Shelf Life

Rumbling Hearts and Grumbling Tummies

Shelf Worthy

Rumbling Hearts v.1

Rental

Air Gear v.1

Black Cat v.1

Fate/Stay Night v.1

Perishable

Nothing this time

From Japan with <3

Ninja Vixens: Vixen Dropouts

Raise your hand if you hate Ticketmaster as much as I do. Come on, I can't possibly be alone on this one. If you don't hate them, or at least possess an extreme dislike of them, then you obviously haven't used their service enough. There are many good points about them: for instance, they are convenient. Tickets online for everything. Wonderful. But I'll be damned if I don't feel like they're kicking me in the face and taking my lunch money every time I fork over their damned “convenience charge.”

Convenience? What convenience? By not making me go to the box office? Does that justify them gouging me $5-15 per ticket? I could understand if going to the box office meant I had to drive 100 miles through quicksand and a small village of Olsen twin wax automatons, but come on. I recently bought two tickets to see the Dropkick Murphys. Tickets were $18.50 each. The convenience charge was $10 each. For those lacking in mathematical skills, the convenience charge was over 50% of the original ticket price—and this didn't even include some other mysterious $5 service charge.

I was not pleased. But, at least I got to melt away my anger in the ridiculous blanket of snow that was dumped on my beautiful state. Nothing gives you more reason to sit around doing nothing than being stranded in your house. Welcome to Shelf Life.

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Speaking of snow once again, I've always hoped that all the snow would melt and freeze the entire town under a layer of ice, so that I could ice skate to the mall. When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about that happening, and hoped that in the event that this miracle occurred, people would forsake their cars and chained tires and opt to all get ice skates and hoof it to work. True, I could have just learned to be really ridiculous on roller blades, but those are clunky and cumbersome compared to the streamlined speed of my hockey skates.

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Since I was already watching a show about kids who kicked ass on rollerblades, I decided to swiftly transition to another show about other kids who kicked ass. Or rather, a show about people who looked like kids. I've always been slightly puzzled about shows where the main characters are deadly assassins/bounty hunters/thieves/etc, but who look like they should be in junior high school. Do their parents not worry about them? How did they manage to dodge Social Services? Maybe they're actually really old, but just eat really well and use a lot of Botox?

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Speaking of spectacular, let's make an abrupt transition and focus our attentions on something that most viewers don't know about. I call it car soccer? Yeah, that was Geneon. (And don't think I'm not going to use this space to nerd out in two weeks about JDM Option vol. 31's excess of awesome drifting crashes.) The company even released a DVD of Wynton Marsalis in concert. How's that for range?

Then there's Ninja Vixens, released under Geneon's Neon-G label (10 pts for cleverness). Released in Japan as some kind of softcore comedy, this series of mini-features does its best to create awkward chuckles in pseudo-titillating epics of ninja nature. I wasn't sure if I truly wanted to watch all of the discs, so for brevity, I chose just one of them: Ninja Vixens—Vixen Dropouts. Oh my gosh. I was speechless for a good two hours after watching it. This is either one of the worst things I've seen this year, or… vaguely brilliant in a disturbing way. These movies are essentially a ruse to introduce Japan's prettiest ladies by dropping them into ninja stories and (not so) subtly surrounding them with uglies, to hide the fact that you just bought a softcore porno. This particular one follows a [TOP]

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In any case, this draws the column to a close. Here's to hoping that 2007 is great for everyone! Happy New Year!

The first installment of Shelf Obsessed comes courtesy of Michael Montanye, a grad student in computer science at the University of Vermont.

Notable Anime Title
The release this month that had me excited was Magic Knight Rayearth, which contains both seasons of this classic.

The good: This early Card Captor Sakura four years later. The characters are memorable to the point that Hikaru is still one of my favorite characters in all of anime, even nearly seven years after I first saw the series, and the plotline, while starting out like a stereotypical RPG, gets completely upended by the twist ending to the first season that sets the stage for the second season.

The bad: The series is more than twelve years old, and parts haven't aged well. It was among the earlier "girls in alternate world" series, and now might seem clichéd among a host of later copycats. Further, the second season is somewhat of a letdown, compared to the excellent first season, and tends to drag somewhat over the middle and later sections, despite a host of excellent new characters and a truly interesting scenario, before picking back up for the last few episodes.

The ugly: This is another repackaging of the same disks that were released by Media Blasters in their original box sets in 2000 and 2001, meaning the first season's buggy menus, odd chaptering, and missing creditless opening are all still problems with this release, six years later. While these problems were mostly fixed for the second season disks, this is my fourth copy of the first season (VHS, Memorial Box, Economy Box, World) and third of the second (no VHS), and it's annoying that what was once touted as a flagship title is still hampered by the mediocre quality of one of the company's earliest DVD titles.

The verdict: If you already have a copy of the series, there's nothing new here for you. If you haven't seen the hottest property of 1994, this is your chance to own it at an excellent price.

The Shelf

Shining Nerd Moment
Nerdiest thing I've ever done... Winning Anime Jeopardy at a small con while dressed as Subaru Sumeragi from X would probably top the list.

What do you think? Is he totally right about Rayearth being the cream of the 1994 crop? And are we totally envious of his anime collection? Head on over to the forums to chat about it!

Want to alert us to a current release that's got you all up in a tizzy? Send your own submission to Shelf Obsessed!

I'm looking for three things:

1. A brief (250 words) review of a recent release that's stoking your rocket. Love it, hate it, or wish you could buy it just to throw it at somebody, give me your thoughts!
2. A picture of your anime collection. Should we be jealous?
3. The nerdiest thing you've ever done. I dress up as cartoon characters—what's your poison?

If you want to give a brief blurb about yourself or include a photo, all the better. , this section is all about you. Oh, and send everything to shelflife at animenewsnetwork dot com.

Thanks for reading!!