Monthly Archives: August 2018

August 22, 2018

Otakon 2018: Wrap

By omo

Otakon came and went. This year it was a “miss” for me guest-wise so I spent a lot of time chilling. This is also the first Otakon in a very long time in which I did not get into the con area until Friday morning, breaking some kind of a streak. Turns out the con was so chill I just went to hang with a friend in the area the night before, so there you have it.

Despite DC being farther than Baltimore, it was easier for me to bus down and up. A ride on Megabus or OurBus or any of the many other carriers is easy. There is a Chinatown bus stop right down the street from the con too. Taxi are plenty if surge fares on Lyft or Uber got your tongue, plus it’s so close. In this way DC is already way superior than Baltimore, and I didn’t even mention the Metro, which was partly under repair that weekend.

There was also a whimper of a white supremacist rally scheduled Sunday afternoon but the counter protestors came in droves and it didn’t go anywhere. The lead up FUD (like that kek ANN drama) was IMO more damaging than the actual protests by probably a multiple, in terms of the wet blanket on the Otakon population. To me, the city of Washington DC is more dangerous than any white supremacist (circa 2018) rally, just by default. To put it into perspective, Otakon was in Baltimore all this time until 2016, and even the Inner Harbor is probably 10x more dangerous than the area surrounding the DC convention center. Otakon attendees are already a hardened bunch.

I’m also glad about the good attendance numbers. Otakon had 29k or so uniques, which is a nice bounce back. It shows that a well-run con with reasonable price scheme (lol selling single-day badges this year) will draw.

Otakon this year is just as well oiled as any other year, except I feel they are still not that organized if you want to do year-to-year comparisons. The downstairs concourse was basically completely screwed during the lead up to dealers room opening, as there is nowhere to put that line and not enough staff to police it. Swelling lines snaking along the walls choked the actual thoroughfare. Sunday morning, even, I was stuck in that passageway to the panel room areas (along with Nagai and the Bandai/FUNi folks) trying to get there on time, LOL.

Dealer’s Room supposedly had some issue with vendors unable to show for whatever the reason, but it was overall an improvement over last year (not the least without a giant leaking problem this time). The rain was a minimum.

Autographing was done somewhat differently this time, but it was clubbed with the dealer’s room which meant doing two lines if you wanted in. It has to be addressed next year because it is compounding the problem, although I don’t know what that would be like. Right now, everyone gets into the autograph area and form a single lineup, which is parsed into buffers for individual sections that lines up by the autograph tables. If the lineup exceeds the area by the tables it backs up into the main line into segments. It’s a mess.

Still, mailing badges was good. I picked up mine on site and it took 20 minutes or so from Friday morning. Getting into the con took a while Friday as well, and during peak hours both the front-of-con and the Marriott underpass can get backed up. The latter is a tad slower, but it is air conditioned.

What did I do at this con…mainly attended the two Kawamori panels, in which he goes over some ancient history and explains his approach in designing stuff and creating stories. They weren’t mind-blowing but all very interesting in beyond just an academic sort of way. I got a couple autographs from the IBO guys, and attended part of Nagai’s panel on Sunday plus the IBO panel on Saturday. I also went to the wotagei workshop friday after midnight but that was just anikura with a bit of cringe leading in. Amazingly, there was this Japanese dude there who was a passing traveler at Otakon. Knows his wotagei!

That is probably more panels than I have attended since a long time ago, which is just to say Otakon this year is a big snooze, or actually chillax enough that I can go to panels. I passed on the Final Fantasy music stuff, although I’m sure it was good. I killed some time goofing around to anikura guerrilla style on Saturday night, after Otabrew.

Otabrew was also an unusual experience, since the organizer used it to launch a manga publishing imprint/company. I guess it is very Ed to have this happen. The beers were all pretty good and conversations are fun, so is getting tipsy. This is the year of the Sours, isn’t it.

I tried to not go into the dealers or do autographs, but I ended up walking the dealers and picked up some Million Live things. Thanks Sahvin &c for bringing back the first anniversary stuff for Million Live in July. Compared to Otakuthon, which I did not plan to spend anything, I spent almost nothing at Otakon dealer’s room. I guess I bought a couple keychains and pin badges, and that was it.

What else are of note?

  • There’s a makerspace this year, which was neat
  • I did the preview screening for Release the Spyce, that was neat.
  • Our hotel room got upgraded to a suite in the Washington tower. It had a walk-in closet lol.
  • Breakfast was business as usual, but we didn’t go to the lobby restaurant this time.

PS. Eat-wise, we hit up a Cajun place a short way across from the Marriott Marquis, across the square. It was restaurant week a weekend earlier there, so we used their promo menu. It was very good. Friday I also went to have small plates at a modern Greek place, supposedly kind of famous, that was just blocks south. Both very Instagram-worthy and the price was reasonable (for a Manhattan kind of person). Beats Fogo I think. After LA’s M-Grill I’m not sure I’ll be in the mood for Brazilian cuisine for a time anyways.

Looking at the photos, only the glazed roast duck over dirty rice is worth posting here…

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August 20, 2018

Otakuthon 2018: Wrap

By omo

I went to Otakuthon 2018. The primary reason this time is to see fhana as their last tour stop. It would make sense if I can at least hit their North America stops, although sometimes I wonder if the 6 stops on the tour t-shirt and graphics were it, what about the other countries they visited during this time–namely PH and CN? And they only made stop-specific merch for the Japanese shows anyway.

There are a lot of reasons to visit Montreal for Otakuthon. Aside from fhana’s lit show, the locals put up a anikura event that was pretty lit too. Lia was in town to do some songs, and they are her perennial hits. Maidreaming sent 3 maids to do wota culture stuff and you can buy cheki with them. Anisong rocker Nishizawa Shiena was also there and it was really great. There were other guests there too, but these were all I had time for. OK, there are plenty to see and eat at Montreal too, and I tried to squeeze those in.

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August 13, 2018

Release the Spyce Preview @ Otakon 2018

By omo

I was still working on my Otakuthon post before I went to Otakon, so uh, here’s the timely nugget first.

Otakon 2018 featured two premieres, High Score Girl and Release the Spyce. The latter seemed more feasible schedule-wise so I attended it. That said, I was a couple minutes late so I walked into the opening action set piece.

I wanted to write about it because this show is really up my alley. It’s a fun spy/ninja piece about a bunch of young women who gain superhuman powers after biting on special spice. Spice, as in stuff you put in food, not the drug from Dune. The main character is a 11th grader who stumbled upon the secret organization in her town, Tsukikage, after her 99.99% percentile perception powers let her spot some shadowy figures flying around rooftops one night.

The lead character, Momo, who is voiced by Anzai Yukari, is a “shopping street kid” type character who seemed to lost her father to something. I won’t go too much into it but a truck ton of foreshadowing was laid down during the 2-episode pilot. And yes, it is a 2-episode sort of thing, which is why they showed 2 episodes at the con I assume.

If you have been following the marketing of Spyce over in Japan, which I have in a very casual way, you would know they have had some live stages featuring the voice cast. The main gang of the story is the Tsukikage group of ninjas Momo becomes in association with, and they’re joined in pairs by master-student setups, where the girl each have to train a successor since once they get too old, the spice super power gimmick stops working. This is partly how Spyce features a really solid of current-day voice actresses. Only a handful has been credited online, but after seeing the full credit after ep2 I can say that this is a show that scores well on that front. Well, it’s a Pony Canyon thing I guess.

The other non-spoiler-ish info I can share about the plot, I guess, is that there is an enemy group opposing Tsukikage. And it seems they’re full of female voice overs, too. That seems like the initial main conflict for now.

There are a lot of pieces of the setting that tickled my fancy–the use of curry for example. There are a lot of spice-themed things in Release the Spyce. There are also some actual spy kind of things, like manipulative interpersonal skills and 007-esqe gadgets. There are some solid parkour animation here and there, and the action leans on movement more than clashing of weapons. The 2-part pilot even ended with a car chase. It’s also the feeling you get when you witness the two sides of a pun moving in slow collision in the form of a TV anime. It’s like when galaxies swallow each other up in the course of millennia, despite being an exciting astronomical event. Or maybe a super slow-mo video of a vehicle test crash. I like it when a pun takes on a life of its own I guess.

Momo and her shishou Yuki (CV: Numakura Manami) use a stick of cinnamon-like thing as their power trigger. One of the other girl uses a bay leaf I think. There are a total of 6 active ninjas in Tsukikage as far as episode 2, and each of the student-teacher pair use the same spice, for up to 3 different spices. The media-mix property is already getting a novelization and manga adaptation since earlier this year, so it’s probably written in there.

I’ll leave the big spoiler on twitter. Well, big on impact, very small on substance. Anyways, the series is slated to air in Japan in October. No word on international streaming yet, but I’m guessing whoever typically Pony Canyon works with being the good bet (HiDive?). The full credit roll of the two-part screening was translated into English, so I’m guessing that’s the case.

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August 1, 2018

Is Revue Starlight Idol Anime? Depends on Who You Ask?

By omo

If you ask me, there is no such thing as idol anime. OK, maybe there are anime about idols, but that’s not what idols are about.

Idol anime is the new slice-of-life. Which is to say, English language fans can call things however they want, but they are probably wrong when they do.

Basically, it comes in the form of the media-mix IP Love Live, which spawns a bunch of anime, manga, games, music, stage events, whatever. That is par for the course for a lot of the media-mix IPs dating back to the late 90s or 00s. What’s unique about Love Live and its ilk is that they are focused on doing stage shows and live events as a driver for the IP. It becomes a way to reward and reinforce fandom this day and age, it is more engaging to fans (and in ad terms, it drives fans with massively high engagement). Also otaku kids in Japan these days are more about social and networking (and I see that overseas too). Live events themselves also have a lot of pluses in this day and age of seiyuu doing multiple roles besides voice acting, but that’s besides the point.

Invariably most if not all of these “idol” IPs engage its characters primarily, as my non-anime-nerdy friend would say, is like how a professional wrestler (in the WWE and NJPW sense) are like characters performed by the wrestlers, who would have these matches that are dramatic performances and deliver what passes for content to the audience and fans. I don’t know why people think Love Live was the first “idol” thing or the last whatever it was before, but there was definitely some kind of awakening in the west where people “get it.”

The popularity of Love Live and the fact that the IP bills itself as an idol story probably coined the term as such. But the mistake people make is to think Love Live is an “idol” thing. It isn’t. It’s just another media mix story with people who want to be “school idols”–just like how the characters in GaruPan are practitioners of “tankery.” It’s a made up thing that is as close to real idols as just teenage pretty people singing and dancing, trying to make it in some contextually fictional entertainment setting. SIF and Love Live are a work of fiction. But somehow people clang on to this “idol” idea and won’t let it go.

Part of it is obviously that Japanese idols are a real thing, and it is a cultural phenomenon. But I see more and more people who don’t understand the difference between the fiction and the reality. Just like how people apply the term “slice-of-life” to, say, Wake Up, Girls! or something dumb. At least in that verbiage misuse, it’s a made-up-term associated with nothing now being associated with something. “Idol anime” and “idol” generally refer to actual existing things, now being used by ignorant anime nerds to associate with totally different things, regardless of how relevant they are.

You can see this person who complain how calling “Revue Starlight” is misleading people, and it’s obvious. I wouldn’t call Utena or Sakura Taisen an idol anime either, but they are quite similar as Revue Starlight. (Would someone call Girls und Panzer a war anime? Or a tank anime? I guess it’s an anime about tanks, more precisely, an anime about fictional tanks?) But the real injustice here is that it pollutes the discourse on actual Japanese idols, as they are nothing at all like the stories portrayed in Love Live, IDOLM@STER or obviously Revue.

This is also how you get Aqours fans telling their management to not “overwork” the idols. [Which is, by the way, the most sanctimonious, paternal bullshit I’ve ever seen in western seiota fandom, and I’ve been in this fandom since the 90s.] This is not that different than someone who doesn’t know about actual tanks, and thought Tankery exists and a team of 5 people can service 7 tanks in a week, and it’s okay to shoot tank shells at each other???

I don’t know, a lot of this fictional stuff (eg., anime) are only meaningful if you have enough real life experience to contextualize the content. It is real sad if you don’t… It’s like people learning about Japanese idols from anime, when there are tons of real people who are actually in the scene they could read from. It’s fine as a gateway thing but it cannot be your only thing.

PS. I have maybe like 3-4 different draft ideas on this topic in this year alone. It’s really bothering me because while it’s good the Love Live’s popularity is a tide that raises all boats, so to speak, it also brings on a lot of people who are just plainly clueless about idol fandom, culture, and the things those idol IPs try to evoke, and there are not enough school teachers to feed the hungry masses on the Reddits of everywhichwhere. It’s as if only youtubers are their teachers on this stuff, LOL.

Leave a comment | posted in Seiyuu, Idol, Pop