What’s on your wish-list?

by dm00

With the licensing of Xam’d and (previously) Toradora, I thought my wished-for list of anime licenses was growing pretty short.

Then I sat down to enumerate it, and I realized my list still had a ways to go (in no particular order):

• Summer Wars
• Mind Game
• Tatami Galaxy
• Kaiba
• Kemonozume
• Princess Arete
• Starship girl Yamamoto Yohko (TV)
• ef: a tale of me*o*ies
• Bakemonogatari
• Katanagatari
• Angel’s Egg
• Time of Eve (movie)
• Welcome to the Space Show
• Dennou Coil
• Gakuen Utopia Manabi straight
• Futakoi alternative
• Kara no Kyoukai
• Moyashimon
• Yokohama kaidashi kikou (manga too, please — or, I’d be happy with just the manga, actually)
• Durarara
• Minky Momo: the Bridge of Dreams
• Minky Momo: tabidachi no eki
• The rest of Yawara!

(Some of these I’ve gone so far as to get (used, primarily) on R2 DVD, and may do more as years of not-being-licensed go by.)

Also, I’ve heard good things about My Mai Miracle, but I haven’t seen it. I’d spring for inexpensive releases of Shangri-la and Angel Beats, too.

This list would keep me ecstatic for a while, certainly.

What’s on your wish-list?

Shangri-la 8: Rube Goldberg, not MacGuyver

by dm00

 

All the pieces are there, assembled by thumbs.

 

Update, one week later: This post starts out negative, as that was my first reaction to the episode.  Then as I thought about it more and more (as I wrote this post) I began to appreciate how the episode had been put together.  The end result was a complete reversal in my feelings, such that I think this episode is actually quite good.

I’ve tried to believe.  There’s been a lot that’s quite good about this overly-maligned series.  But really, this episode was almost bad enough to be worthy of the disappointing Allison and Lillia.

You can see that they’re trying.  The climax wasn’t a deus ex machina — we see all the bits of the machina being assembled, Macgyver-like, from things that have been introduced earlier in the series or in this episode, and it’s easy to see that something is going on.  There’s pleasure to be gained from seeing how all the clues we see will be put together.

Unfortunately, some of it requires prison-guards with an almost Imperial-Storm-Trooper-like inattention to detail, plus there’s a small coordination problem that is glossed over: how does solitarily-confined Kuniko communicate the plan she’d hatched, during her three-days of punishment, to her co-conspirators?

Shangri-la 6: datakake shoujo

by dm00

The sky above Kuwait was the color of television tuned to a dead channel

Hanners is in despair while PSGels likes what’s happening.

I like it, too, less for the interpersonal drama and more for the political tangle, with Japan a wholly-owned subsidiary of Atlas Corporation, and Ishida Finance nibbling at the edges, different factions at work within Atlas itself, and Metal Age (or at least Nagiko) pulling at the knotted strands of the Atlas Corporation, too.

I can sympathize with Hanners’ complaints — there are a lot of strands running through this show; but, like PSGels, I’m happy with how they’re braiding them together. I am growing increasingly interested in the novels that this series adapts — I can imagine quite a few favorite books that might look this chaotic (but promising) at this point in an anime adaptation, so I’m willing to be patient.

Graphite to Newcastle — Shangri-la 4

by dm00

Kuniko (from the Shangri-la novel) disapproves of fanboy-science

Someday, someone will make science fiction in which economics is the science.  I don’t think this is that day.

Shangri-la: not the Green Robin Hoods you think

by dm00

Image from http://forums.megatokyo.com/index.php?showtopic=1733198&view=findpost&p=4890805

TJ writes in defense of Shangri-la (pay close attention, especially, to Trapmind’s comments on reading Science Fiction).

Ani-nouto replies, but seems to think the show’s environmental and political message is trite and straightforward, and seems to shrug the series off as a result.

I think the politics has the potential of being one of the best parts of the series, and currently poses one of its more interesting puzzles.

The show may turn your expectations on their head.