So the premier of Legend of Korra, much like it’s predecessor, was built into two episodes. Unlike it’s predecessor though, the episodes aren’t just one big episode; there’s a very definitive line from one episode to the next, so I’ll be reviewing them as such.

Welcome To Republic City

This was a good episode, but it had a few systemic problems that I’m hoping won’t come up in the future. More on that in a moment. Here, we have the obligatory introductory episode: first we see what remains from the old series (Katara is still around, looking almost exactly like her grandmother), we’re given insight into who our new heroine is (basically imagine a cross between Toph and Sokka personality-wise, with Katara’s body shape), and the vague overtures that will give us our myth arc for the series. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I got a bit of a kick out of the new architecture. I’d known ahead of time from promotional materials that this series essentially takes place in a steampunk version of “The Roaring ’20s”, but even knowing that doesn’t prepare you for the system shock of seeing actual Model-T styled cars, backed up on a highway, against zeppelins and other facets from the old series. It’s a little jarring, but once you’ve watched for awhile, it feels more natural.

The animation, I might add, is gorgeous, though someone really needs to tell Korra to stop dancing whenever she talks. She looks like someone who constantly needs to pee, and while I get that it was done to show how restless/energetic she is, it still feels like they’ve overdone it.

The plot itself is alright, but it’s got a big problem with pacing. Too many characters, doing too much stuff in too little time. This would be fine if we were halfway through the season, and everyone had already internalized the characters involved, but this is supposed to be the introductory episode. They’ve gotta slow things down.

Kind of a personal gripe, though this doesn’t affect my perception of the episode’s quality: How exactly did Korra grow up to be so aggressive? I’m not complaining about that specific trait of her’s; I actually think it’ll make her character really dynamic and complex in later episodes. No, what I’m bothered about is how she got so aggressive from living in the South Pole. I mean, this isn’t like the original series where characters like Sokka became aggressive because of the constant threat of the war, or where Katara became a sort of muted shy character (I am talking, of course, about the beginning of the series, and NOT her later character development) for similar reasons. But why is Korra like this?

Eh, whatever.

Overall, it’s a good episode, but kind of falls flat at times, and I’m not sure how well it works as an introductory episode to the new series.

Score: 6.5/10

(Try not to get too pissy about the scores, I grade everything on a normal curve, which squashes most of my scores into the 3-7 range. So basically, anything above or equal to a ‘5’ I consider to be watchable. Maybe I’ll do a blog post explaining later.)

Leaf in the Wind

What was really striking in this episode was the portions given over to the pro-bending fights (I know it’s a goofy name, but just roll with it). Aside from the WWF homage that gave us Toph, there wasn’t a lot of insight into the “professional” sports played in the Avatar world, and it’s been long overdue.

Also long overdue? A return to form. Most of the problems that existed in the previous episode were absent in this one. The episode was slow enough that the audience is able to figure out what’s going on, but still knew well enough to kick into high-gear when the fight scenes started. This episode, in addition to starting to teach Korra how to Airbend, also introduces the two new characters that we’re going to quickly become familiar with: Mako, and Bolin (Bo-lin? Bol-in?). I feel like the episode spent a little too much time detached from Korra, but it wasn’t a major issue, and the episode does well at least spending a requisite amount of time on her character development.

Just from a technical aspect, the fight scenes were actually really interesting, owing largely to the fact that there have been virtually no scenes in TLA where each side had more than one type of bender. I mean, sure, the “Gaang” had a composite diversity of talent, but exactly how many of their opponents could say the same? I know that’s kind of a function of the setting (firebenders == villains, everyone else == heroes) but it’s a curious artifact I didn’t notice until seeing this episode.

I’m glad Korra got at least one big scene of character development in this episode. I’ve been latently worried that Korra might turn out to be a bit of a “Peggy Sue” (Derived from, but not identical to a “Mary Sue”) in this series, but it looks like my fears were for nothing. Korra has some character complexity to her, and it’ll be for the better.

I feel like Bolin and Mako’s introductions were rushed a little, and I actually got confused for a moment if Korra and Bolin were supposed to have known each other from “Way Back When”, because the dialogue was kind of awkward, but I’m sure this’ll get better later on.

Overall, this was a very good episode, and it gives me great hope that this series will turn out as spectacular as the original show.

Score: 8.5/10

I’m not particularly big on naming “Celebrity Crush’s” of mine, since having spent a considerable amount of time growing ever cynical, the mere act of possessing such an infatuation is more or less impossible for me. But if I were to indulge, Lauren Faust would probably be up there on the list.

For those of you who aren’t aware, Miss Faust is the woman responsible for pretty much every big nerdy fixation from the last decade or so: she contributed to Power Puff Girls, Dexters Laboratory, and is regarded as the progenitor for the recent My Little Pony series, whose popularity among internet nerds reached a transcendent level that has not been previously mounted or established in the demographic of young, preteen women.

The short linked above appears to be intended to be part of a series of shorts featuring the adventures of the starring characters Wonder Girl, Super Girl, and Bat Girl. I’m pretty much a complete noob in the realm of comic books, so I can’t attest to how accurate these interpretations of the characters are. But in a sort of “brass-tacks” analysis of the material provided, I might be able to offer some insight nonetheless.

The Good first: Very interesting characters. They’re filling out the Id, Ego, and SuperEgo roles to a tee, but frankly, I say don’t break something that works, right?  The concept also looks interesting, to the extent that this would probably be a show about non-sequitur weirdness (my favorite kind of humor), and playing the character archetypes against each other. So that’s good.

The Bad: Not much, though the VA’s need to work on their Syllable-Accent-Allocation. No, the voice acting itself is fine, the characters sound like they look; the problem is that the way they’re emphasizing their words feels uneven. Also, I guess I’d personally hope that they plan to include more run-time per episode, since 76 seconds isn’t much time to work with.

The Neutral: I’m kind of tired of this specific animation style. The characters always look like they’re just flying across the screen when lots of stuff is going on. Not really an objective criticism, just personal preference.

Bottom Line: Seeing as how most of my criticisms are either minor issues or else personal bitching, and the stuff that they got right are the most important aspects, I guess you could call me excited for what they’ve got next.

This is going to be a long review.

See, ordinarily I’d describe what was good about a certain show, nitpick about the things I didn’t like, and at the end, give an overall assessment as to whether I thought it was worth watching or not. But, while I intend to do that for Rebuild 2.0, this series has such a legacy that I can’t properly give a review without considering first my impressions of everything that came prior, because Evangelion isn’t simply a random Mecha Anime. It’s the poster child for controversial, fandom/hatedom rivalries, and in this case at least, it feels very inappropriate to analyze it without any prior precedent.

Now first, a confession of my bias: I did not like NGE very much. Oh, it was fun at first: Lots of robot battles, and lots of (what appeared to be, at first) characterization and character development, to give the whole thing a dignified feel to it. We meet the pilots: Shinji, the 14 year old that desperately seeks his father’s approval, at the expense of everything else; Rei, who behaves like a puppet; Asuka, the brash, confident young girl with repressed inferiority complexes… Each character is a paragon of psychological damage, but the series always attempted to maintain a sort of levity to the episodes, presenting the spark of hope that they all would eventually emerge from the carnage better and stronger for their trials, or else crushed by the nihilism of it all.

I don’t begrudge the ultimate direction that the series decided to take, in that regard, but I DO begrudge the obnoxious and half-assed manner in which they did so. First there was the second half of the series, which dove so far into cynicism that the characters stopped being likable. Then there was the series conclusion, which was 2 episodes of nothing but navel-gazing monologues, created for no reason except to… Well, this is a pretty good assessment of what went wrong there.

“BUT!” I hear you cry. “Gainax had budget problems at the end of the series! They couldn’t help it, they ran out of money! That’s why they went with that crappy ending!” And that would be a valid point, except a few years later, the series made them enough money that they actually HAD enough money to make a proper ending. And you know what we got then? End of Evangelion, where Shinji turned into a manically depressed loser who masturbates over unconscious women and makes out with the woman who basically adopted him, even more bloody navel-gazing powered by the improved budget, and just when you think maybe—just MAYBE, there was a point to all of it, Shinji has dream sex with his cloned sister/mom, and then strangles Asuka to death because, I assume, he wants to start masturbating on top of her again. I don’t know. Because it never bloody tells me anything.

Oh, spoiler warning, by the way.

I wanted to like Neon Genesis Evangelion, but it has become clear that it didn’t want me to like it. Everything that went into the system, which I assume the writers/production staff intended to be deeply troubling moral ambiguity, just ended up being pretentious crap, and somewhere down the line, they confused “self immolation” for “Characterization”, and at the end of the day, the only good thing I can say on the behalf of the series was the high production values in the fight scenes, which is undercut rather considerably by the noticeable lack of animation quality everywhere else.

And if you want to know my ultimate opinion? If I had just come off the back of NGe and EoE, I wouldn’t recommend it. If you asked me whether you should watch it or not, I’d say that you’re better off leaving it be.

Fast forward to Rebuild of Evangelion, the “remake” (pay no attention to the quotes for now) built around 4 movies, two of which have already aired, and the second of which is the main subject of my review. Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0 didn’t impress me. It brought to the table a considerably improved animation quality, some much-needed enhancements to the character/mecha designs, and some better pacing to the storyline, but otherwise, it told essentially the exact same story that was told in the first 6 episodes of NGE. On the whole, though, I guess I can’t be too harsh to Rebuild 1.0, since the episodes it spanned aired well before NGE lost its shit, though Rebuild 1.0, on the whole, is nothing more than a glossier cash-in on misplaced public faith.

Well, that’s how it all looked. Everything I said, in the last ten paragraphs, that’s pretty much how I felt on the trailing end of having watching it all.

But then… something funny happened.

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“The third child, huh? You never change. I look forward to meeting you, Shinji Ikari.”
-Kaworu Nagisa, Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0 

Remember how I said that Rebuild 1.0 comprises roughly the first 6 episodes of the original series? Well, those of you that actually saw NGE, I want you to explain something to me: When did Kaworu actually show up in the original series, and how important was his role?

If the answers are anything but “VERY late in the series, and barely anything at all”, then you weren’t paying attention.

At this point, I’ve actually begun to suspect that he was inserted into the first movie as a way of toying with the audience, to mess with their heads to prime them before Rebuild 2.0 came out.

See, while Rebuild 1.0 was essentially being guided by NGE and never straying far from the themes and plot that drove the series, Rebuild 2.0 went off the rails completely. Suddenly the whiny, narcissistic tone that NGE reveled in was not only turned around in Rebuild 2.0, but the movie even goes so far as to mock those themes for being immature and meaningless. Nowhere is this clearer than when the new character Mari has her last encounter with Shinji before the movie closes, when she, while piloting a broken and busted up Eva, finds him hiding in a warehouse:

Mari: “You sure picked a good time to sit on your ass.”
Shinji: “Yeah, well… I decided I’m not going to pilot the Eva anymore.”
Mari: “Wow, that sounds like a big struggle for you. Don’t you have anything better to whine about?“ 

Oh sure: the broad strokes of Rebuild 2.0 play out the same as they did in NGE (for the record, the plot spans a much larger set of episodes, covering from Asuka showing up, all the way to Eva-01 going god-mode, which goes roughly from episode 7 to 22), however condensed they might be. But gone is (most of) the whining. Gone is (most of) the pointless cynicism, devoted to nothing more than rehashing that “nobody needs me, why should I even care” bullshit that made the original series so grating.

And I have to say:

I. Fucking. Loved it.

Not only is Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 better than Rebuild 1.0; Not only is Rebuild 2.0 better than NGE; Not only is Rebuild 2.0 better than the stupifying End of Evangelion that I’m told I’m supposed to think is some kind of work of art… Merely saying all of that doesn’t do justice to Rebuild 2.0. This movie is better than a lot of things. In fact, I don’t feel ambiguity about declaring that Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 may be one of the best anime movies I’ve ever watched.

Forget, for a second, that it fixed so many flaws in the original series’ plot that the new take on Evangelion feels like a breath of fresh air, as well as an entirely new story. What this movie has done, and what I didn’t even think was possible, was to make me give a shit about what happens to Shinji.  Discussing what he does could constitute pretty heavy spoilers (and this time around, I actually care about whether this story gets spoiled or not), but never once, since I began watching this series, did I ever think that he would display enough character development to actually grow and mature from the problems he faces.

Maturity is the key word here. If NGE was adolescent bitching, then Rebuild is the same kid, but having had 10 years to grow older and wiser and look back on their old self with disdain and embarrassment. Every problem that the characters faced from NGE is still here, but this time around, instead of getting swallowed up in depression and self-loathing, they stare it down.

Now, those things alone would have gotten me to revise my opinion on the franchise, and suggest that, while NGe might still be crap, this new series might actually be worth checking out. But that’s not all this movie brought to the table.

Along with the newly reformed themes and character arcs, Rebuild 2.0 presents some of the best cinematography I’ve seen in a long time; indeed, I don’t think a single scene has ever moved me as much as the scene from….Eh, well, A…. certain…. series about a 16 year old god that I really have been talking about too much (you know the one). Regardless, there was more than one scene from this movie that left me unnerved, but in a good way. And I dare anyone who watches this movie to earnestly make it through the scene that plays “Tsubasa wo Kudasai” across the events unfolding (you’ll know which one it is) without getting goosebumps.

I’ve seen this movie almost a dozen times now, and I’m still trying to figure out its faults. Okay, fine, the English dub takes a few liberties with the language barriers, but let’s be honest, it would have been really weird for Mari to request that the handlers speak Japanese, only for them to then continue speaking English. Sure, okay: that plot twist at the end of the credits is almost certainly going to make the wait for Rebuild 3.0 unbearable, but riddle-me-this: what exactly is so bad about an ending that makes you crave finding out what happens next?

But what am I supposed to say? The voice acting is great. The plot is complex without being confusing. The Thematic Overture is finally taking on a semblance of maturity. The characters are all interesting, and they finally have character arcs to follow. The soundtrack, while composed many times with familiar BGM, also produces hauntingly fitting tracks for the movie’s most brutal moments. Shinji finally learns to find something he cares about. Asuka and Rei finally begin to grow and mature as people. Misato finally learns a constructive way to handle her grief over her father’s passing.

Guys…. I’m at a loss. I don’t know what to tell you other than “This movie is fucking brilliant, and you should go see it right the hell now.” And don’t let the prospects of watching Rebuild 1.0 bother you: like I said, the episodes it spans come from before NGE went nuts, so it’s still decent material. And for the payoff here, it’s definitely worth it. I really hope that Rebuild 3.0 can top this, because I’m willing to give the Evangelion franchise a new change to dazzle me, and I don’t want to find out that this faith was misplaced.

I’d write a review for K-On!, but this guy(s) did a better job summing it up than I ever could. Suffice to say, I agree with every major point they’ve made, if maybe not their prior bias.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manga/FullmetalAlchemist

Now of course I have to lead with the caveats: I have not read the manga, and only watched 8 episodes from the original 2003 Anime, so my review of the series boils down to my impressions of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (which I’m given to understand is intended as a direct adaptation of the manga, moreso than the original series which used the characters settings and a few of the plots as a springboard for its own plot). And while I’m going to spend most of this post bitching about this show, one should probably know that this show has officially unseated Ouran as my second favorite series, Anime or otherwise, and it also marks the first Action Anime to make my list (CL isn’t anime, it’s French) which says a lot about how much I liked it.

Anyways.

The series, for those of you unfortunate enough to be unaware, is primarily focused on two characters, Edward and Alphonse Elric, who live in a world bound by a magic-science called Alchemy, constituted primarily of the ability to take one thing, and “transmute” it into something else. They would be canonically 15 years old at the point where the series begins, except that during a botched attempt to bring their mother back to life, Alphonse loses his body and Edward loses his leg, and in saving his brother’s life, he binds Alphonse’s soul to a suit of armor at the cost of his arm. The series is ostensibly about these two characters and their quest to restore their bodies, but it becomes clear pretty quickly that malevolent forces and their schemes are going to bring a fast halt to those plans. Explaining the 

While the series does enjoy a considerable amount of emotional investment in the plights of its characters, there seems to have been some fumbling with regards to the intra-character relationships. Ed and Al have a good chemistry with each other, even if it tends to be predictable brotherly-stuff, but understanding the other characters proves very difficult. Nowhere is this more evident than with Colonel Mustang and his Lieutenant Hawkeye. Mustang is supposed to have a really deep relationship with Hawkeye, and supposedly having once been in a physical relationship with her, but nearly every opportunity the Anime might have to try to reinforce our understanding of their relationship is ignored until the very last second, and even then, the most we get out of *any* of these characters is a brief embrace. I mean, come on Mustang, you nearly flip out when she’s spilling liters of blood onto the ground, but once you manage to save her, the most she gets is a tepid hug? That was NOT how we raised you action heroes!

Early on in the series, the storyline does a good job managing to keep awareness of the big plot events happening around the outskirts without sacrificing investment in the Elric brothers, but about halfway through the second act, the narrative begins to crumble as the scope of events simply ends up dwarfing the conflicts previously established as being integral to the characters. Describing exactly what happens would constitute pretty heavy spoilers, but big plot devices from the beginning of the story end up being buried under all the insanity.

The acting, overall, is pretty goddamn good (I watched the english dub). I’m still not convinced Mignogna was the best choice for Edward, but he’s definitely acting his ass off, and it’s become clear that his interactions with Caitlin Glass as Winry ended up paying off when the two of them found themselves working against each other in Ouran. As for the other characters, one thing I appreciated was the fact that the quality stays pretty consistent throughout. And the villains, save for a few unmemorable characters, are all brought to life excellently.

The soundtrack is a mixed bag. A few of the OP’s are stunning, and you can bet I’ll be checking out the associated artists (after all, that’s the main reason they use J-Pop songs for these kinds of titles), but others are very forgettable, and the original soundtrack doesn’t really contribute anything other than appropriately moody music when things are tense, and appropriately calm music when things are more relaxed.

Endemic to this genre is the tendency to have very sloppy transitions between comedy and drama, but FMA actually does a reasonably good job patching up those transitions. It’s not perfect, but at least it avoids “Bleach Syndrome” most of the time.

What I found most interesting about this series though was the (possibly unintentional?) commentary on the world. I like to think that the naming of the “king” title in this series as “Fuhrer” is intentionally invoking memories of Nazi Germany, and that’s before we learn about his orders to systematically slaughter every last of a race of misunderstood people in a genocide that marks one of this series more brutal moments. Before the epic plot ends up crushing it, one of the primary themes of this series is the dangers of unchecked militarism, and also some lessons about racism that are still relevant in today’s world.

Ultimately, if you’re wondering whether you should check this series out, then the answer is a resounding “yes”, but you shouldn’t have needed me to tell you that. This is an extremely well made series, and while the profoundness of it slips up towards the end, it still has a lot to say about the human condition.

… Somehow, I’m doubting that will happen.

Recently I decided to re-watch the series seasons 1-4. While my overall assessment of the series remains unchanged, I’m suddenly feeling a little bit inclined to be charitable towards the series, in spite of the nonsense that came naturally to the series. If nothing else, I guess I’d rather have a series that aims high and fails spectacularly, than a series that aims low and succeeds.

If there’s one comparison to be made that ought to stick, it’s my comparison of the material to Tron and it’s remake, and not just because both series center around protagonists fighting in a virtual world that threatens not only their existence, but the safety of the real world too. Tron is one of those franchises that has pretty much been built on a mentality of these high-concept genre fiction stories that, while possessing the potential to be grand and spectacular, tend to fall flat because of poor execution on the part of one or more aspects of the production, and Code Lyoko is no different. 

Including the critical flaw. In Code Lyoko’s case, the big problem holding the series back is the writing team, who lack both the willingness to really “carry to the hilt” the psychological implications of a story where five (pre)teenagers have to fight for their lives on a daily basis, or the narrative stitching necessary to ensure any sort of episode-to-episode coherence.

Part of my newly allocated charity towards the series comes in the form of considering that the frequently-groaner dialogue might be a product of the localization. It’s not just the fact that the french writers had to make sure the dialogue matched the frequently reused video footage—Seriously, go back and reexamine the CG scenes, and identify the total number of unique scenes they used in season 1, or look at the number of times a specific 2d scene gets reused verbatim with only a change of music or dialogue— but that the English VA’s would then have to match to that already-poorly-matched scene.

But then there’s the plot contrivances used to drive events. Where characters will refuse to explain really important issues just because they’re pissed off at them for something they brought on themselves. Or where the story refuses to execute any genuine sense of subtlety. Honestly, there’s dozens of scenes that I can recall where a simple remix of the order of dialogue, or omission of a certain scene would have improved the episode vastly.

And the characters never learn from their mistakes. The only character who ever seems to work out his psychosis is Jeremy, and the others always ignore his advice, even though 95% of the time, he’s the only one who really knows what’s happening. And there’s never an explanation given, except for the one we infer as an audience, that the story wouldn’t have any drama at all if they weren’t making one stupid mistake after another.

———-

If Moonscoop have learned anything from the four years the series has been on hiatus, I really hope it will have been to fix those issues. My personal hope is that, whatever style they use for the new series (there’s been contradictory information as to whether the series will be Live Action/CG or Traditional Cel Shaded/CG), they they decide to make this a remake, rather than a sequel. I imagine this might disappoint a lot of fans, but making it a remake would be to acknowledge a desire to fix what went wrong the first time around, and maybe perhaps create something that stands up on its own better than the original series did. It would also allow them to cut out the useless padding in the middle of seasons and focus on the important, overarching plot information, the episodes concerning which having consistently been higher quality than the rest of the series.

I don’t consider this likely, but rather, my interpretation of what they *should* do.

Despite my provocative title, it should be made very clear that SOPA and PIPA are not dead, or at the very least, the twisted ideals that spawned them are not dead. What we’re currently witnessing is, essentially, congress bumping into a hornets nest, and now, having realized that you DON’T FUCKING MESS WITH A HORNETS NEST are trying desperately to convince the hornets that they’re not sneaking past anymore such that they’ll be more careful when trying to sneak past *next* time not to let the Hornets figure it out.

Unravel this metaphor at your own peril.

But this is nonetheless a major victory, and the consequences of this victory are not obvious to everyone, nor immediately visible. 

I’m always hesitant when people start going on about how corrupt our political system is, or how politicians only care about the money they get, and how partisan politics is ruining the country. Certainly there’s great amounts of truth to these arguments, and I guess I’ll have to write up a blog post eventually consolidating my feelings on this topic, but I’ll provide the abbreviated version here in two important points:

1. Much of the bitterness towards congress does boil down to a sort of “I’m not the problem, everyone else is the problem” mentality, that, whether justified or not, is part/entirely the reason undeserving senators still hold seats in the house/senate.
2. The fact that, within 3 months we completely shut down support for SOPA and PIPA through nothing more extraordinary than the 21st century incarnations of the sit-in protests and marches of yore is evidence, at least to me, that underneath the grime there is yet a working government.

Certainly that last one boils down to a “glass half-full” kind of mentality, and one could just as easily point out the efforts to pass that legislation in the first place as evidence of a corrupt government, and that’s a fair point, but also not really the point (Like I said, I really need to do a proper segment on the functionality of our government)

What is the point is that we’re almost certainly going to witness a very interesting shift in our politics. I don’t know the precise time frame when this happens, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens before we close this decade.

The biggest thing that’s going to change, and almost certainly the earliest will be perception. The fact that the internet got so riled up, and rippled so strongly throughout the mainstream atmosphere, means this medium is going to take on a very different meaning in political debates. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were Senators/Congresspeople who just now are seeing reddit for the first time, and realizing just what kind of insight these people have, intelligent or otherwise (certainly there’s a lot of “otherwise” on reddit), into their inner workings. People in the political field are going to have to acknowledge that they can’t discount the impact/opinions of the technology sector, especially as we gain greater footing in the world.

But what’s also going to change is a little more mundane, and that’s in the terms of legislation that will be put before congress.

The MPAA, RIAA, etc., are not stupid. And the worst thing you can do is make the assumption that they are stupid. They knew that the internet was going to throw a fit the moment we caught wind of this legislation. What they probably didn’t anticipate was that it would get this drastic, this quickly, and with so much gusto.

But they’re not going to make that mistake again. When they begin drafting SOPA/PIPA 2.0, the tactics are going to change.

For starters, it’s much clearer now what is standing in the way of legislation such as this is social media like Reddit or Twitter. So if/when they introduce new legislation, it will be targeted towards crippling these websites, probably with some additional smear campaigns targeted against these websites. The Pirate Bay was an easy target because they pretty obviously are founded on anti-copyright principles, and whether you agree with them or not, they’re breaking established laws and can be prosecuted on those terms.

The biggest thing, though, is the matter of public understanding of these issues. What we’ve just seen is the first real glimpse the uninformed public has gotten into these laws and the stuff that is being pushed through congress. We need to maintain momentum such that we don’t neglect to inform the public about these issues.

Recently there was a bill introduced called OPEN, which has the same goals as SOPA, but without most of the draconian overreach that made SOPA so toxic. The verdict is still out on whether it’s a suitable alternative, or just another bill that needs to die, but you can read about it here.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/PuniPuniPoemi

Ended up checking this out with some spare time I had. Not sure what I was expecting from it, but I’ll say this: it’s an interesting specimen. That it is.

The two-part OVA is, ostensibly, a parody of the “Magical Girl” genre. It features a girl by the name of Poemi Watanabe, and her reckless energy ends up getting put to use in the form of a pink-haired warrior that is supposed to defend the earth from evil, under the moniker Puni Puni Poemi.

At least, I think that’s what it was about.

Puni Puni Poemi comes from the same studio that produced Excel Saga, and if those words aren’t giving you spine shivers, then you are probably the sort of person who would have their brain melted by either of these Anime. What Excel Saga was know for: Didactic, insane premise with even more insane characters, all behaving as though they’ve been fed an amphetamine drip… Puni Puni Poemi recreates in much the same fashion. The plot doesn’t so much take a back seat as it does shoot itself up in the back of a shady alleyway while getting punted back and forth midst a gang-fight. PPP is all about the surreal, over-the-top acting, whether it’s the lead character who seems unable or else unwilling to acknowledge that she’s even a fictional character in an anime, or the blatant [director]-self-insert character who shows up just in time to fix and/or break whatever plot device is currently being mocked.

It also loves its fan-service. When it isn’t trying to come up with excuses to make something inert explode, it takes its entire female cast and strips them naked, only barely concealing their genitalia. The shamelessness with which this OVA does this would be insulting if it weren’t so over-the-top, and there’s at least a few scenes that would not look out of place in any random Hentai vehicle. At one point early on, I actually suspected that this abomination was just that, but PPP manages to stop just short of Hentai.

I can’t say with any real certainty that this is a good Anime, or worth watching. Excel Saga, while clearly the inspiring entity, holds up better as an enterprise, mostly due to the variety the individual episodes afforded. PPP ratchets the Dadaism up to extreme levels, and the constant lampshade-hanging of every trope that gets abused (And I do mean abused) makes for an entertaining watch, but it also ends up sacrificing the character identity that Excel Saga managed to maintain, even at its silliest, and while having one off-the-walls character makes for an interesting premise, the fact that nearly every character in this Anime is just a different shade of insane/stupid means that characters just end up fighting for screen time.

The only real saving grace to this Anime is the runtime, at a solid 61 minutes, which means that right about when the Anime starts to get stale, it has the courtesy to wrap itself up. And if you liked Excel Saga, or are just a random Otaku, then you’ll probably have a good time with this. It’s just not going to make anyone’s favorites list anytime soon.

Conclusion: Fans of Excel Saga will enjoy it, and anyone willing to keep up with the schizophrenic plot will probably enjoy it, but otherwise it’s probably not worth checking out.