Voltes V

Daimos

UFO Robot Grendizer

Hearing any of these themes now always sends me back to being eight years old again, watching these shows on the air (in the case of Voltes V), or from a rented betamax tape (in the case of both Daimos and Grendizer). I’d imagine that something about these super robot shows had a massive impact on me as I was growing up, but, truth be told, it was an experience almost uniquely associated to my childhood in the Philippines. It wasn’t a particularly deep association, mind you — when you’re a kid, it’s harder to connect the dots between the heroic struggle against the oppression of the strong over the weak and the political reality of living in a dictatorship, but certain themes of courage and valiant sacrifice do manage to get through.

When I moved to Canada when I was twelve, anime generally fell by the wayside in favour of other geeky offerings (Dungeons & Dragons, video games, and comic books, mostly), and it wasn’t ’til the early twenty-first century that I started watching anime again in earnest, largely due to Neon Genesis Evangelion (and boy, was that ever a reaction to the earnest offerings of the super robot genre).

No modern anime quite recaptures the feelings of exhilaration and heroic righteousness engendered by these three shows, but I suppose we’re into post-modernism now and the wide-eyed honesty of that time is long since past. Gurren Lagann came close, with its structure that mirrors the ages of the mecha genre in anime with the first eight episodes, up to the death of a major character, being the late ’70′s and early ’80′s age of super-robots; the middle act with all its tragedy and pathos and redemption being the Evangelion / Gundam-esque “silver age”; and the last act being… well, the post-modern take on mecha in general, which seems to be a combination of knowing references, a desire for the return of the old “hard work and guts pays off” approach, but always acknowledging that sometimes, everything you work for doesn’t mean you get the happiest ending.

It may be a bit of a fool’s errand to seek to recapture that essence of childhood while looking through today’s mecha offerings, but plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, and who knows, the days of the Robot Romance Trilogy might yet come again.

I can’t stop watching it. It’s so… charming.

Yes, I know who the target demographic is. No, I’m not buying the toys (it’s not like I have the shelf space, plus I still have a slew of SF IV figures still-in-box to display after this renovation is all done and my walls stop shaking). Also, I knew that I recognized Rainbow Dash’s voice from Hey Ocean!

Although I keep hearing J. Jonah yelling “I want Portals! Pictures of Portals!”

Hobo with a Shotgun! (Rutger Hauer!)

I began the movie-watching year with True Grit (a bit late, true) then last week, the TNMC went and saw Rango. It’s probably one of the most fun movies I’ve watched all year. It’s almost too earnest to be a kids movie, but this fact is disguised by the comedy and by the meta-references all throughout. I mean, a movie starring Johnny Depp as the Chameleon-With-No-Name (sorta) gets a cameo of Johnny Depp as Hunter S. Thompson? That’s…. deliciously loopy. Oh, yeah, so here be spoilers, of a sort.

A lot of the movie’s musings on the nature of the West will probably be lost on a majority of its officially-intended audience, but I found it a truer meditation on westerns than the aforementioned True Grit (which, while technically competent and masterfully told, was about more straightforward than you could usually get from the Coen brothers). Rango’s homages, comedic asides, and heroic journey (which is made even more telling by its use of the Mariachi Greek-chorus) harkens to the whole of the western oeuvre, not just Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy, but every Sunday afternoon Black Hat / White Hat cowboys-an-injuns serial. This really shouldn’t be so surprising, considering that Gore Verbinsky directed the whole shebang, and he does seem to have a talent for lovingly deconstructing and re-integrating the best things out of a genre (see also: the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie).

It’s interesting to see how Verbinsky chose to direct this project by sticking all the actors in  a skeletal mockup of the town of Dirt and environs letting them have at it. I’d love to see a side-by-side view of the animated movie with the actor’s reference in the director’s cut DVD, but for now, this Youtube video will have to do.

Is it me, or do I keep hearing a bit of the Hunter S voice coming outta Johnny Depp?

They got a lot of really recognizable voice talent out for Rango, and overall it was nice to see it used appropriately, though it was criminal how few lines we actually heard out of Claudia Black. Still, Bill Nighy as Rattlesnake Jake was an inspired bit of casting. The movie’s done pretty well for itself, but I’m kind of hoping we don’t see a sequel. Some things are more complete when it’s had its moment, and then wanders off into the sunset.

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Have some bonus music from Rango — Ride of the Valkyries, with Banjos!

So, the World of Warcraft community is abuzz with the picture Blizzard released on their Facebook wall about their new, purchasable Winged Lion Mount….

Considering how much their first store mount earned for them, this would likely be yet another financial windfall for the company. Gamers, with their bizarre sense of surreptitious elitism, were quick to decry the first mount as a blatant money grab, considering that it was a re-skinned version of a much more difficult to obtain mount. I say “surreptitious elitism” because I’d imagine a lot of these same gamers quietly went and bought the mount for themselves anyway. It’s interesting to see the same arguments of “non-exclusivity”, “conformity”, and “unearned privilege” that were leveled against the Celestial Steed (or “Sparkle Pony”) are already being recycled for this new mount, which seems to have already acquired the nickname TRL (“That Retarded Lion”).

While I didn’t pay for my sparkle ponies (they were gifts), I was very appreciative of them, and in turn, the new winged lion would be a zero-day purchase for me if at least half the proceeds went to helping out the victims of the recent Japanese catastrophe. It does seem unlikely that Blizzard (well, Blizzard-Activision) would do so, considering the dearth of upcoming income streams for Activision. One can hope, though.

Note: I actually only want one of these two things.

The kindest thing that can be said of Tron: Legacy is that it was watchable, and that it had an awesome soundtrack (which is getting a remixed version come April). At its core, it was a cheesy popcorn flick, marred by an overcommitment to its cool graphics and an underwhelming use of its source material, and lacking a consistency of vision in the execution of its digitized environment. I have no complaints on the acting side of things; it’s not as if they were given Shakespeare level material to work with, and it’s always nice seeing Michael Sheen chewing the scenery (not to mention Olivia Wilde playing the kick-ass naif).

So, it was with something akin to shock and joy that I viewed the teaser trailer for TRON: The Next Day (TR3N? Whatever the next title will end up being).

It seems odd to see a Tron movie set so strongly in the real world, but in hindsight, that was what I found most lacking in Legacy. Aside from the placeholder setups in the beginning and a few callbacks here and there (Dillinger’s kid! played by the awesome Cillian Murphy), there was less of a connection between the two worlds than there was in the first movie, and I think that’s why Legacy seemed to lack soul (too computerish, perhaps, and far less human).

Now I’m not sure how much I’d enjoy a Tron movie without its digital world or cool graphics, but my interest is definitely piqued. I do hope that they get Daft Punk back to do the soundtrack, though part of me thinks that a Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross-esque collaboration may work better with the more human setting. Time will tell how this movie shapes up, but I think they’ve already got my TNMC vote, for sure.