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.

I could buy a photo whitebox. I think the cheapest is 50 bucks. I saw the DIY on how to make a white box from a cardboard box, but I don’t have a spare one laying around that I’m not using for some kind of storage. So, while I was watching Moribito: Guardian of the Sacred Spirit, I decided to see if I could put one together with my oldest and favorite childhood toys: my Legos. It turned out that I did have enough Legos to build a framework to hang sheets of white sketching paper.

Here’s the breakdown: the floor of the whitebox is made out of two Lego town road plates put side by side. The framework is made out of blocks and they’re each about 37 Lego blocks high and they’re 2×4 peg towers. There’s three cross beams for the sides and the back. From these I fashioned white walls out of my 14×17 in. Biggie Sketchbook paper. The backdrop is an 18×24 in. sheet of sketch paper. I only have one light source here, which is an overhead lamp. The whole thing sits on my drawing table — which I’ve leveled — for the time being I haven’t been using my drawing table for any kind of actual drawing, so it’s a good work area for this setup.

That’s it.

I fashioned this so I could take some better pictures of my newly purchased anime PVC figures. I’ve been watching a boatload of anime — it’s a phase I’m going through right now. I started with Japanese Dramas such as Producing Nobuta, Densha Otoko, and Beautiful Life, and once went on back to anime sometime back in October.

One of the shows I finished off last year was Galaxy Express 999. I’ve posted about my obsession with this show in the past. I learned about it back in 2008 or 2007 after watching Kino’s Journey and fell in love with the show then. It was being fansubbed — imagine that, after 20+ years it’s finally being fansubbed, and then all of sudden it was dropped because Toei was going to do the translation. It took a while but eventually the entire series showed up on Crunchyroll.com and I was able to watch it all — for free. You can see it there too. I can’t recommend every episode. Some stories are plain out silly and the show’s animation definitely hasn’t aged well, but that’s all apart of its (creepy) charm. It’s also very melancholic and tragic, but I eat that stuff up. I got myself PVC figures for Maetel, Emeraldas, Tetsuro, and Tochiro.  They’re cheap since no one gives a rats ass about them anymore. Some photos from my flickr account reposted here:

I have a few other PVC figures so I’ll eventually get around to shooting them too. It might be cool to get a macro lens and go in really close. It might also be really cool to get a better light setup.

• Welcome to the NHK: Vol. 5: 5th Conspiracy
• Welcome to the NHK: Vol. 4: 4th Conspiracy
• Welcome to the NHK: Vol. 1: 1st Conspiracy
• Welcome to the NHK: Vol. 2: 2nd Conspiracy
• Welcome to the NHK: Vol. 6: 6th Conspiracy
• Welcome to the NHK: Vol. 3: 3rd Conspiracy

• Farscape: Season 2
• Seven Samurai
• The Twilight Samurai
• Farscape: Season 3
• Yojimbo
• Pineapple Express

• Moribito: Guardian of the Sacred Spirit: Vol. 6
• Moribito: Guardian of the Sacred Spirit: Vol. 5
• Moribito: Guardian of the Sacred Spirit: Vol. 7