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

HARD COVER. Real manga hardly ever get hard covers.

This post is kind of a disjointed fit of rage, so please excuse me.

It’s not so much that I’m mad at Gundam 00. I’m not one to get mad at TV shows, that’s a silly thing to do. I am however mad at people watching and liking it. This, again, is something very silly. I usually don’t get mad about things like this, but Gundam 00 is kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back. In that, it was the breaking point on a build up of rage I have towards modern anime fans for having shitty taste in general.

Gundam 00 on its own isn’t that offensive. I mean, it’s just your normal boring anime, one of many that clogs Japanese airwaves these days. I think what pushes it to moderate hate level is the clear fujoshi pandering and the absolutely horrible opening and ending numbers. What causes me to explode into FITS OF RAGE is when I read gay fanboying like this (yes, I did just call DarkMirage out. Your blog FUCKING SUCKS, by the way.) The first thing that crosses my mind is, “have these kids even seen the original Gundam?” I was one of the many kids who was first introduced to Gundam through Gundam Wing on the Cartoon Network, back in 2000 (though before then, a friend of mine had a Gundam shirt which I found very cool.) Back in those days, I thought Wing was alright, simply because it was something I just had never seen before (incidentally, ever wonder where the “heero” part of my screenname comes from?) It was probably my first robot anime, actually. However, deep down I desperately wanted to see the original. When Cartoon Network announced that they were going to air the original, I was fucking ecstatic. I tuned it right as it came on, and I’m pretty sure I was thoroughly blown away. I didn’t fully understand its true awesomeness then, but I knew it was far better than the trash I had been fed earlier (though I will admit, Wing gets good points as a comedy.)

While I was eating up good ol’ UC Gundam on the CN, a bunch of other kids weren’t watching it. Thusly, the show gets canceled, and I am left in despair. Basically, what I’m trying to get at is, why do people settle for less? Anyone with half a brain can tell that Gundam 00 is written for idiots. Why watch that when you could watch the original three movies, Zeta Gundam, and the various UC OVAs? While those all vary in quality, they are all WORLDS better than any Alternate Universe Gundam (not counting G-Gundam, since G-Gundam is AWESOME.) I guess the answer to that question is that people actually like it. This confuses me to no end. I mean, I can understand liking the Seed series as a sexy comedy, but actually taking it seriously? Give me a break.

What’s more distressing is how now-a-days I feel a lot fans simply have no grounding in anime. How many newer fans have actually sat down to watch classics like Lupin III, Ashita no Joe, Space Battleship Yamato, Cutie Honey, Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, and of course, First Gundam (comedy Fist of the North Star option). I can’t say I’ve watched all of these, but by just watching of a few of those listed there, I’ve gained great insight into more modern shows and their influences. So, naturally, it bothers me when I see your average Joe anime blogger fanboying about your typical horrible anime, clearly displaying a lack of knowledge or perspective.

You know, I don’t even know where I was going with this. Actually, I’m just really mad. This is the first FIT OF RAGE I’ve had in a while. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go watch Kaiji or something…

Amazon reviews make for good reading…

“ai yori aoshi and ai yori aoshi enishi are such great shows i feel that this show has something for both the guys and the girls and the voice acting is pretty ok, so i would definetly recomend this to anyone.geneon had a good idea when they decided to make these shrink brick sets, and they did i know that a lot of people prefer thinpaks and all but i really love this idea becuase usualy when i get a thinpak one of the dvds will come lose and start rolling around in the case and get scratched (expecialy with bandais packaging) but that almost never happens with regular dvd cases, and this is the first time that Geneon has made something so affordabel, these really do have a good price.”

That is the best sentence. It doesn’t need a qualifier like “ever”, it’s simply the best sentence.

“It had romance, comedy, and some situations I myself would not find! But, overall, I liked it alot!!! And I do recomand it to all!!!”

And I do recomand we all write like this from now on.

03:27

03:44

My father rented 300 against his better judgment today, on BLURAY. BLURAY because my brother has a PS3 and we figured it’d be neat to test it out. From all the internet talk about it, I assumed it would be at least mindless manliness, but it wasn’t even that. It was just dumb :(

Maybe my idea of manliness is just more in line with this. I dunno.

I recently ordered a copy of the Cardcaptor Sakura artbook, Cheerio! off ebay. While waiting for it arrive at my doorstep, I noticed today that ebay has my address set as the one in Boston!

orz

I forgot I had a blog to write this stuff in for a moment. So as not upset my IRC comrades any further I’ll keep all my Gundam 00 bashing to this blog. Anyway, on to why this will be the worst Gundam series ever.

• It’s the newest one, and they’re only getting worse. Well, I suppose nothing can top Wing in terms of pure suckage though.
• Too many pretty boys. Though I heard some kind rumor that this person can do girls, too. But there’s already like 5 billion sexy men in the promo vid, and I’ve become uninterested already.
• The mecha designs look retarded.
• The story is retarded. “An organisation formed to stop war”? Give me a fucking break. Just sounds like retarded Seed contradictions. But it worked in Seed since Kira is a smug piece of shit, and is actually Light Yagami. Also Seed has Andrew Waltfeld, who can save any disaster. Fuck, how do you think I finished Destiny? Why do you think I’m buying it now? For the fucking coffee, that’s why!
• It’s directed by the retard who did that dumb shounen show that’s by Bones.
• Wow I’ve used the word retard and retarded a lot already.

C’mon guys… just for me… get Tomino and Yaz back together… let them make one last UC epic to end them all. That’s all I ask. Just one more thing that’ll take us back to the days when Gundam was for true men and not pansy teenagers. Let’s see a show about hellish war, not fucking j-rock stars in space.

Anyway, time for bed… or time to watch the Layzner op for the 100th time…

Talking of Youtube, Koike68’s account was suspended. This leaves me quite sad as all those great MADs that I had on my favourites are now gone. Burn in hell Youtube!

I didn’t want to do this but I guess I have to. This is what happens when general animation fans and otaku collide, I guess. This entry is primarily influenced by the comments here, specifically those of Harakiri. Basically he’s saying the Kyoto Animation’s craft is poor and lacks artistic integrity, while works such Denno Coil are worlds better given they uh… have artistic integrity, I guess. Basically the point of this entry will be to illustrate that works such as Kanon and Denno Coil are at the same level when they come to quality of their craft, they’re just for totally different audiences.

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DIE IN A FIRE

After a couple of months, I finally popped in Manga’s re-release of the classic Lupin film “Castle of Cagliostro” into my DVD drive with high expectations. I figured their last release was bad enough, so they couldn’t possibly do anything worse to the film with this new release, right?

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Shuffle! Memories isn’t too painful. I mean, it’s recap, but they’re decently done. That and I haven’t seen the original series for quite a while. But oh, did episode three made me wanna die.

A bunch of screencaps with witty comments after the jump.

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MY MOTHERFUCKING SHOWER IS BROKE

that is all :(

edit: seems them frozen pipes have thawed. for now.

I’m “Live A Live” by the way. I change my display name on MSN almost daily because I’m insane.

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