Archive for the English Anime Category


Princess Knight Anime, Part 1 – Disk 5 (English) and Contest Winners

November 10th, 2013

As we reach the final disk of the first half of Osamu Tezuka’s  Princess Knight, things heat up significantly for Knight.

After Knight has many adventures (and again meet Satan and his daughter, who is now falling for Knight,) the King sets aside the crown in order to allow Knight to take the throne, but finally, Duralamin’s schemes pay off and Knight is publicly unveiled as a…gasp!…girl. Duralamin throws Knight into jail with her mother and puts his own son on the throne. (One is left to presume that he has paid off all the other nobles of the Kingdom, or surely they’d all be angling to rule.)

Knight finds a way to escape the jail and uses it to fight for her people, who are being cruelly used by Duralamin, as Phantom Knight. The disk leaves us wondering how, not if, she will manage to free Silverland.

And, actually, that was my only “complaint”…if you will. Had I been organizing the disks, I would have ended Disk 5 as Knight and her mother were dragged off to jail. It’s a pretty tense moment and would have made for a compelling cliffhanger. But no one asked me. ^_^

Now that Knight has been outed, I’m actually looking forward to the second half more than this half. Knight can be herself as a whole person as opposed to hiding and having Duralamin and Nylon being creepy about her.  From now on, Knight is a powerful, fearless Princess and just exactly the person who can save Silverland.

Ratings:

Art – 4
Characters – 8
Story – 8 While technically, the low point in the story, it’s a relief to be past the whole “she’s really a girl” nonsense.

Overall – 7

And now, the Princess Knight, Part 1 Box Set Contest Winners!

Joel Keralis
Emily Orr

Please contact me at yuricon at gmail dot com with your shipping addresses and I’ll get you set out to you asap!

Thank you everyone who entered and RightStuf for their generosity in providing these box sets for review and contest.





Princess Knight Anime, Part 1 – Disk 4 (English) and a Contest!

October 21st, 2013

Disk 4 of Princess Knight continues to be more difficult for me to watch than I expected. While Knight’s adventures remain exciting, the constant – and to my mind, creepy – obsession with her sex absolutely kills any enjoyment I eke out of the story.

On the one hand, Knight is praised as being the very epitome of a fine Prince – handsome, brave, honest, kind. Glossed over that is the emphatic reminder that she is not, never will be, a Prince at all. Her mother feels terrible about “forcing” her to act as a boy, but it’s pretty obvious that she prefers to do so. And yet, when Knight is wrestled into a dress, she longs for that, as well. Destined to never be allowed to be comfortable in her own body no matter what she chooses. Poor Knight.

While watching this anime and thinking of the constant pressure Knight faces, I was looking back through my own youth and feel the need to thank my parents for making it possible for me to get boy’s clothes in my early teen years, rather than forcing me to wear girls’ clothes. That was pretty important to me, especially in retrospect.  ^_^

So, we head into the final Disk of Set 1, and thanks to the generosity of TRSI, we have two copies of Set 1 to give away!

In the comments, please put your name age and country and if you’d be so kind to register with WP, so there’s an email I can contact you at, I will announce the winners when I review Disk 5. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 4
Characters – 7
Story – 6 It just sort of starts grinding here

Overall – 6

I still like it best when Knight can just be knightly, without other people’s issues. ^_^





Princess Knight Anime, Part 1 – Disk 3 (English)

October 10th, 2013

Disk 3 of Princess Knight has a few notable qualities. For one, Prince Frank steps up his courting of Knight and, as a result, he comes across as rather gay to my 21st century LGBTQ-filtered mind. ^_^ I actually quite like those moments. ^_^

In Episode 14, Knight fights Satan, which makes me laugh on principal, but Satan’s Daughter does not profess her love for Knight, which would have been icing on the queer cake. Oh well. ^_^

But what I really wanted to talk about is Episode 15, in which Knight dresses up as a sheep-looking goat in order to save a bunch of sheep-looking baby goats being raised by a female wolf (with long black feminine hair), in order to protect them from the big bad wolf husband. If that isn’t worth watching, I just don’t know what is.

 

Ratings:

Art – 4
Characters – 7
Story – 7
Baby sheep-goats and their mommy wolf – 10

Overall – 7





Princess Knight Anime, Part 1 – Disk 2 (English)

October 3rd, 2013

After a rather stressful Disk 1, Disk 2 of Princess Knight settles down. Starting with the final episodes of the first disk,  Sapphire – referred to in the dub as “Prince Knight,” or “Knight” for short – sets off on more adventures.  Of course Duralamin and Nylon still slaver over her uncomfortably and their continuing obsession about her sex is always squicky. Knight’s energy is mostly spent protecting her kingdom from being invaded by shark necromancers and fighting wars on behalf of flower kingdoms. Knight even gets a moment to shine as she goes on an epic quest to save her mother from a poisoned flower.

It is during this last adventure where Knight meets the dashing young Prince Frank (Franz of the manga.) Prince Frank thinks young Knight is funny, always trying to outdo him. Something inside of Prince Frank is clearly resonating to Knight – when he gives the younger Prince a flower, Knight says she doesn’t like flowers, but Frank assures him that he will, someday.

Because we know the two of them are destined to be together, it seems to me that the vibe begins right away. While Knight seeks to establish equal status with Frank, Frank sees him as “cute.” Is the storyline not-so-subtlely reinforcing Knight’s femininity (and therefore her inferiority) even as she herself maintains that they are  equals, or am I working *way* too hard as I watch this out of the corner of my eye while I work? ^_^

Without a doubt, I far prefer the adventure stories to the obsessive creeping of Duralamin and Nylon. They are portrayed as so unambiguously mystery play-style evil they might as well have names like Duke DoNoGood and Sir Henchman. It leaves no room at all for the kind of masterful storytelling one associates with Tezuka. We get a glimpse of this when Knight is fighting off an evil plot to start a war and destroy the Prince of Roses, when she rejects Duralamin’s blustery, dangerous patriotism. (Gee, who does this remind me of….oh, wait, every politician ever, right.) Give me a good old fashioned shark invasion any day.

Ratings:

Art – 4
Characters – 7
Story – 7

Overall – 7





Ghost in the Shell: Arise – Border 1 (English)

October 2nd, 2013

GitSAriseboxHaving watched Ghost in the Shell since it first arrived on western shores I, like so many other fans, have had a few questions about Major Kusanagi. Who is she? How did she get a fully cyborg body, where did she come from, what her family was like…these all seem pretty reasonable questions, when you think about it.

Ghost in the Shell: Arise 01: Ghost Pain answers these questions – without actually removing much of the mystery behind Kusanagi. Although we now know how she meets Aramaki, Batou, Paz and Togusa, there’s still way more questions than answers we have about her life. With luck, none of them will be addressed in future episodes. ^_^

The main strength in Arise, is that someone with little to no knowledge of the Ghost in the Shell franchise – and the ability to flow with a cyberpunk-y, slightly non-linear narrative – will have no trouble following this story. (Completely unlike Innocence, for instance, which makes little sense if you have not seen at least some of the other GitS franchise.) You do not need to know Kusanagi Motoko – Arise will introduce more about her than we have had in all the previous series.

Of interest to me was Motoko’s superior, Kurutsu, who was a character design that could only exist in anime. Long yanki-style skirt over black leather pants, no bra, shirt open to the navel…what military is this again?  I had very much hoped that she and Motoko would end up fighting, because Kurutsu so wore the look of “mentor gone bad.”

The Japan Collector’s Edition contained Episode 01 on Blu-Ray,  a few frames of “film” of Batou and a booklet with commentary and character designs.  The episode comes in just shy of an hour so whether you feel its expensive, will depend on how you feel about paying for your anime.

The plot is convoluted, and has obligatory government corruption, brain hacking and a fair amount of fanservice, so if looking at Kusanagi in underwear or naked is high on your list, bonus points for you. It is a solid OVA (OBDA, maybe, since it’s a Blu-ray?) for GitS.  I’m definitely looking forward to Ghost in the Shell: Arise – Border 2.

Ratings:

Art – 9 Top notch, except in a few scenes. Faces in 3/4 profile still seem to be the most challenging for animators.
Story – 8
Characters – 7 Comfy, rather than good
Yuri – 0 (I was really hoping for something between Kusani and Kurutsu, sad face)
Service – 6

Overall – 8

My very very since thanks to  an anonymous Okazu hero for sponsoring today’s  review! It was so much appreciated  – and enjoyed! It would be even better if you tell me who you are, so I can thank you.