Category: Action

Contest + Trigun, The Sixty-Billion Double Dollar Review

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hisuiconWe have been meaning to review Trigun for some time but now the stars have aligned in a way to make this extremely relevant. Funimation has recently license rescued Trigun and is putting it out on Blu-Ray and DVD. Madhouse released a Trigun movie on April 4th and Yasuhiro Nightow is writing a new chapter of the manga in celebration. Since Trigun first appeared on Adult Swim it has a solid fan following in the U.S. despite not being that popular back in Japan. We will be looking at what made the Trigun so enticing to English speaking fans and how is the manga different from the anime that was such a hit in the US.

I remember Trigun fondly, the DVD was given to me at random and little did I know a little while later it would appear on the afore mentioned Adult Swim to then go on to be one of those shows that defined anime for new U.S. fans in the early-2000s. And seriously did any of us really think the Trigun movie was going to happen? More than 10 years after the television series ended a movie comes out for a franchise that seemed to be rather ignored in Japan. I don’t know how or why it all finally came together, but I am super happy about it. But anyway, this post isn’t about the movie but the manga!

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Berserk Season 2, The Revenge of Fetus Baby!

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***This was our 2010 April Fool’s post***
(For actual Berserk Season 2 info go here)


BEWARE OF SPOILERS

hisuicon It is truly a shame when a classic anime is forgotten. The Berserk anime used to be praised up and down by the fan community; on everyone’s 10 top favorite anime lists. But the second season has gone largely undiscussed online which is a travesty. I hardly saw any fanfare on the Internet and only one or two episode blogs seem to have reviewed any of it. As I understood it, Berserk sells well for Dark Horse but I guess that is more among comics and graphic art fans than anime fans. I hope that after Narutaki and I do this review more people will go back and check out what they are missing. Berserk season two meets if not succeeds in surpassing the high bar of dark fantasy that the first season established.

narutaki Well, perhaps it is just because the follow up to the extremely popular first season was a long, long, long time coming. I think people just got tired of waiting and finally moved on, but they should really reconsider and come back to Berserk. Another worry that many could run into is whether or not a second installment like this can really live up to it’s predecessor. But much to our surprise, not only does the second season sport the high standards of the first but you have a great studio behind it, and some grand new editions that both come from the manga and are completely original.

hisuiconSeason two picks up right where season one left off. We have Skull Knight busting in and saving Guts and Casca on a horse that looks exactly like Fuunsaiki. After getting cleaned up Guts vows to take down the God Hand but first he has to go through a training arc. Guts gets swordsmanship lessons and life lessons from a most unusual source. I would say who his teacher is but I don’t want to ruin the surprise. Guts then has to enter a tournament to recruit new allies and friends to take down the dreaded God Hand and their sinister minions. But of course they have some laughs and make a few missteps along the way. All of this building up for the big showdown at the end, which ends on another cliffhanger.

narutaki Eventhough the series starts very much where it left off and moves right along from the manga, it’s nice to see their own touches here and there which get stronger as the show goes along. This was especially seen in the new cast and the return of some favorites. I never would have expected there to be an essentially zombie version of the Band of the Hawk. You might think that would destroy the impact of their beautiful-horrific destruction at the end of the first arc but the seance scene and then the later resurrection episodes are so spectacular that you’ll be happy to have them back. I also really liked the addition of Guts’s philosophical musings, it gave at introspective feel to some of the major twists.

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Contest + Riding Bean, The original transporter.

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hisuiconRiding Bean has an fascinating back story. Although it might seem that Riding Bean is a spin off of Gunsmith Cats it turns out that Riding Bean was the original concept and Gunsmith Cats is the continuation of the project. But when various problems that I have never seen clearly stated occurred everything was canceled and Kenichi Sonoda took Bean’s side kick Irene Vincent and altered her a bit to create the Gunsmith Cats manga. Bean Bandit would later show up in Gunsmith Cats as a reoccurring guest star but sadly this is the only piece of animation showing off the Road Buster himself. But what a ride this one OAV is.

narutaki I remember vividly from my youth trying to rent this from the video store on multiple occasions. When I did finally get my hands on it, I was overwhelmed with joy at its lovely 80’s OVA-ness. I didn’t really have access to much information at the time, so I was in denial that there wasn’t anymore of the adventures of Bean and Rally. Much to my joy years later I learned of Bean’s appearance in the Gunsmith Cats manga, but still there is a little hole in my heart that Bean was relegated to just a side character.

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