Some Stuff I Noticed

Random thoughts.

• Anyone notice a strong similarity between the manga Kurohime and Bayonetta? Yeah, except for the "turns into a little kid" part, Bayonetta's just Kurohime with glasses for added moe. Which is not to say I don't like Bayonetta (I hate the type of game it is, but genuinely feminine badass women are thin on the ground, and I'll even acknowledge one who's in a game I'd rather not play).


• So the film critic Christian Toto had a column last year about how a crack about Palin in a movie, though largely unobjectionable (and actually, fairly funny in context), was distracting. And one of the commenters said

  And who else should the best pick for laughs than Sarah Palin! She’s, after all, the woman who flitted from college to college (4!) to earn a single BA degree, but wants to be seen as Mrs. Know All…

  I don't personally think Palin is a genius myself (though certainly no less intelligent than anyone else in politics), but hey, if you're gonna belittle other people's intelligence, make a note: it's Mrs. Know-IT-All, thinktank.


• Toto himself shall not escape my ire, however (and thus do I demonstrate that this post isn't on the theme of "women with glasses and guns"). In his recent "Summer Movie Report Card", he gave Iron Man 2 the same grade he gave the most recent Twilight movie, a B-. And he gave Get Him To The Greek a straight B.
  
  Mr. Toto, please tear up your voting card.


• So as I mentioned before, I've been watching the remastered DBZ on Nicktoon, and...I realized, Vegeta is tsundere. Not really the male variant of it, even; taking into account the conventions of fighting anime, there's no legitimate reason he doesn't yell "Urusai, urusai, urusai!" every other episode. Hell, he's even short and has a high forehead—if he had twin-tails or wavy hair, he'd fit the profile perfectly. In Super Saiyan form he's even blond.
  
  Creepy, isn't it?


• Ookami to Shichinin no Nakamatachi—The Wolf and Her 7 Friends—may well be the best thing out this season, anime-wise; it's slightly better than the anime of Nurarihyon no Mago. The "weird school club with a twist" format is pretty much de rigueur for light novels, but the twist in this one is fun, and the series has a gently wicked sense of humor I like. Plus, I'm sorry, I think narrators riffing on their own show is nearly always funny.


• In case you wonder, yes, I do watch anime online, but I also buy the stuff that's out Stateside. I figure it's no worse than TiVo/DVR/whatever-ing it, and besides, a lot of the stuff I like ain't ever gonna get a release here.
  
  Which reminds me, I hate American anime fans. Their weird tastes keep good stuff from being sold to me. Consider their worship of the false idol Haruhi Suzumiya, to the neglect of the true deity, Kyôka-sama.


• So someone, either Australian or from the British Isles somewhere, once referred to the Japanese as "Japs" on a forum I used to go to, and then was shocked when people got mad at him. Someone else said, "It's no different from calling us Scottish people 'Scots'."
  
  Good God. Actually, no, see, Scot is your tribe's name, or rather the name of the tribe whose land your ancestors stole ('Scotii' was Latin for the Irish, of whom the Highlanders were a colony; the tribal name of Lowlanders, I regret to inform them, is Angle or Saxon). The Japanese's tribal name is 'Yamato'.


• So I may be the only one who thinks the Brutes' menace in Halo 2 is undercut by the fact their species' chieftain, Tartarus, is voiced by Captain Gantu from Lilo and Stitch.


• Kevin Michael Richardson (Gantu, Tartarus, the only non-Mark Hamill Joker who's as good as Mark Hamill's Joker) is also Maurice in Penguins of Madagascar (not sure about the movies, but they're not as good anyway).
  
  I have a theory about the genesis of those penguins: I posit that they started out as seals. And, therefore, Special Ops—as in SEALs. But then someone realized penguins are infinitely superior to seals—nobody would've sat through more than three episodes of Evangelion if Misato's pet was a seal—and the rest, as they say, was history.
  
  No I have no evidence, but how much you wanna bet?