Opalsong's Ekele

 
Image: sunlight through yellow maples at Afton State Park

Yesterday, Shawn woke up with a migraine. She gets these a lot, but there must have been something about this one because, even though she decided to go to PT, the rest of the day was a wash.  The PT was even touch and go. She and I sat in bed a couple of extra hours debating the merits of going or not. She felt that having not quite mastered the most recent exercise meant that she should postpone and reschedule. That sounded valid to me, but then I also asked what would be the benefit in going... and she talked herself into the idea that maybe the physical therapist would have some mini-steps she could practice so that she *could* figure out the exercise. 

So, I grabbed a bit of extra coffee for the road, turned off the coffee maker, and we headed out.

I sort of thought that this late start would be it--the end of a nice little break to the rushing, workday routine. But, lately Shawn and I have been taking detours on the way to work to look at the early morning sunlight through the golden, orange, and blazing red maple leaves. At this point, Sunday's wind took down a lot of the showiest displays, but there are still plenty of trees here and there that are in their full glory.  At one point, when we were admiring a tree, I jokingly said (as I often do, keep in mind) that if she was feeling poorly, she could just skip and we could go on a leaf peeping adventure. Maybe a drive down to Red Wing? Maybe all the way to Wabasha?

She wasn't sure she was up for that, but then, to my utter surprise, she said, "But how about Afton State Park?"

So we went. 

Afton never has really spectacular fall colors, though. Afton is largely prairie, oak savvana, and oak woodland.



Image: The Wisconsin Bluffs from the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River, very oak, much brown.

But it was a really, really lovely sunny morning and the view down on the picnic area's dock was absolutely spectacular.


Image: the azure expanse of sky and river on the St. Croix (from Aspen State Park)

All this touching grass, though? Very much exhausted the migrainer. So, we came home, had a little bit of a lunch and faceplanted until dinner time.  I would normally be chagrined to have slept so long in the afternoon, but between the gig last night and the fact that Mason was flying home from Oklahoma City at 12:30 AM (that's in the morning!) I figured it was fine. I was, in fact, able to stay awake until he was deplaning around 1:00 am. 

For those of you just tuning in, Mason has a romantic partner, Jas, down in Oklahoma. They are doing the long distance thing very well so far, but they do like to punctuate it with actual togetherness as much as they can afford. Next planned trip is to try to coax Jas up here for... Minnesota WINTER.

Wish Mason luck. I think he's gonna need it.

 A friend of mine from my D&D group (Nick) suggested that we go see Chainsaw Man: The Reze Arc together.

After my experience with Psycho-Pass: Providence, I suggested we see the subtitled version even though that meant seeing it in IMAX and at 10:30 pm. The tl;dr of the link above is that, because I tend to watch my anime in Japanese with subtitles, I actually had a hard time telling who was speaking when I watched a dubbed movie of a franchise I am super familiar with. I was surprised how many scenes required me being able to know who was speaking---when a character was on the phone or had their back to the audience--and how similar English-speaking voice actors seem to be in terms of regional accent and vocal range. I feel like, even though my understanding of Japanese is minimal, I do subconsciously detect Kansai dialect when I hear it and so even when Japanese VAs vocal ranges are similar, I know who is who. Anyway, you can read my whole rant about it linked above, if you want. 

Back to last night's movie...

I am a moderate fan of Chainsaw Man. I reviewed the first couple of volumes of the manga in January of 2022 and found it decidedly OKAY. Denji's boob obsession kind of turned me off on the page. But, when it became super popular and the anime came out in December of 2022, I watched it and sort of understood the hype. Although I will say that Mason and I were also watching Jujutsu Kaisen at the same time as Chainsaw Man, only we had a break in between seasons of Jujutsu Kaisen because we were watching together and he had this pesky thing called a college education, and when we returned to Jujutsu Kaisen, I was often like, "Yuji? I thought his name was Denji."  (To be fair to me: both demon hunters who are aligned with demons themselves, both kind of stupid boys, both in funky little trio poly situations with a dark-hair dorm mom-boy.)  

Given my inability to distinguish between these two mega hits, I was grateful for the fact that the movie wouldn't be starting until late because that gave me a chance to rewatch a lot of the series. Crunchyroll has this condensed version you can watch which is good because it seemed clear to me from the trailer that I was going to be expected to remember who was who and what had happened previously. I actually got through most of it before Nick showed up. He showed up early, actually, so we sat and watched a half hour or so on the porch.The original anime doesn't exactly end on a cliffhanger, but I was glad we reviewed it because I'd forgotten about the shark demon, Beam. 

The movie was... FINE. I mean, I was telling Mason this morning when he asked about it, it didn't really feel like a continuation of the story in a if you don't watch this, you're missing something sort of way. He said, "So more of a character development piece?" I nodded, but added, "In so much as Denji has a personality beside boobs. This movie his character development can be summed up as: which is more important? The boobs I imprinted on, or NEW boobs? (And both sets of boobs want to kill him.)"

But it was fun to go out. The IMAX wasn't standing room only, but it was decently packed for a 10:30 pm movie. The crowd was all otaku, of course, and at least one person cosplayed Denji. (I mean, the nice thing about cosplaying any of the Public Safety Division is that they basically dress like salarymen so all you have to do is pull of anime hair.) It's been a while since I've been in a crowd that young. 

For reasons known only to AMC Roseville, there were a RIDICULOUS number of previews before the movie. Like a dozen? It was far more than what I've come to expect, and I LIKE movie previews!  Only a couple of them were for other anime movies, so think they were sort of scattershotting the crowd hoping to lure some of us back with something, ANYTHING. 

Nick is someone I've known since college. He used to be one of my best friends, but we grew apart benignly, unintentionally. We struggled a bit to land on any subject to explore deeply in part, I think, because Nick has latched on to the fact that we have anime in common. And, as discussed here previously, saying you have anime in common is a little like saying you have TV in common. Finding the places where the Venn Diagram overlaps can be difficult, even among very voracious fans. I'm a tough one to match up with, too, because I tend to read more manga than I watch anime and some of the stuff I loved as manga never had an anime made!  And these days, of course, a lot of anime are being made from light novels or are entirely studio produced. (To be fair, Psycho-Pass was entirely studio produced and that didn't stop me from loving it, but the number of people who have seen that is small and so the Venn Diagram doesn't often connect there.)

Nick is very self-consciously fond of magical girl series, too, which is not a genre I often connect with. I do... sometimes, but I'm more often knee deep in shounen (see above.) But, we had a nice time doing that thing that fans will sometimes resort to wherein, since we have only the meta-genre/format in common, he told me the plot summaries of his favorites and I did the same for him. 

A good night out, all and all.