Author Archives: sdshamshel

A Tale of Two Harems: Kore Wa Zombie Desuka? vs. Infinite Stratos

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WARNING: Spoilers.

When the Winter 2011 season of anime began I saw two harem anime on the schedule. One was Kore wa Zombie Desuka?, which apparently being zombie-themed I wrote off as something to skip. The other was Infinite Stratos, which, while likely not to set my world on fire, had mecha and SF elements that I wanted to check out.  But thanks to a tip from Sub, I decided to check out Zombie after all, and now that I’ve finished these dual harem series, I find that my relative opinion has flipped. Kore wa Zombie Desuka? is a pleasant surprise, while Infinite Stratos‘s faults far outweigh its strengths.

First, let’s actually list the highlights of Infinite Stratos.

  • Good character designs, better than Zombie
  • Charlotte Dunois
  • The fact that it did not turn into a tournament fighting series

In contrast, I feel that the strengths of Kore wa Zombie Desuka? are substantial enough that they shouldn’t be listed in bullet form, but to sum them up, Zombie does a good job of playing with the conventions of the harem genre and bolstering many of the areas where harem shows tend to be weak. The main character in a harem series tends to take a lot of physical damage, so the series incorporates that into the basics of the setup. The hero Aikawa Ayumu is made undead, so that he can take abuse far beyond what is normal and regenerate. Whereas most harem protagonists tend to waffle and lack motivation, we see that from the very start of the series he has an initial goal to spur him on: to find the person who killed him. He’s still your Average Japanese Guy with Extraordinary Circumstances, but just by having drive and personality, you can see why more than one girl might take an interest in him.

Harem anime are really all about the girls. It is something I gladly accept when watching harem shows, but I prefer to see that the girls have fallen in love with the main character for something resembling a good reason. It helps that Ayumu has something called a personality, as well as traits that are actually admirable instead of vague “nice guy” characteristics, but Kore wa Zombie Desuka? also shows the girls actually developing feelings for him. Seeing the female necromancer Eucliwood’s first meeting with Ayumu, we can see how he charms her with a goofy and well-meaning attitude. Haruna, a chainsaw-wielding magical girl, is witness to Ayumu’s continuous noble actions and sense of self-worth. We can even see where feelings don’t develop with Mael Strom, who does not have feelings for Ayumu but actually works to go from indifference to affection-after-the-fact in some kind of twisted parody of an arranged marriage.

The girls of Zombie are not particularly well-developed in terms of personality, but they have a manic edge to them where their simple traits are pushed to the extreme without having them become tiresomely one-dimensional. This is probably most evident with Seraphim, a deadly vampire ninja not unlike a couple of Axe Cop characters, whose hobby, talent, and favorite word are all the same thing: Tsubamegaeshi, a sword technique, and whose catch phrase, calling Ayumu a “piece of shit,” feels delivered with sincere malice instead of being there to compensate for any sort of weak, fragile interior.

Infinite Stratos fails to convince me that most of the girls have legitimate reasons to be interested in the main character, Orimura Ichika. Looking at four out of the five girls in IS, two of them are childhood friends and two of them fall in love with him after a single fight. With neither situation are these explanations given time to develop. They just are, as if their purpose is to get Ichika in the harem situation as quickly and efficiently as possible. Instead of further flattening the characters as Zombie did, IS sees fit to give them contrived flashbacks where a girl will literally narrate to the viewer as to why her life is tragic. Ichika does this as well, and it doesn’t happen until half-way through, so when we first see him, he’s just a bland fellow who draws all the ladies for Some Reason.

This is actually why I emphasized Charlotte Dunois as one of the highlights of Infinite Stratos, because she is the only girl among the five whose eventual attraction towards Ichika was given room to develop. Charlotte Dunois starts off disguised as a boy, and as the only other guy in the school, Ichika finds a comrade in “Charles.” Their friendship grows through this “male” bonding, and with Ichika talking to her closely and comfortably, it makes sense that she would develop intimate feelings. If more of the girls in Infinite Stratos had this sort of portrayal, instead of having their affections develop out of un-reasons, then my opinion might have very well been more even between the two shows.

The essential strength and flaw respectively of each show is that Kore wa Zombie Desuka? creatively manipulates the harem genre conventions while Infinite Stratos feels beholden to them. This is evident even in each show’s approach to the dramatic. While neither series excels in this regard, in Kore wa Zombie Desuka? the dramatic elements are continuously built upon and reach a fairly satisfying conclusion, while with Infinite Stratos, much like the flimsy bases for affection, the drama just seems to appear instantly and recede just as quickly.

Overall, while I would say that the girls in Infinite Stratos are more attractive, it does not feel as complete a product as Kore wa Zombie Desuka?, which is able to show that a lot can be done with the harem genre without completely subverting it School Days-style. In doing so, Zombie winds up being the better anime.

In Celebration of a Life, Short-lived: Sym-Bionic Titan

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This past weekend was the final episode of Sym-Bionic Titan. I wish I didn’t have to say that.

When I first started watching anime, one of the most enticing aspects of it over many of the American cartoons I watched at the time was that, not only did they have on-going stories, but that those stories actually finished. They had conclusions. They weren’t always good conclusions (or good shows), and many times they were so open-ended you weren’t sure what exactly had happened, but you knew that if you started something, chances are you’d get something final out of it by the end.

American cartoons had managed to get some decisive finishes through, such as in Gargoyles or Conan the Adventurer, and I’ll even count the end of the Saturday morning version of Sonic the Hedgehog as a decisive finish despite it setting the stage for another season that never came to be. But for every one of those, you got a Pirates of Darkwater, where the show was set up from the start to reach a certain conclusion, but the show just stops in the middle and all you’re left with is your own imaginative speculation and/or fanfiction. I thought we were past this era, but I was wrong.

Sym-Bionic Titan was the brainchild of Genndy Tartakovsky, the man behind Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack, and it was his most ambitious and best-looking work to date. Following a trio of aliens (Lance the soldier, Ilana the Princess, Octus the robot) who escaped to Earth as the last hope to save their world of Galaluna from a traitorous general, the show took cues from Japanese super robot cartoons, American action cartoons, teen films, and various other areas and channeled them through some of the most deft usage of flash animation I’d ever seen. Much like Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt (and I have drawn comparisons between them before), it poked fun at genre conventions from multiple genres, and did so with style and grace-disguised-as-clumsiness.  It was a sign that Genndy had learned a lot since working on Samurai Jack, where the animation was often nice but felt very flat, and he married it with excellent characters and an intriguing plot. There were many mysteries in the show. What was Modula’s true motive? What really happened to Lance’s dad? Who was the mysterious person behind the Galactic Guardian Group? While the show could have easily gone on forever, it was not in its best interest to do so, as there was a real sense of urgency throughout the show, especially when you learned more and more about the characters and where they came from and why, on a personal level, they fight.

But Sym-Bionic Titan ran its initial 20 episodes, and was not renewed for more. Genndy Tartakovsky has moved on from Cartoon Network, possibly frustrated that they never let him finish his works. Samurai Jack never fought his decisive battle with Aku, and it’s unlikely that Lance, Ilana, and Octus will ever be able to return to Galaluna for a showdown with Modula. Was the show not doing well? Was it just not getting the money behind it to continue on?

It turns out that the reason given is that the show was actually doing quite well, but it did not have enough toys connected to it. I can see this being a problem, but I have to point out the fact that the show is ABOUT PEOPLE WHO TRANSFORM INTO ROBOT SUITS WHO COMBINE INTO A GIANT ROBOT THAT FIGHTS GIANT MONSTERS. That they couldn’t figure out how to convert this concept into toys is nothing short of ridiculous, and so the reasoning behind the show’s cancellation feels flimsy at best, an act of malice at worst.

Now there’s a possibility that Genndy pulled a Bill Watterson and specifically forbade merchandise from being made, but I highly doubt that. For one thing, he had hoped for a continuation of the series. This much is obvious based merely on the way the show is set up and how its final episode leaves room for so much more, let alone him actually saying as such. For another, the show’s explicit homage to Japanese giant robot cartoons makes it very likely that Genndy was not ignorant of the genre’s toy-centric origins or the fact that giant robot anime practically grew that merchandise industry in Japan to enormous proportions.

So even with the lack of an ending, is Sym-Bionic Titan worth watching? Yes, very much so. Do it.

Tsumo Times and a Ron Wait

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I was back in New York recently for a short while, a period that just so happened to coincide with the latest instance of my favorite mahjong gathering, the USPML‘s monthly open play events. Bringing with me exotic cuisine from beyond the oceans, I played my first offline mahjong game in many months.

It was good to see many familiar faces and even some new ones, as well as to learn that the USPML has only gained in popularity since I last saw them. Where once we barely were able to get sixteen players to fill four tables, we now had somewhere like 6-8 tables. I even saw an enterprising older woman there, learning the game amongst us young Turks. I wondered if she had experience playing an American form of mahjong and decided to expand her horizons. If that’s the case, she is a better person than me, who has no experience with mahjong outside of Japanese-style and one bad game of Taiwanese mahjong on X-Box Live.

I can’t say whether or not I’ve made significant improvements in my mahjong, but I did end up winning both games I played that day. The first was a rough-and-tumble game where I managed to win here and there and gain a small lead going into the final round. The difference was about 4000 points, so a mangan tsumo or a direct hit with about a 3 yaku hand could’ve knocked me off my perch, but I went for a quick, cheap, and most importantly closed hand. I purposely decided not to call reach as it would have made everyone overly defensive. In the end, I won with a simple pinfu.

The second game, I won a haneman and a mangan early on and held my lead by winning a large amount of cheap hands, many times with no yaku to speak of other than when I decided to reach. In a way it’s a dirty, yet effective way of playing. However, my victory is not the biggest story to come out of Game 2. That honor instead goes to my mahjong comrade, Dave aka Sub.

In an early round (it may have been the first), one of the players had called a closed kan. This was already dangerous, as it was a kan of the dora, but when this new dora indicator flipped over to reveal that it was a twin of a previous dora indicator, things got to a Washizu-level of bad. There, staring us all in the face was an 8-dora hand, an automatic Baiman, and who knew what else lurked within the the unrevealed tiles? Later on, we found out that this was a hand of much destructive power in more ways than one, as it not only turned out to be an 11-dora hand thanks to another kan that had been called, but that it was in position for a possible Yakuman, the Suu An Kou. But whether he got that standard Yakuman or not, the hand would’ve easily surpassed 13 dora, which would have given it equivalent power to a Yakuman. In other words, no matter how he would have won, he would have gained 32,000 points and potentially ended the game right there.

But Dave was a hero. Abandoning any notions of grandeur, he quickly called for some tiles. A few turns later, he won, and off the player with that amazing hand no less. Crisis averted. It was only after Dave’s smooth counter-offense that we realized how much danger we were really in. I may have won the game overall, but did I really?

See you guys around again. Playing has made me want to scope out the Dutch mahjong associations that I know exist.

Preventing Anime Burn-Out

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Every so often I’ve been asked how not to burn out on anime, but I haven’t been able to formulate a proper response. Sure, I’ve talked about how to not burn out on anime blogging, but nothing tackling the beast itself. With the new season starting up though, I figured now was as good a time as any to address that malady which afflicts so many otaku and their disposition towards anime. It won’t be a sure-fire guide to preventing burn-out, but I think it’ll at least help get you somewhere in the realm of a right mind.

I’ve never really burned out on anime, so in the sense that I have never hit the bottom and risen back up to fight another day, I may not be entirely qualified to talk about avoiding burn-out. However, I do have times when the act of watching anime can seem overwhelming, as well as times when I just don’t feel like watching anything or feel myself not enjoying what I’m watching as much. One such moment occurred a couple of months ago, as I found my attention was drifting away while watching Creamy Mami. I had some other shows I was watching at the time, but I was feeling a stronger desire to check out competitive Starcraft II matches. I had to ask myself, was it really happening? Was I really getting tired of anime?

Then I remembered that just the day before I was being riveted by Legend of the Galactic Heroes. I had an untouched full series of Ojamajo Doremi Sharp that I know I would enjoy but hadn’t gotten around to yet. The fantastic Heartcatch Precure had just finished or was about to finish, and I’d just been enjoying Star Driver since the fall season. I also knew that some of the shows I was ignoring in favor of watching Nada siege tank someone to death were not shows I was chomping at the bit to follow…at that moment. Things could change given a couple of days. Rather than finding myself in the beginning stages of anime burn-out, I realized that I was simply being incredibly short-sighted.

It’s easy to trick yourself into dwelling on the negative experiences. Remembering the bad more than the good, it then can cause you to create unfair demands for anime because they’re based on a desperation to be knocked out of your funk, and when the next batch of shows don’t rescue you from yourself, the burn-out becomes that much worse.

So then, how do you stop that from happening?

If you’re worrying about the shows in the here and now, I think it’s a good idea to just take a mental step back and look at the shows you’d been watching previously. I know that on the internet and among anime fandom there’s a tendency to quickly forget anime after it has finished airing, but don’t be like me and get caught up in your own myopia. One year ago isn’t that long a period of time, let alone three to six months ago.

Don’t be afraid to stop watching those specific anime that seem to be dragging for you and to replace them with something you think you’d enjoy more. If you’re not sure whether you actually dislike a show or if you’re just not feeling it, put it on the back burner for a while. If it’s a current show that you’ve been keeping up with week after week, don’t get so attached to the rat race that watching it becomes more of a chore than anything else. See if you can come back to it a few weeks or even a few months later, when you’re feeling sharper. If you must keep up with it as it airs, and I have to again recommend you not fall into this trap, let it run as you’re doing other things. A lot of television in general is made with the assumption that its audience will not always be paying full attention.

Anime burn-out is largely psychological. How you define it is ultimately up to you. If you find the amount of shows you’re interested in dwindling, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not enjoying anime anymore, it can just mean you’re watching fewer shows. If you’re not feeling any of the shows currently running, don’t be afraid to look backwards, to older anime. If you’re really finding nothing to watch, perhaps think about what it is exactly you’re looking for. Whether you’re following ten shows or just one or are even deciding not to watch any anime for a little while, the quantity of anime doesn’t have to define your interest in anime or your identity as an anime fan.

Who is the Daytona USA announcer’s favorite philosopher?

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Roland Barthes

Ichika’s Rosy Life: An Infinite Stratos Fanfiction

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It was noon at the Infinite Stratos Academy in Japan. There in the cafeteria sat Orimura Ichika, your typical guy who also pilots an advanced robot suit. In fact, it wasn’t the suit that made him special, it was that he was the only man in school, a special and rare case of a possessor of the Y-chromosome being able to pilot an IS. At least, he was, before his new roommate Charles Dunoa arrived from France.

So as Ichika sat there eating his sandwich, a bunch of girls came up to him. They were curious about Charles, particularly because he was quite handsome, and they used this opportunity to not only try to get more information on the Frenchman but also as an excuse to get closer to Ichika.

One of them sat right next to Ichika and said, “I’d like to visit the two of you in your room.”

“I guess that’s all right,” replied Ichika.

“Can I…invite my friends?”

“Sure! We’ll go wild.”

The girls’ faces all turned red and they shouted various exclamations and variants of “Kyaaaaa!” But just as it began to escalate, in  came four of the most talented girls in the school, Houki, Cecilia, Lingyin, and Sarah. Houki brandished her Japanese sword at the blushing girl. Cecilia reprimanded them. Lingyin began to activate her IS. Sarah pushed her short pink hair aside and told the girls that she prefers older men.

Ichika tried to calm the girls down. He figured the best thing to do would be to get up and leave the cafeteria, but while standing up his hand slipped and he fell face first into all of the girls’ chests.

I will leave the grim and violent details to your imagination.

Ichika eventually managed to escape, and saw a mysterious figure with sharp eyes and turquoise hair. Another guy, it seemed. He beckoned Ichika to come over and handed him a note.

Ichika whispered to himself. “This changes everything.”

My Pain

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Cross Fight, Cross Fight: Genshiken II, Chapter 62

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What was once fated to shine brightly for a few moments in the grand scheme of the universe now has been given new life, as Genshiken II has shed its limited-time status and has revived itself as a fully serialized title. That’s right, Genshiken is back in full force and I can only be pleased by the news. Almost as if to symbolize this new beginning for Genshiken, Chapter 62 feels almost like another introduction to the series and the madness contained therein. Let’s take a look.

As Angela returns for her third trip to Japan and Yabusaki puts the finishing touches on her Fullmetal Alchemist doujinshi, Ogiue is working frantically to complete the second half of her debut as a legit manga artist. Luckily she has the help of the current Genshiken freshman as well as Sue, but the whole situation begins to derail when Hato becomes self-conscious of the fact that his facial hair is growing in. Yajima suggests that Hato wouldn’t have this problem if he dressed like a guy, given that guys aren’t embarrassed by facial hair, but Hato has no men’s clothing with him. Fortunately(?), Ohno left everyone some cosplay outfits, but things get quickly out of hand and everyone ends up working on Ogiue’s manga while cosplaying.  Even Ogiue decides to join the “party” in an effort to take responsibility. The chapter ends with Yabusaki coming in to help Ogiue, only to lecture them for goofing off. Naturally, Ohno deeply regrets not being around for this rare occasion of cosplay goodwill.

So, this heavy chapter obviously has a ton of references, and it’s not exactly big on character development, so I think it’s a good idea to find out just who they all are. Some of them I got, some of them I needed to do some internet detective work. Here’s a list of the costumes worn by each Genshiken member.

Yajima: Yagyuu Juubee Mitsuyoshi, the rather large and voluptuous heroine of Sekiganjuu Mitsuyoshi.

Hato: Ashikaga Yuuki, the cross-dressing main character of the School Days sequel, Cross Days.

Yoshitake: Kurashita Tsukimi, the Jellyfish-obsessed protagonist of Kuragehime.

Sue: The titular character of Comic Master J, a super manga assistant.

Ogiue: Nakano Azusa, underclassman guitarist from K-ON!

The entirety of Ohno’s selection for Hato consists of crossdressing characters. Though I can’t recognize all of them, at least one of them is Maria from Mariaholic. Yajima’s outfit is arguably the most embarrassing, coming from a manga series by the character designer of badonkadonk resource Real Drive, but given Yajima’s personality that must have been the most conservative outfit of the bunch. It’s interesting that Ohno would see “overweight girl” and interpret that as “cosplay as thick ladies,” though it makes sense in retrospect. Yajima’s outfit this chapter shows that she’s actually quite busty, and much like when Ogiue first cosplayed way back when though, it kind of makes you aware of the fact that Yajima’s baggy clothes are partially the result of shame. How appropriate it is then that Yoshitake is dressed as a character with a similar dilemma.

Ogiue as Azusa of course makes it own kind of sense, especially when you factor in the fact that the girls of the light music club pushed Azusa towards the Azunyan cat motif somewhat resembles Ohno’s own constant persuasion of Ogiue into cosplay. In fact, Ohno can draw a number of parallels to K-ON!‘s Yamanaka Sawako.

Interestingly, everyone except Ogiue is dressed as a main character, despite the fact that Ogiue was pretty much the central focus of the second half of the original Genshiken. If I were to be somewhat liberal with my interpretation, I’d say that this is symbolic of the direction of Genshiken II, where the new girls are starting to establish themselves as the main stars of the new series. As I’ve said before though, I’m quite okay with this, despite my fondness for Ogiue, as it feeds into one of the themes of Genshiken, that of the continuous renewal of the club.

Looking forward, with Angela around, the chances of a Sue-centric chapter rise greatly. And in the spirit of Sue, we’ll end with a fourth-wall-breaking image.

Distance to Travel: The Borrower Arrietty

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Thanks to a twitter tip by the fine folks at Tsunacon, I found out that there was a showing last week of the latest Ghibli movie, The Borrower Arrietty, at the Melkweg theater in Amsterdam. Luck would also have it that I’d come down with a cold during the same period, but I managed to power through and experience my first theatrical anime in the Netherlands, and second time in a Dutch theater overall.

The first time, I had gone to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, and it carried the unique challenge of having the audio in a language I understand (English) with subtitles in a language I don’t know but is fairly close (Dutch). Perhaps due to my experience as an anime fan, I found my eyes gravitating towards the Dutch subtitles, and because written Dutch is so closely related to English it would occasionally interfere with my ability to understand what characters were saying, almost as if the subtitles were in English but accidentally taken from the script of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. For The Borrower Arrietty, the movie was presented with Japanese audio and Dutch subtitles, and I found it a lot easier this time to ignore the Dutch. I think it had to do with both the fact that Japanese and Dutch are quite far apart as languages, and that I had gained the experience of Deathly Hallows. Which is to say, I was able to avoid one potential distraction, and even my cold seemed to play nice. Either that, or the movie drew me in enough that I could comfortably ignore it.

The Borrower Arrietty follows a small family of Borrowers, a race of small people no taller than a ballpoint pen. Living underneath a house inhabited by normal humans, they “borrow” the tiniest amount of materials from the human world in order to fulfill their own needs. The humans meanwhile are oblivious to their existence, and the Borrowers in turn avoid all contact with humans. Arrietty is the family’s only child, a 14-year-old girl who is set to go on her very first “borrowing” with her father, but who is already quite adventurous and often wanders outside to explore. Living above them is a new resident named Sho, a young boy with a heart condition.

The world of the Borrowers is a patch-work world of human products appropriated for use by tiny people, and it is in the portrayal of this world that the movie really shines. Whereas a lesser film would constantly make obvious references to scale, Arrietty does this through a mixture of subtle visual effects and through the characters’ natural interaction with their environment, and it is the first thing that really pulled me into the movie. A hand cloth becomes a blanket, a clothespin becomes a hair clip, staples become the rungs of a ladder. When the family of Borrowers is gathering at the dinner table, they have tea which they pour out of a tiny teapot, but while the teapot is scaled down for their usage, the tea comes out not as a steady flow but as droplets which swell at the tip of the spout due to the small opening and the natural cohesiveness of water. Backpacks are held together by velcro; when viewed from the perspective of a Borrower, the fastening and unfastening feels quite alien. The world is a whimsical and dangerous frontier.

Without giving away too much, The Borrower Arrietty is about physical, social, and conceptual divides. There is the sheer size difference between human and Borrower, the purposeful separation of the two species, and even the way a length of distance for a person can seem mercilessly long to a creature 1/20 our size, or for that matter, for a boy with a weak heart. The film is also about working to bridge those divides, and the degree to which it succeeds actually depends on your own outlook on life. Arietty is as optimistic as you make it out to be.

The Borrower Arrietty is not directed by Takahata or Miyazaki or even Miyazaki’s son Goro, but by Yonebayashi Hiromasa, who has worked on Ghibli films before but is in the director’s chair for the first time. When the movie began, I wondered as to what extent Miyazaki would influence future Ghibli films of which he is no longer apart. Granted, Miyazaki still has a big hand in Arrietty, being responsible for planning and screenplay, but I still had to ask myself how much “Miyazaki-style” and “Ghibli-style” would go hand in hand as time passes. Fortunately (or not), The Borrower Arrietty made me quickly forget my own inquiry with its engrossing visuals and storytelling, and by the time it was finished I felt myself not worrying about it so much.

Vistas: Final Fantasy Advent Children & Character Camera

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I’ve written a post concerning Final Fantasy: Advent Children as part of our “multi-vistas” category at the Vistas blog, where everyone on the blog takes a look at the same work and writes a response. Mine is about the character-centric visuals of Advent Children as well as some personal elements, while my colleagues have written about Advent Children as Fantasy vs. Science Fiction and the lack of discrete visibility in its action scenes and its possibilities.