Category Archives: anime

Fansubs, Digital Distribution, Shenanigans

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This post is perhaps far too late, and even then, lots of people have more knowledge and insight than me, so I won’t really bother with explaining about WHY the anime industry is in danger. To sum it up, the people in charge need to catch up to modern times. That’s about it.

All this talk though has reminded me that Nintendo is planning on a service for their Wii where a person can purchase something from their online shop FOR another person. You buy, say, a virtual console game, and then the game gets sent to the person you bought it for. And I think this would be a great system to implement somehow for anime.

There’s little doubt that a good number of anime fans love to spread word about their favorite anime, and having the ability to purchase episodes for your friends (because they’re lazy or refuse to watch but you just know they’re going to like it!), I think, would only be embraced by people.

Granted, once the episodes are obtained, it’d probably be pretty easy to pirate them. Maybe there could be some kind of reward system for recommending a show to someone, a way to earn goodies like Naruto headbands or copies of Iroha Gokko and Anato no Tonari. Barring that, I look at the Wii again, with its library of virtual console games, and the fact is, people are ACTUALLY buying them, including the NES ones. You can download the entire NES library for like 50mb onto your computer, and people are still buying NES games.

I know that selling old games isn’t exactly like selling new anime, though.

Except perhaps when the anime isn’t new at all, and it’s just never been released here.

Ogiue in Mii form

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Back when I first got my Wii, my first order of business was creating an Ogiue Mii.

I have uploaded it to Check Mii Out at 9781-2877-1647. It’s based on roughly volume 5-volume 6-style Ogi. I may make one that’s closer to her anime counterpart.

And yes, I will be referring to different periods of Ogiue aesthetics from now on.

You can also use the feature to see the rest of the Mii’s I’ve put online.

Does learning Japanese hurt the domestic anime and manga industry?

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I have taken years of Japanese. I studied abroad in Japan in a university with virtually no English speakers. The result is that I am more or less fluent, and that at some point I decided to start buying some manga in the original Japanese because it usually comes at a lower cost. Genshiken is an example.

However, by doing so, I am also directly taking away from sales of the Del Rey release in respect to me personally. At the same time, though, my early fandom into Genshiken I know has caused other people to pick up the manga as it was being released her. My consistent and long-term Ogiue fandom has caused people to take notice of Genshiken, buy it, read it, and enjoy it immensely. If I had never started reading the Japanese versions, this may not have happened. So it’s tricky to say, at least as it concerns myself and my interactions with others, whether or not this has hurt the chances of certain things succeeding in the US.

I think there may be a certain balance, and that there is a potential point where if too many anime fans were fluent in Japanese, it would hurt the domestic industry, but that with a certain percentage of fans as Japanese-literate that it may actually be very beneficial. This might sound like I’m encouraging a portion of the anime-viewing population to remain ignorant, but that’s not the case, and the chances of “too much” of the population learning Japanese leans on the slim side anyway.

My prediction was wrong

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In an earlier post, I predicted that the Ogiue cosplay in volume 7 of the manga would be replaced by Ogiue’s Menma cosplay in the opening.

Is this what they mean when they say “I can’t lose?”

Genshiken 2, adding to the flavor

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“Check out these pythons!”

I’m not sure if I’ve made it clear previously, but I really like Genshiken, and I really like Ogiue.

I have had all 9 volumes of Genshiken, in Japanese, since last year, and I had been highly anticipating the arrival of the second series ever since it was announced and perhaps even before then. Naturally, I thought about the pace of the series previous, and what they had covered in the OVAs, and I figured that, hey, it might be a bit of a squeeze, but they could probably fit enough of the significant content from Volumes 5-9 and finish it off this season.

However, in Genshiken 2, entire chapters have been extended to the point that they fill the approximately 22 minute space that is a tv episode. They’re up to episode 7 already and they’ve only gotten to the end of Volume 6. Either they don’t intend to finish it off just yet, or they’re gonna cut out a lot of stuff from the manga.

Poor Keiko. I get the feeling most of her scenes are gonna get axed.

Now, you’d think I’d be mad at Studio ARMS for extending the chapters in this manner, but I’m really not, because they’ve managed to pull it off successfully. I am genuinely enjoying the episodes, and the added content only serves to enrich the characters and their thoughts and interactions. The prime example of this is episode 5, “Madarame is a Total Bottom,” an episode which covers the manga chapter which basically turned me from an Ogiue fan to an Ogiue fanatic.

Hell, the image banner I’m using here is taken directly from that chapter.

The episode devoted far more time to Ogiue’s fantasies than Kio Shimoku did in the original manga, but it provides me, the viewer, with such a strong understanding of what’s going on inside the mind of sweet Ogi that I cannot help but appreciate it. I am no fan of yaoi, but that I was pretty much seeing her direct train of thought, (lightly) warped logic, and that I was pretty much in Ogiue’s head provides me with a sort of joy that is both pleasant and visceral.

Keep at it, Studio ARMS! The only thing I worry about is that they probably don’t have enough content for a third season if they keep up this pace. Maybe another OVA series is in the works.

The Only Club that Matters

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Oh, You are Crazy! This is USA! That is Japan!

ME no PRIDE o kakete, YOU-tachi de MEMBERSHIP INCREASE suru ze!