Trivia that matter
Here’s a handy schedule of expected cherry blossom bloom times, in case you should be heading to Japan during the next few months. If you can’t go to Japan, you can visit the botanical garden in Wichita, where the Okame cherry, above, has just started flowering.
The Japanese apricot is in full bloom now. Thanks to new construction and landscaping, it is no longer possible to get close to tree, but you don’t need to get close to appreciate its powerful fragrance.
Some aspects of GATE are not well thought-out, e.g., the girls’ armor. What purpose do the pointed projections on the pauldrons serve? If one of the warrior maidens tilts her head to the side, she’s liable to pierce her ear or worse. Also, I don’t recall ever seeing any of the girls with helmets, even in the middle of battles. It may be that on the far side of the gate women’s skulls are so thick and dense that head protection is superfluous, but I am skeptical.
… and pigs are flying. Dennou Coil has finally been licensed for North America. The Mouretsu Pirates movie has also been licensed.
It’s another blasted Monday morning. Here’s a concert performance of music from Girls und Panzer to wake you up.
Aside from GATE, none of the current shows that I’ve sampled thus far are worth mentioning. Fortunately, Crunchyroll this week added one I can unreservedly recommend, Shingu. Tatsuo Sato has directed much noteworthy anime, including Martian Successor Nadesico and Mouretsu Pirates (both recommended), and Shingu is his best. It’s long been one of my favorites, and I’ve probably rewatched it more often than any other show, anime or not. If none of the new series catch your interest, spend a little time with Hajime and his family and friends, human and alien, in quiet town of Tenmo.
Here’s Ubu on what didn’t happen when Shingu was made.
Every January I visit the calendar shop at the regional shopping mall and pick up a few at half-price to provide a variety of art on my walls for the coming year. This year, I struck out. Everything of any interest was gone — no medieval or renaissance art, no pre-Raphaelites, no Edward Gorey, not even Ansel Adams. There were plenty of puppies, of course, but I prefer dogs as friends, not as artistic subjects. Fortunately, I earlier ordered this year’s Girls und Panzer calendar, so I do have a way to keep track of passing time.
Although there are only six pages (seven if you count the cover), they are poster-sized, 24″ tall (including the binding strip at the top) and 16.5″ wide. (Right-click and open the links in new windows to see the images at high resolution.)
Remember this?
Michael Dudok de Wit, who made it, is working on his first feature film, The Red Turtle, due out next September. Studio Ghibli is co-producing it.
Another de Wit short, “Father & Daughter,” won an Oscar. It’s a bit weepy for my taste, though pleasing to the eye.
Coming soon, but probably not to Wichita.
Natsume Yuujin-cho, episode 9.
Here’s yet another Touhou arrangement, this one of Mamizou Futatsuiwa’s theme from Ten Desires. I’m not entirely happy with this and may revisit it someday, but I want to move on to fresh disasters.
A cheerful little ghost story, by way of Wonderduck.
Here’s the source, featuring Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor.
Ken the Brickmuppet called it. Potentially the most profoundly dangerous volcano on this planet is Iwoto, alias Iwo Jima, according to Volcano Café. Arpeggio of Blue Steel makes less sense than ever.
Incidentally, Ken notes that there might be volcanoes on Pluto.
Update: the tabloid press takes note.
Take Mayumi Kojima, add J-pop weirdness, a button accordion and a touch of klezmer, and you’d get something like Charan Po Rantan.
There are more videos here. There’s one album available for download at Amazon.com.
Bonus link: Sailor Moon does “Moon River.”
So it’s Halloween, and you’d like to watch some spooky anime, preferably available online legally for free? There are some suggestions here, but there are other series I prefer. For monsters, there’s the currently-airing Ushio and Tora. For Shinto 101 and yokai, there’s Natsume Yuujin-cho. But my first choice is Mononoke, Kenji Nakamura‘s first series and still his best. The medicine seller’s investigations are as much moral detective stories as horror shows, informed by a stringent sense of justice. If you merely want to be scared out of your wits, there are many other shows to choose from, but if you want a work of art worth rewatching and thinking about, try Mononoke.
I watched the first episode of Black Butler years ago and decided that it was not for me. Nevertheless, I’d like to attend tonight’s performance of OperAnime, which combines the peculiar anime with an opera from 1880. Unfortunately, the event is being held outdoors, and it is likely to rain all evening.
*****
I may need to watch this week’s episode of My Little Pony. What would Ranma’s cutie mark be?
Let no screencap go to waste: miscellaneous illustrations for posts I didn’t write.
The Perfect Insider has very good opening and closing animations. The stuff in between, which falls somewhere between a locked-room mystery and And Then There Were None and concerns people tediously self-conscious of their high IQs, is less enthralling. I did spot a pair of red half-rim spectacles, though. If there were any rubber ducks, I missed them.
Speaking of ATTWN, here’s Eve Tushnet on Agatha Christie: “Never trust the cute ones.”
Various odds and ends:
Fillyjonk linked to an old but not outdated story by Ray Bradbury, “The Murderer.” I found a couple of other favorites, “The Veldt” and “The Pedestrian.”
*****
Perhaps not entirely unrelated to the Bradbury stories:
Having time each day merely to amuse oneself, or just to sit and think, greatly improves one’s life. Yet we’re practically taught to avoid such periods – to stay as busy as possible virtually all the time. The emphasis on work, on “multitasking” (which, as a former expert in the architecture of multitasking operating systems for embedded devices, I can assure you is always an illusion) and on achieving ever more per unit time is using us up in ways we don’t always perceive and even less often appreciate. You’d almost suspect that time spent in introspection had been deemed an offense against the social norms.
(Via Dustbury.)
*****
While Sakurajima is ominously quiet, in the South Indian Ocean Piton de la Fournaise is putting on a modest, colorful show.
Continue reading “Notes from the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies”
It’s time to look for next year’s calendars. I found a number at YesAsia that might be of interest to visitors here:
Studio Chizu (i.e., Mamoru Hosoda)
Roger, who is spending the current semester in Japan, recorded a theme from Someday’s Dreamers, playing both the piano and fiddle parts. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to embed Facebook videos on my site, but you can listen here.
Update: It’s on YouTube now.
Update II: Roger with some of his Japanese friends playing a different sort of music: