What’s on your wish-list?

by dm00

With the licensing of Xam’d and (previously) Toradora, I thought my wished-for list of anime licenses was growing pretty short.

Then I sat down to enumerate it, and I realized my list still had a ways to go (in no particular order):

• Summer Wars
• Mind Game
• Tatami Galaxy
• Kaiba
• Kemonozume
• Princess Arete
• Starship girl Yamamoto Yohko (TV)
• ef: a tale of me*o*ies
• Bakemonogatari
• Katanagatari
• Angel’s Egg
• Time of Eve (movie)
• Welcome to the Space Show
• Dennou Coil
• Gakuen Utopia Manabi straight
• Futakoi alternative
• Kara no Kyoukai
• Moyashimon
• Yokohama kaidashi kikou (manga too, please — or, I’d be happy with just the manga, actually)
• Durarara
• Minky Momo: the Bridge of Dreams
• Minky Momo: tabidachi no eki
• The rest of Yawara!

(Some of these I’ve gone so far as to get (used, primarily) on R2 DVD, and may do more as years of not-being-licensed go by.)

Also, I’ve heard good things about My Mai Miracle, but I haven’t seen it. I’d spring for inexpensive releases of Shangri-la and Angel Beats, too.

This list would keep me ecstatic for a while, certainly.

What’s on your wish-list?

Minky Momo and the Bridge over Dreams

by dm00

 

Minky Momo on the bridge

 

Inspired by chatter about an “anime licensing wish list”, I watched Minky Momo: Yume ni Kakeru Hashi (Minky Momo and the bridge over dreams) last night.

It’s a neglected treasure made in 1993 during the golden age of the OAV — the era when an expermental work like Angel’s Egg or Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer could be made. This simple little film is not embarassed to be in the company of those films (though it’s a good deal more accessible and less “arty”).

Kingyo used books mono yes, but no ware?

by dm00

Where's the bookstore cat?

I read Kingyo used books from Viz’s IKKI imprint recently (sample chapters can be found here).

It’s about redemption through (used) manga. If the woman who works in the bookshop (the owner’s long-suffering grand-daughter) were a good deal more bright-eyed and bubbly, it could be like Aria substituting old manga series for Venice. Real manga are used as examples in this series — there’s an appendix describing the series and mentioning whether they’re out of print or still available in Japan (one of the highlighted series is Dr. Slump).

But she’s not Akari, nor even Aika. The series seems to be missing something. Or maybe out-of-print manga series just aren’t as compelling to newcomers as Neo-Venezia is. I imagine the book works better for an adult Japanese audience, for whom many of the series are probably remembered with fondness and nostalgia.
(That said, I am going to look for one of the series mentioned — a manga biography of Hokusai called Sarusuberi.)

The initial draw is books, and mostly it stays that way, except it doesn’t pull it off (and there’s a bit of clunker plot-element in the form of a young man obsessed with the Japanese Tintin). I think the first chapter is the one-shot that launched the series, and it is a fine short-story about reconnecting with old friends and reminiscing about old manga series. That has a certain charm that can reach a foreign audience unfamiliar with the specific works. Later we have a chapter about someone whose sour mood is cured by some old gag-manga series. But we’re not in on the joke because we’ve never seen the series. The hook isn’t baited for us.

The 84, Charing Cross Road of manga has yet to come to these shores, it seems.

The book ends with one-page overviews of the manga highlighted in each chapter. These are a real database animal addition, and rather charming (they’re written by a genuine used bookshop owner).

This book, with its bibliomanic characters, reminds me a bit of some of the gentler stories in Read or dream, the Read or die manga-spin-off about the three Paper Sisters. That series also had a nostalgic love for books and book-centric plots (a library that appears only once every ten years; a lost book containing a love-note), though it also had a great deal of silliness (the sisters foil an alien invasion).

Still, thank you, Viz, for bringing it over. Now translate Sarusuberi, please.

Reminiscing About The Past From A Present Sorrow-kun Experience

So, for fun, I decided to take a part in something that zzeroparticle set up, the Aniblog Readings, where a few people who blog about anime decides to read one of another blogger’s first ten posts back when they started up. Is it self-referential, and just bloggers having fun with each other? Sure, but it’s not something that I see as important in this case. It’s definitely not stopping a blogger from suggesting that their own audience do the same things either, or maybe bloggers reading some interesting comments they see, or something else that is not “patting themselves on the back”, or comes off as only acknowledging the more visible commenters who tend to be fellow bloggers and so on and so forth.  Or other things like that.  :)

As shown in the above link, Sorrow-kun, the mastermind from the blog Behind the Nihon Review decided to read the post “On anime endings and things…”, a post from “way back in” February 2007. Done on phone, the quality might not be liked, but it works. The track is below:

Sorrow-kun’s rendition in the tone of a smarmy bastard.

Review of Satoshi Kon: the illusionist

by dm00

Book cover

I just finished Andrew Osmond’s Satoshi Kon: the illusionist. I recommend it for any Kon fan — it’s full of tidbits gleaned from Kon interviews (including an email interview done by Osmond), and discusses Kon’s works, Kon’s life, and Kon’s attitudes toward his own works. Osmond is a fan — he is a prominent poster on the Nausicaa-net mailing list back in the day — and he knows how to appreciate Kon’s works. Reading the book is like spending an afternoon with an articulate, film-literate friend talking about Kon’s films, with nary a whiff of cineaste pretentiousness.

Junichi Yamamoto — sad robot in rubble/Hot blooded alien/Kobe & I

by dm00

Thanks to an ANN news story about a Kobe tourism board-sponsored short animation, the quirky and eccentric Kobe & I:

I stumbled onto the director’s Youtube postings.

Kobe and I has a female lead with boyfriend-troubles, who also appears in the manic Hot-blooded alien:

Which reminds me a good deal of Yoshitoshi Abe’s I am an alien, and I have a question (don’t be mislead by the “graphic novel” — it’s only 20 or so pages long). I suppose it should remind me of Sunred, but I never got into that series, for some reason.

Half the films have a melancholy air, such as Melody, a Kunio Kato (Diary of Tortov Roddle, and the Oscar-winning
La Maison en Petits Cubes)-like short about a son’s memories of his deceased father. Watching it, I found myself wondering if my own children would have such memories of me (I fear I have no such memories of my own workaholic father).

It’s a bit trite and predictable, but sweet and affecting, and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

By far the best of the lot is the all-CGI Memory, which may remind some of Eve no Jikan (particularly the episode Nameless):

(If you like that sort of thing, take a look at this Russian adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s story There will come soft rains:

But be warned: the related links may turn into a TV-tropes-rivalling timesink.)

I don’t know if he’s got more animated shorts out there, or not. Google turns up some tantalyzing hints, but also hints that “Junichi Yamamoto” is not that unusual a name.