Tag Archives: anime

New York Comic Con 2022 and the Long-Lost Hand of New York Anime Festival

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The story of New York Comic Con has long been a move increasingly towards mainstream nerd culture. But what happens when that culture changes into one where comics have ascended?

For years now, I’ve associated this convention with prestige TV shows and superhero movies above all else. Comics are still paid lip service and the Artist Alley still brings some of the biggest names you can imagine, but my attendance and attention have waned over time. Even this year, I only went one day when in the past it would have been three or four. But when I was there, I couldn’t help but notice the remnants of New York Anime Festival, once upon a time absorbed into its bigger and more popular brother we call NYCC, emerging with new life.

It would be inaccurate to treat NYCC like an anime con, but the industry presence in the Exhibition Hall was very noticeable. Big booths for Gundam, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and various anime and manga companies littered the space. And when it came to cosplay, the amount of Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, etc. was hard to ignore. There were plenty of other things (including some very excited folks in Cobra Kai uniforms eager to meet John Kreese’s actor, Martin Kove), yet it felt like Cool Japan stepped one foot out of a casket.

I have to wonder if this stems from the big boost anime and manga have gotten during the pandemic. Ever since COVID-19 forced major changes on how people live, one consequence was that people’s entertainment habits changed. Among these shifts were a massive increase in book sales, and among them graphic novels blew up. But among the boom of graphic novels, manga had ascended even further. Anime and manga are almost undeniably mainstream now (at least when it comes to certain major titles), and perhaps it’s only natural for the mainstream-chasing New York Comic Con to follow suit to some degree.

The Russian Roulette of Comedy: Mahou Shoujo? Naria Girls

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nariagirls

I love the dumb, yet incredibly clever humor of gdgd Fairies–style humor. Typically combining incredibly cheap animation with a cleverly absurd dialogue, a splash of improv comedy, and willful ignorance over their own premises, these anime always bring a smile to my face. The team behind gdgd Fairies has since gone on to do a variety of shows in that vein, including one about robot girls trying to discover humor, a Transformers series, one about personified Sega consoles, and now we have come to their most daring (and perhaps low-budget) work: Mahou Shoujo? Naria Girls.

Though technically a background story exists, it really doesn’t matter. Three young girls get magic powers to rescue a far-off magic kingdom, but it just so happens that every monster of the week’s scheme “coincidentally” resembles an improv skit like what you’d find on Whose Line Is It Anyway? It’s the kind of show where the girls transform from their school uniforms… to their school uniforms, with no discernible difference.

Unlike the other series mentioned, which are very simply animated using programs such as Miku Miku Dance and Flash, Naria Girls actually uses motion-capture, directly translating its actresses’ motions onto 3D anime-style models. Motion capture can be a finicky thing, and it can take a lot of careful work to not make character movement appear unnatural or to avoid tiny mistakes that come from trying to automate such a process. Naria Girls does not care. Its use of mocap is very rudimentary and constantly exposes its flaws, but then I think that blatant disregard for what is supposed to be a “professional quality work” is what makes the show kind of charming in the first place.

The other appealing quality of the series, though I must warn that it is paradoxically what makes it difficult to watch as well, is that it takes the improv element of the gdgd Fairies-style show to the extreme. If Seha Girls is one end of the spectrum, where all the jokes are scripted and planned out, then Naria Girls is the opposite. From start to finish through each 8-minute episode, all of the jokes are clearly made up on the spot. If that wasn’t enough, the show was revealed in June for a July broadcast, and they were still auditioning for cast members.

The result is that the show can be funny, but often times isn’t, namely because the actresses themselves are not particularly good at improvising. Even eight minutes is hard to maintain if the comedians themselves aren’t experts at it. However, the Russian Roulette element of watching Naria Girls, where you truly cannot tell if the show will be amusing from one moment to the next, is why I enjoy it. When a joke works, it’s a cause for celebration. When a joke falls so utterly flat that it’s like humor itself has been sucked into a black hole, it somehow comes out the other side still being an interesting artifact.

Naria Girls isn’t as good as its predecessors, but it is its own exciting experiment and adventure. That’s why I’m on board.

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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.

DEFEATED

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