Off the Cliff

Have finished the first disk of Gankutsu-ou. ( (cut and lux'd for those who prefer to stay completely unspoiled) )

Also tammylee and tpod, can you send me your email addies for further discussion about hosting? Mine is in my user infor.

Gankutsu-ou DVD 1 gets released by Geneon on Tuesday. Chances are somebody about town will have it, and if not I can get it in NY. Fun eye-bleeding stuff all round.

So I was going to celebrate the end of AS and the end of the week by watching the end of Gankutsu-ou near the end of the current tape. But my VCR suddenly decided it hated stuff taped on shiny_monkey's VCRs. It has a way of doing this- turned three tapes from her last winter into agitated black lines, even though the sound stayed OK. This time the picture was still visible but the sound went Chipmunks. This is sad because the end of Gankutsuou is set to the full version of You and I Were Lovers, and having the Chipmunks sing it rather loses the effect.

I also pinched a nerve in my neck (sleeping) which led to rigid shoulder which led to miserable headache, and I'm in despair about not having a voice to write my stories in, or not having the right voice, and the world is a bit of a howling wilderness at the moment. But this almost makes me cheerful again.

Whatever the malign astrological influences are that've been at work this last week, they're still working overtime. I find myself sinking into a generalized sullen irritation: though mind you, a threatened transit strike is reason enough to be irritable. I could silver-line it: a transit strike means more money for replacement worker me, since certain staff can't or won't get into work if it happens. But I don't feel like silver-lining it. I feel like sneering at the one staff who loudly insists that *she* isn't walking any three subway stops to work; the more so as another staff who lives thirteen stops away and across the Viaduct is all prepared to bicycle in.
( But what has this to do with Hellsing? )

(ETAmend- eps 17 and 18, not 16 and 17)
Over at the Gankutsu-ou lj someone wonders what the short form of the title should be, since evidently every other series has one but ours. (No I haven't looked at any Japanese wps, since you ask.) I'm partial to Gankou myself, so if I say that you know what I mean, yes?

So because I get my eps on tape I'm usually a few weeks behind everyone else. While others are babbling about ep21 is it, I've just viewed ep 17. (And have ep 18, a brief scan of which explains that poster's virulence about the visual quality of same. I've seen little in the way of RPG animation but *that*-- is RPG animation. 'Oui,' said the 11-year-old, 'and bad.' Give me back my flickering plaid patterns and dancing paisley shirts, please, cause I loathe mecha.)
( Spoilers aka I love the smell of betrayal in the morning )

No sooner does all the snow melt away than more snow falls. Yes dear, it's called 'winter.' But even Mrs. Professor of Islamic Culture up the street, who must be an easy 20 years younger than me, says she aches from shoveling; and so do I.
( Gankutsu-ou, cut for those who might view it some day )

Mind you, if the Count turns out to be someone like Deth from the RiddleMaster trilogy, I shall be pleased as well. But I'm not holding my breath on that one. The Count too may have altruistic motives for what he's doing but ultimately one must assume it's personal. It's the Count of Monte Cristo, after all.

I-have-finished-a-fic-go-me. Not dragons. Seven Samurai. Kyuuzou (that's the swordsman)/ Katsushirou (that's the kid.) And to spare you all I've used English spelling for the names which are otherwise u-heavy.
( Non-natter )

So, fannishly, as I view through my compilation tapes (yes I come from an older slower generation: I don't think I *want* to watch anime on my computer screen) I find myself becoming unreasonably fascinated with Gankutsu-oh, Cave King, ie The Count of Monte Cristo on both acid and mescaline. Yes the shifting garish computer graphics make one's eyes bleed, the more so as the characters' clothes are generally much more alive and certainly move much more than the characters themselves; but you get over that little quirk eventually, as anyone who survived 60's poster graphics learned to do, and then you realize there's a story there, and more surrealism than I've seen since Utena, and Folken's VA as the blue skinned pointy eared Count with his visual and other references to Mephistopheles. (And is he going to steal the soul of our brash young hero, the boy who ought to have been his son, or is brash young hero going to save the Count's soul, or neither? Tune in next week.) Weird and batty and burning style as it goes, the way I like 'em. And a nifty opening theme, angsty modern grafted onto 18th century minuet. Cool.

I also agree with everybody else about Meine Liebe: it exists only to be pretty and to resonate and so what? It's pretty and it resonates. How long it can go on doing so is a good question; but let us never forget, in Japan style *is* substance, so if it does nothing else but embody The Beautiful Male, what of it?

Equally I continue to plow through Fool's Errand, growing ever crosser as I do. It needs some of Meine Liebe's honesty. Madam, you are breaking no new ground in your constant hints of Deep Attachment between Fitz and the Fool, even if you think you are. That one's old; it's old enough to vote even; old enough in Japan to be married with school-aged kids. Also, if you want to work that territory you'll gain no marks by having one of the densest narrators I've ever had to deal with. Thank god I skipped the three (or is it six?) previous books with him in it.

Though such is Hobb's dogged approach that I begin to think maybe it couldn't be done any other way. Keep it all repressed or simply not noticed by our purblind hero and all's presumably well on the middle American front. But surely she's falling between two stools here? These chronic and obvious hints- I'd expect the pro-m/m people to be howling that there's not enough and the anti-m/m to be howling that it's there at all.