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j | RENTED Hovies!
| Wii- BEceAse T'M
| SUCH AGoOD

~“WE INTERRUPT THIS
CARTOON To BRING You

"ASK AN ExeERT ”. tTooAty

QUESTIONS ¢&

Fun with Kathleen
Continued on page 14

BY DE VERE

BUR YOu
j couco se

WATCHIN ¢
waeval! 1?

CHECK 1T oT! CARtET
MUNCAING CAT-GIRL
HENTAY!! Let's. CHUCK

TREVOR... ARE
You oK7?

(WE TURNED You,
INTO A HORNY
PERNERT CAT Roy!
WELL... PROBABLY NOT any
MORE PEVER TEC THAN

A CATEOY IS BASIC AULY FANSERVICE, NHAT
FANSERVICET IT'S SHORING SCANTILGY
CLAD CATGIALS IN ORDER TO ATTRACT
REROERS TO AN OTRERWISE SHITTY
FEATURE. 50 Now - A roertAG os cookies!

aS E

" By Kathleen De Vere

This fall/winter season is a
bumper time for new anime
to be coming out; among the
newcomers lining the shelves
are Blue Gender and
Boogiepop Phantom. Both
have been heavily promoted,
but how do these new shows
really stack up? Are they as
good as advertised, or they
just mediocre with big adver-
tising budgets?

First up on my
chopping block
is Blue Gender,
which has been
touted as a slick
futuristic — sci-fi.
Frankly Blue
Gender stunk up
my TV as far as
’'m concerned.
The animation is
fine, but the
Character
designs are pret-
ty uninspired and
boring. The Blue, i
read ‘mysterious &
man-eating
insects’ look like more sinis-
ter and less cool looking ver-
sions of the Bugrum from El-
Hazard, and the mecha in
Blue Gender are boxy and
plain. The dub, which | had
the displeasure of seeing, is
done by FUNIMATION, who
are consistently terrible with
their casting and direction.

Most of the characters were
flat, except for the hero, Yuji,
who was constantly overact-
ed. Speaking of Yuji, | can’t
think of a more boring main
character. He is pretty much
a useless turd, and | noticed
that in order for the viewer to
get any sort of attachment to
the dink they had to kill off
anyone who might have had
potential as an interesting
character.

The final nail in Blue
Gender’s coffin is the fact
that it is boring. Watching
Blue Gender basically turned
into me and my boyfriend
Chris re-enacting Mystery
Science Theater 3000. The
best part of Blue Gender was
making fun of it. Some of the
best dialogue was the stuff
we made up. Some of my
personal favorites were

Ls ®
_ eA LEVIEW
“WI will the pee dry?” and
“when | hum it'll be our signal
for pee-pee in bum.”

What saved my anime view-
ing experience was
Boogiepop Phantom.

An odd name, but the
English phrase Boogiepop
Phantom is the actual name
of the show, and for the aver-
age Japanese person who
doesn’t speak much English
the name_ is
"| exotic and
strange.
Boogiepop is a
st ud ie
Madhouse pro-
duction, which
means excellent
animation.

| loved
Boogiepop
Phantom. It was
creepy, atmos-
pheric, and
incredibly inter-
ream esting. The story

\) is made up of
es the tales of inter-
tH} connected char-
acters and how their lives
have been touched by the
strange phenomena that
have been taking place in
Tokyo; there is a serial killer,
a boy who eats the spiders
who live in your heart, and
the strange Boogiepop
Phantom herself, the Angel of
Death. Boogiepop is she who
hunts down those that have
grown too ugly to live on the
earth and takes them away.
Boogiepop’s dub is also very
good, and the soundtrack is
excellent.

It’s hard to try and say much
about the story because it’s
filled with strange twists and
turns that keep you guessing
about what is really going on.
The closest thing that | can
compare Boogiepop to is
Lain, only it really looks like
Boogiepop is going some-
where, unlike Lain that left
you confused even after the
ending.

To sum it all up: Blue
Gender isn’t worth the time
that you could be spending
watching Boogiepop
Phantom.