I occasionally mention to people that I think the original 1970s Reideen anime has one of the best final battles ever. In the past, I have not been able to support this with visual evidence, but thanks to the power of Youtube and some guy, I can now present to you the decisive battle between Akira in Reideen against the evil Baraoh. Seriously, go watch it and see how action-packed and smartly choreographed it all is.
As an aside, Akira’s mom is really hot.
Kransom has informed me of Pop Japan Travel’s plans for a tour package in Japan centered around fujoshi activities. Departing from Los Angeles, prospective American fujoshi will get to walk down Otome Road in Ikebukuro, hit up Akihabara, go to a butler cafe, and visit something called the MUSCLE MUSICAL. I haven’t bothered to research what Muscle Musical is because the name alone has sold me. If there’s any indicator that the word “fujoshi” has creeped into the American otaku lexicon, this is it. They want people to spend money just for the right to live like a Japanese fujoshi for a week. You know aside from shamefully hiding your fetishes and living in a small dinky apartment saving money as much as they can so they can make the occasional yaoi doujinshi purchase. Close enough, though!
2channel has gotten word of this development, and they’ve got some amusing comments to throw around.
パティみたいのが大勢来るのか
Will there be lots of girls like Patty’s coming here?
らき☆すた？それとも絶対可憐チルドレンのパティたん？
Lucky Star’s? Or do you mean Patty from Zettai Karen Children?
いや、「げんしけん」のスー
Nah, they’ll be like Sue from Genshiken.
腐女子までいるのか
There’s fujoshi over there as well?
アメ公のキモ腐まで来んな
Stay away, you disgusting American fujoshi!
アメリカ人の腐女子なんてたくさんいる。
スラッシュ（ヤオイのこと）小説の二次創作サイト運営してるし、
オタコンなんかでは毎回ボーイズラブ小説家が招待されて
サイン会とかやってる。
There’s plenty of American fujoshi. There are sites devoted to “Slash” (Yaoi) fan works, and every Otakon they have autograph sessions for Boys’ Love writers.
Oh the wonders of fandom.
So with the new Fullmetal Alchemist anime set to air, people have been wondering what to call it. Some prefer “Fullmetal Alchemist 2” seeing as it’s the second anime, but it can seem inappropriate, seeing as this is a remake and not a sequel. Luckily, a recent commercial for the new FMA has given us the answer!
The preferred title is now Hagane no Renkinjutsushi – Fullmetal Alchemist.
“Wait a second!” you might be saying. “That just means the same thing! How is that different from the old title?!”
Ah, you see, what you’re supposed to do is say the JAPANESE name followed by the ENGLISH name!
This is totally easy to understand and will not be confusing at all!
So let us welcome our new show. We’ll call it “Hagaren – FMA” for short!
I went to the New York Japan Society’s exhibition on anime, manga, and video games yesterday. Entitled KRAZY!, the exhibition explores a variety of artists and works, from Moyoco Anno to the guy who made Afro Samurai, from Shigeru Miyamoto to… Shigeru Miyamoto. The point is, this is totally about stuff that the kids like: ANIME AND MANGA AND VIDEO GAMES. As expected, it seemed to attract a young audience, something most museum and gallery exhibitions wish they did without it being just 20-something hipstrs.
Overall I didn’t get too much of a “HEY GUYS! ANIME!” vibe from the exhibition, and I liked what they had to say about the Super Mario Bros. series being a collection of simple rules which opens up a rich and complex world to interact with, but I couldn’t really tell who exactly the exhibition was trying to draw in. Passing by their video room filled with clips from Akira, Patlabor the Movie 2, Paprika, and Macross, I got this strange feeling that this is not what the kids these days see as “anime,” nor is it what they want. It’s kind of a baseless feeling, but when you see all those movies together and realize that the styles aren’t very “modern” (despite Paprika having come out recently), I think you might get the same impression. All I could think about was how others would handle the exhibition.
There was one blurb however that really pissed me off when I saw it. In one part of the exhibition is an area devoted to the music of Yoko Kanno. Now, neither Yoko Kanno nor her music anger me, but when the description of her music is prefaced by, “Prior to the late 80s all anime music was of poor quality,” then I have some serious issues! The emphasis is mine but they actually used the words POOR QUALITY. It’s as if no REAL music aficionados could POSSIBLY like ANIME music before REAL MUSICIANS like Yoko Kanno and her contemporaries graced the industry with their presences and sprinkled magic fairy dust and now ANIME MUSIC IS GOOD! WOW! Hey, wait to take a dump all over those hardworking composers from the mid-80s and before! Joe Hisaishi? Apparently the man who composes Studio Ghibli music is garbage!
There are apparently other things like this in the exhibition where it’s like a guy trying to convince REAL ARTISTS that anime is totally artistic too and making mistakes in the process. For better or worse, I didn’t notice any other glaring instances though.
All in all, it’s worth a visit at least once, just calm down when you visit the Yoko Kanno section. I hope the kids who visit this exhibition at least learn something.
Oh yeah, and I’m probably gonna go read Sakuran. Sounds interesting.
As mentioned previously, I attended the one-day Polytechnic Anime Society Spring Festival 2009 at NYU Polytechnic (formerly known as simply “Polytechnic”). It wasn’t my first visit there; I had friends tell me about it back when it started. Still, I figured that it was worth a trip into Brooklyn to see what was up.
Sadly, I was unable to attend Sub‘s panel on Most Dangerous Anime, which he informs me was just watching Crystal Triangle and being amazed at how every scene, every moment, had something terrible about it. Still I got to see cool dudes and it was fun seeing the younger anime fans going around.
What I like about the PAS Spring Fest is that it gives young anime fans in New York a taste of what anime cons are like, especially because it’s free. It doesn’t prepare you for everything, but it lets you see stuff you haven’t seen before, lets you hang out with friends in a somewhat unfamiliar environment, and meet new people. I personally did not do much at this event, but I don’t think PAS Spring Fest is really meant for that sort of thing.
After the event was over I had sushi with Sub and other excellent dudes. What better way to cap off the day? I mean, that’s what I do at Otakon too, so why not?
One criticism I do have of the event is the lackluster execution of its game rooms. The event had two rooms for games: The first had only two TVs with a PS2 and a fighting game each, way down from the last time I went where there at least twice as many TVs and the game variety was excellent. The second room however was six tvs, but they were all devoted to Smash Bros Brawl. The worst part? You couldn’t even play a casual game of Smash as ALL SIX TVS were taken up by all-day Smash Bros tournaments! And later I found out you couldn’t even sign up for the tournament AT THE CON and that you had to do it on an internet messageboard weeks prior!
But as long as you weren’t looking forward to playing the games, it was an all right time.
There’s something about a lot of anime and manga that I think lends them much of the praise and criticism they receive from people, fans or otherwise. I wouldn’t call it a unique or exclusive property of anime, but it’s something that I believe recurs more often when compared to other mediums. What I am talking about is the ability for a character to both be sexualized and objectified by its audience while still being able to move the audience with a well-developed personality.
Sheryl Nome. Arika Yumemiya. Kawashima Ami. Practically the entire female cast of Gundam 00. Every girl in Godannar. All these and more are designed on some level to explicitly titillate, but I would not call any of their characters excessively shallow or designed purely with fanservice in mind. Nor would I say that pure fanservice characters do not exist at all, but I feel like more often than not in anime and manga, blatant, in-your-face sexual attractiveness does not come at the expense of strong characterization or at the very least attempts at strong characterization. Much of the eroge and visual novel industry is built on this premise.
I do not see this happening as often in other mediums. Of course sex appeal still exists in them, but very rarely do they try to turn both dials up to max, rarely do they say, “Hey we want to basically tell the audience outright to fantasize indecently about this character while still showing the strength of their personality.” Hayden Panettiere (Claire Bennet) on Heroes is clearly meant to invoke a reaction from male viewers with her attractiveness, official assignment as “cheerleader,” her clothes, and pretty much everything about her, but there’s some attempt at keeping the character Claire’s “fanservice” somewhat implicit. The DC Comics character Power Girl, known for her super strength and her enormous chest, seems to go through constant subtle shifts in characterization as writers and artists seem unsure how to balance the development of her character with a design clearly meant to get guys’ mojos going. Fans of DC Comics run into a similar problem. In other cases, a character who is obviously sexually attractive while possessing good characterization will have their sexuality incorporated into their personality and character.
Meanwhile, many anime fans embrace this double threat. Others do not of course, and I think this causes some of the conflict as to whether or not a character is “good” or not. Does being explicitly sexual in design and presentation work with characterization, or against it? Or do they perhaps run parallel to each other? Wherever you fall, if you meet someone who thinks otherwise, there’s a chance that, because your approach to characters is so different, arguments will arise. This is probably where arguments about moe find most of their ammo, no matter which side fans are on.
As a final note, keep in mind I used female examples because that’s what gets me. Feel free to replace all examples with male equivalents if that’s your thing.
It’s out, and it looks awesome. It makes me want to see the movie even more now, even if they are reusing footage from the TV series to save time and money. The TV series was already very well animated so there won’t be much of a disparity, and I get the feeling that unless you’ve watched the show over and over it’ll be difficult to spot all the moments they use existing footage.
But let’s talk about what’s really important: The reversed colors on Eureka’s outfit sometimes. Man, they look so great! I mean, I think in the end I prefer the way it is normally, with the blue on the side and the white in the middle, but the other way around is really visually striking. Maybe they’ll even make a PVC figure with those colors.
I really hope they release this movie on DVD here eventually.
Yeah, remember when if a title wasn’t cyberpunk, people pretended it was or wished it could be cyberpunk?
Remember the lack of honestly flawed characters who weren’t played for comedy’s sake?
Remember thinking that the anime right then and there was the pinnacle of achievement in the industry, and totally ignoring the anime that had come decades previous?
Hell yes, animes.
It’s a one-day anime con that’s run by the school’s anime club. I’ll be heading there today, chilling out, having fun. You might see other blogging luminaries there, or at least one.
Good times for all.
Don’t forget, it’s free!
OGIUE MANIAX 