Anime sucks Saturday, Dec 13 2008

I was watching the 10th episode of the second season of Gundam 00 and princess Marina was whining to Shirin that she didn’t want to fight because it would only lead to more fighting and I finally gave up on this shit show right then and there. Frankly that kind of conversation is more relevant in the world today than it was 13 years ago. However it already occurred 13 years ago in Gundam Wing with princess Relena and Noin. It would be one thing if Gundam SEED, SEED Destiny, and Gundam 00 had elements that were too similar or blatantly copied from other mecha series. But the fact that they are just repackaging old gundam plots for any reasons is just too much. MAYBE it’s just a coincidence or maybe I should have ever read a single thing about Gundam 00 aside from announcements that it was starting up but I don’t give a shit and neither should you.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the Gundam franchise has been a zombie for a while now. It’s actually dead but it keeps walking around. The last gundam series that I didn’t feel guilty about liking was Turn A which was also supposed to be the final series. I have to admit that for some reason I kind of got into SEED Destiny for a while, and I like the SEED characters and units  in SRW games (mostly so I can kill them), but about halfway through I was sick of it and after it was done rehashing the plot of SEED and having about the same conclusion I gave up on the Gundam franchise ever putting anything good out again.

And when I watched 00 last year it didn’t do anything to redeem the franchise to me. I can’t say for sure why I kept watching even though I hated it other than morbid curiousity and nostalgia but that’s over now. I seem to recall that I similarly gave up on SEED and though I never watched its entirety I did confuse the hell out of myself by watching the last episode. Eventually I learned the plot through SRW Alpha 3 and without a doubt gundam 00 will be in an srw game so… In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if other than a possible sequel to Z (which would just about be a travesty since almost all the series in it wrapped up their plots so you can be sure it would happen even though it wouldn’t make any sense) they hold off making a game until after 00 so that they can include it.  I don’t want to speculate on when or how they’ll add Code Geass to a game. By all rights Code Geass has no place in an SRW game but with its popularity… Well anyway this time around I watched the first 00 and gave up 00 S2. I probably gave up at just about the same point though so hey.

In other news Tales of the Abyss also sucks. I unofficially quit watching it at after the 5th episode but I kept telling myself I’d check it out later when I was less busy doing other things that I actually enjoyed. But giving up on Gundam 00 gives me a good opportunity to give up on this as well. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both franchises are under the Namco Bandai umbrella. I almost think that TOA (is there another TOA?) was the first official “namco bandai” game but perhaps that was just the US relase I don’t recall now that it’s been a couple of years. And it doesn’t matter right? If I was a conscientous writer I’d look this shit up and give you the details for things that I mention instead of making you work to find out but trust me that it really doesn’t matter.

I wouldn’t say that this means I’m giving up on all anime although I have to admit that I’ve scaled back my consumption of it this year as my enjoyment has decreased. I don’t think that it’s actually gotten worse, I just think that it hasn’t gotten very different. I do still enjoy animation and I think that it’s probably the type of media that you can do the most with as far as fictional worlds go. But “anime” is shackled by formatting and conventions. Whether or not it’s better or worse off than serialized manga isn’t something I care to think about but both have a lot of issues and I’ve just gotten really tired of being disappointed by them. The issues that is. Like a series not having a proper ending only to never get a sequel. Or a series having a really crappy ending because its popularity has waned and serialization has to be broken off. Or a series having to have both an anime and a manga version regardless of which is the original or whether their stories are the same. The whole damn thing, I’m just sick of it.

And with that said don’t be surprised if the next time you see me post it’s still about anime.

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Too bad they’ll never kill Suzaku Monday, Apr 7 2008

As promised, after Gundam 00 ended, Code Geass (hangyaku no lelouch) R2 has started. And it is good. Which is somewhat relieving since the crop of new shows this season is especially slim and this just might be the only new show I watch for a while. I have plenty of things to catch up on in all facets of my life though so that’s not such a bad thing. I am very tempted to re-watch the first season and so on but we shall see what life holds.

So as to some speculation which might spoil… probably the first series since there wasn’t that much that actually happened in the first episode, other than a lot of people getting killed anyway.

All through the fall and winter I wondered to myself just what was going to happen after the climactic end of the first season of “CG” while utterly ignoring all the geass stuff that came out in the mean time. Well it turns out that nothing happened. Apparently almost all the rebels got captured or killed and the order of the black knights was effectively defeated on the verge of things because of Lelouch’s sentimentality. Wouldn’t that look better with an e? no? Well apparently everyone has somehow had their memory wiped of different events and otherones implanted and Lelouch was being left to his devices at school in order to be bate for C.C. who finally shows up one day. And in typical dramatic C2 fashion gets shot through the heart then kisses Lelouch reawaking his power which he uses to command those who were observing him to kill themselves as Karen and some other guy I don’t recognize bow in their KnightMares. Hmmmmmm Suzaku shows up in front of the emperor and says that he’ll take care of Lelouch. I really hate that fucker.

My hatred for Suzaku is well documented and I continue to hold the viewpoint that he ruins the show. Nunnaly doesn’t help anything either but it’s really that piece of shit that spoils things. Now I would hope that Zero would just kill Suzaku right away but you know that won’t happen. If Suzaku is to die at all it will not be until the approximate end, and in fact it’s a lot more likely that Lelouch will be the one who dies. Which is what happened with, X/1999 spoilers, Kamui and Fuuma in the X tv series (in the movie Kamui did kill Fuuma though and the manga will probably never end because japanese people are pathetic, so). Which didn’t make me happy since I hated Fuuma too. hmm… yeah you remember things like that.

Anyway it will be interesting to see how the show turns out. I will try to refrain from frequent commenting until the show ends. For all I know they might have used up all the bang in the first episode. I doubt that at least. Well count on lots of random brutality in this series.

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I’m gonna motherfucking kill some cunt over this one Friday, Feb 29 2008

I can not remain silent on this matter any more! I have made my view that Gundam 00 is absolutely the worst gundam series ever clear. Frankly that isn’t saying much since most are pretty mediocre, but it turns out that it’s the worst written one too. In episode 19 it’s revealed that one of the useless side characters has lost a hand as a result of an arbitrary attack by the second set of gundams which was by and far the most contrived act of the series. As the series takes place in the future and there’s all this other crazy shit out there one’s first thought is “well that’s not a big deal, they must have some way to fix or deal with that right?”. So episode 20 opens up by saying that the hand can’t be regenerated because of some special property of the gundam’s beam weapon. To add to things, this character wasn’t even hit by the weapon but crushed by rubble. I’m not an expert on whether or not energy beams leave residuals, but if they are saying that just by being in the area when these beams are fired it causes cellular damage… Then they have just totally fucked themselves. Nothing previously indicated this and there were countless opportunities to bring it up. I have little doubt that they will not create a second incident where someone loses a limb but you know that some character is going to get injured and then turn out fine even though now they’re saying gundam beams cause cellular damage by proximity. Fuck.

This is by and far the worst piece of writing I have ever encountered in my life. I have probably seen a few thousand episodes of anime, easily over 10,000 episodes of live action television, thousands of movies, thousands of books, thousands of comedy routines, untold hours of radio shows… And in all of that, Gundam 00 has the worst writing I’ve come across in my life.

So I can not remain silent about this one: make sure that no one makes any money off of this series. Do not buy any legitimate merchandise from the show, especially the models since that’s where bandai makes all their gundam money. If you like the music by the Back Horn then just buy their music and forget about the first ending single.

I think that no matter what it is, you have to stand up and say “this really sucks” and try to get people to change things. Personally I hope that there is never another gundam series again. The franchise was absolutely run into the ground with the two Seed series, but they strung its corpse up and shook it around for 00 and this is the result. I mean seriously, this is what Sunrise chose to do instead of the continuation of Code Geass? Fuck those pieces of shit. I hope they all rot in hell with Zaku FII models up their asses.

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