Latest Geneon license

Geneon are certainly the biggest risk taker when it comes to licenses nowadays. Strawberry Marshmallow, Kamichu! and now Zipang

Zipang is a superb series. One of the most strongly themed and powerful shows I have ever seen. I am genuinely curious as to how it will do in the US. Theres no shortage of controversy which might do it well I guess. Can't wait to see the usual 'Zipang - racism' threads over on animenation/Animeondvd (they were all locked on animesuki).
 
Indeed, I'm really amazed that Geneon have licensed Zipang for US DVD release since it was afterall the US vs. Japan in the war; imagine the looks on veterens faces when they discover their grand children watching this "Japanese propaganda" about how a Japanese ship can travel back in time and change the tide of the war. The controversy could be massive! :) In fact, it's probably a wise move from Geneon; controversy sells (Legend of the Overfiend, anyone?)
 
Well theres the controversy aspect of it, and I remember the whole racism threads on the animesuki forum (forwarded by a huge amount of posters who based their comments on the JASCII blog).

But unlike Silent Service, the authors previous work where a lot of those comments can be credibly applied, Zipang has risen above that. The mere fact is that it is not the Jingo-istic sink-the-yanks fare that most people expected it to be. Its a pretty damn impressive piece of work that has as its central theme how two different and conflicting notions of japanese nationalism can be reconciled.

Its as much about identity as it is about war, and secondary themes are about how a bunch of peacetime weekend warriors suddenly find themselves lost at sea in command of the most powerful weapon of the time.

Lastly Lt Commander Kusaka (the rescued IJN officer) is probably one of the most brilliant, and ruthless characters I have seen in anime. He has got a scary notion of patriotism.

I think the controversy works in the shows favour, as the claim of it being anti-america or racist is quickly dispelled once you actually watch it.
 
Akaten said:
I haven't seen the show and won't pass judgment until I see it, but it does give me the impression that Zipang says more about the current climate of some contemporary thoughts in Japan about the war than about the war itself.

Its not a revisionist show. The history of the war is well depicted and factually correct. It does adopt a contemporary view, in that it is critical of the naive imperial japanese expansion and its shortsightedness. Personalities of the time which can now be seen in hindsight as being great thinkers are protrayed in a better light (e.g. Admiral Yamamoto).

The contemporary aspect is kind of the whole point. We see the story develop from the viewpoints of 2 very capable, but ideologically opposite people: IJN officer Lt Commander Kusaka and the XO of the Mirai - Kadomatsu. Its the modern guys who are the fish out of water and don't know what to do. The locals know exactly what to do with an AEGIS cruiser.
 
Laughing Manji said:
Akaten said:
I haven't seen the show and won't pass judgment until I see it, but it does give me the impression that Zipang says more about the current climate of some contemporary thoughts in Japan about the war than about the war itself.

Its not a revisionist show. The history of the war is well depicted and factually correct. It does adopt a contemporary view, in that it is critical of the naive imperial japanese expansion and its shortsightedness. Personalities of the time which can now be seen in hindsight as being great thinkers are protrayed in a better light (e.g. Admiral Yamamoto).

The contemporary aspect is kind of the whole point. We see the story develop from the viewpoints of 2 very capable, but ideologically opposite people: IJN officer Lt Commander Kusaka and the XO of the Mirai - Kadomatsu. Its the modern guys who are the fish out of water and don't know what to do. The locals know exactly what to do with an AEGIS cruiser.

I have to agree that the controversy is largely unwarranted. And Zipang is an awesome show in its own right, I can't wait for it to get here (well, I hope it gets here).

I don't understand the fuss either. I recently watched Tora! Tora! Tora! and interestingly enough, it didn't depict the Japanese as some sort of bloodthirsty savages or anything like that. I thought it was actually quite a decent depiction of the events that took place. Same here. It tells the events of WWII from a Japanese perspective, but that doesn't make the Americans out to be some sort of monsters. It's just war, and both sides are just both sides.
 
Paul said:
Legend of the Overfiend, anyone?

Yes please.



In all seriousness though, i hadn't known what Zipang was about, but hearing that summary certainly is interesting! Yes indeed controversy sells, i like it! I would love to see an anime about religion being a form of brain-washing, but i'm not going to go into that lol.

Geneon are sexy, i want MVM to bring more of their releases over here, now! I really want those Card Captor Sakura box sets, those look wonderful! I've always wanted to see the series in its entirety after watching it on CITV when i was naïve lol. To know that it had more than half its episode count CUT OUT! was truely disheartening, all for not having the Sakura and Li love thing... i still don't know about the story properly, and finding out about this editing crap made me realise why most of the series i watched seemed to never make proper sense and they seemed to skip from one bit to the next, i was thinking 'okay, now she's caught the Light Card, but when the hell did she get the other 50 cards, wtf...' and so on. How dissapointing. Please MVM, tend to my heart and bring CCS over here, i'll give you money, and sex, well actually no i won't.
 
Ive read about this series and it sounds very interesting seeing as Im interested about WW2 etc, so Ill have to look into this further.
 
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