Posted in

Otaku Evolution Episode 133 – Ninku: The Movie

What happens when an anime studio, desperate to cash in on its properties, creates a so-called movie that’s about the length of a single TV episode? What happens when an anime licensor snags a 20-something minute “movie” in a franchise completely alien to the North American public, dubs it, and that becomes the first and only representation of the whole thing? Well, you get Ninku: The Movie, a completely superfluous and brainlessly silly feature for a show based on a really, really poorly drawn manga. I mean, really. Just go look it up. read more

Posted in

The Debate That Got Me Ejected From Kanzenshuu Forums: Is Gohan Out Of Character In The Cell Games?

 "I don’t need this shit."

 

PART I: The Preamble
 

I’ve been a fan of the Dragon Ball franchise off and on since about the time Dragon Ball Z first broadcast in syndication in September of 1996. I didn’t immediately latch onto the show. It took a while. A friend of mine, Jon Oakes, who I used to play SNES with at his house (I had a Sega Genesis, and we alternated homes for playing), introduced me to the series, and I didn’t quite latch onto it until I started watching it on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block. When I started branching out into different types and titles of anime, I kept pushing the DB franchise back, exploring the more complex and compelling narratives of shows like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Serial Experiments Lain, and Cowboy Bebop. And after all, I would argue, the English version of Dragon Ball Z was so poorly done it was impossible to stomach the show except with subtitles, and I didn’t even have a DVD player until around 2001. By then, I looked at my DB fandom as an object of nostalgia at best and embarrassingly poor childhood taste at worst. read more