Guillotine

So right off the bat the name might give someone false impressions of this show… I mean… School Rumble??? You might think it’s another Ikki Tousen type of show (which is funny that the name would be more fitting to ikki tousen), but no there is very little rumbling in School Rumble. Rather than a fighting show it is a romantic comedy with extra emphasis on the comedy. While there is some fighting it is mostly in parody of other more serious shows (Japanese period dramas in particular). The anime is based on the manga of the same name by Jin Kobayashi, and they have been pretty faithful to the style and source material.

To describe the plot is a rather tall order… A girl named Tenma Tsukamato is in love with the class geek Karasama while the class delinquent Kenji Harima is in love with Tenma. Already starting off with a love triangle is usually enough for most shows, but School Rumble has only gotten started. You also have Haruki Hanai who is in love with Tenma’s sister Yakumo, and of course the Japanese tradition of using last names causes tons of misunderstandings between Harima and Hanai. Not to mention the rest of Tenma’s friends and class thrown into the mix. It’s one crazy situation after another on a non stop roller coaster ride.

At first the extreme slapstick comedy of this show might seem a bit much and way too over the top, but once you come to understand the physics of the world you’ll just accept that these things could happen there. It’s kinda like The Three Stooges and The Little Rascals got together and invaded Japan.

One interesting aspect of this show is the dub. I’ve always said that this show has one of the best English dubs ever created, and it actually fits the characters better than the original Japanese dub. The characters are so good that you can’t help but like them all. They get to feel like family, and it’s a show you wish had continued. Alas we only got two full seasons consisting of 52 episodes plus 2 OVAs. There was a pseudo third season which was only two episodes meant to end the series, but they kind of fell flat with those, and personally I like to pretend they never existed, and that somewhere the series continues on. Since those two final episodes never released in the US it’s quite easy to pretend they were just a bad dream and not real.

If you want to check out School Rumble for yourself all the episodes are streaming on Funimation’s site free, and the DVDs are way lower now than when I purchased them. I whole heartedly recommend that everyone watch this series… At least twice. I personally think this is one of the funniest shows ever created.

Oh… Almost forgot… The show has a really cool soundtrack as well. The music in the whole series is pretty amazing.

The Kiss X Sis TV series which broadcast during the 2010 Spring anime season was quite bold, offensive, inappropriate, and just downright hilarious. Most people by now should be familiar with the manga series and the OVAs this show is based on, so to keep the story short…

Keita Suminoe is a middle school student in a curious situation. He has twin step sisters Ako and Riko who are completely infatuated with him. The sisters are a year older than him, and the storyline of the TV series is about how Keita is trying to study so that he can pass the entrance exam and be accepted into the same high school his sisters attend. Basically continuing right where the first 3 OVAs left off.

While the OVAs mostly dealt with how Keita related to his sisters the TV series goes a little more towards a harem setting by introducing several new female characters to add even more mayhem to the already outrageous circumstances. Included are: Mikazuki Kiryū who is a loli-ish underclassman at Keita’s school, Yuzuki Kiryū who is Mikazuki’s older sister as well as Ako and Riko’s high school home room teacher, and finally another of Keita’s school mates Mikuni Miharu who seems to have a bladder control issue (to a hilarious although sometimes gag inducing extent).

The show was quite a bit bolder than I expected from a broadcast, and aside from the blatant censoring (which involved the strategic placement of chickens and teddy bears) the show was not any less steamy that the OVAs were. It seemed that each week the show attempted to top the previous episodes outrageousness (to good effect I might add). The show definitely pushed limits of comedy as well as bad taste. There is also an OVA that was released during the series which fits between episode 9 and 10 which takes us out of the realm of implied incest between non blood related siblings to actual yuri incest between the sisters. I hope readers will take that last line as either: a spoiler, a warning, or a reason to watch… I leave it up to you to choose which.

While I will say that the show is not exactly the most well made show it does keep you coming back just to find out what insane thing will happen next. If you are a fan of this type of comedy (I guess the term “potty humor” fits) then you will definitely enjoy the show. Someone more conservative may just find it offensive. Personally I found it all quite hilarious. I admit in real life most of the things in this show would disgust me, but hey… It’s just animation, and being politically correct all the time is quite boring.

There is also a 5th OVA scheduled for September (if I remember correctly), and it’s pretty much guaranteed that I’ll be watching… If for no other reason than just to see how far they are willing to stretch the limits in this series.

So I wrote about the V reboot about a year ago, and haven’t written any more updates simply because I talked to someone who had seen an advance screening of the pilot around the beginning of this year, and he described it as “unwatchable”, so I wasn’t really looking forward to it after that. I assume they have worked on it quite a bit since then because the aired pilot was rather watchable. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was good, but it was alright. The show has some potential if the writers don’t get weird. Of course Sci-fi writers always tend to get weird don’t they?

As far as the visual aspect of the show… It looks like they were betting a lot on the visuals with large sweeping pans of the ships, but… Maybe if this show had aired 6 years ago it may have been more impressive. They didn’t really do anything breathtaking, or anything that wasn’t already done in BSG. I did like that there was an Independence Day reference in the show though.

The cast is pretty good so far, and were quite believable. The story has some potential if as I mentioned above the writers don’t go off on a weird tangent, and simply stick to the plot that has been laid out. For those expecting a simple retelling of the original series you may be disappointed. As I mentioned in the last article I wrote (here) this story is quite different than the old series. The 80′s series was based on a World War II perspective with a very similar story to the German Holocaust. The new story is based more on well… What the current hot topic in the world is… Terrorism. I did like the way they placed the Visitors on Earth decades before the ships appear thus the UFO nuts that people have been laughing at for years turn out to be the base of the resistance force, and that they really weren’t crazy all this time.

If I had to do a comparative analysis… The original series to me was always like The A-Team with laser guns. The new series I’d say is more like 24… With laser guns (although I haven’t seen any actual laser guns yet… The new Visitors seem to like bladed weapons).

ABC is reportedly getting ready to begin a reboot of the 80s series “V”.

For those that don’t remember back to 1983 it was a weekly series that chronicled how an army of alien lizards disguised under a human skin take over the earth. Appearing at first to be friendly rodent eating visitors that only want help to save their world they soon proceed to take over ours. Oh yeah… Turns out they eat more than just rodents. The series revolved around a group of “rebels” who attempt to thwart the aliens plans and save the people of earth from becoming late night snacks.

The original series was modeled after the WWII holocaust, but the new version is taking a different approach in that the story will show the way masses of humans will blindly follow their leaders.

The new series like the original is being produced by Warner Bros although the writer/producer/director of the original series Kenneth Johnson will not be involved with the rebooted franchise.

No news as of this posting about when we can expect the new V to be broadcast.

V – The Complete Series is available on DVD for purchase at Amazon for those that would like to catch the original.