Despite the fact that I poke fun at Amazon’s recommendation system a lot, I respect the amount of work they’ve put into solving a really hard problem. How do you classify how “similar” two items are? How can you tell the difference between classes of items that you want more of and classes where one satisfies the demand? When should you consider two items too similar? Etc, etc.

They’re mixing a lot of variables together, and trying hard to sort something to the top that will be interesting. Sometimes, they sort too many of the same class of item to the top. Sometimes, they come up with surprising, apparently insightful associations. Sometimes, they just goof.

And sometimes, I have to stop and try to figure it out. Today’s link goes from a lighthearted relationship comedy to a hardcore rape cartoon. The anime series Please Teacher is certainly suggestive at times, but it’s really a story about two misfits who accidentally marry and try to make it work. The only disturbing elements are the age difference and power imbalance between the couple: she’s his high-school teacher (and an alien with a powerful spaceship), and his physical maturity is below average for his age (especially compared to her height and lush curves).

Because I’ve told Amazon that I own one of the DVDs in this series, although I haven’t rated it, it recommended something called Perverted Thomas, which is apparently about a guy who learns an “ancient Chinese secret” that lets him force any woman to have sex with him. I’m pretty sure it’s not Calgon.

I think the link actually runs backwards, because on that page, Amazon reports that people who bought Perverted Thomas also bought animated titles like Night Shift Nurses, Maid Service, Xtra Credit, Mother Knows Breast, Anyone You Can Do I Can Do Better, Hot For Teacher, and … Please Teacher.

Boy, I bet they’re going to be disappointed.

[The also-bought list also included Cutey Honey, Appleseed, Please Twins, Elfen Lied, and Witchblade…]

One of the other students in my reading class brought in the first chapter of the One Piece manga, which we finished a few weeks ago. Towards the end, there’s a scene in the bar where the villain Higuma is laughing with his gang about how pathetic Shanks and his pirates seem to be. One line in particular is noteworthy.

To set the scene properly, the teacher is a rather attractive woman “somewhere past age 30” (coughcough), there are two male students in their early twenties who are big Japanese pop-culture fans, and a basically-bilingual female student who’s about 19. And me, the big hairy over-40 otaku. We were translating as we went, and I had just finished reading the following speech bubble:

酒ぶっかけられても文句一つ言えねェで!!

This loosely translates as, “they didn’t even complain when I threw a drink in his face!”, but before I had a chance to say that, the teacher launched into an explanation of the verb, which she was sure we wouldn’t know: bukkakeru.

All three of us guys were trying hard not to say anything, or look at each other. We just let that one go quietly by…

Following up on earlier discussions of the trainwreck that was the anime version of Rosario&Vampire, I recently picked up the latest issue of the magazine that’s running the manga, Jump SQ, and learned that:

• They're hyping the light novel.
• They're hyping the game, including its two new girls in a crowd scene, holding a DS Lite.
• They're hyping the second season of the anime, which, if the pictures are to be believed, consists entirely of swimsuit scenes, and adds Our Hero's human cousin Kyouko and the second loli, Moka's little sister Cocoa.
• In this episode, Nekonome-sensei kicks off a membership drive for the newspaper club. How to get attention? Cheerleader costumes!
• Cocoa finds this incompatible with her dignity, and flees the fan-service, with Yukari chasing after her. Flying lolis in skimpy cheerleader costumes.
• Chuu is in the manga cast now, and hangs out with Cocoa. I don't know if he was added because of the anime, or in spite of it; I'm not really following this series.
• Our lolis go looking for another club for Cocoa, and get booted out of several for being too young. Cocoa doesn't handle frustration well, so Yukari offers her latest magical item: instant puberty candy.
• Cocoa's a big hit with her new look, easily winning a brick-breaking contest at the karate club, and breaking dozens of hearts in the process. It doesn't hurt that her cheerleading costume didn't quite scale to match her new figure.
• Cocoa is thrilled with the power in her new adult body, and the effect it had on all the boys. Yukari's thrilled too; not only did they win a lot of money, but she likes Cocoa's new body, too. Especially the boobs.
• ...so much so that she goes in for a squeeze, leading Cocoa to moan, "oh, what's this strange feeling?", and the lecherous Yukari shows no signs of stopping.
• Fortunately, Cocoa's honor is saved by the dishonored karate club, who wants a private rematch to salvage their reputation.
• Naturally the pill wears off just as she's about to kick their asses, dropping her skirt around her ankles. Full-frontal loli-pantsu!

I know there have been a few “serious” chapters in this second series, but they don’t seem to have advanced the overall plot significantly. No matter what happens, Tsukune won’t change in a way that will prevent his harem from glomping him at every opportunity. He can’t leave the school, he can’t stop being at least partially human, and he can’t commit to any one girl. Similarly, Alt-Moka must remain constrained by the rosario, or outer Moka will effectively die.

The mangaka might want to break out of this genre, even if he doesn’t have a real long-term plan for a serious story, but he’s trapped. There’s too much merchandise that focuses on the harem side of the series. Maybe he can work out some of those issues in the light novel, but I think the manga’s future is clear.

In the Kino’s Journey short story we’ve been reading in class, the following line appears as Hermes the talking motorcycle is introduced as a “Motorado”:

（注・二輪車。空を飛ばないものだけを指す）

Translated: “Note: two-wheeled vehicle. Refers only to non-flying ones”.

The origin of the word appears to be German: “motorrad”, as in BMW Motorrad, makers of fine motorcycles. All the Japanese search engines I’ve checked turn up lots of links to Kino, followed by a few to generic motorcycle discussions.

So why does the author feel compelled to point out that Hermes can’t fly? I just spotted the exact same phrase while skimming through the first Kino novel, in every story. Where’s the ambiguity? If motorado isn’t in common use in Japanese outside of Kino and motorcycle fans, why stress the fact that Hermes is a non-flying two-wheeler, every time?

After eleven novels, two spinoff novels, an anime series, and two OVAs, isn’t someone who picks up a special-edition Kino book going to be pretty clear about at least the non-flying part? The novels are really short story collections, originally published individually in a magazine, so I can see the first half-dozen or so introducing unfamiliar katakana words like モトラド and パースエイダー, but doing it every time is either an editorial standard or a stylistic choice, and just calling it a “two-wheeled vehicle” is somehow insufficient.

[This quarter, I’m taking a class that’s focused on reading authentic Japanese text. Everyone finds something short to read, makes copies for the entire group, and prepares a vocabulary list. Well, we’re supposed to be making vocabulary lists, although so far I’m the only one to do so. Two of the pieces I’ve brought in have been from illustrated books, and it seemed wasteful to photocopy the whole things, so I typed them in and added some furigana.

The first one wasn’t really authentic Japanese, being from the ASK reader series, but the teacher really liked that author and wanted us to read it. The second is more contemporary, and I thought it might be of general interest. It’s the latest short story from the Kino’s Journey series. I’m just posting the first scene, since it’s both illegal and darn rude to reprint the whole thing. If you like the story, buy the book, which also includes a DVD of the second Kino movie.

I’ve added a lot more pop-up furigana (with English translations) than I need myself, to give more people a chance to work through it.]

more...

I just finished chapter one of the first 魔法戦士リウイ novels, in Japanese.

[Pardon my shouting: I just read thirty pages of Japanese prose written for a native audience!! Ahem.]

The anime adaptation opened with the experienced adventuring team of Genie (amazon warrior), Melissa (priestess of the war god Mylee), and Merrill (thief) finding a magically-sealed door in a ruin. They headed to town to recruit a mage, preferably female, but the only one that seemed interested was Louie, a brawny goofball who had already “rescued” Genie from a fight and pantsed Merrill while being chased by a mob of angry women. Later, he accidentally blew up a bar trying to prove himself to them, and then while being chased by a mob of angry priestesses, destroyed the roof of Mylee’s temple with his magic, inadvertently revealing himself to the (naked) Melissa as the hero her god had chosen for her to serve. By the end of the first episode, Louie was firmly established as a drunk, a womanizer, a careless street brawler, and a terrible student, with no real interest in or aptitude for magic.

The novel starts out a bit differently. Louie is being congratulated by his classmates for finally mastering enough magic to earn his mage staff, making him the fifth to succeed out of the hundred apprentices that their class had started with ten years earlier. The next day, the others are all nursing a hangover from the party, but Louie cheerfully heads off to the entertainment district in pursuit of wine, women, and trouble. The sound of a tavern brawl draws him in from a distance, and he pushes through a crowd of onlookers to find two apprentice knights fighting three women (guess who?), and the women are wiping the floor with them.

more...

1. Pizza Hut's new meat pasta is pretty good. I'll be eating it for another two days, since they only deliver a family-size portion with breadsticks, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
2. I always thought the name "Rune Soldier" was an invention of the team who translated the anime for the US market, since "Magic Soldier Louie" sounded too similar to "Magic Knight Rayearth" and similar series. Nope, page six of the first novel glosses 魔法戦士 as ルーンソルジャー. Pity, really, since the change ruined a decent joke in episode 18.
3. Constructs of the form AたるB, where both A and B are nouns, are a bit of grammar that's hard to find a good explanation for in English. Historically, there were three different conjugations for adjectives, but for the most part only the -i and -na types still exist; there are only a handful of true -taru adjectives in modern Japanese. This does not stop people from occasionally attaching -taru to a noun to make an "A-looking B" or "A-like B" expression.
4. Speaking of -taru adjectives, I find this one charming: 死屍累々. Shishiruirui, it's like the "que sera sera" of carnage. I don't think I'll ever be able to sing the correct lyrics to that song again.
5. Speaking of songs we'll never be able to sing correctly again...
6. Nobody ever told me that Pixel Maritan had a webcomic.
7. On a vaguely related note, the trading figures for Moe yo! Tank School are, um, interesting.
8. And while we're following dirty links at Amazon Japan, I can see where the artist was going with this covergirl from MC Akushizu ("the hyper bishoujo military magazine"), but, anatomically speaking, he made a wrong turn.

[Update: holy crap, they’re doing a second season. WTF?

… Okay, having followed the scavenger-hunt instructions on ANN, the only verifiable fact in their story is this line on the next-to-last page of the just-released chapter of the manga: 「ＴＶアニメ第２Ｓ制作決定!!」, which does in fact say “tv anime #2S production decision!!”. Their “announcement” link just goes to the publisher’s flash-based home page, which doesn’t seem to mention this. I’m wondering if it’s just obsolete news based on the publishing cycle of a monthly magazine.]

[Update: nothing on the anime’s staff blog, but there’s a similar one-liner on their news page. Also, a lot more merchandise, including an original novel, a school uniform, and a special edition of the DS game that comes with an original comic. Again, WTF?]

Out of morbid curiosity, I downloaded episode 13. Pretty thorough spoilers follow:

more...