What?

Kannagi, “Jin, Lovestruck”

Well, it’s the end of the first (and possibly only, but more on that in a minute) season of Kannagi, and not much has changed.  Jin and Nagi get their relationship straightened out (okay, well, maybe straightened out isn’t the best term for it, because it’s still kind of tangled, but at least Nagi has returned to the Mikuriya residence and gotten the whole “I have no clue who I am or what I’m doing” business off her very flat chest).  Nagi’s back at home, all’s right with the world.

In all my Googling, I haven’t been able to find any reference to a second season of Kannagi.  Certainly, the series needs another thirteen episodes to deal with all the loose threads in the story, but between mangaka Takenashi Eri’s health problems and the fanboy-rage backlash over Nagi’s ex (don’t get me started…just don’t), it would not surprise me if there wasn’t.

Still, I’m hoping.  In all ways but one, I really like Kannagi.  The characters, major and minor, are interesting, engaging, fun.  The art style is great.  Voice acting: I can’t understand what they’re saying without the subtitles, but I can hear the emotions, and it sounds good.  Music: not bad, but not distractingly ungood; nothing really stands out like the Pillows’ songs in FLCL or any Kanno Yoko soundtrack (Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, many, many others).  Everything is top-notch, except for…the storyline.

The story is the one part of Kannagi I’m not too thrilled with: if it was a slice-of-life series, with no grand arc, I could accept a bunch of marginally related stories.  But Kannagi isn’t a slice-of-life series.  It has the first half of a grand story arc…but not the second half, and even in the first half seemingly significant elements are introduced and flat-out ignored (they toyed with the impurity-bugs for, what?  Two episodes?).  Kannagi really, really needs a second season.  Ending it here would be like ending Neon Genesis Evangelion after only the first thirteen episodes…uh, wait a second, that’s not really a good comparison…nevermind that.  Is it weird that this series has many times reminded me of Evangelion?  I mean, they are nothing alike.

I hope they aren’t, anyways.  Of course it could turn out that Nagi and Zange merge like Gendo Ikari and [lengthy, off-topic, grammar-free, and slightly hysterical ranting about the, oh, how shall we say it? unique imagery in The End of Evangelion deleted to preserve the public's sanity] and then Tsugumi looks up and tells Jin how disgusting he is.  I mean, if that shit happens, I’m swearing off both anime and orange juice forever!

Ahem.  Well, now that I got that out of my system, back to the subject at hand.  What was I talking about?  Oh, yeah, Kannagi.  I liked the anime, but the story isn’t finished, and might not be finished.  At the very least, I hope the manga comes stateside, but that might be just as unlikely.

Kannagi, “Truly Ephemeral”

A brief summary of the episode: Nagi’s gone, and Jin misses her.

Actually, even if I wrote a detailed summary of the episode, “Nagi’s gone, and Jin misses her” would sum it up pretty well.  Nothing happened in this episode…again, leaving me with the fear that this series, which started off so strong, will end in an incredibly forgettable fashion.  There is one episode to go, and they are going to need to pack that episode full of story arc resolution in order to rescue the series.

I mean, think of the loose threads: the bugs/impurities, that person Nagi mentioned she liked back in the second episode, the fire at the Kannagi Shrine, Nagi and Zange’s origins, the Hakua girl Zange is possessing, Nagi and Jin reconciling their differences…either the final episode is going to be a whirlwind and seem rushed, or not all loose threads will be tied up.

I guess I’ll find out next week. I just hope this series doesn’t end leaving me hating it.

Sports Suck; These Are Exceptions

I’m not too particularly fond of sports.  Basketball, baseball, football (either version), hockey, stuff like that: their fans can have them.  Not my thing.  Of course, there are some athletic events that I will go out of my way to watch: The World’s Strongest Man, and Sasuke/Kunoichi (known stateside as Ninja Warrior).

Take the biggest, most ridiculously amazingly incredibly strong guys in the world, and have them lift, throw, carry, and drag extremely heavy objects.  It sounds terribly silly, and it is, but it’s just so awesome. This is the extreme of human performance—there is some technique to the events, but unlike in powerlifting or weightlifting, brute strength is more important. Take, for example, this video clip from the 2008 WSM in West Virginia. Just for the record, the plane is a C-130 Hercules (oh, how fitting a choice), and empty they weigh 83,000 pounds.

Now for the other extreme.  The Sasuke and Kunoichi events are essentially obstacle courses, demanding agility, balance, and grip strength, and designed to be so difficult that it is not unusual when nobody manages to complete it—one hundred people compete in each event; in seven Kunoichi competitions, the course was completed only three times (all by Miyake Ayako); in twenty-one Sasuke competitions, the course has been completed only twice (by Akiyama Kazuhiko and Nagano Makoto).  Winners make these events look easy, but the long list of those who went in the muddy waters of Midoriyama stand as a testament to the difficulty of the challenge.

Long range chainsaw

Is there anything hotter than a hot chick with a mini gun?

Predictions? Okay, 3, 2, 1, Let’s Jam!

20th Century Fox is working on making a live-action motion picture adaption of Cowboy Bebop, with Keanu Reeves cast as Spike Spiegel.

How do I think this will turn out?  Here are my predictions, some serious, some not, numbered for no particular reason, as they are listed in no particular order:

The Mecha Monogatari, Book Two, Chapter II

If you’re going to be sick, keep the faucet running. That way you won’t clog the drain.

During basic training, we spent virtually all day doing simulations, but it wasn’t like we were synced up the whole time. Usually, we would start with a short mission briefing where the instructor would tell us what the simulation would be like and what would be expected of us; then we would run the simulation, which would take about ten or fifteen minutes; and after that the instructors would debrief us on our performance for thirty to forty-five minutes. Finally, we would take a break before repeating the process.

Not so here at the Academy. Benkei-sensei’s pre-simulation briefing had not lasted about five minutes, then he had dismissed us to change, for the first time, into our pilot’s jumpsuits, replete with tactical boots, gloves, and helmets that felt like they weighed more than any one-and-a-half kilograms. The class reconvened in one of the Academy’s large simulator rooms, which featured the newer full-motion simulator pods.

Message Movie − Message = ?

Really, what do you have when you take the message out of a message movie?

Some spoilers follow (like a movie based on a sixty-eight-year-old story can be spoiled, but just in case, you have been warned…)

I saw The Day the Earth Stood Still yesterday, and I was less than impressed.  There was the requisite quota of eye-candy special effects, but not much else.  The story: Klaatu comes to Earth to decide whether or not humanity needs to be eliminated to preserve Earth’s ecosystem, decides humanity’s got to go, Gort starts eliminating everything, then Klaatu changes his mind, stops Gort, and leaves, the end.

Kannagi, “But It’s Vague”

And, slowly, the plot begins to thicken.

Jin, frustrated by the injuries and indignities he has had to suffer on Nagi’s behalf, demands that the goddess answer some questions about the impurities they have been struggling to purify all this time all but ignored since the third episode, but Nagi cannot give a clear answer.  It seems that Nagi doesn’t even really know the reason why she is doing what she is doing—when Jin looks in the school library for information about the enshrined deity that Nagi claims to be, he finds not only that there is no information on said deity, but also that Nagi had been searching for that same information, too.

For some odd reason, during Nagi’s bout of introspection, I found myself thinking of the last few episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion (I suddenly had a vision of Nagi hugging Jin, whereupon he turned into Tang…at least none of the young ladies were comotose…) Still, not a lot has been learned, and more questions have been raised. I was a little worried after last week’s nothing-to-see-here-move-along episode, but I’m once again interested in seeing how Kannagi turns out.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

The first three X-Men movies were good: there was some great acting (Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan stand out in my mind), enjoyably over-the-top action sequences (most of which involved Wolverine), and social commentary that was no more anvilicious than necessary (the minority-rights themes, especially). Oh, and I liked the way Magneto, one of the major villainous-types, is portrayed, not merely as a gratuitously evil-for-evil’s-sake Chaotic Evil caricature, but an individual who actually has something of an understandable reason why he’s doing what he’s doing.

In any case, I’m looking forward to this new X-Men movie, due out on May 1st. I’m just glad that it is going to have Gambit in it, not because I know anything about the character, but just so that the “THEY SHUD HAEV GAMBIT INSTEAD OF WOLFERINE! WOLFEREEN SUCKS!!!!!1!” fanboys can chill.