February is over. Good riddance.

However, February did bring at least one good thing. And that is the long awaited DVD release of the classic anime series, Gunbuster!

Gunbuster is a totally cool 6-episode show from the 80’s about girls and giant robots. What’s not to like about that? I had never seen it, but knew it from reputation, so I felt comfortable buying it right away. It was the directorial debut of Hideaki Anno, who of course would later go on to great fame as the creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion. As he and the rest of the Gainax studio were formed as a bunch of hardcore anime fans, it has a lot of parody and homage to many classic shows. It’s a very pure series, created not to sell toys or adapt comics. It’s anime for the sake of the art form. So from a historical perspective, it’s very important and a total must see for anyone that considers themselves a serious anime fan. It’s also the first anime that contains, well, “bounce“, if you catch my drift… so take that for what you will.

The DVD set is released by Bandai Visual’s Honneamise label. The 6 episodes are on 3 disks, and the visual quality is superb considering that the first episode is almost 20 years old. There is no English dub. In fact, as far as I can tell, there has never been an English dub, even when it released on VHS back in the day. I don’t miss it because I’m perfectly comfortable reading subtitles, but I suppose it’d have been nice to have. The major negative side, however, is the price. At about $60 for the set, it’s pretty expensive. That comes to around $10 per episode. With anything else, I’d say that’s just too much. But this is Gunbuster, so it’s worth it.

The show itself is really enjoyable, and spans many years despite only being 6 episodes long. The message of the show, that hard work and guts will bear fruit, is very simple and universal. One can imagine that was the motto of the artists working on it while in production, since they were really just a bunch of fanboys. It uses a lot of hard science that probably make sense if you care to figure it all out. It doesn’t really take itself all that seriously at times, but it can often be very deep. One of the most interesting topics that the show covers is time dilation, how characters in outer space age differently than characters on Earth. The final episode looks completely different than the rest of the series, and is a very satisfying and beautiful conclusion.

It’s not ending there, though. Just a few years ago, Gainax went back to the old well and pulled out Diebuster, the sequel to GunBuster. That’ll be getting a licensed DVD release here in North America at some point this spring, and I’ll definitely be picking that up too.

So go watch Gunbuster, and aim for the top!

Sayonara.

And I’m sick today too, so it’s just as well.

Sayonara.

They say that you learn something new everyday. Not only have I just learned something new, but this new thing that I have learned is so unbearably awesome that I had to share it.

You see, there is a town in Colorado, USA, that has the most amazing name ever. It is a name I would never in a million years expect a town to be called, and yet all other towns wish they had names this cool.

The name of this town is DINOSAUR! That’s right, Dinosaur, Colorado. Just wrap you head around how amazing that is. It’s a real town. A real town called Dinosaur! The people who live there get the privilege of writing DINOSAUR on the return address of their outgoing mail. That’s just mind blowing! Why am I just learning about it now? Had I known much earlier, I would have made it my life’s mission to see that I relocate to this incredible land of Dinosaur.

I wish I lived there! Someone from Dinosaur, please invite me to your town and I will bring my Jurassic Park DVDs.

Sayonara.

In my last post I talked about how the CBC is totally cool. Well, this past week they aired a pair of shows that officially cemented that reputation. It’s pretty rare for me to talk about TV shows in this way, because I really don’t go out of my way to watch very many television programs. But these two shows are really great, and are definitely worth watching no matter where you’re living.

The first show is called Dragon Boys, a 2-part miniseries that aired this past Sunday and Monday. It’s all about Asian gangs in western Canada and the people who’s lives are effected by them. It was a very well done series with lots of twists and turns. While watching I could swear that I had seen the actor who played the lead detective character in something else that I had seen. In fact, I was sure that he was in my DVD collection somewhere. So I looked it up and I was quite embarrassed to say that I was right, because he played Ryu in the live action Street Fighter movie, and I do happen to own a copy of that film on DVD for some reason. But anyway, I won’t hold that against anyone, because Dragon Boys was excellent, and I hope they do a sequel. A DVD release is forthcoming, so hopefully a wider audience will get to check it out then.

The other show I want to talk about is getting a lot of buzz. It’s called Little Mosque on the Prairie and it’s about a community of Muslims living in small town Saskatchewan. It’s also a comedy. Obviously this show is dealing with some sensitive issues, but it is very funny. I think I’ll be making an effort to catch this show whenever I can.

What’s really great about both of these shows is that there is no way that anything like these could ever be a Hollywood product. It that were the case, the people in charge would go out of their way to make these shows as bland and generic as possible by casting few minorities and taking away pretty much anything that could be considered ethnic, thus ripping the heart and soul out of the entire project. Only Canada could be the birthplace of shows like this, and that’s yet another reason why I’m proud to live in this country right now.

Sayonara.

Kill Bill is on TV right now. It’s on the TBS network. The current network slogan for TBS is “Very Funny“, and they like to portray themselves as being a comedy network. Now, Kill Bill is awesome and it certainly has its funny moments, but I don’t think it’s a comedy. But it is “Very Funny” how edited it is. I started watching just out of curiosity to see how it would turn out after being pasteurized and reprocessed for television consumption. It’s still pretty bloody, all things considered, but some of the cuts are rather obvious. I kind of wonder why they even bothered. Interesting how, a few months ago, Kill Bill Vol. 1 ran on the CBC in Canada, pretty much uncut from what I could tell. This is obviously because Canadians are much more hardcore than Americans.

Speaking of which, the CBC is now airing Arrested Development on weekdays at 5:30 p.m. after The Simpsons. This officially makes the CBC cool, because Arrested Development is totally great. In fact, it really ought to be on TBS too, when you think about it.

Sayonara.