anime pocast

As you well know by now the AAAPodcast is currently stationed in Japan and as a result they have access to all kinds of amazing anime happenings around the country.  On this episode they will be sharing some recent ones, covering art exhibits and stage plays.

Recent Events in Japan

• Princess Mononoke Stage Play

  • Extremely difficult Ghibli movie to make into a play.  Probably only Nausicaa and Spirited Away would be more difficult.

    • I thought that the very first scene illustrated how difficult it was; Kodama

    • They did make interesting choices though with how to do thing, like yakul, very Lion King esque (see below)

  • The casting was done quite well.  I really thought Ashitaka and Eboshi’s castings were great.

    • Jiro’s casting was not so great

    • San- soso

    • Lady Eboshi was very good

  • The music was obviously great because it was borrowing heavily from the original score done by Hisaishi.

    • Much rearranged.  Maybe for licensing purposes.

  • The props were pretty good.

    • Yakul was done interestingly.

    • I thought that the costumes were also done well

    • The backgrounds were lacking.  The has the same background (forest) the entire show and only utilized a digital screen to great illustrations.

  • Followed the movie Exactly

    • Kind of nice to see a true adaptation over them trying to make it “their own” in some strange, forced, way

• Kunio Okawara Art Exhibit

  • Who is Kunio Okawara

    • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunio_Okawara

  • Covered a broad spectrum of mecha designs from many giant Robot series, including a lot of Gundam

    • Yatterman (1977), Votoms, Ultraman, Zendaman, Tekkaman, Super Robot Wars, etc…

    • Incredible level of detail and absence of eraser marks (perfect work)

  • Giant 15 foot tall Scope Dog (Votoms)

  • Hilarious silly Gundam designs; Windhill Gundam, Tequilla Gundam, Mermaid Gundam

• Yoshitaka Amano Art Exhibit

  • Original work and series prints for sale

  • Cheapest one was around 4,000$