Week 47 Update

Ms Vampire Who Lives In My Neighborhood episode 8 was a pretty solid episode.

My tolerance of Ulysses: Jeanne d’Arc and The Alchemist Knight is growing thin, episode 5 was quiet fixated on Rape and Purity.

Well I’ve watched all of A Certain Magical Index season 1 and 2 as well as A Certain Scientific Railgun season 1 and 2, dubbed of course.  And now I’ve started A Certain Magical Index III having watched the Dubs of the first 5 episodes by the end of Saturday November 24th.  It’s been awhile since I did such a massive Binge project, it was quite a rewarding experience.

Hugtto!PreCure episode 41 was pretty good.

I finally got to see Heaven’s Feel Presage Flower now that the Dub is available.  I made some Tweets about it.
https://twitter.com/JaredMithrandir/status/1066985506821627904

Episode 6 of Slime Incarnation was great.

Anime Weekly Updates, a Thankful Season

Ulysses: Jeanne d’Arc and the Alchemist Knight episode 4 was…. Damn I’m really conflicted on this show.  If it wasn’t about Jeanne but rather a made up fantasy world I’d be a lot less critical about certain things.

Ms Vampire who Lives in my Neighbourhood I referred to as the only show I’m consistently enjoying this season.  It’s really more like it’s the only show that isn’t mildly bothering me at any points.  It's CGDCT appeal still can’t compete with the greats of the Genre just yet.  Episode 7 was pretty decent, I’m glad the Beach Episode routine didn’t go on too long.

The above statement was about specifically Fall shows and obviously doesn’t include Hugtto!PreCure which has been awesome, episode 40 was quite fun as it finally clarified a lot of things.

In the meantime I also decided to watch A Certain Magical Index which is proving to be a pretty interesting show.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime episode 4 was pretty good, so I’ve got two Fall shows I’m mostly enjoying.

This coming Wednesday I'm planning on watching season one of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha dubbed, and then on Thanksgiving I'll do A's.

Pokemon is my Generation's Star Wars

I'd expressed this on twitter a couple months ago, before I even looked and saw that Pokemon has indeed surpassed Star Wars as the highest grossing franchise of all time.

I was born October 31st 1985, though the average age of people Nostalgic for early Pokemon are 4-7 years younger then me, there are plenty who are a little older then me as well.

When I look back on the things I'm nostalgic for from the same era, they're all stuff I still love, but only Pokemon has become truly ubiquitous.  And only Pokemon is pretty much incapable of letting me down.

There was a time after the initial craze ended when it seemed like those of us still into it were a pretty niche group.  And yet Pokemon provided Trope names on TVTropes.  Then in 2016 with Pokemon Go was a resurgence that hasn't fully died down yet, and with Detective Pikachu coming soon it may well blow up bigger then ever.

My relationship with Pokemon has often been pretty off and on again.  This year it definitely helped me through a rough patch.

Detective Pikachu has quickly become the 2019 movie I'm most excited for.  Yeah Star Wars and the MCU are both ending an era of sorts, and I'm optimistic that Battle Angel Alita will be a game changer.  But I haven't gotten to experience Pokemon on the big screen at all since 2000.  And while I was skeptical of the ability to make Pokemon work in Live Action, that Trailer has made me realize that this is something I've wanted to see for nearly 20 years now.

The last time I thought a movie had the potential to make me as hyped as The Dark Knight made me was Batman V Superman which let me down.  But DC had let me down before, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company never have.  I've always known only the Nintendo Fanboy in me could top my status as a Batmaniac, but I used to think it'd take a (seemingly unlikely to ever happen) Live Action Zelda to translate that to a Big Screen experience. But now I realize that Pokemon may well have slowly but surely come to mean more to me then Mario and Zelda combined.

Anime Weekly Update: Deep into November.

Tonari no Kyuuketsuki-San aka Ms. Vampire Who Lives in My Neighborhood’s episode 5 introduced our two secondary characters to each other, and had some fun with Curry and Garlic.

Wow, great job Conception, it didn’t take long at all for episode 2 to ruin what I found interesting about it.

I was late in getting to Release The Spyce episode 4, and eventually decided to maybe just wait and watch episodes 4 and 5 back to back.  But the thing is now that the plot is picking up I feel like I may need to wait for the Dub because I’m not following the episode much at all.

Episode 11 of Attack on Titan Season 3 was an informative episode.

The Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime episode 3 was great.

Ulysses: Jeanne d’Arc and the Alchemist Knight episode 3 had some good stuff, but…. 

I’m all for Anime that takes some part of history and flips a bunch of the genders.  But in the case of Jeanne what’s interesting about her story has a lot to do with it being unusual at the time for women to take such roles.  And then you add in the other fairly common mistake sin how to fictionalize Jeanne and I mostly wind up wishing this was just a made up fantasy world.

Ms. Vampire episode 6 was fun.

Episode 12 of season 3 of Attack on Titan was okay. Apparently MAL is choosing to organize season 3 of AoT into two seasons.

Hugtto!PreCure episode 39 was a pretty good shake up.

I saw the Detective Pikachu trailer and it was awesome, this film’s gonna rock.  I love that they used that song from the first Super Smash Bros trailer.

Slime Isekai episode 4 was pretty good, this show is pretty solid so far.

Being the worst Pokemon Movie is like being the poorest Billionaire

Looking back at the Top 5 Pokemon Movies post I made not too long ago, I already feel like my rankings have changed.  I don't think I can keep I Choose You in the top 5 after all, and it's certainly not actually better then Destiny Deoxys.

It's still a good movie, but I'm not sure how well the experiment always payed off.  When I watched it a second time I was loving it just as much as the first time right up until we first saw Charmander.  But from that point on it definitely started hitting me how these condensed versions of the Butterfree and Charizard arcs don't really work.

Spell of the Unown will always be number 1, Latios and Latias is 2.

Thing is there are people on YouTube making lists of their 5 or 10 worst Pokemon movies.  But it's pretty rare that I can call any Anime related to Pokemon bad, Origins was not exactly what I wanted but it was fun.

A number of people, like Anime America on YouTube think the Hoopa movie is sooo very bad.  Sorry but I had a lot of fun with it.

The least of the Theatrically released films in my opinion is still Jirachi, but now that I'm over my initial reaction to it I can see that it's still fine.

For me, the only Pokemon Anime that flat out makes me upset in Mastermind of the Mirage Pokemon, and I blame it's failure fully on the involvement of Westerners helping write it.  But even it has it's defenders.

Pokemon simply has an inherently winning formula, as long as you get it, it's pretty easy to do well.

And so it's not any Disney sabotaging DC conspiracy theories that make me disregard Rotten Tomatoes, it's the fact that no Pokemon movie gets over 30% on the site.

Too many professional critics, especially in the west, simply can't respect what Pokemon is going for, and when it's your job you don't get to just not review something.  So they got lots of negative reviews for being exactly what they're supposed to be, consequence free fun.

And Rotten Tomatoes marks all reviews as either Rotten or Fresh, no middle ground.  And there have been reports of reviews being labeled Rotten by the site that ultimately said more good then bad, reviews that would be a 6 on an out of 10 system like MAL's.

So those two factors together mean a site like Rotten Tomatoes is incapable of telling the truth about Pokemon movies, which is that they pretty much never fail.

All I want is for them to be fun, I want scenes that are irrelevant to the plot that are just the Pokemon being cute and having fun.  And I want the characters to simply be likeable, every movie doesn't need to be some vital new character arc for Ash.  And every theatrical Pokemon film does at least that, and some manage to do more.

There are some popular Pokemon movies I'm not as hot on as most fans seem to be, the Lucario film didn't quite connect with me, and in-spite of my unique Nostalgia for them I can't label either of the first two a favorite.  But I would never call them bad movies.

So that's why you'll never see a top 5 worst Pokemon movie list from me, not unless a slew of unlikely failures happen in the future.  If you're willing to accept each movie on it's own terms you can never really go wrong.

"We don't trade lives".

I'm going to say something controversial, I hope no one has to die to undo the Snap in Avengers 4.  I hope they truly follow through on Cap's declaration of "We don't trade lives".

I watched a Video Essay Criticizing Antman and The Wasp for how they didn't follow thorough on their "tough choice".  This is like the Bathos issue in how my disagreement with common MCU criticisms are directly related to how much I love Anime.  Both the Magical Girl genre and what Digibro calls the "Otaku Hero's Journey" are predicated on saying "screw that crap, we will save everyone and make sure no one has to die no matter how much you insist that's impossible".  From Steins;Gate to Prisma Illya to No Game No Life.  I'm divided on how much Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha As fits this.

Now Antman and The Wasp still isn't as good as those Anime, it does feel a little like the resolution just sorta happened.  Thing is I also feel this "tough choice" was unearned to begin with, Laurence Fisbourne had no real reason to believe his plan would work anyway, yet this Video Essayist acts like it was such a real tense dilemma ruined because no one actually had to die. In-spite of that nit pick however I did enjoy the movie, it was fun, my Mom watched it 4 times in 3 days.

This Video Essay also talked about how "Sacrifice" is a long standing tradition of the Superhero Genre.  Well I'm like Linkara in that I'm tired of every Event (which there are 5 of every year now) needing to kill a few people off to have real "stakes".  I'm a Christian who Believes in Universal Salvation, Jesus Sacrificed Himself to save all Human Beings, even the ones who killed Him, and He Will Succeed.  And yes His Sacrifice was real because he still has the Wounds, that's the difference between His Resurrection and ours.

My Love of Anime has to do with how often the fiction of these modern Japanese Secular Shintoists comes closer to the True Gospel then what the Western Church has been saying for over a Thousand Years.

Another YouTube video I watched said Tony has to die because his story arc is over.  And that really annoys me, why does having no more story to tell have to equal death?  Why can't he just finally retire and start a family with Pepper?

I think there should be a Sacrifice but not one that's a truly permanent death.  I suspect our heroes will have to regather the Infinity Stones, and thus someone will have to be Sacrificed for the Soul Stone.  I think that should be Cap leaving the mantle of Captain America to Bucky for awhile.  But like Gamora he'll still be alive in the Soul Stone, maybe his going in will also let Gamora out.  Either way the potential to get him out in the future will be in place.

I'm not super optimistic about this however.  You see I reject the notion that Killing a popular character is the brave route, maybe it was in Comics in the 70s.  But Western media criticism is so obsessed with the notion of "consequences" and "equivalent exchange" that I know the Critics would never forgive Avengers 4 for actually having the Guts to do what I'm suggesting.

Infinity War's dark route was a bold move in the context of the general MCU tone leading up to it, but responding to it with a complete reversal would in fact be ten times bolder.

Meanwhile there is nothing brave about killing off Tony Stark when no more solo films staring him are likely to be made anyway.

Dubbing Old Anime

It used to be the most current Anime wasn't the only stuff getting Dubbed, in fact in the mid 2000s probably most of what you'd see on the New Release shelf was stuff that was at least 5 years old in Japan.

A pretty large percentage, maybe even the majority, of 90s Anime that has a Dub wasn't Dubbed while it was still the 90s.  Not even all of Sailor Moon, the Cloverway Dub of S started airing in 2000.  From Gundam Wing to Wedding Peach, a lot of Anime that's 90s in Japan is really 00s Nostalgia for Western Otaku.  Heck even some 80s OVAs got Dubbed in the 2000s.

The market has changed since then, and while I love that a dozen shows are getting Simuldubbed every season, that does mean less resources for finding time to Dub old Gems that got passed over at the time.

It's still fairly normal for something that doesn't get Simuldubbed to take like two years to get a Dub.  But once something is three years old it seems like there is no hope.  Stuff from early this decade like Dog Days and Daybreak Illusion already feel like if they're not Dubbed already they never will be.  Re:Creators was big enough that it'll probably get a Dub in 2019, but if it doesn't by the end of that year then it probably won't.

Viz Media is still doing their Redub of Sailor Moon, but that's it as far as dubbing Old Anime goes.  I'm mostly not gonna be requesting Redubs however, I'm fine with even the Dubs of Utena and Higurashi and when it comes to Pokemon I'm the biggest 4Kids apologist you'll ever meet.  Sailor Moon was the one that needed a do over for the sake of HaruMi and Zoiscite.  Now that that's being taken care of any time spent dubbing Classics into English should be devoted to works that have no existing English audio track.

I feel like it ought to be possible to make room for more old Dubs.  As a pretty big Dub enthusiast I don't really think JoJo is worth spending money to Dub, people only really like JoJo for the Memes of how the Japanese Actors sound.  So maybe Funimation should give up on that and find some skipped over classic instead?

I don't hate on Sentai Dubs the way many do, but their one attempt at a Simuldub I watched didn't turn out well, maybe they inherently do better Dubbing stuff after the fact and so maybe they should give up on Simuldubs and and try to Dub some of the old stuff they have access to, like Gunbuster or classic LOTGH, or Kampfer.

And maybe this is another place Netflix could be our savior, since they want to only do Binge releases, maybe they should stop hogging the rights to recent shows and zero in on some classics.  Stranger Things shows their target audience includes a lot of people looking for Nostalgia trips.

I'm willing to watch stuff Subbed, but I do so fairly rarely (besides PreCure which I've given up any hope on getting Dubbed in a reasonable manner), I sometimes wonder if I might have mild undiagnosed Dyslexia or ADD since it's sometimes flat out hard to follow when I have to read while I'm watching it.  Which is why I probably can't get into Monogatari either way, as it was originally Animated it's constantly throwing text on the screen, I watched the first 3 or 4 episodes and have no idea what was going on.  For whatever reason I tend to do best with Cute Girls doing Cute Things shows.

So there are so many old Anime that interest me, where the lack of a Dub has certainly delayed my impulse to dive in.  (Meanwhile most stuff I've enjoyed Subbed I want to hear what my favorite Dub VAs could do with it.)  And there are still a lot of people less willing to watch stuff Subbed then I am, lots of people who could be potential fans of great not yet Dubbed classics.

There is a lot of stuff that is still long over due for a Dub.  Rose of Versailles still having no English Dub is a travesty,(meanwhile from what I hear it's French Dub could use a do over).  Not to mention the Green Jacket Lupin III series, and what's left of Red Jacket, and the TV specials that were skipped over like Episode 0.

Now that Dubbers have gained more faith in Yuri titles, how about Strawberry Panic and Yuru Yuri?  And with Traps being more a trend then ever maybe Stop! Hibari-Kun.

And with the Magical Girl Market growing I'd say it's about time Saint Tail and Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and the rest of the Nanoha franchise got dubbed, as well as the Pretty Sammy shows since Tenchi still has a fan-base.  And whoever has that Dub that was made for Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pichi, please drop it on Crunchyroll, it's literally free money.

Also Aniplex, for the love of God dub Kara No Kyoukai.

Well those are some examples of what I personally wanna see. Feel free to comment with what you wanna see get Dubbed.

Anime Weekly Update: October becomes November

Tonari no Kyuuketsuki-San aka Ms. Vampire Who Lives in My Neighborhood’s episode 4 introduced a new Vampire, and it was pretty fun.

Episode 10 of Attack On Titan season 3 was a moody episode.

Episode 2 of That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime was decent.

That was the last of the new Anime I watched in October, then November began.

I watched the first episode of Conception, dubbed, not right when it dropped, I waited a bit deciding if I wanted to try it.  I watched it hoping it might be another show to be surprising free of the Fanservice I dislike in-spite of its premise, and for the first episode I’d say it was.  I did a post last year explaining how what I mean by Anime Fanservice isn't anything you could fap to, but actually pretty all stuff I don’t desire to fap to.

The people not being kind to this first episode come from two angles.  You got the Anime Feminist review that is all “what an obvious male fantasy” while I’m noticing that the male lead was arguably objectified more then the girls.  And then the more Meme driven Gigguk who’s all “why be about Sex if it isn’t an actual Hentai”, but I don’t enjoy a lot of Hentai because I want to see people make love rather than mindless humping.

Episode 11 of Food/Stay Night focused on Archer for a change, which was fun.

Ulysses: Jeanne d’Arc and The Alchemist Knight episode 2 was……. So the gimmick for this Anime take on Jeanne d’Arc is that she’s basically Wolverine.

I think I might like it.

The Legend of Zelda RPG

There have already been some Zelda fan games that are role playing games.  But these are some ideas on the subject of Zelda as an RPG I’ve had for awhile now that it’s time I shared.

One is that Final Fantasy Mystic Quest could easily be turned into a Zelda RPG with a simple patch, not even a full hack.  Just turn the MC into Link, the Dark King into Ganon and Pheobe into Zelda and the mysterious old man into the Owl.  Kylie could then be viewed as a variant of the Marin/Malon/Cremia/Romani archetype, and then Reuben could be a Goron and Tristam a Sheikah.

But more ambitious than that is the idea of doing an SNES Rom Hack/Homebrew that is basically A Link To The Past remade as an RPG with Final Fantasy elements, and with narrative influences from later Zelda games as well as various Manga adaptations of ALttP.

HP will now stand for Heart Points rather than Hit Points.  And there will now be two Magic Meters, Light Magic and Dark Magic.  Potions will be classified by colors, three can be bought in standard shops, Red Potions which recover HP, Yellow Potions recover Light Magic and Blue Potions recover Dark Magic.  There will be places you can go (mainly the Potion shop on ALttP's map) to have two potions mixed together for one potion that has the effect of both.  Creating Green Potions to recover both Magic Meters, Purple to recover HP and Dark Magic, and Orange to recover HP and Light Magic. 

But the only Item that can restore all three at once is the very expensive Lon Lon Milk.  Lon Lon Ranch will be placed on the Map in the area south of Link’s House but north of the flooded ruins.  It’s Dark World equivalent will be a Colosseum.

Mages won’t quite be the only party members who can use Magic, but they have by far the best affinity for it.  However only two characters can use both Light and Dark Magic, The Warrior/Knight and the Red Mage. 

I intend to create a party with a total of 9, but only 5 can be in battle at once.  Some of them may be found in side quests and not quite required to join your party to beat the game.

The Master Sword can only be wielded by the Warrior/Knight, but besides that all other Swords are the one weapon class everyone can use.  For example The Bow and Arrow can be used only by the Rito, Sheikah and Gerudo.  The Hammer can only be used by the Goron.  The Magic Rods and Staffs only by Mages.  One of the main differences between the Gerudo and Sheikah functionally is the Sheikah have Light Magic affinity and the Gerudo Dark magic affinity.

The Main character is Link or Linkle depending on the gender you choose, who is the Warrior/Knight class.  Zelda is the Red Mage, she is the first to join your party in the early game but the last to permanently join it.

Impa as a Sheikah will serve as the Ninja class.  She’ll be the first to permanently join your party once you reach Kakariko village.  Second will be Lana the Light Mage.

Ganti will be the name of a Gerudo who’ll join you as the party’s Thief.  Roam will be the Rito.

A Goron and Zora can also join the party, I don’t have names for them yet and am still working on what their unique features would be.

Cia is the Dark Mage.  Only three party members won’t be available till you have full access to The Dark World.  Cia, Roam, and Zelda.

In this version Ganon only has the Triforce of Power. 

The quest for the three Pendants will be replaced by a Quest for the Triforce of Courage.  The Eastern Palace will contain a relic needed to open the Desert Palace, there you obtain the key to the Tower of Hera where the Triforce of Courage is. 

For the Dark World quest the Seven Maidens are replaced with the Triforce of Wisdom being split into 8 pieces, one of which is with Zelda on Turtle Rock.  Seven of them are in versions of the Dark World Dungeons where you found the Maidens in the original game, but one you’ll have to get by winning a Gauntlet at the Colosseum.  In this version Blind will disguise himself as Zelda instead of a random Maiden.