Mistakes of Youth: The Blog (Powered by EXCELLENCE!)

Man, they’re seriously catering to the lolicon otaku in this one. Other highlighs include Lucky Star, Shugo Chara, Yotsunoha (the anime sucks but I’ll be damned if Nono isn’t a totally cute design), Kyouran Kazoku Nikki and Zero no Tsukaima. I’d love to have it, since my walls are stuck in mid-2007, but I really have no money right now. Also, not like I’d be able to put up this Murasaki one, since I’m living with my parents. My 3 or 4 Kodomo no Jikan posters are bad enough…

Once I start work I should just get that year-long Megami subscription with my first paycheck…

Subatomic Brainfreeze brought this video to my attention, and I feel it’s worth talking about– if only just to pick it apart in the same way that this guy picks apart fansubs. I guess I’ll also take this opportunity to do the “My Perfect Fansub” post I’ve been planning but have never done for some reason. It’s two blog posts for the price of one!

This OtaKing guy actually gets it pretty right for a decent portion of his video. I too think that most translation notes are extraneous, and notes on cultural references can be delegated to an attached/downloadable PDF/txt/html/whatever file. I also think leaving shit untranslated is lazy, but at the same time am indifferent to honorifics. I guess I just got used to that stuff. His bit about screen clutter is good, too.

He does however kind of shoot himself in the toes. His attitude is no better than the that of the fansubbers he’s bashing, and his animated avatar is really quite cheesy (I do respect his animation work, though, but that’s only because I can’t animate for shit.) Near the end he becomes too nitpicky, getting on the cases of Shinbo shows like Pani Poni Dash and Zetsubou Sensei. The fact that ADV’s release of Pani Poni looks exactly like Oyasumi’s and gg’s kind of destroys his argument, but I guess he’s just not used to anime with lots of on-screen text. Not really a surprise, I guess, since according to everything on his DevArt page, he’s stuck in 1987.

Oh yeah, and we all know that all VHS fansubs weren’t prime examples of translation genius. I know. I watched them when I was younger.

Anyways, my idea of a perfect fansub is quite simple– white/yellow text in Arial or some other sans-serif font with a decent, competent translation, and any notes would be shown at a screen at the end or in an downloadable file I’d never read. Softsubs would be nice, but a hardsubbed release like this wouldn’t bother me. Of course, I’d like for openings/endings to be free of karaoke, and I would also like no overlays (that’s become something of a fad now-a-days.)

The only group which really subs stuff in this manner is ADTRW, and they never finish anything. That said, the current style of fansubbing doesn’t really bother me. To be honest, even with all their shit all the stuff I watch is bearably done.

God, I really can’t write today.

After a very stressful yesterday/last night, I finally have a sexy working version of XP running on this machine. It took blood, sweat, tears and the help of many great men. Thanks go out to Rob, Randall and Chase for helping me get this sucker installed.

It works great! It feels just like my old computer except for Photoshop starts up in 5 seconds and nothing slows down ever. The real test of this machine’s power will come in the form of some epic Photoshopping (which should happen today or tomorrow), but as of right now things are more or less perfect! The only losses from all this were Dell’s little mini-view thing, but that didn’t do much but look kind of cool and space-age-ish anyway, and my Hizashi no Naka no REAL save game. Well, it’s not really a loss since the harddrive on my old PC is still intact and I probably backed it up but I have no idea where to find it. Any fellow lolicon out there have ideas? Alternatively, a full save file would be good… I could never get past 75% complete…

Normal comicing/blog posting will resume shortly~

Not sure how I feel about Vista. People have told me I should keep it installed, since it’ll use all of 4 of the gigs of RAM I paid for, but it’s causing more problems than making anything easier. I can live with its aesthetic, but other very basic things are wrong here. For instance, when copying over all of my fonts, there were a number of duplicates. It asked if I wanted to replace the dupes, but of the options it gave me, none of them were “yes to all” or “no to all”. As a result, I had a stay there clicking away until all my fonts installed. Also, the OS basically prompts you about everything and is too secure for its good (ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO INSTALL THE THING YOU JUST CLICKED ON etc etc etc.) I’ll give it a spin for a few days, but I’m really leaning towards just loading up XP, especially considering the fact that my scanner doesn’t work with Vista (I can still scan through the laptop, though)

Anyway, other than OS issues the new machine works great. I will however miss the old guy, though. I used my old Vaio desktop for something like 6 years, and I guess I became attached.

I have no idea when I’m going to colour this. Probably soon, though. I’m experimenting with defining various background elements in pencil, rather than drawing the whole background on the computer later. I feel it might make the picture seem more unified, or something. Going to go for a “painted” look here. Colouring would probably be easier with a tablet, but I’ll make due with my mouse… I really need a tablet. I should set up a PayPal donation thing, or something.

Yeah, I know this is an anime blog, but this is like the only movie I’ve watched in a cinema since like 2004.

So, Indy 4. It was pretty good. Captured a lot of the magic of the originals while mixing it up a bit with some wacky shit. As far as plot goes, it’s probably the most ridiculous one out of the four, but that doesn’t really hurt it at all. Though, as a Jones movie, it kind of falls flat. While all the chases and fights are good, it feels like it’s going through the motions now.

This one kind of falls between Temple of Doom and Last Crusade for me. It’s a lot better than Temple (not a difficult thing to do) but not quite as epic Last Crusade. It doesn’t even touch Raiders, which will forever be my favourite.

Also, it really suffered from lack of Sallah!

Code Geass won’t win any awards for outstanding writing, but I’ll be damned if this stuff isn’t extremely entertaining. It’s like a 24 minute party each week, and everyone’s invited. The problem with having a guest list like this is; while you’ll get some dudes who really know how to party it up, you’ll also get some dead serious types who take all the fun out of the whole affair. You know, those guys who write the Code Geass entries on Wikipedia and sometimes forget to write in the historical present.

Code Geass is fun. It is not something meant to be taken entirely seriously. It’s a show that concerns itself with giant, toyetic, multi-coloured robots and plans that are about as plausible as the plot of a Golgo 13 episode. Yet, despite this, you have an entire legion of fans who treat this thing like the End of Evangelion. They’re the kind of people who take you extremely seriously when you crack a sarcastic joke. They somehow miss the irony here, which I find quite difficult since it hits me in the face like a sack of bricks episode after episode.

Geass is not deep. Geass is not complicated. Geass is not clever. Geass is crazy. It’s motherfucking insane. It has the kind of plot that only a night of heavy drinking and drug use could produce, and that’s why I love it. It beats me in the face each week with a giant WHAT bat,  and more often than not it beats me way more than once. It’s a good time.

What ruins that good time is the fans, though. I mean seriously, how many times are you going to take the same joke seriously? It took me four episodes before I learned that Code Geass wasn’t going to be serious business, so I don’t see why these guys haven’t even so much as considered that their holy grail of alleged exceptional writing may not be as serious as they think two seasons in.

I’ve never had a good relationship with Type-Moon. My first run-in with them was in the form of the Fate/Stay Night anime over two years ago, and I went into that with the bar set quite high due to the original’s high level of praise. I came out of it severely disappointed. The fans did, too, but that doesn’t change the fact that this was my first impression of Type-Moon, and first impressions are everything. Since then, I’ve had something of a bias against them. So naturally, when Kara no Kyoukai was announced, I hardly even cared.

My fanboy ears did perk up a bit when I heard UFOTable was on the job, though. While I’m not a fan of everything UFOTable puts out, they’re a good studio and I was confident they’d do justice to Type-Moon’s allegedly legendary brand of writing and produce something that wasn’t an insult to my intelligence. They almost did it, too! If only they had more than 50 minutes…

I’ll get the ugly stuff out of the way first: this writing is pretty bad. I understand that this one movie is the first in a series of seven, but a complete lack of introduction and/or exposition about these characters is pretty unacceptable. The movie should spend less time talking about flying and floating and more time establishing who these characters are and just what the fuck it is they do. The plot progression is pretty choppy, too, but I think that actually works. They way they present the story makes it seem more complicated than it actually is, but it works decently. Aside from that, though, this writing sucks. Too much wishy washy BS and pretentious musings about nothing for my tastes. Give me Eva over this any day.

Thankfully, the movie is just about perfect in every other way. UFOTable can put out some pretty good TV animation, so them plus a sexy movie budget is quite the site to see. It’s almost GITS:Innocence level, except for with less bad 3D graphics. Lighting effects, backgrounds and character animation are all top notch. The cinematography is great, too– the movie has a lot of great, well composed shots that almost distract me from the silly dialogue. Sure, they’re not Shinbo or Anno level, but what is? As far as music goes, the soundtrack doesn’t especially grab me but it works well in the context of the film. I’m not really a Yuki Kajiura fan anyway.

I know I sound like I’m taking a crap on this movie, but in retrospect it wasn’t an all together unpleasant experience, I just wasn’t all that impressed. The visuals and the rest are captivating, but the story is just so stupid that it leaves something of a giant stain on the whole affair. Type-Moon fans will eat it up, but I guess guys like me will still wonder just what all the fuss is about.

also: badass female leads suck. women should fate/stay in the kitchen

I’m not sure if I’ve made it very public on this site, but for those who don’t know, I’m currently in the process of applying to study in Japan in the spring of 2009. The biggest hurdle to get over was grades, since Sophia University requires a 3.0+ GPA to get in. Thankfully, my grades for this semester were nearly flawless (I got mostly As, and scrapped by with a C+ in math) so that’s taken care of. Now I’m focusing on the paperwork, which is mostly straightforward except for this goddamn Certificate of Eligibility form. Looking at it is almost like looking into the eyes of death itself. Just try and see if you can imagine this: 4 pages, both in Japanese and badly translated English with no sense of design at all. It is the most fearsome bit of paper I’ve ever seen– an assault of kanji and compact, cramped English text with very little breathing room. Reading the thing is a challenge, especially considering a lot of the English translation reads something like English Akiba Blog.

Thankfully I’m nearly done with that form. There are a lot of areas I’ve left blank, but that’s only because I really think I should go over them with my study abroad advisor so I don’t screw up. Beyond that, I just have some areas that I need to go over with my parents and professors, and after that’s mostly smooth sailing. It’s pretty much guaranteed that I’ll make it over there, but given my experience it’s best not to get excited until things are 100%.

Also: Thanks for everyone’s help with my new computer. It’s currently on its way here and should arrive on Wednesday…