Mistakes of Youth: The Blog (Powered by EXCELLENCE!)

I’m not a real filmmaker like some of my friends are, nor have I studied film in any great detail. I have however seen Casablanca, and I know what both a pan and a tilt are, so I figure I’ll talk about filmish things in the context of Japanese animation.

There are few anime out there that stand out as really great in my eyes. More often than not, what pushes an anime from good to great is the direction. When I talk about direction, I’m talking about pacing, scene composition, the framing of shots, and things like that. Ever since I started watching anime, these aspects have always jumped out at me when they were really well done, and as a result I have turned into someone who talks out of their ass about things like shot framing, scene composition and pacing.

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Thank you Sadamoto, for such wonderful Misato-service in volume 11 of the Evangelion comic. Unlike most Eva fans, I do not like Rei or Asuka, but I really like Misato! So thanks!

Volume 11 covers the second half of episode 24, and then starts to move pretty well into End of Eva territory, ending just as Seele’s assault on NERV gets underway. One great thing Sadamoto has done with his adaptation is deviating from the source material. The plot stays exactly the same, but character interactions are different and some vague details from the TV series are covered more in depth. Sadamoto’s most striking and interesting deviation from the television series is his portrayal of Kaworu. Kaworu in the TV series is a caring and loving individual, who shows Shinji kindness that he’s never felt before. In the comic, Kaworu is more of a jerk. His comments, mannerisms, and actions challenge Shinji, and often times irritate him. Their relationship is completely the opposite from what it is in the TV series. However, Shinji’s indecisiveness about killing Kaworu is just the same, which brings forth a set complex emotions that’s completely different from what is present in the TV series.

After that, the manga more or less copies the first fourth of End of Eva panel for panel. That’s not all together a bad thing, but it’s substantially less interesting than the preceding chapters. Good action, though!

The Evangelion comic has a kind of grittiness that’s not present in the TV show. Sadamoto’s handling of the narrative for some reason comes off as a lot more honest and down to earth. It could just be because the manga lacks the TV show’s over the top orchestral score, and its kinetic animation. Sadamoto’s artwork also progressively deviates from his original cartoonish designs, to characters that look more realistic.

I’m not trying to say the manga is better than the TV series, since the TV series is my most favourite anime ever, but I really appreciate Sadamoto’s take on the tale. I think in a way it’s just a tad bit more accessible than the TV show.

Manga are comics. They are published in books.

I’m cutting into my Special Fund here, but these are the only two US releases I’m really following, so I figure I’ll get them right when they hit, especially since volumes from both of those series come out about once every two years.

Since I totally forgot where Trigun Maximum left off, I started reading Evangelion on the train ride back home, since I’m familiar enough with the TV series plot to just pick it up and not be totally lost. I still love Sadamoto’s vision of the story. I’ve seen episodes of the TV series way too many times, so a different angle on the story is quite refreshing. It looks like it’s finally about to end, too! I really like how in one panel Sadamoto has a drawing of the Twin Towers in flames, in attempt to illustrate the folly of man. Way to date your comic! Now everyone will know of the ~10 years between volume 1 and volume 11!

When buying these, I attempted to strike up conversation with “The Asian Guy” at Tokyo Kid, asking him how those US-made dakimakura are selling. I asked him this because I assumed he was One Of Us (he was assembling some goth loli figure at the counter) but he seemed very uncomfortable. In an attempt to make it seem like I wasn’t making fun of him, I admitted to owning a lot of hug pillows myself. He then got more uncomfortable. I expected better of you, Asian Guy At Tokyo Kid!

More at Sankaku Complex

It’s that time of year again! Time to purchase giant books of poster-sized illustrations that are passed off as calendars simply because they have some numbers running down the side! Seriously, who actually uses these as calendars? I know I don’t! But yeah, preorders are going up, so it’s time to buy. In past years I’ve usually ended up with three to four of these hanging on my wall during the year, but this year I’m keeping it simple. I’m getting just one calendar. Reason for this is because I want to save money for, uh, something, so I’m trying to be as thrifty as possible. However, despite my best efforts, I only managed to narrow the selection down to four!

• First up is the annual Evangelion calendar. I got the 2007 Evangelion calendar which was pretty good. The art was trying so hard to look like Sadamoto, but wasn’t quite there. The guy gave it the good ol’ college try, though. The main thing that put me off about this one was its total lack of Misato anywhere! Shinji and Kaworu get a gay gay gayed up page and Misato gets nothing? What gives, mang?! Anyways, when I was about to get the 2008 one last year, it was sold out. I didn’t get too pissed since I figured it lacked Misato as well. Then the scans came in! I’ve already had an Evangelion calender once before, but the idea of potential Misato material and art from the new movies is enticing…
• Second up to bat is the usual Gundam option. Truth be told, the only Gundam calendars I’ve bought have been of Seed Destiny (yes, I admitted it, laugh) and just general Gundam. Since I’ve already had two Gundam calendars in the past, I’ll probably steer clear of this one. I do want the resulting scans, though!
• Gurren Lagann is up third, fighting the power as always. I have the 2008 GL calendar sitting next to me right now, and it’s pretty cool. But you know, while I appreciate them collecting all the great eyecatches together in one package, I really wanted more original art out of a GL calendar. From the looks of it, this one seems kind of different– more like a “traditional” anime calendar (but still pretty small from the description.) I’m not sure if I actually want this– I may just hold out for the scans.
• And last but not least are everyone’s favourite trio of Absolutely Lovely Children! This is the one I’ll probably end up buying, since there won’t be a Zettai Karen Children calendar next year, and the show itself is pretty alright. I’m not as mad over it as I am for Hayate (which is the current big boy calendar I have hanging up) but this calendar has potential to be filled with lots of yummy art of our cute little preteen espers.

I’ll think about this over the next couple of days, but I’m really leaning towards the psychic kids. You guys should probably buy one of these things, too. Like, buy them through clicking these links. Doing so might give me money! ( ‘3′)

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In this exciting episode of the MISTAKES OF YOUTH PODCAST 2 BEYOND THE TIME, Aaron Clark, Daniel (aka WELCOME TO BONERTOWN) take on the new, strange and unusual BEAST that is the new Evangelion movie! You will be moved to tears by our words, moved!

Guests

• Aaron Clark
  
• Daniel

Songs

• Opening Piece– “L’Attaque des Anges” by Shiro Sagisu
• Ending Song– “Fly Me To The Moon” by various Eva seiyuu

Note: I’m basically talking out of my butt for this one. If there are any big mistakes, let me know.

When I watch 90s anime it’s always kind of a weird experience. Despite growing up with the stuff, each time I start on any given 90s title, I feel a little lost. This is probably because when I’m watching a 90s show, I’m watching it completely out of context.

Let me explain. If I were to watch something made in the 1960s, I’d watch it knowing that a lot of the shows made in the 60s were Astro Boy clones. If I were to watch something made in the 1970s, I’d watch it knowing the climate of fandom in the 70s, and so on. I’ve learned about various decades’ fandom through literature and anime like Genshiken and Otaku no Video, but each time I turn on some 90s show, I come to the realization that I know almost nothing about that decade’s fandom in Japan. Aside from reading the Notenki Memoirs, my knowledge of 90s fandom is very limited. As such, I’m wondering– are there any anime or manga titles that depict fandom in the 1990s?

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Last night I watched the cam-sub of Rebuild of Evangelion. While the movie doesn’t suffer as much as the Zeta movies do from compression (the Zeta movies were damn near incomprehensible) it does rob the earlier installments of the show of their lighter charm. Naturally, since this movie is an anime-blogger-like summary version of the first six episodes, it constantly punches you in the face with all the “important stuff” leaving the lighter moments of the opening episodes on the cutting room floor. These lighter moments are important, I find. People accuse Evangelion of having a lot of filler at the beginning, but let’s be honest, it needed it. The series gradually eased you into the real meat of it, and didn’t just drop you smack dab in the middle. This is what makes it work well for me, and I find it a lot better than, say, Bokura No’s approach, which was forcing tales of death upon you week after week. That said, redone Operation Yashima is great.

Also, there’s something of a small plot hole in the movie, and I hope it gets addressed in the form of added footage in the DVD release. I made this point earlier, but I’ll touch on it again– the movie introduces Toji with him smashing Shinji’s nose in. I found this introduction to be quite awkward since it never really had any sort of build up. Now, the plot hole here lies in how Toji knew Shinji was the Eva pilot in the first place. I figured I might have missed such a detail watching it raw, but with subs it seems there’s never a scene showing how he came across such information. If I recall correctly, the original series had a scene in which the entire class finds out Shinji is the pilot (it was established that there was a rumour going about that he was the pilot) and ask him a bunch of questions in the middle of class. In the movie, they don’t have this scene at all, let alone tell you about the rumour. It strikes me as quite clumsy of Gainax to overlook this. Hopefully they’ll fix it.

Finished Devil Hunter Yohko last night, and it was good. The show doesn’t go out of its way to impress you with a complex plot or original story telling, but it’s well done popcorn action plus T&A that any guy can get behind and ride for a few hours. As such, you can’t really write much about the show, but I do have a few observations, one of which lies in the style change that happens between episode 5 and episode 6. There wasn’t that much time between the production episodes 5 and 6, so why does the last episode look all angular and late 90s all of a sudden? Not that I have any problem with that, as I find the designs of the last episode to be the best, but it just strikes me as odd. Also, the last episode is like an episode of Tsukuyomi with action, except for instead of Neko-Mimi-Vampire lolis we have girls in China dresses cutting up demons. Good to see Shinbo exercising his weirdness as early as the mid 90s.

My other observation has to do with the promo art for the series. The two other girls on this cover that aren’t Yoko and Azusa don’t show up in the show at all. Well, the pink-haired one looks like a re-coloured Haruka, but I’m drawing a blank on the other. Any hardcore Yohko fans have an idea?

This post will have spoilers. Just so you know.

Saw that new Eva movie. Something like the first 50 or so minutes are just prettier scenes from the TV show cut together. The cutting probably feels a little jerky to someone like me who’s seen the show something like 50 billion times, but I guess to a newcomer it’d be ok. The only cut that really struck me as really rough was how they introduce Toji with him punching Shinji in the face. Maybe it was just because I was watching the movie raw, but it still didn’t seem like there was much of a segue to that scene. In any case, it’s a lot smoother than the Zeta movies, but that’s not saying much at all.

After they rush through episodes 1, 2 and 3, and cut episode 4 down to a mere scene, the movie ends with completely redone versions of episodes 5 and 6. I swear to god, basically none of the shots are the same as in the TV series, save one or two. Everyone’s heard about how they made Diamond-Angel (I can never remember their fucking names) shape-shift so I won’t go on about that. Basically they just made those two episodes a lot better than they already were.

While the movie is mostly recap, they do mix some stuff up which could make for interesting plot changes in the coming films. Like how there is one Lilith down in Central Dogma, but its mask is like Sachiel’s face, and there’s another one on the moon hanging out with Kaworu. Also, why did Misato bring Shinji down there so early in the game? Maybe I missed it because it was raw, but it seems somewhat less shocking seeing that so early on, whereas in the TV series it was like “WHOA ZOMG WUT.” I dunno, like I said, it could just be because I’ve seen it already so it doesn’t really shock me anymore. Maybe it shocked the two people who were seeing Eva for the first time, I dunno.

I watched a cam of the movie, but it was surprisingly good. Scenes with lots of lighting looked good, and scenes that were dark looked like that bad copy I have of My Youth in Arcadia. Sound is kind of tinny, and it’s hard to make out a number of lines. Not like it matters, none of you know Japanese anyway.

For recap, it was pretty good. It nice to see Eva presented in the kind of epic format it truly deserved. The animation is great, and for a show in which the scenes were all 4:3, they make the transition to 16:9 pretty well. Music is mostly the same, with some additions. Some scenes had completely redone pieces, and I’m not sure how I feel about them at the moment. I’ll have to see it again, which will probably be after I preorder the DVD from CD Japan with the money I don’t have.

The movie ended with a preview for the second movie, and it seems like it’ll cover up to episode 18-ish based on what they show, and if I remember the TV show correctly.  There’s some old stuff, some new stuff and a lot of shit that leaves me scratching my head, hoping it’ll all make sense in the end. But yeah, it’s a lot better than the poopy Zeta movies, so WATCH IT.

According to Anime Castle it is 2015. If that was the case I wouldn’t be sweating over my GPA right now and would hopefully have found a good job and would be making tonnes of money.

Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone, recently began showing in cinemas all across Japan, and from what I can tell, the fan response has been mostly good. That said, I’ve not read much in the way of impressions, but from the three or four people I’ve spoken to, it’s mostly “the first six episodes, only prettier.” The fact that the first movie is more or less a slightly condensed version of the opening act doesn’t really bother me (what else was it going to be, anyway? It’s not like it’s going to be TOTALLY HOLY SHIT DIFFERENT from the get-go), but one thing that did have me worried was the pacing of these fims.

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HEY! THE EVA MOVIE IS SHOWING IN JAPAN RIGHT NOW! Current reviews say it’s just the first 6 episodes except prettier, which is what I’ve come to expect from the promo material. BUT HEY IT’S MORE ANIMATED EVA MATERIAL. WOO.

He’s so excited!!

[03:01:00] wildarmsheero: was it just the first 6 episodes in 90 minutes with prettier animation
[03:01:28] Shingo: more or less
[03:02:56] wildarmsheero: figured

Preview footage

Yes, I understand everyone has seen this by now, but when I wanted to post about it my server was down. Anyway, If you’ve read my feelings about the first trailer elsewhere, you should know that I found issue with comments such as “it’s just the same but with prettier animation.” I argued that all the scenes that were similar were just so iconic that it’d be a sin to change them. And of course, when doing a project like this, you’ll throw all the “memorable moments” out in front of the audience first. However, after seeing this new footage, and this 15 second teaser, I’m beginning to lose hope. Sure, it could just be they’re trying to put more AND MORE “memorable moments” in all the preview footage, but I can’t shake the feeling that they just won’t be changing much at all, at least for the first installment. Gainax, please, don’t fail me now.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=7pfnqsEEEpo

Though it’s already made its way around the world and back by now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaWj2mCm5TU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaWj2mCm5TU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaWj2mCm5TU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaWj2mCm5TU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaWj2mCm5TU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaWj2mCm5TU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaWj2mCm5TU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaWj2mCm5TU

Thanks, Something Awful and Harakiri.

Podcasts, a comic and further photos to follow (I really didn’t take many though. Seriously, no more than 10, tops.) For now, the loots. If for some reason porn offends you, don’t read further!

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Found via Randall, who’s less of Eva fan than I am, so I’ll announce this with some enthusiasm.

The first new Eva film has been titled Evangelion Shin Gekijouban: Jyo, which apparently means Evangelion New Motion Picture: Prologue. Simple, generic, but effective. Oh, I suppose it’s Wevengeriwon now, given the new spelling… :P

The official site has the new Nerv and Seele logos up. They’re neato torpedo. Especially the Seele logo. Religious symbolism ++

Hideaki Anno recently released a statement regarding his feelings on remaking Evangelion (or shall I say, Wevangeriwon) in the form of a movie poster that was distributed across Japan.

Ok, this in itself is badass, having a movie poster that is really just a bunch of words. It takes something, I don’t know what, but something to do something wacky like that. Not only that, but the what is written on the poster is nothing short of awe inspiring.

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The first Eva movie has a release date of September 1st.

A naughty picture of Misato after the jump to celebrate this auspicious occasion.

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I hope everyone is having a hot and sexy holiday season. To make it even hotter, I’ve decided to dump a bunch of a Christmas/winter/holiday themed anime images on you. Almost all the images are resized, so please click on them to see the full version. Warning, some of these images are HUEG (Yes, HUEG.) The patented Mistakes of Youth Witty Commentary ™ will be applied to certain images as I see fit.

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Original Post

Uncensored version here. (warning, nudity!)

The reason why I’m here writing this news post instead of getting ready to go to Karate is because I’m feeling sick, and one should not be punching and kicking other people whilst sick. It’s simply not good form, you know. So here I am, under a blanket (much like this) writing you this lovely news post.

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Those bastards should stop sneaking these kinds of things in stores I frequent, as it results in a loss of funds. I heard of this figure a while ago, but never really thought about buying it. It wasn’t until today when it appeared in Tokyo Kid that its existence came back to the forefront of my mind.

The best part? The breasts, nay, the entire chest area is soft.

Sorry for the photo, I’m no Happy Soda.

Other adventures today? Well some political solicitor stopped and informed me that the world is going to regress to a 14th century dark age if “our generation” doesn’t do something about the government. I listened to his spiel for a bit, but he couldn’t really put together a convincing argument. After a while I got bored and left. He handed me his little book and I promptly threw it away at the nearest trash receptacle.

Anyway, I’ve not watched any anime today, sadly. I should get going on the rest of this PPD disc in a moment.

Apparently we have some hot details on the first new Eva movie. Is it just me, or does it sound like Anno’s pulling a Lucas on us…?

Also, looks like Haruhi II is a Go Go Go. I guess Kadokawa was lying to Danny Choo. Then again, there’s no official confirmation, but the source is stronger.

That’s all~