January 7 (5M^_^: Seven of Seven)

[Zeke]

Welcome back as Five-Minute Anime breaks into the new year! Today, filling in the fifth question mark on the front page, we have a more obscure target -- Nana: Seven of Seven. It's a light comedy anime from the creator of Sgt. Frog in which young Nana is accidentally split into seven copies of herself. (Fun fact: their voices are all different in the original, but Veronica Taylor does them all in the dub. You know her as Ash Ketchum.) Here's...

Five-Minute Seven of Seven

-- HEY! What the hell was THAT?

I don't get it. It wasn't supposed to be about Voyager. Where did this overlong dialogue piece a la The Disbanding come from, and what did it do with my anime fiver?

Something weird is going on here...

Well, anyway, I'm off to a math conference, but be here when I get back for the filling in of that final question mark!

[Side note: We're getting a lot of traffic right now from Chris's Invincible Super-Blog. Why? Because of my entry in Chris's fifth-anniversary contest (the second one of these I've entered). There'll be a proper update for it later.]

[Derek]

That was pretty cool, Zeke. I liked a lot of the lines in your fiver, but just to pick one:

Seven: None of them! I'm the outcast! The discard! The Pluto! I was left behind, and let me tell you, it was not rapturous!

I'm assuming the anime is more or less along the lines of the fiver.

[MaverickZer0]

Seven: Yes! And it was hell, I tell you! Sneaking food was difficult! Showering was impossible! And I had some pretty damn close calls! Did you know there are invisible flesh-eating monsters that live in all the shadows of the universe? No you didn't!

Ahaha, this line really caught my eye. Vashta Nerada anyone?

Nice one, man. Good to see the Underused Characters' Tavern is still open.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Derek

I'm assuming the anime is more or less along the lines of the fiver.

Pretty much. The two most important differences are that the Nanas had only one year to live unless they got reunited, and their transformation gave them super-powers. They sometimes used this as an excuse to disguise themselves as the "Nana Rangers" (characters from a Power Rangers-type show they used to watch) and thus be out in public as a group; they couldn't do this otherwise since Nana was trying to keep her duplication a secret.

Other elements of the show appear here only to get dismissed. Nana's copies really did have distinct personalities (except blue, who was the "real" one), they had nicknames to keep each other straight, and they all inherited Nana's crush on a boy in her class.

To be honest, I only got three episodes into Seven of Seven. It's the anime equivalent of a Saturday morning kids' show, so I felt a little old for it. Of course, since it's anime, Nana is a bit... bouncier than you would see in a western cartoon for the grade-school set. Okay, a lot bouncier. And it's based on a manga with even less age-appropriate visuals. So the whole thing makes me cringe a bit. It's part of a general phenomenon I discussed in the first half of this recent LJ post.

Oh, by the way, "nana" is Japanese for 7. That's the joke in the title, and it's the reason "Nana Rangers" isn't quite as ridiculous a coincidence as it sounds.

Anyway, glad you two liked it. (Now where's everybody else?)

[Nate the Great]

Not everybody is a fanatic about relatively obscure anime, Z. I'm certainly not. Probably the most obscure anime I'd consider myself a fan of is The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Otherwise it's mon shows, magical girls, Miyazaki, and Takahashi.

(And Lucky Star. How can a dance with such meaningless lyrics be so catchy?)

[Zeke]

I was afraid of this. Nate, click the link. As my "reaction" was supposed to indicate, this update is not remotely what I billed it as.

(On the plus side, this means somebody actually got my reference to the Lucky Star theme in the Sailor Moon fiver. I completely agree re: meaninglessness/catchiness.)

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Seven: Only a mild predilection for the colour indigo.

Janeway: Red, Seven. Your favourite colour is red.

Seven: But indigo...

Is not a real colour, just something made up by the numerologists when they were assigning the colours of the spectrum back in the dark ages.

Doc: Not... right away. Re-integrating seven people takes much more complicated calculations than just differentiating one. It could take weeks.

Janeway: Weeks?

Doc: Have you ever tried to do a septuple integral?

Pfft, theoreticians. Another pass through a prism will sort them out. Er. Unsort them in? (Well, OK, maybe not Black Lant^H^H^H Seven, but there's always dark current in any instrument. You just have to subtract her out with the baseline)

Chakotay: So what did you do? Vaporize them? Give 'em the airlock?

Bandpass filter.

/nerrrrrrrd!

Side note: We're getting a lot of traffic right now from Chris's Invincible Super-Blog. Why? Because of my entry in Chris's fifth-anniversary contest (the second one of these I've entered). There'll be a proper update for it later.

A comic? I didn't know you could dr--oh. Never mind.

(I keed, I keed. I can't dr-- either.)

Nice update, Zeke. How's it feel to be back in the saddle?

[Nate the Great]

Actually, I didn't. My fandom of Lucky Star is completely external.

I'm assuming your point is that you fived something that wasn't technically an anime. For that, I call foul. You can't call it Five-Minute Anime unless it's supposed to be a fiver of an anime.

[Tate]

I enjoyed that, especially the math jokes.

Did you know there are invisible flesh-eating monsters that live in all the shadows of the universe? No you didn't!

Not every shadow, but any shadow... (cue creepy music).

[NAHTMMM]

Torres: Romulan ale should be illegal.

Chakotay: It is.

Torres: Then Neelix should.

*snerk*

There were a few other lines, but I forget what they were. Aside from "Space Pepsi". That was quite an amusing thing for Janeway to blurt out.

Originally Posted by Sa'ar Chasm

Seven: But indigo...

Is not a real colour, just something made up by the numerologists when they were assigning the colours of the spectrum back in the dark ages.

Isaac Newton = dark ages?

[Zeke]

Now this is more like it! Sorry I whined about the low turnout earlier.

Originally Posted by Tate

Not every shadow, but any shadow... (cue creepy music).

You wouldn't believe how long I spent deciding how to word that bit. (Btw, hope you noticed the next line...)

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

Actually, I didn't. My fandom of Lucky Star is completely external.

So you've only heard the theme, not seen it? Or did you see different subs? The line I referenced was "Seeraa fuku da kara desu ketsuron", which usually gets subbed as "'Cause it's a sailor uniform, Q.E.D.!"

I'm assuming your point is that you fived something that wasn't technically an anime. For that, I call foul. You can't call it Five-Minute Anime unless it's supposed to be a fiver of an anime.

Only now, at the end, do you understand... or rather, only at the end WILL you understand.

But this wasn't a fiver. It's like 493 times too long.

[ETA: Check the front page for a little not-quite-update.]

[MaverickZer0]

Janeway: (to Chakotay) Remind me to ask the Doctor about that later.

I had to go back and look. Hell yes. Potential for Voyager/Doctor Who crossover: totally fulfilled.

There was a Motteke! Serafuku reference in Sailor Moon and I missed it?

Oh, right at the beginning. Dur. I r smrt.

[Nate the Great]

No, I meant that if you made a Lucky Star remark or reference, I hadn't remembered it. I made my remark because I was listing my tastes in anime and felt that a joke would enhance it.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Originally Posted by NAHTMMM

Isaac Newton = dark ages?

(Newton) chose seven colors out of a belief, derived from the ancient Greek sophists, that there was a connection between the colors, the musical notes, the known objects in the solar system, and the days of the week.[5][6]

5 ^ Hutchison, Niels (2004). "Music For Measure: On the 300th Anniversary of Newton's Opticks". Colour Music. http://home.vicnet.net.au/~colmusic/opticks3.htm. Retrieved 2006-08-11.
6 ^ Newton, Isaac (1704). Opticks.

Newton fell off the shoulders of the giants and got heavily into occult gibberish towards the end. The spectrum essentially goes red, orange, yellow, green, blue, more blue, purple we can barely see and basically ignore.

/knowitall

[Derek]

^ You say occult, but that really just sounds like scholasticism.

[Zeke]

Hmm, no guesses so far about the final series? (Check the front page to see what I mean.)

Originally Posted by MaverickZer0

Potential for Voyager/Doctor Who crossover: totally fulfilled.

True, but the point is that Janeway means her Doctor. I've been looking for a chance to make that joke. As for crossovers, I do have one on the backburner involving DW -- you wouldn't believe the other series if I told you.

Originally Posted by Sa'ar Chasm

Pfft, theoreticians. Another pass through a prism will sort them out. Er. Unsort them in? (Well, OK, maybe not Black Lant^H^H^H Seven, but there's always dark current in any instrument. You just have to subtract her out with the baseline)

Yeah, but since this is the transporter we're talking about, it could be way the hell more complicated. Fictional technology is convenient for plotting. (And hey, you're following Blackest Night?)

Chakotay: So what did you do? Vaporize them? Give 'em the airlock?

Bandpass filter.

/nerrrrrrrd!

Took me a sec to realize what that was, then I laughed enough to betray my own nerd status. To anyone who somehow didn't already know, that is.

A comic? I didn't know you could dr--oh. Never mind.

A zing, I do declare it. That said, be sure to read the contest rules. Artistic skill is almost discouraged.

Nice update, Zeke. How's it feel to be back in the saddle?

Not sure whether you mean the recent updating or the math conference, but either way -- it feels good. REAL good.

[MaverickZer0]

^^Everyone always means their own Doctor. And we'll see...

Guesses? Death Note fits the pattern. So does Excel Saga, but it's already crack. Not sure if you've seen Elfen Lied. Lucky Star, same as Excel Saga.

Death Note is easier to make fun of, but Elfen Lied seems more your thing...still gonna have to say the first.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Yeah, but since this is the transporter we're talking about, it could be way the hell more complicated. Fictional technology is convenient for plotting. (And hey, you're following Blackest Night?)

The transporter magically fixes everything at the end of the episode, especially if it caused the problem in the first place. Unless you're implying Banana Whatsername isn't up to the same standard as Scotty or Geordi or O'Brien?

(Not really following, since I don't buy comics, but I got the introductory issue on Free Comics Day and I've been reading up on the background on the DC wiki. I thought Indigo was going to be Altruism to balance Avarice until I saw they'd written Compassion in very tiny, very missable font. All the colours either side of Green seem to be opposites, or opposites once removed (Love and Anger (nearly hate), Fear and Hope, Compassion and Avarice (nearly Selflessness and Selfishness)).

Took me a sec to realize what that was, then I laughed enough to betray my own nerd status. To anyone who somehow didn't already know, that is.

Wish I'd told you that in person, then.

A zing, I do declare it. That said, be sure to read the contest rules. Artistic skill is almost discouraged.

Really? In that case, maybe I should enter. My stick figures look terrible.

Not sure whether you mean the recent updating or the math conference, but either way -- it feels good. REAL good.

The updating. If you're gonna keep this up, I may have to actually write something for my subsite anniversary.

[Wowbagger]

Being a reference whore, the Vashta Nerada joke will definitely be my favorite quote from this one, but it really was wonderful all-round. It has been far too long since I heard an intelligent anti-Chakotay joke.

I'm hoping for Death Note or Azumanga Daioh, on the grounds that those are the only two animes I've actually ever seen.

[evay]

non mi frega anime, frankly, but I cheered so loudly at seeing Voyager content that I woke both cats. And it's damn funny! nice job!