Author: Don

Here’s a list

Soundtracks nominated so far for the next poll:

Aria the Animation/Natural/Origination
Azumanga Daioh
Bartender
Bleach
Bubblegum Crisis OVA
Bubblegum Crisis 2040
Code Geass/R2
Cowboy Bebop
Death Note
ef: a tale of memories
Elfen Lied
Eureka 7
FLCL
Full Metal Alchemist
Haibane Renmei
Kaiji
Kamichu!
Macross Frontier
Madlax
Manabi Straight
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Noir
Oh! Edo Rocket
Princess Tutu
Record of Lodoss War
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Shigofumi
Shigurui
Simoun
Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann
True Tears
Vision of Escaflowne
Welcome the the NHK

A few others were mentioned, but I’m not sure that they were meant as nominations:

.hack// et cetera
Vampire Princess Miyu OVA
Vampire Princess Miyu TV
Witch Hunter Robin

Some other soundtracks worth considering:

Ah! My Goddess: The Movie
Angelic Layer
Binchou-tan
Denno Coil
Interstella 5555
Kaiba
Macross Plus
Metropolis
Mushishi
Paprika
Saiunkoku Monogatari
Shingu
Someday’s Dreamers
Sugar, a Tiny Snow Fairy

What else? I’m sure I’m forgetting something obvious.

Also, would someone care to nominate a specific Miyazaki movie OST?

Call for nominations II

The next poll will probably be anime soundtracks: which is the best? There are the obvious candidates: Noir, Haibane Renmei, nearly everything by Yoko Kanno; and some less-obvious ones: Denno Coil, Oh! Edo Rocket, Mushishi. What other examples are worth considering? Please leave your nominations in the comments. Links to illustrative mp3s or videos will be helpful.

Note that this is about specific soundtracks and not who the best composer is. That is a topic for a future poll.

I’m going to let the anime babes poll run for another week or two. I’d like to see at least 200 votes before I close it and compile the top ten. Please vote if you haven’t already.

Update: I just checked that other dealer. Although the soundtracks to Haibane Renmei and Noir are gone, there are still many noteworthy OSTs available for $4, including Arjuna (the series itself looks like toxic waste, but Kanno’s score isn’t bad), Azumanga Daioh, Someday’s Dreamers and Utena (four eccentric CDs’ worth of the last — if nobody else nominates Utena, I will).

*****

Poor neglected Eineus. She hasn’t yet received a single vote in the final round of “who’s the babe?” I’m trying to resist the temptation to campaign for or against particular candidates, but I will note that I think she has a better claim to be a proper babe than at least one who is headed for a top-ten finish.

Unified Defense Force

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.

Continue reading “Unified Defense Force”

Four balls?

Pete says that baseball is

A game without discernable rules or purpose; I deduced that teams compete to collect points, but those are awarded arbitrarily, so the formal objective does nothing to add any sense to the proceedings.

I just happened to digitize The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart last week. Here’s Newhart’s take on baseball from about 50 years ago:

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/Nobody Will Ever Play Baseball.mp3]

While I’m uploading audio, here’s a selection from another curiosity I came across: string quartet arrangements of music from Rozen Maiden. Here’s a sample:

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/Otome wa Tenshin Ranman.mp3]

*****

I have jury duty this week, so I’ll probably be spending the days at the courthouse and the evenings at the office. See you all next week.

Update: I was spared jury duty. (Actually, The plaintiff in the case I was in the pool for had suffered a broken ankle and knee injuries. It was no surprise that I wasn’t empaneled, given my own broken ankle and knee problems.)

More claret

The rains have stopped for the moment, and my Echinocereus triglochidiatus finally opened. The grey blotches on the epidermis are due to the workers who painted the house last year, who painted the cacti, too.

Mao-chan, Miku, etc.

When the Fnools invaded Earth, they disguised themselves as two-foot-tall real estate salemen, figuring that no one would take them seriously until too late. ((See Philip K. Dick’s “The War with the Fnools.”)) The aliens in Mao-chan adopt a similar strategy: by assuming mercilessly kawaii forms, the invaders make the Japanese defense forces reluctant to engage them in combat, lest the human soldiers be seen as bullies. The Japanese fight cuteness with cuteness: the head of the land forces enlists his eight-year-old granddaughter, Mao, to battle the invaders, arming her with a baton, a full-size model of a tank, and a clover-shaped pin that transforms her into a not-terribly-competent but very cute mahou shoujo. Mao soon is joined by a couple of other eight-year-old girls: Misora, representing the air force, and Sylvie, representing the navy, both recruited by their doting grandfathers. Mao and Misora are ordinary grade-school girls, as kids in anime go, but Sylvie is distinctly Osaka-ish.

Continue reading “Mao-chan, Miku, etc.”

Recent arrivals

I don’t watch as much anime as I used to, but I expect that I will always retain some interest in the art form. Now that my financial situation has improved from nightmarish to merely frightening, I can budget some occasional purchases. Noein and the first seasons of Slayers and Ah! My Goddess TV have been on my to-buy list for years. What I’ve read about Kurau and Moon Phase piqued my curiosity, and the discs were cheap. Mao-chan will give me an opportunity to compare the judgements of Steven and Zac Bertschy, and it might be a good show for youngsters. About UFO Princess Valkyrie — well, I suppose I ought to have a token fanservice title in my collection (Divergence Eve/Misaki Chronicles fails as fanservice: the character designs are too exaggerated, and the story and characters are too interesting). Steven says the story is pretty good, and there’s a bus full of catgirls. Finally, I generally prefer reading books to watching dramatizations of books, and Fuyumi Ono is a good writer.

Other items on my to-buy list: Gurren-Lagann, Baccano!, Moribito (books and DVDs), Witch Hunter Robin, Mysterious Cities of Gold (another possibility for youngsters), perhaps Negima!? and Seven of Seven. When they’re available, Oh! Edo Rocket and at least the first few discs of Soul Eater. I would add the rest of Utena, but it’s out of print and the company is bankrupt.

What I’m most looking forward to, however, isn’t anime. It’s been about 30 years since I watched The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. I would like to see if it’s as good as I remember.

Query

The adult Mikuru Asahina is leading the current poll. You all do realize that in voting for her, you’re voting for a character who appears only in one four-minute scene during the entire 14-episode run of Suzumiya Haruhi, in which all she does is talk to Kyon and display a little cleavage? Is that really sufficient qualification to be one of the outstanding babes in anime?

Historical artifact

Richard the bodhran player and his '67 Camaro convertible
Richard the bodhran player and his '67 Camaro convertible

Note the license plate. It was Richard who loaned me his copy of Princess Mononoke several years ago and thus made The Kawaii Menace inevitable. (Richard’s brother has an astonishingly huge old Cadillac. There’s room for a children’s wading pool between the front and back seats.)