The Lousypoet

What more can I say? This was one of those things I really wanted to experience. I’ve long been a fan of anime, and though I’ve seen the Disney-Miyazaki films in theatres, there was something about seeing Evangelion on the big screen.

Evangelion was the first show that got under my skin. It was the show that made me plunk down mega bucks for merchandise and spending hours reading about Kabbalah, the Apocrypha and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The first website I built was an Evangelion website I titled “New Century Gospel.” The first domain name I ever purchased was evangelion.ca. In so many ways, Evangelion was a seminal series for me. While the debates seem to rage if it deserves the notoriety it has achieved, I have little doubt in the influence it had on me.

So walking into that theatre tonight, watching so many scenes familiar to me from the TV series, it was like coming back home to visit an old friend. I enjoyed the film very much, probably because it differed so little from the original series. It left me wanting so badly to see the second film I can hardly contain myself. But alas, I suppose it will be at least another year-and-a-half or more until we see a decent North American version.

So, anime on the big screen was a big hit with me, and I would certainly consider going again. On a side note, it was pretty funny/cool that the film was projected from a Blu-ray DVD player. I recall working in theatres ten or so years ago and being told that such technology would never be usable. Funny how times change. At about the same time, I’m pretty sure I was told we would never see anime such as Evangelion shown in mainstream theatres.

So Funimation films have completed their english dub of the first of the Evangelion movies (the re-release movies that is).  And to celebrate they’re putting the film out in a limited theatrical release!  What has me hyped about this is that there is actually a pretty wide release here in Canada!

On September 30th, numerous cities across Canada will be showing this film on their screens!  Funimation’s website has the details on where the film will show.  I actually have several sites that are near to me, so I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to check this out.  I don’t know if I’ll manage to convince Carolyn to go, she’s not that big on mecha anime, but Evangelion was one of the first series we watched together, and she certainly didn’t dissaude my obsession with the series, so maybe for old time’s sake

Anyway, the dates in the US start in July.  If you can go, do so, cause the more successful events like this are, the more we might see similar events in the future.

I haven’t written anything original in what seems like sooooo long. I mean, other than my rant about my job, what have I contributed to this blog lately other than the Word of the Day? And really, we all know that’s just filler so this place has something new on a regular basis.

The odd thing is, I really have wanted to write. Not just my usual obsession with writing the novel that I never will write, but just to throw some words at this blog, to talk, to vent, to do all the things I suppose a normal person would do with their friends. So pardon me while I go on about far too many things….

So I’ve been watching the anime Bleach almost consistently for a few weeks now. I think we hit episode 111 last night! I can’t tell you how much I’ve been enjoying this. It reminds me of the days where we watch Ruroni Kenshin until there was nothing more to see. Or the almost hypnotic compulsion to keep viewing Marmalade Boy or Fushigi Yuugi. I’ve said it so many times, I really do love anime, and it’s just great to get into a series that delivers episode after episode. Bleach has impressed the hell out of me in terms of how it can just keep being excellent and engaging after over 100 episodes! There are so many characters, and each of them is unique and ever increasingly fleshed out. Do yourself a favour and check out this fabulous series!

I recently finished the last of the Night Watch books – titled The Last Watch. I’ll try and get around to writing an actual review of this thing. Maybe today. Anyway, I think what it boils down to is that if you liked the previous 3, you’ll like this one too. But more on that later….

So via the Super Bowl last weekend, we finally got some of our fist glimpses at Transformers 2, GI Joe, and maybe something else, I can’t really remember. I’m in such a lazy mood right now, I’m not really going to bother giving you a link, I’m sure you can find it through a simple search on YouTube. Speaking of which, in checking out the GI Joe Live action trailer, I found this on YouTube, GI Joe Resolute! Apparently Hasbro is looking to release a number of web based episodes that will amount to an hour long show. It’s GI Joe taken to bad ass levels. It’s apparently written by Warren Ellis, a comic writer known for his generally gritty scripts. Gone are the red tracer fire, we’re talking bullets flying and Snake Eyes dicing a bunch of Cobras! The trailer is a cam grab, so the quality is shite, but from what I can tell, they must’ve gotten a pretty serious animation studio involved, cause it looks great! I think I’m actually more hyped to see this than I am about the Live flick!

The Transformers 2 trailer looks ok. I don’t know, it just didn’t get me as hyped as I thought it would. Maybe cause they just flashed so many scenes, there just was no way to get a real feel for how this was going to play out. From what I understand they finally confirmed that the Fallen was indeed a character. Maybe I mentioned that before… meh..

I got this crank call yesterday that kind of freaked me out. At least, I hope it was a crank. But it’s got me serisouly contemplating changing my number and unlisting it. You know, I remember when we were kids and if we cranked someone, it was something childish. This guy asked for me by name, then proceeded to ask if I had raped his daughter! I’m sitting there with my wife and the mother of one of my son’s friends. What the hell?! So I keep cool and start asking how he got this number and he tells me he was told by someone that I had done it and they gave him my number. Now, I know I’ve never done anything like that, so I’m not worried about that, but it just kind of creeped me out. I started thinking how this guy could find me, how if it wasn’t a crank what might it mean? Anyway, I’m trying to just let it go.

So I went into work this week, and it doesn’t seem like much of anything has changed with the whole fall out from that newspaper article I mentioned. I’m hoping that since we were in the 90% bracket that this thing will blow over for us. We’ll see I guess.

I was trolling DeviantArt and it never ceases to amaze me some of the really great work that people post there. I wish I could write more and get it posted over there, maybe more people would read it. Mind you, I’m really lazy there. I never write any comments or anything, which is really how you kind of get noticed. I guess if it were so important to me I would put the work in.

Anyway, this post is just dragging and I’m really getting a clear pic that I’m really just being apathetic, which is boring. Anyhow, I should hopefully return later today with that Last Watch review and maybe something else. Time will tell…

Have you ever had a hobby that for one reason or another, you let slip? I used to be really be into anime. Trips to my local China Town to look for merchandise and bootleg DVDs was almost a weekly occurence. But since having kids that activity has been seriously scaled back. The sad fact is that you have to grow up and realise that there are priorities like paying a mortgage and feeding your family.

But recently, Carolyn found this site that for a $5 monthly fee, you can download unlimited anime episodes. We’ve grabbed a bunch, and I’m sure we’ll be getting a few more. I know it sounds like I’m a complete geek, but to me it’s just so exciting and gratifying to get back to watching anime. I love the art and the unique storylines. Now if I could just find it in my budget to get back to playing some mind blowing RPGs on my gaming systems, I’d be cool.

The two series we’ve been watching are, ironically, both vampire series. The first, Vampire Knight, is a mostly serious drama about a school that ghas two classes. The Day Class is populated with normal humans, while the Night Class is made up of vampires. The school is an attempt by certain parties to prove that the two can coexist. Naturally, there is a great deal of intrigue and everyone has their own agendas. The main characters are the two guardians of the school that help to ensure the two classes don’t interfere with each other. Really cool series made up of two parts, Vampire Knight and Vampire Knight Guilty. We’re almost done Guilty, so maybe I’ll do a full blown review soon.

The second series is much more light hearted. It’s called Rosario+Vampire. The story follows Tsunake who enrols in a school just to find out that it’s a school for monsters. The all too human boy is ready to flee, but finds himself attracted to Moka, a vampire who is bubbly, outgoing, and has a strong affection for him. In usual high school anime hijinks, a number of other attractive girls are introduced who all fall in love with Tsunake. It’s a really fun little series, that works on a mostly monster-of-the-week format. The hitch here is that Moka wears a Rosary. When it’s removed, she turns into a full blown, ass-kicking vampire, much more serious, intense, and scary than the usual Moka. Plenty of laughs and fan sevice!

I’m not sure what series we have lined up next. When we start, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I do recommend Vampire Knight and Rosario+Vampire!

So it’s finally official, Funimation is going to release the first Evangelion movie, Evagelion 1.01 You Are (Not) Alone. No word yet on the actual date we’ll see it, but most seem to peg it for a release this year. You can check out the trailer at The Official Funimation Site.

So I guess this news is a little old, but I feel like posting about it anyway.

The website for the second Evangelion rebuild movie has been relaunched, anouncing the official english language title as You Can (Not) Advance. It also said that the film would be released in early summer 2009, a year later than the first press releases about rebuild had stated.

While the first film apparently deviated little from the series (I still haven’t seen it as there’s been no official english release! Grrrrr…), it appears this second installment is going quite a bit off the path, introducing 2 new evangelions and at least 1 new major character!

You can see a trailer for the film over on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in7xhXyxR8c.

This is the one I’m really excited to see. This is where Evangelion truly begins to deviate from what we know and delivers Anno’s promise of a new version (vision?) of Eva.

It’s funny that at one time I lived for Evangelion. My first true website was an Eva website and virtually all the forums etc that I participated online in were Eva related. There was something exciting about it back then. The story seemed so new, modern, and yet somehow avante-garde. I guess since then, cerebral anime with flawed characters are so common now, that Eva just doesn’t seem as unique as it did back in the 90s. None the less, I am really looking forward to seeing how these films turn out.

So I’ve yet to see the first of the new Evangelion films. When I heard this was going to be a retelling of the evangelion story, I had some hope that it would be a slight revamp, but still be true to the Evangelion that I knew and loved. But I just saw a trailer for the second movie and man, it looks totally different. Eva-06?!! Not to mention that Eva-05 looks totally different. I’m kind of interested to see how this plays out, but I’ve kind of accepted that this is not going to be the evangelion that I am at all familiar with. We’ll see…. Now we just need someone to pick up the translation rights so I can actually see the damn thing!

So I finished the anime of Death Note. It left me feeling a bit odd. I don’t want to go all spoilerific, but the end left me wondering just how I should feel. Should I want Light, the anti-hero, to win, or should I be routing for the other side, who are clearly trying to end Light’s murderous ways. And the series does pose an interesting question; how do we feel about capital punishment? What would we do if the world’s worst criminals just all started to die? I mean, think about it. All someone would have to do is post a pic and the person’s name (not even a name if the death note owner does the swap for the shinigami eyes) and BAM! the criminal or otherwise evil person would be gone. I mean, Osama bin Ladan? Who needs to find him? Write his name, BAM! gone. Same with just about anyone. I do think the anime didn’t stretch the whole concept as far as it could. For most of the time it felt like a localised conflict between Light and the police. Think about it, to be able to kill from anywhere. A person with that kind of power could dictate whole changes to be enacted by any government. How would they oppose him/her? It’s a scary thought, and perhaps the grand scale the power could escalate to just seemed too overwhelming to go into with full depth. But I’m losing my point…

The anime was excellent. Very well executed animation, voice acting (Japanese, I caught some of the dub and hated it!), characterization, and plot. It held me firm until its very end. Watching the cat and mouse games played by Light and the police was great and realising how Light’s own genius was probably the source of much of his own frustration. I highly reccommend this one.

On a side note, I started to read the manga. The first issue is almost identical to the anime. I’ve been told that it does that for the majority of the first major story arc, and then the anime omits a number of things from the second story arc. I’ll see eventually. At 12 issues and $10+ dollars an issue, I’m going to have to buy this one over time….

So I just watched the first 4 episodes of an anime series called Death Note. The story follows Light, a young man bored with life and angry at seeing the decay and evil in the world. Then, Light finds a book called the Death Note which will kill any person whose name has been written on its pages. Light decides to use the book to cleanse the world of evil and begins entering the names of criminals. One by one, these people die of heart attacks, so many in fact that Interpol decide to put their best agent on the case.

This little blurb doesn’t even begin to get into the fact that with the book comes a demon called Ryuk, who is a god of death. He was the original owner of the book and dropped it – starting all these events – because he was bored.

Very cool so far! The animation by Madhouse is great, and the story is truly surprising. I had little idea about the story when I sat down to watch, so I was somewhat surprised to find that the story was about an anti-hero. I mean, Light is even conspiring to kill FBI agents! It’ll be interesting to see where the story goes from here. We also have copies of a live action film adaptation, and I’ve seen the manga on sale at Chapters. Based on what I’ve seen of the anime, I’m very tempted to burn some plastic and get the 12 volumes of the manga. Oh well, more overtime needed I suppose