ToRtUgAs MaGiCaS

Been ages since the last time I posted something in this blog! What have I been doing meanwhile? Among other things, I have been reading the light novel “Hanbun no Tsuki ga Noboru Sora”. Some of you may remember this title thanks to the anime adaptation released a few years ago. I haven’t watched it, but since I had read some good reviews, I decided to try to read the light novel on which the anime was based.

 Cover of the first volume

 To start with, “HanTsuki” (for short) is the first light novel I have read in japanese. I was a bit afraid at first of not being able to understand anything of it. Fortunately, before reading “HanTsuki” I had read a novel in japanese aimed towards young children which was easy to understand (not very complex grammar and kanji) and that helped me to get used to the written style japanese novels usually display.

Long way short, “HansTsuki” revolves around the life of Yuuichi, a 17 year-old boy who is sent to the hospital and has to spend about three moths there to recover from a certain illness (I read in a blog that he actually suffers hepatitis,  but I don’t remember that being mentioned in the book). At the hospital, Yuuichi meets different people like the nurse Akiko-san and an old patient called Tada-san who is a bit of a pervert. The hospital is very small and almost all the patients are old people, so Yuuichi rapidily gets bored and sneaks out from the building  every night. However, Akiko-san tells him one day that a young girl has just been trasferred into the hospital, and suggests him to make friends with her… This is the beginning of a complex, but heartwarming relationship between Yuuichi and the new girl, Rika.

As you may notice, the plot of “HanTsuki” is nothing remotely resembling a comedy. There are some little gags all throughout the novel, but to be honest, there is a nostalgic, almost melancholic feeling surrounding the characters and their actions. Yuuichi, who is the narrator as well, describes how the town he lives in (and where the hospital is located) has slowly decreased in population as many shops have closed down. What was once a lively town is now silent. That “silence” also seems to affect the characters. Rika and Yuuichi may spend a whole hour without speaking,  each of them lost in their own thoughts.

I must say that the interaction between Yuiichi and Rika is more interesting and less clichéd than I thought at first. I had imagined Rika as  some kind of annoying tsundere character (she is constantly ordering Yuuichi around). She is a bit tsundere, but at least, as Yuuichi says to himself,  she has got a reason to act like one.

Now I’m looking forward to reading the following novels in the “HanTsuki” series, but that will have to wait a little bit. I still have to read two other novels I ordered along with the first volume of “HanTsuki” and there’s always the money issue…

See you!

Completely random entry. I watched “Coraline” some time ago and loved the film. I’m reading the original novel right now, to see if it is as good as the film (and I’m pretty sure it will be, since it was written by Neil Gaiman of “The Sandman” fame), and well, I may post some comparisions between the two once I finish it. I know my “I may do this or that” often ends in nothing (I should have already posted about some manga I purchased recently…) but as I said, I’m going to try to keep this blog as alive as possible. By the way, I want that cap Coraline is wearing!

Been a while, eh? I can’t say I’m going to be back for real, but at least I’m going to try to keep this blog alive. Since the Summer Anime Season has already started, I’m going to comment a little bit on the anime shows I’m currently watching.

Umineko no naku koro ni:

Being a fan of Higurashi, I couldn’t miss this one. It has mistery, it has murder…and some horrible distorted faces wich, instead of freaking out the audience, makes you wonder who on earth is in charge of animation production at Studio Deen, the anime studio behind the show. The first couple of episodes were a bit meh, especially after reading the manga. FYI, the manga is waay better than the anime, at least when it comes to character development and delivering certain pivotal scenes. I’m enjoying the show, though, since I have a thing for mistery/ horror films (or novels).

Sora no mani mani:

Childhood freinds meet each other after many, many years. The girl is insane, and the boy is a nerd who constantly runs away from the former. Mihosi, the girl, makes the boy, Saku, join the Astronomy Club, and thus the fun begins! I didn’t expect this show to be so entertaining, but I love all the characters and the humour. The pace is slow and relaxed, and even though I smell a future romace between Mihosi and Saku, I like the show for what it is now.

Taisho Yukyuu Musume:

Give me a show taking place either in the 20s or the 30s, and I’m in! I don’t know why exactly, but I find TYM to be charming. The shots of Taisho era Tokyo, the old cars, the clothes… And to make things better, a bunch of schoolgirls trying to learn how to play baseball with the help of their English teacher. The first couple of episodes were spent in trying to ins members to join the team, so I expect the next episode to show the girls training.

On another note, I started watching the second season of “Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu”, but all those episodes of “Endless Eight” got on my nerves and gave up. I may pick up the show again once they finish that arc for ever and ever.

And this is all. I may comment from time to time on some random episodes of the above mentioned shows. And remember, I’m still here!

“Ponyo on the Cliff” was released in Spain the 24th of April. “Summer Wars” will be released in Japan the 1st of August.

PONYO ON THE CLIFF

I recently watched “Ponyo on the Cliff”, the new Studio Ghibli masterpiece. The cinema was filled with small kids with their parents, and I guess I was the only adult in there under 25. But you know, I didn’t care, because the film was everything I expected and even a bit more. Read the rest of this entry »

Dragons went somewhere warm and cosy. Not because they are frightening they should be stupid…

So well, it’s been ages! I guess some people thought I had finally given up writing in my blog. The fact is that, lately these days I’ve been fangirling (if the verb ever exists) about Discworld, so I haven´t watched much anime. I’m thinking about ordering some manga soon, so I may re-take blog-writing a bit more seriously in a few days. But now, let’s move on what I really wanted to talk about:

DRAGONS!

I think I’m including “Guards! Guards!” (the 8th novel in the Discworld series) in my “They should make an anime out of this” list, along with “Mort”. There’s nothing more amusing than a bunch of loveable losers trying to fight a dragon, a witty patrician taming rats in the cell he’s imprisoned in, a brethren made up of fools, and blushing men. Yes, blushing men, because there’s even some good romance. And a strong female character (well, actually in the Discworld novels most of female characters tend to be a bit bossy, and very rarely they play the “damsel in distress” role. Even if the play said role, they won’t play it in the usual way). I wonder how “Guards! Guards!” would turn out as an anime. I guess it would depend on the anime studio. Bones, for instance, would provide clean and amazing action scenes. Shaft would rather focus on the comedy bits, making them even more surreal. I can perfectly picture some artistic rendering of Captain Vimes blushing profusely at the sight of Lady Sybill. Blushing men should be the new moe (or better, Moegar). Enough of lolis, meidos and Kyoto Animation!

By the way, I commented some time ago that Discworld novels weren’t available in japanese. I take it back, since the other day I was browsing through Amazon Japan and I found the japanese translation of”Guards! Guards!” among others. And that made me quite curious. I’ve got the feeling it must be very difficult to translate Discworld novels into japanese, with all the plays on words and references to both popular culture and british literature. Even the spanish translations have to work very hard to retain all the elements from the original version, and well, at least there isn’t such a wide gap between english and spanish, both as languages and culture. Studying how the japanese translation managed to keep all the elements from the original work could make for an interesting field in translation research…

Well, sorry for the detour! As a final note, I’d like to add that if some japanese anime studio decides someday to adapt “Guards! Guards!”(or any other Discworld novel ) into an anime, I hope they take Paul Kidby’s illustrations as a model to do the character design.

And yes, many of you will say this a filler post.

The merry ol’ men of the City Watch! (And the dragon, of course)

As I already wrote in one of my posts, Bioshock ROCKS. Graphics-wise, plot-wise, action-wise. I hope that the rumours about a film in the making are true, because this is an adaption I would really look forward to watching. I was also thinking what it would be like if Bioshock were turned into an anime. Which elements would be more prominent? The action? The mystery? The horror? Which anime studio could undertake the task of providing a good adaptation? I would say here Madhouse or Bones. Madhouse did a wonderful job animating “Mouryou no Hako”, in a terrorific and dream-like kind of way. Bones… well, they always manage to provide high quality animation and good story telling. Now, talking about the game itself, I noted that you don’t actually need to be a pro to enjoy it, since you can choose the game level of difficulty (I know this sounds a bit retarded, but I was of the opinion until recently that shooter games were REALLY complicated when it comes to the controls). So, no matter how clumsy you are, it’s very difficult to get killed if you’re playing in the easy level. Even if you are not a videogame fan, I recommend trying out this game. The experience is worth it!

 The Little Sisters with a Big Daddy, anime style. Props to the author, whoever he/she is.

 Spanish version after the jump! (Haced clic en el enlace para ver la versión en español):

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m trying (once again) to make this blog actually bilingual, so I’ll provide a spanish version after the text in english.

Una vez más, voy a intentar que este blog sea de verdad bilingüe. La versión en español la encontrareis después del texto en inglés.

I read, way before the film was even released, that this film would be either complete win or complete fail. I decided to watch it after some careful thinking, mainly because :

1)I intended to watch the film raw. Apart from my japanese lessons, I haven’t been exposed to “real japanese” as to say (that is, japanese spoken in a more “realistic” way, compared to the japanese spoken in anime shows).

2) I’m a great fan of the Higurashi series.

3) There was probably another reason, but I forgot it…

Well, well, where to start? This film adapts the first chapter of Higurashi, the Onikakushi-hen, in which Keiichi loses his marbles and goes into psycho mode. The adaptation is quite faithful, although there are certain elements that I think they added in order to make the story a bit more coherent, especially for those who are not familiar with either the games or the anime. For example, I don’t remember Takano being painted by Keiichi’s dad, for example. They also changed a bit some pivotal scenes (like when Keiichi eats the Ohagi and goes berserk. In the film, he still goes bersek, but doesn’t phone Oishi-san afterwards telling him what happened) The scene with Rena muttering “gomennasai” wasn’t included either, and that was a pity since I think it was very powerful in the anime. On the other hand, there’s a certain scene in the film in which, like in the anime, Mion is concerned about Keiichi, when she sees him wielding Satoshi’s baseball bat. In the anime, Mion acts a bit “odd”, but in the film she goes completely insane, to the point that Keiichi wonders if that’s really Mion. I don’t know, but maybe in that moment it was actually Shion and not Mion. It’s possible they wanted to introduce her character in the film earlier, thinking of a sequel. Also, no kiss between Keiichi and Rena, and the Yamainu’s role was reduced to a few minutes towards the ending of the film. Rika and Satoko didn’t appear much either.

Now, for the acting. It was often subpar, but maybe I had that impression since I’m used to the anime voices. I didn’t like the cast for some characters (mainly Rena and Satoko) but I was fine with the rest. Keiichi and Mion were close to their anime counterparts, as well as Rika, although the actress playing her was a bit older. On the technical side, there weren’t too many SFX, but they tried to create an atmosphere of terror. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. I can’t tell much about the music, except that the opening song by Eiko Shimamiya (Wheel of Fortune) just rocks.

Will I recommend it?: Only if you are a hardcore fan of Higurashi, or have a thing for low budget terror films.

(By the way, I’ve just watched the trailer for the next film “Higurashi no naku koro ni: Chikai” and it looks good… Judging from the images, it will adapt the Tsumihoroboshi-hen)

Second film’s official webpage

Spanish version after the jump! Haced clic en el enlace para ver la versión es español.

Read the rest of this entry »