Nice Body
What I learned from Kemeko Deluxe episode 7:
1. Comedy is a spice that is all too frequently missing in this year’s offerings. I mean it isn’t like there aren’t comedy anime every season, but I’ve just been dropping them because they don’t make me laugh enough.
2. Leek can’t cure a cold no matter you eat it or you stick it in your rear, but it sure can make a joke go farther than necessary. I mean, thanks to the viral internet breeding beds that are 2ch, youtube, nicovideo and others, the leek is now a veritable icon in Japanese modern visual fandom. And Kemeko sure paid respect to that icon.
3. Chiwa’s delivery of English is … just like my Aunt’s. It’s not a criticism. If Kemeko’s image is this middle-age-body super-woman that does stuff for shits and giggles, then I think Chiwa Saito is right on target. I don’t know how many other anime have this kind of a character as a lead, so it’s hard to say if she’s doing an extraordinary job. The character idea is extraordinary already.
4. Speaking of which, Kemeko DX puts the “shit” in “shits and giggles.” I know there’s probably a crowd of moe otaku that lament the short end of the stick for Haruka Tomatsu and the equally lovely MM, but I think we’re getting a fair balance between the kimoi otaku stuff and the plain dirty/naughty joke department. That said, long live the Ramen King.
5. Can I watch gymnastics floor routine the same way ever again? Probably, after enough time has past.
6. Who wrote these lyrics?
By no means Kemeko fits the pants Excel (Saga) or struts like old fashion rom-coms of the early 90s, but it sure is a good dose during a serious time in the world.
Blogging: Stand Alone Indexing
Who needs Ani-nouto when you can harvest the power of Web 2.0 and make your own? It’s like a salad bar.
Google Reader always seemed like something that require extra coaxing to make this idea come true. Honestly a lot of Google feels like something stuck in eternal Beta land that while you know, deep inside your soul, you can do all kinds of awesome things, you just don’t know what that would look like.
Just to bring up the love-to-hate-but-lovely Russian Author again: yes, it’s like hot-linking. But it’s hot-linking of love. And you can’t really share the love with a local feed reader like you could with Google Reader or some equivalent. The cloud is warm and nice (so far), hop on in. But I suppose it’s just a matter of preference.
Now, Google Reader is definitely imperfect; one problem is just how the heck do we aggregate feed of feeds in a meaningful way? Google doesn’t really push it either when the potential for this is huge. A big problem is also in the implementation. It’s not obvious, and the difference between a tag and a folder is not clear at a glance. And you need to do both to take full advantage of it. For example, if you’re Hinano and you want to share with us a bunch of stuff relevant to you but you know some of your friends don’t care for the local news and some of your friends don’t care for Asian MMORPGs that are kawaii desu, then you could actually filter your shared posts by tags, and share them as separate feeds. If you got the time to play with it, it’s quite powerful.
There are other problems–unless it’s a feed, you can’t really index it via Google Reader. Bloggers still need things like Animenano to discover new blogs–new as in age, not as in “I haven’t seen this before.” And it can turn into an expertise-indexed feed much like the present crop like 9 Rules. But at least this gives the users the control over whose feeds to follow, out of those of us who bother to click and tag our Google Reader shared posts.
The more important and the problem everyone runs into first–you can’t re: on a shared post. And that’s fair–when you see something interesting coming through you RSS reader, it isn’t like you can reply through it. To reply, you have to visit the post directly and post in the comments, or link to it via a reply blog post or the equivalent (like a Google Reader shared entry note). But Google Reader doesn’t allow people to reply to a shared entry’s note by sharing it again. At least this way no one can say “why are your comments locked” because, dur, you aren’t suppose to do that!
Still, I’m all for share-and-share-alike over indexes. I’m not sure if it provides any tangible advantages for readers and bloggers but it’s one more tool to add to your arsenal in dealing with the internet. It’s something relatively unique but at the same time it feels like it can replace something some of us are already doing. Maybe it’ll add to your routine, or maybe it will simplify it. I don’t know.
But at least use a reader. Srsly. Can be anything. I’d love to find alternatives to Google Reader that has this capability.
Lastly, this is my public anime feed. I guess I’m going to make an effort to share crap. :3
Xam’d Episode 16 - Nazuna’s Dream, Snowy Secrets
There are some choice shots of Prois in this episode and the preview. It’s almost amusing but she’s such a side dressing to the show at this point. But of what secrets does she have to tell?
One thing that is heavily featured this episode is snow. Nakiami and Yungo are deep into the northern continent, crossing snow-covered mountains and buying way deeper towards Tessik territory.
Real Drive Is Fatty, Tree Hugging, Ordinary Shirow; Oyaji Only
The general gist of Real Drive (RD: Dennou Chosashitsu) is best explained by Production IG’s website. The profile page gives you key information about the setting and the setup, and it’s a must read if you are curious about the show. You can look at ANN for the Shirow’s connection but the description blurb they have reads like nonsense. And it’s even wrong at places. The “Metal” is short for “Meta-Real” which is, well, self-documenting, as they say in the trade.
Real Drive paints a much lighter side of that style of futuristic society than Ghost in the Shell. For the most part it feels like a high school slice-of-life “hey that sounds just like Mikan!” affair, full of giggling and of the everyday. But at the same time isn’t that where science fiction become reality, when the extraordinary becomes the everyday?
Perhaps that is why the first parts of RD wasn’t very engaging. There are so many anime that does the extraordinary-everydays. It is like when a spaceship crashes into your house and a hot chick in a tiny mecha claims to be your finance? Or when you get married to an alien who is also your homeroom teacher? I don’t know, there are a lot of these kinds of things. But this one features the technological framework and society as the catch, not a hot alien or a harem of monsters or pokemons or turning into a girl or what have you.
But just like the first season of Ghost in the Shell SAC, the main story eventually kicks in. There are some thriller/suspense chops to the show. Behind the various adventures of Minamo & Haru, there is an overarching plot which comes into the fore in the last 1/3 of the series. By the time episode 19 rolls around you are already familiar with most of the key characters, so when we see how the Aoi family struggles to play its role as a shining example in a futuristic society, bridging the old and the new, you can get into it. References to previous episodes and adventures come out of the last plot arc as well. There is a lot of fun to be had watching it through the end.
I am convinced that RD is good science fiction. Despite what it may say thematically about the role of people and the extent that we transform the environment, the focus of RD is not on what we can do or how we do it but why we’re doing it. To that end it’s already quite different than most science fictional works out there. For an analogy with GITS, it’s no longer about that there’s a Laughing Man and how and what is he, but what does it mean to have a Laughing Man.
It even go entirely fantastic to try to answer the question it posed. Fair enough. The fact that it even had an answer was admirable.
That said, there are some quirky-ness to the whole affair that needs addressing.
- Fat. It is self-evident. I suppose there will always be those who watch anime and expect some kind of aesthetics and find themselves unable to watch Escaflowne because of pointy noses. It’s nowhere as extreme with RD, but it could take some time to get used to the plump-ness. Also note this is only visible on the girls. All the guys in the show are built like killer man-bots with exception of the more homely trio that hangs around Minamo. I don’t think they’re fat, but I laugh whenever this topic gets argued anywhere.
- The chairperson-sex-symbol. It is odd. I am betting that it is some kind of fetish someone has, and they just had to stick that in the show. In GITS, the Major was a major (heh) symbol for a kind of power that is symbolized by the feminine form and identity, along with her strange take on sexuality. In RD, they toned it down and the chairwoman (or Secretary-General or Secretariat General or whatever) is just your average over-achiever (like the rest of the elite cast). Ok, so she is a pageant queen, research scientist-doctor AND a bureaucrat. Not to mention all the female androids are made after her likeness. But that’s not what’s weird. What is weird is that we don’t know a thing about her for the longest time in the show besides that she likes to do the horizontal tango with Minamo’s brother, while ruling the artificial island, snuggling in her love nest, via the Metal. I suspect all that character profiling comes in later to make her a more credible character and as a plot point. Much like how we don’t even know her name until near the end.
- The Metal. In RD, the Metal is really like SCUBA diving in real life, except for the fish and corals or whatever you think SCUBA diving is like. The Metal offers psychedelic fractal patterns as a backdrop. I mean, I guess all it is suppose to represent is that they are on the internet doing something. But the visual representation is just weird. I know they are trying to draw a parallel with diving and going on the internet–hey, isn’t that straight out of GITS? In RD, the two are linked even closer and more explicitly.
- The ending. Maybe it is just that I suck and my fansub translations suck but I don’t know everything about the mystery box and Kushima’s fate. It’s like the perfect setup to namedrop “God Lives Underwater.” But I guess unless you saw it you won’t get why that’s relevant. Ooops.
- The treehugging. There isn’t much, but there’s a mystical respect for nature in the later part of the show. It is a vehicle to bring forth the tension between change and what remains the same, perhaps. But just like how Johnny Yen is actually a good guy (really?) sometimes what is the “right” answer may sound kind of wrong. Its fast and loose play with your typical sense of justice and it may be jarring for some viewers, even if all of it is rooted in reason.
There are other quirks with Real Drive that are probably worth mentioning; you are better off finding them yourselves and tell me about it, because it feels as if I am telling someone who’s purposely trying to show off some eccentric aspect to his personal life. I suppose it’s interesting at least from a bystander’s perspective.
But overall I think this is a solid science fiction production along the line of the first season of Ghost in the Shell TV. At the same time it’s so unlike the dystopic setting of GITS that you wonder why you’re watching some high school girls acting like high school girls. As long as the mixed martial art stuff (among other eccentricities) can tide you over towards the last third of the series, it’s smooth sailing.
Nuance for the Ear, Beyond Maaya’s Voice
I’ve been listening a lot to Praline, which is the c/w track on the Ame ga Furu single. It’s penned by Taiyo Yamazawa.
It’s a good snapshot to how Maaya Sakamoto has changed throughout her music career.
I still remember listening to her earlier works like Dive and Grapefruit…and I still occasionally do. Despite that raw talent in her voice it all feels a bit cuddly. Almost juvenile. And honestly back then Yoko Kanno was (and probably still isn’t) your average pop composer. Kanno and Maaya do work with good people and sometimes the arrangements are spot on, so Maaya’s earlier CDs have strong entries to carry them despite the lackluster accompanying tracks. In the grand scheme of things, that’s really nothing unusual. In fact it was quite good given the genre of music.
The fruit of having all that good people work on your stuff is two very good selling compilation albums, but that’s all anyone needs to know about Hotchpotch and Nikopachi. Besides maybe one had came with guitar tabs if you ordered the special edition. If there was any other questions, I figure you can find the answer by listening to them.
I always thought Shounen Alice is her most mature album. If we just take a very cold, hard look from statistics, the chart you can find over at en.wikipedia would seem to agree, as it had done the best out of all her original albums. It shed the most amount of that cuddly feel out of all the works that came before it, which I then thought was the biggest barrier in her creative endeavors reaching greater popularity by its own merits.
It is probably safe to say that Maaya has moved beyond that. I say this not because 30 Minutes Flight and Yunagi Loop were particularly remarkable, but because I believe she has started to find a voice that’s closer to the her true voice. Maybe it’s a change in her person or in her vision of what kind of an artist she wants to be, and it is a small change. But I think I see a subtle evolution and I like it.
And I’m not even giving praise to Taiyo Yamazawa. Indeed Praline felt a little repetitive and in the original arrangement, it sounded much like Maaya’s other light pop songs. But in the 1+1 version, we have a slightly different beast.
Maybe she’s just flexing her musical chops. I don’t know, but she did a good job making the most out of repetition. This is something successful pop vocalists do well… and honestly, I was a little impressed. It’s different than the kind of songs she did in Shounen Alice.
It does make me kind of hopeful for her upcoming CD (aff. link) coming out early next year.
