We’ve moved to a new server. This move should me almost completely transparent, however if you’ve linked to posts here directly then the link has had to change slightly. This is because the new server is running Windows Server 2003 and IIS. This means no URL rewriting, so we had to enable a work-around.
Monthly Archive for October, 2005Page 3 of 3
Wow…Mai-HiME. No, I’m not behind the times at all, right? Just now starting on this series when its quasi-sequel remake thingy premieres later this week? Wait, of course I am. Seriously though, this was one of those dozen or so series I got maybe one or two episodes into before reluctantly having to drop them because BitTrickle went too damned slow to keep up (credit to Negs for the “BitTrickle” thing). The farthest I got into Mai-HiME was some drowning girl with a sword cutting up a boat fighting some hot chick with a robo-dog who later appeared in a metric shit-ton of lesbian hentai with a rather domineering blond woman, all the while this big-breasted redhead watched from the side-lines like, trying not to die & all. Seemed rather interesting, but like I said, I had to drop it because other series had my attention and I lacked the download speed to keep up with everything. Gundam SEED Destiny of all things, too; sucked royal to watch that show plummet week by week while this one just garnered more and more praise from everyone. Luckily though, my internet got faster and I discovered that wonderful invention known as XDCC, so now I’m able to go back and pick up those last-year series that wound up being the subject of everyone’s coversations. Like Mai-HiME. Yay.
So, a couple days ago, Neg & I were chatting about various anime-related items, and we both came to the conclusion that we needed to rewatch Haibane Renmei. I mean…why not? It’s like, one of the best shows ever; it’s pure genius. After that, I went over to a friend’s house for beer, pizza, and a rather rousing game of Tiger Woods 2005 on XBox. I discovered that beer and my stomach don’t get along. At all. And I also did fairly good at Tiger ‘05 for having never played it before, but that’s another story for another day. The point is, while I was over there, I had an idea, and after I got home and my stomach stopped doing beer-induced backflips, I ran it by Negs.
Basically, we’re gonna try something new here at PinkuBentoBox. Every weekend, we’re each going to watch an episode of Haibane Renmei, and then post a comprehensive two-man analysis of it right here. Thirteen weeks of Haibane, and if it proves successful, we might end up branching out to other intellectually high-brow anime titles. Names like Boogiepop Phantom and Serial Experiments Lain have already been thrown around, and I don’t think it’d be too much of a stretch to consider such titles as FLCL, Paranoia Agent, and perhaps even Big O as future prospects. Odds are, we’ll probably start sometime within the next two weeks, so keep checking back. It oughta be interesting.
2004 was something of an unfortunate year for Gundam, once you think about it. On TV, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny debuted in October, and despite showing tons of promise and actually putting on a good show for about ten episodes, quickly deteriorated into one of the worst Gundam series of all time. In the theatres, the Zeta Gundam movie trilogy, planned as the pinnacle of Gundam’s 25th anniversary celebration, had its much-anticipated wide release pushed back by way of numerous delays into early 2005. And on the international level, the popularity of the Gundam franchise only continued to slip, prompting many concerns that Bandai might not keep their word on their promise to eventually release every major Gundam anime in some capacity outside of Japan. Despite all of this, however, there remained one good thing (well..more Astray aside) to come out of Gundam’s 25th year. Debuting right as details on Destiny were first going public, the series Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO: The Hidden One Year War began as a special theatrical trilogy screening at the Bandai Museum, before being extended to a six-episode OVA series later on. Animated entirely in some fairly high quality CG, it provides a radically different take on the One Year War (and Gundam in general) than that of its peers.
Continue reading ‘Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO: The Hidden One Year War episode 1′