Category: Whatever

Miscellany

A “zombie brand” is “a dead or dormant brand that have been revived or trotted out for second or third chances.” Anime has its share. I recently watched a soporific new Ah! My Goddess OVA, and I’m sure we haven’t seen the last Tenchi Muyo spinoff. What are other zombie anime?

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Yet another volcano in Kyushu is acting up. The Nakadake crater in the Aso caldera has been producing small plumes of ash and steam, and incandescence is visible on some webcams at night. Aso is the third volcano on the island to erupt this year. Shinmoedake/Kirishima put on quite a show back in January, and Sakura-jima has been puffing away since 1955. There are webcams here and here. Aso is currently tenth from the bottom in the box at right at the latter link. (Starting at the bottom and counting up by twos will give you a tour of some of the more active volcanoes in the south of Japan: Suwanose-jima, Satsuma-iwo-jima, Sakura-jima, Kirishima, Aso.)

Today, by the way, is the 31st anniversary of the VEI 5 blast at the American Fujiyama.

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Here’s a different, practical approach to cosplay: superhero styles as everyday street wear. (Via Project Rooftop.)

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Hobbes and Bacon.

(Via Pixy.)

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Time travel is not merely impossible. In China, it’s illegal.

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Romance novel covers, improved.

Sicilian fireworks

Viewing hasn’t been good for Sakurajima and its neighbors lately, and with a tropical storm passing by, it isn’t likely to improve in the immediate future. However, visibility is considerably better in Sicily, where Mt. Etna is currently displaying “modest” but pretty Strombolian activity. There’s a good chance we might see some nice lava fountains tonight as the eruption intensifies. You can watch the show here.

Update: a couple more cameras with good views: here (camera #6) and here.

Update II: The show’s over for now. Here’s a video of the eruption.

Update III: Another video:

Quote of the week

At around age 6 while living in Korea, I somehow came to have a spiffy catalog from America that listed all Fisher-Price toys that were available for mail-order. The catalog had all these incredible toys that neither I nor any of my friends have ever seen. I read that catalog so many times, imagining playing with those toys, until the catalog eventually disintegrated in my hands one day.

The catalog was the book that confirmed to me — who was six, mind you — that America must be the best and the greatest country in the world. Later when I came to America, my faith was validated.

(Via .clue.)

Magical girl theory

(Manga Kyubey from here.)

Possibly useful for those obsessive about Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica: the “Puella Magi” Wiki. ((Grrr.)) Among other things, it include notes on the “middle school” mathematics and Mitakihara architecture.

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The last word on Fractale:

This series really would have stood out had there not been a Madoka Mahou Shoujo Zombie Level E Wandering Son Fantastic Yumekui Midriff series occurring at the exact same time.

Quote of the week

If magical girls don’t breed true, than it would be pointless to try to domesticate them

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A few miscellaneous links:

Cute little computer viruses.

H.P. Lovecraft’s favorite words. I expected “eldritch” to score higher.

The 2011 edition of the Arts and Faith Top 100 films of all time includes three anime: Spirited Away, Grave of the Fireflies and Paprika.

Things are heating up in Hawaii. (Webcam here.)

Historical forces

Numerous bloggers are writing about the histories of their interest in anime. I did that myself a few years ago. The next year, I wrote about becoming increasingly burnt-out. Since then, my interest has waxed and waned. I’m currently relatively enthusiastic, largely because Madoka is potentially a classic. However, I don’t think I will ever again be as absorbed in the form as I was in the days of Haruhi and Haruhi and Yuko and Yuko.

Hot times in the islands


Suwanose-jima in the Ryukyu islands south of Kyushu is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. There’s a webcam on the island (the last listing in the box to the right), but usually it’s impossible to make out anything beyond a small orange glow just below the center of the image. This morning, however, visibility is was briefly good.

Incidentally, Sakura-jima, jealous of all the attention that Shinmoe-dake/Kirishima has received, has ramped up its activity. There’s a good chance you won’t have to wait long to see a substantial vulcanian eruption on a webcam during daylight hours, and if you’re lucky, you might catch some incandescence at night. ((For a better nightime view, try the fourth listing from the bottom of the right-hand box here.))

Update (2/28/11): After a week of good viewing, the camera image is back to the usual murk. I’d like to send someone there with a bottle of Windex.

Update II: And now the camera is gone.

Pausing for a moment

Life has been insanely busy, and I don’t know when I’ll have time to catch up with Zombie and Level E or collect my thoughts about Madoka. Until then, here are a couple of links.

Jonathan Tappan writes about Buddhism, particularly as it figures in anime.

Don’t ever let anyone try to embarrass you because of your taste for anime. Whatever you’re watching, it isn’t as pointless as the movie eat, pray, love:

This is an alien story told in an alien language with alien grammar of an alien culture of which I know little and understand less.

(Via Professor Mondo.)

Bonus link: TWWK takes a brief look at Shusaku Endo’s Silence.

New horizons in evangelization

Toro Benten, goddess of art, wisdom and absolute territory. Note the cute little fang.
Toro Benten, goddess of art, wisdom and absolute territory. Note the cute little fang.

How do you entice youngsters to visit places of worship? If you are the chief monk of a Japanese Buddhist temple, you embrace anime/manga culture, with anime-style statues of a Japanese deity, cosplaying temple maidens, J-pop tunes and videos, decorated vans and a maid café. Somehow, I don’t think this is likely to catch on in the Catholic Diocese of Wichita.

(Via Beneath the Tangles.)

Addendum: On a related note, Ken the Brickmuppet visited a certain Shinto shrine last summer.

New Year’s Day miscellany

A couple of timely poems by Kobyashi Issa, via another Steven:

New Year’s Day

New Year’s Day–
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.

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New Year’s Morning

New Year’s morning:
the ducks on the pond
quack and quack.

If you need New Year’s resolutions, Dr. Boli has some for you. (Years ago I resolved to make no more New Year’s resolutions. It’s the only one I ever kept.)

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I haven’t watched enough anime this year to warrant a year’s end summary. Instead, I’ll refer you to DiGiKerot’s. (I fully concur with his award for Katanagatari. Learn to use spoiler tags, folks, and don’t describe plot twists in the first few sentences of your posts.)

Grades for the 2010 shows that I watched more than two episodes of:

Asobi ni Iku Yo — C+ (B+ for the story and characters, minus a letter-grade for excessive fanservice.)
Katanagari — A
Kuragehime — Incomplete (A, if the second season that had better be in the works is as good as the first; otherwise, B, for too many dangling threads)
Summer Wars — A
The Tatami Galaxy — A

There’s much else I watched part of an episode of, but I have less and less patience for drivel, no matter how popular.

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It’s about time: Steven reports that all of Master of Epic has finally been subtitled, nearly four years after it first aired. I’ve watched the first ten episodes so far (and just downloaded the eleventh). It’s yet another anime adapted from an RPG, but instead of inventing twelve or twenty-six episodes worth of plot and characaters, the makers instead made a sketch comedy out of it, something like a fantasy Saturday Night Live. The skits often fall flat or run on too long, but enough of it works to have sustained my interest over the years.

Update: I finished Master of Epic. It’s not “terrible,” but aside from the “Waragecha Five” segments, too much of it is too lame to recommend. It’s a pity; with better writing, Master of Epic could have been a effective treatment for overexposure to MMORPGs and fantasy worlds.

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Here’s a quick little number puzzle for the new year. What is the next number in the sequence? It’s not 71. What does this sequence represent?

23
27
31
39
43
47
55
59
63

I posted a similar puzzle on my other website a year ago. When is the next time this sort of puzzle will be timely?

Deck us all …

… with Boston Charlie.

(Via John Salmon.)

By this time every year, I’m thoroughly burned-out on the usual Christmas songs, and I suspect that I’m not alone. Here are a couple of offbeat seasonal tunes that might be eccentric enough to be listenable. These are from Masaki Kurihara’s second Yotsuba& album.

“Yuletide Town”

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

“The Day Santa Comes”

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

In other seasonal news, scientists are gradually understanding how Santa does his job. (Via Steven.) Meanwhile, Dr. Boli points out a reason to endure Christmas pageants.

Notes in passing

I visited my family last week. While there, I spent more time watching American teevee shows then than I have in all the previous 30 years. My folks don’t have cable, so the menu was mostly ancient reruns. In my last post, I suggested that early televised anime was not very sophisticated. Well, compared to I Spy, Dororon Enma-kun is a brilliant example of wit, subtlety and charm. I endured about ten minutes of a drearily preachy episode of Dragnet; I can’t think of any anime I’ve ever seen that was half as lame. Of contemporary series, I saw several “CSI” shows, which were slicker than, but not really much better than, The A-Team. The highlight of each evening was Wheel of Fortune, believe it or not, and at least half the time of that was devoted to commercials — the same damned noisy, stupid commercials, over and over and over and over again and again and again.

There was also an awful lot of “news.” I have a low opinion of newspapers, but sometimes they actually do convey information. Televised news is too dumb even to be a joke.

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National Review doesn’t quite know what to make of Hatsune Miku. I gather that there will soon be an English-language version of Miku; this is one of the very few reasons I have ever found to consider working with Windows.

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Here’s a nice piece of Taiwanese animation:

(Via Beneath the Tangles.)

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I don’t have a car, but if I did, this is the “coexist” sticker I would prefer on my bumper:

(Via Dustbury.)

Briefly

Life, always messy, has become even more complicated than usual, and I’m going to be absent from cyberspace for a while. Here are a few quick notes before I disappear.

• For those interested in unlikely crossovers, there’s finally a new page up at Sailor Ranko. How frequently the webcomic will be updated remains to be seen.

• We are living in the golden age of anime right now. If you don’t believe me, watch an episode or two of a recently-exhumed ancient series such as Mahou Tsukai Sally, Yusei Shonen Papi or Dororon Enma-kun (the last concocted by anime’s weird uncle, Go Nagai). Then watch some of the better recent shows such as The Tatami Galaxy or Kuragehime, and note just how far anime has come over the years.

• I’ve been obsessively following the events at Merapi in Indonesia. As major volcanic eruptions go, this is nothing extraordinary — spectacular though it is, it’s little more than a cough compared to Pinatubo in 1991 — but Java is one of the most densely populated islands on the planet, and this time Merapi isn’t following its usual script. The best source of information in English is Erik Klemetti’s Eruptions weblog, including the hundreds of comments.

Update
Continue reading “Briefly”

Fireworks

Recently I’ve been spending more time watching volcanoes than anime. In particular, I’ve been keeping an eye on Java’s Gunung Merapi, which is currently in the middle of a major eruption. (See Eruptions for continuous coverage.) There’s a webcam perilously near the mountain. It’s not always online, and when it is, the lens is likely to be be covered with ash. But when conditions are right, the view is spectacular. (Update: the camera is out of commission again and probably won’t be working again until things cool down. That may be a while, since this is apparently Merapi’s largest eruption in 50 140 years.)

Update: It looks like the view at night is clearer. I’d like to send someone to Java with a bottle of Windex.

Update II: Here are a couple of videos, this one and that one.

Update III: Some very good pictures here. And here.

Update IV: When the camera isn’t working or is covered with ash, you can check the seismographs. Here’s what’s been happening during the past 24 hours:

(For some reason, the preview image looks pale grey or invisible, depending on the browser. Click on it to see it at full size in full color.)