It is apparently very true in my case that any reference to Card Captor Sakura would be enough to send me into paroxysms of bliss. Part of this is, I think, the relative age of CCS, especially when compared to recent outings like Tsubasa Chronicle and XXXHolic. CCS is a popular anime, but I believe Chobits beat it out for even more popularity, and I can barely find any other CCS fans anyway, compared to the overwhelming representation of stuff like Gundam.

And recent references to it (which are not in Tsubasa Chronicle) are rare. References to my other anime fandom, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, are fairly easy (some would say too easy) to encounter, since it is a new anime. The time of CCS was before the time of huge Megami posters and easy trading of pictures on imageboards, or even prior to the explosion of English-speaking anime blogs, which probably does not help its case.

This is, incidentally, one reason why I'm blogging CCS. It feels like some sort of repayment for allowing me the passion to create this anime blog in the first place, and I figured that instead of wishing that some other blogger cover the series, I may as well do it myself.

But that is beside the point of this post, which is the release of CLAMP's new CLAMP in Wonderland video, titled, imaginatively, CLAMP in Wonderland 2. For those unfamiliar with the concept of the CiW videos, they are short (maybe five minutes or so) music videos featuring pretty much every CLAMP creation at the time of release. The first one was vintaged 1994, three years before mine beloved CCS was released, and featured characters from (among others) Magic Knight Rayearth and CLAMP School Detectives (I think; it's been a while since I saw it, and I forget where I put it) set to "Anata dake no Wonderland" (by Junko Hirotani). Since I'm not so much a fan of CLAMP as a specific fan of CCS, it provided me with some entertainment, but was ultimately not as memorable as I hoped it was.

Yeah, I'm selfish. I admit as much, since I did rail in the beginning of this post against the lack of CCS material on Teh Intarwebs, but am guilty of being just as ignorant of the Old Days Of Anime.

This one, though, caters to people like me, and shares much the same appeal as Tsubasa Chronicle or, more accurately, Kingdom Hearts: these are the settings we recognize, the characters we are familiar with, the series we know. Like the debate on the merits of Lucky Star, points of familiarity work wonders with regards to enjoyability.

This post will be an exercise in seeing how many screenshots I can squeeze out of a video less than six minutes long. Also, expect it to be edited fairly often as I gain more information about who the unrecognized characters are.

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Every time I listen to the Clannad ending theme, I have the odd craving to scrawl eyeballs onto dumplings.

This is pretty much just an admin announcement that the twice-a-week post schedule will be lifted from today until December 5th. It's relatively routine (… gods, the irony), but I have to bold it anyway because I get the feeling that readers might have developed a habit of skimming through my posts without actually reading them, possibly in a valiant attempt to save their brain cells from suicide en masse. This is probably a just, proper, and wise thing to do, considering my usual writing style.

The reason for this is, as mentioned before, NaNoWriMo. I've actually noised around this anime blog website to the other Singaporean NaNo-ers, a great many of whom are (somewhat surprisingly, at least to me) anime fans, or at least anime watchers. As I learned from Impz-sempai, any (well, most) publicity is always good.

If you're a NaNovelist reading this, feel free to say hi in the comments of any of the recent posts, or via email (check AT animeblogger DOT net, or damienkellis AT gmail DOT com). I'm a lot friendlier (and articulate) online than offline. I think it has something to do with withdrawal symptoms.

(Due credit: pic found on Danbooru, actual creator site on the bottom left says DESU.)

The fourth DVD of Card Captor Sakura, entitled "Sakura Fight!" in what is possibly a clever way of referencing both the episode containing Sakura's and Kero's flare-up as well as a generic encouragement often heard in anime, contains the following text as a blurb:

Sakura challenges the Power Card to a game of tug-o-war, but thanks to Li, the game could be over in no time! Then, Sakura goes to see her brother in a peculiar version of Cinderella that is brought to a crashing halt by the Mist Card. What will Toya do? Next, after a fight with Sakura, Kero runs away and accidentally befriends a lonely child. Will Kero be able to see Sakura again if it means breaking a little girl's heart! Finally, Sakura's family takes a vacation where Sakura meets an old man in a mansion – who could he be?

I get the feeling that whomever comes up with these probably has nothing much to say about the episodes in question, and can see the looming future of so many DVDs to go and nothing to say about them too.

Extras outside the DVD would be one pencilboard, with rather nice pictures on both sides. One side has Sakura in her episode 2 battle costume framed by very large wings from the Sealing Wand (plus random glowies scattered around), and the other side has Sakura in her opening animation outfit posing against a backdrop which resembles a Clow Card. I might put the pictures up someday when I find them.

Extras in the DVD consists of an Art Gallery, with twenty-four line-art pictures and cleaned-up production sketches, a large number of which are basically Kero-chan in different poses. Standard "art gallery extra" stuff, essentially, and nothing particularly eye-catching, especially at the default resolution; one drawback of relatively older anime is that they don't really age well with regards to Bigger Better Screens and the ability to note every little pixel.

Anyway. Episode 13 is called "Sakura and the Elephant's Test of Strength", which I suppose technically counts as accurate if one kind of squints for a bit at the events in the episode. Sakura does have a test of strength, and an elephant does help out, and that's pretty much all one can say about it. I mean, it's just one elephant (well, technically two), not one thousand, much to Dibbler's disappointment.

Once again, the number of screenshots for this summary has been drastically reduced, or we'll be here all day staring at Tomoyo (Daidouji, I have to add, after the incalculable number of times I have to explain that I do not mean the CLANNAD Tomoyo of the Super Combo Hits). While I am perfectly content to while away the hours basking in Tomoyo's presence, I dare say that not everyone shares my view. (More's the pity.)

Therefore, every time Tomoyo appears onscreen, have another CHECK!Point. It's the right thing to do.

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I think I need to add in a new tag, called "fandom" or some such. I'd use it in cases, like this, when I muse upon the vagaries of the meta; not so much anime itself as the enjoyment thereof, and the observations surrounding the people engaged in such enjoyment.

Conversations among several acquaintances in assorted fields of interest have indicated that it appears to be a common human trait to assign some form of levels within any sufficiently sizeable gathering, perhaps as a method to determine the next plateau to aspire to, but more often than not merely as a device to decide which set of unfortunates are acceptable targets for derision and ridicule. This is, I believe, why we have lawyer jokes, which does seem to pair neatly with one's innate distrust of those with Too Much Money (or those seen to have Too Much Money), but this may be an artefact of media influence, and I'm digressing from the point anyway.

In the great and nebulous superset of that amorphous social blob known as anime fandom, there appears to be a highly complex hiearchy of respect (and the accompanying ridicule in the other direction) wherein someone may place him or herself and know, to some minor degree of accuracy, whom to look down upon. In fact, I've generally only noticed the ridicule, with the respect going to a very few people: the makers of anime themselves, lumped together in one large group as "The Creators", and good fan artists. These appear to be the people who gain the admiration of their friends and acquaintances merely by being, by existing and doing what they do best. However, since I am neither a Creator Of Anime nor a good fan artist, I have no real insights into these particular strata, and so will leave it at that.

Comes then the next level, that of the viewers of anime. And here we have a multidimensional spiderweb of intrigue and illusions, as it appears that every fan of every show must look down on every fan of another show, and all these shows are different for each and every person, although I would hazard a guess based on empirical observational evidence that the shows being looked down upon are the shows which are popular and which the looker is not a fan of. There are also some subtle variations to take into account, such as whether a respected member of the particular community, whether a Natural Respected like the fan artist or Creator, or simply a Big Name who gained their position from effort, reputation, or longevity, also likes that popular show. For the extremely popular, this may not save the show anyway: I bring your attention once again to the myriad rants I have written about the views arrayed against Haruhiism, which does have several Big Name fans, but nevertheless still suffers from popularity backlash.

And then we have, for some reason, cosplayers. Now, I personally have great respect for cosplayers, since there is no possible way I can even begin to imagine the effort needed to make some of those costumes, but, like lawyers, lolicons, and people who talk too loudly at the theatre, it seems that cosplayers have become Acceptable Targets for derision among otherwise level-headed anime fans. I'm guessing, with next to no evidence about this whatsoever, that this is due to the belief that Sturgeon's Law hews strictly to this aspect: for every "good" cosplayer, there are nineteen not-so-good ones of varying quality. Personally, I have yet to encounter such a statistic, but most of my experiences have been with the Singaporean cosplay community, as well as one single ACen (2006, if you're wondering), which I remember primarily for the large number of non-anime cosplayers; Final Fantasy 7 was greatly represented, as well as Kingdom Hearts. Anime-esque, but not actually anime. (Also, I remember it for that time I got drunk, but that's another oft-told story.)

Even lower than that, and the one I have to admit to a great amount of personal bias regarding, are fanfiction writers. Now, I write fanfiction. I treat this as just another aspect of enjoying an anime, like drawing fanart, or blogging about it. There is nothing particularly bad about this, at least when Sturgeon's Law, convenient excuse that it is, is considered.

But going "well, I write fanfiction" appears to be an open invitation to the more trollish members of the amorphous community to, well, troll. What answers unadorned by ad hominem insults I am usually (if rarely) able to obtain seem to have to do with the idea that we are somehow sullying the work of the Creators by forcing our interpretations upon them. How exactly this enforcement is done is left vague, perhaps intentionally so. I dare not probe further into this matter in a great many cases, as it is invariably likely to lead to my being compared as unto yet another lowly maggot again.

It is a mystery. Of course, many aspects of human nature are a mystery to me anyway, so that's nothing really new.

I'll come up with an actual relevant post soon, I promise. (In fact, I have one about halfway done; I've written out the entire text, but the actual pictures to go with it are escaping me.) This process would be magnificently sped up if I ever manage to find out a good way to disable the region code locking on my DVD-R(WPQ-Whatever) drive in a safe and technically legal manner. If the Man wants me to own my media legally, I'd be happy to oblige, if I can actually own my media legally.

In any case, I figured I should give any readers still around some fair warning that come the month of November, I will be very busy, and not likely to be able to post anything of actual substance and value and honour for pretty much the entire month. Rest assured that if I haven't worn my fingers to bloody stumps by that time, I will endeavour to resume my usual sesquipedalian locquaciousness.

Needless to say, my intense obsession with anime would dictate that any and all stories I would ever write turn out to be at least heavily influenced by anime. I've gotten to the point where I'm fairly confident in projecting an anime feel to a story, even if none of the names are Japanese, Charlie Dog or no. I'm not sure if this is financially sound, even if I'm well aware that only a miniscule fraction of a percentage of writers ever make any sort of profit from their work; also, I keep hearing that Singaporeans need to "write with a Singaporean identity", which I don't think covers SF&F and instead has to do with how We're Being Oppressed or something.

I'm trying to wean myself off cynicism. This is not an easy task.

In other news, rather more on-topic to this blog, the English dub of Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya's "God Knows" has been teasered. (Link courtesy of the SOS Brigade LJ Community, which, I find myself having to add, is one of the unofficial fan communities, rather than the more official ASOS stuff.) There's only about ten seconds' worth of song, so I'm not sure how it's going to be in the longer version, but my initial impression is that it's not so bad. There's a bit too much of an echo effect (yes, it's more concert-authentic, but still too blurry), and I'm not sure the lyrics match up that well to the words, but it's not rip-off-my-ears horrible, and it's actually kind of listenable.

Of course, I'm well aware of how the Sub Vs Dub thing is going to go, so let's just consider the obvious arguments over and done with and move on from there, please.

Having spent most of this week playing through my newly-acquired Kingdom Hearts II, as well as going through the rather older Final Fantasy 8, I have to say that playing one tends to make me want to play the other one.

KH2 is fun in its own right, but a bit uncertain when it comes to setting the mood. This is a game which contains a world where absolutely nothing terrible happens, and the worst which can occur is a bit of a scare and some minor mischief which is laughed off easily (Hundred Acre Woods); a world (or rather, several worlds) which is the usual Disney-esque movies For Kids, where there is a Designated Villain (who dresses all in Evil Colours and is all sneaky and malicious and stuff) and the plucky heroes have to stop them from completing their all-so-evil plan (Agrabah, Atlantica, Olympus Coliseum, Land of Dragons, Pride Lands); and a world where the default state of happiness is being sarcastic and snarky and backstabby, which is still a damned sight better than all these rotting skeletons and ancient curses and bloody works (Port Royal). Throw in the ghoulish humour of Halloween Town and the surreal existentialism of Twilight Town, and we have a fair case of mood whiplash. This may be illustrated with the differences between the Heartless, which look all cutely scary in a cheap-bedsheet-over-the-head kind of way, and the Nobodies, who move in a disturbingly rubbery manner that is genuinely creepy Nightmare Fuel.

And all this is presided over by an anthropomorphic duck, a similarly anthropomorphic dog-thing, and a boy who just hit puberty with a highly unusual weapon. And none of the other people in all the worlds think that this is odd. I would have expected Captain Jack Sparrow to make a comment, at the least.

I feel that I'm probably not the designated target age group for this game. I found myself wishing the Disney sequences, where we sing musicals Under The Sea or prevent an invasion of Disney China, were over as quickly as possible, so we could get to the deeper parts of the game, which dealt in downright mind-boggling concepts of whether someone exists if they're only in one's memories which one then forgot but then remembered again but only vaguely, and whether hearts and the shells left behind when they leave are interchangeable or shareable or something. It's akin to a mental and philosophical shell game: the truth's under one of these cups. Round and round they go.

This invariably means that I found myself impatiently rushing through a great deal of the game, only to have to go back and grind through them when it turns out that the Deep Parts are gated by bosses I need to level to defeat. I will not even mention Jiminy's Journal, which I'm seriously considering ignoring and just starting over on Proud Mode. At least in KH1 I could get the Secret Ending through level-grinding patience, rather than actual, yanno, game-playing skill.

At least the various cameos of Final Fantasy characters are appreciated. Setzer's appearance was just blatantly Out Of Character, but Auron was pretty well done, and Tifa was kind of fun to watch in action, in an Akane Tendo kind of way. The trio of Yuna, Rikku, and Paine made me remember how odd it seemed that the saviour of all of Spira and a self-sacrificing well-respected summoner would end up as a giddy pop star, but that's a rant for a different game, and at least they're very cute in this one.

A great deal of the tension and mystery of the game is maintained through the simple expedient of having everyone who might know something either disappear mysteriously for no adequately-explained reason, or get interrupted by a convenient (or inconvenient, depending on your point of view) attack of Heartless or Nobodies. I get the feeling that it is a staple in stories for those In The Know to selfishly guard their secrets, since Knowledge Is Power and all that, but I have to wonder what the story would look like if everyone revealed all they knew right at the beginning. It may be a rather shorter story, or it may not.

Leon, mind you, is a great deal more tolerable than his template Squall, who acts like such a self-absorbed jerk that I have to wonder why anyone wants to stay around him. I mean, the player sees what he thinks about and can thus follow his chain of logic, but for everyone else, his random outbursts are astonishingly non-sequitur. At least the game has the requisite Square Trio of cute female characters, and I find myself torn between Selphie's cheerfulness and Quistis's Reliable Older Woman appeal.

… why yes, that is a major reason why I play these games. This should not be surprising in any way.

The saga continues.

I was actually planning to do three episodes again, but it looks like I have to leave episode 6 for the next time around, considering the present number of pictures.

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AMV.org

Anime: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Music: "Twilight" – Electric Light Orchestra

Contains only a small helping of bunnygirl, sadly.

41MB h264 mp4 encode, for those who understand such arcane terms. Nobody really knows if Haruhi feels at all satisfied now that she's created the SOS Brigade; one can but hope.

UPDATE: Actually, yanno, added links.

I've said it time and before, and yet I keep forgetting it myself: never HTML when drunk, people.

So I've managed to inveigle a himegimi account from Mellow Bunny, in my ongoing quest to be a part of everything under the digital sun and then forget completely about it via a spotty memory. In this case, I'm obviously going to try keeping track of it for as long as I can, if only because I was thinking of trying something like this myself. Perhaps I'll save the "CHECK!Mate" term for something else.

Basically, the concept of the "himegimi" (literal translation: "princess") is that of the female character one is, in essence, a die-hard fan of. There isn't much else I can add to that, since I'm sure everyone has their own reasons for choosing the characters they did. There's an explanation of the whole conception of the site at the bottom of every page, but suffice to say, blame Guncannon.

Absolutely no prizes for guessing whom my first pick is. Yes, it's supposedly listed in chronological order, but that just shifts the burden to whom I would think of first.