Monthly Archives: August 2008

The Stigma of Giant Robots

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First, no Kaze no Stigma jokes.

Okay? Okay.

Mecha is one of the main stereotypes of japanese animation, along with martial arts, sci-fi, and not being for kids. But despite being one of the first things many people think of when they see the word “anime” it somehow has gotten a negative reputation among many fans in the United States. People will turn away from a title if giant robots are involved, and the only Gundam series to ever truly be successful is Wing.

I have no issue with people not preferring giant robot anime, but what is bothering me is the idea that robots, be they real or super, are an automatic red flag for a lot of anime viewers.

What happened? I know that the large female otaku population tends not to be fond of titanium titans, but why do so many guys also brush these titles aside? Could it be that giant robots are no longer considered a staple of anime, that in the eyes of this newer generation of anime fandom it is something to be ignored? Are there certain tropes of robot animation, different from say, shounen fighting, which detracts from the viewing experience?

The Ending I Want for Code Geass

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Odysseus u Britannia, eldest son of Emperor Charles di Britannia, is the Hitou Nami of Code Geass. He is a man who did not find anything odd about being married to a tiny little girl. Had the marriage gone through, he probably would’ve spent their honeymoon making hot cocoa and playing board games with Tianzi. He is the master of milquetoast, the avatar of average, the sultan of sterile. Somehow, in a family of conniving psychos, Odysseus remains completely sane and, more importantly, completely alive.

As such, he is easily my favorite male character in Code Geass. And with that said, I can think of no better conclusion that for Odysseus to become the new Britannian Emperor while the rest of the royal family dies.

And the moral of this story would be…

And then stuff happened: More Real Shoopon?

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Before I realized it, it seems her pose is similar to a certain previous drawing.

Kyoto Animation to do 801-chan, Hiyorin and Konata cameos deemed inevitable

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When I first heard that Tonari no 801-chan was getting an anime, I was interested in seeing how they would adapt it to a full show. I figured that it would be something fairly low-budget and a decent show, but with the news that they of Haruhi and Lucky Star, those lords of chaos known as KyoAni, are going to be animating the show, well that changes things. 801-chan now has the potential to not only be a show that everyone’s talking about, but the show everyone’s talking about. I for one welcome new shows centered around the concept of the fujoshi.

One problem.

With KyoAni being the engine behind 801-chan, there’s a chance that Yaoi-chan will be the most popular fujoshi around.

And I cannot allow that to happen.

Flaw Magnification at Conventions

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A week after Otakon, about a month away from New York Anime Fest, and knowing my friends are going to PAX at the end of this month, I have conventions, or more specifically congoers, on my mind.

I support fans doing what they want with what they love. One might call it one of the pillars of the concept of fandom itself. However, even I find myself being at times bothered by some of the behavior at anime conventions, even things that I normally would not be too bothered by outside of a con. It bothered me as being hypocritical, and it still might be, but I knew something was different about each situation. I mean, a lot of things are different about a con, but the main one is that it’s a lot of similar people in one area.

When you have one person who loves being the center of attention, it’s a perfectly okay personality trait, especially when you have people who can reciprocate. However, when you have 100 of those attention-craving individuals, and ten times that many people reciprocating and giving them attention at the drop of a hat, it magnifies the negative facets. It’s like inbreeding, where the more it happens the more concentrated the disadvantageous genetics become (no Koi Kaze jokes, please). And because so many people ARE vying for attention, their individuality tends to get lost in the mix, making them faceless, making them “attention whores.”

Being the center of attention is just an example, and not any sort of focal point for criticism. And it doesn’t just apply to personality traits but also tangible ones as well. When everyone who is not in a costume is wearing a t-shirt (myself included), you start to notice that fact.

Once you get to know someone individually, this sort of thing almost always stops mattering, but it is in this initial stage, this first sighting, that these judgments are formed, for better or worse. Moreover, many geeks, nerds, dorks, and otaku are bad at making first impressions in the first place, so this doesn’t make it any easier.

And though I say this is “at Conventions,” I know that this is less about cons in particular and more about human behavior and the interaction between individuals and masses. This is just to put it all in a context which is meaningful to me so that I can think about it more readily.

Kaiba is a difficult show to watch

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A very good show yes, but a difficult one nonetheless.

Kaiba is a very intelligent show, but so are a lot of other shows. The difference, however, is that while something like Crest of the Stars appeals to the viewer’s intelligence, it does not actively try to challenge that intelligence as Kaiba does.

Crest of the Stars will say, “I assume you to be an intelligent person, and therefore I will provide you with tons of information so you can get a clear idea of what’s going on and better appreciate this fiction.”

Kaiba, on the other hand, will say, “I assume you to be an intelligent person, therefore it’s only right of me to push that intelligence further, to not only grease those wheels but to then burn them out as well.”

The result is that Kaiba can be rather exhausting, and it’s not the kind of show I would recommend for a marathon. This is exactly the reason why I haven’t finished it yet. Each episode presents so much, and asks so much of the viewer that it makes me wish I was some kind of brain cow with four organs to process it all.

This is one of those posts About Me, so don’t read it

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In the “About” section of Ogiue Maniax, I state that I “want to have a strong sense of its lifespan, to appreciate its history both in the context of the work itself as well as its influence in society throughout the world.” I think this accurately portrays my stance towards anime and other topics which I choose not to discuss on this blog, but I often wonder what made me the anime fan I am today. While a lot of it has to do with the shows I’ve watched and the fellow fans that I’ve known, that’s more of a “how” and not a “why.”

In a recent conversation with my mother, she told me that I was extremely inquisitive. I would always be asking, “Why?” Not to the extent that I’d be accompanied by a dog named Buttons perhaps, but she said that there were times when she would get fed up by my insistence on asking questions. A typical conversation would go something like:

Mom: Play with this toy. It’s fun.
Me: Why is it fun?

I remember a large amount of my childhood, but I don’t remember being so eager to learn why things are the way they are. I do remember that in high school, when a friend of mine would say he thought something sucked, I would get kind of agitated because he couldn’t back it up with why he thought it sucked. I thought this was something I developed around junior high, but apparently I was wrong.

So it might be the inevitable conclusion that I ended up interested in all those things “beyond” anime and manga: the history surrounding it all, the interaction of fans and creators, the way anime and manga differ from other forms of entertainment, not just on a qualitative level but emotional and societal levels as well.

I mean, this is probably why I devoted so many posts to discussing WHY I like Ogiue.

Otakon 2008 Artist’s Alley-ooplah

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I’ve heard recently that there was some kind of scheme going on at Otakon’s Artist’s Alley this year, where one or two artists bought around 14 tables and put their friends at each table to sell their artwork. Otakon is apparently looking for ways to prevent this incident, provided it actually happened.

I couldn’t find any reliable sources stating that this actually occurred, but it makes sense given the content of the artist’s alley this year, awesome Vegeta’s aside. As I went through the alley, I kept seeing this one specific, airbrushed style used on largel Shounen Jump characters. At first I wanted to make the joke that, huh, these asian girls sure do draw alike (and also draw like asian girls), but after the fourth and fifth artist’s table with the exact same style I started to get concerned. While I was there, I just thought it was an incidence where a bunch of artists really liked another artist and so they aped that style. I’ve seen one artist copying another’s style before, so it wasn’t too farfetch’d.

At best, this was just coincidence, and all that needs to happen is for a bunch of girls to try and find their own style, not just copy what they think looks good.

At worst, these people took away valuable artist’s alley tables that could have been better-used by those more deserving, regardless of the quality of the artwork itself. After all, the artist’s alley isn’t really about selling huge amounts, though I won’t fault you if you do make some hefty sacks of change. Well, provided it wasn’t done by completely eliminating someone else’s opportunity to show their art at a convention.

Looking back, it is pretty unusual that artist’s alley tables sold out so quickly this year, and this may go a long way in explaining it, provided it happened.

Anyone got any reliable sources I can use to verify this whole incident?

That Which Causes Me to Not Like Something, Part 1

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The vast majority of the time here on Ogiue Maniax, I talk about the shows I like or at the very least the shows which I think have merit in discussion. I prefer to be open-minded about shows of all kinds, though there are some genres I’ll get into less than others for a variety of reasons (boys’ love, for example). Still, as much as I want to say that every anime or manga has its day in the sun, there’s some criteria in which I will have to declare a show less-than-good, and not in a so-bad-it’s-good kind of way. Here is one of them.

When a show fails to reach my already low expectations, I will think less of it. Link, upon reading one of my reviews for My-Otome/My-ZHiME, informed that from what he’d heard, the My series was nothing but pure trash. My response was that I was fully aware of this, but it did not impact my enjoyment of the show. I expected nothing deep, and that’s what I got, as well as an excellent characters in a sort-of-okay story. Now, Tokyo Underground is a different story.

With Tokyo Underground, I looked at the show presented to me, one that was essentially “fighters with elemental powers hitting each other.” “Okay,” I thought, this is about as run-of-the-mill as you could get, so it shouldn’t disappoint. All you need is characters throwing lightning and fire at each other and maybe some training montages and the occasional powering up and development of new abilities. I got none of that. Instead, over the course of 26 episodes, only two new abilities for the main character were developed, with one of them simply being an enhanced version of his default special move. Whereas Dragon Ball Z had the courtesy of giving us the logic of “powering up makes you stronger,” fights in Tokyo Underground consisted of using the same attack over and over with no tangible change from one attempt to the next. 

I heard the manga is better though. Maybe I’ll check it out some time.

To summarize, when a show cannot even reach the level of “cliche,” then there’s a problem.

More Than Enough: Otakon 2008

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I went to Otakon with one purpose in mind: to go see JAM Project. Everything else on my priorities list could be postponed or sacrificed as long as I would be able to not turn away, and not show my tears, because I have the power of love to take back tomorrow. I am glad to say that not only did I see JAM Project, but the overall experience of Otakon 2008 has made it one of the best times o my life. It’s a culmination of various parts of a long weekend which turned out to be all too short.

I arrived Thursday afternoon by train along with a number of friends who I’ve known for some varying numbers of years. The first pleasant surprise was the hotel itself. We had taken two rooms in the Radisson, and found the rooms to be spacious, far more spacious than the place we stayed at last year. This was very fortunate, as it meant sleep would be comfortable and not the hassle it usually is at a con. We were later joined by kransom and astrange of welcome datacomp, two happening guys, one of whom is currently on a plane to Japan.

Actually, scratch that. My first pleasant surprise was on the train watching episodes of Cosmic Baton Girl Comet-san. I can’t believe how good that show is.

Thursday night was spent sitting back and playing Smash Bros Brawl with friends in the hotel room. The character choices among everyone were quite diverse, and this became a mainstay of practically every day we were there. As is always the case, Smash is simply a great way to unwind during conventions. kransom also showed me a copy of Patrick Macias‘ new book, Otaku in USA. The book is in Japanese, but it doesn’t seem to be a difficult read so I may pick it up at some point.

Friday morning, I went to the dealer’s room. While browsing DVDs, a dealer asked me what I was looking for, to which I responded, “Something for JAM Project to sign.” Luckily, a female dealer standing nearby pointed me out to a Gravion + Gravion Zwei combined thinpack that she was selling. She mentioned to me that the only reason she was here in the dealer’s room was so that she could be at Otakon to see JAM Project. To the kind woman who helped me out, I thank you, whoever you are. Other than that, I also accomplished another major objective that day.

(I also got an Eureka Seven poster.)

My first sighting of JAM Project was at the opening ceremony for Otakon, though I arrived pretty much just as they were leaving. I was there to see the Madhouse-produced opening animation, which basically involved Otakon’s two lackluster mascots fighting every anime character ever on their way to the convention center. Could have been worse, could have gone without it, the result was that I applaud their desire to celebrate their 10th anniversary with something big.

The JAM Project concert was to be held at the 1st Mariner Arena, a few blocks away from the convention center. After a bit of hassle, I managed to find a place in line with Sub from Subatomic Brainfreeze, and his friends, who I’ve met in the past thanks to a mutual friend of ours. There, we spent time enjoying the wonder and prestige of Sasaki Isao English renditions of Maginzer Z themes, who teaches us that, although humans can fight for good, give it all they’ve got, men are weak and they’re flesh and blood. Mazinger, however, is not. I could not think of a better way to pass the time.

At 7:00 we walked inside, me carrying a glowstick which I accidentally snapped. Sitting only a few rows away from the stage got me feeling anxious as I chatted it up a little with the people around me. Smoke began to fill the stage as I realized I was without my DS and could not participate in the inevitable pictochat. This only made me more anxious, as I knew it was almost upon us, the Japanese Animesong Musicians Project, albeit minus a few members I would like to have seen.

I am not a concert-goer, but I do not think any concert will ever top this one again. JAM Project are the masters of keeping the crowd excited with both their choice of music and musical style, and their sheer stage presence. JAM Project introduced themselves in English. You had the Lover of Amateur Rock Music Yoshiki Fukuyama , the Only Female There Masami Okui, the Youngest Member of JAM Project Hiroshi Kitadani aka Dani, the Most POWERFUL Member of JAM Project Masaaki Endoh (said while flexing his bicep), and the Leader Hironobu Kageyama. With an introduction like that, greatness was inevitable.

Their set included a large number of their combined efforts, such as Nageki no Rosario, Hagane no Messiah, and Breakout, as well as individual songs for which they were famous, which included Chala Head Chala, We Are!, Rinbu Revolution, Angel Voice, and Yuushaoh Tanjou! Knowing I had plans for karaoke the next day, I sang my heart out anyway, actively trying to destroy my throat as I yelled GOLDION HANMAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH. Totally worth it.

Especially impressive during the concert was Ms. Okui, who without Rica around had to sing twice as many lines as she normally would. Not only that, but Okui sounded better than I’ve ever heard her sing before. Usually her live voice is different from her studio voice, but on this night the two were one in the same. This, of course, is not to say that the others were anything less than outstanding. You could tell they enjoy their careers, and have a genuine love for anime music.

They finished off the main concert with GONG, then followed up with an encore comprised of Soul Taker and SKILL. I really couldn’t have asked for anything more, besides the presence of the God of Anime Songs Ichirou Mizuki! Sadly, my “Mizuki” chant did not work. By the way, that’s how I think Kageyama would have introduced him.

After the concert, a woman walked by with a sign saying,”Give your message to JAM Project!” All I could do was close my eyes and smile while clapping. I then gave a deep bow to them to show my gratitude. I hope you see it, JAM Project.

With the concert over, this was already the best con ever. I could have gone home that evening and been totally satisfied. Fortunately, the weekend was not over. After greeting Erin from Ninja Consultant (she asked me what I thought of the concert and my first response was to pump my fists), I ended up eating dinner with a mighty group indeed, perhaps the mightiest ensemble in all of Baltimore that evening had JAM Project not been around. This group consisted of myself, astrange and kransom, Mike Toole (whose panel I attended earlier in the day), ricequeen, Daryl Surat, and Gerald Rathkolb. It was an enjoyable dinner at a humble chain-like mexican food restaurant, where we discussed various anime-related topics. Kingdoms fell at our feet, while my ears continued to ring from being too close to the speakers during the concert.

The social aspect of the convention, which I was concerned about prior to attending, turned out to not be a problem, and was in fact one of the most enjoyable aspects of Otakon. While I ate with some anime titans of the internet on Friday, I ate with a different group of people every night that I was in Baltimore. Thursday night, I enjoyed extremely delicious Brazilian buffet at Fogo de Chão with my close friends from New York and college in Pittsburgh. There, while chowing down on lambchop, leg of lamb, pork sausage, garlic beef, filet mignon, filet mignon wrapped in bacon, chicken wrapped in bacon, etc (I tried to eat as wide a variety as I could), I talked to a waiter from Brazil. He mentioned his fondness for Saint Seiya and Evangelion.

Fogo de Chão is very pricey, so I wouldn’t recommend it as “con food” but as a place to enjoy the company of others while stuffing one’s face with protein-based brilliance, it is worth checking out.

Saturday evening, I ate with the internet. It was a Vegeta-mongling good time.

Afterwards, I ran to attend karaoke, where I gave a poor performance of Disarm Dreamer. There, along with astrange and kransom, I sat down and had a grand old time with wildarmsheero, Link, Omo, Anna, among others. You’ll forgive me if I forgot all of your names, but you were many. I sang along with a number of tunes, including Pegasus Fantasy, English and Japanese Pokemon themes, and SKILL, and tried my hardest to do my Souther impression for wildarmsheero. Watch out for it on his site. I was surprised to find someone singing the ending theme to the Sega Saturn racing game, Sonic R. I salute you as well. Unfortunately I did not have time to sing Minna Daisuki from Shugo Chara, which I had also planned.

While signing up for karaoke, one of the people working there asked me where I got my badge (see all the way up top), to which I said I made it myself. As he looked closer at my badge he suddenly said, “I read your blog!” Thank you, SSJSquall. You made my day in a day full of things which can make days with little difficulty.

On the same day was the JAM Project Q&A, which was a good time for all. There were many highlights to the whole session, but the absolute best was when Masami did an incredible Mizuki impression. Very few things in life will ever top Masami going, “[Mazinger] ZEEEET!” but one of them might be Fukuyama’s sheer antics. This guy is a joker through and through.

Sadly, I missed the Katsura panel because it interfered with the JAM Project autograph session, but I managed to attend the Maruyama/Madhouse panel, which is always a treat. I also sat in for the Fansubbers and Industry panel, which was informative if disappointingly peaceful. John Sirabella, head of Mediablasters, was a blast with his crotchety-yet-informative ways. I wanted to ask how buying region 2 dvds directly affects the region 1 industry if at all, but I was cut off. Maybe next year.

As for the JAM Project autograph session itself, I got to shake hands with them. As Kageyama signed my Gravion box, I pointed and said, “Sparking!” to which he responded in kind. After my friends and I all got our swag autographed, we got together in the dealer’s room to do a Whoa Bundy, the second Whoa Bundy of the day.

I also saw two incredible cosplays during the convention. First was a girl cosplaying as Rosalie from Rose of Versailles. Her outfit was this bright pastel blue, perfect for a shoujo character, and it was as if she stepped out of the pages of Riyoko Ikeda’s work. Second was a cosplay of Billy Mitchell, the first man to ever conquer Pac-Man. I failed to check if he had a bottle of Rickey’s Hot Sauce in hand.

At the train station, I saw Erin and Noah from Ninja Consultant, and wildarmsheero. Along with the friends who I came with, we had a good conversation to wind down the convention, and one of my friends read my blog for the first time. I hope it’s as frightening for you as I think it is.

There are two main lessons I took away from Otakon 2008. First is that on the internet it can become very easy to caricaturize those you talk to, to focus on only one aspect of their character and personality. In real life, we can get along without necessarily needing to debate or to try and make things “interesting.” Those things will come in time.

Second is that, according to Kageyama, this was one GAY 2008.

(It actually says 9 Aug 2008)