Day: February 24, 2010

Putting faces to names

By now many of you have probably heard about the recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association about Tutankhamen.  What was fascinating to me was not so much his cause of death, but the revelations concerning his family tree.

At long last, we can now ascribe mummies to Tutankhamen’s relatives.  The mysterious body found in KV55 was found to be Tutankamen’s father and, given its genetic relationship to Amenhotep III, it’s almost certainly Akhenaten.  The Elder Lady found in KV35 is Queen Tiye, wife of Amenhotep III and mother of Akhenaten.  The Younger Lady who was found next to her is Tutankamen’s as-yet-unnamed mother.  Even more intriguingly, one of the mummies found in KV21 can be identified as the mother of the two embalmed fetuses placed in Tutankhamen’s tomb, which suggests that it’s the mummy of his wife, Ankhesenamen (though that can’t be proven yet).

Perhaps someday we’ll be able to learn more about the posthumous journeys made by Tiye, the Younger Lady, and Ankhesenamen.  Clearly, they were moved out of their original tombs at some point and taken to places of relative safety.  But none of them seem to have been treated well.  Ankhesenamen was left in a small uninscribed tomb with some other woman, while Tiye and the Younger Lady were found unwrapped on the floor of the tomb of Amenhotep II.  I can see why the Younger Lady and Ankhesenamen might get shitty treatment given their relationship to the Heretic King, but surely Tiye should have been treated better.

What I’ve watched: Wolf’s Rain

My Grade: C-

Every Sunday, my friend and I get together to watch anime and have dinner.  Over the years, we’ve watched a number of great series, including Fullmetal Alchemist, Cowboy Bebop, and Avatar: The Last Airbender.  We’ve also watched some not-so-great series, such as Bleach and Gilgamesh.  Recently, we finished Wolf’s Rain and, I have to say, it falls into the not-so-great category.

Let me start out by saying that I had high hopes for WR.  I first became aware of it several years ago when I found its closing theme (“Gravity”) used in some YouTube video.  But I promptly forgot about it until last December when the Physicist and I were looking to start a new anime series.  Much to my subsequent embarrassment, I suggested WR.

Like Bleach, WR gets off to a good start.  The whole premise of wolves masquerading as humans in a postapocalyptic, vaguely steampunk world was intriguing.  But it all goes downhill from there.  Most of the characters are so poorly developed that you don’t really care when they meet their Inevitable Tragic End, nor do you care about their inane subplots.  And the ending manages to be both depressing and ludicrous at the same time.

And then there are the recap episodes.  Despite the fact that the series is only thirty episodes long, WR has no less than four consecutive recap episodes in which the story so far is retold from the perspective of four different characters.  Of course they don’t end up being all that different from one another, so it just gets old really fast.  The whole thing just reeks of a production delay.  The only good thing about these recap episodes is that, in the American release at least, they’re all on the same disc, so they’re easy to avoid.

PROS

Nice Artwork

Nice Soundtrack

Cool Premise

CONS

Hamfisted Plotting

Paper-thin Characters

Pointless Recap Episodes