Category Archives: industry

Reminder that Shounen Jump’s Special Anime Streaming is About to End

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I’m here to remind everyone that January 31st, 2009 is the last day you can see the three  exclusive Shounen Jump anime specials airing on their official website.

I already wrote a review for their Dragon Ball special, so check it out.

The One Piece special is an isolated episode, but it’s the fun and wonder you’ve grown to expect out of One Piece. Even if you’ve never actually seen One Piece before it’ll be all right as long as you’re not afraid of spoilers, as the Straw Hat Pirate crew is pretty far along by this point.

This is Letter Bee’s first anime, and it’s really nice to look at. Kind of atypical for a shounen jump series, Letter Bee feels a little more subdued than expected, which I can only call a good thing.

I’d write longer reviews but I realized that by the time I wrote them, it’d be already too late.

So go forth, young anime fan!

Checking Out the Bandai Entertainment-Sponsored ImaginAsian TVAnime Block

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ImaginAsian TV is a cable network devoted to asian shows. It has Korean reality shows, Chinese dramas, Indian music videos and, to no one’s surprise, anime.

Back when ADV launched its Anime Network, one of the criticisms leveled at it was that the network was dub only. Well here with ImaginAsian TV we have what seems like a dream come true. Subtitled anime! On TV! It’s great until you remember that the anime industry isn’t doing so hot at the moment.

The shows they’re airing are My-HiME, Scrapped Princess, and Planetes, among others. They couldn’t have chosen these shows out of a hat. My suspicion is that out of all of the Bandai Entertainment properties, these are probably among the ones that have sold well. They’re also probably good for both the American TV viewer who happens to be channel surfing and the anime fan who’s dedicated enough to look for anime, but not aware of bittorrent or willing to go out and buy dvds, at least not without sampling first.

I really only had the opportunity to watch My-HiME, and despite having recently watched My-Otome S.ifr, I had forgotten that My-HiME actually looks really good. Like the current Sunrise show Sora o Kakeru Shoujo, My-HiME simply had good production values, and that makes it an eye-catching show. The same could be said of the other shows on there, now that I think about it.

ImaginAsian TV isn’t by any means a widespread thing so in the end its audience is limited, but it really feels like a sign of progression for anime, even if it’s not one that will lead to big profits for those involved.

Inconsistency in Iconographic Character Design and the Aging Audience Mind

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It was winter, around New Year’s one year when the Naruto anime in Japan aired an episode that acted as a set up to the long-anticipated Sasuke vs Gaara fight in the Chuunin exams. During this episode the characters were all terribly off-model, and not just for a few frames as the internet so likes to point out, but throughout the entire show. Taking a gander at the ending credits, it was very clear that this was some animation studio’s E team working on it. It was New Year’s after all and the New Year is a big deal in both Japan and Korea.

As a college-age student, I was not the primary audience for Naruto, as much as all college-age fans of Naruto might like to believe. Now, thinking back to my own childhood and knowing some of the things I’ve learned about animation, I have to wonder if I would have been so keen to pick up on inconsistency in character design, and if it would have mattered to me at all.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to watch many episodes of the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, the one that began in the 80s and ran for close to a decade, and it was then that I realized that for the Shredder, nothing was ever actually consistent. There was the helmet, the claws, the cape, the overall outfit, but from one shot to the next the thickness and curvature of the helmet would change, the arm guards would just do whatever, and it looked like each scene was drawn by a different person. And they probably were! But I didn’t really notice, or at least not that I can recall. I remember sometimes the Shredder looking more awesome than other times, but that’s about it.

World Events licensed the Japanese robot anime King of Beasts Golion and Space Musketeer Bismarck, and transformed them into Voltron: Defender of the Universe and Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs respectively. Both shows were popular enough with kids that they ended up creating extra episodes from scratch. Without the guiding hand of the original Japanese companies though, the shows just did not end up looking the same.

If you look at a lot of cartoons animated in Japan in the 80s for American audiences, such as Bionic Six or Galaxy Rangers, many of the openings are much more visually impressive than the actual episodes. Of course, openings being superior in quality to the show they precede should not be unfamiliar territory to anime fans.

Decades before Voltron and Bionic Six, the anime 8-Man was brought to America as 8th Man. At Otakon 2008, Mike Toole in his panel “Dubs That Time Forgot” pointed out that in the custom American intro for 8th Man, the character design used for the titular character didn’t even resemble the original Japanese design beyond a basic level.

Now, I watched both Voltron and Saber Rider as a kid but as I was very young at the time I barely remember anything about them, aside from the fact that smaller robots combining into a single mighty robot was the best idea ever (see also: Transformers, Gobots). Did I catch any of these extra episodes? I really don’t know. As for 8th Man, I wasn’t even born yet. But somehow I don’t think most kids were angry that the show tried to trick them into believing two different designs were the same character.

Kids need only a few iconic things to identify the character. With Shredder, it’s a mean-looking metal helmet ninja guy (something you can also see in the more recent TV series). With Voltron, it’s some people in color-coded outfits and a robot with lion heads for limbs and a sword that blazes. With 8th Man it’s a giant 8 on his chest.

I’m not asking whether companies right or wrong to rely on these aspects and hoping kids wouldn’t notice the difference, or whether or not they insult children’s intelligence by doing so. And I am not defending inconsistency in animation or saying that it is totally okay to just forget what your own characters look like. At the end of the day, Yashigani doesn’t help anyone, and there are times when characters are so off-model that they break even the important iconic features of a character. What I am asking instead is, what is and should be prioritized when it comes to presenting a character to children? And then, how does this affect media for older people that grows out of these preconceptions?

American superhero comics were once the domain of children, and it’s there that you see the strength of symbols and in characters. An S on the chest, a blue outfit with red cape, and a confident stance, and you’ve got Superman. Individual artist differences don’t matter as much as getting the basics of Kal-El down. But then over the years superhero comics became more and more geared towards adult readers, as they are today. Since then, the practice of having different artists and writers on the same character has become a staple of the genre, but now with this older readership this practice is celebrated. It is touted as one of the unique features of comics, where for better or for worse an Alan Moore Swamp Thing-level revamp can be conceived and then taken away months later, but with the record that the same character has many different approaches both in terms of story and subtle visual changes.

And now we have anime which, like comics, started off in the realm of children and grew to encompass adults, adults who were once those very same children. And then when watching anime for at least a certain subset of adults (otaku) became more commonplace, anime started gearing towards them to a certain degree, and with every passing year we see more of this. Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics talks about how he considers of the great strengths of manga to be its use of characters as iconography, which I’m extending towards anime as well. But how has icon usage in character design changed if at all in this journey towards adulthood?  One of the long-standing strengths of anime I feel is the way in which it provides material for adults to enjoy even within children’s shows. Is more consciously consistent (or intentionally inconsistent) character design a higher necessity when the target audience is older? Is an older audience what’s needed to truly appreciate a Shinbo-style unorthodox approach to a show? These questions don’t necessarily need answering, but I feel they may lead to finding out parts of the truth about how anime and its audience interact.

I Am Grateful for These Abunai Sisters

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Grateful indeed, that in 2009 we can still manage to achieve such an amazingly bad anime release.

The 80s and 90s were a time when bad OVAs were everywhere and being put in Blockbusters across America, but I thought that time had passed. We may have gotten true winners such as Musashi Gundoh and Zaizen Joutarou, but I was always sad that the era of BAD anime, the kind of bad so terrible that it causes five different forms of Space Cancer, seemed to be over.

“Not so!” say Kano Mika and Kano Kyoko, two women known collectively as the “Kano Sisters” who appeared at Otakon 2008 alongside JAM Project and other guests to announce their new anime: an anime about them. And apparently, all they had at the time were some drawings of them as characters by a guy who makes Japanese baseball team mascots, which they just used over and over.

It appeared to be the kind of project destined to fall over and die. Lucky for us, it looks like the Grim Reaper won’t swing its ironic comedy scythe at this production until after the DVD release. And now it’s your chance to see the first episode for free(!!!) on Anime News Network. The title is Abunai Sisters. Abunai means “dangerous.” Sisters means “my eyes appear to have spontaneously imploded.”

Abunai Sisters is a 90-minute DVD release with 30 3-minute episodes. It’s being made by Production I.G. Yes, PRODUCTION I.G. You like Ghost in the Shell? How about Innocence? Stand Alone Complex? That’s all Production I.G and so is ABUNAI SISTERS. It also has the most hilarious pricing scheme ever, one which lowers the cost of each individual DVD if more people end up buying it overall. The lowest it goes is $65, the highest $340. $65 minimum for 90 minutes of bad tits jokes and an English-with-Japanese-subtitles-only release. At least Bandai Visual had good properties! So if you run any sort of bad anime panel at a convention, this should probably be on your list.

A new form of Space Cancer is out, and boy does it feel…something.

It’s All in How You Look At It

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The 2000s have been an unusual time in anime fandom. It’s achieved greater popularity and notoriety than ever before, but it’s also been characterized by  claims that the people who create anime have lost their adventurous spirit, that shows are too dumb, creators are too cynical, and that what made anime great isn’t there or isn’t there in sufficient amounts.  I don’t believe this to be the case, but I occasionally have trouble convincing naysayers otherwise. How can you talk about the subtleties of experimentation within genres that people refuse to watch in the first place?

The other day I was reading the animation blog AniPages Daily when his post on what makes animation interesting caught my eye.

“Five or six years ago, I discovered something that kind of renewed the waning spark of my enthusiasm for anime: a set of Japanese animators creating flamboyantly stylish animation that was exciting like no animation I’d ever seen. It was the discovery of the existence within the anime industry of a coterie of animators with a deeply creative spark like Masaaki Yuasa, Shinya Ohira, Satoru Utsunomiya, Atsuko Fukushima, Yoshinori Kanada and Takeshi Koike – each working within the industry, yet managing to carve out a stylistic niche of the kind that elsewhere might only be attainable in the capacity of an independent animator – that renewed my faith in the power of animation, and showed me that some of the most exciting animation being made today was being made by these people in Japan. These animators heightened my awareness of the animated element in animation, and expanded my appreciation of the importance of movement in animation. But more than that, the sheer audacity and brashness of their individuality opened my eyes to a rich vein of creativity in the Japanese animation industry. There have been many great animators over the decades in Japan, and these animators continuing that tradition opened my eyes to a hidden narrative of anime history that broadened my appreciation of anime and renewed my faith in its potential.”

This post was written November 7, 2008.

Now, the man behind AniPages Daily is not your typical blogger. When I say it’s an animation blog, I mean it’s an animation blog. AniPages Daily is concerned with quality of animation above all else, and he’ll seemingly watch any show for it, from Naruto to Tiger Mask. He doesn’t talk about character designs, writing, story, giant robots, or fanservice, unless it concerns how a scene was animated. I really don’t watch animation like he does, and I’m not sure if I could completely agree with the idea of watching animation for the animation. However, I can appreciate his approach and the fact that it’s different from mine, and it left an impression on me that he could look at today’s anime, often criticized for lack of experimentation, and from his relatively unusual perspective see ideas and techniques being pushed towards greater heights.

It makes me wonder if it’s actually possible for anime to truly stagnate. Yes, there are disappointing shows, and ones that you could call better than others, but even in those shows which do not manage to succeed artistically or financially there are hands at work, and they may be achieving something special, just in an area that you or I don’t expect or pay any attention to. Maybe it’s in the soundtrack or even the use of the soundtrack relative to the animation. Maybe it’s daring risk-taking with forms of storytelling. Maybe it’s highly unorthodox mecha designs. And all of this is within the confines of an industry which is concerned with appealing to larger audiences.

Oshii Mamoru… and a Play About Tetsujin 28???

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Below is an article from the Mainichi Daily News’ website, translated for your convenience.

Actually it’s for my convenience as it lets me practice my Japanese, but we’ll leave that aside.

Tetsujin 28: A 500kg Iron Man Stands Tall! Minami Kaho Claims the Robot “Has a Life of Its Own” at Public Dress Rehearsal.

The robot manga Tetsujin 28 [Originally brought to America as Gigantor] by Yokoyama Mitsuteru (deceased) has been transformed into a play by Oshii Mamoru of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence fame. During the public dress rehearsal on the 9th, viewers witnessed the roughly six-meter-tall [approx. 19.7 ft], 500 kg [approx. 1102.3 lbs.] Tetsujin. They also showed the climax where main character Kaneda Shoutarou (played by Minami Kaho) rides in Tetsujin’s hand as the robot itself stands up.

For the theater edition of Tetsujin 28, Oshii Mamoru helped with both the script and production. Originally known as “Prototype 28,” the giant robot emerged towards the end of the Pacific War as a decisive weapon of the Japanese Army and is later revived in 1964 around the time of the Tokyo Olympics. The story tells of boy detective Kaneda Shoutarou, who takes control of the Prototype 28 in order to fight against a terrorist organization. After the dress rehearsal ended, Minami Kaho remarked that to her surprise she was able to sense life in the robot, claiming, “It feels as if it has a life of its own.”

The performance will be open to the public in Tokyo at the Galaxy Theater  from January 10 – 25. In Osaka, the performance will be at Umeda  Arts Theater’s “Drama City” from February 5 – 8. S-rank seats go for ¥11,000 [$121 US] while A-rank seats go for ¥8000 [$88 US].

Writer: Kawamura Naruhiro (I don’t actually know how you’re supposed to pronounce this name. If anyone could help that’d be great)

There’s Something “Different” About These Voice Actors…

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Back when the Soul Eater anime began airing, one of the big topics going around was Maka Albarn’s voice actor. Maka was Omigawa Chiaki’s first role in anime and it showed. Some called her voice work terrible or amateurish, I referred to it as a very natural-sounding voice. For those who haven’t heard it, when Maka speaks it sounds more like a young, soft-spoken narrator than it does a character in a show. However you judge it though, no one can deny that Maka’s voice was different from the usual.

At some point I decided to listen to the Soul Eater Web Radio Show (Maka Side), half curious, half wanting to practice listening comprehension for the JLPT2, and I was surprised to find out that Chiaki’s Maka voice is quite different from her everyday speaking voice. This meant that as natural and realistic-sounding as Maka’s voice is, it’s not just Chiaki speaking normally. I was impressed, but then I thought about how I wasn’t the best judge of Japanese voice acting, and a lot of the Maka voice’s detractors were Japanese people posting on 2ch and what-not. I’ve made progress over the years, but to really tell who’s good and who’s bad, I can’t do so with complete confidence still.

It was a few weeks after that when Anime World Order posted its review of Bubblegum Crisis. I had seen the show long ago, back when I barely knew anything about anime and my older brother knew guys in his high school who were willing to copy tapes for him, but it had been so long I barely remembered anything. I decided to re-watch the original Bubblegum Crisis, all of it, knowing that there was some bias for BGC among the AWO crew and not wanting to be too influenced by it.

Throughout the OVA series one voice really stood out among the rest: that of main character and most prominent Knight Saber Priss Asagiri. There was something about the way she intoned words, it almost reminded me of Jack King from Shin Getter Robo vs Neo Getter Robo. It sounded, felt different from the other voices which were all clearly talented but sort of blended together in the area known as “good,” like how Henri Cartier-Bresson may be one of the most talented photographers ever but his photographs were all good in the same exact way. It could be awkward at times, but Priss’s voice would always jump out. Then I looked up her voice actor, Oomori Kinuko and listened to the AWO episode (Part A) and found out that it was her one and only voice role, Kinuko being primarily a singer. “Oh,” I thought. And then I remembered Maka.

Maka and Priss’s voices are similar in many ways. Both are very noticeable when placed among their fellow cast members, and both have this style that really takes over a scene, for better or worse. When they talk, you notice. As such, both have this strange voiceover feel to them, where it sounds like they’re speaking directly to the audience rather than to other characters in their shows. Is this merely a product of lack of experience in voice acting? Did anime fans in 80s Japan have a field day with Kinuko’s voice work the way they do with Chiaki’s now? If more seiyuu sounded like Priss or Maka, would their lack of experience and/or talent stand out even more?

Budget Heroes

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As fans of anime and perhaps animation in general, it’s pretty easy to spot when something is well-animated or poorly animated. While a little trickier, it’s also certainly possible to notice good visual direction in a show. What’s more difficult is being able to notice when a show’s funding has been used intelligently, or when the creators have had to make due with limited resources. The men and women responsible for such arcane trickery are Budget Heroes, and I think they’re deserving of at least some praise.

I have to say, I’m not that good at spotting the handiwork of a Budget Hero. However, I can think of a few instances.

Evangelion is sometimes ridiculed for having poor budget usage, resulting in clip show and recap episodes. Evangelion also frequently uses still images over extended periods of time. Some might call it lazy, but I would say that the way Gainax pulled it off gave these scenes a sense that the stillness was more than appropriate. There are elevator scenes, where characters will be standing on opposite ends, not moving, not saying a word to another, as the hum of the elevator resonates. It’s one frame and some noise, but it goes a long way in showing just how awkward that silence is. Then there’s the 60+ scene of EVA-01 holding Kaworu in his hand. Again, a still image, and yes they could have shown Shinji in the cockpit panicking and hyperventilating but they didn’t. I wouldn’t call it a purely artistic choice, but it’s at the very least intelligent use of limited resources.

A more recent example is SHAFT’s Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. The show frequently experiments with unusual forms of animation, such as paper cut-outs, puppets, and clay, and sometimes it’s clearly to cut corners in animation. The show even pokes fun at itself for doing this, choosing not to hide behind the idea that it was artistic intention. Still, it’s really well done and I think it reinforces the overall off-kilter look and feel of the show.

This is not to knock the hard work of talented animators who have the benefit of funding to really pull off some incredible scenes. Talent is talent after all. And in the end, without doing any serious research into animators and studios, it’s difficult to discern who truly is a budget hero. For all we know, Musashi Gundoh had a budget of 100 yen and a pack of coupons and the animators were miracle workers. But I just wanted to remind myself and others that often times things simply do not go as planned and that animation isn’t cheap to produce, even at the comparatively lower amounts that Japan is used to.

An anime industry in a terrible economy

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As disposable income decreases for anime fans across the country, it becomes increasingly tempting to resort to alternative, less legitimate methods of obtaining our fix. This hurts an industry which is trying its best to stay alive in an increasingly volatile environment, but ultimately a person with no money to spend on entertainment will choose free entertainment over no entertainment. It’s an absurd level of Catch-22, with both and neither side to blame.

Anime companies want to take as much of our money as possible, and it’s only fair that they do so. I may often say that “I want to support the shows that I like,” but I also know that in the end, no matter how friendly the higher-ups and the employees are, a business is a business. Anime companies want to maximize their profits, but we fans have limits on how much money we’re willing to spend, especially as of late. The issue then becomes finding an amount that’s agreeable to both sides.

I know this sounds incredibly obvious, but we’ve seen at least one company (Bandai Visual) eat dirt because it didn’t even consider compromise.

The Moe Heroine and the Yamato Nadeshiko

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A “Yamato Nadeshiko” is defined as the traditional ideal Japanese woman. These qualities include being loyal to their husband, putting family first, modesty, and being skilled in domestic matters. Belldandy from Ah! My Goddess is a prominent example in anime and manga of a Yamato Nadeshiko, and the fact that Ah! My Goddess has continued to run for many years indicates that this type of character is relatively popular today.

Of course, the spotlight in recent years has been on moe characters, and while some character traits reinforce the idea of the Yamato Nadeshiko, others defy them. Key’s heroine of heroines Tsukimiya Ayu has loyalty as one of her important traits, but is also a clumsy tomboy whose cooking ability is on par with Homer Simpson pouring cereal. Tsundere characters such as Hiiragi Kagami are strong, capable, and put family and friends first, but are independent-minded and are anything but submissive. Aisaka Taiga from Toradora! meanwhile is a clumsy tsundere.

I don’t think the intentional increase of moe traits in characters is, at the very least on a basic level, “progressive feminism,” but I think it’s worth taking a look at how these characters relate to a concept with a long history in the society from which their fictional media are produced. In American fiction, particularly television and movies, there are certain stereotypes for female characters, particularly when it comes to romantic interests. The Girl Next Door can be considered a reaction to the Bombshell (or vice versa). Any time there’s a shy girl who turns out to be highly sexual, it’s actually just a simplified form of “what you see isn’t always what you get.” Though they are now recurring, even stereotypical concepts in fiction, their basis is in the trends of what most people want in their entertainment, at least as it pertains to female characters.

Granted, otaku are not “most people” in Japan or any other country in which they (or should I say we) reside. And when non-typical people look at something typical, I think there’s often a desire for something “different,” though perhaps not drastically so. But the line between “different enough” and “too different” is a very personal thing, and I think it’s the area in which disagreements regarding the validity of moe characters arises.