Monthly Archives: August 2009

Encroaching Emotion

I recently joined Goodreads, partly because I hope it’ll give me the chance to slap more people in the face with my lit-peen and partly because I find it useful to have a place to look up books I’ve read in the past — going through the bibliographies of past work is a time-consuming and haphazard method. I’d include a link to my profile, but I don’t want to, so I won’t. Continue reading

Those Uppity Mycenæans

The Mycenæans built with such large stones that their successors thought that they were giants.

The Mycenæans' successors thought that only cyclopes could have built with such large stones.

The Mazinkaiser movie (which might more accurately be called a one-hour special) reworks an earlier title, Mazinger Z vs. The Great General of Darkness. I’ve seen Mazinger Z vs.: it was made back in the seventies and it connects Mazinger Z to Great Mazinger. During its climax Tetsuya brings Great to the aid of a faltering Mazinger Z, and the ending leaves the villains only temporarily defeated. It has some enjoyable scenes — Kouji manfully struggling out to the final confrontation after giving blood, for example — but it’s a little flat, and a criminal amount of time is spent without something large and destructive on screen. Continue reading