Author: Don

Roddle and Mozart

One of the charms of The Diary of Tortov Roddle is the music by Kenji Kondo. It’s hard to pigeon-hole. Sometimes it reminds me of Metamora, sometimes of Satie, sometimes of something else I can’t quite place. Here’s a sampling of the soundtrack:

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

Kondo, I discovered, is part of the Kuricorder Quartet (formerly the Kuricorder Pops Orchestra) and is one of the musicians featured on the Azumanga Daioh and Yotsuba&! albums. He also plays Mozart on the ukelele. Here’s a video with the Kuricorder Quartet. I think Kondo is the one on the bicycle.

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Addendum: Here’s the picture Author mentions in his comment. It’s from the booklet accompanying the first Yotsuba&! CD.

Bad pun alert

The habitués of Chess House (which was on 72nd Street, but no longer exists) were mostly elderly Jewish men. The air was dense with pipe and cigar smoke. Opponents did not talk to each other much, but it was the custom to engage in incessant thinking aloud, chattering to oneself, and verbigeration. Once, when I blundered by leaving a knight en prise (meaning undefended and liable to capture)—or in the chess slang “hanging”—my elderly opponent wondered aloud, “Why is this knight different from any other knight?” I thought he was just making a sarcastic comment about my play, until ten years later I finally got the joke while watching a TV show about Passover!

A few notes

I’m curious about Kunio Katou, the creator of Aru Tabibito no Nikki, or The Diary of Tortov Roddle, so I did a litle searching. Here are his web site — unfortunately, only in Japanese — and a brief curriculum vitae. I also found this note at AniPages Daily:

It’s easy to see why Kato’s films would have won so regularly at the festival, which Norstein presides over every year. Visually they’re incredibly refined and convincing works closer in their graphic richness and craftsmanship to Norstein than to the bulk of Japanese production. Although his Tabibito series was produced in Flash, you would hardly suppose so at first blush. His production method for the series was somewhat unique: he drew each drawing on paper, scanned it into the computer, and left the white space around the figure intact rather than cutting it off as one would normally expected him to have done, which accounts for the handmade look of the series.

*****

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I finally watched the second half of Moyashimon. Good grief. There is a distinct shortage of microbes. Instead, we get a rather grim school festival, girls bathing (but no real fanservice), girls in leather clothes, aphrodisiacs (which don’t work), alcohol (more effective), fermented herring, expensive people, same-sex kisses and Sawaki’s buddy as a gothic lolita. Oh, and the Aspergillus fungi have dirty little minds. It is still a fun watch and there’s nothing quite like it, but I can’t give it an unreserved recommendation.

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*****

I noticed that Shigofumi ~Stories of the Last Letter~ is directed by Tatsuo Sato. Sato’s directing credits range from Nadesico to Cat Soup, not to mention Shingu, which was his original creation and his script as well, so I figured I ought to check Shigofumi out. The premise — a mail carrier with a talkative staff delivers the last message of a recently deceased person — reminded me of Shinigami no Ballad, and I was afraid that Shigofumi would be mawkishly sentimental. I needn’t have worried. The first episode is grimly ironic; if Shinigami no Ballad is about life, Shigofumi is about death. I do have some problems with the first episode. In particular, I need more context for Ayase’s actions, and if the second episode isn’t a continuation of her story, I will be very annoyed.

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*****

I saw the doctor Wednesday. It’s going to be eleven more weeks and another operation before I can walk again. Bleah. It my be fun to zoom down the halls at the office in my wheelchair, but otherwise this is a blasted nuisance.

Traveler from Tortalia

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Some time back Wabi Sabi mentioned The Diary of Tortov Roddle. I recently came across a torrent. It’s an odd little series, consisting of nine short episodes. Seven concern Tortov Roddle, an etiolated traveler with a stovepipe hat exploring the northern plains. These are brief, surrealistic stores told without dialogue. In the first episode, for instance, Roddle sees a town on a hill and hopes to find an inn there. However, it turns out that the town is on the back of a gigantic frog, which leaves the hill for a lake populated by other frogs with towns on their backs. The penultimate episode, “Fantasy,” is a collection of brief vignettes too slight to summarize. The last is “The Apple Incident,” in which giant apples fall from the sky.

Rather than try to explicate the imagery, I’ll just post some screen captures below the fold.

Continue reading “Traveler from Tortalia”

Wolves, foxes and vampires

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I have to give Rosario to Vampire credit for one bit of realism: when you have skirts as short as Moka’s, you’ve going to see panties. ((Mireille’s outfits in Noir were just as short, but her underwear was never visible — the single most implausible element in that amazing show.)) The vampire inspired J. Greely to coin a new word. Ubu thinks I should be “all over” R+V. Moka is indeed a candidate to replace Pyun and Potaru in the header art above, but I’m not sold on the series yet. The premise has some promise: nebbish winds up at a school for monsters and acquires a vampire glompire girlfriend. The cast features Kikuko Inoue in what looks to be a purely comic, non-weepy role as the nekomimi meganekko teacher; Takehito Koyasu is also listed. I’ll give it another episode and see what I think.

I’ll give Spice and Wolf another episde also to see what kind of story it’s going to be. The premise again has promise: wolf-girl and former agricultural deity in Medieval Europe hitches a ride with a travelling merchant intending to return to her homeland in the north. It could be an interesting travel story, or it could be nasty Christians oppressing nice pagans. The first episode suggests both possibilities. If it turns out to be the latter, the hell with it. Even if I decide to abandon the series, though, I will keep an eye out for the quasi-Renaissance soundtrack.

The second episode of Kaiketsu Zorori was on the same level as the first. Zorori and his boar sidekicks enter a haunted castle to rescue a sleeping princess. This time Zorori actually suceeds in his quest, but he is betrayed by his own impatience. It looks like Kaiketsu Zorori will be a good kid’s show that adults can also enjoy.

What I most enjoyed (re-)watching recently was the first disc of Kamichu! It’s a maddeningly erratic series, but the good episodes are very good indeed. I wish it was as easy to compile a custom video DVD as it is a custom music CD. A collection containing the first three episodes, the seventh and probably the ninth (I haven’t see it yet, but Steven says it’s excellent) would be a fine way to spend two hours.

Memo to Senator Pat Roberts

When the phone rings these days, I awkwardly rise out of my chair, lumber across the room with the walker and, struggling to not lose my balance, pick up the phone. It is a nuisance. I don’t mind making the efforts for friends and colleagues. However, when I put the receiver to my ear and hear a recording of a politician, I regret that I don’t know more maledictions. If you want to guarantee that I’ll never vote for you or any of your causes again, this is the way to do it.

Miscellany

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In the recent Kino no Tabi movie, The Land of Sickness — For You, Kino visits a country that seems mostly deserted. The traveler and motoradd eventually find a hermetically sealed city, where they are treated quite well. Kino is invited to tell travel stories to the ailing daughter of a hotelier. There is a disease in the land. The inhabitants desperately search for a cure and hope someday to reclaim the rest of the country outside the city, and they’ve made some progress. However, there’s a dark secret for Kino to discover.

I’m relieved to say that this movie (if you can call a 28-minute show a “movie”) is a vast improvement over the earlier movie, Life Goes On (recommended only for Kino completists). Ryutaro Nakamura is back at the helm and Chiaki J. Konaka wrote the script. It seems like an slightly extended version of a television episode, but that’s not such a bad thing when the show is Kino’s Journey.

*****

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It looks like Kaiketsu Zorori may finally be fansubbed. The series concerns the adventures of the scapegrace fox Zorori, whose ambition is to be the king of mischief. In the first episode he plots to win the hand of a princess using a mechanical dragon, but things don’t go according to plan. If the first episode is representative, this could be a good series for children and tolerable for adults.

*****

I’ve now watched all of Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, and I dunno. It started off well, but it peaked at the second episode by my reckoning. Once all the girls were introduced, it became hit-or-miss. Sometimes it was pleasantly absurd, but just as often it seemed the creators had only one joke and were mechanically working out every possible permutation to fill the time. It’s probably the year’s best black comedy, but I’m not really looking forward to the second season.

*****

For the heck of it, here’s my top ten for 2007 as it currently stands.

1. Denno Coil
2. Oh! Edo Rocket
3. Seirei no Moribito
4. Mononoke
5. Baccano!
6. Mokke

Yes, that’s only six. I haven’t seen everything and I’ve probably missed a few of the best. Perhaps I’ll eventually fit ef and Gurren-Lagann somewhere on the list, but I have to watch them first. Ditto Bokurano and Manabi Straight. Perhaps also Moyashimon. Or perhaps not, if the eighth episode is as horrifying as rumored.

*****

When I was at the hospital last week, I acquired not only a cast but also a virus of some sort. While I’m not quite sick enough to stay home from work (darn), I’m usually dead tired when I get home. Posting will continue to be spasmodic until I feel better.

Still life with Marx and Engels

Fred recently discovered Komar and Melamid. I first encountered them half a lifetime ago when they made an appearance at Wichita State. Their schtick then was that they bought and sold souls. They were particularly proud of purchasing Andy Warhol’s. The business wasn’t as lucrative as they had hoped, though, so by then they only accepted souls on consignment.

They came to Fred’s attention through their fusion of musicology and statistics. By polling, they attempted to define the characteristics of the “most wanted” and “least wanted” songs, and then realize the songs. I’m afraid that I’m the in the 28% that dislike the wanted song. The unwanted song, however, is an amazing hodgepodge of accordion, bagpipes, tuba, banjo, operatic soprano and obnoxious kids, and it’s worth 22 minutes of your life. Once will probably be enough.

Oh, yeah, Komar and Melamid are painters, too.

*****

Mr. Darwin is the son of a planetarium lecturer. He reminisces about the artificial skies here.

Awards time

I’m not in the mood for deep thought and critical analysis, so here are the annual Kawaii Menace Anime Awards.

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Best idiot, male: Isaac Dian, Baccano!
Best idiot, female: Miria Harvent, Baccano!
Least enviable magical (or quasi-magical) ability: Sawaki’s in Moyashimon
Most noble dog: Densuke, Denno Coil

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Best spacesuits: Rocket Girls
Best resident deus ex machina: Oh! Edo Rocket
Most accurate botany: Mokke
Worst animated vehicle: Rocket Girls

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Best battle: episode four, Denno Coil (Runner-up: episode three, Seirei no Moribito)
Most shameless almost-but-not-quite plagiarism: Oh! Edo Rocket OST
Best opening song: Mayumi Kojima, “Poltergeist,” Ghost Hound
Best ending song: Polysics, “Rocket,” Moyashimon
Best completely extraneous musical number: episode ten, Oh! Edo Rocket
Ugliest musician: episode four, Mononoke
Most popular current series I haven’t the slightest interest in: Clannad
Best fusion of kawaii and kowai: Guchuko, Potemayo
Worst behavior from good kids: Manabi Straight opening

… and others as I think of them. Later. Right now I’m heading back to bed.

Addendum:
“Kids Say the Darndest Things” award: Czeslaw’s request of Ladd, Baccano!
Best show for children and adults: Mokke
Best choreography: Lucky Star opening

I’m back, sorta

There were a lot of firsts for me last Wednesday: first broken bones; first ride in an ambulance; first morphine; first surgery by a doctor I’d never met (and still haven’t talked to. I’m trying to make an appointment to see her for the follow-up on the operation, but her office hasn’t yet returned my call). You can see the before and after pictures of my ankle here and here. I’ve spent most of my time since then lying in bed with the left leg iced and elevated. I’ve read some and listened to a few CDs, but mostly I’ve been too drowsy to do much of anything at all. I’m starting to feel a bit more awake now, so maybe I can start posting a little.

Random notes

Some good news for Steven: it looks like there are plans for a Strike Witches TV series. I’m ambivalent, myself. The eight-minute OVA was perfect in its way (and perfectly absurd); a regular series, even if done well, is going to seem diffuse in comparison.

*****

I’ve got the week off. I’ve been reading Diana Wynne Jones rather than than watching anime, though, so I don’t have much to report. I have noticed that many recent visitors find this weblog through searches involving the terms “gothic,” “lolita,”, “Kei” and “Moyashimon,” which makes me apprehensive about the second half of the series. I suppose Kei does look a bit girlish, but I doubt that he’ll be as charming as Aspergillus. (If I were to tell a young woman that she’s as cute as a fungus, would she understand that I mean it as a compliment? Probably not.)

*****

We have an uncommon event here in Wichita: a white Christmas. That happens maybe once in ten years.

I considered posting a tune from the Sailor Moon Christmas albums today, but I’m not sure that punishing your readership is a good idea. If you would like to hear some less-familiar Christmas carols, there are some MIDIs on my other weblog.

*****

Not anime, but geeky: mathematical needlework; crocheting a Sierpinski triangle; a how-to book, with projects and papers. (The first link may be slow to load.)