I Don't Really Like Halloween

Well, Halloween is near and depending on who you are, you're going to celebrate in one or more ways. Usually, it's either to go outside and get free candy, go to a costume party, watch horror movies at home or any combination. Unfortunately, I'm doing the third option this year because the only things that I want to dress-up as have their costumes cost a lot of money, at least well-made costumes, because the usual retail costume for a Power Ranger or Kamen Rider sucks. Anyways, most people (or at least, I assume it's most people) celebrate Halloween this way, by watching the 1979 John Carpenter classic, Halloween. Sadly, I lived a disturbing childhood where I never experienced certain TV shows and movies until I was at a more recent age. One of these movies was Halloween... sort of. I did see the original Halloween when I was in middle school, but I never saw it all the way through. Instead, it was the sequels that had most of my viewing attention. And by sequels, I mean 3 through 5, and H20. Tragic isn't it?

The earliest time I can remember watching Halloween all the way through was when the Rob Zombie remake came out, and the general consensus was that it didn't hold a candle to the original movie (people liked the original more than the remake? what is this madness!?), and a lot of people I heard who had this opinion made Halloween sound like it was some masterpiece in film-making. So I watched it to see what all the fuss was at that time, and I'm sorry to say that I didn't really like it. Yeah, I know it was a major influence in the slasher movie genre and laid the foundation for horror movies to come, but to me, it just hasn't aged well.

Movie critics like to respond negatively towards slasher flicks, and for good reason. I mean, the characters are usually bland or annoying and the events that happen in these movies are pretty predictable and formulaic. However it bothers me that these same critics brag about how Halloween is so much better than these movies even though it's pretty much the same thing. What's so special about Halloween compared to other slasher flicks today?

Well one aspect that's said to be different is the character of Michael Myers whose back-story and descent into madness is made to be very ambiguous, making him an interesting character, but to me, the ambiguity isn't really handled well. I think ambiguity works best when the audience is given some insight on the mystery without spoiling things outright and make that same audience look through the story again, looking for any semblance of an answer even though in the end, there really isn't one. With Halloween, the only thing we know about Michael is that he killed his older sister and his psychologist describes him as simply being "evil", and for me, that's not enough for me to be interested in the character the same way I was interested in the events that happened in The Exorcist or Paranormal Activity. I mean, whenever Dr. Loomis describes Michael to his companion and goes on his "pure evil" rant, it just seems childishly-written and something that I can't take seriously. Plus from what I understand about what's revealed about Micheal's back story in the sequels, it doesn't really make sense for Michael to be killing Laurie Strode's friends when he could've just killed Laurie in the first place, because she and the rest of her family are apparently Michael's only targets.

Another bit that's said to be done better is how atmospheric and tension-building it is. This again, isn't really something that I can agree with. I suppose by tension, you mean the lead killer stalking the main character, chase scenes that has the killer walking at a snail's pace, slow pacing, and pretty much everything else that's present in slasher movies, than yeah it does build tension. I want to talk about the slow pacing for a moment, and say that this was the main reason why I didn't like Halloween. It just made the movie soo boring. I mean people complain how The Blair Witch Project was boring, saying that it really just about people rambling nonsense with camera shots of the woods, but that's what Halloween is most of time, just replace "woods" with "houses" and "rooms that are too dark to look at". I mean, pretty much nothing happens in the first three quarters of the movie and none of the characters (with the exception of Loomis) are interesting or likeable and it's all just set up for the inevitable, and even when Michael comes into action and starts killing people, it's still boring. And at moments when it's suppose to build tension, by having scenes shot in rooms with no source of light whatsoever, I'm not going to be surprised that Michael's gonna make a jump-scare and stab the lone person in the room.

Again, what is so special about Halloween compared to other slasher movies!? I know it was one of the firsts, but like I said, I'm looking at this movie in terms of how it holds up today, without looking through rose-tinted glasses, and I'm sorry but I don't think this movie has aged well. People may complain how the terrible the sequels were, especially the ones that came after Halloween III, but I'm probably going to be the first one to say that I actually prefer watching those movies over the original. Personally, I found them more entertaining and more attention-grabbing than the first movie. Now I don't really expect anybody to agree with me here, but this is just my opinion that I wanted to express, and if you think I'm a moron for having this opinion, well... I can't really blame you.

Top 10 Dumbest Evangelion Moments

Neon Genesis Evangelion is an anime that I have love/hate relationship with. You see, I really didn't like the original 26-Episode series. The animation was crap, it was incredibly formulaic, and to me the story and characters were badly written. However, for some strange reason I really like the movies. End of Evangelion, to me, is one of the greatest animated films I've seen in my life, and I'm enjoying the Rebuild of Evangelion movies, which is basically a retelling of the original series. So yeah, I'm a bit of an odd-ball when it comes to having an opinion on Evangelion. Although to be fair, even the movies have their share of dumb moments that are on par with those found in the original series. But what exactly are the dumbest moments? Well I made this list of what I think are The Top 10 Dumbest Evangelion Moments. Let's begin.

10) Toji Punching Shinji
Toji acts as a good and reliable friend to our main character, Shinji, constantly standing by his side and being an overall nice guy to Shinji even though he's pretty much a lost cause. However, the first time we see these two characters interact with one another, Toji in a fit of anger, punches Shinji a couples times, blaming him for hospitalizing his sister. Now I'm not saying that Shinji doesn't deserve to be punched (judging from what we see of him later on, it's well deserved), but is it really a wise move to be punching somebody who pilots a giant robot on an almost daily basis? I mean Toji's really lucky that Shinji didn't kill him out of revenge, because in the same episode that happened, Shinji was given the perfect opportunity to kill him while he was in his EVA suit. And it's not like that Toji deserves a gruesome death or anything, but it's just a really dumb idea on his part to try to bring his fists into a giant robot fight.

9) The Electrical Plugs on The EVA Suits
The best compliment that I could probably give to NGE is the design and characteristics of the EVA mechs. I'm not sure I can do a good job at explaining what I like about them so much; I guess it's how slim and organic they look, as well as how quick and agile they are compared to other mechs roughly around their size. However the one thing that I find really stupid about these mechs are the giant electrical plugs that come out of their backs. I know that technically, their not electrical plugs, but they pretty much behave the same way, what with their power being relied on giant wires that can be attached and detached at certain hot spots that transfer blood (the fuel source that the EVAs run off of). I can understand what they were trying to pull off here, trying to bring this sense of tension in the fight scenes by having the EVAs be dependent on them, or else it would cause the EVAs to run on a very short timer, but there are better ways to try to implement this feeling of suspense without making me think of this...



8) Death and Rebirth
I said earlier that even though I didn't enjoy the TV series, I do really like the movies.... Except for Death and Rebirth. To those who are not familiar with this, Death and Rebirth was the first Evangelion movie released. The movie was broken in two parts, the first being a rundown of the events that happened in the series, while the second was basically the first ten minutes of End of Evangelion. Now, I don't really have a problem with Rebirth, like I said, it's the first ten minutes of End of Evangelion, but Death is sooooo retarded. Was a simple recap of the events that happened in the series too much to ask for? Apparently it was, because Gainax wanted to be pretentious and make something that had some bullshit philosophical message, at least that's the conclusion I came up with to explain the horrendous editing that has been done here. Seriously, this movie was pretty much just clips from the series put together in a random, nonsensical fashion having no sense made whatsoever. Oh sure, there's new bits of animation to be found in Death, but the quality in animation is on par with later episodes of the show and they're pretty much useless other than to act as transitions and reveal info that's either pointless or doesn't make any bit sense (or both). I'd love to see the reactions of the people who went into theaters, having no knowledge about Neon Genesis Evangelion and saw Death and Rebirth.

7) The Masturbation Scene in End of Evangelion
I said earlier that End of Evangelion is one of my favorite animated movies, but that's not to say that it doesn't have its share of problems, and for this entry I'm going to have to discuss the most infamous scene from this movie. To those who don't know what I'm talking about, watch the clip below, and see what happens early in the film's run time.




Okay, this bit is lower on the list than it probably should be. The reason why this doesn't bother me so much is because I can sort of understand a 14-Year old boy jerking-off to an unconscious girl with her breasts exposed. I mean at least Shinji admits that he's wrong for doing this. But the thing that puzzles and disgusts me more is "Why is this necessary?". It doesn't really contribute anything to the events that happen in End of Evangelion and it comes off more as a perverted excuse to show underage tits. The only reason I can think of to include this scene was to give Shinji a reason why he was severely depressed during the first half of the film, but before I was writing this, I thought that he was depressed about killing his "friend" Kaworu. Either way, I'm sure we can all agree that there's a better way to show why somebody is depressed that doesn't have "masturbation" being the key-word used.

6) Kaworu and Shinji's Yaoi Scene
Alright, next to the masturbation scene in End of Evangelion, this is probably the most infamous in all of Neon Genesis Evangelion. And like the previous entry, I'm going to show you a clip to give some of you who haven't seen Evangelion some perspective.



Before I go on this rant, I would like to remind people that I'm not homophobic and I that I'm all for sexual expression of this caliber to be shown, and anybody who hates homosexuals is a bigot who is no better than those who persecute Jews and blacks. Got that? Good, now let's continue? WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!? I mean first of all, there was no build up whatsoever to that scene. Kaworu first appeared in this episode and there was nothing in that episode to indicate that he (or Shinji for that matter) was gay. Secondly, where they attempting to be philosophical here? All I can really gather from here is that Kaworu is telling Shinji that he (Shinji) has difficulty accepting that he is alone and because of that, Kaworu is empathetic towards him, or as he puts it, loves him. What message are they trying to get across here!? To those reading this, please let me know what bit of philosophy can only be represented by a teenager flirting with someone his own sex in a bath house. Besides, it doesn't really feel like it's looking at homosexuality in a serious way, and it comes off like it's written by a twelve year-old girl who thinks that yaoi fan-fiction is comparable to Milk and Brokeback Mountain in how they portray the struggles of homosexual relationships.

5) Episode 9
You know how in some shows, someone will look at two people who are total opposites and imagine the two living together and say "I smell sitcom!" or anything else along those lines? Well this is what that episode is, it's an unintentional parody of a sitcom, with Shinji and Asuke living together and trying to get along with each other so they can do better the next time an angel shows up and attacks the city, which they failed terribly at. Where do I start with this? First off, if the lack of getting along was the cause of their failure, why don't they just replace Asuka with Rei? It's not like she was injured at that point, and it's even been established in that episode that Rei gets along with Shinji a lot more than Asuka does, so why is the cooperation between the two vital in fighting this one specific angel? Also, how exactly does playing DDR cooperatively with twister mats help? I'm serious, this is what actually happens in this episode, Misato goes on about how playing this game will help their body movements sync up with each other or some bullshit. You know what would be a better way to train the two? How about have them use the combat simulators!? We're suppose to take this show seriously, right?

 I'd like to think that the "Error" signs are in response to the logic of this scene

4) Episodes 25 and 26
These two episodes are probably the best examples of one of Evangelion's major flaws; the animation sucks. More noticeable in the later episodes, many scenes relied on showing stilled images for long periods of time and left most of the animation work to the mecha-action and lip-movement. However, the last two episodes of the show reach a new level of lazy animation. They use that aforementioned still-image trick but they top that with using scenes from previous episodes and have almost all the animation work went to lip movement sync-up with the audio. I understand that animating for TV is difficult due to time restrictions, but this is just laughable. The only way for this to have been possible is if Gainax only had one animator working on this show, or if the animation team worked on both of these episodes in on the last day. Also, these were suppose to be the last episodes to close the series. You'd think that a little more effort would've been put in! And on that note, let's talk about how this series originally ended. It's basically about Shinji thinking to himself about how worthless he is and how he's imagining people responding to that, saying that it's not true. This is basically how the dialog went:

Shinji: "I'm worthless"
(Insert Character's Name Here): "No you're not"
Shinji: "I'm worthless"
(Insert Character's Name Here): "No you're not"
Shinji: "I'm worthless"
(Insert Character's Name Here): "No you're not"
Shinji: "OK you're right, now I love myself"
(Insert Character's Name Here): "yay"

Again, this was suppose to be how the series ended. A bunch of psychological babble surrounding a character who constantly gives up on himself with no good reason behind it. Fortunately End of Evangelion came along and gave the series an ending with some semblance of closure (at least to me anyway), but still these two episodes are probably the worst examples of both ending off a series and animating one.

3) Asuka's Constant Bitching
Next to Shinji, Asuka is probably the worst written character in Evangelion. She looks at herself as if she's the best person to exist on Earth and treats almost everyone else as if their beneath her, constantly scolding and insulting people while at the same time gloating about awesome she is and anybody who doesn't understand what she's talking about, it's because their jealous. Then when she sees Shinji being the pilot that comes out on top, her personality makes a 180 turn and becomes a manic depressive because she realized that she isn't perfect. There is no clear explanation given to why she acts like this, other than that her mother committed suicide when she was five, or something. Even with that knowledge, how does having your mother commit suicide turn you into an egotistical bitch? Did she commit suicide because she was disappointed in Asuka for not being the American President at the age of five? Was Asuka picked on because her mom died ("That will teach you for having a dead mom!")? And if her mother's death wasn't responsible for Asuka's selfish attitude, than why wasn't it ever explained? I'm not against ambiguity, unless it's given to an unlikeable character's back-story and we're supposed to feel sorry for that character's vague tragic past. This is just poor writing.

For once I congratulate Shinji in one of his hissy-fits

2) It's attempts at being "deep"
This is something that I put most of the blame onto the fans of Evangelion, but Hideaki Anno deserves it as well. Anybody who says that Evangelion is "deep", or "philosophical", or "artistic" or whatever has their head totally up their asses. Now I admit that I'm a sucker for the pretentious and there are bits of symbolism that I like in NGE, and I would hesitantly call End of Evangelion deep, but overall, there's almost no depth in the original TV series. The main complaint that I have in this regard is just the overall format of this show. It's a generic monster-of-the-weak, giant mecha anime with stock characters, cute animal characters, fan service and other anime cliches, with all the pretentious stuff feeling forced and tacked-on, not having much of an impact on the show. And most of the stuff that does have an impact on the plot is just poorly-written shlock that's used as an excuse to make bullshit psychological metaphors. "Shinji's whining isn't badly written, it represents Sigmund Freud's theory on self-worth and the troubles of accepting the world around you". Fuck you. I'm not gonna buy into this psychological bullshit, especially when we have scenes throughout the show such as this...

 and this...

and this...

1) Shinji's Constant Whining
Okay, this is something that I don't think Evangelion fans even defend. Shinji is someone who spends all the time throughout both the TV series and movies constantly whining, depressing, and complaining about how miserable his life is. But what exactly happens in his life? From what's shown, he has good friends who like to hang out with him, and support him no matter what stupid thing he does; There are three beautiful girls who find him attractive, two of which actually live with him; He pilots a giant robot, usually coming out as the best pilot, saving the world from total destruction; and how does he respond to all of these accomplishments? "I'm worthless". That is total bullshit! Throughout everything we see him in, he has always been able to come out on top and have a life that would make many people jealous. I guess you can make the argument that that's the point, having a character with a lot of good things in life only to overlook them and focus on the negatives, but we never see anything that would put a damper to how Shinji sees himself and the only thing we have to go by is that his dad is an ass-hole, and that his mom died. Plus, I personally find his character to border on the offensive. There are people who have serious self-esteem problems and to have a character with these many luxuries and so few problems in his life either tells us that Hidieki Anno's own psychological issues is comparable to a spoiled rich kid who hates his/her parents for not buying a Ferrari Testarosa for his/her birthday, or that he sucks at writing characters with psychological issues... which he is regardless.

So that's my list of dumb things to be found in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Some of you are probably wondering why I didn't put the ending of End of Evangelion on this list, well it's because I actually do like how End of Evangelion ended. The main criticism I hear for that ending was due to the fact that everybody pretty much died. I personally didn't care about any of the characters from the show, so no ounce of depression came from me. Also, it did end on the assumption that Earth will turn back to normal and everybody will come back to life so even if I did care about the characters, I'd be glad to know that they'll make it out okay

To end on a positive note, I am enjoying the Rebuild of Evangelion movies and if I were to recommend watching this series in any way, it would be through those movies as they remove a lot of the stuff I hate about NGE, fixing and improving some of the things that are on this list.... As well as amplify some of other stuff in this list, making it look more idiotic at times. Oh well, there's still two movies to go and I'm interested to see how they turn out.

Time Bokan OVA Review

There's a chance that some of you guys played Tatunoko vs. Capcom, and if you enjoyed playing it, you probably thought to yourself "Wow, these characters belonging to Tatsunoko are pretty interesting, I would like to see the anime they were in". Well... You're results will vary depending on who you're looking for. I would say that the ratio of anime that features the Tatsunoko characters from TVC, that have been licensed in The States, compared to those that aren't available to an english-speaking audience, is about 50/50. Gatchaman has DVD releases for its original 1970's series and 94' OVA. Casshan has its 93' OVA, live-action movie, and the recent reboot licensed over here. And Tekkaman Blade and Karas has their shows released on DVD as well. Also, I did find fan-subs for Space Knight Tekkaman and the original Neo-Human Casshan series (although as of writing, only eight episodes of the latter show have been fan-subbed). Everyone else however.... is going to be more difficult.

I could not find much belonging to the other Tatsunoko characters. I found nothing for an English translation of Gold Lightan and Ippatsu-Man. There seems to have been a VHS release for the Hurricane Polymar OVA according to eBay, but that's about it for that character. And for Yatterman, there is nothing for the original series. There do exist fan-subs for the recent remake, but only the first two episodes were done and the guy who made them seemingly dropped the project altogether. And whether the live-action movie is licensed here or not, is something I have no idea about. However, there is one thing that is related to Yatterman that was sold to the English-speaking world.

This is the DVD shown on Amazon, but the only customer who reviewed it on the site says that the grammar in the subtitles are horrible

Time Bokan: Royal Revival (or just Time Bokan if you went by the North American DVD) is a 2-episode OVA that centers around the main enemies of Yatterman, The Dorombo Gang (who were also in TVC). The two episodes in this OVA are self-contained and don't really have much connection to each other, but one of the episodes here is probably the only anime crossover with characters made by Tatsunoko. Kind of lucky that somebody decided to license this anime and give Americans the chance to experience what these Tatsunoko characters are like. But is it any good? Let's find out.

Now the Tatsunoko crossover is the second episode on this DVD, so I'm not going to look over that one first. The first episode is another crossover, though this one is with characters from Tatsunoko's Time Bokan series. I don't have a clear understanding of what exactly Time Bokan is, but my best guess is that its a string of super hero/mecha/comedy anime (similar to Super Sentai, in that each season follows a different cast and setting) where time travel seems to be a constant theme throughout the shows, and that Yatterman and Ippatsu-Man are part of this series.

Anyways, the story of this episode is that a race is being held to determine who's the best trio of villains from Time Bokan. It basically plays like an episode of Wacky Races, following The Dorombo Gang as they try to compete without the help of their member, Boyacky. Now to me, the best accomplishment a crossover can make, is to have viewers who are not familiar with the characters shown, become interested in them and view the series which they came from. In that regard, this episode doesn't really do a good job. The main problem here is that the set of villains from each of the Time Bokan shows, who are really the only characters here, are all the same and don't really have much distinction between one-another. They're basically Team Rocket with an attractive woman and her two lackeys, one skinny with a weird mustache and the other, fat and muscular. There may be differences between these teams that's noticeable in the anime they're from, but I kind of doubt that. Besides wouldn't it be more sensible to focus on the heroes in a crossover? Not saying that there can't be crossovers centered around villains, but the villains in Time Bokan are all the same. But I'm probably being to harsh here. After all, it really only focuses on The Dorombo gang. Both episodes are very comedic in tone, and there are some stuff in this episode I thought was pretty funny, but most of the jokes are pretty bad, with there being a lot "funny moments" that are either suppose to be in-jokes or Family Guy-esque jokes that are based purely on randomness (or both). Either way, they aren't funny and they just come off as being confusing. There's really nothing more for me to comment on. Like I said, it's really nothing more than an episode of Wacky Races with more of a plot, and less differences between characters.

Anyways, now we get into the episode that's got me interested, The Tatsunoko Crossover. The story in this episode follows The Dorombo Gang as they try to steal "The Basterd Child of Tatsunoko", a statue found in "Tatsunoko Land", but the group has a little trouble as the inhabitants of Tatunoko Land have a bit of a problem with people stealing what's essentially this world's version of The Statue of Liberty. As a jumping on point to Yatterman, this episode does a better job than the first one was at introducing Time Bokan, showing us some of the stuff that's usually done by it's main cast of characters, while also showing a bit of progress in the lives these people to entertain existing fans, such as showing that Yatterman-1 and 2 are married and are now in the list of couples who look more like a pair of siblings, rather than a pair of lovers.

Separated at birth? I certainly hope not.

I have to admit, I went into this with higher expectations than I should've had. I thought that this would reveal and explain that the Tatsunoko characters were living in the same universe and shared the same continuity, but that just shows how much of a comic book dork I am, because its one of those crossovers that has these characters here for fan-appeal, and nothing more really. At least that's what I think, because with what I know about some of the Tatsunoko characters here, and I seriously doubt that Galactor's conquest of Earth, The Robot Uprising, and The Waldarians' invasion of Earth all happened with Gatchaman, Casshan, and Tekkaman living so close to each other and in the same time frame. I suppose you could make an explanation to try and tie all these people and events together to make it resemble what's shown in this episode, but that's just putting more thought into this than the actual creators did. The jokes in this one are a lot better than in the previous episode, with a most of the wacky stuff actually having some context to what's going on in the story, and left me with a few chuckles, even when it came to stuff that was just bat-shit insane, such as when The Dorombo Gang used their "Sailor Mun Mun" mecha to seduce Yatterman's dog mecha.

I've seen worst things that were meant to turn people on

Now to the question of whether Royal Revival is good or not? To me it's just okay. Out of the two episodes on this OVA, the second one is really the only one that's pretty decent, with the first being very 'bleh'. There is a dub, and coming from somebody who doesn't really notice bad dubbing, it means a lot when I say that the dubbing is pretty bad. However, I think the bad dubbing actually makes a lot of the jokes funnier than if you were to watch it through reading the subtitles. The DVD is very cheap, and you can find new copies that costs less than $5 Dollars. So if Royal Revival interests you, you really don't have much to lose.