review

Time to exorcise another evil spirit from my anime fandom and shove Gundam 0083 in the wood chipper where it belongs. Sure, it's pretty, but it's also as dumb as a sack of knobs. It's quite possibly the worst entry into the Universal Century timeline in terms of characters and plot. The characters? Most of them are insufferable. The plot? Goes further than it needs to. Maybe it's best to watch this by fast forwarding through most of the dialogue to the action bits. Or, you know, watch War in the Pocket or 08th MS Team instead.

Kou and Nina are just... I have a real life, palpable hatred for these fictional characters.

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I gotta end this watchthrough with a rotten pun. Sorry.

So after skipping a week so I could watch some OG Dragonball (a decision I do NOT regret), it's time to cover these final few episodes. Long story short, they're good but so good it really hurts when one realizes that after the final scene, it is all we've got. Short story long? Well... let's see what interested me about this.

Hm, maybe I should have timed this better so it could be the 120th episode. 20th anniversary of the show, 120th episode, get it? Well, whatever, 119 will have to do.

Cowboy Bebop is an unvarnished work of genius, an exquisite blending of genres set to a multitude of rhythms. It's not defined by its genres, though, but by ingenuity in execution and emotional gravity. There's plenty of other reasons why it remains my favorite anime after so long.  So for my 35th birthday (what the fuck am I doing with my life?), I've decided to review this eternal classic of Japanese animation.

3, 2, 1... let's jam!  

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With Lion-O once again righting his course, it would appear this series is prepping for its finale with this small set of episodes. At my initial viewing, I thought it would be a 'one-and-done' at their latest locale: a desert dog town. Instead, it unfurls into a semi-lengthy mini-arc of lore and loss. The latter part is not just any loss, but multiple losses of life, plot devices, and even personal effects. Who knew?

So after seeing his adopted bro making out with his crush, we start this next batch of episodes with a fuming Lion-O. Yeah he seems to have gotten the hang of the Sword of Omens, and has gained enough respect from his fellow felines that herding them together so he can disparage Mumm-Ra as a loose woman is easier, but... that's only before the cockblock. 3/5ths of this episode batch involve Lion-O coming to grips with Cheetara picking Tygra over him, and by god he tries. It's actually a nice bit of development for him, since the show has him try to act above his heartbreak as possible, but once the big two-parter begins it shows he still has a lot to work with even with his team's loyalty present.

My final entry in this year's Dragon Ball Month is the eighth Dragon Ball Z movie, that one with the mountain of muscles who dumb people seem to enjoy. Seriously, Broly is a complete waste, because he's not even really a character. He's such a two(at best)-dimensional villain, and yet they give him this back story to try to get us to sympathize, or at least understand. Sorry, but that only works for characters with personalities. With Broly, it's just a lot of wasted potential. Granted, at least they tried, but maybe they should have shifted that effort into giving him something that defines his role, aside from a lot of screaming, and cry-induced insanity. Sure, most DBZ movie villains are shallow, even in the better movies, but this is a case of aiming high and falling low.

The article title for this week's watchthrough is not meant to be a disparagement towards the series, nor an implication it gets TOO sentimental. In fact... the introduction of further feeling into the show is welcome in ways I could not imagine back in the day.

Man alive, I thought it would be a few episodes after what I had watched before I would be won over by the show. Yet about halfway through this one, I was already won over not just by the episode proper, but the whole show in general. Had I ONLY watched this after the previous episode, I would've probably finished this show earlier. Alas, that was not to be the case, but better late than never.

I had to move this video to BitChute because Toei is run by assholes.

I really should cut down on these long pre-credit and post-credit sequences, and I'll probably do that soon, but for now, I spend days meticulously putting them together. It makes me appreciate animation more, because they're barely animated, just a step or two above a slide show. I don't know if I intended them to continue story ideas from my comic strips (which frankly, I can't see anybody getting unless they read them, which nobody did) or they're there to provide atmosphere/pad runtime. I both love and loathe making them. Perhaps I simply want to show off. But if I didn't, I wouldn't be making these videos at all.

Some unexpected computer problems the last week created a delay in my rewatch of the ThunderCats 2011 I had already seen. Instead of going through with my plan of watching smaller chunks, I watched the whole cat and kiboodle instead. So let's end this so we can get to what I think of the episodes I HAVEN'T seen.