28/365: Irresponsible Captain Tylor

Tylor is that guy you hate and love at the same time. You hate him cause he just seems to stumble his way into awesome thing after awesome thing. You love him cause he's adorable and lazy and fun and he just seems to stumble his way into awesome thing after awesome thing.

I owned both the entire anime series and OAV series on VHS tape once upon a time. I got them at an amazing sale even though I'd never seen any of them and had no clue whether I'd like them or not. Lucky for me I totally loved the show and was happy to have spent my money on it.

The animation is old school and hand drawn. The characters have pointy faces and silly hair. The character costumes don't always make perfect sense. The dubbed voices don't always seem to match up with what you expect from the characters they are matched with.

Still. Irresponsible Captain Tylor is a wonderfully good time. Tylor joins the space military specifically to get out of having to get a real job. He thinks his life will be easy peasy once he joins up, and the recruitment officer is so confused and bedazzled by Tylor's lunacy that he goes along with it. Several minutes later Tylor is captain of a ship (because why not) and wackiness (of course) ensues.

While you can imagine all the comedy this show contains, there are also some really good serious, emotionally complex moments throughout the series. Especially later on in the original series. I haven't gotten through all of the OAVs yet but I have a feeling it has a similar story-telling style.

This is a good show with a lot more depth than it at first appears. It might not be as pretty and flashy as anime today, but it makes up for it with a great story, fun characters, and a whole lot of heart.

27:365: Chrome Shelled Regios

Oh fer cryin' out loud! The Big Bads in this series have a really stupid name. Contaminoids? Really? That's the best you could come up with? They do look horrible and they make some icky sounds and they do a regeneration thing that is creepy, but it is just so hard to take something seriously when the name makes me want to laugh every time someone says it.

But hey, that sexy voice from Kaze no Stigma popped up in this show so it gets points for that. Probably not enough to help it out after the stupid name for the Big Bads. But at least a little bit.

Holy crap, the hair in this series is ridiculous! It goes above and beyond normal silly anime hair and reaches epic new heights (sometimes literally) of absurdity. Seriously? Who comes up with this stuff?

So stupid name for the main enemy, ridiculous looking character designs, and one or two sexy voices. I'm not sure this particular anime is gonna be able to do it for me. I want to look past the silly business in the beginning but it is definitely a struggle.

Which is kind of sad really cause usually I love the post-apocalyptic stuff. All those nasty wastelands full of deadly creatures and tribes of leftover humans trying to figure out how to scrape by from day to day without becoming monster chow. Or having to submit to bigger, stronger humans bent on world domination.

And really I don't mind the fight scenes in this series, or most of the serious talking scenes, but the show devolves into overly dramatic silliness on a regular basis and that just annoys me. Too much screaming and talking fast and blushing and fainting in clouds of smiling steam.

Ugh.

Anyways this show seems to be about a kid with super fighting skills who enrolls in this school/city where they are all about the super fighting skills. Even though he doesn't want to fight anymore he gets sucked into that world of Big Bads and evil humans and super fighting nonsense.

I don't know. I got more sucked in as the first episode went on, and I am mildly curious to see what happens next. But I can't guarantee I'll watch the entire series. The cons still outweigh the pros for me at this point.

26/365: Fairy Tail

This show wasn't at all what I expected from the opening. Which is a good thing, cause I really didn't expect to like it. There was this narrator doing his thing about wizards and lands far far away and it seemed kind of Disney-ish and hokey to me.

But once the story really started and I started laughing, I got over my first impression. Go me! I'm like mature and shit.

So the story basically revolves around this blonde wizard girl (with Ayano's voice from Kaze no Stigma which made me immediately like her) who wants to join the Fairy Tail wizard guild cause they're like, the coolest guild ever! (Or so Sorcerer Monthly Magazine would have us all believe.) She randomly runs into a wizard from the guild, helps him out, gets saved by him in turn, and then tags along with him when he returns to the guild. The zany adventures go from there.

And what zany adventures they be. The big thing about the Fairy Tail guild is just how destructive they are when working wizarding jobs. They destroy enemies, ships, harbors, mountains, towns, and their own guild hall on a regular basis.

It's hilarious. Just the intro to the other wizards in the guild hall was pretty funny. It shouldn't have been because of the way it was set up, but this show is just so good-natured in its camp and silliness that it comes off pretty well.

Sure there are some moments where things get all serious and backstory-ish. That part was a little cloying, but it didn't last too long before things were all destructive and fun again. I'd watched my way through several episodes before even realizing that it happened. If that isn't the sign of a worth-watching show I don't know what is.

PLUS the dude who did Kazuma's voice in Kaze no Stigma pops up in Fairy Tail as well. I quite like that voice (mhmmm) and am happy to hear it whenever I can (girl moment, can't be helped).

25/365: Samurai Champloo

I'm a couple days behind. I know it and it sucks but it can't be taken back now so I'm moving on.

How adult and emotionally mature of me.

Samurai Champloo is so badass. I am happy to see that even though it's been years since I watched it before it has retained all of its awesome.

Some shows really don't. We won't go into it now because I've gone into it before.

But yeah.

This show, however, is still badass. The music is still great. The story is still funny and deep and sometimes kind of dark. The characters are still hilarious assholes.

Yep, Samurai Champloo totally retains its awesome.

The story basically follows Muugen, Jin, and Fuu, three reluctant ... friends I guess? ... who are traveling together looking for a samurai that smells of sunflowers and having lots of wacky adventures along the way.

Sometimes even wacky tabacc-y adventures, but I digress.

Watching this series is entertaining and fun and sometimes educational. The animation style is an interesting mix of loose and sloppy alongside detailed and clean. Not my favorite but it really works with the story it's paired up with.

If I was going to recommend an anime to someone new to the party or someone who'd never seen anime before, this is probably one of the first shows I'd name. It has a little something for everyone, and really is just so dang badass it would be hard for anyone to resist. 

24/365: Inari Konkon

This is the first really new anime I've ever gotten to watch. So new in fact that only one episode has been released so far in the US. I've watched series that were released slowly in this country, a few episodes at a time on VHS or DVD, but they weren't really new. Just new HERE.

It's kind of cool. I like this modern age quite a bit sometimes.

Anyhoo, this show was very cute and I wasn't sure I'd like it cause of all the cute stuff and the middle school characters and they adorable scream-y business. But in the end I liked it quite a bit actually. The funny stuff was really funny, the anime in-jokes were awesome (the main character's "spell" to activate her powers was based right off Sailor Moon on purpose and I laughed out loud), and the story really wasn't too bad.

Basically it revolved around a young girl who makes a silly wish in order to win the heart of a young boy. When that wish can't be taken back, she is given some god powers to make up for it. I'll have to assume hilarious situations will arise from that later on. As there is only one episode of the show right now, I can't know much else.

Even the Wikipedia entry had summaries for only the first and second episodes. I can't even cheat and read ahead to see what happens next.

Kind of a new feeling experiencing a show an episode at a time without an opportunity to spoiler it for myself. I'm pretty amused by the whole thing.

23/365: Durarara

I'm not sure I paid as close enough attention to this show as I should have. To be honest it's been a long week and I had some drinks with dinner and now I'm not focusing as well as I want to. So I'll have to try this again at a later date when my attention span is longer than a couple of minutes.

I will try this again, I know that at least. The animation style reminds me of that seen in Eureka 7 but the story seems to be its own thing. I couldn't follow all of the stuff about areas of Tokyo, but I could follow the stuff about sushi and yakuza and urban legends. There are obviously a lot of layers here and I have a feeling even completely sober I would have missed some of them.

But like I said, I'll come back to this show and see if I can get into it more with a second viewing. What I gathered this time is that basically there are some kids living in a district of Tokyo and that brings them into contact with a cast of colorful characters including an American/Russian/sushi chef that looks about eight feet tall, a strong man who likes to throw heavy appliances, and a mysterious lady on a motorcycle whose head has been replaced by black smoke and a yellow cat-eared helmet.

Speaking of the mystery headless lady, she is one of the most popular cosplay costumes I've seen at Sakuracon in the six years I've been going. I think it might be the skintight black bodysuit and the cat-eared helmet that make it so popular. I could be wrong but I'm probably not.

Anyway, this show seems cool and I'm looking forward to giving it another shot. Just not tonight when all I can really think of at this point is sleep.

Ahhh, sleep. It's about time we spent some quality time together.

22/365: Guin Saga

So if you took Hercules and stuck a leopard head on him and gave him amnesia and hooked him up with a pair of twin heirs, you'd kind of basically have Guin Saga.

I'm sure there is more to the story than that, but I don't know how far into it I'll get cause while the anime is 26 episodes, the novel series it is based on is 130 novels PLUS 21 side-story novels.

Let me give you a second to really think about those numbers. 130 and 21. All written between 1979 and now. 151 books in 35 years. Over four books a year on average.

That is a mind-boggling amount of books to write in that period of time. Some authors take decades to write one book. The author of these was cranking them out like it was nothing.

And there is no way a 26 episode anime series will encompass all of the story that took 151 novels to tell. No way.

Even if they managed to come up with their own ending for the Guin Saga anime, it wouldn't have anything to do with the actual ending (if the series even has one, I was a little confused on that when reading up on it). Would it even fit with the story if it was just tacked on to complete the series?

That just doesn't work for me. I'm not fond of long-ass series with no real ending (once again looking at you Bleach) but I'm also not fond of ones with rushed or forced endings that don't seem to really fit with the show.

There is certainly stuff to like with this series. The animation is pretty slick and the fantasy world the characters live in sounds pretty complex and interesting.

But can I get emotionally invested in something that won't really end? I'll have to give it some more thought before I decide if I want to proceed.