Manga Update

Time for some comments on the manga and anime I've been looking at this past year. 

For a long time, I've been trying to find an English translation of From up on Poppy Hill. And I finally found it. I knew it wouldn't be as good as the movie. but it was pretty flat. It was all the same shoujo manga I've seen before. 

I watched the Basara anime many years ago, and I don't really remember it. But I've been enjoying the manga. I liked the concept of someone pretending to be the chosen one, to protect her people. I was a little disappointed (spoilers) that she really was the actual chosen one, but I'm invested enough now to want to continue reading. I may go back and try the anime again. 

My Hero Academia is finally over. Honestly, the only reason I finished the manga is because it's one of the only popular ones I was following, and I wanted to recognize references when I go to Fanime, or something. I stopped being excited about it a while ago. Part of that is because they do something that's really disgusting - making a pervert character who's supposed to be funny. 

I watched the first couple seasons of Spy x Family. I'm not sure what to make of it yet. It's supposed to be funny, but I can't help thinking of how traumatized this little girl will be from her childhood. 

I finished Barefoot Gen. Wow, that was probably the heaviest manga I've ever read. It's definitely worth reading, because it is based on real events. The author survived the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. Other parts of the manga are from other survivors. 

I kept reading Shaman King, though I'm not sure why. It stopped very abruptly, in the middle of the ending arc. I think it has since been completed, but I don't care enough to find it. It was interesting at first, but ended up baffling. Like when one character nearly killed another, just so he could cut him open and examine his insides. And then the others tell the character that survived to suck it up and deal with it, so the almost-murderer can be on their team. Yeesh. There were a lot of things that made me go "why?" 

I read Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card. It was nostalgic. But the story style no longer interests me. I think nostalgia is why I appreciate the first two Cardcaptor series. There were some cool new card designs though. 

And I've been watching the new Kenshin anime! I'm so glad they're redoing it without all the useless filler. 

There are a few manga I tried, but gave up on after a few chapters. I won't bother to mention them. 

Fictional Fiction

After I read Carry On, I realized that it was a fanfiction. But not what your'e thinking. Rowell, the author, wrote a novel about a college girl. In that novel, the protagonist has a book series that she loves, and she writes fanfiction about it. Rowell liked these fictional books so much that she ended up turning them into real novels. Three of them! So it's almost like the author created fanfiction of her own work. 

Right now, I need to find some books for my characters to read. I think I may end up doing the reverse of what Rowell did - taking story ideas I have, and making them into books that my characters read. 

Long ago, I even made notes on some classic literature that might exist in their world. So I could tap into that. 

And one of the characters likes manga. I had a random idea for a comic strip, but only a couple vague ideas. And a title. So maybe I'll have that be the manga that he reads. It's not like I'm ever gonna draw a proper manga. 

I'm kinda tempted to wait to figure out these books. But if I figure them out now, I can possibly work their themes into the rest of the plot. 

Childhood Fantasia

It's time to ramble some about Fantasia. I loved it growing up. Or, I should say, I loved parts of it. 

The opening number was always strange to me. When I watch it now, I think, "so, this is what an animator imagines when they listen to classical music." 

I still love the part with the fairies. Decorating spiderwebs with dewdrops, painting fall colors on the leaves, tracing frost patterns on the water. I loved the mushrooms. Especially the smallest one. I had no concept stereotypical portrayals back then, but it's amazing how many of them there were in kids movies. More on that later. 

Now when I think of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, I think of the live-action movie. The ending used to scare me as the kid. But only the part where the Sorcerer whacks Mickey with his broom. Not the part with the axe. I guess I was a weird kid. I also just learned that the Sorcerer's design was based on Walt Disney! 

I loved the dinosaurs too. Though not the violent parts so much. The Rite of Spring, the accompanaying music by Stravinski, actually caused riots when it was first performed. The music and visuals were too intense for the audience of the time. Stravinski was alive when Fantasia was animated. He liked it at first, but apparently changed his mind part-way through. I wonder what happened. 

I thought the Soundtrack was cute. Now I just watch it and am interested to see how someone visualized the sound of a flute. 

I suppose the Greek mythology must have been my favorite. Cute colorful unicorns and winged horses, pretty centaurs, and the idea that you could drink a rainbow. Now it's somewhat tainted by the zebra centaurs. I love the idea of zebra centaurs. But gee, what a coincidence that the only dark-skinned characters are servants. My cousin told me that her copy of Fantasia had edited the zebra cantaurs out. But it was on the version I grew up with, and on the DVD I later got. 

The DVD has more footage of the musicians and narrator. But due to an issue with the audio, the narrator's voice is different. That still confuses the heck out of me. I haven't been able to find a DVD with the narrator I grew up with. So if I watch it, I watch my old copy. 

And Dionysus is another example of Disney drunkenness. There was quite a lot of that in early Disney Movies. Everything from Dumbo to Robin Hood. 

Also, did they purposefully have cross-dressing ostriches? Because all of those ostriches are boys. Girl ostriches are brown. Heheh. 

Usually as a kid, I stopped the movie at this point. Bald Mountain was too intense for me to enjoy. And Ave Maria wasn't interesting enough. 

Fantasia wasn't successful when it came out. It was too experimental. But it had a big impact on a lot of people. Enough so that they made a sequel. I also love Fantasia 2000. My favorites as a kid were Pines of Rome, and especially Firebird Suite. Which is still true. 

But now I'm super impressed with the way they plotted Rhapsody in Blue. There are a ton of cameos in that piece, from the Disney staff to George Gershwin himself. 

Fantasia was the first time I'd heard many of these songs. I still can't listen to them without picturing the animations. Even now that I've performed some of those songs.  

Changing Roles

Sometimes it's fun to notice when two actors star in multiple, unrelated movies together. 

I've seen a couple times where two unrelated movies have the same hero, and the same villain. Like Wolverine and Magneto, who are then the hero and villain in Flushed Away (by the creators of Wallace and Gromit). 

Then there was a boyfriend and girlfriend in one movie, who played a brother and sister in another movie. 

A little weirder is when actors play a parent and child in one movie, and in the next one, they're a married couple. Which I can't help as seeing as another common Hollywood example of men having much younger wives. 

Actually, in my favorite season of Doctor Who, Jenny is the Doctor's daughter. And the two actors ended up getting married in real life. But the Doctor's age isn't easy to tell from his appearance. 

I found a very sweet example in Once Upon a Time. Snow White and Prince Charming are actually married in real life! 

When you're trying to be accurate

I want my stories to feel real when it comes to forests and mountains and animals. 

I was looking for something that one character could point out to another, to help them realize how beautiful the forest is. I landed on a display that hummingbirds do, which involves a high-speed dive out of the sky. I started writing it, and it felt perfect. Then I realized that male hummingbirds do that to show off to the females. They wouldn't be doing that in autumn, well after the nesting season....

So, back to square one. It would help if I'd ever actually gotten to walk through those forests. Hopefully soon. During the right season... 

Cinema Therapy, and Pirates

Cinema Therapy did a show which happened to be near a family friend's house. It sounded fun, so I got a ticket and met the friends for dinner. Then I walked over to the venue. There was a nice bookstore next door, so I killed some time in there. 

There was a meet-and-greet before the main event, but I didn't have a ticket for that. I did get a seat near the front of the audience though. 

Alan came out early, to check something on the stage. He tried to be inconspicuous, but everyone cheered. He flapped his hands, trying to get everyone to quiet down. It didn't work. 

The event was to analyze Will and Elizabeth's relationship in Pirates of the Caribbean. It turns out that both Alan and I aren't enamored with the sequels. For me, that's especially because all of the characters become so deceitful. It was fine when it was just Jack. 

Jono explained Will and Elizabeth's relationship in an intriguing way. He says that they end in a good place, after they work through some tough patches. Now I want to watch the sequels again. Alan said how good the effects are in movies 2 and 3. I recently watched the show about Industrial Light and Magic, which talked about what went into making them. I always loved the octopus design of Davy Jones (When I was watching those actor interviews last year, I learned that the actor was so pissed when he realized he'd have to do two whole movies wearing cgi dot suits. He considered quitting). 

Alan and Jono talked about how there isn't an "opportune moment" to tell someone that you love them. Though some moments are better than others. For example, when Elizabeth gets engaged to save Will, that's not a the opportune moment. She's going to marry someone else. Though they finally do seize the moment when they ask Barbosa (their formal mortal enemy) to marry them. Yeah, I'm not thrilled when they bring people back from the dead. But he is a freaking awesome pirate. 

They pointed out what parts of the relationship didn't work. For example, Will is upset when he finds out that Elizabeth kept his necklace all those years. She did it to protect him, but it was also the only thing he had from his father. Instead of discussing why he was upset, he slammed his hand on the table, and scared Elizabeth away. To be fair, people don't often discuss things rationally when they're upset. 

In a later movie, Elizabeth lies to Will. She didn't want anyone to know that she killed Jack-or at least sent him to some weird sandy crab land? She was trying to keep Will from bearing that burden. He said that he was bearing the burden. He just didn't know what it was. Keeping secrets from people doesn't spare them. They may be just as upset, because they don't what's going on. 

There are a couple points in the sequels where it seems that Elizabeth is attracted to Jack.  There was a whole discussion about an implied love triangle. Which they didn't like, and I don't either. 

Jono was getting over a cold. The lady in front of me asked if he wanted a cough drop. She tossed it just as they dimmed the lights. "It's dark!" Jono cried, trying to catch a small thing he couldn't see. He picked it up and tried to open it. "How warm are your pockets?" He exclaimed, as he tried to peel the wrapper from the gooey cough drop. The lady, embarrassed, said that it had been sitting next to her laptop. Poor Jono tried for a while to extract that cough drop. I'm not sure if he ever succeeded. Much later, someone threw one onto the stage. Jono didn't even notice until someone pointed it out. This one was less sticky, at least. 

At one point, someone blew their nose so loudly that Jono thought it was a chainsaw. Wow. 

After their talk, they opened it up for Q&A. For some reason, I don't usually have questions at these talks. I wish I could think of some. 

The first "question" was a lady with a passionate argument about why Prince Eric doesn't suck. Alan isn't a fan of that character. The lady pointed out that Eric saved his dog from a burning ship. Alan hollered how that was the rock-bottom level of human decency, and that dogs are better than people. Well, I can't disagree with that. She had more arguments. Alan didn't seem particularly convinced, but he kind of conceded to her at the end. The lady did make some good points. Though I agree with Alan that The Little Mermaid could have had more solid characters. 

One lady asked them if they could sign a shirt for her friend, who couldn't come because a fire had hit their town. She choked up, and Alan and Jono came down to hug her. 

I think that was the best thing about the evening - being in a room full of fun people, who were so supportive when something happened. 

One lady made a great case for Elizabeth's character. She said that when Elizabeth first met Will, she said, "I'm watching over you, Will." And she continues doing that for all three movies. It's Will that goes off to try to prove that he's not bad, just because his dad's a pirate. 

Then another lady came up and said that "love triangles" are pointless. Because there's three points, but where's the third side? Everyone burst out laughing at the implications. 

Someone else asked about feelings toward an ex, or toward a boyfriend's ex. Jono said a great line: "Comparison is the thief of joy." 

When the event ended, I went up to the stage and tried to say how much I learned from them. Except I don't think I worded it very well. Either they didn't hear me over the sounds of everyone leaving, or they didn't understand what I meant. They both looked very confused, even as they nodded. So, when I got home I commented on their latest video (Wicked!), thanking them for the show. They gave me a nice reply. 

From A to B

I finally started working on my Beauty and the Beast story. Properly, anyway. I'd written out a few scenes that were clear in my head. Now I'm trying to write the rest of it. I wanted to finish editing my short stories, but this feels like it should be more of a priority for now. 

The perpetual dilemma of writing: to know the beginning and the end, but not how you get between the two. 

This is how most of my stories unfold, really. Mostly I need to figure out how the "beast" opens up his shell. But also, how to make it feel like their relationship is real and not something where Kristoff would say, "you got engaged to a guy you just met?" (This story will span at least a couple months, but still)

Gotta remember that this is just a first draft It doesn't need to be perfect. I just have to figure out basics. But it always feels like so much to juggle at this stage in writing XD