A remake of Enter the Dragon?

...Starring Korean pop-star Rain?!
As if the remake by itself was not bad enough news.
Fuck you Warner. Fuck you for shitting all over Bruce Lee's grave.
I was going to refrain from making another post and go to bed quietly, but now I'm up in arms.
It's going to be called "Awaken the Dragon." And it's supposed to be a "noir-ish" reboot. Who the fuck gave this project the go-ahead? The writer, some nincompoop named Kurt Sutter, has the balls to say that "This will be more ‘Raging Bull’ than ‘Crouching Tiger’ in its viciousness,” in regards to the project.
Again, why Rain for the love of God? Great, not a white guy, but at least get somebody with a lick of martial arts experience.
Christ, I hope I wake up tomorrow and find that this was a prank.

Until then, motherfucking shit.





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Things I Hate About Anime

I began watching anime in 2004. For the first three years of my hobbydom, my viewing habits consisted of marathoning series over weekends and breaks. Watching on an episode by episode basis was unheard of. There were a crapload of older series I had to catch up on, and for the longest time, I didn't know what the hell fansubs were. It's now been a couple years since I've last marathoned a series I haven't seen before (though I still marathon older favorites like Giant Robo and FLCL all the time whenever I'm back home from college). So, for nostalgia and laziness' sake, I decided to try and get through Eureka 7, seeing as its episodes are streaming through ANN right now.

It was a fucking struggle, I tell ya. Getting through those episodes was more grueling than a workout, except a workout would've actually been helpful. What a goddamn waste of time. Despite all of its eminent audience acclaim, dazzling animation, and sky-surfing robots, my experience was derailed by the fact that Eureka 7 contains or has reminded of some of the cliches/devices/tendencies from the medium I abhor the most. These include:

The Getting Caught Fantasizing/Daydreaming LOL moment-
A classic, tired attempt to elicit some laughs, or maybe even some pity for a particular character. Not funny. Just pathetic. Yes, people fantasize/daydream all the time while talking to themselves, but we usually notice it when somebody, especially when the person of interest we are fantasizing/daydreaming about moves right in front of us. I know animation, hell, film period, is a medium of exaggeration, and there's suspense of disbelief and all that crap, but with how often it's used, I've had enough of this "human awareness fail"-dependent humor.

The Incredibly Forced Crying/Tearing Up moment-
Happens in anime like it does with kids. You see it coming from a mile away. It's telegraphed by every movement...and yet you can't stop it! Shit, people cry, but they stay silent a lot of the time too. It also would help if the voice actors didn't sound like whimpering goats every time they did it. Then again, I would sound like one too if I was told to cry on the spot for something I don't really care about. The Incredibly Forced Crying/Tearing Up moment is closely related to...

The Deeply Emotional Pan To the Sky Visceral Scream moment-
To write the perfectly generic Deeply Emotional moment, follow these steps:
1) Supporting character is mortally wounded after a Heroic Sacrificial Action.
2) Protagonist rushes to character's side.
3) Supporting character utters Last Words.
4) Supporting character coughs up blood and dies.
5) Protagonist remains in disbelief and begins crying.
6) Pan to the sky for the Visceral Scream of dead character's name.

Props to Kenji Kamiyama and his fellow writers for making fun of this pattern in the first season of Stand Alone Complex.
The end of Gurren Lagann's eighth episode is one of the more tolerable and effective death scenes that I've seen because the Last Words and Visceral Scream have been removed. Why can't other folks follow suit?

Saying a Person's Name During Conversation moment-
"I...I just don't understand anything anymore. Life...has become so confusing."
"Kinshasa..."

Awkward as hell. Doesn't help when the names are really strange. But hey, for all I know, maybe this is normal and I'm outta the loop. Enlighten me here.

Technobabble-
Not endemic to anime by any means, but it appears all too often to rob our poor little 2-d constructs of more relevant and valuable dialog. I cannot count how many times in Eureka 7 people started going off about trapars, skyfish, and coral. Look, they're trippy and colorful and that's nice, but when the concepts are horribly inconsistent and can be surmounted by the Power of Love, there is no need for that much time to be spent on establishing them. Keep the concepts consistent, or better yet, keep it in the hard sci-fi world where this shit is actually paramount and belongs. The only anime "technobabble" I've genuinely found interesting, so interesting in fact that I hesitate use that ugly word in association, is from the Ghost in the Shell-verse.


I hope to dear god that these things eventually die out. What was once barely palatable has become vomit-inducing. In a nutshell,

P.S: If any of these have some more properly accepted names besides the random nonsensical jumbles I came up with, definitely let me know.

A petty rant involving Black Jack

As the English market for seinen series continues to grow, so do the expected names move out of their scanlation-favored beginnings into the lexicon for would-be manga critics. Naoki Urasawa is one such manga-ka, a passionate following amassing itself even further now that he has two more of his famous series being released side-by-side. This is important to note in this coverage of Black Jack because while Urasawa utterly adores and worships Osamu Tezuka, the former's approach is so radically different that it comes as little surprise for why the criticisms come more quickly for the late god of manga by specific reviewers.

As I read Pluto alongside Black Jack, what is the most obvious aesthetic difference is the handling of melodrama. Tezuka can be targeted for his ham-fisted ways, where Serious Messages are delivered in a tone not far removed from the late Will Eisner: distanced, alienated male characters crying out, defiant at the people, ideology, system and even divinity that steal away fairness and justice in this world. But, like Eisner, there's little doubt that Tezuka completely means every single speech bubble, constantly seeking answers for the betterment of humankind. Self-awareness isn't out of the question, either, considering the amount of fourth-wall-breaking scenes and general absurdities Tezuka throws at the reader.

Urasawa also never shies away from prodding sentimentality into the picture, but his motivations are arguably suspect -- particularly considering these almost always involve elongated sub-plots consisting of characters offering feel-good platitudes, while repetitive panels emphasize just how miserable they all really are. When the story of North No. 2 reaches its "emotional climax," finally succeeding at aiding the blind, bitter old man to open his heart upon the songs and revelations of his homeland, it stumbles past a line of acceptability into self-parody for cheap manipulation of the audience. When, in volume five of Black Jack, Tezuka focuses on Black Jack desperately fighting with Dr. Kiriko attempting to kill his apparently tragically-fated father, or his indifference upon a former "wolf girl" dancing into dangerous territory, it reveals more questions about the characters and Tezuka's own moral questions.

Undoubtedly there are those who won't find themselves attached to the admittedly inconsistent storytelling found in Black Jack. Instead they are more comfortable with Urasawa's thriller, questions always dancing around the answers until the narrative compulsion nearly grinds to a halt. Personally, I'm coming back and away with higher and more fulfilled expectations with Tezuka's insanity-filled honesty.