-Alfred J Kwak, ep2

It's a duck... with a duck!

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Sometimes when you're down and out, and life has you on the ropes, something wonderful comes along and makes you realize that the world is great and good.

This has occurred today.  Today, a fansub group released episode 1 of The Greatest Anime Ever.  Ladies and Gentlemen, for your entertainment, may I present...

            ^{...flying, check, good for a duck.  Swimming, check, good for a duck.  Wiggles?}
ALFRED J. KWAK, or Ahiru no Quack in Japan.  This is an important distinction, because AJK was originally a Dutch-Japanese collaboration that was translated into no less than  seventeen different languages!  While a children's show, it appears to be headed into quite mature territory.

According to Wikipedia, for example, In episode 1, Alfred is hatched, and minutes later, evil land developers turn his home near a stream into a theme park.  Alfred's family is killed in a car accident in episode 2.  His opponent is named "Dolf", and is apparently based on Adolf Hitler (though we haven't met him yet).  The characters age over the course of the 52 episode run. 


                                       ^{Our hero as a young man duck.}
As you can tell from looking at the screenshots, this is an old show, starting in 1989.  It's not bad, for a children's show, all things considered.  The transfer to the OGM format is pretty poor, with any movement being blurry; that's probably an artifact of the original DVD source material.  Still shots look fine, if a little soft-focus.


                            ^{Our hero's father, taking umbrage at the slight on his family...}

Truthfully, I'm sure I wouldn't've watched this if it didn't have a duck as the main character (and I didn't have broadband).  However, I'm glad I did... it's fun, and there's a lot of potential here.  ANN says it's a historical show, teaching children about life and such things as WWII.  If so, I can't wait.

One huge surprise, though, was the voice of Alfred.  The moment I heard the theme song, I thought "I know who that is," and a look at the cast list confirmed it: Megumi Hayashibara, performing in only her fifth or sixth show, and what might be her first lead (I can't tell if Ranma 1/2 debuted before or after).  It's a piece of anime history, and it's about ducks!  How cool is that???

And in this episode, Steven's worst nightmare comes true:
more...

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Actually, a better question might be "where's your boss been, Wonderduck?"

He got married a couple of weeks ago, and has been off on his honeymoon... leaving me the only person with keys/alarm code/etc etc etc for the Duck U. Bookstore, as well as the only full-timer.

In the past two weeks, I've worked around about 110 hours, 10 out of 12 days, and so on. Not too terribly bad, until you realize that about half of the hours were spent ALONE, with no staff to help.

So I've had very little time to watch much of anything, be it Anime, F1, or whatever. "Normal" blogging will resume soon.

Now for one of my favorite 'ducks in anime' pictures of all time... because it's so moving:

From Hidamari Sketch, some episode that I didn't keep track of.

Darn it, when will you humans realize that DUCKS ARE PEOPLE TOO? You can't just leave one of us in the dark, alone, like this!

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from Hayate no Gotoku!, ep18.

Y'know, this picture fairly screams for a caption contest... my entry is below, leave yours in the comments! more...

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Since this sequence of screenshots could be considered NSFW (Onsen episode alert!), I'll put them in the extended entry.

Make sure you read the alt-text. more...

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Do you remember THIS "Ducks In Anime" entry:

During his trip to Japan, Brickmuppet took the time to write in that "That is the actual mascot of a curry house in Yokuska." And, for good measure, he took a photo of the actual statue shown above:

Thanks, Muppet!

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-Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (Goodbye Mr. Despair), ep. 5

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Unknown Anime
-taken from the AMV Something Fishy. If anybody knows the series, lemme know.

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Since the Chiyo-chan Sighting has caused such a kerfluffle, I figured The Pond needs something a little less controversial (and who would have thought Chiyo-chan would be controversial???)...

-Hayate The Combat Butler, episode 10
(yes, I'm running behind. Also, yes, that was a really stupid episode)

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Sky Girls, ep2

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from Moetan, ep1

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Lucky Star, ep10

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-Hayate The Combat Butler, ep2

I'm starting to believe that the rubber duckie is a little-known ninja throwing weapon...

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Mahou Sensei Negima Natsu OVA more...

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Kanon 2006, episode 20. And it's computer generated, to boot!

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Hidamari Sketch

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Strike Witches

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Please Twins!

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Princess Tutu

In an unrelated note, this is the 400th post here at The Pond.

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1 400 sounds like A LOT. In all my blogging I only made, lessee... 375 of them:

[zaitcev@lembas ~]$ find lj -name '*.txt' | wc
375 375 7044
[zaitcev@lembas ~]$

Although it does not count Advogato... That's another 188:

[zaitcev@lembas ~]$ grep '' arc/misc/Zaitcev.Advogato.diary.xml | wc
188 188 1880
[zaitcev@lembas ~]$

So, 563 posts since 2000.

Congratulations on the 400th, anyway. What did alert you to the number? Your blog software counts them?

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at December 20, 2006 09:15 PM (9imyF)

2 Oh ke ke ke. Make it grep "<entry>".

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at December 20, 2006 09:17 PM (9imyF)

3 Are you taking a look at Tutu? It has an undeservedly small audience and, as you note, a very cute duck.

Posted by: HC at December 20, 2006 09:33 PM (79VS8)

4 Pete, the software keeps track of post count AND comment count, so it makes it real easy to know which/who did what when.

If you're curious, your 'ke ke ke' comment is #738.

HC, I saw the first episode on an ADV screener DVD about 2 years ago and thought it was TOO weird for me. Now, 2 years on, I'm considering it again. If nothing else, it's quite striking visually.

What do you think of the show, HC?

Posted by: Wonderduck at December 21, 2006 01:47 AM (0Co69)

5 http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=1267

ANN hystogram peaks at 2, with a reasonably smooth distribution of 278 votes. This is a very good sign, basically an Azumanga-level vote by the great unwashed, albeit upon a smaller total. Seems like a sleeper hit to me all right.

The only problem is the length. At 38 eps, the SDB's Second Heuristic works against Tutu. Not to mention, it's probably expensive.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at December 21, 2006 06:33 AM (9imyF)

6 Actually, it's 26 episodes on DVD. There were 24 15-minute eps and fourteen 24-minute eps; they combine two 15 minute eps into one full-length ep for the DVDs.

...or so I've heard.

Posted by: Wonderduck at December 21, 2006 01:35 PM (YadGF)

7 ANN page says:
Seasons:
1. Chapter of the Egg (2002-08-16 to 2002-11-0
2. Chapter of the Chick (2002-11-15 to 2003-05-23)

This is 9 months of running, or 38 weeks. I dunno, do they show 15-minute episodes by themselves ever, or they always double them up to fill the slot (like, ahem, Dokuro-chan)?

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at December 21, 2006 04:01 PM (9imyF)

8 OK, the collection at Neowing (aka CDjapan) has 6 DVDs, and the last one ends with ep.26.
http://www.neowing.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=KIBA-862

I welcome the American density in R2, because paying 5000Y for 2 episodes gets old pretty quick. On the other hand, 7140Y is $60 at today's rate. It's still 2.5 times more expensive than we pay.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at December 21, 2006 04:11 PM (9imyF)

9 I liked it. It's very stylized - in some ways, nearly as much so as Utena - but if you're in the mood for a cracked fairy tale, it's quite good. Like all good fairy tales, it has a sort of dream-like logic to it. Also, ballet. And the heroine _is_ a duck, so you've got that going for it too.

Posted by: HC at December 22, 2006 01:22 AM (79VS8)

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As seen in Kanon 2006, episode 5:

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