Wander over to "Rurouni Kenshin"

Personally, I don't care much for shonen.  While I have a few gripes with it, like the over-simplification of some themes and over-use of comedy, the big thing I don't like is the way characters in action series can take deadly hit after deadly hit in fights that go on for episodes and still be standing.  Rurouni Kenshin has this trope, but it's not only great shonen, it's great, period.  For a lot of reasons.

I wish I could run a clip of the first few minutes of the series, because that would demonstrate a great point in favor of the show.  We see Kenshin in a situation in the first few minutes that tells us about his personality, current worldview, how he deals with violent situations, his former life, and current "occupation."  Already, we know more about Kenshin than we did about the Bride in the entire four hours of Kill Bill.  We see his personality, his appearance is intriguing (this short, long-haired guy was a great assassin?  Really?  But--cool scar!  How'd he get that?), and his reactions and reverse-blade sword tell us a bit about his philosophy and allude to his history.

Part of the reason is the Japanese voice actors, especially for Kenshin.  Mayo Suzukaze is utter perfection here.  Her vocal range gives Kenshin a lot of individuality.  He's a very original and three-dimensional character, so it's fitting that he should have an atypical voice.  He doesn't sound like a woman--he sounds like a kind, small man.  There's also the fact that Kenshin has a lot of verbal tics that don't translate to English.   Japanese has many pronouns for "I" depending on politeness, sex, age, etc.  He uses the very archaic and humble "sessha," meaning "this one" (NOT the same "this one" Cheza uses in Wolf's Rain).  However, when he reverts to his assassin self, his verbal tics ("Oro" and "de gozaru") vanish, and "sessha" changes to the more masculine and vulgar "ore," all of which are audible in the Japanese dub if you know what to listen for but appear nowhere in the English dub because English doesn't have multiple "I" pronouns.  These changes are essential for understanding how much Kenshin changed from the war days to peacetime and how he can fall back into that harmful personality if the situation's right.  (It's also a testament to the crafting of the character and the talent of Suzukaze that the Japanese rendering of the line "I will kill you?  That's my line" is not cheesy, as the English dub feels, but subtly terrifying.)  Please stick with the Japanese dub for this one.  As well, if you're going to watch the OVAs for this show, be warned that the English vocal cast changes whereas the Japanese cast remains the same.

A huge point in Kenshin's favor as a shonen series is that it is a historical drama.  It's not an action-comedy that happens to be set in the early Meiji period--it's about the early Meiji period, the dissatisfaction so many people have with the new government, and what assassins do once their services are no longer needed because swords are illegal.  Kenshin himself was based on an assassin who looked like a woman and used that to his advantage to carry out assassinations.  Much of, if not all, the conflict arises from various characters showing their distaste for the Meiji regime and wanting to undermine it in various ways.  This angle gives the show a lot of depth that most action shows lack.  It has a purpose: it's teaching us history and about how war changes people.

Another benefit is the inclusion of philosophy.  Most of the fights are duels of philosophy more than they are between swords/fists/spears, and learning swordfighting is as much about worldview as it is about slashes.  One fight ends when one combatant has been rendered completely unable to move, yet he wins because he has so thouroughly deconstructed his opponent's view on life that he must admit defeat.  The conflicts are much richer when words and minds fight alongside brute force.  Having said that, some fights do drag on a bit too long or suffer from the pitfalls of shonen where a character will perform some superhuman move and then say, "Oh, I was only at three steps below my optimum level," and then work up from there.  Those fights become a bit more aggravating, but this may be more of a issue with my opinion of shonen than an inherent flaw in the shonen-action genre.  As well, none of the individual fights last more than three episodes.

Sometimes the tone can be a bit uneven, especially in season one.  It will go from goofy comedy to serious drama a little too abruptly.  Season two, the pinnacle of the show, seems to balance this much better with a bit of comedy applied in the right places.

About once per episode, I wondered how silly, goofball Kenshin, when falling off a roof after being caught spying, getting chased by a girl, or playing blindman's bluff with the kids, was once the greatest assassin in Japan.  This is all in the series' favor--it demonstrates how an assassin can become carefree and how carefully he has to watch himself to keep from reverting to his manslayer persona.  It also inspires interest in his history, which is revealed in pieces in the series and the OVAs.

Rurouni Kenshin was followed by Samurai X: The Motion Picture and the OVAs Trust, Betrayal, and Reflection.  These OVAs are so different in tone and content than the TV show that I don't feel comfortable talking about them in this review.  They deserve their own review.

Seasons one and two are fabulous and great fun to watch.  Season three is much more mixed, as it is not based on the manga and suffers appropriately.  The first and last episodes are fine, the Christianity arc is decent, and the fake-Battousai episode is amusing, but the rest of the season is entirely skippable.  Definitely put this show on your list.

"Hugo" See This Film

Hey! I went to a theatre to see a movie!  First time in three years.

And Martin Scorsese did not let me down.  This is a wonderful film.  I smiled the whole way through it and all the way home.  It's not mean-spirited; it's wholesome but not devoid of conflict.  The conflict is all emotional--the journeys Hugo and Georges take are quite relatable and full of substance.
Though I would call it a PG movie for adults, I think that children would enjoy it too.  I don't think adults give kids enough credit for what they'll enjoy.  I know young children who like Babette's Feast and Branagh's four-hour Hamlet.  They like quieter, calm films sometimes, and other times they just like something because they do, even if they don't understand it.  Hugo is an emotionally healthy film for kids and mentally stimulating film for adults.  If you know about silent film and Scorsese's life, you will get more out of it, but it's not necessary to enjoy the film.  This is a true film, one that makes perfect use of the medium.  It's not a plug for film restoration, though it does clearly support it.  Instead, it maturely supports film preservation by showing how not doing so leads to deep unhappiness in certain folks' lives.  If no one remembers old films (or books or plays or songs for that matter), then what was the point of it all in the eyes of the ones who made them?  The material is handled subtly and depends on the audience to make the connections.

I hadn't seen a 3D film before, so I have no way to judge, but I did not find the image dark or murky.  Maybe it's getting better, or maybe Scorsese just utilised color very well, but it's a very clear, colorful film.  The 3D was never distracting.

I'm hoping for some acting nominations here.  And directing, visual effects, sound, editing, and picture.  Films like this used to win Best Picture, but these days, it's unlikely they're even nominated.  The Oscar race has mostly gone to PG-13 and R films.  I hope it gets some recognition.  Especially considering that Breaking Dawn Part One is the top grossing film of the weekend on the week that Hugo, The Muppets, and Arthur Christmas (all getting rave reviews) came out.