It's a magical world

Well, I'm back. California is beautiful, for the record, and despite some baggage folderol secondary to SEA being one of the most inefficient airports I have ever encountered (and that's saying something), my travel was pretty good. I even saved the $50 baggage fee Alaska was supposed to charge me, which I suppose is a virtue of experience. And learned paranoia.

So Parallels 2011! I wrote Turning and Turning, a Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo fic for person. 2800 words, Makoto/Chiaki/Kousuke.

And on that note…

---

Toki wo Kakeru Shôjo | The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Dir. Hosoda Mamoru, 2006.

In a strange, tangential way, this movie reminds me a lot of Utena--no, not for the plot, but for certain plot elements and the way that damn piano music accentuates absolutely everything, because if I learned one thing from Utena--well, I learned a lot of things from Utena, but one of them was that genteel piano music is totally appropriate for totally creepy things, and this movie is, for most of the way through, a horror story.

To back up, this is Hosoda Mamoru's first movie, adopted from a 1967 novel by Tsutsui Yasutaka. Hosoda's Summer Wars remains one of the best anime movies I've seen in the past few years, and Toki wo Kakeru Shôjo is also quite good. I'm not sure which is the stronger movie; I like Summer Wars better in all honesty, but that's entirely subjective.

( Mild spoilers )

It says a lot that, living in Japan, I look at that damn bag of peaches Makoto carries around and think, "Damn, that's like ¥3000 or ¥4000 worth of fruit!"

I think my contention that the movie has horror elements is borne out by the AMVs that have been made from it. In particular, Maniaki's award-winning Paranoia Drift is very subtly creepy (and also excellent). DL and streaming at the link.

Originally posted at Dreamwidth Studios; you can comment there using OpenID or a DW account.

Parallels 2011 is live!

I received for summer to come, an understated, very sweet Natsume Yuujinchou OT3 fic. Thank you, dear author! It is just the perfect thing to read in the oppressive heat of a Kyoto summer. ♥

As for what I wrote, you'll just have to wait a week to find out. But, you know, the collection's quite small (and awesome); if anyone wants to hazard a guess as to what I wrote, and gets it right, I'll happily write something to your prompt. You have until authors are revealed to guess!

---

A very long, weather-induced intense day of wandering around Kyoto culminated in the Biwako Fireworks tonight, which are still both my favorite and the most impressive in the world, in my experience. Before that, though, in a timely rebuke to my delusions of total competence, I managed to think I was ordering two mini parfaits with lunch for us and instead received surprise! parfait to the tune of two full-size parfaits and a mini parfait. This is not the worst thing in the world, as parfait is delicious and these were quite good, but it was pretty hilarious.

---

I wouldn't know Dwarf Fortress from a hole in the ground, but I was just linked to this gameplay retelling by snarp and for some reason it both cracks me up and reminds me unspeakably strongly of my friend S, who was regaling us with his archaeology stories tonight while we waited (and waited, and waited) for the train back from Lake Biwa. I'm doubly lucky to have a fluctuating cadre of awesome friends in Japan, with whom it doesn't feel like three years have passed at all.