tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90854808815186230802024-03-13T08:28:52.788-07:00You Like Reading Things, Right?Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-15500050565294712802019-03-17T13:49:00.000-07:002019-03-17T13:49:30.812-07:00Japanese Cartoons You Could’ve Seen at the Movies in 2018<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The 2019 Academy Award nominees for best animated feature include an anime!<br />
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In fact, it includes the first anime nominee not from Studio Ghibli!<br />
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And you know, I’m not actually that excited.<br />
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First there’s the fact that this was inevitable ever since GKids slid their way into the Oscars – it was only a question of when they’d decide that one of their anime releases would benefit the most from the exposure. More than that though, this is just a really good lineup all around. <i>Incredibles 2</i> was full of marvelously fun layouts, <i>Isle of Dogs</i> showed once again that Wes Anderson’s real element is animation, and <i>Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse</i> is the first American mainstream animated feature in a very, very long time to make me say “wow, these guys really love cartoons!”<br />
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The Spiderman movie especially is delightfully innovative aside from being just a really tight story full love for the medium, and I almost included a writeup on it in the article as a joke. It would’ve been good too, since I’d have talked about how it takes techniques from Japan like frame modulation and a certain style of effect animation named after a guy named Yoshinori Kanada. I didn’t though. My self-indulgence does know some bounds, as incredible as that may seem as you read what I did write.<br />
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The only one I didn’t see was <i>Ralph Breaks the Internet</i>, which…seems like a “my friends worked on this so I’m going to vote for it” nomination, but I guess I oughtn’t say that. Either way, it’s still a nice bunch.<br />
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It was a very good year for anime film too – both in general and in the US. Eight anime were eligible for 2018, and more than that were in theaters at some point or another. Most of them were alright or better – a few were brilliant.<br />
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–but before we get to it, a word on the movies that aren’t appearing in this article:<br />
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You’ll notice that I’m only talking about six movies here, which is because I missed out on two of them (and was unable even to pirate them afterwards). The first was a Franco-Japanese co-production called <i>Mutafukaz</i>, but that name was just way too cool for America so we called it MFKZ here instead. France and Japan have produced things together before, and their industries have only grown closer over the years. The other was <i>The Laws of the Universe: Part 1</i>, which I’m really looking forward to because I hear it’s so terrible. The only thing you need to know is that it was funded by a cult called Hаpрy Sciеnсe, which is both more wacky than Sсiеntolоgy and, somehow, even more insidious too. I’d never have paid money to see it even if I’d noticed the screening.<br />
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Some other non-eligible movies which did appear in theaters were <i>Mazinger Z: Infinity</i>, <i>Free! Take Your Marks</i>, and <i>Haikara-san: Here Comes Miss Modern Part 1-2</i>. In order: <i>Mazinger Z: Infinity</i> was good but means more to fans of <i>Mazinger Z</i>, the <i>Free!</i> movie was cute but means more to fans of <i>Free!</i>, and <i>Haikara-san</i> was a rigid adaptation of a period piece whose rigidity and uninspired production doomed it to mediocrity.<br />
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Lastly, I should mention that <i>Dragon Ball Super: Brolly</i> did technically premiere in December 2018, but it didn’t open wide until 2019. I’m hoping that means it’ll be eligible for next year, because that was a very entertaining movie even to someone who knows basically nothing about <i>Dragon Ball</i>. Dudes punching each other through glaciers as a chorus dramatically chants “BROLY! BROLY! BROLY!” is pretty universal.<br />
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Anyway,<br />
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<i><b>Mirai</b></i><br />
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<i>Mirai</i> is the movie GKids pushed for their slot in the Best Animated Feature category, and I think it was a smart move. It isn’t a classic Parent Anime, but it’s aimed so perfectly at the Parent Anime demographic that Mamoru Hosoda’s claim that he made this movie for his son is either hilariously devoid of self-awareness, or else just plain cynical.<br />
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Much of that appeal is bound in the premise, which is very simple and appealing. It’s a movie which seriously attempts to engage with the feelings of a 4 year old boy named Kun, whose parents just had another baby, using a sequence of visual metaphors which a 4 year old might imagine. The movie is structured episodically, with each episode dealing with a different subject, and using a new visual metaphor. A good early one has Kun, who feels the new baby has displaced him, fancy himself meeting a disfavored prince in a courtyard. As they talk, he realizes that the prince is in fact the dog, who complains that his food has been cheaper ever since Kun arrived in all his maleficence to darken that noble family’s doorstep.<br />
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(It’s okay, they become friends!)<br />
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It sounds wonderfully unique, and it…shouldn’t. Insofar as it’s a movie about seriously engaging with the feelings of a 4 year old, there is fundamentally nothing that this movie does that <i>Arthur</i> at its best did not do just as well. That’s not for nothing, of course, since <i>Arthur</i> could be excellent at times.<br />
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The difference between <i>Arthur </i>and <i>Mirai</i> is visual, broadly speaking, and what a difference! Kun’s father is an architect, and he designed the house they live in. I don’t know how nice the house would be to live in or maintain with all that glass, but it’s a filmmaker’s dream and allows lots of really nice blocking and layouts. This is good, since those are Hosoda’s strength, and most of the movie takes place inside the house. His direction is fun to watch, and some nice but unremarkable character animation only helps.<br />
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The movie really rests on those visual metaphors though, and unfortunately, they’re also my main problem: it’s all too fantastically whimsical. This isn’t how childhood memories are, and this mostly isn’t how children’s imaginations work. Fantastic whimsy is how imaginative romantics think children’s imaginations are like. The whole premise of the movie is dishonest, but at least it’s dishonest in the same way as most similar media is.<br />
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Still, I find myself in the awkward position of recommending a movie while seeming to condemn it. The premise may be dishonest, but Hosoda’s imagination is fantastic, and his vignettes are nothing if not heartfelt and personal. While it’s only somewhat insightful about 4 year old boys, it’s accidentally quite insightful about parents of 4 year old boys.<br />
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-which, come to think of it, probably says as much about the movie as I just did in the last few hundred words.<br />
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<i><b>Fireworks</b></i><br />
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One of the few things I actually remember about <i>Fireworks</i> is that the screening I attended had the first six minutes of <i>The Night is Short, Walk on Girl!</i> attached to the end, and that there was more life in those six minutes than in 90 minutes of <i>Fireworks</i>.<br />
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It’s not a very good movie.<br />
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But it doesn’t do for me to just damn it; I have to actually tell you what it’s like. That’s really hard, because it’s so unmemorable, and I’m not going to rewatch it just to write a few hundred words about it for Facebook – not even at 2x speed.<br />
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To start, this is a romance with magical realism adapted from a live action TV series directed by Shunji Iwai in the early 90s that is, I hear, actually good. The movie was announced in December 2016. The perceptive may notice that its announcement followed only six months after the opening of the 9th highest grossing non-English film ever made, <i>Your Name</i>, which is a romance with magical realism. Just like <i>Your Name</i>, <i>Fireworks</i> was funded in part to promote a single. While the movie was not a success, the song miraculously was, and it was absolutely unavoidable in Japan for a period.<br />
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You might assume that <i>Fireworks</i> is cashing in on <i>Your Name</i> hype, but much to Shaft and Kadokawa’s ceaseless terror, that’s not the case. This movie had been in production since around 2013. In case you’re wondering, let me just confirm this for you right now: 4 years is not a reasonable amount of time for an anime film to be in production. 3 years would not have been a reasonable amount of time. 2 years is quite leisurely. The production of <i>Your Name</i> took about a year, with an additional year of pitching, business arrangements, and pre-production. Moreover, this movie did not take 4 years because Shaft was taking extra care to make sure it was good. This movie took 4 years because Shaft is burning hollow, and they do not have the resources to properly work on all the projects that Aniplex has foisted on them. I expect <i>Fireworks</i> to be the last movie they ever make.<br />
Still, <i>Fireworks</i> isn’t bad because it has to grow in the shadow of <i>Your Name</i>, or even because its production was a mess; it’s bad because it’s a bad movie. You can divide it into two parts: the parts that are bland, and the parts that are distinctive but eye-rolling.<br />
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The love itself is one of the bland parts, which is, now that I’ve written those words, one of the most damming things you can say about a love story. It’s a story about a girl whose family circumstances prevent her from dating a guy she likes, which is odd, because the whole movie is told from the guy’s perspective. If the movie insists on framing the girl as purely an object of the boy’s empathy, then at least they ought’ve had the two interact more than marginally before launching into the third act so we can grow to like her ourselves. Instead, the emotional core of the story is distant, which makes the fact that the back half of the movie is a sequence of two teenagers being total jerks to their friends and family in a boring, myopic sort of way all the more painful. The movie, of course, isn’t reflective about their behavior in the slightest.<br />
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If the love story is one of the bland parts, the direction is nothing if not distinctively eye rolling. The movie was directed by Nobuyuki Takeuchi – a man who ought to have know better – at a studio called Shaft. Shaft since the mid 2000s has been an experiment to see if a single auteur can impart his vision on a studio of multiple other directors. The auteur in question is Akiyuki Shinbou, whose visual language is a development of the Dezaki school. It’s hard to describe the Dezaki school in words, but it’s a heightened, dramatic, abstract way of directing – and people like Shinbou take this already heightened style and heighten it even more. Sometimes it works out well. The visual language of <i>Fireworks</i>, however, is a bit like a fantasy novelist trying to write in Tolkien’s voice, but who understands none of his substance. It’s like if you opened <i>The Hobbit</i> and the first chapter is written in the same register as <i>The Book of Genesis</i>. Instead of the grandiose romanticism of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FbQ_YwBmDo"><i>Rose of Versailles</i></a>, <i>Fireworks </i>is full of the same uncanny foreboding as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb27wJVINTY"><i>Puella Magi Madoka Magica</i></a>. This is 100% unintentional. I do not understand how Takeuchi got it so wrong.<br />
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I realize that it feels like I’m midway through a longer essay, but I really do want to keep these short snapshots unless they really warrant more, and this movie really doesn’t. If I did go on, I’d probably talk about:<br />
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>The horniness the storyboarders seem to have for the girl, which would be totally normal in, say, the <i>Monogatari</i> series, but is totally out of place in a by-the-numbers romance.<br />
>The ugly compositing and cold, boring animation, which would be unremarkable even by TV production standards.<br />
>How rote the big musical number is, visually, from a director who – and I stress this again – is great at bombastic, inventive visual design in literally every other thing he’s been involved with.<br />
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Don’t watch <i>Fireworks</i>. Just watch the music video and be done with the whole thing.<b> </b><br />
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<b>A note on the Year of Yuasa</b><br />
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Masaaki Yuasa is a visionary, which was as clear when he was an animator as it is now that he is a director running the studio Science Saru. I am not wholly a proponent of his vision, but he is a visionary, and this year, three of his anime came out in the US. Two of them – <i>The Night is Short, Walk on Girl!</i>, and <i>Lu Over the Wall</i> – were eligible for a nomination. The third was <i>Devilman: Crybaby</i>, which is a Netflix original anime series. Three anime is kind of a lot, and they’re vaguely thematically related, so I’m going to take a moment to introduce Yuasa at length.<br />
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When talking about Yuasa, you have to start with his visual style, because his style as an animator and his style as a director are inseparable. This makes him an auteur, and a good example of why individual animators are important to questions of authorship in the Japanese animation industry. He likes exaggerated poses, walk cycles, and movement in general which communicate emotion and weight, which is different from the character-focused exaggeration common in the West, or the snappy pose-to-pose exaggeration common in some anime. He uses wild camera movement and angles to accentuate it. He’s unafraid to make his characters look grotesque in the process, which makes him highly distinctive in an industry which is deeply in love with cute cartoon people.<br />
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Perhaps predictably, he likes nonhuman, monstrous characters a lot, and all three of his anime this year feature them. Moreover, two of them are meditations on some of mankind’s darker tendencies, with the underlying theme that monstrous and alien things aren’t always bad. Their plots are both broadly about ordinary people reacting poorly in understandable ways and causing catastrophes. <i>Devilman: Crybaby</i> ends in the same brutally pessimistic way as the manga it adapts did (yes I know this is a loaded contention, but let it slide for now), but <i>Lu Over the Wall</i> does not. I’m thankful for this because I found <i>Devilman: Crybaby</i> in many ways unpleasant, but I also wonder if <i>Lu Over the Wall</i> really provides a satisfying answer. <i>The Night is Short, Walk On Girl!</i> falls outside this pattern for reasons I’ll get to in a minute.<br />
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Last, I ought to mention that both movies – but especially <i>Lu Over the Wall</i> – are showcases of what Science Saru has been trying to do with the Flash animation toolchains they’ve been working on for a long while. Flash has the benefit of allowing animators to more easily animate scenes with lots of moving camera – which is important to Yuasa – and the drawback of making those scenes look floaty and weird. I suspect most of the work they’ve done has gone into solving that issue, which they haven’t yet. Nonetheless, if you read the credits to <i>Lu Over the Wall</i>, you’ll notice that there are no in-betweeners credited. There are only the key animators – who likely drew all the frames of their own cuts themselves – and Flash animators. An unusual production for an unusual director.<br />
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<b>The Night is Short, Walk on Girl!</b></i><br />
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<i>The Night is Short, Walk On Girl!</i> is simultaneously a highly literary movie, and a story that was always meant for animation. That isn’t as strange as it sounds, since it’s an adaptation of a novel by Tomohiko Morimi, whose style could not be more perfect to attract animators and animation fans. I myself regret that I can’t quite read his work in Japanese quite yet, and hope someday I may. All the context you need, however, is that four of his works have been adapted into anime so far, and all of them have been great.<br />
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I’m not sure how to describe this movie, except that it’s about a girl who gate-crashes a bunch of parties, wins a drinking contest with a youkai, goes used book shopping, pinches in for a guerilla theater troupe, and cheers everyone up when they all get the same cold, all in the course of what I suppose must be an ordinary summer night in Kyoto. A boy follows closely behind, trying to confess his feelings. Just like the eternal night, the 92 minute movie feels about twice that long: not because it’s dull, but because it’s an episodic movie so dense with ideas that time seems to slow.<br />
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Note how I didn’t say what it’s about thematically. It’s about so many different things that I’m not sure what to say, and at any rate, really getting into it would require more time and space than this context allows. It’s a movie of vaguely related observations about life philosophies tied together in a bundle. If I had to name its primary through-line, it’s about the girl and the boy finding themselves, which sounds trite but isn’t. I suggest reading any number of other analyses if you’d like to know more.<br />
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Essential to this movie’s identity is the fact that animation is woven in to the warp and woof of Masaaki Yuasa’s directorial style. I can’t think of another anime director working right now who uses visual abstraction quite as aggressively and playfully as Yuasa, and it suits the abstract and playful story not only in the vague aesthetic sense that Morimi’s prose has an affinity for Yuasa’s visual language, but also in the more definite sense that Yuasa needed to articulate both concepts and sensations without relying on dialog or even some traditional storytelling tools.<br />
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Now, earlier I said that GKids running <i>Mirai</i> was a good idea, and I’ll even add that it probably has the most to gain by broader awareness. Nonetheless, I have a vague feeling that <i>The Night is Short, Walk On Girl!</i> has the potential to be a pretty big hit with someone, but I’m not sure exactly who that someone is. It’s too weird to be Parent Anime. It doesn’t walk or talk like anime, but since anime is not nearly the anathema to general audiences that watched DBZ and Naruto and Attack on Titan growing up, that might actually be a disadvantage outside the Parent Anime demographic. It’s not so weird that only film nerds would watch it, but then, it’s still experimental animation. In the end, the only way to be sure it reaches someone would be to throw it up on Netflix, which I’m sure will happen. Maybe it’ll even reach you.<br />
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<i><b>Lu Over the Wall</b></i><br />
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Another thing about Masaaki Yuasa is that he likes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzHaztLAh9M">dancing</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23Hovo63hp4">music</a>. <i>Lu Over the Wall</i> features lots of both, being about some kids in a band and a singing mermaid.<br />
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Actually, “merfolk” doesn’t get the right picture across. They’re more like magical vampire mermaids, which sounds like something extremely tedious off the late 2000s internet like “zombie pirate ninja,” but is perfectly accurate. They can manipulate water, they burn in sunlight, and you turn into a mer yourself if they bite you. Moreover, the most anthropomorphic mer is Lu; the rest are kinda like shark people. They’re tied to music, and they gain legs to walk on (or more usually dance across) land when they hear it. They’re pretty nuts, is what I’m saying.<br />
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Anyway, the movie introduces the depressed main character Kai and his two friends who rope him into being in a band. Kai discovers the mermaid child Lu when she’s attracted to his music, and they become friends. In the process we learn why Kai was dead to the world and about the lives of his two friends, and then watch as these people and the community they live in accidentally fuck everything up by acting painfully consistent to their established characters. This goes on for a very frustrating half hour or so of film until everyone manages to get their shit together in a big, strange, and pretty fucking neat looking finale with floating cubes of water and stuff. All told, I came away roughly satisfied, and…<br />
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…and I’m not sure I have much more to say about it than that, except that it’s like a way better version of <i>Ponyo</i> for an older audience. As I mentioned before, it veers away at the last minute from falling into shockingly dark nihilism for a movie about some dorks and a mermaid child. And yet, it’d be a kid’s movie, except for the fact that most kids would find the teenagers deadly boring. More than that, a lot of the best and most emotionally affecting parts are about old people who aren’t even the focus of the story. Maybe the highest complement I can give Yuasa and his staff is that somehow, nonetheless, it never became an atonal mess. It is aesthetically quite cohesive. Maybe I’d be more impressed if it didn’t have to go up against Yuasa and Morimi’s Kyoto Party Night 2018.<b> </b><br />
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<i><b>Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms</b></i><br />
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aka “Call Your Mom: the Movie”<br />
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Mari Okada is the kind of writer who can have the whole theater laughing at a line that is clearly supposed to be serious one moment and near breaking down crying another…in the same scene. This is her best work.<br />
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This is a movie about the lives of an Iorph girl named Maquia and a human boy named Ariel. The Iorph are elves, more or less, and live secluded on an island where they produce fine textiles and frolic through the meadows all day for centuries on-end, as off-brand elves do. Maquia, being young and fragile, does less frolicking than others, but she watches others frolic with some reticence. Unfortunately, some shit involving dragons and geopolitics happens and she ends up orphaned very suddenly on the mainland, where she finds the human baby Ariel among the wreckage of a bandit raid, is adopted by some farmers, and becomes in turn a sister, a single mother, a single mother who may as well be a sister, and a grandmother.<br />
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Let me first note that while the “May-to-December Romance” is a well established type, I can’t think of another example of an epic life-spanning May-to-December maternity narrative. Nihil sub sole novum is a cliché and a falsity.<br />
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Anyway, there appears to be a tendency when writing pop film criticism to frame things in the most general way possible. If it’s a movie about a thing, it’s a movie about Thing, whether or not the movie displays much universalizable insight into Thing. <i>Maquia </i>is a movie about a mother, so it’s clearly about motherhood in a real sense, but I’m not sure it’s right to call it about motherhood in the broadest possible sense. <i>Maquia</i> is, however, a highly compelling and detailed portrait of a very specific mother, informed by Mari Okada’s thoughts about her own very specific mother.<br />
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It’s an idiosyncratic portrait because Mari Okada is a strange person who writes works of – to put it in neutral terms – “heightened drama.” For context, she spent her youth as a shut-in with her single mother due to severe social anxiety, and what she calls in her memoir very probably a panic disorder. She spent so long trapped inside her own head that her career as a screenwriter might be called an exercise in getting outside it, but even in other people’s heads, her own worldview leaves a distinct tint – and “distinct” is the right word. This is not always a good thing.<br />
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Indeed, I seem to remember there being a few truly, bracingly strange moments in the narrative which had me really wondering if a “100% Okada movie” was such a good idea, but for the life of me I can’t remember what they were. This should tell you something. The rough moments are only part of what makes the movie so interesting as an object of consideration. I think that you do have to have a certain tolerance for her way of writing (and now her way of directing), but I think that threshold is quite low. This is an accessible movie, and if you find the premise at all intriguing, you should check it out. It’s a touching and heartfelt tearjerker of a story. Okada once commented that at first she thought the reaction of wanting to call one’s mom after a movie (<i>Tokyo Story</i> is a common one) was distinctly Japanese, but hearing us foreigners react to <i>Maquia</i> proved to her otherwise very, very conclusively.<br />
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Now I know it sounds like I’m wrapping up my writeup, and I’ve probably told you everything you really need to know about this movie. Compelling concept, deeply affecting, you get the idea. But here’s the thing: this movie is also an amazing feat of raw animation power. Almost 2/3rds of this movie was animated by <a href="http://www.pelleas.net/animators/?#5">Toshiyuki</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6Eigpn-fSE">Inoue</a> as a favor to producer Kenji Horikawa before he retires. Toshiyuki Inoue, you may recall me having mentioned, is one of the most skilled animators to ever walk under the vault of heaven. To help him, he brought onboard many of his immensely skilled friends. This movie’s animation is amazingly complicated yet absolutely full of character. I could absolutely go into great detail about what makes it so astounding on a scene-to-scene basis, but I’ll spare you. Unlike the next movie in this article, I do not think that animation of this caliber was necessary for the production or is integral to its appeal. However, I absolutely had to mention it, because this is the current masterwork of one of animation’s greatest.<br />
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<i><b>Liz & the Blue Bird</b></i><br />
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You can explain what happens in <i><span class="_4yxp">Liz & the Blue Bird</span></i> in a sentence or so. It’s about two seniors in high school: Nozomi and Mizore, 1st flute and 1st oboe in their school band. They’re very close to each other, but temperamentally heterogeneous.* Neither knows where they’re going afterwards; neither wants to part from the other; neither knows what they want for themselves: so they awkwardly cling to each other in their own way. Over about 90 minutes, they learn what letting go would mean.<br />
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These aren’t simple emotions, exactly, but putting it into words undercuts the fact that this may be the most beautiful animated movie I’ve ever seen.<br />
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I don’t merely mean that it looks pretty – though it does. Rather, this beauty is the kind only possible by an absolute unity of art. Every piece is in its place: sound, color, movement, words, composition, design. It all articulates as one. This is just what constitutes film aesthetic, properly understood.<br />
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The operating principle of the movie is specificity – a kind only possible in animation due to the precise control of every textual element. The opening sequence of the movie exemplifies this, and introduces motifs associated with the girl Nozomi. There is a certain way her ponytail swings, which will recur. What recurs is not a <span class="_4yxp">shot</span>, though a shot does recur; what recurs is the motion. This is one of the things Mizore likes about her. There are many of these motifs, and many of them are aural as well. The entire opening is a soundscape which is half-music and half ambience of the two girls walking through their school together silently. Taken as one, it creates on screen something like their sense experience – a kind of ground-level phenomenological study. Not a bad way to show what their relationship is like, huh?<br />
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“Specificity” is a word that some fans of western animation use to talk about old school character acting – the kind in old Disney movies, where everyone carried themselves in an immediately recognizable way. Some of them contend that anime lacks this kind of specificity, which is partially true, since Japanese approaches to character animation are fundamentally quite different. <i><span class="_4yxp">Liz</span></i> has some specificity of character, but even more, <i><span class="_4yxp">Liz</span></i> has a lot of animation which is hyper-specific to an emotion. This kind of realist animation isn’t unique to <i><span class="_4yxp">Liz</span></i>, but it’s important to it. Animation can very cleanly show the exact and precise way in which a girl might set her flute down during a rest and clench the hem of her dress as emotion silently overcomes her during a rehearsal. Quiet moments and subtle gestures like that are key to how director Naoko Yamada tells stories.<br />
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Not unrelatedly, Yamada uses lots of shots of legs and hands during this movie, as she does in all her work. She says they’re an underutilized way of showing emotion, but they’re especially well suited to animation. The human face has countless muscles which animation can’t replicate, but legs and hands have many clear points of articulation and can show as much subtlety in how people shift their weight and posture as the animator can put there.<br />
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Reiko Yoshida’s script is probably the most conventional component, and it’s quite funny how little of what’s being said at any given point has anything to do with what’s happening in the movie. The important thing is that Yoshida is good at writing high school girls being high school girls. Some scenes feel more anime-like than others, and those scenes are usually the ones which have the most Yoshida in them. Luckily, they feel like they’re from a good anime – these girls are fun.<br />
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The voice of Ayano Takeda, the author of the <i><span class="_4yxp">Sound! Euphonium</span></i> novels from which this is adapted in bits and pieces, comes through oddly less in the characters and more in the heavy use of visual metaphor. The story of Nozomi and Mizore is framed by the eponymous fictional fairy tale Liz & the Blue Bird about a lonely girl who becomes friends with a beautiful blue bird who can turn into a human, whose love for the lonely girl compels her not to fly away. The fairy tale is the basis for the third movement of a tone poem which their school band is playing in a competition. As you might imagine, there are windows and birds framed by windows and birds flying around and windowframes casting shadows and…listen, this movie has many subtle parts (including other visual metaphors), but this is not one of them.<br />
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Now, I’m not going to go on any more talking about individual parts (but I could – I could for a thousand words more), because at this point you should get why this is an astounding movie. I’m afraid, however, I haven’t told you much about why you should care beyond that yet. I’m writing to <span class="_4yxp">you</span>, after all, not to my film studies professor.** The truth is, like the <i><span class="_4yxp">Sound! Euphonium</span></i> TV series, I don’t think I can recommend this movie to everyone. It’s a delicately told story about two girls which I found quite moving and worthy of contemplation, but it’s a very small story where not a lot happens. You have to have a taste for small stories like that, and a lot of patience for Naoko Yamada’s “whisper once, don’t yell twice” style of filmmaking. It asks that you be very observant. Like Naoko Yamada’s <i><span class="_4yxp">A Silent Voice</span></i> from 2017 – a more thematically complicated but comparatively messy film – I only fully appreciated and felt it on watching it a second time.<br />
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Anyway, I’m not disappointed that this isn’t one of the Oscar nominees: because I already know ElevenArts can’t actually run an Oscar campaign, but also because movies like this don’t benefit from that kind of exposure anyway. It <span class="_4yxp">is</span> the best anime film of 2018, but a bunch of people watching it because it’s prestigious would just lead to a lot of disappointed user reviews. What I <span class="_4yxp">do</span> hope is that the academic film studies people find this movie, and they write the volumes about it that it deserves.<br />
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Ah, one more thing to note though. The tone poem Liz & the Blue Bird which Akito Matsuda composed for the film is actually quite good in isolation from the movie, and the important <a data-lynx-mode="asynclazy" href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DCYBXIPyE5zE%26fbclid%3DIwAR2nZSGQf6rF_MRTN8uCHCjRQf4tlZh71gW69MhlWDKTUU1JYv2SdB8fl7A&h=AT2OMv83QAJbCXpDyoD1SvkjWpjxS3BCRl-_qAT5-UwQvaiOqGJltwHrsRKc7YHsZyVxj-Sk-XQVtk6UztQZzXeLAQQshFMQHaO8IJ3h2rd5fR_gV9zQM6Ho32cLZy7uyI8oXeTA" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">3rd movement</a> especially so.<br />
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*And that’s the only thing hetero about them.</div>
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**If somehow you do read this, Prof. Fleeger, you should be aware that there’s totally a brief visual reference to the opening of <i>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg</i>. Also the director, writer, and most of the staff are all women.<br />
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And that’s about it for 2018. Now, here’s where I’d like to tell you all about where you can actually watch these movies, but just like last year, most of them are currently only available on BD and not for streaming. This isn’t really surprising, since of the anime I wrote about last year, only <i>In This Corner of the World</i> and <i>Mary and the Witch’s Flower</i> are available to stream in the US. You want to watch <i>A Silent Voice</i>? lol buy the disc for 22 dollars, or else buy yourself a gift card for the UK iTunes store and enjoy your DRMeriffic digital copy. You could strip the DRM, but then as xkcd once pointed out, you may as well just pirate the thing anyway.<br />
<br />Ahh, but of course, this is an article specifically about anime that had a theatrical release. Last year my point in doing this was to show how anime was here, culturally, no matter if an anime feature actually got nominated for an Oscar or not. This year I don’t really have a point, except that animation is cool. Why am I doing this again?Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-61641966995616240282018-02-11T17:25:00.001-08:002018-02-11T17:25:40.335-08:00Japanese cartoons you could’ve seen at the movies in 2017<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7dgh-zdJHVFrZL_GGxUeay88nMN_Fuc8coI4hKRyTWq1SRA8PDRqEV1aZQ_1ZZhLpSU7Zgu6dPcdTnQiLz1YxeqISNdROAqgvFMPzD-XzPQ5ZL4bArzq60C8oeNWpAitAdsNgyryI-Ew/s1600/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7dgh-zdJHVFrZL_GGxUeay88nMN_Fuc8coI4hKRyTWq1SRA8PDRqEV1aZQ_1ZZhLpSU7Zgu6dPcdTnQiLz1YxeqISNdROAqgvFMPzD-XzPQ5ZL4bArzq60C8oeNWpAitAdsNgyryI-Ew/s400/maxresdefault.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i><i>Originally published on Facebook on February 3rd, 2018</i></i></div>
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The 2018 Academy Awards nominees for best animated feature were announced!</div>
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Like last year no anime made the cut, but unlike last year this isn’t a surprise.<br />
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Not to imply that the nominees aren’t shocking in other ways. It may have been fashionably cynical to expect <i>Boss Baby</i> to appear, but <i>nobody</i> expected<i> Ferdinand</i>, and at any rate few serious and thoroughgoing industry observers expected either. No, what’s not surprising is that none of the qualified anime were nominated. Three of them are good (kinda), two had a shot at mainstream appeal, and only one was released in America by a company proven capable of mounting an Oscar campaign. That’d be <i>Mary and the Witch’s Flower</i>, released by GKIDS. GKIDS, however, put their money on <i>The Breadwinner</i>, which did indeed secure a nomination. I can’t disagree with their choice.<br />
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What interests me the most, however, is the very fact that five anime films did qualify, meaning that five anime films screened at enough theaters for long enough to meet the Academy’s criterion. <i>That’s</i> new. This wasn’t the case a decade ago. Anime – non Studio Ghibli anime – is regularly screening in American theaters…sometimes even in AMC and Regal multiplexes. Anime is winning, even if it’s not winning awards.<br />
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So what <i>did</i> screen in theaters this year? Let’s start with the films that qualified for the best animated feature Oscar.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">In This Corner of the World</span></b><br />
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Lots of discourse about any movie will center around its message: its validity, and ultimately its praiseworthiness. This is fine so far as it goes, but I personally don’t sing too loudly the moral praises of a movie which can offer only a message. I hold that <i>In This Corner of the World </i>is a deeper kind of good, because it brings not a message but an <i>approach</i>.<br />
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<i>In This Corner of the World</i> is about the life of a young woman named Suzu, living with her newly wedded husband and extended family near the major military port of Kure, Japan. The year is 1944. Ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy are always coming and going: everything from submarine tenders to battleships. Suzu and her young niece Harumi often stop on the hills to watch, sometimes sketching their striking silhouettes. But fewer and fewer ships are returning. Friends in the Navy are disappearing, and the survivors speak morbidly. Goods are growing scarce. Japan is losing this war, and everyone knows it. Suzu can only do her best for her family, and for her neighbors. It’s all anyone can.<br />
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War movies are often about the extremes of human experience. This is natural, as war is always extreme. This goes doubly for movies about civilians in wartime. Perhaps the most famous is <i>Grave of the Fireflies</i>, another anime, also about Japanese civilians at the tail end of the Pacific War. It’s famously hard to watch, being more or less 88 minutes of two kids slowly starving to death. It’s a simple movie with a simple message: this is what it costs to wage total war in the modern era. Simple, and effective.<br />
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<i>In This Corner of the World</i> is not like those. It’s not about the biblical terror of firebombing or atomic weapons, even though both of those affect Suzu’s life. Rather, it’s about how normal people lived their lives during the war, and in turn, how normal people came to view it. Its director, Sunao Katabuchi, did a massive amount of research to make sure that he depicted life in Kure accurately and honestly, so that we may better identify with Suzu and understand her. From this humanistic approach stems a flood of unstated bitter ironies, and subtle truths about how people and societies behave. This devotion to depicting an unsensational lifestyle is what makes it great, and in my opinion, what ultimately makes it far more interesting than <i>Grave of the Fireflies</i> or <i>Barefoot Gen</i>.<br />
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This I believe is <i>precisely</i> the kind of movie that would’ve been a hit with the Academy, if anyone had bothered to see it. It squarely hits the middle aged NPR listener demographic – a phenomena I call “Parent Anime.” This movie is the prototypical Parent Anime:<br />
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>It doesn't look like that Pokémon stuff.<br />
>It shows off Japanese culture – “isn't Japanese culture so interesting?”<br />
>It's about an Important Topic.<br />
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This might be a backhanded compliment to any other movie, but not to this one. It’s genuine – the real deal. Simply, it’s one of the best movies about war I’ve ever seen.<br />
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(Just, please, don’t watch the English dub. Watch it with subtitles)<br />
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<b>Mary and the Witch’s Flower</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I'm about to complain a lot about this movie, but this PV is </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">cool as </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">heck.</span></div>
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Everyone loves Hayao Miyazaki, but he’s haunted in popular consciousness by the specter of the Miyazaki Movie. It clings to his body of work like a miasma. You know how it goes. A Miyazaki Movie is full of wonder and fantasy. A Miyazaki Movie stars a strongheaded young girl. A Miyazaki Movie is warm and comfy. This idea is a phantasm, but it exists nevertheless.<br />
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Hiromasa Yonebayashi and Studio Ponoć tried to make a movie in the phantasm’s image. They succeeded. It is an error.<br />
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What is <i>Mary and the Witch’s Flower</i>? A story of a young girl: bored with her grandmother, and mildly insecure about her frizzly red hair. She comes across magical powers and finds herself caught up in an adventure. At one point, she is mistaken for a magical prodigy, and for a brief moment we see that perhaps her insecurities run deeper than at first it seemed. Is this the moment where her stressful fever dream becomes lovely? What does it mean for her when later horrors reveal themselves? It passes, this moment, without hardly a rustle.<br />
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This girl is the image of a Miyazaki character, without any of the depth or feeling. She does not have the detail of Kiki, or of the lesser Chihiro. She is a cypher for any number of her more interesting predecessors. Her actions do not belong to her; she does things seemingly out of obligation to the unremarkable story. Her personality lacks anything that could lend her charisma. Her body language is identical to near any of her Miyazaki predecessors, although lets be real, the body language of most Miyazaki girls is the same anyway. Yonebayashi even tacitly admits this in the post-movie interview.<br />
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Our villains are similarly lacking. Yonebayashi says he likes villains whose morality reflects something in the real world – and indeed the movie has a self-conscious message about nuclear power (a Parent Anime staple!) – yet their actual demeanors are rote. I’d take fairy-tale simplicity if it came with people who were fun to watch. Nor does their worldview, comprehensible as it is, extend beyond the walls of their campus. Miyazaki villains – when he writes fantasy – have motivations which extend far out into the world, and into its culture, values, and politics. Princess Kushana is not only the hero of her own story, she genuinely is the hero in almost any other story you tell about that world! As Miyazaki is a leftist and was a union organizer in is youth, maybe this owes something to his worldview.<br />
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What of the spirit of adventure? The fantasy? The wonder? Yonebayashi and Studio Ponoć were able to call on the usual bunch of former Telecom Animation Film animators who once formed the core of Ghibli, as well as freelance luminaries like Shinya Ohira, Shinji Hashimoto, and Kiyotaka Oshiyama. Those three especially put in lots of astounding work, especially in the cold opening, which may be the best part of that movie. This is unsurprising, since Yonebayashi’s specialty has always been “dynamic action sequences.”<br />
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I should like to continue on to praise the aesthetic of the rest of the film, but regrettably its fantasy and wonder is as rote as its characters. The magic school lacks coherent design sense. It is a mishmash of colors and worn ideas, and aside from a technically quite impressive bit of animation with a water fountain, there are very few memorable images or motifs. The backgrounds, at least, are quite nice, even if on a whole the movie lacks a strong sense of time or place.<br />
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Now, all this sounds pretty harsh, but the truth is that this is an inoffensive fantasy adventure with moments of interesting animation. It’s not boring, and I didn’t dislike watching it. I’m simply frustrated that Yonebayashi and Ponoć fettered themselves to a spook and produced a lesser movie for it. Before this, Yonebayashi directed <i>When Marnie Was There</i>, which in my opinion punches in the same weight class as near anything Miyazaki ever made. It’s affecting, beautiful aesthetically and morally, and it inspires reflection. It has in abundance everything Mary lacks, save that it’s not fantasy. It is an extremely different kind of movie, but it shows that he and his crew have the skills to make a truly great fantasy adventure film for children.<br />
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This is not it.<br />
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If you want really spectacular anime fantasy adventure with witches and magic, go watch <i>Little Witch Academia</i> (2013) and <i>Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade</i> (2015). You may find both of these on Netflix, if I am not mistaken.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Napping Princess</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Indeed, I shit you not, the end credit song for this movie is a </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">cover </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">of</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Daydream Believer by The Monkees.</span></div>
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This movie is not as charming as Kenji Kamiyama thinks it is.<br />
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It tries. It really tries, and whatever its failures, you can’t accuse it of being rote, or falling for some fundamental, obvious-in-hindsight trap. In other words, I’m not about to write 762 words about it like I did for <i>Mary and the Witch’s Flower</i>. (I swear I intended these to be short!)<br />
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What is it? A story about patent disputes! Only, told with fantasy elements. It’s about a teenaged girl who, as a young child, was told by her father by way of an allegorical fantasy about how a car company working on self-driving cars tried to steal his late wife’s code and kicked him to the curb. Some years later, the self-driving car company – still unsuccessful in replicating the code and committed to unveiling their product for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics – comes after the father. The teenaged daughter is caught up trying to protect the code and rescue her dad. She frequently dreams of the fantasy world of her dad’s story, and the movie toys with the idea that her actions in the fantasy world might be affecting the real one.<br />
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And you know what? It’s not a half-bad idea. The characters are all fun to watch thanks to the work of a very wide variety of animators, from absolute legends like Toshiyuki Inoue and Mitsuo Iso, to young foreigners like Bahi JD and Cedric Herole. There’s actually quite a bit of French influence in the way the characters move, which I think even a non animation nerd audience might pick up on. The master achievement of the production was not any of the action scenes, but the character of Watanabe, the villain. This is a ridiculous man whose way of moving and design telegraphs evil to an absolutely hilarious extent, but not the same way as any villain animated in the tradition of Western character acting might.<br />
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The rest of the film? Eh. It’s kind of a mess. It’s weirdly paced, the characters aren’t very fun, save Watanabe and young Ancien, who gets a pass mainly for being adorable. I found the fantasy world too high off its own whimsy. “A dieselpunk town devoted to making cars where the guards wear Anglo-Zulu War era British Army uniforms and they build giant magical robots to fight monsters” is the kind of thing that sounds amazing and creative and wonderful when you dream it up with your friends, yet somehow never transcends “that cool idea you thought up with your friends” in practice.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">A Silent Voice</span></b><br />
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If you ask me who inspires me, I can give you a list of people who have an aspect or two I admire. If on the other hand you ask me who I want to be like, I’d have a very hard time naming anyone outside of three people, and all of them are directors: the late Noboru Ishiguro, Guillermo del Toro, and Naoko Yamada.<br />
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Yamada is a <i>highly</i> idiosyncratic director. She tries to put her feet in her characters’ shoes, and makes her decisions from the point of view of what best does justice to them, which she calls “method directing.” For that reason she’s very good at finding out-of-the-ordinary ways of communicating body language, and the way she blocks scenes is always tone-perfect.<br />
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A Silent Voice was an especially good fit for her; one of its most important characters is deaf and uses sign language. At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, the original manga is about a deaf girl named Shouko Nishimiya, whose classmates bully her in early elementary school. When the teachers finally do something, the blame falls almost entirely on the boy who (kinda) started it – Shouya Ishida – his friends unwilling to face their own guilt. He too becomes ostracized and falls into deep isolation well into high school. This is the story about Shouko and Shouya, their friendship, and all the people in their lives. Needless to say, it’s full of very difficult and complicated feelings. Misrepresenting them could be ugly. A premise like that should make you wary. Yamada herself only barely felt up to this task.<br />
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What kind of movie did she make? A strange one. She handles all these relationships and feelings with absolutely deft precision alright, to the point where you can easily fail to notice half the movie’s detail. As another review once put it, she’d rather whisper once than shout twice. At the same time, her “method directing” approach means that the movie is constantly wearing its emotions on its sleeve. It’s a subtle movie pretending to be an unsubtle one. Yamada does justice to these characters, and does it wonderfully. But if you accused it of being too neat and pretty, that’d just put you among many fans of the far rougher shod manga.<br />
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There are genuine marks against the movie too. Yamada and her friends at Kyoto Animation like to plan their work as though they were shooting it with real cameras, but here she decided to use lots of very warm light and low depth-of-field. She’ll use animated cinematography evocatively over the course of the movie too, but the first half hour or so of the movie is almost <i>aggressively</i> warm, and <i>aggressively</i> bokeh. A lot of visual cues are borrowed from the manga, but in animation they feel often too cute. Probably the most bizarre choice though was the use of My Generation by The Who in the opening, which is thematically so far out that you’d need a telescope to see it. Yamada explained that she chose it for what amount to aesthetic reasons, but even considering that she speaks little if any English, it’s odd that she seemed to give no thought to lyrics. <br />
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How does it all pan out? It’s an astounding movie, but I can’t tell you whether it’ll bring you to tears, or make you resent having to watch it. It’ll probably do one or the other. You’ll have to see. I naturally love it, and can’t wait to see it in the theater again tomorrow. <br />
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Ahh yes, that’s the best part, isn’t it? The Blu Ray is coming out soon and it’s getting another round of screenings with the English dub. Couldn’t tell you how it is, but they did get a deaf person to play the deaf character, so it’s got that going for it. <br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Sword Art Online: The Movie – Ordinal Scale </span></b><br />
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So,<br />
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I didn’t see <i>Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale</i>. That’s because I don’t like Sword Art Online. Actually I think it’s terrible.<br />
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But that puts me in a minority. A significant one, but a minority. SAO has been popular since it aired in Japan, and even more popular since it aired on Toonami. And why shouldn’t it be? It’s a beautifully produced show directed very well at times by Tomohiko Ito. I think it’s badly written, but there’s a certain innocence to it. This is the story of this guy who’s really good at video games, and he has a cool and sexy gamer girlfriend, and together they have to escape from a VR game where you die for real if you die in-game. It’d be charming if it weren’t bad. But most important of all, it’s never boring.<br />
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And none of this even matters, because SAO is popular, and it’s only one of many. If you can strike up a conversation with a nerd under like 30 about <i>Game of Thrones</i>, you stand like a 50/50 chance of being able to strike up a conversation about SAO too. Or <i>Attack on Titan</i>, or <i>My Hero Academia</i>. (And one of those shows is even good!)<br />
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Point is, the times are changing. Anime fandom is established in the United States as a lucrative and well-served corner of the market. The anime and j-drama streaming service Crunchyroll is in the same subscriber count range as CBS’ streaming service, only Crunchyroll gets to call that a success. Western money makes up a not insignificant amount of anime’s revenue, and western companies are funding a lot of shows. We might not grow much larger, but that’s okay too. Anime is here. <br />
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And if you’re the sort who cares about awards, consider this: the creators of Netflix’s most successful original series were inspired by <i>Elfen Lied</i>, of all the strangest things. If you visit any particular film set in Hollywood, it’s full of anime fans. Maybe not for a decade or so, but as the voting demographic in these awards shifts, you’ll probably be seeing way less <i>The Boss Baby</i> and way more…<i>Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale</i>? <br />
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…this is a good thing? <br />
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That wraps it for the movies that qualified for an Oscar, but wait! There’s more! We also got screenings of <i>Kizumonogatari Part 3: Reiketsu</i>, <i>Your Name</i>, and <i>Genocidal Organ</i>. This post is going long, so I’m going to break it into parts – for your sanity and mine. The next part will deal with them.<br />
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Spoiler: <i>Genocidal Organ</i> is, unfortunately, not about an evil reanimated heart that fought alongside Ustaše bandits in the Yugoslav Wars :( <br />
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Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-80846622864665691052013-12-23T19:54:00.003-08:002014-02-13T22:12:16.929-08:00PMMM: The Rebellion Story<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It’s never wrong to hope! - Madoka Magica TV</blockquote>
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Well then you’d better start hoping some more. - Rebellion Story</blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMVmKJVHvK2x-mD9kh4FyGCDIzUzeC-uKLicEy-ZgziozMhr9rgWUCEuP5Q-JBFqkXv4HK2B0HqHW9dgNM1AF7hJ2Ju2343MMwHVkFpaCFF7YXACD7l8ppNwCMSzqaP63fz7qHQfHhmMk/s1600/39324845.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMVmKJVHvK2x-mD9kh4FyGCDIzUzeC-uKLicEy-ZgziozMhr9rgWUCEuP5Q-JBFqkXv4HK2B0HqHW9dgNM1AF7hJ2Ju2343MMwHVkFpaCFF7YXACD7l8ppNwCMSzqaP63fz7qHQfHhmMk/s320/39324845.jpg" height="320" width="285" /></a>Gen Urobuchi is a little bit like Homura, and not only because they both look like they could fuck up your day, hardcore. See, he too had to find a way to bring Madoka back, and he had to break his world to do so. I’ve thought of a bunch of different silly readings you could make of the movie, but by far my favorite is the one where the movie is a metaphor for itself. All the characters live on in doujinshiland doing happy things, but no mere contrivance could make things like that. A disinterested race has put Homura in limbo and are trying to recapture Madoka’s power - bring back the old days for their own benefit. Homura doesn’t want a reset though: she wants to write her own ending. So she does something dramatic: breaks the Law of Cycles and undeifies Madoka.</div>
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The Kyuubeys on the production committee started this cynical enterprise, but Urobuchi, like Homura, aims higher. Urobuchi tries to make it have impact, have it make sense thematically. Certainly it’s better than what would have happened if the Kyuubeys had control of Madoka’s power themselves, but does that mean the movie succeeds at what it’s trying to do?</div>
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…kinda.</div>
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If we take the movie as pure connective tissue from one season to another, then sure. It’s all in place. Homura’s arc is shocking, but she was never a hero, and divorced of the movie’s actual execution, it fits her character. Unfortunately, you have to be in Earth orbit to be so detached as to see why. We have to take it on good faith that Homura has been so desperate to see Madoka again all this time - that her pure love has driven her into impure obsession. There are some good visual hints, but they only make sense in retrospect. The movie simply does not stop to take breaths often enough to drive home the character beats it needed to have driven home.</div>
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Part of this is the fault of the movie having to do all this in 115 minutes while also setting up its byzantine plot and finding time for a song about cake. Clearly this movie had priorities, and when you’ve got only so long to work with, and a theatrical budget that was likely twice as much as the entire TV show ever had, you want to use it on scenes where stuff is happening.</div>
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But another important cause is also maybe the movie’s greatest strength: the visual style. You thought the series had a really far-out aesthetic? That’s cute. Wait until you see this one. Almost all of the movie takes place in a labyrinth, and it’s clear from almost scene one, because there are little pieces of Inu Curry’s influence in almost every shot, and I don’t just mean because of the pervasive presence of the familiars. I mean the unnatural lighting and color palette, the bizarre mise-en-scene, and all the visual details that make the sense of foreboding leading up to Homura’s revelation so very heavy. Inu Curry put a lot of work into this one, and it looks both otherworldly and completely amazing.</div>
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It’s not just the visual aesthetic though. Shinbou did a really good job of making the little things just slightly off. The fanservice fluff is clearly fanservice, but it serves a dual purpose. It’s inconsistent with the established visual language - with the very foundation of Dokes’ world. The cake song isn’t just fanservice - it’s something that should never happen in Dokes as we know it. Shinbou knows what he’s doing alright. He’s not Ikuhara, but he knows how to do expressionism.</div>
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But back to the point, because it’s focusing so much on the foreboding atmosphere and fanservice scenes, it’s very hard to focus on what the characters are actually doing. It’s sensory overload. We can’t get close to Homura because between her mind and the audience is the phantasmagoria of an uncanny city.</div>
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The other characters get even less room to breathe than Homura. Kyoko and Sayaka get to fight a little, say some lines, eat some cake, and really don’t do anything else. Madoka continues to be a complete non-entity, but at least that’s consistent with the series. Mami just up and disappears from the movie entirely around the middle of the second act. You might be able to write them all out of the movie entirely and replace them with characters from a different show, and except for the fanservice, the movie would be about the same.</div>
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Lacking any real emotional impact, the characters actions feel hollow, but that’s not all the movie has to offer. It’s a worthwhile film if only because the imagery is just that good. Mitakihara burning is one of the best things to come out of the franchise. The bus feels almost like it came out of Rintaro’s body of work. Even the ridiculously long transformation sequences are beautiful and completely worth the five minutes the film devotes to them. I was never bored during the entire runtime (though I was beginning to get a headache).</div>
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Rebellion Story doesn’t really work as a narrative in and of itself, but maybe that’s not what we should be asking. Clearly there’s going to be more; a movie, a TV series, OVAs, who knows? And clearly this movie is only there to make it possible to use more already existing characters than just Homura, Kyoko, and Mami, because they want to aim for that otaku money. The movie did its job, and now we are only left to ask “where are we now?”</div>
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It’d be easy to paint things in a pessimistic light. In a single empty gesture, Homura and the rest of the Puella Magi are enemies, and it’s hard to see past the cynicism. But I’m not a cynic, and I’m not a pessimist. What I am is a fan of the work that results when Urobuchi, Shinbou, and Inu Curry collaborate. Surely they have not run out of interesting places to go - interesting things to say. The movie didn’t work as drama because it had to balance the demands of reviving a franchise, having the characters make sense, and finding the time for a five minute transformation sequence and cake song. But now that it’s over and done with, they’re in open water. They can give that characterization which the movie sorely missed. If they couldn’t make the decisions feel weighty, they can certainly make their upshots hit home.</div>
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The original TV show will always be there, a perfect little 12 episode story that wraps up and subsists on its own. It will always be a favorite anime of mine, in isolation from all else. Whatever comes next will be completely different - a new story to tell. And I refuse to believe that just because it’s a cynical endeavor that nothing good can possibly come of it.</div>
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Because it’s never wrong to hope.</div>
Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-81655786369474118282013-10-04T15:27:00.001-07:002013-10-04T15:27:53.372-07:00Marketing as subtle as a nuclear explosion.<div>
The first thing you hear in <em>Gojira</em> is the sound of rending steal distorted into the roar of an unfathomably huge monster of terrible power. Not a single person in any theatre across the Home Islands had even a moment’s confusion as to what this movie was really about. The year was 1954, not a decade had passed since the horrifying destruction of the American bombing campaign, and just a few months prior a Japanese fishing boat and her crew were irradiated by a nuclear weapons test. Thoughts of science and destruction and the state of Japan in the international community were first and foremost in the minds of the audience, and Toho knew it. Nowadays we call <em>Gojira</em> “historically and culturally important.” Back then they called it “exploitative.” And it was. Totally. A close reading of the <a data-mce-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSk-i1UFJWA" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSk-i1UFJWA" style="color: #444444;">theatrical trailer</a> may tell us more.<br />
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Before we get to that, there’s some groundwork to do. What are we comparing this to? There aren’t really any sources that document how theatrical trailers were put together in 1954 Japan (that I can find), but my own research (watching a bunch on youtube) seems to show that they had a slightly more thematic proclivity than what you’d expect of a western theatrical trailer at the time. This was true both of Shochiku and Toho published films. It’s common to open onto a character speaking about the subject matter, or to some piece of imagery which in some way captures what the film as a whole is like. They’re really quite admirable in some ways. There’s no common structure like what we have now, so I don’t think you could say Gojira really deviated, since there was nothing to deviate from.</div>
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Indeed, Gojira is very clear right from the start. What are the images that Toho thought most important to put at the front of the trailer?<br />
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00:00-->00:03: Toho logo.<br />
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Okay, <em>right after</em> the front of the trailer.<br />
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00:03 --> 00:14: Immediately we’re presented with a bit of a difficulty. The shots chosen give the impression of a storm bearing down on an island from the point of view of the people in the midst of if. A shot establishes the force of the storm by showing it blow past trees, and then we cut to show a group of people huddling down behind cover. Another cut, and apparently we’re on the inside of a house as the roof collapses and lightning shines through. Cut again and a man covers his face in terror. On its own, the editing is ambiguous, because it implies spatial relationships between the people outside behind cover, the house, and the man in the house that might not actually exist. And yet, it’s not exactly montage because there is no building of images. Because of this, I’m not sure precisely to what extent I can read this accurately. Nuclear weapons testing took place primarily on islands, and while this figures into the movie itself, I don’t think an audience would consciously look at the images as presented and conclude that it’s a movie about atomic weapons and the devastation in postwar Japan. Typhoons are common enough in Japan that there might not be anything especially unusual.<br />
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The strongest tie you might be able to make from atomic weapons to these images is the light coming through the roof, followed by the man in the house covering his face. In the movie, this would have certainly been part of the metaphor.<br />
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00:15-->00:20: A boat explodes. A mass of people on the shore of the island stand up and start pointing. The title “Gojira” appears in katakana (the Japanese equivalent of bold face) superimposed.</div>
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This, on the other hand, is significantly more clear, and significantly more heavy handed. The reference here is to the Lucky Dragon incident, which took place the first of March, 1954. Filming of Gojira began shortly afterwards, and the film was released in November. The incident occurred when the tuna fishing boat Daigo Fukuryuu Maru (Lucky Dragon Number Five) was caught within the fallout of the Castle Bravo nuclear weapons test conducted by the US over the Bikini Atoll. The captain and crew had believed themselves to be in the safe zone, but unanticipated weather patterns had blown fallout much farther than predicted. The entire crew had been given acute radiation syndrome, and the radio operator died of it in late September of that year, his last words expressing his hope that he would be the last victim of an atomic weapon. The incident would have still been in the news due to negotiations on a settlement between the Japanese and US governments.<br />
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Not only would almost any audience member at the time would have recognized this imagery, this imagery (or rather, the seeming reaction of the people on the island to it) is immediately associated with the title of the film.<br />
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Now, the audience has no idea what a “Gojira” is. The word doesn’t mean anything in Japanese, and since it’s written in katakana, which is a phonetic way of writing, none of the individual characters have meaning either. The only thing the audience knows about this film so far is that it’s about people in the middle of a disaster which involves suspiciously topical imagery.<br />
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00:20-->00:26: Emergency vehicles move past a crowd in the dark. “THE FINAL DAYS OF MANKIND” flies into our faces. This movie is clearly not messing around, no ma’am. There is a distinctly apocalyptic and desperate feeling to this trailer so far, and now Toho is outright telling us “IT’S THE FINAL DAYS OF MANKIND!” They really, really wanted to make the audience feel the terror and panic that the editing, imagery, and dark lighting (did I mention that this film is shot really dark yet?) had been creating and will continue to create throughout the trailer.<br />
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00:26-->00:30: A man being restrained warns “the light will enrage him!” The audience responds “who is this him?” What is the cause of this suspiciously topical panic? We must know!<br />
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00:30-->00:44: And oh boy does Toho let us know. I cannot embed pictures without padding the length, but go look up historical photos of what firebombing at night looked like, and then watch what unfolds in the trailer. It’s uncanny. On purpose. But let’s still dissect this piece by piece.<br />
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The first we see of Gojira is his head imposed on the backdrop of a dark sky, walking through a building, the debris of which is falling towards the camera. There is little depth in this shot, which is one of the many techniques the filmmakers used to make their guy in a rubber suit look more convincingly like a monster, but also serves the purpose of obscuring what this thing actually looks like. So even though the audience could surmise that the giant, vaguely reptilian looking head belongs to “Gojira,” it’s still a bit of a mystery, and the focus is still on the destruction.<br />
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It follows, this destruction, in a flurry of edits. Walls collapse and massive flames erupt from the city as the narrator tells us how hydrogen bomb tests have enraged the monster in the pacific. Now we’re drawing fully on the imagery of the allied bombing campaign. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are what we think of primarily when we think of the destruction, and the shock of the terrifying and up to that point completely inconceivable power of the atomic weapon was what caused Japan to surrender, but what would have been more familiar to the people who had lived through the war would be the destruction of the firebombing. More people died in the firebombing of Tokyo than in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and in fact, the route Gojira takes to Tokyo is the same one the B-29s took. Gojira may be a metaphor for atomic weapons, but the imagery the filmmakers are using is the much more familiar imagery associated with that, and it’s this imagery Toho chooses to show off to market their film.<br />
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It follows, this destruction, in a flurry of edits. Walls collapse and massive flames erupt from the city as the narrator tells us how hydrogen bomb tests have enraged the monster in the pacific. Now we’re drawing fully on the imagery of the allied bombing campaign. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are what we think of primarily when we think of the destruction, and the shock of the terrifying and up to that point completely inconceivable power of the atomic weapon was what caused Japan to surrender, but what would have been more familiar to the people who had lived through the war would be the destruction of the firebombing. More people died in the firebombing of Tokyo than in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and in fact, the route Gojira takes to Tokyo is the same one the B-29s took. Gojira may be a metaphor for atomic weapons, but the imagery the filmmakers are using is the much more familiar imagery associated with that, and it’s this imagery Toho chooses to show off to market their film.
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Finally Gojira appears in full view, walking through the city and breathing radioactive flames, as the narrator talks about the monster releasing radioactivity in Tokyo. At this point, Gojira as a monster is fully associated with atomic weapons.<br />
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A shot of a burning building is held for longer than normal as a buffer between this flurry of imagery to the next point the trailer tries to hit.<br />
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00:44-->01:05: Having made a visceral impression on the audience, the trailer shifts gears and we start discussing the more intellectual engagement of this movie, with a conversation between two characters. There’s nothing particularly special about how this shot is framed or anything, the dialog is the focus. The older fellow says “Gojira is unknown to science; a fantastic opportunity for Japan.” The younger fellow objects “but we can’t just let it wreak havoc.” This is one of the larger conflicts from the movie, epitomized in this exchange.<br />
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Oh hey, guess when Japan first started building nuclear power plants. 1954. Eventful year.</div>
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Japan uses science-fiction to deal with the question of “can we use this thing which caused so much destruction for good” a heck of a lot. Gojira does it. Astro Boy does it. Space Battleship Yamato does it. But the fact that the first real dialog we see in this trailer – the first glimpse of the characters – is of them <em>literally discussing the metaphor of the movie</em> tells us that maybe this is what Toho wanted the audience to walk away with.<br />
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01:05-->01:17: Here, we see the younger man from before ask a man wearing an eyepatch (because of course he is) to reconsider diving even though he isn’t a diver, to which the eyepatched man replies that so long as he’s alive, he may be “forced to use it again.” We then cut to the woman in the background of the previous scene, who asks “what if it’s used for evil purposes?” This sequence shows one of the stranger quirks of the actual movie: that it seems to have not one but <em>two</em> metaphors for nuclear power going on. Gojira is the destruction of nuclear weapons – nuclear energy as a destructive force – while Serizawa’s invention (the oxygen destroyer) is a metaphor of nuclear energy used for good. There’s no reason to introduce this in the trailer itself, however, except to let the audience know even more that this movie is not solely exploiting the imagery of destruction but actually discussing it as well. That said, simply putting this in the trailer out of context, favoring it over any sort of emphasis on character, is a way of exploitation too.<br />
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01:17-->01:22: “What is this terrible invention of young scientist Serizawa’s?” asks the trailer as it pans over a generic 50s B-movie laboratory set. I do wonder. It does deserve mentioning that this is the first time anyone’s name is mentioned in the trailer. The characters are just that unimportant to Toho.<br />
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01:22-->01:29: Here we have a sequence of images which imply character conflict. That is, the trailer is trying to let the audience know that not only is there the external conflict of Gojira vs the world (but actually just Japan), but also internal conflict not dissimilar to the internal conflicts of the discussion of nuclear power.<br />
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01:29-->01:34: But in case the audience had forgotten, we have two shots which show Gojira breathing radioactive fire on a sporty looking car. I don’t think I can really draw any semiotic significance from this since that would probably be giving the editors too much credit, and I don’t think a Japanese audience would react to it in any special way. This part seems primarily just there to remind us of the monster’s existence and provide context for the next sequence.<br />
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01:34-->01:35: People running away. Presumably from Gojira. Scenes like this were probably common during the bombing campaign, but what’s interesting is that the editing seems to imply that they’re all running towards…<br />
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01:35-->01:46: …some sort of official looking meeting of official looking people in an official looking room. While the trailer has let the audience know that this movie is in some ways about Japan as a whole, this is the first time Toho gives us images of a definitely public body. After the experience of World War 2, there wasn’t exactly a strong desire for nationalistic or authoritarian imagery in films, so this makes perfect sense. The government is fairly useless in the film itself as well.<br />
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What’s interesting is that the superimposed titles associate these images with a conflict of “love versus reason.” I’m not exactly sure what to make of it myself. “Love versus reason” is a common theme across cultures and time, and there are some Japanese films of the period which also deal with something like that, but there’s no reason in particular for its association here. Maybe I’m just missing something.<br />
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01:46-->01:58: We have images of the military mobilizing and civilians in cramped quarters, the former being “land, sea, and air forces with the latest weapons,” and the latter “refugees fleeing from Gojira.” Some of these “refugees” are seen protesting out in front of a governmental building. Toho seems to want to play off fears that the government may be powerless to do anything to prevent nuclear weapons from becoming a threat to Japan. The movie seems to agree with this sentiment: some dude with a cool eyepatch is the savior here, not the JSDF.<br />
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I should note now – and it will become more relevant later – that the JSDF is using American equipment here. There’s a sentiment here that is not precisely anti-American, but is certainly in favor of Japan not relying on America to solve its problems. At the time, America was still very much involved in Japanese policy making, both public and foreign. So this trailer isn’t <em>entirely </em>one-note.<br />
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01:58-->02:06: Here, a politician tries to argue for covering up Gojira for the sake of Japan’s standing in the international community, and the official people in the official meeting make a clamor in protest. More text along the lines of what the trailer has already said of the government.<br />
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02:06-->02:12: Kyohei tells HIdeto they’re counting on him, as the trailer asks us “can we defeat Gojira?” I think this may be the first sequence in the whole trailer that <em>isn’t</em> in some way exploiting the zeitgeist of 1954 Japan. It’s just a man saying “Hideto-kun…we’re counting on you,” and Hideto responding with a confident “yes sir.” Very ordinary action-adventure movie like.<br />
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02:12-->02:45: The trailer’s final few shots are of the JSDF (again, using American equipment) attacking Gojira as the trailer proclaims how the special effects surpass American films, and how much money and talent went into the making of this spectacle. This is fairly ordinary for action movies like this to claim, but comparing Gojira to American films definitely seems like an appeal to the sentiment of the time, especially when paired against images of American-produced F-86s, American produced M2 machine guns, and American produced 88mm howitzers failing to take down the monster, as is made apparent when in the very next shot Gojira smashes into a train.<br />
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The parting words: “the year’s most talked about film.” Well, Toho sure tried their damndest to make it so.<br />
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To conclude, if you were to ask me how Gojira was marketed to the Japanese moviegoing audience of 1954 – what the underlying expectations were – I would answer you this: “just watch the trailer, it will tell you everything you need to know.” Toho expected a genderless audience of Japanese moviegoers 20 and up who had at least a peripheral knowledge of the day’s issues and sharp childhood memories of what Japan during the final days of The Second World War was like. They expected them to respond to the trailer’s imagery and for word of mouth to spread.<br />
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And they did.</div>
Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-63071536414888331992013-08-05T13:28:00.000-07:002013-08-05T13:28:16.895-07:00Dumb Questions with Complex Answers: What Is an Opinion?<br />"You get to have an opinion" is a proposition you see all the time on the internet, usually followed by "…but here’s why you’re a dipshit nonetheless." The sense of the phrase is, as near as I can understand, “I will not try to stop you from expressing your opinion." It always seems to have more significance about the wish of the utterer to seem amiable than anything else, and I can even see how you might call it an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illocutionary_act">illocutionary act </a>of sorts. Its usage is very interesting.<br /><br />It very rarely, however, has the sense that you would understand it to have literally, that “there is a class of thing ‘opinion’ which you are allowed to form (by some external agent)." This is because understood that way, the claim it makes is baffling. What is this mysterious higher being which grants the power of opinions? You? Ishtar? Misaka Mikoto? It seems intuitive that nothing of the sort is the case (but…who knows O.O).<br /><br />However, I don’t merely think the literal phrase is baffling, I think it’s completely nonsensical: opinions aren’t the sort of thing that can be sensibly talked of in those terms. This is because knowing a fact about the world and having an opinion are actually the same thing.<br /><br />Let’s look at what an opinion is.<br /><br />Actually, let’s take a look at how opinions are formed, and then we will know plainly what it is.<br /><ul>
<li>I have experience.</li>
<li>This experience pertains to the facts of the world, but does not contain within it the facts of the world as knowledge. That is, experience before logic is not knowledge. Even ∃x is a logical proposition. x is not.</li>
<li>Logic discerns the world from experience. (i.e. the existence of things, the disposition of things, the relation of things to each other, etc.)</li>
<li>From this, we have knowledge of the facts of the world. (i.e. there is a glass on the table, I am having a thought, the streetlamp is currently on, etc.)</li>
<li>These are the facts. We call them that because they are elementary and evident without much conscious thought.</li>
<li>On continued thought, the amount and complexity of the facts compounds. From “there is a thing called the sun, the sun moved relative to me across the sky many cycles, and cyclical things without clear contingency tend to recur unless halted," we arrive at “therefore the sun has a high likelihood of rising in the morning."</li>
<li>While inducted from other facts, we have no problem calling this a fact as well.</li>
<li>As the facts become more generalized, our tendency to call them opinion increases. Let’s look at a few kinds of things.</li>
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<ol>
<li><i>"Bertrand Russell wrote many things influential to modern philosophy."</i></li>
<li><i>"Bertrand Russell is the most influential modern philosopher."</i></li>
<li><i>"Bertrand Russell is my favorite modern philosopher."</i></li>
<li><i>"We should read A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell."</i></li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<ul>
<li>All of these are things are facts (or at least they could be - they are at least valid propositions), but we are very much tempted to say 3 and 4 are opinions.</li>
<li>While 2 might need a citation to be used as a fact in a debate, intuition says that it is indeed a fact, if it is supported by everything else (and assuming “influential" is unambiguous).</li>
<li>3 is clearly a fact about the utterer, but we call it an opinion because it is a fact about something in the world contingent on facts about the utterer. This is the distinction why “I am a human male" or “I am 21 years old" are not opinions, but "<a href="http://toarunobaka.tumblr.com/post/48823889227/iron-maiden-album-cover-the-anime">I think Mazinkaiser SKL is totally rad</a>" is. Value judgements, then, can be either a fact about the object or a fact about the utterer, depending on what the involvement of personal taste is. We would call the latter an opinion for sure.</li>
<li>4 is intuitively different from 2 because it’s making a normative claim about what you and I should do with our time. We’d say this is an opinion. However, it is the same basic underlying form. If we can derive a goal from the facts (i.e. “history and philosophy are intrinsically valuable," or more likely, “we are both interested in history and philosophy"), and establish that A History of Western Philosophy contains a wealth of knowledge about both history and philosophy, and the fact that we should do things which are in our interest, then it would follow as a fact that we should, given the time and patience, read the book.</li>
</ul>
<br />First, the concerns.<br /><br />1) I am treating present sensory experience and memory experience as the same thing for this argument. It’s clear from neurology that they are not the same, and moreover that memory itself is more complicated than I understand. I will not argue this, because while there may be a distinction between “facts about the world known from memory" and “facts about the world known from stream of experience," it is not a distinction of opinion. I do not see where the argument would diverge.<br /><br />2) I seem to be acting almost like I think logic is known a priori. Else, how can we ever know anything about even our own thoughts, since we need it to even say ∃x? I say that you cannot have experience without gaining logic - that you cannot have a thought x without knowing ∃x. It seems contradictory to think that I can perceive a thought without knowing it exists. This is the same logical form as the Cogito.<br /><br />In any event, regardless of where we get the logic, we have it, and it pretty much unambiguously serves the function I claim it does.<br /><br />3) I am handling only cases in which it’s clear the train of thought is logical and correct. This is not the case in the real world. Emotion being a component seems mostly irrelevant, since we’re taking an external view, not an internal one. “I think avocados are da bess" is based on an emotional fact, but logic probably doesn’t come into play in the utterer’s mind.<br /><br />4) I likely did not cover all the types of propositions that we would call opinions. There may be more that I have not uncovered because I simply have not thought of it yet. I cannot come up with a general rule for opinions, and I suppose that’s part of the point.<br /><br />So what can we say about opinions?<br /><br />A definition at this point could read,<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>An opinion can be either a fact about the utterer in regard to an object in the world, or it can be a normative statement.</i></blockquote>
This is nothing we didn’t already know, but now we know it more plainly and with a greater understanding for its implications.<br /><br />What is more interesting is its implication that opinions are the same sort of thing as facts. In fact, things which we may be tempted to call opinions are indeed facts about which we have confusion about the identity of the subject. When something like “you should listen to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEoO41t_22Y">Demetori</a>" fails to be a fact, it is because the utterer has derived it incorrectly, or is misinformed about an underlying premise (i.e. you enjoying metal).<br /><br />This sort of outlook, however, is dangerous. You learned incorrectly in school the distinction between fact and opinion for a reason: there’s so much that can go wrong. Asserting facts about yourself while believing them to be general (i.e. “this anime is terrible, you have to be a pretentious asshole to like it") is common. Asserting facts without consideration for other relevant facts that may change the analysis is also common. This is the true issue at the heart of things.<br /><br />I am unsure if it’s possible to have an opinion which cannot be wrong. Any opinion can be wrong if a constituent fact is wrong, but I cannot find any way for “I think Roger Florka is swell" to be incorrect. Roger Florka may not exist, but so long as the utterer thinks he does, then the opinion refers instead to his own belief. Properly understood, it’s “I believe a Roger Florka to exist, and that according to my criteria, my conception of him is swell," all of which are true for the utterer. Swell is also subjective. Now, it’s possible to subsequently learn that “Roger Florka murders cats" and that opinion to change, but that does not make the previous opinion wrong because the holder was right in holding it, according to his own knowledge.<br /><br />So,<br /><br />>Given that deducted facts make up our knowledge of the world (or if you’re <a href="https://twitter.com/Wittgenrobot">Wittgenstein</a>, compose the world), including thoughts.<br /><br />>Given that without the facts of the world, there is no human experience, even solipsistic.<br /><br />>Given that opinions are a certain type of fact.<br /><br />Then it is nonsensical to say “you get to have an opinion," because opinions are necessary to our very human experience.<br /><br />Or else, Misaka Mikoto really does control whether you get to form an opinion or not, and we should all just accept the fact.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://media.tumblr.com/3cc077c8458dbf6f206a02bf8b9aab55/tumblr_inline_mr1mz02u3H1qz4rgp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://media.tumblr.com/3cc077c8458dbf6f206a02bf8b9aab55/tumblr_inline_mr1mz02u3H1qz4rgp.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-71701707247669098882013-06-03T16:46:00.000-07:002013-06-06T18:58:33.847-07:00Sillypunk: Cyber City Oedo 808Last night* I saw a film called Frances Ha. As the first twenty or so minutes of the film passed, I said to myself, "I'm gonna love this movie!" As the movie came to an end, I had no idea whether I loved it anymore. Most of that movie's working parts are hard to discover at first, and it's something that really deserves to be looked at more closely.<br />
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Frances Ha, however, does not have a scene where she fights a psychokinetic robot on top of a massive radio tower by punching it in the face. Cyber City Oedo 808, does.<br />
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<a href="http://media.tumblr.com/7175c07214e670f21c9c7e1389fb8cb8/tumblr_inline_mns36caiQx1qz4rgp.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="295" src="http://media.tumblr.com/7175c07214e670f21c9c7e1389fb8cb8/tumblr_inline_mns36caiQx1qz4rgp.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Really, there's not a lot I need to say about it other than that.<br />
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Actually, while I love it for its craziness, and as weird as it is to say, there's nothing novel for an anime of it's vintage to be crazy like this, especially one of Kawajiri's. The thing that makes Oedo stand out is that unlike many (or even most) anime of that sort, Oedo is unironically good. Kawajiri has a good eye for imagery and his workmanship is very solid. Some anime from that time are enjoyable despite themselves - because nobody really knew what they were doing and were trying crazy things to make up for their 30,000 dollar budgets - but this is good because Kawajiri can draw from that same well of craziness <i>and</i> has the talent to make it work.<br />
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I might be making a mistake by associating it with a lot of those other anime though, because despite the punched-up Manga UK dub, it's actually not nearly as violent or lewd as a lot of its contemporaries, including Kawajiri's other work. While there's certainly blood, and the heroes are criminals, it's actually not that dark. It's not misanthropic, it's not misogynistic, its heroes are likable, and there's never any real risk of the heroes dying. As far as anime of its ilk go, you could almost call it a lighthearted adventure.<br />
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One of the things that makes it work is the Manga Entertainment dub. Since this was the period when publishers saw anime's biggest obstacle being the age ghetto, Manga overcompensated by inflating the age rating with added profanity completely absent in the original Japanese script. The result, in this case, is not strictly a good dub, but in a lot of ways it is a good script rewrite. Here's a line from the original Japanese with its subtitle script translation.<br />
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<i>「長谷川十蔵、心配すんな。あんたの思う壺にはまってやらあ」// Don't worry Hasegawa, I'm swallowing your bait.</i></blockquote>
Here's the dub line.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Okay, okay, I don't wanna buck the trend. I accept your most generous goddam offer."</i></blockquote>
Now to be fair, the subtitle script doesn't really capture the spirit of the original.「あんたの思う壺にはまってやらあ」is a hell of a lot more brusk than "I'm swallowing your bait," but even so, the English line is just plain better. Even if the dub is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDWJMZFSrC0">ridiculous</a>, it's still by far the most enjoyable way to watch the OVA.<br />
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So where does this leave Cyber City Oedo 808 standing?<br />
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On a space elevator, fighting robodogs that fire lazors from their maws.<br />
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Now if you'll excuse me, I have the sudden urge to read the Cyberpunk 2020 SRD again.<br />
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*not actually last night anymore</div>
Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-16839926620220622622013-05-28T13:25:00.000-07:002013-05-28T13:25:30.928-07:00This Is Why I Don't Do Ratings: Star Trek Into DarknessI am having a very difficult time talking about this movie, because I find myself constantly reassuring people that I actually did enjoy it. It’s true, but maybe you shouldn’t have any reason to believe me, because as I watched the movie, every single observation that occurred to me was negative. I agree with Tarantino when he says “never hate a movie,” but that doesn’t stop me from saying that this movie is actually pretty terrible.<br />
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So how do I reconcile all this?<br />
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<a href="http://media.tumblr.com/37bbd73885ccf45fa3ba2f0d0e4bb85b/tumblr_inline_mnhk6ij8SU1qz4rgp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="275" src="http://media.tumblr.com/37bbd73885ccf45fa3ba2f0d0e4bb85b/tumblr_inline_mnhk6ij8SU1qz4rgp.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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(by the way, there will be spoilers, if you care about those)<br />
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The first sequences we get in this movie are of Kirk and McCoy running across a vibrant red landscape. This opening is effective because of the punchy character interaction and flurry of images which give us something interesting to look at every few seconds.<br />
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The problem is that this movie never stops running. It never pauses to take even a single breath of air and keeps on running with more or less the same character dynamics, same editing style, and the same cramped framing right up until the end credits. I feel as though the film is yelling “I’m late, I’m late” as it passes by, leaving only a vague impression of a movie.<br />
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Khan’s character helps illustrate what I mean. The idea that he’s evil is telegraphed by camera angle and musical cues before the second act even begins. How do we know he’s evil? We don’t even have any idea of what he plans to do from one scene to the next, and the only thing Khan actually does is look intensely into the middle distance. He does nothing else, because the movie doesn’t dwell on any one scene - or even one shot - long enough to give us much information.<br />
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Part of this is the writing’s fault. In fact, most of what’s wrong with this film can be found in the script, because while the characters themselves are entertaining, the actual character writing is very, very lazy. I had trouble not giggling in the theatre during the first act while Kirk and Pike basically talked about each others character in the guise of having an argument. It’s easy not to notice it sometimes because the editing and acting is so out-there that you almost don’t notice what anyone is actually saying - as if what they’re actually saying isn’t important.<br />
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It’s not that the script doesn’t try to do some interesting things. Kirk and Spock discover some things about how each other face death, and about their characters, and those were some of the strongest moments in the movie for me. They’re interesting thoughts. It’s just that the movie doesn’t seem to have any time to dwell on them before it’s all swept up again in the overall plot, and overall, the script really doesn’t do much with the characters which isn’t strictly required by the plot itself.<br />
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On the other hand, maybe I’m not being fair. Star Trek is a latter day tentpole action movie, and when you’re making a film to those specifications, you can either have your characters be complete milquetoasts with guns, or vibrant but very broad. This movie, like The Avengers, goes for the broad approach, and it works. Orci and Kurtzman assembled some good actors, and JJ knew what to do with them. I don’t think any movie ever chooses to have boring characters, but the new Star Trek franchise seems to have chosen not to.<br />
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The plot itself, it seems, is concerned largely with connecting its action set pieces in a way that makes sense from moment to moment (and tries to make a statement about the war on terror, because that’s what smart movies do I guess). I don’t ask that a movie have a plot that makes sense, but the problem is that it informs the decisions characters make, and makes things feel inorganic. Characters end up doing things and showing up in places out of convenience and since nobody in the movie seems to notice how weird everything is, it takes a while for it to register with the viewer as well why everything feels like it’s taking place in some kind of weird, lens flare filled dream.<br />
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As much as it’s easy to make fun of the lens flare, I do think JJ Abrams can be a good director, but this movie is jarring visually, and it’s not just the editing. Simple sequences of characters walking or talking are shot at weird angles, and there are precious few anchoring shots to be had. Everything is very tight and very dramatic, and it’s all very weird and sometimes disorienting. The action sequences especially fall into the category of films that try to use disorienting montage to convey urgency a la Saving Private Ryan or The Bourne Trilogy without realizing the things that made it work in those films. They’re not exiting, they’re just there.<br />
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Some of the film’s most effective imagery is the imagery that it borrows from The Wrath of Khan, which also helps because this is also the point where the movie slows down the most. When Kirk dies a dramatic death after fixing the warp core (by kicking it a lot - I kid you not), the movie actually succeeded in making me feel something. It’s a good moment until the dramatic music starts and the sound fades out. After that, it’s just a matter of waiting until Spock has a fight scene with Khan and they bring Kirk back with Khan’s blood (which is telegraphed rather obviously towards the end of Act 2).<br />
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So the one most sincere moment in the film is cheap and kinda manipulative, even if it is effective. That alone is something praiseworthy, I guess. I don’t fault films for being “manipulative,” though on its own, I don’t think it makes a movie. It does not make this movie, in the end.<br />
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I guess I can sum up how Star Trek Into Darkness went for me like this: I sat in a theatre for 2 hours while stuff happened and I wasn’t bored but I had no real experience otherwise.<br />
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I’ve written far more than I thought I would, and honestly, I could probably write even more about how it shows how filmmaking has changed since 1982 when The Wrath of Khan came out, but maybe I’ll do that another time. After all, it’s been many years since I last saw that movie. Maybe it’s time to revisit it.Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-32835807281876240102013-04-22T22:34:00.000-07:002013-04-28T13:34:19.909-07:00Why yes, they do still make 'em like they used to.I just had an experience.<br />
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Or, I had one over the span of the last few days.*<br />
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Sit down, and I'll tell you about them: two anime, very unalike, and very unusual. Second for second, both of them have more great stuff going on than most any show you'll have seen this last anime season.<br />
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So let's not waste time. Mazinkaiser SKL was released in 2011. But that doesn't matter. Where it comes from, time has no meaning, and Mazinkaiser SKL comes from hell!<br />
<a href="http://www.animereq.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Mazinkaiser-SKL-post.jpg"><img border="0" height="231" src="http://www.animereq.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Mazinkaiser-SKL-post.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
Or at the very least, from the anime section from your old Blockbuster video.<br />
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I don't feel like I can do this. I am not metal. Only the metal can write about something this metal. Can I handle the power? CAN I HANDLE THE POWER?!</div>
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Apparently, director Jun Kawagoe could handle the power. Here's why. Metal is not in the things that the characters ostensively do. Metal is not Loudness singing about the Soldiers of Eternity in the opening credits. If you want your anime to be metal, you have to be able to handle that awesome power. Channel it. Cut it. Arrange it. Put it into order. Jun Kawagoe could have just shown us a slideshow of Mazinkaiser doing cool things, and <i>that wouldn't have been metal.</i></div>
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No, Jun Kawagoe understands Metal, and his sense of editing is perfect. No shot is held too long. No shot is held too short. It has a rhythm. It flows, but it is not languorous. It's not hyper, like the lame double-petal attacks of wannabes like Dragonforce. It's 80s heavy metal drumming. Powerful. Effective.</div>
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But editing isn't Metal. Yasujiro Ozu was perhaps the best editor to live, but he wasn't Metal. You know what is Metal though? A giant black robot with a skull cockpit that has fists which are missiles and guns which are axes, and can inexplicably rise from fissures in the ashen earth itself! That's metal. A shot of a giant tornado glowing innerly with untamed power, framed between massive stormclouds, as a giant robot with spike nipples that turn into a polearm shoots through the gap at supersonic speed. That's metal.</div>
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You ask, though. You ask, what's it about?</div>
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...uhh...</div>
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...there's, like, an island where everyone is fighting all the time, and there's a massive energy generator there for no good reason, and it's melting down, and it's going to destroy the world, so Japan sends these two dudes there in a giant robot called Mazinkaiser to fix it. And then they fight a lot. Sometimes they fight alongside some warrior chicks in toga robes with some sort of weird techno-magic. Sometimes they fight alongside this engineer who came to do the actual generator fixing along with some other guys who crash land and die at the start of the movie, and she also has a mech because the commanding officer died and...</div>
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You know what? Don't worry about it. The plot makes no goddam sense, and the main characters can be described with little lost nuance as "cold gunslinger, hot-blooded sword guy, and engineer chick," so that's not important. The script is shallow and nonsensical, but at the very least, it's well paced and it isn't overly ridiculous in the harmful sense.</div>
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There's a bit of a thematic statement about fate, I think. This movie is very anti-fatalism. So if you want to take away something, that's the thing. Your one thing. Fatalism is lame. Hey, I'm down with that.</div>
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Anyway, if you're in the mood for some good 75 minutes worth of entertainment, go find this. Now's the time when I should say, "they really don't make stuff like this anymore." Except they do. They just did. It's called Mazinkaiser SKL.</div>
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Changing gears a bit, Little Witch Academia.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGWe7ipPt6m7YI9eBMwAZkeDqspfZE3Ia0XFj8f8cD6p1ZDZL4Lf0Z0F0LGJzHYBPWOlYBoIr5t-3kQxB5zZp7_xM5PymWKyNYitVR3L7nBC2U-BilBGxowo8p2DjC6b0UvKcZT4wMXYXj/s1600/Little+Witch+Academia+-+OVA+-+Large+06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGWe7ipPt6m7YI9eBMwAZkeDqspfZE3Ia0XFj8f8cD6p1ZDZL4Lf0Z0F0LGJzHYBPWOlYBoIr5t-3kQxB5zZp7_xM5PymWKyNYitVR3L7nBC2U-BilBGxowo8p2DjC6b0UvKcZT4wMXYXj/s400/Little+Witch+Academia+-+OVA+-+Large+06.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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You know what's dumb? Representing animation with a still frame. I am loathed to pick a picture to represent what Little Witch Academia is. Luckily for you and me, I don't have to. Trigger, bless their divine animator souls, has uploaded the short in 1080p with English subs on their site. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBlqxEIJ_Cg">Here it is.</a> Don't take my word for it, go watch it. My words will be here when you're back.<br />
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Have you watched it?<br />
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Yes? No? Either way, you're here for my thoughts and my thoughts are that Little Witch Academia is really spectacular. It's a labor of animated love in the same way as Redline - an animator's animation. One of the reasons animation became viable as a niche industry is the idea of limited animation: that you don't have to exaggerate models, or try to replicate the fluidity of live action, or have so many moving elements in a scene at a time. You could have still frames and individually animated elements and have it still look OK.<br />
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Trigger was having none of that.<br />
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See, Little Witch Academia is a contribution to a program called Anime Mirai: a program funded by the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs to train and promote the works of new animators (read: help keep the anime industry from dying off because of terrible wages and stressful work). This short is a chance for the new (and old) talent at Trigger to show off all their enthusiasm and talent.<br />
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What they made seems to have a foot on both shores. On the one hand, it's easy to say that the super fluid and exaggerated animation style and very closely played magical school tropes make it an homage to American cartoons. It might not even be inaccurate - I'd have to imagine that these guys were watching mid-century Disney in animator's school as much as Miyazaki or Matsumoto.<br />
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But this is not a love letter to American cartoons. You can see the anime conceptions of magic in there - the emphasis on bravado and soul. You can definitely see the influence of years of magical girl and moe anime in the characters and setting (all girls, all the time), and in the way they interact. It doesn't feel like almost any other anime I've ever seen, but it still feels like anime.<br />
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Don't get the wrong idea. Trigger didn't put this on celluloid because they like drawing cute girls. Trigger put this on celluloid because they like drawing. Certainly, not because they like writing. It would be unfair to call the writing in this short bad. It's not. Some of the banter is quite nice and plays off the animation well. Despite being about as shallow as a koi pond and questionably acted as well, these characters have charisma. All of the other elements are handled competently, and little more.<br />
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It is, however, a very trivial anime if you're looking for anything except a light 26 minute visual nosh. However, I must say, if you really <i>are</i> going into something called "Little Witch Academia" looking for Goethe, I question your judgement and sanity as a fellow fan of Japanese cartoons. Little Witch Academia is Shining Chariot: panache and wonder - seemingly shallow and easily dismissed - yet actually deeply important to the continued survival of the anime industry. Anime desperately needs its gene pool mixed up a little.<br />
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Seems like our hope for the future just got re-affirmed.<br />
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*Actually, weeks. This post got pushed <i>way </i>back. So now I can also recommend to you another Anime Mirai short: Death Billiards. Go check that out too.Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-46733235634150125612013-02-19T00:00:00.001-08:002013-02-19T09:13:43.236-08:00Cool Cinema in 2012I think this is my third time re-writing this damnable thing. Be published and gone from my thoughts, vile list!<br />
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I originally intended to write a huge thing about film in 2012, but I ran into two problems. First of all, I didn't have the time or motivation to do so. The second problem was that I didn't really see enough films this year to do it with any sort of conviction. I didn't see Holy Motors, I didn't see The Raid: Redemption, and I didn't see The Master, as well as any number of smaller art house films that are probably better pieces of film than almost anything actually on my list, which, when you come down to it, is pretty pop. My excuse is that I'm only really home during the summer, so all I see are summer films.<br />
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Given that and since this was a bit of a "yeah, that was decent" sort of year to me, this is a top seven, not top ten. Some runners up were Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Avengers, Argo, Lincoln, and Skyfall.<br />
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<b>⑦ Life of Pi</b><br />
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I wasn't going into this film expecting anything great. I expected bromides. I got some of that. It's not as much a film for old white people to feel pan-cultural as I initially feared, but I still do find the milquetoast audience surrogate character to be unneeded and undercutting. I am giving a terrible impression by saying these things right off though, because the rest of the film is so extremely pretty. It is a vibrant film, not just in color, but in the way it uses motion and depth. Ang Lee uses 3d the same way that a lot of American animators use animation. Life of Pi is a film with a great sense for visual space, and that is its main appeal. I do not find Pi's journey especially engaging, or his philosophy interesting, but I like Ebert do appreciate how the film does not "romanticize the tiger." Doing so would ruin the metaphor. Such as it is.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.thelifestylereport.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Life-of-Pi-movie-Richard-Parker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://www.thelifestylereport.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Life-of-Pi-movie-Richard-Parker.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not Hobbes.</td></tr>
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<b>⑥ The Hobbit: An Unexpected </b><br />
I don't find it nearly as difficult as I should to put this on my list. It's not a very good film. I might simply be projecting my love and nostalgia for the Lord of the Rings onto The Hobbit, but despite the film being in all honesty a mess, I enjoyed watching this mess. I can diagnose why it's a bad film - it tries to follow the book too closely in structure but makes a half-hearted attempt at making it fit the Hollywood model in terms of characters - but I can't give a general diagnosis for why it still works despite of it. I'd have to tell you about those few vignettes and scenes in the film that hit exactly the right stride and made the rest worth it. I loved how the conversation with the First Age Gang about the Morgul sword played out. I loved the feeling of weight and power the rock giants had. I think the film could have ended on that shot of Erebor in the distance, and I would have been more than happy. The Hobbit does not always hit its stride, but when it does, it hits it quite well.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A hobbit far away from home.</td></tr>
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<b>⑤ The Grey</b><br />
I am not sure why this is up so high on my list. But it is. Maybe I like this film less in retrospect. I'm not sure, but I do know that The Grey gives us something rather uncommon. Liam Neeson's character is badass, but he's a quiet, complicated sort of badass. Middle-aged, working an anonymous job for a faceless company, his skill is made of years of experience. Our protagonist is not emotive, but emotional - he stops short of a suicide attempt within the first few minutes of the film, but he is quietly depressed for relatable, "my wife is dead and I have wasted most of my life" sorts of reasons. Our fellow survivors are equally humanized and characterized in an equally quiet sort of way. Never is the film melodramatic because it's scared it won't get a reaction from us, or that it won't get its point across. Neither is it a work of genius. As I described it above, this film would be Oscar worthy, but parts of it are there in concept but don't work in execution. A lot of the repeated motifs about the guy's wife and childhood are cheesy and dumb and doesn't deserve to be repeated ad-nauseum to us, but I still have a lot of respect for being an action movie that feels so very much unlike a modern action movie.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A wise and complicated badass.</td></tr>
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<b>④ Django Unchained</b></div>
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In retrospect, this film suffers just from its having to be compared to Inglorious Basterds. I recognize that as a film, Django might be more important just for its complete evisceration of how the American South is glorified, but I found it lacking in the same charisma that Inglorious Basterds had. Nonetheless, I'm writing this because I enjoyed the film, and it is up very high on my list for a reason. I'm not sure what I should say. Tarantino has a pitch-perfect grasp of visual vocabulary, of how cinema works, and it's not surprising that it's good. Add his own personality to the near flawless technical filmmaking, and I find it difficult to believe that this film could have ever been <i>bad</i>. All the actors give charismatic and entirely non-naturalistic performances (nobody ever thinks for a second that they aren't in a movie, and they don't care), and are super fun to watch, even given the terrible things those characters sometimes do. Standard 20 year old film guy opinion of a Tarantino film: completed.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">German dentist + former slave</td></tr>
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<b>③ Zero Dark Thirty</b></div>
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I saw Argo. I enjoyed it. Originally, it was on the list, but it got cut due to budgetary restrictions. Also, because I couldn't think of anything interesting to say about it, because when I take a step back and really think about exactly what it was in Argo that I really liked, I found that I was at a bit of a loss. I liked Aflek's 80s hair, I liked how it built suspense, and I liked how it felt fairly mature. Yet, it has that Hollywood soul where I can't quite loose myself in the puppet show because I can see the strings too well.</div>
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I don't respect it nearly as much as I do Zero Dark Thirty, which has a soul very much of its own. Zero Dark Thirty is a brave movie. Zero Dark Thirty is not scared that it isn't showing the whole sociopolitical picture, which it feels no real need to show. It is not scared of torture, which it feels no need to address. Zero Dark Thirty cares about a professional woman obsessed with finding Bin Laden, and how she did it. Zero Dark Thirty barely even cares about the character herself. She's directionless once she gets on the C-130 to go back home. Even in the end, the film isn't very intimate with her. It doesn't care if we feel anything - the audience can choose to feel what it will about her ambivalence. Of course, the audience does feel, and it feels quite a lot, because the character is great and the story fascinating. I guess its distance makes it impersonal, but it's never ever cold the same way something like 2001 is cold. The film is just too exiting for that. The third act drops everything to show us the actual operation to kill Bin Laden, and even though this should be a <i>bad </i>choice, it works. Really well.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maya: CIA agent and hikikomori.</td></tr>
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<b>② Moonrise Kingdom</b></div>
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I couldn't care less about two kids and their Newberry-winning coming-of-age story. If Moonrise Kingdom were the sort of book we read in middle school, I would have hated the crap out of it. Books like that feel phony. Something deep in me rejects it like a bad blood transfusion.</div>
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Unless, of course, it's by Wes Anderson.</div>
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Unlike all those other stories, this film convinced me that the characters have some emotion in them that isn't prescribed by the story. It gives me something to tell me that they're human. Our two kids are seriously troubled, and I love and sympathize with them anyway. No, more than that, I love and sympathise with them <i>because </i>of it. It gives me these completely abnormal, strange, engrossing characters, and then tries to put them through the coming of age formula. When something in the formula doesn't ring true with our characters, it changes the formula. Wes Anderson has made the most quirky and bizarre coming of age film as he could, and he did wonderfully. And naturally given its director, it has an aesthetic to match. Cinema vérité would have only felt hollow. Cinema vérité would have been the death of the film, so it abandons any pretense that anything but the underlying emotions have to be true to life. How boring would it be to shoot a movie like this in by-the-numbers continuity editing? <i>I </i>certainly wouldn't want to make that film.</div>
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And, it doesn't forget to have lots of fun either. That's very important. We're all going on a really cool adventure, all things considered, in this whole life thing.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm sure they'll find their way.</td></tr>
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<b>① Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Beginnings + Eternal</b></div>
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I am a dirty cheating cheater, and here is the test to prove it: I am already in love with the TV anime series of the same name, and these films are not significantly different, so I could have told you these would probably be at the head of the list before I had seen a single other thing. And you know what?</div>
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I don't care. I couldn't put anything else as my 1º for cinema in 2012. With all conviction, I hold that these films are important artistically. I acknowledge that they're untenable for a wide audience because of the artifacts of an insular anime industry, and I acknowledge that they have structural flaws that would damage any normal film, but neither of those things are significant.<br />
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All that matters is that these two movies are absolutely beautiful Every aspect of the design from the bottom up paints a whole of incredible atmosphere and intricate thematic detail. I find an almost Kubrick-like level of attentiveness and stylistic fingerprint. Magical girls in magical girl anime often fight witches, but never the things that we see here. When we see the enemy, they are profane and arcane and poetic. It all comes together in the form of a script which gives us heartfelt and dynamic characters, and maps out the course by which they will be deconstructed noble intention by noble intention until they lay a broken mess. Only then are they put back together again a shining new whole. Yuki Kajiura composes an eerie, sometimes dramatic, sometimes serene, always very, very memorable score to accompany.<br />
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These movies are in equal parts deconstruction and reconstruction. They are cruel and terrible movies about loneliness, uncertainty, despair, and entropy. It rejects self-sacrifice, it rejects egoism, and in the end, even love is uncertain. Yet in the end, it rejects despair too - and embraces hope. Not through any of the trite and bromidic ways we have come to expect - Madoka Magica earns the right to have the message it does, and earns it well and hard. I recall few things that were ever so simultaneously cohesive and compelling.<br />
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I have few pieces of media I like as much as these films. I can never be certain who is capable of getting the most out of anime and who isn't, but if you appreciate good film and are open to occasional moments of inexplicable weirdness, I cannot recommend these films enough.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption">IN SPES CREDEMUS. IN MADOKA CONFIDAMUS.</td></tr>
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Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-76896223201789112702013-01-09T12:54:00.000-08:002013-01-09T12:54:06.995-08:00Comiket 83 - Music and StuffI really don't feel like trying to copy everything over and fix the formatting for the stuff I wrote about albums from this recent Comiket, especially since I'm not quite done. I'm pretty sure what few readers I have tl;dr that stuff anyway. I'll just post links for now.<br />
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<b><a href="http://toarunobaka.tumblr.com/post/39086731701/comiket-cometh-anon">冬コミ - Comiket Cometh Anon</a></b><br />
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<b><a href="http://toarunobaka.tumblr.com/post/39259121139/c83-01-dominated-dancehall-alstroemeria-records">C83#01: Dominated Dancehall - Alstroemeria Records</a></b><br />
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<b><a href="http://toarunobaka.tumblr.com/post/39284634056/c83-02-double-key-zytokine">C83#02: Double Key - Zytokine</a></b><br />
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<b><a href="http://toarunobaka.tumblr.com/post/39524291949/c83-03">C83#03: チェス - 豚乙女</a></b><br />
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<b><a href="http://toarunobaka.tumblr.com/post/39544337076/c83-04-magico-catastrofe-shibayanrecords">C83#04: Mágico Catástrofe - ShibayanRecords</a></b><br />
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Also, Airfoil E.P. is awesome and you should go find that too.</div>
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Coming soon: favorite films of 2012? It's more likely than you think.</div>
Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-10857026987674019712012-11-27T22:45:00.001-08:002012-11-27T22:46:17.002-08:00Deus Ex: Human Resources<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Also from my tumblr, a ramble-y thing that really should have gotten edited, but I'm not going to bother doing so even now.</div>
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So, a bit more than a week ago, I went down to gamestop to buy Halo 4. I’ve been a fan of Halo for quite some time, but you couldn’t actually call me a long time fan, even though that’s what it feels like. I remember very clearly, in eighth grade, before my parents actually allowed me to play them, Halo and its story was the shit. One of my friends told me the story up until that point (this was before Halo 3 came out) in installments during art class, and he told it well. I was captivated. This was really one of my first exposures to a lot of the pop culture tropes that contemporary gamers would have found common.<br />
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Since then, I’ve moved out into the gaming world, but I still defend Halo as still being perhaps the best multiplayer shooter franchise out there, even though the rest of the world either plays CoD and thinks Halo is for nerds, or plays TF2 and thinks Halo is for CoD kiddies. And honestly, TF2 is probably the better online multiplayer shooter, and certainly a lot of the audience Halo previously had locked has moved on to CoD.<br />
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So I went down to gamestop to buy Halo 4, but I wasn’t as exited as I might have been. I arrived, and gave the used games a look over while I was there, and one caught my eye. Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I had heard great things about this game, and it was only 17 dollars. This, I figured, was an excellent deal. What of Halo 4? I figured I’d buy it later. Deus Ex was cheaper, and probably a better game. So I walked out of there with Deus Ex instead.<br />
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And now, just recently, I beat it.<br />
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This is old news by now, I expect. People know about how cool the setting is, how smart the writing is, how dumb the boss fights and third act are, and all that. I agree with most of the common consensus, though I honestly did enjoy the fight against Federova, but by that point I had dermal and leg augs, which helped tremendously by allowing me to bunny hop and machinepistol my way to victory.<br />
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And I imagine that people are also pretty tired about hearing how interesting the commentary on transhumanism is. If I wanted to weigh in on this fully, I’d devote a whole post to it, and it’d go something like this. There is no real higher level ethical debate to be had about transhumanism. If you want to establish that it compromises your humanity, and therefore you shouldn’t do it, you must first establish two things. You must establish that humanity requires having flesh and blood and lacking these causes the rest to be irrelevant, and you must establish that this conception of humanity is in and of itself ethically valuable. Both of these are highly problematic, and I have trouble coming up with an answer to either that does not veer off into magical thinking.<br />
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Fortunately, Deus Ex HR Department does not focus so much on that. It at the same time acknowledges these feelings, creates characters with whom you may sympathise about, but at the same time, it does not force that particular issue. It’s used in a far more interesting way in a very memorable conversation with an injured and dying anti-augmentation detective you meet some way through the game.<br />
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Instead, Deus Ex HR focuses on the practical upshot of transhumanism: it costs money. Augmentation isgreat for those who can afford it and can also afford the neuropozyne to avoid rejection symptoms. But it deepens the disparity between rich and poor. Humans can still compete with transhumans for now, but the bar is getting steeper and steeper. Ignoring the social problems is difficult even for those who would normally not see it as a problem at all, as it’s possible society itself may not survive long enough for augmentation to become so cheap and practical that, as Edison put it, “only the rich will burn candles.”<br />
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And really, ethics does not concern itself nearly enough with road tests. In the traditional thought experiments, outcomes are epistemologically certain, always. If you don’t flip this switch, five people will get run over by the murdertrain. If you do, you will kill a man on a different rail, even if you yell at him to run. But few things in the real world are so certain.<br />
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This is why Deus Ex makes such an interesting case. You can augment humanity, make yourselves gods, but if you try, the world could easily destroy itself before that happens. You could regulate augmentations, but then you’d be regulating the human body itself. If you leave it unregulated, it may not change human nature, but it turns potential tragedies into potential nightmares. The consequences of your actions are amplified along with your abilities. Augmentation changes the premises.<br />
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For instance, in Deus Ex, you routinely come into situations where you are under fire and can justifiably call any killing you do as in self-defense. It’s an intuitive response. But you are playing as Adam Jensen, a transhuman man of the future, who can just as easily knock a guard out cold as stab him with an arm blade. Given that, is Adam in any way remiss for killing a guard in defense instead of simply subduing him, where otherwise, he might be perfectly justified in murder? Where is the threshold between feasibility of non-lethality and the justification of lethal force?<br />
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I think it’s difficult to ascertain any moral weight of the distinction (I’m actually not sure if moral weight should look quite how it does in modern ethics), but it seems to me that Adam, if he acts rationally, should prefer non-lethality.<br />
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But whatever. Adam has retractable sunglasses implanted in his skull, and that automatically justifies anything he does.<br />
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So yeah, Deus Ex Human Revolution is a really cool air vent crawling simulator, and y’all should play it if you haven’t already. The characters are very well written, the gameplay is solid, and the atmosphere is great.Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-66813899211775475402012-11-27T22:43:00.000-08:002012-11-27T22:43:11.281-08:00Almost German Expressionism - The Romance Novel<div>
Posting your thoughts on someone else's work immediately after posting some of your own is probably in bad form, but oh well. I'm not claiming I'm any better or worse or anything. Just a disclaimer.</div>
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I don't read nearly as much as I want to anymore. I suppose it's just a matter of priorities, but it's still rather unfortunate. Most of what I read I actually listen to on audio book traveling to and from college in the car.<br /><br />Recently, I just finished a book by Erin Morgenstern called The Night Circus. Now, if I didn't know better, I'd guess that Erin Morgenstern were a pen-name. I mean, how awesome is it to have the last name "blackstar?" Erin Blackstar. German is an awesome language, isn't it? Damn recht es ist.<br /><br />The story itself is a romance framed by a contest between the disciples of two magicians, who are out to answer the question of whether sorcerers or wizards are stronger once and for all.<br /><br />Of course, the story has nothing to do with D&D, but the two magicians certainly lie on that dichotomy. Marco is the wizard, and his reliance on spellbooks (not in the traditional sense, mind you) and power sources gives him a large amount of control and autonomy, but little at-will power. Celia is the sorcerer, her power limited on the upper bound by raw force of will, and on the lower bound by self-control and self-knowledge.<br /><br />Inevitably, they fall in a nominally all-consuming love, and inevitably, the plot comes in between them and happiness. I have no deep and abiding love for romance novels, but I appreciate the well done ones, and the Night Circus, hypothetically, has some interesting things going for it.<br /><br />For one, I am a huge fan of stories that use magic thematically rather than solely as plot propellant or setting window dressing. Magic in this world is complicated and makes it much easier to make serious mistakes. It is a constant drain on both contestants to maintain the circus. At least, we're told this, but I don't think either of these points are ever driven home, even if the plot elements are there. The one time when magic amplifies ordinary drama beyond its normal scope, when the novel actually demonstrates how easy it is to mess up with magic, it feels very much like douche ex machina. We never are given a decent explanation for why a certain character incites another to go murder a certain other one. It's just something that happens.<br /><br />And really, that explains a lot about how the characters act in this novel. For main characters who carry literal scars with them from their past, they've got themselves very much together, and aren't seen really doing anything that isn't required explicitly by the plot. You'd think they'd be full of wonderfully interesting quirks and insecurities and motivations beyond the challenge, but they really don't. There is extraordinarily little character drama going on here. It's just them versus the plot, and the plot inevitably wins.<br /><br />All of this ends up with an author filibuster as delivered through a one-sided conversation between A.H. and Widge (not the Cyberchase character...oh god, why do I even still remember that show?). I really wish Widge had provided a more contrasting point of view in that tract. That would have made it a lot stronger, I think. As is, the story doesn't really have much in the way of commentary on anything except the context this final conversation gives, but what was there wasn't...bad...per se, but it was a bit hollow, and along with the unsatisfying love story with the unsatisfying characters, this only leaves the story one leg to stand on.<br /><br />The writing itself.<br /><br />Which is pretty awesome. It maintains atmosphere extraordinarily well. The surrealism of the circus is handled quite well, even if it does seem a tad obsessed with the smell of caramel (is it a metaphor or something?). The story is structured in a non-linear fashion that at first seems unnecessary but eventually becomes understandable as a creative choice. The world-building is convincing and sets a very interesting stage that deserved an equally interesting cast. I would love to see another story, written with these same premises, in this same narrative voice. I hope Ms. Morgenstern (power metal riff here) revisits this world at some point, maybe in a short story.<br /><br />So I guess my overall reaction is that this isn't a really bad story. It's not, even if I'm critical of it. I'm critical of it because of how much better it could have been. I did enjoy listening to it very much, and I suppose I can still give it some sort of recommendation, just on account of its writing style. I just wish it did something more.Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-60839847408453974502012-11-27T21:58:00.002-08:002012-11-27T21:58:34.631-08:00The Hunting Girl Stops For Tea<div>
<i>>Draft of a short story for my fiction writing class.</i></div>
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<i>>...technically already turned in for a grade, but I can still think of it as a draft, right?</i></div>
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<i>>Actually no.</i></div>
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<i>>So what I mean is, this is a finished short story for my fiction writing class.</i></div>
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<i>>Enjoy.</i></div>
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I open my eyes.<br /><br />It's still dark out. Man. What time is it?<br /><br />It must be early. I look up into the sky, and I see that it is still clouded over, with lots and lots of massive thunderheads, <i>way</i> off into the deep focus range. So I guess it'd be dark regardless, huh.<br /><br />I don't mind the dark, I never have. I get up and start to grab for my clothes. I pause. I think, I don't need to put them on just yet. I'm out here in the wilds, I won't need clothes until I want to go anywhere.<br /><br />So I just stand up and feel the air. My magic-tent-enchantment-thing is still going strong. Rain is streaming down the invisible planes. I'm actually not sure how I'm going to undo the magic, once I'm done with it.<br /><br />I don't particularly care anyway.<br /><br />So I grab my coffee machine lying over beside my coat. It's white, and it's laying on its side. I dust it off, put the old bag of pre-ground beans in, draw some water from the air (this is why I love humid days), and grab the end of the electrical plug. This is the most annoying part, see, standing there and pretending you’re a human dynamo (which is exactly what you are).<br /><br />Mostly, I'm actually annoyed because coffee is one of those things I still haven't been able to finesse. I found an old book in a library back in the Nuremberg metro area. That book had magic in it, and they were all able to conjure things out of thin air. Like, with wands and stuff. Convenient. I wish real magic was like that sometimes.<br /><br />Ah, but I still wouldn't trade away my godhood for it. So I’m sitting around, doing my whole dynamo thing, thinking about how awesome it is to be alive.<br /><br />Hah. Godhood. The ol’ man back in the village would frown his frowniest of frowns if he heard me say that shit. He’d worry I was about to turn into one of those viajantes myself. A good man, he is, and I'm fine with it, but he could never understand this about magicians. Deus ex magica, man. Well, dea ex magica in my case. My tomboyishness only extends so far.<br /><br />And then my coffee's ready, and that just makes my morning complete.<br /><br />"GUUUUUUUUTEN MORGENNNNNNNN!"<br /><br />It feels just awesome yelling that. There are some birds - yeah, actual birds man, the Fulda Gap has, like, a ton of them - and they get all startled and tweet tweet off into the…oh, that's where the sun went. I couldn't really see it before, because of all the storm clouds.<br /><br />I take my first sip of coffee. It's damn good coffee. I feel like magic, let me tell you.<br /><br />So I pace around a little. There's an old tree - that's what I slept under. I walk around that, and I look at it, I regard it. It's bark is a sort of grey, not so much brown, I dunno why people think trees are brown so often. It's smooth-skin too. Maybe it's a cherry blossom tree of some sort. I dunno how it got there. But it's a damn nice looking tree, and I like the way its bark looks when it's wet. Which it gets wet, because it’s still raining. Which I remember as soon as I dispell the force-tent-thing and I realize I'm still not wearing clothes.<br /><br />Oh well. I don't mind being wet. And for real though, clothes are for looser humans.<br /><br />The rain does get in my coffee before I can stop it though. It's a sad thing. I manage to dehydrate it slightly, but it tastes funny.<br /><br />Damn.<br /><br />So I decide, forget the coffee. I toss it out of the cup. Messily, I do a poor job of it. But I rinse it out and sterilize it and I walk over to where my bag is. And my clothes. I put the cup in last, on top of the books, which are on top of everything else. I put on my clothes. They're light clothes, summer clothes, even though it's winter or something (I honestly can't really tell the seasons apart anymore, to be honest). I like the cargo pants the most - they're roomy and good for storing random things. Good adventuring gear. I got them from Sñr. Fransisco Franco (no relation) a month ago. These things are damn useful, and with those sleek, crisp lines even despite the pockets, they look very nice too. Even without having been washed for who knows how long.<br /><br />So I take off. The rain gets in my face, of course, but though I squint, I'm fine. I just fly along in low visibility. I'm not too concerned exactly where I'm flying. Mainly because I don't know where I'm supposed to be going. They said I'd find her somewhere in where Portugual used to be. Maybe somewhere towards Nazaré? It's been a while since I've been there, and I'm still working on my Portuguese. Não é dificil, mas não tenho tido a oportunidade de ler muito, sabes?<br /><br />Mas, I'm getting distracted.<br /><br />The storm is following me.<br /><br />The storm is definitely following me.<br /><br />No really, why is the storm following me? This is…peculiar.<br /><br />I lick my finger and hold it up in the air stream. I get goosebumps. There's fire in the air. There's lots of fire, and lightning. She’s definitely around here somewhere.<br /><br />I love it. I eat it up.<br /><br />But I feel the current is ahead of me, not behind me, not within the storm, so I guess whatever is causing the storm to follow me is completely incidental. I have such bad luck with weather sometimes.<br /><br />But anyway, it's a strong, strong current I’m getting from her, because as far as I can tell, it's still hundred miles off.<br /><br />At least I know where I'm going now.<br /><br />I feel good today, real good, I tell you. The rain isn't even touching me now, the air is getting displaced in front of me. I accelerate, and before I know it, I've graduated from the transonic realm into the supersonic university, and my skin is very uncomfortably warm. Shit. I'm not protecting against the heat from the air resistance. I read about that too. Humans used to have trouble keeping their planes from melting. Of course, flesh is even worse for that – that’s why most of them abandoned the stuff. Then magic happened, and…well…<br /><br />But that’s depressing.<br /><br />I love the heat though. I let in just enough.<br /><br />I can barely see ahead now through the mist of air, and I'm finding it hard to breathe. The air feels so much less dense. I feel my feet getting swept with fantails of water flung far from the displaced air, in brilliant arcs. It feels wonderful.<br /><br />I see a rainbow star up ahead, between the coastline and the clouds.<br /><br />Ah. There she is.<br /><br />I feel her very distinctively. It's an interesting feeling, but most importantly, she doesn't feel crazy in the same way so many other viajantes do. I'll talk to her.<div>
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Hell, something in me is actually exited about this. What is this? I never liked small talk. I like reading and shooting things with giant lasers. Who needs to talk with anyone when you can do that?<br /><br />I watch her shoot pass to my left as I cross in front of her and pull high into a loop to burn energy. All my joints are being torn at by the massive deceleration. My intertia wants to go in a different direction entirely. Silly intertia.<br /><br />“Boa tarde!” An uncanny but friendly voice.<br /><br />“Boa tarde, meu amiga!” I respond. “Este tempestade é genial, não?”<br /><br />“Yeah, é muito genial. Mas, quem é você?”<br /><br />“Katrina Gallardo de Nuevo Barcelona, em tua serviço.” I slide into the air in front of her. She actually looks younger than me – something like a 17 year old human might, if she didn’t have this creepy depth to her eyes and her skin weren’t so pale. Her eyes are an ossified blue, she wears a frilly blue and white dress, and she’s drinking a nice cup of tea. Charming look, really.<br /><br />“Ah. De Nova Barcelona? Podemos continuar en español, si prefiere usted.”<br /><br />“English is best. Y sabes que puedes usar “tu” conmigo, ¿no?”<br /><br />“It has been a while since I spoke with anyone. I feel the occasion calls for extra politeness.”<br /><br />“Vaya vaya, encantada to meet you. Thank's for the welcome, but I’m afraid I should either get down to business or start shootin’. I'm here on behalf of the people of New Barcelona, you see...”<br /><br />“Oh. Oh dear. You’re one of those mages.”<br /><br />“Yeah, I’m ‘one of those.’ I still kinda sorta identify with normal humans, you know? I feel…obliged…to make sure the likes of you don’t go around accidentally irradiating the lot of them. Or hunting and eating them. Or carving lewd things in their wheat fields. Or something.”<br /><br />“Go away. If you’re just here to bother me about dumb petty things like that.”<br /><br />“I was going to ask you to do the same thing. Perferably somewhere not near New Barcelona.”<br /><br />“I haven’t been doing anything. If you notice, I’m sitting here in the air drinking some nice tea in the middle of this wonderful storm.”<br /><br />“Well that’s all well and fine, buh-waitwaitwait, you can magic tea?”<br /><br />She shrugs. “I’ve been around a long, long time, Señora Gallardo.”<br /><br />“But I mean…I have been trying to years to figure out a way to synthesize coffee with magic. Shit’s impossible!”<br /><br />“Oh don’t be silly. Everyone can do it, you just need patience – time to refine yourself. I am going to guess here, and I’m going to guess you spent all your life training how to blast things, right? Of course you did, you’re a hunter. A demon hunter. They call us ‘viajantes,’ but you know they think of us as demonios. You kill gods so they can feel better about themselves at night. So they don’t feel so insecure.”<br /><br />“Well, yeah. But really I spend most of my time reading and experimenting with little things, and I guess coffee is only one of many so I can’t say I concentrated on it too hard, but I guess it's not that I really don't have the time, since that's really all I do besides travel and reading, and…well, that’s beside the point.”<br /><br />She smiles and closes her eyes. “You remind me a little bit of myself, I think. Before I decided to leave all that nonsense.” She nods to herself.<br /><br />“So am I going to have to fight you first? Before I get you to leave?”<br /><br />“Where do you see yourself in fifty years?”<br /><br />“Still floating here asking you to leave.”<br /><br />“A serious answer, meu amiga.”<br /><br />“I <i>am</i> serious, I’m <i>totally</i> serious!” What’s this lady getting at?<br /><br />“Do you have no sense of self-awareness at all?”<br /><br />“Very little, Ms. Viajante. Now I’m gonna a…”<br /><br />“Do you know how much your quality of life would improve if you left and became a traveller like me?”<br /><br />“Gonna take a wild guess that you think the answer is up.’”<br /><br />“More than you know.”<br /><br />“No way, tía. I have friends in New Barcelona. It’s where my life is.”<br /><br />“You know full well you spend more time out around the countryside than you do there. You ever think why?”<br /><br />“It’s a place to come back to, you know? A touchstone. More or less. I...just do. They're good people, you know. I'm fine with it.”<br /><br />“I don’t see why you couldn’t return now and again, if you became a viajante.”<br /><br />“You said yourself, they’d see me as a demon. And what’s more, that’s exactly what I’d become if I stayed out here for too long, you know?”<br /><br />“Well it’s their fault for not accepting it. Be the change, Katrina.”<br /><br />“Lol no. We both know nothing of that sort’s ever gonna happen. I’d rather not become a monster to my own hometown.”<br /><br />“You already are. How many friends do you have in New Barcelona?”<br /><br />“Plenty! I have…Señor Fransisco Franco, the shopkeeper! He sold me these pants! He…uhh…actually decided to move to the new settlement, I think near León, but he’s still a friend! I just don’t know where he is. Is all. It's fine.”<br /><br />“Can you talk to him about anything?”<br /><br />“Sure. He’s very knowledgeable. I gave him some of the books I found in my holiday to old Nuremburg. Well, sold, technically.”<br /><br />“About yourself?”<br /><br />“With him? Why would he care about me?”<br /><br />She smiles, sadly, a pressed smile. “And your parents?”<br /><br />“Want nothing to do with me. But hell, I never was the sentimental sort.” The hell is with this lady? I'm fine like this.<br /><br />“So who do you talk to?”<br /><br />“Well…no one, really.”<br /><br />“It must be hard. I know it is. All the looks of hate hidden with aside glances. All the aquaintences who never spend any but the most minimum of time near you. All the warm, friendly tableside conversations at the café that dim whenever you walk past.”<br /><br />“Hey. Hey. Shut up. It’s not like that at all.” How in holy hell does she know about the café?<br /><br />“You stare at them. You sit behind your book and your coffee and you stare at them, and you’re jealous. So jealous. And I’m very sorry about that.”<br /><br />“Shut it! I’m fine, dammit!”<br /><br />“Your parents want nothing to do with you, and whoever gives you orders is too frightened of what you might do if you ever go rogue. He sees past your guards too, I know it. He knows how lonely and bitter you are with them all. That’s why he’s scared. You must eventually come to realize this.”<br /><br />Shit. She can’t be reading my mind. She can’t be. I’m too good for this. I’m too good for all this! “Imma ask you once and once only…”<br /><br />“You only feel alive out here, doing this. This is all you know. Flying. Fighting. Letting yourself get swept up in magic – they don’t know, do they, that using magic on such a scale releases endorphans like that? But when you return, you have nothing. You walk up the street to your little house on the corner, you open the door, you take off your hat and coat, and you collapse on your couch, wanting to cry, and there has never been anyone there. There never will be.”<br /><br />“I’m fine! I’M FINE!” I’m trembling.<br /><br />I’m also releasing several megajoules of anger colored magic at her. Oh god, what am I doing?<br /><br />The beam manifests at about 9000 degrees kelvin, and like most B-class stars, glows a white-blue. I cannot see this, because I cut the line between my optic nerve and my eyes so I don’t blind myself. It’s all instinct. All of this is instinct.<br /><br />And I’m crying.<br /><br />Why am I crying?<br /><br />I can’t cry anymore. How is this?<br /><br />Why did I let this girl get to me?<br /><br />I feel a hand on my left shoulder. I look, and there is her face, sad smile and all.<br /><br />“I’m sorry,” she says.<br /><br />“Fuck you.”<br /><br />“I wanted to help you realize.”<br /><br />“I was fine before, thanks. You fucking asshole.”<br /><br />“Would you like some tea?”<br /><br />“Yes. No!” I feel a glass of tea is in my hand. Now that I think about it, I seem to have floated back down to the ground.</div>
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I shoot the tea back like a fifth of vodka. It refills.<br /><br />“They don’t realize how dangerous it is to use us magicians as demon hunters. Using so much magic as you do in a fight releases so many endorphans that it’s only natural it becomes the one happy thing you ever do, and so when they shun you, they create a potential demon with not only bitterness, but a taste and talent for destruction. If time had been allowed to take its toal on you...well, you may have done something you’d regret forever on.”<br /><br />“Cool story, tía. You dunno that.”<br /><br />“I know I would have, if I didn’t catch myself in time.”<br /><br />“You dunno that either.”<br /><br />The rain beats on over our heads. She’s using the same trick I do, for making a tent out of force projections.</div>
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I watch the planes of rain. Sitting out in the rain on travel are some of my only best memories, and I feel a bit calmer now. It's pleasant.</div>
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>Only best.</div>
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>Did you just think...</div>
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Fuck.<br /><br />“Look,” I start,” you've given me things to think about. Okay? But I’m not going to do anything, <i>anything</i>, to risk hurting New Barcelona. They’re good people, they really are. I’ll protect them, even if I’m not with them.”<br /><br />“I know. That’s a good thing, I think. If you ever need any help, call me.”<br /><br />“Call you?”<br /><br />“I am very much like you, I think. I enjoyed a good fight back in my day.”<br /><br />I consider her. She managed to not get incinerated by the energy beam I shot at her, and that’s damn impressive.<br /><br />And fortunate.<br /><br />Oh fuck, I could have outright killed her, and I wouldn’t have…<br /><br />“I’m sorry, Ms….I don’t even know your name.”<br /><br />“Aline Sampaio. It’s quite alright.”<br /><br />“I’ve killed viajantes before. But they were crazy, psychopathic, murderous. Hell, you’re just psychopathic. And an asshole. And you’re probably right – that’s worst of all, you know.” I sigh deeply. “So, what is it you do around here, anyway?”<br /><br />“I drink tea. Sometimes I paint. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I work on my giant robot project.”<br /><br />“Sounds like a good life.” It clicks. “Wait," I gesticulate, "giant robot project?”<br /><br />“Would you like to see it? I’ve been working on the design for years. I call it the ASA-00 – it’s a prototype model, of course.” An edge of exitement lines her voice. Her eyes don’t seem quite so distant anymore.</div>
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Well, part of that is because she's sitting beside me now, and her hand is around my shoulder.<br /><br />Am I really going to let this shit happen?<br /><br />“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds nice.”<br /><br />My hands no longer trembling, I take a sip of tea. A considered sip. A calmer sip. An honest sip, and I can taste it with good clarity now.<br /><br />It’s very good tea.</div>
Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-75524862809101411612012-09-30T18:25:00.001-07:002012-09-30T18:25:53.377-07:00Almost Bodacious Space PiratesI feel like I need to write this sooner rather than later, but Toonami is coming on in about an hour, so I'm probably going to challenge myself to keep this as concise as possible.<br />
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Ha. Ha. Ha. Lol.<br />
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Anyway, the next season of anime will start up in just two or so weeks from now, I believe. There's a lot of shows I'm looking forward to. Psycho-pass, with its combination of writer and director, can't help but at least be memorable, Dvorak's 9th would be interesting on pedigree alone, and, of course, Jormungand S2. Not to mention, I hear...interesting...things about Lychee Light Club, and when it comes to anime nowadays, different is almost always at least worth a watch.<br />
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But before the next season, I had a bit of a backlog of shows that I started but then neglected to finish from the spring, for various reasons. Specifically, I had yet to finish Bodacious Space Pirates and Kids on the Slope.<br />
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Bodacious Space Pirates I hadn't yet finished for a very simple reason: it had lost my interest. When the show started, it started strong. It was obviously a show designed to be a safe bet among otaku, but within that bracket, it was immediately apparent that quite a bit of thought had gone into the world building and the characters. It takes the show several episodes to even get into space, because it's concerned enough with developing the good captain Marika on the ground. Even the stock megane-tundere-whatever girl had some interesting moments that belied a deeper layer. When we did go to space, the mechanics were not at all arbitrary but well developed and well explored in a strategically limited scope.<br />
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But then the director's attention shifted to Lagrange, and all of a sudden, it stopped. The characterization stopped, the world building stopped, and the attention to detail stopped. It went from being an interesting take on a decidedly limited concept to an astoundingly mediocre show. It was never bad, and I kept at it for a while - until the end of the first season arc - but it almost never did anything even remotely interesting. It's like the show was in holding pattern, and actually, I suspect that was exactly the case. The director was working two shows, after all.<br />
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Eventually, I stopped watching it weekly, and eventually, I was barely watching it monthly. I just wasn't motivated to follow it anymore, and I hadn't dropped it yet only because I heard from people who did keep up with it that the ending picked up quite a bit.<br />
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But then just recently, still being on episode 19, I decided to go ahead and finish it. First was an arc about Ai-chan (yes, that's what they actually call her: "love-chan") which was pretty okay. I was wondering where everyone else was coming from, when all of a sudden, we're introduced to the final arc.<br />
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Now, let me set this straight. The final arc isn't super awesome. It's only about as good as the first part of the show, and it comes very close to feeling rushed. But it is several other things that the middle was not.<br />
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It's engaging, it has the same attention to detail as the start, and it picks up the same thematic thread as the start alluded to but never explored. Honestly, the thematic thread still isn't explored very far or very well, but it's something. The pirates in this show are more similar to the romantic Spanish conception of pirates, as you'd find in El Canción del Pirata. These pirates are about freedom in the unknowns of space, with power as a means to that. If that were what the whole show were about, I'd be a happy otaku, but alas.<br />
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Since it's still not a particularly masterful show, there's not much I can say about how it achieves what it achieves. The director has a set of preferred camera angles that he uses for different characters in different situations, so the style isn't particularly dynamic. Most of what makes the show work or not work is in dialog and pacing, I think. It knew - at least in the beginning and end - how to take a dramatic breath for the sake of getting us to care about the characters.<br />
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But in the end, it's not a terribly good show. It could have been, I wish it were, and other people seem to think it is, but it's really not. Watch the first few episodes. Then, if you progress through the series and find that the high school girl tropes are enough to keep your interest, then it'll probably be a worthwhile series. Otherwise, either drop it, or skip to episode 23.<br />
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At least, that's my take on it.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://frozenmyst.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/marika_pose.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://frozenmyst.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/marika_pose.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">There are individual shots in this show that are cooler than the show as a whole ever was</td></tr>
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(Kids on the Slope writeup to come.)Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-39054706621324643712012-09-26T21:52:00.001-07:002012-09-26T21:53:38.413-07:00Cross-Postination<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://0-media-cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/jp/thumb/1342/41/1342412474563s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://0-media-cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/jp/thumb/1342/41/1342412474563s.jpg" /></a></div>
So yeah, posting.<br />
<br />
That thing.<br />
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I’ve been pretty busy ever since I got back to college, but that isn’t really an excuse. I guess I never felt inspired to really write about anything. I never did finish talking about C82, but I don’t feel like doing so now either. Here’s the brief version:<br />
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<li><b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXsabrJXw24">東方四重奏7 (Touhou String Quartet 7) - TAMusic:</a></b> I think this is probably their best quartet album so far. TAMusic’s biggest problem is a lack of form due to their improvised nature, but that doesn’t seem to be present here nearly as much. If I were to give an example of what classically arranged Touhou should sound like, it’d definitely be from this album, and not, say, Adonis Enterprise or some other WAVE album. Not that WAVE is bad…more misguided. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zE8WamQFGY">Touhou is not not not Hanz Zimmer material.</a></li>
<li><b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd0v7Mki9yQ">12th Spell ~ Trick Shooter - Xi~On:</a></b> It did not blow me away, but there’s nothing really wrong with it. I don’t remember any real standout tracks, and I don’t feel like listening to the whole thing right this moment. I should really do so soon though. It kinda feels like it doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up: metal, rock, or synthorchestralthing. Which is a shame, because xi~on normally has some pretty darned good power metal.</li>
<li><b>Blaze Out - EastNewSound:</b> Eh. It’s a long album, and it’s filled with lots of pretty good songs. It’s hard to point to any specific feature of ENS music as “this is their signature sound,” but it’s nonetheless very particular and very strong in all their works. As a whole, it just didn’t feel like anything special.</li>
<li><b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew6VqhDoi-w">Limited Dimension - EastNewSound:</a></b> Their original album, however, is more interesting, though I still can’t think of any specific basis to recommend it on. Now that I think about it though, doesn’t a lot of their music feel like its from an anime ED sometimes? They’re kinda like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKxbdn6pxI0">fripside</a> or something.</li>
<li><b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M-hSdn4Wn0">White Clear - Syrufit:</a></b> In comparison to Blossom, it’s a bit disappointing, but anything would have been. All of the tracks work pretty well, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41dJDloxRfs">Shibayan</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HA_5sG9Dbg">Nhato</a> are always nice to see as well. Syrufit really is developing as a producer.<br /><br />Though incidentally, it really sounds like Syrufit is channeling Shibayan in Back Door. He's done electro in the past, but I like where this is going.</li>
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Anyway, lately, I’ve not been playing too many video games or watching much anime besides what’s on Toonami (like the casual scum I am). I have been playing in two different D&D Pathfinder campaigns though. In one, I play an overpowered as fuck magus, and in the other, an overpowered as fuck sorcerer.<br />
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Since when did I become a powergamer? Okay, the magus (her name is Fern Hartmann) was a bit intentional, but the sorcerer (Catherine Hyland - I really do play too many girls) was mostly by accident. At least the DM put the kibosh on my idea for a spell that <strike>abused</strike> was perfectly in line with the whack-as-hell physics in Elements of Magic’s move(force) rules to do 12d8+1d6+17 damage at 30ft (read: will one-shot most enemies we'd encounter at this level on a low roll). I mean, really, the spell can put out several times the amount of energy in joules as the bullet from a Lee-Enfield rifle: did they really think about this stuff?<br />
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Oh well, playing that sort of character would be kinda boring, actually. I’ve always kinda hated rollplay in the place of roleplay, and while the move(force) railgun would actually rather fit the character, people don’t need the encouragement to see characters as an amalgamation of spells-per-day and BABs.<br />
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I’ve also been thinking of running my own campaign sometime around the ending weeks of the semester, in preparation for running something much larger the following one.<br />
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The small one I was thinking of is an excuse to a) get the hang of DMing and b) try out some ideas I’ve had for making Pathfinder more martial and deadly and d10 like. There will be crit tables, magic will have a tendency to literally blow up in your face, everyone will be rolling up NPC classes, and it will likely end badly for all involved.<br />
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The bigger campaign is going to be <a href="http://s4.zetaboards.com/adeva/forum/3702035/">Adeptus Evangelion</a>. We’re going to be operating from NERV Barcelona. It’ll be awesome. I’m kinda hoping v3 will be out in time, but I’m not counting on it.<br />
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Anyway, maybe now I’m settled in, I’ll have time to write more.<br />
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Oh, but as a bit of an extra something for people who read this and not my <a href="http://toarunobaka.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a>, here's a bit of archaeology I did. If you look on the touhouwiki at Alstroemeria Record's discography, the first cd listed there is not ARCD-0001. ARCD-0001 is actually arrangements of songs from Key visual novels, and it's <i>very </i>different from most of his later work. It's very low key, not anywhere like his later trance and house. There's only one track from this album on youtube. ...the embedding of which is forbidden by the user, so:<br />
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(I think she's from Air or something, but I dunno shit about Key. Just music.)Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-76015067486046599442012-08-28T12:33:00.000-07:002012-08-28T12:33:27.343-07:00Aggregation #02<a href="http://www.lovelyanime.com/wp-content/anime/cover/tbn/deadman-wonderland_200x0.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="http://www.lovelyanime.com/wp-content/anime/cover/tbn/deadman-wonderland_200x0.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.lovelyanime.com/wp-content/anime/cover/tbn/deadman-wonderland_200x0.jpg" /></a><br />
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Aggregate - Part 2</div>
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<b>If M.D. Geist Were Emo: Deadman Wonderland</b><br />
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People don’t know what to expect from this strange thing called “anime,” but they do know what to expect from Toonami: accessibility and action.<br />
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Deadman Wonderland has plenty of the latter, added and stirred with a cup and a half of good ol’ fashioned manipulative nihilism. Bake at 400 degrees. Ding. You now have your very own incredibly dumb, barely competent, and completely enjoyable exercise in blood, half-way bildungsroman, and what the hell, here’s some more blood, because we’re cool like that.<br />
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Ganta is a nice little ordinary middle school kid. So naturally, his whole class is violently slaughtered, and he’s pinned with the crime. Innocent as he is, few judges are on the circuit who are inclined to believe testimony alluding to a murderous phantasmic “Red Man” who, according to Ganta, implanted a red crystal in his chest. The villainous DA, who obviously knows exactly whats up and further frames him for the crime, does nothing to help. So Ganta gets interred in a privately owned prison called Deadman’s Wonderland (and everyone’s okay with this, apparently) where everything is awful, and he meets a mysterious albino girl in a skintight body suit who immediately greets Ganta as her bestest buddy.<br />
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So basically, a not particularly unusual shonen adventure setup. The grownups are terrible, the girls are well endowed, and the kid is special. Why, then, is Deadman Wonderland as enjoyable as it is?<br />
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Not because it’s any good. A drama starts and ends with its characters, and Shiro and Ganta are flat. We never really find out that much about them, or why they are the way they are. They wear their motivations on their sleeves, and they seem to feel things out of habit than actual emotion. I seem to remember all of about three emotions from Ganta, and most of them have to do with the fact that the show is doing everything it can to make the guy miserable.<br />
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And the show goes out of its way to do so, to the point of completely, almost naively transparent contrivance. Why is the friendly, decent guy introduced? So he can get stomped on with a stiletto heel. Why must Ganta consume antidote “candy” to stay alive? Because it’s dramatic. Why does anyone do anything in this whole show? Because the director had one burning question he wanted answered during this production: how do we make it more dark?<br />
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Deadman Wonderland is a show that revels in its own nihilism, trying to one up itself at every corner. Yet in the end, the show reveals it actually has a theme.<br />
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What’s that theme?<br />
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You have to reject nihilism…to reject nihilism.<br />
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A theme that it states boldly and with supreme and utter self confidence, as if it were the most brilliant realization in all of human history.<br />
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And that’s what makes it so special. It has the audacity to be a stupid piece of crap. At no point did it feel like this was something that came out of a production committee. The director’s semi-competent fingerprints are all over this show, and while the result is intensely dumb, it feels like a special kind of dumb that will never be reproduced anywhere else. It is a show as written, it feels, by an edgy teenager, for other edgy teenagers to marvel at.<br />
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Miraculously, the show is also halfway competent on the technical side. It’s paced decently, the dub is just good enough to get by, and all the little filmmaking details are all there. All this helps make all that’s stupid with it watchable, instead of simply boring.<br />
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For the weapons that require you to cut yourself to use. For the dumb OP song. For Greg Ayres doing his best Shinji impersonation. For the complete tone-deafness to theme. For the complete lack of anything like self-moderation. For all those things, I loved this show, in spite of itself. It’s pretty hilarious.<br />
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<b>Wargame: European Escalation</b><br />
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Obviously, by “one post a day,” I meant “one post after about a week of chilling with friends, drawing, and trying to decide how I feel about going back to college.”<br />
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Also, playing vidya.<br />
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Specifically, I’ve had a bit of a problem. I used to play a lot of a mod for the old game Command & Conquer: Generals called Cold War Crisis. As you may guess, it’s set during the 80s, and involves conventional warfare with the Soviets. Think Red Storm Rising.<br />
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In the real world, had the Soviets ever decided to roll across the Fulda Gap into West Germany, they’d be rolling in under a fog of deadly chemical weapons and would have likely trounced NATO forces in Europe in about a week. Assuming things had not already gone all fission-y.<br />
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Fortunately, as this is a game, NATO is strangely well-supplied, and the thousands of chemical and nuclear weapons have been thankfully ignored, allowing you, the player, to command your armored division with impunity.<br />
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Note how I use the past tense.<br />
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When I got my new laptop, it came with OS 10.7, a user friendly but problematic OS that, among other things, broke the Cold War Crisis mod. If this were merely a configuration problem, I could fix it myself, post the fix on the internet, and be a minor sort of hero, but alas no. The problem is with the launcher, which only the CWC team would be able to fix.<br />
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I enjoyed the style of game, and I wanted a replacement. Unfortunately, none presented itself on the mac, but on the PC, I found Wargame: European Escalation.<br />
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<img height="180" src="http://images.vg247.com/current//2012/07/wargame_european_escalation-dlc2_05.jpg" width="320" /><br />
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A game developed by people who hate the letter “s.”<br />
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Compared to the CWC mod, it’s a much more tactical game. You control objectives, earn points, and use them to bring in reinforcements. Vehicles use roads to move faster, tanks run out of fuel, and using transports to move around infantry actually makes sense on these huge German expanses. Given how much you’ll need to be shuttling supply trucks and reinforcements to and from the FOB, the game is as much about logistics as tactics.<br />
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It plays on very large maps, but it still conserves individual unit detail. Unfortunately, unless you’re running on a very good computer, you won’t see much of that detail. I’m actually experiencing some rather unfortunate texture glitches, but I think that’s the fault of something I did to the configuration.<br />
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With the added dimension of realism, I’m having to get used to thinking with practical tactics, and learn more about cold war era weaponry. For instance, hiding a squad of Panzergrenadieren with MILANs in the trees to fire on approaching armor is a good idea, but their missiles are manually guided. That means, even though they can engage at significant ranges, they will almost always miss even a sitting target, wasting all their missiles. You have to tell them specifically to hold their fire until the armor gets closer.<br />
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On the other hand, micro is more difficult to pull off. I have yet to be able to maneuver my tanks into a “hull down” position (stopped behind a hill so just the turret is visible over the crest). Though tanks have different amounts of armor on different sides, there’s not really much of a way to make sure they’re facing the right direction. Most tank battles seem to come down to who has the better tanks and crews.<br />
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Playing skirmish agains the AI is fun, though on easy, it makes some weird choices.<br />
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I once found myself moving up my armor to defend two middle objectives when all of a sudden the AI decided to bring out all the MI-2s ever. I had about three units of four Leopard L4s, and two of them routed under the hundreds of rockets that were coming down on them from all directions. It worked for the AI. But then my Gepards arrived and all of a sudden it was full of burning MI-2 wrecks.<br />
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Later, I was playing, and it decided to camp around…somewhere. I’m not sure where all its forces were, if it even brought any in, but I sent in a recon helicopter to scout their FOB. There was nothing there except the command vehicle, which got destroyed, securing victory.<br />
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Most of the time, it’ll simply bring up lots of tanks with scout vehicle support and some anti air in the back. Woe to any tank elements that get caught out of position, but with some scouting and good preparation, its armored pushes stall pretty quick by better quality tanks with infantry, helicopter, and logistical support. The first time it tried this, a unit of Leopard L4s and two of L3s got caught behind enemy lines with no support against about five units of T-55s. The tanks took more than 50% casualties, but the remaining tanks held out, because the AI didn’t stop to deal with them. So they followed them and took shots at their rear while two more units of Leopards came to reinforce the other side of a rather obvious choke point they were headed for while artillery fired ineffectually in the general direction of the advancing armor.<br />
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So anyway, it kinda sucks that it’s on the PC, but it’s a good game. I’ll definitely be playing a lot more.<br />
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Did I mention you’d be spending a lot of time watching tanks drive down the Autobahn?<br />
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Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-73776497425865682872012-08-28T12:28:00.002-07:002012-08-28T12:28:40.258-07:00Aggregation #01(I recently made myself a tumblr to post things that I didn't feel warranted essay length entries here. I have aggregated some of it in this article)<br />
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<b>C82#01: 幻想郷茶房~tea for two~ - 10th Avenue Café</b><br />
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<br /><br />Sometime early this morning, the first uploads from C82 began appearing on /jp/, slowly but steadily. It will likely take at least a week for even half of the stuff I actually wanted to listen to starts appearing, but I am a patient fellow (though that cruel, cruel premature upload thread was hard to deal with). I have the Tokyo Active NEETs album downloading as I’m writing this, but for now, I’m trying out some stuff that went under my radar.<br /><br /><a href="http://spritewing.com/cd/10th_tea_for_two/image/10th500.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://spritewing.com/cd/10th_tea_for_two/image/10th500.jpg" /></a><br /><br />I had never heard anything by the 10th Avenue Café before, but there were some familiar names on the credits. Miki - the vocalist on Close to You - I seem to remember from somewhere. The mastering was done by Shibata Takahiro of ShibayanRecords, a very familiar name indeed. His Bossa Nova albums show an interest in lighter, jazzy music, in contrast to his very heavy electro that most know him for. It is not surprising, then, to see him working with the 10th Avenue Café.<br /><br />This album is rather short, but I feel like a longer album would overstay its welcome. There is, after all, only so much smooth jazz you can listen to at a time and not become a little bit bored. As ambience though, it works wonderfully.<br /><br />Unfortunately, smooth jazz is hard to talk about in any interesting way. The arrangement makes heavy use of electronic instrumentation for harmonics and backup, but the melodies are primarily carried by piano (or keyboard) and vocal. In terms of license, the arrangements take very little: it’s very easy to tell what songs are arrangements of what originals.<br /><br />The mishmash of backup elements could, if handled poorly, end up sounding off, but as unchallenging as the arrangements are, they are also masterfully done. That the tracks sound like anything at all is impressive: for soft jazz, it has a fair measure of soul in it.<br /><br />Mood stays more or less consistent across the album - another reason for it to be short. Albiet, the first two tracks make more use of funk guitar and harmonics than the last two. Forest Calling especially seems to be the most focused on rhythm and groove of them, containing a piano riff that covers an unexpectedly broad range of octaves for a soft jazz arrangement.<br /><br />In the end, I’m not sure how much I’ll end up listening to this, but it’s eminently pleasant, if just as eminently unchallenging.<b><br /></b>
<b>C82#02: Mythology - Sound Online</b></div>
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Remember Sound Online, guys? The guy who Alstroemeria Records and REDALiCE would team up with to make those triparte albums way back when? Fun times. He doesn’t seem to be doing all that much on his own of late. His last album was six tracks: three with vocals, three instrumentals. This appears to be his new business model, and it appears to be working out for him.<br /><br /><a href="http://soundonline.info/Mythology/ban_l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="68" src="http://soundonline.info/Mythology/ban_l.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I keep up with his releases, but I really don’t get exited by his stuff. He had, back in the day, a very clear style. Very clean sounding instrumentals and ambient reverb were dominant. In the present day, his work seems to have taken on more rock influences than were present in his heyday of co-releases with RAMM. I do not care as much for this new direction, but he still has his moments. Perhaps Tsubaki is no longer hitting his stride as he used to, but he isn’t down for the count yet.<br /><br />Since it’s a short album, I’m going to be all unprofessional and do a track-by-track. Sorry y’all.<br /><br />We see what this new direction means in the first track - 春暁ストライド - with an arrangement that features prominently guitar backing and a rock style drum kit. In a way, it reminds me of a faster, less intense Cytokine, before he went heavier to the electronic side of things. 3L delivers excellent vocals, as always, but as a whole, it lacks progression, either rhythmically or melodically or in pacing. It starts off as it ends: rapid and with little in the way of tonal contrast. It’s okay at the outset, but it gets rather tiring quickly.<br /><br />The vocal version of Borderland has some problems keeping itself integrated. The synth work does not flow well with Nachi Sakue’s vocals, which, because she’s Nachi Sakue, are in moé timbre. The combination of squealy dancefloor synth and squealy voice doesn’t work. However, the instrumental version largely solves this. We discover, in the vocal-less version, a throwback to SO’s older work. The underlying arrangement is actually both ambient and powerful, like his best days.<br /><br />The third track - 白銀桜花 - handles its vocals far better. Aki Misawa does not sing in moé timbre, and mostly sticks to octaves she can reliably hit. It also helps that the background arrangement is more subdued, primarily consisting of continuo, piano, and placid electronic drums. On the instrumental version, this makes it a more ambient piece than the others. Some added electronic flute and synth work makes it work well enough, though at 4:23, it runs the risk of overstaying its welcome slightly.<br /><br />So, just like his last album, we have two kinda passable tracks, and a pretty good one. Is it worth it? Maybe. Do I wish Tsubaki would pick up his game? Yes, but honestly, I know nothing about the man himself, or whether this is his full time job, or simply a diversion. If it is a diversion, it is a good one. If not much more than that.<div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: -5px; margin-top: 10px; outline: none 0px;">
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<b>C82#03: 東方爆音ジャズ3 - 東京アクティブNEETs</b></div>
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Okay, our first full length album!</div>
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<br />As a fan of hard jazz and fusion, I am rather surprised I never came across these guys before. However, I am glad I did.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Despite being a fan of it, I am unfortunately not very well acquainted with the technical side of jazz, which makes it hard for me to talk about it very engagingly. Since the jazz almost writes about itself, putting into words that which comes intuitively from the music is impossibly difficult, so I won’t even try to do an analysis of any individual songs.<br /><br />Instead, I do give a hearty recommendation just from the outset to go and check out the album if you like either hard jazz or Touhou. If you live in Japan, buy this shit.<br /><br />I still have observations about it though. NEETs’ interpretations are excellent, but they feel very strange when they’re quoting ZUN directly. It encounters the same phenomena as Shostakovich’s singularly odd jazz album: the strong classical tendencies find their ways into the piece and end up overpowering the jazz-ness, converting it into some sort of hybrid. In some contexts, this would ruin the soul of the thing, but here, everyone’s playing with enough style and cohesion that it never feels like it’s departing the jazz envelope.<br /><br />Still, the juxtaposition of ZUN’s neo-romanticism with the flow of the jazz itself means that this is a very, very different beast than, say, Kind of Blue. It’s melodic and tonal in ways that BeBop generally isn’t. Which is because, it’s not consistently BeBop. It falls into the softer end of the scale (though never into soft, and never at the cost of its complexity) from time to time, just as it sometimes treads the border of fusion. It brings variety, which is always a good thing. Never once was I anywhere even close to bored with this album.<br /><br />I couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed in their interpretation of Greenwich Upon the Heavens. In its original, it’s already a track highly suited to jazz arrangement, but the NEETs’ interpretation doesn’t really play that up. Though “this truly spectacular music isn’t as spectacular as it could be” is hardly a complaint.<br /><br />So if you couldn’t tell already, this is a godly frakking album, and you should, like, listen to it right now.<br /><br />So, all the albums I had assumed would be showing up last are the ones that were showing up at the outset. The Tokyo Active NEETs’ album, and ButaOtome’s Bowling both were on the first day, but Alstroemeria Record’s new album is still nowhere to be found.<br /><br />On the other hand, this gives me time to enjoy each in turn, and even more time to write a short something about it here, before going onto the next thing.<div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; outline: none 0px;">
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<b>C82#04: Crimson Tempest - REDALiCE</b><br />
REDALiCE is one of those guys. Occasionally, he’ll have something really neat, and occasionally, he’ll just kinda…pass by. Back in the day, he and Minoshima of Alstroemeria Records would do a bunch of collaboration, but I haven’t seen them working on Touhou much together. What they did work on, however, was the ED to the spring’s Haiyore, Nyarlko-San, I’ll Absolutely Be With You (or something like that). Which, unfortunately, isn’t all that great (hey, kinda like the anime itself).<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I wish I could say this album goes to show that REDALiCE still has it in him. It…kinda doesn’t. Admittedly, the style of most of the album is not one that greatly appeals to me, so I’m having a hard time separating the technical genius from my personal taste, but honestly, not a whole lot of it was particularly interesting listening.<br /><br />The problem is mostly with his vocal stuff. A very (surprisingly) wide variety of vocalists show up on this album, from the familiar Nomiya Ayumi to the less familiar Rizuna. For the majority of the songs, REDALiCE has them sing in moe timbre. And honestly, that’s probably what, say, Nachi Sakue is best at. At the outset, this is unpromising for my own tastes, but it also seems that, on the vocal tracks, REDALiCE’s arrangements get a lot less interesting as well. Either that, or the mastering is such that they get overpowered by the vocals.<br /><br />This is, of course, a generalization. Some songs work considerably better than others, and some are actually rather good. Your mileage will vary on which ones, but, having put the album on shuffle while writing this, the current song, Hungry Girl, is very nice in both how it phrases the vocals and the way it contrasts tones.<br /><br />On the other hand, the two vocal-less, j-core oriented tracks on the album, are pretty neat. It is what he’s good at, and it’s what I listen to his albums for. If he delivers at nothing else, he delivers at that.<br /><br />So far, I’ve talked only of REDAliCE’s own tracks, but he shares almost 40% of the album with guest arrangers: t+pazolite, ARM of IOSYS fame, and someone named Gennya, who is as of yet unfamiliar to me. t+pazolite has two tracks, similar in their flaws to REDALiCE’s own, and neither one of which I particularly care for. In truth, I have not heard enough t+pazolite to compare it to his normal, but I have not been too thrilled with his work that I have heard. ARM’s track is…well, he’s IOSYS, so that means crazy out-of-character humor. And indeed, that’s exactly what it is. At least, the fragments I actually understood. Gennya sounds like what I’d imagine Sound Online would sound like if Tsukasa did happy hardcore. Which isn’t terrible, but the track doesn’t really go anywhere either.<br /><br />All told, I’m not really a fan of this album. A lot of the tracks don’t really go anywhere, and about 70% of it is rather underwhelming in general. I’m not writing off the whole album, but if you’re really interested, wait for some of it to get uploaded to youtube, then decide if you want to buy it/download it/get low quality rips of it from youtube.<div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; outline: none 0px;">
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<b>C82#05: THE WORLD DESTINATION - Alstroemeria Records</b></div>
I had intended on writing something about every album I listened to from C82. I had this notion that I’d just write brief blurbs about stuff I hadn’t been anticipating. How silly of me, I don’t do ”brief.” I only do long, convoluted, and flowery.<br /><br />I listened to Bowling, but I want to make sure I can’t actually purchase it legally before writing about it. I’ll give it a while. Maybe do that one last. I’ll go ahead and say this though: it’s really, really good. As if that were ever in doubt.<br /><br />So as of now, I have a few albums I need to write about: <br /><ul>
<li>xi~on’s 12th Spell Card </li>
<li>EastNewSound’s Blaze Out </li>
<li>TAMusic’s Touhou Quartet 7 </li>
<li>Unlucky Morpheus’s Parallelism α </li>
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<br />More widely known as The Granite Countertop Album (Not really)<br /><br />It’s actually a nice change of pace from tats’ normal covers, and it’s not just the cover that’s changed either. This is not one of Minoshima’s “Dancehall” albums (see Haunted Dancehall, Killed Dancehall, and Abandoned Dancehall, his previous three). Unlike them, it is separated into distinct tracks rather than a continuous play. Because of this, Minoshima has more freedom in terms of sound and tone diversity, since they need not lead into each other as smoothly.<br /><br />He demonstrates this with his first track, an original. Brostep. I am not a fan of brostep (most of it has all the subtlety and art of a power drill), but I do not shun it, and this is a pretty good example of how to do it in a way that doesn’t get annoying fast. More importantly, I don’t think Minoshima has ever done straight up brostep before.<br /><br />As a whole, the album is heavier than the usual for Minoshima. It sounds more like Plastik World than Abandoned Dancehall at times, though the electro and brostep influences are definitely still there. It’s definitely still nu-Minoshima, but I think he’s taking slightly more risks with this album.<br /><br />Most of the tracks have something interesting in their conception, and though towards the longish side, none of them really and truly start to drag. At seven minutes, YOU’RE MINE almost runs into this, but it’s an improvement on some of his other longer tracks (like Plastik Mind).<br /><br />Minoshima seems to have started working more with a producer called Camelia. He is not a Touhou arranger and does not have a circle of his own: he produces Vocaloid albums. Moreover, he produces pretty good Vocaloid albums, from the one that I listened to, but I’m glad to hear him use real people on Minoshima’s albums. A funny artifact of his background is that his vocals still sound like they were written for Vocaloid, a sense reinforced in his track - IN THE FLICKERING - from the processing he did to it. The vocalist, Takanashi Toriko, does well in following Camelia’s baroque and demanding score.<br /><br />I honestly was rather skeptical of this album, when I heard the crossfade. I was anticipating it regardless because I trust Minoshima to, at the very least, fail in an interesting way, but I was only expecting maybe a few good tracks. THE WORLD DESTINATION, as it turns out, is not only pretty good, but very good. Recently, I’ve wondered why it is I still hold Alstroemeria Records in such high esteem, especially compared to Shibayan and Syrufit. I no longer wonder.<div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; outline: none 0px;">
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<b>C82#06: Parallelism α - Unlucky Morpheus</b></div>
I think I’m gonna make myself only do one of these a day. Otherwise I’ll burn out and start getting boring.<br /><br />Well, more boring.<br /><br />That, and I want to do at least some actual fiction writing this summer.<br /><br />Today’s album comes to us providence of Unlucky Morpheus. My first exposure to Unlucky Morpheus was Rebirth, a 2009 album. Rebirth was primarily speed and power metal, with vocals. It was pretty okay, and I never listened to it all that much. I paid them no attention until last Comiket, when they released Faith & Warfare, a fusion album. It was surprisingly really good. I just assumed that they were better at fusion than they were at actual metal.<br /><br />Still, they made me curious, so when this Comiket came around, I went ahead and listened to this.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It seems that in the interim, Unlucky Morpheus not only got a hell of a lot better (providence of some roster changes, I believe), they morphed into Dark Moor: Touhou Edition. Specifically, Dark Moor when they had Elisa Martin, though they too brought on a male vocalist for a few tracks.<br /><br />I am at a loss to provide much more criticism than that. The team of Fuki and Yuki have gotten better at making interesting arrangement, and the newcomer vocalist - Denshirenji “Most Dangerous” Takeshi - has a powerful and emotive voice (I…err…actually mistook him for a girl at first). The drummer, who previously on Rebirth did little more than a straight and tiring double base drum attack and was the source of most of their problems, has either gotten much better, or left. The percussion on this album is still not its high point - it’s a bit stiff and still pretty basic - but it’s serviceable and allows their high points to show.<br /><br />That isn’t to say that the album doesn’t have one or two problems. Yuki makes the questionable decision to try to sing in English for Inside of Me. Yes, she still sings pretty well (if a bit too emotively), but I haven’t the faintest what she’s actually saying, and it does stick out to a native speaker. The album itself is also mastered rather poorly, though it is not too egregious, and a good sound system or pair of headphones will help.<br /><br />But those things aside, if you like power metal, go for it. Demetori has the harder end of the spectrum filled out (here’s hoping to C83!), and xi~on has the progressive metal handled, but besides for Sound Holic’s two pretty-good metal albums, we’ve lacked a really consistent vocal metal act. Perhaps, until now.<br /><br />Favorite track.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-87378912563578989072012-06-15T22:02:00.000-07:002012-06-16T12:20:39.248-07:00Scarlet Weather Rhapsodies - Part 1So I've been considering whether I really want to write about the stuff that came out of Reitaisai or not, and truthfully, I don't think writing about music is particularly compelling either to the writer or the reader, and I don't think that I'm particularly good at even that. I never write quite what I want to write about the album, and I'm never satisfied with the result. Honestly, neither should you, if you know anything about music or writing. Still, I might as well write something.<br />
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Reitaisai 9 was very successful. I do not know much about the games that came out, nor the manga - that'll all be scanlated later (and my Japanese is barely decent enough to get through a four panel comic strip), but the music and PVs were almost invariably awesome. I'm going to get to the music, but I really want to try something new here and talk about the PVs: two, specifically.<br />
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<b>東方夢想夏郷 - A Summer Day's Dream, Second PV</b><br />
Remember way back when, I talked about those two independent anime projects, both of which were flawed but progressing with new episodes, supposedly? Probably not, unless you're a Touhou fan reading this, so here's the brief version. The first project is produced by a studio called Maikaze, who released their first episode a few years ago. It was...not very good, for a couple of reasons. Maikaze hired big-name voice actors for their cast of not particularly well written characters, going through their not particularly interesting plot, in a singularly ugly looking world, observed poorly by a poor director. Yet, a 30 minute Touhou anime episode is still a pretty cool thing, and it's a good thing that, now, we are still assured that progress is being made on the second episode! What's particularly amusing about this is that they seem to be funding the production by selling the trailers on DVD. It's a strange sort of crowd funding: produce a trailer, and if the fans buy it, then it gives them the money to follow through. They're certainly taking their time with this one though. I can't say I blame them either: they took the cheap route the first time and we ended up with crap. And, from this new trailer, they seem to be in a good...ish way.<br />
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<b>00:27</b> - Okay, Reimu's hand doesn't have one too many fingers anymore! Good sign, good sign.<br />
<b>00:32</b> - *sigh* They're still going with little kid Suika. These guys <i>did</i> play the games, right?<br />
<b>00:49</b> - My god, it even sounds like an anime theme song. ...not a <i>good</i> anime theme song, but...<br />
<b>00:57</b> - "Aright so in this scene, you watch the moon dramatically, then turn!" Looks like we got the same director alright.<br />
<b>01:10</b> - Sweet watch.<br />
<b>01:12</b> - Alice Margatroid's in this one. Lots of weird looks of ennui in this trailer, but Alice makes it look awesome.<br />
<b>01:16</b> - No really, why is Youmu naked? And have the body of a 12 year old?<br />
<b>01:20</b> - Ah, she was taking a shower before her fight scene! I must say, this opening shot kinda impresses me. They're definitely getting better at this.<br />
<b>01:27</b> - Not that their editing has improved by too much, but eh, it works. You know, I just read a manga called Youmu vs Udongein. An Imizu work, of course.<br />
<b>01:35</b> - Yep, the animation quality is definitely better this time around. Now it looks like a low-ish budget television anime rather than a low-ish budget indie production.<br />
<b>01:39</b> - Player 2 Reimu? Well, I guess she has to have other clothes.<br />
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So yeah, I'm exited. It's going to suck, but I don't care, because cheesy bad anime is fun. Honestly, this is what I imagine a real, professional Touhou anime would be like, not Manpuku Jinja's vision, as much as I may like to imagine the production committee would take the show seriously. It's charming, in a way.<br />
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<b>花鳥風月 - Fantasy Kaleidoscope PV</b><br />
Manpuku Jinja were the other guys: the good ones, who produced the 15 minute adaptation of Perfect Cherry Blossom. Manpuku Jinja has a good grasp on the feel of Gensokyo, and have far better production values in their work, both in pure animation quality, and in the quality of the design elements. In fact, it's the charisma of the setting itself that sets theirs apart from anyone else's, I'm willing to say. Characterization obviously doesn't happen in a PV like this, as it shouldn't, because the focus is Gensokyo itself, as we will see. I hear they published an art book with this one, which I'd love to get my hands on somehow.<br />
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Anyway, they have stated that they are not, in fact, working on a second episode because of money and time, which is okay: they put out quality work anyway. Their last PV, from Comiket, I did not particularly like for various reasons, but this new one is a return to form.<br />
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<b>00:22</b> - Interesting image. It's surreal, but it totally feels like something Marisa <i>would</i> do. Also, maybe a Super Marisa World reference?<br />
<b>00:35</b> - I think this is the only major shot in the PV I don't really like. Something is weird about the framing and colors and...well, I don't know.<br />
<b>00:58 -</b> Dear god, I am just in love with this one though. The composition is perfect, the way it draws the eyes along the plane of focus across the shot, Yama's expression, the way the color changes with focal point...just, yes.<br />
<b>01:15</b> - And Yuuhei Satellite isn't a bad band, either. The lyrics are pretty neat. "Kachou fuugetsu" means "all that's beautiful in the world." Indeed.<br />
<b>01:19 - </b>The old maids of Gensokyo: Yukari, Yuyuko, Kanako, and Eirin. All of whom are rather generously endowed, it seems.<br />
<b>01:26 - </b>Manpuku Jinja really likes drawing Reimu with wistful expressions. Huh.<br />
<b>01:29</b> - They also really like drawing boobs. Well, who can blame them.<br />
<b>01:45</b> - <i>We all live in a Lunarian submarine! Lunarian submarine! Lunarian submarine! </i>Seriously though, I'm really not sure what this is about.<br />
<b>02:16 - </b>Yeah, I'll admit, Manpuku Jinja can be fanservice heavy, but at least it's really competent fanservice.<br />
<b>02:23 - </b>Daily life at the Scarlet Devil Mansion. I'm not sure why those characters have as many fans as they do, but this is a pretty well put together little vignette.<br />
<b>02:32</b> - Okay, Youmu's fight in Maikaze's trailer does look cool, but not anywhere as cool as this. Then again, it's not actually a fight scene but a little vignette of her practicing her stuff. That seems to be mainly what the PV is: a look at the daily lives of Gensokyo's denizens. I like the idea a whole lot. Montage theory is pretty great.<br />
<b>02:47</b> - That's another Manpuku Jinja trope: they love shots of people jumping and turning mid air. I think there was one like that of Alice in the original Memories of Phantasm, and in their previous PV. Not one of my favorite things in the world, but eh.<br />
<b>02:53</b> - Lewd.<br />
<b>02:55 - </b>Reimu's hair ribbon looks like it's about to take off and fly into the porch light. I like their character designs, but Reimu's really is kinda excessive.<br />
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Well, no guesses as to which one is the prodigal child. Man, it'd really be a shame if these people never got to live up to their potential, because I see a whole, whole lot in these guys. These PVs remind me of the Daicon III and IV animations by the group that would later become Gainax. It's not as easy a market to get into these days, but man...what if these guys became a real thing? Where's their <i>Wings of the Honeamise?</i> Or are they content with this?<br />
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<i>So anyway, the music.</i><br />
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<b>11th Spell 〜 Overflow</b><br />
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I have never talked about xi-on (pronounced, she-on) on this blog before. They're a metal and hard rock act. They've got a nice sounds. They're not as good as Demetori. And that's about it. I'd say that the variety in their instrumentation is a very nice feature. Crow's Claw, Demetori, and Unlucky Morpheus are all very focused on the traditional metal arrangement. While there's a heck of a lot you can do with that, and honestly, their guitarists can coax more interesting sounds out of their instruments than xi~on, but they don't have quite the aesthetic. I can't compare this album to any of their previous work, since I haven't heard any, but I'll have to fix that in the future (and once I get a bigger hdd).<br />
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So, I won't bother going track by track, because that's boring, so here are my three favorites. The album has lots and lots of Perfect Cherry Blossom arrangements, and is about 30 minutes, so it works as a nice little concept album.<br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4HE45QGvVA">Overflow</a> is a nice little variation on Yuyuko's theme. Mostly straight guitar and drums, but with judicious use of sampled strings and shakuhachi. It's really a strange melody to hear in metal form. It's nice though, very nice.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C02bnRirtvs">広有射怪鳥事 ~ Till When?</a>breaks out the Hammond B3s! I've honestly never heard a single one in any Touhou arrangement before this (though Crow's Claw's album has one later on, which we'll get to), so it's kinda funny finding it here now. I feel like I'm listening to ELP, not xi-on. It doesn't vary very obviously from it's source until the end, but passes through some neat places by the end. It's not very heavy at all, either. (track title in English: Hiroari Shoots a Strange Bird)<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ccDmiqRvng">死霊の夜桜</a> has some more guitar work, this time, and a very nice drum accompaniment. Drummers really are important, and they got it down well. No really, go listen to it. (English: Cherry Blossoms OF THE DEEEEAAAAD. Emphasis mine.)<br />
<br />
They didn't over-extend themselves with this one. It's short, but it feels just the right length. Quality stuff. Not amazing, not really, but really great, even if just to have on.<br />
<b><br /></b><br />
<b>Abandoned Dancehall</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i34.fastpic.ru/big/2012/0530/bc/9df08a1e6f9f8e6fd77e8a21b713d8bc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://i34.fastpic.ru/big/2012/0530/bc/9df08a1e6f9f8e6fd77e8a21b713d8bc.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guh, slutty bioluminescent Sanae. Really, Tats?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Another Dancehall album is always welcome. Honestly, I don't automatically associate Alstroemeria with quality, and I didn't care as much for Killed Dancehall, but I do very unequivocally love this one. It plays like a very good house set. A very, very good one. Like, go find this if you like this stuff.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC9c_ZiFV-w">Integration under the moon of codes</a> is a really great track not by Minoshima. As it turns out. It's a long and rather uninteresting intro, but when the song really starts, the brilliance of the way the atmosphere is maintained becomes clear. Also, the lyrics are about physics. Which is kinda awesome.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzdVtaPBSu8">DREAM A DREAM</a> really, really reminds me of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=799wkFJambY">Cheek Colours</a> from Harmony, an old-ish school Minoshima album that I think I talked about at one point. There's a certain dissonance between the synth and vocals at the chorus, and it works wonderfully. It's pretty airy, almost disco-esque. But better.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmJe_opQVjs">Necro Fantasia (ALR Rewind Remix)</a> is a remix of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_rJalhzIag">a song</a> from one of Alstroemeria's Lovelight-era releases, For Your Pieces. Strangely, I do not have this album *goes to download it* The original is a good song, and it has absolutely nothing to do with this one, so I don't know why he even mentions that it's a remix. This song is much more dance oriented, but is no less good. It's downbeat, but with a strong pace, and excellent feel to it.<br />
<br />
<b>Blossom</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.syrufit.jp/blossom/img/jk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="197" src="http://www.syrufit.jp/blossom/img/jk.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Purdy. Mokou's looking not so hot<br />
though. Huh.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Avidya was a bit of a surprise for me, in retrospect. I ended up listening to that album more than I did Killed Dancehall. Syrufit's got his own thing going on, and he does it more consistently sometimes than Minoshima. He also works a lot with Mei Ayakura, who many artists use, but Syrufit moreso. Linjin as well, but we'll get to him later. On Blossom, he uses her exclusively. A good decision: she's a strong vocalist. Not the strongest, but reliable, and a friendly enough person, if the livestream a few months back is any indication.<br />
<br />
Well, this time, I don't think he beats out Minoshima, but he does tie him for playtime. Some really great electro here.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj--NDkvJNg">Monochrome</a> is a really, really great track. It starts off kinda low, which is not Mei's strength, but it gets stronger as it goes on, and boy does it have a great progression. It's got that weird use of mora-phrasing that Syrufit likes to do, which in and of itself isn't remarkable, but overall flow is excellent, and the pathos is great. I'm loving the instrumentation too.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MLhVDRObeM">R.I.N</a> is a bit out of place, isn't it? ShibayanRecords isn't billed on the cover, but nobody's ever going to mistake his style for <i>anyone</i> else's. Even Mei sounds different when singing his track. What sets this track apart even for Shibata-san is the industrial sounding accompaniment. Also, "nyani ka," in an otherwise serious song. Rofl.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0O55iiOoD8">Cloudy, later fair</a>, reminded me a tiny bit of the Macarena at first. But only a little, and only at first. What's more striking is that it's much more house oriented than the rest of the album, and quite vocal-centric. Strong sounding, I think, is how I'd describe it. Very strong sounding.<br />
<br />
<b>Bossa Nova ToHo</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.touhouwiki.net/images/7/79/STAL_1201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://en.touhouwiki.net/images/7/79/STAL_1201.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Good to see Remilia getting out of the<br />
castle now and then...I guess...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So yeah, ShibayanRecords doesn't just do electro. He also does Bossa Nova. He did some easy-listening-ish stuff before, and I believe that he had a similar album at C81, which I didn't listen to, but it's still kinda odd to think that they both come from the same guy. I still think he's better at electro, but he's improved his Bossa Nova mojo as well, it seems. This isn't one of my favorite albums from Reitaisai 9, and it's very telling that two of my recommendations aren't vocals at all, so only go into this if you have a) hdd space to spare or b) like breathy Bossa Nova stuff. I guess those people exist.<br />
<br />
I think it's good to note that the album gets progressively a lot better as it goes on. Like, a lot better. Like, I'd probably recommend almost anything after たまにはSUNを, but almost nothing before that. It's a 36 minute album though, so eh, nothing lost.<br />
<br />
Also of note is that he only uses one singer twice: Fukami Chie. Huh.<br />
<br />
たまにはSUNをis like the easy listening tracks of Shibata-san's previous albums, but good. There's not as much remarkable about it, actually. (English: Occasionally the Sun...) Can't find on youtube.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V47ctGcBz8A">Otemba de Jane-yo</a> is very up-tempo compared to the rest of the album. Everyone plays really well on this track. It comes together really well. Oddly, it doesn't sound much like Cirno's theme at all beyond the first few bars. (English: I'll be Tomboyish, Then)<br />
<br />
Shadow of the boundary has Engrish, I think. Or maybe it's Flançais. I honestly can't tell. Can't find on youtube.<br />
<br />
<b>Divine</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://thdoujin-music.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Divine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="199" src="http://thdoujin-music.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Divine.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm okay with this.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So, Sound Online is a circle I haven't heard much of lately. Tsukasa and Minoshima haven't worked on anything together in a while, so I guess that's why: I didn't pay as much attention to him on his own. It turns out that, in the mean time, his style has changed quite a bit. Or, at least so it seems. There are only three tracks on this album, both vocal and instrumental versions. The first two are pretty okay. The last one is actually pretty neat.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD5KJAsQtYE">Mochi no Tsuki, Yoi no Utage</a> is an arrangement of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6BEP0-69Mc">Mamizou's theme</a>, which already reminded me a bit of Sound Online. It's not surprising that this ended up good, both the vocal version and the instrumental, but I'm going with the vocal version, because nobody's uploaded the instrumental. It's also a curse, because it does sound a heck of a lot like the original. Still, if Sound Online made another album like this, it'd be pretty sweet, I think.<br />
<br />
<b>EastNewSoundBest Vol.2</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.touhouwiki.net/images/c/ca/ENS-0019.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://en.touhouwiki.net/images/c/ca/ENS-0019.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yuyuko is busy right now, it seems.<br />
Let's not disturbing her.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So, I downloaded the first volume just before Reitaisai 9. Didn't care for it too much. Which is a shame, because EastNewSound is actually pretty good, for the most part. I say this, yet, if that was their self-proclaimed best, then why did I not care for the album? How can I say that? Well, Uncanny Instinct was proof that they're talented, and I've heard individual songs on youtube. That, and Vol.2 here is actually pretty good. They've got their eurodance-y aesthetic to them, but after hearing a whole album of their original work, I can definitely say that they do their own thing more often than not, and it's not quite eurodance nor is it quite Touhou.<br />
<br />
Compared to the other albums here, this one is pretty long: 58 minutes.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOceKZerCbg">PiPiPiPARU</a> feels like an iosys song, almost, with the lyrics and vocal register. Well, except that it's actually a pretty decent song too. Normally, this sort of vocal performance is offputting for me, but the delivery and metering actually make that into an asset, make it desirable. Also, taught me the word ねたましい.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrv4gk9tTeA">無炎舞踊≠循環</a> is basically for Nuclear Fusion what <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOz-T3NPtLA">緋色月下、狂咲ノ絶</a> was for U.N. Owen Was Her. I find few other ways to describe it. As it is the same arranger, from the same composer, this is highly unsurprising. It is a Good Thing. Listen to it.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mIGihnMgrE">I:solation</a> is pretty much what's good about EastNewSound trance. In that way, it is both extraordinary and unremarkable. Huh.<br />
<br />
<b>Excelsior</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.touhouwiki.net/images/f/f6/Excelsior_Cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://en.touhouwiki.net/images/f/f6/Excelsior_Cover.png" width="196" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Good cover art? Good cover art.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I'm really not sure how I want to classify this album, if at all. It's not big-band, it's not disco, it's not any sort of modern dance music. Not sure, and I don't particularly care: it's a really nice album. I'm not very familiar with what precisely is normal for Pizuya's Cell. I only remember them for working on a thing or two with MyonMyon - a metal act. This isn't a lot of things, but it <i>really</i> isn't metal. The two members listed on touhouwiki are the arranger - who plays the guitar and writes lyrics - and the pianist. I don't have complete album information (and I'm too lazy to look it up on the site), so I'm guessing they do lots of collaboration, as their way of making a living. This time, they've teamed up with the vocalist 3L. 3L is really good, and she sounds especially nice here.<br />
<br />
A real class production. I just wish I knew who to recommend it to, because it <i>is </i>definitely good, whatever it is.<br />
<br />
DD -Instrument- has got some neat stuff going on, I'll say. The flautist knows his stuff, for one. It's not easy to get a flute to do some of those things. The call and response is pretty exceptional, and the electronic components lend it a certain something. Can't find on youtube.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9aZCAZiJoo">Old Nezumy</a> contains tape noises and an answering machine. Also, really strong vocals and disco-like accompaniment, but also tape noises and an answering machine. Because it's awesome.<br />
<br />
Original -Instrument- is something I really have very little to say about. For some reason. Not on youtube.<br />
<br />
<b>実は繊細な貴女とたまに勇敢な私のなんだか騒いでるって話。</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.touhouwiki.net/images/3/37/%E5%AE%9F%E3%81%AF%E7%B9%8A%E7%B4%B0%E3%81%AA%E8%B2%B4%E5%A5%B3%E3%81%A8%E3%81%9F%E3%81%BE%E3%81%AB%E5%8B%87%E6%95%A2%E3%81%AA%E7%A7%81%E3%81%AE%E3%81%AA%E3%82%93%E3%81%A0%E3%81%8B%E9%A8%92%E3%81%84%E3%81%A7%E3%82%8B%E3%81%A3%E3%81%A6%E8%A9%B1%E3%80%82.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://en.touhouwiki.net/images/3/37/%E5%AE%9F%E3%81%AF%E7%B9%8A%E7%B4%B0%E3%81%AA%E8%B2%B4%E5%A5%B3%E3%81%A8%E3%81%9F%E3%81%BE%E3%81%AB%E5%8B%87%E6%95%A2%E3%81%AA%E7%A7%81%E3%81%AE%E3%81%AA%E3%82%93%E3%81%A0%E3%81%8B%E9%A8%92%E3%81%84%E3%81%A7%E3%82%8B%E3%81%A3%E3%81%A6%E8%A9%B1%E3%80%82.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">「ながすぎてる名前話」</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Yep, this is a ButaOtome album. Which means that it's awesome. ButaOtome is another one of those bands I never really mentioned here except in passing (they had a piano album, which I think I might have mentioned). They do lots of jazz fusion, blues, folk, and not-precisely-ska stuff. They also have my favorite singer on the Touhou doujin scene: Ranko. An amazing voice, and their arrangements (disproportionately from ZUN's music albums) are generally excellent. Good musicianship in general. This album, whose name in English translates to A Story of You, Whom are Actually Delicate, and I, Whom am Sometimes Bold, Making a Riot of Some Kind," is certainly well worth your time and hdd space.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7CbD_RmPUg">丁か半か色即是空</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COYF5ID0VLs">紅い記憶、白い未来</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sstFgDj7Lfw">永際の幸</a><br />
<br />
<b>Lightning Discharge</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.touhouwiki.net/images/d/df/PAEG-0016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="197" src="http://en.touhouwiki.net/images/d/df/PAEG-0016.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marisa Kirisame: An Oriental Western<br />
<strike>Magician</strike> Musician.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Crow's Claw is the good Touhou metal act (discounting xi-on) that's not Demetori. And there, is the operative argument: not Demetori. Nobody is Demetori but Demetori, but Crow's Claw does pretty damned well for themselves regardless, and they're certainly more prolific. They went so far as to publish an independent album - a compilation of original works by themselves and a couple other circles, including Demetori. Lightning Discharge is an arrangement album, however, and is quite superb. It's pretty straight metal, and well conceived. Crow's Claw is good, and this album is too, and I have very little to qualify that with. Yeah, their drummer doesn't do much in one or two out of the nine tracks, but that's hardly anything. It's non vocal, it's got pretty great musicianship, and both the arranger and original composer are pretty great.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfVk2JqyWJ0">The Third Eye</a> has the misfortune of having to contend with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKRzWvQZ-BI">Demetori's version</a>. Well, both of them are really good, so perhaps that language is too negative. Also, I am incredulous that whomever uploaded the video I linked to couldn't find a more...fitting...picture of Satori. <a href="http://kafkafuura.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/komeiji-satori-f7-eiki.jpg">Here's a better one.</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBVZCJtszJI">Legend of the Great Gods</a> is an incredible name, right? It is also a great song, fortunately. It's probably my favorite on the album. The sense of rhythm is really quite nice.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cRoMtKUa-k">Rigid Paradise</a> is, basically, Crow's Claw playing something kinda like Rigid Paradise, and I have little more to say about it other than that: of course it's cool.<br />
<br />
So anyway, great album, go listen to it if you like metal, but first, I feel like I did not do Demetori's Nada Upasana Pundarika any kind of justice when I talked about it a few months ago. This album is really great, but if you haven't listened to either, listen to Demetori's first. It's seriously amazing.<br />
<br />
...dammit Crow's Claw, stop reminding me of other albums!<br />
<br />
<i>So, I'm going to make this a two part post, because it's already getting ludicrously long, and I still have Poptrick, Trojan Green Asteroid, ZEphyr, and 東方四重奏6 to cover. I have other things I want to write, and this is taking a ludicrously long time for something that nobody is going to want to read in one sitting. In the not-too-distant future (next Sunday A.D, let's say), I'll probably talk about Toonami, Sins of a Solar Empire, and a few other things. If I'm not writing anything else, anyway.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
Anyway,<br />
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I need to listen to more Fatboy Slim...Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-19789699181205065712012-05-16T00:24:00.001-07:002012-05-16T00:24:57.681-07:00Good for the Good God!<i>Utility for the utility throne!</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
Ah, the Tau: our friendly neighborhood extremist Space!Utilitarians. I'm told I can rest assured that the horrible hellfire their fleet used to cleanse those major cities from orbit directly proceeding our joining the Tau Empire ensured the happiness of the majority. If /tg/ and tvtropes are to be believed, the phrase "good for the good god" came from the gravely mistaken belief by some newcomers that the Tau were the "good guys" of the Warhammer 40k universe. I am not sure how anyone could possibly come to that conclusion, but then again, I'm inherently suspicious of two things: dem commies and dem God-Emprah-hating xenos. The Tau happen to be both. Well, except when they're not. How could those vile traitors who joined the Tau ever leave the caressing hand of the Imperium? I haven't the faintest. Only the God-Emprah knows, I suppose.<br />
<br />
Would you believe that this is a lead-in to me talking about music?<br />
<br />
Well, it is. For some reason, I always associate the album Cross by Justice with Warhammer 40k. I'm not precisely sure how that happened, but it did. Something about reading through some codex entries at the time, probably. Whatever the case, for what it's worth, I'm probably the only person in the whole world who has made this connection, so yay me?<br />
<br />
<b>Cross</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://sleevage.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/justice_cross_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://sleevage.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/justice_cross_cover.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">oooOOOOoooEEEEEEeeeeooOOoo〜</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Now, you may remember me making a reference to Justice in reference to broken stereo equipment a while back, and I think I have to explain myself. Justice is actually really neat, but compared to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwMWEkx2kFQ">Shibayan</a>, their style is much darker and more aggressive. The distortion is greater, the dynamics louder, and the tone darker as a whole. Some features are not dissimilar to brostep, as strange as it is to say. However, the form is still purely house...well, electro-house, and lacks the distinct reggae flow and time signature, much less wubby bass drops (thank god). One of these days, I'll have to go on a hunt to see if I can find a good, authentic, Bristol-style dubstep album to talk about, but for now, let there be Justice!<br />
<br />
Dear god that was lame. Should give you a hint to just how professional this review will be, what with the ever so classy track-by-track analysis and sentence fragments. Anyway, the album opens with a 60s sword-and-sandal movie soundtrack...or so it seems. This seems entirely appropriate, for a track named <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThKNt-GY1ww">Genesis</a>. The orchestra drops into an funky synth-guitar-thing with nice use of sampled vocals, redoubled with a wubby sounding synth. The slight chorus in the background give the track a very grandiose, deep feeling, and the heavy, syncopated bass beats hammer the point home, smoothing into a bit of a transition track (I hesitate to call it filler) called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSJ4WintrrY">Let There Be Light</a>. Justice seems to be dropping The Book on us with the Biblical themes. Hey, electronic dance music is exactly the time and place for bombast. Of the track itself, it adds little stylistically except as a bit of an emotional refractory period. It does not have as clear a progression, except for the addition of instrumentation. That is, until the end of the track, where a light, wet synth is introduced, carrying a light theme on top of the base. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjWPyDMk8k8">D.A.N.C.E</a> follows, and plays on the lighter feel of the end of the previous track, with a more disco-y feel to it, and a Jackson-5-esque vocal section. If the Jackson-5 wrote stupid lyrics, that is. I suppose if you're looking for awesome lyrics, electronic dance music probably isn't the place to look. Unless you're a Touhou Doujin.<br />
<br />
So anyway, the next track - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfDQg2dF8uw">Newjack</a>'s - instrumentation still has the characteristic Justice open transformer circuit buzz, but the overall style reminds me more of Daft Punk. The heavily fragmented vocal samples make for a catchy melody, and the chime backing and interludes work well with it. Then the album takes a turn for the heavy, and goes into <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQWuWfxMXA0">Phantom parts 1</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR035Mhd58o">and 2</a>. The main melody is at first carried by what might or might not be a really, really heavily vocoder-ized voice, or might be an exceptionally voice like synthesizer. Either way, it gives the track a very distinct, unique feeling. We get an interlude of broken transformer circuits arcing in minor keys, leading back into the main melody with renewed vigor, now with mild un-distorted electric guitar. Part 2 leads into a logical progression of the first part's themes, except the buzzing synths take the lead, and the vocoderthings take a continuo position. Disco strings return here, and they give a rather eery feeling, being certainly in keeping with the track, but somehow feeling at odds with the form. Justice samples at prolifically from all concievable sources, and the finished product, while composed of constituent parts that may on their own make no sense together, when used for Justice's purposes, make for truly unique aesthetic that can only be called Justice's own.<br />
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We're given a bit of a refractory period with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX3hPSXwudU">Valentine</a>. Compositionally, compared with the heavily sampled tracks that proceeded it, it feels very simple. Standing on its own, I'm not sure it quite holds up, but it functions very well in the context of the album. After that comes <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbN5B93mpFE">TTHHEE PPAARRTTYY</a>. We don't talk about that track. For what it's worth, this singer does the Ke$ha thing better than Ke$ha. Regardless, *skip* What I really meant was that the next track is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nWnLxYzuBE">DVNO</a>. This is also a vocal track, though with the saving grace that the actual lyrics are very hard to decipher. I might have to make a misheard lyrics video for this one. The vocalist - a male - does not have the most precise voice, but it has an interesting texture, and is expressive to the extent that it lends more to the track than simply another instrument at Justice's disposal. He reminds me a bit of MGMT's singer, actually.<br />
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The next track is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5S0dkLZoTg">Stress</a>, and belongs in an Alfred Hitchcock movie from hell. I would say there were sawing violins, if they were actually violins, and I would say that there were quavering violins too, if synths could quaver. Eventually, more samples of instruments that come and go too fast for me to identify give the track more melody, but it's still very much focused on the suspense. It maintains this atmosphere very well. I have no idea what DJ would ever play this track in his or her set, but it's pretty damn fascinating as a case study in atmosphere in the age of electronic composition. And as just being all around awesome. Speaking of awesome, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqJu_3CPhC4">Waters of Nazareth</a>! Timpani drums! Not often you hear those in electronic dance music. Which is a shame, really. Also, some is going "guh" into the microphone. And lots of distortion. ALL the distortion! The intro is rather repetitious, but leads into a cool organ section with Justice's signature growly and beepy synth work backing it. It works exceptionally well.<br />
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The final track is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7XTqHbsrdY">One Minute to Midnight</a>, with has some neat, highly compressed and manipulated electric guitar action. There's not much going on in this track, but it's a very nice lead out to the album.<br />
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This is the only Justice album I've listened to in its entirety, but I haven't heard anything quite like what I've heard on Cross. Shibayan is the closest, having some heavy Justice influence at times, but they both have their own distinct styles, and listening to their albums back to back (I just put on Musou Materialise right now), I have a hard time comparing the two on any level except, perhaps, technologically. On the other hand, like Shibayan's albums, Cross is far more uniform in style and mood than, say, Daft Punk. They do not vary from track to track as much, and though Cross does not run into problems of listener fatigue (that I've encountered), this is not their strong point. Still, it's a singular album that anyone looking for something different in house should sample.<br />
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Ah, I feel I should also mention this. The album itself is not particularly well mastered: it's very loud. It's not much of a problem, but it's sometimes enough to be noticeable. It's a shame, really.<br />
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<b>Some Other Notes</b><br />
I'm currently waiting for the Dark Moor album Hall of the Olden Dreams to come from Amazon, at which point I will talk about that. I've been listening to quite a bit of Dark Moor recently. They're very good, and I look forward to talking about the album.<br />
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I hear Daft Punk will be coming out with a new album, possibly this summer. I can't wait for more news.<br />
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Also in the cue, Reitaisai (a convention where Touhou doujin sell stuff) is coming at the end of this May. Syrufit will be coming out with a new album, as will TAMusic. I will likely talk about both, as well as anything else interesting that comes out then.<br />
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Until then, enjoy some mega-cheesy fantasy power metal:<br />
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<b><i>DAWNNNNNRIDAAAAAHHHHH~!</i></b>Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-6534627965041545352012-04-11T22:15:00.000-07:002012-04-11T23:13:01.173-07:00¿Omaqué?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From my Pol Phil class "notes."</td></tr>
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Okay, so this is going to be an "omake" post. "Omake" is a Japanese term meaning "bonus." You see it very often on the Japanese speaking parts of the internet. Western bloggers have also adopted the term for their own use. It now means "I don't have anything to say, so I'll just throw a bunch of random shit up and hope it sticks." Such as, explaining the definition of omake.</div>
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<b>End of Evangeliffect</b></div>
A long time ago, I promised I'd write something about Mass Effect 3. That never happened. Now it's been too long for me to write down my thoughts completely uninfluenced by the intervening time: the intervening time during which the whole internet bitched about little else but The Ending. Admittedly, it's not a good ending, but the point has been belabored for so long that it no longer really interests me (if you want a very nice rundown of the technical details why it sucks, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs">this guy's got it covered</a>). Here's what I do have to say about it, and the one thing I haven't said yet: Mass Effect could never have "ended" well. Mass Effect's emotional weight - and a good amount of its narrative - was delivered through direct interaction with its world. For there <i>not</i> to have been at the very least a disappointing break in gameplay, the denouement must in and of itself have been interactive. A truly fitting ending would have involved Shepard - or someone, anyway, not necessarily Shep - traveling throughout the galaxy and <i>seeing for herself</i> what sort of shape the galaxy was in after the Reapers, and what direction it was heading. It could be heartbreaking, it could be inspiring, it could bring closure like little else. As it is, the game was bound to have ended disappointingly, and now Bioware's going to add more cutscenes to fix the ending, which is more likely to induce Return of the King syndrome than anything else. If Return of the King had originally ended on Mount Doom with Frodo and Sam about to die after destroying The One Ring, and then later, the six other endings were added in the DVD, I'd have been glad to have seen the six other endings, but I'd still have more respect for the version that ended exactly and precisely when it was supposed to. It'd still function better as a film.<br />
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Anyway, everything else has pretty much been said and done. The only thing that really bugs me about the internet's response - besides the ludicrous entitlement issues that always disappoint but never surprise - is how some people seem to see the "synthesis" ending as giving the Reapers what they want. The Reapers want to eradicate advanced civilizations and turn them into Reapers so that the next generation of intelligent civilizations may rise. Nowhere is transhumanism mentioned in this. Individuality remains intact. Multiculturalism remains intact. The only thing that changed was everyone...glows green I guess? To be perfectly honest, that's the one thing I can say for certain I thought Bioware did brilliantly <i>right</i>: the ending isn't "good Shepard vs jerkass Shepard." Pretty much all the major choices before came down to "do the ends justify the means:" the Rachni, the Council, the Collector station, winning that game of poker with Adams. To be honest, that's deeper than most other games ever tread, but it was still rather frustrating at times. The Ending, however, was much more nuanced. When I was at that point in the ending, late at night, before it had really sunken in just how stupid the whole Reaper thing really was, I was actually half-way impressed. Or at least, so it seemed, then it turned out that it didn't actually mean anything, and I joined the rest of the internet in a moment of silent "what the fuck just happened?"</div>
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<b>Oh Hey, More Touhou</b></div>
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Okay, so here's something a bit odd: people keep saying that Imperishable Night is the easiest of the Windows Touhou games, but I can still barely complete the game on normal without slow-modo. On the other hand, Perfect Cherry Blossom is pretty easy for me, yet it's one of the harder ones for the rest of the internet. I beat it on normal on my first playthrough: that's something you're not supposed to be able to do in a Touhou game. When it comes to games like this, I'm a firm believer in "if it's not kicking your ass, turn up the difficulty or gtfo." Perfect Cherry Blossom is still my favorite Touhou game on account of its soundtrack, art, and design, but I do usually end up playing Hard more often than Normal. I think the internet and I can agree on one thing though: Subterranean Animism is <i>fucking insane</i>. Like, I-still-haven't-beaten-the-third-stage-boss insane, and it takes several continues sometimes to get through the second. Then again, I've really only been playing it during D&D while the rest of the party is taking their turn in initiative, or arguing about loot, so it's not like I've had lots of time to practice.</div>
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Anyway, I've lately downloaded and been listening to the album Musou Materialise (for some reason, it's always romanized British style) by ShibayanRecords. I've written about this album's direct predecessor, and I came to the conclusion that, because of the similar natures of the songs, and Shibayan's own style, it didn't bear extended periods of listening. Musou Materialize does not encounter this problem. In fact, it's an improvement in almost every possible way, sounding like what you might expect the love-child of Justice and Daft Punk to sound like, except Japanese. I am not going to detail it here, but if you like Justice, Daft Punk, Touhou, or all three, then definitely check it out. The <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL4I_INoagY">funkiness</a> is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLo1TT_Ql4k">overwhelming</a> (and unlike <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqJu_3CPhC4">Justice</a>, not as likely to be confused for broken stereo equipment).</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stripe Pattern in a nutshell. (image rights<br />
belong to him, 訴えないでください)</td></tr>
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I still mean to do that article on Touhou doujin manga, but I still have not had the time I wanted. I shall likely not have that sort of time until school lets out. This is a shame, since recently, the man known only as SMS Skull 1 got me turned onto an artist called Stripe Pattern. He has a very distinctive style of art and storytelling that bears further analysis. While manga - especially, it seems, Touhou manga - is generally quite expressionistic, Stripe Pattern takes it up to a new level. Moreover, he always has very interesting insights into previously ill-examined characters. I'm tempted to make Battle Cry required reading or something, for when I do write that article. Looking at the touhouwiki archives, it looks like KafkaFuura had a hand in translating some of these. I'll have to ask him about it: some of these translations definitely feel very loose, as if the original made use of lots of double entendre and meaning that didn't quite translate literally. Not that the dialog is particularly necessary in some of these works.</div>
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<b>Ender's Publicist</b></div>
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So, filming of Gavin Hood's adaptation of Orson Scott Card's seminal SciFi novel Ender's Game began at the end of February, in New Orleans. I don't know what's in New Orleans that they specifically need to shoot there, but who cares, because this film is definitely getting made. Will it be good? Damned if I know, but it'll be interesting to see where this goes. It'll be at least as interesting to see how it's marketed. With a cast of kids, will they market it like any other YA novel adaptation? Will they spin it as a summer blockbuster? How <i>do</i> you handle the marketing of a novel whose cast would fit right into Harry Potter or The Hunger Games, but who today's kids won't remember (or, most likely, even understand)? You'll get the literary Sci-Fi crowd easily enough: both those who read it when it came out, and those like me who, the discerning nerds we are, picked it up out of curiosity. Will they be satisfied with that though? I doubt it. Films take lots of time and effort, and if they don't try to sell this to a broader audience than that, then they're not doing their job. Especially if the movie ends up being good.</div>
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Whatever the case may be, they've already made at least one overture to we the Ender's Game fans who live on the internet: someone's started <a href="http://endersgameblog.tumblr.com/">a production blog</a>. It appears to update every week on Wednesday, though my hypothesis may be proven wrong if no new post occurs within the next five hours of me writing this. The posts set the right tone, in my opinion. They aren't informative about the film itself (they shouldn't be), but they portray a sense of enthusiasm and excitement for the project. Whether or not it actually reflects the atmosphere of the production, it's fun to read, and heartening. After all, I've said many times that when a movie sucks, the two main reasons are almost without fail either the script or the crew's ennui, and I have good reason to believe that the script is at least solid. Of course, all that really means is that we probably wont be watching it in Riff Club a few years from now. Movies are strange things.</div>
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Anyway, the film's release date is a <i>long</i> way off (November 2013, according to Wikipedia), so I'm not precisely exited about it, per se, but it's an interesting thing to keep tabs on.<br />
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Edit: hypothesis confirmed, it does indeed update Wednesdays. New picture is of Ender's room. Looks pretty much perfect.</div>
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<b>Dusty Cels</b></div>
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If you're an American anime fan, and were born sometime in the early 90s or very late 80s, you probably watched a programming block called Toonami on a basic cable TV channel called Cartoon Network. Even if you didn't watch it, you probably still heard about how, on April 1st, this previously cancelled block made a return. For one night, exactly. Certain parts of the internet exploded with renewed frustration at its cancellation, and desperate hopes that it might return. For the first time in, perhaps, all of internet history, those hopes actually have some basis in fact: Cartoon Network has <i>not</i> denied that they are considering brining it back, and in fact, has said that those interested should make themselves audible so that they can better evaluate what sort of audience it would get. I am sorry to say that, since my TV isn't hooked up, I watched a not-quite-legal livestream of it, but if it were to return, I would definitely watch it. I can think of few better ways to spend a Saturday night than watching awesome, poorly dubbed anime, hosted by <strike>Spike Spiegel</strike> <strike>Roger Smith</strike> <strike>Grunt</strike> <strike>Captain Bartlett</strike> Steve Blum.</div>
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Of course, in all likelihood, Toonami won't be coming back. Licensing and dubbing anime is a high-tension bet when your audience is so uncertain. I have reason to believe that they <i>could</i> sustain a pretty decent audience, but there's no way to make that argument in a way that doesn't rely on the hear-say of any number of given 90s kids and internet nerds. If they were to restart the Toonami block, they'd be jumping off a cliff without making sure the stranger you just met tied the bungee cord right. Still, since speculation is what I do, suppose that Toonami did start again. What would they show? Certainly, I foresee the occasional Trigun, Cowboy BeBop, and Tenchi Muyo! reruns, but they wouldn't survive on nostalgia for long: people would actually realize how awful the dub of Gundam Wing really was. They would definitely have to license new releases, but what, pray tell, might they license? The production committees favor shows that cater two Japanese otaku, who watch it on Japanese television, buy the ridiculously expensive Japanese DVD releases, and the hilariously weird Japanese exclusive merchandise. While there are many on the internet who watch and appreciate Nichijous and such, that's not the sort of show that drew in people to Toonami. That's been true since the early 2000s, and if you just look at the Wikipedia page, illustrating Toonami's lineup by year, you can see for yourself how much the quality of shows had thinned out.</div>
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Once again, then, what would they air? It would seem a problem, except that I'm feeling rather confident about the direction the Japanese industry is taking. The last couple of seasons brought us shows like Tiger & Bunny and Madoka Magica, and this season is in the process of giving us things like Jormungand. I would like to think that it's a sign of the times that Japan is slowly starting to realize that making the occasional non-pandering title now and then is not only feasible, but profitable. That's all we really need at this point.</div>
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So, off the top of my head, here's some new shows, movies, and OVAs that have come out since 2008 that I think Toonami, should it come back, would be remiss to miss:</div>
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- Eden of the East + Movies</div>
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- The Rebuild of Evangelion films</div>
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I haven't seen a lot, so I'm sure there's perfect stuff that I've missed, but pretty much all of those would fit perfectly with what people seem to have loved about Toonami. The only thing that gives me pause is that first episode of Madoka Magica, which, though I love the series, is still hard for me to sit through. Here's how it goes: "OMG THIS IMAGERY FUCKING ROCKS AND oh, it's another middle school slice of life show. Huh. I have to give it to them: this is the most inane dialog I've ever heard. Oh wait, what's this now? A mysterious transfer student? How impressive. I'm going to stop watching this now." That's pretty much exactly what happened the first time I tried to watch it, and then abandoned it, and I'm worried that might be what happens if it aired on Toonami. Which would be a shame, since it's an awesome show that everyone who has ever watched an anime and liked it should see.</div>
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<b>Taking a Jormungander at the New Season</b></div>
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Anyway, speaking of Jormungand, that's one of this season's shows, and it's awesome. The writer is Yousuke Kuroda, who also happened to be behind one or two other anime, like Trigun, Tenchi Muyo!, and the Hellsing OVAs. It's about a former child soldier named Jonah, who hates everyone associated with weapons, and yet travels as a mercenary with an arms dealer named Koko. Despite his hatred of war and murder, he's come to depend on guns, and has become as dead inside as you'd expect a former child soldier working as a mercenary to be. Also, lots of gunfights. The writing is spectacular, of course, but there's something about the character designs that make it work that much better. Koko is one of the most insidiously menacing looking characters I've ever seen, and Jonah compliments her excellently. The use of white symbolizing death is not uncommon, but somehow, it works. I'm not quite sure precisely why it works this time more than others (perhaps it's the way it ties into the characters' mannerisms), but it does. Of course, this show could easily end up forgettable after all, but if it keeps up at this pace, I'll be very happy.</div>
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Bodacious Space Pirates is continuing into 26 episodes, and is still a very well put together thing, but I feel it's lost its way a bit. The early episodes had a very specific vision of what it wanted to do with Marika's character and the world of the story. With the introduction of the two princesses, and their storyline, that got muddled a bit. She's stopped growing, or rather, we've stopped finding out new things about her. The two new characters have little in the way of depth to take its place. Cowboy BeBop could get away with that, because Spike, Jet, Faye, and Ed are inherently fun to watch, but Marika and her crew, while fun in context, doesn't really have that quality. That's not what the show was ever about. It's still a good show, of course, but not as good.</div>
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On the other hand, we have Yoko Kanno and Shinichirou Watanabe of Cowboy BeBop fame making an anime about Jazz, which, for those playing at home, is shorthand for "holy crap this is going to rock." I need to look up when that's going to air, and if it'll be simulcasted. Expect to be hearing about this one.</div>
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<b>To Make the End of Puns</b></div>
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And now, I must attend to other, far less important matters like homework. Until then,</div>
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Don't you love how villains in old Japanese video games speak? かっこいいぜ!</div>Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-79924280753828663922012-02-26T23:19:00.000-08:002012-02-26T23:19:29.926-08:00Disinterested Lecturer - Touhou Music 101I talk a lot about music from the series of bullet hell shooters known as Touhou, specifically about works based off of them. Naturally, anyone coming across this on the internet likely doesn't know what a Touhou is or what music sounds like. This is problematic. For one, people won't understand half of what I say. While it's obvious I don't write this with the idea that people actually read it, it'd be nice if any hypothetical readers were able to understand it. Also, Touhou music is amazing and people don't know about it: this is a huge problem.<br />
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So, to help with this, I've put together a guide to 15 of the most prominent compositions from the Touhou series, along with a short explanation.<br />
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<b>The ZUN Scale - Menu Music</b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/adJ3we-uFTo?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe>F A# C D# C A# F A# C D# C A# F A# C D# C A# F A# C D# C A#...you will hear this on opening almost any of the windows era Touhou games. It may not be in the same key, or in the same place compositionally, but it will be there. It gets you in the mood to dodge rain high above the scenery of Gensokyo - a serene yet surreal place where gods have nothing better to do than shoot lots of magic at each other and drink tea and sake. It's not as often you hear it arranged, but when you do, it's usually the first track on the album. For instance, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy7jk77P51k">R.E.D.</a> from Sound Holic's album Metallic Vampire. ZUN says the theme sounds "Japanese" to him. ZUN says that about a lot of his work, and still nobody really knows what he means. It's definitely a very calm and airy sort of progression, and as ZUN pointed out himself, doesn't sound much like a shooting game.<br />
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<b>Bad Apple!! - Elly's Stage Theme (Lotus Land Story)</b><br />
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While arrangers frequently use music from the PC-98 era Touhou games - you still see lots of Casket of Stars and Romantic Children - few of the originals are within the fandom's consciousness. They're known almost solely by their remixes. This is mostly because the PC-98 soundtracks were not encoded into mp3 files, and must be played through an emulator. Bad Apple!! is Elly's stage theme from Lotus Land Story, but is more commonly known because of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkgK8eUdpAo">Alstroemeria Records' seminal work based on it, and the PV that helped make it famous</a>. The Alstroemeria verison's riff is actually slightly different: it ends up at the bottom of the octave rather than the top of the next. Its actually kinda odd, being used to the one that ends in A#6 instead of A#5. It's also a good place to track the progression of ZUN's style, since according to him, this is like his earlier works from before he began making the Touhou games. Most obviously, all the PC-98 compositions had to be simpler in structure because FM-synth only allowed for so many tones at once, without as much variety in tone type.<br />
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<b>Beloved Tomboyish Daughter - Cirno's Theme (Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil)</b><br />
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Cirno is a simple character, and she has a very simple and melodic theme. ZUN set out to write a stupid sounding song, and in a way, I suppose he succeeded. It has a certain air of innocence and simplicity about it, certainly. There's not much complexity to the composition itself: a beat, a bass guitar, and a keyboard part (followed by a piano part). A few measures into the main body of the piece after the introduction, the keyboard joins the piano, and there is some minor polyphony between them. This is a popular song to play on the piano due to the simplicity of its arrangement, and yet, one does not too often hear doujin arrangements of it. In a way, having such an easily recognizable and simple melody makes it hard to make an arrangement of it that doesn't simply take the song verbatim and transpose it onto different instrumentation. No matter what you do with it, it'll always be Beloved Tomboyish Daughter, and nothing else.<br />
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<b>Locked Girl - Patchouli Knowledge's Theme (Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil)</b><br />
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ZUN wrote Locked Girl to be very heavy despite its fast tempo. He rather succeeded. The composition is fast, with a constant percussion part and base, but the melody itself has a sort of air of melancholy to it, as well as the grandeur given to it by its form. The introduction of the piece with a strongly stated melody rather reminds me of some of some of the more bombastic stuff to come out of the late classical and romantic period. Certainly, Dvorak loved this trope. We also get introduced to ZUN's love of trumpets here. Those trumpets appear in freaking everything. Locked Girl is known in the fandom both on its own, and also for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL3FDHNjqW8">Cool&Create's arrangement of the same name.</a> Understandably so: both the song and PV are ridiculously cute. The melody and feel of the song lend itself very well, being already very expressive and voice-like. At least, that's what I seem to take from it.<br />
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<b>Septette for the Dead Princess - Remilia Scarlet's Theme (Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil)</b><br />
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Remilia claims to be a descendent of Dracula himself. This is a rather obvious lie, but nobody calls her out on it: she has nothing to prove, and would rather sit inside and drink tea all day anyway. Because of this, her theme doesn't sound much like a final boss theme at all. It's got ZUN's signature percussion, and despite the complexities of its many layers, has a strong central theme to it. It's one of the most "charismatic" songs from the Touhou games, befitting Scarlet. It's not actually a septette: there's percussion and trumpet, piano, and some other synthesized instruments that don't quite have any equivalents. Unlike most of his other pieces, it doesn't have a real prominent continuo or bass part, not like, say, Locked Girl anyway. ZUN says it's a Jazz-Fusion sort of piece...ZUN's descriptions can be pretty weird sometimes. Given how he writes most of this stuff while drunk, this is unsurprising.<br />
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<b>U.N. Owen Was Her? - Flandre Scarlet's Theme (Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil)</b><br />
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Flandre is gonna kill you all.<br />
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But at least the last thing you hear will be here theme song. It's probably the second most well known composition from Touhou besides for Bad Apple!! and Doll Judgement. It's been spread around the internet as McRoll'd and as John Stump's Death Waltz (the latter was how I found Touhou to begin with), some people never even realizing what it actually was. It's a pretty strange piece structurally. You have the intro segment with the rapid fire riff, string continuo, and weirdly non-metric percussion, which goes into the much simpler coda that transitions to the main melody. It's a simple melody, as always, and a powerful one. There's a tempo shift as it goes into the next segment, which is several octaves lower and serves as a coda back into the melody. ZUN said he had a lot of fun writing this one. It definitely comes through. It's interesting to note that the weirdness with the tempo and meter creates some pretty big problems for people who have tried to make arrangements of it. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOW2JpPi6Wc">Incidentally, here is the arrangement through which I discovered Touhou in the first place.</a> It's like Scott Joplin decided to write a piano rag that could <i>only </i>be played on player piano.<br />
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<b>Doll Judgement - Alice Margatroid's Theme (Perfect Cherry Blossom)</b><br />
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<i>Kirai...kirai LAABIN~</i><br />
<i>Dare ga, dare ga KAN BI ALI FAU TSU</i><br />
<i>Doushite? Naze kashira...</i><br />
<i>WAI WAI WAI WAI MISSHU A LOT FOEBAA~</i><br />
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For doubtlessly a good 90% of Touhou fans, they will feel the urge to sing these lyrics on hearing this song. This is called IOSYSitis, and it kills untold multitudes each year. In all seriousness, the IOSYS arrangement called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8ZXID1tPXs">Marisa Stole the Precious Thing</a> (listen at your own peril) is probably why it's so well known, but it'd be one of my favorites regardless. It's got ZUN's ever common busy piano work, which works with some synth sounds to create some rather eerie feeling polyphonies, that lead without coda into the main melody. ZUN says that he composed this one with renewed vigor, and that he wanted to emphasize how laid back these girls are as they blast each other with arcane power for fun and profit. I don't think he quite nailed the laid back part, not with the erie feeling and melancholic melody. A lot of ZUN's better work feels kinda melancholic, come to think of it. That, and nostalgic, but this is definitely not a nostalgic piece.<br />
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<b>Ancient Temple - Youmu Konpaku's Stage Theme (Perfect Cherry Blossom)</b><br />
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If you were to ask me which composition most embodied ZUN's style, it'd definitely be Ancient Temple. It's got the eeriness and nostalgia, the laid back feeling, the pentatonic scales, the key shifts, and the semiquavers, all conversing the same ideas and melodies. It doesn't feel much like any other soundtrack I've heard, and doesn't fall neatly into any compositional category besides romanticism. ZUN said (I feel like I'm quoting Confucius or something) that it expresses a "nostalgia that is deep within every Japanese and the frantic feeling that arises when someone is approaching." For once, ZUN's commentary actually makes a whole lot of sense: the pentatonic scale and shinto-like flutes and percussion seem very nostalgic, and yet, I also get a strong feeling of ZUN despite it. I wonder if ZUN would want to live in Gensokyo...he always comes through so strongly here. The music helps define the world, so it's very much his world, reflecting his beliefs.<br />
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<b>Love Colored Master Spark - Marisa Kirisame's Theme (Imperishable Night)</b><br />
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<b>Maiden's Capriccio - Reimu Hakurei's Theme (Imperishable Night)</b><br />
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This is the theme of Touhou's other rather dubious protagonist. It is not actually a capriccio. Like Love Colored Master Spark, it's a very game-like and direct. It fast in tempo, and it moves along quite rapidly structurally too. Unlike Marisa's theme, it has a strange feeling of valor and power that really doesn't feel like Reimu. She's the protagonist of these games only when people yell at her enough to actually do her job and keep Gensokyo from falling apart while she pretends to clean up the shrine and drinks tea on the veranda. I think it's the fact that it feels like a victory march played in double time, with the constant trumpet melody and simple structure.<br />
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Maiden's Capriccio is also a victim of IOSYSitis, with their seminal earworm <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVtTNN8jJXU">Neko Miko Reimu</a>. Sing it with me:<br />
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<i>Neko Miko Reimu, ai shiteru! </i>(Cat-eared Miko Reimu, I love you.)<br />
<i>Neko Miko Reimu, nani shiteru?</i> (Cat-eared Miko Reimu, the hell are you doing?)<br />
<i>Neko Miko Reimu, shuran yurari... </i>(Cat-eared Miko Reimu, hopelessly drunk...)<br />
<i>Neko Miko Reimu, muron furari! </i>(Cat-eared Miko Reimu, and aimless, of course.)<br />
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<b>Lunatic Eyes - Reisen Udongein Inaba's Theme (Imperishable Night)</b><br />
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<embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lY_KORpQPdI&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object>Actually, come to think of it, most of Imperishable Night's soundtrack was pretty heavy. However, there's nothing so "heroic" in Lunatic Eyes as Maiden's Capriccio or Love Colored Master Spark. It's actually a rather spooky theme, which is fitting for an encounter with an uncanny lunarian rabbit in the middle of a bamboo forest during an unnaturally long night. The frantic lead-in piano and synth to the kinda hard-rock-ish melody feels like an idea I've heard before somewhere, and not just in other soundtracks either. I think the defining feature of this piece is how its A melody is a restatement of the same riffs in different keys. I think there must be something inherent to that construction that resonates with us as being "frantic" or "insane." Anyway, Lunatic Eyes also has a well known IOSYS arrangement called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5vmMyor5i4">Stops At the Affected Area and Immediately Dissolves.</a> It will not leave you singing any lyrics, only saying to yourself "wh...what just happened to me?" I think this song is the closest I'll ever come to an acid trip. There's rabbits...and everyone is speaking nonsense...and some girl who looks like Robin Hood if he were a girl and dressed like a nurse talking about suppositories...and now they're playing DDR...WHAT'S HAPPENING?<br />
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<b>Flowering Night - Sakuya Izayoi's Theme (Phantasmagoria of Flower View)</b><br />
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Sakuya had a theme in Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil, but this one is probably her better one, even though I hear arrangements of both with equal regularity. It's a softer feel to it than her other theme, though it also feels a lot more generic in form and structure. It's got a simple melody without too many moving parts. It's A segment goes C G F# G F# G A G F# G D E B A B A B D B A B in various keys over and over, unless it's doing the B segment, which does something else over and over again. This, of course, is not necessarily a bad thing, it's just a trait it has. ZUN said that he wanted this one to sound more human, and at the very least, he made it sound not nearly as noisy and cluttered as Lunar Dial (her theme from Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil). It's another one of those pieces one doesn't see too many arranges for, except on piano. It lends itself quite well to piano (I even taught it to myself for the computer keyboard - it's not difficult either).<br />
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<b>The Gensokyo the Gods Loved - Nitori's Stage Theme (Mountain of Faith)</b><br />
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In a way, you can call this "Gensokyo's theme." ZUN wrote this to be a liberal and melodious piece to reflect the scenery of Gensokyo that appears to Marisa or Reimu as they enter the Youkai mountain: a place of majesty and beauty where mythic beings live apart from humans, unused to them. For this reason, it's a simple piece, with a strong but complex melody stated in different keys by ZUN trumpets and piano, with his usual percussion and subtle FM-synth continuo. Unlike, say, Ancient Temple, this composition isn't generally associated with the boss it precedes - Nitori Kawashiro. For this reason, it made a good choice for Yuuhei Satellite to arrange for the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTe1JMTlwwc">OP to Manpuku Jinja's Memories of Phantasm: The Spring Snow Incident.</a> Given how well The Spring Snow Incident embodies the soul of the Touhou games, it was a good choice.<br />
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<b>Naitive Faith - Suwako Moriya's Theme (Mountain of Faith)</b><br />
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Gensokyo has many gods, and yet, none. To ordinary humans living there, even the lowly fairies are gods, not to mention the <i>human</i> magicians and mikos that can strive even with the real gods. This is the theme of a god: a rather childish looking god with a hat that looks like it has googly eyes stuck on it. Such is Touhou. Befitting such a character is a rapid, childish sounding theme. ZUN used lots of piano in Mountain of Faith, and it shows up here, doubled up with some sort of synth string. In structure, it's not unlike The Gensokyo the Gods Loved, except far more rapid and game-like.<br />
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It suffers from IOSYSitis, at least, to people who understand some Japanese. The song in question is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUBbigtfCWs">Kero⑨Destiny</a>, which turns it into the worlds weirdest childrens' song. Odd how the life of a several thousand year old god who once led an army has been simplified to that of a child. There's a lot to be said about Suwako's character in general, really.<br />
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<b>Nuclear Fusion - Utsuho Reiuji's Theme (Subterranean Animism)</b><br />
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Personally, I consider <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsMNqUVv3mQ">Demetori's version</a> almost canon. The original may as well be metal anyway.<br />
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<b>Homework Assignment:</b><br />
Now that you've been introduced to the barest essentials of the Touhou musical canon, if you've got another 20 minutes, here is an excellent piano medley, which includes all of the songs mentioned here. It highlights some of the problems encountered when trying to arrange these compositions, as well as ways in which these problems can be turned into features.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/3-l47r9gua8?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Here are some of the better known doujin composers:<br />
TAMusic: Makes good chamber music, crappy electronic-chamber hybrid.<br />
WAVE: Arranges for a real orchestra, forgets what they were arranging.<br />
Virus Key: Arranges for a midi orchestra, adds faux choir to ALL the things.<br />
Buta-Otome: Makes cool fusion arrangements of Magical Astronomy. Also, sometimes actual Touhou.<br />
Alstroemeria Records: Makes house, sometimes quotes Touhou and calls it an arrangement.<br />
Syrufit: Makes electronica and engrish.<br />
Demetori: Makes a lot of incredibly awesome noise.<br />
Xi~On: Makes slightly less noise, slightly less awesome.<br />
ShibayanRecords: Makes bad easy listening, kick-ass electronic music.<br />
Unlucky Morpheus: Makes kick-ass Jazz, kinda neat speed metal.<br />
EastNewSound: Makes you forget you're listening to pop.<br />
Sound Online: Doesn't make much nowadays, but used to make really clean sounding electronica.<br />
Sound Holic: Makes lots of different stuff with varying degrees of awesome.<br />
Cool&Create: Makes alternative rock, funny sounds into the microphone.<br />
Tomoya: Makes awesome piano music, awful recordings.<br />
REDALiCE: Doesn't make much anymore either, but used to make lots of really fast techno.<br />
Yuuhei Satellite: Makes awesome PVs and electronic music.<br />
IOSYS: Makes absolutely no fucking sense.Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-70561300902456135392012-02-25T22:22:00.000-08:002012-02-25T22:57:26.691-08:00Compound Backlog Increase - Issue 3Yay, this isn't anywhere near on time. I started writing it a week or so ago, but that never happened. I had too much stuff to do. I still do have a lot of crap to do, actually, and it feels a bit like the whole damn academic sky is deciding to fall on my humble head all at once, but that's unimportant.<br />
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To the blog, I mean.<br />
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Anyway, this one is about crap I've been watching. I can't decide how structured I want this to be. I don't feel much like writing long tracts right now, so probably pretty broken.<br />
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<b>Bodacious Space Pirates</b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's kinda like this, except not at all.</td></tr>
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Well, in Japanese it was called <i>Mouretsu Pirates</i>, but that's boring, so I'll call it by its English name. Can you believe there are actually people who don't like that title? It sounds like the most fun thing ever...well, assuming you like fun, and all. Also, assuming you didn't live through the 80s when people actually said "bodacious;" then I can imagine it being annoying. Fortunately, I'm a 90s kid, so yay.<br />
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Anyway, the show - so far - is about an ordinary-high-school-girl who is heir to a pirate spaceship, and the whole thing is a bildungsroman where...<br />
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...okay, if I spell out the premise like that, it sounds intensely awful, and then I'd be doing a disservice to the show. I won't lie and say it's not trope heavy: it's trope heavy. It's not a deconstruction either: the tropes are being played with, certainly, even occasionally subverted, but there is nothing edgy or groundbreaking here. The thing with Bodacious Space Pirates is, even though it's only seven episodes in (eight, if you're watching fansubs or a paying member of crunchyroll - I am not), while it has these tropes, there's always a level deeper than what meets the eye that turns what would be surface level cliches into rather interesting characters, and an otherwise standard setup into surprisingly intricate science fiction of the sort not normally seen outside of literature. While this alone does not a show make, it's well made, and rather fun in a way that few shows nowadays are.<br />
<br />
As I was saying, it's about a girl who becomes the captain of the pirate ship Bentenmaru, a vessel handed down to her by her mother, operated under a letter of marque. Technically, this makes them Bodacious Space <i>Privateers</i>, but since it takes five or so episodes for her to even come to the decision to take up the offer, I suppose the emphasis isn't really on the "pirate" part of the title. The show sets up the protagonist, Marika, and her life before being a space pirate before anything else. As it's a 26 episode series, it has more than enough time to do this, and I think this sort of leisurely pace helps ground the show quite well. We get a good sense of Marika's motivations and character, and a good sense of the general mood of the show (unless the unlikely happens and things take an Evangelion-like turn, but this show is too tightly produced for that).<br />
<br />
I get the odd sense that this is a project that the director and writer got more exited about than it deserved from its conception. It's undeniable that the tropes here pander very much to the merchandise-buying Japanese otaku. The opening credits seem like someone looked at a list of theme songs from successful otaku-bait anime, chose some elements at random, and hashed something together from that. They feel like the opening credits to the show this by all rights should be, but somewhere along the lines, someone with talent got exited and started writing actual characters behind the tropes, and thinking up how the mechanics of future space actually work. I seem to remember in particular something that happened early on with the mysterious-transfer-student, where with one line she manages to not so much subvert her character type but build underneath it into something still recognizable as a mysterious-transfer-student, yet divergent in some fundamental way. It's a shame that what and when this effective piece of writing <i>actually was</i>, of course...but it happened, I swear. I remember that, at least. Derp.<br />
<br />
I shouldn't have to mention that it has a bunch of really heavy handed self-realization metaphors - it comes with the territory, but maybe I have a weakness to that sort of thing in the framework of a space opera. Somehow, it doesn't evoke much <strike>narm</strike> bathos in me. So far, anyway.<br />
<br />
It also gets points for not being over the top with fanservice, which, given how in the future, people seem okay with wearing skirts on spaceships in null gravity, is rather surprising. I can't remember which of the first classic Sci-Fi writers it was who first pointed out the logistics of such things. Asimov, I believe it was. He seems like that kind of guy.<br />
<br />
<b>The Sky Crawlers</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2_OjMiptksU/Sljt8hD5FfI/AAAAAAAABs4/PuoNk0SQB4U/skycrawlers_glasses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2_OjMiptksU/Sljt8hD5FfI/AAAAAAAABs4/PuoNk0SQB4U/skycrawlers_glasses.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's a bit like this...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Mamoru Oshii is probably Japan's second most visible auteur in the west, second to Miyazaki. Oshii directed the adaptation of Shirou Masamune's manga Ghost in the Shell, a work which explored themes of transhumanism and the mind/body problem in the context of cyborgs doing cool things in future Japan, with lots of gunfights and (totally symbolic) nudity. It partially inspired The Matrix, and is one of the few films that people will go to besides the works of Hayao Miyazaki upon being asked what anime is. Oshii's filmography also includes the Patlabor films, none of which I've seen, but which I hear are quite excellent. His films are known for having very sparse dialog, and yet, also for ridiculously dense - and sometimes contextless - exposition. He has stated outright that in his films, visual elements come first, before story, and before characters. Meaning he emphasizes visual storytelling and atmosphere to create meaning, as opposed to dialog. In a way, he's Quentin Tarantino's polar opposite.<br />
<br />
The Sky Crawlers is about a young fighter pilot who, knowing no other purpose than being a fighter pilot and accepting his eventual death as a given, goes through the motions of life without much care or motivation, only with a sense of malaise. As all the pilots, he does not remember where he was a year ago, and likely wont remember where he was a year from now. The pilots are "kildren" - likely clones of various other pilots - perpetually young, though whether this is because of genetics or because none of them live long enough to grow up is never quite made clear. The young fighter pilot flies for Rostock, a private military corporation waging war against another PMC called Lautern. They are disconnected from the rest of the world, waging their war visibly, but never intersecting: only there in the back of society's mind. There is a nominal antagonist in the form of Teacher, an unbeatable ace flying for Lautern, but defeating him is only tangentially related - though important thematically - to what's going on. The film is focused on Yuuichi (the main character) and his existential problems, which is conversed mostly through scenes where he and another character come to silent realizations, up to and including the final shot, which is held for a good 30 seconds, and involves the dog standing around before deciding to join the others and walking offscreen.<br />
<br />
It also involves cool planes tearing the crap out of one another. That happens.<br />
<br />
Oshii has stated the film is meant to be a commentary on the malaise of Japanese youth in general, but also specifically of otaku who are content to consume entertainment of tired tropes reiterated over and over again rather than living actual lives with real motivations. As Yuuichi himself says while one may travel the same path over again, it's always possible to have new experiences. However, I don't think I really have much to say about this, so if you want to read a good analysis of the film's main theme, check out Justin Sevakis' review <a href="http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/sky-crawlers/theatrical-release">here</a>. It is a theme well served by almost every aspect of the film, though perhaps not obvious enough that it'd be apparent to many viewers.<br />
<br />
However, it also appears to me that the metaphor of the road traveled down repeatedly, and yet new experiences being possible can be applied to any sort of genre film. A film which takes a certain framework, with the initiative of the writer and director, can say something new or different while still retaining its shape. As a matter of fact, I am tempted to say that Bodacious Space Pirates provides an excellent example of this (though I am pessimistic about the prospects of it saying anything truly new about self-determination). Oshii believes the industry as is to be creatively bankrupt, and yet his own Ghost in the Shell certainly has genre elements, so it's not too much of a stretch to believe that this might be intentional. All this reminds me a bit of Neon Genesis Evangelion, which frames the issue in a similar, though far more hard-line way: Anno believes that true originality in anime is mostly impossible, and that everything must inevitably be conversed through recycled elements. I rather think that Oshii would disagree (and he might point to Anno's own work to prove it).<br />
<br />
What I found rather striking about the film that I'm fairly sure was <i>not</i> intentional on Oshii's part was the way it depicted - or rather, mirrored - the life of a fighter pilot as it might have been during, say, the Battle of Britain. The film is very quiet for most of its length, punctuated at times with periods of life-or-death struggle. Part of the film's premise is the fact that these pilots might be called upon at any time, and may at any time die, which I imagine was not a situation unfamiliar to those of the RAF. What made the pilots of the RAF different, of course, was that they had motivation, purpose, and personality.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/mNJ8OzY4PbQ?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Of course, when aerial conflict does happen, it's really freaking sweet. Oshii is not a dry art film director, and I am doing a disservice to him with this dry article. The animation of the planes is videogame-like 3d, in contrast with the flat and ghostly characters. The use of CG is very conspicuous, but perhaps because it does not try to hide, it is not a problem. The aerial sequences are "breathtaking" and "stunning" and all those adjectives that people seem to love throwing at beautiful aerial sequences.<br />
<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br />
Also, Engrish, Engrish everywhere, Engrish so you start wondering if you're really the one who's saying it wrong.<br />
<br />
<b>Other Stuff</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.anomalousmaterial.com/movies/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/the_tree_of_life_movie_02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="164" src="http://www.anomalousmaterial.com/movies/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/the_tree_of_life_movie_02.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seeing it in thumbnail form is kinda depressing, actually.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I was originally planning on talking about Tree of Life as well, but I don't think I really have enough to say about it for a full length spiel. In short, it's a really freaking well directed film: it captures something deep about the human experience in its imagery and atmosphere. These characters feel incredibly real and compelling, and the cinematography is easily the best I've seen all year. Yet, like 2001, I can't help but feel that the themes that it actually tries to converse are rather simplistic and ill-fitting the feat of filmmaking serving them. While I enjoyed the film, something inside me rejects it at a level that I can't really recommend the film other than as an interesting piece of art, much less call it anything like a favorite. At least this film has more of an actual structure than 2001, though I don't really see the point in the "creation of the world" scene in the beginning, other than as a rather sarcastic response to the question "why are things this way?" It's beautiful, but if your film's plot synopsis includes the line "the universe was created," then your film better be about gods, and certainly not a Texas family in the 1950s.<br />
<br />
I don't think Tree of Life really deserves the oscar for best picture, but Terrance Malik definitely deserves the award for achievement in directing, and Emmanuel Luzbeki <i>way</i> deserves the award for cinematography, even though it does a disservice to Robert Richardson, Hugo's cinematographer.<br />
<br />
Incidentally, I hear Terrence Malik convinced the special effects artist who did 2001's stargate sequence to come out of retirement just to do this film. I'm not surprised.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://avvesione.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/puella_magi_madoka_magica-08-kyubey-incubator-shaft_head_turn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://avvesione.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/puella_magi_madoka_magica-08-kyubey-incubator-shaft_head_turn.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don't you see that releases like these are necessary for<br />
the industry to survive this new market?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is coming out on DVD and BluRay! Four episodes at a time. For 30 dollars each installment. Over four months.<br />
<br />
...yeah...<br />
<br />
The first installment (containing the first four of PMMM's twelve episodes) came out earlier this February, released by Aniplex. Aniplex follows the Japanese model, which is to release shows slowly and at a high price, but with a bunch of collectors items packaged with it. This model serves to make a profit only off of the ones who are guaranteed to buy it: the otaku. It's a model that has worked in Japan, and I suppose it's a model that makes very good sense for a market that generally sees anime as a disposable form of entertainment. However, that does not make it any less ridiculous that a 12 episode series - one that is best suited to be marathoned over a <i>short</i> period of time - costs 90 dollars over four months. I fully intend to buy this show. But I have not yet. I am hoping that eventually it'll come out in a box set for, ideally, not 90 dollars. However, there is absolutely no guarantee that Aniplex will ever do that. They already have it streaming on CrunchyRoll, so perhaps it doesn't even make any business sense to do so. I'm worried that a year from now, there will still be no word on a box set, and it'll be already out of print.<br />
<br />
I'd imagine the scenes inside the witches' barriers would look quite excellent on BluRay. Except my laptop doesn't do BluRay. Damn proprietary media formats...<br />
<br />
Madoka Magica is one of those shows that I often worry about forgetting why it was I liked it in the first place. Being able to watch it all the way through again - legally - would be very nice indeed.<br />
<br />
Speaking of things I want to re-watch, I also still want to see Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22 again. I saw it in the theatre, once, and my impressions of it were strong, and yet, only of the film as a whole. I want to watch it again and get a more detailed impression, especially since it was so (seemingly) awesome. I wonder whether I should get it from Netflix and waste my parents' money by taking up a slot, or just get it on DVD and waste my parents' money that way...<br />
<br />
Man, I really need to find a part time writing job on the internet somewhere just so I can have some money I can actually spend on stuff that's not food or school supplies. Then again, it's not like I could show anyone this blog as an example of my writing, not with the severe lack of effort I put into it.<br />
<br />
<b>And Another Thing,</b><br />
Since I'm pretty sure I won't be crippled with work, I'll probably finally be getting around to writing that thing on Touhou Tonari tomorrow. Probably. If I don't decide to do something else instead.<br />
<br />
It's a good thing I'm doing a variety now, because this spring is going to be a spring of epic gaming. Here are some games that are coming out (or have come out) that I'm likely going to be picking up:<br />
<br />
- Mass Effect 3 //Well duh.<br />
- <strike>IL-2 Sturmovik:</strike> Birds of Steel //So I can get my ass kicked online by people with xbox flightsticks.<br />
- SSX //One of the few parts of my childhood I don't mind returning.<br />
- Asura's Wrath //Once it goes down in price...a lot.<br />
- The Witcher 2 //Well, if I have time for another really long story-focused game.<br />
<br />
That, and I'm still slowly making my way through the Touhou games. I wish I could run them full screen, that'd make it quite a bit easier not make some of the sillier mistakes.<br />
<br />
But that'll all be tomorrow.</div>Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-49675458370002457362012-02-15T21:26:00.000-08:002012-02-15T21:56:07.513-08:00Compound Backlog Increase - Issue 2Well.<br />
<br />
Okay, here's what happened: instead of writing about the Mass Effect 3 demo last night, I stayed up finishing Lilly's story in Katawa Shoujo. I had the time to stick to my schedule and do a double post about Touhou Tonari and ME3, but I can write about those pretty much any time I please. On the other hand, I'd rather write about Katawa Shoujo now than later, since I might forget important things about what struck me as I finished the game.<br />
<br />
So I think I might as well jump into this one. Let me tell you a story.<br />
<br />
Once upon a time, in the magical land of 4chan, a land known to the rest of the Internet as a home to anarchy, trolls, and exceedingly strange people who say incredibly strange things and post singularly strange pictures, there was a man named RAITA. He was not a writer, but an artist, and he drew this picture:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.crushfragdestroy.com/wp-content/uploads/katawashoujosketch-600x852.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.crushfragdestroy.com/wp-content/uploads/katawashoujosketch-600x852.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
It was a picture of a bunch of cute girls with physical disabilities.<br />
<br />
It proposed that a romantic visual novel about disabled girls might be pretty neat.<br />
<br />
For reference, a visual novel is a novel that plays out in illustrated scenes with text boxes, and occasionally prompts you to make a choice that will affect how the rest of the novel goes.<br />
<br />
Naturally, the people of the magical land of 4chan thought this was the greatest idea ever.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, so did a bunch of people who actually knew how to write, and had the initiative to turn this idea into a reality.<br />
<br />
So, Katawa Shoujo is an interactive romance novel about disabled high school students in Japan as developed by people who organized on what is widely considered the place where the internet goes to die.<br />
<br />
If this sounds like the worst idea ever, you're not the only one. However, if you want to read about someone talk about the idea of a visual novel about disabled girls at length without having actually played the game, there are god knows how many people that have already done so.<br />
<br />
Here's the thing: I loved Katawa Shoujo (or rather, the one path I've played so far), but if I want to talk about why it's good, I feel like I first have the burden of having to show that it's not horribly misogynistic and awful, but I don't want this to become an apology in the greek sense of the term. There are lots of those too. Fortunately, part of why it's good is also the reason why it's not misogynistic.<br />
<br />
See, if the main character were a blank template for the player to insert him or herself into, and if the novel were structured so that it was a game with the objective being to date one of the girls, that would be horribly misogynistic, since that would be making the characters gameplay elements instead of characters, elements to be manipulated towards an end. Fortunately, neither of those are true.<br />
<br />
The main character of Katawa Shoujo is not the player, it's Hisao Nakai, a senior in high school who was living a perfectly normal life...until his previously dormant arrhythmia caused him to have a heart attack. His previous life gets unceremoniously cut off as he finds himself in a hospital, taking medication every morning and evening to stay alive, his friends' visits stopping, and ultimately, unable to return to his old school for health reasons. He's set adrift in the unfamiliar world of Yamaku High School, a boarding school for people with physical disabilities. He does not know how to handle himself there, and in the distance, the prospect of what to study when he graduates looms. He's good at science, and he has a natural curiosity about the world, but other than that, he's anchorless. The people that he meets at Yamaku will change him in the coming months, and he will realize many things about himself and the world around him.<br />
<br />
If this doesn't sound like a self-insert character to you, good. Hisao has his own, distinct worries, personality, and motivations that come through no matter what choices you make. No matter what you do, it's in character for Hisao, not the player.<br />
<br />
This brings me to the second point. Like all visual novels, you are occasionally presented with choices of what to do. It would be unfair of me to try and compare how choices work here to how they work in other visual novels, because I haven't played any other visual novels. However, I can say this: choices in Katawa Shoujo are never petty things like "do I say sorry or slap her in the face," but more realistic and well considered choices where a real person might have genuine indecision as well. It's not so much about playing a game as it is choosing which of these novels you want to read. You read Katawa Shoujo, not play it. It's a novel, and I will approach it as such.<br />
<br />
Okay, now the obligatory apology is out of the way,<br />
<br />
<a href="http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/masonry/000/233/334/10e.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/masonry/000/233/334/10e.png" width="192" /></a><br />
Pictured to the left is Lilly Satou. It was her story that I read. She's an 18 year old girl attending Yamaku high school. Her family is affluent, but as of the start of the novel, she hasn't seen them in quite some time. They live in all the way in Scotland, and she spent several years living with her older sister, Akira, before attending Yamaku. She's a very polite sort, and her poised demeanor and tendency to worry about others more than perhaps she should has made her somewhat of a mother figure to the rest of her class, and to Hanako Ikezawa, her best friend. Yet, it becomes clear through her story that even though she is liable to worry about others, she is very reticent about sharing her own concerns with others, even with those she most cares about. Despite her air of maturity, she admits, in the end, to being rather foolish about that.<br />
<br />
She's also completely blind, something that she has learned to live with quite well. She is not uncomfortable with having to rely on others, but she'll poke fun at you if you for a moment try and pity her for it. She doesn't like it when people worry about her, which creates a nice dichotomy when she inevitably starts worrying about others, and fails to share her own. <br />
<br />
She's a well thought out and realistic character, and the fact that she's blind, while a factor in her character, does not define it. However, it does bring out certain aspects of her character in interesting ways, and creates for some very effective situations. For instance, walking to town one day, Hisao had a heart murmur. She cannot see Hisao, only hear him in pain. The subtext here is never explicitly stated, but how would you feel if something were happening to someone you cared about, and you couldn't see what's happening?<br />
<br />
Lilly would seem to fall very loosely into the "yamato nadeshiko" archetype. She's well mannered, tall, kind, can cook, and would be considered by the standards of another age to be an "exemplary woman." This, of course, is very much deconstructed over the course of the story as it becomes clear that she's not a perfect woman: she's a normal person with her own needs and motivations who's really almost as lost as Hisao himself sometimes, only she has a hard time showing it. It's also worth mentioning the dichotomy of the "yamato nadeshiko" character being a tall, blonde, blue-eyed, half-Scottish girl. Perhaps this is part of the game's message about outward traits not defining one's personality? Only in animeland, I guess.<br />
<br />
She was the subject of the story, but Katawa Shoujo is not a dry, super serious character study. It is populated with not only the other girls, but also side characters that give Yamaku high life.<br />
<br />
First, all of the dateable characters in Katawa Shoujo fall loosely into genre archetypes. If they're as well realized as Lilly, I have no doubt they're more than they appear to be. Lilly's best friend is Hanako Ikezawa, a girl with severe social phobia and burns down all of one side of her body. Hanako is also a dateable character, but since the two are friends, their paths are largely interconnected such that you find out a bit about her as well. She would at first seem to fall under the "reticent bibliophile" archetype. As someone with a poster of Yuki Nagato above his bed at this very moment, I'm quite familiar with the archetype, familiar enough to know that Hanako really doesn't fall so neatly into the tropes as it would initially appear. I haven't played her path yet, but I'm interested to. Even if this is the sort of game to have characters that fall into tropes, it's not the sort of game that would let that get in the way of having interesting and compelling characters. Everyone here follows real world logic, and all that entails.<br />
<br />
Rin is another one of the dateable characters. She's an artist with no arms and a very...off...sort of personality. She has a very dry, ludicrous sense of humor, and seemingly no connection with the outside world. She wanders out into the town at night once and stands on a corner. She doesn't know why, she just does. ...I think I know Rin. I think quite a few of us have known at least one Rin in our lives.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://archivethumb.foolz.us/board/a/img/0602/83/1327295340513.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="235" src="http://archivethumb.foolz.us/board/a/img/0602/83/1327295340513.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Akira Satou: brash young lawyer, or half-Scottish mafia boss?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In fact, the side characters of Katawa Shoujo aren't so much <i>genre</i> archetypes as they are "we all knew that guy" archetypes. I know an Akira, except she's not somebody's sister, he's a teacher I had in high school. I know a Nurse: I recently had a dentist appointment with him, as a matter of fact. I know a Mutou: he's my Logic professor. I know <i>several</i> Kenjis (Commonwealth Academy was funny that way). What makes this different from genre tropes? Well, at a basic level, I don't suppose much. I can't take that away from the, of course, since the result is most often hilarious, and it does take a certain amount of skill to codify one's life experiences in such a way that you can epitomize them in a character.<br />
<br />
For all the research that seems to have gone into this game to accurately depict characters with physical disabilities, the writers don't seem to have even bothered trying to accurately depict Japan or Japanese society. This game takes place very firmly in animeland, and it's unapologetic about this fact. The writers drop it for the sake of the story, and it's a stronger work because of it.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, certain anime-isms like Misha's ridiculous pink hair are called out in universe and explained: Misha's hair is dyed for reasons that I expect I would know better if I were reading Shizune's path (Misha is Shizune's interpreter and best friend).<br />
<br />
At any rate, Katawa Shoujo is definitely the product of people who love the genre and its tropes, but instead of being every cliche ever, it feels almost like a sort of Tarentino-esque tribute to visual novels: playing with the genre tropes, sometimes subverting them, doing them right when they are actually played straight, and ultimately creating something more than the thing which it would seem to do homage to.<br />
<br />
Oh yeah, and there are sex scenes. They flow as logical progressions of the narrative and were written by people who had maybe had sex before. I suppose that comes with the territory. If it were a normal novel, nobody would give a second thought about it, naturally, but Katawa Shoujo is most certainly not porn. Mostly.<br />
<br />
It made a very nice contrast with Mansfield Park, to say the least. Mansfield Park is probably the "better" novel (if we are to judge novels by their influence and depth of content), but I know which one I enjoyed reading more.<br />
<br />
Well, I wanted to talk more about the story, and maybe about some of its context, but it's too late at night now. I might have to write some more thoughts on it in the next part. We'll see, I suppose.<br />
<br />
Again, I feel like I've written too much of a review and not enough of my personal feelings about the game, or even any sort of analysis. What did I really spend all this time writing, in truth? Everything I said I didn't want to write. Oh well.<br />
<br />
Incidentally, I want to play <i>this</i> game:<br />
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Katawa Shoujo is freeware, for PC, Mac, and Linux. If you're curious, download it <a href="http://katawa-shoujo.com/download.php">here</a>.Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-25902084401773457172012-02-13T18:15:00.000-08:002012-02-14T12:54:50.754-08:00Compound Backlog Increase - Issue 1I've been meaning to do another issue of Compound Disinterest (or whatever the hell I'm calling this blog nowadays) for quite a while.<br />
<br />
Sorry, I've been meaning to do another issue for way too goddam long.<br />
<br />
Yeah, that's much closer, I think.<br />
<br />
Anyway, I've had so many things I've been meaning to write about, and so little time to do it, if I wrote one huge update, it'd be far too long to read, boring, and most of all, I wouldn't have anywhere near enough time to actually write it. Instead, I'm going to write something once per day for this week. Here's what I'm going to try to do, ideally:<br />
<br />
Monday (this update): Music. //Get that out of the way<br />
Tuesday: Mass Effect 3 demo. //Yeah, me and everyone else.<br />
Wednesday: Two by this Side, Three by the Other Side. //And, by extension, doujin manga.<br />
Thursday: Assorted thoughts on film and anime. //Including Mouretsu Pirates.<br />
Friday/Saturday: (Riff Club/Good Move Night)<br />
Sunday: Katawa Shoujo //If you want a preview, <a href="http://acecombatskies.com/topic/29506-katawa-shoujo/page__view__findpost__p__755579">here's what I had to say about part-way though act 1</a>.<br />
<br />
I had been planning on talking about all of these for quite a while, each individually, but for one reason or another, I've never actually done them.<br />
<br />
These entries will be much more succinct and blog-like instead of rambling masses of stuff nobody cares about.<br />
<br />
But speaking of things nobody cares about, let's begin.<br />
<br />
<b>Kokoro Vibrations</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.akibaoo.jp/i/jan-jpg/3/2500020166338-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="175" src="http://www.akibaoo.jp/i/jan-jpg/3/2500020166338-3.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reisen's bangs are in the way of<br />
her Lunatic Eyes.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This was an album I thought that I was going to like far more as a whole at the beginning than I actually ended up liking at the end. However, I'm not entirely sure this is because the latter half of the album is worse than the first half in any meaningful way. Rather, it's possible, perhaps, that ShibayanRecord's style may not be one that's conducive to listening to for long periods of time. I find this rather unlikely, but I have a hard time really coming up with any other decent reason why a circle as obviously talented as Shibayan can make such good - sometimes stellar - work on this album, and yet I can't give the album a complete recommendation. Yes, all of the tracks on here are good - really good - and yet...but let's see:<br />
<br />
Shibayan is electronic, but not in the same way as Alstroemeria or ENS. Their music is far more experimental in nature rather than more conventional house or trance. The first track on the album - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I78xoddq7ec">WAP-WA</a> - demonstrates this in its most extreme form, with a glitch aesthetic that, while perhaps repetitive, is very interesting and feels very cool. As a thematic introduction, it serves its purpose well, and more. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwMWEkx2kFQ">Autumnal Fan</a> takes this theme and takes a more conventional approach, keeping a very profound feeling, funky base, and building on it a really cool vocal track with fun harmonies. I can't quite put its feeling into words, but it's my favorite track on the album. Apparently, it's supposed to be Fall of Fall from Touhou 10 ~ Mountain of Faith, but I didn't recognize it at first, and it took me a while to figure out exactly what parts of it they used in this track. The next track is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jJ2PknAq3g">Castle of Thorns</a>, which has the same approach to its feel, with similar musical attributes, save for the vocals, which are an entirely different. Here, Chie Fukami gives an adept, but regrettably high and whiny performance that, while actually rather impressive, I find disagrees with me. It's seven minutes, illustrating another trait of Shibayan tracks: they're always really frakking long. Next is a really funny sort of track with a funny sort of name: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI4AO3FyTT4">MyonMyonMyonMyonMyon!</a> Myon is the sound cats make in Japan, and is also the name of Youmu's ghost half. Myon(5)! is the track where 3L does the incredible feat of hitting what I think is something like C8 and not being incredibly annoying. Nevertheless, to the benefit of the track, her part does not constitute a significant part of the track, which headless proceeds for eight minutes of myon to infinity and beyond. It's probably the most inventive interpretation of Ancient Temple I've ever heard, and Shibayan's clever use of electronic effects make for lots of fun that somehow doesn't get old for me. (Internet history lesson: speaking of Youmu and things that go nyan, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwKFCj1K7uY">this video</a> existed at least a year before nyancat: know thine history) The next track - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU4j1cEfibM">The Color of Flowers Is...</a> - is, naturally, funky and cool, but less profound feeling than some of the previous tracks for qualities that I can't quite place but may have something to do with how the progression and arrangement work with each other. Here, through no fault of its own does it not feel as epic as some previous tracks: it has more to do with the original: Riverside View. I think Shibayan may have tried to do something with it that didn't quite work. Or rather, doesn't start working until about the four minute mark, where all of a sudden it gets kinda epic with lots of harmony, interference, and coolness all of a sudden coming together and working perfectly. All of this, and the vocalist - yana - is doing it again, and doing very high octave vocals that actually work really well with the song, which is saying something, because it's a really challenging part, and I can't hear any signs of pitch tampering with her voice. Dammit Minoshima... Anyway, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M9RFtziALc">Candle-Magic of Lunar Age 11.3</a> (I <i>have</i> to be reading that wrong: it sounds like an Engrish title, except it's in Japanese) is more of Shibayan doing their thing, this time with the ever-popular Locked Girl, which fits their style very well, and yet Shibayan chose to go with a very vocal-centric aesthetic here. I don't quite understand the decision, but it doesn't <i>fail, </i>per se, so much as it's unexpected. The only problem here, I suppose, is that it's been a whole lot of basically the same musical idea so far, even despite the slight change in style of arrangement. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yLVLYOCjiU">Star's Tears</a> (or rather, simply Hoshi no Namida, since it's spelled in katakana) comes next, is a sans-vocal track based on The Primal Scene of Japan the Girl Saw. Unfortunately, since I can't quite quantify some of the things that Shibayan does in their instrumentation, I can't describe why this track is good, only that it is, and that the ways it plays with the song's rhythm and progressions are really fun. The next track has an incredibly awesome name: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeNkbyFwy5c">Huge Bunny Explosions</a>. Naturally, it's based on Lunatic Eyes - Reisen's theme (the lunarian rabbit featured on the album cover). The arrangement feels a bit thinner than the other tracks on the album, which I suppose ends it on a different note for an album that is largely the same brilliant idea for about 53 minutes. Here, an Alstroemeria vet is brought in for the vocals: Nachi Sakue (ha! I remembered: it's Sakue and not Sakagami). She does well enough here, but compared to 3L and Chie-san, it does feel like a bit of a step down.<br />
<br />
Anyway, if you liked Daft Punk's Homework, or some of Kraftwerk's less experimental stuff, then definitely give a listen to the album: just not all at once. It's got one really great idea that it does over and over again in different flavors, and it makes for some really great singles, just not for contiguous play. A rather odd conclusion to come to, and one that doesn't do credit to ShibayanRecords, but there you have it.<br />
<br />
<b>Other Stuff</b><br />
I got into a discussion of fusion jazz the other day with my dad, and he gave me a couple of recommendations that I have now forgotten and must ask for again (I know one was Weather Report and the other was Return to Forever, but nothing besides that). It coincided, oddly enough, with me finding the Touhou jazz fusion album Keyboard Cat 4 by Buta-Otome. I'm not going to talk about it, because I really don't have the time or will right now, but I do recommend it. If nothing else, check out their version of Hiroshige no. 36. called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsiyCruqY-U">Dream Travel Journal</a>. The original is from one of ZUN's standalone albums, Retrospective 53 Minutes. I need to listen to the whole of that album, because I still haven't, and I'm curious to see exactly what ZUN does when he's not writing music for games (except I already know the answer: pretty much nothing different). The album is a bit of a musical poem about Mary and Renko: two humans who find themselves traveling Gensokyo. There's something very interesting about these characters: humans filled with wonder as they explore the quiet countryside. I wish I knew of more doujin about them: they could be really interesting, or at least really funny characters. Fittingly, the image is really quite Hiroshige-esque.<br />
<br />
Anyway, enough Touhou crap, have a metal version of Skyrim's theme. I've seen some of this guy's other stuff too: this guy's technique is freaking incredible.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Anyway, I'm done with my homework, so I'd better read some more Katawa Shoujo. I just realized: I said I'd read something that's the length of a novel (and has the content of several novels) by the end of the week. Ah well, there are worse fates.<br />
<br />
Incidentally, I've decided to go with "read" instead of "play" in reference to KS. It sounds far, <i>far </i>better to say "I'm reading a romance novel" than "I'm playing a romance game."Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085480881518623080.post-62309383019481173272012-01-14T23:25:00.000-08:002012-01-22T17:37:44.412-08:00Subterranean ChromaticismHaha, and to think that I actually thought I was going to be timely in writing about some of these new albums from Comiket 81. Not too late, of course, but late enough. I suppose I had an excuse in that I was going to do it earlier, but I couldn't find one or two of the albums I wanted to listen to, and, truth be told, I still haven't listened to everything I intended to.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'm also going to try to stop being so very formulaic in the way I go about talking about these albums. Music is probably the most subjective sort of art, and it's not something one can so much review as it is something one writes about, analyzing and voicing opinions, but not necessarily judging as good or bad in an objective sense. Usually, this sort of idea is a sell-out, and if I didn't voice any opinion whatsoever, it would be, but I aim to be interesting: a few hundred words rattling off which songs are pretty good and which ones have problems is boring, boring, horribly boring. Touhou is not a boring series of games, and the sort of music that has come out of C81 isn't boring either.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>じゃ、はじめましょうね!</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<b>Avidya</b></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.syrufit.jp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/main.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="198" src="http://www.syrufit.jp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/main.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
Yukari is totally Buddhist: she's</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
too lazy to have desires.</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
And what's less boring than going in alphabetical order? Nothing, bro: alphabetical order is totally rad, and you know what, so is Avidya. This is a joint production between Syrufit and *Poplica. I've already heard quite a bit of Syrufit, both on Alstroemeria Records albums and on his own, under the name Syrup Comfiture. His tracks may sometimes seem to lack Minoshima's diversity in style, but he's also more consistently good, and as I mentioned once before, he's a heck of a lot better at picking and arranging for vocalists. *Poplica, on the other hand, I've heard very little of, but what I have heard has been pretty good. Syrufit and *Poplica are not new to collaborations: they've actually produced quite a number of albums together before. After hearing this album, I'll have to look up some more. They have different styles, but they compliment each other quite well.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Anyway, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFO_b88h1zQ">Avidya</a> sets the atmosphere with ambient Shakuhachi and electro in a very distinct, Syrufit sort of manner. It's an original track, so the fact that Syrufit's style comes through strongly here...is not a surprise. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAN-Qe5wdWE">Another Vision</a> carries this on the electro side of things, also a Syrufit track, though this one perhaps too repetitive and atmospheric for its own good. I'm not quite what's going on with the vocal samples, and I don't think it quite worked out how Syrufit might have wanted it to. *Poplica's first track on the album is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbTrpix8LYo">We Are</a> (I haven't the faintest). The style is distinctly more built around distinct synth chordal progressions, or in other words, more like Alstroemeria style progressive house and, well, more pop-ish sounds. As a matter of fact, it feels a bit like eurodance in structure, but with a certain air of maturity to it that most eurodance doesn't really have. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyym9zPCqqg">Rapture</a> continues more along that stylistic line, but reversed, with the vocals forming the melody with atmospheric synth and piano work and house style 4/4 beat providing a mild counter-point. It's almost more Syrufit style-wise than *poplica. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W-kalfVjIc">et Cetera</a> is actually Linjin's work, but it fits with the album's flow well. I quite like the very rapid, distinctly stress-metered vocals, even if at its core, it's a rather simple track, with continuo synths and fairly standard percussion work. Perhaps it goes to show that the tropes wouldn't be so tired if people would just put some soul and talent into them. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoq8wySNWzQ">Links</a> is also a combo-breaker in that it is a co-arrangement by Syrufit and *Poplica. I'm immediately suspicious when more than one person begins working on a <i>single</i> track, and to be honest, I don't think this is as good as any of the tracks they worked on individually, but it does retain the soul of the album. *Poplica and Syrufit work very well together, it seems. I will say this though: I'm not sure what modulator they put the vocals through, but it sounds a little like Miku Hatsune. Confirming my theory that Syrufit and *Poplica work well as a team, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8SJprgGdLg">Stellar</a> is a very heavily phrased sort of upbeat house track with a very strong central feeling. <strike>It's pretty stellar.</strike> Anyway, it's Röyskopp's turn for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHAk1CYUUyU">Candle</a>, the next track on...wait, Röyskopp? No, this is definitely Syrufit. Huh, coulda sworn it was Röyskopp, what with the very low base+pad aesthetic it opens with...and the quiet, mid-octave range vocals it continues with...and ends with. It's undeniably Syrufit in its structure, and it fits with the rest of the album, but it's still kinda uncanny. You know what doesn't fit at all with the rest of the album though? <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SQKgWjjUew">Innocent - Nhato remix</a>. 2/2 beat, base drops, noisy/growly instrumental interludes, yep, this is Touhou dubstep. It actually works pretty well, for dubstep. The clear sounding, airy interpretation of Broken Moon that the base-dropping segments play off of make it, I think. The last track, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnPnHHav3DA">Angel's Doubt</a> - a very vague sort of interpretation of Necrofantasia - actually uses dubstep style tropes in concert with the atmospheric style synths we've come to expect from Syrufit/Poplica extraordinarily well, proving that dubstep might have actually given us an interesting musical tool, if people would only stop making the same song over and over again already.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I don't really have as much to say about Avidya as I do about, say, Killed Dancehall, not because it's not good, but because it didn't evoke much more of a reaction than pure enjoyment. I'm certainly not saying it's only mediocre, because it's actually a very good album that I recommend any electronic music fan listen to, but that said, it didn't inspire much passion in me either. But with a Buddhist name like Avidya, perhaps passion isn't what this album was really about.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Lol, the bs I say sometimes. Go listen to this album. No really.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Begierde des Zauberer</b></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.kawachi.zaq.ne.jp/demetori/images/c81_deme_omote_s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="197" src="http://www.kawachi.zaq.ne.jp/demetori/images/c81_deme_omote_s.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marisa took a trip to Mordor, naturally<br />
intending to steal Sauron's ring.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
Apparently, it was really good timing that I only just discovered Demetori, because I didn't have to wait as long for their next album, which came out this Comiket after a rather lengthy period of time when they didn't produce anything. What they did eventually release was Begierde des Zauberer - The Magician's Longing in German, referring to Marisa Kirisame: the Lord Byron of Gensokyo. I guess Patchouli would be Anne Isabella, in that case. Who would Alice be though... Agh, muisc, yes, topic.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The introductory track is most appropriately named "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAukl9_f3hY">introduction</a>," and serves as an introduction. Derp. The dark synths build into the introduction of the guitars and twisted version of what I think of as the "ZUN scale progression" that always appears in his menu themes, and it's all very badass. What's surprising is that, even though they share very similar riffs in the start, albeit in different keys, it doesn't transition into the next track like an Alstroemeria album might, which actually makes the similarity sound rather awkward. In fact, the first few bars of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujS-GCL-av0">Plastic Mind ~ Alice in Underground</a> are actually rather awkward, with a very straight speed metal beat, but it straightens itself out quite nicely into Demetori's signature guitar and synth double counterpoint. It never quite feels like the brothers' A game because of some weirdness with the percussion and synth in one part of the bridge, but flawed as it may be, it is also quite awesome. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVNYHEUCN6Q">Rigid Paradise ~ Dawn of the Dead</a> is also awesomeness, great simply in general, but notable for how well it manages to make the "Dawn of the Dead" part of its name work, with some very nice use of atmosphere in what could have easily been a very straight progressive metal track. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRoOZPtI60k">Love Colored Master Spark ~ Final Sorcery</a> takes Marisa's already very rock-like theme and puts it through Demetori's metal filter. The result follows the original quite closely, feeling very much like a Demetori version of a ZUN track rather than a Demetori track that happens to use a riff from ZUN somewhere. I can't fault Demetori for this, because I certainly don't think they have anything to prove, but also because they do such a great job of maintaining and reinforcing the soul of the tomboyish, cocky, rainbow-colored-destruction wielding mage and kleptomaniac named Marisa. Perhaps fittingly, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGMMMLiBg2M">U.N. Owen Was Her</a> follows this, matches it, and crushes it in the palm of its hand while grinning madly. I didn't like this track as much when I first listened to it, but the more I do, the more I realize what a great job of keeping the eerie power of the original whilst at the same time totally twisting it into something eldritch and heady with Flandre's insane spirit. U.N. Owen is a very hard composition to work with, but Demetori rises to the challenge quite beautifully, which may be one of the reasons for it being one of the most memorable tracks on the album. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmGhImWAubg">Magus Night ~ Frenzy Night</a> seems rather tame and straightforward in comparison, and it actually is rather straight forward for a Demetori track. Which is not to say it's bad. The song it's nominally an arrangement of is from Fairy Wars, and yet occasionally, I seem to hear quotes from other ZUN songs, especially Doll Judgement, but I suppose that comes with the territory of being from ZUN. Really, this album's problem is that too much of it sounds like Demetori playing ZUN, which, while awesome, can get a bit tiring. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJYjXJ-nEw0">Desire Drive ~ Desire Dream</a> is not an exception to this, being exactly that: Demetori's version of Desire Drive. I can't really substantiate specifically why this is, but on the other hand, I don't particularly care, because as I said before, Demetori playing ZUN is still oh so very awesome. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GdzCM92fy4">Endless ~ The Endless Deadly Deadly Sins</a> provides a nice buffer before the final track, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dK4uYJEvxQ">Strawberry Crisis !!!!!!</a> It's very speedy and adroitly played with the flare one expects from Demetori, but I think the guitar work stands out here even in comparison with the other tracks on the album.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As a whole, it's not as interesting as Nada Upasana Pundarika, or as varied or clever, but given how brilliant Nada Upasana Pundarika was, that's a rather unreasonable bar to set. I definitely recommend anyone who likes hard rock or metal give it a listen, but after Nada Upasana Pundarika. I also have to say that, though I have not listened to any others in their entirety, it's probably their second best album, so take that for whatever it's worth.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Killed Dancehall</b></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://alst.net/system/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/arcd0036_killed_dancehall_jacket1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="163" src="http://alst.net/system/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/arcd0036_killed_dancehall_jacket1.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Geez Flandre, this is the fifth<br />
Dancehall you've killed this year!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
I think I've said it before, but Alstroemeria Records is really, really unreliable sometimes. You never know whether you're going to get good Minoshima or evil Minoshima. When I first listened to this album, I knew it was good Minoshima, but I couldn't make up my mind <i>how</i> good. While it's not really brilliant in the same way as Haunted Dancehall was, the more I listen to it, the more I like it, and the more I think that it's a very good mirror of its predecessor. See, Haunted Dancehall was etherial and full of groovy, almost disco-esque soul. It was "haunted," as if spirits were floating around in the data. Killed Dancehall is much more hard-edged, taking the structure and spirit of the original and going for a much more electronic feel. Killed Dancehall is to Haunted Dancehall as Human After All was to Discovery: not as good, but a very interesting mirror, and still, in the end, a pretty neat album.</div>
<div>
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I shouldn't even need to mention that it starts with a short original track with sampled vocals that leads into a longer track, but I should mention that this one - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD2XYPVfUfc">Undercover</a> - is especially cool. What it leads into, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odz83T3ZIA4">Romantic Children</a>, lives up to this promising intro, at least partially. The pulsing synth echoes the soul of Haunted Dancehall, and yet, in it, there is a depth: something hard and unyielding. Unfortunately, Minoshima being Minoshima, he writes a vocal part for Nachi Sakue (whose name I've been improperly romanizing as Nachi Sakagami for the longest time, ごめんなさい) which falls into the common trap of being high and "moe" in a track where it's really not appropriate, and it doesn't really work. On a track where everything else works so well, it's quite unfortunate. Luckily, there's a vaguely Daft Punk-esque bridge into a track with Mei Ayakura vocals: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyJUzbWtMqY">Unknown</a>. There are still traces of the intro track as it begins, actually. The arrangement is is very Minoshima in several ways. The interplay between the instruments and the vocals is minimal, but contributes to an overall whole very well. It's also supposedly an arrange of U.N. Owen, but in true fashion, the only part of U.N. Owen Minoshima actually seems to have used is the continuo part. It's probably the best track on the album, actually. It's followed by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psc9j-4UZm0">Phantoms in da House</a> by Nhato. He's always a bit of a gamble, but this track is actually very interesting, and very distinctly his style. It uses the melody of Phantom Ensemble in some rather interesting ways, along with a very wide range of hard-edged electronic instrumentation, used playfully and in very good harmony. I think I also hear the pentatonic scale progression from Ancient Temple at one point, but I could just be hearing things. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZbFcL_aoUk">Brazil</a> follows, which is a very strange Minoshima original, with a totally incomprehensible vocal sample (I'm not entirely sure what language it is, even) used in concert (though not really harmony) with the sort of instrumental backing one expects from Minoshima. It's disappointing for an original track to be as uninteresting as all that, but it's over about four minutes and goes on to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ys_f59uwGI">Lunar DIAL</a>, another rather odd track with a riff that uses glissando to...some effect anyway. To be honest, I'm really not certain at all about the reasoning behind some of the stuff in this track, like the rhythmic, compressed vocal segments, but it nonetheless works fairly well, even if it's confusing. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb7APEEWu9w">Endless</a> is confusing for different reasons. Minoshima bases this track partially on an English DJ track, with the refrain "My fellas run this muthafucka." Oh Minoshima. One of these days I'll go to Comiket myself and ask you where you keep finding these samples. Musically, it actually works really well, and ends up being a really fun track, with a tight sense of rhythm and tone. It marks the transition from the album's rather mediocre middle to its strong end, a trend that continues with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS92oLnjn8k">Flowering Night</a>, a track that plays with the riff from, guess what, Flowering Night, and continues on into what might have actually sounded more at home on Haunted Dancehall (or, for that matter, Harmony), with its piano and laid back vocal aesthetic. It flows into <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErCyFuJ5Rdw">Underdog</a>, the other Minoshima original on the album, and by far the better one. It's his often-used double layered style, with a complicated looped undercurrent and much more broad melody section for some sort of glissando-y FM synth. It's pretty neat. The album proper ends with Underdog, but Syrufit contributes an extra track at the end called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ6FTfggN4Q">DIS_K</a>. It's rather uncharacteristic of Syrufit, and I checked twice to make sure I had read it right and it was in fact Syrufit, because it's much more in a glitch sort of style than really anything else he's done that I can recall. It's good to have heard him try something new, but I can't say I like glitch-mode Syrufit as much.</div>
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Killed Dancehall starts off very strongly, has a mediocre middle, but then picks up again quite nicely for the end. After Haunted Dancehall, I was expecting a bit more, but all things considered, this is still probably one of Alstroemeria Records' better albums, at least as good as Fragment Reactions, and probably on par with Plastik World. Yet, I don't feel quite right comparing it with something like Plastik World, because Alstroemeria Records has changed so much from that era. Bad Apple!! barely even feels like it came from the same artist. Minoshima is going in a new direction, I think the two Dancehall albums have shown that pretty clearly. What will be next, I wonder. Fused Dancehall, maybe? I think Utsuho has only been on the cover once, and that was Double Counterpoint...so what I really meant to say was "Utsuho has never been on an Alstroemeria Records cover, what are you talking about?"</div>
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<b>Uncanny Instinct</b><br />
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Blonde: Woe! My soliloquies be verily poor:</div>
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I must anon resolve to further my emoting!</div>
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Purple: Oh man, the salt on your skin is making</div>
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me <i>soooo high~</i></div>
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Being arrangements of somebody else's <i>already </i>brilliant work, one can't help but be slightly cynical about the actual talent of some doujin arrangers. While some may produce decent covers, I don't think all of them would be as good if they played completely original material. This is only to be expected, but on the other hand, it does take a considerable amount of talent to create truly great arrangements, talent that would easily be applicable to original material. The best doujin circles would no doubt be notable if they did play their own material, and in fact, many do put completely or almost completely original tracks on their albums. Alstroemeria Records does this all the time, either with totally original material or only using elements from the original totally out of context for different ends. Though Minoshima, Syrufit, and Nhato often play sets as club DJs (under the name Badcats Party), surprisingly <i>none</i> of them have released original albums. EastNewSound, however, has, and their product is Uncanny Instinct. I wish I were more familiar with EastNewSound beforehand to see how much of the style here is present in their Touhou arrangements, but that said, what I have heard has been very interesting. For refrence, possibly their most known piece being a really great U.N. Owen arrangement called...(looks up kanji)...crap...<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOz-T3NPtLA">Under a Scarlet Moon, Absolute Insanity</a>...I hope. <i>あなたが甘い...甘い...赤い...赤い...フフ<b>殺してあげる!</b></i><br />
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Looking at the track information, I think the defining feature of this album is that it has so many different artists contributing to it, yet I think you can still pretty definitively call the album electronica. We start the album with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI9kim04a_k">Summer Breeze</a>. The translation on touhouwiki says "Summer Wind," and this isn't really inaccurate, but it sounds weird, and in my world, I'd like to think that Kofun P is a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsW8rXPcnM0">Seals & Croft fan</a>. The song itself is a melodic affair with moe vocals that, fortunately, are arranged and performed well enough not to be grating. The easy listening synth provides a sugary second layer of melody that provides harmony with the vocals occasionally, but doesn't really do much else. It's really pretty bland stuff, but it's inoffensive, and afterwards, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtLsFLpYbrg&feature=related">Steel Cliff</a> comes along and takes it in a more eurodance-y direction. It would sound a little bit like Harmony-era Minoshima were the vocals not so chromatic and in a tolerable octave. It's got some nice harmonies with the base part and percussive piano, and works quite admirably. While the arranger was different, the vocalist was actually the same as the first track. Whaddaya know, I guess it's just Minoshima who can't pick good vocalists. The next track, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hoMXNKqMOg">In a Constant World</a> (again, not the touhouwiki translation, but heck, even GoogleTranslate says that 「変わらぬ」 means "constant") is more glitchy in its instrumentation, but despite being from a different composer, is structurally similar to the previous track. Its vocals are of the "low and breathy" sort, another one of those aesthetics I can never quite get into, but I suppose they are interwoven with the instrumentation fairly well. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTXNHasgdks">Original Remind</a> (this one was named in English originally, can't you tell) comes next and keeps up with the trance-like trend of the last two tracks, with meandering vocals, very lightly phrased vocals, and high-attack synth and pad second layer. It's really quite traditional, but it does its thing well, and moves on to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qau5BLTnwKA">EasyNaturalStep</a>. Now, EasyNaturalStep is probably one of the most Jpop-like tracks on the album, but it's also probably my favorite. It has a very well done vocal section, trading off between heavily phrased and harmonized female vocals and rapid rap sections, playing off of the admittedly pretty simple major-key continuo and base. It helps that this is one of those lucky tracks where I can sorta-kinda understand the lyrics...well, one half of the lyrics anyway. It has this pervasive atmosphere of fun that good pop should have, with the adroit execution and soul to make it work. I'd call it a guilty pleasure, but I can't say I feel all that guilty. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbHBwC5dTl4">Within the Light</a> follows this up, a more slow paced track with a simpler sort of melody, going for a softer feel, with its soft-spoken (not breathy, mind you) vocals, percussive piano, and pad aesthetic. As this is the same composer as In a Constant World, this isn't particularly surprising. Again though, I can't honestly say it doesn't work, but it does go on into <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cldiFmpN_dM">The Two of Us</a>, which is another one of the album's more notable tracks, also by Kurotori (Black Swan), the composer of EasyNaturalStep and Under a Scarlet Moon, Absolute Insanity. It's got a very interesting minor-key vocal section and some very good use of distortion and pads in its instrumental and continuo section. It at times feels the slightest bit like Yuki Kajiura, actually. I think it's the sweeping and rather un-pop-like melody and solo section, but it's more likely I'm simply hearing things. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUCLiAqsVgg">Monochrome</a>, sorry Monokuroumu, is next, and it maintains the quality of the previous track. Again though, I'm having trouble pinning down exactly why this is. It's not a melody with traditionally constructed tonalities, anyway, so maybe I like it just because it sounds different. The next song is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlng0qO8J6w">Paper Planes</a> (which was hilariously mis-romanized in the download I got ahold of as "kamihiko uki" instead of "kami hikouki," but I suppose I should be glad he didn't translate it as "Spirit Plane" or something) is the third song on the album from Kurotori, but it's also probably my least favorite, despite the fact that his style continues to remind me of Yuki Kajiura for some incomprehensible and probably really stupid reason. Maybe I just don't like the fact that he opted for very traditional trance-style synth instrumentation this time. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw0Hmee5Ip0">Before the Dawn Breaks</a> finishes the album on a rather Jpop-y note, but an exceptionally good Jpop-y note. Actually, many Jpop-y notes in a row. That together form a song. Sorry, sorry, anyway, the pulsing synth and continuo harmonize with the vocals quite well, and give the song a distinct aesthetic despite it's questionable heritage.<br />
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Uncanny Instinct is a good album, and I think I could point to it as proof that doujin circles aren't worthless second-handers and actually do have some genuine talent. I would not call this one of my favorite albums ever, not by a long shot, but I see myself listening to it quite a bit in the future. I think EastNewSound could make quite a name for themselves as an indie music group, though if they do want to make their way in the world, I'm not sure if they want to stick with the anime lesbian album covers. I love anime, and I love lesbians, but really, they're not doing themselves any favors. I'm also a little confused, because I'm looking through their discography on touhouwiki, and as far as I can tell, despite Touhou being responsible for a good 75% of the world's girl-love manga and fanart, this is their first album cover to do this.<br />
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Why am I spending so much time talking about this?<br />
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Edit: I looked it up, and apparently "Under a Scarlet Moon, Absolute Insanity" is actually, according to touhouwiki anyway, "Beneath the Scarlet Moon, The Crazed Blossoms' Severance." Got the first part right, but not so much the second.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">-</span>----------------------------------------<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">whyistherenohorizontalrulefunction</span>-----------------------------------------<br />
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<b>Touhou Pianoforte I - Requiem for Sakura</b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yuyuko lookin' boss, Youmu lookin' QUALITY</td></tr>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">I'm actually going to cheat a little and talk about an album that is actually from...you know, I'm actually not sure, because it's not on touhouwiki at all. *looks up* Apparently, this was C79, so only a year ago or so. The artist - Tomoya-san - is on youtube <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/tomoya1060moon">here</a>. He's pretty small-time, and as a result, the quality of the recording is pretty awful. There's significant cut-off at the high end that causes some really unfortunate distortion. Fortunately, the music itself is beautiful. A piano album like this isn't the same thing as a more traditional doujin arrangement, because it's usually much more straightforward in its interpretations of the originals. For this reason, I think it'd be more accurate to call this "variations on ZUN" instead of "arrangements of ZUN." "Variations" sounds higher-brow anyway.</span></b><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Unfortunately, I can find only two tracks from this album on youtube, both uploaded by kkcwkoh. I'll go ahead and say that it's worth downloading, or, if you live in Japan and are actually able to buy it, buying.</span></b><br />
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Because of its nature as piano variations on Touhou music, mostly from Perfect Cherry Blossom, I'm afraid I don't have as much to talk about. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GVfmt_rJVg">It opens</a> with the "ZUN scale progression," naturally, but moves on to, actually, a rather powerful motif on Sakura, Sakura, which is fitting with the whole "Perfect Cherry Blossom" thing, and also thematically, since contrary to popular belief, the song was only popularized in its modern form in the Meiji period (though the melody was from Edo), when Japan was modernizing, and the romanticization of its history began. This is the era that Gensokyo appears to be in technologically as well. All this weaves in quite well with a variation on Ancient Temple, one of ZUN's more under-recognized compositions, played with feeling and flare. Next is a very dizzy, formless, yet still strong variation on Mystic Dream. After this is a variation on Hiroari Shoots a Strange Bird (another one of Youmu's themes), this time much stronger in its central themes. It captures the feel of the original better than the original did, in some ways. The Sakura, Sakura motif returns in the next track, which is a variation on Ultimate Truth. It doesn't feel as strong as some of the other tracks on the album, but as a relative measure, this is meaningless, since the rest of the album is so awesome. A variation on The Doll Maker of Bucharesti is next. Alice's themes are some of my favorites from PCB, and this track is one of the best on the album. Next is a variation on Paradise, a track I'm actually not as familiar with. However, the arrangement itself is very nice, and played with the characteristic flare. I'm even less familiar with the next track, Prayer in Service of the Sky ~ Towards Equal Heights, mainly because it's not actually from Touhou, but Clannad, an anime. I've never seen Clannad, but it has quite a large fandom. I imagine that if I saw it, I'd like, but it is, at its core, a soap-opera, so I'm not sure if I could ever take myself seriously again. Then again, I loved every panel of <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/TouhouTonari">Touhou Tonari</a>, so I guess I already kinda can't take myself seriously. Anyway, the track is good, and even though it's quite obviously not ZUN's style, it's still Tomoya-san's, so it's all good. Next, going apparently in reverse order, is a very nice variation on The Fantastic Tale of Touno. The album concludes with a variation on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYO8K-yhmdY">Phantom Ensemble</a>, a very nice end to the album, embodying quite a few of the themes present throughout.<br />
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It's an extraordinary album, carrying the atmosphere of PCB's soundtrack perfectly, except for the recording hiccups. It's probably my favorite Touhou piano album. I once played this album for a friend of mine who listens to almost nothing but top 40 stations and has been exposed to very, very little Japanese otaku culture, and he said he very much enjoyed it. If that's not an endorsement, I don't really know what is.<br />
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<b>Symphonic Suite: Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil</b><br />
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If only, if only. The more I think about it, the more I think how perfectly Touhou soundtracks are structured to be adapted into symphonic suites. Think Pictures at an Exhibition. Think about it: every Touhou soundtrack has a very proper first segment - the menu music - to set the theme. Each is already segmented into very distinct sections that explore their own themes, but progress the suite as a whole. ZUN's work, if handled correctly, could be played very well by even a small orchestra or septette and piano. It wouldn't be overly long (about the same length as your average symphony), and would be a unique experience even for people who are already familiar with video game music.<br />
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In my ideal world, someone would get ZUN's permission (or heck, maybe even inspire ZUN to do it himself, the lazy drunk) to write a symphonic suite based on Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil. Since Touhou fandom is rather large in Japan, I think someone could conceivably convince even the Tokyo Philharmonic to do it. Hey, they've done Final Fantasy, though granted, Nobuo Uematsu is a respected name in higher circles, and Junnya Ota really isn't. If it's a success, then there are still seven more games to do, not to mention all the spin-off games ZUN has composed music for.<br />
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If I were to undertake the task of adapting ZUN for orchestra, a task I'm in no way qualified to do, despite the meaningless jargon I throw around, I'd try to keep a few things in mind. First, while Touhou compositions work because of melody, the also work because of their unique atmospheres, so having the whole string section playing the same part simply won't do. Any Touhou orchestration has to emphasize solo performances and interplay, perhaps using instrument combinations not often seen in more traditional video game arrangements. TAMusic has demonstrated that simple violin and piano can go a long way. Too many have forgotten that large orchestras originally evolved for variety and flavor, not for redoubling the same handful of sounds. Speaking of which, I also imagine that, if at all possible, a clavichord would be most useful to the orchestra. I should also think that choruses should be spared for the most part. There are few tracks that I think would really benefit from that sort of aesthetic, but on the other hand, using them for the tracks that are already supposed to be bombastic, like U.N. Owen Was Her, might work. The trope became popular for a very good reason, it's just that people keep on using it without understanding what makes it work.<br />
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One Winged Vampire. Lol.<br />
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Anyway, I'm thinking the chances of this happening are very much dependent on what mood ZUN is in, and knowing ZUN, that means it's pretty darn unlikely, but one can hope. Perhaps we'll continue to see things like the performance in the video above. This isn't what I had in mind, stylistically or otherwise, but having anything Touhou played by an actual orchestra is pretty darn cool.<br />
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On the other hand, maybe all we need is a good ol' tavern bard.<br />
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<br /></div>Nate A.M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09274463407704657525noreply@blogger.com0