Sunday, October 30, 2005

Ow

So on Oct. 14th I got hit by a car while riding my scooter. I had the scooter exactly one month & had just made my first payment on it the same day. The driver went through a stop sign. His excuse was it was dark, there were a lot of headlights & my white scooter blended in with them. My first thought was, he thought I was headlights & still came though the intersection?

He also stated that I rolled really well. Gee thanks.

Despite how well I rolled I still ended up with a broken right wrist, 3 stitches in my upper lip, bruised ribs, & scrapes on my left knee & both forearms. The wrist required surgery to be put back together, which included putting plates & screws in to hold it all together. I'll be in casts for about 6 weeks. Work has put me on short-term disability leave, which gives me full pay for 2 weeks & then 60% pay there after. Hopefully I'll only be out for 3 weeks max because the doctor said I'll get a smaller different cast after the first two weeks after my surgery (I had to wait one week before surgery for all the swelling to go down.

Finally got to see the damage to my scooter yesterday (I vaguely remember seeing the scooter after the crash, before a nurse driving by got out & took care of me till medics arrived). Talking to the repair shop guy, the amount of damage to repair with estimated parts & labor totaled $1000 more than the cost of the scooter itself.

In the second pic note how the center of the seat is off-center compared to the front main post. I was hit hard enough to bend the frame. Seeing that & the rest of the bike I got lucky with just a broken wrist. (If you click on the pics you get a larger image.)



Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Night Walker Anime Series

So I picked up the "Night Walker Midnight Detective" DVD at EBGames as part of their "buy 1 get 1 free" sale (I also got "Basic" good movie). I had never heard of this series before & it said on the cover "3 Hours of Vampire Action." Well being a bit of a horror & anime fan I decided to check it out. After viewing the first DVD I found the second DVD on eBay for a decent price.

After viewing both I decided to write a review. So here are my thoughts on the Night Walker series. (WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD)

Basic premise of the show is Shiro is a vampire with a human heart. So he hire's himself out as a detective to fight the evil Night Breed in Tokyo. Most of the episodes Shiro is hired by Yayoi who is with a special paranormal branch of the Tokyo Police, the NOS (I don't remember if they ever said what NOS stands for). Yayoi is also Shiro's lover/provider in that she allows Shido to feed off of her blood, but not to the point of turning her into a vampire. Shiro has a coffe runner/secratary/helper named Riho. Riho has a HUGE crush in Shido, which causes all sorts of tension when Yayoi is in the office. Shiro also has an "Urban Fairy" sidekick named Guni....mostly she's there for comic relief. The last main charater is Cain. Cain is also a vampire, he is the one that created Shiro. Shiro does not remember anything of his life prior to becoming a vampire. Only Cain knows that.

I think the episodes are too short. It doesn't really allow enough time to play out everything they seem to be trying to fit into each episode (plot action backstory etc.). In the later episodes they do finally settle into the short format and the writing gets better, but it still lacks depth. Added to the problem of the short format the action is limited.

I have to say that by the end of disc two they have done a lot of charater development between backstory & present day.

While I love the concept of the show, sadly a lot of it was lifted from the Anne Rice novels. The relationship between Cain & Shido is the same homo-erotic vampire relationship Rice created with Lestat & Louis. And also the same can be said for the father-daughter/lovers relationship with Shido & Riho, it mirrors the relationship of Louis & Claudia. Right down to Cain/Lestat practicly forcing Shido/Louis to create Riho/Claudia as a vampire

The final episode was good....up until it became the "it was all a dream moment," (I really hate that plot gimmick). That & it felt wrong storywise (almost like a "jump the shark" moment) with Shido & Riho becoming a couple at the end. Mostly because by that moment she was still young (early teens?). Whereas in the Louis & Claudia relationship while she is sill trapped in the body of a child Claudia is quite old.

While the back of the case on Vol. 1 describes it as "Anime meets Forever Knight with some Angel and City Hunter on the side," I would describe it as more Anime meets Forever Knight meets Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles.

I did like the second disk better in that the stories were better paced & just plain better writting then the first few on disc 1. I loved that they explored Yayoi's background, though the off-handed way explained Guni in the same story seemed tacked on.

While I liked the series, it's missing a main adversary. While they try hard to set Cain up as the main baddie, he seems to have no connection to the Night Breed that Shido & company are constantly fighting. And while great character devlopment happend for most of the good guys (Guni the exception), the bad guys aren't. The Night Breed pretty much serve as "monster of the week." While Cain is always rambling on either about the "Golden Dawn" or how much he want's Shido to return to him. Neither provide much of anything.

Overall it's a hit or miss series with it's best moments coming in the later half. I feel that if the series were to continue they really would need to develop the adversaries more. I'd almost say the 12 episodes are a good pitch for a better series. It's got all the parts for a good show, it's just lacking cohesion.