Oh, Tetsuo! :: Don't Take Your Love to Town

Music Video :: "Hate Everyone" by Say Anything

2009-09-01T17:41:00.003-04:00

Moving is such a pain, isn't it? Sorry about the lack of updates. I'll get back to a regularly scheduled stream of anime nonsense pretty soon, but in the mean time, heeeeres the new Say Anything video

Say Anything - Hate Everyone

Music News :: Holy Crap! Noel Gallagher Quits Oasis!

2009-08-29T16:48:00.004-04:00

Well half of the United States may think the band broke up over the feuding brothers back in the late 1990's, but there's a big legion of Oasis fans that were still buying records and selling out their inexplicably huge arena shows (despite the lack of noteworthy commercial success in the states since (What's the Story) Morning Glory. Still, it seems that time finally caught up to the belief that the band had split yesterday when lead guitarist and songwriter Noel Gallagher posted a short message on the bands website declaring that he'd left Oasis after an altercation with his brother before a show in Paris.

How do I know? Well, it's not the worlds best kept secret, but I'm one of them. Although for the past six years I've been referring to myself as more of a Noel Gallagher fan than an Oasis fan.

Today, a few more details are starting to appear and Gallagher has posted a more formal letter on oasisinet.com:

Dearly beloved, it is with a heavy heart and a sad face that I say this to you this morning.

As of last Friday the 28th August, I have been forced to leave the Manchester rock'n'roll pop group Oasis.

The details are not important and of too great a number to list. But I feel you have the right to know that the level of verbal and violent intimidation towards me, my family, friends and comrades has become intolerable. And the lack of support and understanding from my management and band mates has left me with no other option than to get me cape and seek pastures new.

I would like firstly to offer my apologies to them kids in Paris who'd paid money and waited all day to see us only to be let down AGAIN by the band. Apologies are probably not enough, I know, but I'm afraid it's all I've got.

While I'm on the subject, I'd like to say to the good people of V Festival that experienced the same thing. Again, I can only apologise - although I don't know why, it was nothing to do with me. I was match fit and ready to be brilliant. Alas, other people in the group weren't up to it.

In closing I would like to thank all the Oasis fans, all over the world. The last 18 years have been truly, truly amazing (and I hate that word, but today is the one time I'll deem it appropriate). A dream come true. I take with me glorious memories.

Now, if you'll excuse me I have a family and a football team to indulge.

I'll see you somewhere down the road. It's been a fuckin' pleasure.

Thanks very much.

Goodbye.

NG.

So, sad news for true believers in the Manchester outfit, but a sigh of hopeful relief from the section of the fanbase who've been clamoring for Noel to start making solo records. I suppose now's as good a time as any.

No official word from "the band" (liam) yet as to what the future holds for Oasis, but needless to say, without Noel Gallagher, Oasis simply ceases to exist.

More on this as it comes in.

Music Review :: Jet - Shaka Rock

2009-08-19T23:18:00.002-04:00

Artist :: Jet
Album :: Shaka Rock
Release :: 25 August, 2009
Label :: Atlantic Records
Genre :: Garage Rock Revival, Rock N Roll

Long before my days slagging 90's anime robots and covering the occasional random album release here on Oh, Tetsuo, I used to sling reviews at a pretty huge public music community that shall remain nameless. I found, though, after about five years, that I truly loathe most people who consider themselves avid music fans. If asked to explain this seemingly irrational hatred of a pretty sizable group of people, I like to use Jet as a prime example.

Jet crawl under the skin of the Animal Collective collective, like nails on a chalk board or. ..um. well ...Jet. A harmless poppy throwback rock n roll band with catchy songs and some fist-pumping guitar riffs. But, harmless fun being the bane of the average indie music fan, this clueless bunch of Aussie rockers with a severe Beatles and AC/DC addiction have managed to become the antichrists of audio to the pitchfork media crowd, which is reason enough to love them to death.

Over on that there site, I've explained about a hundred times that I'm a fan of pop music, yet I still get a constant stream of private messages and site references about my "perplexing taste" ...because I think TV on the Radio are cool, but I also thought there were some good songs on Paris. Which isn't really all that hard to understand really. I'm someone who really enjoys music and spends absolutely zero time attempting to impress anyone with my taste. Sometimes Fleet Foxes make one of the best albums of the year and sometimes I like to listen to Journey really loud in my car in a non-ironic way.

Now, that said, there's more to my love of Jet than that Pitchfork can't stand them.

The problem I had with much of the garage rock revival of '01 was that every band needed a gimmick. Unique or not, someone was releasing vinyl exclusively or had silly back stories like The Hives. Hell, The Vines had a legitimately mentally handicapped singer, although I don't think anyone knew that when they came out. Especially being as close to Detroit as I am, the dirty non-art artrock garage nonsense was thick.

Then along came these four kinda thickheaded guys who played some furious guitar riffs and the singer shouted "yeah" a lot on top of some really catchy tunes. Months after learning about these guys and going to see them live they wound up with a huge hit that was a ripoff of an Iggy Pop song (which I might add is dramatically better than the song it lifts from) and... well... that was pretty much the end. There wasn't much else by way of mainstream success in the States. The story of Jet that most people are aware of.

The more well-read folks know that there was a second album, but not many people bothered to listen to it, which of course didn't stop anyone at the aforementioned league of hipster douchebags from shitting all over it. It charted higher than the band's debut in the US, but that's slightly misleading because of the dramatically more abysmal chart sales conditions at the time. Which was really unfortunately because the album itself was spectacular. Excellent harmonies, pounding drums, classic-rocky solos, great songs, all kinda uplifting stuff on account of the singer and drummers father had recently passed away. A lot less AC/DC and a lot more Beatles (god forbid.) Just a really enjoyable album from top to bottom without an ounce of pretense.

So that leaves us with a major hit, a solid debut of fun rock songs, and a pretty amazing sophomore effort full of some ambitious classic pop. How fucking horrible is Jet, right? Obviously lacking the talent of the legendary Panda Bear who is the only man brave enough to loop sounds for seven minutes while guys with indie beards have their jaws drop in Rodger Rabbit-esque fashion.

...but I digress.

Needless to say I've been anxiously awaiting their third LP, Shaka Rock (yes, I'm on to the actual review now.) Which was increased tenfold upon hearing the lead single "K.I.A. (Killed In Action)" which seemed like more of a take on their first record but utilized a marching band drumline, and that's always enough to make my clap my hands like a seal.

Finally getting my grubby little hands on it today I exercised extreme digital-music-collector OCD protocol. I loaded it into J. River Media Center. Got 500x500px album art. Got my display on my secondary monitor up. Loaded all my genres, styles, label info, tags, etc. Finally when everything was absolutely perfect, I hit play.

There it was! "K.I.A.!" Hell yeah! After being in an M. Ward / Mountain Goats indie folk kinda mood all week, 24 seconds into the song I was suddenly ready to squeeze into some flares and drink Rolling Rock at some shitty club in The D. I was ready to go. I was here for the party. ...but a funny thing happened after that first 3:28.

...the rest wasn't all that great.

I mean, it's perfectly good, but I was dishearten to see that this wasn't the Jet I'd known and loved and most fucking importantly defended a LOT.

The second track "Beat on Repeat" in is easily the worst of the bunch, serving as a sort of creepy, slimy disco funk number sung in part by drummer Chris Cester who's now apparently singing in full accent (never a good idea. Nice one, Ringo.)

There's still plenty of decent stuff on Shaka Rock. "She's a Genius" "La Di Da" and 80's-ish "Let Me Out" (Jet have heard music from the 80s?) all make for excellent editions to the catalog, and I'd still take Jet and a steak knife to the shoulder over Portishead any day of the week, but there's just something missing here.

Shaka lacks the urgency or instant gratification of the first two records, which, are really all Jet are about in the first place. They also seem to be broadening their musical influences, which I'm not sure how great of an idea that maybe for a band who are essentially a really awesome tribute act.

So it's worth checking out, and worth a couple listens to see what all clicks. If you like your catchy rock tunes that still sound like four guys playing them in a room instead of a grand mess of glossy production magic, Jet are still here for you, suffering the slings and arrows of the indie militia to bring you a fond and fleeting memory of what rock music used to sound like.

New Rating System

2009-08-19T22:42:00.004-04:00

I used to be a firm believer that film should always be rated on a four-star basis, but, honestly it's not worth it to have nine different sets of star graphics for the blog here, so we've instituted a new rating system that runs across the board (I'll have to go back and adjust the rating guide accordingly.)

Here's the quick run down, although the wacky graphics probably are decent enough indicators on their own:

I like to think that this might be pretty self explanatory.

2-2.5 tends to be mostly reserved for fans (music) are hardcore completionists (everything else) who absolutely have to watch, absorb, and then be able to reference everything in the history of time. Not recommended except in some cases of being bad, but somewhat interesting to see/hear for the experience alone.

As a general rule, I like more things than I hate, so 3-3.5 is where the good stuff kicks in. From 3, which is usually worth a spin or a viewing to 3.5 which boarders on "damn good" territory.

Again, these are the things you should be hitting the refresh button on the piratebay every few hours to see if they've leaked yet and buying a retail copy (or two) the second they hit the shelves (or the in case of my old-ass anime reviews, hop in your car and go pick up a box set asap.)

Once a year, maybe, something comes out that is too impossibly good for words. Just crazy retarded excellent in every possible way.

I am making an active effort to take some of the mystique out of five-bombs, though. I get tired of them being reserved excluslvly for Akira or Beatles and Dylan albums. Believe it or not, "perfect" albums have been released since the 1960s. I'm all for classics worship, but, hey, it's a modern world and eventually I've got to beleive that not everything new that comes out is crap.

aaaand there you have it. We now have a unified system. All hail big brother. All hail west texas. Cheers.

Anime Review :: Key the Metal Idol

2009-08-19T03:23:00.005-04:00

Director :: Hiroaki Sato
Language :: English Dub
Runtime :: 15 Episodes (13x30 min. 2x90 min)
Genre :: Drama. Sci-Fi. Cyberpunk.

A truly great short anime series is the kind of thing you can bang out on a Sunday afternoon. It'll start with lunch and poppin' on a new title and before you realize it the final credits are rolling, it's dark outside, and you can't believe how quickly the day's gone by. I can remember sitting totally lost in the beautiful world of Kino's Journey or laying in bed with a cold but still enchanted by the whimsy of Jing: King of the Bandits. However, it seems like an entire lifetime has gone by in the time it's taken me to painstakingly drag myself through Key The Metal Idol. In fact, in some ways it has...

Since I first stepped into the world of Key, my dad's passed away, I've moved, and my best friend has gotten married. Albeit that those things just happened to all taken place over the span of a month, it really does feel like a significant amount of time has passed since I was first introduced to the little robot girl who spoke exclusively in the third person on her quest to become human.

In the first installment of Key, the leading robo-lady's grandfather passes away and in his final message to her he reveals that she only has a short time left on this world before her battery runs dry, but there is a way for Key to go on. If she can make 30,000 friends, Key can become a real girl. Upon learning the rules of the world I'd entered into, I sat at my computer with a gob struck look on my face and could only muster up a quiet "oh god" as I realized the fate I was doomed to for the next nine anime-hours of my life.

I can remember the first day I excitedly started the series just to realize that, what seemed like hours later, I'd actually only watched three episodes. I can also recall the joyous feeling I got when I assumed I was nearing the end only to find that I had completed a mere eight episodes. Now, I may be painting a grim picture of the series and it's not completely without some decent qualities. The world itself is inventive at times and the villain is a right dick who's well constructed and pretty haunting, and if you can stomach the pop idol worshiping nonsense that story itself isn't terrible, but the pacing. My god, the pacing.

The thing that takes what could have been a cute little robot-girl-Pinocchio story into such a grueling task is the fact that there's very little cause for what's happening on screen the majority of the time. What one minute seems like establishment of character relationships the next winds up irrelevant. Development often happens only to then be undone or explained away as a fluke as the cast are randomly exploded, ripped to shreds, or simply vanish into the scenery. (Not that the series is particularly violent, but when they time is right, Key does like to go for the gusto.)

There's also the assault of very annoying quirks peppered throughout like Key's third-person speak and meanwhile-back-at-evil-headquarters cutaways that rarely make sense or serve a purpose other than to establish "yeah, these guys are jerks."

The most exciting episode, ironically, is the first feature-length one, "System" wherein two of the characters (one from the good camp and one from the baddies) deliver simultaneous monologues explaining all the story that the series had yet to bother with before the final confrontation. That might sound like an exaggeration, but I'm not kidding, the entire episode takes place in a park and the aforementioned evil headquarters. No development. No action. Nothin'. Just a conversation and a soliloquy. And, yes, it really is the best 90 minutes of the entire series. Mostly because after all that work making it to that point, you're finally rewarded with a glue-and-duct-tape together explanation of why everything you saw over the last seven hours mattered in any way. The final episode is the inevitable showdown at "the big concert" ...not to give too much away.

The decision to end with two feature-length mini-movies is something that I'd have loved were Key a more enjoyable experience. I can't imagine how fun it would have been to have FLCL or either season of Black Lagoon end with a couple of movies that close the story arc (as opposed to the usual anime move of tossing in an out-of-sequence unrelated movie at the end. ...I'm lookin' at you Cowboy Bebop.)

Despite coming together fairly well in the end and certainly not being the worst thing I've seen (or rated for Oh Tetsuo) I can't in good conscious recommend anyone go dig up this series simply for the sheer amount of time and will-power it takes to plow through.

Music Leaks :: Say Anything "Hate Everyone"

2009-08-17T20:46:00.003-04:00

Upcoming single from Say Anything hit interwebs. Good to see the boys fought the law and the law won...

Music Leaks :: New Weezer Single "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To"

2009-08-17T02:29:00.003-04:00

The first single off the mysterious new Weezer album has hit the internet and despite sounding almost entirely un-Weezer-like, seems to have their fanbase raving that after three premature declarations of "Weezer Are Back!" Weezer Are Back! I suppose time will tell. Maybe they'll finally have their fans stop hating their guts after almost a decade. The song itself is downright pop-punkish, but I have to admit it's quite the catchy little number. Enjoy..

Music News :: The Verve F**k Off for the Hundredth Time

2009-08-12T22:51:00.004-04:00

The Mirror might be about as reliable source of music news as my uncle who's knee starts to hurt when it's going to rain, but given the sheer believability of this story, it's probably true.

Rumors are aflutter that Wigan's little britpop band that always almost was has decided to call it a day yet again as Nick McCabe and Simon Jones gear up their new project The Black Ships (not to be confused with Black Lips, or The Black Keys) and presumably Richard Ashcroft is locked in a studio somewhere looking at photographs of himself. Though no official word has been released about "The Big V" the story has been creeping around that a combination of McCabe's drinking and Ashcroft's ...Ashcroftness seem to have made the band's umpteenth reunion more short-lived than usual.

Still, if every ten years they insist on coming back to put out one good song and then go away again, I suppose that makes them better than most bands. So here's to you, The Verve.

The Verve - Love Is Noise

Music Tidbit :: Say Anything Frontman Slams Lady Gaga Via Twitter

2009-08-10T03:15:00.005-04:00

Sure, it's not really news. ...at all. ...in almost any way. But Say Anything frontman Max Bemis took a nice little shot at Lady Gaga on twitter tonight.

maxbemis: recording a cover of @eisley's "telescope eyes" for their new ep..... really curious if lady gaga indeed has a penis. i hate her.

HA! Okay, sure, it's mostly that I'm a closet Say Anything fan and I absolutely can not stand Lady Gaga, but I thought that'd be fun to share.

Maybe NME will post some super-frivolous headline about it to grab some attention for their upcoming self-titled full length coming in a couple months? Here's hopin'

Anime(ish) Review :: Dragonball Evolution [2009]

2009-08-07T21:46:00.006-04:00

Director :: James Wong
Runtime :: 82 Minutes
Genre :: Action.

Barring a handful of very well executed exclusions, comic book adaptations are always a hard pill to swallow. It's never an easy task to take decades of story and character development and jam them into the first ten minutes of a feature film so that the audience understands "well that guy with the visor is called 'cyclops' and he shoots beams out of his eyes." It's always hamfisted and it's usually terrible but we accept it anyway because we've got a talky to make it through. And, since as a culture we've totally run out of movies to make, it's a necessary evil.

As you'd probably expect, the same rules apply for the anime adaptation. When previews for Dragonball Evolution came down the pike I imagine every self-respecting anime fan took a deep breath and went "oh boy. this is gonna be a tough one."

...which of course it is.

But still, to take the piss out of Db:E almost seems detrimental to our cause. We're going to have to start suffering a lot of these americafied anime remakes and it's probably a good idea we start learning to live with them instead of screaming "not our fault" every time one shells out an unsuspecting theater (or... dvd rack.)

Now, that isn't to say I'm trying to defend it as good, and lets get that out of the way early. Dragonball appeals to no one, the action sequences range between par and bad, the special effects are dated, the acting is silly (but that means nothing in a comicbook adaptation), and the story is too convoluted for children and too ridiculous for adults. If this movie has a target demographic outside of "anime fans" then it's probably 13-15 year old boys who are a little too weinery to like the violent grown-up action flicks yet.

Additionally, one point of awfulitude I haven't seen brought up anywhere is the movies unchecked schizophrenia with regards to setting. Goku lives in some sort of mountain temple-house yet rides his bike every day to science-fiction futurama valley highschool (a cross between Clueless, Never Back DOwn, and the Jetsons), which is apparently two towns over from a mud-and-grass hut village and two hours from an active volcano.

Still there are some decent points. Justin Chatwin plays a remarkably likable Goku. James Masters has less than ten lines as Lord Piccolo. There are bright colors.

Okay, so there's not much going for it even if you are an anime fan. But still, I never once sat watching it and wondered when it would be over, or laughed at how absurd anything was. I simply watched and did what I could to enjoy, taking it for what it is... a live-action movie about magical glowing space balls that summon a wish-granting dragon.

If you go in expecting The Shawshank Redemption, you're probably gonna want your money back.

(yet still sort of worth seeing once)

Music News :: Julian Casablancas is Making a Solo Album

2009-08-07T17:35:00.007-04:00

Every member of The Strokes seems to be a pretty advantageous and prolific artist, so long as it doesn't happen to be in regards to the band itself. Recently NME reported that between his busy schedule of doing guest spots and shoe commercials, Julian Casablancas will soon be releasing a solo album, Phrazes For the Young, which came with an accompanying trailer. The album is produced by Jason Lader with additional production from Mike Mogis, who you may know from his work on... nearly every album saddle creek has ever released. The trailer itself appears to be more of the 70's Sci-Fi imagery that's grown ever present on The Strokes promotional material and videos. Gone are the days of the dirty New Yorkers hanging out in dive bars and shit-talkin' with Slash, it seems.

Meanwhile, it's also been announced that The Strokes have started thinking about considering work on a new album and they've written A new song. Strangely lackadaisical for a band once praised for their work ethic, but hey, not everyone can be Kings of Leon.

Is Jon Peters The Dumbest Man In Comic Book Movies?

2009-08-07T14:27:00.005-04:00

I was reminded earlier today about the Kevin Smith Superman project that died back in 1998 which led to me re-reading some of the stories about it, and re-igniting my hatred for Jon Peters. This part of the Wikipedia entry really sums up most of the problems with Peters quite nicely:

Kevin Smith pitched to Jon Peters his story outline in August 1996, in which Peters gave him permission to write a screenplay. However, Peters presented Smith with three rules, such as wanting Superman to wear an all-black suit, feeling the more traditional suit was "too faggy"; not wanting to see Superman fly, saying that Superman would "look like an overgrown Boy Scout." (In order to deal with this, Smith wrote Superman flying as "a red-and-blue blur in flight, creating a sonic boom every time he flew."); and have Superman fight a giant spider in the third act. Smith accepted the terms, realizing that he was being hired to execute a pre-ordained idea. Peters and Warner Bros. forced Smith to write a scene involving Brainiac fighting polar bears at the Fortress of Solitude, and Peters wanted Brainiac to give Lex Luthor a space dog, stating "Chewie's cuddly, man. You could make a toy out of him, so you've got to give me a dog." Smith claims this was because of the recent re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy, and claims that Peters wanted Brainiac's robot assistant L-Ron to be voiced by Dwight Ewell, calling him, "a gay R2-D2 with attitude." Peters was able to recycle his giant spider idea in Wild Wild West, a film he produced.

Yes, Spiderman vs. Giant Spider, Braniac vs. Polar Bears, non-faggy black suits, and a gay R2-D2 with attitude (how much more gay can you make a robot than R2-D2 by the way?). Now, Kevin Smith was probably going to end up turning the movie into a turd anyway as he had casting choices in mind like Jason Mewes as Jimmy Olson, then Tim Burton came in and was going after guys like Tim Allen for Braniac. It was likely going to be a disaster no matter what direction they went. I have no doubt that Smith's story was as good as one could expect given limitations like polar bear battles seeing as how most of his actual comic book work has been solid to great. But the world was spared a potential "worst movie ever" when the studio canned the film after $30 million was spent on absolutely nothing.

As if Peters ideas weren't dumb enough with Superman, he also got involved with attempts to bring Sandman to the big screen. Again Wikipedia gives us the scoop:

Jon Peters involvement in adapting the critically acclaimed and highly popular Sandman comics has also met with controversy. One draft, reviewed on the Internet at Ain't It Cool News, was met with scorn from fans. Sandman creator Neil Gaiman called the last screenplay that Warner Brothers would send him "...not only the worst Sandman script I've ever seen, but quite easily the worst script I've ever read." Gaiman also has said that his dissatisfaction with how his characters were being treated had dissuaded him from writing any more stories involving the Sandman characters, although he has since written Endless Nights. By 2001, the project had become stranded in development hell.

In a 2005 interview, Gaiman summarized the Peters approach as follows: "But Sandman movies, they just got increasingly appalling. It was really strange. They started out hiring some really good people and you got Elliott and Rossio and Roger Avary came in and did a draft. They were all solid scripts. And then Jon Peters fired all of them and got in some people who take orders, and who wanted fistfights and all this stuff. It had no sensibility and it was just...they were horrible."

As with other films, Jon Peters insisted on the inclusion of a giant mechanical spider.

Yeah, another giant mechanical spider. This guy wanted one in Superman, then put one in Wild Wild West, and then wanted another one in Sandman. Am I out of the loop? Are giant mechanical spiders box office gold? Who the hell is in Jon's ear telling him the public is clamoring for giant mechanical spiders? It's as if he has the most absurd manifestation of OCD possible. Oh well, at least I enjoyed his work on Clue.

Music Video :: "Remedy" by Little Boots

2009-08-07T04:38:00.005-04:00

"Bulletproof" it ain't, but La Roux namechecked Little Boots in NME today and I'm in some sort of hella electropop revival kinda mood the last few weeks, so here's the latest Little Boots jam.

oh maybe it's watching my present yet-to-be-named MMO downloader move at a snails pace or perhaps the rustle of the wind through the forest while I vodka the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks up, but some nice glossy 80's inspired pop seems to hit the spot just right this evening.

Music Review :: Spinnerette - Spinnerette

2009-08-05T23:38:00.005-04:00

Artist :: Spinnerette
Album :: Spinnerette
Release :: 2009
Label :: Anthem Records
Genre :: Alternative Rock

Farewell Brody Dalle, it feels as though we hardly knew ye.

In the tradition of finding backing bands that sound like cover versions of whatever her husband's band sounds like, as is "Brody" Bree Joanna Alice Robinson-Dalle-Armstrong-Homme's way, it comes as no surprise that the ex-Distillers frontwoman's new band, Spinnerette, sounds startlingly like Queens of the Stone Age (Dalle is hitched to QotSA's Josh Homme incase you live under some sort rock or wet board.)

Now, my qualms with Queens of the Stone Age are pretty simple: It's painfully simple music played with zero energy and little-to-no lyrical perspective. There's no context to any of the music, which all seems to be by the grand design of Homme who never manages to get the result to sound 10% like I assume it does in his head, and yet, as Peter from the Family Guy said regarding The Godfather... "It insists upon itself."

So it's not really the biggest surprise of my lifetime that Brody Dalle's crappy knock-off QotSA band doesn't exactly strike a chord with me on any sort of significant level. Muddy and ugly. Plodding and with a total lack of energy despite all the shouting. Brody's sexy venom that made The Distillers more than just one of a thousand other faceless crappy punk revival bands never once gets the chance to emerge from under the distorted murk and shine on Spinnerette.

Sure, I understand she's trying, and that Cortney Love-esque voice of hers is still top-shelf, but it seems to have nothing to cling onto musically. Like a lioness scratching hopelessly at a smooth steel wall, Brody makes a lot of sparks but no actual traction.

The only notable highlights here are "Ghetto Love," which had been previously released late last year on their Getto Love EP, and "Impaler" which is the only track that manages to develop a little personality between the clouds of thudding distorted one-note bass riffs. I suppose the closest other thing to a highlight would be the tacky crotch-shot cover art, as, even if her musical career seems to all but made it's final circulation of the drain, at least she has very nice hips. 2/5

Video Games :: Final Fantasy XIV Trailer / News

2009-08-05T22:42:00.005-04:00

So sure, Final Fantasy XIII has yet to see the light of day and won't in the states until the first quarter of 2010, but that's no reason we shouldn't all start salivating over the next item in line for Square's epic RPG franchise. Rest assured I'll be no where to be seen for months after the release of Final Fantasy XIV, the hundred-and-twenty-ith-or-so FF release to date and the series' next take on the MMORPG format, this time doing away with Sony's horrendous PlayOnline system.

Developers say to have been greatly inspired by the layout and features of World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online this time around and have taken many player-based suggestions into account for their second trip up to the plate in the world of MMO gameplay. The announced formats thus far are Windows and Playstation 3, so, tough shit and get out of Sony's house for Xbox players once again despite early word that Xbox 360 would be included.

Regardless of what's said about the upcoming Aion MMO, I've maintained for years that if any company can compete with Blizzards ability to give their subscribers severe social anxiety disorder, it's Square. And, if they're attempting to take on the WoW gameplay model, it's not outside of the realm of possibility that we could finally see a dethroning of Warcraft in the states.

Here's hoping.
Go get 'em boys! Kupo!

Music Video :: "King Rat" by Modest Mouse

2009-08-05T22:11:00.005-04:00

Much like Elvis or 2-Pac, Heath Ledger seems to be getting just as much play post-mortem as he did in life, this time as the director of Modest Mouse's new video for their track "King Rat" off their EP "No One's First, and You're Next," released last week.

The video itself is... well. Hey, give it a spin for yourself. I suppose it's about time rock music took a hard stance against whaling. Someone call up Bono, we'll need an all-star benefit.

SONY ATE IT! ...re-post coming asap.

Music Review :: Arctic Monkeys - Humbug

2009-08-05T19:19:00.005-04:00

Artist :: Arctic Monkeys
Album :: Humbug
Release :: 2009
Label :: Domino
Genre :: Indie Rock, Post-Punk Revival

To impressionable American youth, if Oasis made Manchester seem like party central in the early 1990’s, then Arctic Monkeys have done fine work in painting Sheffield, England as the boiling mouth of hell from which there’s no return.

On their third full-length, Humbug, Alex Turner and company make the dark and seedy stories on 2006’s Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not sound like fresh-faced optimism and wacky teenage hijinks with Turner now deeply submersed into the world that he and his friends used to point and laugh at from their high-tops at the bar.

The most notable difference from their debut is that the overall tone of the songs has changed dramatically. A change that was foreshadowed by their sophomore effort Favourite Worst Nightmare in which the more sinister chord progressions and creepy reverb became present, but still took a backseat to the furiously fast guitars and Turner's never-ending verbal assault. This time around Turner and company ease off the throttle enough to let that creepiness come through with great success.

There are no "Brainstorm"s or "I Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor"s this time around, just slow-paced strut and tangled webs. The lead single, "Crying Lighting," is the closest the band get to the furious energy from what seems like forever ago. But where the drunken teenage anthems have become a thing of the past, Turner has developed into more of a songwriter with a far more poetic tongue as opposed to a one-trick-pony who's only musical device is telling a sixty page story in three minutes thirty seconds.

Among the albums strongest moments are the lead two tracks. "My Propeller" which opens the affair as not only the records best track but also a musical mission statement for what's about to come. Slow burning and swaggering as it builds towards the songs instantly memorable final thirty seconds, where it explodes into the atmosphere as Turner pleads "my propeller won't spin..."

"Crying Lightening" carries on in the bands fine tradition of seedy stories about sketchy people, only with seemingly a more personal twist.

Humbug is another excellent entry into the Arctic's catalog that showcases a tremendous amount of growth and poise. For anyone wondering what the Arctic Monkeys would sound like grown up, this is your first glips. Still, though, with this new turn in direction, there's something to be said for that frenetic energy from the first two records. Spastic barroom tales and clever lines put on the shelf it seems everything in music must change or it'll eventually die. It's good to see the Alex Turner and company have chosen the former. 3.5 / 5

Music Videos :: Do You Like Garage Rock and Murder?

2009-08-05T05:31:00.006-04:00

Much thanks to Brent for pickin' up some slack while I've been draggin' ass. Between Pops passing away and moving a month earlier than expected, the last few weeks haven't exactly been conducive to anime and indie rock. As amped up as I am to sequel about the new Arctic Monkeys or complain about Key the Metal Idol, there's a lot of moving, calling, and paperwork to be done. I seem settled in at present though, so hopefully things will start getting back to normal.

In the mean time, in my little bit of free time, I've been playing Gunz: The Duel a lot, so it seems fitting that I have two wonderful new videos for those of you who like you both 70's inspired garage rock and violent, violent murder. First we have Jet's "K.I.A." from their upcoming album Shaka Rock. There are leaks floating around, but all early indications point to ultra-bogus bullshit.

Followed by "Treat Me Like Your Mother" by The Dead Weather, a new band composed of Alison Mosshart of The Kills fame and Jack White of... Jack White fame. Do you like The White Stripes? Do you like The Raconteurs? Do you wish there was a band that kinda sounded like both of them at the same time?!?! ...good news:

Comics :: Cover of the Day - August 3, 2009

2009-08-03T23:49:00.006-04:00

I won't be doing these every day or anything, but for the sake of getting some content up sometimes I'll just post a cover or page that I really enjoy. Today is a cover that I really enjoy from Geoff Johns' run on The Flash.

This was a "modern story" with a cover that just feels nice and old school. That "here comes a wacky story that we'll explain on the cover" thing is really sweet compared to just a portrait of the hero on the cover or whatever.

It was just in recent times that I got into DC characters beyond just Batman & Superman. Green Lantern has developed into one of my favorite characters ever and I decided I needed to give some of the more modern runs of Flash a try. Something about Flash just always felt lame to me because his rogue gallery was dorks like Captain Cold. However, I have since learned that Captain Cold will freeze and punch your goddamn jaw off:

Comics :: The Only Exciting News Out of Comic-Con - Miracleman

2009-07-29T21:25:00.006-04:00

Hi, I'm Brent! Long, long, looong time friend of Aj and now the resident comic nerd of this here blog. My goal when it comes to writing about comics is always to not be such a gigantic nerd that it's hard to follow along unless you're already a comic fan. Plus, I'm not exactly an all knowing fanboy myself...just a dude that likes comics.

________________

Coming out of Comic Con the only news that really jumped out as "OMG! NERD BONER!" worthy was the news that Marvel had purchased Alan Moore's Marvelman (Miracleman) stories and was looking into possibly reprinting them as a nice hardcover set.

While "deconstructing the superhero" is just standard operating procedure in the comic world now, Marvelman was one of the first times (if not THE first time) it was done really well. Alan Moore is a nutjob with an amazing mind for comic book writing and it truly is a shame that this story hasn't had a beautiful reprint treatment to this point. The truth is the story behind why this hasn't happened is just long and boring. If you want to read about it (and the history of the character pre-Alan Moore), just go here.

The important thing is that it may be happening sometime in the future and everyone with any interest in comics should read these stories. Miracleman features deep subject matter and graphic art (including a birth scene showing the baby emerging from the vaginal canal) that trumps most everything you get from anything in the modern comic world. The amazing thing is that for all the graphic moments it is not a "shock" tactic. The birth scene is just to bring you closer to the moment, the classic Kid Miracleman attack on London is meant to be brutal in its dipiction, shock is needed to get the point across...etc.

Speaking of Kid Miracleman (or Kid Marvelman if you prefer), he is one of the best villains in the history of comics. He is just pure evil. See the image to the right for proof.

Anyway, I could write a complete recap of the series but I'd rather hope that SOMEONE reads this and either seeks the books out once they're released in hardcover format or if you can't wait there are always torrent sites...not that I'm advocating such a thing.

Music Video :: "Crying Lightning" by Arctic Monkeys

2009-07-28T21:52:00.005-04:00

My heart all aflutter from the new La Roux album, I managed to lose the new Arctic Monkeys single in the mix. This is big on the youtube seek and destroy list it seems, so we'll see how long this one hangs around.

I'm sold.

Music News :: Panic! At the Disco vs. The Young Veins

2009-07-28T20:38:00.005-04:00

Blur vs. Oasis, it ain't, but the teenage myspace flame-war over the Panic At the Disco split has reached a head today as ex-Panic guitarist Ryan Ross and bassist Jon Walker announced their new band and song via myspace. The duo seemly have adopted a style reminiscent of their retro-60's psychedelia work on Panic At the Disco's 2008 sophomore release Pretty. Odd.

Meanwhile, Panic! guitarist Brenden Urie and drummer Spencer Smith re-added the infamous exclamation point to the band's name and have released a new track of their own via myspace, "New Perspective", that's also available on for purchase on iTunes. The song itself is yet another departure for the band, though not nearly as interesting of a departue as one might expect. A song I'd post as well, but the youtube terms of use violation gods are already all over it. You can, however, check it out at their site, and keep up with the endless stream of comments from crying high-schoolers over at The Young Veins' myspace.

Music Review :: Modest Mouse - No One's First, and You're Next

2009-07-27T18:55:00.006-04:00

Artist :: Modest Mouse
Album :: No One's First, and You're Next (EP)
Release :: 2009
Label :: Epic Records
Genre :: Indie Rock

I probably have more fond memories of Modest Mouse dating to when they were half the band they are today. Long before they were unlikely hit-makers, they were a weird vacation destination somewhere inbetween pervy post-grunge and the wontobulous world of Dr. Seuss, and a decade ago I was listening to "Never Ending Math Equation" in my car for the first time wondering what the hell was going on. What was this dude who's voice sounded like an off-key trumpet going on about, exactly? From there it was midnight shows, glorious weirdness, and that moment in 2004 when we all were left scratching our heads when "Float On" became an instant radio classic.

Being a permanent member of the thrift store Gestapo, I've seen a lot of bands be pronounced dead by the underground after a dramatic shift in what they were doing in favor of commercial success, but, with Modest Mouse it was different. With Modest Mouse, I think none of us really understand it. Isaac Brock is truly one of the least loveable front-men to ever live and America doesn't usually go in for chubby weirdos as hit musicians anymore. Like Guided By Voices before them, it seemed kinda obvious that Modest Mouse was going to be one of "our" bands forever.

Still, shit does happen, and after the assumed fluke that was "Float On" we saw "Dashboard" become another chart topper and the addition of Johnny Marr into the Mouse line-up (who post-Smiths had resigned himself to making crappy Oasis knock-off arena rock.) But hey, it couldn't have happened to a more creative group of total dickheads.

Quickly closing in on twenty years of THE MOUSE, the guys have slapped together a mess of songs that weren't good enough to be b-sides to anything on their last two major releases for their new kinda-compilation EP No One's First, and You're Next, and, from that description, you might have a guess as to how it sounds.

There's very little that matches up together here. From some very classic Modest Mouse-sounding guitar noodling in fits and starts of shouting through reverbed murkiness ("The Whale Song") to the gimmicky apocalyptic ragtime jazz that started to surface from time to time on We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank ("Perpetual Motion Machine.") The EP almost serves as a career retrospective that's told through unreleased material.

Coming in at 34 minutes long and about a track short of qualifying as a proper album, No One's is probably better suited for devout fans than casual Modest Mouse listeners. It'd be easy to say "There's probably a reason this stuff never got released!" ...but in truth it's just a nice little collection of extras. Nothing more. Nothing less. 3/5

Music Review :: La Roux - La Roux

2009-07-27T17:47:00.009-04:00

Artist :: La Roux
Album :: La Roux
Release :: 2009
Label :: Polydor
Genre :: Pop / Electropop

While I couldn't explain to you the exact process, as I'm not as skilled in my understanding of human anatomy as a med student (or any given commenter on Photoshop Disasters) ...but something happens between childhood and adulthood that causes your taste buds change and start to develop a favor for bitter flavors instead of just sweet ones.

Pop music is much the same way. There's plenty of one-dimensional sweetness geared more for children and teenagers, which, there's absolutely nothing wrong with. I enjoy a good pack of Starburst candies every few months or so. Just like between my stints of listening to M. Ward or Elliott Smith, I like to sometimes kick on some Fall Out Boy or Gwen Stefani and rock around in my computer chair lip synching (as to not let my roommates know about what ridiculous nonsense is taking place in my room.)

On rare occasions, every once in a blue moon or so, something comes along that's the perfect amount of both. ...The Heath Bar (or Skor bar, if that's your game.) A grand combination of childish sweetness and pretentious sophistication.

Enter La Roux.

With so many cheap electropop-revival acts floating around, La Roux actually come off as though they've been unearthed from a time capsule. Some opening act for The Human League that were locked in a cryogenic chamber and thawed in a time period where there would be flying cars and a cure for terminal boneitus.

And, as an added bonus to that authentic feeling, they're really fucking good as well. Go figure.

Elly Jackson and Ben Langmaid pack their self-titled debut full-length with a bundle of instant dancefloor shout-along classics including "In For the Kill" "Colourless Colour" and the impossibly memorable "Bulletproof," which, even in living under a rock for a few months, I managed to hear.

Personally, any time I hear a catchy electropop single, I immediately think about "Ice Cream" by New Young Pony Club, and assume it's one decent track meant to sell to TV ads and the rest of the album is trash, but the bulk of La Roux more than holds itself up under the weight of "Bulletproof."

Now, it's doubtful that La Roux will change you in some deeply spiritual way. If you didn't like the sound of synthesizers before, one quirky redhead with terrible 80's make-up and a good voice isn't going to change your mind. But if you're tired of Lady Gaga being the only viable pop act floating around this year, and can manage to listen to a record without a T-Pain collaboration on it (I can, but it's hard,) then it's definitely worth your time to check out. 4/5

Music Video :: "Bulletproof" by La Roux

2009-07-27T03:26:00.006-04:00

Kind of a weak year so far for good pop singles, but my fiance threw this one my way tonight. With everything going on the past couple months I've sort of been off step with my jams, but this is pretty instantly memorable though. Fantastic video as well.

Memories :: Apologies :: Cartography

2009-07-25T18:08:00.004-04:00

Apologies for the lack of content as of late. It seems sometimes that my efforts here are forever doomed to come in fits and starts, though, this time I had a reasonable excuse. My father passed away a few weeks ago after years of dealing with complications from an experimental stem cell cancer treatment. The treatment itself worked perfectly in wiping out the cancer, but left him with a very sever case of host vs. graft disease.

After all the services and running around I spent about a week playing old Final Fantasy games and refusing to leave my apartment, wearing his t-shirts, and crying into my vodka (dealing with things has never been a strong suit of mine.)

We spent some time sort of estranged through my early 20s, but in the past year we’d gotten very close again and spent most every Monday for six months hanging out together and going for beers at our favorite microbrewery in town.

I also had some time to think about the blog here, as I started finding anime a taxing subject when I didn’t have other things to interject into it occasionally. I think in the process of posting more I lost sight of what my original intention was. There are a thousand anime blogs around that can all cover news, brand new series which are only available in fan-sub format, and the stuff all the fanboys crave. Personally, reading the anime news network’s posts, I only care about every one in forty stories, and my intention was to present anime as it fits into regular culture, as opposed to specifically covering anime culture, which is it’s own brightly-colored animal. So, starting immediately Oh Tetsuo! will be changing formats from an anime blog to a media blog with a heavy emphasis on anime. I’ll also be covering music, movies, gadgets, hamburgers, and M. Wards hair.

Anime News :: The Great American Anime Remake Disaster Begins...

2009-07-09T07:35:00.012-04:00

With the semi-recent (and wonderful) news that not even god himself has enough money to produce the live-action Akira remake and M. Night's Avatar not looking half bad, I figure I'd post the new teasers and trailers that have been floating around.

Maybe... just maybe... this won't be so bad afterall.
Although we still have James Cameron's post-Avatar Battle Angel Alita project (uh, his special effects Avatar, not M. Night's Avatar that he has to call "The Last Airbender" ...long ridiculous story.) Not to mention Steven Spielberg's Ghost in the Shell that we're all terrified about. Still, at least the opening round of this mess doesn't look all that bad.

Anime Review :: Battle Angel [1993]

2009-07-09T06:55:00.008-04:00

My next incoming review for Oh,Tetsuo! was (well, and still hopefully is) Key The Metal Idol. A sort of bygone cyber relic that passed me by growing up that I just never really got around to finally watching. By the fifth episode, however, when the lead character had said her name (spoilers: it’s "Key") in the third person at least six hundred times and I was treated two and a half hours of wasted conversations about pop stars with no tangible plot development outside of the absurd premise, my patients were wearing thin. I decided to take a quit trip back (and thankfully a short one at that) to one of my absolute favorite little pieces of cyberpunk bloodbath goodness, just to make sure I haven’t lost my mind. I mean, afterall, maybe I’ve been so spoiled by the slicker animation, better voice work, and cohesive plots of modern anime that I’ve just lost all love for the murderous robo-girls of the 1990’s.

Battle Angel [OVA] [1993]
Director - Hiroshi Fukutomi
Language – English Dub
Runtime – 70 Minutes
Genre – Action. Drama. Cyberpunk.

For those unfamiliar, Battle Angel is a two-part OVA based on a manga series titled Gunnm, and… I’m not going to go into the details of the story in its entirety. Not for lack of wanting to, in fact the more copy I put in this post, the more fantastic artwork from the series I get to post along with it. No, it’s just that trying to explain Gunnm to explain the Battle Angel OVA is sort of like trying to catch someone up on the entire history of the X-Men books to get them ready to see the movie. It’s unnecessary, the world the story takes place in gets explained away about five minutes into the film, and knowing about the period that Marrow was an X-Man or the brief but important story of Maggot doesn’t really enrich the experience of watching Hugh Jackman say “bub.”

Like the slew of recent Marvel movies, Battle Angel is a film adaptation in the strongest possible terms.

So we've covered that it's good hatin’ material for purists, let's get down to business (see, blah blah blah, and I get to put more artwork in.)

While scavenging through a dump for parts on the outskirts of Scrap Iron City, cyberphysician Daisuke Ido comes across the shredded remains of a cyborg body that is miraculously still alive. Ido takes it home and transfers the still living… aspect of it into a new cyborg body and names her Gally. (It’s never really covered in the anime whether it’s her brain or ghost or whatever sci-fi philosophy we’re actually dealing with that’s “still alive”)

Within no time (no, seriously, we’re talkin’ about 5 seconds of screen time) Gally is up and about being chipper and charming and taking an interest in Yugo, a young lad who does maintenance work for Ido. He takes little interested though, as he’s far more concerned with one day making enough money to go to the majestic floating city of Zalem that hangs over the slums of Scrap Iron City. A place it’s soon made clear that Ido himself and his colleague Chiren were once residents of, and a place that Chiren herself too has designs on getting back to by any means necessary.

Another abrupt jump-cut later Ido, who’s already managed to be quite a mysterious character in a scant 10 minutes, is spotted sneaking out at night by Gally who tails him to find out that he’s secretly a bounty hunter, and, seemingly not all that great of one at that. Luckily, in the midst of a foiled attempt to stop a murder, Ido himself is saved by Gally who, as luck would have it, is a ruby-eyed murder machine. Gally herself takes up the cause after finding out about her new abilities …and the fun begins. As, aside from trying to recover the lost memories of her past, she just… REALLY loves killin’

From there heartstrings are tugged at, clusterfucks are developed, hope is squeezed out of you, and heads are torn off. But hey, it wouldn’t be fun for you if I told you the ending.

It’s hard to properly rate Battle Angel.

The artwork is magnificent, and Gally is one of the most likeable… murderous robot girls in the history of anime (marvelously voiced by Larissa Murray(?), I might add, although, I can’t tell if that’s the proper ADV credit or the notoriously awful UK/Aus release Viz had. Blame IMDB.) The action is stunningly choreographed and the story has far more feel than the usual hack-and-slash fodder. Imagine everything good you’ve ever read about Kite. It’s like all of that except actually good.

A wonderful juxtaposition of the struggles of heaven and hell on earth.
…but also a short and sometimes sloppy one.

For all the ungodly drab series that were treated to at least 12 episodes it seems almost criminal that Battle Angel was doomed to be shorter than a feature film, and, because of that, choked a little and not allowed to grow naturally with heavy reliance of abrupt jump-cuts and a few too many monologs that explain away the plot.

Sort of a random reach into the vault, and definitely 15+ as far as the kids go (three boobs and some occasional on-screen gore), but while it’s got quite its fair share of flaws, it’s most certainly a mini-classic by cyberpunk standards.

Not that I’d ever endorse torrents, especially of material who’s American copyrights are owned by the mighty ADV, but, ya know, there maaaay or may not be a dual audio copy floating around on Demonoid.

…just sayin’.

Ten Anime Films that Shaped My Fanhood :: Part 2

2009-07-06T19:37:00.007-04:00

Like so many others, one particular anime classic was a huge influence on my fanhood. I mean, who can forget nihilistic the motorcycle punks, the frightening look into the future of humanity, the dusty artwork, the killer soundtrack, the fast-paced action. That’s right…

~~#o9 :: Akira~~
#o9 :: Venus Wars

Yeah, okay, so, maybe those images bring to mind a slightly more popular film, but I’m still on a trip down memory lane and before there was Tetsuo, there was Hiro Seno, hotshot leader of the Killer Commandos. Well, by before, I mean a year after in a crappy attempt to ride some of the Akira coat-tails, but lets not split hairs. I didn’t know that at the time.

Venus Wars, Akira, Demon City Shinjuku and a host of Project A-Ko flicks made up much of the Sci-Fi channels Saturday Anime rotation and after my adventures into the world of Iria, I was hot to get my hands on anything anime related I could. And, while Akira was a little over my head at the time, and Demon City Shinjuku was… retarded, even for a 13 year old, The Venus Wars was about where I was at, and somewhere in that aforementioned box of VHS tapes at my mom’s house is a TV dubbed copy of that movie that’s nearly warn to death.

Venus Wars isn't exactly an emotional tour de force, in fact, it's mostly just action pulp, but there isn't much that you can't enjoy about rollerball-like motorcycle violence, space-wars, and sassy Japanese James Dean hero-boys. Now, I'd like to say that this had some sort of deep impact on me, but, really it makes the list because of when I stumbled upon it at the right time and it opened me up to anime on American TV.

It doesn’t come with the same charming story about my friends pressuring me into watching nudie cartoons, but by this point I was already on the anime bandwagon and using my blazing fast 14k connection to check out all the anime info Geocities had to offer. It does come with lots of fun memories of my sitting at my dad's house watching on Saturday mornings drinking Dr. Pepper and eating ham & cheese hot pockets.

Anime Video :: Iria Opening Credit Animation

2009-07-06T05:04:00.004-04:00

Ahh, it brings back memories.

Happy Independence Day

2009-07-04T16:08:00.004-04:00

As we feast on beer and meat and reflect upon our country's rich heritage, I wish you the very best, a fun evening, a DUI-free night, and some damn fine explosions in the sky.

Cheers, America.

Ten Anime Films that Shaped my Fanhood :: Part 1

2009-07-02T17:50:00.006-04:00

#10 :: Iria: Zeiram the Animation

Everyone’s journey into the big-eyed fanboy world of anime begins somewhere, and mine started in 7th grade at a Record Town. …on a dare.

There had always been precedence for me eventually falling in love with anime. Growing up I was always a huge fan of Secret of Mana and the Final Fantasy series, or maybe back even further when I’d always preferred the slightly more Asian-oriented Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to GI Joe or Master of the Universe, but either way, the roots were there despite never really being at all aware of Japanese animation.

The moment where it all officially got underway, however, was in the hands of good old fashion peer pressure.

I spent most of my time hanging out with my best friends Rob and Eric, and we were at that age when you start to do sinister little kid stuff because you’re left on your own and, that’s what little newly teen-aged kids do. I was a bit of a goody two-shoes, though. I was already under heat for not shop-lifting gum and volunteering to be lookout while the guys checked out Playboys from under our other friend Peter’s older brother’s bed, so I was due to do something of note, lest I be the wuss of my social circle for all of my upcoming highschool years. …then my moment came.

"Oh dude!" Rob exclaimed in one of those sort of shouted whispers, "they have those crazy cartoon porn movies!" As you can expect, he was talking about the stores collection of about six anime tapes positioned slightly outside of the soft-core adult videos and the sports/special interest movies. And, for the most part, he was right. Record Town’s "anime" collection was four Hentai tapes (the only one of which I can remember is La Blu Girl), Fist of the North Star, and Iria volume 1. Of course, I had no idea what any of it was and as far as I knew, Rob was right and this was all just porn.

"Who would make cartoon porn movies?"

"I dunno, dude, I think it’s from China or something. You should totally get one!"

"Why would I want cartoon porn?"

"Dude, they don’t even have 18+ stickers on them. Look at the dude at the counter, he’s like 17, he won’t even pay attention, you should do it."

"No way, man, these are expensive."

"Whatever, you’re such a pussy sometimes, AJ."

My time had come. Well, okay realistically I wound up transferring schools in two years anyway and even had I not, nothing would have come from it because I could have just called out Rob for being kind of a perv, but when you’re in 7th grade and your entire life is just one extended episode of The Wonder Years, you eventually come around to the idea that you attempting to get adult-rated cartoons on a dare somehow will impact the rest of your social life.

I thumbed through the six VHS boxes for roughly a half hour, and eventually decided on the least offensive one (which still had a huge-breasted girl on the cover carrying a gun twice her size) and nervously wondered over to the counter with my heart pounding. Again, having been a goody-two shoes, and not usually getting in to any sort of trouble, I was half sure that this zitty 17-year-old store clerk was going to hit some button that locked the store and summoned the police to come take me away the second I put the box on the counter. He looked at the box. He looked at me. The exchange probably took three seconds but it seemed like hours. Like he was robot-scanning me with his eyes and coming up with a big red flashing “UNDER AGE. UNDER AGE" read out in his line of vision. I choked and was about to spit some excuse why I had the wrong tape, or didn’t realize if that one was not okay to buy, though to this day I have no idea what words were about to follow when I spat out:

"I…"

"That’ll be $31.79"

Success! My status as with the guys was cemented forever as Mark (who hadn’t been there that day and was also a bit of a nice kid) became our groups wuss and I had pulled off the grandest heist in the history of our little clique. Gum? That fits in a pocket. Someone’s brother’s playboys? No danger at all. What was he gonna do, tell his folks? Oh no. I fought the law and I won. A grand day for goody-two-shoes kids everywhere.

About a week later my mom left for a meeting of some sort and I popped in my video to see what exactly I’d gotten myself into. Now, keep in mind through all of this that I had no idea what “porn” actually was, and I’m willing to bet neither did my friends. My understanding of “adult material” was basically air-brushed models topless and I figured that somewhere there might have been photos with no pants on too. Had I wound up with La Blue Girl, I’d probably have screamed and threw the tape against a wall, as alien tentacle rape was a bit over my head.

It started and I remember the first thing I thought "it’s subtitled?! I have to fricking READ this?!" But my displeasure was brief as I quickly got into it. It was such an amazing soundtrack and the artwork was so dusty and cool. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, peppered with some mild violence and swearing. …the cartoons I’d seen never had blood. The story itself was fantastic (well, at least by the standards of a 12 year old) and when it ended I was upset to find that it was just a part one sort of deal (back in the glorious days of two-episodes per tape.)

I guess kids today grow up with an understanding of anime. Lots of more kid-oriented series are on cartoon network and anime is presented AS Japanese cartoons instead of what we grew up with which was, at best, just dressed up and re-dubbed as a mostly American product. To me, and at that time, though, Iria was something I’d never seen before and it was something I was quickly in love with. I even, being somewhat of an analog wiz-kid for my age, made audio tapes of Iria that I’d listen to on the bus and between classes.

To this day, I’ve never been able to fully explain what it was about the short series that, today, I don’t even think all that highly of, but I went from totally unaware of anime to a huge fan virtually over the course of an hour.

Now, I’d like to tell you that my anime origin story is a little more classy. Maybe I stumbled onto Saturday Anime on the Sci-Fi channel, or learned about it online (afterall, I think AOL was getting big around this point) but no, unfortunately, my story starts with a begrudging attempt to see boobs and look cooler to my friends.

But hey, it could be worse. I could have never gotten into it at all.

Anime Review :: The Place Promised In Our Early Days

2009-06-28T21:49:00.003-04:00

only with a robot.

Anime Review :: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time [2006]

2009-06-27T15:56:00.006-04:00

Director - Mamoru Hosoda
Language – English Dub
Runtime – 98 Minutes
Genre – Drama / Sci-Fi. Slice-of-Life.

If you turn off Mamoru Hosoda's The Girl Who Leapt Through Time at approximately one hour and fifteen minutes in, you’ve just watched the best anime feature film of the decade. If you decide, however, to let the final 23 minutes play on, you’ve instead just watched a pretty darn good movie (though, not a pretty damn good one.)

Loosely Adapted from Yasutaka Tsutsui novel by the same name, The Girl… is the story of Makoto Konno, a high school student who finds she has the ability to travel back short distances in time to re-do things after avoiding a fatal accident. Learning of this new talent, she does what any high school student would do; She frivolously jumps around time to prevent being late for class, avoids awkward conversations, and re-lives a single karaoke sessions for ten hours, until finally realizing that her power is having an effect on the people around her and a mysterious number on her arm seems to be slowly counting down.

Hosoda’s landscape to the story is the sort of atmosphere so masterfully created that you can actually feel the warm summer air and smell the food from the vending carts. You can taste the dust kicked up on the baseball field as Makoto and her best friends Chiaki and Kōsuke play catch and you can feel yourself start to get stuffy from the pollen in their air at time. So involving is the backdrop that instead of wondering why you would care about a girl frittering away such an important gift, you smile and remember your idiotic youth and think to yourself "yeah, I’d have probably done this sort of stupid shit too."

Things eventually take a turn for the serious when Mokoto gets careless with her talent and the people around her start to suffer as a consequence to her impulsive behavior as she jumps away from all of life’s unpleasant circumstances.

The film is completely outstanding until suddenly, with the story seemingly wrapping up in fatal results and a lesson in life well learned, we’re treated to some out-of-the-blue twist, a major continuity problem (which I can't get into without spoiling the story) and an impromptu love story to bring us through to the conclusion, none of which are obnoxiously bad, but they do leave a slightly sour aftertaste to what would have otherwise been a one-of-a-kind anime classic.

In the end, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a wonderful little slice-of-life story with a sci-fi spin that's still quite an enjoyable piece of work despite it's slightly left-field outcome.

Anime News :: Hulu Features Voltron and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

2009-06-27T14:57:00.005-04:00

For those of you feeling nostalgic, or maybe just lacking your requisite amount of gigantic snap-together robots, Hulu Days of Summer has two particularly random and completely delightful featured goodies this week care of Microsoft's Bing. Voltron Season 2 and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie grace the main page this week, continuing the site's excellent history of bringing you a great collection of things you might want to watch but would never want to pay money for (I never did upgrade to a DVD copy of the power rangers movie afterall, and it’s been a huge inconvenience.)

For a while the site has kept a small but respectable collection of anime and anime-related goodness including xxxHolic, Death Note, Bleach and (as baffling a choice as it may be) The Slayers, which has been a godsend to external hard-drives everywhere.

Watch Ivan Ooze get his ass whooped on @

Anime Review :: Read or Die [OVA]

2009-06-26T22:19:00.009-04:00

Director - Koji Masunari
Language – English Dub
Run – 3 Episodes [2001]
Genre – Fantasy / Adventure. Boobs & ...Books?

Having fun with the usual genre boundaries of anime is a difficult task. A narrow line walked gracefully by Jing: King of the Bandits, or to a lesser degree even Gunsmith Cats, but Read or Die’s kitsch wears paper-thin (ha!) quickly and spends three thirty-minute-ish installments clumsily trying to decide how serious or whimsical it wants to be. All while still managing to occasionally stop along the way for the sake of pandering to daydreamers and horny teenagers alike.

Our heroine on this spin through a wontubulous world of books and evil clones is Yomiko Readman (yes, really,) a special agent codenamed "The Paper" working for the British Library's Special Operations Division (yes, really,) who’s special ability is a type of telekinesis involving paper or paper-related products. She’s a quiet, forgetful, polite Japanese girl with an affinity-going-on-obsession for books, who soon finds herself paired with the no-nonsense femme fatale “Miss Deep” Nancy Makuhari (what were the odds!)

Yomiko and Nancy battle a small army of clever literary references sent by the evil mastermind Ikkyū Soujun in progressive order of difficulty - once again begging the question of why the bad guys never send the competent henchmen out first. Eventually we arrive at the final battle at Ikkyū’s multi-gazillion dollar hideout / fortress where by-the-numbers adventure ensues.

I really have no problem with pulp. Give me any standard hero’s journey with a predictable outcome and I’ll be more than glad to snatch out the good parts and take it at face value, but Read or Die seems too haphazard in its attempts to come off unique that it’s difficult to distinguish if it’s coming or going at any given moment. What elements were meticulously planned out and which were simply drawn at random via a dartboard with words on it.

Being an escapist fantasy series with an implausibly one-dimensional character in Agent Drake, the tough-talkin' American who doesn't care one bit for guff, doesn’t help matters, nor do the really uncomfortable lipstick-lesbian undertones (I didn’t realize such a thing could even exist) and unnecessary chest-rubs in an otherwise wholesome story. Read or Die suffers from some severe identity issues.

Still, there are some high notes hit over 100-or-so minutes. Most notably, the score is one of the best I’ve heard in some time, going well out of its way to capture excitement and whimsy even when the story isn’t holding up its end of the bargain. Also, for my teasing earlier, the literary references are cute and not done with such frequency that they ever get irritating. Ultimately, though, neither are enough to let the well-meaning series shine.

Anime Review :: Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage

2009-06-25T18:35:00.001-04:00

Director - Sunao Katabuchi
Language – English Dub
Run – 12 Episodes [2006]
Genre – Action. Modern Pirates. Boobs & Guns

The second installment of the Rei Hiroe-penned and Sunao Katabuchi-directed Black Lagoon series manages to pack equal parts Ranma 1/2-style goof-assery as well as a surprising amount of depth and thrills. This time around utilizing an ensemble cast of characters (most of whom only made brief appearances in season one) to even out the stories with a far greater focus on the lore and landscape of Roanapur Island.

The Second Barrage is broken down into three story arcs. Which, for the sake of naming, we’ll call "The Vampire Twins," "The Roanapur Counterfeiting Clusterfuck," and "Hotel Moscow Vs. Japan," each of which come with their own distinctive style and flow, with progressively more enjoyable results.

"The Vampire Twins" arc does little but builds the clout of Hotel Moscow, Roanapur’s resident Russian cartel, and in the process grabs two new tiny killing-machines straight out of the anime-invent-an-archetype hat. While the story itself packs a couple of decent Revy’d-up action sequences, it mostly seems tacked on to make better use of Balalaika (the boss of Hotel Moscow) and company who were underutilized in season one. It’s a slightly disorienting move to start a season with little focus on the main cast, but it’s one that pays off by the seasons conclusion.

"The Roanapur Counterfeiting Clusterfuck" is where the unbridled silliness comes in, bringing back most every head-hunter, C-character, and general bad-dude from season one, and throwing in a couple of even more ridiculous editions to boot. Think the parade-chase scene from Ranma ½: The Movie, only with more bullets and swearing. Every notable gangster (and a handful of faceless bullet catchers), as well as our old pal Shenhua ("Chinglish") winds up on the hunt for The Lagoon Company’s newest client. Wackiness ensues.

And, finally, we have "Hotel Moscow Vs. Japan," a massive (by Lagoon standards) six-episode arc that takes Revy, Rock (who’s gone almost unnoticed in the season by that point), and Balalaika to the land of the rising sun. Rock, who is there under Hotel Moscow’s employ as a Japanese translator, confronts his past and the life he found himself running from a year ago when he joined up with the Lagoon crew. Revy is there to protect Rock (who by this point she’s warmed to significantly), who has a nasty habit of almost always getting kidnapped, and is granted plenty of opportunities for fast-paced mayhem against floods of Yakuza and thugs. The story also lends wonderful insight into the relationship between Revy and Rock as well as a look into the human-esque side of Revy (without the obligatory “oh I’m sad. Here’s my entire backstory” give-away.) Plenty of tense build-up and pace yet to be seen from the series.

With the characters beginning to flourish, and Lagoon setting up more roots for the long haul (Season 3 is on the way,) Second Barrage is a clear departure from the "kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out" feel of season one, which plays slightly against it’s strengths, but does make some positive strides to lay the groundwork for more adventures to come.

For all the surprises that season two brings with it, the biggest is how comfortable it’s able to make itself as a semi-serious drama, giving Revy a chance to care for other people without falling into the clichéd world of "killers with a heart of gold" and Balalaika to prove herself quite the frightening motherfucker.

The gore is dialed up slightly and the dialogue isn't quite as slick, and while you won’t find nearly the amount of explosion-based payoffs, the story is far more focused and delivered with a much steadier hand.

While I started iffy on the series and wrote it off as a trite (but very enjoyable) action mess, over 24 episodes and whatever number of misadventures that amounts to, I'm now anxiously looking forward to meeting back up with Revy, Rock, and the crew in the next installment.

Anime News :: Miyazaki's "Ponyo" English Trailer Hits Interwebs

2009-06-25T14:32:00.002-04:00

As the anime-god's newest assumed masterpiece gets ready to hit state-side, Disney lines up Matt Damon, Liam Neeson, Tina Fey, and the recently in-vogue Betty White to spin a new tale about the magic of nature and ooze-men.

Anime Review :: Black Lagoon: The First Barrage

2009-06-25T03:39:00.002-04:00

Director - Sunao Katabuchi
Language – English Dub
Run – 12 Episodes [2006]
Genre – Action. Modern Pirates. Boobs & Guns

I am hopelessly devoted to explosions and swearing. Sure, at the end of the day my true loves in life may be slow-burning, thought-provoking travels into the soul, but, it’s hard to deny the sheer joy of a good pistol-whipping at the hands of a foul-mouthed, scantily-clad anime gal with an unreasonably mysterious past.

Substance isn’t exactly a strong-suit of Rei Hiroe’s Black Lagoon. But, honestly who needs substance when things explode.

Black Lagoon: The First Barrage, set in the 1990’s, focuses on the story of The Lagoon Company, a group of loveable smugglers working the high seas of Southeast Asia, and their adventures involving newest kidnapee-turned-recruit Rokuro Okajima. After a classic wrong-place-wrong-time for Rokuro, who’s taken along with a set of classified documents that you wouldn’t expect to be left with a low-level, unarmed company guy, he’s taken onboard by Lagoon after proving himself as a strategic thinker, business asset, and all-around swell fella.

The cast is rounded out by Dutch, the cool-headed gigantic black ex-marine leader of the team, token computer nerd Benny, and Revy, the resident murderous bipolor lunatic who graces most of the series promotional artwork and eats up most of the screen time.

(Benny, Benny's Orange Shirt, Rock, Revy, Dutch)

From there begins the fast-paces, high-energy, often scattershot tales of Rock (Rokuro) and friends on the high seas.

For a series well known for its violence and adult content, it’s actually quite tame outside of the fierce language. With only one notable appearance of boobins and most of Revy’s samurai-like entire-army-killing sprees obscured by smoke, shadows, or camera pans, it’s the sort of violence that’s easy to take if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t stomach it easily. Something that was a wise choice in maintaining the action sequences “oh shit” factors while never becoming a big bloody distraction.

The English dialogue flows remarkably considering its lack of content, mostly filled with quick insults, yelling, and obtuse observations to pull the story along behind the trail of gunsmoke, cigarette butts, and cold bodies. The bad guys always explain their motives at length and the good guys normally wrap everything up in a tight package before the one-to-two-episode arcs finish up. The small plot pay-offs come in the interaction with Revy and Rock who jump from deploring eachother to being bros on an almost daily basis while Dutch shows up for hacky-cool one-liners and Benny stands in the background entirely forgotten were it not for his tacky orange shirt.

Still, there’s enough chair-jump moments and fist-pumps to keep you wanting a little more with each installment and the 12 episodes fly by in no time at all.

Clichéd low-brow action fodder at its absolute best.

Anime Review :: Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex

2009-02-04T14:10:00.003-05:00

Director - Kenji Kamiyama
Language – English Dub
Run – 26 Episodes [2002-2003]
Genre – Cyberpunk. Boobs & Guns. WHOA-BOTS!

Being a huge fan of the original film from my day's as a young lad, I was reluctant to dive into what initially stuck me Ghost In The Shell: The Animated Series. I'd caught a handful of episodes on Adult Swim in random spurts and, without giving it a fair shake, came to the conclusion that I was about ankle deep into "blah blah spandex, blah blah techno, blah blah shooting shit" waters.

Years of really well produced family-oriented anime films trumping most anything action-based mixed with a really horrendous Armitage III sequel had hardened my heart to the "bullets and bitches" genre, but after the drudgery of sitting through the uncut versions of both Kite and Mezzo Forte, I figured if anyone was going to be able to single-handedly redeem how I feel about skin-tight body suits and gunfire, it was going to be Major Motoko Kusanagi.

Now for those familiar with the 1995 classic, but relatively unaware of (or disinterested in) the series, the stories take place around the same characters but in alternate continuities, and the story is a little more slick and ready-to-digest for public consumption. It is, for all intents, a pretty straight-forward crime-drama set in the same future as the original film. So, the setting itself gives Stand Alone Complex a bit of a leg up on it's often banal competition.

To clue you in on it's particularly grim (and pretty awesome) vision of the future would really require more space than is befitting a review so I'll link some supplementary information at the bottom on the philosophy of Ghost, but the gist is basically that your soul connects directly to the internet.

Stand Alone Complex (season 1, commonly referred to as "First Gig") follows the exploits of Public Security Section 9, an intelligence agency headed up by Daisuke Aramaki, a delightful and sly old man with a ridiculous haircut. It's key members: "The Major" Motoko Kusanagi, our building-jumping, fully-prosthetic lead lady; Batou, Section 9's meat-faced lead investigator; and Togusa, an all natural ex-police detective. Section 9 also involves a handful of others who get less than ten-or-so lines the entire first season, sooo we'll skip them for now.

The story-arc of the season follows the squad's investigation into a case from six years prior known as "The Laughing Man Incident" after a strange sequence of events and new information.

Despite some unpleasantness along the way (The Major's absolutely fucking ludicrous thong-unitard/leather jacket combo and the awful closing theme song immediately jump to mind) Stand Alone Complex makes for a fun and occasionally gripping ride. There's a bundle of story twists, wonderfully choreographed action, and some much needed comic relief provided by some delightful little blue robots called Tachikoma.

While The Laughing Man story arc gets a little too convoluted at times, and the season spends a little too much time trying to establish the boundaries of it's universe rather than just existing in it and forcing the audience to keep up the pace, Stand Alone Complex still not only puts most other "boobs and guns" anime series to shame (not a hard task,) it manages to keep it's pace over a full-length season and captures the imagination like you'd never expect.

Foibles aplenty, what makes Stand Alone Complex recommended reading though is where it goes next

Ah yes. ...a cliffhanger review.

Extra Reading:
Wiki: The Philosophy of Ghost in the Shell

Subs & Dubs: The Yankees and Red Sox of Unwashed Basement Dwellers.

2009-02-02T15:13:00.002-05:00

I suppose the question of Subs versus Dubs in the world of anime isn't so much a long-time debate as a pissing contest for fanhood.

"What? You want those terribly inaccurate Dubbed pieces of crap?! You know they totally violate the integrity of the story, right?" Which, depending on the quality of the dub ranges from a slight exaggeration to blathering space-man talk.

But there is a reasonable argument to be made on behalf of those artistic nightmares, and of course I'd be please to make it. First, why Subs simply rule earth:

The theory is that dubs are often inaccurate or the western licensing companies take artistic liberties with the dialog and occasionally the story. Which, is entirely true. Many little chunks of Dialog are frequently bent slightly to help fit the animation or to simply smooth out some of the awkwardness of translation. Japanese tends to be very a literal language and Dubs are geared (of course) towards their respective English-speaking audience.

(Watch a very flattly fan-subbed Hentai film sometimes for a good laugh. If you've got some friends and want to make a drinking game out of it, do a shot any time anyone says "release" and you'll all be wasted by 22-minutes in)

There's also a world of things taken into account. What passes for normal behavior in one culture doesn't nessesarily do so in others. Some jokes would be totally lost on American audiences just as I'm sure dubbed episodes of Cheers would make for just as big of head-scratchers over there

A lot of the distaste stems from where Anime in the west had a much smaller fan base and the artistic librities were greater simply because small distributers were pushing to get a product out with as little money or time as they could. It led to a lot of pretty iffy material.

But, this is less an educational peice as it is an editorial, so enough of that. Subs, in most cases, are the truest form of the original content.

I do, always will, and always have prefered dubs for one very simple reason: I speak english.

Now, I know that seems like something someone says on a message board after getting teased, berated, or generally pwnzd after mentioning he likes dubs, but it's a valid reason. I'll be the first to admit that despite years of anime consumption and a semester of Japanese in college (that I had to withdrawl from due to... never going) my Japanese comprehension ends with "hello" "thank you" and "goodbye." Which makes it completely impossible to watch anything in japanese and acuratly gauge the voice acting.

With no understanding of the words themselves, let alone the inflection, dialect, or timing, you'd be hard pressed to understand the difference in acting talent between Marlin Brando and Pauly Shore, which is going to be the case with 90% of fans.

The subs versus dubs argument, more often than not, is really nothing more than the never-ending "I'm more indie than you" nonsense that has plauged mankind forever. Yes, from the first time one caveman asked another if he liked Animial Collective, and his friend replied "well yes, but only their early stuff" ...we've been doing this same song and dance.

Another good reason is purely an issue of watchability. Yes, I can take in a subtitled film from time to time and deticate my eyes soley to the screen, but really when I'm trying to plow through seven season of Ranma 1/2, trust me, you get the idea regardless of language it's in. Cold Water. Hot Water. Whacky Shit Happens.

Even as I write this I have Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex playing on my secondary monitor and trust me, there is nothing going on in the untranslated version that's going to deeply impact my viewing experience and reading subtitles doesn't make your soul fundimentally more pure. So the next time some poor kid is over at box-torrents asking where he can find this one dubbed, un-do your Caps Lock, take a deep breath, open your blinds and take a look at the sun outside, grab another soda and calm down.

There really are more important things to worry about.

Anime Review :: Kite (Uncut) [1998]

2008-12-10T19:46:00.006-05:00

Director - Yasuomi Umetsu
Language – Japanese (English Subs)
Genre – Action / Horror. Blood & Guts. Broads & Guns.

The Internet hype and cult status of Yasuomi Umetsu's Kite (1998) is somewhat baffling. Sure, the eerie sex and super-violence rank among the fairly memorable in the anime history books, and if you can score points for all the ways to kill people with exploding bullets, I suppose it's a classic in that regard, but the problem with this sort of material is that it's best presented with a more gentle touch. Instead, Kite comes swinging a sledgehammer of provocative sensory overload that ultimately falls short do to one simple rule of film:

Somewhere in your bloodbath, you have to craft a reasons anyone might care about the outcome.

[Now, my exposure to the film is based on the Uncut version and if you're unfamiliar with the story of how Kite went through phases of being gradually less censored, wiki can do the 'splaining here. The toned down version is still available for those of you who still like exploding heads but don't care much for sex.]

The story follows a "college" student [for legal reasons] named Sawa, who was orphaned and subsequently adopted [yeah, you do the math there] by a murderous police detective with a sinister mustache and affinity for watching people die. The blank-stared Sawa, through some series of events no one bothered to let us in on, has become somewhat of a super-assassin who gets sent out by her boss / adopted dad / bang-buddy to clean up the streets, passing righteous exploding judgment on murderers and child molesters.

Now, before I plunge into all the things about Kite that made it a bad film, let me quickly touch on the thing that don't bother me...

The explicit sex has many viewers hot under the collar, with many clamoring that Kite isn't anything but glorified hardcore pornography. Which, is a bit of an over the top criticism in my estimation. The sex scenes themselves are far beyond what would be acceptable in an R rated movie that you might let your 16+ kids see, some involving visible penetration, however, we're not talking about Swank Magazine material or anything. And while the scenes are brief, they're numerous and their tone is intended to make the audience cringe as it's fully implied that while there's no struggle, these aren't the most willing encounters in the world. So, certainly keep your teenagers away, but as an adult who's not at all shy about the subject, their presence didn't hurt the film for me.

Or at least they wouldn't have if Kite had been better.

Maybe it's that I'm 25, or maybe I've spent too much time on the internet in the past 12 years, but this brand of blood, guts, and creepy sex just doesn't effect me when I have no emotional investment one way or the other about the characters. So while I still can't watch Akira without cringing when Tetsuo's would-be girlfriend is crushed (a much tamer scene, by comparison) I didn't find myself tensing up once during Kite. Instead the movie relies on it's blood-gushes and banging to cover for the fact that there's very little effort put into any other department.

To call the story is haphazardly assembled is probably an understatement. The crux of the entire plot is based on two encounters by Sawa and a young male assassin named Oburi who after, without reason or explanation, are suddenly in love, seemingly for no other reason than to keep things moving forward. It's as though the bulk of the action and sex were completely written and animated when the production staff said “well, we've got 15 minutes left. Why did all this shit just happen?”

The action sequences aren't particularly well choreographed and managed to use the same three tricks more than you'd ever think possible in a 50 minute film. Stylistically there's nothing that really pops or even makes you jump a little for the sheer cool-factor of it all. Something that even the most unapologetically “girls with big guns” anime has to some degree.

The payoff for all this lackluster development comes in what I assume is intended to be the film's most gritty scene wherein Oburi has to watch Sawa have sex as he lays beaten and blood on the floor, held down at gunpoint. A scene that in a better film would have been tough to stomach, but I couldn't help be completely overwhelmed by my indifference to what was going on.

Which leads me back to what I said about a gentle touch. Kite, at all points, seems out of the control of it's makers. There's no craft. There's no real reason for being other than to shock people who're easily shocked or pander to people who like limbs being blown off. Instead it's a particularly sigh-worthy mess that's not really constructed enough to be edgy or ridiculous enough to be laughably bad.

Anime Review :: Paprika [2006]

2008-11-27T02:08:00.004-05:00

Director - Satoshi Kon
Written By - Seishi Minakami, Satoshi Kon
Language – English Dub
Genre – Sci-Fi Thriller, Satoshi Kon Dream-theater.

Animation is an easy forum for surrealism, since the only limitation is the director and staff’s imagination. And, while it’s always interesting to see someone’s artistic exploration on screen, generally, it never goes too far beyond just that. "interesting." Since the essence of film is the storytelling, regardless of how many walls with eyeballs, talking dolls, or Michael Bays-plosion surround it, more often than not, heavily surrealist films read more as a sort of creative masturbation rather than anything that took much skill. Unchecked creativity that leaves the viewer wishing they had a handful of whatever drugs necessary to make what their watching as mind-expanding as it may have been intended.

Then again, perhaps that’s just me. My qualms that stem from my obsessive devotion to Joseph Campbell and the idea of stories being what makes any film worth the time it takes away from your life.

Either way, for that reason any time I line up a Satoshi Kon film, it usually comes with some healthy skepticism. Despite not once being a let down (Paranoia Agent and Perfect Blue being personal favorites of mine,) Kon always walks a thin tightrope of letting his love of blurring the lines between reality and dreams get the best of him.

Paprika, of course, is no exception. Yet even when we start to wonder if we’ll be drifting off into complete nonsense, the real world comes back long enough to provide us just enough bits of tangible story to keep this sci-fi thriller on perfect pace.

With so many things to say about the film, from it’s beautiful use of color and seamless drifting from dreams to the real world, to the gripping story, to even the whimsical and imaginative dream sequences themselves, the most noteworthy thing about Paprika (and the thing that really took me by surprise) is just how disciplined it is. A story this structured in this sort of whacky environment takes a near super-human effort to keep on course, which gets accomplished wonderfully, even packing a nice consolation sub-story about a detective having reoccurring dreams about a case he’s working. It gives the film’s proper ending more freedom to be slightly ambiguous while providing enough loose-ends clean-up to not leave you feeling cheated for paying attention to all the details.

An altogether sensational film that provides just enough structure and formula to give it’s creative pulp and philosophical exploration room to really thrive.

Anime Review :: Death Note [series]

2008-11-20T03:51:00.001-05:00

Director - Tetsurō Araki
Written By - Toshiki Inoue
Language – English Dub
Run – 37 Episodes [2006-2007]
Genre – Thrillers Involving Godly Powers, Brilliant Detectives, and Obnoxious Girlfriends.

Imagine yourself in a perfect world. Not one where any evil-doer is immediately punished by death or that there are no wars or serious conflicts because of the ever-present hand of god… just imagine one where everyone is as cool as the characters in Tetsurō Araki’s Death Note.

The story follows Light Yagami, a brilliant student who stumbles upon a "Death Note" dropped to the human world by a bored Shinigami (god of death) named Ryuk from another realm. The notebook is capable of killing anyone who’s name is written in it as long as it fits into a whacky set of rules provided by the super-natural rightful owners. By just writing a name in it and picturing the victims face, the person in question will die of a heart attack, but, the user is able to get creative if they feel so inclined. Light decides to be the god of justice of his new world and is dubbed "Kira" by the media, killing criminals he deems unworthy of that world with a flick of his wrist. Eventually a connection between the deaths and this mysterious mass-murder is made and the police as well as L (a generally off-beat fella who happens to be the world’s top three detectives) get involved. From there, several years of shit go down in a murderous chess game between Light, L, and L’s successor Near.

Suffering a few year lapse from my anime intake, I accidentally caught one of the middle episodes of Death Note on Adult Swim and was immediately hooked by the sinister protagonist Light and the enigmatic L. My heart filled with the burning intrigue I haven’t felt since seeing Serial Experiments: Lain. What was this all about? What was the Death Note? What were it’s rules? Was I really watching a series where the lead character was the bad guy? Who wins? Why isn’t everyone’s hair spikier?

But, like many cases of love at first sight, eventually you’re waking up with a sore back from having to share your full-size bed and annoyed that their overnight bags take up so much room on your floor.

Now, before I got blasting holes in Death Note, which, for the record, I did enjoy a great deal, let me tell you about how cool it’s hair is and how nice it smells… maybe something about how cute it’s laugh is.

First off the interplay between Light and L is just wonderful. With Anime it tends to be difficult to actually create on-screen chemistry between non-existent characters, but here it’s really a sight to be seen. Truly a better set of onscreen rivals haven’t been seen in anime since Anyone You Can Do… I Can Do Better (a cinematic achievement if there ever was one, but that’s another post.) All kidding aside, though, it really is what drives the series until…

Sigh. well out of courtesy: **Spoilers**

L dies mid-late-series. From there, things take a turn for the mundane, but, I’m still talking about how cute the girl at the bar is.

The English voice acting is also notably well done. It’s funny to see how much English dubs have developed over my lifetime, from awkwardly phrased over-the-top dialog that wouldn’t be out of place in unlicensed Sleepaway Camp sequels to an actual art.

The plot itself is very comfortable to get into, and even when you can see the twists coming episodes away, you don’t mind, because you’re enjoying the ride and the interplay of the flawed, brilliant, and socially retarded characters. Death Note’s constant battle of wits with good and evil pushed into the background makes for some great viewing.

But…

Now here’s the part where I’m a jerk. For the record, I’m a lot better at being a prick than building things up, but, I think the most obvious question to ask after a complete viewing of Death Note is:

Why in god’s name did this need 37 episodes? Up until and including episode 25 ("Silence") the series is on task to be one of the best in years, but, since when does any anime story need an additional 12 episodes to wrap up everything in a neat little package? Personally, I’d have been content with a one episode wrap up and have Light go on to have his misguided desires of becoming a god come to fruition or be killed by Ryuk after vanquishing his rival L, but, unfortunately, I was treated to an additional five hours of hastily assembled characters and half-baked plot twists.

The book was fake! Well we knew it was a fake! Well we faked the fake!! Oh Noooes!

At very least, a second full season would have been necessary to further elaborate on the relationship between L’s successors, Near and the criminally underutilized Mello, but, instead we wind up in a 12 episode no-mans land with a new hero we couldn’t possibly care less about and who’s very existence seems to devalue all the mystery and brilliance of our once-breathing hope of stopping “Kira.”

Also, in the transition between L and Near, Light seems to go from an evil genius to sort of a dope, employing a cast of strangers to help in his plan to kill his new foe.

Truly, the last twelve episodes enter into Jaws II territory.

Where the early sins of the series were more than made up for, (the murky, relatively clichéd color scheme (I swear if one more thing on earth casts the color red versus the color blue… I’m looking at you Chelsea and Manchester U) and the neo-goth pandering with a race of gods dressed in Halloween costumes) the final 12 leave you sitting in front of your TV checking your watch while you’re stuck waiting for the predictable conclusion.

Even the tie-in to the two aspects of L’s personality split between Near and Mello seemed hackney. L liked elaborate, colorful sweets, so Near plays with toys and Mello is constantly munching on plain chocolate bars in aluminum wrappers. Get it?! Truly appropriate because these two crappy derivatives together probably could have made for one interesting character, while our delightfully evil Light suffers a mental lapse at the hands of the writing staff.

In the end everything gets phoned in and there’s a nice, predictable, blue bow on top. Ryuk puts the screws to our anti-hero everybody hugs as our secondary semi-retarded villainess jumps off a tower in the "smoke and sparks" region of Japan. A pointless clusterfuck if ever there was one.

Still, since 25 wonderful episodes easily outweigh 12 bad ones, Death Note is still a chunk of your life that’s well worth the effort.

[3/4]

Anime Review :: Howl’s Moving Castle [2004]

2008-11-18T01:49:00.003-05:00

Director - Hayao Miyazaki
Written By - Diana Wynne Jones
Screenplay – Hayao Miyazaki
Language – English Dub
Starring – Christian Bale, Jean Simmons, Billy Crystal

Miyazaki has entirely too many films considered masterpieces for his own good, and while it’s usually not fair to rate a film against someone’s existing body of work, I’m gonna go ahead and do it anyway.

The Hayao checklist is all accounted for off the jump. Lead character with a curse? A war? Royalty being involved? Nature? Magic? Some form of frightening mindless Ooze-Men? (Seriously, this guy has it out for mindless ooze-men.) To lesser visionaries, this would be borderline self-parody, but luckily for Miyazaki, he’s always got enough visual punch to cover his ass.

The story follows Sophie, a modest young woman working at a hat shop who starts her adventure after an inadvertent run-in with a dashingly handsome and predictably mysterious wizard named Howl. Yes. The fella who has a moving castle.

Howl proving himself as the traditional romantic interest who’s more trouble than their worth, after her encounter, Sophie gets chased by blob-men and cursed by the equally blob-like Witch of the Waste. She’s now an old woman who, as we quickly learn is the detail of most curses in this world, isn’t able to talk about what happened to anyone beyond the witch herself.

Whimsy, art-direction, and yet another imaginative world run rampant over the first hour, as well as a delightful peppering of Wizard of Oz nods. One of the bigger problems with Howl’s, however, is that it blows too much of it’s magical wonderland upfront and leaves us playing catch-up as the film takes a turn for the average.

Eventually all the cast are making assumptions based on information the viewer hasn’t been let on and, like is all too common, you’re left to shrug and explain away the plot-holes with the handy caulk that is “the power of love.” Miyazaki is so accustomed to creating his unique little worlds that this time he’s really failed to make clear the rules over the course of the story.

Soon enough you're met with “your hair looks like starlight” and everybody hugs, which, you enjoy, because it’s a lighthearted story about the power of love, but while you’re jumping up and down for joy with the characters your mind does wonder to exactly why it is you’re hugging anyway.

Was this a wonderful story or did it just coast on a walking castle or the flamboyant charm and overwhelming cool of the male lead?

The answer is both.

Still, the end result is a wonderful film that’d be an out-of-the-park piece by any other director. Miyazaki unfortunately is forced to work within the handicap of… being Miyazaki.

[3.5/4]

Greetings. (Are You There God? It’s Me, Gigantor)

2008-11-18T00:00:00.002-05:00

Welcome to Oh Tetsuo. A pragmatic look into the beautiful and often-times frustrating world of Anime. A branch of film that’s brought us the feverish intensity of Akira, the wonder of Serial Experiments: Lain, and the stabbing abdominal pain that is Big Wars. A waning trend in America that’s had dozens of ebbs and flows over the past thirty years, and rightfully so.

Like any genre of film, as a general rule, you’re looking at a twelve-parts-crap to one-part-genius margin ratio. For every Dark Knight, there’s more than a few Daredevils.

Oh Tetsuo is here for the fans and social-users alike, presented to be an editorial outlook in plain, understandable English without constant use of insider slang or attempts at educational nonsense. This is for a few reasons; first of all as a part-time music critic, I only know how to be a jerk, and, second, there have been lots of excellent online resources for learning all you need to know about the rich world of Japanese animation. Like all avenues of nerd-dome, fan resources are plentiful, I’m just here to spout off my thoughts on a genre I love to readers with a base understanding of the art-form, or at least for insomniacs that like to read.

To establish the map, so to speak, I figure I’ll give a quick overview on my thoughts. Consider it an FAQ for my particular brand of douche-baggery.

1a.) I really love anime.
1b.) Most anime is genuinely awful.

Important thing to understand. Anime often suffers two true stereotypes. It often has non-liner storylines and addresses issues of a more philosophical nature through metaphor and ambiguity, and, just as often, resembles a Michael Bays wet dream with depth replaced by large-breasted 16 year-old bounty hunters that blow things up and drive cool cars.

…also there are robots. Whoooole lotta fuckin’ of robots.

2) Not all popcorn anime is inherently bad, just as not all art-school anime is inherently good.

3) No matter how objective I attempt to be, I’ve always got a soft-spot for a lot of the sitcom stuff I got onto when I was younger (Ranma ½, Tenchi Muyo, The Slayers, etc)

4.) Combination of 3D CG and traditional 2D was maybe the most dreadful directorial choice in the history of the form.

5.) Not everything Hayao Miyazaki has done is flawless (though, a lot of it is pretty close)

The rest of the bridges we’ll cross when we come to.
Cheers,
- Aj