Anime Roundup: 7 to the X edition...

First, though, I finished up "Zettai Shonen", which was only 12 episodes, it turns out. Nothing particularly groundbreaking, and for a while, a couple of the character's "romantic awkwardness" was totally turning me off of it, but in the end, it was modestly contemplative and the story and characters made it watch-worthy enough. A very simple style overall, though probably a bit more manga-like than I'd otherwise prefer. Beyond that, any attempt at profundity was rather underwhelming.

"X", the TV version, finally made it into my rental queue. There's a "Remix" version of it that caught my eye, but I wanted to see if it's worth it first. So far, after the first non-"Remix" disc, it's inconclusive. I'm not particularly a CLAMP fan. I saw the older movie, dubbed of course, some years ago; but attempting to rewatch it -- dubbed again -- proved to be unbearable and unwatchable, and I dumped it rather early on.

The series is a little more forgivable, though I was tempted to drop it partway in the "episode 0" that opened the disc. The animation is rather stiff and manga-esque, which I suppose is predictable. But the writing and the characters overall show a little bit of potential, so I think I'll give it a little more of a try.

Another tidbit I noticed -- the color pallette and the background texture is straight out of "Noir", which has a rather unique style in that regard. Surprising, to a small extent. I checked ANN's encyclopedia, but there didn't seem to be any overlap. Still, to me, it's unmistakable. And it's something I haven't seen in any other anime. I'd be curious to know what the real overlap is.

Finally, I rented disc 1 of "Samurai 7". It was one of the first fansubs I watched after my re-introduction to the anime world, and way back then, I was a bit dissappointed with it, particularly in the way it took such obvious liberties with the Kurosawa film it takes credit for mimicing. I wanted to see, though, if a couple of years of experience in a wide variety of anime would change my impression of it at all.

And the answer isn't entirely clear. It definitely thinks that it's cooler than it actually is. And it's quite obviously a predecessor to "Gankutsou", both in character style/expression, and the overall ripoff of classic material for it's own ends. But there's a couple of interesting sparks to be seen, and I'm pretty sure I recognized it back then. And it's definitely different from a lot of the usual junk, which I didn't quite appreciate as much at the time. So I guess I'll keep renting it, as I realized I don't remember as much of the fansub as I thought I'd might, and the picture and audio quality aren't half-bad on the DVD. Plus, I actually quit watching it when the license was announced (as was the style at the time)...