Insert joke about “blog updates” here.

I watched the first couple of episodes of old OAV series Mad Bull 34 earlier in the week. I don’t really have much to say about it’s actual content right now – it’s pretty much the kind of thing that I suspect most of the people who actually read his blog would hate anyway, being the incredibly violent and misogynistic adventures of the straight-laced, American-born Japanese cop Daizaburo “Eddie” Ban and his man-mountain pimp of a partner John “Sleepy” Estes (the man so imposing he has two nick-names, the other being the titular “Mad Bull”). I find pretty much everything about it to be pretty damn hilarious, but it’s not exactly high-brow or socially enlightened viewing material.

Of all the random things to jump out at me as being interesting in the show, though, the scene in above screenshot amused me. It’s a scene where Daizaburo is waiting in the car whilst, unbeknownst to him, Sleepy is collecting money from (and doing other things with) the prostitutes under his protection (when I said he was a pimp, I meant it in the literal sense). What I find kind of curious is the debris littering the car – fairly genuine looking Coke, Pepsi and 7-Up cans, and even a McDonalds cup!
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Hmm, my steadily dropping page impression stats are essentially informing me that I’ve made not a single post in the last month. Whoops.

It’s not like I’ve not been watching anything – contrary to my expectations coming into this anime season, I’ve actually been watching a fair bit. It’s more that none of the shows I’ve been watching have hit that sweet spot between dumb and entertaining that I find amusing to write about – not even Valvrave, which is certainly dumb, and is certainly entertaining, but it wears it so much on it’s sleeve that there’s little to say about it other than, well, “This is duuuuuuuuumb“.

Unfortunately, this has left me in somewhat of a quandary in regards to posting blog content, in so much as there’s really not been much else going on that’s been worthy of lengthy comment. I suppose there’s plenty worthy of shorter commentary, though…
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Not that I’ve been able to play it, since BaNam haven’t seen fit to grace these good shores with it’s availability – some joke referencing “The World Is All One” and telling them to stuff their “Unity Mind” would likely be appropriate here, were I feeling up to the necessary level of witticism. I’d be curious to know if there’s any specific reason for it’s lack of local availability, but I wouldn’t like to speculate on that specific point.

Anyway, the Internet exploded with a whole load of annoyed shouting and a whole boatload of misinformation when the games surfaced in the US AppStore yesterday. This, mostly, comes down to the fact that it’s three games priced at $55 a piece, which even I admit is a little on the steep side.
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Just because this amused me, more than me having anything particularly interesting to say.

So apparently the thing I do when having been away over the first couple of days of the new anime season, faced with an every increasing number of first episodes that I should really probably check out, is to pull something that’s languished on my shelf for months now to watch instead. I suppose it’s at least the prior season of something that’s restarting this season, but that’s not exactly helping the situation.

In any case, when watching OreImo, I couldn’t help but be amused by the establishing shot they used for Kirino’s first visit to Akihabara in the shows second episode.
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I’m not really sure what the RE in the title of this movie is supposed to imply. I don’t think it’s supposed to imply that it’s a statement in response of the Cyborg future of it all – whilst director Kamiyama has a background in GitS:SAC, this isn’t a movie about life, politics and terrorism in the all-connected robot future. In fact, the robotic nature of the movies protagonists only really serves as an excuse to give them all cool superpowers.

In other ways, it could perhaps be seen as indicating that the movie is in more direct response to the franchise as a whole – as Kamiyama himself put it after the movie, there’s been a big shadow cast over the property in terms of a final story, incomplete due to the original author Ishinomoris’ death, which has left the property in a place from which it has been difficult to continue or reinvent.

Or it could just start for Religious Education. Or exposition. That’d work.
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