Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru (Yet the Town Turns)

Just finished watching the anime adapation of this manga by Ishiguro Masakazu, about a young girl growing up in a small neighborhood who's kind of ditzy and loves mystery novels and gets into trouble a lot.  She works at a Maid cafe with her friend Tatsuno, and it is really just a slice of life story that is sweet and funny and the anime adaptation does it justice.  I didn't think I'd like it but became an avid fan after one episode and it just ended after 12 episodes and I am so sad :(

Update on Yahoo Answers Question

I think that's it - I got 6 answers to my question - here is a screen shot:

Yahoo! Answers question about anime vs. American cartoons

My Yahoo! Avatar

Because I need to do grading I have decided to procrastinate by posting the following question on Yahoo! Answers:

What American cartoons do Japanese people like?

I'm a longtime fan of anime but I never hear about the American cartoons Japanese people like to watch - or do they like American cartoons at all? Can anybody help me answer this?

 

Haha, can you tell I C&P'd this from the website?  So, here are some of the answers I've gotten so far (there are four days to get answers to this question):

 

 

1.  Avatar the Last Airbender.

 

2.  Hello Kitty to the highest degree.

Source(s):

one of my friends is japanese.

 

3.  I heard they really like Scooby-Doo (for some odd reason)

 

4.  The original Tom and Jerry cartoons, as well as The Pink Panther's original shorts translate well overseas because there is no soundtrack to translate since the title characters remain silent through most of their adventures.
And while I can't say why The Pink Panther remains silent, Tom and Jerry never spoke in the originals because William Hanna and Joseph Barbera could never agree on what they should sound like.

 

I am totally dubious of answers 1 & 2, and answer 4 doesn't really answer the question and seems almost like speculation.  I like answer #3 the best just because it has a S-D reference and S-D is awesome so why wouldn't people around the world love Scooby-Doo?

If you've got some spurious information on this question, feel free to post on the Yahoo link, here.  I've had this question rolling around for awhile and watching Total Drama Island with DJ made me finally decide to pose this question to the Internets.

Total Drama Island

Just bought my son the complete first season of Total Drama Island from iTunes - 35-bucks!!!  Gaaa.  Did I do this because I am a super-duper mom?  NO!  It is because I am a sick mom who needed to lie on the couch and watch Total Drama Island episodes while dozing and/or coughing.

TDI is not really a show I should let the kid watch - it's for just a little bit older set (although, he's almost a 'tween' so he's in that gray area already).  He learns so much from the monsters older kids at after school, though, so it's getting harder to police what he does and doesn't know about the outer world.

Anyway, this is one of those shows I talked about in an earlier post that DJ started watching and I caught on to it and liked it as well.  I can attest to the fact that, for the most part, DJ has some pretty good taste in what cartoons he likes to watch.  I was even skeptical, early on in his choosings, about some of them - like, "Sonic the Hedgehog? Seriously?"  And then I'd get all into it and then he'd move on.  The student has surpassed the master. 

TDI is a really fun show in that era of American cartoons that has some continuity and plot progression.

DJ wants to play catch so I'll update later.

DJ picked this pic for the post - it comes from jadore_renard via fanpop

Sick Day

Darling son is home sick this morning and, for some reason, last night he decided to drag out our Speed Racer DVD's and re-watch the eps we have.  When he was little, his very first observation about Speed was that, "he looks like a girl."  But, you have to admit, he does some pretty kick-ass stuff, and his dad knows Judo.

Here's a link to the first post about Speed Racer from 2006(!), and here's one that has a youtube of the Japanese version of the theme song.

The Real Kuragehime Post

Dang, I didn't save the notes I had from the last post, after I started jotting down a few points I wanted to make about Kuragehime and then realized I'd yammered on too long about what my son and I have been up to, lately.  Well, no matter - I've thought enough about what I wanted to say.

Okay, here's a brief summary:  Tsukimi is an 18 year-old girl who moves from the southern part of Japan to Tokyo at the invitation of a group of women otaku to come live at their apartment building; Tsukimi's hope is to find work as an illustrator.  Her specialty is drawing jellyfish which comes out of her otaku devotion to jellyfish, a fascination that began with her (now dead) mother introducing her to jellyfish by taking her to see an exhibit at an aquarium.  Her mother points out that one of the jellyfish has a beautiful train like a wedding dress, and she will one day make Tsukuki such a dress.  The promise is never fulfilled as Tsukimi's mother dies prematurely from cancer.  Her comfortable, sheltered life as one of the Aman (nuns) in the retro apartment building they all live in is shaken up when she meets a cross-dressing young man named Kuranosuke.  HIJINX!

The thing I like about this anime is that it has a slice-of-life feel, but it's a slice-of-life about the otaku world.  I don't know much about trends in anime and manga right now, but I see that there is somewhat of a current running toward otaku-themed storylines, and this one is quite well-done.  It is sensitive and sympathetic to its subjects so that you immediately like these very strange women and the main protagonist from the get-go.

I also like it because it gives me some glimpse into the fact that otakus aren't just confined to anime and manga; in Kuragehime, the women who live together are only tangentially connected to the manga world through their assistance to Juon Mejiro, a nocturnal mangaka who lives in their building and is a popular BL (boy's love) artist; the Aman help her ink her drawings so that she makes her publication deadlines.  Otherwise, each of the Aman have a different proclivity; Mayaya is devoted to the Records of Three Kingdoms; Chieko is passionate about Japanese clothing and is a master kimono maker for dolls (her mother is also incidentally an otaku who pursues the Korean actor Bae Yong Joon; Banba knows everything about trains and the train system in Japan; Jiji is devoted to older men (i.e. actor Takeo Chii) and butler cafes.

I guess my third reason for liking this anime is that, quite possibly, I relate to these people very strongly.  I don't know if anyone has made comparisons between Japanese otaku and fanboys/girls in the US; I fall somewhat into the latter category, but I'm too lazy to be deemed a true fangirl by any stretch.  My husband is a rock nerd, and we haven't yet determined what kind of nerd our son will be, but a nerd he will most likely be with us as his parents.

The appearance of the cross-dressing Kuranosuke, while it is central to the storyline, is not as fascinating to me as the background details of the show; Kuranosuke helps Tsukimi save a jellyfish from dying because it has been put in a tank with an incompatible jellyfish, and this is how their strange friendship begins.  But Tsukimi and, by extension, the Aman's interaction with the outside world is the real interesting point; they live in a well-kept, older apartment building (Kuranosuke calls it "retro," which probably means it is post-WWII), and because they have an invitation-only policy they have kept out the majority of people who may not be sympathetic to their proclivities.  They call themselves nuns because no men are allowed into their isolated little world; men are not needed because the love of their individual passions sustains them.  Kuranosuke has figured this out, and so he is becoming a constant fixture, dressed as a woman, even though he is not careful about his immersion into being a woman, constantly using the male "ore" instead of the female "atai" (a common deception that is often the unraveling in gender-bender stories when it is not adhered to), much to Tsukimi's dismay.  She is nonplussed by his insistence on being her friend even though she (and the rest of the Aman) have consistently tried to dissuade him from this course, because he is a "fashionable" and therefore not suited to their lifestyle, which is decidedly the opposite of fashionable.

The development of this story then seems self-determined; inevitably, Kuranosuke will transform all of the Aman into "proper" women.  This is what annoys me the most about this storyline; each of the women are wonderful and fascinating in their own right, and somehow a cross-dressing college student needs to be involved in recreating them in the mold of appropriate female behavior.  This is already starting to happen by episode 5; it began with Tsukimi's final transformation in episode four, which culminates in a heart-touching scene between Tsukimi and Kuranosuke's brother, Shū, at an aquarium.

However, now they've got to get serious and "dress for battle," Kuranosuke tells the Aman, because their retro apartment building is being eyed for demolition and reconstruction as a high-rise hotel.  As Kuranosuke has deemed them all to be NEETS (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), they would be in trouble if their apartment building closed down; their nunnery would be broken up and cheap apartments are hard to come by in Tokyo.  At the end of Episode 5, he is beginning to remake them into contemporary ideals of womanhood; Amaya is remade in the mode of Nicole Richie and Banba, because of her untameable afro, has it concealed under a straight, blond, page-boy wig.  Kuranosuke hopes that, by this transformation, the Aman will be taken more seriously as they protest the sale and demolition of their home; it should be noted that Chieko's mother, the owner of the building, has just decided to sell it so she can pursue her interest in Korean language studies.

This also brings up the meme I've been aware of in other manga about the reconstruction of Tokyo; like many gentrification projects in cities around the world, manga storylines have consistently portrayed this tearing down and reconstruction.  The one that immediately comes to mind is Takashi Shiina's Ghost Sweeper Mikami; Mikami is an exorcist who makes money (lots and lots of money) banishing spirits who still inhabit sites that are slated for demolition or are already in the reconstruction process.  In this sense, then, Kuragehime can be viewed within this meme of new taking over the old; if the Aman are forced to leave their home, their way of life may very well come to an end, like the spirits of old buildings.  Their proclivities represent a rather old-fashioned passion for older things and the natural world, things that modern Tokyo will not abide by in its quest to reshape itself as a modern-world metropolis.  Like the spirits that Mikami exorcises from old buildings, the Aman are also an endangered species within the modern world.  Another instance where this is apparent is in Takahashi Rumiko's Inuyasha; the intersection between ancient folklore and the modern world is a constant theme.  The main characters, Kagome and Inuyasha, travel back and forth between two worlds, the ancient past and the modern present; occasionally, this line is blurred when artifacts or spirits are loosed upon the modern; in the ancient it is a common occurrence, but in the modern this is not as often seen, and final battles in the modern world in Inuyasha usually take place at construction sites.

Edit 5.5.11:  Added photo of Kuragehime characters from anime, which I got from Amal x icchan, a really cool blog that I think I'll add to a blogroll that I haven't made yet.  The piece this is connected to has a good description of the anime, and some "fun facts" as well as the ED for the anime and a photo the building the Amars home is based on. The characters in the photo are from top left to right: Kuranosuke, Shu, Amaya, Jiji, Tsukimi, Banba, Chieko, Clara

Kuragehime (Jellyfish Princess) and Belated Update

So, let's see...the last time I posted to SMC I was remarking on the death of Walter Cronkite, the voice of Benjamin Franklin on DIC's "Liberty's Kids" - I have actually been talking about this show in one of my graduate seminars this semester.  Yes, my professor thinks I'm a complete doof, now, because so far I've expressed my love of "1776, the Musical," my preference for Hall of Presidents at Disney World over real presidential history, and now my comment that one of the themes of Liberty's Kids is about the obstacles of slaves and freed black people (my seminar with this professor is looking at Antebellum slave narratives).  I think if he knew about this blog he would be rather dismayed that he had provided me with a letter of recommendation for graduate school.

Anyway, so I'm finishing my second year of grad school and then...?  The economy is so bad I'm not really sure what my next move is; I just know that I'm not continuing in the PhD program because I cannot continue teaching freshman English for $7.80 an hour.  Well, actually, I could keep doing that, but not teaching AND writing a dissertation for eleventy years. 

My son is still watching Scooby-Doo; he doesn't like the newest addition to the canon, however; It's something that Cartoon Network came out with recently (he watches cable at the G-rents').   Not having seen it, his resistance to it tells me that it either has too much real supernatural stuff going on, or it's somehow grittier than the other incarnations.  Wait, let me look for it...It's called Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (this link will take you to the CN page for the show) - it looks pretty standard issue, so I'll have to watch an ep and see if I can figure out this SD anomaly with my boy.  He's watching a lot of CN's other offerings for kids (and the Total Drama series, even though it's for a somewhat older crowd); Scooby-Doo has become a sort of mental comfort food for him, like the old Popeye and Looney Tunes cartoons were for me. 

I started this blog when my son was still little, as a way to write about my experience with reacquainting myself with the old cartoons I watched as a child, especially now that I was introducing these works to my son.  Now he's moved on to the stuff he likes but he still has an appreciation for the old Fleischer stuff and that makes me happy. 

So, I'll sit with him and watch the stuff he likes, and for the most part it's stuff I can reasonably tolerate, like Johnny Test; while it's not stuff I would go out of my way to watch on my own, I'm still appreciative that I get a chance to sample what the hip youngs are watching these days.

Anyway, so that's as much of an update I can reasonably give without getting completely boring, so I'll just move onto the next subject, which is also somewhat of an update. While my son has been blazing his own path of cartoon experience, I'm continuing down this rabbit hole of anime (and now manga) that I started up when introducing my son to some of the old anime that I watched (when it was still called Japanimation).  After I went through all of the old stuff I watched, I started looking at stuff I had never really watched but was from the same time period (and had not entered the U.S. market in any translatable way), then I moved onto new stuff.  I think the first recent anime I started watching was Bleach, and it's been all downhill from there. 

Does my obsession with Japanese animation make me otaku?  Haha, no - I've actually tried to engage otaku in online forums and was immediately tossed out, so either my online social skills are really, really bad or I just haven't gotten "it" (whatever "it" is).  I realized recently, however, that I've watched so much anime in the past couple of years that I'm getting a little jaded and can now start looking at the different offerings with a more critical eye.  So, I won't automatically obsessively watch a series if I don't like it or find it too ecchi or fan-servicey.  I guess that's a good thing?

One show I've started watching that deserves some mention is Kuragehime, and I'll continue with those thoughts in another post - I've already eaten through way too much time on this one meandering post.

Swiped the picture from Star Crossed Anime Blog