So I was reading this entry at ANN, specifically Enoki Films ‘presenting’ Slayers R, the imminent new Slayers show. Now, putting aside that I thought Enoki had been dead for years and the implication that this show might actually have been pre-emptively licensed, the ‘plot summary’ really grabbed me.

Part I - Episodes #1-#13
The story unfolds in the usual pattern with Lina involved in a fight with bandits in the woods. Gourry arrives to her rescue and escorts her to Atlas City. Lina and Gourry struggle to defeat Rezo the Red Monk, who has awakened as the Demon King after finding the Stone of the Wise. Lina is interested in Gourry’s sword, the “Sword of Light” and allows him to accompany her after leaving Atlas City.
Amelia and Xellos the Priest join Lina and Gourry and they encounter many weird incidents relating to the Demon Tribe. Lina realizes it’s because the weapon she used to defeat Rezo, “the Giga Slave”, is empowered by tremendous forces. Hellaster Fibrizo takes Gourry as a hostage and demands that Lina give him the Power – Giga Slave. Can Lina defeat this powerful enemy and save Gourry?

Wow. Just wow. We’ve waited what, ten whole fucking years since Slayers Try, and they’re going to piss away the first half of this by summarising the first eight novels again just so they can retcon Slayers Try out of existence? What the hell? I want to believe that I’m reading this wrong and there’s no way they’d try to condense something that took maybe 45 episodes (when you cut away the filler) into the space of only 13? For the love of god, why? Sure, they changed a few things towards the end of Next in order to fit Try in, but why can’t this just make a few small changes and continue as if Try never happened?

I hope this doesn’t mean that they’re trying to pitch Slayers at a brand new audience rather than the sizeable existing one. That could bode very, very badly for the characters - the last thing I’d want to watch would be Lina reduced to a tsundere moeblob.

Guess we’ll have to wait and see. This news knocked my interest down significantly, though.

I’m usually pretty prompt with these entries, generally doing them about a month out. I’ve been slacking off recently I guess, since next season’s only a week away and I’ve already been beaten to this by some far more thorough entries than my own. Anyway, here’s a list of the upcoming shows next season (beginning in July) which I intend to be watching or at least have enough interest in to check out seriously. As usual there’s a few others which I’m also going to keep an eye on and I’m sure there will be one or two that I won’t be expecting at all.

Slayers Revolution

My last entry should have made it pretty clear that I’m somewhat of a Slayers fan, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that this is one of my more anticipated shows for the season. There’s not a huge amount known about what they’re going to do with this yet, but we do know that the plot will be original, rather than adapted from the novels. This could be good or it could be terrible, we’ll just have to wait and see how it pans out. The biggest thing that I can think of which they could pull would be introducing Naga into the ‘normal’ continuity, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this happened. Generally speaking though, as long as it has Xellos I don’t really care what they do <3.

Blade of the Immortal

In all honesty, I suspect that Blade of the Immortal is going to be a huge disappointment. The actual plot of the manga was fairly predictable and a bit trite, though still entertaining enough. Really, the big draw of Immortal was the manga’s artwork. It has a really detailed sort of sketchy style that was never goung to be possible to animate without throwing an astronomical budget at it, and even if they did it I’m not convinced it would look good moving. I’m hesitant about this and I’m adopting a wait-and-see approach, but it could be reasonably good.

Zero no Tsukaima S3

The first season of this was pretty good. It was never anything incredible, but it was solid and enjoyable. What the fuck went wrong with the writing team when they started on S2? The bulk of the character development from S1 was thrown out the window and Louise and Saitou’s relationship was basically reset back to zero. The whole he-looked-at-another-girl-so-I-whipped-him-repeatedly thing went beyond being a gag and really started to grate. There were also a fair number of plot points from S1 that were left hanging. And don’t get me started on the deus ex machina ending.

Yeah, I’ll be watching S3. The new girl has elf ears.

Mahou Tsukai ni Kaisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~

This is actually a sort of tentative entry here. I fully intend to watch the show despite only having a very cursory idea of what it’s about, because I haven’t seen the first season at all. It’s something I’ve been meaning to watch for years now, ever since I saw some of the beautiful watercolour promotional art for it. I’ve just never gotten around to watching the show. My intention is to watch that season first, then if I like it I’ll hit this up too.

Koihime Musou

Whenever Japan completely runs out of ideas they decide to conduct a raid on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Interestingly this is going to be running at least partially alongside Ikkitousen, which is another example of the same material being bastardised into anime. The only real difference I can see in their conception is that Koihime Musou seems like it’s got more moe influence, where Ikkitousen gets most of its inspiration from bad porn (note: I like Ikkitousen and am currently watching GG). I’m not expecting much, but at least this has nice art. Also, bonus points for turning Diao Chan into a muscle-bound crossdressing guy.

Sekirei

With Kanokon ended and Kiss x Sis not hitting until the season after next at the earliest, this seems to be the most likely candidate to take over from Kanokon as the oh-god-I-can’t-believe-they-went-there horrible fanservice show for the season. Seriously, it looks completely lacking in any redeeming features besides being smut. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with smut.

Hidamari Sketch x365

Hidamari Sketch was seriously underloved, and I’m glad to see that it’s getting a full sequel. Back when I first watched it, my impression was that it was what you’d get if you combined Aria with Mahoraba. Like Aria, it has that same sort of warmth to its characters and the same sort of relaxing feeling when you watch. If Aria is like a cool breeze on a hot summer’s day, then Hidamari Sketch is like a warm fire on a cold winter’s night. Add to that the fact that you get Akiyuki Shinbo’s unique artistic flair, use of colour and shot composition and I think that this could be my most anticipated show of the season.

Strike Witches

Yeah, I know. The whole premise of Mecha Musume stuff is utterly retarded. I don’t particularly care. I fully expect this show to be multiple shades of awful, but at the same time it has some kind of bizarre appeal to it (and no, it’s not a lolicon thing, before someone suggests that). This is another show that Gonzo are actually trying to be progressive with, like Druaga and Blassreiter. I’m hoping that they allow the same sort of distribution models - personally I was quite happy to drop $2 on each Druaga episode from Crunchyroll, though it would have been nice if they’d offered it in h264 instead of Xvid. Anyway, not expecting much here.

Looks like a reasonable season, especially considering how many shows from last season are ongoing. I just wish there was a decent yuri show, it’s been ages since the last one.

My anime watching habits seem to increasingly fall into a certain pattern. Whenever a new season starts I will invariably gorge myself on the latest shows, reveling in their general newness. Usually I justify this by saying that I’m ‘trying them out’ to determine which shows I’ll follow on a weekly basis. In actuality that choice is usually made well in advance, though in the end it is somewhat dependent on the mercurial whimsy of fansub groups and my own personal and exacting requirements as to when and how our subtitle pirates purvey them. But I digress. We are now well into the meat of the current season, and I find this is usually the point that I’ve pretty much abandoned most shows as a weekly indulgence, paring the list right down to just a few. It’s not that I lack time, though it is true that my temporal management skills are somewhat lacking, but if I desired I am certain I could fit other shows into my rotation. Instead, I find myself repeating the same pattern I went through in previous seasons: rather than watch what’s current, I find myself going through my ever-expanding pile of complete shows from seasons gone by. I’ll settle on a ‘new’ show and consume it completely in the space of a few days.

Anyway, this was an overly-long lead-in to what I hoped might become a semi-regular (hah!) thing here, wherein I talk about an older show that I’ve recently finished watching. Any semblance of content on this site is an improvement, I think. Admittedly it’s actually taken me several weeks to get around to finishing this entry.

I don’t have any intention to write this as a review or a summary. I assume that most people have actually seen these things by now. You can find that information in a lot of other places. My intention is more to just give general impressions and observations about the show in question and its significance (if any), since I think that actually has the potential to be somewhat more interesting than the usual overly-worded garbage I vomit up here.

Anyway, by now everyone knows that Slayers is getting a new outing next season. I can’t help thinking that the producers missed the bus on that one about five years ago, but whatever. Let’s talk about Slayers Next!

First off, I feel I should come clean on something: this was not the first time I’ve seen the show. Slayers was among the first anime series that I saw when I first got into the hobby, which when I stop and think about it is nearly ten years ago. I downloaded and watched all of Slayers, Slayers Next and a bit of Slayers Try. All VHS rips, combination of official sub and fansubs. That was back before fancy things like broadband or DVDs or DivX - these were 50mb video in RealVideo format and I believe 320×200 resolution most of the time. My single run through Slayers Next was done at lightning pace, I think I marathoned the whole series in a day, so it tended to blur together in my mind. Additionally the CD-R I burned the episodes to ended up getting scratched so I couldn’t give it another go, and eventually I sort of shelved it in my mind, only to have it resurface when Slayers Revolution was announced, reminding me that I should really rewatch the 3 TV series. Not the OAVs, they were shit. Also not the original because I’d seen it several times on DVD. I never purchased the Australian releases of Next and Try (they had significant production flaws, plus $120 was way too much).

I think that I won’t find many people that would argue that Slayers Next is anything but the strongest offering of the bunch, overall. I have seen people arguing that Slayers itself is a horrible waste of time and that it might as well be someone’s D&D fanfiction and stuff, but those people clearly have no friends. Or taste.

It was interesting to go back to an old classic like this and really realise how much our expectations have changed when it comes to the content of our shows. And before someone misunderstands me, I am definitely not one of the people who ascribe to the notion that fanservice is rampant in every modern anime produced and moe is creepy and gives anime a bad name and so on. That’s neither here nor there, and the subject for a completely different entry. Suffice it to say that I disagree.

If I had one criticism of the original Slayers TV, it is that there are aspects of it which have really aged badly. Animation is a given, since the show was produced for television broadcast with an average mid-90s anime budget. I don’t think that Slayers Next looks quite as dated as The Slayers did, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a combination of the fact that it literally isn’t as dated, and the fact that it likely commanded a more expansive budget simply by virtue of its predecessor’s success on the market. I presume that it was successful - the fact that it’s spawned three TV seasons, a theatrical film and a pile of OAVs and specials would seem to indicate such. Regardless, this isn’t a show you’re going to trot out to show just how good 90s TV animation could look (unlike, for example, Card Captor Sakura).

A more pressing issue that The Slayers had was one of aging humor. To put it bluntly, what was considered extremely comedic in the mid 90s is not necessarily what we find amusing today. Now, I freely admit that I am very likely bringing some of my own personal bias into this judgement, and I am obviously not the weather vane for anyone’s sense of humor but my own. However I don’t think that I’m the only one that would have this perception. One only needs to look at the comedy shows recently which have been popular and contrast their execution. I think some of this is likely to do with other shifts in overall composition. We don’t really have the same kind of response to a girl getting angry and hitting people / setting them on fire at the slightest provocation any more - the Tsundere archetype has become so firmly ingrained in modern anime composition that you can barely spit without hitting a pair of them.

Of course, Lina Inverse as a character is not what we would usually pigeonhole as a tsundere character. That particular moe archetype carries a lot of baggage with it, most importantly it implies that the character has some kind of hidden weakness of character, a deep-seated [i]need[/i] to have The Generic Male Protagonist breach her hardened outer shell. On the other hand, it’s clear that the original author of the Slayers novels was somewhat cognizant of this particular storytelling trope, because there are aspects of it visible in Lina’s character, particularly in her relationship with Gourry, which is one of the key plot elements of Next (and oddly is largely brushed over in Try). It’s also interesting to note that there is some inconsistency in her characterisation. A lot of people rightly point out that Lina is structurally a bit of an oddity in the anime space. A female character who is not overtly sexualised, either in appearance or actions, who is easily the most powerful of any of the protagonist group, is often motivated by greed or gluttony, and has a temper like a bear with a sore tooth.

Most importantly, she is not reliant on some dumb bloke with a big sword to bail her out of trouble all the time. I think this is an interesting point. Heroines with strong character in anime are not uncommon at all, but it’s very interesting to note that in almost all modern male-oriented anime where the central and usually titular character is female, the actual protagonist will be a male character. Despite having such character fortitude and ability, she needs to be reliant on that male protagonist. Lina Inverse is generally held up as an example of being one of the few heroines that avoided this trap. Then again, the climax of Next had her ass being hauled out of the fire by a dumb bloke with a big sword.

Generally speaking, the rest of the major Slayers cast are not really anything to get excited about. Amelia is pretty much a caricature and is probably the weakest of them in terms of characterisation. I also thought that with the whole ‘King Phil is dead’ subplot that pops up towards the beginning of the show they had a really good opportunity to develop Amelia, but unfortunately they didn’t take it. Zelgadis, meanwhile, is very inconsistent. It often feels like the writers can’t figure out how powerful he is, not to mention that they often forget the fact that he’s supposed to be made of stone. I feel like they could have pushed this better, making him a more tragic figure than he is. Despite his apparent drive to become ‘normal’ again, it never feels like he’s really been inconvenienced by his form. Additionally in the back of my mind I have a suspicion that he’d be a far more compelling character if he was a girl.

Gourry probably got the most interesting character development in Next. We see his relationship with Lina develop and grow - and then get cut off completely in the epilogue, which I thought was a little disappointing. Having him taken off and forced to fight against Lina’s group was interesting. I don’t know if it was deliberate or not, but he felt a lot stronger when he was fighting against the group. I suspect that this is mainly simply because he’s basically a guy with a big sword, albeit a magical one, and unfortunately his ability doesn’t scale up very well. Lina can learn new and more powerful spells, but Gourry is really capped and he begins to feel like he’s standing in the shadow of everyone else. I also really appreciated them bringing back Gourry’s rival, Zangulus, as their rivalry in the original season was one of the best parts of the show. Unfortunately Zangulus felt like a bit of an afterthought, and they effectively wrote him out of the story going forward by hitching him up to Martina.

Martina herself is probably the weakest addition to the cast. I don’t think I ever felt amused by her antics. She was really only a vehicle for comedy relief, but I question their decision to include her at all rather than using the existing cast. If they really needed a character like her, then I don’t see why they didn’t slot in Naga, who has never appeared in the TV series stuff. Naga is basically Martina with a stronger character and an annoying laugh. And bigger boobs. As well as providing a potential avenue for comedy relief she provides some significant character development potential for Amelia and Lina, especially given that at the time that Next was produced, it hadn’t been officially revealed that Naga and Amelia were sisters.

In contrast, Xellos as an addition to the cast fit in perfectly. He practically eclipses the rest of the cast, with the arguable exception of Lina. Initially I wanted to say that Xellos actually represents the genesis of a new character archetype in anime, but to be honest I’m not sure that that is a valid argument. He is undeniably an evil character. He manipulates those around him in order to advance his own agenda, waiting for the perfect opportunity to screw everyone. His schemes and plots are intricate and often nest inside each other. Yet his outward persona most of the time is that of a jovial wandering priest.

I’ve heard it said many times that often the most interesting characters in anime - and in storytelling in general - are those which defy the usual definition of the hero or the hero’s ally. The Anti-hero is a concept which has gained a lot of traction in modern storytelling, especially in the last decade. We can see the rise of this sort of character especially in the last few years, with some of the most popular and compelling shows featuring anti-hero protagonists. Code Geass’ Lelouch, for example, who is practically the definition of the Byronic hero. Death Note’s Light and Akagi’s titular Akagi show is the true gamut of what’s possible.

However, Xellos does not fit the definition of anti-hero at all. He is quite clearly a villain, and thus he dodges classification with these other characters and I don’t believe that it is fair to consider him to be anything more than potentially a stepping stone towards the development of this trope. In fact, I think it is more valid to say that he’s an early expression of a more general societal trend towards finding these sorts of ‘grey’ characters with uncertain motives and morals. It is true that these characters tend to be far more popular, and that’s likely because they are far more interesting and compelling to the modern individual.

The seemingly ambiguous nature of Xellos is probably accentuated by the two major villains in Next. Personally I didn’t really care much for Gaav. His character, especially in comparison to some of the more interesting cast members, is straightforward to the point of tedium. Stupidly strong and generally a bit of a dick, he’s basically your bog-standard fantasy bad guy, which admittedly is in keeping with the setting, but is simply a bit uninteresting. His eventual demise is reasonably anticlimactic too.

Hellmaster Phibrizzo by comparison is a much more interesting villain. So often anime villains fail to actually be villainous. Phibrizzo is definitely not one of these examples. Where Gaav was tired and uninteresting, Phibrizzo is sinister and malevolent. He stands out in comparison to all the other villains in the franchise aside from Xellos in this regard. I think the main thing that makes him work is that he’s one of the few characters to successfully manage to attempt to break the party down mentally instead of physically. I can’t help but think that the show’s plot as a whole would have been much stronger had they spent less time early on with filler - did we really need that tennis match? - tied up the Gaav arc sooner, and spent more time with Hellmaster.

Overall I think that Slayers Next is undoubtedly the high point for the show. Originally I was going to talk about Slayers Try here too, but the entry is overly long as it is, and most of the comments here are pertinent to Try as well.

Since Slayers is a pretty old show and very well known and liked amongst the anime enthusiasts who have been watching for a fair amount of time, I’m sure that there are some interesting thoughts out there. Do share.

Tune in next week* for more old animu. Probably Lost Universe or Outlaw Star since I finished them recently too.

* more like in six months when I’m next feeling un-lazy lololol

P.S. The Slayers NEXT OP, Give a Reason, is still one of my personal favourites and has what has to be one of the best intros in an Anime OP, ever.

I’m also still not 100% sold on Wordpress, though to be honest I doubt that there’s anything better out there. There definitely doesn’t seem to be a decent gallery plugin for it that would be right for what I need (one ‘image’ with links to multiple variations, i.e. resolutions).

Comments and thoughts are appreciated.

EDIT: Embiggenment complete. I can have decent sized images now, yay.

What can we tell from this? Given that it’s pretty much the only half-decent photo of a set of about 30, we can assume that a) I am terrible at photography, b) the camera was free for a reason (though it’s not terrible and if I can figure out how to get it to stop compressing the damned images it’ll look nicer) and c) I desperately, desperately need new curtains. And also a new cabinet to store all these things in, they’re taking over my bedroom and my cabinet’s been full for months. I actually still have a couple in boxes because I don’t have space.

Now, I guess I should point out that back in the day, before we became crotchety old men, Neggo and I were huge Evangelion fanboys. Yes, we were those pretentious faggots that would analyze the show endlessly for the greater meaning behind a blue-haired girl (in an anime) and snub our noses at “lesser” series, like Dragon Ball Z and Trigun (well, okay, I still snub my nose at Trigun). I don’t know about The Neg, but my excuse was I was a naïve high school underclassman, and the ravages of time have long since wrenched my head from my ass. At least mostly. As I got older, my fondness for Eva waned into an idle nostalgia, and my interest in its greater meanings outright vanished in a wash of raging skepticism and common sense. And if I ever hear “Fly Me to the Moon” again, I’m taking Alan Shepard’s six-iron upside the head of the person responsible.

That in mind, it should come as no surprise that when I heard Anno was remaking Evangelion into a series of four feature films with a slightly altered story, I didn’t give the news much more than a passing grunt and went back to gushing over the Boogiepop novels or Black Lagoon or whatever was coming out at the time. The fact that I’m also a former Gundam obsessive and was long subjected to that franchise’s miserable excuses for cinematic retellings of television series only further diminished my already miniscule excitement for the project. Once you’ve seen the second Zeta Gundam movie (“Lovers,” or as it should’ve been called, “Sarah Zabiarov’s Big Day Out”) or the absolutely nonsensical mess that was the Gundam SEED Special Edition, you kind of lose hope in Japan’s ability to condense meandering television productions into tight, snappy feature films.

So imagine my surprise when the first Evangelion movie, You are (NOT) Alone, absolutely blew my mind.

For those that haven’t yet seen it (hint: DO SO), Fucking Awesome (MOVIE) Title covers the first six episodes of the TV series, from Shinji’s arrival in Tokyo-3 to the destruction of the fifth Angel, Ramiel (or according to the movie, the sixth Angel, but more on that in a bit). Now I feel the need to point out right away that even at the height of my younger Evagasm, I was never a big fan of some of the early episodes of the series, and episodes three through six held a particularly special place of loathing in my heart. Shinji making friends, Shinji running away, and the Evas battling a giant blue cube that just…sits there…were pretty much akin to watching dried paint dry some more. That the movie would improve upon these events is not surprising, but what’s amazing is that it didn’t just make them slightly more bearable, but it actually succeeded in making them compelling. Shinji’s making friends and running away from NERV are no longer agonizingly drawn out and we’re no longer clubbed over the head with the same repetitive ‘AWW THIS POOR KID’ message ad nauseum. The point behind both episodes is quickly gotten to, we quickly move on, and we’re not so bored with Shinji by this point that we can’t actually feel sympathy for him for once. And the battle with Ramiel actually feels like a battle this time around. It’s tense, there’s a real exchange of firepower, and there actually seems to be something at stake, where previously it just felt like the NERVies were poking this big blue block with a stick until finally deciding to pop it and walk away Raiders of the Lost Ark style. And man, SHIT FUCKING BLOWS UP.

KABOOM!!!

It would seem in revising the plot, a few key characters have also been given a little cleaning up. I say this because as impossible as it may sound, I actually sat through this entire movie without once getting the urge to grab Shinji by the neck and fucking wring the pathetic out him. I know, I know, it’s hard to believe–Shinji’s long been considered one of the most obnoxious characters in the entire pantheon of animedom–but it would seem here that he’s actually been made a stronger character for these movies. He’s far from GAR to be sure, but his former wormlike nature has been toned down considerably. He now acts like…well…a kid with confidence issues realistically traumatized by being chucked into a robot to fight giant fucking monsters. You actually kinda feel for him here, and even better, he even seems to improve! TV series Shinji was pathetic all the way through, but in this movie, he actually seems to collect the first couple vertebrae to build his spine during the battle against Ramiel. He takes a hit from the Angel almost head-on, and where TV Shinji would’ve curled up in a ball and cried about it, or snapped or let Eva-01 bail him out, he actually bucks up and gets back into the battle with some sense of real determination. Fucking omedettou, Shinji-kun. Similarly, Misato seems to be a much stronger character this time around. She doesn’t seem to mother Shinji as much as she did in the TV series, and seems to handle her job with a greater sense of professionalism. We actually get to see her behave like a military commander and devise some actual sound strategy; we really see her earn her supposed rank this time around, instead of running about wildly irresponsible with Ritsuko as her keeper. And her own emotional scars are much more effectively represented early on. We actually see them come to the surface once or twice, where the equivalent TV episodes just focused on the lackadaisical behavior she used to mask it. Makes for some very powerful interactions between herself and Shinji.

If I had one complaint about the way the movie handles the events of the first six episodes, it’d be in the battle with the third fourth Angel, Sachiel. In the movie, we see the entire battle right up front, from Sachiel skullfucking Eva-01 with his hand-poker to Eva-01 going berzerk and beating the shit out of Sachiel with his own rib. Seeing it all at once, as opposed to only seeing Eva-01’s berserk state in Shinji’s utterly traumatized flashback as in the series, kinda takes away the shock value of it. At least to me. And the sound department really could’ve tried harder. Why redo Eva-01’s berserk roar for the movie when the TV version was creepy enough? The new roar just sounds whiny and silly. And what was with the fucking melodramatic piano bit when Shinji was deciding to first board Eva-01? Talking right around the 9:50 mark in the film, here. The original music (and occasional lack thereof) for that scene was fine and cinematic enough, where this new piano number sounds like something out of a silent film when the villain shows up and twists his mustache. Most of the changes made in the movie are welcome ones to be sure, but it seems as though when the staff were just starting and running through the first couple episodes’ content, they struggled with just how much they should change, and overdid it in a few places. Luckily, by the end of the film, these little bits of awkwardness seemed to all but vanish, so hopefully this will be the last we see of them.

Moving beyond the plot, there are two rather infamous points about Evangelion that the movie has already shown very promising signs of rectifying: insane, aimless psychobabble and amazingly cheap animation stemming from a threadbare budget. One of the supposed aims of the new Eva films is to make the series more accessible to mainstream audiences and anime fans who were initially put off by the series’s pretentious, self-important philosophical waxing and waning, and it would seem they’re ready to make good on that offer. Granted, the first few episodes were always rather light on the stuff, but it was still there, and for the most part it always seemed as though Gainax could never make up their mind on how to present it, and would bring up theoretical concepts in one episode only to promptly forget all about them by the next. One minute Shinji’s sitting in a folding chair getting clapped at while pondering the Hedgehog’s Dilemma, and the next he’s flexing his hand to represent the…Dirac Sea or what-the-fuck-ever. With this movie, however, it seems that not only did they finally pick a consistent way to portray Shinji’s neuroses, but they’ve picked the most effective and fan-friendly method, downplayed its importance, and actually followed through with a couple of their random ideas. The “unfamiliar ceiling” actually becomes a rather recurring theme here, making it all the way into the episode five and six content as opposed to being something Shinji said twice in episode two and never again. And the short-lived “Shinji talks to himself in a train at sunset” method of showing Shinji’s internal fucked-upedness from episodes sixteen to twenty-ish seems to have become the standardized approach, which works for me because I’ve always found it to be the most direct and easy to understand of Gainax’s random and sporadic attempts at being “deep.”

Visually this is one of the most gorgeous anime of the year, easily. Considering I’m saying that about Evangelion must come as a surprise to some, seeing that the show was rather infamous in years past for its methods of stretching out a miniscule animation budget. Surely everyone’s at least seen one of the series’s patented long, slow, agonizing camera pans over still scenery set to five to ten minutes of off-screen chatter. Well, now that Anno’s collected himself a veritable dragon’s hoard of yen and has his own animation studio to utilize, it would see that shit was the first to go in making the new films. Any long, slow camera pans that were actually relevant to the plot now sport some manner of motion so that people’s ocular senses don’t get bored, while the bulk of them are just plain trashed. And in a true example of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” the few truly excellent animation sequences the TV series was able to boast are lovingly revived shot-for-shot, with at most a touch of remastering and a little bit of smoothing out around the edges. As for new animation, it’s exceedingly difficult to find fault with it, and even more difficult to properly convey just how good a lot of it looks. The scene in which Shinji gazes out upon Tokyo-3 as the buildings all rise at sunset now appears every bit as breathtaking as we’re led to believe it to be, instead of just looking like cheapo matte painting manipulation fuckery. And minor touches here and there, like having the Angels bleed something other than sparks and giving Shamshel’s appendages a little motion (so that now it doesn’t just look like a floating purple penis when it glides into town) and actually showing Tokyo-3 as a bustling metropolis really go a long way in improving the show’s overall atmosphere. All in all, the movies take what could’ve been a feast for the eyes in the TV series, and genuinely fulfills its potential in a big way.

Yes, that thing on the right is Ramiel. He actually…y’know…moves around this time.

And now for that one aspect that’ll never elude Evangelion fandom no matter how much the series is dumbed down and debunked: rampant, spoilerific, ill-informed speculation! Even as a less heady retelling of the TV series, these movies give us plenty to chew on here, in particular because the last couple minutes of this film and the trailer for the second film promise some genuinely radical departures from the original story almost immediately. For one, Kaworu. Originally only showing up in episode twenty-four, he now makes a super early appearance in the story, popping out of a box and having fun naked chat with the SEELE monoliths about all the nasty things he’s gonna do. His early appearance, combined the the mention in the trailer of at least two new Evas, seems to imply he’ll stick around much longer and be much more involved in the plot than he was in the TV series. His rather ominous word choice also implies he’ll be much more sinister than his rather innocent and misguided interpretation in the original episode twenty-four. It’ll be interesting to see if he once again tries to shmooze up to Shinji, or if he’ll prove much more antagonistic this time around.

The setting Kaworu appears in is also worth serious note. For one, the boxes. He appears out of one of a series of rather coffin-like boxes, of which the first four to his right have already been opened. And whaddya know, there’ve apparently been four Angels to already assault Tokyo-3! Sachiel, Shamshel, and Ramiel are all identified as the fourth, fifth, and sixth Angels by NERV, and as a giant humanoid chalk outline at the beginning of the movie implies, the third Angel likely attacked Tokyo-3 before the arrival of Sachiel (which raises a whole new set of questions about who killed that one; was it Rei and Eva-00, or did the JSDF actually bag themselves a giant monster for once?). Of course, Adam and Lilith have always been listed as the “first” and “second” Angels, but they’re considerably higher in power and authority than the usual lot, and thus likely wouldn’t have coffins for themselves. The fact that it looks like Adam is the one overseeing the opening of these coffins would serve to reinforce that notion. And on that note…holy shit, Adam! We’ve never properly seen him before, as he only ever appeared in the series as first a giant humanoid apparition of pure light, and later as an embryo stuffed into Gendo’s hand. His appearance here not only marks the first time we’ve seen him, but also raises some fundamental questions about the story and its direction. For one, it seems doubtful at this point that Kaji’ll be shipping Adam to Gendo in convenient embryonic travel size. For two, it would seem Adam (as well as Kaworu and all the Angel coffins) are actually on the moon, as you can see what appears to be the Earth behind Kaworu in some shots. If Adam is being excavated by SEELE on the moon, did he still cause the Second Impact on Earth, and if so, how? That was kind of an important point in the original story, seeing as it…established the setting and all.

Speaking of Angels, it’s mentioned in the movie that there are only going to be twelve of them this time around, as opposed to the seventeen seen in the TV series. Understandable, given that some of the Angels were either very filler-ish (the fishy Angel Gaghiel, that conveniently attacks when the Evas are at sea, the lava baby Sandalphon, which…doesn’t even serve as much purpose as Gaghiel), or were fairly redundant (Iruel, Bardiel, and to an extent Armisael were all basically viruses infecting either technology or, in Armisael’s case, Rei as well as her Eva). However, the question must be raised as to exactly which Angels are staying, and does that twelve count include Adam and Lilith? If it does include Adam and Lilith, then we already know all but two of the Angels that appear in the movie series: Adam, Lilith, Sachiel, Shamshel, Ramiel, Kaworu, and as evidenced by the trailer for the second film, Israfel (the twins), Leliel (nega-shadow zebra ball), Bardiel (Eva-03, or the virus that infects it), and Zeruel (sheet metal Ginsu arms). There’s also Mister Chalk Outline, which may be one of the TV series Angels, but I personally doubt it considering the outline is humanoid, and beyond the known Angels to be appearing, there really is nothing remotely resembling a human form among the ranks, meaning we may only see one more of the TV Angels. If the twelve count does not include Adam and Lilith, that obviously means we may see three of them. So who are these unknowns? Considering their relevance to Asuka and Rei’s character developments respectively, I’d expect Azrael (mind raper) and Armisael (Mr. DNA) to be among the top candidates. Iruel would be a possibility for its involvement in Ritsuko’s character development, but again I think it’d be redundant to shoehorn two virus-type Angels into a movie series, and Bardiel’s already claimed the spot. Gaghiel and Sandalphon I don’t expect to see, nor do I want to see, and the remaining two names (Matariel the eyeball-spider and Sahaquiel the suicidal modern art) are equally as filler-ish and pointless.

There is one more option, though, according to the trailer: the new character. The Eva films promise a whole new character that we’ve never seen before…except now we’ve seen her briefly in the trailer and if you’ll pardon my saying so, she is HOT. Her exact role is uncertain, but speculation has it she’ll be an Eva pilot. Narration in the trailer goes on to mention Eva-06 descending from the moon, and seeing that the Angels all seem to be spawning on the moon, that leaves the possibility that this new character (assuming she is the pilot) might either be an Angel, or a SEELE operative acting as a pilot. The fact that she seems to stare rather unimpressed at a series of Angelic cross explosions would seem to further the suspicion. Personally, though, I’m skeptical. Of her being a pilot, at least. My gut instinct tells me the “pilot that descends from the moon” in Eva-06 will actually be Kaworu, while this new character will be filling some shady non-piloting role. Perhaps Kaji’s killer finally has a face? A sexy, sexy face in glasses and twintails?

I just hope she’s not replacing Touji in Eva-03.

OMG SO HOT

So what can we expect from the second film? Well, if the trailer is anything to go on, it would seem we’re shitcanning most of the filler and filler Angels and rushing right along from Ramiel to some rehash of Jet Alone (rampant speculation places the “provisional Eva-05″ as JA’s replacement in the story), to the appearance of Israfel (guessing Asuka makes a grand entrance helping to thwart either of the two), and then directly to the events surrounding Leliel, Bardiel, and Zeruel. Somewhere in there, we can also apparently expect to see Eva-04 for the first time in film. It seems like a bit of a leap at first, but considering how much useless crap actually transpired between about episodes seven and sixteen, I for one expect number two to be an incredibly streamlined and jaw-dropping experience in much the same way that Fucking Awesome (MOVIE) Title is. As for movies three and four? There’s such a dense amount of plot material between episodes twenty and twenty-four (I mean fuck, they had to go and make director’s cuts of those episodes just to fit everything in) that they could make up one full movie all on their own. And then I imagine the fourth movie will be some rewrite of End of Evangelion, in which everything is slightly less fucked up and hopefully more conclusive. It’ll be interesting to see if I’m right on that.

“Provisional” Eva-05 on the left, Eva-06 on the right.

Anyway, in short, if you haven’t yet seen the first Eva film, SEE IT NOW, YOU FUCKERS. It soundly kicks its equivalent TV episodes in the balls with how much more polished it is (and not in that shitty George Lucas way, either), and I’m willing to bet that even people that hated the original Eva will find something more to enjoy here. Hey, it broke down my skepticism and made me a fan all over again.

And by the by, WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!?

EDIT: Looks like the wordpress update went fine, now to fix up k2. Hopefully the customised stylesheet we created will still be compatible with RC6.

EDIT2: Looks okay. Need to hack K2 slightly because they have this annoying thing about not adding tags to posts, doing that now.

EDIT3: Everything should be done. This took far longer than it should have.

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2

Website: http://www.geass.jp/
Okay, this one is pretty much a no-brainer. The first season was overall an excellent show (though to be fair not as good as some people hype it up to, it has some fairly significant flaws) and hopefully this season will be just as good. I really hope so. I don’t know why, but I get this horrible suspicion whenever I see any material about it that R2 will end up being a horrible trainwreck. I get the same vibes that I got from Gundam Seed Destiny and from Nanoha Strikers. I really hope I’m wrong.

Allison & Lillia

Website: http://allison-web.net/index2.html
I have high hopes for this. It’s an anime adaption of a series of light novels by the author who also wrote the excellent Kino’s Journey. I’m not completely abreast of this, but my understanding is that it’s set in a sort of fantasy world with tech that sits around the 1940s or so. It’s actually an adaption of two novel series - the first is focused on Allison, a 17-year-old airforce pilot, and the second is an adaption of the follow-up novels Lillia & Treize, which is focused on the children of the characters from the first series of novels. The anime is adapting both, with the first 13 episodes being Allison and the second 13 being Lillia & Treize. I’m really looking forward to this one.

Macross Frontier

Website: http://www.macrossf.com/
The last year or so has been a real revival for mecha anime. There’s been remakes and sequels to several classics (eg Reideen, Dancougar, Votoms), a return to form for Gainax with Gurren Lagann (which effectively crystallised what we love about Giant Robot anime) and then we were furnished with what has turned out to be hands down one of the best Gundam series produced. Not to be left behind, they’ve also decided to produce a new Macross TV series. By now probably everyone has seen the episode 1 preview that was posted a while back. When I saw that I actually decided to finally go back to the beginning and watch all of the various Macross shows back to back in preparation. I’m seriously hoping this one lives up to the legacy. And I seriously hope that whoever decides to fansub it doesn’t feel they have to stick fucking bouncy distracting karaoke all over the episodes - the shows are guaranteed to have musical bits and that worries me.

To Love-ru

Website: http://www.j-toloveru.com/
Yeah, generic shitty moe anime. Once again this is a case of I-know-it-will-suck-but-I-like-the-art. The title is a really stupid engrish pun that doesn’t make sense unless you’re Japanese - “trouble” in engrish would be toraburu, to-rabu-ru, with ‘rabu’ being engrish for “love”. Retarded. Just like this show should be, providing that the planets don’t somehow align and their mystical energies twist it into something decent. But I think that already happened to True Tears so I’m not holding my breath.

The Tower of Druaga - The Aegis of Uruk

Website: http://www.druaga-anime.com/
Long title is long. This is apparently an anime adaption of an old namco bandai hack & slash dungeon crawling RPG games. And speaking of needing the celestial energies of a planetary alignment to not be a steaming shit, this is being produced by Gonzo. I imagine that this will be generic, mediocre fantasy crap. However I’m still willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and watch a few episodes (a few because Gonzo are sneaky bastards and the first episodes of their shows are rarely a good measure of how the rest will be). On the upside the director’s the same one who gave us the remarkably un-sucky Last Exile and Full Metal Panic…

Kanokon

Website: http://www.kanokon.com/index-n.html
Cute animal girls who remove their clothes a lot. That’s pretty much it. The reasons for watching should be self-evident. Moving along.

P.S. not a furry.

Wagaya no Oinari-sama

Website: http://www.mediaworks.co.jp/contents/oinarisama/index.php
I really don’t know much about this, but it seems interesting enough to give it a look at least. Apparently it’s about a fox deity protecting some family or something. Sometimes it’s a foxgirl, sometimes it’s a foxboy.

P.S. not a gay furry.

Special A

Website: http://special-a.jp/
This appears to be more of a shoujo-oriented show from what I’m hearing. The setup is pretty similar to Karekano, involving a boy and a girl who are intellectual rivals but actually secretly crushing on each other. I gather that they’re in some ’special’ class for ’special’ kids (read: arrogant smarmy little shits who are far too smart for their own good). Generally speaking I kind of like good shoujo, so I’ll be watching.

Soul Eater

Website: http://www.souleater.tv/
Like a kind of bizzaro fusion of Bleach and Naruto as far as I can tell. The story revolves around teams of three Shinigami who are learning to use their weapons or something. God knows. Given that Naruto Shippuden has the pacing of a legless turtle I’ve been hoping that a decent shounen action show would come along so that I have something to switch my brain off and watch besides Bleach, and hopefully this is the ticket.

Real Drive

Website: http://www.ntv.co.jp/RD/index2.html
Information on what the hell this is is a bit scarce. However I can guarantee this is worth at least a look, the reason being that it’s Production I.G. doing a science fiction / cyberpunkish anime written by Masamune Shirow. Ghost in the Shell meets Serial Experiments Lain? I don’t think that we can handle the outbreak of sheer potential awesome that would give us. Anyway this could potentially be great. And complicated and no one will sub it.

Library War

Website: http://www.toshokan-sensou.com/
Another Production I.G. thing. Apparently it’s about a military organisation that fight against some evil secret society that is trying to destroy books that contain knowledge that it doesn’t approve of. I presume it’s anti-censorship or the like. Anyway, it’s running in the Noitamina timeslot, which has previously had excellent shows like Honey & Clover, Nodame Cantabile and Moyashimon, so that alone would indicate a certain sophistication which is reasonably attractive. Might be one to keep an eye on.

Kyouran Kazoku Nikki

Website: http://www.kyouran.jp/
A comedy show about a half-human special ops group who, in order to protect earth from various threats, must pretend to be a normal human family. I’m wondering how they go about explaining the catgirl. Or the Lion. This looks like it could be potential comedy gold.