Category Archives: anime

New York Anime Festival 2009 Preparations

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New York Anime Festival 2009 is this Friday-Sunday, September 25-27, and it’s going to be the final NYAF before the thing merges with New York Comic Con to form a nerd Vegetto (or Chouryuujin, depending on your tastes). The advantage/disadvantage of NYAF is that there isn’t a whole lot to do all the time, but when there is it’s really, really worth it.

These are the events I’ll be trying to attend, as per the schedule.

Friday
Yoshiyuki Tomino Keynote @ Panel Room 4 (1A21) 5:15pm – 6:15pm
Aniplex @ Panel Room 4 (1A21) 6:30pm – 7:30pm
Cencoroll @ ANA Theater (1A08-12) 9:00pm – 9:30pm

Saturday
Del Rey Manga @ Panel Room1 (1A24) 11:00am-12:00pm
Yoshiyuki Tomino Q&A @ Panel Room 4 (1A21) 1:45pm-2:45pm
Blogger Roundtable @ Panel Room 4 (1A21) 8:00pm-9:00pm

Sunday
State of the Anime and Manga Industries @ Panel Room 1(1A24) 1:30pm-2:30pm
CPM Retrospective @ Panel Room 4 (1A21) 3:00pm-4:00pm
Anime Recruitment @ Panel Room 3 (1A22) 4:00pm-5:00pm

I’ll also be trying to catch any Starcraft matches during the WCG USA finals.

Also don’t forget to catch me on the Anime Bloggers Roundtable panel on Saturday from 8pm-9pm. I’ll be there along with Ani-Gamers, Reverse Thieves, Comics Worth Reading, Anime Vice, Subatomic Brainfreeze, Anime Almanac, The Gaming Dungeon, About.com: Manga, and Super Amazing Number One, there to discuss this fine art we call anime blogging. There’s a structure to the whole thing, but it’ll still probably be fairly free-form.

Look forward to it!

The Fujoshi Files 11: Angela Burton

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Name: Burton, Angela (アンジェラ・バートン）
Alias: N/A
Relationship Status: Single
Origin: Genshiken: The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture

Information:
Angela Burton is an anime and manga fan hailing from Boston, Massachusetts who befriended a Japanese student named Ohno Kanako while the latter was living in the United States. Though Ohno eventually had to return to Japan, Angela would come to visit Japan on more than one occasion, along with their good friend Susanna Hopkins. While they were partly interested in reuniting with Ohno, their main task was attending the largest doujin event of the year, Comic Festival. Initially, the flaxen-haired Angela startled the members of Ohno’s club with her strong, outgoing personality and her attractive and athletic figure, but would soon become a valued friend and an otaku comrade-in-arms.

Angela has a talent for sports, allowing her to physically endure the wear and exhaustion of an all-day doujin event far better than most. Her favorite shows include General Frog and Gungal Bleed, and she also possesses a strong fetish for glasses-wearing characters, though she does not actually wear glasses herself.

Fujoshi Level:
Angela Burton is unusually athletically fit for a fujoshi, which allows her to accomplish more, but what really sets her apart is her personality, specifically her openness as a fan. Perhaps due to her American upbringing (combined with the corrupting influence of anime), Angela can easily declare her fetishes in public and describe them in explicit detail. Angela’s tastes are also more diverse than most fujoshi, as she describes herself as being interested in both “male-oriented” and “female-oriented” doujinshi.

Genshiken 2 R2 Single Box Re-Release

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After 6 DVDs worth of Region-2 Genshiken 2 goodness, the official site back in August announced a December 2009 release of a single Genshiken 2 box containing all 12 episodes for the enjoyment of Japanese fans and those willing to spend lots of money on anime but didn’t do it the last time they released the DVDs.

The Region 2 DVD box will likely have more features than the American release, which has just begun, but fewer features than the original Japanese release, which came with Drama CDs and Pretty Menma stories and all sorts of crazy things that only I crazy fans would want. However, while I am not 100% sure of this, I am almost certain that the new box will be the best-looking of the bunch, and most likely designed to fit in with the previous box-set compilations. I previously posted an image of them some months ago, but here they are again.

Genshiken and Genshiken OVA boxes

I mean, I don’t think anyone can argue that these are the most stylish of the bunch, though I’d have to wonder who they’re gonna put on the Genshiken 2 box. Ohno is on the back cover of the OVA series, but maybe they’ll graduate her to the front for this one.

Bleach Fight Scene

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The Effects of Visual Falsehood

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In the Anime World Order review of Nobody’s Boy Remi, Gerald Rathkolb discusses the way in which the narrator plays with the expectations of its viewers by saying things that turn out to be completely false a short while after. If the narrator says that Remi found some money and spent it happily, there would likely be a scene shortly after where he accidentally drops the money down a sewer.

Generally, identity-less narrators are seen as omniscient, so either the narrator does not actually know everything, or is actively deceiving the audience. A similar effect happens with misleading episode titles. How many times does Chiba Shigeru in Hokuto no Ken declare in the next episode that a major character is definitely going to die but actually doesn’t? It makes a person begin to doubt the authenticity of words in fiction.

But words are easy to ignore as lies. The very idea of lying is tied closely to the use of words. If someone says you’re lying, it usually has to do with what you’ve said and not what you’ve done. What happens then, when the lies are not words but pictures?

Ambiguity in a given scene is a common technique used in anime and manga to create a sense of tension and drama. In Dragon Ball Z, a character attacks an enemy with so many energy projectiles that a giant explosion occurs where the target was standing. This ambiguous moment is meant to leave the viewer in anticipation as to whether or not the attack worked, though the explosion itself begins to take on a symbolic identity as a red herring and leads the viewer to assume that the opponent did not in fact die. What I’m referring to with visual falsehood though is something far more sinister.

While I cannot speak for everyone, I tend to believe that what is presented to me on the screen or on the page is what has happened in the story. In other words, there is a certain degree of “truth” to the visuals of a manga, because without them how are we supposed to know what has or has not happened?

One prominent manga author who uses visual falsehoods to their utmost advantage is Fukumoto Nobuyuki, creator of gambling series such as Mahjong Legend Akagi: The Genius Who Descended into the Darkness, Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji: The Suffering Pariah -The Ultimate Survivor-, and Gambling Emperor Legend Zero. In Akagi and Ten for example, mahjong hands are displayed right on the page and presented as what a given character has to work with. In the anime for Akagi, the hand is generally displayed by itself floating in a space, as if to say that this is an objective view of the mahjong hand. Of course, it turns out not to be, and we are presented with what is really there.

This is a scene from Zero where the main character is faced with a scenario where he cannot see who is behind the wall. Fukumoto lets us the readers take a peek at the person behind the wall. Then he reveals the truth!

What are we to believe? Reveals like these are downright disarming.

A non-anime/manga example of this comes in the form of Megaman 9. In this game, there is an enemy that disguises itself as a 1-Up icon. Attempting to get a free life will of course result in an unpleasant surprise.

Though the enemy is not difficult to defeat, it creates some paranoia in the player. Just which 1-Ups are real? Does that 1-Up seem too good to be true? The game has challenged your perception of what “should” be.

I do not believe these visual lies impact these works negatively, but when the images themselves are untruths, it can create a sense of imbalance, a distrust for what is in front of you. Keep in mind that in Fukumoto’s case, this never damages the “gambling” or “mystery” aspects of his stories, so you are also unable to just doubt everything and view his works from a position of absolute superiority. It adds a new layer to reading manga, one where you are in a sense competing against the creators themselves.

Asahiya NY Closes October 31st, 2009

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I really regret having to say this, but apparently the NY branch of the Japanese bookstore Asahiya is seeing its final days. Located on 45th St in Manhattan between Madison and 5th Ave, Asahiya for many years provided a smaller, yet less expensive alternative to Kinokuniya for buying new Japanese manga and books (Book Off is of course still the king for used material). When I came back from Japan, I used Asahiya to continue purchasing issues of Monthly Afternoon and buying volumes of Genshiken, and just recently I used it to purchase Tonari no 801-chan Volume 4. While Kinokuniya will still be around, I’m really sad to see Asahiya go.

They’ll be having a sale between October 1st and October 31st, so if you get the chance, I suggest stopping by before it’s all gone for good.

The “Anime Canon,” You Say? -The Anime Canon Project

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Back in May of this year, I wrote about an idea to create “A Comprehensive Guide to Essential Episodes.” What it basically entailed was a desire to create a database of some sort to archive which episodes in a series could be skipped, and which episodes should be watched to really understand what makes these shows good or at least memorable. I came up with this idea in response to the anime fans I’ve seen and talked to whom have complained about the difficulty of getting into a show as long as, say, One Piece.

Alex Leavitt, in turn, has decided to utilize my original idea and convert to a much greater task, that of creating a true Anime Canon Project, or at least leading anime fans to understand why certain shows are “essential”—not that you need to watch them, necessarily (though Alex may disagree with me here), but that you need to understand how and why these specific titles have effected a great influence on anime fans and society beyond that.

Just to be safe, the canon here refers not to whether Naruto officially loves Hinata or not, but rather to a list of works which are deemed most influential to a given medium. In the canon of classical music for example, you would find names such as Beethoven and Mozart.

I’m not sure if Alex here is the first to try and tackle this monster, but the idea of an “Anime Canon” is in itself a precarious one (though not without merit). Not only would there be big differences between the Anime Canon of different countries (Golion was just another robot show in Japan, but Voltron is integral to the giant robot fanbase in American culture, just as Gloizer X is apparently an influential show in Brazil), but the last thing anime fans want is to be told what they should watch and that they are somehow inferior as fans should they choose not to watch these things. I am confident that this is not the message either Alex or myself are sending; as I have said in the past, the path to true fandom is not how much you know but how much you want to learn, and if done correctly this would be a valuable learning tool for everyone, including myself.

The Anime Canon should be not about what shows you should watch to truly understand anime, but rather about what shows you should watch if you want to see the degree to which trends in anime and the cultures that both stem from and are influenced by it. And the only way that this can happen is if enough people are willing to help while still keeping their heads on.

Give him a reply over at (alexleavitt @ gmail . com) if you’re interested, because I sure am. Alex: you have my e-mail address, so feel free to send anything you want over.

Am I “Qualified?”

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This is one of those weird blogging about blogging posts. If you have no interest in waxing philosophy on such matters, then I suggest you go watch some anime (because anime is awesome).

If you look at the way in which I form ideas and write them out here at Ogiue Maniax, you will see that I have a tendency to qualify statements, taking simple sentences and complicating them in order to fully explain what I mean. Generally my goal is to remove as much ambiguity as I can (unless intended), but it can be a dangerous habit that can lead to strong assertions being weighed down by too many technicalities.

It’s not so much that I dislike the fact that I qualify statements so often(ah, there it goes!), but rather that I think it’s a good thing for me and other writers to be aware of. We can then know when it is appropriate to try and clarify in great detail what we’ve said previously, and when it is best to let something just stand on its own merits (in my case, this usually takes the form of a bad pun). In a manner of speaking, it all comes down to “how much should you say?”

The other major pitfall of over-qualifying statements is that if done incorrectly it can make your words seem as if they are constantly contradicting themselves in order to keep your opinion “correct.” That’s something to really watch out for.

Taisho Matthew Musume: A Biblical Look at Moe

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In thinking about my Taisho Yakyuu Musume-related post from yesterday, I was reminded of one of the difficulties some people have with understanding how varied the appeal of moe can be while still being considered moe. Sometimes people ask, “Why would you want to see helpless girls? Do you like them that way?” And the answer to that is, they’re not helpless, they’re just at a disadvantage, and that has its own appeal from the perspective of a consumer of fiction.

I’m going to present here a quote from the Bible which I think is appropriate given the subject. Better known perhaps as the Parable of the Talents, Matthew 25:14-30 (New International Version) reads:

14“Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. 15To one he gave five talents[a] of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. 16The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. 17So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. 18But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. 19“After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. 20The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’

21“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

22“The man with the two talents also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.’

23“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

24“Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’

26“His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

28” ‘Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. 29For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. 30And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Religious connotations aside, this parable highlights the appeal of watching, say, the girls of Taisho Yakyuu Musume strive to beat a boy’s baseball team instead of aiming for a loftier goal: the desire to watch characters try their best to succeed with the abilities they have. You can even see that not all of the girls are the absolute best at the positions they’re given. Sure, some of the girls are already athletic, but many have to train, some harder than others, and ultimately no one expects them to easily surpass the ones with more training and talent, but we look approvingly upon the progress they’ve already made.

While the parable does not map completely to the case of the Baseball Girls, the gist is that the servant fearing that he was not good enough chose instead to bury his head in the sand and hope for the best. What the master wanted to see from the servant was for him to value what he has, even if it wasn’t as much as the servant with ten talents, and do something with it. What I and others want to see is characters who may not be the most skilled or even capable of simple tasks trying hard to accomplish what they can.

In a more secular vernacular, the proper term would probably be, “Work with what you’ve got.” This is why we enjoy watching moe girls try to cook even though they’re terrible at it. This is why we enjoy watching them learn to play baseball without any indication of skill. We’re not hoping for them to fail, we just want to cheer them on and congratulate them for not running to the backyard and burying their one talent.

Don’t compare the moe girls to those more capable than they, but rather look kindly upon what they manage to accomplish taking into account the amount of “talent” they were given.

For examples of character equivalents of the man with five talents, see: Akagi Shigeru, Kenshiro.

Noe is Moe. No, Not That One.

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Sometimes I watch an anime, and I get amazed at just how well that anime portrays a certain simple act. Years ago I was quite impressed by the level of skill and animation used to depict crying in Alien 9, years before Kyoto Animation would make it a trademark of sorts with their Key adaptations.

Such a moment hit me again the other day, when I was watching Episode 8 of Taisho Yakyuu Musume. Here, we see team strategist Kawashima Noe giving one of the best blush moments I’ve seen in a long time, and it’s not like these baseball girls are any strangers to blushing; why the main character herself has eternally rosy cheeks. This one was different, however. It was this moment where Noe suddenly realized the position she was in and her face reacted accordingly. Not shown are the before and after moments, which serve to make this little scene even better.

It was, to put it mildly, so moe I could die.

In the meantime, Taisho Yakyuu Musume continues to please, as it continues its trend of combining 1920’s feminism in Japan with cute girls and catchy theme songs. If you’re worried about the show pandering too much, it really doesn’t.