cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning

It's gonna be a busy weekend - I've got loads of stuff lined up to do. Not much of it is gonna be hugely fun, as such, but it all needs doing.

A lot of it revolves around cleaning. It's a cleaning weekend, so I need to do the normal hoovering and mopping and stuff, but I also want to tackle all the little odds and sods bits of cleaning. I want to do them now, just as we crest into December so that they're done and I don't fill up my holiday with them.

One of the most random is that I need to clean my computers. They get pretty dusty partly due to where I live is quite dusty, but also because I'm fairly lazy and don't hoover as much as I should. It's a job I secretly enjoy on some level, but it's also a little tedious. I can be a bit odd like that.

There's all sorts of other stuff as well - like wiping down my small bathroom cabinet, cleaning the insides of my windows and the glass panels of my door and dusting in the roof corners and under the curtain hems to get rid of cobwebs. They all need doing, but only occasionally so I thought I'd stack them up together.

I've been scanning the Code Geass Rebels artbook during the last week, in the evenings. The artbooks I've got left are all loads of pages jobs - I've kinda been putting off the bigger books, as you do.

There are actually two new Geass artbooks coming out in December, so I should really pre-order those, but I've been trying to hold back on buying artbooks until I start selling more stuff on e-bay again. But then, as previously noted, I need to watch some stuff in order to sell it.

Anyway, I've been watching some of the new season shows while I scanned:

• Chaos;HEAd was okay, I guess. To be quite honest, I found it really rather confusing. I also have to say I found the protagonist to be incredibly annoying. In fact, all of the characters were really annoying. I dunno - it just sort of rubbed me up the wrong way, I guess. The most annoying thing, though, was that it seemed like it had potential, I just got really bloody annoyed at the characters and the way the story was being told :/.
• Yozakura Quartet seemed quite good. The set-up is a bit odd, but the characters look quite interesting with a degree of complexity. Also, I love the character designs. They really appealed to me, especially a couple of the girls - they were strangely hot.
• Akane-Ira Ni Somaru Saka is okay, I guess. I dunno, maybe I just wasn't in the mood for this show. It's basically a fanservice, rom-com job and as these go it's got some things going for it - the male lead isn't a douchebag, there are some genuinely funny bits, and there appears to be a bonkers element, for example, but I dunno, it just didn't really engage me for some reason.

children of men

This last weekend's DVD was Children of Men, starring Clive Owen.

It's apparently adapted from a book by P.D.James, who I normally associate with crime novels, though apparently it's only loosely adapted. Either way, the film is bloody good.

The idea of it is basically that the world is going to hell, only rather than zombie apocalypses or viruses, the reason is rather subtle - all women on the planet have become infertile, and have been for a good 18 years or so. It also rather cleverly never tries to explain why.

Of course themes are touched on - is it a punishment from God or some virus, or what? But it never really focuses on the why. Instead it focuses on hope - Clive Owen's character (and I dunno if this counts as spoiler or not, so you may want to skip ahead) ends up having to escort a young, pregnant, Black African woman out of Britain. She's trying to get to what we assume is some sort of scientific research institute called the Human Project.

But there's so much more going on than that. The film is set in England and the impression we're given is that it's the only place in the world still vaguely working properly, but it's not exactly a picnic. There's global terrorism and Britain is flooded with illegal refugees, for example. Our government has also devolved into fascism and all refugees and immigrants are forcibly evicted and/or put into concentration camps. But there are revolutionaries and freedom fighters in the mix too.

As you can tell, there's a whole heap of stuff. But the clever thing about the film is that it never gets lost in those things. It's about hope - the hope of the first pregnant woman in twenty years.

The other clever thing is how it's shot. Rather amazingly, most of it is done in some very, very long single-takes. I mean literally 5+ minute long single takes that never cut. Technically, this is a very difficult thing to do once, but it's used repeatedly throughout the film.

It has an incredibly powerful effect, especially when it's a dramatic or action-oriented scene. In an odd way, it actually manages to capture some of the visceral excitement of playing a first-person shooter game, only Clive Owen basically never uses a gun.

I'd highly recommend the film. In fact, I'm currently contemplating buying the special edition DVD (the standard version has almost no extras - just one short featurette) and then even doing a proper review.

runchycrolls

(*gets down off hobby horse*) I got a bit carried away yesterday :).

My intent was not to go on a rant about the problems of piracy in anime, but was instead to comment on the whole Crunchyroll thing.

"But what Crunchyroll thing?!" I hear you scream in your beautiful dulcet tones. Well, the announcement that Crunchyroll is going to stop accepting fansubs of course, my young friend.

It's a weird site Crunchyroll.

It's a bit social-networking site (ughh) and a bit YouTube (ughh) and all anime (ug--er, no I mean yay!). Or, to put it more simply, facebook dry-humps YouTube and produces a mutant weaboo offspring.

As you may detect I'm not hugely keen. This is mainly because the whole social-networking thing kinda doesn't appeal to me. It's like internets for kiddies. And YouTube is just the biggest collection of fucktards and fucktardery ever assemble in one (virtual) place.

Basically, Crunchyroll has thrived on piracy since it's inception - users are allowed to submit anime (i.e. they uploaded the latest bit of piracy they've engaged in) and also people post in forums and each other's userpages and all that banal drivel stuff.

One of the difficulties I have is that anime is predominantly a kids thing. I don't mean like little kids - I just mean people who aren't old, like me. Me and my age groups make up a very small slice of the anime watching public.

And while I'm not going to comment on that specifically, Crunchyroll is the sort of place that underlines the fact that I'm up to twice the age of most anime watchers. And that makes me feel old.

Anyway, the point of this post was that actually I welcome the whole move to stop fansub uploads. Especially since it seems to be accompanied by a move to get the anime companies submitting stuff.

To me this seems like a win-win situation. If there are more sites with legally downloadable anime that's available soon after the original airing in Japan, that can only be a good thing.

Oh, the other thing I wanted to mention was Bost TV. Having ragged on Crunchyroll, Bost is what I see as the better way of doing things.

Unfortunately for me, I seem to be in a minority, as Bost appears to have pretty much ground to a halt. There's very little new stuff been available for a long time, which to me is a shame as I've really liked it when I've used it.

legal anime downloads

One of the big problems anime has is piracy. However, the thing with anime is it's not quite the same beast as with other forms of piracy.

The main difference is that anime is Japanese but very popular outside of Japan. That popularity means that potentially there's a ready market available to buy your products, except it's being pirated left, right and centre. However, without the piracy it wouldn't be as popular as it is - it's like a double-edged sword.

In order to feed the popularity it needs fansubbers - people who add subtitles to the anime so that us foreigners can watch it too. I'm not going to explore why they do it, but suffice to say Fansubbers are basically volunteers. But they're also the enablers for all the copyright theft that goes on, so they're the target to beat fansubbing.

And it is theft, btw. It's not normal theft - you didn't take a five-finger discount from your local DVD shop - but it is the same basic thing. If you've not paid for something or the something isn't being given away (or the copyright hasn't expired) then you are basically abusing Intellectual Property and Copyright laws.

Anyway - back to my point - the issues are complicated.

In the case of western mainstream films and music the main differences is the speed of availability. Western media comes to us in all sorts of forms - at the cinema, in live concerts, DVDs, CDs, rentals, broadcast on TV, as well as all the legal internet stuff - streaming, downloads, MP3s, the iStore, etc, etc.

So it's available. It's around. You can go down the shops and buy it, you can get it legally via the internet. And if you're willing to wait you can get it cheaper or even free on the telly. Also, radio and television as well as magazines and the net can provide us with reviews and previews and free samples and all sorts.

It's pervasive so the point is there is really no excuse for piracy.

For anime the situation is different. I mean, you're still talking about infringing copyright, but the available is just not the same.

I can't go down the shops and buy the latest anime shows. I can't watch them on TV. Until very recently I couldn't even get them legally online either.

So, if there were no avenues at all for people to watch anime would there be as many fans? Well, clearly not. If people could only get at anime by buying expensive DVDs the scale of the fandom would be too small to support itself. It's that combination of word-of-mouth and availability that feeds the popularity.

Unlike music or western films, that illegal route has traditionally been the only way to try-before-you-buy. Especially when you're talking about the more unusual shows. I mean, I don't mean the whole Naruto, Bleach side of anime - the popular face that would almost certainly make it over here anyway, I'm talking about the weird odds-and-sods.

The classic example is Azumanga Daioh. Without the huge popularity generated through fansubs, none of the western companies would have touched it, but because of the fansubs, they did and so it got its day in the sun.

If there were no fansubs, that could never have happened.

But then on the flipside - looking at the Bleaches and the Narutos - what are the effects of fansubs on their sales? The trouble is it's almost impossible to quantify.

Another crucial issue is the speed of availability. These days we get near-simultaneous film releases at cinema and for DVD for films and music, but it can be months (if not years or even never at all) before the DVD version of a show becomes available in the west.

For some shows fansubs are literally available within a week. Much as I have issues with fansubbers, I have to give it to them - that's a phenomenal turn-around time for volunteers.

And what's more that's part of what anime fans are there for. They type of person that is an anime fan is much more likely to be of the frame of mind that getting it first is more important. These are the people at the frontiers, they're the early adopters. To them, knowledge is a currency - if you're not up-to-date you're no-one.

And part of the problem there really lies at the feet of the anime companies. The impression we're given is that they expect very large sums of money for distribution rights. They've also been horribly, horribly slow to take advantage of the opportunities the internet offers. They do not understand the western market, as they are so used to how the otaku behave in Japan, spending huge sums of money, happily being ripped off by the anime companies.

They have, in short, sat on their bums doing nothing expecting the gravy train to keep running for ever.

And they've paid the price in many ways for that attitude. Many western companies have effectively pulled out or folded and so any license money they were getting has dried up. Let's put it this way - a bit of money for all of your shows, or no money at all?

Thankfully things seem to be improving. There are finally moves to get legal forms of anime up and available to foreign consumers. It's the only way they'll ever manage to "beat" the fansubbers, but I have to wonder if it's not coming a bit late.

scan-o-rama

Discovered an interesting site/blog thing on Friday called Stuff White People Like. It's kinda squarely America-centric, but I found it pretty amusing.

The weekend was an odd one. I woke up on Saturday totally shattered. I was so tired I could hardly be arsed to get out of bed and instead watched several hours of recorded telly (I've now literally only got the film Lucky Number Sleven to watch).

When I did eventually shower and stuff I still ended up bumming around for an hour-or-two. Finally, I got my arse in gear and did all the usual bits and bobs of keeping life running. I did discover that I've apparently been hit for late-payment charges on one of my credit cards.

Now to be fair this is true - I checked my cheque book and I've not paid them. But the thing is I'm convinced I never received a statement. Trouble is I can't really prove that, so I just did an internet transfer - hopefully it'll be enough, but without being able to find the statement it's difficult to know what the minimum is.

Anyway, on Sunday I had a much more productive day (also, much colder as we're having a cold-snap). I scanned like there was no tomorrow - I must have done something in the order of 200 scans.

I scanned the latest megami deluxe (volume 11) which had the best part of 80 images, then I scanned two Artbooks - Divergence Eve and Makoto Uno's. I didn't actually get Uno's quite finished, as I wanted to watch Top Gear and Survivors on the telly, but I should be able to finish it this week.

Lots of scanning meant lots of anime watching too. I've now finished the Spring Season (Strike Witches and Blassreiter not withstanding) so am finally moving onto the Autumn stuff. Here's what I watched:

• Telepathy Shoujo Ran was surprisingly good. I'm pretty sure this is aimed at a younger audience. At least that's the optimistic viewpoint - it's either a surprisingly sophisticated show for younger audiences, or a rather simple show for adults. I'd prefer to think of it as the latter, since I quite enjoyed it. The only thing that did worry me was that the thing that made it interesting - one of the characters is really evil, but in an "I'm broken" way - sort of got resolved by the end of ep 3 when I stopped watching. If she has a sudden personality flip it may mean the show is less good than the impression I got.
• Eve no Jikan was good. It's an ONA - I've not specifically mentioned those before, it means Original Net Animation, so it's basically broadcast on the web. There's 6 eps each of about 15 minutes and I watched the first one. The animation was beautiful, though the viewpoint-camera thing they used occasionally was a little distracting. The show had distinct overtones of Shirow (not sure if he's involved) and Asimov with the laws of robotics. It looked like it could be very good - very thoughtful, rather than action oriented.
• Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel was okay - nothing special, but not exactly bad either. It's a 2 episode OAV so I just watched the first episode. It's basically a magic girl job, with two magical girls in it. I can't say there was particularly anything that made it stand out :/.
• Switch was okay. It's only a 2 episode OAV so I just watched the first one, though it's based on a fairly long-running manga, I believe. It also lacked any women whatsoever, though all bar one of the men are gorgeous in that androgynous way Japanese women like (the old, ugly one was clearly a bad guy). Oh - think I might have given the game away there a bit. It's female-fantasy pretty-boy stuff. It's an organised crime/undercover cop sort of job, though, so it wasn't bad, but it's not really my cup of tea, either.
• Michiko to Hatchin looked very good. I only watched the one episode as I believe it's been licensed already. Basically this is by the people that did Samurai Champloo. Now for other people I'm sure that means a lot, but I've unfortunately not got around to watching Champloo (it's one of the many series occupying a shelf) so I didn't quite know what to expect. First thing I noticed was that it's beautifully animated, and to be honest I'd be happy to watch it just for that, even if it was rubbish. Second was the great character design. As for the story - it looked like it could be awesome, but 1 ep is not enough to be certain.
• Skip Beat! was another show that was surprisingly good. It's also another show that's aimed pretty squarely at women. The plot is that this girl moves to Tokyo with this pretty-boy character who is essentially trying to become a "celebrity" (it's a little difficult to explain how Japanese entertainment is set-up - think 'manufactured acts' on all levels). She ends up supporting him, working several jobs to pay for an expensive apartment and looking after him, all in the belief that he might love her. He turns out to be a bell-end (which is pretty obvious to anyone but her), she finds out, and swears revenge. The form of her revenge is kinda why I ended up liking the show - it's just a little bit unhinged. I dunno, it's difficult to explain, but the show is like all sort of predictable (and maybe a little dull) but then it'll just throw a random curve-ball and those are why I ended up enjoying it.