First, a little tribute to Daron Nefcy’s Star vs the Forces of Evil, a show I only got into this year but will miss forever, for some reason. A really fun cartoon that blossomed into a compelling one with continuing story arcs. It’s been over a month since “Cleaved”, the final episode, but I wanted to sneak something in. I ended up doing more than I thought because I was able to link it to Dragon Ball. Starco forever, but the best relationship was Eclipsa and Globgor.
If the opening bit seems familiar, the first part is from Episode 97, “Mid Year English Dub Review III”, but I added a bit more of me fighting recolored Free—er, Golex. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it was to customize those fighting poses with the skeleton armor. I need to work on the beam effects, though. I used Dragon Ball Z sound effects for it, as you probably can tell.
Anyway, it’s time for me to rant about Dragon Ball Minus and the newest Broly movie. Yeah, I know I’m doing a review of Bardock: Father of Goku, but I spend most of the time griping about the lore mining in the DB franchise in general, and my complaints about Minus in particular. Can we please stop doing Bardock stories? It was enough a long time ago, the mystique is long gone.
It’s the start of another Dragon Ball Month here on Otaku Evolution, which means padding the videos with my dumb pixel character pieces. This time, I thought I’d dive a little into the ordinary life of pixel-me, but obviously he’s luckier with women than I am, because nobody, ever, in their right mind, would want me to destroy them, sexually or otherwise. Yeah, when women see me, they normally destroy themselves right there to get out of talking to me.
On the bright side, the Dragon Ball movie I’m reviewing, Sleeping Princess in the Devil’s Castle, is a charmingly weird short tale with a wonderful aesthetic. You don’t really get that kind of quality atmosphere in the more recent Dragon Ball entries, with rich environments and an adventurous, but tense mood. I miss that.
It’s the finale of 80s Month this year! So yeah, this one’s just a “summarize and snark” kind of video, not a lot of deep diving, because it’s Crusher Joe, so there’s no deep diving to do. It’s just a light, fun adventure wrapped up in about an hour. Really, I think there should have been a Crusher Joe TV series with stuff like this. There’s revivals of all sorts of anime properties nowadays, so perhaps this one is due for a new entry.
Speaking of new entries (or old ones), I padded the video a bit with the return of Terry and a few hints for what’s to come with what I still loosely consider a “storyline” but is just me playing with sprites for shits and giggles with no special goal.
In this second video in Otaku Evolution‘s first 80s Month, I examine a… complicated Lupin III feature, Legend of the Gold of Babylon. Complicated because, by most metrics, it’s really pretty terrible. But it’s terrible in an academic sense. You should see it at least once. And you should watch THIS at least three times. I could use the hits.
Welcome to the beginning of 80s Month here on Otaku Evolution! I wanted to do a speciial theme month just for that decade that brought us outrageous perms, acid washed jeans, fanny packs, and Swatches. Everyone was still worried about Russian nukes, a guy stood in front of a tank, BBSes were full of people debating Star Trek captains, and Roger Moore finally stopped playing Bond while in his late 50s. It was fresh, it was gnarly, it was old school and new wave.
This video’s offering is 1986’s Megazone 23 Part II, the follow-up to the incredibly anticlimactic first part. Shogo is still trying to expose the truth about the edifice the people of Tokyo live in while on the generation ship, the military still wants to control Bahamut, there’s another transforming motorcycle robot to be stolen, and this anime is 80s as fuck. I mean, at one point, somebody’s playing a Thundercats pinball machine. Wow.
It’s the return of Yumiko Readman (after a fashion) in 2003’s R.O.D. The TV, a 26-episode series that largely delivers on the unfulfilled promise of the original OVA. You’ve got multiple paper masters, two people who can phase through things, a giant conspiracy by the British Library of all organizations, international intrigue, and a whole lot of that thin white writing weapon. It’s the show with the pushy title, so you had better Read or Die!
Sounds like a choose-your-own adventure book.
So, I thought I’d do a little character scene to start out the video because the idea popped into my head. Actually, I was thinking about terms and phrases people get wrong, including myself, and I also wanted to show off that diner/restaurant background I only ever used in a Christmas episode. You can tell that the scale is a little off, because my feet and Glasses Guy’s should both be able to reach the floor, as we are both intended to be adults of at least average height, but hey, why nitpick? I envisioned a scene in which I was just ranting while looking at a menu, only occasionally looking up to be an asshole. So I made one. It doesn’t really have any relevance to the review itself, I just like doing these things now and then.
I last discussed the topic of “tragedy porn” during my Kikaider 01 video. Essentially, it’s a melodrama so rife with manipulative and transparent tragedy wanking that it becomes increasingly difficult to take it seriously as you watch it. Now, granted, every drama intends to get you to feel for its characters and plot, but tragedy porn is just an endless parade of misfortunes for little rhyme or reason except to get you to tear up. With that reiterated, the title looked at here is Now and Then, Here and There, an anime favorite of mine. It does take a serious, no-holds, unglamorous look at war in a way few other anime do. But it does wear a bit thin when the main character tries to project a sense of positive thinking on people suffering endlessly. I can understand wanting them to hold onto life somehow, but Shu’s smiles and assurances can come off annoying and empty, even if he’s ultimately proven right. So the question is, is NTHT a real tragedy? A melodrama? Or something else? And if it is tragedy porn, why do I still like it so much? Well, join me for an analysis of this fine work. My Dailymotion page My BitChute page My Vimeo My DTube page My DeviantArt page My Patreon (please support my videos!) My Ask.fm page (ask me questions!) Like, Subscribe, Link, Share, etc.
