Category Archives: anime

Correcting Past Failures Through the Super Robot Wars Games

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The Super Robot Wars series, which crosses over various mecha anime across history in the form of turn-based strategy video games, is known for trying to make giant robots look their best. One way in which this is accomplished is through the attack animations, which have become increasingly detailed, dynamic, and beautiful as graphics have improved, such that even the less popular and even less good-looking series of yesteryear appear to have a new lease on life.

However, on a few occasions there will be an attack, even an ultimate attack, that will within the context of the source material be followed by failure or tragedy, and I find it pretty funny to see when the makers of the Super Robot Wars games try to compensate for this in some way. Below are a few examples.

(Spoilers for some series below).

The first comes from King of Braves Gaogaigar Final.

The mighty King J-Der, rival and ally to Gaogaigar, launches its strongest attack, the J-Phoenix. In the OVAs, this attack is unsuccessful in taking down the enemy, but of course you can’t have that happen in the video game. I personally interpret that pause at the end of the attack animation in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 to be a vestige of that past failure.

The second example comes from Shin Mazinger Shougeki!! Z-Hen (also known as Mazinger Edition Z: The Impact!).

In the final battle, archetypal hero Kabuto Kouji sends a shower of Rocket Punches at Dr. Hell, ending it off with a final blow with a “Big Bang Punch.” However, in the actual anime, while the attack succeeds, the consequences are revealed immediately after to be arguably worse than if Kouji had not defeated Dr. Hell. It turns out that Dr. Hell, while evil, was also trying to prevent an even more evil force from succeeding. While this is acknowledged in the Super Robot Wars Z games through its story, as the games move along you can just keep using the attack mission after mission. The fact that the background doesn’t just suddenly turn red to signal further horrific developments almost feels as if something is missing.

The third comes from Neon Genesis Evangelion.

When the Angel Zeruel appears, it’s the toughest enemy that Ikari Shinji and the other Evangelion pilots have ever faced. At one point Asuka, desperate to prove herself, launches a non-stop artillery volley at the Angel, only for it to prove utterly ineffective. In the anime, this is one of the stepping stones to Asuka’s total breakdown at the end of the series, but in the video from Super Robot Wars MX below shows it being used to defeat opponents with few problems.

As I mentioned, most of the attacks in Super Robot Wars don’t really have this issue, and generally it’s all about celebrating their successes and having fun with characters from multiple series working together. Though, if most of the attacks in Super Robot Wars were to come from failures in the original anime, that might say something about where mecha anime as a genre has gone.

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Digimon Adventure Tri’s Mature Look

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Long gone are the days when Digimon tried to compete with Pokemon. Regardless of who won that war, fond memories exist for both. When a new Digimon anime that would feature the original cast but older was announced, I think it’s safe to say that many fans rejoiced at being able to see their favorite characters again. Anyone who’s seen the previews for Digimon Adventure tri., however, will notice that, even if the characters themselves are recognizable, their designs are significantly different compared to the original anime in a way that can’t just be explained by them being in high school.

Digimon had a typical yet still distinct enough style where characters had big heads, big eyes, and big hands that it carried through multiple series. In many ways it was unmistakably the way a kids’ anime was expected to look. Digimon Adventure Tri, in contrast, not only has characters with more realistic human proportions but also has a kind of looseness to the art that to an extent resembles Hosoda Mamoru’s famous Digimon films such as Our War Game. They could have easily mimicked the original style or even refined it to look more mature, so obviously this change is deliberate, but I think this change is particularly fueled by the fact that Digimon Adventure tri. is targeting the audience that watched the original Digimon Adventure all those years ago.

Essentially, I believe that the new character designs and general appearance of Digimon Adventure tri. are a way to show how the series itself has grown up just like the people who first watched Digimon Adventure. The audience has changed, the world has changed, and so too has Digimon evolved into something else. If anything, it’s grown up just a bit more slowly, as the kids who watched it then are probably in their 20s at this point, and they’re going to see Taichi, Yamato, and the rest stepping forward into adulthood.

NASTY NASTY: Ogiue Maniax Talking Yuri Kuma Arashi on The Anime Now! Podcast

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I’m back with Sir Brad of Meek to talk about, bears, lesbians, and torrents of highly structured forms of social exclusion.

Check it out!

Diners, Saiyans, and Drives

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This is a sponsored post. If you’re interested in submitting topics for the blog, or just like my writing and want to be a patron of Ogiue Maniax, check out my Patreon.

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The fact that anime and manga about food is a “thing” is one of the commonly referenced points to show how diverse Japanese animation can be. Rather than fighting with weapons or fists, characters will often try to outmatch each other in the kitchen, and the results are as diverse as Mr. Ajikko, Yakitate!! Japan, The Drops of God, Fighting Foodons, and indeed the current Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma.

However, I have to wonder if America is that far off from getting something similar, based on the direction that the Food Network has taken over at least the past five or six years. Where once the main feature of the cooking-oriented Cable channel was the variety of personable chefs making food from around the world look amazing, now the most common feature on Food Network has been competition through cuisine. Chopped. Food Network Star. Iron Chef America. Cake Wars. 24 Hour Restaurant Battle. Guy’s Grocery Games. Food Feuds. Food Fight. Throwdown with Bobby Flay. The list goes on.

While one obvious difference between food anime (which doesn’t have to be about competition but frequently is), and these Food Network shows is that one is inherently fictional while the other thrives off of the idea that they’re real people engaged in real rivalries with each other, they share a similar air of dramatic narrative. Both find ways to make something as visually appealing but not as lively as, say, sports or fighting, have more intensity. Close-ups on fine knife work. Flames roaring as someone stir fries using a wok. Unfortunate accidents and injuries. All of this works together to make food preparation a fierce, perhaps even macho world in a bid to get more guys to watch Food Network in the first place.

In that respect, another point that some food anime and Food Network shows have in common is the use of sex appeal. While it’s much more noticeable for a series like Food Wars!, where the girls are drawn to be curvaceous, and eating good food is a downright orgasmic experience, I think it’s no secret that a lot of the Food Network’s female stars are dressed in ways that enhance their bodies. This isn’t a criticism of the use of sex appeal, and especially for TV it’s par for the course. Food and sex are also not unfamiliar companions, and I could see two arguments coming out of this: first, that sex appeal can add to the excitement of food, or second, that the sort of “excitement” it brings emphasizes anything but the food. Food Wars! strikes a “balance” by pushing both to the extreme.

That’s not to leave out the other common type of food anime (and especially manga), however. One of the other common trends with food-themed works in Japanese visual media is an emphasis on travel, discovery, and healing. These series are built upon finding the next interesting food, or having a particular dish or beverage be exactly what someone needs to fix an emotional problem in their life.

Perhaps what might bridge the gap and possibly even get an animated food series on something like Food Network would be to add drama through presentation, to take something like a documentary and try to give it greater expressiveness through the art of animation.

Or they could just make a series where Fieri is a Super Saiyan.

ssj-guyfieri

Japanese Pop Culture Gattai: Waku Waku +NYC Next Weekend

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Every so often you may have seen me link to blog posts that I’ve written for Waku Waku +NYC, which is a new Japanese Pop Culture Festival in Brooklyn. Waku Waku +NYC is set for next weekend, August 29th to 30th, and while some of my readers are complete con veterans at this point and others might not have other been to anything of the sort, I encourage everyone to go because it’s going to be a different experience from the typical anime con.

The main things that probably separate Waku Waku +NYC from similar shows is that, in addition to having cool anime guests—like Mega Man and Mighty No. 9‘s Keiji Inafune and veteran anime screenwriter Takao Koyama, who worked on such shows as Saint Seiya, Time Bokan Series, Dragon Ball Z, Slayers, and The Brave Express Might Gaine, —there’s also going to be a huge emphasis on mixing things up. Rather than keeping each all of the various elements of Japanese pop culture in their respective bubbles, Lolita fashion will be encouraged to intermingle with Japanese hip hop and EDM, for example. It’s also going to feature a cool area full of delicious eats called “Savory Square,” which will be serving authentic Japanese food from some of the most notable restaurants in both Japan and NYC. Probably the main attraction is Dotonbori Kukuru, which will be flying in from Osaka to serve the classic Osakan snack, takoyaki.

Waku Waku +NYC will be spread across multiple locations in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. These are the Brooklyn Expo Center, Wythe Hotel, Verboten, Transmitter Park, and Brooklyn Bowl. They’re all within walking distance of each other, but a shuttle will also be available.

I hope you can make it to Waku Waku +NYC. If you come, you might be able to spot me. I’ll be running around the venues conducting interviews.

Senki Zesshou Symphogear and the Question of Genuine Passion

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This post was sponsored by Johnny Trovato. If you’re interested in submitting topics for the blog, or just like my writing and want to support Ogiue Maniax, check out my Patreon.

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When first approaching the anime Senki Zesshou Symphogear, my view of the show was colored by one experience in particular. A few years ago, I was on the Veef Show to discuss AKB0048, another show from Studio Satelight that also involved singing, battling idols in a science fiction setting (no surprise coming from the studio founded by the creator of Macross). There, Veef informed me that Symphogear was essentially a show made by a relatively inexperienced staff, and it showed. So, I went in with the impression that it’d probably look nice but be fairly discombobulated, lacking the veteran knowledge of Kawamori Shouji or others. While after watching four episodes I certainly can’t say how the series concludes or holds together, what I can say is that Symphogear is very good at conveying passion.

I’m aware that this kind of sounds like a cop-out response. How can any anime, created by teams of people, and often tied in along with a desire to sell and succeed, be any more or less passionate than others? For that matter, how can a series that combines mild yuri, skintight space battle uniforms, idols, mecha, and general fanservice be anything more than a cynical marketing ploy? However, when watching Symphogear, I can’t help but feel that all of those elements are less calculated ploys and more actually the things that the creators themselves wanted to see. I haven’t read any interviews, and I haven’t researched this show heavily, so none of what I say is backed up by hard facts. It’s mainly my impression, and that feeling says to me that there’s something beyond appealing to the lowest common denominator as an external factor in Symphogear.

Being calculated doesn’t make a bad series, and neither does being true to one’s passions result in a good series. I think Love Live! School Idol Project, for example, is a fantastic series, entertaining through and through, with lots of great characters with well-rendered personalities, but it feels on a very basic level to be a product of marketing knowledge. All of the characters, even my favorites such as Hanayo and Nico, are carefully crafted to have just the right balance of traits. It’s just that this has worked out in its favor, and the series is genuinely well-written. Conversely, a series that is genuinely the product of its creator’s vision and interests but might carry an unfortunate message or soapbox situation can also be an issue. Symphogear seems as if it on some level has to go cheesy and get overloaded with all of those otaku interests, because that’s just what the creators think would be enjoyable.

I think the best example might just come from the main character Hibiki herself. Within the first four episodes, she’s shown to be this quiet girl with large, gentle eyes and a petite yet shapely figure who gains a mysterious power almost equivalent to that of a berserker. She’s shown to have a strong sense of justice, a willingness to get her hands dirty fighting, and a childhood friend who seems to be on a Daidouji Tomoyo level of “friendship.”At a distance, she can come across as this amalgam of desirable traits, and even upon looking more closely they still maintain that impression, but through the efforts of the animators and artists, the writers, and her voice actress Yuuki Aoi, her sense of being shines through. All of the elements that might be viewed as schlock when viewed with a cold, critical eye gain an air of warmth, and it feels possible to connect with Symphogear on a deeper level as a result. Perhaps it’s because Symphogear, more than even Kawamori’s own series, is the pinnacle of combining singing idols with space fighting faction, because the girls’ suits are literally powered by their voices.

With three seasons of Symphogear now in existence, I might assume that the series gets better as it goes along, but of course that’s never a guarantee. One thing I’ll be looking out for is, simply, what this inexperienced team ends up doing with the experiences they gather.

 

Respecting Choices and Garnering Respect in Fandom

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A number of years ago I was in an online conversation with a friend who refused to be critical of anime. While others argued that this didn’t make sense because every person has to prioritize likes and dislikes to some degree, my friend rebutted that it was not their own role to pass judgment or to push their own taste on others. Rather, what they preferred to do was to match a show with what someone was looking for, a librarian’s approach rather than that of a critic.

While in the end this was only one person with a very particular way of viewing media, I find that it encapsulates an unspoken (or perhaps sometimes unconscious) disagreement among fans within all sorts of popular media, from games to anime to comics as to how people should view and engage with media. This philosophical disagreement can in some sense be described as “modern,” the idea of aiming progressively towards an ideal, vs. “postmodern,” the idea that there are essentially multiple truths.

I will give two examples. The first comes from the popular site Anime News Network, and the other comes from the Super Smash Bros. online community.

Anime News Network is a general anime and manga site with news, an encyclopedia, and reviews. As is typical of a review site, its writers will often talk about a specific work, list their likes and dislikes, what they might find interesting or problematic about a series, and then give letter ratings. On the forums, this inevitably leads to some strong disagreement, where people respond as if they are being personally attacked by the review, while calling the reviewer out for bias.

I’ve seen the argument that ANN forum posters do not understand what it means to a review a series, and that they should not be so close to their anime that they would feel personally offended by a harsh review, but the more I think about it the less I think it’s that simple. Rather, what happens is a difference in how engagement with anime is perceived. The reviewer will tend to state their opinion in a manner to try and convince the audience that, as a reviewer, their thoughts have significance, and while the idea that a review is an opinion is thought to be implied, it’s a tendency of “good” English writing to state things somewhat authoritatively. This results in the sense that the goal of reviews, and what anime fans should be doing, is progressively refining their tastes. The more they watch, the more discerning they should become.

However, many forum-goers see things differently. While they often look towards the review for validation and thus see the reviewer as someone of importance (and indeed when the reviewer and the posters’ opinions align they tend to express positive feelings), there’s also a strong sense that a lot of these anime fans are not trying to become more critical, to develop better taste in anime. Rather, they’re trying to find the anime that suits them on some mental or emotional level, and because some reviews will criticize some social aspect of a work (portrayal of women, for example), this becomes a point of contention because from their perspective it can seem as if the reviewer is trying to invalidate the work and its readers, when it really comes down to a difference in philosophy. From the reviewer’s side, the forum posters might appear to be people with no taste, who don’t understand what reviews are generally meant to do. It’s like two different conversations are happening.

In the case of the fandom surrounding competitive Super Smash Bros., since 2008 there has been an on-going tension between fans of different iterations of the franchise. Amidst frequent arguing over the years, there have been proposals for fans of the different games to unite under one banner and respect and support each other, but almost without fail someone will ask the following:

“Why should I support a game I don’t like/is terrible? What’s in it for me?”

This way of thinking views the Super Smash Bros. games not as different takes on a core idea with varied gameplay experiences, but a series where one game in particular is the best and the others should live up to its example. This assumes that there is one right way to make a competitive Smash game, and that, the further away you get from that approach, the less competitive and interesting a game becomes. More importantly, however, this mindset assumes, rather than bringing in more people of different tastes and opinions, it is better to cull other games in order to further refine the ideal competitive environment.

Relative to the idea of unity across the Smash franchise, it is assumed that supporting “lesser” games is insincere, thus compromising one’s own tastes and, for some fans, going against their “objectively” derived conclusion that their game is simply the best. In contrast, basis for unity, the reason why it is touted as a goal for the competitive Smash Bros. community, comes from a different place. The idea is that, not only does the idea of a fun, competitive game vary from person to person and that those with whom you disagree might see something that you don’t, but that there should also be mutual empathy. Rather than focusing on which game is the best and why fans of the others simply aren’t seeing things correctly, this unity in a sense prioritizes people and their hard work over the games, which implies that, while playing the right games are important, it’s a very individual and subjective choice.

I don’t know if these differences are simply a matter of personality, or upbringing, or just the manner in which people are exposed to their hobbies and interests, but that’s less important to me than having people be aware of these varied mindsets when talking to others. Even though we might all be called “fans” of the same things, even within specific categories there are dissimilarities as to what we consider to be fundamentally important. If you’re an anime fan, what’s more important, the anime or the fan? If you’re a gamer what’s more important, the game, or the er (this is a less effective play on words)? This is not a black or white situation, as different people might even value different aspects of particular media. For example, someone might truly believe that books are in the eye of the beholder, but that music should be held up to higher standards. While this might seem to be hypocritical, I think it’s quite possible for it to be a positive thing, as it potentially allows people to see the other perspective more clearly. Each side, although they might have different goals or motivations, aren’t automatically invalidated.

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Goku vs. Javert: Voice, Performance, and Interpretation

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I’m not big into musicals, but after watching the Les Misérables film and seeing all of the criticism of Russell Crowe’s Javert (especially in terms of the quality of his singing), I began looking into the Javerts from Broadway, most notably Philip Quast, who was used for the 10th Anniversary performance. While Quast is clearly a more powerful singer and better at acting through his singing (as opposed singing along with acting), what stood out to me was the sheer difference in Crowe’s and Quast’s interpretations of the character of Javert.

Quast’s Javert is supremely confident in both himself and his sense of justice, with the idea that, as the story progresses, he begins to lose his philosophy of absolute righteousness. Crowe’s Javert, in contrast, comes across as someone who is constantly at war with himself, fighting against the fact that he is “from the gutter too.” What amazes me about this, as perhaps someone who’s spent arguably too much time with anime and manga and not enough with other media, is that the same lyrics, the same script and dialogue, could result in such different characters.

In thinking about this in terms of recorded media, I have to think about the position a particular work has to have in order to get to this point where multiple interpretations of a character can exist based on the same core script. Sure, remakes happen, whether it’s anime, film, or something else, and American superhero comics are known for re-inventing characters through the different minds of new creators who revisit or take on older properties, but it’s not quite like having a stage play (or a movie that tries its hardest to be faithful to a stage play), where having new actors, new people to give their voice and mannerisms to the same character and script, is expected.

Dragon Ball is one of the most famous manga and anime ever, and between Dragon Ball Kai, Dragon Ball Super, Resurrection ‘F,‘ and more, its characters have been coming back stronger than ever. In fact, Kai had all of its dialogue re-recorded even though the story was Z’s. In a way, that idea of having different interpretations despite the same script happened, only most of the voices were the original cast, and it’s more seeing how experience has changed them.

Where the “actor interpretation” idea might exist in anime is, perhaps, the act of dubbing. For most who grew up with the English voices of Son Goku (most famously at this point Sean Schemmel), Nozawa Masako’s original Goku portrayal is extremely jarring, her shrill voice sounding much less masculine than their image of Goku. Because Dragon Ball is so internationally successful, that also means that it and similarly popular works (Pokemon, One Piece) all give these potentially very different experiences due to how the same (or similar) script is communicated through dozens of languages. English-language Goku and Japanese-language Goku are in a way very different, and I can only imagine that Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic Goku are all going to bring variations even though they share the same basis.

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How Many Curtains Does It Take to Get to the Truth of Anime Production?

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One of the recurring endeavors in the study of anime and manga has been to remove some of the aura from Tezuka Osamu. Rightfully one of the most influential figures in anime and (especially) manga history, it’s not so much about questioning whether Tezuka had any impact on Japanese popular culture but to what extent the attributions given to him (either by others or himself) are necessarily accurate. Did he really create the first anime (no) or the first TV anime (no)? Did he really invent shoujo manga (the answer is also no)? However, amidst the pursuit of the truth, this brings to mind the question of how much one is willing to peel back the veils of illusion that go into the production of art and media, to look at the creators themselves, and perhaps to take away even their brilliance in favor of treating them and their works as mere people and products.

What inspired this post was the book Anime: A History by Jonathan Clements, which aims to study anime as objects, created and sold, and in doing so reveal a side of anime’s history that isn’t merely about lauding the successes or pointing out obscure, overlooked works. As much as one might argue that this is removing the “magic” from anime, there’s nothing wrong with this approach, especially if one is in pursuit of a more factual type of truth. In fact, it’s not so much that the veneer of fantasy has been peeled away from the anime or the creators that has me writing this post, but rather about the degree to which another might accuse me of doing the same thing through this blog.

One of the aims of Ogiue Maniax from the very beginning has been to get people to think more about anime and manga, to explore why one might love anime in a certain way. To this extent, I’ll talk about different themes in series but I’ll also bring up both creators and audience in a mix of modernism vs. postmodernism that I don’t necessarily think needs to be resolved. I’ll go to panels at Otakon and lament the lack of audience for Maruyama Masao, who is one of the greatest troves of anime production knowledge in existence (though maybe now that he’s been parodied in Shirobako this might change things) and question why people pay so little attention to the creators. And yet, is that so different from what Clements does in his book?

While Clements strips away the aura from the creative process a bit in order to question the self-congratulatory aspects of creators and studios, am I stripping away the fantasy of the anime as a story in and of itself, the narrative as entity that wishes for people to engage it on some level as inherently real? Do even the people who follow voice actors do this same thing in their own way? And perhaps most importantly, should these contrasting stances all be considered under the same umbrella of “fandom,” or are they distinct enough to need more specific categories?

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Ogiue Maniax Talks Otakon on the Space Opera Satellite Podcast

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I was recently on PatzPrime’s Space Opera Satellite podcast to recap and review the highlights of Otakon from the mecha fan’s perspective. Joining us were also Tom Aznable, Hazukari, and Ashe Blitzen.

Have a listen