In other news, even less cared about, Vexille is on Hulu - in Engrish, no less.
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"Hey! My super-slut was Catholic!" - Jason
Thothie

Oooh, Shiny!

Is Vexille any good? I remember hearing about it at Comic-Con two years back, but since then I haven't heard anything about it.

Is it just a Appleseed meets GITS?

Eh, it's heavily influenced by GITS, but not quite the same philosophical focus or message. Dunno about Appleseed - I never got around to watching that. It's not the most premium anime movie ever, but better than many, and very good as CGI anime goes. Ending is a tad over the top, but all in all I'll give it a 9/10 Testosterone Boys, and a 3.5/10 Romantagoths. Excess of eye candy and lack of dramatic focus leans me to recommend the Engrish over the subs.

Certainly better than any recent American sci-fi (eg. Tranformers) in any case - but tis not saying much. (Hopefully Avatar turns out well...)
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"I was like many other fullbloods. I didn't want a job in an office or factory. I thought myself too good for that, not because I was stuck up but simply because any human being is too good for that kind of no-life, even white people." - Lame Deer
Thothie

Wow.

I watched the first 10 minutes or so (3 of which was commercial and introduction) and it looks like it's trying very hard to mimic american action films.

Not bad though. Maybe I should watch it in engrish instead of subs...

It starts off pretty action filmy - but about half-way through, though still action packed, it breaks away into one of those "OMFG what have we done to ourselves!" situations that you don't often see in American sci-fi films... Outside of maybe District-9 and The Moon. (Forgot to include those in recent decent sci-fi - both of which are better than this, of course.)
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"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." -Albert Einstein
Thothie

District 9 was too gory for me. I know it added realism to it, but I very much appreciate a little less heavy-handedness when it comes to someone getting exploded.

The scifi concept and message, and exploration of a species that was pretty mediocre in the intelligence department instead of some kind of all-powerful beings was very interesting. I dream up movies that explore new and interesting angles on things a lot, and I was pleased to see that this movie was one of them.

Well, I thought District 9 was valuable as a social parable about apartheid, even parodying some of the more famous human-rights violations of South Africa. In the same way, The Moon was a valuable social parable about the devaluation of human life and individuality in the face of corporate profit - leading to an age where the trained machine has more humanity than the human - as well as an exploration of loneliness on a more personable level. The two movies have value beyond their entertainment, some substance, as it were - and that's fairly rare in Sci-Fi these days - even though the genre is tailor made to construct such tales.

Vexxille's aiming for a message about dehumanization and environmental destruction as well, obviously, and Avatar will no doubt be about the exploitation of resources and native peoples - though that latter tale's been done to death, yet nothing changes. I suppose, in the end, that's true of everything though.

Most Sci-Fi films are like the recent Transformers or Star Trek, which completely removed what used to be a strong ecological bent, and strong political/philosophical bent, respectively (Mr. Roddenberry is rolling in his... Orbit... Believe me). That sort of blaspheme-level Hollywoodization doesn't stop at Sci-Fi, of course. There's The Passion of Christ, for instance, which managed to take all Christian teachings out of a story supposedly about Christ.

Gore don't bother me none though - unless it's real - tends to make me a bit more, edgy, that - but I've never seen any in a movie that didn't seem comic-like to me somehow. District-9's over-the-top seemed particularly fake, but still flashy enough express the emotion of destruction, in-between sniggers.


I think they were aiming at like-level intelligence, just kinda emphasizing the point, that if a passenger liner crashed some place, the odds of anyone on board knowing how to fix the plane or boat or deal with hostile natives, sort-to-speak, is very unlikely. The vast majority of us are really useless and would devolve to beasts outside our own society.

The idea of truly stupid aliens, however, isn't too far fetched. I mean, there maybe a species out there with an average IQ of 60 that has space travel - simply because they had a million years head start on us. Think that was the whole premise behind the X-Com game - alien ship designs were just very simplistic - very easy to take apart and learn from, and the dumb aliens just weren't ready for us to catch on so fast. Can't really make a movie on that premise without it becoming entirely comical though. (Then again, 'Signs' has aliens vulnerable to water damage doing a ground invasion of a planet nearly entirely covered by said, so maybe it can be done after all.)
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"Imagine what humanity could accomplish if only we'd abandon our humanity." - Joe Wilson, quoting Murray Rothbard
Thothie

Yeah, actually I started to write that in my post, and deleted it, then wrote it again, then deleted it. I think that you're right, that they were aiming for more of a mirror image than anything else, but I also think that humans would have ended up with SOME kind of social structure, no matter how horrible or oppressive. That's why I opted for "mediocre" intelligence as a whole.

I'm pretty sure the reason that concepts like "we shouldn't kill people for the resources they live on" and "we all have baser instincts that take over when the shit hits the fan" don't catch on as a ubiquitously known ideal because they're not pleasant to think about. We have to be reminded, over and over, like a parent telling us to eat our vegetables.


I've actually thought a lot about how I would do sans society, and my conclusion was that I would probably get killed in a fight or freeze to death. My survival and home making (read: actually MAKING, not the metaphor for house wife) skills are pretty minimal because they're simply not very useful in modern society. A guy with a generic degree in computer science and a Cisco cert is a lot more likely to be successful than someone who can make a tent out of a cow hide.

That makes me wonder just how dependent we have become as a species. Is there some kind of dependency plateau? Have we hit it? Is it possible to become MORE dependent than we are already?

I suppose society is a lot like computers and electronics - the more sophisticated and complicated something is, the more likely it is to need a dedicated support structure to hold it up. Like air traffic control. Who would have thought we'd have a class of people, who, all they do is intelligently manage our air traffic?

Maybe there's some kind of mathematical theorem - as the level of complication and benefit increases, the necessary support and number of problems increases exponentially.

See it's shit like this that makes me think I need to go to college.

Regarding Vexille:

Meh.

Entertaining, english subs were better. Predictable. Imaginative at least.

6 / 10



Next?

http://www.hulu.com/naoki-urasawas-mons ... d-Cartoons

Not all there yet (looks like maybe S1 so far?) but going to be over the course of the next year, so sayeth the page.

Alternatively?

http://www.hulu.com/search?query=Myster ... +3000&st=1

Monster is certainly one of my all-time-favorites... But Dubbed? I dunno... That show is pretty much all drama, tension, and intrigue. I'd have to see... Hard to do a voice this smooth and creepy in Engrish though.

Can't get much out of just one season of the show though, tis true. Damn show covers maybe 20 years and a half-dozen countries, before you get to the end of it.
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"To kill is easy. All you need to do is to forget the taste of sugar." - The retired assassin, Monster
Thothie

Finally finished off Slayers, more or less enjoyed it.

Picked up Mushi-shi, claymore (which, oddly enough, was $10 cheaper on Blu-ray than DVD which makes it my first anime Blu-ray purchase), and baccano to watch over the next month or so.

vexille has original score by Paul Okenford, I would watch it just for that

Speaking of hulu, holy wtf why the hell wasn't I informed about this:

http://www.hulu.com/fullmetal-alchemist ... d-Cartoons

Wasn't even aware they were making new FMA, let alone that hulu was airing it on a delay straight out of japan via Funimation. Been running since August, so a good 40 eps up, all subbed.

Also, one of Thothie's favorites Spice and Wolf is on Hulu as well:
http://www.hulu.com/spice-and-wolf?c=An ... d-Cartoons

Also subbed.

Man, I really need to get my switch so I can get my PlayOn running again.