I've taken a look at two more shows this past weekend. "Adventure Time" and "Gungrave".
Adventure Time is good. I'm about five episodes in at this point. It's a madcap rubber hose animation set in a post-apocalyptic world. The character design is very simple and to give the characters more expression, but only when needed, the animators will add more expressive eyes or additional facial features. The show doesn't really hold my attention for long enough, but then again I'm not one in favour of madcap comedies with random plots and Deus ex machina thrown in all over the place.
I'm eleven episodes into Gungrave and it's more my style. You can watch the first four episodes for free at Funimation.com to see if you like it and if you do then I recommend purchasing the series. It's worth it. I've added an reasonably priced Amazon link to the left. It's around $37 for the whole series - crazy amazing deal for the quality of the animation.
Gungrave is focused around death. The plot revolves around death and undeath. It's interesting to see how death is handled in each of the episodes. For good characters there is usually a fade to another scene and then we hear the gunshot(s). In those instances it's really the musical score that takes centre stage to set the emotion.
At this point, the story isn't particularly unique. It revolves around a mob family fighting for dominance in an ever complicated world. The one interesting twist is that the creators have added the undead to the mix with scientific wizardry. I am, however, hooked into the story by the relationship between the two protagonists who are best friends. The stage is set for an ultimate showdown between the two and I'm ready to see it unfold. So even though it's not a unique premise the character development has enfolded in such a way as to totally hook me into watching it right to the end.
In terms of character design the really interesting thing is that Harry, the main character who turns evil, has really large pupils - a trait that is usually reserved for good/cute characters - so I'm intrigued to see if his pupils will grow smaller as his power hungry nature deprives him of his humanity.
P.S. Gungrave was produced by Madhouse Studios, who as far as I can tell, are the current cutting edge creators of Japanese anime. They produced Redline, which I saw at WFAC last November, and the animation in it blew me away. It was stunning. Gunther Heinrich gives a very apt review of the film on his blog.
The story for Redline was admittedly weak, generally that would be the end of me liking any film, but in this case it's almost irrelevant due to the artistry used to execute the film. The word on the street is that Anchor Bay may be the one to release the Blu-Ray for Redline in Canada and if they do I'm buying it the second it's out. It's gorgeous and I'd probably watch it once a day for a week after I got it. There were about half a dozen films in the WFAC lineup last year that were each reason enough to attend the festival and Redline was one of those films.
Adventure Time is good. I'm about five episodes in at this point. It's a madcap rubber hose animation set in a post-apocalyptic world. The character design is very simple and to give the characters more expression, but only when needed, the animators will add more expressive eyes or additional facial features. The show doesn't really hold my attention for long enough, but then again I'm not one in favour of madcap comedies with random plots and Deus ex machina thrown in all over the place.I'm eleven episodes into Gungrave and it's more my style. You can watch the first four episodes for free at Funimation.com to see if you like it and if you do then I recommend purchasing the series. It's worth it. I've added an reasonably priced Amazon link to the left. It's around $37 for the whole series - crazy amazing deal for the quality of the animation.Gungrave is focused around death. The plot revolves around death and undeath. It's interesting to see how death is handled in each of the episodes. For good characters there is usually a fade to another scene and then we hear the gunshot(s). In those instances it's really the musical score that takes centre stage to set the emotion.
At this point, the story isn't particularly unique. It revolves around a mob family fighting for dominance in an ever complicated world. The one interesting twist is that the creators have added the undead to the mix with scientific wizardry. I am, however, hooked into the story by the relationship between the two protagonists who are best friends. The stage is set for an ultimate showdown between the two and I'm ready to see it unfold. So even though it's not a unique premise the character development has enfolded in such a way as to totally hook me into watching it right to the end.
In terms of character design the really interesting thing is that Harry, the main character who turns evil, has really large pupils - a trait that is usually reserved for good/cute characters - so I'm intrigued to see if his pupils will grow smaller as his power hungry nature deprives him of his humanity.
P.S. Gungrave was produced by Madhouse Studios, who as far as I can tell, are the current cutting edge creators of Japanese anime. They produced Redline, which I saw at WFAC last November, and the animation in it blew me away. It was stunning. Gunther Heinrich gives a very apt review of the film on his blog.
The story for Redline was admittedly weak, generally that would be the end of me liking any film, but in this case it's almost irrelevant due to the artistry used to execute the film. The word on the street is that Anchor Bay may be the one to release the Blu-Ray for Redline in Canada and if they do I'm buying it the second it's out. It's gorgeous and I'd probably watch it once a day for a week after I got it. There were about half a dozen films in the WFAC lineup last year that were each reason enough to attend the festival and Redline was one of those films.
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