Not the Week in Review

[kate_nepveu]

Dull week, so have some anime comments and links instead.

Thanks to yhlee, we have the first two discs of Vision of Escaflowne, and watched the first last night. Spoilery comments behind the cut.

Short version: cause of mild snark, but reasonably enjoyable and moves pretty fast.

Longer version:

Dear me, but the life-of-a-high-school-girl opening takes forever, even though objectively it's about ten minutes. And the dragon looks like something out of Monty Python's animation studio.

Chad's remark on the pendant always taking a second to complete a swing: "Congratulations, you've discovered the regular pendulum."

Hitomi and Van are largely non-irritating, which is a point in favor of my continuing to watch. The cat-girl could be very irritating, but I don't want to smack her, yet. I was interested to find that Allen, the blond guy, immediately came across to me as kind of a jerk; I wonder if this is a YA thing since he's older than Hitomi and Van and treats them as such.

Draco Malfoy in super-petulant mode is not a very interesting villain, but the smart traitor whose name I didn't catch could be interesting. And Destiny Prognostication Engine would be a great name for a band.

The tech interests me. The big robots seem to be mechanical plus a bit of magic, but if they've got the capability to do that level of metalwork, shouldn't they be past catapults and swords (even swords that get bigger when you pull them out *eyeroll*)? It seems to early to tell whether the Bad Guys' superior military strength is magic or tech.

If there's no explanation for Hitomi's visions and pendant, I shall be annoyed, but I expect there will be. I'm less certain that there'll be an explanation for there being a magic invisible mass-less planet that close to Earth, though.

(Oh, this reminds me that I should recapitulate my spoiler policy: if it's not in the episodes I've already watched, it's a spoiler and I don't want to hear it. Any spoiler comments will be screened and ROT13'ed.)

Links:

• A hugely detailed recap of Serenity at Television Without Pity, with plenty of snark but also some close readings of the movie that I found interesting.
• Via lots of places, a big online sale from University of California Press. I've spent way too much time going through the lists, and I'm thinking about getting the following titles. Any comments?
  • J. G. Landels, Engineering in the Ancient World (Revised Edition) (link)
  • Antonia Fraser, editor, The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England (Revised and Updated) (link)
  • Luo Guanzhong (tr. Moss Roberts), Three Kingdoms—they have this both abridged and unabridged (volume one, volume two), do I particularly need the unabridged?

    [Edit: the two volumes are not a complete set, see comments.]

• Puppy nose!

Comments

[cliosfolly.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're enjoying Escaflowne--I'd thought about recommending it (it was the first anime series that I ever saw aside from Sailor Moon on TV, and it was what really got me interested in anime), but I didn't think it would hold up well after just coming off Full Metal Alchemist. I'll be interested to read what you think of the series as it continues to unfold.

[kate_nepveu]

It's certainly not grabbing me like _FMA_ so far, but then I wasn't expecting it to, so that's okay.

(I was planning on watching _FMA_ that night, actually, but I had some problems playing back the files; this turned out to be a software conflict, but I didn't track it down until late that night.)