Read or Die

[avram]

Today was a mixed bag. Upside: Worked out (and a nice, hard workout it was), watched Read or Die. Downside: Did fuck-all else.

Read or Die kicks amazing amounts of ass. It’s about some characters who work for the Special Operations division of the British Library, and have superpowers and save the world. The plot’s got the general anime wackiness to it, but it’s got a level of creative detail and inventiveness that makes it worth watching. This was the first disk; I think there are more.

I’d like to get hold of the English edition (just released a couple months ago), partly because I’m the sort of philistine who prefers to watch anime dubbed rather than subbed, but also because I hope that the subtitles would be of higher quality than the ones on the disk bigscary lent me. Not only were there lots of typos and awkward phrasing (and references to “the US Parliament Library”), but there were times when the subtitles appeared well before or after the speech or writing they were supposed to be translating, making it hard to figure out who was saying what.

Comments

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I read the LJ entry and hope that means I will now not die.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, that's all of Read or Die there is (3 OVA episodes). There is a TV series, Read or Dream, currently running in Japan, but reviews are mixed (though undiscouraging: the bad reviews seem to be mostly because it does not, in fact, star Yomiko, but is rather about other special section agents.) and rumors of a second OVA series, once again starring Yomiko herself. There is also a manga, and where this all started, the novel series. (manga scanlations are available online. Oddly, scripts are harder to find. Some crazy folk are apparently working on a fanlation of the novels, but no other effort of that sort from the fan community (Slayers, Crest of the Stars) has lasted long.)

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

Heh. I was going to bring up Read or Die in my journal at some point. I didn't like it quite as much as you did, but it was fairly enjoyable. I really liked what The Paper could do and her character in general. The opening music kicks ass. ;) The disc that I watched was quite clearly one complete story, but I'm glad to hear that there are some other related works floating about as well. :)

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

Heh. I was going to bring up Read or Die in my journal at some point. I didn't like it quite as much as you did, but it was fairly enjoyable. I really liked what The Paper could do and her character in general. The opening music kicks ass. ;) The disc that I watched was quite clearly one complete story, but I'm glad to hear that there are some other related works floating about as well. :)

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

Heh. I was going to bring up Read or Die in my journal at some point. I didn't like it quite as much as you did, but it was fairly enjoyable. I really liked what The Paper could do and her character in general. The opening music kicks ass. ;) The disc that I watched was quite clearly one complete story, but I'm glad to hear that there are some other related works floating about as well. :)

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

Okay, that was SO not my fault. Stupid stupid Live Journal did some whacky bizarro spazz attack on me! Weirdness.

But in other news, the version that I watched was the US release and it's very nice and well done - I also think it has more episodes than the import disc - I rented both to compare and noticed that it seemed to have more on it at least, though I didn't check that throughly.