Tag Archives: Anime

You Should Be Watching

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This was originally published

Visions

Star Wars is a cultural phenomenon. It has become part of the culture of media. The first film hit screens more than forty years ago. Lately the franchise has come under new ownership. These new owners have pushed forward with many, many new works in the universe of Star Wars. There’s a lot out there, even for fans. I have considered myself a fan for a very long time. I was exactly the right age when the first movie hit theaters. I scrambled to get action figures and play sets as a kid and spent seemingly endless hours pushing my imagination out to all the various places in the Star Wars universe. The movies are deeply entrenched in my personal nostalgia along with all the entwined media. I can effectively say that I’ve ‘always’ been a fan.

I’m also a fan that just doesn’t want or need to devour the seemingly unending supply of hot off the presses Star Wars stuff. Maybe I’ve outgrown certain aspects of the story telling. Maybe the abundance of available material has taken the shine off the whole thing. I could just be tired of seeing the same old thing. This ennui is at the very root of this recommendation.

Star Wars, only done as anime. Imagine taking a team of amazing story tellers and artists from an anime studio and saying, “Go – play in our universe. Make something great”. That is precisely what they’ve done. Now streaming on Disney+ (because I think they own everything?) Star Wars Visions gives us seven all original stories in the same galaxy, using the same background and the same legendary ‘Force’. The stories vary in style, but never lack in beauty. The art is amazing. The stories are fresh. The look of it all is straight up anime. They’re short, so you can sneak them in between other things, or you can easily binge them. I would suggest one at a time, to give each the attention it should have. I think this may even be a way to draw new fans in; fans that might not have given a tired old franchise a chance otherwise. You should be watching Visions.

Check out the trailer:

Ghost?

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Ghost of a story?

Shell of an anime?

Looks a lot like Laura Croft to me…

Normally I’d write up a media post about “what to watch” for the fanzine, but I really don’t know if I can recommend watching Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045.

I am not an anime purist. I suspect most anime lovers would suggest that I’m barely a fan. Yes, I’ve been hanging around the fringes for a very long time (yes, I still call it Starblazers, thank you) but I’m not super invested. When GITS popped up on Netflix I didn’t rush to it. I was interested enough to start, and finish the series so far.

IF you’d like a review filled with fans and spoilers – head over to Gizmodo and check them out.

I’ll stay away from the spoilers (I think). I’m not sure if Patrick Huge is a spoiler or not… but it was a ridiculous character name in this show. I find little things like that distracting.

Anyway, the story itself is set in the future of the GITS characters, beyond a lot of the other material I’m familiar with. It presents some very interesting world building. There’s a lot of room for action and the creators do not shy away from that. There’s a lot of clunky action.

Why clunky? Because this is all done as 3D render, not traditional anime style. It’s downright distracting and tough to watch. It’s twitchy and looks cheap. I know it can’t be cheap, but I’ve been spoiled. IF you haven’t seen the animation from the Netflix series Love Death + Robots you should definitely go watch that. That stuff is amazing work. This variation of GITS was a struggle.

So, getting past the animation style itself – the story could have continued with the starting point, but then it felt like it changed half way through the episodes. We switched focus from this giant, world building economy based story to this other post human thing and it’s just messy. I’ll probably take a look at the next season to see if they tie all this stuff together, but I’m not in a rush.

IF you’re desperate for some new GITS then you can give these a look, otherwise I’d wait and see what so called season 2 will be… and hopefully we’ll avoid naked back flipping things…