Category Archives: thought exercise

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.

A Visual Comparison of Marvel-Style Capcom and Tatsunoko-Style Capcom

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When the preliminary screenshots for Marvel vs Capcom 3 were revealed, the way the Capcom characters were portrayed really caught my eye.

Now it wasn’t too long ago that the similarly themed Tatsunoko vs Capcom saw the light of day. Both it and MvC3 portray Capcom characters using 3-D models, but you might see a notable difference between the two games.

Ryu here, despite being in two very similar games, turns out looking quite different. Against the anime characters of Tatsunoko he too looks closer to an anime character, but against the American-friendly grittiness of Wolverine and other Marvel characters, he too becomes almost equally gritty. His design is being adapted differently in order to better match with the types of opponents he’s facing.

In any crossover but especially in video games, visual consistency is important. If the characters do not look like they belong together, then it becomes extremely jarring. The Capcom vs SNK series suffered from this, as the old Alpha sprites of the Capcom characters clashed with the newly designed sprites for the SNK characters. As an opposite example however, Sakurai Masahiro purposely added realistic touches to all of the characters the later Super Smash Bros. games in order to minimize the visual discrepancies between them, so that someone like the relatively realistic Samus Aran matches up with the more cartoonish Mario. If you look at Mario actually, he has much more detailed textures on his overalls than in any other game he’s in.

One last thing that I find interesting is that the old VS games (most notably Marvel vs Capcom 2) actually leaned in the opposite direction of MvC3 by having the Marvel characters designed to better match the anime-style Street Fighter characters used at that time. Either way though, the message seems to remain the same: MUGEN is really ugly.

Fanseverance

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The topic of fanservice can be a touchy one among anime fans. Providing some blatant eye candy is nothing new for anime, as Space Battleship Yamato regularly featured skirt flips and a brief glimpse of pure white cloth, but it seems to be especially controversial these days as the nature of fanservice itself changes and anime is increasingly seen as catering to a fanbase which actively sexualizes characters.

But there are many different approaches to fanservice, and I wonder, what do anime fans consider to be the “best” (or in a sense “worst”) form of fanservice?

Let’s say there’s a fairly serious show, and the show contains fanservice. Which of the following do you consider the lesser of two evils/the better of two worlds?

1) Fanservice that occurs during a dramatic and emotional scene that is possibly the climax of a show.

2) A fanservice moment or possibly even episode which occurs between important and emotional plot points.

Essentially, when is fanservice more welcome or considered more egregious, when it exists within a “dramatic” moment or when it happens as a “break” of sorts?

I can see arguments for either side. Someone who says example 1 is worse would probably argue that fanservice can trivialize or harm what could have been a truly great moment. However, it reminds me of Tezuka’s work, where he would stick comedic moments right in the middle of serious ones, only here we’re replacing comedy with sex appeal (and also possibly comedy).

Example 2 meanwhile can be seen as the greater menace because it can detract from characterization. But then it can be seen as a form of relief, a break in between emotionally involving moments in a series.

So, which is the path you’d choose?

Well My Parents Don’t Drive Awesome Flying Cars

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For the most part, video games have advanced in a positive direction in terms of artistic progression. Though I don’t agree entirely on how our newfangled advanced realistic graphics are being used or certain trends in storytelling or interaction, I can say that we’re doing okay. At the same time though, I’ve come to realize that when video games look this good and have fully elaborated stories and such, it often leaves less room for creative, off-the-wall adaptations in fiction.

At this point with games looking and feeling closer to the realm of film and animation and other storytelling mediums with characters having concrete personalities, there  are fewer opportunities to make great leaps in interpretation. Yes, I understand that products like the Super Mario Bros. movie are exactly the kinds of disaster that comes from being too “loose” an interpretations, but I believe there is a definite charm.

This applies not just to storytelling but also visuals as well. Although the Tekken OVA of the 90s was awful, could you imagine a Tekken anime today, given the fact that it would be 2-D interpretations of such detailed 3-D characters? Good looking or not, you could see the move from blocky polygons anime designs to make some sort of sense.

Basically, I’d like to still be in a world where a racing game with a normal setting could be interpreted as a futuristic setting with talking computers inside my motor vehicles.

Is that too much to ask, I wonder?

The Society for the Study of Ogiue Dialogue 2: “Come Here, My Dear”

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Though my first experience with Genshiken came as a result of watching the first series fansubbed, my first impression of Ogiue comes from the Japanese version of the manga. And in the original Japanese language version, Ogiue speaks in a way that I can only describe as “polite bluntness.” In a normal situation where she is not flustered to the point of switching back to her native dialect, Ogiue uses a standard polite form of Japanese, but does so in a very terse manner, like she’s telling people to back off, or that she wants to say as little as possible and end the conversation quickly. The content of her words also speaks towards this, as exemplified in her legendary introduction, translated officially as “My name is Ogiue and I hate otaku.”

When you look at the original Japanese however, the structure of the sentence is different. To clarify what I mean, I’m providing not only the original image along with the original Japanese, but also the romanization of the Japanese, as well as a more literal translation.

「オタクが嫌いな荻上です。」

“Otaku ga kirai na Ogiue desu.”

“I am the otaku-hating Ogiue.”

You can sort of see how much is changed here. Now, keep in mind that the official translation, the “My name is Ogiue and I hate otaku,” is very much how I prefer to translate that very line. The overly literal translation doesn’t sound like good English, and the grammatical differences between English and Japanese, let alone the cultural ones, mean that you cannot achieve the same effect through a strict translation. But at the same time, I began to wonder just how much Ogiue’s manner of speaking was able to translate from the original releases in Monthly Afternoon to the Del Rey Manga English versions. I’ve read a good deal of the English version, and often times I felt like the many of the subtleties of the dialogue were being lost in translation. There was a problem, however.  The Del Rey version was not designed for people who knew Japanese, and I was in a sense “tainted” by my exposure to the original Japanese.

This potential problem with dialogue didn’t apply to just Ogiue, and in fact I noticed it possibly moreso with the rest of the cast, but I decided to use Ogiue as a metric. So a week ago, I asked people via this blog, what do you think of Ogiue’s dialogue? I asked it without explaining my experiment, as I was worried that I would influence the people responding with my own doubts, though looking back, I think by asking them specifically about the “English” version, I already planted that seed. In spite of that, however, I managed to get some good responses which had me re-evaluate my own thoughts on the accuracy of the “spirit” of the translation.

Chaostangent felt that Ogiue’s dialogue “never seems too polite or too brash,” which in a way is how Ogiue talks, or is at least a compromise. Paul said that Ogiue “always sounded angry when she talked,” which is also quite accurate. And digital boy even claims that in reading the English version, he could “hear” the Japanese voices in his head. So, at least according to people who weren’t looking at it from the perspective of having read it in its original language, Ogiue’s character comes across in her dialogue. Though it might not be to the extent that it captures 100% of everything there, it still works and works well, enough to turn people into fans of Ogiue.

And I also think I focused too much on the dialogue itself. Ogiue as well as all the other characters don’t show their personality just through their usage of Japanese, but through their facial expressions, their mannerisms, and not just how they speak but when they choose to speak and why.

So, I know I’m going to regret explaining the background on this, but I am once again going to ask people how they feel about not just Ogiue’s, but the dialogue in Genshiken in general. Let’s not even limit it to the manga translation, but the anime as well. For those of you who’ve seen the dub, how does the translation fare? I found it unusually stilted, but again, maybe I’m just biased.