Does it lack these days? What am i missing?

The only anime i really get to see comes from the limited section at a local video store. Street Fighter animated has great combat action, some of the best ive seen in anything animated. Then Tekken comes along, and it is so inferior and terrible, especially where fight scenes are concerned. Its as though the creators didnt know or didnt care about any past met standards (hell, Ling Xiaoyu's anime ending in T3 blows that movie out of the water). Sf Alpha animated, again dissapointing and inferior to the sf2 anime. I liked the artwork and some of the animation, but the fight scenes reminded me of DBZ (in a bad way). I dont think I should have to go into the sf2 "series" by the way. Then theres Ninja Scroll and its utterly cool, best action ive seen in a period martial arts anime. Sword for Truth is quoted as having the best action since Ninja Scroll. Lies!! It doesnt come close. Ninja Ressurection, while good in some ways its the combat action that is lacking, the choreography is dull. Blood, Samurai X, and Princess Mononoke all in my opinion lack combat action to top Ninja Scroll.(They're all great though).

Who thinks there are animes out there with better action than Ninja Scroll, or better fighting choreography that sf2 animated? These animes are both pretty old, so surely one should expect so.

PS. If I just sounded like a cinematic idiot who's seen nothing its not my fault, Im disadvanted by my location, I reasearch all the time though. 0_o

-- Sam (janecherrington@paradise.net.nz), April 09, 2002

Answers

Watch Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. It's by the same director as Ninja Scroll, and it's fight scenes are incredible. Every possible angle and camera trick exploited. Also Utena, the series and movie had some sweet fencing action.

-- Inu (paul@nadisrec.com), April 09, 2002.

Sf definetely had the best fight choreography I've ever seen in an animated movie. I heard the creators saw the U.S. live action movie and were so disgusted they vowed to do the franchise justice; and it shows. Mononoke wasn't an action movie so it's unfair to criticize it on that point. The action it had, though, was pretty good. I would say the King is definitely Ninja Scroll, but then again, there's a ton of U.S. released anime I haven't seen, and even that it just a vast minority of the total amount of anime released in Japan. I'm sure there's tons of great stuff that will never be released here. If you haven't seen Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust you should definitely check it out. Since Kawajiri directed it, its got great action scenes, that rival Ninja Scroll's in style if not number. (Actually there's one enemy that seems to have been transported directly from Ninja Scroll). Since it sounds like you are more interested in close quarters, inidividual combat than large scale battles, I would recommend "Kite" (sometimes titled "A-Kite") and "Mezzo Forte," both by Yasuomi Umetsu. It's over-the-top ultra violence at its best and "Kite" actually has a decent plot and characterization. Go with the censored versions though, since the hardcore pornography of the director's cuts add virtually nothing to plot and just bring down the whole experience. Of course there's also "Akira" and "Ghost In the Shell," but everybody has seen those. "Spriggan" had some good action scenes despite being a complete failure in terms of narrative. DBZ 0bviously has great action scenes, although in the American releases they remove all the blood and cursing and raunchiness of which I'm told there is a large amount. "Fist of the North Star" is a classic and easily wins the award for bloodiest movie ever made. Its shock value alone is enough to make you sit through it. "Apacalpse Zero" has some good over-the-top bloody action, as well as some of the most original character designs I have ever seen. For action without a significant death toll check out "Castle of Cagliostro," "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind," "Laputa: Castle in the Sky," actually probably most Ghibli movies. The "Patlabor" movies are also pretty good, although I haven't seen the series. "Vision of Escaflowne" and "Neon Genesis Evangelion" also have some good action scenes (not bloody though) even though there are not really part of the action genre. There's a ton of good stuff out there to find in the sea of crap. Usually it's more a matter of checking out who worked on the film than reading the product description on the box. Since New Zealand is a smaller market than the U.S. I guess you would get less anime there, but what with the internet, there's no reason you can't enjoy a wide selection of anime titles, either legitimately or through fan subs or bootlegs. In fact, some of the more interesting stuff you're only going to be able to find through fan subs and bootlegs.

-- Logo (Vosepherus@aol.com), April 09, 2002.

Thanks for the recommendations. Its good to know what I should spend my money on.

VHDB is now showing at some film festival, I hope I catch it before it dissapears from this country forever.

-- Sam (janecherrington@paradise.net.nz), April 09, 2002.

Logo, ive seen nearly all of the original DBZ eps and they're sooo much better, really no holds barred stuff. Highly reccomended.

Ive also seen every DBGT ep. Not so good.

-- Sam (janecherrington@paradise.net.nz), April 09, 2002.

Where'd you get your hands on the uncut eps? Do you speak Japanese?

-- Logo (Vosepherus@aol.com), April 09, 2002.

Ive got a friend who aquired every single original db dbz and dbgt ep and movie off some guys computer at a lan. "Im not condoning anything though"

I think you can by uncut eps from http://www.dragonballz.com/ but they're still dubbed. I used to know of a couple of sites that sold original dbz eps bootleg, they are however long shutdown. I dont speak japanese but I have a few friends who do.

-- Sam (janecherrington@paradise.net.nz), April 09, 2002.

Might I recommend Gin-roh? Wonderful animation and story. The action ain't so bad either. It deals with issues of terrorism that tie in to what we are experiencing today -making it very... "relevant" I guess you could say. Not a lot of character development, but it is an allegory of human behavior and human nature. It is a juxtaposition of simple versus complex, good versus the greater good.

-- cynical (gemini318@excite.com), April 15, 2002.

What was the greater good in Jon-Roh? All I saw was a pack of lies heaped on an even greater pack of lies which were only hiding a desperate need for survival. And no, I don't think survival in itself can be considered a greater good.

-- Logo (Vosepherus@aol.com), April 15, 2002.

Hah, I wouldn't expect anything less from you, Logo. Bounded chaotic mixing produces strange stability. Though as far as assessing the good and greater good in the story, it seems impossible, and somewhat skewed in a direction favoring the armored soldiers/wolf brigade. I'm just gonna STFU because I honestly don't know; the producers didn't bother giving a clear indication of what the "terrorist's cause" was -I believe he might have done so to discourage extremist political views from being exposed or supported at all (by omitting the terrorist's cause entirely). The sheer conviction in your answer creeps me out, Logo. It really does. In another life I might have found it fit to debate you, but from past experiences I get the impression that you are one who refuses to be shown a different aspect of understanding, even in the face of superior logic and empirical evidence. ;)

Anyway, I liked the quote...


"We are not men disguised as dogs; but we are wolves disguised as men."


Seems appropriate.

-- cynical (gemini318@excite.com), April 16, 2002.

With an ending like that, how can you not feel strongly about that movie? Don't get me wrong, I thought it was a pretty good movie, even though it was very sterile and slow at times, but it all came together in the end. And I think the sterility helped show how impotent most of the characters are.

ATTENTION SPOILERS!!!

The last five minutes of that movie is just betrayal upon betrayal and there doesn't seem to be any cause other than just petty survival. The last five seconds of the movie is almost too pessimistic even for me. And even the last line confirms an unnecessary amount amount of suffering. After all, the wolf didn't have to eat Little Red Riding Hood. She wasn't a threat to him in any way. But in this story he does it anyway. I guess because it's in his nature. But as we see in one of the last frames, the wolf himself is just a target.

-- Logo (Vosepherus@aol.com), April 16, 2002.

YO! People: more SPOILERS-DON'T READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT!!

Other message boards have people discussing the ending too. Some of them suggested that it was the sniper who ended up shooting the girl, or that he was simply making sure that Fuse killed her. I don't know the answer myself. But you bring up a good point about it being the "nature" of the characters. I thought it was interesting how they both knew the story of Little Red Riding Hood, yet still played into those roles -even up to the end. The director guy explained, pretty well, why she needed to be terminated - but leaves the actual extermination to Fuse. Throughout the anime there were terrible dreams and visions that showed traces of Fuse's internal conflict -but whether these dreams were implanted or self- engineered is still a mystery. Where we suspect there might be humanity in him, he blinks out and becomes quiet --like a zombie/puppet, or perhaps quiet like someone who has it all figured out: the smart kid in class who's always so quiet. But we can never know what he is thinking. This displays, even more so, that Fuse is the quiet predator and the girl -I forget her name- is the prey.

-- cynical (gemini318@excite.com), April 16, 2002.

-- cynical (gemini318@excite.com), April 16, 2002.

Here's the linkage for jin-roh:

The Official JIN-ROH Website

-- cynical (gemini318@excite.com), April 16, 2002.

Sorry -thought I closed my tags there...

-- cynical (gemini318@excite.com), April 17, 2002.

I recently rented Project A-ko. The fight scenes were awesome, but the rest of the movie was like having a fat man sit on my head and fart.

-- Kristine Rooks (krooks@agnesscott.edu), April 18, 2002.

Please keep your sexual fantasies to yourself. This is not the forum for such debauchery.

-- Logo (Vosepherus@aol.com), April 18, 2002.

Yeah man, toe-licking/ear-licking fetishes only!! ;)

-- cynical (gemini318@excite.com), April 18, 2002.

Agent Aika -now there's an anime for ya... WOW is all I can say. They managed to fit something like 400 panty-shots in the first 3 minutes of the anime. Impressive. Shameless Japanese animators, man...

-- cynical (gemini318@excite.com), April 18, 2002.

I've never seen agent Aika, but I've heard about its fabled fan service. I think it was by the creators of project A-Ko.

-- Logo (Vosepherus@aol.com), April 18, 2002.

You guys crack me up.

-- Mat Rebholz (matrebholz@yahoo.com), April 19, 2002.

For animated combat action in general, Aeon Flux is up there, right. Taken in the fluidity of character animation and movement I could picture some complex fighting choreography looking pretty sweet. The liquid television short with that Monican Swordsman had some action of a Ninja Scroll'ish calibur(what was the name, again?)

-- Sam (janecherrington@paradise.net.nz), April 21, 2002.

I always liked the intro to AF -the dialogue between Aeon and Trevor and the trippy animation sequence. It sets up the anime really well -we see Trevor walking down that hall of television screens and we see Aeon fighting. I must say, that is a REALLY GOOD, A+++ intro, man. The last good intro I've seen for a cartoon has to be Men in Black (if any of you have seen it...), but even that seems tame compared to the AF intro.

-- cynical (gemini318@excite.com), April 22, 2002.

Not quite the same, but Outlaw Star has a wicked intro... that bit where Gene is running and we see him from a 3/4 view always reminded me of AF.

-- Inu (paul@nadisrec.com), April 22, 2002.

I have just finished with the Akira manga's and there all just so good. Kind of a little amazed at what the movie changed here and there. Seriously cant believe I didnt read these things a long time ago. Actually a little overwhelmed by how much I enjoyed it all. Re awakening, expanding on and enhancing everything I liked about the anime and more.

-- Sam (janecherrington@paradise.net.nz), August 04, 2002.

By Odin! Not so much as the original audio on my SF animated dvd.

-- Sam (janecherrington@paradise.net.nz), September 05, 2002.

Small Akira Manga review by Ian Vance.

"Amidst the flotsam and jetsam of former pop-culture sensations, there are a few items of media that, through sheer visceral creative force, transcend the 'cool one moment, cliché the next' element of disposable entertainment. The Japanese manga/movie _Akira_ is among these rare and dignified. Although the movie version is cluttered and convoluted, an epic mess--and what can one expect from the effort of reducing 2000 pages into two hours?--there still remains a power and presence to it that is at once unnerving and captivating.

I "got" Akira upon my first viewing, but like many others found the movie unsatisfying on a basic level. Characters and concepts popped up out of nowhere, seemingly important to the overall arc, yet remaining undeveloped. It felt as if an enormous amount of back-story was left untold. Thankfully, Dark Horse has decided to give the manga version of _Akira_ the definitive publishing it deserves, to fill in the gaps and give us a deeper and far more gratifying glimpse into Katsuhiro Otomo's astonishing vision of dystopia.

And now, finally, volume six is here, containing story and art never before seen on these shores. Here Otomo takes the hints and fragments presented by the film--Tetsuo's metamorphosis, the fate of Neo-Tokyo, the showdown of primal force between Akira and his prodigy companions- -and ties them together in a way that, as an end result, far overshadows the 16mm attempt. I have to agree with a fellow reviewer who claims that the movie and manga compliment each other...but while the former is interesting and challenging, the latter is far more essential in terms of scope and overall achievement.

The art is, as usual, clean and crisp and amazingly complex; one can simply contemplate the detail of various panels for hours on end. But the story is paced at such an ongoing peak (especially considering the cliffhanger ending to vol. 5) that upon first reading you may do what I did: breeze through the pages, totally involved in the build- up/release of conflict, while using the art as merely a visual representation for the ongoing story. Thus, Akira vol. 1-6 contains immense re-read potential: firstly to glean Otomo's philosophical ponderings on energy and consciousness, secondly to appreciate the amazing artwork.

And the ending...in true Japanese form, the very ambiguity of it hints at a far larger story in progression; the end is the beginning, apparently. Those with concrete story-structure paradigms may find it unsatisfactory, but I personally loved the surreal suggestions.

Truly an epic, in all sense of the word. Five stars."

-- Sam (janecherrington@paradise.net.nz), October 29, 2002.

Now I've seen Kite, I had to watch it uncut. I certaintly does have pretty cool looking violence, but I felt the action was over top in all the wrong ways. Sometimes it seemed like characters were more clumsy than skilled.

Logo, have you seen the Cowboy Bebop movie yet? For fighting choreography I'd put it straight to the top. Maybe even for dog fights.

-- Sam (janecherrington@paradise.net.nz), December 18, 2002.

The action in Kite was ridiculously over the top (and watch Mezzo Forte, if you wanna see REALLY over the top action), but I liked it for two reasons. The first is that it had style, and the second is that you DO see the characters fuck up which makes it more interesting. That being said though, I think the pacing in the bathroom scene was a little off.

I haven't seen the Bebop movie yet, Sam, but I'm really looking forward to it. When Spike goes hand to hand and uses his Jeet Kun Do it's always a thrill.

Has anyone seen the Fist of the North Star series, and if so, how bloody is it compared to the movie?

-- Logo (vosepherus@aol.com), December 19, 2002.

Someone told me the FOTNS series was better than the movie. I havent seen the it.

I just saw the preview for something called Hellsing, anyone seen it, looks great.

Logo, when you watch the Bebop movie you should try rewatching and studying Spikes fight scenes, they're more beautifully done than ever with a lot to pick up on. Actually, try watching Spikes small kick combo he does at the beginning, his form looks incredible.

-- Sam (janecherrington@paradise.net.nz), December 20, 2002.

LOL. Thanks, I'll look out for it.

-- Logo (vosepherus@aol.com), December 21, 2002.

hellsing is fantastic, ESPECIALLY the dubs, which are better than the Subs in my opinion. It features Crispin Freeman as Alucard, and not only is Crispin an awesome guy, but he's the best Alucard voice EVER. Interesting, the Japanese voice of Alucard was Touga from Utena, and Crispin was the American voice of Touga. Coincidence? I think not.

skye

-- skyknyt (skyknyt@aol.com), December 22, 2002.

Thanks Skye, I'll have to find the dvd.

I just found an anime club to join, cool.

-- Sam (janecherrington@paradise.net.nz), December 22, 2002.

Just forwarding the information you already know if you've seen Knockin' on Heaven's Door - the fight scenes are indeed spectacular. Spike throws down the hard-core JKD moves, including a sexy boy/girl fight where he defends himself with a push broom - very Jackie-Chan-ish. It also features a dogfight that puts anything from the series to shame. My only qualm about said dogfight is that it's completely unjustified - you can hear the creative team thinking, 'Now we have to put in a dog fight somewhere.'

One complaint I've heard is that the movie lacks what Bebop fans call 'Fayeplay' - Miss Valentine running off and doing her own thing. Personally I think it's more than made up for by several great sequences involving Ed doing her own thing.

I understand that when the movie finally makes the Pacific jump, it will feature the same terrific dubbing job as the series. I've got nothing against that - but by now I love subtitles so much I barely even bother with English. I'm learning a spot of Japanese, in fact.

I suppose this has been more of a full-on (if brief) review than a strict analysis of the fight scenes. Oh, well; as the English say the French say: sest lavvy.

-- Charles Martin (bebop432@earthlink.net), March 06, 2003.

I love to get specific about choreography of this persuasion, been doing it for a good while (HK cinema). There's just so much to draw from this sort of thing. 'Knockin' is one of the few animes (I've seen) that seems to measure up to its live action comparisons (the films endeavour?).

-- Sam (janecherrington@paradise.net.nz), March 06, 2003.

Just saw "Kill Bill". Whoa! Tarantino doesn't really hold back does he?!

And the character playing Lucy Liu's body guard... The epitomy of cool, I'm in love!!

The anime segment is amazing, very intense, very nice! Anyone know who dunnit?

-- Sam (janecherrington@paradise.net.nz), October 20, 2003.