Cold Review #1.
Apr. 21st, 2004 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xyzzysqrlSo this is a new feature here, the Cold Review. Right now it applies to anime mostly, because that's what I had in mind, but if I feel like dropping what I'm doing and whipping a review out of my pants, I'm going for it. Today I decided I was sorta bored and wanted to go with reviewing a bunch of anime first episodes, so these will be popping up all over the place today. You're warned.
Galaxy Express 999 TV
Episode 1 title: Departure Ballad
So when a show starts off with a steaming, old-style rail train speeding along the track and straight off a ramp, to fly casually off into space, you know it's not going to be quite the 'normal' fare.
The year is 2221 AD, and technology has advanced to the point, it seems, where spaceships no longer have to look spaceshippy. Galaxy Express trains travel back and forth between Earth (now handily climate controlled and featuring domed cities... mmmm, domed cities...) and other planets. Death doesn't come easily either. If you like, you can have your brain moved into a mechanical body, and keep living for a couple thousand years. Mind you, the catch is that the domed cities and mecha-bodies come at a high price... and most can't pay. If you're poor, you're out into the wastes, full of trash, real weather, and less reputable cyborgs who hunt humans for sport. All's not lost, however. Rumors abound of a planet somewhere where you can become a cyborg for free and live until you grow tired of it, a planet along the line traveled by the Galaxy Express train #999.
Tetsurou, a disturbingly large-mouthed boy, is the hero of this story. Put quite bluntly, he's got a life of massive ass-suckatude, and arrives in our story as his mother is being shot by aformentioned cyborg hunters. He is determined to work all his life to board the 999 and ride it out to a better place and a life long enough it might as well be eternal. His determination knows no limits, he'll work any job he has to. So it's kind of strange that he's just... handed a Galaxy Express pass, on the condition that he take Maetel, the striking blonde who saved him from a snowy death, along with him.
(There is an unapologetic and unironic harp glissando as he gazes upon his pass for the first time. Then his eyes turn into stars. It's VERY seventies.)
Tetsurou looks to be perhaps six years old. So it's -really- creepy when he grabs an assault rifle, stalks and guns down his mother's killers, deliberately destroys their brains, and then sets their house on fire, fleeing the police and blowing away the cybernetic K9 unit when they arrive to investigate. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
katrus, who was around when I described this scene, theorizes: "Then he kills all of their relatives and their pets, and blows up their homeworld.")
Revenge is one thing, but watching this made me squirm. This isn't exactly light hearted fare, here. Anyway. He has to board the 999 that night at midnight, as the train doesn't run again for a whole year. So they get a hotel room, Maetel acts all suspicious for a while, the cyborg police show up, they get blinded with a flash bomb (presumably between scene transitions Tetsurou decapitates them and kicks their heads out the 44th story window) and they make a run for it through the slums. On the way, Tetsurou reaffirms that yep, what he wants more than ANYTHING is a mechanical body. 'Cause becoming a cyborg is being the best person that he can be. In spite of hating them now and all.
Luckily, the police haven't cordoned off the only train leaving that night, so Tetsurou boards and... they're off. On the way into space, Tetsurou (hanging his head out the window) points out there's a lot of bright spots. These, it's explained, are the cities where the rich cyborgs live. The big black patches are where humans too poor to affort a bright spot or mecha-body live.
What can I say? This first episode is everything I'd like to see about the future, twisted and made cold and harsh and bitter. It's got cyborgs and life that lasts as long as one could want, but only for the rich and cruel. It's got space travel to far off, beautiful worlds... okay, I can't think of the downside to that. It's got technofuturistic wonder, but it generally mostly has stuff that sucks. Maybe I'm unrealistic, but if there's the ability to be given life near-eternal, and a way off-planet to explore the universe... not to mention enough technology that apperently humans are living not just all over the galaxy, but all over the universe... I don't see why everyone would cluster on Earth, or why a class struggle would hold sway. Maybe I'm just wishing for something like this combined with something like Fredrick Pohl's 'Gateway': You get your cyborg body, they push you off in a random direction, and you kick it and explore the universe. Maybe that's just me.
The artwork is mixed... it's got character designs in the old style, where everything's kind of hyper-stylized. I actually kind of like the look of it, but it's off-putting in some ways too. Plus, Leiji Matsumoto is at the helm of this one, so every female we see kind of looks alike, long-haired and willowy and prone to standing with her head down and her eyes glistening. The still backgrounds and scenes of snow falling on wind-swept fields and so on are really nicely drawn, though, and the city (for the moment or two we see it) is nice and Jetsons-esqe.
I can kind of see why this would be a classic, and maybe it gets less bleak after this episode, but I can't imagine watching a second one to find out. Which is a shame, because when I heard the premise of this show, I was really quite excited indeed. Maybe I should try for the movies or something.
Cold Review 1: Galaxy Express 999.
... today's experiment... FAILED.
Galaxy Express 999 TV
Episode 1 title: Departure Ballad
So when a show starts off with a steaming, old-style rail train speeding along the track and straight off a ramp, to fly casually off into space, you know it's not going to be quite the 'normal' fare.
The year is 2221 AD, and technology has advanced to the point, it seems, where spaceships no longer have to look spaceshippy. Galaxy Express trains travel back and forth between Earth (now handily climate controlled and featuring domed cities... mmmm, domed cities...) and other planets. Death doesn't come easily either. If you like, you can have your brain moved into a mechanical body, and keep living for a couple thousand years. Mind you, the catch is that the domed cities and mecha-bodies come at a high price... and most can't pay. If you're poor, you're out into the wastes, full of trash, real weather, and less reputable cyborgs who hunt humans for sport. All's not lost, however. Rumors abound of a planet somewhere where you can become a cyborg for free and live until you grow tired of it, a planet along the line traveled by the Galaxy Express train #999.
Tetsurou, a disturbingly large-mouthed boy, is the hero of this story. Put quite bluntly, he's got a life of massive ass-suckatude, and arrives in our story as his mother is being shot by aformentioned cyborg hunters. He is determined to work all his life to board the 999 and ride it out to a better place and a life long enough it might as well be eternal. His determination knows no limits, he'll work any job he has to. So it's kind of strange that he's just... handed a Galaxy Express pass, on the condition that he take Maetel, the striking blonde who saved him from a snowy death, along with him.
(There is an unapologetic and unironic harp glissando as he gazes upon his pass for the first time. Then his eyes turn into stars. It's VERY seventies.)
Tetsurou looks to be perhaps six years old. So it's -really- creepy when he grabs an assault rifle, stalks and guns down his mother's killers, deliberately destroys their brains, and then sets their house on fire, fleeing the police and blowing away the cybernetic K9 unit when they arrive to investigate. (
katrus, who was around when I described this scene, theorizes: "Then he kills all of their relatives and their pets, and blows up their homeworld.")Revenge is one thing, but watching this made me squirm. This isn't exactly light hearted fare, here. Anyway. He has to board the 999 that night at midnight, as the train doesn't run again for a whole year. So they get a hotel room, Maetel acts all suspicious for a while, the cyborg police show up, they get blinded with a flash bomb (presumably between scene transitions Tetsurou decapitates them and kicks their heads out the 44th story window) and they make a run for it through the slums. On the way, Tetsurou reaffirms that yep, what he wants more than ANYTHING is a mechanical body. 'Cause becoming a cyborg is being the best person that he can be. In spite of hating them now and all.
Luckily, the police haven't cordoned off the only train leaving that night, so Tetsurou boards and... they're off. On the way into space, Tetsurou (hanging his head out the window) points out there's a lot of bright spots. These, it's explained, are the cities where the rich cyborgs live. The big black patches are where humans too poor to affort a bright spot or mecha-body live.
What can I say? This first episode is everything I'd like to see about the future, twisted and made cold and harsh and bitter. It's got cyborgs and life that lasts as long as one could want, but only for the rich and cruel. It's got space travel to far off, beautiful worlds... okay, I can't think of the downside to that. It's got technofuturistic wonder, but it generally mostly has stuff that sucks. Maybe I'm unrealistic, but if there's the ability to be given life near-eternal, and a way off-planet to explore the universe... not to mention enough technology that apperently humans are living not just all over the galaxy, but all over the universe... I don't see why everyone would cluster on Earth, or why a class struggle would hold sway. Maybe I'm just wishing for something like this combined with something like Fredrick Pohl's 'Gateway': You get your cyborg body, they push you off in a random direction, and you kick it and explore the universe. Maybe that's just me.
The artwork is mixed... it's got character designs in the old style, where everything's kind of hyper-stylized. I actually kind of like the look of it, but it's off-putting in some ways too. Plus, Leiji Matsumoto is at the helm of this one, so every female we see kind of looks alike, long-haired and willowy and prone to standing with her head down and her eyes glistening. The still backgrounds and scenes of snow falling on wind-swept fields and so on are really nicely drawn, though, and the city (for the moment or two we see it) is nice and Jetsons-esqe.
I can kind of see why this would be a classic, and maybe it gets less bleak after this episode, but I can't imagine watching a second one to find out. Which is a shame, because when I heard the premise of this show, I was really quite excited indeed. Maybe I should try for the movies or something.
Cold Review 1: Galaxy Express 999.
... today's experiment... FAILED.
