#JOSHUA SETH AND MONA MARSHALL KILLED IT AND THEY KILLED ME

[seventeenlovesthree]

@jamesthedigidestined AND I WATCHED THE NEW ENGLISH DUB OF OUR WAR GAME AND WE ARE NOT OKAY.

[ultraericthered]

Anime Update V2 26

Wolf’s Rain - Got through the first two episodes. It has been quite some time seen I’d experienced this anime in any capacity, so I’d completely forgotten that one of the things that happens in the very first episode is a wolf bites a child while trying to save him, resulting in screaming and resistance and the child falling to his death! That is so dark, it’s morbidly hilarious! By the second episode we’ve got Johnny Yong Bosch and Joshua Seth on a quest for Paradise, Crispin Freeman and Mona Marshall with their own plotlines elsewhere, Tom Wyner the wolf-hunting sheriff, and Steve Blum as the mysterious villain. As he even states, the journey has begun.

Hunter x Hunter - Finally getting to the real action in Yorknew City and it is wonderful! Gon and Killua are still looking into Greed Island, the Nen-powered VR game, which has a bunch of rare copies that will apparently be featured in the coming auction, and Killua even got big brother Milluki aiding them which I totally did not expect to see happening! They’ve reuinited with Leorio on the city streets and are raising money while elsewhere in the city, Kurapika is now doing guard duty for the princess of the Nostrade mafia family, Neon, who is exploited by her father and at risk from her father’s enemies all for the same reason: she has the ability to prophecize future events. She’s already a fun character albeit a touch disturbing, as are the Phantom Troupe, who has fully converged at their hideout to prepare to attack the auction. Hisoka is there, and we get the first look at their boss, the Shinobu Sensui-looking fucker named Chrollo Lucilfer.

Fruits Basket - Two very different focuses on these two very different anime adaptations this week:

2001 - The one where Tohru comes down with a cold and all the Sohmas who know her are worried about her. In the other anime, this event will be the start of the season finale, but it happens as a one-off episode here. Kyo and Yuki’s part entertained me immensely, tho.

2019 - Now we get the whole “Prince Yuki Fanclub visit Saki’s house, meet her brother, and try to learn her weakness to exploit against her and Tohru” thing, which goes differently than I remembered it in the other anime since the whole filmed documentary angle is not present here. And exactly as I’d said, we get Saki’s backstory and how she met Tohru and Arisa immediately after. No wonder the first anime skipped this ‘cause like Arisa’s backstory it gets DARK. Like “wishing for someone to die and then nearly killing them” dark. But you have to appreciate how both backstories give so much more depth and perspective to Arisa and Saki’s characters and why they love Tohru so much, and even make me appreciate the Fanclub’s harmless antics more. But really...what kind of name is “Megumi” for a boy?

Rozen Maiden - An episode titled “Angel” told me exactly what I was in for, and it ends up being hands down the best episode yet. Shinku is only in it for a little bit, and the rest of the main cast not at all, as the focus is on the revived Suigintou and how she has a pact with a medium of her own now, a terminally ill girl named Megu who is just so morbid and so utterly fucked up in how she yearns for death but shameless and happy about it that I love her. The more power Suigintou uses, the more life is drained from Megu, which Megu wants but Suigintou doesn’t, creating a great conflict of interest. With Suingintou back in the Alice Game, things will be heating up soon...

Fate Zero - We got Saber wearing a suit. SABER. IN A SUIT. And yeah, some other stuff like Assassin’s “death” getting undercut by the reveal that “Assassin” for this Holy Grail War is a whole bunch of assassins who serve Kirei and his father, more odd couple hilarity with Waver and Rider (Rider randomly flipping through TV and deeming Bill Clinton to be a future great opponent had me laughing out loud), and at the very end, Lancer appears...and he’s voiced by Grant George, previous VA for Gilgamesh. These dubs are weird.

Revolutionary Girl Utena - "Am I supposed to feel sorry for this bitch? ‘Cause I don’t”, the episode. First of all, while it sucks that Ruka went and broke up with Shiroi in such a humiliating and public way, Shiori had been such an ass to Juri and treated her in the same disdainful way Ruka’s treating her now that I couldn’t feel too bad. Then after Ruka had Juri duel Utena along with him and it led to a chilling emotional metldown from Juri, Ruka feels regret and “makes things right”...by going and dying off-screen of a terminal illness it’s suddenly revealed he had by the Shadow Play Girls of all people! Maybe Ruka meant well and wanted to help put Juri on a path to healing in the long run even if he had to make her hate him to do so, but that can’t even begin to excuse the lengths he went to and the sheer amount of douchebaggery from him. NOT gonna miss him!

Love Live! Nijigasaki School Idol Club S2 - In the second-to-last episode, Kanata suddenly becomes a very important part of what’s going on and helping Ayumu and Yu with career contemplations, meaning I had to hear a lot of that Akane Shinjo voice, which cannot ever be said to be a bad thing. The Nijigasaki girls also teamed up with other schools to give a boost to Kanata’s younger sister and her school idol group, which was very effectively heartwarming. Then came the First Live in the final episode, mostly just snippets of each girl’s main songs. But what stood out was getting to see how some of them have really grown by the end, particularly Yu, Ayuma, Konata, Setsuna, Rina, Lanzhu, Shioriko, and Mia. The end of Yu’s journey was particularly rewarding as she’s gone from a fangirl who glommed onto school idols as a selfish means of advancing herself to her dream to wanting to share and spread school idol love in order to better lives and make people happy to pretty much being a very different type of school idol who gears her skills and her dream to work in service of something much bigger than herself. I don’t think the Nijigasaki Club is getting a movie since they seem to have definitively gone their own ways at the end. But it was a pleasant ride, and now I eagerly await when I start on Love Live! Superstar!!

MAR - Snow fought against the Chess Piece known as Mr. Hook. And she lost pretty badly due to having exerted so much strength during both training and the previous fight that she’d won. What hurts more is that she could’ve surrendered earlier but took Ginta’s own words of encouragement of “never give up!” to heart a little too much. Thankfully once she’s unable to fight, Mr. Hook shows that he has some honor and allows her to live to hopefully fight another day.

AMC: Bakugan Battle Brawlers - Two episodes again. Dan was out of commission from the start of the first one, so it mostly follows Runo and Marucho as an unlikely tag team. But they’re out to recruit Shun into the Battle Brawlers and when Shun’s name came up, for a split second I thought “....WHO???” Yeah, Shun was built up in the premiere episodes and is always in the opening, but ever since Masquerade popped up and started driving the plot, he’s not been seen or mentioned since, all while we got to know Dan, Runo, Marucho, Julie, and Alice better. If you’re not enticed to see more of a character after he’s been neglected for a long stretch, it’s probably not a very strong character. And sure enough, Shun’s just not that interesting, not helped by his dub voice being on Jason Wishnov as Byakuya Togami levels of sounding like a pretentious dweeb.

The following episode could’ve given me something about Shun to feel for and appreciate but OH MAN, did the dub eviscerate this one. Most of it is a flashback told by Dan to Drago about the last time he and Shun ever interacted, where the crux of it is that Shun’s mother was in the hospital on her deathbed at the time. The Bakugan Brawl that Shun starts with Dan that slows time is only delaying the inevitable, as the heartbeat monitor constantly shows us. Then the moment arrives, Shun gets to his mom’s hospital room just in time to see her off as she passes away, prompting a heartwrenchingly emotional response from Shun as he breaks down into tears...and then the doctor’s ADRd voice tells Shun his mom’s gonna be fine. Turns out she’s just “really tired” and slipping into a coma, as we hear her tell Shun even though we don’t see her talking on-screen. She gives Shun his new (and current) Bakugan partner, which makes Shun totally hunky-dory as he realizes his mom knows that he’d rather be out playing Bakugan than being trained in the ninja arts by his grandpa. I was totally slackjawed at what I was hearing versus what I was clearly seeing. The dub cover-up was pathetically obvious, on the level of Duke’s “coma” from G.I. Joe: the Movie or Sven’s admittance into a “space hospital” in Voltron, Defender of the Universe. Also, going into a coma for an indeterminable amount of time is still pretty fucking bad, but Shun totally underreacts to it after his earlier sobbing, which just puts me off his character all the more!

Thank the lord for Masquerade and Hal G., who end the episode on a strong note to directly set up what’s to follow this cringey ordeal.

AND

A Certain Scientific Railgun - Visited this show again with Episode 2, which oddly enough had no action scenes or any type of serious conflict whatsoever, as it was all about Kuroko feeling like a third wheel to Misaka and her two new friends even on the 1 month anniversary of Misaka and Kuroko properly meeting and becoming roommates. Goes without saying that the episode was a positively deranged but entertaining delight, just like Kuroko herself. And there was some sweet, sentimental bits mainly towards the end, but mostly it was just hilarious, reminding me why I so love these characters.

[geejaysmith]

ok instead of infodumping about it in my groupchat what if I just liveblog me finally watching Digimon Adventure Tri 

Currently mid-way through #3 out of 6 and to catch us up with prior commentary: 

-I’m watching the dub on YouTube and I for one am impressed that they got like 80% of the original cast reprising their roles (like holy shit I think the last time I heard Mona Marshall and Joshua Seth in anything was all the way back in fucking Wolf’s Rain), but I am mildly confused why Lara Jill Miller didn’t sign back on as Kari when I know she’s still doing anime, and it’s because of that role as Kari that I for one thought casting her as Haru in Beastars was inspired. 

-Even if I think Matt kinda has a point and his perspective makes sense in a “act immediately to eliminate potential threat retain control of situation” trauma response kind of way also, it’s not especially well-executed and his and Tai’s whole Thing just comes off as the seed of an interesting idea turned into a Conflict For Conflict’s Sake plot obstacle. 

-This is not helped by the dub recasting Matt with Vic Mignoga. 

-Also all of Matt’s band names are dumb. 

-It’ll never be Butterfly but the fact they made a new version of the dub theme song for Tri and that it’s actually listenable* makes my inner nine year old like, stupidly happy. 

-Seriously, where the fuck are Yolei, Cody and Davis and why are TK and Kari not concerned about them even if they clearly know who Ken is and show consternation over being unable to get ahold of him??

-Also, will we *ever* get an explanation for why Kari keeps being a conduit for Weird Extradimensional Shit, or at this point are we just accepting that this girl is a Lovecraftian Phenomena Magnet? 

-These movies were made years before the pandemic but the Digimon being worried about catching/spreading the Feral Infection is now a bit Too Real. 

-Joe and Mimi are Best Kids.

-I would kill and die to protect Meiko.

(*Please take my music opinions and the quality thereof with appropriate skepticism; I listen to Nickelback unironically sometimes)