Imagine We Still Had VHS: Doomed Megalopolis (and Bank Branches)

  *This blog post was started on January 25, 2023.

I cannot say that it has been a good year for resolutions. It is kind of sad since the past two years were successes. NinetyForChill: The #Podcast was started in 2021. In 2022, learning to use chopsticks ended up being a success.

This year, I did not really have any ideas on how to approach resolutions. Perhaps Skimble's health was the bigger priority, but I had managed to screw anything that I thought would be obtainable goals before he passed away Sunday.

The first idea was, as always, to eat something Buffalo-flavored each day. The seond idea was consuming THC everyday, inspired by my pal Andrew "Couchman" Tiede. These streaks both ended when I tried to drink with kids that were 17 years younger after last Thursday's Trivia night.

Those goals, were kind of silly, which is why I took them on. The practical one was writing a blog every week that was not related to my podcast. Time management was the biggest challenge for that goal, and it came out as the victor. I wonder if I had successfully blogged every week when I was working for a glorified ATM that is Marine Bank?

That is a statement about management and I cannot wait to see the branch shutdown when Morton Community Bank takes them over. Serves them right for being hateful to genuinely compassionate people. My job was terminated because Marissa Embry ratted my blogging content out because I told her to quit watching racist and transphobic videos at work. This was something my manager, Angie Zindars, who okay my blogging on the clock while at the same time telling me to just accept that they had different views.

Hope kind of fucks me over to kick off every year. If only I knew that the state was going to just ignore my unemployment case, I would have gone on record telling the judge that I was terminated on the whims of hateful people. By the time I got a hearing, the anger seemed pointless.

The anger is there this year. I say that as a statement about losing Skimble. There is anger towards myself for failing to realize how sick he was. My most recent episode of the podcast discusses my angst towards society over it. To keep pushing on, only two friends have been told about him in person. If only society was as understanding as my queen kitty, Evangeline Stacia Stevens.

Eva has been doing her best to look after me. This means, if I am not in the room with her, she is meowing to get me back on the bed in the living room. I hate that it took a dead kitty to get me to watch more TV, but from a creative (at the very least, critical) standpoint, maybe I can get back to my writing goal this year.

The problem is, my best subject matters are wrestling, movies and politics. Echo chambers keeps me out of politics right now. I think I need to alternate content, but movies are the entire point of the podcast. So to follow up:

New Year's Day: Easy U2 Reference, Difficult Championship Declarations

It's best to return to the subject matter that brought me to the internet to begin with, anime from the 1990's. Thank the gods that only the free streamers seem to carry that.

Imagine We Still Had VHS: Doomed Megalopolis (Volume 1: The Haunting of Tokyo)

Tokyo is on the verge of being a capital city of equal glory to any major city in the West. To further modernize, the government is in the midst of a major renovation. It may mean rebuilding on top of the old city, but if it will give them earthquake-proof skyscrapers, that is just the cost of progress.

So is ignoring the old gods and traditions of the East. Why reject tangible Western science? Well, the West cannot account for a 2000 year-old, anarchically-driven demon. Taira na Masakado was a well-meaning rebel, but when the government executed him, his soul remained in purgatory. Unable to rest, a vengeance capable of destroying Japan may occur if he were to be awoken. And there is a pagan priest called Kato who wants to wake him. This is the only way that Kato believes will bring about the utopia that Masakado fought and died for.

Unable to bring the demon back on his own, Kato seeks to capture Yukari. This young psychic woman may serve as a medium to pull Masakado back to the land of the living. His efforts start with using her as a vessel for demon spawn, but the priest Hirai is able to destroy them as they are born. In response, Kato has challenged Hirai and Yukari's lover to try and stop him from kidnapping her. The two priests are essentially reflections of each other, so can one even defeat the other? If our heroes do not prevail, what will the fate be for Tokyo?

"Doomed Megalopolis" is one of the latter acquisitions of Streamline Pictures, the first prominent anime distributor in the United States. Much of their library ended up being shown on Syfy in the mid to late 1990s. This is one of those titles (like "Crying Freeman") that was not going to be censored for cable television.

In the first episode of the OVA, there is nothing that is actually sexual aside from some lesbian innuendo, but once we get our first demon spawn, you cannot do that on television. What I am trying to state is the artwork can be rather phallic. According to Wikipedia, "Doomed Megalopolis" is an adaptation of Hiroshi Aramata's novel "Teito Monogatari":

The anime is darker in tone, more violent, and more sexually explicit than any previous adaptations of the novel; an artistic decision likely inspired by the financial success of the OVA Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend.

There are some nude images shown during Kato's first attempt to awaken the demon, but that is pretty much just a blur. The demon spawn birth is a combination of Lucio Fulci's woman puking up her internal organs from "City of the Living Dead", but with the head of the spawn immediately looking like a penis.

Aside from that imagery, I did not find anything to be too offensive. That includes the dub. It at least felt more natural that the original American voice over track for "Akira". The animation is a nice mix of the softer eighties style that was on the way out and the incoming sharper, more manga-inspired nineties style. Some brighter colors would have been appreciated, but this was up to the standards of the time.

The issues with this Original Video Animation are with the storytelling. It may be an effort to capture all of the characters' perspectives, but it feels like it is jumping all over the place. This is a premise that is rather prevalent in the genre, and the feature fails to be exceptional. Granted, "X" is the first anime I think of when it comes to apocalyptic Tokyo, and that was released eight years after this. Still, to come back to a title does not excuse it from not being coherent enough to keep my attention. There were many a time I rewound to see if I missed something, but it might be the storytelling and not my attention span that required this.

"Doomed Megalopolis" offers nothing to standout aside from some Cronenberg/Italian-style body horror. It is not fair to the series, but the idea of Tokyo being destroyed by ancient forces has been done better, so it may not be worth returning to. If the story was told better, this would be a nice piece of anime history. Sadly, it is nothing but a trivia answer.

Melting Brain TV - Blogspot

Imagine We Still Had VHS: Burn-Up W (and Burn Up Morton, IL)

 *This blog post was started on September 16, 2022.

It is actually getting late for me this Friday. As always, I air fry some wings to watch "AEW Rampage". When I have to be back at the retailer at 7:30 am, a 10 pm stop time means that I would be wise to hit the bong and call it a night. But my belly is just settling down by then.

Again, time management is not my strongest skill. Groceries and a haircut came after work and I cleaned up my apartment a bit, but aside from getting my My Faction award for today from "WWE 2K22", it feels that I just lost three hours. That is kind of depressing. This leaves me wondering if I will be able to type out a well written review for 1996's "Burn Up W".

Granted, "Burn Up W" was one of my first favorite anime series when I first got nerdy about this style of animation. The first volume (This was a 30-35 minute OVA series released one episode at a time), "Skin Dive" was a great entry point to capture my fellow Morton High School classmates curiosity. Too bad they were sex-driven teenagers. I showed them "Neon Genesis Evangelion" afterwards, but that somehow did not grab their attention.

After watching "Clerks 3" this past Tuesday, my disdain for the town keeps amassing. Thank the gods that the town cannot possibly have a social gathering on Sundays.

Fucking Apostolic Christians. This faith is kind of for wusses. They make their women cover all of their legs with skirts, but why the ladies allow for that is beyond me. Show me an Apostolic suicide bomber, and I may take them seriously. When I shout all that, it does not surprise me that half of my friends were treating anime like issues of "Playboy". It was a dirty window into another world. They were not interested in philosophy. Why question the dominant faith in a town where most of them were in the one-percent?

Despite my mocking of these "good" Christians, ironically the town's traditions means that I will miss the Pumpkin Festival when I return Sunday to pick up my replacement Apple Watch. The theme was a tribute to the 1980's. If you do not have VH-1's budget, do not try it. For fuck sake, it will probably be a Reagan circle jerk and calls to vote for the women-hating fascist Darren Bailey.

If a town made for the one percent wants to celebrate the Eighties, cocaine better have been flowing through the streets the last three days. At least do one thing right.

And I thought I was not going to be able to give you any insight into my mind this week. Just thinking about how the town does not appreciate art brings it out of me. Aside from not appreciating art, they do not appreciate their fellow man. Thus, why "Clerks 3" further hurt me. A village came to make Kevin Smith's a name in indie cinema, but fuck Russ Stevens and his dreams. If they are not about encouraging the importance of lessons about states' rights in the 1860's, they are worthless.

Now I think my vitriol about my hometown is seemingly obsessive. There was an easier transition to my thoughts about the adventures of Tokyo City's premier, all-female police strike force. In high school, I had developed a third anime website dedicated to kick ass, overly sexualized women. There was nothing too crazy about the "Iria: Zeiram the Animation" side of it, but when it came to "Burn Up W", I had Duran Duran midis playing in the background that were dedicated to each episode. The main protagonist is named Rio after all.

Pardon me for just focusing on the best things about the decade of my birth instead of how my hometown will fuck that up.

Imagine We Still Had VHS: "Martiann Successor Nadesico" Episodes 1-3

*This blog post was started on August 17, 2022.

Convention season is over, so it is back to trying to come up with time to watch movies. And of course, "House of Dragons" is going to debut Sunday, so that may all get thrown to the side. It is bad enough that I am behind on video games to play, but there is still "WestWorld" to return to.

At least my job, staffing wise, is settling in. This means I should not have too many early shifts. Time should be more manageable. Outside of time management, things seem to be going pretty well. I do feel like a conclusion to this physical existence would be nice, but that is more prevalent when I am stoned, trying to fall asleep. Every morning I wake up, so let us continue.

As for continuing my writing, it seems tricky. I say that, and immediately think, "Come up with some fiction". The environment just does not seem right. When I wrote "Main Event of the Dead", there was a better social environment. My script writing started during my relationship with Cindy and carried over to my second stint at Illinois Central College with my best friend Stefanie Smith. Once my relationship with her concluded, no one seemed to give a shit about my efforts. If it was not for my time in hospitality, writing about my Schrodinger-like existence, there would be no practice in writing.

The issue is finding stuff to practice. I do not have the cynical drunks to inspire my satire. Thus, it is up to movies and wrestling. Movies get "NinetyForChill: The #Podcast", so criticism with aspirations of a Pulitzer is lost. As for wrestling, since I concluded "Rip'Em System: Vince McMahon's Mein Kampf", it has been dependent on ranking the performers based around championships. WWE's lazy booking has made constantly writing about that a challenge.

Thankfully, Pluto TV and Tubi have allowed me to go back to what started the development of my writing skills, pre-Toonami anime and anime not flashy enough for Funimation. These streamers spare me from gambling on my VHS tape deck successfully playing my scores of tapes.

Ironically, the series I chose to revisit was the last set of VHS tapes that I devoted to colleting completely, "Martian Successor Nadesico". I will need to revisit "Gundam Wing" to determine if this is my second favorite giant mecha series. At least that means I have the next anime I will need to discuss lined up (This was stated before I saw the series was covered on this blog.).

Or should I watch "Macross Plus" or "Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure". Keep circulating the tapes (and tomorrow will be dedicated to "Rifftrax: The Return of Swamp Thing").

Martian Successor Nadesico: Episodes 1-3

Pinterest @rpgzero

By 2196, humanity has colonized space as far out as Mars. All seems well until an alien force, presumed to be from Jupiter, started to expand the reach of their empire to the inner planets of the solar system. Little is known about the Jovian "lizards" except that their gravity-based weaponry is far superior than anything Earth's United Forces has to offer. It was only a matter of time before the Jovian forces had conquered the Moon and Mars.

Like in the late 20the century, galactic expansion is not a big deal to most humans, so as long as they can fend off the invaders, they just blow off the attacks. Except for Akito Tenkawa, a fry cook who unexplainedly ended up on Earth after the first Jovian attack on Mars. Suffering from PTSD, he cannot hold down a job down and is shunned for having nanotechnology in his body that is necessary to operate any machinery on Mars, but is only used by mech pilots on Earth.

He is seen only as a coward, but his fortunes are about to change after a loose suitcase falls from the trunk of a car and crashes into his bike. The passenger is nice enough to help Akito out, but thinks there is a deeper connection between the two of them. As her car pulls away, Akito finds a picture left behind. This photograph is of him and an obnoxious girl as children. Akito realizes that the girl who he just ran into is Yurika Misumaru. She may have the answers about the demise of his parents the day her and her admiral father left Mars.

Akito follows her to a Nergal Heavy Industries facility, a private military contractor. Screaming Yurika's name the entire way to the base, he is obviously detained. Prospector, the civilian liaison for Nergal, questions Akito and after hearing his story, takes pity on the Martian and offers him a job as a cook on the new space fortress Nadesico. It is not ideal for a traumatized war survivor, but at least it give him a place to belong. And of course the Jovians are quick to attack.

Panics takes over and Akito takes a giant mech, an Aestivalis, to escape. Soon the captain of the Nadesico messages him calling on him to serve as a distraction to allow the ship to launch. Cowardice is not even a thought to the captain because the captain is Yurika. Akito seems to be a natural pilot and is the hero of the day as the Nadesico defeats the Jovians with little effort.

This is the first victory for Earth in the war with the Jovians, but the United Forces are not pleased. Nergal has no intention to provide the ship to the UF because they are not about to defend earth when there are so many humans left behind during the retreats from the colonies and answers to be obtained. The UF cannot afford to let a civilian battleship operate independently and will do whatever they can to stop them from leaving on their mission.

Akito needs answers about his parents and what happen to the Martian colonists, so he will put his culinary aspirations on the back burner to defend the ship. With the support of Yurika and the "Gekiganger III" anime-obsessed pilot Gai Daigoji, his fear will not stop him from defending those he cares about.

I have always thought that giant mech anime was played out as I was getting into anime. Central Park Media's mascot was "MD Geist". "Robotech" and "Voltron" were the first two animes to break big stateside in the 1980s. Anime intrigued me because of the drama and adult themes that it suggested animation was capable of. Not action that can be seen on "Mighty Morphing Power Rangers".

The only reason that I got into "Neon Genesis Evangelion" was because of its reputation as the greatest series ever. That series provides all the drama and symbolism I wanted, so it may have left me hungry for mecha as a means to tell stories. By the time "Evangelion" had concluded (As in, all the VHS tapes made it stateside.), I was ready for a new series.

Being an elitist, "Gundam Wing" on Toonami was not going to be enough. I was a fan of ADV Films ahead of all other American distributors, so I just presumed "Martian Successor Nadesico" was the next "Evangelion". To my joy, this is a more luscious looking series that took the piss out of my favorite franchise and celebrated geekdom that "Excel Saga" was yet to do.

The comedy is always present but drama is never ignored. It is exactly how I like to cope. If you want to focus on taking things seriously, you lose track of the present. Laugh your way through trauma because you need to get to the future.

I can see where many would think that is poor storytelling. If the writers do not take things seriously, why should the audience? My counter is that there is enough overly dramatic bollocks out there. After the intensity of "Evangelion", this is the break mech fans need.

The character design might deter some. It also does not take itself too seriously. This especially apparent with juxtaposing the story to the events occurring in the binge of "Gekigengar III" that Akito is on during his free time between cooking and piloting. I find it to be a clever storytelling device, but others may see it as an affront to a genre that they take way too seriously.

"Dual" maybe the series that better suits them since it has a "Tenchi Muyo!/El Hazard" vibe when it comes to deconstructing giant robot anime, but that is for fans of boy as the center of obsessed girls' universe. This series was a new approach to a tried genre of anime, and it should be admired for that. Add in great themes songs, and I think it is worth a view by any Japanese animation fan.

"Martian Successor Nadesico" is a great entry point for people that want to dabble into anime. It offers fan service, but not excessive to the point where the audiences thinks that it is trying to sell sex. The battles are fun, but not trying to sell the audience on gore. Unless you want Shakespearian drama, the humor does not take anything away from the series.

"Nadesico's" only fault could be that you do know it is still a cartoon. I do not see that as a bad thing, but some nerds want something to transcend a medium. This is a show that is not ashamed of being just entertainment and amusing an audience. Can you blame them for wanting a large one?