To augment poor cell phone coverage when we're gallivanting around the hinterlands, I've been talked into Amateur (Ham) radio. After blasting through the Technician-level test a couple weeks back, it took the FCC almost two weeks to get me in the ULS. (No, I'm not going to put up my callsign. I'd like to keep a fig-leaf of Internet annonymity. You can get a lot more than a name from a callsign.)
Until I figure out exactly how much vandalism I'm willing to do to the interior and exterior of my truck, I'm sticking to a (not-so) simple 5W handheld radio. (A base station is simply out of the question. I don't want to invest in that much equipment. I'm really not in need of another neglected hobby, and the HOA would have my nuts if I tried to put up a decent antenna.)
So far, I've been using the wide-band receive to listen in on a couple of nearby repeaters and some aircraft frequencies. I now know that the airport tower near me shuts down at 9pm and re-opens at 6. Beyond that I haven't so much as "kerchunked" the radio.
I blew through the Tech test so fast that they asked me if I wanted to try the General (pretty easy when you've just been running through online tests over and over). I wasn't prepared for that level, and I'm not sure I'd ever want to take things that far. 6m, 2m, 1.25m, and 70cm are more than enough for my needs. It's not like I'm really looking to get into DX.
Posted by: Will at August 05, 2008 02:15 PM (WnBa/)
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These days people who are inclined to get into DX create web sites.
Posted by: Will at August 05, 2008 11:20 PM (oj5wx)
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Well, time once was where DX was the only way you'd converse with people from foreign countries. You'd make a contact, chat for a few minutes, send a little postcard and get one yourself, and maybe years later you'd talk to that person again, and remember the last time you talked and what it was about.
But these days, it's just a lot less special. I mean, yeah, I could talk with a guy in Germany, if I set up a lot of equipment, got my antenna aimed right, and had good band conditions.
Or I could just switch windows to my IRC client, where I have a -choice- of Germans to pester when I need help deciphering Japanese people speaking bad German. ;p
The hobby just doesn't have the luster it once had. Cheap, easy, ubiquitous communication has made most of its aspects redundant, like being a classic car aficionado without the sexy aspect. About the only thing that it does uniquely well is handle disasters - no infrastructure required, after all.
It doesn't help that band conditions are crap lately. Go go Maunder minimum...
That said, it's not a bad hobby. You can learn a lot about physics and circuit design. And nobody is more polite and helpful than a group of hams.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at August 06, 2008 01:08 AM (pfysU)
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DX has become far more technical than social (at least from all the recent literature I've been looking into). Now it's more about seeing if you can tag Siberia on 1W than just finding anyone at all to talk to in Siberia.
Posted by: Will at August 06, 2008 08:56 AM (WnBa/)
If there's one word to describe the pace of the sequel compared to the original, it's "slow."
Respawn delays and much longer engineer build/upgrade times really ruined this game for me. While I'm sure respawn delays are a server option, the fact that every server I tried had them drove me nuts. Eliminating grenades was moronic, particularly the engineer's EMP grenade. In the handful of games I managed to play before getting bored, there were a half-dozen shit-head Demos that kept mining the spawn doors in 2fort. EMPs were great for stamping out that sort of nonsense.
Soldier rockets didn't seem to travel to target as fast. Shooting enemy spies doesn't cause a helpful blood splatter. The Pyro's rocket launcher is gone (awesome for supressing snipers).
Who needs Ambien?
I've been dealing with bouts of insoma lately. I'm really not big on medicating this sort of problem, and none of the million sure-fire home remedies has worked.
But believe me when I say, the Silmarillion will knock you on your ass in ten minutes. At my current pace, I'll probably finish the book some time in 2046.
Gurren Lagann 1
So far so good. The video transfer looks sharp. Audio is clean. The "extras" are a little sparse, but I expect they're saving those for the eventual dub release.
Pro subbers still seem to insist on translating XX-dan "Team XX" instead of "XX Brigade." Team lacks a certain militaristic punch if you ask me. It's also odd that they chose to use the "kick reason to the curb" motto on the DVD packaging, but then they didn't translate it that way in the subtitles. I'm gonna have to guess that decision came down to limited screen real estate.
Otherwise things seem to have translated cleanly.
[Update:] Ok, so I've watched all nine at this point. Episode 6 seemed to have a helluva lot cut out for broadcast. Still not a nipple one, but I don't remember any accidental kanchos or breast-squeezing remote controls. I'm not feeling inclined to go back and make a scene for scene comparison just to confirm.
1
My Japanese teachers really didn't like the sound of "brigade" for -dan, because it sounded too military. Most of the cases where I see it translated as brigade are where it's an abbreviation of ryodan. I wouldn't call an orchestra, a choir, or a baseball team brigades, but they're -dan.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at July 09, 2008 03:01 PM (9Nz6c)
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You wouldn't call a choir or an orchestra "team", either. Is there any distinction made between -gumi and -dan, to keep both from being synonymously translated as "group"?
It isn't unit - I'm pretty sure that's "-tai".
But the Gurren-dan *are* a military organization. Well, of sorts.
Posted by: Mitch H. at July 10, 2008 07:58 AM (jwKxK)
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Okay, after digging through a pile of books, I'm going to stake the claim that the difference in nuance between -dan, -gumi, and -tai can be summed up as "associated", "supporting", and "regimented".
"Building word power in Japanese using kanji prefixes and suffixes" doesn't list -gumi, but gives -dan as "organized group who participates in a common activity" and -tai as "group organized to accomplish some purpose", with some overlap in actual use.
Unfortunately, even the big Kenkyusha dictionary gives overlapping translations of the three. -dan: body, group, corps, gang, party, batch, bunch, company, troupe; -gumi: group, gang, company; -tai: body, company, corps, unit, squad, crew, band, posse, force.
The most interesting hint it offers is in the expression 隊を組んã§è¡Œã = "to march in formation". So, tai for the disciplined structure of the group, and kumi/gumi for the common purpose. Clear as mud.
I'm tempted to look through some of my older anime to see how the three were commonly translated before the fansubbers decided that Haruhi's -dan needed to be called a brigade, a choice that never worked for me. It's a fun word, but growing up near a military base, "brigade" was always exclusively a military term to me.
"Team X" does sound a bit weak, although that may just be the pathetic nature of Hank and Dean shouting "Go Team Venture!". "X Company" adds a bit of military flavor without pushing it, but I suspect the younger generation might not think so. And, of course, there's always "F Troop".
I think Haruhi's club should have been a "gang". It sounds like the G-L folks might be a "company".
-j
Posted by: J Greely at July 10, 2008 11:15 PM (2XtN5)
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I liked the old fansub translation of Hanaukyo Maid-tai as "Hanaukyo Maid Battalion". It got across their massed, militarized affect.
The Gurren-dan as of episode 9 still strikes me as more of a gang than either a team (which suggests cooperation and coordination, which isn't really their strong suit so far) or a brigade (which suggests chain of command and discipline, also not really part of Kamina's world-view). And "company" in English has that dual economic/military set of definitions which is also off the mark - you can make a less economically-minded show than Gurren Lagann, but it'd take some work.
Likewise, the SOS-dan were, at least in design, supposed to be an official school club. Troupe would probably have been the right word - gets across the "merry band of eccentrics" concept properly, and follows through on Haruhi's record as a serial perpetrator of performance art.
Posted by: Mitch H. at July 11, 2008 05:29 AM (jwKxK)
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...now I want to redo the Haruhi credits to the theme from F Troop.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at July 11, 2008 09:54 AM (2XtN5)
Visual Oddity
Something very odd happened to the image of this KC-135 taking off out of Williams-Gateway Airport. Whatever captured and processed the image managed to break the outline apart from the color. It looks like a grey blob being followed closely by Wonderwoman's personal tanker aircraft. The strange purple blob in front of the aircraft's shadow is even more confusing.
It's been a long time since I did any real online FPS twitch-gaming. For a long time I was addicted to Team Fortess Classic. I could spend hours upon uninterrupted hours turning other people into digital kibble. Back around Christmas I took a shot at Call of Duty 4 online and was "deeply humbled". (It doesn't help that I'm playing the PC version which is far more vulnerable to cheats and exploits than the Xbox version)
So I picked up The Orange Box a couple weeks ago on a whim. I'd been itching to play the second episode of Half-Life 2, and Portal had been receiving rave reviews, so it was well past time to make the investment. But what I'd really been waiting for, the part I'd truly been anticipating, was the inclusion of Team Fortress 2. Oddly enough I haven't touched that part of the suite yet. Why?
Well, I've been damned busy. There are several anime from the winter season I haven't had time to watch through to completion (and not for lack of interest). There's also a measure of anxiety involved. I loved the previous edition of this game. Am I going to be left out in the cold by the sequel? Am I going to have to cut my teeth again and completely relearn how to play? I don't have that kind of time to invest anymore. I'm hoping this weekend will afford me an oppurtunity to sit down with the game and put in one long solid play session that will let me know if I still have what it takes.
Below the fold are the TF2 promotional videos released to date.
I don't doubt there still lots of people playing it. It's an awesome game. I've thought about jumping back into TFC, but getting it patched up was always a pain in the ass.
Oh gawd... Drop someone liek that in a game of Unreal2 XMP and watch her brain melt. Of course, I know a couple guys who would be just as slow on the uptake.
Are the grenades in TF2 similar to TFC? I could never get ConcJumping firgured out in TFC. It's an incredibly useful skill, but I just couldn't get the timing and position right.
Requiem for the Exhausted
How is it I do less relaxing on the weekends than I do during the week? Tore an engine down all day Saturday out in the heat, then spent all day yesterday helping a friend move (that'll teach me to offer help... three months ago when it was cooler). I feel like I could liquify and leak out of my seat at any moment.
There was a time in my life when I really wanted to do stuff like this. I wouldn't say those days are completely behind me, but I know now that I don't have nearly the patience for the kind of detail required in top-tier scale modeling. It may come to pass that someday I'll have the resources, but I see myself trying to push performance limits more than detail.
Ever since I quit the job at the hobby shop in early 2002, I've been hauling all my old RC airplane equipment around with me from house to apartment to house hoping that some day I'll have the time to really get back into the hobby. I have several engines that have had little to no time put on them. Most of my balsa airframes are dried out by now, and who knows if my radios still meet FCC specs.
For years AM was the "standard" mode used by most radios. Only the really rich guys could afford FM radios. When the FCC doubled the number of channels occupying the same frequency space in 1991, FM became the new default mode (AM being too prone to bleed-over from other now very-much-closer channels) and PCM became the new hot-ticket mode. I haven't checked in on the market for a while. I suspect PCM is far more common than it used to be.
There are times in a man's life when he begins to reflect. What have I done with my life? What have I added to society? Have I left my mark?
Then there are those other times when you begin to ask the same questions of other people.
Behold...
Let's see... we've got Haruhi three times, Lucky Star, Madlax, Air, several video games. Yep, he hit all the nico-nico meme highlights. Interesting little project.
Not Dead, Just Busy. Might as Well be Dead, but Too Busy for That.
Hoe-lee-krap, has it been one of those fortnights... Don't let those poor bastards in the housing market know that commercial construction is going balls-to-the-wall. It could mean we get a break around here, heaven forfend.
I haven't watched a single episode of the spring anime season. As a matter of fact, I haven't watched any anime in the last month, not since finishing Shingu (a show I just can't seem to find anything to get riled up about, good or bad). I get home and all I want to do is veg out watching a baseball game, where I don't feel inclined to use my brain.
Blew through Medal of Honor: Airborne in a couple nights. There used to be several distinct differences between the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty series. Now they play almost identically, and I suspect it's because they're both being consolized. It used to be MoH played as a more "realistic" depiction of WW2 battle situations, while CoD seemed geared more towards placing the player in cool action sequences. But in a rather bizarre twist, CoD4 pushed realism as much as possible, while MoH:A started to look like Wolfenstein in the latter levels with it's Nazi super-soldiers and preposterous "Flak Tower" level design. I fully expected to run into Mecha-Hilter sporting fire breath and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. Gag.
When does "Inspired by" become Plagiarism?
Here's a good example of how I hope to use "Random Debris" from now on.
There are only so may ways to arrange notes. Repetition is inevitable. So when I first played through the third episode of the Xenosaga franchise, one track in particular tickled that portion of my brain I mentioned previously that gives me (annoyingly selective) Rainman-like ability to remember a bit of music.
You can only take "inspired by" so far. Hans Zimmer caught flak for his heavy-handed use of Holst's Planets when composing tracks for the Gladiator soundtrack (I've heard them both, and I'm much more on the side of the Holst foundation than the article's author). I like Yuki's music, but this sounds a bit suspicious.
The less I remember about the Big O, the better. I caught a couple of episodes on Toonami back in the day (which is why I've never seen the factory-installed OP/ED, until just now). It was enough to convince me I did not want to see anymore Batman with mecha.
Posted by: Will at April 29, 2008 11:39 AM (WnBa/)
Which version of the Big O's theme? There was also one lifted from the old UFO series.
Have to actually finish the Xenosaga trilogy. It's my favorite, which is why I have been spending too much time building up my characters rather than advancing the plot.
C.T.
Posted by: cxt217 at May 13, 2008 04:57 PM (zM0D5)
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Well this is the one I found immediately (and it does have that Queen sound).
Xenosaga is my favorite RPG series, with Xenogears taking top honors in the stand-alone category. It's a shame they had to truncate the plot of XS. There's plenty of room for a continuation. Unfortunately, Monolithsoft is now owned by Nintendo while the XS series is firmly in Namco-Bandai's grip.
I've been thinking of going back to work on my own translation of Perfect Works (I did a few pages for class projects back in in college). It is not light reading material and is a mother to translate.
Wow, you want to translate Perfect Works? And you got a copy to do that from? Wow. I mean, just wow. There were some other people doing it, back when the Zenosaga website was still up, but that effort seemed to have disappeared.
Last time I checked, though, Namco-Bandai was not platform specific (After all, they gave the world Idolm@ster for the XBox 360.). And given Nintendo's history of letting subsidary development studios get bought out by other parties (Cough-Rare-Cough)...Well, we did get Xenosaga on the DS. Since Xenosaga is my favorite video game series (Never played Xenogears though.), I still hold hope that we shall see something come from it again one day.
Funy thing you mentioned it, since over at AOD, there was a conversation on whether Yoko Kanno had done the same thing, or was simply a case where certain taste and styles produces similar results.
C.T.
Posted by: cxt217 at May 13, 2008 09:32 PM (zM0D5)
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I've had my copy of Perfect Works since about 1999/2000. Even at that point it was hard to get. What was supposed to be a 2-4 week ship turned into 3-6 months. I have a few of the translated PDF pages "int" put up on zenosaga.com. I'd like to do something similar, but I'd have to wreck my only copy to do it (and they're getting $200 for copies on amazon). It was a damned shame when he decided to shut the site down (of course I'd been through the same thing a few years prior when Dark Warlord shutdown xenogears.org.). There's a fairly complete history of things here.
Nintendo bought up Monolith specifically to make them RPGs (Batten Kaitos was one of the few on the Cube), but given the poor sales of the XS series, I don't see them making the effort to work out a deal with "Bamco" to re-ignite the series. Tetsuya Takahashi has now tried twice to tell this story, and both times he's run up a huge tab and taken too much time getting product on the shelf. He needs to just write a novel or three and get it over with. I just don't think he has what it takes to develop video games. And given the way Soraya Saga was treated by all parties involved, she certainly won't be getting involved again.
Shrug...Well, given the dearth of games available for the Wii, you would think something might be worked out. In any case, that is water under the bridge now, and I have been waiting for both Gust and Tri-Ace to release their latest titles. Tri-Ace, especially, since Star Ocean (The only reason why I would touch a PS3) and Valkyrie Profile have titles under development. As an aside I thought it was Tri-Crescendo who developed Baten Kaitos?
Anyway, I would not be eager to rip apart the copies of the Japanese books I have either, given the scarcity value of some of them. I think I might had read seen some of the translation you had for Zenosaga if I remember right. Never really could understand them, even after they were translated, probably because I never did get into Xenogears. Thanks.
C.T.
Posted by: cxt217 at May 14, 2008 07:50 AM (zM0D5)
Wikipedia says both were involved, but I don't know how the work was split between them. Monolith's name has been the one I've always heard linked with the BK series.
I never submitted any of my translations to Zenosaga. Those PDFs were all done by them. I haven't looked at them in a while, but as I recall, they were only slightly better than Babelfish quality in places. It looked like they fed the text to a machine then cleaned up the output with mixed results. The book is also full of technical jargon that is really hard to translate. It took me a half-hour working with my Japanese instructor (who had little to no science background) to work out the differences between the three words (elevation, absolute altitude, and AGL) the Nelson dictionary translates simply as "altitude."
If you can find Xenogears for anything less than a small mint, get it. There is so much going on in XS that hearkens back to XG that I've always thought people without the extra background weren't getting the full experience.
Ah, that clears it up then. I never did see more than a handful of scans on Zenosaga so I probably was not missing much.
Oddly enough, I have seen Xenogears, back when Gamestop/EB still carried PS1 games, at pretty good prices (~$20). I was tempted to buy it the last time I saw a copy, but I was quite happy with Xenosaga by itself than trying to read too much into a backstory that even Monolith Soft commented had spiritual connections with the Xenosaga series. (Just to complete things - I have no opinion on Soraya Saga/Xenosaga situation. Almost all the stuff I read seemed to be a lot of hysterics and not a lot of facts.)
C.T.
Posted by: cxt217 at May 14, 2008 06:43 PM (zM0D5)
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As few as he had done, they were easier in the eyes than raw text. But int quickly locked them away from the general public, limiting access to only those people who put in ridiculous amounts of time in the Z forums and whatnot. Can't say I liked the guy that much.
Oh, so that was it. I always suspected something like that, but my interest in Xenosaga at the time was not that devoted. Now it is much higher (As a quick assessment of the Xenosaga merchandise I own will report.), but that attitude always irked me a bit.
Just as well I was more into naval matters on newsgroups back then. Either everyone could find out about a piece of information, the information was made-up and therefore non-relevant, or you would not be able to say anything about the information you knew because it was classified...
C.T.
Posted by: cxt217 at May 15, 2008 09:28 PM (zM0D5)
I decided I'm going to make up a new category for the random crap I come across while surfing and leave the "Random Debris" category to more serious subjects (Hah!). Basically I'll just link-dump stuff I find either humorous, cool, bizarre, or some combination of the three.
Today is a monk theme.
Monks chanting the Lotus Sutra (long, with a strange but cool acoustic shift about 7 minutes in, shamelessly stolen from the Hostages).
Which reminded me of another bizarre monk vid I saw at some point (@ Hop Step Jump I think). I think it's a piece of software (like a midi tracker) that allows you to have these "monks" sing various parts and turn it into a song.
The original song is a classic Yuki Kajiura piece. After that, it looks like somebody threw together a choir of anime character impersonators to sing the track.
Less weirdness and more music (video-heavy) beyond the jump.
Over the years, I've observed something about myself. When it comes to females in anime, I'm a sucker for the sensible ones. The women who have their act together, and in the absence of plot contrivance, are perfectly functional people. If there's Shipping to be done (which, oddly, doesn't seem possible with most of my choices) , I'm usually Shipping in their direction
4
Well, there is a shocker - Will prefers sensible women. Whatever happened to opposites attract? I was sure that you would love a good "fixer-upper" walking disaster type of gal
Posted by: TheRightWife at April 26, 2008 10:19 PM (uS+aN)
5
Heh, and people laugh at me when I say my favorite Sakura Taisen girl is Kanna...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at April 27, 2008 11:43 PM (LMDdY)
Kerith, I've tripped over two-such so far, and I don't care to deal with it any more. Women who aren't completely psychotic are hard to find.
As to Sakura Taisen... It's a show I have given serious thought to starting up times, but considering how much the continuity is split up into videogames/anime of varying age and availability, the cost overhead has always driven me off.
Posted by: Will at April 28, 2008 12:18 PM (WnBa/)
I had some thoughts on the show that didn't really fit with the comments in the other post. Most are holes in the "realism" of the premise that I think are interesting.
For a show touted as "realistic," it seems to be full of highly dysfunctional people in positions where dysfunctions are normally filtered out in the application process. Psych evaluations are a big part of going into space right now. That would have been an interesting direction for the show to explore. The world is full of people who have no business going into space for various reasons, but if we commercialize space to the extent shown in Planetes (and dreamed of by guys like Glenn Reynolds), how do you handle the competing needs of access and safety for fellow travelers?
I know the Japanese are still in love with tobacco, but what company would spend the time and money building something as hair-brained as a "smoking room" into a moon base? Some people maybe be disappointed (angry even), but I fully expect space to be a default No-Smoking Zone, no exceptions.
How the hell do they feed all these people in space? I wasn't looking very closely, but I didn't see anything resembling dome-agriculture on the Moon. If I ever go back to watch it again, I'm going to keep an eye out for exactly what they eat and where they might get it from.
I'll keep adding to the list as I think of things.
This is an old draft (4/9/08) that's been sitting in the list waiting for me to finish it up. The problem is that I still feel exactly like I did when I wrote it, and I don't have any interest in going back to give the show a second chance.
It must be the novelty of "hard" sci-fi. That's the only explanation that makes sense for the praise this show receives. (Or the socialist prosthelytizing going on constantly throughout the second half.)
The management of the Debris Section are a couple of screw-ups that would never be let within sight of a functional rocket in the real world.
The ending felt tepid. Maybe all the glowing reviews inflated my expectations. Maybe moving in the middle of working through the show colored my experience. Maybe the show's the greatest thing since sliced bread, when viewed in the right place, time, and frame of mind. None of that does me any good right now, because I have no interest in re-watching the show at all right now.
2
The setting is at least mildly interesting for me on its own, but it would be far more compelling with a cast that weren't a bunch of losers and a story that lived up to the hype.
Posted by: Will at April 22, 2008 08:30 AM (WnBa/)
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In the end there is no substitute for interesting characters and a compelling story.
That's why I'll be curious to see your take on Lucky Star. If I had to break it down...
Setting: 5 - High school slice of life. We've been here before. We'll be here again.
Characters: 8.5 - The series' strong point. They all occupy the far reaches of their particular archetype/stereotype. The show's really about having fun bouncing these moe-modes off one-another.
Story: 3 - Not that it's bad, just that it's non-existent. No villains, no struggle, little character growth. Almost entirely static.
Posted by: Will at April 22, 2008 11:47 AM (WnBa/)
I'll admit my bias up front. I liked the show. I liked it a lot, in fact. I'll be the first to admit that the biggest draw is probably what Steven calls the "gadget fetish." Hard SF is very rare in anime, and I'd bet the success of Planetes is part of what's behind the recent rash of what might be best described as "space-pr0n." Rocket Girls,Freedom and Moonlight Mile, especially (caveat: I haven't seen any of those, but I've read the reviews at The Space Review and other places, and seen plenty of screencaps). Basically, Planetes is to these shows what the original Gundam is to the "real" subgenre of mecha shows.
The Leftism is something I've basically resigned myself to in anime these days. At least it wasn't as egregiously anti-US as the manga was. But what gets me is the notion that there was no story development, that the characters were static, and that the characters are losers (management aside; my God those two twits were annoying. I'll put up with the Leftism of the manga to avoid Lavie and the boss). Hachi grows up and starts to work toward his goal instead of just sitting there and talking about it. The company manager he had been friends with has the same story, but in reverse. She had it all, career-wise, and basically throws it all away after losing a rigged contest - as opposed to sticking with the company and changing it from the inside. For grins, the writers doubled up on both of them in one character with Chen-Shin, the pilot who manages to recognize the trouble he's getting into and bootstraps himself back out of it. Fee was already a pretty level character, underused in the show maybe (agian the manga is different), but she didn't need much growth. She's the show's 'perfect spacer,' the measuring stick for the rest of the cast. Even the space-cop who'd been Hachi's mentor is simply Fee to the Nth. Yuri came to terms with his loss that started the show in the first place - and gains a mission in life, helping to prevent it from happening again. And Ai? She ends the story where she belongs, back on Earth and hopefully never going back up to space (except maybe as a tourist) ever again. She's the human who can operate in space, but probably shouldn't, and loves it anyway. Like Hachi's mom, she lives space through her loved ones.
Posted by: Rich at April 22, 2008 07:29 PM (kfccJ)
6
Most of that probably should have been inside a spoiler tag.
Rich, don't confuse my comments on Lucky Star above with my thoughts on Planetes. Some characters do change in Planetes, the problem is they just couldn't seem to make me care.
For example, when Clarie and Ai were stranded on the Lunar surface, there was never any doubt in my mind that Ai would do the right thing. All that supposed tension and dread felt completely hollow to me. She was too much the "pure" character to leave Claire for dead. Sure she's been disabused of the romance in space travel, but she's still the idealist she was at the beginning.
Hachimaki is the one character who really underwent serious changes. The problem is he went from a listless self-centered jerk to an ambitious self-centered jerk, only to finally become something resembling a sociable human being in the last couple episodes. I hated his character for 24 episodes, so I'm quite dubious about how genuine and permanent his transformation will turn out. Was I supposed to empathize with this guy?
Those ninja-cosplaying clowns on the moon drove me nuts as well. I was supposed to feel sad when they died in the engine expolsion, but I help feeling happy I'd never have to see them again.
That's not a failure on my part to "get it." That's a failure of the writers to give me a cast I give a damn about. I didn't like the principals. The secondaries were mostly stereotypes, and there are better ways to lighten the mood than filling your tertiary cast with Excel Saga rejects. It completely destroyed the mood of the show.
Posted by: Will at April 23, 2008 09:29 AM (WnBa/)
Ahh, I see your meaning, Will. I did confuse your comments on Lucky-Star with what you meant about Planetes, mixing your comments 2 and 4 with Steven's #3 into an extended multi-blog group whine about the story not being what you guys would have made it. Which is still no excuse for my own whining thereafter. Your opinons are your own, and this is your blog. Regardless of guest opinions, those of the host are the correct ones in his own home, and I'm sorry for forgetting that.
(Aside: we're in complete agreement on the tertiary cast in any case; I so completely blocked the "clowns" out that I forgot they were ever there. Those scenes were downright painful to watch.)
About spoiler tags, I don't see a button for those on the control panel at the top...is it some form of 'special character,' or something else? I'll tag the rant appropriately if I can edit.
Posted by: Rich at April 23, 2008 09:07 PM (kfccJ)
10
I'm certainly not one to turn into a despot over differing opinions. There's no sense getting wound up with somebody over fiction. Non-fiction is a whole 'nother story.
And that spoiler tag format Steven mentions works at any mee.nu blog (mu.nu I'm not so sure of).
Posted by: Will at April 23, 2008 10:20 PM (ZhN+Z)
That's basically the choice in this show. How much do you dare to know about what's really going on?
It's a show full of characters. Sure there are some eccentricities (I guess all aliens are fun-loving goofballs), but it looks like everyone's up to pulling their own weight when the chips are down.
On the other hand, you can tell the show doesn't take itself too seriously. Fourth wall breaks appear in just about every episode (mostly by Hajime in the narration, but occasionally someone else will ham it up and talk to the camera).
I'm not sure exactly which episode I left off at last night. The Cultural Festival has yet to arrive, but it looks to be just over the horizon. It's hard to tell at this point if Hajime is going to turn out to be some untapped super-powered bad-ass or just a mundane with fate/serendipity on his side. It seems everyone's powers are specialized. I guess Hajime's "Ganbare" power could come in handy from time to time.
Oh, yeah, you can probably guess I found my Shingu DVDs.
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Yep. I assiduously avoided reading any of your spoilers when you were gushing over the show last summer. The discs (still in the wrapper) disappeared in my move two months ago, and I finally found where they'd been secreted away.
Posted by: Will at April 18, 2008 02:22 PM (WnBa/)
One of the songs I most enjoyed playing during my short time in the junior high jazz band was Birdland (named after the jazz club Birdland, which was itself named after a jazz musician nicknamed "Bird"). It was one of the first songs we played that gave us a chance to improv solos, and when we finally had it down, it was probably one of the fastest tunes I've ever played.
(Somewhere just north of 180 bpm when we were really pushing it. We never performed at that tempo. We just did it to see if we could. It was ridiculous amounts of fun at that speed. The director would have to break in to cut-time so he didn't look like he was trying to take off.)
It's a song I haven't heard in a while, and being jazz, there are about N+1 arrangements and variations out there. This is the cleanest recording I found so far.
The other song that was always a lot of fun was Malaguena. It's also another song with N+1 arrangements and variations (because in addition to being a jazz band favorite, it's also really big with marching bands)
Here's an indoor performance of the song from Blast! (a show everyone owes it to themselves to see)
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Well, only three Buddy Rich recordings came up in a quick youtube search. I can't say the audio quality in any of them is particularly good. This is the best sounding of the three. It is a lot closer to the version we played, but it was only junior high, so we were playing a simplified arrangement.
Posted by: Will at April 18, 2008 09:39 PM (ZhN+Z)
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Obviously you guys weren't going to be playing at his level.
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I have a HQ avi of "Battery Battle" from Blast here at Pond Central; the Phantom Regiment is from Duckford, and has their Tryout Camp at Duck U., so I've gotta be a drum & bugle corps fan.
There's something about walking out of the Duck U. Bookstore and having the Regiment's drumline slamming away ten feet from your car that puts a zip in your step after a long day at work...
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 18, 2008 10:01 PM (AW3EJ)
Little late to respond on this one, but I just remembered something. On the soccer fields adjacent to where we play our city-league softball games, occasionally a local drum corp rehearses in the afternoons. I think it's The Academy, but a buddy's girlfriend was rehearsing with their color guard, and I'm pretty sure she's older than the DCI limit of 22. I can't think of who else it would be.
Posted by: Will at April 23, 2008 05:05 PM (WnBa/)
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That video is the pinnacle of marching band nerdom.
No offense or anything, but really, it's hilarious for that very reason.
Nevertheless that was a really tight song. And then there's birdland being another one of "those" songs we all have to hear. But anyway it's good to find another eclectic blogger who's into anime and jazz.
Posted by: lelangir at May 10, 2008 07:04 PM (iZmZ/)