Yeah, I remember talking with you about Maris the Chojo and other Takahashi Rumiko stuff awhile back, when you posted that you were throwing out old VHS tapes. I love her work. Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, and the Rumic World videos (even the one with the weird flesh eating mermaids) are all >>>

**** yeah Gunbuster!

I've never heard about the one with the flesh eating mermaids, but it sounds like it's got a premise much like this really, really freaky comic book I've read called Princess Mermaid (by someone named Junko Mizuno).

I did read some Ranma ½ as well back then, but I've really only been through a fraction of all the stuff Rumiko Takahashi has made.

I'm 100% sure Gunbuster was the first anime I ever watched - and before I'd ever read any manga too.

As a result, I've got a soft spot for the drawing and coloring style of a lot of old Anime.

http://images2.static-bluray.com/reviews/895_4.jpg

The ending to Gunbuster was a major bummer! As in good, but also a pretty extreme and depressing way for things to end for the heroine.
It's just too bad they apparently couldn't afford to fully animate and color the last ~1/6 of the series.

And so it goes for Hideaki Anno.

Not too familiar with this guy's work. I've got a Cutie Honey anime, but apparently not one which he was involved with. Still only read maybe 1/4 of the Evangelion manga. The last part of Gunbuster was published as an anime, but was made incredibly cheaply and in B&W, so I'm curious about what Hideaki Anno has suffered in terms of incomplete anime? I read his Wikipedia article and can confirm that I know **** all about his work aside from the few volumes of Evangelion I read 10+ years ago. Anything I'm missing?

There's dispute and speculation over the reason, but the last two episodes of Evangelion were barely animated, showed random pictures for long periods of time, and the actual plot of the third to last episode was basically ignored for a surrealistic, existentialist screed. Many have theorized that the show either ran out of money or time to animate the last two episodes. This was fixed with the movie End of Evangelion, but no one has ever really answered the question of why those two episodes happened the way they did.

Those two episodes were great to watch while stoned though.

Seems like it's far too common that anime adaptations of manga run out of money. I love the original Berserk anime, but as I'm sure you know, it kind of cut off right where the manga was about to delve into the real serious stuff with demons and such. Upon re-watching it, I really think the anime stands on it's own, if you pretend the manga doesn't carry on beyond that point in the story. I almost always opt for the anime over the manga, but it clearly has its drawbacks.

Evangelion is a pretty unique case tbh. Those last two episodes were a screeching halt to the episodes before them, to the point that they might as well have come from two different shows, except that the characters and themes just happened to coincide. It's a ****ing trip tbh and has probably gotten the show a lot of press it might not have had otherwise. I believe that one Evangelion movie actually ended with a bunch of hate mail over those episodes.

And yeah I'm totally bummed that Berserk ended right when it should have been getting started. And those new movies and the TV show that apparently is complete ass has probably scuttled any possibility that the series could ever be presented as it should have been. I'd be curious to see how they would have handled all the blatant rape porn tbh. Plenty of scenes that were pretty horrendous no matter how much I love the manga.

Yeah I've been avoiding the new Berserk material just based on the negative hype and the ****ty CGI. Looks terrible, really.

I have no idea what happens in the manga after the original anime arc, and I'm kind of not sure if I want to risk tainting the experience I have of that. There was something very special about that original Berserk anime, not least due to the music of Susumu Hirasawa. I re-watched the whole thing last year, and it was almost as magical as the first time I watched it.

I mean, great soundtrack or what?



It really lends an extra layer of pathos and atmosphere to the anime.