Category Archives: thought exercise

A Convenient Metaphor for You Anime Fans to Remember

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Fanservice is like chocolate.

Sure you might like it, perhaps even a lot, and sometimes it’s just the thing you’re looking for. But you can’t live off of chocolate alone, and any attempts to do so will only end in agony. Similarly, fanservice can be a welcome addition to anime, but if all the anime consists of is tits and ass, then it’s not going to be a complete, well-rounded experience.

Which isn’t to say you should never watch fanservice shows; it’s just that the satisfaction you get from marathoning To-LOVE-Ru is as fleeting as the one you get from gorging on a box of Russel-Stover.


If you want fanservice and a well-rounded show, go with Godannar.

GONZO on Super Street Fighter IV, I Think They’ll Be All Right

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In creating the same-numbered sequel to Street Fighter IV known as Super Street Fighter IV, Capcom has opted to ditch acclaimed animation studio 4C in favor of GONZO to do the anime accompaniment to the game.

“Wait, GONZO? You mean those guys who ran out of money and weren’t even allowed to do Strike Witches Season 2?” Yes, those guys, but when you think about it they’re a really good fit for Street Fighter IV. Production IG would’ve been better, but you can’t have it all.

Let’s first get out of the way the fact that the Studio 4C Street Fighter IV anime was pretty terrible, and much less than what we’d expect out of a studio which prides itself on its creative animation. Looking back, it’s easy to see that it was simply the wrong studio for the job. Illustrating muscley men (and women!) beating each other up is not really 4C’s thing. GONZO on the other hand is quite good at it.

GONZO utilizes a certain style when animating for international audiences, one that combines the basic aesthetics of “anime” with a very American and masculine idea of “cool,” with the most prominent example being Afro Samurai, and that style just so happens to mesh well with Street Fighter IV ‘s. Looking at it relative to the rest of the series, SFIV looks the least like anime out of any of the games ever, and it’s a style that appeals to an audience that also consists of people who don’t like anime (or their image of anime) too much. It’s 3D, it’s “realistic” in an American comic book sort of way even if we’ve got some weird character designs, and it’s close to how GONZO rolls and vice-versa. If you don’t believe me, check out the trailer.

GONZO’s weakness as a studio has generally been utilizing money poorly and mediocre to poor direction on their shows leading to bad endings. But give GONZO enough money for the job and they’ll turn out something pretty-looking for sure. That’s why I predict that this GONZO SSFIV animation will turn out well. First, this is game industry money after all, and even if it’s feeling the effects of the recession it’s still faring better than the anime industry, and they’d be able to at least fund a one-shot bonus feature. Second, this anime will probably be a mere setup for the game itself, so there’s no need for an ending and thus no conclusion to sabotage. And even if there was an ending, it’s not too hard to predict. In fact, I’ll spoil the ending for you: Ryu punches Seth, everybody wins.

All in all, I don’t think it’s going to be the pinnacle of Japanese animation, but it’ll definitely get the job done.

Your Introduction to Anime GMILFs

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With anime these days, it’s always “lolicon this” or “high school that,” and amidst all this focus on youth I began to wonder if a certain segment of the population was feeling that anime provided nothing for them. I am of course referring to people who like their women with not just a little bit of experience, but a lot. I want to tell those guys who dig the really mature that anime has something to offer to them, even if it seems daunting otherwise.

Now I don’t partake in this particular preference, so I can’t tell you for sure whether or not they do the job, but I have set up a few criteria in compiling this list.

First, the women here have to look aged. There’s quite a few elderly female characters out there who never age past 35, and so hardly count as GMILFs. In fact, their appeal is no different from just plain MILFs. So in this respect, characters like Tsunade (Naruto), Kazami Hatsuho (Onegai Teacher), and Milia Jenius (Macross 7) do not count, even if Milia is actually a grandmother.

For that matter, second, they do not have to have grandchildren to qualify as GMILFs.

Third, the characters for the most part tend to be quite physically fit. I figure part of the issue is that a lot of times cartoons, be they anime or anywhere else in the world, tend to portray the elderly as comically old and decrepit and having seen better days. This is probably appealing to only a few, and so have chosen characters where age is not a barrier to active living.

Fourth, this isn’t really criteria but a lot of them are teachers or are in some kind of teaching profession. Don’t ask me, that’s just how it turned out.

So without further ado, your GMILFs.

Maria Graceburt, My-Otome

More commonly known as “Miss Maria,” Maria Graceburt is a teacher and advisor at Garderobe Academy where she trains her all-female students to become “Otome,” or nano-machine-enhanced super-powered royal bodyguards. Once an Otome herself, Maria has much experience in this regard, and has been tempered by her years in battle. Despite her old age, she is still capable of keeping up with the younger generations. She almost has to be seen to be believed.


Barbara McGregor, Taisho Baseball Girls

It’s the 1920s and Japan is at the height of the Taisho Era, where western influence is making in-roads into the society. Barbara McGregor is the principal at Touhou Seika Girls’ Secondary School, a school that prepares young girls to embrace both Eastern and Western influences and lead them to a wholesome mentality. When she finds out that a group of girls at Touhou Seika have decided to form a baseball team, she supports the endeavor but with a stern warning that it is not to affect their grades, or else. Calm and steadfast, Barbara sees progress in the future of womanhood.


Yukimura Tokiko, Kekkaishi

Tasked with protecting Karasumori, a land which bestows great power upon spirits and demons, Yukimura Tokiko is the 21st “Kekkaishi” or “Barrier Master” of the Yukimura clan. In addition, she trains her granddaughter Yukimura Tokine in the art of Kekkai while also maintaining a rivalry with the head of the Sumimura Clan, fellow Kekkai users with whom the Yukimura clan split generations ago. Although quite old, Tokiko has vitality greater than her talented  granddaughter, and is actually currently the strongest Kekkai user known.

Tamashiro Miwa, Koutetsushin Jeeg

In her younger days, Tamashiro Miwa, then known as Uzuki Miwa, was a skilled pilot who supported the cyborg hero Koutetsu Jeeg and the “Build Base” in their fight against the evil Jama Empire by piloting the supply ship known as the “Big Shooter.” 50 years later, when the Jama Empire resurfaces and her granddaughter Tsubaki becomes the pilot of a new Big Shooter for a new Jeeg, Tsubaki becomes the new commander of Build Base, lending her experience in combat against the Jama Empire for a new generation. Though she now sits behind a desk instead of a cockpit, it is apparent that age has only made Miwa stronger and more determined than ever.


Toudou Kaworu, Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu

Toudou Kaworu is a visionary who seeks to transform education in Japan, and has implemented an exclusive revolutionary method of organizing students. As principal of Fumizuki Academy, Kaworu ranks students from A to F, with the A students at the top receiving the best supplies and the best teachers, while those at the bottom must claw their way up if they want to improve. To facilitate this Darwinian education system, Kaworu allows students to engage in holographic “battles,” where summoned avatars engage in combat and have strength proportionate to their grades and overall academic achievements. A cheerful, if mysterious woman, Toudou Kaworu challenges the conventional.

So there you have it, five women who have experience on their side and are capable of appealing to those who are tired of seeing nothing but young girls in their Japanese animation. Keep in mind that this is only a brief list; there’s more out there. If you’ve got any suggestions, speak up!

Conceptual Gattai: Mecha and Slice of Life

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I’ve been talking a good deal about both giant robots and slice of life anime as of late, and in doing so it was perhaps inevitable that the notion of combining both would start to percolate in my head.

At first, mecha and slice of life would appear to contradict each other. Mecha is generally about some kind of story and conflict, be it good vs evil, big vs small, one team vs another, whereas slice of life has its focus in the non-events of life. Is it possible to reconcile the two? I say yes, and all you have to do is start with Patlabor.

Now for those unfamiliar with Patlabor, the basic premise is that in the near future giant robots are used in labor jobs such as construction and demolition, and have essentially become a part of everyday life. Some unscrupulous people get the bright idea to start using these mecha to commit crimes, and so a robot-based police force called “Patlabor” is formed.

So envision the Patlabor scenario in your mind. Now, get rid of the robot crime and by extension get rid of the robot police force. There’s your slice of life mecha show. Instead of focusing on capturing criminals, the story becomes about the daily hijinks of working a normal job as a robot pilot. If you want, have the characters younger and center the story around the training process, like Gunbuster‘s early episodes minus the competitiveness. On that note, make the characters all cute girls if you want, though honestly speaking I don’t think such a thing is necessary for slice of life.

So basically, giant robots without the fighting. I know, pretty exciting, right?

I Was Right About the Megaman 10 Robot Masters

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A few days ago I made a post about how the eight primary bosses of Megaman 10 looked quite different from their predecessors, most of which were in-story creations of either Dr. Light or Dr. Wily, and thus felt that these new robots were the work of neither. What I did not know was that the magazine which announced the eight robot masters, Coro Coro, also included basic information about them, and it turns out that all of them are robots who had normal jobs who were then affected by a virus which made them go berserk. In other words, none of the Robot Masters were designed by Wily or Light, and  my suspicions based on their designs turned out to be true.

“Congratulations,” I said to myself as my right arm patted my left shoulder, “You figured out a plot point in a game meant to evoke the nonsense plots of the NES-era.”

Megaman 10 Robot Master Analysis

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These are the 8 Robot Masters of the recently announced Megaman 10. If you haven’t seen their sprites yet, you can consult my post from yesterday. As promised, I will be talking about their designs more today, laying out what I feel are key aspects of the latest set of eight.

When I look at the bosses of Megaman 10 I can sense a difference between them and their predecessors. While the game’s designs are still in-line with the overall classic Megaman aesthetic of cute and simple anime-style characters, there’s a consistent theme throughout their designs which only occurred sparingly in previous Megaman games.

The most prominent one is that the descriptor in their name dictates a lot more of their design in general than in previous games. Strikeman’s torso is designed to look like a baseball. Commandoman is a tank on legs. Sheepman needs no explanation. The properties that define them are more explicitly incorporated into their designs. The closest we get to more orthodox designs are Solarman and Chillman, and even they have somewhat unusual bodies.

While you have a few Robot Masters from previous games which do follow this trend seen in Megaman 10, such as Heatman having a Zippo Lighter for a body, they’re more the exception than the rule. When you compare Metalman to Blademan, Metalman is merely adorned with sharp spinning blades, whereas Blademan has swords for arms and a sword for a head.

Overall, these robots do not look quite like any bosses from the past. They do not resemble any of Dr. Light’s designs, nor Dr. Wily’s or Dr. Cossack’s. I think this is intentional. My suspicion is that, in actuality, none of these Robot Masters are Dr. Wily’s, and that they’re coming from another source entirely or from multiple different sources. In a way, they remind me of Megaman 6 because that game also had Robot Masters who didn’t seem all that Wily-esque, which made sense seeing as all of them were supposed to have come from different countries.

So I’m throwing it out there: I don’t think Dr. Wily is responsible for the Robot Masters in Megaman 10, and in fact I bet he was planning to attack with his own set of 8, but his minions also got affected by the “Roboenza” virus. That doesn’t mean he won’t be the villain, but I think it’ll be more him taking advantage of a bad situation. Or maybe once you figure out the cause of Roboenza and find the cure, then he’ll make his move.

The Precarious Position of “Seinen Cute”

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I am a man who likes cute things. This is sometimes a problem.

As a general rule in societies around the world, cute often falls into the realm of the feminine and the girly, especially when the ones being cute are girls. This is something I experienced when I was really getting into anime in high school, and people who knew about my interest in anime would sometimes say, “Cardcaptor Sakura? Really?”

During that period, the shock that fanfiction of Gundam Wing existed that paired men with other men was still fresh, so the idea that Cardcaptor Sakura was capable of appealing to a lolicon crowd didn’t even factor into the equation. It was more a matter of me, a guy (almost an adult at that point!), enjoying something that was made for little girls. It’s a battle I had to fight, and it’s a battle I’m sure many of you out there are familiar with and may even continue to go through. How do you break through societal standards of what is considered “umanly?” It’s a little easier when we’re all nerds and we suck at throwing objects, but even in the realm of geekdom you will find that masculinity plays some sort of role.

So when I see people bothered by how often seinen manga have this girlish, cute, sometimes moe aesthetic, I think back to whenever I’ve run into the problem of being told that I’m not supposed to be enjoying cute things made for girls.

Consider the fact that guys are guys, and while some of us like cute things we all have a tendency to like sexy things, though personal preference affects what “sexy” is. There is cute, there is sexy, and there is cute and sexy. And sometimes they all exist in the same comic, sometimes in the same character, and it can be off-putting for a lot of people while being just as enticing for others. Ask yourself, is it all right that a comic can have both sexualized characters and non-sexualized characters interacting with each other on an equal level? Does having sexualized elements in a character sexualize the entirety of their character?

If I had to take a stab at how Azumanga Daioh creator Azuma Kiyohiko felt about these questions, I think his response would be found in the character of Kimura.

Kimura appears to be a pretty creepy guy. He’s a high school teacher with a thing for high school girls to the point that, for him, age is irrelevant because “high school is high school.” But then you see how the guys in his classes react to him. They consider him a “role model” of sorts because he’s honest with his feelings. Further exploration of Kimura’s character shows that he is both a loving husband and a good father, and that he strongly believes in charity, donating a significant part of his paycheck on a regular basis. At the end of the day, taking all that into account, is he still creepy? Probably, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a lot of other things too.

Those of you who are creeped out by the state of seinen manga’s more questionable practices have every right to be creeped out, and those of you who enjoy it have every right to enjoy it, and everyone has the right to disagree with each other. To me however, no matter how much questionable material is released and sold, the very fact that cute comics aimed towards adult men are published and manage to be successful is a great triumph that can never be taken away.

Getting to Know the Characters: An Example

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In my look back at the first decade of the 21st century, I talked about the shift towards character and the idea of “getting to know the characters.” While I think I made it pretty clear as to what I meant in the original post, I thought of a good example to explain the idea: the mahjong anime and manga Saki.

Mahjong has been a topic frequently explored in manga for decades now, with even Frederik Schodt’s “Manga! Manga!” pointing out its existence. It’s a favorite topic among salarymen and older audiences, but it wasn’t until the game was paired with moe and a heavy dash of yuri that it began reaching out to the otaku market in the form of Saki.

Anime nerds are playing mahjong in greater numbers now, and it’s not like Hikaru no Go where the manga itself explains the rules to a certain extent; characters in Saki just come in and do their thing and winning magically happens. And yet the otaku still want to play.

The reason that fans of Saki play mahjong, instead of just admiring the girls through fanart and doujinshi (and possibly their own dreams) is that mahjong is the focus of the Saki world, and by playing mahjong a person can feel closer to the characters in the series. I’m sure Miyanaga Saki fans smile every time they get +/-0 in their final scores, while achieving Haitei Raoyue is a wonderful feeling for supporters of Amae Koromo.

Performing an activity that is done by the characters gives a sense of connection, and the characters themselves make you want to connect to them through the power of their cute, moe designs and notions of very close friendship. That is the feeling of being “one” with the characters.

Avoiding the Shounen Power Creep

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Shounen fighting is quite possibly the world’s most popular anime and manga sub-genre. Whether it’s Saint Seiya in South America, Naruto in the US, One Piece in Japan, or Dragon Ball around the world, the idea of heroes fighting villains and getting stronger along the way is an idea just about any boy in any country can understand and get behind. But one of the common problems with shounen is the idea of the “power creep,” where newer and more powerful villains keep appearing to challenge the hero to the point that the earlier villains who once appeared legitimately threatening begin to look pathetic by comparison. Tao Pai Pai in Dragon Ball may have been one of the few capable of defeating Goku early on, but by the time Goku turns Super Saiyan 3 the assassin is little more than a distant memory.

I think all shounen fighting series creators are well aware of this danger, but only some try to circumvent it, at least temporarily. As such I’ve included a few examples of attempts to quell the Power Level beast.

The first two series of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure had some degree of power creep, but starting with the third and most popular series starring Kujou Joutarou the series became about outwitting the opponent instead of outpowering them. Here, characters were given their own power sets which changed little to none over the course of the entire series, and all advancements came from figuring out new ways to use abilities already known to the readers, instead of acquiring entirely new powers.

Hokuto no Ken saw fit to make its main hero Kenshiro already absurdly powerful. Kenshiro is not a youth who needs to learn the ways of fighting and to live up to his potential, but a man who already has received the title of master of the world’s deadliest martial art. As such, Kenshiro’s victories are generally won through willpower and using the right moves in his encyclopedic collection of head-exploding strikes. The other move Hokuto no Ken makes is to establish its main villain Raoh relatively early and make him a proper end boss, and also establishing the fact that as far as fighting ability goes, both Kenshiro and Raoh are at similar levels. Even when the series goes crazy with Kaioh and such, this is never quite a problem.

Digimon Adventure 02 saw a problem when it realized that, if left the way things were, the already powerful Angemon could just go Ultimate and leave an unfortunate stain where the evil Digimon Kaiser (Digimon Emperor in the English dub) was once standing. To get around having to make the villain more absurdly powerful than the final opponents in the first series, the concept of the “black rings,” devices which prevent digital monsters from evolving, was created. The solution was that the heroes had to find an alternate means to “power up” which, while incapable of reaching their old heights, gave them a fighting chance. Eventually they overcame the Digimon Kaiser and new villains appeared, but at least for a time the shounen power creep was stayed.

Those are three examples. Can you think of any others?

Gunshow Comic Anime Club and Saying Your Anime Sucks

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Gunshow Comic’s “The Anime Club” recently reminded me of how easy it is to make someone angry by saying their favorite show sucks. For those of you who haven’t read “The Anime Club,” it’s an on-going series about a group of high school kids who love anime and fall prey to every negative otaku stereotype possible, and yet is still fun to read and never actually feels mean-spirited even when it’s actually making fun of anime.

In the relevant chapter, a loud and obnoxious character insults the all-time favorite of another loud and obnoxious character, and through it reveals the simple steps needed to insult anyone’s favorite show. All you do is declare that the story is “predictable” or “cliche,” the characters “flat and one-dimensional,” and possibly insult their intelligence and/or maturity. You don’t even have to know anything about the show to do this.

Now it’s not like bad characters in fiction don’t exist, let alone in anime, but what’s interesting about this generalized method of diminishing someone else’s tastes in anime is that it hits on multiple vital levels.

First, by saying that a show is predictable, you say that they are easily entertained and have less intelligence than they should for not being able to see the “obvious” developments. And if you were to look at the self-image of anime fans, you’d see that they usually consider themselves to be smarter than average. Second, by calling their favorite characters flat, you trivialize any emotional connections they have made with those characters and demean the fact that they opened up to it. Third, by calling into question their level of maturity, you exploit that niggling doubt that exists in a great many anime fans, that their hobby is worthless and that a “well-adjusted person” who lives in the real world would never do this.

The last one’s efficacy is dampened somewhat if it’s coming from one anime fan to another, and in general the effect weakens the more you talk specifics as then the possibility of mutual understanding increases. But the overall effect, whether the blow is softened by familiarity or not, is that it becomes an attack on an anime fan’s confidence, and many fans have some degree of confidence issues.