The Kawaii Menace

(Read on …)

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.

(Read on …)

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.

(Read on …)

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

NSFW edition.
show

From Soul Eater, episode one.

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

(Read on …)

Here’s a curiosity: Iblard Jikan. It’s a Studio Ghibli project based on the paintings of Naohisa Inoue of the imaginary world Iblard. There’s no story; instead, it’s thirty minutes of looking at surrealistic paintings. It’s not as dull as it sounds. The paintings are enhanced with discreet animation: rivers sparkle, waves roll up beaches, trams run on tracks, girls walk and fly. There’s no dialogue, just instrumental music (mostly bland, but a few of the pieces are listenable). If you pay attention to the backgrounds when you watch animated features, you might find Iblard Jikan worthwhile. There are more screen captures below the fold.

Those who enjoy jigsaw puzzles will want to visit this page.

(Read on …)

I’ve been studying yet another treatise on father-daughter dynamics, Petite Princess Yucie. Steven liked it and it sounded promising, so I ordered it last week, along with Magic Knight Rayearth TV (which Jonathan Tappan reviewed positively). I’ve watched four of the five discs in the thinpak and will probably finish tonight or tomorrow evening. It is pretty good — it already has the distinction of being the first Gainax series that I watched more than the first disc of — and if it ends well, it will be a show I can recommend to almost everyone.

The primary pleasure is in the characters and their interactions, but there is much else to enjoy, such as the utterly terrifying Demon world.

Update: Finished it: thumbs up. I may write more later, but I’m going to be away from the computer for a few days.

(Read on …)

Some time back Wabi Sabi mentioned The Diary of Tortov Roddle. I recently came across a torrent. It’s an odd little series, consisting of nine short episodes. Seven concern Tortov Roddle, an etiolated traveler with a stovepipe hat exploring the northern plains. These are brief, surrealistic stores told without dialogue. In the first episode, for instance, Roddle sees a town on a hill and hopes to find an inn there. However, it turns out that the town is on the back of a gigantic frog, which leaves the hill for a lake populated by other frogs with towns on their backs. The penultimate episode, “Fantasy,” is a collection of brief vignettes too slight to summarize. The last is “The Apple Incident,” in which giant apples fall from the sky.

Rather than try to explicate the imagery, I’ll just post some screen captures below the fold.

(Read on …)

Nobody’s favorite guitarist.

The passengers.

On the deck of the boat in the Dragon’s Triangle (like the Bermuda Triangle, but more garish).

I’m going to be away from the computer for a few days. While I’m gone, I’ll post a few screen captures from Mononoke, a series perhaps of more visual than narrative interest. This is the medicine seller, the central character of the stories, who functions somewhat like a free-lance exorcist. Usually his fingers aren’t dissolving away.

We’ve had pocket calculators, televisions, helicopters and worse so far in the 1840’s Japan of Oh! Edo Rocket, so why not a giant wooden mecha?

Oh! Edo Rocket #5

Bears, too.

Yep.

… or Denno Renmei?

(It occurs to me that there are significant parallels between the two Yukos, and Rakka and Reki.)

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.)

(Read on …)

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.)

From Oh! Edo Rocket #2.

(Read on …)