Another panorama, this time from near the altar. If you look carefully, you’ll see an instance of bilocation.
Blame the ducks
Specifically, GreyDuck and Wonderduck.
1. If you’d like to play along, reply to this post and I’ll assign you a letter.
2. You then list (and upload or link to the video, if you feel like it) 5 songs that start with that letter.
3. Then, as I’m doing here, you’ll post the list to your journal with the instructions.
So here are five tunes in the key of H. I’ll skip the obvious ones — you all know “Highway Star” and “Hardware Store,” right? And “Harold the Barrel” and “Happy Jack”? These you might not have heard before.
Ghost Hound was a major disappointment. I expected so much more from the Lain veterans. But the opening did introduce me to singer Mayumi Kojima. ((Some of her recent recordings can be found at amazon.com, but they don’t show her at her best.))
Mayumi Kojima, “Himawari”
The Webb Wilder Credo: “Work hard, rock hard, eat hard, sleep hard, grow big, wear glasses if you need ’em.”
Webb Wilder, “Human Cannonball”
Here are John Jorgenson, Will Ray and Jerry Donohue, and lots of guitar.
The Hellecasters, “Highlander Boogie”
To clear your ears, here is some finger-picking from a Winfield veteran.
Pete Huttlinger, “Hortensia”
Let’s finish up with a classic anatidian tune.
Raymond Scott, “Huckleberry Duck”
Here’s a more recent recording by David Bagsby and Kurt Rongey, alias “XEN.”
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Bonus H tune: What show does this come from?
Want to play? Leave a note in the comments, and I’ll give you a letter.
New poll
Which anime has the best opening? I ended up with over 30 candidates, so I’m going to do this in two rounds. In the current one, you can vote for up to three openings. The ten with the most votes will advance to the final round.
I found videos for most, but there were a couple that eluded me. If the openings to Dennou Coil and season one of Hare & Guu exist somewhere on the web, please send me the links. It will save me the trouble of extracting them myself. Update: I have Dennou Coil up now, but I still need Hare & Guu.
If there is an opening missing that you feel absolutely must be in the poll, please make a note of it in the comments and include a Youtube link. Maybe — maybe — I can add it.
Please note that not all these openings are “family-friendly.” I put a couple that might be problematic inside spoilers.
Boo, hiss
Light Yagami is the best villain in anime, with more than twice the votes of his nearest competition, Johan. Sephiroth came in third and Gendo Ikari fourth. There’s a three-way tie for fifth place between Knives, Lord Genome and Vicious. Ladd Russo and Beatrice tied for eighth, and Lord Shishio and Orochimaru tied for tenth. Other candidates receiving votes were Lust, Diva, Vegeta, Char Asnable, Yomi Isayama, Friagne, Millennium Earl, Leader Desslok, King Hamdo, Joker, Cell, Queen Beryl, Frieza and Piccolo Daimao.
There’s a new poll up.
Memo to Funimation
I had been planning to purchase the the first few discs of Soul Eater when my budget permits. However, if you force me to endure the preview of the SE dub every time I watch an episode of Baccano!, I might change my mind. ((Yes, I know ways around this, but it’s still inexcusable. Also, every time I see the unskippable antipiracy notice, I feel a sudden strange urge to make illegal copies of every DVD I own.))
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I don’t know which is more depressing: the number I don’t recognize, or the number that I do.
(Via Anime Raku.)
Update: Raiga in the comments links to a spreadsheet with explanations.
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Naming your kids after anime characters is a dumb idea, but it’s no worse than calling them “Jimi Hendrix” and “Janis Joplin,” as did one erstwhile neighbor.
Pixar versus Dreamworks
(Via Steven Greydanus.)
Explosive action
Nothing worth watching on television? Eyjafjallajökull not doing much these days on the rare occasions when it’s not hidden by clouds? Take a look through the Sakura-jima webcam. When the weather is clear, you probably won’t need to wait long to see a nice column of ash burst out of the crater. Sakura-jima has been almost continuously active since 1955.
You can control the camera, by the way. Click on the box with crosshairs at the bottom right of the viewer and wait for the countdown to end. The bar to the right of the picture controls the zoom, and the little box under the picture controls where the camera points.
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A different sort of video: Arthur C. Clarke, Benoit Mandelbrot and the Mandelbrot set, with a soundtrack by David Gilmour. (Via Steven Riddle.)
Beyond the extremes
It’s been a bit warm here in Kansas, though not as warm as Oklahoma. However, it’s a tad chilly in California.
Holiday shopping
If you’re planning to corrupt youthful acquaintances with anime this Christmas, you might want to check out the current weekly specials at RightStuf. Among the drivel and trash are such things as the complete sets of Bottle Fairy and Mao-chan, each for $15, both suitable for all ages (but keep them away from jackass anime critics). For school-age and older, there’s Petite Princess Yucie for $26. The outstanding bargain is the complete collection of Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit for $20. Moribito was the third-best show of the banner year 2007 ((Second-best was Oh! Edo Rocket, due out soon from Funimation. The best was Dennou Coil, which remains unlicensed.)) and I can recommend it unreservedly for all grade-school age and older. The protagonist, Balsa, was my choice for the outstanding anime babe of all time.
50 books
I came across yet another list of the “100 science fiction books everyone should read.” Like every other one I’ve seen, it’s an arbitrary selection and not at all what I would have chosen (though it does earn a point for mentioning The Fifth Head of Cerberus.) Rather than reprint that list here with the usual “bold what you’ve read,” I instead compiled my own. It’s half the length of the other and perhaps just as arbitrary, but I daresay it’s better reading.
A lot of writers you might have expected are missing. In some cases it’s because I haven’t read them yet, but usually it’s deliberate. For instance, I have no desire to re-read anything by Isaac Asimov no matter how historically important he may be, so why include The Foundation Trilogy? (And I think John Sladek is more reliable on the Three Laws of Robish, anyway.)
There are a lot of short story collections mentioned. Partly it’s because I like short stories, but mainly it’s because many writers are better at shorter lengths.
I could easily have made a valid list using just the works of Wolfe, Wells, Lafferty and Dick, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the obsessive.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: the Original Radio Scripts
J.G. Ballard, Chronopolis
Greg Benford, Timescape
Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination, Starburst
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Algis Budrys, Rogue Moon
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End
Samuel Delany, Driftglass
Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle, The Preserving Machine, or any other of his better novels or short story collections
Thomas M. Disch, Fun with Your New Head, Camp Concentration
William Gibson, Neuromancer
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Diana Wynne Jones, A Tale of Time City
C.M. Kornbluth, The Best of C.M. Kornbluth
Frederick Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth, The Space Merchants
Henry Kuttner, The Best of Henry Kuttner
R.A. Lafferty, Nine Hundred Grandmothers, or any other collection of his short stories ((If you need evidence that there is something fundamentally wrong with the publishing industry, note that The Collected Stories of R.A. Lafferty still doesn’t exist.))
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris, The Cyberiad
Barry Malzberg, The Best of Barry N. Malzberg, or whatever else you can find ((It is not required to read a lot of Malzberg; a brief glimpse of his universe will suffice for most readers.))
Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Liebowitz
George Orwell, 1984
Frederick Pohl, The Best of Frederick Pohl
Rudy Rucker, Master of Space and Time, or any collection with Harry Gerber stories
Joanna Russ, The Adventures of Alyx, And Chaos Died
Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow
Robert Sheckley, Dimension of Miracles, or any collection of his short stories
Keiichi Sigsawa, Kino no Tabi ((Good luck finding this one. The contract to publish the Kino stories in English fell through shortly after the first volume was printed. You can get a taste of Sigsawa’s work by watching the animated series Kino’s Journey, which heads my short list of anime for people who think they hate anime.))
John Sladek, Tik-Tok, Mechasm
Cordwainer Smith, The Rediscovery of Man
Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker
Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
William Tenn, Immodest Proposals, or any other collection of his short stories
James Tiptree, Jr., Ten Thousand Light Years from Home, or any other collection of her short stories
Yasutaka Tsutsui, Salmonella Men on Planet Porno
Jack Vance, The Dying Earth
Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
Ian Watson, The Very Slow Time Machine, or any of his early novels
H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau
Gene Wolfe, The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories and Other Stories, The Book of the New Sun
John C. Wright, The Golden Age trilogy
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Let’s play
Steven declared that he couldn’t stop laughing after the second episode of Asobi ni Iku Yo (spoilers), so I checked it out. There’s more fan service than I like, and it’s a bit too off-color to generally recommend, but otherwise it’s been fun. It looks like the story is will be pleasantly convoluted, with nearly every character representing various competing secret organizations, and I’m certainly not going to object if one of the central characters is a sweet, playful and competent catgirl.
If the series gets stupid or devolves into mere fanservice, I’ll drop it. However, this is one of the very few recent shows that have caught my interest, and I have hopes that the crew can maintain a high level of complicated absurdity through the remaining eleven episodes.
How much sense Asobi ni Iku Yo ultimately makes might depend on the translators. Compare these two versions of a moment in the second episode. Eris, the adolescent fantasy alien catgirl, is speaking to her human captor, who has the scent of dog on him.
Ayako & SubDESU:
Team Zebraman:
Update: Here’s the clip in question. Would someone who understands Japanese please explain what exactly Eris says?
[flowplayer src=’http://tancos.net/flv/wp-content/uploads/Asobi_ni_Iku_Yo!-clip.mp4′ width=600 height=340]
The previews for the third episode suggest that the Ayako/SubDESU version is more accurate. Note the entity in the lower right corner of this screen capture:
A thought: so far, no weapon has presented any real threat to Eris. What would happen if an enemy were to roll a ball of yarn in front of her at a critical moment?
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Steven also enjoyed Battle Programmer SHIRASE. Unfortunately, scarywater.net is defunct, and many older torrents are no longer available. Grr.
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Want a catgirl of your own? Visit the catgirl generator:
This brave catgirl has slitted, red eyes. She has neck-length, luxurious, curly, brown hair worn in an impractacal style. Her skin is pale, and she has brown fur with orange patches on her ears and tail. She has a voluptuous build. Her ears are alert. Her fashion preferences are best described as “as little as possible.” When she talks, she tends to use a lot of big words – and know exactly what they mean. (sic)
You can find many more generators here and here. (Does the world really need a “Bishotron“?)
Forest wars
The first half of Osamu Tezuka’s Legend of the Forest is a history of animation. It begins with static sketches of a forest, with squirrels, birds, trees with faces, and a brute with a chainsaw. After a glimpse of a zoetrope, the detailed drawings are succeeded by very primitive animation. Gradually, the art becomes more sophisticated, wth homages to Winsor McCay and Walt Disney. At about the half-way point the film goes from black-and-white to color, and soon thereafter it completes its evolution to Tezuka-style art and animation.
Unfortunately, the man-versus-nature story is not as interesting as the art history. Tezuka has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. I’m not going to bother summarizing it — you can glean the essentials from the screen captures below. The soundtrack is Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony. It was not an ideal choice; sometimes it works with the animation, sometimes against it (and I’m not much of a Tchaikovsky fan anyway). Legend of the Forest is from 1987, 25 years after Tales of the Street Corner, but the earlier film was more deft.
Heavy-handed though Legend of the Forest is, it is still worth seeing for the art. However, the pieces on The Astonishing Work of Tezuka Osamu that I am likely to rewatch are the satirical and whimsical cartoons, such as “Memory,” “The Genesis” and “Jumping.” The 6:22 of the last are sufficient reason to recommend the DVD to anyone interested in the history of anime.
More on Tezuka here.
Sunflowers
One groups of plants I particularly like are those that grow like weeds, but aren’t, such as the sunflowers I planted this spring, which are now taller than I am.
Three pictures
Eldritch prose
Depending on which sample of text I use, I also write like Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown (ugh), Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, Chuck Palahnuik, Isaac Asimov, Daniel Defoe, Margaret Atwood, Vladimir Nabokov, George Orwell, Oscar Wilde or James Joyce. But not R.A. Lafferty or Flann O’Brien. Oh well, nobody else can really write like them, either.
Actually, when I read my writing, it just sounds like me.
Update: A bit of background about that site.
Anime Festival Wichita in four minutes
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