Category: Occidental animation

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:

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.

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.