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vermilionone
Joined: 21 Feb 2009
Posts: 45
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 3:42 pm
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Wonderful writeup! I've been meaning to watch M-66, for at least a decade now... Perhaps its better he doesn't do too much stuff anymore. I constantly try to collect his current work but he has way too much fun with adding shininess in Photoshop. Everything looks... greasy. It's as if all the characters spent a few minutes rolling around in a bathtub full of warm petroleum jelly, then rubbed themselves over all of the scenery. Given the subject matter, that might have been the case.
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GATSU
Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15585
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 4:40 pm
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Quote: | and it was successful enough to spawn a sequel bankrolled by John Woo. |
He didn't bankroll it. He just participated in it.
Quote: | Ghost in the Shell doesn't enjoy runaway popularity in its homeland-- Major Kusanagi just doesn't have the instant recognition mojo of a character like Lupin the 3rd or Monkey D. Luffy-- but it's undoubtedly one of the most popular global anime brands. |
It'd probaby help if she didn't sound like she was working on tech support.
Quote: | Dreamworks quickly optioned a sequel, |
They didn't quickly option a sequel. It took nine years, and only after SAC and the Wachowski name-drop.
Quote: | and gave director Mamoru Oshii $20 million to present Innocence, his vision of a future awash in vintage cars, basset hounds, and Bartlett's book of quotations. |
I'm not sure if DW actually funded it or distributed it.
Quote: | Fans, particularly Japanese fans, weren't big on these films, because director Oshii had a free hand with tweaking the characters and settings for the big screen, and his version is very distinct from Shirow's manga. |
Yes, it has none of Shirow's godawful technobabble and fascist cop porn, so of course it sucks.
Quote: | Fortunately, just a few years later we'd get the Ghost in the Shell TV series, Stand-Alone Complex, |
SAC came before the movie.
Quote: | Got a favorite Shirow project? |
I always wanted to play Horned Owl.
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DuelLadyS
Joined: 17 Mar 2006
Posts: 1705
Location: WA state
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 4:51 pm
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Black Magic M-66 is one of a handful of anime titles I know I've watched, but remember utterly nothing about. I can tell you about the guy I borrowed the recorded-from-an-old-rental tape from, and how it had Devil Hunter Yohko 2 on there as well. I can play you the theme song I recorded onto casette (something I did with all the anime I watched in the VHS days.) But if you wanna know about the actual show? Well... at some point, a man and a woman are in a Jeep. That's all I got. I should really try watching this again sometime.
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DavidShallcross
Joined: 19 Feb 2008
Posts: 1008
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 5:23 pm
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GATSU wrote: |
Quote: | Fortunately, just a few years later we'd get the Ghost in the Shell TV series, Stand-Alone Complex, |
SAC came before the movie.
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Between the first two movies.
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One-Eye
Joined: 08 Mar 2011
Posts: 2267
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 5:34 pm
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I completely forgot about M-66. I vaguely remember something like towards the end a whole building getting trashed, a fight in an elevator (?), and military dudes dying badly. Wow, maybe its been a really long time since I've see it because I too pretty much forgot what it was about.
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edzieba
Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 704
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 5:46 pm
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I'd like to know more (or anything at all!) about Gun Dancing or Pile Up, but quite not enough to import them and muck about trying to get a CD designed to run on an old OS with a completely different locale to run correctly.
And of course, like anyone with a pulse, I'd like Shirow to stop mucking about with the posterbooks and finish Appleseed already!
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Great Rumbler
Joined: 03 Oct 2006
Posts: 334
Location: Oklahoma
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 6:01 pm
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Ah, Gundress. I actually watched it for the first time a few months ago and can attest to it's bad-ness. It's not totally awful, but it's just so bland and so poorly animated and the characters so thin and the story so forgettable that there's just nothing there to hold on to. It doesn't quite reach the depths of depression as the abysmal Bounty Dogs, at least.
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PlainPersonoftheInternet
Joined: 03 Jul 2011
Posts: 2
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 6:03 pm
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You forgot NEURO HARD, Mike. Shirow's brief attempt at world-building.
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toddc
Joined: 23 Jul 2007
Posts: 164
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 6:07 pm
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I never thought I'd care enough about Gundress to correct someone, but well, here I am.
Alissa, the white-haired Motoko clone, is the main character of Gundress, not Takako. I'm going from memory here, but I also believe that Kei Yung was Shirow's pick to be the lead. I found this strange, because Kei is Korean and you don't see many Korean characters in anime. Anime likes to pretend that Korea doesn't exist, and that if it does, it was certainly never invaded by Japan during any sort of war.
Gundress, like Landlock, was originally going to be a video game, or so Shirow wrote in one of those Blades/Bullets/Babes artbooks of his. I've been morbidly curious about the Landlock and Gundress games for years, but I've never seen any screens of them. I've never even seen them listed among other canceled games. I imagine they were canned before they were officially announced.
Last edited by toddc on Sun Jul 03, 2011 8:45 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Kicksville
Joined: 20 Nov 2010
Posts: 1253
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 7:56 pm
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I have a dumb confession to make: I bought Appleseed on VHS simply for the handsome dope case.
Photo doesn't even do it justice, that lettering is reflective, man!
It's the kind of case that reminds me of going down the VHS rental aisles when I was very, very young and seeing tapes in similar, "serious" looking casing, like it was telling me "see this is the real deal right here, graphic, SOPHISTICATED stuff, too ADULT for YOU, kid". Early 90's video tape cover design was to me something of vast importance.
I nearly bought a copy of Bounty Dog on DVD just today because I wanna see the dumb thing sooner or later, but I somehow forgot it was another one of those look-it-has-Shirow's-name-on-it productions - I'm quite glad to be reminded. Landlock is the one of the few things I truly regret having bought with money, so if this is anything like that...
I'll never get those eight bucks back. I nearly sold it to a guy once, but I didn't just cause...I couldn't do that to him. It seemed a cruel thing to knowingly rob another person of 90 perfectly good minutes like that.
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The Nagabuchi
Joined: 18 Apr 2007
Posts: 103
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 10:33 pm
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I found the 1st movie compilation of Appleseed xiii to be a little lackluster - the tv budget of the CG was very obvious on the big screen unfortunately. plot-wise, it reuses some elements of the 2nd movie and has the potential for a better story if not visual experience imo. having Maaya Sakamoto as the new Deunan was interesting and I thought she handled the role pretty well apart from a weak opening scene (then again, i AM a huge Maaya fan).
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marcos torres toledo
Joined: 01 Sep 2009
Posts: 269
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 11:06 pm
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I am a fan of Ghost in the Shell I rented all the anime films and watch the Stand Alone Complex series on the Cartoon Network and enjoy it I also have the three Ghost in the Shell manga and one of Dominion I would liked to have seen the anime made from that manga but given all the rental stores I know of have either cut back on their anime sections or drop them altogether I doult I ever will. To bad Shirow is not creating any more new manga I like his work.
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GhostShell
Joined: 25 Jan 2011
Posts: 1009
Location: Richmond, B.C., Canada
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Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 12:14 am
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Funny Gundress should be mentioned in the column, as I just bought and watched the DVD about a week or two ago. I had just finished going through Shirow's Intron Depot 4, where he includes some of the character designs for Gundress and talks about it, and I was curious. It was interesting to see what it was about, though it will be a while before I put it in the DVD player again.
I'm a fan of both Appleseed and Ghost In The Shell, though admittedly, I didn't read Shirow's manga of either until after having seen, in the case of Appleseed, both CG moves, and in the case of Ghost In The Shell, the original GITS movie, the SAC series, Innocence, and SAC: SSS. Having now read the manga, one can see where many of the elements for the animated versions were pulled from or were used as seeds. Personally, I'm glad the animated versions were more serious in tone.
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timesteel
Joined: 04 Aug 2009
Posts: 202
Location: California
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Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 3:26 am
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my favorite shirow anime was probably dominion tank police (the original one not the second one) it's aged well and is still hilarious after so many years.
also I'm surprised ANN still hasn't mentioned that each episode of Appleseed XIII will be done by a different animation firm.
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Moonsaber
Joined: 16 Jan 2007
Posts: 343
Location: USA
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Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 6:34 am
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The Nagabuchi wrote: | I found the 1st movie compilation of Appleseed xiii to be a little lackluster - the tv budget of the CG was very obvious on the big screen unfortunately. plot-wise, it reuses some elements of the 2nd movie and has the potential for a better story if not visual experience imo. having Maaya Sakamoto as the new Deunan was interesting and I thought she handled the role pretty well apart from a weak opening scene (then again, i AM a huge Maaya fan). |
I haven't seen the movie yet, is it available in the US?
I have high hopes for the new TV show this fall.
Mike, as far as Ghost Hound and Real Dive go, Ghost Hound may not have the character design, but when it gets into the science, you can feel the channeling of Shirow for sure. It's enough for you to either want to rewind, or fast forward. Or both. As far as Real Dive goes, I see a lot of Shirow influence in both the designs, the science, and the weird sexuality of the show. Not sure why you glossed over those two as an afterthought. Then again, maybe they are afterthoughts to Shirow too?
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