Comment Policy

Posted on July 10, 2007 by Ubu Roi

Recently, Steven pointed everyone over here to a discussion he and I were having. I didn’t expect an Instalanche or anything, but since he has about a bazillion more readers than I do, I figured a freewheeling debate might break out.

Imagine my surprise, when not one person had anything to say. “WTF?” I thought. “Not even the semi-regulars?”

Well, I was reminded today that people who want to comment here are often off-put by the registration. Sigh. I’m sorry about that, but it’s necessary to stop the spambots. You don’t need a “WordPress Login,” just one special to this site. Needless to say, I don’t do anything with the e-mail addresses of my registered users — although for full disclosure, there’s a never-yet-activated “send email to all registrants” feature I could use, were I inclined to do so.

Your first comment will be held for moderation, just so I can be sure you’re not a particularly clever bot. Because of work, it may be several hours before I release it (although I confess to having accidentally let a couple go for a day or two when I’m super-busy and too frazzled to think.) After that, you’re good to go. If I were to open comments again (as Houblog’s used to be) I’d be fighting off the usual culprits; Akismet has captured 4,000 spam in a year for Mahou Meganekko, but over 22,000 in slightly less than two years for Houblog. For simplicity’s sake, I’d like to leave the comment policy the same on both sites, so this is actually a case where Houblog is driving Mahou Meganekko’s policies. Back when I maintained both regularly, Houblog had about five times the readership and higher rank on Technorati. So it gets about five times the spamination.

Anyway, I finally hacked the template files for the footer and registration screen to explain the registration to readers. WP seems to love convoluted template files that call each other into recursive oblivion, which makes me both leery and frustrated when it comes to meddling with them. I do hope more of you will be inclined to register and comment in the future; I enjoy discussing animé, and sometimes it seems like it’s just me and Steven talking. Out of the last 20 comments, exactly two aren’t from one of us.

Random speculation: I noticed a drop in the number of comments right after Steven moved to Pixy’s hosting in May, and opened up comments on his own blog. I’m wondering if some of the comments here were essentially “displaced commentary” from mutual readers who couldn’t comment on his site until he opened the new one? I can’t link the two events for certain, because that’s also when Mother’s hospital stay forced a hiatus for about three weeks.

Posted in Administrative | 6 Comments

Ecchi-tousen

Posted on July 9, 2007 by Ubu Roi

I just watched the first DVD of Ikkitousen last night.

O. M. F. G.

I’m not sure where I read it, but somewhere I saw a comment that “Ikkitousen sounds like an excuse for girls to lose their clothes repeatedly while fighting.”

Uh, no. Try “lose their clothes repeatedly — and engage in sexually suggestive poses, acts, and talk — while fighting.” Plot? What plot? Just openly steal from history, throw logic (and its relative, reason) out the window, stick panty shots in the opening, and get it on. In more than one sense of the phrase. Well, it’s not an actual hentai title, but it isn’t missing by much. I’ll include the screenshots, but you bet your bippy they’re NSFW.

I mean, to start with, this is what greeted me after I opened the first case and popped out the DVD. Yeah, the Not Safe For Work cover’s reversible:

“No, no, really! I didn’t buy animé porn!” (looks at the rating: Mature: 16+) “Um, well, maybe I did.” I say again: NSFW.

Yeah, the “c’mere and bang me” girl on the right is Hakufu Sonsaku, and is apparently Excel Excel’s better-stacked cousin. She’s that ditzy. But since she burns off the excess energy beating the crap out of people just for the fun of fighting, she talks a bit slower. She apparently has no body modesty at all, one of two traits she shares with every other female in the show. The other, is of course, “booby bombs” as they’re constantly referred to.

She’s got a rival, Shimei Ryomou (the “leave me alone” girl on the left, above). She normally wears an eyepatch, although her eye works just fine. You won’t see the eyepatch from this NSFW angle:

At this point, Sonsaku has just ripped the eypatch off, which really gets Ryomou worked up, enough to unleash the NSFW thighs of doom.

This kind of makes what happens next seem… ambiguous. Maybe not NSFW.

That’s as tame as it gets…. I mean, next second, Ryomou crows that she’s cut off the blood supply and all of Sonsaku’s muscles are relaxing….In a very NSFW way.

Ummm….

Oh, I’m sorry, did I forget to mention that is is also apparently a school for NSFW fetishists?.

But hey, there’s six more schools of fun out there, and they’re all fighting. Including this chick that forget her bra. And blouse. At least you can tell which school she attends. Nice thing, is, there’s no need to make a choice between going for the babe with the green hair, and the babe with the big breasts, when you’re dealing with Ryofu Housen. (At work? Taking your chances here…) Although it’s a bit of a downer that the last time we see her, she’s busy running her tongue down the bad-guy’s chest. Incidentally, her seiiyu has got another one of those “reaches below the waist” voices (where I’m concerned, anyway). I thought it sounded familiar, so I checked. Sure enough, she was the voice of Villetta in Code Geass, Tiamat in Shana, Lt. Yun in Divergence Eve, and Chachamaru in the original Negima!

I notice that I have yet to discuss much plot and backstory. Well, don’t worry, the writers haven’t either — other than to acknowledge that they’re completely stealing the Three Kingdoms period, right down to many names and character fates. Did I mention that the winner of all these fights among high-school kids will somehow be the country’s ruler? Yes, kids. I mentioned school, didn’t I? Not that you ever see the first teacher, or even a class being conducted through the first DVD. A few other well-worn tropes, characters, and plot devices get trotted out, including an oversexed MILF and secret powers.

Well, I think I’m going to give this one another day or two before I continue. I need the time to perform CPR on all those dead brain cells.

Posted in Series Reviews | 5 Comments

Some Confusion About Shingu

Posted on July 7, 2007 by Ubu Roi

Warning! This entire post is a major set of spoilers for the series. If you haven’t seen it, don’t go there!

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Posted in DVD Reviews, Series Reviews | 10 Comments

Some Very Random Notes

Posted on July 6, 2007 by Ubu Roi

This post is mostly stream-of-consciousness; that is, if you accept the controversial theory that I am conscious. Really, I didn’t have anything to say; I was just too bored of playing WOW. So this is going to bounce around like a hyperactive ferret on a pixie stick.

Otome wa Boku was licensed this week. If you’ve never heard of this show, you haven’t missed much; it’s another h-game adaptation. How bad are the lapses in logic? Check out the picture of the babe-er-riffic Mizuho, and then click the spoiler tag below to see what’s wrong with it.

Yowza!!!

Mizuho is a guy. 😮 This is the show that prompted Jason’s meme, “Just shoot me, there’s no way there’s ‘X.’ No way. None.” Here, ‘X’ was, “a penis on this….”

Moving right along, one Robotech fan gets a little too much wrapped up in his idea of fandom. Thou Shalt Not Defy The Fans’ Beliefs. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight… I hereby christen him and his ilk “Robotards.” (Grammar Nazis need not e-mail about that sentence.)

(Oh all right! “HE and his ilk.” There. Happy now?)

Steven’s ordered Godannar. I blame me. (NSFW!) Maybe I should have taken his tack from UFO Princess Valkyrie and posted all the good parts, so nobody else would have to buy it. (Do I have that much bandwidth?) Seriously, fast forward through the launch sequences. It’s like a minute-and-a-half. And they play it in FULL through about the first six episodes. Every. Single. Time. They finally have mercy in the 2nd half of the first season, and mostly do away with it in the second season. I think it looks like UPV has the superior fanservice anyway — not that Godannar is weak or anything! Quoting myself from an earlier review…

As one reviewer stated on Anime News Network, there’s a hallway scene where you can pretty much change the color palette from “uniform orange” to “human skin” and it’s at least hard R.

And this isn’t actually in the show…no, it’s in the swimsuit gallery. (Not terribly NSFW, but let’s not take chances, eh?)

Yeah, I could hang out on that beach.

Girls High got licensed. This proves that some people have no taste. NSFW(?) spoiler:

G-On Riders still hasn’t. Ditto.

Geneon will subject us to the not-very-funny but definitely-not-dramatic Shana OAV. They’re firmly in the “teen idiocy” genre for this one. Just in case it slipped your mind, there’s the movie (a milking retelling of the first story arc) and a second season coming. There was a five minute trailer for it, which I have thankfully lost the link too, seeing as three minutes of it was either watching waves crash onto the shore, or a chibi Shana threaten Yuuiji with dire consequences if he doesn’t watch the movie or series. The rest of it was Wilhelmina. And it was awful. (She smiled. How wrong can you get?)

I still don’t understand why Steven would be interested in Godannar. NSFW: Not that I, you know, like Shizuru, or anything.

Couple of side notes here: He got amazingly fast service from Robert. Last time I ordered late, late on a Friday night (Saturday A.M. really) my order didn’t ship until Tuesday. Not getting it out on Monday is even more unusual for RACS than Steven’s luck in quick shipping. I like RACS because I can depend on Robert to be in stock when he says he’s in stock, and if I pre-order, he’s going to have enough to fill my order. DVD Empire repeatedly failed to do that. RightStuf can’t ship in a reasonable amount of time. And I pity this poor fool from the ANN forums:

More Haruhi! Shocked I can’t wait! Very Happy I really enjoyed the first series and am looking forward to the next one. I will be glad when my Haruhi vol. 2 LE comes. I had pre-ordered from AnimeNation but they don’t even have it in stock yet. Crying or Very sad So, I cancelled my pre-order and ordered it from The Right Stuf. Cool I am looking forward to watching the Kyon Order bonus DVD.

I’ve had my copy since Tuesday…. Thanks again, Robert.

Meanwhile, Bandai is going to make sure we get our daily ration of Aika fanservice.

Funimation is making sure that Love Hina will still be available, come 2008, as well as subjecting us to XXXholoic, Darker than BLACK, Tsubasa Chronicles, and horror of horrors, Karl Malden’s nose.

Whoops! I mean the new Negima!?. It’s a spastic version of the old Negima! Rumor has it that the third version of the series will add a comma to the title. “Negima!?,” (I think a dollar sign would be more appropriate, if there really were a third series…)

Skipping back to XXXholic for a moment, this just goes to show how much of a negative CLAMP’s character designs are these days. I got adjusted to it in Code Geass, but the screenshots of the characters for XXXholic turned me off. Now that I’ve actually gone and read the description, I wonder if I missed something good.. Well, maybe I’ll find out in 2008.

And going further back, Love Hina is a classic that’s been around so long, its id# at ANN is “168” when you look at the URL…which led to an odd thought: what is the “oldest” show, as in first animé series/movie/OAV in their database? I figured it would be some venerable old classic occupying the place of honor.

I was rather surprised.

So what about the remainder of the First Ten?

Continuing with my stream of alleged consciousness, I checked some other blogs over the last few days.

The Fledgling Otaku moved last week. Perhaps not oddly, despite our (former) relative proximity, we never met in real life. (He passed within about four miles of my house on his way out of town!)

Brickmuppet tells of the passing of a great sailor and warrior. I’m utterly flabbergasted at what he accomplished — if his most famous exploits were made into an animé, we’d laugh at how stupid and unrealistic it was! If you follow the link, don’t read anything right away… first scroll down to the picture of his sub’s battle flag. Look at the absolute bottom center. Yes, that’s a train. A train, on the battle flag of a submarine.

Don’s apparently still watching Sola. Pray for him. He’s also apparently having weather much like ours in Houston. Send floaties.

Oh, and I got a PG.

Apparently there are two uses of the word “crap” on this blog somewhere. (Three now, I guess). And one that made me really suspicious of a political bent to it: “Shoot.”

That’s right, the nekkid women and bouncing boobs had nothing to do with it…. Then I got to looking a bit more closely at the code I was cutting and pasting to make that appear above. Aha! I went back to the website that it linked to. No wonder it isn’t any good. Look at the bolded part below. (I’ve added spaces so the code will show.)


< a href="http://mingle2.com/blog-rating">
< img style="border: none;" src="http://mingle2.com/img/bb/blog_rating/pg.jpg" alt="Online Dating" /> < /a>
< p> Mingle2 - < a href="http://mingle2.com"> Online Dating< /a>< /p>

Nothing bad, but they hope it will become a popular meme and drive business their way, I’m sure.

Sigh.

Godannar…. I mean, really. He is My Master fansubs would have been cheaper.

Just be ready for the Attack of the Killer Tropes, because Godannar is going to throw them at you. “Don’t respect it” is right….

Update: What did I mean, “IF?” Good lord.

Update 2 (7/10): By the way, have I ever mentioned I hate IE? If you use it, and have seen this post before today, you know why I say that.

Posted in Bitching, Fandom, Random Nonsense, Upcoming Releases | 6 Comments

It’s Announced

Posted on July 5, 2007 by Ubu Roi

Either the greatest leg-pull in animé history has just occured, or Season II of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is on the way. Announcement said to be coming in the next issue of Newtype.

Just seen over at ANN:

Second Haruhi Season to be Announced
Posters on the Japanese 2ch board report that the August issue (officially on sale July 10) of Japan’s Newtype magazine has revealed the second season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The reported coverage of the magazine indicates that the science fiction comedy anime’s continuation will be announced on July 7 (07/07/07).

I’m going to be cautiously optomistic; but not gung ho. Reasons being, it’s 2ch and a Saturday announcment seems weird. However, two counterpoints: that’s Tanibata, which is hugely important to the series backstory, and Jason has posted a copy of a picture that I wouldn’t expect to see as random art. It’s about the drawing of the symbols “three years ago,” and it hints (as one poster says) that the series will start with that and launch into the 4th novel (The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya), which is a pivotal story, especially in regards to Kyon’s maturation and Yuki Nagato’s character development.

Update: It wasn’t season 2, just more of their live action silliness.

Posted in Random Nonsense, Upcoming Releases | Leave a comment

Order Arrived

Posted on July 3, 2007 by Ubu Roi

Yep, spent some of yesterday catching up on Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, English dub version (and rewatching some of the Japanese, just to make sure my memory wasn’t faulty). I got DVD 1 of the english dub in last month, but I held off until I also had DVD 2, so I could watch all the way through the first arc in English. A few notes:

Fansub text beats the crap out of corporate subtitle text. It’s not even close. Amazing how much better the fansubbers do.

Wendee Lee as Haruhi: No. Hell no. She doesn’t sound maniacal at all. She doesn’t even sound like a teenager; she honest-to-god ends up sounding like a full grown woman trying miserably to pretend to be a teenager. It’s confirmed: there is only one Haruhi, and Aya Hirano is her name. Thank you, Bandai. Not.

Crispin Freeman as Kyon: The U.S. Post Office thanks you for your support, but I object to your mailing in this performance.

Johnny Yong Bosch as Itsuki: Enh. He’s not oily enough. He comes across as a goofball, not someone that you’re unsure whether to trust at your back.

Mischelle Ruff as Yuki: Very credible performance. Much better than I expected, but it was often hard to hear her. They should have boosted the gain on her track some more.

Stephenie Sheh as Mikuru: Absolutely. Outstanding. Performance. She nailed Mikuru perfectly. It took a few seconds to adjust to hearing that kind of voice in English, but after that I had to remember I’d ever heard it in Japanese.

Seeing the show in all its HD glory makes me sick to think how much we lose from .avi encoding. The level of detail was so much greater, I had to go back and doublecheck some scenes from the series because I thought they’d re-done them for the DVD.

Also spent some time listening to the Misaki Chronicles soundtrack. It does include the OP and ED, but it does not include the music from Divergence Eve. Makes me want to go back and rewatch the series, but I don’t need that kind of emotional wringer right now. Sora brings back enough of it that I don’t want to try it.

Still to come: Vandread (legal and presumably superior) and Ikkitousen.

Update: Pictures below the fold. Examples of bad subbing, IMHO.

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Posted in Bitching, Commerce, Random Nonsense, Subs, Dubs, & Voice Acting/Actors | 13 Comments

A Conversation That Never Happened

Posted on June 26, 2007 by Ubu Roi

Steven made a comparison between Shingu and Evangelion today. On the face of it, that’s rather absurd; Evangelion is considered an iconic series, often even by those who hate it–because it is iconic. Shingu is relatively unknown. In fact, had Steven not written about it, I wouldn’t have a clue it existed, unless I was bored enough to browse through all the series starting with the letter S over at ANN. (It might take a while…) Yet neither he nor I dispute that Shingu is the better series. It was made, as Steven points out, by an accomplished director, who was at the top of his game. Evangelion was made by a relatively inexperienced director, who didn’t yet have the professional tools in his kit to make such a grand, reaching story.

There was another key point to how Shingu turned out, although it isn’t so much in comparison to Evangelion, nor is it a straight comparison of the two directors. Rather, it is a comparison to all the other dreck out there this year. Sato Tatsuo had the artistic freedom to make the show he wanted to make in Shingu.. He had a specific vision of the story he wanted to tell, and how he wanted to tell it, and that’s exactly what he did.

There was obviously never a conversation with the Marketing department, that went anything like the following:

“Look Sato-san, we’ve been running the numbers and looking at the competition for the upcoming season out there right now, and we’ve got some serious concerns about this show. We think it’s going to need, you know, a little sprucing up. Nothing major! We don’t want to interfere with your creativity after all…just make a few, ah, tweaks. Minor stuff, really.”

“Like for instance, we’re thinking about the character design — these girls, the breasts don’t work. They’re just too small. Complete non-starter for the 15-22 male demographic. If you were to enlarge them just a little, not much, say, to about watermelon-sized, it would raise the appeal of the show. Five or six points, minimum.”

We’re also concerned that there’s no loli anywhere in this show. That’s a whole fan segment that we’re overlooking right there, so we were thinking, whatshisname, that really fast kid, you know, make him a girl instead, that looks about 8-10. Oh, don’t worry that it’s junior high and the other girls are all, ah, somewhat more developed. We thought of a perfectly logical explanation — you see, she’s a loli and really, really fast because she’s actually an android under that skintight outfit–see? What? Not a problem. If you don’t like the painted-on jumpsuit look, we could go for something more gothic-looking. Oooh!. And maybe she fights with cute little grenades, painted pink!

Something else we want you to think about. Just consider it, for now. Muryou and Haichi… shounen-ai! It’s really hot this season! What? Right, Haijime, yes, that’s what I meant.”

“So anyway, moving on to these mecha designs… yes, yes, we know they’re not *really* mechas, but have you considered high heels and more, ah, female proportions for the robots….”

Nope, that conversation never happened. Or if it did, Sato politely listened, told them he’d think about it, and then hired ninja to assassinate the entire marketing department, their wives, and their descendants down to the nth generation.

Well, that’s how I’d write it anyway. Goth loli catgirl ninja, of course. With glasses. Disguised as meido.

Posted in Anime Industry, Art and Craft | Tagged , | 3 Comments