Monthly Archives: December 2011

December 12, 2011

Mandarake Online, the Gateway to Wallet Pain

By omo

This post is more like a user review of Mandarake using my token sample size of one. But I guess lately I had to look out for #1 a little more, because all this spending has taken a toll. Figuratively speaking as well as literal. It is times like this, when I think about consumerism in the context of an anime fan, that I appreciate the monster machine that is Jeff Bezos’s Amazon.com. Between their tablets/e-reader, Prime, cloud services, high-volume hosting services, and of course their online store that sells just about anything, shopping is actually a simple, effortless, and seamless experience. The stuff is there, the only thing left to think about is shopping for a price. It does not take a toll on my mind and sleep schedule.

Mandarake, on the other hand, subscribes to a paradigm of something closer to a flea market…in China. When you’re buying things overseas, it’s not unlike how you really need to know your stuff unless you don’t mind being ripped off tourist-style. Even worse, you can’t quite bargain for prices (although you can play the waiting game, if it is an option (sometimes it isn’t)). You probably shouldn’t expect much different in terms of customer service either. But thankfully it doesn’t smell like a  Chinese flea market, there’s no examples of outright theft and pickpockets to worry about, and there is a RSS feed.

RSS feeds are neat little things. In a way it provides the foundation of Web 2.0 revolution; we can now reorganize the world wide web using filtered syndicated feeds to reorganize and manage the pure, astronomically large quantity of content produced on the web every day. But who cares about that? If you are like me, all you care about are very specific, individualized items of certain niche-among-niche products that cannot be bought direct from a store; or, second-hand commodity goods sold at a discount (namely home video and music, but sometimes also books). Occasionally you can also use them as an “incidental proxy” (which is my way of saying that because Mandarake can sell anything (tho it doesn’t take orders for you), and sells oversea, sometimes you’ll find something regularly sold in other Japanese stores that do not ship overseas in Mandarake, in which it is really just a proxy for you). This is how RSS is useful.

Long story short, Mandarake’s online site has a RSS feed of their inventory (as fast as their data input freeters can type things up anyways) and when pairing it with regexp or something simple (like Yahoo! Pipes) you can make your own notification feed of stuff in your watchlist. I’ll go over some very basic how-to later on how to do this, although if you are sufficiently Japanese and logic-literate you can do this already!

But before we get to that, I just want to give my $0.02 about Mandarake in general, purely from the online store perspective. And to do that I’ll just spell out a few fundamental stuff that you probably already know.

Mandarake is a chain of used otaku goods store. By otaku goods I don’t mean manga or anime-related goods, although that is the bulk of it. By otaku goods I mean what occupies people like Patrick Macias’s free time, which goes as far as idol goods, plastic figures from the packaging of gums in the 1970s, posters of old Japanese chanbara flicks, doujinshi made of words, costumes, etc. You get the idea. Of course, that’s not where the money is; used figures (more along the lines of the PVC crap that has exploded since 2004, but also dolls), artbooks, doujinshi you can fap to (ero or not), and used DVD/BD/CDs are probably Mandarake’s mainstray. And to make it clear, by doujinshi I mean for guys and gals, and even for children of all ages. I wrote about 1kuji and that artbook the other day, if you want examples of what you can be looking forward to in a typical transaction.

It’s important to remember that Mandarake is a series of stores, and the online store is more just a gateway than some monolithic entity that typifies the online store version of some chain store you may be familiar with. This is probably mostly because Mandarake deals in used good only, and they do not need a distribution chain (and thus no such a thing as a centralized warehouse or fulfillment center). You’ve got these people that go to Mandarake to sell things, that’s Mandarake’s primary stock. And each Mandarake location has its own stock.

Unfortunately, this also means when you buy from Mandarake online, you are dealing with these stores as individual sellers, and not a single one. This means if you have 3 items in your shopping cart and checks out, you have to pay your bills 3 different times. Each store will give you a PO sort of thing to fill out, although the store website saves you some hassle by consolidating the shipping info, for example, when you log in, etc. This is mostly evident that for orders < 5000 yen there is a 500 yen handling fee, and if it happens you can be paying that fee several times, when you didn’t have to if all the items were located in the same store. That, plus having to pay shipping separately too as well.

Another side effect is that the data entry in the system totally depends on who is entering the data, which branch they work for, and what it is. And because every single item in stock has to be entered (it’s not like they just stock x items of type y; info about condition, etc, and photos of the thing has to be associated with specific items in stock). From what I can tell there’s not much in terms of standardization of formats. Most of the time I construct my searches purely by keywords. When you are looking to buy specific things, that’s pretty easy to handle. It’s not so simple when you, for example, want to split out all the doujinshi from the main RSS feed into a different one.

Personally I think this is a large business opportunity. Mandarake should hire like a couple gaijins (or just anyone who can design data structures) and work this out. But alas. All this market op as valuable as a black hole. It’s just like how there’s this market op for small but powerful laptops, so hopefully it will be just a matter of time. (That said I’m still waiting for an ultraportable that can play games, instead of this not-netboo-v2-ultrabook nonsense, to speak of another toll.)

As for actually buying from Mandarake, once you identified and located the exact thing you want, it’s pretty easy to enter all the info. Unlike many online shops from Japan, Mandarake actually takes your oversea credit cards (supposedly Visa and Mastercard only, no debit cards, and maybe some others) and if you have a good card set up (eg., one that doesn’t charge that foreign transaction fee) it’s more preferable than Paypal, which they also take.

Once you put in the order, you don’t pay until they are able to find your item and mark it for shipping to you. Then they will email you a payment page in which you can do that credit card/paypal dance. I’ve only used credit card, so I can’t speak to how it works using other methods. Items that are marked as a “store front” item are items in the B&M store (ie., some guy can walk in and just buy it). By putting such an item in your cart and checking out, you may not actually get the item if the item is no longer there (ie., someone bought it between the last inventory check and the time the shop employee goes to fetch it from the storefront), which is why Mandarake also offers the service to cancel the order if something is missing by the time you pay.

The shipping offered vary between EMS, Fedex and SAL. SAL takes its usual sweet time. Packages are boxed and lightly packed, although I also found a difference between stores on that regard. And is it me, or does the Osaka store have the best prices?

I guess ultimately, it also comes down to if you can get over buying used goods at a premium. It’s an odd concept but such is the way free market works. I find Mandarake’s prices generally on the high side. They price their mint condition stuff almost as much as they are new. It’s gotten to the point where the new price (on Amazon.co.jp for example) is only 10% or 20% higher than the used price. It is just nonsense on some items, but if saving money is your thing it may be still worth the while. But usually if that bothers you, you would rather be waiting for a better deal or shop around some more. Such is how the Rulers of Time roll. And things do get cheaper, generally, the longer you wait. Prices changes based on market indicator (Y!J auctions for example), but if you can risk something being hard or impossible to find, patience does pay.

Yes, that moniker is for real. Anyway.

The pipes! I’m going to give you the quickest Yahoo! Pipes tutorial on how to filter the Mandarake RSS feed. First, find Mandarake’s English portal (You can do it from the Japanese side as well, but I’ll keep things simple here). Find the RSS link in the footer of the page (down at the bottom). Now go sign in to Yahoo Pipes! and create a new pipe. Drag in the “fetch” widget that reads the content of a feed into the workspace. Put in the RSS url into that. Next, drag in a ‘filter” widget and connect the fetch widget to the filter widget. In the filter widget, you can add what you want. Like “allow only (一番くじ)” to get a list of all ichiban kuji things. Or “block 【中古】” to filter out certain books. You get the idea. You can make more fancy filters if you want to mess around in Pipes.

Once you are done with filters, remember to daisy chain them to each other and connect the final filter to the “output” widget. Once you save and run the pipe, you’ll get a URL for your pipe, which is the new Mandarake feed now with your filters. Stick that sucker in your favorite feed-processing thing like Google Reader or something else that alert you when something cool pops up, and you’re done. You can even share those links if you want.

It’s a good way to do your holiday shopping…back in November. Speaking of which, this year I probably won’t be arsed to write much on the blog. Way too much stuff is going on and I am really short on free time to goof around online. Maybe I’ll still write something, I guess.

You, do you have any better ways to do this? I am eager to listen.

2 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom

December 9, 2011

Remake and Sequels, Anime Ver.

By omo

Making up reasons why anime remake and sequels exist looks like a fun game. Here’s my try. Going to avoid using paragraphs (as much).

Underlying observations, concepts and assumptions:

Many anime are based on existing material. They are adaptations. Furthermore many anime suck badly when they “run out” of material to adopt within the context of a single adaptation effort (tho what are notably excepted are “filler” material that can expand on existing material in the context of filling in gaps or providing better fanservice. Even so, mileage vary on that. It is just there some very notable exceptions like K-ON and now, Fate/Zero).

There are more sequels than prequels. As usual Ask John begins with a question that is probably not too well-phrased.

Both sequels and prequels have good commercial viability.

Things like copyright law exist and companies and IP owners generally plan their businesses (eg., anime production) according to those business practices. I mean, this is a no brainer; I’m just writing it here to raise this fact. (Actually that is what I want to see in that Ask John article. Except he totally didn’t get into it.)

Similarly, production companies are sometimes organized into umbrella pipelines. For example Aniplex is much more likely to use other companies associated with Sony for shows Aniplex produces. Companies will plan their adaptation plans around this fact as well (but that is just a guess).

I’m going to assume that in soliciting funding for anime/media-mix projects, the fact something is a direct sequel versus a reboot versus a hybrid, has an impact in terms of how a work is solicited, how the funding may be determined on past performance of not only the production committee, but the franchise itself. (I.e., “Did the first series do well? Can we do it again better?”)

Discussions:

One good talking point (and not so much of an example, as you’ll see) of this sequel versus remake discussion is in the case of the Rebuild of Evangelion. Let us take big, clear, red, highlighted note that Evangelion is not an anime adaptation. It is also Gainax’s baby in that they own it (which bypasses what John said about WMFH). And now it’s Studio Khara doing the production. I think it is best to ignore this specific example when talking about this subject because it is more like a Batman or Superman reboot, where copyright, artistic consistency, branding, etc., are all at issue. It is very different than, say, why they’re remaking Hunter x Hunter (nobody knows why). I mean at least we know why Columbia wants to reboot Spiderman, for a long list of reasons, some of which do not have to do with how profitable the Sony ones were.

Actually now come to think of it, is this why the new Saki is a reboot too? Anyone knows?

There are plenty of artistic reasons as well to make reboots than sequels, besides the wider-audience kind of thing. Let’s talk about that for a moment. John’s pretty spot on in that we would watch (for example) a reboot of Yamato, as I don’t know if we can find enough people under age of 30 who can sit through all of the original to fit in a bus. I mean, it’s classic but dire stuff. He didn’t explicitly say, simply, that there are a lot of reboots today that are based on some really, really old shows. I mean there are reasons based on physics why we have ST:TNG and ST:Enterprise, etc., and not just more footage of Shatner goofing around (he does that enough on the side)–people age, retire, get fat, and, in some cases, die. Until we all become seiyuu-cogs for robot actors, those are problems in which reboots and remakes can overcome.

There’s another artistic reason; it’s the one Tomino applied a few times: retcon. More precisely, it is about how you can remake a work as a second draft. It’s much easier to sit through 3 Mobile Suit Gundam movies today than watch that in the TV format. Trust me. Doubly so for Turn-A Gundam. And let’s not even get into the ZZ films. Even more drastic examples include Do You Remember Love, Utena the Movie (RIP Kawakami), and even one of my all-time favorite examples, Futakoi Alternative.

Conclusions:

Undeniably, reboots are created today because there’s a market gap for it. In a linear narrative kind of sense, it makes more economic (and other sorts of) sense to redo some shows and sell it again, since the old version may have some limits purely as a result of the long time that has elapsed. In a technical sense, it avoids some problems sequels have, such as copyright ownership and production consistencies. In a creative sense, it frees the reboot from the character, plot, and setting limits of the original work. So when I read this:

Reboots may generate more revenue, but they limit creative progression. However, if creative evolution is the ideal goal, then even sequels are less constructive than focusing effort on creating entirely new franchises and new adaptations instead of resurrecting older titles for either remake or continuation. […] However, right now, when titles like Dragon Ball Kai seem as popular, if not more popular, than Dragon Ball Z, and anticipation is high for the forthcoming Berserk theatrical remake, consumer support seems to validate and encourage the continued production of remakes and reboots in place of sequels.

I’m like, cool story bro. But creative progression? LOL? I mean, didn’t they finished adopting Dragon Ball Z? How can it “creatively progress” any further? Oh wait there are how many movies now? What do the letters G and T spell? Seriously give me a break. In DBZ’s case, we’ve already depleted “sequels” entirely (from an economic perspective) and now we’re moving into reboots since there’s nowhere else to go, and it’s about time for it anyway.

Wanting sequels over reboots is pretty much the purest instance of otaku fetishism in my opinion. Because, why, it’s somehow socially okay to crave for narrative constructs without want of the creative integrity of the original work, over concepts like “artistic freedom” or “creator’s expectation to copyright”? Or even over the notion of fixing-your-mistakes, to improve on an existing work in an in-place effort? I see that no better than craving for breasts or panty shots, if not worse in the sense that those things are pretty open-ended, where as fans are fickle as hell when it comes to “their” stories and characters. It’s like the snake that devours its own tail; that they crave the thing that slowly destroys the essence of its original existence. Remakes may be one one method to get out of that trap!

4 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Modern Visual Culture

December 6, 2011

Fate Zero Tribute Regular Edition

By omo

I, like many other collectors, react to terms like “LE” or “限定” or “First Press” etc., you get the idea. Unlike many other collectors, though, I’m rather lazy when it comes to the need to pursuit the limited edition. Do I prefer it? Yes. Do I value it over, say, sanity and a rational cost analysis? Only now and then.

So to my surprise when I realize one of the illustrators that I’ve taken to recently, Shigeki Maeshima, was a contributor to the Fate/Zero Tribute artbook. Among many others. And unsurprisingly I noticed there was a collector’s edition of it back in Comiket 75, or winter of ’09. I think at this point, given the ass-tastic dollar-to-yen exchange rate, a regular edition pre-owned copy would do just fine. Toranoana had, apparently, truckloads of this this particular varity, and given how Type-Moon is over its peak popularity already, you can probably score a new copy without too much hassle if that’s your thing.

Kransom has already written it up very well in his C75 report, including all the links I’ve linked to so far and what composes the LE copy of the same artbook, so I won’t bother repeating it any further (besides to comment on a towel). I’ll share a couple images from the book, simply because I’m testing out a new camera. I mean, if you want scans, you can just google it; it’s a 4-year-old artbook after all. If anything I wish there were more artwork from Maeshima out there. Especially if it is him drawing Maiya Hisau. I am too lazy to link the originals, but they’re available if people really want lousy photographs.

Loli Rin. That was some filler episode wasn’t it?

You know it’s fan drawing fanart when they pick scenes like this. Except it’s some fan who turned pro. And thankfully it’s the kind of spoiler that you won’t get unless you actually know what’s going on already.

And of course, Maiya. The way I stumbled on the image was when I was looking for some Fate/Zero pictures for putting on the blog. As you may have noticed I’ve been writing a lot about it (and Aniplex just doesn’t let up on giving me more reasons to do so) and when I saw that image I was like, “HEY I KNOW WHO DREW THIS,” thus leading to the discovery of said artbook, and then the importation thereof.

So don’t ever let people tell you artbook image sharing doesn’t generate additional sales. (Except in the case where the guy who downloaded the picture bought it pre-owned. Damn you Mandarake.) And, oh, since this artbook is like one of those half-doujinshi, half-pro, 100% Toranoana exclusive things, you can’t really expect to purchase it without some third party help. Not to say you can’t, it is just much easier if you do. And I half-expect nobody would know a thing about this artbook except how some people are all hyped up on industry booths on Day 1 comiket, or are really, really into Nasuverse. Perhaps fortunately, somehow I get the feeling that neither type of people is particularly hard to find on the internet.

That Einzbern doll, so white. And one more Maiya for good measure.

2 comments | posted in Fate, Modern Visual Culture

December 4, 2011

Gundam Unicorn Episode 4

By omo

The plight of Zeon forces on Earth is best chronicled in anime form as Gundam 08th MS Team. It is a fun show to watch and it’s a series I would recommend over other UC Gundam, with exception to maybe the trilogy form of the original series. It is in this space that Gundam fans appreciate the glorious Zeon fanservice in the form these whacky mobile suits in Gundam Unicorn, which is the only other exception that I would recommend alongside with 8th MS Team. As the clumsy Zeon units clash against their angular Feddie counterparts in the heat of the battle, it feels like I’m watching a bunch of Syd Mead designs rolling back and forth like a certain episode of Mawaru Penguindrum.

Even better, Gundam Unicorn 4 is more than the sum of its parts. The fourth installment in a six-part series brings to it a certain turning point. It is an emotional episode; you know the emo protagonist schtik works when you can empathize with him. Banagher’s issues come out, and while we can take home the conclusion that he is now invested enough to want to change the world using his powers, it is done in a way that is convincing. I think it is especially noteworthy because it isn’t some lame flashback that gets used way too often; we get a little too philosophical for my tastes, but I realize what Banagher’s going through.

Perhaps more importantly, these youths need someone to guide their way. I think this is ultimately one of the key themes in episode 4; the way such people make mistakes are not resolved by the charming quotable lines the likes of Full Frontal would quote his subordinates. It takes something a little more spiritual. I guess berserk psycommu powers can count?

The problem is that time waits for no one. Kids grow old in a blink of an eye. Just because one may be lost in a Timeless moral dilemma of Epic proportions(and I mean both Timeless and Epic) , decisions have to be made, people have to be saved, and action scenes need pilots. Indeed it is through action, when Captain Zinnerman took him on a desert stroll, that healed Banagher’s soul. Or for example, the events leading up to Minerva’s nice up of coffee (also in the desert, for that matter–or the wilderness for those of you who study the Good Book). But actions have consequences. Or rather, thankfully, they do. (And that is Ensign Riddhe’s cue.)

If anything, you can trace this theme back to episode one. It is not unlike how Zinnerman and the rest of the Vist guys lamenting on the dead man’s quest that they are on–everything is kind of going towards whatever Cardeas Vist is originally scheming. To paraphrase Char, it’s like they’re on the flow of time. In that sense it is very apt to recall not only that the Unicorn symbolizes Banagher’s parents’ will (kind of like World’s Number One Mom here), but Cardeas had actively done things to improve Banagher’s future. (Kind of like World’s Number One Dad.) I mean, making sure he didn’t die in a blast of flaming space inferno is a good start. But we did get a glimpse of Cardeas’s attitude to Banagher in episode one and it may be telling to revisit it.

The emotional climax in this episode is both built on some simple soul-searching and on the notion of having a clear vision of the problem at hand. I thought the point about Char is head on. FULL FRONTAL. So I too appreciated the philosophy lesson even if it’s kind of overdrawn. To the degree that it is, too, it makes me realize that these were originally concepts lifted from a light novel series, so that much can be forgiven. It really is much better handled here compared to what you saw in, say, Fate/Zero.

The animation, the music, the visuals, the fight scenes, the composition of things are all top notch. At this price point, you sort of expect that (I mean I’m paying over $200 over 3 years here, for just 6 episodes). But I did not expect being able to be emotionally connected to a stereotypical UC Gundam protagonist. Perhaps that is due to the fact that my jaw was slacking from all these prolonged battle scenes with gorgeous robots going at it, thus lowering my resistance to sappy emo kids. Seriously, there was just way too many awesomely animated battles in this episode.

I look forward to the battle in 2012 when Banagher tries to reason with our human soldier. I wonder if Shinji fights Rei, who will win? Maybe Alberto Vist’s conscience?

PS. If I was a certain posh, semi-ero blogger I would probably start this post off with a quote with this theme. I chose this particular version for the use of the word curse. I believe it can be fairly interpreted to the context of Unicorn ep4.

1 comment | posted in Gundam