South of Eskdaleside-cum-Ugglebarnby

Today’s been another bang-your-head-against-the-wall day, so here’s some silly stuff.

A hitherto unknown Miss Marple mystery is scheduled to be published. It is allegedly the only Agatha Christie novel in which the murders are unsolved at the end of the book.

Today is Ash Wednesday, which different denominations observe in various ways. From the same authority: this is the only explanation for the USA’s anthem I’ve come across that makes any sense.

If Ayumu should misplace his masou shoujo chainsaw, here’s another one he could use. (Via Dustbury.)

It works for Kuragehime, too. (From Better Book Titles.)

Another Japanese innovation: Rent-a-Friend.

This duck I wouldn’t mind myself. (Via The Rat.)

Quote of the week

If magical girls don’t breed true, than it would be pointless to try to domesticate them

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A few miscellaneous links:

Cute little computer viruses.

H.P. Lovecraft’s favorite words. I expected “eldritch” to score higher.

The 2011 edition of the Arts and Faith Top 100 films of all time includes three anime: Spirited Away, Grave of the Fireflies and Paprika.

Things are heating up in Hawaii. (Webcam here.)

Rewriting history

The opening credits of the third Keroro Gunsou movie, Keroro vs. Keroro: The Great Sky Battle de arimasu!, recapitulate the opening episodes of the TV series. It shows Natsumi walloping Giroro with a bookbag. However, in episode four, she defeats him with a leek. Why the change? Are the writers afraid that viewers will confuse her with Hatsune Miku? (Update: I rewatched the fourth episode, and she does use a bookbag as well as a leek. Never mind.)

Continue reading “Rewriting history”

Historical forces

Numerous bloggers are writing about the histories of their interest in anime. I did that myself a few years ago. The next year, I wrote about becoming increasingly burnt-out. Since then, my interest has waxed and waned. I’m currently relatively enthusiastic, largely because Madoka is potentially a classic. However, I don’t think I will ever again be as absorbed in the form as I was in the days of Haruhi and Haruhi and Yuko and Yuko.

Is there fried chicken on Mars?

I don’t know, but you can get a burger on the Moon.

I thought I’d look at a few minutes of Welcome to the Space Show, the recent movie from director Koji Masunari and writer Hideyuki Kurata (the team responsible for Read or Die and Kamichu), before facing the day’s disasters. I ended up watching the whole thing.

Five youngsters rescue an injured dog near a crop circle. The dog reveals himself to be an alien botanist named Pochi, and he treats the kids to a trip to the moon. Things go awry, of course, and the quintet travels with Pochi through the galaxy pursued by interstellar criminals before they can finally return home.

It’s not a great movie, certainly not in the same class as Summer Wars — the more I think about the last quarter, the less sense it makes — but it is an entertaining adventure movie for kids, tolerable for adults.

Screen captures are below the fold. It’s remarkable how similar life in space is to life on earth.

Continue reading “Is there fried chicken on Mars?”

Meh

I got half-way through the sixth episode of Fractale tonight and said the hell with it. Take away the Ghibliesque veneer, and what’s left is a ho-hum dystopia with annoying inhabitants. I’m mildly interested in learning just what exactly Nessa is, but not enough so to endure six more episodes of Clain, Sunda, Phryne and Enri.

Instead, I watched some more of Gurren Lagann. One indication of how busy I’ve been lately is that I started it earlier this month and am currently barely past the midpoint. It’s a completely absurd, over-the-top show with ridiculous mecha, bellowing macho men, macho women and no respect for the laws of physics, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything so exhilarating.

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Sometimes it’s not easy to call your attacks:

(From Level E.)

Grumbling and muttering

Dennou Coil is finally available — if you have an iToy. I don’t.

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Watching Fractale is becoming more and more of a chore. Are Enri’s antics supposed to be funny? I’m not laughing.

Yamakan thinks anime today is in bad shape. His solution is to ape Miyazaki. I’m reminded of the Pre-Raphaelites, who sought to revitalize art by returning to their notion of the middle ages. Their paintings make for pretty calendars, but they aren’t exactly great art.

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Here’s a bit of computer animation involving quilting and Celtic music:

Now let’s see some quilting using Penrose tiles, ideally with a klezmer soundtrack.

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No.

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The five best toys of all time.

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Bonus link: John C. Wright has discovered the origin of steampunk.

Hot times in the islands


Suwanose-jima in the Ryukyu islands south of Kyushu is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. There’s a webcam on the island (the last listing in the box to the right), but usually it’s impossible to make out anything beyond a small orange glow just below the center of the image. This morning, however, visibility is was briefly good.

Incidentally, Sakura-jima, jealous of all the attention that Shinmoe-dake/Kirishima has received, has ramped up its activity. There’s a good chance you won’t have to wait long to see a substantial vulcanian eruption on a webcam during daylight hours, and if you’re lucky, you might catch some incandescence at night. ((For a better nightime view, try the fourth listing from the bottom of the right-hand box here.))

Update (2/28/11): After a week of good viewing, the camera image is back to the usual murk. I’d like to send someone there with a bottle of Windex.

Update II: And now the camera is gone.

95°

A week ago, it was -17°F in Wichita, colder than Fairbanks. Today, it was 78°. The range is not quite as extreme as some locations in Oklahoma, but it’s worth noting.

Story or fanservice?

Which series will first be licensed for region one DVD: Fractale, Mahou Shoujo Madoka?Magica or Rio – Rainbow Gate!? (Haven’t been watching Rio? Neither have I, but Wonderduck has. You can share his pain here, here, here, here and here.)

Update: And the winner is Fractale. I suppose I should be glad it wasn’t Rio, but bleah.

Pausing for a moment

Life has been insanely busy, and I don’t know when I’ll have time to catch up with Zombie and Level E or collect my thoughts about Madoka. Until then, here are a couple of links.

Jonathan Tappan writes about Buddhism, particularly as it figures in anime.

Don’t ever let anyone try to embarrass you because of your taste for anime. Whatever you’re watching, it isn’t as pointless as the movie eat, pray, love:

This is an alien story told in an alien language with alien grammar of an alien culture of which I know little and understand less.

(Via Professor Mondo.)

Bonus link: TWWK takes a brief look at Shusaku Endo’s Silence.

Round two

Who are the most frightening girls in the poll at right? You can vote for up to three. The top five will advance to the final round, where they will face the winners of the first round, Lucy/Nyuu (Elfen Lied), Shion Sonozaki (Higurashi no Naku Koro ni), Chloe (Noir), Enma Ai (Hell Girl) and Haruhi Suzumiya (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya).

Grrr

So I finally peeled the shrink-wrap off Gurren Lagann and put the first disc in the drive to see if it really is the greatest achievement of mankind since the invention of distilled spirits. The DVD player refused to play it. I took a close look at the disc, above, and I was not happy. One of the other discs in the set also has noticeable delamination, but it doesn’t extend into the data area.

Fortunately, Mac the Ripper was able to read enough of the disc to make a playable copy. Several hours later, I am wondering whether Kamina is the manliest of men, or the greatest of jackasses. Or both.

Miscellany

Which of the fansub groups working on Madoka produces the most accurate translations? I watch the first sub available of each episode so I can see it before the otakusphere is rife with spoilers, but for rewatches I want to view the one that best catches the shades of meaning in the dialogue.

Steven has an interesting hypothesis about Madoka:

Spoiler

Madoka was a mahou shoujo before, and a really good one. But she was utterly miserable, having lost her family and nearly everyone she loved to the witches. Homura was her last remaining friend, and decided to become a mahou shoujo so she could use her wish to make Madoka happy.

Homura’s wish was to give Madoka back the life she had lost, the family and friends and places that were gone. And that’s why Madoka’s life is a bit surreal, with the strange house and the school built of glass walls and everything seeming just a bit off. It is real, in a sense, but it was created by Homura’s wish.

[collapse]

At this point it is very clear that Madoka is a horror story involving children, closer to Bokurano than Sailor Moon. It’s an interesting exercise to watch the opening and note the misdirections and outright lies.

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Since Funimation is streaming Fractale, I am not downloading the fansubs. This has been frustrating. How many more times will the broadcast be delayed? Will I live long enough to see the final episode? Similarly, I am not downloading Kore wa Zombie desu ka?, Level E or Gosick since they are on Crunchyroll. This has also been frustrating. I get very tired of playback stopping every 45 seconds while the buffer reloads.

This illustrates two reasons why streaming is the least desirable way of making anime available. I really do want the videos on my computer or on DVD so they will always be readily available, regardless of the whims of the licensors or the vagaries of internet traffic.

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Just wondering: was there some sort of big sports event this past weekend? The “Stuporbowl,” I think somebody called it.

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Gotta catch ’em all.

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Humor and horror are closely related, as anyone who has read Saki or followed Akiyuki Shinbo’s career knows. Or who follows politics. Both are responses to the perception that something isn’t quite right. Consequently, abrupt shifts in tone from comic to horrific to WTF? in shows like Kore wa Zombie desu ka? or Level E rarely bother me. Both series remain on my watch list.

Gosick, however, I am dropping. Victorique is too abrasive to be sympathetic, even if she is literally a prisoner of the library, and the perpetually flustered Kujo is not a good foil for her. The mysteries aren’t interesting enough to compensate for the lack of chemistry between the characters. ((It’s a bad sign when I know the solution to a “locked room” mystery before the writer finishes presenting the problem.))

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Today’s Sailor Moon crossover:

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Perhaps relevant to the neverending fansub debate:

(Via the other Steven.)

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Anthony Sacramone, formerly Martin Luther’s assistant, is starting a new religion:

1. We believe that Pantu Baba, the Vile, the Irascible, the Arbitrary, eternal and almighty god of all that is was or ever shall be, has created all things in a fit of pique. Which explains Detroit. And Comcast.

It does make more sense than Scientology.

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This post is brought to you by the letter “I.”

(Via Zontar the Enormous.)

Not quite a rant

A comment on an earlier post:

There appear to be two underlying assumptions in your post.

1. Everyone or at least the majority of anime fans share your taste and thus would agree that everything in the first list are all very good to excellent while those in the second list range from mediocre to vile.

2. That if you believe that something is very good to excellent for you then you are entitled to it and if you can’t get it legally it is necessary for you to acquire it illegally.

1. No. The items on the first list are good, period. I don’t care what anime fans think. In anime, as in all other popular arts, there is at best a weak correlation between quality and popularity. I do not give a damn about bestseller lists, Nielsen ratings, ((I got a phone call from a Nielsen representative a few months ago. He was audibly startled when I told him that I don’t have a teevee.)) the top forty, box office rankings, Academy Awards, Emmys or the Nobel Peace Prize. They’re all meaningless. And I really don’t care how a show fares in the ANN ratings.

2. No. It would be good if the people and corporations that hold the rights to excellent anime were to make it freely available to all interested for a reasonable price. However, they can do any damned thing they want with it, including burying it forever, and I can claim no legal right to see it. There are also plenty of problems with licensing anime for sale outside Japan, some insoluble. The firms that do license anime choose what they think the typical anime fan will pay for. Disappointingly but understandably, they usually shy away from the eccentric and unclassifiable, preferring conventional series and fanservice. ((Fortunately, there are exceptions, e.g., Oh! Edo Rocket.)) I can only hope and wait, and wait.

But.

Back in ancient times, I read about a band called Gryphon. They were a progressive rock band influenced by Renaissance music, and they played recorders, krummhorns and bassoon as well as guitar, keyboards and drums. The description was interesting, and I wanted to hear them. ((They opened for Yes on an American tour. According to legend, at some concerts the audience booed when Yes took the stage because they wanted to hear more of Gryphon.)) Frustratingly, no record shop in town had any of their recordings, and of course no radio station played them. A few years later I found one album in a used record shop. Their other four records were not released in the USA. However, I could find plenty of records by such incomparable performers as The Rolling Stones, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and The Osmonds. ((Younger readers might not realize how difficult it was to find particular books and records in the dark ages before the internet. I made trips to every used book store and record shop within bicycle distance at least once a month, hoping to find the out-of-print books I wanted to read and the interesting music that radio stations couldn’t be bothered to play. It was possible to special-order some books and records through shops, but it often took months for your order to arrive, and the recording of “The Magic Flute” you requested was apt to mutate into a Mahler symphony by the time it finally arrived.))

There’s a happy ending to the story. Many years later, I got a 14,400 baud modem for my work computer. I found a dealer online specializing in old prog rock, and he had the CD reissues of four Gryphon albums. I found the fifth at Amazon.com. So, just a quarter-century after first learning about them — a mere instant in geological time — I finally had a complete set of Gryphon’s original recordings.

There might eventually be a happy ending to the anime story. Perhaps, like Gryphon, Dennou Coil will be available in North America after twenty-five years. Or it might take half a century, as did Tezuka’s Tales of a Streetcorner. I’ll be dead by then. And I have little hope that the animation of Masaaki Yuasa and Kenji Nakamura will ever be available in North America. ((It will be interesting to see if The Tatami Galaxy, currently being streamed by Funimation, will be licensed soon for download-to-own or disc in North America. I doubt that it will be, despite its excellences.)) I want to play by the rules, but I am tired of waiting.

Pedantic footnote

The sorta-official alternative title for Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica is “Puella Magi Madoka Magica.” Grrr. “Puella” (“girl,” nominative singular) is a feminine noun in Latin, so the proper form of the adjective “magus” (“magic”) is “maga,” not “magi.” I suppose whoever is responsible was trying to avoid calling the show “Magical Girl Magical Madoka.” I’d suggest either sticking with “Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica” or just calling the series “Magical Madoka.”

Update: Maureen interprets the title differently in the comments below. She may well be right, but I’m not convinced that it’s what the SHAFT staff had in mind.

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Irresponsible speculation: between whom will the final battle be?