Feb
8
Site outages
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Apologies for any site outages you may have noticed in tle last couple of days. The blog has now been updated to the latest MySQL and Wordpress versions.
Jan
14
Winter 2010 anime
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A quick run-down of some of the new season: it’s said than no Japanese animation is entirely without interest, but with several of this season’s offerings that observation is put to the test!
Katanagatari – (trailer). Samurai swordsman fantasy stuff – didn’t pique my interest.
Dance in the Vampire Bund – Irritating TV show in opening episode, but in the last scene we meet some sexy-looking, under-dressed and violent female vampires, so could be worth following if this is what you like.
Ookami Kakushi – transfer student arrives in town full of mystery, and immediately finds a cute girl hurling herself at him, and other students seem to like him too. However the opening credits are full of supernatural violence. Do we want to explore the mystery, or are we just too irritated to care?
Chu-Bra – about a schoolgirl who is fascinated by adult underwear. If you are a teenage girl, it could be quite educational; if not, best just leave quietly…
Sora no Woto – about a girl who joins the army and gets herself posted to a troop of female soldiers, with the idea of learning the trumpet. Setting is a cod-European pastiche. The lead character, Kanata, is utterly and irresistibly cute – but hold on a moment – this is from the same pen as “K-on!” and the character designs are rather similar, so maybe just digging out “K-on!” and re-running it might be a better idea.
Baka to Test to Shokanju - set in a school where the thickest students get the worst facilities, but can challenge the elite classes to a contest to swap rooms. Contains many of the usual school comedy elements but very funny, could be worth following.
Cobra the Animation – Old fashioned all-action sci-fi adventure. Note that the under-dressed female eye-candy are scrumptious and definitely Women, not schoolgirls, so no need for embarrassment about your viewing tastes if you’re over a certain age.
Jan
14
The City of Lost Children (movie)
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The City of Lost Children – Jeunet & Caro. A fantastic live-action French movie by the creators of Delicatessen. It’s full of fabulous stuff: in a seaport, children are stolen by a group of blind men wearing cybernetic “eyes”, nasty Siamese twins send out a group of children to steal valuables, and a group of clones experiment with dreams. In a comic-book touch that will doubtless appeal to fans of Japanese animation, the principal character “Crumb” is a clever, resourceful and pretty young girl clad in a red dress. She helps “One” the side-show strongman track down a stolen boy, his “little brother”.
Most of the characters are grotesques, and in one case I had to resort to the “extras” to confirm that the actor really looked like his on-screen character and wasn’t digitally altered! Judith Vittet who plays Crumb is just brilliant. Though only nine years old when the movie was made, she was very professional and apparently corrected the continuity of the other young actors. Ron Perlman as “One” is also very good.
“City of Lost Children” looks fantastic, contains lots of cool scenes and unlike many fantasy films doesn’t have a plot that insults the intelligence of a five-year old, though it is a bit obscure in places. One of the best fantasy movies I’ve seen.
Jan
14
Memories of Matsuko (movie)
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Memories of Matsuko (2006) dir Tetsuya Nakashima. A young man is asked by his father to clear the flat of an aunt he didn’t know existed, who has just died. Aunt Matsuko was a young teacher whose life was ruined after she unwisely defended a boy accused of stealing. Forced to resign, and rejected by her family, she descends into a seedy underworld of massage parlours and violent boyfriends, living out her later years in eccentric isolation.
A hard-hitting movie and one of the best live-action Japanese movies I’ve seen.
Jan
2
Additions to anime database
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Just added entries on Aoi Hana, Toukyo Magnitudo 8, Bakemonogatari, Nyan Koi, Sasameki Koto, Kimi ni Todoke and Aoi Bungaku (Japanese titles) to my database (see link to left or via WEBSITE).
It took ages. I wonder why I still do this. Blogging is much less laborious.
Dec
28
Tokyo Year Zero
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Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace (355pp)
A cracking good novel by Peace, set in 1946 Tokyo. It’s part historical novel, part crime story, and strikingly original. The main character is a police inspector, Detective Inspector Minami (or at least that’s what he says his name is), is one of the Tokyo police force’s finest, but like the rest of the defeated Japanese, hungry, ill-paid, ill-housed, and flea-bitten. Minami is given the task, with his subordinates, of investigating the murder of a girl whose body has been found in a park. This means working from their office without a break for twenty days or until the case is closed. Minami finds that the case is linked to others, and to another case a year ago. Meanwhile the police force is being purged of unsuitable elements by the Public Safety Division, a branch of SCAP, i.e. the Victors.
Against a background of occupation, racketeering, prostitution, scavenging, and nasty rapes and murders, the police find a suspect. Serious violence breaks out between immigrant gangs and Japanese racketeers. Meanwhile Minami finds himself in trouble.
The novel, clearly well researched, vividly recreates the unpleasantness of survival in a defeated Japan, and explores the life and work of the immediate post-war police, which isn’t a common setting for fiction.
Recommended.
Nov
28
Autumn anime
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Some autumn anime I’ve been following:
Sasameki Koto: I’m still following this story of romantic relationships among girls. The self-absorbed Ushio still hasn’t realised how Sumika feels about her.
Nyan Koi: Amusing story about a boy, Junpei, who is cursed after damaging a roadside cat shrine, with the result that he can understand what cats say, and has to fulfill 100 cat wishes otherwise he’ll turn into one. At the start of the story he secretly is attracted to his pretty classmate Kaede. However as the series progresses one gets to feel that there is a harem thing going on, as while he may be cursed by the cats, he is also attracting a following of good-looking girls.
Kimi ni Todoke (=Reaching You): A charming story about the friendship between the shy and awkward Sawako and popular boy, Kazehaya. Sawako has difficulty in relating to other people, and at the start of the story has no friends. Her classmates just think she’s weird, and persistently mis-pronounce her name as “Sadako” (the name of a creepy character from the “Ring” horror movie). They spread rumours about her occult powers (she hasn’t any, of course.) Kazehaya wants to date her, but Sawako is so lacking in self-esteem that she just doesn’t get it when he says he wants to see her over the summer. Gradually she opens out and makes friends with other girls while falling in love with Kazehaya.
Cross Game: Still watching this. A new character, Akane, has appeared. Everyone thinks Akane looks startlingly like how Tsukishima Aoba’s dead sister would look now if she was still alive.
Aoi Bungaku Series: adaptations of classic Japanese stories. Soseki Natsume’s “Kokoro”, Osamu Dazai’s “No longer Human” (Ningen Shikaku) and and “Run, Melos!” (Hashire Melos). Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s “Hell screen” (Jigoku hen), Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s “The Spider’s Thread” (Kumo no Ito), Ango Sakaguchi’s “In the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom” (Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita).
Running order:
4 episodes for ningen shikkaku/No Longer Human
2 for Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita/In the Forest, under cherries in full bloom
2 for Kokoro
2 for hashire melos/Run, Melos
1 for Kumo no Ito/The Spider’s Thread
and 1 for Jigoku hen/Hell Screen
Manga artists Takeshi Obata (Death Note), Takeshi Konomo (Prince of Tennis), and Tite Kubo (Bleach) will be involved in the animation’s designs. The first one, which was a grim adult tale set in early 20th century Japan, seemed a bit long and depressing. “In the Forest…” is totally different in style and content, and is superb. “Kokoro” is different again, and again superb. “Run, Melos” is excellent. It refers to an ancient Greek story about Melos.
Dropped: To Aru Kagaku no Railgun: a story about some girl students at a college of magic in a magical alternate world. Well-realised and funny. I enjoyed it, but dropped it mainly because there wasn’t an interesting ongoing story. If lesbo groping is your thing, you’ll find it here rather than in the yuri animes reviewed on this page.
Nov
28
Sasameki Koto
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Those of you who like yuri anime may care to note that another one is appearing in the Autumn 2009 Japanese TV anime schedules - an adaptation of the popular yuri manga “Sasameki Koto”.
At the beginning of October I downloaded a scanlated chapter of the manga to get some idea of what it (or the anime) might be like. (There’s also a Wikipedia entry that explains plenty about it.). The anime started on 7 October 2009, and we are currently up to episode 7 or 8.
Briefly, 15-year old Sumika Murasame is academically gifted, good at sports, and skilled at karate, making her something of an alpha girl, and she is 175cm (5′9″) tall, which does nothing to diminish her reputation for being a bit scary, and she wears glasses. Secretly, she is attracted to another girl, her best friend, the pretty Ushio Kazama, who is also a lesbian. However Ushio is only attracted to cute girlies, not strapping young Amazons like Sumika.
Sumika hopes she can find a way to declare her feelings, while Ushio repeatedly pre-empts this by constantly chasing other girls, and pointing out that Sumika isn’t her type. This is (so far) a story about unrequited lesbian love – those who hope to see the other sort should look elsewhere.
Other characters include a cross-dressing boy who finds himself signed up as a (female) magazine model, several other lesbians, and a yuri manga fan-girl. Inevitably, Ushio pursues the boy believing him to be a cute girl.
While this clearly isn’t another Aoi Hana, being more in the familiar territory of exaggerated romantic comedy, it does look like fun. The first anime episode, a slow one, rather misfires, and looks fairly boring in contrast to the lively opening of the manga. However it picks up from the second episode, and thereafter follows the style and storyline of the manga fairly closely.
In the opening scenes of episode 7, the cross-dressing boy Akemiya is bring photographed by his pushy little sister, and this scene is so sexy that it’ s really quite disturbing. Sumika is pressurised into going on a date with Akemiya, who turns up dressed as a girl. They have a snack in a cafe and then go clothes-shopping. It’s all a bit much for poor Sumika, who finds him/her so cute she practically has a nosebleed. Crikey. Don’t watch this episode, guys, if you’re worried about being turned gay.
This series shows the potential of yuri romantic anime for comedy; however there’s as much drama as comedy. As a drama it has a problem in that the humour lies in Ushio never realising that Sumika fancies her, and so the same cycle of Sumika’a hope and disappointment is spun out indefinitely. If Ushio got the message, the story would either end or morph into something else.
By the way, one is aware that successive generations of Japanese are getting taller, apparently because of improved diet, so Sumika’s height may not that unusual. Still, at 5ft 9in she’d be a tall girl in any country!
Nov
7
A Complete Shoujo Anime List
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The Shoujo listing on this site has been revised as The Shoujo Anime Database (2004, 2005, 2006) and, by permission of Vince Ho, incorporates the entire Shoujo Anime List (1995).
Many entries are already in place. Entries based on or matching with the Shoujo Anime List 1995 are generally enhanced by additional data, synopses and comment, and, in some cases, screen grabs. Screen grabs are included purely for purposes of identification and review. (Most screen grabs are in the TV section).The Shoujo listing is extracted from the General database by activating the shoujo option. Read more
Nov
7
Online Shopping
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