(Yeesh, that was a short post! And I’ve really been ignoring this thing for a while.)

You have achieved DAS. Disappointing Anime Syndrome.

Once you’ve recovered from your feelings of melancholy, you find out that there’s been a manga – and it came before the anime. You check that out, and you’re gripped. There are some series that are justlike that – as interesting as the anime might be, the manga is just so much richer and more detailed that you have to keep reading. I had this with Death Note. Now, as much as I enjoyed what I saw of the anime, it seemed a little too… overdone. Sure, the hamminess of Miyano Mamoru or Brad Swaile is effective in the role of Light, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the manga. For me, the manga was like reading a mystery novel. It got me hooked, it had the right blend of understatement and drama, and I thought the character designs were much more tasteful and effective in that chiaroscuro-esque style that they incorporated. So as much as I enjoyed the anime as an entertaining diversion, the manga is so much more of an experience. The same goes for CLAMP’s stuff – the anime adaptations of xxxHOLIC and Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, for example, may be fairly good anime, but manga is CLAMP’s medium, and in my opinion, their art style just doesn’t transfer well to an animated medium. Plus, I have a real issue with the anime adaptation of Chobits. I didn’t need all those filler episodes, thank you very much. Unlike some viewers, I actually attempted to view Chobits for the plot.

The reverse is true, too. If you suffer from DMS (go and take a guess at what that stands for), then worry not. It happens to a lot of people. The Ghost In The Shell manga, for example, is… well, I’ve never read it, but even though it preceded the film(s), the characters were more exaggerated than in the anime adaptations. A case of reverse-Flanderisation? Maybe. And if a show starts off as a yonkoma (those four-panel comedy manga), like Lucky Star, K-On! or Azumanga, there might be more of a chance to develop characters and get to know them better. But I can’t speak for everyone. This is just my opinion, and if you have a different view on manga and anime adaptations, go ahead and have your say in the comments! They’re always appreciated – even if it’s just “I experienced DAS with x series, and I wonder if you did too.” I really don’t mind.

Incidentally, expect a new part of this blog very soon – it’ll be more of a ‘review’ series and less of my own personal rants, which should prove interesting. I’ll leave you in suspense for now – bye-bee!

Warning! Here there (may) be spoilers, so if you’re really paranoid about that sort of thing, stay away just to be on the safe side. But if you’re not worried, watch away! This is more to do with the quality of the acting rather than any of the action in the shows – adding to this the amount of short clips I can find on the ‘tubes. So here goes!

5: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

4: Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad

3: Baccano!

2: Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex/Second Gig

1: Cowboy Bebop

And if you’re interested in any of these series, then definitely watch them! Not only are these excellent dubs, they are also five highly recommended series. From me, at least.

Bye-bee!

Now, I’ve been an anime fan since I was around fourteen. At that time, my gateway drug into the wonderful, diverse and sometimes, well… often strange world that is anime was the films of Studio Ghibli, most importantly Spirited Away, a film that I will always have a soft spot for. After my introduction came my secondary school infatuation with numerous shoujo titles – namely DN Angel (which I still watch from time to time), Fruits Basket (which I’ve read the manga of but only seen a few episodes of the anime – I’d recommend the manga, it’s a lot more in-depth) and Fushigi Yuugi (TAMAHOME!!! Oh, Fushigi Yuugi. You will forever be known as my guilty pleasure).

Then once I hit sixth-form, I saw Ouran High School Host Club. And I fell in so much love with that show. I can’t list every single anime that I have ever watched in those two years, because I flirted with so many series then, maybe more than I ever will in my entire life. Or maybe not. So, back to the here and now. Over the Christmas period and a little bit before, my wonderful boyfriend lent me Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex. And even though I’ve only been watching it for around a month and a half, it’s up there with Cowboy Bebop and, oddly enough compared to those two, Azumanga Daioh as a contender for my favourite anime series.

And as is it’s wont, GITS:SAC (best acronym evar, amirite?) has got me to thinking. Not about the themes of the show – thinking about those goes without saying – but about one of the greatest debates in anime fandom history. The subbing versus dubbing debate. Now, when I was first introduced into the anime fandom, I stood firmly on the subbing side, and I still lean that way now. There are some series (oh, hello there, Excel Saga) that just sound *better* in the original Japanese. But as I’ve become more open-minded with anime, I’ve found some particular gems in the dubbing field. GITS: SAC and Bebop spring to mind immediately as superior dubs, and certain dubs from Funimation are excellent – Baccano! which I have only encountered through short clips so far, is insanely good, as are most of the Ghibli dubs.

But others, as good as certain actors are, can be a little hit and miss. I was surprised by the quality of the Ouran dub, especially Caitlin Glass’ Haruhi, which I prefer over her Japanese VA, and Kyouya, who is as smooth-talkin’ as his Japanese counterpart, but there are some things in *that* dub that grate – Mamoru Miyano is just too perfect as Tamaki: as suited as Vic Mignogna is, I can only hear Mamoru. Then, there are the dubs that I don’t like as a whole, but some voices just stand out for me. Take, for example, Death Note. Now, on the whole, I prefer the Death Note manga, and if I want to watch it, I’ll watch it in Japanese (oh, hello again, Mamoru Miyano). But then… then, there is L’s English voice actor, Alessandro Juliani. I swear, I would watch the English version of that show just to hear Alessandro Juliani. Similarly, the English dub of xxxHOLiC, which I don’t like as a whole, has a redeeming factor or two in J. Michael Tatum as Doumeki and Todd Haberkorn as Watanuki.

So really, I’m on neither side of the fence. But when I love a dub, I will hold it close to my heart, as well as presenting my top five English dubs in a top 5 list! Not this post, though. There’s too much in here already.

ADDENDUM: So other than GITS:SAC, this week I have been mostly watching… TENGEN TOPPA GURREN LAGANN (five MANLY stars out of five, on a first impression of three episodes). Darker Than Black (three angsty talking cat stars out of five on first impression) and Eden of the East, which, as *weird* as the first episode is, I adore. I mean just look at this opening theme! It’s got the decent song from Oasis’ last album as the theme song, really pretty animation, and it is directed by Kenji fucking Kamiyama! The director of Stand Alone Complex! Squee!

So that’s all from me, signing out, so stay shiny and bye-bee for now!

3/11/2009

I am morally opposed to Bryan Ferry.

4/11/2009

One of the reasons why I didn’t get the chance to have my own show on our college radio station this year is because I wrote down under ‘your preferred genre of music’ on the application form, ‘anything other than the music of Bryan Ferry and the rest of his Satan-spawned foxhunting cronies’.

5/11/2009

Apart from my hatred of Bryan Ferry, I like to think that I’m rather open-minded when it comes to music. Then again, I’m a compulsive liar. Whenever someone asks me what the first album I ever bought was, I’ll say it was The Velvet Underground’s eponymous debut, or The Clash’s London Calling, or something else that’ll give me hipster brownie points.
In reality, it was Middle of Nowhere, by those androgynous Oklahomans Hanson. I loved it then, and I still love it now, without any trace of guilt. Well, maybe a little bit.

I was only nine or eight. I bought it in the HMV on North End Road near the market where you could still, in the late Nineties, hear vendors shouting ‘PAAND A SCOOUP!’; throwing old strawberries at unsuspecting grey skinned urchins with toothless, flat-capped Cockney mirth.

6/11/2009

I hate to dwell on the subject, but Bryan Ferry is the anti-Midas, destroying everything he touches, just like in that song by Ladytron who, for your information, got their name from a Roxy Music song. So if you look at it one way, Ladytron wrote a song about Bryan Ferry’s malicious influence on their development as a band.

7/11/2009

One of my favourite films is Breakfast on Pluto, starring Cillian Murphy, Liam Neeson, Gavin Friday and some computer generated robins. But because the director is an evil, twisted man, he decided to cast Bryan Ferry in a rather disturbing cameo role. I won’t spoil it for you, but let me just say that he ruined that perfectly good film for me. I hoped to come away from the film thinking ‘one of the most important parts of growing up is exploring your gender identity! Hooray for gender fluidity and the awesomeness of Cillian Murphy!’

Instead, I just thought it would have been better if the film really was set on Pluto, so we could just send Bryan Ferry there to die.

8/11/2009

My best friend worked in a café the year before last, and there would always be a CD playing in the background. Now, one of them was a Bryan Ferry album. She was forced to listen to his monotonous warbling for hours on end, as she served tea and sandwiches to citizens of Richmond. She grew bitter, while I laughed, mocking her perfectly rational fear.

Flash-forward to last summer. I volunteered in Oxfam, sorting out books, putting clothes on hangers and other forms of charitable tidiness. Every Saturday, one of the albums they would play in the shop was, of course, Taxi, by Bryan Ferry. As the weeks went on, they started playing a CD of ‘Classical Hits’, and I’m not sure which was worse – cringing in horror at Mr Ferry’s vile excuses for songs, or trying to keep a straight face at the till when I was forced to have opera in my head.

9/11/2009

Working in Oxfam for a couple of months was fine, but sorting out books in a musty basement makes one wonder about the state of literature, as well as giving one a rather nasty cold. I sold many Da Vinci Code rip-offs in my brief stint as a till monkey, including one too-blatant number called The Lichtenstein Artefact, about a buxom young librarian and her older male companion searching for an ancient scrap of isometric paper under the streets of New York.

10/11/2009

If I see a work of classic literature reprinted to look like a frothy chick-lit novel, I yalp, like an ocelot with a piece of tofu stuck in its throat. Shopping for one of my courses last year, I picked up a copy of Sense and Sensibility with a pastel-coloured cover and an insipid blurb on the back. The shop assistant (who bore an uncanny resemblance to a young William S. Burroughs) asked me if I needed some help, when he saw me standing stock still in front of a bookshelf muttering “abomination…”
Thankfully, he pointed me in the direction of the Penguin Classics. I was fine after that, until I saw a reprint of The Great Gatsby that had been made to look like a Tom Clancy novel. Poor thing.

Out in Staines one drizzly afternoon in September, I noticed that there was a section for ‘Tragic Life Stories’ in WH Smiths. I was shocked and appalled that books with titles like ‘Please Daddy, Don’t Throw Me Down That Well’ and soft-focus photographs of weeping children on their covers could have their own section opposite one that contained novels by Oscar Wilde, Vladimir Nabokov and George Orwell.
Then again, this was in WH Smiths, and it was in Staines.

Full of rage, striding out of the offending shop, I heard ‘Virginia Plain’ blaring out of a mid life crisis car. I shuddered and realised that I will never be able to escape the nefarious power of Bryan Ferry.