I will withhold comments on the merits of Mononoke until I’ve watched a few more episodes and have seen whether the payoff of the horror story is worth the buildup. Instead, here are some screen captures illustrating the novelties of this moving wood-block print. Note the off-center and unbalanced compositions, eccentric angles and busy detail contrasting with empty space.
Update: Wabi Sabi has a weblog devoted to Mononoke. (Beware of spoilers.)
I’ve watched very little anime recently, mainly because I’ve been playing with my new toy. It’s as much computer as camera, and learning everything it’s capable of is a major project. (Not that it’s hard to use — put it on “auto” and it is a superior point-and-shoot.) I’ve been posting some of the pictures on my other weblog, starting with “90/365.”
*****
The third episode of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei doesn’t begin with an attempted suicide, which is a bad omen for this black-humored satire. This week’s flakes are a blonde with a dual personality and an illegal immigrant. Unfortunately, Itoshiki disappears in the last third of the show, and Kafuka doesn’t have the same chemistry with obsessive-compulsive Chiri as she does with Mr. Despair. While tasteless humor is to be expected in this sort of show, some of the gags cross the line, notably a brief allusion to pedophilia. Although SZS remains the least unfunny of the current comedies that I’ve seen (Oh! Edo Rocket is something more), I’m still underwhelmed. I watched it a second time, pausing to read all the graffiti on the blackboard, and it wasn’t worth the effort.
Otherwise, I’ve been rewatching Shingu. I’m half-way through and, once again, I’m in no hurry to finish it. I may make some time this week to get caught up with Denno Coil; four new episodes were posted in the last three days, after a three-week dry spell. I may also take a look at Mononoke.
*****
A couple of weblogs that might be worth keeping track of:
FictionJunction J-music — Julien writes about and posts samples of anime soundtracks and other Japanese music.
Japanese words of anime fans … — Discussion of Japanese terms of interest to anime viewers. Many of the words I would prefer not to learn, but it is a potentially useful site nevertheless. (Via Wabi Sabi and Nick.)
*****
Sailor Moon remains a constant menace. Usagi Tsukino and her cohorts currently pose two fresh threats. First, there is a “Sailor Moon” game in development for the Wii. Fortunately for the West, it will probably be region-restricted to Japan. And if that isn’t frightening enough, Usagi herself is poised to strike Japan as a major typhoon:
I hope Ken is packing an umbrella.
Consider rice field art, the Japanese counterpart to Stan Herd’s work.
(Via Erik.)
In Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, or So Long, Mr. Despair, the pessimistic teacher Nozomu Itoshiki, who begins each episode with a suicide attempt, discovers the implacably optimistic girl Fuura Kafuka (does that name sound familiar?) in his class. Her classmates through the second episode include a hikikomori, an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist, a girl who communicates only through text messaging, and a stalker; undoubtedly there will be many other healthy-minded young people to meet in the remaining ten episodes of this grim farce.
The opening is the cheapest I’ve seen, just text with do-it-yourself music. Overall, I would describe the production as economical, if occasionally elegant in its low-budget way. It suits the one-dimensional characters and absurd stories well. The show is noteworthy for its graffiti: the chalkboard features comments and wisecracks from Koji Kumeta, the artist responsible for the manga on which the anime is based. There are also jokes for otaku, though the show doesn’t depend on them the way Lucky Star and Hayate do.
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is obviously not for everyone. I’ve uploaded the first eight seconds of the first episode to my video weblog. If you find it amusing, you might want to check out the series.
Update: Astro is also watching Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and he has many more screen captures. (I would guess that the guy whose face turns up in all the odd places is Kumeta.)
Update II: It occurs to me that SZS is anime as Edward Gorey would have done it.
*****
This is likely my last substantive post for a while. I picked up Harry Potter #7 yesterday (I want to see for myself what happens before anyone spoils it for me), which will probably take care of the rest of today. Tomorrow my New Toy is scheduled to arrive, and that will occupy all my free time for a week or two or three. I’ll be back eventually, and perhaps by then there will be fresh episodes of Denno Coil, Oh! Edo Rocket and maybe even Master of Epic waiting for me.
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:
If you see a “Tancos” in the comments at Chizumatic or other mee.nu weblogs, that’s me. There already is a “don” registered at mee.nu, so I’m using my Martian Hungarian alter-ego. I registered mainly so I can comment on the weblogs that require it, but as a consequence, I now have a mee.nu site of my own. I probably won’t post there often.
(Incidentally, the post editor doesn’t work in Safari (Macintosh OS 10.3.9). It works fine in Firefox, fortunately.)
*****
Wonderduck recently posted a quiz in which the viewer is challenged to identify Kyoto Animation characters by their eyes. If you find it easy, you might want to try this and this, which draw from all of anime. Good luck.
*****
More reviews of Shingu: Civilis and Jeff Lawson. I watched the first disc of Stellvia some months back and couldn’t decide whether to watch the rest. Maybe I will, after all.
Reaction to Potemayo: not enough Guchuko (above, left), too much Mikan (below). I could have done without the Brokeback Mountain reference, too. And the boys in skirts. And the incontinent chibi. Never mind.
By the way, Guchuko indeed wields an axe, not a scythe. This is a scythe:
(Goth Hotaru via Ken.)
Post script: I probably am being a little unfair to Potemayo. The central character, Sunao, is quiet and level-headed, something I appreciate in anime as well as in real life. Although there is a definite whiff of shounen-ai, one of the boys involved is a gonk; i.e., the point is not titillation.
Nevertheless, I wonder just who the target audience is. Potemayo and Guchuko — I expect that the plushies are already heading to market — will likely fascinate pre-literate fans of Binchou-tan, but the satirical aspects of the show will go over their heads. Those who can spot the subverted tropes will likely suffer from a kawaii overdose from the title character/thing. I’m mildly curious to see if any explanation is eventually offered for the chibis’ presence in this universe, but there is a limit to how much cute (or Mikan) my system will tolerate.
One argument for anime over live-action: the women have nicer spacesuits. Compare these dull examples with the suits in Rocket Girls, above, or Stratos 4.
(Via Lynn S.)
Footnote: Skin-tight spacesuits may be the way to go.
At WalMart today I spotted a collection of 150 Cartoon Classics in the $5 DVD bin. It’s, um, educational. Here are two before-and-after pairs of screen captures from “Redskin Blues,” a Tom and Jerry cartoon from 1932:
(Sorry about the quality. The DVD’s menus don’t work in VLC, and the Apple DVD player won’t allow screen grabs (thank you very much, Steve Jobs), so I had to snap the monitor screen with my toy camera.)
A different kind of cat girl, from Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro 2007. (None of the many versions of Kitaro has ever made it across the Pacific. If what I’ve seen is representative, it’s no great loss.)
I’ve posted the opening of Oh! Edo Rocket on the video weblog. I also a uploaded a clip of the “abacus dance.”
It was trivially easy to add the 1 Bit Audio Player to my music pages, so you don’t have to actually download the mp3s to sample the tunes, or whatever you want to call them.
I haven’t been able to get the mp3 player that Astro uses to work, so I’m experimenting with the 1 Bit Audio Player. Here’s a piece from the Denno Coil soundtrack. There should be a little speaker icon after the link. Click on it to hear the tune. If you don’t see it, or if the music doesn’t play, please let me know.
Here’s another possibility:
In the summer of 1842, anything that’s fun is illegal in Edo. This includes all forms of entertainment, technological innovations and, in particular, fireworks. The policeman Akai assiduously enforces the law with a particular emphasis on the Furai terrace house, whose inhabitants include the fireworks artisan Seikichi and his mathematician brother Shunpei. One day, after an unpleasant encounter with Akai, Seikichi returns to his room to find a strange, pretty young woman with stars in her eyes (literally) and blue hair who tells him to call her “Sora.” She has a modest request for him: can he make a rocket that will go to the moon?
Oh! Edo Rocket is a collection of disparate elements, starting with the character art. There are at least three distinct styles represented. Seikichi, Shunpei and Sora have classic anime big eyes and small (but definite) noses. (Their mouths are larger than is standard nowadays, though. Seikichi’s is downright big.) Akai, the locksmith Ginjiro and other older characters have normal-sized eyes and relatively realistic faces, and they are considerably taller than Seikichi. Finally, there’s a collection of cartoony grotesques who could have stepped out of a Jay Ward production. These all are as short as Boris Badenov, barely reaching Ginjiro’s knee, with oversized heads. (I posted a portrait gallery earlier.)
In addition to these, there are strange creatures lurking about. One of these is a pale “sky beast,” apparently intelligent, and capable of zapping its enemies with electrical discharges. The magistrate Torii and his secret police pursue the creature, but as of episode two they have yet to capture it.
Other elements include a jazz soundtrack, frequent anachronisms and breaks in the fourth wall. There’s a self-pitying effeminate bishounen whom nobody notices. There aren’t any meganekko or nekomimi so far, but there is Onui, the “watchdog for public morality,” who is distinctly puppyish. There are giant rabbits on the moon.
Oh! Edo Rocket is mostly farce, but there’s menace under the comedy. The inventor Shinsa is hauled off to jail at the end of the first episode. He returns in the second, covered from head to toe with bandages because he refused to inform on Seikichi. The heavily armored secret police are absurd — one travels by turning cartwheels so quickly that he is a blur — but they are also scary. The regular police seem as competent as the Keystone Cops, but Akai is observant enough to be dangerous.
Whether the show’s creators can pull all these heterogenous elements into a unified whole remains to be seen. A stage play, a novel and an earlier television series preceeded the anime, so presumably the writers have some idea of where they’re going with the story. There’s nothing else much like it, so I’ll probably continue to follow it.
Inevitably, plushies of Denno Coil creatures will soon be available in Japan. Owners of the Densuke doll will be one-up on Yasako, who doesn’t know what her cyberpet feels like. (But where are the mojos?)
*****
After some experimentation with ffmpegX, I managed to encode a watchable flash file of the opening to Animal Yokocho, which I’ve posted on the video weblog. Apparently, the quality of the playback is more a function of the computer it’s viewed on than of the size of the file. On my aging Mac at home with its antique video card, playback is annoyingly jumpy, but here at the office (it’s lunchtime) on my newer, faster machine, it’s acceptable. Though it’s hardly a classic, the AniYoko opening does its job quite well, with cheerful, energetic music and imagery that advertises that anything can happen. Animal Yokocho deserves more attention that it gets; it’s a kid’s show that adults can enjoy as much as their children. It’s a pity that it will probably never be licensed. (For more on the joys of working with Flash, see Astro’s account of his experiments.)
*****
The thirteenth episode of Seirei no Moribito was the first that disappointed me. It’s a good story, and the fight scenes were every bit as spectacular as those in the third episode, but the script was clumsy. The symbolism, not exactly subtle to begin with, was highlighted, then underlined, then explicitly explained as if the viewer were in a ninth-grade English class. The rampaging Balsa deserved better. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was the first episode with an unequivocally evil character.
A bunch of stuff was recently licensed. The most interesting news is the title that wasn’t there. Ouran High School Host Club, in my opinion the outstanding show of the non-banner year 2006, has still not been licensed. I presume that it’s a matter of money; otherwise, it is incomprehensible that dreck like OtoBoku gets a region 1 release and Ouran doesn’t.
Random notes on some of the other shows:
The original Genshiken was okay, but just okay, and the three episodes of Kujibiki Unbalance were all that was necessary. The additional episodes will likely demonstrate that “more is less.”
Darker Than Black is a possible buy, but I want to read some reactions to the complete series before I invest time and money in it. Is there substance under the glossy finish?
I watched half of the first episode of Victorian Romance Emma and, well, I was bored. I daresay I would find it fascinating if I could get into the rhythm. It can wait.
Gurren-Lagann is another possible buy. Again, I’ll wait for reports on the entire series before making a decision.
The first three episodes of Nanoha seemed to me to be an inferior version of Cardcaptor Sakura. Things start getting interesting in the fourth episode with the appearance of another mahou shoujo, but by that point I was thoroughly repulsed by the transformation sequence, which was storyboarded with dirty old men in mind. I never thought I’d say this, but I am not interested in watching any more of Nanoha unless it’s censored.
*****
Today’s Words of Wisdom: Too much Freud is bad for you.
*****
The first episode of Sola has two things going for it: a photographer, albeit a flaky one; and, the three inches between the hem of the girl’s very short skirt and the top of her stockings.1 Astro gave the series a “B,” so I may watch the rest sometime, but it’s not high priority.
*****
None of the summer’s series look particularly promising. I may watch the first episode or two of Tetsuko no Tabi, which seems to be the least stereotypical offering. If the characters are interesting, it could be fun.
*****
I see that Gedo Senki has been fansubbed. I will not be downloading it. I like the books too much.
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