DVD logging
Jul. 14th, 2008 04:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckAngelic Layer 5-8 - Netflix is missing the next DVD is this series. I regret that because I'd like to go forward. The characters amuse me, and the series is light enough that I can write while watching it, even in Japanese, because I can look away during the fight sequences as long as I pay enough attention to catch the character development.
I think I'm seeing some deviations from the manga storyline, nothing major, just enough to pique my interest. I also like seeing a series that focuses on combat but that has most of the major competitors be female. Yes, they're fighting by proxy, but they can't do it if they're not actively working at it. No passive participation.
Batman Beyond 2.1-2.7 - I feel a fair amount of sympathy for Terry. Being Batman while being in high school has got to be miserable. I like Max. I hope she gets more screen time. Also, the Jokerz are utterly creepy. I can see them happening in Gotham's future, but they're definitely a sign of what's wrong with people. I do like that story elements come back again in later episodes.
Bee Movie - After seeing trailers for this on several DVDs, Cordelia was adamant that she wanted to see it, so I grabbed it at the library. I wasn't all that impressed. Scott's, "So are we supposed to ignore the fact that all of these characters ought to be female?" summed up my starting problem. I never quite reached the point of understanding why I should care about either the characters or the story.
Of course, Cordelia enjoyed the movie, so it did serve its purpose.
Case Closed season 5 DVD 5 - As far as I could tell, this DVD didn't have a Japanese track. At least, I couldn't get my DVD remote to switch over. Scott thought the episodes were dreadful and mocked the (lack of) knowledge of physics and basic police procedure displayed by the police officers. I tend to handwave the police procedure things because if they were there and done correctly, the stories would be longer without such immediate solutions.
I'm not clear which episodes, by number, were on this DVD. I know that the release skipped some episodes. Oh, well. I'm watching this for the same reason I read the manga-- because I like some of the fics I've read and am curious about the canon. This is the end of what Netflix has. I think it's also the end of what was released in the U.S. I'm not sure, though. I really didn't expect I'd ever get the DVD from Netflix. It was labeled as 'very long wait,' and I'd had it at the top of our queue for months, not so much because I wanted it badly as because I thought that, if I moved it down, we'd never get it.
Condor Hero 16-20 - I'm not sure if those were crocodiles or alligators (I can never remember the distinction), but I'm pretty sure that neither can leap twenty feet-- vertically-- out of the water to attack anything. If I ever become an evil mastermind out to take over the world, I want some of those alligators. They'll be good for the moat. (What? A moat may not be practical in a high tech fortress, but it'd be cool.)
I think I'm glad I'm putting space between these DVDs. Otherwise, the angst and new and improved barriers to True Love would make me hate the series. Five episodes at once is enough to make me want to smack the characters. I'm having fun watching, but I can only stand so much all at once.
I did switch from the Cantonese soundtrack to the Mandarin this time. The Cantonese is the DVD default, but Mandarin seems to be what the actors were using. At least, the Mandarin matches the lip movements while the Cantonese doesn't. I'm used to the Cantonese voice actors, though, and am liking the Mandarin voices slightly less because they're new and not what I expect from the characters. I may switch back next DVD. I'm not sure yet. I want to give myself a fair taste of the difference.
Gorgeous scenery. Well choreographed fights with lots of stunts. Decent acting.
Eureka Seven 1-5 - I considered not bothering to get this from Netflix because, although they hadn't taken it out of my queue, they've listed the entire series as unavailable. I can't get any later DVDs from Netflix right now and probably won't think to keep checking.
I'm not certain how I feel about the five episodes I did watch. They weren't bad, but they didn't catch my imagination very strongly. There's something weird about watching mechs air surfing. I got the impression that there's a lot of world building and backstory that would come out later in the series (at least, I hope it would) so that the series would feel less full of gaps. One of Scott's co-workers who likes anime recommends this series highly and says that one has to give it at least twenty episodes.
Full Metal Panic FUMOFFU 9-12 - Still funny. The last episode is a classic, and I like the battlesuits a lot. Only Sousuke would think they were a good idea, and I don't think that the WTF? reaction on the part of the opposition figured into his calculations (even though it's useful). Highly, highly recommended.
Hikaru no Go 41-45 - Gah! This is the last DVD Netflix has right now. I want more. Admittedly, Scott loves the series more than I do, but that doesn't mean that I don't like it. I wish we'd at least gotten to the end of the pro exams before hitting the gap.
Lupin III: Missed By a Dollar - Yet another romp. I kept thinking that maybe I'd seen this one before. I'm not sure I had, but there were enough bits of stock plot repeated that I kept wondering. Still, I don't watch Lupin movies for surprises. In this one, everyone's chasing after a brooch that magically makes people become world leaders. Or something like that. Not that it matters what the gimmick is.
The blurb on the Netflix sleeve made me think that this was a retitled version of the Nostradamus movie, but the blurb was utterly inaccurate, having nothing to do with the DVD that we watched (apart from the ongoing characters). We almost sent the DVD back without watching it due to the blurb because it hasn't been long since we watched the Nostradamus thingy. I'm glad we didn't because it wasn't the same story at all.
Monk 5.11-5.16 - Well, we watched these, and then I neglected to log them for a few weeks. I don't actually remember the episodes as episodes, just as a general impression of more Monk, more comedy about anxiety disorders and about OCD. I think the episode with Monk taking a job as a butler was in this batch. He was almost spectacularly good at that job. Except for the inability to adapt to changing circumstances...
Rome 1.1-1.2 - I think Scott likes this better than I do. I don't hate it, but I only gave it about half my attention and never managed to track most of the characters. I did find myself thinking that it rather sucked to be any of those people. I also kept thinking that a lot of the sex and nudity was gratuitous. That is, the producers put it in because they *could* rather than because the story needed it. I don't think it was anachronistic, just... So what?
Most of my knowledge of that period of history comes from reading I, Claudius, so I don't know all the historical figures as they appear here. Young Octavian rather boggled me because that's not how I picture him. I tend to picture him much later in his life and married to Livia.
Sword Stained with Royal Blood 1-5 - Once I got through the first episode, I rather liked this. The set up just didn't appeal to me, and there were a lot of characters I couldn't distinguish from each other and feared that I needed to. None of them proved particularly important in later episodes (though I expect some will be back later).
I was a bit taken aback by the early scene in which various folks are fleeing with the child who'll grow up to be the hero. Three of them remain behind to delay the super-warrior who's after them. There's been no introduction of these characters, but the camera stops to give a close up of each man's face. Then they're killed rather pathetically to show just how nasty the bad guy is. I just keep wondering about the close ups-- Are the actors well known? Is it a stylistic tradition of the genre? Are the characters not actually dead and I'm supposed to remember later?
There was a fairly rapid time skip to the point where the hero has finished his kung fu training and is ready to rejoin the various underlings he's inherited from his father. This is the part that worried me. There seemed to be a lot of nuance about the different forms of revenge or not-revenge that the various men were recommending, and I couldn't remember who'd recommended what or guess at why.
Fortunately, the hero ended up separated from those men pretty quickly. He stumbled on a skeleton, buried it, took on a quest based on a letter the deceased had left behind. He then met up with an extremely unconvincingly disguised woman (I couldn't tell if the poor disguise, from my point of view, came from genre conventions, from my unfamiliarity with the costumes-- so that I don't know traditionally male clothes from traditionally female clothes-- or from something else. All of the characters around seemed convinced that they were dealing with a young man) and got embroiled in her troubles with her family, her family's having stolen gold from other members of his kung fu tradition (from the students of another man who had been the student of the master who trained him. I'm going to have to learn all of terms, aren't I?).
I'm looking forward to seeing more. Right now, I'm tracking the characters and the story fairly well. I hope that continues.
The Third: The Girl with the Blue Eye 1-4 - This anime has a really, really annoying voice over narration that even goes so far as to tell the viewer how the heroine feels about things that are going on. It also includes a lot of data dumping. I know I missed a good bit of information because I couldn't force myself to pay attention. I wanted to, but-- Well, no. I didn't actually want to. None of what I paid attention to was stuff that couldn't have been integrated into the main narrative. I think I'd have been less annoyed if the narrator were the heroine, looking back, or one of the characters introduced in the first episode. Maybe.
Anyway, the setting is either post-apocalyptic or a rather unpleasant colony world. The inhabitants live with fairly severe limitations on allowable technology, and those restrictions are enforced by the Third, a group with full access to a higher level of technology.
The heroine is a mercenary swordswoman who hunts monsters (but won't kill humans). She has a battletank with an A.I. named Bogie. She picks up a mysterious but attractive man called Iks who-- I think-- has special powers.
I'll probably try more, but I'm rather indifferent right now.
Wallflower 1-5 - One of the eyecatches is creepy. I feel the need to say that first. I'm not sure what-- if anything-- the loin-cloth clad, dark skinned guys have to do with the story. They annoy me and feel kind of icky. The end credits are creepy in an entirely different way that quite fits the story.
I think I like the manga better. The anime makes the changes in Sunako from situation to situation more obvious, but it also stretches out the pieces of the story and has a lot of superdeformed character moments. Movement also provides emphasis on things like the guys' charm in a way that goes quite over the top.
Pity Sunako's aunt has such a narrow definition of an 'elegant lady.' I'd like to see the guys trying to get Sunako to show her strength. She has it. She just mostly can't be bothered or thinks she doesn't have it.
I think I'm seeing some deviations from the manga storyline, nothing major, just enough to pique my interest. I also like seeing a series that focuses on combat but that has most of the major competitors be female. Yes, they're fighting by proxy, but they can't do it if they're not actively working at it. No passive participation.
Batman Beyond 2.1-2.7 - I feel a fair amount of sympathy for Terry. Being Batman while being in high school has got to be miserable. I like Max. I hope she gets more screen time. Also, the Jokerz are utterly creepy. I can see them happening in Gotham's future, but they're definitely a sign of what's wrong with people. I do like that story elements come back again in later episodes.
Bee Movie - After seeing trailers for this on several DVDs, Cordelia was adamant that she wanted to see it, so I grabbed it at the library. I wasn't all that impressed. Scott's, "So are we supposed to ignore the fact that all of these characters ought to be female?" summed up my starting problem. I never quite reached the point of understanding why I should care about either the characters or the story.
Of course, Cordelia enjoyed the movie, so it did serve its purpose.
Case Closed season 5 DVD 5 - As far as I could tell, this DVD didn't have a Japanese track. At least, I couldn't get my DVD remote to switch over. Scott thought the episodes were dreadful and mocked the (lack of) knowledge of physics and basic police procedure displayed by the police officers. I tend to handwave the police procedure things because if they were there and done correctly, the stories would be longer without such immediate solutions.
I'm not clear which episodes, by number, were on this DVD. I know that the release skipped some episodes. Oh, well. I'm watching this for the same reason I read the manga-- because I like some of the fics I've read and am curious about the canon. This is the end of what Netflix has. I think it's also the end of what was released in the U.S. I'm not sure, though. I really didn't expect I'd ever get the DVD from Netflix. It was labeled as 'very long wait,' and I'd had it at the top of our queue for months, not so much because I wanted it badly as because I thought that, if I moved it down, we'd never get it.
Condor Hero 16-20 - I'm not sure if those were crocodiles or alligators (I can never remember the distinction), but I'm pretty sure that neither can leap twenty feet-- vertically-- out of the water to attack anything. If I ever become an evil mastermind out to take over the world, I want some of those alligators. They'll be good for the moat. (What? A moat may not be practical in a high tech fortress, but it'd be cool.)
I think I'm glad I'm putting space between these DVDs. Otherwise, the angst and new and improved barriers to True Love would make me hate the series. Five episodes at once is enough to make me want to smack the characters. I'm having fun watching, but I can only stand so much all at once.
I did switch from the Cantonese soundtrack to the Mandarin this time. The Cantonese is the DVD default, but Mandarin seems to be what the actors were using. At least, the Mandarin matches the lip movements while the Cantonese doesn't. I'm used to the Cantonese voice actors, though, and am liking the Mandarin voices slightly less because they're new and not what I expect from the characters. I may switch back next DVD. I'm not sure yet. I want to give myself a fair taste of the difference.
Gorgeous scenery. Well choreographed fights with lots of stunts. Decent acting.
Eureka Seven 1-5 - I considered not bothering to get this from Netflix because, although they hadn't taken it out of my queue, they've listed the entire series as unavailable. I can't get any later DVDs from Netflix right now and probably won't think to keep checking.
I'm not certain how I feel about the five episodes I did watch. They weren't bad, but they didn't catch my imagination very strongly. There's something weird about watching mechs air surfing. I got the impression that there's a lot of world building and backstory that would come out later in the series (at least, I hope it would) so that the series would feel less full of gaps. One of Scott's co-workers who likes anime recommends this series highly and says that one has to give it at least twenty episodes.
Full Metal Panic FUMOFFU 9-12 - Still funny. The last episode is a classic, and I like the battlesuits a lot. Only Sousuke would think they were a good idea, and I don't think that the WTF? reaction on the part of the opposition figured into his calculations (even though it's useful). Highly, highly recommended.
Hikaru no Go 41-45 - Gah! This is the last DVD Netflix has right now. I want more. Admittedly, Scott loves the series more than I do, but that doesn't mean that I don't like it. I wish we'd at least gotten to the end of the pro exams before hitting the gap.
Lupin III: Missed By a Dollar - Yet another romp. I kept thinking that maybe I'd seen this one before. I'm not sure I had, but there were enough bits of stock plot repeated that I kept wondering. Still, I don't watch Lupin movies for surprises. In this one, everyone's chasing after a brooch that magically makes people become world leaders. Or something like that. Not that it matters what the gimmick is.
The blurb on the Netflix sleeve made me think that this was a retitled version of the Nostradamus movie, but the blurb was utterly inaccurate, having nothing to do with the DVD that we watched (apart from the ongoing characters). We almost sent the DVD back without watching it due to the blurb because it hasn't been long since we watched the Nostradamus thingy. I'm glad we didn't because it wasn't the same story at all.
Monk 5.11-5.16 - Well, we watched these, and then I neglected to log them for a few weeks. I don't actually remember the episodes as episodes, just as a general impression of more Monk, more comedy about anxiety disorders and about OCD. I think the episode with Monk taking a job as a butler was in this batch. He was almost spectacularly good at that job. Except for the inability to adapt to changing circumstances...
Rome 1.1-1.2 - I think Scott likes this better than I do. I don't hate it, but I only gave it about half my attention and never managed to track most of the characters. I did find myself thinking that it rather sucked to be any of those people. I also kept thinking that a lot of the sex and nudity was gratuitous. That is, the producers put it in because they *could* rather than because the story needed it. I don't think it was anachronistic, just... So what?
Most of my knowledge of that period of history comes from reading I, Claudius, so I don't know all the historical figures as they appear here. Young Octavian rather boggled me because that's not how I picture him. I tend to picture him much later in his life and married to Livia.
Sword Stained with Royal Blood 1-5 - Once I got through the first episode, I rather liked this. The set up just didn't appeal to me, and there were a lot of characters I couldn't distinguish from each other and feared that I needed to. None of them proved particularly important in later episodes (though I expect some will be back later).
I was a bit taken aback by the early scene in which various folks are fleeing with the child who'll grow up to be the hero. Three of them remain behind to delay the super-warrior who's after them. There's been no introduction of these characters, but the camera stops to give a close up of each man's face. Then they're killed rather pathetically to show just how nasty the bad guy is. I just keep wondering about the close ups-- Are the actors well known? Is it a stylistic tradition of the genre? Are the characters not actually dead and I'm supposed to remember later?
There was a fairly rapid time skip to the point where the hero has finished his kung fu training and is ready to rejoin the various underlings he's inherited from his father. This is the part that worried me. There seemed to be a lot of nuance about the different forms of revenge or not-revenge that the various men were recommending, and I couldn't remember who'd recommended what or guess at why.
Fortunately, the hero ended up separated from those men pretty quickly. He stumbled on a skeleton, buried it, took on a quest based on a letter the deceased had left behind. He then met up with an extremely unconvincingly disguised woman (I couldn't tell if the poor disguise, from my point of view, came from genre conventions, from my unfamiliarity with the costumes-- so that I don't know traditionally male clothes from traditionally female clothes-- or from something else. All of the characters around seemed convinced that they were dealing with a young man) and got embroiled in her troubles with her family, her family's having stolen gold from other members of his kung fu tradition (from the students of another man who had been the student of the master who trained him. I'm going to have to learn all of terms, aren't I?).
I'm looking forward to seeing more. Right now, I'm tracking the characters and the story fairly well. I hope that continues.
The Third: The Girl with the Blue Eye 1-4 - This anime has a really, really annoying voice over narration that even goes so far as to tell the viewer how the heroine feels about things that are going on. It also includes a lot of data dumping. I know I missed a good bit of information because I couldn't force myself to pay attention. I wanted to, but-- Well, no. I didn't actually want to. None of what I paid attention to was stuff that couldn't have been integrated into the main narrative. I think I'd have been less annoyed if the narrator were the heroine, looking back, or one of the characters introduced in the first episode. Maybe.
Anyway, the setting is either post-apocalyptic or a rather unpleasant colony world. The inhabitants live with fairly severe limitations on allowable technology, and those restrictions are enforced by the Third, a group with full access to a higher level of technology.
The heroine is a mercenary swordswoman who hunts monsters (but won't kill humans). She has a battletank with an A.I. named Bogie. She picks up a mysterious but attractive man called Iks who-- I think-- has special powers.
I'll probably try more, but I'm rather indifferent right now.
Wallflower 1-5 - One of the eyecatches is creepy. I feel the need to say that first. I'm not sure what-- if anything-- the loin-cloth clad, dark skinned guys have to do with the story. They annoy me and feel kind of icky. The end credits are creepy in an entirely different way that quite fits the story.
I think I like the manga better. The anime makes the changes in Sunako from situation to situation more obvious, but it also stretches out the pieces of the story and has a lot of superdeformed character moments. Movement also provides emphasis on things like the guys' charm in a way that goes quite over the top.
Pity Sunako's aunt has such a narrow definition of an 'elegant lady.' I'd like to see the guys trying to get Sunako to show her strength. She has it. She just mostly can't be bothered or thinks she doesn't have it.
