"Eeeeee-yah!" explained the ninja

In the last month I read a Laura Kinsale romance novel, THE SHADOW AND THE STAR, in which the romantic lead is a blonde ninja from Hawaii, and a middle-grade adventure novel, BLUE FINGERS, in which the main character is a Japanese farm boy who becomes a ninja.

Both are well-researched when it comes to martial arts, although both take the entirely forgivable liberty of portraying legend as fact within their novels, but both also picked up a curious misconception which I think they thought really was a fact. It's one that I've come across a number of times before in books which are otherwise fairly accurate when it comes to martial arts, but were written by people who had done the research but don't train.

It's that yell. You know the one. "Haaaiiiii-yah!" "EEEEEEEEEE!" "Ai-soh!" "HUH!"

It's called a kiai. Technically, it's not a yell (which comes from the throat) but a... whatever it is that comes from the diaphragm, the place you're taught to project from if you've ever studied acting or public speaking. There's a lot of ideas about why we kiai-- to psych ourselves, to express our spirit, to scare our opponents, to empty the breath from our lungs and tighten our bellies so it won't hurt if we get smacked-- but there are several things the kiai is not.

It is not something that you practice as a separate technique, or at least I've never seen anyone doing so. You kiai as you execute another technique, like a punch or kick. You don't go to the dojo and stand still while practicing your kiai.

More importantly, it is not a magic psychic ki attack. I assume writers are getting the idea that it is from the common translation, which is "spirit shout." But you cannot stand still and yell at your opponent and have your vocally projected ki knock them flying. At least, if anyone can do that, I would really like to see it.

Also, a "silent kiai" is expelling your breath with the same feeling but without the yell, and is generally done when you're trying to train without disturbing the neighbors. It is not a magic psychic ki attack where you silently project your ki at someone and make them drop dead.

So if you write a book with a magic psychic ki attack, please do not call it a kiai. The kiai is something else. (In karate, anyway. If there are magic ki-projecting kiais in aikido, I'm sure my readers who study it will let me know.)

Also, it's fine to write a novel, which is generally understood to be fiction, in which ninjas dislocate every bone in their bodies as children so that later in life they can dislocate them at will in order to fit into tight spaces and cast funny-looking shadows. However, you should not have an afterword which states that ninjas really did this, or at least not without citing a source for it. An explanation of how this practice would do anything other than weakening every joint in your body and causing them to spontaneously dislocate at inconvenient times would also be good.

This has been your Public Service Ninja Announcement for the day. Thank you.

Haibane Renmei

This is an original anime (no manga) by Yoshitoshi Abe, who also worked on Serial Experiments Lain. I've seen the title translated as "Charcoal Feather Federation" and "Ash Wing Society."

This was a change of pace.

A girl dreams of falling, and emerges from a cocoon in a dusty store room. She knows that she had a life and a name before, but she can't remember what or where. She is greeted by a bunch of girls with tiny flightless wings and halos.

They are the Haibane, who live with each other in a walled city. Humans also live in the city, which has no contact with the outside world except through masked traders, called Haibane Renmei, who communicate only in a secret sign language. The trader's masks, not incidentally, look like key holes. The Haibane's lives and contact with humans are formalized, and they are treated as second-class citizens.

Who are they? Why the wings and halos? What in the world is going on here?

The animation is smooth and fluid, and the watercolor backdrops are gorgeous and finely detailed. The characters are not drawn with the huge eyes and long legs common to anime but as simplified real people, and some of the backdrops are almost photo-realistic. The colors are all soft pastels and earth tones, the pace is meditative, and the mood is one of pastoral mystery. The score is lovely.

The only thing I can think of that's even remotely like this is MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, which was also about exploring a strange landscape while attending to the details of everyday life. HAIBANE RENMEI is less colorful but more dependent on mystery, and there are suggestions early on that the underlying workings of the society could be quite sinister, or at least dangerous.

This is a wonderful show. I was concerned that the mysterious set-up with have a stupid or reductionist interpretation and the show would come to a bad end. This doesn't happen. The mysteries of the Haibane (the angel people) and the Haibane Renmei (the masked folk in charge of them) are never explained outright, but gradually become clear as much through atmosphere as through events.

I don't want to give too much away, for while the explanation is not really surprising, it plays out in a very emotionally powerful way. A secondary character takes on major importance and the pace begins to accelerate, leading to an intensely moving conclusion.

This isn't much like anything else I've ever encountered and nothing like any other anime I've seen, even though the set-up is eventually revealed to be a familiar one. But the sense that personal spiritual battles are taking place every day while you're frying eggs and scrubbing the floor is reminiscent of C. S. Lewis in theme, if not in style.

I highly recommend this.

Avoid the Chinese or Hong Kong release, which has horrible subtitles which are overly literal and sometimes inaccurate. I had to look up a fan website to clarify a significant plot point because the translation made no sense. The subtitles on the US Pioneer DVDs are much better.

Haibane Renmei

This is an original anime (no manga) by Yoshitoshi Abe, who also worked on Serial Experiments Lain. I've seen the title translated as "Charcoal Feather Federation" and "Ash Wing Society."

This was a change of pace.

A girl dreams of falling, and emerges from a cocoon in a dusty store room. She knows that she had a life and a name before, but she can't remember what or where. She is greeted by a bunch of girls with tiny flightless wings and halos.

They are the Haibane, who live with each other in a walled city. Humans also live in the city, which has no contact with the outside world except through masked traders, called Haibane Renmei, who communicate only in a secret sign language. The trader's masks, not incidentally, look like key holes. The Haibane's lives and contact with humans are formalized, and they are treated as second-class citizens.

Who are they? Why the wings and halos? What in the world is going on here?

The animation is smooth and fluid, and the watercolor backdrops are gorgeous and finely detailed. The characters are not drawn with the huge eyes and long legs common to anime but as simplified real people, and some of the backdrops are almost photo-realistic. The colors are all soft pastels and earth tones, the pace is meditative, and the mood is one of pastoral mystery. The score is lovely.

The only thing I can think of that's even remotely like this is MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, which was also about exploring a strange landscape while attending to the details of everyday life. HAIBANE RENMEI is less colorful but more dependent on mystery, and there are suggestions early on that the underlying workings of the society could be quite sinister, or at least dangerous.

This is a wonderful show. I was concerned that the mysterious set-up with have a stupid or reductionist interpretation and the show would come to a bad end. This doesn't happen. The mysteries of the Haibane (the angel people) and the Haibane Renmei (the masked folk in charge of them) are never explained outright, but gradually become clear as much through atmosphere as through events.

I don't want to give too much away, for while the explanation is not really surprising, it plays out in a very emotionally powerful way. A secondary character takes on major importance and the pace begins to accelerate, leading to an intensely moving conclusion.

This isn't much like anything else I've ever encountered and nothing like any other anime I've seen, even though the set-up is eventually revealed to be a familiar one. But the sense that personal spiritual battles are taking place every day while you're frying eggs and scrubbing the floor is reminiscent of C. S. Lewis in theme, if not in style.

I highly recommend this.

Avoid the Chinese or Hong Kong release, which has horrible subtitles which are overly literal and sometimes inaccurate. I had to look up a fan website to clarify a significant plot point because the translation made no sense. The subtitles on the US Pioneer DVDs are much better.

Never miss a chance to show off

(Or to bail on the project you're supposed to be writing in order to feed the title of your upcoming book into google.)

http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/bdf/

This is so surreal. Six months ago I was getting rejected with comments like "overwritten and unpublishable" and "not ready for publication" and "interesting but uncommercial" and "we just weren't enthusiastic enough about the writing," and now I'm a "leading client" of a major agent.

I really don't know what to say. Except that I didn't write back to any of those rejectors to say, "You're mean, I hate you, and I could kick your ass." Though I do confess that I really hoped that they all read the edition of Publisher's Marketplace which listed the sale of my book and cursed their stupidity.

At some point I will get an actual website (anyone here design websites?) and put some goodies for unpublished or mostly unpublished writers on it. I've heard that we often write books because we want to read them, only they don't exist yet. Before I managed to hook up with the brilliant Brian, there were two things I really wanted to read: an actual query letter that had successfully hooked an agent or publisher, and accounts of authors who faced insulting rejections (with actual quotes) for ages before selling their book. When I get a website, those are going on there (without attributions, of course), to encourage people during what can be an incredibly discouraging process.

Never miss a chance to show off

(Or to bail on the project you're supposed to be writing in order to feed the title of your upcoming book into google.)

http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/bdf/

This is so surreal. Six months ago I was getting rejected with comments like "overwritten and unpublishable" and "not ready for publication" and "interesting but uncommercial" and "we just weren't enthusiastic enough about the writing," and now I'm a "leading client" of a major agent.

I really don't know what to say. Except that I didn't write back to any of those rejectors to say, "You're mean, I hate you, and I could kick your ass." Though I do confess that I really hoped that they all read the edition of Publisher's Marketplace which listed the sale of my book and cursed their stupidity.

At some point I will get an actual website (anyone here design websites?) and put some goodies for unpublished or mostly unpublished writers on it. I've heard that we often write books because we want to read them, only they don't exist yet. Before I managed to hook up with the brilliant Brian, there were two things I really wanted to read: an actual query letter that had successfully hooked an agent or publisher, and accounts of authors who faced insulting rejections (with actual quotes) for ages before selling their book. When I get a website, those are going on there (without attributions, of course), to encourage people during what can be an incredibly discouraging process.