Books, books, anime
January 22, 2007
No news is good news, right? Well, at least it's quiet. I've had time to... no, that's not right. I've always had time to do whatever. It's only recently that I've begun using that time.
The cable TV is gone, so coming home and having a mindless frozen dinner in front of the tube is impossible. I've been handling it with Pinky and the Brain DVDs and the occasional Excel Saga episode (at least when I'm not eating something complicated). With nothing to distract me, I've been free to pace the walls of my mind, finding a short radius.
My new best friend has been my Borders gift card I got for Christmas. I've been stocking up on sci-fi books. Or rather, throwing them out (mentally) as soon as they're over. So far it's been quite disappointing. David Brin's six book Uplift Saga is based around a premise that could have been thought up by Fry from Futurama: "The universe is kerploding!" Wow, my spell checker hates that word. And then there's Manifold Origin, which is so full of wanton violence, incest and child murdering that it reads like an adaptation of Elfin Lied (more on that later). Oh, and it's not even homo sapien incest and child murder, either. It's homo erectus and heildbergensis, like something out of Jane Goodall's snuff film.
Following those two gems (that's... actually only half sarcasm, as the Uplift books were good for a while) were Century Rain and Diamond Dogs / Turquoise Days by Alastair Reynolds. Century Rain is a cross between a film noir movie and the usual sci-fi space opera. There's another Earth inside a giant sphere that simulates the outside universe for them. In that world it's 1959, Hitler was defeated before he conquered France, and the entire planet is going to be clensed entirely of human life so it can be repopulated. To quote the immortal Bender, "I'm so ashamed; I wish everybody but me was dead." That the book ends in the same manner as Casablanca infuriates me even more. It also makes me want to kick Schrödinger in the nuts... but only a little bit. Which reminds me: if you love me you'll buy me this shirt. Large, s'il vous plait.
Oh, and Diamond Dogs and Turquoise Days are awful for different reasons. In Diamond Dogs there's this giant alien tower on a cold, distant planet. A crew goes there to solve the puzzles in each room and receive whatever prize is in the top of the tower. The fate of the people aboard is of no consequence to me (good thing too, as they're all disemboweled or dismembered by the tower when they answer incorrectly). My only interest in reading this story is: (a) who made the tower, (b) why, and (c) what's in the top? I love the idea of alien civilizations doing their own alien thing... alienny. That's probably why I stuck with the Uplift books for so long.
Anyway, in Diamond Dogs you don't learn the answers to any of those questions. Except, perhaps, that... well, it's Farking crazy. And Turquoise Days is just too utterly predictable. Girl's sister drowns in this semi-sentient ocean. Girl gets job promised to her sister, scary people attack, girl lets herself drown in the ocean to join her sister. Snoresville. I guess my problem is I couldn't visualize them getting in and out of those skintight scuba suits.
So I dunno what's next on my reading list. I've exhausted everything I could find that covers xenoarchaeology and I'm still not even remotely satisfied. Maybe I need a good conk on the head to lower my standards a bit? That sounds good.
Okay, on to the anime. You people asleep yet? No? Right, anime. I finished watching the first disc of Elfin Lied this weekend. I had been putting it off because of the first two episodes I watched, way back in the day. Now I've done two more to make a full disc. So, my conclusion? Elfin Lied is a show for sadists. Or people with sadistic tendencies. You're allowed to like Elfin Lied, this is a free country after all, but I'm not sure I would put up with this kind of abuse even for something that's Samurai Champloo awesome.
In fact, I know I wouldn't because really good shows like Escaflowne and Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo don't need to constantly gross you out to get their point across. They don't start (yes, start: frame one) with a human arm from elbow to wrist, twitching in a pool of blood. They don't have eight year old girls numbly saying (in episode three): "limbs don't just come off by themselves" after watching two of the mutant girls rip each other to shreds. Even Evangelion wasn't this bad. Imagine Asuka and Rei with telekinetic abilities, pulling limbs off like ribs at Smokey Bones. Or rather, don't imagine it. I skipped dinner on Sunday night.
Girls Bravo is another waste of a DVD. The premise is pure idiocy. There's this wussy high school kid who was always picked on by girls when he was younger. So much so that he's developed a phobia towards the fairer sex. Then one day he falls into his bathtub and ends up on the awesomely named planet Seiren next to the unnaturally hot Miharu, who doesn't set off his girl rash (yes, he gets a rash from women). Oh, and the ratio of males to females on Seiren is 1/9, so he's instantly the most desirable person in the town.
This could have made a decent premise so far. Kind of like Vandread but with a wuss for a main character. I might put up with that dork for the promise of an entire harem planet. But no, they take loser boy and his pink-haired playgirl back to Earth so he can try and explain why, among other stupid things, she has three dots on her forehead. Naturally she ends up attending his school, living in his empty house (jeez louise there are a lot of deadbeat parents in Japan) and annoying his mandatory big-breasted childhood friend (who was responsible for drop kicking him into the bathtub to begin with). It's still "better" than Elfin Lied, assuming this flavorless drop of candy can compare to a nonstop torture fest.
Oh, and My HiME disc 6 arrived today. Mai herself is quite unbalanced, as is Shizuru, who finally gets it on with Natsuki (and fails to tell her, whoops). It turns out everyone's an evil SOB, even the nice ones. We lose a few more HiME, although from the freaking spoilers I accidentally read in Wikipedia it seems there's a happy ending after all. Considering how this series has gone that means exactly what you think it means, folks. But whatever, I'm ready to be done with Mai's tortured love rectangles. Coming up next is the lusty Maboraho (which I might tolerate this time), Eureka Seven (Cartoon Network seems to like it, so why not), and Spiral (nice hair, kid). See ya!
