You ARE the prettiest, Okura.
Apr. 17th, 2012 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fenlingsB@man
A-MA-ZING. I'll have to watch this again, because we turned our usual Game Night into a STARKID night, and it was hard to make out some of the jokes over our shrieks of laughter. The best part was Robin's tragic robin-related trauma. Because we always heard all about Bruce's bat-related trauma and how the bat like talks to him and stuff, but what about ROBIN's trauma and why he chose that name! In line with the subtle misogyny I get from all Starkid productions, I was missing the presence of at least one real female character in this show. But the Batman/Robin (and Batman/Superman) relationships were developed brilliantly and hysterically, and the songs were great. FUCK GOTHAM, SAVE ROBIN, indeed. (Glad they had cursing here unlike Starship.) We also watched the first acts of AVPM and Starship to refresh our memories~.
Arietty
This was classic Miyazaki at its best. I love all incarnations of the Borrowers, and the attention to detail with the water drop sizes, etc., was really great. The sound editing was what worked best to emphasize the LARGENESS of the human world (though really, Borrowers' voices should be really high and humans' very low, shouldn't they?) The character designs of the boy and Arietty actually reminded me of Mononokehime, but I guess Miyazaki likes that type. Even though the Borrowers are SO English, they translated well (though of course things like Spiller's name didn't translate). But the Englishness of the Borrowers included way more jokes, wordplays, and subtle parodies, whereas the tone of this movie was very nostalgic (typical Miyazaki). The end reminded me of the end of Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi in that the two people from different worlds are parted and back in their separate worlds at the end, with only their memories of each other. (With rural Japan as the gateway between those two worlds.) The somber tone also fit with both the Borrowers' everyday struggle to survive and the uncertain future survival of the species as a whole. IT WAS SO GOOD THO. <3333 I watched Howl's Moving Castle the other week for the first time, and Arietty is way better, not the least because in Arietty you actually know wtf is going on in the plot and character motivations.
Chonmage Purin
HOW HAVE I NOT HEARD OF THIS BEFORE OMG. Ryo is a samurai who is transported to modern day Tokyo, moves in with a single mother and son to do their housework, and eventually becomes a pastry chef. There is an imdb review which talks about how this film shirks resolving the gender issues it raises and instead veers off into the pastry territory, and to some extent I agree. But Ryo does change his old-fashioned views somewhat. Ryo's transformation is also interesting in that he treats his old view of gender roles with the same critical view that he has to treat his view of transportation or clothes or food in the modern world. I just hope that his transformation wasn't a simple fantasy of the woman being able to change her old-fashioned ex-husband through the lens of Ryo the samurai turned shufu. The little boy was ADORABLE, and him bonding with Ryo (with pokemon!) was the best and most hilarious part of the film.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
paranoid_ninja and I both were reminded of Kenshin with the samurai doing housework thing. And at the end, there is an epic fight where Ryo defeats random Yakuza with a frosting knife (like his sakabato!) that he borrowed from his pastry shop boss who just carries it around like Peeta. This SO needed to be a series where samurai Ryo fights crime with his frosting knife!!!! But then the fickle Buddha sent him back to his old time just as he'd achieved his dream of living a meaningful life and everyone was crying and IT WAS SO LAME. D:
SP
Finally, I watched the First Movie, Second Special, and Second Movie all in a row in one day, FOOLISHLY hoping this would enable things to make more sense. The person I watched the series with watched it with me, and we were both still so confused by all the loose ends at the end. There are countless small plot holes, like how the SP never SHOOT THEIR GUNS at the bad guys or TIE THEM UP or CALL FOR BACKUP. But those just exacerbate the big loose ends, like wtf is actually going on with the plots within plots to overthrow the Diet or gain power or whatever. So Ogata and that politician were brothers, I guess is the big reveal. And the PM (supposedly) was responsible for their dad's death. So they BOTH assumed DIFFERENT fake identities and went undercover as a SP and a politician to bring him down. This right here strains credulity. How many background checks do you have to go through as an SP or a Diet member?! But I guess we're supposed to think that Ogata's cadre of uni friends who all infiltrated the police helped or something. There were SO many characters with SO many different plots that only some of them knew, and their motivations were totally obscure. Like the high ranking police man who was forced to hang himself - he had some plot of his own, but for what? Was he contacting the Beatles? Are the Beatles the ones that blew up that building at the end? What building was it? The uni club photo that fell from the explosion was shown before, but neither of us could remember where... Also, that group of young bureaucrats who were going to make the "ideal bureaucracy" (which, wtf does that even mean? Any new system put in place of the old one seemed to be just as corrupt.) - were they part of Ogata's uni club or not? SP never EXPLAINS anything, gah. It shows the same flashback 10 times, but never EXPLAINS it. And so many DELAYS and boring fight scenes instead of telling us what's going on. Why do we care these people are fighting? What are they even fighting FOR? They even had an investigator who was a perfect character to explain everything to us, but no.
The best part of SP is Inoue's random psychic crimesensing abilities. The action was well-choreographed too, and Okada did his own stunts. And of course Inoue's EPIC INTENSE RELATIONSHIP with Ogata. At the end, they show Ogata maybe going to get out of prison, and Inoue getting another psychic attack for the first time in a long time. They have a ~psychic bond~.
Sorry, Nino, Gantz was super boring and upsetting (aliens are people too!), and I had to give up on it, but I did watch:
Ooku
After a disease kills 3/4ths of the men of Japan, impoverished samurai Nino does his public service of impregnating all the ladies for free and being grateful that his mother never pimped him out for money. His childhood sweetheart is Maki, but since she comes from money, she has to marry rich. It's strange the way Nino seems to speak more modernly than his family and Maki. Also lol the way he keeps calling his family mazushii to their faces is kind of rude.
So instead of accepting a marriage offer, he decides to enterJE the Ooku. I don't really get why. I mean he would get a salary for his family that way instead of just a one time payment... But he would have little freedom. Oh, I guess because if he couldn't marry Maki then he didn't want to marry? But aren't there ANY profitable career options for a samurai man left in the world...
Nino becomes a page in the Ooku, but he is bullied by the other pages and OMG ABE SADAWO SAVING THE DAY ALL THE TIME AND BEING AN OOKU MENTOR TO NINO OMGGG <3333 Ugh, the other pages try to rape him as punishment too, gross. Abe says that its normal in the Ooku to sleep with men, but Nino takes the side of the No Sperm Left Behind bills and says he could never do such a thing while there are so many women out there desperate to have a child. ABE TELLS NINO HIS SAD SAD STORY ABOUT HIS LIFE OF STARVATION AND SEXUAL ABUSE and says that even though Ooku is cruel, it's better than what he had before. :( Meanwhile Okuraaaa and Tamakiiii are Ooku boyfriends and it's adorable.
But Ooku men are also security guards! So Nino has a training bout against Okura and defeats him, then Okura has a snitfit and tells Nino that he's STILL THE PRETTIEST and THAT'S WHAT'S MOST IMPORTANT. Tamaki is Unimpressed with Okura's immaturity and breaks up with him. :( Okura goes crazy with his defeat and being dumped and challenges Nino to a fight with REAL swords even though it's illegal to draw swords in Ooku (which, then why are they allowed to have them at all?) And Nino keeps speaking to him in Keigo, and doesn't draw his sword because it belongs to their lady, aww. Nino IS a little TOO perfect. OMG and then Okura kills himself omg. And Nino acts as his second. WTF Okura.
Nino has a fanclub of younger boys since he defeated Okura. Wow, Ooku really IS just like JE. Nino is clearly constructed as The Manly One, since he refuses to sleep with men and shaves his pate (FOR HELMETS FOR BATTLE OK) instead of keeping his forelocks long and beautiful like a woman. Also he doesnt want to wear colors and wears ALL BLACK. The boy from Nino's fanclub is now his tailor, and sews his BLACK clothes and then in exchange asks for a memory~~. Nino gives him a kiss in thanks omg. The fanboy is overwhelmed~ and Abe lols hysterically.
Wow, there are male geishas in the city. Matsushima Shota is one!
Meanwhile, Shibasaki Kou is the most kickass new Shogun ever, and introduces fiscal reform (lol), has no time for the Ooku, and goes out among the people to ~see how they live~. It's true that the Ooku is a waste of money.
Nino gets promoted to a higher position that actually gets to see the Shogun and Abe is promoted to be his cupbearer, awww. Tamaki's boss has some plan to make Nino catch the Shogun's eye, and then pauses his scheming for some Tamaki loving. As one would. Nino does catch the Shogun's eye by being noble and covering up someone else's misdeed. But there's an old rule that the first one to have sex with the Shogun has to die. D: Can't the Shogun just like, make a law that says that rule no longer applies? So THAT's why Tamaki's boss wanted him to catch the Shogun's eye - to sacrifice Nino and protect the other dudes at that rank. And eventually make Tamaki the father of the Shogun's baby. When Abe hears of this HE IS MOST DISPLEASED.
Naked Nino is still so skinny, jeez. Aaaah, Tamaki and his boss SIT OUTSIDE THE BED listening to Nino and the Shogun have sex. Oh the Shogun has a ~sekrit plan~ so everyone just THINKS he dies, and he gets to be with Maki and become a trader. LOL then the Shogun kicks out 50 young men from the Ooku, including Tamaki, to find happiness in marriage. SHIBASAKI KOU CAN BE MY SHOGUN ANY DAY.
Also, with most of the men dead, there's no more war. A+
A-MA-ZING. I'll have to watch this again, because we turned our usual Game Night into a STARKID night, and it was hard to make out some of the jokes over our shrieks of laughter. The best part was Robin's tragic robin-related trauma. Because we always heard all about Bruce's bat-related trauma and how the bat like talks to him and stuff, but what about ROBIN's trauma and why he chose that name! In line with the subtle misogyny I get from all Starkid productions, I was missing the presence of at least one real female character in this show. But the Batman/Robin (and Batman/Superman) relationships were developed brilliantly and hysterically, and the songs were great. FUCK GOTHAM, SAVE ROBIN, indeed. (Glad they had cursing here unlike Starship.) We also watched the first acts of AVPM and Starship to refresh our memories~.
Arietty
This was classic Miyazaki at its best. I love all incarnations of the Borrowers, and the attention to detail with the water drop sizes, etc., was really great. The sound editing was what worked best to emphasize the LARGENESS of the human world (though really, Borrowers' voices should be really high and humans' very low, shouldn't they?) The character designs of the boy and Arietty actually reminded me of Mononokehime, but I guess Miyazaki likes that type. Even though the Borrowers are SO English, they translated well (though of course things like Spiller's name didn't translate). But the Englishness of the Borrowers included way more jokes, wordplays, and subtle parodies, whereas the tone of this movie was very nostalgic (typical Miyazaki). The end reminded me of the end of Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi in that the two people from different worlds are parted and back in their separate worlds at the end, with only their memories of each other. (With rural Japan as the gateway between those two worlds.) The somber tone also fit with both the Borrowers' everyday struggle to survive and the uncertain future survival of the species as a whole. IT WAS SO GOOD THO. <3333 I watched Howl's Moving Castle the other week for the first time, and Arietty is way better, not the least because in Arietty you actually know wtf is going on in the plot and character motivations.
Chonmage Purin
HOW HAVE I NOT HEARD OF THIS BEFORE OMG. Ryo is a samurai who is transported to modern day Tokyo, moves in with a single mother and son to do their housework, and eventually becomes a pastry chef. There is an imdb review which talks about how this film shirks resolving the gender issues it raises and instead veers off into the pastry territory, and to some extent I agree. But Ryo does change his old-fashioned views somewhat. Ryo's transformation is also interesting in that he treats his old view of gender roles with the same critical view that he has to treat his view of transportation or clothes or food in the modern world. I just hope that his transformation wasn't a simple fantasy of the woman being able to change her old-fashioned ex-husband through the lens of Ryo the samurai turned shufu. The little boy was ADORABLE, and him bonding with Ryo (with pokemon!) was the best and most hilarious part of the film.
paranoid_ninja and I both were reminded of Kenshin with the samurai doing housework thing. And at the end, there is an epic fight where Ryo defeats random Yakuza with a frosting knife (like his sakabato!) that he borrowed from his pastry shop boss who just carries it around like Peeta. This SO needed to be a series where samurai Ryo fights crime with his frosting knife!!!! But then the fickle Buddha sent him back to his old time just as he'd achieved his dream of living a meaningful life and everyone was crying and IT WAS SO LAME. D:SP
Finally, I watched the First Movie, Second Special, and Second Movie all in a row in one day, FOOLISHLY hoping this would enable things to make more sense. The person I watched the series with watched it with me, and we were both still so confused by all the loose ends at the end. There are countless small plot holes, like how the SP never SHOOT THEIR GUNS at the bad guys or TIE THEM UP or CALL FOR BACKUP. But those just exacerbate the big loose ends, like wtf is actually going on with the plots within plots to overthrow the Diet or gain power or whatever. So Ogata and that politician were brothers, I guess is the big reveal. And the PM (supposedly) was responsible for their dad's death. So they BOTH assumed DIFFERENT fake identities and went undercover as a SP and a politician to bring him down. This right here strains credulity. How many background checks do you have to go through as an SP or a Diet member?! But I guess we're supposed to think that Ogata's cadre of uni friends who all infiltrated the police helped or something. There were SO many characters with SO many different plots that only some of them knew, and their motivations were totally obscure. Like the high ranking police man who was forced to hang himself - he had some plot of his own, but for what? Was he contacting the Beatles? Are the Beatles the ones that blew up that building at the end? What building was it? The uni club photo that fell from the explosion was shown before, but neither of us could remember where... Also, that group of young bureaucrats who were going to make the "ideal bureaucracy" (which, wtf does that even mean? Any new system put in place of the old one seemed to be just as corrupt.) - were they part of Ogata's uni club or not? SP never EXPLAINS anything, gah. It shows the same flashback 10 times, but never EXPLAINS it. And so many DELAYS and boring fight scenes instead of telling us what's going on. Why do we care these people are fighting? What are they even fighting FOR? They even had an investigator who was a perfect character to explain everything to us, but no.
The best part of SP is Inoue's random psychic crimesensing abilities. The action was well-choreographed too, and Okada did his own stunts. And of course Inoue's EPIC INTENSE RELATIONSHIP with Ogata. At the end, they show Ogata maybe going to get out of prison, and Inoue getting another psychic attack for the first time in a long time. They have a ~psychic bond~.
Sorry, Nino, Gantz was super boring and upsetting (aliens are people too!), and I had to give up on it, but I did watch:
Ooku
After a disease kills 3/4ths of the men of Japan, impoverished samurai Nino does his public service of impregnating all the ladies for free and being grateful that his mother never pimped him out for money. His childhood sweetheart is Maki, but since she comes from money, she has to marry rich. It's strange the way Nino seems to speak more modernly than his family and Maki. Also lol the way he keeps calling his family mazushii to their faces is kind of rude.
So instead of accepting a marriage offer, he decides to enter
Nino becomes a page in the Ooku, but he is bullied by the other pages and OMG ABE SADAWO SAVING THE DAY ALL THE TIME AND BEING AN OOKU MENTOR TO NINO OMGGG <3333 Ugh, the other pages try to rape him as punishment too, gross. Abe says that its normal in the Ooku to sleep with men, but Nino takes the side of the No Sperm Left Behind bills and says he could never do such a thing while there are so many women out there desperate to have a child. ABE TELLS NINO HIS SAD SAD STORY ABOUT HIS LIFE OF STARVATION AND SEXUAL ABUSE and says that even though Ooku is cruel, it's better than what he had before. :( Meanwhile Okuraaaa and Tamakiiii are Ooku boyfriends and it's adorable.
But Ooku men are also security guards! So Nino has a training bout against Okura and defeats him, then Okura has a snitfit and tells Nino that he's STILL THE PRETTIEST and THAT'S WHAT'S MOST IMPORTANT. Tamaki is Unimpressed with Okura's immaturity and breaks up with him. :( Okura goes crazy with his defeat and being dumped and challenges Nino to a fight with REAL swords even though it's illegal to draw swords in Ooku (which, then why are they allowed to have them at all?) And Nino keeps speaking to him in Keigo, and doesn't draw his sword because it belongs to their lady, aww. Nino IS a little TOO perfect. OMG and then Okura kills himself omg. And Nino acts as his second. WTF Okura.
Nino has a fanclub of younger boys since he defeated Okura. Wow, Ooku really IS just like JE. Nino is clearly constructed as The Manly One, since he refuses to sleep with men and shaves his pate (FOR HELMETS FOR BATTLE OK) instead of keeping his forelocks long and beautiful like a woman. Also he doesnt want to wear colors and wears ALL BLACK. The boy from Nino's fanclub is now his tailor, and sews his BLACK clothes and then in exchange asks for a memory~~. Nino gives him a kiss in thanks omg. The fanboy is overwhelmed~ and Abe lols hysterically.
Wow, there are male geishas in the city. Matsushima Shota is one!
Meanwhile, Shibasaki Kou is the most kickass new Shogun ever, and introduces fiscal reform (lol), has no time for the Ooku, and goes out among the people to ~see how they live~. It's true that the Ooku is a waste of money.
Nino gets promoted to a higher position that actually gets to see the Shogun and Abe is promoted to be his cupbearer, awww. Tamaki's boss has some plan to make Nino catch the Shogun's eye, and then pauses his scheming for some Tamaki loving. As one would. Nino does catch the Shogun's eye by being noble and covering up someone else's misdeed. But there's an old rule that the first one to have sex with the Shogun has to die. D: Can't the Shogun just like, make a law that says that rule no longer applies? So THAT's why Tamaki's boss wanted him to catch the Shogun's eye - to sacrifice Nino and protect the other dudes at that rank. And eventually make Tamaki the father of the Shogun's baby. When Abe hears of this HE IS MOST DISPLEASED.
Naked Nino is still so skinny, jeez. Aaaah, Tamaki and his boss SIT OUTSIDE THE BED listening to Nino and the Shogun have sex. Oh the Shogun has a ~sekrit plan~ so everyone just THINKS he dies, and he gets to be with Maki and become a trader. LOL then the Shogun kicks out 50 young men from the Ooku, including Tamaki, to find happiness in marriage. SHIBASAKI KOU CAN BE MY SHOGUN ANY DAY.
Also, with most of the men dead, there's no more war. A+