Author: Don

Three impossible things

So there might be a live-action Noir? If it’s made, I expect it will be a botch, and I doubt that I’d watch it. Still, I’m curious to see how the crew handles the less plausible aspects of the anime, such as:

• Mireille’s magical skirt. It’s very, very short, yet there’s no panchira.

• Bloodless gunmen. Enough people are killed to furnish a small war. There should have been enough blood shed to float a battleship, yet there’s scarcely a drop shown.

• The lava lake in the basement. Both the heat and the gasses should have been instantly lethal, yet nobody even sweats. (And how could anyone possibly erect a building in such a place?)

Heroes, round two

Ashitaka, Balsa, Simon, Kenshin Himura, Homura Akemi, Meia Gisbourne, Allen Schezar, Alphonse Elric, Rem Saverem and Hikaru Ichijyo advance to the final round. Round two is up now. Who of the twenty-two gallant candidates in the poll at right is the most heroic? Vote for up to three. (If you have trouble voting, please mention it in a comment.)

Be sure to miss it

Remember this?

Neglected by his globe-trotting father, Popper grows into a sharkish real-estate wheeler-dealer, flipping New York landmarks and falling out of touch with his young son (Maxwell Perry Cotton) and adolescent daughter (Madeline Carroll). He must, in addition to wrangling the birds — a bequest from Dad, multiplied by a customer service error — try to win back his ex-wife (Carla Gugino) and woo a reluctant seller (Angela Lansbury) to part with the Tavern on the Green.

I sure don’t, and I read Mr. Popper’s Penguins many times back before the last ice age. Please, if you have to make a crummy movie, at least base it on a lousy book, not a childhood favorite.

Menaces, pink and otherwise

Update: If an image of a pink pony playing a trombone might “frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress” to you, do not click here:

Spoiler

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I note with alarm that a corner of the otakusphere has been invaded by aliens more frightening than zombies or sparkly vampires. These creatures look superficially equine, but their fur and manes typically are colors that do not naturally occur on mammals. Their behaviors sometimes suggest intelligible sentience, but just as often reflect either hypertrophied reflexes or psychoses. Thus far these creatures have been primarily an occidental phenomenon, but they recently have been observed in Japan. Here is some video footage of these entities. (Caution: sit at least 0.6096 meter from the computer monitor while watching this documentary. If you find yourself repeatedly viewing any of the videos posted or linked here, seek professional help immediately.)

I would recommend summoning superheroes to deal with this menace, but I fear that they have already been compromised. I suspect that our only hope is a new corps of mahou shoujo.

Post script: What exactly is Pinkie Pie?

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Kansas weather is sometimes a little too interesting for my taste. (The heat didn’t make it into the house, but the wind did wake me.)

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Animation of a different sort: time-lapse photography of the beginning of the recent Grimsvötn eruption in Iceland:

(These are large files and might take a while to load.)

Although this might have been a larger eruption than Eyjafjallajokull’s last year, because of the prevailing winds and the composition of the ash, it was far less disruptive. Grimsvötn, incidentally, has a long and busy history, including the Lakagigar eruption of 1783, which was perhaps more consequential than Krakatau’s a century later.

Recent discoveries

Stephane Grappelli as the cat in Peter and the Wolf.

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“Just once, I’d like to meet an alien menace that wasn’t immune to bullets.”

(video removed)

An outstanding example of obsessiveness: a fan-made Doctor Who anime.

(Via Chizumatic.)

Update: And it’s gone, which is a pity. The video was an impressive piece of animation. The auteur’s site is here.

Update II: You can watch it here.

The most terrifying girl, and a new poll

Lucy/Nyuu is the scariest girl in anime, followed by Rena Ryuugu, Nanami Yasuri and Enma Ai. I haven’t see Elfen Lied or Higurashi, but if Lucy and Rena are more frightening than Nanami, they must be terrifying indeed. Despite her strong showing in the preliminary rounds, Kirika Yuumera received a single vote in the finals; apparently, lethal though she is, she is too sympathetic a character to be truly scary.

There are 45 nominees for the most heroic character in anime. I will run two preliminary rounds. The top ten in each round will advance to the finals. You can vote for up to three candidates in the preliminaries.

These are the nominees:
Aika Sumeragi(Agent Aika)
Allen Schezar (Vision of Escaflowne)
Alphonse Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist)
Ashitaka (Princess Mononoke)
Astroboy (Astroboy)
Azuma Tetsuya (Casshan)
Balsa (Seirei no Moribito)
Captain Harlock (Space Pirate Captain Harlock)
Eboshi Gozen (Princess Mononoke)
Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist)
Hajime Murata (Shingu)
Hikaru Ichijyo (Macross/Robotech)
Homura Akemi (Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica)
Hotohori (Fushigi Yuugi)
Jack Hofner (L/R: Licensed by Royalty)
James Links (Zone of the Enders)
Joe Yabuki (Ashita no Joe)
Juuzo Okida (Space Battleship Yamoto)
Kenshin Himura (Samurai X; Rurouni Kenshin)
Maka Albarn (Soul Eater)
Masane Amaha (Witchblade)
Meia Gisbourne (Vandread)
Nanoha Takamachi (Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha)
Nausicäa (Nausicäa)
Rem Saverem (Trigun)
Robin Sena (Witch Hunter Robin)
Rowe Rickenbacher (L/R: Licensed by Royalty)
Sakura Kinomoto (Cardcaptor Sakukra)
Sakura Shinguji (Sakura Taisen)
Sayaka Yume (Mazinger Z)
Shizuru Fujimura (Godannar)
Simon (Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann)
Son Goku (Dragonball)
Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop)
Susumu Kodai (Space Battleship Yamoto)
Togusa (Ghost in the Shell)
Tokine Yukimora (Kekkashi)
Vash the Stampede (Trigun)
Wenli Yang (Legend of Galactic Heroes)
Yakuta (Outlaw Star)
Yoko (Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann)
Yomiko Readman (Read or Die OVA)
Yoshika Miyafuji (Strike Witches)
Yoshimori Sumumura (Kekkaishi)
Yuki Mori (Space Battleship Yamoto)

Update: If you are one of the four people who voted earlier and could only vote for one candidate, let me know who the others you wanted to vote for are, and I’ll update the totals accordingly. 

Anime or not?

There are a couple of problematic nominations for the “anime hero” poll.

• Samurai Jack was created in America by the same guy who concocted Dexter’s Laboratory. Does Jack truly count as an anime character?

• Robotech was assembled in America from pieces of three separate Japanese series. “Rick Hunter” is the Macek-ization of Macross‘ Hikaru Ichijyo. Should Hunter be included in the poll, or Ichijyo, or neither?

Miscellaneous geekery

A girl band I’d like to hear, or at least see. (Via Project Rooftop.)

Catwoman on ice. (Via Eve Tushnet.)

Ball-peen hammers in World of Warcraft. (Via Nightfly.) Posted in revenge for this (eye protection recommended).

The dark side of World of Warcraft.

I’ve probably mentioned this article before, but it’s worth posting again: my favorite living writer on Tolkien. (Via John C. Wright.)

The Hairball of St. Felix.

First in an interminable series

I got UTAU running on my ancient Mac:

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/Sis Puella Magica 03.mp3]

This is essentially Animenz’s arrangement of “Sis Puella Magica!,” with “Camila Melodia” doing the the quasi-vocals. She just sings “na na na” because I didn’t have the lyrics at hand, and I didn’t manipulate the sound beyond changing the syllables from the default. The harp and synth were added in Logic.

So UTAU works, sorta. Making it sound like music is another matter. Not the least of the challenges is that the GUI is in Japanese, which I don’t read. Fortunately, the manual has been translated into English with numerous screen shots; unfortunately, the interface for the Mac version was significantly revised, so many of the instructions are no longer quite correct. ((There does exist a hack to convert the UTAU GUI to English, but it looks like it only works in Windows.)) The range of topics in the manual suggest that the skilled user has a great degree of control over the sound. I’ve heard some UTAUloid recordings that are much more lifelike than the above, though none are as convincing as the better Vocaloid efforts. It should be possible to make Camila sound more alive and intelligible, though that probably means tweaking multiple parameters for each and every individual syllable.

It might be less trouble to just take voice lessons and pitch-shift recordings as necessary.

Only fourteen?

Here are the nominees so far for my upcoming “most heroic character in anime” poll:

Alphonse Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist)
Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist)
Homura Akemi (Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica)
Kenshin Himura (Samurai X; Rurouni Kenshin)
Masane Amaha (Witchblade)
Nanoha Takamachi (Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha)
Nausicäa (Nausicäa)
Robin Sena (Witch Hunter Robin)
Simon (Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann)
Son Goku (Dragonball)
Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop)
Togusa (Ghost in the Shell)
Yakuta (Outlaw Star?) ((The only character by this name I found was in episode eight of Outlaw Star, which I haven’t seen. Is that the one, or is there someone else?))
Yoshika Miyafuji (Strike Witches 2)

And that’s it. Just fourteen. Note that in previous polls there were 27 villains nominated, 31 scary girls, and almost 60 babes. Surely there are more gallant characters in anime than this.

Here are a few more names to consider:

Balsa
Gourry Gabriev
Priss Asagiri
Ayumu Aikawa
Pretty Sammy
Giroro

Addendum: Shep, from Interstella 5555

Would someone care to second any of these? Who else should be nominated? If I don’t get more names, I’m going to include Sailor Moon and Mao-chan in the poll.

Further musical notes

I’ve been fortunate so far with Miku Hatsune and her ilk. The Vocaloid engine has not yet been ported to Macintosh, so I haven’t been tempted to spend all my evenings and weekends tinkering with vocal synthesizers. But my luck may have run out. There is now a Mac version of UTAU, the freeware/shareware counterpart of Vocaloid. If it’s possible for someone without Japanese to figure out — there is an English-language UTAU community online, so help is available — what free time I had this summer is gone.

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Apparently the Madoka soundtracks will be available only as part of the Japanese BD editions. That presents a problem for those of us who can’t spare $70, or $87.99, for a half-hour of music.

Fortunately, the sheet-music people are on the case. Here’s a nice piano arrangement of “Sis Puella Magica!”, and there are other Madoka arrangements here (third and fourth from the bottom) and here. I hope to see more soon. Update: here’s another.

Update: This is seriously creepy.

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Frëd has been watching Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, or at least the opening.