Jasmine Jello

"Yeah, jasmine jello melts in your mouth, and it's tangy, and slides
down your throat, and is minty and sweet, and smells good, and... I
wanted to tell you about it, Yuusuke. I thought that it would make you
feel better."

Thus says Noelle, speaking to Yuusuke, her 'husband', who is recovering
from a cold in the fourth episode of 'Tenshi ni Narumon'. The reason I
quote it is that I think it somehow says something about my feelings
toward the series, like a poem. And like a poem, I don't really know
what the hell that is.

I know for a fact that some members have already had a sampling of this
series, having inflicted it on them myself. So maybe I should find
something else to review, but I feel compelled to write about this
series anyway. Call it therapy.

Let me kind of set the stage here. When hordes of NOVA members were
watching Marmalade Boy, I was right there with them. The light humor and
unorthodox relationships tickled my funnybone. But when Child's Toy was
making the rounds, I managed to miss the whole thing. For some reason
the peculiar elements of the series just didn't resonate with me.

Now I find myself fascinated with a new series which has elements of
both. The romantic cross-currents of Marmalade Boy are there, and the
goofy non-sequitur humor of Child's Toy is mixed in as well. But the
creator has a hyperactive imagination, and an overdeveloped sweet tooth,
resulting in a series where C-ko has joined the Munsters in an extended
reinterpretation of Urusei Yatsura.

Maybe that's the key here. I was a faithful subscriber and charter
member of AnimEigo's Urusei Yatsura club, and I just couldn't get
enough. Lum was probably the first anime female I fell in love with. And
the premise of the series, an Earthly loser trapped into a marriage
alliance with an alien demon who seems oblivious to his failings and a
powerful family which threatens him with anihilation (albeit usually
subtly) seems to be an unwritten cultural subtext. One that just grabs
me in the gut and then shoots me with a million volt lightning bolt.

How's that for creepy fixation talk? Well, it gets worse folks. I'm here
to assure all you secret double agents infiltrating the club for Pat
Robertson that I have no lustful feelings for Noelle. Who could really
feel lust in their heart for C-ko? I mean really! No, what is charming
about this series is the premise--which in many ways mirrors that of
Urusei Yatsura--and the neverending panoply of goofball visual
enchantments. Where else but in Tennimon (the playful nickname bestowed
on the series by it's fans) can you encounter a rubber WWF-style
wrestler, a bishonen villain straight out of the heyday of Heavy Metal
magazine, giant robots that seem to come from a Hello Kitty
catalog--hey, stop me if your head begins to spin. Dr. Slump never had
it this weird!

Without committing the sin of spoiling the entire series by giving
blow-by-blow descriptions of the episodes I've seen so far, let me
briefly review the setup. Yuusuke is a high school student who one day
accidentally stumbles upon Noelle, literally. When he further
accidentally kisses her, she declares that he is her husband. From there
on Lum, excuse me, Noelle, is the albatross around Yuusuke's neck,
pursuing him and invading his space regardless of his love-from-afar for
a talented high school girl. Into this nascent triangle insert
Dispell-sama, the baroque bishonen villain who collects 'beautiful
things'. And guess what beautiful thing is on his mind now? Correct!
Noelle. So she is targetted nearly every episode with some scheme or
other of Dispell-sama's. Mmmm, nutty goodness!

The visuals of the series are delightful, having at the same time the
simplicity of series like Urusei Yatsura (there he goes again) and the
peculiar complexity of Dr. Slump. The quality of the artwork is
first-rate, and while there are the usual anime shortcuts, they are
woven into the motion and art of the series, and don't grate on the
senses as in a show like Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne. Of course, much of the
visual gimmickry is cute to the extreme, but it fits here, it fits.

Most of the characters are rather two-dimensional, played for laughs,
but still fun to watch. Noelle's father looks like Herman Munster with
tusks, and is looking for honest work in the human dimension. Sara,
Noelle's older sister, is invisible, literally, for the first few
episodes, but as she begins to show her face, I suspect she will also
take on more weight as a character. The grandmother is a witch, the
brother a vampire. The mother seems perfectly normal, if her ears are a
bit pointy (trivia point: the mother's voice is done by the same actress
to bring us Tendo Akane). Anyway you get the idea.

Before I shuffle off to watch more episodes, let me make one more
observation: I love the opening theme song. It is cute, quirky, and
sets the tone for the series very well. When I show this series to my
daughter, I insist on showing it from the beginning every time, just so
I can enjoy the theme again. Moreover, I've gotten an MP3 of it, which I
play now and then on my desktop computer in my den. So if you listen to
this tune as you watch your first episode and it makes you sick to your
stomach, you know what to think of the rest of this review, and you are
excused from the room.

One word of warning, and this is perhaps some of what confuses me so
about this series. I insist that it is a very innocent, child-like show,
and harmless for even the youngest viewer (so I tell my wife when Kelly,
my 4 1/2 year-old and I sit down to watch it). However, it seems that
every third adult female and some of the magical younger ones (like
Ruriri, the catgirl demon) are remarkably well-endowed, and rather
in-your-face, if you'll pardon the expression. They are, as some have
expressed it, 'Gainaxed'. So if the occasional inexplicable
bounce-factor would put you off then steer clear.

I've had a tendency to make these reviews longer and longer of late, so
let me restrain myself here and wrap things up. I've mostly talked about
my own feelings about this show, which is strange since I'm still not
sure how much I like it. I've always had a reputation for liking the odd
stuff, and this will only serve to cement that reputation, but I think
anyone interested in shoujo comedy, romantic comedy or just plain
bizarre stuff should consider giving this series a few episodes to grow
(or rot) in their hearts.

Assemble Insert

Imagine if you will, a city not unlike your own, with all the familiar
trappings: freeways, Quickie-Marts, police stations, criminals in
oversized, powered-armor suits...

Okay, maybe not a lot like your city, but at least a lot like your
city seen through the eyes of Yuhki Masami.

In this city much like yours, Professor Kyozaburou Demon and his gang of
high-tech criminals, the Demon Seed Gang, wreak havoc with utter
impugnity. They have grown so confident that they announce each crime
well in advance. This way, the police can turn out fully equipped--the
better to be properly humiliated (depending on the weather--the Demon
Seed gang has been known to cancel a crime on account of rain).

So how to combat this menace? The city fathers have a plan--founding a
special task force, the Anti Demon Seed Section, will bring down the
Demon Seed Gang. The fact that the task force doesn't even have enough
of a budget to run their air conditioners doesn't phase Chief Hattori,
the leader of the task force, for he has a plan. A plan conceived with
great cunning one night while getting disgustingly drunk in a bar, true,
but having bragged out loud, he now has to implement his plan, or face
demotion.

Thus is launched the two-part OVA 'Assemble Insert', released in 1989
and 1990, and based on a long-running manga by Yuhki Masami, the
creator of Patlabor. This OVA sets out to parody many of the shows from
the preceding decade, including the Dynaman genre which Masami had
already parodied in Ultimate Superman R. Also targetted are the numerous
idol shows then common. The secret plan hatched by Hattori, to recruit
and train an Idol Singer with a secret superpower, and equip him or her
with a powered suit of their own, is an ideal vehicle for this.

Maron Namikaze is the 8th grader with superhuman strength who gets the
'part', and she is bound for success. Without giving away key plot
points (and really, can anyone be surprised at the direction of the plot
in a show like this?), suffice it to say that she gets her power-suited
man.

The show has many good lines, typically delivered with the sheer bravado
of the hopless underdog. In support of his plan, Chief Hattori explains:

"Think about it. Some filthy-looking middle-aged riot police running
around, damaging the town, and letting the Demon Seed get away, or
some cute girl like Maron. Sure she might spread the damage around,
but she'll also inflict serious damage to the Demon Seed. Which
would be welcomed better? It's obvious, right?"

The terminal losers of the Demon Seed Task Force want to give Maron a
shot at a normal life (normal for an Idol Singer, anyway), stating that
"She's more fit for happiness: gentle and cute, rather than going up
against dangerous armed robbers! Because Maron-chan is just a girl,
in spite of her superhuman power!"

One more quote, an exchange between several officers in the squad room
in response to Chief Hattori's insistence that Maron may have to give up
her shot at the Idol Singer Newcomer's Award Ceremony to fight crime:

3: What're you talking about! She only has one chance to win the
Newcomer's Award!

1: The first step toward the domination of the entertainment world!

2: The Newcomer's Award in autumn...Ko-Haku at the end of the year.
Next year, recording in America. An engagement with a big star by
the year after next. Live TV broadcast of the reception party, and
after having a child, she'll go into diaper commercials. The
schedule is filled up completely!

Anyway this sort of thing always tickles my funnybone. However, as you
may have guessed by now, this isn't a predecessor of 'Project A-ko'.
While the action in that series is pretty much non-stop, and the humor
is almost agressive, 'Assemble Insert' generally moves at a slower pace,
delivering humor by lampooning the glorious rants of the madmen and
heroes who litter the anime landscape, with a straight face and upraised
fist.

So if you want your humor in killer doses, or leavened with a
powered-suit battles every five minutes, or sprinkled with liberal
helpings of fan service, move on. If on the other hand you want to
follow a cute, silly and fond parody of the shows of the '80s, you might
want to check this out. If I were rating it against a scale of five
magical girls, I'd give it a 3 1/2.

Princess Nine

I know it's hard to believe, but there are times when I feel quite
humble. I have been taking classes in Japanese, and I know that I am not
studying nearly as much as I should. Still, I've been quite pleased with
the results so far, rather like when I convince myself that I'm getting
trimmer by doing twenty situps a day.

Case in point. I've been buying a series on laserdisc (from Japan, with
no subtitles), called Trigun. I was quite excited recently when I was
watching it and I realized that I was truly recognizing sentence
structure. Not understanding it mind you, but recognizing it. I could
tell when a character was asking a question, when another was
complaining about the first character's behavior, that sort of thing. I
know you get a lot of that non-verbally as well, but I could tell from
the sentence structure. It was thrilling. And oh yeah, I was able to
pick out at least one word in twenty!

In my class, our teacher has been taking it easy on us, mostly because
she knows we're all night students with real lives. So I got a cold dash
of water in my face when she gave us a listening comprehension homework
that consisted of maybe ten minutes of dialogue, and it took me over two
hours to do. Yow.

As if that's not enough, I recently read in EX about one of the current
series in Japan, Princess Nine. I put out the call to NOVA members to
see if anyone has it, and Dmitri came to my rescue. I recently cleared a
slot of time to watch the first four episodes, and once again I got a
dose of humility.

Let me start by observing that Japanese doesnt require rolling r's as
some dialects of Spanish do. Technically, it doesn't even have r's in
the strict sense. But five minutes into the first episode, I'm hearing
what sounds like rolling r's. The characters are rattling off so many
syllables in a single breath that it sounds like an exhibition by the
winner of the Morse code speed championship at the international Ham
Radio Festival. Double Yow.

Despite this handicap, I'm here to tell you today that this series
deserves watching. Even though the spoken dialogue of a series about a
high school girl and her talent for softball for-gods-sake, is harder
to comprehend than Trigun, a sci-fi, anime-flavor spaghetti western, the
basic story still shines through with charm and warmth.

Hayakawa Ryou is the girl who has the talent, and dreams of one day
becoming a pitcher in the big leagues like her father (Hidehiko). Though
she seems not to know about the scandal her father was implicated in
that got him thrown out of the league, it won't change her mind when she
finally finds out.

The first four episodes build her character, and introduce a variety of
other cast members, many of whom are destined to form the team that
Hayakawa-san will join. I don't want to give a blow-by-blow description
of the series, since you can go to EX for a review:

http://www.ex.org/3.7/19-anime_princessnine.html

or search the Web for other info (I found the bit about the league
scandal at an online site for MixxZine). But I will try to capture one
scene that tickled me. The principals are as follows:

• Hayakawa Ryou (talented at pitching, being scouted by Himuro Keiko, a
  rich corporate woman looking to build a baseball team for the high
  school she sponsors)
  
  
• Kido Shinsaku (the new team manager hired by Himuro)
  
  
• Takasugi Hiroki (Kisaragi men's baseball team champ hitter)
  
  
• Himuro Izumi (a high school tennis star and daughter of Himuro Keiko)
  

In the scene in question, Takasugi has dragged Ryou to the tennis courts
to witness Izumi's prowess on the courts. Izumi is systematically
tromping two male players who are clearly there to supply enough
volleys to let Izumi break a sweat. After her tough play, she is
introduced to Ryou by Takasugi (yes, I'm being sloppy about using
surnames and first names, tough). It is clear that there is an instant
dislike (at least on Izumi's part), amplified by the fact that Izumi
feels somewhat territorial about Takasugi, who is clearly friendly
towards Ryou.

What follows is a duel of sorts. Izumi gets Ryou onto the court, racket
in hand, with the clear intention of humiliating her. Ryou misses the
first two volleys, badly. But with the third, a light seems to go off in
her head, and she seems to transform the racket into a baseball bat.
Crack! She connects, and the ball flies across the court, past Izumi,
and hits the baseline.

Before we know what is happening, Kido arrives with a bat, and Izumi is
presented with a chance to experience Ryou's pitching skills, using a
tennis ball! The results are almost identical, with the first two
pitches smoking past Izumi, followed by the command of the new tool (bat
becomes racket, I suppose), and Izumi drives one 'out of the park'. I
nearly split a gut over this scene, though I doubt it was intentionally
funny. It is clear that they are destined to be rivals, although EX says
they'll play on the same team.

The music is great, with a lot setting the 'Field of Dreams' tone which
makes Ryou the likeable winner she is. I just love the OP. In short, I
recommend that everybody check it out, even if you don't speak Japanese.
It didn't stop me ;^)~

Probably My First Anime 'Review'

This 'review' was originally an email (from about three years ago) to Nat, a NOVA member who spoke Japanese. I was trying to con him into creating synopses for the OVA series I was watching, 'reviewed' below.

Note: I've since seen the series with subtitles, and it is every bit as good as I thought when watching it in raw Japanese! Now without further ado...

Mahou Tsukai Tai!

Those magnificent Japanese bastards! I don't know whether to kill 'em or kiss 'em! I just got through watching 'Mahou Tsukai Tai!', Vol. 4, and I just grow more and more enamored of this OVA series. I think I'll mourn deeply when the sixth and final LD comes out.

I don't speak a word of Japanese, and this is a dialogue-heavy series, but the visuals are so rewarding, the physical comedy so cute, and the voice-acting so rich, that I never lack for something to appreciate. There is a sequence in the middle of this episode which I interpret as a game of 'truth or consequences', which I'd kill to know the actual questions and answers to. And how it ties into the ending is also terrific. I don't think I need to know what was said, and nay-said, at the end.

And I love how the show always blends into the closing theme song. The ED is just too cute. I don't remember what it is, but the Japanese language has a word which expresses 'that sense of longing after a sweet nostalgic moment which is so acute that it causes heartache'. God are they good at that!

Can you tell that I like MTT! ;^)~

Latest Anime Review Posted

I've posted my most recent anime review, "Sailor Ninja", since I actually have it handy on the desktop of my computer. I write these reviews for the newsletter of an anime club I attend, NOVA.

I hope to dig up most if not all of my previous reviews and post them here as well. When I have figured out how to do it, I'll place a top-level link to them all on the home page (if that's possible). Unfortunately, at least from my viewpoint, they will not be posted or sorted in chronological order. I wish they were, because then I might be able to see some growth or improvement over time. Possibly not, though, since this latest review is certainly not my best.

http://terebi.weblogs.com/stories/storyReader$8

Sailor Ninja

In some ways, this month's show is cut from old cloth, very threadbare indeed. We
have a hapless heroine, a magical talisman, intrepid enemies and an oft-repeated
transformation scene. Sailor Ninja, anyone? But all is not as bleak as it at
first seems.

Going into this show, you think you're either gonna love it or hate it. The
American release, for instance, has the cumbersome title, "Jubei-chan, the Ninja
Girl: Secret of the Lovely Eyepatch", enough to subdue any asthmatic otaku. Then
try to recite that whole mess with the first episode name:

Jubei-chan, the Ninja Girl: Secret of the Lovely Eyepatch, episode 1:

The Birth of Yagyu Jubei II

It begins to sound a bit like the old children's song: there's a frog on the bump
on the log in the hole on the bottom of the sea...

About five minutes into the first episode, I was fearing that I'd be in the 'hate
it' camp. But I toughed it out, and I watched the entire four-episode DVD. In
fact, I watched it in a rather unfair manner. My daughter wanted to watch the
first episode with me, so I gave her the choice of dubbed into English, or
subtitled in the original Japanese (where I usually read the subtitles, since at
five years old, she hasn't quite worked out how to read them herself). She chose
dubbed (the traitor). Well, Kelly enjoyed it, but I was squirming, and by the end
of the episode I wasn't sure I'd want to do another.

But Kelly went to bed, and after the bedtime story I went back to the chamber of
horrors and queued up episode two. But this time I did it my way. Japanese with
English subtitles. Suddenly the show was flowing, the telegraphic, hurky-jerky
feel of the first episode had vanished to be replaced by a smooth B-grade
storyline. I was puzzled.

Was the show really such a poor starter? I fumbled with the DVD remote control
until I discovered the button to toggle from Japanese to English and back.

English: the show began to creak, my eyelids started to drop.

Japanese: a flicker of interest returned to my eyes. The voices seemed lively,
natural, if obviously theatric.

English: Theatric voices turned into lampoons. A few of the actors managed to
capture some semblance of the drama and comedy of each moment, but most of the
others seemed either limp and lifeless, or so over the top as to seem in another
show entirely.

Eureka! Having made my discovery, I left the deck in Japanese mode for the second
and third episode, then went to bed to mull the phenomenon in my dreams. The
following morning I watched the last episode with my daughter, dubbed (sob).

I admit it, I am a subtitle bigot, a member of that elite two percent of the
American populace who would rather read text on the bottom of the screen and hear
the original actors, emoting at the behest of the original director, than have my
eyes freed to gaze on the scenery while American actors do their best to entrain
their voices to the prescored lip movements on the screen. But I'm not so
enslaved to this attitude that I cannot enjoy a competent dub job.

Mononoke Hime was not bad. I saw it first in raw Japanese, then with subtitles
from a generous fan group, and finally in the theaters with American brand-name
actors lending their talents. Did I think the latter sucked? No, it was very well
done. Did I prefer the subtitled version? You bet your genlock card!

So my conclusion: the dub job on Jubei-chan is just plain bad. Folks who only
listen to dubs are doing themselves a disservice with this show. Read the
subtitles, it's much better with this show.

There. Now that I have that off my chest, let's look at the show proper. For
purposes of space, I'll refer to the show simply as Jubei-chan. The show was
created by Daichi Akitaro, who is also one of the main writers. He is responsible
for much of the unique humor in shows such as Akazukin Chacha (Red Riding Hood
Cha-cha) and Kodomo no Omocha. Since I know a number of you are fans of Child's
Toy, I'll let that speak for itself.

Character designer Yoshimatsu Takahiro (Slayers) based his designs on originals
by Mucchiri Muunii, but I haven't seen the originals, so I'd be hard pressed to
say how faithful they are. In some instances the character designs are amusing,
such as the teaching team from the third episode, but most characters seem rather
flat and indistinguishable.

The background supplied in the first episode runs thusly. Jubei Yagyu was the
leader of a school of swordsmen three centuries ago. A rival school sent an
endless stream of swordsmen to defeat him, but he always prevailed. When he
finally dies, he makes his faithful retainer Koinosuke pledge to search the world
over for his successor. In order to bestow his martial skills upon his successor,
he gives Koinosuke a 'lovely eyepatch' in the shape of a pink heart. And there's
your transformation gimick.

Flashing forward to the present day, Koinosuke succeeds in his search, finding...
Jiyu Nanohana, a schoolgirl nicknamed Jubei by her dad. After Koinosuke gives her
the eyepatch and she predictably transforms into a stylin' ninja gal, the 300
year-old opposing dojo begins launching assassins at her. I don't want to give
away a bunch of plot details, even though this is a fairly predictable show.
Suffice it to say that there are plenty of assassins in a colorful rogue's
gallery, and not one but two pretty boys to tickle Jiyu's fancy.

So where does the show rate? If Maho Tsukai Tai is a 10, and Legend of the
Goose-Stepping Heroes is a 1, I'd have to rate this a solid 6. It's worth watching
at a NOVA meeting when all the solid crowd-pleasers are done, and the synergy of
a crowd of people will bring out the silly humor much better than sitting alone
in a tv room. But it really doesn't rate the thirty bucks a DVD for four episodes,
or worse, the twenty bucks a tape for four dubbed episodes (shudder).

And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to dig through the closet and find a pile
of tapes in raw Japanese, to cleanse my soul.

Sick as a Dog

Today is sick day! Yesterday, the inauguration for this site, I was actually at work, nursing a build late (yes, I'm a programmer) and otherwise 'not really at work', so I was browsing weblogs, which led to the creation of this one.

I had a cold, had had it in fact for the preceeding three days. When I get a cold, the first thing to go is the sinuses, meaning sleepless nights, 'cause I can't breathe. So after I came home from work last night, I anticipated being up late. But not all night! Yuck.

This morning was headache time, clotty nose time, generally just so whacked out that I didn't feel it would be safe to drive, so I took the morning off. Here I am, sitting at a computer on my sick day! Don't worry, it's an iBook and I'm two feet from a bed.