You guys probably heard by now, but Supernatural is being made into an anime series!
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news...nched-in-japan |
I didn't know that. Sounds like a good idea, actually. Wonder if they'll change the lore and legends to reflect a more Asian mythology?
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From what they're saying while it will largely draw on the show, it will have original villains and episodes. Dean and Sam vs Oiwa sounds great, actually XD
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INTERESTING. This could be awesome...it could be REALLY bad too. |
I'm being cautiously optimistic, Madhouse is the studio who's doing it. I wasn't a Death Note fan but at the same time it seems like it should be right up their alley.
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Hmmm ... I have a cautious "wait and see" attitude. The Wikipedia Supernatural article does mention a release schedule for Japan.
Meanwhile, I've been clicking through the episodes my DVR have been collecting, watching and deleting them as fast as I can, and I currently have 19 episodes in queue. Of those, I have 10 to watch before I get to "Lucifer Rising" which is the last episode of season five and the natural end to the series story arc ... and then I have "Pilot" to watch so from the 12th episode in queue on, I'll be starting from the series beginning. Also, I've chosen not to delete two episodes, "Ghostfacers" and "Monster Movie" ... because they're both a bit different stylistically, they both amuse the hell out of me and they both stand rather independent of the ongoing story arc ("Monster Movie" even does away with the standard "what has gone before" flashback intro) so they might serve as a good introduction to the series for friends, as long as I explain that. Plus, I think I will be watching them again sometime soon. |
Sam: "You seem pretty cheery."
Dean: "Strippers, Sammy. Strippers. We are on an actual case involving strippers. Finally." Ahahahahahahahahahaha! |
I am having nightmares of Dean running around copping feels and looking up skirts while his nose bleeds uncontrollably.
As the show focus's heavily on Christian mythos, I'm also wondering how the Japanese will handle that. They have a tendency to just make shit up and slap biblical characters in just because they think it's cool and exotic. But yeah, Ghostfacers is awesome. Have you checked out the webseries? |
Well, its only going to be the first two seasons that are covered. The first season wasn't too heavy in Christian mythos, and I admittedly can't remember the second season very well but I can only remember them dealing with demons. There's been a few animes that are something like Supernatural (Mononoke is about a demon hunter, Ghost Hunt had, well, ghost hunters who dealt with different types of spirits every week), so I bet it's mostly its going to be a monster of the week type thing.
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As long as it's not a "monster of the weak" type thing, I'm interested.
Speaking of monster of the week, that reminds me that I need to buy the original Night Stalker series on Amazon. I saw it got pretty cheap recently. |
Dammit! Dammit dammit dammit!
I just finished "Lucifer Rising" and see the next episode I have in the DVR queue is "Pilot" ... so I've finished season 4, ending on the most dramatic cliffhanger imaginable, the expected release of Lucifer on earth and the start of the Apocalypse ... and now I've got season one to watch because TNT does not have rights to show season 5 yet. Well, I guess I know what I'm ordering on Netflix next. Season five DVD's, coming up! LOL! |
K, so I finally got around to watching some, and consider 7 episodes a good enough run to decide it’s utter crap. Just a few of the things that sucked about it:
- Why is virtually every episode structured around them helping and saving a young attractive female? Seriously, every single one I’ve seen so far, to the point where you can pratically guess who’s gonna die and who’s not in the openers based on the criteria for the person they will eventually rescue. The only time this worked okay was in the one with that chick who used to play Fred in Angel – at least she can act well enough to not embarrass herself every time she opens her trap, which bring me to my next point....... - While Desp already mentioned that the show doesn’t maintain a consistent standard of acting with the weekly incidental characters, I feel that these words constitute an understatement so gross in magnitude I literally will not sleep tonight if I don’t amend them: the extras are, almost without exception, fucking atrocious..... - ..... Which wouldn’t be so bad if the dialogue weren’t so utterly uninspired. The bright spots were so few and far between, I really didn’t find the overall hamminess worth the wait. (Although I must admit, I did snort at Dean being restrained by cops while Sam did his po-faced shit by some forgettable victim’s hospitable bed, straining over going, “Yeah, there he is, I’m here for my brother. [big bright smile & wave] Brother!” ........ Okay, so not exactly Heller-worthy, but eh, it’s the way ya tell ‘em.) - The sibling relationship was completely and utterly underdeveloped, and any potentially interesting avenues were quickly squashed to leave a formulaic process of two total bros-for-life hugging in the shower for approximately 85% of every episode. I was wondering if the doppelganger episode, when the monster takes on not only Dean’s face but his memories and resentments, was setting up some satisfying monster as metaphor angle, but nope – all forgotten the second the scene finished. The sad thing is, the writers obviously TRIED to pursue the monster as metaphor thing now and again (e.g. episode 7, the preacher hook-monster entity as a functionary of repressed revenge fantasy), but the substance when they attempt this kind of thing is so thin it’d lose an ana-comp with the cast of 90210. - ** SPOILER** (probably doing any potential viewers a favour by ruining the pilot BEFORE they devote 40 mins of their life to it, but what the hell, I’m a fucking nice guy) Not that I would normally demand this from an otherwise satisfying viewing experience, but since they were clearly gagging to saturate the whole thing in sentiment, why did Sam get over the murder of his girlfriend so quickly? It was literally like: Step 1: dead loved one on ceiling bleeding all over his fucking FACE, which I think we can all agree would suck and lays the groundwork for some interesting repercussions which it then utterly fails to deliver; step 2: Sam chooses to take this out on the token skeptic in the following episode by bumping shoulders with him one time, like you did with that big kid you were too scared to fight properly but too much of a jackass to just walk away from in 2nd grade; step 3: Dean’s subsequent intervention, which lasts about eight seconds and contains all the emotional depth of a trip to Walmart, apparently fixes the problem; step 4: insert the occasional nightmare at random intervals to cover writer’s asses against charges of underplaying the whole love of Sam’s life being fucking DEAD thing. Otherwise, he is perfectly fine and barely seems to remember he ever HAD a girlfriend - except for the aforementioned nightmares, which I’m guessing are more about setting up the fact that we’ll soon discover Sam’s a seer or some shit, than the lingering trauma he’s otherwise clearly totally cool with. Seriously, I think Gothicus set the bar too high in offering Breaking Bad and Mad Men as shows which piss over Supernatural. Fucking Buffy makes it look inspired. The most annoying thing is, in the hands of good writers, this could be a pretty cool way to waste 40 minutes. Seeing something like that is somehow more frustrating than watching something with no redeeming features whatsoever. Whew, that was long. Still, considering I only persevered with something I probably would have quit on by halfway through episode 2 on the basis of the praise given in this thread, I’m now a man of many grievances. |
I can't say I disagree with any point you make, and I'll admit that I watch it as a guilty pleasure while making a lot of allowances. It's true it has at its core the potential to be much more.
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I am sorry you felt like it wasted some 280-odd minutes of your time. No, not felt ... it was a waste of your time. |
In fairness, much of the time I spend at work is essentially wasted, since there's very little to do besides look pretty. Luckily I was able to fit these into work hours, or definitely wouldn't have stuck it out for so long. At this point, it's more the principle than anything.
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And although Desp did acknowledge numerous shortcomings, he also compared it to the work of Neil Gaiman, who I've never read but have heard is pretty damn good. That's false advertising in my book. Motherfucker owes me a dime. ;) |
Yeah but he compared it to an episode in the last season, and I didn't follow it enough at first to tell you when, but it definitely got a billion times better. I didn't really start liking it until somewhere in the fourth season and didn't care enough for the first and second season to watch it. I think the first season they weren't really sure who their fanbase was or where they were going with it, and relied heavily on tired old tropes like damsels in distress, or the one I personally hate the most, utterly bitchy and hateful women who are supposed to be hot?
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M y experience was similar. I thought the 3rd and 4th season episodes I saw were interesting, but the 1st season episodes seemed very formulaic.
By the way, AC, there's a lot of programs on TV that have a good idea at the core of them but don't end up as good as most of us think they ought to. Television, more than any other medium, forces so many compromises on the creative process that I'm amazed anything good gets on the air at all. So I'm probably more forgiving of "oh what could have been" shows than you are. Mostly because I have no desire to go write television shows myself. I was going to ask you about that, but you answered with the fanfiction line. I do have a question for you, though. If the episodes of this show that you saw were crap, and Buffy is a notch above that, what in your opinion is a good prime-time live action supernatural ghost/monster hunter type of show? I'm not asking to be sarcastic, but to get your honest opinion. |
So is it worth starting with series 3? Is the quality of the storylines drastically different, or just marginally?
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Last series I watched was Breaking Bad after getting it recommended - to be fair, most things were going to suck compared to that. Quote:
That's not to say a good movie or TV show can't ever be as good as a good novel in and of itself. Just that I think I'd bust a vein in my temple even in the unlikely event that I were lucky enough to catch a break doing that. Quote:
As for your (very specific) question, I guess the only thing that really springs to mind are certain episodes of Angel. Somewhere between shameless attempts to emotionally manipulate the viewer and disappearing up its own ass, I think that show occasionally struck gold. EDIT: You may think I'm stretching this a bit, but I thik the inclusion of Dr. Who would also be justifiable, since most the aliens are essentially monsters. |
Nobody talks shit about Buffy, I will wreck your ass.
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From the Wikipedia article Supernatural (season 3) (which also includes an episode guide): WritingI think the plotting of some of these stories rivals Buffy in quality ... but I'm with you on being of the opinion you have to make some allowances in consideration of the target audience. And the brothers never really talk to each other about their relationship or their feelings ... and that is frustrating. But based on what I've seen, if I wanted to get someone into this series, I'd start them on season 3 ... not season 1. Quote:
BTW, to answer my own question, the only other show I could think of was the original "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" series. That was an interesting show for its time, although it stuck to a pretty formulaic methodology: each week the veteran news reporter stumbles across the evidence of a possible monster and tries to report on the vampire/mummy/witch/whatever but his boss at the paper and the local politicians and other authorities laugh him out of their offices ... till he resolves the issue and stops the string of murders by killing/banishing the monster by the end of the show. The episode ends with a sardonic recap by our hapless scribe, as he recounts why the local authorities won't let him publish his latest story because it will embarrass them. I'm also sure it looks pretty dated now, the music screams bad 70's soundtrack and there's no way you believe Darren McGavin is the chick magnet they built him up to be ... but still, I liked it. In fact, I still recommend the made-for-tv movie "The Night Stalker" that inspired the series to friends as an example of a good vampire movie ... if you can get past that dated music. Stay away from the 2005 remake of that series, "Night Stalker" developed by Frank Spotnitz (previously a writer and producer on "The X-Files). And let's not get started on "The X-Files", shall we? Thanks. *edit* P.S. - My question was very specific because I wasn't looking for an anime series. |
Is someone implying that the first four seasons of the X-Files aren't exceptional television?
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On second thought, I think the series really started to get awesome when Castiel was introduced. He's so deadpan and its a wonderful balance to Sam's constant whining. The show does make fun if itself a lot but even when its trying to be serious Castiel just somehow lightens it all up.
And I don't know if my mind is in the gutter but I think they're very aware that fangirls love the idea of Dean and Castiel being together. You know, lines like "Castiel, blow me." Or when Castiel beat him up once it seems so passionate. Its little things like that that I love, and why I say it gets better once they realize who their fanbase is. I think Castiel was only meant to be temporary actually but fans loved him so much they made him a main character. |
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*sigh* - You're right ... at the beginning it was a very good show. And Saya ... Whoa! ... You just went in a direction I did not expect. |
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Honestly, even then it's more or less hanging around the stadium as opposed to being in the ballpark. I do agree that there is alot of wasted potential her (I'm hoping season six improves, because season 5's ending left alot to be desired in my opion) In the hands of a more capable writing staff (ie: one that includes me, and possibly David Milch) and a better network, it could've been legendary. The preminse is excellent, and the characters and relationships are there. I can't say if the flaws are the fault of the writing staff, or due to executive meddling (Though the episode about the necromancer working on a movie set makes me suspect the latter). |
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Or was it my love for Castiel? Because he is awesome. And so is Misha Collins, by far my favourite celeb to follow on Twitter. ETA: Actually, its a tie with LeVar Burton. |
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