Comic Site Rant: “Baby, baby, would you stop?”

Saturday, March 8th, 2008

Original Post

I don’t know how to feel about this one. The biggest problem was that I forgot to draw Rets in panel 2, so I had to hastily sketch him in Photoshop. Though, looking at it now, I kind of like that. Tina’s face also looks too long in some planels. Bleh. I guess I like it more than others. And yes, I know that messy little scribble on the sketch pad doesn’t really look like Roro– I didn’t wanna put to much time into drawing man porn. The joke seems solid enough to me.

Anime Boston is in something like two weeks. I’ll be there, but I won’t have a table or anything. I’ll just be walking around with some dudes. Most likely my server admin and Seiya (gotta get back in contact with him!) and will probably meet up with DS and Hinano.

About half-way through Dennou Coil, and it’s finally starting to show its stuff. The fish episode and the beard episode do a good job of playing with the setting they’ve created far better than the opening episodes. Also, a lot of interesting plot developments are starting to take shape. I actually want to see the next episode, now!

Finished Diebuster again. I almost forgot how incredibly epic the ending was. I almost want to buy those Bandai Visual DVDs, now. Almost.

Anyway, cutting it short today for whatever reason. Got some raws/subs to dig into and a Shuffle! DVD. Later.

Comic Site Rant: 未来は僕等の手の中

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

Original Post

I actually had this one drawn and done for a bit. The idea was to get this one done real early, then have the one for next week done already. That didn’t really pan out since I’ve been in something of a funk all week. No matter. This comic was real easy, and looks fairly good, I guess. I dunno why Rets has such a messed up expression that last panel, I guess I thought it would be funny. You know, the greatest thing about this comic is that you can probably put any kind of dialogue in and it could be funny. Probably funnier than what I have here. As you can see the comic is something of a joke on anime writing, highlighting two examples of QUALITY. Honesty, do girls really go “I WON’T LOSE!!!” all the time?

Winter season is still fairly lame, and a lot of shows from Fall are concluding. Hayate seems to be going out with a bang, with a strong set of final episodes (manga-based?) and Clannad is ending well. I kind of wished I’d just stayed with the widescreen releases of Clannad instead of watching both 4:3 and 16:9 versions. I kept up with the 4:3 mostly because I didn’t want to miss any discussion on it, but about 19 episodes in, there’s not much to talk abut. Yes, I do appreciate that Clannad was trying to be different in not telling overdone sob-stories, but as a result it comes off as rather boring. Well, boring isn’t the right word. Maybe not as memorable and engaging. I guess it’s not good that I don’t really dig the characters all too much (well, it’s more I don’t like Kyou and to a lesser degree Tomoyo.) Nagisa, however, is cute as a button, so I guess that’s fine. This last arc is shaping up to be a good one, but I doubt Clannad will leave much of an impression in my mind.

I’ve been catching episodes of Diebuster at MIT lately. Diebuster gets a lot of flack for various reasons, but I like it well enough. I think it lacks the punch of its predecessor, but is in turn a more competently structured story. The first two episodes are rather weak, I’ll admit, but the show settles into its groove at around the midpoint, and then does nothing but impress from there (splitting of planets etc). Maybe one of the problems people see with Diebuster is the lack of too much overdone drama. Sure, there’s drama, but Gunbuster was pouring that stuff on at episode 2. Personally, I like Diebuster’s approach better. Makes the show easier the watch.

Another thing I’ve caught snippets of at MIT was Ergo Proxy. For those who don’t know, back when Ergo Proxy hit I was kind of looking forward to it as a fan of Witch Hunter Robin. I dropped the show after nine episodes. I caught the first four episodes again a few weeks ago, and episode 8 last night (was trying to get there in time for Diebuster, but ended up watching an entire episode of EP, too.) The show is beautiful. I love dark, grey colour schemes. Always have. The show puts together a nice, if not somewhat generic, futuristic dystopian world. I think it looks great. The praise stops there though. The actual content is kind of meh, and the only good character is Pino. No, not because I’m a lolicon, because she’s genuinely entertaining.

That’s all I got for today. Let’s hope I can get something out by next week. I sure do have plenty of scripts to work off of…