Postby TheSubtleDoctor » Wed Oct 05, 2011 8:12 pm
Akagi
Mah-jong, intensity, noses. Akagi is the story of a natural born gambling genius who possesses a combination of ability to discern the psychology of his opponents and the lack of a fear of (even violent) death. So, what does the world do with such a guy? Get him to play mah-jong, of course. Let me be clear that you don't have to know the game to enjoy the show. There is a lot of info to absorb about mah-jong in the beginning, but you will pick up a lot through prolonged exposure and osmosis.
I would go into detail about how "you would expect an anime about a game to be sort of dull, though it actually isn't," but I've seen Hikaru no Go. I've learned my lesson. Watch anime long enough, and you will learn that anime is more than capable of both making the most mundane activities extremely exciting and making the most thrilling activities extremely boring.
So, it's exciting because the outcome is in doubt, right? Nope. You know Akagi is going to win, but this show is all about the "how we get there" rather than the "what happens." And the "how" is awesome. Akagi is good at establishing thick clouds of tension and slowly pulling you through them to a climax that always thrills. As the show progresses, the wagers, rules and stipulations get more and more outrageous and life-threatening.
My favorite aspect of the show would be the conjunction of a character's inner monologue along with the manifestation of his mental states. Say, a bad guy is thinking about winning with the next move. He will internally describe the move; why it will trick Akagi because he was thinking along track X, but this move totally will bamboozel him; and maniacally laughing. And we will see his thoughts animated, only the bad guy will have glowing red eyes, ridiculous fangs and be surrounded by a roaring flame, while a mountain sprouts underneath him. Also, Akagi will die in this fantasy. This lasts a couple of minutes. Then, he does the move. AWESOME. A narrator will proceed to give us the hard sell of how Akagi is backed into a corner. AWESOMER.
The art will turn most people away. They should get over it and watch this amazing series. More needs to be made.
Voltes V
This is a seminal super robot series from the 70s and part of something director Tadao Nagahama calls his Robot Romance Trilogy (romance in the sense of, like, a romantic adventure...like Kenshin is about the Romantic Swordsman or whatever). I'll try to sum up why it is an important show.
Yoshiuki Tomino (Mistah Gundamu) worked as a producer on this series, and it influenced him greatly. Immediately after finishing Voltes, Tomino began directing a great little show known as Zambot 3. You can see how he took the story elements that worked well in Voltes and turned them on their head in Zambot, which was quite a dark series in contrast. The villain in this series, Prince Heinel, also seems to prefigure Gundam's Char Aznable: handsome, charismatic bad guy who the fans love, who gets plenty of screen time and has interesting, logical motivations for his "villainy." This was pretty groundbreaking stuff for the time.
Voltes also serves an anime ancestor to team robot shows such as Voltron/Go-Lion. Not only does it have five pilots of five robots that form one awesome, sword-wielding super robot, it has a STORY. Again, this wasn't exactly the formula back then. Robot shows were meant to sell toys. Period. Anything Anything else was not on the agenda. Nagahama realized that he could serve that end as well as make something more interesting by developing the cast, explaining the motivations of the sympathetic villains, and having issues that took more than one episode to resolve.
There's also some fascinating stuff about the history of Voltes V in the Philippines. The government canceled it, and many thought it was because the people of the country would get inspired by the revolution that was occurring in this popular animated TV show and then actually revolt in real life. Anime is starting the revolution, man!, etc. In reality, though, the government's rationale was to simply can all shows that were more popular than the programming on its own channel. Read about this on wikipedia if you want more depth, though.
Is the show itself any good? YES. It's definitely one for the choir though; it won't likely convert the non-believers to the mecha genre. Why not? For starters, Voltes V (the robot) itself is a big focus of the show, though, again, the series does have a character-based story to tell. It's also pretty emotional in that over-the-top, 70s mecha sort of way. Character deaths, touching reunions, vows for revenge, proud declaration of loyalty...it's all going on, and with hot-blooded gusto plus manly tears. Though it does drag a bit in the early middle, once the plot opens up to matters beyond the Earth, things really get interesting. They even save the best plot twist, and there are a lot of them in this series, for the final episode.
The animation is what you'd expect, though toward the top of that scale. The mecha combat is a mixed bag if you're looking for variety. Every two or three episodes there will be a wrinkle, but 80% of the mecha battles (there are hand-to-hand duels as well) are Voltes V cycling through its weaponry, via the same animations we've seen, probing for a weakness in the enemy. "VOLTES BAZOOKA! IT JUST BOUNCED OFF OF IT! Well then, ELECTROMAGNETIC TOPS! HYAA!" This is all fine and good if you're already a dyed-in-the-wool robot fan, but, this is part of the reason I say the show isn't a good "my first mecha." The conventions will likely seem a bit weird, or just too cheesy, to neophytes.
If you do like de robots, however, watch this show.
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Loving this show!
It's definitely a favorite! Nice and Jacuzzi are my favorite anime couple (perhaps fictional couple). (people probably get tired of hearing me saying that all the time. xD )
(And since I think I forgot to post about it in here last week again: Ep.'s 12-13. 
