Postby zeroguy » Mon May 12, 2008 12:57 am
Eh, screw what I'm supposed to be doing, and screw the fact that there's not a lot of non-me activity in this thread lately. I feel like writing about a couple of things, both of which are long overdue.
First of all: Crayon Shin-chan. How have I never heard of this before? I just started seeing a few episodes of this during this year, and it's awesome. I have no idea what the original Japanese show is like (and it seems likely I never will, subs -- even fansubs -- seem almost nonexistent, and I assume it wouldn't even be funny to me anyways), but the FUNimation dub is great. I'm usually in strong favor of subs, and would be against significant dialogue changes and so forth.... but this time, it really really seems done well. I hope this does well in America; there's plenty of source material to use (over six hundred episdoes!), so it could be around for awhile if it's popular.
Okay, and the other thing I wanted to say something about: Elfen Lied. This series has me rather conflicted. At first, I thought it was great. Dark, violent, and a very strong opening. The first episode had me very intrigued, but a little uneasy near the end with what looked like just plain fanservice. (Well, you can call almost all of the nudity in the series fanservice, but it at least serves other purposes, as well.... not so in parts such as the later parts of episode 1.)
But I was optimistic. The next few episodes, though, severely dissappointed me. The storyline I was intrigued by seems randomly (temporarily) thrown away to make room for the stereotypical highschool-romance-type-thing, with the stereotypical Japanese ecchi harem theme. Ugh.
Things get more serious as the ending draws near, but the romance stays and eventually ties in. Which was.... not horrible, but not great.
Pretty much all storyline related to the Diclonii was great, through. Even if it had the cliché never-ending stream of stronger and stronger monsters (okay, only 3, but still, it seemed never-ending to a series that's only 13 episodes long), it was still enjoyable. Probably only due to the brevity of the series, though. It's like with DBZ or something, you just get people with higher and higher power levels or whatever? With Elfen Lied, just replace "power level" with "number/range of Vectors", and it's pretty much the same idea. But thankfully, it ends with the third iteration.
So, in all, it was kinda "eh". It really pisses me off, though, because it could have been so much better if it had concentrated more on the psychological and horror aspects. One would like to think that the more light-hearted scenes were just for contrast and juxtaposition.... and if it were done like that, it would have been awesome. But it wasn't, instead it was just crap. What what the hell is with that ending? Everything was going so well until the last few seconds. When I saw that, it made me want to punch the person in the face who thought that was a brilliant, clever, idea.
Awesome music, though. Most of the music in the series is just a variation on the opening theme, which you think would get old. But it never bothered me; I like to think because the song itself is just fantastic.
Edit: Oh, and I should probably mention (in case anybody actually reads this stuff)... Elfen Lied has a lot of graphic violence and nudity (especially the very first seven minues of the series), whether that deters or interests you.
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