December 30, 2006

The Closest-to-Hentai-but-Isn't Show I've Ever Seen!

Kintaro Oe. Age 25. Tokyo University Dropout. However, he independently withdrew from law school because he had mastered the entire curriculum.

Since then, he has been changing jobs numerous times, learning about life. Riding his favorite bike, Crescent Moon, he keeps on moving.

And perhaps someday, he may save the anime industry...

...oh, no. I mean, 'even the world.'
--from the ending of Ep 6

Gentle Readers, I bring you the ecchi-est show I've ever seen...
'...and his sidekick, SilverLad!'  *note: not really.

It's hardly a stretch to say that the plot of GoldenBoy is well-used. Young man hits the road, meets people, learns things, and then moves on, leaving those he's interacted with changed for the better.

The hook in this case is that Kintaro Oe, our hero, only seems to end up interacting with smoulderingly hot women. We'll get to them in a moment... first, lets meet Kintaro:
The many faces of Oe.

As you can see, the animators weren't afraid to go all over the map when drawing our lad. The upper-left pic, of Kintaro on Crescent Moon, is the usual way he's presented, but the others are not uncommon (save the lower-left, which only is seen in Ep 6... thankfully). As they say, 'SD happens.'

Kintaro is a genius, and I'm not just saying that for his choices in co-stars. The GoldenBoy really IS a 'golden boy.' For example, in Ep 1, he learns how to program computers... using only a "keyboard" that he scribbled on a sheet of paper. Ep 3, he winds up working in a family-owned noodle shop... where he quickly catches onto the art of noodle-making (which is an art... one that's a cast-iron b*tch to get right). Ep 4, he goes from not being able to swim... to being able to keep pace (barely) with an Olympic champion. And Ep 6, he (almost) single-handedly saves an animation company from certain doom. In every case, he's doing things he had NEVER done before... always with a smile, and always with his mantra "study, study, study, study, study...." He's also VERY humble, and most of the people he works with don't realize how brilliant he is until he's gone.

The humor is mostly of the 'cable network' type, blue instead of raunchy, and in a few cases, completely over-the-top (Kintaro has a thing for toilets, for example). There's a lot of humor, but it depends on the viewer if it works for them. In my case, most of it worked pretty well.

I picked up the Essential Anime version of GoldenBoy back when MediaPlay went under (for $9.99! Woo!), and truly didn't expect much more than eye-candy. Instead, I got an engaging story and an interesting character. The first five episodes are all stand-alone, and could be watched in any order without losing anything in the process.

Ep 6, however, ties them all together by bringing all of the people Kintaro helped in one place to help HIM. It doesn't hurt that they all have a soft spot for him... and in a couple of cases, a serious case of the yeehaws for him, too.

Now, lets move onto the fun stuff... need I say that everything from now on is decidedly NSFW? Click below! more...

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December 29, 2006

...working on it...

The "Just This Side of Hentai" anime post is coming... as soon as I can figure out where Chiyo-chan's DVD player is hiding the screenshot folder.

*grumble grumble grumble*

Update 1226am: Saturday, I swear.

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December 17, 2006

Elfen Lied

Over at Chizumatic, there's this:
Elfen Lied begins with a bang, all right. Only difference is that the "bang" leaves behind lots of guts, blood, and gore. Elfen Lied is almost a slasher feature, given how much violence there is and how explicitly the violence is presented, or so I've been told. It's a good thing they created it digitally, because the bill for red paint would have bankrupted them.

The "bang" it begins with is Lucy's escape from the laboratory where she and the other diclonius's (read "demons") were being studied. To escape, she killed all the guards, by cutting them into pieces. Ick... (I've seen screen caps, and you don't want to.)

Elfen Lied is a mixed bag. It is, as Steven says, extremely violent and very graphic in that violence. It makes Hellsing (either version) look like Azumanga Daioh, actually.

But, for all that, I found it to be incredibly absorbing, and I don't usually groove on shows of that style. What ultimately makes it work is the dichotomy of the Lucy/Nyu character... one side is an awesomely powerful creature that thinks nothing of, say, tearing the head off an innocent secretary then using her pens as head-shotting missiles, using her 'arms'. The other side of her is a sweet, caring, brain-addled cutie who can only say 'nyu.' Yes, I know, it sounds awful, but it hooked me.

Look, there's no easier way for me to describe the show's violence level than to tell a story from the Duck U. Anime Club. The Club receives monthly screener DVDs from ADVocates, the ADV club group, and one month had the first episode of EL on it. Nobody having heard of the show, we sat down to run it.

ADV throws up a black screen over nudity and extreme violence on their screener DVDs, and the FIRST EIGHT MINUTES were nothing more than black screen and subtitles (except for brief flashes of non-graphic animation).

An example (note: not really).

Best darn OP ever, though. Bar none. EVER.

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December 13, 2006

Hallowed Be Thy Name...

...kawaii be done...

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December 11, 2006

Anime Day

SDB: "If Ron Karenga can do it, so can I. The newly-formed Otaku religion celebrates Anime Day on December 25. It's a jenn-you-wine traditional Japanese holiday (that I just made up) which otaku celebrate by putting up life-sized cardboard cutouts of Sailor Moon. We demand that Usagi be placed next to Rabbi Bogomilsky's menorah, and if they won't do that then we'll sue."

Let's think about this. Pikachu, Sakura and Chiyo-chan would be in attendance as prophets, kawaii be their names. Various mecha would have to serve as angels, and the Space Battleship Yamato playing the role of the Ark.

Communion would be given in the form of Pocky and caffinated drinks.

I think Steven's onto something here!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 06:13 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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December 06, 2006

Open Letter to a Troll

Recently, The Pond got it's first visit from an anime-hating troll. While I generally prefer to starve trolls to death and then jump up and down on their corpses, since this is MY VERY OWN first troll, I wanted to say a few words.

Dear Troll...
Thank you for the comment you left during your recent visit to The Pond. While it was poorly written and hard to understand, it certainly showed that you are either a terribly prejudiced, perhaps racist, person, or maybe just a profoundly ignorant one, with a taste for censorship to boot.
While I have only a handful of regular readers, and losing any reader is something small bloggers hate, I'd prefer it if you never bring yourself to my Pond ever again. In conclusion:
THAT for your 'bubby', Troll...

Have a swell day,
-Wonderduck

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December 03, 2006

Yamato Rising

SDB muses:

Tomorrow UPS will deliver my latest DVD order, and I'll get to watch yet another incarnation of Yamato in anime. It will, at least, be a bit more realistic. Or maybe not. They're not going to lift it into space, but a 13 year old girl is going to single-handedly lift it from the depths and move it back to a Japanese port.

Now I'm curious: when the girl/god in question raises the Yamato, will it be in one piece, or will it be in historically accurate shape (i.e., in two chunks, with the main turrets out of their barbettes)?

Considering that it's a god doing the raising, she can probably repair the damage while she's at it. Maybe a new coat of paint. Buff out the dings...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 06:07 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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