Slick Hits 2/26/2010

Elwood J. Blues has started a trend that I wish to continue: quick and dirty reviews of pieces we don’t want to spend an entire article on by itself. So, in that style, I present my Slick Hits for the day:

Shikabane Hime

I really wanted to like this show, I really did. Shikabane Hime is about people who die but don’t want to go to the afterlife, and so either turn into twisted demonic forms of the desires that kept them from going on or undead warriors whose job it is to destroy these evil beings. It’s got some very interesting ideas and I have to admit that I’m a bit of a sucker for the Japanese take on fantasy. Sadly, there’s just too much cheesecake. I know I should turn in my man card for saying that, but it’s just too obvious this show was made for pubescent Japanese boys. Women walk around not wearing shirts for no particular reason, battles end up with bodices and so on being strategically ripped, and worst of all nearly all the girls seem to be of high school age so you end up feeling a bit ooky about the whole thing even more than, say, an episode of Girls Gone Wild. I just can’t see a female wanting to watch this, and I can’t say that I blame them either.

Rating: 1.5 soiled panties that you can get from a Japanese vending machine out of 5. Would be 3 except that the show managed to alienate half its audience.

Full Metal Alchemist

This show is as aWesome as Shikabane Hime is crap. At first glance you might think that FMA is geared towards children; after all, its protagonist is a 14 year old boy who acts every bit his age and the other main character is his 12 year old brother who spectrally inhabits a suit of armor. Thusly, there is a lot of potential for it to be little more than an anime fan’s dream, but the writing propels it into greatness. Seriously, I’d rank this up with Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion as the finest anime series ever made. As you may have figured out from the title, it takes place in an alternate universe where science is significantly more spiritual/magical than in ours. It explores the boundaries and risks of this milieu from the start and establishes pretty early on (the 2nd episode is a real doozy) that it’s going to give its characters hard choices to make that have far-reaching consequences.

The English acting is pretty okay – not common in anime – although as always I recommend watching the subtitled version over the dubbed so you can hear the Japanese actors’ inflections. There’s more than enough action to satisfy your buddies if you pop this in; just force them to keep watching past their initial “WTF IS THIS HAMTARO” style reactions.

5 severed arms out of 5.

Band of Brothers

This is playing on HBO right now. Despite the fact that I am a huge history geek and loved Saving Private Ryan, I had never actually watched this show before now. It’s the story of the 101st Airborne Division in World War II and is like watching a miniseries version of said Tom Hanks movie. Hanks directed this one and appears to have brought along all of his Hollywood friends: David Schwimmer, Jonathan Silverman from Weekend At Bernie’s, Marky Mark’s big (thanks, Ro) brother and New Kids on the Block alum Donnie Wahlberg, and several others. There’s no “hey, is that MATT DAMON!?” moment like you get in SPR, just hour after hour of the cold drama of war.

5 dying men crying out into the night out of 5.

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