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Kaiba Episode 2 - Smuggling

post from Cinnamon Ass on 18 April 2008 06:55:00 PM. © Cinnamon Ass

Having sold his body into prostitution (well, it apparently did have a massive schlong. I can’t believe I actually just typed that.), “Warp”’s memories have been transferred to a giant stuffed hippo named Kaba. Alongside the flying squid-thing that stowed away alongside him, Kaba meets another stowaway named Kochu. She dreams of settling down with her rather disinterested boyfriend Bataa, but Bataa uses a teleporter to sneak off when she’s not looking; the same teleporter leads Kaba and the squid back to Warp and Paam, the lady who bought him, having the most incredible sex imaginable.

Kochu eventually discovers Bataa’s indiscretions with a well-endowed dominatrix, but in fact Bataa has been smuggling top-grade memories on board the shuttle and doesn’t really give a toss about Kochu anyway. The commotion that ensues attracts the attentions of the sleazy Vanilla, the obstructive guard from the previous episode, who trusses all three of them up and orders them to display their tickets to travel. Bataa produces a fake ticket, but eventually admits his guilt as a smuggler, at which point Vanilla vapourises both him and Kochu; their memories, instead of turning into chips, become orange “memory eggs” and float out into space.

Kaba and the squid return to watch Paam and Warp get it on as officials scour the hold for more stowaways - however, the experience is all just too much for Paam, and with thoughts of her absent father (who turns out to be… Bataa!) she explodes all over the room! When Vanilla comes to investigate, the person inside Warp’s body claims to be Paam, but his ruse is discovered when Vanilla tries to check for Paam’s memory chip. Having frozen Warp in place, one of the officials enters his memories to confirm his identity, but the squid steals the gun that allows him to do this and escapes the shuttle with Kaba. In the meantime, the officials discover a small group of female stowaways in the hold - all of them wondering where Bataa is…

Well, it’s a Masaaki Yuasa show, so there had to be enormous undulating breasts in the show at some point. Maybe he’s got them out of his system?

From an art and animation point of view, this episode isn’t quite as interesting as the first one. The inside of a space shuttle, after all, isn’t as visually interesting as an alien planet, although there are some really nice bits of imagery here, particularly the slightly dizzying shot of the memory eggs floating out past the shuttle. There’s some brilliant animation, though, particularly of Kaba and the squid, and I did like the strange grasping hands that lived inside Paam’s coat even if they were disturbingly voyeuristic.

Plot-wise, we get thrown out an interesting little tidbit in that Neiro is apparently wanted by the authorities for blowing up several memory tanks. I’m also fairly sure that the squid (and possibly the AstroEmu) contains Neiro’s personality - it gets jealous when Kaba eyes up Kochu as she’s getting dressed, and it cares just a little too much about Kaba’s safety for no apparent reason. This is, of course, conjecture, but it’s nice to have a series that one can do that about without someone spoiling you from the manga!

I’m a little confused, however, as to what exactly happened with “Warp”’s body. When did it get a different memory chip implanted? It’s probably not a plot hole and I’ve probably just missed something in the dialogue, but little details like that make the show a little bit less consistent, which is unfortunate. The writers are doing an admirable job with a fairly complex central theme, but if they’re going to slip up on little details now…

Anyway, I don’t think this episode is going to convince anyone who was on the fence before about Kaiba. It’s still a bit odd, and very distinctly Yuasa’s work in its mildly uneven tone, but very few directors would choose to make both the main characters of an episode essentially mute?

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http://www.ass-no-ryu.com/animeblog/?p=1102

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OMG Are Those Stats!

post from Sea Slugs! Anime Blog on 18 April 2008 04:42:27 PM. © Sea Slugs! Anime Blog

From Hige:One restriction I really want to impose is a five hundred word limit for every post I make. Not only because it will avoid the tl;dr problem that seemingly blights the internet, but also to help improve conciseness and stop me waffling in unreadable incoherent ways.I’ve been using the Blog Metrics plugin for a [...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/seaslugteam/~3/273134402/

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Spring, Where Art Thou

post from Hop Step Jump! on 18 April 2008 04:40:00 PM. © Hop Step Jump!

Just so you know, work and the sudden onset of Spring have conspired to suck up most of my spare mental and physical energy these past few weeks. I’ll be out of town on business next week, too, so I suspect the remainder of April is pretty much shot as far as blogging is [...]

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http://anime.jefflawson.net/2008/04/18/spring-where-art-thou/

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Do Not Present Projects on Anime in Front of a
Room of Otaku

post from Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts on 18 April 2008 03:21:13 PM. © Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

Today was my group’s presentation for the Japan and Singapore module. We did a rather dry War World 2 textbook bias paper, even though the topic was completely free. Half the world would probably do their projects on anime, cosplay and the like, so we thought. Turns out, we were right! Partly.There were two other [...]

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http://www.riuva.com/?p=1061

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Jap Movie Review: Check it Out YO, Okinawan
Tourism Promotion Video with Orange Range Soundtrack

post from Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts on 18 April 2008 02:50:39 PM. © Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

The Japanese movie Check It Out Yo! is being shown here exclusively in Cineleisure, and I went to see it with the girlfriend because both of us like Orange Range a lot. The movie was supposed to be about 3 young men from Okinawa who make it big in the Japanese hip-hop/rap/rock scene. That is [...]

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http://www.riuva.com/?p=1060

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Episode of the Week - 04.18 - D. Gray-Man - 79

post from Xebek's Blog on 18 April 2008 02:00:00 PM. © Xebek's Blog

Episode of the Week:

D. Gray-Man - 79

This was a pretty obvious choice. It?s not that the other shows that are starting this new season aren?t really bad, they just haven?t reached a big critical point in their story so early on and D. Gray-Man is right in the middle of one.

This episode really was incredible. I?m not going to spoil anything here, you can read the full post about it, but it just had me in absolute shock. I was speechless for a while after seeing it. It was amazing. The episode itself had some great scenes in it and the overall result of the episode seems like it will be vitally important to the rest of the series. Not only was it a great episode but it really continues the show on a serious and dark path which continues to be interesting.

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http://xebek.animeblogger.net/2008/04/18/episode-of-the-week-0418-hayate-no-gotok
u-52/

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D. Gray-Man - 79

post from Xebek's Blog on 18 April 2008 12:40:00 PM. © Xebek's Blog

Kanda struggles against Skinn who won?t die, giving it his all to make it to the door and defeat him.

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http://xebek.animeblogger.net/2008/04/18/d-gray-man-79/

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Get Your ABA Nominations In

There’s only 4 days left to get your nominations in for the 2008 Anime Blog Awards (nomination phase ends on Tuesday, April 22). So if you have an anime blog, please nominate fellow bloggers that you think have done an excellent job this year. Think of this as the ABA primaries. Your [...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/seaslugteam/~3/272937167/

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Tower of Druaga 02

Boy meets cute girl… ahh, typical Gonzo.Yeap, this episode totally makes me go… “Ahh~ this is truly a Gonzo show.” You have the hotheaded idealistic protagonist in Gil. You also have the complex, interrelated multiple plot threads going around, half of which are going to be used randomly then discarded. You also have the cute, [...]

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http://kurogane.animeblogger.net/2008/04/18/tower-of-druaga-02/

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