FLCL: I thought I'd start this new section on my website with a bit of an oddity. This being FLCL, or Fooly Cooly. I managed to see the 3 part anime series, however I have bought the 2 manga books from Tokyopop first, so I'll talk about them first. I've read them [from back to front :D] and at the end I was a bit confused. I've read them again and I think I've begun to understand it. Its basically about this boy called Naota, who has robots that pop out of his head. It follows his journey on how he copes with his problem and how it affects the people around him, including the "Vespa Girl" from outer space, his brothers girlfriend: a compulsive firestarter, his dirty-minded father and of course Canti, the warrior robot reduced to house work. There are mysteries to discover and unravel many many times [because it didn't make much sense to me when I first read it], plus weird looking robots fighting to the finish, plus of course the Vespa Girl who rides a vespa and wields a bass guitar. My final verdict? Its enjoyable, mixing adolesent culture with a bit of aliens and robots.

There are 3 DVD's for some reason, when it only takes 2 manga novels to tell the story... Anyway you can get the 3rd DVD with the boxset box to store all 3 in... Anyway, I bought them & they are equally as good if not better than the manga, but I'll end up spoiling it all if I talk more about it so I'll leave the rest of this review to the promo that follows this weird creation:

"Produced by GAINAX (Neon Genesis Evangelion) and animated by Production I.G. (Ghost in the Shell), FLCL takes animation to yet another level. Get ready for this shocking, funny, and right out freaky show about adolescence, expectations and alien intrigue."

Naota wants to be normal. But with a talented brother leaving Japan for the US to play baseball, everyone now looks at him a bit differently. His brother's girlfriend is acting strange and now there's an even stranger girl hitting on him. Literally. With a bass guitar. Oh, did I mention the robots that keep springing from his head?

RATING: 4 out of 5!

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Mobile Suit: Gundam Wing: I bought the first Gundam Wing DVD about a month ago and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I made a mistake and I should have saved up dollars and bought the whole boxset as it works out cheaper than buying them each individually, but I didn't think of that at the time :( Here's the promo:

"Centuries in the future, in the year After Colony 195, Earth is surrounded by orbiting space colonies. The colonists are cruelly oppressed by the Earth Alliance, which uses huge humanoid fighting machines called "mobile suits" to control the populace. Behind this tyranny is the secret society called "Oz," which has infiltrated the Alliance military and steered it towards its repressive course.

Now, the space colonies are ready to strike back. Five young pilots, equipped with advanced mobile suits called "Gundams," are sent to Earth to wage guerilla war against Oz and its Alliance puppets. The war to decide humanity's destiny begins..."

Sounds intense huh? Gundam Wing has been around awhile and you all probably know all about it by now so I won't get into it. I will however tell you whats on the DVD. Operation One contains the first 5 episodes of this long series. It has a small character/mecha profile [which for Operation One is Heero Yuy, Relena and Gundam Wing]. It has English/Japanese languages & English subtitles and the odd Madman trailer [can't remember which one it is]. There are about 10 DVD's in this set so it will probably cost me about $270 to buy the rest of them individually, but I think I'll save my pennies and buy the box set [first image] which cost about $130 and sell the one I got to a friend or pawn it off. I might not get my $30 back, but I suppose thats my punishment for being a dimwit ;P

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ROBOTECH - The Macross Saga: Was the first robot series that I got seriously hooked on. It aired in Australia in the early 90's on a morning cartoon show. Each morning at 8am that annoying music comes on and transforming aircraft start flying and fighting in front of my eyes. Its now a little more than 10 years since last seeing the robotech cartoon, and the release of the whole series as DVD boxsets in November 2003, got me excited and a couple months later I bought the first boxset.

And what did I think? Well its still as good as I remember it. Looking at it now brings back some childhood memories and It reminds me of the time when I bought the Zentradi Battlepod toy. Anyway back to the cartoon... Its basically a quality 80s cartoon, watching it closely as an artist you can see many flaws and colouring mistakes, but thats what those cartoons were like then. This series was made for the Western countries. Harmony Gold bought the original japanese tapes and edited them for Western viewing. The dubbing is okay, but if your anti-dubbing then you can listen to it in all its japanese glory with the english subtitles.

Each boxset contains 3 DVDs. I've only bought the first so I'll only comment on that one. It contains the first 12 episodes, 2 DVD's with 6 episodes on each and an extra disc which has the original series featurette: Codename Robotech. It was like a 70min pilot episode which was given to televison networks to introduce this new and exciting series to potential viewers. It also has Audio Commentary by the series developer Carl Macek, some animation model sheets and some international clips [the same clip but shown in many different languages.. rather stupid].

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'One Piece' Manga: I was first introduced to Eiichiro Oda's pirate manga when my friend came back from a trip to Japan. He brought back 2 manga books. One was a western cowboy/indian story called "Red" by Kenichi Muraeda and the other was a compilation of short manga stories called "Wanted" published by Jump Comics, which is now known as Shonen Jump [I think...]. Now about 4-5 years later, I discovered that the One Piece manga is being published by Shonen Jump in a series of graphic novels... in ENGLISH! and presented in 100% manga right to left format. Heres the low-down on the One Piece story:

"Its the Golden Age of Piracy. Countless pirates sail the seas, searching for legendary pirate Gold Roger's mysterious treasure, the "One Piece". Amoung them is Monkey D. Luffy, who grew up listening to the wild tales of buccaneer "Red-Haired" Shanks and dreaming of becoming a pirate himself. Having eaten the fruit of the Gum-Gum Tree, Luffy has the bizarre power to strecth like rubber - at the cost of being unable to swim!"

Its a hilarious series [at the momment there are 4 volumes with more to come] full of strange characters and funny situations. I don't want to talk too much about it as it will spoil the adventure of discovering it for yourself.

ONE PIECE DVD!!! - Yep thats right.. all that quirky One Piece humour in a huge animated series! The 4 box sets I bought have 6 discs in each! Its not an Australian release, meaning everything is in chinese/japanese except for the hilarious subtitles. Who ever wrote the subtitles for this series wasn't very fluent and didn't translate completely to english. Most of the characters names are different, for example Monkey D. Luffy is known as Monch D. Roof! It takes a little while to get used to the typos and poor grammar and the subtitles aren't broken up when two characters speak... There are no dashes to inticate that all the speech isn't spoken by the one person. There are no full stops, capitals or any sort of exclamation marks or anything. Very basic, but alas very funny. Some of the translations are just as funny as the actual anime. I was a bit disappointed, but I think I'm over it now. There is also this logo which appears in the top righthand corner of the screen every now and then. I don't know what it is, but yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if it is a bootleg, but I am getting a heap of enjoyment. If it is official the YAY, but whatever it is I recommend it to anyone a fan of One Piece.