Evil Sales Is Evil
So CD Japan is putting up a sale, realizing no one is going to spend the huge bucks on … remastered DVDs. O RLY? Referral-supported links incoming.
And oh, by the way, these are limited quantity items on sale, so get them while they’re still there. Some items are much more limited than others.
Cowboy Bebop remastered collector’s box (notably, it contains session #0!)
Macross Plus complete remastered box (Has the 4 episodes AND the movie version, and other crap)
(Just a brief note on the CDJ affiliate program–well first I appreciate those of you who actually patronized my links, and it’s working out so far even with my sparse pimpage. Not fully tested yet because I’ve not “cashed in” anything.)
I noticed there is a whole series of these hi-def remastered DVD sets out there. Like the Yamato TV set or the three Gundam movies. I can see why these two titles would be below my radar but it doesn’t explain the first two up there that are singing their siren’s song.
Is this (Maho Tsukai Tai box) remastered? Does anyone know?
The irony is a little thick considering just not too long ago I was talking about $250 a pop anime series with some people on the internet. And here we are.
Still, something like this is just … too much to bear, even for me. Especially when it tempted me repeatedly. It’s like Princess Tutu–if I find some place selling the original releases, I would buy it in a heartbeat (assuming it was priced no more than it was originally), just for the soundtrack omake.
Last note on this pure-pimp filler of a post: Touka Gettan is available in its entirety on this latest CDJ sale. The discount is meager but it’s better than nothing.
Hidamari Sketch 14/365
Thanks to those of you who put this list together. You know who you are.
January 11: Winter Collage - Episode 1
February 13: Heart and Body - Episode 5
March 13: 3% Hope - Episode 8
April 28: Mar Cabbage - Episode 11
May 18: Singing Short Cake - Episode 4
June 17: Another Indian - Episode 3
July 14: Cool and Laid Back - Episode 6
August 11 - S5
August 21: Japan’s Summer - Episode 2
September 4: Wolf of Ura-Shinjuku - Episode 9
October 12: The Storm of Drying Packets - Episode 7
November 3: Yuno-sama - Episode 10
November 26 - S6
December 25: Goodbye Ume-sensei - Episode 12
I missed the boat for the first 3 episodes, but will make an attempt to start Spring with the right foot forward.
Welcome to Liberty City? I guess if you’re high on GTA4 you probably won’t be reading this anyways. I thought this episode was a good primer for this April 28th, 2008.
Slice-of-life is like that.
What am I doing? For the uninitiated, I’m going through the first season of Hidamari Sketch on the dates of those episodes. April 28 was the date for episode 11, so I watched that episode on that date.
It’s seasonally delicious!
Soundtrack of Our Lives
I am hardly the first person to ever blog about this, but what would the soundtrack of your life be like?
Maybe I should be a little more specific; open-ended inquiries like that are good ice breaker questions for airy-headed groups of people. But as I was walking down the street one morning the song I was listening to just struck me as a good match to the feeling and the visuals I was seeing.
In my own limited experience, music works with the visuals to achieve an intended result, at least in directing a film. As people listen to more music more often and more frequently, we can achieve the same — by seeing and listening to certain things, and to achieve purposeful results.
Perhaps listening to a pumping soundtrack while driving enhances your enjoyment even if you are just doing your weekday commute. Or listening to a strong melody that can help me me march down the street quickly. Or a soothing song to relax during some private break time.
It also has to do with your own enjoyment of the music as well. But I found that people who listens to music all the time tend to also listens to a wider range of music; maybe because that’s just how it works.
Much like the science fictional future of our fathers’ generation, there are a lot of little, yet important aspects of today that people did not foresee. Just how many people are carrying around a personal media player today? The soundtrack question lights up differently when one can potentially be listening from a collection of sounds from a wide variety of sources? It’s virtually limitless if you take into account MIDs.
It’s almost Shirow-ish to think that our perception of reality is augmented by little things like this, but it’s the reality we face today.
Recalling the original Macross series, we see the effect of culture as represented by music on a race of people. Macross Frontier is just a timely reminder of how things have (and have not) changed since. Some of us are still high on protoculture, but a new generation of kids growing up will be taking that and inventing new things to do, new ways to explore the world.
I Am a Bad Seiyuu Junkie
Confession: I watch anime, at times, purely for the voice actress.
It’s really sad. I almost wish I want my time back after some of these experiences.
I want to make a distinction, though. A lot of people like a certain voice–Norio Wakamoto is one popular example–because they like that voice and the way the actor does his or her thing. And that is great. There are some actors like that for me, too, and I would go out of my way to check out a show done by that person. What’s interesting is that a lot of people who don’t normally pay attention to voice acting still gets hooked by some of the more amusing performances, and that is remarkable. If I was Mr. Wakamoto I’d be surprised that all these non-Japanese speaking people like my works.
But what I’m confessing is worse. For example, as much as I’m all “notokawaiiyonoto” about it, I think Mamiko Noto’s boy voice really … isn’t all that. Perhaps the voice itself is exactly what the director wants out of that character, but it hurts to watch. Still, I’m going to watch Kanokon. And I respect the Ayako Factor. Or recall how Kawasumi did her Mahoromatic role with such vivid memory and superimpose that onto Kanokon.
Times like this I wish I was a green, mean pet alligator.
But being human, we are called to a higher level of existence. We should recognize how funny episode 3 of Kanokon was, not just because it lampoons, but because of how it lampoons and what it lampooned. Is this what people get out of radio shows? Or phone sex? WTB more Saito Chiwa lines. Or Mai Nakahara lines, if that’s more appropriate.
But all that is second to what some junkies get out of a fairly pedestrian comedy affair–by all means, don’t watch shows like this.
Why can’t these enjoyable voice actresses just work on shows that are worth watching? Nana Mizuki finally stars in a show that I can stand to watch, so I guess I should be glad for what I can get.
Maybe I should be content about Kanokon’s massive dose of fanservice, and watch Kanokon in silence. Sadly it just doesn’t work.
CLANNAD the Movie or Incremental Upgrades Leaves the Heart Wondering
I enjoyed the CLANNAD movie. But I realize it became a very narrowly tailored exercise in, well, dramatic reenactment of something that’s probably more powerful.
The problem with CLANNAD, and to some extent the Key anime adaptations we’ve seen so far, is that there is no way to traverse through all the key “checkpoints” without making a mess of the story. The story either loses some of the impact because of that, or the story just gets too convoluted for a straight-faced narrative.
In a more general sense, multi-pathing visual novels are like arcade racing games. Specifically, it’s those games that takes a couple tokens to play where you have to not only beat your AI opponents, but make various checkpoints to get more time. When you run out of time, even if you are ahead of the pack, you basically lose.
In this modular way to look at drama, where trying to hit every gut wrenching twist and turn becomes the purpose of an unstoppable, artfully sly narrative, we should see quite a few of those checkpoints in the duration of the story. But when as applied to visual novels, the difficulty arises when your checkpoints are not dotted across one race track, but in a city of one-way roads that necessarily limits you to only a subset of all possible checkpoints available in the game out of the total.
The approach in a theatrical adaptation is necessarily much more single minded. We want to go in and get it done in an hour-and-half. TV series can pursuit forks in the road, but movies lack the luxury of time to backtrack (so much).
And in exchange, the CLANNAD movie took us deeper and all the way through with Nagisa’s story. But at what cost? Was it worth it?
I think how you answer those questions will be the litmus test to determine what you enjoy the most out of an exercise in drama.
Perhaps more relevantly, with each iteration, each Key adaptation, both Toei and Kyoto Animation do a better job. At least that was my impression.
