otaku-neko-hime

I was highly amused listening to For Japanese Women, The Past Is The Latest Fad on NPR. It's about female fans of Japanese history, mostly as presented through media such as TV shows, games, and anime, and how they seem to make up a subset of the otaku. I was most amused by the highlighting of the shinsengumi as particularly popular because they were young and lived in a dynamic time...and are often played by popular young actors. How true! The only problem I had with this was the reporter’s particularly bad pronunciation of Japanese words. I try not to let pronunciation issues get to me, but this was painful.

anime watching day!

I finally saw Toki wo kakeru shojo, a movie from 2006 that was very well received. I liked that it was about an ordinary tomboy student and how she deals with the ability to time travel. Since she's not that bright and not malicious, she uses her power for silly reasons. It was exasperating but fun to watch her at first find it great, but then realizing the problems with going back and changing things (or just knowing things). I love how the story doesn't even touch any time travel paradox issues, and just sticks with how her leaps affect her and the people around her. I was a bit put out by the end. It was too...open ended for me. :P

I then realized that the director of the movie also directed Summer Wars, a fun movie I saw last year on an airplane to Japan. It's playing at the film festival here next week and I recommended it to my friends, and it seems like a bunch of us will end up watching it. I can see the similarities between the two. The strongest points of both movies were well-developed characters and their interactions. The plots were in some ways lacking, but not so much so that they got to me. I didn't realize Summer Wars was so well received until I started reading about it online!! I just thought it was a random well-done anime I'd happened to catch. :P Hopefully my friends will like it.

I also saw the first episode of Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru, the anime based on the manga by Odagiri Hotaru. Wow, it was worse than I'd expected. So, sooo cheesy. In my opinion it seems very hard to transfer shojo (or BL) angst from the manga to anime well. It just ends up being too overdone (with bad music and/or random flower petals flying around) for my taste. The voice actors also threw me off. Both Yuki and Zero had higher voices than I'd expected. I think I'll stick with the manga on this one.

I also tried to watch the first Hyakujitsu no bara (Maiden Rose) OVA and just couldn't handle. So bad. SO BAD. In all the typical ways BL manga turned into anime tends to be. *sighs* Even the battle scenes just weren't up to par. I think what really disappointed me was the scene where Klaus really hurts Taki during sex. I think things should've been more violent. The voices on this one were good, tho. Inoue Kazuhiko and Chiba Susumu kick ass, even with not very good animation. :P