Today's lazy day was extremely lazy. My washing up is piling up nicely, despite the fact that I had planned to do that pretty much first thing in the morning. All I actually did was sit around watching anime (volume 2 of Basilisk, volume 1 of Paranoia Agent) or playing Muramasa.
There's an interesting comparison to be drawn between Basilisk and Muramasa. Both are 'ninja stories', both are full of overblown, stereotypical characters... but one is compelling and the other is still not. By the end of volume 2 of Basilisk, I've been introduced to several more characters, but most of them are dead already, and I've gained no deeper understanding of any of them. The two families involved have been at war for ages and for some nebulous and unexplained reason, but had to adhere to a non-aggression pact arranged by their shogun. He now has recinded that pact, with his stated reason being that he wants the next shogun to be the last man standing in an all-out war between the ten best warriors in either clan. It's taken 8 episodes for one clan to learn of this, while the other knew from the start because some of their ninjas intercepted the messages bound for both clans, destroyed one copy and kept the other.
The art style is variable... most of it is pretty good, vaguely serious... but the 'Juliet' of the piece is far cuter than any other character, and seems out of place. She appears to be the reason for the title (as far as I can tell so far), since her only skill is the ability to nullify anyone else's skill just by looking at them.
The skills themselves are interesting in their variety, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to who gets defeated by whom... they are all at the mercy of the plot.
Muramasa, meanwhile, is progressing nicely in the second story. Amnesiac Ninja is basically at the mercy of the plot, going wherever seems most logical... and has just found that the very man who sent him to steal a particular demon blade was the one who then took it away. His clan think he betrayed them, and no-one really seems to trust him... which leads to some pretty epic battles along the way. I'd wager that Kisuke's game is harder than Momohime's, if only because his enemies are more complicated. The second boss (unless I've forgotten one!) is a samurai princess on demonic horseback. She fires arrows, some of which home in on the player character. The horse charges and stamps. There are barriers which can protect you from arrows, but the horse is inclined to ram through them as much as it will jump over them.
I am constantly being blown away by the sheer beauty of Muramasa, its many-layered parallax backgrounds, and its linear but oh-so-interesting parallel stories. I'm never quite sure if I've achieved the right level for a particular stage (probably not, for the most part), but it's a reasonably forgiving game, and I've only actually died a couple of times.
Paranoia Agent looks to be Satoshi Kon's last anime, since he died last August of pancreatic cancer. This is a terrible shame, not least because he was working on something when diagnosed, but also because the projects he worked on were quite unlike any other anime. Perfect Blue may not have quite lived up to the "If Hitchcock Met Disney..." hype, but it was a great fun movie with a surprising twist that came as the result of a tragic backstory you can guess at through the many implied parallels. Paranoia Agent started out as an investigation into a series of seemingly random attacks by a kid on rollerblades. His victims so far are all completely nuts, including a toy/cartoon character designer who talks to a plushie of one of her creations (and it talks back), a private tutor who has a split personality, and so also works as a prostitute, and a 'number one' student with serious rage issues who - for a time - was suspected of being the attacker. By the end of volume one, the attacker has supposedly been apprehended by his latest victim - a mob-connected policeman... but we shall see.
In other news, I've had another cool idea for a t-shirt... but this may be one I farm out to one of the companies that sells t-shirts online and at the conventions. Well, it's an option...
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