FanCruft

Air, Intent, and Even Time. Gode Geass R2 and Kara No Kyoukai

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

I've been watching Code Geass R2 and Kara No Kyoukai: The Garden of Sinners lately. I love both of these shows, and they're both easily 5/5.

Silence brought Kara No Kyoukai to my attention because of it's relation to Tsukihime; they take place in the same fictional universe and examine similar powers (Omegapaladin and I have been discussing the possibility of creating an Exalted charm tree for Mystic Eyes of Death Perception; we believe this is only slightly more doable than a Geass charm, or a Death Note-like artifact). This set of movies is fascinating, dark, introspective, and violent.

Code Geass R2 is still rolling out. It feels like the screenwriters and everyone else involved in the creation of this series must personally hate Lelouch, because bad things keep happening to him. The Guren (Karen's mech) gets an upgrade and reappears as a Deus Ex Machina just when Lelouch needs it to live, but events that occurs soon after make him wish he were dead, literally. Mild spoiler: At the end of episode 19, Lelouch's goal changes to "take my father to hell with me."

The second opening to this series feels like it belongs to a Gundam show; it's entirely way too cheerful.

Much Larger Spoilers (ROT-13'd): Ahaaryl qvrf, ohg guvf znl abg fgbc ure sebz orvat n punenpgre va shgher rcvfbqrf: Erpnyy gung gur Rzcrebe frrzrq gb or noyr gb pbzzhavpngr jvgu Pybivf nsgre ur qvrq.

Pacemaker

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Imagine people that do something, anything, that's cool. Maybe they're working on a project to create hyperintelligent computers that will benefit all of humanity, writing world-class music, or on a mission to end a war. Now imagine an anime series that focuses on these people in their dullest and most uninteresting moments; chatting someone up at bar, doing their tax returns, sitting in on a meeting about the company's internal slogan for next year. Peacemaker, in its first volume, at least, grafts zany antics and political intrique onto such doldrums, and this is only the start of this show's troubles.

There are few characters in anime that I utterly hate and loath as characters. You might think Gendo in NGE is a terrible bastard, but that's just his role. Tetsunosuke, the leading protagonist in Peacemaker, is just an idiot*; comic relief miscast as the main character. Imagine an ultra-aggressive Homer Simpson in the body of Shinji Ikari, and you're almost there; just double the arrogance and switch over from plain stupidity to anti-intelligence, always doing the one thing that's sure to muck things up. Yet, somehow, people let him get away with his antics, more or less. Not just ANY people, but the Shinsengumi, which the anime goes to great length to depict as awesome. The premise that these awesome samurai would put up with Tetsunosuke for even a minute is less plausible than the idea that a modern Japanese high school student would gain the powers of mother earth and fight pollution incarnate. Yes, I know the character is supposed to be arrogant. I know all of this is done on purpose. That still doesn't make it work; it doesn't.

Finally, Peacekeeper is full of cliches; it has a very high CPM ratio (Cliches Per Minute). Tetsunosuke is driven by a desire for revenge because his father was killed. Before dieing, his father left him with a final message that has because an obsession. As a result, he "wants to be stronger." This is in stark contrast to his wimpy/polite brother, who does bookkeeping for the Shinsengumi. Tetsunosuke is repeatedly traumatized by particularly violent scenes, but remains steadfast in his goal. And of course, no cliche-fest would be complete without METAPHORICAL RAIN. Peacekeeper feels like it was hacked together from the droppings of greater anime.

In short, from the first four episodes, it seems like Peacekeeper sucks. Just as stubborn as the main character, I will continue to watch it in the hope that one of its promising side threads will come to rescue its unbalanced plot.

*Not a reflection on the real Tetsunosuke, I'm sure.

FanCruft Gets A Facelift

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Full details on on my personal site:

When I first made Fancruft, I wanted to make it look good even in Internet Explorer 5 running on a fairly low-resolution screen (640x480). Many "Web 2.0" concepts were new; RFC4627 was published just earlier that year. People were still advocating Smarty for PHP templating. I had been a Wikipedia administrator for maybe around a year and a half, and had not yet read The Wisdom of Crowds.

Tyler Cowen on Japan

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The author of Discover Your Inner Economist talks about drinks in Japan:

As I like to say, if you're not thinking about Japan every day, you've yet to wake up. - Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution

Well, anime fans should have at least a bit of an advantage here...

Solar Exalted Trope

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

I'll take a potato chip... AND EAT IT! – Light Yagami, Death Note

Many of my favorites are listed on that page...

Changes at FanCruft

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

FanCruft is getting more awesome:

Search links have been added to YouTube and crunchyroll for all anime. The YouTube links work very well, with a few exceptions. The cruncyroll links will be more useful in the future.
Amazon UMD links have been removed. UMD is a dead format for anime distribution, and only a handful of anime on FanCruft had these links.
Spiffy new logo, no longer based on an image of a slice of bread masked by MS Comic Sans. The new logo loads faster to boot.
Links to Animenation and Rentanime have been killed.

The Creepiest Person I Met At Anime Central

Tue, 20 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

I was at ACEN over the weekend in Rosemont, IL. I had a blast, but I'm not going to mention the panels I went to (one for the Redub of Suzumiya Haruhi, another where some Stranglehold people played around with Chow Yun-Fat's faces on a computer), the anime I watched (Death Note rocks! I am justice!), the music I heard (the Spoony Bards played "Unyielding" from Halo!), or the cosplay I saw (Bioshock people, you rock!).

Instead, I'm going to tell you a story of the creepiest person that I met while in Rosemont, who was not actually a con-goer.

Because of my procrastination, I wasn't able to get into one of the overflow hotels, and I stayed at the Wyndham O'hare (it's okay, but I wouldn't recommend it). So, I got a cab to the convention center Sunday morning. (I stayed at the Residence Inn in '07, and loved it, although it's a good distance away as well).

Now, the previous year I tried to get a cab by calling Rosemont Taxi, and they were a no-show, which is also a complaint I've seen on reviews for them online (why go to the trouble of having taxis and a phone number if you're not going to drive people to places') So, I decided to take my chances on Horizon, which is the other big taxi company that you see all around Rosemont.

So, I called, and one of their vans showed up at the hotel fairly quickly.

As we pulled in the convention center itself, the cabbie said "Lots of hot girls around."

Well, that's true enough. No problem there...

"You get lucky with any of them yet'"

CREEPY!

Watching Welcome to the NHK

Sat, 03 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Many anime start with light, easy to digest humor and move on to deeper issues. Trigun is an example of this. Welcome to the NHK seems to be doing almost the exact opposite, as of the 6th episode. The first three or four episodes are creepy, disturbing, and downright insane.

The main character, Sato Tatsuhiro, spends his days in an apartment. He has a hallucination where his appliances reveal to him that there is a global conspiracy to create Hikikomori (shut-ins) like himself. Things become very strange as Sato attempts to convince a young girl, who seems to be stalking him, that he's actually normal.

Overall, I'm looking forward to seeing more of NHK. The way the (very insane) characters interact with each other is unbelievable. I couldn't stop myself from laughing at the dream Sato offers for psychoanalysis.