Coming all too soon: Usagi meets Goku.

Here’s the culprit.

Not anime, but of interest to science-fiction and music fans: Frëd Himebaugh of the Fredösphere has composed a fifteen-minute opera using Terry Bisson’s short story “They’re Made Out of Meat” as the libretto. You can purchase it here for 89¢. See also Frëd’s earlier posts here and here.

•••••

In case there’s anyone who hasn’t yet seen it, here’s the best Touhou video I’ve seen in a while:

*****

Catholic News Service apparently didn’t think to google the name they chose for their multimedia service.

Highlights from the posts I don’t have time to write:

• Taishou Yakyuu Musume is the first new show this year to sustain my interest beyond the second episode. In the first eight episodes of the story, the writers have kept the focus primarily on high school girls learning to play baseball in 1925 Japan, and they have not let the themes of feminism and westernization versus traditionalism overburden the story. There’s also been very little teen angst.¹ If the last four episodes are on the same level as the first six (the seventh and eight episodes are essentially filler), the series might be worth recommending.

Taking the maxim that “the pitcher and catcher should be as close as husband and wife” too literally.

• Ponyo is in its fifth week in Wichita, the longest any Miyazaki film has ever played here, and it’s at a theatre within reasonable bicycle distance. I watched it last weekend. The dub is tolerable, though “bug off” is not an adequate substitute for “baka.” It made a little more sense than the fansub I watched last year — I suspect that there was some discreet re-writing in the dub script — but the logic of the story still is, um, hard to follow. I’d rank Ponyo as second-tier Miyazaki, not a classic like Spirited Away or Totoro, but far better than Howl’s Moving Castle (skip the movie and read the book instead). It is well worth seeing on a large screen if you have the opportunity, particularly if you have kids.

• For the convenience of any balletomanes visiting here, this is the only section of choreographic interest in Hakucho no Mizumi, the 1981 animated version of Swan Lake.

Sorry — if you want 32 fouettés, you’re out of luck. Swan Lake does have one of the better stories in ballet, but this adaptation trivializes it. Skip it, and find a video of a good dance production instead. Or, better yet, attend a live performance when you have the opportunity.

1. Some of the girls waste time being moody and depressed in early episodes; part of the story is how they find the mental toughness to keep playing despite errors and losses. However, there hasn’t been any romangst — yet. (In the eighth episode, it turns out that one of the girls has an unlikely crush on the central character. If this gets played up in the remaining episodes, it will be seriously annoying.) [↩]

It’s time for the final round of the current poll: which anime has the best soundtrack? There was a five-way tie for seventh place in the second round, so there are twenty-one to choose from. You can only vote for one this time.

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Kadokawa has posted the trailer for Mamoru Hosada’s Summer Wars that Fellini 8.5 found earlier:

How long will we have to wait for an American release?

Below the fold are Kadokawa’s notes with the Google translation. I would welcome a more intelligible summarization or translation, should any bilingual reader have the time.

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As threatened, here is the new, improved slide show featuring pictures from Steven’s header. The music is “Honga,” performed by Itzhak Perlman with the Klezmatics.

Odds and ends, some of them involving animation, Japan or spandex.

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I’ve been saving the picture in the banner each time I visit Steven’s place. Here’s what I’ve collected so far. The music is Raymond Scott’s “Celebration on the Planet Mars,” performed by the Metropole Orchestra with the Beau Hunks.

(This is probably not the final version. The software I intended to use decided that it doesn’t like my machine after all, so I had to struggle with a less-capable application with limited output options. I’m not entirely happy with the results.)

What I saw of Hare & Guu left me indifferent, but this ending is an outstanding production number. It’s my pick for the best anime ending, at least for today.

http://tancos.net/flv/wp-content/uploads/GuuDlxEd.flv
Jungle wa itsumo Hale nochi Guu Deluxe, “Fun Fun and Shout” by Sister Mayo.

You can see the videos in full size at my video weblog, and you can compare my list with Astro’s.

Number two. Astro and I have very different tastes, but we agree on this one:

http://tancos.net/flv/wp-content/uploads/Maromi.flv
Paranoia Agent, “Shiroi Oka – Maromi no Theme” by Susumu Hirasawa.

Merry Christmas, everyone, and I hope you didn’t get Maromi plushies among your presents.

Now see if you can guess what number one is. Go on, I dare you. I will be astonished if anyone comes close.

Number three:

http://tancos.net/flv/wp-content/uploads/ExcelEnd.flv
Excel Saga, “Menchi Aishou no Bolero” by Excel Girls. I’m not posting the clean version because the words matter, and because some who frequent this corner of the otakusphere might recognize one of the names in the credits.

Number four on my list of best endings:

http://tancos.net/flv/wp-content/uploads/dennocoilending.flv
Denno Coil, “Sora no Kakera (空の欠片; A Fragment of the Sky)” by Ayako Ikeda. (The karaoke is annoying; I hope this is licensed soon so I can post a clean ending.)

Number five on my list of best endings:

http://tancos.net/flv/wp-content/uploads/oedo-ending2.flv
Oh! Edo Rocket, second ending, “I Got Rhythm” by Natural High.

http://tancos.net/flv/wp-content/uploads/oedo-ending1.flv
I like both endings, so here’s the first as well: “100 miles~Niji o Oikakete” by Santara.

I had planned to spend some time this evening rambling on about anime endings, but I’m dead tired. Instead, here are a couple of honorable mentions, plus an extra. The countdown begins tomorrow.

While it was introducing the characters, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei was fine absurd humor. Later episodes were hit and miss, with misses predominating. (Macademi Wasshoi seems to be following a similar pattern.) The ending is pleasantly nightmarish.

The first few episode of Tweeny Witches left me cold, though I may give the series a second chance when I have time. The ending, with broomstick surfing, flying jalopy and Strauss, embodies all the fun that was missing from the show.

If this had been the actual ending for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, it would have been number one on my list. The real ending, which is pretty good as anime endings go, is nevertheless frustrating to watch: I want to see all the steps.

You can see the videos at their full width at my video page.

Astro is counting down his top five endings. It looks like fun, so I’ll probably post my own list, though it will have to wait until next week. Astro’s fourth choice, incidentally, almost made my list. It will be interesting to see if there is something we both pick.

As Astro notes, it’s harder to find good endings than good openings. Openings are intended to sell the show; often the trailer for a show is the opening. Consequently, producers typically lavish great care and expense on the opening. In contrast, the ending usually just serves to list the necessary credits, and the production is consequently perfunctory. Sometimes the ending tune might be worth hearing, but the visuals are rarely interesting. Nevertheless, I managed to come up with five that are worth both hearing and seeing.

*****

Here’s something I forgot to post back in October. It’s from the ninth episode of Denno Coil.

In a discussion of anime involving classical music, the writer at Transientem included links to several animated versions of Liszt’s second Martian Hungarian rhapsody, including performances by Tom & Jerry

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Nick found a video of “Funky Cat Maybe” combined with “Thriller.” It’s clever, but I prefer the original:

Below the fold is the same brief video as in the previous post, this time as an flv file. In the past, I’ve used ffmpegX to generate flv files. It works, but it’s a pain to use. It often takes several tries to convert a Quicktime file to flv, and even then the video and sound are apt to drift out of sync. (See my video weblog for examples.) I was wondered if it was possible to skip the formatting headaches and embed Quicktime files in posts, but that presents a different set of problems. I recently found a couple of WordPress plugins that take care of the messy stuff, which I tested in yesterday’s post. They work, but it turns out that at least two of my readers, and probably quite a few more, refuse to install Quicktime on their computers. So embedding a Quicktime file is not an ideal solution.

This morning I looked for alternatives to ffmpegX and found a few. Some of them look dandy. Unfortunately, either the price tags have three digits to the left of the decimal point, or the system requirements are beyond the capabilities of my geriatric Mac. I did find one possibility, On2 Flix, the cheapest version of which is almost affordable at $39. I downloaded the demo, and it worked right the first time. You can see the results below the fold.

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