Excuses, Excuses

Naysayers... Just shut up and enjoy the glory of Akira's Johnny.

Saturday at Otakon, Funimation announced license acquisitions Casshern: Sins and Eden of the East, two titles that many people, including myself, have been anticipating. I immediately went into celebratory mode, but then made the poor decision to go read the ANN forum thread in connection with the news. It began innocently enough, with people being happy for the acquisition, and some people being happy that they could finally watch these shows (some people have much stricter ethics than I do regarding fansubs, which is fine - it just means they get to miss a lot of the cool stuff >:) ).

Of course, someone always has to piss on my parade.

There seems to be a small-but-vocal contingent of people who are more than willing to act like big fans of something, but when it comes time to pony up the cash, there's always some excuse as to why the American company ruined the release and they won't spend any money on it. This time around, the controversy is in regards to the opening theme, which is the song "Falling Down" by the British band Oasis. There are rumblings (not based on anything factual, mind you, just worried whispers based on a couple of past situations) that Funimation might not be able to secure rights to the opening song. I'm thinking to myself, "big deal, right?" I really like the opening song, but a minute-and-a-half of artful design elements coupled with an excerpt from a popular song is not enough to sway me one way or another in regards to a series that I already like. When I'm watching multiple episodes of a series at one time, I usually skip the theme songs anyway, no matter how much I like it.

Wow, they were right! Now that I've read this I totally understand the series! /sarcasm

Well, of course the thread blew up with people in agreement, with a few more rational people in between telling these people that they were being childish. One argument that really irritated me was that the opening theme was somehow integral to understanding the series itself. Hogwash, I say. While the opening pays lip service to a lot of the terms, concepts and ideas around which the series revolves, all of these things are explained within the context of the series itself. The opening is basically someone's very awesome graphic design project, but there's no reason anyone would need to watch it, and if these whiners were real fans of the series they would know better.

In case you were curious, here's a video of the show's opening: