Revolutionary Girl Utena: I let it into my head and now it will not leave.

[beccatoria]

So, for reasons that are complicated and boring and not entirely unrelated to a reflexive pushback against yet another attempt to get me to watch A:TLA (which I DO want to watch one day, but the last time he pushed it, I went and watched the entirety of Gargoyles instead, so basically his insistence and my YOU'RE NOT MY DAD! childishness is leading

Comments

[daybreak777]

Commenting to say I loved Gargoyles full stop and was quite old when I watched it. I could totally rewatch that show. :-)

[beccatoria]

YOU SHOULD IT'S STILL AMAZING I LOVED IT. I EVEN HAVE ICONS EXCEPT I'M OUT OF SPACE ON LJ SO THEY'RE ALL OVER ON DREAMWIDTH *CRIES*

But, ELISA and GOLIATH and DEMONA. *flails*

[daybreak777]

I'm sure it is still amazing! I loved that thing like pie.

And DEMONA. COUNSELOR TROI GONE EVIL AND WE LOVE IT. :-D

(now I want an icon!)

[daybreak777]

P.S. Counselor Troi is now almost 60. OMG.

(But Demona lives forever! I found seasons 1 and 2 but 3 is hard to find. :-/)

ETA: SEASON 3 IS ON YOU TUBE!

[gonzo21]

It is baffling how and why they employed so many terrible voice actors to do the English releases. Friend of mine who was very into Anime told me once it had a lot to do with the company that did the western releases, the boss employed his wife and friends to do the dubbing.

I've always wanted to like anime a lot more than I do. There's been a fair few series I've quite enjoyed, but usually what happens is I enjoy an episode or two, and then about 2/3rds of the way through a show it just goes unforgiveably weird and the story disappears into a mess of nonsense.

Though this said, I did love Evangelion. Until the last episodes where it goes off the wall. But they went back and fixed it with a movie release, so that was okay. Ish.

[beccatoria]

Yeah...that would explain it. Although I think another reason is that anime was really still a niche thing until the late 90s, or, really, the 2000s. So a lot of the earlier dubbed stuff (and I think I read that Utena was dubbed in the mid- to late-90s when it first came out and has never been redubbed) was being done on shoestring budgets for almost no money because the market was just tiny. And basically consisted of buying VHS tapes by mail order.

I'm actually the opposite. I kind of LIKE the point two thirds of the way through when it gets hugely weird, and I'm like, why couldn't it have been this way from the START? Because that's usually when there are more things to distract me from the cliches that bug me, and/or they start undermining those cliches. But...I do take your point.

And I actually had a very similar reaction to Evangelion. But I'm not even sure I like the movie better. I mean emotionally I do. Asuka at least goes out fighting instead of depressed in a broken bathtub. But... Well I guess my issue is

[gonzo21]

Yeah, that's a fair point, it was almost certainly being dubbed on a shoe-string budget. And then of course when they made Urotsukidoji one of the very first anime's released in the UK, they pretty killed the genre dead for a generation.

(One of those few instances were sex doesn't actually sell.)

And see I'm all in favour of weird things. I felt True Detective never quite got weird enough for me. But with anime it always felt like... the story and narrative structure got thrown out to make space for the left-field weirdness.

But I think that's a cultural thing? Japanese story telling traditions are very different to Western story telling?

And yeah, 26 episodes was way too many for Evangelion. It's why I've only watched it once in fact, I remember I liked it rather a lot, but not enough to slog through 26 eps again.

Did they not remake it recently or something?

[beccatoria]

They're in the middle of remaking it, I think. They're doing three movies and either one or two of them are currently out? I think when all three are I might revisit it. But before then, yeah. Once was enough, you know?