Haibane.info

Just saw this at AICN:

IF Magazine has learned that producer Erwin Stoff is developing an adaptation of one of America’s favorite anime series…. Cowboy Bebop.

“I’m developing COWBOY BEBOP for Fox, but doing it as a live-action film, so I’m working on that at the moment,” Stoff tells iF. “I’m really excited to be working on it, and it’s in the really early stages. We just signed it the other day.”

“I have such an enormous admiration for its creators, that our first and foremost concern is going to be a real degree of faithfulness to the tone of the movie, to the mix of genres, and so on and so forth,” he says. “When I met with them in Japan, one of the first things that I brought up was the experience that we had on A SCANNER DARKLY, and how hard we worked to remain faithful to Philip K. Dick, and that was our big concern here.”

America’s favorite anime series? I thought that was DragonBall Z… which also is getting the live action treatment, as I noted before. Of course there’s also that live-action Robotech coming up, too.

I’ll get really excited when they start casting for live-action Haibane Renmei. Others may be waiting for live-action Najica Blitz Tactics. To each his own…

Just curious, though. Suppose they were to do a live-action Haibane. Who’d you want to see playing Reki and Rakka?

via Don. It looks like a cross between Totoro and Spirited Away.

This is a great mashup of the song “In the End” from Linkin Park. Really puts a tragic spin on Jack’s quest:

In many ways it is a kind of pessimistic story - after all, Jack routinely fails to return to the past, despite epic heroism. He really does try hard, but in the end it doesn’t seem to matter, at least not to the billions enslaved by Aku throughout time. However Jack is making a difference to the people in the future who he liberates from Aku’s reign, so perhaps that is the true measure of his destiny.

just awesome.

I am about a third of the way through Ranma’s sixth season now and I think I’ve identified what keeps me interested in the series even though others find it repetitive. That is, that the fundamentals of the character relationships are why we watch, so changing them would by definition ruin it. Steven pointed out a while back that Ranma is enmeshed in a web of obligations, from which there is no escape, so ultimately Ranma simply avoids resolution and proceeds on his own path, which is to continue to master and innovate in martial arts. The entirety of the character evolution is not what the characters do, or changes in their lives, but in how they feel, and on that basis you can differentiate the characters:

Primary characters: Ranma, Akane. The emotions towards each other do grow each season, though there is ultimately a plateau. There will never be public reciprocation of emotion from Ranma towards Akane as long as Ranma remains bound by his web of obligation, and Akane will never act on her (often transparent) feelings for Ranma due to her own sense of insecurity. Ultimately, they are both forced to wait. However we do see that they have evolved over time. I think by season 6 both are as far as they can go, which is fine because there’s still plenty for both to deal with.

Major characters: Ryoga, Nabiki, Kasumi. All have had episodes where they are the focus, and they have to act out of type and be challenged in a way that they didn’t expect. They do return to their usual behavior afterwards, but those episdoes do demonstrate that they have depth when required.

Minor characters: Genma, Tendo, Mousse, Happosai. All are one-note strings thus far, but it only takes one focus episode to graduate them to the Major status. Happosai did actually get a bit of treatment in season 5, but he is needed to play the eternal joker, so I don’t think he will ever escape. We have also had tantalizing hints of more from Moose, but thus far he hasn’t had his own breakout.

What keeps the series going is that they have a large ensemble cast to gradually graduate from minor to major, and balance that out with incremental evolution of the primary characters. The continuity between seasons (slow rate of change) is probably why the series retained its longevity without ever jumping the shark - there’s a formula, and the show sticks to it, with the innovation not from the basic structure, but rather the details. One example of how the series keeps things new is in the varied forms of martial arts tha Ranma encounters: french cooking, calligraphy, chess, race kart driving, etc. Some of these warrant more episodes than others to explore (in particular the Pate Fois Gras arc, which was brilliantly demented).

It’s interesting to see that the manga industry is worried about what happens when its audience in the US grows up. I think Ranma avoids this conundrum by simply staying the same, so that every new generation gets attracted to it for the same reasons. Whether or not you outgrow Ranma is immaterial; if you like it, you will probably keep on liking it.

Is it just wrong that the first thing I thought of when I saw this was Read or Die?

Since Gandhi was a lawyer, you might argue that Gandhi did literally have to read, or die, for freedom.

Pete rags a bit on 12 Kingdoms (not entirely undeservedly). He notes that the system of rule (divine powers enforcing a strict and literal connection to the rulers of each kingdom) is a giant straight-jacket, but that’s entirely the point and in fact the only logical outcome of taking the Chinese theology literally. When you blur the lines between heaven and earth, then heaven’s decrees become part of daily life - and by their very nature, divine will means law. None of that pussyfooting around with interpretations, ijtihad, or whatnot.

In a nutshell, 12 Kingdoms is an attempt to create a “perfect” system of governance, wherein the rulers of a kingdom are held directly accountable not to the masses, but to the higher powers from which they derive their authority. He that giveth also taketh away.

As far as being too-epic-y, I think that 12 Kingdoms is less guilty of trying too hard than Escaflowne (which after my initial disenchantment with, I am now 3 discs in and thoroughly enjoying). The epic layers of 12K get added slowly, as Youko’s horizons slowly expand with her travels. In Escaflowne, Hitomi is dropped right into the thick of things and the first disc is like a firehose of information about Gaea. Hitomi hooks up with the movers and shakers of the new world right away and is at the literal center of action, whereas Youko ascends gradually, from pawn to player. In a lot of ways I am more free to enjoy Escaflowne because having seen the atrocious movie, I know much of the backstory already, and so am not floundering trying to get my bearings (a problem that never went away with Serial Experiments Lain. Now there’s a series that might benefit from a movie treatment…).

If anyone out there has the following series that they are no longer watching or using, I am interested in buying your copy:

- Kino’s Journeys
- Bottle Fairy
- Someday’s Dreamers (esp volume 2)
- any Miyazaki
- anything else you think might be suitable for young girls.

Kino is for me, everything else is for Mini Otaku and Baby Otaku. Please let me know!

Voices of a Distant Star is a surprising piece of work. For one, it’s short, only running about 30 minutes. For another, it was created entirely on director Makoto Shinkai’s home computer. The style is classic Shinkai, with a loving addiction to sunset lighting - there are a few screenshots here which will be instantly familiar to anyone who has seen any other of Shinkai’s works (especially A Place Promised). The lush visual style is as distinctive in its own way as Miyazaki’s, and he shares the same obsession with young women heroines and flying machines. Given his obsession with lighting, he seems to rely heavily on subdued pastels rather than vibrant primary colors, which also lends his work an ethereal quality.

However, what i am seeing in Shinkai’s work is a pattern of obsession with ordinary technology, like trains and cell phones. The contrast is all the more striking given that his stories involve fantastic technologies alongside them, like space mecha, battle cruisers, and gigantic towers that double as dimensional portals. He seems to always insist on keeping the fantastical grounded in the ordinary; the main character in Voices, Mikako, is an elite Agent who is selected to pilot a giant mecha on a mission to combat hostile aliens, yet wears her schoolgirl outfit in the cockpit and sends text messages across the interstellar gulf to her boyfriend, using her battered Nokia mobile phone. It’s the peculiar realities and real-world physics limitations of the latter technology that drive the story, in fact, making it a very poignant and heartfelt little piece of work. I think the fact that it’s short really adds to its emotional heft.

Temptingly, Amazon has a Shinkai Collection DVD set, which includes both Place Promised and Voices, as well as a pile of extra short pieces. I think this is a no-brainer for me to pick up, assuming it ever gets back in stock.

I’ve burned through this in the past week.

I’m almost done with it. After I finish the series I’ll write some thoughts on it, and let me admit up front that I’ve never seen the Kurosawa original. If anyone has seen it, do chime in, spoilers are ok.