Monthly Archives: January 2011

January 10, 2011

Pimping for Haikasoru, Talking about Butt-Kicking Girls, Talking Trash on Moe

By omo

Japan loves their badass chicks. Kuudere or tsundere or just a pretty face with a good head on her shoulders, there are all types and it comes in all forms and shapes and sizes. Even if they tend to be small and yet larger than life.

So I decide to spin this essay topic out in to a blog post, partly because I don’t feel ethically 100% about applying for a freebie (dudes Viz send Jtor some review copies?), but also because I am going over 200 words. (Plus I am going to buy a copy of Mardock Scramble anyways.)

The immediate thought that came to mind is how these girl protagonists run the gamut from cardboard pinup to full-blown mind-virus that consumes the audience. It’s like Satoshi Kon’s Chiyoko, the Millennium actress herself. It’s that feeling of wonder and adoration and moe a person has with his or her idol. She is gender unspecific in a way that she both is adored but she is also a force of nature, a perfected understanding of womanhood, the ideal that is somehow also mono no aware. You can empathize with her, and you admire her because she is your better and she makes you aspire. These things are universal, not limited to a heterosexual orientation.

Chiyoko is probably simply a polished version of another SF heroine, a personal favorite: Priss literally fights with tooth and nail against the things holding her back. But more like a punk rocker than someone driven by universal love, her rebellion is one that highlights human hypocrisy and failing rather than to extol some virtue universal. To me she’s timeless, having survived the 80s, 90s and the 00s. She puts on an act, as in her music gig, but it’s just an extension of her persona.

Which is to say that is yet entirely different than, say, Harmony’s instigators, who are more victims and pawns than human beings capable of their own wills, or are they even such things to begin with? Like puppets in a puppet show, I think that is quite all right. The storyteller has a story to tell, and I paid the admission fee expecting that.

Yet different still is Ibis, who is more robot than a girl, and I mean it in gender terms. The funny thing here is exactly how Ibis (and more pertinently, Ibis’ AI friends) are of originally fancies of otaku. It is through their masters’ drive to fulfilling their wishes that they were born. (As to what I mean by this you can load up a video of Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball for an example.) They bear the shapes of the fancies and fantasies of their masters, even to their personality and desire for non-conflict (although at that point we’re talking about something more Asimov-ish, rather than late night anime or galge). Somewhere between the space, lack of a better term, from the words and ink on a page to the abstraction in the mind of the reader, we’ve inflated these simple ideas like balloons, and injected feelings as if we perceive these characters as some kind of, well, girl, or whatever. Helium or Xenon or what have you, whatever floats your pickles.

Which is still to say that there are a group of people out there, you know, that seek this feminine protagonist, that these protagonists may kick butt in more ways than one, and that is that. And that is the moe problem in a nutshell. It isn’t that these cardboard-cutout characters are deep, insightful, and reflective of the human condition, but their collective existence upon the mind of the otaku social consciousness is notable and profound. They are art imitating life imitating art, except there is no master storyteller here; there are just tens of thousands of storytellers, each seeing the scene with his or her own eyes, each telling his or her own story. It’s a metaversial harem.

Thankfully when we have few substitute for words when it comes to written prose, rather than a flash of a pair of panties or a longing look back with her long blond mane flowing in the wind, pondering about that Distant Avalon that never comes, but kinda should have already given how much money they’ve made on PVC alone. Such simple but indestructible barrier to human communication safeguards, to some extent, the ever-cheapening nature of the database animal. In as much as you can write a book about these 2D cardboard cutouts, it still stands with more dignity than an anime of the same put together. After all, a picture of a butt-kicking girl is not the same as the words “butt-kicking girl.”

[As an aside, I more or less kept my resolution in 2010 about talking about moe. I ought to continue, but it feels right to use the term here. You will have to forgive me.]

Leave a comment | posted in Bakemonogatari, Bubblegum Crisis, Millennium Actress, Modern Visual Culture, Zaregoto

January 8, 2011

Judge-By-Cover Part 2, Winter 2011

By omo

Bloggin’ for the first episodes this season. Judging books by not covers, but by their animated advertisements! And I say this in a literal sense; the light novel adaptations all seems kind of interesting…if all I had to go by are the anime. But we’re making calls on anime, so that’s the figurative judging-book-by-cover schtik that I despise so much but still have to do.

Gosick – I can’t believe I”m saying this, but I think if I dropped this show, the biggest reason would be that I didn’t like how Yuki Aoi sounded in it. I guess I have Sawashiro ingrained in my brain and her hard-edged voice just sets the bar too high for little Yuki. I’m putting this nicely, but let’s just say that she couldn’t sell Victorica for me. It all felt too artificial and I was laughing at her half the time.

On the bright side, her voice isn’t annoying and the show itself is not horrible. Mysteries are fine by me. The setting doesn’t really bother me either except I have a hard time trying to pin down the tech level. Maybe I’ll try to novels.

Freezing – It’s freezing because those guys have some power they unlock when they do something with those girls, basically. Not because Mamiko Noto plays this super-cool cool-dere who melts when the protagonist male jumps on her. When I mean super-cool, she is Terminator cool, when she literally kills off a couple dozen people. Blood and splatter and all.

I think elementally Freezing is right up my alley with near SF setting and aliens and what not. Seiyuu cast is strong, and it seems like a show that will have a real plot. Based on a Korean manga, at any rate. It might be a little too azn-cheesy, but I think I can overlook that if the story gets a grade above C- and there are surprises in the show. I suppose the fact that everyone’s got a huge rack helps, but the lead girl’s rack is just way too big.

Yumekui Merry – I like the backgrounds, but the rest I’m not sure. Reserving judgment on this. It feels like this show has a cool concept and direction if it wasn’t produced like a half-assed semi-slideshow. Tug of war between good and bad elements ensues over my continuing patronage.

Infinte Stratos – I don’t enjoy the way the guy puts down the girls, but it is entertaining to see how this show so teeters over the edge of the abyss of trash, and makes me appreciate better anime (Star Driver, for example). I don’t think IS is a bad show, though; it’s a game of expectations. And I didn’t expect much besides cool mecha combat. I got funnels from episode 1, so I really can’t ask for a lot more, especially so early in the game. If I had to liken it to a crap anime from the near past, it would be favorably compared to Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou, especially with Hiyocchi playing lead chick again and its light novel origin.

Rio – Rainbow Gate – I think Freezing might take over that role this season. Especially if Marinajou gets more lines. She’s got a lot in episode 1. Of course Rio is all Marina Inoue so there is no way we’ll get a shortage of her if we all watched this show. Honestly it was better than I expected, but the last pachinko tie-in I saw was WAY better than I expected, so I’m not sure if this matches up. I did expect T&A, and I got those. I didn’t expect someone out of pages of One Piece, but hey, it ain’t all bad. I definitely didn’t expect the metaphorical card battle sequence, and I guess that’s as far as it goes. Some say it’s so bad that it’s good, I don’t think it’s that bad for me, which is too bad for Rio.

Wolverine – Welcome to Tokyo, Logan. Yeah. Well, Logan is one of the most popular, if not the most popular Marvel character for a reason, and this anime shell works just fine on the weeaboo-y old man/mascot. Fans of Wolverine probably should check it out. While it was nice to hear Fumiko Orikasa for once, I’ll pass.

Leave a comment | posted in Modern Visual Culture

January 7, 2011

Madafuq Magica, or How I Want to Rewatch Soul Taker

By omo

I really like the out-of-box display of magic power in Madoka Magica so far, because it is a solid example of when visuals take care of narrative, and says so itself. It takes risks (though one might say that risk is largely mitigated by Shinbo’s reputation…if you don’t get what I mean by this you can ask me) but it is inventive. But I had to react like this.

The one thing that always made Soul Taker something I look back to is how it incorporates direction as a way to express the story, as a part of the narrative. I can see the same thing in Madoka. I don’t even care too much about the harem of beautiful girls in Soul Taker (and it seems nobody ever talks about it). Which is okay when the story in Soul Taker is like your usual, Casshern-esqe, fighting shounen manga. But magical girl? I don’t know if it works. Just on the basis of the nature of draw typical in that genre, it is not one in which you can buck the norms of presentation too much.

Cross-clashing fists of burning manliness can be kind of cool, in the same way that a magical wideface commands a legion of magical muskets, I guess. Is this why Archer is GAR? Is Nasu’s Reality Marble the next trope for a manly exchange of interpersonal understanding through physical violence? Joe is going to be sad when he finds competition.

It is yet another fine example of danmaku-triggering visual this season, I suppose.

But on some level, the thing feels like a Nicovideo MAD. And that is my problem with Magica. Besides that it also is kind of boring, since most of the episode employs the same tired tricks from every other Shinbo x SHAFT anime in the past 6 years. And there were a lot of them. Am I suppose to survive on how moe Madoka’s mom is during that wake-up routine scene and Chiwa Saitou’s deadpan voice? Man does not live on cherry tomatoes alone. Or Junko Iwao for that matter.

Leave a comment | posted in Modern Visual Culture

January 7, 2011

Konami Rinko PVC Notes, Notes on Character Designs

By omo

The other day I was thinking about shows to watch in the new season. Examining things by seeing what motivates me, basically.

It’s like going through the promo pics for Gold Saw PVC anime version and think that looks kind of like a busty version of BRS, except she looks like some psycho yandere. I probably wouldn’t buy it, despite how it looks meticulously crafted–in my mind meticulously craft kits are plenty, and the only problem with them is that they cost a lot of money, a thing I have limited amounts of. But hey, it’s GSC, they sell stuff to people who buy kits just because of how they look. And sadly the only thing Gold Saw has going for her, for me, is her chest area and the way that iconic BRS jacket looks on her.

That reminds me: every time I hear someone talking about “face” in the context of these little plastic girls I think of Snow Crash. Sure, the way the face is crafted is important in a 3D sculpt, but most anime faces are basically identical (cue the Aoi Nishimata joke image) and it’s pretty darn hard to add details to faces that isn’t

  • eyes
  • shape of mouth
  • size of nose

and still make it look like the original. It’s like if you move any of them a little you’ve basically changed the expression of the character, or even changed the character! I guess this is why Kotobukiya figures have that face all the time. And why Woody is awesome. And which is why Gold Saw is all about her namesake, her chains, her legs, her pretty nifty base, her cool jacket, and of course, that she has a large(r) bosom.

I guess this is why I’m not turned off by Rio – Rainbow Gate, to examine my motivations. Also I guess I’m not for a Snow Crash anime adaptation. Definitely not one with Nishimata’s designs.

Given all that you’d think I would be less enthusiastic about my latest purchase: Konami’s Rinko 1/8 PVC. Rinko is one of the three “girlfriend for the masses” and her appeal is partly based on her interchangeability in appearance and personality. Still, The Thing radiates quality, despite nowhere nearly as fancy as anything pooping out of Alter or GSC’s assembly line. She’s technically a video game character, so I’d compare her to my last game full-assembled figure, Alter’s Selvaria PVC. I’ve previously detailed how gaudy GSC’s  Selvaria was. In some ways it’s like if you stick Fate in a frilly military outfit and give her huge knockers, and instead of Bardiche she’s got a sword and shield and lance… Well, Rinko isn’t like that at all. She’s more like a Wave or Kotobukiya figure, where she stands in a semi-dynamic pose (in mid-motion) and there’s a lot of details, even if at a distance she looks like any other anime girl figure. In fact there’s so much details that I probably need a magnifying lens to get them all.

Rinko’s construction and paint job are not perfect, there are some blotches once you get close enough, but the flaws are within my tolerances. It’s not like copying a file; mass produced kits like this will have some flaws, especially given some of the paint job details… The biggest bone I have to pick is the way her eyes turned out. If you took a look at the MFC version of the review, the very first image is nearly a side-by-side shot along with the solicitation shot. Tell me that does not look the same…

Rinko comes with 5 different hair styles that you can put on her, a gym bag, and her mp3 player. The hair styles are:

  • semi-long with pink hairband
  • twin tails with short bangs
  • twin pigtails
  • melonhead
  • uneven long bangs, short in the back

I went with the pigtails for now, but I think all the hair choices have their charms, and each gives the figure a significantly different feel. It’s 3D proof of the Nishimata character design “theory” LOL.

If I had another hobby of photographing dioramas of anime girls I’d find Rinko’s bag pretty useful. It’s got a large strap so it probably can go on most figures easily, and it’s by far the most detailed thing that came in Rinko’s box. The only strike against it is that the bag is customized with Rinko’s chibi mascot, so it may look odd if you use it on another character. (Each of the 3 Konami Love Plus PVC figs has its bag with a respective custom mascot on it, so you will get the raccoon with Nene and the rabbit with Manaka.) The strap is soft vinyl, so it doesn’t slack as if it was rope. It looks better this way, although it might be more perilous to stretch or bend it than if it was an actual strap.

The only real problem with this kit, albeit a temporary one, is Rinko’s mp3 player. It’s just this dinky PVC loop with a mp3-player-looking rectangle attached lousily at one end. And it’s real small and not adjustable. The way to put it on her, as far as I can tell, is to remove her hair and carefully force it down her head. Rinko’s upper body is constructed so the head and the neck are one piece with the torso; you can’t remove it like most PVC sculpts in which the head is made up of 2 pieces sandwiching the neck joint. However once you install the PMP on Rinko you are all set, so it’s not a big deal. It’s just one thing that can go horribly wrong if you aren’t dexterous enough to force the loop down her head and get caught on her ears or something.

Ears, hmm, it’s not often you see ears on bishoujo figures, at least if they aren’t elves or some such. Well, the mp3 player is optional really; Rinko looks just fine without it.

The reason why Konami went with an unorthodox build with Rinko’s head (and presumably Manaka and Nene as well), I presume, is to facilitate swapping out her hair. In the packaging, the hair pieces come in a separate plastic “tray” with a matching thin cover. It looks like temporary storage but it is pretty easy to keep the hair in that thing. Each set of hair has a front and a back piece, and they are unfortunately not interchangeable (as in you can’t use one hair style’s front piece with another hair style’s back piece). That would have made this very cool, but you run the risk of not being able to remember which piece went with which hair, and it probably would limit the amount of details each hairdo contains (if not the hairdos themselves). Once you remove Rinko’s hair, you see this D-shape thing with a O-shape lock inside, at the back of her head. Each of the back hair pieces has a matching D- and O-shape  connector, so it’s easy to reassemble…sort of. Some of the longer hair styles can get in the way of Rinko’s ears or shoulder, so there’s like an angle in which you have to insert the back piece so it locks in right. For the short ones, it’s easy. The back hair pieces each also has its unique connector to the maching front piece, so you can play LEGO/Tetris/blocks with the front piece and put it all together.

In Tsukiboard/MFC style I will actually use number ranking for this review–

Sculpting: It’s well-scuplted, but it falls short of evoking a strong feeling. Rinko’s lines and features are faithfully reproduced in this sculpt, and it expresses her identity well. Probably an 8.5 or 9 for something very true to origin, artisan, but not excellent.

Painting: I’d give it 9.5 if I could, but let’s roll back to 9 just to reflect that despite the very detail paint job, the eyes, the mp3 player and a few minor flaws make this not a perfect 10.

Posing: Solid 9. It manages to be more exciting than an average Kotobukiya kit (which is kind of the measuring stick I use) and it doesn’t go overboard despite being a motion shot. There are a lot of good angles for this kit. If there’s a complaint, it’s that her skirt is too short; to some that might be a plus, since her butt does play that peak-a-boo thing with the super-short/lifted skirt, in an adorable way. Almost perfect stuff.

Base: It’s a simple plastic disc shaped in the iconic Love Plus shape. What is worth noting is that it also has the Love Plus logo pattern pressed on it. Probably just an 8. Rinko stands on it with one foot down, two pegs secures her action pose. It’s possible that it may lean, but it seems sturdy at this time and there’s no way to tell right now if it can.

Packaging: The packaging is simple. All the parts are well secured and are safe. As described the hair pieces come in a separate plastic mold tray thing, and it’s stored behind the cardboard backdrop inside the box. Nothing really special but it gets the job done. 8.

Enjoyment: Considering she’s my steady now for over a year, I have to give it a 10, right? She’s gonna kick me in the shins otherwise. ;) Do you play Love Plus? I think in the age where figure collectors don’t know the origin of their kits in and out like they used to back way back, how you feel about Rinko will be the only thing that matters when it comes to enjoyment. As objectively as I can to speak for people who don’t know her, it’s probably not worth the hassle, because these are exclusive Konami kits and they can be annoying to fetch. However if you like the designs or the illustrations, you probably won’t be too disappointed with Rinko. The hair customization is actually unique for a kit like this, and overall it is a quality product. It’s just not worth the hell and high water one might need to go through to obtain it. But if you find this in a bargain situation, please don’t hesitate to pick it up. It’s not often to find something that is rather classy and still visually pleasing, at least for a tomboyish character.

Lastly, do take a skim over at the MFC version of this review for some more tidbits. Like the TL;DR version. And pics.

Leave a comment | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Figures and Models, Franchises, Love Plus, Modern Visual Culture

January 5, 2011

Kara no Kyoukai BD: Rank, Region and Control

By omo

So, some tidbits about Kara no Kyoukai BD box. I’m not sure why I’m so hyped on it, but it reminds me of last year’s True Tears ordeal. At least this time I know this isn’t a 720i (pardon the terminology) release…

RightStuf is listing the item as US and Canada only, with limited quantities. That is code for things like:

  • They’re not selling it to Japan.
  • They’re still going to ship to the UK and other locales west of the Pacific. For my English-language brethren elsewhere, good luck?
  • This is not a localized production but a hijack of a set of the Japanese print run, so once it’s out it’s out.

Why “US and Canada” I don’t know, but I suspect they are just playing it safe about being able to deny people of other countries from buying it (if it comes to that). Why do I know this? Well we all assume part of this deal with RS (and Bandai’s US store) is out of reverse import fears (though at $400 that’s not much of a difference) , the rest I know from hearsay. Don’t we believe everything we read on the internets?

Well another possible reason why “US and Canada” is because they don’t want to enumerate every country they want to sell to; or vice versa, in order to avoid pissing off their home customers. If I was writing that up at RS, I would be like, uh, let’s be pretty tongue in cheek about this.

While I don’t know how I can link to it, I also confirm that at one point Rakkyo box made it to RightStuf’s top 10 weekly preorders, the week after it came live on the site. As of this writing it is #2 on the RS top BD list. It looks like a lot of people took the bait over Christmas. Does this mean we will still only see 40 units sold and Aniplex of America explode like a flaming effigy made of explosives, I have no clue. And I’m not entirely sarcastic: RightStuf is a place a lot of hardcore collectors go to buy their BDs, but the US anime BD scene is not exactly replete of stuff off of the shelf. I mean, FLCL is not even out yet (that one is doing pretty well at #4 on RS’s top 10) so I’m thinking the count for that category is going to be low to begin with. Can we use Eva 2.22’s sales as a marker? that’s #7. Or how about that delicious FMA Brotherhood sandwich at #6 and #1? Or the fact that pr0n, especially exploding acid boobs pr0n, sells (Queen’s Blade BD at #5)?

But surely the fact that it can rank that high on that list probably says something. Something about rich people and their fig newtons or some such.

PS. Since this is like an AoDVD research post, let’s go all the way: Chris B. has posted his reviews of the thing. Because he doesn’t post BD caps (and refuses to because “this is a check disk”) you can read it mostly for technical completeness (“hey it does have 5.1 PCM”) and for his anime reviewer’s function. Well he’s always been a pretty easy critic when it comes to content and he finds Rakkyo, as a whole package, completely compelling. Of course he is also one of the very, very few reviewers (if not the only?) for anime that goes at it with the full glorified visual experience, rather than a more conservative and, dare I say, manga-esqe, take on story and content. For AVhogs like me his review provides that juicy technical information that I want to know, as I am already sold on the content.

Leave a comment | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Kara no Kyoukai, Modern Visual Culture