Saturday, April 26, 2008

Ah... 4 hour YouTube romp.

So I just spent close to 4 hours on YouTube. After some simple stuff I stumbled on this, as usual, several months old phenomenom of 2 Girls 1 Cup Reactions. Fortunately I saw enough reactions to save myself from the horror of the actual video, for instance this one which clearly instructs you to never under any circumstances watch the video. At the same time it gives you enough of an idea so that your curiosity shouldn't get the better of you.

After that I was in YouTube mode, and what YouTube mode is is the state in which you start to look up clips to things you never would have thought of looking up under normal circumstances. For instance, after I was done with ^that^ I moved on to Star Wars where I watched old auditions by Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher. There was also one with Kurt Russel who would not have made a bad Han Solo. However THE most interesting part was that they were using old scripts that were a lot different from the final scripts, so you had the ravaging of Organa Prime where "What little is left is totally contaminated with radiation." and the fact that "The royal family has mind control" You also got a much better feeling, I thought, of the whole rebellion against the Empire side of it. As a kid I was definitely too entranced by the Sci-Fi to stop and think about what was actually going on and ended up thinking "Okay, there's a side called 'Rebels' and a side called 'Empire'." without really connecting "Oh, they're actually rebels against a galactic Empire, its not like a group name or something." and the old script seemed much more emphasizing that "Hey, there's an oppressive empire and we need these plans to succeed." (By the way, thats what Episode IV is actually about in case you may have missed that.) Also, Leia didn't seem as tomboyish and aggressive. After fiddling around with that for a while....

I moved on to anime, specifically looking to see if there were any AMVs (Anime Music Videos), or MAD Movies as they were originally called in Japan (See, you learn stuff on my blog... Useless, useless stuff), for a particular anime called Kanon, specifically the 2006 release since the 2002 version was, well, not as good. Anyway, of course they eixisted, as though I should doubt for a minute. This led, of course, to looking up AMVs to a similar series called Clannad with similar concept and the same director, Tatsuya Ishihara (Also directed Air, which is also excellent.). And OF COURSE this led to me looking up video clips of the original PC and PS2 games which both series are based on. I really wish those games were localized, because as good as the series is, the game is better. Anyway, after I looked up the deeply emotional heart rending end scenes from the multiple ending game I thought "Hey, wasn't I looking up AMVs and MADs?" so I continued with that, discovering that MADs are generally superior to AMVs, probably because they've been around longer. THEN came the fruition of my journies, I came upon that which can only exist in the online anime culture.... Fear it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK2QUjt7jXI and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjHIn-hU8ro and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_e1lB6j6lM (Which is basically the difference between an AMV, in the case of the second, and an MAD in the case of the third). In case you want to read an explaination before watching, basically the first one is the second opening to the Death Note anime which is pretty notoriously over the top, psycho, crazy... Yeah. But instead of the soul shattering hard core death rock it normally has they play the upbeat intro to Lucky Star, which, aside from Evangelion, Elfen Lied and Nadesico, probably has the best intro ever, and I might be willing to move Nadesico down a slot to give it a top 3 spot. The next two are adaptations of the Lucky Star Intro animation to the music from the Death Note Intro music.... Yes, and if you've now watched them, good for you. While I was writing this I actually watched several other parodies of the Lucky Star theme including one in which someone actually made original animation of Kingdom Hearts 2 characters and put them in a custom variation of the opening, it was rather impressive.

Anyway, I've geeked your brains to new levels I'm sure, or at least new directions. To help you recover I provide this final, semi-classic video which I hope makes you Feel Great.

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