Desu ex Machina

(out of 4)

Review: Uta Kata

My ex-roommate, along with many others whom I know, never understood why I force myself to finish anime I do not find enjoyable. I really don’t like to drop shows, so if I’m a few episodes in, I am probably going to go to the bitter end. It’s not really that Uta Kata is bad, it’s that I’m not a member of its target audience. As much as I will try to be objective in this review, keep in mind that I didn’t enjoy the show because its concepts, themes, and lessons simply did not appeal to me.

The two main characters

14-year-old Tachibana Ichika (cv. Honda Youko), meets magical girl Hatune Miku, err I mean Kuroki Manatsu (cv. Asamo Masumi) at the beginning of summer (that’s the only jab at the character design I promise). The two then spend the summer in various escapades, but each episode Ichika turns into a different flavor of magical girl and this solves all the episode’s problems. Ok, it’s not that simple and the plot and premise is actually a lot more professionally written than I give it credit for. Uta Kata is labeled a “magical girl” anime because it contains magical girls and there are cool costumes, but it is quite a different breed than its contemporary anime. Unlike other magical girl anime that come to mind, such as Sailor Moon and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Uta Kata has a slightly more mature and edgy shadow to it. Uta Kata contains references to things such as depression and child abuse, and serious scenes and situations appear more frequently as the series progress.

The writing is competent and the pacing is alright. In 12 episodes it did feel like Uta Kata did everything it wanted to. The structure of episodes early on seemed repetitively similar – Ichika and friends go somewhere, dramatic thing happens, magical girl transformation, everything is ok now – but the overarching plot does kick in eventaully. Friendship is a cool motif that is explored in the series, mainly in the form of Ichika and Manatsu’s relationship. Ichika’s friends are explored to an extent, most of the “mature” topics in the show are relating to them, but it really felt that they were almost background characters sometimes.

The art is circa 2004, but has a nice clean look with crisp lines and a soft finish. The art style is very much forgettable, and characters outside of Manatsu and Ichika are pretty forgettable visually. One unique and cool thing about Uta Kata is the costume design for magical girl Ichika. In each episode, a different famous mangaka designs the costume, and its cool to see the interesting ways different people interpret the different elements that each iteration of magical girl Ichika is supposed to represent. The guest costume designers include the likes of Kobayashi Jin (School Rumble), Rikudo Koshi (Excel Saga), and Ken Akamatsu (Love Hina). The overall costume design in the series is very good, though Manatsu kinda looks plain in her generic magical dress.

Uta Kata is the last time I watch an anime just for its music. Uta Kata’s music was so good that I jumped right in and started to watch this anime without so much as looking up what its about. When the anime didn’t really appeal to me the music was still good, so that kinda pulled me through. savage Genius absolutely hit it out of the ballpark with the OP and ED, but what is often overlooked is the amazing score for the series. The instrumental theme and melodic background music is beautiful and works well with the show. Besides that, the voice acting in Uta Kata is nothing special. Michiru is a forgettable role for Yukari Tamura that is great for obscure fanboy trivia.

Uta Kata is not bad, far from it. It’s mainly my fault for starting a show that I have no interest in that I otherwise would not have watched.  Uta Kata’s storytelling was passable, but it told a story I didn’t want to here. The themes and deeper meanings in the show were well done, but they didn’t appeal to me. And the climax of the show was really, really cheesy. The lesson here, kids, is to research your anime just a tiny bit before diving in. At least read the blurb that tells you what the anime is generally about.

So in a stroke of utter boredom yesterday afternoon, my friend Josh and I decided to redub the second Youtube video of my previous post. We turned a dub that we cannot bring ourselves to finish watching into a dub that we cannot stop ourselves from watching over and over again. Ahh, the dog days of summer. He played Rising Heart, Fate and Hayate, I played Nanoha and Fate grunting. PLASMA ZANBAR.

Friday, on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, Conan did a skit about his ventures into the American Anime Industry. Conan and his sidekick Andy visit the headquarters of Los Angeles-based Manga Entertainment and proceed to poke jokes about the anime culture and dub Ghost in the Shell.

Of course, there are a few groaning moments, such as the irk-inducing pronunciation of “Gurren Lagann” by that Manga Entertainment employee, but I think this was pretty cool. One thing that is very significant in this skit is the popular perception of the anime culture and style. To Conan, the entire business is strange, foreign, and inexplicably insane ( “tell us the plot to Ghost in the Shell” is not exactly looking for a comprehensible reply) and in all honestly he’s absolutely right. Being a comedian, he then uses the audience and his unfamiliarity with the subject to create humor. They visit some strange exhibits, such as the large-breasted figurine and a closely cut short skirt in an anime poster, giving the audience the impression that anime is a strangely perverted hobby about 2-d girls. As people who enjoy and partake this noble hobby, it’s important to step outside to the third person once in a while and realize that the “otaku culture” or whatever is quite silly, but we have fun with it just like Conan does.

More importantly, Conan’s skit reflects the growing presence of the anime industry in the United States. Ever since Neon Genesis Evangelion, anime has only become more and more popular stateside. Ghost in the Shell is a very “mainstream” anime in America compared to contemporaries, grouped along with things like Afro Samurai and FLCL. I don’t claim to exactly be an expert on the American anime industry (I watch fansubs,cut me some slack), but I don’t think we’re not going to see Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei in primetime anytime soon. However, baby steps are important; even if not too many people actually watch or understand anime in the United States, most people at least know what is. Millions of people watch The Tonight Show, so people who don’t know what anime is now has some kind of idea, though that idea is a bit less attractive and more skewed than the reality.

Finally, Conan O’Brien has got some serious seiyuu talent. Talent that the American anime dubbing pool lacks. Ok, I was only semi-serious but let me go on a little dubbing rant here to conclude the post. It’s a matter of preference, but watching dubs is something that I think is absolutely ridiculous. Some people say that they can’t catch up to subtitles. learn2read at a 3rd grade level. Other people, like my ex-roommate, says that dubs better capture a character’s emotion because “Japanese has a different phoneme set than English,” also known as complete bullshit. I can honestly see dubs working one day, but not with talent like

When reading anime blog post narratives, please sit far from the computer in a well lit room, thank you.

Last time on Desu ex Machina, kevo discussed his thoughts and recent episodes of Japan’s three great stories. This week (not really, that was just two days ago) kevo is on another adventure in anime. What will become of our hero? Desu ex Machina is starting. Right now!

[roll opening theme]

Ok, there is no opening theme, I guess we can be just really cool and edgy like the first episode of Bakemonogatari or something.

So today I had my homedawg Phil (philipawalker of YouTube “fame”. Check his pianerz videos out they actaully are pretty cool) over but apparently an extraordinary circumstance came up and I had my dentist appointment moved up to today. So after an abbreviated session of chillin out maxin’, relaxin’ all cool, I sent Phil home and proceeded to engage in my fated meeting with the dentistrial arts.

Now like 6 hours later I have aching gums but a much cleaner mouth, writing on my anime blog while jamming out to the new K-ON! CD (it’s a compilation of all the fictional songs from the series, grab it on Nipponsei), so I might as well tell a story that relates to anime. So pop open another can of Mountain Dew Gamer Fuel and grab some Cheetoes.

I was up for deep cleaning today, which is basically a routine cleaning except with 100% more razor sharp things in my mouth. I knew it was srs business when they injected me with the local anesthesia. After losing all feeling in my mouth and being completely numb in my lower face, the process began. If I was in that kind of pain while being completely numb, I want to leave what the process would have felt like without gin to only my imagination. I think there was more blood than the first episode of Elfen Lied…

Why am I telling you this? Dentists don’t have anything to do with anime! Well, well, look who’s the expert here astute one. It was the most intresting part of the day, and the experience reminded me of a particular anime that happens to be airing right now. While my dentist is scraping at my gums and I’m trying to restrain my drugged gag reflex from throwing up, I try to go off in my own far off place so I can think of something else. Lo and behold, I think of my high school freshman algebra class. Our teacher would basically check homework by walking around and we would hold up our open notebooks, which had the assigned problems completed on the pages. Essentially, our homework was part of our notes and it saved paper and we could easily study with it. The laziness of students is a dangerous and mysterious power and after a while me and some of my classmates began abusing this lax way of checking homework and show old homework assignments, passing them off as new ones. Oftentimes the teacher was at a distance and just glanced our way to make sure that triangles and things were there, so it worked often. Once, I passed off one assignment five times in a row.

Even though it worked often, us being students were probably around 70 times more stupid and naive than the teacher. She occasionally pointed out that we were showing her old assignments, much to our chagrin and embarrassment. Later on in the year, she would walk by, giving us the impression that we won another minor battle against work but she secretly marked the assignment as incomplete. Diabolical! Despite our best attempts at forgery and deception it’s no question that I lost the war against geometry. I would have saved time (and grades) by just doing the homework. To this day I remember my defeat.

So, here’s the meat and potatoes of the giant pile of tl; dr. If I can’t pass off one math assignment five times why can Kyoto Animation pass off one episode of anime five times and call it a day.

There are 4 stories listed up there. Therefore, this anime sucks.

“Mahjong Story”, of course, refers to Saki. Sea Story is the English name for Umimonogatari, and Ghostory is the English name for Shinbo’s other work this season, Bakemonogatari. Three of the very popular shows this season showing up here on the board. So let’s walk through with the latest on each of these. Oh right, “Leopard Head Story” is not an anime this season, sorry :/

The last two episodes (15 and 16) of Saki has been some kind of combination of awesome and badass. It really gets into the crazy shonen style mahjong with the yuri kind of repressed into only 2nd most important to dramatic lightning effects and lines like “I WILL BE THE FLOWER BLOOMING ON THE PEAK!” Knowing and playing Japanese mahjong a lot, I know just about every single little nuance in each character’s hands and I usually understand all the crazy strats in the show. Regardless, seeing crazy over the top special effects and the overboard reactions of characters to the events and actions in the game is a strangely savory mixture of hilarity and catharsis. If Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was about mahjong, it would be something a lot like Saki. Episode 16 of Saki was basically purely awesome as Koromo rips the shit out of everyone with her giant mahjong penis and tears people’s still-beating hearts out of their chests in glorious victory. (Ok, not really, because that would be strange even by this show’s standards)

If you are still reading and still have not seen this episode, I have no idea why you are still reading. Any episode with flaming tsumos and lightning rinshan kaihou needs to be watched immediately. The whole episode was basically a roller coaster of intense mahjong action. I knew Koromo was being too quiet in the last episode, so now she unleashes her true inna powah. I would summarize what happened but unfortunately I cannot make my writing spew lightning out of the screen at you.  I’m curious how the show will end from here, namely who wins the tournament and moves into Nationals. Regardless, I’m excited for the next episode, especially after I saw the episode preview.

This is by far the most GAR I have ever seen Saki. Time to go super saiyan.

I snuck into Gonzo’s office last night and learned that in the next episodes there will be a crazy development where all the girls in the show have to team up and play a game of mahjong against alien invaders that decides the fate of the earth itself. There will also be magical transformation scenes and the heart of the tiles. Oh dang I spoiled it.

I’m not caught up to Umimonogatari, sorry. I find the story massive amounts of “not interesting” but I will give this show a watch and see if it gets cool. I’m not the biggest fan of the art but the anime has Horie Yui so I can listen and pretend I’m watching Kanon.

The third episode of Bakemonogatari was basically meh until the end, which had me doubled over laughing. Now that Hitagi no longer has crabs, she stops being a cold hearted bitch spewing awesome one-liners and dissing Araragi, she becomes a strangely mellow bitch spewing awesome one-liners and dissing Araragi. Hitagi is the only reason I would consider fixating the “comedy” genre onto this show. Hitagi feels that she owes Araragi something for introducing her to Oshino and solving her problem. In this episode, character development reveals that Araragi is a bit of a pussy when it comes to women, basically being too scared to take up any of Hitagi’s offerings, despite undoubtedly being attracted to her. Hitagi is a very interesting character herself, and the relationship between our two protagonists will be fruitful. This show also introduces a loli (see left), who has twintails AND fangs. Formulaically, I assume (which is probably a nono with a Shinbo anime) she also has a mysterious problem/power to be fixed. In conclusion, show rules bye.

Oh right. Apparently, we have to wait until freaking August until we can torre- buy the ending theme in stores. What is this evil. Here it is in all its awesome glory, regardless. Fear the awesome piano intro.

The lyrics (in case you have seen this subbed or speak Japanese) are retarded. How can you not find Altair after finding Vega? It’s called the summer triangle for a reason, you know. It’s the “tip” of the triangle, and Deneb should be just as easy to spot. In case anyone is inspired by the anime, it’s summer now and the summer triangle should be high up in the sky (almost overhead) if you’re in a mid-northern latitude. It’s a pretty cool sight, I recommend getting away from bright city lights and taking a gander sometime, maybe while playing this song. Man, I should totally pick up Sora no Manimani and turn this into an anime astronomy blog.

I have an engagement tomorrow and I didn’t a lot of sleep last night so I’m going to be going to sleep tonight at the tender time of 1 AM. However, before I hit the sack I would like to make a quick announcement.

You, yeah you. At the keyboard. Put the Cheetoes down and pay attention. If you have not watched the next episode of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei yet, or if for some god forsaken reason you are not watching the show this season:

Now that I have made myself perfectly clear, here you go.

The most recent episode of Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei was perhaps the most reference-laden 18 minutes of anime ever. Also, when I get all the J-League baseball references (everyone knows Ichiro, but do you know who Yu Darvish is?) I probably watch too much sports. I took lots of screens but I would say I understood most of the references. Looks like we’re in for an absolutely amazing season of despair.

Let’s talk about The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Actually let’s not and pretend we did. This is how the anime ends. Bye.

First things first: last night I watched my 2000th episode of anime since starting to use MyAnimeList. Since have a retarded penchant for this stuff, it also coincidentally was my 100th anime completed. I noticed I had 1991 episodes and 99 anime under my belt earlier in the week while randomly looking my anime list. I had a multitude of options available at the time to make my 100th anime my 2000th episode, because I am a loser like that. I was considering not making them the same episode for a while because it seems kind of lame and cheesy, but I decided to go with it in the end. My original solution was to watch one episode of something random and finish the first season of Hayate no Gotoku. As much as I love that show, however, it didn’t feel “landmarky” enough. Another choice was either Afro Samurai or FLCL, both shows I decided against but I will finish soon. Cowboy Bebop would have been acceptable, but it impossible because I was too many episodes from the end. That show has been on hold for a solid year because my old hard drive crashed and I was too lazy to get it again. Rather inexcusable, I know, I do enjoy the show.

I finally decided to watch whatever I wanted until 1999 make a movie (which MAL counts as 1 episode) my 100th anime and 2000th episode. I chose Hiyao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke, and it turned out to be a great choice. The music really made the movie pop out from the rest. Miyazaki’s crazy antics, such as non conventional plot developments, strong protagonists, redeemable antagonists, and environmentalist themes, are all there and present. The story is great and the fight scenes (yeah, fight scenes in a Miyazaki film) are pretty cool. In conclusion, Princess Mononoke was, in my opinion, a great watch and a good milestone anime. 2,000 episodes of anime in a little more than a year while maintaining what I would consider a “normal” social life is a pretty decent clip, don’t you think? Now on to 200 anime and 5000 episodes by next summer!

I searched "Princess_Mononoke" on danbooru to get this image. So you had better appreciate this picture's aesthetic in this blog post considering what I had to suffer.

I’m a few days late, but the first episode of Bakemonogatari is finally out in English. As much as I love my man Akuma from ODI, I suggest qIIq’s subs over Koharubi’s. It’s pretty evident really quickly why subs took 688 years to come out, the massive amounts of typesetting is absolutely insane. Besides that, what did I think of the episode?

In one word: awesome. In 642 words (and rife with much more sarcasm and lame jokes):

As with any other episodes, there are certain qualities that are good and bad. The slightly bad (or at least unnecessary) part is Shinbo’s signature directing style of shoving random frames of text into your face like a Gatling machine gun at the beginning of the episode. While I understand and appreciate the tense, chaotic, and rushed effect this creates, I’m not having a lot of fun watching an anime frame by frame. In reality, you don’t miss much if you just watch the beginning without pausing to read anything, though it does help with some character background info. So the good parts? Right, everything else.

Akiyuki Shinbo IN DA HIZZOUSE

I love every character so far.  Senjougahara is basically a perfect combination of 2 parts cynically insane, 3 parts being voiced by Saito Chiwa, 3 parts moe, 2 parts jagged sense of humor, and 9 parts pure badass. Besides that, Horie Yui does a great voice for Hanekawa-san, as well. If you excuse my voice actor fagging (I’ll stop after this I swear), Kamiya Hiroshi, straight out of his award winning role for Zetsubou-sensei, voices our male protagonist Araragi Koyomi. When Hitagi (I’ll call Senjougahara by her first name from now on) appears out of nowhere and shoves a boxcutter into Araragi’s mouth, I knew immediately that this show was going places. Weighing 5 kilograms is a rather unusual, yet undoubtedly original concept as a problem or curse. You can somehow feel that Hitagi as a character is going to be thoroughly explored and you look forward to that, because she is visually and plot-wise interesting. Also, any character that uses school supplies as weapons, let alone a character who happens to have the power of hammerspace for said school supplies, is automatically awesome in my book. Spoilers follow, but watch the damn episode dammit.

Did I mention the perfect zettai ryouiki? Yeah that too, as if the first episode wasn't awesome enough.

After recovering almost instantly in a staple to the mouth, a sensation better left to a viewer’s imagination, it is revealed that Araragi is a vampire that recovered back into human form. This anime then proceeds to have absolutely nothing else remotely similar to Twilight, as if to say “sike! just kidding haha gotcha”. Anyways, Araragi proceeds to tell Hitagi about Oshino, a miracle worker type person who can apparently restore people with strange powers back to normal. I assume he can also make Touma be able to hi five espers, Spiderman not have to wear that godawful suit all the time, and Ikari Shinji have balls. Maybe the last one is a stretch. I wouldn’t classify this show as a comedy just yet, but on the way and at Oshino’s place Hitagi is occasionally randomly popping hilariously awesome lines, just to keep this anime fresh. You really have to notice how well Shinbo directs “flow” in an episode. You don’t really get bored, because Shinbo does whatever it takes, be it jokes, crisp dialogue, or insane visuals involving noodles, to keep you constantly entertained. The plot is then kicked into gear when Oshino concludes that Hitagi has crabs and he will help her. Or something like that. To cap it all off, the ending theme rules too.

I’m not going to go insane and declare that this will be be show of the season just yet (since whenever I do that too early the show ends up sucking), but it’s definitely on the right track. I can’t wait to see where this show is going, and Hitagi is hot as hell. The visuals and art are top notch and I am absolutely confident that this show will be well produced. Finally, I just noticed that this show’s English name is Ghostory, which is the absolute worst thing I have ever read. Fuck English. Can’t wait for the next episode. *staple staple*

The show I’m looking forward to the most this season is the third season of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, so of course its one of the few shows that can’t seem to get subbed in time. gg fansubs just released, so I’m going to grab that and rewatch it. I was impatient and grabbed Suimasen-Commie’s release, which I suggest you pass on. Subbing Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei without translating any of the lists or signs is like washing your clothes without drying them.

So Akiyuki Shinbo returns for the third full season of my favorite pure comedy show ever. The art looks kind of different, with a more crisp set of colors. There are less throwback film grain effects and more saturated colors. I suspect the art staff was slightly overhauled, but after a few minutes you get used to the good ol’ familiar feeling of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. Some scenes, admittedly, did look rather detuned. Let’s hope this is not a trend.

To be quite honest, I was expecting a lot more out of this episode. They didn’t really go through any kind of effort to reintroduce the premise of the franchise or cater to new viewers, the show basically dived right into the meat of things. The first segment mulls over superstition in Japan, and it was pretty funny, standard fare stuff that most people can kind of understand. Kafuka, of course shows up and makes everything insane. Vintage Zetsubou.

The scene in the first segment when the girls rescue Itoshiki-sensei is a rare exploration into the realm of slapstick comedy for the Zetsubou Sensei franchise. It felt rather unfamiliar and out of place, as I was starved and eager for some good ol’ fashioned parody and social criticism. The second segment is a rather exclusively Japanese in topic, so some people might not get it. The whole episode overall, to me, is lacking a little in the “funny” department. Sure, a bit of it is being unable to relate to what it’s lampooning, but some of it was like it wasn’t trying hard enough. I would give this episode a score of “average/below average”, especially if you consider its pedigree. Regardless, I have extremely high hopes for this show and I can’t wait for next week’s installment. Until then, zetsubou shitta!

Today, I am going to just talk about the first five anime-related topics that come to my mind.

Storytime: It’s the prelims round of Saimoe Japan (the Anime Saimoe Tournament). I want to participate and I put a ballot together with my friend uis, who in return for six of the ten names on my ballot, provided the voting key. So after like 10 minutes of double checking to make sure my ballot is formatted right and I’m posting in the correct thread (everything is in Japanese because they hate foreign participation) I get slammed basically with a message that my American ISP is banned. Ok, I thought, so I proxied a random server and that’s banned. Then I proxied a Japanese ISP, and 2ch’s mechanism picked up the proxy. Apparently I have to have starred in the movie Swordfish to be able to vote for which 2D animated girl I think is the more attractive.

Fuck reality and Zion, we did all this because we just wanna vote in your anime character popularity contest.

The Reich-fuhrer xenophobic hodgepodge demographic that is the otaku internet of Japan has decreed that I cannot vote in the 2009 Anime Saimoe Tournament. I have found the xenophobic tendencies in Japan (another instance is many eroge visual novels being DRM’ed outside of Japan) a rather disturbing trend. Over at International Saimoe League, we don’t really mind Taiwan spamming Rozen Maiden characters and China spamming Haruhi that much. I mean it’s annoying but it’s fair. I guess that’s because we have “International” in our name.

In other news, Yuki utters a grand total of five syllables over the course of the entire second episode the The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It must have been a quick day at the office for Chihara Minori. I know she’s busy, so at this rate she can just leave her lines on Kyoto Animation’s voicemail.

Everyone who watches anime has a different “favorite Miyazaki film” or Studio Ghibli film. It’s like the same people who discuss what the best Disney movie or Beatles and Michael Jackson song is (The Lion King, Let it Be, and Bad if you disagree you are WRONG). For Miyazaki films, people usually answer with the standard fare of Spirited Away (typical response), Princess Mononoke, or Howl’s Moving Castle. Occasionally, we get My Neighbor Totoro or Castle in the Sky (i.e. old people). Know what I never hear? I have never heard anyone say that their favorite Miyazaki film is Kiki’s Delivery Service. This is probably because this movie is too kickass. I might dedicate a full essay to this later after I finish watching every one of Miyazaki’s works. I like it because even among Miyazaki’s unique style of direction and plots, Kiki’s Delivery Service is unique and different. It seems so much smaller, less ambitious, and compact. The touch and magic of Miyazaki’s directing is there, but the epic granduer and overarching messages are much more subdued and sutble. It’s just such a great, simple feel good story with great amounts of depth if you peer a little harder. So yeah I’m a rebel now.

I have noticed that while my conversational Mandrin Chinese is perfect, my reading has withered into shit. It’s because I never read anything in Chinese. I discovered this because I tried to watch Chinese fansubs of Bakemonogatari. Because English fansubbers are slow and … slow. I know a few groups are going to pick this up and I will wait patiently. I don’t really blame them too much, as the first episode has over 9000 lines of typesetting. Fansubbers have nightmares about two things at night: Akiyuki Shinbo’s directing style and jokes about the .ass format. (”Hey babe, are you fansubbed? Because I want that .ass) This will probably mean that releases of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei 3 are going to be slow and unreliable as fuck. Maybe if a.f.k. does it they will have the good sense not to make 170MB hardsubbed unchaptered .avi’s but I will honestly take anything. If Shinbo keeps directing I am sure that pretty soon people will be fucking for fansubs. Would you do Aeris from Eclipse for some Full Metal Alchemist? It’s pretty tempting…

Finally, time to go off and watch CANAAN. About time…

Ok, I usually don’t follow this stuff. I personally consider myself an expert in anime and I don’t really go out and research developments like this. So when I was randomly watching G4 (I know, sorry. I was watching Cops, ok?) this trailer came up…

So the mind-blowing engrish and cheesiness in the whole trailer aside, live action anime. I always look at live action anime with a very tilted eyebrow. Because everyone knows how much crap Dragonball: Evolution turned out to be. At least the fighting and casting in Blood looks decently cool. For those who are not familiar with the source material, Blood: the Last Vampire is a 2000 anime film produced by Production I.G., of Ghost in the Shell fame.

Let me say something here. If they ever make a Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann live action movie, let alone if Hollywood does it (thank god, the studio doing Blood is at least a French studio) I will proceed to gouge my eyes out with my keyboard. I have never seen an anime live action movie (yeah. never) that was not suicidal. So the better the anime the movie is adapting is, the more orz I get. But apparently they keep trying. But hey, Cowboy Bebop with Keanu Reeves might work!

(this is sad because I’m probably going to end up watching both movies)