Just kidding. This update contains exactly zero puppies. It does have a kitten, though. Can you find it? Better get to clickin’, mateys.
Add to Queue: Weekly DVD Column
The Add to Queue DVD column gets top billing this week, because it brings with it a miracle of human joy: more Futurama. Unfortunately, even the best things have their downside. So let me ask: what the hell is wrong with you, Internet? Half the results I received for my Futurama image searches were cartoon porn. Are you really that hard up, Internet? Seriously?
Anime Blues: Weekly Anime Column
And for once I’m actually kind of intrigued by the anime on offer this week. Paprika‘s supposed to be complete great in the usual Satoshi Kon style — which is good, maybe. Seven years later, I’m still shell-shocked from Perfect Blue. Also, I’ve given the anime column a new title. It’s a lame name, admittedly, but that is what happens when the writer is insufficiently proactive about it. Tsk.
New Game +: Weekly Games Column
Aaaand at the other end of the spectrum is the weekly game release column. We are clearly past the pre-Black Friday salad days of yore, that’s for certain.
Wow, you’re right, that’s a lot of Futurama porn. The loving descriptions on that one site are pretty hilarious, though.
Yeah, I didn’t actually click through any of those.
Er, yeah, I guess that’s fine. What’s in a name, wot?
“it’s the assiest-looking Wii game yet.”
Best. Review. EVAR.
Paprika is the best looking anime film since Spirited Away. One warning, please watch it on mute. It is stupider than the last 2 Matrix movies COMBINED. It is retarded. I like Satoshi Kon, but it is shit. Towards the end I was thinking “At least it doesn’t have icky nudity like Perfect Blue/Paranoia Agent….. oops”. It falls victim to the “lets make up the rules as we go along” trap, like Howls Moving Castle, only much, much worse. Good looking movie though.
There is actually an internal logic to Paprika. It’s just…kind of difficult to spot it amongst all the crazy visuals and melding of reality with fantasy.
Well, Paprika has the benefit of being about dreams, and taking place in dreams, and dreams bleeding with reality, so all of the randomness actually ends up making sense, in that crazy dream logic kind of way. Controlled chaos, if you will. It makes up the rules as it goes along, but it plays out in a world without rules to begin with.
Good point, being about dreams is the ultimate pass. It’s still retarded. Hey, Sardius, please give a real update. I am missing your free entertainment. I know you don’t owe us anything, but all this teasing is cruel. Hey, does being about dreams excuse ‘In Dreams’ (Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding) for being shitty? I find that the best interpretation of dreams is the Foo Fighters video for Everlong (youtube it). The director for it went on to participate is Eternal Sunshine and another lesser known movie that I need to see that I forgot the title of because I have been drinking.
RE: dreams — I totally agree with you guys. Paprika is a beautiful movie, but I’m a little tired of these directors using “dream worlds” as an excuse to omit characters’ logic and incentives, or to permit them to make wildly ridiculous statements and decisions.
Koizumi from Haruhi, everyone in UY: Beautiful Dreamer, and so many others — anime literally takes illogical ridiculousness and makes a genre out of it, I swear.
Am I the only one who found Paprika to be a refreshing exception to a lot of the usual anime storytelling cliches? To me, the story made sense (for being a story about dreams invading reality), I understood what every major character wanted at each key point, and it avoided the dreadful “everyone floating in space talking about their ’emotions’ with zero context or action driving things forward” denouement.
The dream-symbolism was a good combination of subtle and playfully surreal, not everything you see in the giant parade “means” anything. I can think of so many directors who would have strangled the film trying to pack those scenes with more “meaning” only to have it implode trying to explain it all.
Amazingly, the story only has one to ~1.5 real main theme, instead of doing the usual anime thing of trying to encompass every single theme possible with the most cosmic scope, ever… see again “everyone floating in space talking”.
Only thing I didn’t like was the english translation on the dream babble, “waffle emperor” et al. It didn’t sound like authentic dream logic or automatic speaking to me, compared to the visual progressions (like the cop’s recurring dream) which had a beautiful logic to them.
So I thought it was very well crafted and a display of great creative maturity. Am I on crack?
Also I really want to steal Paprika’s ability to use artwork as dimensional portals as a game mechanic.
So the rest of Bleach is even worse than the Soul Society arc? Is that even possible?
Re: Artwork as dimensional portals as game mechanic
Uh, wasn’t that Super Mario 64? Not to mention Portrait of Ruin.
I probably just need to see the movie again. :)
Portrait of Ruin I didn’t play. In Mario64 they were just wobbly textures. I’m talking full-on portals into an arbitrary space.
Those Cruis’n games are still everywhere in what passes for arcades these days. You should have a gander because the attract mode touts an upcoming Ultra 64 home version that should be phat.