Author: Don

The path to enlightenment, or how to squander vast amounts of time and money

Some bloggers recently have reminisced about the origins of their addictions. I might as well, too.

I don’t watch television. At all. Consequently, I never saw Dragonball or any other Japanese imports. I did once come across a mention of something called “Sailor Moon” in a newspaper. It sounded dumb. Nor have I ever been a gamer of any kind, unless you count chess. Final Fantasy means nothing to me. If there ever were any “good old days” of anime, I missed them.

Some years back I read a review of a movie called Princess Mononoke. It looked interesting, and Neil Gaiman had worked on the English script. I made a mental note to see it if it ever came to Wichita. It didn’t.

Time passed. I discovered that one of my musical friends was an aficionado of Japanese animation from ‘way back, and he had a copy of Princess Mononoke. (He also has an impressive collection of anime cels, including some from Porco Rosso.) The movie was terrific, even with the English dub, and I asked him for more to watch. Most of what he brought by was disappointing — e.g., Those Who Hunt Elves (not recommended) — but I did discover the original Dirty Pair and Martian Successor Nadesico.

Meanwhile, I read every entry on every anime review site I could find. After sifting through hundreds, thousands of reviews by plainly unreliable writers, I settled upon Serial Experiments Lain as my first purchase. It was as good as Princess Mononoke, and utterly different. Ghost in the Shell followed. Some time after that I discovered that Steven Den Beste also saw that Lain was something exceptional. I finally had found a writer on anime whom I could take seriously. (I’ve found a few more since then. See the blogroll.)

I eventually started a weblog devoted to anime in addition to my main one (you’re reading its successor). A little over three years ago, one of my acquaintances from the SCA organized an anime festival in Wichita and an anime club. I’ve furnished most of the videos the club views at its rare meetings.

This isn’t quite the full story, though, and Princess Mononoke wasn’t the first anime I ever saw. That title belongs to Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke, released in the USA before the last ice age as “Magic Boy.” It was the greatest movie I had ever seen. It blew away everything by Walt Disney. Then I saw Forbidden Planet, and that was the greatest movie ever made, and I forgot about Magic Boy until my discovery of Miyazaki many years later.

Burning bandwidth

GreyDuck recently posted nearly an hour’s worth of his favorite music on his site. I thought I’d do something similar, in case anybody is curious about what I listen to. Here are nine tunes I like in batches of five and four. I picked mostly shorter tunes, so the total time is about twenty-two minutes. My tastes run toward the obscure and the eccentric (hence my interest in anime); if anyone recognizes more than one or two of these, I will be impressed. No matter how broad your tastes are, there is sure to be something here to annoy you.

[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/favorites1.mp3[/mp3]

[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/favorites2.mp3[/mp3]

Update: Identifications below the fold.

Continue reading “Burning bandwidth”

Indicators

The fall anime season is coming up, and members of the otakusphere are trying to decide which series to follow. (The only one I’m interested in at this time is Ghost Hound, because of the credentials of its creators. It may well be a botch, but if so, it will be an interesting botch.) You can read the press releases, watch the trailers and click all over the various websites, but ultimately there is no reliable way of telling how good a show is without watching some of it. However, I have found three criteria that help me narrow the list of candidates.

Possibly good:

1. Series based on novels. Examples: Crest/Banner of the Stars; Suzumiya Haruhi; Seirei no Moribito; Kino’s Journey (short stories in this instance, but still literature, not manga); possibly Oh! Edo Rocket, though I’m not sure which version came first.

2. Series reflecting one person’s vision. Examples: Haibane Renmei (Yoshitoshi ABe); Shingu (Tetsuo Sato); Denno Coil (Mitsuo Iso); Cardcaptor Sakura (Nanase Ohkawa (of CLAMP))

Probably lousy:

3. Series based on games. Examples: too numerous to mention. H-game conversions or RPG-based epics, they all stink. I have never watched more than a few episodes of any. (I would like to see more of the Waragecha Five from Master of Epic, though.) ((Sakura Wars TV might be an exception, though I quit part-way through the first episode.))

Based on the first criterion, the series to check out in October are Rental Magica and Strait Jacket. I can’t tell from the write-ups I’ve seen if the second criterion applies to any of the new shows. The third criterion rules out at least half of the new crop. I have even less interest in the anime Clannad than I do in the band.

147/365

pic091807a.jpg

My well-used 4×5 Crown Graphic. I think I paid $125 for the body and $75 for the lens. Cheap though the outfit is, it is capable of superb results. For sheer quality, nothing beats large format:

An old $200 Crown Graphic will completely eclipse any Nikon, Hasselblad or Leica camera for technical quality because of the huge film size and movements.

For some kinds of photography, this is absolutely true, and if I were primarily a landscape photographer, my principal tool would be the Graphic or perhaps a 4×5 field camera with more movements. The large negative also makes contact-printing processes such as cyanotypes possible. The downside is that large format photography is slow in every way. If you want to catch dancers in mid-air during rehearsal, you need fast film in a quick-focusing camera with a fast lens (or a digital SLR that performs well at high ISOs), and you need to take a lot of pictures quickly. Even so, I have taken good studio shots of dancers with the Crown Graphic.

Soul (the cartridge)

The Ghost Hound website includes a “Word Shelf,” i.e., a glossary. As translated by Google, it is largely impenetrable. Here is one of the more lucid entries:

Existential Ghosts

The departed spirit in existence principle.

Rumor of the departed spirit that it appears in the pachinko store where the prefectural road paralleling is closed. Don’t you think? with what, the shadow man who does not have the face from the building being present, in the track/truck which runs road surface the plectrum and others you call the [re] [ru].
The ? happiness which designates such rumor as the ear, Taro, inviting trust, embarks on the elucidation of rumor.

Nevertheless, it is possible to glean some information about the back story from the page. Taro, presumably the protagonist, lives in water heaven town. Eleven years ago, when Taro was eight, there was a kidnapping involving his older sister and younger brother. The sister apparently was killed. Their father committed suicide shortly afterward. Or something like that. Chiaki J. Konaka wrote the script, so there is a fair chance that it will all ultimately make some sense.

Advisory

I’ve just redirected the tancos2.net domain name to point to the same nameservers as tancos.net. The change will take a few days to propagate, but soon all the links to my old sites will either be redirected here or return 404s. You will still be able to visit the old sites for a few weeks more by substituting “tancos2.pmachinehosting.com” for “tancos2.net” in the URLs. However, I am cancelling my old host before the next service renewal in October, and after that the old sites will be gone. If you’ve been coming here by way one of my old pages and you want to keep track of my obsessions, this is your cue to update your links.

Advisory

I’ve just redirected the tancos2.net domain name to point to the same nameservers as tancos.net. The change will take a few days to propagate, but soon all the links to my old sites will either be redirected here or return 404s. You will still be able to visit the old sites for a few weeks more by substituting “tancos2.pmachinehosting.com” for “tancos2.net” in the URLs. However, I am cancelling my old host before the next service renewal in October, and after that the old sites will be gone. If you’ve been coming here by way one of my old pages and you want to keep track of my obsessions, this is your cue to update your links.

He doesn’t look Jewish

So Pikachu is an agent of International Zionism:

Who: Saudi Arabia’s Higher Committee for Scientific Research and Islamic Law

What: Denouncing the lovable Japanese cartoon characters as having “possessed the minds” of Saudi youngsters, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority banned Pokémon video games and cards in the spring of 2001. Not only do Saudi scholars believe that Pokémon encourages gambling, which is forbidden in Islam, but it is apparently a front for Israel as well. The fatwa’s authors claimed that Pokémon games include, “the Star of David, which everyone knows is connected to international Zionism and is Israel’s national emblem.” Religious authorities in the United Arab Emirates joined in, condemning the games for promoting evolution, “a Jewish-Darwinist theory that conflicts with the truth about humans and with Islamic principles,” but didn’t ban them outright. Even the Catholic Church in Mexico got into the act, calling Pokémon video games “demonic.” ((These Mexican Catholic officials obviously weren’t paying attention to the Vatican.))

(Via Jonah Goldberg.)