Anne of Green Gables: It’s the most wonderful story of an orphaned girl whose life is changed when she is adopted and gets to live on a beautiful farm with birds singing and glorious trees full of splendid color and she meets a girl and they become best friends. Ah, how I wish I could be her! Why, everyday I would

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World Masterpiece Theater is a very long-running series in Japan, where famous stories from around the world are adapted into television anime series. Even today new series are running under the World Masterpiece Theater banner, and in practically every case it’s produced a series loved by many and considered to be of the finest quality in Japanese animation. One particularly exceptional series comes to us from 1979: Anne of Green Gables. Adapted from the novel of the same title by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, or “Akage no Anne” as it’s called in Japan, is the story of a young orphan named Anne Shirley and the positive impact she makes upon the life of a pair of elderly siblings, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, as well as the little Canadian town of Avonlea in which they live.

Now, I’ve never read any of the novels and never really planned to, but two factors piqued my interest enough to watch the anime. First was the fact that it is so well-regarded in Japan, and second was that it bears one of the more remarkable pedigrees in anime history. The director and first layout artist for Anne are two names you might recognize: Takahata Isao and Miyazaki Hayao. They are the two men who would a few years later found Studio Ghibli, perhaps the most respected and highly acclaimed Japanese animation studio of all time. Also on board were Kondou Yoshifumi on character designs and Sakurai Michiyo, who would take over from Miyazaki on layout. The two would go on to do key animation for various Ghibli titles such as Kiki’s Delivery Service and Porco Rosso (Yoshifumi), Castle in the Sky Laputa (Sakurai), and even direct for Ghibli (Yoshifumi on Whisper of the Heart). Both also did key animation for Grave of the Fireflies. Simply put, this show did not suffer from a lack of talent.

While this was not the first time the duo of Takahata and Miyazaki had worked together, nor was it the first time they had done any World Masterpiece titles, Anne of Green Gables is one of the best examples of what they were able to accomplish. Anne of Green Gables takes full advantage of its fairly episodic format by making each and every episode a joy to watch either on its own or in large chunks of multiple episodes. It makes the show approachable at any stage, and the show becomes a pleasant yet compelling experience, especially when you factor in Anne Shirley herself. Anne, who introduces herself as “Anne with an E but I’d rather be called Cordelia,” is a shining example of a main character who just carries a story. All of the other characters are good too, mind you, from Anne’s best friend Diana to the rascally Gilbert Blythe, but her name’s in the title for a reason.

Anne’s most endearing trait is probably her tendency to get caught up in her own imagination. When combined with her love of storytelling, it results in seemingly endless declarations of love and hate, with flares of drama or comedy or passion depending on how she’s feeling and where her sentence construction is taking her. Anne is never satisfied with a simple story, and will turn even simple lies into elaborate tales just to fulfill her sense of the dramatic. Give her one episode and you’ll be likely be drawn into her world.

Anne of Green Gables is not only one of the most beloved novels of all time but also one of the most beloved anime of all time. Just this very year, the prequel novel Before Green Gables was adapted into a currently-running TV series to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the original anime. 30 years is a long time, but Anne of Green Gables has aged very gracefully. Kannagi director Yamamoto Yutaka said at one of his Otakon 2009 panels that he considers Anne to be the best example of how to do a long television anime series, and while I cannot say it is the best, it certainly sets a good precedent. In fact, my only real regret with this series is that we are no longer able to see Miyazaki and Takahata use their talents on television series, as they’ve moved on to feature films and almost nothing else.

Anne of Green Gables has a level of quality and accessibility that few anime can live up to, and just as the original novel still carries relevance today, so too does Akage no Anne.

Bokura no Garadoubla

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One of the most amazing and shocking reveals in the world of giant robot villainy was the discovery that Mazinger Z’s infamous first two adversaries, Garada K7 and Doublas M2, were actually once a single sentient entity known as Garadoubla. Garadoubla turns out to be a heroic figure to the Mycenae and also a warrior of honor and pride (and also three heads). In fact, he was so beloved that they referred to him as the Hero Garadoubla. Thanks to extensive research, I have unraveled more information on this god of the Mycenae.

Archaeological evidence shows that Garadoubla was to the Mycenaeans what Mazinger Z is to the modern Japanese. Children would play with clay dolls fashioned after Garadoubla’s visage. Musicians would sing about the strength, size, and reliability of Garadoubla when he unites the power of justice, love, and friendship. The most famous of the songs celebrating Garadoubla began with the following opening chorus:

Ga Ra Ra! Ga Ra Ra! Garadoubla! Ga Ra Ra! Ga Ra Ra Ra Garadoubla!

According to records, the heroic tales of Garadoubla, the honorable warrior of the Mycenae, were recorded on ancient illustrated stone tablets by a well-regarded artisan known as Gonagacles. Sadly most of his work was destroyed in the great fire that exterminated the Mycenae Empire, but the memories of his adventures would remain in the Greek consciousness and would eventually be retold as Garadoubkaisar and Etumos Garadoubla.

Tomino vs Imagawa, NYC vs Atlanta

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Anime Weekend Atlanta has announced that one of their guests of honor will be Imagawa Yasuhiro, acclaimed director of the Giant Robo OVA and the currently-running Shin Mazinger TV series. AWA is running this year from September 18-20.

Meanwhile, New York Anime Festival, running September 25-27, has already announced famed Gundam creator and director Tomino Yoshiyuki as its guest of honor. If you’re a fan of giant robots and you don’t have the time or resources to go to both, this can be a very painful decision to make.

To help you with your dilemma, try asking yourself the following two questions.

Question 1: Do you love Gundam?

Question 2: Do you love G Gundam even more?

I Am/Am Not an Otaku: The Reverse Thieves’ Otaku Diaries and the Definition of Otaku

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After an initial introduction of the demographics of those who chose to partake in the Otaku Diaries, the Reverse Thieves have released the second part of their study. This time around, the discussion centers around the word “otaku” and what it means to anime fans.

A large number of their results showed that many anime fans consider the word “otaku” to have negative connotations and may even be upset if someone referred to them as an otaku. It is, in other words, an insult. Sometimes, the negative connotations come from wanting to distance oneself from the “other” anime fans, e.g. socially inept naruto fans, and other times they stem from wanting to use the word as the Japanese use it. Of course, I can’t be the only one to see the irony in a person denying that they’re an otaku while also championing the true, JAPANESE definition of the word, or at least their interpretation of the Japanese definition.

I remember years ago when I was part of a Pokemon community on the internet (the Team Rocket Headquarters if you want to know), where one of the site owners got very upset whenever someone called him an otaku, insisting that the term was in reality extremely derogatory and that it should only be used for the most extreme cases of anime fandom. It was around that time that I began developing my hypothesis on the Path of  Otaku Self-Acceptance, or the path the typical anime fan takes when confronted with the term “otaku.”

Phase 1) I Want to Be an Otaku!

This phase is usually the first one that new anime fans feel. Anime is fresh and exciting, and they want to see more and more of it. They consider the status of “otaku” to be a goal to strive for. However, if they start to sour towards the anime community they may enter…

Phase 2) Don’t Call Me an Otaku!

This is the point at which you find many of the subjects of the Otaku Diaries, as well as many anime fans you know. Sometimes they genuinely are just not that into anime and don’t want to be considered hardcore fans, but often times you see that many of the people who fall into this category are simply in denial. They hide their anime fandom from others as hard as they can, and they will put on airs so that no one can discover their terrible, terrible secret. Eventually, some of them pretend not to be otaku so hard that they permanently make the switch. Others, however, may grow tired of the charade and come to acceptance. That is what leads them to…

Phase 3) I am an Otaku

This is the point at which people realize that “Otaku” is just a descriptor. It is no more a self-inherent badge of shame or badge of pride than any other part of a person’s life, like saying “I am short” or “I work in construction.” It’s where I hope to see more anime fans, and I believe it’s the key to becoming true to oneself, provided you actually are an otaku.

I am an Otaku. Are you?

Another Legend is Born

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Ninja Warrior’s Subtitles

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“Ninja Warrior” and “Women of Ninja Warrior” known in Japan as “Sasuke” and “Kunoichi” respectively, are competition shows taken from Japan where men and women compete to complete increasingly difficult obstacle courses to prove their ninja prowess. And as anyone who’s seen these shows on G4 in America know, most of the program is Japanese language subtitled into English. For anyone who knows a bit of Japanese though, you might have noticed that the subtitles are never 100% accurate or really even 70% accurate, with parts of sentences being dropped and even entire sentences being left out entirely.

Watching subtitled anime all the time, others like me may be wondering why they do their subtitles this way, but when you realize that most viewers of G4 don’t know any Japanese and are probably not used to reading words at the bottom of the screen, their decision to simplify and omit certain parts makes a lot more sense. First, they probably don’t want the subtitles to be too distracting, and second, if you’re unfamiliar with subtitles it can be a hassle to keep up with them, especially because the Ninja Warrior announcer speaks rather quickly and will load his sentences down with humorous descriptions of the contestants. To just be able to get the gist of what’s going on is more important, especially when they want your eyes focused on the guy dressed like Amuro Ray falling into cold and muddy water.

The funny thing is that this is how subtitles used to be. If you go back and watch old movies, they had to simplify a lot so that people could keep up with them while still paying attention to the films themselves. The desire for perfectly accurate subtitles is probably a minority, especially when you realize that not very many people would even be able to notice if the translation was a little off.

My Modern Take on the Tezuka Star System

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Tezuka Osamu, the “God of Manga,” is famous for many innovations in comics and basically influencing the entirety of the manga industry we see today. His techniques for cinematic paneling, use of comics to tell long and drawn-out stories, as well as breadth and depth of topics basically helped define manga as we know it. Even the comics that tried to reject Tezuka’s methods were still a reaction to Tezuka’s work.

One technique Tezuka introduced is something referred to as Tezuka’s “Star System.” Tezuka grew up in Takarazuka, home of the Takarazuka Revue theatre where an all-female cast would give stage performances. Much like actors in a play, Tezuka’s characters would assume different-yet-similar roles across the manga he created, like Orson Welles playing Kane in Citizen Kane, Harry Lime in the Third Man, and Unicron in Transformers. However, the “Star System” concept never really caught on among anime and manga creators and remains something generally unique to Tezuka. “Generally,” I say, because I can think of at least one relatively recent example of the Star System in use.

My-HiME came out in Japan in 2004 sporting an almost all-female cast and telling a story of love and betrayal and summoning a mechanical dog to shoot ice shard bullets. Around the time it ended, there was news that a sequel was starting up, and that it would star a new main character instead of the titular Mai, pictured on the left. Instead, the protagonist would be the girl on the right, Arika, and to emphasize this point the last scene of the last episode of My-HiME shows Arika, like a hint of things to come. What people did not expect, however, was that the “sequel” to My-HiME was anything but a direct continuation of the story. Released as My-Otome (also sometimes spelled My-ZHiME), Arika’s story took place on what seemed to be alternate Earth completely different from My-HiME. Arika’s world had a sort of techno-medieval vibe, and in the story male characters were de-emphasized to an even greater extent compared to the previous series. The most interesting thing though, is that the characters of My-HiME were re-cast as new characters, similar yet different, without any explicit acknowledgement of who they were previously, not unlike actors in a new television series. Here in anime, Tezuka’s Star System manifests itself.

My-HiME’s Kuga Natsuki on the left, My-Otome’s Natsuki Kruger on the right

Anybody who sees the My series is sure to acknowledge that the show is designed to sell to a certain audience and to push figures and posters and all sorts of goodies on the demographic of guys who think anime girls are hot. Fanservice is not a stranger to My-HiME, and the re-using of characters from My-HiME in roles for My-Otome may seem like just an attempt to draw in the same audience who fell for the girls the first time. However, when you think of the characters a little less like actors and a little more like actor-idols, and incorporate the concept of (pop) idol worship, then the My-HiME Star System really shows itself as a modern, 2000s adaptation of Tezuka’s technique.

Incidentally, stars (the literal kind) are a common motif across the My series. It is the source of power for characters in My-HiME, and My-Otome was originally going to be titled “My ☆Maid” (pronounced My Star Maid). Whether this was a conscious reference or not, though, I can’t really say.

Did You Listen to Me the First Time? I Said, “Watch Shin Mazinger”

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Back when Shin Mazinger first began, I told everyone to go check it out based purely on the strength of its first episode. I assume some of you followed my advice, but there are probably many readers who were still unsure. Maybe they checked out the first episode (which acts like a final episode), and got too confused. Well, with over half of the series finished at this point I am back to tell you once again and emphatically to take some time out to watch Shin Mazinger Shougeki!! Z-Hen.

The director Imagawa, famous for Giant Robo and G Gundam, among others, does not make the story unwatchable for those who are unfamiliar with the Mazinger series of classic and pivotal giant robot anime. Every character that matters is introduced as if you’ve never seen them at all, and many of the characters weren’t even originally in the Mazinger Z manga or anime! Now, Imagawa has a tendency to pull characters from other works loosely related to the source material in question, but it’s never done in a Marvel comics kind of way where they refer you back to a previous comic book release to get all the details. No worries there.

Unlike what many would expect, there isn’t a giant robot fight scene every episode, which I know disappoints some, but know that what’s really happening is a buildup to an even better fight later on in the series. This happens again, and again, and again. On top of that, each fight is choreographed and animated surprisingly well, especially when it seems like the show was (and possibly still is) operating on a very limited budget. No matter what’s going on, you can expect a certain degree of high quality.

As for the story itself, Shin Mazinger plays out like a children’s story as one might expect based on its source material, but it’s done with a strong sense of sophistication and respect for what it means to be a children’s story, with enough twists to make it watchable for its new intended audience of older viewers. It’s not like Alan Moore who is all, “Well what if we took superheroes and made them crazy and grim and realistic?” If Imagawa were to do super hero comics, he would ask, “Well what if we took real life, and made it more like super hero comics?” That’s pretty much where Shin Mazinger comes from.

If you’re still hesitant about watching Shin Mazinger, you should maybe check out the episode reviews of it over at Subatomic Brainfreeze, as Sub is all about HYPING it up.

The Trickiness of Taste

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Discussing artistic taste is always a mine field no matter the subject, and anime and manga are no exception. People can have very different backgrounds, mindsets, and approaches to anime and manga, and when there is a rift separating two people on many levels, misunderstandings occur. When you have a common point of interest such as anime, people may feel united by that common interest only to realize (or not realize) that it is very possible for people to enjoy anime differently.

That is not to say that arguments about such topics are meaningless, even on the internet as some might claim. It is an opportunity to listen to another point of view and to learn from it with an open mind. Now, an open mind doesn’t mean that you accept everything and let your opinion be bent by every little comment by a strong-voiced individual, but what it does mean is that you engage the other person’s opinion and if they’re wrong you show why you feel they’re wrong without having it descend into a shouting match.

I think one of the main reasons internet arguments are so prone to going nowhere is that they are not based on debate, but rather pride. “I am right, you are wrong.” This happens so much that it ended up creating a countermeasure, “We’re all right, so let’s stop arguing.” One is a statement which bolsters pride, the other is a statement that preserves pride. Neither is correct, but neither is wrong, and what I feel to be the real key to enjoying art, enjoying anime and manga, is to never stand at the absolutes. You can stand very close to them, but once you arrive at an absolute, no matter how right it feels, you’ve now cut yourself off from growth and change.

I hope that more and more people will desire internet debate about their hobbies not to assert their sense of righteousness but to learn and to inform. If you liked this post, I would also recommend reading my post on the Geek Logical Fallacy, which warns of the dangers of applying a “logical” mind to everything in life.

We’ll Pull Through Somehow: Onanie Master Kurosawa

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Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: A young man is an outcast among his peers, and he spends each day barely interacting with them. When he’s alone though, his true personality emerges, and he makes grand displays of superiority, insisting that he is above everyone else.

Here’s the twist: Our intrepid hero is proving his superiority by masturbating daily in the girls’ bathroom.

And now here’s the second, vital twist: The story ends up, against all odds, actually being really good.

That is Onanie Master Kurosawa (Onanie meaning masturbation), a 4-volume doujin work which goes from being a sort of parody of Death Note and Code Geass-type manga, to a recounting of characters not unlike Anonymous messageboard posters who lash out at the world in pointless and self-destructive ways, to a stark and heartfelt look at redemption and growing up and, well, acknowledging the mistakes of your youth. Most likely what happened was that the creators, Ise Katsura and Yoko, realized that they couldn’t just keep milking the same gag (no pun intended…maybe), and that it needed something extra, something dramatic.

And the most amazing thing of all is how well the comic transitions from absurd comedy into down-to-earth drama. It’s something many a webcomic have attempted, with few ever succeeding. For one thing, Onanie Master Kurosawa transitions far better than Megatokyo did, and I suspect it might not be even be a fair comparison.

That’s not to say Onamas (as it’s called by fans) is without its faults. The transition was surprisingly good, but it did have quite a few bumps along the way, and for those who aren’t comfortable with that change in content it might not be an enjoyable read. Also the art is good but not fantastic, which when I think about it is hardly a negative, as it were. Like Megatokyo above and even parts of Nausicaa, the artwork is done primarily in pencil, which may seem sloppy.

The entire series has been scanlated, so go check it out. Raws are available as well, and if you can understand Japanese better than you can read it, the Nico Nico Douga Onanie Master Kurosawa Community has uploaded some dramatic readings.