Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Video Backlog: “Big Windup! (Ookiku Furikabutte)”

Publisher: Funimation (USA)
Format: Region 1 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English dub and English Subtitles.
Length: 26 episodes x 24 minutes
Production Date: 2007
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes

Ren Mihashi was the “ace” pitcher in his former school’s baseball club. Apparently the only reason why he was selected to be pitcher was the fact his grandfather owned the school. Coupled with his slow pitches which made every game for the school a lost one, the team aren’t exactly friendly with him. Mihashi decides to break away from what is a horrible situation by moving to a new prefecture and to a new high school, Nishiura High. However his self-esteem is at rock bottom due to his experiences at his former high school. Yet he still decides to join the baseball team. He almost decides not to re-join, but the rather quirky female coach, Maria Momoe, essentially forces him to join. In the team he befriends the catcher, Takaya Abe, and becomes the team’s main pitcher, despite the fact his pitches are rather slow. However Abe seems that there is more to Mihashi’s pitching style than meets the eye, and due to his directions Mihashi gains his utmost trust.

With the pitcher and catcher working in almost total harmony and the rest of the team in place, a practice match is set up. The group set off on training camp. Unfortunately the team playing them turns out to be from Mihashi's old school. Mihashi already has a rather skittish and shy personality, but with the prospect of facing his former taunters, he loses confidence big time. However Abe manages to build up his confidence enough so he can play. Things seem to be going well with Mihashi striking most of his former team mates out (thanks to Abe’s directions), however Abe now thinks that Mihashi is getting homesick for his old team, and has to shake the feelings out of him. With their first success, the team now prepares for the Summer National Senior High School Baseball Championship. Unfortunately the team they have picked to play is the team that won the championship last year. How can a bunch of rookies win against them?

So this is the second sports anime and Funimation titles I’ve watched in as many weeks. Sports anime is not my favourite genre, however the way a lot of these shows are constructed (especially non-shonnen ones, such as this show - it’s from a seinen manga) make them quite intriguing. Unlike “Bamboo Blade”, this show is heavily focused on the sport side rather than the non-sport aspect of the character’s lives. The first few episodes did really turn me off. First problem was Ren Mihashi. I could generally accept his extreme shyness and barely tolerate his constant crying, but his actions in the early episodes made little sense. In particular going from situation where baseball was hell due to his team mates, then moving to a different prefecture and REJOINING the school’s baseball club. I mean, what the hell? It just doesn’t make any sense. The other aspect to this is he rejoins in the same position which made his life a misery; pitcher. The other problem I had with the show is how fast it went from the initial members joining to full on matches. There seemed to be no time from training or anything. And nobody seems to try out for the positions. People just stated what they were and nobody, not even the coach, said anything. And speaking of the coach, Maria Momoe, I don’t really see the point of making her exceptionally breasty.

Once the baseball starts, that’s when the show really kicks into gear. The fascinating part for me was the tactics used in the games, in particular those thought up by Abe and Momoe. I did play baseball in high school (for one tortuous term only), but there was hardly any coaching from the teacher, let alone any mention of using tactics during the game. I know baseball is pretty big in Japan, but it really seems to different to the US system of college sports where it resembles a slightly watered down professional set up. I don’t know, but wouldn’t it be more fun for the kids if there wasn’t all that pressure? Surely not many of them are gunning to make to the pro league? That aside, because of that the games are really nail biting at points. I was really thoroughly entertained during these parts, perhaps because I knew the basics of the game. At the very least I thought the show was realistic. The kids didn’t really show any silly superhuman skills which many sports anime fall back on. Some of Funimation’s terminology was rather odd at times. Some of it wasn’t familiar to me or I knew certain aspects of the game under different names (admittedly I’m not too well versed in baseball, I just know enough to get by). Luckily this only happened a couple of times. One of the problems with the show is that even though the team states that they want to go to Koshien (Hanshin Koshien Stadium where the finals are held), all we see are a practice match and the first official match, which are spread over almost the entire 26 episodes. The show also mostly focuses on Mihashi and Abe exclusively. The final episode (an OVA extra) focuses on a player in other team before the events of the first episode. It really feels out of whack because we only briefly follow the player in the series. I think more time should have been allotted to individual team members and series is way too short for the scope of the story. A second 13 episode series was broadcast in 2010, but I think this show need more time devoted to it than that. In the end it was pretty entertaining, but some aspects where a little hard to swallow, but most of these relate to the early episodes. I really think this show would have benefited greatly from a much longer episode count. 6.5 out of 10.

Remaining Backlog: 28 months (it's much easier this way than listing the number of discs). 

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Video Backlog “Bamboo Blade”

Publisher: Funimation (USA)
Format: Region 1 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English dub and English Subtitles.
Length: 26 episodes x 24 minutes
Production Date: 2007 - 2008
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes

Toraji Ishida, better known as Kojiro to his work colleagues, is a part time teacher at Muroe High and also more importantly the coach of the school’s kendo club. A meeting with his sempai, Kenzaburo Ishibashi leads to him wager that his students can beat the other. As Kojiro is a pauper, if he wins he gets to eat at Ishibashi’s father’s sushi restaurant for a year. As Kojiro lucked out and beat Ishibashi in a kendo championship in high school, and Ishibashi still feels slighted by this. If Kojiro’s team loses, he has to surrender his trophy to him. While Ishibashi already has a full team ready, Kojiro only has a total of two students that fit the criteria. The battle will take place against five of Ishibashi’s female students and currently Kojiro only has two in his team; Kirino Chiba the quite competent and happy go lucky team captain, and Sayako Kuwahara, another girl quite competent at kendo, but she often quits and re-joins on a whim. She hardly turns up to practice.

Hoping that he bumps into a girl who’s an expert at kendo, Kojiro’s wish literally comes true. He discovers Tamaki Kawazoe, a student in the first year of high school who is a kendo prodigy. Tamaki spends hours at home honing her skills and fighting grown men at her father’s dojo. She sees no need to spend her spare time joining the school’s kendo club. However the club has two problem members; Toyama and Iwasa. The former is an expert bully and the latter is his lackey. Both have put students off joining the club for a couple of years. Tamaki’s sense of justice forces her to join and rid the club of the bullies though a match with Toyama. Soon after the very beautiful Miyako Miyazaki joins along with her oddly dumpy boyfriend Danjuro. Despite absolute beginners, Kojiro is pleased he has a fourth member. Fully aware he requires five, he hatches a plan to take on Ishibashi’s girls by using Tamaki twice in the match and pretending she’s the first and fifth member.

I’m rather iffy on a lot of sports anime. I’m not much into sports in the first place, and secondly a lot of sports’ and manga are aimed at the shonnen market and you end up with absurd storylines and super human plays. I much prefer it when the sports part of the show is incidental to the story. “Bamboo Blade” almost fits the bill in that regard. While kendo does play a fairly big part in the show, the characters and their backstory are what actually makes the show work. Tamaki, or Tama-chan to her friends, is unsurprisingly the focus of the show. She is an avid anime and tokusatsu fan, with her favourite show being the sentai-like “Blade Braver”. Tamaki is very stoic and very serious in everything she does. The humour in her character comes from her child-like obsession with her favourite shows. There is also some romance hinted with fellow team mate Yuji Nakata, but his is mostly in the minds of the female kendo club members. Tamaki doesn’t seem to be interested in boys as such. Miyako is another key character in the show. The humour generated from her character revolves around the fact she’s sweetness and light on the outside but has a rather dark and almost demonic side which comes out frequently. She also has a bizarre female stalker from old school, Reimi, whose antics are a bit creepy at first until find out what’s really going on, which only adds to the laughs. Also Miyako’s taste in men (i.e. Danjuro) is strange for a girl as pretty and popular as herself.

For most of the show it’s quite light and focus is on comedy rather than the tactics or rules of kendo. However at times it does veer towards melodrama and some sequences felt like they were taken out of a shoujo manga melodrama handbook. Then suddenly it’ll snap right back into comedy mode. These moments really threw me. I don’t think throwing these moments of drama into what seems to be a comedy works. I felt that it really threw off the flow of the story. Surprisingly a lot of the secondary characters, mainly the girls from Ishibashi’s team are really quite well fleshed out (despite their short screen time) and provide a lot of humour to the episodes they’re in. Unfortunately for me a fair wack of the jokes fell rather flat. The strike rate was about half. However when the writers get a set up right and its well thought out and written, the punch line can be a cracker. The climax of the show, though probably more accurately the coda, was a bit of fizzer for me. It just sort of petered out slightly, especially in terms of the fate of Kojiro, though that was solved I the final episode. The very end of the final episode was a bit annoying. It sort of sets up a second series, which to date, never eventuated. Funimation’s publicity of the series is just plain awful and misrepresents what the show is about (sushi? It’s mentioned for about half of one episode at the most). Most of their promotional material panders to the lowest common dominator (which I blame ADV for starting the trend of this type of promotion), but for whatever reason this time it really shat me to tears. Overall it’s quite an enjoyable series. It’s quite funny in parts, but the drama felt a bit shoehorned in and maybe a little out of place and unnecessary. I would have preferred if it was purely comedy. I’m going to give the show 6.5 out of 10. Unfortunately it’d not quite good enough to give it a 7. Perhaps I’m a bit too hard on the shows with my scoring now days.

Remaining Backlog: 28 months (it's much easier this way than listing the number of discs).

Friday, April 13, 2012

Video Backlog: The Nitro Powered Honda Today Returns

“You’re Under Arrest - Second Season (Fast & Furious)”
Publisher: Sentai Filmworks (USA)
Format: Region 1 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English Subtitles
Length: 26 Episodes x 24 minutes
Production Date: 2001
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes

After the deletion of ADV’s previous “You’re Under Arrest!” discs and AnimEigo losing the licence to the original OVA and TV series, I had given up any hope of any more of the anime being released. Somehow Sentai have the magic touch and have released not only the second series, but the final (so far) third series. Based on Kousuke Fujishima’s (of “Oh! My Goddess” fame) manga, the series reunites some of the staff from the previous YUA anime outings with animation production by Studio Deen with character designs by Atsuko Nakajima (“Ranma ½” anime). Interestingly only Aoi’s design is noticeably different. Everyone else’s designs remain the same as they appeared throughout the entire anime franchise. The series pretty much follows on from the 1999 film and no real new ground is broken in terms of story. Nothing much has changed from the 1996 TV series. Saori Saga, a high school girl who gets involved in case with Natsumi and Miyuki in the first series returns as a rather uptight cadet. Shouji Toukairin also returns (and leaves, then returns again), but his character is underutilised. Surely the romance between him and Natsumi could have been amped up.

Also making little more than cameo appearances are “Scooter Mama”, Strikeman and the Buddhist priest. Somehow Strikeman seems a whole lot stupider in this series and his brand of justice seems to be forgotten by the writers of the show. The local children, where were in kindergarten in the original OVA series return also, this time as primary school students. And of course Chie Sagamiono returns to hassle Yoriko. Nakajima’s father and new wife, Sena, are also heavily featured this time around. A new mechanic at their Zapper bike workshop, named Honda, becomes a rival to Nakajima for Miyuki’s affections. Another spanner in works rears its head with Natusmi being offered a new job with the Special Forces unit, which of course has the potential to split Natsumi and Miyuki up forever. As I said before, not much has changed from the original series. Even the music is the same. The animation is much better than the original series, that’s for sure, but goes off model numerous times. The quality of the stories is no better than the original, but I’d think I’d seen it all before and no new ground was being broken here. I was a little bored with what looked like a rehash. The end of the series with the tension between Nakajima and Natsumi and with Miyuki sort of made me like the show again though. Certainly I enjoyed seeing this likable cast of characters again, but not a great deal was done with them which hadn’t been done previously. I’ll still give it 6.5 out of 10.

“You're Under Arrest: Full Throttle”
Publisher: Sentai Filmworks (USA)
Format: Region 1 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English Subtitles
Length: 24 Episodes x 24 minutes
Production Date: 2007 – 2008
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes

Unfortunately for whatever reason, Sentai never licensed the “No Mercy” TV special that was originally broadcast in 2002 after the Japanese TV broadcast repeat of the original series. I’ve never seen it, but after watching the initial episodes I suspected that it was a bridge between the 2001 series and this series. That’s not the case. Apparently the TV special takes place before the second season. A little explanation or just a small justification to audience would be nice. The series begins with Miyuki returning from training in the US and Natsumi returning from her training from the Japanese Self Defence Force. What annoyed me greatly about the beginning of this series is that Natsumi’s departure and sudden return at the end of second series is pretty much glossed over. Natsumi’s stint with the Special Forces unit, supposedly in aid for her to transfer permanently, there is never mentioned. It’s almost like the last few episodes of the second TV series never happened. Ditto for the leaps and bounds Nakajima and Miyuki’s relationship made in the final episode. Everything is set to zero. Honda is never mentioned again, Saori Saga has left before the events of the first episode and Chie Sagamiono doesn’t make any more appearances. For the most part all we are treated to is the usual self-contained stories, which this time around are rather weakly written. It’s as if the writers think the audience has an IQ of a walnut. One episode has the girls dressed in animal suits to entertain a group of children while simultaneously searching for a time bomb. Another is a beach episode coupled with a daft plot where high school boys take candid photos of bikini clad girls and post them to a website. These episodes don’t show any of the female police officers in good light. Most of the time they look rather incompetent. Is it really all that hard to write a reasonably intelligent plot?

The first two episodes start off the series fairly well with Miyuki helping a young rich American boy escape the clutches of jealous relatives. There’s also a great two part arc where Bokuto Station has to deal with a bunch of joyriders causing accidents and fails to curb their behaviour. This cleverly segues into another plot where a vigilante takes out the joyriders and Miyuki takes it on herself to stop the vigilante, against the chief’s orders, due to the injuries sustained by Nakajima due to her actions in attempting to stop the joyriders. It’s really quite well written and makes a fine end to the series (though two OVA episodes close out the show). In the end the last few episodes had won me over and I sort of forgave a lot of the earlier silliness. Unlike the previous two series, the animation here looks pretty darn good. Atsuko Nakajima’s character designs are treated with a lot more respect. What’s quite interesting with this show is the closing animation, with its very heavy Yuri overtones between Natsumi and Miyuki. Perhaps this explains why Natsumi doesn’t really seem to care that Toukairin has disappeared and Miyuki doesn’t seem all that interested if Nakajima never makes a serious move. With this series it really mystified me why the writers didn’t build up on the situations and characters that appeared in the previous anime. Most of the introduced characters and ideas were only briefly mentioned or forgotten entirely. Instead were where yet again stuck with the same cast from the original series. The ideas seemed to be running dry by the midpoint of the series. You really have to wonder why they would do this as it feels a bit like a rehash of the first two series. However there were some great moments here and some quite exciting episodes. I’ll still give the show 6.5 out of 10.

Remaining Backlog: 28 months (it's much easier this way than listing the number of discs).

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Video Backlog: “Tree of Palme”

Publisher: ADV Films (USA)
Format: Region 1 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English dub and English Subtitles
Length: 136 minutes
Production Date: 2001 (2002)
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes

In an alien like world which may just be an alternate universe, an old inventor named Fou lives alone in a house next to a giant Koolop tree. He does have two non-human companions; a small dragon-like creature and Palme, a now mostly inactive boy robot carved out of a Koolop tree. Long ago Palme cared and played with Xian, Fou’s terminally ill wife. However after her inevitable death, Palme retreats into his own world seemingly depressed and eventually he ceases to function, except on the rare occasion when a giant fish like creature passes by. Some years later, a blue skinned woman named Kouram suddenly appears in Fou’s house. She pleads with Fou to deliver a mechanical globe she calls the Egg of Touto to an underground realm called Tamas. However coming as a shock to Fou, she also gives him a small amount of Crosskahla, a mythical blue sap that Xian dedicated her life to discovering. Kouram escapes just as Fou’s pursuers enter the house, obviously in search of her and the contraption she left behind. Fou has hidden the items from the soldiers prying eyes, but he is stabbed by them anyway and left to die. However after they leave to continue to hunt down Kouram, Fou’s final act is to use the Crosskahla along with inserting the Egg of Touto into Palme’s abdomen to revitalise his broken robot boy. When Palme awakens, some days after, he leaves his dead creator and begins his journey into the outside world.

Unfortunately for Palme, his journey starts out quite badly. Mistaken as an orphan child wandering the desert, he is captured with a group of other children and taken to a city, destined to be sold off. However the children are saved by a group of street urchins, who then take most of the children into their group. Due to Palme’s depressed nature, most consider a pest and useless to their cause. That is until they discover that Palme is a robot and contains Koolop tree oil, a substance that is highly valued in the marketplace. However a conflict occurs between a faction within the group who wants to sell off Palme and a minority who wants to save him. This comes to a head and a fight occurs, with a knife being held to Palme’s neck tubes which accidently releases some of the Crosskahla which floods the city with a blue light. The light alerts Kouram’s pursuers who are searching for the Egg of Touto. All hell breaks loose as the street urchin’s base is exposed and the group scatters. A trio of survivors manage to band together to help Palme; two rabbit like child creatures called Mu and Pu and Shatta, a young man of the same race as Kouram. Somehow they manage to stowaway aboard a small ship in order to flee the city and Palme’s pursuers. There he meets Popo, a young girl who resembles Xian. The initial meeting terrifies Popo, but it also awakens Palme out of his stupor and back to his former self. Leaving Popo’s abusive mother behind, Popo, Shatta, Mu and Pu continue one by foot to Tamas with Palme to complete the journey.

I first saw this film almost a decade ago at the Japnaime 02 film festival. I went to see it (along with a few other films screening that day) with a few people from the anime club. The subbed 35mm film print had been to more than a few film festivals in its brief life and was really worn out. The film broke a number of times and due to the film’s jumpy narrative we sort of wondered half-jokingly if that was due to film being missing some scenes because the film print was so damaged and brittle. Watching this film it seems the truth is that the narrative indeed jumps all over the place. Looking at ADV’s liner notes, it seems that this film was conceived as a TV series. Certainly the plot does feel rather compacted, and even with its long running time it really feels as if bits are missing. For example Mu and Pu secretly board a ship with Palme and later when discovered start calling Popo by her name even though there is no evidence that any of them have met. But the major problem with this film is Palme himself. It’s really hard to get inside his head and figure out what he is thinking. The way he acts in the latter half of the film completely contradicts flashbacks with him interacting with Xian, especially in terms of how he interacts with nature and in terms of how empathetic and sympathetic he is. What I hated the most is how Palme is treated during the first half of the film. He is beaten down many, many times and it becomes quite a depressing watch. The way Palme learns to “become human” is done in a really ham fisted way. They might have had a neon sign flashing during these bits saying “Palme is learning to become human”.

The film was conceived and directed by Takashi Nakamura. I really liked his 1995 kids film “Catland Banipal Witt (Catnapped!)”, and eagerly anticipated this film, but “Palme” really turned me off his work. It was only in the last year I saw his TV series “Fantastic Children”. Certainly Nakamura has a lot of great ideas in his works, but he seems to rarely pull it all together to create something that really cohesive. “Palme” is pretty much in the same boat. Reinterpreting “Pinocchio” in a sci-fi setting was a great idea and the artwork and world design is fantastic, but the story is just so damn cluttered with dead ends and scenes which should be trimmed. And most annoyingly as I said before there are several jumps in the film which aren’t explained. It’s as if whole scenes had been deleted from the film. The story is also told rather badly and there are just way, way too many ideas in this film. It’s as if Nakamura wanted to cram in as many ideas as possible into the film and then forgot to give any of them purpose or meaning. The strange vibrator/dildo like bola creatures are a perfect example of this. It’s obvious they are important to the story, the characters do fear their presence, but it is never really explained to the audience how they are important or how they are a threat. This is the last unwatched ADV disc in my pile (ignoring the Sentai Filmworks stuff of course). It’s kind of sad this load of bollocks id the final disc I have from the company. Overall it’s an extremely frustrating film with some beautiful looking art and sequences of animation that is told in a very poor way. I can only give it 4.5 out of 10.

Remaining Backlog: 28 months (it's much easier this way than listing the number of discs).