DragonballZ and other Anime and Manga (no Hentai?)
09.13.99 Me and Mandrake just finished watching uncut episodes 70-76. Meanwhile Cartoon Network was showing the new episodes in "Z-Day". The battle between Goku and Ginyu is going on right now. I hadn't seen the cut episodes of season three until just now, and they are showing blood and in a commercial they show Jeice getting punched in the face, so I guess that Funimation is loosening up the censorship. If only we could get good voice actors back and a much better sound mixer. The music is second only to dialog in volume. Of course the sound effects are probably better off not hear a lot of the time. But that's all the complaints I have. Maybe.
More complaining: I didn't think anything could be worse than "You da bomb!". (If you don't recognize that line, just keep listening to Yamucha) But today Yamucha really did it. He said "That's wack!". Who the fuck is in charge of translating his lines and making them unbelievably stupid? Appealing to the younger, hipper audience by using slang such as you da bomb and that's wack is, at best, a terrible decision. Nobody talks like that, and Yamucha sure as hell better not. I hate him, but I don't hate him as much as the guy writing those lines.
No more complaining, time for compliments. The fighting is getting fierce and I like how they handled the first encounters between Goku and Freezer. Not even showing them fight and just playing sound effects and panning the camera quickly really gave you a sense of amazing speed and power. Really big explosions are coming more often these days, accompanied by mushroom clouds frequently. Nuclear like explosions in a Japanese cartoon which is being marketed so much at an American audience. Seems weird to me. I really like what they did with Vegeta too. I'm glad he's not so much of an asshole now. (I'm trying not to say exactly what happens to Vegeta at this point) He seemed to be a wus when Freezer was fighting other people, and I lost some respect for him, but I think the new character developments are good. The animation is really nice with a lot of quick fluid motions coming from Freezer which I like. His tail looks sweet when he is flipping and spinning like mad. Dammit! We gotta wait forever to see new episodes again. At least they are gonna be real good for sure.
09.06.99 I love DragonballZ. Whats not to like? I jumped on that bandwagon before it really go going too strong here in the US. The first episode I saw was when Tenshinhan goes all out against Nappa and I was really in awe over the animation when Piccolo and Kulilin did the tri-form attacks. The fighting was awesome, but I had no concept of what was going on at that point. I really flipped when it cut over to King Kaio and he said something and went away. WTF was that blue guy? Since then I have seen all the translated episodes and read all the translated manga that Mandrake has gotten from the otherwise hideous Hot Topic in the Eastwood Mall. The story is excellent, and the characters are superb. It's a truly great series. Unfortuneatley the 3rd season has run into the problem of having bad actors and bad sound effects. Not to mention some terrible translation decisions. I seriously doubt the original manga translated to "You da bomb!" or "Go green!". Many people have taken such offense to the new season (which is not yet on tv, but I have seen the 1st 4 uncut tapes from it) that they cannot bear any more of the farce that it has become. Of course these are usually people who have had the option of watching the japanese anime. A friend, Sokidan, ran a great site until the 3rd season at which time he shut it down. DBZ Uncensored was the most informative DBZ site on the net, but has since been discontinued in the comparison area because of the new season. I thank Funimation for bringing us what it did, but I wish it could have been better. And WTF is with that next dimension shit? Just about everything visual that they censor is shown on the Power Puff Girls, so why can't DBZ have it? Come on...
In other news... I am excited to see that Mirimax is releasing an anime movie to American theatres soon. Perhaps we can get top quality voice acting and the US public will be awakened to what animation should be (which is to say that Disney is a bunch of biased, evil, and sugar coated bullshit). It should be a step in the right direction. I forget the name of the movie, but the clip I saw on CNN looked rather top quality and I am intrigued to say the least.
I have seen a good deal of anime, and although I like science fiction movies (real actors) I prefer medievil and fantasy anime. It just offers so much more. Gun fights could never be as visually stunning as sword fights in anime, just as the opposite is true in real life movies.
I'm not sure what else to add, but I'll put more up as I think of it. Perhaps movies reviews or some pictures or movie clip downloads. Dunno.