Evangelion occupies a very special place in my heart: I watched the series on VHS in 1997 when I was fourteen and - without hyperbole - it was a life changing experience. A series that was smart and brutally obtuse and flitted from Jungian psychology to religious dogma was revelatory for me at the time and it questioned a lot of what I had not yet fully formed questions about; so as well as being gob-smackingly awesome, it changed who I was and consequently who I am. For those reasons I am utterly fanatical about the franchise and concept. Like a delusional lover I put up with a lot of the nonsense that GAINAX throws: I own the original series on twelve VHS tapes which I upgraded to DVD when they were first released, then upgraded them to the Platinum DVDs; I did manage to stay away from the deluge of tat that has been continuously released but it's fair to say my own lot of Evangelion merchandise is not insignificant. In what is a truly savvy move, just as patience for the constant re-releases was beginning to wane news came of the Rebuild project.
If 1.0 was meant to prime the fans for what was to come, 2.0 detonates with magnum force.
Not just a fresh coat of paint but a fresh take - that was the promise at least. It was hard to get excited, especially when there was also word of a live action Hollywood adaptation bolstered by some mightily uninspiring concept art - the only promise being that WETA are on the case. Regardless, the news came out over a year before the first Rebuild release so there was plenty of time to build up my scepticism. The first movie, "Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone" released in 2007, deserves a post of its own and the number of pages I've devoted to notes and thoughts and theories bordering on absurd. The second movie, "Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance" released just this summer is easy to write about because I have not yet had a chance to analyse and unpick it as I am wont to do. For want of a better description, this is a review rather than an unravelling.
My previous forays into crafting an automatic screenshot taker were, at the time, very successful. The system managed to pump out usable images in a fraction of the time it would have taken me to seek and do them manually; I even extended the script to handle multiple file-inputs which made 'capping an entire series a breeze. Lamentably, this was a honeymoon period before cracks started to show, followed by gaping chasms.
The only workaround the first screenshotter used was a glitch for Windows Media files which meant the first frame sought was always blank, it swerved around this limitation by taking two shots and discarding the first. This symptom, however, was indicative of what would become a persistent problem.
Background
The first significant problem I encountered with the setup was with the series Claymore, a great many of the resulting images seemed to have a lot of "bleed through", as if one frame were being intermingled with another, this was above an beyond the standard cross-fade transition screenshots that were common. At the time I assumed it was because the files I used were modern H264 MKV files rather than the standard XViD ones I had been using before, or that the encoding was particularly shoddy. After downloading an updated version of mplayer for Windows the problem seemed to disappear; I ended up regenerating a lot of the images for episodes which were most severe offenders.
The thing to understand is that seeking in a video files is very difficult
After a spate of swift updates, I didn't blog anime any more so the screenshotter shortcut on my desktop lay dormant until I decided to unleash some madness on Strawberry Panic. While the setup worked, it was producing an unusual amount of exact duplicate images, despite being over five seconds apart. I realised there was a fundamental underlying cause for this that an mplayer update wouldn't fix. True high-definition versions (not upscales) of certain releases were now readily available, namely the seminal Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex (and associated movie Solid State Society) and a selection of Makoto Shinkai works including 5 centimeters per second, which I wanted to pluck some quality captures from (for desktop wallpaper or other purposes). These files did not agree with the screenshotter at all and stoically produced correct resolution but entirely black captures which was less than useful.
Having a character in a series attempt to win an argument using squirrels seems like it would go down well around these parts; thankfully squirrel related tomfoolery is not all Minami-ke has to offer as it manages to break out of its well trodden, all-girl-school-comedy premise and develop into a raucous look at the life of a family of oddities and the selection of characters which get pulled into their orbit.
Characters, situations and comedy are stitched together so deftly that it's hard to think of Minami-ke as a series at all
The first season of Minami-ke seems to constantly better itself by proving time and time again that it will not beat a dead horse, providing capricious situations that seem patently obvious when shown, but on reflection take on Rube Goldberg-esque set up. For instance: Makoto, a typically brash and uninteresting character whose only lot in life seems to be to provide a catalyst for Chiaki's deadpan cynicism, add in the desire to visit the Minami household without incurring special kinds of wrath, mix in some typical gender-bending and atypical cross-dressing, sprinkle in some adoration for Haruka and the result is something that never seems anything less than hilarious. Time and time again the off-the-wall comedy provides sporadic moments of howling laughter buffered by constant amusement with a boy with a propensity for loosening his shirt and sparkling to the trio of straight-faced brothers who also share the name Minami.
Coming from a franchise that started in 1989 and comprises seven manga volumes, three separate sets of OVAs, a movie and two extended TV shows, it would be easy for Full Throttle to be weighed down by a lot of baggage that has gone before it. Thankfully this isn't the case and, while the minutiae of ongoing relationships is perhaps lost, the core dynamic between the two female traffic officers and their outlandish adventures takes centre stage.
Full Throttle [...] does little to reinvent or innovate, it is very much a continuation of what has gone before
If one goes by the plethora of promotional images surrounding nearly all incarnations of YUA then the show would be nothing more than series of trite incidents designed to throw the two protagonists together and expose hidden lesbian tendencies. Whether that is forthcoming is unknown, the first three episodes consist of a two part arc concerning a young billionaire's son who is first chased by gangsters, then goes to live with his kendo uncle to become a samurai and an episode where a body builder turned vigilante ends up as a taiyaki chef but not before a tense SUV pushing battle. It is as bizarre and off-the-wall as the synopsis suggests, whether this is simply due to the franchise running short on ideas or simply the ongoing style of it will be for an audience more familiar with previous outings.
Putting together Production I.G. and Shirow Masamune is cause for celebration nowadays; most noted for his hand in the blindingly excellent Ghost in the Shell universe, even his lesser known works such as Appleseed and Dominion Tank Police stand out as unique and filled with his trademark personality. Given that, it may seem odd that Ghost Hound seems such a vast departure from his other works.
it is difficult to pick fault with Ghost Hound when it is so expertly produced in all areas
It is less odd when one realises that the series is liberally adapted from a work that Shirow created twenty years ago, that the screenplay is penned by Chiaki J. Konaka and is directed by Ryutaro Nakamura, both of whom were in the same positions for Serial Experiments Lain. It then becomes all the more apparent where the mind bending, perception altering experience comes from. Starting with a trip into the protagonists dream, Ghost Hound never quite lets go and always has that ephemeral, dream like quality to its story, visuals, and most prominently, its sound.
