Category: Whatever

Absolute destiny apocalypse

I haven’t had much time for anime or anything else recently, but I did manage to watch the first disc of Revolutionary Girl Utena. Good grief. I think I’ll watch Cat Soup again; that’s a model of clarity in comparison. I suppose everything will make sense in the end, but seven episodes into Utena, it’s absurdity upon absurdity, combined with swordfights, silliness, pointed chins and a minimal animation budget. Surrealistic though it is, it remains mostly on the right side of the line between silly and stupid, and I am curious to see if the writers do make ultimately something coherent out of the nonsense.

*****

Here are a few odd links. Click at your own risk.

A term I didn’t need to learn.

So kawaii.

I didn’t really need to see this. (Found it here.)

This is worth looking at.

Virtual boredom

ninjasrus.jpg

I’ve spent my recent lunch hours investigating Second Life. This virtual world may have a lot of potential, but I find it disappointing. It’s fun to learn to fly and customize your avatar, but once you’re past the orientations and in Second Life proper, it turns out that there’s nobody there. ((There are supposedly 40,000 to 50,000 residents logged in when I visit, but they all must be playing hide and seek.)) There’s plenty to look at — elaborate buildings and landscapes, stores full of clothes, hair, skins, eyes, wings, animations, etc. — but wherever I go, I’m almost always quite alone. When I do encounter someone else, he is generally as disinclined to begin a conversation as I am. There are some busy sites with lots of visitors, but I dislike virtual crowds as much as real ones. I have yet to find a congenial spot.

It hasn’t been a complete waste of time. Some real-life musicians stream live performances while their avatars stand on virtual stages, and the music is occasionally quite good and offbeat. When’s the last time you heard virtuoso musical saw? Supposedly some well-known musicians like Suzanne Vega occasionally give virtual concerts, but I have yet to recognize any of the performers listed on the schedules. There have also been some discussions announced that look interesting, but never at times I can attend.

So, is there anime in Second Life? Well, there are Naruto fans, as demonstrated above. Quite a few shops feature clothing, hair, shapes and skins inspired by anime and gothic lolita styles, and there is quite a bit more that’s Japanese. I found one virtual shop devoted entirely to general anime cosplay and another exclusively to Sailor Moon.

rei-eva.jpg

(Notice how much of the snapshot above is blurry. It takes a long time to render all the fine detail, and if your computer, video card and connection are not the absolute fastest available, expect to spend a lot of time waiting for your system to catch up with SL.)

So there are anime fans in Second Life — somebody had to make the wares and rent or buy the virtual space for the stores — but finding them is not easy. There are over a hundred anime groups listed, a few with hundreds of members, but they don’t actually do anything. There are no meetings, discussions or events in any that I’ve looked at, and no newsletters. The only anime-related communications I’ve received were announcements of new costumes. In contrast, I receive regular updates from various SL musical and dance organizations.

There are a few haibane around:

slhaibane.jpg

If I do continue to visit Second Life, it will be for the music, not anime.

One unexpected pleasure: shopping for clothes. In real life, it’s a pain; the styles don’t appeal and the sizes are never quite right. Clothing your avatar, however, is fun. Penneys might not have much in the way of kimonos, but in the virtual world they’re easy to find. I haven’t yet seen any Abh uniforms, but I did find some other outfits of note. Snapshots below the fold.

Continue reading “Virtual boredom”

Music and marathons

I’m not terribly impressed with Ghost Hound — yet, anyway — but I do like the opening song, “Poltergeist,” by Mayumi Kojima. A few days ago I came across something listed as “Ghost Hound OP album.” It turned to be Kojima’s “A Musical Biography 2001-2007,” and it’s not standard J-pop. Most of the songs fall somewhere between novelty jazz and rock, with touches of rockabilly, surf guitar and the top 40 of an earlier era. To be painfully honest, on some of the tunes I enjoy the band and the arrangements more than her singing, but she earns points for an idiosyncratic repertoire. “Poltergeist” is Kojima at the darker, rockier end of her range; here’s something more playful, “???????!,” or “The Last Shot.”

[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/TheLastShot.mp3[/mp3]

*****

It’s an obvious point, but perhaps worth making anyway. Some series should be marathoned, while others are best appreciated one or two episodes at a time. For most series, of course, it doesn’t much matter. I’ve watched a dozen episodes of Cardcaptor Sakura in one sitting, and also watched one per evening for weeks, and enjoyed it equally both ways. However, something like the Divergence Eve/Misaki Chronicles saga demands to viewed in one or two long sittings (if you can get past the bizarre character designs ((Kei’s and Yuri’s busts are as large as I find attractive; bigger than that just looks grotesque.)) and the mystifying first episode. The series’ creators perhaps expected too much of the casual viewer and the professional reviewer). Don’t put the first disc in your player late in the evening if you need to work the next day. Seirei no Moribito is another to marathon, as is Baccano!. I’ve held off watching the second half of SnM until all of it is available and I have six uninterrupted hours available to spend on it (maybe Thursday, finally).

Lightweight comedies and farces, on the other hand, are best viewed one or two episodes at a time, else they become cloying and the formulae become too obvious. Galaxy Angel A and Z, Animal Yokocho, Kerero Gunsou, Muteki Kanban Musume, Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, etc., are all best taken in small doses. Also, some of the more thoughtful episodic series benefit from being watched one episode at a time, with time to reflect between viewings. I can’t imagine wanting to marathon Mushishi, for instance, or Kino’s Journey.

*****

A bit of good news via Anime on DVD: Martian Successor Nadesico is being reissued as a “perfect collection.” It’s due out January 1.

*****

Mickey Mouse Feio. (Via Cartoon Brew.)

*****

What exactly is Aria?

… it’s essentially 40 filler episodes.

Miscellany

Some odds and ends while I download Moyashimon:

Does anyone make shows about folks who can focus on saving humanity, or are we doomed to a diet of crappy sci-fi soap operas? If WWII had been like this, Roosevelt would have looked like Professor X and have been crippled years ago by his quasi-enemy, Super Seiyjin Stalin; Hitler would have been the lunatic madman out to conquer/end/dominate/destroy the world, Mussolini would have been the jilted bishie lover of both Roosevelt and Stalin, Churchill would have been an angsty teenager, and Hirohito would have been a cute female high-schooler in a sailor outfit trying to end world militarism in time for this semester’s finals.

*

“Isn’t chocolate pudding… bad … for the violins?”

*****

I’m not a fan of Star Wars, but this was uncalled for. (Caution: causes severe ear pain. Blame the LLamas for this one.)

*****

Here’s an alternate history story: if MGM had said “yes” to Bob Clampett in 1936, would the Japanese now be fansubbing American animation? (Via Aliens in This World.)

*****

I may be wrong, but as I understand it, the “sei” in “seifuku” is short for “sailor.” I.e., its distinguishing characteristic is the sailor collar. Consequently, I think only one of the outfits in this poll qualifies as a proper seifuku. (Update: I was wrong — see Andrew F.’s comment. Never mind.)

*****

I’ve added Yumedamaya Kidan to my to-investigate list.

*****

The next self-help bestseller: Aerophobics: The Easy Six* Step program to end your exercise addiction. It could be helpful in maintaing a proper otaku lifestyle.

*”’cause let’s face it, twelve steps is WAAAAAAY too many.” —SR

fyi

This came up in an email exchange with a friend. I thought that other victims of photography might appreciate it:

The default mode in all digital cameras is “caricature.” The software automatically looks for slight defects in a person’s appearance and exaggerates them. If there are no defects, it will interpolate some. (Film cameras have a similar feature.) Unfortunately, camera manuals are minimal these days and seldom include directions for changing this default. In other words, nobody looks as bad as his picture.

Tuesday morning miscellany

dmt02.jpg

Cute and silly?

One of the pleasures of Dai Mahou Touge is watching Punie and Paya-tan, her mascot, instantly transform from cutesy and playful to utterly ruthless, and back again. Paya changes seiyuus when he makes the transition. I thought Dark Paya sounded familiar, and I was right; he is voiced by Jouji Nakata, who is Giroro in Keroro Gunsou.

I’m surprised at how little attention DMT has received, despite its being one of the better examples of animated black humor. Once again, if Steven hadn’t spotted it, I’d have missed it. Why has this been ignored, while Dokuro-chan, which you couldn’t pay me to watch, has been endlessly discussed and now has a sequel?

*****

Not anime, but geeky: U.N. Secretary General or Star Wars character?

*****

Also not anime but still geeky: A new idea for a first-person shooter.

*****

And finally, a word from Shunpei:

oedomath2.jpg

*****

Bonus link: Put down the duckie. (Via the LLamas.)

*****

Update: Congratulations to Avatar.

The path to enlightenment, or how to squander vast amounts of time and money

Some bloggers recently have reminisced about the origins of their addictions. I might as well, too.

I don’t watch television. At all. Consequently, I never saw Dragonball or any other Japanese imports. I did once come across a mention of something called “Sailor Moon” in a newspaper. It sounded dumb. Nor have I ever been a gamer of any kind, unless you count chess. Final Fantasy means nothing to me. If there ever were any “good old days” of anime, I missed them.

Some years back I read a review of a movie called Princess Mononoke. It looked interesting, and Neil Gaiman had worked on the English script. I made a mental note to see it if it ever came to Wichita. It didn’t.

Time passed. I discovered that one of my musical friends was an aficionado of Japanese animation from ‘way back, and he had a copy of Princess Mononoke. (He also has an impressive collection of anime cels, including some from Porco Rosso.) The movie was terrific, even with the English dub, and I asked him for more to watch. Most of what he brought by was disappointing — e.g., Those Who Hunt Elves (not recommended) — but I did discover the original Dirty Pair and Martian Successor Nadesico.

Meanwhile, I read every entry on every anime review site I could find. After sifting through hundreds, thousands of reviews by plainly unreliable writers, I settled upon Serial Experiments Lain as my first purchase. It was as good as Princess Mononoke, and utterly different. Ghost in the Shell followed. Some time after that I discovered that Steven Den Beste also saw that Lain was something exceptional. I finally had found a writer on anime whom I could take seriously. (I’ve found a few more since then. See the blogroll.)

I eventually started a weblog devoted to anime in addition to my main one (you’re reading its successor). A little over three years ago, one of my acquaintances from the SCA organized an anime festival in Wichita and an anime club. I’ve furnished most of the videos the club views at its rare meetings.

This isn’t quite the full story, though, and Princess Mononoke wasn’t the first anime I ever saw. That title belongs to Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke, released in the USA before the last ice age as “Magic Boy.” It was the greatest movie I had ever seen. It blew away everything by Walt Disney. Then I saw Forbidden Planet, and that was the greatest movie ever made, and I forgot about Magic Boy until my discovery of Miyazaki many years later.

Random notes

Dino Squad — yet another reason to stick to anime. (Via Tim Blair.)

*****

I notice that the group fansubbing Dokuro-Chan II calls itself “Philanthropy.” That’s not the word that occurs to me.

*****

For those who regard every anime they’ve downloaded that is subsequently licensed as a an “obligation buy,” a suggestion. If it’s a lousy, trashy series, e.g., Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru, don’t spend your money on it. It will only encourage the company to license more garbage. Instead, take that money and apply it to a good show, preferably one that is underappreciated. (My own policy is less stringent. I purchase more than I download, and if a show is genuinely good, it goes on my “buy” list, even if I don’t expect to rewatch it soon. My drive may be getting full, but my shelves are overflowing.)

Surviving the weekend

afw3_683x.jpg

One of the many Chobits at Anime Festival Wichita

• I may be one of the stranger people around (though I think I’m perfectly normal, myself), but I’m not the silliest.

• There is an inverse proportion between the depth of an induhvidual’s political insights and his loquacity. There is similarly an inverse proportion between the distance from his mouth to my ear and the volume at which he proclaims his thoughts.

• There are few, if any, pictures of Narutards among those I took this weekend. There are also very few FMA characters. This was deliberate. There aren’t any Wolfwoods either, though I didn’t originally plan to omit them. However, those blasted crosses kept getting in my way when I framed shots, and I got irritated. Hint to cosplayers: pick characters who don’t carry cumbersome props.

• There were a number of SOS-dan girls, but no Kyon that I saw. There was only one representative from Ouran, and not Haruhi, either. Most of the solar system Sailor Senshi were represented; only Mercury and Pluto were missing. What most surprised me was the number of girls with Chobits ears.

• The music CDs were tucked away in an awkward spot next to the yaoi doujinshi. I’ll freely admit that by some standards I am mildly eccentric, but yaoi fangirls are downright weird and a bit creepy.

* I managed not to spend much money, but I did pick up a few CDs. The soundtrack to Utena is, um, interesting. Much of it is standard film score fare — some orchestral stuff and chamber music, some pop and rock, a bit of new-agey drivel, synths, etc. — a bit better than average but not particularly memorable. But the second half is something else. It’s been compared to the Vienna Boys’ Choir singing with Megadeth, and that’s a fair description.
I also found the soundtrack to Jubei-Chan I, which I’ve been looking for. The score isn’t outstanding, but there are a few pieces I like, and most of them are included, e.g., the full-length version of Bantaro’s theme. There is also this:

[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/Jubeichanpiano.mp3[/mp3]

• “Raw” format, in which the image as caught by the sensor of a digital camera is initially recorded before being converted to jpeg, is wonderful. The “SafeSync” I ordered so I can use my old strobes with my new camera still hasn’t arrived, and I had to make do with the on-camera flash. It wasn’t up to the job, and most of the jpegs were woefully underexposed. However, I saved most of the images in both jpeg and “nef” formats (“nef” is Nikon’s version of raw), and I was able to salvage every one of the raw images, even when the jpegs were hopeless.

Request

I just a note from my brother:

I’m getting a laptop tomorrow. Any recommendations?

I don’t use laptops, and if I did, they would be Macs, which I don’t think he is interested in. Does anybody have suggestions for him?

Request

I just a note from my brother:

I’m getting a laptop tomorrow. Any recommendations?

I don’t use laptops, and if I did, they would be Macs, which I don’t think he is interested in. Does anybody have suggestions for him?

Excuse me, I’m going to go listen to The Smiths

If you haven’t finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yet, don’t click here. (Language, etc., advisory.)

(While I’m on the topic of Pötterdämerung, let me point out that there is a Potter-related poll in the sidebar. There is a similar poll, worded differently, on my other weblog.)

Update: J.K. Rowling tells all (spoilers, spoilers, spoilers),

*****

You might have wondered where this site was this morning, and several other mornings recently. I wondered, too. Apparently, whenever there is emergency maintenance to be done at the hosting service, or an outage or a kernel panic, the server where my site is currently stored is always affected. I guess if you go with a cheap hosting plan you get cheap service. Still, none of the other inexpensive web hosts I’ve used were as unreliable, not even my original free GeoCities site years ago.

*****

sdbtemper.png

I knew Steven has a powerful mind, but I never realized just how mighty he is. According the the “recent comments” widget in Avatar’s sidebar, “… Steven Den Beste ‘… has a temper and can toss building-shattering attack spells around.'” For your own safety, do not nitpick.

*****

While browsing around the Anime Tropes Wiki, I came across this:

When A Modest Proposal was written a lot of people thought it was actually talking about eating babies.

Some years back, a friend wanted to write a satirical letter-to-the-editor. I suggested that he read Swift’s dispassionate discussion to see how it’s done. My friend mentioned it to his literature professor. The professor said, “What do you want to read that for? It’s about eating babies!” He was the head of the honors program at Wichita State.

*****

It may be a while until Guchuko plushies are available. Until then, there’s this.

Anime for grown-ups

lycorisshingu.jpg

Lycoris radiata

I’ve watched Shingu twice now, and it was as good the second time as the first, even though I knew all the twists. But I’m as puzzled as ever by the great mystery of Shingu: why has the series never received the attention it deserves? There has to be a reason beyond the lame opening. (The following is mildly spoilerish.)

Continue reading “Anime for grown-ups”

Gripe, gripe, gripe

• The third most annoying detail of Shingu, after the opening and closing: the sub consistently uses “I could care less” when a character means the opposite.

• The greatest weakness of digital photography is that it is too easy. Back in ancient times, i.e., five years ago, after shooting a roll of film, I’d either have to develop the film myself or drop it off at the lab. Then I’d scan the prints and spend several minutes on each image cleaning up the scan and tweaking the curves before cropping and resizing it for the web. While not a difficult process, it was laborious enough that I selected only the best or most interesting images for my websites. ((It’s amazing how complicated photography used to be, and how much good work was done in spite of the difficulties. In the 19th century, Matthew Brady and Timothy O’Sullivan worked on battlefields and in the wilderness with portable darkrooms to develop their glass negatives. The most elaborate large-format projects I’ve ever done are trivial in comparison.))

Nowadays, it is possible to take five hundred or a thousand pictures in an afternoon and upload them all, unedited, to a photo-sharing site in the evening. Too many kids with cameras do just that when they attend conventions. I like to see pictures of well-made costumes, but I don’t have the patience to plow through hundreds of mediocre images, fifteen to a slow-loading page.

• I hate MKV. About half the time I can play a Matroska video with one of the versions of VLC that runs on my ancient Mac, ((The most recent versions don’t work on my setup because of a conflict with Quicktime)) but even then the subtitles are often screwed up and the video is jerky. (H264 doesn’t do me a damn bit of good, either.) Someone has finally subtitled the third and fourth episodes of Oh! Edo Rocket, and I can’t watch them. Grrr. (Maybe I can see them during lunch at work tomorrow.) ((Don’t tell me to get MPlayer. I’ve tried installing it several times, but I’ve never been able to get it to work.))

• I dread all nifty new video software. That elegant new codec may work beautifully on a brand-new machine running Windows or Linux, but it chokes my old Mac (which I can’t afford to upgrade at this time). ((Even if the codec does work on my Mac, the people encoding the fansub need to know what they’re doing, too. While I can watch the first episode of Master of Epic easily with either VLC or Quicktime, the second works only in Quicktime for me. To watch the third at home, I have to run VLC and Quicktime simultaneously, the former for the sound, the latter for the video.)) Memo to fansubbers: I don’t need high definition. XviD avi files 640 pixels wide are fine, and there is nothing wrong with a hard sub.

Update: I really hate MKV:

mkv.jpg

Exceedingly random notes

I’ve watched very little anime recently, mainly because I’ve been playing with my new toy. It’s as much computer as camera, and learning everything it’s capable of is a major project. (Not that it’s hard to use — put it on “auto” and it is a superior point-and-shoot.) I’ve been posting some of the pictures on my other weblog, starting with “90/365.”

*****

The third episode of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei doesn’t begin with an attempted suicide, which is a bad omen for this black-humored satire. This week’s flakes are a blonde with a dual personality and an illegal immigrant. Unfortunately, Itoshiki disappears in the last third of the show, and Kafuka doesn’t have the same chemistry with obsessive-compulsive Chiri as she does with Mr. Despair. While tasteless humor is to be expected in this sort of show, some of the gags cross the line, notably a brief allusion to pedophilia. Although SZS remains the least unfunny of the current comedies that I’ve seen (Oh! Edo Rocket is something more), I’m still underwhelmed. I watched it a second time, pausing to read all the graffiti on the blackboard, and it wasn’t worth the effort.

Otherwise, I’ve been rewatching Shingu. I’m half-way through and, once again, I’m in no hurry to finish it. I may make some time this week to get caught up with Denno Coil; four new episodes were posted in the last three days, after a three-week dry spell. I may also take a look at Mononoke.

*****

A couple of weblogs that might be worth keeping track of:

FictionJunction J-music — Julien writes about and posts samples of anime soundtracks and other Japanese music.

Japanese words of anime fans … — Discussion of Japanese terms of interest to anime viewers. Many of the words I would prefer not to learn, but it is a potentially useful site nevertheless. (Via Wabi Sabi and Nick.)

*****

Sailor Moon remains a constant menace. Usagi Tsukino and her cohorts currently pose two fresh threats. First, there is a “Sailor Moon” game in development for the Wii. Fortunately for the West, it will probably be region-restricted to Japan. And if that isn’t frightening enough, Usagi herself is poised to strike Japan as a major typhoon:

tsusagi.png

I hope Ken is packing an umbrella.

Varia

If you see a “Tancos” in the comments at Chizumatic or other mee.nu weblogs, that’s me. There already is a “don” registered at mee.nu, so I’m using my Martian Hungarian alter-ego. I registered mainly so I can comment on the weblogs that require it, but as a consequence, I now have a mee.nu site of my own. I probably won’t post there often.

(Incidentally, the post editor doesn’t work in Safari (Macintosh OS 10.3.9). It works fine in Firefox, fortunately.)

*****

Wonderduck recently posted a quiz in which the viewer is challenged to identify Kyoto Animation characters by their eyes. If you find it easy, you might want to try this and this, which draw from all of anime. Good luck.

*****

More reviews of Shingu: Civilis and Jeff Lawson. I watched the first disc of Stellvia some months back and couldn’t decide whether to watch the rest. Maybe I will, after all.

Moving pictures

I’ve started yet another weblog. This one is exclusively for posting videos. YouTube is handy, but the quality is lousy. I’d like to show things I find interesting at larger sizes and higher resolution. So far, all that’s there is the opening of Denno Coil, which is one of the better examples from recent series.

For those interested in the technical stuff: The Flash player is WP-FLV, which is based on the JW FLV Player.

Update: Getting the quality I want is going to take some work. (Is it even possible to make a .flv file that isn’t jerky?) In the meantime, you can download a higher-quality Quicktime file here (12 megabyes).