The Kawaii Menace

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Who has “an almost Buddhist sense of nothingness”?

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The good news: Not only can I walk (albeit slowly, and with a cane), but as of today I can ride my bike again.

The bad news: Posting here will continue to be spasmodic. I plan to walk and bike as much as possible for the next several weeks to regain strength and flexibility. Other recreations, including anime, are going to be low priority for a while. Of the current series, I will probably keep up only with Kaiba and perhaps Soul Eater. I’ll catch up with Allison and Lillia and the other shows of interest later this summer. I recently ordered the Fantastic Children boxed set, which I’ll probably marathon the weekend after it arrives, and that’s the only older series I will look at this spring.

Speaking of Soul Eater: a commentor wonders how I can find Toshokan Senkou unwatchable because of Kasahara yet enjoy Soul Eater, in which the male characters are “1000% more stupid and irritating than her.” There are three quick responses:

1. There’s only one nitwit in Soul Eater, Black Star. Soul Eater is a competent enough, and Death the Kid is a mental case, not a moron. If Soul Eater were just the Black Star show, one episode would have been plenty, but that’s not the case.
2. Toshokan Sensou and Soul Eater are different kinds of shows. The latter is much more farcical, and what is annoying in one context can be funny in another.
3. Don’t ever accuse me of consistency.

*****

Recent search strings:

tomo takino feet
kawaii stalin
bishie mussolini
britney spears mushi
kawaii religion

If you can explain any of these, please keep it to yourself. I don’t want to know.

I finally watched the first episode of Toshokan Sensou, a.k.a. Library War. It looks like my spring viewing will be Kaiba, Allison and Lillia, Real Drive and maybe Kurenai,¹ with Soul Eater and perhaps Wagaya no Oinari-sama for essential fluff.
But not Toshokan Sensou. I could tolerate the absurd premise — the brain police (i.e., “committees of Media Improvement Act”) raid bookstores and confiscate such dangerous literature as books of fairy tales, while a branch of the military defends libraries — if the anime has compensating virtues. And it is a Production I.G. series broadcast in the Noitanima timeslot, so I would expect the show to be better than average. However, the protagonist is a hot-headed fool, too thoughtless to be sympathetic. Toward the end of the episode she rashly attempts to halt a bookstore raid by invoking her authority as a “Private First Class Librarian,” unaware that she needs to be at least a lieutenant to do so. At that point I quit watching. Toshokan Sensou may be intended to be part comedy, but Kasahara is too dumb and annoying to be funny.

1. I had some problems with the first episode of Kurenai, but so many people have declared it to be one of the best this season that I probably will give it a second chance. [↩]

At least five groups are subbing Kanokon. Three episodes have been translated so far. Only one group is subbing Kaiba, and only the first episode is available in English. You couldn’t pay me to watch Kanokon. Kaiba is probably the most interesting show since Denno Coil.

There’s something wrong here.

A very short piece by Satoshi Kon:

From here, where you can also find shorts by Michael Arias and Kazuto Nakazawa.

A few notes on the first episode of Kaiba:

• It’s dystopian science fiction. In this world, minds can be separated from bodies and stored on conical “chips.” There’s a market for memories and bodies, and young bodies fetch good prices. The rich, who live above the electrical clouds, can avoid death by obtaining fresh bodies. It’s a dangerous world for the commoners, who are constantly beset by automatons.

• The first episode was mostly scene-setting and action, and I don’t have much sense of the characters yet. The main ones so far are “Warp,” a boy with no memory who has a locket with a girl’s picture, an emblem of three discs on his abdomen, and a hole through his chest, and Popo (voiced by Romi Paku), who seems to be a streetwise kid, perhaps with radical political connections (though we don’t know that much about him yet).

• The art and animation are more interesting than the story and characters so far. I’ve posted some screen captures below the fold, and there are a couple of excerpts on the video weblog illustrating the quality of the animation and the strangeness. The electronic music soundtrack might be worth tracking down when it’s available.

• Visual novelties and energy can carry the show for a while, but whether Kaiba is ultimately a triumph or a disappointment depends whether it tells a good story. For now, it’s at the top of my watch list.

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I uploaded a couple of contrasting short excepts from Masaaki Yuasa’s Mind Game to the video weblog to illustrate why I am so impatient to see Kaiba.

Although Yuasa wrote the script for and directed Mind Game, the movie was based on manga by Robin Nishi, which is also the name of the main character. I doubt that the manga is rigorously autobiographical. Nishi’s website is here; it includes a selection of his work and a gallery.

Yuasa’s credits include Cat Soup and Kemonozume, which, like Mind Game, are not for chldren. Despite the simple character designs, I gather that Kaiba isn’t a kid’s show, either.

*****

Quote of the week:

I will personally be nowhere near this. It sounds like my worst nightmare.

See here for context. (Hint: think blue, count a lot more than two.)

Bonus quote:

Damn ! I so wanted to make this. Oh why oh why did I plan to watch paint dry on the same days !

*****

Fuyumi Ono’s target demographic is youngsters who fantasize that they are adopted. In The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow, misfit schoolgirl Youko discovers that she actually comes from Another World, where she has a Great Destiny. In the newly-translated Twelve Kingdoms novel, Sea of Wind, a boy learns that not only does he not belong in the Japanese family where his grandmother makes him and his mother miserable, but that he is not even human.

I don’t have time to write a review — maybe later — but I will note that Sea of Wind is a pretty good story, though less ambitious than the preceeding volume. I don’t know if I ever will watch the anime based on the books. According to what I’ve read, the anime made many changes to the stories, most of which I would probably find objectionable. (I gather that the anime Youko is a much less sympathetic character than the character Ono wrote about.) However, I do plan to read all the books as they become available.

According to Nick, the book Ono wrote that led to the Twelve Kingdoms series may not be released in the USA. Fortunately for me, there is a fan translation available (though I strongly prefer to read fiction as ink on paper rather than as pixels on a monitor).

This one

or this one?

There’s a clue here.

Private investigator Rem Ayanokouji can enter into other people’s dreams, where she battles demons who cause nightmares and steal dreamers’ life force. Her activities were chronicled in several Dream Hunter Rem OVAs dating from 1985 to 1992. According to the Wikipedia article, the first episode was originally hentai, but it was so popular that the makers skipped the pornography in subsequent episodes to appeal to wider audiences. The first episode was re-released in a cleaned-up “special version.”

Only the later version of the first episode has been fansubbed, and it may just be the first half of an hour-long episode.¹ It’s not exactly a masterpiece, but it does have a certain creaky charm.

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1. I did come across a listing of another episode, but it was labeled “hentai,” and I’m not that curious. [↩]

… not to mention Romi Paku. Now I’m really impatient to see Kaiba.

Update: Really, really impatient.

*****

Psgels gave Demashitaa! Powerpuff Girls Z the surprisingly high score of 88/100. Last night I was in the mood for something silly and frivolous, so I watched the first few episodes. Well, it’s really silly and frivolous. How silly is it? The girls, Hyper Blssom, Rolling Bubbles and Powered Buttercup, and their arch-enemy, the talking monkey MojoJojo, interrupt their battles for ice cream breaks. Tomboy Buttercup catches a cold from wearing the mahou shoujo short skirt. I posted an excerpt from the first episode on the video weblog that might give you an idea of the show’s flavor. It’s not something I could stand to watch much of at a time, but in small doses it’s agreeably ridiculous.

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I also posted a four-minute excerpt from Iblard Jikan, which I mentioned earlier.

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I spent the morning at the hospital getting a three-inch screw removed from my ankle. I can now put weight on my left leg, and this afternoon, for the first time this year, I walked. It will take a few weeks to regain full use of the ankle, but at least I can return the wheelchair to the shop now.

Today marks three anniversaries. The Kawaii Menace is one year old. Note that it’s not my first anime weblog. It was preceeded by the defunct Beware the Kawaii, begun on April 19, 2006. The curious can find a selection of the less-embarrassing posts from the earlier weblog in the sidebar listed under “ancient texts.”

It was five years ago today that I began my first weblog, Mixolydian Mode. It focused on music, books, the decline of civilization, and silliness. At that time I hadn’t yet seen any anime beyond Miyazaki,¹ and it wasn’t until I discovered Serial Experiments Lain a year later that I began writing about anime. Eventually my posts on anime threatened to overwhelm the rest of the blog, so I started Beware the Kawaii, devoted to animation, Japan and women with blue hair. Mixolydian Mode is defunct now, replaced a year ago today by Scuffulans hirsutus.

1. I did see Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke a long, long time ago, but I was very young then. [↩]

Here’s the first batch of this season’s rejects.

Against my better judgement, I watched the first episode of To Love-Ru. It starts off as an action-in-space thriller, but that’s deceptive. As the opening makes abundantly clear, the show is actually a fanservice vehicle with occasional laughs and perhaps a bit of a story. Lala has run away from her home planet to avoid an arranged marriage. She’s an inventor, albeit a ditzy one who doesn’t always remember how to turn off her contraptions. She’s pleasantly curvaceous, and she is not the least bit self-conscious about materializing naked in someone else’s bathtub. When she does get dressed, she wears her “costume robot,” undergoing a quasi-mahou shoujo transformation in the process.

The bathtub she arrives in was occupied at the time by the luckless Rito, who spends most of the episode blushing. By the end he has managed to accidentally propose to the alien Lala (she doesn’t have horns, but she does have a tail), who is enthusiastic about the prospect. Sound familiar? At least Rito isn’t a jerk like Ataru, but his dithering and overreactions make him just as annoying.

The premise of To Love-Ru does have some possibilites, but so did that of Rosario + Pantsu. Never mind.

By the way, why the skittishness about showing nipples? We see almost every inch of Lala, but there’s always something — strands of hair, Rito’s hands — hiding the nipples. (Wolf and Spice is downright weird: Horo’s breasts are smooth and featureless.) Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2 were far less concerned with fanservice, and they weren’t coy about showing the entire breast.

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If you would like to earn the Kawaii Menace Award for Service to Humanity, devise a player for matroska on Macintosh that really works, or a utility to convert soft-subbed MKVs to hard-subbed AVIs. VLC will kinda play MKVs, but it handles soft subtitles poorly. The majority of the MKVs I’ve downloaded require more processing power than my aging mac and its video card are capable of. (I had hoped to do some upgrading this year, but medical and dental bills take priority in the budget. Bleah.) Sometimes these will play on my machine at the office, and I spent lunch yesterday watching the first episodes of a couple of new shows, Kurenai and Zettai Karen Children.

The opening of Kurenai is bright and cheerful, showing simplified versions of the characters dancing. The show itself, however, is a rather dark action drama so far. In the first episode high school student Shintaro accepts the job of guarding Murasaki, a very young ojou. Beyond that, I really can’t say what it’s about. There are a lot of characters introduced, including several women with Red Garden noses, and hints of complicated backstories. Spying is a frequent motif, with characters observing other characters from a distance or listening at the door.There might be an intricate story developing here, or it could just be poorly-thought-out drivel.

I have serious problems with the premise. Shintaro accepted the bodyguard job even though he knew that he would leave Murasaki alone in his room during the day while he’s at school. Uh-huh. His employer offered him the job knowing that this would be the case. Sure. Shintaro doesn’t think to ask why Murasaki needs a bodyguard. Perhaps all will be satisfactorily explained in later episodes, but I have better uses for my lunch hour

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Zettai Karen Children features Aya Hirano, and that’s its only salient feature. Her performance is noteworthy because there’s nothing noteworthy about it; it’s a competent portrayal of an annoying ten-year-old girl and nothing more. Her character, Kaoru, is one of three little girls with paranormal abilities, the “Absolutely Lovely Children.” This dirty trio (there’s likely to be considerable collateral damage when they’re involved) are deployed in the first episode to deal with a jerk who turns bystanders to stone while wreaking havoc. It may sound like a kid’s show, but it’s intended for an older audience: the jerk is stereotypically gay, and Kaoru is obsessed with breast sizes and the like — a peculiar trait in a prepubescent girl. It’s not a bad show; it’s just not very good, and not worth my lunch hour.

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The above are the weakest of the recent releases I’ve seen. Fortunately, there are better shows. While nothing yet has grabbed me the way the first episode of Denno Coil did a year ago, Allison and Lillia and Special A both started off well, and Chii’s Sweet Home has the virture of brevity. My favorite thus far is Soul Eater, not so much for the story as for the art and especially the animation.¹ I’m also waiting impatiently for the fansubs of Library Wars and Kaiba.

1. I just noticed that one of the characters listed is “Sid Barett.” Does somebody on the staff listen to early Pink Floyd? [↩]

NSFW edition.
show

From Soul Eater, episode one.

And now for something completely different: Mike Peters‘ take on a Japanese icon:

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Studio 4°C has posted a trailer for Genius Party Beyond. It looks like a mixed bag, but the range of styles should hold my interest. I figure that the chances of either of the Genius Parties being licensed for region 1 are close to nil.

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I used to be a busy costumer back when I active in the SCA. I sewed mainly for myself, and I still have a closet full of 14th- and 15th-century clothes, most of which I can’t fit into anymore. When I became interested in anime, I naturally was curious about cosplay.

I discovered that there are significant differences between the historical recreationist and the anime universes. Costumers in the SCA have 1,000 years of fashion to draw upon. No matter what your age or shape is, there is something elegant for you to wear in any period, and there are plenty of options for both men and women. Cosplay, however, is the province of the young and thin, and females have a definite advantage.¹

There’s also a greater degree of freedom in SCA costuming. If you could document the elements and show that the combination was plausible in a particular time and place, you could design a outfit to suit your fancy, and that was fine. In cosplay, however, you try to duplicate a particular outfit as closely as possible. There’s far less room for idiosyncratic variation.

I’m not all that young and skinny anymore, so, rather than turn stomachs, I stick to photographing good costumes. (It’s probably just as well, though I’d be interested in sewing for someone with a better figure if I could find a willing victim (and the time).) I enjoy good cosplay photography, so I was interested to learn today that the cosplay magazine Cosmode has announced a bilingual, sorta, online version. There’s a preview here. The gimmick is that, although the Japanese text remains unchanged, you can read translations by positioning your mouse over a block of text. I don’t know if it’s worth the subscription price, but I’ll probably check out the free first issue.

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Today’s quote:

Anime titles are eminently sensible, fairly representing their content. I mean, who can look at titles like these without knowing exactly what they’re about: DearS, Angelic Layer, All-purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku-nuku, Bubblegum Crisis, FLCL, Chobits, Cutie Honey, Green Green, Bleach, Kiddy Grade, Divergence Eve, Dirty Pair, Hyper Police, Happy Lesson, Club-to-Death Angel L’il Skull, Mysterious Hats of Twin Princesses, Excel Saga, G-on Riders, Lime-colored War Stories, Gals!, and of course, Mai Highly-advanced Materializing Equipment. (only four of these are translations, the rest are the original titles…)

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A few non-anime links of note:

Blogging is a hazardous occupation.
The patron saints of graphic design.
The fifty most powerful blogs (yeah, right). None of them are about anime.
(Via TSO and MCNS.)

1. I once saw a picture of an “Ah, My Goddess” group, with girls in pretty robes and a guy in street clothes. It took me a moment to realize that he was in costume, too, as Keiichi. [↩]

If you are sick of reading negative comments about the Anime Blog Awards, skip the rest of this.

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When I read that BOST is offering DRM-free downloads of their shows, I figured I ought to check it out. So I registered and purchased the minimum quantity of BOST “points” (a disorienting process: the PayPal page was initially specific to Japan, but I live in Kansas, not Kansai). My first download was the iPod-ready version of the The Tower of Druaga’s initial episode. There were problems. My first attempt to download the file last night stalled at 56 megabytes. I tried again this morning and got the entire 84 megabytes in five minutes. However, the episode wouldn’t play in VLC or QuickTime; according to the former, there was a “moov box” missing from the file. Grrr. I wrote a couple of sarcastic paragraphs about BOST earlier today, but before posting them, I downloaded the PSP version to see if that would play.

I’m relieved to note that it does work in VLC. The image size is 480 by 272 pixels, not generous, but large enough so that subtitles are easily readable. Hitherto, legal downloading schemes involved DRM and were Windows-only, both deal-breakers. $2 for a freely-watchable mp4 I can live with. Now let’s hope BOST offers shows that are worth watching.

Oh, yeah, about The Tower of Druaga. The first episode is apparently a one-off spoof of RPGs. I found it rather tedious, but if you are a gamer with an encyclopedic knowledge of ’70’s and ’80’s anime, and if you find girls and tentacles an amusing combination, you might enjoy it more than I did.

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Shamus (whose Chainmail Bikini and The DM of the Rings satirize RPGs more entertainingly than Druaga #1) recently posted several classic — if that’s the word — annoying videos. Click at your own risk. Shamus did have the decency not to include badgerbadgerbadgerbadg…. Unfortunately, one of his commenters was not so considerate.

Update: Someone had to go and link to the rathergood.com kittens. At least he didn’t bring up their viking cousins. The miscreant also mentioned this old favorite that I hadn’t seen in years, so I might forgive him.

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If The Kawaii Menace were the name of a book, it would have a 69.0% chance of being a bestselling title, according to the the Lulu Titlescorer. I tested a few other names:

Wonderduck’s Pond — 76.9%
The Ego’s Nest — 69.0%
Mahou Meido Meganekko — 26.3%
Haibane Renmei — 35.9%
Martian Successor Nadesico — 10.2%, 26.3% or 41.4%, depending on how you describe the title
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World — 26.3%
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships — 8.6%

(Via Frëd.)

Media Blasters has rescued Seirei no Moribito. Further good news: the first novel in the series that Moribito is based on is scheduled to be published in June. The series also will be shown on Cartoon Network. I look forward to apoplectic reactions from the “meat is murder” crowd when the twentieth episode airs.

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Quote of the week:

As regards Go Nagai, I’m not sure that the creator of Kekko Kamen and Cutey Honey is really the father [of anime] we want to acknowledge. He’s more like the creepy uncle who goes around wearing the trench coat.

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So far, the only upcoming series I plan to watch is Allison to Lillia. The main reason, of course, is that it is based on books by Keiichi Sigsawa, the creator of Kino no Tabi. I recently discovered that the opening and closing themes feature the Kuricorder Quartet, who, as the Kuricorder Pops Orchestra, did the music for Azumanga Daioh.

Update: Astro has posted the opening.

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A few notes on the Anime Blog Awards before I drop the subject forever:

1. As I mentioned before, Rule #10 disqualifies me from participating:

10. You do not have to nominate blogs for all the categories. However, you are required to fill in at least 9 nominations in 9 different categories in order for your nomination to be accepted.

Let’s see: I don’t read manga; I don’t obsess over particular seiyuu; I’m not interested in fan art, doujinshi or visual novels; I don’t collect figurines; my main sources of anime news are not blogs; and, for humor, satire and comics, I’m too spoiled by David Burge, Randall Munroe and their peers to have much interest in their otakusphere counterparts. That leaves at most eight categories in which I might be able to make knowledgeable nominations. Owen, in a comment on my earlier post, says

I got clarification: it’s a guideline, not an absolute rule. It was made in order to scare off those who’d vote in like 1-2 categories for 1-2 people or something. Perhaps you have like 5, 6, 7 potential nominations? That’s fine.

That implies that there are two sets of rules, the official ones posted on the site, and the real rules, which are secret. If that’s the case, then I’m really not interested in being part of this.

2. The categories are rather arbitrary. I can think of several not included that I would rather have seen than some listed, and I expect that you can, too. The worst omission: there should have been a category for “best reviews.” The single most useful service an anime blogger can do is to identify what’s worth my time and explain why. Those who are good at it deserve recognition.

3. The list of blogs nominated so far suggests that the inhabitants of this region of the otakusphere are rather parochial. The awards are popularity contests and you’re inevitably going to see the same sites over and over, but I expected a broader range of nominees. Many of the sites I find most interesting were still missing from the lists last time I checked. Surely I’m not the only one who finds the infrequent updates at AniPages Daily worth the wait. There was exactly one nomination for a mee.nu blog. There is one site in particular I have in mind whose absence from four of the listed categories is inexplicable and renders the competition meaningless (not that that particular blogger gives a damn).

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Nick has posted a collection of short works by Makoto Shinkai on his site.