Stardate 20040118.1207

(Captain's log): I haven't posted for a while about the anime I've been watching, so I thought I'd catch up. Here's what's been on the menu recently:

CardCaptor Sakura: The Movie: As with a couple of other successful series, the creators of the TV show "CardCaptor Sakura" got the budget to make a movie, and it was in my local video store, so I picked it up. I didn't have very great expectations for it, given that my impression that the series was about a kawaii little girl who wears lots of kawaii costumes when engaging in an effort to recapture all kinds of critters which escaped from a book she opened by mistake, accompanied in this quest by a kawaii teddy bear with wings and... did I mention that it was all really very kawaii (cute)? Yeesh. So I was pretty sure I was in for an overdose of sweetness, but it didn't turn out to be anything like that sickening.

In fact it was quite good. As usual I watched it first with Japanese dialog and subtitles, and then watched it again with an English dub, and in this case in some ways the dub worked better because the voice used for the protagonist (Sakura) sounded older and more mature. She looks like she's about 7, but that appears to be more artistic style than anything. But the Japanese voice sounds really immature, and this works against the way that the character actually developed. She ended up acting much more mature than that would have implied, and the movie was better because of it.

On the other hand, though I liked the English dub voice for Sakura better, I thought that the script was dreadful. Sometimes the dub scripts include a few changes intended to make things less opaque to westerners who don't fully understand Japanese culture, but in this case they totally rewrote the story. It is not just that they presented it differently; it is completely different – and far worse. So I have to say that in this case the dub should definitely be avoided, except as an example of "how not to". But in the subtitled version, it was actually far better than I thought it would be.

It didn't fall into a hackneyed ending, nor was it consumed with angst like Rayearth: The Movie, and it didn't end up being a syrup-bath of kawaii-ness, so that was also a pleasant surprise. And I continue to be amazed by the artistic vision of Japanese animators; this movie is yet another treat for the eyes.

El Hazard: The Wanderers: Saw this as a boxed set and vaguely remembered positive comments about it, so I took it home. Then I looked up where I thought I'd seen those comments and discovered that they were for the OVA, not for what I'd bought. (Oh, well.)

Nonetheless, I did enjoy watching it. It's not first class, but it's far from a waste of time. Sometimes a series like this has a bad guy who is also ludicrous and annoying, and deliberately portrayed that way. Nanbara in Hand Maid May was like that, and I guess the point is to set up dramatic conflict without scaring the crap out of the audience by making the villain be a joke. So it was in this series, and his name is Jinnae, and he's a real jerk. He engages in plots which are worthy of Yosemite Sam or the Coyote, with about as much success in most cases, and his voice grates. It didn't take me too long to reach the point of fast-forwarding through most of the scenes he dominated.

It's a tried-and-true formula: people from Earth tossed into a magic land, trying to survive and figure out a way to get home. (On that level it's nearly the same story as Those who hunt elves though the two series' have little else in common.) There's a certain element of contrivance in the series and some wish-fulfillment, but in general it works pretty well.

I guess I would say that it's worth watching if there's nothing better available. I can't enthusiastically recommend it but don't really dis-recommend it either.

Serial Experiments Lain: But you probably shouldn't get to the point of watching it, because there are definitely better things available, and this is one of them. I state forthrightly that this is the best anime I've now watched, on almost every level. If the imagery in CardCaptor Sakura: The Movie was good, that of Serial Experiments Lain is spectacular, and that is only one of the ways in which this series excels.

There isn't anything dumbed-down about the story. It is complex, loaded with amazing ideas that challenge the viewer to think about much they take for granted.

The primary characters are not stereotypes and the series doesn't wallow in angst. It is definitely an adult series, and I use that in a positive way: it doesn't talk down to its audience, and doesn't simplify, and doesn't pull any punches. There are parts of it that really hurt a lot, but that's because they should hurt.

It is not loaded with sex; there's only one scene which has a significant sexual component, and it is not explicit and definitely not erotic. It is also essential to the plotline. There's quite a lot of violence in the series and some of that is rather graphic, but none of it is gratuitous either; all of it is also essential to the plotline.

Those are not the reasons why this is an adult series, and why I definitely don't recommend it for kids. It's adult because of the ideas it presents, and the kind