Dr. Nick wrote:Sengoku Collection:... A lot of people probably dropped this back in the day because it's frontloaded with some of the weakest episodes, but overall, it's a gleeful exercise in IP disrespect, and one of the very few fun things to come out of modern cancerous Konami.

The only contemporary mention of it was from symbv, who dropped it at about episode 3 or 4. I only watched it some years later on the strength some /a/non, recommending a few specific episodes around the 20 mark, and, looking for things to do with my time in retirement, was very pleasantly surprised. It is definitely a series that has no right to be as good as it is. The 2001 episode was one of my favourites.

Metallic Rouge ep 2

Red Faction: Guerrilla


Huh... and they both take place on Mars...


The concept of Rouge seems lifted from the 90's. Cute girls with guns, one is the (metallic) brawn, the other the brains.
Out to kill a numerated list of big metallic baddies. It's fun, if light on plot.

With my night light on, could of sworn Rouge herself in robot form looked like EVA-01. But alas, she's crimson, not purple.

The Killer of Heroes wrote:I caught "The Boy and the Heron" in IMAX and quite liked it. Felt very immersive and honestly as more people watch this I'll be curious to see what people make of this thematically.

To me is seemed like this movie had a lot of weird sexual subtext. Like I had been jokingly calling this movie "Boy x Heron" for weeks now but I did not expect a scene where the Heron actually asks the Boy to fill his "hole" lmao. There does seem to be some kind of Oedipal thing going on between with the boy and his fascination with the stepmom, the real mom being revealed at the end etc. too. Even the uh, time travel (I think?) arguably is similar to prophecy stuff in Oedipus myth in thematic way. Still gotta process this though.

EDIT: In a more general note my other big takeaway is that its hard to not view the wizard guy as a stand-in for Miyazaki himself, as both are guys who "create worlds". If Wind Rises is allegorically using the story of Jiro to talk about an artist being so dedicated to mastery of his craft that he can't even seen what's right in front of him, perhaps this film is about the same kind of genius completely failing to find a successor as a result.

I don't how far you can take this new movie's MC as being a stand-in for like, Goro probably, but I think that's the kind of thing on Hayao's mind here.

Yeah, I enjoy your interpretation of the movie. I watched this quite recently after it won the oscar for best animated feature, which felt like it came full circle to when spirited away won the oscar previously, since they felt quite similar. To me, the film was just the male-version of Spirited away but with Haku as the main character rather than Chihiro, as he represents the strongheaded man entering adulthood and trying to cope with emotions through anger and stoicism. The film also deals with a sense of finality as Hayao takes a look through all aspects of his work and potentially links them with his childhood and how they influenced him, which is why this film evokes so much nostalgia for me. But what is probably most significant for me is the ending involving the boy meeting the wizard for the final time (like old Miyazaki talking to his younger self). It makes it poignant how the wizard accepts how the world he created and spent his life on is actually just finite and will probably live on as the boy creates his world in his reality. The movie is also made beautiful by the amazing score by Joe Hisaishi, I have listened to the three versions of "Ask me why" so many times now.

The idea of the boy and the wizard BOTH being Hayao standins for different parts of his life is really interesting one I haven't considered before. Gonna have to ponder that.

Hisashi score was really good too yeah, and as far as Oscars go its insane it wasn't nominated over like Dial of Destiny and such (Which is movie I like overall, John Williams etc., but this was clearly better).
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On another note I saw a little movie called The End of Evangelion in theaters today. Highly recommended for those that haven't seen it before.

Pompo the Cinephile:

You wouldn't guess this from the marketing, but this film is not primarily about the love of cinema or the movie-making process in general. It's a film about film editing, and everything else is just scaffolding supporting that core. I think it's helpful to know this in advance because the other parts can be uneven, like the frictionless foreign location shooting, or the wrangling for extra funding part, which is just complete fantasy slop. This extra funding is needed for reshoots, the conclusion of which is an excellent punchline during the editing of the final cut. And yes, this being anime, the editing sequence in Gene's mind palace is basically him unleashing his Bankai and going after the strips of film with a giant golden splicer blade.

Pompo herself isn't even the main character; she's the sensei character who first notices the whizz kid Gene's innate talent. She seems like a Golan/Globus composite of sorts, in that she's into cinema as a whole, dabbling in Oscar bait, but her heart's in genre & exploitation fare, and she definitely could carry a movie-making movie of her own.


Arcadia of My Youth:

It's a boomer manime classic for a reason, but on my first watch-through the thought that stuck with me was that Emeraldas seems like a cooler space pirate than Harlock. And it's not because this is Harlock's origin story and he's in beginner mode - rather, Emeraldas is a self-made privateer, whereas Harlock is a military man who gets handed a new ship and pirate cosplay gear because he's bound to a legacy of a fated friendship. But that's manime romanticism for you. It’s a feature, not a bug.

The most controversial part is, of course, Phantom Junior, Captain Harlock's distant ancestor from the days of WW2, from whose friendship with Tochiro the whole chain of fate starts. And certainly, whatever individualistic ideals he may have, they certainly don't extend beyond his immediate Monkeysphere. I get that he's an ethnic German and thus it makes sense for him to grudgingly fight for the Nazis, and he has his weird trad rationalization for it, but still, he stands in stark contrast to his space pirate descendant who has a famously low tolerance to societal rots like authoritarianism and cattle mentality. But it's not like Phantom Senior is some sort of paragon either, as from the little we see of him, he's basically just an adrenaline junkie. He challenges the Stanley Witch in search of personal thrills (don't try to tell me he's doing any worthwhile exploring there), whereas Captain Harlock faces the Witch's space equivalent while fighting a resistance war for Earth's liberation. Kind of a big difference. But it makes heroic sense that it's this modern, virtuous, suffering but uncompromising Harlock who finally gets to deservedly reap the benefits of his family's fate.

In text Harlock is fighting for "Earth's" liberation but subtext seems to me like he's trying to liberate Japan from AmeriKKKan occupation.

I haven't seen Arcadia of My Youth in years at this point and didn't like the movie much, so maybe I'm really overstating things but between that and the Nazi thing it just seemed like WWII apologia to me.

It's my understanding that there's an ambient vibe of "Do we get to win this time?" fantasy all throughout the two big boomer space franchises of Yamato and Harlock. It's just a thing that is because their creators were from a generation personally affected by the war, and it can get stale if you watch multiple seasons of this stuff in a row. In comparison, Yamato III, as flawed as the show is, appealed to me because it at least tried to graduate from the usual underdog story and instead take a stab at the then-current cold war politics. I'm no Leijiverse expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if Arcadia is the Harlock entry where this subtext is at its strongest.

Dr. Nick wrote:It's my understanding that there's an ambient vibe of "Do we get to win this time?" fantasy all throughout the two big boomer space franchises of Yamato and Harlock. It's just a thing that is because their creators were from a generation personally affected by the war, and it can get stale if you watch multiple seasons of this stuff in a row. In comparison, Yamato III, as flawed as the show is, appealed to me because it at least tried to graduate from the usual underdog story and instead take a stab at the then-current cold war politics. I'm no Leijiverse expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if Arcadia is the Harlock entry where this subtext is at its strongest.

Idk because the other Harlock thing I saw was Endless Orbit SSX which just felt more like a general space adventure than something as political as Arcadia of My Youth, but that's the extent of my Harlock experience. It might be more prominent in other shows/movies.

I have seen Yamato 2199 though (As well as that movie that's basically just The Exterminating Angel but on an alien planet) and as much I really loved it a lot, it did have some of that same subtext too even if its not nearly as pronounced as Arcadia's. I think I remember people saying it was toned down a bit from the original 1975 show though, which I have not yet seen myself.

Currently getting into Bullbuster. It's been a very long time since I found a mecha anime that really sucked me in with a unique concept, but this one did. What makes Bullbuster work is that, tone-wise, it's the complete opposite of most other mecha series I've watched. The main characters aren't an elite military unit or a top-secret government agency, they're a pest control company-- it's just that the "pests" they've been hired to get rid of are giant monsters that have overrun an island. The whole thing is basically a workplace sitcom that happens to involve giant robots.