Nana, I'm sorry

Why didn't I remember that Nana had a dub?  Why did I keep putting off watching it because I thought I had to watch it subtitled (meaning I have to sit there and give it my full attention)?  Why?!

Nana has an excellent English dub!  I had a few moments of trepidation when I first heard the dub because the last VIZ-dubbed josei foray I encountered was Honey and Clover.  I do not recommend watching HandC's English dub.  Just . . . don't.

Do watch Nana dubbed.  That's some good work.  Then watch it again in Japanese because it's good to watch it again.

I really love this series.  I've been reading the manga as it has been released here in the US, and we're caught up to where the author collapsed, so this stroll back through the material as seen through the lens of a new creative staff has been somewhat nostalgic.

What I like about Nana

Adult friendships.  Young adult friendships, at times, but still.  There are a lot of different adult choices being made here, and I like that, especially when those choices are unwise.  I respect a work that dares to let its characters face tough choices, choose, and deal with messy, sloppy, awkward consequences as best they can with a little help from their friends.

Connection.  The director said that he thinks Nana is all about people seeking connection with each other.  And how.  There are many kinds of friendship relationships, personalities, and love on display in this show, and they're subtle and well-done.

POV.  I like the way Nana uses point of view.  I like the internal monologues and comments from the future. I like the reflection on who we were before we changed and how we look on those older/younger selves.  Sigh.

Endings. Knowing how it "ends" makes everything even more bittersweet, adding significant rewatch/reread value.  The anime is less heavy with the foreshadowing use of narrators speaking from the "future" until the second collection.  It still sucks to know and like the characters even more after what you learned about them later.  You see nuances you couldn't properly decode before, and that makes what will come harder to bear.

Music.  Well done.  Not annoying yet, which is commendable.  This is a story that often uses music to connect and break apart, to confuse and explain, to depict passion and choice.  Rock on.


I don't actually know where the anime series ended (compared to the manga), but I know I look forward to finding out.

Why I still haven't seen Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

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I'm such a dork sometimes.  For whatever mysterious reasons, I don't want to watch the second anime series based on the manga series until after I've read the manga ending.  This is especially dumb because I'm pretty sure the first anime series came out before I started reading the manga series.  Sometimes I really don't understand myself at all.

In my defense, the ending hasn't been released on DVD.  Let's ignore the fact that it has been legally viewable through other means for a while, shall we?

Don't you love being the only girl?

The college anime club I attend is on spring break, so instead of our regularly scheduled programming, they reserve a room for 12 hours and watch whatever people bring.  Variety is the spice of life.

Since I was the only girl who showed up (in the evening, after work, so there could have been girls there earlier), I noticed that the watching selection skewed heavily toward the male demographic for some reason . . .  I wonder if they felt awkward.  I enjoyed myself anyway.

We watched an episode of the newer TV series of Ah! My Goddess, and I remembered the controversy over it when it came out.  Feminists didn't like it because they didn't like that this powerful goddess would sacrifice herself to fulfill role of domestic female for the protagonist.  Some folks didn't like it because they were frustrated by the "pure" relationship between the two leads; they just couldn't enjoy or understand a slow-moving, loving, affectionate relationship between two folks that never got past kissing.  I liked it. :)

Maria-Holic is another one many folks just don't like.  The manga was kind of messy (that artist just writes messy, hyper manga), but the anime actually seemed to make more sense.  They actually pulled off the over-the-top screwball SD comedy stuff without it grating on my nerves as such things do when done poorly.  It's like some crossbreed between GoComi's Tenshi Ja Nai and Maria Watches Over Us.

The one I was most surprised at was Princess Jellyfish.  It's about a bunch of hopelessly weird girls living in a no boys allowed apartment in Tokyo.  And these girls are really weird.  I don't foresee this series doing the "but if they only worked at it, they could be Stylish people, too, and get boyfriends and live happily ever after" thing, so I wonder what attraction there is for guys.  The guys liked it anyway.  :)  Way to go, guys.  It seems like a comedy nerds of both genders can enjoy.

It's nice to watch some random things every so often.  :)

Selections from What I Watched in November: Digest Version

Is it really true that the last time I posted one of these was in June?  Oh, goodness.

Hayate the Combat Butler: Still goofy, nerdy fun.  Did I mention that they're going to make a live action version?  The mind boggles.

Gurren Lagann: Well, the things that usually bug me about Gainax shows are present here, but there's just so much gosh-darn enthusiastic heart in here that I can't help but be kind of charmed.  Watching the show makes me tired. It's like watching a toddler: the sheer, shameless squandering of energy seems to take it out of me.  But it leaves me kind of mellow and happy sometimes, too.  The body count was brutal by the end, though.  And then that beautifully bittersweet ending . . .  Well done, folks.

Tweeny Witches: It was a lot of fun this time around, too.  Now that I've had real chestnuts (they taste very healthy), I'm wondering if what she was always eating was sweet chestnuts.  If so, I could understand her addiction because I had sweet chestnut soft serve in Japan, and I believe it is akin to the nectar of the gods.

Kimi ni Todoke: Quite a decent adaptation, really.  It was adorable and awkward, and I would have really liked it even more if I hadn't read the manga first.  The tweaks they made to turn it into a TV show just kind of squeezed a bit of the spark out, so I mostly preferred the manga.  That's not to say that the anime isn't really good, too.  I'd be curious about the opinions of any who watched the anime first and then read it and how things compare in their minds.

Macross Frontier: Loved it.  Sloppy space opera, occasionally great music, lots of cheese and angst, clearly understandable by someone with no prior exposure to Macross.  (Yeah, I know, it's like admitting I haven't read any Tolkien.)  The body count at the end got kind of brutal, but it never completely lost its heart (even though its mind was highly suspect at times).

I was watching a bit of anime in the fall, but I was working two full-time jobs, so it didn't really add up.  I tended to just write one-off reviews.  I think the only thing I haven't written about from last year is Moribito, which I plan to rhapsodize over soon.

Quote roundup

Sometimes you just find quotes that tickle you, but they're too short to make a whole post, so you keep collecting until you have enough.  I think I have enough.

Sean Gaffney on Natsume's Book of Friends: "Natsume has gotten much better at this protagonist thing, but he still tends to be emotionally passive, and as an action hero he's fairly miserable. So there's a sense of genuine danger to the proceedings that works very well."

Kate Dacey on Qwan: "I have a bad habit of falling in love with commercially doomed series.. . .  I think narrative complexity was a factor. Though the story is a rich tapestry of political history and myth, Shimizu refuses to spoon feed information to the reader; we’re just as confused and disoriented as Qwan himself is. That kind of reading experience can be quite rewarding, but the absence of an omniscient narrator demands more of the audience, forcing us to pore over the text and make connections on our own. Shimizu’s artwork and characterizations are up to the task, but impatient readers will easily miss crucial details in their haste to get to the fight scenes."

Kate Dacey on Your & My Secret: "Yet for all the black comedy, Morinaga still allows her characters moments of vulnerability and decency, preventing the humor from curdling into pure meanness. She wisely avoids the trap of making her characters too dumb to notice the transformations in Akira and Nanako, allowing her to sustain the body-swapping premise without straining credulity or testing the reader’s patience."

Sean Gaffney on Seiho Boys High School: "Well, that was a bummer. Don't get me wrong, a beautifully told, well-written bummer. I enjoyed every minute of it. But dang. Thank goodness the volume ends with a wacky romantic farce, even though it pales in comparison to what came before.

Kate Dacey on Gun Blaze West: "Like many shonen stories, the hero is the least interesting member of the cast; he’s not much more than a reader surrogate, a collection of attitudes and skills, rather than a fully realized character."

John on Gundam: "Once again, the disabled and headless Gundam continuing to fight represents the Japanese spirit of perseverance and loyalty to one’s goal."

Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith on 1001 Nights: "Maseru, Shahryar’s dark-skinned bodyguard who has the most adorable and sad subplot concerning a sheep that I have ever seen . . ."

Liking Zone of the Enders: Dolores, I

I love this series.  It's so goofy and funny.  It's a family drama at heart, but it's also good science fiction. 

A 49-year-old father working as a space trucker and estranged from his kids gets an odd cargo: a robot who sings lullabies his dead Martian wife used to sing to their children.  This robot is . . . different.  Not only is she shocking pink, but she's not merely a machine.  Dolores has a personality and is basically a ditzy, naive, sweet little girl trapped in a giant robot body.  She frustrates the people who are used to robots just being tools for fighting. 

There are intergalactice politics (Mars and Earth relations are pretty shaky), mysterious military conspiracies, lies, and betrayals.  And a totally crazed villain whose VA is having waaaaay to much fun.  Also a kitten.  (No Full Metal Panic: TSR worries here, my children.) 

The English voice acting is good.  I listen to it in English simply because of the really stellar performances James Links (Travis Dean) and Dolores (Boni Hester) turn in.  The extras are a mixed bag, but some of the interviews with the Japanese voice actors are a good time.  There's action, adventure, and intrigue aplenty, but, at its heart, this is the story of a family reforging itself through a lot of adversity. Refreshing.

Moyasimon: The grossest educational campus comedy manga I've ever read?

Moyasimon (pronounced Moyashimon) is probably the grossest manga I have ever read.  And I've read Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.  And Berserk.  This series is a whole new kind of educational grossness, the likes of which I honestly never thought we'd see here in the U.S.  Lucky us. :)  

Moyasimon is the story of a boy who can see bacteria and his adventures at agricultural college.  (Those little "stars" on the cover are actually bacteria.)  Aside from being totally gross enough to make me stop reading for weeks twice (the seagull thing is just nauseating beyond description), there are lots of reasons to love it.

It's funny.  Weird, snort inducing, dark, often sophomoric humor funny.

"So you're saying alcohol is basically just yeast poop."
"With fermentation, we prefer the term 'product,' rather than poop." 

I can see why.

It's educational.  (And funny.)  Where else will you hear such impassioned dialogue revolving around stomach upset?

"If milk made him sick, isn't yogurt just kicking him while he's down?" 
"What do you mean, girl? Don't talk about lactic acid bacteria that way." 
"Get back here, you stubborn oaf.  Listen to a digression from us lactic acid bacteria. When you humans are born, you come out with a coating made from us. We are inside your body, and we protect you from other germs to make you grow up healthy. We don't actually support and adjust your intestines directly. We're just trying to support our brethren that are already living inside you. If not for your sake! It's for our people! Eat! Eat! Eat, damn you! Help us save our people!"

I, for one, have been inspired to eat more yogurt lately.

It's bizarre.  They encounter this sake store owner who is constantly surrounded by clouds of adoring germs when he leaves his store.

"That should be impossible. Can a man truly be 'loved by germs'? That's silly."
"This, coming from a guy who can see them with the naked eye? Come on."
"Okay, fine. You got me there."

It's fascinating.  I'm learning a lot from it (some things I never, ever, ever wanted to know, but still.)

"The influenza virus goes straight through your standard facemask."
"R- really? But everyone else always wears them."
"The mask doesn't protect against viruses. All it does is slow them down, because they don't like the humidity of your breath trapped in the mask. Plus, the air just goes right in from the sides."

Its author is amusingly neurotic.  Ah, the little notes on the margins are great!

"We don't know if you're actually out there or not. Please send word of your existence." - the author to American readers in the margin notes

We're here!

It's adorable.

"I wish I could get some original cell phone straps made in America, too." - the author

So do I!  I saw the anime a couple years back, and those germs are just too darned cute.  When I went to visit my sister in Japan, the merchandizing boom for this stuff was still pretty big, and I got a few adorable critters to take back home with me.  They also make great stickers.  And if anyone asks, you can say with a smile that your cute plushie is botulism, and you'll know, after reading this series, exactly how much of this substance it would take to kill everyone in the world.

It's gross.  I have learned more about fermented foods than I ever cared to know.  For all that, I still don't know what to think about the fact that once upon a time, someone had to put this in their mouth to discover that it didn't kill them.  Why?  I just want to know why.  But I also really just don't want to know . . .  It's not all food-related yuckiness.  Moyasimon tries to hit the full spectrum of ick.

"We have the ability to stop them before they take root on your skin."
"Even the nasty germs that are left around your anus after you release your bowels only last a short time before we eradicate them."
"Well, this discussion turned gross pretty quick."
"Some people think germs are gross, period."
"What? Now that's just silly!"
"Well, if they want gross, will give it to 'em! Get a load of this.  About half of human feces is made of the corpses of the germs that live in your intestines."

Thanks, guys.  Maybe someday I'll win on Jeopardy with that one . . .  Reward DelRey for really coming out of left field with this one by giving it a try.

Have you read any of this series?  Your impressions?  Most gross-out moments?  Learn anything surprising?