WTF?? Where's the blog?

Yeah, I know, we're coming on 2010, and still nothing for 2009. What happened? Well, the gaming world sucked me in again, and the anime world spat me out. I've especially gotten back into City of Heroes. My friend has a Super Group on there called House of the Wayward Soul, so I've been running around getting prestige so he can buy lots of cool stuff for the group. I've also gotten to a higher level (22 at the moment), which is high enough to start really experiencing some of the fun stuff like inventions and more interesting villain groups. There's also the Christmas event and free server transfers for characters right now. I've also discovered the tailor, which you can visit and add a new costume, for a fee, every ten levels, or so. I still mostly solo, but every now and then I'll team. I'm really still a bit anti-social there.

As for anime, well...I have been going to various conventions, mostly to see how they run differently to the one I staff called Geek.Kon.
I was added as Staff Artist last year, and I'd like to keep doing it. I've gotten a lot better at handling Photoshop, even though I still only use Elements. I've also thought about going into costuming, but there you have major expense, too. And that's the root of the problem when it comes to anime for me. The expense is just too much. I just can't afford to pay $30 for 3 episodes. The vendor from Anime Palace told me the whole hobby is going down. People see that they can get DVD's of quality American (or in the cases of Huntik and Winx Club, Italian) cartoons like Wolverine and the X-Men and Avatar: The Last Airbender for peanuts, and wonder why they have to pay so much for so little when it comes to anime. In their minds, they're getting ripped off. It is a bargain from the viewpoint of the Japanese producers, since anime DVD's can start at $80 and up in Japan. Additionally, a lot of videos from streaming sites are being removed due to copyright infringement, or the sites are being shut down all together. This it the case with the sites I had found. Some, like Crunchyroll, have gone legit with some pay-to-use features. You can't blame them, anime companies are feeling the crunch, too. It's just that I've gone through my Naruto phase back in 2004-2006, and I have fond memories of it. but I'm ready to move on now. I don't really care if they're offering it for free because I don't watch it anymore.

The thing is, even with a subscription fee and buying booster packs for costumes and powers, CoH, as City of Heroes is called, is far more cheaper than all the anime I used to buy. Even upgrading my computer, or buying a new one, is worth the price. I can't really use an anime DVD for much else, other than passively watching the show. I guess I could get back into writing fanfiction [I had written a couple of DBZ yaoi fics featuring Trunks and Android 17 ;) ], or doing fanart. But there just isn't the draw for me anymore. The shorter series and movies seem the best bet for now. I can watch them quickly and then get back to the stuff I really want to do. Kill things on my computer!

Anyway, you'll notice I've removed the "Eye Candy" videos and the photo gallery. The videos went, since Youtube seems to like removing creativity from the site every so often. Especially if this creativity involves other peoples' music and video edited together. I've come across a Team Fortress 2 video that was removed, but through diplomacy and climbing the ladder of bureaucracy, the creator has managed to get it back online there. The photo gallery is gone because it simply added too much of clutter, making it hard to notice the table of contents kind of thing I have. I think I called it "Recent Viewings" or some such, but it's supposed to make it easier for people to search postings based on the anime they feature without having to go through the calender. I took all the pictures off of various websites, and most can be still be found in the original reviews. In a fit of trying to organize my Photobucket account, I went and moved a bunch of pictures into folders based on series, even though I was warned that I'd be breaking links by doing so. I've gone through on this version of Anime Impressions and removed the broken links.

So the blog still isn't quite dead yet, at least not in my mind. I just haven't seen anything worth posting about except for maybe Higurashi. But then, I like to write reviews as soon as it's fresh in my mind. I've already got another series I seem to only be able to find on Veoh called Kaiba. We watched it in Anime Club last semester, but I stopped going to club on account of differences with the current president. I'm not a student anymore, so I don't really have any say in rather we have a serious viewing or a riff fest (as he seems to think everything that comes out of his mouth is a jewel). Yet something else that has made it more difficult for me to enjoy the hobby.

Hiatus Over!

Hiatus Over!

I'm back! Geek.kon 2008 was another success with attendance at 1,144. In an unexpected twist we had as many furries attend as Sci-Fi fans! I wonder if this means the furry fandom is making a come back? I've got a new webcomic up called Miss Popular. Well, it's actually something I did back in high school. It started out as a doodle in my psychology class notebook and wound up being 110 pages long. So far I've only got the first eight pages up, and I'm working on digitally lettering the next fifteen pages.

Since I've been doing more digital artwork, I'm more wary of downloading anime considering how much space it takes up. I've also given up on gaming for now, as it eats up time I'd rather spend doing art and watching anime. I have to say, though, from my brief time as a gamer, I've come to prefer PC gaming over console. I might start up again, especially in light of Gaia Online getting it's free MMO up and running, although it runs a bit choppy on my computer. I've restarted my Netflix account and have found a lot anime streaming sites. Netflix is especially great since it offers many titles I can't seem to find anywhere, or have forgotten about. You know, all those late 80's early 90's OVA's that focus on the apocalypse and bloody ninja battles. To wit, I've found an abundant supply of man-ame!

Like I posted before, I'm going to try to focus on older stuff, probably from before 2000. However, I may occasionally post about newer series, too, just to keep things from getting boring. And now without further ado:

Robot Carnival

There's a sharp contrast between the anime of today and the anime of yesterday, due mostly to the shift in influence in the industry. Gone are the days where the word “animation” was synonymous with the word “Disney.” With the arrival of the Internet, anime came to dominate the scene. Once relegated to the darkened corners of a few video stores, it's fans considered subversive perverts, anime came into it's own a long time ago.

One of the movies that helped push anime into the limelight was Robot Carnival (1987).

For years it sat beside the likes of Akira and Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer on those darkened video store shelves, until, according to the Wikipedia article, the Sci-Fi channel picked it up for late night viewings.

Robot Carnival is an anthology of short films, most of which have a distinct European/American feel to them,and, of course, the main theme of robots. The opening sequence features a young boy trying to warn his desert village of the approach of the massive Robot Carnival machine. Once a center of entertainment, it has become a rusted behemoth meandering its way through the desert, crushing everything in its path.

“Franken's Gears” is about a scientist who creates a robot ala Frankenstein, only to be killed by it in a freak accident.

“Deprived” has a male robot seeking out a young girl he has promised to protect, and who has been kidnapped by an evil cyborg. This was my favorite as it inspired memories of Fist of the North Star and a lot of other action oriented anime that has a lone wolf seeking out revenge. It's also the short that feels most like a traditional 80's anime, from the violence and action driven plot to the androgynous villain who looks like he walked out of an 80's Heavy Metal Hair Band.

“Presence” is one of the longer short films and is very reminiscent of “Ghost in the Shell” and “Magnetic Rose,” with absolutely gorgeous artwork.

It concerns an inventor who creates a “more feminine” companion for himself after his feminist wife upstages him in the career department. Terrified that his new toy has developed a mind of her own, he smashes her and leaves her remains to molder for twenty years before finally facing his fears and returning to her. Another twenty years after that, the mechanical girl appears before the aged inventor and they both walk away into oblivion, leaving the wife baffled as to her husband's whereabouts.

“Star Light Angel” reveals that not everything is as it appears. A teenage girl enjoys a robot themed amusement park with her friend, only to find out her companion is dating her ex. A performing robot notices the girl's distress and comes to her aid when a virtual reality ride, picking up on the girl's emotional turmoil, turns into a nightmare. However the girl is shocked and dismayed to find, rather than the romantic idea of a lovestruck automaton, a human knight beneath the armor. After he finally manages to rescue her, she comes around, and the two meet outside the park after closing time, presumably to pursue a relationship.

“Cloud” feels more like a Rene Laloux art house Sci-Fi cartoon rather than anime. It's about a boy robot wandering the Earth while the clouds behind him take on different shapes. Eventually he becomes a real by via an angel which appears in the cloud behind him.

Up next is “A Tale of Two Robots: Chapter 3: Foreign Invasion,” about a mad genius, dubbed in English with what sounds like a German accent ala Albert Einstein. The small Japanese village he's invading isn't going to take it sitting down...well some of them are. Sitting in a giant, coal-steam powered robot of their own!

“Nightmare” is probably the short that is the least like anime. It's more “A Night on Bald Mountain” transposed over Tokyo with robots in place of demons. The story begins with a view of everyday life in Tokyo featuring rotoscoped pedestrians. As night falls, we see a massive pendulum swinging back and forth between the towering skyscrapers. We then learn that it is attached to a massive robot looming over the city. It summons to its aid a smaller robot dressed in a red hat and cloak.

Known as Red Neck, his job is to race through the city on his hovering platform, bringing various machines to life which then combine to form some truly demonic looking robotic creatures. These minions then dance and gyrate before their master's delight.. In the middle of all this, a drunken salary man, Chicken Man, awakens in an alley only to find the city overrun with nightmarish electronic monsters. After being discovered by Red Neck, Chicken Man desperately trys to escape the machines on his own little Vespa. Eventually the machines are defeated and our cowardly drunkard looks out over a nearly demolished city as the sun rises to shine on the skyscrapers, pierced like pin cushions by fallen debris.

The animation for Nightmare is nearly as smooth as that of Disney's feature films, and many of the gestures and movements made by the characters are very reminiscent of Western animation. The twirl of Red Neck's cloak is much like Snow White's as she runs through the forest. But then perhaps he's more like the Headless Horseman from Disney's Sleepy Hollow. Chicken Man himself looks a lot like Ichabod Crane, and his actions are cowardly enough to put Ichabod's frightened flight from the Headless Horseman to shame.

“Robot Carnival” is worth the effort. Your best bet is to look it up online, as it has never been released on Region 1 DVD, which is surprising since it was, and still is, regarded as an important piece in the history of Japanese animation. You may also be able to scavenge it from the piles of VHS tapes found at various video rental places and used bookstores. Once again, it has found itself sitting beside Akira and Beautiful Dreamer on those darkened, dusty shelves.