Random Anime Theatre?

Though it's not my intention to do too much non-gaming material, a friend and I engaged in a fun experiment last night. Sitting down with a stack of bargain anime, we decided to go through the stack - organized more or less randomly - from top to bottom, and we got...

The Sword of Truth: Yet another gory period piece trying to bill itself to the Ninja Scroll fandom, The Sword of Truth certainly knows what it wants to show. Lots of blood , sex, and general nudity follows in its wake, but the plot is paper-thin and there's nary an interesting character to be found. Add in glaring danglers and you have probably the worst anime of the night, featuring an unstoppable protagonist that runs around cutting faceless ninja apart for sixty minutes while women throw themselves at his feet. Ugh.

Master Keaton: Probably the best of the night, Master Keaton is a subdued anime about a surprisingly resourceful insurance agent of Lloyd's of London. Unlike many anime that use European settings and themes, this one seems to largely get it right, and has a profoundly likable protagonist. It seems largely episodic, though by the end of the DVD (and the five episodes therein) it seems like it might take an interesting turn. Wouldn't mind seeing more of those someday at all.

Orguss 02: Or, more properly, The Super Dimension Century Orguss 02. I've never seen the original which his is an apparent sequel to, and though I was bored by the first few episodes (it comes across as a rather dull mecha show at first) the turns it takes in the last few really helped turn it into something more interesting. With the full OAV series on one disc, it's much better than I expected, an at least left me mildly curious about the original Orguss, which is apparently tied into the Macross and Southern Cross series in a marketing sense if not an actual story sense.

Sorcerer On the Rocks: This entry into the "wacky swords n' sorcery" genre doesn't really succeed in any sense. Though some of the gags are funny, the sub-dom angle it seems to try and push between two characters just didn't amuse me nearly as much as it seems to amuse the writers. And though I expect anime comedies to be filled with cardboard cutouts like you find in this one, they're rarely so dull and uninteresting. It should be noted that this DVD contains an interactive portion which is even more inane and annoying than most interactive DVDs. Thankfully, this series is slain after only two episodes.

Shinesman: Or, more properly, Special Duty Combat Unit Shinesman. Though short, the gag of salarymen as a literal sentai team is a good one, and there's a lot of fun in these two episodes. With their alien adversaries also holding day jobs, there's a lot of comedic potential that is sadly, cut short. While it's not going to win any awards for plot or characterization, making fun of sentai shows rarely gets old, and this is one of the best parodies of the genre I've seen.

Queen Emeraldas: This spinoff of the anime space opera Captain Harlock didn't really do much for me. Though the animation is top-notch (dated CG sequences and a freeze-frame action scene or two aside), it seems to rely more on the viewer having a fondness for the preceding material like Galaxy Express 999 than actually delivering something that stands on its own. Very much style over substance, in any case. Notably, the long-winded Emeraldas monologues are deeply hokey even for something like this.

Red Hawk: This dull Dragonball / Fist of the North Star ripoff comes ready-to-bore right out of Korea. Though it tries to be a period martial-arts piece, it feels like every boring Saturday morning cartoon you forgot after being a kid, only with more cussing. Only its at weak attempts to offer up humor and characterization kept it from being the worst of the night, but it's a hard one to sit through at a painful ninety minutes.

Puppet Princess: This was a good one to end the night on. Good animation, charming protagonists, and the fun puppet gimmick help overshadow the crepe paper-thin revenge plot. Also notable for vacillating between deeply creepy backstory and wacky sexual tension hijinx in the space of about five minutes. I'd love to have seen more of this, but alas, forty minutes is all we get.

We still barely dented the huge stack of bargain anime, so this'll probably pop up again in time, and I'll report on our findings once more.

Maelstrom, Part 2

Yeah, it took me two years to get around to. I at least beat Lucas in timeliness, I suppose. But there's a lot of half-finished Maelstrom material lying about, so here goes. If you haven't seen the original post, have a look back here. Most of the material to be presented today is in the ancient Wordperfect format, which hopefully your native word processor can translate. Microsoft Word seems to manage it, at least. If people call for it, I'll see about translating this to a friendlier format.

When we originally designed this all under the GURPS system, we each took up specific lands and detailed them ourselves. Though the original outline was done by our GM, it was up to us to actually outline and detail our respective lands. Mine was Arbor, which I wrote up as a sentient land / jungle, complete with a 'reaction table' for the land itself. Ironically, this made most players terrified to take their characters there... and looking back at it, I should have probably made the table less risky or at least had people start with a 'base' reaction instead of rolling.

I still like the idea of riding giant stick insects, though. And here you have it:

Maelstrom - Arbor

Char was supposed to be a land that had been destroyed by the pollution of another country - Machina. Essentially, it was supposed to be the "land of all things dark and spiky", as one friend put it. It was honestly never detailed much... it's a blasted land for tough, mean, survivy thnigs, really. I ended up doing a fair deal of shoe-horning when adapting it for my own purposes - apologies to the original designer.

Maelstrom - Char

Crossroads was your generic human kingdom. In this setting, I intended humans as the ultimate diplomats in this setting. Back when I did it, the idea of giving humans racial benefits seemed like such a groundbreaking thing to do... but now D&D does it as well, if generically. But Crossroads was intended as a starting point for any Maelstrom campaign, and it shows. It's your archetypical fantasy hodgepodge where trade rules all, though looking back at it, I rather like the detail on the military orders and the like.

Maelstrom - Crossroads

I've got more sitting around - Hivehome, the insect kingdom, Kyrithia, the floating kingdom, Machina, the city of iron, Malign, the heart of darkness, etc. I'll try and see to putting up Part 3 and 4 before my next two years are up.

And There Would Come a Reckoning...

I've decided to get this ball rolling again. Why I let it slide for two years... I couldn't tell you. I've got a lot of ideas that have yet to find a home, and this little boardinghouse (or is that shantytown) for them'll have to do. I'll be starting out with a look back at some of my earlier posts from two years ago, and occasionally cringing. Why? Well, for one, it's a lazy way to avoid having to write new things, but for two, there's a fair deal for these past bits that never got released. The name of the blog has gone from Crunchy Bits to Rules Tweak, largely so I can have a cleaner blogspot.com address, and I'll probably be fiddling with the layout over time. And, of course, I have some interesting thoughts to inflict on you all. Just you wait! You'll see! I'll show you all!