MAS Halloween AMV Show: The List

All right, here's the list and pertinent links to the AMVs from both the official AMV show, things that were shown throughout the night that I have access too, and whatever else I had in the folder that may or may not have been shown (I honestly can't remember everything). Some of these may be repeats from previous posts.

Main Show

Watchmanga by Ultimatetransfan

A multi-source video set to the Watchmen Trailer. I can usually take or leave trailers, but I found this one to be particularly well-done and it uses some sources that go together very well with the audio.

The Box of Sorrows by Bea$t

It combines footage from the Hellraiser movies and the Silent Hill 4: The Room video game to come up with something exceedingly creepy in addition to its technical accomplishment. It was difficult to see in the auditorium due to the stupid side-lights, but should be easier to see on a computer monitor.

Michiko Hurricane by Alternababe

An amusing portrait of Michiko from Michiko to Hatchin being badass. As a friend commented to me, there are very few videos with this anime as a source and it's surprising that a good one like this even exists. Very action-oriented and entertaining. Slight spoilers for the end of the series (but if you don't know what you're looking for you might miss it anyway).

Vehemence by VeeBee

A Bakemonogatari AMV, since we were watching it last night. The author manages to make the already beautiful footage look even better. The video focuses a lot on Senjougahara and lends her sort of a mysterious air.

To Serve Man by godix

A video set to "A Little Priest" from Sweeny Todd. A comedic video about eating people. The author doesn't seem to happy with it, but I thought it was very amusing and it used some good source choices.

Era by Tana-sama

Mononoke AMVs do exist! Even a couple of decent ones, as I found out recently. This one provides a good overview of the series, and highlights some of its unique visuals.

(This Is) MADNESS! by Creed_FR, Arcos

An up-tempo Soul-Eater AMV which manages to feature a shounen anime and not be complete garbage. Shown since we were watching the first episode of the show.

The Last HOPE by Pipian

Probably the only Dennou Coil AMV I've ever seen that hasn't been junk, and there are very few to begin with. It captures the spooky feeling certain parts of the show have, and serves as a nice trailer to boot.

Warrant on Murder by Archivist

A video that features stunning imagery from the Kara no Kyoukai series of films, the video screamed "Halloween" the moment that I first watched it. It's definitely eye-candy, and makes me interested in watching the movies (I have them sitting around, I just haven't gotten around to it yet).

Extras

De:Light by Aggressor

An action video that uses Shikabane Hime as a source. What I saw of the show was pretty so-so, but this is a very technically-sound production with a lot of intense visuals.

Belzenef's Awakening by Little Atari

A very cute mock-trailer for Ouran Host Club that utilizes the dub track well. Very silly but lots of fun.

Frozen Ayakashi Beach by y00_black

Short but intense vid using Ayakashi Japanese Horror and Mononoke. Still marvelling that vids using these sources exist and don't suck.

Curtain Call by Rider4Z, Stryyder

One of the few Death Note AMVs that I've been able to tolerate (having the anime set to a Queen song definitely helps). It plays up the theatricality of the series well.

Paradoxical Sleep by Paul Kievets

Definitely one of the most unsettling AMVs that I've ever seen in my life. It uses Spirited Away as its source and plays up the aspects of it that are truly frightening. Might give you nightmares.

Stop Killing Yourself by Hareoic

Truly funny AMV that combines Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei with Monty Python. "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life!"

Bonus:

Short Film: Kigeki (Comedy)

A short film by Studio 4degreesC about a lone swordsman who provides his services for a very unusual price. People seemed to really like this one, so here it is.

That's about it! I hope people had fun and that they enjoy these fun AMVs.

MAS Halloween AMVs

Hey all, it's late tonight, but I'll be linking to the AMVs that were shown during the MAS Halloween party at some point later in the day tomorrow (after I get home from work). I hope that you enjoyed them and had a good time!

Toradora Week 2 - Episodes 3 and 4

Episode 3 - "Your Song"

Minori and Ryuji make the best of being trapped inside the storage shed.

Ryuji's rice cooker breaks, so he and Taiga go to the local "Johnny's" family restaurant to eat. Minori works there as a waitress, one of the many part-time jobs she apparently holds. Another is at a liquor store, and Ryuji offers to help her out, dragging Taiga along unwillingly. Ryuji and Minori get locked in the storehouse, and while inside Ryuji learns a bit more about her.

Episode 4 - "That Moment's Expression"

Ryuji finds out that Yusaku confessed his feelings to Taiga a year ago, and that she rejected him.

Ryuji finds Taiga's stash of blurry photographs of Yusaku, and offers to take some better ones for her to have. After getting her prizes, Ryuji offers to laminate the ones she likes the best, but she can't choose and leaves the photos with him. Yusaku finds out about them, and then reveals that he confessed his feelings to Taiga a year ago and was rejected.

Thoughts
While episode 3 garnered a lot of cheap laughs from Taiga's inability to ride a bicycle, it was redeemed by its focus on Minori who, despite being a little bit wacky and extremely enthusiastic, seems to have some hidden reasoning behind her upbeat attitude and her multiple part-time jobs. What's going on there isn't quite clear at this point, but having established her as having something of a hidden side has boosted my interest in the series a bit.

Of course, it becomes even more clear in episode 4 why tsunderekko are annoying to me - Taiga's tsundere rage appears to have quashed any chance at a relationship she could have had with Yusaku right from the start, since she rejected his confession a year ago. Yes, again I realize that if things worked logically and people behaved themselves, then there wouldn't be enough conflict to fill a series of this length. But it still grates on me to see people behaving in immature ways that are counter-productive to their own happiness. Doubly-so because I think that the tsundere character type is very unrealistic. At least, I've never met anyone who was so standoffish, but perhaps I'm just lucky.

Looks like next week the last of the five main characters gets a proper introduction (she appeared briefly in episode 4), complicating matters even further.

Toradora - Week 1 - Episodes 1 and 2

As I mentioned, due to the show's popularity and my original disinterest in it, I've made it a task of mine to blog about the episodes of Toradora that the anime club I attend shows each week, and see if and/or how my opinion of the show changes. I'm slightly behind, so I'll post the first two weeks' reactions back-to-back in order to catch up.

Episode 1 - "Tiger and Dragon"

Taiga surprises Ryuji at home in the middle of the night.

It's the first day of school and Ryuji, who unfortunately has the type of face that causes people to mistake him for a violent thug, meets up with Aisaka Taiga, the doll-like school spitfire. After a late day at school, Ryuji goes back to the classroom to retrieve his bag, only to find Taiga there. Later that night, he finds out why - Taiga's attempt to slip a love confession note to her crush, Kitamura Yusaku seems to have failed, since Ryuji now has it in his bookbag and the note isn't even in the envelope. Taiga confronts him in the middle of the night, and Ryuji, after convincing Taiga of his own patheticness (he nurses a major crush on Taiga's best friend, Minori), offers to help her do things correctly. They establish what they hope will be a mutually-beneficial relationship so that they both can achieve their romantic goals.

Episode 2 - "Ryuji and Taiga"

The oft-mentioned lamp-post scene unfolds as the two leads vent their frustrations at being mistaken for things that they're not.

The unlikely duo begin setting their plans in motion. Unfortunately, their recent closeness gives their classmates the wrong idea about their relationship with each-other, a situation counteractive to their goals. Taiga attempts to set the record straight with Yusaku and even confesses her feelings to him before school, but he politely declines and wishes to remain friends.

Thoughts
I had seen these two episodes before, back when everyone on the internet was singing the praises of the show. I watched episode 2 with anticipation, since I had been told that the "lamp post scene" was an example of how genuine the series was - how it conveyed the emotions of the characters and made them very relatable. At the time I was pretty underwhelmed, as I've stated before. What I had been told was "fresh" didn't feel as such, and I abandoned the series for other things that I found much more interesting.

One thing that has altered my perception a bit this time, however, is watching these episodes along with a fairly large audience; an audience which largely consists of people who just aren't very experienced in the fandom at all, or who don't have much viewing experience outside of R1 releases. They laugh at all the jokes I've heard a million times, and genuinely enjoy situations which I see as contrived, and it's difficult to sit in the same room with swells of laughter and not feel compelled to at least crack a smile. I may be extremely critical and I'm unapologetic about the fact that I probably wouldn't watch this series on my own, but I think that, given the environment, I can certainly keep along with it and possibly even enjoy it on some level, without fundamentally abandoning my opinion of it.

I think the one thing which may turn out to be a deal-breaker is the fact that the female lead is an obnoxious tsundere. I'm not a big fan of that character type and probably never will be except under very specific circumstances (I liked Kagami in Lucky Star, but since that series was so self-aware I see it as being a bit outside the norm anyway). Mostly, I just want to grab Taiga by the shoulders and tell her to quit acting like an obnoxious bitch all the time. But then, of course, the show would have no major conflict and it wouldn't take 26 episodes to untangle whatever misunderstandings are bound to happen. So we'll see if I'm able to put up with her the whole time.

So far, though, my feelings are fairly neutral. I have my annoying nitpicks about certain things, but so far the funny moments have kept those things in check. We'll see how this feeling changes as the weeks go on.

Changing Tastes

Ugh, so I spent the last couple of days moping around in the evenings feeling crappy, thus no updating. Well, whatever; I can't be on top of things every day.

So I was thinking today about how much my taste in entertainment has changed dramatically between about the time I entered college (9 years ago!) to the present time. I used to be an avid gamer, but now you'd have to pay me to pick up the JRPGs that I once drooled over (honestly I don't have 60 hours to spend watching some spikey-haired hero angst about his village burning down or being made into a glorified science experiment or whatever the vogue storyline is nowadays). I don't watch much domestic TV anymore, either. Sometimes I'll catch online re-runs of really good stuff like "The Office," but other than that I rarely watch much beyond the Food Network and HGTV, which is more like background noise. This change has extended to my entertainment medium of choice, anime, as well. As in, I used to watch anything and everything animated in Japan and loved it for the simple reason that it was Japanese, but now I've become just as picky about anime as I would be about films or television if my entertainment interests had skewed more in that direction.

Looking back on some of the things that we watched and that I enjoyed early on in anime club, I can say without a doubt that there are plenty of things that I would definitely not enjoy a second time. Stuff like Fushigi Yuugi, which was funny at the time in a sort of "let's make the same jokes over and over again and not progress the story in any meaningful way" kind of way, or Jungle wa Itsumo Hare Nochi Guu which suffered from the same problem. I even have so much baggage about CLAMP's more recent stuff that watching X would be a chore for me. Yes, I am very picky and not shy about it, your point being?

Of course, there are some things that I saw years ago and still have a fondness for. I think I could watch Azumanga Daioh many times over and still enjoy it, because even though the characters fit very cleanly into your average slice-of-life character archetypes, there was something about them that really made the show fun, and sometimes even kind of heartwarming. Revolutionary Girl Utena grabbed me by the collar and smacked my brain around the first time I ever attended MAS, and it hasn't let go since. I could watch that show 50 times and probably still get something new from it. Haibane Renmei has also been a perennial favorite of mine. I want to stick my neck out and make a comment regarding the difference between "flash-in-the-pan" and "enduring quality," but I'm afraid of getting reamed-out by any overly-passionate fans rolling through.

What I will say is that all the series that have remained amongst my favorites have connected with me in some way. Whether it's because they portray an experience that I wish I had been through or because they touch on themes that ring true for me in my life, it's interesting how enduring certain series can be even when the audience grows up and moves on in so many other areas of their lives. Sometimes nostalgia isn't about looking back towards better times; it might be just about re-living fond memories in addition to creating new ones.

The New Face of the Anime Fandom

Last Thursday was the first Fall meeting of the Manga Anime Society, the college anime club which I've been attending as a regular member since October 2001. The first meeting of the year is usually pretty interesting since there are a lot of new faces and it's difficult to guess whether they'll remain for the rest of the semester, or if they're just kind of testing the waters. This time, though, I felt some distinct differences from previous years, and I'm curious whether this might signal some greater shifts in the anime fandom at large.

One of the biggest changes I saw was how outgoing a lot of the new people were. Speaking from personal experience and also years of observation, there seems to be a tendency amongst anime fans to be a little shy, at least at first. This year, the minute I walked into the room, I was met with a new member who immediately introduced himself and struck up a conversation with me. As more people filtered in, many of them new and unacquainted with each-other, they sat down next to others, introduced themselves, and were almost immediately talking about anime, games, their classes and whatever else came to mind. In this case I found the change in attitudes to be overwhelmingly positive. The more friends people make, the likelier they are to stay for the long haul, to participate in club activities, and to eventually take over the reigns - essentially, the future success of the club is more assured the more people are enjoying themselves from the outset.

Another shift is something that wasn't necessarily a surprise to me due to me hanging around some public anime forums, but which still surprised a couple of my friends is the attitude shift towards English dubs of anime. While the issue is a moot point this semester since all the series we're watching are unlicensed and in fansub form, I did hear a couple of complaints from new people about MAS's policy of watching all series in the original Japanese with subtitles. I think originally the reason for the policy was that a lot of old dubs were kind of terrible, and the policy remained because, if watching it in its original language, we can configure the club as not only interested in foreign entertainment for entertainment's sake, but also as an entity focused on more cultural items (I mean, yes, we're watching Japanese cartoons and having a good time and that's the main focus, but we're also at the mercy of the U of MN and want to seem at least partially academic). Personally, I'm not averse to modern dubs because most of them range from passable to pretty good. But having taken over three years of the Japanese language in college, I prefer to hear the Japanese.

I think that the attitude shift here might be due to the newer generation of fans having had lots of anime available on television and on the DVD racks during their formative years as fans. Being able to see anime in their native language was the rule rather than the exception, whereas for many people my age, in order to see shows that weren't Sailor Moon or the few things that weren't on Cartoon Network, fansubs were the rule rather than the exception and we all got used to reading our dialog.

I think an extension of this is some confusion I noticed regarding things that are very tied to Japanese culture. The three main showings this semester are all pretty straightforward without much cultural baggage, but our pre-showing, Astro Fighter Sunred, not only references a very Japanese genre of entertainment (sentai/tokusatsu) but involves many references to Japanese foods, entertainment and day-to-day issues. It's not really esoteric by any means, but it is a bit quirky and even though much of the humor relies on the personalities of the main characters, there are situations where someone who is unfamiliar with Japan might not get the full impact of the joke. The one comment from my new friends that stuck with me was "well this is never coming to the US, is it?" to which I might reply, "does it have to?"

I think part of the reason that I watch anime in the first place is that I'm interested in the peculiarities of Japanese culture itself, and so little interjections here and there in the case of this gag comedy, or even complete immersions in it in the case of something like Mononoke, aren't off-putting to me. But I suppose to someone who's used to a more Westernized translation and who hasn't done any research into the culture behind the entertainment might be confused and even turned-away by something that they aren't familiar with and can't wrap their heads around. What I find interesting is that when I started getting heavily into the fandom it seemed like my fellows in MAS, many of whom were involved in various different academic focuses, enjoyed the Japan-specific series just as much or more as the more Western ones. A show just being different or quirky was enough for it to provide some modicum of entertainment, and there seemed to be some inherent pleasure in uncovering something weird. Perhaps the negative in that situation is that these series, like Azumanga Daioh or Abenobashi Magical Shopping Arcade, might only be enjoyed by some people because of their "foreign-ness," rather than because of their other positive aspects, but at the very least the fact that a Japanese animation from Japan wasn't avoided for being too Japanese.

My hope is that people will ease into the weirder, less-licensable stuff after they see a bit more of it and become accustomed to the different pacing and intent. But the fact that the unusual stuff was met with apprehension rather than somewhat-confused glee worries me a bit.

The Toradora Viewing Project

Hopefully I won't feel like this after watching the whole darned thing.

This isn't an uncommon occurrence by any means, but once again a show that didn't have any interest in in the least has since blown up into one of the more popular anime of recent memory. In this case, the series is last Fall's romantic comedy, Toradora. I would normally be content to keep ignoring the series and letting its gaggle of fans fawn over it on their own. Unsurprisingly, however, the anime club I'm a part of voted the show in to be viewed this semester, so I have less of a choice in the matter than I normally would.

I could just find something else to do for that hour every week, but I figure that I should make the best of the situation and see whether or not the show lives up to its enormous hype. Each week I'm going to try and blog about the two episodes I've seen at anime club (or, if my friends find something better to do during that time, I'll try to watch them on my own before the following week). Perhaps I can get some insight into why the series is so popular across the board.

I'm not going to lie, I'm going into my viewing having seen the first couple episodes already and being very underwhelmed by them, and I'm not expecting much, but perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised. Or I'll get to rant every week, whatever works :)

Manga Anime Society - Fall Semester 09

Just as a heads-up to anyone in the Twin Cities area, the University of Minnesota's resident anime club, the Manga Anime Society will be reconvening on Thursday, September 10th. The schedule is as follows:

6:30-7:00 - Astro Fighter Sunred
7:00-8:00 - Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief (the Daughter of Twenty-Faces)
8:00-9:00 - Toradora
9:00-10:00 - Michiko to Hatchin

Showings are free and open to the public, and take place in Moos Tower room 2-520 (it's below street level - take the staircase down and walk through the doors, the room will eventually be on the right side of the hallway). Showings are always free, but if you want to become a full-fledged member with voting rights and access to free snacks at all social nights, the membership fee is $6. Hope to see you there!