The Yard Sale
Did you just watch Sasami-san@ganbaranai episode 1? Did that make sense? No? I don’t know, but there’s plenty to go on from here, even for someone unfamiliar with the source material like me. But it requires some decompression for someone who isn’t neck-deep in Japanese culture and subcultures.
FUNimation picked up a cute little IP called PUCHIM@S this season and they decided to announce it in their subscriber-only forum. There was a tweet from the FUNimation account to let people know the news is out. After the fact, I took a look at the timing and both the forum post and the tweet hits 12 Noon Eastern time on the dot, or roughly 1 minute later, on Jan. 10th 2013.
#FUNimation EVS members, head on over to the elite member forums for an exclusive scoop! Not a member? Go to http://t.co/8Lydj2m1
— Funimation (@Funimation) January 10, 2013
A bit of background–FUNimation’s elite video service (which is what I meant by subscriber) is generally panned. I have been using it for about 6 months and I can see why. At any rate most news hounds don’t use it, but they probably have access to it. It took the following time for these news pieces to hit twitter after the initial announcement:
Crunchyroll: 23 minutes
News: FUNimation to Stream "iDOLMASTER" Anime Spin-Off "PUCHIM@S" http://t.co/8ajRI7ur
— Crunchyroll (@Crunchyroll) January 10, 2013
FandomPost: 37 minutes
FUNimation Adds 'Puchimas! Petit Idolmaster' #Anime Simulcast – http://t.co/JA35w8rg
— Chris Beveridge (@ChrisBeveridge) January 10, 2013
Anime News Network: 40 minutes
News: Funimation to Stream Puchimas! -Petit Idolm@ster- Spinoff #Anime • Adaptation of Akane's 4-panel #manga to prem… http://t.co/TocnXzlC
— Anime News Network (@Anime) January 10, 2013
That’s pretty much it for the full-time staff efforts.
As far as I can tell there was no heads-up PR to prime them. ANN is pretty notable about having that often, but I guess not this time.
Also, it is only fair to say that this one anecdote does not indicate if CR or Chris B. or ANN is faster at breaking news. It’s more about a reaction time sort of thing–how fast can people pick up the news, in a way that, I think, measures fairly. Everybody in this case probably followed the same tip trail to the source, unless someone had a head’s up or, in the unfortunate case, were actually keeping tabs on the FUNi EVS forum. It’s like a drop of water landing on a perfectly stilled pool, and measuring the wavelengths of its ripples.
As a matter of disclosure, you all know I also write for a site that often post news (but we don’t really try to break via speed, as fun as that can be once in a while). It took me 11 minutes to copy-paste the EVS post and write some basic instructions into an email to send it to our tip line, and one more minute to post the same copy-pasta on a forum that I read.
PS. Nobody in my timeline picked up the news until one of the news orgs broke it. That shows you how panned FUNi EVS really is. Or maybe we’re all just polite? I don’t know.
PPS. To its redemption, ANN is now the first to break Senren Kagura’s simulcast news that was announced on Jan 11th, 18 minutes after noon. The forum post about Puchim@s indicated another license would be announced today at noon eastern (11am central), but the forum post for Senren kagura actually went up at 10:18am central time today, which is kind of amusing. Anyway.
PPPS. Amuse-bouche. What the.
If you ever read my con introspective posts and reports you might wonder just how much effort I expend at cons. Here’s a somewhat objective measurement.
Since early 2012 I’ve been towing around a Japanese 3DS. While all I play on it is New Love Plus, I also enjoy the built-in games gratis from Nintendo. This means I get that “shoot people’s face” game as well as the Streetpass minigames, which gets a boost via the coins you get by walking while the 3DS is suspended. That provides me with a count of how many steps I take every day once I get back to the hotel after a day at a con. I’m trusting the 3DS pedometer to be relatively accurately, and from my own experience, it is pretty good.  (And of course you want to carry your 3DS, in suspended mode, at a con. Because that’s where the magic of Streetpass happens.) Maybe it undercounts, according to some people online, but I’ve not read anything authoritative.
Here is Gizmodo’s blog post of CES 2013 as the reporters wore various personal devices that kept track how much energy they’ve expended. To sum it up, here are their most active day and how many steps they took:
Casey Chan: 14,839
Brent Rose:Â Â 15,170
Peter Ha:Â 15,440
As for me? The only one I have on record was:
Ax 2012: 23,159
I’ve taken it easy at cons, I have done cons where I got home I lost like 6 pounds because I power-walked all weekend long while averaging 2 meals a day. Both are fun, one is more painful than the other. I probably get more sleep than the average press guy at CES, because there’s less smooching to be done and I sure don’t have to bang up a billion posts every day. But that’s usually what it takes to do my itinerary. It’s also easy to see why at AX you’d walk that much, simply because the way the con is set up, and things in California are just more spread out versus the East coast cons I visit. I think AX2012 was also the one con that I’ve gotten more press-y than any other con, just out of the number of 3rd party obligations. Anyway, a lot of walking was to be had.
Off hand I’m pretty sure there was at least a one con that I got over 30k steps in a day. Oh well.
Do you walk nearly this much at an anime con? I guess it really depends on the venue–I mean if I walk around AnimeNext’s complex (the con center and the hotel) it might take 1500 steps. It’s not that big. It might be 3000 steps to circle LACC. But even for a large con a lot of people don’t do much other than to pace through the AA and the dealer’s room, and sit in some panels or screenings. It’s not exactly the most active sort of thing. But on the flip side that’s not what kids do at cons either, just old people. When’s the last time you were a part of a Caramelldansen train? (Dead meme is dead, almost.)
When I read this article, I thought about Angel Beats. Because, like, it is actually tackling a subtle notion about afterlife and more importantly explaining how what we believe the afterlife to be, that directly impacts the way we look at ourselves right now, and how we live this one.
I mean, it’s a very tangible thing when it comes to organ donation. Some philosophies enable people to donate more willingly than others, after death. And in term, that impacts actual lives of people who can use the help. I think Angel Beats is, from this perspective, an ingenious way to tackle a fairly thorny problem. And it didn’t even had the time to be preachy… Oh who am I kidding?
The mixed-media franchise aside, the one thing that stuck with me in Maoyu Maou Yuusha pilot was the way the story is portrayed from a simple archetype into a nuanced and developed world. It’s Disney-esqe and it evokes the feeling of a pop-up book.
It’s not uncommon in the era of remakes and reboots to see some nursery tale reborn as a modern interpretation. I mean, what the hell is this? Joking aside, the story about a hero vanquishing some evil overlord serves as the pages in which the first-time viewer flips as s/he walks through this 2ch-original tale.
What “pops up” is the multidimensional aspect of the story. While the characters remain flat and 2D-like, their complexity blossoms like a fractal image with each word coming out of the Maou’s mouth. Sure, the Hero’s reaction was cute and Maou’s naivete was cute as well, but the story’s heft increased ten fold from the first encounter to their moment of contract.
The multiplicity of the narrative’s depth expands, too, as cuts and flashbacks show us the world beyond the grim-dark, empty castle. We see merchants and kings, cheering or troubled, and forces moving behind the shadows. Characters that the bizarre duo will eventually encounter on their journey to the world outside of their war-torn destiny already make their appearances, even before the Maou undresses her headpiece.
Maoyu’s world, as set by the pilot episode, is really nothing that special. But it was that flat underpinning which sets the baseline to what we were to expect. I think the way the story pops in the pilot episode is largely credit to the animation direction… It also makes me wonder if having a billion different manga spinoffs make a difference when the eventual anime finally comes together.
Bonus: A good contrast can be seen in Da Capo III’s pilot episode. The funny thing is, by this point, there is a large amount of background material built into that franchise, with two full-blown otaku-minded mixed-media pushes in the two previous Da Capo sets of games. So what does the first episode do? Boil it down to the basic template as much as possible. In fact it feels artificially done, and in a way that might mislead viewers. Instead of elaborate relationships and a huge back story about the magic tree, we just get, welp, what we get. Knowing this show, though, it’s probably just to get you focused away from the back story so they can bring it to the foreground later, with more impact. Well, we’ll see. It’s something they can’t just leave alone (and they aren’t hopefully, with the ex-eternal-17 character on the screen from the first episode).
PS. Magic Knight Rayearth.