30 Day Anime Challenge: Day Three

Day Three wants to know your favorite male character.

First up, some honorable mentions to, amongst others, Inuyasha‘s lecherous itinerant monk with a black hole in his hand, Miroku, the titular Kenshin, as well as Sanosuke, from Rurouni Kenshin, Kawabara and Kurama, Yusuke and Hiei’s far more interesting sidekicks from YuYu Hakusho, Cowboy Bebop‘s fantastic Jet Black, and crack shot Daisuke Jigen from Lupin III.  Now onto my actual choices.

More Patlabor love!

Captain Kiichi Goto of Patlabor franchise fame is my number one choice.  He heads up the ragtag band of delightful weirdos that make up Section 2, Unit 2 of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police department.  He’s chill to a fault, but also sneaky brilliant and playfully devious.  It’d probably suck to work for him, but he’s damn great to watch.

D’aww..

My second choice is Haku from Naruto, partially because I have a severe weakness for androgyness-ness, but mostly because he was just a damn good character that got killed off way too soon.  The are very, very few good characters in Naruto, and pretty much every single one of them get the shaft in one way or another.  Haku was nominally an antagonist and was subsequently killed off at the climax of the very first major story arc.  Freakin’ DAMMIT. 😡

Now I’m just upset.  But thanks for stopping by anyway.

See you Space Cowboy..

30 Day Anime Challenge: Day Two

Day Two wants to know the favorite anime you’ve watched so far.  This… this is a toughie.  There are two series that are basically 1a and 1b, and a two more that are very, very close.  So I’m just gonna cop-out and speak the praises of all of them (get used to that, btw), since I’m not sure that any of them are particularly popular stateside.  I watched them all in the mid-to-late aughts, back when I had digital cable.  All but the one I’ll discuss first were up in the high numbers, the International Channel/AZN, Encore (mainly Encore Action), G4, and the like.  Feels good, man.

Yeah!

Anyway, first up is Coyote Ragtime Show.  I saw this one on the Anime Network On Demand back in the day, and as far as anime series go, it watches like a damn good popcorn flick.  It’s a short, fast-paced joyride that gets from point A to point B quickly and never feels the need to stop and sniff its own farts along the way.  If it helps, think of it as Outlaw Star‘s uncomplicated, fun-loving country cousin (with higher production values).

Abenobashi’s merry band of weirdos..

Moving on from analogies that are bizarre even by my standards, we have Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi.  This is another shorter series.  If I recall correctly, it kinda blows its own premise at the end, but it’s still a whole lotta dimension-hopping fun, looks nice, and has tons of heart (arguably the reason for the screw the rules ending).  You’ll be seeing this one again on down the line.

Tokyo Metropolitan Police Section 2, Division 2..

Now we’re at the ones that are 1a or 1b, depending on the day.  We’ll start with the entirety of the Patlabor series.  Love both the serious, darker movies and the lighter, goofier series, and you’ll be seeing it pop up with a fair amount of regularity over the course of my challenge.  Basically, it is the most realistic, down-to-earth mecha anime ever made.  The movies exist in their own continuity, and the plots go progressively more grandiose, as movie versions of things are wont to do, but they’re still more-or-less grounded in their version of reality.  Err, maybe not Wasted XIII.

Your Vandread pilots..

Finally, we’ll close it out with mecha space opera-ish harem adventure series Vandread.  Some elements of the series may call to mind (mainly old school) Battlestar Galactica.  Like all of my choices, this series is arguably here more for its heart and sense of fun than its brains.  Not that any of them are dumb, it’s just the the fun and heart are more important than any pretensions they might have.

To me, it’s important that one not lose their sense of humor or wonder to the inevitable cynicism being of an above average intelligence causes.  I guess that’s pretty much the unifying theme of my life, and my choices in entertainment tend to reflect that.

Thanks for stopping by!

See you Space Cowboy…

30 Day Anime Challenge: Day One

 

Day One wants to know what is the very first anime you watched.  To the best of my knowledge, that would be none other than the ultra-cheeseball classic, Speed Racer!

Here he comes..

It was so great and terrible and wonderful and parody-able and had one of the greatest theme songs ever made… Buuuut, I also didn’t know that was anime at the time.  The first anime I really recall knowing was anime would be G-Force.  Apparently it was pretty terrible, and not so much in the good Speed Racer way, but I was super into it when I was 9-10 years old.

These freakin’ guys..

Both have seen multiple revivals in various mediums over the years (G-Force was sort of one itself), some better than others, but for good or for ill, these incarnations of two venerable classics are where my anime roots lie.

Thanks for stopping by!

See you space cowboy…

 

30 Day Anime Challenge: Overview

Paul got me doing this fun thing on the twitters, even though I haven’t watched much anime in awhile.  So I thought I’d take it to the blog to elaborate on my choices, and just reminisce.  Here’s how it goes.

The Challenge is on..

I won’t do these posts every day, and I’ll try to sneak a few card, and art (if applicable), posts in there to mix things up a bit, but I’ll eventually cover the vast majority of the days here on the ol’ blog.  Look for Day One’s post over the weekend, and if you want sneak peaks, keep an eye on my twitter to see my choices in advance.

Thanks for stopping by, and feel free to leave your answers in the comments!  Maybe I’ll do a contest/giveaway at the end of this.

Oh oh, here we go! ♫