From Internet to TV: Tonari no 801-chan Anime Announced

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Many doujin artists these days end up publishing professional manga, but what we don’t see often is a webcomic reaching that kind of notoriety. Tonari no 801-chan (The 801 by My Side) has managed to achieve such a position, starting off as a humble comic on an artist’s blog and turning into a variety of media, the most recent being an anime to debut in 2009.

Tonari no 801-chan, the tale of an adult fujoshi named, of all things, Yaoi in an otaple relationship whose boys-love-loving side manifests itself as a furry little creature called 801 (801 can be pronounced as “yaoi” hence the joke). I was referred to it by kransom in the past but never took a good look at it until recently.

The very first comic involves the very normal Yaoi transforming into 801 and citing almost word for word Ohno’s famous line from Volume 4 of Genshiken:”There’s no such thing as a girl who hates homos.”

I think I’ll be sticking with this one, and I’ll be looking forward to the anime next year.

Xam it all to hell

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As you might know, I have been looking forward to Bounen no Xamdou, now known as “Xam’d: Lost Memories,” ever since it was announced. I’m a big fan of Eureka Seven to the extent that I bought all the DVDs individually as special editions (when those editions were available) as a show of support, and I expect good things out of the show.

I was surprised when I found out that BONES is doing a legitimate and subbed worldwide release. “This is a good thing,” I thought. The only problem is that it is a pain in the ass.

The only way to get the episodes legit is to download them from the Playstation Network. That is to say, you have to spend $400-$600 on a Playstation 3 before you can actually download the episodes at $3 US per episode.

C’mon, man. I want to give you money but you’re just making it difficult.

Depending on how things go, I might heed OGT‘s suggestion and simply pay for the episodes legitimately but download the torrents anyway. Either that, or I’ll have to wait for the DVDs.

Oh, and to get it out of my system, here’s some additional puns.

Xam’bot 3
Sha-Xam’d

Okay, I’m done.

The Fujoshi Files 6: Fujiyoshi Harumi

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Name: Fujiyoshi, Harumi (藤吉晴美)
Alias: N/A
Relationship Status: Single
Origin: Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

Information:
Fujiyoshi Harumi is a second-year (11th grade) high school student and the only fujoshi in her class at a school whose company-sponsored name changes every week. Although she is comfortable enough with her fujocity that the other students are aware of her hobby, Fujiyoshi is still somewhat afraid of showing others her yaoi doujinshi manuscripts. Fujiyoshi is a talented artist and regular participant at Comic Market, and her doujinshi range from Gundam SEED to Pretty Cure.

Fujiyoshi often has problems distinguishing conventional thinking from her own personal opinions, even among fujoshi. Fujiyoshi will also often draw very unconventional pairings, though she is also a fan of more popular pairings and even a few male-female ones. Unlike many fujoshi, Fujiyoshi is surprisingly athletic.

Fujiyoshi’s name is a pun on the word “fujoshi” itself. Harumi is the name of a former location of Comic Market.

Fujoshi Level:
While Fujiyoshi’s talent at sports may seemingly contradict her status as a fujoshi, it is actually the best indication of that status. Fujiyoshi’s athleticism is the result of pushing herself past her own limits while enduring Comic Market and other doujin events for long hours. This makeshift exercise, powered by her desire for yaoi doujinshi, improves her physical stamina, strength, and speed, making her able to do even more at future events. Her devotion to doujinshi has resulted in Harumi being fujoshi in both mind and body.

Suddenly, Eureka

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Manly Slice of Life

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Why should slice of life be purely the realm of cute girls? Why can’t middle-aged men have pleasant day-to-day experiences?

Imagine, if you will, an automobile shop, run by a rough yet kind man and his friends. They’re all getting a bit old, but they would not trade their shop for anything in the world. Every day, between fixing engines and repairing brakes, they take the time to sit around at a small, rickety table discussing anything that comes to their mind. Though they may posture and ridicule each other, at the end of the day they know their friendship is stronger than anything.

It’s slow, it’s pleasant, and it’s manly.

I Can Clearly Hear It, the Galaxy’s Song: Macross Frontier 1-13

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If one were to describe a Macross series, there would be many recurring concepts: war, transforming fighter jets, idol singers, love triangles, culture. However, if one were to describe the feelings conveyed by each series, theywould be hard-pressed to find too many similarities. The original Super Dimensional Fortress Macross feels different from Macross Plus, which in turn has little in common with Macross 7 or Macross Zero thematically. They all exist in the same universe, but they could not be further from each other without turning into Gaogaigar and Betterman.

So it can be mighty confusing when I say that Macross Frontier, or at least the first half of it, feels like Macross.

Macross Frontier is the 25th anniversary celebration of Studio Nue’s Macross, and with it comes a return to the original in terms of pacing, characterization, and the specific balance of love and war and the way they intertwine. Nowhere is this more evident than in  the main love triangle of Macross Frontier.

The “love triangle” has been a constant part of Macross since day one with Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay. Still, I have always found the original love triangle to be the best because it truly seemed like a battle for the heart, a battle whose landscape is transformed radically by war and the circumstances surrounding it. Macross Plus is less about developing love and more about resolving an existing one, Macross Zero’s is wrapped in its own lore, and Macross 7’s you can hardly call a love triangle when it involves a guy who likes a girl, a girl who kind of likes both, and a guy who doesn’t care. In every case, the romantic tension is lacking, a tension which I believe factors significantly into the success of the original.

Macross Frontier’s three main characters, Saotome Alto, Sheryl Nome, and Ranka Lee, recapture that tension. Saotome Alto is an amateur fighter pilot and former theatrical actor. Sheryl Nome, the “Galactic Fairy,” is by far the biggest music idol of the day. Ranka Lee is a young girl working at a Chinese restaurant who aspires to be a pop idol. Mankind’s encounter with the Vajra, a violent alien race so powerful it can easily avoid an Itano Circus, brings Alto, Sheryl, and Ranka together and ties their destinies together.

It all sounds very familiar, but I am in no way saying that Macross Frontier is treading old ground, or that it’s some sort of lazy throwback to time immaterial (the 1980s). Already from my small and deliberately basic description, there are some things which are new and refreshing, particularly in this current age of anime. Unlike previous series, the main characters are all involved in performance in very different ways. There’s also the fact that we have not one but two idols with many years of experience of difference between them, with Sheryl being both Ranka’s surrogate mother (Ranka herself losing her parents at an early age), and her conflicted rival for the affections of Alto. Just like in the original Macross, I cannot bring myself to hate either girl or Alto, and also like in the original, I cannot seem to decide who I want to side with at the moment. I like this feeling. It’s one I’ve enjoyed before, and yet it feels so new.

Macross has always used its continuity as merely a backdrop, unlike say, Robotech, which thrives on it. However, whereas the latest incarnation of Robotech is marred by this devotion to continuity, Macross Frontier’s many, many nods to the past, a live performance of My Boyfriend is a Pilot and a car radio playing Planet Dance being just two examples, fit right in without overwhelming the viewer with backstory. History lessons are welcomed, but are not absolutely necessary, so what you end up having is a series which is progress not for the sake of progress but for making something worth watching and worth remembering.

The suspense is so great I may deculture my pants.

The Beginner’s Anime

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If people ask me what they should show to others to introduce them to anime, Slayers is usually one of my first recommendations. It was one of the first anime I was proud to own, albeit in bootleg VHS fansub form. It was Slayers, specifically Slayers Gorgeous, that I believe got me into anime fandom in a major way. Sure, I loved Voltron as a kid, and I got into Dragon Ball Z as early as 4th or 5th grade, but it was Slayers that told me that Anime is Different when I walked into my high school’s anime club. Slayers was the type of thing you could show to a large crowd and get them all into the moment no matter how much anime they’d watched, which has made me always think of Slayers as a  good Beginner’s Anime. I’m sure you can think of plenty of other titles, like Cowboy Bebop, Robotech, or Naruto.

Actually, I don’t even know if anyone else besides me uses the term “Beginner’s Anime.” Pushing aside that fact, as well as the fact that people are different from one another and that there is clearly no universally acceptable standard for introducing anime to others, the term “Beginner’s Anime” implies that there are anime out there which may be too much for initial viewers, that there is a sort of conditioning or familiarizing that must occur before a fledgling anime fan can be introduced to the Good Stuff, distributed by some shady-looking guys in trenchcoats (hands up, you know who you are) in dark areas. Is it the way stories are structured? Is it the cultural differences and symbolism, the most prominent and perhaps infamous examples being the sweatdrop and the nosebleed? Is it a matter of attention span? This could go on forever and I doubt there’s an answer.

When I examine myself, I am not the anime fan I used to be. Sure, there’s a lot of factors both inside and outside the realm of anime which have influenced me and my watching habits, not least of which are the increase in availability of anime itself and the fact that I’ve simply gotten older, but I have to wonder what could have been. What about the time period I was in? I mean, the president of the anime club at the time was so proud of owning all of Cowboy Bebop that he could not wait to show it to us. It was the very beginning of the digisub age, when Napster was picking up steam and of course buying bootleg vhs fansubs was still a viable process. What about the fact that this was an anime club, a relatively social experience? Anime clubs are a dying breed today, and having a good social experience through anime may become less and less of a requirement. I even remember that when I took over this anime club a year later after the previous president had graduated, I noticed a sudden increase in the number of girls in the anime club. And then I tried to show them Serial Experiments Lain. As it  turns out, Lain is not a very good Beginner’s Anime, at least not as a social experience.

It’d be all too easy to say that every anime is a potential Beginner’s Anime. I mean, there’s a grain of truth to it all, but that sort of open-ended statement reduces the significance of all of the factors  outside of the anime-fan-to-be and the anime being watched. There are clearly some titles that succeed more than others at bringing in new fans, and I think it deserves research.

You’ll probably be seeing this topic again.

The Legend of the Running Yuno

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As some readers might notice, I finished the original Hidamari Sketch anime only a few days ago in order to prepare myself sufficiently for the new season, Hidamari Sketch x365. It turns out that nothing would have prepared me for x365.

It is Hidamari Sketch to the extreme, but in the most soft and pleasant way possible. Because it’s Hidamari Sketch after all.

Supposedly Shinbo received huge sums of money because of the DVD sales of Hidamari Sketch (thanks Japanese otaku consumers), and with that giant pile of cash, which I assume was given to him in either some sort of non-descript briefcase or a giant sack with a prominent dollar sign, he made a money bath and rubbed it all over his body.

After those 10 hours, he went and created eye-exploding animation.

I am not kidding, if you haven’t seen the new season and you’ve watched ANY of Hidamari Sketch, I recommend checking it out.

Every time I go to watch another show I find myself gravitating towards Hidamari Sketch x365 episode 1 just to watch the animation again.

In fact, I think I’m going to do that right now.

A new legend is born, and she is…Running Yuno.

Also Sleeping Yuno and Jumping Yuno.

(Guest starring Upside-down Miyako).

You’ve got a lot to learn before you beat me. Try again, baka inu!

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YOU GET OGIUE

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