Naruto Shippuden: End Credits 21

The latest end credits sequence for Naruto Shippuden is tits.

Cowboy Bebop - Session 10: Ganymede Elegy

As anyone reading the past few episode reviews may have noticed, I support the theory that most episodes of Cowboy Bebop are about Spike, even the ones that seem like they aren’t. The exceptions to this rule are the stories that revolve around Jet or Faye (and to a lesser extent, Ed), which may involve Spike or support his story, but otherwise they belong to those characters only.

“Ganymede Elegy” serves as the first good example of such an exception by focusing almost exclusively on Jet and his past love, Alisa. Although certain details of this failed relationship closely resemble Spike’s own, the episode is largely about adults letting go of the past and moving on with their lives – a lesson that might end the show early if Spike were to learn it. It is also concerned with a symbolic stopping of time and its impact on ones ability to grow and mature, not unlike what we saw in "Sympathy for the Devil".

There are certainly similarities between Jet’s past and Spike’s, first introduced during the flashback early in the episode. It has all the rain, desaturated color, and implied heartbreak of the images Spike sees regularly, but without any of the violence, and with the addition of an odd pocket watch. Jet still carries the watch and, presumably, feelings for Alisa, judging by the way he rushes off to meet her when he finds out she runs a little bar called La Fin nearby on Ganymede.

Spike and Faye subsequently drop off their latest bounty without him, which prompts Faye to make a sarcastic comment about justice and duty, the sorts of virtues Jet chided her with as being definitively masculine in “Sympathy”. After Spike makes some remark in Jet’s defense, Faye adds something to the effect that it’s a mistake to believe that a woman from his past is still thinking about him. The official dub and sub disagree on who she means by "him", one saying Jet and the other Spike. Frankly, I think it is a mistake to choose at all. In the Japanese dialogue, she doesn't explicitly refer to either, a seemingly intentional decision because of how it works equally well for both of them. Regardless, not every woman thinks like Faye, as Spike immediately points out and Alisa soon demonstrates.

At the very least, Alisa still remembers Jet and their time together and seems pleased to discuss it at some length. As they talk about the recession and Alisa's boyfriend, Rhint, Jet puts the watch on the bar and tells her the story of how, after she left, he decided to leave Ganymede when the watched stopped running.

In doing so he introduces the stopped time motif, emblematic of the fact that Jet seems to think Alisa hasn't changed since he knew her eight years ago. He still worries about things like her financial situation and is shocked when she jokes with him about being married to Rhint and having three of his children. Ultimately, she avoids answering Jet's question as to why she left that day and ends the conversation by saying that she doesn't need time that has stopped.

Back on the Bebop, Faye is working on her tan after a nice throwaway line to Ed about how a woman's skin care is ultimately futile. Spike, meanwhile, is working on his ship, a job best left to Jet judging from the cartoonishly hard time he's having of it. As he's struggling, he gets a call from Jet's old cop buddy who lets him know that Rhint has a fresh bounty on his head for killing a loan shark.

While Jet is leaving La Fin, he sees Rhint sitting nearby, trying to light a cigarette with an uncooperative lighter held in shaky hands as he flashes back to the murder he committed. Rhint's nervous action and the jerky motion of the camera in his memory underline the difference between himself and Jet, who moves deliberately and calmly, even under stress. It is even reminiscent of the Bloody Eye trip Asimov had in the very first episode, with the slow yet jittery motion and eerie sound.

It also stands out from the long scenes in the bar between Alisa and Jet, in which the majority of the motion comes from the occasional shots of a drinking bird toy dipping into a glass of water or ice settling in a glass. It makes sense to have a bird like that in a bar, since it is constantly drinking, but it also exemplifies the regular, almost rhythmic motion that is characteristic of the mature characters in this episode.

This is at its most obvious in the remainder of the episode, beginning with the way Rhint sits on the floor of the bar in a mild panic after finding out he's wanted. Alisa decides that they should flee and they are soon pursued, first by Spike and later by Jet. Rhint fires wildly at Jet's ship from a fanboat that skitters over the waves as Alisa steers and Jet smoothly cruises over the water. Just before the boat is halted by the Jet's grappling hook, Alisa begins to stand in an arrestingly smooth motion that is soon replaced by the same panicky motion and wild shooting as Rhint in response to Jet slowly walking towards them back on land.

As he approaches, step by deliberate step, she finally explains why she left him. She felt like a child when they were together, since Jet made all the decisions and all she had to do was whatever he said. Alisa wanted to live her own life, even if she made mistakes, so she left. Now she runs a little bar on borrowed money in a bad economy, Rhint is likely going to jail because he killed her loan shark, and her solution to both of those problems is still the same as it was back then: run away.

In that way, Jet wasn't wrong when he assumed that time had stopped back on Ganymede. Alisa had become more self-assured, but basically she was just as prone to flight as she was back then. For her to grow up, she has to learn to stay, which is exactly what she does at the end of "Elegy". She is going to stick with the bar and wait for Rhint to be released, which shouldn't take long since the shooting is being considered as self defense.

In a similar vein, Jet can stop worring about Alisa and trying to protect her. She's grown up and with someone else and all he can do is let them make their own decisions. As he walks away from Alisa at the end, he looks at the watch, smiles, and throws it into the river, returning time to its normal flow.

Cowboy Bebop - Session 9: Jamming with Edward

"Jamming With Edward" opens with a closeup of what appears to be a robotic eye, not entirely unlike the one Spike has implanted at the beginning of "Sympathy for the Devil". This time, however, the eye belongs to one of the many satellites that suddenly begin carving up the deserted surface of what is later revealed to be Earth. As apocalyptic as that may sound, this isn't so much the end of the world as it is a bit of graffiti, albeit on a global scale. It isn't an entirely innocent act, however , and the search for the who and why behind it occupies a good portion of the episode. Fortunately, the why ends up being significant not only to understanding the vandalism, but also the reasons why Spike lives as he does.

Incidentally, the reason nobody seems terrorized by the fact that satellites are burning pictures on Earth is because almost nobody lives there anymore, and those that do have moved underground. Mankind has relocated over the last half-century to avoid the moon chunks that have been crashing into Earth as a result of the gate accident we also saw in "Sympathy". The people remaining under the Earth are seen as a little strange by the people who left for other planets, partly because they have become remarkably adept hackers as a necessary part of being able to communicate across space. In the scene where Spike decides to sit this one out, Faye isn't necessarily talking about all Earthlings when she disparages the hackers and otaku there, but considering that they have become a race of subterranean computer geeks who refuse to move away from home and have an unexplainable love of Japanese trash, she may as well be.

Enter Radical Edward, a weird and gender ambiguous young girl who is the prime suspect in the mysterious satellite laser doodle case. She is one of the Earth-bound hacker elite who uses an odd combination of video-goggles, hand gestures, and occasionally her feet to gain unauthorized access to computer systems. Her formidable technical skills and impish nature are both on display when she uses the controls from a homemade toy model of the Bebop to hijack and crash the ship belonging to the cops who come to arrest her. This kind of circumstantial evidence certainly points to her as someone who would take over the Star Wars defense just to draw a smiley face on South America, but she didn't do it, at least not yet. So even though the episode title would suggest that this is her story, her main purpose in the episode is to pursue the real culprit, which is how we get to the vastly more interesting MPU.

Through Ed’s sleuthing, we discover that MPU is an artificial intelligence trapped in an old spy satellite that has outlasted its purpose and is doomed to orbit Earth for as long as it continues to function. In order to occupy his time, MPU has been using the laser-equipped satellites he’s linked with to draw pictures of birds and other Nazca-looking designs on Earth. It isn’t much of a distraction, but he seems to be comforted by images from the past and helps him forget that his reason for existence was lost decades ago.

This depressing fact nicely continues the futility thread we picked up in the previous episode and gives MPU a connection to Spike that goes well beyond their mechanical eyes. Their connection is even reminiscent of the one between Spike and Roco in "Waltz for Venus", despite Spike and MPU having never actually met. Roco and MPU are both nevertheless joined to Spike by their sense of futility in a specific enough way that we can observe Spike through them.

When we see Roco’s life of hard work and risk-taking end prematurely in defeat and loss, we are also seeing a more fatal approximation of Spike’s life coming to a similar end. Spike survived, obviously, so when he claims that he has already died or that he is watching a dream he can't wake from, it's Spike's dramatically circuitous way of saying that his old life is over and nothing in the present matters to him. While we still don’t know everything about the life he left behind, we have seen enough of his flashbacks to understand that at the very least, Spike has firsthand experience in defeat and loss that have left him feeling not quite alive.

If "Waltz" lets us see Spike’s figurative demise in miniature, "Jamming" shows us what happens in the life that follows. Unlike Roco, whose life and goals were lost simultaneously, MPU continues to function long after his reason to exist disappears. As is the case with Spike, he now drifts through space with a longing for the past while using his limited resources to keep himself occupied without ever really finding any meaning in it.

I think this is the connection we need to finally understand why Spike is not only a bounty hunter, but an oddly dutiful-seeming one who takes on lost causes and impossible missions without much thought for rewards. He believes that his life is meaningless, but he doesn't give up or kill himself because some part of him believes he may be wrong. Whether that means he thinks he can get his past back somehow or if he can eventually let it go and start a new, meaningful life is the question to keep in mind from here on out. In the meantime, he's going to continue taking on exciting or interesting jobs just to keep himself going until he can figure it out.

The sad result of this kind of empty life is loneliness, a diagnosis Spike himself makes after Jet wonders what possessed MPU to start drawing on Earth. His theory is supported by the intrigue MPU shows when Ed promises him that he’ll have lots of friends on the Bebop if he agrees to let them download his programming. Granted, we don’t see MPU again, so it’s hard to call this offer genuine; perhaps it was just the most convincing argument a lonely kid could think of.

Judging from Ed’s offer of friendship and her desire for it herself – evidenced by the one condition for helping the Bebop crew being that she could become a member of it – friends are supposed to be the cure for loneliness. It’s the child’s cure, anyway. Spike isn’t interested in them, instead closing out the episode by complaining about his traveling companions as we look back at the smiley face Ed drew on South America.

Cowboy Bebop - Session 8: Waltz for Venus

There are a few themes worth keeping track of throughout Cowboy Bebop, but I consider only two to be central to what the series is all about. First is the subject of time -- particularly one's past and its relationship with the present -- which we have thus far seen primarily through Spike's eyes. This will eventually become an important concern for every principal character in some way after we get a much clearer look at the histories of Faye, Jet, and the rest.

The other element, critical though it is, doesn't really surface until Waltz for Venus. It's the ultimate futility of it all, which benefits greatly from the information about the character's pasts given ostensibly in service of the other theme. I'm sure I must be quoting someone, though I can't determine who or how loosely this is paraphrased, but, in essence, "there is no sadness without memory". In other words, for this futility to have any impact, it helps to get a little perspective via backstory. It's still far too early to say anything definitive about how anything or anyone winds up at the end of Bebop, but this episode does provide a nice preview, in miniature, of what is to come.

As gloomy as that may sound, Venus doesn't start out as a drag. In fact, after a successful bounty collection by the on-again team of Spike and Faye, the Bebop crew is temporary flush with a little cash. To celebrate, Faye seizes the opportunity to resume being broke by way of the casino and Ein gets a nice meal. On the whole, though, their lives don’t really change much for the better after this rare victory, even temporarily. Shortly after the bounty is turned in and the reward has been distributed among the crew, Jet is already looking for the next bounty to start the whole process over again.

And now that we’ve seen the meager rewards for success in their work, it raises the question of why they even bother doing it at all. Considering the risks involved and, perhaps more importantly, their constant failures, it is surprising that they’re able to earn enough money to survive. They must be cashing in on some bounties between episodes, because the available evidence does not suggest that they could last this long otherwise. Leaving Faye and her gambling aside, if the money they get from turning in bounties goes towards food and other basic necessities plus ship maintenance and fuel, the purpose of which is to allow them to continue hunting bounties, well, the entire thing seems basically pointless.

To clear the air of existential funk, this episode introduces Roco and Stella, a brother and sister living on Venus whose motivations are much easier to define. They represent a solid sibling relationship with the older brother being willing to do anything to help the younger sister, who in turn loves her older brother unconditionally. This relative simplicity gives them a certain innocence that sets them apart from most of the other people we meet in this universe. It manifests itself first in the way they are both surprisingly quick to put a great deal of trust in Spike, even doing so independently from each other and under circumstances that wouldn't exactly justify it.

Although Roco does so partly out of desperation and necessity, Stella's intuitive judgment of character stems from her blindness, caused by an uncommon reaction to the plants used to terraform the planet. She tells Spike that she can understand things more easily because she is blind, which is how she can quickly tell that Spike is basically a good person, even if that goodness is buried. She compares him to her brother, who is still good even though he is doing bad things with bad people, because he is just using them as a way to get the cure for her blindness.

One way to interpret Stella is through a zen sort of filter which allows her blindness to be the strength by which she can ignore the superficial things that get in the way of understanding. I think the sad reality, though, is that she’s a kind, well-meaning person who is cut off from the world and therefore rather naive as to how it works. Roco is similarly naive, but since he doesn’t have the excuse of being holed up in the desert, I think he is more likely to come across as mostly foolish. None of this is meant to imply that these two are pitiful or stupid, only that their innocence leads them to do some foolish things.

This is most obvious in the way Roco tries to use the criminal gang as a way to secure the rare Grey Ash plant that will cure his sister. In this respect, he’s a little like Faye and her gambling in that he is taking a big risk in hopes that a big payoff will follow, despite the odds being decidedly against that outcome. In his mind, he must have imagined that he could get what he wanted from them and escape, not quite realizing how good they would be at keeping that from happening.

The defining moment in this episode comes during the showdown with the gang when Roco finally succeeds in throwing an attacker the way Spike had showed him. As he smiles to Spike and gets a thumbs up in response, he is shot, without warning, through the chest. As he falls so does the Grey Ash, which withers and dies seconds after its protective glass case is broken. This scene, to be echoed later in the series, makes it achingly clear that not only can life end in an instant, but every important thing gained in that life can disappear just as quickly.

The bitterness of this outcome is sweetened somewhat when Stella is still able to be cured by way of the Grey Ash seeds Roco had smuggled to her earlier without her knowledge. This ending removes much of the futile edge from Roco's life and death, but it also says something about how this series intends to treat earnest though naive people. Specifically, it gives some support to "loss of innocence" as one of the other minor themes worth keeping an eye on as we progress. Its contributions to the overall futility of the series pay off spectacularly.


Side Note:
Faye’s lone-wolf bounty hunting story gets almost no time but is still worth a mention. Mainly because she is in no-nonsense badass mode which is all kicking down doors and shoving pistols into dude’s mouths. I think part of her knows that she’s been making a poor seductress and so she tries the more aggressive stance we’ve hardly seen since her machinegun-accented introduction in the second episode. It’s a great time for her to use this tactic, too, because it puts her in clear opposition to Spike’s Bruce Lee-inspired “like water” style that simply redirects the aggression of his attacker.

Cowboy Bebop - Session 7: Heavy Metal Queen

Heavy Metal Queen makes its case as an unusual episode immediately by opening with the sight of strangely long bulky ships pushing past each other in space to the unexpected tune of some thrashy metal. Compared to the series’ more traditional space-oriented openers in which sleek spaceships zip through colorful gates or drift unhurriedly through the stars as we listen to the low rumbling of engines and mellow jazz, this one seems to be taking us to a much louder, grungier, and more aggressive corner of the universe.

And although it may not seem so at first, it ends up being a corner that allows for a relatively lightweight palate cleanser of an episode as some relief after couple of dark and important ones. As always, there is more to the episode than what is on the surface, but still, just about the deepest question Queen has to ask is “hey, did you know there are space truckers?” This is just fine considering that we’ve had to shoot a child in the head and slit an old friend’s throat to get here.

The space trucker central to this episode is VT, a tough-looking woman with a strong distaste for bounty hunters accompanied by her cat Zeros and is – by way of her CB handle and taste in music – the eponymous Queen of Heavy Metal. The opening scenes in space conclude with some nicely understated exposition in the form of her docking at a truck stop and humoring an overconfident chump who quickly loses a few bucks in the long running game of trying to guess what her initials stand for. We get a small sense of her mysterious character in the way she adds his cash to the impressive stack of bills gathered, presumably, in small increments over the years from people who recognize her but don’t really know who she is.

After this, we follow VT into a little bar where we find a grouchy Spike, hungover and on the phone with Jet in a bathroom stall. They’re discussing this week’s bounty: an explosives expert / space trucker / Woody Allen look-alike named Decker. While Spike is complaining about not being able to get anywhere near guy, cut to Faye who is seconds away from spotting Decker at a diner appropriately called “Woody’s”.

The sequence that follows is another great example of how Faye’s sensual charm is effective only in a limited sense. As we see here and in her failure using similar tactics in Ballad of Fallen Angels, she has an undeniable power over men, but not all men, and certainly not over those directly relevant to her goals. In this case, she has no trouble whatsoever using her sex appeal to get the drop on the man she assumes to be Decker, but allows the real one to escape while doing so. Bad luck plays a significant role in this, granted, but the fact remains that her attempted manipulations have a surprisingly low success rate, regardless of precisely why.

Also noteworthy in this part of the episode comes when, in the middle of all of this, while Faye is slithering into the booth to get close enough to pull a gun on the wrong man, the scene suddenly returns to the bar, where a ditzy waitress is being harassed by some lascivious desperados. In the span of just a few moments, the depiction of a woman ensnaring a victim changes to a woman being victimized, and then immediately VT involves herself as the woman who comes to the waitress’ rescue. Briefly, both Faye and VT come across as powerful, albiet in different ways. This lasts right up until we discover that Faye has the wrong target, which leaves the only one of the three with any relevant power.

Going back to the earlier assumption that Heavy Metal Queen is going to be loud, grungy, and aggressive because of the title, subject matter, and background music, I would add that these qualities give the episode an air of brusque masculinity. Those sleek spaceships are absent from the opening shots because this episode is about phallic-looking space trucks full of straight lines, loud music and, as we discover later, pinup art and girly magazines. So, the fact that the most masculine of these three women emerges as the hero here is definitely in keeping with the manliness this episode is supposedly about.

To see the flipside of this particular brand of masculinity, though, look at the men involved during these scenes. The man in the diner who isn’t Decker comes across as pathetic and a little silly when he is discovered to be someone else (and what is he doing in a place apparently meant for kids?), and, well, “lascivious desperados” pretty aptly describes way the men at the truck stop present themselves. And then there’s Spike, who is too absorbed in concocting his hangover cure to pay any attention to the brawl going on right behind him at the bar. In short, the “real men” are all pathetic in their own way, plus horny and oblivious in specific cases.

They do redeem themselves here and there throughout the episode, however. Spike eventually helps VT route the desperados in the bar (although for selfish reasons). Jet’s handyman skills prove useful in getting both Spike and Faye back in the air with remarkable speed after their respective spacecraft are damaged. More notably, though, is Spike’s bold action that saves himself, Faye, and VT from the collapsing asteroid mine.

Not that he does it on his own, of course. All three of them work together here (a rarity for Spike and Faye) over the course of a pretty exciting escape that ends with Spike recognizing a photo VT keeps on her ship. It shows an exceedingly famous bounty hunter and a younger VT, which is all Spike needs to figure out VT's name.

I stand by the idea that this is a slight episode that mostly just provides a short break between weightier ones, but I would hesitate to write it off as insignificant. True, we'll never see VT again, nor will we hear of her husband, yet if there is any significance to this ending beyond the way it slightly broadens the Bebop universe and deepens Spike's involvement in it by some degree, I think it lies in VT's relationship to her past.

Like so many other characters in this series, she allows her past some amount of control over her present life. In her specific case, it does so to the extent that she is unreasonably bigoted against people like Spike, who is basically a decent sort of guy in a line of work she is so completely against that she turns on him as soon as she finds out what he does. It's hard to know if VT changes after meeting Spike and realizing that it's ok not to hate him, but I think the point is that the past is a strangely powerful thing that influences everyone, albiet in different ways. So even when Cowboy Bebop is sidetracked on an oddball episode like this one, it still has time to comment on the themes that run throughout the entire series.

Cowboy Bebop - Session 6: Sympathy for the Devil

After running through a significant amount of important-but-not-understood plot detail last week, Sympathy for the Devil feels like a return to the show's entertaining-but-trivial style of episode: a bounty-focused story that goes light on expanding main characters in any way and, as a bonus, shares its title with a classic rock song. Although true that it does very little to build on anything obviously relevant to the series as a whole, there are a few tidbits worth noticing.

The first of these are in the opening scenes of Sympathy, during which Spike is apparently undergoing surgery to implant a mechanical eye. When or by what means he lost the eye being replaced aren't quite known, nor is there any hint as to why it matters that one of his eyes is a fake. As with the other seemingly trivial details collected from other episodes, however, it's generally wise to just remember that these things happened and wait for that knowledge to pay off.

So, following this eye surgery of presumed future import, we're introduced to a child prodigy harmonica player who is apparently mixed up in some criminal organization by way of his wheelchair-bound guardian. What follows is some remarkably Star Trek-y business, right down to a convenient piece of technology that allows Jet to essentially mind-meld with the recently deceased in order to gather information from him. What he discovers there leads to a plot involving a hyperspace gate accident and what Bones might have called a "Fountain of Youth Effect" that halts the decay of a living person over time and allows him to recover quickly from any injury.

The person affected by this strange condition uses his seemingly endless supply of available time to become one of the galaxy's biggest bastards. His invulnerabilities make him immune to the maturity that follows when we realize that, like everyone else, we aren't going to live forever and that we are vulnerable in ways we only gradually come to understand. Without that understanding, he turns aggressive and arrogant, even dismissive of other peoples lives, which is most obvious in that criminal organization of his and the ease with which he kills its members and anyone else in his way.

Back on the ship, Jet and Faye exchange barbs in a quiet battle of the sexes that dovetails with the issues of maturity going on elsewhere. When Faye can't understand why Spike would volunteer to fight a seemingly losing battle against the immortal, Jet responds that men live for duty, adding that women easily betray others. Taken in the context of an earlier scene in which Faye eats the last can of dog food while explaining to Ein that women are born great and are therefore entitled to such things, it would appear that the show is heading towards misogynistic territory.

But although Faye (and all women, by extension) may seem singled out in this episode as immature, we already know that Spike has trouble letting go of something in his past and Jet's comment about women and betrayal suggests that he has a similar problem. Add to that Spike's repeated phrase expressing his inability to understand difficult matters being translated "As if..." in a couple of places during this episode and we get a growing sense that all of these characters struggle with maturity in some way.

In fact, Faye is becoming one of the only people who ever seems to care about anyone else and who comes the closest to admitting it. In the previous episode, Faye may not have been as good a caretaker/singer as the woman in Spike's past, but she at least stayed beside him. In Sympathy, she tries to talk him out of going to what she believes to be his death and mutters that men are idiots after he insists. Not exactly gushing romance, but compared to Jet's most visible act of concern being his accidentally cutting the wrong branch on his bonsai tree in the last episode, hers is a relatively loud proclamation of some kind of care.

Yet despite her protest, Spike sets out to defeat the immortal which, fittingly, involves returning him to the normal flow of time by way of what is basically a magic bullet. As goofy as that may be, it does restore the age and, more importantly, understanding it brings that he had been able to delay indefinitely. As his body withers and dies, he asks Spike if he understands as well, to which Spike replies, "As if...".

While this story is, again, not exactly a key piece of the series entire, it is a great opportunity to lay down some concepts related to the flowing and halting of time and what it's like to become older. These ideas, much like the past/present comparisons that came at the end of the previous episode, will be given closer attention later in the series and, I would argue, will become central to what this show is about.

Cowboy Bebop - Session 5: Ballad of Fallen Angels

So, AV Club is doing Cowboy Bebop write-ups this summer, which is a project I've been tempted to try but failed to attempt on numerous occasions. They're already five episodes in at the moment (Ballad went up over there while I was still working on this one), which leaves 21 for me to take on before they get to them. Let's see how it goes...

Cowboy Bebop: Ballad of Fallen Angels

Much of the first four episodes of Cowboy Bebop have been spent establishing the series' tone, introducing new characters and -- more importantly -- getting them onto the ship. Now that most of the crew has been assembled, Ballad of Fallen Angels takes a break from adding to the roster and instead gives us a closer look Spike's past life beyond the series' opening scenes and the images from the end credits.

Of course, what that past life is, exactly, remains about as mysterious at the end of the episode as it was at the beginning. Or rather, the information we get is seemingly plentiful but most of it is never fully explained or given in proper context and so remains open to interpretation. Fitting for this episode, really, considering how the Bebop crew likewise keeps each other at arms length throughout. Characters walk away from conversations, end them in silence and generally avoid saying too much. As in the exchange between Spike and Jet regarding Spike's relationship to Mao and what happened to Jet's arm, they talk without revealing any details, even as they hint at their own histories and start prying into others'. At this point, it will be some time before we get more out of these characters than they get out of one another

With tensions and standoffish-ness at peak levels back on the ship, both Spike and Faye go after the same bounty without making any attempt to cooperate while Jet stays behind, expressly unwilling to lend a hand. This leaves Spike and Faye free to use their own solo methods to collect on the bounty, which, for Faye, means charm and her feminine wiles. I call this out specifically because of how amusingly useless her charm/wiles combination tends to be throughout much of the series. Considering her wardrobe, posturing, and endless confidence that she can use them to get whatever she wants, it would be an unfair advantage for this tactic to work as well as she seems to think it should in Ballad.

Everyone on the Bebop is skilled or gifted in some way, but their victories are rare and often Pyrrhic through some combination of bad luck, rash action, and underestimation of an opponent. Making an actual maverick out of any one of these potential maverick characters would disrupt this slightly out of tune series. So, Faye may be able to fool a regular schmo into letting her enter the opera house without a ticket but as soon as she is dealing with professionals, she is quickly identified as a bounty hunter and captured.

Understandable, given that the professionals are led by Vicious, Spike's apparent partner in the old syndicate days who is presented here as a force bearing malice, ambition, and a nice sword. He counterbalance's Spike's geniality, aloofness, and nice gun so completely that it they have no choice but to fight in as John Woo a manner as possible in an old chapel. The culmination of this fight provides the opportunity for Spike to flash back to the same images of his past that we have seen already, with some new ones added that, although appreciated, still don't do much to bring us closer to full understanding.

We do get to see the woman that Spike still thinks about and who has some connection to these momentary glimpses of his old life. The episode ends with a nice juxtaposition between her singing while Spike is recovering from considerable injury years ago and Faye doing the same while he heals from his recent encounter with Vicious. Much more will be made of past/present as the series progresses, built on a foundation of these sorts of moments where the present is a dull reflection of the past.

Naruto: What The Fuck Is Wrong With You?!

I am glad that one of the characters FINALLY asked this.

To bedevil -J-

Sadly, this is a well done edit... man, I hate Haruhi

Dragon Ball: Evolution

I can't imagine anyone looking at the trailers, production stills, movie posters, or even the word "Evolution" in the title could possibly think that the final film was going to be anything other than an insulting waste of time. Still, there were a handful of promising little signs that it could still succeed on some level. IMDB says that Akira Toriyama is credited only with writing the manga, but I could swear he was producing the film. Even if he isn't, Stephen Chow is a producer, and that should at least mean that even if the movie throws out everything that anyone has ever liked about Dragon Ball, at least this new version will at least be potentially entertaining.

Right?

RIGHT?!

Of course not. DB:E not only discards all but the largest of details from the original, but it does so to make room for some of the most truly insipid crap anyone has ever bothered to film. The story is astoundingly generic, the acting shifts from "why is the camera still rolling?" to "oh god please just shut these people up", but I think the real problem with DB:E is pacing. They have less than 90 minutes to take Goku from an awkward high school kid (yeah) to ultimate warrior, and there is no time for dawdling, most of the characters, or really much of anything important. So much happens so fast that it's difficult to consider any particular scene any more or less important than the one that preceeded it. Goku's training is done almost literally on the drive to the final showdown. The villain has less screen time than Malkovich in Eragon, and really, once a movie has been compared to Eragon, it's all over.

There are a few touches that should appeal to the fan. Goku is referred to as Son Goku once, and he wears a blue and orange hoodie, and I think someone mentions a monkey at some point. Bulma has blue highlights and Yamucha is a fugly Korean boy. Well, I guess that's not such a nod to the original, but I guess rather than scarring up an attractive guy, they just found some poor dude born under the ugly tree and called it even. Roshi is a pervert exactly twice, and capsules really can do anything.

To a certain extent, all this movie really needed to do was give some sort of approximation of what could be enjoyable about the Dragon Ball series. They could have a cool fight or spend half of the movie leveling up or put in something kind of funny or be cute or just do SOMETHING. There are some fights and some loser-becomes-winner gratification bits that should make nerdly DB fans feel good about themselves. There are girls who have guns and girls who make Kung-Fu kicks and also kiss nerdly boys, and there's maybe a car chase and a plane crash in there, too, but I really don't recall. Probably not a plane crash. Anyway, I like to think that I'm aware of when I'm being pandered to, but I have to admit that I cannot recall a movie that has ever done so with such a complete misunderstanding of what might make me like it. It's like having your grandma buy you a video game. God bless her for trying, and she has the basic idea, but aside from a stroke of luck, there's no way she's actually going to bring something you'll enjoy. That's the bottom line, I believe: this movie is a video game your grandma bought you.

Also, seeing Chow Yun Fat yell "I AM MUTEN ROSHI! HA HA HA" is more than a little dis-heartening.

The American AKIRA

Anime Contact Lenses

I Love/Hate Digg.com because I find shit like this. Here is the link. Beware.

Anyone who's seen Japanese comics, cartoon videos or anime art is instantly struck by the common look of the girls - big eyes that, by making the rest of the face look small, add the cuteness and sex appeal prized by many Japanese men. Since no amount of cosmetic surgery will make actual human eyes larger, some girls are trying another way to up their cute quotient: extra-wide contact lenses!

This website has one thing going for it. The model is not your average female anime fangirl. It could be really awesome. Or just exacerbate the problem.

Sponge Bob Death Note

Bishojo Regulation Petition: Chibi Kawaii!!!

Apparently the tiny dicked jackoffs of Japan are sick and tired of the tiny dicked perverts of Japan destroying their precious little Chinese knockoff society. So while they're hot for Hentai, stuck on Shotacon, and yearning for Yaoi a line has been draw. That line? No more lolicon!

Apparently A Petition for the Enactment of Regulation on the Manufacture and Sale of Bishojo Adult Anime Magazines, and Bishojo Adult Anime Simulation Games will soon be put before The Japanese Diet (whatever the fuck that is) which states that:

Our towns overflow with adult anime magazines and games which often depict elementary school girls, and the minds of the youths who are seduced by these games are unwittingly destroyed; they lose their very humanity, there are already incidents of young maidens being plucked from the streets and murdered. Since it is plain that our society has now become one where young girls are placed in great peril, the issue of free expression is a thing of the past. To curb these profit seeking companies with no conception of social morals, to restrict the creation of products which place young girls in peril, there is a pressing need for penal regulations and the accompanying laws.

We wish to see enacted laws restricting the manufacture and sale of bishojo adult anime magazines, and bishojo adult anime simulation games.

I'm sure you'll all join me in my empassioned plea of, "Not mey Lolis!"

I'm not entirely sure what the relation is between people playing Bishojo simulation games and "young maidens being plucked from the streets and murdered" though I'll guess it is roughly the same relation as people playing GTA IV and then stealing cars and running over hookers. And, admitedly, I'm not against this petition. Given that Bishojo is animated all the animators have to do is keep drawing the same characters and simply say that they are all 9,000 year old witches from another dimension; problem solved.* No, what bothers me is this:

"the issue of free expression is a thing of the past"

The fuck?

I'm going to get the obligatory 1984 reference out of the way as I'm pretty sure there is a Japanese translation (the title of which probably sounds like "koosh koosh paw euw nom nom chu") with which the tiny dicked jackoffs are at least socially familiar and rather focus on the sentiment of the statement itself.

Do the tiny dicked jackoffs of Japan want to hop onto the "end free expression" rickshaw over the issue of lolicon? Is it really that big of a deal? Sure, it would be ideal if tiny dicked Japanese perverts were not aroused by animated seven year old girls, but is banning lolicon going to solve that problem? And even if we grant the premise that banning it would aid in solving the problem is there really no better way to frame the debate than "the issue of free expression is a thing of the past"?

Also, why stop at lolicon and Bishojo games? Why not make one fell swoop and put an end to all Hentai, ever? Wouldn't that behoove the tiny dicked Chinese knockoff society even more than simply a ban on "meh lolis"? It's terrible to depict elementary school girls as sexual objects for tentacle monsters but it's fine and dandy to depict high school and college age girls as sexual objects for tentacle monsters? Really, Japan?

My guess? The group would like to outright ban all Hentai, ever. But they know that the tiny dicked Legislaters (who love themselves some Demon Rape) would never pass it. So they'll start with the lolicon (given that it is hard to argue on the bamboo covered floor of the Japanese legislature that portrayal of pre-teens being sodomized by plants is awesome) and then use that to give momentum to the "End Hentai" movement.

Which I would wholly endorse, by the way. If only because the national debate might draw enough global attention to the semen encrusted underbelly of Japanese Culture that it would finally end this stupid fucking Japanese fixation we've all maintained ever since we discovered Pocky.

*The other possibility is that we'll get a statement from the Japanese government which legally defines what an elementary school girl looks like. And that would be fucking hilarious.

NEW. EVANGELION. SERIES.

Petit Eva Super-Deformed Series to Be Made into Video

Official Site

CHIBI EVA!!!!!!