Ouran High School Host Club, ep. 01-08 (no spoilers)

Wow. I keep watching things that are more and more meta! I've been hearing about Ouran on my flist for quite some time, but I actually had no idea what it was. The extent of my knowledge was that it was a rather cracktastic shoujo anime set in high school, and that I tried to read the first vol. of the manga, but got completely lost because of the busy panels and the whiplash humor.

Ouran is a rather cracktastic shoujo anime set in high school, but what everyone failed to tell me was that it is so cracktastic because it lampoons various shoujo tropes and often slips into the realm of meta. It's great! I love it!

Ouran High School is incredibly rich, so much so that none of the host club members have ever tried something like instant coffee (my favorite part of the first episode involves a title reading: "The commoner prepares commoner coffee"). Alas, Haruhi is actually a bright, hard-working student from a "commoner" family (read: not super-duper-incredibly-unbelievably rich). Haruhi stumbles into the host club's domain one day and breaks an 8-million-yen vase, and as such, ends up being a fellow host in the club to repay the debt.

( Character intros )

Every time I watch an episode, I end up laughing hysterically on the sofa and waving my hands around, because it's so meta! It's basically a gaggle of the perfect bishounen, surrounded by a fanclub of squeeing girls who react exactly like fans do when confronted by perfect bishounen! I mean, they even have the twincest! They explain the appeal of the twincest! It is insane!

But! My absolute very favorite part is that the club has a manager who is a fangirl. She goes through everyone's attributes and their weak points, takes points off because they need more angst, and talks about things like "moe" and "the glasses type" (this in particular had me rolling on the floor, given a discussion at Wiscon).

And despite all this, I never get the sense that the creators are trying to make fun of fangirls or what they like; the club is largely presented as an organization that fills a particular gap in the girls' lives, and the hosts often act as yenta or fairy godmothers to gift other people with romance.

Yuki Kaori - Angel Sanctuary, vol. 08-12 (Eng. trans.)

( Spoilers )

Steinmeyer, Jim - Hiding the Elephant

(subtitle: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear)

jonquil recced this a while back, but I can't find a link for the life of me.

I only picked it up now because I saw The Prestige a few weeks ago. I also read a Penn & Teller book that teaches magic tricks, only to discover that I don't care at all about sleight of hand or card tricks. I like knowing about stage magic and the performers and their personalities, which is why both this book and The Prestige are so interesting.

Steinmeyer focuses largely on famous magicians during the golden age of magic (around turn of the century); he focuses even more on a series of discoveries, illusions and tricks that eventually resulted in Houdini's ability to make an entire elephant disappear in front of people's eyes. The book is an interesting blend of history, biography and science. Steinmeyer explains how many of the illusions work -- he assures the reader by saying that every one of his explanations has been previously published by others, so he's not spilling any trade secrets. He also goes into the rivalries between certain magicians, such as Houdini ranting about his namesake, Robert-Houdin's reputation, and the differences in philosophy among magicians (performance vs. technique, art vs. science). I was particularly interested in how a good magician can sell a trick through presentation, but again, this is probably because this was a theme covered in The Prestige.

Very fun book, and now I want to see a magic show live.