(NOTE: Originally published on my livejournal account.)
To let you know, I own a good chunk of anime. Not that I have a huge collection at all, but it has expanded to the point of me having more to watch than I have time for! I bit off more than I could chew you could say. The reason? Well I came across some good sales over at www.rightstuf.com and picked up a lot of titles; both titles that I desperately want to watch, others that I just want to have in my collection. I’m kind of working towards building a reputable library of titles for those times when friends talk about shows they love or loved and wish to see again and I can say, “I’ve got that! Come on over and we’ll blast through it all!”
I love to watch, study, and analyze anime and I love to share my stuff with friends.
So, here I’ve got a list of shows that I own, but haven’t either started or finished:
• .hack//ROOTS vol. 6
• Blue Seed
• Escaflowne
•
• Karas
• Loveless
• Saiyuki
• Serial Experiments Lain
• Shin-Chan S1V1
•
• Tenchi in Tokyo
• X TV
So yeah, I’ve got a good ways to go. Now, keep in mind this list only includes series in which I own the complete sets and haven’t finished. If I threw everything in like Voltron, One Piece, Lucky Star, Hellsing Ultimate, etc. it would probably be 3 times longer, but I wouldn’t feasibly be able to finish them during this break due to finances being a bit tight.
I’ve stricken out Get Backers as I put that series to rest last weekend. A decent show, but a lack of background to new arrival characters during the last arc really hurt it. For the sake of brevity, I’ll address Get Backers another time as the next bit is gonna be rather long.
As you can see, Tenchi Universe has been stricken out as I finally put an end to it this past weekend. I had purchased both Universe and Tokyo last January and it’s been a long time coming. I had started loading episodes from my DVDs onto my Zune and watching during my commute to school and watched the last disc and a half or so from the DVD itself. I have watched this show before during its run on Toonami, but that was a good 9 years ago so it was definitely worth sitting through again. The show was great, even though it took a good amount of willpower to sit through the introduction episodes and time-travel arc. Now, it’s necessary to watch these to get to know the characters and to really get a flavor for the show, but after watching the OVA so many times I feel I know these characters well enough, even with their different origins, and the time-travel arc felt like a whole bunch of filler to hold audiences over until the space travel arc got thrown into the fray. The last arc really makes up for the shortcomings in prior episodes and was a treat to watch. In order to keep the vibe going, I popped in and watched Tenchi Muyo! In Love this morning and watched it as it continues the story present in Tenchi Muyo! TV. Yeah, I own Tenchi Muyo! In Love 2 and yes I know it concludes the first TV series, but after having just watched it less than 6 months ago and that I dislike it even more than the first movie, I decided to skip it.
On that note, watching Tenchi Muyo! In Love today I’ve learned something: I don’t love this movie. Now don’t get me wrong, its okay and I like it, but it’s such a far departure from the feeling and tone of the TV series it continues from. While the animation is top notch for 1997, the soundtrack does not work. Christopher Franke, while a decent score composer, should not be tied to the Tenchi franchise in my opinion. The music, pacing, and overall plot do not juxtapose well for a direct sequel to the show. It’s a little too serious for itself, the lightheartedness is forsaken in order to tell a cohesive story in a short amount of time, the music is far from anywhere near the original score of the TV series (and the OVA while we’re at it), some characters are almost completely thrown off to the wayside (Washu, Sasami, to some extent Tenchi). It’s a good movie to watch, but after about 8-10 times it really doesn’t hold up in the fun or charm department.
I’ve since started watching Tenchi in Tokyo and it’s been…interesting. As with most Tenchi shows I start out with the dub. Its nostalgia and the Tenchi dubs, I think, were pretty amazing for a dub done in the mid-late 90’s as nothing was censored or edited and the script wasn’t changed to dumb it down for western audiences. The animation is smooth; the art however is quite different than both Tenchi Muyo! and Tenchi Universe. I’m not sure if a new character designer was instituted for this series or if Masaki Kajishima was playing around with his old characters, but its new and I think it still captures the essence of the characters and the atmosphere of the franchise. Watching the first next episode preview was a letdown. The accompanying music was an instrumental of the western-sounding ending theme and Petrea Burchard just didn’t sound that into it. I love the woman as well as the other dub cast, but if Tokyo was last in the order for dubbing and this process had been going on in rapid succession between the shows I too would be tired of spouting the same old same old. I’ll have to check out how Ai Orikasa handled it as she is delightful to listen to as well. I had watched a good chunk of early episodes back during the original airing on Toonami, but was not at all satisfied with this series, but I hope to finish this off so that I can truly proclaim my opinion on it.
What comes after? Well, Andrew and I both want either Loveless or Saiyuki next on the chopping block. Loveless is only 14 episodes long, so hopefully we can find the time and energy to plow through it together. Blue Seed I’ve watched a little over half of and I quite enjoy it so hopefully I can finish that up as well.
But who knows? Plans may not work out, other shows might make their appearance, old shows or other shows on this list might give me a real itch to get them viewed; everything is up in the air basically. Either way I hope you enjoyed this little section (I’m sure 80% of you who came across this left a long time ago) and we’ll see how later segments go!
‘Til next time!
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