The Duck's Nest: online home of mizducky

Monkey Majik Makes Music Video with Lupin III Anime - Anime News Network

Monkey Majik Makes Music Video with Lupin III Anime - Anime News Network.

And it's a really nicely done video, too, character designs look a little like a cross between Alcatraz Connection, Mamo, and Monkey Punch's manga art, and the general feel of the animation reminds me just a tad of Gorillaz' video for 19-2000. Check it out here.

New obsession: Gaia Online

I can't believe it -- I need yet another obsession in my life like I need yet another hole in my head. Yet here I've gone and fallen for a new--and especially silly--time-sink in my life: Gaia Online. Yeah, it's kind of weird being in an online system where the vast majority of members are young enough to be my children (if I had any), but I have tracked down a few other geezers on there, so I'm not unique in this weirdness. Plus the little customizeable avatars give me the ability to take my Lupin online roleplaying to a whole new level of obsessively geeky detail. God, I'm turning into such an otaku.

Anyway--if you happen to be a Gaian too, come look me up. My username over there is loopy-chan. Yeah, I know. Geeky, ain't it?

New Horizons in Lupin swag: Look before you leap!

One of the Lupin character's more endearingly horn-doggy behaviors, as enshrined in one of the opening animations to the second TV series and repeated with many variations throughout the franchise, is Lupin's uncanny ability to leap clear out of his clothes (except for boxers and undershirt) in his attempt to literally jump Fujiko's bones. Like the Peanuts trope of Lucy always pulling the football away before Charlie Brown can kick it, Lupin's leaps for the goal are always handily thwarted by the resourceful Fujiko--usually with Lupin the worse for wear.

While this is a beloved running joke in Lupin-Land, one would not at first blush think of it as suitable fodder for a Lupin-themed toy. But ... guess again, fangeekfriends:

Lupin III Ecchi Fujiko Grabber Gun Toy anime FUNNY - eBay (item 120350744557 end time Dec-22-08 12:00:26 PST).

FYI: The "ecchi" in the listing title is transliterated Japanese slang for sexual naughtiness.

I am trying to reserve my fangeek-jones pennies for actual content, i.e. licensed DVDs, but I may actually have to break down and bid on this thing. Every time I look at it I boggle. And laugh.

About this Lupin III thing (Green vs. Red spoiler alert)

(For those who have not yet watched Green vs. Red, there's an analysis of that OAV in here that contains spoilers. Just letting you know.)

Okay, so what the hell is it with me and this Lupin III stuff anyway? Why is a person well into their 50s so obsessed with a cartoon character? And such a blatantly silly one at that?

Well, the age thing IMO is a straw man, given that so many of the creative types and talent behind these anime are well into their 50s as well (hell, several of the remaining original Japanese voice acting cast are well into their 60s and 70s). Plus I remain unapologetically kid-like in many areas of my life--insert lyrics to "I Won't Grow Up" from Peter Pan here: "... if growing up means it would be / beneath my dignity to climb a tree / I'll never grow up ... not me."

But totally aside from that ... I'll admit that, at times, I wondered if I wasn't reading a hell of a lot more into this wacky anime character than perhaps its creators ever intended. But that was before I watched the recent OAV Green vs. Red, and discovered that other people besides me had been struck by the larger meanings of this crazy little monkey-man.

The setup to GvR (as fans are inevitably abbreviating the title): we are in a slightly different universe than the one in which the usual Lupin III adventures occur, one in which the master thief has become enough of a cultural pheonomenon to start spawning copycats. Amidst all the hijinks and intrigue of hundreds of Lupin wannabes running amok in Tokyo, plus a big scary caper pitting the current reigning Lupin against a green-jacketed upstart, a young TV reporter pays a visit to a mysterious old man, a bookstore owner who is rumored to be a major authority on Lupin, to try and get to the bottom of things.

This bookseller (who might or might not be the real Lupin in disguise) proceeds to give an extremely Zen explanation of just who and what this man Lupin is: "Nationality doesn't mean anything to him. He is freedom itself ... He's always smart and cool. Or at least he's been so since he became Lupin." When Yukiko, the reporter, asks what he means by that last statement, the bookseller responds with a question reminiscent of a classic Zen koan: "Since when are you Yukiko-san?" He follows this up with: "Someone once told me 'A man isn't born a man, but becomes a man.' The same goes for Lupin."

And as the rest of the film plays out, it's shown that a large part of becoming a Lupin involves simply daring to believe that one is Lupin. Even two of the most inept wannabes manage to bust a majorly Lupinesque move (an homage-to-Cagliostro physics-defying drive up a cliff), once one of them challenges the other with a cry of "Don't say you can't!" And even the current reigning Lupin (there's some question left as to whether even he is the original Lupin, or if there ever was one) has a moment of panic in a death-defying situation--but then he pulls himself together, goes "Yeah right," steps on the gas, and sends the ol' Fiat zooming back on track.

This concept of total faith in oneself being the key to this wild freedom--this is what has me hooked on the character of Lupin. It speaks to all those aspects of my life where I find myself defying convention--from my sexuality, to my beliefs about the world, to my attempts at theatre, even to my current devotion to writing serious fanfiction. Sometimes, carrying on against the cultural tide of convention feels overwhelming--especially when I'm tired or vulnerable or having a self-esteem attack. But when I can psyche myself into believing in myself, when I can connect with the passion, the energy, the rightness I feel when I live in the very things that defy convention, then I have all the strength I need to actualize those things in the world.

There's also, of course, the entertainment value of the kind of outrageous stunts the Lupin character perpetrates with his freedom, and the over-the-top style with which he does them. Lupin is the fictional embodiment of the dude who can get away with anything, the one who always defies the odds. Somebody has to exist on that far tail of the probability curve, and he just happens to be that guy. Yes, there's an obvious element of wish-fulfillment in identifying with this character. But even in something as seemingly trivial as writing a story or performing in a play, there's an element of risk-taking and getting away with wacky stuff that partakes of the same cartoon energy as Lupin's misadventures. Or at least it feels that way to me.

So there you have it, a piece of life philosophy built around an anime character. But for the time being it's working for me. And who knows? He's given me some ideas for whole original stories of my own. How's that for an unexpected--and very real--litle treasure?

Want list: great big box o' Lupin

LUPIN THE 3RD 29 DVD BOX SET ALL 3 TV SEASONS 2 MOVIE - eBay

That's one helluva lot o' Lupin. The prizes here are the complete first (green-jacket) series and the second (red jacket) series episodes past #79, neither of which have never been released in US (dubbed) editions. Nor, for that matter, has the third (pink jacket) series, though I confess I'm a little less interested in those because they aren't quite up to the others in quality. I already have the two included movies--they're not even my favorites. But to have the 1st series and 2nd half of the 2nd series, that would be so sweet. So if anyone's wondering what the hell to get me for my 52nd birthday/Christmas/Hanukkah/Winter Solstice, here's one big fat huge freakin' hint. :-D

New chapter of my Lupin fanfic now posted

Finally got the latest chatper of my Lupin fanfic done. It was a lot harder to write that I expected, because at first I had a much more angsty concept in my head, but that felt wrong somehow, but then unangsting my ideas and coming up with different ones was a challenge. But the result, I think, is just as intense without the waterworks. Plus I got some action into it. But it still remains what it is, an opportunity to drag Lupin into further supernatural weirdness, now with a distinct Hunter S. Thompson goes Carlos Castaneda feel.

Check it out here: clickie

Brief writing update

Got another few pages of chapter 7 of the fanfic done. The prose is not pouring out of me like it was at earlier points in the writing. I spent a lot of time writing the same text over and over, not being happy with the tone. Finally I got it where I liked--removed a lot of the angst that was originally in there, and figured out how to put some action into what had originally been a very non-action chapter.

I feel like I'm finally understanding how I need to work as a writer, and being patient with myself that way. They never tell you this shit in any of the writing books or workshops or classes I've ever attended. With me, the voice and flow is everything. I need the voices and the interactions of the characters to make it feel real.

And I've actually had writing instructors tell me to tone that crap down. They were trying to make me distrust my own writer's voice. But even more, they were wanting to strangle the part I find the most fun about writing--creating and inhabiting that voice.

But now I finally understand--when I'm hitting that right voice and it's turning me on, that's when I am in fact doing the best writing for me. If it means lots of people don't get it, so be it. I can't write for them, or for anybody else besides myself.

New horizions in anime themed merchandizing: Lupin III novelty fishing lures?!?

Two Lupin the 3rd novelty lures new in boxes - eBay (item 380080922903 end time Nov-18-08 19:43:31 PST).

Yep, nothing says "Lupin" quite like a fishing lure. What it says about Lupin, though, I can't quite decypher.

Okay, the fangeek in me will admit that I've seen Lupin wielding a fishing rod at least twice in various TV episodes. In one, the item he was "fishing" for was the beach towel protecting the modesty of a buxom sunbather. So that's reassuringly typical Lupinesque behavior. But still. Fishing tackle. Really. And the company that markets these darn things also markets ones themed on The Simpsons, Popeye ... and Reservoir Dogs. Weird.

That voice acting workshop I attended this past Saturday

So this past Saturday, I arose at a ridiculously early hour of the morning, piled myself and a few cans of energy drink into my car, and vroomed off northward to, as Laugh-In used to call it, "Beautiful Downtown Burbank" to attend an all-day workshop on voice acting for anime, put on by Bang Zoom! Entertainment, a post-production studio that is a major player in anime dubbing.

I'd first heard about these "Adventures in Voice Acting" workshops at San Diego Comic-con this past July, where Bang Zoom! put on a heavily-attended panel-discussion/intro workshop. That earlier workshop impressed the hell out of me not only because the BZ folks hauled an entire Automated Dialog Replacement (ADR) system down to San Diego for the gig, but had the panel MC'ed by Tony Oliver--veteran voice actor/director/writer with a bazillion credits to his name, but best known to Lupin III fangeeks like yours truly for voicing Lupin in the US releases of the second series and Mystery of Mamo. (And he also happens to be my personal favorite of the English-language Lupins.)

So I saved up a little extra room on the ol' credit card, and when one of the all-day workshops in Burbank landed on a weekend I had free, I ponied up the dough.

The studio where we met for the workshop was in an unassuming little brick building tucked into a side-street full of warehouses. A half-dozen students gathered that morning--about half the normal enrollment, which turned into a real boon for those of us attending because we got twice as much studio on-mic time as we would have gotten otherwise. Tony turned out to be a great teacher--warm, encouraging, unassuming, entertaining, and extremely generous with his huge pile of knowledge and experience. His big emphasis was on voice acting being as much about the art of acting as the mastery of the technology involved, and he encouraged us to get as much experience in just straight acting as possible, in addition to whatever specifically voice-acting opportunities we could network and weasel our way into.

The technology, though, was hardly neglected. After a couple of hours going over some basics of classic acting technique (proper breathing and vocal technique, Method and other ways of getting into the character, cold-reading scripts to make the lines come alive), we all piled into the studio. The control room was totally on computer--the engineer worked everything from a ProTools setup. The sound booth was set up for ADR, with a big screen for displaying the anime clip to be worked on, with the timestamp numbers speeding by across the top, and in front of it the big super-expensive super-sensitive mic, a music stand for the script, and your headphones.

One after another, we all took turns dubbing lines into the ADR system. The routine: the engineer previews the scene you're about to dub your character's lines into, so you can see the characters' expressions and non-verbals and hear what the original Japanese voice actor did. Then he cues up the scene again, you hear three beeps over your headphones, and where the fourth beep should have gone, that's where you start talking. It is much more difficult than it looks--you're listening for those beeps, watching your character's mouth flaps and trying to match your words to them, and also trying to relax and be in character while you're doing all this. All I can say is, yeah, I'm glad the class was underenrolled even though that was definitely a financial hit for the studio, because it wasn't until my third time on mic that I felt like I was getting beyond all the pat your head/rub your tummy coordination issues and doing anything even vaguely resembling real acting.

But Tony was, as I said, very encouraging throughout. He definitely gave critique, but it was some of the most constructive encouraging critique I've ever gotten in a critique situation. For instance, it became obvious within a couple of character choices that I was running into a few of my long-standing issues with acting and vocalization--1) that I identify much more easily with rowdy, tomboyish, or even boyish characters than I do with traditional femmy female characters; 2) paradoxically, that I have to work to find a hard cutting edge to my voice as opposed to a rounded, soft, blending sound; and 3) that I could use a hell of a lot of work on breath regulation. Yup, he noticed all of them thar issues right off. I'se got some work to do!

But by the end of the day, I felt that I did have a few things going for me in this voice-acting thang, enough to think that I'm not 100% off my rocker in trying to pursue this dream. And between several of the suggestions Tony gave for pursuing the dream, and a couple other ideas I brainstormed on my own, I'm psyched to give it a go. There's an improv group, for instance, I could audition for (provided I get control of my Wednesday workload since the group meets Wednesday nights); there are also a couple of community radio stations I might be able to talk my way onto. Hell, I could look into being a volunteer reader for one of those books-on-tape organizations for the visiually impaired--they apparently have a screaming need for readers who can hack technical books, and hey, it's on-air time in a studio.

So ... I've got options, and I've got some homework to do, and because of this workshop I feel jazzed about keeping on with it. Sounds like a worthwhile experience to moi!

New on the Lupin swag front: action figure USB key

Lupin the Third and Gundam USB Keys : Akihabara News .com.

Oh, the cuteness, it is unbearable. And the fan-geek in me can't help getting a giggle out of the fact that the USB connector is basically up Lupin's ass -- the place, as he says in one of the second-series English dub scripts, from whence he pulls all of his last-minute emergency plans.

The manufacturer has not yet announced either a price or a shipping charge. But as I was figuring I needed some extra memory storage anyway, I am going to look into this and if it's not too ridiculously expensive I think I'll have to break down and get one. Le geek, c'est moi.

(Oh yeah--the Gundam key is pretty cute too.)