Arc the Lad, and a question

[thistlechaser]

Unfortunately, as mithas warned me, Arc the Lad seemed to be somewhat sucky. While the music was very dramatic (almost overly so), the animation was really poor, and as far as I could tell, the storyline and characterization were lacking.

I only watched two eps of it, and for all the trouble it gave me to download it, I wanted to give it more of a chance, but it turns out this simple little series was plotting the downfall of my computer:

You see, the Arc eps were .mkv files. "What are .mkv files," you ask? Well, so did I! I had to go on a merry hunt to figure out how to play them, and eventually I had to download a new player (like I need yet another?), patches, and some new codec's. These eventually let me watch the files though, so I was happy. Then, in preparation for this post, I needed to make a couple screenshots from an old Get Backers ep, so I fired Windows Media Player up. Crash, crash, crash. Every Single Video File On My Computer Caused A Crash! Arg! Panic, panic! So I uninstalled the special player for the .mkv files. That stopped the crashing, but now everything I played had a commercial watermarking on it! WTF? So I uninstalled everything else new, and finally got rid of that. Whew! So fortunately or un, no more Arc eps for me.

Just a couple screenshots, then the question:

The main character of Arc the Lad. Surprisingly, his name isn't Arc, it's Elk. The bad guy's name is Arc the Lad... which is a really snickery name for a bad guy.
Speaking of snickering, this was one of the monsters. Besides it being all floffy and blue, its "growling" was really, really funny. It was a human saying "grrr" and "arrr". Not a good human VA who can make realistic animal noises, you could actually just hear a man saying "grrr".

I didn't post this a few days back when I was talking about the Go series, but this is one of the two main characters. He's male, wears pink-purple lipstick, has earrings, and wears a very tall hat. I still snicker at the poor fellow sometimes -- I've never seen a more feminine man before!

---

Okay, so the question. This is mostly for anime people or people who know current Japanese stuff or people who know about dangly things. What are these called? One and another two? Are they keychains? Or do they have some other name? I almost want to say "dangles"?

Comments

[pure-trance.livejournal.com]

cell phone straps...not sure what the japanese name is for them though...

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Other folks have suggested "mascot", and thanks!

[pure-trance.livejournal.com]

I think that they are both correct...or maybe just the one that wasn't on the cell phone was...or was it a cell phone mascot...^^;; I'm not 100% sure on any of those....

[yachinami.livejournal.com]

The Japanese usually just refer to such things as "mascots". A variety of other prefixes can probably be stuck onto the word too.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ah, cool! Thank you!

[beckymarie.livejournal.com]

I got about six episodes into Arc the Lad before I had to finally admit defeat. The only character that really intrigued me was Shu and he barely got any screen time at all and it wasn't that the rest of it annoyed me or was bad, just... I couldn't concentrate on it. Nothing to hook me into it.

And as a side note, am I the only one who's really getting annoyed by all these new video formats? The Initial D episodes I've been eying are .mkv files and, argh, I barely tolerate OGM files (which I can never get the freaking subtitles to play on and I am NOT monkeying around with my codecs any more now that I've gotten the perfect combination!), and now there's yet another new type? Argh. *bitch, bitch, complain, bitch, moan*

^_~

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ah, well I'm glad I'm not missing something great on Arc. And yes! Too Many Formats! Why do we need another one? .mkv has to be the worst though, I've never gone through so much trouble for a file type before!

Do you have a viewer called VLC? It's my last straw -- the thing I use when nothing else works or will show subtitles. It's a pain because it tends to crash once per 20 minute ep, the ... slide thing to move you through the video doesn't work, and you can't make screenshots from it, but if all else fails, it usually works. (Other than for .mkv stuff.) It's the only thing I can watch my download of Trigun on, and it's also the reason I haven't watched any of those eps in ages. It's so much of a bitch to work with, unless I *really* want to watch something, it's not worth the trouble.

[metron-ariston.livejournal.com]

The little character goods are usually called mascots, so keychains will be mascot keychains and those things are mascot cell phone straps. A slightly spammy link for you if you want to buy any of them is http://www.animate-usa.com. It's basically run by a guy who goes to Japan, buys character goods, and sells them from the US so us buyers can avoid massive shipping charges, if we're able to find things at all. I got some stuff from him through my old job including these incredibly adorable sheets of tiny Fruits Basket stickers, and was all set to buy one or two of every other series he had when I got laid off. XP

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oh, perfect! Thanks, and thanks for the link as well!

Or maybe... Laddie. Here boy! C'mon, Laddie!

[peppygrowlithe.livejournal.com]

Arc the Lad actually started out, I believe, as a Playstation game. I'm pretty certain that the game begat the anime, though it's possible that I'm wrong... but in any case, that could quite easily explain the suckness. ;)

Shounen Jump is just now starting to put Go! into their magazine, and I'm in the same boat as you over that guy. I seriously - no joke - got through the entire thing thinking the ghost person was a girl, and was mortally shocked when the kid referred to him as "he". Even now I can hardly see it. Accursed gender confused Japanese - they try just as hard as you to traumatize me!

Re: Or maybe... Laddie. Here boy! C'mon, Laddie!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yep, you're correct, the video game came first.

And you should see the guy (Sai, I believe his name is) animated! You'd be even more confused. Hee.

Re: Or maybe... Laddie. Here boy! C'mon, Laddie!

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

The game series is supposed to be good though. I'm embarrassed to admit I've had the PS1 collection for a couple of months yet and haven't started, but they're supposed to be fun games!

.mkv files

[bouteillebleu.livejournal.com]

I've come across the same problem with a series being in .mkv form (in my case it's a series called Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito - which is quite a mouthful, and is thus called Yamibou for short).

I was going to install a whole load of codecs, but I'm rather petrified of messing up my setup, and one of my other codecs doesn't work either. So what I usually use to watch anime is mplayer. It's actually a Linux program, but there's a version for Windows too (I got it at ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/win32-beta/MPlayer-1.0pre2-win32.zip if that helps), and as far as I can tell it plays .mkv files without needing to install any codecs at all. Or anything, apart from mplayer itself. It's true that it involves getting another player, but you don't need to worry about installing any codecs with it, as far as I know - it comes with them already installed.

I've yet to test whether it'll play .ogm files, which are getting more popular nowadays. If I find out, I'll let you know. :)

Re: .mkv files

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Wow, cool! Thanks! I'll check it out tonight.

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

To avoid bizarre problems like these, my dad suggested to me when I got dragged into using XP was to make a restore point before installing any new problems. Then if the program does funky stuff to your computer, whether it's because it doesn't like XP or the program just sucks or whatever, it's really easy to fix the problem. He says it's saved his butt a number of times. I've not had to use it yet, as XP appears to actually like me for some reason, but since you have all kinds of problems with it, it could be a lifesaver.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the idea. And I'm not sure if this was a slip or not, but it amused me either way:

"...was to make a restore point before installing any new problems. Then if the program does funky stuff to your computer..."

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

*looks innocent* Yes, yes, that was definitely intentional, uh huh. *coughs*

Sheesh, why can't my fingers just keep up with my brain? It would solve so many problems. Or programs. Or whatever. ;)