Here’s the culprit.

The website for Satoshi Kon’s current project is active. Yume-Miru Kikai looks like a significant departure from Kon’s previous work, at least visually, and unlike Paranoia Agent and Paprika, this “future folklore story” might be suitable for all ages.

An appreciation of the background art of Oh! Edo Rocket.

For anyone who’s ever said “Huh?” at a renaissance faire.

If you’re in the Minneapolis area, you can catch a performance of “A Christmas Carol” in Klingon. (Via Maureen the Suburban Banshee.)

A three-dimensional Mandelbrot set? (also via Maureen.)

Bored with caricaturing Roman Catholicism, manga artists have discovered the Eastern Orthodox.

An old interview with the late John Sladek I came across recently. Sladek, discoverer of the thirteenth sign of the zodiac (Arachne, May 13 to June 9),¹ was one of the last century’s best satirists and is of my favorite writers.

Meep.

Thinking about large numbers.

Keep an eye on those ducks:

Public service announcement: the complete Dirty Pair TV is out there, subtitled, if you know where to look.

1. For the morbidly curious, my own sign is “No parking — violators will be towed at owner expense.”

Several otherwise sane and sensible people recently have been posting their Champions Online or City of Heroes characters. I thought I’d check the games out. Fortunately for me, the former is Windows-only, but the latter does have a Mac client and a free trial period, so that’s how I spent a couple of lunch hours this past week. (Actually, I spent the first lunch twiddling my thumbs while the client downloaded nearly three gigabytes of additional content — if I had realized that it would do that, I wouldn’t have bothered.) It is fun to play with the character creator; you can make a (rather skanky-looking) schoolgirl, which isn’t possible with such sites as Hero Machine. The game itself, though, looks as dull as every other MMORPG I’ve visited, as far as I could judge from the tutorials (I tried both the heroic and villainous options). It’s nifty to design colorful avatars, but “jogging heroically” to fight random enemies is tedious. I’d rather listen to music —

— which is what I do in Second Life. My initial impressions of SL were rather negative, and if you want to find intelligent people to discuss anime with, you’ll do better hanging around Steven’s place. But there is lots of music there, some of it good, and there are other people with tastes as wide-ranging as mine. It’s possible to stream music from your computer to sites within Second Life, which I’ll be doing Saturday evenings for while. If you have a SL account, stop by Grizzy’s Café between 6 and 8 p.m. SL time (i.e., California time; between 8 and 10 p.m. in the central USA time zone). Tonight I’ll be playing very miscellaneous Japanese music, from Yoko Kanno to Hatsune Miku.

There is a tremendous range of ready-made avatars available in Second Life, such as this Super S Sailor Moon (to my eye, the most elegant of all mahou shoujo costumes). You can also design your own from scratch, if you're handy with Photoshop and virtual 3-D manipulation.

*****

I’ve sampled some random examples from the fall anime season. So far I haven’t finished a single episode. Surprisingly, the one I watched longest was Kämpfer, this season’s attempt to create the ultimate anime. Let’s see … we have

• high school students

• fighting
— with guns
— with swords
— with magic
(… but no forks)

• sailor fuku

• panties

• sexual ambiguity (question of definition: is a guy who actually changes to a girl truly a “trap”?)

• a meganekko

• henshin

• absolute territory

• .4 Rushunas — and that’s the hero. He also runs like a girl.

I hesitate to say whether there are any moeblobs or tsunderes in the show. I think one character qualifies on both counts, but that isn’t my field of expertise.

That’s in just the first fifteen minutes or so. There are also hints of a developing harem, a ridiculously powerful student government and perhaps a vast conspiracy. I expect future episodes will include copious steam. There are unlikely to be nekomimi, mecha or winged people, but I wouldn’t put it past the writers — it really is a silly show. Sad girls in snow are probably too much to hope for.

My only hope for the fall season is Kuuchuu Buranko, or Trapeze, whose crew includes Kenji Nakamura and Manabu Ishikawa of Mononoke.

*****

A couple of odd links:

A “green” F1 vehicle.

Carbon-free sugar.

heresy is not kawaii
gurren lagann knitting
cowboy bebop knitting
knitting anime themes
ponyo on a stick
sailor moon cardboard cutout
a religion based off of sailor moon
canzoni kawaii
languid gay charles solomon
gender critics are idiots
anime girl wolf boy frog
haruhi peanuts
kawaii the murderer pics
safe for work babes
oink supervisor

There were a few that make me glad that I am unlikely ever to meet the searchers:

anime manly girls
armpit hair pictures
kawaii tentacle monster

*****

Anime cosplayers are normal, sane people — at least compared to these.

Via Steven, who recently discovered Pokémon. (Update: note the third-place item in this list.)

Ubu, meanwhile, has discovered RahXephon. In a comment at Ubu’s place, Avatar confirms what I had suspected:

RahXephon was a show where we constructed a couple of really elaborate theories that explained everything, wrote off to Japan with a “so which one is it, we need to know for the translation”, and got back “huh? We did all those things because they looked cool.”

*****

I recently watched the first two episodes of El Hazard: The Magnificent World. Good grief. Here’s our hero:

I really wonder sometimes: do Japanese boys want to be girls? If you think I’m exaggering, count the thumbnails on this graphic:

The first El Hazard OVA was written by Ryoe Tsukimura. He also wrote the scripts for the first Tenchi Muyo! movie and the many UFO Princess Valkyries. They have their moments, but they’re all essentially anime junk food. Most of the rest of Tsukimura’s output looks similarly undistinguished. However, he does have one classic to his credit, Noir, which was his idea and his script. In this, he reminds me of Kou Ohtani, a competent, unmemorable soundtrack composer who on one occasion exhibited afflatus.

*****

Since I closed nominations for the current poll, commenters have mentioned Ghost in the Shell, Tenchi Muyo GXP, Kimagure Orange Road, Spice and Wolf and Wolf’s Rain. The first has been mentioned twice (the second time in an email), so I’ll probably add it to the second round candidates. Would anyone care to second any of the other series?

Some crossovers are best left unrealized.

More here, if you dare.

*****

How to be even cuter. These won’t work unless you’re already fairly cute — visualize how Hillary Clinton would look trying these poses.

(Via .clue.)

When the Fnools invaded Earth, they disguised themselves as two-foot-tall real estate salemen, figuring that no one would take them seriously until too late.¹ The aliens in Mao-chan adopt a similar strategy: by assuming mercilessly kawaii forms, the invaders make the Japanese defense forces reluctant to engage them in combat, lest the human soldiers be seen as bullies. The Japanese fight cuteness with cuteness: the head of the land forces enlists his eight-year-old granddaughter, Mao, to battle the invaders, arming her with a baton, a full-size model of a tank, and a clover-shaped pin that transforms her into a not-terribly-competent but very cute mahou shoujo. Mao soon is joined by a couple of other eight-year-old girls: Misora, representing the air force, and Sylvie, representing the navy, both recruited by their doting grandfathers. Mao and Misora are ordinary grade-school girls, as kids in anime go, but Sylvie is distinctly Osaka-ish.

The first disc of Mao-chan is pure, silly fluff. The girls deal with the aliens by bopping them with the batons, scolding them, or generating energy blasts from their combined batons. The invading aliens seem too cute to be scary (but we know better). There are some satirical elements (everything the girls do is broadcast on television; Mao’s tank looks intimidating, but in fact is just a big toy; image matters more than military effectiveness; etc.), but they are subordinate to absurdity and cuteness. If the first disc is representative, Mao-chan is a good show for families with small children and for anyone who like silly things. It’s best taken in small doses.

But it’s not for everyone. Zac Bertschy’s review begins:

There must have been a race between anime production houses in Japan to see who could come up with the most asinine show ever. Production I.G, having produced Earth Defense Force Mao-chan, has to have won the competition (although the more recent Bottle Fairy might be worse).

and ends:

Mao-chan will undoubtedly be forgiven by a legion of fans who claim that it’s just ‘innocent, cute fun’ and that critics are being ‘too harsh’ by characterizing it as an insipid exercise in stupidity for fans with horrifically low standards. Mao-chan is lame, offensively unfunny, repetitive, and worst of all, mind-numbingly dull. Geneon’s other saccharine series, A Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar, at least has endearing characters and the occasional decent story. All Mao-chan has is pain. Unless, of course, you’re a toddler.

It was painfully obvious that Bertschy was sick of anime long before he quit his “Answerman” gig. The sheer bile of his Mao-chan review suggests that he was already burnt-out five years ago. It demonstrates once again that reviewers are not to be trusted, particularly those at ANN. There really is no substitute for seeing for yourself.

*****

Quote of the week:

I am more excited than an electron around a hydrogen atom being hit by a 13.6eV photon.

*****

I’d rather listen to Hatsune Miku than:

• Bob Dylan
• Peter Cetera
• Richard Nixon²
• Bob Marley
• Bruce Springsteen
• KISS
• Ozzy Osborne
• Joan Osborne
• Grand Funk Railroad
• Any rapper
• Sonny and Cher
• Brian Warner
• Duran Duran
• George Harrison
• Billy Idol
• ‘N Sync
• Tony Orlando and Dawn
• Mick Jagger
• Rick Astley
• David Lee Roth
• Jewel
• Backstreet Boys
• Motley Crue
• Eddie Vedder
• Kid Rock
• Bill Clinton
• Alanis Morissette
• Carole King
• .. and many, many others

The list is still valid if you replace “Hatsune Miku” with “Touhou music.”

*****

Sailor Naruto. (Advisory: may cause nightmares or nausea.)

*****

While The Kawaii Menace merely ranks 40th among anime blogs overall, according to this site, it ranks second in “Top Anime blogs by the number of pages posted on the blog” and first in “Top Anime blogs by the number of pages indexed by Google.” Golly. This is probably a case of being a small fish in a really tiny pond, and The Kawaii Menace will drop off the charts as more bloggers sign up.

(via #13 (currently).)

1. See Philip K. Dick’s “The War with the Fnools.”
2. Via Frëd.

*****

Another entry for the “ducks in anime” file:

From Negima Ala Alba OAD #2 (not recommended).

*****

I discovered that the software used to animate Hatsune Miku is freeware, available here. It’s surprisingly capable. Here’s Miku dancing Maurice Bejart’s choreography; compare it to the final minutes of this.¹ Unfortunately, like Miku herself, it’s not for Macs.

*****

More random nonsense:

An animated stereogram. It works, too. There are more here. (Via Cartoon Brew.)

“Not only does it save time, but it’s really stupid, too.” More poem generators here.

Can’t find anything you like on the radio? Set a few parameters and generate your own music.

I did not need to see this:

show

.

1. I recommend skpping the first six minutes unless you are a Bejart fanatic.

And Raymond Scott:

Via Cartoon Brew

*****

That other dealer is holding a “bargain bin blowout.” It’s mostly junk, of course, but there are complete sets of some worthy anime available for very reasonable prices, including Bottle Fairy, Divergence Eve and Misaki Chronicles, Haibane Renmei, Serial Experiments Lain, Shingu (including a t-shirt), Someday’s Dreamers and Sugar, a Tiny Snow Fairy. There’s also some Miles Davis.

.*****

So Sailor Moon is girl stuff? Check the results of this poll.

Dr. Boli announces his magnum opus:

Distromachia. An epic poem in twenty-four books, describing in allegorical terms the battle between the various distributions of the Linux operating system. The triumphs, tragedies, humor, and pathos of open-source programming are thrown into sharp relief by casting the story in the Homeric mold. 8vo, 2 vol.

Also check the ads in his Celebrated Magazine.

*****

Via Fellini 8.5, a glimpse of the next project from the Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo team:

*****

Caninogenic climate change:

(Via Irish Elk.)

*****

A tea house too high.

(Via The Rat.)

Tired of Ali Project? Here’s some Puccini, also via The Rat.

*****

It’s not what you wear but how you wear it. A pretty girl with nice smile can redeem “… one of the most unflattering spandex /color combinations of any uniform ever conceived….”

*****

I think of Hatsune Miku as essentially a vocal synthesizer, albeit with a cute animated representation, so I’m a little surprised that there are videos featuring her in which she doesn’t sing. For instance, here’s Miku and her colleagues dancing to a Polysics number:

(Here’s the original video.)

And then there is this bit of senseless violence to a Touhou tune:

(Via Ken the Brickmuppet.)

*****

More music: let’s play a Tesla coil.

*****

Via Astro, an example of voices perfectly matched to their characters:

*****

Bonus nonsense: The best headline of the year so far:

North Korea Threatens War with Japan if Missile Is Shot Down, Japan Threatens to Unleash Godzilla if Kim Jong-il Doesn’t Reconsider Haircut

Update: It’s on iTunes.

Update II: “Le Maison en Petits Cubes” won the Oscar for best animated short film,

Update III: Here’s a short interview with Kato, with a brief excerpt from “La Maison.”

*****

And now for something completely different: “Peach Pie on the Beach,” with cheerleaders.