As is the norm, everything has settled down in my life. It has settled to the point that I got to have what use to be my normal evening. Wait till girlfriend goes to bed and watch stuff she does not approve of. I was even able to get a few rum drinks in (Kraken Black Roast Coffee Rum is sippable to the point that it is a shame to dilute to make it last).
Best of all, I was able to get to bed before midnight. Worst of all, it is balanced by 19 consecutive days of work. Managers are just boomers when it comes to internal email.
The more pressing downside is that it was a reminder of how little the two of us actually have in common. Her debate of whether or not she should go to bed in the nine o'clock hour came as I was watching "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" because there is nothing to watch on a Thursday.
The best time on the basketball floor are when the mats are down door to door. That sums up my opinion of Thursday's cable TV offerings.
She also does not dig immediate action sequences. Thus, we did not get past "John Wick: Chapter 2's" car reclamation. And this seems to be the case with anime as well because she was very quick to tell me to grab the Netflix DVD after a few minutes of "RG Veda."
Another key difference between us is her embrace of religion. Hence, it takes a little more work to try selling her a feminism agenda via the history of the Clamp Studio than my other female friends. This turned out to be a poor assessment of her judgement. It has nothing to do with having an open mind and everything to do with intuition.
RG Veda
It is now the time for Kuyo's prophesy to come to fruition. After awakening Ashura, Northern King Yasha is joined by fellow Stars Ryu and Soma to avenge the death of the Heavenly Emperor by the hands of Taishakuten. All that is left to bring peace to the land is to find the sixth and final Star which will grant Ashura all the strength of her fallen father. The greatest problem with that task is, whoever the star is, they are in Taishakuten's castle. Getting to this castle will be quite the challenge let alone maintaining the strength to escape.
The first Clamp anime adaptation I saw was "X (X/1999)". I thought it was a solid and beautiful film, but you could tell they slammed a lot of content into a 1 hour 41 minute feature. With that feature, they established rules when a character was introduced, so an action would at least make sense. "RG Veda" presumes that you are a fan or have an understanding of Hindu mythology. Since that is expected, you should not complain about a 1 minute 30 second exposition montage that explains the world, but not the characters. Well, I picked this up at a used bookstore for six bucks.
I am a fan of Clamp's style (big eyes that nothing can obscure the outlines of). When I look back on the "X" movie, the concept of heroes uniting to put the world back in order with little expository content is common in their product. "RG Veda" fails to focus on who the characters are, so aside from the two leads, we have very little idea of who they are beyond what their weapons are. Fighting game characters from the early 90's had more depth.
Also, when the directions fails to effectively define the world, the audience is going to be lost the entire time. If they have the nerve to watch the second half of this two-part series, they may be comfortable letting the action guide them, but they will be zoned out otherwise. Or they are on their third rum on the rocks like I was.
"RG Veda's" character design of its leads are beautiful, so with enough drinks or other influence(s), it is a nice visual for a party's background. Otherwise, only fans of the manga or Indians can appreciate it. I guess since this was direct-to-video, a large audience was not the creator's intentions. And this is probably why none of the 90's anime distributors exist.
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