Category Archives: anime

A Personal Look Back at Matsumoto Leiji

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The news of Matsumoto Leiji’s death shocked me. While the passing of an 85-year-old shouldn’t be too surprising, it still makes me contemplate so many things. The number of creators who can trace their careers back to those early decades of the postwar manga industry is now vanishingly few. Matsumoto’s influence was monumental, with great works like Galaxy Express 999, Captain Harlock, and Space Battleship Yamato all under his belt. He was also instrumental in so much of what we now call the anime fandom, as his work on Space Battleship Yamato was the catalyst for fandoms in Japan, the United States, and elsewhere.

More than his broader artistic and historical significance, though, I feel Matsumoto’s legacy supporting me, as I might not have gone down my particular path of anime and manga fandom if I had never discovered his works. His messages of humanity and compassion sparked my curiosity, and helped me to look both forward and backwards.

The 1979 Galaxy Express 999 film is, bar none, my favorite anime ever. I reviewed it in the early days of Ogiue Maniax, but as I explained there, my history with it goes back further. I first watched it as part of a local film festival, at a time when my exposure to much older works was more limited. I can’t recall when exactly I saw it relative to other 70s anime, but I still remember to this day the sense of awe I felt coming out of the theater. Maetel remains one of my top 3 favorite female anime characters of all time, a figure whose presence in the story speaks to the beauty and soul of Galaxy Express 999. Nothing has toppled it in my heart even decades later.

An illustration by Matsumoto Leiji found at Comic Store Wonderland in Osaka

After seeing the film, I naturally began to notice more Matsumoto Leiji material, and since then, the worlds of his creations have been part of my world too. I bought a single volume of the Galaxy Express 999 manga in English in high school, and I would read it over and over. I would repeatedly consult Frederik Schodt’s Manga! Manga!, which included not only a biography of him but also a sample of one of his more obscure manga. Among my first figure purchases was a large Maetel, and I remember my excitement over finding the Queen Emeraldas OVAs and discovering Daft Punk through Interstella 5555.

I’ve reviewed Danguard A to celebrate the 50th anniversary of anime on television, sent Harlock to show “the pirate’s way” in Super Robot Wars T, and made lasting bonds thanks to The Galaxy Railways. I’ve also purchased that 1979 Galaxy Express 999 film over and over, whether it was happening upon a used Region 2 DVD at a Bookoff, getting the US DVD to show my support, or upgrading to the blu-ray so I could experience it in better quality than I ever thought possible. Actually, in that regard, the film festival I attended all those years ago showed a VHS version, so it really is like night and day.

An old drawing I made of Ogiue cosplaying as Maetel

In the long run, I think I would have still come to take a broader view of anime and manga. But as I currently am, Matsumoto Leiji’s art contributes no small part to the enthusiast I am today. As he leaves us, I wish his messages about the importance of remembering and cherishing our humanity continue to resonate in the years to come.

The Galaxy Express 999 will take you on a journey, a never-ending journey. A journey to the stars!

Like, Comment, Subvert: Yurei Deco

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Yurei Deco is a science fiction anime that takes the idea of social media influence to the extreme. It depicts a world where obsession with “likes” (or rather, “loves”) is so strong that society is built around their importance. This is a series that speaks directly to me, as I’ve long been bothered by the dominance of “likes” as a vital part of social media interaction.

Twitter is currently going through its largest debacle ever as Elon Musk arrogantly makes every wrong decision imaginable. For me, however, there was a different turning point that permanently soured my experience with the platform: the day that Twitter decided to change their stars into hearts. Suddenly, it didn’t mean you were marking something as interesting and worth looking at, but instead that you tacitly approved of it. What little nuance was there has gotten pulverized, and things have never been the same. Yurei Deco takes this problem and portrays a society that is basically a dystopia of social media where socioeconomic status and opportunity are tied to the number of “loves” one accrues. 

One of the things I like about Yurei Deco is how it utilizes its main character, a girl named Berry. At the start of the series, she’s generally accepting of the conventions around her: Berry’s favorite word is “love-y,” which she uses as a positive adjective—it basically means “this is great because it would get a lot of loves.” However, she’s also fairly curious, and her hobby is learning about Phantom Zero, a mysterious figure/phenomenon who appears to steal people’s “loves.” In this way, Berry is indeed a product of her society but also in a position to start subtly defying it. This combination (along with a broken eye implant) inadvertently allows Berry to begin seeing past the augmented reality that is the norm, and into the cracks that have formed as a result of this tacit acceptance. She’s drawn into a world of hackers and other eccentrics who play at the fringes, resulting in a story that’s equal parts mystery and commentary.

In other words, while Berry is eventually surrounded by outsiders, she herself has one foot in each door. Even as she learns more and more truths, she still uses “love-y,” giving her a realistic sense of growth and change. She makes major strides, but she’s not about to change her vocabulary overnight. In this way, Yurei Deco gives me vibes reminiscent of both Dennou Coil (for the integrated cyberspace elements in everyday life) and Deca-Dence (for the measured solutions that arise from the realities of the world and system portrayed. 

The bright and colorful visuals are courtesy of Yuasa Maaaki’s Science Saru studio, and Yurei Deco does a great job of making it feel both inviting and eerily creepy. The idea of a society built around likes on social media is bone-chilling in its own way, and the neon/pastel facade that everything possesses hammers that point home. But while critical of social media, Yurei Deco does not try to argue that it should just be excised from its world, as if to say “this stuff isn’t going anywhere, so we need to figure out a solution that results in outcomes good for society instead of ones that prioritize personal fame.”

I Almost Forgot the Power of Tsundere, or “Ogiue and Me”

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It’s been many years since the late-2000s peak of the tsundere archetype, when the girls with prickly personalities all but captivated anime and its fandom. I was no exception to this—while I don’t consider myself a huge tsundere enthusiast, many such characters are included among my favorites. But as their novelty has aged into a well-worn trope, I’ve found myself almost forgetting how potent they can be in terms of the emotional force they exert upon fans. What‘s more, the reminder I needed was to realize how much has changed in my own life.

In certain ways, I’m not who I was 15 years ago. Mentally and emotionally, I’m in a different place, no longer constantly doubting whether my social awkwardness would ever keep me from connecting to others. However, I can recall what that felt like, and the crushing fear that it might never be overcome. And I can also recall the amazement and comfort I felt seeing characters who had similar struggles. This is essentially what led me to becoming so fond of Ogiue Chika from Genshiken and naming this blog after her. Her fight with herself felt so very real, even if it wasn’t exactly what I was going through.

It’s arguable whether Ogiue is a tsundere, but one can think of tsundere as characters who face a similar conflict between what they feel inside and how they wish to express themselves, but also boiled down to a powerful essence. There is a difference between the old-school and new-school tsundere (a distinction that’s quite long in the tooth these days), but either way, it is an easily digestible personal trait that can be eminently relatable. To see a tsundere lash out is to see a character fight within in a clear and distinct fashion.

You might hear someone say “I wish I had a tsundere partner,” and they could mean that they want someone straight out of anime—a crystalization of a fetish. But they might instead mean “I want someone who understands me because they face similar challenges.” It’s in the ability to occupy both spaces that the tsundere is strongest.

I originally did not intend to bring up Ogiue, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Not only does she skirt the kind of tsundere, but she’s also been portrayed as growing out of the inner turmoil she carried when she was first introduced. She is no longer the same person, and it’s reflected in her personality and even her visual design, but I still love the heck out of her character. Even though the severity of anger and awkwardness she carries has waned, the struggle was undeniably there, and its marks are noticeable. The tsundere is powerful because of how succinctly they capture a variety of heavy feelings in a digestible fashion, and it would behoove me to keep that in mind.

Don’t Watch on an Empty Stomach: Delicious Party Precure

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As someone who loves to eat (and seeing characters who love to eat), it was all but inevitable that I would enjoy Delicious Party Precure. But my appreciation goes beyond nailing its general food motif, as the series also successfully balances a number of different elements to make a fun and thrilling show. Whether it’s revisiting established tropes of the Precure franchise, reviving old ideas from magical girl anime of years past, or taking steps towards inclusivity, Delicious Party Precure is a pleasure to watch.

Strong Theming and Characters 

Sometimes, Precure series don’t fully commit to theming, which makes for incongruous mishmashes of various marketable elements. This issue largely does not apply to Delicious Party Precure. Its characters, from main heroines to supporting cast, are all about enjoying and cherishing food. Its story is about magical girls fighting food thieves who are literally trying to steal tastiness in the form of food spirits. Every episode watched while hungry is basically torture, as it makes every dish look like the best thing ever. The adorable mascots are food fairies from the CooKingdom, each of whom are based on a particular carb—there’s nothing quite like a chubby little ramen dragon who shouts, “Wontooon!” during transformation sequences.

That said, the series has a sub-theme if wearing makeup that’s carried over from Tropical-Rouge Precure, but it kind of falls flat here. There’s one aspect of Delicious Party that makes it work to some extent (more on that below), but even the show itself emphasizes it less and less over time.

Characterization here isn’t as deep or profound as Heartcatch Precure! or Hugtto! Precure, but it’s still quite good and never drags the show down. The basic idea of them all having different loving relationships with food is simple, yet robust. Their different relationships with food create opportunities for joyful expression, human connection, and personal growth. One missed opportunity is that it doesn’t embrace the international food theme with a more ethnically diverse cast—despite the heroines Cure Precious, Cute Spicy, and Cure Yum Yum representing Japanese, European, and Chinese food respectively, all three are Japanese. 

A Balanced Diet of Old and New

Delicious Party features a few tropes that would be familiar to fans of Precure and its genre progenitors, i.e. magical girls and sentai tokusatsu. There’s an eventual “sixth ranger” (in this case “fourth”). The series also revives the “Tuxedo Mask” along with an extra dash of romance—a relative rarity in Precure. But Delicious Party also pulls them off, integrating them into the overall story without ignoring their histories, making them useless, or having them hog the spotlight. These are known recipes, so to speak, given enough customization to taste pleasantly different.

Another part of the successful balancing act of Delicious Party is that it embraces both its kid appeal and its capacity for more mature messages. The series has some of the best villains ever, and much like Hugtto! Precure, they seem to provide more of a connection for parents and other grown-up viewers. Even with fairly sparse moments of characterization, you get a strong sense of who they are and why they turned to the dark side. Their concerns feel more adult, highlighted by the contrast between the Precures’ youthful enthusiasm and the bad guys’ jaded cynicism.

The team shot at the end of group transformation scenes encapsulates that older-younger dual appeal. Right after a collection of exciting and silly poses mimicking the shape of riceballs, sandwiches, and noodles, it finishes with a basic arms-on-waist stance viewed head on. The switch from dynamic and playful to very direct and straightforward gives what I think is broad appeal. Truly, this is a show for all ages.

Precure Says Trans Rights 

One area in which Delicious Party Precure deserves praise is the steps it takes towards inclusivity. Building off of Kira Kira Precure a la Mode’s romantic tension between two girls and Hugtto! Precure’s (unvoiced but heavily, heavily implied) gay male relationship, this series introduces Rosemary, a CooKingdom “Cook Fighter”/mentor for the Precure who is clearly trans or nonbinary. While the show is never specific, it slso goes out of its way to never gender them, and other characters don’t question Rosemary’s appearance or behavior—not even the villains! There are some hints that Rosemary has struggled with gender identity, and this is the one area where the makeup sub-theme has any legs. 

The heroines all admire Rosemary’s strength, wisdom, beauty, and heart—and in a time when trans people are unjustly labeled as predators, I think this is no small thing. I find it notable that as the author of one of the biggest fantasy series in history continues to descend into trans bigotry, that Precure progresses slowly but surely.

Following Through to the End

While Delicious Party Precure has its fair share of mostly self-contained episodes, the general food emphasis always makes them a pleasant experience. And when they tap into the larger plot being woven over the long term, they help to build towards a satisfying finish. While it doesn’t quite hit the tippity-top of my Precure rankings, I can find very few glaring flaws. It was one of the highlights of watching anime every week, and the overall story is full of mental and emotional goodness—providing a balanced media diet.

Dearest Dad: The Deer King

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An imprisoned veteran of an old war tries to rescue a young girl from a plague said to be brought on by a people’s vengeance. Though he was supposed to die himself from his wounds, the man has gained superhuman abilities as if he is one with nature. Now, he raises this child as his own while fighting off those who wish to find and eliminate him. Elsewhere, a doctor must contend with the superstitions that prevent him from learning about the illness. 

The Deer King is truly dad fiction, both figuratively and literally. 

The film is based on a novel by the same name, and it’s a compelling work whose appeal is manifold. The Deer King is a grisly action piece, yet the bond between erstwhile father and daughter feels genuine and heartfelt. The world-building is robust without being convoluted, and the contrast between magic and science is an interesting one. Rather than acting as opposing forces, the story investigates how a desire to learn can separate the harmfully ossified traditions from legitimate generational wisdom. 

In an environment where so much fantasy is basic wish fulfillment, The Deer King stands out. Its characters discover new reasons to live, and learn the power of curiosity, both intellectual and emotional. This is a film that is more than capable of transcending anime fandom, and I hope many more people discover it.

Rise of the Bread Dogs: Hololive, Precure, and Pokémon

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There must have been something fermenting in the collective imagination of 2022. Last year gave us not one, not two, but three different forms of media featuring cute dogs combined with bread. And as many minds landed on this same idea of oven-baked canines, they all appeared to be guided by more than merchandising power alone.

Sanallites

The first bread dog of note is an embodiment of the Sanallites, the fanbase for the retired VTuber Tsukumo Sana from Hololive. The reason her fans are portrayed as bread is that Sana herself would express how much she loves bread, even going as far as doing a bread horoscope in an early stream. And because Sana herself is an experienced artist, she used her illustration chops to solidify the design as a whole loaf with an adorable flat face.

Sana’s bread dog comes from a warm and comforting relationship with her fandom—the kind of personal-feeling connection that you could only get from a streamer.

Pam-Pam

The second bread dog is Pam-Pam, a sandwich-themed dog fairy from the magical girl anime Delicious Party Precure. Here, Pam-Pam is the mascot sidekick of the bread-themed Cure Spicy, and contrasted with a rice mascot and a noodle mascot for a trio of staple carbs. This all plays into one of the themes of Delicious Party Precure, which is teaching kids to eat balanced meals and learn to appreciate all types of food. Pam-Pam transforms into a little sandwich with her dog head sticking out, meaning her bread elements come out primarily in battle.

Delicious Party Precure’s bread dog is a way to convey a theme of good nutrition. The decision to design Pam-Pam in this way is the result of trying to prepare children for the future.

Fidough and Dachsbun

The last bread dogs are the new evolutionary line from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Fidough, which resembles unbaked bread, evolves into Dachsbun, whose Baked Body ability makes it actually immune to fire attacks. They have more of an active bread motif than Pamu Pamu but retain more dog features than the Sanallites.

These two are actually just a couple of the many new Paldean Pokémon with a food motif—others include hot pepper plants, olives, and more. The Paldea region is based on Spain, which has a rich and diverse food culture, and both bread dogs reflect that aspect.

The Yeast They Can Do

Combining fluffy bread with furry dogs seems like an obvious winner, and these examples are certainly not the first. But to see three big franchises implement the same idea within the same year feels like a tiny miracle. There’s a surprising amount of versatility to be found in the bread dog concept, and should there ever be a true bread-dog boom, I doubt anyone would mind.

Precure Can Drink in Japan: Ogiue Maniax Status Update for February 2023

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February has arrived, and that means new Precure, of course. It’s this odd exception in that February debuts have been typical of the franchise, so I have it on my mind—especially because it’s the 20th anniversary [I’ve been informed that Precure is actually only 19, so oops.]. I still remember seeing the original Futari wa Pretty Cure being mentioned in an English-language anime magazine, and noticing the large combat boots and floppy socks they wore. It’s been a part of my fandom for two decades now, and while I don’t have plans to write a retrospective, I wonder if I should. At the very least, expect a review of Delicious Party Precure.

Moving on from a two-decade-old magical girl juggernaut, I’d like to thank my Patreon subscribers!

General:

Ko Ransom

Diogo Prado

Alex

Naledi Ramphele

Sue Hopkins fans:

Serxeid

Hato Kenjirou fans:

Elizabeth

Yajima Mirei fans:

Machi-Kurada

Blog highlights from January:

“Son Goku” vs. “Sun Wukong”: The Challenge of Translating Chinese Names in Japanese Media into English

If you’ve ever wondered why a Chinese character’s name in an anime sounds so unlike what the subtitles say, this might be hwy.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury Season 1—Bold New Steps

My review of Season 1.

The Elegant Design of Suntory’s Virtual Youtuber

Many VTubers have extremely busy designs, but one notable exception comes from a surprising source: a Japanese beverage company.

Kio Shimoku

Kio actually retweeted one of my posts this month!!!

Closing

I learned along with everyone else that Love Live! School Idol Festival is shutting down to make way for the sequel game. Given this information, it’s all too perfect that I finally managed to achieve my goal. Will I play the new game? I really don’t know—it depends on how much time I have and what the gameplay looks like.

Ghosts in Them Shells

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I’m 20 years late, but I finally finished Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which I first started watching all the way back in 2002 (!). Its detective-story approach to the GitS franchise allows it to deliver its cyberpunk world in a fairly straightforward manner that doesn’t necessarily require an inherent love of science fiction. At the same time, it still explores the central concepts of GitS (like the question of identity in a world where fully artificial bodies are ubiquitous) effectively. 

But watching SAC has me thinking about just how different each iteration of Ghost in the Shell is. It makes me feel that almost everyone will naturally and firmly gravitate towards a particular flavor of GitS, even though they’re thematically of the same realm. The original manga by Shirow Masamune revels in the slick aesthetic of its futuristic technology (and dials up the horny to 11). The films by Oshii Mamoru famously dwell on the philosophical implications of its world, with the second film, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, being even more heavily geared in that direction to the point that one can argue that there’s a breaking point at that sequel. I haven’t watched Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2045, but I have noticed disappointment, and I wonder if it’s because SAC 2045 is yet another noticeably different interpretation.

Though I say that people are likely to pick one version as their absolute favorite, I actually have trouble deciding for myself. I think this has to do with each GitS delivering a substantially different experience, and I find a type of fulfillment in each. Maybe I’m one of those folks who just loves science fiction as a whole.

“Son Goku” vs. “Sun Wukong”: The Challenge of Translating Chinese Names in Japanese Media into English

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Let’s say you’re watching an episode of Raven of the Inner Palace in Japanese. Or maybe it’s Thunderbolt Fantasy. A new character appears and introduces themselves, but the voice seems to say one thing and the subtitles another. Is the eponymous heroine Raven “Ryuu Jusetsu” or “Liu Shouxue?” Is the hero of Thunderbolt Fantasy “Shang Bu Huan” or “Shou Fu Kan?” 

They look kind of similar but also not. It feels discordant to read and hear two different things that are supposed to be the same, so you might be wondering why such a decision was made. 

What you’re running into is the legacy of how the Chinese language came to influence the Japanese language.

I am no expert when it comes to to Chinese-Japanese linguistic history, but I believe I can sum it up very briefly as follows. The Japanese language originally did not have a writing system, eventually began importing Chinese between the 3rd and 7th centuries AD to deal with that problem despite the fact that the language structures are dramatically different. Japanese began to use Chinese written characters (kanji), in some cases choosing to adopt Chinese pronunciations of words as well. Yet, because the languages are so far apart in fundamental ways, these pronunciations had to be approximated. The word for wood (木) was pronounced as muk in Chinese (specifically what’s called Middle Chinese by linguistic scholars), but due to the lack of ending consonants in Japanese, this became moku. Such onyomi, as the Chinese-approximate pronunciations came to be known, were codified into Japanese and are still used today.

But the Chinese languages continued to transform in China, and many pronunciations changed over the centuries. Various factors, from the rise and fall of dynasties to physical barriers creating pockets and enclaves of peoples meant that not only did the language end up different from its 7th century form, but also resulted in regional variations that can often be mutually unintelligible. While the Cantonese word for “wood” retains the “k” sound at the end (similar to how it was said in Middle Chinese), Mandarin Chinese (what is today the official language of China and the most common throughout the world) pronounces it as mu. This is because most of the ending consonants disappeared from Mandarin.

So when you have a hero or heroine with a Chinese name in an anime, that name can generally be written in Japanese through kanji. But when it comes to pronouncing these kanji, the default in Japanese is to use the old onyomi pronunciations. This is why Sun Wukong becomes Son Goku, and why Kongming (like in Ya Boy, Kongming!) becomes Koumei. But then, if these characters are ethnically Chinese or have origins in Chinese stories, might it be better to write their names out as if they were being pronounced in Chinese? The question is whether an anime based on Chinese culture should go Chinese -> Japanese -> English with names, or make it Chinese -> English. And if it’s a manga or novel, and there is no issue of text and audio disagreeing, is it still an issue?

There are many other factors that can complicate this decision. While many anime and manga are set in China, some series take place in a world that is merely Chinese-folklore-inspired. Twelve Kingdoms, for example, is a fantasy series where all the countries have names that would make sense in China, but would translating the names into Chinese be too far removed from the source material, given that the series is originally Japanese and the world of the Twelve Kingdoms isn’t technically China? And even if a story is set in China, what if it takes place in the 5th Century AD or any other time when even “official” Chinese sounded substantially different from its modern form? Or what if a story takes place in a region of China where Mandarin Chinese isn’t the dominant form? What if there’s a Chinese character living in Japan, and everyone pronounces their name as if it’s Japanese but they refer to themselves internally with their Chinese pronunciation? In English, we’re increasingly at a point where the right thing to do is to respect the person’s own desire for how to pronounce their name, but the context of onyomi in Japanese complicates that decision.

The toughest thing is that there is no right or wrong answer because it’s not even a matter of Japanese vs. English but rather Japanese vs. English and the point at which to insert the inherent Chinese cultural aspect into a translation. Whatever choices are made, it‘s important to understand that “accuracy” and “faithfulness” are not so simple. 

(Happy New Year!)

A Dream Realized on Hanayo’s Birthday, or “Oops, All Hanayo”

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It was almost 10 years ago when I discovered Love Live! and by extension the School Idol Festival mobile game. Koizumi Hanayo quickly became my favorite character, and so I set out with a simple goal: Make dedicated all-Hanayo teams while also avoiding whaling. It was both a way to show my fandom and to set a fairly concrete goal that I could dedicate my gacha pulls to. 

In 2015, I achieved the first step in a long road: a Hanayo Team consisting of all unique versions. Now, in 2023, I have crossed what I consider to be my final finish line: Three all-Hanayo teams with every member an idolized and legit Ultra-Rare (as opposed to free-giveaway URs that have less power as a result).

I have, in my own way, “beaten” Love Live! School Idol Festival, and can finally lay this game to rest—at least until the recently announced Love Live! School Idol Festival 2 shows up. Will I even play the sequel? And if I do, will I maybe dedicate myself to a different character, like Love Live! Superstar!!’s Wakana Shiki? Whatever the case, it’s the end of an era.

Happy Birthday, Hanayo. It’s been fun to cheer for such an intensely passionate character of contrasts, and it’ll continue to be amazing.