July 31st
Today I got distracted again. The topic was a recommendation from Ariel, The anniversary of the ELO album "Time", but I got distracted because one of the songs was used in this anime short made for a convention. After watching the short my brain feels like scrambled eggs. The Daicon IV Opening Animation was created for the twenty second Japan SF Convention (Nihon SF Taikai) by animators who would later work for the famed anime studio Gainax.
The short starts with a schoolgirl being given a glass of water from some spacemen. She flies away with the glass of water when she starts getting attacked by Gundam looking robots, Godzilla, that one Giant lobster I'm pretty sure is from Ultraman, and a few dozen spaceships. She deploys rockets from her backpack and blows them all up. She's then able to use her water to water a radish that turns into a spaceship she becomes the captain of.
[ASSOCIATE NOTE: The radish spaceship is a pun on the name of the convention. It's a Daikon for Daicon]
The short takes a second to greet everyone in a text to speech voice before things get wilder.
A playboy bunny lady shows up and starts fighting giant robots, Kaijus, Darth Vader and even the alien from Alien. She then surfs around the sky on one of several rainbow smoke trail swords. And then cities blow up into cherry blossom petals and nature returns to the land. Then there's a bunch of licensed characters and then the con logo plays. And it's all glorious.
This animation in this short is tremendous, and it is a true labor of the 12 independent animators who would later get a foothold in the anime industry. Interestingly this short and it's predecessor made for Daicon III made their production costs back by selling 8mm copies of the film to convention goers. Anime historians say this makes these shorts some of the earliest examples of OVAs.
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August 1st
Today is the beginning of August and I'm going to go ahead and explain something I'm going to start doing next week. The thing is, a while ago I did some Kablam short retrospectives as independent articles. I've decided to take down the original articles, archive their original states offsite, and re-edit them into the regular August weekly articles. I will also specify it's not going to be any new reviews, just the old articles abridged. So starting tomorrow, this will be the August of Kablam at WSTH. Huzzah!
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August 2nd
Today is my first August Kablam article, and it's about the short Anemia and Iodine. This traditionally animated toon stars a pair of best friends; a cat named Anemia the cat and Iodine the wallaby, go to an abandoned house to search for paranormal activity and get more than they expected.
The short was created by Krystine Kryttrean American alternative cartoonist. She's known for having distinct scratchy and whimsical art style, and her works appeared in various alternate comix productions starting in the late 80's into the 90's. To my understanding, "Anemia and Iodine" is her only work in animation. Since the short, Kryttre has moved onto studio art, including print making and taxidermy.
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August 3rd
Today is a grab bag article and its from Ariel:
Did you know locust swarms can get so large and extend so high into the troposphere, they show up on weather radar?
Locust swarms can become so unimaginably vast, radar waves can bounce off of them and make the resulting signals appear like weird moving patches of precipitation in radar reflectivity. That is exactly what happened when 45 million or so locusts went to Vegas in 2019. Or the massive swarm that hatched and made a flyby over Albuquerque in 2014.
It isn’t even just locusts. On special occasions, any incomprehensible amount of bugs that take to the air bunched together as a swarm as big as clouds have a chance to show up on weather radar, including ladybugs and cicadas.
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August 4th
Today in 1995 the movie Babe first hit theaters. The movie is a nice kids movie about a Pig that learns to be a sheep dog, but the simple plot is bolstered by a charming cast of characters. I recommend this one if you need something cute to put on for the kiddies that won't annoy grandpa too bad.
On a related note, I remember there being a lot of pig media when I was a kid, but looking back on it I think I was just exposed to all the possible pig media available because my twin really likes pigs to this day. Makes birthdays easy I suppose. I usually receive pokemon or computer themed stuff. Go figure. I just keep trying to wrap my head around an animal to make my own and it never works out. Before starting the site I had a turtle phase that ended when I found I sucked at drawing them. That’ll do, poorly drawn turtle… that’ll do…
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August 5th
Today is the anniversary of the first episode of the animated seasonal-anthology miniseries Infinity Train. First premiered in 2019, this series ran for 4 seasons. The show was canceled and pulled from streaming despite the show having excellent ratings and unanimous acclaim because the powers that be didn't think kids would like it.
Aside from that, I have a very particular reference in the show I want to talk about. The show has a recurring sequence of four notes It uses as its theme and leitmotif. This string of notes comes from the end of the "Mysterious Stranger" segment of The Adventures of Mark Twain. And this is something that's been confirmed, the series creator has stated he took a good amount of inspiration from both the short and its original story in the series.