Japan is cool.
Ugh... so my buddy Dan's been feeding me the Love Hina manga books for the past few weeks to help pass the time at work. I just finished the 14th (and final) book. I knew the story from the series but when you have 14 books to tell it it becomes a bit more convoluted. It could be argued that this shit isn't too many steps up from cheesy serialized airport novels but at some point I actually became captivated and wanted to see where the characters end up after the anime leaves off...
Semblence of a point aside, I'm really in kind of a foul mood now that I'm done with them. This is what happens when you take in too much of any one thing. Even though they had complete closure on everything since I've spent large chunks of time over the past week getting through these books it feels abrupt that it's just... done.
If you can get past the fact that it's a "Is he going to get the girl?!" storyline spread out over like 110 installments the characters are pretty damn likeable and the awkward situations *almost* never hit the repetitive point. They generally try to make self-aware comments when repetition strikes but there are a few moments where it seemed they could've kicked up the pace storyline-wise a bit.
I'm kind of torn on the anime thing in general. There are a few shows I think are amazing but I've gotta say the average anime fan creeps the hell out of me. I think it's a leftover thing from Best Buy and GameStop mostly- When I sold it I got to see what the average fan is, and they are that Comic Book Store guy from The Simpsons. Not a fair description of the average fan I guess- and I do have a fair number of shows/films that I enjoy so I really can't accurately put myself on the side I'm shooting for. But I will hold ground on that the people who have the "If it's anime- it's awesome" mentality are like the die-hard Disney fans. For every Fantasia you're still going to have a Pocahontas VI: We Discovered Some Other Shit on your hands too. I guess that's just extremism, however, and it's flawed no matter what you apply it too.
My overall take: Anime as a medium is great. The argument I always got towards the shows I like is "Why not just do it live action?" My argument has always been "Why paint a portrait if you can just snap a picture?" Having full control over every speck of every frame is something [good] director's could only dream of- and even that's debatable now with the rise of CG. But controlling all of the lighting/colors/facial expressions/camera angles and movement... Hmm. I'll retract my "I'm torn on the anime thing" statement and replace it with "Fuck extremists." Anyone who is 100% for OR against it is an idiot in my book.
But I'm sure that goes for anything. 100% sure, in fact.
...fuck.
I would like to say as long as this is an anime rant that everyone who hasn't shouild see Neon Genesis Evangelion ASAP. It's gotta be one of the most brilliant, artistic and captivating things I've ever seen. And no, not just the last two episodes. (that's right, Alex, screw off)
Meh. Musings. Sleep.
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