Mysterious package update #1

I have now picked up the mysterious package, and it is indeed one of the item on the poll, but in the interests of dramatic tension, I shall not yet reveal what, exactly, it is.

Mysterious package update #2

Another update on the mysterious package, stretching the dramatic tension further. I have crossed out various items it is not.

Something my mother sent me secretly from Amazon.com
BPAL imps
My leftover prints from AnimeExpo, having gone back in time to be mailed and arrive on the same day.
Some doujinshi I forgot I bought
Something to do with TEH SEEEKRIT PROJEKT
Harry Potter Goes Bollywood, from the same time warp that produced the anime prints.
A head.
Something for my neighbor, notification put on the wrong doot
The traditional box of tickyboxes
Manga that someone swapped me for that I forgot all about
Something else that I am going to list in the comments


Isn't it nice to have dramatic tension and anticipation over something that, after all, matters very little in the long run?

Mysterious package update #3

And I JUST BET you are all just DYING to know what's in this package, huh?

Well, you'll have to wait a little longer, but I shall eliminate a few more possibilities.


Something my mother sent me secretly from Amazon.com
BPAL imps
My leftover prints from AnimeExpo, having gone back in time to be mailed and arrive on the same day.
Some doujinshi I forgot I bought
Something to do with TEH SEEEKRIT PROJEKT
Harry Potter Goes Bollywood, from the same time warp that produced the anime prints.
A head.
Something for my neighbor, notification put on the wrong doot
The traditional box of tickyboxes
Manga that someone swapped me for that I forgot all about
Something else that I am going to list in the comments

Sorry, no, it's not a shipment of tickyboxes, I'm sorry to say, but you'll note the head is still in the running.

Mysterious Package: The Revelation!

And now it's time for the final showdown! What you've all been waiting for! The moment when I reveal to you ... what the mysterious package contained!




And the winner is.............



( Cut for, er, ... spoilers. )

Reading in Ayatsuri Sakon

Thanks to kimun (with efforts by octopedingenue), I've now got the scanlations of Ayatsuri Sakon, which I believe is the first manga that Obata Takeshi (HikaGo/Death Note, as you should all know by now) was the lead guy on. What's interesting is his style ... it's accomplished, but it's pretty manga-generic. It doesn't especially stick out, however, since Obata's unique style hadn't really been worked out at the time this manga was created.

So the basic story is that it's set in contemporary Japan, but has a lot of traditional flavor. There's mild-mannered bishounen puppeteer Sakon and his strong-willed, seemingly independent-willed puppet, Ukon, who travel around the country. They fight crime!

No, really. They fight crime. Well, more like solve crime - it's a detective story. Sakon uses his M4DZ PUPPETEERING SKILLZ to get into the mind of various people and reason out what and how they dunnit. And the story never really comes down onto a definite answer as to whether or not the puppet Ukon is just a personality aspect of the closed-off, shy Sakon or whether he's possessed by the spirit of a boy from the Meiji era. The owner of the Clockwork Voices site, where I got the manga and anime images from under the cut, who happens to also be a puppeteer, comes down on the side of "possessed," because Ukon moves in ways that are not possible for a single puppetteer - you'd need a team to do it. But it can be read either way, as you choose.

And you can see the same element of a setting in the contemporary world with a frisson of the supernatural that Obata has done in HikaGo and Death Note - he must be feeling pretty stereotyped by now. XD

It was made into an anime, also.

( Pictures behind cut )

If you're intrigued, there's a yousendit link in the comments here.

(no subject)

yhlee asked for "something luminous" here, so I blathered on for a while about my mother's house.

( Behind here )