The annual fall orchid show is next weekend at the botanical garden. Perhaps this year someone will bring in a Dracula orchid or two. Most are native to the Andean cloud forests. They need both cool temperatures and high humidity to thrive, which is probably why one rarely sees them in Kansas shows. Species include D. diabola, D. vampira and D. vlad-tepes.
I’ll probably watch Kino’s Journey II to the end, even though none of the three episodes so far have been memorable. The older series is not streaming legally anywhere I’m aware of, which is a shame.
I’ll probably also continue with The Ancient Magus’ Bride, even though the third episode, about the last flight of an old dragon, was disgustingly sentimental. It was set in Iceland, a land of glaciers and volcanoes where continental plates meet, but instead of Hekla or Bárðarbunga, we get a linden tree.3
Tilia sp.
Urahara is like a can of pink icing: sweet, with no substance. Recommended only if you like pastel colors.
I wish I could like Recommendation of the Wonderful Virtual Life. I gave the third episode a try after quitting part-way through the second, but it was no use. The main character is too clueless to be sympathetic. I can understand being socially awkward, but MoriMori-chan is just plain stupid.
I dropped A Sister’s All You Need in less than five seconds. That’s a record.
I would like to watch Hozuki no Reitetsu II, which is streaming on Hi-Dive. I’m also curious about Girls’ Last Tour, which is streaming on Amazon Strike, as is Made in Abyss, which apparently was the only series from last summer worth watching. Hi-Dive requires a paid membership. Amazon Strike requires an additional fee above that for Amazon Prime (which is less and less prime as time goes on; two-day delivery nowadays takes three to five days). There isn’t much else on these services that I want to see, and what they do have is mostly dubbed. I don’t have unlimited funds for entertainment, and anime is not a primary interest these days. (I’ve spent far more time recently comparing different recordings of Beethoven’s piano sonatas than I have watching animated shows.) It’s hard to justify paying for additional memberships when there are only one or two shows worth my time on each site. For now, I’ll stick to Crunchyroll.
Crunchyroll has been steadily adding older shows to its catalog, some of them very good. If you’re a speed reader, Masaaki Yuasa’s The Tatami Galaxy is worth your time. If you like vast international conspiracies but find Dan Brown stupid, there’s Koichi Mashimo’s Noir. The latter features a soundtrack by Yuki Kajiura; when Mashimo recycles animation (and Noir is partly an exercise in recycling), you can close your eyes and just listen to the music.
Haruhi greets the president of the computer club
Crunchyroll has also added The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, albeit in the wrong, chronological order. It’s also the wrong Haruhi. The right one is Haruhi Fujioka from Ouran High School Host Club, a much better series than its distasteful premise would suggest.
Batman Ninja sounds ridiculous, but the movie might actually be worth watching. The writer is Kazuki Nakashima, whose credits include Gurren-Lagann and Kill la Kill, and who wrote the play that Oh! Edo Rocket is based on. He knows something about heroism.
Believe it or not, the New York Times posted an article on anime that I partially agree with. Their top five are also my top five, though not in that order. (#6, though, is way too high.)
Experimenting with “Orton” photography. Essentially, you work with two layers, one sharp and one blurred, and blend them together to get a surrealistic effect. Some images work better than others.
Gilia
Experimenting with “Orton” photography. Essentially, you work with two layers, one sharp and one blurred, and blend them together to get a surrealistic effect. Some images work better than others.
ArgemoneArmorRoseLayiaPas de deuxRugosa roseRudbeckia
Although the 2003 Kino’s Journey is a favorite of mine and the first series I would recommend to someone who thinks he doesn’t like anime, I don’t like all the stories equally. I occasionally re-watch “Land of Prophecy” for its blend of absurdity, whimsy and horror, for instance, but I’ve never much cared for the two-episode “Coliseum.” I was disappointed therefore when the New! Improved! Kino’s Journey remade the latter story as its second episode; I would strongly have preferred that all the new episodes be based on stories not previously adapted. Given that there are something like 20 volumes of Kino stories now, there should be plenty to choose from.
I notice that fans of the earlier series find the new version of the story, now called “Colosseum,” much inferior to the first. I recently loaned out the DVDs of the first series and therefore can’t compare the older episode with the newer. However, I do have the Tokyopop paperback of Keiichi Sigsawa’s Kino no Tabi, translated by Andrew Cunningham, that was available for 15 minutes in 2006. It includes the original version of “Coliseum.”
“Colosseum” (2017) is a serviceable adaptation of the original story, not outstanding but acceptable. It’s necessarily streamlined to fit within the limits of one episode, but the missing parts — mainly the details of the first four fights — are expendable.4 There are some inelegancies in Crunchyroll’s translation, e.g.,
Perhaps that’s accurate, but it’s clumsy. From the book:
Given their recent experiences, Hermes was not nearly so enthusiastic. “I hope you let me rest awhile when we get there,” he muttered. “Some place cool, dark and not too damp.”
The final batch from the Friends University Ballet fall concert dress rehearsal, October 5, 2017. As usual, click to embiggen and to see with better color; right-click and open in a new window to see at maximum size.
The final batch from the Friends University Ballet fall concert dress rehearsal, October 5, 2017. As usual, click to embiggen and to see with better color; right-click and open in a new window to see at maximum size.
Friends University Ballet fall concert dress rehearsal, October 5, 2017. Click to embiggen and to see with better color; right-click and open in a new window to see at maximum size.
Friends University Ballet fall concert dress rehearsal, October 5, 2017. Click to embiggen and to see with better color; right-click and open in a new window to see at maximum size.
Friends University Ballet fall concert dress rehearsal, October 5, 2017. Click to embiggen and to see with better color; right-click and open in a new window to see at maximum size.
Friends University Ballet fall concert dress rehearsal, October 5, 2017. Click to embiggen and to see with better color; right-click and open in a new window to see at maximum size.
More pictures from the dress rehearsal for the Friends University fall dance program. (Click to embiggen, and also to see the pictures with better color. For some inexplicable reason, the WordPress algorithms make the reduced-size pictures look dull.)
More pictures from the dress rehearsal for the Friends University fall dance program. (Click to embiggen, and also to see the pictures with better color. For some inexplicable reason, the WordPress algorithms make the reduced-size pictures look dull.)
If the first episode is indicative, Kino’s Journey II5 survived the loss of Ryutaro Nakamura, who directed the 2003 anime. It felt very much like old times, with a little more detail, and a little more blood. Once again, I was reminded of The Twilight Zone. This week’s thought experiment involved a country where murder is legal. It’s not necessarily a paradise for psychopaths. The story inevitably brought to mind a certain Heinlein comment. If the show maintains the level of the first episode, there finally will be something worth waiting for every Friday.
Watching Kino’s Journey has the unfortunate side-effect of making everything else seem trivial. Nevertheless, there are a couple of other first episodes I watched all the way through which deserve comment.
Urahara is yet another variation on the majou shoujo theme, this time set in a pastel version of the Harajuku neighborhood in Tokyo. Aliens, called “scoopers,” who have no culture of their own, invade the Earth and scoop up anything that interests them, such as the the Arc de Triomphe, the Statue of Liberty, or a pyramid or two. It falls to three girls in Harajuku, one with little horns, one with nekomimi and a tail, and one who sews, to defend their world, Harajuku style.
It’s a silly show. The counterpart of Sailor Moon‘s Luna and Cardcaptor Sakura‘s Kero-chan is a talking fried shrimp, for instance. Silly doesn’t mean stupid, though, and absurd though the episode was, it was always entertaining and visually playful. I probably will continue watching it. For a discussion of Harajuku and this episode, see Emily.
Recovery of an MMO Junkie concerns a young woman who drops out of society to play an online fantasy RPG game. Although it’s not explicitly stated in the first episode, it’s strongly implied that she and her online friends all visit (or work at) the same convenience store, though they aren’t aware of that yet, and that their online and offline lives will get muddled together. I might watch more to see how it develops.
The Ancient Magus’ Bride will have to wait until I have more time. Hozuki no Reitetsu II will have to wait until the discs are released in North America and I can budget their purchase. (Amazon Strike Hi-Dive, grrr.)
The 2017 fall ballet performance at Friends University was a lecture-demonstration covering the history of ballet, including a look at forms of dance that preceded ballet. (Click pictures to embiggen.)
Galliard 1
The 2017 fall ballet performance at Friends University was a lecture-demonstration covering the history of ballet, including a look at forms of dance that preceded ballet. (Click pictures to embiggen.)
I shot too many pictures at the dress rehearsal Thursday evening for the Friends University Ballet fall program, and it will take the rest of the weekend or longer to go through them all and process the best. They’ll be at my photo site, soon, I hope.
Chrysopsis graminifoliaWater, statueMissing or hidden labelSalviaColeus “Florida Sun Rose”Anecdote of the bucketAsterAstersAnemoneUnlabeledSenna alataRatabidaMapleHesperaloe parviflora “Brakelights”ColchicumAnemoneAnemoneLeonotis leonurusSenna alataUnlabeledChrysopsis graminifoliaAnemoneTricyrtisTricyrtisSedumSedumPoncirus trifoliataOrostachys
