Jesus Christ...Literally

What's on Dez's Desktop: The sexy Cloud Strife from Kingdom Hearts; Loki of MaLoRa, ending theme

*Cue bad porno music*
Rya: Good whatever time period/zone you're in. You're at Random Lunacy.
Aro: The sleezy XXX version, apparently.
Syndelin: Which means no underaged children. *tosses Loki into closet with Diz*
Clio: Hmm.....my iTunes' been tampered with....
Loki (now outside the closet): Oh that would be me.
Aro: All cheesiness aside, it had a good beat. I'm gonna get down over here. *starts dancing, badly*
Syndelin: XD Watch Aro go down.....
Loki: And watch your laptop go down. *snaps fingers*
Syndelin: AAAHHHHH! You little bastard! You made my computer go down!
Aro: XD Syndelin's laptop went down on her.
Rya: Will you turn off the damn music?! I mean, damn iTunes....?
Loki: Will you please start hitting power buttons randomly? XD
Syndelin: XD I'm Syndelin Valentine. *turns off bad porn music*
Rya: We're doing intros. Ok, I'm Rya Li St. John.
Aro: I'm Aro of Swords.
Clio: I'm Clio.
Loki: And I'm Loki.
Aro: Hey, Rya, your vacuum cleaner needs to be fixed. It sucks..... XD
Rya: *beans Aro with a broom*

First off, I wanna say a huge CONGRADULATIONS to my sister Penny for getting accepted at FIDM!!!!! WHOO-HOO!!!!!!

Lex: And we're gonna party like its 1999--
Syndelin: Hold up, we did.

And there's your Prince reference for the month. In other news, Thursday night was.....um, interesting..... Ok, let's start with first things first: backround, then I'll hand it over to Inha for review and analysis. A bunch of the anime club got tickets to a Japanese movie (animated) that'd just been in theaters this last October and was ported over and dubbed in mere weeks for American audiences. Called "The Golden Laws", it centered on a boy named Satoru from the 25 century and this girl he meets in a time machine, named Alisa. So, we got a spiritial journey and time travel.

Raz: Legacy of Kain this ain't.

Right. Tsunami Anime Club moved their starting time from 7:30 to 8, promising to run Somday's Dreamers first so the movie goers don't miss anything. Well, that was the plan at least, but they LIED to us by slating Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok first and Dreamers after it, followed by Scrapped Princess, the final ep of Azumanga Daioh, and a double helping of Stellvia the Universe. -_-
Anyway, at 6, Traykor-san took FairSilver, Otakuya and I to the theaters and we all sat down for what would be the most unusual movie going experience we'd ever been to.

And now: Inha's Movie Review of "The Golden Laws"

Inha: "The Golden Laws" is an animated movie based on the books by Ryuho Okawa. It is put out by the Institute for Research in human Happiness. Ok, right here, I would start to fear, or at the very least (though I loath writing l33t) ph34r. The plot revolves around a 15 year old boy named Satoru (who lives in 25th Century New Atlantis), who meets a girl from the 30th century. She has a time machine, and Satoru pleads to go with her to 2003 Japan for a report. So the pair head off to the time stream, but are side-tracked into 2300 BC, where they witness King Hermes (yes, Hermes of Greek legend) defeat a sea serpent. From there, they flounder through other times, meeting various religios figures and learning about the secrets of their lives.
Walking into this animated film, I was expecting a movie about time travel and journey inwhich the characters discover themselves, and was given a story about Buddhism, reincarnation, and the God of Love. It was not what anyone expected. At times, the film was very preachy about the virtues of karma and reincarnation and courage, other times, there was so much exposition, it distracted from the movie and you were left to watch the pretty scenery go by.
Which isn't to say that the movie wasn't well-done. The 3-D computer effects were superb and blended well with the animation style. They were done by the VFX studio resonsible for the effects in Spiderman: Visual Magic. The backgrounds were lush and gorgeous and had many things to look at when the plot rambled on. For the segements where the machine surfed through the rivers of time, the computer effects ere dazzling. The only time, things looked a little out of place was a scene with computer animated sea dragons converging to make a storm. They looked a little too.....shiny for the scene. Also a little cliched were the times when a particular holy figure started to glow in a golden light. It was too cheesy and was laughable at some points. *cue the chorus of angels*
And yes, for those of you who've seen what Valhalla looks like in MaLoki, the heavens in "Golden Laws" also looked like a bad acid trip, complete with a purple haze (XD) of clouds and columns of blue lights. I'm starting to think ALL heavenly places of the gods look like bad acid trips.

Loki: "All will fear Odin's wrath, for in a world of green swirlies, it is black and vengeful."
Aro: And all will fear King Hermes' wrath, for in a world of purple haze, it is large and dragon-shaped.

Inha: Right. The music was very good, and at times very appropriate for the scenes. Surfing through time, you had a techno track playing, and other times, the scenes were perfectly quiet, because, as Miyazaki-sensei knows, some scenes need to just speak for themselves. It was good enough for me to want a soundtrack...though I have a feeling I'd simply let Syndelin rip it on iTunes and sell the CD later.
The immense amount of mythology and religion used in the movie was a trip, especially the way they all connected them in some divine cross-over that rivals the Norse Vs Greek cross-overs that Ryochan and our host are so fond of. Unfortunately, it was incorrectly used in some places, and overall the depiction of such mythological/religious figures was a bit inaccurate. That's not to say it wasn't cleverly done, but in a scale of 1 to 5, I'd give it a 3 for originality.
Its hard to take a movie with an animated Jesus seriously. I remember thinking: "Oh my God! Literally!!! Jesus Christ!!! LITERALLY!!!" Jesus, Moses, the Buddha....all of theses stellar stars of religion showed up, albeit a little inaccurately. *SPOILER* So, King Hermes and Aphrodite are spritial Buddhist spirits?? OMG *SPOILER ENDED* It even has a Wheel of Fate, not unlike the Elder God of Legacy of Kain fame. You know, if Kain and/or Raziel showed up to mess with time, I think the movie would have been more tolerable, but that's me. So yeah. Jesus.
And now, the meat of the review for some: the dub. Given the time they had to dub it, I wasn't expecting something stellar like Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke but I was expecting omething at the very least decent. In dubbing, the quality is torn by 2 factors: taking it word for word correctly from the Japanese version and making it sound natural to American ears; rather accuracy or conformity. In this movie, accuracy for the script was chosen, so you have to give it that much. Again, on a scale of 1 to 5, I gave the dub a 3 for accuracy and having people I recognized. However, in making it accurate, the dialogue was a bit choppy and didn't flow as colliqually as it should. The dialogue consisted of mostly flat sounding lines and repeating what was said. For those who watch enough anime, such things are commonplace. The acting is in the lines, and as most people know, major expression in tone isn't something the Japanese do. Their emphasis in tone is more subtle than Americans'. So in places where the acting would have been more believeable to American ears, it was flatter and more subtle, accurate to the Japanese version. You can tell, the director for the dub wanted to be as accurate to the original as possible, and while that fell through in poor scripting and mediocre acting, you really have to give them credit for trying to stay true to the original.
All in all, "The Golden Laws" wasn't a bad and horrible movie, but it wasn't terribly good either. It hangs in the realm of those who are probably Buddhists and undertsand the immense amount of spiritialization. Only if you know the stuff will you truly understand and probably like the film. Like Final Fantasy: The Spritis Within, the audience for this movie is very small and selected. Not everyone will like this film, and its thick and spiritial plot will probably go over the heads of the younger viewers despite its family animated feel. I give Ryuho Okawa's "The Golden Laws" a 2 out of 5 stars. Jesus H. Tap-dancing Christ.

Um.....thanx Inha...for that...interesting review. And it was an interesting movie, so....yeah. Well, this post's long enough, so I'll let you all go. Gotta get ready for another par-tay....XD So catch ya all on a later date!

*Till next time--any time--Lunies!!*