Not sure how I feel about the 4 shitters from Sharp coming back, but at least they don't seem to be bringing any unnecessary plot elements with them. This episode was otherwise hilarious, based Yamauchi.
I've read that. It's not anywhere near what I wanted. Having a moe prostitute is nowhere near what I wanted.
edit: not to mention it still follows anime tropes such as superpowered badasses who are super anime, and form gangs to destroy cities as they look down on a city from a rooftop.
Very confusing start to it all. Yuno acting all lovey lovey with Yuki was confusing as well. Atleast they explain what is going on at the end of the episode. Still very interesting concept though even with all the confusion of everything happening at once..
Very confusing start to it all. Yuno acting all lovey lovey with Yuki was confusing as well. Atleast they explain what is going on at the end of the episode. Still very interesting concept though even with all the confusion of everything happening at once..
NO the first split is after you capture icari , she escape from her cell , goes to the cpatain quarters and try to convince you to help her destroy the convoi since it would force the alliance army to mobilise. You can either , accept her deal , fuelling her hate for PACT , or deny her and she escape from the ship. You know the rest if she escapes as she'll realise the convoi has childrens inside and thus join your cause.
Yes this election arc is great Cheadle POV is really great to have and pariston trully a great antagonist.
Madhouse really nailed almost everything during their Hxh adaptation.
More people need to see Gintama. The movie was an original anime story right? Did they get any input from the manga author? Because I'm surprised they captured the essence of Gintama so well.
Yeah, I got the DVD Complete collection. Had it for a while, but not started watching it until now. Looks like they added it to Hulu a few days ago too for some reason.
Sunday Without God Blu Ray/DVD Hybrid is on sale via Crunch ends up being $39.99? Still a bit on the steep side but considering I was debating ordering it at $50? Yeah $40 is a no brainer
Some weirdly dressed perverts who climb into electricity posts are going around the city. I wonder how nobody ever notices anything they do this out in the open.
Yeah, I got the DVD Complete collection. Had it for a while, but not started watching it until now. Looks like they added it to Hulu a few days ago too for some reason.
Existing between worlds
Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir was one of the most fascinating animated features that I have ever seen. It was a film that was billed as the first ever animated documentary, featuring the story of veterans of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon told through the surrealistic lens of animation.
Here's an example of the weirdness of this film:
What was interesting was how the film was produced. Shot first in green screen with the actual subjects of the film, the animators used that footage to hand animate the film. Ari Folman could have probably gotten away with rotoscoping all of the actors, but instead you have a film that feels like a traditionally animated film but with the fidelity of something that is entirely referenced from a live action source.
All of that combines to give you a feeling of both being intimately involved with the participants of the war, but also constantly mediated by the fact that the footage is completely animated. I'm sure Folman wanted you to be confused as you tried to square the fact that you are watching a documentary with the fact that you are also watching a cartoon. If anything, maybe even Miyazaki was at least inspired if not directly influenced by this film when he made Kaze Tachinu.
What is film?
But why is this important when thinking about The Congress? Ari Folman's follow up film asks the audience to consider the function of film as not only a source of mediation, but also of representation. To help achieve this goal, Folman casts Robin Wright as a fictionalized version of herself, immediately blurring the line between reality and fiction.
As an actress in her late 40s, Wright exists in this liminal stage of her acting career. Too old to play the leading role in your Hollywood blockbuster, but too young to play the "dame" that someone like Helen Mirren has taken to so well. She's now mostly "the wife", meant to support the male actors who don't have to worry about their age.
Seeing the film through her eyes, we begin to understand the anxiety of a temporary existence. First, we have Robin Wright glimpsing into her past as the princess in The Princess Bride:
And it is through this anxiety that we are allowed to consider the profundities that the film wants us to imagine. In this film world where Wright becomes a failed actress, she is given a proposal by the President of "Miramount Studios". Sign away the rights to her image so that they can make movies with her in them, but give up the right to act for the rest of her life. This is a red herring since it serves as a convenient entry into some of the greater themes of the film, but it allows us to begin to think about not only what film represents to us, but more importantly, how it (re)presents to us.
For one, we see Robin Wright acting for the last time in the context of the film, doing so in a fictional recording "sphere":
In The Congress, Hollywood animators are going beyond simply compositing a live action performance into an animated scene. Here, they are trying to capture Wright's performance itself, having her laugh and cry in order to be able to reproduce the essence of her acting in any film that they want to make.
Folman himself gives us an end result of one a film made by the digitized Robin Wright:
Yep, she's riding that nuke. One might even say that there could be a comment made about the fact that in this world, someone would be insane enough to do a remake of Dr. Strangelove with a digital version of Robin Wright.
There's also one other form mediation worth talking about before getting into the meat of the film, where we see an older Robin Wright 20 years after she signs away the rights to her image:
For a film about mediation and remediation, we understand that the old age makeup is a kind of fiction that not only puts us into the world of the film, but also gives us an opportunity to think about the fact that film represents anything but reality.
The medium is the message
That's all fine and good of course. The question that you must have, my dear reader, is why am I writing about the film in the context of animation? Well, just as Waltz with Bashir gets us to think about reality through surreality, The Congress asks us to contemplate the meaning of existence by producing a "realistic" world that defies imagination.
Going back to Wright, we see the film enter the dreamlike existence of animation in a manner that is very evocative of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
In the fiction of the film, Wright as become a figure who exists only in digital form, existing only to please audiences in terrible Hollywood remakes and blockbusters. In the "real world" of us as an audience, Wright becomes a literal animated figure for us to passively observe with our voyeuristic eyes. Her career as an actress is laid bare for us to see, and this cartoon version of herself in her late 60s is a perfect exposure of what we try to get when we watch films. Representations of reality, but not reality itself. Fiction, not fact.
Representation leads us to the larger theme of existentialism, as the film drops the Wright-as-actress storyline to focus on the fictional Wright's character as a woman separated from her family and ultimately, from reality.
Entering this "cartoon reality" is not as "simple" as entering some other dimension as in Roger Rabbit. Instead, characters in the world of The Congress take a hallucinogenic that brings them into a shared hallucination. We see Wright "see" her son for the final time in the film:
But since we are already seeing this through the lens of the cartoon world, we understand that she isn't really seeing him at all. Her perception of reality is already lost, and she exists in a world beyond reality.
We're left to think about what is real, and how we delude ourselves in our everyday lives in order to cope with whatever traumas that we have. In the case of the film, Wright has to deal with the fact that her son has a degenerative disease that will render him deaf and blind. She sees a cartoon representation of her son above, but we know that she'll never see him "in the flesh" ever again.
She wakes up from her hallucination to find that the whole world has entered a state of mass hallucination. Completely cut off from reality, people are free to live lives full of "freedom" and "choice".
People can be anything they want to be, projecting themselves onto a world that is always colourful and happy.
Even Wright finds a way to abandon herself to this mass delusion, culminating in one of the stranger animated sex scenes that I'll leave you to discover on your own.
This culminates with the film revealing the nature of the cartoon world through a neat match cut that Folman used in Waltz With Bashir, instantly shocking the viewer (and Wright) back into reality:
The film tells us that most of humanity has chosen to enter the mass hallucination of the cartoon world because, as we can see, it is better than the dreary reality that they find themselves in. It allows them to live out their lives in bliss and ignore the reality that they face.
It's a great gimmick to bring the film tumbling back down to "reality", as we begin to understand that the film is about us and how we treat existence just as much as it is a fictional film about a fictional Robin Wright dealing with her son's disease.
Discovering that her son doesn't exist in the "real world" anymore, she chooses to take the drug that will bring her back to the imaginary cartoon world in hopes that she might find her son again.
But as we discover in the final scene of the film, she finds her son in the only way that a parent can after she has lost him.
In her new hallucination, she finds her son in her memory. But she doesn't simply remember him, she hallucinates herself as him and becomes her son: (spoiler image) http://i.imgur.com/QSMvT7Ll.jpg.
It's a final note that offers a sense of false optimism. In a world with poor choices, we can only make the ones that allows us to cope with the nature of our existence. There isn't a clear happy ending, but it isn't necessarily a "sad" ending. The film just ends on a pause, in a moment that can only exist in the imagination and in a state between realities. Just as the film wants to remind us that, since we are watching a film, there is no difference between the dreariness of Wright's "real world" and the fantasy of Wright's "cartoon world". Both are equally valid points of view, even the completely surrealistic ending that defies grounding in reality whatsoever.
In the end
As a film that uses animation to help us meditate on the nature of existence, The Congress is a wonderful followup to Waltz With Bashir. It is a film that challenges us to think about the film and the world at large through the visual medium in a way that is anything but subtle. Animation and the film camera each ask of us the same thing, albeit in different ways: suspend disbelief and join the director as they take us on a narratively fulfilling journey. Folman collapses both techniques together to ask us to think not only about how film functions, but how we live our lives.
Villain gives us an expo dump on the primordial majin and why they want to take Dragon Bone from Earth. It's fairly by the numbers but works well and eventually leads to Iron Dragon Bone. Now that the whole group has upgraded to iron it'll be interesting to see where the series goes from here as most of the villains aren't iron bones outside of the head bad guy.
Not having seen this film, I can't make any intelligent comments on this post, but I do want to thank you for writing such a detailed and interesting one. In its use of animation to explore escapism and the construction of imaginary worlds for ourselves to live in, there seems to be parallels that can be drawn between this film and the work of Satoshi Kon.
Damn, this episode had fantastic visuals (not that they're lacking in this show to begin with). Also was one of the most interesting/entertaining ones yet.
How has this show stayed so consistently good? Most shows I watch that hit the 50 episode range always tend to have a point I feel like I could sleep through but not so with this series.
The only compliant I possibly have is that I wish there were more Pop episodes.
How has this show stayed so consistently good? Most shows I watch that hit the 50 episode range always tend to have a point I feel like I could sleep through but not so with this series.
The only compliant I possible have is there I wish there were more Pop episodes.
Not having seen this film, I can't make any intelligent comments on this post, but I do want to thank you for writing such a detailed and interesting one. In its use of animation to explore escapism and the construction of imaginary worlds for ourselves to live in, there seems to be parallels that can be drawn between this film and the work of Satoshi Kon.
Great write up. I confess to skipping parts so as not to get too spoiled but thanks for putting this on my radar. Really liked Waltz with Bashir and it's good to see another movie from Folman. Will try to get a hold of this.
Woah, after 2 or 3 episodes Ichise finally graced me with the sound of his voice. I think those 8 uttered sentences might be more than he spoke in all episodes till now. With him being bit more talkative now, I'm curious whether they will return to explain the events from the first episode. The woman who got him FMA'd didn't reappear even once.
Lewd and disturbing episode. The way Toyama is getting abused both by his father and the mob boss. -_-
Sunday Without God Blu Ray/DVD Hybrid is on sale via Crunch ends up being $39.99? Still a bit on the steep side but considering I was debating ordering it at $50? Yeah $40 is a no brainer
So finally a contender for working for me has shown up.... for show with the worst female character ever added that took a good show into complete garbage territory :/
Five is a terrible character, everything she has done has made the show worse so far.... the show is going to have to have a super amazing twist with her to even remotely justify her existence at this point, but alas I feel it's far more likely that our detective that was in the right will instead get punished while Five continues to be pure evil and not even remotely try to hide being pure evil and continue to have the police and fbi backing -_-
How has this show stayed so consistently good? Most shows I watch that hit the 50 episode range always tend to have a point I feel like I could sleep through but not so with this series.
The only compliant I possibly have is that I wish there were more Pop episodes.
Great write up. I confess to skipping parts so as not to get too spoiled but thanks for putting this on my radar. Really liked Waltz with Bashir and it's good to see another movie from Folman. Will try to get a hold of this.
So finally a contender for working for me has shown up.... for show with the worst female character ever added that took a good show into complete garbage territory :/
Five is a terrible character, everything she has done has made the show worse so far.... the show is going to have to have a super amazing twist with her to even remotely justify her existence at this point, but alas I feel it's far more likely that our detective that was in the right will instead get punished while Five continues to be pure evil and not even remotely try to hide being pure evil and continue to have the police and fbi backing -_-
about what? there was no kidding/joking at all. Five is a terrible character, one of the worst I have ever seen added to a previously good series.
I didn't like her when she was introduced and she continues to just get worse and worse to the point where if the show didn't have only 4 episodes left I would likely be dropping it because of her. She makes Lisa look like an amazing character, which is a tough thing to do @_@ (well not really... Lisa is pretty useless, but useless is way better then actively making a show worse )
There is a bad one?
The original universe movies (first movie and innocence) are artsy and to me aren't that interesting but are worth watching for the art alone.
both stand alone complex series are great, as is the solid state society movie (skip the others they are just recaps)
I haven't watched the most recent series arise though, so I am not sure if that one is quality, but the rest are.
And definitely watch Waltz with Bashir. It's much more accessible than The Congress, and when you find out how it was made, it becomes a really amazing story in and of itself.
about what? there was no kidding/joking at all. Five is a terrible character, one of the worst I have ever seen added to a previously good series.
I didn't like her when she was introduced and she continues to just get worse and worse to the point where if the show didn't have only 4 episodes left I would likely be dropping it because of her. She makes Lisa look like an amazing character, which is a tough thing to do @_@ (well not really... Lisa is pretty useless, but useless is way better then actively making a show worse )
ah, I have a cold right now so I am having problems detecting things like normal
at least one of the guys she was talking to had decent English.
I think the main reason I am so disappointed is the talent behind the show in general... if it wasn't Shinichirō Watanabe and Yoko Kanno (I know she doesn't really have anything to do the story/characters and the music in general has been good as expected but still she rises my expectations of a show in general a little ) I might be a bit more forgiving.... either way I am just hoping for some massive payoff and soon, but alas I feel it's likely that terror is going to be the second watanabe directed show I don't like (the first being space dandy (which is a show I am hoping to hear the second season is better and I might give it a second chance.... I actually liked most of the cast of space dandy I just found the plots of most of the episodes through the first 6-7 to be very boring or very stupid))
note: I haven't seen Macross Plus yet (the only thing he directed that I haven't seen) so it could be retroactively added as my first chronological release wise if I ever get around to watching it.
Might've misread the Memory Alpha entry. Her official database entry is great though:
Among the crew personnel, M'Ress is well-liked and includes among her close friends Uhura and Nurse Christine Chapel. The distinctive "purr" in her voice is immediately arresting when she speaks, and she is a popular actress in the ship's small theatre company.
While Starfleet's duty uniform for females in the 23rd century provides no problems in regard to M'Ress' tail, long dress uniforms, duty coveralls, and other such clothing have to be tailored to accommodate the appendage.
