Orchestra of Bloggeral Madness

Litany of Sorrows

New Anime
So it wouldn't be fair to use the Hyper-Dramatic Anime/Videogame title scheme and have nothing about anime or videogames in this post, would it?

Hence I'll note, for my own uses, some of the spring anime premieres that Anime News Network is covering and which sound interesting.

First up is Soul Eater, the new project from Studio Bones, who did the fantastic Full Metal Alchemist and the dizzily beautiful Eureka 7. It's a dark comedic work that sounds like a cross between an action show and I Luv Halloween.

Then there's Kurenai, a low key drama with noir elements about a mysterious enforcer given the task of caring for, hiding, and ultimately protecting a privileged little girl from her powerful family.

Another one I want to see more of is Zettai Karen Children, which is apparently a Powerpuff Girls parody, intentionally or otherwise. It sounds delightfully deranged.

Also this year sees another Macross series, Macross Frontier, done by Satelite, who made the quite respectable Noein that I finished watching a couple weeks ago. They can certainly do action-drama, so I hold out hope that this won't suck.

I'm also interested in Code Geass, which is hitting its second season in Japan and I think comes out in the US soon. Apparently it's a hilarious combination of series drama, giant robots and hysterically over the top melodrama.

Finally there's Wagaya no Oinari-sama, a supernatural horror kind of show about a medieval Japanese fox deity who becomes the guardian of a dying shrine in the modern era. That definitely sounds like it has promise.

A couple of these shows, Zettai Karen Children and Kurenai, have gotten very good reviews on ANN, except for one out of the four reviewers, by the name of Casey Brienza. Quite frankly half the reason I want to watch ZKC is because this one person found it so offensive.

This Muscle Okama is presented as a gay man. He swishes, he talks in feminine language, he hits on Kouichi, he humps nude male statues. He also shoots bizarre psychic beams from his groin. At first I was amused by the ridiculousness, but it wore off quickly, and I can't remember the last time I've seen an anime series portray a minority group so offensively. No anime these days would represent even black people in so blatantly stereotypical a fashion.

Arguably worse, however, is Kaoru's apparent lesbianism and her characterization as a perverted old man. You know, I get that oogling boobs and butts can be an important part of the pleasure of these sorts of things. But showing a little girl doing it—as if that makes objectifying behavior somehow morally excusable? That's inexcusable in a way that no amount of cheerfully bobbing breasts alone will ever be.

Objectifying behavior? It's an ANIME CHARACTER. Not to mention a satirical one. How can you objectify AN OBJECT?

THe mind boggles. The Muscle Okama thing is harder to dismiss out of hand, but from the sound of it he might be a joke about bodybuilders and all the repressed homoeroticism in their industry rather than gay people in general. Talk to an actual bodybuilder about the subject sometime, it can be quite entertaining.

They also seem to be alone in disliking Kurenai. I'm beginning to wonder if they're my anti-reviewer of choice, that what they love is what I hate and vice versa.

Unfortunately, they like Macross Frontier a lot. That bodes ill for either my theory or the show.

Update: In a new addition to their review page they bash Saiyuki, a very meandering but still hilarious show.

It's official: they are the anti-me.

Source: Anime News Network (spring anime guide)

Tracking
Here's an ominous anime development for you. A tracking system for conventions was deployed to data-mine the attendees.

Anime Punch, which ran in Columbus, Ohio this past weekend, has become the first anime convention in North America to use radio-frequency identification (RFID) to capture data about attendance at events held throughout its three days. An index card with an RFID transponder was attached to the backs of badges for each of the convention's 1,337 paying attendees, as well as staffers and guests. Information about the location of each transponder, as well as the total number of transponders in certain rooms at any given time, was captured and stored on a central server. Attendees entering the convention's dealers' room had their badges scanned with a reader each time they walked into the room.

Apparently this has been done before at medical conferences and so forth.

In all seriousness it's really not ominous, but it is a bit annoying to be tracked wherever you go. Especially since it's mandatory. If I was going to a convention I knew would be doing this, I'd bring tinfoil to wrap around my card when I didn't need it. Thus I'd be 'off the grid' and all super-spooky.

Or something. I like screwing with data collection, what can I say. I filled out those 'what drugs do you take' surveys in high school with absurdly high and random amounts of drugs, at least the last one. I think I said I took a bunch of stimulants I'd never heard of 20-30 times a month.

I'm fairly sure you'd die if you did half the drugs I claimed to do.

Source: Anime News Network

Older Anime
Some older series I'm interested in to go with the new ones.

First, D.Gray Man, which is apparently about a guy with a cursed left eye that can fight demons and so forth. It's also a historical fantasy series.

I could use a dark historical fantasy series, but I'm interested in this as much for it being yet another show with a character whose left eye is cursed/magical/magically cursed/missing. I wonder if Japan has a thing, some cultural mythos, about left eyes.

*shrug*

Then there's Innocent Venus, a short series about life after the Apocalypse, with a mysterious conspiracy, blah blah. It could be fun.

Finally there's Kyo kara Maoh!, a show which has been compared to Saiyuki in that it has Shoujo art and Shonen sensibilities.

I liked that with Saiyuki, so I'm willing to give it another chance. Plus there are definitely points for a series whose gateway to another world is via the toilet. At least, the first time. (It seems that they use bodies of standing water or something to travel, which is both more classically mystical and boring).


Sources: Anime News Network
D.Gray Man
Innocent Venus
Kyo kara Maoh!

Spielbergian
So Spielberg's company Dreamworks is going to make a live action version of Ghost in the Shell, the classic anime cyber-surrealist-noir movie.

Variety reports that Universal and Sony also negotiated for the rights, which the Production I.G anime studio was pitching for the manga's original publisher Kodansha. What turned the dealmaking in DreamWorks' favor was co-founder Steven Spielberg's enthusiasm for the project. The entertainment trade newspaper quotes the acclaimed director and producer: "Ghost in the Shell is one of my favorite stories. It's a genre that has arrived, and we enthusiastically welcome it to DreamWorks."

It doesn't say whether he will be involved, though Avi Arad who used to work with Marvel and did work on both the great Spiderman and execrable X-Men movie franchises will produce.

This could go... oh face it, it's probably going to suck ass.

Source: Anime News Network

Onion Tastic
A couple of those great Onion graphics that all right-thinking people love.

First a comic on the Elliot Spitzer scandal and the 'Real Disgrace' involved.

Then a short but pity summary of the death of Charlton Heston.

Very Odd
Some brief odd news items from around the world.

First, in Russia they're cracking down on Madam Cleo types.

Russian deputies are to consider a law that would turn up the heat on advertising by witches and healers enjoying a meteoric growth in demand, the Gazeta daily reported on Friday.

The law, which is to have its first reading in parliament's lower chamber shortly, would allow only officially registered healers to advertise in newspapers, Gazeta reported.

The paper quoted one of the bill's authors, parliamentarian Vladimir Medinsky, as casting scorn on the colourful small advertisements that brim from the pages of Russia's popular press.

The bill's introduction argues that "citizens who believe in the adverts of magicians and witches often become the victims of commonplace fraud," the paper said.

So they'll only allow officially registered frauds to trick people into thinking magic crystals and curses work?

That's an improvement? I guess it might bring in tax revenue.

Source: Raw Story

Next up is some jerk who apparently likes to kill squirrels.

An animal protection group is investigating claims made by British band The Falls Mark E. Smith that he killed two endangered red squirrels and condones the deliberate running over of seagulls, it said Thursday.

The revered but unpredictable frontman of Manchester band The Fall said that he would not hesitate setting about a squirrel with a pair of hedge-clippers.

"Squirrels mean nothing to me. I killed a couple last weekend actually. They were eating my garden fence," Smith told Uncut magazine, although it was unclear whether he had confused the animal with their more prevalent American grey cousins.

The singer, whose group has gone through 50 different members and produced 27 albums in their career, also said he "wouldn't have a problem" with people purposefully driving over seagulls in their cars

He may have just killed American grey squirrels, which are something of a pest in the UK, but still not deserving of hedge clipper death.

The worst part for me is that this idiot, if he's telling the truth, killed squrrels for nothing. They don't eat 'fences', whether he means gnawing on wood or eating a hedge. I've never seen a squirrel eat anything but seeds and such. They're hardly a big nuisance.

Also, how would he catch one to kill it? They're wily.

Source: Raw Story

Hobbit
Finally, someone thought up the perfect descriptive term for Joe Lieberman.

Joe Lieberman, whom Chris Durang once called a "sanctimonious Hobbitt," had his ass kicked out of the Democratic party. He's a petty, bitter, nasty little man and he's backing John McCain because that represents his own personal political upside.

How apt! How true!

Thank you, Chris Durang. I shall use your epithet with gusto.

Source: Firedoglake

Ha-HAH
This is so great.

At 39 months in the doghouse, George W. Bush has surpassed Harry Truman's record as the postwar president to linger longest without majority public approval.

Bush hasn't received majority approval for his work in office in ABC News/Washington Post polls since Jan. 16, 2005 three years and three months ago. The previous record was Truman's during his last 38 months in office.

Most disliked president since they started keeping polls.

There's your legacy, W. Suck on it.

Source: Firedoglake

So Funny Can't Breathe
Alberto 'Fredo' Gonzales can't find work after his disastrous and hilarious tenure as Attorney General.

Man, it's sweet to see a jerk fall so far, so fast, so HARD.

WASHINGTON — Alberto R. Gonzales, like many others recently unemployed, has discovered how difficult it can be to find a new job. Mr. Gonzales, the former attorney general, who was forced to resign last year, has been unable to interest law firms in adding his name to their roster, Washington lawyers and his associates said in recent interviews.

...

The greatest impediment to Mr. Gonzales’s being offered the kind of high-salary job being snagged these days by lesser Justice Department officials, many lawyers agree, is his performance during his last few months in office. In that period, he was openly criticized by lawmakers for being untruthful in his sworn testimony. His conduct is being investigated by the Office of the Inspector General of the Justice Department, which could recommend actions from exonerating him to recommending criminal charges. Friends set up a fund to help pay his legal bills.

Shocking. Law firms don't want to hire a man facing serious criminal investigation, who also possesses a terrible track record at work.

Hahahahahhaha.....

Source: The New York Times

Nude
So a photographer auctioned off a nude portrait he did of France's first lady back when she was a fashion model for charity. The shot was originally done for Italian Vogue and thus Carla Bruni was hardly unaware that it might be used for commercial purposes one day.

Still, the charity in Cambodia turned down the large sum of cash on 'moral' grounds.

Beat Richner, a Swiss paediatrician who runs a children's medical care group, said he had turned down an offer of $91,000 (£46,000) - the sum paid in a Christie's auction last week for the 1993 picture of the Italian ex-model, now married to the French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

"My decision was taken out of respect for our patients and their mothers", he told Le Matin Dimanche. "Accepting money obtained from exploitation of the female body would be perceived as an insult".

In Cambodia "use of nudity is not understood in the way it is in the West", he added.

He would not allow the Kantha Bopha Children's Hospital Association "to be involved in the media exploitation of Madame Bruni".

"The idea behind this gift was to get publicity for the auction and the photographer", Mr Richner was also quoted as saying. "It was a way of using us".

Michel Comte, the Swiss photographer who took picture of the then Miss Bruniposing naked with her crossed hands acting as a fig leaf, was quoted in the Swiss press last month as saying he had thousands more images of her, some more risqué - taken over a ten-year period.

Of course he was doing it for publicity. That's often the case with charity work.

The fact of the matter us, this guy still turned down a ton of money for poor kids because he didn't like a nude photo.

I sincerely doubt the Cambodians closely follow French fashion, so the line about THE LOCALS is a bit much.

Once again, conservatism does not pay. But don't worry, the children will!

Source: The Telegraph

Tax Day Sale
Comedy Central is having a sale on Colbert and Daily Show merch. Considering that their clothing is normally obscenely pricey, this only brings it down to Sanity range, but still.

Source: Comedy Central