Hotei and the Wanderers Funky Punky Tour 2007-2008

The DVD is from the January 27, 2008 concert at Kawaguchi Lillia. I preordered this and watched it in early May and at least once since (was watching random songs, and eventually sat down and watched the whole thing). It’s been sitting as a draft since then because I wanted to do a full report with screencaps, but couldn’t get motivated for that; I may eventually do a longer review (track by track, with pictures), but this will just be an overall impression.

I liked this well enough, though I kind of regret paying full price for it; I don’t think it’s worth that much, and it’s already showing up for close to half price on ebay. I don’t like the front cover; he looks a bit smug; the back cover has individual member pictures along with the details. The DVD came with an eight-page booklet; the covers had a picture of the group on one side and the member names on the other, and there were two-page spreads of several pictures, a group shot and the track list, and an overhead shot and the credits. The extras included member interviews and a slideshow, which was all Hotei.

The performance itself sounded decent; I didn’t notice anything off musically (which means nothing, really, since I wouldn’t notice unless it was very bad); Hotei’s voice was a little off in a couple of places, but was fine otherwise, and there were a couple of instances of slightly off-key backing vocals. Any MCs were not included, though there was a long band introduction sequence. Many of the songs were rearranged to include solos from the various members. The energy level was decent (nobody looked bored, at least); the main part didn’t show much of the audience, but they were shown more in the encore and did seem to be enjoying themselves.

The stage was fairly small, with two levels: Ju-ken (bass) — Hotei (vocal/guitar) — Takuya (guitar) in the front and Steve Eto (percussion) — Tatsuya Nakamura (drums) — Ken Morioka (keyboards) on the higher level in the back. For the acoustic parts, most of the members came down to the front of the stage.

The band, normally

One variation of the stage during the acoustic songs

The camera annoyed me to no end; the main concert had too many artsy camera angles and effects (random body parts (not the parts playing instruments), focus on the person behind with a blurry part of a person in front, too much love for the overhead camera; I spent too much time trying to figure out what various pieces of equipment were and why Ju-ken seemed to have a black on white setlist while everyone else had green on black). The encore was more straightforward. I have a general issue with concert DVDs and solos; I would like to see the soloist, and they weren’t always shown.

This concert was billed as “Hotei and the Wanderers”; I (correctly) expected Hotei to get the majority of the screen time, but expected the others to be shown more-or-less equally. My biases may be influencing my perceptions of camera time per member, so this might not actually mean much; I am not anal-retentive enough to go back through and time the amount each member had on-camera. I was satisfied with the amount of Ju-ken (though more is always better) and Ken Morioka (though that may be because I don’t find keyboard players that interesting visually; a fan of his might have a different opinion), but was not satisfied with the rest. I was surprised that Takuya wasn’t on screen more. Steve Eto was not shown much, which was a severe disappointment; I wasn’t familiar with him, but I like watching percussionists in general and was looking forward to there being one.

Tatsuya Nakamura seemed to have his own camera, which was surprising; it seems that in general drummers are either ignored because they are just the drummer or have an abundance of camera time because they are stationary, but this also had two other members who were mostly stationary and on either side of him who didn’t have the time on camera he did. This was extremely obvious in the two songs that were performed with a three-piece band, and especially in the one where they were all in the front; the camera time was mostly split between Hotei and Nakamura. I didn’t mind watching him; he was enthusiastic and interesting to watch (and I have fallen in love with Losalios, and never would have heard them without this), but wish his time hadn’t been at the expense of others. One thing I did notice was that most of Nakamura’s screen time came from the camera on Morioka’s side; I don’t know if there was a technical reason for that, but it might also explain the lack of Steve Eto; it also seemed that the camera on Ju-ken was mostly from that side as well (when not from the front or overhead). It doesn’t explain why the camera seemed to be on Nakamura more than Morioka, though.

Members (profiles on Hotei’s site):

Tomoyasu Hotei (布袋寅泰) — vocal and guitar
Tatsuya Nakamura (中村達也) — drums
Ju-ken — bass (new site)
Ken Morioka (森岡 賢) — keyboards
Steve Eto — percussion
Takuya — guitar

Everyone except Tatsuya Nakamura provided backing vocals; Morioka had the falsetto-ish backing vocals; Eto had the bass-ish ones (surprisingly; his speaking voice wasn’t that low).

recently watched

where recently = late spring and onwards; I have far too many half-finished drafts that have been sitting long enough that I couldn’t finish them properly without rewatching but hate to delete the parts I wrote. These are mostly the impressions that were left and not thoughts at the time.

Monster Drive Party, Tomoyasu Hotei, 2005 tour — a very intense performance, but it did not translate well to DVD (or at least wasn’t what I want out of a tour DVD); dark and murky; uneven camera (I hate to say too much Hotei (and I wouldn’t have bought this if I didn’t like him), but would have liked to see more of the band in general, and specifically the left side, which was under-represented).

Aurora Madturn, LOSALIOS — solo project of Tatsuya Nakamura (中村達也, drums, ex-Blankey Jet City); core band was Tokie (bass, unkie and support) and Takashi Kato (カトタカシ, 加藤隆志, guitar, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra); some songs featured Asuka Kaneko (金子飛鳥, violin) and/or Masami Tsuchiya (土屋昌巳, guitar, ja.wikipedia). I love this (music and performance and all), but it’s probably not for everyone. The music is instrumental and occasionally a bit repetitive and/or formulaic; the performance is not the most exciting as everyone stays in their own spot on stage (involved and interested and intent on their playing, just not moving around much). The focus is on Nakamura; Tokie and Kato are playing as much to him and each other as to the audience, and when the others appear, they are off to the sides. Mixed in with the performances are some backstage clips and other random footage. (From this, Ghost Club and Three Dog Night are on youtube)

The Avengers ‘66 v1 — a bit much of dated race portrayals; native savages in one (though somewhat poking at that stereotype) and even in black and white, a white person in a dark wig + makeup does not really look Chinese or African. The “Chinese” woman’s wig was particularly obvious and the “African” woman made me think of Hawaii; she was wearing a strapless dress with a large floral pattern and a big flower in her hair. Oddly, most of the men in both episodes seemed to be somewhere near the proper ethnicity for their parts. None of the roles were very large; the “Chinese” woman was only in the beginning of her episode and there was a Chinese man with a small speaking part later, and one of the African men had a brief role as exposition-man (I don’t think the “African” woman spoke; if she did, it wasn’t more than a line or two). Other than the racial issues, these episodes were standard Avengers fare: there is a dust that kills all plants and birds it comes in contact with, and there are carphones and hunting and Mrs. Peel being chased by someone on a horse and generally kicking ass; disappearing physicists, and one reappeared and suddenly hated his Chinese wife, and there is weirdness within a hotel; and one that starts with a man shot by a “native” arrow outside of London and an odd sickness caused by a cult and affecting men who had served in an African colony and drums in the distance that were plot, not soundtrack.

The Avengers ‘66 v2 — I don’t think I took notes and have since returned it; I wasn’t impressed with these episodes. One had Mrs. Peel kidnapped at the beginning, with her substitute acting as Steed’s sidekick throughout the episode, so there was not enough of Mrs. Peel to interest me in this episode. One involved shenanigans at a golf course and was bland. One started with a dead man in a pram and ended up at a dance school and involved a shoemaker and a tattooist.

The Legend of the Shadowless Sword — a Korean attempt at a wuxia-style movie; pretty but extremely predictable. Vaguely historical, set in 927 A.D. The capital of Balhae fell to Georan; the Georans have been killing off all of the royal family of Balhae, but realize they could use one as a public-relations prop; the resistance is also looking for last member of the royal family and find him first (barely); most of the movie is them fleeing and her trying to convince him to be king (and at first, him running away from her because he doesn’t want to be king). A bit gory: geysers of blood, exploding bodies, limbs flying everywhere; visibly and audibly breaking bones were what made me start fast-forwarding through any fight scenes with large groups, though. (movie on wikipedia and imdb; Balhae on wikipedia)

xxxHOLiC DVD 4

This series is based on a manga by CLAMP; it is the continuing story of Kimihiro Watanuki, a high-school boy who can see spirits. Much to his dismay, the spirits he sees are also interested in him. One day, he finds himself in the shop of Yuuko Ichihara; she claims to be able to grant wishes for a price; her price for helping him is for him to become her housekeeper. He also ends up occasionally dealing with her clients and investigating on his own. The show is episodic; there are several recurring characters and a little bit of character and relationship development, though. The part of the manga that this series covers is only marginally less episodic than the anime; there are only hints of a larger story. The manga is also a crossover with Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, but those parts were not animated; they do appear in the Tsubasa anime, though.

The episodes mostly follow their manga counterparts; there are a few changes due to the omission of the crossover parts, and the order is not the same as in the manga. The art and animation are at best average; the manga is CLAMP does Art Nouveau, and that sort of elaborate style does not translate well to anime (at least, not without a huge budget). The dub is serviceable; I like Yuuko, have gotten used to Watanuki, and don’t mind the rest of the regular cast. I didn’t think the dub voices of the twins in episodes 14 and 15 were quite right; they were supposed to be in college, but sounded younger. Funimation continues to annoy me with the occasional random changes in the dub; the monster in episode 13 is a good example of this: the subs called it “wings” (the Japanese sounded like “hane”, wings) and the dub called it “a fallen angel”. There were other instances of that sort of thing, and food and drink was sometimes less Japanese in the dub than the subtitles. There were a couple of consistency errors in the dub itself that I noticed: the fish that the twins buy was flounder, but Yuuko calls it sole after they leave with it, and Watanuki refers to kimono in the dub (sub is yukata and is defined there) but Himawari refers to yukata later. The use of kimono instead of yukata is vaguely annoying, but not entirely incorrect; it seems like both references should be the same.

This volume had the same sort of extras as the previous volumes: an image gallery, textless opening and ending (Buck-Tick’s “Kagerou” becomes the ending in episode fourteen and is the one here), and trailers (Genghis Khan, Love and Honor, Dragon Ball Z, Vexille, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hana, Tsubasa, xxxHOLiC); the front-loaded trailer was Samurai 7. Funimation seems to be serious about their live-action division; they had three of the trailers this time (Genghis Khan, Love and Honor, and Hana). The DVD had an insert with ads for several of their upcoming series and a release calendar for July through September.

—The Episodes—

Chapters are from the US release by Del Rey.

13. Transfiguration — (v5, c29-30) The girl with the wings; in the manga, it immediately followed the hydrangea and the ame-warashi and started with Watanuki’s first encounter with the pipe fox; he already knows about it here (episode 9). This episode is changed slightly from the manga, though not in a way that really affects the story. In the manga, Watanuki notices that a girl from his art class has wings on her back that no one else can see and she is a little rude to her friends in class; in the anime, she is nice in class and doesn’t yet have the wings, but Watanuki sees her and her friends after school and has the wings and is rude then. At the shop, Yuuko burns the feather he found (manga, in her hand; anime, in his) and gives him a slightly obscure warning. Watanuki continues to run into the girl and notices that she is ruder and the wings are growing. In the manga, the girl notices Watanuki at a festival and confronts him at school the next day; in the anime, the confrontation is at the festival. The pipe fox shows its true form and saves the day (and in the anime shoots fireballs), and Yuuko scolds Watanuki for not heeding her warning.

    The one major change was in the monster itself: Yuuko says it was a parasite, and it destabilized the soul; there was a slight chance the girl could recover. In the manga, Del Rey called it “Ko”, with meanings of vermin/bug/worm/bad temper/bad company. Yuuko said they were vermin, created to take souls, and implied that she knew who was responsible (hints of the plot yet to come); the anime ignored the few references to the plot, so it’s not surprising that there was a change. They could have left it as a soul-eater, though maybe they wanted something with a possibility of recovery; in the manga, Yuuko said the girl would not recover. Surprisingly, they left in Maru and Moro and their inability to leave the shop due to their lack of souls and the description of the shop as different on the inside; the difference in the shop might be mentioned again, but Maru and Moro’s status is not.

14. Seal — (v4, c22-24) part one of two, the twins and the power of words. The season is shifted from the manga; the changes don’t affect anything. In the manga, it starts immediately after Valentine’s Day and continues into the spring (through White day, at least); in the anime, it is later in the year. It’s hot instead of cold, a couple of meals are different, and Watanuki has a different motivation for making candy. There’s also a bit of Tsubasa in these chapters, which was not animated.

15. Release — part two of two; this is the overall plot for both episodes. Watanuki (and sometimes Doumeki) keep running into a set of identical twins; they are second-year college students. The older sister lacks confidence and self-respect and is often clumsy and is generally negative (doesn’t think she can do anything right, says that things never go right for her, that sort of thing); the younger sister is more confident but spends a lot of time worrying about her sister, saying things like “she’s always this way” when something goes wrong and wondering why she took a job as a waitress when she’s too clumsy and too shy to do the work. Watanuki senses a sort of wave from the older sister when she says negative things (their first real meeting, he helped her look for a contact; she told him it was no use before he started looking). Watanuki eventually has a talk with Yuuko about the power of words and how words can bind; he has a conversation with the older sister about the power of positive thinking, which helps a little, but she soon goes back to the way she was before (at the waitress job, mentioned above). Yuuko eventually fixes the problem, for a price.

16. Reunion — (v5, c31-32) Returning the pipe fox to its smaller form, and a meeting with the zashiki-warashi. This is another episode that was changed slightly due to moving the events of Valentine’s Day to Obon. The pipe fox in its small form liked to hang on Watanuki, and often hid in his shirt; the pipe fox in large form was very large, but still wanted to hang all over Watanuki. At the beginning, Watanuki finds some fried tofu, which the pipe fox enjoys; it is bad for the pipe fox, causing it to lose some of its energy (?), signified by the markings on its head vanishing. I don’t remember that particular plot point being in the manga (it’s not in these chapters, at least). At some point, Watanuki buys hairpins as a gift. Yuuko says that they need to go to a place where there is a lot of pure energy, and sends them through a vase to another world. The pipe fox changes, there are talking daffodils, and they wander for a bit before meeting the zashiki-warashi, who was the source of the fried tofu. Watanuki gives her the hairpins as a thank-you (in the manga, they were a belated White Day gift); they talk, are chased by her karasu tengu, are rescued by the ame-warashi, and eventually she shows Watanuki how to return.

—The Art—

DVD 1, DVD 2, DVD 3
listing at ANN
Funimation’s official site (actually for both Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC)

Agatha Christie’s Marple: Series 3: Nemesis

This is disc two of the third series; it was the last aired in the UK, but the second in the US. For some reason, this series has aired in its entirety in the US (summer 2007, with the DVD release in the fall), but has not yet or only just completely aired in the UK (two September 2007, two August 2008; Nemesis is listed with a generic August airdate on wikipedia (page has cast lists and very vague spoilers about changes)); the cast list is also on imdb.

There are probably spoilers here; it is difficult to talk about the differences without them. I had seen the cast list and was aware that it was not a close adaptation; very few of the novel’s characters are in the cast list (the murderer, the accused, the victim, and a supporting character; all might as well have been different people, and the supporting character didn’t even have the same function as in the novel). I also had watched the first series and had seen how far they strayed from the novels as time went on; the first two were relatively faithful, the third had some characterization changes and extra added angsty subplots, and the fourth had what was essentially the same plot with different characters. I had at one point decided to watch this one next because it looked so different, but had decided to continue in order; I failed to change my queue or check it until after this one had shipped, though. Netflix does have all of the first three series, but the second two are listed under the book name only, not as part of Agatha Christie’s Marple as the first was.

The basic plot was the same: Jason Rafiel has died and left a sum to Miss Marple, under the condition that she investigate an unidentified past event (identifying the event (a murder, of course) was part of the investigation); he arranges for her to go on a house tour through the relevant area. The murderer’s motive and eventual (generic, not specific) fate are also the same, but everything else is different. It is not clear how Mr. Rafiel and Miss Marple met (in the books, previously in A Caribbean Mystery; here, unspecified, though I skipped some and don’t know if he was written into one of those), but his personality and history are completely different. The amount of the bequest was also changed (£20,000 in the book vs. £500 here), but that may be because they moved the story into the past; the novel was one of the last she wrote (published in 1971), while this was set in 1951.

Miss Marple receives instructions (via gramophone) and two tickets for a tour, she decides to take her womanizing nephew Raymond West along. It becomes obvious early on that the other tourists were hand-picked by Mr. Rafiel, though none of them knew it; everyone received tickets from some source instead of deciding that this tour was a good idea. The book had a mix of tourists, and the ones that Mr. Rafiel sponsored knew it. The tour guide is named Georgina Barrow, but she bears no resemblance to the Georgina Barrow of the book.

This adaptation had a World War II-era backstory, including Nazis, a convent, nuns, wounded soldiers, amnesia victims, heiresses, servants, landlords, blackmail, a missing girl in the past, and two murders in the present; the book had school headmistresses and professors and other random people, mostly around the same class as Miss Marple (with maybe a title somewhere), a murder and a missing girl (I think; it might have been two murders, though) in the past and one in the present, with a someone convicted of the murder. One of the Netflix reviewers complained about extra added lesbians, but I didn’t see any difference in that particular relationship between the book and its adaptation.

The overall plot seemed very contrived: eleven years later, Mr. Rafiel somehow managed to track down everyone who knew Verity around the time of her disappearance; it’s possible he managed to find out about her last landlord, but unlikely he would have found the ex-soldier significant unless he knew her eventual fate, and if he knew her eventual fate, he could have gone through more normal channels. I think the tour in the book was a normal tour that happened to go near the relevant area; Mr. Rafiel arranged for Miss Marple to stay with a family who knew Verity (the missing girl/murder victim) during part of the tour. This tour was probably planned by Mr. Rafiel to go to all of the relevant locations, including a forced overnight stay at the abandoned convent. He also gave Miss Marple more relevant clues in this than she had in the book; staying with the relevant family (three sisters, either widowed or never married) led to a more natural exposition of the backstory in the novel. In this, Miss Marple didn’t really do anything beyond ask loud questions and listen to the answers. I’m not sure why the killer tried to poison her at the end; it seemed very abrupt.

The book didn’t have as much action or random subplots as its adaptation; it had a bit more of an aura of menace and a bit of creepiness, though. It was obvious that something was not quite right, but was not obvious until the end who was responsible. I am unfortunately hazy on the book’s details at this time, but may go back and write a longer comparison later; I did write a long plot synopsis of this adaptation for future reference. This might not have been a bad murder mystery on its own, but it bears no resemblance to the book it takes its name from.

Torchwood, series 1

Torchwood is the Doctor Who spinoff featuring John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness, set at some point after the first of the new Who series; the last episode of this series corresponds with the eleventh episode of the third series, apparently. Torchwood’s purpose is to investigate anything that may involve aliens or their technology and to keep the alien technology out of the public’s hands. I’m not sure if they are also supposed to be protecting the public from the aliens; if so, they’ve forgotten that part (and Gwen’s purpose is to remind them that there are people involved). I think there is more information about Torchwood’s history and mission in the second series, but I haven’t seen that yet. The group also includes Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper (ex-cop and new girl, replacing Suzie), Burn Gorman as Dr. Owen Harper (medic), Naoko Mori as Toshiko Sato (computer wizard), and Gareth David-Lloyd as Ianto Jones (general office staff), and briefly included Indira Varma as Suzie Costello.

I think I enjoyed this more now than I would have at the time that it aired; I heard enough about it that my expectations were very low. I treated it more as a mindless action sort of show than a drama with actual character development and consistency; I would have liked more action and less drama, though. It probably also helped that I watched the relevant Doctor Who episodes when Sci Fi first ran them a couple of years ago, and so didn’t really remember how Jack used to be. I tried to watch it when it first aired and only made it halfway through the second episode before giving up; I really don’t like the “watch the new girl screw up” sort of episode but couldn’t bring myself to skip it and continue. When I rented it, I watched most of that episode on fast forward (the subtitles were mostly readable) and continued on.

My biggest problem with the show is Gwen; I don’t like her and she’s too much of a major character to ignore. I kind of liked her in the episodes where she was more one of the group instead of the female lead, though. I did think that a few of the random episode characters would have been more interesting as a regular than Gwen; I would have liked to have seen more of Suzie, and either Diana (the pilot from “Out of Time”) or the cop from “They Keep Killing Suzie” could have filled her purpose better. I don’t like Owen either (and tended to fast forward through anything dealing with him alone), but as part of the group, he’s tolerable; Gwen was kind of whiny (not quite the right adjective, but I can’t think of a better one), while Owen was more snarky and sarcastic (and I liked Gwen best when she and Owen were being snarky at each other). I might have liked Owen better had he not been introduced as a rapist, and I’m kind of appalled by the number of people who don’t consider what he did to be rape (using a drug to get a woman who said NO into bed and using said drug on her boyfriend without giving him any sort of chance to say yes or no = rape. It doesn’t matter that he used it on himself (it was some sort of alien perfume/pheromone spray); there is no indication that the others had any sort of choice).

Looking back through the episodes, it looks like they used several generic plots that I really don’t like (first-day screwups due in part to lack of knowledge/training, fish out of water/adjusting to a new world, focus on outside characters instead of the main cast). I liked the more action-oriented episodes best; it was easier to turn off the brain and ignore plotholes and other problems when there was more action than character interaction. Several episodes showed the loneliness and alienation of working at a place like Torchwood and having to keep everything secret. There were also a whole lot of plots driven by the fact that the characters keep acting like they have no common sense and occasionally lapse into complete idiocy. I’m not sure how they managed to investigate anything before Gwen arrived; she spent a fair amount of time using basic police procedure with better results than the rest of the team had.

xxxHOLiC DVD 3

This is the continuing story of Kimihiro Watanuki, who is a high-school boy who can see spirits; the spirits he sees are very interested in him. Yuuko Ichihara runs a shop that grants wishes for a price; one day Watanuki finds himself there and eventually agrees to work for Yuuko until she feels that his work is equivalent to the price of his wish. For the most part, it is episodic, though there are recurring characters and character and relationship development; the part of the manga this series was based on has vague hints of an underlying plot, though the hints didn’t really make it in to the anime.

For the most part, the episodes are fairly faithful to their manga equivalents, though the overall order is different. This disc is probably the least faithful; I’m not sure where episode nine came from, the ghost story episode (ten) had completely different ghost stories, eleven was shifted from winter to summer (but was mostly faithful otherwise) and twelve was an adapted version of Himawari’s manga ghost story. The dub remained fairly faithful to the subtitles; ranting bits were often a little different, but the general meanings were the same. I didn’t notice as many of the random changes as in some of the previous episodes, though there were still a few. Some of the next episode previews were dubbed accurately, but some were completely different.

Only a few cultural references were removed: references to shochu (Japanese liquor) were removed in the beginning of episode nine; the dub did not mention alcohol at all, though they generally have no problems showing drinking (and it was obvious from the context that that’s what it was). There was a random mention of the southwest corner being unlucky in the subtitles of episode ten that was not in the dub, but it was never really mentioned again (the manga mentioned a lucky corner, but did not explain it or reference it again), and the list of things they should do before telling stories was different. In episode eleven, they left the various food references intact with brief translations in the subtitles, but a mention of potato shochu was changed to Chardonnay.

The menus vaguely annoy me (and have all along); it’s not immediately obvious that the xxxHOLiC logo is what needs to be selected to go from a submenu to the main menu. The extras are the same as the other discs: an image gallery, textless songs, and trailers (Samurai 7 (box set), Yu Yu Hakusho® (first season uncut box set), Dragon Ball Z® (double feature), Glass Fleet (specifically for v6, probably spoiler-y), Shinobi (live action, an older title and trailer, re-released on Blu-ray), Fullmetal Alchemist® (didn’t watch, afraid of spoilers), Vexille (again, though it might be a different trailer), and xxxHOLiC (fourth collection)); the front-loaded trailer was Tsubasa. There was a new advertising insert; it included a release calendar for July, August, and September, which was a nice addition.

—The Art—

—The Episodes—

9. Pinky Promise — (not sure where this story came from; the pipe fox’s introduction in the manga is followed by the girl with wings) discussion of the red string of fate; introduction of the pipe fox; Yuuko gives a ring to another girl with problems with her pinky; Watanuki and the pipe fox follow her one day, and Doumeki joins them the next day. They discover her bad habit was different from the other girl’s, and the pipe fox saved the day.
10. Lamplight — (v2, c12-14, modified) Ghost stories at Doumeki’s temple, and an explanation of Doumeki’s powers. This episode severely diverged from the manga (not bad, just different). It was much earlier in the manga; it immediately followed Doumeki’s introduction and was Yuuko and Himawari’s first meeting. Himawari’s story is very different (man who killed his wife in the anime vs a hotel with a boarded-up room in the manga) and they managed to completely rewrite her story for the dub without losing any of the meaning. Doumeki’s story was also different (his grandfather meeting a ghost in the manga vs a student and a ghost in the anime), as was Watanuki’s (boy at a third-floor window in the manga vs guy at the crossroads in the anime). The connecting bits are the same as in the manga (almost word-for-word), though they moved the discussion of the number four after Watanuki’s story, and changed the first shape on the screen during Yuuko’s story to the guy at the crossroads.
11. Confession — (v4, c21, modified) a look at Watanuki’s home; the introduction of the zashiki-warashi, slightly modified (moved from Valentine’s Day to Obon in the summer), though the basic plot is the same. Watanuki makes holiday food for everyone, tries to give one to Himawari, fails, and gives it to Doumeki instead. The zashiki-warashi shows up looking for a gift, and takes the food from Doumeki, along with his soul. There’s an added appearance of the ame-warashi, who shows up and tells Watanuki about the zashiki-warashi and tells the zashiki-warashi she has the wrong holiday (gifts to boys are Valentine’s Day, not Obon).
12. Summer Shade — (v2, c14, modified) the group takes a summer vacation together. This is a modified version of Himawari’s ghost story, with an added voice waiting and wearing a blue dress and wondering if the blue flower was noticed. Himawari’s story featured a hotel where guests at the end of the hall heard noises from the non-existent room next door; Watanuki’s room is at the end of the hall but he hears weird noises from next door; he looks outside and there should be another room. He investigates and finds a room with words all over the walls and ceiling; the words weren’t subtitled, unfortunately. The random voice looked like a voiceover for the words, but Mokona said the words were something different. The random voice was never explained. I think this is my least favorite episode; everyone seemed slightly out of character. Doumeki seemed meaner than usual and repeatedly called Watanuki an idiot, and everyone expected Watanuki to do all of the work (normal) but acted like that was unusual and only for the sake of their plan.

DVD 1, DVD 2
listing at ANN
Funimation’s official site (actually for both Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC)

Wonder Woman, Season 1, DVD 3

The 70s TV series starring Lynda Carter as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman; Diana is in the Navy but works for Military Intelligence as the secretary to Major Steve Trevor (Lyle Waggoner). This was one of my favorite shows when I was little, and I know it’s dangerous to watch things that were once loved because they often do not hold up well, but I rented it anyway. I realize that its major function was to show off a scantily-clad Lynda Carter, but a little thought in the scriptwriting would have been nice; it takes a lot for mindless action to break my suspension of disbelief, but this consistently succeeded. Broken suspension of disbelief leads to nitpicking everything instead of just watching and enjoying, unfortunately (though nitpicking can be fun). It’s weird what is acceptable (maybe with eye-rolling) and what made me go “that’s not right” and want to rant. Some of this was noticed while watching, but thinking about it is making me notice more random details.

I did like this well enough and will eventually rent more. I think my biggest problems overall are the stupidity of the Nazis and the complete lack of security anywhere; it seemed anyone could get into any sort of military installation or secret base or hideout or safe house without any problems. Implausible plots and the issues with the superhero/secret identity can be attributed to the comic book origins and can be accepted as long as they are somewhat internally consistent, but the lack of common sense and basic security precautions on both sides is what is most likely to break my suspension of disbelief. I am very glad they didn’t really have the characters using some approximation of the appropriate accents, though there did occasionally seem to be traces of accents; I’d rather have the Germans speaking normal American English than bad attempts at German accents.

There are three episodes on this disc (6-8); I think the discs in the original set had content on both sides (the menu says turn the disc over for episodes 8-10), so this is probably the first side of the second disc, but it’s the third in Netflix’s version. It is subtitled in English, French, and Spanish; the English subtitles are true subtitles (not closed-captioning converted into subtitles) occasionally have people’s titles instead of their full names (i.e., someone says Major Trevor, and the subtitles only have Major) and occasionally drop names completely. There are no extras on this particular disc; the extras menu says check other discs for extras.

—The Episodes—

6. “The Feminine Mystique, Part II” — and I don’t remember part one at all; it’s been months and I’m not entirely sure that I watched all of it then. The main plot involves an experimental aircraft that the Nazis want, with a subplot of Diana’s younger sister Drusilla (Debra Winger) trying to convince Diana that she needs to go home. Of course, Drusilla also has the ability to spin around (and clearly got dizzy while spinning) and change into a patriotic costume, and of course, the Nazis can’t tell the difference, so of course she gets kidnapped and accidentally reveals the location of Paradise Island to the Nazis. They are interested in the bracelets and want the raw material (Feminum); they manage to take over the island and force the girls (none of them look over 20) to mine the Feminum by threatening the queen. The queen only had one guard most of the time; it seems if she was superpowered like the rest that she could have rescued herself, but it would have been a much shorter show. Diana and Drusilla eventually save the day there and identify the double agent in the army.

   This episode mostly caused eyerolling: if one assumes the Nazis are incredibly stupid, everything else follows more-or-less logically. I do wonder where the inhabitants of Paradise Island are getting their polyester/spandex/rayon from, though.

7. “Wonder Woman vs. Gargantua” — A Nazi deserter is being interrogated; the Nazis want him back and have a plan involving a trained gorilla (who is also trained to hate Wonder Woman and attack her on sight). I don’t know what it says about me that the trained gorilla didn’t cause me to do anything but roll my eyes (even when they broke his programming and retrained him in a matter of hours), but the hotel/safe house that might as well have had a flashing neon sign saying “Deserter Here” hurt my brain. It was implied that the hotel’s location was a secret, but there were big “Keep Out” signs and army men and razor wire everywhere. Also, he was apparently the only person there; a shot of the outside at night revealed one lit room. I found it very hard to believe that the extremely paranoid deserter would have been in the room at night with the curtains open, the light on, and his back to the window while reading; he was on the fourth floor, but I would think he might be worried about snipers. Wonder Woman and Diana Prince also gave almost the exact same speech about cruelty to animals in front of the exact same people, and no one noticed. Despite her desire to be kind to the gorilla, she dropped the raised-in-captivity Gargantua off in the middle of Africa without a second thought; from the way she was talking earlier, I thought she would take him to Paradise Island, where they live in harmony with animals, but no.

8. “The Pluto File” — a professor has discovered how to create and prevent earthquakes; a mercenary (The Falcon) wants that information and plans to use it. He is also carrying and spreading the bubonic plague, but is not yet showing symptoms himself. I watched this a couple of days after the last, so I wasn’t quite as nitpicky while watching. There was one scene that should have been extremely awkward for Diana: Diana visits the professor in the hospital after the file was stolen; she notices the Falcon aiming a gun at the professor, changes (in front of the window!), blocks the bullets, leaps out the window (completely breaking it), and chases the Falcon, but he had a getaway car waiting. There was a guard outside; he ought to have heard some of that and come into the room to see what was happening and noticed Wonder Woman and the lack of Diana (or at least the broken window and lack of anyone else in the room), but apparently did not. The Falcon’s goal was apparently to cause an earthquake at an experimental nuclear reactor and cause it to blow up, taking Washington with it. Wonder Woman apparently knows physics.

Wonder Woman on imdb and wikipedia

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.