Category Archives: thought exercise

For a Truly Unified Front, You Need to Create a Unified Front

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Let’s talk about the biggest news this past week: manga companies both in the Japan and the US have formed a coalition (literally the word they use) to combat rampant piracy of manga. Their targets are not scanlators, but specifically those for-profit megasites which house thousands of titles for easy reading online, such as Onemanga.

The issue of scanlation sites profiting off of the manga they house is not very new to the scanlation scene, with Narutofan.com and its owner Tazmo getting accused of duping people into paying for a subscription service for something which was available for free elsewhere, albeit still illegally. This newer, ad-driven model exemplified by Onemanga however is something else entirely, and it preys upon its readers by feeding in to their desire for “more” in as convenient a way as possible.

I’ll admit it: I’ve used sites like Onemanga and Mangafox before. They’re absurdly convenient, and I don’t even have to use up space on my hard drive to take a look at a series. So while I wouldn’t mind seeing these sites go, I think there are lessons to learn from their successes.

1) There has to be a way to profit off of online manga.

The issue here is that these sites are “for-profit.” It’s clear that they’re able to generate revenue, so there must be something that companies can take away from them, even if it’s just the method of displaying advertisements.

2) Companies should work together to create a single portal for legal online manga

One of the strengths attributed to the giant manga aggregators is that they have practically everything, or at least significantly more than any individual manga company’s website. They have scanlations, they have just straight-up ripped copies from official English releases, and they have a ton of each.

To compete with this model, I think all the manga companies, like Viz, Yen Press, Del Rey, the Japanese companies backing them, and even this new Open Manga thing, need to pool together their resources and create their own, legitimate manga aggregator. Even if it’s just a link to their respective sites, I think it’d be a very good idea to just have a single place curious readers can go to in order to see what’s out there.

3) Increase awareness, make people know that resources exist

The for-profit aggregators reach well beyond the  “manga fandom.” The first time I heard of Onemanga, it wasn’t from people who were knee deep in anime and manga, but from people who kind of read it on the side. Conversely, when scans of Vertical Inc.’s release of Black Jack appeared, some fans stated that they wished the series was licensed, despite the fact that copyright pages were scanned, and that the covers prominently display Vertical logos and the like.

A lot of fans aren’t even aware of what’s out there, or even that a lot of manga series are online through their licensed distributors. So going along with the idea of a single and legitimate manga aggregator, the existence of such a site needs to get pushed and pushed hard, to the point that word of mouth happens not just in anime communities but on facebook or wherever.

I don’t even think the word  “legal” should necessarily be used either. That doesn’t really factor into anyone’s enjoyment of media, anime or otherwise.

4) Get a better manga-viewing platform

One of the big advantages of a site like Onemanga is that it encourages both rapid and rabid consumption of manga. Their simple linked jpeg viewer makes it easy to just click page after page; you can even use the arrows on your keyboard to move through a manga.

Official manga viewers however, such as Viz’s flash-based viewer on sites like Sigikki have a lot of little things which require more effort to navigate, in contrast with the near-brainlessness of Onemanga. Yes, it can be chalked up to the laziness of fans, but it shouldn’t be about admonishing the readership. Once again, lessons can be learned.

Taking the Viz manga reader again as an example, there are a number of small difficulties which add up and make the experience less enjoyable. I have a small resolution on my monitor and I know that, while this is getting less and less common, it is a problem for a good number of people. When the pages are zoomed out, the text is impossible to read. When it’s zoomed in, I have to use my mouse to pull the pages around, and can’t even use the scroll wheel on my mouse to navigate.

Then there’s the matter of moving to the next page. In zoomed-out mode you can go to the sides of the page and an arrow conveniently appears, but when zoomed in this no longer becomes an option, and you need to use the buttons at the bottom to move on. Not only that, but chapters don’t link to each other. You have to go back to the previous page, find the link to the next chapter, and then wait for that to open up in a new window. Compare this with being able to use the arrow keys to navigate, and being able to click the last page of chapter 1 to move onto the first page of chapter 2.

Conclusion

I understand that it would be difficult for companies to negotiate with each other to create unified website, but I think it’s better than going things alone. A “coalition” is one thing, but I want to really see manga companies working together.

Behold, the Greener Grass Saga!

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While I love anime and manga, I also like cartoons and comics the world over. I grew up with superhero comics, so even though I don’t keep up with them terribly much these days, I still like to know what’s going in them. In reading American comics blogs, it makes me aware that certain topics which garner extensive discussion and debate are hardly blips on the radar for anime and manga discussion. One topic in particular is character interpretation.

Spandex-and-cape comics, particularly the big mainstream ones from Marvel and DC, have a long history of changing writers, and so too with them comes different ideas of how the same characters should act. In time, you have notions of things like “definitive runs,” or the story or series of stories where the portrayal of a particular character ends up carrying through well after that writer has left. Examples include Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, where a B-level character whose power was basically vegetation-based was revealed to have been an “Earth Elemental” all along, or Frank Miller’s Daredevil, which gave the blind superhero’s stories more gritty realism as he fought the mobster dregs of New York City. As time goes on, a character’s chances of getting more definitive portrayals increases. With a longstanding character like the Joker, the wild variation from comic slapstick villain to utterly mad mass murder can seem almost schizophrenic. Appropriate in a way for someone like the Joker, but perhaps less so for others.

Fans can discuss which is the best, most true face for the character. Others can argue that all of the portrayals are authentic, and that the character is an iconic concept to be interpreted by the creators. It’s just the kind of talk that doesn’t have very much opportunity to occur in manga given the difference in history between it and superhero comics. The closest thing anime and manga have to discussions of continuity and portrayal is probably Mobile Suit Gundam. Granted, it’s pretty close, especially with something like Turn A Gundam, a series which takes the idea of all portrayals of Gundam being “true” Gundams and turns it into a cohesive story. But sometimes I look over and think, “I wonder what manga discussion would be like with more of that.”

Then I look at all the downsides of continuity and retcons and the arguments that come with it, and I’m pretty okay with where anime and manga are. It’s a fair trade-off, I think, and I’d rather have the comics of the world be more different than the same.

Part 1: PG-13, Part 2: NC-17?

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Warning! Spoilers for Houkago Play Volume 1 . Also slightly NSFW.

The 4-koma manga series Houkago Play had its second volume released recently. Having enjoyed the first volume, I decided to place an order for Houkago Play 2 at Kinokuniya NYC. However, I received a call telling me that the book could not be ordered due to “content.”

Wait, what?

A call back had them explain that Kinokuniya has a policy about sexual content, which is perfectly understandable, but I didn’t even realize that Houkago Play fell into this category. The first volume is certainly sexually charged, as the story features a sadistic tsundere character frustrated at not getting any alone time with her guy friend, and there’s even a brief portrayal of sex at the end of the book, but there is zero nudity in the book, and the sex takes up only three pages out of an almost 200-page book. Next to some of the stuff that Kinokuniya sells already, such as josei manga, certain seinen titles, and even harem or shoujo romance stuff, this seems like small potatoes. So what gives?


This is literally as far as Houkago Play goes.

One possibility is that the second volume of Houkago Play may be significantly more graphic than the first, which is in itself odd. If that’s the case, where is the line of “content” that Volume 1 manages to keep clear of, but Volume 2 tramples over on its way to the other side? Or is it that the constant sexually charged nature of the comic itself is what takes it over the edge?

If anyone can tell if there’s a significant difference between Volumes 1 and 2 of Houkago Play, that would be very helpful.

What Does “Accessibility” Really Mean?

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It’s the final day in my matchup at the Aniblog Tourney, and compared to when the voting began, both featured matches have had a surprising turn of events, leading to extremely close vote counts. It’s been a lot more thrilling than anyone anticipated, and this unpredictability has me asking a simple question: What do fans want in a blog?

Writing Ogiue Maniax, I’ve gained a reputation for having an intelligent, yet accessible writing style that has given me a unique voice online. I am constantly working on improving all aspects of that voice, and I work towards having my posts be fairly easy to digest while also encouraging further thinking. But the Aniblog Tourney has made me well-aware that there’s always room for improvement and change, particularly in the area of accessibility.

Looking at anime blogs, the most popular ones tend to be “episodic blogs,” or ones that review shows episode by episode, laying down summaries and opinions on a (mostly) weekly basis. Most commonly, the latest shows are the ones that get episode blogged the most, though there’s nothing stopping people from doing the same with older shows. Not only do the more well-known episode blogs get more hits, but they also garner more comments, and as the tournament has showed us, have their fair share of staunch defenders and loyal supporters. In these, the most prominent of episodic blogs, their voices and content have reached a great number of people.

So I wonder, is the fact that I write in what’s often categorized as an “editorial” style holding me back from improving my accessibility?

I know that this sounds suspiciously similar to “Why isn’t my blog more popular?” but that isn’t really what I’m saying. Instead, it’s that anime fans appear to feel more comfortable with the episodic mode of anime blogging that has me thinking hard about the way I write. How can I reach more fans without scaring them off with meta-posts such as this? Would I be able to encourage more people to examine anime and their own fandom by adopting an episode blogging format?

Don’t get me wrong though, I like the way I write, and the basic format of Ogiue Maniax isn’t going to change any time soon. I’m not even sure if I would be able to even pull off Ogiue Maniax-style episode blogging all that well. It’s just something I wanted to contemplate. Though, if any of you are up for the challenge, be my guest. Out of what’s currently there, I think Unmei Kaihen‘s style is roughly where I’d be aiming for, as I always feel like I learn something from reading his Giant Killing posts.

Cosplay Parallelism in Genshiken and the world of 2.5D

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I like Genshiken, and I like when other people talk about Genshiken, especially when they’re able to see just how strong and fleshed out the characters are. Best of all, it gets me to think more about the title, and reminds me that as much as I have looked at the series, there’s always more to consider. So when I read Pontifus’s look at the second half of Genshiken, it not only reminded me of a post from years back, but it also made me aware that the series presents many more comparisons between 2-D and 3-D than I originally thought.

In his post, Pontifus wonders about why Madarame never felt anything for Ogiue, first pointing out that:

“Ogiue is precisely the kind of manga character he likes (literally!). When she’s finally talked into cosplay, she even dresses as Madarame’s favorite Kujibiki Unbalance character, who, in terms of broad traits, isn’t all that unlike her.”

He then goes on to describe how based on his own personal experience, the things that get you going in a fictional character don’t exactly apply to actual women, and that this seems to be the case with Madarame as well. Madarame does show a moment of piqued interest towards Ogiue’s brief debut as Kamishakujii Renge, but it seems to be more about the character than the person behind it.

However, Madarame isn’t the only one in the story whose attraction to a real woman runs opposite to his manga character fetishes; Sasahara also falls into this category. While Sasahara’s taste in pornography isn’t dwelled on as much in the latter half of the series, we are told fairly early on that his favorite female character is Ritsuko Kubel Kettengrad, the chairman in Kujibiki Unbalance, whom Kasukabe famously cosplays to save the club from doom.

So we have Kasukabe, whom Madarame likes, as the character that turns Sasahara on, with Ogiue, whom Sasahara likes, in the guise of a character that turns Madarame on. Again, given the guys’ doujinshi-buying habits and overall anime character fetishism, you might think that their taste in women has been flopped, but the series makes it clear that they have good reason for liking the girls they do, and it all has to do with how they are as people.

In addition to reminding the reader of the distinction between 2-D and 3-D, the parallels between Sasahara and Madarame (or perhaps Ogiue and Kasukabe?) affirm the overall theme of growth and maturity in Genshiken. Otaku can enter the real world and still be otaku, it just might take some help to adjust. But putting aside notions of “2-D complexes” and such aside, people’s tastes in women (and men!) change over time. You can have in your mind your concept of your “ideal partner,” or a mental checklist of all the things you like in an anime character, but you never know if something is totally going to surprise you. It’s not necessarily that they’re fickle, but more that there could always be more qualities that you love, either in a person or a character, which even you don’t realize.

K-On! Manga Too Extreme for TV

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K-On!! episode 8 kind of disappointed me.

Before anyone knew that there would be  second season, I was reading K-On! manga. In one chapter, Yui is having trouble deciding her possible career path, and everyone else gives some idea of where they’re headed after high school. This includes Mugi, whose response clearly contains an underlying meaning.

If it wasn’t obvious before (and it was pretty obvious), Kotobuki Tsumugi plays for the other team. Not only that, but the sharper girls picked up on it long ago. She’s a lesbian, and others know she’s a lesbian. I laughed pretty hard when I first saw this, and it’s still one of my favorite moments from the manga.

So of course I was looking forward to this very scene in full color and animation once K-On!! was announced. And right when I realized episode 8 would be the episode, I sat there, waiting for the gag to hit.  I waited, and waited, and then… they removed it entirely?!

The only reference to it is that Mugi mentions going to an all-women university, but then it completely bypasses the setup and goes into some thing about the difficulty of the school she’s applying to.

Adapting a 4-koma manga into a full half-hour TV show requires adding extra material, but what gives? Did the K-On! manga cross some line that was unacceptable for Kyoto Animation? Are they worried that it damages Mugi’s image in some way? They animated a scene hinting at Mugi’s preferences in season 1, but in a situation where it’s made almost explicit, they shrink back in fear? Could it be that they think having her so clearly in the other camp might alienate some of her more devoted fans? Or perhaps their vision of Mugi doesn’t line up with the original author’s. It’s almost as is Kyoto Animation saw this and went, “Whoa! Too far! Are you trying to break the illusion?”

Maybe it’s the fact that it pretty much reveals Mugi as a lesbian lesbian, who likes girls, as opposed to just the one girl as you so often see in yuri material (especially yuri material written for guys). There, like in yaoi, the love seems to go “beyond” gender, but with Mugi that’s just how she is. So then I have to wonder if the problem is that it’s just too much to just outright state her sexual orientation in that manner.

Hopefully I’m wrong and they’re just saving the gag for another time. In that case I apologize for ruining the joke for people.

Oh and if you’re wondering, no, Mugi is not my favorite member of the band. I’m on Team Ritsu. But actually my favorite character is probably Nodoka.

Post from the Past: “Ogiue’s Perspective or Why Sasahara is a Giver”

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Note: Fellow anime blogger Pontifus recently posted his thoughts on re-reading Genshiken, wherein he discusses in part Ogiue’s developing feelings for Sasahara. This reminded me of an old post I wrote about the subject, pre-Ogiue Maniax, and I thought that it’d be good to share with everyone.

Keep in mind that this post is originally from 2005, two years before the start of this blog, and so not only had the Genshiken manga not quite finished yet, but my writing is a little more unrefined than even back when I first started Ogiue Maniax. I was considering refining it but I think I’ll let it run as is. I still think it makes a good point of just how Ogiue would start to fall for our main man of the Modern Culture Society.

——

In Ogiue’s fantasy yaoi world, Sasahara is viewed as an aggressor. This seems to run contrary to what we’ve seen of Sasahara’s character. Ohno seems to agree; she finds the idea of Sasahara being a “giver” to be unusual. And why shouldn’t she? She has known Sasahara for years now, and he has generally been a very passive individual and easily seen as spineless.

However, Ogiue has not known Sasahara since his freshman year and initial awkwardness. Ogiue initially meets Sasahara when he is Genshiken’s chairman. And while Sasahara is still fairly passive in general, there are moments where Sasahara is “uncharacteristically” aggressive.

First, is the scene where Haraguchi comes back in volume 5 to give Genshiken “advice” on their doujinshi. Sasahara tries to get along with Haraguchi as much as he can, politely saying that while Haraguchi’s advice is appreciated it is not needed. Eventually, as Haraguchi continues to press on in his unique annoying way, Sasahara decides to turn it around and asks Haraguchi outright to teach him everything. Ogiue reacts to this. So does everyone else. They’re all taken aback by Sasahara’s sudden decisiveness and the way he has shut down Haraguchi. At this point Haraguchi turns to Madarame asking if it’s okay, but Madarame points out that Sasahara is the current chairman. I believe this is moment is what gets the ball rolling.

Next, is the scene where Sasahara and Kugayama are arguing over the status of Genshiken’s doujinshi they are making for Comifes. Ogiue is seeing Sasahara yelling loudly and demanding that Kugayama actually stay on schedule, and this further reinforces her perception of Sasahara. The real killer, however, is the moment when Ogiue awkwardly suggests that she could do more work to make up for it. To make a stand against Kugayama, Sasahara says to Ogiue that she doesn’t have to do anything. In fact, they can just use a bunch of sketches from Kugayama’s sketchbooks.

Ogiue becomes silent. Then she starts crying.

This has more to do with the fact that she had put her heart on the line, and Sasahara’s words were probably interpreted by her as, “Sorry, but you’re not good enough.” The main thing is that Ogiue has now directly felt the aggressive side of Sasahara, and it has her in tears. It has made her feel vulnerable in a way up to that point we have not seen of her.

From these two examples, it’s easy to figure out why Ogiue thought of Sasahara as the giver in Sasa-Mada when she sees Sasahara pulling Madarame’s tie. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows that lying underneath Sasahara’s normally gentle nature is someone who can be very active and commanding. And while she doesn’t even initially think this outright (she believes her own drawing of an aggressive Sasahara to be “impossible”), from her personal history with Sasahara, she had no reason to discard the idea.

——
Thinking about how much more happened after I wrote that originally, I think my initial thoughts hold up pretty well. The Sasa x Ogi romance arc reached its climax, with the two of them actually becoming a couple.

Ogiue’s view of Sasahara as “pitcher” comes from the fact that he has a quiet, gentle confidence about him.  It might not be a strong, hyper- masculine or ever-present confidence but it’s still there. It really shows by the end, and I think this contributes significantly to not only the feelings Ogiue develops for Sasahara but also Sasahara’s eventual success in winning her affections. For Ogiue, who had been searching for a way to reconcile her passion for manga and yaoi with her own self-doubt and sense of shame, Sasahara becomes what she needs, providing just the right amount of emotional support.

Man, Genshiken is awesome. Just thought I’d remind you of that.

Tubedubber: Reliving High School By Sitting in Front of a Computer

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In high school I used to hang out in the computer lab after class, where my friends and fellow anime fans would use the school’s T1 connection to download videos of anime openings. After a while we started mixing and matching opening animations. with opening themes in a relatively crude fashion by having two video windows open and playing the video from one with the audio from the other. It was really fun and while I understand that the human mind will just associate any two things together like that, I still enjoy doing it.

For a while I was using Youtube Doubler to approximate the effect, but now I find out there’s something called “Tubedubber” which does exactly what I was hoping for, allowing you to stream the video from one Youtube clip with the sound from another, and it even has enough settings so that you can time it properly.

I particularly enjoyed combining Gundam X with Gaogaigar back in high school. The only flaw is that the audio ends before the video, so your only choice is to pause the video as the song ends. Currently, I’ve gone with something decidedly more patriotic.

Try it out! It’s also a fairly low-level way to make some super basic AMVs.

Let Me Tell You About “Anime” Okay

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In the mid 90s when I was still a fledgling anime fan, I thought about how I would summarize anime to other people. In the end, I came up with something along the lines of “Anime looks really awesome but the story tends to be the weak point. They’re confusing and make no sense.”

When you think about it, you could almost argue that anime is the opposite of what the pre-teen me said. Anime tends to use a large amount of animation shortcuts to save money on already sparse budgets, but make up for it through storytelling and visuals which support that storytelling. It all makes sense though when you consider that my main exposure to anime at the time came in the form of Chinatown bootleg VHS tapes, whatever my brother could bring home, and Blockbuster rentals, the era of MD Geist and friends. If you told me that I would receive a million dollars if I could recall to you the plot of Armitage III, I would be walking away none the richer.


It’s about uh… a girl and stuff…

But there I was, summarizing the entirety of anime as if I knew so much when in fact I had such limited experience with the subject. It’s so easy to think that what you see is everything there is to know, to believe that your little island encompasses the entire world.

Any 5-Year-Old Can Tell You Why Summer Wars is Great

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As of late, it seems like podcast after podcast is discussing Summer Wars. Speakeasy podcasters Hisui and Narutaki use the movie as an impetus to talk about how getting taken out of a movie causes you to more readily notice its faults. Andrew on the Veef Show talks about how the hype for Summer Wars is met by backlash, while also stating that he finds the movie to be good but not great. Anime World Order’s Daryl and Gerald also disagree on the merits of the movie. Overall, the two big questions seem to be 1) Why do the people who love Summer Wars love it and 2) Why do the people who hate it do so?

Now I am on the side of thinking the movie was fantastic, so the best I can tell you about why critics deride it is hearsay and conjecture, but I can tell you about why I think Summer Wars is a very strong movie on par with Hosoda’s previous work, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

Summer Wars‘ greatest strength comes from its overarching theme, centering around the idea of closing gaps, be they generational, technological, or even familial. A super advanced online world is contrasted with old-fashioned ways, the celebration of family is contrasted with the desire to move beyond the home, and young is contrasted with old. But in every case, Summer Wars doesn’t say that one is better than the other, instead giving a message that each is equally useful and that everyone can work together for the common good. It’s a very optimistic view of where we’re going as a society and as a planet, and I think that optimism is what keeps people cheering and praising the movie.

A lot of reviewers seem to neglect mentioning these themes, and I find that to be quite odd. It’s pretty much the heart of Summer Wars and for all of the praise and the criticism, how is it not mentioned more often? And it’s not like the themes are particularly subtle to the point of invisibility either. When I went to the New York Children’s International Film Festival showing of Summer Wars, there was a Q&A session with director Hosoda. In every case, it was the kids who nailed the most important theme of the movie, as well as a lot of the lesser themes. Now, these kids had to be fairly smart, being able to keep up with the subtitles on-screen, but they were still about eight years old on average. Surely the great minds of the anime internet can’t be outdone by a bunch of elementary school kids, right?

Re-reading my glowing review of the film, I am forced to realize that I too forgot to mention the overarching theme of Summer Wars and so am just as guilty of obfuscating the discussion as anyone else. Looking at my own words, I get the feeling that I was so caught up in trying to describe the enormous amounts of effort clearly put into the film and its potential for wide appeal through juggling many different elements that I simply forgot to actually say why I think the film is great. Perhaps everyone else experienced the same problem, like a collective mind fart from thinking too much about anime without actually thinking about it.

And so in the end, we were bested by third graders.