Steamflogger Boss wrote:
Thanks for the insight into Japanese culture, GP. And in that case it sounds like it is worth the risk as the prices there are pennies on the dollar compared to alternatives like eBay.
wanna back gp up, here. i'm a very frequent user of YAJ and jp auctioneers will frequently list working stuff as junk because they don't have the proper means (or time) to test it and are just divorcing themselves from responsibility on the rare chance it's actually trashed. i don't think i've ever actually had to bite the bullet even once, despite buying junk listings fairly often. always get a working item, usually working better than expected and always better than feared. it's important to keep in mind that the YAJ environment is highly, radically different dealing with americans on eBay. eBay had drilled into my head for years that the auction website format is just going to be host to a myriad of awful dipshits trying to rip you off or overstate the hell out of what they have, so it's so refreshing to work with YAJ and its much, much higher rate of reliability and honesty.
just make sure you read descriptions/check pictures accurately! even machine translated, you'll tend to get the necessary information rather clearly. just keep in mind some common stuff like that when japanese auctioneers say what gets translated as "overseas item" they mean bootleg/repro (or that "sunburn" means they're talking about sunfading, etc.).
GaijinPunch wrote:
As of now, I think it handles relativity better than anything. Was hoping Interstellar took note, but did not (which is not really surprising).
i only watched gunbuster for the first time fairly recently (year and a half ago? i'd tried the first episode years before that and disliked it) and frankly thought it handled it really badly. was much more impressed with its handling in something like voices from a distant star, where the emotional impact felt a lot more authentically melancholic. gunbuster paces it so strangely and with characters i care about
so little that it felt mawkish. the ending feels so out of the blue and overtly positive about humanity's future despite its transparently weak & trite cast who never give you a reason to be invested in such a thing.
on gunbuster, in general, i honestly feel like gurren lagann, with as much as it borrows, does most of what i wanted it to do considerably better. at least when it's undercutting its one substantial woman with paternalism and the trademark gainax titty jiggle (holy shit there's more of that in the first episode of gunbuster than there are panty shots in project a-ko), she's only the tritagonist (at best). i can stomach the only women as vapid cheesecake dolls in an anime when the story isn't pretending they're suited for lead roles - characters like simon and kamina have depth and i'm drawn into their boyish charm & passionate humanity, characters like... whatever their names are in gunbuster... man, i don't know. if you can't write women, i'd rather your world be led by a bunch of hot-headed boys. it's not a surprise gurren lagann is the only thing by its director that i've enjoyed, too.
i bought the gunbuster movie recently and was thinking it being significantly recut might quiet my issues with how boring it is for huge swaths of its duration. the absence of character and story might be made up for by the good chunks of the animation being brought a lot closer to each other.