Weekly-ish cartoonspam

[feuervogel]

I missed last week, so:

Ponyo and the Cliff by the Sea: My first theater-cam fansub! It's a cute, funny look at ... well, a boy finds a mermaid that he thinks is a goldfish, and the mermaid wants to be a girl so she can stay with him forever. Unlike Hans C. Andersen's version, there's a happy ending. And some hilarious driving sequences.

This week:

Ryoko's Case Files (or something): Fairly standard supernatural/paranormal detective agency show. If you like that sort of thing, this is for you.

Good Morning Althea: Here's how I envision this OAV came into being: A bunch of animation guys were sitting around in one of their apartments, and saying, "How can we make a movie that'll sell?"
Dude 1: Psionic warfare and weaponry! That's hot! People dug "Terra e," right?
Dude 2: Yeah! And mecha. Mecha are awesome. Everybody loves mecha.
Dude 3: Totally! Uh, the Minmay defense. We have to include that.
Dude 2: Yeah, Macross is hot.
Dude 4: And a naked chick. The chick *has* to be naked.
(All 5 dudes: nod vigorously)
Dude 2: Don't forget cyborgs!
All 5: Yeah!
Dude 5: We have to have unpronounceable strings of characters to represent people's names.
Dude 1, skeptical: If you say so. Hey, we should also include a message that everyone should get along with each other and work together.
Dude 2: Like the Zentradi and the humans? Sweet.

To quote kurai_seraphim, this show was basically a clip show of the 80s. All of it. If it was hot in the 80s, it's in this show. Only unlike a lot of things in the 80s (and like many others), this one failed to have a coherent plot, good pacing, or characters you cared about. You've got your stock tank, your stock lead, your stock female lead. Meh. It's no "Grey: Digital Target." That was *awesome.*

Macross Frontier, episodes 20&21: *sniffle* That's some damn good writing. I heard a couple "no!"s off to my right last week. This is about where the climax of the series starts off, going from about eps 20-24, with 25 left for denouement. IJWTS, don't piss off a 50-foot-tall woman. She'll kick your ass into next week.

20 Faces: Apparently, there's another episode. I don't see how that's really necessary, because it wrapped up perfectly well, most threads tied off, but a couple left tantalizingly dangling. I guess we'll find out next week.

And after 20 Faces ends, we'll double up on MacF to finish off the series in a fell swoop. But it should be worked out so 25 and 2624 and 25 are watched back to back.