Do you ever stare at ye old unfinished fanfiction draft and think, Aye, that was a total mischaracterization, time to gut and rework, then stare at the WIP rework and think, Aye, that was a total mischaracterization, time to gut and rework�
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I am convinced that Fred Wardâwell, especially if he'd been an Englishmanâwould have made a great Captain Haddock had a live-action Tintin movie or TV series ever been conceived.
Shoutout to Roy Maddock and ''Baccano!'' Volume 4 for being the first explicit refutation of a "route to happiness" in a series preoccupied with the pursuit of happiness.
Volume 04 asks: Are drugs a viable means of happiness?
Ryohgo NaritaRoy Maddock answers: No!
It's pretty much ''the'' instance where Narita overtly condemns a happiness route. This is supported by Narita's anti-drug stance in other IPs like ''Durarara!!'', where Mizuki Akabayashi is explicitly anti-drug (this makes him a good Yakuza, whey-o). Okay, all right, so he almost certainly doesn't condone sadism-induced happiness, but never mind that.
Tried revisiting the Lackadaisy pilot and yeah, nah, the voice acting is just electrifying my hair in a not-good way. Calvinâs voice doesnât fit at all. Zibâs voiceâŚdoubt (I donât want to doubt, Sib is my favorite, butâŚdoubt). Rocky: there is literally no voice on this planet that would suit him; he defies voice despite his loquaciousness. Ivy is too pipsqueak. WickâŚeh. MordecaiâŚ? Heâs like Rocky: no voice suits. At least, not the voice Iâm hearing.
(My sincere apologies to the voice actors.)
Itâsâman, the most fitting voices are the most stereotypical ones (Mitzi the southern belle getting a southern belle voice, Victor the accented character getting a mainstream Russian accent), and that doesnât feel good to say.
I think, however, some of my discomfort with the voice acting is influenced by the inconsistent audio quality? Some characters sound like their voices were recorded in completely different environments. That really does not help.
(Also I just feel dirty seeing Lackadaisy animated at all, so thatâs another disclaimer.)
I do love the incorporation of jazz, those. That is the one audiovisual aspect I always thought would be to Lackadaisy.
Incidentally, I really do fear for that Bone adaptation that was announced within the past few years. I canât imagine suitable voices for the Bones whatsoever. Guess there are some comics I prefer to remain comics.
(Just tried to imagine voices for Castle Waiting characters. Or Girl Genius characters. Donât recommend.)
I do like that the pilot has captured the expressiveness of the comic! Mitzi and Wick are animated well characteristically. I kind of have to mute Calvin and Ivy to appreciate that they are animated in-character.
Incorporating Jay-Jay as a fourth-wall sort of musical sound effect was amusing.
I totally understand that pilots are rough drafts, so I have much room for forgiveness here, especially since the animation is a passion project. Iâm glad people cared enough abought the comic to go this far. I mean, if, say, Castle Waiting were to ever get an animation, I would probably be insisting âhow could any of these characters be adequately voicedâ only to be sort of happy that it reached a mainstream audience:
For those of you who are also slow on the uptake, Chapter(?) 3 of the Baccano! ~from the 1700s~ manga released on January 25. The best time for us to buy it was release day, but buying it is better late than never. As always, (the prospect of) new Baccano! media depends on consumer support.
Buy it despite DMM's "DMN" DRM, for we have no choice.
On the one hand, I hate DRM. On the other, if selling this manga via a DRM-strict retailer/platform succeeds in making people purchase it when they would have otherwise tried reading it for free, then. Fine. FiNe.
Remember to rate each installment. I think it's possible to do it without leaving a review: read the chapter in your browser, click the star on the end page, then click five stars on the review input form that pops up. It seems to save my five star rating even when I navigate away from the form. Leaving reviews themselves wouldn't hurt, unless...they're in English...probably. Do you think we could get away with leaving machine-translated ones? How many strangely-written reviews would it take to sound the 'overseas purchaser' alarm?
Edit: Or maybe not. The ratings I âgaveâ arenât reflecting on the listings for 2 and 3. Maybe a review is necessary after all.
Chapter 3 reactions under the cut.
Looks like this depicts parts of LN11 Interlude II and Chapter 4. I did have to manually transcribe some of the dialogue. This took way more time than I can afford.
The opening scene depicts the killing of the 28th victim/witness, an aristocrat named Lord/Sir Alonso. This must be the murder that Larolf reports to Esperanza in the latter half of LN11 Interlude III? Larolf describes the victim as a "boy" who witnessed the Mask Maker right before Niki did in the novel, but this Sir / Lord Alonso is certainly not a child. Hm...
I believe the bit of Niki we see in this chapter is her telling Esperanza the food is delicious from the beginning of Interlude III. However, the manga seems to be omitting the part where Larolf reports [Alonso's] murder? It shows Niki walking away with a maid, whereas Niki runs away when Larolf makes his report...and there's no moment where Esperanza is angered by the bruise on Niki's face per the LN.
Moreover, am I right that the manga also omits Monica and Elmer's encounter with the bald man and Maiza in Chapter 4? There's no marketplace with children singing the MM song, no bald man, no Maiza...
...but the previous chapters also omitted Elmer's first encounter with Maiza, didn't they? So the mangaka's been deliberately holding off on Maiza's introduction from the start. I guess the manga's going to move the bruise reaction, Larolf's report and the bald man/Maiza-Elmer-Monica encounter to another day? How will that account for Elmer's wound, though, since Elmer doesn't show up to class after being stabbed?
I probably need to reread manga chs. 1â2 and actually take note of what was and wasn't adapted. I should do that anyway, since that would be useful for the wiki.
Okay, some positives...
Larolf depicted! (I only know because he was depicted in Chapters 1â2, so this is a belated celebration of a Larolf Hancletia design. Ch.2 gave us Huey's mother, too.)
Warehouse depicted!
Patisserie lady depicted!
Hey, it's Elmer's room at Esperanza's place!
Elmer wounded! Bandages on Mask Maker's arm are neat.
Monica has a lot of fun expressions. Manga is leaning hard into the classic twitterpated teen girl archetype and her 'tells' (big eyes, blushing), and these do serve the purpose.
Denkurou and Zank (albeit seen, not heard)!
Elmer's back scars...
Some mild complaints:
Zank's body should be as dark-skinned as Zank's head. Did the mangaka forget to color the torso? If this is a lighting thing where Zank's head isn't in range of a light source, then Denkurou's body should reflect that too. It's such a weirdly stark difference in hue that it really looks like a coloring error.
Am I allowed to feel lukewarm about Elmer's design? Maybe the fact that I've never seen Elmer with flat (slicked?) hair is throwing me off (aka it's throwing me off a lot), but there's something about his head's shape as well. The big forehead?ăThe eyebrows floating halfway up the forehead? The flat hair is contibuting to the forehead's largeness.
To be totally fair, this is gawky teen!Elmer, not adult!Elmer, and Elmer on the LN11 cover does have a rounder face (than adult!Elmer) that I guess the manga is honoring.
And...
Elmer's back scars.
I am whelmed. I guess I've built up my mental image of the scars for so long that probably any illustration is doomed not to meet expectations. It might be unfair of me, but I can't help think that a mangaka could go all out on the scars, since they only have to be drawn for 1â3 panelsâhonestly, why not just devote a full page illustration to it or one panel that fills most of the page?
Ex: Contain Monica's horrified expression + Huey going ??? to one panel. Overlay that (opt. and the next panel) with a small panel of Huey's face to emphasize Huey actively following Monica's gaze. Thus, rather than showing a Huey!POV of Monica looking at Elmer, you could dedicate one big panel exclusively to Elmer's full back and arms. Go all out.
There, one and done.
Here's the LN description of Elmer's scars for comparison.
Elmer was stripped to the waist, squeezing his clothes out, and his backâŚ
âŚwas covered in scars.
And it wasnât only his back; uncountable scars covered the parts of his arms that had been hidden by his sleeves.
Currently, not a single wound was bleeding, but if all those scars became wounds again, he couldnât even imagine how much they would have bledâ
That was how mutilated Elmer was.
He might have had even more scars than Hueyâs mother had in his memories of her.
They werenât just cuts. There were marks as if something had been used to gouge out divots of flesh, and an enormous burn that covered the top half of his back. Not only that, but the burns appeared to be covering countless more scars.
Where's the enormous burn? Those scars are pretty countable. I see plenty of unmamrred skin. Yep, I'm nitpicking now. Please give my apologies to the mangaka; my expectations were simply too high. Ultimately, I am grateful that Elmer's scars have finally been depicted in an official publication.
(Quick! Enami! Draw Elmer shirtless as a 20th anniversary treat!)
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Hereâs the âMany Baccanovembers to come!â âend cardâ I made for the /r/Baccano community survey Reddit post. Use at your pleasure.
[Image Description: a 1024x576 black âstillâ with the aforementioned quote displayed in the off-right center of the screen. The still is mimicking the âMany birthdays to come!â ending card of Baccano! Episode 13.]
Yet another exceedingly irritating quirk of Book Walker that I am recently contending with is the inability to search a word within a book via the desktop viewer or the browser viewer. Only the mobile/tablet app allows you to search.
All I want to do, Book Walker, is search for shiawase (嚸ă) versus ikigai ( çăç˛ć) in the Japanese digital editions of the Baccano! volumes I purchased through you, for reason that may or may not pertain to Elmer C. Albatross. Is that so much to ask? There are quite a few reasons Iâd rather do this via the desktop viewer.Â
Yes, I know, you discontinued the desktop client in 2017 to focus on the mobile/tablet app and browser version; yes, I know if I ask youâll respond with âsomething something DRMâ. None of that helps.
(As a side note, my searches so far only associate Elmer with shiawase, not ikigai. I did notice he uses shiawase in Episode 14. This is relevant for Reasons, by which I mean my various notes on the âpursuit of happinessâ theme and whatnot.
(I did notice that JP Wikipediaâs Baccano! article uses ikigai in the character description for Maria Barcelito. Still havenât encountered ikigai in the nascent searches Iâve attempted so far--havenât searchd all volumes, though, so maybe she uses ikigai in an unsearched one...)
Can you believe...in less than a month...the official translation of Baccano! Volume 15 will be out and in existence and real?
I distinctly remember posts back in the early days of the post-license announcement in which I and others considered the strange idea that Volume 15 would be officially available in English in a few yearsâ time. How time flies.
