Category: Art and screen captures

Pigs can fly

Here’s some nonsense to amuse you while I’m busy not writing.

Missing link discovered: Magical girls perform functions in Japanese society similar to those of superheroes in America. I’ve wondered whether if this is an example of parallel evolution or if there is a common ancestor. A recent discovery suggests that the latter may be the case. The protagonist of Ai to Yuuki no Pig Girl Tonde Buurin is essentially a superhero. However, she has a henshin sequence that is unmistakably that of a mahou shoujo. (The show is on the border between silly and dumb, and I don’t recommend it except as a curiosity.)

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Um, no comment.

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European history, according to freshman papers:

The Reformnation happened when German nobles resented the idea that tithes were going to Papal France or the Pope thus enriching Catholic coiffures. Traditions had become oppressive so they too were crushed in the wake of man’s quest for ressurection above thenot-just-social beast he had become. An angry Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to a church door. Theologically, Luthar was into reorientation mutation. Calvinism was the most convenient religion since the days of the ancients. Anabaptist services tended to be migratory. The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic. Monks went right on seeing themselves as worms. The last Jesuit priest died in the 19th century.

I spent ninth grade at a Jesuit high school. Either I’m older than I had realized, or I was educated by zombies.

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Let’s intellect: Is this a parody, or for real?

A community where all angst struggling writers and poets can intellect. We are not only spiritual and constructive in our writing. We are serious, hardworking writers. We have given perspiration to inspiration; We have strived in our thrivations. We have lived to build our living characters, penciled through every constructive detail in our realms filled in sorrow, death, birth, hardship, and pain. Our imaginations entwined to unfurl past a world of hope, a universe of dreams, fairies, trolls, gas- breathing dragons or three-warped witches, tales of Heros, and stories of legend all capsized into an outlined story draft. Words strumming onto a page of pure magic; and it is magic. Our work is engraved in our names, stitched into our bloods, ravenous through our ink-coursed veins that defines the artistic process. Join us and forever hold your peace in The Ambitious Writers, The Children Writers, The Erotics, The Romances, The Horrors, The Fictitious, The Poets, The Westerns, The Adventures, The Mystery, THE STRUGGLING WRITERS

Oh, yeah: Rule #1 is “No negative critiquing.”

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Would you buy it for a quarter?

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Fear the clown.

It’s a trap! Or is it?

Newtype is the largest of the magazines in Richard’s box, both in number of pages and in physical dimensions. The pages are too wide to fit entirely in the scanner, and many of the best pictures are two-page spreads. It may take me a while to figure out the most efficient way to handle them. Until then, here are a handful of 1990 Newtype scans with a couple of puzzles.

RG Veda

RG Veda, again. Guess the sex of Ashura, the youngster in white, without looking it up. This is a CLAMP project, so don’t assume anything.

Continue reading “It’s a trap! Or is it?”

Rule 5

I’ve been blogging for nearly nine years — the anniversary of the launch of my first weblog is a week from Saturday — and I long ago realized that I’ll never get a million hits in a year, or ever. I am not interested in blogwhoring, I’m too contemptuous of politicians to care about their blather and posturing, and I dislike making unnecessary enemies.

One thing I can do, though, is post pictures of pretty girls. Conveniently, Richard’s anime magazines are a rich source of such. Here’s another batch of scans. These are from two editions of a “New Video Magazine,” one from 1986 and the other from 1991. Both are similar in format to Vversion, which I looked at previously, so this time I’m focusing mostly on the cheesecake.

'86 cover

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The many flavors of cheesecake

To save you the trouble of clicking repeatedly on the lower left corner of Steven’s header, I’ve collected 915 of the images and assembled them into a convenient slide show.

The singer is Mayumi Kojima. She’s probably best-known in the anime world for “Poltergeist,” the memorable opening theme of the otherwise disappointing Ghost Hound.

A screenful of Madoka

Crunchyroll began streaming Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica today, so I watched the first episode during lunch. I was curious to see how it looked at 1080. I took several screencaps; click on them to see them full-size. They look nice, but they’re not razor-sharp. I would guess that the video was upscaled from 720. (The monitor screen is 1920 x 1200, hence the letterboxing. (The images from Madoka’s dream were letterboxed to begin with.))

More screencaps below the fold.

Continue reading “A screenful of Madoka”

The little samurai

One Saturday afternoon back before the last ice age, when I was very young, my then-girlfriend Gloria and I walked to the town theatre and watched a Japanese movie called Magic Boy. It was exciting, colorful, fantastic in every sense. It made all the Disney movies I had seen seem like pablum. I thought it was the greatest movie ever made, and I wanted to go to Japan and learn magic.

Some months later, I watched Forbidden Planet, and that was the greatest movie ever made. As the centuries passed, I gradually forgot about Magic Boy.

Several years ago, when I discovered anime by way of Princess Mononoke, I recalled that I had seen some Japanese animation back in prehistoric times. I did a little research and determined that film was Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke, which was the first anime to get a theatrical release in the USA. Although it’s apparently still under license, it’s not available in any form in region one that I’ve been able to find. I’ve periodically checked for torrents, but I never found a live one until a week ago.

Sasuke and his older sister live in the Japanese countryside with monkeys, deer, squirrels and bears. One day he encounters a giant salamander, who turns out to be an evil witch intent on causing as much suffering as possible. Sasuke resolves to defeat her, and leaves his home to learn magic. After taunting the leader of a group of bandits and meeting the witch again, he learns martial arts and magic from an old hermit living high on a steep mountain. Meanwhile, the bandits burn and pillage a town, and the lord of the region takes an interest in Sasuke’s sister. There are plenty of swordfights and magical battles, and good eventually triumphs over evil.

So, is it indeed the greatest movie ever made? Maybe, if you’re seven years old. Better than Disney? I haven’t seen anything from the Mouse in centuries so I can’t really say, but in terms of production values, probably not. Is it worth watching? Yes. Beyond its historical significance, it’s a simple but entertaining story told in a straightforward manner with energy and humor.

The version I found is dubbed in three languages. The English soundtrack sounds at times like it was recorded underwater. The story and characters are uncomplicated enough that you can watch with the Japanese soundtrack without getting too lost, and the music is better, too.