Sorry guys, no video post this week. I sat down to record, everything was going quite nicely and then I got interrupted by my housemate knocking on my door, so that recording went out the window. Then second time I tried recording, my webcam failed. And the story then continues in a similar vein from there-on-in, car-alarms going off, other miscellaneous noise, you get the idea, so I'm not gonna keep trying re-records, I'm just gonna do it typed for this week. Sorry about that and all, but hopefully it'll be service as usual next week.
Anyway. This week we have 2 questions, both from Kaldath, because he asked 2 questions that I really wanted to answer. I'll include the questions below and my answers will be after the jump.
QOTD 1: Do you collect anything?
QOTD 2: Do you have a cherished childhood television show, animated or otherwise?
QOTD 1: Do you collect anything?
Yes. Let's see; toy cars. And I mean toy cars, not models, because when I'm older and have kids I fully intend to let them play with them. I don't get the point of collecting toys (be it trains, cars, soldiers, whatever) and just keeping them in a box for the rest of eternity. These things were built to be played with, so they should be played with. I've also recently gotten back into collecting Pokemon cards. I used to collect them back when I was kid and Pokemon was brand new (so late 90's) and I've got a few hundred sitting up in the attic at home somewhere. Since I got back to uni I've got a couple of packs worth (including a shiny Greninja and a Shiny Dragonite, which is very nice). Then you've got the graphic novels. Unlike Myro a can actually read crossover event comics (despite the fact that some of them are properly rubbish (see Civil War)) so I tended to focus on them, but more recently I've been collecting stuff like Umbrella Academy, Sandman and Green Lantern collected editions, stuff like that, moving away from the crossover stuff (although I'd still like to finish the Crisis Quartet at some point, I'm only missing Identity Crisis, which is annoying). And then you've got the Doctor Who DVD's, new series complete seasons (only need the last season now), plus the old series classics like Genesis Of The Daleks and ones like that. So yeah, I do collect a few things.
QOTD 2: Do you have a cherished childhood television show, animated or otherwise?
Ok, lets see here, what did I watch as a kid. Well, you had the Spider-Man cartoons (I can't rightly remember which series, but we're talking one that was shown in the very late 90's), Fantastic Four animated series, The Batman animated series, Disney's Hercules cartoons, Scooby Doo (which, surprisingly enough is the only kids TV show I can remember watching that was on CBBC rather than CITV other than Blue Peter, no wait, actually I think The Really Wild Show was on CBBC), Tom and Jerry (and Tom and Jerry kids). It's surprisingly hard to think of what I remember from my childhood when it comes to kids shows, because I still watch stuff that I watched as a kid. But, if I'm honest, everything I've listed so far has just been honourable mentions, because if we're talking "cherished" childhood TV shows, ones that defined my childhood then it comes down to two; Pokemon and Digimon.
Now, I'm gonna go ahead and say, I still watch both these shows. I've gone back and watched every series of both, in marathon, and, at the risk of this turning into a review, one certainly stands head and shoulders above the other. And of course that is the one that was my favourite as a child. So lets start off with Pokemon. This series was always fun as a kid, it brought the little monsters from the cards and the games to life and made them either cuter or more awesome. I could still sing you the first series theme song, I know it off by heart and have done since the series first aired. Of course they did screw a few things up when transitioning from game to anime, a few of the rules didn't quite make it across (Electric type attacks working on Ground type Pokemon in the anime, where in the games Ground is immune to Electric), plus Ash was completely useless and didn't understand that Pokemon generally tend to get stronger if you evolve them! But the characters were fun, they gave characters such as the Gym Leaders and Nurse Joy so much more life than they got in the games (tell me that Blaine was better in the games than in the anime, I dare you) and Misty is the reason why Water Type is my favourite Pokemon type to this day.
However, when it comes down to it, Digimon was just so much better, and it's a shame that not more people recognise this. If we go by each series produced, the Pokemon anime never seems to go anywhere, it just stays static in terms of character development (apart from in the Sinnoh arc, where Ash actually becomes a good trainer, before magically becoming completely useless again at the start of the Unova arc), where as Digimon lets its characters progress, become better and then it will start again with a new set of characters. And even if we look at the series I remember from my childhood (season 1 in both cases, plus a little bit of season 2 from both), Digimon still comes out on top because it had so much more to it than Pokemon did. Because they allowed their characters to grow you had room for emotion and they put in bits which were absolutely killer (see S1E37 for proof, that episode still brings tears to my eye and if you watched Digimon you know which episode I'm talking about). Pokemon never had that effect on me, because it was more childish, the emotional moments they put in were haltered by the fact that you knew that nothing was really gonna change (apart from Ep21 of the Indigo arc obviously, but even that didn't have the same emotional impact). So Digimon was always tops for me and still is, I might have fallen behind on the dub of the new series, but I watched the sub last year so I know what happens and it's a very good season (up there with season 3 IMO).
Anyway, I think I've rambled long enough. Once again, sorry for the lack of video, there will be one up next week. I might carry on the 2 questions a week thing, if you guys like the idea. It'll make the videos a bit longer, but I don't mind doing extra if you want me to.
That's it for this week, remember you can leave your questions in the comments below (and they don't have to be Heromachine based questions guys, I'd actually prefer none HM questions if possible) and thanks for reading.
JR out.
