First season: great. Second season: not so much. Third season (ongoing): either they lobotimised the original writers or replaced them.

But I could never find a decent copy of the manga. And now I have, and I finally understand all the critical acclaim it garnered in its time.

Don’t get me wrong, the movie was great in its time, the audiovisual experience was amazing even if half the time I only had the vaguest clue of what was going on, but it was a little like watching 1/3 of a movie and sort of having to infer the rest.

But now I understand – that is because at least 2/3s of the story and character development are missing from the movie. Hell, the storyline and characters develop in such a radically different fashion it might as well be a completely different version of the same story.

And it is a brilliant, a riveting version told in 6 books of some 380 pages each, and I read it all in one go – couldn’t stop.

I did enjoy Simon Pegg’s performance, though. It had some good moments, but overall I’m left with “meh”. Which is a step up from Run Fat Boy Run which dragged along at a snail’s pace.

The story features ubiquitous creatures called Mushi that are more forces of/expressions of nature/life than proper lifeforms like plants and animals. They exist among humans, but most cannot perceive them; one such person who can is Ginko, the main character of the series. He employs himself as a Mushi master, traveling from place to place to research Mushi and aid people suffering from problems caused by them. The series is an episodic anthology in which the only common elements among episodes are Ginko and the various types of Mushi. There is no over-arching plotline.

The stories are gentle and filled with sweet sorrow and inevitability; told with a slow, steady pace and beautiful artwork. Elements of thwarted/lost love feature often, as does the cruel beauty of nature (neither good nor evil, it is what it is) and the cycles of life and death. Greed and malice are often their own undoing.

It was a welcome change from the usual giant robots and DD-cupped girls and I can wholeheartedly recommend this series, even to non-anime fans. If you want to try it out, the series is available on Hulu

A live action movie by Katsuhiro Otomo was also made, but I haven’t been able to find it. It is based on a manga of the same name, again, not much chance of finding that here in the Netherlands.

Let’s see, the only way George Lucas could possibly rape more tender childhood memories is by making an all-singing all-dancing musical starring Willow, Howard the Duck, Luke Skywalker, and Indiana Jones backed by the Jar Jar band and introducing the erotic Ewok dance troupe, with a guest appearance/cameo of THX 1138 and Short Round performing a tapdancing dance-off. And lots of chroma key (green screen) background noise with epic space battles and exploding planets, and maybe a trained Bantha or two doing tricks.

Yes, this had nothing to do with the actual movie, but believe me, it was far more entertaining.

I might be too much of a gwailo to get all of Chow’s mo lei tau brand of humor, but the last 20 minutes I spent in a continuous WTF mood. The ending just felt a little forced. That said, I did enjoy the overall movie.

Not only is this a great read and the full text is available online for free here:
http://www.dericbownds.net/bom99/TOC.html

but I also got permission from the author to distribute this text specifically formatted for ebook readers, I uploaded a Sony prs-505 specific file and the raw HTML you need to “roll your own” here:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=244396&postcount=1

And that is all I have to say about that.

Yes, I knew this going in :) I also didn’t know there was a part 2. And this is apparently part 3.

Engineering of consent? Those are some crazy scary ideas.