(no subject)

[camwyn]

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?

Comments

[penguinzero.livejournal.com]

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.

[camwyn]

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...

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

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

[camwyn]

... 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.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

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.

[camwyn]

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

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

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