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Date-Based Archive Don't Worry, I'll Save You with My Magical Karaoke Powers

So I'm only working two days this week, this means there is an excessive amount of time for anime watching.

One sort of theme that's come up this week is magical karaoke powers. Well, not really, more like, magical girls who happen to also sing in one episode while using their magic.

Gatekeepers 21 is a magical girl series, but its as if someone said, "What if someone could make a good magical girl series?" There are no glittery transformation sequences. The show is dark and somber, although not as dark as Boogiepop Phantom. The protagonist is instantly appealing to me, because she's sullen and sarcastic and hates humanity in general. How ironic that she then has to save lives by fighting Matrix-y alien invaders on a near-daily basis. Our protagonist carries a laptop and uses cell phones in a variety of capacities as weapons. In the first episode she picks up a sidekick who is considerably wussy and girlier, who happens to also have the power of flight.

The credit sequence promises more girls on the team, but by the third episode we've met maybe four out of five of them, and we know almost nothing about two of the four. The third girl carries a giant sword, that's kind of Final Fantasy-style.

I've only seen three episodes THANKS TO PIONEER ONLY PUTTING THREE EPISODES ON A DISC!!! You bastards! Alright, so I guess this is an OVA with only 6 episodes total, but maybe if it was one disc, that cost $25, if I had a real job, I may have considered purchasing it. But across two discs, for $50, its really not worth it.

Anyway, apparently it was based on a much brighter magical girl show. There's a better review here. Gatekeepers 21 is largely significant because it airs on Tech TV sometimes. But the dub is pretty bad.

My point is, in the third episode the flying girl is trapped with her friends in a karaoke joint when the aliens attack. The newest Gatekeeper chick appears with her giant sword to bash the bad guys, and sings a song while she does it.

Its pulled off well, and not too cheesy, unlike in the pinnacle of cheese, the new Live-Action Sailor Moon series. The 5th (maybe 6th?) episode of LASM has Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury, and Sailor Mars fighting on a rooftop against some guys in foam-rubber cactus suits that keep regenerating. The sailors realize that to beat them, they must attack in sync, but they can't do it - not until Sailor Moon hears the song coming up through the roof from the party below. The sailors sing the song and move in unison to attack the cactars and defeat them.

Now, Eva had a DDR-type dancing episode with the same sort of we-must-attack-in-sync, but Eva pulled it off well. LASM cheeses it up even further by having Sailor Moon sing the song AGAIN after the fight. She can't sing that well, no music is accompanying her, and its just kind of embarrassing.

The whole show is really embarrassing, actually, with special effects worse than Power Rangers. It kind of makes me proud of American television, because short of public access, all of our broadcast standards are higher than that.

Posted by erin at 01:07 PM | Comments (1)

Date-Based Archive Super-Cute Poster

Look what ET got me in Japan!! Sooooo cute! Its the new blog background, too.

Posted by erin at 12:24 PM | Comments (2)

Date-Based Archive Candy Terrorism/ Shameless Plug / Shopping Dangerously

A few moments ago my coworkers were complaining that people on the other side of our office have quiet the candy stash, whereas we do not. Mike called and left a ridiculous message, claiming to be an "air pirate" and demanding candy in the next half hour.

About five minutes later two giggling coworkers lobbed a tightly wrapped package of candy at Mike's head. This seemed to satisfy him and he withdrew his threats.

I'd like to take a moment to shamelessly plug Greencine.com . They're a Netflix competitor that specializes in carrying art house and foriegn titles. Netflix has a lot of anime, and is a great way to rent anime, but Greencine has a much larger, more impressive selection of anime. Droooooooooooool....

Not that I'm not up to my neck in borrowed tapes, Netflicks rentals, and downloads.

Meanwhile, this is the hat I secretly wish to own. I guess its not a secret. I guess I'm dangerously close to actually purchasing it. I swear to god I'd actually wear it sometimes.

Who wouldn't want a cat hat?

Posted by erin at 06:47 PM | Comments (2)

Date-Based Archive Luck is a Rice-Cake That Flies in Your Mouth / More Twisted Anime Sub-Genres / A New Job, Sort Of

I've written three enteries in two days, so you might want to scroll down a bit to read them.

Apparently last night N. was discussing some Japanese idioms with Kerry and Takako, and this one came up: "Luck is ricecake that flies in your mouth." Good lord! Wouldn't you choke? And in what strange scenario are ricecakes flying through the air in Japan? Is luck choking at first and then good - and is it always at someone else's expense? I mean, sure its good for you, but what about the poor fellow who was going to eat that ricecake?

More Twisted Anime Sub-Genres

Last week, when I only worked two days, I watched a lot of anime. Namely, I watched the Green Green OVA and something called St. Luminous Mission High. Both were about all-girl schools. In Green Green, a group of boys moved from the country to the city to attend an all girl school on a trial basis so the school could determine if they wanted to go co-ed or not. In St. Luminous, a young man inherits the position of director of an all-girl school from his recently deceased grandfather. The young man's best friend decided to attend the school dressed in drag, but he keeps using the wrong pronouns for himself.

So both shows featured boys attending all-girl schools. And neither were as wacky and hijinks filled as one would expect from such a scenario. Green Green was fairly ordinary shojou. St. Luminous had something more interesting going on - a girl mysteriously disappears in the first episode (there is only one episode of Green Green, but St. Luminous goes on for a while). That reminded me a bit of Twin Peaks. The new boy director of the school is determined to find the missing student. There's also a nun with a crazy outfit.

What scares me is that this whole boy-attending-an-all-girl-school thing is probably another anime sub-genre. The series: I My Me Strawberry Eggs, comes to mind, but that's more Bosom Buddies, in that a male teacher dresses like a chick in order to teach, but the school he teaches at is co-ed.

I also watched the first episode of another series, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, which fits into the Phantom Thief sub-genre. Saint Tail, DNAngel, and the Man of Many Faces manga. In KKJ, like the other series listed, Jeanne is good-hearted "phantom thief" who's identity is hidden from the public. The rules of the sub-genre are like this: She only steals items to set things right, she has an informant who tells her what items need to be stolen, she always announces the date and time of her theft to the police so they can try and stop her, she wears a ridiculous outfit and uses magician (but not magical, necessarily) tricks to elude the cops, and there's a kid who's father is on the police force who's friends with Jeanne in school, but determined to stop the phantom thief - and is somehow allowed to attend stake-outs.

There are small twists in the series, but for the most part the plot is the same. In Saint Tail a girl who wants to be a nun is the informant, in KKJ the informant is a very small angel, and in DNAngel and Man of Many Faces, the parents tell the kids what to steal (although in the other two the identities are hidden from the parents as well). DNAngel also has some crap about DNA and Angels in it, and it mixes in some other genres - there's a love triangle and the protagonist has a split personality. In Man of Many Faces (based on my extensive reading of a Tokyopop sampler) the protagonist is an adorable little boy with TWO MOTHERS. They're also identical. Thank you CLAMP, for bringing the the world soft-core porn for preteens.

Saint Tale is a surprisingly good show, but what N. and myself wonder is, what is the ur-text for the phantom thief sub-genre? For example, Utena is an OK show that ripped off Rose of Versailles, which is a good show. Both are about sword-fighting girls who want to be princes and dress as such, but where Utena takes place in a crazy high school, the other series takes place in the court at Versaille before the revolution. RoV is a much better show. Likewise, as I've said before Magical Angel Creamy Mami is a pretty good girl-magically-turns-into-older-girl-who's-a-pop-star show, but ever subsequent spinoff sucks more and more.

I'm assuming Saint Tale is not the first phantom thief show, and that some really good phantom thief show predates it. I'd like to see that show.

But I'm not below wasting my time watching KKJ. She takes her powers from Joan of Arc! How crazy is that?

A New Job, Sort Of

This week I started freelance P.A. work on the commercial side of Curious. I helped out on a stop-motion show called The Wrong Coast, which is an Entertainment Tonight parody that's all shot in Canada. I think they write the scripts here. I got to watch a lot of episodes of the show. It's pretty funny stuff. Some of it is very funny. I also worked on a Crash Test Dummies toy commercial where I got to paint some electronic cells! That was exciting, although repetitive, and I didn't get to do much of it. And I got to scan some stuff for some straight-to-video Barbie movie.

There are all of these people in the other half of the company who I didn't really know before, but now I'm kind of learning their names. That's odd, as if there was this invisible wall there, but now I've crossed it.

The secretary here mocked me a little yesterday, for acting like I work here or something. I ought to have replied, "As long as they keep pretending to pay me, I'm going to keep pretending I work here," or somesuch thing.

There was a bit of stress involved in my new tasks (I still work on KND two days a week) - I mean, there's always stress in adjusting to a new job, but my managers also seemed under stress as things went a little wrong as things tend to go. I don't like not knowing what to do at work, and I don't like waiting to be given things to do... I like to come in and know what needs to be done and do it. Seems simple enough, but as a new employee this is never the case.

I hope I didn't mess up and seem like an ass to my new bosses, as I'd like to work with them again.

Posted by erin at 07:17 PM | Comments (4)

Date-Based Archive A practical guide to downloading anime:

I've adapted these instructions from a handy email on the NYU Anime Club listserv. I know most people reading this blog don't actually download anime, so this is largely for my own notes.

A practical guide to downloading anime:

ABC is the best, most practical BitTorrent client I've tried:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/pingpong-abc/ABC-win32-v2.6.1.exe?download

(or if you're a Mac user: http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/download.html )

Install it. Open it. Go to:

Action > ABC Preference > Advanced Settings
Set "Max peer connections" at 60 (to avoid the "freezing" problem all BitTorrent clients suffer from).

Then search for stuff to download on:
http://www.suprnova.org (everything)
http://www.animesuki.com/ (unlicensed anime)
http://anime.mircx.com (all anime)
http://a.scarywater.net/ (BitTorrent "base" for many anime fansubbers)

Other personal favorites, for anime:

http://animetorrents.com/
http://a.scarywater.net/live-evil/
http://www.a2000a.com/bt/
http://www.akbit.ath.cx:6969/
http://anime-xtreme.com/
http://baka-updates.com

Not all movie files play on all computers - in particular macs have trouble opening avi files, I've found. That's why the gods of programming gave us the VLC player: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

The VLC player can play just about anything.

Posted by erin at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)

Date-Based Archive Lawyers Are Short

N. demanded that I post about the party I went to on the Upper East Side with him last Thursday night wherein I met all his coworkers. Although I post about my coworkers without abandon (sort of), my coworkers are not lawyers from rich families who could sue my pants off.

I mean, even if I refer to them by their code-names, they'd still get offended.

That said, here is the story of the party:

First and foremost, it was held in a fabulous apartment with two doormen and a wooden-interior elevator, not the apartment of a lawyer, but of a partner. The partner has four kids, each which his/her own bedroom, and a live-in nanny, probably a college girl by the looks of her. The party was catered with fabulous little h'orderves, but they weren't totally awesome. That piece of white aspargrass wrapped in salmon tasted like a plain old onion if you asked me.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I CANNOT FIGURE OUT HOW TO SPELL EITHER OF THOSE WORDS.

Moving on, I made sure to tell the Bat-Lawyer that he was the “good one” and that N. never complains about him. The Bat-Lawyer was all gentlemanly, but totally predictable, in that he immediately started saying why N. should go to law school, not necessarily to become a lawyer, but because law degrees are so “marketable”. My ass.

I also made sure to bad-mouth N.’s other lawyers to another lawyer who I thought was a secretary, but in fact, she was a very short and friendly lawyer. I met N.’s two worst lawyers, “Thumbs” and “Harvard”. Thumbs did pick at her thumbs, but must have been wearing some kind of prosthetic over them, because I could see neither muscle nor bone.

Thumbs was obviously very preppy and sort of talked at me about whatever she was thinking, like how she spends $20 a day at CVS, and that’s why she’s so broke all the time. This was an amazing way of talking which required no brain-to-mouth filtration at all, and indeed, no listener was actually required.

Nevertheless, I have been at much worse parties. Despite Thumbs horridness as a person and her constant abuse of N. as an employee, she did seem to want to talk to me and did not hate me right off the bat, like she might of if I met her at a college party, say.

Harvard was very tall, especially compared to the other lawyers, and even taller than N., who may as well have been a giant in this land of kender and dwarves. This would make Harvard something like a sorority-girl mountain troll. She looked paler and pastier than me, and out of shape, like she’d recently gained a lot of weight. She showed up hours late, and seemed violent. I did not want to talk to her.

The long-haired lawyer was barely around and didn’t really talk to me. I don’t remember who she was or what she looked like (except that her hair was, indeed, quite long).

The really weird thing about meeting all of N.’s coworkers was that they all claimed to “have heard so much about” me, and yet, not one of them knew what I did for a living. It’s pretty freaking exciting for me to work on a cartoon show. If I were N., I’d mention this all the time, “My GIRLFRIEND, the one who WORKS ON CARTOONS…” etc. Rather, the only thing they seemed to know about me was that I had successfully obtained Trilogy Tuesday tickets, when N. had failed to do so. Apparently he had pranced about the office on that day, proclaiming his love for me. As far as I can tell, that may have been the first and only time he’s ever mentioned me at work.

Posted by erin at 07:24 PM | Comments (1)

Date-Based Archive Killer Kop Kills Kops! Also; My Sinuses Explode; The Boys From Staten Island; MW Wins Caldecott/Librarians Agree Pigeons Shouldn’t Drive; Sealab Threatens Bloggers

Killer Kop Kills Kops!

Lot of stuff happened lately, sort of. N. and Kerry were listless without gaming, so we played Cyberpunk 2020 with Takako. N., Takako, and I all played cops, and Kerry was the Ref. Kerry’s way of GM-ing seems suspiciously on-the-fly. He keeps almost no notes at all, and seems to be working off the top of his head most of the time.

N. sent a helicopter full of cops after the bad guys, and the helicopter was subsequently destroyed by a rocket launcher. Who knew they had a 1 kilometer range? N. became a killer cop, and a cop killer.

During the game some firemen came over, because the neighbor’s wall had become red-hot. The firemen turned off the heat in the building, but it was OK. They all had great, thick Jersey accents. One of them checked out the CD collection and said that he, too, was “really into” his music.

The Boys From Staten Island

On the way home from Hoboken we waited in the cold only briefly for the bus, thankfully, since it was ungodly cold. Some young men were in a running, parked car in front of the bus stop, but one of them couldn’t fit in the car, and started talking to us, rather merrily, but I don’t think he was drunk. He revealed to us the following information:

• All of them were from Staten Island.
• He had never been to Hoboken before, but thought it was a really nice place.
• He could not find a place to park, although his buddies here could.
• He had seen Aida in the city last month.
• He wished he had not worn his leather jacket, but instead, his “blue puffy shit.”

All of them had thick accents, I assume Staten Island accents. But I only know one other native Staten Islander. It seemed to hold up.

The subway platform at Times Square was ungodly cold at 1:30am. An icy stalagmite was forming before my eyes, and I was worried N. might die, since he refuses to wear a hat or scarf, but it was OK, because the subway came not five minutes later.

My Sinuses Explode

Around Friday I got sick. This is unusual since I haven’t had a cold since last January. Usually I get sick a dozen times per year, but last year found me in good health. I think it was because my diet was much more healthy. Anyway, this cold sucks and isn’t like the kind I usually get. For one thing there’s a crazy amount of sinus pain and pressure. My nose kind of drips… all the time… which is really annoying. I’ve rubbed it raw with Kleenexes. I can deal with the dripping, but occasionally it feels like my face might explode. Its gotten a little better, but today it feels like the cold moved from the right side of my face to the left. Annoying.

MW Wins Caldecott/Librarians Agree Pigeons Shouldn’t Drive

On Monday at work we found out that Mo won a Caldecott Honor Award for his book Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. This annoys N. to no end; I bought the book for my little cousin for Christmas, and N. and I read it in the store. N. was terrifically irritated to find that the pigeon in the book does not get to drive the bus. He kept arguing with me about it for a month. My theory is that the pigeon’s legs cannot reach the pedals.

Stranger still, many of my coworkers knew nothing about the Caldecott awards, they didn’t even know how to pronounce it. I don’t exactly work in the children’s book industry, but I know about the Caldecotts and Newberry Awards. There was even a time when I decided to read every Newberry Award winner, but I gave up on that after a couple of crappy books. Kinda like the time I decided to watch all the Best Picture Oscar winners, but after Terms of Endearment I gave up.

Sealab Threatens Bloggers

On Sunday night the Adult Swim block featured the premiere of a new season of Home Movies, which is a great show, and the new episode was really funny. There was also a new episode of Sealab 2021, with a new captain, since the guy who did the voice of old Captain Murphy died last year. The new captain was a ridiculous football coach, apparently voiced by the real-life son of the old voice actor. Most significantly, the new captain made a direct threat to Adult Swim’s internet fanbase, saying something about how he’s here to stay, and if you don’t like it, you can just go complain in your chat rooms and your whiny forums and your sissy blogs, summing it up with, “I just have one thing to say. If you don't like me, then just go watch anime.”

Goddamn. I like both. That’s allowed, right?

Posted by erin at 02:23 PM | Comments (8)

Date-Based Archive Mad Loot

I arrived home this evening to find that many packages had arrived! Ah, delayed Christmas gifts!

My brother sent me Aqua Teen Hunger Force Vol. 1 on DVD, and a T-shirt. My friend Demi bought me a Doctor Who sweatshirt, after hearing my tale of jealousy of my brother's badass Dr. Who sweatshirt. From my Amazon gift certificates I recieved vol. 1 of Nausicaa. PLUS, Noah opened a card he'd almost thrown away at work - inside was a $30 Barnes and Noble gift certificate!

In addition to these lovely prizes, Hal gave me a book who's name I cannot pronounce, Alison said she's giving me something mysterious, and between Hal and Alison respectively I have obtained vol. 1 & 2 of Rising Stars of Manga. Competition might be incredibly fierce.

Maggagie also gave me a sneak preview of JS2, which should be totally awesome.

Oh yeah, and I may have landed a part-time (paying) gig working on the second straight-to-video Barbie movie.

Posted by erin at 02:06 AM | Comments (0)

Date-Based Archive Princess Tutu: or, You Will Believe An Anteater Can Dance

Princess Tutu has been around as an unliscensed anime series for some time now on the internet, and I can say almost without any doubt that Rick should watch this show. At least the first episode, anyway.

The plot is thick to the point of being nearly incomprehensible, in a long anime tradition of shows that don't make any sense. In short, its the story of a duck who's been transformed into a girl who attends a ballet school. The girl has the ability to turn into the magical Princess Tutu, who solves problems with her magical ballet skills.

Got it so far? The town she lives in is broken, because of this guy, who might be the villain, who used to be an author of books of fairy tales. This author-villain died midway through writing a book, and somehow the story kept living, and screwing up other, surrounding stories, all of which seem to be playing out in this crazy town with the ballet school.

Are you following me here? Good! So one of the stories is question is about a prince, who's heart got shattered. (There's also something about an evil raven, but let's ignore that for now.) Pieces of the Prince's heart tend to end up in other people - more specifically, "those who's hearts have been cracked." In other words, anyone with some crazy romantic problem who happens to be driving the plot forward on a per-episode basis.

But none of that's why Rick should watch the show. Rick should watch it because in the first episode the first clue that reality is broken is that the ballet teacher suddenly turns into a man-sized cat. This doesn't seem to bother anyone other than the duck-girl, for some reason. Worse still, the ballet teacher (appropriately named Neko-sensei), threatens any pupil dancing badly with marriage! A GIANT CAT IS THREATENING TO MARRY BAD BALLERINAS!!

And that's got nothing on episode two, where one of the girls turns into an anteater. An anteater in a tutu! That's priceless. And man oh man, can that anteater dance.

Alison should watch this show because of the nonstop yaoui going on between the prince (Mute-senpai) and that other boy who tortures him and tells him what to do. Plus there's all kinds of girl-on-girl dance action. Fortunately this doesn't play out so pervy that its totally unwatchable.

The whole show, despite the convuluted plot and the non-stop craziness is surprisingly watchable. Its not even boring, which is a problem in some shojou.

Posted by erin at 12:30 PM | Comments (3)

Date-Based Archive The Wisdom of Winkle Plop

Thank god for random strangers visiting my site! Otherwise how would I know that my movie reviews are shit, or that Christians are praying for me.

Here's a log of Winkle Plop's wisdom as he visited my site and proceeded to comment on posts that were over a year old:

February 17, 2003 02:02 This one got lots of comments from angry DJ's.
February 22, 2003 08:44 AM Winkle Plop's comment on my Gangs of New York review really is the best.
February 22, 2003 08:52 AM
March 3, 2003 04:50 PM
March 3, 2003 04:55 PM,
March 5, 2003 05:12 PM

Oops... I think I put the same link twice... is there any way to search in moveable type for all the comments of one user?

Posted by erin at 06:34 PM | Comments (10)

Date-Based Archive Happy Freakin' New Year

A long time ago I resolved never to make another New Year's Resolution, and that was the only resolution I've ever been able to keep.

That said, its not like I don't have plans for the New Year. These plans include:

- Studying Japanese
- Entering the Rising Stars of Manga competition
- Improving my game of Go
- Helping Alison complete her animated short "Astro Girl"

Meanwhile, I think my New Year's party was a big sucess. There were some rough patches in the beginning, and I may have had one drink too many, but I did get to hang out with a lot of cool dorks, such as KDC's sister, Hope, who is super-cool and a big anime fan.

Posted by erin at 05:59 PM | Comments (3)