Seikai no Monshou/Crest of the Stars – Some serious fapping on this piece…

You can already guess from the size of the picture that this post will be terribly biassed… hey, it’s my favourite series after all.

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In 1996 a dude named Hiroyuki Morioka published a trilogy of space opera science fiction novels under the title “Seikai no Monshou” (eng. “Crest of the Stars”). It was to be the overture to “Seikai no Senki”.

Apparently “Seikai no Monshou” was so good that a year later it won this something called the “Seiun Award“. Unfortunately, it will not be till 2007 that it will be translated to English and published by Tokyopop.

For something that has three volumes it isn’t exactly long.

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Anyway, we are here to talk about the anime, right?. In 1999 “Crest of the Stars” was adapted into animated series (13 eps.), the studio responsible for the creation was Sunrise.

As far as I’m concerned the anime is a pretty fucking slick adaptation of the book, of course some things have been change… and not necessary for worse. No, I’m serious. Morioka’s characteristics as a writer include a deep interest for linguistics (he created a fucking language with its own alphabet just for this series – Baronh), artificial intelligence, bitter humor, and well-designed world settings. All those elements (well, besides artificial intelligence) are present in “Crest of the Stars”, in the book as well as the anime. Let me tell you, nothing goes down as good with the morning coffee as bitter humor in a military science fiction.

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So let me tell you about the plot/story (not stole this time).

Humanity finally reached a technological level enabling then to travel through space. After centuries humans populated thousands of planets and star systems. Giving birth to new nations, alliances, empires. One of those nations is planet Martine of the Hyde star system. On the eighty-first day of the one hundred and second year after the colonization they are faced with an enormous invasion by the Abh Empire, although Abhs differ from “normal” humans their origin also leads to earth.
Rock Lin – head of government of the Hyde star system – understanding the tremendous difference in power decides to surrender in exchange for the position in the Abh aristocracy, then becomes the territorial lord (Count) of the Hyde star system.
That was seven years ago. Now, his son Jinto who was send to planet Delct to learn Baronh and Abh culture has finished his basic education and gets ready to leave for a military college in Lakfakalle, the capital of the Abh.
In the Delct space-port he will meet a certain female Abh Pilot-Trainee whose task is to escort him.

From this point on their advanture begins…

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Right about now I should start implying why the “Seikai” series is the best Space-Opera as far as anime goes. What? You think “Legend of the Galactic Heroes” is better? Well, I’m very sorry to inform you that you are a fucking moron.

LOGH had as followed:
- axe fighting
- kindergarten tactics
- battles that take too fucking long and are horribly slow-paced
- a character named Yang – “We lost, I can finally go live a normal life that I wanted, but before that let’s send 80 or so ships that will start guerilla warfare against the Reich”
- other stupid shit I will probably write about another time

SNS has (series as a whole):
- young protagonists that aren’t totally emo or on the other hand, absolutely retarded
- a rich and complex world which doesn’t try to be “epic” for the sake of being epic
- projectile weapons as the main means to make a hole in other space-ships, lasers are secondary weapons usually used as countermeasures or to defend against close range threats
- other good stuff I will not spoil

Looks like I overshoot here, I was supposed to talk only about “Crest of the Stars” and how it’s mostly about the characters then even the story. Oh well.

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At the end I wanted to say that… this may sound strange but… between the books, the manga (yes, there is one) and the anime I prefer the last one. It left me with the strongest impression – I think it’s that fucking good… or I’m just a dude who adores Space-Opera and pointy ear chicks with blue hair.

I LOVE YOU LAFIEL!

Gasaraki – RANT

Sometimes you start watching a title and just after a few episodes you know that there is no hope for it. The story/plot is shit, characters are shit and everything else is mediocre at best.

Someone, somewhere on the net said that “Gasaraki” is a bad rip-off of NGE. I incline to agree. The biggest difference is that they dumped the evangelic bullshit and replaced it with kabuki. Talk about avoiding a speeding bus to get run-over by a steamroller.

Anyway, there is something particular about the mechas in this anime I wanted to bring up to your attention. Mainly, the way they are piloted. This is probably the less efficient way to pilot any craft.
Example:
- You want to get your mecha (that is already in stand-by) from point “A” to point “B”. To do that the computer shows the pilot a few possible routes. The pilot picks one and orders the computer to take it. After that the computer moves the machine from point “A” to point “B”.

Everything is automated, the role of the person sitting inside is brought down to giving out commands. The explanation they are giving out for this is that it would be too difficult for a single human to control all the aspects that make the mecha functional. Excuse me for questioning but did you people ever heard about a “Support A.I.”? The computer regulates most of the less important functions so the pilot – which manually decides where the machine goes and what is shoots – can concentrate on killing and not getting killed.

I bet that 10 out of 10 times a mech piloted manually will outmanoeuvre and destroy that other over-automated piece of shit. There is also another way they could have went. Get rid of the pilot altogether and install a “Battle A.I.” which thinks and acts a lot faster then a human giving out commands… hey, they already have the computer that does just that, they are only missing an algorithm.

Of course I never finished watching “Gasaraki”, it’s possible that later it came out that the mechas actually were powered and controlled by a unicorn sitting under the armour. Hey, it’s a rip-off of NGE so everything is possible.

Interstella 5555 – Some serious thoughts on this piece…

The full title of this anime is “Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem”.

Contrary to the length of the title this movie is quite short, barely above an hour. Which doesn’t change the fact that we have something truly unique on our hands. What is also unique is the history of how it came to be.

So let’s get straight to the point – Interstella is “basically” an animated album, some even describe it as a musical film. It’s hard to categorized because as far as anime goes, nobody ever tried it on such a scale. The album in question is “Discovery” by Daft Punk.

Daft Punk is a group consisting a two total whack jobs who proved beyond doubt that they can make awesome music. Why do I think they are crazy? Well if you didn’t heard some of their other albums this picture will be helpful:

This is the usual way they dress when going on stage or talking with the press.

Before seeing “Interstella” I didn’t knew about theirs existence or the music they made… well true, I heard once or twice one of the tracks (One More Time) from “Discovery” that was playing on Viva/MTV but besides that nothing else.

But let’s not sidetrack.

Somewhere around the time of recording “Discovery” (an album that will later be certified triple platinum in France with more then 2.6 million copies sold… you don’t have to take my word for it but this album is really something) they came up with a idea so far fetched that only a madman would think that it’s possible – “let’s make an anime out of this” – and behold they found a third guy to collaborate with them. After finishing the album and the story for what later would become “Interstella 5555″ our Three Musketeers left France and headed out to Japan to find the Forth Musketeer… two words – absolutely radical.

Before we continue I wanted to talk about my motivation for writing this post. I find writing stuff under the influence of emotion the best. Truth be told after reading the reviews for this anime from those guys – vivafruit and Omurqi – I gathered enough negative emotions to start addressing some of the points they made a.i. pointing what kind of a stupid shit they wrote.

So, let’s talk about the anime and assault someone verbally.

vivafruit wrote:
The animation is certainly not bad by any means, but in the end is somewhat unimpressive. I enjoyed the unique character designs and the liberal use of color, but found anything regarding actual motion to be rather workmanlike.

Hold on, hold on. Unique character designs? Is it me or does someone not recognise a quite old and popular style of drawing?

When “Daft Punk + 1″ reached Nippon they immediately went to an old guy who apparently knew something about doing anime. He’s mostly known for those works:

- Space Battleship Yamato
- Galaxy Express 999
- Captain Harlock

Jesus Christ! It’s Leiji Matsumoto! He will be the Forth Musketeer (responsible for overseeing stuff).

I want you to think about this for a moment. Image that in 25-35 years you will make a music album (example, can be something else… you catch my drift). You also make a story for it in the style of your favorite anime you watched when you were a kid. After that you travel to Japan to ask for help the creator of the anime you liked so much. Impossible? No, because this is exactly what the guys from “Daft Punk” did.

In one of the interviews Thomas Bangalter (pic above, guy from the left) stated:
This album has a lot to do with our childhood and the memories of the state we were in at that stage of our lives. It’s about our personal relationship to that time. It’s less of a tribute to the music from 1975 to 1985 as an era, and more about focusing on the time when we were zero to ten years old. When you’re a child you don’t judge or analyze music. You just like it because you like it. You’re not concerned with whether it’s cool or not. Sometimes you might relate to just one thing in a song, such as the guitar sound. This album takes a playful, fun, and colorful look at music. It’s about the idea of looking at something with an open mind and not asking too many questions. It’s about the true, simple, and honest relationship you have with music when you’re open to your own feelings.

Concerning the story. It’s as Leiji Matsumoto as it can be (Fallen Comrades and Remembrance™). Very simple and could even be regarded as silly if it wouldn’t revolved around music… but it does.

vivafruit wrote:
If there’s one thing that this anime proves beyond a doubt, character development simply cannot exist without dialogue. The director tries a lot of different things to increase the overall appeal of the characters (most noticeably the character designs and some half-baked romance), but in the end his efforts merely elevate them to mediocrity.

Omurqi wrote:
To be frank, the story and the characters were pretty bad and not having any dialogue whatsoever did not help the character development.

Oh for the love of all merciful God (which I do not have). To me it sounds like “Wah, why aren’t they talking?!”. Has everybody on this fucking world forgot that there is something like “show not tell”. Look people – words aren’t necessary to show someones character. There are also thing such as actions (a.i. what people do). Besides, how much character development do you expect in less then a fucking hour?

If you really want to destroy this movie and bring it to a level of mediocrity just try adding words to it. It’s not possible. “Interstella 5555″ is constructed in such a way that if they wanted to add words the length of the movie would jump from 60 minutes to above two hours.

How can I explain this… hmm… the pacing is extremely fast, a lot of thing happen in a short span of time. Adding words would be just playing “Captain Obvious” because everything you need to know is shown to you. Unless you’re a total moron that needs every single thing spelled out for him.

Moving on.

Omurqi wrote:
That’s what it is, an AMV, featuring a whole album instead of just one song.

vivafruit wrote:
I also have a complaint about the synching of the animation to the actual music. While there is definitely some interaction between what happens on the screen and what plays in the background (high points are the sequences for “Harder Better Faster Stronger” and “Crescendolls”), in the end the synching technique isn’t nearly as nice as what I’ve seen in homemade AMVs on animemusicvideos.org (although perhaps that level of quality is impossible for those who are actually interested in making money).

Ok, let’s got through the basics just to be on the safe side.

AMV is a copy-past of certain fragments from anime (can be more then one title) so it will be in “sync” with the track they are plastering it on. Duration: a few minutes.
Animated Musical (in this case “Interstella 5555″) is composed of several clips that when joined create a coherent story with a beginning, middle and end. Duration: an hour.

I rest my case.

Concerning the fragment about “making money”. It’s so full of shit I can’t even wrap my mind around it. All this because Mr. vivafruit doesn’t know the difference between an AMV and an animated movie, it just brings tears to my eyes.

As the closing statement I wanted to say that – between a simple and a complicated story, if execution is right in both cases, the level of “entertainment” will be the same. This is what I firmly believe.
Oh yeah. If you’re wondering what my favourite tracks are then “Superheroes”, “Something About Us”, “Voyager” – so not those in the beginning.

Baccano! – RANT

In my never ending quest for entertaining anime most of the time I find myself digging through a mountain of 100% pure shit. But all that is besides the point.

On one of those endeavours I was visiting a blog where some guy listed his top ten anime titles. I didn’t know most of them but one caught my attention. As the best Space-Opera he listed the Seikai Series (he also stated that “Legend of the Galactic Heroes” doesn’t really hold a candle to it). “This guys sounds legit” I thought. So I put the first two titles on my “to watch” list. “Baccano!” was one of them.

This series has 16 episodes from which I managed to watch only eight or nine. The funniest thing is I still can’t say what was it exactly about. Even the summary is a clusterfuck:

It’s the 1930s, and Mafia groups fight for supremacy in American cities. Young Firo joins the secretive Camorra group; a meek street boy, Jacuzzi, finds himself the leader of a gang of thugs; an alchemist is producing a liquor of immortality, and a homunculus tries to retrieve it; and upbeat thieves Isaac and Miria head to New York after failing to strike gold in California. They ride the novel train, the Flying Pussyfoot, across the continent. However they find themselves embroiled in a ruckus caused by gangs, terrorists, serial killers, and others as multiple stories intertwine and unfold on this fateful ride. All are haunted and hunted by the legendary Rail Tracer…

All this chaos is caused mainly by there being 18 main character, that’s more then the series has episodes, for Christ sake! When do they want to properly characterised all of them?

But wait! There’s still more!

The creators of “Baccano!” probably wanted to be special, as in “let’s make a shit load of flashbacks like in Lost“. Well, there is no problem with being ambitious but there is such a thing like an overkill… or the guy that was transporting the final version of the film accidentally put it into a shredder. Not wanting to get caught he glued it back together. The final result was that at the beginning of episode 2 (or was it 3) in the time-frame of three minutes we jump between four different scenes, four (or more) different characters, four different “times” as in fucking years… ultimately making it impossible for the viewer to define “when is here and now”.

Not wanting to waste more time on this turd…

Now that I think of it, it also should get the “Record holder of the fastest paced anime in the history of mankind”. Oh yeah, the other anime I found on that blog was this.

Mx0 – Some serious thoughts on this piece…

So here’s the second (first) manga that takes place in a school which I would fucking heartily recommend – Mx0″ (that’s zero, not “o”). A summary I stole from somewhere:

During a flashback, an interviewer inquires Kuzumi Taiga, a prospective student for Seinagi Private High School, on what he would do if he could use magic, during his entrance interview. He replies, “take over the world”, with an outburst of laughter, from an attractive girl, following his answer.

After the entrance exam, the school rejects his application; although he recalls almost nothing after this event, he does recall the girl, and believes the cause of his school of choice rejecting his application involves her.
Wandering around outside of the school the next day, Kuzumi tries to enter, but an invisible barrier blocks him. A teacher, Mr. Hiiragi, confuses Kuzumi for a student of the school ditching class and pulls Kuzumi into the school through the barrier.

Seinagi Private High School is actually a magic school and Mr. Hiiragi has just accidentally pulled Kuzumi, a teenager with no magical skill, through the barrier into this school.teenager with no magical skill, through the barrier into this school.

This time let’s actually talk about what makes “Mx0″ good:

- no EMOs, which usually ship truckloads to a manga where there’s a school
- the art is “fuck yeah” but nobody really gives a fuck about that
- the main character shows determination, initiative, willpower – with all those he will try to recompensate the lack of magic power – Class-A Protagonist right here
- the number of secondary characters is enormous, all of them with a personality, different set of skills etc.
- the magical-school in this manga actually feels like a school, no overpowered faggots running around and doing stupid, irritating shit… the people in control are the teachers… as it should be.

What I don’t like about “Mx0″ is that it has only 10 volumes. Why is that?

M×0 was serialized in the manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump between May 1, 2006 and May 19, 2008 and is published by Shueisha. Ten bound volumes were released in Japan. The manga was intended to run for longer, but due to the low ratings it had in Weekly Shōnen Jump it was put up for cancellation.

LOW RATING? Are they out of their fucking minds? This is one of the better mangas out there, “low rating” my ass. Something stinks.

I demand satisfaction.

Code Geass – RANT

We all knew this was going to happen sooner or later. Wall of text inbound, duck and cover.

Let me start by saying that the general idea behind Code Geass had potential. But unfortunately, as have been proven numerous times before, the thing that counts at the end is not the concept but the execution. To be more specific, Code Geass is “Meh” at best. It’s very unfortunate, because by just getting rid of one element they could have made a huge leap forward. What am I talking about?

Well, how about you drop all the fucking supernatural bullshit!? Code Geass biggest problem is the “Geass” itself. For those who forgot what it is, in short, you just have to gaze into somebodies eyes and issue an order… any order, although you can do this only once there is no estimated duration.

The series tries very much to make Lelouch seem like a sly bastard, but the way he utilizes his supernatural abilities makes me think that he’s actually incapable of thinking “outside the box”. Let’s go through the main points in his plan again:
1. Obtain your own army of rebels.
2. Investigate your mothers murder from the bottom of the Britannias hierarchy.
3. Start an all out war against the Empire on the Japanese soil.
4. …
5. Profit/Better World for his sister.
I could understand all this if he didn’t have the power that makes him “only second to God”.

Let’s look at this a bit metaphorically. Try to imagine a theatre – on the well lit stage stands Britannia, clearly visible. On the other side, in the seating area are the Rebels, hid by the darkness. They both know of each others existence, Britannia is vastly superior when it comes to military potential but can’t really do much if they don’t see their enemy. The Rebels situation is the exact opposite.

So where is Lelouch in all this? If you look closely you will notice that he’s right behind Britannia, hiding behind one of the stage props. In the anime our protagonist decides to leave the stage and take a seat with the Rebels, just so he can later lead them back onto the stage and get his ass kicked severely.

What I’m arguing here is why the fuck would he even do such a thing? Because it gives him better odds at achieving his objectives? Hell no. Whatever happened to “Want to do something right, do it your-fucking-self”?

For those who still don’t get what I’m saying – LELOUCH ALONE CAN BRING THE EMPIRE TO IT’S KNEES, TRUE STORY BROS – you really don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure this shit out. An example is in order. Let’s say it’s somewhere around ep. 5 (Season 1), it’s the time when Suzaku shows what an immense faggot he really is and the time when Cornelia along with Euphemia arrive to Japan/Area11.

Without going into much detail, the first thing Lelouch should have done after becoming number one on Britannias “People to Kill” list was to ditch his identity as “Zero”. Just burn the costume and let Cornelia chase after a phantom (I wanted to make a Hans Gruber reference here about “not looking and finding for sure” but gave up in the end).

So now what? What is his brilliant plan to change the world?

Well, there is a plan… although it’s nothing sophisticated, nothing sneaky, nothing that requires assistance of other people. It’s simple, so much that you could say that it’s brilliance lays in the simplicity.

1. Lelouch decides to set things into motion and enters Britannias main administration building in Area11, this is also the place where the Viceroy resides. He approaches the reception. The woman sitting there greats him and asks polity how can she be of service. “Lelouch vi Britannia, The 11th Prince of Britannia demands to see the Viceroy Cornelia li Britannia”, the best word to describe the reaction of people in the nearest vicinity will be “What”. It will take a few seconds for the Receptionist to collect all the needed data in here head, but when she finally does, her jaw will drop.

2. Of course his identity will need to be verified and there will probably be one hell of a chaos, but I doubt that it will take too long, an arrogant attitude and a smug smile can do wonders you know. Cornelia will probably have like a million questions to him but that will have to wait.

3. Lelouch will have two requests to the Viceroy (he may have been abandoned years ago but that doesn’t change the fact who he is). The first will be to arrange a transport for him to the capital of Britannia to meet the Emperor a.k.a. Daddy. The second one will be to take care of Nunnally while he is away. Now that he reviled himself, it’s only a matter of time before he and his sister will be recalled back to the Empire so Lelouch has to act two steps ahead of everybody. Leaving his sister with Cornelia is only a cover up so she will have the false feeling of safety that he won’t try something totally fucking radical… besides, now that the cat is out of the bag, leaving Nunnally in a place where the Rebels have their spy isn’t exactly smart.

4. Lelouch enters the Empires Palace through the fucking front gate… maybe this plan is simple but it has BALLS. From this point out a world of opportunities opens for him. He can Geass the fuck out of his father to get the info about the assassination of his mother, if someone in this nation knows something about this then it’s him… not some wussy Prince (I’m talking about Clovis here, take note). After that just order him to kill himself by jumping out of the window or something. The more people in the room the better. How do they say it, ah yes… The World Is Yours.

In conclusion, instead of playing “Rob Roy” in Japan and fighting some petty battles Lelouch should have went straight to the top of the tower and from there started dismantling the Empire, the enemy within is far more dangerous then the enemy standing in front of you. Or maybe he just didn’t understand that life is not a 2D chess board, you don’t have to kill the paws to get to the king.

It’s still not the end, so hold on. Some other “minor” complains I have, two to be specific.

Suzaku… Jesus Christ man, your father is probably doing a 360 in his grave, not because you killed him but because what you are doing after his death. When I heard what was Suzakus primary motivation that made him go back to being a Britannias soldier/dog (that time when Lelouch saved his sorry ass) it literally blow my mind. The Empire is killing hundreds of civilians because they feel like it and you are just standing there with your moronic ideology up you ass. It’s like after the Nazi Germany took over Poland, the son of Polish Prime Minister joined the Wehrmacht with the wish “to change the Reich from within”…
I’m disgusted with myself for writing that metaphor.

It baffles my mind why the creators went with that instead of going with a reason Suzaku would totally dig, like a love interest under the name of Euphemia… take note, in my book defecting to the other side, for a woman, is a totally valid reason. It also has been proven to be most righteous…

At the end Suzaku understood what a fucking faggot he was, but unfortunately it was to late for him… one woman’s life too late.

Moving on. At the beginning I said that they should have ditched the Geass altogether, my main reason for saying this wasn’t only the thing with Lelouchs reasoning, it was also the thing with those fucking “Edgy” moments. If something really made “Code Geass” unwatchable for me then it was those over-the-top dramatic events revolving around the Geass powers. Especially Euphemias death, it’s as if the creators were baiting us – “Hey look, the end is nearing, maybe it will end good, there is such a possibility, hey it can happen, maybe it will… well… WELL FUCK YOU! EAT SHIT AND DIE!”. Seriously, what the hell were you people smoking?

Finally, I wanted to say that despite how much GC pissed me of, I still can’t bring myself to totally hate it. There is something charming about a “dead man that’s out for revenge” motive (take note, “dead man” has a broad meaning – it may also be a woman, it can be someone who is thought to be dead or someone who doesn’t have long to live). The ending only solidified me in the opinion that this anime could have been a classic if not all those drawbacks.

Hmm, suddenly I feel like watching the first season again… without the three last episodes of course.

Angel Denetsu – Some serious thoughts on this piece…

The story is of Kitano Seiichirou, a very kind and pure-hearted young man, with a horrifying, monstrous face. People being what they are, they think he’s a terrifying delinquent, and there are plenty of chance misunderstandings (coupled with Kitano’s convenient inability to understand what’s happening around him) that propel him into the position of head thug on campus.

I don’t really know how to start this one. I read this comedy-of-misunderstanding a long time… where the fuck are you going? Get back here! Yes, it’s a “Comedy” but for Christ sake let me finish.

This manga is the creation of a guy named Norihiro Yagi (he’s also the author of something faggy called “Claymore” which I did not read), now I want you to look here:

If just now you thought that “that’s some shitty drawings, better look for something else to read” then I’m very sorry but you are one of those faggots that think art is more important then the story. Die.

This manga is Norihiro Yagis second work, his hand is still unrefined…

…or his drawing lessons didn’t cover manga. Either way, after some time…

…he got there.

Getting back to the topic at hand. When it comes to mangas that take place in a school environment there are only two you should consider reading, “Angel Denetsu” is one of them.

P.S. Yes, there are hardly any details in what I wrote above. I don’t remember this ever being a problem. Just go read it.