Anime: Princess of mind numbing boredom

[baavgai]

Miyazaki's Mononoke Hime aside, in anime I believe that anything mentioning the moon or princesses it probably best avoided. Alas, not following this insight, I was recently subjected to Lunar Legend Tsukihime. Sound bad? Tsukihime means Moon Princess. Yep, it's double bad. It was a video game first. Scared yet?

But, well, we were with friends, it promised vampires, and there were only 12 episodes. Little did we know that a twenty two minute episode of Tsukihime is like a three minute angsty music video at 1/8 speed slow motion.

I'm reasonably sure this must of been a straight to video two hour movie that someone used for mid season filler at Animax TV. Did I mention it was slow?

To be fair, the first few of episodes didn't suck, just enough to get you hanging in there. By episode eight or nine you realize they're just leading you on, but all things must end, right? It eventually does end, in our case with a DVD failure five minutes before the official curtain call. You realize, somehow, you've sat through that. There is a certain joy in having survived, after all.

I read some reviews on this train wreck. Some people actually liked it. Then again, some anime fans like a lot of unpleasant things.

I would heartily avoid this one. Seriously, don't do it. I felt the same way about .hack//SIGN. Curiously, some drive by blogger felt compelled to give that study in tedium their personal thumbs up. Hmm...

On the up side, I'd brought with me one of the best anime series I've ever seen and our guests didn't know it. I'll review that one later. I don't want to out it. I'll just say Ginko is my hero.

Comments

[h3salthea.livejournal.com]

I must admit that I was subjected to the first episode months back, and gave it the 'get me outta here' after that first episode.

....should have stuck to that first, initial gut reaction to T-sucky-hime.

...be glad you missed the one with the kid having the device stuck in his chest. Never got beyond the first episode of that, either...TG...

.hack/sign's only good point is the music. Some of it. Ok, a few songs. Two.

*smirks*

[danabren.livejournal.com]

Seriously technically wonkily, "-hime" means "lady", and is a title of respect, rather than a level of rank. But Americans are all about being Fairy Ballerina Princesses of Unicorn Farms and "Princess" gets a better selling title than "Lady Of The Moon".

Don't always trust the translation ;) it's often what they think you want to hear.

[baavgai.livejournal.com]

I think hime, in particular, has some linguistic drift going on. I always assumed it was closer to dono than sama. Just like sama is sometimes used ironically, I think hime may have started to get the same treatment.

There are a few historical Japanese "princesses" that carried the honorific as part of their title, though it could have been a pet name thing. In "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter", the name Kaguya-hime is given to an adopted daughter because, well, damn she's cute. It's often found in English as "The Tale of Princess Kaguya".

In the context of anime, I'd have to assert that "princess" is generally a fair translation, since that generally seems to be the intent. Still, made me look. I'll have to be more careful with my pidgin Japanese. ;)