Anime!

For those fortunate enough to travel to Japan to see the real thing, here’s a great link listing manga/anime museums including iconic Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle) in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka.

So many girls, so little time! lol. *cough* Air Trek (AT) are inline skates with an engine so riders can go really fast and fly through the air! w00t. Here we have Itsuki a normal anime guy (loser) who stumbles upon the world of AT Racing. He later meets SIMCA!! OMG SIMCA! *cough* *cough* um.. yeh.. So.. the story’s a bit cliché, but it is still enjoyable.

Look what I found yesterday at the Kinokuniya bookstore. A little Hayao Miyazaki stationery corner! A collection of notepads, pens, pencils, folders and postcards from some of his popular anime. Specifically Howl’s Moving Castle, Kiki’s Delivery Service and my favourite - My Neighbour Totoro.

Ok, ok, these kinky scrolls are from the Kinki district around the old capital of Japan Kyoto. Still they are charming and the Japanese like to brag that the strolls are, “a precursor to manga comic books and animated films” in their, “use of illustrations [that] enlivens the stories.” Whatever.

Bill Postmus, Chairman of the Board of Supervisors of suburban San Bernadino County, California, has ordered the county’s libraries to remove the scholarly text Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics from circulation. He proudly announced the move, calling the book “obscene comics,” on the county’s Website, saying, “That book is absolutely inappropriate for a public library and as soon as I was made aware of it yesterday, I ordered it to be removed immediately.”

Masume Shirow’s Appleseed recently got a second anime treatment. The last was in 1988 – this time, in 2004, the anime is done up in eye-popping 3D graphics. With a budget of only 10 million as compared to over 90 million for a movie like The Incredibles, we shouldn’t be expecting too much. Surprisingly, we get far more than expected, especially with regards to the wonderfuly rendered backgrounds. While the animation is interesting enough, the story is more problematic. So too are the change in the feel of the characters. This is really where the original version succeeds far better than Aramaki’s version.

This anime heavily reminds me of Inuyasha considering the setting takes place in the feudal era (?) and most of the characters have doggy-like parts. Anyways, the first ep was quite enjoyable and there’s a high chance that’ll watch it.

I’m up to episode 13 of Mushishi. Also finished up nearly all of Genshiken. This one was given to me by a friend of mine. I haven’t found much about it on the internet, so it might be worthwhile to write about this one. Also finished up watching 3 Lupin movies that I hadn’t seen before. Also given to me by the same friend who gave me Genshiken. I’ll try and write up some reviews on these animes in the next few days or so. I might end up putting them on tsumetaihana. (I haven’t touched it in ages. Plus, it would be nice to make that blog dedicated to just anime and jpop.)

I can’t really say that I was looking forward to this anime, because I didn’t even know it was coming out until someone pointed it out to me in a comment. To me, the .hack anime are kind of a stupid idea. Who wants to just watch people play MMORPGs? I’d want to play it myself, personally (although I’ve never tried any of the .hack games).

Finally, Air Gear. I was sort of looking forward to this but really trying to avoid getting my hopes up because as we all know, the last Oh! Great manga to anime adaption, Tenjo Tenge, was awful. Air Gear’s OP is pretty weak, but after that, it well exceeds what I was expecting.