Author: Don

Spice and Bear

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Satoshi Kon and Yasutaka Tsutsui

Some good news: Andrew Driver, who translated Yasutaka Tsutsui’s Salmonella Men on Planet Porno, is currently translating Paprika. It should be out next year. I wonder if anyone is working on Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo?

In case there is anyone here who hasn’t yet seen the movie, here are the opening credits of Paprika, perhaps the best part of the show.

*****

N.Z. Bear has been making adjustments to the TTLB ecosystem. I discovered today that The Kawaii Menace has vaulted into the “Large Mammal” category, even though it ranks only #7,097 (or #7,111, depending on where you look) at this moment. My first, now defunct weblog ranked much higher several years ago but never got beyond “Adorable Rodent” status. This all means almost as little as Technorati “authority.”

Wish list

Things I’d like to see:

Dirty Pair TV: This should have been licensed ten or twenty years ago along with the OVAs and the movies, but there isn’t even a fansub currently available for most episodes.

Yasutaka Tsutsui: Salmonella Men on Planet Porno demonstrates that he is at the very least a capable satirist, but almost none of his books have been translated into English. The recent films Paprika and Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo were based on novels by Tsutsui. In the former case, the orginal was probably better.

Divergence Eve and Misaki Chronicles: I’d like to see a remake, with the same script and cast, but without the pointless fanservice, and with better computer graphics. It’s a pity that one of the best science fiction stories in anime looks like porn.

Petitnone: This was a short CD included as a bonus with the third disc of the Japanese edition of Haibane Renmei. If one were to add some of remaining uncollected background music, such as the solo harpsichord in the third and fourth episodes, the resulting disc would be worth releasing in its own right.

Binchou-tan: One of the very few series that deserve good English dubs. This is an excellent show for small children, but most haven’t learned to read subtitles yet.

Kino no Tabi, vol. two and beyond: Evidentally there’s a licensing snafu and the rest of the books may not be released here after all (see Astro’s note on the previous post). This is criminal.

Ribon no Kishi: Besides its historical importance as the first shoujo anime and, if I remember correctly, the first anime series produced in color, the first episode is also quite lively, looks good and promises an interesting story. Yet the first episode is is all I’ve ever found.

Bandai Visual: Hurry up and go bankrupt, please, before you license anything else I want to see.

Vocaloid: Please port this to Macintosh so I can annoy people with Hatsune Miku.

Alfred J. Kwak: The first four episodes were subbed last year, but there haven’t been any more for several months now. This looks like another good show for kid and adults.

The KuriCorder Quartet: Masaki Kurihara composed and performed the music for Azumanga Daioh with his KuriCorder Pops Orchestra. He has released many other recordings in Japan, none of which are available in the west. The music he wrote for Yotsuba&! is as good as that for AD, and I’d like to hear more.

Mojos: I’m not really into plushies, but I wouldn’t mind a couple of Isako’s helpers to sit on top of the monitor. While we’re at it, let’s have a Guchuko plushie for Steven. (Densuke and Oyaji plushies are available in Japan but not here.)

Thought for the day

Let’s postulate that death can simply be engineered away. That human brains can be modeled in the Cloud and data can be copied back and forth from wetware to silicon. Then what do we become? A race of gods? or just a pile of nodes, acting out virtual fantasies until the heat death of the universe pulls the plug? That’s not post- or trans-humanism, it’s null-humanism.

Briefly interrupting the silence

Yeah, it’s been quiet around here. I haven’t seen much anime lately, and what I have watched have been mostly old favorites, such as the first disc of Haibane Renmei last night. None of the current series have caught my interest the way Denno Coil and Oh! Edo Rocket did last year. (Shigofumi might have, but it’s out of reach now.) The only one I’m following at this time is Hakaba Kitaro.

I did order the first discs of a few older series I’m curious about, which should arrive in a week or two. Once I’ve figured out how I’m going to manage all my medical bills, I’ll probably finally purchase some of the series that have long been on my list. These include Fantastic Children, Witch Hunter Robin, The Twelve Kingdoms, PlanetES and the rest of Revolutionary Girl Utena.

What I’m most looking forward to is not anime, however, but books. The first volume of The Twelve Kingdoms is very good (better than the anime, I suspect), and the second is due out later this month. The second volume of Kino no Tabi is due out anytime, though none of the sources I’ve checked have listed a publication date, grrr. There are also two more installments of Crest of the Stars available.

Recently viewed

The Waragecha Five are back, and they have new uniforms:

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Nice, but I prefer the old style.

A year after their first release, Epic Fansubs have reached episode six of Master of Epic. As a reward for my patience, the Waragecha Five, who were entirely missing from the previous installment, dominate the show this time, with a two-part skit that occupies half the episode. It’s a bit out of character for the show, since it introduces a giant robot into the fantasy universe, but the girls in the sentai team are still very much themselves, even with their science-fiction helmets. The rest of the show is mostly forgettable.

*****

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Shigeru Mizuki’s Gegege no Kitaro has been the basis of a major franchise in Japan for fifty years. There have been numerous TV shows and movies based on the manga. I’ve seen the first episodes of both the 1968 and 2007 series (the former in black and white), and was not impressed. Like his ’60’s American counterparts in The Addams Family and The Munsters, Kitaro was fundamentally good-hearted in these versions, and the resulting shows were rather bland, despite the graveyards and the monsters.

Hakaba Kitaro, the most recent adaptation, apparently makes an effort to be true to the source. This Kitaro is genuinely creepy, and humans who meet him don’t necessarily benefit from the encounter. Unlike the Gegege no Kitaros, this is not suitable for kids. Although there is some humor, this is primarily a horror story, occasionally quite grotesque.

Visually, it’s one of the more distinctive shows I’ve seen. It looks more like an artsy graphic novel than a typical anime. I was not surprised to learn that some of the crew responsible for Mononoke worked on the opening, in which the artists recreated Mizuki’s style. It’s worth attention in its own right (you might want to turn the sound down unless you like monotonous dance music).

****

I’m four episodes into Magic Knight Rayearth. A lot of stuff happens; there sure is plenty of plot. Unfortunately, it comes largely at the expense of character development. None of the characters have much depth yet. After watching a few episodes of Cardcaptor Sakura, I felt like I’d known the characters for years and would recognize them anywhere. The most I can say for the characters in Rayearth is that some are quirky.

This is not to say that Rayearth is a bad series. It isn’t. I probably just came to it with my expectations too high. The story is potentially good, particularly since CLAMP will likely twist the formulae in unpredictable ways. But it does look like it will be one of the lesser CLAMP anime, despite its length.

Ear protection recommended

Recently I’ve been investigating last.fm, hoping to find some new music worth listening to. I was surprised today to discover that there are not just one, but two pages there devoted to my music. (There are also three distinct bands named “McClane.”) Of course, someone has me confused with the guy who sang “American Pie,” ((I was frequently told when I was younger that I looked just like John Lennon (as does Aziz), so I have the name of one singer and the face of another, neither of whom I particularly like.)) but I spotted some of my own tunes in the lists. I claimed one of the pages and uploaded some of my old tunes. ((There may be some new tunes soon; cross your fingers and keep the earplugs handy.)) The curious and incautious can listen to them there, or you can click on the player at the botton of the sidebar. The tunes include a couple inspired by Haibane Renmei. In “Kana’s Toy,” I imagined that Kana finds and repairs an old music box, to which a couple of her nestmates dance. Haibane Suite is a portrait of one of the haibane that ABe doesn’t mention. The sections are “Dream;” “Off to Work;” “Saturday Evening at the Abandoned Factory;” ((“Washerwoman’s Bransle,” from Arbeau’s Orchesography)) “Reading by Halo-Light;” “Calm, Rational Discussion;” “Night.”

Friends and memories

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Steven has been impatiently waiting for my comments on Petite Princess Yucie. I’m afraid he’s going to be disappointed, because I don’t have anything particularly deep or insightful to say about the show. It was good, I enjoyed it, and I can recommend it for all but the youngest audiences. My main two worries — that the ending would stink, and that Kikuko Inoue would release a deluge of tears — were unfounded, though if the series had ended with the 25th episode, I would have dispatched Mireille and Kirika to Gainax HQ.

I have a few reservations. There are some heavy-handed moments, notably the visions of Elmina’s father in the nineteenth episode. Beth is excessively abrasive, to the point that I was tempted to hit fast-forward whenever she appeared. Some of the episodes approach dangerously close to sentimentality. Yucie’s dilemma in the penultimate episode seems contrived, not naturally arising from the premises — it almost did have a Gainax ending.

Still, the virtues outweigh the faults. The main characters are mostly attractive and sympathetic, even Elmina once she warms up to the others. The writing throughout is interesting and often clever, and there are a lot of little touches that enliven the story.

I suppose I could analyze the different models of fatherhood illustrated by the series (only Jubei-chan: The Secret of the Lovely Eyepatch goes into greater depth on father/daughter relationships), or compare and contrast the ending of Yucie with that of the first season of Sailor Moon, or discuss whether the princess candidates form a “five-man band,” but I have other things to do — as Steven guessed, I do in fact “have a life” of sorts.