I had been planning to purchase at the the first few discs of Soul Eater when my budget permits. However, if you force me to endure the preview of the SE dub every time I watch an episode of Baccano!, I might change my mind.¹

*****

I don’t know which is more depressing: the number I don’t recognize, or the number that I do.

(Via Anime Raku.)

Update: Raiga in the comments links to a spreadsheet with explanations.

*****

Naming your kids after anime characters is a dumb idea, but it’s no worse than calling them “Jimi Hendrix” and “Janis Joplin,” as did one erstwhile neighbor.

1. Yes, I know ways around this, but it’s still inexcusable. Also, every time I see the unskippable antipiracy notice, I feel a sudden strange urge to make illegal copies of every DVD I own. [↩]

I had to drive over 20 miles to reach a theater that was showing Ponyo. Meanwhile, every single theater in the area is showing another Disney movie about violent, flatulent guinea pigs. Now of course, Disney knows a lot about marketing animated films, and I’m sure that they will say that most Americans want to see the guinea pigs and don’t want to see a classic film by the greatest living master of animation. But this is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Most Americans don’t know that Ponyo is available and couldn’t find a theater showing it even if they wanted to see it.

Bonus quote:

“Who needs experience? I have theory!”

—John C Wright, Titans of Chaos

1. Underwear goes under your other clothing.¹

2. Heath Ledger’s Joker might be a great character, but the makeup is ugly.

3. Please don’t shriek when you’re standing next to me.

4. An all-ages anime convention is not an appropriate place to lead your pet about on a leash.

5. Please don’t stage large group photos in the middle of congested hallways.

1. And a bath towel cape looks really stupid. [↩]

Anime Expo has come and gone. What got licensed?

Denno Coil?
Kaiba?
Mononoke?
Mind Game?

Uh-uh. There was no mention of anything I’ve been waiting for. The titles that were announced all look like drivel.¹ Steven has a different list, but he, too, was disappointed.

I’m particularly annoyed that Denno Coil still hasn’t been picked up for region one. Number three of my top five,² it is the outstanding first-rate series I’ve seen that remains unlicensed. There are a number of older series on my to-buy list, but there seems to be less and less to look forward to nowadays. Oh, well; I finally got a new pair of glasses and can read all evening long again. Running out of anime won’t be a disaster.

There is a bit of good news regarding licensing: Kino International will release a compilation of Osamu Tezuka’s short films later this month. These date from 1962 to 1988 and are obviously essential for anyone interested in the history of animation. I wrote a little bit about some of them here.

1. Well, maybe the remainder of Aria isn’t drivel, but I’m one of the few who didn’t find Aria the Animation a life-changing experience. [↩]
2. The other four are Haibane Renmei, Serial Experiments Lain, Cardcaptor Sakura and Shingu. [↩]

It looks like upgrading to WordPress 2.8 broke the poll widget. Nevertheless, I think there were enough votes to pick the first round winners:

Cowboy Bebop (42%)
FLCL (23%)
Haibane Renmei (23%)
.hack//SIGN (17%)
Aria (15%)
Last Exile (13%)
ef: a tale of memories (11%)
Death Note (11%)
Azumanga Daioh (11%)
Code Geass/R2 (11%)

These ten will advance to the final round of the best anime OST poll. I’ll post the second round once I figure out how to get the poll working again.

And besides, I don’t really see how there could be such a thing as a “surge” in popularity for Light Novels; they’re basically just romance novels written for men, which is, uh, not a terribly large demographic here in America.

This is too imbecilic to let pass. “Romance novels” for men — absolute nonsense. A “light novel” is essentially the Japanese equivalent of an occidental “young adult” book. Fuyumi Ono and Nahoko Uehashi are counterparts of such writers as Diana Wynne Jones,¹ not Harlequin romance hacks.

1. One of my favorite writers. Her book Howl’s Moving Castle is far better than Miyazaki’s botch of a movie and is strongly recommended. [↩]

I spent most of the weekend installing and tweaking a new theme. It looks fine in my main browser, but I just discovered that in Safari, there are suddenly ads on my site.

I’ll see if I can root out the offending code this evening, but the chances are that I’m going to be looking for a different theme. Don’t worry; Pyun and Potaru will remain.

Update: It turned out to be an easy fix. I just needed to delete a few lines in three of the .php files.

When you’re burned out, do something else. You’re not doing anyone a favor by going through the motions. By the time Zac Bertschy quit his “Answerman” job, my sympathies were with the Flakes of the Week. Justin Sevakis’ review of The Sky Crawlers tells me more about Sevakis’ life than about Oshii’s movie. (Sevakis might want to look up the word “obtuse.”)

About reviews: that someone paid for a review doesn’t mean that it’s insightful, and length does not imply profundity. If you want to find what’s worth your time, you can do just as well surfing at random through the otakusphere as at ANN.

Yesterday’s post has mysteriously disappeared. This is not the only anomalous incident involving my websites this week. My guess is that the web host’s server migration is not going as smoothly as it should. Until I’m reasonably sure that what I write won’t vanish, this weblog will be even quieter than usual.

(The missing post itself was of no consequence. It was just a few amusing links: this, this and this.)