Insomnic Dreams

This is a cool animation featuring silhouette art based on Touhou designs. The song is Bad Apple.

Here is another animation that translates the above into stop motion:

By now the song should have infected your brain. There’s nothing to be done about it. Enjoy.

Hayao Miyazaki creates some of the most stunning animation and imaginative storytelling including movies Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Howl’s Moving Castle just to name a few. Miyazaki’s latest release to come to the United States is Ponyo (full title: Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea).

Head over to the Ponyo Apple Trailers to see the HD version.

If you haven’t seen any of his other works I highly recommend them… they are generally family friendly and are truly … well… magical.

I mentioned the ARC Awards previously and how they are a great place to go to pick up some suggestions for anime to watch.

Well, they just recently released the 2008 Anime Reactor Community Awards.

Here is a quick rundown on some of the winners:

• Best Overall, Best Story, Best Sci-Fi: Kaiba
• Best Romance, Best Drama, Best Slice-of-Life: Clannad
• Best Adventure/Fantasy: Ookami to Koushinryou (Spice and Wolf)

There are some others listed at the site as well as Jury picks – so go check a few of them out if you are interested.

I will say that Kaiba is completely original in its story telling and animation style – so original it may be a bit awkward for some people. If you are confused while watching it – just keep watching, it works itself out.

Also, if you’ve been following me on Twitter or Facebook you may have seen me mention an anime that was really excellent – that one would be Clannad and its second season Clannad ~After Story~. I highly recommend it as a drama/romance/comedy/fantasy/slice-of-life style story.

If you have any recommendations or comments about the ARC Award winners, shout ‘em out in the comments!

As I mentioned in the previous post, I like animation. This includes anime. Anime has become quite a bit more popular over the last few years (thanks in large part to the ease of digital distribution of fansubs and recent pop culture popularity) and some people have asked for recommendations on what to watch. Like any media – there is good stuff and there is bad stuff… similar to summer blockbusters. Luckily, there is one place that tends to pick quite a few of the “good ones” regularly and that is the Anime Reactor Community Awards (ARC Awards).

The ARC Awards are done once a year and it is a community process to narrow down and vote for anime in a number of categories. The biggest category is “Best Anime Overall” which is equatable to the “Best Picture” award at the Oscar’s. The winners get recognition in the form of a banner that is used at AniDB (largest database for Anime – like IMDb is for movies).

Here are the past ARC Award winners for “Best Anime Overall”

• Sekai no Senki II – 2001
• Azumanga Daioh – 2002
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – 2003
• Full Metal Alchemist – 2004
• School Rumble – 2005
• Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu – 2006
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann – 2007

A wide variety of genre’s have won the award including drama, action, and comedy. Be sure to check out the results to see the other categories and selections as well as the other nominees.

Now… that covers newer anime but some people want the classics – the ones “everyone know” (at least the ones anime fans refer to just like movie buffs say “you have to see this”). That gets harder. There are obvious classics, but like many classics, sometimes they don’t translate as well to newer audiences. If you are interested in trying some anime… stick to the ones listed above and you’ll probably be happier. If you really become interested, there are lots of places to find those classics I mentioned – and I’ll be happy to recommend a few.

Lastly comes the big debate with anime … subbed or dubbed. This debate is actually true of almost all foreign media and it usually comes down to preference. Subtitles (subbed) give a more accurate translation and representation of the story and you get the original actors voice and intonation as intended, but it can detract from your viewing as you have to focus more on reading. Dubbed is easier to follow and is less distracting from the visuals but you might lose story elements or get awkward lines as the translation is changed to fit speech time.  Older anime that you find on VHS or DVD was plagued by bad dubbing but over the last 7 years or so it has gotten much better and so comes down more to preference (though there are still some dubs that make me cringe).

So there you have it. The basics to get started watching anime. Hopefully this has helped answer some of the basic questions but if you have more, feel free to ask me.

NOTE: Anime can be more adult in nature than the average American cartoon. Anime is marketed in Japan to a wider audience so be sure to check up on a show before getting it for minors to watch. I’ve seen parents get an anime for their kids because it looked cute on the cover only to end up quite distraught when the cute little girl turns out to be a homicidal maniac. I should also mention the same is true for manga; I’ve stopped many a parent from buying a manga title just by having them flip through the pages first – comics and cartoons aren’t just for kids.

I like animation. As such, many friends have recommended Avatar: The Last Airbender to me. I have resisted this in part because I have particular tastes when it comes to animation – Believe me… that’s a whole different post about the advantages and disadvantages of animation as a story telling device versus as a children’s colorful distraction. You can see I have opinions, and I had put Avatar in the later category because of its marketing and presentation by Nickelodeon. Luckily, enough people whose opinion I trusted said I’d like it that I gave it a shot and my only disappointment was that it took so long for me to watch it.

I highly recommend this show even if you aren’t a big fan of animation – though I understand some people just can’t take animation seriously… I feel sorry for them. If you are a fan of good storytelling I think you’ll like this series. It is a bit saccharine at times – it is a cartoon aimed – but it also treats the audience like they have a brain. I’m impressed. I hope more cartoons take this approach.

Also, there wasn’t a single fart joke in the entire series. Not one. No wonder people think it isn’t an American cartoon.

Oh… they are also making a live action movie with M. Night Shyamalan and the original creators working together to make a trilogy (the series is broken up into 3 parts so it makes sense). Hopefully that will work out okay.

Thanks to Austerity for pointing this out.

It’s like the Coke commercials – but different.

You can find the higher resolution version and more information at the official GOOBEES website.

Phun is a 2D physics sandbox.
So what right?
Watch the video clip.

Now the best part – this “toy” is free and it runs on Windows and Linux (Mac coming soon).  I wish I had this while I was growing up.

The hell is Caramelldansen?

Well… it’s a song by a Swedish group named Caramell – and I assume you can figure out that it translates into Caramell Dance. Yes… there is a dance that goes along with it. It’s been parodied like crazy too. So why bring this up? Well – it’s another of those odd memes that is kind of interesting to see (like Numa Numa) and are often kind of fun.

This is one of the “original” ones from Popotan:

Here’s one with a neat bit of trickery using Augmented Reality and Vocaloid Nendroid:

Real people are doing it too:

Here are a couple popular ones:
—Watch till the end!—

—Guys Too!—

—Some are Sad—

All in all – it’s a song that will get stuck in your head even if you don’t know the words. Plus, next time you are out at the dance clubs you’ll be able to perform this intricate dance and impress everyone with your impressive repertoire.

If you are a fan of Pixar movies, you’ve probably noticed some of the cross references made between the different Pixar movies. Jim Hill details a bunch of these different references at his website – with pictures!

It’s pretty interesting actually to see some of these – especially in retrospect since some of the references were for upcoming releases. Now that’s a tough reference to spot…

Thanks to Hawk for pointing it out.

There is a song that plays during the credits at the end of the game Portal called “Still Alive”. It was written by Jonathan Coulter who is a folk singer/songwriter with a large geek following. He wrote Code Monkey for example (YouTube AMV version here) – a song I really love even though I’m not truly a code monkey.

Here is the trailer for Portal which should give you a real feeling of the game and the computer that is “helping” you:

Anyways… Scott at VGCats made a flash video for the song Still Alive and it’s flippin’ hilarious. It’s the perfect video for this song – and I just wanted to share because it has infested my brain. Hopefully it will infest yours as well.