It’s time to get back to Otaku Evolution with this review, after taking a short break. Tokyo ESP is one of those anime I watched streaming on Funimation’s site (what a bad video player, by the way), like Michiko & Hatchin, and found it interesting enough to purchase the boxset. Although it’s nowhere near as good as Michiko & Hatchin, it’s still a decent show worth a view or two. Plus, it features one of the best anime penguins, Peggy (who is a male, despite the name). He can turn a flipper into a shark, like Alucard changing his arm into Cerberus. It’s neat.
Otaku Evolution
Otaku Evolution Episode 201 – Mid Year English Dub Review VII
This video premieres the new Penguin Council, which is almost all-new, excluding Peggy (from Tokyo ESP, an anime I’m reviewing soon). There’s Mike from Penguin’s Memory, Nick from Adventures of the Little Koala (Koala Boy Kockey), DJ Grooves from the A Hat in Time game, and Esmeralda from Penguindrum. The Penguin Council is the Penguin Union’s central government. At one point, the assassin Ravex murdered a couple of members of the original Council.
We also get me complaining about the adaptation of The Long Halloween, which I didn’t like. Apparently, like with the Evangelion dub, I’m in the minority opinion, because people seem to really like the Part One movie, but I despised how it only broadly captured the plotline of the comic, whereas adaptations of The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One rarely deviated and were very good. I’m a huge Batman guy, so The Long Halloween is an important storyline to me and needed to be handled just right, and wasn’t. I’m sorry, I just can’t abide by the differences. But perhaps, like Peggy suggested, I should just stick to the comic if I want the comic’s storyline faithfully.
Otaku Evolution Episode 200 – Neon Genesis Evangelion
So, I finally made it to 200 videos. Well, I had to split one video into two videos, but I still count that as one. Then, of course, there’s the Recommendation videos and the April Fool’s video where Pen Pen reviewed, so that’s more. Though you also have to subtract all the videos that were taken down, right? I mean, I still did them, so perhaps not, but they can’t be seen, so it’s like a tree falling in a forest when nobody’s around, isn’t it? But nevertheless, 200 OE videos, at least.
Otaku Evolution Episode 199 – Top 10 Otaku Evolution Videos
There’s not a whole lot of commentary I can provide for this one… mostly because it IS commentary on other commentaries. It’s turtles all the way down. And this won’t be the only favorites list this year, either. You can say I’ve gotten lazy, but I’ve been working nonstop on the 200th video (so far it’s over 40 minutes long).
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Otaku Evolution Episode 198 – Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team
I owe Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team for getting me into the Universal Century era of Gundam. If it weren’t for it, I would never have got into watching the original series, or Zeta, or Char’s Counterattack. I’d have stuck with the AUs like Wing or G forever. And while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with the AUs (well, some of them), the Universal Century is the biggest tent at the Gundam circus. There are Gundam titles I like more than this OVA, but it’s still one of my favorites.
Otaku Evolution Episode 197 – Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
In this video, I take a look at Hayao Miyazaki’s second theatrical directorial foray, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, based on his own manga that ran in Animage magazine. Having read some of the manga (I really need to get back to it), I can tell you that there are some definite differences between the two (the movie was made when the manga was unfinished), but the movie is good enough to stand on its own… for the most part. It’s not my favorite Miyazaki film, and certainly doesn’t have my favorite Hisaishi music, but it’s a damn good adventure worth watching.
Otaku Evolution Episode 196 – Urusei Yatsura: Only You
I don’t know a lot about Urusei Yatsura, to be honest. To prepare for this review, I watched the first couple of episodes, and I scanned the Wikipedia page on the series. It’s not a franchise I’ve waded in before. But knowing how important it is to anime, and seeing that it has an English-dubbed version (which I had to retrieve in an interesting way), I thought I’d give it a shot. Besides, it’s Mamoru Oshii, and Mamoru Oshii is a damn good director. Most of the time. Well, Urusei Yatsura: Only You isn’t very Oshii-esque, but it was still early in his career.
Otaku Evolution Episode 195 – Space Adventure Cobra: The Movie
Well, it’s 80s Month again, which means I get to hype myself up by watching old 80s commercials and music videos to vibe with while I’m deciding which selections to make. Hey, did you know Domino’s brought back the Noid? That’s as 80s as Crocodile Mile, shoulder pads for women, and pretending NutraSweet was good for you. I keep waiting for Hi-C to bring back Ecto Cooler… again. But Space Adventure Cobra is more of a 70s throwback with its bizarre, even trippy imagery.
Otaku Evolution Episode 194 – Iria: Zeiram the Animation
I have to admit, I did not watch the two live-action Zeiram movies. I saw a clip or two (I used one of them) and read a summary on Wikipedia. Because of this, I approached Iria: Zeiram the Animation not as a prequel to the movies, but as a distillation of elements from the movies, an anime that stands on its own. But it’s not a great anime on its own, or at all, really. It’s not truly awful, but there are so many other anime out there worth your time more than this one. Some of the plot beats are head scratching, to say the least.
Otaku Evolution Episode 193 – Lupin III: Farewell to Nostradamus
I love the Lupin III franchise, but there is a lot of crap in it. And the crappy parts range from dull and lifeless to actively painful, and all shades in between. Legend of the Gold of Babylon was interestingly bad, which may or may not fall on the spectrum of crap (it may just be an exception). Farewell to Nostradamus, on the other hand, is the kind of terrible that you can’t really say that much about. It’s just a very dull, inert movie that feels like Lupin III in automatic mode. There’s nothing special about it whatsoever, aside from being a theatrical feature.