Category: Art and screen captures

The pirates return

In-Your-Facetime

I got impatient and downloaded a raw of Mouretsu Pirates: Abyss of Hyperspace. It looks beautiful, and the story moves briskly along. What that story is, though, I only vaguely understand. Will someone please license this for North America, or, failing that, fansub it?

There are a few screencaps below the fold. Steven has a bunch more here, though my favorite image from the movie is here.

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Rococo and roll

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Some years back I read Novala Takemoto’s Shimotsuma Story, published in English as Kamikaze Girls. I wrote about it here. I finally watched the movie based on the book this evening. Some of the humor was overly broad, and there were some gratuitous crudities early on, but overall this movie about a very odd couple was watchable and often very funny. Kyoko Fukuda and Anna Tsuchiya were plausible as Momoko the lolita and Ichiko the yanki. The story was necessarily simplified, but it was generally true to what I remember of the book.

There are more screen captures beneath the fold. Click the pictures to see the details of Momoko’s garb.

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Calendar girls

Girls und Panzer

It’s time to order next year’s calendars. I found a number of possibilites here, notably Girls und Panzer and Hozuki no Reitetsu. Others of note include Cardcaptor Sakura, World Conquest Zvezda Plot, Arpeggio of Blue Steel, Hyperdimension Neptunia, Natsume Yujincho‘s Nyanko and the third Madoka Magica movie.

There’s plenty else there — lots of cheesecake, hundred of dogs, Mt. Fuji, Naruto and similar franchises, all the usual stuff. There are also curiosities like the Karel Capek calendar, which is about tea, not robots or newts; the lifestyles disease prevention calendar; and, the maritime self-defense force calendars, both male and female.

Kiss kiss attack

Pupipo

Pixy invoked Haibane Renmei in his post on PuPiPo. Pete also was impressed. I’ve watched the series of fifteen four-minute episodes twice now, and I’ll probably watch it again. I’m not going to discuss it in any detail; it suffices to note that it is funny and poignant, and that there are indeed parallels with the tale of the charcoal feathers. Instead, here are some screencaps.

Wakaba

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Sword and twintails

Tails

There might be several shows worth watching this fall, after several seasons of slim pickings.

Madan no Ou to Vanadis

The protagonist of Madan no Ou to Vanadis is an archer and honorable noble from a minor province in a corrupt kingdom. He is captured on the battlefield by a “war maiden,” who dislikes boring battles, and who doesn’t wear armor, or much else. It’s too soon to tell where the story is going; my guess is that Tigre will have to choose between his homeland in the decadent kingdom of Brune, and the apparently more healthy kingdom of Zhcted where the bright and comely war maiden lives. The series is written and directed by Tatsuo Sato, the man man responsible for Shingu and Mouretsu Pirates, two of my favorite shows. It looks a bit boobalicious for my taste, but I expect that Sato will tell a good story. There are screencaps below the fold.

Aside: Repeat after me: Critics. Are. Idiots. Exclamation point. For example, here’s what the jackasses at ANN wrote about Vanadis.

Amagi Brilliant Park could very well be the first Kyoto Animation series I watch all the way through since Suzumiya Haruhi I. The protagonist, an abrasive, narcissistic former child actor, is drafted, at gunpoint, to reform a decrepit amusement park lest the fairies who live there lose their homes. Although Seiya is an unpleasant character as the story begins, the writer is careful not to make him repulsive, and the fairies are not the cloyingly sweet sort that bore children and nauseate adults. Two episodes in, it looks like it will be at least good.

In Ore, Twintail ni Narimasu, a high school boy with a fascination for girls with paired ponytails becomes a warrior in a powered suit with twintails himself. It’s as silly as it sounds. It might be fun, as long as it doesn’t turn stupid and the writers quit with all the double-entendres. There are screen caps below the fold.

Gugure! Kokkuri-san

Gugure! Kokkuri-san is the oddest show I’ve seen in quite some time. A little girl who lives alone declares that she is a doll. She summons a fox spirit with a Japanese variant of a ouija board, and Kokkuri, the fox, decides to haunt her, i.e., be her guardian. Sometimes Kohina, the girl/doll, is drawn as a human, sometimes as a doll. I think it’s intended to be a cutesy comedy, but it’s a rather unsettling one. Probably during the course of the series Kohina will gradually become more human while acquiring other supernatural friends, but there’s a danger that the show could lurch into something like the final episode of Bottle Fairy. There are screencaps below the fold.

Update: Gugure! Kokkuri-san is off my watch list and is not recommended.

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Pity they’re not real

Extreme botany

If those were actual inflorescences of Amorphophallus titanum and Rafflesia arnoldii, Seiya and Isuzu would be treated to the gentle aromas of dimethyl trisulfide, dimethyl disulfide, trimethylamine, isovaleric acid, benzyl alcohol, phenol, indole and other distinctively fragrant molecules.

It’s just possible that Amagi Brilliant Park is that rare thing, a KyoAni show worth watching.

A courteous invitation

So modest

Briefly bespectacled

Marii

A not-quite-random screen capture from Joshiraku. Pete isn’t the only one who finds the show compulsively re-watchable, though of necessity I stick with the fansub.

(Dammit, WordPress Safari, when I type “fansub,” I don’t mean “fan sub.” Don’t harass me with your expletive-deleted autocorrect.)

Update: a few more screencaps:

Eat

The rest of the cast …

Luchador girl

… and one more.

Liquid

I recently encountered liquid celery. I hope I never do again.