Author: Don

100,000 drawings

redline01

I recently got a blu-ray drive for my computer. For the first movie to watch at 1080p, I picked Redline. It was a good choice. Although there are plenty of digital effects employed in the 2009 movie, all the characters, all the cars — everything — are hand-drawn, and it shows. The last half-hour is the most spectacular anime I’ve seen since the end of Akira, and the whole movie is gorgeous. The screencaps here are all from the first twelve minutes.

Redline opens and closes with wild road races. In between, there is a romance, interference from the mafia, and a repressive government up to No Good, but the story doesn’t get in the way. The movie is pure eye candy.

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Look back in boredom

I can’t make a top ten list of anime for 2014 because I didn’t watch ten series all the way through. Here’s a quick look at what I finished.

The best

Pupipo. It’s unlikely ever to be licensed, so you’ll have to track it down through irregular channels. It’s worth an hour of your life.

Pretty good

Hozuki no Reitetsu. Life in Japanese hell. The most successful comedy of the year. To fully appreciate the eighth episode, watch a Kyary Pamyu Pamyu video first. (You don’t have to watch the video all the way through. One minute will be plenty.)

Kill la Kill, part two. Over the top and beyond. ((I’d like to see a sequel to this — not more bizarre action with the fate of the world at stake, but rather an account of how Satsuki adapts to ordinary life and ordinary clothes. It will be a much greater challenge for her than anything she faced in the show.))

The rest

Amagi Brilliant Park. It’s the first Kyoto Animation series I’ve watched beginning to end since the first season of Suzumiya Haruhi, which is something. Still, I was too irritated with the principals to enjoy the humor.

Madan no Ou to Vanadis. The greatest disappointment of the year. Tatsuo Sato is more comfortable with spaceships than with swords and magic. Tigre is too much a straight arrow, and the war maidens are often too silly to take seriously. The show felt rushed. It needs at least 26 more episodes, but I’d rather Sato start a new project that suits his vision better than waste more time in Brune.

Ore Twintails ni Narimasu. The fourth episode is great. After that, it goes downhill fast. There are way too many double-entendres throughout, and the premise is just a bit squicky.

Sabagebu. Sometimes funny, sometimes tasteless. Still, it’s a good antidote for the Stella C3 catastrophe.

Sekai Seifuku —Bouryaku no Zvezda—. Sometimes funny, sometimes merely weird.

Witch Craft Works. I know I watched this, but I can barely remember it.

And a couple of other things

Girls und Panzer: Kore ga Hontou no Anzio-sen Desu! OVA. A particularly enjoyable affair with Miho’s girls and their tanks.

Mouretsu Pirates: Abyss of Hyperspace. Excellent, as far as I can judge from the raw, but I’ll have to withhold final judgement until it’s subtitled.

Zooming along

Back in the 1980s, it took immense amounts of computer time to generate fractal images. If you wanted to see pretty pictures of recursively-generated figures, you borrowed books such as The Beauty of Fractals, or watched Nothing But Zooms if you knew someone with the video. Computers and software have come a long way since then, and nowadays you can easily create your own fractal images on your laptop. I experimented with a couple of applications for Macs this weekend, Xaos and UltraFractal.

Xaos is freeware, and it comes in Windows and Linux versions as well. It’s fairly easy to use, though you might want to bookmark the online documentation. It’s what I used to make the video above. It doesn’t actually make movies. Instead, it outputs a series of .png files, which you can import into Final Cut or something similar. (Be aware that at 30 frames per second, there are 1800 images per minute. You’re going to be working with a lot of files.)

Ultra Fractal has some Photoshop-style image manipulation features. It’s more complicated than Xaos but not really difficult to figure out. However, it’s a bit pricey; if you want to do animations, it will cost you $130. I think I’ll make do with Xaos for now.

Julia set in Ultra Fractal

The pirates return

In-Your-Facetime

I got impatient and downloaded a raw of Mouretsu Pirates: Abyss of Hyperspace. It looks beautiful, and the story moves briskly along. What that story is, though, I only vaguely understand. Will someone please license this for North America, or, failing that, fansub it?

There are a few screencaps below the fold. Steven has a bunch more here, though my favorite image from the movie is here.

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Ayn Rand at the movies

“101 Dalmatians”
A wealthy woman attempts to do her impoverished school friend Anita a favor by purchasing some of her many dogs and putting them to sensible use. Her generosity is repulsed at every turn, and Anita foolishly and irresponsibly begins acquiring even more animals, none of which are used to make a practical winter coat. Altruism is pointless. So are dogs. A cat is a far more sensible pet. A cat is objectively valuable. —No stars.
“Mary Poppins”
A woman takes a job with a wealthy family without asking for money in exchange for her services. An absurd premise. Later, her employer leaves a lucrative career in banking in order to play a children’s game. —No stars.

There’s more here.

Rococo and roll

Home
Home

Some years back I read Novala Takemoto’s Shimotsuma Story, published in English as Kamikaze Girls. I wrote about it here. I finally watched the movie based on the book this evening. Some of the humor was overly broad, and there were some gratuitous crudities early on, but overall this movie about a very odd couple was watchable and often very funny. Kyoko Fukuda and Anna Tsuchiya were plausible as Momoko the lolita and Ichiko the yanki. The story was necessarily simplified, but it was generally true to what I remember of the book.

There are more screen captures beneath the fold. Click the pictures to see the details of Momoko’s garb.

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Hollywood Juche

Lose a little weight, kid

I’m slightly relieved that The Interview won’t be coming to theaters near me. ((It’s not really a great concern, though — there aren’t any theaters near me.)) It’s one less failed comedy to avoid. Still, I’m just a wee bit uneasy about possible consequences. I’m not entirely sure that a chubby North Korean with a bad haircut is the ideal guide for western culture, even if his daddy was a wacky Daffy Duck aficionado.

Perhaps I should investigate the early history of Captain America. I did order a copy of Team America for my library, lest that also be withdrawn.

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Memo

Ten years ago Sitemeter was a useful tool for seeing who links to you. Nowadays it’s a liability. A month ago, and again yesterday, sites I regularly visit were hijacked with domain redirects most likely piggybacking on Sitemeter code. If you use Sitemeter, please find an alternative as soon as possible.

Memo to the hijackers: Kirika would like to see you.

Kirika

Update: The Bayou Renaissance Man recommends StatCounter.