anime « Super Amazing Number One

12Jul/100

Getting the Race out of Airbender

Yup, Asian!

Whenever racism comes up there's obviously a lot of tension and emotion. As an American of Chinese heritage I luckily haven't had to deal with many overt acts of racism to my person. I grew up in the country-side where myself and a handful of others were the only Asians in my high school graduating class of around 400. Although I have a deep appreciation and respect for my heritage, it's important to note that a more authentic Chinese American wouldn't be completely off base in calling me a twinky or banana. Both are derogatory slang for someone who is "yellow on the outside; white on the inside".

With that disclaimer out of the way, I'd like to tackle the whole controversy surrounding the movie The Last Airbender. This is where people's emotions get involved. The movie is based on a beloved television series named Avatar: The Last Airbender. Even being a show targeted at young American children watching Nickelodeon, it borrowed heavily from several Asian cultures. The amazing thing, is that it did so with a healthy amount of respect. Caricatures are funny, but it becomes racist when it's the predominant form of entertainment featuring a particular people.

Tagged as: anime, racism, The Last Airbender Continue reading

2Jun/100

Anime Brief: Pumpkin Scissors Review

Pumpkin Scissors?

Pumpkin Scissors is a supernatural, alternate history, action, mystery, military show.

It starts off a little slow with encapsulated episodes. Slowly the information begins to connect between episodes to give the viewer an idea for what the big picture is. As the over-arching story unfolds the show's pace really picks up.

Unfortunately this apparently is one of those anime shows that isn't finished. I'm not spoiling much by saying the show ends on a fairly big, if not somewhat obvious reveal. Then there's a poorly tacked on ending.

Overall, Pumpkin Scissors is a lot of fun. Besides the ending, there are a few other quirks. The dub supervised by ADV has some odd accents. There's a mix of British, German, French, and American all rolled in. There are three main nations in play, but the accents aren't consistent between them. There are some recognizable voices but I definitely enjoyed the dub more than the original Japanese. In order to enjoy the show, you'll need to tolerate some magic mixed in with your German style soldiers that have been robbed of their Nazi symbols. It almost feels like they just wanted an excuse to use the word "jäger" a lot.

There's a theme of class struggle with commoners versus nobility. It's not a subtext or anything but obvious and part of the story. The main story is one of an illuminati style group pulling the strings of corruption from behind the scenes. Sadly this plot just gets running when the series ends at the 24th episode.

I definitely recommend the show if you like fun with a side of awesome.

Tagged as: anime, Pumpkin Scissors No Comments

27May/100

The Coloring Divide

I AM BETTER COLORED MAN

I've been watching anime and reading comics for less than half my life. Because of that I have no real attachment or sentimental memories of my childhood favorites. I can say that one of my favorite movies is The Last Starfighter; knowing it's a corny movie I can still say that I love it. As I play catch up with anime and comics, I'm finding that a lot of material that's recommended to me suffers from the same nostalgic memory lens. People remember things as being awesome, but under the light of fresh eyes, the ink starts to fade.

Take for example Gundam. More precisely the earlier Universal Century stuff. I'm probably going to get a lot of flak for criticizing it, but a lot of the art is pretty poor. It's quite possible that I'll never experience the adventures of Amuro Ray because I can't stand to watch it. Until I saw Cyborg 009, I thought I had issue with character designs. That was the first show that made me realize that wasn't the case. So what's the matter? I love mecha. I enjoy mecha so much that I'm willing to put up with awful plot lines and whiny characters (see Gundam Wing) to get my fix. It boiled down for me to a very shallow feature of the art.

I group anime and comics together here for a purely aesthetic reason: color. The two art mediums share a common production process:

Tagged as: anime, comics Continue reading

11Feb/100

East Meets West: Anime and Manga of American Superheroes

I'm Lovin It!

There's more to an art form than the medium itself. Some subject matter lends itself better to a particular style. I'm sure you could do a landscape of a spring meadow with a sculpture, but surely an impressionist watercolor is better suited. That's a bit of a stretch, as different painting styles really can't be segregated that way, and there's an exception to every rule. In the plastic arts (wikipedia) this may not be so clear cut. Even in literature, it becomes difficult to make divisions along the lines of content being paired with style.

Serialized illustrated work seems to have taken an interesting evolutionary path. Compare the American comic book and Japanese Manga industries. While there are standouts, the American comic book is often about a costumed super hero. Sometimes there are secret identities, but more recently they have taken a back seat to the main course: heroes vs. villains. Crazy fights in worldy and other places with amazing powers. All of this done in beautifully drawn and colored artwork. These are amazing to behold.

Tagged as: anime, Batman, Manga Continue reading

19Jan/100

Crunchyroll – Anime on Your iPhone

Crunchyroll

Wow. Thankfully I was checking out Anime 3000 while listening to my friends over at Reverse Thieves. A3K happens to be hosting their new podcast. Go give it a listen!

Anyway, this is an amazing development and I can't believe I hadn't heard about it till now. For those who don't know, Crunchyroll is a a legal streaming site for anime and live action drama from Asia(Japan and I think Korea). Before Netflix had their streaming, I used Crunchyroll a lot.

Tagged as: anime, crunchyroll Continue reading

22Feb/092

Macross Frontier

Ah, guilty pleasures. Macross Frontier is probably one of those shows that I shouldn't like. I just can't help myself. It's so layered in self references and cliche I don't think it'd be able to stand on it's own. Without giving too much away, they make references to the entire history of the Macross fiction, including the "Minmei Attack". I had forgotten that it was called that. That definitely got a laugh out of me.

The animation is wonderful, complete with nice blending of 2D and 3D images. For some reason with Anime, the recent improvements in quality go a long way in getting my attention. I find it difficult to get in to shows that predate computer assisted animation.

Anyway, with all the teenage love triangles, uncomfortable social situations, and reluctant heroes, I still enjoy the show. I've managed to get all the way to episode 15 and I can't wait to watch some more.

The space battles are awesome. Maybe I'm just a sucker for an awesome veritech fighter.

Tagged as: anime 2 Comments

9Feb/090

New York Comic Con 09

I attended the NYCC 09 this past weekend from February 6-8. There were a lot of awesome things there. Coming up I'll post more details about movies, comics, and games.

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