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.

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

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

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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.)

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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.)

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

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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

Aboard the fabulous Flying Pussyfoot

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While waiting for Ghost Hound and Moyashimon, I’ve been watching Baccano! Four episodes in I’m beginning to get some idea of the story. The series could be first-rate, or it could be a massive trainwreck (in more than one sense). We’ll see.

It’s set in Prohibition-era America. The characters cover a wide ethnic range — can you name any other anime featuring a Czeslaw? — though quasi-Italian names predominate. A lot of them are mobsters from the Mafia and the Camorra. Many, if not most of them, are immortal. You can shoot them full of bullets and cut them up, but in a little while the blood oozes back into the bodies, severed fingers and heads reattach themselves, and wounds magically heal without a trace. Some of them are pretty nasty — one is a outright psychopath who favors white suits because splatters of blood show up so brightly. Others seem nice enough.

The story focuses on the events on the train the Flying Pussyfoot ((Originally the Grand Punk Railroad, if I’m interpreting the book titles correctly.)) between Chicago and New York. Something is hidden on the train, perhaps a couple of bottles of immortality elixer, perhaps a bomb. The passengers include many mobsters and many immortals. There are also Isaac and Miria (the former played by Masaya Onosaka at his most clownish), a pair of enthusiastic nitwits to complicate the already complex proceedings. Bloody hijinks ensue.

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Ordinarily a show this violent wouldn’t interest me, and if the narrative were presented in straightforward fashion I would have quit after the first episode. Baccano!‘s novelty is that the story is is told in bits and pieces, skipping backward and forward in the years from 1930 to 1932. Following the plot is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. Even if the series is ultimately disappointing, there is still the pleasure of fitting the pieces together.

The story might be worthwhile. Baccano! is based on a series of light novels, and that is often a good sign. The main problem, aside from the level of violence, is that we never spend much time with any one character. Thus far, most are one-dimensional, though a few of the quieter ones hint at some complexity.

I doubt that Baccano! will ever have much of a following. It expects the viewer to pay close attention and remember what he sees, and some of it is brutal — when I rewatch the series, there are several sections I’ll skip. Still, on the basis of the first four episides, I’d rate it the second-best series from the summer that I’ve sampled, after Mononoke.

The Wikipedia page focuses more on the novels than the anime, but it does have a list of characters that might be helpful to keep on hand while watching. There are no serious spoilers there yet, though that might change.

Approaching Lake Turpitude

I’m sitting on top of the parliament building, resisting tear-gas attacks from air force helicopters that circle above me like flies. I will soon enjoy my very last cigarette, my last show of resistance. My comrade, the painter Kusakabe, fell to his death just moments ago, leaving me alone as the last smoker remaining on earth. At this very moment, images of me — highlighted against the night sky by searchlights down below — are probably being relayed live across the country from TV cameras inside the helicopters.

I’ve got three packs left, and I refuse to die before I’ve finished them. So I’ve been chain-smoking two or three at a time. My head feels numb, my eyes are starting to spin. It’s only a matter of time before I, too, fall lifeless to the ground below.

It was only about fifteen or sixteen years ago that the anti-smoking movement started….

And so begins “The Last Smoker,” one of the stories in Yasutaka Tsutsui’s Salmonella Men on Planet Porno and Other Stories. The story chronicles the growth and ultimate triumph of the anti-smoking movement from the point of view of a chain-smoking writer. Desperate though his plight is in the opening paragraphs, an even more dire fate awaits him.

I first became aware of Tsutsui while reading about Satoshi Kon’s Paprika, which is based on one of Tsutsui’s novels. Paprika was ultimately disappointing — spectacular though much of it is, the whole is less than the sum of its parts — but the premise, more fully developed in a book, could be interesting. Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, a better movie, is a sequel of sorts to another of Tsutsui’s novels. I was curious about him, so I checked Amazon.com to see what was available. Although he is called Japan’s Isaac Asimov, little has been translated into English. There’s a series of Telepathic Wanderer manga, an out-of-print collection of “psychic tales” and Salmonella Men. ((Checking Amazon.com just now, I discovered that there is a newly translated Tsutsui book out, Hell.))

Tsutsui’s stories aren’t much like Asimov’s. In “Rumors About Me,” the narrator finds that his daily activities are the subjects of newscasts and televised panel discussions and are written up in newspapers. In “Don’t Laugh,” an inventor devises a time machine and can’t stop laughing. In “Hello, Hello, Hello!” a self-apppointed financial advisor exhorts the inhabitants of a block of apartments to greater frugality, emerging without warning from the next room, the wardrobe or the toilet to confront the narrator before he wastes any more money. In general, there is little extrapolation and plenty of absurdity. Tsutsui is primarily a satirist in this collection.

The title story is the closest approach to conventional science fiction. Explorers journey at great personal risk through the unnatural hazards of Planet Porno, where “only indecent life forms are allowed to exist.” There is considerable discussion between the narrator and the prudish Dr. Mogamigawa about evolution and devolution. During the Second Green Revolution, we learn, the “obnoxious hippies” were herded onto spaceships and banished from Earth. Perhaps their descendents live in the settlement of Newdopia.

Some of the stories are better than others. The least interesting to me is “Bravo Herr Mozart!”, a nonsensical biography of the composer: “Mozart was born at the age of three. The reason for this is not known. He was born in his father’s house in Salzburg — probably because he didn’t have a mother.” Etc. YMMV. There are several others I’m not likely to revisit. Most, however, are quite readable.

It should be clear by now that Salmonella Men is not the least bit like TokiKake, and that however dark Paprika might be, Tsutsui’s writing is darker. It’s also funnier, with absurdities, slapstick and surprise endings. If you enjoy satire and black humor, Salmonella Men on Planet Porno might be worth your time.

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I’m pleased see that The Kawaii Menace is now included at Anime Nano. I’m also a bit embarrassed that my first post listed there had nothing to do with anime, and that this one is only tangentially anime-related.

Lesser magics

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At the center of Mokke is a pair of sisters. The older one, Shizuru, sees “things a normal human can’t see,” and the younger one, Mizuki, is susceptible to possession by those things. For reasons that will probably be explained later in the series, they left their parents to start a new life with their grandparents in rural Japan. Their grandfather is knowlegeable about those things that Shizuru sees, and he sternly lectures her on what she needs to do to protect Mizuki.

Mokke is a show of modest virtues. It’s a rather cheap-looking production, but there’s otherwise nothing really wrong with it, and I expect that it will be a tolerable kid’s show. The characters are non-neurotic and likeable and the premise has possibilities. Although it looks to be a series of horror stories, it’s not so intense as to give children nightmares (if the first episode is representative).

Shizuru and her impulsive little sister remind me of Yasako and Kyoko from Denno Coil, and the monster in the first episode initially resembles the “illegal” from the first episodes of DC. Shizuru’s ability to see the unseen also suggests parallels to Mushishi. And that is the problem with Mokke. Denno Coil and Mushishi are possibly the two best series since Haibane Renmei. Mokke isn’t bad, but it withers in comparison.

One point in Mokke’s favor: the artists actually know something about botany. The flowers in the picture of Mizuki above are clearly fireweed (Epilobium). During the episode, Mizuki searches for the “seven flowers of autumn,” and they’re recognizably drawn (though I’d quibble with one of the identifications).

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I’ll give Rental Magica another chance before I abandon it. It’s about the dog-eat-dog (or monster-eat-monster) world of the rent-a-mage business. This is anime, so most of the mages are high school students. The first half of the first episode introduces a large cast of characters, none of them memorable. There’s a lot of action, but nothing really interesting happens.

In the second half, however, there is a story worth telling about a girl whose grandfather disappeared. If subsequent episodes concentrate on storytelling rather than action and seifuku, this could be a good show.

Shinsen Subs deserves special recognition for annotations beyond the call of duty, or tact.

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This is a proper flying broom:

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Maybe Ghost Hound will be good. There’s also a show about kawaii bacteria. And that’s about all that looks intereresting this fall.

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My interest in watching any version of Gundam is precisely zero. Nevertheless, the most recent iteration provided the occasion for an interesting thread at Chizumatic.