Euonymus atropurpurea.
196/365
Not a true Nymphaea.
195/365
Evening.
194/365
Poison ivy has one virtue: it’s a good source of fall color.
Hij vliegt, hij waggelt en hij zwemt
Is Ahiru no Quack, or Alfred J. Kwak, the greatest anime of all time? Wonderduck thinks so, but he might not be entirely unbiased. This Dutch/Japanese production from 1989 looks like it could be suitable for children and tolerable for adults. Those who are disappointed by this fall’s offerings might want to check it out; if nothing else, it’s a different style of art and animation than is usual these days, and it features Megumi Hayashibara.
My worry is that it will become an agenda-driven show in which the messages overshadow the characters. I also wonder if the translators are reading too much into the story.
Links for the extra hour
193/365
Virtual boredom
I’ve spent my recent lunch hours investigating Second Life. This virtual world may have a lot of potential, but I find it disappointing. It’s fun to learn to fly and customize your avatar, but once you’re past the orientations and in Second Life proper, it turns out that there’s nobody there. ((There are supposedly 40,000 to 50,000 residents logged in when I visit, but they all must be playing hide and seek.)) There’s plenty to look at — elaborate buildings and landscapes, stores full of clothes, hair, skins, eyes, wings, animations, etc. — but wherever I go, I’m almost always quite alone. When I do encounter someone else, he is generally as disinclined to begin a conversation as I am. There are some busy sites with lots of visitors, but I dislike virtual crowds as much as real ones. I have yet to find a congenial spot.
It hasn’t been a complete waste of time. Some real-life musicians stream live performances while their avatars stand on virtual stages, and the music is occasionally quite good and offbeat. When’s the last time you heard virtuoso musical saw? Supposedly some well-known musicians like Suzanne Vega occasionally give virtual concerts, but I have yet to recognize any of the performers listed on the schedules. There have also been some discussions announced that look interesting, but never at times I can attend.
So, is there anime in Second Life? Well, there are Naruto fans, as demonstrated above. Quite a few shops feature clothing, hair, shapes and skins inspired by anime and gothic lolita styles, and there is quite a bit more that’s Japanese. I found one virtual shop devoted entirely to general anime cosplay and another exclusively to Sailor Moon.
(Notice how much of the snapshot above is blurry. It takes a long time to render all the fine detail, and if your computer, video card and connection are not the absolute fastest available, expect to spend a lot of time waiting for your system to catch up with SL.)
So there are anime fans in Second Life — somebody had to make the wares and rent or buy the virtual space for the stores — but finding them is not easy. There are over a hundred anime groups listed, a few with hundreds of members, but they don’t actually do anything. There are no meetings, discussions or events in any that I’ve looked at, and no newsletters. The only anime-related communications I’ve received were announcements of new costumes. In contrast, I receive regular updates from various SL musical and dance organizations.
There are a few haibane around:
If I do continue to visit Second Life, it will be for the music, not anime.
One unexpected pleasure: shopping for clothes. In real life, it’s a pain; the styles don’t appeal and the sizes are never quite right. Clothing your avatar, however, is fun. Penneys might not have much in the way of kimonos, but in the virtual world they’re easy to find. I haven’t yet seen any Abh uniforms, but I did find some other outfits of note. Snapshots below the fold.
192/365
One advantage of cool weather is that four o’clocks stay open all day.
Virtual culture
I’ve recently been spending lunch hours exploring Second Life, a sort of MMORPG without the RPG. Initally, my fear was that I would become obsessed with it and log in whenever I had a moment. I needn’t have worried. Although it’s fun to customize your avatar and to fly, the novelty soon wears off. Once you’re past the tutorials and into Second Life proper, your impression is likely to be one of desolation. There’s plenty to see — elaborate buildings, shops full of clothing and curious things (need feline eyes or pink hair?), galleries of photographs — but there’s nobody there. You can join various groups or visit the popular places, but it is as hard in Second Life to connect with someone sharing your interests as it is offline.
It’s not a complete waste of time, though. There are frequent concerts, in which Second Life residents stream live performances while their avatars go through the motions on stage. Most are undistinguished — there are as many guys with thin voices strumming acoustic guitars in SL as in your local coffeeshops — but there are surprises. Earlier today, for instance, the Schumann Duo performed a selection of lighter classical fare ranging from Handel to the twentieth century. Clarissima played piano, and Kahuna oboe, English horn and Stanley Handyman saw — quite well, too. I’ve never much cared for the Bach-Gounod “Ave Maria,” but playing Gounod’s melody on the saw does make it more palatable.
There’s also ballet in Second Life, choreographed for avatars and performed live. I watched one yesterday. It was an interesting experiment, but I’m afraid not a successful one. Possibly with a superfast connection and a more powerful computer it would have been more watchable, but what I saw was too jerky to seem like dance — all keys and no tweens, so to speak — and I couldn’t make much sense of the choreography.
A curiosity I came across: the Dulcimer Museum, devoted to the late David Schnaufer.
191/365
Witch hazel.
Ghost Hound revealed
In the second episode of Ghost Hound the story finally gets going. There’s a summary of the kidnapping eleven years ago as it is understood by Tarou and the townspeople. He has another dream, this one about the beginning of the events then, and he discovers a eerie realm near the shrine where Miyako lives. We also get a hint about what the title refers to:
The other series I’m watching this fall so far — Miname-ke, Mokke, Moyashimon, Sketchbook — are just lightweight entertainments and nothing more. With Ghost Hound, it looks like there will be a substantial series, after all. It’s still in the expository stages and the shape of the main story isn’t clear yet, but I think it’s going to be worth following. The main problem for me will probably be remembering that Ghost Hound isn’t Lain redux. This may be difficult, because there are significant parallels, from overlapping realities to the visual and sonic distortions.
Ghost hound dog
There’s about three and a half hours of Halloween left here, so let’s have a spooky tune. Here’s the opening theme of Ghost Hound, “Poltergeist” by Mayumi Kojima, I have no idea what the lyrics say, but the music tells you all you need to know.
190/365
Monica and Tony.
Music and marathons
I’m not terribly impressed with Ghost Hound — yet, anyway — but I do like the opening song, “Poltergeist,” by Mayumi Kojima. A few days ago I came across something listed as “Ghost Hound OP album.” It turned to be Kojima’s “A Musical Biography 2001-2007,” and it’s not standard J-pop. Most of the songs fall somewhere between novelty jazz and rock, with touches of rockabilly, surf guitar and the top 40 of an earlier era. To be painfully honest, on some of the tunes I enjoy the band and the arrangements more than her singing, but she earns points for an idiosyncratic repertoire. “Poltergeist” is Kojima at the darker, rockier end of her range; here’s something more playful, “???????!,” or “The Last Shot.”
*****
It’s an obvious point, but perhaps worth making anyway. Some series should be marathoned, while others are best appreciated one or two episodes at a time. For most series, of course, it doesn’t much matter. I’ve watched a dozen episodes of Cardcaptor Sakura in one sitting, and also watched one per evening for weeks, and enjoyed it equally both ways. However, something like the Divergence Eve/Misaki Chronicles saga demands to viewed in one or two long sittings (if you can get past the bizarre character designs ((Kei’s and Yuri’s busts are as large as I find attractive; bigger than that just looks grotesque.)) and the mystifying first episode. The series’ creators perhaps expected too much of the casual viewer and the professional reviewer). Don’t put the first disc in your player late in the evening if you need to work the next day. Seirei no Moribito is another to marathon, as is Baccano!. I’ve held off watching the second half of SnM until all of it is available and I have six uninterrupted hours available to spend on it (maybe Thursday, finally).
Lightweight comedies and farces, on the other hand, are best viewed one or two episodes at a time, else they become cloying and the formulae become too obvious. Galaxy Angel A and Z, Animal Yokocho, Kerero Gunsou, Muteki Kanban Musume, Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, etc., are all best taken in small doses. Also, some of the more thoughtful episodic series benefit from being watched one episode at a time, with time to reflect between viewings. I can’t imagine wanting to marathon Mushishi, for instance, or Kino’s Journey.
*****
A bit of good news via Anime on DVD: Martian Successor Nadesico is being reissued as a “perfect collection.” It’s due out January 1.
*****
Mickey Mouse Feio. (Via Cartoon Brew.)
*****
What exactly is Aria?
189/365
Red, blue and white.
188/365
Plastic.
187/365
Virginia creeper.
Have you seen me?
After a four-month hiatus, the fifth episode of Master of Epic has finally been translated. This time, the topic is “skill.” In first skit, a young woman learns to sew to impress her crush, and overdoes it. It’s mildly humorous. There’s also a housewife at a flea market, another brief bit with Chuu and Bukotsu in which Chuu does something uncharacterstically cute, an illustration of good and bad luck involving a cannon, and another lengthy installment of the intermittently amusing Diaros Island saga. And that’s it. Yawn. There seems to be something missing — five things, actually, one blue, one yellow, one pink, one green and one black.
In other words, skip this installment and hope that it takes less than six months for the next to be subtitled. The previews promise that the Waragecha Five will have two skits then.
Just wondering: does “larufa kuina vashiina” mean anything?
*****
I watched the most recently subbed episodes of Moyashimon, Sketchbook and Minami-ke, and there isn’t much to say about them that I haven’t already said. All three remain on my watch list. The first continues weird, the second weightless and the third funny. My only problem with the last this time was that there was too much of Kana and not enough of Chiaki.
For the heck of it, I made a few avatars. These are all 80 pixels square, suitable for gravatars, which are now part of the WordPress armory. Right-click to save to your disc — you know the drill.
Yeast (Moyashimon)
Penicillin (Moyashimon)
Black mold (Moyashimon)
Chuu (Master of Epic)
P-chan (Sketchbook)
Aloft
I spent some time this evening at the Wichita Asian Festival and took a few pictures. Pictured above is a moment from the Japanese folk dance “Soran Bushi.” Note the traditional footwear. There are more pictures on my other weblog.