Selections from what I read in July: Digest Version, Part 2 of 2

Whoops.  I dropped out of sight again.  Sorry about that.  Picked up an online class, didn't get the materials I needed in advance, and am bumbling around like a person who remembers a time before the internet.

• b 20th Century Boys 9: The burdens of leadership often suck.
• b Hayate the Combat Butler 1-9: I wonder if I would have found this series quite so fun if I had not seen (yes, I will admit it) some great fansubs with lightning fast explanations for all the allusions?  And I'm pretty sure the answer is no.  So I'm really glad I saw them because now that it's being released here, and I'm buying it because I feel I have a moral obligation to, it's not nearly as fun.  This manga could really have used some of the TLC Del Rey gave Zetsubou-sensei, but I find it more than sufficiently amusing to keep reading it.
• b My Girlfriend's a Geek 1: Still funny.
• b Nana 21: Not funny at all.  Pour on the pathos.  Even though we sort of new this was coming, it sucks.  I agree that it's a good place to pause, though, because I'm not sure I could take any more right now.
• b Shaman King 29: This is now WAY different from the anime, and I am really hoping they license the good, complete ending, so I can read that because it's supposed to be amazing, according to this great essay.
• b Tarot Cafe 5: SOOOOO GOTHICCCCCCCC.  Yeah.
• b We Were There 2: Not Gothic at all.  Just kind of sweet and awkward and sad.
• b Yakitate! Japan 23: Also not Gothic in the least.  I suppose it is kind of melodramatic in an Iron Chef sort of way.  Who will win?!?!?!?  Brain bread.  Awesome.  Not only can it send you to heaven, it can also control your mind!!!  Yeah, I love this series.  Still.

Wow.  I'm looking at my pile of manga from August, and it's taller!  I exercised more!  Oh, wait, it's stacked on top of another pile.  Drat.

Have you seen Kekkaishi?

Has anyone seen Kekkaishi?  I adore the manga, but I don't really have TV, and it's on after my bed time, so I haven't seen how faithful the adaptation is.  ST wasn't very enthusiastic, but she's not really that into shonen.

An amusing quote from the Answerman at Anime News Network about the show.

"But whatever. A TV slot for Kekkaishi, late at night after an hour and a half of fart-related animated comedies is still better than no TV slot at all."

I hope so.  'Cause did I mention how much I love the manga?

Spreading the word about your favorite convention

I was at the Atlanta airport on my way to a friend's wedding this weekend, and I stopped at a restaurant to get a salad.

After telling me about the salads, the girl at the counter said, "You are wearing Edward Elric on your shirt, so I'm going to give you one of these."   She handed me a glossy flier for Anime Weekend Atlanta.

She gave me my salad and dressing and said, "Well, if you're in Atlanta on September 17th-19th, be sure to come on out.  I'll be dressed in Lolita!"  She grinned hugely and went to help someone at the other counter.

The man at the bar next to us looked at me questioningly over his martini.

"It's a really frilly style of costume," I finally explained.

"I thought she meant like the book," the man said, looking relieved.  I decided not to go into the history and nuances and evolution of the word as it's been adapted in Japanese pop culture today.

He expressed interest in the flier, which I showed him.  He looked confused.  "What's this all about?"

"It's a convention for fans of anime and manga and Japanese pop culture," I explained.

"Oh, so you knew what she was talking about before I butted in?" he asked. 

I nodded, took my salad, and left, chalking his disorientation up to one martini too many.  Some people cope with travel anxiety in strange ways.

So, anyway, I hope the good folks of Atlanta have a wonderful convention!  If they're as enthusiastic about advertising it as that young lady was, I'm sure it'll be full of fun.

Do you have any con recommendations?

What silent movies and anime have in common

I've been watching some silent movies lately, and it made me think about anime.

In silent movies, there's a lot of hamminess and overacting because the sounds of actual human interaction are absent.  All we have to tell the story is the visuals.  Sometimes, especially when I feel like I need about 75 more screens of dialogue to tell me what's being said and what, exactly, is going on, this doesn't work.  Sometimes the desperation of the actors to convey makes them into 2-dimensional caricatures.

I've noticed the same thing in some poor or not-very-well-done anime dubs.  When all you have to act with is your voice, it's very easy to overdo it, be hammy, and generally make me turn on the original language track.  (That's kind of odd considering many Japanese dubs seem way more hammy and overacted and melodramatic.  Maybe I'm just used to that as the standard, and I'm willing to be more forgiving as a result?)

In silent movies, I'm really running into this problem.  Right now I'm watching movies with Louise Brooks, and she is everything her essays and documentaries and critics have described.  She is luminous and rarely hammy. 

Brooks starred in two German films that are very different, but the thing that is most noticeable and consistent in both is that she is surrounded by actors who are used to being big and hammy, and she makes them look ridiculous.  She makes it look so natural and effortless, you don't even realize that she doesn't speak the same language as the actor and directors. 

I take that back, it looks like she is speaking another language they don't really know but are dazzled by, and that language isn't English.  It's quite stunning sometimes.  Some actors end up having amazingly subtle performances pulled out of them in certain scenes, like they're trying to be hammy, and she's exerting this anti-ham gravity or something, and they're being pulled into her orbit.  There's a dance scene in Pandora's Box that is even more incredible if you watch it and then read about what was going on behind the scenes (The collection Lulu in Hollywood has that essay; it's a really fun read).

Sometimes you'll get a similar effect in an anime dub.  It actually makes me kind of crazy when this happens, but there will be one or a few voice actors who are just transcendent, and you want to listen to their every word, and it's just too bad they're surrounded by mediocre or poor performances because you can't stand to watch the dub in that language because the bads are so bad (especially when compared with the luminous goods) that it's painful.  Sigh.

Voice acting for anime and silent movie acting both require people to convey a story using less the full range of their instruments.  It's rare to find someone who can shine even when crippled like that.  Now I kind of want to go read The Name of the Wind again . . .

Do you know what I mean, though?  Are there any dubs you love a few actors' perfomances in and loathe the rest? Any really good silent film actors or silent films you recommend?

Selections from What I Read in July: Digest Version, Part 1 of 2

Ahhhh.  I'm starting to get back in the swing of exercising again (much earlier in the morning courtesy of my new corporate job), and this means more manga!  Especially more GALS!  Unfortunately, soon I will be done with GALS!  This is sad.  There's a lot more manga to read, though, so that's not sad.

• b Bunny Drop 1: I love this series, as I've mentioned.  It's realistically awkward and funny.
• b Crimson Hero 13: WAAAARRRGGGHHH.  I really like this series.  Sports and drama and more drama.  And growing up.  Sigh.
• b Deka Kyoshi 2: Awwww.  This story of the plucky cop undercover as a teacher in an elementary school full of kids dealing with real life issues is full of excitement and hard to sell.  The issues the kids are dealing with are more realistic than what we like to let our kids read, so it has a teen rating, but I'm not so sure teens will be as interested in this stuff.  Oh, well.  There's a good mystery going on, and we had some great revelations this time around.  I can't remember if the rest of this series came out before the Great CMX Shutdown.  I do hope so because I want to know what really happened to the teacher who died.
• b GALS! 6-7: Seriously, there is no better pick-me-up than GALS.  This stuff is light-years ahead of Gossip Girl and other trashy teen novels.  The gals are kind of all about having fun, but they're not about being vicious and stabbing each other in the back.  And they help a lot of people along the way.  The balance between silly and serious is just spot on because different plot threads are developing simultaneously.  It's just kind of awesome.  Thank goodness the whole series made it in print.  Now I want to watch the anime again.
• b Library Wars 1: Okay.  So fun.  It's tough to communicate why this is so fun when the premise is that the state has set censorship laws, and the local governments are letting the libraries fight back, literally.  This is the story of one of the few women to get accepted for the library's combat arm and the CO she thinks is out to ruin her life (and how they fall in hilarious and awkward love).  There's a great supporting cast.  I really want the anime and the original novels over here.  Pretty please?
• b Musashi #9 17: Been there. Cried over that.  Farewell, #9, One-Niner, and Co.  I'll never know how the stupid rich kid adventure ends . . .
• b The Name of the Flower1: Sketchy and sweet.  Still.  And really tough to get ahold of unless you get lucky or are rich.
• b Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei 3: The darker side of funny.  Might be over the heads of the casual fan, but if you're a fan of biting satire and know a decent amount about Japanese culture, you will get a HUGE kick out of this.  The Power of Negative Thinking, indeed.

Let me know if you've read anything great lately.  See you next time.

What ST Read in June

These are "reviews" largely taken from text messages and brief follow-up emails.

bb PEACH GIRL

ST: More Peach Girl?

TMIA: I think I have the rest of it.

ST: Bring it.

TMIA: Kind of sucks you in, doesn't it?

ST: Yes.

bb FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST

ST: More FullMetal Alchemist? More? More? I finished 19. More? More?

TMIA: I have through 22.  Sucked to be Jean, eh?

ST: Meh. He's not dead yet. I loved in the extras of that volume where she was talking to her editor about how it was going to be a serious volume, so they should cut out the gags, but they both agreed the boob joke needed to stay in. I love her extras.

TMIA: They are always insightfully classy.  Fighting panties forever!

bb NODAME CANTABILE 

ST: Urk, I can't get over the translation - it's TERRIBLE. It feels very much like a Japanese person who speaks English translated it. The translation in the Japanese/English version I got in Japan is about on the same level as the version you bought here in America. Seriously, BAD translation. I hate Nodame anyways, and this translation doesn't make the side characters any more likable.

TMIA: It's funny that you'd say that because I've read some reviews that say the same thing.  I'm usually too caught up in the story to notice bad translation.  Unless it includes random German words.

ST: I think my brain has been trained to notice because I was in Japan so long and had to read/translate stuff like this.  Fullmetal Alchemist's translation was annoying as well because the either had different people as lead translator for each volume, or they just had a very forgetful lead translator. They aren't at all consistent with names and places (Dublith/Dubliss, Fury/Fuery, Mei Chan/May Chan/May Chang, etc.). It's distracting because sometimes the spelling translations are so different that unless you know the original Japanese, it sounds like they're talking about completely different people/places. 

Live Action Bunny Drop?!

So we know I like Bunny Drop. A lot. But a live action version? Eh . . .

A live action with Matsuyama in it? Okay, now I'm interested. I'm not sure why because it will likely never reach our shores. (Detroit Metal City, I'd love to see you, too.) Hope springs eternal? And with a resume consisting of characters from Deathnote, Detroit Metal City, and Gantz, how will Matsuyama be able to pull off an unattractive but somewhat loveable loser bachelor character who's several years older than Matsuyama is? Honestly, I do wish he pulls it off as well as those other roles. And that the child actress is good. I hope they're faithful to the manga; I'd hate it to be all schmoopey.

Hey, Viz Pictures, um, could I make a request . . . ?

Selections from what I read in June: digest version

Not the best manga month for me, but there were other perks, such as landing a job that pays a living wage (and then some) and finally exiting retail purgatory.  (Praise the Lord for His grace in all ways in all things in all situations.)  Also, there was some good manga.

• b Afterschool Charisma 1: Clones of famous dead people are all teenagers together at this highly-guarded school.  I am still slightly neutral about this series.  It has promise, but it could be so easily squandered, and I'm afraid to get heavily invested in case it chokes.  Very mysterious but not annoyingly so.  I like the fact that so much is made of the fact that clones are NOT copies.  I'm also rooting for it to succeed even after we figure out who the main character is a clone of . . .
• p Butterflies, Flowers 3:  As per my usual rule, three strikes, and you're out.  I really tried to give this one a chance, but it's too distasteful.  If the characters seemed real and I bought their love for each other as people, I would have put up with the creepy crap, but they're not, so I'm not even going to try.  I kid of want to wash my brain out with hydrogen peroxide after reading this.  (But how do I really feel?)  If it gets amazing and realistic later on, I hope someone lets me know when, and maybe I'll pick it up again then.  Maybe.  In retrospect, it probably wasn't a strategically good idea to read this right after the masterpiece that is Record of a Fallen Vampire . . .
• b Demon Diary 1-7: Sometimes, you just need to read that scene about the tomato dream again for the xth time.  And then, you know, it's been a while, and you don't really remember what happens next, and it's a quick read, and suddenly you read all 7 volumes.  Oops.  :)
• b Record of a Fallen Vampire 7-9:  That was awesome.  Just wow.  For more articulate musings, see these great reviews, but beware of spoilers.  Just go read the first three books.  Then the rest.  Then the reviews.  I want to read it again.
• b Shinobi Life 5: Still fun.  Still cute.  Still unexpected.  What more do you need?
• b WaqWaq 1: I really love that front cover.  I have no idea where this is going.  Maybe I should check out the author's other series, Hoshin Engi.
• b Zatch Bell! 14-15:  Okay, you have to find the DVD with the chair spinning guy on it.  Ridiculously hysterical and then WHAM serious.  So cracktastic.  Poor Zatch Bell; its real audience is 9, but I guess American 9-year-olds can't handle the idea of a 5-year-old running around without underpants even when they're painted in or the fact that people sacrifice themselves for others and sometimes die.  Anyway, I think this one is better to read if you've seen bits of the anime so you can get an idea of how hyper it is (and hear the excellent English dub). 

Yeah, that was really it.  July was better; I promise.

The Post Last Airbender Post: A Sort-of Tag-Team Review

ST: *sad face* it sucked. Horribly. HORRIBLY. A and her friends and I stood in the parking lot for over an hour after it was done at 2 am and ripped it apart. And we could have done it for longer. What an utter, utter piece of crap. Go to the cheapest theatre possible to see it. Crapity crap crap crap. I had faith in Shamalan and his directing ability - I wasn't a hater going into it. But he took something great and made it something not great.  And Iroh's name changed body parts. It's now pronounced "ear-roh". Apparently the old pronunciation of "eye-roh" wasn't good enough of a body part? Maybe in the next movie he'll be "nose-roh" or perhaps "mouth-roh"?  Stink. And I so wanted to like this movie.

TMIA: Since I had ST's less than positive review (above) combined with the movie's rather putrid score on rottentomatoes.com and my ability to read enough pathos into a commercial to make me cry, I thought that maybe my expectations were low enough that I wouldn't feel I had totally wasted my money, even though I had to pay more to (accidentally) see it in 3-D.  Right.  Well, I really enjoyed the music.  And I did get choked up a few times.  And . . .  Yeah, the movie was bad.  It was just misfiring on all cylinders.  What did you think about the acting?

ACTING

ST: WHAT acting? And yes, it was utter, utter crap. But it was fun to tear apart in the parking lot at 2 am. And if you were one of those idiot 12-year-olds in the parking lot complaining about the name pronunciations, then you are far behind the curve. That was just the tip of the crap iceberg (crapberg?).

The only character that I felt they captured the spirit of was Iroh; everyone else was so far removed from their character in the TV show that I was shocked. Seriously. We think that they spent so much on the special effects that they realized, "Oh, crap, we've only got $10 left for the script. Let's find the cheapest, worst screenwriter on the planet."

SCRIPT

TMIA: And the special effects left a lot to be desired, too.  You do realize that Shyamalan wrote it (along with producing and directing), right?

ST: Yes, I realize he wrote it. Perhaps he was wearing too many hates (Freudian slip? I meant hats) and so it all turned out badly? Also, he didn't write it all on his own. A script goes through many hands before it's finalized, and even then there's improv and changes made on the set.

It wasn’t just the script that stunk – lots of stuff did. It’s just the script is the most immediately easy thing to criticize. The sheer amount of information dumps in each segment of the movie was ridiculous. The dialogue was almost entirely a series of information dumps that would have been a challenge for even the most amazing of actors to deliver in a realistic manner.

I think one of my favorite amateur line was when they get to the Northern Water Tribe and Katara’s voice over information dump says, “And my brother and Princess Yue became good friends right away.”  As my friends and I discussed afterwards, that is a totally unnecessary line. You can either accomplish that in a 3 second shot where Yue and Sokka look meaningfully at each other (which I actually think they had, anyways) or you can just leave it alone and let the viewers see that, as there are scenes later where Yue and Sokka are together. They seem to have cut A LOT out of this movie, so why waste 20 seconds on a stupid line (and this wasn’t the only one. I think they wasted A LOT more time on stupid lines than should be legally allowed).

CHARACTERS

ST: Getting away from the script, I just hate how he had the children actors act. The script/directing/editing made them so that they were little adults, not children. Part of the charm of the cartoon is that Aang is twelve. He’s a kid. He realizes he has this immense task before him, but he gets sidetracked on fun quests quite easily. And Sokka is a dork. He’s a guy with a boomerang. They started him out in a promising manner – when he says Appa’s trying to eat him, when he dents a guy’s family jewels, etc.; but then it was like they thought, “No, what this movie about kids REALLY needs is a handsome, romantic lead.” So Sokka suddenly becomes this serious guy. And Katara lost her role as the wet blanket who always spurred Aang on. Suddenly, Aang was making the serious motivational speeches instead of Katara. Weird.

TMIA: It's true; there was a lot of ACTING in this movie, but I'd agree that they really didn't have anything to work with.  That's why I'm so impressed with the job Iroh's actor did. And my greatest fear wasn't realized: Aang didn't have a Texas accent.  Also, even if he looked different, Oppa was pretty great.  Momo was awful, as was Aang's interaction with him. (One of those scenes made me laugh so hard I cried a little.)  I actually thought Sokka did pretty well considering what he had, and he and Yue could have worked a bit better given more time. Literally and figuratively.

ST: Yeah, the whole scene with the fish in the spirit pond was crappy.  The fact that he's a firebender, and there's fire all around him, and he stabs it, and he's all stabby stabby, and I'm like, seriously? When you already have a script that's gold, why mess with it?  I wouldn't have minded if they changed lines or scenes, but when they change personalities, they're making different characters and a different story, and pretty soon . . .

TMIA: It's Avatar in name only.  Literally.

EFFECTS AND ACTION

ST: Do you remember all those scenes in the cartoon in the Fire Lord's throne room where it was fire and pillars and curtains of fire and scary doom?  Do you remember what it was like in the movie?  There were two lamps.

TMIA: And a nice embroidered pillow, I think.  So, what did you think of the other special effects?

ST: If the action sequences were better, it would have helped.  But they weren't.  That scene with the Blue Spirit in the ring of stones?  It made me nauseous. 

TMIA: What the heck was with all the slo-mo?  All the fight scenes lost their momentum because they kept being interrupted by slow-motion at utterly inappropriate times.  The pacing overall was terrible, but to have bad pacing in the action scenes is kind of inexplicable.  The action had no action.

ST: And the bending?! A and I were cracking up at really inappropriate moments.  The action . . . it was just pathetic.

TMIA: I don't know how they could possibly make bending not cool!

ST: It just blew my mind how horrible it was.  Zuko and Aang were always fighting hand to hand.  Why?!

TMIA: The bending took so long, I wouldn't want to wait to do it either.

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT 

TMIA: So what would you have wanted the big S to do? 

ST: He could have done a 5-minute montage at the beginning that covered the whole first season.  The whole point of the first season is that he's a kid.  He gets side-tracked easily, and that's why there are all the side stories. 

TMIA: I'm a writer, and I think in stories when I'm getting serious about things. ST, who has seen the series many more times than I have, mentioned that the part at the end with the northern waterbending tribe was all of two episodes in the series.  We allowed it to have some shorthand in the cartoon because it had all the other episodes of character development backing it up.  This movie did not. 

If I were creating this movie, I think I would have talked to fans of all ages and asked them about their favorite scenes from earlier in the series.  Then I would have structured the whole movie to start when they arrived in the Northern tribe.  I would have expanded to include what happened in those two episodes that we didn't get to see in the series.  I would have tried to work as many of those fan favorite bits in as I could as flashbacks.  There would be an organic reason for compressed summaries/explanations/info dumps and short vignette scenes and voiceovers and cutting to the good parts of the conflicts/road trip moments.  Could you imagine the fun they could have had playing the scenes as Sokka described them to Yue with commentary by Aang and Katara?  But flashbacks are evil to real filmmakers, so this is why I am not a film-maker.  (One of the many reasons.)

Anyway, I figure this strategy would allow for the present development of Aang's water-bending troubles and Sokka's relationship with Yue (they were really the only two young actors who were competent--possibly because they had something to grab onto--and had some sort of chemistry) while giving viewers live action versions of scenes they loved/the best that the series had to offer without the whiplash.  It would have allowed Sokka and the others time to shine in humorous and other ways while avoiding the Cliff's Notes of a Road Trip movie syndrome. 

But the director wanted to make an epic.  I would just want to make it fun and good and hopefully profitable.

ST: It already was an epic.  All he had to do was make it shorter.

SILVER LINING?

TMIA:  It does make me want to watch the show again, if only to wipe the taste of the movie out of my brain. That's usually how I feel about movie adaptations of books, so I shouldn't be so disappointed except that I feel like they had even less of an excuse to suck because the plot and tons of great character development were already there for the taking, along with ready-made action scenes and an incredible fighting style.  And a child actor who could do the bending, for the love of Pete!

ST: It seems like his philosophy was if I don't have to spend money on it, and I can change it, I'm going to.

TMIA: I feel like I should say that the single actual child in the theater when I saw this enthusiastically thought the movie was cool.  Any closing comments?

ST: FART.  How's that for airbending?  And it didn't take me 20 minutes to ramp it up.

TMIA:  I still blame James Cameron.  If only we'd been allowed to have the real name, this never would have happened.  :)