Tag Archives: reverse thieves

Robot Cops Are Cool Dudes: Ogiue Maniax on the J-Decker Episode of Podlabor

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I was recently on the Podlabor podcast, where host Patz, fellow guest Narutaki from the Reverse Thieves and the Speakeasy, and I discussed the 90s super robot anime, Brave Police J-Decker. For those unfamiliar with the series, it’s from the same franchise as the more well-known Gaogaigar, and features giant robots who are also detectives. If that didn’t scare you off, have a listen, and if it did, you might be surprised to find out how much heart J-Decker has.

We also discuss a bit about Otakon, which is this weekend.

Podlabor Episode 6: Brave Up J-Decker

On Strong Female Characters, Again

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Occasionally people say that anime and manga have a dearth of strong female characters, that they are relegated to supporting roles where they must step aside for the male leads. But while such characters do exist, to think that they are the majority of female characters in anime and manga betrays a myopic view of anime and manga fueled primarily by titles designed for guys looking for some kind of power fantasy.

I recently began reading Attack No. 1, a 60s shoujo manga about volleyball and one of the most famous sports manga series ever. Being a 60s title and well before the advent of the Showa 24 Group, I somewhat expected the main heroine Kozue to be demure and dainty and in need of a strong man, but I was proven completely wrong. That part in the anime’s opening where Kozue goes, “But I shed tears. I’m a girl, after all?” That is a complete diversion from what she really is.

In the first few chapters, Kozue is a transfer student who antagonizes the teacher by sleeping through classes, then goes up to the girls’ volleyball team and accuses them of not truly understanding volleyball. She then makes a bet that she can beat their trained team using just a ragtag bunch of complete beginners, and then in order to achieve her goal trains her erstwhile teammates so hard that they collapse from exhaustion repeatedly.

Everyone talks about how Hagio Moto and her comrades revolutionized shoujo manga, and they surely did, but going back even to the prior decade we can see a heroine who shows strength, both inner and outer. And as you continue along throughout the decades, you can see more and more examples. Don’t let the popularity of certain titles and genres blind you.

But I also realize that it’s very easy to call just about any female character a “strong one,” particularly when they are designed to be badass action heroes. These fall into two dangerous categories, the first being the “action damsel,” where a girl is a strong and capable fighter up until the point that she gets kidnapped and needs a man, and the second being the “man in a woman suit,” as Hisui from the Speakeasy Podcast so put it. The issue with the former is that it tends to undercut all of the development a female character might have, while the problem with the latter is that it pushes a very specific idea of what it means to be “strong.”

In the same podcast, Hisui also says that his problem with the “man in a woman suit” is that it is essentially a shortcut to actual well-developed character portrayal, and that it is pretty much shallow. I pretty much agree with Hisui on this matter, but I also want to address another great danger that comes from associating the idea of “strong female characters” with “tough action hero,” and that is that it implies that the only way for a female character to be strong is to be “like a guy,” or to put it more broadly, that the only way is through physical strength and hardened grit and determination.

Think about that for a moment. It’s bad enough that we define male strength through physical prowess, but to also try to group women in there as well is a grave mistake. Putting characters and fiction aside for a moment, true strength comes from within, it is not something measured simply through muscles and athletic ability. While a person who is physically strong, male or female, can also be strong inside, the former without the latter is an empty shell. Though I know that Hokuto no Ken isn’t the best example of strong female characters, as most of them are there to just stand aside at let men fight men, I think of the little girl whom Kenshiro rescues early on, Rin.

In one chapter, Rin is kidnapped by a gang of misshapen thugs who have terrorized an entire village. In order to oppress the villagers, the gang ruthlessly forces them to walk on a pit of fire, with many casualties naturally resulting. The villagers are gripped with fear, but when it’s Rin’s turn to walk the coals, she remembers Kenshiro’s words, that she cannot give in to fear, that she cannot let them win. Rin willingly walks towards the flames, head held high, and in doing so shames the villagers. If such a little girl has the spirit to fight back, what does that say about all of the full-grown men who cowered in the shadows?

Then Rin eventually becomes some kind of damsel-in-distress and there’s a whole marrying Rin arc when she gets older, but I chalk that up more to the second part of Hokuto no Ken being terrible overall than anything else. But there it is, even in Shounen Jump you can find a display of great inner strength in a female character, albeit temporarily.

One more time, I want to state that strong female characters in anime and manga definitely do exist and in large numbers. If asked, I can even start listing them off, but the important thing to take away here is that you simply have to look in the right places with the right mindset.

The End of the Otaku Diaries, the Beginning of More?

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In their concluding post of the Otaku Diaries, Hisui and Narutaki of the Reverse Thieves reflect back on their experiment: the ups, the downs, what could have been done differently, what they learned, and what they’d hope to learn in the future should they take up the task again. I hope to see them take a swing at it at least one more time, but that’s up to them.

One of the really remarkable things about the Otaku Diaries was that it was a concerted effort by the Reverse Thieves to learn about their fellow fans, and to do so by collecting information in a structured manner. With anime blogging (or hell, writing blogging in general), it’s very easy to play fast and loose with facts and data, and to write based primarily on feel (I am guilty of doing both), so it gives me a degree of joy to see bloggers who actually want to discover more about their peers instead of pigeon-holing them in stereotypes or talking in too-broad strokes. The project wasn’t perfect, as they’d themselved admit, but it opened up new possibilities.

Obviously I’m not telling people they can only write about anime and fandom once they’ve gathered enough information on the subject, but I’d like to see others encouraged to try similar endeavors, to really reach out and try to learn about your comrades-in-arms. I could stand to do more of that myself.

On a final note, I think they’re onto something with the idea of interviewing people over Skype instead of simply writing surveys. Provided they can make the conversation easy-going (and I know they can), it would allow a lot more otaku to open up, and would also make the conversation more free-flowing.

The Bishounen and the Trap

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The Speakeasy Podcast recently released their 4th episode, wherein they talk about the “bishounen,” and all of the celebration and agony that comes from putting some eye candy for girls into anime that are traditionally considered “for guys.”

For those unfamiliar, the term bishounen literally means “beautiful boy,” and refers to characters in manga, especially shoujo manga, who are beautiful and effeminate. In being pretty, bishounen in turn violate the unwritten rules of Acceptable Beauty in a Man, where guys are allowed to look good, but only in a way that reaffirms heterosexuality by having them conform to the male view of what a lady killer is supposed to look like.

Simply put, bishounen threaten masculinity and make guys uncomfortable. But the “threat” of bishounen isn’t simply in their looks, but in their very presence, and to get to the real heart of the problem, we have to take a look at a very similar concept which also holds some very profound differences: the trap.

The origin of the term “trap,” as it’s used by English-speaking anime fans, refers to the idea that a male viewer is “tricked” into being attracted to what he thinks is a very attractive lady, only to find out that the character actually has a Y-chromosome. In some cases, it works so effectively that some will say that liking traps is still not considered “gay,” because the character is so effeminate that all they’re doing is appealing to a heterosexual man’s natural desires using the power of artistic expression.

Now what’s really interesting is that in some cases you’ll find examples of guys who love traps but hate bishounen. At first, it can appear to be a contradiction, but there’s a fundamental difference at work here: bishounen are designed to appeal to girls, while traps are designed to appeal to guys.

Of course I’m aware that there are plenty of guys who decry the presence of traps just as much as they do bishounen, guys who believe that both the moe fan and the fujoshi are killing anime. But I really believe that the thin line between bishounen and trap reveals the truth, and that it all comes down to fear.

Guys who lament the presence of bishounen are not as threatened by their good looks as they are the idea that the presence of bishounen means that guy-oriented anime will suffer in some capacity. When the bishounen talks, this is what they hear coming out of their mouths.

“These character designs are not for you.”

“We’re doing things to actively appeal to people that aren’t you.”

It’s the fear that girls will latch onto a show just for the hot guys and will ignore all of the deep and wonderful story that’s actually there and will refer to the guys as “bishies” and debate the degree to which they would “glomp” them. It’s the fear that anime which would have had excellent story and setting might end up being aborted half-way and turned into a hideous carbunkle that sacrificed its potential for greatness for scenes involving with male beauty, angst, and sparkling moonlight.

The truth of this matter is actually stated in the Speakeasy podcast: anime, in some capacity has always made attempts to appeal to girls, even in that most manly of genres, the giant robot anime. The original fans of Mobile Suit Gundam were actually mostly female. UFO Robo Grendizer found a female fanbase as well, because of some of the romance elements in the story, as well as the presence of strong female characters. Even Gowapper 5 Godam tried to appeal to girls by being the first giant robot series to have a girl as the main character. They may have been a secondary audience to the boys buying action figures, but when it comes down to it, what’s wrong with having an audience that’s 50% female?

The Otaku Diaries Hint at the Secretive Triumvirate of Hugpillow Enthusiasts

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Now that the Otaku Diaries main events are over, the Reverse Thieves have seen it fit to hit us with all sorts of tidbits, from the number of people who were officers in anime clubs (13) to the number of man-crushes on Daryl Surat (greater than 0) to the number of people who own hugpillows.

Some of the trivia also sounds like it came straight out of anime. And assuming that everyone told the truth as they were expected to, that’s amazing. For example, the person who broke up with his girlfriend after canceling a date to watch Yu Yu Hakusho reminds me of a manga, Fujoshi no Honkai, where a closet fujoshi breaks up with her boyfriend by telling him that she’s “spending time with another man,” when in reality she bought a cake to celebrate the birthday of her favorite character. And when you realize that something like a manga based on the daily lives of otaku is trying to mirror the reality of the fandom, it’s almost like the beast feeding itself.

But really, looking at this trivia hodgepodge, I think it hits me harder than any of the previous Otaku Diaries posts just how similar/dissimilar we all are as fans of anime and manga. We are all united under the banner of Japanese comics and cartoons, but that sturdy felt cloth hanging high above us belies the sheer variety of places we come from. Gone are the days that anime fans all came from a single nerdy source of science fiction fandom or from watching the Pokemon on the TV. And though I use the term “anime fan” to encompass both those who watch anime and those who read manga, there are even people who almost exclusively focus on one or the other. All of it is surprising and yet none of it is.

The Otaku Diaries Look at the FUTURE OF ANIME!!!

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In what is going to be (at least for now) the last major article of the Otaku Diaries, the Reverse Thieves reveal how at least some fans view the future of Japanese Animation.

When it comes to understanding the path anime will take, I think it’s important to look back at its past, though without being confined by it. But then I’ve already addressed that to a large extent through my 2000-2009 series, where I first looked at the past decade and then gave some ideas of where I think anime will go and where I want it to go.

Instead, what really fascinated me about this Otaku Diaries post was the fundamental idea of how your current mindset about anime goes a long way in determining how you regard its future well-being. Do you think anime is “dying?” If so, are you still optimistic about its future? The sample size, as they’re quick to admit, is not a particularly huge one, but it still provides an interesting variety, and it doesn’t make the fact that every single person said that they’d still be watching anime in 10 years, or at least hoped they’d be able to.

Another area of interest that comes out of all of this is the idea that a lot of relatively newer fans don’t mature their anime fandom but simply grow out of it. I have no idea how prevalent this actually is, but the idea is that once they leave high school or college, they leave behind all the shows they watched and move onto other media. I’ve seen it happen on occasion; the person who once loved anime has moved onto live action shows a la House and Heroes, as they offer something “more” than what anime has, or at least what they perceive anime as having.

Anime and especially manga have a fantastic range of stories to tell and decades of history. They can be mature, they can be childish, they can be sexually offensive, they can be enlightening, and sometimes they can be all of those things at once. If you’re a regular reader of Ogiue Maniax, then I hope that I’ve been able to convey that idea to you. But apparently this idea doesn’t reach everyone. Sure, it’s obvious why it doesn’t reach the people who see anime as nothing but tits and/or toons and who don’t understand why we take our hobby seriously, but it does seem somewhat odd that the people who get into anime are able to shed it just as easily.

Or maybe it isn’t odd at all. Maybe, as anime has become more well-known to people and as kids have grown up on the stuff, it just becomes yet another thing they feel they have to shed as they grow older and more “mature,” the process we all go through when we’re trying to reach that realm we call adulthood. In that respect, it is us nerds who are the real anomalies, those of us who can loyally stick to our beloved medium and have enough passion to defend it or decry its flaws.

The Otaku Diaries and the Social Otaku

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February’s Otaku Diaries entry over at Reverse Thieves explores otaku and socialization in all its forms, whether it be hanging with friends after school or work, or chatting with them online. It should be no surprise that the friends otaku tend to find online are fellow otaku; after all, you don’t “bump into” people on the internet, but rather typically seek out like-minded people, or at the very least ones who can understand your interests.

I still remember the first time I had access to real (non-AOL) internet. The first thing I did? Look for websites about my favorite video game, NiGHTS into dreams… I always figured that I was the one and only fan of SEGA’s greatest game, so imagine my pleasant surprise when I found out there was an entire online community devoted to NiGHTS. Of course I joined, and it provided me some great memories (as well as some drama, which was perhaps inevitable). Memories are mainly what they are though, as I don’t really keep up with anyone from that period in my internet life. Still, I remember the joy of being able to actually talk to fellow fans from all around the world and revel in our mutual love of purple flying jesters. It reminds me of when I first started using e-mail, when I was so excited to use it that every night I would write up a bunch of thoughts and send them to friends and acquaintances and classmates.

Some might argue that the fact that online friendships tend to start from just liking the same thing makes them particularly flimsy , while others might give the counterpoint that sharing that common ground can make online friends as close if not closer than “real world” friends, especially if those internet buddies are more comfortable opening themselves up through chatting than through speaking. Of course, the line blurs when online friends meet in real life, or close real life friends interact mainly online, and evidently blurring lines are getting more and more commonplace. Personally, I’ve met some of my closest friends from online, and I have friends dear to me that I’ve met in the real world too. At that point, the internet is mainly a tool and it’s up to the person how they use it, whether it becomes a way of connecting with others, or a method of disguise and insulation.

I’d like to make an aside at this point and clarify something I said in the Otaku Diaries response I made about relationships. There I said that sharing a hobby makes for a “weak and flimsy foundation” for a relationship, and some took it as me saying that finding someone because you both like anime is no good. What I really meant was that I think sharing a hobby makes for an excellent starting point, and even provides some mutual understanding, but that it cannot be the cornerstone of a relationship, which is instead built on trust and compassion for each other. I hope that clears everything up.

Now another interesting point that came up is the question of whether or not the participants had ever tried to bring others into anime, and the response was for the most part a resounding “yes.” This I think links directly into that desire of wanting people with whom you can share your hobby. What’s more intriguing, however, is a comment someone made.

Is it really right to assume that 75% of respondents actively trying to draw in new anime viewers is a good thing?

What we have here is the idea that bringing in new anime fans to the fold might be a mistake. Think about that: once upon a time everyone would have agreed that trying to draw in new anime viewers was a good thing, even if fans might not agree on who they thought was good to draw in. I think that the very idea that the desire to introduce others to anime might somehow  be detrimental to anime and its fandom speaks volumes about where we are at the moment, this state of being more widely accepted and yet still very much niche, even if it’s just one person’s opinion.

Is it really right to assume that 75% of respondents actively trying to draw in new anime viewers is a good thing?

OEL Screentone Revelations!

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Long before Tokyopop started pushing the concept of “Original English Language Manga,” or “OEL” for short, something about western attempts at creating “manga” really bothered me, and not for any philosophical reasons. Something always felt off about the artwork, and I just couldn’t pinpoint why. Initially, I thought that it might be because the artists had no idea how to  draw “manga characters,” but I realized that couldn’t be the case, because 100 people drawing big eyes and small mouths “incorrectly,” so to speak, should result in 100 different ways to look not-quite-right. No, the thing that bothered me was something more consistent across the idea of “OEL” before it was called OEL. It had to be a shared trait.

Then last year while looking at OEL, something hit me: for some reason I was being bothered by the screentones. Again however, I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. I just knew it was something having to do with screentones. In fact, the initial draft of this post is from May of 2009, where the only contents of it was the title of the post, which read “BAD SCREENTONES.”

Finally though, through the keen of eye of the Reverse Thief Narutaki, my suspicions have been confirmed, and I now fully understand why OEL screentones had been bothering me so. I really recommend you read the article, but for the sake of summary: According to Narutaki, in manga, screentone is generally used for patterns or to pull elements into the background of a panel with shading primarily done in ink, but in OEL screentone is more often used for shading and used to excess, which ends up flattening the image.

I feel so relieved!

But this information brought with it a new question: Why is it, if OEL is trying to be like manga (which we all know it is), that it does something that manga almost never does, i.e. use screentone to shade to excess? There are very few examples from manga that would fuel this mass assumption on the part of these artists, after all.

That lead to another revelation: maybe the source of this trend wasn’t “manga” at all, but something closely related. Anime!

Anime is where you will find manga-style characters with some degree of shading, even if it’s a single tone to show a simple fold in their clothing. I can only conclude that the reason OEL shading looks the way it does is because the artists were influenced by the shading methods seen in animation, and then applied these methods to manga where they are in actuality quite foreign despite the fact that anime and manga are so closely related.


Ogiue Chika RANDOM STRANGER AT A DOUJIN EVENT

This is no surprise to me, as anime and manga are often spoken of in the same breath. Heck, I’m no exception, and you will often see me choosing one word or the other when referring to both, as after a while it gets irritating to write “anime and manga” every time instead of just “anime.” Still, it is a very good reminder that as similar as anime and manga are, they also possess a number of unique differences beyond the fact that one is animated and the other is not.

Ed Chavez Double Feature (Neither Feature by Me): Interview + Vertical Vednesday

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Ed Chavez has announced a new Vertical Vednesday set for this Wednesday, January 13 at Kinokuniya NYC’s Cafe Zaiya (6th ave between 40th and 41st sts in Manhattan), where he will be discussing a new Tezuka title acquisition by Vertical Inc (publishers of To Terra and the upcoming Chi’s Sweet Home), as well as the state of the industry as the new year unfolds.

Now normally I would be telling you about how insightful Ed Chavez is in regards to the manga industry without actually being able to give you examples, but luckily for all of us the Reverse Thieves posted their interview with the man today, and you will get to see how his mind works. Among the topics are Chi’s Sweet Home, the pros and cons of flipping manga, and the nature of translation itself. It’s a really good interview that I recommend everyone read. It’s also quite long, so get comfortable before you start delving into his mind.

“Otaku Couples: Threat or Menace?” The Otaku Diaries and Relationships

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In Part 7 of the Otaku Diaries, the Reverse Thieves tackle dating and relationships, topics that are stereotypically divorced from anime fandom and geekdom in general.

One of the questions asked of its participants was how necessary it was for the people they date to like anime, and the majority said that they would at least see it as a plus, while no one said it would detract from the dating experience. I’ve seen anime fans online talk about how they would never date another anime fan, that stance is usually born out of the idea that being an anime fan entails being host to a variety of negative traits that don’t necessarily have to do with anime. They’ve just created an image in their heads that otaku are physically unappealing, loud, obnoxious, and simply unattractive. However, rarely does it have to do with the actual love of anime. In the end, who wouldn’t a companion with whom you could comfortably share your hobbies and passions if even a little? Japanese has a term for an otaku relationship: “otaple,” or “otaku couple.”

One thing that I want to take into consideration is the history of anime fandom in the west, particularly the fact that in the earlier days of anime fandom in the US, anime was primarily a men’s club, and the idea of girls being into anime and manga in large enough amounts that guys could find a girl to share in their love of anime was a far-off dream. This is a typical scenario for pretty much any sort of geekish hobby. And then people discovered that girls were capable of enjoying comics, and we got to see the reaction that happens any time a new group enters an existing fandom, whether it’s girls coming into anime, new people on an internet forum, or those rascally Star Wars fans entering the established world of science fiction: “They’re liking my hobby, but not the way I expected/wanted them to!” It’s possible at that point to wake up from the dream disgusted, but it’s also possible to see opportunity. Of course we are about a decade removed from that initial occurrence, but it still happens time after time, when the image we’ve built up in our heads does not match the reality.

In the eyes of anime fans the otaple status can be considered a Holy Grail or a Pandora’s Box, and from what I’ve seen it largely has to do with how they view the concept of the otaku relationship. Getting together with someone just because you share a hobby makes for a weak and flimsy foundation for a relationship. This is the source of the more negative view of otaku relationships, the idea that you ignore the flaws of the other just because they “like anime,” even when you are not actually happy about it. But when mutual love of anime is a vehicle for connecting on a deeper level, when it is used to support the foundation without being the foundation, that is when the otaple succeeds.