(Hey, I think this is technically my 800th post. ...Whatever.)
This is a little different than what I usually go for with these.
Today's entry is the little doohickey (what is that thing that holds in the CD/DVD? I've never figured that out) from the excellent Escaflowne anime's English release box set.
When I first saw it, it was a confusing, nasty design, and it gave me a hard time. Then I figured out that all you had to do was push firmly in the center, and it was suddenly easier than the more common DVD... thing.
And you know what? It's much harder to accidentally remove the DVD, and it's also more secure than nearly any other DVD holding... thing that I've ever seen. Any you could actually get the DVD out of without bending it, anyway.
(Seriously, what are those things called?)
So why is this a "Great Moment in DVD Cases?" Because it stinks that it never caught on. This DVD case is something like ten years old, and it's better than any I've seen in my life.
(See all those scars? You notice he's sparring with a real sword while not wearing a shirt, right?) Balgus is essentially the main male character's mentor figure, so telling you he dies in the second episode isn't really a spoiler.
Balgus (his name is also rendered "Vargas" sometimes, though only by unofficial translations) is probably the toughest guy in the series, and he's probably way past his prime.
When an unknown, invisible enemy (invisible GIANT ROBOTS WITH METAL TENTACLES) attacks his home country, he tells the main male character to run while he holds them off.
And then he pulls out and unfurls his sword.
Yes, he seems to intend to lead giant robots into a battle against giant robots while on foot.
And you know what? Thanks to an utter disregard for physics...
...he does, and it's actually pretty impressive.
Of course, then he got killed, but nobody's perfect.
I would totally watch a series about this guy in his youth, by the way.
I'm a fairly big fan of anime (and manga), but ironically, I don't watch a huge amount of anime. (I read a decent amount of manga in Shonen Jump, as I've noted in the past.) I'm also not familiar with a lot of "big name" anime, whatever that means.
My first experiences with anime were largely name-changing dubs such as Voltron and Teknoman (most people's above a certain age had the same experience, of course), but the first one that sticks out in my head was a series that was aired spottily many years ago on network television, Escaflowne (TVTropes page here) (also known as The Vision of Escaflowne and "Escaflowne of the Heavens"). The network in question, Fox(Kids), actually put together a pretty cool introductory segment, although they also rather mauled the series.
Not enough to make it unenjoyable, but definitely enough to "ruin" it, as they skipped the first episode and then stopped after a few episodes when they realized "Hey, this show has huge amounts of blood, violence, and other adult themes in it!" So you can't really blame them; the studio that dubbed it apparently wanted to put it on cable first. Eventually, it saw more proper releases, and it's apparently much more popular and well-known in western countries than in Japan.
Escaflowne is a really great series. It has giant robots (which I'm obviously a sucker for) in a medieval setting, and they're powered by magic rocks that are the internal organs of dragons. There are great characters (my favorite minor character is a guy who dies early in the series who jumped around only in normal armor while carrying a large sword and cutting arms off of giant robots) and strong and original writing. And it's even got a moving (if goofily shojo-esque) romantic plotline which is the crux of the series-which led to an episode where the villains plot to break the characters up because of how important it is. (Saying how and why would be huge spoilers. And it's much better than it sounds.) The primary villain of the series is also a historical figure, and there are a few really unexpected twists along the way.
It also has some incredible music.
There's also an alternate continuity movie and two or three manga adaptations out there, all of which take out crucial aspects of the story or otherwise make changes that mean I have no interest in any of them. (The movie is dumbed down to be a movie, and also makes things darker, edgier, and bloodier merely for the sake of doing so [and the anime was already pretty darned bloody, which means that it was pretty awful], although there was a cool fight between organic giant robots at the end. Each manga version took things in an opposite direction, one going more in the shonen direction and changing the characters to match [read: giving the boyish female protagonist more pronounced curves], and the other going in the shojo direction and removing all the violence, which means it probably was pretty boring.)
All in all, Escaflowne is probably the objectively best anime I've ever watched the whole way through.
My only real problem with it is that the characters are drawn with these crazy-looking big, pointy noses. That can be forgiven, though.
When I first saw it, it was a confusing, nasty design, and it gave me a hard time. Then I figured out that all you had to do was push firmly in the center, and it was suddenly easier than the more common DVD... thing.
And you know what? It's much harder to accidentally remove the DVD, and it's also more secure than nearly any other DVD holding... thing that I've ever seen. Any you could actually get the DVD out of without bending it, anyway.
