Rangers and ragtime

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Right to left: Nana, Nana, Nana, Nana, Nana, Nana and Nana (Picture via Steven)

I’ve just added Seven of Seven to my buy list (though it will have to wait awhile):

Another thing that’s interesting is that they’re using a lot of Scott Joplin in the soundtrack. I think it works, too. It’s refreshing, and it does tend to support a light feel to the show. Joplin isn’t ponderous and certainly isn’t slow or depressing.

I used to play Joplin half a lifetime ago when my fingers were in shape. Using his music in the soundtrack could backfire, of course. I hated The Sting partly because I disliked Hamlisch’s arrangements. I hope Yoshihisa Hirano uses the original piano scores.

Incidentally, while most of Scott Joplin is lively and cheerful, he did write a few slow pieces, e.g., “Solace,” and some of his later rags, while not depressing, do leave a bitter aftertaste, e.g., “Scott Joplin’s New Rag.”

On Geneon

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My middle shelf, where I keep the top-shelf anime

To put the recent news concerning Geneon in perspective, here are some of the titles on my shelves with a Geneon (or Pioneer) label:

Haibane Renmei
Serial Experiments Lain
Cardcaptor Sakura
Someday’s Dreamers
Sugar, a Tiny Snow Fairy
Paranoia Agent
Ah! My Goddess Movie
Kamichu!
Magical Project S

… not to mention Bottle Fairy, both copies of which I bought I sent to nephews and nieces, and others on my shelves I haven’t watched yet.

That’s three of my personal top five and many more of my favorites. Geneon peddled a lot of crap, but the number of first-rate titles they released more than compensates for the garbage.

I wonder if the “pre-licensed” Seirei no Moribito ever will actually be available in America?

Tuesday morning miscellany

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Cute and silly?

One of the pleasures of Dai Mahou Touge is watching Punie and Paya-tan, her mascot, instantly transform from cutesy and playful to utterly ruthless, and back again. Paya changes seiyuus when he makes the transition. I thought Dark Paya sounded familiar, and I was right; he is voiced by Jouji Nakata, who is Giroro in Keroro Gunsou.

I’m surprised at how little attention DMT has received, despite its being one of the better examples of animated black humor. Once again, if Steven hadn’t spotted it, I’d have missed it. Why has this been ignored, while Dokuro-chan, which you couldn’t pay me to watch, has been endlessly discussed and now has a sequel?

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Not anime, but geeky: U.N. Secretary General or Star Wars character?

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Also not anime but still geeky: A new idea for a first-person shooter.

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And finally, a word from Shunpei:

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Bonus link: Put down the duckie. (Via the LLamas.)

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Update: Congratulations to Avatar.

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I’ve never been able to positively identify this. It’s either an aster or a close relative (my best guess would be a species of Senecio), but there’s nothing quite like it mentioned in any of my books on Kansas wildflowers. This is surprising, because it’s quite common around here. Normally the plants grow two or three feet tall, but if they are in a spot that periodically gets mown, they’ll form a mat an inch or two high, such as the plant pictured.

… kill them all!

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What’s the name of this weblog?

Steven’s recent discovery reminds of the punchline of an old Koren cartoon: (said of a movie) “The sex wasn’t much, but the violence was wonderful.” I don’t have much to add to what Steven says, except to note that there are also four brief omake episodes. Punie takes her friend Tetsuko on a visit to Magic Land. It is indeed the kind of place that Punie would call home. I’ve posted the opening of Dai Mahou Touge on my video weblog.

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*****

Mahou Shoujo Tai Alice, a.k.a. Tweeny Witches, has just been licensed. I watched the first several episodes a year or so ago and wasn’t sure what I thought of it. It certainly has a distinctive Studio 4°C look, but the main character is nearly as fatuous as Fuura Kafuka. People who like the series like it a lot, though, so I may give it a second chance.

I do like the closing theme. Here’s the full-length version, sung by KOTOKO. You might recognize the melody.

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

another way to ride a broom

Another way to ride a broom

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I don’t know which is more depressing: the fact that about half the buildings I passed downtown on my way home from Mass today had been vandalized this weekend, or that the vandals did such a perfunctory job. Don’t they take any pride in their work?

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Lycoris radiata.

You can expect to see more botanical pictures than usual for the next few weeks. We’re probably about a month away from the first hard freeze of the winter here, and after that it will be around March before there is good reason to take my camera to a garden again.

The path to enlightenment, or how to squander vast amounts of time and money

Some bloggers recently have reminisced about the origins of their addictions. I might as well, too.

I don’t watch television. At all. Consequently, I never saw Dragonball or any other Japanese imports. I did once come across a mention of something called “Sailor Moon” in a newspaper. It sounded dumb. Nor have I ever been a gamer of any kind, unless you count chess. Final Fantasy means nothing to me. If there ever were any “good old days” of anime, I missed them.

Some years back I read a review of a movie called Princess Mononoke. It looked interesting, and Neil Gaiman had worked on the English script. I made a mental note to see it if it ever came to Wichita. It didn’t.

Time passed. I discovered that one of my musical friends was an aficionado of Japanese animation from ‘way back, and he had a copy of Princess Mononoke. (He also has an impressive collection of anime cels, including some from Porco Rosso.) The movie was terrific, even with the English dub, and I asked him for more to watch. Most of what he brought by was disappointing — e.g., Those Who Hunt Elves (not recommended) — but I did discover the original Dirty Pair and Martian Successor Nadesico.

Meanwhile, I read every entry on every anime review site I could find. After sifting through hundreds, thousands of reviews by plainly unreliable writers, I settled upon Serial Experiments Lain as my first purchase. It was as good as Princess Mononoke, and utterly different. Ghost in the Shell followed. Some time after that I discovered that Steven Den Beste also saw that Lain was something exceptional. I finally had found a writer on anime whom I could take seriously. (I’ve found a few more since then. See the blogroll.)

I eventually started a weblog devoted to anime in addition to my main one (you’re reading its successor). A little over three years ago, one of my acquaintances from the SCA organized an anime festival in Wichita and an anime club. I’ve furnished most of the videos the club views at its rare meetings.

This isn’t quite the full story, though, and Princess Mononoke wasn’t the first anime I ever saw. That title belongs to Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke, released in the USA before the last ice age as “Magic Boy.” It was the greatest movie I had ever seen. It blew away everything by Walt Disney. Then I saw Forbidden Planet, and that was the greatest movie ever made, and I forgot about Magic Boy until my discovery of Miyazaki many years later.

Burning bandwidth

GreyDuck recently posted nearly an hour’s worth of his favorite music on his site. I thought I’d do something similar, in case anybody is curious about what I listen to. Here are nine tunes I like in batches of five and four. I picked mostly shorter tunes, so the total time is about twenty-two minutes. My tastes run toward the obscure and the eccentric (hence my interest in anime); if anyone recognizes more than one or two of these, I will be impressed. No matter how broad your tastes are, there is sure to be something here to annoy you.

[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/favorites1.mp3[/mp3]

[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/favorites2.mp3[/mp3]

Update: Identifications below the fold.

Continue reading “Burning bandwidth”