Category Archives: Triumphs

I’m conflicted about which media player to use

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But first some background information.

I acquired an iMac G5 this week for no cost. It’s got a 1.6 GHz PPC processor and it came with 512MB of PC3200 DDR RAM. At some point a year or more ago I was successfully running OS X Leopard on my AMD-based PC with an A8N5X motherboard. The HDD in that machine which had OS X on it failed and I never bothered reinstalling it, since it was so much trouble getting it working in the first place. As a result, I had nothing running OS X at all except for my G4 iBook and G4 snowball iMac, neither of which are the most practical of devices to use. In other words, I was very happy to have a machine that could run OS X that, though undeniably dated, is still useful.

I wish I had a Mighty Mouse to go with it


I looked around on search engines and found a PDF of the instruction manual. It says that this computer takes PC3200 DDR RAM, that it has 2 memory bays and, the best news contained in the manual, that it’s expandable up to 2GB. I said to myself, “I have all these computer parts lying about. I simply must have some unused PC3200 RAM that I can put into this G5″.

Unfortunately, I looked through all the Dell Optiplexes and similar that I have in my closet, and Yune, who I also keep in there, popped out and informed me that the closest thing I have are two 512 MB PC2700 modules. “2700 and 3200 are close enough to each other, right? That’s only a difference of 500”. Such thoughts drifted through my unsophisticated mind. I looked around on some more search engines to see if I could find out if this PC2700 RAM would work in the G5. I found mixed answers online so I decided to give it a try. In so doing I found out that it’s very easy to open these iMacs and you can’t lose the screws that hold the white outer shell together since they’re not actually completely removable. The RAM works fine. I tried putting in two sticks of 512MB PC2700 and it worked. It also worked when I mixed the 512MB PC3200 module with one 512MB PC2700 module. I did go ahead and buy some PC3200 since I feel odd about using the wrong type of RAM indefinitely, but it’s been working fine like this with one module of each type for two days.

The point of all that is to emphasize that my results are not at all scientific since I neither made actual measurements nor am I even using the type of RAM meant to be installed in this computer. With two PC3200 modules I would assume things would go 500 mystery units faster than they’re going right now.

So after installing Leopard on the machine and updating to 10.5.8 I went ahead and downloaded Mplayer OS X Extended, which is the media player I always use on OS X. I used it on my A8N5X setup and watched lots of 720p videos with it.

The conventional wisdom seems to be to use ffdshow-tryouts on Windows and mplayer on *nix and OS X. That’s fine by me. I’ve used xine and gstreamer on *nix but since I’m stupid and don’t like to read instructions I failed to figure out how to configure them to do what I wanted and ended up in a pattern according to which I always use mplayer frontends on *nix. So that’s more or less why I also use Mplayer OS X Extended on the rare occasions when I have a chance to play around in Mac OS X.

But when I tried using it on this G5 I was a little bit disappointed by the results. I first tried playing SD H.264 videos and had bad results in which the audio would play just fine but the video was decoded so slowly that it’d get stuck on a single frame for over 30 seconds at a time, while the audio, meanwhile, chugged away smoothly, ignoring the dilly-dallying video.

I checked the option in the Preferences menu to drop however the hell many frames are necessary but it still was no use; the playback was so slow it was unwatchable. Not that it’s surprising, but I got the same results with 720p material as well.

So I installed Perian and tried watching some SD material in Quicktime. I had similarly bad results. It would drop frames like crazy. It dropped frames to the extent that I would sometimes stop and wonder if it was even playing at all, seeming as it did that it had frozen on one frame. But sure enough, it was playing, just ridiculously slowly.

I was going to give up and conclude that this computer would be useful for word processing, web browsing and email and not much else when I remembered that troglodytes like me who cannot be bothered to properly configure things are often recommended VLC.

Ordinarily, I would not use VLC unless I had a video encoded with an extremely arcane codec that I could not play in any other player. I also use it sometimes to make Firewire video captures from my STB, because, unlike CAPDVHS, you can set it to play the material while it records. I wouldn’t actually watch a completed recording with it though. But I tried VLC on the G5 here and not only did it play my SD H.264 files perfectly, it surprised me and also played 720p material almost perfectly even with some really fancy karaoke (at least 3 lines of stylised karaoke: Japanese, romaji, and translated English lyrics). Artifacts like in the above image only actually occurred two or three times per 24-minute episode and even so, only for a second or two each time. The audio sync is also perfect, as far as I can tell. The video doesn’t look jerky either, which would have been an indication that at least some frames were being dropped to maintain speed. 720p plays with VLC on this G5 almost as well as it plays on my Phenom X4 9950 2.6GHz system with MPC-HC. It’s more than completely watchable.

I’m conflicted though. Cool people aren’t supposed to use VLC to actually watch videos. At least, that’s the impression I get. Maybe if I were more patient and willing to actually read documentation I could get Mplayer OS X Extended to play 720p or merely 480p as well as VLC does. It’s just that VLC accomplished all of this out of the box without any configuration by me at all. Like I always say, I suppose I should just enjoy this without complaining, but as usual when something nice happens, I’ve found something to be unsettled about in this otherwise fortuitous turn of events.

Summer 2011: Usagi Drop

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I don’t know how many more shows I’ll be watching this season, but this one will probably be on the list. In a rare deviation from my norm, I actually knew the basic premise of the show before watching it, unlike my usual practice according to which I watch shows based on how eye-catching the promotional artwork is. For this reason and this reason only, I was not disappointed by the conspicuous absence of bunny rabbits.

As with all high class art, the show begins with a funeral. Things can only get more upbeat from here, right? I hope not actually. The slowish pace and low key atmosphere established by the first episode work really well. This jives well with how little dialogue there is. The protagonist’s interest in Rin is conveyed through meaningful glances and changes in music and subtle shit like that.

I'm sick of characters gazing off into the distance like this, head filled with complicated thoughts. For all we know, Rin could be watching two squirrels fighting right here rather than having some convoluted internal dialogue about her uncertain future.


There’s a lot of contemplating going on here and rustling of bushes and wind. The imagery changes to suit the mood. Prior to the intro everything is all flowery and springtimey and idyllic:

This bloomy vaseline on the lens thing stops as soon as the funeral begins. Then there’s some neat use of lighting and framing to make the viewer feel the same mushy way about Rin that Daikichi does. Despite what a downer the guy seems to be, Rin takes a shine to him and they do some wordless bonding.

I’ve got to watch the next episode to see how I feel about the show. It may become clichéd and uninteresting. It somehow reminded me of Koi Kaze. I’m not entirely sure why, but perhaps it’s the pacing and mellowness of the first episode; it certainly wasn’t because my lolicon senses were tingling. There’s no hint of that here at all and I don’t say that sarcastically. If there were, it’d just ruin everything the show has going for it.

To restate my complaint from the other day though, why couldn’t Rin be ugly? She’s already unwanted. It’s not too much of a leap to make her ugly and fat or something. There are lots of people who think eyepatch girls, pegleg girls and even dialysis girls are moe, so don’t underestimate the ability of the audience to love a character. They don’t all have to be so damned adorable in an obvious way.

Summer 2011: Mawaru Penguin Drum

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This is an interesting show. At the least, it’s quite beautiful.　I will certainly keep watching it. I still don’t know what it’s all about, but at least I get the penguin bit now.　It’s certainly good looking so far, with lots of bright, pretty colours and even some flowery iconography. Maybe that’s obligatory, I dunno.

I love how the place really looks lived-in

The viewer immediately notices that, in a way very similar to Utena, there are scenes in which all of the characters other than those in the main cast are drawn as simplified, anonymous figures, apparently close relations of the man on the men’s room door:

Not that I’m complaining, but I’d once like to see an anime in which the protagonist has a really ugly imouto who the viewer is supposed to love. That’d be a challenge for the viewer. I guess Kuragehime was a bit like that, though Tsukimi wasn’t anybody’s sister. Nonetheless she was supposed to be “ugly” or at least not “pretty” in a conventional way and still succeeded to be moe. Regardless, Himari is undeniably cute as a button:

There’s a little bit of a fairy tale vibe to the show. The three main characters are siblings, but the sister, who fulfills the Ill Girl trope, is a little bit princessy in that the doctors all said long ago that there’s nothing they can do for her and she has little time left to live, as so often seems to happen on TV. Every day is precious, or something like that, so the three value every day they have together. Anyway, that’s how they end up at the aquarium to see these fucking adorable penguins:

M-M-Moar cute penguins!

But oh noes! My favourite imouto dies!

I never saw this coming!

But it’s okay ‘cuz she has a special souvenir hat that revives her, albeit possessed by some spirit that says something or other about fate and the like. We’re warned that her life is prolonged only temporarily so we should be prepared to see this again:

So the cool part here is that once she’s revived using the power of this fate thing and the penguin hat, these penguins start helping out everywhere, finding the protagonist’s train pass, umbrella, killing roaches, sewing, and so forth.

So this is all pretty cool, so much so that I’d like some penguin helpers of my own, even if it means exceeding the 78 degree voluntary limit on air conditioning suggested by Mayor Bloomberg. The only problem is that only the three of them can see the penguins, despite how industrious and adorable they may be. What follows is a henshin scene for the ages. There’s no use taking screen captures of it (and besides, this page already probably takes 9001 minutes to load). There’s some great music in this scene too.


Is Himari being controlled by the hat? What is this about obtaining the Penguin Drum? Of course, the viewer is meant to be confused, but there is also the right amount of humour in here so that I’m genuinely eager to see the next episode. It’s also good that it’s nowhere near as experimental as it could have been. I love shows like Yojou-han Shinwa Taikei as much as the next guy and cannot really criticise it, but I can at least complain that it’s a lot of work to watch. The same is true for masterpieces like Ghost in the Shell; they require some effort on the part of the viewer to appreciate. While I’m not saying by any means that this was superficial, what I think I am saying is that it’s relatively easy to become immersed in the very first episode. It’s not so challenging in the beginning so as to be off-putting to viewers who aren’t interested in something that requires intent focus.

I suppose it’s required that I confirm that I didn’t miss this visual nod (or perhaps I’m imagining it):

No matter how many times you see it, pulling a sword out of somebody’s chest is really neat. I like this show and will continue to watch it. I will also continue to watch Yuru Yuri and Ikoku Meiro Croisee. I don’t know who’s cuter: Yune or Hinata

Well, that was harder than I thought it’d be

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My face after finally figuring this shit out

I just switched (tentatively) to the Twenty Eleven theme for WordPress. I obviously don’t know anything about web design or CSS, but I found it annoying how narrow the content column is and thought, naïvely, that fixing it would be easy. I assumed I could just go ahead and change one or two lines in the style.css file and be done with it, so I looked at this bit:

#content {
margin: 0 34% 0 7.6%;
width: 58.4%;

and changed the 58.4% to something higher. I refreshed the page and it didn’t look any different so I also looked at this bit and reduced the width by the same number of percentage points that I increased the content width by:

#secondary {
float: right;
margin-right: 7.6%;
width: 18.8%;

That didn’t seem to do anything either. I then thought that maybe I had to create a “child theme” of the Twenty Eleven theme for things to work, so I restored the original style.css file for the Twenty Eleven theme and proceeded to create a child theme. The style.css file for the child theme was completely empty except for modified versions of the above two lines. It looked like this:

/*
Theme Name: Twenty eleven Child
Description: Twenty eleven child theme
Author: asdfgh
Template: twentyeleven
*/

@import url("../twentyeleven/style.css");

#content {
margin: 0 26% 0 7.6%;
width: 66.4%;
}

#secondary {
float:right;
margin-right: 7.6%;
width: 10.8%;
}

This didn’t seem to work either. I gave up and decided that I should try to use the Twenty Ten theme and see if I could make it wider. I didn’t really care which theme I ended up using; I was just sick of the “Classic” theme that I’ve been using for a long time and wanted something different, so long as it wasn’t really, really narrow. So I went ahead and looked at the style.css for the Twenty Ten theme, trying to find the lines that I might need to change. I tried changing a few bits here and there that seemed, as far as I could tell, to be the lines that controlled the width of the page, content column and side bar area. Again, none of this seemed to work, regardless of whether I changed the values in the style.css for the Twenty Ten theme itself or if I made the changes via a child theme.

I then read a thread somewhere in which a user complained that he or she was trying to change something in a child theme but that no matter what he or she changed the blog looked the same. The person who responded to the post gave a very curt reply, saying, “clear your browser cache”. The OP responded to that message saying, of course, that all of his or her modifications were now showing up. Of course, after reading that I realised that this was my problem too. It really is as easy as just changing the percentages in the style.css file, but I ended up spending a few days wondering about this because I overlooked such a mundane factor as my browser cache. Dabbling in things you’ve got no knowledge or experience in sure is a good way to make yourself feel like an idiot!

Now this site looks decent without so much wasted white space when viewing it on my 1280×1024 monitor or my 1920×1080 monitor. I need to get a better header image though. This one doesn’t really fit.

Incidentally, I missed Mawaru Penguin Drum because I was so distracted by this. I ended up writing down the time incorrectly. Why the hell do Japanese TV stations have to list times in the early morning as though it’s part of the previous day? I was going to watch the show live streaming at 26:25 on July 07 (it’s weird saying that, since it’s still in the future in my time zone) but I missed it because I wasn’t paying particularly close attention and wrote down that it would be on at 26:55. I tuned in in time to see some commercials and then a rerun of Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko.

My R1 Utena DVDs arrived last night.

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This is the last time I’ll mention Utena for a little while; I promise.

I’m pretty satisfied with the DVDs so I suppose I have no choice now but to buy the rest when they’re released. I think you’re supposed to take the paper stuck to the back off, since when I did I saw that there’s a beautiful illustration of Miki and Kozue underneath, but I’ve never been very smart when it comes to packaging: I leave the spine cards on my CDs.

The three DVDs come in slim plastic cases that fit inside a sturdy cardboard box with some very attractive illustrations on it. It also comes with a 46-page book that I haven’t completely read through yet, but it contains many illustrations, interviews with staff, translated liner notes from the Japanese LD releases and other interesting bonus material, including a feature on the appeal of shoujo anime and where Utena fits on that spectrum.

Not that I buy very many R1 anime DVDs, but there were a couple of things included in these discs that I did not expect, based on the justifications people use for preferring fansubs to legal R1 retail subs. There’s a strong belief out there, perhaps a misconception, that R1 DVDs contain neither sign translations nor song lyrics or karaoke. That was probably true some years ago, but I think it’s more common these days, it’s become an expectation that these things will be included. Nonetheless, it was slightly surprising for me to see that, based on my viewing of just two episodes, there appear to be both sign translations and lyrics for all songs, even the duel songs. Unlike the other songs, however, the duel songs don’t have romaji; the translated lyrics appear on the top of the screen while subs for dialogue appear at the bottom.

Make no mistake though: I don’t care if there are lyrics. I don’t sing along to these songs while watching; just in the shower. I do recognise, however, that there are many viewers who care about this quite a bit, so I commend whoever is responsible for the decision to include both translated lyrics and romaji in most places. Many people were surely very happy about that choice.

I’m no encoder, so I can’t say anything about the video quality. I also don’t have the R2J DVDs, so even if I were qualified to make a comment about the video quality, I still wouldn’t have much of anything to say without a reference point to contrast it with. It certainly looks good to my untrained eye though. Some screens from the first episode:

Finally, there are two more seemingly small, but ultimately significant, inclusions that I thought were great about these DVDs. The first is that the eyecatch in each episode is included. You know, this thing and the accompanying music:

The eyecatch is important for the mood. I can’t explain exactly how, but things would feel quite off without it.

There’s also the next episode previews, which are fully dubbed and subtitled in English. Next episode previews, if they exist in the original show, should always be included on a DVD. A show just isn’t complete without them. It recreates the experience of watching the show for the first time. DVD distributors, are you listening?

Perhaps I’m a bit of an extremist

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but Shoujo Kakumei Utena is the greatest show ever made.

On a kick I went ahead and watched the whole series in several days. I had started watching it several times before, but never got past the episode 12 to 15 area. The currently airing season is boring except for Ano Hana so I wanted to finally watch one of the various shows I had been meaning to watch but never finished. That meant I would either watch Oniisama e, Versailles no Bara, Sailor Moon, or Utena. Since watching any of those four shows would be a major time investment I knew I had to think carefully. Like everyone else, I loved Star Driver for inexplicable reasons, so when I heard about Ikuhara Kunihiko’s new project, Mawaru Penguin Drum, which will be airing in July, I knew I had to finish watching Utena before that. It didn’t hurt that I already knew that the show was ingenious, having watched the first dozen or so episodes in the past.

Now I’m neither a smart nor sophisticated person, so perhaps I’m at a disadvantage as a viewer. I know there were many references that went straight over my head. I had to look on Wikipedia to find out what a “Santa Maria della Consolazione” was. Nonetheless, I think this show hints at some universal truths which, if I could distill the material down enough to uncover them, would prove enlightening.

That’s both the worst problem about the show and its greatest strength and why I felt like crying on more occasions while watching this show than I would have expected: everything seems important and profound but the viewer never knows why that’s the case. I don’t want to use words like “Kafkaesque” to describe the show because I’ve not read enough of Franz Kafka’s work to talk about him or compare his style to Ikuhara’s. But when you read something that everyone’s read like The Metamorphosis, you keep saying to yourself, “Yes, this Kafka guy is saying something very adroit here about society or the human condition, or something like that. He must be. I wonder what it is exactly?” It’s like that. You’re moved but you don’t really know why. I’ll make no pretense of understanding anything that happened in the show. I will recommend this show to everyone I meet, but if they ask me, “Well, if the show is so great, why don’t you give me a plot synopsis?” I’d be at a loss. Let’s see, there’s a mysterious student council that secretly manipulates the whole school, something about the End of the World, duels, roses, princes on white horses, and arena rock. Sounds like a masterpiece, right?

Well, it really is. A good strategy to secure the viewer who is hanging on the threshold between “keep watching” and “drop” is to open with a bit of the meromero factor: i.e. make them turn to mush. That’s what this show does and it does it well. I wasn’t on the edge, but if I had been, introducing Utena to the viewer through the fairy-tale narrative of her meeting with her prince and vowing to become one herself following the deaths of her parents as a little girl, juxtaposed with scenes of her cleaning everyone’s clocks in basketball sends the viewer head over heels for her immediately. The viewer sees her in her boys uniform immediately, sees her get chewed out for it, sees her popularity with the other girls and hears her called “like a boy”. Introductions are accomplished succinctly. From here on out it’s a beeline for the surreal stuff that the viewers who weren’t on the fence came to see in the first place.

This is where it gets confusing though: within the first ten minutes of the show. It stays that way too. What’s all this “bara no hanayome” stuff? Who is Anthy and why is she “engaged” to Utena? I don’t know how to describe the feelings or thoughts that went through my head the first time I saw the stair climbing scene to the duel area and heard the theme “Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku”. Every time thereafter that this imagery was repeated, however, it never failed to give me chills.

Again, it’s a mysterious effect that this show, the repeated imagery in particular, has on the viewer. The viewer starts to think, “Hmm, could it be, after all, that this show is…formulaic?

No. Well, not in a bad way, at least. I watch House on TV. House and Utena are two very different shows, but they have one important aspect in common. House starts at 8:00 pm. At around 8:30 Dr. House and his team think they’ve figured out what the ailment the patient suffers from is called and how to treat it. Of course, the viewer knows that they are wrong; there’s still 30 minutes before the show ends so he can’t be correct yet. At 8:48 House is in the middle of some unrelated task, stops, stares straight ahead, gets a funny look in his eye, the music changes and the viewer knows he’s figured out what’s really wrong with the patient. This happens in every episode but it doesn’t make the show any less fun to watch. Utena has this effect on the viewer as well, but it’s done in an even more satisfying way that in House.

In Utena the episode begins and we have some background story about whichever character is getting a turn in the spotlight today. The apprehension builds throughout the first half of the episode. Perhaps there are a few moments of comic relief, but the trend is mounting tension. In the second half the main conflict builds until it reaches a critical mass at around the 17 minute mark. At this point the silhouette “kashira kashira” chorus appears and says something that, like all of the allegorical and symbolic elements of the show, is both germane and yet somehow completely abstruse and never quite as decipherable as you’d like it to be

At this point your chest is tight, your knuckles are white, wrapped around the arms of your chair and your heart is beating so quickly you feel it’s about to burst through your ribcage. Just when you can’t take it any longer you see the forest behind the school, “Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku” begins to play, the familiar imagery comes out and you experience an unsurpassed catharsis.

This is all well and good, but what is the show about? Of course, I don’t really know. There are some prominent themes and maybe the case could be made that is has a continuous plot, but I can’t adequately encapsulate it in words. There are a lot of well-known anime motifs in this show, one of the most recognizable being the student council. They’re elite, they’re pretty, and they’re powerful. There’s also a characteristic absence of adults. Akio is an adult, I suppose, and there’s the teacher who scolds Utena for wearing a boys uniform, but adults don’t play much of a role in the overall story. In fact, I think that’s one of the themes. The prince that Utena looks up to tells her not to lose her nobility even when she becomes an adult. Akio loses his nobility when he becomes an adult. He seemed like an alright sort of person as a youngster. He saved Utena, didn’t he? Were the writers taking a page out of Wordsworth and saying that adults=bad, unimaginative, selfish creatures who have lost sight of the valuable things in life along with their sense of wonderment and innocence? Bah, that’s what happens when you think about any single phenomenon in the show; you thing you’re getting somewhere understanding the significance, the “message” behind it, but then things get muddled and you don’t know what’s allegory, what’s sarcasm, what’s satirical, what’s metaphor or what’s reality anymore. Perhaps adults just don’t understand. It’s even in the song. 「これ以上話をしてもあなたには見えない。昔の話にすがる大人には言い訳が似合う。」ってところ

A lot of viewers seem to call this a “yuri” show. I don’t know about that. I’m going to have to watch the series again one day for a better perspective, but I don’t think that lesbianism is such a big theme of the show itself. I think that viewers certainly like projecting lesbian themes onto the show and interpreting things as confirmation of those projections, but I just don’t see much of it. I think that what people are viewing as lesbianism is more about the seeming rigidity of gender role mores contrasted with the actual fluidity of gender identities and roles that constitute a continuum, rather than a dichotomy. The relationship between Anthy and Utena is not really lesbian. There’s nothing in the show that can’t be interpreted symbolically. In one of the songs played during some duel or other there are some lyrics referring to the anima and animus. I think it’s more useful to look at Anthy and Utena in these terms, respectively. The idea that Anthy and Utena are two sides of a single character is also conveyed, to some extent, in the bed they sleep in in Akio’s apartment and when they lie down in it, their silhouettes first melting into and then moving past each other. Of course, that’s about as far as I got in my thinking on my first complete viewing of the series. If I try to go any farther, such as wondering, “What is the show saying about gender? Is it saying the categories into which we assign people, without consent, are too inflexible? too proscriptive?” I end up losing track of my thoughts. One thing that’s made abundantly clear is that these categories do shape our social interactions and have consequences that are not always immediately apparent. I think this bit is symbolized by Anthy, Bara no Hanayome, being trapped in that sword-filled prison-ish thingy

Of course, if Anthy is the girly one and she’s imprisoned, as it were, doesn’t that mean that the show is making a normative statement? Don’t you then have to interpret her imprisonment as an indictment of Utena for not being “girly” enough? Of course, the show is certainly not saying that — all of Utena’s qualities are celebrated, both “feminine” and otherwise — but the anima/animus symbolism might lead you in that direction, which is just another reason why this show is so confusing. You can read anything allegorically, but even when you do, different people will come up with different allegories. I will watch this series again and I’m sure I’ll come up with some completely different ideas.

Speaking of watching it again, I will probably buy the DVDs. I’m poor and fundamentally a pirate; I rarely buy DVDs, especially anime. I don’t like buying R1 DVDs because I feel like it’s not much better than buying those Malaysian DVDs with English, Chinese and Malay subs. If I’m going to buy a DVD or Blu Ray I’ll buy the Japanese release. I buy media on disc not because I will watch from the disc — I rarely buy anything I haven’t seen — I buy it because I like it and will proudly put it on my shelf, rather than in a box in a closet, like I do with all the rubbish shows and movies I’m embarrassed I own. That’s why I feel conflicted about buying the new R1 DVDs that came out on June 7. But the Japanese DVDs are just absurdly expensive, even as far as Japanese DVDs go. If there are going to be three box sets of Utena released here in NA and each is about USD 40 it means I’ll be spending quite a bit of money for something that I only want to own as a symbol of how much I like the show. Still, I do sometimes buy multiple physical copies of novels if I like them enough. In other words, this is not completely out of the ordinary for me. I’m still not sure though that I want to spend up to USD 120 on DVDs of a show that I already have on an HDD. I probably will though. I’ll feel guilty if I don’t. At least I already own the R2J DVD of the movie so I won’t feel tempted to buy that over again.

This show is not as deadly serious as it can feel sometimes. There are moments of comic relief in most episodes and there’s even an animal mascot, Chu-chu.

There are couple of what can only properly be referred to as gag episodes. Luckily, they all focus on my favourite character, Kiryuu Nanami. Even these episodes are surreal and, though they are sufficiently different in mood so that the viewer takes them in a different light from the rest of the episodes, there’s still something very affecting about them. The episode in which Nanami, so entranced by what she mistakes for a fashionable brand name, prances about sporting a cow bell, ultimately turning into a cow in mind, body, and even speech is, admittedly, pretty silly, but I enjoyed it.

Nanami is my favourite student council member, followed by Jury and Miki. Jury should have gotten another episode. The only opportunity the viewer had to get to know her intimately were the episodes about the fencing captain Ruka. On the other hand, Miki was featured prominently in several episodes and so was Nanami. The cutest bit of the whole series for me was the episode in which Nanami believes she has lain an egg and secretly cares for it. I nearly melted when she realises that she can’t ask anyone for advice because it’s possible that all the other girls have already been laying eggs for a long time and that she, laying her first egg at this stage, would be made fun of as a late bloomer.

Ahhh ~ why can’t I have an imouto like Nanami?

I loved this show. They sure don’t make ’em like they used to. Although my head is still spinning from the enigmatic plot and symbolism, one final thing that I can say with confidence is that the music is every bit as important a part of this show as the artwork, dialogue and voice actors. It’s got one of the most distinctive sound tracks of any show I’ve ever seen and, although I mentioned that the song “Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku” gives me the chills, many of the other themes also give me the goosebumps. The song called “Akio car” on the soundtrack is just great. This is the song played during the scenes in which Akio is driving that freaky sportscar, showing people the sekais they nozomu. Hearing it makes me feel like I’m in that strange, dark, streetlight-lined roadway that seems to continue forever but never gets anywhere. I’d buy the soundtrack collection as well if it weren’t USD1400.

I’m not sure I have anything more that I can coherently express in proper sentences about the show at the moment, so here are some more pictures of scenery and Nanami:

Best mouse in the world? Or best mouse in the universe?

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The Logitech MX310 is, without any semblance of doubt, the best mouse I’ve ever used.

I’ve always had a problem finding mice I like. I think I have larger than average hands or something, since my most frequent problem with mice is that they have too small a surface area. If the body of the mouse is too small, what ends up happening is that the buttons are too close to where my palm would naturally rest, so I end up having to bend my knuckles at an unnaturally sharp angle, which is uncomfortable. I use my index finger for the left button and my middle finger for the right button, so the knuckles on these two fingers should only have to bend slightly to operate the buttons. The index and middle fingers should be almost straight. Ideally, if you ask me, the buttons on a mouse should be situated so that your knuckles bend at a very gentle 150 degree angle or so.

The Logitech MX310 is long enough so that this is exactly what happens naturally to my hands. It’s also got an attractive color scheme and six configurable buttons: standard right and left, one on the right side, one on the left side, one just below the scroll wheel and finally, the scroll wheel itself, which serves as a button.

I’m fairly certain that the mouse is no longer being manufactured. When it was still in production though, I believe it was marketed as a “gaming mouse”. The type of gaming I do on the computer doesn’t require a fancy mouse, so I don’t actually care all that much about the configurable buttons or how its precision will help me to get a headshot. No, what I like most about it is its weight. There’s just the right amount of resistance when you move it around. It has a very smooth feel when used with a mousepad. I’ve never used another mouse with such a satisfying degree of inertia.

How did I discover this unsurpassed mouse? By accident, of course. Prior to my discovery of the MX310, I had been using Dell 0D1161 mice. You know, these office surplus ones:

Despite their ubiquity, these are pretty good mice. As I said, I don’t actually care about the six buttons on the MX310 — that’s not why I love it so much — so the fact that there are only three buttons on the Dell mice doesn’t bother me. These Dell mice match the MX310 in every respect except for weight. The Dell mice are not too light, but, ideally, they should be slightly heavier. The MX310 is a bit heavier than the Dell mice and, in my opinion, the perfect weight.

Those Dell mice stop working after a relatively short while. I suppose they’re not really made to last. I’ve gone through four of them in as many years. I buy them on eBay several at a time. One day, when another mouse broke and I was down to my last spare, I placed an order for three more of those Dell mice so that I would have them in stockpile, ready to be swapped into service as soon as needed. When the package arrived, instead of three 0D1161 mice (or whatever they’re actually called) I found a single Logitech MX310. I contacted the seller, who acknowledged his mistake and immediately sent out the three correct mice that I had ordered. He told me not to bother sending him back the MX310. That was a fateful bit of apathy on his part, because if it weren’t for that eBay seller, I never would have had an opportunity to use the MX310.

Even once the three 0D1161 mice arrived I didn’t put them into service; I used the MX310 until it stopped working properly. After some time it would intermittently stop responding. Eventually it got to the point where I’d have to unplug it and then reconnect it every minute or so. In other words, it became unusable, as inevitably happens with mice. I didn’t get rid of it though; I just dumped it in my huge box of broken electronics and computer components that, for various reasons, I hadn’t yet disposed of properly.

Since then, I’ve been using those three 0D1161 mice. That is, until a week or two ago when the last one of them that remained stopped working. Since I needed a replacement, I decided that I would try to replace the beloved MX310. I bought one cheaply on eBay for USD20, compared to the USD40 to 50, which was the price on Amazon and other online stores at the time.

Ironically, shortly after it arrived I found this article about how to easily replace the USB cable in an MX310. I followed it and fixed the first MX310 that had been sitting around broken for at least a few years. Now I’ve got two and I couldn’t be happier.

Yep, AnoHana is my top show this season

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I think that even if the show ends with a lame cop-out ending like a meteorite impact or even it was all a dream this show will still be my favourite of the season. The only other show in the running would be Hanasaku Iroha but I hate the protagonist and her let’s-all-get-along-anything-is-possible-if-we-work-together attitude so the show would be a nonstarter for me if it weren’t for Chiaki Omigawa.

But this AnoHana show continues to have very concise yet equally emotionally draining episodes without lowering the intensity scale even a bit. It’s hard work for the viewer and I can see how a one episode break from the bullettrain feverish pace this show seems to be going at in the form of a more easygoing episode somewhere in the middle would be a tempting diversion, but nonetheless, I sure hope they don’t have an onsen episode or anything like that (I’ve jinxed it, haven’t I?). But even if they did, nothing can ruin the show now. Not since Hourou Musuko have I as eagerly awaited each new episode of a show. Admittedly, Hourou Musuko wasn’t that long ago, but prior to that I don’t know when the hell the last time I enjoyed a show this much was. Maybe NHK ni Youkoso.

I like how each character seems to get his or her turn in the spotlight. Last week’s episode was Yukiatsu. I guess I was biased in his favour since it was revealed that he was the one dressed up as Menma, but this episode was devoted almost entirely to showcasing his likable side to viewers who may not have found his crossdressing as likable as I did, saving Naruko and all and wailing like some kind of teary-eyed survivor’s guilt victim repressed to the point of mentos and cola magnitude explosive inundation.

Tsuruko must be more than the archetypal meganekko tsundere. I look forward to her character episode.