anime

Otaku Evolution is back, baby! 2024 starts with me finally getting to a particular anime bête noire of mine, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED. I just do not understand the popularity of this fizzless, lifeless drudge of a show. The "characters" are bland, the plot is largely recycled, the production values are average at best, and there's just no joy or magic to it. It's frankly one of the most soulless anime I've ever watched in my life. But it's so popular! Why?!

Well, anyway, I'm back, and it looks like I got into a little trouble over the Putin thing. Ah well.

The second season of the Yamato remake wasn't as good as the first (unlike in the original series), but I still have high hopes for these movies (which will probably be split up into episodes). Actually, I might review Yamato 2199 this year!

One final video for 2023, folks! As usual with my last video of the year, I go over the various English dubs of the anime I've covered in roughly the second half of the year. The strongest dubs were probably Gundam Unicorn and One Piece: Episode of East Blue, though I think most of the dubs I covered in this half of the year were at least decent. ADV's dub of Macross notwithstanding. (Yikes.)

I've been meaning to get to the One Piece in some form for quite a while, and Episode of East Blue seems like as good as any a place to start, or maybe even better, since it encapsulates a lot of the early One Piece adventures and character backgrounds. And fortunately, this also coincides with the Netflix live-action TV series, which, as I say, is miraculously good. Well, maybe it's less a miracle and more really hard work from the cast, writers, set designers, and others. It's really, really good. Go watch it!

My Anime News Network review of Gundam UC Episode 1

Dragon Ball Z has one of those dubs that's extremely popular despite it being such an affront to the original material. Why is that, I wonder? I'm guessing it's mostly nostalgia. The same people who rave about how you have to watch DBZ dubbed are the ones who rant when there's a slight translation difference in any other anime. Hypocrites, in other words. If a company did today to an anime what Funimation did to DBZ decades ago, there would be a huge controversy over it, and you know it.

Ghost in the Shell: Arise is convoluted as all get-out and much of it confuses the shit out of me. Trying to keep track of the dozens of factions and their motivations is mind-bending work and I could only get the basic gist of parts of it. Is it just me? Am I not smart enough for this anime? Or is every new chapter of Ghost in the Shell just addicted to complexity to a deleterious degree? Join me as I try to make sense of this damn thing.