xxxHOLiC DVD 2

This is the continuing story of high-school student Kimihiro Watanuki, who is working part-time at a wish-granting shop run by Yuuko Ichihara until he has earned enough for her to remove his ability to see spirits. He starts off as her housekeper, but very quickly gets drawn into dealing with clients and the associated weirdness himself. I watched this partially in Japanese with subtitles and partially dubbed with varying degrees of attention; I did check a few things in both to compare, and it’s probably obvious which episode I watched the most closely. This had a bit more explanations in the subtitles than the first volume, which I liked. The subtitles for the shiritori game had the Japanese words used with definitions; the dub version of the game was slightly different (had to use words from a particular category) and unsurprisingly, used completely different words. It lost the impact of the kid’s choice at the end, though; in the dub, he chose a category that Watanuki didn’t like, but in the original he chose oden (an automatic failure, explained in the subtitles).

For the most part, the dub seemed closer to the subtitles this time; it wasn’t exact, but I didn’t really notice many of the random sort of changes from the first volume, though there was a tendency for the rants to be a bit different. Most of the changes I noticed were in the category of making it flow better in English, which could explain the rants; the description of the website where Yuuko and the computer-addicted woman met was a little different, and the shiritori was necessarily very different. I don’t know why the path in episode six is a “[beep]” path (and there is a beep in the original); it’s “Aurora” in the manga, and I don’t remember anything bleeped from the fansubs. In the dub, she just calls it a shortcut.

They did remove some cultural references: the name of the bat in episode six was translated, but the original source (the sword of the legendary thief Goemon Ishikawa; Goemon of Lupin III was supposedly his descendant) wasn’t mentioned. Later in that episode, she quotes Goemon’s catch phrase (“I’ve cut another trifling thing”), but the dub was completely different (“Consider yourself liberated”). In episode seven, they removed the running comparison of Watanuki to Nobita (a character in Doraemon, noted for being a bit of a crybaby) and just called him a crybaby throughout. I can understand why they might have wanted to remove brief pop culture references, though I wish they hadn’t; I am glad they didn’t try to Americanize them.

I think episode seven strayed from the original a bit more than the others, though that could be because it is one of my favorites and I gave it all of my attention. There were a couple of vague references to the zashiki-warashi which were removed; she was introducd earlier in the manga than the anime. I still hate youkai translated as demon (briefly when discussing the ame-warashi). There’s a bit that was presumably accidentally not subtitled (in the Japanese and the dub, Watanuki’s freak-out while Yuuko is discussing payment with the ame-warashi existed but was not subtitled). Watanuki’s rant at the size of Doumeki’s temple is very different (the same basic meaning, though); some of the ame-warashi’s rants were rewritten as well. The dub-writer has apparently never seen a hydrangea; they don’t come in white (only pink to lavender to blue). An ambiguous “she” at the end (referring to the not yet introduced zashiki-warashi in the manga) was changed to “Yuuko” in the dub and the whole line had a different meaning: “Why does she think this guy’s so good” vs “For some reason, Yuuko thinks you’re an exception”, making Watanuki’s rant at the end be completely different.

This had the same sort of extras as the first volume: image gallery, textless songs, and trailers (Glass Fleet, Dragon Ball Z®, One Piece, Samurai 7, Fullmetal Alchemist®, Origin, MoonPhase, and xxxHOLiC). The case was clear, with the inside being a full picture. There was an insert advertising Funimation’s other shows; I think it was the same as in the first volume. It looked like the only front-loaded trailer was Vexille (VLC is my friend, and skips such things). I’d seen that trailer before; I do like the way it says “Music by Paul Oakenfold” with what sounds very much like Boom Boom Satellites playing in the background. I wish they’d put all their trailers in the Extras section, though; I might like the choice to watch them.

—The Art—

—The Episodes—

5. Game of Letters — (v3, c21 and a modified and expanded version of v6, c39) This was originally titled “shiritori”, which is a game where each person has to give a word starting with the last character of the previous word; a word ending in ん (n) loses (Japanese words can’t start with that; na/ne/ni/no/nu are each their own character). Watanuki and Himawari watch Doumeki win an archery contest; Doumeki gives Watanuki part of his arrow (stuffs it in his bag when he’s not looking); Watanuki finds himself at an oden cart run by foxes (father and son), and ends up giving the arrow to the boy in exchange for oden. The next day (the full moon), Yuuko sends Watanuki back to the cart with a package and what looks like Card Captor Sakura’s backpack as protection; spirits threaten, Mokona is in the backpack, and gets Watanuki to play shiritori for protection. The package is delivered (birds whose silhouettes can only be seen in the light of the full moon), and more oden is eaten. In the manga, the delivery is much later, and is to some random man; the shiritori sequence is shorter, and Mokona is not as mean (in the anime, all words end in “ri’, much to Watanuki’s dismay).
6. Indulgence — (v1, c4-6) starts off with a visit to the drug store from Legal Drug for a hangover remedy for Yuuko, though the minor reference to its plot was removed. After Yuuko recovers, she takes Watanuki via a strange path to buy a red bat and to visit a client with a computer addiction. There is some discussion of the nature of addiction and that the desire to stop must come from within. There is a random added scene in a café where everyone’s computer was affected, which is slightly better than the manga’s implication that Yuuko and Watanuki were waiting on the balcony.
7. Hydrangea — (v5, c27-28) Watanuki is walking home and complaining about the rain when he meets an ame-warashi (a rain-making spirit). She visits Yuuko because she wants to help a hydrangea. Watanuki goes to the temple and gets Doumeki, they visit Himawari and get her hair ribbons, and then they go to the hydrangea, which is extremely large and has a section of blood-red flowers. Watanuki is sucked underneath it, and meets a girl who wants to leave. For whatever reason, this is one of my favorite stories; I think in part because it’s where Watanuki’s perception of Doumeki begins to change. Watching this the first time was when I realized that Doumeki was often deliberately provoking Watanuki.
8. Contract — (v3, c18-20) A woman wanders by the shop and gets an artifact that she promises not to open. It opens (not entirely her fault, which I didn’t notice in the manga, though she was the sort of person who probably would have opened it anyway) and turns out to be a monkey’s paw, with predictable results; monkey’s paws are said to be able to grant a number of wishes equal to the number of fingers. For some reason, the animators decided to change the gender of an extremely minor character.

DVD 1
listing at ANN
Funimation’s official site (actually for both Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC)

Bloodhound, DVD 1

Bloodhound or Blood Hound is a live-action series loosely based on Kaori Yuki’s one-shot manga of the same name; Bandai released the TV series in the US, but the manga has not yet been licensed. It can best be described as: He’s a 200-year old vampire working in a host club; she’s an obnoxious and naïve high-school student; together, they fight crime. More seriously, high-school student Rion Kano’s best friend Shiho is missing; her last message was “Help me, Rion! It’s a real vampire”. There are also reports of other missing high-school girls, and one was found with her body drained of blood. Shiho had a card for Suou, a host at Kranken Haus where the hosts dress as vampires; she gets a part-time job there to investigate; even after Shiho is found, Rion continues to work there and gets caught up in other strange events. I blamed Bandai for the subtitle, but it apparently came from the Japanese; the US release is Bloodhound: The Vampire Gigolo; the Japanese official sites call it 「ヴァンパイアホスト」(Vampire Host), subtitled “The Vampire Gigolo” in English. The Japanese sites list it as six episodes, two parts each; Bandai calls it twelve episodes; in either case, the episodes are in pairs: “Case File” and “Resolution”. I find myself thinking of it as six episodes; this DVD has the first two. I rented this from Netflix, enjoyed it, and bumped the next disc to the top of my queue.

Bandai’s site refers to this as a horror-comedy; it seemed more comedy than horror to me. The first episode follows the main events of the first manga chapter, but there is not much Kaori Yuki-ness left in it. As near as I can tell, the manga chapters were episodic with some background plot (three of four have been unoffically translated by various people with varying quality and readability); I’m not sure if this even mentioned the background plot and I don’t think the other chapters were adapted at all. Suou’s character (and hair color) were changed (at least around Rion, he acts like he’s a teenage boy), and the other hosts are no longer vampires; the manager is no longer bishounen, but an older guy with a cane and a bit of a cosplay fetish. I don’t think this had much of a budget for special effects; Suou’s transformation sequence in particular is nothing special (fancy contacts and effects on his eyes, but not much else). There was one part in the second episode that I thought they could have done better, but it turned out to be a deliberate choice and a plot point.

Rion is the loud and aggressive sort of high-school girl; she kicks Suou three times in their first meeting. She demands to be hired part-time so that she can keep an eye on him; he refuses, and she deliberately breaks a bottle of Dom Peringon so that she will have to work off the debt. The manager feels it would be better for her to have a job in the off-hours instead of having a minor randomly wandering in during operating hours and sets her to cleaning the bathrooms in a maid uniform; he apparently feels that having her in various cosplay sorts of outfits is a good idea.

Suou has a limiter that keeps him in human form and has none of the standard vampire limitations (can see his reflection, crosses don’t bother him, can go out in daylight, enjoys garlic). So far, he has healing, speed, and strength, but not some of the other traditional vampire powers (can’t fly, can’t change form). He’s the only real vampire at the host club; the manager supplies him with blood. Suou is perpetually #2 at the host club, much to his dismay; being charged for the Dom Perignon until Rion works enough to pay for it doesn’t help. So far, the other hosts are mostly in the background, except for the one who inherits Diana (one of Suou’s clients) when he is busy.

Rion is a type that I generally dislike; I usually find the brash and aggressive sorts obnoxious, but I like her. Suou acts like a teenage boy around Rion, but is always “on” around his clients, even when being attacked. I like Rion and Suou’s interaction once she calms down a little and realizes he’s not the murderer; though she still (justifiably) thinks he’s a bit of a pervert. She continues to kick him, but he starts being able to dodge her; he also starts bopping her on the head in the second episode; he calls her out to buy feminine hygiene products for his current client and (lightly) bops her on the head with the bag a few times when she’s being exceptionally annoying or naïve. Suou is a little too enamored of the trappings of vampire-ness and has a tendency to go on and on about his dark vampire-ness; people got away while he was posing or transforming; at one point he was knocked off a roof while posturing. Rion has no patience with this and calls him on it repeatedly; in general, they spend most of their time together bickering.

The main recurring characters are the manager of the club and a female police inspector and her minion (a crime scene photographer, maybe). She is the violent type taken to extremes and wears inappropriately short skirts (and there are very close to upskirt shots on her); her minion is more than a bit of a pervert (taking upskirt shots of a corpse in the first episode, being way too excited over the idol’s corpse in the second). I find it hard to believe that either she or her minion (crime scene photographer?) are actually police officers; they are both extremely unprofessional. I do wonder if she finds out Suou is a vampire over the course of the show, though.

In addition to the minion’s pervertedness, there is a minor amount of focus on Rion’s underwear (and underwear in general); Suou at one point is lying on the floor trying to look up the maid uniform’s skirt, and tells her her debt in terms of the price of used underwear (starts out at thirty and drops as she works). The more I think about it, the more I think that the manga target audience and the show’s target audience are not the same due to the sort of humor used.

At one point, they showed a driver’s license on screen and translated the entire thing (in itty-bitty font briefly at the top, but still, that’s very unusual); I think all text on screen was translated, sometimes very briefly shown, but that’s what pause is for. I can’t remember if Bandai usually has romaji and translated songs; this has both on screen. I seem to remember something that might have been theirs that alternated between episodes (odd episodes translated, even episodes romaji or vice-versa). Extras were a textless opening and trailers for the live-action series The Great Horror Family and the anime series Di Gi Charat Nyo! and Galaxy Angel (probably another clue that the target audience was not what I expected).

The Episodes (with English and Japanese titles)

1. The Vampiric Serial Killer — Case File / 「EPISODE　1 吸血鬼連続殺人・事件篇」
2. The Vampiric Serial Killer — Resolution / 「EPISODE　1 吸血鬼連続殺人・解決篇」
   Described at the beginning: Rion’s friend Shiho is missing, she goes to the club to investigate, eventually all is revealed
3. The Invisible Murdering Stalker — Case File / 「EPISODE　2 透明人間ストーカー殺人・事件篇」
4. The Invisible Murdering Stalker — Resolution / 「EPISODE　2 透明人間ストーカー殺人・解決篇」
   Half of a former pop idol duo is murdered; the victim was on the phone with the other half (Saki) at the time. There were past stories of an invisible stalker; Saki indicates the other thought the stalker was responsible. Saki ends up at the host club extremely drunk, Suou takes her home, and ends up calling Rion to fetch some sort of feminine hygiene products for Saki. For some reason, she accompanies him back to Saki’s apartment. There is a phone message from the stalker threatening Saki while they are there; they look out the window and see the invisible stalker. The three of them end up in a trap but escape after the stalker is killed. Suou and Rion investigate a bit; Rion threatens the culprit and Suou rescues her after being thrown off the building.

Official Sites: TV Tokyo, Toho
the drama at d-addicts wiki
the manga at ANN
Various relevant wikipedia entries; there is a massive spoiler in the Wikipedia article on the manga: Kaori Yuki; the manga; the drama

Tomoyasu Hotei – All Time Super Best Tour

The “All Time Super Best Tour” was a celebration of Hotei’s 25 years as a musician; the track list (at the end) has songs from BOØWY and COMPLEX as well as his solo career (including two previously-recorded covers). This is the tour final 2006.06.03 at Saitama Super Arena; the DVD was released 2006.06.28. It is a two-DVD set; the concert is on disc one and is two hours, the encore is disc two and is another hour. It came in a cardboard sleeve with a 24-page photobook (mostly Hotei, but a couple of pages of the band members) and an insert with credits and lyrics to the songs performed in the main concert (but not the encore) on one side and a picture on the other. It was directed by Hiroyuki Nakano (any number of music videos, including several of Hotei’s, and a few films, including Samurai Fiction, starring Hotei). I have to assume that what’s on the DVD is very close to what the audience saw; there were only three weeks between the concert and the DVD release.

I really enjoyed this; I love shows where everyone looks like they are exactly where they want to be. Hotei himself, the band, the crowd all looked thrilled to be there; there were several songs with crowd-provided backing vocals and occasionally main vocals. I like Hotei’s music well enough (though his voice is an acquired taste) and a lot of it is very upbeat (sounding, at least; I have no idea about the lyrics) which lends itself well to a very high-energy show. The lighting was good, and there were a minimum of random body part shots (the occasional dramatic hand did show up occasionally); one of the cameras was (deliberately) shaky, but other than that, I had no complaints. This was really just five guys on stage playing; the stage itself was fairly basic and there were no effects besides lights. I was pleasantly surprised by how much screen time the band got and was very surprised that the other guitarist had multiple solos; I’ve seen concerts of full bands with less even coverage of band members.

The first several songs were all upbeat (or at least fast-paced). The keyboard player had a moment in the spotlight at the beginning of “Devil’s Sugar”, and “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” was one long solo with both the bassist and other guitarist having brief solos. After that was an MC and then two acoustic songs (everyone seated). The next couple of songs after that were slow songs; on one of them, Hotei didn’t even have a guitar, and let the other guitarist have the spotlight for a full solo (he had a few short ones in other places, but this was the real thing). It was kind of disconcerting; Hotei had no guitar, it cut to a closeup of the other guitarist’s hands, and then when it cut back to Hotei, he had a guitar (though watching it more closely, it faded out on him walking back to get it), and Hotei had a solo at the end. For the acoustic and slow songs, the focus was on Hotei almost exclusively, with an occasional shot of other guitarist and a few of the drummer.

There was an intermission after the slow songs; there were varying degrees of costume changes: full outfit for Hotei and minor changes for the band. The songs after the intermission were the more upbeat sort; the crowd was on its feet and moving for this part, singing the first half of “Dreaming” and all of the choruses. There was a short drum solo during “Dancing with the Moonlight”, but the camera was mostly on Hotei for it (that’s one of my biggest general concert video peeves: if there are solos, focus should be on the soloist.) “Velvet Kiss” (the last song for this part) was a slower-tempo instrumental (one long solo, slower only in comparison to the previous songs).

In the encore, there was a short MC and band introduction at the beginning and a few backstage clips at the end; they leave the stage and return twice before the end. The band are all in tour shirts; Hotei starts off in a different shirt, but changes into a tour shirt eventually (he changes both times they leave the stage). These were all fast-tempo songs, with the crowd on its feet and singing along for a large part of it. There was a bass intro to “Poison” and the other guitarist had a short solo there; he called them both by name. By the end, everyone looks tired but still happy to be there, and the crowd is really into it as well. Hotei himself is practically glowing, and everyone is very emotional at the end.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, though I did have a few minor annoyances. Hotei’s dress sense is interesting (sparkly! purple boots! animal prints! need screencaps!) and his stage mannerisms occasionally bother me. A few of the songs dragged a little. I’m not sure how much guitar-playing Hotei was doing while singing; he had a guitar most of the time, sometimes was probably playing, sometimes was going through the motions, sometimes not even trying. The “going through the motions” is the sort of thing that’s more obvious on a DVD and I kind of wish I hadn’t noticed it here; I started paying too much attention to his hands trying to decide whether or not he was actually playing. I don’t really care whether he was playing or not; he was obviously playing the solos, and the other parts were being played by someone on the stage.

The musicians:

VOCAL&GUITAR : 布袋寅泰 — Tomoyasu Hotei
GUITAR : 大西克巳 — Katsumi Onishi (profile, can’t find a personal site)
BASS : Ju-ken (new site)
DRUMS : 酒井愁 — Shue Sakai
KEYBOARD : 岸利至 –　Toshiyuki Kishi (aka tko)

Backing vocals were provided by Toshiyuki Kishi (anything that needed harmony), Katsumi Onishi, Ju-ken, and the crowd.

Katsumi Onishi records and tours with various people, but also works for a part of Avex Trax as a composer and arranger (the source of the profile). Ju-ken and Shue have been in various bands but mostly support others (occasionally together). Toshiyuki Kishi is currently an official member of abingdon boys school (which may explain why he wasn’t on Hotei’s recent tour; he’d been touring with him since 2000, recorded through Ambivalent, and Hotei mentioned him recently) and has had a lengthy career as a keyboard player (recording and touring), composer, arranger, and remixer. tko and Shue have recently (late 2007) started a project together: Two Tribes.