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20070519.0730: Gondoliers in Venice are scandalized by the fact that a woman has gained approval to join their ranks. It's not that they're prejudiced against women, of course, but it's tradition that all gondoliers be men.

I wonder how they'd feel knowing their future? In Neo Venizia, all the gondoliers are young women. (And their boss is a miniature cow.)

20070518.1950: Well, what the heck. I started messing around with a blog on Pixy's site. I just made it unhidden. So far it's just test posts, but I'm thinking of running a sort of hybrid, where TMWs and reviews would remain on this server, but day-to-day posts would go over there. That would, at long last, give people things they could link to, and it would also permit comments. I say that last with great trepidation, but it's worth experimenting with. What the hell.

I've been mucking around a bit with the site format there. It won't end up looking like this site, and probably will have even more primitive site formatting than this one does. One thing I did want to do was to make that site continue to use the image rotation. That can't reasonably be hosted on mee.nu so I've set up my htaccess here so that refers to that image directory from the other site don't bounce. One of the test posts links to the top image, and at least for me it looks right.

Frankly, I've been a bit worried about this server. It still works just fine, but it's been running now continuously for six years and that's pretty long. It won't last forever.

On the other hand, trying to move everything over to mee.nu is probably out of the question. There are more than 3700 image files associated with the Chizumatic site, and probably 200 SHTML files, and the existing uploading mechanism only permits me to upload one at a time. Worse, they're all formatted with my site format macros, which I think wouldn't play with mee.nu. (I'm using server-side includes in my source to bring in the header.)

Anyway, I'm still playing with it, but starting now I'm going to be mirroring all posts from here on that site as well. (After this post.)

UPDATE: I am working on the site formatting relating to the top section. It does not work. It does not display properly. You do not need to tell me about that. I am fully aware of it.

20070518.0135: This just in: Tautologies are true!

Also in the news, this headline: "Census: 1 in 3 Americans is a minority" Well, yeah! And the other 2/3rds is a majority! Isn't that what "minority" and "majority" mean? (This is like "Fugitives still at large".)

20070517.2355: These are really cool: Zoomquilt and Zoomquilt2. Some (well, a lot) of the art is pretty eerie, but it's a neat idea and executed well.

20070517.1730: Don's new site motto is "There's a fine line between kawaii and kowai."

Kawaii means "cute", more or less. (Depends on who the target is.) Kowai means "scary". The obvious similarity between the words contrasted with the radical difference in meaning is one that stands out to the dilettante in Japanese. But apparently it's also obvious to the Japanese themselves. In episode 7 of Petite Princess Yucie (probably my most favorite in the series) Glenda and Yucie are sent to Makai, the demon world, to retrieve a crystal flower. It's a bit jarring:

Yucie says, "This is the demon world? How should I put it? Kind of kawaii (cute), kind of kowai (scary)..." And then Glenda gets very defensive. It's my dad, the king of the demons! He wants to make the demon world more friendly for tourists, so he's trying to make it more cute! This is stupid! We're demons! We're supposed to be scary! and so on, all at a very high rate of speed.

That's one of two major revelations about Glenda in that episode, and after them both, the audience and Yucie never look at Glenda that same way again.

20070516.1810: Japanese acronyms don't end up like ours, since each "letter" is a syllable. That means they're guaranteed to be speakable, unlike ours. The Japanese also tend to shorten multi-word phrases, especially made up of foreign words, by dropping characters out of the middle of them. So Pokemon is short for poketto monsutaa which is the Japanized form of the English phrase "pocket monster". (And then, ironically, when it was exported to the US they retained the name "Pokemon".)

I just ran into another one: labuho. It's short for labu hoteru, "love hotel". It's at the end of the first episode of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, which I've decided to watch again.

UPDATE: Another one: depaato is short for depaatomentosutoa. (Department store)

UPDATE: Have you noticed that some languages are less compact than others? Seems like every time I see a sign written in Spanish and in English, the Spanish version is longer.

Anyway, there are some nicely compact terms in Japanese, and one of the best is 大魔 dai mao. Abenobashi translates that as "great evil lord", which ain't bad. They're using the term to refer to the final boss in the FRP video game episode (ep 2).

UPDATE: Alright, this begs to be translated:

中ボス
ブラックムネムネが
現われた!

chuu bosu
burakku munemune ga
arawareta!

Medium boss
black Munemune (subject)
appeared!

As to the verb, the infinitive is 現われる arawareru "to appear" and it's a V1, so the informal past tense would replace the last character with ta. It's not a present perfect (i.e. "has appeared"). I don't think Japanese has that tense. English verbs have an extraordinarily rich set of conjugations, especially when you start tossing in helper verbs like "have", "is", "will", "would", "should", "could", and adverbs like "might", "maybe", "probably", "definitely", so it seems as if ADV's subtitle translator took a bit of liberty with this one.

By the way, "Middle Boss Black Munemune" is pretty amazing looking:

Of course, Munemune is always amazing looking.

UPDATE: Where are you carrying all those snails, Arumi? None of your business, Sam.

20070516.1100: Hold on there, pardner! Bob's blogspot blog is gone, which is unfortunate. But the Blogspot 404 page that comes up is in Japanese, which is extraordinary! (Did Virginia become part of Japan without my noticing?)

UPDATE: Bob writes:

Blog's not gone. Google, for some reason, flagged it as a 'Spam Blog'. I'm not sure how they came to that conclusion, but there were a bunch of verification steps I had to fill out to get it reactivated. I'm told it should be back up within 24 hours. Perhaps I should rethink hosting it there. I'm not too fond of their v2 Blooger engine, which makes formatting posts very time consuming (IMO) - one thing I do not have in abundance.

Blogspot is a lot like training wheels for a bicycle. A lot of people find out about blogging and decide they want to try it. They may make a few posts, and then lose interest in it. Blogspot is a good place for someone to try blogging out, but if they turn out to be serious and to really want to keep it up, then they should move on, because in the long run Blogspot is worth what you're paying to use it.

And we still don't have an explanation for why Google decided to replace Bob's blog with a 404 page written in Japanese.

20070515.2255: The Brickmuppet (in his new digs) has a list of what he thinks are the top ten anime babes of all time. Such a list is open to endless kibitzing and I have no intention of adding to the pain.

He includes Meia from Vandread and I fully agree with that choice. But he also tosses off a comment about Vandread being based on a computer game, and that's the first I've heard of anything like that. While checking up on it I looked at the Wikipedia entry for the series (which is loaded with spoilers, so I'm not linking to it).

It mentions that there was a manga adaptation done, but the story got changed a lot. Sounds like it was wrecked, quite frankly. (It says, "The characters who are not in the manga are Bart, Duero, Ezra, Paiway, Gascogne, and Pyoro." That's already enough to make me lose any interest.)

And there was this:

There are circulated rumors and pictures of a possible third season, where the main character is Tylor Tokai, the daughter of Hibiki and Dita, with appearances of other characters, relative to the original cast. However, GONZO has not stated whether the franchise would continue or not.

I can't see it. While it would be nice to see Hibiki and Dita settled down in marital bliss, I really can't see any story potential in that, or at least not enough to justify a real series, even half-length.

If I was in charge at Gonzo and wanted an idea for a sequel, I'd do a one-ep special. After several years of effort, Parfet would finally figure out how to use the Power of the Vandreads and the Paksis to do terraforming, and she'd convince the old crew of the Nirvana to take a trip back to the plague planet.

That's the story I want to see. Maybe Dita would have a baby by then. In fact, maybe Parfet would, too. It would give us an opportunity to see how everyone changed. More men would be involved and some of them would come along. And it would provide some closure for one particular character. (Even better if Parfet's idea required modifications to the Nirvana, which would require Bart to summon up his ki again.)

20070514.2340: From the "Everything I needed to know I learned from anime" file: Any robot or machine which is damaged enough so that it can no longer function will explode in a tremendous fireball.

20070514.1715: Sorry about the lack of posting recently. I've been feeling a bit ill and haven't really had much energy.

UPDATE: I was thinking that maybe I should put in another order but I went through my notes and there really isn't anything I want to buy. A few things out now or coming; the first DVD of Suzumiya Haruhi, for instance.

Back three years ago I was wildly enthusiastic about Kaleido Star and ragged a lot on ADV for not releasing the second season. Well, it's all available now, but it's been so long that I've lost interest in it. I'll pick it up eventually, but I think I'll wait for the inevitable thinpak.

The first DVD of the last UFO Princess Valkyrie series is out now, but the second series was the high point (albeit a pretty low "high point") and the final six episodes of the third series are apparently not very good. The last DVD is scheduled for July and I think I'll wait until then and get them both together.

The fifth DVD of Shakugan no Shana is out now; that's worth getting. But the final DVD won't be out until July; maybe I'll wait on that one, too.

The other two DVDs of Coyote Ragtime Show are out now, and when I eventually decide to put in an order I'll probably get them, just for completeness. All reports were that the first episode was the best in the series, and I don't have very high expectations. It's just not something that particularly intrigued me, even with the blonde gothloli with the grenades.

I just went through my "future series" list, and most of the things on it that I do want haven't been licensed or released in R1.

I'm not looking for suggestions; I'm just bitching. I might put in a small order, but I can't really see putting in a big one.

Is my anime collection now complete? That's a scary thought.

UPDATE: From the last order, the following contributions to the "not watched and probably will never watch" pile:

2/3rds of This Ugly yet Beautiful World (snore)
2/3rds of Gunbuster (really!)
2/3rds of Amazing Nurse Nanako (retch)
The entire Battle Athletes: Victory series (moan)

That always happens, of course, but Battle Athletes: Victory was particularly painful because it was 8 DVDs, and I knew after watching 1 episode that I didn't have even the faintest smidgen of interest in watching any more of it.

It didn't even rate being added to the "unwatched" pile. Battle Athletes: Victory and Amazing Nurse Nanako both went into a storage crate. Them's the breaks.

20070514.0115: The Palestinians have agreed to another cease-fire. Not with Israel, of course. Hamas and Fatah agreed to a cease-fire in the Palestinian Civil War.

Is anyone surprised that the cease-fire didn't actually happen? I'm sure not. So if the Palestinians can't even keep their word to each other, why should anyone else be expected to trust them?

20070511.2350: Jane Fonda has gotten old. You know that?

I know that old age comes for us all, but time is a peculiar thing for TV and movie actors. Even death is a bit strange. John Wayne has been dead for 30 years, but I can go back and visit him any time I want.

I know that Katherine Hepburn got old. She was gorgeous when she was young, and she was beatiful as an old lady, too. But when she was young, she was in black and white. If I go back and watch "The Philadelphia Story", she's young, but the movie feels old -- because it is old. To see her "modern", to see her in a movie that feels recent, I see her old. Something like "Rooster Cogburn and the Lady" or "On Golden Pond".

As far as movies are concerned, the dividing line is about the middle of the 1950's, when everyone went to color (unless they were trying to be artsy-fartsy). So On Golden Pond is recent.

Jayne Fonda was in "On Golden Pond" and she didn't look old. She was 43 when that was made. "Cat Ballou" doesn't feel old. Jane Fonda was 27 when that was made.

And now Jane Fonda is old. I just read this review of her latest movie. She's featured on the movie poster, and she looks old. And it's a shock, because she's still young, in Cat Ballou. How the hell did Jane Fonda end up old? It seems like just yesterday she was young!

(Oh, and the movie sucks, too.)

20070510.1940: I was watching the third Tenchi Muyo OVA again yesterday, and in the critical 19th episode (where Tenchi finally meets Z and Tokimi) there was something I noticed, that I should have noticed before. It's all major spoilers, so into the gray it goes.

So just to recap the situation: the Choushin, the three goddesses, have been searching for a power greater than themselves. As far as they can tell no such power exists, so they hope to create a situation where such a power can come into existence. So Tsunami and Washu go "undercover". Tokimi partially binds the power of each. Tsunami becomes the founding tree for the Jurai clan. Washu in her turn places the rest of her power into the magical gems, the original three that no one understands. Washu also loses her memory, and becomes human. 20,000 years pass.

Eventually two candidates appear: Z, elsewhere, is found by Tokimi. Tenchi, in his turn, appears out of the royal line of Jurai, possibly aided by Tsunami. Each demonstrates the potential to be what the Choushin are searching for by having the ability to create the Wings of the Lighthawk.

Z wants to be it, but as long as Tenchi exists Tokimi won't make up her mind, so Z decides to kill Tenchi. It's not that he wants Tenchi dead; it's that he knows that Tokimi can and will restore Tenchi to life -- but without the power to create the wings. Z tries to attack Tenchi, but Tokimi tries to stop him.

Sasami seems to feel on some level that if Tenchi develops his full potential then he'll stop needing the people who have been living with him. Sasami wants Tenchi to lose his power, too, and Tsunami (merged with Sasami) carries out those wishes. She blocks Tokimi. Then it gets complicated.

Eventually Z slices Tenchi in half, but Tenchi doesn't die. Instead he manifests his power for the first time, because he's thrown out of the time stream. He ends up in another continuum, or perhaps a different time and place in the same continuum, where he finds a little girl. (Who is the female half of Kagato, and eventually ends up being part of Noike. Did I mention that this was complicated?) He saves her but they're torn apart while moving between frames again, and he ends up back at the battle -- where he finally begins to exert his power. Z's slice doesn't kill Tenchi, it causes Tenchi to begin to "hatch". A big chunk of the galaxy disappears and Tenchi begins to feel his full power.

Having searched for millenia for this, suddenly the Choushin, all three of them, unite to try to prevent it from happening. I think the reason is that Washu doesn't think Tenchi can handle the power yet, and is afraid that the emergence of that power will either destroy him or drive him mad. Or maybe it was that they feared it would destroy the continuum. Something like that. Anyway, Tokimi unseals the power of Tsunami and Washu, and all three of them exert their full power to try to suppress Tenchi's power.

Then something called the Counteractor interferes. It had already shown up, but it starts crawling all over Tokimi and neutralizes her power. Tsunami shouts, "Okaa-sama! Please stop!"

The Counteractor isn't Tenchi. It's a woman. Based on the hair color and hair style, I'd originally assumed it was Noike, who had wanted all of it to happen because of the female part of Kagato inside her. Who isn't evil, by the way; what we're dealing with is a time travel paradox, where the current female Kagato inside Noike is trying to arrange for Tenchi to go save her in the past. That's not the only time traveller; a future version of Tenchi himself shows up to interfere.

But that didn't explain what Tsunami said. And what occurred to me yesterday was that the Counteractor is actually Misaki, mother of Sasami and Ayeka. The hair color is the same. The hair style isn't, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything; the Counteractor's hair doesn't actually match that of Noike either.

It's about time for some relevant pictures of characters. Some of these are spoilers and some of them are NSFW: Counteractor Counteractor Tsunami Sasami Noike Misaki

The Counteractor has two green forehead spots. Noike doesn't have any. Tsunami and Sasami have that, but how could it be them? Misaki has two green forehead spots, and Sasami calls Misaki okaa-sama, which is what Tsunami calls the Counteractor.

It all fits, except that it doesn't make even the slightest bit of sense. Why would Misaki have such a power? Why would she want to use it to make sure Tenchi died? That's what she says to Tokimi. Tokimi says, "Stop... Tenchi will die if we don't do something." And the Counteractor replies, "I'm going to spoil your plan. That way it will end, and Tenchi can die."

It would be interesting to see whether the Counteractor is listed in the credits for ep 19, and who the seiyuu is. But I can't find out, because Funimation didn't translate the credits into Romaji. The one thing I do know is that Misaki is listed in the credits for OVA 3 on ANN, but I don't remember seeing her in any of the flashbacks. (But it's possible she appeared in ep 14; I'll have to go back and scan through it again to make sure.)

Just as everything is settling down, the future version of Tenchi shows up, takes the hand of the Counteractor, and seems to nullify her power and bring her out of it. They kiss, and vanish.

In my review of this series, I said that Tenchi doesn't pick a girl but there are hints that sometime in future he will, and hints about who it will be. When I wrote that I thought that the Counteractor was Noike. But if the Counteractor is Misaki, then what in hell is going on? Does anyone at AIC even care whether any of this makes sense?

20070509.2010: Will writes:

With the way shows have been hemorrhaging viewership after stellar first (and sometimes second) seasons lately, do you think it possible that American networks would start to look toward the 13/26 episode half/full season format like we see in anime? If the public is starting to look for something different every year, the old method of milking a concept for all it's worth year after year after year may have to be retired.

Extremely unlikely.

The entertainment industry is suffering from an affliction similar to that of a problem gambler. He's slowly losing money, but he's kept going by memory of the last big pot he took in, and thinks that if he can just get a winning streak, just a few good hands, then he can make it all good. The odds are against him, but he cannot give up the game.

The analogy is not exact because success and failure of a particular show or movie is not strictly random. There is a degree to which they can influence their chances of success. But there's much less of a degree of it than they really would like to acknowledge. An occasional movie, an occasional show, will hop out as a smash hit -- and they're just as surprised when it happens as anyone else is. (Or else they're not surprised, but only because they expect every show they produce to do that, and spend most of the time surprised and dejected by all the failures.)

But the occasional big win, the occasional big pot, keeps them going. And if they can just get the combination right, and do the right voodoo, then maybe they'll get on a winning streak. I mean, the guy in the next seat keeps winning, so why can't I? Those could have been my pots, my winnings! And if I do it just like he did, it could happen to me.

That's the reason for me-too shows, and it's the reason why virtually no one here creates limited series. Limited series do happen, and more often than not they've been very successful precisely because the limited series opens up narrative potential. And if such a series hits big, afterwards the top folks at the studio have a feeling of letdown and disappointment: I just won big, and I want to keep winning, but that show ended. So maybe they try to come up with a sequel (or prequel) anyway.

And what that teaches them when creating their next series is to not close the door to further episodes or sequels. It's insurance, sort of an option to repeat the wager if the first wager wins big.

The one thing a problem gambler cannot and will not do is walk away from the game, or change the way he plays in it. If only he can win just a couple of big hands, all his losses will be made good. The next hand, the next pot, could be the big one.

UPDATE: There was a show on TV 20 years ago called "Wiseguy" which was surprisingly innovative. What they did was to tell a series of self-contained stories, each of which covered several episodes. I wasn't a regular viewer but I did watch one of those stories, 5 episodes long, because it guest-starred Jerry Lewis. (Playing straight.) And it was surprisingly good. The longer length of story arcs permitted them to tell better stories. But more to the point, that format gave them the flexibility to make serious changes to continuity, at the level of story arcs. In the one I watched, there was a particularly sympathetic character who they killed off.

The series idea was that the FBI managed to "turn" an ex-con and convince him to work undercover for them. The only two important series-level continuing characters were this ex-con, the so-called "wiseguy", and the agent who worked with him. It was a nice concept, and it worked really well.

I've always wondered why no one ever did anything like it again. It ran 4 seasons and had good ratings.

UPDATE: The story arc I was talking about was called "Garment Trade".

20070509.1735: The OP of the third Tenchi Muyo OVA includes a pan-back from the deck at Tenchi's house all the way out into space. It's not as good as the one in Kamichu but it does include this shot:

The assumption is that Tenchi's house is right smacko in the middle. So where is it?

The terrain is quite recognizable, especially the island on the center right. That's the inland sea. And it turns out that right in the middle of that is the town of Kiyone. Which, it turns out, is also the name of Tenchi's mother.

In the extras there are some "making of" videos showing some of the real locations which were used as models. For instance, there's a shrine which was used as a model for Ryoko's cave. It turns out that those locations are all in that general area.

20070509.1615: Regarding the pronunciation of hitotsu as "shtoots", Roy writes:

It's a common point in Edoko-ben (the Tokyo dialect) to pronounce a word beginning with "hi-" to one beginning "shi-". So, the word is probably actually "hitotsu" meaning "one". It doesn't seem to follow after any old sound, but I haven't made a complete study of it either. Though I've heard it used on "hitori" (one person), proper nouns seem to escape it - Hibiya and Hitachi seem to get pronounced clearly whenever I've heard them.

The usage has been falling out of favor in modern Japanese; my personal thought is that it has to do with Tokyoites believing that their Japanese is somehow more pure, and then working to purge it of non-standard pronunciations. Sort of like the French Ministry for Language or whatever they call it, but enforced by shame rather than government edict.

I wondered if it might not be something like that. Thanks!

20070509.1330: This has to be one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It's a home-brew three dimensional printer which uses granulated sugar as its printing medium. Sugar was an inspired choice, for all the reasons they say.

20070509.1320: I love this modified logo.

20070509.0850: OMGWTF?

In TV's worst spring in recent memory, a startling number of Americans drifted away from television the past two months: More than 2.5 million fewer people were watching ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox than at the same time last year, statistics show. ...

NBC set a record last month for its least-watched week during the past 20 years, and maybe ever -- then broke it a week later. This is the least popular season ever for CBS' "Survivor." ABC's "Lost" has lost nearly half its live audience -- more than 10 million people -- from the days it was a sensation. "The Sopranos" (a show that has earned broadcast-network-like ratings in the past) is ending on HBO, and the response is a collective yawn.

Events like "American Idol" on Fox (which is owned by News Corp.) and "Dancing With the Stars" on ABC (owned by The Walt Disney Co.) are doing the most to prop up the industry. But still, in the six weeks after Daylight Savings Time started in early March, prime-time viewership for the four biggest broadcast networks was down to 37.6 million people, from 40.3 million during the same period in 2006, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Millions of missing viewers could translate into millions of missing dollars for the networks heading into the up-front sales season.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people, could it?

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