My Friends page has been very slow today, so I'll fill the gap with another gigantic post that I've had saved up.
In my spare time between building and moderating websites and writing dull security policies and reports on search trees, I discovered by chance the anime Ranma ½ on the latest inexplicably-named Internet trend, YouTube. Whitney had previously told me of the general idea of it, but I hadn't seen it for myself.
Being a computer science student, I didn't feel like just watching the video like everyone else, so I tried my normal methods of grabbing video from a website. None of them worked, so I slightly embarrassedly used a script that someone else had written for copying videos specifically from that site, discovered it was in the totally useless FLV format, and pulled it through a downloaded convertor. This allowed me to store the video at only double the original disk space. But still.
Even though I knew the vague idea of the series I found the first episode hilariously strange, and I have laid out a summary of the most eventful moments for your perusal.
00:00 The programme opens with a J-pop track that is absolutely horrendous even by my standards. Most of it is in Japanese, but is subtitled in English with lyrics that seem to be written with rhyming being a priority, pushing "making sense" down to an afterthought. It opens with the lines:
Yappa paa yappa paa don't know what to do
My heart is not a game - it's Mah Jongg to you.
Yappa paa yappa paa feel like such a shrew
Who needs boys? Don't you dare - make me wild like you.
The rest of it is a mess of nonsense and occasionally changing time signatures, accompanied by a montage of dancing characters. Like a lot of anime, you could be fooled into thinking it was a children's programme at this stage, but this mood is to be changed later on.
1:40 The episode's title, "Here's Ranma", is spoken by the woman with the high-pitched American accent that is ubiquitous to all anime.
1:50 In the opening scene, a young person of very difficult to discern gender is running down a street somewhere in Japan, pursued by a gigantic panda. As it tries to catch her she leaps into the air, floats for a while (because Japanese people can hover) and smashes it in the face. Unusually, the onlookers seem vaguely surprised by the spectacle.
2:50 The fight ends with her shouting at the panda for picking her fiance for her. "I'm going back to China now, so suck on that, old man," she concludes. The first hint that this is not a children's programme after all has been provided.
3:10 The panda hits her with a bus stop.
4:00 Meanwhile, at the Tendo School of Anything-Goes Martial Arts (that's what it says, honest), the dojo master-whateveryoucallhim is reading a postcard with a similar-looking panda on it and seems very excited that Ranma will soon be back. He gathers up his three daughters, but can't find Akane.
4:55 When Akane is eventually found, it emerges that she is immensely contemptful of the other's obsession with boys. The plot of this series is already becoming self-evident even to the terminally stupid.
5:20 The daughters are told that one of them has to marry Ranma. Only Akane seems bothered at all. One of the other anonymous ones leans over and tells her that he might be "really cute". Their father laughs, his eyes turning into crescents and forming one of the scariest faces ever.
5:50 They're told that Ranma has been in China with his father. Akane is still notably unimpressed with his hike to China, even though unless my geography is failing me, a significant portion of the hike would have had to be underwater.
6:10 Their father admits that he's never actually met Ranma. They are interrupted when the doorbell rings and the panda enters, carrying the incredibly boyish girl from before.
7:30 The father, though shocked by the panda, doesn't notice that Ranma is a girl until he hugs her. A variety of bizarre squelching noises plays and he descends into incoherency.
9:20 Ranma and Akane fight against each other, "just for fun". After calmly dodging all of Akane's blows in a very Neo-like way, she jumps up as she puches through the wall, lands behind her and taps her on the back of the head. Hilarity ensues.
10:35 The panda is shown entering the bath, and the next scene includes a now-human Ranma's father. The plot thickens!
11:45 Meanwhile, Ranma strips, fills a basin with cold water and pours it over herself, proving beyond reasonable doubt that this isn't a children's programme after all.
11:50 Akane is outside the bathroom and notices Ranma's clothes in the basket. "I guess we can both take our bath," she says to herself. Because girls always do that. Yes.
12:20 Ranma, who is now male, gets up from the bath at the same moment that Akane enters. She looks surprised for a moment, then calmly withdraws. Then screams her head off.
12:40 A brief animation showing the panda juggling leads the programme into the interlude.
It does go on, including a scene where a man with an outrageous Chinese accent (and a star on his cap) explains why the two of them have the inconvenient properties of morphing into girls/pandas, and a bit slightly later on when Ranma is repeatedly thrown into a pond and hit with a table, but the whole thing defies description, really. On the whole, from an objective viewpoint, it's cheesy, awkward and slightly embarrassing to watch.
I've already started downloading the first series.
In my spare time between building and moderating websites and writing dull security policies and reports on search trees, I discovered by chance the anime Ranma ½ on the latest inexplicably-named Internet trend, YouTube. Whitney had previously told me of the general idea of it, but I hadn't seen it for myself.
Being a computer science student, I didn't feel like just watching the video like everyone else, so I tried my normal methods of grabbing video from a website. None of them worked, so I slightly embarrassedly used a script that someone else had written for copying videos specifically from that site, discovered it was in the totally useless FLV format, and pulled it through a downloaded convertor. This allowed me to store the video at only double the original disk space. But still.
Even though I knew the vague idea of the series I found the first episode hilariously strange, and I have laid out a summary of the most eventful moments for your perusal.
00:00 The programme opens with a J-pop track that is absolutely horrendous even by my standards. Most of it is in Japanese, but is subtitled in English with lyrics that seem to be written with rhyming being a priority, pushing "making sense" down to an afterthought. It opens with the lines:
Yappa paa yappa paa don't know what to do
My heart is not a game - it's Mah Jongg to you.
Yappa paa yappa paa feel like such a shrew
Who needs boys? Don't you dare - make me wild like you.
The rest of it is a mess of nonsense and occasionally changing time signatures, accompanied by a montage of dancing characters. Like a lot of anime, you could be fooled into thinking it was a children's programme at this stage, but this mood is to be changed later on.
1:40 The episode's title, "Here's Ranma", is spoken by the woman with the high-pitched American accent that is ubiquitous to all anime.
1:50 In the opening scene, a young person of very difficult to discern gender is running down a street somewhere in Japan, pursued by a gigantic panda. As it tries to catch her she leaps into the air, floats for a while (because Japanese people can hover) and smashes it in the face. Unusually, the onlookers seem vaguely surprised by the spectacle.
2:50 The fight ends with her shouting at the panda for picking her fiance for her. "I'm going back to China now, so suck on that, old man," she concludes. The first hint that this is not a children's programme after all has been provided.
3:10 The panda hits her with a bus stop.
4:00 Meanwhile, at the Tendo School of Anything-Goes Martial Arts (that's what it says, honest), the dojo master-whateveryoucallhim is reading a postcard with a similar-looking panda on it and seems very excited that Ranma will soon be back. He gathers up his three daughters, but can't find Akane.
4:55 When Akane is eventually found, it emerges that she is immensely contemptful of the other's obsession with boys. The plot of this series is already becoming self-evident even to the terminally stupid.
5:20 The daughters are told that one of them has to marry Ranma. Only Akane seems bothered at all. One of the other anonymous ones leans over and tells her that he might be "really cute". Their father laughs, his eyes turning into crescents and forming one of the scariest faces ever.
5:50 They're told that Ranma has been in China with his father. Akane is still notably unimpressed with his hike to China, even though unless my geography is failing me, a significant portion of the hike would have had to be underwater.
6:10 Their father admits that he's never actually met Ranma. They are interrupted when the doorbell rings and the panda enters, carrying the incredibly boyish girl from before.
7:30 The father, though shocked by the panda, doesn't notice that Ranma is a girl until he hugs her. A variety of bizarre squelching noises plays and he descends into incoherency.
9:20 Ranma and Akane fight against each other, "just for fun". After calmly dodging all of Akane's blows in a very Neo-like way, she jumps up as she puches through the wall, lands behind her and taps her on the back of the head. Hilarity ensues.
10:35 The panda is shown entering the bath, and the next scene includes a now-human Ranma's father. The plot thickens!
11:45 Meanwhile, Ranma strips, fills a basin with cold water and pours it over herself, proving beyond reasonable doubt that this isn't a children's programme after all.
11:50 Akane is outside the bathroom and notices Ranma's clothes in the basket. "I guess we can both take our bath," she says to herself. Because girls always do that. Yes.
12:20 Ranma, who is now male, gets up from the bath at the same moment that Akane enters. She looks surprised for a moment, then calmly withdraws. Then screams her head off.
12:40 A brief animation showing the panda juggling leads the programme into the interlude.
It does go on, including a scene where a man with an outrageous Chinese accent (and a star on his cap) explains why the two of them have the inconvenient properties of morphing into girls/pandas, and a bit slightly later on when Ranma is repeatedly thrown into a pond and hit with a table, but the whole thing defies description, really. On the whole, from an objective viewpoint, it's cheesy, awkward and slightly embarrassing to watch.
I've already started downloading the first series.
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