Author Archives: sdshamshel

Best Anime Characters of 2013

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For this year I’ve introduced an extra category to make things fair for the rest of the competition.

OGIUE CHIKA SPECIAL AWARD

This year marked the return of Genshiken to anime, and with it the re-introduction of the character whose very passion and turmoil became the cornerstone of this blog. Ogiue Chika has changed much since I deemed her the best female character of 2007, and Ogiue we see in Genshiken Second Season is not the same as the one which struggled with accepting her fandom. However, it is this very transformation within her which continues to inspire me, knowing that, as her eyes and her expression have softened over time, they increasingly reflect the growth and maturation of otaku culture, and of the positive influence of Genshiken. As Ogiue thrives, so does the club which changed her life, and it fills my heart with joy and discovery to continue to be witness to it. I would write more, but I think that I’ve already said more than enough.

BEST MALE CHARACTER

Armin Arlert (Attack on Titan)

Some of my favorite male characters are guys who are ones willing to take the supporting role, guys who defy the macho stereotypes which continue to haunt characterizations of men in media. Armin reflects this in spades, but I find that he is also great at contributing to how we perceive ideas like power, intelligence, passion, independence, and cooperation. Of the core group in Attack on Titan, Armin is clearly the “brains,” but it’s a specific type of brilliance which allows him to think on a more deeply conceptual and abstract level, and what impresses me most about Armin is this strength in combination with his weaknesses, and how he and his comrades  make up for each others’ weaknesses. Armin is highly observant, a clever strategist, and open to new ideas, but can be extremely hesitant, and to see him embrace his talents in the midst of despair and to take inspiration from Eren and Mikasa is one of my favorite qualities of his character. In a way, this is actually an award for the character interaction for Attack on Titan.

BEST FEMALE CHARACTER

Ichinose Hajime (Gatchaman Crowds)

I don’t think I’ve ever dwelled as long on a pick for best female character as I did this year, but in the end I feel there is no character more deserving than Hajime. To describe her is to engage in contradiction, a character who seems to defy all standards of anime characterization while adhering closely to them.  To talk about her role as the lead of Gatchaman Crowds is to realize that there are few who so utterly represent the concept of a main character as Hajime does, because Hajime is Gatchaman Crowds. Somehow Hajime is a protagonist who’s also a scene stealer, a presence which seemingly warps space around her and embodies all of the quirks which make the show special. Hajime shows that being positive doesn’t mean being naive, that conflict resolution through dialogue and and open mind can be just as thrilling as watching someone throw a punch, and that you can be stubborn about being open-minded. Hajime is simply a force of nature.

Final Thoughts

I find that as much as we like to think that anime is over and done, and continue to repeat that sentiment every year, that innovation (or something like it) continues to happen even in the areas most conventional. To hear that Gatchaman Crowds is ostensibly a remake of a 1970s anime classic is to bring to mind nostalgia grabs and numerous references to the old, or perhaps even a meeting of old and new generations, but Gatchaman Crowds largely defies all of those expectations. Attack on Titan is the big hit to the extent that it feels as if it has surpassed Naruto in its heyday, but even though both are of the ultra mainstream shounen battle manga demographic, Attack on Titan defies numerous trends through its bleak setting and the decidedly unglamorous position even its most important characters find themselves in, yet somehow this is also the source of its popularity. For both Attack on Titan and Gatchaman Crowds, I find that Armin and Hajime truly reflect how different and special each of their series are. Both are not the type to solve problems through violence first, but neither are they characters who are immobilized by the weight of responsibility or ones to abandon society physically or emotionally. They truly feel like characters who are a part of contemporary culture, yet will probably remain timeless.

The Fujoshi Files 88: Yamada Moe

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Name: Yamada, Moe (山田もえ)
Alias: Moemoe (モエモエ)
Relationship Status: Single
Origin: Princess Ringo’s Adventures in “Wota” Land

Information:
Yamada Moe is an office worker who is aware of her coworker Himenogi Rin’s fujoshi identity. The two have known each other since their middle school years, though Moe has since been much more upfront and open about being a fujoshi. Eager to help Rin be truer to herself, Moe sets up semi-elaborate schemes at work in order to remind Rin of her fujoshi side.

Like Rin, Moe is into the anime Prince Salaryman, particularly the Red x Black pairing. Moe also forms a bond with a male coworker and fellow otaku named Watanabe over their mutual love of Rin’s cosplay alter ego “Hime Ringo.” While Rin sees her cosplay from her overweight days as a mark of shame, Moe remembers Rin’s cosplay much more fondly.

Fujoshi Level:
Rin is an unabashed fujoshi willing to even show her merchandise at the office, and always eager to talk about her favorite shows and pairings, which can get quite complicated and specific.

The One Thing I Want Most in Digital Manga Readers

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Between the Negima creator’s J-Comi, Viz and Kodansha, the defunct JManga, or the recent Crunchyroll Manga, the quality of official digital manga readers has varied tremendously, but they all lack one feature I keep wishing for. I want to simply be able to magnify or shrink the page quickly and conveniently on a regular computer without having to use magnifying glass icons which either make everything super big or not at all. Most preferably I would like to be able to set my mouse’s scroll wheel to shrink and enlarge the page for when I want to get a closer look at a particular panel or set of panels.

I know that it’s easier on tablets, and when I do read manga on a tablet it’s just  a pinch or a finger drag away, and that digital readers are made more for tablet users, but I just think having this option would go a long way in making the reading of manga on a desktop or laptop so much more natural and convenient.

Anime Secret Santa – Everyday Adventures of the Animest Couple: Acchi Kocchi

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This review is a part of the Reverse Thieves’ 2013 Anime Secret Santa Project.

When anime fans throw around the term “slice of life,” they’re generally either enormously broad in its usage (anything that concerns non-fantastical events is slice of life!) or they’re talking about a certain type of slow-paced anime which due to the popularity of certain titles has become largely associated with a cast of primarily girls doing cute things. Acchi Kocchi falls more in line with the latter category, but where often such shows largely eschew the Y-chromosome, Acchi Kocchi decides that guys too can engage in relatively low-key hijinks without pillaging the secret garden of girlish innocence.

Acchi Kocchi follows a group of friends in high school, primarily a quiet, diminutive girl named Miniwa Tsumiki and her crush, a stoic boy named Otonashi Io. Though a lot of the show involves the characters doing silly things, the primary thrust of the humor is about highlighting the mutual feelings between Tsumiki and Io, and the seeming inevitability that they will become a couple (if they aren’t one by default already). Within this context, the gags can range from heartfelt to absurd, like a mix of Precious Moments cards and Roadrunner-esque slapstick. The humor never quite goes beyond the level it hits in Episode 1, so if you’re looking to experience increasingly powerful laughs it’s not going to happen but if you’re satisfied at that point you’ll remain content.

One thing of note is that the show enjoys making fighting game references. Not sure where that comes from but it’s appreciated.

Romance in this type of anime is not unusual, but it’s generally between two girls, and that’s even when putting aside the highly ambiguous shows which invite interpretation as yuri from the fans. Hidamari Sketch has Sae and Hiro, Kiniro Mosaic has Aya and Youko, Yuruyuri is…basically those combinations times ten. This is not a criticism of same-sex relationships in anime, more an observation about the perhaps surprising lack of heterosexual pairings, which Acchi Kocchi manages to not only include but accomplish in an entertaining and refreshing fashion.

I think that often the worry with a boy-girl romance in these shows is that one will act as the audience stand-in and the other will be the ideal (or ideally flawed) potential significant other, but Acchi Kocchi is more like if both of them were their respective anime ideals for the opposite sex. Tsumiki is small and cute, often portrayed with cat-like features, and is sort of like a fusion between Konata and Kagami from Lucky Star. While this is maybe more expected, Io’s low-key personality is less about being bland and generic and more about being an almost butler-esque bishounen. A lot of the gags involving Io involve him speaking with such natural and unconscious suaveness that the girls around him swoon. They’re quite the anime power couple.

My favorite character by the way is the scientist Katase Mayoi. While I could say quite a bit about how her quirky personality appeals to me, I think this screenshot explains it well enough.

Overall, I definitely enjoyed the show, and while it never felt entirely fresh it wasn’t stale either. Pleasantly humorous with a unique take on familiar territory in a genre which thrives on familiarity, Acchi Kocchi can be a nice change of pace for those who enjoy their so-called slice of life shows but want a bit more variety.

The Spectacle of Salty Bet and VGCW

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At this point a lot of people know that it’s fun to watch other people play video games, whether it’s a Let’s Play or a competitive esports event. A subsection of these people additionally know that it’s crazy fun to watch AI opponents fight each other, provided the right context surrounds it. That’s what we get with Video Game Championship Wrestling, a gaming stream where various gaming culture icons fight each other inside of a WWE video game, and with Salty Bet, a place where you bet fake money on fighting game characters.

Though similar in that they both involve having non-human-controlled characters duke it out, they’re opposites in terms of how these AIs are used. VGCW is a curated experience where, much like actual pro wrestling, a single person writes the story and decides the overall direction of his “show,” but ironically is missing the most crucial pro wrestling component of having match results predetermined. Instead, the show clearly alters its path from week to week according to the results of its own matches. For me, the highlight of the entire thing so far has been when Little Mac came back from getting hit by a car and had an amazing match with Dracula that ended with Mac landing a powerful Star Punch counter on Dracula and then throwing him inside a coffin.

Salty Bet on the other hand is not about “story,” it’s about seeing how different characters crafted by M.U.G.E.N. creators across the world fare against each other, a complex interaction of not just who the characters are but the skills of their makers, their desires to make the strongest or the weakest characters, and even sometimes their desires to be in video games, as many of the self-insert avatars in Salty Bet show. Largely, the “drama” is created at random when two strangely appropriate opponents face each other, or a clash of gods occurs. The exception is that once every Thursday the owner of Salty Bet holds custom tournaments, often around a certain theme (the week of Pokemon X & Y‘s release there was a Pokemon character tournament).

In either case, what I find most amazing about their experiences is the necessity of the audience. Sure, audience matters at a Starcraft or Street Fighter IV tournament in that it livens up the mood and makes things just feel special, and in a Let’s Play of course you the viewer are the audience, but with VGCW and Salty Bet watching them is substantially worse when there is no chat available. The chats, with all of their memes and running jokes, make the fights feel “real” because real emotions are being poured into them. Scholars like Henry Jenkins talk about active fandom and audience participation, but with these “shows” the audience is in many ways the reason to watch. That’s not to say the work the owners of VGCW and Salty Bet don’t matter, as they’re of course important, but their successes are also tied into the image created by the very people viewing them.

Call from Mighty No. 9, a Focal Point of Projected Ideals

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mightyno9-call-e

Given the success of its Kickstarter, it’s highly likely that you’re already aware of Mighty No. 9. The brainchild of Inafune Keiji, co-designer of Mega Man, it’s very much a successor to Mega Man, starring a robot with variable powers named Beck. While there are plenty of things to discuss when it comes to Mighty No. 9, one of the more fascinating topics is the “Roll” of the game, a female character named Call. Garnering enough fan support for a “Call gameplay stage” stretch goal to be reached, what is curious about Call is that her popularity was achieved well before we knew really anything about her.

From the very beginning of the Mighty No. 9 project, it was announced that there would be this female supporting character. However, she had no definitive design (though a few possibilities were shown), no determined color scheme, and very little information about her background or personality. Even her actual name was a later addition to the campaign, while these were the only notes eventually provided about her:

  • Call is a female robot originally created by Dr. White’s friend, Dr. Sanda, to help assist him with his research; she somehow avoided being infected by the virus causing all the other robots to go berserk and has pledged to help Beck.

  • Call was not imbued with the human characteristics that make Beck unique, so she’s more of a pure robot — as you might imagine, this contrast can lead to some interesting differences and misunderstandings whenever they interact!

And yet, even with this utter lack of information about Call, she developed a fanbase, such that the vote to decide what will become her finalized look has become a big deal among Mighty No. 9 fans.

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A common answer these days for this sort of thing involves referencing Hiroki Azuma’s database narrative concept in a reductive fashion by pointing to how disparate features such as blue hair or a tsundere personality act as patchwork parts to create characters appealing to otaku, but I don’t think you can even refer to Call’s initial concept as a “database character.” It was less of a database and more of a less-than-1kb .txt file, and I think Call’s popularity actually comes from something else entirely.

mightyno9-call-h

My own guess is that the reason Call gained fans before we really knew anything about her is that her basic position, as a female character in a new video game which has as one of its guiding principles heavy interaction with the community during development, made her an open canvas for fans’ perspectives. Whether fans see Call as someone to potentially relate to, or an opportunity to establish a strong female character who can go a step beyond Roll in Mega Man, or even just as “the cute girl,” Call’s initial lack of features combined with faith in Inafune and the staff of Mighty No. 9 allowed people to project onto Call their various ideals. In this prototype state Call fans see in her the very best.

The Fujoshi Files 87: Akai Ringo

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Name: Akai, Ringo (赤井林檎)
Alias: N/A
Relationship Status: Single
Origin: Okami-san & Her Seven Companions

Information:
Akai Ringo is a high school student at Otogi Academy in Otogibana City, where she works for the “Otogi Bank,” a school organization which helps with student requests in exchange for future favors. Patterned after Little Red Riding Hood and ending all of her sentences with the syllable “no,” Ringo exudes an image of youth and innocence. In reality, Ringo is a “rotten apple” with a cunning and manipulative personality, albeit loyal to her friends.

Ringo is best friends with her fellow Otogi Bank member, the wolf-like Ookami Ryouko, while supporting Ryouko’s burgeoning relationship with the timid Morino Ryoushi. Her feelings towards Ryouko are somewhat complex in that she would be very comfortable with a romantic relationship, but does not desire her normally otherwise. Ringo is also the half-sister of Shirayuki Himeno, a poor but beautiful fellow student who cares for seven younger siblings.

Fujoshi Level:
Akai once created a fictionalized movie where Ookami, Morino, and she fight the three terrorist Tonda brothers. The story called for the pig-like brothers to do possibly indescribable things to each other as the result of a penalty game.

I Heart Ira x Mako

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I’m not really a big “shipping” sort of person, but I love the idea of having the giant Gamagoori Ira and the hyperactive Mankanshoku Mako from Kill la Kill as a couple. So far, the show’s featured various interactions between them, and the surprising level of respect Ira shows for Mako as well as Mako’s own ability to catch Ira off guard makes them come across to me as “equals” even if you can’t call them opposites. They do both operate heavily on loyalty, so maybe they have some similarities after all.

If only Mako had kept her 2-star uniform and its delightful delinquent-ness, they’d be a pretty fearsome combination. Of course there’s always still hope for them to bring it back.

Though, don’t ask me how that masochism stuff is supposed to fit in.

Coppelion Anime, Smooth and Round

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I’ve come to the conclusion that the Coppelion anime feels like the Coppelion manga with its edges filed down. I don’t mean just that they’ve removed all references to nuclear radiation, or that if you add up all of the elements of each version that one is more “serious” than the other, but that there’s a distinct difference in presentation.

Though the manga is more overt with its criticisms of nuclear energy, at least at first, it’s also wackier in a lot of ways. Amidst the tragedy, characters make wild and contorted faces almost like they’re One Piece characters, and there’s even more fanservice to boot. Aoi, who comes across as more cutesy in the anime, has a greater degree of comic relief in her in the manga, and I think it just has to do with that sense of exaggeration.

Here’s Aoi in the anime:

And here she is in the manga:

Also note the difference in Ibara’s facial expressions.

I think in some ways, this difference in feel does more to change the contents of Coppelion than even the censoring, like the wackiness adds a certain element of permeating ugliness to the story which helps to foreground the social and environmental issues a bit more. That might just be my personal preference though, and I find as the show gets into the second arc it starts to adapt the original material better.

On the Use of “Special Attacks” in Shin Mazinger

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One of the defining traits of director Imagawa Yasuhiro’s adaptive works is the way in which he takes a large mass of disparate information pertaining to a particular work and organizes it such that the themes and concepts are strengthened and made more vibrant through cohesion and consistency. With Giant Robo, it’s an amplification of the history of legendary manga creator and Tezuka contemporary Yokoyama Mitsuteru. With Tetsujin 28 (also originally by Yokoyama) it’s  about highlighting Tetsujin 28 as a connection between post-war Japan and the militarism which had preceded this period. With G Gundam, in spite of the fighting tournament setting, it’s about the effects of continued conflict on the Earth. Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-Hen takes Mazinger Z’s iconic status as the super robot and shows just how much influence it’s had on the genre as a whole while also providing an argument for how Mazinger as a whole gives much food for thought if only one delves a little deeper.

What I find particular interesting about Shin Mazinger as an adaptation is the way in which Mazinger Z’s attacks themselves have been reorganized to strengthen the image of Mazinger. For example, take the Photon Energy Beam, Mazinger Z’s eye lasers. Generally they’re considered one of its weaker attacks, even often being the first and least-damaging move for Mazinger Z in the Super Robot Wars franchise. In Shin Mazinger, however, it is initially Mazinger’s strongest weapon When taking into consideration what Mazinger Z is supposed to be, a robot whose basic power comes from a combination of its Super Alloy Z (which the bombastic narration is very keen on making the viewer remember by deliberately repeating its name) and its miraculous Photon Energy power source. Tapping directly into the very thing that moves Mazinger Z only makes sense as a highly destructive attack.

When it comes to Mazinger Z’s arsenal and its cultural influence, however, there is nothing in all of the history of super robots with more imitators, successors, and homages than the Rocket Punch. What does Shin Mazinger do? For one, it makes the Rocket Punch the very first attack that Mazinger Z does in the show while giving it a fanfare worthy of the gods, but Imagawa doesn’t even leave it at that. He adds new elements to Mazinger Z so that the Rocket Punch, or a variation of it, is the greatest, most visually striking, and memorable thing that Mazinger Z can do. When Mazinger Z performs the Big Bang Punch, it literally transforms its entire body into a massive fist and becomes one with the Rocket Punch, such that Mazinger Z’s most lasting legacy (outside of the act of actually having someone control the robot from within) is also its most potent weapon.

Shin Mazinger takes Mazinger Z’s attacks and asks, “Why are these moves fun and exciting?” In doing so, it is able to play around with Mazinger Z as a cultural object and bring attention to not only what made it conceptually interesting to its fans in the first place, but also what potential still lies within it.