For whatever reason, Adult Swim has decided to put Bleach on hiatus until the new year... but when it comes to a lot of my shows, they're all going away until January at the earliest.
So far, "Grimm" is the only one that has left on a positive note. Well, "New Girl" and "The Mindy Project" have been good.
It's "Castle" and "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." that has me concerned with their cliff-hanger endings... the "Once Upon a Time" franchise as well, although I have yet to see the finales of either series...
Anyways, according to the info, Fooly Cooly is starting all over again. But I more or less decided the 2:30am time slot is too late for me to keep up with.
I managed to find the final episode just so I remembered how it all ended.
It's pretty much gotten to the point where I really don't care to fully explain what it all means. But I did get where they were going with all the character development. That's what makes the finale so good. Not only do they EXPLAIN some stuff and Haruko opens up a little bit more about why she's there in the first place.
In episode four, "Full Swing," we're introduced to this government agency who wants to find out what Haruko is up to. I never really caught names, but we see a lot of this blonde girl that's a second in command and this dude in charge...
This dude apparently has some history with Haruko and for whatever reason, he's always seen wearing fake eyebrows. In this episode alone, his subordinate and Naota say "eyebrows" at least three times because they're basically the elephant in the room.
"Full Swing" focuses on Naota's unwillingness to swing the bat when he's at home plate for his baseball team... but it's also a metaphor for his attitude towards life. And for whatever reason, Haruko is pitching for the other team (and destroying the competition) and she offers to be his batting coach.
During this time, it appears that Haruko and Naota's father are now in a relationship... a very steamy one. They don't show much, Naota's looking through a crack in a door, but he sees them doing the nasty. Subsequently leading into a very strange scene later on where it appears that he hit his father with the bat out of jealousy, and there's another person there that looks like his father, but it's really an android.
Eyebrow guy talks with Naota a number of times, talking about Medical Mechanica and how Haruko is trying to infiltrate the organization.
When it comes down to it, a satellite heading to the earth, that takes the form of a glove throwing a baseball, Naota does, in fact, swing the bat... which is actually a bass guitar that Haruko pulled out of his head.
Episode 5, "Brittle Bullet" makes about as much sense as episode one the first time you're watching it...
for whatever reason, gun violence is a common theme, mainly with the characters shooting each other up with guns with unlimited ammo... with no blood or flesh wounds. Just randomly added in for this show only.
Eyebrow guy shows up again, trying to reason with Haruko and it's made clear that she was on Earth when he was Naota's age and she didn't go for him the same way. Apparently because Eyebrow guy's head doesn't allow robots and machines to come through... which is interpreted as him not being mature enough for Haruko.
Naota also has a tense moment with Mamimi and tells her to stop following him around and calling him Ta-kun, her pet name for his brother, her now ex-boyfriend.
So at the climax, the finale, Haruko and Canti are nowhere to be found. Been on the run from the past couple weeks/months. Since the previous confrontation, a giant hand (formed of the remanents of the latest robot adversery) is hanging over the giant iron, ready to grasp it at any second and a white smoke has enveloped the town.
We almost have a return to form when Haruko returns because it's deja vu of the scene in episode one where everything was in manga form. Then for whatever reason, it stops abruptly after it gets kinda strange (including some graphic nudity that's pixeled out...ok, very strange) and the actors are out of breath, as if the manga form was too exhausting to keep up with.
When Haruko and Naota are sharing the bunk bed again, he's pretends he's back to his indifference/annoyance with her, but breaks into tears because she didn't say goodbye when she left. He agrees to run away with her and help her accomplish her goal.
which seems to be rescuing this being called Atomsk known as the "pirate king" because he's stolen whole star systems.
His loyalty to her will soon be tested. But he makes an interesting statement about how everything is ordinary in town and Haruko was the only way he knew there was a world outside his town.
On the other side of things, we see Mamimi, who has found yet another non-human friend to take care of. This time, it's a small robot exhibiting dog-like behavior. Of course she calls it Ta-kun, same as Naota and the cat (first seen in episode 2). It eats her cell phone. She gives it the cell phones from kids at her school. Then she has it eat mopeds because someone splashed her when it drove by.
But as it eats, it gets bigger and bigger until it becomes the piece needed to activate "the hand".
The craziness goes down with all the characters present. Naota ends up absorbing the powers of Atomsk and Haruko fights him for it... until he stops on his own to declare his love for her.
After all the crap does down, she leaves, deciding he's not mature enough to come with her. She leaves behind the bass guitar and according to Naota, Mamimi decided to take off to become a photographer.
In an odd sort of way, it is a coming of age story. Just with too many twists and turns to fully make sense of. I can't explain a lot of it, but if you do see it, after a couple times, it does start to sink in.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Examining a Potential Muse- Britney Spears
I recently restored the "Circus" tracks I associated with this project on my iPod. While doing so, I wondered for a moment if any of Britney's earlier stuff had a valid place as well.
Primarily, her 2nd and 3rd albums, "Oops... I did it again" and "Britney"...
These were albums one of my friends burned for me back when CD burning was a huge thing. Eventually, I put together my own "Greatest Hits" of Britney Spears.
a) so I could keep my favorite tracks from her first album, which I wound up selling because I hardly listened to more than the first three songs :-P
b) in general, greatest hits from the 90's dissatisfy me, which is why I did my own for The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC as well
c) I was sick of skipping every other track of "In the Zone" to get to my favorites
d) my friend's copy of "Oops... I did it again" was scratchy and as a result, the track "Don't knock on my door" was debilitated so bad that it couldn't get past the 3 minute mark... the ticking remains in the background, but the tracks don't "tick" as much in my copy
when I was getting to know these tracks real well, I was playing them along with Spider Solitaire. Ironically, one of those times, I skipped out on "Coyote Ugly,' thinking I wouldn't get into that movie... finally saw it recently, roughly a decade after that... might of mentioned it a few times
long story short, here're the tracks I'm considering using...
For a second, I even considered the title track. When I recalled it (it's been YEARS since I've heard it, I wasn't a huge fan of that particular track), I thought it sounded exactly like something Talia would say.
"I'm sorry I made you fall in love with me during my performance, but it was just an act"
But after listening to it, the undercurrent didn't agree with my motives. It isn't as if Talia flaunts her sexuality with the intention of toying with other's emotions.
"Don't come knocking on my door," as much as I love that track, it doesn't really fit into my storyline anywhere. The only place it could is as another way of her turning down Alejandro (or JP's) advances... got one too many tracks like that already in mind.
"Don't wanna let you back in" also fits in that same category, but it seems more final than its predecessor
"I'm a slave 4 u" seems pretty obvious... plus the music video will provide ample inspiration. It was choreographed by Prince's first wife, Mayte, who is my key inspirer for Talia's belly-dancing... I need to get back to that element, been focusing so much on the cha-cha and samba steps
"Boys" struck me as a good match because within it lays Talia's policy when it comes to the opposite sex:
"when a girl is with one, then she is in control"...
considering the terrors the girls have endured, that needs to be a top priority. In this business, they must be the ones calling the shots because they don't want to think of themselves as victims anymore
While listening to it, I started pondering a possible back story for either Talia or Vanessa... :sigh: Vanessa remains the one girl with the past that's impossible to nail down. I thought she could be the girl that came from a conservative family (kinda like Katy Perry, who wasn't even allowed to say "deviled eggs" in her house), wanted to take dance lessons in addition to college and leaves academia for dance...
now, I just have her down as the girl that came to the main setting along with Talia, and Talia aimed to help with this new proposal.
Anyway, the storyline is that before the girls came together as a "group," one of these girls was in a controlling, abusive relationship.
Sounds like something Vanessa could fall into, supposing she gave up on college and her parents' dream of her becoming a doctor or lawyer to become a professional dancer.
But at the same time, I can't help but consider Talia might fit that description as well...
considering how far she's gone to protect herself, compared to how much pain the other girls went through, it's kinda hard for those pieces to click in my head.
It's not like she was molested as a girl or that she grew up in a brothel or that she was a prostitute who was raped multiple times a day... that sort of deal...
Right now, I have it figured that she's bitter towards the opposite sex because her stepfather had her believing he loved her, but he betrayed her and her family by emptying the bank account. He treated her like a queen and left her and her mother with nothing.
Then the crap with Alejandro happens and she decides never to open her heart again, believing the opposite sex to be untrustworthy
The furthest I got with "pressing" the limits of Talia's relationship with her stepfather is that he's there for her when she's rejected by a boy she likes and has considered losing her virginity to. Kinda racy considering she's likely only 16 at the time, but he might take advantage of her because she's emotionally compromised over this break-up. Maybe this guy went with another girl because he wants to be someone more experienced. So he takes it upon him to "show her how" to do it... takes her to bed a number of times, she yields to his every direction until the idea forms in her mind that this kind of relationship is normal.
At the same time, he might even put the idea in her head that no boy will ever be good enough for her, so she decides not to pursue high school romance.
Somehow, I just can't see their relationship ever being strained... that she finds out how horrible he is until after the hit on him is carried out...
she more or less makes up her mind that since she lost her virginity to him that she never wants to be used for sex again... instead, she'll be the one in charge
which leads me to "Cinderella"... one of my personal favorites, which I believe is because my friend expressed his love of the track as well... it's about stepping outside the "fairy tale" path and becoming a stronger person... rather the "passive" versions of the original realizations of Snow White (before the 2012 movies and "Once upon a time") and Cinderella who waited for their destinies to come to them...
I listened to that the previous time, seeing it as this HUGE musical type number that's more or less like a revenge anthem pointing the finger at the stepfather :-P
not sure if I'd be able to duplicate that coolness each time I listened to it
"Breathe on me" is very hot and steamy... in a subtle sort of way... so it really doesn't have to belong to one specific scene
"Brave new girl" could either play to Talia or Amber's strengths
which leaves the first two tracks I listed that fit Amber like the tracks from "Circus" did
"What you see is what you get" has the same thing in common with a lot of my favorite Britney Spears tracks... you have a couple verses and a chorus... but after a bridge or an instrumental solo, you get a second chorus that jumbles up some of the same words used in the first chorus, and that extends to the two choruses playing simultaneously to end the song...
Max Martin definitely knows how to write some catchy tunes, but he was at his height with the boyband era in the late 90's/early 2K's
looking at the song, I'm not sure how it fits Amber exactly... maybe it is another one specifically for Talia.. the song is about a girl being with a possessive guy who watches her too closely when she's hanging out with her friends and other guys, thinks she dresses so provocatively that she'll attract unwanted attention from other guys.
thinking it over, maybe I was wrong about this one. The jury's out.
"Can't Make You Love Me"...
"can't make you love me, I'm just a girl with a crush on you"
...
When I listen through my favorites on this album, it always follows "what you see is what you get"... both sound very similar to me and I don't mind that. That's part of the charm.
In this case, she's talking about being into this guy but at the same time, she can't make advances because her fame keeps her away from having a relationship with anyone...
but for Amber, I'm using it in a different context. This could be her swan song before she leaves the name "Carmen" behind. Believing that Alejandro will never want anything to do with her now that he's interested in Talia... in my head, it plays almost like a dream sequence, kinda like "Paparazzi", her answer to "Say it Right" (seeing as I thought "Paparazzi" plagiarized from that Nelly Furtado song when I first heard it).
an interesting thing happened when I listened to it the previous time... something like an alternate version of my story. Instead of Talia starting the dancing component of the club, Carmen was the veteran who had washed up routines and Talia was the fresh newcomer that threatened to overthrow her "reign"...plus there'd be a significant difference in their ages with Amber being vastly older.
The only downside to that, other than me having a lot of rewriting to do, is that it sounds a little too similar to "Purple Rain" :-P
the difference in styles were also vastly different... with Amber having Britney choreography and Talia and her crew being closer to Lady Gaga with some Mayte thrown in... Britney ruling the 90's while Lady Gaga ruled this latest decade
Amber has choreography coming from a lot of different artists. She likes to think she has a hold on Britney's stuff, particularly the "Circus" album... except that Talia has used "Womanizer" and "Mannequin"... "Mannequin" is the last straw, though. Amber will get wind of them using that track to ward off JP's advances and throw something of a hissy fit about it, until they compromise.
like Amber wants to borrow Vanessa for a number or two and wants use of one of their exclusive songs, like "Paparazzi"
Amber likes using:
still got a lot to figure out, but that'll help at least a little bit
Primarily, her 2nd and 3rd albums, "Oops... I did it again" and "Britney"...
These were albums one of my friends burned for me back when CD burning was a huge thing. Eventually, I put together my own "Greatest Hits" of Britney Spears.
a) so I could keep my favorite tracks from her first album, which I wound up selling because I hardly listened to more than the first three songs :-P
b) in general, greatest hits from the 90's dissatisfy me, which is why I did my own for The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC as well
c) I was sick of skipping every other track of "In the Zone" to get to my favorites
d) my friend's copy of "Oops... I did it again" was scratchy and as a result, the track "Don't knock on my door" was debilitated so bad that it couldn't get past the 3 minute mark... the ticking remains in the background, but the tracks don't "tick" as much in my copy
when I was getting to know these tracks real well, I was playing them along with Spider Solitaire. Ironically, one of those times, I skipped out on "Coyote Ugly,' thinking I wouldn't get into that movie... finally saw it recently, roughly a decade after that... might of mentioned it a few times
long story short, here're the tracks I'm considering using...
- What you see is what you get
- Crush on you (though I believe the real title is "I can't make you love me")
- I'm a slave 4 u
- Don't wanna let you back in
- Boys
- Cinderella
- Breathe on me
- Brave new girl
For a second, I even considered the title track. When I recalled it (it's been YEARS since I've heard it, I wasn't a huge fan of that particular track), I thought it sounded exactly like something Talia would say.
"I'm sorry I made you fall in love with me during my performance, but it was just an act"
But after listening to it, the undercurrent didn't agree with my motives. It isn't as if Talia flaunts her sexuality with the intention of toying with other's emotions.
"Don't come knocking on my door," as much as I love that track, it doesn't really fit into my storyline anywhere. The only place it could is as another way of her turning down Alejandro (or JP's) advances... got one too many tracks like that already in mind.
"Don't wanna let you back in" also fits in that same category, but it seems more final than its predecessor
"I'm a slave 4 u" seems pretty obvious... plus the music video will provide ample inspiration. It was choreographed by Prince's first wife, Mayte, who is my key inspirer for Talia's belly-dancing... I need to get back to that element, been focusing so much on the cha-cha and samba steps
"Boys" struck me as a good match because within it lays Talia's policy when it comes to the opposite sex:
"when a girl is with one, then she is in control"...
considering the terrors the girls have endured, that needs to be a top priority. In this business, they must be the ones calling the shots because they don't want to think of themselves as victims anymore
While listening to it, I started pondering a possible back story for either Talia or Vanessa... :sigh: Vanessa remains the one girl with the past that's impossible to nail down. I thought she could be the girl that came from a conservative family (kinda like Katy Perry, who wasn't even allowed to say "deviled eggs" in her house), wanted to take dance lessons in addition to college and leaves academia for dance...
now, I just have her down as the girl that came to the main setting along with Talia, and Talia aimed to help with this new proposal.
Anyway, the storyline is that before the girls came together as a "group," one of these girls was in a controlling, abusive relationship.
Sounds like something Vanessa could fall into, supposing she gave up on college and her parents' dream of her becoming a doctor or lawyer to become a professional dancer.
But at the same time, I can't help but consider Talia might fit that description as well...
considering how far she's gone to protect herself, compared to how much pain the other girls went through, it's kinda hard for those pieces to click in my head.
It's not like she was molested as a girl or that she grew up in a brothel or that she was a prostitute who was raped multiple times a day... that sort of deal...
Right now, I have it figured that she's bitter towards the opposite sex because her stepfather had her believing he loved her, but he betrayed her and her family by emptying the bank account. He treated her like a queen and left her and her mother with nothing.
Then the crap with Alejandro happens and she decides never to open her heart again, believing the opposite sex to be untrustworthy
The furthest I got with "pressing" the limits of Talia's relationship with her stepfather is that he's there for her when she's rejected by a boy she likes and has considered losing her virginity to. Kinda racy considering she's likely only 16 at the time, but he might take advantage of her because she's emotionally compromised over this break-up. Maybe this guy went with another girl because he wants to be someone more experienced. So he takes it upon him to "show her how" to do it... takes her to bed a number of times, she yields to his every direction until the idea forms in her mind that this kind of relationship is normal.
At the same time, he might even put the idea in her head that no boy will ever be good enough for her, so she decides not to pursue high school romance.
Somehow, I just can't see their relationship ever being strained... that she finds out how horrible he is until after the hit on him is carried out...
she more or less makes up her mind that since she lost her virginity to him that she never wants to be used for sex again... instead, she'll be the one in charge
which leads me to "Cinderella"... one of my personal favorites, which I believe is because my friend expressed his love of the track as well... it's about stepping outside the "fairy tale" path and becoming a stronger person... rather the "passive" versions of the original realizations of Snow White (before the 2012 movies and "Once upon a time") and Cinderella who waited for their destinies to come to them...
I listened to that the previous time, seeing it as this HUGE musical type number that's more or less like a revenge anthem pointing the finger at the stepfather :-P
not sure if I'd be able to duplicate that coolness each time I listened to it
"Breathe on me" is very hot and steamy... in a subtle sort of way... so it really doesn't have to belong to one specific scene
"Brave new girl" could either play to Talia or Amber's strengths
which leaves the first two tracks I listed that fit Amber like the tracks from "Circus" did
"What you see is what you get" has the same thing in common with a lot of my favorite Britney Spears tracks... you have a couple verses and a chorus... but after a bridge or an instrumental solo, you get a second chorus that jumbles up some of the same words used in the first chorus, and that extends to the two choruses playing simultaneously to end the song...
Max Martin definitely knows how to write some catchy tunes, but he was at his height with the boyband era in the late 90's/early 2K's
looking at the song, I'm not sure how it fits Amber exactly... maybe it is another one specifically for Talia.. the song is about a girl being with a possessive guy who watches her too closely when she's hanging out with her friends and other guys, thinks she dresses so provocatively that she'll attract unwanted attention from other guys.
thinking it over, maybe I was wrong about this one. The jury's out.
"Can't Make You Love Me"...
"can't make you love me, I'm just a girl with a crush on you"
...
When I listen through my favorites on this album, it always follows "what you see is what you get"... both sound very similar to me and I don't mind that. That's part of the charm.
In this case, she's talking about being into this guy but at the same time, she can't make advances because her fame keeps her away from having a relationship with anyone...
but for Amber, I'm using it in a different context. This could be her swan song before she leaves the name "Carmen" behind. Believing that Alejandro will never want anything to do with her now that he's interested in Talia... in my head, it plays almost like a dream sequence, kinda like "Paparazzi", her answer to "Say it Right" (seeing as I thought "Paparazzi" plagiarized from that Nelly Furtado song when I first heard it).
an interesting thing happened when I listened to it the previous time... something like an alternate version of my story. Instead of Talia starting the dancing component of the club, Carmen was the veteran who had washed up routines and Talia was the fresh newcomer that threatened to overthrow her "reign"...plus there'd be a significant difference in their ages with Amber being vastly older.
The only downside to that, other than me having a lot of rewriting to do, is that it sounds a little too similar to "Purple Rain" :-P
the difference in styles were also vastly different... with Amber having Britney choreography and Talia and her crew being closer to Lady Gaga with some Mayte thrown in... Britney ruling the 90's while Lady Gaga ruled this latest decade
Amber has choreography coming from a lot of different artists. She likes to think she has a hold on Britney's stuff, particularly the "Circus" album... except that Talia has used "Womanizer" and "Mannequin"... "Mannequin" is the last straw, though. Amber will get wind of them using that track to ward off JP's advances and throw something of a hissy fit about it, until they compromise.
like Amber wants to borrow Vanessa for a number or two and wants use of one of their exclusive songs, like "Paparazzi"
Amber likes using:
- Circus
- Kill the Lights
- Lace and Leather (with Vanessa)
- Womanizer (attacking Alejandro)
- Out from Under (attacking her stepfather.. or it just describe something Vanessa went through, about being in the abusive relationship)
- Shattered Glass (she has daggers for somebody, either Alejandro or JP)
- Mannequin (warding off JP, alongside Scarlet & Ruby)
still got a lot to figure out, but that'll help at least a little bit
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