Alter’s Azusa Nakano is three of five of my crazy attempt to collect all of Hokago Tea Time from K-ON. Thank God there’s only five. The box:

Below is Azusa Nakano in plastic wrap. She comes with a separate hair piece. You can take her head off and replace her bangs with a set of bangs with cat ears. Yui gave her the nickname “Azu-nyan” after realizing she looked better as a neko-girl. Did I mention K-ON is big on the moe-factor?

Azusa’s the new freshman the light music club picks up in their junior year at school. She’s much more serious about her music. Both of her folks play in a Jazz band so music runs in the family. She plays back up to Yui and considers herself a n00b. She’s amazed at Yui’s musical savant abilities and she’s not so hip to all of the moe-moe antics of her seniors and their daily after school tea parties.

She plays another Gibson Les Paul guitar. When the other girls realize they’ll be graduating leaving Azusa with nobody in the club they buy her a pet turtle.

It’s Tea Time!

I mentioned that she’s got some friends too. By friends I mean, other figures I collected while I was in Akiba. Those three are some of the bigger ones I’ve collected. Most of the other ones I have are smaller gashapon. For instance, Misato Katsuragi from Neon Genesis Evangelion. I recently watched Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone and Evangelion 2.22: You Can(not) Advance. I like what they’ve done with Tokyo-3 and the Evangelions through the use of toon-shaded CGI. It makes me want to go back to Blender and try my hand at modeling cityscapes for backdrops.

I’m also a big fan of Maria-sama ga Miteru. I didn’t think I’d like it because it was introduced to me years ago as a slow-paced slice-of-life drama. It took me years to sit down and watch it but I loved it when I did. What can I say, I love the over-the-top melodrama.  I didn’t think I’d like most of the characters, but each episode presents a new facet about one of the girls that makes them interesting.

When I was in Akiba I collected some of the Yujin series of figures for Maria-sama. Recently I collected select figures from the MOVIC series. From left to right: Touko Matsudaira, Sachiko Ogasawara, Shimako Todou, Yumi Fukuzawa, Youko Mizuno, and Eriko Torii.

Sei Sato and Shimako are amongst my favorites. I’m still waiting to get Sei from a Yahoo Japan acution. There also aren’t as many figures for Maria-sama since it’s about 4 years too late for me. Back in March, when I was in Japan K-ON! was the big thing.

So there it is. I’m turning  Otaku one figure at a time.

But I got her right here.  This is Yui Hirasawa by Alter. I pre-ordered her back in January and it came in the mail today. How’s that for a wait? My “dream” of owning swanky Japanese plastic toys is finally coming to fruition. The unboxing:

More pictures:

I tend to just call it a toy, but it’s really something that adds otaku aesthetic value to a room. Some facts about Yui. She’s a high school student (of course, right?). Complete slacker in trouble of becoming a NEET because her only hobbies are doing nothing until she joins (i.e. is suckered into) the light music club at school by Ritsu. She’s easily bribed by cake and tea.

Yui learns to play the guitar and becomes lead singer of Hokago Tea Time (Afterschool Tea Time). She plays a Gibson Les Paul, which Yui calls “Gitah.” I understand that “Gitah” also costs a fortune. The show covers how she got her hands on a pricey instrument. Mugi’s family owns a local music shop and gave her a deep discount. Mugi’s also HTT’s keyboardist.

Yui is also a musical savant and her surname comes from Susumu Hirasawa. The show itself, K-ON! and it’s second season K-ON!! (you see what they did there?), is a slice-of-life, high school comedy. It’s all moe, all the time and every now and then has some funny moments. I can’t really recommend it though. It’s cutesy anime and if you want to veg out and feed your brain candy, it’s perfect for that.

I also have HTT’s bassist, Mio. There are in total five members: Yui, Mio, Ritsu, Tsumugi, and Azusa. My retarded-crazy plan is to get them all. In fact I’ve got Azusa coming and I’ve pre-ordered Mugi from amiami.jp.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. I took them with my Sony A200 using the basic lens. Yeah, I know. I’ve been thinking of getting a macro, but I’m lazy. Speaking of lazy, I really got hooked on the OP and ED (“Don’t be Lazy”) for K-ON, one of the reasons I like the show. The other reason: Japanese school girls + rocking out just seemed like a cool idea. Especially after watching Linda, Linda, Linda.

Alright, Yui, play us out…

When I was young my grandmother used to take care of me and she would cook ramen. It was Top Ramen, but the noodles were soaked in the salty broth. They were thick, soft, and tasty. When she left for Taiwan, and eventually died, that was the only thing I remembered about her. My dad showed me how to make ramen with ground beef after I went to college. Just dump a pound of ground beef in a pan and use a spatula to dice it up into small pieces. Put some green onions in with it and take a couple of spoonfuls and put it in with the ramen and the stow the rest for later. When we would have hot pot at our house the leftover hodge-podge broth would be dumped into a pot and made into ramen broth the next day. If we had duck for dinner the heart, liver, neck, and left over meat would be used in the ramen pot for lunch. Good times and good eats.

In college, ramen was el cheapo. Sometimes if I was lucky Market 32 would have ramen on sale — ten for a buck. I stocked up. I bought ground beef to be diced up and yeah, sometimes, I would have ramen every night of the week. When you’re in college that’s what you gotta do. I got the ramen to the point where it reminded me of how my grandmother cooked it up. But afte a year of eating the same thing, I found msyelf staring into a bowl of gloppy noodles and thinking to myself, “this tastes like shit.” I overdosed on it and started eating out or finding other things to try and cook with little to moderate success — I would consider myself a terrible cook, even to this day, and yet I cook well enough for myself that I haven’t died from starvation yet.

NorCal has a few good ramen restaurants. There’s Himawari on 2nd Street in San Mateo. Santa Ramen. There’s a place down in Mountain View which I forget the name of. It’s all good.

It really wasn’t until I was watching Galaxy Express 999 that I realized I really miss eating ramen. Hoshino Tetsuro eats it in bowlfuls. Old men that run ramen shops on distant worlds give him as much as he wants because he’s the poster child for youth and ambition and he’s fueled by noodles. Watching that anime made me crave eating the stuff again but I decided if I was going to have ramen, i was going to “age it up” and make it a little more of a fulfilling meal. I tried with modern success — it was still the same old college meal.

Japan is where the real deal is. I’ve had the good stuff there. I dare say even the airport’s ramen was good. I watched the lady at the food stand make it. They don’t get their broth from some little brown powder packet. She had a clear plastic bag of broth. She had a small basket of noodles and dunked it into boiling water. Microwaved the broth packet and put the whole thing together in a bowl. What a brilliant idea. No wonder even that’s better than the shit they pass off as ramen over here. When I got home a friend got me some Sapporo Ichiban ramen. I love the stuff. It’s a step up from Top Ramen, but seriously, when I say step up it’s like paying a dollar compared to a dime. For a poor college student this is as close as you would get to gourmet. I tried to eat the Ichiban ramen but it tasted like a nasty mouthful of salt and that was sad because I loved it so much before I went to Japan. That’s when I started researching how to make my own ramen broth. I wanted to go beyond Top Ramen and Ichiban. Making broth would take anywhere from 20 minutes to 60 hours for Tonkatsu. I’m not ready to invest 60 hours into simmering pork bones. I have yet to try the 20 minute broth, and I would, but then I found this:

It comes from the Marina asian supermarket in Foster City. In one of those packages you get this:

You get a bag of uncooked noodles and a small liquid package (in this case soy sauce). This might be a decent compromise and I’ve had the Miso flavor and soy flavor. It’s a step up from the brick ramen. I bought some naruto when I was there as something else to put in the bowl. I boiled up some eggs and dumped some veggies in to cook up and put the noodles in and this is what came out:

That’s not bad looking if I do say so myself. It wasn’t bad tasting either. It’s not Japan. It’s not Top Ramen. I didn’t have to cook broth for 20 minutes or 60 hours. I’d say, for me, for right now, I’m content with this compromise.

Totoro welcomes you to the Museum

I love animation. It just so happens the Japanese make a boat load of it. Most of that boatload is moe or crap, or since they’re pretty synonymous, just crap (except for K-ON, I have a soft spot for that one). There are a couple diamonds that pop out of the rough every so often — an animated series that tries to tell a story that isn’t surrounding a bunch of guys ticking off martial arts moves like a grocery checklist or a harem of girls that always seem to have the opportunity to dress as maids or nekos. I’ve said it before but I really like Kamiyama Kenji’s work — Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit and Ghost in the Shell. Eden of the East is his original work, and while it’s intriguing, I felt the show ended poorly but there are two movies out — one of them just came out here in Japan. I’d go see it, but without subtitles that’s a waste of money and time for me. If I want good, 2D hand-drawn animation, there’s only one studio that does it and they do it better than everybody else — Studio Ghibli.

You might have heard of Ghibli before. John Lasseter of Pixar fame gushes over them but he’s friends with Hayao Miyazaki and they have been for a long time. So I think it’s cool that they give each other props and share their work across the international date line. We can thank Lasseter for helping to bring Ghibli’s work to America, and I think with Disney’s resources they’ve done a decent job making dubbed versions of the movies. They can put the star power behind the characters voices and distribute the DVDs far and wide. There are a few films that Disney hasn’t released: Grave of the Fireflies and Only Yesterday are ones I can think of off the top of my head. Grave of the Fireflies was released by Central Park Media way back when and I’ve got the DVD. Grave is worth watching at least once. You’ll know why by the time you’re done.

So, what makes Miyazaki’s works fun to watch? The way they’re animated. I remember watching Nausicaa for the first time and being stunned by how fluid her movement was — she would run, jump off a cliff, and swing around her glider. It was breathtaking to watch. There’s a book out called Starting Point which is a collection of interviews with Miyazaki on production of various films, his Nausicaa manga, and what he thinks good animation should be. I remember there was a strong emphasis on there always being interesting motion. A character’s walk cycle doesn’t have to just be a walk cycle to show them going from A to B, it can say a lot about them, and when you watch his characters like Kiki or Chihiro it really comes through. I remember the bit where Kiki slips on a leaf as she’s running down the street. Or how about the part where Chihiro runs up a grassy knoll and falls flat on her face? Or the bit where she’s huddled against a staircase hanging over a cliffside tip-toeing her way down? You don’t see a lot of other animation do this — this might be considered incidental kind of detail that takes too much manpower and direction you can’t very well get across if your producers are American/Japanese and your animation crew is Korean.

These touches give his animated characters a sense of life that make them fun to watch and I remember being wowed by it, and this is why I’ve been patiently waiting for the day where I could come to Mitaka to see the museum itself.

The hardest part about getting there is getting the ticket. As I said before I thought my cleverness could get me a ticket from the Loppi machine, but I ended up hassling a very kind employee at the Lawsons store. There are assigned entry times. The Museum is small so I guess that’s their effort to make sure it’s not mobbed to death — not that it isn’t. There are two hour intervals starting at 10 am and go onto 12, 14, and 16. Really the best way to handle this is to stay flexible. If you can’t go at your chosen time, go at the next interval or next day. I wanted to go at noon, but it was sold out and went at 2 instead, which turned out to be better for me.

You can find Lawsons just about everywhere, pick a random street in Tokyo eventually you’ll hit one. I’ve had friends tell me I have to buy the ticket in America, but honestly, it’s not that hard once you’re in Japan. Or let me put it this way: I can’t speak a lick of Japanese except for “Arigatou.” If I can get a ticket, then you will be able to do it, and probably a lot better than me. And seriously, the folks that live here just go to Lawsons to buy it, right? They don’t go through an American broker to go to a museum in their backyard. Why should you? I’m fairly confident if you go, you can get a ticket. The museum’s been open since 2001, I’m sure everyone that wanted to see it has already come and gone.

The other issue I was facing was the fact that I was checking out of my hotel, the Unizo Asakusa Hotel, and I didn’t want to haul my crap all over Japan just for the museum. I tried to get another evening there, but it was booked solid. I was going to look for another hotel, but the clerk presented me with another idea. I could leave my bags behind the counter. So I did just that and headed off to Mitaka. That saved me the hassle of looking for another place, money on another night in the city, and took a great load of my shoulders literally and psychologically.

To get to the museum you take the Chuo rapid line. It cuts right across the Yamanote Line — and I assume the heart of Tokyo. It’s rapid until some point outside of the city — past Shinjuku — and then it hits every stop. The ninth stop or so is Mitaka. Don’t worry, the train will definitely tell you when you’ve hit Mitaka. Take the southern exit out of the station and you should hopefully see bus stops (below you). Look for bus stop number 9. I coudn’t find it at first, but if you want you can also just walk to the museum. It’s 1.5 km down the road — about a 15 minute walk.

Mitaka Station

I found the Mitaka tourist information center as I meandered around the outside of the station. The station looks like this:

Mitaka Tourist Station

I told them I was going to the Ghibli Museum. They were quick to tell me that the tickets for 2 pm were sold out, but I told them I had a voucher. Lawsons gives you a small envelope that contains the voucher and you exchange it at Ghibli for the ticket. I pulled out the voucher envelope to show them mine. Except, it wasn’t in there.

Which was surprising to me, because all morning while roaming around Tokyo I would occasionally check my bag to make sure I had it. It was one of the vital pieces of information for the entire day. Had I lost it somewhere? Had I flat out forgotten it at the hotel? If I did, I guess I could just buy one for a 4 pm entry, but I was in a bit of a panic and looked through my backpack for it. I had another folder of stuff that contained various maps and printout notes that I carried around. I rifled around. The two women working the tourist booth waited. I thought I was screwed, but there it was. The voucher fell out of the envelope. I pulled it out and dropped it on the table and the ladies looked over it and they themselves seemed relieved that I was actually apart of the 2 PM entry into the museum. They brought me a map to help me find my way there and helped me point my way to Bus Stop 9. You’ll definitely be able to tell it’s for Ghibli because there’s a very fancy Totoro plaque that has all the times listed for the bus. It runs every 10 minutes on the hour. until about 7 pm. The bus makes a small loop around hitting the Ghibli Museum — and one other stop beforehand (I know cause an old lady took the bus to get off there, go figure) so you can take the bus back. Also, the bus takes the Pasmo card. You’ll recognize the bus too. It’s yellow with Ghibli characters on it. Some people say it looks like a cat bus, but it doesn’t. It’s yellow and has nothing to suggest it’s cat-bus-like.

Bus Stop 9 schedule.

Ghibli Bus

I arrived at the museum around 1 pm. There’s something very humble about the Ghibli Museum. If we think of Miyazaki as a Disney of the East and compare him to Walt Disney — Disney spent a lot of time and effort to create theme parks that would sell the illusion that his movies produced. You meet the fairytale characters like Cinderella, Snow White, Jasmine, Captain Jack Sparrow (I know he’s not a fairytale character). You become lost in the illusion that you’re in a fantasy world. Disney resorts sit on acres and acres of land. A nation unto itself. There are rules that the employees have to follow to keep the illusion alive even if they are disgruntled. You can’t see Cinderella smoke. You don’t see a dwarf take off his mascot head. You don’t see the custodial staff sweeping up the trash. There are secret passages for them go  through the park undetected. Everything is hidden to charm the children and get adults to part with their cash.

The Ghibli Museum is the opposite of all that. When I arrived at the Ghibli Museum, my first thought was: “This… this is it?” The architecture’s a little weird looking, but honestly if I didn’t see the word “Ghibli” I might have moved on. It does also help that there’s a giant Laputa robot on the roof of the building too. The museum sits next to a public park. It’s yellow with a grassy roof and round looking architecture. The staff is visible and friendly — as you’d expect. There’s even a Lawsons right across the street so if you had to get a ticket you could probably do it there. I kinda get the feeling you could get a ticket back at the tourist center too. There’s something very laid back about the place.

The Ghibli Museum

I arrived at 1 PM. I wandered about the park for an hour and then exchanged my voucher for a ticket to go inside. They have information brochures in English and Japanese.

One attraction of the Museum is that there’s a new short there directed by Miyazaki that you can’t see anywhere else. He’s done a few that are only viewable in the museum — no DVDs of them exist, I think. There’s no photography allowed of any kind and the theater’s small enough that if you were holding a handicam, you’d definitely be found out. I saw the new one about sumo wrestling mice. I won’t go into more detail; you’ll have to see it yourself. There are other ones like Mei and the Kittenbus, or one about a dog running through a city, or a kid that grows a planet that I haven’t seen before. I’ll just have to keep going back to the museum, I suppose. Having not seen these, it definitely creates a mystique about Ghibli to keep me interested in coming back.

Funny little story about the theater — as I approached the theater I noticed that they had closed the doors, the room was full for the current showing. So I walked up the staff member manning the theater doors and asked her when the next showing was. She says, “You can go inside and sit on the steps.” Other people were being let in for the same thing. I kept thinking, “they wouldn’t let you do that in the States.” I walked in and thought she was joking around. I wasn’t going to sit on the steps unless someone else did it first. I followed a group in and the guy in front of me took the last seat in the theater which was all the way in the front. I didn’t want to just sit down on the steps so I walked back up the stairs and watched what everyone else did next.

They sat on the steps.

Well, when in Rome…

It makes me wonder, does Japan have any kind of fire code? There’s Animate! in Akiba that’s an eight story high building crammed to the gills with manga — stacks of paper, mind you, and people too. You can’t walk anywhere without knocking over books and it’s suffocating and hot. There’s a small elevator and a staircase that’s best described as single file only. What if there’s a fire there? Then again, personal space is a premium. A lot of people on the subways go in and sit down or stand up and close their eyes — maybe they’re sleeping or maybe they’re just closing their eyes because it’s the best way to escape from the physical reality of where they are.

I digress.

Another fantastic room on the first floor is what I call the Zoetrope room. There’s a beautiful animated sculpture that once you see you won’t be able to take your eyes off even if the strobe light causes you a brain seizure. It’s simply brilliant. It’s a high-velocity spinning merry-go-round of clay figures of Mei, Satsuki, Totoro, the Catbus, and other Ghibli/Totoro characters in poses that frame-by-frame “cels” in a looping animated sequence. When the thing spins and the strobe light comes on you see the whole animation take place. Mei and Satsuki play jump rope with a small Totoro creature, Totoro himself jumps up and down with his umbrella, and the Catbus crawls through the sky. It’s amazing and inventive and the star of that room. There are other attractions such as the Ghibli House which shows stills from all the movies they’ve done and some inset dioramas hidden behind shutters that you’re free to open. There are mechanical contraptions that play out animated sequences. You can go and see the individual sculptures used for the merry-go-round Zoetrope. It’s an amazing art piece that has to be seen. There’s another Zoetrope with the robot from Laputa too. There are dioramas that show off parallax or perspective by using layers of acetate.

On the second floor, there are a series of rooms that display all the hard work it takes to make a film. Concept art adorns the walls of these rooms. There are sketches of Kiki evolving from a long haired blonde to the one we know and love. There are piles of books there on the human anatomy, dance choreography, and human motion. You can flip through the production notes and Miyazaki’s storyboards. I paged through part of Spirited Away.

That’s when it hit me. Miyazaki’s museum is about inspiring kids to make animation. It’s not like Disney where he’s trying to sell you the fantasy of his creations. Miyazaki is about showing them the hard work it takes to make a film and bring characters to life. There are dioramas that play with perspective and parallax scrolling. There are zoetropes. There are mechanical hand cracked animation machines. There are animated shorts running. There’s the original production notes that you can touch and hold with your own hands. You can play with a camera to see how panning and zooming work to animate two still images. You can even pick through the stubby pencils that the animators used to draw every frame. They explain how they did special effects in Ponyo (like the grass waving) or how they paint the acetate cels for Kiki. If you’re curious — they ink on one side of the cel, paint in the shading on the same side, and then turn it over and paint the base colors for Kiki on the otherside and it comes out as one final cel. I’m not sure if Disney has a museum piece like this, but if they did, it’s definitely overshadowed and buried by everything else they do.

There’s a sense of play that exists at the Ghibli Museum because you can touch everything. Things that you can’t touch are roped off, but the important things like the production notes, flip books of animation stills, and the various machines you can get ahold of are ready for you. It might get your neurons firing off, thinking: “I bet I could do something like this.”

That to be was the biggest attraction to the Ghibli Museum and I’m glad that Miyazaki shares his knowledge. I’ve always liked that; I use my blog to share my knowledge and the processes I’ve learned from the side projects I’ve worked on. For me, it’s a great way to recount how I did things on my own and hopefully in a way it inspires whoever is reading this blog as well. He does the same but to a universal audience in his museum.

After that there’s the rooftop. It’s a must to get your photo taking with the giant Laputa robot, but it’s self-service. There’s no one up there taking your yen to snap a Polaroid for you. You politely asking the person behind you to do it.

Me and the Laputa robot

For the younger kids there’s the cat-bus room. They built a giant replica of the cat bus for kids to play on. We’re not talking about plastic here. I mean, it’s like a giant, big stuffed animal for kids to climb all over. It makes me wish I were five. The Straw Cafe is good for a quick snack. I got the Juicy Fried Chicken in Rainbow Rice snack. It’s a small cup of red rice, fried chicken bits, and lettuce leaves. I also got some green tea ice cream before I left. Oh the main attraction at the museum was Ponyo since that movie just came out.

The other major attraction at the museum is the shopping. The shop isn’t huge, but it was definitely mobbed by the patrons. There was a whole section of keychains that was inaccessible because it was overrun with people. A separate shop on that top floor sold books that you could buy. I ended up buying three books — one on Ponyo, and two others on the Ghibli shorts that were shown in the museum. I also bought a bunch of stuffed animals — for myself and friends. Mainly for me. I’ve wanted a stuffed Totoro for a long time but could never really bring myself to get one, but when you’re in the land where Ghibli is king, you buy a Totoro — although without a big suitcase, I didn’t get a big one. Also, you can get Ghibli merch all over Japan. There are some fine looking, classy, artsy statues that you can buy — we’re not talking the run of the mill, porn-star balloon boobie maid/neko/samurai girl PVC model you can buy, but some very artistically done scenes based on Ghibli flicks. When I go back I’ll throw cash at those.

I finished my green tea ice cream and I had done everything. In fact by this point, I had done everything that was a must see for me. I saw Akihabara, the Tsukiji Fish Market, shinto shrines in Asakusa, and the Ghibli Museum. I was going to Mito next and planning to keep my schedule flexible.

You can see more of my Ghibli photos here.

The “Watched in…” posts that I’ve done in the past are just a means to let me indulge in my Otakuism. It also lets me remember what I watched. This month, not too much, since the Olympics are on, and I love me some Olympics. I always enjoyed the winter ones over the summer. Short track, figure skating, downhill are much more thrilling to watch. Especially, the Canada vs. USA hockey game today.

As for anime, here’s the list:

Genshiken series 1, OAV, series 2 (ep. 1-5). Genshiken is a Japanese abbreviation for “The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture.” By “Modern Visual Culture” they’re talking about manga/dojinshi, anime, and video games. The “society” part just means it’s about a bunch of geeky college students hanging out with one another reveling in their favorite past times: collecting erotic dojinshi at comicfests, cosplaying, and dissecting anime. If you’re into anime, there’s a character in this group that reflect some part of you. For me, it had to be Sasahara. I can pick up the references and I know of otaku things but I still kinda stand on the outside when it comes to being a hardcore otaku. By far my favorite character in the series is Saki — she’s the self-proclaimed non-otaku of the group, but hangs around because her boyfriend is a diehard. She tends to give a nice opposing view to the rest of the group and sometimes when the infighting starts or problems crop up, she’s the one who sets the nerds straight.

Kimi ni Todoke (ep. 17-20). I’ve talked about this anime in previous posts. I really liked how it started. It’s shojo and girly, for sure, but I thought Sawako carved herself a distinguished role amongst other shojo heroines. She isn’t an idiot or overly bubbly. She wasn’t just blindly in love but rather respected Kazahaya because he represented everything she wasn’t. A lot of her internal monologues I feel are thoughts that anyone, girl or boy, might have, and I still think all those things about Kimi ni Todoke are awesome. Some of the plotting seems a bit overdramatic — but that’s shojo. By far, the biggest problem I’m having is that the show seems to be wavering in its focus, which seems to be an issue with shojo too. By episode 17 in the series, Sawako’s initial problems and story-arc are pretty much over — there’s only one thing left (in my mind). There’s still some fun episodes, but the focus for these episodes is on her friends and Sawako and Kazahaya take a back seat. So I hope the rest of the series pulls it back into focus. They’re also planning a live-action movie for the series and I’m looking forward to that too.

Fruits Basket (ep. 10-26). This was still the accidental anime I found on my way to watch Honey and Clover over at Hulu.com. It’s still the show I kept on as background noise as I made dinner and went about relaxing in the evening. I could do that because the show is dubbed. The voices aren’t atrocious. I’ve read about the comic on Wikipedia. Apparently the anime series is only a mere pittance of the actual tome of sequential art that makes up the rest of the story, and it shows. In the end, after 26 episodes, it peters out. They try and make a resolution. The theme towards the end just seems to be “let’s stay together, always.” The comic goes on to tell the story of how Taru ends the zodiac curse. She meets the other Soma members, graduates high school, and there’s even a page or two about her golden years. The show is cute, but skippable.

Moribito (ep. 24-26). I finished the book before I finished the anime since the discs are so hard to get from Netflix — they’re always out and apparently in high demand. Both the YA novel and anime follow the same story, but the anime has more since they had to space things out over 26 episodes. The music, painted scenery, and attention to detail and animation make this show outstanding, but I don’t expect anything less from Kenji Kamiyama. Just watch Eden of the East or Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and you’ll see what I’m talking about. If you want something anime that’s not just pantsu or moe, check out Kamiyama’s work.

And that’s it for anime this month. I’ve finished up a bunch of series and I’m ready for new ones, so my otaku obssession hasn’t come to a close yet. Next up is more Genshiken and Welcome to the NHK and whatever else gets recommended to me.

You might ask, do I just watch anime all day? No. It’s a good way to relax on week nights after work. I’ll have more to discuss about my other pet projects in the weeks to come. I hope to be nearing the close on one of them and I can’t wait to write about it.

Also, next month, to further my otaku adventures, I’ll be going to Japan for a week and a day. My friend B is visiting her kids in the land of the rising sun. I happened to IM her one day in February and asked her “How’s Japan?”

She says, “It’s great! You should come over here!”

So I bought a ticket.

I showed you my lego photo box before. This time I borrowed a macro-lens from a friend. It’s a Minolta lens which fits into the Sony A-mount. It does 28-85mm, but I only cared about the macro mode. There wasn’t any autofocus with the macro, so I just had to focus it myself, but I think the photos came out pretty well. Here’s a look at my setup — it’s the same as last time — a lego frame and then white paper for the sides and backdrop. Something that’s not pictured here is an aluminium foil reflector I created out of a piece of comic book bristol board and crumpled foil. Since I’m incredibly lazy the lamp just shines a top down light onto the toy. Alright it’s not really due to laziness. I played around with the light’s orientation and I didn’t like any of the cast shadows. I wanted the shadows to be right under the toy and if I did that I needed to bounce light back up to illuminate the toy further or there would be some hard shadows.  There’s still a lot of post-processing done on my computer to adjust the exposure and the black levels of each photo. I just moved the sliders until I felt happy with it and wham, bam, done.

I wanted it to look overexposed and very white and bright. I like that look a lot.

I’m exercising my Otakuness these days. I’ve got a bunch of new figures I want to purchase and adorn my house with — all of them are K-ON! figures. Alter released these figures of Mio, Yui, and Azusa, and I’ve ordered them. No idea when they’ll come in though since the dates are all further out, but I figure it’ll be like a nice surprise later on.

The setup in picture form:

First up Haruhi. The first image is ‘shopped from three images I took. I’m no expert in photo-manipulation, which puts me on par with everyone else who sucks at photoshopping images.

I recently got the Galaxy Express 999 figures. So here they are again. I tried some different shooting techniques with these figures. The upshot of Maetel and Tetsuro I achieved by laying them down on the “infinite white paper. I then held Tetsuro about level with her and as straight as I could and shot them together. I played with DOF with some of these photos as well and since GE999 is generally pretty (melo)dramatic, I thought it would add a nice touch to the toys.

Symbols for Ladies Chinenesis, Gigantea, and Foetida (just a warning, this image is fakkin’ huge):

No set is complete without Albino Grimby sitting on top of Kasumi.

That concludes my anime toy shoot for the time being.

]]> http://www.cournesupremacy.com/2010/02/14/anime-photoshoot-2/feed/ 0 http://www.cournesupremacy.com/2010/02/02/watched-in-january/ http://www.cournesupremacy.com/2010/02/02/watched-in-january/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:56:23 +0000 AlbinoGrimby http://www.cournesupremacy.com/?p=404 I’ve been binging on anime since last November or so in my quest to find something new and interesting to watch. I’m bored with most American dramas. I feel that most of them have simply just run themselves into the ground. Do I need to watch season 8 of 24? I think I get the picture. Jack Bauer’s badass, but seriously the story doesn’t really change from season to season. I haven’t felt like going back to watch Battlestar Galactica. It used to be that watching Battlestar was compelling and left me both wanting more and leaving me somewhat breathless. The only barrier of entry for watching that show was the amount of nerves I could muster to continue along on their harrowing journey, but after the boxing episode in Season 3 I felt that the show really ran its course. I haven’t even bothered to sit down and watch season 4 and 4.5.

Anime on the other hand, for better or worse, ends. A series like Death Note is done in 37 episodes. Other shows are done in about 13 or 26 episodes. There’s time to do one-off episodes, learn interesting things about the characters, get some fan service, and complete a story arc — epic or mundane. They’re bit-sized and different and I can finish them and move onto something else without having to be dragged through the muck. This obviously means I avoid shows like Naruto and Inyuasha. I don’t have any interest in those — the only time I saw Inyuasha was when I had Adult Swim turned on from 11 pm to 5 am during my college years. I find myself interested in the Shinto view of the world after watching things like Kamichu! which is a story that I don’t think American audiences would get.

I figure, in the very least (and I mean very least) watching anime is a way to get new ideas in my head and to find new things that I otherwise wouldn’t get watching dramas on the big networks and cable. So here’s a list of the anime I’ve been watching this month:

Kino’s Journey. I own this one and I busted it out again and watched the first two discs. It’s only 13 episodes long. It was the anime that pointed me in the direction of Galaxy Express 999, probably one of my favorite anime series — I know I said I avoid along anime series, but this one, for me, was worth it. Kino’s Journey itself isn’t bad. It’s fairy-tale like. I think some people equate it to the Little Prince, which I read after watching Kino’s Journey as well. As for me, personally, Kino’s Journey inspired my short-lived attempt to write serialized fiction on this website called “Tales of a Mechanical Bird.”

Black Lagoon Second Barage. I’ve seen the first season of this before. My brother described it to me as an animated American action film. Sure enough it’s got a lot of gunfights, car chases, mobsters, criminals, and unscrupulous people duking it out for bounties and other illicit activities, but it’s damn enjoyable. The second series continues Remy, Rock, Dutch, and Benny’s adventures in Ranpour. It contains a bunch of mini-arcs about crazy Romanian killing kiddies to Hotel Moscow’s take down of the Yakuza in Tokyo. Lots of shoot outs and apparently a hefty dose of existentialism. I was watching for the explosions and only later did I read on wikipedia that there’s a thread of existentialist conversations and ideas that run throughout the series.

Kamichu! I really liked this one. The art style is very Studio Ghibli. All of the backgrounds are lushly painted and the animation is superb. It takes place in a small town near Hiroshima in the 1980s. It’s about a girl who finds out — out of the blue, mind you — that she’s a Shinto god. What’s her power? Why did she become a god? That’s one of the things I love about the series. There’s no origin story. She just comes to school one day, sits down with her friends, and says, “I just found out I’m a god.” The story is a coming of age for her as a Shinto goddess and how she uses her powers to make the lives of the people around her better. My favorite episode still has to be the one where she sleeps under a kotatsu for the entire episode.

Moribito: The Guardian of the Spirit. Moribito is done by Kenji Kamiyama but it’s originally a fantasy novel by Nahoko Uehashi. Kamiyama-san is the guy that also directed/wrote Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, 2nd Gig, and another series I saw recently called Eden of the East. His work is generally high quality animation. The backgrounds, the integrated, toon-shaded CG, and animation all look seamless. The production value is always high and the stories are always detailed and, to me, engaging. Moribito is the story of Balsa, a Kanbal spear-welder, who saves the life of Prince Chagum. She learns that he carries the egg of a water spirit and that his father wants to assassinate his son because he believes its a water demon. Balsa’s a strong female lead. There’s not an inch of moe in this story. The art and story are excellent. The music is beautiful. Moribito also turns out to be an eight volume series of fantasy novels and the anime is just book one. So I was quite happy to hear that both volume 1 and 2 have been translated and released in the US. I picked them up at Amazon.

Kimi ni Todoke (ep. 13-16). I still like Kimi ni Todoke, although now that this horse is out of the gate, I feel that it’s starting to meander a little bit. I still like Sawako as a character and her quest to clear up misunderstandings about her feelings. I don’t like that the show feel like its plodding along now. Episode 16 was mainly a recap/clip-show episode. Boo to that, I say, but all anime series seem to have an episode where they have to let their animation team recuperate before they begin the log slog to the finish line — at least that’s how I see it.

K-ON OAV. A new episode of K-ON with something new. Afternoon Teatime tries to perform live outside of their school for the first time. My problem with the series is that it’s really on 6 epsiodes because the second half of the 12 episode series is a repetition of the first half. So it’s good to see that they’re trying to take the band on the road, make new friends, and move on up. Hopefully season 2 will be good, but seeing that this is a splice-of-life/high school/moe show, I might be asking for too much.

Candy Boy. Cute little show about two sisters that *really* love one another. It’s yuri and sappy at times. There’s the obligatory third-wheel character that’s completely in love with one of the girls. You can tell she’s insane because her hair is white and she gets nose bleeds and does things like trying to take upskirt shots of her love. Honestly, I kinda felt bad for her in the end, since the sisters tended to be together and she was always left out in the cold despite all the “nice” things she does for them. It’s a super quick series to watch — 10 episodes about 10-14 minutes each.

Eden of the East. This is done by Kenji Kamiyama. High production value on this one, and by far, of everything I’ve listed, one of the more interesting finds from this month’s anime binging. It’s full of interesting ideas and it’s got a damn cool look to it. The backgrounds remind me of the ones in 5 Centimeters Per Second — they have that Photoshop painted look to them. The intro is slick looking — I like the way it plays with typography and I’m still a fan of Oasis. The credits have a cool papercraft animation sequence too. The story starts out like the Bourne Identity but goes off in a weird direction. I’ve read criticisms that it’s too much like the Bourne Identity, but let me tell you, if it was more like the Bourne Identity I would have loved the hell out of it. As the show stands, the story, I feel, didn’t build up to a satisfying ending. Here’s the setup: a boy shows up in Washington D.C. with no memory holding a gun and a cellphone with 8.2 billion yen on it. He learns that he’s apart of a game with 12 other contestants. Each of them have been given 10 billion yen and tasked with saving Japan. The winner lives; the losers die. They use their special phones to make orders to something called Juiz and then the money is deducted from their phone. There’s a secondary emphasis on NEETs (people who are Not in Employment, Education, or Training) and their effect on society. Kamiyama definitely has an interest in politics: GITS:SAC 2nd Gig and Moribito both also have political facets to their storytelling as well. There’s also a running gag in Eden about “Johnnies” too. I won’t spoil it. Definitely watch it.

Fruits Basket. Another shojo anime. The twist is that the girl, Taru, lives with members of the Soma family, and they in turn are members of the Chinese zodiac. Yuki is the rat; Kon(?) is the cat, and there’s a third guy but I don’t remember his name, he’s the dog. Nothing really to special about this series. I’ve always heard of it from way back when, and now that it’s on Hulu, while I was on my way to watch more Honey and Clover, I ended up being distracted by Fruits Basket. Since it’s dubbed, it’s decent enough background noise, and it was really when I started watching this anime, I realized, I’ve hit the end of the barrel, I can’t think of anything else to watch.

I’ve done some exploring on my own since they, trying out the pilot episode for various shows. I’ve taken recommendations from friends, and if you’ve got a recommendation, feel free to leave a comment at the end of this post.

Some of the things that I’ve got on my list are Myself;Yourself, Spice and Wolf, and Aoi Bungaku, which I think is a horror anime. Of course I’d like to marathon watch Maria-sama ga Miteru now that I have the DVDs, and since we’ve been playing Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, someone had to ask, “What the hell is Yatterman?” And you can bet that’s now on the agenda too. At least an episode of it.