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Anime #2

Since the last post, I've watched some more anime.

Nabari no Ou
This show is about ninjas, but it reminded me more of Nana than Naruto (other than one stolen plot point; a plot point is also lifted from Fullmetal Alchemist). This is based on an allegedly shonen manga, but the creator is a woman. I guess that explains why all the ninjas are so emo and depressed. Actually it was a pretty good show, but parts were pretty boring. The interpersonal relationships that gradually develop throughout the show were handled very well, but half the time the plot seemed to consist of "some character has disappeared so let's spend an episode looking for him" (then repeat with a different character, or the same one).

Slayers Revolution
I think I had seen this on Hulu before in dub form, but a big reason to watch Slayers is for Megu-chan's voice acting, so I'm glad it's now available with subtitles. I don't think I've watched Slayers since college, so I was impressed that this new show maintained the best elements of the old anime, basically continuing as if there hadn't been an 11-year break since the last series. It's very funny, and you have to pay attention because so many of the jokes and gags go by so quickly. I'm looking forward to the Evolution-R follow-up.

Lupin III vs Detective Conan
Every year there's a Lupin III TV special in Japan; this was the 2009 offering. I have a bunch of the specials either on DVD or in fansub form, but this is the only one I've watched so far. I'm a bigger fan of Lupin than of Conan (I much preferred Kindaichi when I was in Japan), but I thought the special was handled well. The actual mystery wasn't that interesting, but the interaction between the famous thief and famous detective made it unique. I liked how the characters designs were completely different, and yet didn't seem that out of place together. I'd like to see more cross-over specials like this.

I also rewatched season 2 of Nodame Cantabile and the first 8 episodes of season 3. Nodame is easily in my all-time list of favorite anime. Actually, I was working on a top-10 list, and here's what I came up with (in alphabetical order):

• 3x3 Eyes


• Armor Hunter Mellowlink


• Berserk


• Gunsmith Cats


• Here Is Greenwood


• Kiki's Delivery Service


• Nodame Cantabile


• Outlaw Star


• Spirited Away


• Video Girl Ai

Looking at it now, I'm not sure I agree with everything. The first problem is I can't list every Ghibli movie without taking up the whole list, so I limited myself to two. If they ever finish Nana, it might bump either Mellowlink or Outlaw Star. There's also a ton of stuff not in there, like Cowboy Bebop, Kimagure Orange Road, and Marmalade Boy, just to name a few. As for manga, although the list is similar to the anime list (3x3 Eyes, Berserk, and Gunsmith Cats are top 5, and I haven't read the Nodame manga yet) I can easily say Video Girl Ai is the best manga I've ever read.

The Big Anime Post

I watch so much anime, I decided last year to start posting anime reviews to my blog. Well, I never got around to it, but with the new year starting, I kept track of what I was watching. Here are the shows I've watched so far in 2010 and some brief thoughts.

Antique Bakery
I watched this for the second time when Rich visited for New Year's. It's a neat show, with a good balance of serious funny moments. I think it's notable for probably the most realistic depiction of homosexuality I've seen in a mainstream anime. It also compelled us to check out the local Korean bakeries, because the desserts shown in the show look really good.

Trapeze
This show is so weird that I almost stopped watching in the middle of the first episode. I'm not a big fan of the modern style of mixing live-action photos, etc., with animation. I'm glad I stuck with it, though, because it turned out to be pretty interesting. Like Antique Bakery, this was a noitaminA show, and all of those shows are worth watching.

Toradora!
This was a really cool show. I like romantic comedies where the romance is taken seriously. By that, I mean it's nice to see a relationship develop, rather than the typical scenario where a guy chases after a girl (or vice versa) but nothing happens until he finally confesses his feelings in the last episode. However, they don't forget the comedy either, and this show is really entertaining. I can't remember how I discovered this show.

The Prince of Tennis
This was a lot of anime to watch (yeah, the whole TV show and the rest, except for the movie). I like tennis, so even though this was a fairly typical sports anime, it kept my interest. I thought it was nice that there were lots of unique and fairly well-rounded characters, since a show that focused only on the main character wouldn't have been as good.

You're Under Arrest: Full Throttle
YUA is a long-time favorite and I've seen all the previous anime. I thought Full Throttle was a nice series that brought it back to its roots, without the silliness (mostly) that infected some of the previous series. It's still a slice-of-life show so nothing really happens, but it's nice to spend time with these characters.

Michiko to Hatchin
This was a pretty good show, similar to Samurai Champloo (by the same studio, manglobe) and reminiscent of Cowboy Bebop. The characters were deep and fully realized, but there wasn't too much plot. The setting in South America was pretty unique. I discovered this because the opening theme is by Soil & "Pimp" Sessions, who I've been listening to lately.

Himitsu – Top Secret
This seemed like it was going to be a relatively straightforward police drama with sci-fi elements, but there was something strange about it. Then I saw it was based on a josei manga, and it all made sense. Some really twisted stuff happens in this anime, even more so because of the inherent realism of the show. It's the best kind of sci-fi in that it posits some new technology and then uses that to tell a good story, rather than focusing on the technology itself. I watch this because the animation was by Madhouse, one of my favorite studios.

Valkyria Chronicles
This anime is based on a PS3 game of the same name. The game looked good but I avoid RPGs because they take so much time to play. (By contrast, I watched the 26-episode anime series in two days.) The anime apparently follows the same plot as the game. I thought it was pretty good, but the anime focuses on a few characters and the rest of the characters from the game remain in the background. The characters they do focus on are handled well, though. Also, the plot is interesting enough to serve as the backdrop for the game's battles, but by itself it's pretty average.

So that's this year so far. I'm also watching the following ongoing shows on Hulu: Fullmetal Alchemist, Naruto Shippuden, and Inuyasha: The Final Act. Plus, Nodame Cantabile: Finale just started in Japan so I've watched a few episodes of that. Hulu is a fantastic source for anime, and lately they've been adding a lot more subbed shows. I noticed tonight that they've added some new stuff, so I'm about to watch the first episode of Nabari no Ou.

Door dog update

Never mind, it was a mouse. :-) Now I need to trap it.

Door dogs

Last night I saw a black flash run down my hallway. I haven't found any rodents, so I think it was a door dog. Normally they only show up around 3AM when I'm really tired, and are only visible out of the corner of my eye, but I almost saw this one clearly and it was only around 9PM. I'm surprised I couldn't find much about door dogs on Google, but Google Books does have an excerpt from The Western Lands by William S. Burroughs, who was the first person to give a name to the creatures.

Speaking of Burroughs, I think The Western Lands was the first book of his that I read. I actually read most of his books in reverse order, following The Western Lands with The Place of Dead Roads and Cities of the Red Night, next reading some other stuff including The Wild Boys, then the "cut-up" books, and ending with Naked Lunch and Junky. That actually wasn't a bad way to do it. It's been a while, so maybe I should read them again in chronological order and fill in the gaps.

I even have the Giorno Poetry Systems The Best Of William Burroughs CD box set that I haven't listened to in a while. In fact I'm not really sure where it is -- ah, it's filed away with the LPs. My favorite is still Dead City Radio, though. I notice that most of the Burroughs CDs on Amazon date from the early '90s, which corresponds with when I was buying them and also when I was in college. I think the whole thing was probably started by Material's Hallucination Engine album, which featured Burroughs, since I was a big fan of Bill Laswell at the time. I remember anxiously awaiting the release of Seven Souls and the remix album The Road to the Western Lands, which focused solely on Burroughs's work. I'm not sure if I waited until then to read his book, since Seven Souls was actually originally recorded in 1989 and only re-released in 1997, but that explains why I started with The Western Lands.

Anyway, just like my reverse reading of Burroughs, this post is kind of a reverse chronology of my interest in him, which started in college, continued while I was living in Japan, and popped up again last night when I saw the door dog, which since then has remained invisible. Maybe if I pop in a CD, it'll make another appearance. Then again, maybe I should be glad it's gone, because as WSB said, "Door dogs are not guarders but crossers of thresholds. They bring Death with them."

Computer updates

I still haven't updated my computer web pages, but as of today I've finished updating my computers and taking pictures, so I'll try to wrap up the pages soon. A couple weeks ago, I realized my Home Server needed more than 1GB of RAM, so I decided to double it to 2GB. While I was buying RAM, I decided to double the RAM in my HTPC as well.

The Home Server upgrade was really smooth, but when I finally popped the extra 2GB in the HTPC today, it wouldn't boot. I checked online and found that there was a problem with older versions of the BIOS and 4GB. I checked my BIOS and discovered I was still on 1.0! After some struggles, I got BIOS 1.7 installed and now everything works fine. The HTPC is still 32-bit, so I can only use 3GB for now, but maybe I'll switch to 64-bit when I upgrade to Windows 7. I need to test the codecs under 64-bit first.

I learned a good tip. Nero has built-in tools for creating a bootable CD-ROM. I couldn't get my bootable USB flash drive to work, but the CD-RW with the BIOS files on it worked great. That's how I'm going to do all future BIOS updates.

Deerblogging

I took this on July 4. I could have done some groundhog blogging too, but the critter got away before I could grab my camera.


Deer in the backyard

SKULLCANDY

Is there a better name for a female-fronted Japanese ska band than SKULLCANDY? (I guess Ore Ska Band is a close second.) That's all I really wanted to say in this post, but the MySpace pages for these bands are fantastic. First of all, unlike YouTube, you don't have to worry about the videos being pulled by overzealous copyright holders. Check out SKULLCANDY's guitarist in their videos, and also be sure to listen to my favorite song, "Go! But reality!!"

Next, the friend links are great for finding new bands you might like. I'd never heard of 蕾-TSUBOMI- before, but when they list friends like Ego-Wrappin’, Bonnie Pink, Shakalabbits, and GO!GO!7188 (all huge personal favorites), not to mention SKULLCANDY and their compatriots Witchery SKANK, I knew I had to check them out. I also love that EGO-WRAPPIN' are friends with Patti Smith.

Finally, you get up-to-date news, like SKULLCANDY has released a full album called MERRY MERRY!! (not to be confused with the excellent EGO-WRAPPIN' album merry merry). Also, not only will ORESKABAND hopefully be at the Vans Warped Tour again this year, but you can also buy their album and gear in the US! I'm sure there's more cool stuff waiting to be discovered.

BlackBerry blogging

This is my first attempt to blog from my new phone. Here's my Storm's custom wallpaper.

Update: OK, so posting images don't seem to be working from my BlackBerry, so I had to fix this post from my desktop. The screenshot was taken using Capture It!

I found a prime!

By participating in the No Prime Left Behind project, I discovered that the number 493 x 2⁶⁶⁹¹⁵¹-1 is a prime number. If you perform that calculation, you'll get a number with 201438 digits, which makes it the 891st largest prime number discovered as of today.

The NPLB project is using well-sieved files, which means that most of the non-prime numbers have already been eliminated. That means there's a good chance I'll find some more primes in the future, although maybe not as big.