Category Archives: anime

Joke of a Day

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“Kana Middle Sister”

It is our Genesis, it is our Exodus: Starblazers.com’s History of Yamato Fandom

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Tim Eldred over at Starblazers.com has written a fascinating article about the history of the early Yamato fandom and by extension the history of the first true fandom in anime history. See what fans had to do before the concept of the anime fan even existed, and the steps taken to organize and even save the first of many productions that would be overshadowed by the might of eventual-Ghibli-director Miyazaki.

Yamato’s fandom even plays an integral role in the very first Comic Market, which is only a hint of the profound influence Yamato and its fans had on both sides of the anime industry.

It also sheds light on that Genshiken comic by Zetsubou-Sensei creator Kumeta Kouji depicting Ohno in various cosplay outfits at Comiket over the years. Her cosplay of Yuki from Yamato isn’t just early, it’s early.

The Idiotic Protagonist

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I’ve been taught that the most dramatic stories come from having protagonists who have to do what comes most difficult to them with a fervent desire to accomplish their goals, and lacking intelligence is one way to stack the deck against the main character. You want your hero to struggle, to earn his progress. Protagonists in manga, particularly shounen manga, are often designed to not be the sharpest tool around. Be it Naruto, Goku, or any number of heroes who act before they think (or omit the second part of that combo altogether), the reason why they’re made to be dumb is to make them more of an everyman, to tell its readers, “Hey, this could be you.” However, with some readers an opposite effect occurs, and you’ll often see people gravitate to the supporting characters on account of the heroes being, at least in their eyes, bland or possessing little merit as characters.

In trying to make the hero an everyman, authors run the potential risk of making their hero a no-man, someone to whom the reader simply cannot relate, but I don’t think that’s the problem at hand. I have this feeling that some readers do not wish to see certain negative traits in a story’s most important characters. Sometimes it’s because they’re passive, other times because they’re idiots, and other times because they are totally moe.

There’s a division of sorts when it comes to making this kind of shounen-esque protagonist. Should you have a protagonist that acts as a stand-in for the reader, to allow the reader to be immersed in the world, to feel as if he or she is the one saving the day? Or is it more important that the hero be someone who is already skilled, someone the reader can look up to? Both are paths for readers to live out their fantasies through protagonists, both are forms of wish-fulfillment, but each is different in the types of interaction required by the reader, and people may prioritize one over the other.

I have to wonder if age of the reader factors into this division of stand-in protagonist vs larger-than-life protagonist. The stand-in protagonist is something that I think appeals more to that crowd of boys 12 and under who run around in the school playground pretending they can fire lasers. Meanwhile, the larger-than-life protagonist seems to appeal more to the rebellious teenage crowd. A magazine like Shounen Jump has readers well beyond its originally intended audience of young boys, and disagreements as to what makes a good main character in a shounen series may simply be a result of different groups reading the same story.

I see through your plot, GUNDAM 00!!!

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Oh, you are one clever series, Gundam 00, almost too clever.

Season 1 was all set-up, wasn’t it? “Oh,” you might say, “but shouldn’t the first season be set-up for the second season?” And you’d be right. But this isn’t just set-up, it’s a set-up.

Much like Celestial Being, Gundam 00’s first season had an ulterior motive, one that is given away by the fact that the first season takes place five years before the second season.

Yes, the true goal of Gundam 00 is to trick its younger audience into watching a Gundam series with a cast composed not of teenagers but fully-grown 20-something year olds.

The end-times are upon us. Let us welcome our well-past-puberty saviors.

頭文字 Impressions Fall 2008

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The new season is finally under full swing, and I’ve been looking forward to it for quite a while. As of now, it really doesn’t disappoint.

The new Hokuto no Ken anime tv series, the first in about two decades not counting Souten no Ken, is Raoh Gaiden: Ten no Haoh. The series is a prequel to the Hokuto no Ken anime showing a younger Raoh and his rise to power along with those two characters they introduced in the new movies, one of which is a woman who is not Completely Useless but still is clearly not there to be the main character.

The entire episode is spent with anticipation, just waiting for that moment where the calm Raoh encounters a bunch of thugs who think they own the post-apocalyptic place, and having Raoh deliver a king-sized fist to their face worthy of a fist king. And in this regard the first episode delivers. But unlike Kenshiro, Raoh has little mercy for anyone, though he’s not as quite as big of an asshole as when he first appeared in the manga. The originally manga slowly retconned Raoh from just a Jerk who Conquers to Guy Who is Trying to Save the World By Taking it Over, and this new anime reflects the latter concept.

Toradora! focuses on the relationship between Ryuuji, a guy who much to his own chagrin has inherited his puppy-killing facial features from his departed Yakuza father, and Taiga, a tiny girl whose small size belies her fierce and eccentric personality. Hence the name Tora (tiger = taiga) Dora (doragon = dragon = ryuuji). It sounds typical, but the first episode took me by surprise, and this is from someone who’s read the first novel. A lot of other bloggers will talk about how good the voice acting is and how different (and better) Kugimiya Rie is in this role versus her previous tsundere characters, but the real star of this show isn’t the voices, as good as they may be, but the pacing and atmosphere.

Whereas most shows with a similar premise would try to be more frenetic, more extreme, Toradora is surprisingly slow and subtle, even during gag scenes. The pacing actually reminds me a bit of Cosmic Baton Girl Comet-San, which I had reviewed previously.

The trailer alone made me a fan of Casshern SINS, and the first episode does not disappoint. This is Casshern for a new era, with a style darker and very different from the 70s or even 90s version, and Casshern is much more of a bishounen than in the past, but not in the way the disappointing live action movie turned out. The first episode looks like a marriage between Tatsunoko Pro and Studio Madhouse, which it is, and that’s all I really need to say.

Casshern is voiced by Furuya Tohru, so with this and Gundam 00 we’re getting double the dose of Amuro Ray.

Non-fans, get out

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This is a somewhat personal rant that expands upon something I mentioned in my New York Anime Festival review, something that I’ve seen rear itself in multiple situations that I’ve encountered, and one that I feel I need to speak about.

At conventions one can see all varieties of fans, young and old, old and new, from all parts of the world and with different degrees and types of fandom along with sub-fandoms within fandoms. And it is at a convention that one can meet others and possibly become friends (or maybe more), meeting on the common ground of having passion for a particular subject. You can even end up having brief flings or one night stands at a convention and there’s nothing wrong with that. But to use the trappings of fandom, to pretend to be a fan for your own personal gain is something I cannot stand.

I am also not defining anime fan by number of shows watched, manga read, fanfics written, or what-have-you. I am defining fandom as I have in the past as having a passion for something, and even then I am not saying you need a sufficient amount of passion to qualify as a fan. Being a fan is a very personal thing. For that matter, I’m even fine with people who went to Akihabara after Densha Otoko came out, people who just wanted to see what was going on, who were maybe curious as to see what the fuss was all about. The breaking point comes from wanting to simply LOOK like an otaku without beginning to understand what being an otaku is all about.

This is not exclusive to conventions. I meet with a group for Japanese conversation, and there are people who go there not for Japanese conversation but simply to pick up women. The boggling thing about this is that there are plenty of places where people can meet and date and what-not, so why interfere with the task at hand?

The classic example of this situation is the guy who pretends to be Christian and goes to church to, again, pick up women. This is not what a church is for. Maybe your walk with God is strong, or your faith in Christianity is weak, but what you shouldn’t be is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Even if you’re someone who thinks Christianity is stupid and you go to a church just to question people’s beliefs, this is still adhering to yourself and not pretending to be something you’re not.

Through fandom of any sort, be it anime, sci-fi, fantasy, knitting, cooking, football, baseball, pro wrestling, eating contests, I could go on, one can get to know people. It can be a starting point for those uncomfortable with talking to strangers. It can be a source of friends and enemies all the same, but what I want to see is people who act like fans because they are fans, because they genuinely have an interest, big or small, in something. So when I say “Non-fans, get out,” what I mean is that if you go somewhere, and you have an ulterior motive so strong it can hardly be considered “ulterior,” then you need to reconsider whether or not you should be there in the first place.

The Ogiue Fan Defense Mechanism

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When I go to a convention or any place with lots of anime merchandise, I hold close to my chest one important policy: Ogiue First.

The immediate reason behind this is to prioritize Ogiue merchandise over everything else, as it should be. The secondary effect of the Ogiue First policy is that it prevents me from going crazy buying merchandise and going way over whatever my intended budget was. In a sense, I am using to my advantage the fact that Ogiue is not a character who gets much merchandise of her.

Ogiue is not only a source of obsession but also a source of self-control.

But I’m still buying that Revoltech Souther when it comes out.

Cause, Effect, Necessity? Sci-Fi Fandom and Early Anime Fandom

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Anime World Order recently posted an interview with what are the self-proclaimed “old farts” of anime, and they rightly deserve the title. Hearing them speak, and thinking back to an earlier comment by others in previous shows, such as Joey Snackpants and Neil Nadelman, I had to wonder just how much this has affected the flow of anime fandom in the United States. Though I personally have found some issue with those sci-fi fans who lament the status of anime today because it is not “sci-fi enough,” I cannot help but feel that their influence is hard to deny.

I am certainly not old enough to have experienced any of that early anime fandom, but in listening to those that had been around there is one message repeats constantly: to be an anime fan required obsession. This was before the internet was established, before google and youtube and digital fansubs and wikipedia, so to find any sort of information required the ability to search and research and to find collaborators so as to increase one’s chances of obtaining anime and anime-related paraphernalia. I imagine that either you had to be somewhat extroverted or at least have an obsession so strong it overcame your fear of other people to accomplish this task. And what better place to find those with powerful obsessions than in an already-established fanbase?

For that matter, who better to pursue this difficult-to-obtain treasure from the isles of Japan than those who already had spent time discussing and analyzing technology in their favorite shows, writing fanzines to pursue and exchange ideas? With this many people with the ability to obsess grouped together, and more importantly able to obsess over fictional works on television and comics, two forms of media long thought juvenile or at least unintellectual, it might be no wonder that American anime fandom in its infancy sprang forth from sci-fi fandom.

Of course anime fandom today is also largely the result of arguably bigger influences in the years after. Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, and Pokemon came on TV early in the morning and introduced both boys and girls to a serial story where actions in a previous episode are not reset in the next. They targeted a much wider audience than older anime had ever hoped to, and rather than having their native origins obfuscated where introduced as something from Japan. Still, I believe even this part of anime fandom is influenced by those sci-fi fans of yesterday. Slash, derived from the pairing of “Kirk/Spock,” may have allowed its foreign cousin Yaoi to get accustomed to traveling on western soil. Sci-fi conventions may have given pointers to the anime fandom when it became large enough on how to congregate with like-minded (enough) individuals. In that sense, perhaps the actions of sci-fi fans in the 70s and 80s became a template for today’s anime fandom, who have shaped it to their own experiences and will some day become the old guard to influence others.

English Karaoke Simply Isn’t Dork Enough

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As mentioned in the NYAF review, I spent friday night having a most excellent time with karaoke. It was karaoke as it should be, full of passion and hilarity and no holding back. Towards the back of the Japanese song-list catalog is a section titled “Anime and Hero Songs” followed by “Game Songs.” I consider this to be the pinnacle of karaoke.

There’s one problem: not everyone can do it.

Sub is a badass manly individual and occasional critic, and I have a relatively extensive knowledge of the sort of anime fitting for karaoke while also being literate in Japanese so I can fudge my way through parts I don’t know. Not everyone has these luxuries, and thus they are denied the full experience.  How does one solve this issue? Do we provide a list of sufficiently awesome songs in English that would be common enough for people to know such as Eye of the Tiger?

What I’d really like is if English karaoke had cartoon theme songs beyond, say, Disney. Get some Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors or King Arthur and the Knights of Justice in there. Sadly, people assume that no one wants these songs and so they end up unavailable.

Some weeks back I searched for information on the singer to one of the most famous cartoon themes, the opening to the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. I looked on the official site of all places, and even it fails to list the actual people responsible for their famed intro.

What to do?

Actually, I know the solution.

Save the NYAF, BALDIIIIIIOS

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The second New York Anime Festival ran for this past weekend, oddly three months earlier when compared to last year. NYAF is a professionally-run con, and it shows in a number of ways for better and worse.

Perhaps because NYAF is so young as a convention, there were rarely any issues with lines in order to pick up badges. Both this year and last, I arrived on Friday and obtained a badge with minimal wait, though there was a bit of a hassle due to some poor wording on the website in regards to on-site registration. After that, a friend and I wandered around checking out the dealer’s room which comprises the majority of the convention. After buying a shirt from Sub, we decided that there was nothing much left to do at the con Friday and decided to turn our attentions outwards and towards karaoke.

Somewhat sadly, karaoke was probably the highlight of the con, though that might have to do with the fact that this was no ordinary karaoke get-together but an ultra-manly (and occasionally girly) tour de force spanning the history of anime. After I started things off with the Rose of Versailles OP, Sub followed with a powerful rendition of Holy Lonely Light. We then sang songs from Baldios, Gold Lightan, Hokuto no Ken, Zambot 3, Hajime no Ippo, Southern Cross, Macross, Dragon Ball Z, Overman King Gainer, Albegas, Gaogaigar, Pokemon, Pretty Cure, Soul Taker, and others I think I forgot. We ended, fittingly, with the ending theme to Golion, titled “Gonin de Hitotsu” or “Five as One.” In total, two hours were spent there.

Saturday was naturally much busier than Friday, though I found that there wasn’t all that much to do, or at least not much that interested me. After watching the Top o Nerae movie I went to the anime blogging panel curious as to what they had to say. It was overall good advice, though one thing I want to point to any anime bloggers out there, current, future, and potential, is that anime’s history is 1800 40 years old and if there’s nothing in the new seasons you like you can always look backwards. Other than that, there was nothing particularly important, though in skipping out on the Masquerade I found out I missed the chance to hear Tanaka Rie sing on-stage. If only I had hated myself enough to actually go as I had planned. I also bought a sketchbook at the con and decided to put it and my new black copic to use.

Ogimus Prime

An Anime Con Attendee

Taniguchi Goro

Taison Sanders, the Girl with Fried Chicken Wings

GET IT?

The Ultimate Yaoi Bishounen (with Optimus Prime Arms)

Sunday I woke up early to get the ticket for the Tanaka Rie signing but found out 90 minutes early was still not early enough. I attended the Rie panel, and she was a class act, even accepting gifts. Like all voice actor panels, there were the clowns who tried to speak to Rie in Japanese despite not being able to. Word of advice: DON’T DO THIS. You just waste time and make things difficult for the rest of the audience. The panel does not consist of just you and the voice actor. Now that I think about it, this never happens with the non-voice-actor guests. Go to hell, the lot of you.

A friend of mine had a VIP pass and thus a ticket for the Rie signing, but was unable to find the merchandise he wanted signed. I gave him my Gundam SEED pencil board, and when he returned we hesitated as to who should have it, like two women in front of Solomon, or three kids with a Radioactive Man #1. After much difficulty, I handed over the pencil board as he is a far bigger Lacus fan compared to me. If this were Shindou Naomi and a Cagalli pencil board, things would have been different.

I met the Reverse Thieves at their panel, which was meant to be an introduction of obscure anime to fans. Now not everything on their list was super obscure, but one has to remember that the con-going crowd is not that up-to-date with everything. I mean, Hayate no Gotoku was on their list, and rightfully so. They also mentioned Rose of Versailles, which makes them A-OK.

One major problem with NYAF is that it contained many of the undesirable elements that have been excised from other cons. I speak mainly of yaoi paddles, hug me signs, and the kind of behavior that results from them. There are reasons these things have been banned from other cons, chief among them being that they promote idiocy. Now I have nothing against people liking yaoi, or even advertising the fact that they like yaoi or just showing that yes, they are anime fans. But I don’t see that. I see people using anime, yaoi, naruto, whatever, as an excuse to disregard others and act like jackasses. Guys purposely kissing each other to get a reaction from a crowd, people carrying hug me signs, what I am opposed to is not the actions but the real reasons behind those actions, which generally amount to wanting immediate attention.

The supposed “Anonymous” at NYAF were the same, in that they understood the letter but not the spirit of being “Anonymous.” Anonymous does not Caramell Dansen. This goes double for that guy who was walking around in a Guy Fawkes mask playing Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley. When you walk around blasting it and announcing yourself from many feet away, it is NOT a Rickroll. It defeats the purpose OF a Rickroll, which is to be a SURPRISE. You are no more a surprise than a stereotypical asian man lost in the forest tasked with searching for materials useful for survival.

That said, I didn’t think the con was absolutely dominated by this sort of thing. Will I go next year? Well, as with every con I go to (which isn’t many), I’ll have to see who’s there first.

Oh, and the weirdest thing I did at the con was that I stood RIGHT in front of a Cirno cosplayer for a few seconds.