Month: November 2022

Anime Review: ‘Fairy Musketeers’

I never knew how much I needed to see Little Red Riding Hood in a sword duel with Gretel until I watched Fairy Musketeers.

Fairy Musketeers (Otogi-Jūshi Akazukin). Starring Nobuyuki Hiyama, Rie Kugimiya, and Motoko Kumai. Directed by Takaaki Ishiyama, et al. TV Tokyo, . 39 episodes of 24 minutes (approx. 940 minutes). Not rated.

Available on Crunchyroll.

In the post-Madoka days when most magical girl anime is about blood, guts, and misery, or else full of snarky “irony,” I like to look back on an earlier, slightly more innocent time when magical girl stories were about giggly, fidgety females who saved the world in between shopping trips and junk-food binges. And when I look back on that time, I like to watch Fairy Musketeers. Fairy Musketeers is not the best-written magical girl show, nor is it the best animated, nor the best edited. But it has an intriguing premise, a likable collection of characters, a satisfying conclusion, and a sweetness that avoids becoming saccharine.

The Fairy Musketeers pose dramatically.
No magical-girl show is complete without goofy catchphrases.

Originally produced as an OVA (that is, a straight-to-video production, which doesn’t have the same stigma in Japan that it has in the States), Fairy Musketeers was later expanded into a 39-episode TV series, which is the more readily available version. Merchandising heavily dictated its content, and the show has a few out-of-place props and plot swerves as a result. Although it drags at times, it’s consistently fun. It is one of my all-time favorites, and it’s clean enough to let the kids watch.

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And We’re Back

The site was down for much of the day today, for reasons unclear to me. This has been happening more often lately, and I’m not technical enough to know why, though it makes me wonder if the site is unstable. I don’t have anything particularly weird plugged into it, but who knows?

Anyway, we’re back. My hosting service is prompt in answering customer queries even though they have trouble keeping me online.

D. G. D. Davidson on the ‘Blasters and Blades’ Podcast

My interview with the Blasters and Blades podcast is now live. You can listen to it on Anchor FM or on YouTube:

My wife listened to it earlier and said to me, “You talk too much,” which is true. I was nervous during this interview, and when I get nervous, I talk.

During the interview, we mostly talked about Rags and Muffin, which, it just so happens, would make a nice Christmas gift for the geek in your life.

On Study Bibles

For years, I’ve collected study Bibles. For a while, this was my hobby, but I recently acquired what I believe will probably be the last study Bible I ever buy, both because of the expense and because I doubt any will come out in my lifetime that I like better.

As well as a collector, I am a compulsive Bible annotator. I anotate as a kind of religious discipline: In my office, with no illumination except a desk lamp, bent over the page and writing in my finest print with a Sakura Pigma Micron, I have my own little scriptorium.

Although I own many more than that number, I have over my life used three study Bibles to hold my notes and am now on the fourth. I started with an NIV Study Bible I scribbled in as a teen, followed by the Nelson Study Bible I purchased from its editor at a retreat, followed by the HarperCollins Study Bible, which I purchased while in graduate school, took two years to read, and carefully wrote in for over a decade.

My HarperCollins is now falling to pieces. For that reason, I reecently spent a year and a half consolidating all of my notes. Then I purchased my fourth and (as I anticipate) final study Bible, into which I have begun copying all that work. I expect this project, the complete duplication of my annotations in a new volume, to take three years at least. I will probably add to these notes until I die or at least become incapacitated.

My notes are eclectic: They consist of everything from summaries of sermons to summaries of archaeology journal articles to quotations ranging from Bertrand Russell to the Bhagavad-Gita. There is no theme or discipline to my notes; they consist of things related to the Bible, either directly or through thematic association, that I want to be able to find again.

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Quick Update

I’ve had a heck of a time getting a chance to write blog posts, since our little daughter has hit another phase where she doesn’t want to sleep at night (and she never likes to sleep if “Dada” isn’t in the room). Nonetheless, I’m working on a project I’m excited about. I’ll give updates later, so stay tuned.

New Compy

At last, I have acquired my “new” computer. My old one had become unusable, so it had to be replaced. The new one, which is refurbished, definitely has some disappointments, but it should last a few years, in which time I might be able to save up for something better. One way or the other, the old one had to be replaced, so I can’t really complain.

That being said, I found out that, stupidly, I failed to make sure it has WiFi. I guess I sort of thought everything today has WiFi. As it turns out, it doesn’t have it. Fortunately, my desk is currently close to the router, so I was able to plug it in.

Also, the “free” monitors that came with it are blasting my eyes, even when I turn the brightness down to zero and probably because of bad framerate or something. I might have to replace them with something less cheap just to save my vision.

Also, the computer does not have suitable specs to be upgraded to Windows 11, which surprises me as its specs are mostly decent (aside from the missing WiFi), but Windows 11 is apparently quite specific about what it will run on. I suppose I will plan to replace this thing approximately around the time Microsoft stops supporting Windows 10, or when I want to move my desk across the room.

But the good news is, I can open the word processor without the computer freezing up for fifteen minutes! That is like a revelation. This should increase my productivity immensely, assuming the monitors don’t give me constant migraines. I’m currently copying over all my documents from my backup drive, after which I can get to work. Also, I now have dual monitors for the first time, so I can go all Minority Report with my windows.