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Whoo, these new Harvey Birdman episodes aren't that great. Even with more Birdgirl. The only really good gags in the 3rd ep were the meta stuff about Stephen Colbert. And that only works if you pay attention to who is in the cast. And know what else they do.
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Saw the first episode of 30 Rock via the evil powers of the internet. I quite enjoyed it. Go read what Warren Ellis wrote about it, as I agree with most what he wrote and he wrotes better than me. As that sentance just proved. The stuff about Arthur Atkinson particularly rings true. I'm sure one of the physical gags Tracy Morgan's character does at the end of the episode appears in one of the Fast Show sketches (the bit with him dangling the bottom of his arm). I recall reading somewhere that Tina Fey originally didn't want to star in it, only write, but it was a studio thing that she had to. She certainly is the weakest performer in it in terms of not quite fitting the character properly.
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Go get ezLizard's fansub of the first episode of GeGeGe no Kitarou. I understand it was a one off produced for a convention (in much the same way the Chubby Ninja fansub was), but get it nonetheless. It's a standalone episode and an example of the sort of thing fansubs should be used for. Probably want to google the series first though as the anime seems to assume some basic familiarity with the character.
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Also caught the first episode of the new Nabeshin supervised anime Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge, the manga of which is released in English as “The Wallflower”. The anime doesn't seem to have a decent budget, but you can tell the show is a Nabeshin show. Lots of the visual tricks/short cuts he used in Excel Saga and Puni Puni Poemi are evident here and it works.
That being said there's plenty of better fansubs you could be watching, and it does feel like the anime has been made to cash in on the Ouran Host Club anime's popularity. And that anime is several miles better than this one.
But I'll probably keep watching as it is Nabeshin after all, and he seems to have been given freer reign here as the supervising director than the work he's done on Eyeshield 21.
Oh I suppose I should say what it's about. 4 bishonens, stereotypes to the point of absurdity, stay in a ludicrous mansion. Their landlady offers them free rent for a month if they can turn her niece into a lady. The niece is morbid teen, with bad hair and skin, who shuts herself away watching horror films with her cut away anatomical mannequin for company. So, it's a Pygmalion set-up, but reviews of the manga seem to suggest it isn't the focus of the plots. Reviews of the manga also suggest the plot goes nowhere and the series settles into just focussing on gags for the most part, so hopefully that turns into a postive for the TV show considering the director.
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Also thanks to the evil powers of the internet, I reread Zenith this week for the first time in almost 20 years. Truth be told, I'd only ever read the second arc, the one with the evil Richard Branson character. Which was handy as that is the one that ties in the least with overall story of the batlle with the Lloigor. It still reads well overall – the only clunky bit being the appearance of Chimera at the end of Phase II. It feels somewhat ill fitting with the rest of that arc.