Dead Leaves: how to avoid overuse of the phrase drill penis in a review

THIS GUY'S PENIS IS A DRILL, FEAR HIM NERDS!!!!!

 

DRILL PENIS!!!!

    Okay, now that we have gotten that out of the way, let me begin by saying that I really, really enjoyed Dead Leaves both times I watched it. This is not going to be one for the kids, or one for people who do not enjoy the margins of animation, plot, characters, and violence. This one is for the nuts and the hardcore eccentrics, the kids who love the strange or who want to see what no one else watches. That said, there is almost certainly a higher concentration of those manners of people amongst anime fans than most other demographics, so a large number of you will probably enjoy this shenanigans. It is important to interrupt my manic rant about strange things I want you to watch, however, to note that this is not strangeness for its own sake (a la Apocalypse Zero, though both feature strange penis weapons), but strangeness as a plot device and vehicle for artistic expression. Trust me, that drill penis is an artistic drill penis, you have to see to believe.
   Dead Leaves follows the tale of two miscreant criminals, Pandy and Retro, who wake up naked together in the middle of a desert, and, after quickly landing themselves in prison, strike out on a mission of combined escape and self discovery (oh yeah, they have no memory at all. this is sounding more and more like my Saturday mornings). In
keeping with the pre-established strangeness, our heroes are exactly what their names imply...as long as you assumed from the names that one had a constant black eye and the other had a t.v. for a head. I will leave it to you to guess which is which. As our glorious lunatics go about their escape, they uncover more and more aspects of their intertwined pasts, and they talent for doling out violence leads them to accumulate an army of prisoners, turning their escape into a rebellion. If at this point you have not abandoned the review out of fear, disgust, or both, fear not! Before extolling the rest of the lovely features of this OAV, I feel it necessary to delve into the problem areas.
   Dead Leaves has what is, almost without question, the most awkward sex scene I have ever scene in anime or anywhere else. Quite possibly the least graphic moment in the whole drill penis, the two protagonists manage to have exceptionally acrobatic and absurdly loud sex through the holes in their cocoon-like restraints that are intended for waste disposal. Not disgusted yet? The waste disposal scene displays the use of these creative designs, a vacuum pump sucks the excrement out of each prisoners body so that order and bowel movement routine can be maintained (this scene also features an unfortunate pipe clogging moment). In complete fairness, this is not an unrealistic feature for a futuristic prison, so, aside from the mildly disturbing concept, it is not too much of problem for the viewer. The two main areas that will give some viewers difficulty are the violence and plot development. Dead Leaves is very, very violent. The violence is graphic. The violence is constant,

and the violence is absolutely essential to the aesthetic and narrative. If you are not looking to see cartoon mutants have their faces removed, literally hundreds of police officers gunned down and ripped limb from lib, and a baby shoot a pseudo-family member while being born, you do not want to watch this. As for plot, Dead Leaves does not suffer from the normal plot problems seen in so many underdeveloped anime. Nothing is blatantly left out or improperly explained, and there is certainly enough information to draw educated guesses on any subject that is not explained fully. Essentially, the plot will be a problem for viewers not looking to draw some of their own conclusions based on given information or viewers who just happen to be fairly unintelligent. If this is you, feel not ashamed, but also watch not the Dead Leaves.
   Back to the final super cool reason to watch the good thing Dead Leaves thing; creative genius. This OAV is an explosion of ideas that could not have been expressed in a more delightful manner. It is very clearly crafted with love, and the stunning visual style, rife with two-dimensional, comic book style shots, is paired with a gloriously absurd mixture of characters that would make any contemporary writer jealous. The concepts and characters may not appeal to everyone in terms of their nature, but they are undeniably exceptionally creative.

ARTGASM


DRILL PENIS

shit you don't care about ... out

Vintage Wednesday: Dominion Tank Police

 Starting off Dominion Tank police, I was intrigued by the art style and, frankly, assuming I would love it because it is 80's dystopian. By the end of act !, however, I had had such a mix of fanservice, chauvinism, and weak character development that I was considering not even finishing the other 3

acts. I decided to sit through it however, and I am very glad I did, as by the end of act 4 I already wanted to re-watch the whole thing. This is the strange nature of Dominion Tank Police, it has some fairly polarizing highs and lows, but definitely enough of the good to outweigh the bad.

   The OAV is essentially a feature length film divided into 4 thiry minute "acts." Each act is given a name and intro/outro to delineate it as the OAV was originall serialized between 4 VHS tapes, but present a contiguous story that takes up each time where it left off. The basic storyline follows the exploits of a new addition to the cities rough and toumble "glorious tank police," Leona, as seen above. Leona works to establish herself among her new comrades, though most are reluctant at first, given her gender and lack of tank experience. At the same time, she is making her own mini-tank and preparing to bring the fight to a gang of criminals who function as the series primary antagonists.

   Overall I would definitely call Dominion a worthwhile watch. The characters, while 2 dimensional at times, are fairly compelling for the most part, the humor is on point throughout, and the animation is lovely. Prepare yourself to stomach some fanservice and also for a bit of NSFW humor, but it never gets to extreme. If you are able to look past the slow points and do not mind a bit of nudity, this is definitely an offering that will give you two solid hours of entertainment. As for the sequel, I will have to find out how it is next.

Sunday watchlist number Sunday

It is Sunday, and I am taking a break from early morning Hearthstone to let you know what anime I will be running on my other screen while I make people look the fool in Arena. Spoiler alert: I can't think of many clever things to say right now. HEADACHE.

EL Hazard - the all of it
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=16
(see "related" at the top of the linked page for the others)
I have a strange relationship to alternate re-tellings and OVA's with sequels in series form; everything must be watched in chronological order and, when there are different tellings, the order they were made acts as a second filter. This means that I will be watching the 2 OVA's, then watching the first series as it retells the same story, and then on to the sequel action. This may sound totally ridiculous, but I find that you can get a lot out of a series this way, few re-tellings are made simply for funsies, and so there is usually a lot of depth vs pacing fun juxtaposition to be had in being able to compare a retelling to the original when watching them in order. What is nerdier than reviewing anime? Reviewing how to watch anime properly. This reminds me that I have never broached this issue, but dubs are for shit (see bottom of this post). OH SHIT I have not said anything about the show yet. It is of that excellent 90's large cast, alternate world, love triangle, whatInuyashawasthebadversionof, action adventure anime vein, which is almost as compelling to me as being of the 80's to early 90's campy sci fi vein.

City Hunter
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=384
(again, going to work through the full set over time)
Explaining why I want to watch City Hunter is the most difficult Sunday Watchlist task I have had thus far, as there really is not a good reason. First off, I do not really expect to like the show overall.

There were several people involved in the project that I respect, but the "total dog that is always trying to get laid, but is really in love with his partner" archetype, especially from this time period, is laborious at best, and really sexist at worst. At the same time, the animations looks, from the old trailers and screenshots I have seen thus far, to be absolutely gorgeous, just take a look at those 80's hard lines and shadowing to the right, so I know that the experience will probably be visually pleasing if nothing else. My other reason for watching is that several reviewers, some of whom I even respect, have given this series mixed positive overall ratings, and I feel that discarding it because of my pre-conceptions before viewing would be silly and, dare I say it, ...no, actually I do not. Anyway, we shall see if my fears are confirmed, denied, or temporarily placated with dog treats.


Jisatsutou
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/manga.php?id=13715

GUYS THIS IS NOT AN ANIME OH GOSH. So, I do interact with media forms other than anime (sometimes) and since this is a watchlist to direct you towards ways to burn time, this manga is going to be included. because read it. yeah. Jisatsutou (suicide island) has an exceptionally appealing plot, and I cannot wait to dive in to this business. The incredibly minimal summary that has been circling through various manga sites is as follows "Treating non-successful suicidal patients requires a lot of money and resources. With low budget and a personal respect argumentation, a doctor will ask a non-successful suicidal patient if he/she still wants to live on or not. If not the government will respect his/her wish. However, the government doesn't just simply kill them. " No sauce because no one seems to know where it is originally from. Anyway, I have learned a bit more about the plot, but you will not hear any of it from me, because I have no desire to spoil any of what I believe will be a series of glorious plot twists.

DUB SACK
Let me begin by saying that I am not even remotely objective on the issues of dubbed anime/films. I hate dubs, I will not watch anything dubbed, netflix should not be allowed to have anime as it is all dubbed, studio dubs are rarely better than fan dubs, etcetera. Now that I have gotten that out of the way, I have two primary objections to dubbing in all its forms, from anime to french art shockers, spanish semi-pornographic films of Antonio Banderas' early career (seriously though, what?) to german soap operas. The more aesthetic of the two is centered on the relationship between audio and visual media that have been created in conjunction. Everything from the unique inflections of voice actors and cultural groups to the relationship between the sound effects and dialogue is planned by the creator of a media object. They are all intended to be parts of a component artistic whole. Dubs, in contrast, are created in the overwhelming majority by external parties contracted to dub a movie or series so that it can by more widely distributed for easy viewing (does not require reading things), and thus has an, at best, loose relationship with the artists original vision, even with artistic oversight. See the English dubs of  such seminal anime as Samurai Champloo for a good example. Secondly, the particulars of a specific language in regards to meaning and the corresponding difficulties in translation carry over with much less distortion in written translation instead of dubbing. Because of the variations in speech patterns and diction between languages, it is much easier to give a close approximation of meaning in translation when the translator is not also attempting to fit the translation into a speech pattern that will not sound awkward or forced when vocalized in place of being read. Our brains can handle some atypical diction and syntax much better when pairing text with audio we do not understand then when hearing translated passages in a language we speak. If you want sauce for linguistic analysis, read some books yo, it is easy.

P.S. If you would like to see anything in particular reviewed, comment on dis post, dat post, or any other post. Anonymous comments are enabled, it is really easy to comment, and I will cry less about my lack of fame if people write things to make me feel noticed.

Vintage Wednesday-ish NSFW

I know, it is not Wednesday. Life has been mad busy, kids, but I will be back on normal schedule by Sunday, worry not. Feels weird to be apologizing to all 7.5 of you (my cat does not count as an entire reader). NOW TO WORK

Apocalypse zero is today's topic, and let me begin by saying that it is seriously screwed up. French art shocker screwed up. Korean rape revenge screwed up. Essentially, it is squarely in one of my favorite genres of non-anime film (shhh I know it is an anime) really disturbing shit that most people cannot sit through (think Philosophy of a Knife, Guinea Pig films, etc.). If you understand those references, you either will enjoy these OVA's, or have very messed up friends. If you did not understand them, I recommend that you grab a stiff drink, turn off the lights, and get ready to learn about yourself in some serious ways.

Yeah, not screwing around people, Apocalypse Zero does everything that you wish or fear anime would do, and in an absolutely no holds barred, self aware manner. The episodes overflow with blood and gore, and almost every villain uses a sexualized body part as a weapon (in this case, double tit bomb is employed by the nurse who just tried to seduce the main character). It is important to clarify, Apocalypse Zero is not an excellent anime. There are a variety of plot holes, a lack of any substantive character development, and several moments of animation error. What is important about this piece, both in terms of it's place in anime and it's watching value, is the way in which it tests the limits of what people can animate and what people will watch. In this way, it is a fun, silly, and entertaining testament to the diversity of the minds of artists and the tastes of the audience. Apocalypse zero is unquestionably not for everyone, probably not even for most people, but if you can sit through it, you will love it.

P.S. no character development/plot discussion, because virtually nothing interesting can be said without giving too much away, unless you want a breakdown of the very basic conflict. Two siblings were trained by their dad to use armor that is blood fed and become badass, one is good and one is evil. They battle, there are sex demons.

Sunday watchlist 3, live free or watch hard

It is Sunday, which means my day of serious devotion to anime, the one true god and all that. For those of you wondering if I actually watch everything on my Sunday watchlist on Sunday...sometimes? I am not actually that deprived of other activity, but do frequently use Sunday to watch as much anime as I can, especially if I do not have to work. Now, on to the anime stuffs.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=15359
World War II style naval battles with ships upgraded via advanced technology and piloted by moe school girls. Even if the visuals I have seen did not look so stunning, the absurdity of the concept would be enough to motivate me to give this a shot.

Magi - the Labyrinth of Magic
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=14395
I can't even explain this one without making 123425124 jokes, so I am going to just give you the ANN description.
"In a fantastic middle-age world where slavery is very common, there are mysterious tall towers named "Dungeon" which mysteriously appeared out of nowhere fourteen years before the story line. Someone who conquers a Dungeon becomes very powerful and wealthy. Our hero Ali Baba is a teenager who works for merchants to support himself. He dreams for conquering a lot of Dungeons and becoming a very rich person. One day, he comes across with a strange young boy named Aladdin who carries a mystical flute with supernatural powers in it. Ali Baba and Aladdin agree to travel their first Dungeon together."
Seriously people...Aladdin has a magical flute Mozart style in a dungeon called dungeon. Yes. 

This Sunday is also home to two rewatches, because they have been on my list of OVA's to rewatch ever since I remembered there names, and I have not seen either in several years. 




Apocalypse zero
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=2
Not going to say too much here because this is the object of a forthcoming review, but this shit is absolutely insane. Giant frog women cops, a man who's penis is a giant weapon, a normal school in the middle of it...weird. Look at the picture people. LOOK AT IT.

Sky Blue
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=2536
With more of the feeling of an opera than a film, this is one of my favorite Korean OVA's and a beautiful meditation on post apocalyptic problems of wealth and environmental decay, which, let's face it, the Korean and Japanese media creators do a much better job of dealing with than Americans.

THIS IS NOT AN ANIME POST

So I have been developing an unhealthy obsession over the past two weeks and, like any responsible blogger, I thus must bring it to all of you other anime nerds, so you can share in my social withdrawal. This obsession is a game called Hearthstone. For those of you who do not know, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a CCG which uses mythos and characters from the World of Warcraft universe as cards in a turn based, life elimination based game reminiscent of Magic the Gathering or Yugioh. I will deal with major differences in a moment, but first, the nature of the beast.

Hearthstone is a turn based card game with scaling increased mana used to play cards from your hand, each with it's own mana cost. creatures can attack one another or the players' life total (starting at 30) with the objective being to reduce the other players life total to 0. One card is drawn at the beginning of each turn, and spells played each turn are only limited by mana. This seems like a lot of information for a few sentences, but the nature of games like Hearthstone is that explanation always over-represents the level of complication. The game is highly intuitive and has a comparatively small number of mechanics compared to magic or yugioh, all of which are straight forward. The reason the explanations seem complex is simply that it takes

a fair number of words to explain things your brain can process automatically with relative ease.

To your right, there is a minion card (minions are the equivalent of monsters, creatures, etc). The mana cost is in the top left, it takes two mana to cost this minion. Each player begins the game at one mana and gains one each turn, capping at ten. The three with a sword through it is the attack power, and the two in a tear drop is the minions health (damage permanently removes health, unlike magic).  In the box below the cards name, there is ability text. Almost all abilities in Hearthstone are triggered abilities, meaning they activate when a particular even occurs. In this case, casting a spell (a non minion, non equipment card) triggers the ability to deal one damage to all minions, yours and your opponents. Spell cards are similar in layout to this one, but have only a mana cost, other values are not present, and an ability. Equipment are the final subset of cards. They are a weapon that can be give directly to your hero and used to attack (thus they have an attack power) but have a liminted nuber of uses, called durability). Now to heroes!

This is a hero, in this case the priest class. Each hero has a subset of cards that can be used in deckbuilding or drafterd in arena mode that are unique to that hero. There is also, of course, a general pool of cards that all heroes can use, but a large portion of the strategy side of Hearthstone is selecting a hero who has the cards and power to make a particular deck type. Hero powers (look below the priest) all cost two mana to use and have different effects on either minions, you, or the enemy hero. In this case, the priest's hero power, lesser heal, heals two points to any minion or player. It is important to note, however, that no minion or player can go above its designated life points without the designation being changed by some other effect, so healing yourself while at thirty life would do nothing.

Deck building. I am not going to go into the strategies of deck building in hearthstone, as this does not need to be a 20 page blog post. Basically, from your pool of hero specific and generic cards, you build a thirty card deck containing no more than two copies of each card, or one if the card is a legend (basically, rare cards you can only have one of in your deck). In arena mode, you build a thirty card deck by drafting one card out of a set of three, thirty times.


Ranked play. it exists. it is fun if you take the game seriously, not at all necessary if you just want to play for fun. This is my ultimate conclusion about Hearthstone; it is a fairly simple game that allows you to take it as seriously as you want to without creating too much of a gap between paying and non paying characters and scales well to your competitive level when matchmaking. As of now, the game is in Beta but I look forward to seeing it develop. Finally, for the record I have yet to spend any money on this game and instead play totally free no money style, but am able to hold my own and have been ranking up over the past two weeks against players who have spent money, so do not feel that you have to spend money to have a good time. As a bonus, I am including my budget and non budget priest deck lists below, enjoy.

Vintage wednesday late because I suck

If any of you remember, I was supposed to have done an Eat Man vs Eat Man 98 review a bit ago. Unfortunately, I contracted the death plague of flu murder and have been out of commission from blogging or working for some time. Thankfully, I am now back and better than...worse things, and my cat is still a bastard, so here is the long awaited by no one review.

Eat Man (non 98 original style) is a delightful blend of the action scifi animes of the 80's and an exceptionally bizarre concept that is as simple and straightforward as it is absolutely absurd. It is important for me to make 2 disclosures at this point. First, I am a huge sucker for 70's-90's sci fi anime. Seriously. It is bad. Secondly, this is not Eat Men the gay porn, so if you are looking for that, wrong blog (I can only assume there is one called Eat Men). The story of Eat Man is, surprising surprise, about a man who eats...metal. Why eat metal, strange Mr. Bolt Crank (yeah, his name is bolt crank, thank you 90's. Also, no relation to LoL)? To make fucking weapons WITH HIS MIND. Anime News Network summarizes, as they are professionals

"Bolt Crank is the World's Greatest Mercenary, and with good reason. He has the ability to eat any object and, when needed, reproduce it from his right hand. Also in the world of Eat-Man is the Alvion, a flying ship that flies even though it is a destroyed wreck. The ship floats in the sky, and is always where Bolt is."
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=143

This seems fairly uninformative, but that is really all that can be said as a summary without giving way too much away. I am not here to summarize though, so let's get to the reviewing. Eat Man has all of the grit you look for in a good 90's action anime. The animation has that wonderful, over saturated look that borders between 2 and 3 D, and the stylized weapon and costume designs give you little doubt as to what time period the anime is from. See manic grin and red eye glasses. Given that this is an action heavy show, the stark muzzle flashes and twists of smoke typical in earlier action anime are also executed with perfection. Unfortunately, another feature of action anime from the past century is also prolific, sexism. Now, sexism in anime is a broad topic with many facets, and I am not going to engage in all of that here. It is important to note, however, that any rights conscious anime viewer will be cringing at the interspersed hyper sexualized female costumes, constant attempts at seduction of the male lead, and lack of self sufficiency or physical ability in almost all of the female characters. This is not a good thing. There, we have acknowledged this, it is an artifact of two decades ago, no excuses, moving on (in a later pose I may substantively deal with the issue). This feature aside, the tone and plot of Eat Man are rather interesting. There is an almost constant sense of foreboding and laziness, a hard duality to pull of well, that reminds me of my first impressions of Cowboy Bebop (do not worry, the shows are not actually comparable so I will not attempt to do so), and yet there are still times for personal moments that give hints that Bolt may actually feel emotion. These moments are quickly destroyed for most of the series. In regards to plot, the epsidoes are very self contained early on, acting more as action vignettes than continuous plot, but move into a more contiguous story later on. The various conflicts are interesting, as strange as the concept itself, while fairly well constructed. There are certainly points when the narrative seems to skip over important details or take too many liberties with plot twists, but overall the series can be followed without any glaring holes ruining the experience. All in all, an excellent piece of action shenanigans. 

TO THE FUTURE

Eat man '98 is a direct continuation of the previous serious, same hero, same job, same ludicrous and awesome ability. Anime News Network says it best 

"The continuing adventures of Bolt Crank, the World's Greatest Mercenary, who has the ability to eat any object, mostly metal and weapons. When the time comes, Bolt can then reproduce those weapons and items in his right hand."
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=144

Wait, that said virtually nothing at all. Well, since my beloved ANN has let us down, time for meandmycat industries here at Shit You Don't Care About to take up the blazing torch of anime reviewing and give you a bit more information.  Stylistically, '98 pulls of the same 90's action feel fairly well, with some obvious graphical updates. There is a fair amount of smoothing the 90's flat color saturation and giving it a bit more depth, but without going so far as to change the visual style entirely. Instead, we are given a more crisp and shadowed version of the same thing. Plot wise, 98 gets a lot more wild, with constant attempts to trick and surprise the watcher, without feeling too manic. At times this definitely gets a bit tiresome, like an M Night Shamalan movie marathon (why would anyone do that), but overall leads to more fun than annoyance. THe other primary update the series receives is stronger female leads, so yay for franchises keeping up with the times in some respects. Though this iteration is usually heralded in reviews as superior to its' predecessor, my nostalgic love for earlier series combined with what I see as a more daring and unapologetic approach in the former leads me to say that, while both series are definitely worth your time, Eat Man will always be a bit closer to my heart. 

As a finally apology for my late sick laziness, look forward to staged battle scene photographs of my Gundam collection getting all space violence and shit.