Category Archives: manga

Thoughts on Learning and Teaching Mahjong

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Ever since I’d been approved for the mahjong panel at Otakon, I’ve been both consciously and unconsciously thinking about the game in terms of how beginners approach it. Here are some accumulated thoughts from this slight change in mindset.

As Sub and I work on our panel, we have to be aware that many people don’t have the first clue about mahjong, and that in order to get to the meaty psychologically thrilling parts of the game, we have to show what the game is actually like without going overboard. I trust the both of us to come up with something great, though. Sub especially is a natural at pleasing the crowd.

Sub and I also played some games both online and real life this past week with various levels of beginners, from people absolutely new to the game to people who’ve been playing for a bit but are still grappling with some of the fundamentals.

While neither of us are particularly good at mahjong, we too have made many of the same mistakes, and so we are more keenly aware of them. Generally these errors are the product of over-eagerness and desperation combined with not fully knowing the rules.

In mahjong, when someone discards a tile, there are situations where you can steal the tile and use it as your own, but in doing so confine yourself to fewer options and leave yourself more vulnerable to the attacks of others. One of the most prolific manifestations of this desperation is the over-reliance on stealing others’ tiles in order to move towards victory. Japanese mahjong values defense, and so every time you go on the offense you leave yourself more and more open.  The newbie tendency is to just keep stealing tiles whenever you have the chance. Eventually, your options become so limited that you’re left near-impotent with possibly not even the strongest of luck being able to save you.

Naturally, Sub decided to exploit this and gain a commanding lead over an entire game. I came in second, unable to get a win in, but also able to avoid the traps Sub had set for the other players. In a later game, I did pretty much the same thing he did. It’s a good reminder of where we were and where we can go.

We also realized that the game is not quite as difficult to learn as we originally thought it to be. Yes, when you factor in all of the various small rules and exceptions and knick-knacks, the game can become ridiculously complex, especially because mahjong resembles so few other games. However, the very basics are fairly easy to learn and one or two games and a bit of observation is all it takes to get going.

Of course, there won’t be time for that at the panel as it is not a workshop, but our goal is more to convey a sense of mahjong and the excitement therein in order to bolster your enjoyment of mahjong anime and manga. In that sense, I truly believe we will succeed, and that every game of mahjong we play, not only with those less experienced but also those far superior to us, will be useful lessons towards this goal.

The Fujoshi Files 16: Shirai Sae

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Name: Shirai, Sae (白井紗江)
Alias: Shiro-chan
Relationship Status: Single
Origin: Kodomo no Jikan

Information:
Shirai Sae is a teacher at Futatsubashi Elementary School, where she is known for her strict, authoritarian teaching style stemming from a severe dislike of children. Her cynicism is often at odds with male teacher Aoki Daisuke.

Optimistic in her youth, Shirai is left embittered by years of criticism from her mother and her peers, both as a child and as an adult. Though seemingly a lost cause, her time spent with female student Kagami Kuro slowly causes her to open up a little more as the two learn from each other.

Owing to her lack of social intraction, Shirai is still a virgin, having never dated anyone despite being in her late 20s. Having somewhat of a complex about the whole matter, Shirai tries her best to not reveal it, though at this point it is more of an open secret.

Fujoshi Level:
Shirai Sae is not a fan of anime or manga, but perhaps due to her lack of experience with men her mind does wander into the territory of fujoshi. Despite not getting along with Aoki, she has allowed herself to picture him with another man, though was quick to force the fantasy out of her imagination.

Ogiue Maniax Panels at Otakon 2010

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Two of the panels I applied for have been accepted for Otakon 2010. This is pretty exciting for me, as this will be my first-ever time at Otakon as a panelist! It’ll also probably be my last hurrah in the US before I go. If you’re gonna be in Baltimore for the con, I suggest you stop by. The schedule isn’t set yet, but I do have convenient panel descritions!

Note: Panel descriptions are subject to change, as I don’t quite remember which versions we ended up submitting.

Portrait of a Fujoshi: The Psychology of Ogiue Chika with Viga

“Throughout the series “Genshiken,” the character of Ogiue Chika goes on a journey of development, tackling topics such as self-image, childhood trauma, and the many perils of being an otaku-in-denial. Come if you want to really delve into the mind of Genshiken’s most psychologically complex character with a panel brought to you by the experts on angry fujoshi characters, Ogiue Maniax and Viga the Otagal!”

Riichi: Japanese Mahjong, Anime, and You with Sub

“If you’ve watched such popular anime as Akagi and Saki, you’ve been witness to the ancient game of mahjong– and you had no clue what the players were doing. Maybe you’ve even tried the game and found the complicated rules too intimidating. We did too! But we managed, and today we’re here to show you that it can be done. Let us enlighten you on the basics of Japanese style (riichi) mahjong, its appearances in anime and the entire genre of manga devoted to it, and how to play this fascinating game!”

Well that’s all there is for now. I’ll update with a new post when we have schedule information, as well as if the third panel is accepted.

See you in Baltimore!

Different Aims, Different Misses: “Traveler,” Manga, and OEL Manga

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Back when I was buying issues of Monthly Afternoon to get my Genshiken fix, the magazines would occasionally come with packaged mini-manga. Each small book has one or two self-contained stories and it seemed like a pretty good extra. It wasn’t until kransom’s post about the Afternoon Four Seasons Award that I realized that these manga were exactly that: winning entries from the competitions.

Though anyone is allowed to enter, amateurs can still manage to win, as was the case with Winter 2005 when then-rookie manga artist Imai Tetsuya won the Winter 2005 Grand Prize for his entry, entitled Traveler.

Portable Four Seasons Winter 2005. Traveler is the one on top.

Looking at Traveler, it most definitely deserved to win. The basic premise is that a boy wakes up one day to find that he’s four months in the future and that apparently in those four months he’s turned into a complete jerk who left his band and broke up with his girlfriend. The story is less about returning back to the proper time and more about dealing with responsibility even when it shouldn’t have anything to do with you. It’s pretty intriguing, and everyone loves to say, “Fuzakenna!”

Imai makes mistakes. Some of the characters and plot development seemed tacked on and unnecessary. But what I find really interesting about this is that the faults of Traveler feel different from the mistakes that tend to happen in OEL manga.

When we look at criticism of OEL manga and the whole movement behind it, one of the factors is how much it just doesn’t “look” like manga. Artists try their best to live up to the series they love, but something typically feels off. In the past I’ve talked about some of the reasons why I think this happens, and Narutaki over at the Reverse Thieves pointed out the abuse of screentone in a lot of OEL titles. But I think there’s a more inherent cultural difference, one that’s not really a matter of talent or experience.

The art in Traveler hits bouts of inconsistency, particularly with the characters, as they sometimes suddenly look like they have no bones underneath their skin and muscles. I think you can see this in the image from earlier. Faces go out of proportion, too. A lot of western artists probably even have a better grasp of anatomy and motion than Imai, but the way in which the artwork turns out inconsistent is different from the way it happens in most OEL titles.

The story’s faults are also different from the issues that occur in OEL manga. In Traveler, some characters and plot threads sometimes seem unnecessary or perhaps given too much time, a problem when it’s just a 32-page one-shot, which are problems which occur in OEL titles too, but the plot issues with Traveler seem very much like the kind of mistakes that would happen in manga. There’s a sense that Imai and other manga-aspiring artists in Japan, when compared to their counterparts across the ocean, are simply aiming for separate goals; whether they reach them or not is another matter entirely.

I think the lesson here might be that when you judge two things, comparing the very best of one to the very worst of another doesn’t really get you anywhere. It’s far more interesting and fruitful to look at the middle ground; avoid the absolute greats for a little bit so you can see what most people are doing. There, you’ll find a good snapshot of the state of manga, or whatever it is you’re looking at.

I also know that “across the ocean” leaves out countries and products like Korean manhwa. I’ll leave that for another day though.

The Light Pathos Club

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The second season of K-On! begins with the girls of the light music club heading to their clubroom. Already there, Yui plays a quiet tune on her guitar evoking  a feeling of renewal and change tinged with nostalgia. The subdued nature of this first scene then carries over into the rest of the episode and beyond. As K-On!! has progressed, there has been a distinct overarching focus on the the idea that high school is almost over for the founders of Houkago Tea Time and that things will never be the same.

While present to a certain extent in the manga, Kyoto Animation’s adaptation seems to be focused on showing the subtle magic of the senior year of high school, before the girls become adults and get that much closer to the real world. A semi-running gag in the manga about the ex-student council president turning out to be Mio Fan #1 now features that same character as a mature college student looking fondly on her high school memories. An entire episode is devoted to Sawako, the club supervisor and closet former metalhead guitarist, and her recapturing some of the passion of her youth. In general, the lighting in K-On!! is very soft, again hinting at a strong feeling towards the ephemeral. The message from Kyoto Animation is loud and clear.

I’m not sure how I feel about this, as I think it’s an attempt to add a bit of depth to K-On!, but I’m not sure how much K-On! needs or even wants it. I understand that high school is a big deal and all. My memories of high school are among my most cherished, and it’s because I had very close friends with whom I could be myself, which is also the case in K-On!! However, because it was only somewhat there in the source material, some of it works, some of it doesn’t, and the end result is that it kind of feels forced in.

What are your thoughts on the direction K-On!! has taken?

Heel is Showing

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Shounen, particularly Shounen battle manga, is probably the most well-known type of manga today. In it you have your Dragon Ball‘s, your Naruto‘s, your Kenichi‘s. You have good shounen fighting series, you have bad or mediocre shounen fighting series, and you have ones that start off as one but gradually turn into the other.  I won’t say which is which, and the above titles are not respective examples of each category.

The odd thing about the descent in quality in a lot of shounen series (or even titles which are already poor from the start) is that the same mistakes seem to happen over and over again. The most prominent mistake is that long stretch where the series just drags on and the series appears to have lost all direction. Why does this happen? That’s the thought I want to get at today.

There are certain essential characteristics for a modern shounen battle manga. You need a main character to whom the young boy readers can relate but whom they can also idolize. You need a rival or at least a series of antagonists to continually provide challenges to the hero and to act as measuring sticks for the hero’s progress. And of course you need fighting and lots of it, or at least the story’s concept of “fighting,” even if it’s throwing chickens off of rooftops to see which one flies the furthest. And then you need that extra X-factor, the thing which makes a series different (but not too different). With few exceptions, I think that shounen fighting series have to capture a feeling of action, excitement, and change, and it starts from essentials such as these.

However, I think these same ingredients for success are also what potentially drag titles down to the depths, acting as the hand which dipped Achilles into the River Styx, simultaneously giving a series its strengths but also establishing its weaknesses. As a series continues, it becomes more difficult to maintain those qualities in the right proportions and to also incorporate all of the elements which exist between those essentials. After a while, because the people behind these manga and anime are well aware that their readers look to them for certain specific things, the series start to run on auto-pilot, and that is where the seams start to really show.

For example, I think this is why the most painful filler tends to be the fight which lasts for seemingly an eternity. The manga’s staff know that they need a hefty amount of combat in their series, but they don’t quite have the vision at that point to guide the battles, to have them work towards a definite direction which inspires the readers. As a result, they stall. Battles which should have lasted two volumes last ten. Here, a quick breather chapter or two might solve the problem, but that small break might be unacceptable for a series which relies so much on continuous battles which mark the characters’ progress.

You sometimes  get people who criticize shounen fighting manga for being shounen fighting manga, hating these series for the very same reason people love them. But to some extent they have a very valid opinion, as even those things that the people who follow shounen series list as positives can eventually lead to the negatives.

Break Through the 2nd Floor Window: Ogiue Maniax

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Ogiue Maniax managed to overcome its opposition in the third round of the Aniblog Tourney, in a match so close that a mere image macro could have swung the vote either way. I thank chaostangent for a fine match, and I really enjoyed seeing people talk about how they preferred one person’s style over the other. Voting for content, that’s what I want to see.

My fourth round match is against Tenka Seiha, a popular episodic-style blog which also has a doujin game translation arm attached to it. Or maybe the blog is attached to the translation. One likely event is that the match will come down to the pseudo-dichotomy of “episodic” vs “editorial.” I hope that doesn’t happen, and again, that you read at least some of the content before you vote. I already have primers for the Ogiue Maniax style here and here. I’ve also included a couple of my favorite posts below.

The Aniblog Tourney has seen many of the criticisms that other popularity-based tournaments have had. First, similar to Saimoe, vote results are considered “irrelevant” by some because the number of people voting is far less than the number of blog readers out there, let alone anime fans. Second, like the GameFAQs Character Battle, accusations of snobbery run against cries of appealing to the lowest common denominator, resulting in overwhelming indictments of the personalities of both the writers and the readers.

The first issue revolves around a simple question: What would it take to get the people who read anime blogs to vote in a tournament about anime blogs?

If it were a contest of favorite anime characters or series, then I think people would be more willing to participate. The act of discussing anime is one step removed from actually experiencing it, and to be reading the thoughts of someone who is watching anime creates even further distance. And the more you go along this path, the less likely people are going to care. In order for more blog readers to vote, the competition has to be somehow relevant to them; they have to want to be involved.

That leads to the second issue, that of elitism vs mob mentality. Here, there seems to be trouble relating to the other side, perhaps even a strong desire to not want to relate to the other side. I want to bridge that gap, and I will do so with an extended metaphor.

Imagine you’re at a restaurant eating a cheeseburger. Every bite makes you want to take another. What are your thoughts at this time? Perhaps you’re thinking that it’s simply “delicious.” How delicious? You might compare it to cheeseburgers you’ve had in the past that stick out in your memory. You might begin to wonder why you find this burger delicious, or why the people who hate cheeseburgers do so. Or maybe you’re wondering if you’d eat it over an expensive filet mignon. Why do we eat the things we do? How has the act of enjoying food affected commercialism and vice versa? What of the cattle that went into the beef? Or maybe you’re not even “thinking” at all, and you’re just savoring the flavor, the wanderings of your brain temporarily shut down so that you can fully engage the beef and the cheese which lies melted on top.

Are there any thoughts from your burger experience that you want to share with others? If so, which thoughts? What is your purpose behind making people aware of cheeseburger and cheeseburger-related topics? Do you want to recommend the place to others? If you’re going to compare it, do you compare it with other items on the menu or with other cheeseburgers? Or do you want to talk about the concept of the cheeseburger and how ubiquitous an icon it’s become?

Clearly there are some topics in my cheeseburger metaphor that when translated into anime blogging clearly lean towards the side of the “episodic” blogging, while there are others that would clearly be considered “editorial.” But there’s also this gigantic middle area where the division becomes increasingly tenuous. Some can easily exist in both types of blogs, and it all just comes down to what it is about anime that interests you, what you want to say about it, and what kind of discussion you expect from it, if any at all.

Anime can be emotional. It can be intellectual. It can be sophisticated and it can be visceral. It can be all of those things and none of them, and there’s no clear definition of which is which or how things “should” be enjoyed. Irrespective of any notions of quality in either the anime being watched or the blogs being written, people have real reasons for liking the things they do, even if it’s as simple as “killing time,” that’s still a valid reason. Similarly, someone who has gotten to the point of analyzing the cultural effects of anime and not the anime itself may risk being too far-removed from the anime itself, but it’s still a decided direction. You may not like either reason, but that doesn’t mean that the first person is a mindless sack of waste, nor is the second necessarily incapable of talking “normally.” And just as you can respect someone else’s approach to anime, someone can respect yours, even if you disagree entirely.

It’s easier to understand each other when we’re not being so aggressively defensive.

THE WORLD! IS! MAHJONG!

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Mahjong manga has its fair share of devoted followers, especially in Japan itself, but I feel that the genre has a direction it has yet to explore that could, if done well, be one of the best mahjong titles ever.

The mahjong portrayed in manga is almost invariably Japanese-style mahjong, but of course mahjong is a game of Chinese origins, and has found homes in other parts of Asia and even in the United States. There are some rules we kind of take for granted with  Japanese-style mahjong. For example, declaring riichi, or the act of declaring to your opponents that you’re a hair’s breadth away from winning in order to gain the opportunity to earn additional bonus points, and furiten, or the rule that trying to win off of a tile you’ve already discarded previously is significantly more difficult, are exclusive to Japanese mahjong.

Now, wouldn’t it be great to see a series about a guy (or possibly a girl) who has to master multiple forms of mahjong?

Korean-style mahjong forbids stealing tiles to complete straights unless it is to win a round.

In Hong Kong’s version of mahjong, you can actually win with a 0-point hand, ending the round but achieving nothing in return.

Taiwanese mahjong has 16-tile hands, as opposed to the standard 13-tile hand found in most other forms of mahjong.

American mahjong actually has “jokers” and the ability to exchange tiles at the start of the match.

And Japanese tiles are smaller than the tiles used in other parts of the world, so even the methods of cheating change somewhat as you go from one style to the next.

Some of the rule differences seem small, but they can have a profound impact on how the game is played, and this is exactly the sort of thing that could be exaggerated to great effect in manga format. The hero would have to adapt to every style and figure out the feel and the flow of each type of mahjong. I see it as being similar to Swan, where a young ballerina travels the world to learn different philosophies on ballet.

And if they start running out, then I don’t see why they couldn’t just start making new ones up. There’s Washizu mahjong, why can’t there be Canadian mahjong?

What’s In: Fujoshi, What’s Out: Fujoshi

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So in adapting the manga series Mousou Shoujo Otakukei for English-speaking audiences, the title was changed to Fujoshi Rumi, with Rumi being the main character and fujoshi being what she is.

But now with Fujoshi Kanojo, the title has been changed to My Girlfriend is a Geek.

Two different US distributors are behind each title, but I find it interesting that one would go as far as to insert this very otaku word, fujoshi, into the title when not even the Japanese version used it, while the series that prominently displays the term in its name is presented as being more of a general “geek” type of significant other.

Ogiue Maniax is Going on a Journey

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A never-ending journey. A journey to the stars.

Well, almost.

Big news in the land of Ogiue Maniax. As anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time knows, I love to write about anime and manga to analyze and explore various facets of them, from genres to the industry to the fans to the art. It is a passion that has been with me for a long time, but which only really began to manifest itself once I started writing Ogiue Maniax back in November of 2007. Now I’m entering another stage.

I have been accepted to a PhD program in Europe to study manga for four years. Being a PhD program, it is a paid position.

One of the things I look forward to is opening my mind to another part of the world. As much as I try to view situations from as many angles as I can, I am constantly aware of how America-centric my thoughts and writings can be, and if I can just challenge that part of my psyche a little bit over the next few years then I will come out of the situation a little better. And once I’m back, who knows? Maybe I’ll go on a road trip.

I don’t have to leave for a while, but given the rigor of a doctoral program, I may not have the time to update as much as I have in the past once I get there. I have no intentions of abandoning the blog though; it means too much to me.

I want to thank everyone who’s read Ogiue Maniax over these past few years. Your interest, support, and feedback helped me to shape my online voice, and to get me in a position to be confident enough in my own writing and passion to even apply for a PhD program, let alone get accepted by one in another continent.

These next four years are dedicated to you.