#just poking around before I start my rewatch of s1 and he has such little guy energy

[olessan]

[taki118]

Go Watch the Venture Brothers

So just heard the complete and utter Bullshit news that Adult Swim has cancelled one of (if not the best shows) they have the Venture Bros. This series is one of those shows that for WHATEVER reason never got to the level of fandom Rick and Morty has even though they’ve been at the genre parody game longer and in my opinion better. 

The series is about Rusty Venture former boy adventurer and failing super scientist who in an attempt to keep his head above water in debt goes around with his two boys Hank and Dean, and bodyguard Brock on misadventues while various legal archnemisis go after him, such as the Monarch. 

So if you never watched or never heard of this 7 season series let me give you a break down on why you should, 

1) Art Style & Animation

Venture bros is one of those rare Adult aimed animated series that that really truly tries to utilize their medium to the best of their abilities. Season 1 had like such a small budget and corners had to be cut so it can be a little hard to watch at times. 

But with each passing season they get a little better, a little more fluid, go just a little harder and it truly feels rewarding to watch. Like seeing an artist you follow online improve over the years. Like they COULD have stayed with the choppy and stiff animation from season 1 it fit right in with its fellow adult animated shows but it didn’t. They strove for quality to have something that matched the story they were telling.

2) The Writing 

Venture Bros has some of the tightest and consistently great writing of ANY serialized show I’ve seen, adult, animated or other wise. Wanna know why? Cause it’s all done by TWO people (save for like one ep each season where one other person is allowed to touch their baby). Yeah TWO people and they work their asses off every season to interject, humor, refrences, parody, plot and character development in equal measure. 

3) Character Development

Um yes in case you were wondering that’s right an adult animated show has CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT  that holds as the series goes on. Not to give spoilers but characters will go through changes in alignment, relationships will develop and change, some characters will go through negative arcs where they are straight up unbareable for a season before coming out the other side even better than they were before. There is no end of epsiode or even end of season reset. Characters, settings, and dynamics all change over the course of the show and it feels just so god damn good.

4) Story Development 

Just like the characters the story of the Venture Bros grows and changes each season. Things that are set up even as early as season one are paid off as the series goes on. Like not to be that bitch but you know how RIck and Morty teases an overarching plot ALL THE TIME but like will often just spit in the face of fans hoping for more than like one episode a season addressing it? Yeahhhhhhh that doesnt happen here, fans are consistently rewarded for putting the time in to rewatch and really think about what happened in the series. Characters that are seen in the background or are just referenced by other characters will be brought in to be recurring characters, things that start off as a small detail or gag will be given larger relevance and each time they do this you get that “OH I remember that from last season! So thats what it was!” The writers WANT you to rewatch, they WANT you to analyze and they WANT you to theorize, and they give you a show that gives back the time you put in.

5) Parody & Reference 

This series does a great thing with parody. They make real characters  who are just as enjoyable as the characters they parody, they make story lines that both poke fun at the absurdity of the media but shows the writers love for it. So often parody and references are just used to mock the thing but with Venture Bros you feel the love and care so when you know the thing being parodied you can laugh but feel good about laughing cause they are never laughing at a thing maybe you cared for in your youth but rather laughing with it.

And it’s never just one thing. When they parody a thing its often layered with other things to make it even more unique. Scooby-Doo is overlayed with famous criminals, Laura Croft is mixed Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, GI Joe is given the look of the Village People and so on. They never go for the easy joke or reference. Hell theres an episode that starts with them reciting the lyrics to David Bowies Space Oddity for really no reason other than they could. They weave these things in naturally with their setting and characters so nothing feels out of place. Like if you dont catch a reference or parody you dont feel like “I think this isa reference to something?” like a LOT of things do not just adult animated shows. You arent taken out of the moment cause it all feels so natural. 

6) The Characters 

God damn these characters, I could go on for hours about these characters. From main to one off these are some of the most likeable characters you can find. I mean it when I say I can’t think of a single character I wish they had cut cause they are all so well created. Even the ones I hate i have fun hating cause they were made to be that way. I’ll be good though I’ll only talk about my absolute top faves.

- The Monarchs

You ever sit and wish villain couples could have functional  healthy relationships? Well look no further than Malcom Fitzcarraldo aka The Monarch and Dr. Shelia Girlfriend (yes that is her last name). The Monarch is a high strung impulsive saturday morning cartoon villain whos tendency to over react is only matched by his unspecified hatred of Dr. Venture. And Dr. G is his nonsense partner in crime who will cut a bitch if they don’t play by their admittedly weird rules. Both characters are great on their own but are better together. Though that doesnt mean they always get along. Like a real couple they have their ups and downs they fight, break up, make-up and grow stronger in their relationship with each season. 

- Shore Leave

Ok ok so I want you to imagine James Bond, mixed with GI Joe simmering in a cocktail of the most flamboyant gay men you have ever seen and you have one of my favorite gay characters/characters in general. Shore Leave is a member of OSI (the shows SHEILD/GI Joe parody organization) he’s loud, brash, flippant, sassy and highly competent at his job loving every second of getting to beat bad guys down within an inch of their life. I love seeing him play off the stoic Brock and the two have this great brotherly dynamic that’s never called into question. He also gets to have a very cute romance with Al the Alchemist (who is also great). I could talk about this man all day.

- Dr. Rusty Venture

They did such a good job with this man. He’s a self serving, sexist, perverted, whinny, self important asshole and yet you feel pity and genuine sympathy for him and want him to succeed. You can see how Dr. V was given a raw deal by his father who seemed to care more about his adventures than his sons well being and how this molded him into the bitter man he is today, but on the flip side you can see where he chose to use that as a crutch for his worst behaviors and impulses. Seeing him slowly grow and change and be an actual good father to his boys while all the while still be a giant dick is actually really great. 

- Dr. Byron Orpheus 

Ahhhhh Dr. Orpheus part Dr. Strange Parody part busybody stay at home dad, he’s just such a delight. Dr. Orpheus is a divorcee, with an unfulfilling job of maintaining order to the cosmos (which isnt as hard as one might think), and uses his magical ablities in ways most of us would (ie menial tasks and home chores). Overly dramatic and affectionate Dr. O is a delight whenever he appears, but he’s at his best around his daughter and old friends The Order of the Triad. 

Again I can go on but all these characters ranging from main to recurring are crafted with the utmost care for you to want to see them succeed or fail, to see them again even if you know it’ll never happen, and want them to cross paths with other characters. 

The Venture Bros is one of those series that I will ALWAYS recommend even to the pickiest of humor tastes. But if you don’t believe its as good as I said or don’t think the concept is to your tastes I’ll recommend a few eps that I think best show off the base idea of the series without giving much away. In terms of plot and spoilers, though somethings wont make a lot of sense. 

- S1 ep10 "Tag Sale – You're It!" - Dr. V is having a yard sale so of course all manner of costumed weirdos show up.  - S2 ep5 "Twenty Years to Midnight" - basically a fetch quest around the world to save the planet with daddy issues - S3 ep2 "The Doctor Is Sin" - Again daddy issues but with one of the best recurring characters and a great showcase of the series deeper emotional plots - S4 ep6 "Self-Medication" - Really embraces the parody as Rusty goes to a former boy adventurer support group.  Anyway the show is 7 seasons with 80 episodes, please go watch it. I will never forgive @adultswim​ for cancelling what was to be their final season. And in closing GO TEAM VENTURE!

[murasaki-murasame]

Monogatari Series Rewatch Part 2: Bakemonogatari [Mayoi Snail]

Today in Bakemonogatari, we get an even better image of what this series is really about: people talking to each other a whole lot, Araragi getting owned by every other character in the story, and then things get depressing, and also really heartfelt. This series is pretty great, you guys.

More ramblings under the cut

-I still really like how they keep showing off increasingly frantic cut-ins of the LN text to increasingly frantic music at the start of each episode. It’s a really neat style that pretty immediately gets you engaged.

-The OP for this arc is probably one of my least favourites, to be blunt. It’s fun and cute, but it’s a little grating to actually listen to, especially when you’re like me and you’re binge-watching the whole arc at once. But I still appreciate it.

-I keep forgetting that Mother’s Day is a really important aspect of the story this time around. It was just Mother’s Day a few days ago, so that’s a neat coincidence. I can definitely relate to the discussions of familial/parental relationships in this arc, which I’ll talk about a bit more in a bit. But, for now, I totally feel for Araragi on the topic of feeling a little bit alienated and uncomfortable on that sort of a day, and then getting introspective and moody about the topic of his growth as a person and his future prospects and whatnot, and then getting annoyed at himself for being so petty and ‘small’ in the first place. I think everyone knows what that’s like, to some degree or another.

-I love that this entire arc, especially the first episode of it, really is mostly just about people talking to each other about stuff in a fun, back and forth sorta way. It really gets me back into the mood for watching this series. It’s like, ‘ah yes, this is it, the True Monogatari Experience[tm]’. It’s great.

-The different ways I’ve seen different subbers and translators try and translate the whole ‘moe/tore’ conversation are really interesting. It’s the sort of thing that’s gonna be kinda weird to an English-speaking audience no matter what. I think my favourite variation of it is the one that translates ‘tore’ as ‘fascination’. I don’t know if it’s the most accurate translation, but I’ve always liked it. I dunno why, exactly. Maybe just because it’s the first one I saw. Though I can at least say that Vertical’s whole ‘melting/smelting’ translation was kinda . . . strained. Severely. Mostly because nobody uses the word ‘melting’ in that way in the first place, so the entire conversation falls apart, since it’s meant to be about taking a common slang word and twisting it. It feels like they came up with ‘smelting’ first and then had to awkwardly go back and make up a translation of ‘moe’ that fit that, but the translation they went for missed the point. It just feels a little clumsy and backwards. But I don’t dislike it as much as some other people do. I’ve seen worse. And honestly I kinda like the ‘smelting’ translation, it’s just that the entire thing doesn’t work.

-I still have a huge soft spot for Senjougahara’s tsundere attitude. It’s pretty wonderful. “It’s not that I wanted to show you my new clothes. I wanted you to be the first to see them. The nuance is different”. Aww <3 I love how obvious it is that she’s mostly just a really awkward person who doesn’t have much experience with actually having solid relationships with people.

-In general this arc helps highlight some of her vulnerabilities in a really nice way. It’s really interesting to rewatch this arc while knowing that she can’t actually see Hachikuji, and that she’s just going along with the whole thing because she thinks that she’s the weird one for being out of  the loop. Which is pretty sad, but also kinda relatable. In my own separate way, I have my own experience with “not seeing things that other people can see”, and “seeing things that other people can’t see”, and choosing to keep quiet about it, and go along with how other people act, while telling myself that I’m the one that’s wrong. I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself since I’m trying to make these notes in a vaguely chronological sense, but this is also why I like the whole speech Senjougahara has [relayed from Oshino] about differing viewpoints, and how while you can’t simply dismiss another person as being wrong, it’s also wrong to dismiss yourself as being wrong. And, of course, the whole part near the very end where Araragi tells Senjougahara that she can be open with him, and that she doesn’t need to dismiss anything she thinks and feels as being wrong.

-Now onto the actual heroine of this arc, finally. I really like Hachikuji. She’s pretty great. It kinda saddens me how many scenes with her get kinda bogged down with some uncomfortable jokes that I’m not really gonna try and fully defend, but I still really like her. In general, she has a really neat dynamic with Araragi, though it’s the sorta thing that really grows and develops as time goes on. Things are slightly different between them in this arc, since they’ve just met. Also, after the infamous scene from Shinobu Time, it made me kinda sad to see the first iteration of her ‘Sorry, I stuttered’ line. Who would have thought that a silly running gag line would turn around and stab me right in my feelings about 40 episodes later.

-In general there’s all sorts of parts of this arc that make me flash back to later arcs in the series. It’s a weird experience, to see the seeds being sown for so many character arcs and so on. I didn’t really expect, the first time around, how much these characters would grow, and how much the story in general would expand. But then it did. The part I least expected to get reminded of was how I found myself remembering the Sodachi arc when Araragi gave a really vague summary of his younger years. It’s not really directly related, but it made me remember the whole point of ‘oh yeah he really doesn’t remember her, does he?’. There’s a bit of dramatic irony involved, knowing about it in advance. Araragi doesn’t know what’s about to hit him [in like . . . 60 episodes, hah]. Man, I can’t wait to rewatch the first half of Owari S1. That’s seriously one of my favourite parts of the entire franchise and I can’t wait to get a chance to talk about it and my undying love for Sodachi as a character. It makes me wonder if Nisioisin actually had that whole deal planned out in advance, since it really isn’t directly foreshadowed before Owari itself [I think], and the entire ‘oh yeah there’s this girl that Araragi forgot about because he’s a doof’ thing does feel like the perfect scenario for it being a retcon of sorts. Not like I mind any way.

-The other major thing that I got reminded of and got kinda sad about during this arc was the whole Hanekawa scene. It really hurts to see the topic of her family situation touched upon so lightly, after having seen it in more detail later in the story. Even the thing with her wearing her school uniform on a Sunday is depressing, and isn’t even really acknowledged [at least not directly in the anime]. On that vague note, it’s kinda interesting to see how Araragi is at least vaguely aware of Hanekawa’s whole situation, but doesn’t really know how to approach it, or how to help her. It’s pretty fitting for his character, and makes him seem more flawed and imperfect, in an everyday way. [This just reminds me, ironically enough, about how I just cannot, ever, for the life of me, remember what the hell happened in Neko:Kuro. I can never remember if anything I remember about the Hanekawa/Black Hanekawa/Cat Oddity storyline happened in that arc, or at the end of Bake, or even in Neko:Shiro. I don’t know why this is such a weird mental roadblock of mine, but it is]

-Also on the note of Hanekawa’s whole deal, the part where her glasses go all shiny and she says ‘if you’re going to spank a child, you should at least tell them why what they did was wrong’ while Araragi is just like ‘um . . . ok’ was also pretty uncomfortable to watch.

-I do love how comedic this arc is, even if it has a surprising amount of not so funny parts, especially in hindsight. I kinda suck at giving any sort of a comment on comedy, though. So if I don’t really talk about it much, it can be assumed that I really like the comedy in this show, because I really do. I can listen to these weirdos poke fun at each other and talk about random stuff for DAYS. I’ll at least probably talk about it if I don’t like certain parts of the comedy.

-It’s still pretty interesting to me how one of the major characters in the show is literally one of the oddities. I mean, I guess Shinobu is as well [and Yotsugi??? Sort of????], but you get what I mean. It makes for an interesting dynamic, and I’m really happy about how much Nisioisin does with the concept later in the story. I like how even if it’s mostly portrayed in a fairly light-hearted way early on, it has actual genuine consequences later on. So to say.

-I still always get kinda emotional over Hachikuji’s whole backstory. I admit it. I am the basic lame-o who gets sad over basically anything sad in media, especially when it’s to do with sad children, and dead children, and sad children who are also dead and have been dead for ten years. Sometimes I almost feel manipulated. Almost.

-I do genuinely relate to Hachikuji’s backstory, though. Even though it plays out differently to my own personal history, and we have different feelings toward our parents. Maybe it’s easier to say that I can just . . . see myself in parts of her story? I’m still trying to work out if it’s accurate to say that you can relate to someone who’s been through a similar situation as you even if they respond to it differently, or if you can relate to someone who goes through different situations than you, but responds to them in a way that’s similar to how you respond to certain parts of your life. I like to think that that still counts as ‘relating’. I don’t want to get into it too deeply here, but my own parents broke up shortly after I was born, before I can remember. It was my mother who retained custody of me, though, and not my father. And my feelings toward both of them aren’t the same as how Hachikuji feels toward her own parents. And I’m not a little Japanese girl who got hit by a car and has been sticking around as a ghost-cow-snail-thing for ten years. [OR AM I??? oooo spooky]

-I touched upon it before, but I really like the little moment between Senjougahara and Araragi at the end. It’s so sweet and earnest. I love how it’s all about the idea of emotional honesty and vulnerability, and how important those things are. I love how Senjougahara understands that maybe the most accurate thing she can say is that she just likes talking to Araragi, and that she wants to keep talking to him more and more. I love Araragi’s little line about ‘Senjougahara fascination’. Again, aww <3. I mean I can also totally understand how things end up really rocky between them in the long run, but still.

-Next time on Monogatari: Lesbians! Or should I say, lesbian, in singular form. It’s only when we get to Hanamonogatari that I can truly, justifiably, say ‘Lesbians!’ in plural form. Just you wait.