The Kawaii Menace

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, “ラストショット!,” 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 designs¹ 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?

… it’s essentially 40 filler episodes.

1. Kei’s and Yuri’s busts are as large as I find attractive; bigger than that just looks grotesque. [↩]

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)

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.

Both Wonderduck and Astro have declared their love for Sketchbook full color’S, so I watched the first few episodes. Initially I was put off by the main character. In the first episode Sora seems not just painfully but pathologically shy and sensitive. However, the subsequent episodes emphasize her otherworldliness, and she seems less like a mental case and more like Osaka’s artistic cousin. Also, however strange she is, she not the only eccentric around:

I doubt that I’ll ever like Sketchbook as much as Mr. Duck does, but it is on my watch list. Slight though the series is, it’s appealingly whimsical, and it’s refreshing after noisier, busier shows.

Sketchbook earns bonus points for being 100% fanservice-free. It’s an anime in which high school girls wear knee-length skirts. (But it loses a point for the pointless apostrophe-capital “S” in the title.)

*****

I’m ambivalent about Minami-ke. It does feature potentially the best comic character since Osaka, and the first two episodes are funnier than Lucky Star and Hayate no Gotoku combined. Chiaki is a very bright, very deadpan grade-school student. She steals the show as Ruri did Nadesico. She has a mischievous streak, and her hyper high school sister Kana is an easy target. The two live with their older sister, apparently without parents or other guardians.

Funny though it is, Minami-ke makes me a bit uneasy. The first episode is largely about kissing, which Kana wants to demonstrate to Chiaki. The second concerns panties. What will the third feature, bra sizes? I’m not sure I want to find out. (Note that there isn’t any actual fanservice in the show, just the threat of it.)

*****

Although I was not exactly enthralled by the first episode of Ghost Hound, as I noted below, I am still certainly going to follow the series. Nakamura et al may yet come through.

*****

I’m no expert on swing, but the more I listened to the Oh! Edo Rocket soundtrack, the more familiar it seemed. “Matsuri,” for instance, may not have quite the same melody as “In the Mood,” but it sure reminded me of the earlier tune. It bothered me, so I posted a few of the tunes on my other weblog and asked if they sounded familiar. The consensus in the comments is that the pieces are pastiches of swing originals, not quite plagiarisms but damn near. So, if you like the music, instead of the OER soundtrack, you probably should look for recordings by Glenn Miller and his contemporaries.

Given the creators of Ghost Hound, I was afraid that the show might be pretentious, incoherent or incomprehensible. The first episode suggests a worse possiblity: it might be dull.

Tarou has a recurring dream, which he describes into a voice recorder when he wakes up. He falls asleep in class. Two other students are introduced who are probably going to be major characters. One is a smarmy newcomer, the other is a surly outsider. Also making appearances are Tarou’s parents, the school psychologist with a curl in the middle of his forehead, and a girl who appears both in Taro’s dream and on the road home from school.

So far, it’s been mostly introductions, a little backstory and a little strangeness. Nothing much happens, and none of the characters are particularly engaging. The liveliest part was the fly buzzing in Tarou’s dream. This is just the first episode, of course, and presumably Chiaki Konaka and Ryutaro Nakamura are setting the stage for serious weirdness. Still, I was underwhelmed.

Konaka and Nakamura earlier collaborated on Serial Experiments Lain, which will be ten years old next July. After viewing the first episode of Ghost Hound, I watched the first episode of Lain again. There they didn’t waste time on introductions but plunged straight into the strangeness. Perhaps they ought to study their old work to see how it’s done. (Or perhaps they should have drafted Yasuyuke Ueda and Yoshitoshi ABe.)

Sawaki, who has just begun his studies at an agricultural college in Tokyo, can see microbes with his naked eye and even pluck them out of the air. What he sees doesn’t much resemble the pictures in books. To him, bacteria and fungi have cute little faces. Nevertheless, he can accurately identify species.

The first episode of Moyashimon serves mainly to introduce the main characters. Besides Sawaki, there’s his friend Kei; Professor Itsuki, whose mouth is hidden by his mustache except when — well, you’ll see; and Hasegawa, who doesn’t dress like a student at an agricultural college and who refuses to believe in Sawaki’s ability. There’s also lots of friendly yeast floating around.

What kind of story Moyashimon is going to tell isn’t clear yet. The alternate title of the series, “Tales of Agriculture,” suggests that it’s likely to be a episodic microbe-of-the-week show. Whether it continues to be interesting once the concept’s novelty wears off remains to be seen. (I hope the writers don’t try to top kiviak. Ugh.) There was no indication of any romance (though Hasegawa’s outfit hints at something else), so one can hope that Moyashimon will be angst-free. I’ll definitely be watching more of it.

A pleasant surprise (for me; YMMV): the ending theme is by Polysics, the outstanding exponent of hypercaffeinated neo-Devonian rock ‘n’ roll. The lyrics have nothing to do with the show, or anything else, but I don’t mind.

Here are some notes on the biology involved in this episode.

*****

Seven years ago, when Shion was very young, she witnessed her parents’ murder. She hasn’t spoken since then. Under her foster parents’ tutelage, she has become a prodigy at shogi, the Japanese version of chess. The first episode of Shion no Ou deals with events at a women’s shogi tournament. Poor traumatized Shion may be the least complicated character in the series. We’re only one episode in, and already it seems that everyone else has either a secret or an agenda. There are also strange men observing Shion’s every move.

It sounds ridiculously melodramatic, and the story might eventually collapse under its own weight, but the beginning of Shion no Ou is quite watchable. I’m curious to see how it develops.

*****

The second episode of Rental Magica provides some background for the president and the Celtic magic specialist, and the hell with it. I’m sorry, but the story is not interesting and I don’t give a damn about any of the characters.

*****

I enjoyed the second episode of A Young Person’s Mushishi, a.k.a. Mokke, more than the first, partly because it wasn’t the horror story I was expecting. The spirit Mizuki encounters this time is friendly and helpful, but it doesn’t quite get the distinction between right and wrong. The story suffers slightly from preachiness, but not fatally. It looks like this will be a good show for kids.

*****

In my notes earlier about Baccano!, I don’t think I sufficiently indicated that it’s often a very funny show. There’s plenty of bloodshed and fair amount of horror, but comedy is likely to strike at any time, particularly when Isaac and Miria are around. I’d like to put an excerpt or two on the video weblog, such as Isaac’s recounting of their criminal career in the sixth episode, but the fansubs are in Mac-hostile mkv format, grrr.

Update: I added the opening of Baccano! to the video weblog.

*****

Nota bene: as a matter of policy, I do not approve anonymous comments with obviously phony email addresses, e.g., doesntwork@donttryme.bleh.

Some odds and ends while I download Moyashimon:

Does anyone make shows about folks who can focus on saving humanity, or are we doomed to a diet of crappy sci-fi soap operas? If WWII had been like this, Roosevelt would have looked like Professor X and have been crippled years ago by his quasi-enemy, Super Seiyjin Stalin; Hitler would have been the lunatic madman out to conquer/end/dominate/destroy the world, Mussolini would have been the jilted bishie lover of both Roosevelt and Stalin, Churchill would have been an angsty teenager, and Hirohito would have been a cute female high-schooler in a sailor outfit trying to end world militarism in time for this semester’s finals.

“Isn’t chocolate pudding… bad … for the violins?”

*****

I’m not a fan of Star Wars, but this was uncalled for. (Caution: causes severe ear pain. Blame the LLamas for this one.)

*****

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.)

*****

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.)

*****

I’ve added Yumedamaya Kidan to my to-investigate list.

*****

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 waiting for Ghost Hound and Moyashimon, I’ve been watching Baccano! Four episodes in I’m beginning to get some idea of the story. The series could be first-rate, or it could be a massive trainwreck (in more than one sense). We’ll see.

It’s set in Prohibition-era America. The characters cover a wide ethnic range — can you name any other anime featuring a Czeslaw? — though quasi-Italian names predominate. A lot of them are mobsters from the Mafia and the Camorra. Many, if not most of them, are immortal. You can shoot them full of bullets and cut them up, but in a little while the blood oozes back into the bodies, severed fingers and heads reattach themselves, and wounds magically heal without a trace. Some of them are pretty nasty — one is a outright psychopath who favors white suits because splatters of blood show up so brightly. Others seem nice enough.

The story focuses on the events on the train the Flying Pussyfoot¹ between Chicago and New York. Something is hidden on the train, perhaps a couple of bottles of immortality elixer, perhaps a bomb. The passengers include many mobsters and many immortals. There are also Isaac and Miria (the former played by Masaya Onosaka at his most clownish), a pair of enthusiastic nitwits to complicate the already complex proceedings. Bloody hijinks ensue.

Ordinarily a show this violent wouldn’t interest me, and if the narrative were presented in straightforward fashion I would have quit after the first episode. Baccano!’s novelty is that the story is is told in bits and pieces, skipping backward and forward in the years from 1930 to 1932. Following the plot is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. Even if the series is ultimately disappointing, there is still the pleasure of fitting the pieces together.

The story might be worthwhile. Baccano! is based on a series of light novels, and that is often a good sign. The main problem, aside from the level of violence, is that we never spend much time with any one character. Thus far, most are one-dimensional, though a few of the quieter ones hint at some complexity.

I doubt that Baccano! will ever have much of a following. It expects the viewer to pay close attention and remember what he sees, and some of it is brutal — when I rewatch the series, there are several sections I’ll skip. Still, on the basis of the first four episides, I’d rate it the second-best series from the summer that I’ve sampled, after Mononoke.

The Wikipedia page focuses more on the novels than the anime, but it does have a list of characters that might be helpful to keep on hand while watching. There are no serious spoilers there yet, though that might change.

1. Originally the Grand Punk Railroad, if I’m interpreting the book titles correctly. [↩]

I’m sitting on top of the parliament building, resisting tear-gas attacks from air force helicopters that circle above me like flies. I will soon enjoy my very last cigarette, my last show of resistance. My comrade, the painter Kusakabe, fell to his death just moments ago, leaving me alone as the last smoker remaining on earth. At this very moment, images of me — highlighted against the night sky by searchlights down below — are probably being relayed live across the country from TV cameras inside the helicopters.

I’ve got three packs left, and I refuse to die before I’ve finished them. So I’ve been chain-smoking two or three at a time. My head feels numb, my eyes are starting to spin. It’s only a matter of time before I, too, fall lifeless to the ground below.

It was only about fifteen or sixteen years ago that the anti-smoking movement started….

And so begins “The Last Smoker,” one of the stories in Yasutaka Tsutsui’s Salmonella Men on Planet Porno and Other Stories. The story chronicles the growth and ultimate triumph of the anti-smoking movement from the point of view of a chain-smoking writer. Desperate though his plight is in the opening paragraphs, an even more dire fate awaits him.

I first became aware of Tsutsui while reading about Satoshi Kon’s Paprika, which is based on one of Tsutsui’s novels. Paprika was ultimately disappointing — spectacular though much of it is, the whole is less than the sum of its parts — but the premise, more fully developed in a book, could be interesting. Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, a better movie, is a sequel of sorts to another of Tsutsui’s novels. I was curious about him, so I checked Amazon.com to see what was available. Although he is called Japan’s Isaac Asimov, little has been translated into English. There’s a series of Telepathic Wanderer manga, an out-of-print collection of “psychic tales” and Salmonella Men.¹

Tsutsui’s stories aren’t much like Asimov’s. In “Rumors About Me,” the narrator finds that his daily activities are the subjects of newscasts and televised panel discussions and are written up in newspapers. In “Don’t Laugh,” an inventor devises a time machine and can’t stop laughing. In “Hello, Hello, Hello!” a self-apppointed financial advisor exhorts the inhabitants of a block of apartments to greater frugality, emerging without warning from the next room, the wardrobe or the toilet to confront the narrator before he wastes any more money. In general, there is little extrapolation and plenty of absurdity. Tsutsui is primarily a satirist in this collection.

The title story is the closest approach to conventional science fiction. Explorers journey at great personal risk through the unnatural hazards of Planet Porno, where “only indecent life forms are allowed to exist.” There is considerable discussion between the narrator and the prudish Dr. Mogamigawa about evolution and devolution. During the Second Green Revolution, we learn, the “obnoxious hippies” were herded onto spaceships and banished from Earth. Perhaps their descendents live in the settlement of Newdopia.

Some of the stories are better than others. The least interesting to me is “Bravo Herr Mozart!”, a nonsensical biography of the composer: “Mozart was born at the age of three. The reason for this is not known. He was born in his father’s house in Salzburg — probably because he didn’t have a mother.” Etc. YMMV. There are several others I’m not likely to revisit. Most, however, are quite readable.

It should be clear by now that Salmonella Men is not the least bit like TokiKake, and that however dark Paprika might be, Tsutsui’s writing is darker. It’s also funnier, with absurdities, slapstick and surprise endings. If you enjoy satire and black humor, Salmonella Men on Planet Porno might be worth your time.

*****

I’m pleased see that The Kawaii Menace is now included at Anime Nano. I’m also a bit embarrassed that my first post listed there had nothing to do with anime, and that this one is only tangentially anime-related.

1. Checking Amazon.com just now, I discovered that there is a newly translated Tsutsui book out, Hell. [↩]

Visitors here have declared Microsoft to be more evil than Sony, 19 to 14.

There’s a new poll up.

At the center of Mokke is a pair of sisters. The older one, Shizuru, sees “things a normal human can’t see,” and the younger one, Mizuki, is susceptible to possession by those things. For reasons that will probably be explained later in the series, they left their parents to start a now life with their grandparents in rural Japan. Their grandfather is knowlegeable about those things that Shizuru sees, and he sternly lectures her on what she needs to do to protect Mizuki.

Mokke is a show of modest virtues. It’s a rather cheap-looking production, but there’s otherwise nothing really wrong with it, and I expect that it will be a tolerable kid’s show. The characters are non-neurotic and likeable and the premise has possibilities. Although it looks to be a series of horror stories, it’s not so intense as to give children nightmares (if the first episode is representative).

Shizuru and her impulsive little sister remind me of Yasako and Kyoko from Denno Coil, and the monster in the first episode initially resembles the “illegal” from the first episodes of DC. Shizuru’s ability to see the unseen also suggests parallels to Mushishi. And that is the problem with Mokke. Denno Coil and Mushishi are possibly the two best series since Haibane Renmei. Mokke isn’t bad, but it withers in comparison.

One point in Mokke’s favor: the artists actually know something about botany. The flowers in the picture of Mizuki above are clearly fireweed (Epilobium). During the episode, Mizuki searches for the “seven flowers of autumn,” and they’re recognizably drawn (though I’d quibble with one of the identifications).

I’ll give Rental Magica another chance before I abandon it. It’s about the dog-eat-dog (or monster-eat-monster) world of the rent-a-mage business. This is anime, so most of the mages are high school students. The first half of the first episode introduces a large cast of characters, none of them memorable. There’s a lot of action, but nothing really interesting happens.

In the second half, however, there is a story worth telling about a girl whose grandfather disappeared. If subsequent episodes concentrate on storytelling rather than action and seifuku, this could be a good show.

Shinsen Subs deserves special recognition for annotations beyond the call of duty, or tact.

This is a proper flying broom:

*****

Maybe Ghost Hound will be good. There’s also a show about kawaii bacteria. And that’s about all that looks intereresting this fall.

*****

My interest in watching any version of Gundam is precisely zero. Nevertheless, the most recent iteration provided the occasion for an interesting thread at Chizumatic.

There’s still little time for anime. The only current series I’m up-to-date on is Oh! Edo Rocket (or Oedo Rocket, or Ohedo Rocket).¹ Eighteen episodes have now been subtitled, and it continues as off-the-wall as ever. The word is that the dramatic story is concluded in the twentieth episode and the remaining six focus on comedy, which is fine with me.

The soundtrack is distinctive. About half of it is big-band swing; the rest is mostly swing/rock hybrids, with a bit of pseudo-flamenco here and there. I don’t know how well it will sustain repeated listenings, but in small doses it’s fun. Here are a couple of examples:

(This tune recurs in different arrangements throughout the series. Another setting can be heard in the second video excerpt here.)

*****

Speaking of soundtracks, I discovered yesterday that the other dealer is selling Geneon CDs for $5.99. This includes many outstanding OSTs — Haibane Renmei, Azumanga Daioh, Someday’s Dreamers, Noir, etc.

1. Though I download Denno Coil and Seirei no Moribito as new episodes become available [↩]

How to compose music for an online RPG. (Also why I avoid using violin samples in my own music.) If you can read French, the original is here.