In an older version of my About page, I included “no robots/mecha” as one of the stringent criteria I apply when choosing anime series to follow.
My distrust of mecha-themed titles has not entirely dissipated, but I’ve been sufficiently swayed by positive reviews of a certain recent film to place an order for it on Amazon.com.
There’s a certain anime series from a few years back that I’ve been wanting to see turned into a live-action film. (No, not the one in the picture.) Whispers of an adaptation have surfaced now and again, but nothing concrete has ever come out of the rumour mill. (There was something a few months ago . . . nah, let’s not bring that up again, probably just another disappointment in the making.) Deprived of a real-world silver-screen version, from time to time I’d simply dive straight into the depths of my own imagination and conjure up images of what the film might look like, and play them at will in the world’s best theatre – the one sitting inside my head.
Naturally, I’d need an appropriate soundtrack playing in the background to complete the experience. For this, I turn to the limitless gold mine of AMVs on YouTube.
It’s HD. It has English subtitles (a rarity among Japanese anime releases). It has great visuals, production values, the works.
It also has a price tag that will bankrupt a third-world microstate in no time flat.
Nope, sorry, no deal – not with the number after the ￥. Not even if they throw in the (much better) After Story. Not even if they include all of Kanon as a “special feature”.
Even KyoAniism has its limits.
Then again, given the set’s current sales ranking (months before its release date), it’s clear that those limits don’t apply to everyone.
The film isn’t coming out for another couple of weeks, but here’s something to whet our appetite: previously-unpublished stills from Suzumiya Haruhi no Shoushitsu set to music from the film’s original soundtrack. A word of caution: the collection is surprisingly spoiler-heavy.
Warning: The embedded video contains some strong language.
Most Hitler parodies (specifically of the Der Untergang variety) are in very poor taste, badly edited, lacking in humour, crude, vulgar . . . I can let loose a stream of invective here that would drown out even Der Führer’s infamously loud rants of lunacy.
This one, on the other hand, I found a rather entertaining watch. And I haven’t even seen either of the two films this was pieced together from.
Makes me want to splice together my own parody: a Day of Sagittarius face-off between Der Führer and the SOS Brigade.
