Monthly Archives: October 2009

Machinations of the Lyrical Fujoshi

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A while ago when I was at Duet 35 Karaoke with cool dudes OGT and Hisui, I was perusing the catalog of anime songs, when the Lucky Star section caught my eye. Aside from the songs in Lucky Star that are not from Lucky Star, i.e. those initial ending themes, I noticed that there were only about three or four songs. And out of those handful of songs, one of them was “Mo, Mousou Machine,” one of the character songs of Lucky Star’s resident fujoshi, Tamura Hiyori.

Now I know that this is just one karaoke place, and so is not necessarily indicative of any greater trends, but isn’t it odd that of all the songs to be available, one of them would be a song that’s from 1) a minor character (which means her song is available over an image song from a main character) and 2) a fujoshi?

The first thing to understand about Duet Karaoke is that people can make requests to get songs into the system. It could be that Hiyori’s voice actor, Shimizu Kaori, is popular enough among whoever frequents Duet 35, but rarely do I see that happen, and when it does it’s usually because their voice actor is also known as a singer, which Shimizu is not. Then there’s the idea that this is anime karaoke and obscure songs get in all the time, but that’s not necessarily true either. A lot of obscure openings and endings are available, but not so much character or image songs, and in the case of “Mo, Mousou Machine,” the lack of other characters’ songs is suspicious. And in order for people to request such a song, they’d have to know about it, and the only way they’d know about it is if they’re aware of the Lucky Star Character Albums. In other words, they would have to be hardcore otaku. Another possibility is that it’s just a holdover from Japan and when the system was updated that was one of the songs included, but then I ask again, what about the other Lucky Star songs?

While I can’t say that this is some sort of fujoshi conspiracy (as a real fujoshi conspiracy would probably involve a greater increase in the number of songs from yaoi anime), I posit that whether it’s in NYC or in Japan, Hiyori enjoys a degree of popularity over most of the minor characters, and that it has to do with Hiyori’s status as a fujoshi. This is especially evident when the theme of her song “Mo, Mousou Machine” is taken into account, as the title of the song and the lyrics all point to the idea of a female anime fan who can’t help fantasizing. Of course that would require fans to know what the song is saying, but lyric translations are freely available on the internet anyway. The real culprit might even be male fans of Hiyori.

So if you’re a Hiyori fan, speak up! I want to know just how popular she is among the Lucky Star and greater anime fanbase.

While I can’t say that this is some sort of fujoshi conspiracy (as a real fujoshi conspiracy would probably involve a greater increase in the number of songs from yaoi anime),

Colony Drop is Blazing a Trail Through the Information Super Highway

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I thought I knew about Japanimation before, but thanks to the fine folks over at Colony Drop and their Fall TV Cartoon Preview, I realize that I still have a lot to learn. I seriously gotta check out some of these shows, because a show…about driving cars?! And not the boring NASCAR way? Sign me up, good sirs! I think these guys really know what they’re talking about, which is a rarity these days on the internet.

Honestly speaking, there’s a really bad signal to noise ratio on the Anime Web Turnpike, and I’m beginning to wonder if the site (as great as it’s been) is starting outlive its usefulness. I mean, these days with search engines like Lycos and Excite getting better and better, I can find just the webring I want instantly.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to surfing on Cinnabar Island to duplicate my Body Slam TMs.

Sunshine + Glass = Happy Times

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News so good I had to post about it twice (wait for the Otaku Crush article).

As anyone who reads this blog might know, I am a fan of both Hidamari Sketch and Glass Mask, so when Scott Green over at Ain’t it Cool News Anime informed the twitterverse about their acquisition and release by Section23 (one of the licensing companies that grew out of the now-defunct ADV), I found myself dancing on the streets, and everybody knew to get out of my way because we got some serious Dramatic Shoujo About Drama here.

I’ve previously written reviews of both Hidamari Sketch and Glass Mask, so if you want to learn more about each series, you can check them out, or if you want to experience them firsthand and totally legitimately, Hidamari Sketch’s manga  is being released in the US under the title Sunshine Sketch, while Glass Mask is being streamed for free online via Crunchyroll. Keep in mind that my review above was written before the streaming was available.

So in conclusion, hell yes.

~A Fantasy All Too Affected by Reality~

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I’d like to talk today about a topic that doesn’t pop up too often on Ogiue Maniax, something that in the eyes of a number of otaku is about as far from anime fandom as you can get: sports.

Well not exactly. Recently I’ve noticed that in addition to rooting for the players they like or the teams from their hometowns, people have been watching sports a new way, the fantasy sports way.

Fantasy sports are basically online games where you build teams based on real life athletes and try to win as many games as possible in a given season. It’s kind of like an RPG, only your characters’ stats are influenced by the players’ performances in real life. If the star of your fantasy team gets injured in a real game, he’s off your roster as well.

The result is that you have people who keep up with sports not only so they can cheer for their team, but because they want to see how the events of the real world will affect their chances of winning their own game. It creates this extra agenda that while similar to just plain old betting and gambling on sports games, is actually more involved as the fantasy sports enthusiast has some level of control over his own team. If an athlete is injured, it’s up to the player to choose who to substitute. It’s an attempt to control the chaos in a way that reminds me of mahjong.

Is this really a bad way of watching sports? I don’t really think so, especially if that’s not the only reason they watch, but it does provide an interesting new dimension to the art of spectating. It’s also probably the closest thing a lot of sports fans will ever get to activities like writing fanfics and drawing fanart. The attitude and mindset of someone who watches sports with his fantasy team in mind is similar to that of an otaku watching an episode of an anime series with the intent of using whatever they find in that episode to fuel their fan works . Just as one might anticipate the latest episode of Bleach to have some fancy new outfits to inform their cosplay, so too do fantasy sports players tune in to the Nets vs the Jazz.

“Tune in.” Do people still say that?

Shine on, Geocities. Shine on… Forever

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Yesterday, October 26, 2009, was the day Geocities died.

Now some might call the Geocities we saw hobbling about with an IV attached to its arm not the “true” Geocities. It had, after all, been acquired by Yahoo back around 2000, and gradually lost a lot of what made Geocities so appealing in the mid to late 90s amidst both infrastructure modifications and the evolution of online trends. However, I think that deep within that mass of tubes and cybernetic implants there beat the heart of that noble site which once told anime fans that the best place to put a website was in a Pagoda in Tokyo. And even if that weren’t the case, we still have some evidence (thanks to archive.org) that it existed, and that it gave you 20mb of free space. Do you know big that is? It”s like four to six mp3s!

I’d previously talked about Geocities and how despite never having a Geocities site myself, it was an important part of my youth and my fandom. So many people I met online had Geocities sites, or Fortune City, or Angelfire. Memories of my favorite vido game, NiGHTS into dreams, are tied inexorably to my time on these sites. More broadly though, it represented that era when kids of all ages realized that yes, they could have their own website. On the internet. For free. Gradually, that thrill turned to finding out that yes, even you could implement a scrolling marquee and javascript pop-ups. The most important thing though was that it was yours.

I know some people are ashamed of their old Geocities sites, and I think that’s kind of silly. Sure, the sites might not live up to our current understanding of accessible web design, but they’re so representative of their era that to be relieved that they’re gone is to be relieved that a piece of history has been erased, both greater and personal. After all, that was who you were back in 1997, and you should be proud of that.

Nickelodeon Turtles, Heroes in a Gak Shell

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I will tell you that I know exactly zero people who found out about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles being sold to Nickelodeon and didn’t have a strong reaction about it. Generally, the reaction from people, including myself, was surprise. Where did this come from? Isn’t TMNT celebrating its 25th anniversary? What’s going to become of our beloved childhood franchise? Reading comments on blogs and such, including Peter Laird’s, a lot of people think that there’s something wrong with the move. As someone who’s been around Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for pretty much all of my life, I’d like to talk about it a little, and what the future might hold in store for fans of the series.

A lot of people around my age, when they think TMNT, remember the 80s series and its cowabungas and Krang and questionable pizzas. They’ll say the new 2003 and on series produced by 4Kids just isn’t the same as the original. Of course, the funny thing about this is that in the eyes of many fans of the ORIGINAL TMNT, that is, the Mirage Comics created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the 80s cartoon was a travesty. I think even Eastman and Laird regarded it in that manner for a long time, much like how Tomino Yoshiyuki saw the Gundam franchise. But just like Tomino, they came to terms with how, while the 80s series didn’t really live up to their image and intent for TMNT, it still possessed a lot of fine qualities which made it so memorable and enduring.

One of the franchise’s main strengths is that its core concept is hardy enough to be twisted and molded into thematically very different stories. The original comics started as a parody but eventually became their own gritty universe. The 80s cartoon was fun and light-hearted and encouraged kids to pick favorites and eat pizza, like what Naruto does with kids now and ramen. The 2003 cartoon was somewhere between the two, with an emphasis on both toys sales and character development, possibly best represented by the time the turtles all went into the future and stayed there for a really long time. The TMNT movies got progressively worse, and they had Vanilla Ice, but I know I am not the only one who thought Go Ninja Go was the greatest thing ever as a kid. So while I might cringe at the thought of Nickelodeon trying to replicate that 80s success today, an attempt which would require a LOT of changes seeing as the old cartoon is really a product of that era, I’m also confident that it’s not going to ruin the franchise any more than any of the other adaptations have sullied its name. And who knows? Maybe we’ll get another Avatar out of the deal.

On another note entirely, have you ever seen how the 80s cartoon portrays sushi? You’d think that it wasn’t animated by Japanese people at all! I get the feeling that when they were drawing it, no one told them it was supposed to be sushi. I wish I had a screenshot to show you guys what I mean.

Relating to NES Sprites

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Whenever I say there’s something special about video game graphics during the NES/Master System era, some will believe that it’s simply due to nostalgia, while others will agree with me, but won’t be able to explain why. Sometimes those who agree with me will even chalk it up to nostalgia themselves. I however believe that there are concrete reasons as to why the level of graphics that the 8-bit systems achieved for home consoles holds such significance, and I’d like to discuss one of them here. I’m going to be using mainly NES graphics and not Master System ones, because 1) the NES was more popular and 2) the Master System actually had better graphics overall, and we want to look at the less-good.


From left to right: Berzerk, Robot from Berzerk, Circus


From left to right: Mario, Megaman, Karnov

What is the significant feature that the characters below all have in common that the characters above do not, aside from obvious graphical quality improvements?

Answer: They have faces.

This makes it easier to identify with them as characters, and gives them a sense of personality. In the NES era, the graphics were strong enough on the popular consoles to portray characters’ faces and to give them facial expressions, even if it’s the same expression all the time. This is important because we as humans tend to see ourselves in our surroundings. Scott McCloud talks about this a good deal in Understanding Comics, but it really is something fundamental. Two dots and and a line becomes a face. A semi-circle shape can be a smile or a frown depending on which way it’s facing. It allows players to identify with the characters.

While this does not take into account those games which feature primarily vehicles or objects inanimate objects, my focus is not so much on them, as I believe they have a somewhat similar appeal, only focused on their fantastical realism rather than their human quality.

Even those characters who practically had no eyes, noses, or mouths still benefited from the 8-bit graphical quality, as it allowed the games to clearly delineate an area of the body as the head.


From left to right: Simon Belmont, Bill Rizer, Ryu Hayabusa

This was especially useful in portraying characters with more human proportions as opposed to the big-headed cartoonish sprites from before, as it allowed the characters to seem realistic on the NES while again still giving them some sense of personality.

That is not to say that faces on sprites were a wholly unique experience to the 8-bit era. The NES and the Master System were not the first consoles to regularly portray characters with faces, with that honor probably going to the Colecovision in 1982. However, the difference here is a matter of timing, as 1983 was also the year of the North American Video Game Crash, and so in the minds of most people, graphics went from Atari to Nintendo, and if you look at the graphics of that era, they more often than not could barely differentiate a head from a neck, with one notable exception being Pitfall for the Atari 2600. Hey, it’s not all art and discovery.

The 8-Bit NES era was when graphics were good enough so that almost anyone who made a game for the console could give a sprite a face (and in essence, a personality), and thanks to good timing also was when video games were again popular enough to be a common feature in households. Graphics were certainly not the only factor in endearing the NES (and to a lesser extent the Master System) to young gamers, but as humans are visual creatures, graphics played a significant role in implanting the memories of these games into their minds.

Celebrating the C-Class of the C-Class: Black Dynamite and Animexploitation

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Last night, I had the fortune of seeing the Blaxploitation Homage/Parody Black Dynamite, and it was fantastic. Despite not being familiar with blaxploitation films. The closest I’ve ever gotten to watching anything like that was The Last Dragon, which I’m kind of sure doesn’t even count. Anyway, fun was had by all, and for a good review you should read the one over at Subatomic Brainfreeze. And if you have the opportunity to go see it, go see it. Because you have the opportunity.

When I got home, Sub linked me to an interview with Scott Sanders and Michael Jai White, co-creators of Black Dynamite (with White playing the movie’s titular character), and something there caught my interest. In it, they said that their goal was not to make Black Dynamite representative of the apogee of blaxploitation cinema, but the films that were made when studios realized they had a successful formula on their hands, and sought to milk that cash cow for all it was worth. They wanted to celebrate the films which went through a checklist of items,  from the rich white guy by the pool side, to the hot bitches, to the liberal application of kung fu, all wrapped in a packaging of shoddy cinematography and excessively expository dialogue. They wanted to celebrate the successful, yet mediocre blaxploitation films in all their film school-reject glory.

It’s an unusual idea I think, in any sort of media, to look fondly upon those works which were just kind of okay at best and weren’t terribly deep, but which sold and made names for themselves. Even in anime discussion, we usually celebrate the so-bad-it’s-good works while shunning the mediocre. And with anime the way it is now, people accuse it of running through checklists, utilizing excessively expository dialogue, and exploiting anime fans to make ultra-formulaic shows. Which they might be, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with it.

From the bit of reading on blaxploitation I’ve done since yesterday (which obviously makes me an expert, right?), the genre came about when US movie studios, suffering the lowest revenues in about 20-30 years, realized that the African Americans were spending a large amount of money in the theaters and so decided to specifically target them by making movies for black people about black people. Much like Super Hero Comics fans and figure-buying moe fans, they became the target audience for relevant genres of entertainment media, for better or worse, because they had the money. Creativity aside, companies would like nothing more than for your dollars to go into their pockets so that they can keep making new works and continue to profit.

That’s the way things go, and much like how Black Dynamite really celebrates the genre of film it’s parodying, warts and all, I have to wonder how fans and creators in the future will regard the anime that comes out now. Maybe in ten to twenty years, we’ll be seeing throwbacks to those old shows of 2009. Not remakes, and not references to the ones that made you think, but the ones that told you, John Animefan, that there’s some kung fu and titties and nekomimi nurse maids in this show so why shouldn’t you watch it?

Welcome Back, Tange Sakura

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Kinomoto Sakura, the heroine of Cardcaptor Sakura, is one of the most beloved anime characters of all time. Full of energy, enthusiasm, and a drive to find happiness for everyone with mixed an innocent girlishness, Sakura became what is essentially the lofty goal of most moe characters. She tugs at the heartstrings in a convincing manner, gets you rooting for her as she goes out to face the next challenge, and is both believable and fantastic. A good portion of this power and majesty (at least in the anime!) lies in her voice actor, Tange Sakura.

Tange Sakura to certain otaku such as myself is one of the finest voice actors ever, due mainly to the convincing humanity she puts into her roles. But then a  few years back Sakura retired from the world of voice acting, right around time anime really started to take off around the world, leaving a small semi-generation of anime fans unfamiliar with her abilities. But now she’s back, and I have to say few things are as momentous in anime voice acting as the return of Tange Sakura. I don’t know why she left, or why she’s decided to come back, but it is welcome news.

So far she’s played a character in the video game Love Plus, with her first anime role since her retirement being the vampire Hatori Kanon in Anyamaru Tantei Kirumins (which if I were to try to translate into English would be something like “Animeow Detective Mascots”). It’s definitely Sakura all right, though she doesn’t get very many lines. She’s also working with a mix of relatively new voice actors, and some people she’s worked with before, namely Tanaka Hideyuki (Sakura’s dad in CCS). I wonder if anyone out there is watching this show just for her, and not say, because it’s directed by Kawamori Shouji (Various Macross seres, Escaflowne, Aquarion).

I would not be surprised if that were the case, and wouldn’t really mind anyone watching this show in particular for the voice actor(s).

“Fascinating, Human. Tell Me More About This…Position of the Missionaries.”

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Imagine you’re standing on the beach, when suddenly a UFO appears, and out of a beam of light descends a being not like any you’ve seen before. The alien, speaking some intelligible tongue, seeming to concentrate for a moment, then turns to you and opens its mouth.

“Describe to me, this… ‘vagina.'”

You fumble for the right words, but realizing that as an alien he may have no understanding of Earth culture, you look for something as a point of reference. Finding a bed of mussels, you grab one and continue your description.

A number of people have written about Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night writer Nasu and his penchant for describing female genitalia using mollusk-themed vocabulary. When you think about it though, it’s a good physical description for someone like an extraterrestrial who has never seen human female reproductive anatomy. And with the nature of censorship in Japanese pornography, it’s possible (though perhaps unlikely, given the power of the internet in this age) that a virgin in Japan has never seen a real vagina, in photos or otherwise.

So in conclusion, Type Moon is simply preparing for the future when we will make contact with our brothers across the stars.