Find the regret

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This would ordinarily go on my other weblog, but the subject matter of “Zashiki Warashi,” the first arc of the current anime Mononoke ((Not to be confused with Mononoke Hime, or Princess Mononoke)), might make it of interest to some of my readers here. Set in Edo-period Japan, the story deals with a desperate, pregnant young woman seeking shelter at a crowded inn, and the the room she is eventually shown to by the inn’s owner. The inn was earlier a brothel, and the room has a grim history. The story involves masters taking advantage of servants, prostitution and abortion, and the spirits of unborn children figure prominently in it. Precisely what does happen in the second half is hard to tell — the storytelling and the art are highly sylized, both draw on Buddhist mythology, and much is shown symbolically rather than literally — but it is a horror story with considerable power nevertheless. (Detailed and spoiler-laden discussions of these two episodes can be found here and here.)

101/365

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Wichita rocket. This was originally the ascending portion of a playground slide, but for liability reasons the city fathers dismantled it and closed it up.

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:

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Form, truth and regret

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I will withhold comments on the merits of Mononoke until I’ve watched a few more episodes and have seen whether the payoff of the horror story is worth the buildup. Instead, here are some screen captures illustrating the novelties of this moving wood-block print. Note the off-center and unbalanced compositions, eccentric angles and busy detail contrasting with empty space.

Update: Wabi Sabi has a weblog devoted to Mononoke. (Beware of spoilers.)

Continue reading “Form, truth and regret”

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:

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I hope Ken is packing an umbrella.

94/365

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This is three different exposures combined in Photomatix to produce an image with detail throughout its dynamic range. (I’m using the software in the demo mode, hence the watermarks.) The effect is analogous to a zone-system contraction, but here the camera and computer do all the calculations, not the photographer, and it works for color. You can perform similar stunts with recent editions of Photoshop (see the pictures of the cathedral from Wednesday), but the full version of Photoshop is expensive, and I’m considering Photomatix for use at home.

One of the three originals is below the fold for comparison. It’s the middle of the three exposures.

Continue reading “94/365”