[quasistar]

That the Brubeck obit is a Top 10 HN story puts a smile on my face ;)

If you're in a jazzy mood tonite, I can strongly recommend the recent Shinichiro Watanbe anime "Kids on the Slope" (坂道のアポロン Sakamichi no Apollon).

http://www.crunchyroll.com/kids-on-the-slope

[AlexMuir]

Completely OT but I just don't get anime at all. What am I missing? I got 10 minutes through Episode 1 at that link expecting something to happen - nothing did. I don't even really follow the storyline - a wimpy kid who can only stop himself throwing up by running onto the school roof.

It's like cryptic crosswords, god and football matches - I must be missing a part of the brain.

[georgeorwell]

That's just representative of the "slice of life" genre, not anime as a whole. I'd say try Cowboy Bebop, it's the same director, same composer, but this time it's a bounty hunter space opera with a jazz score. It often gets compared to Firefly. It doesn't seem to be on Crunchyroll but it's widely available.

[georgeorwell]

Also, Kids on the Slope is pretty good, if the idea of a jazz tribute coming of age innocent high school soap opera is appealing. Thanks quasistar.

[muraiki]

For anime in this genre, the pace can be a bit slow at times. This series is definitely character driven, as opposed to being event driven (although there are of course events that drive the characters). Since it's a bit of a "coming of age" story the focus is more on their development, and it takes a few episodes for the anime to set the background for the story and its players before it starts "moving."

One way to appreciate this approach is to contrast the storytelling techniques of western comics vs Japanese manga in the 90s (as they have since borrowed a lot from each other). The book "Understanding Comics" explains how in a western comic book each frame, while containing art, typically contains a lot of text. The story in western comics at the time was very textually driven, with the art as an accompaniment to help illustrate (ha!) what occurred in the text.

In contrast, manga could spend pages on images where the only "text" would be textual sound effects, devoting much space to creating an ambiance or mood. Furthermore, dialog might be more sparse and short, with greater reliance upon illustrating emotion. In fact, one of the reasons that the stereotypical anime style of big heads / large eyes developed was because of the realization that it was an effective technique to wordlessly convey emotions in characters (although this style actually originated in a western comic, Betty Boop).

Sorry, my memory is a bit fuzzy as to how Understanding Comics explained this all, but if you consider this difference in approach to storytelling, you might better understand what "slice of life" anime are doing. The intent isn't necessarily to pull you into a series of events and "go somewhere" immediately.

That being said, I heartily recommend this series. I had always found jazz interesting, although it was a bit too esoteric for me to know where to start. This series introduces jazz through some songs that are very easy to get into, even though they have a lot of depth. The end result of this, for me, was that I ended up taking up the sax and loving it. :)

[eugenejen]

The story is kind of slow and pretty set in Japan's social context. If you like to read novels by Haruki Murakami then you can get the story and its context easier.

Japan (or to some degrees, Korea, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong) has been influenced by Confucianism. How to deal with shame is a central part in social life. This includes dealing with feelings of alienation to one's social counterparts. And "being wimpy" is kind of shame experiences for teenagers in those countries.

You need to understand "shame" and "guilt" are two different concepts. "Guilt" is based on actions and morality. "Shame" is based on attributes that one possess. That's why you can see a lot of murders in East Asian's dramas having no feelings for guilt, but having feelings of shame.