Jman

I still remember a while ago when I compared Toonami to Soul Train, the former face of a particular niche medium (anime, soul, funk and R&B music) that failed to adapt to new mediums and the desire of the audience (Netflix, Hulu, and Crunchyroll, while hip hop music found outlets that made Soul Train obsolete and led to its cancellation in 2008). FLCL was big when Adult Swim/Toonami was on top, so it will be big now is the line of thinking. Instead we got Netflix funding a Tekken anime and Jujutsu Kaisen's movie being #2 in the US behind The Batman.

Nothing was beating The Batman but the spare space has allowed Kaisen to be a surprise hit to those who already saw Battinson in action. (I want to see it but I'm debating whether to go or just wait till next month, April 19 to be exact, for the HBO Max release).

Jujutsu Kaisen 1-2.

DeMarco thinks what worked in the past works now when he was the only game in town and most of the alternatives cost a shitload or were illegal. He clearly likes FLCL. A LOT. He thinks it will light up the casual audiences because he says it will. But when Netflix answers that with a Tekken anime, Fooly Cooly In Da Hood loses out.

Side quest - The episode. Let's find the thing we need to unlock the next main questline! Joy is clearly into Ryo. Shame Cantonese isn't his first language...and he's denser than a bag of rocks. "Hello, we'll be the source of thugs for this part of the story. It's more of an excuse than Yakuza gives where every asshole on the street wants to pick a fight with you." REMEMBER HIM. HE'S IMPORTANT FOR LATER. Today's PSA fresh from the Double Dragon cartoon hits...just as soon as Discotek announces they're going to actually release that thing on Blu-Ray. Funny little world. "Yeah, you can stay here. I'll take the couch, and we avoid the sidequest for pocket money." The preview seems to hammer in Joy having a thing for Ryo. But will we see the underground fight club where Ryo pounds a schoolgirl into pudding?

Fun fact, the announcement coincided with Tekken 3 turning 24 years old. Yes, Tekken 3 is in its mid-twenties. Feel old yet? I still remember when Tekken 3 arcade cabinets were all over rest stops.

Meanwhile on Netflix… Point to Netflix on the “remember that thing?” anime releases.

This is exactly what I was talking about. Toonami gets endless FLCL sequels, Netflix gets a full on Tekken anime.

Pam and Tommy 4-7. The show has to walk a tightrope act, showing the release of the sex tape was wrong, but at the same time, absolutely nothing they do or say will make the release of freaking Barb Wire sympathetic. Pamela could never act, it relegated MST3K’s movie to zero advertising, oh, and the film was Casablanca with Pamela Anderson!

Face to face with Master Tao, Ryo is forced to reflect on his quest for vengeance. Meanwhile, a mysterious delinquent is keeping tabs on Ryo.

There’s something about recognizing a pioneer, who like Blockbuster, they are now trying to run out of business.

Redesigns of Charlie and Alastor (aka the Radio Demon) for the series proper -

This won’t be out till next year. But at the rate we’re going, Netflix’s answer to it is going to be Cannon God Exaxxion, Violence Jack, or friggin Five Star Stories. Actually now that the rights are settled and Harmony Gold is playing nice, I could see Netflix commissioning a full on Macross remake. Yeah, FLCL 4 - Fooly Cooly in Da Hood, will wipe the floor with all comers.

Even he's gone on record knowing that such a thing would be universally condemned. So let me guess, Netflix is getting Chainsaw Man to counter this? I mean, it's just...no one cares about FLCL! They did, at that one point, but it was a complete story. No one was clamoring for a sequel, much less four. It's like Eureka 7, where every entry after the original gets worse and worse until people forget why they liked the original in the first place.

More FLCL? Because the last two seasons absolutely lit the world on fire…

https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2022/03/17/feature-lets-celebrate-the-impact-of-toonami-on-anime-on-its-25th-anniversary?utm_source=community_cr&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=news_feature_tweet_from_author&referrer=community_cr_twitter_news_feature_tweet_from_author Still, the words given are kind, probably since the pair did work on co-productions. And now, 25 years later, Toonami still runs. It’s not the only steady anime game in town, as you being on this website can attest, but its ethos hasn’t changed. Anime is here, it’s great, and it’s for everyone. For many people over the years, Toonami brought anime to life. Long live Toonami.

Something else I’m noticing is just how big the world is looking now and how not ready Ryo is for Lan Di. Ryo never beat up tigers.

At least Shenmue is placing.

Pam and Tommy 1-4. Pretty good telling of the incident, but still, fuck Barb Wire for taking away advertising time from the MST3K movie.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/halo-review-1235111130/ https://youtu.be/LukyMYp2noo

People think Oscar nominations are bad for animation, check out this nonsense - In a world where Arcane exists, it wasn't even nominated. Neither was Invincible, which is especially insulting considering what was. Fuck, no Castlevania? Big Mouth, Q-Force (the gay parody of spy shows that had the same level of gay jokes as Will and Grace), Bob's Burgers, and The Great North, AKA the usual Fox vomit.

Random thoughts - Welcome to Hong Kong Ryo. Watch out for pickpockets and wandering supporting characters. Yeah, he got his shit boosted at the start of the second game as well. You had to pawn off your gatcha toys and get a part time job to get money, everything from lifting stuff at a store to good old underground fight rings. Ah, the days before online booking and AirBNB. You got out kung-fued by an old dude at the park. Do you really think you can beat Lan Di? Suzuki's pacing for this series really works better for a passive medium like an anime than it did for a game. Look, your average Yakuza game has long cutscenes too, but they are also stuffed to the absolute freaking brim with gameplay, interactive elements, and other things that make the experience feel far more rewarding than Shenmue did. Which is part of why I'm so amazed with how the anime has taken the games' writing and refined it. Some of the dialogue remains stilted, which I think is trying to convey that Ryo is still learning Cantonese. It works when he's talking to people for whom Japanese isn't their first language. Joy is a pretty fun character so far, but the visual similarities to Nami are going to be rather...distracting. Honestly the old guy's Tai Chi speech just makes me want to watch Man of Tai Chi again. "The only way this backpack is worth any money is if a $3,000 hooker is wearing it!" Ok, jujutsu is the name for practically dozens of fighting arts, and considering that Yu Suzuki put in a lot of the moves Akira used in Virtua Fighter into it, it incorporates a fair amount of kung fu influence as well. So the name passes the smell test. Not to mention, this was before the popularity of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was a thing. And the master was the woman the whole time. Also there seems to be a recurring theme of people telling Ryo that pursuing revenge is pointless, but he charges forward anyway. The show continues to be pretty good even as we go into the Shenmue games I admittedly never played. Given the length of the series, I doubt we hit Shenmue III, but considering Shenmue III was a gigantic waste of time for everyone involved, maybe if this gets another season the writers can work their magic on that too, as well as the scripts for any hypothetical sequels, since no one is funding another Yu Suzuki Kickstarter. Or maybe Suzuki just makes that OutRun anime he said he wanted to do during the NYCC panel for Shenmue. (He said the idea was for couples to be in a Cannonball Run style race).

The plot of Shenmue II kicks off in earnest as Ryo lands in Hong Kong, only to be immediately assailed by thugs. Can the anime keep telling the story as well as it did for the first game?

Unfortunately, with Oda having a fair degree of veto power on this, I don't think characters can be completely excised. So you're dealing with a bad hand. Recast, put the work in to look like Alvida is supposed to post Devil Fruit, or end up canceled like Bebop where it's a punchline for just about everyone and everyone involved becomes a pariah in Hollywood except the script coordinator who's a child of a Netflix VP. Gotta pick one.

The pronouns I don't give a shit about, and it's considered polite these days. That's fine. Fucking up Alivda's arc the same way Bebop fucked up...everyone, that's where the show needs to die in a fire. Even if the days of Robert DeNiro losing AND gaining tons of weight to play Jake LaMotta are long gone. Either put her on the diet Marvel uses to give sitcom actors abs or recast her for post Smooth Smooth fruit Alvida.