I got Jane the traditional black cat for her birthday—a lovely kitteh in a snowglobe.
And I found a couple of Bleach movies on Amazon. Bleach is one of our favorites…we have stacks and stacks of it.
We are so disappointed in most American drama…very little guts on the part of the storytellers; very simplistic plotting, suspense that unravels and becomes tedious on a re-watch; just a general lack of really good re-viewable material, so that if you’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it all. And probably all its relatives.
We disdained anime for a long time—all we’d seen was figures that looked like plump baby dolls. Then we found the right one or two, and found a) it’s not all transforming robots and flying kids and b) it’s got re-viewability. There are moments you just wait for. Convolute plot, complex characters, and very nice animation.
What Western viewers have to capish is the ‘chibi’ figure that suddenly takes the place of a character: this represents a childlike behavior, and is done for humor. Puzzled us for a long time, and then we got onto it, and find the chibis a lot of fun. They make great keychains.
So we’re quite into certain anime: we’re very picky. Gotta have good-looking people. No robots. Minimum of ‘cute kids’. Gotta have a good storyline. We don’t tend to like kids as characters—but made an exception for Kyo Kara Maoh.
Most of the ones we like tend to have a mythic element: Bleach, or Saiyuki (Journey to the West).
The other thing is—don’t use the English sound track. Go for the English subtitles. Trust me. The translations are not that good on the English track. Most people who watch a lot of anime do prefer the Japanese track. And you’ll pick up a little Japanese in the process. Very serious writers and composers devote their activity to anime—and manga. If you’ve never tried it, it’s worth your time. As a music form, I’ve gotten quite fond of Japanese pop.
We also have a fondness for Chinese historical series, again, with the subtitles. Laughing in the Wind is one we own.
We
I really loved Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi)
When it was released in Japan, it became the highest-grossing movie in Japanese history.
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a critics rating of 97% and a user rating of 95%.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spirited_away/
It’s exceptionally brilliant and creative, and very re-watchable. In fact, you need to watch it a few times to get some of the subtle points of plot and character. The song at the end is amazingly beautiful.
I’ve also liked a few others by Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.
I agree that watching in Japanese with subtitles is much better.
We liked that, too. Again, the mythic connection.
Doing some cultural research on myth and belief is a good thing for any culture not your own. I did some research for a project, re the Tibetan and Chinese and Japanese version of demons, a National Geographic article by one of the first Western visitors to Tibet having been an article I read to rags when I was about 10, and it is really interesting, the demon concept, their attributes and behaviors and the things that give them away. Very different than demons of the Middle Ages and the djinn of the Middle East or the daimon concept of the Greeks [which got mistranslated]. The Oriental demons are very fond of meeting travelers in a friendly guise and then turning out to be something else—sort of cautionary tales about trusting strangers on the road, like the ogres and trolls of Nordic myth. They come in numerous flavors and with various objectives, but it’s usually lunch. We rather like the Saiyuki method of dealing with them, which dissolves them in little dots: splashy blood is just so yesterday! la! And creatures like the 9-tailed fox are just delightfully exotic.
Anime seems to be gaining ground with a lot of sf&f writers, I find. Katherine Eliska Kimbriel did a whole brilliant review series when the Book View Cafe blog was fairly new, and we talked a lot in the comments.
http://blog.bookviewcafe.com/category/anime/
For anyone who loves fiction and metafiction, the perfect anime is Princess Tutu (which has the added bonus of also having ballet as a central feature).
My other favourites are Saiunkoku Monogatari, Twelve Kingdoms and [i]Fruits Basket[/i] (although it differs quite a bit from the manga if you look closely – it also only covers the first six volumes of 23).
One of my all time favorites is Samurai Seven. It’s based on the movie Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa. While there *are* robots involved, yes, the story is less about robots and more about the struggle. And the artistry of it is very nice too.
We like that one.
The original Seven Samurai is very re-watchable and has no robots. I recommend it to all who have not seen it.
Absolutely. Kurasawa was involved to a certain extent in Samurai Seven…I don’t think any anime maker would have dared touch Seven Samurai without his blessing. Someone would have Filed Intent otherwise. I love Kurasawa’s work—I happened on a Japanese film festival on Public Television back in the day, and was absolutely blown away by the beautiful cinematography. I loved Seven Samurai; got very fond of Toshiro Mifune’s work and tracked down the films he was in. I even loved the contemporary films in that film festival, and ordinarily contemporary is a yawn for me. —But then when you select the best of the best from years of film, you’re bound to have some really good ones.
The story of the Seven is a bit interesting: the original was The Seven Against Thebes, a Greek drama, same sort of story, only in this case the seven are the attackers, not the defenders, in a casus belli (cause of war) to do with something very Greek, fate and the breach of an oath, and the keeping of oaths of alliance. Akiro Kurasawa did it in Seven Samurai—another classic, of a different sort, the plight of the samurai and the farmers in Japan in the fading age of the warlords; then the more or less straight adaptation to the Western, with the historic situation of the Regulators in New Mexico carried into a Mexican venue with gunslingers, as a classic Western; then the anime Samurai Seven, which is a futuristic take on the Kurasawa drama.
Oooooh, I like Fruits Basket too.
I must suggest Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. It is a redo of the original anime that fallows the manga more closely and is ten times better. You can watch the whole series and many more for free from funimations own website. I agree that american tv can be rather blah but there a few gems. AMC has a new show coming out called Walking Dead based on a fantastic zombie comic book. It’s directed by the man who directed the Shawshank Redemption. It airs on halloween night! I’ve already watched a leek on the internet of the first episode and I do endorse it fully.
Husband and I greatly enjoyed the original anime and have only watched the first episode of Brotherhood. We’ve been meaning to watch more…we just haven’t gotten around to it yet!
Also, in case you are a viewer who doesn’t mind being heavily spoiled when he wants to get an impression of something – here is the most excellent AMV made from Princess Tutu, but it SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOILLLLLLLLLLLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHZqxecCukg
Watch this at your own risk.
This is (though hazy) a Bleach trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEjqLU5Y_nw&feature=related
I’m a big fan of Naruto. I passed on watching it for a while because there were kids in it to start off and that isn’t my thing either, but my smarter sister forced me to marathon and she was right. It is epic and awesome. If you don’t know much about Nartuo here is a quick rundown. When Naruto was a baby the nine tailed fox attack his village and the town hero defeated the fox by trapped it inside Naruto and placing a seal over him. The hero died in the process but the village was saved. Because enemies might want to use Naruto and what was in him the adults decided to hide the truth and not even tell Naruto why he was different. Since everyone lost someone during the war in a round about way they began to hate Naruto as they hated the fox inside him. Naruto’s peers picked up on the silent hints from their parents that Naruto was trouble and Naurto ended up growing up orphaned and without friends. You might think that would make him cold and bitter, but he really is a sweet kid under all of his posturing for attention. He decides that to get everyone in the village to notice him he wants to become the next Hokage (leader) and he’ll do whatever it takes. He isn’t book smart or talented yet, but he is bull headed enough he won’t stop trying. That’s where the show takes off.
I know you said you don’t like things with kids in them, but Naruto starts off with kids (sorta like how Harry Potter starts off with kids) but the kids do grow up and by the time the second series comes out they are more or less adults. Even as kids they quickly are sucked into the adult world where the realities of adult politics and consequences disrupt their childhood and they are forced to grow up fast. There also are two older generations with their own stories as well so you have people in their early teens, people in their 20s and 30s and then the older war heroes who all get their own storylines. As the kids grow up the world gets bigger around them. And did I mention the Sand ninja are awesome? It’s true. 🙂
Beyond Naruto, I started off my anime watching career with the likes of Record of Lodoss War, Slayers, Kenshin, Tenchi, Kare Kano, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Gundam Wing back in the ’90s. I really liked fantasy and scifi in books as a teen, but there wasn’t a whole lot of that in American media at the time so anime bridged the gap. These days I’m a big fan of RahXephon (my favorite mecha/invasion/music themed anime), Ergo Proxy (a scifi post-Apocalypse show with *very* pretty adult art) and Samurai Champloo (a descendant of Cowboy Bebop only hip-hop influenced instead of jazz). Last Exile is a very pretty steampunk/airship anime that is very good until it has one of those classic Japanese endings that leaves me scratching my head. Escaflowne is a little dated these days, but it is also a very good fantasy/mecha series I loved back in high school. I’ve seen Bleach, FMA, Witch Hunter Robin, Wolf’s Rain, Fruits Basket and other mainstream stuff like that, but lately I’ve slowed my consumption down to Naruto and one other show at a time. Crunchyroll.com has Giant Killing up streaming for free so I’ve been into that.
I haven’t seen Bleach, Saiyuki, or Spirited Away. I’ll check those out.
I really enjoyed Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, dot-hack, and what I saw of Inuyasha looked worth the watch.
I think I’ve seen episodes of Samurai Champloo as well. I’ve seen parts of Ghost in the Shell and Fullmetal Alchemist.
These were as interesting in their glimpses at Japanese culture as in how Japanese people see Western culture. The storytelling and artwork are beautiful, if often tending toward a particular set of styles. The anime and manga styles have influenced teens and adults over here, even if they are only casual fans.
Between those and the classic Disney movies and Warner Bros. and Looney Tunes, there’s plenty of inspiration and chances to go in new directions. It should be interesting to see who comes up with a game-changing innovation next. — That could be on the web.
I went a little nuts and bought everything I could get of Studio Ghibli’s output for our library on DVD. Has Jane seen Kiki’s Delivery Service, especially Kiki’s sidekick, a cute black cat? and My Neighbor Totoro; anything with a catbus in it must rock! I have yet to see someone rehab a Volkswagen Vanagon into a catbus, but I’m sure it’s out there!
How’s this? :p
http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/images/cooperl/2006/06/21/catbus.jpg
And a picture of the bus that takes you from the station to the Studio Ghibli Museum. I got lost in there for about 8 hours. 🙂
http://chroniclesofajetsetterwannabe.blogspot.com/2008/07/where-to-get-your-ghibli-fixes.html
And I created a monster when I bought My Neighbour Totoro for my nieces and nephews – the next birthday (2 weeks later) featured a Totoro cake and hand knitted Totoro soft toy, with demands for a smaller version for my youngest niece made by my nephew. (Thankfully it’s my sister who’s the crafty one. :p )
After a stubborn couple of decades after Robotech, I’ve finally been watching some anime, and I’ve been enjoying it. I loved Cowboy Bebop. Yeah, it’s got a kid AND a dog, and the lead female character wears a costume that would have to be superglued to have any hope of staying on while fighting… or walking… or sitting. But the show manages to do something interesting with all of the somewhat dubious received anime elements. And in the end: solid characters, a relentless overall story arc, and fantastic music from the brilliant Yoko Kanno and her jazz group, the Seatbelts.
Ms. Kanno also does a great rock score for the TV series “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex”, which is parallel to, and rather different from, the remarkable GitS films. Stand Alone Complex does have robots, and cute ones at that, but manages to go somewhere quite unexpected and interesting with them.
I’m not sure that I would call the Studio Ghibli films “anime”, as they seem to be more influenced by Disney than the manga/anime tradition of design and story. I would, however, call them utterly brilliant!
Bleach is now in the queue!
As to Japanese folklore, and the many diversions of Buddhist tradition and myth as it travelled from India eastward: I suspect there are a lot of wonderful stories waiting to be retold and retooled.
“I’m not sure that I would call the Studio Ghibli films “anime”, as they seem to be more influenced by Disney than the manga/anime tradition of design and story”
I think all of Japan might have an argument with that. Those films are VERY Japanese and they’ve been around for years. National treasure unique and completely Japanese in mythology and sensibility. Disney could only wish it was half as good. I can’t think of anything Disney even vaguely smells like it. When I have kids they’ll be watching that, not Disney.
A computer magazine was giving a free first episode of various anime for about 6 months – I gave up after the first 2 as they were all the dubbed versions and they were atrocious. There was one with a geisha who they gave a ludicrous southern belle accent – my ears still bleed.
And our foreign film channel, SBS, insists on using horrendous dubbed versions rather than subtitled, despite the fact they are all shown after 9pm and can’t possibly be aimed at children who would need subtitles (and none of the films they show in the same timeslots are dubbed…).
We have all of the Studio Ghibli movies. We got them for the children but we love them also. Some of them are more for adults. I am interested to track down the Chinese ones you mention, CJ. Can I find them with a search for Chinese anime at Amazon? or on Netflix?
Oh, wait, I see. The Chinese historical series are not anime. they look interesting.
Our Hero is, shall we say, the bad stepchild of the household and struggling for acceptance—in the most starched and noble of families. He is NOT the model of correctness. But the plot gets complicated from there.
Any thoughts on the Moon controversy related to next years’ Wiscon?
http://sf3.org/2010/10/elizabeth-moon/
John Norman and I once shared a GOHship, and though we are from far, far opposite ends of the political spectrum, to say the least, we managed to express ourselves on the same panels and disagree without either of us demanding that our opponent be silenced. A few mundanes with picket signs showed up from outside, but the con soldiered on. John and I even did lunch together, because it was, in that benighted day of civility, just what one did—and at that lunch we did not discuss our political views: I believe we talked about the book biz.
Silencing and banning an opponent without an argument it never looks good for your side. If you can muster an intellectual and rational argument against a guest’s views, do so. It makes a good panel. If you can’t persuade anyone—while maintaining civility in the audience and on the podium—your position is the weaker on that day, and you should go think about it.
The stuff that happened before the con already warned of her unwillingness or inability to have a reasonable conversation on the subject. Not everyone is a good debater and she was already trying to cover tracks online by deleting evidence of what happened. Having her personal issues hijack a con would have set an interesting tone for sure, but people had been resigned to it for weeks prior to this announcement. *shrug*
My issue was with how long they took to decide how to respond to it. Attendees needed to be able to prepare one way or another. People were worried about if there was going to be a forum to address it. If she was going to behave the way she had online. They were worried about how to protest her attendance in the proper way. They were wondering how they could make their Muslim friends feel more welcome at a con that was normally a safe haven for many people. The announcement was made recently, but there was a lot of behind the scenes hurt that happened leading up to it all. If you are really interested do some sleuthing on LJ and you can see people’s well thought out responses following the initial blowup and screen caps of what happened before it was deleted.
This was the 3rd or 4th author/fandom flair up this year that I’ve seen so that might have had a little to do with how tense things got. With the internet these days, issues snowball rather than fizzle out and every comment is passed around the reading community. Deleting unflattering conversations is a big no-no online and I don’t think everyone understands that. There were so many fandom/internet rules broken in this this incident there was a point of no return reached that perhaps she didn’t see coming. Hopefully people will learn from that part of it at least.
I just read some of the screen caps. It looks like she lost the debate, and then deleted it all because she didn’t want to admit that. It wasn’t that the people who left comments were unreasonable. It was the opposite – that their arguments were too logical and contained too many inconvenient facts for her. Perhaps she’s relieved at not having to attend the con and defend herself.
Interesting. And very, very strange. The willingness to debate thing cuts both ways, absolutely.
The internet brings a strange dimension to the question, because a debate is best and most sanely held between a set of people all of whom have read or heard exactly the same body of information. Beyond that, it heads into fantasyland. What was said versus what was alleged to have been said but is now unavailable is a recipe for a heckuva messy argument.
I agree with this principle in my posts: a) I reserve the right to edit myself within an hour as my temper cools; I reserve the right to edit at any time I realize somebody could be hurt by a post. But removing a post that has sat there for long enough to lay eggs—that creates craziness: alleged statements can now spiral way out of reason, and you’ll be arguing with the ghosts of what people heard you said.
Having been a fan of SF&F since well before the first IBM PC, I fail to see the how a breach of netiquette and political correctness leads to Non-guest of Dishonor status. There is certainly evidence of highly politically incorrect attitudes held by the acknowledged giants Asimov and Heinlein and others of their era in their works and/or by rumor. John W. Campbell was so chauvinistic with regard to the human race and Western democracies that he would unfailingly reject or require rewrites of anything that remotely challenged their supremecy among the races of man and the universe. Asimov had to make “The Mule” a sterile mutant to get that chapter of the Fouhdation saga past his editorial pen for heaven’s sake. Our current society has become so self-centered and rootless that we can demonize and savage someone like a ravening pack of dogs due to just one splinter of their being that threatens our smug self-righteousness. Agreeing to disagree about issues and continuing to esteem another in spite of that “ding-danged wrong-headed piece of foolishness” has gone right out of style along with the person-to-person courtesy and respect which have long gone out of style. We are far more likely to give our lip-service and lofty ideals to the hypothetical man “the poor”, “persons of a given ethnicity”, or various genders or gender identities, etc. which never require us to actually apply them to the specific human persons that are currently within our purview. Quaintly, I had always thought that GoHdom was all about the body of work and service to the genre and to fandom. I suggest that the cons organize a Politically Correct Bureau of Investigation to vet potential GoHs. Organizers could look to the Wahabis for a highly effective model. In my opinion based on her work which I’m very familiar with and herself personnaly through blurbs and inference only, Elizabeth Moon is a highly estimable woman. The literal dishonoring is a mortal insult and reflects dishonorably upon all who brought it about. The simple solution would have been to frankly discuss the issue with the GoH and agree to address it at a specific point in the program or place it off limits via a brief public statement before the con. However, as we discovered in the late 1960’s, childish tantrums are often quicker, more personally satisfying, and frequently produce the desire result regardless of the equities of the situation. I’m betting that 99.9% of the foofaraw was about whether she was guilty of her sins most mortal and 0.1% or less as to whether the proposed punishment was just or remotely germane.
Regarding Elizabeth Moon, I agree with Brennan. I think we have to distinguish between an author’s works and their personal life and views.
Many writers, artists, composers, and scientists have held weird and unacceptable beliefs, or have behaved despicably in their personal lives, but that doesn’t mean that their works don’t have value.
Wagner was a great anti-semite, but that doesn’t mean that his music is bad. There were decades of controversy about whether his works should be played in Israel. Some of the most prominent Jewish musicians and conductors felt strongly that his works *should* be played, and they prevailed in the end.
Sir Isaac Newton was a great believer in mystical Christianity. He spent far more time and energy on far-fetched interpretations of the Bible and on alchemy than he did on science or mathematics. He spent years trying to decipher hidden messages and codes in the Bible. He wrote over a million words on alchemy, which the Royal Society described as ‘not fit to be printed’. But that doesn’t mean that Newton’s Laws of Motion are wrong, or that we shouldn’t use them.
Any human being may be a great genius some areas of life and a great idiot in other areas. That’s just the way it is. So we always have to distinguish between a creative person’s works and their beliefs and behavior. We have to take what is good and not mind their failings in other areas.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t engage with them and debate their personal views if they choose to make them public. We can always point out what we believe to be wrong. But their works, and honors for their works, should be kept quite separate.
I’m going to have to break down and add the first of Bleach to my Netflix list. I did a bit of research and can now understand why it’s so well loved. The only anime I watch is Ranma 1/2. Light, fluffy and slapstick.
There’s a Korean series which is very special for me – ‘Winter Sonata’. It was originally a live TV series but now it’s been made into a 26 episode amime series.
I haven’t yet watched the anime, only the live series, but it’s one of the most deeply memorable I’ve ever seen.
Winter Sonata was immensely popular in Japan and throughout the whole Far East. It’s been credited with changing the whole way that Japanese view Koreans. I can well believe it, because it certainly made a difference to my perceptions of Korea. Previously I knew very little about the country, and had no interest in it. Now, even a few years after first watching Winter Sonata, I still have a very warm, soft place in my heart for Korea and the Korean people.
It’s a moving love story set in present-day South Korea. That’s very strange for me, because I’m certainly not the kind of person to watch soppy (and soapy) Asian love stories. Yet I watched all 20 one-hour episodes voraciously.
There’s not much action (sorry!), but plenty of emotion. It’s visually stunning throughout, and it has a very twisty plot with many deep, dark secrets unfolding very slowly, and sometimes sudden unexpected melodrama.
The style and the story take a while to get into, but it’s worth it.
There are 6 main characters, and love triangle. The first 2 episodes are set during their last year at high school, and then the story shifts to a few years later when they are young professionals working in Seoul.
Anime trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShzpGgf6Zzw
Some clips from the live TV series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-aASPurEi4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtvPlQJa5Jc
I have to agree Saiyuki is good stuff. You might also check out Mushi-shi. Good art, good mythic stories very reminiscent of Miyazaki’s work.