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akira625
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Riyon densetsu furea (1986)
Rape scenes disguised as love scenes?!
I'm not exactly a fan of the "naughty tentacle" stuff that comes of of Japan, I got the videotape merely out of curiosity. It definitely was not money well spent. This series was made by Yorihisa Uchida, the guy who gave us "Guy". Like in Guy, there's plenty of non-consensual sex involving young nubile women and vile bad guys possessing no redeeming qualities whatsoever. In this video, the vile bad guys are aliens, who defile their victims with tentacle-like appendages. Thises aliens, led by Glode, lay waste scores of planets, not for conquest, not for colonization, but for the sole purpose of raping the female population. I don't know why these guys went through all that trouble, unless they're not getting any back home from the females of their species. The thing that really bothers me about the show is not merely the depictions of rape, it's that the notion I get that the people who worked on the show actually tried to make the rape scenes appear like *love* scenes for crying out loud! For example, in one scene during the first episode, Glode has his way with swords-woman Neris, and she is depicted as being aroused by the experience, as some soft piano and flute music plays on the soundtrack. Is this supposed to titillate the viewer somehow? Ick!
This video has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, save for one thing and one thing only: those squishy "naughty tentacle" sound-effects. I recorded from the video back in the mid-90's. I would later incorporate the sounds in a Doom WAD file.
Appurushîdo (1988)
Appleseed video can't hold a torch to the manga
I saw this OAV in the early 90's, mainly because I was such a fan of the original Appleseed manga. Fortunately for me, I decided to rent the video as opposed to buying it. These days, I don't remember a great deal from the OAV, which is probably understandable, since there really isn't much that IS memorable. The things that had attracted me to the manga are simply missing in the OAV. Gone was the manga's overall grittiness, graphic violence, and occasional tinges of humor to keep the story from being too dark and nihilistic. When I watched the OAV, I felt as though I were watching some sort of weird animated security tape The pacing of the story was too slow for my taste, and the characters themselves lacked detail, as they were often were far away from the camera and placed neatly in the center of the frame. And then there's Olympus itself, it just seemed too antiseptic, I didn't get much sense of the city's dark underbelly as I did with the manga.
I haven't seen the recent Appleseed movie yet, I can only hope it did the manga justice, this OAV sure didn't.
The Dick Tracy Show (1961)
Dick Tracy in name only!
Way back in 1990, when I was still a kid, and when the live-action Dick Tracy was hitting theaters, one of my local TV stations decided to get into the act by re-running The Dick Tracy Show. I thought "Oh cool! Now I can see Dick Tracy animated!" I started watching an episode, and sure enough, there ol' Dick was there, but he was delegating all of the crime-fighting to his deputies, a badly-drawn rabble of ethnic stereotypes. It would seem the people at UPA had pulled "bait & switch" trick on the kids since this show first aired in 1961. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that the animators found that Dick Tracy himself too difficult (or too expensive) to animate using their particular limited-animation style. So, Tracy's relegated to the show's opening, which can be reused for each episode, the remainder of the show is devoted to Tracy's staff, all with far more simplified character designs.
And to top it off, I don't even remember seeing any of the original Chester Gould villains in any of the episodes I saw.
Moral Orel (2005)
Did I miss something?
Okay, I've now seen that episode twice, and I'm still don't get it. Is it supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek social commentary or what? I cannot understand why Cartoon Network chose to hype this show back in December. The promo they aired in advance of the premiere gave me mixed signals. Superficially, it resembled a typical syrupy Christmas cartoon, but I noticed the TV-MA logo, and I wondered if the show might in fact be some off-color parody of "Davey & Goliath". The title itself suggested the story might be lampooning those Christian Right folks. So then the show finally aired, I just saw this nauseatingly cheerful and deluded young "true believer" who thinks his hyperactive kid brother is Jesus, while oblivious to the complete meltdown of his nuclear family. These scenes with the Jews For Jesus, the pizza commercials, the gay coach seemed to be attempts at humor, yet they all fell flat with me. Maybe I'm just being cynical about the whole thing here, or maybe that was the really intent of the show after all.
Urusei Yatsura 6: Itsudatte, mai dârin (1991)
A tepid end to the series
This movie was released in 1991, ten years after the Urusei Yatsura debuted on Japanese TV. I guess for this reason, Itsudatte My Darling was a feature-length film rather than going straight to video like most of the other UY stories made after the TV series ended. As stated by other users here, this movie's unrelated to the fifth movie, and is a side story. Overall, I felt the movie wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything to write home about, either. The animation was done by Madhouse this time around, but don't expect the movie to look like one of Taro Rin's works. TAKAHASHI Kumiko did the character designs, and I was a bit bugged at her design for Lum, who looked less like an Oni and more like an elf. As for the writing, the story seems to focus much more on Lupica & Rio than Lum & Ataru. What I really disapproved of was the fact that Ataru is reduced to just a mere stereotype of himself, lusting after Lupica like an oversexed puppy, showing none of the devotion to Lum that makes him endearing.
This movie's only for die-hard UY fans who want to complete their collection, newcomers to the series are better off watching the first film instead.