Anime that Doesn't Suck

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Boss Out of Town
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Re: Anime that Doesn't Suck

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zanntos wrote:I don't recall mentioning it but i've been watching Toradora! this fall/spring season. Though my liking it may well be due to a general drought of decent things to watch. I may see if i can watch Magical Index at some point, can is the operating word since so many series feel either painfully generic of insanely over-fanserviced. (I'm blaming YOU Rosario+Vampire BLAME, why destory an amusing manga with fanservice WHY!!!!)
I freely admit to watching Benny Hill a lot back in the day, but there are limits to how much burlesque humor a human mind can take without cringing.
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. --- Henry Fabre
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Re: Anime that Doesn't Suck

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Hmmm . . . finally getting through bits and pieces of Black Lagoon, and it is much better than I thought it would be. On the one hand, it is a violent shoot-'em-up where the lead characters all have sneer power or stonekiller power. Sneer-power is what happens if you enjoy killing so much that you sneer whenever you are in combat, bullets can't hit you and you kill anyone you shoot at who hasn't got sneer-power of their own. Stone-killer power is used by characters with deep wisdom or deep callousness with tragic or mysterious back stories. The are protected from bullets or explosions in the same way as characters with sneer-power, but they seldom show emotion or even move much while they kill all their opponents.

As examples, Dirty Harry had sneer power; the Man with No Name had stone-killer power. See the range of Clint Eastwood's acting skills.

Black Lagoon even has a tribute to a scene from A Fistful of Dollars to illustrate the stone-killer power of one of its characters. He walks out into a hallway, confronts and questions four neo-nazis, then gets off four killing rounds with a pump shotgun before they can fire a shot with their semi-automatic handguns. The badassness of the character is emphasized by the fact that he deliberately walked into this situation. He knew without a doubt that he could kill these four men before they could raise their guns and pull the triggers to return fire.

Be that as it may, Black Lagoon rises above its shot-'em-up background and gives some actual emotion to its characters. Emotions, in fact, more realistic than those in Noir, my favorite tragic assassin anime. Rock, the Japanese salaryman forced to join a smuggler gang after his bosses sell him out in the most sinful city in East Asia, is neither a weakling or easy convert to criminal life. He is genuinely and honestly appalled by the life he is forced to lead. Revy, the "girls with guns" sneer powered shooter for hire, is emotionally battered, cynical, foul-mouthed, and seems constantly on the edge of a psychotic break. The tense, tragic music over the end-credits, with a backdrop of her dropping her guns and then suddenly turning in murderous fury on the audience, captures her personality perfectly. She concedes nothing to Rock's moralizing and "soft" emotions, and he has to learn to fight back against her bullying without doing something that would fetch him a slug in the head.

Pretty cool stuff, really.
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. --- Henry Fabre
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Re: Anime that Doesn't Suck

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Black Lagoon is one of my guilty pleasures. As you say, it's got more character and real plot than you would expect from what looks at first blush like nothing but an excuse to show lots of fan-service and violence.
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Re: Anime that Doesn't Suck

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Sareth wrote:Black Lagoon is one of my guilty pleasures. As you say, it's got more character and real plot than you would expect from what looks at first blush like nothing but an excuse to show lots of fan-service and violence.
My idea of over-the-top hilarity: Revy's non-lethal confrontation with Edda, the killer nun, in episode five. Eda makes a return at the end of the first season, but I've only seen bits and pieces of it thus far. More raw machismo then the entire Magnificent Seven!
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. --- Henry Fabre
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Re: Anime that Doesn't Suck

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Oh, geeze yes. Edda and Revy in the same place at the same time should be illegal.

There's an episode in season two that features the two working together that is just... over the top funny, awesome, and machismo. The two of them have more balls than an entire SpecOps team despite their both being XX chromosomed...

For double hilarity, there's always Black Lagoon: the Fucking Short Version. (Not to be played around two year olds who learn new words well.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SUvD5fhQ68
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Re: Anime that Doesn't Suck

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Boss Out of Town wrote:
Sareth wrote:Black Lagoon is one of my guilty pleasures. As you say, it's got more character and real plot than you would expect from what looks at first blush like nothing but an excuse to show lots of fan-service and violence.
My idea of over-the-top hilarity: Revy's non-lethal confrontation with Edda, the killer nun, in episode five. Eda makes a return at the end of the first season, but I've only seen bits and pieces of it thus far. More raw machismo then the entire Magnificent Seven!
I fell in love with Black Lagoon, esp' Revy. I've read a few of the manga as well and while if anything Revy is even hotter looking in the manga than the anime, there's more character development in the anime. Kind of odd really. I've heard that there's going to be a third season of the anime soon. I've managed to watch most of both seasons fansubbed for free and while I agree with what Poe said about how this is killing anime in the US because nobody is paying for it, I'm just too cheap (not to mention poor) to not take advantage of it.
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Re: Anime that Doesn't Suck

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I wouldn't say it's killing Anime in the U.S. necessarily. Yes, you have some people who will not buy it if it's available for free. But you also have a number of people like me who, if he finds an anime or manga he loves through fan-subs and scanilations, he goes out and buys the official release when it becomes available. (For example, I own all of the Chibi Vampire and Gunslinger Girl books available, and most of the Negima and Fullmetal Alchemist books, even though I can read them for free. It's the same reason I donate to Errant Story when I can, even though it's free.) What's more, fansubbers and scanilators usually (not always, but usually) have the ethics to withdraw fandone translations when a series becomes officially licensed as part of a gentlemen's agreement with the professionals and artists who create the works. They, too, are fans, and know that if the artists don't get the money they deserve, the stuff goes away.

For a counterpoint, let me point you towards the Baen Free Library. It's Sci-fi, not Anime, but the story goes like this:

One of Baen's authors (Eric Flint) and then Baen president Jim Baen once had a rather extensive chat regarding online piracy of things like music, anime, and books. Flint felt that efforts to stamp this out were very Alles in Ordnung! in nature, and what is more, that this sharing of materials about through piracy actually served as a form of free advertising. He posited that enough people introduced to the materials through this means would want real, higher quality, professional copies legally purchased to actually boost sales.

Jim basically told Flint to put his money where his mouth was.

So he did. He made available, online, for free, one of his novels. Free. Totally free. Download it. Read it. Never pay a cent.

Sales of the novel soared.

Ever since then, Baen has encouraged (but not required) it's authors to have several of their novels available for free download online at Baen's own website. Most of their biggest names (Eric Flint, David Weber, David Drake, John Ringo, larry Niven, etc.) have several books available at any given time. And Baen's business is booming.
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Re: Anime that Doesn't Suck

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davester65 wrote:
Boss Out of Town wrote:
Sareth wrote:Black Lagoon is one of my guilty pleasures. As you say, it's got more character and real plot than you would expect from what looks at first blush like nothing but an excuse to show lots of fan-service and violence.
My idea of over-the-top hilarity: Revy's non-lethal confrontation with Edda, the killer nun, in episode five. Eda makes a return at the end of the first season, but I've only seen bits and pieces of it thus far. More raw machismo then the entire Magnificent Seven!
I fell in love with Black Lagoon, esp' Revy. I've read a few of the manga as well and while if anything Revy is even hotter looking in the manga than the anime, there's more character development in the anime. Kind of odd really.
Yeah, and good work by whoever adapted the story. The manga is more pure gun-porn, for sure.

A good example is the mercenary team sent after the maguffin in the first issue. The leader barges into the bar, apparently with an entire company behind him, and starts shooting. Only three people in the bar are shooting back. After everyone has a chance to unload ammo and attitude, 16 soldiers are dead, but the guy who walked into the bar and opened fire isn't one of them. His sneer power was too overwhelming for Revy to overcome without a face to face confrontation.

Then, after learning he has lost most of his men, instead of being appalled, he has a giggling orgasm of macho delight over the quality of his opponents. So, what does he choose as a weapon to meet his foe mano e mano, face to face? An attack helicopter!

Of course, he and all the rest of the characters know they live in a sneer power universe. In a rational world, would anyone make this giggling, incompetent psycho an officer? Or serve under him? Or hire him for a hush-hush retrieval job? Sadly, the corporation has no choice. If they don't hire someone with enough sneer or stonekiller power, their operation would be doomed to failure from the start.
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. --- Henry Fabre
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Re: Anime that Doesn't Suck

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Sareth wrote:Ever since then, Baen has encouraged (but not required) it's authors to have several of their novels available for free download online at Baen's own website. Most of their biggest names (Eric Flint, David Weber, David Drake, John Ringo, larry Niven, etc.) have several books available at any given time. And Baen's business is booming.
Er, yes, that may be true as far as it goes. There's a reason agents are very worried by the electronic rights becoming a standard item in publishing contracts, though. That dependence on "free advertising" also tends to include some rather limiting factors for the author, like the books never being officially defined as "out of print," meaning that an author stands virtually no chance of getting their rights back if something goes bad. It also does limit the amount of money an author stands to gain on sales of reprints, and the probability that a publisher will invest in additional hardcopies instead of just milking the electronic rights which cost them next to nothing to maintain. Not so much a problem for bestsellers, but crippling for everyone on the midlist, and a bad deal overall according to some agents.

-_-'
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Re: Anime that Doesn't Suck

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Hmm. I hadn't realized that about the reprints and "out of print" list. Gives me something to think about.
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