Category: Whatever
Recent arrivals
I don’t watch as much anime as I used to, but I expect that I will always retain some interest in the art form. Now that my financial situation has improved from nightmarish to merely frightening, I can budget some occasional purchases. Noein and the first seasons of Slayers and Ah! My Goddess TV have been on my to-buy list for years. What I’ve read about Kurau and Moon Phase piqued my curiosity, and the discs were cheap. Mao-chan will give me an opportunity to compare the judgements of Steven and Zac Bertschy, and it might be a good show for youngsters. About UFO Princess Valkyrie — well, I suppose I ought to have a token fanservice title in my collection (Divergence Eve/Misaki Chronicles fails as fanservice: the character designs are too exaggerated, and the story and characters are too interesting). Steven says the story is pretty good, and there’s a bus full of catgirls. Finally, I generally prefer reading books to watching dramatizations of books, and Fuyumi Ono is a good writer.
Other items on my to-buy list: Gurren-Lagann, Baccano!, Moribito (books and DVDs), Witch Hunter Robin, Mysterious Cities of Gold (another possibility for youngsters), perhaps Negima!? and Seven of Seven. When they’re available, Oh! Edo Rocket and at least the first few discs of Soul Eater. I would add the rest of Utena, but it’s out of print and the company is bankrupt.
What I’m most looking forward to, however, isn’t anime. It’s been about 30 years since I watched The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. I would like to see if it’s as good as I remember.
Spies like who?
A friend and I are planning to attend Costume-Con 28 next year, and we need to start working on our costumes soon. The theme is “spies.” I’m too tall for Boris and she’s too short for Natasha, and I’m not particulary interested in James Bond, or most other spy movies for that matter. So, I’m wondering what spies there are in anime worth considering. Let’s see: there’s Tenhou and Tenten from Oh! Edo Rocket, and Yomiko Readman and Drake Anderson from Read or Die (I don’t think I should ask my friend to be Nancy). I’m sure that there are others. What other pairs of spies are there?
Update: Are you a fansub team looking for a new project? Consider tracking down and translating the video of the stage play Oh! Edo Rocket. There are some brief excerpts here.
Calling all classicists
Vicipaedia needs otaku who can write decent Latin. The anime and manga pages are pathetic. (I had several years of Latin, but that was a long time ago in a different century, and it would take more time than I can spare to regain competence.)
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Another entry for the “ducks in anime” file:
From Negima Ala Alba OAD #2 (not recommended).
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I discovered that the software used to animate Hatsune Miku is freeware, available here. It’s surprisingly capable. Here’s Miku dancing Maurice Bejart’s choreography; compare it to the final minutes of this. ((I recommend skpping the first six minutes unless you are a Bejart fanatic.)) Unfortunately, like Miku herself, it’s not for Macs.
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More random nonsense:
An animated stereogram. It works, too. There are more here. (Via Cartoon Brew.)
“Not only does it save time, but it’s really stupid, too.” More poem generators here.
Can’t find anything you like on the radio? Set a few parameters and generate your own music.
I did not need to see this:
Spoiler
.
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Two years ago today …
… I launched The Kawaii Menace. It’s my second anime weblog, succeeding Beware the Kawaii, which I abandoned when bots found ways of circumventing the anti-spam mechanisms. I’ve been writing about anime to some extent now for about five years, ever since I discovered Serial Experiments Lain.
Today is also the sixth anniversary ((Six years, while not negligible, isn’t all that long in the blogosphere. Charles G. Hill has been around for over thirteen years now and still posts more in a week than most bloggers do in a month.)) of my first weblog, Mixolydian Mode, also defunct for the same reason. ((Coincidentally, Pixy Misa began blogging at almost the same instant I did six years ago. Congratulations, Pixy)). Its successor, Scuffulans hirsutus, devoted largely to photography, music and nonsense, is a good place to escape the virtual crowds; daily traffic there is usually in the single digits.
This is probably as good a time as any to acknowledge the obvious: The Kawaii Menace is essentially retired. I’m not shutting it down. I do have a series of summing-up posts in mind — though I’m in no hurry to write them — and I am as curious as anyone to see who the top ten anime babes are. There likely will be occasional observations, trivia and links about animation, Japan and women with blue hair. But my interest in anime has run its course. Little I’ve seen in the past year has sustained my interest past the second episode. I still enjoy watching old favorites, but I don’t have the patience anymore to plow through all the unremarkable new releases hoping to find another Denno Coil.
Precise language
From a discussion in the comments at TSO’s place:
>Reminds me of my System/360 days when we had to suggest to the programmers that rather than ask the operator at the console to type “1 for Yes, 2 for No”, the program should request “Y for Yes, N for No”.
>And what’s wrong with “1” for Yes and “2” for No exactly? 🙂
>One for yes and two for no is great if you have at least one position to the right of the decimal point.
>”And what’s wrong with ‘1’ for Yes and ‘2’ for No exactly?” 1thing.
Miscellaneous nonsense
Odds and ends, some of them involving animation, Japan or spandex.
Wired kid
I just got off the phone with my nine-year-old nephew. He’s a bright kid, a voracious reader, and he enjoys anime. He likes Bottle Fairy a lot. His favorite, though, is Serial Experiments Lain, which I sent to his father several years ago. Um, parents, keep tabs on what your kids watch. ((If any anime series is a classic, it’s Lain, but I hesitate to recommend it to anyone younger than college-age.))
Today’s mental picture
And to make matters worse, the other events were a cheerleading convention and a Christian youth group convention. I mean, not necessarily antagonistic if physically separated… but apparently the Witchblade cosplayers kept walking into the youth group talks, and that’s just not going to end well….
She’s also been posting singable translations of the songs from the Natsume Yujinchou series. If I understand what she’s doing correctly, these are paraphrases of English translations she’s found.
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I’ve been doing everything but watching anime lately. I’ll get back to it — I’ve got Tokyo Godfathers sitting next to the computer, and I want to watch the rest of at least the first season of Natsume Yujinchou — but right now there are other priorities. In the meantime, here’s a curiosity: a piano version of a tune you might recognize.
Early start
These are some of the daffodils near my front steps as they were on this early February afternoon today. If winter doesn’t abruptly return, they could very well bloom within a week.
Ancient technology
During an archaeological dig in my office today, I unearthed some relics from prehistoric times.
Remember when floppies were floppy? (Remember floppies?) And eight inches in diameter?
Ancient technology
(Not anime, but possibly of interest to geeky types.) We’re playing musical offices at work, and I unearthed some antiques in the back of one of the cabinets earlier today:
Yes, people actually did use 8-inch discs back in prehistoric times. Floppies really were floppy.
Book versus anime
Quote of the week II
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I haven’t spent much time on anime recently, and I don’t know when I will. My current obsession is a collection of fiddle tunes. (([Link deleted because of reported virus.] If you’re in the Kansas/Oklahoma area in September, go to the Walnut Valley Festival and drop by Carp Camp. And if you are building a website, don’t use frames.)) It should keep me busy for quite a while. I’ll be back eventually — maybe — but don’t hold your breath.
Quote of the week
Towering sponge
Here’s the most bizarre video I’ve seen recently. (Patience is required; it takes forever to load.)
There are more sponges and other three-dimensional fractals here, here and here.
Addendum: For sheer trippiness, nothing beats the Mandelbrot set. Here’s the classic fractal video, “Nothing but Zooms,” presented in four parts. Unfortunately, the image quality is low, even for YouTube.
Part one
Part two
Part three
Part four
Here are some more videos of varying degrees of gimmickiness featuring the ultimate paisley.
This one
That one
This other one
What’s the Mandelbrot set? Let Jonathan Coulton explain. (N.B.: naughty words.)