I decided to try and catch up on Fullmetal Alchemist a bit today, wattching a few episodes off my Tivo. I was glad to see that I had the first few episodes in the queue. I had originally started watching it near the end of the series, then I stopped watching it, then a few episodes got deleted off my Tivo because I ran out of space. So, basically, I wasn’t too sure where I was going to be. I enjoyed the first episode, but I was really puzzled with the second. Not long into it, I started hearing a bunch of random farting noises. I thought maybe there was some plot-based reason for this, but I couldn’t think of one. After a few minutes, it became obvious that something was very wrong. I checked the original air date, and realized that the episode had aired on April Fool’s day. This Wikipedia article confirms that Cartoon Network stuck a bunch of random fart noises in some of their programs on April 1. Way to go, guys. You made a perfectly good episode of FMA unwatchable. Now I’m going to have to go out and buy the DVD or something.
Category: anime
Samurai Champloo
I finished watching Samurai Champloo a couple of days ago. It’s a great series; nearly as good as Cowboy Bebop. I’m re-watching some of the episodes now, catching some stuff I didn’t get on the first run-through.
AMALGAM is a pretty good Samurai Champloo fansite. I stumbled across it looking for info on some of the music from the show.
Gundam kits
Got a lot of spare time on your hands? Amazon has a few Gundam model kits marked down, including this one, with over 400 parts, marked down from $70 to $10. I’ve never built a Gundam, but it’s fun to read about them, at least.
Samurai Champloo
Beatbox Bandits is the Mushroom Samba of Samurai Champloo. Great stuff.
Otakon
Paranoia Agent
I started watching Paranoia Agent yesterday. I watched the first four episodes. So far, so good. It definitely feels like a Satoshi Kon creation. (That’s a good thing.) The structure of the show reminds me a bit of David Lapham’s Stray Bullets. Interconnected stories with a bunch of interconnected characters, with the focus shifting from episode to episode, while maintaining certain common threads throughout.
Puffy AmiYumi
Looks like Puffy AmiYumi will be playing in NYC on 8/18.
Steamboy
I just picked up the Steamboy DVD. I’m still kind of annoyed that I didn’t get around to catching it while it was in the theaters.
MoMA.org – Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata: Masters of Animation
I’ve already missed most of the Miyazaki thing at MoMA. Still, maybe I can make it in and see Castle in the Sky next week.
Steamboy
New movie from Katsuhiro Otomo: Steamboy. It sounds like it should be worth seeing.