Thursday, December 18, 2008

Drifting though space and time you come across this blog. Read Y/N?
Hey folks. Another update from the world of Darke.


Another quiet few days of late. Despite the run up to Christmas, not much is going on. I'm doing pretty well for Christmas shopping. Yay!

I went out and bought Luna a new battery the other day. she’s all working properly again now. Midori on the other hand is not doing so hot. The other day she suffered something called an “Unmountable Boot Volume” or something…asically she wouldn’t start Windows XP. I had to boot her up from her OS disc and run a check-disc application to fix whatever was wrong. Dad says its possible that Midori’s hard-disc is on the way out, so I’ve started backing up her data onto my external hard-drive, and I wanna make some hard copies of her data too, so in the event she does crash completely, I have all the data copied somewhere. I hope she doesn’t crash, but Midori is getting pretty old for a computer.

i've started using Firefox, for various reasons, but its made my MyO page run off to the right side. any one know how to adjust it to look normal?

I watched The Last Samurai the other day on DVD whilst shading a picture I’ve been working on for ages. I do enjoy that film, even though it is a bit long.

I just finished watching an anime series called “Kino’s Journey”. I bought the box set a few weeks back, and just got round to watching it all. It’s a short anime, only 13 episodes long, but I really enjoyed it. For those of you who haven’t seen it/heard of it, “Kino’s Journey” follows a young woman called Kino on her Motorrad (a talking motorcycle) called Hermes as they travel throughout the land, and documents her encounters with the various people she meets, never staying in any one place for more than three days.

Its not exactly the most thrilling description of an anime, and indeed, “Kino’s Journey” rarely picks up a rapid pace. But at the same time, you seem content to drift along the way, visiting place to place with Kino as our quiet and observant guide.
The story is very whimsical, with neither a true start or end to it, and indeed, nor is it linear, the last episode being about an event that happens early on in Kino’s time line. We get an episode dedicated to Kino’s youth, and we see vague clues into how Kino became the character she is, but the story focuses more on the places she visits rather than the reasons.

The art is beautiful and simple, and the music is haunting and melodic. The English dub is ok, Kino’s V.A being the best in show with Hermes’ V.A being grating at first but you become accustomed to it as the show progresses.

The show could be seen as a subtle commentary on how the traditions and customs of a place might seem like the norm, and even the right and proper thing to do to the inhabitants, but to an outsider might seem ridiculous and even demented, and, by extension, how any “tradition” is really just silly. One episode describes one town who believes the world is going to end judging by a book of prophesy, and then later we discover that the book is actually the World’s Saddest Poem written in another town. Then, right at the end of the episode, we discover that the town the poem originated from is about to be destroyed by the army of yet another town thanks, ironically, to a book of “Prophesy”.
Other episodes see a town where no one has to work, but still do, a town where anyone who enters has to participate in a death match tournament. We meet a lady who created androids but then suffers an accident and believes she is an android, we meet three men working on a railway track, with each one’s task made more pointless by the next man’s task, unbeknownst to each of them, and we meet a girl who wants to fly. The whole show is filled with actions and places full of farce and irony, but you never despair, and each new destination brings new discovery.

Anime fans who like their shows to have a point, or to have a resolute ending should avoid Kino’s Journey, but those who delight in their anime being whimsical and philosophical should definitely pick this up. Fans of “Haibane Renmei” should definitely give this a once over.

“Kino’s Journey” is an anime for fans who, like Kino, find the journey more important then the destination. I really quite enjoyed it, and felt inspired to go on a journey myself…if only real life was a simple as an anime.




Anyways, that’s all from me today. I’ll try to update again before Christmas, but if I don’t, I hope y’all have a good one.


Ciao.

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