A couple of OP’s I like :3

Samurai Champloo is really great, much thanks to the music. The same goes for the OP, obviously.

I haven’t seen more than a couple of episodes of Cowboy Bebop. But it was enough to decide that the OP was great.

I love Ghost in the Shell, both the movies and the series. The song is so beautiful

Serial Experiments Lain’s OP immediately sets the mood for the series. Laid-back but still weirdly unsettling.

That’s all for this post

Live action anime/manga movies. What do you think ’bout ‘em? Sometimes I like them, since they’re so cheesy it’s funny. I wonder if there are any actually good ones.

DMC
The anime is short and hilarious. So is the movie. But the anime still pwns it. Watch the anime if you haven’t. It’s awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7Fk1yDNrl8

Death Note
I liked the anime, and the manga. Haven’t watched the movies yet, tho, but you gotta admit Ryuk looks fucking sweet (not seen in that trailer, tho).

Uzumaki
The manga was friggin’ sweet, but I laughed my way though parts of the movie. They manage to make interesting things with the directing. Music is sweet to. And Shuichi is so ugly in this >:D

Tomie
I haven’t watched this one either, since I haven’t finished the manga yet. The manga (by the guy behind Uzumaki) isn’t nearly close to as good as the author’s other works, but still decent. I’ve heard the movie sucks though.

What’s your thoughts on this?

While we’re on the subject of corny stuff, I’ve started watching Kamen Rider W. It’s hilarious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSjmpITEqR4

“T-REXU!”

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

That should be all I need to say for everyone to get an instant anime-boner, but I guess I’ll elaborate.

Durarara!! throws you right into the world of Ikebukuro, a commercial and entertainment district of Tokyo, and into a crazy and chaotic story often involving several different characters plotlines intersecting with that of main character Mikado Ryūgamine, who’s transferred to a school there.

Of course, everything spirals out of control, and pretty soon we’re introduced to a wide array of characters covering every spectrum of the weird-rainbow, perhaps most notable of all is the “Black Rider”, a head-less motorcyclist rumored to be the Grim Reaper.

Even the OP is good, as soon as the show starts it grabs you by your waist and pile-drives you into the gigantic smörgåsbord of awesome that is Durarara!! The animations, drawings and overall aesthetics are great, and another thing that immediately strikes you is how the music is both original for being a sound-track for an anime, and really fitting. Everything sounds sort-of like something your grandpa listens to, and when they meet different characters the music takes a turn into a direction that fits said characters the best. When the main characters run into a russian guy (who’s black. The fact that he’s coloured seems to be a big thing for the Japanese main character.) the music takes a turn towards classic Russian music.

When you’re past your first impression the feeling of awesome is still there, the ultimate proof of a good anime with a solid and interesting plot development. I hope it will stay just as awesome all the way and I will certainly follow this one.

The only bad thing is the ending song, but hey, it made me laugh.

Sorry for being inactive the last couple of weeks. I recently started out at a new school and have almost no time to either watch or write about anime.

I’m just going to write about an old favourite of mine, and hopefully introduce some lost souls to an awesome anime, but this will be a short post.

Anyway. Samurai Champloo, from the creators of Cowboy Bebop, was released in 2004. It’s yet another samurai anime, but really awesome. It takes place during the Edo era, but is deliberately filled with historical errors. The art is beautiful and the soundtrack consists mostly of hip hop.

Mash these things together with a highly skilled team of developers and you get a great anime. The fighting scenes are fast and slick, the characters are cliché, but they work. I’m not really sure how, but this anime manages to stick out and has become one of those experiences I keep close to my heart.

It’s simply awesome. In every kind of way.

The amazing OP:

Haven’t seen all that many episodes yet, though. I completely forgot which day it was. : P

Anyway.

IN A NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE: COMPUTERS! E-MAILS FROM DEAD PEOPLE! FEMALE MAIN CHARACTERS! SOME WEIRD-ASS SHIT! BLOOD! THE WIRED!

Sound cliché to you?

It is, in a way. At the same time, it isn’t, thanks to the way the anime does things. In a goddamn awesome way, that is. Awesome music, weird flashing stuff, dreamy, weird parts that are… dreamy and weird. Basically, it’s just the summary that makes it sound like your averege, cliché sci-fi.

I like how it cuts from sequences with a distant feeling to become a normal anime about a girl in a classroom. How the music fits so perfectly. How you’re served just the right amount of information.

You probably get what I’m talking about.

What I like most is how Serial Experiments Lain is not afraid of taking things slowly, pacing on at about the same speed as a sleep-walker, slowly covering us with blankets of image and sound. Giving us moods, feelings. Giving us hints of things to come, hints of a deeper world than the anime manages to cover.

Character relations start to get more and more tense and break. And even though Lain isn’t bullied or anything, there’s always the feeling that in her heart, she’s all alone.

Also: Bear Pyjamas.

Awesome.

I’ve heard that Akira is a pretty unknown movie in Japan, and that it hit so big in the west because adult animations were all but non-existent. The truth of this statement however, I do not know, but I don’t doubt it to be true. Akira is neither the best nor the smartest flick out there. It’s just a sci-fi anime adaption of a sci-fi manga. It’s just doing what it does best; delivering a cool sci-fi/action movie. And it’s really good at it.

Everything in the movie is hand-drawn and absolutely gorgeous. It gives a feel to the movie that I miss in newer animes, everything feels alive and in constant motion. The music is great too, Akira’s blessed with one of the best anime soundtracks of all time, I especially like the one where most of the music is based around a man panting heavily. It sets the mood immediately, delivering an eerie feeling of panic.

The story is pretty thin, the characters are pretty shallow, you don’t really care about the people in the movie. But you don’t care, because everything that happens is so awesome. And most movies those days had pretty shallow plots and portrayals, which is why I find many old movies pretty overrated as I usually think of them in the same terms as newer ones.

Akira is pure entertainment, plain and simple. It’s not too deep (even though it’s trying to at some points), it’s not particularly complicated, it’s just an exploding barrel of anime fun, leaping out and biting you in the face, leaving you with a sensation of awesome.

Good enough for me.

Just beautiful.

In a not-too-distant future, humanity has ruined most of the world. Divided into fractions controlled by rich Nobles they do their best to lead happy lives crawling in the dirt. They wage wars for more power, unable to learn from past mistakes. They steal, they hurt, they kill.

And in their midsts are the wolves. Acting as humans through illusions they fight for their survival, the humans thinking they’re extinct. Myths. And then one wolf picks up the scent of a flower, knowing that said flower will somehow point him in the direction of Paradise. And he’s prepared to sacrifice everything to get there, just because he doesn’t have anything to lose.

Setting out on his journey to find the flower, to find Paradise, he comes across new friends, new enemies and new wonders. Holding his head high he’s prepared to pay the ultimate price to keep on living as a wolf, as a hunter. Not prey.

And he knows, that according to prophecies, the world will end once he finds it. But he couldn’t care less about the world. The world’s controlled by filthy humans, in Paradise the wolves reign supreme.

Wolf’s Rain is fantastic.

‘Nuf said.

I haven’t really been watching alot of anime the last couple of days, but fear not! In this post I’ll discuss three of my favourite anime openings.

As some of you may have noticed from my earlier posts, music is really important to me. I live and breathe music. It makes me feel good. I will now give you three of my favourite anime openings. The headings are links to the videos, so clickety-click at ‘em, ok?

Lilium

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BMMAUNlNGw

Lilium is from a show called Elfen Lied, which is a show that I really enjoyed. But we’re not supposed to talk about the show here now, are we? The song is in latin, and it’s fucking beautiful. The visuals make a good companion to the music without taking away too much focus. The only negative aspect of this opening is the bad pronunciation of the latin words… But hey, it’s an anime. At least it isn’t engrish.

Dream Island Obsessional Park

Paranoia Agent is a weird show, with a just as weird OP. Crazy singing, crazy lyrics, crazy people, people falling, a hidden silhouette of Jesus in a mushroom cloud, this OP’s got everything and I love it. There’s hidden symbolism and there’s symbolism that’s about as subtle as a freight train. And above all; it’s disconcerting as hell.

Girl in Byakkoya

These are the opening credits for the movie Paprika, and they’re the most awesome thing ever. The audio and video combine to create something perfect, that immediatley sets the dreamy tone that’s there through the whole movie. It succeeds in everything!

So, these are three of my favourites. Please, share three of yours

When the movie was released in Japan, it was to a small number of theatres. Not much advertising took place. But it did get great reviews and it’s reputation grew until the theatres were literally full. There were even people standing to watch the film, since there were no seats left.

This movie is a sequel-of-sorts to the novel, there are many references to the original which has left many viewers with the wildest of plot-theories, all of them nonsense because they didn’t know that this is a sequel. I haven’t read the book either, just knowing that this is the sequel is enough to make it a great stand-alone.

The girl who leapt through time is about a girl leaping through time. Duh. She discovers her ability during a near death-experience and then starts abusing it for her own gains. TGWLTT is obviously meant to be some kind of chick-flick, but fails at achieving this since TGWLTT doesn’t suck. Instead, we’re served an awesome time-travelling story, with focus on characters rather than time travels, neat animations and functioning music. It is somewhat fun at times but not really as sad or gripping as it tries to be. There are a lot of plot details left to you to think about and you’re left in the dark on a lot of things, but in a good way since this gives the movie a kind of depth and mystique.

I didn’t think that it was quite as incredible as it’s been made out to be, mainly because I expected some kind of twisting philosophical flick, rather than a romance. The music wasn’t all that great, but it was all-right, it’s mostly sweet J-pop and stuff like that, with cheesy lyrics and melodies. The voice actors had their flaws (the laughs!) but were good all-around. So, even though I expected something completely different, it worked out all right. I liked it and I would recommend watching it to most of you guys.

Thriller Restaurant, one-word review:

mediocre.

Press “Read the full story” for the long version.

Long version:

Mediocre.

There’s not much more to say. This anime is the embodiment of something that you simply can’t care about. In any way possible. The introduction is kinda funny, then it turns out to be the anime version of those horror story-collections for children. It just doesn’t manage to come across as anything but mediocre. The music is mediocre, the drawings are mediocre, the stories are mediocre. The animation, the voices, the everything.

Writing about this anime is like watching a bland, grey wall and then try to come up with something interesting about it.

There just isn’t anything at all that makes you go “oh, that’s new” or “oh, that’s funny” or even “oh” (except the introduction).

Watching Thriller Restaurant is like eating bland noodles. It’s not disgusting but it’s not good either. It’s just bland and plain boring.

I can’t even manage to figure out what the purpose of this anime is. Is it trying to scare me? Is it trying to be funny? I honestly couldn’t tell most of the time.

Watching Thriller Restaurant is like watching a stamp-collector desperately trying to come of as a genuinely interesting person.

Watching Thriller Restaurant is like watching one of those school plays kids set up, but it’s not your kids, they’re somebody else’s and you JUST DON’T GIVE A SHIT.

I mean, the depth of the characters is non-existent. There’s a guy from Europe, a girl with glasses and some goth/emo chick. That’s all there is to them. Nothing more. Nothing. Just… mediocrity.

Watching Thriller Restaurant is like playing Solitaire on your computer while waiting for something fun to happen.

The jokes (if they are jokes) are not funny. The scares (if they are scares) are not scary.

Watching Thriller Restaurant is like playing poker without money in the pot.

You just don’t give a shit.