A is for apple, that grows on the trees,
B is for bats, that fly on the breeze,
C is for cat, that is black as night,
D is for demon, that hide out of sight,
E is for eels, that go in a witch’s brew,
F is for frogs, that go with it too,
G is for ghost, that moan and wail,
H is for haunt, something they do very well,
I is for ink, that gets spilled on the page,
J is for Jack, who hangs in a cage,
K is for kids, that play with a mouse,
L is for Lady de’Kay, who hides in her house,
M is for moon, that shines like silver,
N is for night, so cold, you shiver,
O is for owl, his feathers are brown
P is for Peter, the mayor of our town,
Q is for questions, we ask before we sleep,
R is for rats, that go “squeak, squeak, squeak”,
S is for skeleton, who has a big grin,
T is for town, that Peter lives in,
U is for umbrella, the winds blow from the west,
V is for velvet, used to make a pretty dress,
W is for witch, who turns frogs into stones,
X is for xylophone, make of skeleton bones,
Y is for yell! A scream of delight.
Z is for … well… ‘Z’. My darlings, let’s call it a night.
All posts by mhuffman
Oh! My Goddess
So during this Covid-19 pandemic, I’ve resorted to watching a lot of Oh! My Goddess episodes in between catching up on Westworld and spring season anime… I remember watching the movie a long time ago, and maybe a few episodes, but I couldn’t tell if it which season… I also remember reading the manga series when Dark Horse released it in the US… But I can’t actually pinpoint when I fell in love with the series… Maybe after college?
As someone put it on reddit, Belldandy was the original waifu, before goddesses became insane in anime…
I’ve avoided rewatching if for awhile, thinking in the back of my head that I don’t have all the seasons… or I’m missing a special. And there’s a certain nostalgia about the series when you compare it to modern anime… the pacing is a little slower. And it’s 50 episodes with specials and a movie — it’s a lot to sit through.
I watched season 1 in English, which made it go faster… As I write this, I discovered on my self I have a S.A.V.E. copy of season 2, in both English and Japanese… So I’ve been ripping those and watching through them in English. I remember having a VCD copy of season 1 somewhere, that I got off eBay.
As I’m watching through the series, I’m releasing the season 1 & 2 were released in 2005/6… Hard to believe it’s only been 15 years. But I’m also realizing that the very first OVAs were released 1993/4… I’m thinking this is when I fell in love with the series & became aware of it. The OVAs covered a few things that were drawn out into a few episodes in season 1… I can’t which did a better job… The nuance about causing trouble for others is there… Belldandy meeting Keiichi during childhood (which was talked about in season 2) was very different from the OVA… since the Batman story has been told and retold many different times, with different ways, I’m not so much hung up on cannon…
For an anime that’s saccharin sweet, there is a pervy vibe that runs through it… Even from the beginning, in the original OVAs, there’s a drag race competition between the Nekomi Institute of Technology Auto Club and a rival club. In between races, girls in skimpy swimsuit-like outfits hold up signs, either as cheer-leaders, crowd motivators, or announcing the next race… there’s a few cut screens where all viewers see are butts, crotch-shots, or boob-shots… there should almost be a eechi-index (and there might be), of how many sexualized visualizations there are within a title…
Interesting Stories
Today as I was driving into work, I started thinking about what stories do I like the most. What has captivated my attention to keep watching (in anime and TV series) or reading in comics…
From the masterful story teller, Alan Moore, I learned about framing/book-ends — start with one story, show how it leads into another story, then close it out with the original story; tying the two stories together with reference to similar subject matters, a play on words within the exposition, or visuals leading from the first story to the next (ie. zooming into the eye of an character in the first story, switching in the next frame, then zooming out from a different character in the next story). Alan’s background details not only foreshadow things to come, but added atmosphere, depth. His ability to tell multiple stories, where one story thread feed into the other kept me engage.
Alan’s villains also had dimension. Time was given not only to create depth in his heroes, but the bad guys were more thoughtful, twisted.
Switching to anime and a little bit, TV, there are certain stories that I really love. Most of them tend to be Isekai (異世界, “different world”), but with the overall story, the characters are very likable, you want them to succeed, you become invested in them quickly — then something happens and you as the audience despair. The first few seasons of Game of Thrones was like that — you wanted the Starks to win, but then the father is killed. Or for Rob to be happy in love on the battle field, but then the red wedding. But with GoT, after awhile, it became cliche to kill off a characters you became emotionally attached to.
In anime it’s a little different. There tends to be a villain that seem over-powered at first, that comes into the story punching you in the gut. Or the villains are arrogant, weaselly, no more than high-school bullies, but then they pray on some the weaker, timid, shy. You see it coming like a freight train down the tracks, but can’t stop it… In many cases, it’s a change of atmosphere, the visuals are darker, the music switches and you get that sinking feeling in your stomach, that whatever happens, it’s not going to end well.
Nightmoor: Apples, Mirrors and Love
So in the stuff we had in storage up north, I found a notebook containing ideas for a comic series I wanted to write — it was a little NMBC like, but different… I tried mythology building, played with symbolism, flesh out a few characters, created a town named Nightmoor, set up land marks, introduced elder-gods, etc. Even tried to outline a few simple stories… I obsessed over the mythology, trying to create something Halloween familiar, but not a rip-off of NBMC.
One story was to pull from an old victorian Halloween superstition about apples and mirrors, but more of an older lady, sipping tea in an empty bar, mid-day, sitting at a table near a mirror, cutting up and eating an apple. She is met by her friends — what seems like a common Tuesday afternoon affair — and they pick up from where they left of from the week before with talk… Secretly, the friends knows what she’s doing, the nine apple pieces, the quick glances into the mirror between bites. They tease her from time-to-time during the conversation — very subtilely at first, but as time reaches the point of calling it a day, they call her out on it, chiding her on her childish beliefs… but something unexpected happens…
The intent was set forth a few characters to play into stories later. The tea gathering conversation would give the reader insight into the town of Nighmoor and the local gossip. The twist was to tie the story up into a nice bow… or set the stage for something more sinister… I also like the idea of digging up an almost forgotten about superstition for the basis behind a story.
I should actually take what I wrote and expound upon it, giving it more details… adding tone and atmosphere; drawing upon authors I like to tell a more complex story.
夢 Yume
On Sunday, ended up getting caught up on a lot of 1st episodes of the new anime season… Many I surprisingly liked, only one I tried to nod off during. The first was A Certain Scientific Railgun (Season 3); I’m like it better than the last season of A Certain Magical Index (which I got lost in; too much politics, too many characters). Then I followed it up with Infinite Dendrogram — little bit of a SAO rip-off, but I still enjoyed it. The third was Uchitama?! Have you Seen my Tama? — which I thought was going to be too cutesy, to the point of being annoyed, but really enjoyed the transition between dog/cat to human & the animators really nailed the animal behaviors. Next was Hetena Illusion — which I thought would be magic girl-esque or silly like Magical Sensai, but turned out to be intriguing. Watched 2 episodes of Keep Your Hands off Eizoken! — mind blowingly good, the animation style is just awesome. And finally, In/Spectre — a story about Yokai.
That night, I had a mash up dream — the world was set in Eizoken, at a hot springs, but the art style was clearly Eizoken. The hot springs were a maze to get into, with the healing waters at the center of the maze. Along the way, I met 4 people who were actually yokai, but switching from animal form to human like in Tama when they interacted with me. One of the characters was the general from the latest SAO Underworld season, the other three have become fuzzy now — all male however… About all I can remember now, but there was a plot/story there… One that made sense in dream logic.
I just realized, Tama reminds me of my almost all-time favorite anime, The Eccentric Family, with how it switches from animal to human.
私はマイケルです。
So my Japanese studies continue with Duolingo. I feel a little bit better about hiragana and katakana; I’m just a little slow at reading it. And using the app, I’m picking up some kanji. I need to go back learn more kanji, but right now, I’m working on sentence construction and telling time — it’s been a slow process.
The one app I’m using for learning kanji is a little annoying — it forces you to write correctly (which I’m fine with), but slight deviations can make you miss a character… the line detection is a little buggy. Like my angle might be a little off, so it considers it a fail.
Which brings up an interesting point; my hand writing isn’t the best. I can write in cursive, but I’ve settled on something that’s about 1/2 cursive and 1/2 traditional letters — depends if one letter flows nicely into the next or not. There’s a little “art” when it comes to writing in Japanese with the more complex kanji, any my pragmatic writing style gets in the way sometimes.
The other thing I’m realizing I need to spend more time on is listening… I watch anime in Japanese whilst reading subtitles, but it’s not until recently that I read a word in English and try to pick it out in Japanese. Like the other day, I heard 行く, meaning “to go”, but picked up the conjugated form. Fun, but feel like it’s just the tip of the iceberg (氷山). (heh, that’s ice mountain)
Dr. Stone
There are a few genres of anime that I typically avoid — sports themed, music themed, something that resembles Power Rangers, generally anything that doesn’t score a 6 or higher on MyAnimeList. One that I started this past year is Dr. Stone because it rated high and it had an interesting premise — all human life on earth becomes petrified, then after thousands of years, one of the most smarts teenagers in the world comes back to life, with a mission to move humanity from the stone age, back to the space age.
The art style is nice; a little goofy at times. The science is sound… but that seems to be the point. Aimed at teaching kids science, and how we moved from point A to point B. There’s no ecchi (although an innocent high school crush among class-mates). Some savagery — there’s a camp of science vs. a camp of might/brawn — building up a war that I’m wondering if it resolve itself peacefully or not. But otherwise, it’s been entertaining and educational… and not my typical anime-fare. I’d definitely recommend watching it.
… There is another anime I’ll talk about later that I’m also watching this fall, that is entertaining as well, but it’s like watching a funny orchestrated train wreck.
San Francisco/Bricks by the Bay 2019, pt. 1
This year, the wife and I decided to try a different LEGO fan event (Bricks by the Bay) in Santa Clara, CA. This was our first time to the bay-area. We were excited — a new city to explore, prefect weather, plans to meet up with family we hadn’t seen in a long time, a new LEGO fan venue, etc. We had almost a week, with a few days built into the trip for sight-seeing… Thinking about this, I’ll probably break this post up into a few individual post, based on how I’ve arranged the albums on Flickr. 🙂 This one will be on San Francisco the city itself…
With the convention being in Santa Clara, it’s pretty far from San Francisco proper. We ended up doing public transportation and Uber — I don’t like to drive in large cities where I not familiar with, figuring it’s cheaper than renting a car & paying parking in the long run. I also figured public transportation in a larger city would have been easier to get around.
The VTA light rail was fun; we had to take it a bus stop, to take the express bus to a BART station, to take the subway into the city… I think our total time was about 1-1.5 hours to get into the city. I think at some point, if I calculated the cost & time, don’t know if it would have been any cheaper to do Uber. The bus system wasn’t bad, but we missed a bus or two (not understanding where the bus actually picked up people), and we got turned around once (didn’t understand we were on the wrong side of the street where we should have picked up the bus). I think I was more frustrated with the bus system out of all of the public transport we took.
Needless to say, it was hard to get around. With hindsight, I think we’d break the trip into two stays, one part where we’d stay by the convention center and the second part where we’d stay in/near downtown San Francisco. For our last day, we did stay near the airport, so Ubering to/from downtown wasn’t too bad.
The other thing we decided to do was take the Hop-on/Hop-off tours. Now mind you, we had done this in San Antonio a few years back and didn’t have a problem — the bus stops were clearly marked, the A/C worked, the buses weren’t too terribly crowded… Well, you see where I’m going with this. Our goal was stop #10 the Golden-Gate Park by the bridge, we ended up catching the bus at stop #4… about an hour later on a crowded bus with no A/C, already spending nearly 2 hours to get into the city and the need for lunch, our first day was exhausting and frustrating.
High-lights: Santa Clara is nice. The different areas were the VTA took us into were were a mix of old/new architecture, recognized a lot of big tech names along the way. The lunch we had on the pier (high end restaurant) was great — crab in/on everything. The view from Golden Gate Park was wonderful. Enjoyed the farmer’s market like atmosphere by the Ferry Building.
The full Flickr Album: 2019.07 – San Francisco
Fall Time
It’s fall time, which means I’m down with a cold or sinus infection… Which means that pumpkins are starting to appear at Walmart… Which means a new season of Anime has started…
In the spirit of Maker Faire, I’m thinking I might try doing a LED-lit pumpkin this year… down the street from us, someone has created a Halloween display that looks like a web of pumpkin vines, with carved plastic pumpkins hanging in various places… I’ll try to get a picture of it later. Think Jack-n-the Beanstalk x Pumpkin patch… I should try creating a halloween based mythos and try executing on it…
So this season of Anime is interesting; there’s two anime that I’m trying to figure out if I’ll continue watching. One is where a person from this world is summoned to another world, but instead of immediately jumps in feet first, starts training, and training, and training… he’s overly cautious. The other one is where a professional wrestler is summoned to another world, but doesn’t want to kill monsters, but to open up his own pet shop… I’m thinking the whole “summoned to another world” genre has played itself out?
Japanese Progress
I’ve completed learning hiragana and katakana, but I’m finding some kana in katakana to be a little similar and confusing. Kanas like シ (shi) and ツ (tsu), or ソ (so) and ン (n) have very subtle differences — the brush strokes are different, but depending on the font type (or if it was written), don’t know if I’ll be able to tell the difference, unless in context. And other kana have similar appearances, like ウ (u), ス (su), ヌ (nu), フ (fu), ラ (ra), ワ (wa), and ヲ (wo). I probably need to spend another 20-30 hours of drilling and writing to get the strokes right.
The other subtle problem I’m having is recalling the right appearance of the kana when given the romanji. Recalling (n) in hiragana is easy, katakana is a little harder… but will just take time & practice. The other issue I’ll have, until I become better a listening, is the difference between short and long vowel sounds — a word like famous, 有名, or ゆうめい. There’s a subtle long (u), that if someone said the word, I’d accidentally omit it.
I need to start learning some vocabulary words next. I don’t feel like I’m at the point of sentence construction or verb conjugation… And with speaking, I find certain sounds to be difficult to say…to go from one sound to other certain sounds doesn’t feel natural yet.