Category: Cartooning

Eric’s non-Anime Pick — Train Man (Densha Otoko)

A highly-popular recent manga/movie/TV series in Japan is Train Man or, as it’s known there, Densha Otoko. It’s a romantic comedy that is supposed to be based on a true Internet bulletin board thread about an ultra-nerd who helps a girl that is accosted by a drunk on a subway.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUN07/TrainMan.flv 425 240]

This movie is all heart, with none of the mean-spirited macho posturing tone that afflicts The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Another nod to honorable Eric from his humble parents!

Swooning-Crooning Again

A fairly recent, now lost, post was the Warner Brothers cartoon Swooner Crooner…
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/MAY07/SwoonerCrooner.flv 400 300]

Oh, right! Don’t want to forget that I highlighted Raymond Scott’s “Powerhouse” that’s featured in the cartoon.

Raymond Scott

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/MAY07/Powerhouse.mp3]

Kamichu, the Girl-Child God

Eric had written a special guest blog entry for Kamichu, an Anime series about a girl who somehow becomes a god. Not a great god, but a good one. The text was lost in the Great Database Debacle, but here’s the video…

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/MAY07/KamiChu.flv 425 240]

As Eric pointed out, this sequence is atypical for the show, which is mostly slice-of-life vignettes, sometimes featuring little spirit creatures.

Kino Kicking Again

Here’s another repost of an entry about an Anime title that was lost to the database error. We’ve watched the entire series of Kino’s Journey, which turned out to be one of our favorites.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/MAY07/Kino.flv 425 240]

 

RahXephon Re-post

I’m still bumming about losing six weeks of blog posts. We just watched an episode of RahXephon with Eric, so I’ll repost the two videos that were here previously.

First, the trailer …
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/MAY07/RahXephon.flv 400 300]

… and now an unexpected love scene from a series that is full of battling giant robots!
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/MAY07/RahXephon2.flv 400 300]

 

Jonny Questioning

Previously on Dog Rat, I featured a Marvel Super Heroes cartoon with Captain America. The low-budget cartoons in this series went into production thanks in large part to the relatively successful and ambitious Jonny Quest, a half-hour primetime cartoon from two years earlier.

Jonny Quest was developed by cartoonist-animator-comic book artist Doug Wildey, who had worked for Alex Toth on an earlier cartoon called Space Angel, which shouldn’t be confused with Toth’s Space Ghost. We’ll be seeing some of both those spacey guys later.

The premiere episode of Jonny Quest, “Mystery of the Lizard Men”, originally aired on ABC-TV at 7:30 pm, Friday, September 18, 1964. I had just turned nine, and I thought this was one very cool cartoon — except for Bandit!
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/APR07/JonnyQuest.flv 400 300]© H-B