Great Human Moment in One Punch Man

is...fine. 

Dorothy Sayers wrote that there is no group of people who can't find common ground complaining about drains. 

In sum, some practical conditions of human mortality crop up again and again--which is where humor comes from.

In One Punch Man, an asteroid--or rather, parts of an asteroid since Saitama prevents the entire rock hitting the planet--takes out areas in a city. Saitama notes that the "supermarket is in ruins...But my old landlord's building is fine? Tch!"

The anime uses this event: Saitama complains that the apartment building that he got evicted from is still standing while everything around it is reduced to rubble!

Anyone can relate to unsatisfactory landlords and the fact that karma honestly doesn't happen according to plan.  

And here's a joke about drains: 

 

 

Voices in Various Venues

I recently mentioned Loid from Spy X Family as a great laid-back hero. 

I must mention the voices--Takuya Eguchi, Japanese, and Alex Organ, English. 

What amazes me about Alex Organ is that he is able to give Loid a dead-pan voice. A dead-pan voice! And yet it doesn't sound monotone. In fact, the voice sounds warm and kind. Even when he gets exasperated, he sounds more like  "guy trying to get by" than a zealot--which is largely the point. 

Like Scarecrow (Scarecrow & Mrs. King), Loid is a spy who actually IS better at the family stuff: he just doesn't know it yet. 

* * *

Max Mittelman

Saitama in One-Punch Man is excellently rendered in the English dub by Max Mittelman, who manages to capture the character's dry, laconic, "hey dude" personality in a light tenor. 

Makoto Furukawa

The voice is amusing by itself--but a great deal of the anime's humor arises from Saitama's tone paired with Genos's earnest, monotone and slightly deeper voice. The exchanges are quite amusing.

Genos is voiced by Kaito Ishikawa and Zach Aguilar.

Makoto Furukawa is the original Japanese actor for Saitama. Voices do not have to match up to image but in this case, I found the "hey, folks, wassup?" photos more than a little amusing. Maybe capturing the character IS all about mindset. 

* * * 

For World Voice Day, I decided to pay tribute to anime voice actors and post a short interview with Don LaFontaine, 1940 - 2008.

The anime voice actor for today's post is Adam Gibbs, who has an impressive resume in that field. He does the voice of Taichi Mashima in Chihayafaru. Gibbs' voice notably captures Taichi's personality, including the doubts, romantic longings, self-reflection, and leadership qualities. Taichi is a complex guy!

Don LaFontaine, of course, is That Announcer Guy From the Movies. 

What amazes me about the interview is the anecdote about how fast his voice changed and how extreme was the change. The other fascinating point was how his voice can cut through loud music and explosions--it doesn't get drowned out.

By all accounts, Don LaFontaine was as sweet and generous and good-natured as he appears in the interview.

Loid: Relaxed Tough Guy

Loid from Spy X Family is a great relaxed tough guy.

He falls more into the Scarecrow (Scarecrow and Mrs. King) category of spies than the James Bond category: less man about town and more clean-cut, family guy at heart who happens to also be very good at his job. 

He ends up with a family: wife, daughter, dog, who are all as odd as he is--granted, he is the most reasonable and level-headed though only to a point. As the interview at his daughter's school indicates, the more attached he gets to his unexpected family, the more important they become: more than anything else. 

As of Season 3, he isn't quite there yet, but he is getting closer. 

He's a great laid-back hero since he takes extreme physical action and then immediately assesses his situation: Wait, did I upset her? What did I do wrong? 

So when his drunk wife nearly takes him out with her assassin skills, he parries her but doesn't fight back. He's too busy trying to figure out, "What is happening?!" 

A thinking action man!  

Great Slimy Character: JJ from Yuri on Ice!

JJ isn't exactly slimy. But in a highly competitive world inhabited by combative, strident personalities, he still manages to irritate people. He brags, mocks, struts, shows off. Yuri P, the younger Yuri, can't stand him. 

Consequently, JJ has one of the best arcs in the series. In the final competition, during the short program, skated to "Theme of King JJ," he suddenly suffers a performance downturn, a one-thing-goes-wrong-it-gets-worse ripple effect that the protagonist, Yuri K, suffered at the series' beginning. 

JJ fights back. He gets the lowest score of his career, but he finishes his demanding program. He also retains his JJ persona for the fans. In addition, his girlfriend reveals that she has a loyal tough side--she's not just dating JJ for the wins and the fame--when she begins a chant among the fans on JJ's behalf. 

It's a fantastic example of rivals never entirely being enemies in sports anime. The better and more resilient the rival, the better and more resilient the protagonist. 

Fairy Tales: Peter & the Wolf

Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev shows up in the fairy tale section.

However, unlike Hoffmann's Nutcracker, which was created in literary form before moving over to music, Peter and the Wolf was created as a musical piece from the beginning.

I saw Peter and the Wolf live at some point in my childhood. Unfortunately, I didn't remember it enough to know the answer to Jane's question, posed to a deceptive mother (who didn't actually attend the concert).

I recently picked up a picture book version and quickly lost interest--there is not, in fact, much of a plot: boy with animals catches wolf against his grandfather's wishes. Without the music, the story is somewhat blah.

So I determined that, like with Shakespeare's plays, the only way to truly appreciate the work was to watch it as it was meant to be watched: action with music. 

Walt Disney (1946)

Walt Disney's version is entirely appropriate to Sergei Prokofiev's vision. He visited Disney in 1938 (the studio and the man). The animated version was created in 1940 and released in 1946, just after World War II. It is likely that had the studio waited even a little longer, the short never would have been released due to its Russian setting. The Cold War and McCarthyism was looming.

It is worth watching, namely, to be honest, for its nostalgic factor. It's classic and again, does Prokofiev's score justice.

It also doesn't go anywhere. It is better than the picture books but as a plot with an arc...eh.

Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman (2006)

The 2006 stop-motion animated feature is a marvel!

I confess to being a little worried beforehand since I knew about some of the changes. Due to the age in which we live, I fretted that the short would be heavy-handed with the theme.

I shouldn't have worried. (Hey, this was 2006, not 2023!) Yes, the true villains are the bullies in town. And Peter does free the wolf.

He frees the wolf after it eats the friendly, silly duck (eats it whole, which is in keeping with the original story). He still frees it. The boy who desperately wants to get out into the woods and nature and explore makes the tough choice because he is tough enough to handle it. He isn't afraid of the bullies now OR the wolf. He knows he can face the world. He knows he handle whatever comes, including risks.

The boy, Peter, is pure boy and lovely to watch as he gets scratched up and his hair goes wild.

The short is also very funny. The cat was animated by someone who "gets" cats. In fact, the cat receives a surprising amount of air time as it chases the bird, tries to act dignified after falling through an ice hole, stands off with the wolf in a gangster type gesture, and weaves around the grandfather's legs.

The music is also perfectly used. It doesn't begin until the boy finally gets outside the house and town. Then it bursts out of the screen, Dorothy entering Oz, only the woods are like the half-swamp I grew up next to, rather than some gorgeous, perfect nature preserve.

My siblings and I still loved the half-swamp. Similarly, the freedom and pleasure the boy finds in the small iced-over pond is worth all that music. 

I highly recommend the short, which won an Oscar (another red flag for me--but turns out to be justified in this case). It is available on Amazon to rent and buy. 

Wonderful Anime Voice: Jean Simmons

Pixar did itself proud with the voices!

One of the most remarkable voices in anime is Jean Simmons as older Sophie in Howl's Moving Castle. 

Far too often, when I listen to audio books, the narrators try to "sound" old when playing an elderly person. Barbara Rosenblat is a good reader but she makes Mrs. Pollifax sound like a creaky, near death 90-year-old. 

Old people don't sound old. They sound like themselves with some additional rasp (or loudness). 

Jean Simmons sounds like herself--and I suspect that every narrator who does try to sound "old" is mimicking her, but she is too distinct to be mimicked. 

The link is a wonderful short fan tribute: A Tribute to Jean Simmons.

Chihayafuru & Yuri on Ice: Sports as the Ultimate Defense of Individual Introspection

This past spring, I finished watching the second season of Chihayafuru. I also requested and watched, three times in a row, Yuri on Ice! 

I determined that sports is the Japanese answer to psychology-on-the-couch. Sports satisfies both the communal and ego-centric aspects of human nature.

There is a reason Progressive leftists in the West are willing to let grown biological men compete as women in sports that rely on muscle, physical speed, and physical endurance. They don't care because for these particular activists, competition is a symbolic act, representative of something entirely divorced from the sport. It's what the players say in the media or what they "mean" to various groups in terms of their labels. 

 

For these activists, the sport can be gutted, shorn of its actual competitive purpose, because they don't care about the actual sport, not enough to understand the fierce desire by players to play and win.

 

Activists of this ilk will eventually lose, of course. People love their sports too much. Thankfully! In terms of meaning, the survival of sports is an act of libertarian conservatism: 

 

Sports are the ultimate combination of reality, rules, and individualism.

1. All the abstracted, jargon-heavy theories in the world don't replace actual ability and discipline.

In Yuri on Ice! the 15-year-old male competitor is well-aware that his body will change as it ages. He is also aware that although he has the edge on the protagonist in terms of youth/energy and inherent talent, he lacks the protagonist's stamina. 

 

At 23, the protagonist Yuri K. is at the upper range of being able to compete (only a few more years if he is lucky), but he has physical power and discipline (along the same lines, the real life figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu, now professional, has the ability to build up great speed--which is necessary for jumps--from a still position).

Likewise, Chihaya's ability to hear syllables as soon as the readers take a breath is an actual skill and, interestingly enough, sometimes a hindrance, depending on the player she is up against. All the team members continually practice to build up speed and recognition--and they rely on research regarding their competitors' strengths and weaknesses.

 

The game's environment is also a reality that players must take into account. Nobody complains, except in their heads, when the air conditioning cuts out. The stuffy room with non-moving air is reality. Make it work.

2. And then there are those rules! 

 

All the sophisticated finger-pointing theories in the world don't wipe out the rules, not in the moment of the game. Sure, they may be structural manifestations of some corrupt system or of war or whatever, but, eh, in the world of sports, blaming the "system" is simply making excuses. Characters need to meet the standards set by the game.

Both anime series deliver the rules in bits and pieces--namely, viewers learn them when the rules become important to the plot. Consequently, with Yuri, I've learned a tremendous amount about how figure skating is judged. I always assumed that falling was end-of-game but it turns out, the rules are more complex, and the strategic skater will take them into consideration.

Likewise, I am continually amused and amazed with Chihayafuru that psychological attacks, such as standing up and stretching, calling out, or slapping the mat, are not considered cheating but rather permissible actions that the other team had better learn how to handle. And I was impressed that the one first-year, Akihiro, wasn't given a pass for being able to play 2nd verse karuta. That's nice--okay, now learn the rules that apply here and now.

3. Ultimately, the inner voices of the players are intensely self-reflective. 

 

The games and performances become the manifestation of deliberate inner conclusions by separate individuals.

The blow-by-blow tournament episodes in Chihayafuru are accompanied by blow-by-blow inner thoughts and reactions from the characters

In Yuri on Ice!, Yuri K. struggles with confidence--his performances become the literal manifestation not of bolstered self-esteem but of fierce personal analysis and choices and will.

Okay, in both anime, the self-esteem element is part of the characters' success. But that element is a recognition of what they do--what inner strengths and abilities they should rely on at a particular moment and why.

It's that focus on why and its connection to how that blows me away. Freud has nothing on these folks! Therapy may be stigmatized in Japan. I would say it has been going on for years, what with sports and preparing for final exams. Therapy is almost redundant.