Hey so I heard about this show, The Inbetweeners, on this blog I go to to get the latest episodes of American shows I watch. It's a British comedy that was aired over here on some channel, and the concept of 4 dudes in british high school sounded kinda interesting to me, so I asked TS (dude from bakawolf) about it, since he's an Englishman, and he said it rocked. So then i asked another englishman about it and he said it rocked or something I don't really remember but it wasn't negative. So anyways I downloaded the first season (only 6x25min eps), and it was fantastic! It was brilliant! This show seriously jacked me off, thats how awesome it was. So I grabbed season two, same size as season one, and it was less crude or harsh, and more over-the-top, but it was still brilliant. So now I've caught up on like the 3 eps of season 3 that have come out, and I'm loving this show to death.
Everyone needs to go watch The Inbetweeners, it's incredible.
As for cartoons i've been watching I started in on Nadia, because Tatsuyuki Tanaka image boarded a chunk of episodes mid-series. I had seen some of his (or, what I assumed to be his) image boards in this Cannabis Works artbook, and they're incredbile. Like, giant monster reaching arm out over land. Awesome looking robot dudes. it's sweet. So I watched this expecting to see some of this junk, but then none of it showed up. And I finally watch up to like ep 19 or whatever when he starts working on the series, and still no awesome robots.. So I flip through the episodes that he's worked on, and STILL no giant robots anywhere to be found.
So after careful examination (This actually happened back when i was at like ep 4 of the TV series) of the image boards in question, I noticed the text identifying the images. I could clearly recognize the characters in the pictures as being from Nadia, but now I read the label at the top, and it confirmed it was Nadia. So then I search about for the meaning of the extra bit, next to the Nadia title, and I find out that it means "The movie" or "motion picture" or "theatrical release" or something along those lines... And hey, since there's a Nadia movie out there, then that is clearly what these pictures must be from! It all made happy sense to me.
But.. But then I watched the movie, and it didn't have any cool robots. No poor kids standing on robots, and evil part-robotic men.. No giant arm reaching in the sky.. Nothing. The movie sucked as hard as the TV series on it was like an hour and a half or something (like the first 20-30 mins of which is recap from the TV series, rofl) and it's super lame.
So now... I'm at a complete loss as to what the heck Tanaka's Nadia images are from.. I'd love to see these images animated together into a story, but I guess it's only concept art or something.. I dunno.
Man trying to get all the images to fit there nicely is weird.. I'm not gonna bother.. Anyways, Nadia the movie as well as Nadia the TV series sucked. horribly. I asked people about it once because I say Tatsuyuki Tanaka on it, and someone was like "dude, director of NGE, Gainax show. of course its good".... The show is pretty awful. It doesn't really know who it's target audience is. It starts with these annoying kid protags, and these Team Rocket villains chasing them, and it's literally like I'm sitting there watching Pokemon. Director of NGE put out a definite kodomo Pokemon-esque title. I couldn't stand sitting through that crap.. But then it's like "Oh no, this bad guy. he's bad see, he kills his own man!" or something, and it's supposed to get dark or mature but it doesn't. Then there's this considerably dark and depressing episode where people who are dying are trapped inside a room and you just hear them screaming as they die and there';s no music or anything and it's like "I thought I was watching pokemon???" of course right after that it hurries back to it's roots in comedic kodomo-aimed antics. It's got some forced tsundere on the part of Nadia which was kinda cute, but couldn't save this series in any way. Also around ep uhhh 16 or 17 I think it was , all production values go out the window. If this series started off looking good for a late 80s title, it was now a still picture drama. No joke. There's this one ep in it, episode 17, which is probably one of the cheapest and laziest cartoon episodes I've ever seen. I couldn't focus on the "deep engaging plot" because what was on the screen wasn't talking animated characters, no, it was entirely soulless still pictures, where the only movement was excessively blinking eyes. I can't stomach anymore of it, and I'm not gonna try to. I sampled Tanaka's other image boarded episodes, and I don't care enough to sit through it. I'm done with the series. (It did however make me want to go back and rewatch the Atlantis disney cartoon)
So now I'm watching through this Twelve Kingdoms title, and it's not that great. It is barely moderately interesting enough that I keep going back to it, but overall it's really boring and predictable.. Though it is finally picking up after like 11 episodes, but with 45 in total, I don't see this going anywhere anytime soon.. Plus visually the series is so boring. I was impressed with the first episode, but overall it actually annoys me. The character designs are really ugly, and though the monsters generally look interesting, beyond the first episode there's minimal genuine action involving the monsters. Also all the characters are really bland and just boring. I don't care about any of them.
I gotta find me some cartoons that'll hold my interest.. cause neither of this longer running titles HOLY CRAP MY CAT JUST STARTED EATING MY HAIR WHAT THE HECK? anyways none of these longer titles are grabbing my interest. However I want to get through them because they're massive and it'd clear up some space on my 'puter. because i generally wait to finish a series then movie it to my external.. however I'm thinking I might just put both Nadia and Twelve Kingdoms "on hold" and stash them on the external anyways...
But since neither of the cartoons i've started have been interesting, I've found myself picking up more and more american TV junk these days. I've been checking out the new eps of Modern Family, The Office, The Inbetweeners of course, House, The Big Bang Theory and even some family guy (Which, family guy season 9 premier had pretty incredible production values.)