got_quiet

On the recommendation of Falllover I picked up a copy of Jhereg and I enjoyed it! It was like a murder mystery except backwards, where the mystery was about how to do the murder. I guess that makes it a caper story? Some of the writing felt a little dated, not thematically or anything but voice wise there's the sort of quippy dialog and humor that I associate with spec fic of a certain age, but it's not really a detriment, and the worldbuilding was interesting enough. There's just enough there to serve the plot it seems, and maybe to plant a few seeds for future developments. I'll probably pick up the second book too if my local bookstore has it. I need to go by to try turning around a few books I want to get rid of to make space anyway, as I am in severe need of Marie Kondoing my library. Like, severe. I ended up buying a new bookshelf over the New Years weekend to deal with the issue a little but I would much rather just get rid of some things.

The other thing I did over the New Years weekend was watch the entire fucking run of Demon Slayers. Like Season 1, Episode 1, through the movie, and then straight into the current arc to the most recent episode. It was a lot of show, but it was like catnip to me. I just needed some straightforward shounen combat, pure-hearted protagonists, funky monsters and cathartic tragedy. But I loved it. And somehow Zenitsu was my favorite, even though his constant screaming is neigh unbearable. He's just got my favorite character design of the three, and his terror is relatable, haha. I just wish he wasn't so obsessed with the ladies, but hey, shounen anime, I know what I'm signing up for. Also, Inosuke having a bijin face is just... the weird sort of thing I will always find entertaining. I'm a simple person who enjoys simple pleasures. I'm now waiting impatiently for new episodes, and digging around for fan art. Unfortunately I find fanfic for anime to not be to taste so I'm kind of stuck there.

The roommates and I finally sat down to watch some Cowboy Bebop... and what the fuck was that? I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like the show. I don't like live action generally, and I don't see the point of adapting something that took so much advantage of animation in the original. I am not a huge fan of John Cho (in his defense he was not bad in this, actually) and of course there's already been a lot of news and reviews out about how the adaptation was a critical failure. But generally I go into these things with extremely low expectations and in that way I can often be pleasantly surprised when there are moments of genuine quality in mediocre or bad shows. But not with this one. In fact, the live action managed to some how corrupt or undermine the elements of the anime so thoroughly that it's hard to believe that it wasn't an intentional hit job. It managed to miss the point of almost everything, and made decisions that weren't just nonsensical, but felt deliberately intended to say fuck you to the point that had been made in the original. My roommates told me they at least got some entertainment out of it just because how I kept reacting to the stupid shit that was going on on the TV, cause I was throwing my hands up and saying "what the fuck are they doing" a whole lot.

And the thing that gets me is that the live action episodes are about 40 minutes or so, like typical Netflix episode size, whereas the anime episodes were the usual 20 something minutes. And yet still they managed to fail to get in all the elements of the episodes that made them good or make sense. Because instead they were going on and on and on about Vicious and Julia and Spike's relationship with them. There's this whole B plot with Vicious, who is a sniveling little sub boss in the live action instead of a dangerous killer who mostly serves as the threat of the past catching up to Spike in the anime. He tries to deal some drugs on the side and the big bosses reprimand him by telling him to kill his wife Julia. And he's like no, anything but that! Cause it's not like in the anime Vicious was like I will kill you if you cross me, Julia or anything. Anyway he's a weak, sad guy so he does the whole, shaking eyes closed oh man I don't want to do this but I must thing and Julia is like nooooo don't shoot me! and then of course the gun is not loaded. So now Julia's villain backstory is triggered, because she's angry that he didn't defend her, because he's weak.

So, obviously none of this has anything to do with the anime and is in fact the exact opposite of the anime, but also, just as its own thing, the show is not good. Like the above is not particularly interesting or novel in a general sense, and there's nothing in the movie that shows it's capable of transcending its source material in the way it so clearly wants to. The Ein intro episode for example, is a complete departure from the anime. It's got absolutely nothing to do with it. The only similarity is the name of the culprit and the presence of some face changing technology. Other than that, nothing. The baddie in the live action is stealing the pets of rich people because he hates rich people for caring more about their dogs then for human beings. So he's going to kill all the dogs, but then he realizes he can't because they're cute, and anyway dogs are just being dogs. He says something to the effect of, "It would be like hating water for being water." There's no suggestion that Ein is anything more than a dumb dog.

OK, whatever. The episode also decides that dogs are by themselves ridiculously valuable and no one owns dogs except the ultrarich which again is just an absolute flip of the fun farce of the shop keep in the anime saying Ein wasn't worth shit, but whatever, I'm trying to approach the show on its own merits at this point since every scene before this has shown me comparing anything to the anime is futile. So another change they made is that Vicious is already actively trying to get Spike assassinated. He's already sent one guy, and Spike is now in the process of trying to assassinate Vicious back. After the whole dog debacle (in which asshole police spoil their plans instead of things just kinda going to shit in the more absurdist way that the anime usually goes with) the last scene of the episode is Spike up in an a sniper's nest, with a sniper rifle, looking down the sights at Vicious' forehead. He gives Vicious a call. They have a nice chat while Vicious chews the scenery. Spike then says something like, "I was going to kill you, but I've had a change of heart. Being mad at you for doing what you're doing is like being mad at water for being water."

And I actually wanted to throw something at the TV at that point. Like I could just feel the self-satisfied smile the writers were giving each other when they thought that shit up. "We've really made this nice and pat! Yup, what a great call back!" Except Vicious isn't water, he's a ganglord who's trying to get Spike killed, and Spike is actually the stupidest man in the solar system to think to himself, yes, just like dogs and water, I need to just get over my distaste for this guy and let him do his thing. (WHICH IS HAVE YOU MURDERED, SPIKE, HELLO?!)

On top of the writing, which was very, very, very , very, very bad. The direction, fight choreography, framing of all the shots, just everything is bad. There are so many zoom in shots of the top half of people's faces as they emote some sort of reaction for about 5 seconds longer than they should. I started getting flashbacks of that infamous scene in the DnD movie where the camera zooms into the dwarf's face for 10 years. The fights are sluggish, low energy, and just generally feel like a bunch of play fights where actors are working hard to hit each pose, hold, and then move to the next pose. This is accompanied by excessive sound effects, so the rather weak looking punches sound like small explosions, and the disconnect increases the absurdity.

I'm sure none of this hasn't been said elsewhere in a more articulate fashion. I'm just somewhat surprised that it was quite as bad as it was, especially since there were people out there that said they still enjoyed it. I guess if you're okay with the unrelenting stupidity of every moment it still is at least trying to be fun a lot of the time. And Spike and Jet had a decent rapport. The actors were doing the best they could and I couldn't really fault them for their struggling with it. It was very clearly the shit ass direction that was mainly to blame for almost all of the cringe.

Poor John Cho man. I find myself bouncing off his work a lot of the time, but he honestly did the absolute best he could here, and had the show had better material maybe he could have really sold it as Spike. As it was he was an older looking guy acting like a very immature young gun, and it did not work.

Oh well. There's a good chance I will still end up watching more, depending on just how traumatized my roommates are. They enjoy bad shows, but I don't know if this degree of bad is too much for them or what.