a spurt of anime

I go through spurts. Watching movies, anime, reading books, knitting, gaming. All the things I love make it difficult to spend quality time with each so I have to break it up. These past few weeks, it has been anime. I have caught up with a few shows that have not been great but have managed to satisfy the recent dearth.

I rented Chrono Crusade from netflix. The strange combination of Christian themes and killing in 1920's New York can not seem strange in the Japanese genre. Nuns, priests, spouts of god fearing language seem to resonate in anime. This particular one tells the story of a girl and her childhood devil trying to save her brother from an evil devil who, in turn, is trying to take over humanity and become immortal. While it resorts to silly antics intermittently, brother - sister plot is sweet. Rosette, a cross shooting gun in hand, deals fine with the evil devils but can rely on the devil, Chrono, to turn and wipe them out at the cost of time on her life. I have about three episodes left but I would recommend it. The art and music are average though I really like how the bullets turn into white crosses when they hit.

I had begun Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo through netflix's streaming on the computer. With a bit of time this weekend, I managed to finish the series through my xbox (did I mention how much I love that!). This show was just plain strange. A futuristic loose retelling of Dumas' famous novel, the art in this show will either make you cringe or blow your mind. It layers these photoshop patterns onto the digital anime so when the characters move, their clothes and hair kind of don't. At first, I thought something was wrong with the video. I guess I got used to it but it was sometimes very distracting and sometimes pretty neat. Above that aspect, I was not totally in love with the show. The characters were rather boring and a theme of revenge was taken to very alarming levels. I enjoyed the original novel for what it was but could not take the changes made to the characters.

Partaking of more netflix - xbox streaming, I started Saiyuki. Saiyuki is the story of four guys, one a buddist monk, the other three devils who have their dark powers inhibited. I have read it is based on the historical story A Journey to the West, also called Monkey which makes sense because that is what the little one is called a lot, in jest of course. This show is very well written, or should I say well translated. The fight scenes are not very good, however. It burys the action with still shots which I hate. But so far, I enjoy the humor and character relationships enough that I continue to watch with anticipation and with 50 episodes in the first season, it better be good enough.