Gen X Otaku 1971: the OG blog

Finished Nabari No Ou

I finally finished watching the last of Nabari No Ou, the modern Japanese Ninja epic.  What stands out at the heart of the series is the deep and abiding friendship that develops between Miharu and Yoite....

Two loner misfits who find themselves reflected in the other.  As we learn more about Yoite's past, it seems his family utterly rejected him and he came to be adopted into the Kairoshu clan.  Yoite's ongoing desire throughout the series is that he wants to be utterly obliterated from existence, he wants never to have existed at all.  He wants Miharu to use the Shinrabansho powers to do this.  We also learn that Yoite accepted to become a Kira user because it would similarly "delete" him from existence.  

The main focus of the story is Yoite's self-loathing, suicidal wish.  Yoite is the one influence upon Miharu that drags him out of his apathy, forces him to care.  It can be fair to say that Miharu by the end of the series truly loves Yoite.  It never crosses over into a "boys love" kind of anime, but no doubt there is dojinshi fan fiction out there that goes there.  This thread of Nabari No Ou probably appeals to female fans who go for the boys love genre.  In any case, it is one of the more beautiful depictions of sincere friendship I've seen in recent years.

The action is solid throughout Nabari No Ou ; we do finally get to see in flashback the dark secret that has been burdening Tobari, Miharu's Sensei (teacher).  Miharu, in the English dub, does use the proper Japanese term "Sensei".

The voice acting is very good; Brina Palencia voices Miharu, taking a cue from Luci Christian in voicing teen boys.  I was very pleased with Brina's performance.  Kate Oxley voices Ramei, the Samurai of the Shimizu family and brother to Raiko.  Kate's voice still sticks in my head as the voice of Momo from Peach Girl.  Greg Ayres voices Gau, which I wonder might have been a hat tip to his prior role in Shadow Skill where he also voiced a warrior named Gau, who was the brother and travel companion of Luci Christian's main character in that show.

A couple of the characters are revealed to be immortals, and they are expectedly bad-ass, but they do not upset the main narrative and they are still inferior to the Shinrabansho within Miharu.

I especially liked the creepy white haired, yellow eyed immortal girl with the razor claws, Shijima.  She reminded me of Evangeline from Negima! At first I thought that she was voiced by Hilary Haag but this is not the case, though Hilary certainly could have voiced the role convincingly.

Props also to Colleen Clinkenbeard's performance as the Clan leader who can read minds.  Yae Oda (織田 八重 Oda Yae^?) is the leader of Togakushi (戸隠^?) Village and president of Fog Blue, a small-scale dispatch company and the form the village takes in the front world.  Ms. Oda lost her daughter to a tragic illness and has never been the same.  She tries to leave the world of the Shinobi (Ninja) but gets pulled back in by Miharu...and her clan is utterly eliminated by the Kairoshu special assassination squad, the Tattegami.

Very good series, though not good enough for me to purchase a personal copy for the ages.

Just saw English dub premiere of Ghost Hound (eps.1-4)

Just got back from Alamo Drafhouse, where I watched Sentai Filmworks / Section 23's premiere of the English dub of Ghost Hound, Volume 1.  We got to watch the first 4 episodes.  Unlike with Clannad, I did not luck out and win the boxed set drawing at the end.

This was an extremely beautiful Anime from an artistic standpoint; the animation was top notch and cutting edge.  The story is extremely well written and complex.  The characters are immediately likable but all have deeply tragic pasts.  The story as we first receive it is incomplete, and the details are filled in only little by little.  Reminiscent slightly of Serial Experiments Lain though more supernatural than cybernetic.

The English voice cast have a mix of new talent and some ADV films and FUNimation veterans, including Brittney Karbowski, who plays a Shrine Maiden with the ability to see the spirit world, not unlike Watanuki from xxxHolic.

The main protagonist (foreground) is Tarō Komori (古森 太郎 Komori Tarō^?), a slightly pudgy teenager who was involved in a freakish kidnapping incident 11 years ago, in which his sister tragically died.  He suffers from haunting nightmares and other signs of PTSD.

Taro is befriended by brash transfer student from Tokyo, Masayuki Nakajima (中嶋 匡幸 Nakajima Masayuki^?), who behaves very much like an investigative journalist wannabe.   He's already read up on Taro's kidnapping case online and knows many of the intimate details already, which rather creeps Taro out initially.  Though he seems happy-go-lucky, the lighthearted Masayuki has a skeleton or two in his closet as well, which is only revealed a few episodes in.

Rounding out the male trio is Makoto Ōgami (大神 信 Ōgami Makoto^?), a gruff, loner-type who "only comes to school when I feel like it".  Makoto's father committed suicide 11 years ago, and there's always been speculation that he was somehow connected to Taro's kidnapper, but this was never proven conclusively.  Makoto lives with his grandmother but seldom talks to her; he mostly shuts himself up in his room and practices on the electric guitar using plug-in headphones.  This is a method of practicing I have employed, and electric guitars are remarkably quiet when plugged into headphones rather than an actual full sized amp, quieter than a softly played steel-string acoustic guitar, in fact.  Only the guitar player wearing the headphones can actually hear the guitar in this manner.

The mysterious shrine maiden girl turns out to be Miyako Komagusu (駒玖珠 都 Komagusu Miyako^?); Miyako is sensitive to the spirit world and even sees echoes of Taro's sister when she used to be alive, and images of Taro when he was only a three-year-old boy; His sister was only eight when she was kidnapped.

In visions and memories we see that on the day Mizuka and Taro were kidnapped, Mizuka was angry with Taro and scolding him.  For this reason, Taro can't remember his sister's living face, it's all a blur...though he remembers her pallid face clearly after her death but before his rescue by the authorities. 

Taro is figuratively and perhaps literally haunted by Mizuka's ghost.  Ghost Hound plays with a lot of inter-related Japanese themes and myths, and if you lack an basic understanding of Japanese culture you might not pick up on all the significance and nuance contained in this show.  It is a psychological thriller wrapped in a supernatural mystery and a cautionary tale about the ravages of environmental catastrophe.  It is also about guilt, fate, responsibility and coming of age.  It is  a very good show and very worth watching, and I look forward to finishing Volume 1 and Volume 2.

Decided to Link up with my Facebook

I decided to go ahead and link back up with my Facebook profile, since moving my anime blog from Vox.com over to this location on Typepad.com; I'm still not happy with losing Vox, but I'm grateful I didn't lose my blog forever like could have happened.  Since Amazon sometimes works nicely with Facebook, I may go back to posting briefer anime reviews there.  I don't know.  Maybe, maybe not.  Gosh, it was so nice to be able to import the DVD box art over from Amazon and slap it on my latest Vox.com postings...why can't I do that with Typepad??  That's such a rip.  My blog was about discussing anime shows and Vox.com was THE perfect way to do that.  Also, the theme I picked here, well, at least it was Japanese in style, but I liked my Vox theme better...it was a cute animated scene, with Mount Fuji in the distance.  I've also griped about this on my MySpace and on Facebook already.

I do generally like to keep my various internet presences separate, so I generally don't link them together.  But I decided to make an exception for Facebook in this specific case.

I will admit the ability to incorporate MUSIC into Typepad postings is pretty neat & cool.

Audio capture brainstorm.

I really like the first opening song used in the earliest episodes of the 1990s anime You Are Under Arrest. It's by the group Flying Kids and I used to have the title scribbled down somewhere on a post-it note from the opening credits of the show.  I've searched everywhere on YouTube for this song but no luck.  I even searched on Amazon music for the soundtrack to the show, but none of the sample tracks contain it either...it seems two albums of music from the show were produced on CD and are available for sale in the USA, but not this particular song.  It really irks me because I totally love this song.

I can't even find it on the AnimeIgo website...and they list the words in Japanese and English of the other major songs used on the show.  I may just have to re-rent one of the earlier volumes via Netflix and when I pop in the DVD to my computer to let it play, I'd hook up my digital recording device directly to the speaker output on the PC and record the song that way.  Then on my other PC, I'd replay the captured audio into Audacity, like I would if I were recording a podcast, then I'd convert the audacity file into an MP3 so I can at least add it to my personal iTunes library on my iPod.  It's a very melancholy, sad & pensive song about looking for love but only finding loneliness...about how love may find others but not me, etc. Sort of a sushi-flavored Hill Street Blues kind of vibe, as I've described before.  Since I don't speak or read Japanese, it's the only way I know to get a copy of the song I can listen to over and over again without renting the DVD continuously.  If I knew a way to buy the song easily, for $.99 cents I'd gladly do so.

Nabari no Ou: The Complete Series

Brina Palencia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Major characters of Nabari no Ou as they appear in the anime. From left to right: Gau Meguro, Raikō Shimizu, Kazuhiko Yukimi, Yoite, Miharu Rokujou, Tobari Kumohira, Raimei Shimizu, and Koichi Aizawa. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

via www.amazon.com

Just started this series via Netflix rental.  It's a Ninja epic but set in contemporary Japan, featuring Japanese High School students...and one very apathetic (anti-)hero in the middle of everything.

 

Miharu Rokujou (六条 壬晴 Rokujō Miharu^?) is an apathetic 14-year-old middle school student and protagonist of the series.  Surprisingly, voiced by Brina Palencia.

 

 Koichi Aizawa (相澤 虹一 Aizawa Kōichi^?) is Rokujou's seemingly 14-year-old classmate, voiced by Chris Burnett.  Tobari Durandal Kumohira (雲平・帷・デュランダル Kumohira Tobari Dyurandaru^?) is Miharu Rokujou's and Koichi Aizawa's 25-year-old teacher in the front world, the world that is unaware of Nabari. He was born in Ireland but moved to Japan at a young age, raised by a Japanophile grandfather who was a self-confessed Otaku and also a Ninja fanatic.  Kumohira has a curious phobia of any kind of mechanized transport...

Raimei Shimizu (清水 雷鳴 Shimizu Raimei^?) is a 14-year-old guardian of the world of Nabari and head of Fuuma Village's Shimizu clan. She prefers to fight with a sword named Kurogamon (黒我聞^?) over using ninjutsu to the point of claiming to be a samurai.  She's voiced by Kate Oxley in English, also known for voicing the role of Momo in Peach Girl, and Tokyo police inspector Misaki Kirihara (霧原 未咲 Kirihara Misaki^?) from Darker than Black.  I watch a lot of Anime so every time I'm usually trying to pick out the voice actors by name *before* the credits roll. I usually get most of them identified before the end credits of most episodes, though with this one I did not guess Brina Palencia in the lead role, not least because I was used to hearing her voice the character Holo from Spice and Wolf that I finished just before popping in the first DVD of Nabari No Ou, which is a very different character.

I can see that Typepad is going to make including anime images difficult (much more difficult than Vox.com) and this is really souring me on the closing of Vox at the end of September.

Ergo Proxy is awesomely bad-ass.

If you have not seen Ergo Proxy, go watch Ergo Proxy, or else:

...Ms. Re-L Mayer would like you reconsider your viewing choices and give the Anime she features in your full attention, please. 

No, seriously this is a totally kick-ass show.  Blade-Runner-esque, later more Mad-Maxy.  Futuristic apocalypse kind of show, very dystopian sci-fi.  My favorite character is actually not Re-L (though I do like her very much), but rather the robotic girl Pino, who ironically becomes the most human and lovable of all the characters.

Vincent Law becomes more and more of a distinct person and goes from having his eyes drawn as nearly always closed or almost closed to being fully open, which has symbolic meaning in this story.

This series also has a really great music track as the opening song, sung entirely in English by the J-pop band Monoral, called "Kiri"

Download 01 Kiri

Hope you like it ^_^

Sigh; Typepad is harder than Vox.

From what I can see, Typepad is more complicated to use than Vox. *grumble*  Will have to learn how to play around with it.  The feature I'm going to miss the most from Vox was the ability to import images (and links) directly from Amazon.com when referring to the Anime titles I have recently watched.  Now Typepad is going to make that difficult (if not impossible) for me to do.  Dammit, this sucks.

Well, have to scan the old FAQ of Typepad to see if there's a workaround I can use.  I have to admit Typepad is still easier than, say, Blogger, but not as easy as Vox, which was very much "for dummies".  Also, I lost my animated fox logo with Mt. Fuji in the background that I loved.  I don't mind the new generic Japanese theme I chose for Typepad, but I'd prefer one that's outright Anime-themed.  Grr.  Oh well, so it goes.

Took awhile, but found...

It took me awhile, but I did finally manage to get the MP3 of the BoA song that opens each episode of Serial Experiments Lain.  I like a lot of songs (usually J-pop) that serve as the opening music for a lot of my favorite anime.  I'm overjoyed when I can find them for purchase on iTunes or on Amazon music or Napster.  I don't know nearly enough Japanese to make any sense of iTunes Japan where the motherload of all that J-pop is most readily accessible.

 Anyway, here's the theme song to Serial Experiments Lain...

01 Duvet

Hope you like.  I found it on Amazon music, by the way.

Konichiwa! Kilted Kraut Sugar Land Otaku has landed on Typepad from his home on VOX.com. ^_^
Very sad that vox.com is going away, hopes that Typepad will be just as easy to use as vox.com was...

Spice and Wolf, Season 1

Finished watching the relatively new FUNimation release, Spice and Wolf, Season 1.  

Spice and Wolf: Season One

"I am Holo, the Wise Wolf"; with these words, Holo, the Wolf-Goddess of the Forest, who governs the wheat harvest, introduces herself.  She is voiced by Brina Palencia.  Holo reveals herself in her quasi-Human form to traveling peddler and aspiring merchant Kraft Lawrence (クラフト・ロレンス Kurafuto Rorensu^?), voiced by J. Michael Tatum.  Holo is a playful and mischievous Goddess, but also depressed and lonely.  The time of pagan polytheism and pantheism is passing her by, and Monotheism is on the rise in this fictionalized version of Europe in which the story takes place.  Her true form is that of a gigantic, terrifying Wolf many stories high.  She does not like to revert to this form except in the most extreme situations.  She prefers her Quasi-human form...basically that of a young woman, but with wolf ears and a tail.  She actually looks more fox-like than wolf-like in this form.  The Church is portrayed in a very unsympathetic, deservedly critical light in this story.  The second heroine who emerges late in season 1 is Nora, the gentle Shepherd.  Nora Arendt, voiced by Leah Clark, is very skilled at protecting her flock, so much so that the Church suspects her of using pagan witchcraft to survive as long as she has.  Even Holo recounts frustration with having to deal with Nora in the past.

The story is a little slow to develop at first, so if you were expecting an action hack & slash, you will find yourself disappointed.  This is a late Medieval fantasy bordering on dawn of the early Renaissance.  The plot mostly revolves around convoluted merchant dealings, some of which are fruitful, others of which go very badly for Kraft Lawrence (クラフト・ロレンス Kurafuto Rorensu^?) and his new partner and traveling companion Holo.  Lawrence presents Holo sometimes as his wife, but later mostly as his business partner and traveling companion.

If Holo had not come into his life at that point, it's very likely he would have found himself married to Chloe (クロエ Kuroe^?), a fellow rival merchant who plays Holo with a wooden mask in the village festival.  She does not believe Holo is real at first (to acknowledge Holo as real would be blasphemy, after all)...but seems surprised that Lawrence thinks she could be real.  Lawrence not only thinks this, he's already met Holo in the flesh and forced her to show him her true Wolf form, which caused him to shrink back in fear and faint.

All in all it is a sweet story, and Holo and Lawrence make a good "odd couple" kind of pairing.  Holo is impulsive, vivacious, and jealous.  Lawrence is calm, polite, reserved, and coolly calculating.  Holo is capable of hiding her wolf attributes (tail and ears) completely for roughly two days so that she can appear fully human if she needs to blend in or disguise herself.  But mostly she wears feminine head coverings that allow her to easily conceal her wolf ears, and long skirts to conceal her tail...though sometimes she wags her tail involuntarily when overcome by happiness or excitement.  Holo is also something of a glutton, and is enjoying the discovery of more refined human cooking.  Luckily, the metabolism of Goddesses seem to be magically high, so Holo retains her trim figure despite her ravenous appetite and love of fermented alcoholic drinks.

Nora seems to show some attraction to Lawrence, but she seems aware that Holo is very possessive of him; Indeed, she becomes increasingly possessive of Lawrence.  Lawrence has to keep reassuring Holo that he will keep his promise to her and accompany her to the North country, where she originally hails from.  Holo is also quite unencumbered by human modesty and doesn't mind allowing Lawrence to see her naked form, though she does grow accustomed to human clothing for the purpose of travel and chooses to remain clothed while alone with Lawrence in their shared accommodations on the road.

I was just in my local Borders books and see that the English translation of the Manga is now available for sale, volumes 1 and 2, matching the plotline of season 1 which is currently out on DVD.  Season 2 isn't yet released.

I am definitely looking forward to the next season.