kingdom hearts manga books
download japanese anime
hentai full movie download
online hentai games
hikaru no go manga
online hentai video
Martian Successor Nadesico: Volume 1
It's been a while since I tackled an Anime series, so I checked back to my recommendations post and decided that I should try Martian Successor Nadesico next. It gets good reviews, it seems to be recommended for newcomers to Anime, and it meets the requirements I laid out in my recommendation request (said requirements won't stay in place forever, but I've got to start somewhere). The only drawback is that it's out of print and Netflix is missing disc 5 (of 6 total) in the series. But I was able to find a torrent of the series and downloaded the episodes on that disc, so I think I'll be alright. I just finished the first disc and wanted to give some of my initial impressions.
* So far, things seem to be pretty engaging. The characters are interesting and the story seems to be moving along well enough. The only thing that is a little strange for me is that there appears to be a ton of references to other anime series. Not having watched a lot of Anime, I can't really say for sure, but it seems pretty obvious to me that this is at least partially a parody of older Anime series. For instance, one obvious source of parody is how some of the characters become obsessed with a 100 year old series called "Gekigangar 3," which features a giant fighting robot that looks to this newbie's eyes like a version of Voltron or something. I'm positive there are tons of references going on there (it just feels referential, the way you'd be able to tell Family Guy was being referential even if you didn't know what they were referencing). Also, several of the characters tend to break the fourth wall and talk directly to the audience, a sure sign of parody. Again, I'm finding the series engaging and funny (I laughed out loud several times) in its own right, but I wonder if I'd get more out of it if I was more familiar with the giant fighting robot genre?
Voltron? Is that you?
This mecha looks so familiar...
* Considering that I've pegged this as a parody of your typical giant fighting robot genre series, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that almost everything about this series reminds me of Vandread and Vandread: Second Stage. Lots of things, from the characters and their stories (for instance, Akito is like Hibiki in several ways: they've both got a mysterious past, they've both got a ditzy girl chasing them around, and they're both pseudo-untrained pilots.), to the enemy (the Jovian Lizards also seem to use robots to do their fighting, just like the enemy in Vandread - the ships even have similar designs), to the combinging robot fighters (which, granted, don't happen in the same way) are similar. MSN came out before Vandread so I can only assume that they're both borrowing from a common set of archetypical anime characters and conventions. In any case, I'm guessing that I'll be using Vandread as a point of reference to all anime in this genre going forward.
* I was somewhat shocked by the end of episode 3 and start of episode 4. Something surprising happens to the character I had pegged as a cross between Bart and Hibiki from Vandread, and, well, I just wasn't expecting anything like that this early in the series.
* The extras on the DVD are actually helpful for once, particularly the Translation Notes. At one point, a character who had stowed away in a shipping container makes her entrance, and one of her friends tries to push her back into the container. In response, she says "Don't put me back in... I'm not a mackeral that has to be canned." Inexplicably, she starts laughing hysterically. At the time, I remember thinking it was an odd thing to say, and that there must be some sort of translation problem with a Japanese idiom or something. According to the translation notes, I was close. It turns out that the character in question can't stop herself from making horrible puns, and the Japanese verb for "packing in" and "preparing mackerel" is the same (shimeru). Apparently, the translater pulled out his hair all throughout the series trying to come up with ways to translate the puns. To be honest, I'm not sure how much of this sort of thing really makes it through, and it makes me wonder how much I'm missing whenever I watch a foreign language film (I've recently written about this subject as well).
* Speaking of translations, is it me, or do the subtitles on this get ridiculously difficult to read at times? They use different colors to indicate background speech and foreground speech, but they're sometimes inconsistent with it and in a couple of cases, the text takes up more than half the screen! For the most part, it's fine, but I was having a little trouble at first. The translation for the dubbing seems to be similar (not exactly the same, but not as different as some other shows I've watched). I guess I'm still on the fence about whether or not to watch with subtitles or dubbing...
More thoughts and screenshots below the fold. Some even more random notes and screenshots