Thoughts On: The Third Vol. 3

One of the (very few) anime I started watching during my extended break from this blog was The Third. Last night, I finally got around to watching the third volume of The Third, and I figured I’d resurrect the ever-popular (for sufficiently small values of popular) “Thoughts On” format. Therefore, below is an unordered list of my thoughts. Minor spoilers may abound.

• As might be gathered from the choice of screenshot, the character of Paife - who originally I found a fairly annoying addition to the cast and will henceforth be referred to as Lesbiana Jones - has begun to grow on me. She’s still something of a cipher and a stereotype, but she gets fun lines.
• If it weren’t for the presence of Space Jesus… err… Iks, I could totally see a Crest of the Stars/The Third crossover working really easily. The Third are clearly a bizarre offshoot of the Abh…
• Even with Space Jesus, a skilled writer could probably make one work.
• I’m actually kind of surprised at the increase in the presence of “supernatural” abilities beyond the vaguely defined powers of The Third. Then again, maybe Japan is just so used to the idea of “chi attacks” that it doesn’t register as supernatural to them anymore. Or maybe if I went back and rewatched the first two discs I’d see that sort of thing was always there.
• I love, love, love scenes with evil doppelgangers in anime, because it’s fun to hear the voice actors and actresses do a different take on their characters’ voices. (A similar scene was enough to turn an otherwise lamentable episode into one of the highlights of the Naruto filler arcs… though that’s still damning with faint praise.)
• Related, I was relatively pleased with the resolution of the “Honoka reacts to killing a man” subplot, as it admirably didn’t go for the easy “Killing is always wrong!” resolution.
• Remind me to do a post someday about killing, DC and Marvel comics, anti-heroes, and why I really like the character of the current Batgirl. It will only be the ten thousandth time someone has expressed similar ideas on the Internet, making it fit right in on this blog.
• Back to The Third, with this Gravestone plot resolved, I’m rather curious as to where the rest of the series is going, as we’re only about halfway through.
• Also, is there any free solution for playback and screencapping - including the subtitles - of DVDs under Windows that doesn’t suck horribly?

There, wasn’t that fascinating?