Forum - View topicANNCast - Just Froobin' Over Here
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BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3019 |
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Pretty much every TV show that Becky Clements and Marty Adelstein have executive produced together - from Tim Allen's "Last Man Standing" to that Donald Trump biography miniseries they're shopping around - has filled me with the sense that they tend to "play it safe". It seems to me like it'd be impossible for someone who isn't willing to take a bunch of huge risks to make a good Cowboy Bebop project.
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CatSword
 Posts: 1489 |
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Zac, stop trying to make "froobin'" happen. It's not going to happen.
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5504 Location: Iscandar |
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It is good to hear from you guys. While it is undeniably a great thing to have Evangelion on Netflix, I hope an R1 BD release is forthcoming. As a collector and huge fan of the show, it is very important for me to upgrade my DVD sets.
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jroa
Posts: 548 |
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I'd absolutely agree, but there's no indication of that so far. Netflix doesn't usually care about their licenses getting a physical media release (or re-release, in this case). Unless someone else has already bought the home video rights, there's a risk that'll take a long while. |
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jenthehen
 Posts: 835 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio |
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Whelp, they hit on ONE of the EIGHT shows I’m following this season ...
I thought Zac was watching Iroduku. I’m curious to hear his thoughts. |
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Dragonsandphoenix
 Posts: 82 Location: Malaysia |
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As someone who's never watched Fruits Basket I am looking forward to this new anime. I've heard so many good things but never got around to watching it and now I have a reason to!
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Zeino
Posts: 1098 |
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You know Zac, there is a very easy way to catch up on all Dragon Ball if you honestly wanted to without being bothered by slow pacing. It's called "read the original manga".
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KitKat1721
 Posts: 974 |
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Glad to have the podcast back, lots to discuss!
I think Evangelion being on Netflix will be a great opportunity to re-watch. I honestly haven't seen it all the way through since probably high school. I never actually owned the ADV dvds myself, and just kept waiting for a blu-ray release in vain. I do hope eventually there is a blu-ray release for the show, especially if Netflix only bought the streaming rights, but I don't think anyone really knows what's going to happen there. I'm so excited for the new Fruits Basket, probably even more than the Eva news, which is kind of crazy. It was such an important manga growing up, and I'm excited for it to have some new life. Its cool seeing people online hyped up - all the dormant Fruits Basket fans are popping up like daisies. I don't really have any hope for a Netflix live-action Cowboy Bebop, but I also feel at this point I don't have the energy to care much about it. Maybe I will when we actually start seeing promo material. If its bad, it will just be forgotten, on to the next live action anime property. I always feel like I have a harder time keeping up with Fall season anime, since its the end of the year, and I'm thinking back to shows I need to finish from earlier months. Luckily I've finally gotten to the point where I don't feel like I need to finish everything I saw and enjoyed. I liked what I remember from Cells at Work, but I don't need to watch all of it. Still crazy Devilman Crybaby took the favorite spot like six days into the year. |
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King Kuma
Posts: 6 |
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Ralph 2 is a hard pass from me. I've already seen the first Wreck It Ralph, the Emoji Movie, and the princess teaser trailer. Got it.
Read the Dragon ball manga or watch kai (or the original anime series if you're into goofy Toriyama). "Ugh, I never got into Dragon Ball, but I like Super" just feels contrarian. Especially from Zac who always talks about how important visuals and art are to him. Super is just reheated DBZ and looks like ass trash. The Favourite sounds like exactly what I need in the current plastic Disney facades-of-films hellscape. I'm SO excited to rewatch Eva when it comes to netflix. Ready for another Eva renaissance among the netflix crowd, so hopefully it gets some traction. Its themes only get more powerful and resonant as time goes on. Live action Bebop on the other hand... not so excited. |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8500 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Broly is probably the worst thing to ever happen to the Dragon Ball franchise. Even considering Evolution. Broly is a microcosm of all the worst excesses of the DBZ approach to action, characterization, and lore humping, and they've only made him worse now. That after three movies Toei decided to give him a fourth chance to suck is baffling. Especially since they're also incorporating Toriyama's DB Minus chapter, which is bad enough on its own.
G Gundam is really fun. It's definitely a unique experience when it comes to the Gundam franchise, with an overpowering wuxia lean to it. I wouldn't list it among my favorite Gundam titles (maybe as my second favorite AU show), but it does have plenty of good qualities. For instance, it has the romantic development of Domon and Rain and an actual tragic hero/mentor-hero/villain story with Domon and Master Asia. And since the whole world is over-the-top and quirky, the abilities don't ever seem like they come out of left field in an otherwise believable scenario (see: Newtypes in UC Gundam). What you're appreciating, I think, most of all, is the work of Yasuhiro Imagawa, who helmed Giant Robo and Shin Mazinger, as well. A very underrated director. Even though I'm more of a Tomino guy, Imagawa has never made an anime that's failed to entertain me. Golden Wind has a feel to it that's a little Part 3 and a little Part 4. There's a definite set goal for our main protagonist, like in Part 3, but it also has a sort of comfy, strangely chilled vibe, even though there's an underlying tension, like in Part 4. It's more serious than that aspect of Part 4, though, and there's a lot more serious and tragic backstory to its characters. I'm not as big a fan of Giorno as I am of Josuke, because I think he's a little bland, outside his ambition, but the supporting characters are fantastic and I love the group vibe. I can't imagine there's anything left to say about Evangelion that hasn't already been said in the decades since it's first release. It's been talked up to death, outside of (and sometimes inside of) the Rebuild movies. But I will watch it. Even if the new redub makes the mistake of bringing back the original core English cast, I'll still watch (in JP, at least). I do have the Platinum Edition DVD set still, but this will be a good new excuse to revisit it with everybody else and, of course, recruit many into the cult of Pen Pen. I have zero confidence in the live-action Cowboy Bebop, but I may give the first episode a watch out of morbid curiosity. |
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AsuraTheDestructor
Posts: 487 |
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Because obviously you can judge a movie you haven't seen yet. That's hipster talk, no offense. |
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Kicksville
 Posts: 1247 |
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I do kinda get the general distaste for 90's Extreme Super Saiyan Broly, but I did like his movies - I suppose this is relatively speaking, since I found the plot of the first refreshing after so many previous DBZ movies played out the same sequence of events over and over. The second is one of the better looking movies overall. He's like a slasher villain in these things, which I thought worked well enough.
Although Bio Broly isn't the best or anything, the premise amuses me: "Oh yeah? You like Broly, kids? You want him back again? AGAIN? Well HERE! HERE YOU GO! THIS is what you GET! Just a BIG sloppy puddle of USED UP BROLY! You LIKE THAT? Huh? HUHHH???" |
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2480 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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Deeply Unpopular Opinion: I am kind of dreading the return of Evangelion, in part because we're already seeing a bunch of gatekeeper-y BS around it. Not two days after its return was announced, YouTube was already offering me "how to watch Evangelion" fan videos? Ugh, why were these necessary?
But it also took me back to Eva's halcyon days of the late 90s and early 00s. This is when I first started really taking in a lot of anime and different kinds of anime. And what I found at this time was that whenever I wanted to discuss any other show with any level of seriousness, someone would inevitably turn the discussion back to Evangelion, as if to suggest that it was not permitted to take any other anime seriously. I did a Fullmetal Alchemist podcast for a number of years (2005-7, I think?) and a major motivation was that it gave me a chance to delve into FMA's themes and ideas in depth, without some asshole cutting me off with a "Sure, but in Eva…" There was a tweet going around a few weeks ago about shows you won't watch just out of spite. Mine included Eva and Fate, both because of fan behavior. Eva fans are nowhere near as bad as Fate fans -- my goodness, who is? -- but it was enough to rub me the wrong way back then, and I'm petty enough to still hold a grudge. Yes, this makes me a wrong and bad anime fan. Fine. I've actually tried watching Eva, but I kind of drifted off after episode 11 or so. I get what it is, and I can see its influence in so many other things that at best I can appreciate Eva, but I'll never love it. Sorry. |
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LightningCount
 Posts: 238 |
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Lot of intriguing topics here...
Dragon Ball Z: I've only seen the first of the Broly movies, too, and was not impressed. There are DBZ movies that are a lot better. I will say that the character of Broly as a basic idea--an unstoppable Saiyan that is more powerful than Goku and has a super-imposing, over-the-top visual presence--is attractive to me, however. All of that said, Dragon Ball Super, with some exceptions and while still amusing, is honestly sort of a pale parody of Dragon Ball Z at its best. Now, DBZ itself is not flawless by any means and it really devolved as its seasons and spinoff movies went along. But I would say this: To understand the heart of DBZ, you basically have to see the series through the original Freiza Saga (and check out the first three movies for extra seasoning). You can watch the abridged Kai version to do so, which cuts out a bunch of awkward filler moments, though you'll lose out on some of the world's unique texture and some of the building tension as a consequence. Yet so much has been spoiled about DBZ publicly and turned into trend-setting Shonen tropes at this point that I'm not sure it can have the full impact its original arc had for new viewers familiar with the anime scene. After the Freiza Saga, there are some good moments, but it doesn't really have the same impact, in my opinion. It ends up undoing a lot of what it developed up to that point. Some of the iconic moments in the early seasons, particularly a handful of the fights, have a sense of physical weight to them that the modern frenetic fighting in anime sometimes (many times?) tends to lack. I'm curious about the new Broly movie, but the sort of fun but inconsequential storytelling of Dragon Ball Super makes me leery. If you watch the series in order, you see that it wasn't always about a super-goofy Goku craving his next fight without any consequences, and that there were more plot points than just one fight after another. The franchise has sort of been turned into a meme at this point, which is generally what happens to any long-running, successful franchise, really. G-Gundam: Easily one of the best Gundam TV series, and I think top five for the entire franchise for me. While it's very different on the whole, its emphasis on interpersonal family drama, overarching social-political themes/plots, factional shifts, attention to mecha action, and inclusion of franchise technology definitely make it still feel like a Gundam series to me. There just aren't a lot of mecha series/franchises that go the extra mile like Gundam does. The mix is strange, and yes it maybe has parallels to the director's non-Gundam works, but there really aren't mecha series outside of Gundam you can easily compare this show to overall. G-Gundam, Gundam Wing, and Gundam X form a triad of Gundam series in my mind in terms of how they put an emphasis on how the characters exist in their world both as pilots but also as capable people dealing with complex problems outside of their machines, and the writing emphasizes this. Such a great era of Gundam. (By the way, I think the blu-rays stripped this extra off, but the Bandai DVD release has digital director notes for the episodes where he talks about how episodes connect to old cinema. Very interesting stuff.) Evangelion: I love the art design, direction, and mysterious apocalyptic story in Evangelion, but I've never fully loved the show. I like it, I just don't love it. I may need to rewatch it again. The kinda-sorta related RahXephon always clicked with me more. I liked the tone of the first two Rebuild movies better overall, but I wasn't satisfied with how they became more rushed and scatterbrained as they went on, and I found myself missing some of the iconic moments of the original TV series. It will be interesting to see if it still resonates with new viewers on a large scale. And if so, why would you think that is when other celebrated things like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and even Cowboy Bebop have gotten more mixed reactions from newer anime fans, it seems. Cowboy Bebop Live-Action: The trend of live-action anime doesn't make sense to me for all the reasons you mentioned and more. It sort of downplays the idea that animation can ever be taken as seriously on the same level as live-action. I don't have a lot of expectations for this, but I can see why they're doing it. Still, one key note that I feel you left out: The writing on the original Cowboy Bebop was not all from Japan; I remember seeing/hearing that some (maybe even a lot) of the iconic dialogue was quite reworked/embellished/adlibbed by the American ADR team, which as I recall, impressed the original creators. |
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