anachred

Thousands of Hot Asian Chicks are Looking for a Guy Just like Me!

Sorry. Just thought I'd share that.





Okay, my Reprobate friends of sounis  were recommending this, as well as The Book Thief, and I think since they titles muddled in my head, I never gave it a second look. (The Book Thief has always sounded too serious for the reading mood I was in.)

This is awesome. I wish my reading attention span wasn't shot to pieces by reading all the shoujo. Whoops...
(Actually. It was never that good for much anyway.)

But speaking of that...
This comic competes with few others for sheer beauty and strength.

The Voice Blooms Red (Akaku Saku Koe)

With the manhwa (Korean comics) that are really fetching to me, it shares a sort of stillness.
Technically, it's the dialogue:panel ratio--so many more silent panels rely on the art to tell a story rather than just talk. But it's artful.

(Here there was a really cool page that was disabled. Have a cover thumbnail instead.)





It's like the Hayao Miyazaki films of the comics world, in a way.

The Voice Blooms Red (my title translation) is a mystery/special police forces/and terribly understated romance manga.
It is two volumes, I don't think they've been translated except by fans. The translation job is not bad. The story itself has psychic depth. And the creator's comments at the end made it even more interesting to reflect on.

I've read the whole thing--brilliant to the end.
 Unreservedly recommended.

like having the sky in my hands...




( This Yarn's Story )Some of the pictures you can see bigger at GossamerSong. And to end: my favorite song from a certain soundtrack.

Going to Japanese school isn't something I usually mention in a positive light, but the oddest things will make you nostalgic. This is a youth choir from Singapore, it looks like, but they're singing a theme song from Spirited Away, and it looks oh-so-familiar...
My school, Yonezawa 2nd Middle School (Nichu) was fairly accomplished musically and each homeroom formed a choir for annual competitions.

And then I go and listen to this song, which makes me less warm-fuzzies-nostalgic, and more oh-isn't-the-world-bittersweet-beautiful, which almost leads to tears. You need to go hear it, obviously.

Joe Hisaishi does a brilliant job using Western classical influences to create a score that works with film the way we expect it, and yet making it mesh so well with Japanese themes, with the additions of traditional instruments and musical conventions. I think he has had a lot of fun scoring for the various projects Miyazaki has created. After all, it ranges from WWII Europe, to Steampunk Whereever, to Ancient Japan, and Modern Tokyo...

Sometimes you just dream that your life will have the same sort of breadth as the people you look up to, even if you can't compete with them in their chosen field.

These are the sort of things you create and try not to think about what profound throughts you could have been thinking if you'd resisted the urge...
Guess the tributes!       [not really. spare yourself the "What If?" agonies of wasted time.]

Rainbows on bubbles and great winged horses
Snowdays with Tumnus and werewolf keen noses
Gamboling kitsune, sly leprechauns
My favorite illusions, once seen and they're gone

Kings born in exile with old broken sabres
Changelings and deep wells and candles and prayers
Angry steep mountains with snow to hunt dwarves
Mad wives in attics and those fey secret drawers

Time full of wrinkles, impossible heroes
Wrestling with Grendel and magical bureaus
Avatars running from demigod des'ny
My fav'rite illusions are running away with me.

Alphabets forming from thornbush and briars
Phookas that prefer to ride on two tires
Redheads, tea, dragons, elves, shoes, steel, owls, rain
Here let me tell you my favorites again...


Hint: I cheated.

So, this instead of finishing another major edit on Beastly. I will scoping out new guinea pigs predictably later than I like and sooner than is good for you.

    [this will probably mutate into other posts elsewhere as well--I disseminate myself]
I realized while devouring Patricia McKillip's Ombria in Shadow that I love her fantasy novels like I love Hayao MIYAZAKI's films.

The parallels are in the worldbuilding, but not in the exquisite detail they put into it. Hayao's is primarily visual, as is her's in a way. But both really excel in drawing a place so that you are aware of it's hidden corners and that there are complexities beyond the stage.

They also are good at drawing out a single facet of our reality and looking into it, making it more major so that the whole of the world around it is reflected differently.

Oddly enough, that "facet drawn out" phrase makes me think of Rescuers Down Under, the image of the diamond they're looking for. Apparently that was a stand-out moment. The colors and contrasts were very striking.

With McKillip, having an artist with a uniquely rich vision create her covers is an asset to the experience itself of her book. With Miyazaki, his adaptation of Howl's Moving Castle (while not as perfect as Spirited Away, I think) was a way of putting his lens on a new imagination (Diana Wynne Jones') and drawing out new corners. His inventions to the story are interesting. They do not put tropes back in (like Hollywood adaptations tend to)--they add wider spins. He makes a story with pockets of darkness part of a cosmic struggle where the darkness is overwhelming.

Seeing artwork from the movie (that I've got on my own computer, have for months!) while reading it, I feel the poignancy of what he created out of that story more strongly than from the prose.

This is very roundabout, but in a way, I've been talking about two artist who can bring a new dimension to another work of art by focusing their vision.

In a way all artists do that. We not only contribute to the art lexicon we draw from it. Some more obviously than others, and at different times more completely. Kinuko Y. Craft's Elinor of Aquitane paintings (there are two!) and the ones she's done of Raine and Od and other characters' of McKillip's have a certain focus that gives them meaning beyond some of her generic faerie work, I think. Miyazaki does best drawing on his own Japanese historical roots, vividly painting a piece of Japanese culture--but also at bringing to life and color the Wizard Howl.

What will you draw on to focus your art?
 Or how do your favorite artists hone their vision in?