Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance [Original English Audio] - Episode 1
For something thats supposed to be an English Language production, you'd be forgiven to think it was instead a really slapdash localised project. It was mocapped and performed by those same actors (mostly Japan based English speakers, along with a few Australians), yet the lip sync and direction is often disconnected to whats going on? Weird. Dropped.
NieR Automata Ver1.1a [English Audio] - Episodes 16-24
With this done, the show ended up as a interesting remix of the game. While I wouldn't be super sure about recommending it instead of the game, its certainly a nice pseudo companion piece to it, along with the rest of these games.
Also pleased with Aniplex of America handling it, if CR handled it directly, inevitiably at least 2 (if not more) of the English cast from the game would have to be recast, and pleased all major characters are reprised here. A few quibbles here and there but some of those were likely unavoidable, with some interesting (and entertaining) new takes from these same folks.
Will have to hold up my end of the bargain when the time comes. All $239.98 of it, + Taxes & Shipping
What a fun show. Episode 9 might have been the high point, the unvoiced musical sections go to show how capable Mitsudomoe's visual humour is even without any dialogue. The segment with the barrel in particular was a wonderful (if exaggerated for comic effect) illustration of an older/younger sibling dynamic as Mitsuba tries to do something nice for Futaba for once (or perhaps to show off her own cleverness, probably a bit of both) only to find that she's opened herself up to a whole lot more responsibility, frustration and pain. The late (and entirely unnecessary) introduction of Sugisaki's masochist mother was a bit of a low point however, she didn't really add anything to proceedings and her segments were pretty dire and one-note, thankfully she only shows up a couple of times but none would have been preferable. It's unfortunate Mitsudomoe felt like it needed a perverse and exaggerated adult character like that because it really didn't, the comedy of errors with the other adults like Yabecchi and the triplets' father was much more entertaining and helped seperate the kids' crazy world from the more mundane adult one.
Speaking of Mr. Marui, I can't believe I forgot to mention him before. Beloved of Futaba, scorned by Mitsuba, largely ignored by Hitoha and fiercely but quietly (until he isn't) loving and protective of his daughters, he might actually be one of the real best dads in anime. The fact people are constantly getting the wrong idea about him from his scruffy and intimidating appearance is quite cannily observed. Mitsudomoe might be the antithesis of a CGDCT show but there are some genuinely sweet moments towards the end here as we see that Mitsuba and Sugisaki are perhaps not completely awful, or really all that different. I'm quite surprised (and a little disappointed) it wasn't more popular, having only got a short eight episode second season which I guess I'll get straight into next.
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War - The Conflict episode 395 Keys.
Blue Exorcist -Beyond the Snow Saga- episode 3 Red snow.
Blue Lock Vs. U-20 Japan episode 27 Process.
Demon Lord Retry! R episode 4 Reluctant royal.
Monogatari Series: OFF & Monster Season ONA 14 Fledgling. (Complete. A great entry into the Monogatari series - I’m glad I invested my time into the preceding series’.) 4.5/5
Ooi! Tonbo 2nd Season episode 15 Windpower.
Ranma 1/2 (2024) episode 3 Frequent visitor.
31 Days of Halloween 2024! Day X Ginger Snaps, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (Films)
Uzumaki [English Audio] - Episode 4
It's over, another episode thats an improvement from before, but still not to the level of the first. difficult to parse between the production pains, pacing problems and the goofiness that seems intentional but layered in the, again, aforementioned production issues. Maybe I should just read the source. In the end, the adaptation will have the question of "what could have been?" hanging around it after the first, bit of a shame.
Giant Robo OVA - The Day the Earth Stood Still Episodes 1-7 COMPLETE (Animaze/Magnitude 8 English dubbed) - Brilliant animation and music and an engaging premise, I was moved by all the characters who were sincerely trying to do what they believed was right, and I look forward to rewatching this with the NYAV Post English dub soon
Still rewatching Gochiusa S1 (only a couple of eps left to go, then on to S2 which I've never seen before, though tbf I am using the term "rewatch" very loosely here as I have only had most of S1 on in the background before as it's nice and cosy, but given it's subbed I didn't really take it in at all mostly, so a lot of these episodes I have no real memory of) and now most of the way through Season 3 (Final) of the Ducktales Reboot
Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest episode 15 Wooden threat.
MF Ghost 2nd Season episode 15 Initiative and ideals.
Shangri-La Frontier Season 2 episode 27 Special device.
Tower of God Season 2 episode 16 Next time.
TsumaSho episodes 4 Sightseeing.
Uzumaki: Spiral Into Horror episode 4 Acceptance. (Complete. A promising start but the wane in animation quality hindered the adaptation and brought the overall anime down for me despite the apparent strength of the source material.) 2.5/5
31 Days of Halloween 2024! Day XX: Dolls, Cellar Dweller (Films)
Urusei Yatsura episodes 139-140
Urusei Yatsura Movie 3: Remember my Love (Film) Whilst I don’t think any UY film will compare to BD, this took a while to get going and could have just been a multi-episode arc in the core series. 3/5
Welp. ‘Grandma’ Seiko gave me a feeling so complicated.
Gun Gale Online II: Gunner Galer Onliner ep2-3
For a series that, by design, runs on computer game logic, it sure feels like none of these characters are familiar with any of the gameplay tropes one might associate with the battle royale genre, and need to explain them to each other at considerable, conspicuously time consuming length. This is shiny and (mostly) harmless, but frankly I am bored and likely won’t stick with it unless reports suggest it does something more interesting down the line.
DAN DA DAN (Japanese audio) - Episode 3 Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines (Japanese audio) - Episodes 9 Tower of God Season 2 (Japanese audio) - Episodes 9-10
I love the start of Dragon Ball Z. Some anime can take a several episodes to get going, but the DB universe is immediately expanded within the first few minutes of the first episode - with the arrival of Raditz.
By the end of only the second episode, we have learned the true origins of Goku (or Kakarot/Kakarroto) and how he ended up on Earth. It really is quite a fast start.
Dragon Ball Z Movie 1: Dead Zone [Re-watch]
The highlight of this one for me was
Gohan becoming intoxicated and then proceeding to urinate in Kuririn's mouth
And yes, I'm using spoiler tags for a 35 year old anime
Dragon Ball Z - Episode 7 through 35 [Japanese][Re-watch][Major spoilers blurred]
I've started to keep some notes as I go through my Dragon Ball re-watch; simply things that stand out to me or certain thoughts that I had when re-watching.
What kept going through my mind as I progressed a bit further into the show is how much of the original Japanese soundtrack I adore. In the UK, we grew up with the Ocean dub and Ron Wasserman's score, before we transitioned to the Funimation dub and Bruce Faulconer's score, and then to the Westwood dub and score. While these soundtracks are nostalgic and have their moments, none get close to the original Japanese score by Shunsuke Kikuchi in my opinion. Kikuchi is Dragon Ball, and I feel he manages to bring out Toriyama's artistic intentions the best with his music.
Now, after the Raditz saga there are a handful of filler episodes. One which stood out to me on this re-watch is episode 9, where Gohan falls into a cave and meets the robot known as "C-6", who has been trapped in the cave for 80 years. Gohan attempts to free C-6, which I think is quite poignant despite the episode not being canon; Gohan shows deep empathy for something that is 'only' a robot, so much so he continues to try and save C-6 as the cave begins to collapse on them. I think this is really good filler as it relates to Gohan's character in the canon. For instance, much later, in the Cell saga, we see the death (or termination) of Android #16 by Cell as the catalyst for Gohan to tap into his locked potential and ascend beyond the level of a Super Saiyan. Gohan isn't addicted to fighting like his father, his character is much different (likely due to being half-Earthling), he greatly sympathises with all creatures, including those who might be mere robots or androids.
While Toriyama did not sit down and approve every single character design or plot-point within these episodes, it has been noted Toriyama did contribute in some ways to the TV filler as well as the movies, such as designing Paikūhan or giving the anime production staff background information on the Saibamen. I think it's clear that those who worked on these filler episodes understood and appreciated Toriyama's characters and world.
Watching this set of episodes in Japanese, we are spared the infamous "it's over 9000!" line. In the original Japanese, the line is "It's higher than 8000!". This was changed in the original English dub as "9000" apparently matched the lip flaps better in English. DB Kai's English dub uses the original Japanese number though.
There's also something about watching the show again as a fully-fledged adult (I'm 30 now ), which I think is the case with a lot of media you go back to at a later stage of life. Some of the scenes definitely hit differently. As you grow, gain more life experience, and come to understand your own and other's mortality, you notice and comprehend things in the show you perhaps missed or did not quite fully understand when you were younger.
I sympathised with Chichi more when she learns of her husband's death and her son being "kidnapped" by Piccolo to go away and train. It's easy to see Chichi as simply a hot-headed, overbearing, crazy wife and mother. However, I now of course see, she is motivated by wanting to keep her family safe in the wake of a global threat. The deaths of Yamcha, Chiaotzu, Tienshinhan, and Piccolo weighed a lot more on me also. Piccolo's death especially, as it meant the Dragon Balls on Earth were gone; this filled me with an eerie sense of dread. For those surviving characters at that time, it meant they had no way of bringing their friends back to life. As far as they knew, they would not be seeing their friends alive again.
Perhaps the greatest scene in this stretch of episodes is when Piccolo sacrifices himself to save Gohan. As Piccolo says, Gohan is the only one who spoke kindly of him, which contributes towards Piccolo's actions to protect Gohan in that moment. Despite Son Goku being Piccolo's sworn enemy at this point, Piccolo sacrifices his own life to save his rival's son - which is a significant event in Piccolo's character development. Vegeta and Nappa also reveal to Piccolo that he is in fact not of this Earth and is actually from a planet called Namek. Much like Son Goku, Piccolo had no knowledge of his heritage or his true origins. It has been written on quite a bit, but this is seemingly a key factor as to why Dragon Ball Z, especially, took off within the Black-African American population when it came to the US. Being mixed-race myself and from a broken home, I can somewhat understand; being not quite sure of where you belong or where you are really from. Son Goku and Piccolo experience this on a inter-galactic scale, but it only serves to give them strength and more determination in their pursuits
The final scene in episode 35 is where we see an interesting diverge between how Son Goku is portrayed in the Japanese dub compared to the original English dub by Funimation. After being defeated and on the verge of death, Kuririn goes to finish off Vegeta with Yajirobē's sword. However, Kuririn is stopped by Son Goku. In the original Japanese version, Son Goku states that when he saw Vegeta almost dead he thought "what a waste...". We learn that Son Goku was excited to find there was fighter out there as strong as Vegeta. He essentially states he wants Vegeta to survive so that he can fight him again. Despite Vegeta and Nappa murdering his close friends, he asks Kuririn to grant him this "selfish request" to let Vegeta escape. Here, Son Goku's Saiyan heritage is showing - he wants to fight strong fighters and test his limits - even if by doing so he is putting the Earth and his friends at risk.
However, I also listened to the same scene with Funimation's original English dub. In this version, Goku's justification for allowing Vegeta to escape is that he wants to show Vegeta compassion and that the people of Earth are merciful; in the hope that Vegeta may one day turn good. To me, this was a straight up character assassination of the Japanese Goku on Funimation's part. We lose a big bit of Goku's original personality in this scene, as Funimation originally attempted to portray Goku as a merciful superman-type character. Son Goku's true character is about fighting strong fighters and training to his limits, more so than it is about wanting to be a principled superhero. This isn't the first and it will, unfortunately, not be the last time where there is a divergence like this between Japanese Son Goku and the original English Goku. Thankfully, however, DB Kai's revised English dub is a lot more faithful to the original Japanese translation.
The end of episode 35 brings us to the end of the Saiyan arc.
Up next, we have a bit of a break from the regular TV series:
Dragon Ball Z Movie 2: The World's Strongest (1990)
Dragon Ball Z Movie 3: The Tree of Might (1990)
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), which I think is the case with a lot of media you go back to at a later stage of life. Some of the scenes definitely hit differently. As you grow, gain more life experience, and come to understand your own and other's mortality, you notice and comprehend things in the show you perhaps missed or did not quite fully understand when you were younger.