Obscure Adventures in Geek and Nerd Culture

Channel K, otherwise a popular tv station in military controlled Myanmar, has its own festival teleplay show, ‘A Drama I don't want to forget’, which has gotten a bizarre reimagining of the Broadway Tarzan musical in its first season.  Two of the actors known to regular Burmese theatre goers are Myo Shwe Mann and Ko Po Chit (Tar Phoe Chit), who starred in such a frankly crazy early episode of this teleplay show.  It is a frankly entertaining experience.

The Yuasa Lineage Yuasa School  Masaaki Yuasa  Michio Mihara (by adoption)  Nobutaka Ito  Naoyuki Asano  Hiroto Nagata  *Tellingly, the Yuasa effects and character acting school is a downplayed hybrid of Kanada and expressionist styles as with that of the Asano school, yet tends to lean into less boredom inducing scenarios. However, it’s not quite closely related to the Mao Lamdo school lineage and is still more related to the Asano school, even though it feels similar to the former. Tokura Yamashita School  Kazuko Nakamura > Norimoto Tokura  Shingo Yamashita  *The unlikeliness of Shingo Yamashita’s effects lineage having survived the influential pre-Kanadafication age of Japanese tv is a telling indicator, since it began with Kazuko Nakamura. Nakamura indeed was one of the most influential Mushi Pro and Toei animators alive, which meant that Tokura himself has now gained a school of fellow distinct animators, who don’t just adhere to some...

Vlaamse Filmpjes, the modernisation of postwar period Vlaamse Filmkens, remains a much longer runner than its predecessor’s Francophone spinoff Presto Films. It’s pretty telling when Presto Films’ sole major claim to fame is perhaps Jean Ray’s Hirro the Jungle Boy, which is basically a Tarzanesque shipwreck story cashing in on the Jungle Book expy trend.  The first postwar period is known for tropical stories which not just have felt too colonialist even for the 1960s, but are often offensive to almost everyone involved except for grandparents who vote for hyper corrupt politicians regardless of any political wing. Nonetheless, there is a good reason why even it evolved positively from featuring such boring, stodgy colonialist stories into darker and edgier, also more mindful, weekly Shōnen Magazine style contemporary stories. But that was before the third period has now become a mild Shōnen Jump style Mecca for Flemish school stories and fantasies from the early 2000s onward....