More than you ever wanted to know about the Japanese music industry.

(Via Anime Instrumentality Blog.)

Speaking of mullets …

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In case there is anyone on the planet who still hasn’t seen the grandest of all Pythagorean devices:

Here’s a story and some videos about it.

(Via Steven Riddle.)

Update: here’s another noteworthy contraption currently under construction:

(Via the Borderline Sociopath.)

I doubt that anyone will be surprised by the first-place winner in the best anime soundtrack poll. Cowboy Bebop received more votes than the second- and third-place winners combined. I had expected that Noir would take second, but it was eventually overtaken by FLCL and Death Note. Here’s the top ten:

1. Cowboy Bebop (18.0%)
2. FLCL (8.0%)
3. Death Note (7.0%)
4. Noir (7.0%)
5. .hack//SIGN (6.0%)
5. Vision of Escaflowne (6.0%)
7. Lucky Star (5.0%)
8. Haibane Renmei (5.0%)
8. Macross Frontier (5.0%)
10. Mushishi (5.0%)

The other nominees were Ghost in the Shell SAC (4.0%); Princess Mononoke (4.0%); Azumanga Daioh (4.0%); Aria (3.0%); Code Geass/R2 (3.0%); Neon Genesis Evangelion (2.0%); Simoun (2.0%); ef: a tale of memories (2.0%); The Twelve Kingdoms (2.0%); Mai-HiME (1.0%); and, Last Exile (0.0%)

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So, who’s the worst character in anime? I changed the question to “most annoying” in the poll widget to make it clear that I’m looking for the most poorly conceived, pointlessly irritating or useless character, not the most evil. I added a couple more candidates whom I think should have been nominated, and I changed the representative of Sailor Moon to ChibiUsa, whom I had forgotten about.

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.

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

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

I spent most of the weekend at the Walnut Valley Festival. It’s primarily devoted to acoustic string music, particularly bluegrass, but there were some items of interest to students of Japanese popular culture.

• The second-place winner in the fingerpicking championship was Akihiro Tanaka, from Kyoto, Japan. I wasn’t able to get down to Winfield on Thursday, when the contest was held, but the fingerpick winners made an appearance on the main stage Friday evening. Here’s what Tanaka played then:¹

• I spent several hours listening to the jam sessions at Carp Camp.² Here’s the tune that the campers call “Finish (sic) Polka.” It sounds strangely familiar.

(This is not my recording, but Carp Camp’s own from last year. The campers played the tune at least twice this weekend, but neither time did I have my recorder handy.)

• One of this year’s Carp Camp catchphrases (if you write it as a single word, you get six consecutive consonants. Can you think of any other English words like that?) was “Don’t hurt the old people.” The third Monday in September (usually the day after Winfield), is celebrated in the Japan as Respect for the Aged Day.

1. The sound is less than wonderful. Stage one is a noisy place. [↩]
2. I don’t bring my dulcimer to Winfield unless I’m camping. This year I day-tripped, so I just listened. [↩]

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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The problem with the poll widget had to do with the update to the plugin, not WordPress 2.8. I was able to get the poll working again by dumping the new version of the plugin and reinstalling the previous one.

This is the second, and last, preliminary round. The top ten from this poll will advance to the final round. You can vote for up to three candidates.

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.

Just for the heck of it, here are some excerpts from noteworthy soundtracks that weren’t nominated for the current poll.

Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihohito:

Binchou-tan:

Spice and Wolf:

Metropolis:

Arjuna:

… and a little music depreciation. Here’s a tune you might recognize, sung by Haruna Ikezawa.

After four rounds and over a thousand votes, we have a babe:

I’ll post the complete results sometime this weekend.

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There were 62 nominations altogether for the best anime soundtrack. I’m going to run two preliminary rounds of 31 each, in which you can vote for up to three candidates. The top ten in each round will go on to the finals.

Ideally, I should post excerpts from all the nominated soundtracks, but I’m lazy. If you want to campaign for your favorite, feel free to post a link to an illustrative video or .mp3 in the comments. (There are a number of such links in the comments here.)

… which Shinkai and Miyazaki soundtracks do you want to nominate for the next poll? The complete works of Makoto Shinkai are on my “buy” list, but I don’t have them in hand yet; and, I can’t remember a note of Joe Hisaishi’s music after any Miyazaki DVD ends.

Soundtracks nominated so far for the next poll:

Aria the Animation/Natural/Origination
Azumanga Daioh
Bartender
Bleach
Bubblegum Crisis OVA
Bubblegum Crisis 2040
Code Geass/R2
Cowboy Bebop
Death Note
ef: a tale of memories
Elfen Lied
Eureka 7
FLCL
Full Metal Alchemist
Haibane Renmei
Kaiji
Kamichu!
Macross Frontier
Madlax
Manabi Straight
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Noir
Oh! Edo Rocket
Princess Tutu
Record of Lodoss War
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Shigofumi
Shigurui
Simoun
Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann
True Tears
Vision of Escaflowne
Welcome the the NHK

A few others were mentioned, but I’m not sure that they were meant as nominations:

.hack// et cetera
Vampire Princess Miyu OVA
Vampire Princess Miyu TV
Witch Hunter Robin

Some other soundtracks worth considering:

Ah! My Goddess: The Movie
Angelic Layer
Binchou-tan
Denno Coil
Interstella 5555
Kaiba
Macross Plus
Metropolis
Mushishi
Paprika
Saiunkoku Monogatari
Shingu
Someday’s Dreamers
Sugar, a Tiny Snow Fairy

What else? I’m sure I’m forgetting something obvious.

Also, would someone care to nominate a specific Miyazaki movie OST?

Pete says that baseball is

A game without discernable rules or purpose; I deduced that teams compete to collect points, but those are awarded arbitrarily, so the formal objective does nothing to add any sense to the proceedings.

I just happened to digitize The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart last week. Here’s Newhart’s take on baseball from about 50 years ago:

While I’m uploading audio, here’s a selection from another curiosity I came across: string quartet arrangements of music from Rozen Maiden. Here’s a sample:

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I have jury duty this week, so I’ll probably be spending the days at the courthouse and the evenings at the office. See you all next week.

Update: I was spared jury duty. (Actually, The plaintiff in the case I was in the pool for had suffered a broken ankle and knee injuries. It was no surprise that I wasn’t empaneled, given my own broken ankle and knee problems.)

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.

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1. See Philip K. Dick’s “The War with the Fnools.” [↩]

Banshee on Ohayocon:

And to make matters worse, the other events were a cheerleading convention and a Christian youth group convention. I mean, not necessarily antagonistic if physically separated… but apparently the Witchblade cosplayers kept walking into the youth group talks, and that’s just not going to end well….

She’s also been posting singable translations of the songs from the Natsume Yujinchou series. If I understand what she’s doing correctly, these are paraphrases of English translations she’s found.

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I’ve been doing everything but watching anime lately. I’ll get back to it — I’ve got Tokyo Godfathers sitting next to the computer, and I want to watch the rest of at least the first season of Natsume Yujinchou — but right now there are other priorities. In the meantime, here’s a curiosity: a piano version of a tune you might recognize.

Can you see the mp3 player?

How about this one?

I post a lot of music on my other weblog, and recently I’ve been receiving reports that the music players are not appearing on the page. I wonder if that’s a problem here, too, since this also runs on WordPress.

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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It looks like there never will be an anime of Yotsuba&! It may be just as well. Movie adaptations of favorite books are invariably inferior to the originals, no matter how skilled the adaptors, and that probably goes for anime versions of manga as well (I wonder if I would like Cardcaptor Sakura as much if I were familiar with the manga). To assuage your disappointment, there does exist a soundtrack for Yotsuba&!, here and here. (Technically, they’re “image albums” inspired by the manga.) The music is by Masaki Kurihara and the Kuricorder Pops Orchestra, the same crew reponsible for the Azumanga Daioh soundtrack.¹ Here’s a suite from the first Yotsuba&! album, titled “よつばのちいさなだいぼうけん” which the Google translator renders as “I stand little risk of saliva.”

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While I’m on the subject of music, here are a couple of a capella pieces that caught my ear. The first is from the Kaiba soundtrack. The second you should all recognize.

Update: Actually, Yotsuba&! has been animated, after a fashion:

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1. There is quite a bit more music for Azumanga Daioh out there that has never been released in the USA, including a second OST album that is nearly as good as the first. [↩]

The “Touhou Project” is a family of shooting games. According to what I’ve read, they are mostly the work of one person, “ZUN,” who, as “Team Shanghai Alice,” writes the code, draws the art and composes the music. They are noteworthy for their complex bullet patterns and large casts of pretty girls.¹ I don’t have any particular interest in playing the games, but I was curious to note that the very active Touhou doujin community includes many musicians who record their own versions of ZUN’s music in various styles. Most I’ve sampled have been okay but nothing more; I forget them as soon as I’ve heard them. One album did catch my ear, though. It has the perfectly comprehensible title “Cubical Another Perspective Has Violated Systematically” and was recorded by something called “Cytokine.” Here’s a sample:

It’s no substitute for ELP, but what we have here is good, old-fashioned prog rock.

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No only is Polysics one of the most energetic bands around (they’d be the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band if only Hayashi could carry a tune), but they are also one of the most uncompromisingly intellectual:

Here are the lyrics.

1. if you don’t mind cockeyed mouths [↩]