Gatchaman Crowds is Horrible

If only the series was as cool as this artwork.

“Gatcha, Gatcha-Gatcha, Gatcha,” sang main character Hajime.

“Strangle, Strangle-Strangle, Strangle,” sang BrikHaus as he strangled the life out of Hajime.

Seriously, Hajime is one of the most annoying anime characters in recent memory. She is a super-positive, Mary-Sue type who has earned the dual ire and love of anime fans who have watched this series. She is one of those characters who shouts all their lines, says incredible positive things all the time, and is unrealistically naieve. It’s impossible to think that anyone could be as dense as her in real life. So, when this is a show’s main character, things aren’t off to a great start.

Things don’t get much better with the rest of the characters. Three characters shout/scream all of their lines. Two characters are incredibly pseudo-gay, they are insulting stereotypes. Of course, there is the token quiet/shy loli character. None of the characters have any depth at all. They are all completely one-note. They have virtually no backstories, no personalities, and nothing to make them interesting at all.

Fate/Stay Night

Fate/Stay Night’s cast of clowns.

Fate/Stay Night is an anime series based on a erotic porn video game, so you know it’s going to be high quality. It features the exploits of a blockhead named Shirou who gets caught up in a war for the Holy Grail. He has a really great super power in that he can “fortify” the durability of any inanimate object (like a school desk lol). He also has the amazing ability to act like a complete dumbass in almost any situation.

The story here revolves around the “Fifth Holy Grail War.” These wars take place every 10 years. So, if these wars are every ten years, and this is the fifth one, then they only started 50 years ago. But the Holy Grail was created approximately 2000 years ago. So what about the prior 1950 years? I guess nobody gave a shit about the Holy Grail then. And why is it that the Holy Grail only shows up in Japan? Was Jesus Japanese? Do the Japanese think Jesus was Japanese? It doesn’t make any sense. They might as well have had the series take place on the Moon.

Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo

Prepare to see this image reused... a lot.

Whenever I think of Studio Gonzo, positive reviews do not come to mind. They have an amazing ability to take great source material, animate it, and, without fail, fuck it up. For example, Hellsing and Chrono Crusade were great series ruined by horrible endings. Of course, Gonzo also creates terrible series that are unsalvageable messes from episode one, like Gantz or Strike Witches. Once in a while they create unintentional comedy gold like they did with Speed Grapher. The lesson from all this is that Studio Gonzo is trash. They have terrible writers, shoddy animation, and use extremely outdated CGI. To date, the only Gonzo series that could even remotely be considered good are Last Exile and Welcome to the NHK. Then I watched Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is a sprawling, epic adventure, a tale of heartbreak and revenge. It is a novel so intricate it requires multiple readings to appreciate it to its fullest. It stars one of literature’s most complex and intriguing (anti) heroes, Edmond Dantes. I’ve read the book and seen a number of Hollywood adaptations. To me, it is one of the greatest stories ever told. And since Gonzo is known for making non-sensical shit, I figured there was no chance in hell this would be any good.

The Help, Alias Season 1, Blassreiter

The Help

Talkin' 'bout eatin' shit pie.

Mrs. Brik and I went to the second-run theater to check this out. We almost always go to the second-run theater because it’s cheap. Since most movies are toxic chunks of shit, it’s more palatable to spend $6 on tickets instead of $18. The Help was surprisingly great. It was funny, dramatic, topical, and inspiring in all the right places. It seemed to tell a deeply personal story in what came from a fictional novel. This is a rare example of a movie done right. It doesn’t have a lot of cliche lines, bullshit transformations by evil characters, and they don’t solve racism by the end of the movie. It was simply a different lens through which to view 1960s-era Southern U.S. racism. It didn’t pander and it didn’t dumb itself down. Both of which were very refreshing.

Verdict: Awesome

Alias Season 1

Alias season 1 cast

I’ve already watched Alias once from start to finish. In my boredom from the fact that there is hardly anything good on TV, I decided to crack open my dusty old Alias DVDs and watch the show again. My first thought was that it would be horrible, and my memory of it being good would be tainted by nostalgia. However, as I watched it, I was pleasantly surprised. The main character can be a hot-headed, emotionally-driven, knee-jerk-reactionary bitch. The action sequences can be cheesy, and the special effects weak as hell. However, the story is cool. The other characters are mostly fun. The Rambaldi stuff appeals to the conspiracy-theory fan in me. The writing remained as strong as I had remembered. Apparently, a lot of the writing/producing team went on to work on Fringe, which is definitely a good thing. Overall, each episode was a worthwhile distraction for 45 minutes. 

Verdict: Good

Blassreiter

Grrrrr serious business.

Yet another horrible shit-turd from anime studio Gonzo. What a huge piece of shit this turned out to be. Speed Grapher was terrible, too, but at least it was over-the-top crazy fun. Blassreiter, however, was like Gantz or Blue Gender in that it is just shitty and has no redeeming qualities. The show takes itself deathly seriously, but then it has ridiculous things happen. For example, in the first episode a guy sees a telephone morph into his ex-lover’s face. I literally laughed out loud when that happened. It uses horribly obvious CGI: humans, monsters, vehicles, mecha, everything is CGI. The storyline is ludicrous. The characters die and give inane soliloquies just before they kick the bucket. It tries to be adult, but turns out like a 13 year old boy’s idea of cool.

Verdict: Shitty

Speed Grapher Doesn’t Have Speed or Graphing

The series’ animation doesn’t look nearly this good.

Speed Grapher, the 2005 anime series from Studio Gonzo, features neither speed nor graphing. The reason for the title remains a complete mystery. I suppose it should be chalked up to LOL ANIME and the medium’s penchant for giving things ridiculous names (e.g. Marmalade Boy, Cream Lemon, Tantei Opera Milky Holmes — it also seems they like to give their titles food-centric names as well). This series is an incomprehensible mish-mash of genres and themes, of half-baked ideas, and with, at best, half-assed execution. It has all the trappings of a terrible B-movie. Typically, when an anime or movie has crappy animation, crappy acting, crappy storyline, and crappy directing, it will get a score of Shitty. However, there is the rare occasion when all the elements come together to create something so terrible that it rises above its crappiness to become awesome. That is precisely what Speed Grapher does. It’s a perfect, shining example of a B-anime that’s so bad it’s good.

The premise of the series is that there is a virus that infects certain people, and when it becomes activated (activation involves getting kissed by a prepubescent loli — it’s Japan, remember) the virus allows a person’s deepest desire to come to fruition. Of course, everyone’s desire is to become a super-powered killing machine, but hey, if a virus gave me those kind of powers, I’d want to get infected, too. Our first taste of a desire come to life (referred to as Euphoria), is a photographer who can blow up anything he takes a picture of. If I was a photographer, I would want to blow up everything I took a picture of, too. In fact, as a blogger, I’d want every post I write to explode. But I digress…