Forum - View topicShelf Life - From Me to Yu
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bemused Bohemian
Posts: 404 Location: central Mizzou (Moral Oralville) |
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Finally, finally plugged in the blu-ray dvd player given me as a birthday gift and chose Redline to be the el primo anime show that breaks it in. For the first 20 minutes I had second thoughts about this show. It appeared to be overloved by posters who saw it much earlier and maybe my getting both the US and Japanese versions sight unseen might have been collector error.
I'm glad I stuck it out. I found myself entranced halfway through all the way to the end. I loved watching the exagerrated facial expressions, artful display of both dentristry and eyewear, overbearing macho-machismo of testerone run amuck. As far as fantasy went, I felt Redline delivered, in spades. Japanese animation gave me what I wanted: the entertainment of watching rugged individualists (aka fools) overcome great odds to achieve a goal no matter how contrived. Ah, anime. This show embodied on 2-D the same spirit 1 could enjoy when viewing a Nascar race from a dirigible. I only wish our local guy, Carl Edwards, had been animated in contention for that extraterrestial ultimate win instead of an Elvis Presley impersonator. Good call, Erin. I agree with you about a show for a change. |
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TarsTarkas
Posts: 5912 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Feel your pain, the only anime I have gotten my dad to watch was the remake of Appleseed. Nothing since. |
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asimpson2006
Posts: 3151 Location: USA |
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Well Indy cars do not just drive on ovals they also drive on road courses and street circuits, but it seems like if I met your dad we would have some disagreement since I do not have any interest in drag racing any more and I love Indy cars. Having watched Redline twice now, while it is an enjoyable movie I am going to say that it is the second coming of Jesus or anything. It is not a terrible movie by any means at all and it has its share of problems but that does not take away from the overall experience. I cannot saw that I feel bad about buying the YYH movie and OVA set since I did enjoy the "movie" but I have not watched the OVA parts yet though I will in the near future. |
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erinfinnegan
ANN Columnist
Posts: 598 |
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Whoa whoa whoa, how was Wings of Honneamise "banal"?
I don't mind being called a poster.
That's a better turn-of-phrase than I managed in my review. I like it for the same reasons.
I think the director would be proud to hear you say that! That's what he was going for (except the Elvis thing...).
Now I kinda wonder what anime that you love that I hate, or the reverse. How is it our tastes cross over for Redline, but not other titles? |
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Ingraman
Posts: 1082 |
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I was wondering how many posts were going to go by before someone commented about Wings of H. ^^; I definitely don't think of it as an "animation demo," either... I haven't seen more than a handful of pictures from Dead Leaves, so I can't comment on that one. |
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tcdelaney
Posts: 169 Location: Mittagong, NSW, Australia |
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I suspect most people were like me ... felt that if eyeresist couldn't appreciate WoH then nothing I could contribute would convince him/her otherwise and I should just ignore it. |
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Cheesecracker
Posts: 240 |
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I don't think its a dumb reason. A raging battle of opinions(from the lovers/haters or just plain never-wrongs/wanna-be-right-ers playing "dueling blind-spots") gets to the point that it becomes part of the context of the piece. It's kind of like eating a burger thru the wrapper. Sounds like you want to let it stand on it's own merits. Not a bad thing. I found I enjoy things a lot more without the pressure of people who think these relatively mundane decisions make some grand statement of me as a whole. Mac or PC, PlayStation or X Box or Nintendo. You'd think they own stock in the company( more likely it's just the "power by proxy" effect from attaching oneself to something larger than oneself). |
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eyeresist
Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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I think "See my review on ANN" is the quickest, most effective answer to this. I am aware that it's a controversial opinion. BTW, I received a lovely pm about Redline from a forumite today, full of swears and comments about my mother. Now I know what it's like to be an ANN columnist |
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erinfinnegan
ANN Columnist
Posts: 598 |
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Is there a link somewhere...? Unless you're "T Strife" or Theron Martin. |
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Surrender Artist
Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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I believe the one that may be found on his MyAnime list. Here, I shall endeavor to give satisfaction:
I'd be inclined to disagree, but my memory of this film is very faint because, well, let me put is this way: the last time that saw it was when I rented it on videocassette from a Blockbuster Video. Last edited by Surrender Artist on Wed Feb 01, 2012 9:47 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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eyeresist
Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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You are correct, sir/madam. It's not the most eloquent of reviews, but I tried to make my viewpoint clear. And please remember, everyone, it's only an opinion! |
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erinfinnegan
ANN Columnist
Posts: 598 |
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I hardly think that any film that attempts a pretentious art statement could be considered "banal". Just to make sure I also looked up a definition of banal... "so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring" according to my dictionary widget. I think the final montage is not obvious or boring, although it does employ the outdated "intellectual montage" filmmaking technique. Noah and I fondly recount Wings of Honneamise in our 13th podcast, with poor audio quality as it pre-dates our current microphones. The point of the ending is not to dismiss the hero's personal narrative, but to highlight that he's some kind of "every man". The rape scene is a big topic, but Noah theorizes that it's to show the protagonist is deeply flawed. Seeing Honneamise thrown out in the same breath as "Dead Leaves" and "banal" was too much for me. Dead Leaves really was all style and no substance. In the DVD extra the director says "Please let your brain go transparent" to an audience before a live screening of the film. By contrast, I suspect the creators of Honneamise wanted you to think really hard about the film. |
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Ingraman
Posts: 1082 |
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I think that eyeresis should talk to Carl Horn about Wings of Honneamise. ^_^ |
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eyeresist
Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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I used "banal" in the sense of "dull, uninspired, without great significance". My argument is that while the sequence pretends to be a thematic culmination of the story, it doesn't succeed in a way bearing up to intellectual analysis. OTOH the sequence does achieve a kind of poetic power, which, however, I would argue is fatally disconnected from the preceding contents of the film. By "disconnected" I mean, the montage has a generalised "This is Humanity" message, but the preceding film has been very much concerned with individuals and incidents (this specificity reinforced by the high detail of the animation). If the main body of the film had at some point overtly addressed the theme of 'the ambitions of the individual' versus 'the broad growth of society', then I think the montage would have been organically connected to the main narrative, and the whole thing would have worked more effectively. My first objection to the rape scene is that it comes out of nowhere, doesn't seem to relate to what we have learned of the character so far, and seems unconnected to any "character journey". My second, greater objection is to the heroine's ridiculous response to his apology. Was it a misguided attempt at comedy, or a sign of the writer's total failure to understand human beings? |
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Ingraman
Posts: 1082 |
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I went Google searching for some words about the rape scene from Carl Horn, and found this post to rec.arts.anime from long, long ago. This post looks pretty good, too. Heck, there's even this post from Neil Nadelman that explains where the name 'Honneamise' comes from (within the story of the film). I'll call it quits with this post written by Carl Horn, replying to someone who said that it "was one of the worst films I've ever seen." I miss the days of rec.arts.anime... ;_; That was odd. I did my searching using Google Chrome, and had no problems, but when writing and then previewing this post with Firefox, I had to login/sign in with Google to see the posts that I linked to. Well, I hope that you read them. Carl's always had a way with words when it comes to Gainax productions, especially WoH and Evangelion... |
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