Luck is a Rice-Cake That Flies in Your Mouth / More Twisted Anime Sub-Genres / A New Job, Sort Of
Posted by erin at January 22, 2004 07:17 PMI've written three enteries in two days, so you might want to scroll down a bit to read them.
Apparently last night N. was discussing some Japanese idioms with Kerry and Takako, and this one came up: "Luck is ricecake that flies in your mouth." Good lord! Wouldn't you choke? And in what strange scenario are ricecakes flying through the air in Japan? Is luck choking at first and then good - and is it always at someone else's expense? I mean, sure its good for you, but what about the poor fellow who was going to eat that ricecake?
More Twisted Anime Sub-Genres
Last week, when I only worked two days, I watched a lot of anime. Namely, I watched the Green Green OVA and something called St. Luminous Mission High. Both were about all-girl schools. In Green Green, a group of boys moved from the country to the city to attend an all girl school on a trial basis so the school could determine if they wanted to go co-ed or not. In St. Luminous, a young man inherits the position of director of an all-girl school from his recently deceased grandfather. The young man's best friend decided to attend the school dressed in drag, but he keeps using the wrong pronouns for himself.
So both shows featured boys attending all-girl schools. And neither were as wacky and hijinks filled as one would expect from such a scenario. Green Green was fairly ordinary shojou. St. Luminous had something more interesting going on - a girl mysteriously disappears in the first episode (there is only one episode of Green Green, but St. Luminous goes on for a while). That reminded me a bit of Twin Peaks. The new boy director of the school is determined to find the missing student. There's also a nun with a crazy outfit.
What scares me is that this whole boy-attending-an-all-girl-school thing is probably another anime sub-genre. The series: I My Me Strawberry Eggs, comes to mind, but that's more Bosom Buddies, in that a male teacher dresses like a chick in order to teach, but the school he teaches at is co-ed.
I also watched the first episode of another series, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, which fits into the Phantom Thief sub-genre. Saint Tail, DNAngel, and the Man of Many Faces manga. In KKJ, like the other series listed, Jeanne is good-hearted "phantom thief" who's identity is hidden from the public. The rules of the sub-genre are like this: She only steals items to set things right, she has an informant who tells her what items need to be stolen, she always announces the date and time of her theft to the police so they can try and stop her, she wears a ridiculous outfit and uses magician (but not magical, necessarily) tricks to elude the cops, and there's a kid who's father is on the police force who's friends with Jeanne in school, but determined to stop the phantom thief - and is somehow allowed to attend stake-outs.
There are small twists in the series, but for the most part the plot is the same. In Saint Tail a girl who wants to be a nun is the informant, in KKJ the informant is a very small angel, and in DNAngel and Man of Many Faces, the parents tell the kids what to steal (although in the other two the identities are hidden from the parents as well). DNAngel also has some crap about DNA and Angels in it, and it mixes in some other genres - there's a love triangle and the protagonist has a split personality. In Man of Many Faces (based on my extensive reading of a Tokyopop sampler) the protagonist is an adorable little boy with TWO MOTHERS. They're also identical. Thank you CLAMP, for bringing the the world soft-core porn for preteens.
Saint Tale is a surprisingly good show, but what N. and myself wonder is, what is the ur-text for the phantom thief sub-genre? For example, Utena is an OK show that ripped off Rose of Versailles, which is a good show. Both are about sword-fighting girls who want to be princes and dress as such, but where Utena takes place in a crazy high school, the other series takes place in the court at Versaille before the revolution. RoV is a much better show. Likewise, as I've said before Magical Angel Creamy Mami is a pretty good girl-magically-turns-into-older-girl-who's-a-pop-star show, but ever subsequent spinoff sucks more and more.
I'm assuming Saint Tale is not the first phantom thief show, and that some really good phantom thief show predates it. I'd like to see that show.
But I'm not below wasting my time watching KKJ. She takes her powers from Joan of Arc! How crazy is that?
A New Job, Sort Of
This week I started freelance P.A. work on the commercial side of Curious. I helped out on a stop-motion show called The Wrong Coast, which is an Entertainment Tonight parody that's all shot in Canada. I think they write the scripts here. I got to watch a lot of episodes of the show. It's pretty funny stuff. Some of it is very funny. I also worked on a Crash Test Dummies toy commercial where I got to paint some electronic cells! That was exciting, although repetitive, and I didn't get to do much of it. And I got to scan some stuff for some straight-to-video Barbie movie.
There are all of these people in the other half of the company who I didn't really know before, but now I'm kind of learning their names. That's odd, as if there was this invisible wall there, but now I've crossed it.
The secretary here mocked me a little yesterday, for acting like I work here or something. I ought to have replied, "As long as they keep pretending to pay me, I'm going to keep pretending I work here," or somesuch thing.
There was a bit of stress involved in my new tasks (I still work on KND two days a week) - I mean, there's always stress in adjusting to a new job, but my managers also seemed under stress as things went a little wrong as things tend to go. I don't like not knowing what to do at work, and I don't like waiting to be given things to do... I like to come in and know what needs to be done and do it. Seems simple enough, but as a new employee this is never the case.
I hope I didn't mess up and seem like an ass to my new bosses, as I'd like to work with them again.
Comments Individual Archive Index
January 24, 2004 06:30 PM, Ivory Kitten said:
Apparently you are the daughter of a women my dad (Michael young) works with...erm. Hallo ^^;; nice layout, I don't know much about Prince of Tennis but Waya (i think that's who it is) seems to be a funny character.
January 25, 2004 01:12 AM, Erin said:
Yeah, I know your dad.
Prince of Tennis is a crappy show, that character is Waya, from Hikaru No Go. HNG is the best sports anime, possibly ever.
January 26, 2004 04:00 PM, Erin said:
Heheh... but now I just changed the background to something even cuter.
January 29, 2004 09:20 PM, said:
OH! Yes it's Hikaru no Go =.= I mixed them up (not sure how...Hikaru no Go has /much/ better art)
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