I am going to clump all the recent video media consumption in here.
Susan and I went and saw Rango. It was okay. I remember thinking in the middle of it that I would like to take the story and improve on it. There are a lot of interesting things about it, but they don’t really mesh well. Johnny Depp seems to have this manic personality that he can draw out for roles like Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Sparrow, which comes out for Rango as well.
I will say this, ILM first foray into a full animation feature is pretty good. The textures in the movie are nice, and they have a lot of leeway with character movement, considering the species makeup of the cast.
Using the highly undocumented maiki rating system, I would say this movie is entertaining and beautiful.
Over the weekend we finished the first season of Spice and Wolf (which you can watch on YouTube, among other places).
This was a pleasant surprise. It has an interesting concept, a well-detailed world that is explained at a decent pace, and a plot that had me re-reading subtitles multiple times to understand what was going on. In fact, I may be infatuated with this series because it had me confused and unsure multiple times throughout. I still don’t know what happened in some of the arcs, but I normally watch things multiple times, so I let it slide. I would say it is interesting and beautiful.
Last night I had Susan start Initial D (also on YouTube). I had just finished the second season, and I was surprised at the development, in both story and the characters. I thought it was about drifting, a ridiculous luxury that I like watching in video games and movies, but it turns out it probably more along the lines of one or more coming-of-age stories.
Also, there is a conversation at the end of season two that foreshadows the later seasons that got me really excited, so I decided Susan needed to watch it with me.
The animation is odd in the first season, and hard to get used to, but still slightly better, in the second season. All the cars are rendered rather than drawn, which is obviously a better way to produce the show. When they combine the CG cars with the animation, both suffer. Because of that I think this series is interesting and adequate.
I watch Initial D to decompress after work, but now I want Susan to catch up, so I am going to turn to some other series I have queued up. I really want to catch up on everything Slayers, but I also have a lot of manga to read and a few books that may help me relax (I really should read more fiction writing).