March 24, 24, 2004

 

 

‘Amanda Aikman
Ci | re Editor

 

Cobain interview co! aveniently

Ten years va his suicide,
Britain’s Uncut magazine has print-
_ed a previously unpublished inter-

view with the reluctant guru of

for French television, reportedly
quotes | Cobain saying he wanted to
quit, Nirvana to play in his wife’s
band Hole.

According to the ance, Coban
was planning on ditching more than
just his band. No, don’t get excited,
Tm not talking about Courtney.
Allegedly, Cobain was planning on
tossing out the “grunge” scerie alto-
gether and changing musical direc-
tions.

“Tt might be nice to start playing
acoustic guitar and be thought of as
a singer and a songwriter, rather
than a grunge rocker,” he said. “I
‘could sit down on a chair and play
acoustic guitar like Johnny Cash
or something, and it wont be a
big joke.”

 

Avril Lavigne vs. Hilary _Duff—
popstar catfight.

Why'd Hilary have to go and
make Avril’s life so complicated?
Apparently Duff has been like all,
“Avril’s mean to her fans, and she
make’s fun of them and stuff.” And
Lavigne’s like all, “Hilary’s such a
goody-goody she should totally
mind her own business,”

I cant wait to see this feud
resolved; I so hate to see teen idols
not getting along. Perhaps, drawing
on their collective wisdom and expe-
rience, Britney, Jessica, Christina,
and Mandy Could organize some
sort of interve that would
help the batcling babes come to
aceasefire,

 

Appetite for litigation, =—=s_—

_A US federal judge has thrown
out a lawsuit filed by Axl Rose. Rose
was seeking to prevent Geffen
Records from releasing a Guns

'N’ Roses greatest-hits album on
March 23.

According to Rose, the label’s con-
tract with the band bars them from
altering any master recordings with-
out the band’s permission. The
suit accuses Geffen of both trade-
mark infringement and_ breach
of contract.

Apparently the G N’ R frontman
is worried that the “best of” release
will hurt sales of the band’s upcom-
ing album Chinese Democracy. Sure
Axl, that’s why your new record is
going to flop. Not because it sucks
and nobody has any interest in you
or your band anymore, but because

_ of the competition with the greatest-
hits album. Riiiight.

Culture °

 

the other press” 9

 

S-Cry-ed Volume 2:
The Alter Hunt

 

Sure it’s only been a couple of
weeks since I last reviewed S-cry-ed,
but this series has certainly made
quite an impression on me. The
amount of depth in this series is
staggering, but there was almost no
hype or any advertisements when it
came out last summer. So far, all I
know is I’ve got to see more of this
series, and my wallet is rather dis-
pleased with me.

The animation transfer to DVD
was superb, just like the last vol-
ume. The English audio was pre-
sented in 5.1-channel sound while
the Japanese audio tracks remained
in the standard 2.0-channel stereo
tracks.

As for the extras, they kind of
went all out, putting in a lot of new
and different things. It was inter-
esting for once, to actually be
entertained by the DVD extras.
First off, we have two Japanese pro-
mos for S-Cry-ed, both of which
are fairly long and do a decent job
of setting up the series. They're
interesting to watch, but not really
needed on the second DVD.

Also included are these character
music videos, which are just a
bunch of scenes hashed together
while the opening music plays.
They also had this thing called a
sound comic, where they took a
chapter form the manga and the
voice actors read out the parts. But
its only in Japanese so there are
now English subtitles, and it’s kind
of redundant in English since
youre reading the subtitles for
someone reading a comic in

Japanese. It’s a comic again essen-
tially, since you've still got to read
it.

I was also impressed with the
design gallery that gave character
sketches and profiles; it was a slight
cut above what you normally get in
that department.

And finally, since S-Cry-ed
changes the opening for each
episode, instead of one clean open
we get five. I can’t comment on the
opening-and-closing animations
anymore since they are standard
fare, although perhaps one day I'll
find something that doesn’t include
them.

At the beginning of this yolume
Holy begins its Alter hunt and pre-
pares to clear the land of the lost
ground for the cities expansion. All
of the inners, or people who are not
citizens of the city, out in the lost
grounds, are being herded up,
forced out of their homes like cat-
tle and used as slave labour.

The story tends to take a good
hard look at what people will do to
justify their actions if they believe
it’s for the greater good. We return
to Ryuho of Holy who obediently
follows their orders and believes
that for alters to live with regular
humans they must serve under
them and not draw attention to
themselves. While on the other
hand we have Kazama, who
fighting to protect his home and
the people around him from the
expansion of the city. As the strug-
gle between Ryuho and Kazama
still continues, we see more of the
true face in Holy with its witch-
hunt mentality in finding alters.

These people aren't necessarily
lawless savages like they are
described, but much like any form

 

of persecution, it works on the
masses because people always fear
what they don’t understand. But, in
the end, you have a group of peo-
ple invading someone else’s home-
land, classifying them as sub-
humans, and doing as they please
with the populous. It seems this
theme is destined to repeat itself in
many forms.

It’s taken an interesting turn,
and I’m looking forward to seeing
how Holy’s demoralize-and-con-

quer strategy will play out in com-
parison to past real historical situa-
tions that mirror this.

I can say one thing, this is prob-
ably the shortest amount of time
between finishing one volume of
anime, to running out and buying
the next volume. I’m fairly certain
that speaks for itself. But if the
story keeps up with this amount of
depth, my wallet is going to be in a
lot of pain.

 

ae

FPLATINUM e&oiirio

 

 

 

 

 

Anime Laser

 

Here’s the weekly focused look into
what’s going on in the anime
world.

What's Hot Right Now:

Tenchi Muyo GXP is popular and
will have a large base of fans to
accept it, but it’s a good example of
running a series into the ground. It
makes me ill just to think of the

Tenchi Muyo GXP

fact that they'll be running the
same jokes into the ground that got
old after ten minutes during the
first series.

What's Going To Be Hot:

-hack//Legend of the Twilight is
upon us. You've got to love Bandai’s
decision to fill the sequel to one of
the most thought-provoking series
about human life and the Internet
with overly cute characters. Sure

a

i] LEGEND OF THE TWILIGHT

 

hack//Legend of the Twilight

everyone is extremely cute, and the
twilight bracelets look like a gold
hex nut, but hey, it’s the story that
counts. Too bad it made me so vio-
lently ill when I tired to watch it

that I couldn't get past the first 15

minutes.

We also have R.O.D. the TV,
well it’s really not a television, but
that’s what they called it,. so it
wouldn't be confused with the
movie. Seeing as how it has barely
anything to do with
the movie—since
no characters from

http://www.otherpress.ca

the movie actually appear in the
TV series—I guess this would be a
bad example of trying to cash in on
a franchise’s previous success.

What's Hot in Japan Now:
Everyone likes ninjas right? What if
I told you Naruto had a whole
town full of ninjas? Yeah, now we're
talking. And with an expected
episode run that will make Prince of
Tennis look like a quick watch,
Naruto is going to be around for a
while.

 

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