Utena, Mishima, and Sakamoto

First of all, fuck yes my favorite anime series is finally getting the US release it deserves.  It was announced sometime last year that Nozomi Entertainment had acquired the rights for the Japanese remasters of Revolutionary Girl Utena, and I quite restlessly have been anticipating an actual release date for the collection ever since.  Nozomi are apparently good at publishing niche titles like this too, and they spent a lot of time licensing bonus content, so I am ridiculously excited to get this collection in my hands.  I have been holding off rewatching the series (which desperately needs to be done) specifically for these DVDs.  Nozomi is dividing the episodes into three box sets, which kind of sucks because I am impatient, and because the Student Council arc is the slowest one, but I can hardly complain.  The fact that these DVD collections are going to be a reality is sweet, and I need more pink things in my bookcase anyway.

Yesterday, I finished my second Yukio Mishima novel, Spring Snow.  I think I am starting to get a grasp on him as an author, but there are still a lot of things which fly swiftly past me.  I believe Owen Pallett referred to him as both his favorite and least favorite author--favorite because he loved Mishima's writing, and least favorite because he hated Mishima's ideas.  I can kind of get that vibe.  His writing is often absolutely gorgeous.  Obviously, I am reading a translation, so I unfortunately have no concept of his Japanese prose, but the images he uses and the way in which he describes people and concepts are wonderful.  He makes a story about romance among Japan's elite in the early 20th century a lot more interesting than that description makes it sound.  He also seems to be doing a Faulknerian (holy shit, that's a word?) kind of thing, i.e. lots of Faulkner's characters long for the "glory" and "nobility" of the Old South, which never really existed in the first place.  There's a similar attitude towards Imperial Japan in this novel, although I suspect that, whereas Faulkner's point was that the Old South was a pretty crappy place, Mishima himself actually yearns for the old days sans irony.  But, I've got three more books in this Sea of Fertility tetralogy to familiarize myself better with Mishima, and I am totally enjoying myself so far.

Not giving away too much, but parts of the novel have striking similarities to Joyce's story "The Dead."  Perhaps not enough to write an essay about, but interesting nonetheless.

While I am on the subject of Japanese things I really like, I just found this song yesterday.  It is further proof of the seemingly endless talent of Ryuichi Sakamoto, and I love this woman's voice.