アニ・ノート

In his post on Nyoron Churuya-san 04, Jaalin riddles us with a screencap and tooltip “if you don’t already recognize her, the voice will surely do it”.

The only thing that comes to mind is the snowbug from Aria, but, as far as I remember, it does not speak.

I’m out of ideas. And yes, the voice does seem quite familiar.

UPDATE: Hikago says it’s Kyon’s sister (CV: Sayaka Aoki, credited for both roles).

My insatiable hunger for Idolm@ster videos led me from Youtube to Nico, where I found this fan edition:

The chick represents Kotori, the non-playable character. She is an office assistant in the 765 Studios. On the Master of Master CD, she does the Talk 02 track and “is made by audience” to sing, delivers sora, and is every bit as good as any regular employee whose job is actually to sing. I wonder if it’s a hint at goings on in Rondo-robe.

Finding what she actually looks like requires a few searches. The official site only has a smallish sprite (center). She also appears in promotional materials (left), and in figure set (right).

The only in-game screen I have is this:

It may or may not be real. Kotori says “タベ、危ない目にあってる私を、真ちゃんが助けてくれる……、夢を見たんです。うふふ……”, which is a perfect case of “know all words, cannot understand the meaning” for me. Someone has a dangerous eye, and then she saw a dream? In which Makoto saved her? Particles!

Anyway, after seeing the website “Kotorim@ster“, I have to suspect that a part of Kotori’s popularity has something to do with the office space romance.

Prosecution rests the case.

UPDATE: J.Greely e-mailed:

危ない目に会う is “to be exposed to danger; to have a dangerous experience”; I had to use my big dictionary to find it.

Now it all makes complete sense: Kotori saw a dream where Makoto rescued her.

Honda, creators of Azimo, are at work again (via Telegraph). The result is called HRP-4C. For any practical purpose it’s a useless gimmick (look at Youtube, but it’s a fun project. Another thing, check out how they addressed the uncanny valley:

“If we had made the robot too similar to a real human, it would have been uncanny,” said one of the inventors, humanoid research leader Shuji Kajita. “We have deliberately leant toward an anime style.”

If they didn’t tell me, I would not know. The face looks normal to me.

Maybe it’s just PR.

I stated it explicitly before, but perhaps didn’t stress it enough:

[The] biggest point I took away home was that Kyon is no rebel. He not just accepts his own fate of servitude, but rationalizes it (”for the sake of the world!”) and gets complicit in it. Perhaps even finds small fun here and there, or tries to ride the dragon. In order to drive the point home, creators trotted out Ryoko, who rebels and dies for it. I thought it was glorious.

Since the above was blogged, I turned the matter over a few times in my mind. I did not want to accept the outcome. But there’s really not much Kyon could possibly do, given the circumstances. Events unrolled too quickly to take them in and realize what was going on. In retrospect, the best option would have been getting squished by the giant in the sports field. But normal people only get fed up gradually over the course of years, so there was no way for Kyon to recognize that there was no hope before the critical decisions had to be made. It was a railroad plot all along, a setup made by Anti-spirals.

From this point of view, Ryoko resolved to act much quicker than a human would. Most likely it was an outcome of her greater capacity for reasoning. Plus, she possibly simmered for a while before Kyon appeared on site.

ANDY REMINDS in an e-mail that Kyon is likely manufactured by Haruhi to enjoy it.

By the way, I’m aware of the tilt the source material is taking. Here’s a sample from Jonathan’s spoiler FAQ (which I’ve read before watching):

Question: During the First Conversation, Why Does Haruhi Ask Kyon if They Have Met Before?

This is answered in Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, which will probably be included if there is a second season of the anime.

Andy is known to lean heavily on extra material, he did so when we talked F/SN and Nanoha at least. But I always take an anime-centric view. As far as I’m concerned, Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody might as well not exist.

Regarding mergers, I think “Karma-nouto” has a good ring to it. But as a matter of grand stragegy, I’m opposed to mergers: they make the sphere less robust. I noticed that over the last year quite a number of top-line people learned the art of linking. Omo did it even before my crusade, and Zyl was particularly effective in the last couple of months, and these are just immediately apparent ones (I don’t include SDB because he didn’t have to “learn” anything — he carried the proper technique over from his previous life). Forming a cloud of blogs is the way to go. I appreciate DS’s humour though, especially at the start of the list.

UPDATE: OMO MAKES me LOL on Sunday:

Author has it backwards. It’s Ani-BURN not Karma-nouto. I mean, seriously, one is actually cool (in a STRAIGHT FROM JAPAN sort of way), where as the other is the biggest bunch of self-referential act of hypocrisy ever. And can be easily confused as some Death Note slash.

Also, he has a picture.

Watched an episode of Maria+holic at a club meeting an hour ago. I always wondered what would happen if Shinbo had a budget to work with… and this is the answer: he knows how to use money productively. Chracters look absolutely gorgeous, stunning. It’s as if J.C.Staff took their first-string, Kimikiss-producing key animators backed by the most dilligent Koreans that Korea can offer, and put them all under Shinbo. Only it’s SHAFT, not J.C.Staff. Unbelievable. Alas, story and characters are pukeworthy; Kanako is less so, but Matsurika and Mariya are pretty much PPD level.

FOLLOW-UP: I’ve not taken any pictures, but there’s a decent collection for Maria+holic 09 at THAT, where Calawain follows it. Check out the screencap of Kanako nosebleeding. Looks like they did not spend all of their gas on 01, which is good (if you can stomach watching).

Regarding Rand’s question, since Naruto has conclusively established that children soldiers are a-ok, an anime studio should definitely consider making Ender’s Game into a 26-ep series (just as long it’s not GONZO and 3D bugs). I’d be particularly curious to see the J.C.Staff’s version. If handled well, it can be more epic than RahXephon… and cute.

I blame DiGiKerot. His gendoesque gaze compels me to buy IM@S merch. This time it’s the combo of COCX-35247 and LACA-5736. The former is bought without sampling first, as I swore to do previously.

It wasn’t a mistake, I’m happy to report. Master of Master turned out to be a fake “concert” with song tracks punctuated by talk segments where idols introduce themselves, announce upcoming songs, and generally kid around. Musical performances were pretty neat too (nothing new for gamers, I’m sure).

One especially curious musical number is “Danketsu” (”Unity”), where idols rap their short intorductions, some are rather goofy. Haruka says that her main quality is hair ribbon, I think. Yayoi proclaims that she’s poor but does her best, which is at least understandable.

The talk tracks weird me out somewhat, and in the same way live videos and drama CDs. Clearly I’m too used to familiar and comfortable visual language and mores. Graduation from anime didn’t come a day early, it appears.

Unlike the one for J2, this entry is going to spoil minimally, but still. Caveat emptor.

Midori no Hibi was the last series from my happy anime days, and perhaps this is why it feels more special than it should. But even now I think it’s generally underappreciated, like Dai-Guard.

I already expended three great entries for beginning, middle, and end. But there’s plenty more.

One of my biggest bones with characters is that Seiji treats Midori poorly. He rejects her heart-shaped carrots, scolds her for sneezing, etc. I really want to think that I would raise above such petulance and meanniness in his place. We know that he cares for her, which is great and all, but this kind of behaviour does not bode well for their future. It’s 20 years of marriage experience speaking here.

This is a “flashforth”. Note the cat, a recurring gag, wearing the same glasses. I have a feeling that animators had fun working on this.

Shiori is supposed to play a role similar to Futaba in Shingu. Sadly, I think she’s not quite there. For one thing, she’s not as innocent in her advances. Also, the gag nature of the series undercuts her character by making her waste her screen time on the gags. And finally, she’s at the center of weirdest pedagogical case I’ve seen in a while (unfortunately, too spoilerish to discuss — I’m talking about the end of ep.06).

The series’ true otaku is not as annoying as he could be. Not unexpectedly, he drives the visit to Comiket and thus a whole episode of filler. I found the fillers in Midori rather bearable. Most or all of them are made to include some elements about Midori or Seiji, plugged into the continuity (I call them fillers because they are easy to cut), and generally are fun. It’s somewhat like Kamichu (where certain people liked ep.08; and I liked ep.12).

In some ways, Midori has a sensible world. For example, Seiji questions the fact that Midori is so skilled at housework despite coming from a typical anime rich family with a mansion.

In other ways, not so much. Little Midori never eats (if I remember right), but she certainly drinks. Does anyone else wonder what happens to the material she consumes? It probably is unfair to ask. She is a magical creature. But for some reason I find it easier to accept that she can rotate a full circle upon her attachment than problems with her body design. I would not say that my suspension of disbelief was unduly taxed overall, but there are some small yet intractable problems.

Animation in Midori is generally acceptable, and some parts are just done very well. I especially like designs of secondary girl characters like Iwasaki and friends of Ayase. But at Studio Pierrot they just cannot seem to keep it up for 13 episodes without a lapse. Azumanga, where are you?

Almost looks like a fishbowl shot, doesn’t it? I’m not telling what (or whom) they are seeing though.

The love umbrella.

This much fetish power made me reel, I have to admit. Not sure if the name signifies anything or not.

Iwasaki, it’s impossible not to love you (unless one is extremely unobservant, evidently).

This is the scene from ep.11 where Midori is trying to hold Seiji to his word. More importantly though, we can see Seiji’s pencil case. The weird part for me is, in my school students generally stopped carrying them by the 7th grade (or earlier). But I guess not in Japan. I began paying attention to it back when Azumanga included every girl’s pencil case into DVD extras as some important design element (mind, the infamous eye cheatsheets were not included). Is there a meaning here I fail to grasp?

I don’t know if I could take living in Japan, where people are happy to eat a roasted hamburger patty… I know that Seiji’s finances are rather shaky, but this is just bad.

And finally, Ayase. I like her. I think one of the points of having her around is to let Midori to remark on their similarities. Aroduc also remarked at #animeblogger that “every time having Ayase on screen was painful”, and in ep.07 I noted “OK, Aroduc was right, this is painful.” Perhaps part of the pain for me was to realize that her idiotic theatrics only hurt herself. Also, it was impossible to guess if she liked her own visions of grandeur more than reality and/or Seiji (fortunately, the question was resolved in the grand finale).

I smirked and nodded quite a bit while reading their latest opus. It was almost like a girl Rush Limbaugh wrote the first part and Jonah Goldberg penned the rest. As J.P. hinted in passing, putting basic assumptions outside of discussion is one of the favourite tools of the orthodoxy.

That said, some of the scholarly types are endearing with their weaboo schtick, just like any regular lover of the anime — once you discount their biases, of course. One time I was at a lecture by Gilles Poitras, it was hard not to eye-roll when he talked about the way drying futon saves energry. Yet it would be entirely unfair to smear the likes of him with the same brush used to paint the douchebags. He never was a douchebag about the art.

Also:

Just look at a list of anime produced in a given year and there will be a dozen Yoake Mae Cabbage Loves and Pretty Cures for each Kaiba.

He better not insult Feena above.