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.)

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:

Ayako & SubDESU
Ayako & SubDESU

Team Zebraman:

Team Zebraman
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.

Continue reading “Forest wars”

Eldritch prose

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

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.

Miscellaneous silliness

Miyazaki meets Groening.

Schrödinger’s Kitty.

“Nothing says ‘My Country, Long May She Wave’ more clearly than wrapping the American flag around the shapely hips and intimate parts of an Amazonian Princess, preferably with the American eagle grasping yet caressing her firm, large, shapely organs of matriarchy.”

“Well, Then, Maybe Now Is the Time“

Call for nominations

It looks like Light Yagami is the best villain in the history of anime, at least for this week, with Gendo Ikari as a distant runner-up. So, let’s get started on the next poll. Which do you think is the best anime opening? Which exhibits the most creative combination of good music and imagery and is appropriate to its series? Here are some possiblities:

Azumanga Daioh
Baccano!
Cowboy Bebop
Haibane Renmei
Lucky Star
Noir
Paranoia Agent
Ramen Fighter Miki
Serial Experiments Lain

What else? Post your nominations in the comments, if possible with YouTube links.

Notes in passing

Here’s a list of “20 Must-See Movies to Share with Your Kids.” There are some significant omissions. (And some questionable inclusions: e.g., the entire Disney 2D animation catalogue? Even in their glory days there were plenty of klunkers. And I’m sorry, Julie Andrews might have sung nicely, but even as a youngster I resented what Walt Disney did to Mary Poppins.)

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I see that there is going to be more To Love-Ru anime. Why?

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In case I have any readers here in Wichita: next week I plan to spend some time at Anime Festival Wichita. Look for a large, hairy non-cosplayer behind a camera.

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Iceland has been in the news a lot recently. It’s worth noting that Japan also has more than its share of entertaining geology. Sakurajima, for instance, has been putting on quite a show for decades.

This is an exciting time for geologists, by the way. African is splitting in two, and there will soon (i.e., in about 10 million years) be a new ocean where the rift zone is now. (Via Darwin.)

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I’m pleased that Funimation has rescued the ABe animes. Serial Experiments Lain is essential viewing for anyone with the slightest interest in cyberpunk, and everyone should see Haibane Renmei at least once during his lifetime. (Texhnolyze has been sitting on my shelf unwatched for over a year now. I’ll get around to it eventually.)

I’m also pleased to learn that I will finally be able to see the rest of Revolutionary Girl Utena. I just spent several minutes trying to think of any anime as strange as the first arc of Utena. Let’s see …. There’s Cat Soup, though that kinda, sorta makes sense; maybe Angel’s Egg; Mind Game; perhaps Yuasa’s other works — and that’s about it.

More Zhzhh

Exceedingly miscellaneous links and videos.

Via Jonathan T., Jonathan C. on “adapting” anime for western viewers.

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From kowai to kawaii: the Queen of Night’s aria, sung by Hatsune Miku:

Update: This aria (but not this particular “performance”) has been voted one of the top ten arias of all time. (Via Steven R.)

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Mono no aware: Steven Greydanus on the trailer for Tales of Earthsea:

Here is a mainstream Japanese animated film with a trailer that has an evocative, haunting power that eludes virtually the whole of American animation—and that’s just the trailer. And it’s not just American animation either, but pretty much the whole Hollywood machine. What was the last Hollywood box-office blockbuster that made you think of beauty, loss, longing and mystery? (Yes, other than The Lord of the Rings.)

Whether this particular film turns out to be good or not, it’s part of a cinematic culture that aims at, and sometimes achieves, something that isn’t even on the radar in Hollywood. This trailer reminds me of how I felt during the first five minutes of Howl’s Moving Castle, even though the film ultimately turned out to be a disappointment: Just the promise of the first five minutes, even a promise unfulfilled, was worth more than some American animation studios have delivered in whole films if not their entire outputs.

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American mecha: spiders for now, but eventually they’ll get to Gundams and EVAs (via the Borderline Sociopath):

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The Lelouch Lamperouge Picture Show: Is there such a thing as “anime camp”?

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I suppose it’s not that surprising that there is a large fanfiction community devoted to Ranma 1/2-Sailor Moon crossovers. Still, I did not expect to find a Sailor Ranko webcomic.