martes, 14 de septiembre de 2010

Cuenca. Part 4.

OK, Let´s wrap up Cuenca with the last findings and some randomness i found in there.

This is the "Torre de Mangana"


This is located at the top of Cuenca, and can be seen from all the city. It´s an entirely different building from the Parador, and it´s located a bit far located from it. It´s reconogised as one of the Symbols of Cuenca, and what the SnW creators did was basically Copy - Paste it into the Time Telling Fortress, which considering that the belfry makes a quite particular but beautifull sound, and the Clock on both sides of the tower, makes a lot of sense.

At the time i went there, the street the tower sits on was being remodeled and was mostly closed, it didn´t look anything presentable, so i didn´t bother much with pictures.



Most of the spots up to this point were from the east side of the city, the next ones are from the west side.

Starting with this. I explained at the beginning that you can drive to the top of Cuenca, well, this passway is located at one side of that road, and it´s been used in episodes 4 and 7. Again, another case of passing beside it a couple of times until i reconogized it. It looks like the Balcony has suffered a bit of an encounter with a truck or a bus...


 House seen in episodes 6 and 10, from both sides. Here´s a clear example of how much attention to detail the animators have taken on this series, see how they respected the name of the street on the top left, the wild plants growing into the wall, the colors of the curtains, the streetlamp, the buildings in the background mostly match the real ones, the sign you see behind Kanata matches the one of a real pub there... 
   


 Sometimes i wonder if most of this is just photoshop work, but considering the angles of some of the shots, and looking a bit in detail i don´t really think so, and either way i don´t care because it looks fantastic.



This 2 are a couple of spots that Rio and Kanata walk by on episode 10. You know, one of the things that i noticed at this trip, is that i gained a 3d sense over the anime. I mean, i can tell what kind of walk Rio and Kanata took, where they came from and where did they go, and specially in that meaningful scene, feels nice.



Well let me take you to the last 2 spots. Actually we have been quite close to these over the walkthrough, but i saved them for the last. First one is actually in a side street at the "Plaza de mangana", at the top of Cuenca (Part 1). From the spot Kanata rests in episode 1 after losing Rio´s bell, looking straight, we see this stairs.


And this is what they hide. The spot where the fire maiden ceremony in EP.1 happens. When i started this trip, i knew i would find lots of exact spots where action happens in the series, but i had my doubts about some of them, that maybe were created by the animators to suit their needs better. I am glad that this place exists, and unlike the rest of Cuenca, which was mostly tourist crowded, this was mostly alone.


As most of the people who liked SnW, the fire maiden legend, and "Servente de Feu" left an impression on me, so i decided to "Live the dream" miself... Walking to this spot late at night, while listening the OST in my Ipod, was quite a moment...


 Beautiful views from here. And once again they match the ones in the anime, IMHO this has been an anime done with lot´s of attention and love.

 

And to finish up, let´s go back to the cliffs in the beginning. Because there´s a particular rock in there which took my attention. This is the actual rock Kanata climbs in order to search for Rio´s bell in Episode 4, late in the afternoon, with that nice view of Seize in the background, while that wonderfull piece of music begins so sound.

 

The picture looks otherwise, but it´s a couple of meters tall, and the access itself is quite hard, i would have loved to climb it to get the exact view kanata has, but that would have gotten dangerous...

OK, i´m sorry to report that this is the end of my findings in Cuenca, but still we have to go see "La Ciudad Encantada" and Alarcon. But first let me show a you couple of interesting things about Cuenca.

Cuencas old part is famous for it´s "Skyscrappers". These are quite curious, because the facade on the outer side of the building, looks as tall as 6 or 7 stores, while on the inner side, they are only 3 or 4 stores tall up to street level.

This is how they look from the outer side.


 And this is how they look on the street side. BTW, those arcs in the back are from the City hall building, in case you didn´t guess it, first time i got through here i did guess it on the spot.


In SnW, you can see some street cats here and there, well, this is not casual as the old part of Cuenca is full of them. I bet the producer team liked them on their trip to Cuenca and included them in the series...



I am more of a petrolhead than an otaku, a car otaku if you like. So i can´t help taking some pictures of cars that took my attention, so here they are in case you are interested.

A Lamborghini Murcielago parked next to my hotel, a last restyling one. This is how a super car should look like: Big, Low, Fat and Ridiculous. The cost of a single bodypanel of a car like this is worth way more expensive than my poor old Astra (in the front).



But i bet the Lambo would be unable to drive through here! As i mentioned before, most of the old part of Cuenca is driveable, but most of it´s streets are tight. At this spot i asked miself if it was a joke to let open a street this narrow, even if it was a back street. The walls were full of car marks, and my mirrors had less than 2 fingers of margin on each side, had to take a picture of this as a memento.

If you are american, and you have wondered why the european cars are so small compared to yours, well this is one of the reasons, and you should see our underground parkings!


 Wow, it had been serious years since i last saw a Lada 2107, even the older Seat 124s outnumber them by miles. This was parked at the street where the 1121 parks it´s vehicles, before the "Casas Colgadas". If you wanna survive the bird war, this is the kind of car you need: Tough, simple and rude, and when it breaks down, you can fix it with a screwdriver, gumtape and zipties.


Kübelwagen!! Well, not really... I found it in the Plaza de Mangana, parked close to a Citroen Dyane 6, again, the kind of vehicles to survive a war. Not really a rare car, but reminded me of the 1121 choiced car.


 This one was amazing. This house is located on the top of Cuenca, near the cliffs where i started the trip. What do you expect you can find hidden behind these bushes?


If my knowledge is right, that´s a 1950´s Unimog!! I don´t know if this was a runner but looked quite decent. If you don´t know awhat an Unimog is, they are offorad multipurpose trucks build by Mercedes Benz, and it´s one of the toughest and most versatile vehicles in the world, because they can be converted to a huge variety of works, like snowplowing, adventure camper, off road fire fighter, military uses... These things are rare in Spain. Looks like the owner of this is already prepared in the event that a huge bird starts railgunning Cuenca...


And finally, the real life Tank - Kun. This must be the only Moe tank in the world, because how else can you name a pink tank?


This tank, obviously abandoned, is located about a couple of kilometers from Cuenca, driving through the worst patch of road in the world, together with some TV repeater antennas. I readed about this on some random web and decided to take a look, i don´t know if it´s just ridiculous or awesome.


Out of all the retarded graffity, one anon in 4Chan pointed out the one in the turret. I don´t usually give a damn about this kind of messages, but that one, thinking on terms of the history of SnW, and specially thinking in EP.7, it may take some sense...


Estais muertos 
Ni patria 
Ni bandera 
1 patriota...1 idiota! 
¡Mierda de sociedad!

Translation (poor, sorry):

You are Dead 
Neither country 
Neither flag 
1 Patriot... 1 Idiot 
!!Fucking Society!!

Well. This wraps up the part of Cuenca. Gotta say that all the pictures of the blog have been taken through the course of 3 days, not in this order, but i decided to get them together to be as organized as possible.


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