April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers

Dropped:

Minami-ke:

I got bored. I have the most ungodly short attention span. With English-language TV, I can do crossword puzzles to ease myself through the dull bits, but that doesn't work with subtitled stuff.


Everything else is on hiatus because I was so hardcore about catching up on the new Doctor Who that I reactivated my Netflix account, and I can't pass my classes and watch more TV than is available with 3 discs at a time, unlimited monthly, even when the Post Office eats Season 3, Disc 3. Twice!

I have been going through my obscenely large pile of manga. I've been reading about two to three volumes a week (and buying two), but the pile started very tall indeed. I read a lot of manga. I read a lot more manga than I ever watch anime, by powers of ten. The reason I don't even try to blog about the manga I read is that I cannot keep track of it. The only thing I try to write down is titles I particularly want to read but haven't yet, and it's an awfully messy list, and very hard to decipher.


When the semester's over, I might try to marathon Ghost Hound, though, because that is more awesome than buttered bread.

( Music: )


( Lounging: )

Anime:

Ghost Hound is the best show in the latest season of anime that I've seen. Best show, not best drama; I laugh at Miname-ke, but while the individual skits that make up each episode are pretty strong, it drags as a half-hour of comedy. Ghost Hound is the only new anime I've seen in a while that I've not been tempted to pause so I could go check LJ or brush my teeth.

In tone, it reminds me of something like Niea_7 or Zettai Shounen or Serial Experiments Lain. I've never managed to finish any of those three shows, and in fact, found them inaccessible and pretentious. I'm not sure why Ghost Hound isn't turning me off, honestly. It's got all the creep factor of Lain, with a little less artistic repetition, and some of the buried mystery appeal of Niea_7 and Zettai Shounen, only nastier. (One of the recurring, dominant images of the show is the protagonist Tarou's memory of seeing a fly land on the face of his dead older sister when he was three years old.)

Lots of things seem to happen without there being a clear plot. Tarou is still traumatized by the incident that led to the death of his sister, ten years ago; he has preternatural dreams which he describes in his dream diary, and has sessions with a super-fuckin' creepy therapist at his school. His mother is even less well-adjusted than he. A Kaworu-esque new student turns up at school to harass Tarou and snoop around in Tarou's traumatic past, and he ought to be utterly hateable, but I don't hate him, possibly because the Kaworu-esque snoop has a nice humanizing acrophobia that is clearly the result of his own severe childhood trauma, and also because the symbolism of the prying outsider constantly wearing the wrong school uniform is so obvious that it's kind of funny.

There's also a really hot traumatized fellow student whose father was probably linked to the childhood trauma of Tarou, who wants nothing to do with Tarou, and a younger female student who resides at the shrine where much of the creepy action takes place, and also wants nothing to do with Tarou. The younger student has violet eyes the size of dinner plates, sees supernatural dealies, and is not traumatized that we yet know of, but is also not genki, which probably amounts to the same thing. This is one of those animes where people never want to talk about themselves, or what they're feeling, or what the hell is going on. This may be part of why I don't resent the annoying snoopy kid, since his wandering around expositing about people's traumatic pasts is practically the only way we find out anything.

I do think there's a plot somewhere in all this mystery--I'm fairly sure that the producers know what's going on and where this is headed, but they're taking their time establishing the mysteries that they're going to explore. There's really nothing I like better than being able to cast myself at the mercy of a storyteller, fully confidant that they know what they're doing. Very, very atmospheric--the setting, a small country town with mountain-and-cliffs-scenery is gorgeous, as the acrophobic snoop comments to Tarou--very creepy, with characters more likable than they ought to be, as withdrawn as they are. I'm really interested to see where this show will go.