Category Archives: anime

Buy Strike Witches: You Can Call this a GONZO Editorial

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GONZO’s new tv series Strike Witches has begun airing, and GONZO, as it did with Blassreiter and Druaga, is putting the show online with a good translation for the enjoyment of English-speaking anime fans. It’s an mp4 file, approximately 200mb, with hard-encoded subtitles. It’s even free of Digital Rights Management shenanigans, which is a big plus in my book.

Unfortunately, what I’ve heard is that someone has put the episode on bittorrent.

I will acknowledge that it’s iffy to put money into a series you haven’t watched yet, but GONZO is trying hard to reach out to us in the English-speaking anime fandom, and to piss away their good will just makes us look terrible.

If you don’t like Strike Witches, or are afraid of watching yet another GONZO series, then feel free to ignore it. I’m not expecting people to buy something they don’t have any interest in, but if you think you’re going to enjoy it, I ask that you at least try it out.

One thing to keep in mind is that you have 14 days to download each episode so you can’t really wait until the series finishes. That said, this also means you can perform a 3-episode test. I’d also normally say that you could possibly wait for the DVDs if you want to support them with your wallet, but there’s a high probability that Strike Witches DVDs will never see the light of day.

You can purchase episodes of Strike Witches via Bost TV for approximately $3.00 US. Keep in mind you have to spend a minimum of $10 in order to buy the points necessary, which is kind of annoying, but that has less to do with GONZO itself and everything to do with Bost.

Episode 1 Review
Strike Witches is the story of a squad of young and powerful soldiers augmented with technologically advanced armored weaponry in order to combat the alien menace known as Neuroi. Its protagonist is Yoshika, a girl with a strong dislike of war whose father died during the conflict. However, a chance meeting with an old friend of her father’s puts Yoshika in a position she never expected.

All in all, Strike Witches is very cute, awfully fanservicey, and  well-animated. The main appeal is that its important characters are basically Mecha Musume. It’s a simple show that is clearly targeted towards otaku, so don’t expect it to be any more than what it tries to be.

Genshiken DVDs, R2 Only

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Also included is the Genchoken CD on the lower left. The OVA box also came with this delightful image.

I am pleased.

Though based on that post from a few days back I’m sure you knew that already.

Observations Concerning Dub Openings

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I’ve recently become interested in examining modern (mid-90s – present) dub anime openings to see how they correlate to the notion that children have very short attention spans that are gradually decreasing as time passes.

Note: If you’re looking for a point or thesis, there really isn’t any. All I present here is possible evidence.

I began by comparing dub openings to their original Japanese counterparts. This has nothing to do with quality of music (or lack thereof), so you won’t find me making any comments regarding the actual themes.

YOHOHO HE TOOK A BITE OF GUM GUM.

Okay, last one. I promise.

Aside from the difference in length (the common 1 minute, 30 seconds in Japanese openings is hardly ever reached), the biggest difference I’ve seen is in the rate at which imagery will flash on and off the screen. In the English openings, there tends to be a much higher rate of changing imagery.

I give as an example a Yu-Gi-Oh opening in English, and one in Japanese. They are both the “second” openings, but keep in mind the English dub has fewer openings overall. To keep from having the different songs influence you, I suggest turning down the sound.

English

Japanese

As you can see, the dub opening is just a lot more frenetic, eager to keep your attention with rapidly changing colors.

I next focused my attention on Pokemon, as it is perhaps the most famous of all dubbed anime for children. Interestingly, the English opening is actually not that much faster-paced than the Japanese one in terms of imagery. It’s certainly slower than the Yu-Gi-Oh opening and both of these shows are 4Kids shows (or at least Pokemon was back then).

English

Japanese

But what about the idea that children’s attention spans are getting shorter? I took a look at every dub opening of Pokemon, and I noticed that over the years the Pokemon openings have actually gotten shorter.

The first few openings were 1 minute long.

Then it dropped down to 45 seconds per opening.

Now, the most recent openings have been 30 seconds apiece.

I know the examples I provided were primarily from 4kids, but keep in mind that the most recent Pokemon openings were dubbed by the Pokemon Company itself, so it’s not something exclusive to them. There’s also the realization that a lot of kids watching Pokemon today were not even alive when the series began airing in America. Just what has spurred this diminishing of time devoted to Pokemon openings? The Yu-Gi-Oh openings (including GX) are 1 minute long. Is it because the show is meant for a slightly older audience?

Many questions indeed.

Doing this Brooklyn Translation Makes it Difficult to Concentrate: Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series (in Japanese)

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Little Kuriboh’s Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series, where one man acts out the roles of (almost) every character with surprising skill and summarizes the absurdity of the English version of Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters,  has become quite an internet phenomenon. You are probably aware of this, but one thing that you may not be aware of is that it has reached back to its original source, as one Japanese fan has subtitled Little Kuriboh’s work and put it online. You can also see it on Nico Nico Douga under the names 遊戯王要約シリーズ or 4分でわかる遊戯王アニメ.

What is fascinating about this first of all is that we get to observe the other side of the fansub mirror. Normally, even the Japanese subtitles for English shows that we see are professionally done.

What’s even more interesting is observing how the translator makes various attempts to localize the translation just enough for the Japanese speakers. Characters’ names are in Japanese, but the subtitles point out that “Jonouchi” is speaking with a “Brooklyn Accent.” Characters’ unique speech is kept intact, as Pegasus, according to the subtitles, still speaks in random Engrish and says “de~~~su” a whole lot. “Super Special Awesome” is just “Super Special.”

And of course, one of the big challenes is puns and wordplay, and the guy does surprisingly well. One of my favorite examples is his translation of the famous line from the “evil” Kaiba, “You don’t stand a GHOST of a chance,” said by characters who are ghosts or at least resemble them. Translated literally it doesn’t make much sense.

The translation the subtitler went for is “勝利のチャンスは「霊」だ” (Shouri no chansu wa rei da). It literally means “The chance of you winning is “a ghost.”

Here’s the fun part: the word used for ghost is pronounced “rei.” There’s another kanji with a pronunciation of rei, 零, which means “zero.”

In other words, “The chance of you winning is zero.”

So bravo, Japanese Yugioh Abridged subtitler. Your wordplay kung fu is mighty indeed, and I bow to you.

Skin-deep Personality: Thoughts on the Categorization of Anime Girls

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As anyone who reads this blog would know, I like girls in anime, and I like moe. However, there are times when even I question the kind of conversations that arise from talking about female characters and what effects they’re having on fans.

Growing up, I was taught various lessons on beauty, namely that inner beauty trumps simple appearance. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” “It’s the inside that counts.” Adages such as these shaped the idea that while physical beauty is more prominent in society, emotional beauty, personality, and character are considered to be deeper aspects to admire. While I do not discount physical beauty in people be they fictional or otherwise, this idea of personality trumping looks is something I still believe in. In anime, especially with the current prominence of moe, something which I think is much more personality-based, with moe visuals derived from personality, this seems to be the case.

However, with the increase and proliferation of moe terms, it can sometimes feel like character traits are no different from physical traits. Calling a character a tsundere becomes not much different from calling a character a busty redhead. Personality can become just as simplified as appearance and turns into something very immediate, very at-the-surface, and easy to fetishize. Liking a character for their personality becomes just as shallow as liking someone because they have nice legs.

Sexualization isn’t the thing that bothers me. Rather, it is that the type of sexualization that can occur as a result of this categorization of traits makes it difficult to see if someone actually genuinely likes a character or not. If I ask someone why they like a character, and they say, “Because she’s a shy twintail tomboy meganekko,” then I myself wonder, “Is that REALLY why you like them?” If an entire conversation is spent simply throwing out these categories as descriptions in lieu of actually talking about the characters, it can give the impression that these characters are undeveloped and shallow. Maybe they actually ARE that shallow sometimes and it’s all in good fun, but it still creates the feeling in me that personality becomes just another facet of a character to get gratification from, rather than something to cherish on a deeper level.

This is I assume a personal thing, and I don’t expect others to necessarily feel this way. I’m not faulting anyone for doing this, nor am I criticizing the existence of otaku vocabulary, as I do this myself pretty often. Still, there’s this gnawing bit of doubt that can occur when I see it when I think a real dialogue or discussion should be occurring.

Ogi Ogi Douga

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While doing a search on Nico Nico Douga the other day, I noticed that my Ogiue and Tohoku-ben video had been uploaded to the site, albeit from an older version, titled as 【ニコニコ動画】荻上の東北弁

Good job, mysterious uploader, though I wish there was a way to give you the updated version.

DEFEATED Mk.II (NSFW)

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Totally Not Work-Safe Warning: There’s a reason why I’m using a cutoff for the first time.

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Kaiba and What He Expects Out of His Anime

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Kaiba and What We Expect Out of Our Anime

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Kaiba is an unusual show amongst unusual shows. Its visual style is not like any anime airing on tv, it visuals existing somewhere between Tezuka and 60s manga, and the high art of Japanese artists such as Aoshima Chiho. Kaiba is different, and people will inform you of this fact.

I’ve heard numerous polarizing comments in regards to Kaiba, among them being that it’s (one of) the best of the season, that it’s so much better than all that crap out there, that it looks terrible, and that it’s nothing special and catering only to those who want high art in their anime. Either Kaiba is the savior of anime as an artform, or it is damning evidence of an incestuous circlejerk for highfalutin posers.

Kaiba animates well, but anime has never been known for spending elaborate time and money on movement, especially not for a tv series. Its characters are cute, but in a very illustrative, non-tactile manner. Characters have sex but are not sexualized. It uses characters as icons, but then subverts this by having the physical look of characters be interchangeable.

I think the divided opinion on Kaiba comes from the varying and often times contradictory roles that anime plays or is supposed to play. It is both an elevation of animation as something to be taken seriously as well as entertainment that anyone can enjoy. It is so much more realistic than other cartoons, but look at how weird and stylized these characters are!

There’s nothing wrong with seeing or wanting to see physical, human-like beauty in anime characters (see name of blog), even if it’s on a purely visual level. At the same time, this idolization of characters may be the root cause of the divisive opinions in regards to Kaiba. In fact, in the eyes of some, anime is currently the incestuous circlejerk and to others those same wide-appeal shows are what make anime great.

Defining 90s Shoujo…maybe

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When speaking of the spring 2008 show Itazura no Kiss, the way I and others describe it as “so very 90s shoujo.” And it’s true. The show, even animated in 2008, screams the conventions of shoujo from that decade, which is no surprise seeing as the manga is from the 90s.

But then, I thought, what if someone had no idea what 90s shoujo was like, and that description was therefore useless? How could I accurate convey the properties which make up 90s shoujo?

This is the challenge I’ve set out for myself, and I have to admit, I have no idea how this will turn out.

Visually, 90s shoujo is all about clean, almost cartoonish designs for characters. Girls are much more cute than sexy, but it’s not the type of cute one expects to moe or fawn over immediately. Guys are certainly bishounen, but rarely do they look completely feminine. Line work tends to be very simple, giving 90s shoujo a very flat look, but not so flat that the reader or viewer becomes distinctly aware of it.

The melodrama dial isn’t cranked up nearly as high as it is in 70s shoujo, where characters’ emotions hit harder than a train filled with lead, but characters are affected strongly by the small events around them. There is suffering, but it tends to be a beautiful sort of suffering where you can tell that the characters will recover from whatever their problems may be.

90s shoujo is innocent. This doesn’t mean that it’s devoid of sex. Far from it, in fact. The difference is that there is not much venom (or lead poisoning) between characters. The drama is strong but fairly civilized, and characters generally do not end up wanting to kill each other. Love triangles do not end in ridiculous tragedy.

90s shoujo is pleasant in a way that shoujo from other eras is not. It’s about 50/50 escapism and realism, and is almost always uplifting.