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Right. Not exactly anime, I know.

Perhaps I’ve been overly influenced by the fact that a new comics store opened only three blocks away from me recently, but I’ve been on a tear through Transmetropolitan, DMZ, and The Walking Dead these last few weeks. And by tear my inference is that entire days, nay, whole weekends at a time have succumbed to their inky goodness.

Needless to say, my wallet hates me.

Then again, it probably hates you too. But that’s inconsequential. You’re not chained to the thing.

For me at least though, I enjoy the sheer physicality of holding a trade collection, or a book for that matter,  down to the smell of the ink and even paper cuts. Antiquated, I know. But coming across a recent tweet announcing that Joss Whedon’s X-men was going all moving picturish on Hulu put me in mind of this. It’s a remarkable example of the successful convergence of forms. A moving comic. Not animated mind you, simply moving. And frankly, the outcome is really pretty stunning.

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Tags: Aesthetiophilia, Pictoriphilia, Videophilia by Etruscan
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Heh. This may be some sort of twisted personal best, but I’ve just discovered that a Google search for ‘Dystopian Anime’ now returns this column on both pages 1 & 2 ( who knows, maybe others too, I got bored).

Leaving aside what that actually might imply about my posting, in honor of this achievement we’ll take a little departure this evening into the just purely off-kilter, as opposed to the slightly more linear and focused oddities that my coverage usually entails.

I recall some years ago, during the midst of my redbull-fueled Netflix addiction, one evening the nascent BoL Consortium was debating the wisdom of watching a movie. Alas, the only thing we had at our disposal was an as-yet-unheard-of by any of us anime by the name of Gantz. Within the first few minutes, there were several yelps from the back of the room in addition to some notable cringing. As Cash Money put it to me recently, “It starts bizarre and crass. And ends bizarre, crass, and unexplained.”

While his description is utterly on the mark (and I’ve had more than a few cringe-worthy moments myself with this series), nevertheless there are probably a few guilty moments of that internal monologue we’ve all had at one point or another. In a sense I appreciate the attempt to make the characters sympathetic by being unlikeable. It’s a tactic that has served a number of authors well (I’m looking at you Chuck Palahniuk!), and sort of a staple of the modern sense of absurdism. It’s interesting to see it translated to the anime form.
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Tags: Aesthetiophilia, Videophilia by Etruscan
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Ahh, now this should be interesting. I’ll go out on a limb (I swear, no pun intended.) tonight, as this is one I’m only now delving into (though it seems highly recommended). If you’re here with me tonight, then I’ve brought Hirotsugu Hamazaki’s Texhnolyze along. Class warfare, prosthetics, and consideration of a culture which has become overly obsessed with technology and the necessary human consequences of such, seem to be the order of the day. A bit like Repo in the anime form. Let’s watch together, shall we?

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Tags: Aesthetiophilia, Videophilia by Etruscan
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I was watching old episodes of The Animation Show the other night and suddenly realized I’d seen this almost a decade ago in a pizza parlor/movie house, and it’s been with me ever since.

Absolutely gorgeous. It’s amazing how some thing just keep up with you despite your best efforts.

Animation is by Jeremy Solterbeck, to whom I am now indebted.

Tags: Aesthetiophilia, Videophilia by Etruscan
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Neko and I took a walk yesterday in the first snowfall the city has seen this year. There was the obligatory snow throwing, and a couple of pirouettes, and a generally wonderful time was had by all. Me being me, it’s also a perfect opportunity for nostalgia and it got me thinking about the last time I’d enjoyed a winter so much. A couple years ago Gestalt turned me on to Monkey Dust during my stay with him further up the coast, and the experience completely flavored that entire year for me. I can no longer see a snowfall without the near-irresistible urge to break out in a British accent and speculate about what the the Church of England really needs to turn their image around. Below is yet more goodness from one of my personal favorite story arcs: Daddy and Timmy

There’s really too many insanely brilliant bits to do justice to in a single post. Suffice it to say that dark humor has never seemed so strangely comforting, especially after a good snowy walk down brick paved streets before the first cup of coffee.

I may just have to make this a yearly Holiday thing…

Tags: Aesthetiophilia, Politics by Etruscan
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