アニ・ノート

Anyone watching Taishou Yakyuu Musume 01 saw how girls were shocked at the violence of the sport after a player was knocked out with a ball. Also, I recall some bloggers mentioning anachronistic aluminum bats in TYM, although I didn’t watch far enough to see them myself. Now, check out this:

In 2003, an 18-year-old pitcher in an American Legion baseball game, Brandon Patch, was struck on the temple by a batted ball and died only hours later. Attorneys for the mother of Brandon, Debbie Patch, filed a civil suit in Helena District Court seeking damages from the makers of Louisville Slugger bats, claiming that aluminum bats are too dangerous.

Since this is not a show by GAINAX, hopefully Akiko is not getting her brains bashed out in ep.6 thus allowing Koume to flourish.

UPDATE: Evirus comments:

That is a big reason aluminum bats haven’t made it into the big leagues; at a professional level they would kill pitchers.

Also the whole changing the balance of the game thing.

They’re still used at the collegiate level because it’s cheaper than replacing wooden bats over and over, but the use is also blamed as the reason many pitchers don’t know how to pitch inside (throwing the ball very near the batter) anymore–it’s not as difficult to hit an inside pitch with an aluminum bat, and nearly all pitchers now will never face a quality batter using a wooden bat until they are already professional.

I knew I’d learn a lot from TYM, even if indirectly.

A random post at Scrumptious pointed to a blog called “Opinion Prone” and a quick backscan brought up a post ostensibly about learning with Nintendo DS, although actually it broaches a wider topic.

I imagine that most people will take a few shots at memorizing their kana and then give up. They’ll retain all the romaji vocabulary and phrases they know, and maybe they’ll still use it now and again in a mocking or less-than-serious manner, but that’s about it. Some will succeed in memorizing their kana and master some grammar, but kanji stops them dead in their tracks. The last handful plow right on through, kick the JLPT’s ass, and then run off to Japan to teach English because that’s your stereotypical otaku dream.

This may be a good time to claim that the idea of living in Japan is abhorrent to me. It’s a society manufactured by American liberals in their image during the occupation. Shitty medicine, democracy instead of republic, trains trains trains, etc. Also, what am I supposed to do with my guns if I go there? So although I did take the lowest JLPT, I never thought about teaching English there (which is not my native language anyway). But he’s right about the popularity of that lifepath in general.

When I visited Ana-sempai last week in Akita, she reported that one of the best things about AIU was that almost everyone (among non-Japanese students) was a closet anime fan, if not a downright otaku. Tired of not having anyone to talk about Umineko IRL? AIU is the university for you. And of course, what are you going to do with a MA in Japanese studies? You cannot be a high rank translator for Cabinet level officials because Monterrey was too tough for you. Essentially, hikkying under JET umbrella is the only job you can do. Little wonder next to every American otaku leans that way.

Since we’re on topic, the same week I had the first ever opportunity to talk in Japanese for real. Usually my Japanese acquaintances (like Rio and Koyomi) have a very passable, even solid English, so they do not have much patience to indulge my excercises at their expense and switch to it. This time, I set up a meeting with my online buddy “Mumu”, whose English was worse than my Japanese. We hung out at Asakusa, then went to the 60th floor of Sunshine City to look at Tokyo, and later Mumu’s husband joined us and we had a double-date style dinner in some random yakiniku place. I translated for my wife, who never had any interest in Japanese, and generally had some 6 hours of non-stop practice. I can only say it was fun, but I have a very long road to go yet. And all that because of the anime. What a data point for Opinion Prone’s author Kiri.

A broadcast “industry” observer Claire Atkinson reports that Hulu is going to charge fees according to News Corp. Deputy Chairman Chase Carey (via).

I only used Hulu sporadically. Their anime content is extremely sparse. That they only offer the first half of Honey and Clover is utter madness. Their flash viewer makes it extremely hard to take screencaps I need for this blog. And worst of all, no DTO. Honestly I’ve had it with streaming video. So whatever, Hulu, go make yourself even more irrelevant and help Crunchyroll, I don’t care.

Heh. Personally I think it’s bad manners to leave unclean boards for whoever comes next. Try crapping into your toilet and neglect to flush, see how your wife reacts. But apparently the masses of approving commenters do it every day. Anyway, he should do yaoi next — as a pennance.

Poor Eternal struggles to define the essense of Kimi ni Todoke and comes up with heart, which is the same signifier Mahoraba commonly received back in 2005. Now I have to extract the anime from the “rejected” pile, where it landed after a brutal beating by Aroduc, and put it into the queue.

BTW, both Choux and Eternal are men, or at least boys. {Correction: only Eternal is.}

UPDATE: Ryan joins in. Now it’s a veritable gaggle of bloggers and their inner fangirls against the grumpy blogger with a heart of stone.

UPDATE: Even Jen wasn’t immune, although she selected some ugly screencaps I have to say, as if to boost Aroduc’s objections. I guess it’s like Kaiba then.

Josh is staging a comeback that includes his newly minted co-writer, Polaryzed, producing cutesy first impressions going like this:

Now this series threw me for a loop. I came into it knowing that it’d be a fan service comedy. The premise/synopsis from ANN made it sound very similar to To Love-Ru. I enjoyed watching that show, in a mindless zombie way, and I’m never one to shy away from fan service, so I gave this a try. After two episodes, I’m VERY surprised by this show. The production quality is much higher than I expected, and it was REALLY FUNNY.

Ah, the pleasant surprise, hidden gem, unexpected Rocket Girls of the season (Nodame was an off-season surprise for me). Don’t we all love this? I remember watching a random episode of Naruto because my daughter torrented it, and thinking: “hmm, this is really good, it was supposed to be yet another clone of DBZ but it’s much better…”.

Unfortunately, the inclination to universalize personal projections mars the rest of the post. The strategically placed “IMO” (without ‘H’) is supposed to help, but I’m not sure it does. I myself was vastly uneducated when I was a teenager, and I wasn’t interested in groping anyone. I’m quite certain that the necessary reflexes and neural pathways are established with training. So, I consider it quite believable that what we see is actually what creators think or recall of their own youth (even if ostensibly they work for the audience, not themselves).

I was quite satisfied with the triptych that I made for Marimite, but alas, it’s difficult to hit the right tone every time.

This may be a bit too obscure. Nanoha is supposed to express my dissatisfaction with the outright magic and implausible combat that is completely railroaded by the creators with Deux Ex Machina as a locomotive. To make it more unfortunate, some may remember that Nanoha made me stop enjoying anime. SOPS was nowhere as bad; I would rather avoid that connotation.

This one is a bit of a lie. Using Nadesico is difficult for technical reasons: when I scanned my screencap collections for this, I realized that I almost never take pictures of mecha and starships, and for Nadesico I have none. What I really expected was Nadesico’s zanniness. The bemused Yuriko helps a little bit, but still it’s not the same. Last Exile’s bullshit in the end was almost perfect, except that again, there aren’t good visuals.

I wish someone did better with more humour, like this classic:

It’s funny because it’s true, yes. But that’s not all. The decline in quality of direction towards the end of Starship Operators is true too, but to express it visually is a different thing entirely.

Not many enough shows for a thin slicing, but Ubu’s report makes it up with wit. Sadly, he didn’t like Kampher and Sora no Otoshimono. About Ichizon:

This strictly B-grade effort doesn’t seek to achieve much, and yet it is the season’s best, so far. This is not a complement to the season.

That is all.

It started so well, but the bullshit was steadily growing in the final episodes until I only wanted it over with. Magic attacks and tactics, gravity in the axial passage to shuttle, convenient plotting, and… Truman? Seriously? I would not claim that Starship OPS reached the GONZO levels of ending collapse, but this anime really wasn’t Banner of the Stars.

By the way, one of the criticisms sometimes levelled against Banner is how the opposing side is not given a voice. In S/OPS, it is. And did it help much? I wonder.

Liked: Meh
Rewatch: No

Sixten does his utmost to convince everyone that Railgun is a superior show, mostly using the device of point-by-point contrast with Index. Sequels being better are not unknown (e.g. Nanoha), and if I didn’t know that he would be using the same oratory for any show by J.C.Staff, I might’ve even been convinced to give it a try. Poor Mr. Nishikori though. Sixten’s put-down of him was so brutal, that I even marked a couple of his series for future viewing.

UPDATE: Rocket does the same, a bit more concisely and with yuritard angle.