Category Archives: anime

They’re Like Robots, Except Giant!

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Much like my attempt at compiling “Non-Japanese” magical girl shows, I’ve recently started a Youtube playlist consisting of “Non-Japanese” giant robot shows. My definition of “Non-Japanese” here is somewhat lenient, as I’ve also included anime which were heavily adapted for foreign audiences, as well as shows animated in Japan for foreign audiences. Something like Voltron which was based on Golion and Dairugger XV but then got additional episodes made due to the popularity of Voltron counts as both. Parodies are okay as well, as evidenced by The X-Treme Adventures of Brandon and Mallory.

I’m taking suggestions, so if anyone knows any series/movies/whatever besides the ones I have already, please chime in. Please keep in mind that they must be lean more towards the “robot” side and less towards the “powered suit” side, though I understand that such a line is blurry at best. To give you an idea of where the line is, I do not consider The Centurions or Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors to be giant robot series. Dino-Riders is on the fence, but if you can convince me that a T-Rex in advanced techno armor is not that different from an Evangelion, then I might include it as well. But most likely not.

Machinations of the Lyrical Fujoshi

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colony Drop is Blazing a Trail Through the Information Super Highway

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

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

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

Sunshine + Glass = Happy Times

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

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

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

So in conclusion, hell yes.

~A Fantasy All Too Affected by Reality~

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

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

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

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

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

“Tune in.” Do people still say that?

Shine on, Geocities. Shine on… Forever

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome Back, Tange Sakura

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Describe to me, this… ‘vagina.'”

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

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

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

Stupid Emperor Baseball Girls

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I’ve been reading up a little about Japanese history as of late, and one interesting bit is that the Taisho Emperor was reported as something of a numb-skull. Described as “aloof” and “feeble-minded,” the most famous story is the time he rolled up a document in order to peer through it like a telescope in front of his ministers and officials. He was never allowed in public again. In light of the recent display of 1920s Japanese girls engaging in America’s Favorite Pastime in the form of Taisho Yakyuu Musume, my first reaction was wondering how the existence of a less-than-good Emperor might cast a dubious shadow on the show and its setting.

My second reaction however, was the realization that no moment in history is truly idyllic, even if it might be a lot harder to write about the happy times fighting in the trenches of World War I than it is to portray 1950s America as an A-OK happy fun time (as TV shows from that era often did). If I started looking at TYM from that perspective, I’d probably have to do with every period piece of fiction ever, and that’s not a road I’m willing to travel down.

There might have been some riots during the time Koume and Akiko were learning how to throw a ball, but forcibly attaching the politics of the era to what is supposed to be a harmless show about girls learning about self-improvement (with some yuri humor on the side) would be a definite problem that likely would be purely for my own smug satisfaction, which is the last thing I’d want.