I'm back

All this week when I wasn't working, sleeping, eating, or lying in bed with a massive sinus headache, I've been spending almost every minute of time watching DVDs. I got the Buffy season 2 set this week, too. I haven't had a chance to watch it though, since my backordered-for-two-months boxset of Neon Genesis Evangelion was finally shipped to me this week, and I have been caught up in its insanity. And I use that word "insanity" in a very literal sense. For those unfamiliar with it, it's a Japanese animated series that starts out as a show about children who may be something more than ordinary children recruited to pilot giant robots that may be more than mere machines in order to fight giant genocidal monsters called Angels who may be exactly what their name implies. It then gradually takes the seemingly typical giant robot anime into directions such shows hadn't followed before its time, and eventually descends into depression, madness, schizophrenia, and what I can only describe as a nervous breakdown in animated form, seemingly tossing the plot completely out the window to spend the final episodes inside the mind of the lead character. (The director reportedly was dealing with a terrible period of depression in his life at the time, and it shows.) Trippy stuff. I wouldn't call it the best anime series ever, as the sticker on the box does, and I think it is slightly overrated by many, but I can see why it's passionately loved (and hated) by lots of people, and has been copied by lots of shows that came afterwards.

The Buffy season finale was good, and a good resolution to the storylines and themes of the season.

Overall, I think the season had some major problems (and Joss Whedon has actually said he's looked back at how a bunch of things could have been done much better), and it just meandered all over the place and dragged on too long in spots before the final few episodes where everything started falling into place and setting the storylines of Warren completely being corrupted by power and ambition and Willow being driven insane in motion. It might be better when viewed as a continuous whole over a shorter period of time, rather than spread out in chunks of new episodes interspersed with reruns over the course of a TV season. Maybe the pacing will work out better when I re-watch it that way.

I liked Xander's moment of heroism, proving himself once again the Heart of the group, saving the world with his unconditional love for his best friend. About time he got the chance and the guts to be the hero (and actually get recognized as such).

The development with Spike at the end was pretty interesting, and it should be fun to see where that goes next season. Interesting that the one character who was warning everyone all season long about the consequences of messing with powerful magic and wishes and such ends up asking for and getting something that's no doubt gonna cause him more trouble than ever before...