There, I've said it, and nothing Chris over at AnimeOnDVD.com or any other self-righteous review out there can shake me on it either. I fell in love the moment I watched a cyborg claw his brains out as he thought it was being eaten by live-action bugs, and wanted to find a way to somehow make sweet love to the very concept of a cyborg-enhanced suitcase (or limbless for those not yet totally jaded... think Boxing Helena) woman and a feral loli-child uniting in a cosmic womb to become the embodiment of Vajra, the duality of wisdom and folly that both teaches mankind what it is to be alive and destroys it in the process.
Sure, I'll admit Genocyber takes a sharp swan dive after the first episode ends, with episodes 2-3, Vajranoid Showdown, turning into a sort of "what if ROBOCOP had a love child with ALIEN?" deal, in which bio-mechanical nastiness controlled by a large robot looking monster (a male Genocyber, in short) took out an air-craft carrier and everyone on board. In comparison to the "electronically born twins become the vessel from which the harbinger of death erupts and takes out crazy transforming gore-droids and levels Hong Kong" insanity of the first episode it's unimpressive, perhaps, but it packs in the action, violence, needless techno-babble, techno music of varying quality, and moderately budgeted animation well enough to be a decent sequel. No, not as amazing and full of mind-bending drugs in animation form as the first episode, but a worthy successor at the very least.
Episodes 4-5, Arc de Grande... well, the less said about that tripe the better. Literally, the first 2 and last 3 minutes of these episodes were watchable, leaving a big stinking crater full of crap between their awesome wake. A damned shame... but there things happen.
Anyway, all the special features are going on volume 1, since if I do vol. 2 and 3 I'll have 48 and 60 minutes of raw episode footage respectively, so I might as well maximize DVD space and compression while I have the chance to. Episode 1 is 48 minutes, which takes up a good 3.3 gigs of a DVD-R's 4.7... that's before 0.5 gigs worth of original manga, 0.3 worth of alternate scenes, not to mention the original sound track and my intention of including a "music video" thing so you can watch all the awesome gore and madness of episodes 2-5 without... um, watching episodes 2-5... But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Anyway, here's some menu concepts for all 5 of you who still read my inane ramblings, accompanied by some rambling commentary on what I dislike about them. Perhaps you'll agree, perhaps you'll love 'em... eh, we'll see. One thing I'll say: these are all a hell of a lot nicer than the kinda' shoddy screencaps I did for Angel Cop, though at least there an utter lack of disc space was at least partially to blame. Yeah. Partially.
Here we have the main menu. On the one hand, this is the moneyshot of the title, the moment in which all bitches shall bow down before the one and only, and I love the shot in and of itself so much I might just use it on principle... but, it's really fuzzy, and truth be told it's too goddamn simple for my tastes. I am, however, keeping the original Engrish logo: you have no fucking clue how much of a pain it was to be able to remove JUST the text and splatter so I could add the border and drop shadow. I may even animate the front menu, depending on how big the project becomes... maybe a blood-stained border playing clips of Genocyber kicking things in the anus? Not 100% certain.
Here we have a Special Features menu. On the plus side, I like juxstaposing Elaine in her half-feral form against her darker (or stronger) side. On the other hand... I can't stand that green bar border. I'm currently experimenting with ways to make one image "tear" or perhaps even "burn" into the other, and as such this one will probably not change drastically, just be improved slightly.
Manga menu. I like the extremely simple design going on, and while it's mostly just a crop from the inner title page, the dripping blood? All me. I also eliminated some damnable text, but that was pretty easy. I may change the wording slightly, but I actually like this one for a change.
OST I. The text may be too small to read after resizing to NTSC DVD resolution (720x480 stretched out to 720x540... it's retarded), but this is so far the best compromise I've been able to come up with. I rather like what I've got going here, particularly the translucent snake skin pattern that helps blend the LD/OST cover into the background.
OST II. Similar, yet sexy, no?So, yeah, you guys know where to hit me up. I still have PLENTY of work to do - setup menus, chapters, chapter menus, the LD archives (the content of which is mercifully finished), and then there's packaging of course - the only thing not 100% finalized on ANGEL COP. Yeah, stick a fork in that chapter of my life: it's burnt. I've tested those screeners enough to know that short of some horrific burning accident (which is why I keep all the streams in one place... juuuuuust incase...) Angel Cop is ready to be enjoyed by the masses. By which I mean the 10 people who will buy it whenever my lazy ass finished the webstore. Yeah.
...why do I do this again? Oh, right. The love. Why else would I put together an ultimate edition of Genocyber? I swear to God once this (and Countdown 2... *sigh*) is done I'm doing a cheapie English language restoration of Franco's Erotikill: The Female Vampire and selling it to Xploited Cinema for $5 a pop. That, or Caligula 2. That's just got to net a better profit than everything I've been doing in the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment