Category Archives: thought exercise

Sometimes It’s Translated as “Hero” Too

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As I mentioned previously, Heroman seems to take a lot from Tetsujin 28, particularly with the idea of a kid remote-controlling a robot and using it to fight evil. However, I think there’s another series which draws a number of parallels to Stan Lee and Bones’ collaboration.

The series, or rather franchise I’m talking about is the “Yuusha” or “Brave” series. In  the 1990s, Sunrise and toy company Takara created a series of super robot cartoons emphasizing the combining robot (and in turn, sales of toys based on combining robots). There was a new show every year from 1990-1997, with The King of Braves Gaogaigar being the biggest name. The two I want to concentrate on in particular are the first two, Brave Exkaiser and, particularly, The Brave Fighter of the Sun Fighbird.

In both shows, alien space police possess Earth vehicles in order to fend off evil menaces, which is at this point the most likely origin for Heroman in my opinion, particularly with the way the scientist in the first episode of  Heroman sends his signal out to find extraterrestrial life. Similarly, in Fighbird a kooky scientist makes contact with alien life forms, including the aforementioned ghost alien cops, but also space criminals who escaped from a space prison (in space).

I know the similarities are pretty shallow, especially because Heroman is barely out at this point and hasn’t even established that much of its own story, but it really reminded me of those early Brave shows.

I’ll Be Waiting for My Check, Japan

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Anime and its fandom have managed to create personifications out of everything, from computer operating systems to charcoal to cans of soda, applying many of the popular character tropes to them and creating a fun logic exercise you can also get your rocks off to. At this point, you might ask, what’s left to capture the hearts of moe otaku everywhere? But I have the answer.

Imagine, if you will, a world where toilets are transformed into cute, beautiful girls. Modern toilets are a triumph of civilization, carrying with them notions of human progress and indoor plumbing, but at the same time also have quite a bit of variety to them. The division between the different characters could be along brand names, or along type. Personally, I think the latter would be more favorable for the purposes of creating a show/franchise.

The squat toilet could be the traditional yamato nadeshiko-type, while the high-tech toilet with the self-warming seat and such could be the enthusiastic computer geek. The french bidet would be the really classy one. And of course, the urinal would be a total tsundere tomboy.

And I don’t need to say anything about how the doujin community would utilize this fertile ground.

All in all, I think this is what you’d call money down the drain.

(By the way, I’m open to ideas for the title.)

Personally, My Favorite Anime Studio is Rolex

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Some time ago I noticed a running joke going across multiple anime throughout the decades, where the animators will put a clock or a watch in a show with the name of the studio displayed on it.


Aim for the Ace! (1973)


Kekkaishi (2006)

I really wish I had more samples to show, and I’m not sure how it all started, either. Does it even have its origins in Japanese animation? Can anyone answer that?

I think the first piece of the puzzle is probably just to see how prolific this sort of thing really is, so I’m making a call out to everyone who reads this blog and beyond: if you are so inclined, find as many instances as you possibly can of anime where a studio’s name is prominently displayed on a clock or watch.

Thoughts on “Bohemian Rhapsody” a la Matsumoto

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Watching the special music video of legendary UK band Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” as interpreted by Galaxy Express 999 and Captain Harlock creator Matsumoto Leiji, a few quick thoughts come to mind.

1) While the original music video is better, that’s because the classic one is just that hard to top. And while this one isn’t exactly mind-blowing, it’s still very well-animated and has that Matsumoto feel we all know and love. It can be kind of confusing at times though, like it’s trying to tell too much with too little and in the wrong format.

2) I like how the “Matsumoto Gauges,” or that staple of Matsumoto anime and manga where a room is filled to the brim with complex gadgetry and meters and such, has been updated to fit in more with current times. It looks much more “digital” now, and reminds me of modern stereo systems. It doesn’t have quite as visceral a feel, but it makes sense.

3) I wonder if this occurs in the same universe as Interstella 5555. Definitely a possibility, but as Daryl Surat would advise, don’t think about this too hard because Matsumotoverse continuity is paper-thin.

4) I picture Matsumoto going to an anime con and entering this in an AMV competition. Would he win? I don’t know, the character designs do look kind of old…

Hah! It Was Only a Dream…

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About two weeks ago, I made a post talking about the “spinning room” effect used in the opening to K-On!! Thinking that was going to be the end of it, I was surprised to have actually had a dream about the very same topic.

In the dream, I was showing someone the K-On!! opening, particularly the aforementioned effect, when suddenly the video started to act kind of funny. The video started to slow down, and at first I thought that maybe it was a problem with my computer as it’s not exactly what you would call “new,” but then the angle of the view itself changed, with greater focus on each individual character playing their instrument as the spinning room effect was still going on. I particularly remember the emphasis on Tsumugi and Ritsu, as the camera seemed to really sit there to showcase the size of their musical instruments.

Funny thing is that it actually took me a few hours after I woke up to even realize I had a dream, and didn’t actually try to show the K-On!! opening to someone. Also, I’m not sure if what I saw in my dream was the idealized version of the OP I had hoped for, but I think it was somewhere in that direction.

The Illusion of Equality is the Best Equality! …At Least in Mahjong

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In the past year, as I learned to play mahjong, I’ve had quite a few opportunities to play against people I know, whether it’s online or in live settings. Sometimes I win, many times I lose, and though I’m sure I’ve improved, I can’t tell you what strengths I have as a player, if any at all. I honestly have no idea. I also had a revelation that I have absolutely no idea if I’m better than any of my peers or vice versa.

When I think about it though, this is actually a strength of mahjong. Unless an opponent is significantly better than you, it’s actually very difficult to gauge who is the stronger player. If I had to hazard a guess as to why this is the case, I’d say that it has to do with 1) the large influence luck has on the game and 2) the fact that you can only see results, and not the process through which they succeeded.

Both factors manifest themselves, for example, when an opponent declares riichi. If you’ve watched mahjong anime, this is when a character throws a white stick on a table to indicate that his hand is “about to win,” sort of like declaring “Uno,” except it’s optional and you get bonus points for it. At this point, an opposing player has two basic choices: break up their own hand to avoid dealing into the opponent’s hand (in Japanese-style mahjong, a player cannot win off of a tile they already discarded, so you can “play it safe” by discarding things they have already discarded), or continue to build your hand towards victory, at the risk of losing. You either prioritize winning, or not losing. In other words, you attack or defend, advance or retreat.

You can tell to a certain extent what another player is doing, as there are situations where certain tiles are considered “dangerous,” particularly because none have previously been discarded, but there’s no guarantee. So when a player manages to avoid dealing into the riichi player’s hand, you might wonder, are they actually destroying their hand to avoid losing, are they getting lucky with their discards, or are they actually that good? Is it luck? Is it skill? Can you even tell the difference? Watching a replay will give you some of this information, but trying to figure this out in-game is another matter entirely.

Given the random nature of the game, sometimes good tiles are dealt and sometimes you get garbage, but the real influence comes from a combination of luck and the illusion of luck, derived  from being able to read only so much information. At the same time, luck is not an all-consuming factor, as the beauty of mahjong is that even if you’re doing terribly, you always feel like you have some control of the game, coming down to that simple choice again of whether to attack or to defend, to go for victory, or to cut your losses. It’s vaguely similar to Texas Hold ’em  (whose rules I just learned the other day) in that respect.

The result of not being able to tell who’s actually a better player is that the game feels more fair, even if it isn’t, and it’s exciting to not be able to tell who has the greatest chance of winning. It makes every game exciting.

I Want to Be the Very Best, Ready to Fight for What’s Right Against Wrong, in America

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Heroman feels like a return to an old idea, and probably not in the way you’re thinking.

When we think giant robots, we usually think of robots being piloted from within or being some kind of sentient being, but Heroman is neither (at least, not as of Episode 2). Instead, he’s an entity separate from the human, controlled through a remote device. Sound familiar? It’s the same premise as that progenitor of giant robot anime heroes, Tetsujin 28.

But as I implied, the giant robot moved away from having its hero exist separate from it, and that’s been the trend ever since. While there were attempts to bring back this idea on occasion, I think the reason it failed to succeed was that it just didn’t seem as exciting or as practical as having a cockpit. After all, I’m sure just about anyone who watches any incarnation of Tetsujin 28 will wonder why they don’t just target the completely vulnerable human controlling it. The answer, of course, is that Shoutarou would stab you in the neck and set you on fire because that’s how Shoutarou rolls (no, really), but the basic idea is that it just makes more sense on a variety of levels to in the protective bosom of your mecha. At least, that’s how I see the evolution of that general trend in giant robots.

But then when you think about it, the idea of the remote-controlled giant robot is surprisingly similar to a genre which supplanted mecha in popularity, profitability, and marketability: the monster battle anime, of which Pokemon is by far the most famous. And in time, this turned into not only monsters but mechanical creatures as well.

So we’ve gone from a remote-controlled giant robot to piloted robots to kids battling using monsters to kids battling using mechanical devices, and now with Heroman, a remote-controlled robot servant fighting alongside his owner, it’s  like we’ve come full circle.

As an aside, does anyone else get the feeling that this post is a product of me having recently finished Tetsujin 28 combined with me getting back into Pokemon? Yeah, I thought so.

The Bishounen and the Trap

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The Speakeasy Podcast recently released their 4th episode, wherein they talk about the “bishounen,” and all of the celebration and agony that comes from putting some eye candy for girls into anime that are traditionally considered “for guys.”

For those unfamiliar, the term bishounen literally means “beautiful boy,” and refers to characters in manga, especially shoujo manga, who are beautiful and effeminate. In being pretty, bishounen in turn violate the unwritten rules of Acceptable Beauty in a Man, where guys are allowed to look good, but only in a way that reaffirms heterosexuality by having them conform to the male view of what a lady killer is supposed to look like.

Simply put, bishounen threaten masculinity and make guys uncomfortable. But the “threat” of bishounen isn’t simply in their looks, but in their very presence, and to get to the real heart of the problem, we have to take a look at a very similar concept which also holds some very profound differences: the trap.

The origin of the term “trap,” as it’s used by English-speaking anime fans, refers to the idea that a male viewer is “tricked” into being attracted to what he thinks is a very attractive lady, only to find out that the character actually has a Y-chromosome. In some cases, it works so effectively that some will say that liking traps is still not considered “gay,” because the character is so effeminate that all they’re doing is appealing to a heterosexual man’s natural desires using the power of artistic expression.

Now what’s really interesting is that in some cases you’ll find examples of guys who love traps but hate bishounen. At first, it can appear to be a contradiction, but there’s a fundamental difference at work here: bishounen are designed to appeal to girls, while traps are designed to appeal to guys.

Of course I’m aware that there are plenty of guys who decry the presence of traps just as much as they do bishounen, guys who believe that both the moe fan and the fujoshi are killing anime. But I really believe that the thin line between bishounen and trap reveals the truth, and that it all comes down to fear.

Guys who lament the presence of bishounen are not as threatened by their good looks as they are the idea that the presence of bishounen means that guy-oriented anime will suffer in some capacity. When the bishounen talks, this is what they hear coming out of their mouths.

“These character designs are not for you.”

“We’re doing things to actively appeal to people that aren’t you.”

It’s the fear that girls will latch onto a show just for the hot guys and will ignore all of the deep and wonderful story that’s actually there and will refer to the guys as “bishies” and debate the degree to which they would “glomp” them. It’s the fear that anime which would have had excellent story and setting might end up being aborted half-way and turned into a hideous carbunkle that sacrificed its potential for greatness for scenes involving with male beauty, angst, and sparkling moonlight.

The truth of this matter is actually stated in the Speakeasy podcast: anime, in some capacity has always made attempts to appeal to girls, even in that most manly of genres, the giant robot anime. The original fans of Mobile Suit Gundam were actually mostly female. UFO Robo Grendizer found a female fanbase as well, because of some of the romance elements in the story, as well as the presence of strong female characters. Even Gowapper 5 Godam tried to appeal to girls by being the first giant robot series to have a girl as the main character. They may have been a secondary audience to the boys buying action figures, but when it comes down to it, what’s wrong with having an audience that’s 50% female?

Read and/or Die: Aniblog Tourney Thoughts

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Back in 2008, I won 3rd place for Bloggers’ Choice Rookie of the Year in the now-defunct Anime Blog Awards. I thought that would be the first and last time anyone ever did some sort of anime blog competition, but  Scamp over at The Cart Driver has proven me wrong. Now he’s pitting 96 blogs against each other in a Saimoe-style throwdown in a competition aptly named the “Aniblog Tourney.”

Most likely your first reaction to this is something along the lines of, “This is just some kind of circle jerk popularity contest!” And you’re pretty much right, at least for the popularity contest side of it. The circle jerk I think is up in the air.

The one thing I like about this endeavor in particular is that the criteria for voting is very clear and simple, with no ambiguity like so many other vote-based tournaments you’ll find on the internet. This isn’t like Saimoe, where the meaning of “moe” is so nebulous that it loses all meaning in voting, or the GameFAQs character competitions where the notion of “greatest” can be construed in a million different ways. Here it’s just, if you were only allowed to read one blog out of those two, which would you pick? What do you personally prioritize? Humor, knowledge, writing style, good or bad is all up to the remote control voter.

And it’s not like it’s hard to get an idea of how a particular blog is. Just read one or two posts and you’re good to go.

I don’t know when this thing is beginning, and I can’t tell you who to vote for or whether you should vote at all, but if you do decide to participate, just go with what you think is right. And if you don’t participate, then at least it might be a good opportunity to just check out some blogs you’ve never read.

You can check out the bracket, as well as the thought process Scamp went through, right here.

Getting to Like You, Getting to Hope You Like Me

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What is a MILF?

The correct answer, of course, is a Mother You Would Like to Meet Between the Sheets. It is a fetish towards older, more mature women. But while a million things could be said about the concept of the MILF and its appeal, I want to point your attention to one in particular: what the word “mother” in this context really means.

The “mother” in MILF does not refer to the stretchmarks or the fact that they have a five year old sitting at home. Rather, it is very much a visual ideal. The MILF looks more mature and is therefore attractive in a way younger girls are not, and while it has a conceptual side to it, the idea that the MILF is also far more experienced in them in bedside manners, this is also achieved through visual signifiers, such as the clothes they wear and the hairstyles they favor.

While I’m no scientist, I think it’s safe to say that our minds are built to connect ideas and images, to associate one thing with another. This is evident in art, as symbolism abounded in works throughout history, changing depending on the culture. There, we find increasing levels of abstraction, wherein the “symbol” itself may potentially have the power to supplant the original itself, or at least to carry significant weight. So when it comes to anime and manga, the mental association of visual attributes to other physical traits as well as personality and sexuality isn’t that surprising.

Anime fans are encouraged, for better or worse, by possibly the shows or fellow fans, to grow and cultivate a visual vocabulary in this manner, creating a two-way street where looks imply personality and vice versa. Girls with large breasts either tend to be hyper-sexual (Anybody in Ikkitousen, but especially Ryofu Housen) or reluctantly so (Asahina Mikuru from Haruhi). Tsundere can often be found with twintails, due to their potential implication of guarded innocence.

At their most extreme,  these visual signifiers can describe not just personality and background but the entirety of their characters. It’s like instant ramen. It tastes “enough” like the real deal, and it doesn’t require the time and preparation of a real deal. You might consider it shallow, efficient, or both, but it makes sense. Anime fans new and old and from every generation have loved anime partly because of the connections they make to the characters. They want their characters to have personalities attached to their looks, even if those personalities might be one-dimensionally simplistic. This is what a lot of the successful Visual Novel companies have realized. While the characters’ story arcs are just as important, the companies know that they can set the stage with the appealing character designs and hint at their personalities through those deisgn aspects.

They can have players experience love at first sight. Or first moe or whatever.

(Oh, and in regards to MILFs and taking things too far…)