Mahou Meido Meganekko

Yesterday: DVD’s 1 and 2 of Shakugan No Shana. I’ve got the full fansubs of it and the first time I watched it, I detested the ending. There were about three things wrong with it, one having to do with the some character motivations during the final arc. (I’m avoiding spoilers here, because there are quite a few twists and turns in this tale). After Steven remarked that he was watching it and had gotten hooked on the first DVD, I happened to be bored and looking for something to kind of “come down on” after watching Misaki Chronicles, so I queued up Shana and re-watched all 24 episodes. Lo and behold, I noticed something blindingly obvious that I’d missed a the first time through, and it completely changed one of the characters. In turn, that changed how I viewed that person’s actions, which impacted the last arc hugely, and in a positive fashion. (Some actions I’d thought were “wrong” for the character now made a lot more sense). I’d mentally given the series a C, maybe a C+, but it was worth a full letter upgrade. I’ll hold off doing a full review until sometime this summer (when the series is fully out) but it’s a worthwhile series, even if I still have a few problems with the ending. In part, they’re forced by (as usual) the fact that the manga is ongoing. In fact, there’s an OVA (released this month) and a movie (pending) that will continue the story of Yuuji and Shana.

Last week: Serial Experiments Lain, as a Xmas present. Haven’t begun to watch it yet; I’m saving it for after the new year.

Two weeks ago: Planetes. It may be #83 on some Top Anime list in Japan (it even got beaten out by Bobobobobobo-boob), but it’s not going on my list. Too close to home. Loaned it to DrH. and told him I’d pick it up next time I went to Dallas. Maybe I will.

Itsuki’s auditions are up. Once again, nobody gets it quite right, though I think #4 edged out #5 for closest. This time, the problem is, none of them came across as untrustworthy enough. They’re all “nice guys.” Itsuki may be a nice guy in reality, but his defining characteristic is that that he sounds oily. You just know he’s trying to sell you hemlock and claim it’s Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper….

There’s a new audition poll over at asosbrigade, this time for Yuki. I voted for #4, but frankly, I think all four girls flubbed it. Every one of them inflected their voice to a greater or lesser extent. The defining characteristic of the Japanese seiyuu’s performance was that she modulated her voice without inflecting it in the least. To understand what I mean, say aloud, in an absolute monotone: “I am an alien lifeform.” Then repeat it with a slight empahsis on the first word. “I am an alien life form.” Then say: “Life”, “Am”, “Alien”, “Form”, “I”, “An” without stressing any of the words. If you pronounce it as written, the odds are you did it fairly robotically. Even if you recorded it, then spliced the words together in the correct order, it wouldn’t sound like a sentence spoken by any human; it would seem machine generated.

The reason for that is that we not only stress words and syllables to emphasize our meanings, but we subtly modulate our voices as we slide from one word into the next. I’m not sure it’s a universal human trait that would be shared by a tonal language, such as Chinese, but to my untrained ear, it does sound like the Japanese do the same thing. That’s how Yuki sounds in the original Japanese: absolutely no inflection; her seiyuu never stresses a single syllable–but her voice naturally modulates through the sentence. The net effect is human, yet eeriely alien.

In fact, as I discussed this above, something ocurred to me that I went back and checked out. It’s not true that she never inflects. The barest hint can be discerned when she’s startled by something outside her understanding–such as when Kyon remarks that she looks cuter without glasses. Also when she’s denying that she’s disobeyed Kyon’s orders and talking about the Computer Society’s actions during Day of Sagittarius. It might be my imagination, but she seems to do it more often as the series progresses–which, given the novels, is entirely logical.

Unfortunately, none of the auditioned women seem to be capable of turning in a performance that subtle. I hope they either find a different one, or give Yuki’s VA better direction when the time comes to dub the voices.

Back in October, I wrote:

If you were an individual with the talent to make videos like Ryan and Michael, would you leap at this deal from Google? “Make us content, and we’ll give you $0.35 out of every $1 we make from your video, and we’ll split the advertising revenue too.” And here’s the kicker: YouTube has been inking some deals with movie and song publishers that would allow the use of their materials without YouTube or the creator getting sued or recieving C&D notices–I bet such deals probably have something in the way of royalty provisions. After all, if KyoAni were to get $0.05 for every single viewing of the over two thousand Melancholy clips on You Tube, they’d probably have paid for the series several times over.

Ok, what about viewing it for free, just cut straight to the advertising revenue? Well in a piece of completely related news, the subtitled version of the SOS Brigade’s “release video” is available online. Maybe I’ll sign up later and change the link to my very own and make lots and lots of money.

Heh, with a readership that can be counted without taking off both shoes? I think not. But it is amusing to read my old article and see the words:

Take Shamus’ word for it; his expenses are pretty close to mine, per blog (but I support two blogs now)….

Haha. As if. This was perhaps true, pre-DM of the Rings!

I picked the boxed set of Planetes up the other day, having been intrigued by it’s hard-science premise, though the fact that the trailers didn’t hint at any kind of story had me leery of it. Still, I thought it would be good to see just how well someone did trying to make “serious” science fiction as opposed to “fanciful” or even “fantasy” science fiction.

As I watched the first DVD tonight, I kept being bothered by something. The show was giving me a really frustrating (frustrated?) vibe. I wasn’t liking it; in fact, I was actively disliking it, and I couldn’t understand why. Was it the characters? They seem pretty typical.

Overeager klutzy rookie? Check.
Permissive boss-san, close to retirement, and just marking time? Check.
Brown-nosing assistant? Check.
Frustrated, cynical veteran/co-worker? Check.
Quirky, but competent senior non-com? Check.
Steady and quiet assistant non-com? Check.
Competent but snarky temp who doesn’t hide her contempt? Check.

Ok, so maybe it was the lack of plot. No, wait, I watched 8 episodes of Kanon before it began to hint that it might have one. And I watched lots of Oh! My Goddess! Nope, that’s not it.

The animation? Nope, pretty good so far, no shortcuts, and reasonably good.

The overuse of tropes? Not really; there almost aren’t any, aside from the character types.

The lack of fanservice? Be serious. (Damn, but they drew a lot of ugly women. I mean where’s the Seraphim pilots when you need the place brightened up a …. ) Uh. No, that’s not it.

Then finally it hit me, as I took the first DVD out of the drive. I realized why I didn’t like the show, to the extent that it felt kind of like fingernails on a blackboard. I was rather annoyed with myself, because I should have seen it one episode earlier than the end of the DVD. How could I have missed that THAT was the reason why I wasn’t enjoying the show at all?

I wasn’t watching a fictional workplace in outer space. I was watching my own.

Cleaning up Earth orbit was obviously a “public work.” Trash hauling. The pay sucked, the job was a dead end, the prospects for advancement were nil, their “betters” looked down on them, morale was shitty, and still they showed up every damn day ready to work, hazarding their lives; even putting in overtime when it was needed. They were cynical, world-weary, and tended to pursue their goals in self-defeating fashion, such as gambling or playing the lottery. Their immediate bosses had petty concerns; the upper bosses generally didn’t give a damn about them. (I’ll give one in the show some credit, though; he backed them when he should have.) So why did they stay on and do the job with dedication? Because someone had to, and since they were the ones doing it, they might as well–or maybe it was just a living, anyway.

I am Hachimachi. Hachimachi is me. I was watching him poke at the dead corpse of his dreams, and seeing my own.

I watch anime to get away from my life, not celebrate it. And I blog so I can kid myself that my words have some significance. I think that’s the self-contradictory problem at the core of my disatisfaction over my near-abandonment of Houblog. It was a significant work, and could have an effect, but blogging about my employer and city politics in general didn’t get away from my life, it just rubbed my nose in how futile it is. I’ve watched some dedicated people have an effect, such as Tom Bazan and his efforts over Metro’s and the City of Houston’s safety issues–but it’s been an all-consuming crusade for him, with both Metro and the City doing their level best to stymie him. Also, he is a self-employed professional, which I am not. (Which isn’t to say he hasn’t paid a price, nonetheless.) I don’t have that in me, and yes, I’m aware and frustrated by the fact that to change my world, the first thing I have to change is me. (Sorry about sticking a local political reference in here, but I needed it for the point.)

And oh yes, for my superior employee rating, I got a 2.5% pay increase this year. About $15/week after taxes. Hey, that’s a boxed set of animé every month or so, deshou? I could have gotten 3.5% if I had no “Averages”, 2/3 “Superiors” and 1/3+1 “Outstandings”… out of about 15 different categories. Like that’s gonna happen. Inflation for 2005 was 3.6%; the 2006 figures will be available in March, 2007 from the US Department of Labor. I enjoy the heartfelt sympathy of some of my friends. “At least you got one. We got the, ‘our department underbid again this year, so no raises again,’ excuse.” You know, the grass really must be greener, if I’m envied.

I watch animé to escape all that, not to be reminded of it. So Planetes is back on the shelf, and I have no intention of watching any more of it. I detest too much navel-gazing, and you’re not here to read it, either.

At least when it comes to being grumpy at this time of year, I have good company. 20061218.1310

The website for R1 dubbing of Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumaya has a link to several actresses supposedly under consideration for the role of Mikuru Asahina. The first of the five links is the original scene in Japanese, during which Haruhi is forcing Mikuru into a bunny-girl outfit for the first time — an activity that approving fans of the series have dubbed “costume rape.” You can hear her insisting over Mikuru’s weak protests and Kyon’s shock–during which he flees the room rather than watch, since he has no hope of stopping Haruhi.

Upon listening to the English versions, one thing is clear. If that’s all you had to go on, you’d swear this series was a porno flick!

Slow posting today. Hanging out with Master Plan, Dr. Heinous, and the Stainless Steel Brat. Who’s being very bratty, of course. During a Runequest gaming session, Dr.H as the GM:

DrH.: “You enter a very large chamber… it’s pitch black in here, except for your torches. You can see hundreds of years of dust on everything, and piles of trash and junk several feet across, with cobwebs all over them, reaching from floor to ceiling.”

SSB: “Oh, so that’s what happens when a Wal-Mart closes down!”

Sigh, I can’t kill her; her dad gave me Serial Experiments Lain for Xmas….