Sigh

I've pretty much given up on anime, but it needs to be said:

This would've been _so_ much better as a Shinbo/SHAFT production.

Kabu no Isaki chapter 11

I think this is my favorite chapter so far.


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We find ourselves in Kawagoe this chapter, which lies roughly 50 miles (80 km) north of the Miura peninsula, as the crow flies (in our world). Multiply those figures by ten and the trip becomes quite long; the Cub has a quoted range of 460 miles and a cruise speed of 115 mph.

There's a bit of a pun in the noodle shop's name: Isa Soba. Thanks go to a Japanese blog that pointed out how there's a lake in Kawagoe called Lake Isa. "Soba" can mean "buckwheat noodles" but it's also a homonym for "next to."

A lot of food gets mentioned in this chapter: eggplant tempura, squid tempura, soba zenzai, awamori, sata andagi, soba karinto. Damn, I get hungry just thinking about it.

Discommunication Seireihen chapter 11

It might seem like this is the end of the background material, but nope.

Obligatory.

Weekly Masayuki Ishikawa - The National Bird of France

I know I really slowbro'd this one, but that's just how it goes.

Now, I don't want to get anyone's hopes up, but I happened upon my copy of this story collection over break, ended up reading through it, and I realized that I've come a long way Japanese-wise. In other words, I might work on a few more stories than the 3 I originally picked out. Won't happen until Seireihen is finished, though.

Discommunication Seireihen chapter 10

Well, just one chapter this time. I found it mildly unsettling, if not disturbing; that's Ueshiba's stock in trade, really.

I'm going to be busy for the next month or so. Have a happy Festivus and we'll continue this next year.

Kabu no Isaki chapter 10

Well, here we go again.


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I was feeling facetious, so I asked Google for directions from Nagai to Kisarazu. It does just fine for ground routes, but as far as I know, there's no as-the-crow-flies distance measurement option. Using a ruler, I measured 30-odd kilometers in our world, which makes 330 km in KnI's world. [Addendum: Found the Ruler feature in Google Maps Labs; it measured 33.1 km.]

There was one sticking point in this chapter that I'm still not completely sure about. Isaki actually says "liaison aircraft" where I had him say "air courier." So what's a liaison aircraft? It's a small plane used for non-combat military purposes, like transport and reconnaissance. The Pitts Special is not a liaison aircraft, but the L-4 variant of the Cub (the "Grasshopper") is. So perhaps they were talking about the Cub, but the rest of the conversation doesn't make nearly as much sense that way. I might be wrong, though, so I'll come back to this if necessary.

Suddenly, AX

I finally got my hands on the first volume of the AX Anthology yesterday, chock full of some of the trippiest comics ever made. The tale of the obtaining is long and harrowing: I made a preorder on Amazon in January. All seemed well, with an email in May saying that the expected date had been moved forward a couple of weeks to the end of July. Come the end of July, however, an email appeared that asked, "we haven't been able to get this, do you still want us to try?" I thought the situation was a little odd, as Top Shelf reportedly was selling copies at San Diego Comic-Con, but I continued to wait. At the beginning of August, Amazon gave me a new ship date of mid-September, only to deliver another "we haven't been able to get this" message on September 10th. Then two weeks later, the order was cancelled by them for lack of availability.

Then about a week ago, I was ordering some other books on Amazon, and oh hey look the AX Anthology is available and in stock. The rest, as they say, is history.