I Am Completely Serious

And so I took two two-hour-long naps today, to make up for the fact that I haven't slept through the night in about a week.

THIS IS THE STUPIDEST BRAIN SURGERY SIDE-EFFECT EVER. WHY THE ARM.

I kind of wish I were having headaches or something; no one takes the damn arm problem seriously. Even I can't take it seriously.

I have this problem where I sometimes lose the ability to concentrate on TV. It was really bad when I was a teenager - from about age 13 to 18, I didn't really watch TV for more than 10 minutes at a time unless somebody tricked me into going to a movie. It was somewhat better by the time I went to college, but I would still usually have to leave anime club and stand in the hall a few times every meeting to rest.

It's just hard for me to process this stuff; I think my video card is, like, an IBM Mobile Chipset-of-Doom. Sleep deprivation probably makes it worse, given that I just tried to watch a two-minute YouTube video and couldn't make it through. I had to look away and fiddle with my teacup.

In terms of media I can mentally handle, I am reading Doris Egan's Ivory series; it's good! Not as good as City of Diamond, though. I also finished:

Jane Eyre - I liked the ending better than most of the book; the fact that Rochester is capable of being sarcastic while traumatized and seriously injured irrationally endears him to me. I have a Thing about this.

I discuss this book in a context of my own emotional responses because I don't feel I know enough about the other literature of the period to talk about it sensibly in its own context. I just feel insecure about attempting such things!

Andromeda Tales, Volume 1 - And I thought things happened quickly in To Terra. This would be four or five volumes worth of plot in another manga. And, oh my god, Keiko Takemiya! There is a female character in this, and you didn't put her on a pedestal to shout out a guy's name in anguish! She's armed, stoical, and has a mysterious past!

There are twin Children of Prophecy, one of whom is destined to save the world. But is it the one we think it is? Also, this takes place in a hostile desert land ruled by an evil king. I feel fairly safe in assuming that Yumi Tamura had read this before she started work on Basara.

The Adolescence of Utena (the manga) - This is significantly less compelling than the film, as was the case with the other Utena manga and the anime. I think it came last of all the Utena media in publication order, and it ends with an epilogue that seems intended to be taken as last chronologically - as in, trying to tie the series and the film together into a whole. I think. I probably need to reread it and rewatch the film to be sure.

Anyway, if that is the epilogue in question's intention, it feels earned.

I was sure that someone must have made an Utena AMV out of the Sifl and Olly Performance Art song. It's so logical! But apparently it has yet to happen.

Getting close to the end of Utena!

( Spoilers up to episode 36, kinda. )

If you discover a new band via an AMV, you will never be able to picture its members as they actually are. You will always imagine them to be, like, Gojyou and Utena.

(Gojyou and Utena are members of Moxy Früvous. Moxy Früvous's Wikipedia entry contains this sentence:

Common themes in Früvous songs include Canada and the "human experience".

It sounds awfully dubious about that human experience thing. "Some sub-citizens have claimed that there is a "human experience" which in some way differs materially from the Zervack-16-ian experience. Have been unable to produce material evidence of this, most of these parties have been fed to the vengwaster, or else put to appropriate use in the Fields Of Inexplicable Heat.")

No, I’ve never actually watched it before! I just read the manga. I’d heard the general population of LiveJournal saying it had influenced Princess Tutu a lot, but I didn’t realize it was that much. Tutu’s fairy-tale narrator openings are a direct visual rip from the opening of the first episode! The shadow puppets’ voices are like the crows’ voices!

The music is deeply insane.

So far, I’m liking Wakaba and Utena’s relationship more in the anime than in the manga. In the manga Wakaba’s feelings for Utena were set up as being pitiable, because Utena herself didn’t do anything to indicate she felt anything for her, and because Wakaba was so jealous and insecure. Here, they actually seem to be friends - Utena teases Wakaba without Wakaba freaking out! (Though Wakaba doesn’t know about Anthy yet, so there’s still time for the dynamic that bugged me in the manga to develop, I guess.)

(I’m very smug how much of the Japanese I can understand. I turned away from the screen to check on something for a few seconds, and understood nearly all of the dialog without looking at the subs. It wasn’t a scene that used many complicated words, but still! I kinda speak Japanese! (Working for a Japanese company does not do much to convince me of this, because whenever they want to tell me something important, they have the English-speaking guy do it.))

(Originally published at SarahPin.com. You can comment here or there.)