War of the Triumvirate

It seems pretty likely that my three favorite music artists in the universe: Neil Young, Tom Petty, and Taylor Swift, will each release new records this year. So the natural question becomes, whose record will reign supreme??

I had a similar bout (a warm-up match, you could say), when over the course of about a year (2012-2013) I got to see all three of these acts live, in all their flesh and glory. Tom Petty won that fight decisively, bringing out an exceedingly surprising, very rare and sincerely inspired set of deep cut gems & lost classics. But in the grand scheme, it was really more of a draw... A sourly unfortunate illness muddled what may be my last chance to see my all-time favorite band, Neil Young & Crazy Horse. And while Taylor Swift's 2013 concert was merely great, and not Great with a capital G, her 2011 Speak Now show ranks uncontested as the greatest concert I've yet had the pleasure to witness. So Petty won this particular battle, but the War of the Triumvirate rages on in an apparent stalemate. And so, we cross the latest battlefield.


Artist: Neil Young
Album: A Letter Home
Expected Release Date: May 27, 2014

A Letter Home is a lo-fi acoustic covers record from Neil Young, recorded with Jack White in a phone booth. As ever, Neil is an inspired rogue, and it's electrifying. The song selection isn't especailly inspired -- My Home Town and Girl From the North Country are alright songs by Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan respectively, but they're pretty mediocre selections from artists with such spellbinding catalogs. But on the upside, it's a lo-fi record, which is by far the medium in which Neil's acoustic material sounds best. And Neil's previous covers album -- Americana -- was one of the most wonderful and unique albums of his career. Can A Letter Home match it? Quite possibly, we'll have to wait and see.

Neil Young's newer music is, just like all his older music, uneven and relentlessly, inconceivably unpredictable. But when he's good, he's really good, and the 21st Century has been a different kind of renaissance for him. Records like Living With War and Psychedelic Pill are better than anything he released in the 80s, and he's done a lot of interesting experiments.


Artist: Tom Petty
Album: Hypnotic Eye
Estimated Release Date: Summer 2014

They started out with a record of blues-rock just like their last jam, 2010's Mojo. And that'd have been fine with me, Mojo was spectacular. But not wanting to repeat themselves, they kept the best tracks off of that unreleased record, and continued recording for another year or two. Now they have a hodgepodge of prime tracks that supposeldy harken back to The Heartbreakers' early new wave days, with terse, static-charged rockers like "Anything That's Rock N Roll," and "Listen to Her Heart." How true that description is, we won't know 'till we hear it. But it's a highly promising and evocative imagery.

If anyone can knock a new record out of the park, surely it's Petty. He's amazed me again and again with his ability to retain vitality and create work that is great in new ways, ways that don't merely repeat the past. Lately his work has gotten impressively instrumental, so a part of me is hoping he'll return to a stricter format just so I can see if he still has his pop powers. And he was at the peak of his pop powers when the Heartbreakers began, with hits like American Girl and Breakdown. So, if the press rings true, this could be the ideal record I've been hoping for.


Artist: Taylor Swift
Album: TBD
Estimated Release Date: Fall 2014

She may be my third favorite artist, but typically Taylor Swift is not in the same league as Neil Young and Tom Petty. Neil and Tom have unfathomable **fifty year** careers to draw from, and fifteen years of leal service (in my life, specifically) under their belts. Tay has the potential to parallel their reigns if she can keep up her pace for forty years, but as of yet she's a small fry.

However, what Taylor has on her side, is youth. Even great artists tend to wear down after 5 or 6 albums and lose the magic. The only people apparently immune to this are Neil and Tom themselves. But Taylor's still in that sweet spot, where it's not just possible but *probable* that every new album will demonstrate the peak of her powers and attain classic status. Even if the new record isn't great, it's an inherently more meaningful experience to witness an artist in her heyday creating history rather than reliving it or running from it.

Very few details have yet been unearthed for how Tay is crafting her fifth full-length album. She's leaned towards pop, rock, country, and folk so far, could R&B or adult contemporary be next? No matter what she does, it will be interesting to hear. Her last album, Red, may not have been her best record yet. But as she continues to grow and mature, the promise of brave new work increases by exponents. And  thus far Taylor has always been willing to probe new territory.


Assessment:

Tom Petty's new record *sounds* the best, at least on paper. And it'd be no surprise for the rougish King Bee to sneak another victory, his 00s output has been among his all-time best, and it's more consistently great than Neil Young's 00s output is.

But Neil Young is like a Chaos Orb, or a Mad Targaryen. Every time he makes an album, the gods flip a coin, and born forth into the world is either a new dud (like Fork in the Road) or a new God (like Americana). A Letter Home will most likely be either crushingly awesome, or mostly forgettable. But if it's crushingly awesome, Petty and Tay don't stand a chance.

And of the opposite persuasion we have Taylor Swift, whose record is the only one out of the three that is basically guaranteed to be decent. An artist in her prime, with zero subpar records on her roster? A genuine failure would be unheard of. Now, whether the new record will err on the middling side of Red, or the flawless perfection of Fearless -- will depend largely on what new mode Tay chooses for its modus operandi. And of that, we know little yet.

So it truly is anyone's game, and I can't wait to hear all three!

Madoka Magica

Spoiler Warning: Madoka Magica TV series

Netflix is pretty good at forecasting my ratings for films. But when it comes to TV, it gets strangely erratic. Despite having very few 5-star shows and many 5-star films amid my ratings, they never predict a >4.5 for a film, but they'll quote me a 4.8, 4.9 for all kinds of ridiculous TV shows that aren't even any good. Lord only knows why in the flying samhain they predicted 4.7 as my rating for Madoka Magica, until this show I've never watched more than two episodes of any anime on Netflix and I don't even have anything like Evangelion or Dragon Ball Z in my ratings collection to point the results in that direction. Yet this was a rare case where their overenthusiastic TV rating was actually correct.

Madoka Magica was recommended to me (not by Netflix, but by an actual human) on the basis that it is to Magical Girls what Neon Genesis Evangelion is to Giant Robots. I don't generally like to go into any TV show expecting it to be Evangelion, that's almost inevitably a recipe for crushing disappointment. That's like taking a random meal from anywhere in the world and assuming it was made by an Iron Chef! But, hey... the person who recommended Madoka to me was, in fact, the person who showed me Evangelion some 13 or 14 years ago, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

So I started watching. And I was highly skeptical but the show turned out to be fucking awesome. The Evangelion comparison becomes apparent pretty quickly. You have your Asuka, Shinji & Rei, you even have a Gendou. But this isn't some two-bit Kinko's photocopy like RahXephon. Madoka Magica approaches its influences more in the vein that Avatar: The Last Airbender did; using the giants which preceded it as a jumping off point to see what *else* they can create, rather than using the previous work as the intended end result in and of itself.

It's not necessarily Game of Thrones in terms of trope-defiance, but this show definitely fits in with the recent emphasis on reevaluating the tenets of fantasy and aligning them more closely with the edicts of real world turmoil. And it does a very clever job of it. I especially like how Madoka is basically a side character in her own series, until the last couple of episodes. This is a welcome subversion of how Sailor Moon was necessary to kill virtually every enemy no matter how many hordes of near-equal magical comrades were attacking it before she showed up to invariably save the day.

The character designs weren't quite to my preference, they look more Chibi Moon than Sailor Moon, and their faces strike me as slightly too big (in close up shots). But I got used to it and ended up liking it by the end. And I suppose choosing this style serves the show, in the sense that it's supposed to be a more gritty/realistic Magical Girl show and these are supposed to be little girls, not the 12 year olds that inexplicably are 6'1", have mini skirt legs and size-D breasts like you see in Sailor Moon, Evangelion, ad infinitum. And the animation itself was superb, utilizing crisp, vibrant digital technology but retaining the warm, human feel of traditional animation.

Ultimately I came to dearly love and care for all of the different characters, which is a very impressive task to accomplish. Most shows have at least one character that fails to really hit it off with me. I think part of the genius was focusing on so few characters to begin with. There are no unnecessary characters what-so-ever. And the sparsity of characters also empowered the strength of the bond between them, and underlined the concept of fate's threads having already locked these people together, as we ultimately discover.

After Kyubey tells Madoka she could become a God, I started to wonder what the ending might be like, and whether they might give us a Third Impact type scenario. But I never thought they'd actually have the courage to do it. To emulate the most confounding and controversial aspect of Evangelion? Magica's finale had conscious shades of both the deific mayhem of The End of Evangelion, and the psychological confrontation of Evangelion's original final episodes, utilized in a way that felt natural to Magica's own intricacies. More importantly, it told a perfect ending to the story of the series, and quite a spectacular one at that.

Overall this was an intriguing concept with excellent characters, 12 episodes was a little thin to really tell this story. They could definitely have benefited from more time to flesh out the character's relationships and lengthen some of those lightning-fast witch fights (could that be my latent masculine side talking?). But ultimately it's really hard to argue with a succinct series with exemplary pacing and a very satisfying conclusion in which all pertinent threads are conclusively and reasonably resolved. Too few episodes is preferable to too many, where the strength of a core story weakens exponentially as extraneous content muddles its impact. And I certainly struggle to think of anything else that would have been strictly necessary for them to explore.

I can't say this is as good as Evangelion. But I can say it's better than the Evangelion movies, if only for creating something new that genuinely stands up to the classics, as opposed to merely recreating the classics. And if they do end up remaking Sailor Moon as has been rumored, that'll be a fun comparison to make, between the two. And I'm not saying they should, you know, turn Sailor Moon into Madoka Magica any more than they should turn Lord of the Rings into Game of Thrones. But I for one would be pleased if Sailor Moon's new creators would acknowledge where the genre has gone lately, in their own way.

Final note: Could Netflix have possibly written a more generic and unappealing blurb for Madoka Magica? "Madoka has a magical encounter one day. This is the story of magical witch girls." Other than the highly disturbing spoiler that the magical girls are witches, which I refuse to believe is intentional but if it WAS intentional that's admittedly brilliant (because it seems like a stupid mistake until you actually find out it was true all along!) ...erm, but other than that, Netflix made this sound like the most generic piece of shit. And I hate generic pieces of shit, so if I had not heard on good authority that this show rocked, I never would have watched it.

The Bling Ring (2013)

The Bling Ring is based on a true story where a group of reckless upperclass teens discretely burglarized several A-list celebrity homes and used the bling to live out their A-list fantasy. This is one of those movies where the trailer looked really exciting but I just get the feeling it's going to be a humdrum, by the numbers movie. On the contrary, the Bling Ring actually turned out to be quite unique and thoroughly enjoyable.

The awesome thing about it is that, despite being your typical universal POV film, it manages to feel a hell of a lot like a found footage movie. The style is stark and subdued, and the best few scenes play out more like voyeur's camera than like a regular movie: just very natural and personal little moments. The music and the voiceovers are done in a way that seems a little less like a typical hollywood production and a little more like something the kids would be putting together themselves -- highly reminiscent of found footage films such as Diary of the Dead and The Bay, where the protagonists are self-editing a makeshift documentary while telling their story. As a result of the borrowed found footage feel, the suspense was heightened and the viewer gets to share in more of the taboo fun, which puts this one a cut above most of the other "rowdy partying teen" movies.

In other teen crime films like, say, The East, the protagonists are meant to be sympathetic. But in The Bling Ring the characters are never portrayed positively, and as a result I found them much easier to root for. They seemed more like actual people, as opposed to props in the filmmaker's agenda. I'm sure some would accuse Sofia Coppola of trying to harang a message into The Bling Ring about the celebrity obsession of generation Y, but I don't think that's true. The protagonists themselves are the only ones who are waxing philosophic, and we're obviously never supposed to take them seriously.

The entire film feels like the characters' own pet project. I don't think the point is that this is some tragic downfall (like the primary POV seems to be implying), Sofia Coppola's point is that these kids are trying to aggrandize themselves, and that's what comes through in the film. Despite being a good movie precisely for NOT being as message-oriented as you'd expect a movie like this to be, it's actually quite clever at gettings its point across: it's not a moral or social message, but a very mild character study.

And I didn't even recognize Hermione, so Emma Watson must have been doing a darn good job of acting her part.

Avatar: The Last Airbender vs. Dragon Ball Kai: The Final & Lengthy Showdown

It's the long-fated battle!

No ATLA spoilers for you newbessies. I *will* throw Z spoilers in here though because fuck it it's as old as I am.

Like The Super Saiyajin Son Goku emerging to challenge Evil Lord Freezer, I never dreamed there could be two action shows as absurdly spectacular and as evenly matched as Avatar: The Last Airbender and Dragon Ball Kai. To decipher who truly was the stronger, I watched the two shows back to back over the course of a few weekends. For Kai, I only watched the first 53 episodes (Saiyan & Freeza arcs), as to present the best possible comparison.

First and foremost, it was an experience of unparalleled satisfaction and synergy. The two programs' mutual themes and styles made them flow perfectly together, but their fundamentally opposite episode structure allowed for the perfect balance. It's hard to imagine two shows that work better in tandem. ATLA focuses on concise storylines wherein a satisfying conclusion is reached every episode, while Kai tells one long, 53 episode story, so the two together effortlessly kept my attention without ever feeling redundant.

The two shows even mirrored each other in progression, with an exciting first arc, a slower second arc more focused on build-up, and a third arc that is the best of all. And sure enough, they were pretty much neck and neck. Both shows tell a brilliant story, with excellent animation and characters. ATLA has much better dialogue, with some of the smartest and best-written lines in TV history. But Kai has much better fighting, in fact it's in a league of its own. No show in history can even come within 50% of Kai's immaculate battle scenes.


Memories

Dragon Ball Z will always hold some of the most vivid and by far some of the most beautiful memories of my childhood. But Kai is only able to retain bits and pieces of that, for obvious reasons. If you could combine the nostalgic aspects of the Ocean Dub and the original Japanese Z into a series as good as Kai, that might be my favorite show of all-time. But ya can't.

Avatar: The Last Airbender may be a lot newer, and I may have been a cynical & depressed teenager by the time this show existed... but it was one of the frighteningly few unsoiled bright spots in an otherwise dark time. It was able to transport me back to those DBZ days and offer something genuine of its own as well. So I have a cherished wealth of ATLA memories too.

Of course, I've only just begun watching Kai. Memories of my first time watching Kai will surely be worth something someday, this is a pretty great period of my life in its own right. It took me a few years before I came to fully appreciate ATLA and likewise Kai is liable to improve on further viewings.


Mentor & Master, One & the Same?

One thing you must admit, gotta hand it to ATLA for getting it right the *first* time around. They took the bloated, filler-infested format so common among shonen anime like DBZ and Naruto, and made a perfectly-paced, virtually fillerless series. They took everything great about the classics and genuinely improved upon it.

Oh there's no question that ATLA was standing on the shoulders of giants. Had Dragon Ball Z not existed, you can be almost certain Avatar: The Last Airbender would cease to exist as well. Not only did ATLA take abundant influence from Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, but without the immense success of Z in America, it's highly unlikely a series like ATLA would ever have been greenlit by Nickelodeon in the first place.

But I've never been one to value history over results. I'm not going to put Robert Johnson over Led Zeppelin just because Johnson was a pivotal influence. I still think Zepp made much better music and making good material is the primary objective and highest virtue. To me, the victor gets the spoils.


The Final Stretch

But the road goes both ways, you see? If I'm not judging ATLA for standing on Z's shoulders, obviously I can't judge Kai for doing the same. So we end up right back where we started: with Kai and ATLA being dead even, kneck 'n kneck, both at the top of every game.

It wasn't until the final stretch, with both series at the ultimate peak of their powers, when Avatar: The Last Airbender pulled conclusively ahead. Kai culminates in the most astronomically gorgeous deathmatch in the history of histories, the badass duel between two gods on a dying planet. And as it progresses it gets better and better, with Kaio-sama's fucking brilliant scheme to resurrect the Namekians & teleport them from Namek, Freezer's desperate measures, his tragic defeat, and that heartbreaking... confounding call from help, from such a creature as he. It's really satisfying when the final moments of a series are also the best moments by far. Dragon Ball Kai is definitely, easily one of the best shows ever made.

But it is in its final season that Avatar: The Last Airbender pushes its already prodigious ingenuities into maximum overdrive. Its episodic sensibilities become more supreme than ever, with outstandingly deep side quests like The Beach and The Southern Raiders. And yet, at the same time, all these little threads they've been planting throughout the entire series, are now weaving together in an prescient web of clever fullfilment. Things that at the time seemed like filler, all become pertinent and meaningful.


Supreme Ruler

The few complaints that I had about ATLA after my first viewing, have since become some of my favorite moments of the entire show. A couple things that seemed a little thin at first, were expanded on in The Legend of Korra and now they make perfect sense, and are some of the coolest goddamn shit ever.

As jaw-droppingly magnificent as Dragon Ball Kai's fighting is, the dialogue can get pretty stale -- even in Kai we still have to hear people repeat some things over and over. ATLA may not be able to compete with Kai on fighting but for crafting likely the most flawless, perfect program of all-time, it is clearly the better series.

Its intricacy is immense, it's almost on level with Neon Genesis Evangelion, it's so succinctly assembled. And not only does it boast some good wisdom, it's bloody hilarious as well. Avatar: The Last Airbender may well be the greatest show of all-time. It may be better than Neon Genesis Evangelion, it may even be better than Seinfeld.

Next time I'll have to pit it against one of those.

The Coffee Den Legacy

Now that I have a large iPod, I've been adding my huge CD collection to my computer. And I've been finding a lot of cool stuff I haven't listened to since I was a teenager.

One of my favorites is a duo of playlists I put together collecting all the best of the local music from around town. A lot of these CDs were totally "whatever" to me back in the day, because these were songs that I heard every couple of weeks at the Coffee Den's open stage -- why do I need them on CD? But 7, 8 years later it means a lot to me that I can have these tracks and that I'll always have them, even when I'm 80.

Cold Coffee

1. Wary -- The Primatives
2. When You Dance (I Can Really Love) -- The Primatives
3. I Am A Child -- The Primatives
4. Bridge of Sighs -- Zharth
5. Simpleton in Complex -- Guitar Zack & No Slack
6. Heal Forever -- The Rhodora
7. Toast to Life and Love -- Ron Boone
8. Liquid -- Cathasaigh
9. Drinking Herself Away -- Cale Darnielle
10. The Dragon's Song -- The Primatives
11. Never Again -- The Primatives
12. The Ballad of One Time -- The Primatives


Warm Tea

1. The Messiah Will Come Again -- Zharth
2. Lonely -- Winston Cook-Wilson
3. Love, Blood & Grace -- Mark Gramm
4. Sorry -- The Primatives
5. Needle For My Child -- Ron Boone
6. War -- Baghead
7. Whisper -- A Vulcan Circus
8. It's Not Easy Being Nude -- Ron Boone
9. Born a Stranger -- Mark Muretisch
10. Born Again -- Cathasaigh
11. How Do You Feel? -- The Rhodora
12. Mental Health Alternatives -- Bert Moore
13. Here Come The Primitives -- The Primatives


Thanks to my influx of refurbished old music, I've been able to put together other unique playlists as well. For me, playlists are pivotal. They aren't just something I might listen to once and then toss away, playlists have replaced the album-oriented culture that I grew up with. I return to them again and again over many years, likely for the rest of my life. So I've put a lot of work into making these as good as possible.

Here's one I did as a collection of the best OST and Background music... well, as far as the action/adventure genre goes. I was considering doing a more far-reaching thing but a lot of the good anime songs aren't available on iTunes (like, say S.E. Lains' theme). But either way, I still would have made this collection as well. It flows really well together despite its disparate sources.

Porunga's Vox

1. Cha-La HEAD Cha-La (Full Version) [Dragon Ball Z Theme]
2. Prologue & Subtitle I [Dragon Ball Z]
3. To The City, Artifical Humans [Dragon Ball Z]
4. Hardboiled...Afraid (Separate Ways) [The Legend of Korra]
5. Mind Power -- Kageyama Hironobu & Satou Yuka [Dragon Ball Z insert song]
6. The Monster Freeza vs. Super Saiyan Son Goku [Dragon Ball Z]
7. Makafushigi Adventure (TV Edit) [Dragon Ball Theme]
8. Battle to the Death ("Atma Weapon") [Final Fantasy 6]
9. "Satan's Lament" [DOOM]
10. Terra [Final Fantasy 6]
11. Come Out, Incredible ZENKAI Power! (TV Edit) [Dragon Ball Z Ending]
12. Korra Confronts Tarrlok [The Legend of Korra]
13. Fresh Air [The Legend of Korra]
14. Prologue [The Legend of Korra]
15. Rock the Dragon [DBZ Ocean Dub Theme]


Here's one where I collected all my favorite melancholic, bittersweet ruminations.

Contemplation

1. Eet -- Regina Spektor
2. Caught in the Hustle -- Immortal Technique
3. Atlantic City -- Bruce Springsteen
4. The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt 1 -- Neutral Milk Hotel
5. Visions of Johanna -- Bob Dylan
6. No Surrender -- Bruce Springsteen
7. Parting Gift -- Fiona Apple
8. You Know You're Right -- Nirvana
9. When I Die -- GG Allin
10. Nobody Home -- Pink Floyd
11. Two-Headed Boy -- Neutral Milk Hotel
12. Signs of Age -- Jake Holmes
13. High Hopes -- Pink Floyd

DBKS4 The Assassination of the Gentle Cell by the Vicious Murderer Son Goku

Rest in Peace, noble hero.

I have to say, while Kai Season 3 (comprising everything from Freeza's death to Vegeta outmatching Semi-perfect Cell) left me deeply impressed and changed my whole perspective on the Android/Cell Saga... Kai's final season unfortunately left me less than satisfied.

After the Freezer Saga, Akira Toriyama was in a bit of a pinch. The manga was much too popular to end it there, but he had just finished the most epic battle imaginable. What can he do for the next saga? Another battle against an insurmountable enemy would only pale in comparison to Freezer.

So I have to hand it to Toriyama, he clearly saw a problem and hit it with everything he could, crafting for Dragonball a new arc that was completely unlike the Freezer & Saiyan arcs, a story full of twist after twist after twist. It makes for the most complex arc in DBZ by far. Right up to the end, the Cell Saga is full of exciting subversions.

But I have to wonder if, in subverting his own conventions, did he make it a tad more morally ambiguous than was the intention? Goku, up until this point in the series, had been a kind and noble man, who offered mercy to his enemies. But this time he decided to murder Cell without giving it even a second thought, and what's worse... Cell wasn't an enemy at all.

I'm sorry to go into such a tirade about it. This isn't A Song of Ice And Fire -- nobody gives a fuck about my Dragon Ball Z conspiracy theory. But suffice to say, I'm convinced that Perfect Cell is a good guy. Or, at the very least, he's the most mild villain the Z warriors have ever faced, and they decided right from the get go to summarily execute him.

When Piccolo ascends to Kami's Palace and insists to Kami that they must merge together to face the overwhelming power of the evil artificial humans, Kami's response is that there's no proof the artifical huamns are evil. "You guys picked a fight with them." he says. And he was right, although the artifical humans declared their intent to kill Son Goku, it was Vegeta who confronted them and demanded a duel. After defeating the Z Warriors, the artificial humans allowed them to take senzu beans, and had no intention of killing them at that particular moment.

Three out of the four androids we're dealing with here turned out to be decent blokes, by all accounts. Why then is the fourth, Cell, assumed to be irrevocably evil without so much as a Q&A? Moreover, what did Freeza and Vegeta do to deserve mercy, while Cell was given no such chance?

Cell showed the exact same mercy and lack of malice that the androids did -- in fact he showed more so. As soon as Cell becomes Perfect, he no longer values killing or destruction. He is the spawn of Goku, Piccolo, and Vegeta, what Cell wants is to fight a good fight. After witnessing Trunks and Vegeta multiply their powers by tenfold in just one day, Cell decides to give the Z Warriors 10 more days to prepare. He's basically begging them to defeat him. Even when he defeats Goku in the Cell Games, he tells Goku to eat a senzu bean so they can continue fighting. What exactly is so violent, evil, or menacing about that?

The Z Warriors picked the fight with Cell, just like they picked the fight with the Artificial Humans. All the fuck Cell did was put on a martial arts tournament! Why did the Z Warriors have to decide to kill him? Why didn't they try to reason with him? Even if Cell wasn't a 100% perfect angel, he was nowhere near as bad as Piccolo or Vegeta were before they turned good, let alone Freeza who Goku still offered mercy to.

Cell's one and only crime is that he absorbed all the people in a handful of rural towns. Freeza probably averaged that many kills per second, considering he was the mastermind of a universe-wide genocidal organization, and Vegeta killed half of Goku's friends, plus countless people on countless planets -- not to mention the Earthlings killed in the city the Saiyans destroyed probably equals all the rural townsfolk Cell absorbed considering the disparity between rural villages and cities. And the final cherry is, Imperfect Cell is the one who killed the villagers. It stands to reason that Perfect Cell, as a more evolved being and as a being who contains the genes of great heroes such as Son Goku, Piccolo, Gohan, and Tenshinhan, obviously it's possible his Perfect form may be less barbaric and more open to reason. But did anyone bother to test this likelihood? Absolutely not, they just decided to murder Cell. Perfect Cell never did anything wrong until he was backed into a corner and facing certain death at the hands of his aggressors. And as a matter of fact, it wasn't until he lost #18 that he made any move against the Earth. In other words, Perfect Cell again is not the culprit.

Perfect Cell may have announced his plan to destroy the Earth if no one beat him in the Cell Games, but it was clearly an empty boast. Cell's intention was to stage an epic martial arts tournament and the only way to do that was to inspire fear. But even in inspiring fear, his attempts were feeble, lazy, and unambiguously facetious. Meanwhile, Artificial Human #16 clearly intended to kill Son Goku and was still entertaining notions of doing so even during the Cell Games -- he says as much right to Goku's face. Who is the real villain here, the guy who just wants a good fight and puts on a fucking martial arts tournament, or the soulless robot who wants to kill Goku? The bitter, cruel irony of it is that #16's death is what turns Gohan SSJ2, when Cell may well have saved Goku's life by killing #16. What if Cell is murdered and #16 remains alive? #16 has no other mission in life but to kill Goku.

And if you're fool enough to believe Cell really would have destroyed the Earth, why was he so visibly scared when Goku aimed his full-power Kamehameha at the Earth? Cell was more worried than anyone else, that the Eart would be destroyed. Cell is not an alien from beyond the stars. He has not destroyed planets. The Earth is his home, and his only mission in life is to have a good battle with a worthy opponent. He would never kill the Z Warriors, if he did his life would become meaningless. He needs them to survive for the same reason Goku spared Vegeta's life. Cell never enjoyed destruction the way that the evil #17 & #18 from Trunks's future did. What Cell gets pleasure from his from fighting with a WORTHY opponent. How is that nobody realized this? Goku literally begs Gohan to kill Cell as soon as Gohan has the upper hand. What happened to the Goku we know and love?

Cell was virtually begging for the Z Warriors to convince him to join the team. He demonstrated his mild intentions time and time again. He was a powerful foe who, like Vegeta and Piccolo before him, could easily have been turned into an even more powerful ally.

The obviousness of Cell's lack of malice is almost obnoxiously overwhelming. The ridiculousness of Goku's bloodlust towards Cell is so extreme that it makes me think less of Dragon Ball/Z/Kai. Mind you, Kai is still one of the greatest fucking shows ever made (probably top 5 all-time), but it's not as good as it should have been. If Toriyama wanted Cell to be evil, he should have made Cell evil, it's as simple as that.

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But other than that, the Cell Games Arc was a fun watch, and Kai represents an enormous improvement over Z, as always. The fighting, as always, was top-notch. Goku vs. Cell was a true joy to witness, without all of Z's original filler. And there was one scene I had forgotten, which was the best scene in Kai's whole latter half: when Piccolo stays behind to offer Vegeta a hand after Cell's death. Now... Piccolo has held a grudge against Vegeta this whole time, and understandably so: Piccolo died fighting Vegeta during his original visit. But Piccolo is also in a unique position to understand Vegeta. Piccolo WAS Vegeta. Piccolo fought to take over Earth, Piccolo lived to kill Goku, and Piccolo came around to the good side because he was shown the kindness of friendship. In offering his hand to Vegeta, Piccolo is offering Vegeta this same gift of friendship. It's devastatingly beautiful, and even if Cell was viciously murdered, I'm glad that at least some personal growth could come from it.

I'm also eagerly awaiting the Buu Saga. As long as they keep using Z's original music and they don't leave too much filler in, I'm sure seasons 5 & 6 will be better than season 4.

Dragon Ball Kai Season 3 -- Rethinking the Android Saga

I can't say I enjoyed Season 3 of Dragon Ball Kai (comprising the Android & Imperfect Cell arcs) half as much as I did Seasons 1 and 2, but that was never going to happen, it would have been impossible. Even so, Dragon Ball Kai has continued to roundly knock my socks off and in one fell swoop I've come to appreciate the Cell Saga in ways I never have before. I scoffed at it for a good while, but now I can proudly say that the Cell Saga is an incredible piece of work and every bit as worthy of being a part of Dragon Ball Kai as the Saiyan and Namek arcs are. It'll never be half as good as the first two seasons for me personally, but I finally understand why so many people... probably even the majority of people, consider this the best part of DBZ.

See, it occurred to me how much of my distaste for the Android-related arcs is more personal than perceptive.

By the time I got to this part of Z originally, I was a moody & depressed tween, unable to give myself fully to the show. Plus it was no longer something being shared with my brothers, so watching it was less fun and had less meaning. I also held a grudge against the Cell Saga because it begins with an utter emasculation of the Freezer Fight: reducing both Freezer, and Goku's transformation into the Super Saiyan, into hum-drum, garden variety fodder. This still pisses me off and it's still my least favorite part of DBZ and DBK.

But the biggest thing that kept me from enjoying this material the first time I saw it, is the fact that everything had been spoiled for me already. And looking at the Android arcs objectively today, I can see how.... butt-fucking unbelievable this storyline is. Are you kidding me? These plot twists are out of this world. I can't believe a show as generally straight forward as DBZ was able to pull off this many sleight of hands consecutively, I feel like I'm looking into my scouter and saying "It's a malfunction!" Hell, the number of times they spoiled the "hey kids, don't forget about the Super Saiyan thing! That's gonna become important later on" EVEN in Kai, I really wouldn't have thought DBZ/Kai could have done this but they really did.

First you have Freezer come to Earth, pretty straight forward story arc there. Now we'll repeat the pattern we see so often: everybody has to keep the enemy at bay while we wait for Goku to arrive. Nope! Somebody new is here to kill Freezer in an instant! Then he sets up a new arc: two impossibly strong androids are coming in 3 years. So everything goes according to plan, they train and the two androids aren't tough to beat. But, wait! Trunks comes back and those weren't the right androids. The real androids are way too strong to beat, but they're not pure evil... so what's going on here? How will this be resolved? Well, something ELSE has come back from the future and it's a freaking monster! Aaah! So here, finally, is the primary antagonist. But wait, Vegeta has him vastly outclassed, surely he will destroy him! Well, I wish he would have, but he doesn't.... yet another twist! While it doesn't form as good of an arc overall (the perfection of the Freezer Saga can't be beat), I'd have to say that strictly in terms of complexity this is the best-written portion of Kai by far. It's also great to see Piccolo be the strongest person on Earth again, even if only briefly, and the artificial humans are pretty cool characters.

Other things that annoyed me as a kid also make more sense as an adult. For one thing, Bulma & Vegeta's relationship makes a lot more sense. You see Bulma contemplate on Namek about how she really missed the boat not going for Goku when she had the chance, and choosing the perennial loser Yamucha instead. It only makes sense that Bulma would immediately jump on the only other Saiyan around, and the second most powerful person in the universe (at the time). I also used to decry the Cell Saga for having such a low body count -- I mean Future Trunks deserved to die (Freezer's Revenge), and #16 was a machine, basically a talking toaster. Freezer and Vegeta killed much more impressive people than that. But then I realized, since they unfortunately felt the need to remove the caveat in the dragon balls that meant you can only come back to life once, death has lost all meaning anyway. So why bog Cell down with a meaningless body count? It's just plain not necessary.

My only real complaint, here were some continuity issues that perturbed me. Generally I'm not quite such a nit-picking fanboy, but part of Dragon Ball Kai's purpose was to remove the glaring plotholes and give DBZ a flawless storyline. Dragon Ball Kai is indeed so close to being flawless that the few issues which do arrive, just seem so unfortunate.

Happily, a lot of the issues I had as a kid turned out to just be teen angst. Like, I used to think introducing the Room of Spirit and Time was dumb, 'cause why hadn't they used it before? Well, they couldn't have used it before, Goku and Kami were the only ones who knew about it. In fact, it *explains* the rather odd lack of training that Kami gave the Z warriors back in season 1. He probably brought them up there to see if they would be able to handle the Room of Spirit and Time, but none of them made the cut.

However still, there were a small few continuity issues that Kai probably could have resolved but didn't. The biggest, most jarring one is how Yamucha was wished back to life and was transported right to where everyone was, at Bulma's estate. Rather inconvenient how when it doesn't have any ramifications, people can just be transported anywhere. But Yamucha was at Kaio-sama's dwelling. Remember when Goku had to travel Snake Way, then be brought back by Kami to Kami's palace, and then travel to where the Saiyans were? Same dragon, same wish, what allowed Yamucha to be transported back and not Goku? Is Shen Long sadistic?

But those are minor things compared to the immensity of Kai's greatness. Silly me, I made the mistake of thinking I wouldn't want to watch the last season. I mean sure, the Cell Games isn't my favorite but how could I stop right in the middle of the storyline like this? Alas, I'll have to wait another week to watch the fourth season.

But now's a good a time as any to put a cap on my Kai review. I have to say, it's amazing... I came in this thing lamenting the fact that DBZ had aged incredibly poorly while pretty much everything else I watched as a kid had gotten 10x better. But Dragon Ball Kai really achieved what it set out to do, it brought Dragon Ball Z to its proper greatness. It's not just a good show, it's done me a huge favor in giving me back the Dragon Ball Z that DBZ deserves to be, and I can restore it to my pantheon.