"Aishiteru ze Baby" and "Bleach"
Jan. 1st, 2005 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katsarisHappy New Year, everyone!
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Have not commented any on the tsunami tragedy, mainly because I don't have anything noteworthy to say about it that hasn't been stated already. My only additional perspective I could have would probably be a comment about mass-murdering deities --- but it'd probably be in really bad taste to try and push a religious point of view based on this issue.
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Have been bittorrent-downloading a couple anime eps last few days. "Aishiteru ze baby", ep 1, and "Bleach", ep 1, as recommended to me by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
homasse
A couple unspoilery words, and then onwards with the more spoilery commentary.
Bleach: Yay for humorous violence! Onwards.
Aishiteru ze baby: No way. Too saccharine-sweet.
Aishiteru ze baby
Okay, assuming that the fansubbing was accurate, which I have no reason to believe it wasn't: Did I get it right that the reason the immature teen-fellow was saddled with the orphan-for-practical-purposes 5-year-old girl, was not despite but rather *because* he was the most immature in the whole family?
Sure it makes sense from an authorial sense to put the two of them together, the person that needs the care, and the person who needs to start thinking about someone outside himself. But, gah! If you are the writers then atleast find a plausible reason for such to happen. Like (for example), they don't have any other family whatsoever, so it's either he takes care of her or it's the orphanage. Or something. Anything.
Humour was also ultra-lame. Seeing her as he returns home and thinking that his sister has shrunk would possibly be a good joke in a magic-laden series where such bizarre things have a way of happening. In a realistic series like this, it felt like the writers simply wanted to find as many ways to destroy the audience's suspension of disbelief as they possibly could.
homasse also described this series as "cute", but I think this mainly served to show we have different definitions for the word "cute". :-) The greek word I'd use is glykanalato, literally "sugared and saltless", in meaning closest translation being "saccharine" I think.
And in the end it will end up being either of two things -- either the five-year old kid will not suffer excessive amounts of either danger or distress in the rest of the series, or she will. If she doesn't, then the series will probably exceptionally empty from an emotional-interest perspective, since I don't give a damn about the guy-protagonist. And if she does suffer through such danger or distress, then I'm probably too much of a softie to endure it without additional gut-wrenching. I could barely suffer it in the 1st ep when she was lost for a couple mins from kindergarten.
Lesson to be learned for series-creators everywhere: Better have your protagonists be atleast 8-10 year olds. Younger than that, and either they will live too happy existences to be endured by me-as-audience or suffer too much pain to be endured by me-as-audience.
Since my chosen ADSL connection is still limited (3GB free transfer per month) until I can be making some more money of my own to upgrade it, no more eps of Aishiterazu for me currently. Later perhaps I will download the second ep, just to see if it significantly improves from there. Otherwise -- nah...
Bleach
Now this is more like it. Yay for humorously applied violence! *g* This is *my* definition of cute. This big guy punching up three other big guys just for upturning the flowers that had been left to commemorate a dead girl. And then going to his place and being punched around by his own dad for being late for dinner. (And the nice thing btw is that this "cartoonish" violence doesn't take away from the much more serious violence later on -- you can tell the difference by the fact that people bleed in the latter.)
And one of his first questions after meeting up with a death-god who's showing him the metaphysical deeper realities of the universe being "Why do your drawings suck so much?"
Hee.
And in this case the drama of the series (from what I can tell from the first ep atleast) also seems to work. I wonder if the guy's sister with the attitude of "Doesn't matter that I can see ghosts, the fact I choose not to believe in them means they don't affect them" will keep up her bizarre solipsism now that she's been almost killed by them.
And cool end. "Kurosaki Ichigo. Occupation : High School student... and also: DEATH GOD" Coolness.
Anyway, will keep on downloading this one. Recommended so far.
---
Have not commented any on the tsunami tragedy, mainly because I don't have anything noteworthy to say about it that hasn't been stated already. My only additional perspective I could have would probably be a comment about mass-murdering deities --- but it'd probably be in really bad taste to try and push a religious point of view based on this issue.
---
Have been bittorrent-downloading a couple anime eps last few days. "Aishiteru ze baby", ep 1, and "Bleach", ep 1, as recommended to me by
homasseA couple unspoilery words, and then onwards with the more spoilery commentary.
Bleach: Yay for humorous violence! Onwards.
Aishiteru ze baby: No way. Too saccharine-sweet.
Aishiteru ze baby
Okay, assuming that the fansubbing was accurate, which I have no reason to believe it wasn't: Did I get it right that the reason the immature teen-fellow was saddled with the orphan-for-practical-purposes 5-year-old girl, was not despite but rather *because* he was the most immature in the whole family?
Sure it makes sense from an authorial sense to put the two of them together, the person that needs the care, and the person who needs to start thinking about someone outside himself. But, gah! If you are the writers then atleast find a plausible reason for such to happen. Like (for example), they don't have any other family whatsoever, so it's either he takes care of her or it's the orphanage. Or something. Anything.
Humour was also ultra-lame. Seeing her as he returns home and thinking that his sister has shrunk would possibly be a good joke in a magic-laden series where such bizarre things have a way of happening. In a realistic series like this, it felt like the writers simply wanted to find as many ways to destroy the audience's suspension of disbelief as they possibly could.
homasse also described this series as "cute", but I think this mainly served to show we have different definitions for the word "cute". :-) The greek word I'd use is glykanalato, literally "sugared and saltless", in meaning closest translation being "saccharine" I think.And in the end it will end up being either of two things -- either the five-year old kid will not suffer excessive amounts of either danger or distress in the rest of the series, or she will. If she doesn't, then the series will probably exceptionally empty from an emotional-interest perspective, since I don't give a damn about the guy-protagonist. And if she does suffer through such danger or distress, then I'm probably too much of a softie to endure it without additional gut-wrenching. I could barely suffer it in the 1st ep when she was lost for a couple mins from kindergarten.
Lesson to be learned for series-creators everywhere: Better have your protagonists be atleast 8-10 year olds. Younger than that, and either they will live too happy existences to be endured by me-as-audience or suffer too much pain to be endured by me-as-audience.
Since my chosen ADSL connection is still limited (3GB free transfer per month) until I can be making some more money of my own to upgrade it, no more eps of Aishiterazu for me currently. Later perhaps I will download the second ep, just to see if it significantly improves from there. Otherwise -- nah...
Bleach
Now this is more like it. Yay for humorously applied violence! *g* This is *my* definition of cute. This big guy punching up three other big guys just for upturning the flowers that had been left to commemorate a dead girl. And then going to his place and being punched around by his own dad for being late for dinner. (And the nice thing btw is that this "cartoonish" violence doesn't take away from the much more serious violence later on -- you can tell the difference by the fact that people bleed in the latter.)
And one of his first questions after meeting up with a death-god who's showing him the metaphysical deeper realities of the universe being "Why do your drawings suck so much?"
Hee.
And in this case the drama of the series (from what I can tell from the first ep atleast) also seems to work. I wonder if the guy's sister with the attitude of "Doesn't matter that I can see ghosts, the fact I choose not to believe in them means they don't affect them" will keep up her bizarre solipsism now that she's been almost killed by them.
And cool end. "Kurosaki Ichigo. Occupation : High School student... and also: DEATH GOD" Coolness.
Anyway, will keep on downloading this one. Recommended so far.