Miyazaki is a genius

I'm sure I'm not the first to report this, but it bears repeating. Now, I don't really know anything about anime culture, and, besides a special pocket in my heart for life-changers like Ghost in the Shell, I haven't experienced much of it. Despite being graphic and intense, the plots usually twist out of my limited mental grasp and leave so many loose ends dangling that you could weave a hammock out of them. Anime is entertaining, no doubt, but it's frequently incomprehensible to me. (Aside: for some reason, American movies are the only ones that tie up most if not all of the loose ends. Undecided whether this is good or bad.) However, every now and then, an anime movie will stab straight to the point. Tonight's feature: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The movie takes place in too strange a world to describe here, but the characters are humans, and that's the only frame of reference one needs in order to relate to the story. The movie's themes are intertwined so well that it's almost poetic: love people, respect nature, fight for what you believe in. Can we live like this, please? Regardless of how fantastic the setting, many of these anime stories have a greater humanistic pull than our overused American tragic-romantic comedies. Those are powerful, sure, but it's hard to deliver the emotional depth-charge of something like Grave of the Fireflies with anything short of a three-part documentary. If you want to cry and/or temporarily lose all faith in humanity, watch that movie in a dark room. The point is, I could do with greater exposure to meaningful movies, and I now have a new place to look for them.

Incidentally, Nausicaa was the name of the princess upon whom Odysseus nakedly stumbled in Homer's Odyssey. I don't think that princess was quite as good at flying hang-gliders as Nausicaä, though.


In lab-related news, new pics are up (fotos section on right -->), including a brief gallery of droplets beginning here. Droplets, eh? Just water out of a syringe for now, but I'll post a shot or two with fog-juice (mostly glycol) and whatever else Mark and George will use to effectively seed Mark's dust-devil generator. Hopefully not grad student blood.


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Update (02/14/2009): Just finished The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Heinlein is also a genius, for many of the same reasons as Miyazaki. That quality of story makes me want to stay up all night reading. In fact, it did. Also, happy Valentine's Day!