Category Archives: Special
If you have been watching Anime long enough, you will come to a point where you can clearly say with conviction your opinion on marathoning a series. Marathoners believe that if you watch something all at once, you keep everything fresh in your mind, making emersion a prime directive. Non-marathoners on the other hand believe that one should take the time to divide a show up over a stretch of time, longevity being the name of the game. But every so often you will come across a film series like Garden of Sinners (humor me a little here people) or a tight-knit OVA series like Giant Robo (something that I want to see covered on this very site) and ask yourself if making the viewing experience into a marathon is the only way to victory. Well Biskmater and I thought that if we were ever going to effectively cover the 2010 anime film series Broken Blade, we would have to marathon it together. What follows is an experiment involving two guys, one TV, and a ton of couch sitting. Some God have mercy on our charred souls.
Broken Blade is based on a still running manga by Yunosoke Yoshinaga, consisting of six forty-five minute film parts. Every episode was directed by Tetsuo Amino, director of all things Macross 7 from the nineties and Starship Troopers OVAs from the late eighties (the idea alone that Amino was stuck directing the dreaded Starship Troopers anime is far funnier than any slapstick Macross 7’s comedy could pull off astounds me). Amino was also involved in many of the Super Deformed Gundam properties, meaning that he is tangentially qualified to direct a mecha series.
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Leave a comment | tags: Broken Blade, 2010, Yunosoke Yoshinaga, Tetsuo Amino, Fantasy, Film Series, Marathon shows, Mecha | posted in Anime, Special
Megazone23 part 2 was directed by Ichiro Itano (Blassreiter, Gantz, Spirit Warrior) and its character designer was Yasuomi Umetsu (Yumemakura Baku Twilight Gekijō, Mezzo Forte, Kite).
Part 2 of Megazone23 starts a few months after the events of part 1. Shogo was defeated in his attempt at a final confrontation with BD (the military commander whom I affectionately call Blu-ray Disc). After his defeat, Shogo apparently went underground to lick his wounds, gathering some of the most varied assortment of lunatics out there in the world of anime (with the exception of maybe team Dai-Gurren) There is Guts, who is basically a bull in a biker’s get up and bad teeth. Lightning , Shogo’s best friend and second in command, who looks like a goofier Shogo with his multi-colored hair and an interesting attraction for Eve, which sort of made me think of an early parallel for Otaku’s obsessed, with their idols and/or waifus. With company like those two, Shogo lies in wait for an opportunity to strike back. Meanwhile, Yui, our heroine has been sitting around waiting for Shogo to appear, like a good woman of the 80’s is necessentially expected. And apparently she decided to get her hair dyed (which may not have been intentional on her part).
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Leave a comment | tags: 1986, Ichiro Itano, Megazone 23, Part 2, Yasuomi Umetsu | posted in Anime, Special
Crossed: Psychopath is all together a different beast than the original. Written by David Lapham and drawn by Raulo Caceres, familiar names in the Avatar Press catalog. The story starts several years after the happening world is infested with crossed Marauding bands terrorizing the land and few humans remain living in perpetual motion. The climate is different, no big government gesture or act of spiritual power has thought the need to intervene, for the crossed are here to stay. Our cast of four non infected humans is introduced watching the crossed mutilate various vultures and a decomposing cow along a mountainous terrain. Tired of this total disregard for any human decency, they stumble upon a trapped man passed out in a deep ravine. They learn that the man is named Harold Lorre. He was chased by the crossed into the ravine and broke his leg. He was stuck there for days. His broken leg would limit the groups’ mobility; however, one of the group’s members Amanda pleads for the group’s humanity and Harold helps by selling himself as an excellent tracker and crossed behavior expert. The group decides to take Harold, not knowing that their constant threat of the crossed pales in comparison to what Harold personally has in store for them.
David Lapham flash-steps away from the survival angle of the first series to instead use the crossed as a device to allocate natural human emotions of violence and lust. In an attempt to not reveal too much, the lead Harold is by far more of an atrocity than anything that the cross have in store. He is a crossed-environment-beaten man who has only fermented with age, as he reminisces about his lost “love” Lori. David Lapham demonstrates straight-laced on the outside and unstable on the inside Harold as an apex of sexual frustration with quick erotic bursts of dominance and confidence in his own mind. His perch sitting judgments on the others comes quick and flips just as fast. Harold does what I feel many non-psychotic people do and by that I mean create hatred for others based solely on a few actions. Lapham created a demonstrative individual who slowly tears down his fellow-man like an anger embedded puppeteer. Harold’s dedication to premeditation makes him far more deplorable of a subject than anything the gore frolicking crossed could ever imagine. This shows what humans are capable of, parallel banded tribes who have already fallen off sanity’s edge.
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Leave a comment | tags: Avatar Press, Cover Variants, Crossed: Psychopath, David Lapham, Raulo Ceceres, Special | posted in Comics, Special
Story time is upon us here tonight at CTBF and the story in question is one that started it all and the genre that constitutes one-fourth of this site. Yeah, I feel like introducing you (sea of darting eyes) to how I started delving into western comics and the mastery that I continue to convince you that I have on the subject. Years of reading in general had left me with shelves of manga and certain collections of Calvin and Hobbes and Simpsons’ comics. It was not until I was seventeen or so, when I decided to return to the land that brought me The Crow and Watchman, and with the love of extremes (be it both sides of the spectrum as my past reviews with attest to) that goes with youth. Being at an age where I still needed to show my driver’s license when I bought an M rated game at GameStop, but still able to in the end, I was hard set for a western equivalent to the large amounts of Seinen manga I had consumed by that point. I stumbled upon Avatar Press’ successful series Crossed. Those gore laden covers got my attention, and as they say “the rest was history”. I have come a long way since then, but I thought it fitting to compare and contrast the original to one of its followers, Crossed: Psychopath, (considering that Avatar Press’s advertised C-Day and launch of Crossed: Badlands is just around the corner.)
To start off, I think a run-down of exactly what constitutes a “Crossed” for the sacks of those of you reading that I am technically trying to convince to look into this series further (I have to keep the familiar and not-so-familiar balanced right?). As stated through dialog in the first volume, to go “crossed” means that a person, no matter the age, has basically flipped off the switch in their mind that controls restraint and judgment. That human urge to rape, pillage, and mutilate replaces all other human desire, leaving a kill prone form who communicates through vulgarity and taunts. The “crossed” state spreads through infecting a human with any (and do I mean “any”) bodily fluid. It paints a gorgeous picture where everything is placed on an even playing field where you fear a six-year old child in the same way that you fear a seven-foot broad shouldered freak of nature. Introduce this element to a town or nine and you have yourself a blood bath that will literally fill swimming pools.
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Leave a comment | tags: Avatar Press, C-Day, Comics, Crossed, Crossed: Badlands, Crossed: Psychopath, Early Comic Fandom, Garth Ennis, Jacen Burrows, Special | posted in Comics, Special
Megazone Part 1 was directed and part created by Noboru Ishiguro. He seems to have shared the director’s chair with recognizable names like Leiji Matsumoto on Space Battleship Yamato and Shoji Kawamori on the Macross movie The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love?. He was also the director for the long running OVA/TV anime hybrid Legend of The Galactic Heroes, making it safe to say that Noboru Ishiguro has had his hand in some of the greatest works of Sci-Fi anime of the last forty-years. Most recognizable for readers that might remember watching Robotech on TV, is the Super Dimension Fortress Macross lead character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto who takes full charge of Megazone Part 1 (his designs for the character Eve do show up in following parts).
Megazone 23 Part 1, starts by what I consider to be one of the most rapid-fire opening five minutes of an Anime that I have ever seen. Clocking in around almost seven minutes, the oddly credit-less opening involves our rebel-without-a-cause lead Shogo Yahagi speeding away on his Suzuki brand motorcycle from the cops, almost crashing into our other lead Yui Takanaka. Since she is late for work he offers to drive her and then he goes out on a bubbling outing with friends. By this point, the amount of leather jackets, sunglasses, shopping, worshipping the city’s most popular idol Eve, and shots of woman dancing in leotards and thick socks has easily convinced me that Megazone 23 might just be the most eighties anime in existence. This truly is life in Japan during the eighties. But enough of this setting of the mood, what is Megazone 23 all about plot wise?
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Leave a comment | tags: 1985, Anime, Haruhiko Mikimoto, Megazone 23, Noboru Ishiguro, Part 1, Shiro Sagisu, Streets of Fire, Yoshiko Miura | posted in Anime, Special
Anime as a medium goes through the same (or similar, from my viewpoint) creative processes of any other visual entertainment work. At a certain stage in a production, financial backing from producers has to come into play. In 1985, when the rising Japanese home video market thought to conceive of Anime in the OVA format (readers of this site know that this constitutes much of our Anime reviews), the highly successful Megazone 23 was released making way for two sequels, Megazone 23 Part 2 and Megazone 23 Part 3. If you look at these three titles, it is hard to tell that they all came from the same series, with the ever-changing directors, character designs and methods. Keeping this in mind, I thought it fit for us, the writers here at CTBF, to review each unique part of Megazone 23 separately. Each consecutive part will be posted on its own schedule, different from our usual articles. So let the excitement of youth burst forth and ride off into the great beyond!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Leave a comment | tags: 1980's, Joint Reviews, Megazone 23, OVA, Special | posted in Anime, Special
This was an AP Government book review assignment that I wrote last month. I want to say that I got an A minus, but I am not sure. Outside of the beginning and the end of this review, and the usual photos, everything is a complete reinstate of that essay. The format was a little random, and I don’t dig to deep into the plot, but I hope you find it to be interesting.
Hidaka Yoshiki joins together with artist Tsugihara Ryuji to adapt Yoshiki’s novel The Birth of a President in Japan into the four volume political manga First President of Japan, introducing the first appearance of a popular vote elected Prime Minister. Hidaka portrays the main character, Sakuragi Kenichiro, as a clever revolutionary thinker who will be able to reform Japan’s stilted government; while Tsugihara draws him as a handsome man who can be a convincing leader that looks good at the same time. First President of Japan’s plot encompasses a fictional “what if” story on Japan’s East Asian relations. Japan has a detailed history of using its comics during political strife’s against World War II era America. First President of Japan strives to create a fictional situation utilizing Hidaka Yoshiki’s strict, journalist experience.
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Leave a comment | tags: First President of Japan, Hidaka Yoshiki, manga, Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics, political comics, Rajin Comics, Tsugihara Ryuji | posted in Manga, Special
The Blackfriars Guild takes the fight to the well knownclassic Dracula and comes away victorious. Directed by John Athas and working from the Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston adaption of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (the prior being the first person to ever consider putting Dracula in evening cloths with the famous cape), we are treated to what I consider to be one of the best performances coming from this young acting troop.
The story finds us in London during the 1920’s; with the one piece stage taking place in Dr. Seward’s Sanatorium for the Insane. Dr. Seward’s daughter Lucy has taken ill of late, and he has required the assistance of his old friend Dr. Van Helsing to cure her. Lucy’s blood is being drained at a frequent rate, a symptom that Dr. Van Helsing attributes to vampirism. All of this leads to the suspicion of the family friend Count Dracula.
The set was simple to maneuver and functioned quite well (a backstage tour allowed me to finally see what I like to call Mr. Athas’ “balcony window set” from the other end), with enough open space to allow for traveling bats and quick escapes.
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Leave a comment | posted in Special
