Category Archives: anime

Take My Place, Fair Citizens, at the Mahjong Table

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So a bunch of stuff has come up all of a sudden in my life, and this will prevent me from going to the monthly Riichi Mahjong sessions held by the US Professional Mahjong League in New York City.

But while I am unable to go, another continues to champion the cause, and you can join him in his endeavors to bring on the “its.” If you barely know how to play, that’s really not a problem, as it’s a friendly learning environment, and you get free snacks and soft drinks to soften the blow to your fragile ego. You’ll reach Akagi level someday. Or at the very least, Kanbara levels.

Wahaha.

This month’s Open Play session will be this Sunday, April 25th. The address is below.

Simple Studios
134 W. 29th Street (b/t 6th and 7th)
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10001

I’ll see you there.

I Want to Be the Very Best, Ready to Fight for What’s Right Against Wrong, in America

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Heroman feels like a return to an old idea, and probably not in the way you’re thinking.

When we think giant robots, we usually think of robots being piloted from within or being some kind of sentient being, but Heroman is neither (at least, not as of Episode 2). Instead, he’s an entity separate from the human, controlled through a remote device. Sound familiar? It’s the same premise as that progenitor of giant robot anime heroes, Tetsujin 28.

But as I implied, the giant robot moved away from having its hero exist separate from it, and that’s been the trend ever since. While there were attempts to bring back this idea on occasion, I think the reason it failed to succeed was that it just didn’t seem as exciting or as practical as having a cockpit. After all, I’m sure just about anyone who watches any incarnation of Tetsujin 28 will wonder why they don’t just target the completely vulnerable human controlling it. The answer, of course, is that Shoutarou would stab you in the neck and set you on fire because that’s how Shoutarou rolls (no, really), but the basic idea is that it just makes more sense on a variety of levels to in the protective bosom of your mecha. At least, that’s how I see the evolution of that general trend in giant robots.

But then when you think about it, the idea of the remote-controlled giant robot is surprisingly similar to a genre which supplanted mecha in popularity, profitability, and marketability: the monster battle anime, of which Pokemon is by far the most famous. And in time, this turned into not only monsters but mechanical creatures as well.

So we’ve gone from a remote-controlled giant robot to piloted robots to kids battling using monsters to kids battling using mechanical devices, and now with Heroman, a remote-controlled robot servant fighting alongside his owner, it’s  like we’ve come full circle.

As an aside, does anyone else get the feeling that this post is a product of me having recently finished Tetsujin 28 combined with me getting back into Pokemon? Yeah, I thought so.

The Bishounen and the Trap

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The Speakeasy Podcast recently released their 4th episode, wherein they talk about the “bishounen,” and all of the celebration and agony that comes from putting some eye candy for girls into anime that are traditionally considered “for guys.”

For those unfamiliar, the term bishounen literally means “beautiful boy,” and refers to characters in manga, especially shoujo manga, who are beautiful and effeminate. In being pretty, bishounen in turn violate the unwritten rules of Acceptable Beauty in a Man, where guys are allowed to look good, but only in a way that reaffirms heterosexuality by having them conform to the male view of what a lady killer is supposed to look like.

Simply put, bishounen threaten masculinity and make guys uncomfortable. But the “threat” of bishounen isn’t simply in their looks, but in their very presence, and to get to the real heart of the problem, we have to take a look at a very similar concept which also holds some very profound differences: the trap.

The origin of the term “trap,” as it’s used by English-speaking anime fans, refers to the idea that a male viewer is “tricked” into being attracted to what he thinks is a very attractive lady, only to find out that the character actually has a Y-chromosome. In some cases, it works so effectively that some will say that liking traps is still not considered “gay,” because the character is so effeminate that all they’re doing is appealing to a heterosexual man’s natural desires using the power of artistic expression.

Now what’s really interesting is that in some cases you’ll find examples of guys who love traps but hate bishounen. At first, it can appear to be a contradiction, but there’s a fundamental difference at work here: bishounen are designed to appeal to girls, while traps are designed to appeal to guys.

Of course I’m aware that there are plenty of guys who decry the presence of traps just as much as they do bishounen, guys who believe that both the moe fan and the fujoshi are killing anime. But I really believe that the thin line between bishounen and trap reveals the truth, and that it all comes down to fear.

Guys who lament the presence of bishounen are not as threatened by their good looks as they are the idea that the presence of bishounen means that guy-oriented anime will suffer in some capacity. When the bishounen talks, this is what they hear coming out of their mouths.

“These character designs are not for you.”

“We’re doing things to actively appeal to people that aren’t you.”

It’s the fear that girls will latch onto a show just for the hot guys and will ignore all of the deep and wonderful story that’s actually there and will refer to the guys as “bishies” and debate the degree to which they would “glomp” them. It’s the fear that anime which would have had excellent story and setting might end up being aborted half-way and turned into a hideous carbunkle that sacrificed its potential for greatness for scenes involving with male beauty, angst, and sparkling moonlight.

The truth of this matter is actually stated in the Speakeasy podcast: anime, in some capacity has always made attempts to appeal to girls, even in that most manly of genres, the giant robot anime. The original fans of Mobile Suit Gundam were actually mostly female. UFO Robo Grendizer found a female fanbase as well, because of some of the romance elements in the story, as well as the presence of strong female characters. Even Gowapper 5 Godam tried to appeal to girls by being the first giant robot series to have a girl as the main character. They may have been a secondary audience to the boys buying action figures, but when it comes down to it, what’s wrong with having an audience that’s 50% female?

Read and/or Die: Aniblog Tourney Thoughts

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Back in 2008, I won 3rd place for Bloggers’ Choice Rookie of the Year in the now-defunct Anime Blog Awards. I thought that would be the first and last time anyone ever did some sort of anime blog competition, but  Scamp over at The Cart Driver has proven me wrong. Now he’s pitting 96 blogs against each other in a Saimoe-style throwdown in a competition aptly named the “Aniblog Tourney.”

Most likely your first reaction to this is something along the lines of, “This is just some kind of circle jerk popularity contest!” And you’re pretty much right, at least for the popularity contest side of it. The circle jerk I think is up in the air.

The one thing I like about this endeavor in particular is that the criteria for voting is very clear and simple, with no ambiguity like so many other vote-based tournaments you’ll find on the internet. This isn’t like Saimoe, where the meaning of “moe” is so nebulous that it loses all meaning in voting, or the GameFAQs character competitions where the notion of “greatest” can be construed in a million different ways. Here it’s just, if you were only allowed to read one blog out of those two, which would you pick? What do you personally prioritize? Humor, knowledge, writing style, good or bad is all up to the remote control voter.

And it’s not like it’s hard to get an idea of how a particular blog is. Just read one or two posts and you’re good to go.

I don’t know when this thing is beginning, and I can’t tell you who to vote for or whether you should vote at all, but if you do decide to participate, just go with what you think is right. And if you don’t participate, then at least it might be a good opportunity to just check out some blogs you’ve never read.

You can check out the bracket, as well as the thought process Scamp went through, right here.

Getting to Like You, Getting to Hope You Like Me

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What is a MILF?

The correct answer, of course, is a Mother You Would Like to Meet Between the Sheets. It is a fetish towards older, more mature women. But while a million things could be said about the concept of the MILF and its appeal, I want to point your attention to one in particular: what the word “mother” in this context really means.

The “mother” in MILF does not refer to the stretchmarks or the fact that they have a five year old sitting at home. Rather, it is very much a visual ideal. The MILF looks more mature and is therefore attractive in a way younger girls are not, and while it has a conceptual side to it, the idea that the MILF is also far more experienced in them in bedside manners, this is also achieved through visual signifiers, such as the clothes they wear and the hairstyles they favor.

While I’m no scientist, I think it’s safe to say that our minds are built to connect ideas and images, to associate one thing with another. This is evident in art, as symbolism abounded in works throughout history, changing depending on the culture. There, we find increasing levels of abstraction, wherein the “symbol” itself may potentially have the power to supplant the original itself, or at least to carry significant weight. So when it comes to anime and manga, the mental association of visual attributes to other physical traits as well as personality and sexuality isn’t that surprising.

Anime fans are encouraged, for better or worse, by possibly the shows or fellow fans, to grow and cultivate a visual vocabulary in this manner, creating a two-way street where looks imply personality and vice versa. Girls with large breasts either tend to be hyper-sexual (Anybody in Ikkitousen, but especially Ryofu Housen) or reluctantly so (Asahina Mikuru from Haruhi). Tsundere can often be found with twintails, due to their potential implication of guarded innocence.

At their most extreme,  these visual signifiers can describe not just personality and background but the entirety of their characters. It’s like instant ramen. It tastes “enough” like the real deal, and it doesn’t require the time and preparation of a real deal. You might consider it shallow, efficient, or both, but it makes sense. Anime fans new and old and from every generation have loved anime partly because of the connections they make to the characters. They want their characters to have personalities attached to their looks, even if those personalities might be one-dimensionally simplistic. This is what a lot of the successful Visual Novel companies have realized. While the characters’ story arcs are just as important, the companies know that they can set the stage with the appealing character designs and hint at their personalities through those deisgn aspects.

They can have players experience love at first sight. Or first moe or whatever.

(Oh, and in regards to MILFs and taking things too far…)

NOW ONLY PLAYING IN MY HEAD

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Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time doing nothing (by necessity), and whenever I have about half an hour’s worth of time to take up, I think about how that’s roughly the span of a TV show. And so I engage in the same failed exercise: I try to form an original anime episode in my head and pretend I’m watching it from start to finish. I’ll play a poorly thought-out song in my head, maybe have characters talking about something with some kind of goal in mind, and then try to progress from there. Eventually I get tired and have to take a break.

Then I look at my watch and realize that it’s only been five minutes. This is why I call it a failed exercise.

This reminds me of how when I didn’t have a music player while exercising, I used to sing anime openings in my head as I used the treadmill. The opening to Getter Robo was a favorite, and the best part was that if I lost track of a song it didn’t really matter, and in fact starting over could be seen as a good thing as it acted as further distraction.

ABeshi!

An Ally of Justice, a Subordinate of Evil, a Symbol of the Past and the Future: 2004’s Tetsujin 28

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Yokoyama Mitsuteru’s Tetsujin 28 is one of the landmarks of anime and manga, a classic among classics and a significant influence on the history of comics and animation in Japan. It is widely considered the “father” of the giant robot genre, being the first notable manga to feature a towering humanoid behemoth of steel and jet engines in a heroic role. It rivaled Tezuka’s Tetsuwan Atom in popularity, bringing with it a more base thrill than Tezuka’s stories. One thing Tetsujin 28 did not do, however, was really look at its own contents and try to incorporate them into a greater story, which is where the 2004 anime adaptation of Tetsujin 28 comes in.

Tetsujin 28 2004 was directed by Imagawa Yasuhiro, who is known for his work on shows such as G Gundam and Giant Robo the Animation: The Day the Earth Stood Still. The latter is of particular significance, as Giant Robo is adapted from a manga/live-action show by Tetsujin 28‘s creator Yokoyama, and acts not only as a story of gaining maturity and forging destiny, but also as a tribute to Yokoyama’s works in general. So Imagawa, being no stranger to the works of Yokoyama, approaches this adaptation by putting a subtle, yet profound spin on the story of Tetsujin 28, using in the 21st century what was not available to Yokoyama back when he was creating the original manga: hindsight.

Tetsujin 28 is the titular giant robot of the series, and in the story’s premise it is a product of World War II, a super weapon designed to fight the Allies that finds a new purpose in post-war Japan. Its “master” is 10-year old boy detective Kaneda Shoutarou, the son of Tetsujin’s original creator. With his trusty remote control, Shoutarou uses the iron golem not to wage war, but to protect peace and stop crime. With these essential ideas, that of a weapon of destruction finding a new identity as a guardian of good, and the young boy at its controls, Imagawa transforms Tetsujin 28 into a story about the relationship between the people of post-war Japan and the demons of their past, tying the characters and stories from Tetsujin 28 into actual historical events and paralleling the development of Shoutarou and Tetsujin with the development of Japan.

Though Tetsujin 28 is most certainly a giant robot series, it is not as much of one as you might think. Many times the episodes feel more like detective fiction, and in a great number of instances the antagonists don’t even utilize giant robots. Instead, the recurring theme among the villains in Tetsujin 28 is that they are all relics of World War II and the weapons developments that were going on at the time, ranging from artificial intelligence to hideous disease to genetic manipulation and a host of other mad sciences. Shoutarou must constantly confront the past and the horrors that came from the very same war in which Tetsujin itself was created. That’s not to say that giant robots are out of the question, of course. The series takes Tetsujin’s greatest rival, the Black Ox, and increases its role in the story. This is actually a hallmark of director Imagawa, his interest in fleshing out villains, and he ends up giving a somewhat similar treatment to Ox as he did Baron Ashura in Shin Mazinger.

The strength of the visuals in Tetsujin 28 are perhaps best exemplified by the show’s portrayal of Tetsujin itself. While Tetsujin’s face is completely static, it is still able to convey a sense of mood and emotion by utilizing a technique from the No plays of Japan, where the apparent expressions on No masks change depending on the angle at which they’re seen. Viewed from below or straight on, Tetsujin’s eyes appear large and friendly. From above however, the visor on Tetsujin’s head turns its expression into a vicious glare, a look often enhanced by changing the color of Tetsujin’s eyes from a bright yellow to a menacing red.

The show’s visual direction isn’t all good however. Tetsujin 28 has this odd tendency to use these extremely awkward digital transitions which can really jolt you out of the show. They really do stick out poorly, though it’s my only real complaint in terms of visual direction.

There is a near-constant gravity in the 2004 Tetsujin 28 series, and it can be a lot to take in, especially if you expect the series to be as lighthearted as its source material, and doubly so when you factor in the potential incongruity of the tone of the series and the character designs. Everyone in the show, from Shoutarou to Police Chief Ohtsuka to scoundrel Murasame Kenji are drawn to resemble the original manga’s look, with only slight updates to their designs. The animation looks new, but the characters look very old-fashioned, and Tetsujin 28 thus potentially runs into the same problem that Tezuka’s work does in front of a modern audience. To the show’s credit however, while the character designs are old-fashioned, almost none of them take on the useless slapstick roles that characterized older series. Ohtsuka in particular benefits from this transformation, as his role as police chief is greatly expanded upon and he is shown to have an iron resolve fitting his position. Many other elements from the original series are taken as well, such as the fact that the 10-year old Shoutarou not only drives a car but also carries a loaded gun and isn’t afraid to bust a few heads to reach his goal. Again, it can be a difficult pill to swallow.

Overall though, Tetsujin 28 is a very intelligent show that asks a lot of good questions, and is thoroughly entertaining throughout, though it can get depressing at times given the subject matter. At 26 episodes, it’s a bit of an investment but I think it pays off very well.

I Don’t Not Not Know About This Not-Ending

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I recently finished the Imagawa-directed 2004 anime adaptation of Tetsujin 28, and knowing that Imagawa played around with a lot of the existing material the source manga by Yokoyama had to offer, I began to wonder just how the original manga ended. I could not find any information on how Tetsujin 28‘s manga ended. So I thought, hey, I’ll start researching on Japanese sites, but then I stopped myself for a second and had to ask, why is it that there is so little information on how Tetsujin 28 ends? Or for that matter, something like Tetsuwan Atom?

I do know that Tezuka tried to end Atom a number of times and was forced to bring his most famous character back every time, and that Tetsujin‘s original manga isn’t exactly the most serious and serial of stories. And it’s one thing if something said, “This story never ended,” or “This story just kind of tapers off,” or even, “This story has a non-ending.” But there isn’t even that little. And I’m not condemning anime fans or anime researchers for ignoring this. It’s just that I find it incredibly odd that, despite Tezuka and Yokoyama being such big deals, somehow this information is not common knowledge, especially in this age where it’s difficult to go down two websites without tripping over ending spoilers.

Anyway, once I’ve found out this information, I’ll be glad to share it.

Ogiue’s Conscious/Subconscious Desire to Change

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If you were to pinpoint an event in Ogiue’s life that began her path of self-acceptance, you would not be incorrect in saying that the catalyst was her arrival in Genshiken. The story makes that much clear. However, what I would like to remind people about, even if no one’s arguing for or against it, is that the signs are clear that Ogiue changed because she had a deeper desire to change. If she were truly resistant to the idea of changing herself, it would not have happened.

While Ogiue’s preference for clothes changed throughout the series, in the very same conversation where Saki convinces her to start wearing better clothes you learn that Ogiue had already undergone a small makeover in the transition from high school to college. Her signature paintbrush hairstyle was something new, and she switched out her eyeglasses for contacts. The message is, “I don’t want to be the person I was,” though it’s marred by the fact that she isn’t sure at first what person she wants to be. Does she want to be more of an otaku or less?

This also comes out in her apparent interactions with the school’s Manga Society, where she antagonized the girls in the club. It’s clear looking back that all she really wanted was friends, but she projected her own shame onto them. Still, as poor a reaction as she had towards them, this was also a sign of change.

There’s that saying, “help comes to those who help themselves.” In this case, I think it happened on a subconscious level.

K-On and On and On!!

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In college, a teacher gave me some good advice on animation. He was a 3-D animation teacher, and he knew full well how time-consuming it could be, and how rewarding it was to make something really impressive. His advice, however, was a message of artistic prudence. I don’t remember the exact words, but the message was basically, “Don’t get so attached to a bit of strong animation that you reuse it to excess.” I was reminded of his words while watching K-On!! (the second season of K-On!).

In the new opening, there’s a very distinct part where the camera pans around the five girls of Houkago Tea Time, and it’s really some impressive animation, especially because while the background of the clubroom is 2-D, the girls themselves are still animated in 2-D, and overall it looks pretty natural.

So it looks really nice. But then they use the effect again. And then a third time. At that point, I think it’s just excess.

The opening for the first season also had something similar, a shot where all the girls are playing together that gets reused about three times total. However, in my opinion the recycling isn’t as jarring for a number of reasons. First, it doesn’t have that three-dimensional rotation effect going on like the new opening, where that piece is so different from the rest of the opening that you notice it immediately. The shot in K-On!! sticks out like a really nice-looking sore thumb, and it becomes all the more obvious when they use it another two times. Second, the first opening changes the background between usages of the stock animation, and while this can be seen as simply being lazy, the change in scenery makes the reuse more comfortable to the viewer.

If they really, really wanted to use the revolving camera effect that much, I think a good solution would have been to put more camera movement in the scenes right before that animation to ease the transition into it.

Not that Kyoto Animation is reading this blog, of course.