I'm watching the anime series Fullmetal Alchemist these days, and having just seen the episode wherein Edward and Alphonse return to their hometown for repairs, I have to say Winry is an awesome character. As fictional female mechanics go, I'd say Firefly's Kaylee is more quirkily endearing to me, but Winry makes me happy just the same.

Umm, interesting: Wikipedia has a category for fictional mechanics, and it includes Darth Vader, who's also listed under the categories fictional racecar drivers and fictional characters with disabilities, and hey, who am I to argue with those? :)

Fill in the blank:

Since I love Haibane Renmei, I'll probably also like _______.

I finished watching the short anime series Now and Then, Here and There (今、そこにいる僕). I'd heard that it was really depressing, but I didn't find it to be. In my personal hierarchy of all the anime I've seen, I put it between Neon Genesis Evangelion and Tokyo Godfathers. Not top tier, but enjoyable.

The idea is that a Japanese boy is accidentally transported to the future; specifically, he finds himself in a tyrannical desert kingdom where children serve as soldier-slaves. The psychopathic king tries to exploit a mysterious girl with a powerful pendant, while the main character tries to protect her. The characters in general are complex: Abelia is more than an evil henchwoman, Nabuca is torn between loyalty to and rebellion against the king, and Sara is transformed by violence.

We've started watching the Kino's Journey series, about a traveler who rides through various odd countries on a motorbike. I have what must be a predictable question: is Kino female or male?

On the male side: the DVD sleeve uses masculine references to Kino, and in the Japanese version, Kino uses the masculine self-pronoun boku. On the female side: a feminine voice (and not in the typical woman-voicing-a-child way), and in the fourth episode, “Land of Adults,” we see what appears to be Kino's origin as a girl escaping her cruel village. I'm familiar with the fluidity of gender in anime and manga, but this case seems more contradictory than usual.

On Saturday I went grocery shopping ( Read more... )

Saturday night was thewronghands‘s going-away party. ( Read more... )

Yesterday, I spent a bunch of time reading. I made mochi ( Read more... )

I made zenzai (a.k.a. oshiruko) yesterday for the first time. ( Read more... )

Rob and I re-watched Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence last night. ( Read more... )

Anime hair. Those words evoke visions of outrageously brightly-colored, spiky or otherwise outré hair. Me, I notice the hair ribbons.

Here's the title character from Serial Experiments Lain:

I don't know if you'd call that a ribbon, or what. Maybe it's a rubber band. It's always there, in that little X shape. It's understated. Very Lain.

And here's gothy Miho from the web comic Megatokyo:

Miho seems to wear those ribbons almost all the time, along with a darkly cute sailor-style school uniform. I wonder how those ribbons would stay in place, in the real world. She has some complicated thing going on with the ribbons here; I wish I could reproduce that.

It seems to me that I've seen hair ribbons like these (by which I mean ribbons that wind down the hair rather than tie it up or back) in other anime, but as usual, my memory fails me. Feel free to chime in with any similar examples.

What, you wanted a substantial post?