Keanu Reeves' Cowboy Bebop

"Cowboy Bebop" is easily one of the best TV shows I have ever seen in my entire life.  I don't even know if I should even call "Cowboy Bebop" an anime, because its so much more than that.  Categorizing it with such a charged term as "anime" leads to so many preconceptions amongst people:  those that hate anime won't bother, and those that like anime will jump at it even though it really isn't like any other show out there.  Being easily the best work to come out of that cartoon style, "Cowboy Bebop" transcends anime.  A label of any kind will only weaken its power.  It would be as if I called it "a cartoon".  To some the word "cartoon" immediately conjures up images of Saturday morning kids' shows and Disney sing-a-longs (not that there's anything wrong with either of those things), which is not fair at all to what "Cowboy Bebop" really is.  Defining this title only damages it, all you can do is watch this show to understand its greatness.

I really don't need to explain to you why a show about a bounty hunters in SPACE catching crooks with a wild west motif to the greatest soundtrack in human history is worst a watch, do I?  Let me repeat that.  Its the greatest soundtrack ever.  EVER!  Let me explain it this way:  if you don't like the same things I like, I'm usually fine with it.  However, there are three things in this world which you cannot dislike without being an absolute failure as a person:  children, "The Lion King", and "Cowboy Bebop".  If you don't like any of those things, get off my blog.  You're not wanted here.  Just watch "Cowboy Bebop", that's the point I'm making.

Last year Keanu Reeves of all people decided to announce that he was going to make a live action "Cowboy Bebop" movie, starring himself.  This was met with almost universe groans from every single man, woman, and child on the Internet.  Nobody had any faith in this project, nobody at all.  I think "Dragonball Evolution" got a warmer response.  I, of course, didn't feel worked up about this news at all.  And its for one simple reason:  live-action Hollywood adaptations of anime don't ever actually happen.  You can count that as a Law of Nature.

True Blood is Goofy

This show is stupid.  I'll open with that.

You might be thinking that's a little harsh.  "Oh look, Blue is hating on 'True Blood' because its a show about vampires.  How short-sighted is he."  Well no, I'm not saying this show is stupid because of the vampires.  Its stupid because its stupid.  I cannot believe how bad this show got in just a single season.  It went from awesome high-tension action where the fate of just about every character was in jeopardy to boring nonsense in only a single year.  I don't know what happened with the writing staff, but they went insane.  Whatever happened, I'm not going to be there next year, and I suggest you don't watch it either.  There are other things on TV.

Let's start with why I even was watching this show at all this season.  I started up really only because I saw the last few episodes of the last season, where a demon named Mary-Ann completely took over the Louisiana town where this show takes place.  Pretty much the entirity of the secondary-cast had their minds controlled and became lunatic partiers out to kill the main cast.  That was intense.  At that point, pretty much the entire fabric of that society was destroyed for a time.  And I loved that.  It was still silly, but at least the silliness didn't overwhelm the drama.  So when I came into this season, I was expecting something of at least equal intensity, if not more.  I couldn't imagine how they could have topped Season 2.

What didn't occur to me was in hindsight the most oblivious way Season 3 would go:  it wouldn't top the last one, it would just fail.  And fail it did.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep

Another Fall, another Kingdom Hearts game, another stupid-sounding title.  Yay, life!

So we all already know that Kingdom Hearts has been awesome for years now, that needs no further explaining.  If you aren't aware of the amazing appeal of Kingdom Hearts, please stop reading this review right now and spend the next week or so shut off from the rest of the world blasting through at least "Kingdom Hearts I" and "Kingdom Hearts II".  I can wait...  (Dum dum dum da dum)  Okay, its a week later.  Awesome right?  Yeah, I thought so.  And I bet you want to play more of this series, huh?  Well, that's why Square Enix decided to create "Kingdom Hearts:  Birth by Sleep" for you, a game definitely of equal measure to the other two games listed above.  Only one problem... its on the PlayStation Portable.

Not that anybody is going to be surprised by this judgment call, but the PSP has clearly lost the battle against the Nintendo DS.  Everybody on Earth has a DS, I'm probably the only for miles who has a PSP.  Yeah, the PSP certainly has the stronger graphical and memory abilities - its graphics blew me away the moment I bought it and still continue to surprise - but its definitely a flawed piece of machinery (for one its too darn fragile).  And I don't think any one title reveals all the PSP's successes and failures better than "Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep".  For one, the graphics are amazing.  This game looks as good as "Kingdom Hearts 1" did on a console half a decade ago.  Unlike "358/2 Days", the DS Kindom Hearts that came out last year (my review), this game doesn't shrink Kingdom Hearts down into a smaller mobile form, it is a fully fledge title of massive scale and scope.  However, in order to fit all that action and awesomeness, there are load times.  Huge ones.  And tons of them.

Books Don't Burn

Books don't burn.  This is a curious position to take, since books are very often extremely flammable as you can easily demonstrate with even the both basic of lighters.  Yes, the pages that a book is written on can be torn and torched, the ink can be washed away, and the entire object can be destroyed in countless ways.  However, the book itself is eternal.  Setting them ablaze will not make them go away.  This is why book-burners are always the most preposterous of the many lunatic fringes this world has to offer us.  Ideas live on, even if in just a minute cultural consciousness, and you, the burners, will be left more the fool for thinking you can trample thoughts you disagree with*.  In end, that's a battle you're going to lose, if not tomorrow then centuries from now.  If just one person remembers the words of your book, if just one of them writes it down, in even a fragmentary form, you've lost your battle forever.  The book burners always lose, and its only thanks to this that the modern world can exist at all.

When you torch a book, even if in the name of modernity or "moving the world forward", you castrate the very philosophy you're trying to protect.  No matter how pure your intentions may be, you will forever be known as ignorant, intolerant, and ultimately incredibly stupid - which is all true.  No matter how many people - or how few - people stand behind you, what government is giving you support, what religious figure has given you God's blessing, your cause is hopeless.  Because, again, books don't burn.

Pastor Terry Jones* is only the latest in a very long tradition of book burning that easily must go back as far as books have been written.  His scheme today was to burn several copies of the Qu'rans, essentially just to piss every Muslim in the world off.  He didn't go through with it, because the entire thing was a publicity stunt, perhaps saving him from the title of fool, but in turn opening him to the new title of fraud.  The sad thing is that Terry Jones is not alone in his lunacy, book-burning has an extremely long historical tradition amongst Christians:  simply look at the number of lost Greco-Roman and other pagan texts thanks to the religious fervor of the first Christian who call consider themselves "authorities".  He wasn't the first, he won't be the last.

Last Exile

"Last Exile" is one of those great unappreciated anime series.  Exactly why is largely unknown is a complete mystery to me, it has all the ingredients that an anime needs for greatness:  amazing beautiful landscapes, awesome airship battles, all the episodes are named after famous Chess moves, and the hero is voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch.  What more do you need?  Its rather confusing to me*.  So obviously I need to step in and save the day!

What lies beyond the sky?  Flyboy Claus Valca (played by Johnny Yong Bosch, so he's the hero) and female mechanic, Lavie Head work together as couriers for a aerial delivery service, together chasing their (separate) parents' dreams of being a top pilot and mechanic respectively.  Together they live in the world of Prester, a world of clouds and strange clearly artificial land, which is dominated by airship battles between two nations, while a mysterious third faction, the Guild, watches over in seeming omnipotence.  One day Claus and Lavie find a crashed plane, or "Vanship" if we're to use the series' terminology, and discover a mysterious little girl named Alvis, who like all mysterious females in Japan, will inevitably hold the key for the survival of the universe or something like that.  This leads Claus and Lavie to join the crew of the legendary sky Battleship, Silvana, led by the emotionally distant but serious badass captain, Alex Row, a man bent for revenge.

At this point the series really starts to switch gears, as its no longer really about Claus and Lavie's relationship, and it becomes a huge ensemble piece with dozens of characters all hanging around and inevitably vying for Claus's affections.  And of course, the entire world of Prester is turning into a massive war zone filled with chaos and such.  But even though Claus is essentially the hero thanks to his plot role, the real star of the show is just the sky itself.  The animators can never stop themselves from making amazing scenery for their production, almost to the point that you start to wonder if the amazing art design is somehow sucking energy from the story.