This Week in Anime

Reading Rainbow

I could break out Xzibit again for this, but Lynzee told me I only get one every six to eight months.
But that's very true, classic literature continues to influence anime to this day! Much like that confluence of Hemingway and Leblanc in Lupin Part 6, it's fascinating when anime classics swim in the same creative brain stew. 2023's Revolutionary Girl Utena.

I love how the creatives behind G-Witch played those overt connections, as if they were putting on their own production of The Tempest in a way. However, this production went into the Gundam well while taking many a cue from Utena to strengthen their vision of this story. It's an incredibly satisfying conversation of various "classic" source materials—one you don't see often nowadays, aside from series that strictly focus on their relationship to other series. It goes to doubly show the strength of the World Masterpiece Theater era of anime—back when a broader swathe of series took inspiration from way more than just other anime...or gacha games in today's world.

Don't you mean Fate/Stay All Night?

That's a shame! John Leguizamo's Tybalt is already anime-ready!

I vividly talk of Romeo x (not +) Juliet popping up in-between classes during my freshman year of high school in 2009. Maybe folks wanted another way to spice up Shakespeare for their teenage minds, or perhaps I kept seeing ads for it in Otaku USA.

I wonder why I didn't watch this in high school. For better or worse, I enjoy an adaptation that strikes out to craft its own identity within the original's framework. I also need more of Zorro Juliet!

Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo is so visually mesmerizing. Any of my encounters with the series has left me with a lingering feeling... One that tells me: this is a series you need to sniff, drink in, and swish around in your mouth like a fine wine.

The closest visual comparisons that come to mind are Puella Magi Madoka Magica's witch encounters, but I'm not sure if they even broach the same territory.

Now that's affecting alliteration, Chris! Just as I raved on with G-Witch, those changes make these adaptations all the more appealing. Speaking of robots and radical departures from the source material, that's exactly why 1983's Around the World in Eighty Days.

I love how I.C. Blues strikes up a bet to hit every planet in the solar system and ends up assembling a very Lupin-esque crew to assist him in his goal. And that's all before he buys a transforming robot train with a credit card to get the crew around space. It's deeply unserious, but it hits me with the same fuzzies I feel whenever I see a good heist flick.
Like Blues, we both know what it's like to buy a robot with a credit card, don't we, Chris?

I wasn't expecting a tokusatsu pull this evening! But I will say, I love that the yellow dude's name is simply "Evil."

By that logic, Keifer Sutherland is not only Venom Snake, but a Power Ranger as well.

However, that loops us back around to World Masterpiece Theater and the many films the creatives behind them went on to make. Of course, I speak once again of Studio Ghibli. Be it Howl's Moving Castle, When Marnie Was There, or The Secret World of Arrietty, the studio has carried on that WMT ethos well into today.

It also has me thinking that Miyazaki's next "last" film could very well be another adaptation of classic literature. After all, while not a western novel, How Do You Live? That book will be 100 years old before we know it! And now I ask myself, "How do I live?"

At least we know that pitching an Animorphs toyline won't work out.

This has a potential for unforgettable Beast War—a tale ed down from father to son, just like the classic stories we've spoken of today.