Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - The Least Essential Anime
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Apollo-kun
 Posts: 1213 Location: City 7, Macross 7 |
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Oh, but Mike, you forgot "Harmageddon", a show that, as a teen, I should've listened to my elders about. One of the worst excuses to spend 2+ hours of your time I can imagine, it's a movie that I wish could forget.
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gerbilx
Posts: 138 |
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Have you seen Advent Children Complete? The added scenes make the story considerably more sensible.
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mastertr
Posts: 70 |
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Can't forget Mars of Destruction, which is still to this day, the worst OVA I have ever seen.
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Kicksville
 Posts: 1245 |
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I was just thinking about Cybernetics Guardian again, thanks to happening upon the soundtrack by TRASH GANG. It's as great as it sounds ("I CAHNT GET it ENUFF").
...also hey I like Legend of the Crystals. ._. Then again, the only Final Fantasy game I really like is Tactics, so... |
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trunkschan90
 Posts: 593 Location: California |
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Soar High! Isami was a fun anime for me, so I was sad when no more episodes were released
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Judge Of Toyama
 Posts: 122 |
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I actually enjoyed Trouble Chocolate and Psychic Academy
I think Urda should on the list. I couldn't get past the animation. Also I've tried to watch Virus Buster Serge twice now and have not made past the 4th episode. Maybe third times the charm. |
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Ushio
Posts: 635 |
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I've been an anime fan since 1991 when Akira aired on BBC2 and still all the anime I saw back then is still ingrained in my memory. Guyver a 12 part ova released at £5.99 an episode, Dominion Tank police, Bubblegum crisis and many other ova's released on VHS at the time.
New anime on the other hand is instantly forgotten I saw Madoka but I honestly can't remeber a thing about it. The reason is simple there is too much easily accessable media nowadays. Who really rewatches anything anymore and gets into a show like we did once before? |
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nargun
Posts: 930 |
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Didn't Tattoon Master get a US release?
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Harsh words, perhaps. Whilst it is only proper to echo your sentiments regarding the principle villain of Submarine 707R, the OVA nevertheless provides a nautical adventure worthy of the reasonable price tag it typically bears. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4788 |
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Probably not. At least to me, that show plummeted right past So Bad It's Good to So Bad It's Horrible. But in a strange masochistic sense, that's exactly why I found it hilarious to watch. It just kept finding new ways to get worse, all the way up to the utterly-incomprehensible ending. It'd probably make for one hell of a drinking game, at least. 
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Surrender Artist
 Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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There's something appealing about easily forgotten obscura. These aren't really things that I'd care to watch, but there's some interest in just gawking in disbelief at their having been released at all. I'd swear that I've seen the case for Jewel BEM Hunter Lime. I probably passed it by back in the days when Suncoast video had a generous, dedicated animation section... and existed. I've had that experience with Cybernetics Guardian and Final Fantasy Unlimited too. Final Fantasy Unlimited has some little bit of notoriety for being lousy.
Are any of the 161 people who claim to have seen Voogie's Angel reading this? I don't even know how I found out about it. I've never seen it. It just exists as an encyclopedia entry to me, which I'd wager makes it more memorable than it would be if I had in fact seen it. How about the 45 people who admit to having seen Wanna Be's? I'm one of you, although I can't say why (I made weird choices when I was in high school). The only other person I whom I've heard mention it is Daryl Surat and that was just in passing during an episode of Anime World order. It's a weird little OVA about some sort of weird mad science experiment having something to do with poison dart frogs being performed on female professional wrestlers, which sounds like the plot for a pretty good episode of the The Venture Bros., but a strange OVA. As a point of interest, it was written by Toshimichi Suzuki, who did much of the creative work for Bubblegum Crisis and was involved in, Oh joy!, the later Gall Force OVAs. I almost wish that I hadn't thrown my old Central Park Media videocassette away; thinking about it again gives me a perversely nostalgic curiosity to see what the Hell it was like again. Something that most people have likely forgotten is The Fuccons. It's live action rather than a cartoon, although the live action in question involves mannequins, but it was released by ADV and is in a similar category, if not the same one, as the stuff in the column. I was reminded of it when I saw the first volume for sale at $2.99 yesterday at an FYE that I happened to visit (bringing my lifetime visits to FYE up to 3!). I almost bought it just to see if it was weirdly good or weirdly bad, but I suspect that the praying mantis that landed on my the brim of my hat in the parking lot of the ice cream shop provided more entertainment than it would have, especially the five minutes it took for me to coax it off. Last edited by Surrender Artist on Mon Mar 26, 2012 11:16 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Charred Knight
 Posts: 3085 |
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Reading this column makes me remember a lot of these reviews on Anime Jump, especially Submarine 707R because of the running gag with the letter R.
I never did understand what Squaresoft found so hard about making a Final Fantasy anime, simply make it like you do the games, you don't make a game with one useful player character, so why would you make an anime where 3/4th of your main cast can't fight. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2665 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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It actually got two releases. ADV first did it on VHS, both dubbed and subbed, back in the late-90s and the Media Blasters gave it a dual-audio DVD release in the mid-2000s. As for the article, that's a really nice list, Mike. Thankfully, not one of the titles Make covered have been reviewed on my blog, which focuses on obscure anime, and thankfully I don't think I'll ever have to review any of them... Well, Borgman would be cool to check out, as I hear that it really is a good TV series. As for Jewel Hunter BEM Lime, it must have struck a chord with the guys at Sentai Filmworks, as that was actually announced as one of the company's first licenses... Only to never come out. Babel II - Beyond Infinity, from what I saw, really wasn't anything special but I did see Shin Seiki Den Mars (a.k.a Mars, The Terminator), and I thought it was fairly enjoyable of a watch. Apparently even that version of Mars wasn't exactly accurate to Yokoyama's original manga, though. And Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals is a fun anime to watch. True, it's not much more than that and Rintaro really didn't need to give Final Fantasy a multitude of panty shots, but I found Legend of the Crystals a fun ride. |
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Melanchthon
 Posts: 550 Location: Northwest from Here |
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Okay, this thread is now my new list of must watch shows. The real question will be which is harder, watching these or finding them in the first place?
The only show on Mike Toole's list I've seen is Trouble Chocolate. I believe his description was too kind. There are a couple of R1 releases that deserve consideration. The first is Sorcerer on the Rocks, which managed to be even worse than it's parent story, Sorcerer Hunters. In the original Sorcerers, female on male sexual abuse is played for laughs, which is common, if politically incorrect. On Sorcerer on the Rocks, it's male on female sexual abuse, which isn't funny anyway you spin it. When someone like me is uncomfortable with the attempts at comedy, there is a problem here. Magical Play. If there was a point, I didn't get it. This was an early internet release, so the animation is crap, and the jokes aren't particularly original and are done better in other shows. While it paved the way for shows like Hetalia to be made, I really don't know why ADV licensed it, unless it was really popular back in 2001. (Trivia: The same voice actress that did Queen Purilun also did Astarotte's Mom in her eponymous series. And one day Astarotte's Toy will be making an Least Essential List somewhere. It's the Circle of Liiiiiiifee). Here's two that never made it to America, which we can count our blessings for. Dragon's Heaven. What stands out to me is a very boring live-action bit where a bunch Japanese guys show off their animatronic mecha they built in a garage or something. I skipped through most of it, but I was left with the impression that the OVA was made simply to help fund their mecha building hobby. The anime itself was a very generic good mecha vs evil mecha battle, but some of the animation styles were pretty unique. The director, Kobayashi Makoto, was also the "brains" (and I use the term loosely) behind 6 Angels, so that should explain things. Kanon (2002). Sometimes, there is a reason for a remake. The original Kanon TV anime was a complete disaster of a show, with some of the worst animation seen in any anime series. There wasn't any time spent on the plot, and the show raced from one flag to the next trying to fit everything into a 13 episode series. Also, they made Yuuichi into a total asshole. I can only hope that after the 2006 version was made, the master tapes of the 2002 version were buried in a landfill outside of Vegas, next to all those unsold E.T Atari games. |
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The King of Harts
 Posts: 6712 Location: Mount Crawford, Virginia |
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I almost bought Trouble Chocolate last year. Movietronix had a listing on ebay of all 5 volumes for $20, but the little voice in my head kept telling me to skip it. Later on I had to purge my "To Buy" list because it was too big, and I ran across that, forgot what it was, looked it up, and immediately removed it from the list. It sounded so awful that it made me wonder the hell I was thinking when I said "Hey, that sounds neat! I'll consider checking that out!" I actually say that a lot nowadays when I think about it...
One of my favorite things to do every now and again is look at the list of licenses by ADV, Geneon, CPM, and Media Blasters to see what obscure (or not-so-obscure) OVA grabs my attention. Sometimes I find gems like Kite and Dragon Half, stinkers like Sakura Diaries and Maze, or, since the topic is easily forgettables, non-essentials like Demon Fighter Kocho and Buttobi CPU, which aren't bad, but aren't worth a memory cell either. I don't know what it is, but I really love those non-essentials a lot, definitely more than I should. I think it's because I'm a young (21), new-ish fan (4 years) and looking at anime's past is very intriguing to me. Demon Fighter Kocho in particular is so interesting in that it's so mediocre. I actually think I like the extras more than the show, but the show wasn't...bad. It has some nice one liners, a decent dub, and OK fanservice, but I'll never watch the show again, maybe the extras.
I actually rewatch shows a lot. Like, a whole lot. I said that I've only been watching anime for about 4 years, but I've seen nearly 300 pieces (TV, OVA, movies, specials, and ONAs) and rewatched tons a stuff many, many times. Off the top of my head, I've seen Haruhi 7 times, TTGL 4 times, Fumoffu 6 times, Lucky Star 3 times, and the list just goes on. What's the point in having a huge collection if you're not gonna watch some of the stuff again eventually? |
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