Movie Review: Evangelion: You Are (Not) Alone 1.01

I recently managed to get my hands on a DVD for this movie from Chong Hock and while I’m not quite an Evangelion fanboy, I did like the manga by Sadamoto Yoshiyuki enough to want to experience the other incarnations of the original anime. I myself have been unable to find a way to watch the original anime series but I have watched the End of Evangelion movies in their RAW format for which I’m not sure whether or not would have been more disturbing had I understood the terminology heavy parts. It runs a reasonable 98 minutes for a movie of this fashion.

First of all I need to point out the reason for the title of the movie. I very much lack skill in the field of sarcasm so I honestly cannot tell if that (Not) is meant to be played straight or subverted but I do know the reason for the 1.01 numbering. Most fans should know that the 4 remake movies are to be thematically title “You XXX (Not) YYY 1.0/2.0/3.0/4.0” but there’s an extra bit to that. You see, GAINAX loves their remakes. They love them enough to make 3 versions of the same movie only to make the latest version even more visually spectacular than the last. To my understanding of this particular Sankaku Complex article, 1.0 is the movie shown at the cinema, 1.01 is the first DVD release and 1.11 is the re-remastered release and they altered scenes in each release despite the story content being the same. It’s basically a downgraded version of the Endless Eight debacle but in this case the changes might very well be worth it considering the excellent action scenes. What’s my take on it? I wish that my source had 1.11 in stock instead of 1.01.

Now, onto the contents of the movie itself. I really have to say that the first 10 minutes of the movie were a whirlwind intro with pacing that the word “rushed” would only begin to describe it. I’m comparing this to my experience watching the first EoE movie which was more disjointed than rushed which it still was. It doesn’t really get better in terms of pacing after that but the next few minutes of Unit 01 fighting the fourth angel and going berserk was an absolute adrenaline rush. This particular scenes had an excellent blend of action, mind screw and music. Unfortunately, that was the best fight in the movie and despite it being an excellent way to capture the viewer’s attention I wished they had upped the Holy Shit! factor on the following fights. It’s not that they weren’t great but you really shouldn’t throw out the best part at the beginning of the movie.

After that first fight, they padded it with scenes of Shinji adapting to his new environment and his role in the survival of the human race. I vaguely remembered this part from the manga and assuming that these scenes were taken straight from the anime then nothing significantly different was done here except for maybe the scene where Shinji meets the penguin which I found hilarious in this incarnation. I also thought that Misato was harsher and more cynical in these scenes than in the manga though. The actual struggle between unit 01 and the fifth angel lacked intensity of the first fight in the movie so it really wasn’t very impressive. This part of the movie was well done though thanks to the bits of mind screw they put in here. The Eva’s glove armor melting off to display human hands underneath and Shinji’s desperation really worked wonders for the fight. The former was quite easy to miss in the manga by the way while the latter is better animated.

I pretty much glossed over the next part up till the coming of the 6th angel since I remembered this part of the story from the manga quite well so I have nothing in particular to say about it. The appearance of the 6th angel was pure brilliance though. It’s hard not look on in absolute fascination and/or abject horror when it hypnotisingly changes shape and begins melting away everything in the way of its wave motion cannon. Between this and their rematch it was very much the a good deal of development between Shinji's relationship with Rei. The sniping scene was very much the same as in the manga except for how Shinji bails Rei's entry plug out ofunit 00. Those squelching sounds when Shinji pried open the back hatch with his progressive knife were rather unnerving albeit effective. The movie ends right after he rescues Rei from the entry plug followed by a teaser of Kaoru on the moon. Not just any moon but the blood scarred moon from End of Evangelion, a total mind screw to those who thought this was a simple remake.

There were some really interesting changes made in this movie alone. Lilith replacing Adam in Terminal Dogma and Adam and Kaoru being on End of Evangelion's scarred moon are indicate that the story will not end the same way in this universe. I'm thinking that these movies might be inspired by the famed Re-Take doujin which managed to find a way to tie in all these evangelion spin-off works while adding onto the original ending. The second movie's trailer show us a new character and eva unit so that means this movie is a slow start to what seems to be an incredible sequel to the series. I'm eagerly anticipating the next movie which I hope will be soon.

New Banners!

I have made some candidates for a new banner but I haven't decided which one I should use. I have one or two that I particularly but still not sure as to whether or not they match my blog. If I figure out how to get the blogger HTML to let me set up my background image in a certain way then I'll be making a new background to match the banner. This poll won't actually decide which one I'll pick but it'll help my choice so I'll value your input. Click for full size - 1280x300px.

Banner 1

Banner 2

Banner 3

Banner 4

Banner 5

Thanks for your input!

Manga Review: Zansho

Title: Zansho
Author: Mohiroh Kitoh
Release: Onsehots
Status: Finished
Genre: Seinen, Slice of Life
Art: B
Originality: B
Story: B
Characters: B
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This is a collection of oneshots from various points in Mohiroh Kitoh’s career. It consists of stories set in daily life touching upon various issues in peoples’ lives. Unlike the rest of his works, these stories are nowhere near as morbid or depressing as the usual stuff he comes up with. There are one or two bits involving some dark issues but they come off as stories of getting over the past and moving on. In this work you can actually see how his art evolves from his early days into his current style since it takes several oneshots from different times so it proves to be an interesting read for his fans.

Manga Review: Artist Acro

Title: Artist Acro
Author: Ato Sakurai
Release: Weekly
Status: Finished
Genre: Shonen, Fantasy, Adventure
Art: B
Originality: S
Story: B
Characters: B
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This is set in a world where people with special abilities are called Artists who use them to create splendidly magical works of surreal Art. The main character is a young kid with ability to turn anything into clay ready to be shaped and his dream is to create a city full of Art. Between the walls of moving fire and portraits made of coins, these are just the kind of works of art that I’d like to see. This manga has plenty of creativity to augment the usual shonen fair and hopefully it's had enough time to show itself off in all of its five volumes of publishing.

Manga Review: War Front on Spike Hills

Title: War Front on Spike Hills
Author: Ida Hiroto, Harada Munenori
Release: Monthly
Status: Finished
Genre: Seinen
Art: B
Originality: B
Story: B
Characters: S
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This about a trio of teenagers who are trying to make their way into one of the most prestigious universities in Japan but lack the qualifications to be accepted into it so they come up with a scheme to cheat their way in by stealing the answer sheets to the entrance exam. They are an insufferable maths genius, a ditzy chick and an aimless guy with a godlike talent for pickpocketing. The gold in this treasure chest of a manga lies with its characters and the gall they have for doing the things they do. I’m not much up for the story since I’ve seen quite a few big ploy plots done before but I can’t say I’ve seen one where a bunch of teenagers are trying to get their goal relying on so few resources. The characters have flaws that make it easy to sympathize with them and funny quirks that make their personalities memorable. On a side note, the art style really seems to resemble Kubo Tite’s style at times.

Manga Review: Dr. Ruuru

Title: Dr. Ruuru
Author: Maeda Risou
Release: Monthly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Shonen, Comedy
Art: A
Originality: A
Story: B
Characters: B
Humor: C
Action: B

Impression: This is the story of a young man infected with a disease called the Devil Flu and the intergalactic nurse that was sent to help him manage it. The Devil Flu affects the person’s surroundings based on their mood and could cause disasters if it’s not kept under proper control. I had to give this an A for originality due to the fact I could hardly believe someone would combine space aliens with a pseudo medical plot even though I’m not particularly interested in it. The characters and initial plot are okay for now but the humor suffers horribly from the puns. I can only imagine the translator’s anguish trying to come up with these painfully punny jokes. I never understood the Japanese sense of humor concerning puns but my guess is that the original raw script can’t be as painful as the translated ones so the international opinion will most likely diverge from the local opinion for this manga. I can only imagine masochists taking a liking to this manga for its cringeworthy jokes in it.

Manga Review: Chokotto Sister

Title: Chokotto Sister
Author: Zappa Go, Takeuchi Sakura
Release: Monthly
Status: Finished
Genre: Slice of Life
Art: A
Originality: A
Story: A
Characters: S
Humor: A
Action: B

Impression: This is the story of a young man living alone to attend college and the little girl he receives from Santa for Christmas because of the wish he made to have a little sister several years before. Apparently the reason for the lateness was because making a living human as a present took years of preparation which raises more questionable ethics about Santa to add to stalking and breaking into houses. To describe this manga in one word I’d have to call it “charming”. I’ve read some of Zappa Go’s other works as well and noticed that this mangaka is especially good at the characterisation aspect of storytelling. This story shines brightly thanks to his excellent characters and the storyline that builds up around their interactions with one another. This is an absolutely wonderful slice of life series that you really shouldn’t pass up on.

ReWritten Words Back Up Again

For those of you who are wondering what my other blog, ReWritten Words, is about, it's a separate blog for me to write stories that I come up with.

I have decided on 3 stories to write up for now and they are:

1) Interweb Intel
2) Phantom Genocide
3) Escaping Death

I have Interweb Intel's synopsis listed over there while the other two are new ideas that currently have my focus. I won't be posting them up in any particular order so whichever chapter of whichever story that gets updated depends on what I feel like writing. Hopefully I'll be able to pull this off without too much trouble.

Here's the link to the blog:

http://rewrittenwords.blogspot.com/

Manga Review: Onikirisama no Hakoirumusume

Title: Onikirisama no Hakoirumusume
Author: Uranku Akinobu
Release: Monthly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Slice of Life , Supernatural
Art: B
Originality: A
Story: B
Characters: A
Humor: A
Action: B

Impression: This is the story of a young boy who comes across a half demon girl sealed up in a box by his ancestor inside his store room and how she tries to adapt to modern to society. T he boy’s ancestor along with other demons he sealed are also awakened from a sealed sword during the demon girl’s initial attempt on the boy’s. I like how both the main characters are children in this one and how the manga’s main focus is on the girl’s adaptation to the modern world rather than a hunt for the awakened demons. The characters are lively and their antics add a youthful charm to manga and a lot of the humor is derived from this. Basically, this is a character driven manga that works like a Slice of Life story with supernatural elements thrown into it and it makes for a refreshing read if you’ve read plenty of supernatural themed shonen manga.

Manga Review: Dei Ecchi Ei

Title: Dei Ecchi Ei
Author: Yuuki Rin, Tanimura Marika
Release: Monthly
Status: Finished
Genre: Ecchi, Romance, Comedy
Art: B
Originality: B
Story: C
Characters: C
Humor: C
Action: C

Impression: This is a manga where a girl in love who by decree of the heavens has to make love to the saintly human reincarnation of Lucifer to prevent his awakening. She herself is a typical shy girl in love who is embarrassed just by the thought of doing the deed and even has to contend with the human incarnations of the 7 deadly sins that attempt to awaken the boy by committing sins. I am somewhat impressed by the fact that I read this from start to finish even though I had plenty of other series on my reading list but that was probably because I was intrigued by how Sloth would get the guy to commit the sin. The method wasn’t as intriguing as I thought it’d be but by then I was more than halfway into the manga so I just finished it off. The characters, plot and jokes are very uninspired with a lot of fanservice thrown for any number of reasons and the whole thing comes up as mediocre at best. Still, it seems that my friends enjoyed it so it most likely appeals to certain groups of people.

Manga Review: Kurosagi

Title: Kurosagi
Author: Kuromaru, Natsuhara Takeshi
Release: Weekly
Status: Finished
Genre: Seinen, Psychological
Art: B
Originality: A
Story: A
Characters: B
Humor: B
Action: A

Impression: This is the story of a young man who swindles other swindlers for the sake of his sense of justice and as part of his revenge. He calls himself the Kurosagi, the black swindler who feeds on Shirosagi, the white swindlers who feed on normal people. Frankly I quite like the way the main character handles his prey but the character himself is a bit of a bore. Sure there are bits of his background that make him interesting but when it comes to expressing his character on the pages it just doesn’t really feel sincere. Given the fact that guy is a swindler himself this ambigious representation of the character to the readers may be intentional on the author’s part but regardless of that it makes it hard to sympathize with the guy. In spite of that, this manga makes for a fascinating read thanks to the tricks the guy plays on the antagonists and doesn’t really suffer very much from the main character’s dull persona.

Movie Review: Sherlock Holmes

Today I’ll be writing up a review for the latest silver screen incarnation of the world famous super sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. I finally managed to watch it this Wednesday with my friends at the mall but was caught off guard when almost all of the guys in our year came along for the ride. It was just supposed to be a few of us at first but then things seemed to have picked up due to someone’s comment on Facebook. The downside to that was the ticket trouble we had since it we all part of one big group. Me and Khai kept having to move around during the previews because it was hard to keep track of which seats we bought.

Anyway, the movie features Robert Downey Junior of Iron Man fame as Sherlock Holmes with Jude Law playing his Watson and Guy Ritchie as the film’s director. Me being a fan of the books myself just had to go see this movie once I heard that “Tony Stark” was going to play Holmes even though the last time I read one of his stories was back in 2005. Also, the music was done by the genius Hans Zimmer who delivered an awesome soundtrack that fit perfectly with the setting, mood and pacing of the film.

The movie starts off with a chase scene of sorts through the darkness of London set to a track which I honestly thought would be titled “The game is afoot”(Actually called Discombobulate) since it really set the atmosphere for mischief and trouble with its fast paced rhythm. This leads up to a couple of excellent fight scenes where we get to see Holmes plan out a quick and silent slow-mo beatdown on some mook guarding an entrance and that both he and Watson are able to handle themselves even when outnumbered. This opening scene really set the tone for the movie taking characters who to much of society have generally been thinkers rather than men of action.

Unfortunately it is right from that point I knew how exactly the story would play out. The main plot was shamelessly straightforward for a Holmes story and lost focus to all the other excellent bits of the movie. Even the subplots seemed far more interesting than figuring out what Lord Blackwood was planning since it was the standard world domination plot with a fake wizard element added in. The little gimmicks that the villain used as “magic” were actually pretty easy to figure out though I admittedly was wrong on the crypt’s slab being detonated from the inside and that mercury was how he killed in the bath scene.

Of course, it’s not the story that we’re coming to the cinema to watch but rather the character himself. To this day, I have never seen anyone else play the character as properly as Downey has in this film. All of the TV shows, Movies and Cartoons featuring Holmes always played him as a humble genius with impeccable manners. The Holmes I followed through on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s adventures was actually a strange obsessive smartass(Not as obvious an ass as House but still an ass) of a coke addict whose remarks can come across as polite or offhandedly offensive depending on how you interpret what he says. Holmes was the guy who camped out alone in a cave(As far as I can remember it was in the Hound of the Baskervilles) to keep an eye on his suspects and did whatever he felt like doing to solve his cases. This Holmes is completely faithful to the original incarnation of the character with an added bit of badass sprayed onto him and his companion. I remembered Watson as the loyal best friend who held an admiration for Holmes’ intellect and that he wasn’t quite as brawny as Jude Law made him out to be in the film. Then again, Watson did serve his country in Afganistan prior to meeting Holmes and was a mean shot with that revolver of his so maybe it wasn’t all that far from the original.

What really tickled me about the film were the numerous references they make to the books and certain events in history. I really liked how they threw in Lestrade’s comment on how Holmes would have made an excellent criminal in another life. They even brought in Professor Moriarty as an annoyingly tempting sequel hook to which I’m hoping will end up with a trilogy of films. I noticed they didn’t throw in Holmes’ “Elementary my dear Watson…” phrase which he is famous for but that could be justified with how faithful they wanted this Holmes to be to the original since sources say that he never actually said that in the books. I do wonder if they were also trying to make a Guy Fawkes reference in there as well considering the fact that the story takes place during November and that parliament and barrels of gunpowder were featured but it seems that was just a red herring.

In the end, the movie played out more like an appetizer for the main course since the mystery and plot take a backseat to the excellent characters and all the action we get. I felt like they should have also given us a slow-mo fight scene at the end of the climax rather than a straight out confrontation since the two scenes we get to see that happen were simply marvelous. It was pretty damn smart of them to adapt the story somewhere in the middle rather than give us an origin story but it was also pretty damn stupid of them not deliver a mystery fitting of the master detective himself. They have a lot of things set up for the sequel as well with the secret organization, Moriarty, Irene Adler, Watson’s marriage and Mycroft Holmes prepped up for future use and I can only expect greater things from the sequel. All in all, the movie was a fun romp through London featuring a couple of badasses taking down an evil fake magician trying to take over the world that simply leaves you hungry for more. Serously, I’m starving for the sequel right now – it was just that awesome.

First Post of 2010: New Year Resolutions

First post of 2010 and I was thinking of starting things of with something that's not a review like a couple of pictures, videos and a list of resolutions for 2010. I'd been hoping to have a new layout ready for the new year as well but the current one works well enough.

My first try at typesetting my own translation which isn't half bad but seeing this here made me realize the last bubble's translation is a bit off. For those of you not reading the manga, this is from volume 7 chapter 199 and Konata & friends graduated from high school in volume 6. If they can make a 2nd K-On! anime why can't they make another Lucky Star?

A couple of motivationals I made while rereading Mahou Sensei Negima. My visits to 4chan on New Year's may have had something to do with their creation.

SUPERCELL's new song, "Goodbye Memories". Good but not their best.

Sherlock Holmes Soundtrack - Discombobulate. Loved the movie, loved the track and I hope you'll love my review tomorrow. The word means to add in confusion by the way.



K-On! Gundam 00 MAD I found on Nico Nico Charts last week. An odd but brilliant video.

As for my new year's resolutions I couldn't really come with any single one thing so I'll just put down this to do list:

1) Make a new Blog Layout
2) Write up and finish at least 5 stories for my other blog by the end of the year. I keep an ideas book and so far I have close to 100 individual story ideas out 173 plot ideas..

If you can actually read them from this LQ webcam image then you have too much free time.

3) Get better at knife throwing.
4) Remember to take the JLPT this year. I forgot all about the damn thing last year and right now I'm sure I can ace level 3.
5) Level up my photoshop skills.
6) Improve my left handed writing.
7) Make an AMV.
8) Learn another language, probably italian.
9) Upgrade my stealth skills... somehow...
10) Learn how to make a pizza from scratch
11) Extend my held breath time to 3 minutes. Currently 2 minutes at best.
12) Learn some roping skills.
13) Write more non-anime related articles on my blog.
14) Figure better ways of conciously controlling my involuntary body functions.

15) Smuggle a boomerang or BB gun into my possession.

That's it. Look forward to the Sherlock Holmes review tomorrow.