The Band of Four!

Revolution! Politics has never been so good. We are right behind you boss.

My Desktop

Wow, five posts in one day! Must be a new world record!

I decided to post the wallpaper that I am currently using for my PC just because I felt like it (^_^) I think I got the picture from a Korean website that posts random anime images but I may be wrong. Anyway, the picture is quite beautiful and although I don’t smoke, I have to admit that the pipe gives the girl holding it a certain degree of charisma (just like Harold Wilson).

I’m still not sure whether the picture is the front cover of a novel or an artbook. I found a link to a Japanese website that sells the book but I can’t tell what type of book it is. With my luck, it might even turn out to be a cover for a hentai illustration book. Either way, the image on its own is quite gorgeous so I decided to share it with you guys.

Manabi Manga

I decided to check the Manabi Straight manga to see how it stands against the anime. Thanks goes to Musume Scanlations for translating the manga. The group managed to translate the first volume so far which roughly corresponds to the first two episodes. The manga gives a more extended version of the student council room renovation though.

After reading the manga, it became apparent that the anime is far more superior and was handled in a much more professional manner than the manga. There are many scenes and nuances in the anime that are just absent from the manga and those scenes managed to deliver the desired message in a much more robust manner while the manga seemed like it was just fooling around. While the manga has its funny moments, the anime comedy scenes are much more powerful and the punch line is delivered like nothing I’ve seen before.

In the Wikipedia entry on Manabi Straight, they mention that the show follows a new and unique direction style with no overall series director. Instead, they use a team of directors for each episode (story, animation, layout, technical). It’s obvious that this novel way of directing was very fruitful because it shows in every episode. The producers took the material in the manga, added a lot of their ideas to it, mixed everything together and presented the whole thing in a slick neat package. Their real test now will be how they decide to end this show.

I watched episodes 6 and 7 on Thursday. Episode 6 was a nice episode about Mikan and Mutsuki’s friendship. That episode was heavy on the fanservice compared to the previous episodes but it wasn’t that bad apart from one tasteless scene. I’ll never understand why the Japanese keep spoiling their shows with these kinds of references.

Episode 7, however, was barking mad and it seems that the lines of the final battle are beginning to emerge; a battle for the existence of their own school.

A Tribute to Wikipedia

When I was young, I used to love reading encyclopaedias and I still do. I enjoyed encyclopaedias much more than regular books. Why? Because you get to learn about anything you can think of. Regular books always cover specific topics that may or may not interest me but encyclopaedias gather the bulk of collective human knowledge, summarises it and then places all that knowledge between the palms of your hands. Is that cool or what?!

I used to spend hours just browsing from one page to another. It was just like a trap; you start reading a random article then something in that article catches your attention so you start reading the article about that topic and something else catches your attention and so on. All this was done on paper so no hyperlinks are involved here. Do you know what was the best part of all this? You never ever get bored. Why? Because there is no chance in life that you will be able to read the whole thing so there was never a lack of new material. Heck, I even used to return to some article I already read and read them again because I like them a lot. I had all these great memories with just a single volume concise encyclopaedia. Makes you wonder what my reaction would have been if I owned all the volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica or something similar!!

Yet there was something missing. Some of my favourite articles were about the history, culture and geography of various countries. We all know that these topics change with time and need to be updated regularly. I would need a fortune to buy updated versions of encyclopaedias every couple of years. I never complained though. I just thought that having an instantly updated comprehensive source of knowledge is just a flight of fantasy and it will never happen because the effort that would be involved in such a project would be astronomical. I just decided to accept what I already have and be thankful.

Then the internet came…and the rest is now history (^_^)

I never thought that I would truly live the day when my old childhood dream would come true…and how?!! Wikipedia is a truly remarkable piece of work. A work of genius even. I raise my hat to the founders of Wikipedia because they managed to conquer the main obstacle that stood in the way of achieving the perfect encyclopaedia using a very simple yet powerful concept; letting the people of the world write the encyclopaedia themselves. It thus became a truly global project that brought humans from various cultures and backgrounds together.

I realise that the term “perfect encyclopaedia” is not an accurate way to describe Wikipedia and I believe even the founders agree with this. Yes, there are flaws which are mainly related to the accuracy of some of the information but most of the people who use Wikipedia everyday know that most Wikipedia contributors have provided their contributions in an honest and professional manner and it shows. The inaccuracy problem can be resolved with time so I don’t see it as a threat to Wikipedia in the short term at least.

The comprehensive nature of Wikipedia is truly astonishing. It is just about the only general encyclopaedia that has anime and manga entries (and extensive ones at that). Well established encyclopaedias like Britannica would devote many pages to Walt Disney and his company but hardly anything at all to anime ore manga. Even articles about anime directors or manga authors are hard to find (if there are any at all).

Here is hoping that Wikipedia will continue to prosper, grow and provide valuable information to the people of this planet for years to come.

They're Back!

One of the shows that I’ve started following recently is the new anime adaptation of the famous Victor Hugo novel Les Miserables, namely Shoujo Cosette.

First of all, I need to thank Ureshii, Yoroshiku and Delicious Fansubs for picking this title up for subbing. It’s very rare that shows like this are subbed and I applaud these groups for going against the norm.

The show is animated by one of my all time favourite anime studios, Nippon Animation and is promoted as the continuation of their once famous (now defunct) project “The World Masterpiece Theatre” (WMT). When it was still running, this project managed to place Nippon Animation as one of the key players in the anime arena but after it was abruptly halted in 1997, the company basically went into slumber mode and the shows it worked on since then lacked the lustre and beauty of the WMT shows. I wouldn’t exaggerate if I said that the WMT shows managed to expand anime fandom across the world (and I mean the WORLD, not just the US and Canada!) long before shows like Ranma ½, Cowboy Bebop or Neon Genesis Evangelion did. Let’s hope that this new show will be the first in many to come.

I would imagine that most of you have either read the novel, watched a movie or TV series based on the novel or at least have some general idea about what the story is about so the story shouldn’t be new to most of you. Despite being old, the story is still one of the most loved and most powerful pieces of modern literature. The topics tackled in the novel like poverty, child abuse, unemployment, corruption, government reform and the role of religion in life are topics that featured prominently in many other pieces of European literature but it was presented in a more powerful manner here because it used the tragic lives of a young girl and an old politician as a literary tool for spreading it messages. While it was indeed a critique of the French society at the time, it can equally be viewed as a critique of many of our societies today and that explains its worldwide appeal.

I have only watched the first two episodes so it is two early to judge this show but I can always comment on what I have seen so far.

The animation quality seems high enough and has remained consistent so far (and I hope it remains that way). While the character designs are quite simplistic and on the shoujo side of the anime spectrum, they are not really bad or ugly and can easily be tolerated. I still miss the realistic character designs used for older WMT shows like Little Princess Sarah and Little Women.

While the opening is a nice calm piece, the ending theme is the true music highlight of the show. I had tears in my eyes when I first heard it because it reminded me of the emotional music of older WMT shows. It has a beautiful melody and the subject of the song makes it even more beautiful and fitting for this show.

I haven’t heard any annoying voices so far and all the character voices seem to fit the characters perfectly. A lot of blogs seem to indicate that the focus of the story in this show will be Cosette but that is yet to be seen as this story cannot function properly without giving equal emphasis on both Cossette and Jean Val Jean.

The show is slated for 52 episodes (just like early WMT shows) so it should have ample time to cover all the main points in the story and give a lot of emphasis on character development. I was disappointed by one aspect of episode 2 though. In that episode, we get a brief retelling of Jean Val Jean’s past which doesn’t really emphasise or detail how he was changed from being a thief to a popular politician. Let’s just hope that this was just a flashback scene and was not intended as the real retelling of his past and let’s hope they will set al least a full episode for his past later on.

All I can say in conclusion is Welcome to the WMT.

A Tribute to Kousaka Minami

As a whole, Jinki Extend wasn’t exactly what I would call a first class anime show. The story started out on a strong note and then started to go downhill halfway through the series. A lot of that has to do with the producers’ catastrophic attempt to cram in two different storylines (the Aoba story and the Akao story) in one 12 episode series. This meant that a lot of details and potential character development were lost along the way and the lame rushed ending says it all. It makes you wonder why people decided to watch this show when it first aired instead of watching Starship Operators which was airing at the same time.

The show had a rather exciting fast paced ending song but I did find the parts where the singer stressed her voice rather annoying. The animation quality was also more or less high. The real redeeming feature about the show, however, was its cast of characters. Most of them were interesting to say the least, even the bad guys. While Aoba and Rui were some of my favourites; Aoba for her strong will and determination and Rui for her no nonsense attitude, her jealousy of Aoba on the outside and her fondness of Aoba on the inside.



The real star of the show as far as I’m concerned is, however, Kousaka Minami, Rui’s foster mother. I knew I was going to like her character from the moment she was introduced. She plays the mother figure and effective leader of the young pilots in the show. Her cheerful attitude is quite amusing and may at times make her look like an idiot (something which Rui keeps taunting her about) but that is just a clever act. She learned to behave that way in order to live beyond all the hard times she has been through. While Rui keeps criticising her for her carefree attitude, she never showed any signs of being bothered by this criticism and kept looking after Rui as if she was her real mother. She was also quite supportive of Aoba when she was brought to Angel HQ and provided the same support (with her usual sense of humour) many years later to Aoba when Angel tried to recruit her to the organisation. Her infatuation with a man who is a lot older than her (Genta san) was also one of the most amusing aspects of the show. I have to point out that Kousaka’s voice actress Takamori Yoshino did a great job in bringing her character to life.

In short, Kousaka Minami was one of the best motherly characters in anime history.