Monthly Archives: December 2010

Cambrian I: Tube…things

I’ve reeived via my trusty courier the two episodes of a curious anime series called Cambrian, acquired by me because there was alleged to be some sort of mad science going on in there.  It was put out in mid-decade by Milky Animation, an outfit whose website is I think here.  Anyone out there with real Japanese literacy skills is of course welcome to correct me on this if I’ve got it wrong.

Yes, some.  On the surface this appears to be just a standard tits ‘n tentacles story, albeit a fairly compressed one containing only five characters of any consequence:  Senior Mad Scientist, Hot Lady Scientist, Junior Mad Scientist, Bad Girl, and Nerdy Assistant.    The opening scene has some appeal.  As best I understand it, Senior Mad Scientist has figured out some means of “speeding up” evolution through “radiation waves.”  Obviously evolution does not work the same in anime world as it does in the real world.  In the real world, evolution is a process through with there is differential success of replicators (genes, in the case of biological evolution), a blind, goal-free process which nonetheless results in various kinds of exquisite design.  In the anime world, by way of contrast, evolution is a goal-directed process.  And the τέλος at which this process is aimed is turning all creatures great and small into things very muscular, tentacular, and rapey.  (Ol’ Aristotle would have been so proud to see this philosophical development.)

So anyway we open with a pretty good lab scene.  Senior Mad Scientist has speeded up evolution and has a lab full of tubes of…well, I’m not really sure.

He analogizes his (rather questionable) achievement to the “Cambrian Explosion,” all the while addressing what appears to be a female experimental victim inside the lab.

Unsurprisingly nude female victim will be writhing in ecstasy within a few frame.  And slain within a few frames more.  Genre!

Anwei transformation art by Bokuman

Here in the Northeastern United States we’ve been enduring some rather frigid weather and short, dark days of late.  What better way to find relief for ourselves than to journey to some warm tropical beach somewhere?  Well, we can do that in imagination at least, with the help of the prolific Peruvian artist Bokuman, who’s drawn for us the epilogue scene from The Apsinthion Protocol.

(Click on the image to see it in larger size. Creative Commons License
Anwei Transformation by Bokuman and commissioned by Dr. Faustus of EroticMadScience.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.)

The scene Bokuman is illustrating is this one:

EXT. A BEACH SOMEWHERE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA – DAY

Corwin and Anwei stand on the beach, which is otherwise deserted.

CORWIN

This is very risky of you to attempt, Anwei.

ANWEI

However risky, if there’s even a small chance that Nanetta and Moira succeeded in doing what you think it was they were trying to do, then this has to be done.

CORWIN

Try to re-establish contact with Howard’s species. Get their trust back. See what of Nanetta and Moira might have made through. But do you really think you can succeed?

anwei

I have been through many iterations of the Apsinthion Protocol since we first improvised it for that…emergency. My body has absorbed a lot of apsinthion chemistry in that time, and I feel I am beginning to undergo certain…changes that might make it possible for me to survive out there.

Anwei holds up her right hand.

EXTREME CLOSE UP: anwei’s right hand

Larger-than-normal webbing has is to be seen between her fingers.

back to scene

CORWIN

It still seems somehow very uncertain.

ANWEI

I can’t not do this, Joseph.

CORWIN

I agree.

Anwei disrobes completely, folds her clothing, and hands it to Corwin.

ANWEI

I am ready.

CORWIN

Go then.

Corwin kisses Anwei gently on the forehead.

Anwei wades out into the surf, then dives in and disappears.

FADE OUT.

I’ve always greatly enjoyed Bokuman’s illustrations, especially the voluptuous attention he gives to female figures, but what pleases me most about what he has done here is the attention he paid to Anwei’s facial expression and body language. The illustration presents an interpretation of the story, and a most interesting one as well. Anwei has predicted her transformation from a land creature into a sea creature. She has accepted it intellectually. But now that it’s actually happening it’s implications are beginning to come home viscerally, and she is registering a moment of awe, surprise, even fear as they do, even as Anwei is about to dive in.

I think Bokuman is really clear on the concept, don’t you?

Colorful event

I don’t know if any mad science was intended here, but this animated gif of a female orgasm sure partakes of the erotic mad science aesthetic, if nothing else.  And it’s also someone’s splendid example of making vis own.

Found at the appropriately named site LSDEX.  Some of the linked-to posts are equally trippy-erotic.

Tube girls without the mad science

And sometimes, of course, the serendipity of search turns up things you would never have thought of.  This image also comes up under “tube girl” if you look hard enough, in a blog post with the somewhat awkward title “Beauty fever pipe tube exercise because of olympics.”

No mad science I can perceive here, but I must say that what these Chinese women are doing is certainly an impressive (and sexy) display of athleticism.

And one of the same different kind

Following up on yesterday’s theme:

This might be a whole new sub-genre!  Found at the site of a company called Eurotubes, naturally.

This post image and yesterday’s leads to a further reflection on the whole girls-and-tubes meme and its relationship to erotic mad science.  I’m pretty sure that my surface analysis stands.  The “tube girl” illustration was probably primarily created as a getting crap past the radar means of doing implied nudity in pulp art, as well as an interesting variant on ever popular notion of the pretty girl in bondage/pretty girl in peril theme.  But of course the mad science thematics do go beyond that:  in the age in which the pulp art was created the core electronic component was the tube — the vacuum tube.  And of course a core bit of chemical apparatus was also a tube — a test tube.  Any self-respecting mad scientist’s laboratory would doubtless have been full of both kinds of tube.

No wonder I spend so much time on the strange (perhaps dumb) theme.