The new, official, stand-alone anime thread!

[Guest CED Ordonez]

Dude, I have GOT to see Ninja Scroll in Espanol. That would so totally rock.

 

AlwaysPissed: I think generally once you get accustomed to a certain set of voices for a show, it's hard to switch to another one because it's just so damn weird. I watched Vision of Escaflowne from start to finish in Japanese, and it never seemed the least bit weird to me, but watching all of Bebop in english and then attempting to watch it in Japanese proved to be practically impossible.

Yeah, I agree with you for the most part, RickyChosyu. Kinda like a voice imprinting of each character; once you hear a certain voice pattern for a character, it tends to stick with you as the voice of that character. I think it's true in most cases, but Tenchi Muyo! stands out in my book as one of the exceptions since I found going from English to Japanese was an easy change. I think it was the English VA for Ayeka that made the Japanese VAs that much more suitable. Flame me for that comment if you must.

[Guest RickyChosyu]

Yeah, I suppose that after hearing Akeka's english VA for a while anything would seem good. I actually liked the Tenchi dub, for the most part, but Akeka's voice got on my nerves really fast. Fear not, no flaming in this thread, just anime love....and stuff....

 

Has anyone seen GTO, by the way? Sorry for being so spastic, it's just a very cool show. Me and my friends enjoyed it so very much that "TEACHER BANZAI" has become our latest inside joke. Dorks are we.

[Guest AlwaysPissedOff]

I just watched Death & Rebirth last night and all I have to say is this: WHAT. A. MINDFUCK.

 

Sure, Death was really just the retelling of the entire series, but dammit... Rebirth was fuckin' AWESOME! The double-sided DVD was a nice touch, but the Eva glossaries/bios are damn near impossible to read, though. Still though... great movie and great extras. They even included all the trailers for the movie and a preview of EoE(which will be MINE when Amazon gets it.), which of course rocked bells.

 

Something I found hilarious: Asaka reviving in Unit-02 and realizing that her "mama" was with her the entire time. That entire spiel she went on cracked me the fuck up.

[Guest Kagato Otaku]

Yeah, I suppose that after hearing Akeka's english VA for a while anything would seem good. I actually liked the Tenchi dub, for the most part, but Akeka's voice got on my nerves really fast. Fear not, no flaming in this thread, just anime love....and stuff....

 

Y'see, Ayeka's voice never bothered me... during the OVAs. But sometime after the "Tenchi Muyo in Love" dub, she lost it and focused on being nasal and generally unpleasant.

 

It's not so weird, 'cause the "Tenchi" series dub quality goes in waves. It's a little rough in the first two eps of the OVAs, and then in ep 3, it gets really good, with no embarrasing or "funny-accented" secondary characters. Everybody fits their roles well, and the Big-Bad of the first arc, Kagato, is blessed with one of the best dub voices... EVER. The smug bastard is so calm and smooth in his evilness that I can't help rooting for the guy. I'd say his English voice is even better than the original, and his original voice actor is VERY good (Vicious in Cowboy Beboy; Cell from DBZ).

 

The second OVAs are all high-quality, as is the first movie. But from Tenchi Universe on, alot of the actors get really lazy and/or bored, which I'd blame on sloppy direction. Tenchi in Tokyo is particularly awful, not that anything could of saved that abortion anyway.

 

APO - Haven't seen Manga's E:D&R yet, but I've heard the dub was pretty uneven, with everybody but Shinji sounding "off". I liked the English version of TV series okay, is there really that big a difference in the dubbing of the movies?

[Guest RickyChosyu]

Yes, Tenchi does indeed seem to go in waves, as far as dub quality. Ayeka can be, at times, effective as a character, but many times it's needlessly corny in general. I think that, overall, the voices were handled pretty well, but it went over-the-top quite a bit and could get on one's nerves from time to time. Then there was Tenchi in Tokyo, which, as you said, was an abortion and a waste of everyone's time. Kagato rules the world, definitely. For such little time to develope, it was easy to get into the character, for sure.

 

Yes, D & R is indeed a mind fuck. If you can believe it, EoE is even more so.

[Guest Crucifixio Jones]

It's very true about getting accustomed to hearing voices on a certain show...

 

I can't stand to watch DBZ in English. If it ain't japanese and subtitled, I don't wanna hear it.

[Guest CED Ordonez]

Heck, even changing voice actors and actresses is tough to deal with. Vegeta's VA changing in between his debut and the Frieza saga is still makes it strange to watch older episodes. Vegeta's current English voice sounds alot more suiting than his slightly higher pitched one he had during his debut IMHO. Also, the turnover rate of the English Sailor Moon VA crew where only Jupiter and Venus are the only original cast members left pretty much sealed the deal for me and the Japanese dialogue track.

 

And on a side note, has anybody heard about what's going on Tenchi Muyo! with the final OVA installment and the "new series". Frankly, I haven't heard anything new in the past few months and the "new series" still frightens me alot with all the main focus turning to new characters.

[Guest El Psycho Diablo]

The new series is just a spinoff with periodic appearances by the Tenchi crew, as I remember

.

[Guest AlwaysPissedOff]

APO - Haven't seen Manga's E:D&R yet, but I've heard the dub was pretty uneven, with everybody but Shinji sounding "off". I liked the English version of TV series okay, is there really that big a difference in the dubbing of the movies?

It's not THAT big of a difference, but yeah, Shinji's pretty much the only one who sounds like himself. I can kinda excuse Asaka because she basically spoke one time the entire time in Rebirth and that's when she woke up like I stated in my last post. Also, the animation is a lot different from the series with it looking kinda "Ghost in the Shell"-ish to me.

[Guest RickyChosyu]

Great, another case of anime companies trying to cash in on a dead horse (forgive the mixed metaphor there). Ah well.

 

I think the animation in D & R was just another case of them attempting something a bit different. I didn't care too much for it, but hey, what can you do.

[Guest CED Ordonez]

bump.

And while I'm at it, could somebody explain the continuity and order of the original Dragon Ball series? Namely the Pilaf Saga, The Red Ribbon Army Saga, and the Tournament.

[Guest pochorenella]

I'll do it. Just give me a little time to get my facts right.

[Guest pochorenella]

Okay, here’s how the Dragonball story goes:

 

Baby Gokuh arrives on Earth on his spaceship and is picked up by his “grandpa” Gohan, who takes care of him after Gokuh falls head first to the floor and forgets his original mission (destroy the Earth) and develops into a decent human being, albeit one with a monkey’s tail.

His first major villain is Pilaf, who collected all 7 DBs but failed to make his wish: Oolong got some panties instead of Bulma’s affections.

After this, Gokuh would go on to meet Krillin and train with him under Master Roshi’s. They would all face off in the 21st Martial Arts Tournament, won by Roshi under the Jackie Chun disguise. Gokuh would be runner up.

Gokuh would meet the Red Ribbon guys next, who wanted to collect the DBs to conquer the world or something, but Gokuh would defeat them and instead ask Shenron to revive that Native American guy who was bulletproof (sorry, forgot his name.)

Another Tournament now, again with Gokuh as runner-up and Tien Shin Han taking top prize. Later, they would all team up to fight Piccolo Daimaioh (Kamisama’s evil side), and only with a supreme effort by Gokuh could he be defeated. Apparently beaten, Gokuh used a Kamehameha to propel himself towards Piccolo and spear him, leaving Piccolo no other choice but to create an egg with his essence to survive. That egg would give birth to Piccolo Daimaioh jr., who vowed revenge against Gokuh. He would train intensively to face Gokuh in the 23rd Tournament (under another name I also forgot). Ladies and Gentlemen, this is an epic battle if there ever was one. New technique after new technique would Piccolo throw at Gokuh, but the rpund Saiyan would ultimately defeat him (and learn to fly in the process.)

Gokuh showed Piccolo his respect towards him by giving him the hermit seed so he could recuperate. However, Piccolo was still very bitter and his hatred for Gokuh was still great. He vowed to train harder than ever and take him down again. Kakkarotto wouldn’t have it any other way.

After this I think the gang met with Garlic jr. (I’m not really sure about this) in the first DB movie, and then the mighty Dragon Ball Z series started.

 

Please feel free to correct me or add anything here. Hopefully most of the facts here are correct. Peace.

[Guest RickyChosyu]

Great job explaining it without making it too wordy or complicated, since the DB universe seems to be like that, be it intentional or not. The Indian guy that Goku reserected was Guilan, by the way.

 

If anything, I would say there are just a few details that link the various story arcs together that could be mentioned. For example, the Red Ribbon Arc (my favorite), saw Guilan get killed by the Red Ribbon's assasine, Tao Pai Pai. Goku ended up killing him in revenge, but Tao's evil brother, Tsurusenin, trained Chaozu and Tenshinhan to kill Goku and avenge his brother's loss, which set up the the 22nd Tenkaichi Budoukai. Also important from the Red Ribbon arc is that one member of the army escaped and plotted revenge against Goku for a long, long time. That man was Dr. Gero, who designed all the androids that show up in Dragon Ball Z later on, which explains why all of them have "RR" written on them somewhere.

 

Also important is that Pilaf is the one who releases Piccalo Daimaioh to (say it with me) get revenge on Goku and take over the world. Of course, Daimaioh is the architype of evil, and turns on poor Pilaf, but he probably had it coming anyway.

 

And yeah, the first DBZ movie takes place between Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. I actually like that movie quite a bit, but the "mini-saga" that resulted from it was atrocious.

[Guest AlwaysPissedOff]

Great summary, Pocho. Maybe you can explain the storylines in Gundam Wing so I can finally find out who the fuck hates who there...

 

[Guest AlwaysPissedOff]

Hey guys, I'm gonna be posting my old AKIRA DVD review on the site since I just found it while cleaning out the PC. Gimmie some feedback on it.

[Guest RickyChosyu]

Only had time to skim through it (school is not my friend) but from what I saw you did a good job, as there are ton of extra features to cover on the DVD. Just out of curiousity, did you change it before posting on the web site? It's not too comon that something anime related gets posted there.

 

Personally, I wouldn't rate Akira, as a movie, at *****. The manga is clearly better, and since Otomo created both of them, he should have done more to make the movie at the same levle. I really wish he would have lengthened it into an OVA series, or something of that nature, because the manga does a way better job at explaining what happens, and why. Considering he condensed a manga spanning six graphic novles into a standard-length movie and yet still managed to make it one of the best animes ever speaks volumes of his directing ability, though.

[Guest El Psycho Diablo]

On a different note..has anyone around here seen Inuyasha? ¬.¬ I'm up to ep 9, and fairly addicted to it.

[Guest pochorenella]

Thanks for the compliments, guys. It really means a lot. And thanks to Ricky for adding up all those facts about The Red Ribbon and Pilaf. I could probabaly do an extra-detailed account of the whole series, but that would probabaly take too much space (and nobody's asked for it, anyway).

 

AlwaysPissed, I haven't seen one single episode of Gundam (in any variation), even though it's showed on Cartoon Network, so sorry there. And could you post a link to your Akira review? Personally, I love the movie, and have only seen a little of the manga but I know about all the changes done. And while it's true that it's very difficult to condense that many episodes into one movie I agree it was a great job finally.

[Guest AlwaysPissedOff]

Just out of curiousity, did you change it before posting on the web site? It's not too comon that something anime related gets posted there.

Nah, I posted the review exactly like I did it last year with the exception of putting in the html codes(what was a real bitch), everything else was the same as I'd written it before. And I plan on working on the anime content of the site as I got a nice lil 3 day thing that I'm going to do for Evangelion just as soon as I get EoE. The Eva Box Set will be done first(obviously, I can't really go into huge detail on all the episodes, so I'll basically be going from DVD to DVD and pointing out a few significant events), then Death & Rebirth the second day, and finally(of course) End of Eva on the third day.

 

 

 

Personally, I wouldn't rate Akira, as a movie, at *****. The manga is clearly better, and since Otomo created both of them, he should have done more to make the movie at the same levle. I really wish he would have lengthened it into an OVA series, or something of that nature, because the manga does a way better job at explaining what happens, and why.

Understandable. I can't really be unbiased when talking about AKIRA because it's one of my favorite anime movies and personally, one my favorite movies ever. Also, I've never seen the manga before. Hell, I didn't even know there WAS one for AKIRA, so I'm gonna try and track it down.

 

 

 

AlwaysPissed, I haven't seen one single episode of Gundam (in any variation), even though it's showed on Cartoon Network, so sorry there. And could you post a link to your Akira review?

Heh, I was just messing with ya about Gundam Wing, Pocho. And, as for the link, here ya go: AKIRA: Special Edition

 

 

On a different note..has anyone around here seen Inuyasha? ¬.¬ I'm up to ep 9, and fairly addicted to it.

I'm watching it now too, EPD. Just that I'm reduced to watching Adult Swim for it and they are up to episode 3 where Inuyasha is fighting the chick who uses hair to kill. Gotta say that I'm digging it right now, too.

[Guest RickyChosyu]

Inu Yasha is da shiznit, and I'm really getting into it's wierd take on feudal Japanese mythology and what-not. I've got a friend who's read the whole manga that says the show is very true to it's story, almost to perfection, which is nice to see. Inu Yasha, the character, is especially cool.

 

APO: The manga is really worth it. The movie basically covers the first two and half volumes of the manga and then skips right to the ending, so you'll get a lot more if understanding if you track down the manga.

 

And pochorenella, I wouldn't want to subject you to the horrendous task of trying to cover all of Dragon Ball on paper. Hell, I could write a term paper on Evangelion if I had to, but I'm not about to do jump on that one.

[Guest CED Ordonez]

Inu Yasha is one of those anime titles I really want to check out, but I keep forgetting about it when Saturday comes around and it's on Cartoon network.

 

Finally went through the entire 24 episodes of Love Hina (plus the afterthought of episode 25), the X-Mas and Spring special episodes, and the Love Hina Again OVAs and I'd like to give some impressions:

 

*POTENTIAL SPOILERS*

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

...

 

-It's definitely a fun series to watch although it just seems really random between the point where Mutsumi leaves the storyline in episode 6 and the point where Seta and Sara officially enter the fray. I'm not saying that the episodes weren't funny. Most of the episodes developed the other Hinata-sou characters aside from Naru and Keitarou, but I really wondered when the main plot was going to get moved forward.

 

-The Christmas Special really kicks major BUTT in my books as the final scene contains probably the best moment in the series.

 

-Love Hina Again OVA ranks up there with Tenchi in Tokyo as an anime that never should've existed. It was decent standing by itself, but falls way under the bar the TV series raised. Though we finally get actual closure in the Naru/Keitarou relationship, the way they get to it just didn't seem right to me.

 

I'll add some more after some discussion.

[Guest El Psycho Diablo]

I'm really suprised with Inuyasha. Up to watching episode 22 (I have 1 - 30, but 27 I haven't found yet.. ). Good show, so far.

 

Don't know how the dub is, but I think it'd take me a while to get used to now.

[Guest Kagato Otaku]

I don't care for Love Hina, but I can definately sympathize for your hate of the LHA OVAs. At least in the Tenchi-verse, we can rationalize TinT by saying it NEVER HAPPENED. But I think Love Hina Again is official canon, so it can't be sworn off so easily.

[Guest RickyChosyu]

Yes, the Love Hina OVA's aren't very good at all. The worste part is that most people will sit through them anyway just to get some closure on Keitaro and Naru, which the TV series should have taken care of. Personally, if I had seen the Christmas Special and stopped watching after that, I would have been totally content, as the Spring Special is dumb and the OVA is just tripe.

 

Still, Love Hina is a great show, albeit random at times, with lots of sympathetic characters that all play their roles well and help further the central storyline. It did divert from the central storyline a bit much, but I think that helped the series more than hinder it. It's refreshing to see a show like this where the main character isn't trying to get with every female on the show, yet still has those secondary characters developed. Motoko, especially, became a favorite of mine, and by the end it was evident how she had changed as a character. Even though they hinted that she might have feelings for Keitaro, the main focus was on how he helped her become a more complete person, which made her character much more enjoyable. I agree that the Christmas Special has the best moments of the show, too.

[Guest CED Ordonez]

The Christmas Special is the official closure for me; the main couple make confessions, one a bit indirectly yet still clear as day. Also, the bridges of past relationships were burned so they could move on to the next level of their own relationship as par for a Japanese couple. The main complaint I have about Love Hina Again is that it goes in a completely roundabout way to blatantly state what is already apparent.

 

For characters, as much as I like watching the shenanigans of Kaolla, I think it was the most fun watching Shinobu's growth and her innocent relationship with Keitaro. I really liked that they finally put some focus on her tribulations in the Christmas Special.

[Guest RickyChosyu]

Shinobu was deffinitely another case of a some-what cliched character overcoming that becoming a really likeable despite it. By the end, I found myself totally rooting for her and it was really easy to relate to how she felt.

 

The Christmas Special is deffitely the best closure.

[Guest Kagato Otaku]

Bringing up Tenchi in Tokyo reminded me of something… has there *ever* been a good “alternate universe” anime? All the ones I can think of are either thoroughly mediocre (Tenchi Universe; El Hazard: The Wanderers) or hack-jobs that destroy the original characters (TinT; Nuku Nuku Dash!). I'm not familiar with Escaflowne, but I've heard the movie butchers it as well.

 

Nothing annoys me more than getting into a series, only to find out its been spun off into a fucking "alternate universe". Especially in Tenchi's case, where we've been subjected to ten years of that crap. Has any one of these things NOT been inferior to the original?

[Guest pochorenella]

Bringing up Tenchi in Tokyo reminded me of something… has there *ever* been a good “alternate universe” anime? All the ones I can think of are either thoroughly mediocre (Tenchi Universe; El Hazard: The Wanderers) or hack-jobs that destroy the original characters (TinT; Nuku Nuku Dash!). I'm not familiar with Escaflowne, but I've heard the movie butchers it as well.

 

Nothing annoys me more than getting into a series, only to find out its been spun off into a fucking "alternate universe". Especially in Tenchi's case, where we've been subjected to ten years of that crap. Has any one of these things NOT been inferior to the original?

 

The Mazinger Universe (Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger, Grandeizer, the original Getter Robots, Mazinkeiser) have so many alternate twist and turns it could make your head spin. The appearance of Mazinkeiser I'm pretty sure is "alternative Universe" stuff all the way (being that Dr. Hell and Baron Ashler are still alive when they died in the original storyline), but it gives for a fun ride nonetheless, so I wouldn't say it completely butchers the original, but I definitely like it less than the original. I could elaborate more on this if anybody wants to.

 

I know Kagato is familiar with this mecha anime, so any insight from you here is a welcome one. I seem to be one of the few anime mecha fans around here.

[Guest RickyChosyu]

Yes, the Escaflowne movie is a giant heaping pile of ass, and is, in no way, a representation of what the show is actually about.

 

Evangelion's End of Eva movie is an "alternate ending" and I while I'm not as found of it as most, it's deffinitely not a hack-job or near-parody like someone of the Gundam spin-offs are.

 

Actually, that brings up a good point: are any of the alternate universe series for Gundam worthwile? I enjoyed Wing at times, but it's hardly on the levle of works like Char's Counter Attack and the 08th MS Team. It felt contrite and flashy, and the characters were way too one-dimensional. Is the current 0083 part of the central storyline? I'm pretty sure it is, but not possitive. From what I've seen, G Gundam, Gundam X, and Turn A Gundam are total abominations that undermine the entire purpose behind the Gundam saga. Thoughts?