AWESOME (mostly) ACTION PACKED ANIME NIGHT: MIT ANIME SCREENING 08/31/07
The reason I’m walking in at about 12:30 tonight is because for the first time ever I stayed the full length of one of MIT’s anime screenings. Tonight was movie night, with the program boasting titles such as READ OR DIE, ORIGIN: SPIRITS OF THE PAST and RIDING BEAN.
I hadn’t seen ROD in a while, so it was nice to get reacquainted with it. It was the same ridiculous super hero romp that it always was, but I find I can appreciate it the most now. The animation holds up pretty well today, still looking better than a lot of current productions, even if it is early computer animation. It’s very fluid at all times, and all the effects and such are mostly top-notch. The animation has a nice flatness about it, like Tokikake with some shading.
Origin: Spirits of the Past was a pretty bad movie. It’s like Gonzo can’t get the good writers and good animators to ever work together, ever. Like, why couldn’t they give the guy who came up with the AWESOME IDEA to have cameras blow things up write this movie? It’d be so awesome, because he’d actually have a budget to work with. Yes, this movie has MONEY behind it. I don’t know why, because the plot is so shitty and preachy, and the characters are so one dimensional and boring. The animation is stupid fluid though, but the cel shading is a little weird. It’s all softened and shit. I can see what they were going for, but it mostly doesn’t work. Also, the character designs are pretty ugly. I guess they made the characters not sexy an attempt to make themselves seem like they’re better than normal anime, which is kind of what the whole production was trying to do but failed miserably and just turned into some gay un-entertaining piece of garbage about SAVING THE PLANET. Anyway on to…
RIDING BEAN! This is one awesome piece of ’80s animation right here. I can’t even begin to tell how awesome this is. I’m starting to see why people call the ’80s the golden age, since this shit rocks hardcore, motherfucker. It has everything that makes watching TV worth it: guns, cars, cars in car chases, gore that comes out of nowhere, lolis, questionable relationships between lolis and older women, huge chins, ridiculous fast moving plots and solid as hell animation. This is what anime is made for. This, right here. I am so happy I sat through that Greenpeace shitfest just so I could watch this awesome OVA of awesomeness.
Anyway, that’s all for tonight. Catch you goofballs later.
An interesting line-up there. They slip the preachiness in between two action flicks. It’s been too long since I last saw Riding Bean–it is one of the best animes of the 80s.
Bean blocking a bullet with his forehead is about as gar as it gets. Thanks for the recommendation.