2 posts tagged “anime”
To be honest...I've been convalescing this week,
with nothing to do. Somehow I managed to get
through a bunch of the Nana series.... I'm on
episode 38 of 47[?]. It's addictive... and horribly
depressing. Yazawa spins her happy little yarn
about the fateful meeting of two girls, and you're
all innocently caught up in their happy lives....
rooting for the debut of the Black Stones and
praying for the success of Hachiko's wild
love-life....and then Yazawa drops some kind of bomb
on you and whoops, there goes any prospects for
happiness you ever had. Seriously I think I'll need
therapy to recover from this series.
I think it's an honorable pursuit on Yazawa Ai's part. She is working with the parts of heroes and heroines that the reader or viewer should hate. The petty and selfish parts of people...the possessive aspect of love and desire...the painful, greedy need to control and sculpt situations and circumstances. It's a bit of an emotional battle-royale, with everyone tearing each other to pieces. It is really difficult to tell who is right and who is wrong-- mostly it seems to be a mix on everyone's parts. My reaction is totally bipolar, I keep thinking "Grr! I hate you!" and then the next scene I'll be all "Well...you're actually pretty much ok, huh?"
And then it changes again....haha. And even though all
the characters are showing the despicable, most human
sides of themselves, at this point there's so much affection
and tenderness for all the characters that I really can't hate anyone,
even little Hachiko.
I can really sympathize with Ya-san, haha.... He's the wise, quiet,
caring one who everyone runs to when they want to hide from the world
and just cry their hearts out. Sometimes I feel like everyone does that
to me (although I would never be so audacious as to declare myself
any of the above listed adjectives)-- they come crying with their problems
and I sit and listen, even though I want to say "oi, you! I've got problems
too, y'know!" But I guess in the end our friends' problems are our
problems, too, and it's so much easier to deal with their issues than
our own, as I'm sure Yasu would agree.
In fact... somtimes I wish I had a Yasu to go complaining to
when the going gets tough. He has to be one of my favorite
characters; even though he has a smaller role, his presence
is very important. He's something of a symbol of the sanity and
goodness in the crazy world. Or something.
Anyway....I was saying. I also really like the whole aspect of
the celebrities' "real lives" ...and what happens when they mix with
us mortals. Apparently it's not good news...and everyone gets the
painful truth that....dun dun dun! They're mortal too! There is even kind
of an underlying theme at one point where the characters seem to
be trying to figure out if Takumi has feelings [even though he's a
celebrity]. Which is totally unfair....but I was kind of wondering that too....
Ok. My big complaint. In one of the episodes I just watched there
is a scene where BLAST is performing a new song for the producers...
(it's actually the 3rd....4th....ed? for the series) As usual, the vocals
are provided by Anna Tsuchiya. I don't mind Tsuchiya, really...but
for some reason I can't picture Nana singing with her voice. I don't know
why, but it doesn't fit well in my mind, so I don't really go crazy for
the scenes where NANA is singing. Maybe it's just *too* predictable.
I enjoyed the songs that Nakashima Mika did for the NANA movies, and I
really liked Oliva Lufkin's vocals for TRAPNEST-- but the whole NANA
thing didn't cut it for me. Which is a bummer, because the whole anime
is kind of about her and her band. ^_~
GacktPause, over and out~
Last night I watched The Count of Monte Cristo.
I enjoyed it, for the most part. I had a little bit of
trouble accepting the guy who played Monte Cristo,
mostly because he looked exactly like a young
Jeremy Irons, whom I really dislike. Also, the dialogue wasn't
very well-written.
Probably the main reason I enjoyed it, was because
I had watched Gankutsuou, The Count of Monte Cristo
anime... And it has to stand as one of my all-time, never
changing, utterly wonderful, favorite series ever. I could
say that about almost all of the anime I have seen, but
truly, this one stands out in my mind.
The characters, the story, the writing, the animation,
the development, the layering....everything was unbelievably
genius. I have never been so emotionally effected by a movie
or anime as I was by Gankutsuou. The final scenes had me
feeling both a little nauseous, and faint. >_< It was overwhelming
it was so touching.
Some of the major plot differences were that in the anime,
it spends 7 or 8 discs on the actual vengeance, with the
beginning scene opening at Carnivale. In the movie, they
spend an hour or so on the awakening of the Count, and then
don't drag out the vengeance terribly long.
(anime) The protagonist is Albert, closely followed by friend
Franz D'epinay, playing the Count himself up as
more the mysterious character, rather than the protagonist.
My favorite character in the MOVIE was "Priest", who teaches
Count everything (played by the actor who was Dumbledore in the
early few Harry Potter movies).
One of my greatest issues was I felt that everytime they said a
name, they pronounced it terribly wrong. But it wasn't that I
needed them to pronounce the name with a correct French accent...
it's that I needed them to pronounce them how they are pronounced
in Japanese!!! Like Aruberu (Albert), Danguraasu (Danglars), Biirefoado
(Villefort). ... ... . . . It was a funny experience.
