Wrongness... ahh, the Japanese Wrongness.

As many of you know, I am a fan of many anime (though not all; there's a lot that sucks, just like American TV). I have found many of their shows eye-opening and entertaining.

Unfortunately, the Japanese also appear to have perfect the art of WTF Wrong!

It was roseembolism that started me thinking about this this morning, with her post on the Totally Kawaii Watchmen. The Watchmen done up as Kawaii Anime Girls.

Now, that was pretty darn Wrong. But not as wrong as what USED to be at this address: http://www.yamabuki.sakura.ne.jp/~ilek-vad/hpl/cg/

Alas, it is no longer there. It *WAS* a collection of the Great Old Ones (Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, etc.) done as Kawaii Anime Girls.

Then we have the CHARACTERS who are the epitome of Wrong. Sometimes their Wrongness is heroic, sometimes it's simply WTF? SWEATDROP! WRONG!

We'll begin with the truly heroic Wrong of Major Alex Louis Armstrong from Fullmetal Alchemist. Armstrong is a powerful alchemist, a couragous fighter, a loyal friend... and Utterly WTF Wrong. Filled with Pink Sparkly Wrongness.

Then, from Naruto, we have Mighty Guy/Might Gai and his "now I duplicate my sensei" student Rock Lee. Gai is a tremendously strong warrior, a hard teacher, a courageous man... and Totally , Utterly Wrong. In this video we have a frightening look at him and his student Rock Lee with terribly strong Yaoi implications (except that there's no actual evidence that Rock Lee is "like that" -- he's expressed very significant interest in girls). The Smile! The Sparkle! The Wrong!

Descending farther into Wrongness, you can search on YouTube for Patalliro!, which is FILLED with Wrong, starting with the title character and going from there.

And perhaps the ultimate in Wrong is the show Bobo-Bobobo. I cannot DESCRIBE the Wrongness in this show. In fact, my mind tries to BLOT OUT my memory of the show.

Fear the Wrong.

Just finished watching "Tin Man"...

...and my question is, how in the HELL did Sci-Fi make THIS? I mean, it's GOOD!

I saw little pieces of it before, and as an Oz fan I twitched and avoided it. But Kathleen watched the beginning of it and felt it showed promise, so we decided to take a chance and get it.

Contrary to my original impression, despite all the drastic outward changes, this is a very "Ozzy" story in many ways. It's an ADULT story -- that is, it hasn't got the innocent and overly-shiny polish on it that the original books did, targeted as they were to children around 10 or so -- but it's still very much of the right SPIRIT. This contrasts markedly with things like Farmer's "A Barnstormer in Oz" and Maguire's "Wicked", which completely miss the POINT, as far as I'm concerned, or -- worse -- deliberately twisting it around in the sort of way I find most painful.

Instead, "Tin Man" gives us an Oz struck, many years after we knew it, with disaster, of a particularly Ozzy sort, and needing to be rescued -- in a way that parallels the original story, of course. But not so closely that we can know everything that happens.

It's a VERY clever show, well crafted, well paced, well acted, with tributes and nods to both the classic movie AND to the original written novels (one particularly nice point is that when we get a glimpse of the original Dorothy, she's wearing the SILVER (not ruby) Slippers.

Also, as Kathleen pointed out, it was essentially CLEAN. Unlike most Sci-Fi channel offerings, there wasn't really anything in it that we couldn't let our 12 year old watch if we wanted. The biggest piece of fanservice amounted to a push-up bra that didn't reveal any more than you are likely to see during any summer day anywhere in the U.S. There was almost no bad language, either.

The actors playing the parts that paralleled the original Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, and Tin Man were *AMAZING*. While these were in many ways very different characters, the actors carefully wove in mannerisms, expressions, and movements that were taken directly from their respective actors in the classic Wizard of Oz movie (Ray Bolger, Burt Lahr, and Jack Haley).

Overall, an excellent piece of work. I'm glad I've seen it.