Author: Don

Random notes

Some good news for Steven: it looks like there are plans for a Strike Witches TV series. I’m ambivalent, myself. The eight-minute OVA was perfect in its way (and perfectly absurd); a regular series, even if done well, is going to seem diffuse in comparison.

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I’ve got the week off. I’ve been reading Diana Wynne Jones rather than than watching anime, though, so I don’t have much to report. I have noticed that many recent visitors find this weblog through searches involving the terms “gothic,” “lolita,”, “Kei” and “Moyashimon,” which makes me apprehensive about the second half of the series. I suppose Kei does look a bit girlish, but I doubt that he’ll be as charming as Aspergillus. (If I were to tell a young woman that she’s as cute as a fungus, would she understand that I mean it as a compliment? Probably not.)

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We have an uncommon event here in Wichita: a white Christmas. That happens maybe once in ten years.

I considered posting a tune from the Sailor Moon Christmas albums today, but I’m not sure that punishing your readership is a good idea. If you would like to hear some less-familiar Christmas carols, there are some MIDIs on my other weblog.

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Not anime, but geeky: mathematical needlework; crocheting a Sierpinski triangle; a how-to book, with projects and papers. (The first link may be slow to load.)

Token Christmas post

When I first began maintaining a weblog, I posted a MIDI arrangement of a traditional tune every day. It was fun initially, but eventually it became more of a chore than a pleasure, so after a year I reduced the frequency to four times a week, and ultimately stopped posting the arrangements altogether. Earlier today I uploaded about 650 of the tunes. You can find them here. There are all kinds of melodies there, from Medieval bicinia to strathspeys and reels, rounds, Shaker songs and tunes from the Near East and Asia. The following are some of the Christmas (or Epiphany) songs I’ve arranged.

A la Media Noche
A la Nanita Nana
Berger Secoue Ton Sommeil
Brightest and Best
Corde natus ex parentis
Dziasiajw Betlejem
El Cant del Ocells
Masters in this Hall
Fum Fum Fum
Gesu Bambino le Nato
Hush, My Babe
La Journada
Menybol Ar Angyal
Nesem Vam Noviny
Noel Nouvelet
Pat-a-Pan
Puer Natus in Bethlehem
Quem Pastores Laudavere
Touro Louro Louro
Tu Scende Dalle Stelle
“Twas in the Moon of Wintertime

Observation

The concept of the “lethal radius” (the radius of the circle within which the number of survivors of an event equals the number of fatalities without), useful in discussions of bombs and music technology, is also relevant to perfume science.

Endings

Courtesy of “RonPaul2008,” I finished Denno Coil this evening. Although the final revelations, ingenious though they were, were perhaps a little too tidy — has there ever been a really good mystery for which the ultimate explanation wasn’t a bit disappointing? — the resolution of the story of Yasako and Isako was satisfying. The focus of the last episode was on Isako’s choice, where it belonged, and not on the technology and gimmicks. Although the comparisons to Miyazaki and Lain are valid, in the end Denno Coil reminded me most strongly of Haibane Renmei in its concern with grief, guilt, despair and pain, and friendship.

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Before I watched the end of Denno Coil, I viewed the conclusion of the utterly different Oh! Edo Rocket. The final episodes are of a piece with the rest of the show, as off-the-wall as ever, with cat-people and references to Gurren-Lagann, and just enough drama to keep the story from dissoving into sheer silliness. There may have been a few better shows this year, but none were more fun. I posted on my video weblog a brief excerpt from the epilogue which reveals a fact that NASA has hitherto kept secret.

55 billion silly faces

Shamus Young is the most dangerous sort of guy, with lots of ideas and the time and energy to implement them. He first came to my attention several years ago with The Lemon. Later there was The DM of the Rings. Currently he is one of the parties responsible for Chainmail Bikini. His most recent effort is a WordPress plugin, “Wavatars,” which I’ve installed here. If you leave a comment, your name will be accompanied by an eighty-pixel-square avatar determined by your email address. (If you have a Gravatar, as I do, that’s what you will see instead.) On a weblog like mine where comments are infrequent, these are just a cute novelty, but on sites where comment threads get lengthy, these could be useful for keeping the various writers straight.

If you like the idea but want something a little more macabre for your own site, consider MonsterID. (Via Aziz.)

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I’ve finally had time to catch up with Denno Coil. As of this evening, I’ve watched through episode 22. Episode 23 is a recap, so this is a good moment to catch my breath and maunder a bit.

The question is not whether Denno Coil is the best show of the year — I haven’t seen a better series in long time — but whether it will rank among the classics of the form. I hesitate to label anything a “classic” until it has aged at least ten years, so check back in 2017 for my verdict. Unless Mitsuo Iso completely blows the ending, though, I expect my judgement will be positive.

It’s not perfect. Denno Coil shifts gears at the midpoint and becomes a darker story. My initial impression of the series was Serial Experiments Lain as retold by Hayao Miyazaki. The first half evokes Miyazaki, with bright, lively girls and myriad little imaginative touches. The second half tends more toward Lain. There’s menace in the virtual worlds, and the stakes are high. It’s as if Iso decided to stop playing with his imaginary worlds and focus on the plot. It’s a good story — a very good story; I’m impatient for Ureshii to finish the last two episodes — but I miss the fun of the early episodes. AniPages Daily notes that Iso wrote the scripts for the first fourteen episodes by himself but shared the writing credits on the later ones, and that probably has a lot to do with the shift in tone.

Still, it’s as good as anything I’ve seen since Haibane Renmei. I particularly like the soundtrack by Tsuneyoshi Saito. A friend commented that she could easily imagine it adapted for use as a ballet score, and I recommend it to any chamber music ensemble or small orchestra looking for new repertoire.

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Update: I’ve watched Denno Coil through episode 24 now. The build-up to the climax reminds me strongly of the last episode of Haibane Renmei. I’ll find out soon enough how far the parallels go between the two Yukos and Rakka and Reki, so no spoilers in the comments, please.

I posted a couple of excerpts from the OST earlier, here (the last in the first set) and here. Here’s one more, “Nazo.”

[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/17-Nazo.mp3[/mp3]

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Decorations on the Minisa Bridge in Wichita, too near where I live. The Indian heads and buffalo, kitschy though they are, are Architecturally Significant as examples of Carthalite. The bridge is scheduled to be rebuilt beginning next month, and during the process the arterial traffic will be detoured to the street where I live. The construction process will take longer than usual for such projects, because the city planners want to preserve the art. I’m slightly sympathetic, but only slightly; this means a year of ugly traffic outside my door.

I’m back

3,500 Nutcracker pictures. Gah. I’ve gone through them all, selected the best and cropped and edited them and burned a stack of CDs for the dancers and crew, and I am done, done, done. Life can return to what passes for normal around here. Maybe I can even watch some anime. (The morbidly curious can see a selection of the pictures here.)

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Congratuations to Avatar.

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What happened to Astro? (Update: he’s back, sorta.)

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I probably will add Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann to my “buy” list. I did watch the first two episodes and was not entirely unimpressed. Since this was a Gainax series, though, I decided to wait until it completed its run and see what the final word was before investing any more time in it. By all accounts the show succeeded on every level and is probably one of the best of the year.

I can’t resist posting the Gurren Lagann Jack:

gurrenjack.png

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Every time I hear someone say “Ohayo,” I have a strange urge to reply, “Illinois.”

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When I lived with my folks, I got stuck every year with taking down the Christmas tree, which by that time was thoroughly dried-out and prickly. It was not much fun. Since then, I have never had the slightest interest in putting up my own tree. However, if I were to decorate a Christmas tree, even though it’s utterly inappropriate, I would like to include a Belldandy angel among the ornaments.

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Sooner or later I’m gong to want to upgrade to a more recent version of WordPress. Before I do, however, I want to make sure that I can still post the occasional phrase in Japanese characters and not see “???.” When I upgraded my other weblogs, I lost this capabiity, even though the selected character set is still UTF-8. How can I make the Japanese look the way it’s supposed to?