Iowa and anime

[osprey_archer]

The road trip consisted of eight hours of driving on Monday, eight hours of driving on Wednesday, and eight hours of unpaid baby-sitting sandwiched in between. I can hear you all dying of envy.

No, it wasn't nearly as bad as it sounds. The kids were much less high-strung than I was at that age (the five- and seven-year-old accepted it with remarkable grace when their little sister waddled into their blanket fort and completed a mission of MASS DESTRUCTION). And they were funny. We saw a commercial for the movie Boat Trip. The five-year-old watched it and then, very solemnly, repeated the last line: "How could you think I'm gay?"

Also, the little girl looked exactly like Hina Ichigo, from Rozen Maiden.

Rozen Maiden is an anime about talking dolls with magic powers who occasionally fly through gateways into dreams, which means it's kind of like crack for me. I didn't play with dolls much as a kid (I was a teddy bear girl) but for some reason I adore stories about living breathing talking magic dolls. And they fight duels! And they have beautiful clothes! And they have anime hair, which is like a character in itself.

I've been watching anime recently in an effort to become a well-rounded person (yes, anime is an integral part of well-roundedness. Really.), so I am looking for series that are good and don't have five thousand episodes, if anyone knows anything about anime. I'm watching Rozen Maiden and I'm planning to watch Chrono Crusade, which involves a nun fighting demons in the 1920s in Chicago (I think), using the power of an interestingly inaccurate remix of Christianity and her demon buddy.

Comments

[silksieve.livejournal.com]

Did you have fun?

[anait.livejournal.com]

That many hours in the car would be tiring, but the kids sound adorable. Were there other fun out-of-the-car parts too?

Your talking dolls sound a little like the 'Indian in the Cupboard' books that aren't very PC anymore. Only in the talking magical doll part, not the un-PC part!

Sally likes anime, and she got me to watch two that I love a lot. 'Samurai Champloo' and 'Cowboy Bebop' are both by Shinichiro Watanabe and short-- each are one story-arc of about 20 episodes or so. There's lots of good character and story stuff, humour and angst, and they're very pretty to watch and listen to as well.

[team-fen.livejournal.com]

Ack! I always hit the wrong leave-a-comment button on your journal. I don't know why.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Maybe you're just special? :p

I read the Indian in the Cupboard books, too. I remember enjoying the first few a lot, but then the author tried to explain how the cupboard worked and things went rapidly downhill. Why do authors feel like they need to give an origin story to the inexplicably fantastic things in their stories? It's almost always disappointing.

Dorothea had a dog half as large as I am (no, really. It was a Great Pyrenees (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyrenees)) and a really awesome hammock swing, and we watched Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood, so it was a good time.

She also lent me the Twilight books, which defy the ability of adjectives to describe and are practically a post on their own.

[anait.livejournal.com]

You are probably right. :p

Great Pyrenees!

I just watched the Twilight trailer, and it was pretty indescribable, so I can only imagine the difficulty in trying to talk about the books.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Is it just me, or is Edward strangely unattractive in the Twilight trailer? I think it's his pallor--he's not just pale, he's positively chalky.

But I couldn't quite wrap my mind around how attractive he was supposed to be in the books, either, because Bella kept describing him as "marble-like." As in, ice cold and hard as concrete. How is cuddling with that remotely attractive, no matter how beautiful he is?

[anait.livejournal.com]

Mm. Yes. Which is strange, because the actor is apparently the one who played Cedric Diggory, and he looked fine then. Concrete, marble and ice are not attractive traits either. Ick. Neither is the name Edward, or immortal love with a vampire. They would get so sick of each other after the first hundred years! Maybe it's just me. Clearly there's an audience who thinks that kind of thing is great.

Speaking of trailers, the 'Half-Blood Prince' looked surprisingly good. It makes the book look better and smarter than it was, stressing the whole Voldemort-is-Hitler thing, and best of all, there were no incompetent child-actors!

Also: Daniel Craig!! That, I will gladly pay money to go see in the theater.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I've clearly seen the wrong Half-Blood Prince trailer; the one I saw was mostly "Tom Riddle was creepy even as a child," which isn't really a historical parallel with Hitler. I can't find Daniel Craig anywhere in the film either. :(

[anait.livejournal.com]

Maybe I was getting ahead of myself, but with the young kid, it was the stuff along the lines of "The thought that I can use magic to get back at the people who are mean to me is exciting" and the delusions of grandeur, as well as the complete absence of all the awful teen actors, that made the movie look like a very different take on that sixth book (which I remember as mostly very fluffy). It was completely different than the 'see child actors attempt to look awed, gleeful and determined while sparkly music plays' kind of thing for the other movies. Although I will miss Mike Newell's random boys jumping out of trees in this one!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I did. It wasn't that we did anything that is fun in a movie-style vacation way, but I enjoyed just being around them. Emma and Dorothea got along really well, which was a relief.

Also, there's something just inimitably ironic about being so absorbed in a discussion of immortality that you nearly merge into a truck.

[silksieve.livejournal.com]

eee! well, I'm glad everyone is safe and sound and cheers for getting along!