By TheBigN

I wrote a guest post over at Listless Ink which notes more openly one of those “extra” areas that gets and keeps me interested in anime – my yuri goggles. Reminds me that I probably need to do posts like this more often. Or probably just more posts (guest and otherwise) in general. I thank Yi very much for letting me post on her blog, and I hope to do it again in the future. :3

High above Not-Kyoto

I haven’t had so much fun since I first saw Noiseman Sound Insect. It’s like all the madness of FLCL compressed into one caffeine-maddened episode (no Pillows, though).

Poor Koto and her brothers seem to have been sucked into the world of gods and yokai, where they have special chaotic powers of their own. There’s a rabbit involved, and the episode begins with an extended quotation from Lewis Carroll, just in case you didn’t get the message. But this is no slavish adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

Apparently it’s a one-shot ONA, though the end holds out hope for more.


Here is the PV. It’s positively sedate compared to the half-hour of chaos that is the episode.

Cruising Google images for 京騒戯画 reveals that Toei and Banpresto already have figures out. And kanban musume:

Image source: http://ascii.jp/elem/000/000/623/623327/

Pixiv goodies.

Update (29 Dec 2011): Accelerator’s review goes into detail about who all the characters are and what they are up to.

If you have a multi-region DVD player, you, too, can seek the raven-haired beauty

For years British anime fans have been importing US anime DVDs. Now we in the US can return the favor.

When I ordered my copy from Amazon.co.uk they didn’t charge this gaibrit value-added-tax, so, even with shipping, it was a little cheaper than the £25.99 list price.

In last Friday’s ANNCast, Funimation representatives Marketing manager Adam Sheehan and Director of Corporate Strategy Lance Heiskell talked about the prospects of titles they’d streamed, and it didn’t sound to me as though there’s any hope of a home-video release in the US.

I will be terribly embarassed if this turns out to be a boot-leg. However, none of the tell-tale signs are there: it’s not a region-free disk, the episodes are on three disks and not crowded onto two (or one).

It shows its age (animal mascots and singing!) but worth a look.

If Fate/Zero’s Castor is the kind of villain you like, have I got a manga for you. Remember those juvenile/loli assassin twins in Black Lagoon? Mardock Scramble‘s Balot took the advanced course.

Volume two picks up right where volume one left off, facing Boiled, Oefcocque’s former partner, Oefcocque’s nightmare.

Balot, using her powers (perhaps inadvertently), catches a glimpse of Oefcocque’s memories, and the fight with Boiled awaken something in Balot, giving her a reason to live, and a reason to surprise Boiled with her capabilities.

Balot decides to partner with Oefcocque.

The story is grim: Balot’s life, before Oefcocque and Easter rescued her, was not a happy one. Flashbacks in this volume tell us why she had no desire to survive in the preceding volume, but seem more humanizing than dehumanizing: with the help of Oefcocque, Balot is learning to be human again. We learn a bit more about the madness behind Shell’s method, and we see him unleash four horrors to track down Balot and kill her.

She’s prepared.

There’s some truly creepy stuff implied here. The art is reminiscent of Mohiro Kitoh’s (Narutaru, Bokurano),especially when she draws Balot. Her action scenes are dynamic without turning into a muddle of speed-lines. Some of the brutality is horrific, but fortunately not dwelled upon nor drenched in blood — a good deal of it is left to your imagination.

I have not read the novel. This manga version stands on its own, and is excellent story-telling, and excellent art. I look forward to the next volume. Fortunately, Kodansha is bringing the volumes out every two months, and the next one will be released in early December (this coming Tuesday, as it happens).

Hard cover edition

I just finished The Wavering of Haruhi Suzumiya, a title that makes me think of Alexander the Great for some reason.

Book six of the Haruhi Suzumiya series is a collection of short stories. The first two stories, “Live alive” and “The adventures of Mikuru Asahina episode 00″, were among the highlights of the first animated season (which I think appeared shortly after this book was originally published in Japan).

In the new stories in this volume, Yuki is on the receiving end of a confession of love, Mikuru asks Kyon out on a Sunday afternoon (“The melancholy of Mikuru Asahina”), and the cat Shamisen is a key witness in the murder mystery that got derailed in “Snowy mountain syndrome”.

Paperback

Aside from the weak story involving Shamisen, it’s a pretty solid book. “Love at first sight” has that special Nagato charm, “The melancholy of Mikuru Asahina” involves another critical event in the setup of the Haruhi wrold. Both stories continue “Snowy Mountain syndrome’s” suspicion that there are other forces that were awakened by Haruhi’s powers. The last story, especially, shows that there’s more to Mikuru’s mission than just the care of Haruhi Suzumiya’s moods.

Perhaps it’s just rose-coloring from nostalgia, or perhaps stories about movies and concerts are better off being seen instead of read about, but “The adventures of Mikuru Asahina” and “Live alive” struck me as having been better done by Kyoto Animation. They’re okay stories, and despite all the time-travel, the author had no idea that, in the future, his images would have to compete with those created by top-notch animators. These are the stories that went on to be animated so well, after all.

Also, I think animated Tsuruya works better than described Tsuruya.

I kvetched that too many iterations of “Endless Eight” was a wasted opportunity in my review of the previous volume. This volume prompts that sentiment as well, though not quite so much. “Love at first sight” might have comfortably replaced one of the eighterations (though it’s richer for following The disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya); “The melancholy of Mikuru Asahina” might be a less comfortable fit. That story ends with an unresolved thread, and it is not clear that the resolution would have fit into the 12-episode season (I don’t know — the resolution may not yet have appeared in print).

The next volume (The intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya) is scheduled for June 2012, with the volume after that (The indignation of Haruhi Suzumiya) scheduled for September 2012. There are two more volumes after that in the series (which I expect Yen Press to release as a single volume, since they comprise a single story). I’m looking forward to them.

…except I guess he wears pants.

Hardback cover, paperback sticks with the single-color theme of past paperbacks

Volume five of the Suzumiya Haruhi novels, The rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya, has been out for a while now, and I finally read it. It consists of a couple of short stories, and a novella. The paperback appears to be out of print, but the hardback is available for paperback prices.

The stories are Endless eight (which only takes us through the last iteration — which is all it can do, since that’s all our narrator, Kyon, could know about to write down in his memoirs), and Day of Sagittarius, the story of the game contest with the computer club.

The novella is Snowy mountain syndrome, about a ski trip gone terribly wrong. The book has lots for Yuki and Tsuruya fans. In addition, Haruhi has mellowed a great deal and actually shows some consideration for others. It’s an excellent puzzle story, somewhat reminiscent of a Heinlein or Asimov short (you know the sort of story — it reads like the author was inspired by a Scientific American article, and writes a story about a nifty idea). Tanigawa is definitely growing as a writer.

…And it’s a bloody wasted opportunity. It advances the plot and development of the world and the characters. But the “math is hard” Barbies at Kyoto Animation chose to demonstrate their craftsmanship on eight variations of Endless eight instead of rising to the challenge of animating a story in which the resolution requires Koizumi to use a carpet as a blackboard.

Shaft could have done it, and it would have been a miracle of typography. And fanservice — the resolution of the puzzle involves a series of nocturnal visits among the cast members. Oh, it could have been wonderful.

Anyway, this series, after bobbling a bit with The sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya, just keeps getting better. I’m looking forward to the next volume.

Anyway, on to The wavering of Haruhi Suzumiya, which includes the story of “The adventures of Mikuru Asahina 00″, and has yet more for Yuki and Tsuruya fans….

"No way!" the chameleon replies

Volume 3 of Yoshitoshi Abe’s Ryushika, Ryushika was released this week: more adventures of Yotsuba’s evil twin.

In this volume, Ryushika tries on her extremely near-sighted father’s glasses, and gets new ideas about the malleability of perception (a later chapter does much the same thing with her sense of smell, prompting the realization that rainclouds are cloths the gods use to wash the world). In the final chapter, her father asks her what happens to the hole as we eat the donut.

Along the way, Ryushika has nightmares about a creeper vine seeking revenge for being uprooted, and names her brother’s chameleon “Hamu” for the hamster she was expecting him to bring home, and more.

Almost all the dialogue is Ryushika musing, and misunderstanding, the world around her in the most energetic ways possible. Ryushika muses in simple sentences written in kana, so even someone with just a semester of Japanese can read it pretty easily (the adults around her do use kanji, some of which are moderately obscure, but clear from context, and with full furigana).

If you’re a fan of Yotsuba&!, especially if you’d like her more if she were a little brattier, and you have just a tiny bit of ability to read Japanese, the Ryushika, Ryushika volumes are certainly worth adding to your collection.

The Dr. Pepper and everything.

As such, I spent most of my time roaming throughout the hotel snapping a few cosplay photos, the video gaming room (where I learned that I still have skills for DDR, but none of the stamina to match. As well as that I should play my unopened Project Diva 2 as Dreamy Theater 2 is awesome), the dealer’s room (got more Firstspear stuff from Hendane which is always good), and panels that I mainly went too because I knew one of the people involved with them (those were entertaining, by the way. Props to TheGreatSG).  And I was able to run into a handful of people who I knew attending the con, which is always good. But that’s not really a fully satisfying con experience for me, and it was hard for me not to be bored. When I think about Otakon, I have to wonder if I haven’t been spoiled by the myriad things to do and panels with a wider range of topics to see that it presents as one of the larger cons in the US.  Going further, I wonder if it taints my expectations of what a fulfilling con experience can be, where even if I don’t plan, everything is entertaining and I feel like I don’t have enough time to experience all I want to do.

So while I’m happy wondering about the possibilities that Anime USA will have in the future should they move to a much larger facility, based on what I’ve been hearing, I do wonder in the back of my mind if I haven’t given them a fair shot. And I will keep going to Anime USA as long as I have the ability to do so. Still, no Japanese voice actors at all this time around makes me sad.

My set of cosplay photos for this convention are here. There was an awesome variety in terms of shows, but it’s also a little depressing that out of 3 days, I could only get this many pictures of cosplay compared to getting more out of less time at Otakon this year. There I go again.

“Chewy-ni-byou”