Category: Art and screen captures

Count to twelve

I have two Japanese calendars this year. Hozuki no Reitetsu is the usual poster-sized six-pager (one large picture for two months, rather than one smaller picture per month). Girls und Panzer, however, is a single sheet about six feet long, larger than I had expected (when shopping on foreign websites, alway convert centimeters to inches before you order). Amazingly, it arrived uncreased, even though it came loosely rolled in a box rather than in a stout tube. I eventually figured out a place to mount it. Right-click and open in a new window to see the picture at maximum size.

Calendars, again

New Zealand must have lax or poorly enforced copyright laws. An outfit called “Pixiluv” that ships from there advertises numerous calendars on Amazon.com. Many feature old art and advertisements that are, or should be, out of copyright everywhere, but quite a few others display recent illustrations, such as the Katanagatari calendar above.1

Continue reading “Calendars, again”

Burnable or non-burnable?

Indeed

I watched an episode of Ninja Nonsense, which turned out to be oddly topical.

Orange magic

Throw them all out

(Ninja Nonsense is often funny, but it is too off-color to generally recommend. Not even Norio Wakamoto can make Onsokumaru tolerable for long.)

Update: Here’s a list of write-in candidates for president. Those running include

• Raff, Riff, of Notre Dame, Indiana
• Bunny, Soul, of Williams Bay, Wisconsin
• Vader, Darth, of Spokane, Washington
• Mouse, Mickey, of Anaheim, California
• The Elf, Buddy, of North Pole, Alaska
• Hydrox, Cookie, of Newport Coast, California

These and the others on the list are all better choices than any of those offered by the political parties.

First impressions, spring 2016

Character study

Tanaka-kun Is Always Listless — So listless, in fact, that his friend Ohta often picks him up and carries him over his shoulder. However lazy Tanaka is physically, though, his mind is active, at least until he falls asleep. It’s a one-joke show, but it has remained entertaining through three episodes with the introductions of Tanaka’s quirky classmates.

Continue reading “First impressions, spring 2016”

Murder and meh-hem

Imperfection

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.”

Advice to parents

Pina colada

Think carefully about how you name your children, even if you’re fictional characters. This goes double when you’re royalty.

Preview of the next episode

One of the novelties of this week’s episode of GATE is that next week’s preview was in the middle of the show. I’m curious to see if there will be any Wagner.

Update: Yep, there was a little Wagner, with helicopters.

Continue reading “Advice to parents”