Category Archives: anime

The False Decline

Posted on by

The new anime season’s gotten off to an excellent start. From Basquash!, a rare international collaboration basketball-robot-themed anime created by Kawamori Shouji (Macross, Aquarion), and Thomas Romain (Oban Star Racers), to celebrations of anime’s history with shows such as Shin Mazinger and Before Green Gables, I’m finding this batch of Japan cartoons to be really fun and varied and imaginitive, just like last season’s. And the season before that, too. And so on.

As always, there are naysayers who will point out how once again the new shows are proof that anime has been on a decline and that it needs to capture the glory days of when anime was good. However, you might notice that the people who talk about anime’s golden days of quality are not all talking about the same period of anime, and begin to realize that anime has never hit some horrible slump no matter how much some would want you to believe.

Budget allotments may rise and fall, the economy may see dark times and periods of prosperity, and old staff may die or retire while new blood replaces them, but I feel like there are constants, such as the desire to succeed and the desire to express an idea, that make it so that there is always something to hope for with anime.

It’s one thing to be saddened that the types of shows you like are no longer being made. I for one sometimes wish that we would get more bad 80s OVAs and good 70s-style ultra-melodramatic shoujo, but I understand that this is just a preference, and I can appreciate every new anime that comes out and know that as a collective whole the anime industry does not want to fail. Yes, there are shows that are not good at all, and others that cater to niche audiences, but even within those shows and genres that are criticized as being vapid or devoid of content, progress is still being made. It might be the case that the popular shows are overshadowing the better ones, but this doesn’t stop the good shows from being good, and it certainly doesn’t mean popular show can’t be good either.

Criticism is necessary, as is discourse, as is the ability to express one’s opinions on shows and how the industry is doing. However, anime does not need doom and gloom, nor does it ever actually invite such a mindset when you look at it as a whole.

Hey You, Watch Shin Mazinger

Posted on by

Episode 1 of Shin Mazinger aired in Japan, and I am telling you right now: Watch it, watch it, watch it.

Some of you I can convince to watch Shin Mazinger when I say it’s Mazinger Z as directed by Imagawa Yasuhiro, director of Giant Robo the Animation and G Gundam.

For you others who are unsure, or may not be familiar with Mazinger at all, let me explain it this way:

You know how a lot of shows, especially giant robot shows, have like 20 minutes of setup per episode to lead to a 5-minute climactic fight at the end? Shin Mazinger replaces all of that setup with MORE FIGHTING. Or rather, to put it more accurately, every moment in this first episode is SIMULTANEOUS SETUP + FIGHTING.

Things are HAPPENING in this show, and they’re happening on the field of battle where a boy can become a god or a devil. Whether you’re a big fan of Mazinger or you’ve never even heard of it, know that this show has potential to go places and the visionary force to take it there.

Time Warner Cable Hates Your Anime

Posted on by

Recently it’s been revealed that Time Warner Cable plans to start implementing bandwidth caps, and is trying this strategy in select areas of the United States. If you go over these (very low) caps, you have to pay $1 per GB. You might be thinking that oh, all you have to do is just not use bittorrent so much, but even if we factor bittorrent AND all downloaded anime out of the equation, this is still a problem for fans because of the increase in websites dedicated to streaming anime online legally and how this bandwidth capping will affect even people who want to support the shows they love.

Think of the very likely scenario that you’re watching a show, and it doesn’t load properly, so you have to refresh the page a few times. If you’re under Time Warner’s plan, you’ve just eaten up a good portion of the bandwidth you’ve been allotted that month. Of course, anime is still a niche market, but this also affects regular non-anime viewers who simply prefer to watch their shows online and not on the tv.

What we have here is an attempt by Time Warner to pull people from their computers and put them back in front of their TVs so they can buy on-demand from Time Warner directly and make you go back to viewing long commercials (provided you don’t own a Tivo). And while I understand that Time Warner does not want to lose profit, I can’t help but see this as nothing but a defensive turtling with fingers plugged into ears, ignoring the progress that is happening to visual entertainment.

Personal Growth, If Not Physical: Toradora!

Posted on by

Sometimes I get filled with a certain sense of dread in preparation for a new show based on the information available at the time. “This seems oddly familiar…” is the prevailing feeling. Fortunately, sometimes this is just a false alarm and I end up with something far greater than my expecations. Such is the case with the anime Toradora!

When first reading up on the anime adaptation of the light novel Toradora!, there were a number of warning signs. All we had to go by was that there was a tiny violent tsundere girl played by Kugimiya Rie, master of tiny violent tsundere girls (and also Alphonse Elric), and that it would be set in school and characters would be in love with each other. And while I still quite enjoy these types of shows, the mere fact that I said “these types of shows” implies that a certain formula has been passively agreed upon between these shows.

“Uh oh, I’ve seen this before.” This was the feeling I initially had with Toradora!, but by the end of the first episode I knew how totally wrong I was. This carries on throughout the entire series, with the end result being an incredibly satisfying show to laugh and cry over. Toradora! is different. Toradora! is ambitious. And it’s ambitious within the context of this high school romance-comedy-moe, and that makes it all the better.

Toradora! stars Takasu Ryuuji, a nice fellow with a love of household chores who has reluctantly inherited the deadly stare of his departed Yakuza father, and Aisaka Taiga, a diminuitive girl whose aggression and unsocial personality are legendary at their high school. Though the two of them do not get along, once they realize their respective love interests are best friends with the other they decide to work together to achieve mutual happiness. After the positively energetic Kushieda Minori (best friend of Taiga) and the confident and honest Kitamura Yuusaku (best friend of Ryuuji), the main cast is rounded out by Kitamura’s childhood friend, the two-faced Kawashima Ami who also works as a professional model.

Toradora! takes its name from the first names of the main characters. Taiga is a play on the English word “tiger,” for which “tora” is the Japanese equivalent, and the Ryuu in Ryuuji means “dragon,” or when written out in Japanese romaji, doragon. The tiger and the dragon are famous rivals in Japanese mythology, and if you’ve played Art of Fighting, King of Fighters, or Super Robot Wars (Alpha, OG) then the concept should be somewhat familiar to you.

The character designs are genuinely appealing, being cute and full of life without drowning in its own pool of kawaii, and the backgrounds and animation are executed with skill and grace. The voice work is top notch especially with Kugimiya as Taiga, who reaches new and exciting levels of depth with Taiga on a level of Mizuhashi Kaori playing Ogiue. In terms of presentation though, the biggest stars are, as I’ve said in the previous review, the pacing and atmosphere. It was true then, and it still holds to the very end, except where the early episodes are slow and pleasant, the later ones are passionate and dynamic. And all throughout the show remains surprisingly subtle.

There are many factors as to why Toradora! succeeds, but I feel that the real reason is that the characters actually change. The Taiga you see in episode 1 is not the exact same Taiga you see by episode 13 or by episode 25. All of the characters influence each other, and the result is that you get to see some genuine growth by all of the characters as they deal with the ups and downs of young love.

If you want to know what the difference is between cash-in instant cup moe and honestly good, moving moe, the answers are growth and change. You care for the characters not because you want to see them preserved forever in a glass dome, but because you want to see them fight on, succeed, win in their own little personal battles.

Toradora! is joy. Toradora! is wonder. It’s also heartache and maturation and learning to accept one’s feelings even if there are consequences. So yes, it’s a romantic comedy anime, but if you do not like this sort of thing, scratch that, especially if you do not like this sort of thing, I still advise you to take a look.

Belated Happy Birthday to Ogiue

Posted on by

I am ashamed.

Just as I did last year, I failed to mention in time that last Saturday was the birthday for the great and wonderful Ogiue Chika, who if we go by the dates set in the Genshiken manga is already a productive(?) member of society.

If you recall, Ogiue at the end of Genshiken started to work as a manga artist for Monthly Afternoon. This was in 2005, and so by now she’s had about 4 years to make something of herself. I’d like to believe that in the world of Genshiken, she has worked hard with Sasahara at her side, a wonderful professional manga romance. Sasahara meanwhile is still probably working hard as an editor, possibly losing lots of sleep and wrangling manga artists to get their jobs finished on time. Such a splendid concept, being in a relationship with a person in your field who approaches it just a bit differently from you.

Let us give our goodwill to Ogiue in her future endeavors, and hope for happiness for her in the years to come.

Guilty Over My Gear (or lack thereof)

Posted on by

Sometimes I feel as if anime companies are trying to guilt trip me into buying their products. Now, I will say that I download anime and manga. I also buy anime and manga, but it’s usually of series I already know are good or tend to be inexpensive purchases or both. The sheer amount of series which I think are good and worth my time are far greater than my income. I still get series, but as anime companies struggle to keep up, the feeling I occasionally get from interviews and such is that I am not doing enough. It’s really uncomfortable.

This is especially true of series which I think are quite good and even somewhat affordable but simply am unable to purchase in the near future. Should I be getting it in lieu of others simply for the sake of “supporting?” If I buy a series from one licensing company but not the other, is it all right for me to be supporting the anime industry as a whole but not helping out all the companies which put the shows I like?

The Differences in Realism in Video Games

Posted on by

For as long as video games have existed, there’s been a graphical arms race. The Intellivision claims its superiority over the Atari 2600 due to its much more accurate-looking versions of Basketball and Football. The Sega Genesis has 16 whole bits, twice as many as the NES, a number whose significance in marketing was always accompanied by images to show much better Genesis games looked. With the rise of 3-d graphics, particularly with the era where the original Playstation was king, there’s been a push towards manufactured realism. While it’s not like the pursuit of realism didn’t exist previously (Mortal Kombat’s digitized graphics looked amazing at first), it was with 3-d graphics that the foundation was laid due to the simple if faulty logic that a three-dimensional game is more like our three-dimensional world.

As we look at today’s graphics, we know that the pursuit of realism is still going strong, with improved lighting, increasing numbers of polygons per model, and just tons of work and money being put into getting a scene in a video game to look like a photo. While I’m not a fan of this push towards realism as I believe it to be somewhat of a dead end, what I am interested in is how America and Japan differ in their depictions of “realism” in video games, or at least what the perceived difference is. The reason why I say America and Japan of course is that these two countries are really considered to be the places where mainstream video games happen.

Let’s take a look at male characters in games. In essence, characters in “realistic” games made in America are stereotyped as a bunch of square-jawed tough guys who have to drink beer and shoot enemies with automatic weapon fire as a display of their manliness. The male characters of Japan are criticized as being overly effeminate, sometimes to the point that people wonder whether or not it was necessary to make them guys in the first place, and even the more muscular and masculine guys in Japanese games tend to have a bit of beauty to them. Neither category is actually true and you can find a million exceptions, but these are where the stereotypes stand. And as I looked at these generalizations, they seemed oddly familiar, as if I’d seen this argument happen before, and it also occurred between Japan and America. And then I remembered: Comics vs Manga.

The same complaints that are leveled at the male characters of Japanese and American games are given to the characters of comics, from complaints about superheroes being too musclebound to bishounen being too much bi and not enough shounen. And so I have to wonder, how much do comics play a role in the depiction of realism in games for either culture?

By now, we know that the realism from games isn’t meant to actually be “like reality,” but rather a sort of hyper-realism where things we consider to be part of the actual world like muscles and sweat are emphasized and exaggerated. The difference then comes from what is perceived to be important to realism, and when it comes to non-abstract comics, I believe these elements are also very present and perhaps even more prominent. Of course, I can’t completely ignore the idea that both comics and video games are simply influenced by the reality of society. Most likely, it’s not a unidirectional relationship and at this point, especially as video games enter the mainstream more and more, and they will affect the aesthetics of video games and the environment around us in even more profound ways.

Dragon Ball Kai over Dragon Ball Z?

Posted on by

Dragon Ball Kai, for those of you who don’t already know, is the remastered, revised new airing of Dragon Ball Z with the filler cut out and the pacing altered to remove the fluff and get closer to the pacing of the original manga. Obviously, this is going to at some point be released on a physical format for purchase. Most likely it’s even going to be on Blu-Ray what with this being a remastering for HD broadcast.

If you enjoyed the series on Cartoon Network or syndication but never purchased any series, is how willing would you be to buy Dragon Ball Kai INSTEAD OF the original Dragon Ball Z anime? If you have the original DBZ anime, would you be willing to sell it in order to get DBKai, or does the original hold too much sentimental value?

It’s supposed to be about half as long with everything improved, so it looks to me like a more enticing purchase, but I just want to get a better idea of what others think. Would DBKai being essentially a condensed DBZ anime be a more attractive product to lay money down on? Is DBKai something only existing DBZ fans will pay attention to? Can it draw in a new audience, one that was born within the past decade and is now just reaching the target age for a classic great shounen series?

Reideen and the Awesome Final Battle

Posted on by

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.

Sue and Patty’s Excellent Adventure: Pop Japan Travel’s “Fujoshi Paradise” Tour

Posted on by

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.