Unlimited Grace Works
CCY’s first ‘Twelve Days Project’ (which sounds like a doomsday device, if you ask me) was more or less the first thing that happened on this blog, so I’d be foolish not to repeat the exercise for 2008. Why so late starting, though?
Two reasons: firstly, as you may or may not have noticed I’ve been away meditating in a cave behind a waterfall recently, and secondly I bothered to do some research wiki’d, and the apparently the traditional Twelve Days run from Christmas Day to Epiphany. Far be it from me to go against tradition.
This year I’ve given up on finding the right number of things for each day of the song (maths was never my strong point) and I’ve focused on anime broadcast in 2008. This was a surprisingly tough restriction: I realise now that a substantial majority of the anime I consumed this year wasn’t from this year. Without it, however, I would have had a nasty case of ‘LotGH GOES IN EVERY FIELD’ on my hands.
My chosen twelve moments are also not intended to tell you what the year’s best anime were. I seem to recall making a similar point, in relation to Code Geass, this time last year, so perhaps I’d better begin with Code Geass again.
Do you remember the eighth episode of Code Geass R2? It was the one which featured a million Zero costumes and a brief discussion between Lelouch and Suzaku about Japaneseness. What I particularly liked, however, was the arrival of the Black Knights’ getaway vehicle: a giant, militarised iceberg.
The simple punster in me shouted ‘ICE BOAT’ just as I realised that – intentional or not – it was a reference to Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
In the Legend‘s history, Ale Heinessen escaped (with four hundred thousand followers) from the oppressive Galactic Empire in ice boats. (Long montage? That’s galactic history for you.) The parallels between Lelouch’s escape and the (presumably rather chilly) beginning of Ale’s ‘10,000 Light-Year March’ aren’t overwhelming, but they are stimulating – and an unkind writer would point out that, if you put the Legend and Geass side-by-side, Geass is definitely the child playing with ice boats. But I think I’ve made some similarly snide comparison already this year, so I won’t say that.
Besides, I heartily enjoyed Code Geass, good or not, and the ICE BOAT was Geass in microcosm: the utterly cheap pun and the thought-provoking comparison wrapped up in one moment. I love it far too much to speak ill of it.
They All Come Crawling Back
It looks like the ‘bit’ I referred to in my last post was about a month. I’ve been able to examine the relationship between the blog and the rest of my time. I’ve also decided that running out of ideas is really no impediment to blogging, as I can always retreat into mundanity.
Comments saying ‘welcome back’ are pleasant, but not necessary – this is potentially much more significant.
Animanachronism 
“I’ve also decided that running out of ideas is really no impediment to blogging, as I can always retreat into mundanity”
True!
Ah, that Ice Boat thing. I remember you telling me about it. Good times.
So what you’ve learned from your waterfall meditations was that you’ve learned to sell out? Wonderful! Now all you need to do is post some daily porn and you have an instant hegemony in place.
Hah, was this when you asked about the earth meta-documentary history episode? But nice on that, I hadn’t even thought about ICE BOAT when watching LoGH.
I like all the SCIENCE in that episode of Geass, with some kind of “Super Polyfmer Crazy [famous person] Protective Casing” stuff that prevented the iceberg’s melting.
But then my favorite part involving ice was when Yang sent those stellar glaciers at nearly light speed in some kind of jettison engine to destroy Heinessen’s Artemis necklace in one shot. That was sooooo awesome.
@Owen – animanachronistic hegemony doesn’t even need pR0n.
Mundanity is all well and good as long as you make it interesting. And you can do that in spades. :P
Welcome back!
And yes, nothing wrong with being mundane, so long as you can put an interesting and/or entertaining twist on it. After all, that strategy has worked just fine for the slice-of-life show industry for a long time now. =D
@ animekritik: I hope, anyway.
@ Owen S: Isn’t that what Mecha Image of the Day is for?
@ lelangir: Yeah, that’s why I asked about the history episodes. If I recall correctly, Yang actually appropriated the Heinessen story to justify his own use of ice?
@ TheBigN: I don’t know if mundanity is still mundane if you make it interesting, but I see your point.
@ 0rion: I must say, I hadn’t seen the idea as a move towards slice-of-life blogging, but that does make a lot of sense.
Only you would remove one letter from a meme to create a better meme :P
@IK: Hmmm, I don’t know if Heinessen’s story was a justification or a legitimate basis for Yang’s creative mind. Maybe both?
@ omisyth: I doubt ICE BOAT will ever achieve memetic status, but rest assured that I will come harder than omo if it does.
@ lelangir: Both, and an inspiration as well, perhaps.
Thing is during WW2 they accutally looked into this to bulk up the UK navy. Mix of ice and wood chips made a strong enough hull and slowed the rate of melting to a more usable time frame for the north atlantic (wouldn’t work in the Bahama’s). Doubt that’s where they got the idea form though.
Ah, I think I read something about that on TV Tropes’s ‘Military Mashup Machine’ page. Is that Project Habakkuk, to make a ship out of Pykrete? They alway say that war drives technological advances, but I guess there are bound to be some dead ends along the way . . .
I’m really fond of R2, but it didn’t end up the way I wanted, so …
I wasn’t online from a little before Christmas up to about two days ago so I haven’t really checked any blogs. Welcome back, nevertheless.
Thank you, and I hope you have/had a happy New Year.