Cartoon Corner- Zombieland Saga

This show went and did a thing, and it works hard to undue some of my goodwill toward it.
Don’t set up a redemption arc for your abusive asshole character unless you’re willing to really put in the work folks.

Cartoon Corner- Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F

I think I’m kinda bored.

Cartoon Corner- Castle in the Sky

My first temptation is to just pick out all the Miyazaki-isms and talk about how this fits in the Ghibli canon.  Except this is the first time I’ve covered one, and also I found something more specific to talk about with it anyways.

Cartoon Corner- One Punch Man (Season 1)

One Punch Man is a strange show; not quite parody, not quite a regular comedy, definitely not straight shonen.  And as usually happens in those cases, I’ll be forming thoughts on this one in the writing, because organization is for chumps.

Cartoon Corner- Hellsing Ultimate

Hellsing Ultimate, despite being adapted by the same people from the same material, is a lot of things that the earlier Hellsing really wasn’t.

It’s horror porn, gore porn, gun porn, and occasionally just porn.  It’s an indulgent, fantastical mess, that always demands your attention except when it’s clearly just playing with itself.  You do have to give it a minute once in a while.

Hellsing

A bit of production history for this one.  Hellsing is adapted from a manga of the same name… but specifically the first two volumes (with a smattering of material and notes from later I suspect).  Said manga ended up being 10 volumes.  So essentially in 2001 they produced about 6 episodes based on the existing material followed by an addition 7 including whatever nuggets Hirano deigned to give them with a more or less original story.

Cartoon Corner- Millenium Actress

Originally posted at the DL May 2016

Y'know, I feel like Kon is just showing off in this one in a way the other movies of his I've seen don't.

Cartoon Corner- Tokyo Godfathers

Originally posted at the DL April 2016

To this day this movie amuses me on a conceptual level.  Probably the greatest Christmas Miracle movie ever made comes from a Japanese man who, so far as I can tell, was not among the ~2% or so of Japanese folks who adhere to any variation of that faith.  Satoshi Kon's fingerprints are all over the movie in terms of visual design and story focus, but the actual story told here stands out a lot from the rest of his work and the degree it resembles western works (apparently it borders on adaptation of a John Wayne western, although I'm not familiar with that film) and the less-than-ubiquitous-in-Japan Christian faith is a bit uncanny.

Cartoon Corner- The Slayers Next

Originally posted at the DL February 2016

OP2 (Give a Reason)- The single best remembered song in Slayers, and with good reason.  The intensity of it builds in a way that gets you to follow one rhythm just before it ramps again, and it's almost impossible not to move along with it.  There's also this very real sense of incredibly sincere emotion to it that I just don't.... quite know how to explain.  We're moving to Megumi's rhythm, but she's really baring her soul here, y'know?

Cartoon Corner- Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Originally posted at the DL February 2016

So this finally happened.

Cartoon Corner- Summer Wars

Originally posted at the DL February 2016

At heart, Summer Wars is a very simple movie.  In the sense that it tends to be straightforward or obvious, and telegraphs heavily.

Which is good.  It's good to remember that simple things can be amazing.  That straightforward or obvious isn't the same thing as stupid.  That making something easy to follow and accessible doesn't make it somehow less.

Cartoon Corner- Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods

Originally posted at the DL December 2015

So the release of The Force Awakens has of course generated a lot of talk about Star Wars, and on comment I've run into, phrased differently in various places, is the prequels being basically the unchained id of George Lucas.  One dude made every creative decision and had full rights to do whatever the fuck he wanted, and it's fascinating to pick apart even the very very flawed products of that effort and see how he ticks.

Cartoon Corner- Slayers Excellent

Originally posted at the DL December 2015

ED-E (Never Die)- Such a low key song.  It's bloody weird, because I strongly associate Slayers vocals with bombast as suited to Megami singing more or less in-character as Lina.  within that it's pretty enjoyable, but doesn't stand out at all.  Probably the weakest vocal so far.

Cartoon Corner- Slayers Special

Originally posted at the DL December 2015

Box calls this Slayers: The Book of Spells, but it's labelled as Special in the actual OVA.  'sides, any Slayers fan material I run across always, always uses the Japanese terms so.

Cartoon Corner- Star Driver

So this show was pitched to me as basically fusing Utena with Gurren Lagann.  Which is certainly true, it wears both of those influences on its sleeves.  Of course, those are both all-time classics that redefined their genres and one of them is probably my favorite show full stop, so I mean… I don’t want to pretend Star Driver lives up to those.

Cartoon Corner- The Slayers

Originally posted at the DL December 2015

Actually, before anything else, we gotta do this.  It's Slayers man.

Cartoon Corner- Redline

Originally posted at the DL September 2015

So I actually made a short comment about this the first time I saw it.

"This movie is such a pet project.  These dudes gave no fucks if the movie was salable.  They made what they wanted to.  I just wish I had more levels in animation geek, there is so much going on in this movie and I would love to be able to analyze more of what's going on with it.

No mistake though, this is a thoroughly entertaining movie on its own merits.  Just, everything under the hood has me intrigued but I just don't have the background to dig in."

Cartoon Corner- Aria: The Animation

Originally posted at the DL September 2015.

ara ara~