Category Archives: anime

My NYAF Mascot Submission

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So my entry for New York Anime Festival’s Mascot Design competition is over at the contest site now. You can view my entry here. I uploaded the image twice because I felt that the first upload’s resolution wasn’t high enough (they actually expand a smaller image so the enlarged image looks terrible). Then I found out you can edit your entry and just reupload.

Whoops!

The way the contest works, 10 finalists will be picked from the existing pool of images and then those will be voted on. Once the finalists are picked, you’ll have to go to the Sakura Matsuri in New York City from May 2nd-May3rd.  I won’t tell any of you to vote for me unless you really think my design deserves it. If you see something better, go for it.

Once all the entries are in, theOtaku.om, Del Rey Manga, and the New York Anime Festival will be selecting ten finalists that will be put on display at the New York Anime Festival booth at Sakura Matsuri (May 2nd-3rd at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in Brooklyn, NY — http://www.bbg.org/exp/cherries/sakura.html). Sakura Matsuri attendees will vote for their favorite, with the character receiving the most votes being crowned NYAF’s 2009 mascot. On May 7th, the winner will be revealed!

And if you’re unable to see it somehow, the profile I’ve designed for my character is below. No, her name is not an Ogiue reference, it’s short for “Chikatetsu,” the Japanese word for subway.

Name: Chika
Favorite Anime: Kino’s Journey
Favorite Manga: Honey and Clover

Chika is a girl who loves experiencing variety, something which anime, manga, and New York all have in abundance. You can often find her head buried in manga as she rides the subway around the city.

If there’s one thing that connects all of the anime and manga fans in the city, it’s the use of the New York City’s public transportation to visit the various stores which allow fans to maintain their hobbies and even meet each other and foster friendships. Chika’s outfit symbolizes New York City subways and the opportunities they represent.

The False Positive Pitfall in Discussion of Anime and Manga

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“Intertextuality” is the idea that there is a conceptual space where ideas brought forth by books, movies, texts, etc. interact with each other. One way to think about it is the old addage that the “truth lies somewhere in between.” This is the space where differing (or similar!) opinions confront each other. Don’t think about it too literally, but with the internet available, it’s become a lot easier to have this sort of thing happen beyond the scholarly journals and academic settings where this sort of thing usually occurs.

As anyone who has read Ogiue Maniax probably knows, I quite enjoy finding and seeing any connections which may connect one aspect of anime to another, be it from show to show, or from staff to real world events or whatever, and it’s something that’s consumed my time and the direction in which my hobby has gone. I think I’m pretty good at it, and apparently others do too.

However, there’s a drawback to having an open mind which actively seeks out connections among the material you’ve ingested mentally. Sometimes what happens is you see connections that do not exist, but because of the success you or others have had in taking this approach to a topic, it becomes difficult to break free of this trap. In other words, sometimes we tend to overthink things. This is what I call the “False Positive Pitfall,” and it’s something I feel anyone academically-minded towards anime and manga (or any other topic for that matter) has to watch out for. Failure to acknowledge this effect can result in a number of problems, from undermining your writing to being seen as unnecessarily elitist to simply leading you down the wrong path until all you see is false positives and you become a case where you’re an anime reviewer everyone makes fun of because you have no idea what the hell you’re talking about anymore.

Now, I’m not immune to this at all, and there’s multiple instances of statements made out of false positives that are on this blog. But people aren’t perfect, and even if you’re constantly on the lookout for them, some are bound to slip through, especially as your knowledge of anime and manga expands. Again, it’s more that I want people to be wary of the False Positive so that we can foster better discussion that is both relevant and respectful to the topics we engage.

Preview of My NYAF Mascot Submission

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One of the Strengths of Modern Animation as Displayed by Mahjong Anime

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Incorporating 3D animation into 2D animation has always been a tricky thing, but as technology has improved the integration has become better and better. It can be a time and budget saver, and all it takes is using it intelligently.

Enter the modern mahjong anime. The first screenshot is Saki, and the second is Mahjong Legend Akagi: The Genius Who Descended into the Darkness. What they’ve done in each of these shows is designed a full set of mahjong tiles in 3D, and basically use those same tiles throughout, aside from Akagi’s trip through WASHIZU MAHJONG. There’s no need to redraw the delicate details of a mahjong tile every time when you can meticulously etch out the details in Maya or whatever. Maybe YOU should make a mahjong anime with fully rendered tiles!

Go on, I’ll wait.

So you’ve got their mahjong tile set in 3D and you’re wonder, what to do with it? Why, EVERYTHING YOU CAN. Tiles spin around and taunt the players. One tile floats in a player’s head as he contemplates his decisions. Tiles form an unpassable mountain, or perhaps even a golem or giant robot! These are all just representational metaphors for the game of mahjong!

Integrated 2d and 3d which saves time and money! Behold the power of modern animation!

Drossel, the Best Figma

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How can I make such a wild claim that the Drossel Juno Vierzehntens Heizregister Fürstin von Flügel from Disney’s Fireball is the best Figma, when she’s only just recently been announced on their site?

Simple. Drossel is a robot and also a girl.

Despite recent attempts by Goodsmile to man up the Figma line with the world’s deadliest assassin and a gay porn star, Figmas are mostly known for being a fairly girly set of toys. Girly set of toys for guys, that is. Whether it’s Haruhi, or Konata, or Konata dressed as Haruhi, the big beefin’ robots are usually left to Kaiyodo’s Revoltech line. Which is all well and good, except that when it comes to having poseable joints, giant robots tend to fare better than fleshy meatbags in terms of having elbows and knees which make sense.

But now you have Drossel who, as stated above, is both robotic and feminine. Her joints make sense, and she possesses much of the trademark cuteness that the Figma line is known for. And she’s got the twintails. In a sense she’s the first Complete Figma.

Drossel goes on sale June 2009. As I don’t actually own it, I can’t recommend it per se, but really, check out dem knees.

Adieu, Geocities

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It’s the end of an era as Yahoo! has decided to completely shut down Geocities, the free site-hosting service that  was one of the go-to places during the late 90s if you didn’t know a whole lot about html or web design but really, really wanted a website. I never used it myself, being an Angelfire user, but so many of my friends both online and in real life utilized Geocities that it’s tied to my youth and my time as a fan of anime and video games.

Geocities is very significant to a number of fandoms out there, and it’s particularly a big deal when it comes to anime. It’s not because any incredible resources existed on Geocities sites (though some may have, I just can’t be bothered to check), but the sheer amount of anime sites that were on Geocities over the years. Don’t believe me? Go to the Anime Web Turnpike right now and look through the sites and see how many are Geocities pages.

Geocities has sort of become obsolete at this point, as those who want free pages can go to Myspace or Livejournal (or WordPress!) and do whatever they will with their space, while those who want their own web space can obtain it easily as getting web space and your own domain name is significantly easier now than it was 10 years ago all while being less expensive. Still, I feel we should pay our respects to Geocities, with its initial ridiculous URLs and its pop-up ads and remember how much it has done for anime fandom and online communities in general.

Mine Characters, Aye

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While bored on the train, I decided to do a quick (not-to-scale) sketch of a lot of the characters whom I considered to be “main” or “important” characters in the stories and worlds I made up growing up all the way up until now. If you see any recurring themes in certain characters, well, that’s because I like certain things. I will not say that all of these were good ideas. Some concepts are better than others.

1. I don’t remember her name. She had the ability to “defy” laws of conservation of matter by tapping into the energy of an alternate dimension. Key point is her headband. Came up with her around the age of 16.

2. A pillow man based on the pillow I slept with when I was very little. He had a gun and his own video game where he fought enemies like a piranha man with tank treads for legs and a guy with satellites for arms. Probably my earliest character from when I was about 4 or 5.

3. The Victim. Co-created with a friend based on a calendar we got for class, the Victim is a dim-witted, optimistic fellow prone to getting himself in life-threatening, violent situations. Around age 10 or 11.

4. Peanutty. A peanut person. Liked to use anvils. Also created around 10 or 11, but before the Victim.

5. Tentsuki Akiko. You can tell by the psuedo-Japanese name that this was during a time when I started getting into anime. She’s a school girl and giant robot pilot, with her robot resembling somewhat the Aestivalis from Nadesico. Created probably age 15 or 16.

6. King HIV. Final boss of a video game about the immune system. Wears  crown. Created in 3rd grade. Seriously, not even kidding about this.

7. Alex Bellberry. Male bounty hunter who is very bitter about his effeminate looks. Around age 17 I believe.

8. Name undecided. The latest main character for an upcoming comic. She’s interested in the truth. Created just this year.

9. A magician girl whose name I forgot. Carries a staff. Created around age 15 or 16.

10. Super Six. He’s a muscular half-butterfly, half-man with 6 arms each of which have a weapon on them, ranging from a stinger to a can of insecticide. Created when I was about 5 or 6.

11. Sylvia North. A cheerful, intelligent girl who flies around in a modified garbage can and delivers garbage to those in need. Created at age 20-21.

12. Blink, co-created with the friend who drew Victim comics with me. Blink and his twin sister are the main characters of a puzzle platformer where they have to defeat an evil mosquito named Mr. P. Created around age 10.

13. Elyuna. A sickly girl whose disease happens to give her the perfect physiology to make an alien giant robot think she is a member of the alien race it came from. Created around age 18 or 19.

Let’s Play a Game Using GONZO’s Woes

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The animation studio GONZO, unable to make up for much of its losses over the past few yaers, recently cut most of its staff and is planning on reducing their output by 50%, down to four shows a year instead of eight. As GONZO marches forward, trying to do what it can to survive (which includes big steps into streaming video online), I feel it might be fun to figure out who these remaining creative staff members are.

I haven’t done any work on it at this point, but I figure there’s only 30 of them left, down from 130. By cross-checking the names that appear at the end of all of their shows, a comprehensive list could be formed.

That said, I wonder if any cut staff members are perhaps planning on forming their own companies.

Sprkng! Early Observation of Dragon Ball Kai

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I don’t plan on making it a habit of blogging about Dragon Ball Kai, but seeing as I reviewed a very “special” remake yesterday, I felt I should talk a little about how the other, inarguably better remake is doing.

For those of you who don’t know, Dragon Ball Kai is an HD re-mastering of the original Dragon Ball Z with new audio recorded (both music and voices) and, most importantly, all fat trimmed to make the show more streamlined and in-pace with the original Toriyama manga. Three episodes are out so far, and it should give a good indicator as to how the show will fare later on.

Dragon Ball Kai accomplishes in three episodes what took the original anime five, and early Dragon Ball Z wasn’t even that filler-laden! At the pace they’re going, the show may end up feeling it’s never dragging. That is, unless perhaps the manga dragged in certain areas as well. It’s an interesting conflict, being “true to the manga,” because should you be true to it, bad parts and all? Probably the main difference in pacing that will be seen is that in the manga powering up hardly takes any time. It’s the classic cliche of Dragon Ball Z that entire episodes are spent “powering up,” and it’ll be funny to see that stereotype smashed. It’ll be even funnier when the Namek saga takes significantly less time, and the inevitable jokes will occur which go, “Are they still on Nam- oh…I guess not. Carry on!”

Unlike that other thing, there’s really no point to discussing whether or not Dragon Ball Kai is true to the spirit of Dragon Ball. While this is clearly going to make them massive piles of money to roll around (and to sleep on top of with lots and lots of beautiful women), it’s still, I feel, a labor of love to a certain extent, even if it’s simply a repackaging of old material to seem new and fresh. I’m cool with that.

I just have to wonder if this mean that for all the young kids who are watching Kai before Z, will they be unable to ever watch the Z anime when a superior alternative exists?

The Best Argument for Creationism: Dragonball Evolution

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Dragonball Evolution, what can be said about it? Well,  I can certainly call it a “movie.” It is a series of scenes placed one after the other on a film strip and shown in a sequential order. Dragonball Evolution: People involved in a production to put a form of entertainment in theaters.

Upon first hearing that a live-action Dragon Ball movie was being made, I had an image in my head full of cheesy lines and attempts to bring stories full circle, revisions to existing aspects of Dragon Ball designed to make it seem “cooler” and less “cartoony,” unfaithfulness to the source material’s characters and their personality, and awkward special effects. When the first trailer was released, and then the second, this prediction still appeared to hold true. Now, after having seen the whole thing, I can say that the movie was exactly what I expected it to be.

Where to start with this, “Evolution” of Dragon Ball as it wishes to be known? Well, how about the way in which it relates to Charles Darwin’s theory, or rather the attack on it by certain religious groups?

Proponents of Intelligent Design commonly state that there is evidence in the bedrock that shows that the Earth’s history is not a continuous chain of events, and that there are mass extinctions and sudden increases of certain types of animals, as if the history of the Earth and its wildlife are a series of islands connected by a higher power. This is in fact how Dragonball Evolution feels. You know it’s a story mainly because you’ve been told that it’s one, but while the events of the movie follow a chronological order, there is almost nothing which smoothly connects one scene to the next. Master Roshi will claim that going to the tournament is vital to their quest to defeat Piccolo. Then no one will participate in the tournament and then we never find out what going to the tournament actually accomplished. Yamcha and Bulma hate each other in one scene and in the very next they’re already falling in love. There isn’t even at the least a generic scene where Yamcha catches Bulma while she’s falling or something. Goku is in high school for some reason, and he gets picked on by jocks. He meets Chi Chi there. Then high school is never ever mentioned again. Master Roshi, the narrator, and Piccolo will all mention that Piccolo was responsible for nearly destroying the Earth until he was sealed 2000 years ago, but now he’s free and looking to enact revenge on humanity. How exactly did he break free from his confinement? Apparently NOBODY KNOWS OR CARES, at least not enough to tell the audience.

That’s not to say EVERYTHING is bad about this movie. Characters are occasionally true to their manga portrayals in certain ways. Goku is always naive, gets one or two nice lines to show how dumb he is. Master Roshi’s introduction feels very much like Master Roshi except in every scene after that he turns into generic old master. Also, sometimes the action scenes make it feel like a generic action movie, which is to say not super awful. Also my friends and I burst out laughing practically every minute at one bad line after another until we lost count.

An interview with the people who made Dragonball Evolution has members of the cast and crew defending the production, saying that the director succeeded in keeping the spirit of Dragon Ball alive and adapting it just enough to appeal to a wider audience. The problem is that they’re totally wrong and Dragonball Evolution is not faithful to the spirit of Dragon Ball at all. I can go into the many reasons why this is the case, but I’ll just give one: the core of Dragon Ball is represented by its main character Son Goku and his personality: goofy, often very dumb, loves to fight, and has a strong sense of justice when it comes down to it. There’s a certain kind of whimsy and humor that never leaves the series even when planets are being destroyed and limbs are being chopped off. That is to say, Dragon Ball is all about having serious fights never be too serious because it’s always been about the comedy as well. Dragonball Evolution throws all of this out and decides to be an action movie and coming-of-age story like so many others out there. Even if it succeeded in being a well-constructed story with brilliant direction, it would still not be Dragon Ball.