Song of the week

We close out Anime Month with the theme song to Nadia, The Secret of Blue Water, one of the few animes I actually own.  Damn, listening to this makes me want to sit down and watch the series again.  Most of it, anyway.  The part where Nadia and Jean are stuck on that island went on Forever...

Song of The Week

I remember  a few years back when one of the big three networks had attempted to market new anime for American markets and completely botched it.  One of the two was Card Captor Sakura, an anime that while is very good, some of it's subject matter simply is not right for American audiences.

Okay, ten year old boys crushing on teenage boys?  I don't think that is right for any audience.  Seriously the Japanese are just weird.  But don't you go changin', Japan.

The other anime they screwed up was Vision of Escaflowne.  Dave once described Escaflowne to me as well disguised Shoujo anime.  Shoujo anime, for those of you who do not know, is anime directed at an audience of teenage girls.  But despite that I think the show was very well done.  Yeah, sure, you had the teenage love triangle (done years before Twilight, btw, and done far better, IMO) but I thought the animation was great and the heroine was likeable.

So here is the complete opening song to Escaflowne:

Song of The Week

More anime goodness, I give you the opening theme song to To Aru Kagaku No Railgun:

Song of The Week

Anime month rolls right along, this time with another contribution from the incomparable Yoko Kanno.  It is Tank, the opening song to the Cowboy Bebop anime.

Song of the week

It is anime month here at GM's Revenge, at least where Song of The Week is concerned.  First up is the theme song to Magic Knights Rayearth:

Anime and me

I am not a big anime fan.

It is not that I have anything against anime, it is just a matter of my lack of exposure. I find a lot of stuff that makes it on to American network, syndicated and cable television is either not very good (either it starts off crap or becomes so after the heavy editing and dubbing; what happened to Card Captor Sakura is a crime) and I do not have financial resources to purchase any directly. I tried getting into the stuff shown on Cartoon Network but I always found Ghost In The Shell to be...inscrutable. When I watch that show I always feel as if something has been lost in the dubbing, and honestly I really do not like half the characters. Bleach got very boring for me and Big O ended with what I felt was a "fuck you" ending (by which I mean the writers had no idea how to end the show and decided to try and pull a Prisoner on us, and frankly only Patrick McGoohan can pull a decent Prisoner on us). Outlaw Star was okay and I liked Cowboy Bebop, but the track record for me in regards to easily accessible anime is not very good. I do have friends who are huge anime fans but after my buddy Dave introduced me to Welcome to Greenwood years ago I have been leery to ask him to loan me anything.

Welcome to Greenwood. Some messed up shit, yo.

Okay, seriously, Dave is a great guy and he has introduced me to some stellar stuff; Macross Plus, Vision of Escaflone, the live action Gamera movies, all are tremendous entertainment. He also loaned me Ong Bak II and The Good, The Bad and The Weird, two outstanding live action movies from the East. I guess I could ask him to loan me more but I am always leery about borrowing things from people; I have enough trouble not breaking my own stuff.

Anyway, imagine my pleasant surprise when I discovered Hulu has anime. Not just dubbed anime, either: much of it is subtitled! Is it a large collection? Not really. But it feels like whomever is picking the stuff is attempting to appeal to a broad audience and I respect that.

I finished watching Darker Than Black and am enjoying Last Exile, but by far my favorite show is Bamboo Blade. I just finished watching it today and I enjoyed it a great deal. The only thing that would have made it better would have been a lesbian scene between Kirino and Saya.

Come on, Japan. We in the states have certain expectations.

Seriously, the show is a lot of fun. It is about a girl's kendo team and it is funny without getting too ridiculous, and I found myself liking the characters a great deal. I especially enjoyed the self referential humor, with inside jokes regarding Japanese television (I do not want to go into any detail 'cause I do not want to spoil anything).

So if you can, give Bamboo Blade a try. And if you cannot watch it, you can always read the manga...