March 28, 2002

Dear Mr. Frazier,
Why are there English words in some of the Anime songs and why are they often so weird?
— Lee

We long ago discovered that teaching the animation staff and writers only weird English would not only be much more interesting, but it would keep them from being able to easily leave us and go to work for a higher paying USA company. Thus, writers think that lyrics like “midnight submarine” and “pink vibration” and “Gorby, dump the ashtray!” are perfectly normal, everyday English. It’s always a lot of fun to go through immigration and customs behind these people.

Scott Frazier, anime industry insider

Anime Update

Oh, wow. Lots of cool new anime news.

There’s going to be a second season of the Batman-like series The Big O, and it’s slated to air in America (probably Cartoon Network) before it airs in Japan. Anime is making its mark in America.

There’s serious talk of a sequel to Robot Carnival. RC is the Fantasia of anime, in which various directors made short animated films about robots, which were combined into a single movie. I love Robot Carnival for its artistry and beautiful animation; I can’t wait to see what would happen in a sequel.

Also, there’s a new OVA coming out, that looks positively stunning. It’s called Sentou Yousei Yukikaze, made by Gonzo and Bandai, and this page contains a video clip of the trailer. Wow. It looks like they’ve combined CGI with cel animation with an artistry that rivals Macross Plus (the whole thing looks very much like Macross Plus, actually).

There’s also a very cute article from the Daily Yomiuri On-Line (it’s in perfect English), which provides a wisecracking round-up of new anime series in Japan. The author is obviously an anime lover, though one who is unafraid to criticize it where appropriate. Here’s one of my favorite paragraphs:

Full Moon o Sagashite is the adaptation of a popular manga about a 12-year-old girl who dreams of a singing career, and resorts to magic to turn herself into a 16-year-old for the big audition. (But why resort to magic? She could have just as well tried out for a place [on Japanese television]. Being underage seems to be no impediment there.)

I’ve been engaged in a rather odd activity lately: documenting the AtheOS API. I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile, but didn’t have the necessary impetus until I spawned the massive AtheOS fork debate recently on AtheOS-developer.

What was the massive AtheOS fork debate? Actually, I can’t tell you right now; I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll post details later.

Leave a Reply

I work for Amazon. The content on this site is my own and doesn’t necessarily represent Amazon’s position.