Monthly Archives: July 2009

When the seagulls cry… (I)

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…there are no survivors.

The announcement of the Umineko anime came with both excitement and dread. Finally, everyone will be able to see why I won’t shut up about how great Umineko is! Oh no, is it even possible to condense that much complexity and text into a two-cour anime series? Awesome, we’ll see the murders in animation! I sure hope the voice actors aren’t terrible.

And with that, Episode I is done. How did it fare?

Art

One thing Higurashi did not have was very good art. It kind of helped the crazy-faces when the art for the crazy-faces was off, but that’s about the most charitable thing I can say about it. While it’s still Studio Deen and it’s still LOLOL at times, the art is a lot better than Higurashi and while it isn’t spectacular like it would be from a top studio, it’s adequate.

The character designs are one point where I don’t understand the mind of the VN reader. Well, I guess I do understand, since they’re pretty much occupied at pointing out every single inconsistency with the VN. Sorry guys, the uglier character designs from the game probably have more to do with Ryukishi07′s terrible drawing than it being his exact vision for the characters.

Sound

I’m pretty surprised that the voice cast has pulled through. I remember looking at the cast initially and while it was pretty solid, I had a few misgivings. My biggest concern was with Rie Kugimiya as Shannon, who pulled it off by not doing her Shana/Louise/Nagi/Taiga/all the same/URUSAI voice like I was worried she would. Next was Yui Horie as Maria, who manages to sound like an annoying kid and become sufficiently creepy, so good job there. Finally, there was Daisuke Ono, who was a bit shaky at the beginning, but was much better for the serious parts, where it really matters.

The other big concern was with music. A lack of stuff like goldenslaughterer or worldend_dominator would instantly break Umineko for a lot of people. It turns out that they got almost all of the music into the anime, even something excellent that will be happening early in the next arc. The music could have been a bit louder though. The thing that I felt was missing was the absolutely dominating role that the music played. The first time I heard goldenslaughterer, the dread and fear I felt coming from the speakers was pretty palpable.

Story

This is where the VN readers are split. I consider it a good adaptation because the division of VN readers is almost even. I never would expect Deen to be able to adapt Umineko perfectly to win over most of the VN readers. On the other hand, the fact that there are a large number of VN readers who are satisfied with the adaptation means that they’ve done well.

What Deen has included in the anime is adequate for the Umineko story. Anyone who would make any major changes to what’s there doesn’t understand the difference between visual novels and anime and will never be satisfied.

Yeah, it’s unfortunate that we didn’t have the gigantic scene at the airport and on the boat at the beginning. It’s too bad that we didn’t have the exposition about all of the characters, their backgrounds, and their motivations going into the first twilight. It was useful to know, but it was also boring as hell. Even reading it, I would be ready to stop if I didn’t know what was going to be coming later. And you guys want to put this into an anime episode and expect people unfamiliar with Umineko to stick around?

Beyond that, what did we miss? We get most of the character relationships anyway. The only thing that wasn’t clear was how much of an arrogant jerk Gohda is. Everyone’s basic personalities and motivations are covered. Oh no, we don’t find out Jessica has asthma! Great, we’ll find out next chapter, when it’s important. We might have skipped out on the long introduction, but all of those details end up getting beaten into you anyway when they become important. If there are any plot-altering omissions, then I haven’t seen them.

To me, the biggest adaptation challenge was the tea parties and the meta-world. These scenes are extremely important and are where the real story takes place. I was pretty surprised to see the tea parties adapted pretty much as I’d remembered them. I expected them to cut out the stuff where they were talking casually about how it sucked that they died, but even that made it in. And the ???? made it in too. I was super happy to see Bernkastel there.

So that solidified my satisfaction with the adaptation. It’s definitely not perfect, but I am perfectly fine with the direction it’s going in. I have no huge grievances with it that would make me hesitate to suggest it to someone. In fact, I’ve been trying to get everyone to watch it. And with that, I’m looking forward to what Episode II will be bringing to the table.

Kara no Kyoukai 6 – Oblivion Recording

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I got every Kalafina release I could get soon after finishing Kara no Kyoukai 5. This means that I’d been listening to fairytale for at least the past half year. Having done that, I noticed the use of the song a lot more in the BGM, especially the opening section with the chanting.

This chapter was a weird one. It’s a lot less dark than any of the other chapters and the focus is on Azaka. I think I’m going to have to read the novel now to figure out what this chapter was all about. I’ve heard it being described as more comedic. No creepiness, no Shiki being crazy, and lots of Azaka prancing around being moe. While still entertaining, it’s not anything like the grand, two-hour epic, Paradox Spiral.

Oblivion Recording also still delivers in the production department. It’s still got the same great art and animation and music. The fight scene in this movie is worth seeing. Yeah, we’ve seen a magic fight before, but Azaka’s is nothing like Touko’s. It’s really pretty, super flashy and colourful, and is nothing like Shiki’s usual knife-fights.

I guess I would have liked something more in line with what I was expecting, but oh well. Time to buckle down for the last long wait for Rakkyo 7.

Light novel talk: Suzumiya Haruhi

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It hadn’t occured to me until a week before the new episode of Haruhi aired that I could have just read the light novel translations on Baka-Tsuki instead of waiting three years for the new anime. In fact that us usually what I do for most other anime: watch as much as is available and go to other sources, usually the manga.

The problem with light novels is that they’re a lot harder to translate. For anime and manga, there’s really only dialogue and whatever signs are on screen. Light novels however, are entirely text. In anime and manga, if you’re a bad translator, you have visual cues to help the viewer understand your crappy translating. For light novels, the reader’s understanding rests entirely in the text, and therefore, your translation.

As a result, light novels take a much longer time to translate. They’re usually far behind their anime adaptations, usually because they only get popular after they get an anime. It’s only in instances like Haruhi where the publisher screws around with the audience for three years that we get complete translations of the volumes that are available ahead of the anime.

The light novel volumes are arranged so that they’re either a series of short stories or they contain one plot arc. For instance, the anime animated one volume that contained a plot arc, Melancholy, while all the others were short stories from other volumes. For the most part, the important things happen in the arc volumes with some incidental stuff happening in the shorts.

The most interesting thing about the light novels is the focus on Haruhi is lessened and we get to see the other characters grow and do stuff. There are entire plot arcs where Haruhi is not the focus. Sure, she’s the focus and reason of the SOS-dan and weird stuff still happens because of her, but she’s not always the one being examined and she’s not always the one who has problems.

It becomes clear Haruhi isn’t just a bunch of random stories about the SOS-dan. Stringing the plot arcs together, you can see a narrative being woven. Some things that make this clear are the conflicts that come up. The anime doesn’t make it too clear that the Organization, Time Travellers, and Data Entity aren’t necessarily allied and that there are tensions between Yuki, Mikuru, and Itsuki at first. Eventually, they become friends through the SOS-dan, but it’s not until the appearance of opposing factions that their superiors officially start working together.

Each character has their own struggles. Yuki, created to interface with humans, wants to become more human. Mikiru, who has information withheld from her by her superiors and relies on Kyon, wants to become less useless. Itsuki, who used to be normal until he got his esper powers, begins to have trouble keeping up his facade and wants to be normal again.

The later volumes of the light novels are especially fun. I mentioned that the short stories contain incidental information. This doesn’t mean they’re pointless. They contain some character development. More importantly, they contain obscure details that the author sets up to use in later, more important plot arcs. I really enjoy that because random details come back to fix problems later on. The author doesn’t forget what happened or what he’s set up from earlier.

Is it worth reading the novels now that the second season is reality? Yes, especially since the last few volumes won’t be animated, and it’s these that contain a lot of the meta-conflict. But, if you’re enjoying the anime, you might want to wait until it’s over before you dive in so you don’t spoil yourself. because lol Endless Eight.

Visual novel talk: Ever 17

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I was sucked into playing Ever 17 by the folks at the Penny Arcade forums anime thread. Basically, someone found the game at a Circuit City or something and rescued it from the bargain bin. Since then, a few more people weighed in on it and some picked it up. From the general discussion and others’ opinions I’ve been promised that I would shit bricks.

I’ve gotta say, Ever 17 is another fine example of taking advantage of the visual novel format. My first brush with this sort of trickery was with Clannad and it’s light orb shenanigans.

I feel like the order that I did the arcs had some bearing on my impressions. I went Sara, You, Sora, then Tsugumi. So I did both of Kid’s paths before doing both of Takeshi’s. You could imagine my surprise the first time I went through one of Takeshi’s routes after doing all of Kid’s. I think that going in this order made it more obvious that something didn’t quite add up.

When taken as a whole, each arc seems really strange. I’m not entirely sure what the point of Sora’s arc was. The cloning stuff with You was really weird. I guess You’s arc was really about the Third Eye stuff. The Kid I = fake Takeshi was also a lolwut. The whole reveal with Coco and Blick Winkel didn’t feel like it was a resolution for me and it felt more like it came out of nowhere.

So I guess my favourite arcs were Tsugumi’s and Sara’s. All of their weird medical anomalies made some sort of sense. The Cure and Tief Blau and infrared vision and Leiblich’s sinisterness were a lot more interesting than the crazy Third Eye stuff. The relationships that were developed in those arcs also made more sense and were more enjoyable.

I guess my problem with Blick Winkel is that it seems like it’s supposed to make complete sense but it doesn’t quite fit in with the other stuff like the diseases and the exploration of what living is. Compared to light orbs and Hinamizawa syndrome, Blick Winkel doesn’t feel like it’s a part of the framework they’ve set up.

Overall, a lot of it is really good and a lot of it is really ridiculous. That and pharmaceutical companies are evil.

Waterloo: Hey guys, I can use Illustrator too

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So it looks like my school is going through another major bout of rebranding. Since I enjoy being a pretend graphic designer (in between when I’m being a pretend political analyst and a real weeaboo), I took a look at what they’re trying to do.

The most interesting thing is that there was a more minor version of this happening not too long ago. It was essentially a style guide that mandated the use of two official fonts (Eidetic Neo and Solex) and outlined when to use them. It also had some stuff about faculty-specific marks. The biggest change was to the school’s logo, which changed the colour slightly and used the fonts that were being used in published materials instead.

This new rebranding effort looks a lot larger than the previous one and looks like it’ll be a significant departure from the current UW identity. The rationale behind this entire thing is that Waterloo is known for vague strengths like innovation, but not specific ones. Personally, I don’t see how rebranding will help that.

So there’s going to be a sneak peek at what the new branding is going to look like. The actual redesigned logo is not going to be used, but the elements and motifs are showed off in the banner that they put up online. Apparently, each of those is paired with an alternate design. I’ll have to wait until September or something so I can take a look at the pairs before I can say anything about those, but the black banner itself gives a few things to note.

The use of Gotham is interesting, mostly because of its use in recent history. Most people will not be able to unsee it once I point out that this is the font for the Obama campaign. In fact, the font weight used is about the same and they’re also doing the all caps thing. It’s really different from both of the fonts that they’ve been using for the past while.

The other thing is the colour use. Apparently, each faculty gets its own colour. The danger seems like it’ll be that no single one of those colours will be identified with Waterloo and that none of them will be recognized as the colour of a particular faculty like they’re supposed to be. I mean, we all know that pink is for Mathematics, but what are all the other ones? It is a mystery. The other problem is that I’m not sure that the other faculties have strong associations with a particular colour like Mathematics does. That makes the connection between colours and faculties a lot harder.

The biggest and most worrying change is probably the logo. Based on the direction that the other elements are going, there’s a good chance that the coat of arms might not survive. How would they make that fit in with all of the other funky colours they’re trying to shoehorn in?

I wouldn’t have tried to incorporate all six colours into one piece. If they were hellbent on mapping colours to faculties, I would have kept black as the primary colour, gold as secondary, and one faculty colour for tertiary. Keeping black and gold as the school colours would have been better than trying to associate six new colours, not all of which will appear together all the time, as Waterloo.

Update

Literally seconds after I hit the publish button, I find this:
UW logos

Well, thanks for ruining my careful analysis, Waterloo. Anyway, if this is true, I really don’t know what to say. It is pretty much the worst thing ever.