Pushing Daisies, like nothing you've ever seen

"Like nothign you've ever seen" is a phrase I hear alot promoting various projects, only to be disappointed that it's almost exactly like several other things I have in fact seen before. One of the few times a project lived up to the title was a show called Pushing Daisies. This show was incredibly unique, sort of a crime procedural, though very unorthodox, absurd, comedic and despite the them of death, proved to be more about life and surprisingly was first and foremost a storybook, fairy tale romance, and one like you have never seen before and sadly may never see again.

The show revolves around a man named Ned. Ned is a fairly ordinary man who wants to live a fairly ordinary life. He bakes pies at his shop, the Pie Hole, and is very happy to let this be the entirety of his life. He is good at making pies, he is happy making pies, and people are happy eating his pies. Ned likes baking pies because his mother liked baking pies. In fact baking a pie was one of te last things Ned's mother did the day she died. Still, bakign pies brings back fond memories of a simpler time for a simple man leading a simple life. However, lifeis not so simple for our dear ordinary Ned because he has a quite extraordinary gift, he can bring the dead back to life. When Ned was young his dear dog Digby died, hit by a truck. Young Ned rushed to his dog as most children would and without realizing it, his touch brought the dog back to life. Not long after, his mother died and he used his touch to bring her back to life as well. Sadly, two tragedies would follow that would teach Ned the rules of his gift and change his life forever, the first being that Mr. Charles across the street died just one minute after Ned's mother was resurrected, and the second being that when Ned's mother kissed him good night that night after tucking him into bed, the first time that she had touched him since being revived, she died a second time, this time permanently. Through some experimentation with bugs in the yard Ned discovered the three cardinal rules of his gift, one touch comes back to life, second touch means death forever, and if that second touch does not come within exactly sixty seconds of the first, then another life of equal value must die in place fo the resurrected. For Digby it was a squirrel, for Ned's mother it was Mr. Charles. The real tragedy of Mr. Charles death was that Ned was madly in love with Mr. Charles daughter Charlotte, whom he lovingly referred to as Chuck. Now, Ned knew that the apparently random death of Mr. Charles was in fact his fault and with this guilt he could not face Chuck, let alone tell her he loved her. And so, sad lonely Ned, with his dog that he could never pet, went on to bake pies and live melancholy ever after.

Until that is, Ned experienced a rather bizarre coincidence. While he was takign out the garbage one day, a thief was running away from a crime and in an attempt to jump from one building to another fell to his death on ned's dumpster and then shortly thereafter flopped upon Ned inadvertently activating his magic touch and springing to life. Knowing the consequences of allowing this stranger to get away alive, Ned did the right thing and touched the criminal a second time, making him dead again. The entire event was witnessed by Emerson Cod, a private investigator who, upon discovering Ned's gift, realizes how easy it would be for him to solve murders if Ned can bring the victims back to life and tell him exactly what happened. When Emerson Cod approaches Ned with a business proposition, Ned is not really interested because he wants to remain in his ordinary life a his ordinary pie shop. Emerson Cod then realizes he has the perfect leverage to hold over Ned, he will keep Ned's secret and allow him to live his ordinary life if he helps with murder cases. All Ned has to do is visit the morgue, touch the victim, ask pertinent questions, and then touch them again within sixty seconds and Emerson Cod catches the murderer and collects his reward.

However, this simple plan too becomes complicated by another bizarre coincidence. Chuck dies an untimely death; raised by her aunts who feared the outside world after the death of Chuck's father, Chuck wants to see the world and goes on a cruise only to be murdered while on board on the only trip she ever took away from home. Emerson Cod wants to investigate this death, but it is harder for Ned who knows this is like no other life that he has ever restored since that fateful day so very long ago. Ned ultimately agrees and restores Chuck to life, agreeing to make her dead again with their first and final kiss. However, Ned decides he can't take away her second chance at life and tells Chuck she can live if she never touches him. She goes back in her casket and the funeral proceeds with all believeing she is dead, then Ned digs her up and allows her to come back with him so they can have some sort of a relationship workign together at the Pie Hole and solving crimes with Emerson Cod and none but the three of them knowing the truth about Chuck or Ned.

This now creates a most complicated situation, in two entirely different ways. One is that Chuck feels like making the most of a person's last sixty seconds of life and her distractions mean they often get less information than Emerson Cod would want and they have to spend the rest of the episode doing actual investigations that Cod has gotten out of practice actually doing so that they can fill in the gaps. The second problem is that Ned is in love witha woman he can never, ever touch, and so they have to find creative ways to be intimate, sleeping in a bed divided by a plastic wall, dancing in beekeeper suits, etc. It's usually vey sweet, especially with the music playing in the background that highlights this unlikely romance, paralleled each week by the similarly unusual relationships of their murder victims and the people they knew in life, like a man who is so desperate for friendship that he starts a company to rent friends so that he can rent himself out to people as lonely as he is, or a man so lonely he falls in lve with his doll, yet from his perspective it is no more unusual nor less real than Ned's love for his living impaired girlfriend. These are no ordinary cases, each one stranger than the last and pushing the limits of believability, yet always having a very human and surprisingly relatable heart that always reconnects to our starstruck lovers.

Why was this amazing show like nothing you've ever seen canceled? The writer's strike.As a writer myself, I do understand how important itis to be compensated for your hard work, but sadly when the writers went on strike, a number of new scripted shows lost their momentum and their audience. It was too hard to win back viewers after an extended hiatus due to the season ending early because of the strike. So Pushing Daisies among some other prmising new shows that particualr year, died and was not to recieve Ned's magic touch and a second chance at life. If you can find it online, do give it a go, it really is like nothing else you've ever seen.

Marvel anime

Many of you may know that marvel is incredibly huge right now, but what some of you may not know is thta Marvel took a shot at anime a few years back. Teaming with Japanes animation studio Madhouse(Summer Wars, Paranoia Agent) they took some of their most popular characters and sent them to Japan as anime for four series of twelve episodes each to try and reach the anime audiences on both sides of the ocean. All aired on G4 and I will review them in the order they aired on that channel.

First there was Iron Man which quite clearly ripped off Evangelion. Each episode featured a robot modeled after a sign of the Zodiac as a stand in for Evangelion's angels. Tony Stark gets involved because he is in Japan selling the new Iron Man Dio, a unit that functions liek Iron Man only without any human inside the suit so no human is ever in danger on missions. Of course, Zodiac wants the Dio project and all the trouble that goes with it falls on Stark. His other connection is that his back story is tweaked and the man that helped him build the original Iron man suit got left behind during Tony's escape years earlier and now he wants revenge for that and he's part of Zodiac now. Also they introduce a new ally in Captain Nagato Sakurai who uses a suit called the Ramon Zero, which is quite simply Iron Man with a samurai asthetic, serving little purpose other than being Japanese Iron Man.

Next was Wolverine. Now I am given to understand there is a canon storyline involving Wolverine visiting Japan, but I do not believe this was it, or at least they twisted it almost beyond recognition. Logan had been in love with a woman named Mariko who was the daughter of a Yakuza and her father forces her to return home to marry another crime boss to secure an allegiance in Madripoor. Madripoor was already established in the Marvel Universe, but after wathign this, it seemed eerily similar to Roanapur from Black Lagoon, given that both are crime ridden areas somewhere in Southeast Asia. Wolverine is teamed with a ninja named Yukio but the real fanfic friend here is Kikyo, a mutant who like Wolverine has the powers of regeneration and retractable blades, only his blades are fully formed kattana with ornate hilts. Frankly I think Kikyo's blades are a little out of range for Marvel's mutants, but whatever, he's the Japanese Wolverine. Kikyo is in the story because he's an assassin hired to take down Logan, but at the last moment he spares Logan because while he appreciated the challenge of fighting a worthy opponent he loses interest when his employer poisons Logan to counteract his regeneration. No way in a western story would that "I will not kill him because it is dishonorable" crap fly, but in Japan, that's how it's done. Kikyo is also awesome because he is voiced by anime voice actor super star god Steve Blum. Speakign of voice actors, Wolverine was voiced by Milo Ventimiglia and Iron Man was voiced by Adrian Pasdar, who geeks may recognize as the Petrelli brothers from Heroes.

Steve Blum also comes back to voice Wolverine himself in X-Men. I was disappointed in this one because Wolverine makes cameos in Iron Man and Blade and appears the same as he does in Wolverine, but here, Logan is completely different, meaning that the the other three are all in the same world and X-men is apparently separate from the others. X-men is simply a rip-off of Akira. They go to Japan to find a new mutant they call Armor because she is able to create protective force fields. While there they get caught up with a plot involving the U-Men who want to take powers away from mutants and give it to themselves. Ultimately the whole thing comes down to Professor X's son Takeo who has relaity warping powers that threaten everybody until the X-Men are forced to kill him. The final scene is where is becomes totally Akira.

Finally Blade. If you've seen Vampire Hunter D, Blood, or any other similar anime that features a vampire hunter or demon hunter with a half-blood heritage that makes it personal, you know the story of Blade. In this version, Blade's nemesis has been experimenting with a way to become the perfect vampire and has created a number of other vampires in the process, though each group is unique for the episode. It was cool enough, but the awkward moment for me and absolutely nobody else, was the final battle. The villain a silver haired man with regenerative abilities sprouts blades from his arms to fight Blade and his sword. Change blade from balck vampire to Japanese cyborg and this was the ending of 7th Moon, though I wrote mine first before seeign this, I just hate that the comparison can be made and suggest I ripped off Marvel. On the other hand, it was one of the coolest battles I have ever seen!

As someone who is familiar with both the real Marvel and anime I was impressed with the effort, however, honestly, it seemed like fan fiction crossing popular Marvel characters with popular anime, ripping off some other anime and adding a couple characters which exist only for a Japanese audience to relate to. Still for fanboys and fangirls, this was a worthwhile romp. I haven't bothered to check where you can get these now, but if you can find them, give it a go.

Evil Counterparts

Currently my book, 7th Moon, is under review from a blogger and troper who tweeted this week that he got to a part about a "Face your Evil Counterpart Battle" and I knew exactly what he was talking about as I wrote that particular part consciously aware that I was doing that. I followed up by looking up the trope on TVTropes and found some interesting information about the evil counterpart trope. I would like to follow up by discussing this particular trope and it's role not only in my book, but in general.

Before I talk about how it fits in my book, I would like to point out a completely unrelated example of how it was used by another author, Drizzt Do'Urden and Artemis Entreri in the novels by R. A. Salvatore. These two characters are absolute opposites, photonegatives even. Drizzt is a Drow, a dark elf with dark skin and white hair from a world of evil where he has prevailed against the odds to escape to the surface world and live among the good people of Faerun and follow ideals of compassion. Artemis is a human with light skin and dark hair, comes from the decent human world and has become an amoral assassin who shows mercy only when he has a use for them alive or if they are simply not worth the trouble of killing. They only have two things in common, they both mastered using the two blade fighting style, and they have a common acquaintance in Regis the Halfling. Regis stole a valuable, magical gem from his former employer who still employed Artemis when he tasked him with getting the gem back. Drizzt protects his friend and ends up fighting Artemis and they find that they share a unique fighting style that makes them immediate archrivals and mortal nemeses. Drizzt has fought a number of worthy opponents revealing his prowess as a fighter, dragons, demons, yetis, hordes of goblins, and yet there is no enemy as significant as Artemis Entreri. Why? Because by fighting an enemy that is the same shows off his skill set in a way that nobody else can. Defeating a dragon shows he's strong, defeating a demon shows he's cunning, and cutting through goblins like hedges shows he has endurance. But in all those cases, Drizzt is cutting down his foes with two scimitars, so we know he's powerful because he wields two blades at once, but couldn't anybody be just as tough if they could use two swords at once? Artemis tests that when he draws his vampiric dagger and pairs it with his other sword. Now we see two equals duel, in a way, he's fighting against himself. His victory against Artemis is not merely defeating a powerful opponent, it's proving he is the better of two differing only by morality, and apparently, by a very narrow margin, skill.

Evil counterparts serve this function in just about any case where they are used. Fighting entirely unique and different enemies always has a margin of different strengths between the combatants, the true measure is when they are similar enough to test the hero on an even level. That is part of what is going on with Hidariude and Seichei. Honestly Seichei was inspired by the Zeta Project a spinoff of Batman Beyond in which a robot was created to destroy but refuses to kill an innocent target and goes rogue, leading those who sent him into the world to try to recapture him. I assumed 7th Moon would go in that direction, but I wanted to eliminate the possibility that Hidariude would ever go back, so I decided to create a replacement, an upgraded version who has more of everything to counter the relatively minimalist cybernetics Hidariude has. The point of the two is, Seichei is bigger, badder, better in every way that should matter, but Hidariude still defeats him because he fights for what's right and draws some undefinable power from within his soul that Seichei lacks. I love using this trope and I also love seeing it used by others, no matter how overused it ma ever seem, the truth is no hero will ever truly know his worth until he has faced his ultimate enemy, himself, his Evil Counterpart.

Evangelion: You are (not) tripping balls

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Okay, weird one to start off the new year with, but I loved the title and a week after the fact was already waiting too long, so here are my thoughts on the Evangelion movies.

Let's start with Evangelion, what is it? Evangelion is a highly acclaimed anime that I think gets way more credit than it deserves. It's not that I hate it or that it's bad, it's that there are anime fans who think it is one of the best, but it's just not. Maybe it's because I didn't see it until many years after it was originally made and seeing what they've done since, I'm not as impressed, although historically it was fairly cutting edge for it's time. Evangelion was loosely based on the biblical apocalypse and uses many references to the bible, notably referring to it's villains as angels, as in the angels of destruction from Revelation. That's about as far as it goes, and then it just goes off in it's own direction and relies on an audience who doesn't actually know the source material to call BS. Anyway, the background that is referred to in passing to the point that you really do need someone to explain it to you is that the Dead Sea Scrolls contained prophecies of the apocalypse regarding angels of destruction, and then(this is where we switch from fact to fiction) toward the end of the twentieth century, a group of archaeologists discover the angels of prophecy, or more to the point, the first two, they name Adam and Lilith after the first man and woman according to the apocrypha. This discovery resulted in the Second Impact, named because the world is told it was a meteor like the one that killed the dinosaurs and has the same effects on the Earth. Among the archaeologists was Gendo Ikari who understood the significance of what he found and began the Evangelion project to develop a means to fight the angels that would destroy what managed to survive. This project was rather complicated but boils down to what they call Evas, three giants that are to be controlled by specially selected pilots to fight the angels with the same power the angels have. These pilots are Shinji Ikari (Gendo's son) Rei Ayaname and Asuka Sohryu Langley, all of whom were born after the Second Impact and are called into action at the age of fifteen. It probably seems wrong that they are recruited at such a young age, but the truth is everybody is lucky it took fifteen years for the angels to appear. The story mainly focuses on Shinji when the third angel (fourth in the movie) attacks and he is recruited to pilot the Eva-1. Over the course of the series he meets and works with the Rei who seems to have no personality and Asuka, who thinks she's better tan everybody else, especially the other two pilots, and most especially Shinji. Now, here is where things get really fucked up...the Evas, while appearing to be robots, are actually cloned from Adam(Eva-1) and Lilith(all other Evas) and were combined with the parents of the three children. The Eva-1 is actually Shinji's mother Yui transformed by being combined with Adam, Eva-2 is Asuka's mother used as base material for a clone of Lilith and Eva-0 is the most bizarre of all, Rei is actually a clone of the woman who was used for the base of another clone of Lilith. The reason they appear to be robots is that the only way for them to be controlled is to for complex machines to restrain their bodies and prevent them from using full power and are ultimately controlled by the pilots who are chosen because of their biological relation to the Evas, which means they are the only ones capable of piloting the Evas at all. The reason for such dangerous beings to be used to fight the angels is simple, the angels are protected by AT(Absolute Terror) fields which can only be penetrated by a counteractive AT field which can only be produced by the Evas because they are part angel.

The series quite simply follows the fight against the last fifteen of the seventeen angels ending on episode 24 where Shinji fights the last angel who comes in the form of Kaworu pilot of Eva-3 which was itself an angel earlier on until it was deactivated after a disastrous test run with the equally disastrous "Fourth Child". It's important to note the series was only 24 episodes long because most anime run for 26 episodes, but the creator only had 24 episodes of material. There were in fact 26 episodes but episodes 25 and 26 are filler that don't really have anything to do with the story told up to that point. This is significant because Shinji is always listening to tracks 25 and 26 on his cassete player and this is a direct reference to how the creator never really had a plan for those episodes, he's just kind of giving the finger the whole time. As for the movies, it's pretty much the same story as the series, except that they try to condense it to fit in three movies. Movie one covers Shinji meeting Rei and fighting angels four, five, and six, with a brief glimpse of Kaworu hinting at the end of the story. The only major difference in "1.11 You are (not) alone" is that they used fresh and new updated animation and edited the corresponding episodes for time. "2.22 You may (not) advance" introduces a new character, an alternate pilot and veers the story off in a new direction. Well, asthetically different, it's still Shinji freaking out about how his father is even worse than he thought while Asuka and Rei cover his ass.

One thing I have to say, I have wanted to make a live action movie of Evangelion mostly because I love Cruel Angels Thesis Bleeds, the original theme and wanted it attached to a film, or at least a trailer. "NO!" I hear you scream because live action movies of anime tend to be disasters. However, I have three rules to make this work.

1. Cast must be Asian. If we have learned nothing from Dragon Ball Evolution, it's that fans can not stand Japanese characters being played by white people.
2. Angels and Evas come first, they must be done properly or this thing is dead in the water. No improvising, they are to be 3D renderings of the cartoons EXACTLY!
3. Use FUNimation's script exactly, no edits. When you make changes, people get mad, use the script that the fans accepted already and it saves the trouble of them being pissed off when you finally make it.

On a completely unrelated note, Red Ellen is now available on Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle formats.