Look Into the Past For Clues
Hey, you know, I think I’m starting to really appreciate “This Week Last Year.” That is, the little segment on this site’s sidebar where I cull all the posts I wrote during the same week of the previous year. Yesterday I posted a follow-up to 2004’s “Oddball Digest Edition.” Today, I saw a whole crapload of posts appearing on the sidebar — I guess I was bored a year ago — so I started clicking around, and voila — something else good came of it.
A year ago, I talked about having seen the end of Chobits, and then mentioned how I really wished Netflix would carry Excel Saga. This reminded me to check again, and much to my delight, now they do. So I queued up the remaining discs which I have not yet seen. Yes, I am consistently late to the anime game, but I just have trouble affording the expense for anime DVDs. Anime is so good, but I often wish I could just rent it and not buy it. Thankfully Netflix is carrying an ever-growing assortment of great anime. They even have Puni Puni Poemy! Ahhhh, warm sigh of happiness.
Hmm, what else can my little sidebar inspire me to do today. Well, there’s a post about Vampire: Bloodlines, which was a really great PC game which I really ought to reinstall and check out on my SLI-enabled rig. I wonder how it will play, considering it chugged a bit on my previous box.
The rest was mostly vacuous, but I think I’m going to enjoy this feature more as the months progress! Go me.
Categorized as Randomness, Site
Perhaps ironically, the last time Forster was over here I was making the point that I haven’t watched Excel Saga in some time! Heehee. …Or any anime, for that matter.
I hear ya about the cost of anime DVDs though…and the sheer NUMBER of DVDs out there now makes it hard to know where even to begin — I’m certainly not in the mood to simply buy something because it may look interesting (remember Forster and Burn Up W?). Remember back in the day when we’d get a subtitled VHS tape for $30 from Doug’s? And we had a choice of about ten or fifteen shows? And each tape would have maybe two episodes on it? And to think we thought we had it tough back then!
Excel Saga, woo hoo! I’m excited. I watched episode one again today during dinner just for funskis. I think my favorite episode so far was the one where they were at the bowling alley. I laughed my ass off through the whole thing.
Yep, the sheer cost of trying to collect an entire anime series on DVD is a bit staggering, particularly where said series is sold individually with like two episodes at a time on a single disc, rather than a boxed set. Usually with a boxed set you get some kind of price break, but with Excel you’re stuck paying the full amount six times…that adds up fast. For series with more episodes, it’s even worse.
And so to your point, you’re right that it’s hard to get into new anime that way. Why risk paying 30 bucks for something that might not be that good? Hehe, yeah, Burn Up W is a prime candidate…in fact, I have my own Burn Up W: Najica. Oh my God, what an awful anime. And awful in a similar way, too. They sacrificed everything for bad fanservice, panty peeks and upskirts. It got to be such a cliche, it wasn’t funny at all — and that was just episode one.
You know, now I’m going to have to go and re-watch Excel Saga, because I don’t remember the bowling alley at all — then again, it’s been…oh, three years or so since I watched the series. To quote Doc Brown: “My God, has it been that long?”
Besides, I want to see Space Butler, Puchuu and Nabeshin’s flying LanEvo again.
And Pedro! “AFRO! NOOOOOO!”
And of course, “Stick It In.”
Hahahahaha…love it. “The guitar that everyone can play is finally here!”
I think the bowling alley episode was on disc 3…it’s called “Bowling Girls.” Natch!
Mmm, now I want more…
NOW I remember the bowling alley one. With Nabeshin as the ethereal bowling demigod/instructor in the bathroom. And the bowling show. And the “Excel Girls”.
I definitely need to re-watch that series again. Unfortunately this time Forster’s mom won’t be there watching along with the first disc, as happened when I first bought the Vol. 1 DVD back in the day. It was really surreal to keep seeing Excel dying over and over, and the looks of disbelief his mother kept giving us as it all happened.
“Oh no! It’s THAT MAN!”
On a totally (except that it deals with TV) unrelated topic, tonight is apparently Smallville’s 100th episode. I gave up on this show a year ago, basically, but I hear that the big news about the 100th episode is that “somebody will die!” Now, is it just me, or is this becoming a very tiresome and recurring stunt by TV producers that always gets pulled when they run out of ideas? Just kill a cast member? They used to invite celebs on for cameos, now they just thin the ranks of the regulars. I guess they figured it would garner attention and allow them to reduce the payroll at the same time.
Now. If somebody on that show’s got to die, I at least hope it’s Lois Lane.
From what I understand, Bo Duke’s gonna be biting the big one. But you’re right about the stupid ratings stunts — “X will die and we get attention!” Bleh. I definitely can’t stand US TV shows anymore. I’m just annoyed by the “let’s keep this cash cow going for x years” mentality, instead of “let’s tell a good, complete story” mentality. Who cares that Friends was on the air for a decade? Did it tell a story? No, it was a bunch of tawdry sex jokes and other, more obvious jokes. And this is the best sit-com of all time (as I believe it’s been called)? Good God. No wonder I don’t watch much TV anymore.