![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shesanowheregirlI am a geek; I've accepted it. However, my geekdom is mostly confined to comics (online and a few in paper form), the Discovery Channel and animation (Disney and Avatar). However, there are a few anime that I do enjoy going back and watching old episodes. They are mostly stuff from my 'Anime-phase' around fifth or sixth or seventh grade, like Cardcaptor Sakura, Sailor Moon, Vision of Escaflowne, Outlaw Star, Blue Seed and anything Miyazaki. Needless to say, I'm not a diehard fan, I don't cosplay, and I don't speak Japanese (more on that in a bit).
But two days ago, I just had the urge to watch Cardcaptor Sakura. So, I watched my favorite episodes, wikipedia-ed the show so I could find my favorite episodes, and stumbled in a show I'd heard of but never really though about call Tsubasa Chronicle. The creators of CCS (Cardcaptor Sakura) are super-famous in Japan and have written a whole bunch of 'manga,' to use the correct term, and Tsubasa Chronicle is a giant crossover of everything they've done with the CCS characters as two of the main characters. Now, some references to other works baffle me, the character designs are really lanky, and I think the plot's kind of slow at parts (more on that later, too), but overall, I really like it. I really love the music, especially the theme music, and despite the character's lankiness, the animation is gorgeous. Also, the story is really interesting and I forgive the slowness because I see a lot of potential for awesome later.
Now, on the subject of Japanese. There was a time that I wanted to learn Japanese (during the Anime-phase), so I know about 5 words or so from that endeavor. But after watching all these episodes in Japanese, I can understand a sizable chunk of what is spoken. I'm not about to start stringing sentences together, but I can look away from the subtitles and understand certain small sentences. Now I just need to start watching some French shows to help me out in that department.
Back to the slow plot. The first episode of Tsubasa Chronicle and most anime I've seen was very fast and frenzied and exciting, but then by the second episode, it gets into this slow pace with a lot of filler episodes. There are a few exceptions, but in the anime I've seen, you can skip episodes 2 through 15 (of 26 in a season) and not miss anything. It's around this time that the big villain is revealed and something about someone's mysterious past comes out, but before then, it's just monster-of-the-week with very little overall plot. In Tsubasa Chronicle, the main characters have to do some inter-dimensional traveling to find shards of the princesses memory. So far, I've seen ten episodes and they've only been to two dimensions. I really think they could have done 2 episode arcs here instead of 4 or 5 episode arcs, especially in this part of the season.
This is what I like about American programming. Since a lot of new shows don't make it past season 1 (or even sometimes all the way through season 1), the creators know they have to keep it interesting and get enough plot in there in case their show is cancelled. In Japan, they can be much more leisurely because most anime come from manga and they're not going to get cancelled. As much as I love the few anime I watch, it is this filler that keeps me from being a real big fan.
But two days ago, I just had the urge to watch Cardcaptor Sakura. So, I watched my favorite episodes, wikipedia-ed the show so I could find my favorite episodes, and stumbled in a show I'd heard of but never really though about call Tsubasa Chronicle. The creators of CCS (Cardcaptor Sakura) are super-famous in Japan and have written a whole bunch of 'manga,' to use the correct term, and Tsubasa Chronicle is a giant crossover of everything they've done with the CCS characters as two of the main characters. Now, some references to other works baffle me, the character designs are really lanky, and I think the plot's kind of slow at parts (more on that later, too), but overall, I really like it. I really love the music, especially the theme music, and despite the character's lankiness, the animation is gorgeous. Also, the story is really interesting and I forgive the slowness because I see a lot of potential for awesome later.
Now, on the subject of Japanese. There was a time that I wanted to learn Japanese (during the Anime-phase), so I know about 5 words or so from that endeavor. But after watching all these episodes in Japanese, I can understand a sizable chunk of what is spoken. I'm not about to start stringing sentences together, but I can look away from the subtitles and understand certain small sentences. Now I just need to start watching some French shows to help me out in that department.
Back to the slow plot. The first episode of Tsubasa Chronicle and most anime I've seen was very fast and frenzied and exciting, but then by the second episode, it gets into this slow pace with a lot of filler episodes. There are a few exceptions, but in the anime I've seen, you can skip episodes 2 through 15 (of 26 in a season) and not miss anything. It's around this time that the big villain is revealed and something about someone's mysterious past comes out, but before then, it's just monster-of-the-week with very little overall plot. In Tsubasa Chronicle, the main characters have to do some inter-dimensional traveling to find shards of the princesses memory. So far, I've seen ten episodes and they've only been to two dimensions. I really think they could have done 2 episode arcs here instead of 4 or 5 episode arcs, especially in this part of the season.
This is what I like about American programming. Since a lot of new shows don't make it past season 1 (or even sometimes all the way through season 1), the creators know they have to keep it interesting and get enough plot in there in case their show is cancelled. In Japan, they can be much more leisurely because most anime come from manga and they're not going to get cancelled. As much as I love the few anime I watch, it is this filler that keeps me from being a real big fan.
