Mnemosyne – Daughters of Mnemosyne

I have no idea how to pronounce the show’s name properly in English, but the katakana used for the name are pronounced ‘mu ne mo syu ne’. Which is funny, since the ‘mune’ part taken on its own means ‘breast’ in Japanese. Haha, tits. I’ll get back to that later.

The structure of the show is pretty interesting. It’s a 6 episode series and each episode runs for an hour (45 minutes without commercials). Starting Feb. 3rd, they’re airing one episode per month. Pretty weird. It’s like an OVA, but on Satellite.

I’ve only seen the first episode raw (I don’t think there are any subs yet), and my Japanese is hardly at the level where I can ‘get’ everything, but I have the general idea of the show. Taking place in 1990, it centers around the green haired lady in the image above. She’s Rin Asougi, the central character who runs a sort of detective agency along with a loli chick named Mimi. Rin strikes me as a cross between Yomiko Readman of Read or Die and Motoko Kusanagi of Ghost in the Shell. She’s highly skilled and pretty ruthless at times, but when she’s not fighting someone she’s playful, compassionate and even a little clumsy.

Now let’s get back to the boobs. This is definitely an Adult show. Rin doesn’t have any problems rolling around unclothed with nary a puff of steam or strategic prop placement to be found. Putting aside the nudity, there’s some pretty disturbing violence in one extended scene involving a chick with a piercing fetish. It’s actually worse when the piercings are taken out. Yikes. Rin actually dies 3 times in this episode. This was being advertised as having ‘erotic violence’, and it certainly lives up to that advertisement.

If you’re the type that follows seiyuu, this show has a few big names to it. Mamiko Noto, Rie Kugimiya and Rie Tanaka all play major roles in this show. Nobuyuki Hiyama is in it as well, but I didn’t recognize his voice at all. The opening and ending songs are done by the Japanese metal band Galneryus

Looky here for a 3 minute trailer to have an idea of what the show looks like.

I’d imagine Mnemosyne would be more interesting if I understood what they were saying. It did hold my attention through its entire 45 minutes, so this is something I’ll be following during its run. It wasn’t anything particularly spectacular, but it is one of the more exciting programs this season. Hope someone subs it!

Dragon Ball Z MMO

I would have thought this happened already, but perhaps that’s my fond memories of my brief stint with Bid for Power some years back.

BFP is the first thing I thought of when I saw this, but this is an entirely different (and entirely avec Toryiama legit) project. You can create your character as a child from either the Saiyan, Namek or Human races, and the child will grow up as the game progresses.

Seems interesting, but I’ll probably never play it. Chances of it coming to the US are slim, but not impossible. DBZ is still pretty popular in the west, but it’s nowhere near popular enough to make a dent in WoW in the MMO space–or even FFXI for that matter. I won’t be spending money to import it either, despite my efforts to be learning Japanese.

Afro Samurai

The latest in what seems to be a growing trend of cross-production between renowned Japanese anime makers and US companies is: Afro Samurai.

Gonzo, the Japanese company who is known for having high quality visuals, teamed up with  Spike TV to bring this anime to the US first. It’s based on a dojinshi, a Japanese fan comic, and its buzz was mostly surrounding the fact that Samual L Jackson has a starring role in this anime.

I’ve managed to watch the first episode, and here are my brief thoughts.

The art style and animation is outstanding, which is to be expected from the likes of Gonzo studio. It actually  reminds me of Samurai Champloo–the action scenes are quity gritty and are filmed as if the camera is shaking, and while in combat the fighters go through some very exaggerated poses. The black people (with a show called Afro Samurai, what do you expect?) seem to be drawn with a different kind of detail than how you usually see Japanese/White people drawn in anime, it’s quite interesting to see. Gonzo also did shows like Gantz and Basilisk, both of which had some very graphic scenes. Spurting blood, dismemberment, it’s all here as well.

So far the voices seem to be pretty adequate. This premiering in English probably helps, since I don’t have the Japanese version to bias my opinion on. In fact, the English version could probably be considered the ‘original’ (Afro Samurai will air in Japan later as well). I was surprised to find out that Sam Jackson isn’t actually the main character, but now seeing his role placement he would not have worked as the main character. Instead, he is the hyper, annoying sidekick to the Afro Samurai. It works for what he does with his voice, and I mean that in every possibly positive way I can.

The story so far hasn’t quite grasped me yet, but it doesn’t seem like anything out-of-the-ordinary. Basic plot premise is the old fallback revenge, and there are a few other elements in there to spice it up as well. There seems to be some kind of tournament, when the people have to wear a bandana with their rank on it. Anyone is open to challenge them, to kill them and take their rank. This is actually how the story begins–the main character seems to be the son of the Number 1 ranked fighter, who is killed by another enemy. Thus, the boy grows up to be Number Two, and is looking for that man who has remained Number 1 since that incident. Along the way he seems to be getting picked on by other people wanting to climb the ranks.  So far i’ve seen derivative elements from several shows, but it doesn’t detract from the experience so far.

To be honest, my expectations were pretty low going into it. Spike TV doesn’t exactly have the greatest reputation for high quality programming. I’ll say that I was suitably impressed by the first episode of Afro Samurai, though it was probably more for the production values than the actual content. I think the series is only going to run for 5 episodes, which would be a simple OVA in ‘normal’ anime.

Afro Samurai premiers at 11PM EST on Thursday January 4th on Spike TV.