Category Archives: anime

Dithering While Breaking the Speed Limit

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A few weeks ago made a post concerning dithering and its place in this current age of advanced visuals.

Here, the Kannagi anime is using exactly that effect to give the impression of otaku seeing the two girls as if they were characters in an erogame.

Though with using dithering when this is clearly supposed to be a modern pc visual novel, I have to wonder if this isn’t the visual otaku cousin of those scenes in tv shows where you hear bleeps and bloops as someone is supposedly playing a video game.

PS: Takako is wonderful.

I too shall lament the unlikelihood of Tatsunoko vs Capcom reaching American shores

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Tatsunoko vs Capcom, the crossover fighting game which allows you to pit Roll from Megaman againt the ill-conceived-yet-somehow-awesome Gold Lightan, is probably not going to be for sale in America. Much like the Super Robot Wars series, which only managed to legitimately reach beyond the shores of Japan when it released games with Original Characters Only, TvC’s problem is primarily on the T end.

As anime gets licensed in America, there is no hard-and-fast rule that one company’s shows must all go to one US licensing company. This is good for us because if one company goes under it doesn’t take too many shows with them, but it’s also bad because negotiating any sort of crossover game is more difficult than trying to translate Hong Kong subs into sign language. Capcom and Tatsunoko are not Scrooge McDuck, they do not own giant money bins in which they can perform backstrokes, and it only makes sense that they avoid trying to release their mutual effort in game form over here, especially because Tatsunoko is not exactly well known in America. Maybe they could do better in  Spanish-speaking countries.

There’s always the rumor that they could take the engine and modify it into a new Marvel vs Capcom. I don’t know what’s up with the Marvel game license.

In conclusion, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe has terrible Fatalities. I don’t mind the lack of gore, I mind the lack of creativity.

One month to JLPT

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And I am totally not ready yet.

Grammar and kanji are not up to snuff, though I’ve definitely made progress. I still have a month to go, but Japanese of this level is not something you can cram for in such a short amount of time.

All that’s left is to bank on that 50% pass mark, or to truly believe that courage will turn 50% into 100%.

Living Off the Scraps of Continuity

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Although continuity is commonplace in anime, while growing I always assumed a kids’ show would essentially reset itself after the half hour was over. It was safe, it was reassuring. Nobody died or suffered any lasting consequences unless it was a two-part episode, and then it would simply reset back to square 1 at the end of the following week. I craved continuity, piecing together episodes in my head and a personal fanon (before I knew of the term) in the way a child only could. That’s why it was all the more amazing whenever a show would tease the viewer with bits of continuity.

King Mondo directly confronting the Zeo Power Rangers impressed me. So was finding out that one of Grimlord’s lieutenants was the father of the primary VR Trooper. But nothing comes to mind more than Conan the Adventurer.

Conan the Adventurer was a child-friendly version of Conan the Barbarian where Conan and friends sent their enemies “to another dimension” before Saban decided to bestow that phrase upon its Dragon Ball Z dub. And while Conan met his friends across the land and sea, and they didn’t go away after an episode, Conan never seemed to get any closer to reversing the spell of living stone cast upon his family by the evil Wrath-Amon, the very impetus of his quest. Imagine my surprise one morning(no really, do it!) when I saw Conan and his allies directly fighting not only Wrath-Amon but his lord and master Set, the big final boss master of the series. Not only that, Conan actually managed to soundly defeat both of them and even finally save his family. To actually have a satisfying conclusion to a cartoon adventure, it was such a rare sight that the memory stuck with me, as you might have noticed) even if the show was actually not that great.

But even if a show had no sense of continuity or concept of lasting consequences, I wanted there to be some. It wasn’t what I would call a burning desire, but the shows which gave me a taste of what continuity could add to a story, and the shows without continuity which simply made me want it more, I think it’s definitely one of the many factors that got me into anime.

METAL OBAMAAAAAAAAA KING GAINAAAAAAAAAAA

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(The alternate title for this post would have been “McCainder, McCainder, McCainder Robo.”)

Kagami Claims Saimoe Supremacy

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Hiiragi Kagami, alias HIIRAGIIIII, has emerged as the winner of 2008’s Anime Saimoe tournament. All the more impressive was that her victory was over her own sister Tsukasa, in what is sure to remembered as a fierce battle where blood was not thicker than moe.

Kagami’s status as the Moest means a few things. Remember that neither Kagami nor anyone else from Lucky Star took the title last year. Generally after the first year if your show is truly just a flash in the pan you don’t get much further, but here we see the Lucky Star cast drive down harder than ever. So Lucky Star may not be the most enduring show ever, but it’s not as ethereal as some might hope.

Also of note are the high placements of Kawazoe Tamaki (Bamboo Blade), who made Top 8, and Hinamori Amu (Shugo Chara!) who was a force so powerful she had to be stopped by the tournament winner Kagami.

I know a lot of people who might have liked to vote couldn’t due to some of the intentional barriers put in place, but I hear there’s an (arguably!) more important vote coming up in the near future…

I-it’s not like I want to be tsundere, okay?!

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Yes, this is another post about Aisaka Taiga. Let’s call this a Taiga Weekend Carnival.

Previously, I’ve established my belief that moe is tied to empathy, it is the connection of viewer to character in regards to some type of weakness, though the character may not necessarily be weak, physically, mentally, or emotionally. Think of it as a character having relatable character traits-which-may-be-interpreted as flaws. In this regard, Aisaka Taiga, the tora in Toradora, is one of the most effectively moe tsundere characters I have ever seen, a tsundere moe on the level of Ogiue. Tsundere has become a very common trope in otaku-oriented media, so to describe what makes Taiga a very moe character is to explain why she stands out from her peers. And to explain that is to explain why Taiga is tsundere.

Taiga is a girl who has difficulty expressing her own emotions. When Taiga speaks, her words are the culmination of 1001 battles fought inside of her mind. It’s a violent battle, and the victor emerges not without a few scars. The result is that Taiga comes across as rude, blunt, perhaps even shy. Unlike many of her contemporaries at Tsundere Academy, who use their brash attitudes to actively hide how they feel, or Ogiue, whose tsundere is caused by years of deep-seated self-loathing, Taiga’s outward attitude is the consequence of falling short of a greater goal, that of being able to accurately express one’s feelings through words. Taiga is tsundere, but only because she can’t help it.

Clumsy, socially awkward, unable to convey the proper meaning in words when talking to others, this describes more than just Taiga, this describes a feeling that hits close to home for me and I’m sure many others. Even if we’ve gotten better over time, we can still remember the days when talking was one of the most difficult things we’ve ever had to do, and are reminded constantly that for us introverted folk, being social is not a natural talent but one that has to be learned and built upon. It is from the people watching that Taiga truly generates her moe.

Tsundere characters, be they the traditional type which slowly turn from tsun to dere, or the modern type which switch back and forth constantly, are generally girls to be sought, to be pursued. They are the goal. Taiga is not the goal. Taiga is us.

Handheld Tiger

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Have a Mega Chain Combo Halloween

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Analyzing the Hokuto Zankai Ken

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I was thinking about one of Kenshiro’s most famous moves, the Hokuto Zankai Ken, i.e. The One Where He Sticks his Fingers in Your Head and a Counter Appears And You Die When it Gets to Zero, and the scene in which he used it on Souther to no effect. Souther’s secret is that his heart is on the right side of his body so all of his pressure points are reversed, and this is why he is, under normal circumstances, immune to Hokuto Shinken. But if that’s the case, that must mean one of a few things.

1) The two pressure points Kenshiro hits are not the same ones on each side.

2) Kenshiro IS pressing the same left and right points on the side of the head, but uses a different amount of pressure on each side.

3) The human head’s pressure points aren’t symmetrical.

4) Souther simply can’t be affected by Hokuto Zankai Ken even if Kenshiro knows his secret.

Yes, I thought too much about this