Midaregami

It is time to start writing again. The excuse I have been using (“too tired, nothing happening”) just doesn’t cut it anymore. There’s no reason a genius of my caliber can’t making exhaustion and boredom interesting—look at Douglas Copeland. (Zing! If I were a Simpsons character I’d be Mr. Buuurns!)

But I’m going to start of easy and slow, with Otogi Zoshi, a new anime set in the Heian period of Japan. Let’s discuss the reasons why it is good.

• One-eyed swordsman with memorized, pompous pre-battle speech—check.
• Cross-dressing girl archer secretly fighting in place of dying brother—check.
• Dancing Imperial Entertainer bishounen who is actually an angst-ridden martial artist—check.
• Vicious heian insults such as “The plum blossoms in the capital have little fragrance. I am thinking of searching them out elsewhere.”—check. (and Buuuurn!)
• Bitchin’ gagaku soundtrack—check.
• Creepy Noh mask-wearing villain—check.

And that’s only the first volume. I hear tell that the second half of the series takes place in modern Japan, with the reincarnations of the characters from the first half. As happens so frequently, my hyperbole fails me.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 11th, 2005 at 10:49 am and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.