Author Archives: sdshamshel

Dutch-Japanese Foods Part 1: Japanmarkt 2012

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The city of Leiden has an annual outdoor market called the “Japanmarkt” (Japan Market), where people and booths gather along one of the canals of the city in order to celebrate all things Japanese. I actually went last year but forgot to bring my camera, so I made sure this year not to forget and to also actually report on the danged thing because it’s pretty cool overall.

Held this year on May 25th, Japanmarkt is not terribly different from any of the Japan-themed festivals I’ve attended back in the US, but what is very clear is that the festival reflects to some degree the unique history the Netherlands has with Japan. Back when foreigners were for the most part not allowed in Japan, it was the Dutch merchants who were the rare exception. Moreover, the first Japanologist, Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold, was a German living in Leiden, and his old house is now a Japanese museum on the same street as Japanmarkt. And of course, there are a good amount of Dutch anime fans mixed in there, creating this convergence of Japan-loving generations that’s different from an anime convention. That said, there were actually anime con booths there as well.

Food was a popular item, and for my part I tried two things in particular. The first was a curry (for charity!). The second was something that could only have come out of a Dutch-based celebration of Japanese culture.

If you don’t know takoyaki, they’re essentially fried chewy balls of batter stuffed with bits of octopus and covered in savory sauces, a kind of convenient comfort food (and quite delicious if I do say so myself). There was a takoyaki stand at Japanmarkt, but it had a twist, mixing the concept of takoyaki with that of “poffertjes,” tiny pancake-like snacks typically served with powdered sugar.

These “takoyaki poffertjes” were something I felt I could never get elsewhere, their uniqueness compelling me to try them out. I can’t complain.

At one of the tables which was selling manga, I overheard a girl helping her friend out by finding volumes of My Girlfriend is a Geek (Fujoshi Kanojo). I don’t often see people interested in those otaku/fujoshi romance manga, especially ones giving lists to their friends to hunt down those books wherever possible, so that put a bit of a smile on my face.

Thoughts on Fandom Structure: Facilitating the Moe “Lifestyle”

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In a recent conversation, I was presented an interesting question: why is that moe seems to engender the type of fandom which seems on some level staunchly devoted to it and has fans who can take attacks on moe personally? After some consideration, I thought of two reasons.

The first reason is that on some level, whether it be deep or shallow, I think moe fosters a very individual, perhaps even private connection. Regardless of the specifics and any sort of moral/aesthetic tastes, the idea (nebulous as it may be) begins to resonate with concepts such as catharsis, fantasy, sexual desire and identity, self-reflection, stress, and so on.

The second reason, and the one I’m more interested in for this post, has to do with the ease by which one can become a fan of moe. In a recent interview concerning Starcraft 2 fandom, commentator and personality Sean “Day[9]” Plott was asked why so many SC2 fans have a tendency to identify themselves as “Starcraft fans” and to put down other games as inferior products, to which he responded:

There’s a lot of people who are into Starcraft and it’s just become their identity because, honestly, there’s so much Starcraft content that you can watch it all day, every day, just like you can be into football or baseball. And so, rather than just say, “I like this,” they look down on other things.

I think these words can apply to moe as well, in the sense that not only is there so much of it currently available that you can watch and read nothing but moe genre titles and have your entire day filled, but that the system behind it actively promotes and encourages this sort of obsession. On the fiction-production side, you have this tendency towards characters who each possess easily expressed individuality, and so make it easy to define a favorite, and it’s a process that can be renewed with the next show and the show after that. On the merchandise side, you have figures, posters, limited edition DVD boxes, fan clubs, official events, and so on. If you’re into some show, there’s a good chance you can buy something related to it, and though there’s a lot of talk these days about how fandom is moving beyond expressing itself through simple consumption, it can’t be denied that it is still in its own way an expression of one’s self.

Obviously this model doesn’t only apply to moe or even just anime/manga, nor does every single fan of moe do this (and I want to make the point clear that I’m not characterizing an entire fanbase as having a singular mindset). However, when combined with that very personal connection which moe fosters, I think it creates a particular kind of devotion, which, while not entirely unique, more easily manifests itself as something just that personal.

I Expected Better, Genshiken Omnibus

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Though it seems to be old news at this point, I thought I’d express my own disappointment at the fact that the re-release ofGenshiken(in massive omnibus) format.

Given the number of big re-releases of manga in English as of late, from Sailor Moon to Cardcaptor Sakura, I had originally bought Kodansha Comics’ Genshiken release with the expectation that, like those other revised editions, that it would come with a newer, more accurate translation. Instead, what we’re left with is a direct reprinting of the old translation which, while serviceable, not only made mistakes which are somewhat less significant to the story (like messing up the names of Mobile Suits from Gundam), but also changed characters’ dialogues to mean entirely different things (Ogiue’s introduction goes from her asking why girl otaku like yaoi so much to accusing the guys of being “queers”).

I don’t need to buy Genshiken over again. I have it a million times over, in anime form, in manga form, in Japanese and in English to differing degrees. I even own all of the special edition Japanese releases of the manga and their accompanying paraphernalia. The reason I bought the first omnibus was simply because I wanted to be able to share Genshiken with my friends who can’t read Japanese while treating them to a more accurate translation, but if that’s not the case then I have a problem.

If anything can be done to revise the later omnibus volumes I would like to know, as I think having a truly solid edition of Genshiken would only be for the best.

Ogiue Maniax’s First Trip to Anime Expo!

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Though not my first time in Los Angeles, it’ll be my first time hitting up Anime Expo, that monster convention whose size and majesty dwarfs all around it. In fact, it’s also my very first west coast convention, so while I know what to expect from a big convention, I don’t know if there’s anything particular this con in particular that I should be aware of.

In any case, I’ll be attending most if not all of the academic panels, and trying to go to the concerts if I can. I’ll also have my own presentation to give while I’m there on Saturday, as part of the Building Bridges Through Individual Texts panel. My presentation is titled going to be focused on the science fiction manga 7 Billion Needles.

My (tentative) schedule is as follows:

Friday

The Cutting Edge of Anime and Manga Studies (11am-12:15pm)

Why Do We Try So Hard? Anime and Manga Studies Roundtable Discussion (12:15pm-1:15pm)

The Origin of Anime Fandom (2pm-3pm)

Aniplex of America Industry Panel (3pm-3:45pm)

Animetal USA (WHO IS IT WHO IS IT WHO IS IT) (4:30pm-6:15pm)

Adventures in Teaching: “The History of Manga” (7:15pm-8:15pm)

Bushiroad Industry Panel (8:15pm-9:15pm)

Saturday

E-Manga: The New Style of Manga with Ryo Horikawa (11am-12pm)

Animetal USA panel (12:15pm-1:30pm)

Madoka Magica panel hosted by Aniplex (3pm-4pm)

Anime Bloggers/Podcasters Town Hall (4pm-5pm)

Yuki Kajiura/FictionJunction (6pm-8pm)

Building Bridges Through Individual Texts (8:30pm-10pm) (That’s me!)

Sunday

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fan Panel (9am-10am)

Hamada, Morio, Tsunoki (Madhouse) (10am-11am)

LiSA Concert (12:15pm-2:45pm)

Right Stuf/Nozomi Entertainment Premieres (3:15pm-4:45pm)

What do Anime Fans do, Why and How? (5:15pm-6:45pm)

Supporting and Expanding Anime and Manga Studies (7pm-8pm)

Monday

Who knows!

So there you have it. For all you cool dudes I know, I hope to see you, and if I don’t know you, then I hope to at least meet you.

The Fujoshi Files 46: Kagawa Rika

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Name: Kagawa, Rika (香川リカ)
Alias: N/A
Relationship Status: Single
Origin: Otaku no Musume-san

Information:
Kagawa Rika is a classmate and friend of Higan-sou resident Arisaka Haruka. She has a younger sister in elementary school named Riko. Rika has a crush on an older man, Nitta Chihiro (who also lives in Higan-sou), though he is not interested in her. A teenager, Rika believes that she is too young for him, when in fact the truth is the complete opposite.

Fujoshi Level:
Rika is not an extreme fujoshi, but she still got thrilled at the idea of Nichi and Kouta in a relationship, and was the one who encouraged Haruka to make a drawing of them in the first place.

My Hopes for “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games”

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There was a big to-do recently when Anita Sarkeesian over at Feminist Frequency received a barrage of nasty comments over her Kickstarter to fund a project to analyze common tropes concerning female characters in video games. A lot of the commentary was as you might (unfortunately) expect, citing her supposed jealousy of better looking women, her “hypocrisy” over wearing makeup, as well as threatening her with rape. Even if most of this turns out to just be purposeful button-pressing in order to get a rise out of her, it’s still pretty sad that it came down to this.

I do not think people should have to agree with her just “because” she’s feminist, but at the same time I do wish people would come up with better arguments against her ideas and her points than simply things like “sexualization happens to men too” (the nature of the sexualization is nowhere near the same).

Tropes vs. Women in Video Games is already more than well-funded as of this post, but having watched her previous videos in the Tropes vs. Women series, I still want to say something about my hopes and worries about the project.

While Sarkeesian makes overall good points in her videos pertaining to the types of tropes which can reinforce images of women as passive beings in service to more fully developed men, I find that her videos tend to take something of a sledgehammer approach to addressing problems. Tackling big problems with big answers is a valid method, and it does result in points which are more readily and sharply conveyed, but there is a loss of nuance in discussing specific tropes she addresses as a result, possibly due to the brevity required in making short videos.

The consequences of this loss of subtlety is that the presentation of the tropes themselves seem to center around the idea of the trope itself being sexist more than its overuse (though both are considered culprits). For the Women in Refrigerators trope, the idea of a side or major supporting character dying in order to drive the hero to action is a recurring theme throughout fiction, be it with men or women, and the use of a girl as the “sacrifice” is not so much the problem as it is the degree to which it happens in superhero comic books, a genre which is all about power and inspiration.

Similarly, in her discussion of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, she criticizes the character type for being something of a vague supernova of inspiration for the leading male character, lacking in qualities to make her fully realistic. To that I have to ask, since when does more realistic automatically equal a better character? While I certainly see the advantages and have argued for the strength of such characterization before, there is something to be said for characters who are their concepts distilled to an extreme. Furthermore, it risks leaving no room for the trope to be turned into something which can be positive for women without having to completely subvert it.

When it comes to Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, my hope is that Sarkeesian will not come at the female characters of video games with a “one strike” policy. While there are plenty of girls to be rescued and recurring roles for girls that can be explored and criticized extensively, I hope that she does not view individual characteristics isolated from each other, but rather sees the characters as a whole. In the end, any judgment she makes is hers, and characters can and will end up being considered problematically sexist (because let’s not kid ourselves, video games do have them), but if a character has positive traits in addition to negative or even harmful ones, they should be acknowledged in order to show where games have managed to make smaller progressive steps in addition to bigger ones.

Thinkin’ Thoughts

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Getting anime and manga merchnadise in the Netherlands is actually not that difficult I’ve learned, particularly when you live closer to the bigger cities. Though a lot of material is in Dutch, because a lot of people here know how to read in English already a lot of it is also imported from the US. I could be in worse situations.

That said, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss New York City and the amazing amount of access I can get with just a short train ride. When I think about how to spend a summer day in New York for me, it involves going to Kinokuniya first, followed by Bookoff (or vice versa), and then moving on to eat at Go Go Curry. They’re all around the same area so it also makes for an enjoyable walk. The sheer weight of my bookbag as it’s stuffed with manga is also a strangely pleasant and familiar feeling, and even reminds me of my high school days. It’s even more fun to relax on the train ride back, preferably with friends, just sharing everything we got while simultaneously peeling off layers of Bookoff price tags (those things tend to accumulate as the same book gets resold over and over).

Perhaps the New York routine is special mainly because it’s where home is. Probably if I gave myself more time here (and actually went to Amstelveen), I could build up a similar routine, but for now I’m content to wait for the moments I go back.

The Fujoshi Files 45: Aoba Tsugumi

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Name: Aoba, Tsugumi (青葉 つぐみ)
Alias: N/A
Relationship Status: Single
Origin: Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens

Information:
Aoba Tsugumi is a high school student with a long-time crush on her life-long friend, Mikuriya Jin. Upon seeing that Jin was living with another girl (his half-sister supposedly), Aoba has made a much more concerted effort to express her feelings for him. Knowing firsthand about Jin’s troubled past, Aoba is always looking out for him, even bringing over meals prepared by her mother. For this reason, Aoba also learned to cook,  though she has a very limited repertoire, her best two dishes being “fried eggs with vegetables” and “vegetables with fried eggs.”

Aoba is a sweet, practical-minded girl, though she can also be a bit of a romantic. She can often be seen fighting with her imagination, both in terms of things not to think and things not to say. A newbie to the world of BL, Aoba was suddenly introduced to the genre by Kimura Takako and Ookouchi Fujino of the Art Club. It is not an active part of her life, though.

Fujoshi Level:
At first shocked by the content of yaoi doujinshi, Aoba very quickly asked for more. In addition, her reborn consciousness has allowed her to view the close bond between Jin and his friend Daitetsu in a new, corrupted light.

It’s All Right to Be Weak

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Though no one has ever said it to me before, I sometimes feel that my stance on various related topics concerning women in media may come across as hypocritical. I write a fair amount on the depiction of women in visual media, whether that’s anime or American comics or video games, but at the same time I’m also one to defend the concept of moe, often seen as the nadir of female representation in particularly Japanese media. It can be seen as a contradiction which ultimately compromises the arguments I make, but I would argue differently.

While I cannot reasonably argue that moe is faultless, the reason I don’t find my relative fondness for moe and my criticisms of misogyny to be all that contradictory has to do with the way in which characters impact a viewer. I believe that one of the core components of moe, that sense of weakness or perhaps even helplessness in a character (typically a girl), is not necessarily experienced solely as something external, a third party on whom the viewer acts as voyeur. That may factor in, certainly, but there is also a component of personal empathy, the depiction of weakness as a relatable point for those who may feel weak themselves, that is capable of being far more significant than simply the girl being cute or needing an older brother.

The capacity to portray weak characters is a good thing, in my opinion, and the problems of moe aren’t relegated simply to how girls are depicted but also how guys often aren’t allowed to be depicted. For whatever reasons there is a relative dearth of male characters targeted at men who are truly allowed to be weak and who are allowed to rely on others without having their worth as a man called into question either inside the works or by the viewers. This is why I’m fond of the supportive male character type you sometimes see in anime, because they manage to acknowledge their own limitations without issues of pride, and can both provide and receive emotional support. This is not to invalidate the more aggressive images of men of action, your Golgo 13s and Charles Bronsons, but I think there is room to expand both what can be done with men and women in entertainment media. In the mean-time, though, moe is having its positive effects.

That is not to say that moe is without its negatives and its problems in portraying women, and one thing that I have to acknowledge is that there are viewers, including moe fans themselves, who may bristle at the idea of a weak, helpless man (as opposed to girl), or might even be really aggressively sexist anyway. It is certainly not without its problems. In that regard, however, it actually reminds me of an essay titled “Never Trust a Snake: WWF Wrestling as Masculine Melodrama” by fandom and media scholar Henry Jenkins. In it, Jenkins argues that through the imagery of intense competition with a clearly defined goal (winning the title, beating the villains), pro wrestling provides a safe haven for the expression of “weak” emotions such as sadness and betrayal by couching it within the context of a hyper-masculine (and often extremely racist, sexist, and homophobic) setting, to which men in the US would be more willing to relate. They appear on stages and in front of cameras and audiences to loudly proclaim how others made them feel, driving home their characters in a conceivably therapeutic process. They’re shown to be physically superhuman, but prone to the same emotional scars as their audience.

Like pro wrestling, moe has its recurring issues, but I think sweeping it all aside under the single banner of “sexism” is over-simplifying some of the cultural and psychological dynamics at work. This is why I criticize certain portrayals of girls in moe without condemning it as a whole.

Gattai Girls 1: Gowapper 5 Godam and Misaki Youko

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Introduction: “Gattai Girls” is a series of posts dedicated to looking at giant robot anime featuring prominent female characters due to their relative rarity within that genre.

Here, “prominent” is primarily defined by two traits. First, the female character has to be either a main character (as opposed to a sidekick or support character), or she has to be in a role which distinguishes her. Second, the female character has to actually pilot a giant robot, preferrably the main giant robot of the series she’s in.

For example, Aim for the Top! would qualify because of Noriko (main character, pilots the most important mecha of her show), while Vision of Escaflowne would not, because Hitomi does not engage in any combat despite being a main character, nor would Full Metal Panic! because the most prominent robot pilot, Melissa Mao, is not prominent enough.

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Between its generic Monster of the Week stories, basic “defend the world from evil” plot, and its overtly toy-oriented design, the 1976 anime Gowapper 5 Godam by Tatsunoko Pro is a largely bland and mediocre giant robot series. Following the “Gowapper 5,” a team of five kids whose purpose is to “go on adventures” (really) and who discover a giant robot, even the normal saving grace of such a show, the giant robot itself, is lacking.

Though one can ignore the Rudolph nose, the titular robot is so blocky and aesthetically awkward that even the animators for the show who are otherwise skilled at producing action scenes cannot make Godam look impressive. Despite a handful of fairly impressive episodes which manage some good bits of characterization or interesting moral dilemmas, overall Gowapper 5 Godam would be even more forgotten than it already is if not for two reasons.

First, the character designs were by Amano Yoshitaka of Final Fantasy fame, who worked on many other Tatsunoko anime as well.

Second, it is the first ever giant robot anime to feature a prominent female character in a leadership position.

Misaki Youko transcends the “token female character” position in a number of ways. In addition to being the unmistakable leader of the Gowapper 5 (she wears the red uniform and her teammates consistently refer to her as such), she is clever, courageous, cool under pressure, a highly-skilled fighter (possibly the most skilled of the five), always dresses sensibly, and, perhaps most amazingly of all, never actually gets kidnapped or put in damsel-in-distress situations. She shows strong leadership even in moments of weakness, at one point willing to relinquish her position for what she feels is her own error in judgment, and is able to pilot Godam effectively and deal the finishing blow on multiple occasions to the enemy. Even today, such a character is a rare exception in the mecha genre (especially when you exclude those shows where all of the pilots are female), let alone in 1976.

However, while Youko as a character remains extremely capable, she is hurt by the fact that the show itself can never actually decide if Youko is its main character or not. Even the opening flip flops between emphasizing her as the most important character and focusing on the blue second-in-command, Gou.

Looking at who is most prominent when piloting Godam itself, a method which would work with just about any other giant robot show, doesn’t really apply here. While Godam is the centerpiece of the series, usually the Gowapper 5 go out and fight hand to hand or in their personal vehicles, leaving whoever is left behind to pilot the robot, whether that’s Youko or Gou or one of their three comically misshapen teammates. Much later in the series when they start to regularly pilot it all at once, Gou sits in the center chair, but then other times Youko acts like the main character, even being the one to directly defeat a major villain.

Because of the way that Youko receives fewer and fewer episodes devoted to her as the show goes on, I get the feeling that the makers of Gowapper 5 Godam originally wanted her to be the undisputed protagonist (with Gou as deuteragonist), but something had to make them backpedal, possibly as early as when they were making the opening. The fact that Gou, the character who has more of the look you’d expect from a giant robot hero, overall gets the most episodes dedicated to him (followed by the youngest character, Norisuke) makes me think that they determined that a female as the central character of the show was hurting their sales and that they had to do something about it. Moreover, the odd 36-episode length of Gowapper 5 Godam and the number of sudden introductions of new merchandise into the series in the last 1/3 of the show hints at a possibly troubled production or low toy sales which they would have to try and overturn. At the same time, the fact that Youko continues to be prominent even at the very end might imply that this was an on-going conflict throughout the show’s production.

As the first true female leader in a giant robot anime, Misaki Youko is in many ways a pioneering character. She is well ahead of her time to the extent that she may have been too much for the very anime she comes from. In that respect, she perhaps not only the patron saint of female protagonists in mecha, but also the patron saint of characters who transcend the quality of their own anime.