Rambo: Last Blood

As an unabashed fan of action films, I am well-acquainted with Sylvester Stallone’s iconic Rambo. I saw Rambo III as a child in the theater when I was way too young for it, and have since seen parts 4 and 5 in the theater, as well. Rambo: Last Blood promises to be the final film in the franchise. Of course, Stallone promised that Rocky Balboa was the final Rocky film, yet the character showed up in two more films, so it remains to be seen whether or not there will be a sixth Rambo film. Anyway, how did the latest Rambo outing hold up?

Taking place 10 years after the previous film, Rambo is living on his childhood ranch in Arizona. He has a surrogate family which includes a young girl he raised as if she was his own daughter. Rambo has settled into an idyllic life training horses and digging preposterously labyrinthine underground tunnels. Naturally, Rambo isn’t going to live out the rest of his life in peace and harmony. The girl discovers her biological father is living in Mexico, so she crosses the border to reconnect with him. Her plan back-fires, and she ends up the victim of a sex trafficking ring. Rambo springs into action to get her back.

Conan the Barbarian – Probably the Greatest Movie Ever Made

Conan the Barbarian is probably the greatest movie ever made. I recently rewatched it on Blu-Ray for the 11,000th time. The sheer bliss I experienced while watching all that cinematic sex and carnage led me to realize that this is probably the pinnacle of human creation. No one will ever make a piece of art more endearing, more inspiring than this film. So why is Conan the Barbarian the greatest movie ever made? Let’s take a look at some of the reasons.

1.) Sword Fighting – Whenever you include sword fighting, it ALWAYS improves the quality of your movie. Just try to think of one movie that wasn’t improved by sword fighting. You can’t. It doesn’t exist. A movie with sword fighting is going to be better than one without, every single time. Take a look at this picture from 500 Days of Summer.

JGL and Zooey: an indie match made in heaven.

It looks fine and all, but compare it to this picture from Conan the Barbarian.

Bloody swords improve everything 100 fold

The improvements are obvious. Clearly, the addition of the sword makes Conan the better film.

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…

Reasons Why Elfen Lied Rules

 

This image had to replace the original, more awesome one. It featured a naked chick killing people in fountains of blood. Photobucket removed it because they are pussies.

1. Gratuitous violence – I haven’t seen any other anime, TV show, or movie that has as much violence as Elfen Lied. Seriously, buckets of blood are spraying everywhere. There are tons of decapitations, not to mention the severing of limbs, and the punching of holes through torsos. When the Diclonius get pissed off, you’d better watch out. No one is safe. Everyone is a target. I love that the violence crosses the line. You keep thinking that it will hold back, but it doesn’t. And the best part is that the show doesn’t look back. Every episode has geysers of blood splattering everywhere, and the Diclonius are complete unremorseful about it. Not a lot of characters make it through to the end. In the first episode the show tricks you into thinking this cute, ditzy girl will be a primary character. Nope. She gets killed very quickly, and then Lucy (the main character) uses her corpse as a human shield against a torrent of machine gun bullets. Badass. The fight scenes are all essentially massacres. They aren’t dragged out over multiple episodes like so much shonen garbage. Instead, they are quick, bloody, and brutal.

Amazing Elfen Lied cosplay.

2. Violence against women – The Diclonius are mostly women, and there is a lot of Diclonius vs Diclonius action. This means girls are fighting each other, which is hot in itself. They don’t wrestle naked in a mud pit, but they do get naked quite a bit during their fights. Any time these girls battle, they kick the crap out of one another, and it rules. But the women don’t get all the fun. Even the main guy, Kohta, bitch slaps females when they get hysterical. He hits his cousin, his sister, and anyone else with two X chromosomes who is within slapping range. It’s actually very refreshing, as in most anime all the female characters go into histrionic rants constantly and no one ever shuts them up. But Kohta does. Nobody knows how to shut up a woman faster than Kohta, except for maybe Sean Connery.

Kaboom! Splat!

3. Violence against children – The creators of Elfen Lied were really not fucking around when they decided to make the most hardcore series ever. I can’t think of any story in any medium where children are brutalized so much. They get beaten, molested, sliced in half, and tortured. Kids attack other kids in school. The Diclonius kill kids. Hell, even the adults get in on the kid-crushing action. The villainous Bandoh beats up a poor, defenseless human girl for information. Scientists launch cannon balls at kids, and even the motherfucking police gun down Lucy when she was just a little girl. Awesome.

This is the only picture I could find with the dog in it.

4. Violence against animals – If anything is taboo in storytelling, it’s violence against animals. Fucking PETA have brainwashed society at large. It’s so bad that in any movie or TV show we can have humans destroyed in a blaze of genocide and no one blinks, but god forbid the cute horsey gets hurt! These goddamn hippies even got up in arms when the contestants on the reality TV show Survivor were eating rats for sustenance. What the hell were they supposed to do, starve to death? Jesus. Well, this show told those stinky hippies to go to hell. In a flashback scene we see Lucy’s dog held down and bludgeoned to death, and the perpetrators all thought it was hilarious. They were even saddened when the dog died too soon. Of course, Lucy’s revenge that comes soon after is bloody goodness. Damn, Elfen Lied is so metal.

Pic related. Get it? Related.

5. Incest – The only other good anime series I can think of that showed incest was Shakugan no Shana. The Incest Twins were constantly making out, and I imagine they were fucking behind the scenes as well. Kanon came close by teasing us with the possibility of hot incest. Of course it pussied out, and the asshole protagonist in that series ended up choosing a comatose girl instead of going for some sweet cousin-on-cousin lovin’ (oops, spoilers!). Anyway, Elfen Lied doesn’t hold back. Kohta’s female cousin makes it quite clear that she gets wet for him. She is constantly getting mad any time he so much as looks at another girl. She makes a move and makes out with him, and being the super stud he is, he makes his own move on her later. Although we only saw them kissing, we can all guess what it led to. Kohta also manages to make out with Lucy, who also wants him. While this would seem harem-ish (e.g. Tenchi Muyo, Love Hina) you have to remember that Kohta is actually kissing these girls, so Elfen Lied already rises above those typical harem shows. They probably had a giant orgy at the conclusion of the series.

The costume designer really pulled out all the stops for this show.

6. Nudity – Nudity is always better than no nudity. Here we get tons of nudity. Lucy wanders around naked for half the series. Nana is naked for practically all of her fight scenes. Mariko gets in on it, too. Honestly, I’m surprised that more of the female characters didn’t get naked. Nudity rules, and so does Elfen Lied. If you didn’t like this series, then you just weren’t manly enough to handle it.

Verdict: Good

20 Shittiest Anime of the Decade (2000-2009)

I’ve seen me lots of animu in the last decade. I started watching this stuff in late 2001, and it’s ruined my life ever since. That being said, I felt it was my obligation to impart upon you the fact that there are terrible anime out there. Sometimes it seems like it’s all moeblobs and slice of life bullshit. I’m not sure if anyone else has done this yet, so I’m giving you my list of the 20 Most Shittiest Anime of 2000’s. Keep in mind that even though I have ranked these, they are all equally shitty. My list probably won’t sit well with the slice of life fans or the moe-loving fapboys, but rest assured these anime all need to be sent directly to hell.

Dishonorable Mention) Most Pointless Award – Rebuild of Evangelion – Why Hideaki Anno, why? You impressed us with Gunbuster, you further solidified your directing talent with Nadia, and you amazed us with your opus Evangelion. After that you did… well, not really anything. You went on to make a bunch of really shitty live action movies. You failed and failed and failed. You weren’t able to succeed in the mainstream, and that’s OK. But when you returned to the world of anime, what did you do? You decided to make A MOTHERFUCKING REMAKE of your biggest cash cow. Hmmm. Out of ideas already? Apparently so. Either that, or you wasted all of your money on full body Asuka pillows and mosaic screened Japanese porn. Now, I will agree that Rebuild of Evangelion was extremely well made, but it was also extremely pointless. Evangelion was by far one of the most incredible anime of all time. And remaking it is retarded at best.

Dishonorable Mention) Worst Director Award – Mamoru Oshii – To all the fans of Oshii… fuck you. This guy is terrible. He’s a horrible director. He has no concept of pacing or intriguing storytelling. There is an old writer’s guideline that says, “Show, don’t tell.” Basically, it means you should describe what’s going on, and not just say that it happened. It provides for a much richer experience for the reader. Oshii’s work is all flawed by the same problem. He “tells” and doesn’t “show.” He wants to bring up philosophical ideas, and his method of doing that is by having two talking heads spout off paragraphs of dialogue at each other for huge chunks of time. This could potentially work in a book format, but in film, which is a visual medium, it fails miserably. Immediately, this becomes boring to all but the most insane Oshii-loving otaku. I swear to god, Oshii fans are practically a cult. To them, Oshii is like Jesus and he can do no wrong. He could film himself taking a shit, and his fans would call it the greatest piece of cinema to ever grace the earth. The truth is, 99% of everything he has put to the screen is garbage. Oh, and Oshii, nobody gives a fuck about Basset Hounds, so stop putting them in all your goddamn movies.

Baccano, Shana, and Afro Samurai

I have three quick reviews for you. Why? Because I’m too lazy to write a single in-depth review of any of these titles. Really, it all stems from my inability to— ah, fuck it, let’s just get on with it.

Baccano

Boring Baccano's boring cast of boring assholes.

ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz

Huh? Wha? Why’d you wake me? What’s going on? Oh that’s right, I was watching Baccano. Something about too many characters, and nothing really happens. Any time you have a story (movie, book, tv series, whatever) about the multiple perspectives of one event (e.g. Rashomon), it inevitably sucks. Yeah that’s right, Kurosawa fanboys, suck it. Now, let me get back to sleep. Oh, and also: Jacuzzi Splot is a fantastic (read: retarded) name.

Verdict: Shitty

Shakugan no Shana

I'm eagerly awaiting the Shana hentai.

Taking one look at the character designs for this show, I figured I would hate it. And yeah, it did start out a little weak. It was basically a combination/rip-off of Full Metal Panic and X. However, there was something about it that seemed kind of cool. There was this dark side to it that was rather unexpected. Basically, the main character, Yuji, (and many others) are just the ghosts of people who have already died. Shana gets pissed off, and unleashes some serious shit on various bad guys. The moment that really did it for me, though, was the multi-episode arc featuring the Incest Twins. A villainous brother and sister that make out constantly, and kill innocent people. Awesome! I wish more anime had the balls to show hot, sweet incest. Overall, this show had a lot more personality than I originally anticipated, and it is worth checking out.

Verdict: Good

Afro Samurai

Afro's fro could be a little bigger, don't you think?

With Samuel L. Jackson providing the voice of not one, but two characters, I thought, “This is sure to be terrible.” And the first episode was. It was this bizarre mix of pseudo-historical Japan, the American old west, 20th century weapons, robots, cell phones, and hip hop. The animation was pretty good, and it was ultra violent, with buckets of blood spraying in every direction. Still, it seemed lackluster. But then, in the second episode, BAM!, we got full frontal tits. Sex scenes are obviously great, and this one suddenly made Afro Samurai a hell of a lot cooler. After that, it was non-stop badassness. Once I forgot that it didn’t take place in any reality that made sense, I started to like it a lot more. Overall, I was really pleased. The film that followed the five-episode OVA was more of the same, although it had a tendency to drag in a couple of places. Still, if you want a solid action show, you can’t go wrong here. Just check your brain at the door.

Verdict: Good