Comments on: Akira on blu-ray

Akira on blu-ray

slimepuppy — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:07:00 -0800

20 years after its cinematic debut, Akira is being released on bluray.

Now would probably be a good time to do the following: Visit the official site (in Japanese). Watch the documentary (Part 1 of 5, youtube, English dub, Spanish subs) and learn, among other things, about the record-breaking colour palette that was created for the film and the intricate storyboarding process that Katsuhiro Otomo went through for the production. Read the manga (and then buy it!). Listen to the soundtrack by Geinoh Yamashirogumi (in Japanese). (buy it too!) Visit the fan sites. (previously on metafilter.) Fear the soon-to-be-release live action remake. Apologies for the copyright infringements. Excise as felt necessary.

By: chunking express

chunking express — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:11:32 -0800

Fuck Yeah!

By: chunking express

chunking express — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:12:49 -0800

Also: TETSUO!

By: Greg Nog

Greg Nog — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:14:07 -0800

KANEEEEDAAAAAAA

By: you just lost the game

you just lost the game — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:15:01 -0800

AKIRA!

By: Joakim Ziegler

Joakim Ziegler — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:15:57 -0800

After seeing this movie as a kid, I believed for years that Japanese people tend to scream about 60% of the time. Mostly each other's names, yeah.

By: you just lost the game

you just lost the game — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:16:06 -0800

Note for those who haven't seen it: the last three comments pretty much sum up 50% of the dialogue.

By: Prospero

Prospero — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:17:51 -0800

We're going to the Olympics!

By: poppo

poppo — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:20:42 -0800

Fear the soon-to-be-release live action remake. The animated one already didn't live up to the comic book

By: mark242

mark242 — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:25:11 -0800

I came here for the "KANEEEEEDAAAAAA" shout out, and I was not disappointed. Watched it on I think HDNet the other night. Classic, classic film, looks great in HD. When Tetsuo walks down the hallway and meets the doctor and two guards, well, let's just say the extra horizontal lines make for extra meaty bits.

By: Stonewall Jackson

Stonewall Jackson — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:25:41 -0800

Will it make sense in Blu-Ray?

By: Greg Nog

Greg Nog — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:28:29 -0800

I believed for years that Japanese people tend to scream about 60% of the time. Many an afternoon did we while away during my teenage years, screaming "JEREMYYYYYYY" and "JASOOOOOON" and such at each other. Ah, youth! Whatever the flaws of the movie, the soundtrack is indeed wholly fantastic, and exposed me to the first gamelan I'd ever heard. Although if we're talking about the intersection of music and Akira, I think we oughtta make this FPP a little Stronger.

By: ruthsarian

ruthsarian — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:29:33 -0800

The DVD release from 2001 has more bonus features than this Bluray release. That seems odd to me. I'd like to get more details on this "hi-def transfer". Any extra restoration done to this? Anything new or restored on the audio track? If they didn't throw down at least a few million on a new (not the 2001!) meticulous restore I don't see the justification for a $50 price tag. For one fifth the price I can get a DVD that will look and sound almost as good as the Bluray release. And unless you're operating a high end system, the difference just won't be noticeable. The high quality audio track is nice (even if it's only for the japanese dialogue), but you can actually get an even better quality sound from the 1988 laserdisc's analog (hence, no compression) audio track. even so, i'll still probably pick it up. but i'll wait until it hits the $20-25 price comparable to other Bluray releases.

By: chunking express

chunking express — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:29:59 -0800

Does it ever make sense? I think it's one of the reasons I like the film so much. I've heard the manga makes a lot more sense. My friend had a copy on VHS which is where I first saw it. I'd love to see it on the big screen, but I don't really pay enough attention to see if it's playing at some festival or anime convention happening in the city. I've seen the film a crap load of times. It's always so good.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:30:32 -0800

Will it make sense in Blu-Ray? No, but it will make AWESOME! With a side of FUCK YEAH! The first time I saw a copy of Akira on VHS a tiny bit of my soul died. It was so muddy you could hardly make out anything. At least kids today won't have to grow up without this seminal coming-of-age tale. That includes mutated telekinetic freaks.

By: BeerFilter

BeerFilter — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:33:24 -0800

I hope it includes the original English dub, replete with valley guy voice-acting and "Amoebas don't make motorcycles and atomic bombs!" dialogue. I love that damn dub.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:35:49 -0800

Note to Bandai: If you release that sucky "Special Edition" version with the totally annoying redubbed voices that make Tetsuo and Kanada sound wrong, I won't even consider buying it or even pirating it. Please release the original Japanese vocal tracks with subtitles, or at least the crappy American-English dub that the vast majority of us know. The Special Edition redub makes me want to smash things. Yeah, I know the SE dub is supposed to be "more accurate" and the voice-acting is supposed to be better, but the first time I ever watched the SE version it was so disconcerting I thought I put in a DVD full of episodes of Full House or Family Ties.

By: shmegegge

shmegegge — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:36:59 -0800

The animated one already didn't live up to the comic book *cough*hipster!*cough*

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:41:18 -0800

The animated one already didn't live up to the comic book Very true. And the redub on the Special Edition didn't help matters. Here's a chance to make things right, Bandai.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:42:26 -0800

Do. Not. Watch. High.

By: sotonohito

sotonohito — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:45:19 -0800

Meh, I'll stick with my DVD until TV's that are capiable of showing the difference between that and BluRay become affordable.

By: pantsrobot

pantsrobot — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:46:55 -0800

An oldie but still good: Akira set to Come out and play

By: MasonDixon

MasonDixon — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:49:18 -0800

I've always wondered if this "crazy" manga stuff would exist without a culture at least subconsciously living out the ramifications of having a couple nukes laid on it. There's got to be a doctoral thesis out there on this topic, right?

By: Sukiari

Sukiari — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:51:29 -0800

OK, so maybe the anime wasn't 100% faithful to the manga. It is still the high watermark for hand drawn animated features, and is still kick ass. So, yeah, *cough*HIPSTER ALERT*cough*

By: lekvar

lekvar — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:52:54 -0800

I thought about relating this in the "Anime fandom in the 80's" thread a few days ago, but I think it fits better here. The first time I saw Akira was on a 20" TV in the back room of a game store that had been closed for the day for a private screening of a bootleg VHS tape that had been smuggled out of Japan. This was only a few months after the VHS release, probablt early '89, and it still hadn't been translated. Not even a crappy fan-dub (thank god). So me and a room full of hard core game/comicbook/anime nerds are clustered around this tiny TV, watching a movie that we can only understand because we'd read the comic*. Rapt. It stands as a defining moment in my geek experience. A year later I got to see it on the big screen at the local art-house theatre, and even dubbed it was glorious. Maybe it's 'cause I've read some of the manga, but I've never understood why people call it incomprehensible. *If I recall correctly, the Marvel-republished series was only about halfway out, so after a point we could only infer what the hell was going on.

By: chunking express

chunking express — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:53:11 -0800

MasonDixon, if you search online this comes up a lot. A lot of Japanese video games, anime, and movies I've seen are very anti-war as well. Mind you, a lot also have flying robot planes, so i'm not sure if there is anything there.

By: chunking express

chunking express — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:54:57 -0800

I've never understood why people call it incomprehensible. It's hardly incomprehensible, but it is certainly strange as fuck -- and it doesn't try too hard to explain big chunks of the story.

By: lekvar

lekvar — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:55:29 -0800

Also, I ask this whenever I meet a new anime geek, so I guess here is as good as anywhere: Ghost in the Shell or Akira?

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:59:56 -0800

Ghost in the Shell or Akira? Love Hina and Kodomo No Omocha.

By: limeonaire

limeonaire — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:00:12 -0800

I'm not the only one who really didn't like Akira that much, am I? For me, I guess, it's just another instance where I saw experienced works in a thread or evolving genre (in this case, anime) first, only later working my way back to seeing the originals—which then paled in comparison to the iterations I'd already seen. I saw Akira only after years of watching other anime, all the while being told how amazing and mind-blowing Akira was—and ultimately, it really just seemed like a lot of screaming and exploding, with far too little exposition.

By: Dr-Baa

Dr-Baa — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:00:19 -0800

Ghost in the Shell or Akira? Akira. All the way.

By: BeerFilter

BeerFilter — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:00:54 -0800

The best time I ever watched Akira, we were all trippin' acid and listening to music. We were listening to Tool's AEnima album as the movie played silently. Man. It was like the Dark Side of the Rainbow, turned up to eleven. Everything was syncing so uncannily, and it all came to a climax during the title track of the album, watching Neo-Tokyo sinking into the bay as Maynard James Keenen crooned, "I'm praying for rain / I'm praying for tidal waves / I wanna see the ground give way / I wanna watch it all go down."

By: limeonaire

limeonaire — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:01:11 -0800

Oh my God, should've previewed. Ghost in the Shell all the way, lekvar.

By: KirkJobSluder

KirkJobSluder — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:01:41 -0800

Ghost in the Shell or Akira? Yes.

By: WPW

WPW — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:04:41 -0800

Akira, but the sityscapes are better in Ghost in the Shell. It's a close-run thing.

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:04:54 -0800

The animated one already didn't live up to the comic book The comic book was way too long, and doubled back on itself too many times where the anime just got to the point, that said the cool post apocalyptic. stuff with Tetsuo and Akira in the ruins of neo-tokyo would have been good to have. Lekvar – Akira. Akira hands down. The answer is always Akira.

By: WPW

WPW — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:04:59 -0800

Duh - cityscapes

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:06:21 -0800

Ghost in the Shell or Akira? Voltron? Robotech? G-Force? But Akira was the first time I'd seen anime that wasn't edited to appeal to 10-year-olds.

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:06:58 -0800

far too little exposition. You watch manga for the exposition?

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:12:38 -0800

The high quality audio track is nice (even if it's only for the japanese dialogue), but you can actually get an even better quality sound from the 1988 laserdisc's analog (hence, no compression) audio track TrueHD is losslessly compressed, and linear PCM is uncompressed. It's hardly incomprehensible, but it is certainly strange as fuck Not really. A while back, some experimenters mutated Akira and he went nonlinear, o the embarrassment. Some other experimental subjects got weird powers but didn't go full-on robot weirdo and are still around. Then Tetsuo got all fucked up after contacting one of the kids, and he went nonlinear too. I haven't seen it in a while, but ISTR that a flashback implies that Tetsuo was also an experimental subject before he went to the orphanarium-juvie-school that he and Kaneda attended.

By: mkultra

mkultra — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:13:24 -0800

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:14:07 -0800

Ghost in the Shell or Akira? Cowboy Bebop.

By: limeonaire

limeonaire — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:14:14 -0800

You watch manga for the exposition? No one watches manga. I watch anime. And I do like a modicum of, oh, I dunno, storyline, yes. I like anime for other reasons as well, but a storyline really helps.

By: butterstick

butterstick — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:15:47 -0800

Ghost in the Shell. Every. Time. Unless we're answering this question in 1989, of course. Akira is groundbreaking no doubt, but being first and being a source of nostalgia don't make this the better film. That being said, I'm eager to add this to my collection, but don't have BluRay. I would settle for the 2001 DVD.

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:15:54 -0800

Ghost in the Shell or Akira? Cowboy Bebop. Excellent point, sir.

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:17:07 -0800

> I've heard the manga makes a lot more sense. That's what I had been told too, but when the manga came out it cost thirty bucks a volume for six volumes. It would have to explain a heck of a lot more than the movie for me to want to shell out that much. Also, the Blu-Ray version is worthless if they don't fix the horrible clipping in the thunder during the opening theme.

By: PROD_TPSL

PROD_TPSL — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:19:46 -0800

Ghost in the Shell... Preferably, bash. ....END OF LINE....

By: vorfeed

vorfeed — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:19:51 -0800

Ghost in the Shell or Akira? Patlabor.

By: Mblue

Mblue — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:23:33 -0800

Do you remember the first watch? It fascinated. Repeats are great, but the virgin hurt.

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:23:35 -0800

You watch manga for the exposition? No one watches manga. I watch anime. And I do like a modicum of, oh, I dunno, storyline, yes. I like anime for other reasons as well, but a storyline really helps. To me exposition is the bits where the story stops dead, and then you get some cod philosophy and an explanation of whats going on. Bad anime always has a heap of scenes like that.

By: PROD_TPSL

PROD_TPSL — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:25:39 -0800

ROU, indeed. Spike is well... Spike. Edward, gotta love her. Ein, BEST DOG EVAR! Jet, is just a BADASS through and through.

By: KirkJobSluder

KirkJobSluder — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:28:38 -0800

Comparing Ghost in the Shell to Akira is rather like trying to compare North by Northwest to The Ten Commandments (DeMille, of course). Ghost is a more tightly-written and edited screenplay. Akira has more massive epic moments.

By: butterstick

butterstick — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:30:29 -0800

Dude, I heart the Beebop and her crew as well, but it's unfair to compare something that grew over 10+ hours of vignetted storylines to standalone Akira. GitS is the more apt comparison since the first movie was based on the manga. I haven't read the Akira manga, is it a single storyline or a series of vignettes like the GitS manga?

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:35:48 -0800

Oh, this is where we mention other anime we like? FLCL, then. I had a car named Tetsuo! for years.

By: KirkJobSluder

KirkJobSluder — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:35:53 -0800

Adding in Bebop to the mix is comparing apples to oranges to grapes. Bebop is all about mastery of the short-form single or two-part episode.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:41:51 -0800

Whatever the flaws of the movie, the soundtrack is indeed wholly fantastic, and exposed me to the first gamelan I'd ever heard. Hell, yeah. The music is just phenomenal.

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:46:33 -0800

I remember in the early 90s Akira was shone at my local arts cinema. Asked my house mate if he wanted to go - the place was literally at the end of our road, so I used to go nearly every week - but he was 'not interested in a Japanese cartoon'. In the pub later I could tell he thought I was just mad as I raved on about how good it was.

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:53:53 -0800

Heh. Akira blew my mind. Then I watched every other Manga video I could get hold of back in the early 90s, only to fins that they were all inferior tosh like Fist of The North Star. I haven't read the Akira manga, is it a single storyline or a series of vignettes like the GitS manga? If you imagine the first three quarters of the movie, then a resurrected Akira, wars for control of a ruined Tokyo, some stuff with Americans trying to intervene and Tetsuo sinking an aircraft carrier, and IIRC some psychic monks (bit hazy on that bit), and then a slightly different version of the end of the movie, it's basically that. So to answer your question it's a big sweeping slightly incoherant epic rather than something episodic.

By: pantsrobot

pantsrobot — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:04:35 -0800

Ah yes, the soundtrack. I was alone in lab late one night; after working on my assignment for about 30 hours straight there were only five left till it was due. The soundtrack was on my discman and the weird chanting and gamelan solos seemed to keep me awake. And then... Track #5, Doll's Polyphony... Already hyped up on coffee and no sleep I ignored the first "birumm" but the second one came from behind me. Then the Teddy Bear and Train noises got louder, coming from my left, then right, then all around me. I literally jumped and my headphones flew off. Finally realized that it was only the music, but those 10 seconds were easily one of the most harrowing experiences I've ever had.

By: shmegegge

shmegegge — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:45:14 -0800

Akira and Ghost In The Shell are to my mind equal by virtue of being incomparable. Well, to adjust that statement, let me say they are supremely comparable in certain ways, but that their real strengths are incomparable. explanation: Akira was an awakening to me. It was the first animated thing I had seen that seemed, in the words of my super young self, deep. Ghost In The Shell was also an awakening to me. It was the first thing I had seen that I didn't get because I wasn't old enough to get it. Akira had mysteries, and let's be honest still has mysteries, that I didn't understand when I first saw it, but on the whole I could understand what they were getting at, what they were ultimately trying to evoke in me. In short, I could see why someone would sit down and conceive of that story. It took many viewings for me to finally see Ghost In The Shell as more than the flashy tech action flick I gobbled up as a kid. They were both technical masterpieces, absolute perfection in style and editing. But where Akira excelled was in painting a picture of the past, strange as that may sound. Where Ghost in the Shell excelled was in painting a picture of the future. What do I mean by this. Ok. There are two movies I've seen in my life that fill me with tremendous guilt over American action in Japan during WWII. One is Grave of the Fireflies. It is the most directly affecting story i've seen come out of Japan, and I bawled my eyes out watching it. The firebombing, and subsequent nuclear bombing, of Japan during WWII is so much harder for me to simply dismiss with a "we had to do it" hand wave the way I did when I was learning about it in school because I saw that film. It's deeply personal, and pulls no punches. Beautiful film. Akira is a step or two removed from being that intensely personal a story. Rather than focus with that laser precision, it paints a larger picture of a devastated culture in the wake of, and in the face of, unknowable cataclysmic circumstance. The level of apathy in the youth, the disenfranchised jadedness of the adults, so much of it screams "this is what happened to us, more than the physical destruction of the bombs." It has its mirror in the obsessive fashion-based materialism of modern japanese youth culture, but it's taken elsewhere for what I assume is the point of allegory. You can see in the petty squabbles of the biker gangs in the beginning (who couldn't give outside observers a substantive answer for why they fight at all) a parallel to the honor driven soldiery of wwii era japan before the bomb was dropped (and quite possibly a commentary on the perceived motivation for THEIR fighting). So much of that beginning story serves the dual function of presenting us with 3 dimensional characters whose lives are interrupted and presenting us with the comparatively small lives they lead before Tetsuo's awakening. Until Neo Tokyo explodes, their identity was as bikers and fighters. Afterward... But Ghost In The Shell tackles the state of Japan as a technological powerhouse. It presupposes that japanese culture has an identity outside of foreign devastation, and moves on to describe a Japan that picked itself up, that has become the spiritual center of a technological metaphysical existence. The remarkable spiritual life that Shintoism, Taoism and Buddhism invested the material world with seems to me paralleled in the ever present immaterial nature of Ghosts that inhabit people and everything technological around them. What the movie does, and the tv show also does to the point of becoming repetitive, is ask where that goes. Where Akira asked what happened, Ghost In The Shell asks what is happening, what will happen. How do people define themselves in a culture where who you are, how you perceive yourself can be and is digitized and transferred around like so much imaginary currency? I can't possibly choose between them, and wouldn't want to live in a world where I was forced to. end rant here. sorry. that was long.

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:46:35 -0800

Blu-ray Blue?

By: gen

gen — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:57:29 -0800

Awesome post. The English dub on that Japanese documentary is horrendous. Inaccurate in many places and the affected speech of the dub really grates.

By: Chinese Jet Pilot

Chinese Jet Pilot — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:10:22 -0800

I bought the VHS tape when I was too poor to own a VCR. I bought the soundtrack CD years before I owned a CD player. But I will skip the Blu-Ray and wait for it to play in a theater again.

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:23:13 -0800

It's actually not the first Japanese animation to blow my mind – there was a rogue showing of Laputa on brit TV sometime in the 80s. I think I missed the beginning and it was only ages later, when Spirited Away came out and everyone was into Ghibli that I found out what exactly it was that I had seen. Those two are responsible for me watching an awful lot of crap trying to recapture the same experience.

By: poppo

poppo — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:24:40 -0800

*cough*hipster!*cough* It's not my fault that the all antisocial activities I preferred as a 13 year old are now considered hip. I'll be making fun of people over in the 80's video game thread if anyone needs me

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:30:44 -0800

Now the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comics were definitely WAY better than the cartoon...

By: Durn Bronzefist

Durn Bronzefist — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:59:47 -0800

We named our dog Tetsuo for all of three days. What can I say? Not as many Akira fans out there as you might think. People had trouble with it. Now he's called Rion *cough-Galerians-cough*

By: Durn Bronzefist

Durn Bronzefist — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:00:53 -0800

Oh, also, for your moment of Zen: I taught English in Japan awhile back, and nobody had any fucking clue what I was talking about. Akira? What's that?

By: lekvar

lekvar — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:06:58 -0800

Here here, Artw. Nothing makes me want to scream "GET OFF MY LAWN" more than what happened to TMNT. *a single tear falls for the lost longbox containing issues #3-7*

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:15:26 -0800

Akira vs Ghost In the Shell... I wish I had kept the email I got from a potential buyer when I had the gn for Ghost up on ebay, wanting to know if it included the lesbian sex scene on the boat (which was censored out of the US printing)... for, you know, completeness. ... so sorry Akira fans, mental though it is, lesbians trumps it.

By: P.o.B.

P.o.B. — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:23:44 -0800

I haven't read the Akira manga, is it a single storyline or a series of vignettes like the GitS manga? It's a single storyline that diverges quite a bit from the anime. The drugs play a much larger part and you'll gain a larger understanding of the anime by reading the manga. I would suggest anyone who has seen the anime to pickup the manga. To me exposition is the bits where the story stops dead, and then you get some cod philosophy and an explanation of whats going on. Bad anime always has a heap of scenes like that. Yeah, that's why there's a shit-ton of bad anime out there. Now if your talking about something good, then you shouldn't be able to make this distinction. Now the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comics were definitely WAY better than the cartoon... I hope you are talking about the original comics and not the Archie Comics that re-invented them into the cartoonish characatures. I wish I had kept the email I got from a potential buyer when I had the gn for Ghost up on ebay, wanting to know if it included the lesbian sex scene on the boat (which was censored out of the US printing)... for, you know, completeness. To be honest I was pissed-off when I realized my GitS manga was edited. Why the fuck did they edit it??? I don't need anybody cutting out parts "for my safety!" or whatever the hell they thought justified doing that.

By: P.o.B.

P.o.B. — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:54:42 -0800

into the cartoonish characatures. uhmmm...ignore that part.

By: tetsuo

tetsuo — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:02:10 -0800

Also: TETSUO! What?

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:20:24 -0800

Spike is well... Spike. Edward, gotta love her. Ein, BEST DOG EVAR! Jet, is just a BADASS through and through. ...and Faye has large breasts.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:24:18 -0800

Oh, this is where we mention other anime we like? FLCL, then. FLCL is neat/interesting to me. I've watched it, and I appreciate its manic intensity, but I don't really get it. But at the same time, I am completely certain that if I had seen it when I was 12--14, it would have been one of the most important things in my world for years. That the same things I can't get anymore would have noticeably shaped how I grew up.

By: zardoz

zardoz — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:57:32 -0800

loquatious: The Special Edition redub makes me want to smash things. I couldn't disagree more. The original English dub of Akria is atrocious. The adaptation is clunky and the dialogue is really painful most of the time. The 2001 redub version has a redone adaptation, with much, much, much better dialogue. The original was obviously simply rushed through without much thought, giving rise to the now infamous, repetitive lines like "Tetsuoooo!"

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:53:16 -0800

I hear that George Lucas was in charge of the production.

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:14:34 -0800

...and Faye has large breasts. and terrible fashion sense.

By: Alex404

Alex404 — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:21:07 -0800

Serial Experiments Lain is the best ever. Just sayin'.

By: Balisong

Balisong — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:58:30 -0800

I prefer Lupin the Third. And Cowboy Bebop.

By: cerulgalactus

cerulgalactus — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:18:37 -0800

Serial Experiments Lain. Ghost In The Shell. Akira (original dodgy as hell English dub). FLCL. Cowboy Bebop. And a heap more, but that is my top five.

By: wobh

wobh — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:22:13 -0800

Pretty good, but it's no Ninja Scroll.

By: nushustu

nushustu — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 22:12:17 -0800

What about Robotech? That was the first exposure I had to anime. It ran on a UHF station that later became Fox, and introduced me to so much: kick-ass transforming jets, aircraft carriers in space, j-pop... Plus, it was the first time I had ever seen the suggestion of interracial sexual relations on tv in the small, backwards town in which I lived. And, main characters died! So, yay Robotech, for being one of the first cartoons to show me that cartoons didn't have to exist to sell toys (I'm looking at you, He-Man.)

By: porpoise

porpoise — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 23:29:39 -0800

Ghost in the Shell or Akira? Different. Ghost in the Shell or Natural City? Same.

By: shmegegge

shmegegge — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 23:44:48 -0800

It's not my fault that the all antisocial activities I preferred as a 13 year old are now considered hip. ha. well said. really, though, i was just kidding about the hipster thing. also, so long as we're mentioning anime series we love, I second the mention of FLCL, which is god damn brilliant, but also want to bring up Paranoia Agent, which is one of the most brilliant series ever to come out of Japan, bar none. Anyone who bothers to mention Serial Experiments Lane is heretofore condemned to an eternity of beginners' writing classes to learn what's wrong with that ridiculous attempt at a show. As for movies, I'll mention that the sequel to Ghost In The Shell is flat out incredible, and that Millenium Actress is one of the most touching films I have ever seen. Not only was the writing and voice acting stellar, but the overall visual style of the film made me wonder if I wasn't wasting my life on projects of too little ambition. Just a masterpiece. also. Metropolis, motherfuckers. hot damn. metropolis.

By: dirty lies

dirty lies — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:22:36 -0800

In a period of three months, many years ago, I started drinking beer, smoking pot, playing D&D, reading Dune and Lovecraft, and watched Akira in a VHS just brought from Japan by one of the guys in the D&D booth I was volunteering at at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, the year Salman Rushdie attended, and we had a stoned Killer game were the mission was to tag him with a Post It without getting caught by his bodyguards. It was kind of a coming of age period, and the movie fit perfectly. The next and last time I watched it is when I found it under Free Movies in Comcast on Demand, in my own apartment in San Francisco's Mission District, on a 42" flast screen with nice speakers, high on some primo medicinal purple, drinking a quite fine G&T. Antisocial teen to 30 something hipster metamorphosis barely averted by having a bike with more than 10 speeds and loose fitting jeans.

By: Ghidorah

Ghidorah — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 05:57:35 -0800

One of the truly crap things about living in Japan is that there are very few (if any) dvds available with English subtitles. I'm hoping blu-ray will tackle this (I got some hope from looking at a blu-ray that had subs in ten or twelve languages). Almost all of the anime I've seen I saw at home, years ago. Things that come out here, that I'd love to see, I'm too language-dumb to go to the theater and get much out of it. Things I'd like to see: Paprika, Brave Story, Innocence, Metropolis. As for Akira or Ghost in the Shell: Heisei Tanuki War. Makes me cry like a girl everytime. The saddest movie ever made about shape-changing racoon dogs with testicles the size of watermelons.

By: asok

asok — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 06:58:30 -0800

I watched Akira most weekends of 1990. Eventually got the point of it after a number of viewings. There was always someone who had not seen it though, so repeat viewings continued. The I won Ghost in the Shell in a competition, which I enjoyed, but which could never surplant Akira for me. Recently I have watched Haibane Renmei, which I think is a fantastic series. Saw Paprika at the cinema, which was most enjoyable. In such a hightly stylised medium as this, the balance between style and content is difficult to manage without upsetting somebody.

By: Busithoth

Busithoth — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 07:18:25 -0800

this is near-worthless to me without the original dub. just when my coil's reaching the green line... I'm happy to ignore the fact I have no Blu-ray player. If they included original dub, I'd buy it. but the movie deserves to live in this format. thanks for this!

By: Durn Bronzefist

Durn Bronzefist — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 10:48:51 -0800

Dub?? DUB?!?

By: stinkycheese

stinkycheese — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 11:19:56 -0800

Legend of the Overfiend FTW.

By: stinkycheese

stinkycheese — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 11:24:37 -0800

Also, a huge amount of Japanese films allude either directly or indirectly to the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US (which is not at all surprising, right?); the most obvious example is the Godzilla films. This is pretty well-trod ground in film theory, especially in the area of horror films.

By: inpHilltr8r

inpHilltr8r — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 15:06:30 -0800

Akira or Ghost in the Shell? Evangelion

By: The Ardship of Cambry

The Ardship of Cambry — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 15:39:55 -0800

Akira or Ghost in the Shell? Both please, and for dessert, Ouran High School Host Club!

By: flaterik

flaterik — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:17:13 -0800

For those that like Ghost In the Shell but haven't seen the series, I can't recommend it highly enough. In many ways it surpasses the movies. I am not nearly articulate enough a critical to relate in what ways I found it superior. It's Just Good.

By: flaterik

flaterik — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:35:00 -0800

"articulate enough a critical"? *facepalm* I meant "critic". And I believed that proved my point...

By: shmegegge

shmegegge — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:47:25 -0800

wayyyy late, but i just wanted to second the FLCL endorsement. I adore that show, and Paranoia Agent may be the best anime series I've ever seen.