September 27, 2018
The drama of the single dad
The "single dad" is a melodrama and sitcom character that defines its own genre. Plenty of single moms inhabit television as well. But a single mom is expected to already grasp the basics of child rearing, and that pushes the conflict in a different direction.
By contrast, regardless of his competence in every other aspect of his life, the single dad is presumed to have a built-in learning curve. Hence the "dumb dad" premise. This plot device has seen an upsurge on Japanese television, in live-action dramas, manga, and anime.
Sweetness & Lightning tackles three genres at once: the single dad, the teacher-student romance, and the cooking show.
Recently widowed high school teacher Kohei Inuzuka never learned to cook, so he and Tsumugi, his spirited five-year-old daughter, eat takeout almost every meal. Until Kotori Iida, one of his students, hands him a flyer for her family's restaurant.
Kotori's (divorced) celebrity chef mom no longer has the time to run it, but Kotori wants a reason to keep the lights on. Realizing that his daughter hasn't eaten a decent home-cooked meal in ages, Kohei takes Kotori up on the offer.
The problem is, Kotori doesn't know how to cook either. But with her mother's recipes, the help of Kotori's classmate (whose family runs the local vegetable stand) and Kohei's college friend (a cook), they tackle a new recipe every week.
The relationship between Kohei and Kotori is handled so subtly that it can be read as romantic or platonic or something in-between. These dinners quickly become the highlight of the week for all three.
The anime is available on Crunchyroll. The English-language manga is published by Kodansha Comics.
Yotsuba&! [sic] is a manga series by Kiyohiko Azuma, now in its twelfth year. Mr. Koiwai adopted Yotsuba abroad (the details are scant). The stories focus around her daily adventures in Japan. Think of Yotsuba as a kindred spirit of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.
An English translation of the manga is available from Yen Press.
Marumo's Rules is a 2011 Fuji TV series. Mamoru Takagi adopts the twin children of his best friend when he suddenly dies of cancer. The plot description in Wikipedia sums up the whole genre:
A cute narrative device is that when Marumo discusses his problems with the family dog, the dog talks back.
(No English versions available.)
Hinamatsuri is based on the manga series by Masao Otake.
One day, Hina drops into the condo of yakuza Yoshifumi Nitta through an interdimensional portal. Some sort of bio-engineered child assassin with telekinetic powers, Hina doesn't know what what she's doing there. She assumes she's on a mission and Nitta is her handler.
This mistaken assumption comes in handy when Nitta has her literally defenestrate an entire rival gang in one fell swoop. But after that, Nitta is stuck with her. So he tells people that Hina is his long-lost daughter, and before long they have assumed their respective roles.
As a brand-new dad, Nitta finds himself with the responsibility of turning this tiny version of Robert Patrick from Terminator 2 into a functioning member of society.
The anime is available on Crunchyroll. The English-language manga is published by One Peace Books.
My Girl is a manga series by Sahara Mizu, made into a TV Asahi series in 2009 starring Masaki Aiba of the mega-boy band Arashi. (As far as I can tell, the members of Arashi are much better actors than they are singers, and they're not terrible singers either.)
Attending the funeral of his ex-girlfriend (who'd been living abroad), Masamune Kazama discovers that not only did she have a child, but she had his child, who now really is his child. What follows is a how-to/day-in-the-life melodrama that defines the next series too.
(No English versions available.)
Bunny Drop is a manga series by Yumi Unita, an anime series by Production I.G, and a 2011 feature film.
Daikichi's grandfather had a child with his live-in maid. Daikichi only finds this out at his grandfather's funeral. "If the old man was still alive," he grumbles, "I'd give him a high five." He points out to his mother, "That'd make her your sister." She retorts, "And your aunt."
Nobody wants to take responsibility for Rin, the five-year-old girl. Finally (if only out of disgust with the rest of them) Daikichi takes her home. He soon decides to make the arrangement permanent.
Bunny Drop is a sweet, unadorned drama that avoids most of the stereotypical melodramatic devices. Like My Girl, it succeeds by making a virtue of ordinariness and by featuring protagonists who are believably decent human beings striving to do the right thing.
However clueless Daikichi may be at first, he doesn't stay dumb, and grows quite insightful into the strange, topsy-turvy life Rin has led, while cheerfully saying goodbye to his "me-time" and his climb up the corporate ladder.
The anime (based on the first three volumes of the manga; English translation available from Yen Press) is drawn in a pencil-on-watercolor style that gives it a subdued picture book quality. I found it quite pleasant and entirely appropriate to the subject matter.
The anime is available on Crunchyroll and Tubi.
The Japanese government actually has a "Minister of State for Measures for the Declining Birthrate." If government agencies were ever that creative, I could imagine them commissioning television series like these to encourage young men to take up the reins of fatherhood.
Unfortunately, regardless of the good intentions in the regard, it doesn't seem to be working (in Japan and every other country with the same problem).
By contrast, regardless of his competence in every other aspect of his life, the single dad is presumed to have a built-in learning curve. Hence the "dumb dad" premise. This plot device has seen an upsurge on Japanese television, in live-action dramas, manga, and anime.
Sweetness & Lightning tackles three genres at once: the single dad, the teacher-student romance, and the cooking show.
Recently widowed high school teacher Kohei Inuzuka never learned to cook, so he and Tsumugi, his spirited five-year-old daughter, eat takeout almost every meal. Until Kotori Iida, one of his students, hands him a flyer for her family's restaurant.
Kotori's (divorced) celebrity chef mom no longer has the time to run it, but Kotori wants a reason to keep the lights on. Realizing that his daughter hasn't eaten a decent home-cooked meal in ages, Kohei takes Kotori up on the offer.
The problem is, Kotori doesn't know how to cook either. But with her mother's recipes, the help of Kotori's classmate (whose family runs the local vegetable stand) and Kohei's college friend (a cook), they tackle a new recipe every week.
The relationship between Kohei and Kotori is handled so subtly that it can be read as romantic or platonic or something in-between. These dinners quickly become the highlight of the week for all three.
The anime is available on Crunchyroll. The English-language manga is published by Kodansha Comics.
Yotsuba&! [sic] is a manga series by Kiyohiko Azuma, now in its twelfth year. Mr. Koiwai adopted Yotsuba abroad (the details are scant). The stories focus around her daily adventures in Japan. Think of Yotsuba as a kindred spirit of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.An English translation of the manga is available from Yen Press.
Marumo's Rules is a 2011 Fuji TV series. Mamoru Takagi adopts the twin children of his best friend when he suddenly dies of cancer. The plot description in Wikipedia sums up the whole genre:
Together with the help of his landlord and the landlord's daughter, Mamoru [nicknamed "Marumo"] manages to take care of the twins. They face many challenges, with Marumo struggling to balance his time between his work and parental responsibilities.
A cute narrative device is that when Marumo discusses his problems with the family dog, the dog talks back.
(No English versions available.)
Hinamatsuri is based on the manga series by Masao Otake.
One day, Hina drops into the condo of yakuza Yoshifumi Nitta through an interdimensional portal. Some sort of bio-engineered child assassin with telekinetic powers, Hina doesn't know what what she's doing there. She assumes she's on a mission and Nitta is her handler.
This mistaken assumption comes in handy when Nitta has her literally defenestrate an entire rival gang in one fell swoop. But after that, Nitta is stuck with her. So he tells people that Hina is his long-lost daughter, and before long they have assumed their respective roles.
As a brand-new dad, Nitta finds himself with the responsibility of turning this tiny version of Robert Patrick from Terminator 2 into a functioning member of society.
The anime is available on Crunchyroll. The English-language manga is published by One Peace Books.
My Girl is a manga series by Sahara Mizu, made into a TV Asahi series in 2009 starring Masaki Aiba of the mega-boy band Arashi. (As far as I can tell, the members of Arashi are much better actors than they are singers, and they're not terrible singers either.)
Attending the funeral of his ex-girlfriend (who'd been living abroad), Masamune Kazama discovers that not only did she have a child, but she had his child, who now really is his child. What follows is a how-to/day-in-the-life melodrama that defines the next series too.
(No English versions available.)
Bunny Drop is a manga series by Yumi Unita, an anime series by Production I.G, and a 2011 feature film.Daikichi's grandfather had a child with his live-in maid. Daikichi only finds this out at his grandfather's funeral. "If the old man was still alive," he grumbles, "I'd give him a high five." He points out to his mother, "That'd make her your sister." She retorts, "And your aunt."
Nobody wants to take responsibility for Rin, the five-year-old girl. Finally (if only out of disgust with the rest of them) Daikichi takes her home. He soon decides to make the arrangement permanent.
Bunny Drop is a sweet, unadorned drama that avoids most of the stereotypical melodramatic devices. Like My Girl, it succeeds by making a virtue of ordinariness and by featuring protagonists who are believably decent human beings striving to do the right thing.
However clueless Daikichi may be at first, he doesn't stay dumb, and grows quite insightful into the strange, topsy-turvy life Rin has led, while cheerfully saying goodbye to his "me-time" and his climb up the corporate ladder.
The anime (based on the first three volumes of the manga; English translation available from Yen Press) is drawn in a pencil-on-watercolor style that gives it a subdued picture book quality. I found it quite pleasant and entirely appropriate to the subject matter.
The anime is available on Crunchyroll and Tubi.
The Japanese government actually has a "Minister of State for Measures for the Declining Birthrate." If government agencies were ever that creative, I could imagine them commissioning television series like these to encourage young men to take up the reins of fatherhood.
Unfortunately, regardless of the good intentions in the regard, it doesn't seem to be working (in Japan and every other country with the same problem).
Labels: anime, anime lists, anime reviews, cooking shows, demographics, food, japanese culture, japanese tv, manga, personal favs, social studies
September 20, 2018
Frenemies (3/7)
As the 1990s began, big changes in the computer business were just over the horizon.Intel was rolling out the 80486 microprocessor. With over a million transistors on board and clock speeds that would climb to 100 MHz, the 486 made the Graphical User Interface truly usable. Featuring that GUI would be Windows 3.0 and OS/2 2.0.
Conventional wisdom had already concluded that Microsoft took three tries to get the software right. That meant Windows 3.0 was going to be a Big Deal and Microsoft treated it as such, with advertising spreads in all the major tech publications.
The 26 June 1990 issue of PC Magazine included a massive 70 page insert. Titled "The Next Generation of Windows" and featuring gushing quotes from the major players in the industry, it was only distinguishable from the rest of the publication by the "Special Advertising Section" header. (The insert was cheekily preceded by a rare full-page ad for the Apple Macintosh.)
Nevertheless, the personal computing world was not ready to to cast Windows and OS/2 as competing products. Almost two years before, in the 14 March 1988 issue of PC Magazine, Gus Venditto reported on a "recent policy statement" by Bill Gates that "outlined a timeline in which 15 percent of new PCs are running OS/2 in 1989, growing to 50 percent by 1991."
In his 12 April 1988 cover story, "What OS/2 Will Mean to Users," Charles Petzold concluded that "Everybody currently using DOS on an 80286 or 80386-based machine will eventually consider upgrading to OS/2."
Everybody knew what IBM and Microsoft intended to do.
Over a year later, Petzold still predicted that "IBM and Microsoft intend OS/2 to be the dominant PC operating system of the 1990s—and they seem ready to fix any problem that could inhibit this goal." In the 27 February 1990 issue William F. Zachmann stated that "OS/2 is clearly the intended heir to DOS as far as IBM and Microsoft are concerned."
Despite the overwhelming success of Windows 3.0, Zachmann doubled down on this prediction in the 25 September 1990 issue: "Windows 3.0 will light the way to OS/2, not eclipse it. And that's really what Microsoft always wanted."
By 1990, what Microsoft really wanted was to get out of its software development relationship with IBM, and had been hedging its bets for the past two years. It hired David Cutler—designer of the revered VMS operating system—away from Digital Equipment in order to create Windows NT. In the first issue of 1990, John Dvorak reported in PC Magazine that
Everyone is talking about Microsoft Windows 3.0, but not all of the talk is pleasant. It seems that Microsoft's sudden re-emphasis on Windows may result in more grousing by developers who have put their hopes into OS/2. Windows 3.0 now looks like the hot ticket to the future. I'm told that Microsoft employees have gone back to Windows en masse.
Although Gates increasingly had every reason to question IBM's competence in the retail arena, the source of the widening rift was the diverging corporate philosophies of the two companies. Keep in mind Microsoft's mission statement: "A computer on every desk and in every home all running Microsoft software."
Microsoft got started selling software for the 8-bit Altair. Microsoft made a CP/M card for the Apple II and is still a major software developer for the Macintosh. "A computer on every desk" manifestly did not mean "An IBM computer on every desk." Microsoft had much bigger aims than that.
Every computer on every desk in the universe, if possible.
IBM's lurch toward proprietary solutions, starting with the Micro Channel bus, was tossing sand into the gears of this goal. OS/2 cheerleader William Zachmann plainly admitted that Micro Channel was "IBM's standard. And nobody else's. From the very beginning, IBM intended Micro Channel to eliminate competition from vendors of compatible systems."
In the same 12 April 1988 issue that Charles Petzold declared "the OS/2 decade has begun," a more pessimistic Robert Hummel keenly perceived the same existential threat to the Microsoft and the huge base of existing DOS software that Bill Gates must have.
If you use IBM software, OS/2 may not live up to the capabilities you want unless you buy your computers from IBM. And now you see the real reason for OS/2.
Six months later, in his 31 January 1989 column, Charles Petzold mused that "The conspiracy-minded among us have suggested that OS/2 Extended Edition is the first step in making OS/2 an IBM proprietary operating system."
Gates was not about to get hemmed in by IBM's possessive hold on the platform and its parochial approach to software development. Despite the huge industry it had created, IBM demonstrated no interest or ability in driving the business forward at the retail level and maximizing the consumer base.
Simply consider that a personal computer user who resolved to plunk down 340 dollars for OS/2 Standard Edition 1.1 still had to figure out how to buy it. The OS/2 ads that appeared in PC Magazine directed the reader to "your local authorized IBM dealer." Whoever that was.
By contrast, Microsoft made sure that Windows 3.0 came bundled with most new computers. And if you wanted to buy a copy, simply flip though the pages of PC Magazine to an ad from, say, mail-order powerhouse PC Connection, pull out your credit card, and it was yours for 99 bucks.
Even William Zachmann had to admit that "IBM was never really aggressive on pricing. IBM was never aggressive when it came to innovation either." No surprise that Microsoft should resolve to reassert control over the personal computer operating system.
As it had since its founding, IBM envisioned itself as a highly profitable purveyor of proprietary computing systems. In other words, what Apple would become two decades hence. Not a bad corporate goal to have—for IBM. But Bill Gates wasn't about to sacrifice a 90-plus percent market share in order to bolster IBM's our-way-or-the-highway strategy.
Not when Microsoft was busily building an interstate of its own. In the 25 April 1989 issue of PC Magazine, John Dvorak mused that
If IBM had not become preoccupied with its Micro Channel patents and closed architecture, I think it would have sold twice as many PS/2s. More important to IBM, Big Blue would be in the driver's seat, controlling the destiny of the market. Now it's just a target for bypass.
The time had come for Microsoft to take the bypass and lead the personal computing world in a direction of its own devising.
Related posts
The future that wasn't (introduction)
The future that wasn't (1/7)
The future that wasn't (2/7)
The future that wasn't (4/7)
The future that wasn't (5/7)
The future that wasn't (6/7)
The future that wasn't (7/7)
The accidental standard
The grandfathers of DOS
Labels: business, computers, history, tech history, technology
September 13, 2018
The streaming chronicles (4/4)
Tubi is available on-line and via streaming services such as Roku. It's an ad-supported channel with a straightforward interface and a decent selection of anime and Japanese movies.
The catalog doesn't say whether an anime title is subbed or dubbed. If the voice actors in the cast list are Japanese, then it's subtitled. In some cases, closed captioning has to be enabled to get the subtitles.
For once, the ad audio is quieter than the main programming. And Tubi deserves a round of applause for its ad engine. The ad transitions are smooth and not at all annoying (though the ads can get repetitive).
If Tubi has the title and you don't have an ad-free subscription at Crunchyroll, I'd recommend Tubi.
Once in a blue moon, the closed captioning stops displaying. Tapping auto-rewind (the 10 second skip-back) always fixes it. I have no complaints about the image quality. Tubi never buffers that I can tell.
Tubi is free. It works. It's got a ton of content besides anime. It's an app well worth installing.
I've also installed the NASA TV Roku app. The content is the same as its cable channel, with additional libraries of archived material.
Related posts
The streaming chronicles (1)
The streaming chronicles (2)
The streaming chronicles (3)
Anime's streaming solution
Labels: roku, streaming, technology, television, tubi
September 06, 2018
New old titles at CR
Sherlock Hound features some of Hayao Miyazaki's earliest work. As you might surmise from the title, in this version, Sherlock Holmes is a dog. And so is everybody else. Lots of fun. I reviewed the series here.
In Magic Users Club (watch the OVA first), we learn that sitting on a broom (sans a pillow) hurts your butt, and the best way to deal with an alien spacecraft is to turn it into a giant cherry tree. (The first scene of the OVA has no sound because there is no sound in space.)
Patema Inverted and King of Thorn explore the unreliability of human perspective. I reviewed the former here.Patema Inverted literally asks which way is up. King of Thorn wonders if really you know what time it is. Both require mighty suspensions of disbelief to get past the premises. But there's tons of material for anybody who enjoys musing about philosophical what-ifs.
In terms of narrative structure, King of Thorn reminded me of the "No Reason" episode of House.
Crunchyroll doesn't yet have the 3DCG Appleseed movies but it does have the 3DCG Vexille, a pastiche of every post-apocalyptic, mecha, and military anime series ever made. Watch it as a work of social commentary rather than for its dubious cinematic merits. I reviewed it here.
Welcome to the Space Show takes a gang of kids from rural Japan on an Art Deco roller coaster ride through a fractious galactic empire ruled by a reality TV show host. As the title suggests, it's a dazzling and hilarious trek through the stars.
Night on the Galactic Railroad is based on the fantasy novel by Kenji Miyazawa, an agronomist and social activist who died in 1933 at the age of thirty-seven. Little known for his poetry and fiction in his lifetime, he is now considered one of Japan's great literary figures.
Night on the Galactic Railroad inspired Leiji Matsumoto's anime classic Galaxy Express 999. This morally complex work of science fiction won the Shogakukan Manga Award in 1978 and the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize in 1981.
Video links
5 Centimeters per Second
King of Thorn
Galaxy Express 999 (Tubi)
Magic User's Club
Magic User's Club OVA (YouTube)
Night on the Galactic Railroad
Patema Inverted
Sherlock Hound (YouTube)
Voices of a Distant Star
Vexille
Welcome to the Space Show
Labels: anime, anime lists, anime reviews, crunchyroll, fantasy, matsumoto, miyazaki, movies, science fiction, shinkai, streaming