Mystery Objects

I took this picture at Leng's house in San Diego.

Geeky Anime Sunday

It's been a while since I've watched any good Japanese television animation. Today, however, I stumbled upon Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (GITS:SAC) on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.

A lot of people have seen Mamoru Oshii's movie version of Ghost in the Shell. I didn't much like it because it was, tonally, a deviation from the original manga from creator/artist Masumune Shirow. I found the movie to be aesthetically slow and ponderous...while it was interesting philosophically, I felt like my eyelids were being forceably strapped open with "art tape".

Shirow's original manga featured characters that were part of an ensemble, and delivered the philosophical themes through action-oriented plotting balanced by moments of introspection. There is a tension between events that just doesn't come across in the movie versions. Television, with its episodic nature, is probably the better delivery medium for a faithful interpretation. As I watched the episode "Testation", I was struck by how close it captured that feeling, and particularly how good the action detail was.

The production values for this episode are not like those of the movie, of course... this is television animation. However, being for TV didn't limit series like Cowboy Bebop, where every frame exuded character. A lot of the shots in GITS:SAC were somewhat dull, except when there's mecha or action started. Even then, the animatin had a sense of detail, sequencing of action, and timing that captured my attention. The character designs, though, are an improvment: a compromise between the movie and the manga character designs that I prefer.

What's particularly interesting is to see Shirow-style mecha designs animated. They're quite different from the usual humanoid mecha. Seeing the tanks in action was a revelation. I didn'understand the urban mobile tank concept before, but now it makes sense.

There's some interesting cross-pollination of production talent too: * The music is by Yoko Kanno, who also composed the music for Cowboy Bebop and Macross Plus. It's a very pleasing cut above what you'd usually get in an anime series (particularly in the case of Cowboy Bebop, which my very-particular cousin Ben also enjoys, so that's saying something). * The production company is Production I.G., which is Mamoru Oshii's company, having done the two Ghost In The Shell movies and the animated sequence in Kill Bill Vol 1 among other things.

I've only seen one episode so far, but I'm hoping for more. It's the most faithful adaptation of the original Ghost in the Shell manga out there, and to Shirow's style of storytelling in general.

Shareware/Freeware Harvest

PC Magazine has this fall recommended list of freeware / shareware. There's a number of free PDF-making software, image editors / viewers, alternative word processors, and odd things like "thing databases". I'm always encouraged to see the little guy approach the same problems in software...helps keep the gene pool diverse!

Money of the World, Regrettable Food

I was browsing through lileks.com after visiting the Gallery of Regrettable Food, which preserves stomach-churning food photography of the 50s and 60s. There's also a neat section on Money on the World...check out Brazil and Cuba! A country's money tends to be filled with interesting iconography and symbolism too, so that's well worth checking out from a graphic design perspective.

You can see a lot of their other projects as part of their Institute of Official Cheer. It's a good waste of an hour.

“You know, in a European Way”

My mistake! It turns out that watching hair grow is fun, or at least mildly distracting, if you speed it up by a factor of 172800 or so. I especially liked the rationale:

Despite the fact that my husband claimed my hair was sexy -- "You know, in a European way" -- it had been a year since I decided it might be fun to painstakingly maintain the look of a horribly botched haircut, and I needed a change.

There are a few other projects I've seen like this, like this one of one family over 25 years. Hair link via dooce.

I shall now endeavor to use "in a European way" in lieu of "that's interesting" as much as possible. My verbal horizons: broadened!