Category Archives: English Language Modern Visual Fandom

June 19, 2013

OreImo Radio Update: The World Is All Sisucon

By omo

From Chiba to the World

Your OreImo web radio efforts have paid off in the form of this kinda-heart-warming message from the producer of the show, Shinichiro Kashiwada. The full message can be read on the JP home page for OreImo S2 but here’s the key excerpt:

Every staff and cast member who has been involved in this series has put their hearts and souls into these last 3 episodes of “Oreimo 2,” and we have all been hoping to share these final episodes with as many fans as possible. When we saw so many dedicated fan submissions to the “Oreimo 2 Web Radio Show” from our international fans who watch every week through various streaming services, we knew we had to provide an environment where every fan can watch and experience these final episodes simultaneously.

And yeah, it was written bilingually in English and Japanese. Oh, of course, the bigger news is that OreImo OAV streaming for everyone without the time lag. I don’t know, does this obvious acknowledgment of the episodic bubble, the “watch every week” water cooler-style chatter (except it happens mostly online) in which drives this particular niche fandom, mean something after all?

And of course, last Thursday was when the latest OreImo S2 radio came up and the hosts did mention the large volume of English-language submissions. I think during the foreign mail segment, there was a letter from Singapore who pretty much dissed Ayachi outright (but he did apologize). There was definitely some internet-tard-y guy who referenced Hanazawa as “Hanakana-chan.” It’s kind of funny I GUESS? There was some Californian-tiger dude with an unique greeting. There was a letter from a Canadian sisters doing real talk about the difference between fujoshi and otaku-ko. Finally (or initially?) there’s this pretty much incomprehensible letter that makes no sense? Can TKTT pronounce “Commander Riker?” The world will never know.

Kind of like this simulcast announcement, I think people realize foreign otaku knows their stuff as much as slick Aniplex-types know about the foreign market. At ~5 hours post-tweet, there are about ~1000 RTs for the ep16-18 tweet announcement in Japanese, and about a quarter that for the English version of the same tweet. Does this mean we’re about 1/5? Should I check back in a day? Is it fair to assume our oversea comrades not in Japan would rather RT in Japanese? Does pointless speculations make any sense? But yeah, throw us a bone, even if it’s full of crap like this, we’ll slurp it up gladly.

Regardless, it’s always a good time with Hanazawa and Taketatsu. Hopefully next week they will do more foreign viewer mail! Read more about it here and listen to it here!

PS. We should all submit tongue twisters in English or something. You know.

PPS. Updated count on RT at time of publish is still about the same, 284 to 1180

Leave a comment | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai

June 17, 2013

Cons and Chums and Takedowns

By omo

…and I survived my first big gaming convention. I have some takeaways to reflect on, for example how the “anime” stuff is like out there in the non-anime con context, and how con culture is different between different groups, and all that stuff. But I liked my first Origins, mainly because I hung out with some old school gamers and they are a good group to hang with.

Makoto via Nekopuchi

I found this little rage-induced spiel from Astronerdboy’s site appropriate as a typical example of a bad DMCA takedown. People generally gets irked. Even I felt irked. [Tho probably not as irked as when Google Adsense decided that my site violated their age rating policy and still spams me with their promos.] My problem with Asteronerdboy’s takedown rant is that while this is part of the work that Japan has to do in order to resolve some of the problems I’ve been complaining about, namely, srsly guys, let’s do SEO in English please, ANB doesn’t seem to understand how copyright works (eg, every time that green header loads up I kind of roll my eyes), although that is also very common among most people who gets a takedown. Ah well. Where there’s mass DMCA takedowns, there’s chillingeffects.org.

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Paranda and cowboybibimbap are both in Japan doing their respective wota things. Good time to track what’s going down! Feel chasers gonna chase feels.

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I’m helping Wah to run a panel at Otakon. It’s about nerd spots in Tokyo. I will have prizes to give away at some point. The panel is called Otaku Hotspots in Tokyo and it might be a veiled advertisement for A-Button and Garten, who knows. Talking about it also makes me want to go see ZUN at AWA. It also makes me miss this brewpub IPA I had last weekend in Columbus. And this other IPA…hybrid that I had in Columbus. Or this coffee-based stout I had in Columbus. Some good stuff there.

Otakon also has listed their fan panel winners er I mean panelists. Take a look. Given that Otakon this year will be nuts schedule-wise, I hope I get the first-thing-Friday spot. Let’s see how it works out.

Anime Expo’s schedule, in comparison, feels a lot easier to plot. The big things I want to check out are all going to not conflict, not counting autographs. So we’ll see.

Leave a comment | posted in Conventions and Concerts, English Language Modern Visual Fandom

May 19, 2013

Wai AnimeSols Akari AnimeSols Daisuki

By omo

datedatedatedatedaisukidakara.jpg

I think I’m going to have a good time making fun of Daisuki. Daisuki, the international effort of a Japanese congolmerate trying to promote digital streaming distribution overseas, opened its doors last Thursday and featured a sampling of free streaming anime with both new shows like Gundam Seed HD and Lupin the III 2nd season. I mean, that’s quite a range; you could be crawling in your skin watching Sword Art Online one moment and slapping away with Zeta Gundam the next.

Launching the site also means playing most of its hand. The design of the site seems to break down into a video section and a store section. The FAQ page lists various generic Q&As that a retailer site would have. It also answers questions about a potential pay-subscription service. None of those things are available yet. In fact, other than some hiccups, there’s not much to say about Daisuki itself right now.

The one thing that can be said is DRM. At least, I am assuming this is why Daisuki’s video playback require flash, and local storage via flash. So if you can’t get that to work, no video for you. Which also means no video for most devices running Android 4.1+ or any iOS devices.

A very different story happened 2 days earlier when AnimeSols launched. The half-kickstarter, half-free-streaming site launched with 8 titles from the wayback machine. I watched an episode of Creamy Mami and I am like, hey this is not entirely terrible. It uses only HTML5 which means it works on everything other than Firefox and some versions of IE. They are essentially streaming without DRM.

It isn’t to say AnimeSols don’t have (serious) problems. The website looks like a fan site from 6 years ago, the pledge mechanism could be better (eg., can’t freely cancel pledge before deadline). The fatal flaw is a general lack of understanding why successful crowdfunding projects are successful. It didn’t launch with some key components like FAQ and the like (some were added afterwards). There are simply too many launch pledge titles, there is next to zero discovery mechanism, and generally does a poor job of marketing any of their pledge drives (in fact I don’t even know how it is suppose to work, who is running them, etc). Well, it’s hard to say what is what without knowing the constraints Daisuki and AnimeSols had to work with, but AnimeSols is like that beautiful paper airplane from ef, except it’s gonna crash and burn.

I think there’s a half-empty, half-full approach to look at these two new ventures. On one hand, anime is kind of an insular business, especially since Japan can’t be counted on to produce a catchy tech business, let alone revolving around children’s cartoons. Outside of Japan, there are probably too few people to really call on in order to make something really top notch. At least, not after Crunchyroll–arguably the only legit startup in the business. That Strike Witches joke from Seizon season one, heh, strikes again–it takes more than one person to make an anime; it takes also more than one person to sell it.

But I would love to be proven wrong.

These two sites are just getting started. Time will tell. Meanwhile go sign up on Daisuki, win some prizes and vote on what you want to see. If you want junk from anime studios’ storage closets in the form of “vintage merchandise” from shows back in the 70s, go back some stuff from AnimeSols.

PS. The post topic is brought to you by this adorable twitter bot. This post is brought to you by the need to pun.

PPS. The ANNCast with Daisuki rep is unfortunate. I’m not sure anyone took note or what, but if there’s one takeaway, it’s that old Toei titles are all open game (eg., people will really daisuki for Daisuki when it becomes the one place that shows Sailor Moon), except of whatever that may be blocking their way.

PPPS. Hi there.

http://twitter.com/epitanime/statuses/335580302992887808

4 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom

May 16, 2013

Flood OreImo Web Radio with Your Overflowing Affection

By omo

“Otakus of the world, unite!”

DJ KURONEKO is probably a real DJ.

Should I put a [sic] there? I guess not. Anyway, Oreimo season 2 web radio has this corner where they are reading international fan mail. So it’s really neat. What’s even more awesome is how the web radio page got a translation so you can just waltz over and type in nonsense and hit submit. I think it would be great if all the oversea viewers of OreImo got to send their messages to the radio show.

To do it right, I think you also need to try a few things.

  • If you have some Japanese ability, try to write your message in Japanese. It’s okay to use terrible Japanese if you are a legit gaijin, and I think it’s kind of a good thing, as that gives them something to talk about. But it’s also impressive if your written Japanese is top notch.
  • Approach the message like a letter. Write a “Dear Miss Taketatsu and Miss Hanazawa” in there or something. It’s okay to close with “sincerely yours” but it’s probably not as important as the initial bit of the letter. It’s tempting to treat it like an internet blog comment, but this is a radio show still, folks.
  • Include where you are from in the letter. And generally stick to topic.
  • Additionally if you can handle listening to the previous episodes (well, just ep 2 and 3), give it a spin and hear what they say about the segment to give you an idea what to write.

I ended up using machine translated text. Great thing about Google’s web interface is that it has text-to-speech, so I can translate the text and hit playback to at least make sure what I wrote sounds okay, even if I can’t read it.

Most of these tie-in radio shows are pre-recorded, and so is this one. New episodes come out twice a month on alternating Thursdays (Japan time), but it makes me think that they’re recorded at the same time. At least, given episodes 1 and 2. I’m guessing if we submit comments to the show today, it probably won’t show up in the next week’s episode.

I think this is a great way to show that oversea fans can represent. They’re asking for it. Let’s give it to them.

PS. Just want to document this … thing some more.

https://twitter.com/oreimo_anime/status/335005608908582912

3 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai, Seiyuu, Idol, Pop

May 9, 2013

Jojo Generation

By omo

Lisa Lisa

I was listening to this at some point before my trip in which the interviewee, a internet-popular personality defines meme as an idea that passes through generations a way DNA does, but just faster. Then I thought about Jojo.

I viewed Jojo TV marathon-style, but in sprints. The first 6 episodes I took it weekly, then I watched like 7-14 in one shot, and then 15 to the end after maybe a 3-month gap. I thought it worked well, except that the last chunk of it I was kind of just plowing through while half-tired and jetlagged, on a plane.

Feeling tired while watching the climatic end to Jojo made it a little less dramatic. But watching it marathon style does nothing to hide the feeling that the same formula in which the same kind of thing happens in the first arc was used in the second arc. Maybe it’s a good way to see how the 1800s isn’t so different than the 1900s. I don’t know if it’s true or not, at least when it comes to the content of our heroes’ hearts and the curse of the super-species of man that started eons ago.

It feels like memes are the anachronism for the future? Like, it is both a pot mark in the past in which the future can “understand” (eg., via name dropping) and also a way in which the future can connect to the past (eg., generational). It’s just the vantage point differ, since there’s that arrow of time and all.

 

Leave a comment | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Jojo no Kimyou na Bouken