Category: Videos

Downright bodacious

I watched the first episode of Mouretsu Pirates twice in two days. The last series I did that for was Madoka a year ago. Pirates has a lot in its favor, including:

Space pirates.

Tatsuo Sato.

A meganekko with a hime haircut and a sailor suit.

A bunny, a ducky and a pink bobblehead pig.

An absence of in-your-face fanservice. ((No surprise, given that Sato’s Shingu featured an outstanding example of anti-fanservice.))

There are a few negatives, e.g., green lipstick, skinny ties and really bad haircuts.

The positives greatly outweigh the negatives, and Mouretsu Pirates looks like, at the very least, a fun show. With Sato at the helm, there’s a good chance that the series will be a satisfyingly complex story and not just an excuse to put pirate hats on pretty girls.

*****

A bit of music:

It’s not just for humans.

If French is the language of love, what is German the language of?

(The latter via John C. Wright.)

*****

2011 is over. Good riddance. It was a thoroughly crummy year for me, ((2011 was a good year for volcanoes.)) and I am not going to compile any retrospective posts. If you want to know about the year in anime, see Ubu’s recaps here and here.

Parachutes and bumbershoots

Here’s some music that caught my ear recently.

Kinoco Hotel has the ’60’s psychedelic sound down cold, straight from the garage.

If Chabrier and Satie formed a string band, they might sound a little like Shugo Tokumaru.

Here’s a piano arrangement of the above tune.

Pop music with a high-gloss finish: Tokyo Incidents, featuring Shiina Ringo.

I’ve also been listening to some “Tokyo virginity pop,” as Urbangarde labels their music. Imagine Hatsune Miku as a real singer in an avante garde-ish band. I don’t like any of their videos — the visuals range from pretentious and silly to pretentious and distasteful (I wonder what percentage of their operating budget goes toward fake blood) — so I’ll just refer you to their website. There are links to videos there; the music sounds better if don’t actually watch the videos but only listen.

I’ll close with another Tokumaru tune.

Altogether ookie

Some favorite spooky, creepy anime-related tunes and videos for the Halloween weekend.

Ghost Hound was a major disappointment, but the opening song, Mayumi Kojima’s “Poltergeist,” is terrific.

Here is Susumu Hirasawa’s “Parade” from Paprika, illustrated with scenes from the movie.

(Although Hirasawa may be best-known to anime fans for his soundtracks to Satoshi Kon’s work, he’s had a long and interesting career stretching back to the ’70’s. Of particular note is his influential synth-rock band P-Model. Look for the first album, In a Model Room (good luck finding it), and see where Hiroyuki Hayashi really got his ideas. (There’s also a K-On connection, which you can discover for yourself.))

Here’s the cheerful, upbeat ending song to the heartwarming series Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (So Long, Mr. Despair).

The opening of Hakaba Kitaro (Graveyard Kitaro) was storyboarded by the spasmodically brilliant Kenji Nakamura in Shigeru Mizuki’s style.

Here’s something you might remember from years gone by.

Let’s end with a tender lullaby by Hirasawa from Paranoia Agent. ((If you want something a little livelier, try the opening.))

*****

Bonus link: Jack Chick meets H.P. Lovecraft.

Odds and ends

Steven on fansubs:

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.)

Continue reading “Odds and ends”

The wrong place

Yu Muroga was a Japanese delivery man. He was doing his round when the earthquake occurred on March 11th 2011. Like most people in the area, he did not feel under the threat of the tsunami as he was driving far from the coast. That’s why he kept on driving and doing his job.
The HD video camera on his dashboard did not only film the tremors but also the moments after the earthquake when several drivers were trapped by the tsunami waters.
The video camera was recently found by the police next to the passenger’s body.

Click on the quote above to see the video.

(Via a comment at Eruptions.)

The last AFW post …

… until next year, maybe.

I finally got through all the Anime Festival Wichita photos. You can see 421 of them here.

Here they are in a slide show:

[flowplayer src=’http://tancos.net/flv/wp-content/uploads/afw7SlideShow.mp4′ width=640 height=480]

Right-click on the blue lady to download the file (57 megabytes).

I was surprised that there weren’t any Madoka cosplayers. Also absent: Chii; Rei and Asuka; miscellaneous Rozen Maidens; Ayumu and Haruna.

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:

Menaces, pink and otherwise

Update: If an image of a pink pony playing a trombone might “frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress” to you, do not click here:

Spoiler

[collapse]

I note with alarm that a corner of the otakusphere has been invaded by aliens more frightening than zombies or sparkly vampires. These creatures look superficially equine, but their fur and manes typically are colors that do not naturally occur on mammals. Their behaviors sometimes suggest intelligible sentience, but just as often reflect either hypertrophied reflexes or psychoses. Thus far these creatures have been primarily an occidental phenomenon, but they recently have been observed in Japan. Here is some video footage of these entities. (Caution: sit at least 0.6096 meter from the computer monitor while watching this documentary. If you find yourself repeatedly viewing any of the videos posted or linked here, seek professional help immediately.)

I would recommend summoning superheroes to deal with this menace, but I fear that they have already been compromised. I suspect that our only hope is a new corps of mahou shoujo.

Post script: What exactly is Pinkie Pie?

*****

Kansas weather is sometimes a little too interesting for my taste. (The heat didn’t make it into the house, but the wind did wake me.)

*****

Animation of a different sort: time-lapse photography of the beginning of the recent Grimsvötn eruption in Iceland:

(These are large files and might take a while to load.)

Although this might have been a larger eruption than Eyjafjallajokull’s last year, because of the prevailing winds and the composition of the ash, it was far less disruptive. Grimsvötn, incidentally, has a long and busy history, including the Lakagigar eruption of 1783, which was perhaps more consequential than Krakatau’s a century later.

Grumbling and muttering

Dennou Coil is finally available — if you have an iToy. I don’t.

*****

Watching Fractale is becoming more and more of a chore. Are Enri’s antics supposed to be funny? I’m not laughing.

Yamakan thinks anime today is in bad shape. His solution is to ape Miyazaki. I’m reminded of the Pre-Raphaelites, who sought to revitalize art by returning to their notion of the middle ages. Their paintings make for pretty calendars, but they aren’t exactly great art.

*****

Here’s a bit of computer animation involving quilting and Celtic music:

Now let’s see some quilting using Penrose tiles, ideally with a klezmer soundtrack.

*****

No.

*****

The five best toys of all time.

*****

Bonus link: John C. Wright has discovered the origin of steampunk.