Bay is a producer of the film, not the director. Jonathan Liebesman who directed "Wrath of the Titans" and "Battle Los Angeles" is director. Transformers is a big spectacle of a film, I think Ninja Turtles will be much smaller in scope focusing more on the story and less on a big splashy effects driven soap opera.
The motion capture could end up really good, but then again not everybody has the mo-cap acting chops of Andy Serkis. I'm only not excited for the new TMNT movie because I'm afraid it will be too similar in tone to Bay's Transformers movies, which, while I don't hate like many other people, I do think were unnecessarily crude and full of innuendo and swearing for being based on a toy franchise.
Also I need to stop forgetting about this topic because cool stuff gets talked about in here. And now I'm glad to know there is a fellow Young Avengers fan on the board :3
A thing I've noticed, and am rather fond of, about Berserk is the way Guts swings his sword. I've begun reading again and I've ntoiced that his expertise with the blade is 2/3rds incredible strength, but 1/3 his style. When he goes into a big arc his whole body goes into it. When he's moving with it he's often bent down with the sword trailing behind, almost parallel to his torso. I love the details of Berserk. Things like that and
are what really sets it apart from just some gory seinen story. I can understand why drawing it can make Miura sick because, just off the top of my head, I cannot think of a "Quality" moment it. One of those weird random bits in an Anime or Manga where the art is sort of...off. He always seems to bat 100 when he draws, and the world he's made is mysterious and very interesting. I really hope when it finishes, something like the Hyrule Historia or the Lord of the Rings Legendarium comes out. Lots of interesting details, concept art and Maps. I NEED maps for the berserk world. Okay gushing over, back to reading.
Oh, oh, one other thing. In a lot of works as everyone gets more powerful you tend to get lost in characters who throw energy beams, and then thats all it is. I can't think of anyone as far as i've gotten who's thrown an energy beam. Just, a ball of energy. Thats cool
Zelda's back. How do they make all the females so attractive... Even Link knows.
Oh, man, SHE GOT UPDATED. SPIRIT TRACKS IS BEING ACKNOWLEDGED. (The internet informs me that since her pose in both this one and the last one are so similar, Phantom Knight might just be an Assist Trophy. If it is, I'll just be really sad and disappointed in Sakurai.)
So far, no sign of the sun. i have never been so hopeful for rain in my sea faring life. Perhaps we will survive this yet.
However...
There is a writing, ominous writing, that has appeared on the cabin wall. It appears as though we are cursed with some skeletal apparition. Though, it seems to me more of a prank rather than something truly ominous. At a glance, one might not notice but part of it looks to be written in a different ink than the rest.
I have left swabby Silver to. clean up this mess. (swabby still seems to be talking to some form of apparition of the mind. Perhaps some sleep after this chore will help him)
My favorite part about stands is the fact that Araki actually doesn't give a shit about explaining them or the rules. Beginning of part 3 he goes "oh yeah everyone has these weird things that 'stand(if they can actually stand)' beside you, so we call them 'stands.' They're the real force behind what normal people call psychic powers, only other stand users can see them, and stand users are naturally drawn to each other somehow. Have fun!" And that's it. And then he promptly starts doing things like introducing every stand being named after a card in a tarot deck, then running out of cards and just saying fuck it and doing naming them after other things. Or like how stands are supposed to be just extensions of the users and have no personality/original life to them, but then suddenly there are stands that are independent of their owner. Or stands that survive thousands of years after their owners die. Sometimes people even get more than one stand, or their stand gets upgraded. And it's never explained with any rhyme or reason, it's just "OH WELL I GUESS THAT'S SOMETHING." All of jojo can be summed up as "haha fuck it."
Not sure how to embed this so I'll just leave the link here. The trailer for part 3 of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is out. This is now officially a Jojo hype thread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQqkpbt2Ero
I watched...alot of anime.... Caught up on Kill la Kill and....marathonned Jojo. My brain is the consistency of oatmeal....Delicious awesome oatmeal....
I just watched episode 12 of Killakill and I am enjoying this recent turn of events so much.
And now I suppose I might as well input my two cents on the fanservice scandal. Pheo did a pretty great job justifying the rapey bits and I don't feel like every instance of fanservice in the show needs to be justified for some other purpose or else the whole thing is somehow lessened in value. Even if some of the fanservice serves no greater purpose than to titillate, that doesn't outweigh the rest of the content and make the show shallow or downright pornographic. Kill la Kill isn't the first good series to have fanservice and it won't be the last. Also, none of the character's are defined by the skin they show, and when so much is constantly on display I find that to be a huge achievement. Basically, I think reactions are largely a matter of personal taste, but it's easy for me to say the show is objectively good when I like it.
Alright guys. I mention this practically every time an episode is released. I figured this out after seeing episode three, two months ago. I don't know why this all keeps going over all of your heads or why nobody is listening despite the fact that my streak of being completely right all the time is infinite, but okay, here's my synopsis of Kill la Kill so far. I've been waiting for the series to end first before I sit down and write anything really substantial about why it's my favorite anime of all time, even better in my opinion than the berserk and jojo animes (those are both manga adaptions first and foremost anyways), but you have forced my hand. Here's why The really uncomfortable comedic rape/nudity scenes are not only ridiculously essential to whatever makes kill la kill so wonderful, but also absolutely supposed to offend you. Wow! They're supposed to make us all uncomfortable??? Why would any studio ever do that??? WELL READ ON MY MAN, READ ON.
I'd like to mention before I go on in any detail that I'm usually the first one to get upset when there's any blatantly annoying and unneeded fanservice in an anime or videogame. I find it not only personally degrading that any studio, director, or executive producer should assume the best way to keep me interested in their production is by making a cheap shot at my sexual preferences, but also that they're so unconfident in their own work that that's the only thing they can do to hold my attention. At best it's done just as a result of someone at the top of the production chain mistakenly believing it should be done because it's the industry standard, and at worst it's misogynistic drivel I have no interest in watching. So if I thought any of this was actually being done out of ignorance I'd have called it out by now.
I'd also like to point out I know rape is nothing to sneeze at. We can have conversations about "should rape jokes be socially acceptable or not," or "is nothing sacred," and so on and so forth, but no matter where you land on that argument you have to agree rape is a horrifying, terrifying thing. I know a girl who was stranded one New Years Night a few years ago and went to one of her friend's houses that was nearby who let her spend the night there so she wouldn't freeze or get mugged at a bus stop or something. She woke up the next morning with some she'd never met guy on top of her, simultaneously strangling and fondling her, in the bed she was supposed to be safe in. I'm not going to go into graphic detail about what happened, but she ended up getting away to the nearest hospital with a broken tailbone a black eye and a fucked up spine and a whole bunch of other stuff that made her have to stay there for a few days. I don't pretend that I know what rape is like first hand, but I've seen what it does to people, and I hate it. You better believe I was seething when I first saw episode two. I actually felt betrayed by this Trigger. Why would a studio who made something as friendly as Little Witch Academia turn around and make something like this? But then I saw episode three, and I understood.
Here, let me make a comparison to a movie that came out in 1975 by Ralph Bakshi called Coonskin. This was ten years after the civil rights movement when we (I say "we" even though I wasn't alive haha) were all still pretty on edge about racial issues. Well, more on edge than we are today. I digress. This is a movie I have stated on many different occasions that I would like to stream for all of you if I could just decide that I care enough to learn how to stream things from my mac.
If you have no idea what this movie is about, it's the most horrifyingly racist thing you've ever seen. It's disgusting. Those characters up there on the poster are all black people and white people, and you can see they clearly took every racist character design from every racist cartoon published prior to this movie and ran with it. Mainly, the movie focuses on black people in america, who are all portrayed as every negative stereotype of a black person you've ever seen. If you saw this movie in 1975 there was a big chance you'd think it was white supremacist propaganda, but you'd be wrong.
I'm gonna go ahead and link the article about this movie on wikipedia, because I think it's a really good read, and then I'm gonna go ahead and quote that article directly, and I'm gonna highlight the definitely important parts, okay here I go:
Bakshi didn't make this movie to attack black people, or any other minorities. Fuck, Bakshi himself is a Palestinian immigrant. He made this because he absolutely hated the racist culture that prevailed across american cartoons and films. He hated the fact that there was this famous movement to let all races be treated equally just a decade earlier, but there was still any sort of "acceptable" racism in hollywood. He hated that apparently all of these movies said "yeah sure racism is bad but we're kidding ourselves if we think it's going anywhere." So he made a movie attacking all of it. "Cut that shit out."
If you don't believe it, just look at the casting. Barry White is the voice of one of the three main characters. Which I think is actually kind of funny to think about, but somebody as famous as that would never do a white supremacist propaganda film. Another of the main characters is played by Charles Gordone, a famous playwright who's body of work emphasizes multi racial unity. These are not people who would make a racist movie. Especially not racist against themselves. No, this was a movie that fought fire with fire.
"BUT PHEO!" I hear you shout, "WHAT DOES THIS MOVIE HAVE TO DO WITH KILL LA KILL AND ALL THAT RAPE?" Well, because they're taking the same approach. Kill la kill's main character is a young girl who has just begun her path through puberty to sexual maturity. That's what the kamui is a metaphor for. In fact it's pretty obvious once you have it pointed out to you. It's this thing that's suddenly forced onto this young girl out of bumfuck nowhere, that suddenly gives her an incredible body to gawk at that she either didn't have before or nobody noticed, but now that she has her puberty on, everyone can't help but stare. Thanks to her kamuiberty, she can now do utterly amazing things, because she's growing up. But nobody cares, because all they can see in her is sex. Jesus, it even requires her to bleed every time she wants to do something cool. I'll admit that went over my head until I had it pointed out to me, but I felt like such an idiot for missing it. Kill la kill's main story is a metaphor for the path from girlhood to womanhood in the same way that Gurren Lagann was about the path from boyhood to manhood, but it also includes the struggles young women will face because of that. But all of that is about story, this post right now is about the subtle yet relentless attack this show makes against rape culture and the way women are portrayed in anything and everything.
Remember that episode two that we all love(d) to hate? In one scene, our hero passes out from exhaustion and bloodloss, and wakes up somewhere she didn't remember going to, in a dark room with some guy heavily breathing over her. This could not have been any more of a rape scene. They did that because they knew that was the conclusion we'd all jump to, and rightfully so, because she did the same thing. But then! It turns out he was just her new friend's father who patched her up after her showdown! Ha ha! Oops! Not even five minutes later she passes out and wakes up again in a weird situation where she's naked and paralyzed and her teacher is stripping down and oh wait it turns out she's just being briefed on his secret identity and all that. HAHA WHAT A COMICAL MISUNDERSTANDING RAPE SITUATIONS ARE HILARIOUS AREN'T THEY? This show is actually making jokes about how that situation, in and of itself, rape, is funny. Wow. If I didn't know any better, I'd be offended, too.
But thankfully, I know it's not actually about that. The entire show is a metaphor for the struggles young women face, and it does it's best to address all of them. For example, take the gross oversexualization of the female body. Never is this issue more present than in episode four. If you'll recall, the plot of that episode was that all the no-star students needed to get to school on time one day. However, Ryuko's magic super pubiform was dirty, so she couldn't use it to easily get herself and mako to school on time, so they needed to get by without it. Mako's father, brother, and dog, all work together to try to get Ryuko's uniform to her while they're on their way to school, but every time they get close to ryuko, her pajamas get undone, they get distracted, fail, and have to start over:
Oh, those poor men! If only they weren't such slaves to their sexual desires! It's really too bad, huh. Yup! That's what butts a for. Sex. And only that.
Or at least, that's the attitude of the show on the way that we treat any nudity in a woman's body. They're doing the same thing here that coonskin did. They're taking the thing that they have a problem with, and doing it to the max to emphasize the fact that "jesus christ guys this is so stupid why do we do accept this."
In fact, this episode is my favorite example in particular because right in the dead center of the episode, all of the action grinds to a halt for about ten seconds when a young mother steps off a bus while breastfeeding a baby to make a call to the hannouji academy and let them know Ryoku's whereabouts. Of course, in terms of plot thats what happens, but against the rest of this show's message, it's really just shouting this message at you:
A studio like trigger that made a feel good OVA like Little Witch Academia about young girls going to school to be witches would never turn around and make a show where the actual message was "haha this is all women are good for." All the laugh-at-rape in Kill la kill is a vicious attack on the way we treat women in media. This is the studio I fell in love with.
I'm going to go ahead and stop writing now before I get started on every other reason I love this anime. Like how apparently everyone working at Trigger is ridiculously inspired by western media, and is packing this anime with references to classic movies like Pulp Fiction or Fight Club, to little stuff like Marvel Action figure cameos in the first few seconds of the first episode. Or all the metaphory stuff, like how Berserk-Ryuko is clearly Ryuko's older brother, and when he demands she removes the clothes (her puberty) he's just misguidedly trying to protect her from all of the dangers of womanhood. He doesn't mean to be, but he's the one that everyone hates about rape culture that says "you, the woman, need to change, because these men are going to rape you if you're pretty." And yes he's clearly her older brother I'm just patiently waiting for that fact to be revealed its so obvious oh my god. God look at me I just said I wasn't going to do this and I'm already doing it. The point is I'm right and you're all going to have to accept that.
Okay fine guys just reply to each other rapid fire while I'm writing a response :| here you go anyway
Stuff you guys already went through
Rika, I do agree that the rape jokes were in bad taste, but they were mostly in the first couple episodes, and that was done away with very quickly. If anything, I'm glad that Ryuuko beat down Mako's dad, and that she has an upper hand in strength over the teacher guy. She is powerful enough to defend herself, and she does without a second thought, and that's what counts. The teacher stripping all the time is mostly just comedic relief. His stripping isn't exactly a pivotal part of the story, but he does explain things as he does it, and he is part of an organization called "Nudist Beach". Clothing is a very prominent theme in this anime, and the teacher is the converse to Ryuuko's initial mindset; less is more. When their organization seems to be specialized for destroying and disabling clothes, I think it's appropriate that he doesn't like to wear them.
Good lord, guys, I am the first person here to get annoyed and disappointed when fanservice is ever in an anime at all, and yet I'm completely capable of understanding there's a perfectly good reason for the makers of the show to dress their characters like that. I really want to write a synopsis called "why Kill la Kill is incredible and all of you should agree and the 'fanservice' if you actually want to call it that is actually really great incredible creative symbolism and a scathing commentary on the way we treat women in media" but it would go over all of your heads you dirty plebians.
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