WTF Wardrobe: Sha Goyjo – Gensoumaden Saiyuki

Let’s face it, sometimes clothing and hairstyle design in anime is bad to the point of being ridiculous.  You sit, and stare at the screen and wonder who exactly would wander out of their house looking like that.

My example today is Sha Gojyo from Gensoumaden Saiyuki and his ridiculous pants.

They’re like hammer pants, capri style.  What exactly is the point of them being all poofy only to be extremely fitted at the calves?  It certainly doesn’t make them look any better.

Not to mention the actual front of the pants.  What the heck is that sticking up above the waistline?  Do I even want to know?

This ridiculous piece of clothing made it nearly impossible for me to take Gojyo seriously.  Any reaction I would have to a real person wearing something so silly looking got attached to the character, so even when he did something badass, I would still think, ‘yeah but those PANTS….’  They negated any hint of machismo he possibly had or could have, and simply relegated him to being bad.

If you’re wondering, yeah I’ve been posting about Saiyuki pretty heavily.  It’s one of my favorites, so you can look forward to more posts about it, good and bad.

I wouldn’t go on a field trip with you for anything

I’ve had some cause to regret my decision to watch all the anime I have in my binder from cover to cover.  The order that I put anime in was pretty random and I have a giant chunk of Naruto to be watching in the middle.  I’ll admit that I wasn’t exactly looking forward to rewatching Saiyuki, as I labored under the impression that it wouldn’t stand up to the more recent anime I had been watching.

I was wrong.  I still enjoy Saiyuki mightily, and I’m glad it’s still in my collection.  It’s one of the few anime I own that I have watched multiple times, some of the others being Trigun, Magic Knight Rayearth, and D. N. Angel.  I suppose that in itself may tell you something of what I prefer to watch: anime that has lots of action, humor, and characters that essentially don’t change much.

Which sums up Saiyuki pretty well.  The Sanzo party does not get along throughout the entire series (and by series, I’m only referring to Saiyuki itself, not the latter seasons Reload and Reload Gunlock).  Sanzo himself is unflinchly direct to everyone, declaring that ‘anyone that gets in the way of my mission, I will kill.’  Every time they’re in the car, Goku and Gojyo fight in the back, while Hakkai laughs and makes a sarcastic comment about it being peaceful and Sanzo eventually gets angry enough to threaten to shoot the both of them.  In an episode where an enemy sent a fake Goku, the others knew he was fake because the fake didn’t declare immediately that he was hungry.

After some anime where the entire season is comprised of the hero constantly second-guessing themself and wavering on every decision, Sanzo’s directness is refreshing.  He doesn’t waver, he doesn’t second guess.  If he sees someone in his way, he simply takes them out and keeps on his way.  I like that.  I tend to get annoyed with wishy-washy characters, because really, how hard is it to just make a freaking decision and go by it?

I’ll admit that the beginning animation is a little painful to watch, as there looks to be LOTS of photoshopping, but as the seasons progress, the animation takes off and really improves.  By the end of the series the animation is superb and special effects actually add to the story rather than distracting from it.  I can see what will become echoes of later series in the animation in Saiyuki.  Although, Studio Pierrot also does Naruto and Bleach, the consistency of quality unfortunately does not stay the same as Saiyuki, which is rather unfortunate.  It’s not a very fair comparison though, given the length of Saiyuki compared to the lengths of Bleach and Naruto, both of which run much, much longer, and therefore probably have different costs associated with them.  However, that is beside my point.

Saiyuki is pretty much the way I’d imagine any ‘extended field trip’ for any four people that knew each other would go.  Everyone would shortly get on everyone else’s nerves, and do the same thing, time after time after time.  I don’t find that repetition boring at all, although I imagine that kind of storytelling isn’t for everyone.

Now to sit back and watch Saiyuki Reload!  I still need to buy Reload Gunlock sometime :\  Maybe after I’m done watching everything I have now..

The anime in this review is provided by the author.

Mid-week update October 21, 2009

I’m trying to get back into the swing of some semi-regular posting.  On that very subject, I may just start posting pictures of my figure collection.  Most of them are nothing fancy, and not inherently valuable, but I did spend a lot of time and some effort getting them.  I’d say the grand majority does come from anime conventions while the lesser portion comes from ebay/livejournal sales.  So I’ll probably do that…this weekend sometime.  That’ll give me time to figure out what to start with.  Heck, maybe I’ll put up a new poll about it, let you guys help me decide.

So for the reading portion of this update, I’m currently reading Kushiel’s Mercy by Jacqueline Carey, which is the end of the Imriel trilogy of the Kushiel series.  It’s been pretty engrossing, although I have to admit, it started REALLY slow for me.  It took me some determined reading and about a quarter of the book to get drawn in to where I’m reading two and three chapters at a time.  If you don’t know, these books are dense, so it’s still going to be a while.  I’m currently about two-thirds of the way through it.  For a very brief summary, Imriel is the son of the realm’s greatest traitor.  Despite being fostered by the realm’s greatest heroes, he’s lived in the shadow of his infamous mother, and has grown up under suspicion.  He has the further misfortune of falling in love with the Queen’s heir, which makes  him appear to be carrying out his mother’s plans, which were to put him on the throne, long ago.  To this end, the Queen decrees that she will not accept his suit unless he brings his mother to justice.  He only just begins to work on that when the realm comes under the spell of another country, threatening to throw them into civil war.  I’m not sure I’d actually classify it as ‘fantasy’ as the only thing that I see that even falls into that category is that it’s an alternate realm in an alternate timeline.  As usual, I love the characters, and I love the intrigue and politics at play.  There’s an especially great bit where our hero realizes that to achieve his current goal, the only person he can turn to for aid is one that he’s hated for the past couple novels.  It was a great moment.

As far as anime watching, I’m currently re-watching Saiyuki, and I’m about three-quarters through that one.  It’s one of the first anime I kept up with, buying DVDs when I could afford them, so there’s a bit of special nostalgia in my heart for it.  I’d started kind of cringingly re-watching it, fearing my fond memories would mislead me, but they haven’t.  I still find it to be a very enjoyable anime to watch.  The animation starts off horrible, but it gets better.  There’s angst, but hey, it’s a pretty-boy series.  It’s to be expected really.

I’ve slowed down some on my manga reading.  I still have a small stack waiting to be read.  I recently read both volumes of Trigun manga, and I’m now borrowing Trigun Maximum and reading that.  I found the art in Trigun to be confusing at times, which lead me to re-read panels and even pages a number of times, and coming away still not sure what exactly was going on.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it really detracted from any enjoyment I’d have in the reading.  Trigun Maximum however seems much easier to read, much more concrete in artwork.  Granted, I’ve only read one volume so far.  I may retract that particular opinion later.

I was leant Bioshock to play, so I’ve started that.  It’s a fascinating game so far.  I haven’t played much of it, and I’m going to admit that this game will definitely scare the heck out of me.  There’s a reason I don’t usually play any kind of horror game, but I will make exceptions.  Bioshock is going to be one of those exceptions.  Other than that, I’ll probably be wasting tons of time playing the Namco Museum pack I recently downloaded, mostly because it had Dragon Spirit.  Which I did not realize started life as an arcade game.  I thought it was going to be the Nintendo version, which I have fond memories of watching my brother play it.  Needless to say, I really suck at it.  Terribly.  I think after a dozen or so tries, I got past the first stage only to promptly die in the next stage.  At least I’m better at Galaga, but the roomie tells me she beat my high score which is definitely a challenge.  Hopefully I fix that this weekend.

That’s it for my geekery this week.  I bet these posts go a long way toward explaining why I’m such a boring person I spent entirely too much time on these solitary activities, lol.