Star Trek: The Animated Series

There are two types of fanbeings - those who gravitate towards Star Wars, and those who gravitate towards Star Trek.  Of course, it's not as cut and dry as all that, and I'm rather fond of both narratives; I just find Star Trek more...accessible.  Somehow it's always on my teevee when I am in front of it.  It's hard to explain.

Anyway, so I thought it would be a lark to put Star Trek: The Animation into the Netflix cue, just to see if DJ would cotton to it.  We just finished watching the first disc of a 4-part set and I'm thinking, this is going to be one of the sets of cartoons I end up collecting.

DJ really, really likes it - it's almost exactly like TOS but it's somehow more simple.  Part of it is the fact that it's only a half-hour so they're bite-size for 8-year-old attention spans.  At the same time, it is really, really well-written, and most of the original peeps from TOS are doing the voices!

It's actually pretty awesome in that TOS kind of way - it's ultra serious with some strange Roddenberry Liberal agenda and unintentionally hilarious at all the right moments.  Like I said, it is basically the Star Trek universe on a child's scale.  This is one of those cartoons that I seriously missed the boat on when I was a kid - according to Wikipedia, it was on TV from 1973-1974 - I think at that time I was probably watching Speed Buggy or Scrappy Doo or some crap.

Oh well, back to work.

Got the crew pic from epguides.com

Mahou Shoujo Modoka★Magica

Mami, Rifles dropping from her skirt?!  Now that's Magic!

As I've become a bit jaded in my second go-around with anime as an adult, I never considered myself someone who would like anime from the Magical Girl category, but I've taken a shine to Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica.  Who'd a thunk?

The thing I like about it is that it pretty much destroys my preconceptions about magical girl stories, and seems to be a bit dark.  I also like the alternate-reality sequences where the magical girls reach the core of the delusion (a newly-forming witch) that is causing people to off themselves in various ways (jumping from buildings, releasing toxic gases in a closed room), and these sequences are especially well done with a lot of stop-action-like animation using photographic-like images.  It's hard to tell what technique the animators are using because things have really opened up with CG-integrated anime.  Does this mean a more serious move towards CG is planned and will this put the already depressed Japanese economy further in the dumps by replacing animators with CG-generators?  Not sure, but this technique is very interesting and engaging in realizing an alternate reality from the usual anime world we see. 

The dark part of the storyline is that the girls who are selected to become magical girls by this stuffed-animal looking magical dog (rabbit?) is, on the outset, a pretty sweet deal; in exchange for becoming a magical girl and fighting witches you get any wish you want fulfilled.  But the cost is too great in more ways than one, and this agonizing sub plot of what and how the two main storyline characters want to wish for and make their decision to become magical girls is interesting and unexpected.  

If you don't want to take my word for it, here is a youtube video of a very (enthusiastic?) drunk young man, probably broadcasting from the inner sanctum of his dorm room at uni, narrating the preview from episode 3.  

Got the picture of Mami from Due2Life blog.

Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru (Yet the Town Turns)

Just finished watching the anime adapation of this manga by Ishiguro Masakazu, about a young girl growing up in a small neighborhood who's kind of ditzy and loves mystery novels and gets into trouble a lot.  She works at a Maid cafe with her friend Tatsuno, and it is really just a slice of life story that is sweet and funny and the anime adaptation does it justice.  I didn't think I'd like it but became an avid fan after one episode and it just ended after 12 episodes and I am so sad :(

Update on Yahoo Answers Question

I think that's it - I got 6 answers to my question - here is a screen shot:

Yahoo! Answers question about anime vs. American cartoons

My Yahoo! Avatar

Because I need to do grading I have decided to procrastinate by posting the following question on Yahoo! Answers:

What American cartoons do Japanese people like?

I'm a longtime fan of anime but I never hear about the American cartoons Japanese people like to watch - or do they like American cartoons at all? Can anybody help me answer this?

 

Haha, can you tell I C&P'd this from the website?  So, here are some of the answers I've gotten so far (there are four days to get answers to this question):

 

 

1.  Avatar the Last Airbender.

 

2.  Hello Kitty to the highest degree.

Source(s):

one of my friends is japanese.

 

3.  I heard they really like Scooby-Doo (for some odd reason)

 

4.  The original Tom and Jerry cartoons, as well as The Pink Panther's original shorts translate well overseas because there is no soundtrack to translate since the title characters remain silent through most of their adventures.
And while I can't say why The Pink Panther remains silent, Tom and Jerry never spoke in the originals because William Hanna and Joseph Barbera could never agree on what they should sound like.

 

I am totally dubious of answers 1 & 2, and answer 4 doesn't really answer the question and seems almost like speculation.  I like answer #3 the best just because it has a S-D reference and S-D is awesome so why wouldn't people around the world love Scooby-Doo?

If you've got some spurious information on this question, feel free to post on the Yahoo link, here.  I've had this question rolling around for awhile and watching Total Drama Island with DJ made me finally decide to pose this question to the Internets.

Total Drama Island

Just bought my son the complete first season of Total Drama Island from iTunes - 35-bucks!!!  Gaaa.  Did I do this because I am a super-duper mom?  NO!  It is because I am a sick mom who needed to lie on the couch and watch Total Drama Island episodes while dozing and/or coughing.

TDI is not really a show I should let the kid watch - it's for just a little bit older set (although, he's almost a 'tween' so he's in that gray area already).  He learns so much from the monsters older kids at after school, though, so it's getting harder to police what he does and doesn't know about the outer world.

Anyway, this is one of those shows I talked about in an earlier post that DJ started watching and I caught on to it and liked it as well.  I can attest to the fact that, for the most part, DJ has some pretty good taste in what cartoons he likes to watch.  I was even skeptical, early on in his choosings, about some of them - like, "Sonic the Hedgehog? Seriously?"  And then I'd get all into it and then he'd move on.  The student has surpassed the master. 

TDI is a really fun show in that era of American cartoons that has some continuity and plot progression.

DJ wants to play catch so I'll update later.

DJ picked this pic for the post - it comes from jadore_renard via fanpop

Sick Day

Darling son is home sick this morning and, for some reason, last night he decided to drag out our Speed Racer DVD's and re-watch the eps we have.  When he was little, his very first observation about Speed was that, "he looks like a girl."  But, you have to admit, he does some pretty kick-ass stuff, and his dad knows Judo.

Here's a link to the first post about Speed Racer from 2006(!), and here's one that has a youtube of the Japanese version of the theme song.