Wis[s]e Words – Page 18 – Ceci N'est pas Un Blog

Mayonaka Punch in the Feels — First Impressions

Published on July 29, 2024Leave a comment

Mayonaka Punch, just like Na Nare Hana Nare, is another original series done by P.A. Works airing this season. Starring Masaki, a once popular streamer who fell from grace after she punched one of her co-hosts and friends live on air. The first episode saw her stumble across an actual vampire when she went back to the abandoned hospital where she and her friends had recorded their first viral video. Said vampire thought she was the woman of her dreams (having just literally woken up from a twenty year long erotic dream starring a girl that indeed looked a lot like Masaki) so agrees to help her get a million subscribers to her new channel if she can suck her blood afterwards. The first three episodes were mostly about Masaki and her desire to make a quick success of her new vampire friends, while we got to know them as well, but it’s the forth episode I want to talk about.

Fuu with the guitar case of her old friend Aya

This episode stars Fu, the shy, green haired vampire girl who hides behind her bangs. She had been in the background until this episode as the other four, much more manic vampires took the spotlight. Masaki, still desparate for a hook to establish her new channel on, discovers that Fuu is actually a good singer when she listens to a decades old cassette tape of her. When she tries to get Fuu to sing for her videos, Fuu refuses and gets angry, saying she doesn’t deserve to sing anymore. Through flashbacks at the start of the episode we know that she used to have a friend called Aya, with whom she would sing and record songs together. Aya wanted to go pro but of course Fuu being a vampire, this wasn’t possible for her. Once Masaki leanrs of this, she and the others attempt to track Aya down and learn that the last time she was seen was two years ago, in New York. Fuu immediately sets out there to find her, but as you may have guessed, the news is not good…

A mixtape with pastiche titles of clearly recognisable seventies hits

With the first three episodes having been firmly on the comedic side of things, with a large dose of slapstick thrown in, this far more serious episode hit like a brick. The pastiche titles on the mixtape Aya gave her at the start firmly show that the flashback took place somewhere in 1979 or 1980, so Aya being a teenager then meant she should be in her early sixties now. What exactly happened to her isn’t told, but this isn’t a case of the mortal friend of the immortal vampire just dying of old age. A real bittersweet episode as Fuu finds closure on the biggest regret of her life, enabling to move on and start singing again, but still with that knowledge that if only…

Hyouka at Home — Shoushimin — First Impressions

Published on July 24, 2024Leave a comment

If, like me, you remember the 2012 Kyoto Animation series Hyouka with great fondness as one of the best series they ever did, than this season’s Shoushimin is for you. Based on a series of mystery novels by the same author as the original Hyouka novels, Yonezawa Honobu. Like his other series, this one too features a too smart for his own good protagonist with a dark past, now wanting to be nothing more than ordinary Sadly for Kobato Jogoro, having a rule about not turning down requests from people you barely know even if they drag you into some bizarre investigation and leads you to postpone the plans you already made with your actual friend to buy some exclusive cakes? Not something ordinary people do.

Do not turn down a request from an acquaintance, lest you cause a disturbance.

To be honest, that whole first episode annoyed me a lot and Shoushimin really only clicked with its second episode for me. Jogoro’s actions made no sense to me, especially as we barely knew anything about him or Osanai Yuki, the shy girl with whom he formed that pact to become ordinary together. Him leaving her to wait while he goes running at the request of Kengo, somebody he knew from elementary school and only met again when they were all accepted to the same high school frustrated me. It all seemed forced. Jogoro has to be involved in solving the mystery Kengo needed him for, so that they would be delayed long enough to at the end of the episode set in motion a certain chain of events necessary for the larger story. The mystery itself is mundane and uninteresting, slightly artifical. A girl’s purse has been stolen or misplaced and Kengo has dragged Jotoro and some other random class mates in to search for it; Jotoro is reluctant to use his ‘powers’ but in the end solves its disappearance through deduction. In the end it turns out it would’ve mattered: had he and Kengo done nothing, the purse would’ve turned up again the next day.

That idiot Kengo is challenging us. A small spoon is lying in a dry sink

This sort of Sherlock Holmes like deductive reasoning can be incredibly irritating when it’s clear the author has put his thumb on the scale to make it all work, as was the case here. By contrast, the mystery to be solved in the second episode is even more mundane yet much more interesting. How was Kengo able to make three mugs of good cocoa while only using a small spoon to stir it with but no extra cup to heat the milk up with? That’s what his sister is trying to figure out when Jogoro and Osanai are visiting him. Kengo was very proud of his cocoa making and explained how to make good cocoa, so it wasn’t just a question of slopping the cocoa powder and milk in some cups and microwave them. Resolving how he did it takes up most of the episode’s runtime butunlike the first episode’s mystery, it is all highly entertaining as successive hypotheses are proposed and shot down in turn. Jogoro has to work for his answer. Having him work through his deductions as he’s solving the puzzle, working together with the other two is much more satisfying than him giving the answer after he had already done so as in the first episode.

Who eats a slice of cake by leaving the plastic on around it and taking a bit from the middle?

What the answer is will surprise you, but it is in keeping with somebody psychotic enough to eat his slice of cake with the plastic still on, who begins by taking a bit from the middle. Kengo is not very ordinary either….

The pretentious letterboxing aside, this is a gorgeous series, full of little Shafterian tricks to keep what might have otherwise been slightly dull dialogue scenes snappy and interesting. I do like this sort of series, Hyouka, Bunny Senpai, even Monogatari, with protagonists being dragged into weird situations while pretending they want to be just normal. Shoushimin looks to be a good addition.

Seeing far beyond his time — John Berger’s Way of Seeing (1972)

Published on July 23, 2024Leave a comment

If you have two hours to spare, spend them watching Ways of Seeing, a four part documentary by John Berger from 1972, ostensibly on how photography has changed the way in which we see art, but moving beyond that to examining the European tradition of oil painting, what its purpose was and how it’s reflected in modern day publicity.

For something itself now fiftytwo years old, from a time when colour television was still a novelty and no such thing as personal computers let alone mobile phones and social media existed, it’s still incredibly relevant. Just that first episode alone, looking at how a painting was changed from a still, silent image rooted to one unique location to something that can be chopped up, moved about, re-contextualised through the ability to photograph and reproduce it, is a revelation. Then in the second episode he takes a punt at how nudes, female nudes, are represented in oil painting: how these are not naked, truthful images of the women they supposedly portray but passive pictures to be consumed by the male owner of the painting. The female figure as a possession to be displayed. And then, echoing what he said in the first episode, that he too uses these painting to send his own messages, he acknowledges the absurdity of his the sole voice on the subject and hands over to a round table of women to discuss this further.

Episode three than looks at the real purpose of the oil painting as a medium, not the lofty ideals ascribed to it, and argues that it is about showing off your possessions as the owner/displayer. That in turn leads to the fourth episode where it juxtapositions publicity and advertisements with the oil painting tradition as a sort of mirror image. If paintings shows the things you already own and you in control of them, ads feed the dream of owning them, the aspiration.

A very heady mix of ideas here and no wonder it had such an impact. It is an interesting rebuttal to the far more traditional view of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation (1969), to which this was in response. Art as a mystical, uplifting activity versus art as a capitalist tool that needs democratisation as much as any other such tool. In this context, the most interesting idea of all may have come from the end of the first episode, after he has argued that images are like words, but:

The images may be like words but there is no dialogue yet. You cannot reply to me. FOR THAT TO BECOME POSSIBLE IN THE MODERN MEDIA OF COMMUNICATION ACCESS TO TELEVISION MUST BE EXTENDED BEYOND IT’S PRESENT NARROW LIMITS.

Fifty years on we got this through social media; now we know that this democratizing dialogue has broken our modern elites’ minds.

Three cheers — Na Nare Hana Nare — First Impressions

Published on July 17, 2024Leave a comment

Na Nare Hana Nare opens with a great looking cheerleading performance that sets the tone for the rest of the show:

An original cheerleading anime done by P. A. Works of all people, with the director, Kakimoto Koudai and writer, Ayana Yuniko, having also worked on MyGo in the same roles. The series even opens in a similar way, with a big incident that happened some time ago, as shown above; the the opening credits roll and we’re in the present dealing with the fallout. In this care it was Kanata, a first year at a school famous for its cheerleading club, the girl launched into the air when the accident happened, who still seems to suffer some sort of trauma from it, even if she wasn’t directly involved. Na Nare Hana Nare is a lot cheerier handling this than MyGo was however.

Anna kisses Kanata on the cheek at her first meeting. Kanata is shook.

But about as gay.

That’s Anna from Brazil kissing Kanata because that’s what they do over there apparently, though usually not with complete strangers. They only met because both were following Obunai Suzuha, a student from what turns out to be a very sort of gokigenyou young ladies school — literally called Ojou Girls — who commutes by doing parkour. Anna is interested in her because she wants her to start in the videos she’s making together with her friend, Nodoka, who’s slightly less outgoing. What I like about Anna is she doesn’t talk in the usual highly accented Japanese foreigners get saddled with in anime, but does actually struggle sometimes to find the words she needs. Nodoka so far has been the least developed of the characters, mainly trying in vain to slow down Anna a bit.

Shion sitting in front of Megumi in her bed

Rounding out the cast are Megumi, a childhood friend of Kanata who did cheerleading with her in middle school but got an undefined illness in her last year that left her in need of physical rehabilitation and unable to attend high school. She’s also friends with Shion from the same school as Suzuha, who is a talented gymnast. So we got half a dozen girls, each with their own talents, who obviously are going to do some sort of cheerleading together, but not quite yet. I really like each of the characters and it will be interesting to see how the series develops. The animation is on point as expected from P. A. Works and the little details like Anna struggling with her vocabulary or Megumi having to come to grips with her slow rehabilitation make this extra special.

Why translations shouldn’t be too faithful

Published on July 17, 2024Leave a comment

If, like me, you find yourself occassionally nostalgic for the era when anime series could get multiple fansub groups working on them, none of them just ripping off Crunchyroll, this 2011 vintage discussion about how several fansubbers translated one particular scene in Bakemonogatari is right up your street:

For some reason, I was watching Coalgirls’s release of Bakemonogatari. It was the second episode, and the scene was when Hitagi, in her own unique tsundere (read naked) fashion, was hitting on Koyomi, even though he’s too stupid to realize it. Incidentally, this part was what got me into the show two years back because the jokes and Hitagi’s all-around verbal abuse here is fantastic. Coalgirls’s translation up to this point can be best described as “understandable” despite the translator’s poor sense of style. Or at least until it got to the punchline of my favorite joke in the scene.

Your amateurish virginity will infect me

“Amateurish virginity?” What the hell does that even mean? Let’s ignore the Japanese here for now and judge this based solely on the English translation, which is what I would assume most people who watch subs (and don’t know Japanese) would do. Interestingly, the translator didn’t even provide a translation note to preach to the viewer about the finer details of Japanese slang.

The writer goes on to compare Coalgirl’s subs to two other fangroups, Thora and GG’s, finding the latter to have the best translation. “Amateurish virginity” turns out to be Japanese slang for men who only have sex with sex workers and never had a proper relationship. In English you’d call them incels these days. It’s a good example of why a translation should not be too literal or too faithful to the original wording, when this does not make sense in the target language.