So my vacation has taken me by Dr. Heinous’ place now. I got him Grenadier for Xmas, and we’re watching it now. Veddy interesting. And silly. Definitely got more of a plot than you expect from the beginning. More later.
Update: 2nd DVD down. It’s much better than the cover makes it look, both plotwise and philosophically. Not that it’s all that deep either. However, we’re waiting to see what Yatchan’s secret is. They’re covering something about that guy…
Update: Done. Very fun little show. Some of the comments made during the watching, by myself and Dr. Heinous:
“Yeah, that would make me lose my will to fight too — Make love, not war, baby!”
“What’s an inn like that doing in the middle of nowhere?”
“Wait, no panties, and that’s all we saw from a Najica Panty Blitz shot?”
“Her clothing budget must be pretty high.”
“Nah, it’s pre-ripped.”
“And that was how the king was suffocated to death!”
“Just where is she keeping those balloons?”
“Shouldn’t the concussion from firing an underwater cannon knock him out?”
“Where do I get one of those coupons?”
That brothel looks like something out of an epic poem, doesn’t it? Not even Kublai Khan dreamed of such luxury…
It is definitely silly, though.
By the way, did you know that you could coat a balloon with diamond dust and make it bullet-proof? I sure didn’t.
They really, really wanted to include magic in this, but couldn’t really bring themselves to bite the bullet (as it were) and just do it. So the double-talk gets a bit dumb. Mikan is a magic user in all but name, and I wish they had just gone ahead and admitted it. It would have made something she did near the end of the series a lot more believable.
All of the ten-whatevers (slips my mind right now) are magic-users or demi-gods, wielding magical implements and demonstrating impossible powers. You expect a certain level of superhuman ability from animé heroes, and we get that from Yatchan. But the others are far beyond mortal abilities.
Exactly. But they try, oh they try, to pretend that it’s all technology.
I think even Rushuna’s reloading trick is effectively magic.
By the way, did you notice the omitted scenes in the extras? Most of them are on the last DVD but I think the first has one as well.
There’s one from the second brothel episode which is hilarious.
No, I didn’t. We just went straight through it last night.
Tonight, we’ve pretty much shut down for the night after watching Black Lagoon. Now that’s a series with a lot of twisted women. I think Revy might just be the second-most normal one….
Ok, more stream of consciousness subject changes… went back and checked them out. On the 2nd and 3rd DVD’s and yes, it was hilarious. I had thought there was a scene missing there; an obvious opening for comedy that had been missed.
Another one answered a question I had about one scene (the open air bath.) I wonder if those were considered omakes in the episodes, or were clipped out from the R1 DVD episodes, or were deleted from the broadcast but included on the DVDs?
I have a suspicion that those were omakes. Probably they were originally in the storyboards, but they were clipped for time. And they decided to animate them anyway for the DVD releases.
I don’t remember for sure, but weren’t there six of them? If so, that’d be one per Japanese DVD, since it was released two episodes at a time.
I didn’t count, but that seems right.
Oh, and by the way, DrHeinous loved Dai Mahou Touge. 🙂
Alas, there were only four of them. A beautiful theory shot down by an ugly fact.
I still think they were omakes.
Hm. Panties, Oujo-sama, Pinch the fake, Open-air bath, Underwater sketch, and I think I’m missing one. Definitely at least five.
Fun show. I liked the series so much, I think I’m going to order it for myself.
However, I first need to catch up on fansubs and then do my “Worst of 2007” post, which is going to be somewhat late this year.