Anime Staff and Cast: Shame is Not in Their Vocabulary

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It was at New York Anime Festival 2009 where someone asked why the creator of Gundam Tomino Yoshiyuki would keep going back to the franchise after swearing it off every single time. Tomino’s response was simple.

“I had to pay the rent.”

And with that, Tomino exposed us to the REAL Anime Reality, as opposed to the one that exists on the fan level.

I’ve occasionally seen people ask about whether or not voice actors get embarrassed playing some raunchy roles or ones they might find objectionable. Similarly, people have wondered whether or not animators ever take issue with, say, making porn about middle schoolers. I bet you though that 9 times out of 10 the answer is “Sometimes, but money is money.” Sure, Inoue Kikuko forbids anyone from mentioning her “early” work, and many voice actors change their names when performing for erotic games (and then oddly enough decide to use their real names for when that erotic game gets a non-erotic anime adaptation), but I’m sure that if they had to go back they’d do it all over again.

Let’s look at one of the hit shows of this past year: Queen’s Blade. Now who in the world would agree to work on a show like this? Well you might be surprised. I’ll give you that quite a few of the staff worked on racy material before. Director Yoshimoto Kinji was the character designer on La Blue Girl and directed Legend of Lemnear. Key animator Umetsu Yasuomi is probably known best for his role as director and character designer in both Kite and Mezzo Forte. Fellow key animator Urushihara Satoshi is known for his erotic illustrations, as well as works such as Another Lady Innocent and Plastic Little. To no one’s surprise I’m sure, the character designer Rin Shin also has plenty of experience with 18+ works (Words Worth, La Blue Girl, Classmates).

But then you get to someone like the art director, Higashi Jun’ichi, and you see what he’s done.

“Art director on Cowboy Bebop?”

“Art director on THEY WERE 11?!”

That’s a whole lot of classiness to be injecting into this Boobs and Blades fanservice vehicle. Then you look back at the other staff. Yoshimoto Kinji may have quite a few “unsafe” titles under his belt, but he’s also worked on Riding Bean and Roujin Z (and also Genshiken 2 of all things). Umetsu is a legendary animator, key animating both openings and the ending to Zeta Gundam and lending his hand even today. Urushihara had his hand in Five Star Stories and Akira.

The voice cast is the same way. Queen’s Blade has one of the finest modern female voice casts ever assembled, with names such as Kawasumi Ayako (Lafiel in Crest of the Stars), Mizuhashi Kaori (Ogiue in Genshiken), Tanaka Rie (Lacus Clyne in Gundam SEED), Hirano Aya (Haruhi in Suzumiya Haruhi), and Kugimiya Rie (Alphonse Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist) all playing their own respective cleavage-shot-prone characters.

Keep in mind that I’m not saying that the people working on a show like Queen’s Blade don’t have integrity. They have plenty of it, seeing as how when you get past the, shall we say “awkward” premise, you have a show that’s well-animated and well-acted. After all, not just anybody could properly animate a slime girl’s acid-filled breasts bursting violently. But shame? Shame is a luxury.

In conclusion, I leave you with the words of one of the finest philosophers of the modern age.

“Get Money, Get Paid.”

MMM… Megaman 10

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Megaman 10. That’s 10 Megamen. Actually, more like 50 or so, but hearing news that last year’s retro revisit of the classic franchise is getting a sequel brought joy and happiness to this anime blogger. There’s a lot of positivity and negativity floating around because of the announcement, and I want to just talk a little about it, go through some of the things that pop up in my head when I read these conversations.

The Megaman series is very special to me. If I had to pick a favorite classic NES series, the Blue Bomber’s exploits would be it. I even wrote an entire post about it  where I talked about the way its graphics affected me.

Two of the most frequent criticisms I saw leveled towards Megaman 9 were that its mode of play and concept of difficulty was a relic of older times that should have stayed buried and that it was a cheap cash grab that fell back on a tried-and-true formula with little innovation and a gimmick to tug at older player’s feelings of nostalgia. While there’s no way to play Megaman 10 at this point, it’s a fairly safe bet that the former complaint will resurface, while the latter’s already being tossed about.

Is there any merit to these criticisms? Well sure, Megaman‘s idea of difficulty falls under the banner of “NES-difficult,” an unofficial term which describes the days where games could be brutal and unforgiving and would often require you to play many times over before you started to get the hang of it. Megaman was particularly cruel. Whereas a game like Super Mario Bros. would place an item somewhere in order to give you some respite, Megaman had a somewhat frequent tendency to deceive, placing items as bait to lure you into inescapable death traps. That’s how Dr. Wily rolled, and whether you could handle that or not was key to whether or not you enjoyed those games.

As for the whole cash-grab thing, I can totally believe that, but that doesn’t diminish the amount of effort that was put into 9 and that I assume will be put into 10. It’s also easy to attack the use of 8-bit sprites as a “gimmick,” but when you actually sit down with a Megaman game you realize just how significant the graphics are towards the gameplay. Yes, what I’m saying is that in this case graphics matter, just not the advancement of graphics. And this is coming from someone who played the hell out of Megaman 8 on his Sega Saturn. I loved how bright and lush that game was, I loved how hitting the bosses with their weaknesses would cause unique effects and animations. I even tolerated the JUMP JUMP SLIDE SLIDE rocketboard sections. But when I went back to the NES Megaman games and Megaman 9, I could really feel the difference that those simple (yet still very good-looking) 8-bit graphics made. They were graphics that assisted the gameplay immensely. Same goes for the music. Try as they might, I’ve never heard a remix of an NES Megaman song that I liked more than the original, and that includes live bands like “The Advantage.” They’re songs that work best as video game music.

Megaman 9 was a look back at things that the series did right. While constantly moving forward in the name of progress is great and all, sometimes a look backwards can be just as important, as it can teach you what to keep and what to discard. Many people called it the best Megaman since 2 and I’m inclined to agree.

So yeah, I’m looking forward to Megaman 10. I hope they make Protoman more unique, rather than just him being the “challenge” character, and I’m eager to see who the third playable character will be. Maybe it’ll be Roll, hot off her victory over Gold Lightan. Or maybe it’ll be Bass making his first non-cameo 8-bit appearance. Better yet, let’s get some multiplayer up in here. If New Super Mario Bros. Wii can do it, why not?

Kiddy Girl-and Reverse Peer Pressure

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I liked Kiddy Grade. It had nice character designs, an intriguing plot, and even though it fell apart by the end (something that would become a signature-of-sorts for its studio GONZO), I came away from it satisfied overall.

So when the sequel came out, I was quick to get the first episode of Kiddy Girl-and, and I found it okay but not great or memorable, kind of like the original series’ first episode. But then for some reason I didn’t watch the next episode, or the one after that. After a while, rather than continuing off from episode 1, I looked around for others’ opinions on the show, and nearly unanimously the response I got was “it’s terrible, even for Kiddy Grade.” Oddly, this did not cement my decision to ignore the show entirely, but rather actually prompted me to get another episode with the intent of continuing just a little further.

Why did their negative reviews make me want to watch it more? It felt like a combination of wanting to make a judgment on a work more directly, making sure I wasn’t writing a show off entirely based on the opinions of others, and maybe a twinge of morbid curiosity. As Daryl Surat will tell you, every time he tells someone not to watch Odin they almost inevitably disobey. I’m not sure if it’s that simple, but I think it plays a role in how I’ve approached Kiddy Girl-and, but it’s a mindset that has perhaps transformed into a form of “reverse” peer pressure.

Let’s say everyone you know hypes up a show to be the greatest anime ever. When almost everyone is touting this new show to be the best thing since Instant Sliced Brownies there’s a chance you might get this little voice in your head saying, “If it’s THIS popular, something’s gotta be up.” You start to wonder if it the work is “overrated.” Ask any person who dislikes Haruhi more because of the fanbase and less because of the content of the anime itself.

I think that’s how I feel about Kiddy Girl-and but in the opposite direction. With so many people telling me how not-good a show it is, it intrigues me further into watching, especially because its perceived awfulness wasn’t entirely apparent from episode 1 (as opposed to say, Akikan, where its level of quality was immediately recognized).

A, Er, It’s the 90s: Casshern OVA aka Casshan Robot Hunter

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Immortality has been a dream of man for as long as he has walked the Earth. For some, immortality means having an indestructible, ageless body. For others, it means living through the memories of others, or having their exploits retold in song and splendor. In the case of a robot with a penchant for chopping other robots in half named Casshern, all three apply, though he might not always like the result, especially when it’s in the form of a 1990s OVA.

In the 90s, the animation studio Tatsunoko Pro went about reviving some of its most popular franchises from its early years. Without a doubt the most well-known remake among English-speaking fans was Tekkaman Blade, a TV series based loosely on the classic series Tekkaman the Space Knight, as it managed to find its way into syndication under the name Teknoman. The second most famous remake however was an OVA based on another classic,  Neo-Human Casshern, about a man who is transformed permanently into an android in order to stop a massive robot revolt from conquering the world. Called simply Casshern, this update would be released in English as Casshan: Robot Hunter, and would air on the Sci-Fi Channel’s anime block, alongside movies and other anime such as Akira and Project A-Ko.

There are two things I want to make clear at this point. First, while I gave that nice history lesson there, I did not grow up with Cable and thus was not a part of that segment of anime fans who grew up on the Sci-Fi Network’s anime showings. Second, at the time the OVA came out there was no official romanized spelling for “Kyashaan,” and so they decided to go with “Casshan” at the time. Nowadays however, it’s officially spelled as “Casshern,” and in conforming with this standardization and for consistency’s sake, I am going to refer to the OVA in this review as Casshern OVA or Robot Hunter.

What is immediately apparent about Casshern OVA is that it is all flash and little to no substance. The story is there, and just like its source material it’s about a human robot fighting against the odds and punching holes in bigger, burlier robots, but it lacks sufficient amounts of connective tissue between scenes and between individual episodes which results in a bare sense of story coherency at best. Its purpose and goal is to look nice and pretty, and it succeeds in that regard, but only if you like the character designs, animation styles, pacing, and direction that embodies 90s anime aesthetics to the fullest extent. Even the fanservice is distinctly 90s-style! Not only can you can instantly tell when it was made, but the extent to which Casshern OVA is a product of its time is made all the more evident when you compare it to the ultra-stylized 2009 remake, Casshern SINS.

To those fans who grew up with 90s anime, it may just be “the way anime looks,” but for younger fans the look of Robot Hunter can be very, very different from today’s action series such as Black Lagoon. To sum up the 90s “serious action” aesthetic, it’s comprised of this exaggerated realism which permeates everything, but especially the male characters and their angular musculature, as well as the female characters and their sculpted curves. It’s the direct descendant of the 80s OVA aesthetic, which sought to give a sense of three-dimensionality to character designs.

I can only picture the staff responsible for Casshern OVA getting all excited and going, “The old Casshern is a classic, but it’s kind of dated now. That’s why we gotta make it right! We gotta make this thing timeless!” Despite (or perhaps because of) their best efforts, Casshern OVA ends up being more dated than even its 70s predecessor and its child-like sense of drama and wonder.

At the very least, it has the awesome Casshern Introduction Speech.

Throwing away his only life,
Reborn in an invincible body,
Here to obliterate the Demons of Iron,
If Casshern won’t do it, who will?

Bonus Assignment: Compare and contrast all three Casshern Openings and tell me what you think of each one.

Yaoi Paddles are Merely the Beginning

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It’s likely you’ve seen them at anime conventions, those wooden paddles with homoerotic buzz words printed on both sides of the weapon. As the “seme” paddle chases the “uke” paddle, or as a squad of BL enthusiasts roam the halls looking to “glomp” others. You may think this a problem, but this is small fries compared to what’s to come.

You likely think that the problem is the way these (mostly) girls are acting out of order, or that putting their love of yaoi on display is irritating, but the real threat is when those words start to change.

That paddle might say “Yaoi” now, but what happens when they start selling paddles with…

“Genocide”

“Anarchy”

“Ignorance”

…and worse? You will wish for the days that girls were loudly promoting their love of guy on guy action in their Japanese comics.

Let this be a warning to you all! Yaoi Paddles are not the problem, it is their potential to transform into messengers of destruction!

Miyamoto Shigeru Continues to Amaze Me

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I recently wrote a post about “Mr. Mario” and his interview regarding New Super Mario Bros. Wii. I decided to take a look at other interviews he’s given, particularly the ones on the Wii’s Nintendo Channel, and as I watched them I realized just how different his mindset is compared to everyone else in the industry at this point. Yes, the fact that he’s a genius who has given birth to many of the great franchises of video game history isn’t anything new, but when you listen to him talk about games, it’s like he’s discussing an entirely foreign subject compared to his peers and contemporaries.

Everyone else is working from the mindset of “how do I foster competition,” or “how do I make this a more enjoyable experience,” or even “what is interactivity and what does it mean,” and they’re all valid questions worth answering, but in contrast the most important question that seems to pop up in Miyamoto’s head is “how do I make life better?” It’s not a matter of him being “better” than anyone else in game design so much as the fact that he’s playing another game entirely.

It’s as if when everyone else is trying to bring guns to a sword fight, Miyamoto brings a cup of tea.

The Essential Strength of Evangelion

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Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most famous and influential shows in all of anime history and whether you’re a fan or a detractor there is no denying this fact. As time has passed however, Evangelion and its legendary status have been thrown into question. Critics will say that its story falls apart or makes no sense, that it’s chock full of plot holes, that its characters do not act as proper story characters. And all of this might be true; going over Evangelion with a fine-toothed comb reveals that much of its symbolism is paper-thin, and that its characters tend to not have much personal resolve or major development. That’s okay, though, because none of that is the truly essential strength of the series.

What is Evangelion‘s biggest strength then? To explain, I’ll use some examples from the series. Not any particular example, as my memory’s faded a bit, but some common ones: Shinji riding the train, and an Angel Attack.

There Shinji is, sitting on an empty train, listening to the same two tracks on his Walkman as the sun sets and ambient noise echoes through the city of Tokyo-3. You can sense how little he thinks of himself, how easily he gets into a rut, how much he prefers to just ignore the world if he can.

Then a grotesque monster appears. It’s vaguely humanoid, but the angles of its body and its lack of a real “face” make it incredibly jarring, even moreso when this song starts up. It’s not really an “evil” song so much as it is one that announces an inescapable and impending doom. That monster, called an “Angel” apparently, is disturbing. You can feel a certain mood, just as you can feel Shinji’s mood of doubt and despair and frustration, and that is where Neon Genesis Evangelion gets you.

The main strength of the series is in its ability to convey moods to its viewers. Whether it’s a character’s mindset or the setup to an action scene, you experience this strong understanding of the emotion the show is trying to make you feel. Whether you like him as a character or not, with Shinji you can always feel his crushing depression in every scene. So too with Asuka, where you can always feel her absolute fear of failure, and with Rei there is the constant sense that she is struggling with something and that she doubts her own identity.

While Evangelion came out at a time where it captured the zeitgeist of Japanese youth, and it owes much of its success to that fact, I think the ability of the series to transmit moods and emotions to the viewer is its primary and longest-lasting legacy and is the thing that makes it accessible and relatable over a decade after its creation. It’s what draws people in, it’s what causes people to reject it, and it’s something that it does better than nearly every other series in anime history.

John Rambo and Sorrowful Warriors

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In a prior discussion with Sub of Subatomic Brainfreeze, he brought to my attention the existence of a Sega-made Japanese arcade game based off of Rambo. Yes, the 80s Sylvester Stallone movie franchise. He told me all about how indicative the game was of how the Japanese perceived the movies and John Rambo as a character, and upon further thinking it shed light on a difference between Japanese and American culture.

According to Sub, the narration in the Rambo Arcade Game places great emphasis on how “sorrowful” John Rambo is as a person, and this idea of Rambo carrying great sadness within his stoicism is repeated throughout. Well of course that makes sense. This is the same culture which gave us Kenshiro, and Kenshiro is all about being a stoic hero who is full of emotion within.

As far as either of us could tell, in Japanese fiction stoicism acts as an indicator for emotion and sorrow, which contrasts greatly with the American idea of the expressionless badass, who while not entirely without emotion tends to be “unmoved” by traumatic events or the plights of others, though still willing to do the “right thing.” Their tears are not allowed, as they are a sign of emasculation.

I thought about the concept of the “sorrowful warrior” and any portrayals in Japanese entertainment thereof, and I recalled one in particular: Sol Badguy.

Sol is the hero of the Guilty Gear series of fighting games, and his character is quite reminiscent of Joutarou from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. He doesn’t talk much, is quite aloof, usually has a hardened expression on his face, and is incredibly adept in combat. It’s easy to see him as just a guy who knows what he wants and acts on his own, but then I remembered a significant fact about Sol Badguy.

As with many fighting games, characters in Guilty Gear have their own theme songs/stage background music, and Sol is no exception. The Guilty Gear series took it one step further and gave all of the characters vocal versions of their respective themes, and the first lyrics in Sol’s theme song say it all:

He’s a sad soldier.

I have to wonder, is it the case where whenever Japan and America see the same stoic badass hero, each ends up having a very different perception?


Otaku Diaries and Fans on Fans

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This month, the Otaku Diaries look at possibly their most interesting topics yet: how anime fans perceive anime fans, the idea of fandom as a community, and our terrible/awesome sexual fetishes manifested in 2-d form. Have you ever been ashamed of other anime fans? Well you’re not alone, as the majority of the people surveyed by the Otaku Diaries believed the same thing. Check it out, and tell them what you think.

Hisui and Narutaki bring up an excellent point in that it seems as if fans (and people at large) are quick to point fingers and acknowledge the flaws of others without taking a good long look at themselves. Personally speaking, I can be just as guilty of this as anyone else.

While open-mindedness is certainly a noble trait I try to maintain and promote in others, I’m also aware that it’s extremely difficult for anyone to remain so all the time. We all have our values, and values have limits that can be crossed. When you look at the fandom, it’s easy to remember only the “yaoi paddles,” the “black-ups,” the actions that seem born out the desire to fit in and stand out simultaneously, and then lament that you are being associated with these people. You do not want shame by association.

The desire to not seem inferior in the eyes of others is not exclusive to otaku or geeks, but I think it’s particularly interesting among nerdish hobbyists because of how those who have been shunned tend to turn around and draw their own lines in the sand. Whether it’s gamers at WCG USA 2009 refusing to acknowledge that their national finals took place at an anime convention, or a fan’s desire to not be associated with lolicon getting so extreme that they lash out at any modicum of fanservice real or otherwise, we get to see nerds condemn other nerds for the sake of appearing more legitimate. Even the fact that the definitions of nerd, geek, and otaku are argued about with some regularity are indicative of this tendency to want to stand out while also fitting in. Is any of this all that different from the glompers and /b/tards?

The reason that we as fans can get so incensed about our fandom is that we place so much of our emotions into our hobby. Whether we’re overly cynical or too forgiving, we at some point decided that discussing and arguing about anime, manga, and the people who love them has been a fight worth fighting. Those who actively try to separate themselves from the riff-raff are perhaps the most guilty of all.

I think the most important realization to make is that we’re all works in progress, we can all stand for some improvement, and we all often confuse “improvement” with “further mistakes.” Do not condemn the fandom as a whole, but do not go against your own values. Do not ignore your own mistakes, but do not look down upon yourself for being flawed.

Through all this, one thing remains true: No one wants to be truly alone. Even the most arrogant, the most self-centered, and the most unsociable people in the world would still jump at the chance to have someone out there who truly understands them and makes them feel good to be themselves.

What is Kuronuma Sawako’s Favorite American Football Team?

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