Went out with Alexis and Bernadette today to take a walk around Mito. I also had to get my laundry done. Washed it at Kenny’s and went to the “Soft Cream” Laundromat and got it dried — just a note it was 100 yen for 8 minutes, 400 yen for 32 minutes and my clothing was dry. To get there you leave Kenny’s and go down a hill and across a bridge. When you get to the other side it’s to the left at a cross junction. It says Soft Cream on the front of the building.

While my clothing was drying we fed the ducks, pigeons, white and black swans. There was a nursery full of kids around us playing with the birds while we fed the birds. Usually birds are disease ridden creatures — at least ones in cities, but it feels somewhat safer here since everything is cleaner in Japan. The animals should be too, right? I had a few pigeons eating out of my hand, literally. So did Bernadette and Alexis. I took some great video of them feeding the birds too, looks great on the HD camera that i borrowed from Rodrigo.

Of course when we finished we all washed our hands — they’re still birds after all. I washed my hands a few times — I’m just like that.

Afterwards we continued into Mito. It was a pleasant day out — not very cold. We went to a stationary store. I bought a ton of brush pens, not because they were cheap, but because they were readily available.

Afterwards we continued down the street until we hit the Keisei department store. It’s a 9 story building filled with department store goodness. Up on the 8th floor or so we went to a store called Loft — you can buy all sorts of cute toys there. I saw some more Ghibli toys and I had to buy more Totoros. I got myself a Jiji cat from Kiki’s Delivery Service. I now have all three of the Totoros — the white, blue, and gray ones.

We ate at an American cowboy themed restaurant.

I got to go into a grocery store and bought some snacks for everyone back at home.

I intend to ship all my goods back so I don’t’ have to carry them back on the plane. I hope that plan comes to fruition. Or maybe I can leave the stuff here with Kenny and have him ship it.

We took the elevator up the Mito Art Tower and looked out of all the different portholes. You can see Fuji there on a clear day, but not today — it was a bit hazy.

Day 3 Notes

Tsukiji Fish Market
* I woke up at 5:30 and was out at 6:30 and headed down to Tsukijishijo. You get onto the Ginza line and go to Ueno hirokoji from Asukusa, and then I took the Oedo line from Ueno hirokoji to Tsukijishijo.

* I realized I was only one block off and if I went the other way I would have hit the fish market. I recognized the Lawsons that I visited to get my Ghibli pass.

* I found the market by the market that sits around it. It’s like an Edo era stand market. Lots of little stands crowded and butted right up against one another. After walking through that market I found the fish market. It’s LARGE. I can’t really say how long it is, but there are fish everywhere you look.

* I took a video camera and just swept through, mock-documentary style. It’s an A480 canon P&S but the video’s decent enough. I tried to capture the fish and then every now and then anybody working on the fish.

* I wasn’t early enough to see the auction, but it doesn’t matter.

I had sushi in a nearby sushi restaurant. I was the only patron but I didn’t care. i got some fresh sushi which was excellent.

Asakusa Shinto Shrines

I got back from the fish market and decided go to around the block of my hotel. I know that Asakusa has many temples and I found the big one. They looked to be preparing for some kind of festival — my guess is a Cherry Blossom one. There were girls dressed in kimonos. There were school kids running around. There were stands setup selling stuff from food to clothing. It was getting busy and people were cleansing themselves with incense and going into the shire.

I abstained from it. I’m an atheist. You know, I believe in your one true god, your many gods, your devil, heaven, and hell, but I abstain from taking part in any of the religious stuff because I’m not that. I didn’t dare to walk into any of the temples because I didn’t know what I was doing and I don’t know Shinto rituals and protocols. I got a lot of great outdoor pictures there of koi in the koi pond, a waterfall, and the temple itself.

Mitaka, Ghibli Museum

I went from Ueno Station JR to Kanda and then from there I took the JR Chuo rapid transit line to Mitaka. When you get to Mitaka station take the south exit and look for bus stop #9. That’s the Ghibli bus and it runs in a circuit literally every ten minutes on the hour. When you get out of Mitaka Station go down the stairs and head where to where the buses are. I couldn’t find it — I wasn’t look for the Totoro bus sign, and instead I found the tourist information center and asked them. You can either walk… it’s about 1.5 meters or you can wait for the bus to take you there.

When I first arrived at the mansion, my initial thought was “That’s it? Really, that’s it?”

I thought it would be in a more secluded space surrounded by nature, but no — yes and no. It’s sitting in a public park. There are people just picnicking outside. There’s a track and exercise area beyond the museum. There were school kids exercising with over-anxious parents photographing them with dSLRs.

The Ghibli bus is small. It also takes the Tokyo PASMO card — so if you’ve been using that to get around the subways in Tokyo you won’t have a problem paying for the bus. It’s expensive! 300 yen. YIKES, but then again Redwood Shores’s Metro has run up to 2 bucks, and you know it doesn’t even stop every ten minutes. The US still has way more useless “public transit” at least where I’m at.

The mansion is “organically” shaped. The roofs are round. It kinda looks like a mud hut with a forest growing on the roof, which of course is homage to Laputa: Castle in the Sky. The Robot and the cube from the movie are there and you can take a spiral staircase from the Catbus room to the roof to snap a photo.

You have to get a ticket at Lawsons, although it seems like you could get one through the Tourist center at the train station, but I would recommend using Lawsons. There are instructions on the web for how to use the Loppi interface, but you can also harass the very friendly and kind employees to help you figure it out. I don’t speak a lick of Japanese just so you know other than “sumemasen,” “arigato,” and “watashi we America-jin desu.” I know a lot more words in my head and I can kinda decipher Hiragana and write the symbols but it doesn’t translate into knowing anything about the language. Still I got a Ghibli ticket and so can you.

You have to go by the specified time on the ticket. Mine was 2 pm. If you miss it, I have no idea what will happen. So if you’re dead set on going, make sure you get there. The ride takes about an hour via the JR line — first time I was using my JR pass.

We often say that Miyazaki is like the Disney of the East, and if so, his philosophy runs contrary to Disney IMO. Disney wanted to sell you the illusion — the characters, the pomp and pageantry. He wanted his employees to hide their real identities and assume the characters in the stories — the fairytale princesses, pirates, princes, etc. Disney built his park on a massive slab of land that’s cornered off from everywhere else and a state unto itself. Miyazaki is the entire opposite. He built his museum in a public park (basically). Instead of selling you the characters and the pomp he shows you the the hard work it goes into making animation. The Ghibli Museum is dedicated to the man’s undying love for the medium of animation.

There’s a zoetrope there that’s amazing. It’s a large wheel laying on its side. On the surface set on concentric circles are scupltures of your favorite Totoro characters. There’s Totoro with the umbrella jumping up and down. There’s Mei and Satsuki playing jump rope. There are little Totoro running around. A bat is flying overhead. The neko-bus is running in the air. The wheel spins really fast and using a strobe light that’s flickering fast enough to give you a seizure, you can see the individual frames super imposed on top of each other. You can see these sculptures moving and I couldn’t turn away. It’s fantastic.

there’s another zoetrope of the robot from Laputa rotating around with a bunch of birds flying over his head.

there are some great 3D dioramas. They’re slabs of 2D images on acetate or some kind of transparent material that when looked at and using perspective creates the illusion of depth and distance.

I feel like that museum exists to inspire children to make things. That diorama, didn’t look hard to make with a parent’s help and some artistic skills. In fact a lot of stuff in the museum was there to demystify animation. Every room you go into it goes into an aspect of how movies were made without explicitly saying so. It’s designed in such a way that you enter a room and you see the storyboards and concept art wallpapered over the room. There are cordoned off areas where there are stacks of books. If you read the titles they’re about dance choreography, animal movements, flowers, gardens, color theory, you name it. There are books on architecture from old European cities that they used for Kiki’s, etc.

What’s best is that you can get your hands on the storyboards. You can sit there and page through the entire storyboard for Ocean Waves or Spirited Away — and a few other ones. If you can read Japanese I bet it would be more than amazing.

Ponyo is the latest attraction because the movie came out. They go over how they did the special effects such as her running on the waves — they broke that whole scene down so you can see how it was put together. They let you flip through the drawings and see how the animation develops. I learned that they used blue lines to denote areas of shade and red lines for highlights. They showed the stack of pictures used for Ponyo and it’s massive — that’s a lot of paper, a lot of art for that movie. Yes it used some computer graphics, but the backgrounds are watercolor painted.

There are things in there for kids to do or for parents to do with children. You can go and crank a handle to watch a flipbook style animation. You can see how a camera pans and zooms using literally two images to create the semblance of a fully moving piece of animation zooming or panning. There’s a catbus room for the kids to play in — it’s literally a giant plush catbus — the kids can sit in it. Benches have hand cracks so you can make noise. There’s a water pump on the first floor in an inner courtyard where you can pump water and a friend can take a silly picture of you.

Yeah, it’s totally contrary to Disney. It’s humble. it’s informative. It wants to make you love animation. It exists to inspire children to love animation. Miyazaki’s always said it’s been about handwork. It’s not magic. It’s about getting movement right and coming up with interesting ideas to animate and I think the museum shows it all off wonderfully.

The store was crowded, mobbed by the Japanese. I bought some small keychain Totoros and I bought myself Totoro, Ponyo, and a Catbus. There was so much more I wanted, and maybe I’ll get them in Ueno or some other time when I revisit Japan and Ghibli (oh yeah there will be another time). If I had kids I’d take them to Ghibli to be inspired.

I bought some picture books for Ponyo and two shorts I didn’t get to see.

I saw the sumo-wrestling mouse short. It was cute and funny and impeccably animated — I believe even directed by Miyazaki himself. He knows how to animate to make moments tense or make the movements interesting.

One thing about the showing. When the seats were full, people were still let in with the intent that you would sit on the steps. I walked in and as the last seat was filled I decided to walk back out until I saw other people file in and sit in the aisles and fill up the space. They treat the theater like the subway. If all the seats are taken and the rungs are filled with standing passengers, there’s always room for more. So we were jam packed inside for the movie. There was no applause at the end. Everyone got up and left.

I had “Juicy Fried Chicken in Rainbow rice” at the Straw Cafe and some green tea ice cream.

After I made my purchases and had food I left. I climbed all the spiral staircases and did what I thought was everything except play in the catbus. No I just stared at it and wished I was six and able to enjoy that. It’s probably why I bought a catbus later on even though it’s somewhat smallish, but who cares. It’s the catbus.

Akiba impressions

There’s SO much stuff there. I was in a Softmap and I went to the top floor, 8th floor, and then started to walk down. I got off on a floor with DVDs and a picture of Yui from K-ON! — the poster for season 2 right in front of me. I browsed that floor and then walked to the elevator to go down to the first floor. I thought I hit 1 for the first floor, but when I got off I realized I had to go down the stairs and there was Yui again. I thought, WTF. I felt like I was in an endless loop of STUFF.

Japanese are producers or so much stuff, so it’s obvious that they would be great peddlers of stuff.

Everytime I walked into sight of one of their employees they would shout something at me — I have no idea what it is they’re saying. Tim Rogers says it’s gibberish; but, and forgive me, most Japanese speak is just moon-speak. I either nodded my head, or my early years of going through airports prior to 9-11 taught me this valuable lesson: never make eye contact with someone trying to sell you something and always look like you’ve got somewhere to go and something to look at and don’t loose sight of it.

It doesn’t open until around 10 am and doesn’t get crazy until later in the day when everyone’s out of school and the maid cafes are in full swing.

There’s SOOO much stuff there

Softmap — you can get ANYTHING there computer, video game, anime, figure, DVD related. ANYTHING. I swear on a stack of bibles.

Yodobashi-Akiba — think of every floor as a Fry’s store stacked 8 levels high.

I don’t even know where some stores are, I just went and explored and came across them by accident.

Tokyo Day 1

Some quick thoughts so I don’t forget.

JL001 was my JAL flight from SFO to NRT. It took about 11 hours. I arrived around 5 PM Tokyo time — or midnight Pacific time.

NRT doesn’t strike me as a massive international hub airport like I thought it might be like. It feels like an airport out in Wisconsin, but then I haven’t seen all of NRT. The trains for the JR and Keisei lines are right in the airport down the escalator.

As soon as I got off the plane I followed the rest of the passengers out to the customs area and went where the foreign passport people went and got fingerprint and photographed by customs and then sent on my way. Once I was through I had to go and declare my items.

During the flight you get two sheets to fill out — one to declare alcohol or other expensive stuff and then another to write down your passport information and where you’ll be staying and what not.

The flight itself wasn’t too bad, but you gotta stand up every couple of hours. Every seat has a tv in the headrest and a controller attached to the armrest that you can use to watch movies (american, japanese, indian, anime, etc), listen to j-pop, or even play some simple games such as solitaire, mahjong, pac-man, tetris, and bejeweled — Popcap teamed up with whomever did the software and lent them their game. Tetris interestingly was multiplayer — you could play against other people on the plane, but when I went on nobody else was waiting to play multiplayer — sounds cool if a bunch of friends were to go to Japan together.

Once I got into NRT and past customs I got my bags and went to grab as many maps and literature as I could so I could find my way around.

I got my JR pass exchanged at the travel information booth for the JR. It’s to the left after you pass the 7-Bank ATM machines. I also tested exchanging currency with the ATM machines — took out 10,000 yen from my bank of america account. I know I should withdraw more, but it was a test run.

I decided to go with the Keisei Skyliner because A. I couldn’t use my JR Pass yet, since it starts tomorrow (the 10th), and B. due to that, I decided the Keisei was the cheaper way to go. I didn’t get as lost as I thought I might. I asked a few people as to which track the Skyliner was on. The extent of my Japanese is “Sumemaisen” and “Arigato.” It’ll be very interesting and intertwining. I’ve already been to a 7-11 and the clerk gave me a look when I said “Hello” in a more than chipper voice, more on that later.

I took the Skyliner to Aoto Station and then transferred to the Asukasa line. Once I got off at Asukasa Station, I was promptly lost. I was able to use my P&S camera to get some informational shots, maps and whatnot, but it didn’t totally help. Also didn’t totally help that Asukasa is just one giant backalley. It’s got large main roads but then the nooks and crannies are just filled with little places to go. There are things hiding everywhere. So I bet it’s a great place to explore and get lost in.

I ended up getting lost and turned around while looking for my hotel: Unizo Asukasa Hotel, but here I am, I found it. As I write this it’s 4:35 am in the morning back in San Francisco, and right now it’s 9:35 pm here in Tokyo. So I’m beat and hungry and dehydrated. I need food and water.

When I got out of the station it was snowing. Freakin’ snowing. I haven’t been in snow in a while. My sneakers got soggy, so…that should be interesting too since I’ll be doing a lot of walking. I might want to bring some extra socks with me and I might have to do the laundry more with them.

Umbrellas are cheap. I got a 399 yen one. So don’t bother bringing an umbrella with you. I got a plastic transparent one, it’s a lifesaver otherwise I’d be totally hosed and wet.

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/2010/02/14/anime-photoshoot-2/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CourneSupremacy/~3/zLiQX7lqhGc/ 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.