At some point in every series, there’s a need for a chunk of exposition. Handled well, it fleshes out the story without interrupting it. Handled poorly, it’s episode 14 of R.O.D The TV.

I like the series. The characters are developing nicely, and disc 4 has some terrific action scenes, but when it came time to reveal what was really going on and how it connected to the original OAV series, they resorted to one of the clunkiest infodumps I’ve seen in years: the bad guy’s secretary spends the entire episode writing a report that summarizes everything that’s happened to date, talking over clips from previous episodes and the OAVs.

It’s a classic “As you know, Bob…”, telling characters things they already know but the audience doesn’t. The worst part is, it doesn’t work. If you haven’t seen the OAV series, it doesn’t give you enough information about the characters you’re starting to meet, and if you have, it’s mostly redundant, with the added negative of handwaving away significant changes in some OAV characters.

After this mid-series train wreck, they get things back on track by fleshing out Wendy and Junior, and finally bringing Yomiko and Nancy into the story. If they can avoid another jarring interruption, the rest of the series should work out nicely.

On a side note, fan-service in this series is primarily limited to the enthusiastic bouncing of large breasts that have never known the confinement of a bra (only one pair of which are ever seen bare), but they’re a bit less restrained in the mini pencil boards that ship with the DVDs. The Maggie pin-up is well-done, if a bit out of character, but the “candid” pin-ups of Nenene and Michelle are just awkward. Anita gets a pleasant, non-sexualized portrait, but the big surprise is the utterly gratuitous “please molest me” panty shot of Hisa-chan included with disc 4.

Yep, Anita’s shy, bookish, young schoolgirl pal is lying on her back, knees up, skirt up, school uniform rumpled, looking like she’s just auditioned for the little-sister role in a hentai game. Definitely not the way I expected that character to appear.

After I finished watching this series, I started imagining how they came up with it…

(warning: some spoilers included)

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After viewing the latest trailers, I just can’t decide which film is going to be worse, Nicole Kidman’s Bewitched (yes, that Bewitched) or Keanu’s Constantine. For a long time, I thought Constantine would set a new low in franchise abuse, but then I was exposed to the concept of Kidman as Samantha.

I have to admit that I can’t think of a better Endora than Shirley MacLaine, although I doubt that will be enough to save it. For me, Kidman’s best film will always be BMX Bandits.

Got an amusing phone poll tonight, by some company called Ipsos, on behalf of the AP. They led off by asking about approval of Bush and Congress, then asked if I liked NASCAR racing, then a series of questions about ice cream as a comfort food and “relationship bonding” tool, then New Years resolutions about diet/lifestyle, then pizza delivery chains, then specifically about Dominos Pizza, then about Dominos’ sponsorship of NASCAR, then buying prescription drugs from Canada and Mexico, then whether I was some variety of born-again or evangelical Christian, and finally the usual demographics.

Each segue was accompanied by the words “now on an unrelated topic”. Unrelated, my ass; they were definitely trying to tie things together to support a predetermined conclusion. About the only thing they left out was the gay-rights issue.

I’m quite certain that my answers won’t fit their spin. :-)

The government of the city of San Francisco wants to ban all private possession of handguns. Oddly, Fark tagged it as Misc. I’d have gone with Asinine or Dumbass, myself.

Money quote:

Barnes said the initiative is a response to San Francisco's skyrocketing homicide rate, as well as other social ills.

Yes, their response to a “skyrocketing homicide rate” is to make sure that only people who disobey the law have guns. And government agents, of course. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to the four remaining gun owners in SF, of course; the city hounded the gun-shop owners out years ago, and if there’s one thing they can’t stand in San Francisco, it’s people who don’t conform.

I’m sorry, but Matsushita lost my battery business right here:

Reporters were also shown audio players powered by a regular battery vs. Oxyride. The one with Oxyride delivered a stronger, deeper bass, and Matsushita officials said some music experts express a preference for Oxyride.

Yes, not only does their battery last significantly longer in portable devices, it makes them sound better, too. I’m surprised they didn’t also claim that it improves the contrast on your digital camera.

You know, I originally started buying this series on a whim, thinking that it might be amusing, well-drawn, cheery fluff. I figured that it would be entertaining, but not good enough to justify the pre-release hype.

I was wrong.

In any sort of fiction, the people who get the most out of it are the ones who come to feel for the characters and their situations, and this requires placing a lot of trust in the creators, a faith that the story will continue to be told well. All too often, this faith is misplaced, and the ending hits them like a slap in the face. In anime, it’s usually called “the Gainax ending,” named after the company who seems to hit fans the hardest. Evangelion and Mahoromatic seem to set the standard for this sort of ending, although they came painfully close to finishing Mahoro’s story well before pulling a Zeist at the last minute (apologies to anyone who was trying to forget that Highlander 2 ever existed).

The creators of Kaleido Star never abuse the fan’s faith in the story. They make a lot of promises early on about the people, the place, and the plot, and they keep those promises, episode after episode. The result is a show that keeps getting better, building up to a climax that is both surprising and pleasing. Even if you failed to avoid the remarkable number of shameless spoilers put out by ADV, Newtype, and everyone else in the business, you’re still in for a treat. It’s so good, even a publicist can’t ruin it.

Season two? I’ll buy the entire thing, sight unseen.

Worth every penny I paid for the seven DVDs (but I am not, repeat not, buying the Noir otaku soap). There are a lot of things I could say about it, but I think it’s sufficient to say that the ending is driven entirely by the way the characters were developed during the course of the series. Nothing has to be explained in terms of “the director added it to make the plot work out” or “they needed a cool fight scene here, so X did Y”.

The plot does work out, and you definitely get the cool fight scenes, but it’s because the heroines and villains are doing what they should do, given the sort of people they are and the situations they’re in.