Anime Night: We Like Pie
So The Librarian had a work-related event this evening that wouldn't place her at The Pond until 830p... a little late for us to follow our usual routine. Instead, we decided that we'd do dinner instead.
Well, more correctly, I'D do dinner. She did pie. Specifically, a slice of pie, then an appetizer, then another slice of pie. For the record, I had a slice of pie as well.
Plate wreck!!!
And a good time was had by all us. Anime came up for about five minutes ("Gunslinger Girl? Henrietta? Violin case upside the head? How could you not remember that? It was only last Friday!"), the rest of the time was spent being seventeen years old again.
Did you know that KC (of KC and the Sunshine Band) had a brother that invented fried chicken? They called him KFC (I should be congratulated for not spewing pie over The Librarian after that... and for not attempting to scoop her brains out with a spoon).
Yeah, we can be like that once in a while. In this case, it lasted about three hours; it ended with a game of tic-tac-toe in the parking lot (see, it was snowing, and we were the last people out, so we had this really clean flat space...) and brushing snow off our cars (and doing everything we could to dump the snow on the other's car).
So NOIR is on hold until next week, but we had more fun than a barrel of superballs anyway. It ain't always about anime, folks... just most of the time.
(thanks to DbD for the picture... I flat-out stole it.)
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Actually I'm not 100% sure it's 20, but Yomi and Chiyo are sceptical of Tomo's claims that she's studying hard, or at least not playing all the time. It happens right after they part with Miruchi and Yuka.
Posted by: Author at February 24, 2008 05:29 PM (qNSKg)
Anime Night: It's not called "No Ear".
Last week's Anime Night was canceled, as The Librarian was attending a convention (those librarian conventions seem to be quite the wild times... who knew all the things you could do with whipped cream?). THIS week's Anime Night was nearly D.O.A. due to ickness (on both of our parts, actually), but we soldiered forth and jumped into disc 2 of NOIR.
And then The Librarian fell asleep. Her cold really knocked her for a loop, and in her defense, it was warm in The Pond, and the Official Afghan made her feel snug, and the Official Wingchair is really comfy... and she dozed off. Restraining my first impulse (Sharpie Marker Eyebrows FTW!), I instead paused the show and cleaned up the dinner dishes.
When she woke up a few minutes later ("What time is it?"), I couldn't let Impulse #2 go by ("930pm..." Please note, it was 715pm).
It's not just cats, either--it's almost as if anime artists have never been around any furry animal, but have only seen them in books.
I'd love to see a show where the animators spent some time
observing actual cats or dogs, and made them act right and look right.
Not even human-animal mixes work right. For instance, Inuyasha
doesn't act like a dog very much or very often, only a minor tic now
and then. They missed a huge payoff by not having Kagome discover that
she could get him to roll over by rubbing his tummy, then make his leg
thump by scratching his ribs.
In the otherwise well-drawn Spice and Wolf, when Horo pets her tail, she strokes it tip to base; that is, against the natural lay of the fur. This does not ruffle the fur at all. I've never seen any furry critter do that, except to expose a specific spot of skin, which is then closely inspected for fleas and ferociously nibbled at. It'd be great to see Horo do that.
There's a show about a cat-girl cop (title mercifully forgotten, she had four ears, two human and two cat) whose most significant cat behavior was to go chasing after the bouncing shells in a firefight. That was amusing once or twice, but they never did anything else with it, and it got old.
Oh gods, I'm seeing an adorable little cat-girl loli curled up in a big cardboard box, chin exposed for scritching, or with her tail curled over her eyes....
Hollywood movies don't get cat behavior or sounds right,either. Disturbed cats never, in my experience, make that MGRROUW! squalling you always hear--they just disappear as quickly and quietly as they can. You have to actually step on them to get the noise. I believe that there must be a standard cat screech that the Foley guys splice in whenever a cat appears, like the Wilhelm scream.
I've never seen a movie-cat jump three feet straight up when startled, either. That'd be a great cat-girl effect. I'd also love to see a recently transformed cat-girl try to dive under a cabinet she's now too big to fit under, or jump up a table that can no longer hold her....
No movie or anime I know of has ever shown a cat defending its household by stalking and disemboweling the dangerous paper towel monster. I'm thinking of that cat-girl cop again, only grappling with a real bad-guy....
I'd also like to see a cat being petted by someone who knows that cat well enough to scritch it in the right spots, which can make cats do all sorts of amusing things--make weird faces and strange noises, nibble on another hand held in front of them, or do that rapid-fire scratching thing with the back leg.
The gods only know what an accurately animated duck would be like.
Posted by: refugee at February 23, 2008 09:58 PM (8hipT)
Refugee, while she's not a catgirl, Makoto (the fox-girl) in the remake of Kanon does jump when startled (and winds up clinging to the door of a fridge).
As far as a correctly-animated duck goes, it'd be awesome.
Posted by: Wonderduck at February 23, 2008 11:38 PM (UdB9M)
Over at The Org, the 2008 VCAs have moved to the Final Round. In the category of Best First Video, "...Angel" did not make it, unfortunately.
Still and all, even making it into the Semifinals is pretty good stuff... and a lot better than I had hoped back in May. Not that I made the video to win awards or anything, but it's only natural to want people to recognize your geniusness, right? "I just don't want it to suck" was what I said before, and I'm proud to say that I met that goal and then some.
For everybody that voted for "...Angel", I say thank you very much! Your support was wonderful to see... and means a lot.
If you've no idea what I'm talking about, here's the video:
I'm Pandering Again. Still. Whatever. Just a reminder that there's just a few more days left to vote for "...Angel" in the 2008 VCAs Best First Video category over at AMV.org. You got it into the semifinals, now help it into the finals!
Anime Night: "Turn The Plant"
After a couple of weeks where life and illness got in the way, Anime Night resumed this past Thursday when The Librarian, bearing food from Panda Express, dropped by The Pond. If you remember, we had finished Kanon '06 about a month ago, and attempted to begin Uta~kata the last time we'd met.
That last Anime Night, however, met with disaster when Uta~kata turned out to be one of those series that causes revulsion and disgust in ducks (anti-anadatae folks, take note) and DVD players alike. In fact, it proved to be the final nail in the coffin of The Pond's main DVD player, a seven-year old Samsung DVD/VCR combo (please note that the VCR portion still works fine). Unfortunately, the backup DVD player, an inexpensive Coby, didn't like the homemade disc much, either. By this time, it was too late to start anything new, so we watched a couple episodes of CardCaptor Sakura (still as good as it was way back when) and called it a night.
So this put us at the start of a new series. By our unofficial 'rules', The Librarian and I switch back and forth on choosing what show to watch; I had chosen Kanon '06, so it was her turn. Uta~kata was technically her choice, but the FAIL that had occurred was my fault, so it was still her turn. She had narrowed her picks down to three titles. Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu!, Azumanga Daioh, and Noir.
Any of these series would have been a-okay with me, with AzuDaioh of course being my favorite anime of all time. After dinner, her decision was made:
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 10, 2008 11:55 PM (+rSRq)
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It's been quite a while since I watched this, but from what I recall it's a very serious show with no lighter moments or comic relief to speak of. That's not a bad thing at all, but I can imagine the urge to make wisecracks is very strong when watching it with someone else, since you're not getting any laughs out of the show itself.
You mentioned the lack of blood, which was probably my biggest annoyance with the show. Yeah, I get that they didn't want to exaggerate or over-emphasize the violence, but I thought it was pretty well established that when people get shot, they bleed, dammit.
Posted by: Andrew F. at February 11, 2008 12:38 AM (JI1Qq)
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Andrew, there was an interview I read with the director of Noir where he said that he made a specific decision to not have any blood in the show (except for one specific time), because the mass body counts would then detract from the story.
Consider the case of Elfen Lied, where the blood is all anybody talks about, ignoring the rather good storyline in the process, and it becomes clear that he made the right decision. After all, Kirika and Mirelle's bodycount is pretty darn high (I think the rooftop scene, for example, outpaces EL's opening, as far as corpses go). Could you imagine the "death by glasses" scene with blood? Eesh.
Steven, I know two of the fork scenes: the one pictured above (where she actually uses forks twice, though only one is shown), and
Chloe's death. If you count the scene where she hides the fork (that Chloe eventually takes as a memento), that's three, but I suspect you've got a different 'third time' in mind.
So I'm stumped on Fork 3. In my defense, the last time I watched this show was back in 2005, when I was ill and didn't realize it, leading up to The Incident.
Now that I think of it, that's where I first heard about EL... because I was in the hospital the night the Duck U. Anime Club was to meet, and I didn't bring Noir with me to work that morning. The Club wound up watching ADV screener discs that meeting, and EL was the feature on the newest.
Posted by: Wonderduck at February 11, 2008 12:57 AM (AW3EJ)
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It's been a long time since I saw it, too, and yes you got all three.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 11, 2008 01:46 AM (+rSRq)
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I understand and sympathize with the director's intent, but the lack of blood itself became a distraction when I watched the show. I'm not looking for Elfen Lied levels of blood, or even Gunslinger Girl levels. Just enough to avoid breaking immersion, as it were.
It's funny, though, that I get hung up on stuff like that, yet can watch something like Full Metal Panic without caring a whit for verisimilitude.
Posted by: Andrew F. at February 11, 2008 06:50 PM (JI1Qq)
There were 89 first videos in the nomination round, and the list has been whittled down to 20... but only five will move from the semifinals to the finals.
Way back when, in an e-mail exchange with Jeff Lawson, I mentioned to him that I just wanted to get a few votes in the VCAs. Now that it's made it to the Semis, though, I find that I really want to make it to the Finals.
It wouldn't've made it as far as it has, though, without you folks. Thank you so much... now lets go to the finals!!!
Posted by: madmike at February 05, 2008 11:36 AM (o+iiH)
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Geez... It's been so long since I used my amv account, I had to recover my password. All so I could put a vote in for "...angel." I hope you're happy
Posted by: Will at February 05, 2008 01:51 PM (WnBa/)