camwyn | (no subject)

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I have in my possession a DVD of the first season of Real Ghostbusters. It is undoubtedly illegally ripped from VHS or something similarly cheesy, but I do not really care. It's got the cartoon that I loved most as a kid and a high schooler and ...

... I am afraid to watch it.

It's all down to the Suck Fairy, you see. The Suck Fairy comes in the night when an artist does her or his work, and finds some piece that the artist hasn't looked at in a while. Then she takes away as much good as she can carry, and leaves only suck.

She's done it to me more times than I can count. I've taken to making sacrificial drawings for her before starting my good stuff, but it doesn't always work. She's done it to novels I've read and loved, stealing the good away from the authors. She tried to do it to Cosmos but all she got was the UNBELIEVABLE OMG SO WONDERFUL graphics I remembered, and they were so good she could only carry away part of that. She had very little suck to leave, and so Cosmos was not rendered sucky, merely not as visually appealing.

I am terrified that I've got a DVD full of suck where a magnificent cartoon used to be.

Three weeks' worth- no, four- of not opening the packaging because of that fear.

*stares pensively at case*

Can anyone who still has it on tape tell me if it's worth opening, or should I stick to my memories and pass this off on someone else?

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um, good luck?

No idea, really. But I remember that show. I loved that show. I was banned from watching it because my parents thought it gave one of my little brothers nightmares. He loved it. We both watched it anyway, whenever possible.

Of course, I was also inordinately fond of Rainbow Brite.

You seem as prepared for the Suck Fairy as it is possible to be. I'd say go for it. Good Luck.

I saw a few eps recently and was not disappointed, but then, I didn't watch in the way-back.

If you want peer support for the viewing we can always come over or vice versa.

*hugs*
LMG

I gotta admit, the peer support would make me feel a lot better about cracking the thing open.

Am big fat hairy WEENIE.

When's good for you?

This week is busy, how is your Thursday next week? (the 17th?)

Sure. Beats the crap out of how other people celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

(BTW: I got up the nerve to watch two episodes tonight. It ain't Gargoyles, but it ain't as bad as I feared, either. I have great respect for an American cartoon that allows its characters to say things like 'gentlemen, I hate to say this, but... in fifty seconds, we die." *tweak tweak* "Forty-eight...")

You know, what drives me crazy is that I've been a Ghostbusters fan for as long as I can remember (The theme song just started playing as I typed that. Spooky.) and I've never seen that show. I can remember seeing the end credits, but that's it.

The end credits rocked.

I wish I could come watch it with you!! I so desperately want to see Real Ghostbusters again - where did you get a DVD? In reality, it might suck, but I don't think that will bother me. What I want out of it is refresh my memory on what it really was, what the canon really was, how Janine spoke before and after that Kourie-whatsit gave her the new look, and if they didn't change Peter's voice, too. I think there was a lot of timing that was off and probably I will be a tad bit disappointed, but I was in my early twenties when I was watching it, and it was good enough to still catch my eye, so I think it can't really totally suck. Obviously there was something there which inspired us, and it might not be visible in the first few shows, or even on viewing a few minutes of random episodes, but it was something which stuck with us. I think there was more depth implied than could ever really be portrayed in a 30 minute cartoon.

I got it from a comic book store in Manhattan that didn't seem to be very worried about how it wasn't exactly what one would call 'legal'. There were two copies of the first season there, so I bought one with the intent of christening my DVD player with it. I left it in the wrong box when I moved, but when I finally found it, I was too panicked at the thought of the Suck Fairy to open it up and watch.

Going to have to watch it with someone, I think. Just in case I need to hide my face and whimper, or something.

The best advice I can think of: artificially lower your expectations beforehand by assuming every worst-case scenario is true. I was a bit disappointed by my first viewing of the old Transformers series in my adult life, but I think this would have helped.

The animation is going to be much worse than you remember. The voice acting is going to be cheesy. The plots not as sophisticated as you hoped. The humor a bit stale. And you'll find out you were remembering the best of the best episodes, not the ones that boil down to 'Slimer does something kooky and everyone chases him.'

It may not all be true, but if you go in ready for the worst, you can probably still recapture what was great about it. There are definitely episodes of the show I still look back on fondly even now, and while my memory's probably glossed over the less-than-stellar aspects of them, I'd still love to see them again. Even if I have to remind myself that the animation's not going to be up to the level of good anime or Gargoyles or anything, and that I didn't realize when I was a kid that the tormented musician with a flute that could destroy the world had a vaguely Elvis-esque voice.

Let me know how it turns out, because I'm quite intrigued.

I didn't realize when I was a kid that the tormented musician with a flute that could destroy the world had a vaguely Elvis-esque voice

"Ragnarok and Roll".

I saw that episode EIGHT TIMES. !*&)(&! rerun scheduling...

Did you ever notice that the incantation used in that episode is apparently "One Ring to Rule them..." in the Black Tongue of Mordor?

... no, I did not. I don't think I'd ever actually heard the Black Tongue properly spoken at that point, though. I'm pretty sure no one recited the Ring incantation in the cartoon adaptation of The Return of the King, and no one of my acquaintance at the time was enough of a Tolkien geek to know the language.

Damn.

Someone else pointed it to me a few years ago.

I don't think Maurice LaMarche, who was doing that character's voice in addition to his usual stint as Egon, got the pronunciation right, but it does certainly sound close enough for horseshoes.

When you do fire up that DVD, see if the flutist (what was his name?) says:

Ash nazg durba-tul-ûk,
Ash nazg gimba-tul
Ash nazg thraka-tul-ûk
Agh burz-um-ish-i krimpa-tul

because I'm really curious if my friend, a major Tolkien geek, was right or she was just hearing what she wanted to.

It doesn't seem to be one of the episodes on this DVD, unfortunately. I'll see if I find it anywhere, though.

I used to have that episode on tape. Your friend is absolutely correct.

You know, I've had an episode that I downloaded sitting on my computer unwatched for the exact same reason?

If you go, I'll go.

Dragomorph
"Let's hear it for nostalgia. Gah."

*currently on Ghostbusters kick* ... And apparently, I'm the only one who's watched the show recently. The animation sucks, but the stories and characters are still good. ... Can we expect more fic if you watch it..?

Yes. I actually have the outline for the next chapter of Who Ya Gonna Owl? in my notebook as we speak. Hence the extra strong fear of the Suck Fairy, since I'm mid-fic, after all.

I'm something like 10 years older than you, so I was already in my teens when the Real Ghostbusters came into being, so I don't have a 'little kid' memory of it. I do remember being really rather impressed with the storylines. I know there were later episodes that weren't nearly as well drawn, but I remember the first ones being quite good. And the writing was fairly sophisticated.

I think it will be okay.

It's airing still on Jetix here in the UK, which amazes me. With all the new stuff that Fox/Jetix has access to, they're sticking to the RGB?! Yay! (although annoyingly, the new Sonic cartoon precedes it in the afternoon, ugh.) They are sticking to the earlier and better episodes, however. None of the Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters have been aired.

I find myself mentally glossing over the animation. I'm picky, I know the process involved, and that the high-shiny nature of current animation is due to tech changes like computers more than anything. There's some pretty looking but sucky animation out there right now. New and shiny doesn't mean good... and the RGB have, for the most part, bloody good scripts. I hedge because a few days ago the ep was the Dairy Farm episode, which has Peter at his worst hit on the girl writing ever.

Go on, be brave, watch them. I'll stop hiding from my DVD of the Galaxy Rangers, which I've been avoiding for much the same reason, if you do.

I've the few RGB tapes that are available in the US, and they do suffer on the artwork front.

The color isn't as eye-popping or as subtle as it is in more recent works (Gargoyles comes to mind), but in general the first season had good scripts with lovely bits of characterization, and of course it had the best voice cast.

First off, I adore the icon. There's a deleted scene from the movie that further enhances the idea of Egon/Janine.

Also, I must also state that the cartoon was awesome (up until they changed all the writers and it became "Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters," at which point it was hit by the Suck Fairy).

The show was stupendous through the first season (the first 70 episodes), but it did trail off in quality pretty badly after the move to ABC as opposed to syndication, and after J. Michael Straczynski quit.

The syndicated seasons had some of the best writers -- Steve Perry, Michael Reeves, Linda Woolverton and so on.

It holds up. If you have any irritation with Slimer, that does not fade with age. In my case, it got worse. Still, the early episodes with no dumbing down and little of the green blob were fabulous.

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