Trivia that matter
A friend mentioned that he was curious about The Supergal, or Maris the Chojo, so I found it for him. I made the mistake of watching it myself, and I can authoritatively state that its obscurity is well-deserved, even if it based on a Rumiko Takahashi story. Unless you think that female wrestling is the apogee of civilized entertainment, skip it. Watch Project A-ko again instead. However, it does give me an opportunity to post a picture within a spoiler tag for Ubu.
The 1985 OVA Leda — The Fantastic Adventure of Yohko, which Steven recently discovered, looked like fun, so I downloaded it. ((According to ANN, it was once licensed by The Right Stuf International, but I found no sign of it on the RightStuf website.)) The story is straightforward anime fantasy: a high school girl is mysteriously transported to an strange world, where she transforms into a warrior in a battle bikini. Screen captures are below the fold.
It’s silly, but it’s not cheesy. The art is detailed, and the animation looks smooth to my non-expert eyes. Although there are characters named “Lingam” (spelled “Ringhum” in the subtitles) and “Yoni” and the girls don’t wear a lot of clothes, there is actually very little that’s off-color. It’s probably tolerable for all but the youngest audiences. If you have any interest in old-school anime, it’s worth checking out.
Update: Here are two sets of six consecutive frames. Each of these whizzes by in a fifth of a second.
Mao-chan goes on too long. It’s based on a clever notion and is executed with considerable charm, but the writers weren’t inventive enough to keep it consistently interesting through 26 half-length episodes. The story meanders through many standard anime situations: the sports festival, the beach episode, the hot springs episode, the bunny suit, the maid uniform. They’re not complete wastes of time — the beach episode is one of the better ones, in fact, though not because of the beach — but they mainly serve to let us spend time with the girls rather than advance the story, and Mao and Misora aren’t particularly interesting characters. The series would have been better overall had it been shorter and more focused.
[flv width=”440″ height=”330″]http://tancos.net/flv/wp-content/uploads/480pix.flv[/flv]
As threatened, here is the new, improved slide show featuring pictures from Steven’s header. The music is “Honga,” performed by Itzhak Perlman with the Klezmatics.
[flv width=”320″ height=”240″]http://tancos.net/flv/wp-content/uploads/sdb01.flv[/flv]
I’ve been saving the picture in the banner each time I visit Steven’s place. Here’s what I’ve collected so far. The music is Raymond Scott’s “Celebration on the Planet Mars,” performed by the Metropole Orchestra with the Beau Hunks.
(This is probably not the final version. The software I intended to use decided that it doesn’t like my machine after all, so I had to struggle with a less-capable application with limited output options. I’m not entirely happy with the results.)
I uploaded a couple of jigsaw puzzles of screen captures from Genji Monogatari Sennenki, here and here. Assembling the pieces is easy; the challenge is to determine whether the individual pictured is a boy or a girl.
The first episode of Genji is the prettiest thing I’ve seen since Saiunkoku Monogatari, but I think I’d rather read the book, a translation of which is sitting on a shelf in the next room.
*****
One more example why I have no respect whatsoever for American television: Moribito, which had been broadcast at an impossible hour, has apparently been cancelled. It’s a pity, because it is a good show for all ages and one of the best of recent years. Fortunately, the DVDs are being released by Media Blasters, and the book (recommended) is easily available.
*****
So there is a live action Cowboy Bebop with Keanu Reeves in the works. I’ve never seen Reeves, so I don’t know how much of joke that is, but if the music is not by Yoko Kanno, then I don’t give a damn about the movie.
*****
Update (1-21-09): I’m going to be away from the computer for a week. Things will continue to be quiet here for a while.
Actually, we do see Kirika smile — rarely — during Noir. This screen capture is from episode six, “Lost Kitten.”
Someone smuggled a video camera into a showing of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, and thus I was able to take a look at it last night. It’s not first-rate Miyazaki, but it is much better than Howl’s Moving Castle. ((The book, Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones, is excellent. Give copies to all the youngsters on your Christmas present list, and grab one for yourself. But don’t waste your time on the movie, Miyazaki’s worst.)) It will be worth seeing on the big screen when it’s released in the USA.
The good news: the core story, about the fish who wants to be a human, is something Miyazaki is good at. Ponyo, the magic goldfish, Sosuke, the boy who finds her, and Lisa (or Risa), Sosuke’s mother, are believeable, sympathetic characters. Some of the scenes reminded me of Totoro ((There is a significant parallel to Totoro in that Sosuke’s other parent is absent and, in the latter half of the movie, at risk.)) and Kiki. Ponyo’s first evening as a human in Sosuke’s home is as charming a sequence as Miyazaki’s ever done.
The bad new: the outer story is a mess. It’s a mixture of fairy tale, science fiction, paleontology, celestial mechanics, fantasy and deep ecology that doesn’t immediately add up to anything coherent. (I suppose I should be grateful that there isn’t a war going on.) Perhaps the symbolism will click after several more viewings and all will be clear and logical, but I doubt it.
Ponyo is not prime Miyazaki, but half of it is very good, and all of it is pleasing to the eyes, if not to the mind.
Incidentally, I was surprised by the quality of the video, both image and sound. There were very few clues that this was a surreptitious recording.
Screen captures below the fold.
Here are the candidates in the new poll.
Does your cat turn up his nose at a saucer of milk? He probably prefers scotch.
If you really want to know about fairies, skip Earl and Fairy. Read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and Little, Big instead.
I wish fansubbers would occasionally look things up to make sure thay have them right, e.g., the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
A few notes on the first episode of Kaiba:
• It’s dystopian science fiction. In this world, minds can be separated from bodies and stored on conical “chips.” There’s a market for memories and bodies, and young bodies fetch good prices. The rich, who live above the electrical clouds, can avoid death by obtaining fresh bodies. It’s a dangerous world for the commoners, who are constantly beset by automatons.
• The first episode was mostly scene-setting and action, and I don’t have much sense of the characters yet. The main ones so far are “Warp,” a boy with no memory who has a locket with a girl’s picture, an emblem of three discs on his abdomen, and a hole through his chest, and Popo (voiced by Romi Paku), who seems to be a streetwise kid, perhaps with radical political connections (though we don’t know that much about him yet).
• The art and animation are more interesting than the story and characters so far. I’ve posted some screen captures below the fold, and there are a couple of excerpts on the video weblog illustrating the quality of the animation and the strangeness. The electronic music soundtrack might be worth tracking down when it’s available.
• Visual novelties and energy can carry the show for a while, but whether Kaiba is ultimately a triumph or a disappointment depends whether it tells a good story. For now, it’s at the top of my watch list.
Private investigator Rem Ayanokouji can enter into other people’s dreams, where she battles demons who cause nightmares and steal dreamers’ life force. Her activities were chronicled in several Dream Hunter Rem OVAs dating from 1985 to 1992. According to the Wikipedia article, the first episode was originally hentai, but it was so popular that the makers skipped the pornography in subsequent episodes to appeal to wider audiences. The first episode was re-released in a cleaned-up “special version.”
Only the later version of the first episode has been fansubbed, and it may just be the first half of an hour-long episode. ((I did come across a listing of another episode, but it was labeled “hentai,” and I’m not that curious.)) It’s not exactly a masterpiece, but it does have a certain creaky charm.
NSFW edition.
From Soul Eater, episode one.
And now for something completely different: Mike Peters‘ take on a Japanese icon:
