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Erin wrote:

It also struck me that there is a lot of narration in this show. I enjoy the magical realism (or urban fantasy) aspects of Durarara!!, but I don't know how much I need a narrator shoving it down my throat. Conversely, I don't know if the series would work without the narration. Would it be like Garfield without Garfield?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it I say. All the narration in those first six or seven episodes could have been a problem, but the combination of direction, writing and voice talent allowed Durarara!! to get away with it, and make it genuinely entertaining.

Erin wrote:

As of late, I get the feeling DVDs are going to go extinct, along with most other physical media. What if this is the only DVD release Durarara!! gets? Sorry about the side tangent here, but the recent interview with Chris Beveridge has this on my mind.

Chris has been saying that for awhile now. Who knows, maybe it'll become true someday. If so, that'll be the point in time that the anime industry loses me as a customer. I won't pay for streams, I won't pay for downloads. If it's not on a disc, forget it. On a side note, I find myself getting kinda angry at people for continually saying this, but I just gotta remind myself not to kill the messenger as it were.

I have to agree, Durarara has phenomenal picture quality. It looks great upscaled on my 47" TV. I don't feel the least bit guilty shelling out $40.00 for each set now. I wish Funi would take note of that.

Murder She wrote:

Noah and I have slowly been watching Adventure Time (the Cartoon Network series) between anime titles for Shelf Life. The writing is brilliant, weird, and funny.

Agh, don't remind me. One of the cons I've been to a couple years ago, someone in costume kept running around shouting, "What time is it?! What time is it?!" And I still think both main characters are jerks, in an Adult Swim-esque kind of way. Laughing

Murder She wrote:

Frankly, the entrails didn't bother me as much as the interspecies non-consensual sex acts or the alarmingly high number of rape attempts. In light of the surreal plot and violent content, I was convinced early on that the show was just pseudo-philosophy aimed at adolescent boys.

Why does everyone always blame the boys?! Y'know what, I think most of the problems occur because at the roots of it, it's the girls! Now how's that to flip things around! Laughing

Sailor S wrote:

Erin wrote:

As of late, I get the feeling DVDs are going to go extinct, along with most other physical media. What if this is the only DVD release Durarara!! gets? Sorry about the side tangent here, but the recent interview with Chris Beveridge has this on my mind.

Chris has been saying that for awhile now. Who knows, maybe it'll become true someday. If so, that'll be the point in time that the anime industry loses me as a customer. I won't pay for streams, I won't pay for downloads. If it's not on a disc, forget it. On a side note, I find myself getting kinda angry at people for continually saying this, but I just gotta remind myself not to kill the messenger as it were.

You can burn downloads to discs (or whatever media/flash/crystal are vogue at that time). You just won't get the pretty packaging, though if that's available for download, you can just print it too (or disc designs onto a printable DVD with a capable printer). Still, not as good as professional, and the discs are burned, not pressed. But if there's no money to be made on discs....

Then again, Beveridge has always been a harbinger since the end days of VHS, and maybe then we won't need AnimeOnDVD anymore neither. Confused

Erin wrote:

I watched Durarara!! streaming the first time, and I ought to confess at this point that my internet speed is somewhat slow. I found the clarity of the DVD picture striking. I watch streaming shows on an aging Mac Mini (a PowerPC G4 with 512 MB SDRAM – wait, that's all!? I ought to buy more RAM!) hooked up to my TV. Consequently, I often pick the lowest quality option on Hulu, youtube, or Crunchyroll so shows will load without lagging.

Oooh, I'm really looking forward to watching my Durarara DVDs now because I also stream at SD thanks to Aussie internet speeds.

Last edited by CareyGrant on Mon Mar 07, 2011 3:37 am; edited 1 time in total

Lordy... Gantz. Any social or political commentary or moral message aside, that was one long drawn out WTF?! from beginning to end. As for loaning it out? Yeah, I agree. Gantz isn't one of those "try to win over some Avg. Joe converts to anime" type shows.

And as for [AS], besides Bebop, GitS, Venture Brothers, Metalocalypse, Boondocks, FMA: Bro. and Symbionic Titan (which technically isn't AS, but CN), their stable of "original" content (See: Super Jail, et. al.) is like a collection of some bad Hunter S. Thompson acid trips. Now that's some serious WTF?!

Durarara is definitely on my list of "to see" anime titles.

Sailor S wrote:

Erin wrote:

As of late, I get the feeling DVDs are going to go extinct, along with most other physical media. What if this is the only DVD release Durarara!! gets? Sorry about the side tangent here, but the recent interview with Chris Beveridge has this on my mind.

Chris has been saying that for awhile now. Who knows, maybe it'll become true someday. If so, that'll be the point in time that the anime industry loses me as a customer. I won't pay for streams, I won't pay for downloads. If it's not on a disc, forget it. On a side note, I find myself getting kinda angry at people for continually saying this, but I just gotta remind myself not to kill the messenger as it were.

I agree I can't afford so many monthly subscriptions as various companies keep trying to force down our throats nor the per episode rent model that Apple and others are trying to introduce. Digital downloads mean locking episodes to hard drives and in my experience they fail often while I still have dvd's from 1999 and cd's even older than that which still work perfectly.

Quote:

Sure, it has high production values, a compelling plot and thoughtful themes, but I reserve Shelf Worthy for titles that I would recommend to anyone. I could never recommend Gantz to coworkers.

I find this criterion questionable. I understand assessing a show's rewatch value when determining whether something is worth buying versus renting - that makes sense. But throwing in the consideration of whether you would loan out a series to "anyone" - which presumably includes non-anime fans, or people who are just casual anime fans, doesn't scan for me. Can you not imagine a situation where you come across a title that you know you would re-watch enough to make it Shelfworthy under normal circumstances, yet it has some element that would make you hesitate to loan it to "anyone"? To not buy something just because you wouldn't be comfortable loaning it out to "anyone" seems, well...dopey.

Blood- wrote:

Quote:

Sure, it has high production values, a compelling plot and thoughtful themes, but I reserve Shelf Worthy for titles that I would recommend to anyone. I could never recommend Gantz to coworkers.

I find this criterion questionable. I understand assessing a show's rewatch value when determining whether something is worth buying versus renting - that makes sense. But throwing in the consideration of whether you would loan out a series to "anyone" - which presumably includes non-anime fans, or people who are just casual anime fans, doesn't scan for me. Can you not imagine a situation where you come across a title that you know you would re-watch enough to make it Shelfworthy under normal circumstances, yet it has some element that would make you hesitate to loan it to "anyone"? To not buy something just because you wouldn't be comfortable loaning it out to "anyone" seems, well...dopey.

Yeah, I read that and thought it was pretty bizarre, to say the least. So a series isn't worth owning unless it has complete universal appeal? Then in that case I suppose American Idol would be infinitely more shelf-worthy than Gantz, Berserk, Evangelion, even Cowboy Bebop or any other great anime series since it would be easier to recommend to the average joe.

Blood- wrote:

Can you not imagine a situation where you come across a title that you know you would re-watch enough to make it Shelfworthy under normal circumstances, yet it has some element that would make you hesitate to loan it to "anyone"?

Strike Witches.

*cough*

Joking aside, I have to say I was also perplexed at the Rental Shelf criteria in relation to others. I couldn't imagine giving a rating and redacting it because "Joe the Plumber" may have a problem with it.

Given it's animation from the offset, there's already a problem most people wouldn't take the time to get past, let alone the content. If there's a removal of those who dislike animation, then it's rather awkward to think those who only like Disney-esque animation are in control of the ratings system.

*shivers*

Surprisingly, Gantz doesn't strike me as interesting enough to want to own, despite its ridiculously low price (before FUNimation screwed it up with yet another damn SKU) and I was never a fan of the artwork in Initial D. This left Durarara (ran out of "ra"), and it looks like this will be stream for me, which will hopefully happen some day in Netflix's future.

In Japan getting a drivers license for most people costs several THOUSAND dollars, not several hundred. The driving test for people who don't go to driving school is so hard that everyone just goes to a school so they can skip it.

And Takumi doesn't really have an accident persay, spoiler[ the engine just blows and he has a near-accident that could have been worse.]

Sailor S wrote:

I won't pay for streams, I won't pay for downloads. If it's not on a disc, forget it.

At least with DVD and Blu-ray I have the option to import in most cases. Streams and downloads have this annoying tendency to be geo-locked. The Philippines' iTunes Store has nothing but iOS apps since the rights for digital music/video downloads apparently haven't been worked out yet. Using the U.S. store requires a credit card with a U.S. billing address or getting gift cards.

Quote:

I reserve Shelf Worthy for titles that I would recommend to anyone. I could never recommend Gantz to coworkers.

I'm going to raise this quote as problematic like the others, but for a different reason: inconsistency of application. You'd be comfortable recommending Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne to anyone, including your co-workers? They wouldn't be bothered by spoiler[a woman getting eaten by angels as they're in a lust-driven frenzy trying to have sex with the same creature that's eating them]? Seriously?

But in terms of re-watch value, I agree with you about Gantz. I was surprised by the finale how much I actually felt the series "said" something. Before that, it had merely been addictive in the degree that I didn't want the character to die and was on the edge of my seat to see what happened next. All of that said, I never, ever want to watch it again, and the idea of picking up the manga and reading three or four times as much of this content staggers my stomach. And I own the manga for Berserk. I think it's just that Berserk takes more time to develop its characters, whereas in Gantz you've only got a short while before they're offed. It can be a very callous series.

As for Durarara!, my only problem with the three-part release is that, well, I really only want to own the first half of the series. The second half was good, but it didn't have the re-watch value of the first half, for me at least.

When I last lived in Germany (2002), it cost about $2.5k for a driver's license, though exchange rates and other economic factors have likely changed that. That greatly annoyed me because I had to wait until we moved back to the US to get my license, cause my parents were understandably not going to pay that kind of money when we were just 2 years away from moving.

Erin wrote:

The subtitles differ from the dub adaptation slightly, but it isn't to the extreme that you see in some Funimation titles lately.

While I believe there should be a subtitle track that is word-for-word what is on the dub for those few who watch it dubbed with the subs on, I have no problem with dubbing companies changing the script for the purposes of making it more accessible/understandable to local viewers. I personally prefer they drop honorifics and replace Japanese pop-culture in-jokes with jokes that local viewers would get.

It's maybe a bit of a stretch to call Gantz intelligent, but I've always appreciated it in some weird way. The themes that really drew me to it are the ones that don't, or only just barely, exist in the narrative. I really enjoy how it continually cranks the violence and sex while holding a mirror up to the viewer and asking them if this is why they watch anime. I could never tell how intentional that was, though. I never decided to what percent Gantz was a super smart show about the overindulgence of the viewer, saying: hey, maybe shows with this much shit in them AREN'T okay. Often, it's more like one of those pointless T&A shows it appears to be philosophizing on. Still, I'm happy Gantz exists even if it's kind of awful. It's sort of an accidentally post-modern show about anime, and that's a really cool idea to wrap your head around. I'm glad you liked it, Erin, I think very few people do. And of those people very few seem to give it one iota of thought.

Also, Gantz has the highest incident of "I finally found a reason to live OH GOD I GOT HIT BY A TRUCK!" deaths outside of any Naoki Urasawa joint. Since I go in for melodrama more than actually well crafted drama, some of that stuff really tugged at my heart strings. But then, when Fist of the Northstar's involved how could it not?

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