… Dr. Who debuted. If it had been an anime, it might have looked something like this:
What’s the word? Oh, and stop by Google today if you haven’t already. Update: the doodle is archived here.
Category: Occidental animation
Epicyclic revelation
No comment necessary.
Sailor Bruce
Caution: What has been seen cannot be unseen. Think before you click.
So what’s his transformation phrase? “Moon Bat Power Make-up”?
*****
In case anyone has missed it, here’s a worthy KickStarter:
Woozy Sunday
My neighbors decided that I didn’t need any sleep this weekend. Consequently, my mind is too fuzzy to focus on the posts I have planned. Instead, here’s another batch of miscellaneous nonsense.
It’s been a tedious week …
… and I could use a little silliness right now.
When I read Dusty Sage’s comments on Equestria Girls, it occurred to me that there might be another bipedal variation on the Pony theme extant. And indeed there is. Is there ever.
~Tomodachi wa Mahou~
The ponies got a shiny, bouncy new opening for their Japanese debut.
I can’t say that I’m enthusiastic about it, but it is more palatable than the original.
To clear the treacle out of your ear, here’s “My Little Baccano.” ((Here’s the original Baccano opening, in case anyone still hasn’t seen it.))
You’ve seen too much cosplay …
… when the first thing you notice in this picture is the old film SLR camera (and also how ugly the tattoos are).
Make a contract with Fluttershy
So the Japanese are going to get their own dub of My Little Pony ~Tomodachi wa Mahou~. Good for them; the first season, at least, (which is all I’ve seen) is often clever, rarely cloying, and probably better than nearly all other contemporary shows on western teevee.
Most of the actresses announced so far are new to me, but there are a few familiar voices. The Queen of Tears, Kikuko Inoue, is Princess Celestia. Fortunately, Celestia isn’t a weepy sort, and Inoue is a good actress when she isn’t bawling her eyes out. Rozen Maiden‘s Shinku is Twilight Sparkle, and Cardcaptor Sakura‘s Li Shaoran is Spike.
The surprise is the voice of the sweet, bashful Fluttershy: Emiri Kato. Kato earlier was the cute, cuddly and evil Kyubey. I have difficulty imagining Fluttershy with that voice. It’s the stuff of nightmares.
*****
Dusty Sage found a “State of the Herd” survey of Bronies. One of the findings is astonishing if it’s accurate: more than a quarter of all MLP:FIM fans are INTJs like me. I knew that thoughtful introverts are far more common on the internet than offline, but this is bizarre.
Ancient cultural artifacts
You might notice some familiar names in the credits of this 1950 cartoon. You can download it here.
*****
Without exception, everyone on the island clamors to the Skipper for help at every crisis. “Skipper will know what to do.” The Skipper is “brave and sure.” The Skipper calms the islanders at each emergency, not by alleviating the problem, but by standing tall, pounding his chest and loudly making magnificent promises that neither he nor any other person could possibly keep.
Gilligan, the Skipper’s “little buddy”, embodies every extraneous governmental agency, policy and program ever foisted on innocent people anywhere. It is “Gilligan’s island.” Gilligan is well-intentioned. He sincerely wants to help. Gilligan saves no exertion, refuses no absurdity, respects no boundary in his unceasing efforts to solve, or at least soften, any and all of the everyday problems of the castaways. More often than not Gilligan is the problem. At best he makes a bad situation worse. At worst, he makes a great situation completely unbearable.
From A Scholarly Critique of the Style, Symbolism and Sociopolitical Relevance of Gilligan’s Island.
(via Joe Carter.)
*****
Be sure to check today’s Google doodle. Update: It’s gone now, but there’s plenty of Little Nemo to look at here.
Alternative animation
Ubu on $369.98 ($498.98 retail):
I refuse to apologize for bittorrenting any longer, and I refuse to feel guilty, and I refuse to buy any series from anyone, anywhere at that price. Burn in hell, Japan.
If that is indeed what purveyors of anime have planned for us, and if they do finally succeed in eliminating torrents and downloads, then anime will be dead outside of Japan. However, there are other places where good animation can be found. France, for instance. Recently I made the mistake of browsing amazon.com and found both The Triplets of Belleville and Persepolis for $7 each.
Belleville was as good as I remembered, though I had forgotten just how fat the Americans were. Here are a couple of excerpts showing the eponymous triplets in their prime and in the movie’s present.
Madame Souza, who plays the bicycle wheel in the second clip, is one of the great heroic animated characters. She would have been serious competition for Balsa in the current poll had The Triplets of Belleville been a Japanese movie.
Persepolis is a girl’s-eye view of the Iranian revolution, with a sojourn in France. Despite its subject matter, it’s often quite funny.
I highly recommend both movies.
Other bargains I spotted include Chicken Run and The Corpse Bride, each for $5. I also found a two-disc edition of Coraline for $7 at the grocery store. It includes two pairs of red/green 3D viewers.
*****
Looking for Christmas presents for youngsters? Petite Princess Yucie is on sale at RightStuf for $10. This is an excellent price for a very good series. (Here’s Steven’s review, with which I concur.)
Princess Tutu is on sale for $15, also a good price for a very interesting story, though not as suitable for young viewers.
*****
Both Jonathan Tappan and J. Greely have been posting pictures of their recent trips to Japan. Visit their weblogs and see.
*****
Newt Gingrich has an idea for enhancing American defenses.
*****
Hot stuff:
Jeepers creepers
Two weeks’ accumulation of curiosities and silliness.
I recently discovered that Tex Avery’s documentation of the big, bad wolf’s remarkable courtship behavior is available at the Internet Archive.
[flowplayer src=’http://www.archive.org/download/RedHotRidingHood_557/BannedCartoons—texAvery-RedHotRidingHood1943.mp4′ width=640 height=480]
More of Avery’s research can be found here.
Odds and ends
Even disregarding the price, the sad fact is that the product delivered by the fansub groups via torrents is better than what we can buy. It’s more timely, and the quality is higher, and the resolution is better, and it’s more comprehensive.
I wish it weren’t so. I would rather buy than steal. But two years ago it reached the point where it didn’t feel like virtue to be honest. It felt like being a sucker.
Even as big as the anime market was in North America three years ago before everything fell apart, we were still being treated as second class citizens. Usually there was a delay of between 1 and 3 years before titles got released here, if they were. And what we got was 480p, which these days looks like a postage stamp to me. (Especially on my 1920*1080 computer display.)
Before Cat Soup …
Good news, bad news
The good news: There’s more Marie & Gali translated. Wasurenai is up to episode 27. That leaves 13 episodes to go of the first series, plus the 30 of Version 2.0.
Marika, a magenta-haired middle school student who favors EGL fashions and has no interest in science, finds herself marooned in Galihabara, an isolated town populated by famous scientists. They’re a little different there than they are in history books. Galileo is a buffoonish gonk, Newton is a snooty bishounen who only has eyes for his apple, Darwin is a robot, (John Ambrose) Fleming says “Yo!” a lot, etc. Fortunately for Marika, Madame Curie is relatively sane and provides her a place to stay.
Each of the five-minute episodes illustrates, sorta, a scientific principle. In the episode from which the screen captures above come, Archimedes, Hertz and Galileo compete in a fishing tournament. Through various ridiculous strategies, they catch enough fish and other aquatic creatures to capsize their boat, leaving them up lost at sea in a lifeboat with Marika. The episode ends with a brief lecture on bouyancy from Archimedes.
How much of the science kids watching the show will retain, I can’t say. It doesn’t really matter that much, though. Marie & Gali subordinates didacticism to broad, goofy humor, to its benefit.
The bad news: Captain Planet, the live-action movie. Please excuse me while I throw up.
500 errors
I’m tired of seeing this
and this
whenever I want to edit a post or check statistics. I plan to move my websites elsewhere soon. WordPress currently recommends Bluehost, DreamHost, MediaTemple and Laughing Squid. Does anyone have any experience with any of them? Thumbs up or thumbs down?
*****
After seeing the same henshin sequences recycled endlessly in typical mahou shoujo series, I’m not particularly scandalized by this:
Moose, Squirrel and Rabbit
Every educated person knows the contributions of Bill Scott and Jay Ward to Western Civilization. But do you remember Alex Anderson?
Don’t waste a crumb
To the Moon
Alex Ross, in The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, states that Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method of musical composition “… finally reached the silver screen by way of Scott Bradley’s inventive scores for Tom and Jerry cartoons in the forties, notably Puttin’ on the Dog and The Cat That Hated People.” Which gives me an excuse to post some High Culture, courtesy of Tex Avery.
All that Ramayana jazz
Nina Paley, unable to release her movie Sita Sings the Blues through conventional channels because of insane copyright laws, is giving it away, free. You can download it here in a variety of formats and resolutions.
(Via Maureen.)
Dark silliness
Neil Gaiman and Gahan Wilson:
And Raymond Scott:
Via Cartoon Brew
*****
That other dealer is holding a “bargain bin blowout.” It’s mostly junk, of course, but there are complete sets of some worthy anime available for very reasonable prices, including Bottle Fairy, Divergence Eve and Misaki Chronicles, Haibane Renmei, Serial Experiments Lain, Shingu (including a t-shirt), Someday’s Dreamers and Sugar, a Tiny Snow Fairy. There’s also some Miles Davis.
.*****
So Sailor Moon is girl stuff? Check the results of this poll.