Up, close and personal

Well, I haven't written much lately, basically because I haven't done much lately beside working and, at some point of the day, watching TV or, rather, DVDs, as there is not much on TV to watch. So, today I just decided to go through some anime I've been on these days. Did you ever start to watch this japanese cartoon show and think, "this is quite a kiddie thing" just to, after a few episodes, thank God you never got your nieces to actually watch it? This is anime for you, guys!



First, there is Bleach. The underlying concept is pretty ordinary; you get these gods of death, or shinigami, basically in charge of collecting the souls of dead people just after their demise. If they don't, these souls may become what they call hollows, the bad guys from the show. They carry these really large swords they can modify with their inner force and most of them can use martial arts and even magic -kido- at some extent. The show starts when Ichigo, the main character, helps this shinigami Rukia girl defeat some hollows by borrowing her sword and, with it, most her powers. Now he is stuck with her job and hollows seems to be everywhere. He is also stuck with Rukia, as she can not return to her world without powers, and she is not very familiar with this world either. Plus there is this mistery plot around the shinigami that everyone is involved into, yet knows nothing about. Even though the key concept is pretty usual, the series are nifty -at least during season one- mostly because of the secondary characters and the underlying humour. Ichigo is basically the tormented teenager, but his friends, Orihime, the quincy and Urahara are hilarious, and, once in the Seritei, captains like Shunshui, the 11th squad or Kuukaku and her brother really made my day. There are also pretty cool combat scenes, but I'd stick to Yoruichi and SoiFon shunpo combat, in pure jiajutsu style, without swords and toys, basically because you get to see most of the hits. And the intro sequences are the best design I've seen in anime. Too bad they decided to switch to a different style in the stupid, stupid bounto saga, where all you get is angst and emo characters and none of the absurdity and weirdness of season one. Just like Dragon Ball a decade ago. Maybe the hollow saga is better, but I haven't gathered the resolution to go back to the series after the bounto fiasco.



Now, something different: Great Teacher Onizuka. This Onizuka guy used to be the leader of a gang of bikers when he was a teen, but now he is older and supposed to do something with his life. He decides to become a teacher, mostly because he will get to see lot of girls in short skirts: too bad he does not have the qualifications. Still, Onizuka has something that most teachers don't: an understanding of the students. During a work interview, the director of a school notices that and decides to hire him ... to teach the hardest group in the place. These guys have already sent into depression 4 or 5 teachers and none lasted more than 2 months, but Onizuka manages to win them one by one and to discover the secret behind the class behavior, and, at the same time, solves their problems and makes a fool of himself again and again and again in front of (one among many) the girl he likes (sometimes). This anime is fun, fun, fun and some of the episodes are really good at storytelling.



Back to fantasy, but no swords, Full Metal Alchemy has a nifty plot. These guys, Alfonz and Edward, start to dabble with alchemy to impress their mom after their dad, a very famous alchemist, leaves one day. Too bad her mom gets sick and dies, because they decide to bring her back from the dead using alchemy, but forget about its most important rule: equivalent exchange. In order to get something, you must pay with something of the same value. The experiment is a disaster: their mother returns as a horrible creature that explodes later, Ed loses an arm and a leg and Alfonz's body evaporates and his soul gets bonded to a golem armor to prevent him from dying. Wenry, the kid's neighbour and a hot shot at mechanics (go engineers,go!), provides some limbs for Ed and her granny takes them into their home, but in time they decide to leave and join the army so they can become alchemists and find the philosopher stone. Their goal is to use it to recreate Alfonz's body, but it is easier said than done. First, the army is not as clean as one might (or might not :)) think. Then, there is something really disturbing about the stone and anyone involved with it. Also, there is this strange murderer after alchemists. And, besides, who are the very mysterious homunculus? In this case, a simple plot that turns out not to be so simple after a few chapters and becomes rather complex, but coherent. Plus secondary characters are great, as usual, and the art is pretty good.



If you want to look for something really weird, try Dokuro Chan. She is a guardian angel from the future who comes to the current days with her bat Excaliborg to ... help(???) the main character, a shy teenager who likes a school mate (and any other female in the series, he's a teen, after all). Her help basically consists of killing him in the goriest possible way to bring him back to life later each time he does or say (or whatever) something that displeases her. There is also Sabatto-chan, the evil angel from the future who is supposed to kill the guy, but she is so useless when compared to murderous Dokuro that she gives pity. Plus everthing bad in the series not happening to the main character will most likely go her way. This anime might not be your choice, there are some scenes I laught at, but all in all I can't exactly get in the mood to watch this. It is like Bobobo, you either like it or hate it, only I don't like Bobobo at all: too strange for my taste.



Finally, Monster is one of the best series I've seen. It goes about this hot shot surgeon who likes life easy and won't quarrel with anyone, rather sheepishly obeying his boss and girlfriend, until one of these orders make him choose between the life of a rich man and a poor worker who had, in fact, arrived earlier. After thinking on how his ideals went corrupt, he has a second choice: the major of the town or a 7-years old kid with a gun shot on the head. This time he goes for the kid and the major dies. He loses his job, girlfriend and social position ... until his boss and superiors die poisoned that very same night and he is chosen head or surgery. It turns out 10 years later that the kid was, in fact, already a very dangerous sociopath and he had saved his life, so he is, in part, responsible for the many people he had killed in the last decade ... and will kill in the future. Again, he has to make a decision: leave the hospital and go find the killer, Johann, to finish him ... if he is capable of. From this point on, the anime becomes a superb road movie with hundreds of secondary characters and a very dark underlying story.



Not too bad for someone who only watched three anime series as a teen: Dragon Ball (of course), Saint Seiya (tea time) and Sailor Moon (they ran it during breakfast, guess stomach rules my TV :D). Dragon Ball was pretty cool during the first dozen episodes, up until the first martial arts competition. I laughted and laughted with the secondary characters and Goku's ignorance about practically anything. However, as soon as it became a neverending circle of "get more power - smash your fiend - find someone stronger to beat you up" and back again, I hated it. The deepest character in the series at the point was probably Goku's bo. Saint Seiya was pretty cool, with the armors, and the fights and everything, only it was always the same: Athena got captured by some unknown enemy that put her into a deadly trap and gave the saints 24 hours to free her. These guys would go against the baddies one by one, rather than smashing them together. Seiya's technique would basically be to let the others beat him up until they were too tired or too disgusted with his blood to go on and then finish them. Eventually, they'd free Athena and unmask the bad guy, who would vanish in thin air. The first time, it worked for me. The second -Asgard saga- was even better in terms of character development (the baddies were not that bad and such), but it was exactly the same. At Poseidon saga, I decided to just give up. Sailor Moon is a different matter, I can't recall much about the plot, because I only caught parts of the episodes with my coffe and cookies, but I just could not help by laugth with the transformations and little speeches of this main character, the Moon Warrior or whatever. I still remember her in the middle of a concert where the cello had gone nuts (and alive, of course) and massacred equally the band and the bystanders, but she would not do anything until the thing accidentally steps on a pot and then it goes like "For killing that little innocent flower, I won't forgive you. Moon, give me your powers!!" HAHAHAHA! It's true, unlike people flowers are really cool xDxD



I'm thinking about Samurai Champloo or Death Mask next ...