Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Ltd.

Archive for the ‘Anime and Animation’ Category

I always intend to use the summer to catch up on TV and movies that I haven’t had time for during the school year to watch; even with a DVR I still get behind. Our recent move from Lubbock to San Antonio cut into a lot of that, but I have been watching a few things as Jen and I make an attempt to live without cable. Here is a rundown of what I’m watching, and how I’m watching it.

First, I had already been using Netflix streaming on the Xbox 360 for a lot of my TV and movies. The experience is so good that Netflix is my primary source; if it’s on Netflix, that’s where I watch it. Because of the way Netflix works (these are generally things available on DVD), these shows are older.  So, here are the things I’m watching on Netflix.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is a great example of what animation can do.  The show takes place in the near future, as people begin to become more and more “plugged in.”  Some are more artificial than others: cybernetics range from implants that allow a person to be constantly connected to the Internet to fully cybernetic bodies, such as that of the main character, Major Kusanagi.  Ghost in the Shell also represents on of the great failings of anime companies in North America.  This is a show that should have been on TV in the same time slot as 24 or Law and Order, not late night on Cartoon Network.  It’s a perfect example of truly adult animation.

Robotech: The Macross Saga is a beast of a different nature.  This is one of those shows that I have a great deal of nostalgia for as it was one of the first Japanese cartoons I remember watching.  Fortunately, unlike some of my other childhood favorites (G.I. Joe and Thundercats, for example), this one is still watchable after twenty-five years.

Although I didn’t watch all of it, Jen also watch most of season one of Arrested Development, which, despite personal recommendations from my brother David and a lot of positive reviews we never got around to watching.  The show is definitely great, and I will probably go back and watch the episodes I missed as I was doing other things while Jen marathoned them.

The second piece of hardware instrumental in getting rid of cable is a five-year-old laptop coupled with an IR remote sensor.  I’ve had a computer in the living room for years, but we primarily used it as a DVR with Windows Media Center (still my favorite DVR software).  I don’t use Media Center on this computer (I don’t currently have a USB tuner capable of receiving ATSC over-the-air content), but I do have two great pieces of software installed on it: Boxee and the Hulu Desktop app.  Through Boxee I primarily watch internet television such as that from Revision 3 (Film Riot, Tekzilla, and Hak5 are some of shows I watch from them).  Certainly for me Boxee goes a long way to replacing mainstream television almost entirely, but its compatibility with Hulu has been iffy, and that’s where the Hulu Desktop app comes in.

On Hulu’s website, the Desktop app is touted as being a lean-back experience for the PC.  We, however, are using it as a lean-back experience in the living room.  Running it with a remote is really easy (although I’m still looking for a way to start it from within Boxee or Media Center), and they have a lot of mainstream content right there.

On Hulu, I’ve been watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.  I watched a bit of the original version of this show when it aired on Cartoon Network.  I haven’t seen the original in a while so I can’t compare the two.  What I can say is that I really like the show; it’s got a good mix of comedy, action, and drama as the Elric brothers search for the elusive Philosopher’s Stone.  While not as smart as Ghost in the Shell, this show is no slouch when it comes to ideas either, whether it be faith and science, or a soldier’s responsibility in war time.

On the lighter side, I’ve also been watching Sgt. Frog.  I’ve read up to volume six of the comic for this, and it’s really funny.  The title character is Sgt. Keroro, an diminutive frog-like alien leading an advance reconnaissance mission to prepare Earth for invasion.  However, his crew ends up scattered in Tokyo, and Sgt. Keroro becomes the prisoner (or rather housekeeper) of the Hinata family.  The show is goofy and fun, as Sgt. Keroro struggles between his desire to conquer humanity, and his love of Gundam models.

Outside of Netflix, Hulu, and Boxee, I’ve also been watching some shows on Crunchyroll, an anime and Asian drama streaming site.  One in particular I’ve enjoyed is The Book of Bantorra. The show takes place in a world where people become “books” (actually, stone tablets) when they die.  These books contain the life of the person and are stored in Bantorra Library.  Because of the immense knowledge contained in these books, they are defended by the Armed Librarians.  The show has a great deal of action in it while still maintaining some good human drama.  Like Ghost in the Shell, one of it’s core issues is what it means to be human.  The primary antagonists of the show is a religious cult, the Shindeki Church, divide people into “true” men and meats (people used as slaves).  The first story arc focuses on a young man brainwashed by the Shindeki Church into acting as a bomb, and his struggle to accept that he is, in fact, human.

Well, there you have it: my summer watch list for 2010.  The jury’s still out whether or not we can totally go without cable, but we’re well one our way.

Coraline is one of my favorite books for children, in large part because Neil Gaiman has a cleverness to his writing and imagination that lend themselves to such books. I find that such cleverness lends itself to children’s entertainment, especially those that can appeal to both children and adults (such as the Warner Bros. and MGM cartoons of old, or Animaniacs). Gaiman’s worlds are unique, and his prose is full of turns-of-phrase that I love, little ways of describing things that sound good to the ear and read well on the page.

When I heard that Coraline was going to be made into a feature film, I was very excited, and I enjoyed seeing the first trailer for it in the theater. I was, to be sure, annoyed that Gaiman’s name was not giving top or second billing in that trailer; in fact, he wasn’t even mentioned. Instead, the chief name was that of Henry Sellick.

If the name Henry Sellick is not familiar to you, that’s primarily because one of his best works is usually ascribed to Tim Burton: The Nightmare Before Christmas. While Burton was involved in the creation and production, much of the work, including the direction, was done by Sellick. That film is a perfect example of what I mentioned above: a clever, quirky children’s story that appeals to adults as well, and giving the tone of Nightmare, Selllick was a good choice for the creator and director of Coraline as a film.

However, after having finally watched it, I have to admit that I am, to a certain extent, disappointed.

And, I kinda feel bad about that.

See, I think Coraline is, independent of the source material, a good film. Henry Sellick makes fine, living, colorful worlds with interesting characters. I enjoyed the performances of all the voice actors: Teri Hatcher is great as the mother and other mother, John Hodgman’s father is, although not British (a small quibble I won’t mention again) spot on, and Keith David’s cat is appropriately smug. Dakota Fanning’s Coraline fits very well, and the others are great.  The film is also beautiful to look at. I haven’t researched how they achieved all of the animation effects, but there’s a wonderful dichotomy between what looks like computer animation and real world textures. Everything has a depth to it, and it’s wonderful to look at. There are scenes that are obviously meant to appeal to those watching the 3D version, but these work appropriately in 2D, and I didn’t feel pulled out of the film because of them.

Given how well everything works, it remains to find a reason for my disappointment. A part of it definitely comes from plot and character differences between the movie and the book, and this is one of those conundrums that fans of any book often find themselves in when it’s adapted to a movie. We want the movie to be exactly like the book, but we understand it cannot be. However, although we understand that it cannot be, we still (however slightly) resent the movie for not being the book. Admittedly, it’s not fair at all, but it’s just the way it is. No matter how much I try, I cannot approach this movie as someone who hasn’t read the book.  So take the following criticisms with a grain (or even a shaker) of salt.

First, I felt the character of Wybie to be completely unnecessary. That’s not to say I don’t understand why Sellick wrote him in (which I suppose to be to give boys a character to identify with and to give Coraline someone her own age to interact with), but I think it was not needed. What he did do was to take screen time away from Coraline’s interactions with the other characters, and I think this was a mistake. Wybie’s presence necessitates that some really great moments (especially between Coraline and the cat) had to be left out for time’s sake, which is, I think, always a problem.

Second, I didn’t care for the reordering of parts of the plot, specifically the number of times Coraline goes to and from the other world. Sellick adds one extra to-and-fro, and I feel this alters the dramatic tension. I think this might be one instance where the 3D imposed itself on the story; perhaps Sellick added one more journey to utilize the tunnel between worlds for the 3D version. Also, Coraline gets locked up with the ghost children earlier here, whereas in the book her parents are already missing and she has gone back to retrieve them. The separation of these events (her going back to get her parents and meeting the ghost children) weakens the story from a dramatic and thematic perspective.

My last criticism is really the reason that I think I was disappointed by Sellick’s Coraline. Although parts of the movie maintain some of the tone of the book, overall the book has a darker tone; the other world is not quite as happy, and there is more of a sense of danger even from the beginning. I suppose some people (perhaps Sellick himself) felt that making the other world lighter made it more appealing to Coraline, but I think this misses a key point of Coraline’s character. She is bored with the real world and craves something more interesting, even if it’s a little dangerous. And this is, for me, a completely believable character trait in a kid. For example, in the movie, Coraline is lured to the door in the drawing room by Mr. Bobo’s jumping mice. Certainly, this makes sense; the jumping mice are very cute. But in the book, Coraline is drawn to the door by hearing it creak open and by seeing a small dark shadow flit out from her room and into the drawing room. While this is much more creepy than Sellick’s version, the fact that Coraline is interested in the shadow and the creaking door fits with her character, and I think it makes her a more interesting and stronger character than just some girl chasing something cute.

Interestingly enough, there is one change in the movie that I think works. I like the way the other mother was portrayed as more like Coraline’s real mother. The reason I think this works is that this accentuates the weirdness of her button eyes, and in this way she comes across more disturbing than if the eyes were just one of many differences.

Given all of that, I did enjoy Sellick’s Coraline. It was fun to watch and continues the tradition of children’s entertainment that adults can enjoy as well.

UPDATE: Having watched the film again, I wanted to comment that I definitely appreciate it more the second time.  I think watching Coraline the first time worked out any disappointments/expectations that I had going in.  Now that all that’s worked out, I can enjoy the film on its own merits.