Category: Anime and Japan

Winter anime notes

From Polar Bear Cafe

Llamas and alpacas celebrate Christmas by going to Mass. (Via Aliens in This World.)

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So, what am I going to watch this winter beyond the rest of Shin Sekai Yori? Let’s see …

• I might watch all of Satoshi Kon’s work in order and see what overall themes emerge. With four movies and one 13-episode series, that’s a manageable goal.

• I might look again at series I started but never finished: Noein, Kurau Phantom Memory, Fantastic Children.

• I might finally watch some of the sets gathering dust on my shelves: Witch Hunter Robin, Welcome to the N.H.K., Texhnolyze, Samurai X, various Ghosts in the Shell.

• I might revisit old favorites that I haven’t watched recently: Serial Experiments Lain, Princess Tutu, Mushishi, Kino’s Journey, Jubei-chan: Secret of the Lovely Eyepatch, Divergence Eve.

• I probably will watch all of Shingu yet again when I once more make the mistake of thinking I can watch just one episode.

… or I might not watch anything, but instead read.

What I’m probably not going to watch is any of the winter anime offerings. In all the previews I’ve read, there is not a single show that looks even slightly interesting.

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Some sort of mesemb

I noticed that Hyouka was on a lot of best-of-the-year lists, including Jonathan’s, so I watched the first episode. It’s okay, I guess, but the premise wasn’t particulary interesting, and the characters were mildly irritating. I doubt I’ll watch more. What caught my attention was the plant above, the first mesemb I’ve seen in anime. There were also images of the distinctive and dangerous Euphorbia marginata, out of focus but unmistakable.

To be fair, I should note that I attended four grade schools and three high schools and was a bored outsider at all of them. I am not the least bit nostalgic for my school years, and any story set in a high school automatically has one strike against it.

A glance back at an ordinary year

shin19

I’m not going to make a “ten best anime” list for 2012 because I haven’t watched ten shows all the way through. Two of the year’s best best are incomplete, and there are a couple of well-regarded series that I have yet to look at (Sakamichi no Apollon and Space Brothers). Instead, this is just a casual survey of this year’s offerings that I watched.

Series I didn’t make it all the way through the first episode of: Chihayafuru, Hayate No Gotoku: Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse and Magi. The last I might give another try sometime, since the writers evidentally understand more about economics than do our betters in Washington.

Series I watched only the first episode of: Accel World, Binbougami ga, Campione, K, Nyarko-san: Another Crawling Chaos, Sword Art Online and Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai. Jonathan thinks highly of the last, and I would watch more, but what I saw wasn’t sufficiently brilliant to warrant subscribing to Anime Network. (Update: Also Ozma, Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate and Shining Hearts: Shiawase no Pan. See how memorable they were?)

Series I watched more than one episode of before losing interest: Kamisama Hajimemashita, Polar Bear Café and Sengoku Collection.

Unfinished series I might yet watch the rest of: Inu X Boku SS.

The year’s major disappointment: Moyashimon Returns. Too much soap opera, not enough craziness.

This year’s minor disappointment: Dog Days II. Entertaining, and the characters are mostly likable, even admirable; but the fanservice-to-story ratio is too high. It’s a kid’s show that I can’t recommend for kids. (And surely Leonmitchelli can find something more appropriate to her station to wear than daisy dukes.)

These are the shows that I can recommend:

Continue reading “A glance back at an ordinary year”

No silver eagle of the steppe

US copyright law is stupid. Case in point: Girls und Panzer‘s eighth episode is missing about a minute in its Crunchyroll version. Unless you download a fansub, you are going to miss this 1938 song, the highlight of the episode.

Update: here’s the video, via Ivlin, who notes that “Copyright is demonstrably making art worse“.

A few quotes

Josh W.:

… while a massive philosophical gulf separates J.R.R. Tolkien and Hayao Miyazaki, their works both come from a strange and unmodern place, and speak to the part of us which is unmodern and strange; which is to say the human part of us.

Gilbert Seldes in 1928, quoted by Helen Rittelmeyer:

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the word “reformer” meant one who wanted to give liberty to others; today it means, briefly, one who wants to take liberty away. The change in meaning is accompanied by a change in method. There is a dislocation of the center of fear. Laws, lobbies, censors, and spies have displaced God as the object of awe and veneration, sometimes even as the object of faith. The great social and religious movements of the middle of the last century were based on the belief that man could be made perfect. The current belief is that machinery, including the machinery of government, can be made perfect. . . .
The typical zealot of 1800 was a man fanatically busy about salvation; in the 1840s he was as fanatically busy about improving himself; later he turned to uplifting his fellowmen and later still to interfering with their pleasures. . . .
Eighty years ago, [a reformer] withdrew from society, founded his own community, and preached Abstention. Today, he passes laws and cries, I forbid.

J. Greely:

When engineers sleep,
catgirl breeding runs amuck;
Steven, get well soon.

(This is in reference to this news.)

Annual task

What anime calendars are available for 2013? I did a little searching at YesAsia and found a few:

Mouretsu Pirates
Natsume Yujincho (times three)
Inu x Boku SS
To Aru Kagaku no Railgun
Moyashimon
Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica (times two)
Sword Art Online
Accel World
Idolm@ster
Osamu Tezuka
TV Anime

… plus the usual Naruto, Gintama, Bleach and One Piece products, and of course multiple Totoro calendars. There are also Hatsune Miku and Mount Fuji. I didn’t see any Strike Witches or Dog Days calendars; maybe next year.

And then there’s Karel Capek. In the western world, Capek is known for such works as R.U.R., War with the Newts, The Absolute at Large and The Insect Play, but in Japan, “Karel Capek” means tea.

The wrong omen

So you think things are bad now?

I watched the final episode of Joshiraku before I left for the polling place this morning. That may have been a mistake; I couldn’t help seeing a political subtext that probably wasn’t actually there.

Four more years. Four more years. Four more years.

Not Red Reviews is posting the translator’s notes on this most idiosyncratically Japanese of shows: ((Sure, much of the show is obscure even after all the puns are explained, so why waste your time translating it? Oh, and you’ll never really fully understand medieval or ancient worldviews, either, so why read Chaucer or Homer?)) episode one, episode two, episode three, episode four, episode five, episode six, episode seven, episode eight, episode nine, episode ten. Update: episode eleven, episode twelve, episode thirteen.

Marching out

Which anime is this?

Attention, Funimation

Do you want me to stick to downloading fansubs? If not, then why do you put unskippable previews for series I have zero interest in on your DVDs? ((Yeah, there are ways around this, e.g., playing the disc with VLC or making a modified copy with Mac the Ripper. But these tactics shouldn’t be necessary.)) Punishing your audience is not good business practice. Also, please don’t have characters say “I could care less” when they mean the opposite.

Bonus, unrelated grumble: The hour you gain in the fall doesn’t compensate for the hour you lose in the spring.

Miscellany

A duck and a cuckoo from episode eleven of Joshiraku.

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You don’t need to attempt kanji for a memorable tattoo. A weak grasp of English is sufficient.

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An entertaining historical document is online: That Party at Lenny’s.

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Welcome to Crossover Hell. A related horror: another approach to Touhou Ponies.

I wonder: how does the world of Bronies compare with the Touhou universe?

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So salt and sugar are unnatural?

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Jinrui wa Suitai Shamashita was perhaps the best show of the summer. I did a little searching to see if Romeo Tanaka’s novels have been translated yet. As far as I can tell, there’s only one chapter available in English.

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(Bumper sticker courtesy of Borepatch.)

Last and least, some political notes. Although I am a member of the Wet Blanket Movement, I do have some interest in the Fringe Party. For those who believe that all people should have the right to vote, not just the living and the residents of Chicago cemeteries, Dr. Boli has yard signs you can download and print.

Irony deficiency

From Helen Rittelmeyer‘s review of Yumiko Kurahashi’s The Adventures of Sumiyakist Q:

For one thing, Japanese literature has no tradition of satire. I did not realize this until I read it in the translator’s introduction (“only deviations from accepted socials norms have tended to be the objects of criticism . . . where there have been attempts at satire in the twentieth century . . . one gets a stronger sense of personal grievance than of objective criticism”), and if he says it, I suppose it’s true. I have heard that Americans visiting Japan are warned not to speak hyperbolically because they are liable to be taken literally, and it is difficult to imagine satire without exaggeration.

Is this true? Does Japan not have an Aristophanes or a Swift? I’m skeptical; I don’t see how a culture can stay sane or even survive without satire.

Even if it was once true of Japanese literature, it’s not true now. See Yasutaka Tsutsui, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Legend of Koizumi, Oh! Edo Rocket, Jinrui wa Suitai Shamashita, Dai Mahou Touge, ….

Update: The challenges of translating humor. (Via the Sanity Inspector.)

Today’s question

Dog Days II seemed like a collection of filler episodes, even if it was laying the foundation for a dramatic third season. There was an excess of jiggle and bounce and disintegrating clothes, too. I’m not a randy adolescent, and I would have preferred less fanservice and better stories. Fortunately, the more interesting first season is now available to Crunchyroll subscribers.

Continue reading “Today’s question”

You don’t have to worry about a thing

A thousand years from now, technology has advanced little, if at all, if what we see in the first episode of Shin Sekai Yori is representative. Not all technology, though — genetic manipulation has produced some remarkable results in farming and perhaps elsewhere. Many people, maybe everyone in the rural community where protagonist Saki lives, are capable of some degree of telekinesis. The appearance of this power in a youngster is heralded by the appearance of a “blessing spirit” and is the occasion for a quasi-Buddhist ceremony, but it is strongly hinted that there have been generations of selection and breeding involved. And culling.

There’s also Dvorak every evening at twilight.

The first episode suggests that Shin Sekai Yori could be a complex, uncanny story like Serial Experiments Lain was and Ghost Hound tried to be. However, the summary at ANN indicates that it will go in a different direction:

In the future Japan has become a fractured country, and small towns now exist. The rulers of this world have the cursed power of Telekinesis. When an incident occurs, 5 children come to realize the world is not as it seems, and learn the bloody history behind this world. These 5 children unite and help the world as it falls into a downward spiral of chaos.

More spectacular and less interesting that I would have hoped. I’ll continue watching it, anyway. It may still be the best show of the fall season.

Screen captures are below the fold.

The first episode of K is worth watching for sheer gorgeous spectacle. One episode will probably be sufficient. The characters are largely violent bishies (there’s also a creepy little EGL), and I have no interest in any of them. But the animation sure is pretty.

I also watched the brand new Hayate no Gotoku for a while, but bailed out half-way through. It was just dumb.

Continue reading “You don’t have to worry about a thing”

Back to school Hell

Excel began her saga by getting hit by a truck. If the Great Will of the Macrocosm had not intervened, her story might have been something like Hells. Here are some screen captures from the first third of the movie. (It will probably be a week or two before I watch the rest of it. Right now, I’m getting ready for Winfield.)

Continue reading “Back to school Hell”