Suddenly Meh.
Sep. 25th, 2010 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxinthestarsI think my supposition about the fansub/anime binge may have been on the right track; a week or so ago I was spending too many hours a day watching stuff, and now, having seen Jessie off, I just suddenly don't feel like it anymore, to the point that I'm having to push myself a little to keep turning around 12 Kingdoms with Netflix and finish Bakumatsu Kikansomethingorother* (down to the last four episodes and have put off watching them for a few days now).
That does remind me to revisit a previous viewing addiction, though; kicking the politics habit seems to have gone pretty well. The politics shows I used to spend too much time on and never wanted to miss, suddenly they're not even that appealing anymore... I still do check Democracy Now! and watch it sometimes, and of all things I'm pretty attached to Paul Krugman's blog, but I feel like I'm at a much healthier level now.
I did have one fansub I finished a few days ago and have been meaning to report on, the first season of Trick (subbed by TV-Nihon). It's a live-action drama series, part mystery, part comedy, with the twist that the "detectives" are an unemployed stage magician and the somewhat jerk-ass physics professor who gets her into these things and usually gets the credit, plus there's a pair of comically bumbling cops. The villains claim to have supernatural powers, which our heroes debunk as fakery, usually over the course of two episodes (it does show some ambivalence at whether any kind of psychic or supernatural power is possible, but the villains are always faking it). It's pretty fun, and an interesting concept, but by the end of the first season's ten episodes, it was perhaps wearing a little thin through overspecialization---how many prestidigitating criminals can you run into in quick succession and how elaborate can their schemes be before you strain credulity? Episodes six and seven were a particular low point in which the villain's schtick was so easily explicable, it was hard to buy anyone crediting it as supernatural for a second (she would pantomime murders that would then turn out to have taken place elsewhere at the same time and in the same manner she acted out; not until the second episode of this did someone make the excruciatingly obvious guess that she had an accomplice, and they were talked out of the idea much too easily. It turned out that it was an accomplice---her identical twin.) It also had an odd habit of ending stories on a down note of sadness or doubt, the opposite of American dramas that like to leave you with a laugh. In the end, it was fun, but the fact that I don't know of fansubs for the rest of the series doesn't really bother me.
*I actually do know the full title of this, I'm just being silly because its a mouthful: Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto; the last part always throws me. I've been enjoying it a lot, but will defer further comment until I get myself to finish it.
That does remind me to revisit a previous viewing addiction, though; kicking the politics habit seems to have gone pretty well. The politics shows I used to spend too much time on and never wanted to miss, suddenly they're not even that appealing anymore... I still do check Democracy Now! and watch it sometimes, and of all things I'm pretty attached to Paul Krugman's blog, but I feel like I'm at a much healthier level now.
I did have one fansub I finished a few days ago and have been meaning to report on, the first season of Trick (subbed by TV-Nihon). It's a live-action drama series, part mystery, part comedy, with the twist that the "detectives" are an unemployed stage magician and the somewhat jerk-ass physics professor who gets her into these things and usually gets the credit, plus there's a pair of comically bumbling cops. The villains claim to have supernatural powers, which our heroes debunk as fakery, usually over the course of two episodes (it does show some ambivalence at whether any kind of psychic or supernatural power is possible, but the villains are always faking it). It's pretty fun, and an interesting concept, but by the end of the first season's ten episodes, it was perhaps wearing a little thin through overspecialization---how many prestidigitating criminals can you run into in quick succession and how elaborate can their schemes be before you strain credulity? Episodes six and seven were a particular low point in which the villain's schtick was so easily explicable, it was hard to buy anyone crediting it as supernatural for a second (she would pantomime murders that would then turn out to have taken place elsewhere at the same time and in the same manner she acted out; not until the second episode of this did someone make the excruciatingly obvious guess that she had an accomplice, and they were talked out of the idea much too easily. It turned out that it was an accomplice---her identical twin.) It also had an odd habit of ending stories on a down note of sadness or doubt, the opposite of American dramas that like to leave you with a laugh. In the end, it was fun, but the fact that I don't know of fansubs for the rest of the series doesn't really bother me.
*I actually do know the full title of this, I'm just being silly because its a mouthful: Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto; the last part always throws me. I've been enjoying it a lot, but will defer further comment until I get myself to finish it.
