JOURNAL: ErMaC

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  • Random thought 2002-08-24 08:37:41 Is it just me or do like 90% of the banners here suck/are stupid/do an injustice to the site they promote? 
  • August 24th, 9PM 2002-08-24 08:18:36 gambitt:

    I appreciate all of your comments, here's my responses:

    I had considered Excel Saga, however I'd rather not show bits and pieces of things, which is why I had the original stipulation of short series or movies. While I love Excel Saga (it is on my top 10 list, after all) I think it's too narrow a parody - i.e. it's parodies are not very deep or have any real commentary or undertones. Poemi (which I mentioed) does indeed have this - the show is much more a parody and satire of Japanese Society in general. And the actual Plot of Excel Saga is actually pretty good as long as you skip all the filler, but I'm not willing to do that in the class. Also I'm only showing things that I can show subtitled on DVD - thus no Abenobashi. Plus I already have enough Gainax in the lineup.

    However you do remind me about Captain Harlock - I am sorely missing something in the Space Opera genre and that could fit nicely in there. I must rewatch it soon, I have the DVD at home but never watched it...

    Unfortunately the same DVD-stipulation applies here for Utena. I can't really show Utena the series, and honestly I felt the movie was too weak. The first CCS movie stands alone and represents the modern mahou-shoujo genre (and Utena doesn't quite represent MahouShoujo in the standard sense). If I could do something on Utena TV I would, but it's just not feasable due to lack of region 1 DVDs.

    I like ROD too, and I considered it (because I have my own subtitled DVD made from scripts and R2 DVDs) because as a MOVIE it's great, but as a FILM, be realistic: it sucks. Don't get me wrong - I LOVE the show, but that's simply for the incredible fun factor it has. But cool/fun doesn't really cut it when it comes to academic analyses.
    Also I felt Metropolis was a good film, and it represents a mesh of the old (Tezuka, the God of Manga and Rintaro) and the new (CG animation techniques) and that can help show what a modern computer-aided animated film looks like.

    For the Maison Ikkoku thing: If I were to show something of that genre I'd try to fit Ah Megami-Sama in their (perhaps the movie) because that's really what defined the genre (the original manga from '84 can be considered what set the standard for the 'glass guy surrounded by girls' genre).

    Perfect Blue represents the horror/thriller genre, which is actually a big genre of Film in general in Japan - many of Kurosawa Higashi's (not Akira, this is a different Kurosawa) films are in this genre and his films are getting a lot of international exposure (not because they're good necessarily, just that his distributor is spending a lot of money on promoting him). An example from the horror genre really needs to be included, and from an analysis standpoint Perfect Blue is RIPE with it - parts of the movie can be debated for hours, while I do not see the same thing with VHD:B.

    Totoro I didn't include because there are already 2 Miyazaki films and 3 Ghibli films in the lineup, and Mononoke is more important for it's analytical potential (it has many different themes that it can be interpreted with) and Sen to Chihiro to Kamikakushi needs to be shown for the fact it's the #1 grossing film of all time in Japan, and represents what's likely Miyazaki's last work (Mononoke was supposed to be but due to the box office disaster that was My Neighbors the Yamadas, Ghibli begging him to do one more movie). The Yamadas are in there because it's an example of a very disjointed yet sweet film - a series of vignettes about family life in modern Japan.

    And I didn't include Daicon because while technically it's a "film" there's no good copy of it anywhere to be found. Every VHS version I've found looks worse than the 360x240 DivX that's been floating around the web for years. I might consider it on the last day or something, but really Gainax started with Honneamise - that was what the studio was founded to produce, and Gunbuster etc came after that.
     
  • August 24th, 6:15PM 2002-08-24 05:38:14 AMV Blog Stuff:
    Well those of you who haven't read Ian's journal really should - he and his friends have done some absolutely fabulous work. Honestly I did almost nothing to help than and I really shouldn't take any credit. He also informed me today that he thinks they've also fixed the colorbug - so now we've basically got a working plugin as long as we don't find out it breaks or has memory leaks or something yucky like that. :)
    Shame I can't test it since I wouldn't dare run Premiere on this little thing.

    For those anime buffs out there - I would like to ask a question. What Films or short (4 or less episodes) OVA series have most affected Anime as an artform? I'm trying to come up with a list of films to show for a potential film studies class on Japanese animation. I'm attempting to cover as many different genres as possible, while still trying to pick things which are actually good films. There would be around 18 classes, each 3 hours, and I want to leave time after each film for discussion, etc. So far my list is: Akira, Mononoke-hime, Ghost in the Shell, Perfect Blue, Sen to Chihiro to Kamikakushi, FLCL (spread across 2 classes), Jin-Roh, Metropolis, Evangelion (across two days, Death class and EoE the next), Wings of Honneamise, Cowboy Bebop, My Neightbor the Yamadas, Grave of the Fireflies, Card Captor Sakura Movie 1 (Because there needs to be some sort of representation from a shoujo-genre), Memories, Rurouni Kenshin OVAs (The first 4, not Seisouhen). Also for the last class I wanted to show Puni Puni Poemi and Otaku no Video for examples of Parodies or Satires of Anime in general.

    Everytime I look at the list I feel like I am missing something glaringly obvious. Does anyone know of something that just HAS to be included? I considered Patlabor 2, but GitS is also by Oshii and I feel it's his better known film and it's also responsible for much more international exposure of anime (it's the first anime film to open in multiple countries simultaneously). I axed any of the Tenchi movies because I don't think they're very good films in the sense that they really don't stand on their own, and they really haven't made a huge impact on Anime filmmaking - while the original Tenchi Muyo had a big affect the movies didn't. I would've also liked to have shown Blue Sub as an example of new animation techniques and how people are changing the way films are animated, but I decided it was too long (would take over 2 hours to show) and not good enough in the actual story department, although the art direction is very good. I also thought of Beautiful Dreamer but again I think you'd have to be familiar with characters beforehand.

    Standard Blog Stuff:

    So Thursday I still felt really bad so I didn't go to school. But I DID go on Friday... of course I didn't sleep at all the previous night. I finally decided part of the reason I must feel like crap in the morning was because I just couldn't get to sleep when I was supposed to, probably because of the weird sleeping ours the recouperation process has throw me into. So I didn't sleep Thursday night, instead talked with Ian about plugin stuff (OK so I did a lot of talking and brainstorming but no programming, honest! It was all them!) and various other things, cleaned up my room, did laundry (since it wasn't raining anymore). I go to school, manage to survive most of the first half of class alright.

    Second class comes around, and I never realized how LOUD this particular sensei talks. I started getting a pounding headache. She was talking so loud that even after putting my sweatshirt over my ears and covering them with my hands, I could STILL hear her. It wasn't pleasant. Then that afternoon we ewnt out bowling, I played some DDR before and after, and I came home. I would've loved to go to sleep but Davee was having a party at his place at 7 and since I'd been missing a lot of group activities I decided I should probably go to at least seem like I'm not a total introvert. So I went for a few hours (I was the only one not drinking, too) and then headed back here, when Ian gave me more good news about the plugin, and I then went to sleep. First time I'd gone to sleep at 10PM in god knows how long.

    And then today I wake up at 3:30PM. S#@%! So much for getting back into a normal sleep schedule. I'm thinknig of maybe going to Nagoya tonight or tomorrow because I got word that they have a really kickass HUGE arcade right near Nagoya airport, which shouldn't be too hard to get to. Hopefully won't take too long, I'm gonna get in touch with Nathan and Tae and see if they wanna come.

    Been reading books lately. Read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress when I got here, and then I read End of Eternity (Isaac Asimov) after that. Just finished Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a couple nights ago and started Restaurant at the End of the Universe yesterday. 
  • Grumble 2002-08-21 14:51:11 It appears SOMEBODY has been leaking information about my videos. I only give out that stuff to a select few people, so this is irritating me because it means either I've been careless or one of the people I thought I could trust can't be trusted.

    Just to let people know - I always like my big videos to be surprises. I want my videos to be seen by the public for the first time at a con where it can have an impact. That's why I store them up in some cases for 6 months before releasing them. And I really don't appreciate people messing that up.

    It may sound a little selfish but it's what I like to do with my work. Trust me, if I could be at AWA to see the reaction, I would be. But sadly, flying to Atlanta is not an option. 
  • August 22nd, 3AM 2002-08-21 14:15:16 Well still can't sleep very well, decided to write a bit before trying to go to bed again.

    The rain has stopped, and so I can finally dry my clothes outside. Never thought I'd miss a dryer so much.

    Cold's gotten somewhat better, I've still got a headache but I think I'll be able to go into school tomorrow if I can actually get some sleep. I'll probably be behind by a few days now but hopefully the sensei will be understanding about it. I was supposed to make a speech on Tuesday but since I didn't go to school at all that day (and felt awful the previous night) I didn't get a chance to practice at all so I'm completely unprepared for it. I'm hoping I'll get a chance to do it on Monday or something.

    I'm trying to grow a beard. Partly it's out of sheer morbid curiosity as to what I will look like with facial hair and the other part is because I'm lazy. I have no idea what I will do with the beard - I do not have a beard trimmer of any kind and the idea of trying to buy one here in Japan frightens me, so I'll probably just do the grow-it-out-until-it's-unmanageable-then-cut-it-all thing that some of my friends have done in the past.

    Fun Facts About Japan! (tm)
    7-11's are everywhere. My town is tiny and we've got _2_ of them, on the same street no less! However many will not acknowledge them as real 7-11's because THEY DO NOT HAVE SLURPEE MACHINES. Yup, that's right. They're a very different kind of store - they've got all sortsa premade sandwiches, bentos, various baked goods, drinks in a cabinet, some various over the counter drugs, and some magazines. It's very weird being in there and trying to absorb the fact that it really indeed is a 7-11.

    Ian and I have been discussing some really cool new video plugins that have been coming out - Donald Graft's new Motion-constrained smoother (Msmooth) works wonders on animation. Ian ran some tests with Ebichu and paired with Warp Sharp the filters do wonders at cleaning up video noise without losing fine definition in the characters. I've also made a post on the doom9 forums asking for help with the AVIsynth import plugin. I think now that AVISynth v2.04 has gotten to the point where I don't think it's the weak point in the chain anymore (it used to be due to it's memory leak issues) I think we could really use a better input plugin and some people over there seem enthusiastic about it so hopefully good things will come from it.

    Quu, being the incredibly nice guy he is, is sending me tapes for the AWA pro competition all the way to Japan. Now all I gotta do is beg Yoshi to let me borrow his VCR once the tapes arrive. Maybe I'll let Nathan in on watching them. He sometimes has some good insights as a non-creator when it comes to AMVs that I appreciate. His tastes can also vary wildly from mine at times, so having his input will be useful. Although this year with there being 3 tapes worth I have a feeling I may be doing a lot of fast-forwarding through videos I just can't stand - which I really hate doing but when you've got 3 tapes worth of videos to look through, and when you want to watch them at least twice, you have to draw the line somewhere.

    I'm also trying to include my three good AWA videos on RedWolf's compilation CD, so if you're going to AWA and you don't want to come to my site afterwards to download them (because it will suck, trust me) try to get a hold of it as my Masters vid and two Pro videos will be on it. I've got two videos in Expo, my Go Speed Go video and this silly trailer parody thing I did which I don't think is very good and so I didn't want to hog any more space on RedWolf's CD than I already am by including it so I didn't bother sending it to him.

    In DDR news, I haven't been playing any. Wahhhhh. However, I got up the courage to post on Aaron's message board (Aaron in Japan - www.aaroninjapan.com) and he replied personally! Whoa! I'm hoping to meet him at some point and see his incredible mad DDR skills in action. :D I asked him about the closest DDR 7th mix machine to where I am so hopefully I will be getting some Oni mode action in after over a month without playing. I hope I haven't gotten rusty. I'm down to only being able to Full Combo So Deep (perfect sphere) consistantly, but not AA'ing it, which is disappointing to say the least, although I can excuse myself because the pad down at the bowling alley leaves a whole lot to be desired, as does its location and volume level.

    I miss Pizza Hut and Del Taco. 
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