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Uchû kôkyôshi Mater: Ginga tetsudô Three-Nine gaiden (2004)
A New Low
This 13 episode series had so much promise. The opening sequence is fantastic - orchestral music, heroic images of the Leijiverse's greatest heroes, 999 chugging away . . . and then the show starts. The writing on this show is so bad that things just happen for the sake of convenience. People are on the planet, then they're off the planet. People die for no reason, technologies exist or don't to advance the "story", and some character's motivations are illogical. Queen Promethium's actions make no sense. Leopard's actions make no sense. As usual the mechanoid vs. human concept is fraught with stupidity and things that make no sense. As soon as I realized that this series was a direct sequel to the abominable "Maetel Legend", I started to see its faults. At least we didn't have to watch Hard Gear drink wine 15 times as he cackled. It's not ALL bad - the CGI Death Shadow was impressive, there are some nice character designs (when the A-team was doing the animation and not the underpaid Koreans), the music is good, and there were a handful of nice Leijiverse drama. But the rest is derivative crap - right down to Queen Promethium's ultimate weapons - a Death Star clone and a fleet of dumb laser-shooting balls. Don't show this to any non-anime fans if you're trying to convince them that anime isn't awful.
Îhatôbu gensô: KENjI no haru (1996)
Super Disappointment
I waited many years to finally have an opportunity to see this. I had heard so many good things about it and was lucky enough to finally catch it streaming (legally) online this week. Words cannot express my profound disappointment at this overrated, self-indulgent piece of garbage.
Some reviewers have actually equated parts of this low-budget train-wreck to Fantasia, which makes me sad for some people who must be visually challenged. Honestly, some of the more "experimental" aspects of this anime are actually quite derivative (most notably the colorful etching style which artlessly apes George Plympton). And the computer animation that people praise is middling even for the 1990s.
The dub, which features an obviously African-American voice actor as Kenji Miyazawa is a legendary miscasting. Anime like this must be watched in Japanese with subtitles - English cannot possibly do justice to the local color needed to flesh out some of these philosophical concepts.
The story is padded with long pauses, repetition, and ultimately goes nowhere, leaving us with no real feeling for Miyazawa. The character designs are ugly and inconsistent - these anthropomorphic felines lack all of the charm and beauty of their counterparts in Night On The Galaxy Railway (also based on the works of Kenji Miyazawa).
Anime fans can often be self-delusional with regards to shows that feature weighty concepts and artsy pretensions, but I find it impossible to praise something so shoddy and hollow as Spring & Chaos.
Rôjin to rabudôru: Watashi ga shochô ni natta toki... (2008)
Terrible by any measure.
I'm ashamed to admit that I even rented this. Obviously conceived as a combination of high science fiction and soft-core porn, it fails on both accounts. The actors do their best with bad material, especially the aged man in love with his maid droid. And in the tradition of the worst J-video schlock, it flushes any credibility down the toilet by dredging the same tired well of deviant sexuality and misogyny (get ready for that swirling simulated phallus as it menaces the poor victims). See - the women being raped are actually just horny and the rapist is satisfying them!?!!?!? The special effects are poor, the comedy is lowbrow (a malfunctioning sex-bot rips a guys junk off), and the ending is actually a repudiation of the message of the entire film to that point. Pure garbage. Do not bother with this unless you have a maid fetish or like robotic bestiality.
A Girl Named Tamiko (1962)
Score 1 For Emotionally Vacant Eurasian Manchildren, Score 0 for Womankind
In the great tradition of Sayonara, Teahouse of the August Moon, Bridges of Toko-Ri, and Love Is A Many Splendored Thing, this movie is yet another 1950s-1960s era taboo-romance/travelogue picture with little going for it in terms of plot or authenticity. I find it odd that many people tout the exotic locales as a positive - a closer look at the film reveals that the leads spend exorbitant amounts of time interacting in front of projections, to say nothing of duped stand-ins walking through crowds and busy scenes. The unsettling mannerisms of Laurence Harvey actually lend some level of interest to his otherwise unlikeable character. The blonde vamp is an awful weak female stereotype. The titular Tamiko has all the makings of a strong female, but still ties her happiness to an emotionally vacant (at least until the last improbable minute and a half) jerk. It was interesting to see Tokyo of the early 1960s, but I'm inclined to believe very little of the movie was filmed in Japan. Most of the interiors reek of studio sets - right down to fake trees in some spots. Although not an offensive mess by any means, this is still horribly dated.
Dirty Dingus Magee (1970)
Surprisingly Crass and Vulgar
This movie is a series of "blue" gags and poorly written slapstick mixed in with crappy stunts and a nauseating plot. I love Westerns, I love Frank Sinatra. But there's a reason it took him 7 years to appear in another movie - this picture soured everyone on him. We get two unfunny pee scenes, nymph schoolteachers, racist Indian gags, more boob jokes (T. Chest, anyone?), and even an "I got shot in the butt" vignette. Ugh. And Frank Sinatra sounds like a reject from Amos & Andy with the accent he affects. Only Jack Elam lends any real comic effect, or maybe I just think lazy eyes are funny. 96 minutes of this and you'll be wishing you were watching Seargents 3 or 4 For Texas. This movie fails on all accounts.