The Avengers ‘65, vol. 3

Even more adventures of secret agent John Steed and his sidekick Mrs. Peel (vol. 1, vol. 2); there’s not much to say about it that I hadn’t said before (witty banter and occasional innuendo, Diana Rigg in a catsuit (usually in the fight scene), plot of random importance and coherency). I do wonder why they continue to use their real names when investigating, though. I wish these had subtitles; sometimes the accents are hard to understand.

—The Episodes—

• The Murder Market

  The plot: Eleven murders in six months, no clues, anyone with a motive is “conveniently elsewhere at the time”, looks organized, all had been photographed recently. The photographer only does commercial work, but does portraits for a marriage bureau. They investigate and discover that all were clients of the bureau (and all but one were single); Steed sends Mrs. Peel to attempt to warn the next victim, but she was too late and was seen by the murderer. Both Steed and Mrs. Peel become clients of the bureau; Steed gets a date (who is extremely interested in his financial situation), while Mrs. Peel is unfortunately recognized by the murderer. It turns out that the club offers quid pro quo murders (person A will inherit money when B dies, C will inherit money when D dies, so A kills D and C kills B); Steed’s first assignment is to kill Mrs. Peel. The plot in this episode was unusually plausible and coherent, and I was surprised by the mastermind.

  Random observations: Mrs. Peel wanders in to Steeds apartment without knocking and makes herself at home. Apparently, they could show artistic rear nudity (a painting in the matchmaker’s office of Adam and Eve; she has her arms over her chest and a figleaf lower, he is next to her, turned around), even though the Scottish guy’s briefs were scandalous. Mrs. Peel is randomly sitting on Steed’s couch playing a tuba while Steed is practicing golf inside (and of course, hits the ball into the tuba). She was also doing ballet-type exercises at one point. Nobody was kidnapped or tied up in this episode.
   

• A Surfeit of H₂O

  The plot: It’s back to the more bizarre plots: it starts off with a guy drowning in a thunderstorm; someone is writing letters to the editor about ark-building (and is actually building one), and the dead guy’s brother (Eli) goes on about the dead one having fallen into sin and about the recent torrential rains (very leaky roof, gives Mrs. Peel an umbrella inside). Eli blames the death on a factory (aka the Den of Iniquity) that makes some sort of alcoholic beverages nearby (specifically, their large vats of water). The town is rural (the dead guy was a poacher setting out snares), but the factory has lots of tubes and vials and random equipment. Mrs. Peel is posing as a newspaper reporter trying to find out more information about the death; Steed is impersonating a wine dealer in order to get into the factory. Since there is strange weather, Mrs. Peel has some knowledge of meteorology (though the writers didn’t) and runs some tests in the field where the guy died (conveniently in view of the factory windows) and finds that it is excessively humid, so they called in a meteorological expert (also, there’s a stationary cloud). They attract the attention of the factory, and the expert dies and Mrs. Peel is abducted at gunpoint and placed in the press the factory uses so they can attempt to squeeze information out of her.

  Random observations: 67.8% humidity is apparently only found in the jungles of Brazil or Equatorial Africa (if they’re having constant torrential rains, I’m surprised it’s not higher). I don’t believe they left the expert in the field alone when they knew there was someone malicious around! I like the way people who drowned in the rainstorms leave body-shaped puddles behind (and wonder why the first guy’s boots were left behind as well). Mrs. Peel is the driver in this episode. The receptionist at the factory gives Steed the best crazy look as he goes off and describes wine in excessively florid terms (berries gathered by maidens, the tang of honey, etc.); she is Not Impressed by his “charm” (though I think he’s aiming for obnoxious and stupid attempting to be charming rather than actually charming). Despite their claims of impenetrable security, the factory is ridiculously easy to break into, but Steed and Jonah (the ark-builder) LEFT THE TRAP DOOR OPEN (though the receptionist would have noticed Mrs. Peel missing immediately, even without the trap door being open; I don’t know why she walked into the empty lab in the first place, but she was walking towards the trap door and looking down at it before she could see it)!. Steed is supposed to be a PROFESSIONAL!! Everyone has a different accent. All fight scenes should have someone yelling “Alleluia! The Flood is Coming!” in the background. I thought that was Lionel from As Time Goes By (Geoffrey Palmer) as Smythe, and it was! I adore this show, but I was completely unable to suspend belief enough to enjoy this episode (and apparently I’m the only person on the internet who didn’t like it).
   

• The Hour that Never Was

  The plot: This episode was a bit different from the rest. The isolation of the recently-abandoned airbase with Steed wandering around alone trying to figure out what was going on was kind of creepy. I took notes as I was watching and don’t feel like editing them down to a reasonable length, and I’m fairly sure I misidentified some characters as I was watching; I was confused at the time, though it made sense at the end (the actions, at least). It starts off with a dog running and Steed swerving to avoid it and hitting a tree; he and Mrs. Peel are going to a military camp nearby (a party for an RAF base being decommissioned). They arrive, and everything’s set up for the party, but no one’s around; everything looks abandoned in the middle of actions…there’s a car at a gas pump with gas running everywhere; the inviter’s electric razor is running; there is smoke coming from the kitchen. Eventually, they see someone running across a runway; that person is shot (the milkman, apparently; they also found a pile of milk bottles to be delivered or picked up). While investigating in the direction of the shooter, they find an unconscious rabbit. There’s a weird noise occasionally, and after one instance, the milkman’s body vanishes; Mrs. Peel finds the milk truck with the body on it. There is an extremely annoying noise, which causes Mrs. Peel to go fuzzy and Steed to fall down a hill and stagger into a fallout shelter. Steed eventually finds a bum who has been living off of the dustbins of airbases all his working life who eventually mentions that the clocks stopped striking at 11. The dog Steed almost hit comes back and apparently belongs to the guard at the gate; Steed goes to check the guardhouse at the gate and is knocked out by the gate falling and ends up back at his car without Mrs. Peel. He makes it back and the party’s in full swing; Mrs. Peel apparently called an hour before and said she couldn’t make it. Steed steps out for a breath of air and sees the dog; it leads him to the tramp’s body. The milk truck drives by with the milkman’s body in the back (maybe there were two milkmen all along; one is driving) (Mrs. Peel was last seen near the milk truck). I’m really confused; apparently the body in the back was the cooks; the milkman delivered it to the cook house; when Steed looked in, he was decorating the cake. The milkman visits the medical centre and picks up two more bodies and another man who tells him to hurry up so they can get them back before they wake up. Steed finds Mrs. Peel tied up in the medical centre; she apparently passed out earlier. She identifies a random drug as a tool for brainwashing; they deduce that someone drugged the camp and set the clocks back so no one would notice they’d lost an hour. That doesn’t explain the dead fish reviving, though (or how they knew where Steed’s car was). Apparently the dentist discovered the sound of the drill could induce a hypnotic state; he broadcast the sound and brainwashed the men so that he could auction them (30 preconditioned brains) off to the highest bidder. The fight scene includes Steed and the dentist and laughing gas. There was, of course, no explanation of why the milkman was helping (a cut of the proceeds, presumably) or who the other guy was.

  Random observations: This is a different sort of episode; there are no other characters until halfway through, and a good chunk of it is Steed wandering around the empty base. Mrs. Peel’s outfit at the beginning is odd; a light-colored jacket with two-toned sleeves (and a matching sleeveless shirt underneath) with a dark band around the chest and pockets on the band (the outfit). I like the way Mrs. Peel’s other shoes are conveniently located in the front seat of the car. Running out onto a runway to check on the person who’s just been shot without knowing anything about the shooter is probably not the best idea. Steed doesn’t seem to think it’s odd that all the clocks say its 11 o’clock; he does show frustration, though (throws a glass at a wall) and spends a lot of the episode angry. An open truck is probably not the best choice for carrying bodies around. Diana Rigg’s wardrobe and shoes had their own credits in this episode (the only one on this disc with that sort of credit).
   

official site for this release
The Avengers Forever
The Nitpicker’s Guide to the Avengers
another fansite

Barbara Hambly: Stranger at the Wedding

I was looking for something light to read or reread, and chose this; the last book I read was her Bride of the Rat God, which I adore. This is set in the same world as the Windrose books (The Silent Tower/Silicon Mage/Dog Wizard), but isn’t really related to them; I think it’s a year or so after Dog Wizard. Kyra Peldyrin (aka Kyra the Red) is a wizard-in-training, living at the Citadel of Wizards. Her father disowned her when her powers became public knowledge; she was essentially his heir (a marriage was arranged, but she would have continued running the business). Mages are not allowed to own property or run businesses or marry, and the Inquisition is watching for improper magic use. Wizards who are trained at the Citadel take a vow to not use magic to “meddle in the affairs of humankind”; wizards who don’t take that vow are known as dog wizards, and generally aren’t well-trained and are not protected by the Council of Wizards against the Inquisition.

Kyra has been at the Citadel for six years, and is a journeyman wizard, preparing to test for the next level when her spells start acting randomly, usually in negative ways (scrying in water, the water turns to blood; summoning moths results in flies; card reading gives Death in the same place every time). She receives a letter from her younger sister Alix announcing her wedding to Blore Spenson, the Lord Mayor of Angelshand’s son, who is a bit older and who has been a trader (on ships) and has been convinced he needs to settle down and start a family. Kyra wakes up in the night with the knowledge that Alix will die on her wedding night and is on the coach to Angelshand the next day. Her father is dismayed to find her in his house, but permits her to stay. She is horrified to find out that the wedding is in a couple of days instead of the couple of weeks originally planned, which does not give her enough time to find the curse on Alix.

Kyra frantically tries to find the source of the curse (a wizard’s mark somewhere) while dealing with her family and various friends and acquaintances and the wedding preparations. She tries to find ways to delay the ceremony without breaking her vows (or at least not being noticed breaking them). The house is chaotic, with various friends and relatives visiting to see what is happening with the delays (one family want Spenson for their daughter and have been getting love potions from a dog wizard and attempt to bribe Kyra to help) and the extra servants for the wedding (the musicians chase anything female, including the other servants and the neighbor’s daughters). Alix herself is desperately in love with one of the pastry-cook’s assistants (who is very talented in his own right) but is determined to do what her father orders. Interspersed with the present-day activities are flashbacks to the events leading up to Kyra’s discovery of her powers and her eventual leaving home for the citadel.

I didn’t like this as much this time as I did the last time I read it; it used to be one of my favorite of her books. I’ve unfortunately found that to be true of many of her books; she used to be one of my favorite authors, but more recent rereads of many of her books have either stalled out or felt forced (but don’t remember why I felt that way; it’s been a few years). After the last round of re-reading, I decided that this and Bride of the Rat God (and maybe the Windrose Chronicles) were the only ones I liked. I haven’t been interested in most of her more recent works; I do have Sisters of the Raven somewhere, unread, and I tried Magic Time, but didn’t finish it (didn’t like the style, maybe; I think it was written like a script for a TV show).

In this particular case, I like her writing style and the world-building (though I wouldn’t want to live in this world). I reread this because I was looking for a comfort read; unfortunately, I think my current mood led to me being more critical of the book than I might have otherwise been. Kyra was annoying this time through; she is the sort of person who ignores anyone who is not important to her (servants are essentially furniture, especially), even though she mentions that her mage-training has made her more observant/able to observe more. She does eventually admit this as a flaw in her character, and it would be a much shorter book otherwise, but it’s still annoying. Admittedly, even if she was more observant of people, she might not have recognized the relevant person; poverty apparently took its toll. There was another incident of Kyra overlooking the obvious that really annoyed me (flashback to a relevant event, soon after seeing something similar and not recognizing it, and regardless of whether or not she recognized the similarity, not checking everything that could have been in contact with the trace of magic she found).

The other problem I had was that I didn’t find the romantic subplot particularly believable; I think my tolerance for whirlwind romances is lower than it used to be (and it was never very high), especially when there are severe obstacles to a successful relationship. In this particular case, they decided they were in love after three days; I don’t think they even had a conversation before the first kiss. In addition, one party had never had any sort of romantic attachment (not even schoolgirl crushes) and the other said he didn’t know that love could feel like that. The obstacles to a successful relationship were extremely severe, and I’m not sure I believe they could be overcome.

I didn’t dislike this book enough to get rid of it yet; there are parts that I really like. I will probably reread it again, eventually, hopefully when I’m not in as critical of a mood.

Gackt -The Greatest Filmography-Red/Blue (US releases)

This is one of two DVDs of Gackt’s videos; Red is the rock-type songs and Blue is the slower songs. I rented Red from Netflix because I was curious about the US release and wasn’t planning on buying it at this time; I don’t like a lot of Gackt’s slower songs, so I didn’t bother renting Blue. I ended up buying them both after all, though. These are the official US versions of these DVDs; they have English subtitles (by Gackt and/or his staff, apparently; the European CD releases seem to have the same English lyrics). They are missing the Japanese subtitled versions of the videos, which were separate versions with the subtitles incorporated in the videos, not a standard subtitle track. Each video is preceded by a brief clip with the credits (director, cast, location, release date). The songs themselves are the Sixth Day versions instead of the original version, when applicable; this was true of the Japanese version as well. The three unplugged songs on Blue are the Seventh Night versions and were originally included on the Platinum Box V (2004). They are all “live” performances with Dears members as audience.

The DVDs have the same covers as the Japanese versions (front at least), and have an insert listing the songs and the PV credits with a picture from each video (and also an ad for Viz’s other live-action movies and a subscription card for Shojo Beat magazine). The Japanese editions had full booklets with lyrics and more screencaps; the credits are taken directly from the Japanese versions, with the English song titles replacing the Japanese. The covers are eyes; Red is the right eye and the packaging is right-to-left and Blue is the left eye with left-to-right packaging; this is apparently the same as in the Japanese version.

The English subtitles were a little distracting; I have a little knowledge of Japanese, and have read multiple translations for some of these songs and had a few moments of ‘that’s not what he’s saying’ or ‘there should be more translation there’ though the first could be explained in part by the translations being more verse-by-verse than line-by-line (and both by my ignorance). In a few places, the English subtitles were not the same as the English lyrics, which was disconcerting. I would have liked to have the original Japanese subtitled versions and a romaji subtitle track, but I am happy they had an official US release.

various manga

I’m not reading as much manga as I used to for various reasons, but am keeping up with a few series. I’ve let them pile up too much to want to post individually for each; I may do fuller writeups with future volumes of some of these.

———

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle v14-15 – CLAMP
CLAMP’s crossover/alternate universe version of their previous works. I think it is technically shounen of the endless quest for parts variety (wandering through worlds looking for Sakura’s feathers). I keep accidentally running across spoilers for this and xxxHOLiC and may eventually resort to other means of reading them. I’ve been meaning to stop reading this, but keep seeing volumes when I have coupons and am now more interested because of a spoiler I saw. I kind of wish I was more familiar with CLAMP’s other works so that I could recognize more of the background characters.

———

Genju no Seiza v4-5 – Matsuri Akino (Pet Shop of Horrors)
This has gorgeous artwork, but kind of a generic plot. Fuuto Kamishina is a fifteen-year-old high school student; he father is famous photographer who vanished a few years earlier and his mother was living among the sherpa in the Himalayas. They have moved frequently since his father vanished. Fuuto sees a news item about the new king of Dhalashar, and soon after is accosted by a Garuda (half man, half bird that others only see as a bird) who claims he is the rightful king. Fuuto rejects this claim and tries to continue leading a normal life; unfortunately, he has always had various psychic powers (one of the reasons for the frequent moves) and those powers are rapidly increasing. He becomes friends with Professor Ichijo, who wants to believe in everything but who has no spiritual powers, and Mayu, who is wheelchair-bound, completely emotionless, and who has some powers. The stories are sometimes Fuuto using his powers to solve other’s problems, randomly astrally traveling by touching artifacts, and dealing with the various problems caused by being thought the next king of Dhalashar (astrally traveling and meeting the acting king and dealing with his various guardians and assassins being sent by the power behind the throne (several assassins end up as guardians)). One of the previous volumes featured a descendant of Abe no Seimei who has no powers and who wants to be an astronomer; the arc that begins in volume five has Fuuto, Seishun (the descendant) and three of his guardians sent back to the Heian era, where they meet Abe no Seimei and try not to affect history. I like this series much more than I expected. Fuuto is a typical obnoxious high school boy in the beginning but does change and grow as the story progresses (though he still acts the same); the current plot with Fuuto wanting to help those around him but being unable to because of the fear of paradox and the knowledge that he should not interfere with the natural progression was painful (in a good way), and I am looking forward to the next volume.

———

Kamen Tantei v1-2 – Matsuri Akino
High school students Haruka Akashi (junior, female, a bit of a tomboy) and Masato Nishina (sophomore, male) are the only members of their school’s mystery club, and have written a novel that they entered in a mystery contest (using the name Taro Suzuki; they don’t want to be known as the authors). Weird things and mysterious deaths start happening around them, and a masked man randomly appears and gives them hints as to the solutions (and also gives them the hook for their novel: Kamen Tantei, the masked detective); in one case, he claims to be the author Taro Suzuki (with sunglasses instead of the mask). There are often supernatural elements to the cases; Masato can see ghosts (but can’t do anything about them), Haruka does not believe in them, and “Taro Suzuki” sent one on to the next world. Some of the stories also blur the line between fiction and reality; I wasn’t sure in one case if the story was their new novel or something happening in the real world, and another featured someone who was living in a fantasy world (which Masato and Haruka entered). This didn’t really work for me, and I don’t know why; I like her other works and this is the sort of thing that I like, but it didn’t really grip me. I didn’t really care about Masato or Haruka (and kept thinking she was a guy), but I am curious about the masked man; it is only four volumes, which is a point in its favor.

———

Tramps Like Us v13 – Yayoi Ogawa
The story of a career woman (late twenties) and her pet Momo (a twenty-ish dancer) and her boyfriend Hasumi. I don’t know why Tokyopop chose that name, but I adore this series, even though there are several reasons why I shouldn’t (for one thing, I generally hate lying and secret-keeping, and Momo is a big secret). This is volume thirteen of fourteen, and everything is falling into place (and any mention of specifics would be spoilers for the final resolution). I will probably write up the series as a whole once the last volume is released (in February, I think).

———

tactics v1-2 (ADV release) – Sakura Kinoshita and Kazuko Higashiyama
tactics v3 (Tokyopop release)
I reread 1-2 after watching v3 of the anime, 3 was just released. Kantarou is a folklore researcher and occult expert; he theoretically writes for a living, but is often distracted by the supernatural. Since childhood, he heard stories of a demon-eating tengu, and wanted to find it and name it Haruka; naming a youkai causes it to obey the namer. ADV released the first two volumes a few years ago, and then dropped it; there were some issues with their translation (most notably, Sugino’s gender). Tokyopop rescued the license and re-released the first two volumes with a new translation; I didn’t bother re-buying them but will buy the following, maybe. Haruka is now a demon-eating tengu instead of a demon-eating goblin, which is a slight improvement. The stories are mostly episodic (someone approaches Kantarou about a supernatural problem, Kantarou, with Haruka and often Youko (his kitsune housekeeper/maid), investigates and solves the problem while Youko worries about money (they are perpetually almost broke). There are recurring characters and vague hints of overall plot. The first story in volume three was kind of disjointed, but I think that was a fault of the original rather than the adaptation; I had a similar issue with parts of the ADV-released Matantei Loki Ragnarok (by Sakura Kinoshita). I’ll buy the next volume, but further will depend on what I think of that one; it’s kind of generic, and several of the characters annoy me (though not as badly as their anime versions).

———

Vampire Hunter D: The Stuff of Dreams – Hideyuki Kikuchi
not technically manga, but is often filed with it. I bought the first novel, found the prose too purple for my tastes and gave it to my sister, who enjoyed it. I borrowed another one from her and did not finish it due to the writing style and the appalling amount of sentence fragments (which I might not have noticed if I liked the style or was more interested in the plot). She eventually stopped buying them because they mostly had the same plot, but sent me this one with a note that it was her favorite due to a different plot. I liked it well enough; either the style was less florid or I found the plot interesting enough that I didn’t notice it as much. I did like the wandering in and out of dreams, but I’m not sure which bits were reality and which were dreams. I am unlikely to read any more of these without a recommendation, though.

Mushi-shi, DVD 1

aka 蟲師; based on a manga series released in the US by Del Rey, though I haven’t read it. I rented this because it had a lot of hype and sounded interesting. It follows the travels of Ginko, who is the Mushi-shi (Mushi master/expert) of the title. Mushi are some sort of primal being, neither plant nor animal, neither alive nor dead. They can be any size, and the larger/stronger ones can appear human. They occasionally inhabit people or objects and can cause problems, which is where Ginko comes in; he seems to wander, following rumors of incidents that could be caused by mushi, and trying to help the people involved. He does occasionally take relics of the mushi, which he sells to a collector.

I didn’t like this as much as I expected; it had glowing reviews everywhere, it is the sort of thing that I like (someone wandering around looking for weirdness), and the art is gorgeous. I didn’t dislike it and am planning on continuing to watch it, though. I watched some of it dubbed and some in the original, and found them both listenable; I don’t remember anything about the music (except for wondering why such a Japanese series had an English-language opening). It is extremely episodic and I’m not sure if there’s ever any sort of overall plot; there was one reference to previous episodes in these five (selling to the collector in the fifth episode). Ginko doesn’t have much of a personality, there don’t seem to be any recurring characters so far, and I didn’t really care about any of the episode characters except the girl in the fifth episode. I think the lack of any sort of plot beyond mushi-of-the-week plus the lack of any interesting characters (except the girl) caused my neutral feelings towards this series so far; I adored the fifth episode (I was interested in the episode characters, and Ginko showed a little bit of emotions/personality), but didn’t have strong feelings towards the others. Out of these five episodes, one ended happily, one ended tragically, two ended successfully, and the other was ambiguous (nominally successful, but the very end made me wonder about the future of the people involved).

—The Episodes—

I rented this, but returned it, and didn’t really care enough about the episodes to want to write more about them.

1. The Green Seat
   Ginko investigates rumors of a boy who can create life from drawings and writing.
2. The Light of the Eyelid
   A girl from a noble family becomes excessively sensitive to light and lives in the storehouse of a less-than-noble family due to worry that it is a disease.
3. Tender Horns
   People in a village lose their hearing in the winter; one boy loses more than that.
4. The Pillow Pathway
   A man has prophetic dreams; Ginko gives him medicine but doesn’t really explain why the man needs to take it.
5. The Travelling Swamp
   While traveling through the mountains, Ginko repeatedly encounters a swamp and a green-haired girl. (migratory swamp!)

official English site at Funimation
listing at ANN

various books: mysteries

Things I read that I never got around to writing up:

After renting the Miss Marple adaptations and rereading the relevant books, I also read (reread, mostly) a ton of Agatha Christie novels, but didn’t keep track of which ones. I had reread The Seven Dials Mystery in the somewhat recent past, and had rented an adaptation (extremely close to the book, and the actors didn’t look like my impressions of the characters; didn’t watch it all), but hadn’t thought about reading her in years. I think I like Miss Marple best, and the earlier novels better than the later ones. I only read a few of Poirot novels and did not like them much, especially the ones with Hastings; Hastings seems too stupid to live and Poirot is cryptic for the sake of being cryptic. The two that I read were two of the earliest, though; it’s possible the later ones were less annoying. I also read the Tommy and Tuppence novels; I liked the first two, but spent most of Postern of Fate trying to figure out when it was supposed to be set, how old they were, and when the events of the past happened. It also reminded me of Sleeping Murder and a couple of others that dealt with past crimes.

I also read a couple of Perry Mason (Erle Stanley Gardner) mysteries that I picked up at a book sale and had not read before: The Case of the Ice Cold Hands and The Case of the Queenly Contestant (I wanted the client to be the murderer, but of course she wasn’t). These are extremely formulaic: the client is almost always an attractive woman (sometimes young, sometimes not); she doesn’t tell Mason everything and often ignores his advice; a murder is committed (sometimes is the client’s reason for seeking out Mason, sometimes happens afterwards); the client or whoever she was trying to protect ends up in jail; Mason annoys the police; there is a preliminary hearing with courtroom antics; and the murderer is revealed (often by fleeing the courtroom). If I were the police or the DA, I would be tempted to let Mason to the dirty work and then take all the credit instead of trying to prove him wrong and looking stupid while doing so.