Monthly Archives: July 2011

NEW PROJECT: The AMV Savior of the Century’s End

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I’ll be the first to admit that my tweets are of varying quality, but I’m going to run with an idea that popped into my head earlier today:Christian rock Fist of the North Star anime music videos.

You can see a proof of concept here. It combines the Manga Entertainment “Prologue” video with a random lame Christian rock song I found on YouTube, and they sync up quite nicely. I have no idea how to make AMVs, but we’ll see what happens.

It’s about time the “Savior of the Century’s End” got the AMV respect he deserves, huh? I am very excited at the prospect of unleashing this horrible project unto the world.

Watching the 3rd Fist of the North Star Box Set: A Story Told in Tweets (Disc 4 of 5)

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There’s something wonderful about watching a high-quality transfer of traditional animation that is minimally processed. It induces this exotic perception where I feel as if I’m able to visualize each painstakingly drawn and colored celluloid, the camera used to photograph it, and the resulting film stock, all at once. The viewing process acquires an almost solemn and reverent tone as I find myself unable to ignore the incredibly laborious process which birthed the animation I’m enjoying.

All in all, I’m brought back to how amazing the art of animation is. These guys didn’t point a camera at a location and throw an actor in front of it. They created a world from nothing, using drawings and sound. They’re sorcerers. Miracle workers. Olympians of the highest order.

God damn I love cartoons.

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Watching the 3rd Fist of the North Star Box Set: A Story Told in Tweets (Disc 3 of 5)

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Juza might be one of the best-utilized supporting anime characters ever. He’s the main focus of this disc, as the final climactic battle between Raoh and Kenshiro inevitably draws closer.

Fist of the North Star is an anime filled with men of action. Whether it be to pillage, steal, protect, or save, there’s little to no ambiguity in what the major players of this series want to do. So it’s a bit refreshing to meet Juza, a competent warrior casually disinterested in participating in any of that post-apocalyptic kung-fu mess, instead electing to rescue beautiful women and bone them. That is, until he discovers a reason for fighting (and in fact, the reason for this entire show), and out of nowhere becomes the greatest threat Raoh’s ever met, short of Kenshiro himself.

Juza dies spectacularly in his final showdown with Raoh. I love it when good guys lose a fight! Anime and manga routinely does this to great effect, the most iconic example being Joe Yabuki’s death at the very end of Ashita no Joe.

Tweets after the jump.

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Watching the 3rd Fist of the North Star Box Set: A Story Told in Tweets (Disc 2 of 5)

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The Fist of the North Star manga has been released in many formats over in Japan, but I have a collection of the fifteen aizōban volumes which were first printed in the early 90s. They’re technically hardcover, though the covers aren’t that sturdy. That black line you see in the bottom middle of the picture is one of the built-in bookmarks included in each volume. You know, the kind bibles have.

Anyway, manga volumes 7-9 of this edition loosely cover the same content as Discotek’s third box set, hence the photograph. Last night I saw disc 2 of said boxset, and here are the resulting images and tweets.

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