The Yard Sale
This is actually unrelated to this post (despite the matronly reference) and a response to these posts, only because I’m prompted by this post in reminding everyone that the more you spam your blog the bigger your visitor count-penis gets!
And silly Night Elf hos should just stop cluttering my game by quitting and doing something more productive with their lives, like making money.
Well, supposedly today you can get a discount at Kinokuniya Manhattan if you dressed up, but be sure that instead of cosplaying I’ll be cooped up at home and down some shows with friends nearby who I haven’t seen in a while.
It beats eating ice cream while watching the Honey & Clover movie in celebration of an exciting but disappointing Saimoe 2007 final (not that I did that…). Instead, we went out for dimsum at this nice and hidden-away local place that served very delicious chicken feet and beef dishes. I suppose if I was by myself I’d rather distract and blank out by crunching a lot of sketches from Danbooru into VectorMagic. Damn you tj, damn you.
But what is really bothering me is how my taste for anime on TV has seriously derailed from the mainstream. It gets hard for me to find something to watch that my friends and I can equally share. It would have to be either something really funny or something that’s purely “shounen jump”-like but not as bogged down with terrible episode counts (like Naruto), or full of self-infused fandom (like Suzumiya Haruhi).
It’s a little sad to remind myself that I know of no seiyuu fans in my proximity. It’s only at cons where I get to talk to people about voice actresses face to face. Something like this requires consultation among the people! At the end, I settled for Ai Nonaka because she is pretty looking at least in pictures. While she can’t sing, her unique voice and competent acting skills balance things out. Also I guess this past year I’ve enjoyed her roles more so than ever. Sure she may have tried to pander along the lines of Yukarin or Aaya but I think she has a more natural air about it.
The strange thing is, 10 years ago we just couldn’t quite do this–even the most popular voice actresses were passable at best. Girls like Minorin didn’t really take on the more otaku-poi career route. Must be a shift for production and producers. And I’m sure good-lookers like Kanako Sakai probably would not have even bothered. What does that make Halko Momoi, who sort of started half in, half out? A trend setter?
Yea it’s a post on ef. I can’t help it–this is the kind of anime that gets my mind going.
But what is there to say? Lacking the tools of someone who studied film seriously I can only say that much like Soul Taker, for once the direction speaks to the message of the story.
Imagine a pop-up 3d book with moving parts; or better yet, a simple illustrated book. The words of a book still carries the story in its entirity, but the visuals and the interactive parts of the book help tell it. The ef anime is basically a pop-up 3d version of a normal anime.
Allow me to run with this illustration for some significant lengths.
Last time I looked at a pop-up book, I was shopping for presents to give to kids at a community service function. Freeing my engineer instincts I would examine the book carefully to see how each piece worked–how it folds into the book closed, how each pull or push tab connects with a corresponding piece as a part of the panorama. On the other hand when it’s presented to the lucky (or not so lucky) child, they tend to look at it as-is–“wow this cool” or “bleh I don’t want that kiddy book.”
It’s something that you either get or you don’t get, I guess. Looking at an elaborate illustration can give someone the same effect (Escher anyone?), but having seen the same kind of illustrated stuff for many years, a 3d, pup-up version of the same illustrated stuff might just tug and push your sensibilities into curious mode, like how ef did for me. Of course, that’s where the illustration ends. The ef anime is like any other anime, but by heavy-handedly highlighting all the techniques it eliminates a lot of the directional magic that we are accustomed to because they’re no longer subtle, yet the heavy style creates another kind of subtlety. It’s the kind of subtlety that makes Soul Taker so good. That said, it’s a little early to say if ef has successfully done it.
Lately shows like Touka Gettan, Pani Poni Dash, and even Suzumiya Haruhi (and the list goes on) has gone above and beyond the call to differentiate themselves from the crowd through these kind of tricks. Clever or not I don’t know; and they get different mileages out of the different tricks they employ. And to be honest, I don’t know what we can draw as conclusions besides that more and more shows are getting more sophisticated. And that is likely a good thing….for people who appreciate sophistication in anime.
If you didn’t know, Hashihime is throwing a serious seiyuu poll. There’s even a photo index.
Well I did promise to study the list, so here’s my cheat sheet and starting point. The ones with a hash mark are the ones who will be considered for round two as I try to find that needle in this haystack of pictures, identities, subjectivity and human worshiping that’s worth my solitary vote. I think I’ve wiped out a lot of them who are just starters because their resume looked weak, and I think overall there is actually a bias of picking pictures. The ones Hashihime likes tend to get a better selection, lolz, at least that was my feeling while going through the list and looking everyone up. Plus, there are quite a few that were left out in the list that I thought was essential.
And if you want to know more, yes, there is a pattern to my madness. I did stick to looking at a set of criteria for everyone, and those who did well enough will qualify.
One caveat: considering that meeting Mamiko Noto had left such a great impression on me this past summer, I don’t know if I can at all objectively rank her. She’s got this awesome yamato nadeshiko aura around her that’s just enthralling. Maybe it’s just me, I guess. And yea, pictures do not do her justice.
Well she hasn’t made me feel like learning Japanese and get myself to Japan and work in a related industry, yet. Thank God.
Lately I read a book that told the story of ordinary people doing radical things. They are not unlike you and I, with exception of their earnest belief that they are here to change the world in their ordinary capacity.
The fact that you and your neighboring commuter are traveling to work does not separate him or her from any other person commuting to work in the car or seat also next to you. What is different is beyond the ordinary–traveling to work–from the normal–that someone can tell all about you just by your commute. After all, if you’re reading this blog odds are you’re some crazy ass anime fanboy nut compared to the average person within a 50 meter radius of you. It’s not something you can easily discern usually. Yet,the cling to normalcy is a complex of an entire identity. A normal person is just that, normal. An ordinary person, however, doesn’t have to be.
Granted the distinction between ordinary and normal is nonsensical semantically, but it does serve to highlight the difference between something commonly seen versus the institution of conformity.
Ponder the following scenarios:
It’s ordinary, yet somewhat extraordinary. It feels attainable, its lure just within our grasp. For me it’s irresistible (at least when it’s done right).
There’s a thin line between what’s ordinarily extraordinary and what is just normal. I’m not sure where the line is, but you can tell when it stops being ordinary either by being just plain out there, or being just … a normal anime.
Capturing the tension that exists in the abnormal ordinary is a key element of a compelling storytelling style. Perhaps the biggest problem for the ef anime right now is that it is too odd to be ordinary, even if it is rooted so.
