Overall, I have mixed feelings about the movie. It was as beautiful as Spirited Away and as mysterious as Princess Mononoke. Miyazaki has the incredible ability to create a modern animated film that looks like it was originally drawn decades ago during the early years of animation.. on the surface. Suddenly, though, you see the enormous amount of detail each and every scene incorporates. On animation alone I’d be tempted to say that this film surpasses Spirited Away.

It’s the story, however, that differentiates the two. While Spirited Away had a fairly straightforward plot, Howl’s Moving Castle has a plot full of twists, turns, subplots, and dead-ends. Overall it is a fairly simple story: Sofie, a young girl working in her late father’s hat shop, gets cursed by the Witch of the Waste and turns into an old woman. Sofie then sets out to find Howl to have the curse removed. I won’t give any more of the story away, as you should definitely see it yourself. I will say however, that there are plot elements that just do not seem to flow well with the rest of the movie. At some points, I was left wondering what I had missed.

This confusion led me to read the book by Diana Wynne Jones that was the basis for the movie. It is an excellent book and an easy read; I think it took me around five to six hours straight to finish it. The book differs greatly from the movie and while it does provide some useful additional information, most of the more puzzling movie scenes are not in the book at all. If you do read the book before you see the movie, don’t be surprised when the two bare little resemblance to each other.

Overall, I think I still think Spirited Away is my favorite Miyazaki film, with Howl’s Moving Castle coming in a close second. Perhaps if I see it again, or in English, I might change my mind. If you have not seen it yet, it is definitely worth the eight plus dollars of admission to see it in the theater.

Yeah, yeah, I’m going to get around to posting a real post one of these days… hopefully when I magically become less busy…

Today when I checked the mail, much to my surprise and delight, I found my brand-spanking new, hot off the presses, limited edition, first volume of Samurai Champloo. Excellent. Dustin and I watched the four episodes on the DVD over dinner and I must say I am extremely impressed with the English dub. As a general rule I don’t like dubs, especially when I watched the show in Japanese first. Geneon does an excellent job, though, and there’s not much to complain about. No super-whiny girl for Fuu and Jin sounds awesome. The only tiny little complaint (more like personal preference) I have is that the same guy that voiced Spike in Cowboy Bebop does the voice for Mugen. After four episodes I’m still calling him Spike. If you pay attention you can also catch the voice actors for Jet and Faye doing some of the lesser characters in Samurai Champloo.

The translation, another thing I hate about dubs, is almost dead-on with the original Japanese. In fact, the whole dub is good enough that I would watch the rest of the episodes in English and be happy about it. It may not sound like a big deal, but trust me, it is. Finally! An anime dub that I can be proud of! No more hanging my head in shame when (if?) I see it on Cartoon Network. Thank you Geneon for not screwing it up!

The 20 gig player will set you back 47,250 yen or about $450. There are some extras such as an enamel case and over the ear headphones plus the iPod and the accessories will all feature the “NERV” logo. If you have more money than brains and you want to get your hands one of these, Bandai plans to start taking orders midday on December 22.

However, my legally purchased anime collection is growing by leaps and bounds. Finding Rightstuf.com was a very, very Bad Thing for me. Their weekly specials are updated every Thursday with several really good deals and who am I to pass up a good deal? So now I own all of Orphen and Outlaw Star and most of Saiyuki. Plus I just ordered the Fullmetal Alchemist starter set, His and Her Circumstances Box Set, the Samurai Champloo limited edition box + first DVD, and the Chrno Crusade box + first DVD. I highly recommend everything I’ve purchased but at this rate I’m going to have to buy another bookcase just for my anime collection. I just try not to think about how much of my money that bookcase is going to be holding. Ouch.

You have been warned. Possible spoilers ahead. Turn back now.

It’s over, but nothing was really resolved. More questions were raised and a not-so-subtle hint at another series/OVA was made. Supposedly the movie coming out in December is going to kick off the next part of the series. Which means all of us stuck here in I-don’t-speak-Japanese-because-I-suck land will figure out what is going on next summer someone decides to take pity on us and fansub the movie. You know… I always wanted to be trilingual…

Yes, experience. Viz had free showings of the first Inuyasha movie in theaters across the country. Dallas happened to be one of the lucky places to get the movie. So, since we had been planning a trip to Dallas anyway, we went. The movie was ok, I’d seen it before and I still don’t like the English dub, but the experience is a toss up between hilarious and very, very scary.

The movie started at 10 and it said to get there early. We arrived around 8 and quite a few people were already there. Some were in cosplay, some in Inuyasha teeshirts, and some carrying around little stuffed Kirara’s. There were lots of kids (middle school, maybe), with their moms. Lot’s of girls with high pitched voices. Heck, probably lots of guys with high pitched voices, it was hard to tell.

So, after Dustin and I played our Gameboys for two hours, it began. First, loud screaming welcomed any main character onto the screen. Then, especially loud female screaming welcomed Sesshoumaru any time a glimpse of him was seen. Then, four guys decided to be narrators and would scream out the Japanese attack names over the English dubs. I thought that was pretty funny, but apparently some other people did not, judging by the number of “Shut the hell up!” yells that followed their narration. I mean, really, “Backlash wave” is a pretty lame translation of “Bakuryuuha” even though it’s probably close to literal. Just watch the movie and wait for the building music and booming attack noises while the English voice actor is screaming “BACKLASH WAVE” and you’ll see what I mean.

The obligatory booing and hissing accompanied Kikyou any time she decided to make an appearance and a round of aaahhhs was in order for Rin. Overall, the experience was ten times better than the movie would have been by itself. At least now I know that I’m not the craziest Inuyasha fan out there.

No, it’s not my evil plot to steal your money, although that would be good too. It’s the plot of the movie, gaming, and anime empire to suck you dry as quickly as possible. It seems that the cosmos have aligned and everyone wants an even larger chunk of your money this month.

Gaming

If you own an Xbox and you haven’t been living in a hole for the past, oh… say… couple of years, then you have heard of Fable. In fact, it’s only slightly behind Halo2 in the “uber hyped game that isn’t coming out for two years but we want you to want to buy it RIGHT NOW” category. Luckily, Fable does have some experience to back up all the hype–after all, Lionhead Studios is involved and their previous game, Black & White, incorporated some of the basic “good and evil” elements that are such a big part of Fable. Since I’ve been avoiding the hype as much as possible, I can’t actually write a “review” of the game, so you’ll just have to check it out for yourself. Fable is available September 14 and can be pre-ordered from Amazon.com or anywhere else that sells games.

Anime

Ah yes, the anime industry. While they continuously try to suck you dry by charging $25 for 3 episodes, this month is even worse. On Tuesday, September 7th, Viz is releasing the first InuYasha movie, Affections Touching Across Time. They are also releasing the first season in a box set which includes episodes 1 – 27 on five DVDs. It’s available in a normal set or a limited edition set with an “InuYasha fang necklace,” which if I see anyone wearing outside of an anime convention, will probably kill me from laughing too hard. You have been warned.

For those of you who were fans of Chrno Crusade, the first US released DVD is coming out September 21, with the name Chrono Crusade. I’m still not sure why they needed the extra “o.” It’s available as a single DVD or with an art box to hold the rest of the series. I’m not sure how many episodes are on the DVD, but with a running time of 100 minutes, it’s either three or four, which means the series is going to be about eight DVDs long. Which, of course, brings us right back to the “wow that’s a lot of money for 24 measly episodes that I already have, and have watched, fansubbed from when it was airing in Japan.”

Movies

I’m sure that there are those of you reading this post from your campsite in front of your favorite DVD retailer, just because you are that cool. Well, that and the Star Wars trilogy is coming to DVD this month. Everyone knows that anything Star Wars induces geeks everywhere to give up showering to go camp out somewhere. Well, maybe they’re not really giving up showering–you have to have something to begin with in order to give it up… *grin*  All kidding aside (yes, I was kidding), Star Wars is finally coming out on DVD on the 21st of this month. If you don’t know what Star Wars is, then slowly back away from your computer and run screaming to your nearest geek friend to get educated. If you don’t have any geek friends… well I just feel very, very sorry for you.

That about wraps it up. I’m sure there are plenty of other things coming out that I am going to want to buy, but I decided to stop looking. I mean jeez, I have student loans to pay…

*Many of the links in this post link to Amazon. Yes, I am an Amazon affiliate. Yes, I will get a small amount of money if you click the link and then buy something. Yes, you may be able to find it cheaper elsewhere. Yes, I encourage you to shop around, in fact I recommend RightStuf.com for anime (no, I am not an affiliate there). RightStuf looks a little rough, but actually they are totally legit and have pretty good prices, especially check the weekly specials.

Now that I have joined the rest of the gainfully employed world, I find that I am falling into a routine I like to call “the American Way.” It goes something like this: Wake up, get ready, go to work. Work hard (most of the time, anyway) all day. Come home, eat dinner, watch TV. Go to sleep. Rinse; repeat once daily. The first week it was pretty bad. Even my computer and my anime sorely missed me that week. It’s been getting better, as now I am incorporating some much needed web surfing, anime watching, and blog updating into the schedule. However, it’s still pretty sad. Especially now that an entire month has went by in this fashion.

My grandma had surgery on Monday. Everything went fine and she says she feels a lot better than she thought she would. She goes back to the doctor tomorrow for a checkup, but everything seems to be fine.

I’ve finally gotten off my lazy behind and started on an About Me/Contact page. You can find it handily linked under the “Navigation” section on the right, or the truly lazy can just click here. Yeah, I don’t blame you for not looking under the Navigation section. I know I wouldn’t have.

The anime world continues to trudge along. Inuyasha has been fansubbed up to 161 by IY4Ever. They have also released Samurai7 up to episode 6. Samurai Champloo is fansubbed up to episode 9 by Animeforever. If you don’t have the links to the fansubbers I mentioned, check my older posts, since I’m feeling pretty lazy right now. I really just need to set it up so whenever I type their name it auto-links for me. It’s an easy option to add, I just need to actually do it.

Just after I get done complaining about how expensive the Inuyasha series is, Viz decides to go and release a box set of the first 27 episodes (first season) for a somewhat reasonable price. Well, as long as you buy it from someone besides them. I broke down and bought it from Overstock.com for about $60 with a coupon, but it doesn’t actually ship until the beginning of September. Since I’m not a big fan of the English dub, this was probably an impulse buy, now that I have some money to spend. But at least I’m not one of those poor suckers that spent $25 for 3 episodes…