Trivia that matter
Who knows when Hatsune Miku will be ported to the Mac? Until then, there’s the Delay Lama:
(Via Fellini 8.5)
If that’s too passé for your taste, you can listen to music made with Nintendo Gameboy chips at the Blip Festival. Want to make your own bleeps and bloops, but you don’t have any old video games on hand to take apart? Try quadraSID.
If tht’s too old-school for you, consider Reactable. (Via Fred.)
Update: Accordion Hero? Sure, why not?
Here’s another picture from the same event, this time a J-rock cosplayer.
Continue reading “Let’s waste more time”
I found a site that makes Flash jigsaw puzzles from your pictures. Here’s a Suingintou from the Wichita anime festival last August.
Continue reading “Want to waste some time?”
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.
Some odds and ends while I download Moyashimon:
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I’m not a fan of Star Wars, but this was uncalled for. (Caution: causes severe ear pain. Blame the LLamas for this one.)
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Here’s an alternate history story: if MGM had said “yes” to Bob Clampett in 1936, would the Japanese now be fansubbing American animation? (Via Aliens in This World.)
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I may be wrong, but as I understand it, the “sei” in “seifuku” is short for “sailor.” I.e., its distinguishing characteristic is the sailor collar. Consequently, I think only one of the outfits in this poll qualifies as a proper seifuku. (Update: I was wrong — see Andrew F.’s comment. Never mind.)
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I’ve added Yumedamaya Kidan to my to-investigate list.
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The next self-help bestseller: Aerophobics: The Easy Six* Step program to end your exercise addiction. It could be helpful in maintaing a proper otaku lifestyle.
*”’cause let’s face it, twelve steps is WAAAAAAY too many.” —SR
While going through this month’s search terms, I noticed a theme:
kawaii watches
criticisms of kawaii culture
kawaii car stuff
kawaii room maker
couple kawaii hat
how to be kawaii
kawaii oak panio
teenage kawaii
kawaii camera
kawaii sequencer
kawaii computer
kawaii software
english clothes kawaii
chicago kawaii
kawaii multiply theme
kawaii comments
kawaii culture
Also:
japan fake reality cute
silly japanese cute words
Some kowai searches:
jewish anime
why is jackson pollock named jack the ripper
hello kitty boots without socks
dokuro chan costume prop — Don’t. Just don’t.
when did solomon become a satanist
horribly good saki
asian bluegrass metal — Something like God of Shamisen?
miss mune mune costumes — You probably shouldn’t, even if (particularly if) you have the figure.
paprika ubik — There’s a term paper here.
bartok lambda calculus music
rock critics are idiots — Obviously.
chicken dance accordion — Be careful what you search for. You might find it.
One of the pleasures of Dai Mahou Touge is watching Punie and Paya-tan, her mascot, instantly transform from cutesy and playful to utterly ruthless, and back again. Paya changes seiyuus when he makes the transition. I thought Dark Paya sounded familiar, and I was right; he is voiced by Jouji Nakata, who is Giroro in Keroro Gunsou.
I’m surprised at how little attention DMT has received, despite its being one of the better examples of animated black humor. Once again, if Steven hadn’t spotted it, I’d have missed it. Why has this been ignored, while Dokuro-chan, which you couldn’t pay me to watch, has been endlessly discussed and now has a sequel?
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Not anime, but geeky: U.N. Secretary General or Star Wars character?
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Also not anime but still geeky: A new idea for a first-person shooter.
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And finally, a word from Shunpei:
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Bonus link: Put down the duckie. (Via the LLamas.)
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Update: Congratulations to Avatar.
(Via Darwin Catholic.)
I’m back from my trip, but I’ve got a minor yet tedious project ahead and it’s still going to be a while before I have time for anime. Don’t expect much activity here for the next two weeks.
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Yesterday evening I was frazzled from travel and a long day getting caught up at work. I was in the mood for something pretentious and angsty, so I watched the first few episodes of Evangelion. It’s a bad sign when the least unsympathetic character ((other than the penguin)) is the flakiest, and worse when the putative hero is a basket case. So, does it get better, or should I abandon it now?
Update: Rei isn’t “emotionless.” She’s dead. The hell with it.
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It won’t cure angst, but you can dance to it:
Continue reading “Bleah, bleah, and a surfeit of seifuku”
Hatune Miku, a “vocal android” suited for J-pop and anime songs, might be a lot of fun to play with. Unfortunately, she’s Windows-only at this time. (The Vocaloid website doesn’t list a release date for the Mac AU version, but I can hope.)
According to my camera, this is picture #666. Make of it what you will.
I’ve finished formatting all the pictures possibly worth posting. There are 139 of them, though I probably will cull a few. With a little luck, I should get the pages of thumbnails assembled on Wednesday. Then I’ll finally have time to read, watch and write again. Next project: Princess Tutu.
Update: Here they are.
Update 2: Here’s a calendar using my AFW pictures. (25 megabytes.)
The only kind of “moe” I really understand is Moe Howard. I’ve been trying to get a handle on moe as the term is used in the otakusphere, and I have been following Avatar‘s reporting on this year’s Saimoe tournament, but I’m not sure that I grasp the concept (or that there is a concept there worth grasping). Let’s see if I have this right.
Moe.
Not moe. (From Oh! Edo Rocket)
Let’s try a subtler distinction.
Perhaps.
Probably not. (From Denno Coil)
Isako is possibly the most interesting character in any current series, but I think that she’s probably too intimidating to be truly moe.
Let’s see how far we can push the concept.
… in real time.
From the comments:
Every marching band in the world has just been pwned by Samsung employees.
If you haven’t finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yet, don’t click here. (Language, etc., advisory.)
(While I’m on the topic of Pötterdämerung, let me point out that there is a Potter-related poll in the sidebar. There is a similar poll, worded differently, on my other weblog.)
Update: J.K. Rowling tells all (spoilers, spoilers, spoilers),
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You might have wondered where this site was this morning, and several other mornings recently. I wondered, too. Apparently, whenever there is emergency maintenance to be done at the hosting service, or an outage or a kernel panic, the server where my site is currently stored is always affected. I guess if you go with a cheap hosting plan you get cheap service. Still, none of the other inexpensive web hosts I’ve used were as unreliable, not even my original free GeoCities site years ago.
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I knew Steven has a powerful mind, but I never realized just how mighty he is. According the the “recent comments” widget in Avatar’s sidebar, “… Steven Den Beste ‘… has a temper and can toss building-shattering attack spells around.'” For your own safety, do not nitpick.
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While browsing around the Anime Tropes Wiki, I came across this:
When A Modest Proposal was written a lot of people thought it was actually talking about eating babies.
Some years back, a friend wanted to write a satirical letter-to-the-editor. I suggested that he read Swift’s dispassionate discussion to see how it’s done. My friend mentioned it to his literature professor. The professor said, “What do you want to read that for? It’s about eating babies!” He was the head of the honors program at Wichita State.
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It may be a while until Guchuko plushies are available. Until then, there’s this.
I’ve sampled a number of mahou shoujo series during the past year or so. Most are not particularly good, and the transformation sequences often are all that are worth watching. On my video weblog I’ve posted a half-dozen clips of mahou shoujo transformations that caught my eye for some reason or another.
… or Denno Renmei?
(It occurs to me that there are significant parallels between the two Yukos, and Rakka and Reki.)
I generally don’t have much interest in plush toys, but this one is appealing.
(Via Steven the palaeontologist.)
Consider rice field art, the Japanese counterpart to Stan Herd’s work.
(Via Erik.)
You probably didn’t want to know this, but The Chipmunks are still around. Nowadays, they do covers of anime themes. Here is their most recent release, which I just (cough) discovered, the theme to Seirei no Moribito:
