Final Anime Weekly Update, Including Pokemon.

As I said the goal of Anime Weekly Updates was mainly to do this for 2018 and I don’t think I’ll be continuing it in 2019.  Also for Winter 2019 I think I might wait a month or so before checking out the new shows, I think part of why I enjoyed Winter 2017 so much was that when I started it even the Simuldubs already had a handful of episodes each to binge.

On Friday I finally watched Pokemon The Power Of Us.  It was pretty good, I think this alternate continuity film series will do better now that it’s not condensing much of an 80 episode saga.  Though I do wish Ash had more Pokemon.

I think it took longer than any other film for us to see any Pokemon on screen, about 3 minutes.  I’m sure in Japan it was preceded by an amazing world of Pokemons segment and/or a Pikachu Short.  But it’s interesting that the Pre-Title screen segment wasn’t really about the Legendaries of this film at all but just introducing one of our new main human characters.

This female lead was pretty fun, I quite enjoyed her.  When she referred to her sibling as “Little Brother” I was quite shocked.  I want more Oneechans in Anime.

The film’s tie in to the new game is by prominently featuring an Eevee (since Pikachu is always there) and that worked out great, for being one of the most popular Pokemon it’s surprising it took this long for Eevee to get a lead role in a movie.

It looks like a defining feature of this alternate timeline series is going to be having a flashback where a Pokemon actually dies.  I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of that decision, but it works in the story better this time then it did in the first film.

I’m not going to this early on make any definitive statement on how I’d rank it.  I’ll just say it didn’t disappoint.

I also decided to finish Ms Vampire Who Lives In My Neighborhood, just binged the last three episodes.  It was a pretty satisfying show.

Turns out both the Slime Incarnation simuldub and Hugtto!PreCure took New Years off.

This is going to be my last blog post of 2018, so see ya in 2019 and Happy New Year.

A Certain Magical Index is awesome

This week's Slime Incarnation and Hugtto!PreCure were still pretty good.

And I just watched episodes 7-9 of Index season 3, Dubbed of course.

I talked a lot on Twitter about Index and Railgun when I first got into them last November, I love em and season 3 is not disappointing.

The Raildex franchise is another Anime example of what I was talking about liking from Anime in "We don't Trade Lives", I wish I was already familiar with it when I wrote that.

This franchise is also I think likely to be Linkara's favorite Anime if he ever watched it.  I'm similar to Linkara in a lot of ways, as a fellow Teen Titans fan and having a similar history with Power Rangers and Pokemon.  But I'm also aware of where we're different, we'll never see eye to eye on Snyder's Superman films or Identity Crisis.  So Index/Railgun is not quite my favorite Anime franchise but I suspect it could become Linkara's.

It really is the perfect Anime to get an old school Western Nerd like I used to be into Anime in a similar way to Code Geass which played a big role in getting me into Anime.

The Dark Knight is a decade old now

I should have done this post closer to the actual anniversary, but I wasn't in the right mindset for Batman during the Summer.

I remember being on IMDB's TDK board back in 2008, and while the movie was all the rage at that time, some people wanted to insist it wouldn't stand the test of time the way Batman 89 and Nicholson's Joker already had.  Well here we are a decade later and the Video Essay genre that has emerged on YouTube over the last four years has been largely built on this film being a go to example on how to do a Superhero film and a great villain right.

Ironically, it's myself who'd adamantly declared the movie the Greatest of All Time back then, who has toned down my rhetoric a bit.  It's still the best Batman film, Ledger is still the best Joker and Gary Oldman still the best Gordon.  But I now think Ben Affleck is a better Bruce Wayne then Cristian Bale, and it has some competition for the title of my favorite movie now, and none were films that came out years later.  One was from the same year, Speed Racer, which I didn't see till more recently, and another is Miyazaki's Nausicaa of The Valley of The Wind.  And while the 3rd Pokemon movie was one I was already familiar with in 2008, I've recently come to consider it possibly on TDK's level.

However none of that means I've completely turned on the film, it's probably still my favorite Superhero movie, certainly the best example of how to do a dark one.  It'll firmly stay in my Top 10 films for awhile.

My first YouTube Video was predicated on 10 years after TDK, so perhaps I should bring it up again here.  It was my idea but edited for me by solyentbrak1.

The Wolverine, a Western Comic Book Superhero film for Weebs

The Wolverine is so far the only of the FoX-Men movies I really like, though I haven't seen the Deadpool movies yet.  To me even the first two X-Men films are overrated and I kind of flat out hate Logan.

The Wolverine isn't perfect, all the Jean Grey stuff was just a distraction thrown in to tie into a movie most people forgot about.  And I could go on about how Yukio's ability doesn't make sense as a Mutant power, and how I further feel "you're technically dead if your heart stops for a few seconds" shouldn't count towards paranormal premonitions, yet it constantly does when a fictional story needs it to.  But all things considered it's a good Superhero film.

What's interesting is how it relates to my history as an Otaku.  I've been on this blog defining my deep dive into Anime as beginning in 2014, and I didn't truly become an Otaku till some point in 2016.  But I remember when this movie came out in Summer 2013 already knowing enough about one particular aspect of Anime to immediately recognize a possible allusion to Class S in the relationship between Yukio and Mariko, and I have indeed shipped them ever since, I think I'd mentioned it on Tumblr at the time.

Still, I re-watched the film recently and how much more I "know" about Japan now definitely added to the experience, the film's use of Honorifics and Sibling terminology, the Pachinco Parlor and the Love Hotel, all things I notice now that I didn't really notice back then.

I have never read the original Comic Story-line about Wolverine in Japan, I might in the future.  But it's interesting how even the role that plays in my ability to enjoy this film more then most Nerds relates to how my lack of Manga and Light Novel reading helps me enjoy Anime.  I'm not constantly looking for changes to complain about, just enjoying the film for how it works as a film.  For plenty of other Western Superhero franchises I do know enough about the source material to care somewhat, but the X-Men have never mattered that much to me.

Anime Weekly Update, back from the Hospital again

I had to go the Hospital again, but I'm doing much better now.

I caught up on both the Slime Incarnation Simuldub and Huggto!PreCure, they're both still pretty good shows.

I decided to put Ms Vampire on hold for now.

Noir Snow

If something can count as a good quasi Christmas episode just from featuring Snowy weather (Western TV tends to pretend it only Snows at Christmas and New Years even though in my experience Winter is only just starting then) then the Sixth Episode of my personal favorite Anime, Noir, makes a pretty good one.  It’s an episode titled simply Snow.

It’s not quite as cheerful and uplifting as what I’d generally prefer to promote at Christmas time, but it’s not typical Dark and Edgy Anti-Christmas Nihilism either.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s is the best Christmas Anime

My personal tradition of watching Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s dubbed on Thanksgiving (preceded by season one on the same day or the day before) started mainly as a fluke, since it happened to be on Thanksgiving of 2016 I first decided to dive in and watch Nanoha.  By the time I contemplated making it a tradition a few weeks later I’d kinda forgotten that A’s actually takes place at Christmas time, making it a more logical tradition for a month later.  I think the movie remake left the Christmas part out of it which further affected how I remembered the story over the course of 2017.

But it does still fit because of how we tend to traditionally view the Christmas season as starting with Thanksgiving, hence Santa at the end of the Macy's Parade.

Things didn’t go quite according to plan for 2018, since it turned out to not be so easy to get myself into the right mindset for watching Nanoha when I’d a little before gotten into A Certain Magical Index and it’s spin off.  There is a lot of natural overlap between the appeal of these two shows, but Nanoha’s overall tone is a bit more mellow so jumping back and forth between them isn’t easy.

If I had to call any Anime the perfect Holiday Season Anime, it’d be Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s.  It’s about family and like all great Magical Girl shows it’s highly optimistic in-spite of the darkness present.  It really is the perfect melodrama.

I'm not a big fan of the strictest definition of a Christmas movie, I'm more a fan of movies that happen to take place at Christmas time, where in theory it didn't need to be, but being Christmas still adds to the film thematically and emotionally.  Batman Returns is my favorite example of such a film, Die Hard is okay, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe kind of counts as one of these (the weird thing is the centerpiece of that story is actually about Easter), I still haven't seen any Shane Black Christmas films.

Basically Batman Returns is my favorite Christmas movie, and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's is the Batman Returns of Anime in terms of how it relates to Christmas.

I was hospitalized for a week.

That messed up my plans for both 12 days of Anime Christmas and Anime Weekly Updates.

Two posts for the "12 days of" project were already written and are still coming.

Then I think I'd decided following my last Anime Weekly update before all this started was that I was likely to wait till December's over to binge all the December episodes of IndexIII.

I don't think I'll be saying anything about my catch up on what I missed last week, just know they're the shows I'd been following.

Hanukkah Anime Weekly Update

Episode 6 of A Certain Magical Index III was pretty good, it finished off an arc so maybe I’ll wait a couple weeks before starting the next one.

Episode 9 of Ms Vampire was a lot of fun.

Episode 12 of Food/Stay Night was a Christmas episode which was nice, maybe it’ll worthy of a deeper break down later in the month.  Turns out the show will have a 13th Episode, so it won’t be finished before the year ends.

Episode 42 of Hugtto!PreCure was pretty emotional but satisfying in the end.

Episode 7 of That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime was dope.

If I make a post looking back on 2018 it’ll probably be after new years.  As is it looks like my last post of 2018 will be the last Anime Weekly Update.  I started this project at the beginning of 2018 planning to do it for the year with no guarantee of continuing it next year.  And I think I’ll stick with that, and in 2019 just do posts on current Anime I’m watching whenever something hits me.  To many of these posts felt forced and often saying nothing more than “well, I watched this week’s episodes”.

12 Days of Anime Christmas

I’m not planning to play by the rules of any existing 12 Days of Anime project like the one Zeria is taking part in.  But I will try to post something on this blog that is at least tangentially related to both Anime and Christmas for the 14th through 25th of December 2018.  Some of them may wind up being pretty weak posts, but I will try.  I may also decide to do something on YouTube for at least one of them, but if so it’ll get a blog post promoting it.

Zeria’s project of sharing Anime related stories from earlier in the year doesn’t suit me at all.  Generally I’ve been trying to post about such experiences when they happened.  If I look back on the year that’ll be for New Years.  But doing some sort of Anime Christmas extravaganza does intrigue me.

I don’t know how much Christmas related stuff I’ll be doing on my other blogs, I think I’ll try to mostly get them done before this project starts.   I have at least one planned for the Prophecy Blog where I continue to defend my firm belief against mainstream modern convention that Jesus probably was born in December or early January on the 25th of Kislev aka the first day of Hanukkah.  You should also keep an eye on my Tumblr where I’ll try to copy/paste there some older Christmas related posts.

I did already post on on the Shepherds in Winter issue.
https://midseventiethweekrapture.blogspot.com/2018/12/shepherds-in-winter.html

Update, Christmas is also Relevant to Universal Salvation.
https://solascripturachristianliberty.blogspot.com/2018/12/robin-parry-on-universal-salvation-in.html