アニ・ノート

My bragging about Linux jinxed my desktop. For the eating the own dogfood purposes, it runs the bleeding edge of Fedora Linux, and thus its components are constantly shifting, packages can be incompatible at times, etc.

This time I broke my VLC by forcing an update to libavformat. I saved the old library, but apparently it wasn’t enough. Now VLC cannot find a fourcc encoder for PNG, and so it cannot take screenshots.

I went around it by taking screenshots with GIMP, but it requires swithing from XVideo output in VLC to legacy X11 to work. Doing so changes the way VLC renders DVDs, and results in ugly artefacts. If you cannot notice them right away, look closer at Rin’s jawline while she’s saying “ha. ha. ha.” (these half-closed eyes just tickle me).

Fate/stay night shapes up quite nicely. I cannot explain. It does not strive for a materpiece status, but everything just works. It aims squarely to entertain, characters are likeable… by comparison with, say, Kana of Minami-ke, who sadly are the rule these days. Not everyone would agree, of course. Here’s what Evirus wrote:

Male leads with no redeeming values are a given in simple harem comedies — even outright despicable ones are tolerated under the proper conditions. But True Tears seems to have more going for it, so I have greater expectations for it. As such, I can’t abide worthless characters. In a way, it’s similar to the biggest flaw in the Fate/Stay Night anime: Emiya was such a waste of space he dragged a promising show down to his level.

Well, Emiya has issues, but so does Mr. Naruto Uzumaki. Also, harem is rather downplayed in FSN.

BTW, I noticed FSN originally because one of reasonably known blogs had a set of about 6 Rin poses in the banner. I cannot find it now, or I’d link. The banner had about the same dimensions as Nigorimasen uses, but CalAggie has the rotating image directory open, I looked through it, and it’s not there.

UPDATE: DiGiKerot wrote to tell that it was Minaide Hazukashii, and indeed it was. I visited J.P. when I searched, but the banner was too tall. Now I understand that the alpha-blended signage made it look deceiptive.

The repeating background makes it look like the images were captured from a ren-ai game, but there wasn’t one. CORRECTION: There was.

I am bending the full power of this fully armed and operational battle station… er… I mean, the full power of the Internet to scout my way across Tokyo. Google Maps, naturally, feature prominently; I was able to find my hotel’s building by matching photos on its website with the satellite images (CIA move over). Also, I watch Youtube videos of various locations I have to cross, mostly trains and train stations.

Among those was a video of Yurikamome Line which has nothing but the soundtrack of announcements, made, as we know, by bona fide seiyū. The wikipedia article contains a convenient list.

If I understand correctly, most of the announcements have to do with exits leading to restrooms. Not only that, but restrooms come in three types: “joshtoire” / 女トイレ for ladys, “danshtoire” / 男トイレ for men, and “daredemotoire” / 誰でもトイレ, which I suppose are unisex. It could be funny to see foreigners select wrong entrance, but since Odaiba is such a touristy area, I expect lots of English signage… unfortunately.

I quit following Bamboo Blade for the lack of time after ep.5, without an official notice, because I rather liked that show. Now after Kuro’s post (spoiling), I foresee DVDs in my future.

I pray they wrap up this season and won’t make any sequels.

UPDATE: Subulture has screencaps and a detailed write-up.

Sometimes I tell people that I saw Azumanga more than 25 times, and they look incredulous. Indeed the number seems a little high, even makes me dubious myself. But today I noticed the following play counts in my iPod (I’ve got a Video model and watch anime on it despite poor quality and small screen):

Stellvia 26: 2
Ai yori Aoshi 1: 3
Kamichu 12: 7
Naruto 22: 9

Now it should be cristal clear why industry is so keen on “subscription” model where you (the consumer) own nothing and pay per view instead.

Thought that Danny Choo might have gone to TAF in the past and so I visited his website, unreadable as always. While scrolling in futile attempts to find a search box, I came across a post with a leader picture which looked familiar. But of course…

As it turns out, the Glico Man is famous Osaka landmark.

IMDB Studio Briefing:

Hewlett-Packard has signed a deal with Sony Pictures to turn out DVDs from the studio’s library whenever customers request them, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Thursday). The deal will allow consumers to order movies that ordinarily would not be stocked by dealers because they are too obscure or too old.

Someone tell Bandai to give HP a call. Maybe then we could buy 08th MS Team.

It has become fashionable to post “I installed Linux, and…”, which is cute and everything, but frankly fails to interest me. One reason is, I used Linux as my exclusive desktop since 1995, so I’m quite beyond caring for Realtek drivers sucking or other such small things.

But more importantly, I sense a distinct lack of anime. What I would really like to know is how everyone rips (or downloads), stores, manages, encodes, and watches their anime on Linux. For example, we know that VLC, up to and including 0.8.6d, artefacts on H.264 encoded ef. Unfortunately, I cannot abandon VLC because no other application has painless capture of screencaps for blogging (partisans of MPlayer were heard to dissent, but they never showed how exactly they make MPlayer to behave.). Or how about teaching fellow anime enthusiasts to find the correct title and chapter on their DVDs to rip? Something like that would be useful animeblogging about Linux. But Compiz? Bah.

UPDATE: Artit replies and adds a suggestion:

Screen captures with MPlayer - Just use the x11 video output module (-vo x11 on the command line), and take screenshots with your favorite program, or add -vf screenshot to your command line and hit the s key.

I had some issues with ’s’, but switching to X11 is the old standby trick. At least Mplayer shows video in a separate window, so it’s easier to crop later.

Owen extracted a lot of mileage out one little slip by batezi. That’s the devil of commenting. Once you made a hilariously retarded comment, you cannot amend it, ever. Even if, for instance, you learn that ef is not a harem at all.

BTW, while Owen mostly circled around harem and slice of life, I think no genre proves his point better than “mecha”.

Omo asks what stores people use.

For R1 DVDs I go to RACS, although I bought an item or two from AnimeNation and TRSI. My Vandread set came from DVD Pacific, a bargain-hunter’s outfit. RACS offers competitive prices versus specialized retailers, and although the likes of DVD Pacific are unbeatable, the difference after the S&H is small enough for me to exchange it happily for the RACS’s consistent service.

For R2 DVDs and J-pop I use CDjapan. I have only one R2 DVD which was not bought there: Manabi Straight Special (it comes from Amazon.co.jp).

P.S. Forgot to add, but I make some purchases in brick-and-mortar stores. For example, I bought Naruto Uncut v.4 in Borders. Mostly it is Fry’s, who devote a lot of shelf space to anime. But physical transactions are infrequent these days. No matter how much shelf Fry’s is willing to allocate, RACS’s warehouse is bigger still.

I was thinking about visiting a recognizable anime place, and with Okinawa being out of the reach for the moment, the next one I remember is Izumigaoka Station.

Unfortunately, it’s fictional. A station by that name exists in the Osaka prefecture, but not in Tokyo. And Ikebukoro is just not the same.

I suppose it’s just going to be Tokyo Tower, which is meh. I’m not that fond of Someday’s Dreamers…