HTF Anime Discussion Part VII - Page 95

Finished Witch Hunter Robin last night.

Won't go into details since noone seemed interested in my Blue Gender review - but suffice to say its one of the best. Kind of lulls a bit from episode 16-21 or so, then picks up again. I think it peaks too early though (episode 13-15).

Highly recommended anyway - well worth the investment.

Todd: I was interested in the Blue Gender review. Just because no one comments on something doesn't mean we didn't enjoy reading about it. =) Please continue to offer your opinions here, I love to read detailed information about anime I am potentially interested in.

John: I think I'll skip WR's vol. 4 for now then. thanks!

And Snow Fairy Sugar sounds sweet, I might get that since it sounds safe for my daughter (not that she's tv viewing age yet atleast with preferences anyway).

I certainly like to share my opinions on DVDs as long as people are interested, but do people want to hear the technical side of anime DVDs here? Sometimes that when I mention things like "per pixel motion adaptive algorithms for video sources" it comes across as blah blah blah blah unless I'm on AVSForum with the rest of the nuts like myself.

If you don't know what I mean, go check the front projection forums over there.

How many of you would call Bandai to have them correct their Overman King Gainer DVD specs? On second thought, maybe some of you would.

Anyway, happy to share but I don't want to bore anyone.

Todd - Don't worry too much about it.

We are pretty open minded here, so post anything you feel is relevant.

Alanna - So far Snow Fairy Sugar remains a pretty light hearted, and non serious series. No real scary moments per se, or violence, for that matter. But then remember I've been seeing a variety of shows (I mean I just finished Mahoromatic, for crying out loud which has a bit of violence and is definately fanservicey, and a Robot anime (Dai-Guard)) so this is a definate change of pace. As always, see if you can wait for a box set of the series, and get it that way - and preview before showing to the lil' one - safest way to go, IMHO.

Oh - alternatively, you can show a little one something like My Neighbor Totoro at some point - it's wholesome entertainment, and along with Kiki's Delivery Service, the "gentlest" and "soothing" of the Miyazaki feature films.

Yep, didn't know about that when I bought it, and I was kind of ticked off when I realized it about 2 minutes into it - "WTF? This is the first episode, did I get the wrong one?" If you hadn't seen any of the series up to that point, it was all the episodes prior fairly heavily condensed into a few episodes. I wouldn't have bought it if I had known that.

Kickass. However, I just did a store availability check for it, and none of the stores around here have it. Oh well.

Tony-B- Don't trust BB's store availability information. They always say that items aren't available at my local BB, but when I make the trip, they always have a few copies on the shelf. There are some other unadvertised deals at BB on Geneon discs. Gungrave 1, Texhnolyze 5, ROD the TV 2 & 3 and Last Exile 5 & 6 are all $14.99 each. Gungrave 2 is also on sale for $17.99. I don't know if these are sale prices or clearance prices because Heat Guy J 1-3 has been available for the last few months for $19.99.

Well, it looks like this site was down this morning.

I've finished Mahoromatic Summer Special, Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar #3, and watched the special features on Vampire Hunter D Special Edition (interesting special feature with clips of the artists, director and va working.)

Got stuff used - Kiddy Grade 3-8 used, Vampire Hunter D: Special Edition, and King of Bandits Jing #2 Yesterday, as well as 256MB card for my Palm Zire31. Now I can play mp3s on it. Pretty nifty....


Alanna - I've finished disc 3 of Sugar, and it's shaping up (still) to be a G show overall. Need to get disc #4 and #6 so I can finish the series, but that won't happen until next month or so.

Another show I can recommend that's along "Rated G" lines is Risky Safety, cute and mostly harmless (there may be a few "scary" moments, but the show as a whole is a G show).

Woo:

I haven't watched anything in the past couple of days. I'm going to try and get Ghost in the Shell: SAC vol. 5 SE and Samurai Champloo vol. 2 watched this weekend. I did get the new DVD rack set up, so I nearly doubled the amount of space for my anime DVDs, plus I've got some space for my J-pop CDs. It was getting so bad that I've got a stack of DVDs to convert because there wasn't very much room left, and the shelves on the first rack where bending under the weight .

John.

At my local BB all Gungrave's are 17.99 except Gungrave 1, which is 29.99. I'm having a bit a trouble with that logic honestly.

If you get a change to try Kiddy Grade, please give some feedback. I've seen a few episodes of Bakuretsu Tenshi (Burst Angel) which I'm assuming is similar? I've decided to start buying those DVD's as they are released.

JohnAD:

I really have to slow down - don't have time to watch at my current pace (slept around 1am or later every day this week, not good). I gotta use my rewardzone coupons so I'll probably try to get some stuff from Best Buy this weekend.

Todd:

Others here have watched Kiddy Grade, and I recall the general opinion was positive. I now have all of it, but am trying to watch some older movies I haven't watched (namely Vampire Hunter D - it's now 20+ yrs old!)

All:

Well, this weekend or next, I'll sit down and update my dvd profiler lists as well as manga lists, and then transfer the data to my Palm Zire31 so that I won't ever buy something I have...

Wish me luck, as I haven't updated that in MONTHS...

EDITED: to respond to Todd and others...

Woo: I will look into Risky Safety then, I remember reading about it awhile back and thought it looked cute. =)

Todd: I LOVED Kiddy Grade (atleast the first five volumes - I dont have the rest yet). It is one of the few shows that I started watching and just couldn't put it down, blew through one disc after another even when saying "just one more episode"... it has the right blend of action, drama, twists and just a dash of humor. No overboard super deformed stuff.. from what I remember anyway, its been a couple of months. But was loving it. The first ep is kinda... boring but after that it really kicks in.

Alanna - Risky Safety is a total of three discs, so it won't be so hard on the wallet.

ChristopherDAC:
If you think I'm bad, my brother literally sold his house because his basement had too many issues to have a dedicated theater.

I'm actually heading to his new house tonight to watch the first few disks of Blue Gender with him.

I'll be sitting in the power recliner next to his full size replica of he Helm of Sauron. He has Sting mounted on the wall right behind it along with Aragon's Elven dagger.

He had the gawl to say "man you're addicted" when we were talking about anime the other day. Yeah.... OK....

O_O;;

Todd, that is some serious stuff - and to nitpick, it's gall, not gawl. /nitpick

Wow...I had a lot of reading to catch up on! I usually only come here when I'm at work on 3rds but, alas...the 3rds are tonight and I'm at home doing laundry so...it's about as boring!

Todd: Yes, I was interested in the review also because Dave and I just went down to Borders in Ann Arbor and they had a bunch of random anime marked $1!!! Blue Gender was one of those so, I 'claimed' it on my shelf so I'm in charge of picking up the rest, I was hoping it was good!
BTW: I think Dave bought almost every anime dvd they had! hehe...

John: You really need to take a picture of your shelf and put it online! I took a pic of mine w/ my camera/phone and use it as wallpaper, it's very soothing...hehe.

I am currently marathoning Twelve Kingdoms, I hadn't seen past disk 4, so...I'm up to 5 and I have through 9. If I had to pick one series out of all to be my all time favorite, this would be it...yes, even above Kino's Journey...but that would definitly fall 2nd!

I also watched disk 2 of Samauri Champloo last night. Good stuff, I am as amused as I was the first time I saw Bebop, which I still don't think I've seen all of...I just keep catching different episodes on Adult Swim. Champloo has just the right mix for me, there are a few things that annoy me, but overall they are small enough to overlook. Not to mention Sunflowers are my favorite so...that was a good choice. Makes me overlook the stupid plot of looking for the samauri who smells of sunflowers....if I didn't like the flower so much I'd be going "WTF??"

Once I finish off Twelve Kingdoms I'm moving on to marathon Wolf's Rain, another series I got like halfway through and just stopped/got busy..whatever...but I've only seen through disk 3 and I've got through disk 6 now...

Overall I'm desperatly waiting to get my hands on Scrapped Princess and Elvin Lied, (is anyone else waiting for this one??) I saw the first eps. of Elvin and it was awsome. Very Horror, if you like Paranoia Agent, you'll like Elvin Lied.!! It has a crazy mix of pychotic and 'cute'.....very Perfect Blue Meets Chobits...

Stacey

Cool - Stacey or Dave: I am gonna look into trying to get Bablyon 5 dvd sets and Star Trek DS9 sets, (don't care for voyager or enterprise at all) as well as ST: TOS sets. Any suggestions to where would be greatly appreciated.

Which reminds me - Twelve Kingdoms is 10 discs all, right? If so I need the last four. If any of you are curious and don't mind great epic storytelling and well thought out fantasy, Twelve Kingdoms is the series for you. Great characters and very well thought out backstories (at least from teh first four discs). One of hte best fantasy animes done right, IMNSHO.

Todd:

Kiddy Grade is quite good. Pick it up.

Stacey:

I think I just might do that .

Woo:

Well, I've been spending so much time on Rome: Total War and watching shows on my new TiVo that I just haven't been buying or watching too many new DVDs. I hope I can get to 1,000 by the end of the year .

John.

I can't help you on DS9. Although I liked TNG and DS9 a lot when I was younger and watching it on TV, I can't imagine spending time watching it rather than watching B5 again (no offense Star Trek people). I'm with you in that I also detested Voyager...I gave up on the whole ST thing at that point.

With B5, DeepdiscountDVD has generally the best combination of price and reliability although pricegrabber shows it available cheaper in mroe questionable places. If you are familiar with the Columbia House thing, apparently via the CH TV season club you can get a very good deal on the seasons (see dvdtalk DVD club forum for more information)
http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=367791


Columbia House has added a lot more anime to their list in the past months, too, FYI, including stuff like Fruits Basket.

Anime titles available @ CH


Have you seen B5 before, Woo? The best damn character-driven and story-driven arcs ever to air on TV IMO, with characters that actually change.

Even Stacey liked it OK (we just finished watching Seasons 1-5, it took like 1.5 years with me trading off with whatever shows she wanted me to watch) even though she hates sci-fi with spaceships with a passion (you would probably find her dead before finding her watching Star Trek, and her interest in Star Wars is...ahem...markedly less than enthusiastic).

I got some....meh, you guys figure it out. I'm just stockpiling this stuff. I haven't watched any anime in a while. Too lazy to type.

Well I went to my brother's place last night, sat next to the Helm of Sauron and watched Blue Gender disks 1-3, Mezzo DSA episode 1 and Mezzo Forte. We wrapped at 2:30AM and I drove home.

I've got to ditch this Mezzo Forte disk and get the cut version. I watched Mezzo DSA first and bought "Forte" because I thought the show simply rocked. "Forte" is actually a great OVA but the Hentai stuff pretty much derails it. If nothing else, it screws up the high energy pacing and comedy of the show. I assume the cut version only ditches the Hentai?

Is Kite (cut version) just like it or is it serious?

ADV is having an April Fools sale from today to sunday

http://www.advfilms.com/sales.asp

That said, though I WANT to get Kino's Journey 1, I probably won't. Spent too much this month so cutting down... ;_;

Stacey/Dave:

No, I've never seen B5, and wanted to see DS9 since what few eps I saw on tv were pretty fun. TOS is also something I've wanted to see, and never got around to, since I usually have too much anime or games to watch/play.

The B5 thread where Ron Epstein asked for advice sparked my interest, and now I am interested in getting it.

EDIT:

OOPS!

Forgot to add that I saw Vampire Hunter D:Special Edition last night. Fun but very old show - this was made in 1985, and I saw it on bootleg vhs ages ago as well as on the Sci-Fi Channel many years later. Old, but the art was pretty good, especially some of the backgrounds. Other than that, not much watching went on last nite.

Todd:

I've never seen the uncut versions of either, but I can agree and imagine what you say is true - at least about the "ecchi" portions of the show. Though it's been a while since I've put those discs in my dvd player, MezzoForte and Kite are great in terms of action, and I am of the opinion that removing the "ecchi" portions preserves better the flow of narrative.

All:

It is with sad news and a heavy heart that I must report that I have decided to give up collecting DVDs, and will replace my collection with analog formats such as VHS and Laserdisk. I have clearly seen the error of my ways, as the DVD technology simply doesn't stand up to the picture quality of VHS and Laserdisk. As part of this, I will also be giving up my new TiVo, my digital cable, and any plans for a large, widescreen TV. In fact, I will be selling my 27" TV, and replacing it with a 13" B&W that is easily portable. Thank you for reading my contrition.

John.

And I'm going to sell my speakers...

My Mezzo Forte purchase is kind of a funny story actually.

Sometime last month on anime-planet's forum I was warned about Mezzo Forte being classified as Hentai. But did I listen? Heck no!

You see, at the end of disk 1 of Mezzo DSA (TV) there is some fighting footage of Mezzo Forte (via a flashback) and the animation looked hand drawn, 3D and simply amazing. It was along the lines of the excellent original Armitage III OVA which I'm a huge fan of. An instant buy!

Being a totally naive *dufus*, and never having seen Hentai before, I figured "Forte" must have some nudity or situations that made it borderline classified Hentai. How bad could it be right? Certainly nothing hardcore/porn I'm sure. Its anime right? On top of that, I've cetainly NEVER bought an edited version of original content before and I'm not starting here! Like I said - total *dufus*.

So it arrives... I popped it in, watched the first 20 minutes or so and thought:
"Boy those guys on the forums made a stink about nothing!"

AND THEN...
UM....
"HOLY #$%&%$*#@ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The trailer for Kite looks very cool - but I know better this time!

Sorry about that Todd. Can you clarify which version of Mezzo you have? Maybe I am confused as to which...

All I can say is that anime includes hentai, it's just something I was never really interested in watching so I never collect it. Anime contains and covers pretty broad genres and subgenres of which Hentai is one.

Now you got me wanting to watch Kite and MezzoForte again.

I really don't feel that Kite should be classified as Hentai. I bought this (although I don't have the Directors Cut, so I can't speak for that). I think it's really only classified as hentai since she's suppose to be very young, like 15 or 16 and there is a graphic intercourse scene involving her and a much older man. But this is not really the central point of the film, nor is it half the film's content. I thought Kite was a legitimatley good anime. FWIW

That was my logic buying Mezzo Forte (Uncut version Woo Jae). However, the sex scenes are wickedly over the top and very hardcore.

The two scenes are literally inserted into the OVA however, easily edited out and probably intended to be that way. The first scene could be removed without any continuity gaps at all - and the second one has one line of dialog that references the scene.

Hmmm... I really like this series but the last thing I need is an oddball in my anime collection for my kids to find some day.

Kite has a graphic scene in the CUT version? Now I'm really scared LOL!