Thursday, October 20, 2005

Well. A scheduling error caused me to sleep in this morning, which made me an hour late for work. Fortunately, this wasn’t a problem in terms of the work itself; it just meant I had to stay late to make up for it. Also fortunately, I had two major projects to accomplish today, and together they took exactly eight hours to complete. I walked out of the office building with a spring in my step, knowing I had done at least my full share of work that day.

…and came home exhausted. It was partly the psychological effect of coming home later than usual; it just felt like the day was long, despite my working no longer than a normal day. So I watched The Halloween Tree and episode two of Densha Otoko. If you’re not interested in odd animated Halloween specials or Japanese dramas, feel free to move on.

The Halloween Tree could have, should have been brilliant. It’s got beautiful, detailed, atmospheric backgrounds. It’s got snappy direction. The voice actors are solid and easy on the ears. The character designs are generic but at least not ugly (the girl, in particular, looks quite cute).

If only it wasn’t animated by Hanna-Barbera. There are plenty of cels; it has a very good budget by Hanna-Barbera standards. But…for instance, when four kids are being blown by a fierce wind, their bodies undulate up and down like flags. Real bodies don’t move like that. The characters feel like they have no weight to them; they’re just floating on the backgrounds, being pulled along by the animators’ whims. I’d prefer if they moved oddly like characters move in anime; in this, they move like…well, like Hanna-Barbera figures.

If you’re going to make a cartoon scripted by Ray Bradbury, and even get him to narrate, can’t you at least have it well-animated?

Anyvay. Densha Otoko continues to kick my awesome. The nerd…

…has just asked the girl…

…out to dinner. And gone shopping. And he really looks nice. I can’t believe it, but I’m really rooting for the guy. This is great stuff. You can download the episodes via BitTorrent.