the message in the bottle is the booze

I ... uh ...

If you haven't watched this, I highly recommend it. Not because it's good, but because it's hilarious. I especially recommend watching it while live chatting with a friend who shares a love for terrible but bonkers TV.

The tone of the entire series, episode to episode, scene to scene, is non-stop DRUMS! CHOIR! PRIMAL SCREAM!

I watched it expecting something like Castlevania because it's done by the same animation studio, but it has absolutely no subtlety or self-restraint. Castlevania could be entertainingly extra too, but it also had things like characterization and storytelling. They both have a penchant for "edginess" but Castlevania's edgy moments are more earned.

I think it could have been an actual good show if it was longer. There was simply no time at all to make us care about the characters and their conflicts. As it was, it was just crammed full of:

(a) exposition

(b) more exposition

(c) seriously is the exposition over

(d) tragic backstories (told though more exposition)

(e) the female gaze

(f) tropes turned up to 11

( In case you don't want to be spoiled for the, uh, plot, I'm putting my favorite moments behind a cut. They're not super-spoilery, because I'm keeping details vague, but I dunno you. )

I actually hope there will be fanfiction for this series. The thing is, we know almost nothing about most of the characters. We see very, very little of their lives and their relationships outside of the (very compressed) events in the series. There's a lot of room for for fun.

P.S. Hermes looks like a penis.

On Thursday, I turned in a paper and several assignments, and immediately collapsed into a brainless puddle of laziness. I decided to watch some dramas.

Freeze

( Why I didn't like it. )

---

Jeon Woochi



So after that letdown, I decided to watch something I already knew I liked: the cute, if a little chaotic, movie "Jeon Woochi".

Woochi is a wizard's apprentice living in the Joseon era. Cocky and selfish, he wants to find two mysterious artifacts that will turn him into the greatest wizard who has ever lived. However, this quest gets sidetracked when he ends up entangled in a fight between demons who want to open up the gate to hell, and a trio of Taoist gods. Woochi ends up being transported to 21st century, where the fight continues.

This is one of those movies that it's fun to waste a couple of hours on. It really could have been a mini-series--the story has so much room for expansion--but to be honest, I kind of like the final scene, even though it felt sort of abrupt. It has good production values and there are no characters that I really disliked, although Woochi's companion Chorangyi (a dog in human form) might annoy some.

I recommend this one if you're looking for a bit of fluff. You can download it from the jdramas community on LJ here.

(I should write fanfic.)

According to Wikipedia:

Ishikawa Goemon (石川 五衛門 or 石川 五右衛門?, 1558-1594) was a legendary bandit hero who stole gold and valuables and gave them to the poor. He is notable for being boiled alive after a failed assassination attempt on Toyotomi Hideyoshi. A large iron kettle-shaped bathtub is now called a Goemon-buro ("Goemon bath").

This movie is loosely, loosely based on that story--to begin with, this Goemon doesn't get boiled alive, although he does try to assassinate Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

This movie has almost nothing to do with actual history. If you mentioned research to the writers, I'm sure they would have blinked at you as if you were a madwoman.

If I had to describe their approach, it would be something like: "Take one part fantasy Japan, one part video game cut scenes, and one part visual kei. Stir well. Season with popular storytelling tropes such as tragic orphans, maniacally evil rulers, and star-crossed relationships." But that almost makes sense, while the actual movie raises an endless series of questions of "why did they do that?"

(The usual answer must be because it looked cool. This is why Oda Nobunaga wears European plate armor and why the McGuffin that Goemon accidentally steals is decorated in Egyptian hieroglyphs and is called Pandora's box.)

Much of the storyline is revealed through flashbacks, making it even more confusing. By the time that I had finally pieced it together (note: that did not mean it made sense), it had turned rather dark, in that tragic now-it's-suicide-revenge-fantasy way, and the main female character had become even more pointlessly helpless.

Final verdict: Quite silly. There's no point to watching unless you like the style of pretty, or are a fan of action scenes that are set in a world with video-game physics.

Music Time!

Fly, Fly My Sadness - Angelite and Huun-Huur-Tu

Angelite is an offshoot of the famous Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, a Bulgarian women's choir. Huun-Huur-Tu is a renowned Tuvan folk group. Combine the two and you get something gorgeously haunting and perfect for a cold, lonely day outside.

Take that, Edward Cullen.

There seem to be two animated versions of Hellsing. I thought I would try this one, because I couldn't remember if it sucked or not, and because someone on Netflix said it was the version truer to the manga.

So far it has been mostly pulled from the manga, just slightly rearranged. It loses something in the transition, though. The animation shortcuts make it drastically less creepy, and attempts to emulate the style of the manga fall flat. I'm not sure if the visual style of Hellsing is suited to animation, but a decent attempt would require a bigger budget. And more imagination.

That and condensing the storyline made it even more stupid. We have two things: clumsy exposition, and violence. The manga is completely ridiculous, but it has something that makes it entertaining all the same. Style, a bit of a story... Not so much this anime.

I think I'll remove the rest of this from my Netflix queue unless someone says, "no, wait, it gets better!"

---

MEANWHILE, IN THE SPACE CRAVAT ANIME, A LOT HAS HAPPENED.

When I last watched, the Tytanian dukes were embarrassing themselves by losing important battles to various types of riffraff: pirates, doctors of philosophy, men with no cravats. Fan Hyulick, a member of he latter category, had been particularly annoying, and so Tytania was after him.

Alses, Duke Zarlish's horrible little brother - from now own referred to as "the squid" - captured the woman in stupid pants and decided to use her as bait.

It backfired, because he sucks.


Fan Hyulick rescues the plot device. Kind of.

( The rest of this post contains spoilers. )

Aryoung is hot. Ki-Chul and his gang of idiots are idiots.

This isn't a sequel and none of the female characters are married. But the titular character is a gangster, so we have two out of three.

Aryoung, the daughter of a powerful Hong Kong boss, goes into hiding in South Korea when a gang war makes her a target. Ki-Chul, a thuggish and bumbling South Korean gangster, is told that he has to take care of this "guest." The relationship gets off to a rocky start, and meanwhile, the Chinese underworld is still searching for Aryoung.

It's a formulaic movie and it's hard to believe that Aryoung would be interested in Ki-Chul, who is an idiot and not even a quarter as badass as she is.

What makes it decent popcorn is that it's occasionally pretty funny, especially when it comes to the the communication difficulties.

Because Aryoung doesn't speak Korean and Ki-Chul doesn't speak Chinese, Ki-Chul hires a young woman to be their translator. The woman is at first terrified when she finds out that she's been conscripted by gangsters, and translates everything nasty that Aryoung says into something nice. Later, swept up by vicarious badassitude, she translates everything nice that Aryoung says into something nasty.

Also: Aryoung is hot.

(I'm using the name spellings and translated title that was used in the subtitled version I watched. It also goes by "Jopog Manura 3" and "Gangster Wife 3".)

I'm currently reading the first book in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. Most of what I've heard about it is the same: It's good paranormal-detective fun, but the first book is pretty bad. It gets better as the series progresses.

I don't mind the prose. It's not good, but it's not obtrusively bad either; it sort of fades into the background most of the time and only jumps out to go "BLARRRHGH" at you when there is a clumsy info-dump. I'm not far enough along to really judge the plot.

What does stand out is the sexism.

Harry Dresden, the protagonist, is a self-proclaimed "old fashioned" man. For example, he holds doors open for women--not something I would blame him for, but he continues to do it even after they tell him that they don't appreciate it.

In his own words, "men ought to treat women like something other than just shorter, weaker men with breasts." Women should be treated differently, regardless of their feelings on the matter. And this is portrayed as if it makes Dresden more noble.

I'm alright with flawed protagonists--in fact, I love them, but when it seems like those flaws are reflections of the author's prejudices, I'm uncomfortable. I don't like it when an author's racism, sexism, or other -ism is showing. I could accept that this was Harry Dresden's problem, not Jim Butcher's, if not for how sexism suffuses the portrayal of women in the book, which can't always be explained away as being due to Dresden's point of view.

( And then it gets worse. )

So, Harry Dresden's old-fashioned values:

Women should be treated differently than men regardless of their opinions about it. Women are more hateful than men, and more subtle than men. It's unexpected if an attractive one has a traditionally male job. They love romance novels land chocolate, and what they're looking for in a man is money. Using a mind-altering substance to get a woman to fall in love with (read: sleep with) is bad because it makes you look desperate.

Instead of working on my homework, I took a long, hot bath, and finished The Lions of Al-Rassan.

The story takes place in a very thinly disguised version of medieval Spain. The Asharite kingdoms, which have ruled for centuries, are crumbling, and the Jaddite kingdoms to the North are mobilizing to reconquer the penninsula. The three main characters represent the faiths/cultures that are caught up in this conflict: Ammar ibn Khairan is an Asharite warrior and poet; Rodrigo Belmonte is a Jaddite mercenary; Jehane is a Kindath doctor.( I think there are spoilers here. But nothing major. )