Anime-thon

I yielded to temptation yesterday by feasting on a Happy Meal in McDOnalds at the London old County Hall. There was nothing else open, and we had to get dinner one way or another before the next anime started. The 'meal' came in a colorful kiddie box, half occupied by a terrigying toy:



Without complaint, I choked on the chicken nuggets and was saved by the vanilla milkshake that tasted of my younger days. Then it was time to get kicked out of the premises at 19:00, and for a festival of weird anime series.

Elfen lied. Surely the genre is familiar: a naked female alien, with bouncy boobs and some form of horns of another on the head to differentiate her from human, lands in the care of an unsuspecting, naive young man. He is already struggling in a friendship/relationship with a human female, possibly a childhood friend. They end up living in the same house, and there are plenty of situations where the wholesome alien is naked...and slaps all over the place to punish him from being all over the alien. Really, not so much different from Lamu, Chobits ro Dears as far as I'm concerned. Just another male fantasy serie. In this one, it is made worse by the sexists dialogues and the bloody scene of chopped limbs and heads...not very enjoyable.

Next door was Yugo the negotiator. A bit of a Nicky Larson meets Cowboy Beebop. Except I like Cowboy Beebop...:) Later, it was a dark fanstasy story of travelling illusionist, writer, and unidentified woman who encounter characters that live in complete denial of their vice or past murders. The episode we saw was about this woman in a village who had an incestuous relationship with her father, and kept her litle sister in a closet while doing it...then it turned out she had complete control over her father, making him kill her mother and everything else that is in her path. She also already killer her litle sister so that she would not see her doing it with her Dad...very very sick indeed! All that with interesting graphics though, that really conveys the uneasiness or the disturbing feelings about the situation.

The last Anime was the best one so far. called Paranoia Agent, each episode is about acharacter struggling with its own mental condition. The beginning credit is very very strange and again, disturbing. The characters are all laughing, the lyrics talk about the mushroom cloud, and yes, they are laughing, and in the background the mushroom cloud erupts and seems not to affect their laughing. It is a s if the deaath and destruction that is to come has already been there, and everyone was detached from the usual feelings. In a sense, as the episodes showed, they all have some sorts of schizophrenia. One teenage boy struggles between being cool and being cruel. His cute timid teacher is fighting against her other self, called Maria who is a prostitute. Another woman, a designer, thinks her toy or plush animal can talk...all of them are very very insane, but they do show the inner voices distilled in us. Each character is legitimate and believable in their dialogues and storylines...very intersting and addictive anime.

And again we got kicked out of the building at 22:00...I wish I could go see Panda Z just for the name's sake but it is better to get back tor eality of rainy and sombre London, and pack my stuff for the upcoming flat move. Also, better food probably maked me feel happier...