Happenings

Finished Blue World last night. I had forgotten how much I loved that book. I'm still surprised no one as ever adapted the like-named novella into a movie.

_______________

The second episode of the new season of True Blood, "You Smell Like Dinner", was fantastic. Worth watching for no other reason than the flashback to London in 1982.

_______________

Started Elegy For April. Read the first chapter. Kind of bland so far and the prose reads like writing.

_______________

"The Silence of Untranslated Stars" is stalled out. As well as the western I had been working on. I suspect those two may be damned to the hard drive.

_______________

Have been busy working on an undisclosed project that won't see the light of day for many months and a horror piece for Christopher Grant's other site, Eaten Alive.

_______________

Here's the link to an old story, Maiden's Prayer. The follow-up story, "The Method", features the same characters and will appear in Crime Factory: The First Shift.

_______________

Question: Why is dubbed my only option for watching anime on Netflix?

They've finally added some Bleach episodes, but I refuse to watch that dubbed. When Maria and I first started Bleach, she was tired and didn't feel like reading subtitles. We watched the first two episodes dubbed. It was days before we had the chance to watch more, so when we did she wanted to start over.

This time we watched them subtitled. When we did, I discovered they still change a lot in translation. Too much in my opinion, but America is only now, thanks to Pixar, getting over the notion that animated programs are only for little kids.

The lack of subtitled options on Netflix disappoints me.

I've always really liked anime. I never bought any for years. It was too expensive to buy here in America unless you were willing to drop hundreds of dollars on a single series. The few anime distributors that released anything here used to have a terrible habit of double and triple-dipping their customers. I usually just rented it when I found it. You were less likely to get burned. Plus, back then, it was difficult to know what exactly you were going to end up watching, how heavily edited it was, or whether it was outright reworked into something else (Robotech, Voltron, Battle of the Planets/G-Force).

Prices have come down a lot now. The internet has made it far easier to research a program so you don't accidently find yourself watching something you may find offensive, like lolicon. And it's much much easier to discern now how edited or watered down an American release is. I think a much wider array of people are far more familiar with Japanese animation now and realize the genre is a lot bigger than just Robotech, G-Force/Battle of the Planets, Voltron, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, and Demon City Shinjuku. So then, why do I have to watch everything dubbed? Is it just laziness on Netflix's part?

It's especially a shame since I've seen some fantastic anime since we started Netflix.

The real standouts have been:

• Sekirei
• Claymore
• Ga-rei: Zero
• Fruits Basket
• Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid
• Full Metal Alchemist
• Soul Eater

I really wanted to like Darker Than Black, but the first couple of episodes left me cold inspite of an interesting premise.