Forum - View topicANNCast Holiday Special The Third: Part Deux
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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Wait a minute ~ you're saying that these aren't the views of Anime News Network? For reals?
Here I've been thinking of ANN's official views as being a pastiche of sarcastic humor and an obsessive love of angst. Totally agree about Wolf's Rain. It could have been done in 18 episodes, but the last couple of arcs payoff the series. |
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Zhou-BR
Posts: 1461 |
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I guess I'll have to track down TO-Y and Windaria now. Torrent gods, don't fail me.
I'm more familiar with Zac's recommendations. I only got to watch Macross 7 four years ago, and I thought it was a lot of fun, mostly. The franchise never took itself too seriously, and that show in particular took the idea of "music as a weapon" to its extreme. However, the ending was quite unremarkable, and I was especially disappointed with how they handled the main love triangle, if you can even call it that. As for the soundtrack, the almost complete lack of instrumental BGMs (except for some they stole from Macross Plus) is a bit odd, but most of the songs are great, although I wish they had played "Planet Dance" and "Totsugeki Love Heart" a few hundred times less. And Wolf's Rain's last four episodes simply made the show for me. I was surprised by how Tsume grew on me, and I get choked up just by thinking about the scene where he spoiler[kneels next to Toboe's body and says he's the one who brought him to paradise, not Kiba.] And one thing many people don't notice about the ending is that spoiler[it wasn't a complete reset, since Tsume, Hige and Toboe became normal humans, unlike Kiba, who will continue his cyclical quest for paradise.] I also agree about Keiko Nobumoto being one of anime's unsung heroines. It seems she does most of her work on doramas, but every single anime title she touched is gold, and I wish she did more work in the animation industry. |
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Charred Knight
 Posts: 3085 |
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You know your low on the totem pole when Zac occasionally refers to you on his podcast but never by name.
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8501 Location: Penguinopolis |
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To me Wolf's Rain was a huge disappointment. The human characters are the only really interesting ones, it has those clip episodes, and the finale just feels like a cop-out. The beautiful art and music make it bearable, but the wolf characters are bland and they try too hard to make them interesting, when it clearly isn't working. For a while towards the end, nothing at all happens. It's just a lot of running in a direction while nothing worthwhile occurs. It's a show with a great premise but a failed execution. It just goes to show you that even Kawamoto and Kanno contribute to bad anime.
I'm sorry, but four recap episodes immediately means your show is bad. It's just not acceptable. Just on those alone it's a bad show, not that it doesn't have plenty of other negative aspects. Hell, a show as short as this shouldn't even have one clip episode. A very overrated show. Last edited by penguintruth on Wed Dec 28, 2011 7:31 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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JacobC
ANN Past Staff
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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I f***ing love Keiko Nobumoto. Maybe no one pays her any respect, but I sure do. I always cite her as one of my all-time favorite anime screenwriters. Same with Mary McGlynn, absolutely love her as an ADR director. She has the strongest track record of any ADR director in anime, period. I'm churning through a retrospective of Digimon Tamers right now, another thing she directed, and Digimon is a thankless kinda detail, it's a hokey low-budget kids' franchise, but Tamers specifically was a Chiaki Konaka project, so it took some weird turns and had a *lot* of potentially difficult content in it but she took it as seriously as it needed to be taken to work and some of those scenes are really resonant even after I've grown up*. And yeah, as a result of those factors and various others, Wolf's Rain is a personal favorite of mine. ^^; [/fangirl]
...Also, if you wanna track down Wolf's Rain, it's speculated to be going out of print soon, as Bandai has pulled it from their listing, sooooooooooooo...JUST LETTIN YA KNOW! * She directed the season after that, Digimon Frontier as well, and that one didn't really have any difficult content, but it still had a kickass dub compared to all the other crappy kids' shows. 
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2678 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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When it came to you guys talking about Macross 7 I honestly couldn't tell if you guys were talking positively about it or not. It is a silly idea, and though I haven't seen the show myself it's easy to see that Macross 7 is most likely the only true, 100%-concentrated vision of "music can stop war!" that the Macross series bases itself on. As much of an uncaring ass Basara can be when you're not talking to him about music, you have to love his energy and excitement because it's so addicting. When he screams "Listen to my song!" you actually want to do so, because you can hear his passion and love for music with little to no trouble... And I was able to get this feeling simply by playing Super Robot Wars Alpha 3, which uses Macross 7. And, yes, the music is sheer awesomeness, and is still probably some of HUMMING BIRD's (a.k.a. Yoshiki Fukuyama;s [of JAM Project fame] old band) best work. It is a shame that Macross 7 will forever remain unlicenseable...
I've thought of watching Angel Densetsu a few times, but I do wonder if I'd get tired of the running gag like Zac did. I did buy Wolf's Rain about a year ago, and after hearing you two praise the ending like that I am more interested in watching this show now. I simply love The Fifth Element; it's both funny & serious, has great action, and is filled with memorable characters... Once you see Ruby Rhod you will never forget, for better or worse. It's a movie that just remains enjoyable even to this day, and I think it is a classic. Wow, the way Zac described Match Factory Girl made it sound like he started hearing Monty Python & the Holy Grail while watching it (Get on with it. Yes, get on with it! GET ON WITH IT!!). I do have to argue with Justin's reasoning of "If high school didn't suck for you, then you're a bad person", though, since high school for me was infinitely better than my elementary and middle school days; in elementary school I was the "odd kid" who people tended to not converse with, while middle school was simply hormones combined with downright archaic ideas (like getting detention for not doing homework), making my two years of middle school the most-sucky school time for me. High school, on the other hand, is where my classmastes seemed to accept me for who I was, I understood that people not paying attention to me didn't really mean anything most of the time, and high school is where I started to really become more social with others; that's not say that high school for me didn't have bad moments, because they did, but overall high school wasn't a horrible experience for me. But, hey, that's just my personal experience, and that's really what high school is to each person: Their own individual experiences, good or bad. And, of course, college is mainly a fresh slate. I agree that this idea was a good one, though. Who knows what you two will have each other watch next year? |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2678 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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Yeah, a SARS outbreak that halts a lot of actual production for about a month will suddenly make a show bad. Hell, Zac & Justin even bring up the outbreak while talking about the show. While having four recap episodes in a row like that is stupid, in Wolf's Rain's case there was an actual, legitimate reason that happened. |
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jl07045
 Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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I just have to ask. What is so bad about high school that I am a bad person for liking (or at least not disliking) that part of my life:?:
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penguintruth
Posts: 8501 Location: Penguinopolis |
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But the fact is that it does have four clip episodes, and regardless of why, it must be factored into judgement of it. It's a bad show even without them, but with them it's just heinous. |
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FLCLGainax
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Zac's comments on Windaria were interesting. I guess to a modern viewer, the downer ending would seem overdone. Back when the film was newer, such an ending was not something a lot of Americans would have expected in an anime.
Last edited by FLCLGainax on Wed Dec 28, 2011 8:32 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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You have this really bizarre dogmatic (no pun intended!) commitment to making sure everyone knows that you absolutely cannot judge Wolf's Rain without a laser-like focus on the recap episodes and then suggest that it's fair to judge the show based solely on the recap episodes and nothing else. Which is dumb to me. Really dumb. You didn't like the show and that's fine, but this rabid insistence that you CANNOT IGNORE THE RECAPS just seems like weirdo zealotry when they're completely ignorable, come on their own disc that you can just skip or not buy and you wouldn't notice it whatsoever in the story. But then based on the rest of your shallow, surface-level, vague complaints that seem like they're based on a half-drunk viewing of the show 8 years ago with badly translated subtitles, maybe the recaps are the one substantive thing you can cling to for dear life while trying desperately to convince everyone who'll listen that the show is a pile of shit. I'd probably do that too if the rest of my argument was "I didn't like the characters, ugh why are they running in one direction all the time". |
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rti9
 Posts: 1241 |
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Great episode. Last one felt unnecessary since you guys had already commented on most of the titles mentioned. This one was really fun to listen. Reminded me of the experiment AWO did of assigning anime for the other two hosts to watch. I don't think the trio enjoyed the result of that since it kinda felt that sometimes they were trying to prank each other.
Nice that Justin was the one who brought Keiko Nobumoto to the conversation. Sevakis usually pays extra attention to some technical details while Zac is the one that carefully examines the writing of shows. Keiko also worked writing live-action movies and TV dramas. I remember her mostly because of Cowboy Bebop. One of the few shows I would check the credits to see who had written particular episodes. I'm curious about the Cowboy Bebop live-action movie if it ever gets made because of her and Shinichiro Watanabe. It is kinda funny to listen to Zac's reviews of anime because the writing is generally below average or just terrible. Thinking about it reminds me of this scene from The Critic. Zac (and Justin when he is back in the show) always have a worthy criticism, something rare in this niche environment. If you are going to watch a Brazilian movie besides City of God, let it be The Elite Squad. |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8501 Location: Penguinopolis |
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I watched it on Adult Swim. I wasn't impressed. Like I said, I felt the only truly interesting characters were Hubb, Cher, Quent, and Darcia. The only wolf I really cared a bit for was Blue, because of her struggle between the two worlds she was a part of. I felt a real connection to her storyline, but not the threads of Kiba and the others. They just didn't have any charisma at all. They show up and disappear without creating any sort of impression. They're lacking in color. The mindless running in a direction for a few episodes and nothing more does grate, I'm sorry. I notice you also attack my opinion without providing any sort of counter to it, because you have some notion that your opinion is so superior, you don't need to defend it against mine. It's a sort of hostility from you that I'm not understanding. As for the clip episodes, you can't pretend they don't exist simply because circumstances warrented them. It means that it's not Bones' fault the show is bad, but it doesn't make it a good show magically because they were forced to do those clip episodes. The thing is, I don't hate the show because of the clip episodes alone, but I feel plenty justified to while including them. I've given ample reasoning as to why I dislike the program and you have given none as to why you disagree. You attacked me instead. Thanks for making me out to be an asshole instead of making a real argument. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3495 Location: Back stateside |
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On Wolf's Rain:
Wow, Keiko Nobumoto. You're right, I was never aware of her, but man she does have an amazing, if small resume. I'm... not a huge fan of the dub, but I rarely am. Mostly, I just loved the set of brand-new voices that the Japanese got to do the main wolf characters, so anyone else felt like a bit of step down. That said, what I listened to of the dub was good by my own standard: everyone matched their role, nobody was a bad actor. It's "as good as the original"... but I have this fondness for the original and no problem with subtitles, so as a result, again, not really gonna watch the dub. As for the ending, GOD BLESS YOU ZAC FOR LOVING THIS ENDING!! I've always felt as though I were alone in the world for thinking it was a brilliant finale. I remember watching this in fansubs, getting to the TV ending, dismissing the series, then checking out the real ending, and yeah, started buying the DVDs the moment I did so. It manages to match real, developed characters and drama with an allegorical story. I still cannot listen to the soundtrack -- particularly the final track of the second OST -- without sobbing uncontrollably in botha mix of sadness but also a strange sort of joy. Wolf's Rain is just... wow. And now I am regretting that my DVDs are all on another continent right now. Re: the OSTs out of print, I was lucky to buy the first one way back when the DVDs were first coming out and got it cheap. I also bought an import copy of the second at a convention (I think). This is one of the many, many things I got lucky buying before they went out of print. |
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Saffire
 Posts: 1256 Location: Iowa, USA |
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Guess I need to rewatch Wolf's Rain, because all I can remember of the ending is that it's pretty. Of course, it's been...7 years? At least the boxsets are still cheap so I can rediscover it easily. Probably won't last much longer, a lot of places don't have it listed so it's likely OOP.
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