Still ongoing, still finding new films to view
Although I’m as much a piracy advocate as Gol D. Roger, it’s not like the legacy services don’t occasionally give us something worth viewing. The way I got into watching movies primarily on YouTube (before looking elsewhere if what I wanted wasn’t available) began with that time I started to binge all the Terminator movies in rapid succession, next to a viewing of Saving Private Ryan.
One in a million
There have been numerous non-Japanese animations that have aped the art-style and, at times, tropes of the medium over the years. Sometimes a single episode is dedicated to taking the piss outta anime, other times it’s the framework of the entire show. You can pick some of your favorites, and while some of mine come from French-produced animations that Nicktoons Network was able to air in the US, one particular show jumped on the same bandwagon and in a more crude manner than its contemporaries in Europe. Enter Kappa Mikey:
A pair of anime darlings in this day and age
It isn’t everyday that new anime debut and take the world by storm… or maybe it is since the audience is starved for a brand new bevy of releases to christen the Big Three of Anime. The western anime fans are still in search of those that can lay Bleach, One Piece, and Naruto to rest and as far as contenders go, the early 2020s have so far seen two of them go back and forth in popularity: Jujutsu Kaisen and Solo Leveling.
JK debuted in 2018 as a serialized manga running for 30 volumes until 2024 and SL started sometime in 2016 and bounced between publishers online as a Korean webcomic until it got a physical release the same week as JK for 14 volumes of its own, releasing its final chapter in 2021. I admit that I was late to the party, coming on for both JK and SL only this year, and I’ve made better progress in the former than the latter, though still stuck on the first season. Not to mention how inconsistent I am with my viewing, so the remainder of this double bill will default to Wikipedia. Starting with the first:
The Life and Times of a Busty Office Lady
After over 150+ chapters of this manga, and years of fanart, I’ve come to the conclusion that its existence was used as an excuse for artists try and draw its title character in various outfits and hairstyles. Except by “artists,” I mean “creator” Yanbaru, though countless other artists have aped his art style in order to draw Takizawa-san.
Artist: AfterProject
Read More »Same continent, Different History
Full disclosure, the first topic lined up was meant to be about the Senran Kagura series, but I haven’t been playing it as much as of late. Work-related stuff among other things took my time, and for the style of gameplay, I’ve seen better. At least it has an anime adaptation. Next to that, was about a series that was subject to limited release outside of Japan — Idolmaster, only I’ve mentioned it before and without access to the whole of the franchise, I’m not able to review it in the manner I’d like. Typically, I start at the beginning, but the circumstances that created this series in particular are only available in Japanese arcades with the Xbox 360 port dying with the console, making the first installment in this franchise semi-lost media. So instead, we’re sticking with Nihon and talking about their movies.
As far as old movies go, whatever I could get my hands on I’d always given it a watch. In community college, I watched 1932’s Scarface and 1933’s King Kong. I managed to find the 1982 film The Wall based on the Pink Floyd album of the same name. I recommend all three by the way. And all of these plus similar films have been my go to for years, from my piracy era to my movie theater era. I’ve heard from the Extra History channel on YouTube in their series on Japanese Militarism that when it comes to studying societal changes in the Axis Countries during WWII, Germany and Italy get over-studied while Japan frustratingly has been under-studied or brushed aside, presumably because they don’t have an equivalent to Hitler and Mussolini, or rather no civilian equivalent with the Japanese military dragging the society down into Hell with them one assassinated politician at a time. I bring up the historical blind spot in an admittedly faulty comparison to my own approach to the Japanese film industry. I’m American, after all, my first movies are going to be American. Sometimes, British cinema will spillover.
Guess I was always a sci-fi fan, I was just denying it because the genre was so broad.
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