Category Archives: English Language Modern Visual Fandom

April 26, 2013

FREE Willy, the Swimming Anime

By omo

I think I can make 99 jokes based on FREE, the newly announced Kyoto Animation project. This TV anime will hit the airwaves in July 2013. It’s roughly the same anime people have been clamoring for since the Animation Do KyoAni commercial of the same subject matter aired a couple months ago. Today, the characters have names, voice acting, and are part of some story.

I don’t know, really. After Tamako Market I’m definitely skeptical about another original Kyoto Animation work. I still like/am biased towards original works, so I’ll definitely be watching it when it comes out, even if the visual signals are clearly saying it’s not for me. And it isn’t as if Tamako Market was not fun to watch; just nothing special short of that one episode.

As for the ongoing discourse, to put it broadly, it’s all about Kyoani putting their foot down on female-targeting fanservice. There’s a lot of different reactions out there actually, but what is kind of amusing and bothersome at the same time is the meta-ness of it. There are probably more blog posts and reactions about people who might be against this manflesh anime pandering than actual complaints about the anime, let alone complaints about the anime being manflesh pandering. I’m sure there’s a healthy contingent of whiners, those so-called moe otaku or whatever, but isn’t that true for just any other anime out there? Shouldn’t all this complaints be characterized in a way where it’s normalized against some average? At this point it feels like people are just having fun against a strawman, and yeah, arguing against a strawman is pretty fun.

The way I see, it’s a simple formula of KyoAni fanbase clashing with the truth that there are probably a helluva lot of girls actually working at Kyoto Animation, slaving away at your Hyouka or Chuu2Koi, and now they are doing a project that flies their flags, so to speak. That goes against the typical work Kyoani has produced, so naturally some people are kind of irked. Like all those people hoping for a Full Metal Panic work. (Funny thing is you can’t even really make fun of these guys (at least not full bore) because FMP is at least a cut above, say, an eroge adaptation). I like this–this flag flying–because people tend to draw their best when they draw stuff they like. But, really, just how many girls are working at Kyoani today? Why do I get the impression there are a lot of them?

To take even a bigger step back, I feel this is just an anime hipster kind of thing to do. It’s like there’s this overarching dialog over there in the video game scene about women and sexism, and anime peeps are just making their own version up, in a monkey-see-monkey-does kind of way. I mean, it’s too disingenuous to even call it prosecution. It’s just silly. It doesn’t even address any of the core issues, or real issues involved.

For one, this is about fanservice. It’s clearly not about moe (or anti-moe or whatever). Yet moe gets flagged, why?

Second, more people need to watch Tsuritama. Or KimiBoku. It’s not otaku entertainment if it doesn’t have discourse, and without familiarity of the discourse I don’t know if you can really make sense of it. Like a good doujinshi, it needs context, it’s from fans, to fans. You really get a nice dose of it in the promo material for FREE. In fact I think that’s part of the problem–so far the various promos offer little in terms of what the show will be like besides the fanservice part. There are high schoolers swimming, and…?

To circle back about fanservice and moe, I think maybe it’s more about misidentifying Kyoani fandom? There was all this hoopla about Little Buster and Air and Kanon, after all. I think it’s just yet another chapter in KyoAni’s varied history–from Munto to the Kanon remake to Haruhi-isms to Yamakan. Now this.

And like every misleading narrative, it distracts attention from real issues, like the regularly-issued bomb threats for Kuroko’s Basketball events, or, well, Kyoto Animation hasn’t been able to do an original anime to make a living off of. Will whining about whiners whining about the homoerotic undertones or manflesh or whatever of Free, change any of it? Or improve the lives of women interacting with anime? Doubtful, unless you count the good feels those tumblr campaigns or laughing at internet strawmen bring home. It’s normal for guys (especially nerds) to get squeamish about the naked body; it’s not normal for BL doujin events to get canceled because of bomb threats. I think it’s just sad when people can’t get that straight.

TL;DR – just another day on the internet.

5 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, FREE, Tamako Market

March 18, 2013

From Up on Flag School

By omo

"Back in the days."

From Up on Poppy Hill hails as the first full-length animated feature helmed by a father-son combo. The Miyazakis did a pretty good job here, with its usual features that we’ve came to expect of the typical Ghibli production. Even if it’s an adaptation.

The US dub is, as usual, competent. It falls just short of being a really great dub, but I think it suffices quite well nonetheless.

Watching it on debut weekend on the coattails of the NYICFF takes a bit of air out of it because the screening didn’t count for the box office numbers. It’s kind of weird but those screenings are eligible to be watched by festival pass owners (It’s like $250 or something). Maybe that is why they counted separately.

The real angle I have on this movie is that it has a strange cultural bubble that the narrative swims in. My first reaction after finishing the film was “man, I need to get the JP version and rewatch it.” Thankfully, it will make a fun rewatch. The subdued and awkward teenage drama is as cute as quaint can get. I mean, only if Hyouka was even 10% as cute as this. It’s too restrained to catch up to Whisper of the Heart but this might be the very first Ghibli film since Kondo’s masterpiece which attempted at real teenage awkward-laughing-at.

Poppy Hill makes a very strong parallel with Umi’s home at the Coquelicot Manor and the Quartier Latin, one that is made explicit half way through the movie. I guess it’s typical for the movie to help us out in this way.

In Porco, there was a scene (or two?) where you see these shiny American bombers doing rounds in the sky. I wonder if this is how it feels when Poppy Hill shows us its smoky, 1964 landscapes in Yokohama. It’s all this figurative “flag language” that surrounds the film which makes it doubly more interesting if you knew what it spoke.

PS. I wonder if we can say, fairly, that the difference between Miyazaki Sr.’s film and Jr.’s film being the difference between Shun and Oreki.

Leave a comment | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Kokurikozaka Kara

March 14, 2013

JManga, 2010-2013

By omo

Himawari-chan Best-chan

I wish I have something to add to JManga’s last announcement, but I don’t. It’s the imagine conjured up in my mind whenever Japan tries to innovate regarding media. Which is to say, yeah, as much as I love you for trying, you guys just got that proverbial long ways to go left to go. I hope the people who were working for JManga find a nice landing place. I also hope I get to read all the stuff I bought off JManga but didn’t finish reading yet, before they cut the cord.

The saying also goes “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” I think we’re pretty much stuck at that stage of the game when it comes to new media. You have to execute. In fact just willingness of these big corporate dudes in playing the game, as another saying goes, is just half of the battle. It feels none of the execs or corporate bodies on the list of controlling entities are known for innovation. Manga publishing? Hah. Maybe you could point and say it’s in the DNA.

It takes an incredibly different mindset to be able to serve the world beyond Japan’s borders, and the truth is nobody over there has proven this is something possible domestically. It’s not that they are incompetent, but it seems like they just don’t get it.

I’m also tired of this naysaying. So instead let’s see what JManga did right after all. It’ll help me switch gears from whining about Google’s decision to kill Reader.

  • Open up the service more like a title library than a catalog – They listed a bunch of stuff they didn’t translate, but were possibilities. It’s a nice touch.
  • Bring over guests to cons – You do this, you’re all right in my book–it’s about connecting fans with creators.
  • Mobile apps – They eventually had this, and it’s increasingly a must for new media to cater to relevant platforms.
  • Regular communication – For the most part they’re pretty okay at this.
  • Sales – It’s nice to have. Especially periodically and at first.
  • High definition images – They exist, although it could be better, it’s good enough.
  • Translation options – It’s good to have the option to read in raw and in English or any other language available.

…and I’m spent. Fact is I just haven’t used it much. Certainly not enough to really get to know the service–as much as you can after reading a couple volumes and browsing for a while. The downsides and things it got wrong held me back. And that’s the temptation–for every one thing it did right I can probably name 2-3 things it did badly or wrongly. It’s so easy. I remember when JManga launched in 2010 I sent feedback to them about their point system, and in some ways they never outgrew that. Maybe they were doomed from the start.

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

March 12, 2013

Eroge Fandumb, Let’s Choke on Maple Syrup

By omo

Chihiro

I was reading Bamboo’s latest blog post about the ailing sales of this stuff over there, and how it’s harder to make a living doing it now than before. Figured I probably should hit up some usual visual novel/bishoujo gaming conversational haunts I looked and then lost my motivation in trying to talk about this stuff. Why? Because the retard to sensible ratio is up in there. It’s not that people are stupid–most everyone have a good point or more they want to make. But that’s all they want to do. They don’t want to actually discuss stuff. I’m probably unfairly characterizing things but it’s sad and pathetic how people bicker over things like translation quality or release dates. It’s like they’re on a sinking ship, arguing what the shade of blue the sky is. It’s also probably a sign: that it’s a scene increasingly drowned out by the “vocal minority” given how it’s a very small scene to begin with.

So instead, I will just link to it here. It helps to have read Akira’s translation to this news bite to get the general background of what’s happening.

For what it is worth, after the interview with nbkz went public, I did buy a copy of ef. I think a big reason is that I realized it’ll never get a physical copy, which is what I really wanted, so I stopped holding out. This is why it will probably never get a physical copy.

Still, I think it’s such a pain to read these forums–it’s like you get the totally clueless-about-game-dev types (are they from the FGC? Please be from the FGC) crossed with the super-entitled pirates crossed with dirty redditors and on top of that, fansub snobs. It would not surprise me that this is partly why we can’t have nice things.

And if Bamboo calls it quits, we may very well have way fewer nice things! I mean, I think I spent like $100 minimum at the MG booth at AX every year. And that’s just AX. I’m seriously hoping that will not be going away. I hope someone can do Bamboo’s rant a reasonable translation, because as you know I can’t.

Finally playing the beginning of ef now, it’s really just a tortuously beautiful version of the anime. Should be a fun ride going through it on a flight or something. It’s also in some ways painfully ironic in regards to the severity of the situation.

Edit: I just found out I was linking to the wrong post. So the maple syrup thing probably didn’t make sense. This is the recent rant from Bamboo that was kind of an interesting read. This is another follow up that is, well…

8 comments | posted in Bishoujo Gaming, English Language Modern Visual Fandom

March 4, 2013

Robert Napton’s ANNCast

By omo

I don’t know if it’s the best ANNCast, but it’s one of the better ones, partly because it clocks in at a massive 2.5 hours, goes over Napton’s involvement with the comic boom during the early 90s with Image (he worked for them as a writer), some anecdotes from Nippon Books and US Rendition, and it’s basically the final salute/farewell to Bandai Entertainment USA. This podcast is also great partly because it namedropped “Anime Expo 2007” and “Yutaka Yamamoto.” And partly unlike most ANNCasts, it talks a lot about Turn-A Gundam. It’s all over the place. But ultimate I think it’s great, because I think Napton has a narrative going on. And you might know how I like narratives.

The people who have better things to do than to listen to a 150-min podcast can get a detail list over at AODVD/FP thanks to WTK. But I’d like to drop my own spin and do  my own distortions like a crappy dubstep remix. I think all the talk about manga and Napton’s career is actually quite fascinating, but it’s kind of off topic so I hope you’d just go listen to it to get the most out of it.

What’s probably more important is that Napton posted an errata of sorts in the ANN forum which ends with a paragraph that extended the main problem as raised by Quarkboy. Let me reconstruct it here so you understand what I mean.

First, from Napton’s POV, throughout the podcast, the reason why Bandai Entertainment USA closed was because Japan decided to restructure. Bandai Entertainment USA was trucking along, doing the “right things” and making themselves as a sustainable business. The rug was pulled out from under them, as the saying goes. It’s probably good to understand, also, that after the Namco merger, Bandai was really more a collection of independent units/businesses that operated with a lot of independence. As a unit, Bandai Entertainment USA was doing fine however. (For example, as repeated elsewhere, K-ON was doing well.)

It seemed that the Namco-Bandai mothership wanted to come up with an unified international strategy, which is described below. I quote:

I’ve heard things here in Japan from within Bandai “corporate” as to the reasoning for the shutting of Bandai Entertainment…

The reason why it seems so senseless is because Robert is only considering the situation in the US market, as if Bandai in Japan made the decision in a vacuum. The decision to shutdown Bandai Ent. was part of an overall restructuring that affected all parts of Bandai Group’s audio visual units, within and outside of Japan.
The new overall philosophy is that Bandai should make physical products in Japan, and sell them overseas.
You remember how you said it was so silly for Bandai Ent. to have to pay Japan (bandai visual or sunrise) to license the shows? It seemed silly to them too, especially when the market had shrunk so much. Why should Bandai have a licensing and sales unit in the US but not everywhere else in the world, for example?
Their new strategy is to treat videogram sales more like gundam kits, and export Japanese made products to the world. For broadcast and internet license to local companies, and for sales export your Japanese products.
In this new strategy it didn’t make sense to keep a sub company like Bandai Entertainment around. In fact having it license things in the US just made it harder to control a global marketing strategy from HQ. Bandai Group wants to treat the global market as much as possible as a single entity.

A couple days later Napton actually posted some errata to the podcast (you can read it here) but I want to highlight the below:

As for the future, after reading some of the comments, I’d like to make the analogy that President Obama was re-elected because his campaign did a better job on the GROUND in the battleground states. More people knocking on more doors. The R1 US anime market cannot be salvaged without a dedicated ground effort, which cannot be accomplished by manufacturing discs in Japan with subs and dubs and importing them long distance with no one here speaking on their behalf. Aniplex is succeeding at the moment because they have a US based group heading up their North American effort. I would hope in some form or fashion, Bandai Japan realizes that this is the best strategy for the US market because I believe it’s the only way to really accomplish the goal of selling more DVD and Blu-ray product in the R1 market, which is the understandable goal of any company.

I’m inclined to agree with Bob. This is basically how I feel about that Daisuki thing, if you recall. The internet is wondrous. Having Japanese releases with subs is excellent. But it does not address of the value that Bandai Entertainment USA had in terms of a “footprint” of anime in North America. Maybe that footprint is changing, the market is adjusting. Sure. Stuff gets left on the table. What is a footprint anyway? The people, the con presence, the PR, the store they had, the line of manga, all of that has some kind of value. The question is what value is it? What and how should corporate value it? How should consumers value it?

Is this why K-ON’s marketing falls into a pit once the license switches hands? All of this is non-trivial, important stuff that the average consumer kind of misses. In this “American fans party, don’t pay” atmosphere of narratives, I like Napton’s “Star Blazer mountain” narrative because ultimately the middlemen are the true critical failure point. It’s just now we’re dressing it in greater clarity. It’s reasonable to expect unreasonable fans to go crazy on Turn-A Gundam at a panel, even if that is a bad thing. That’s what is suppose to happen. It’s not reasonable to expect fans to reason with you on the causes why Japanese licensors are disconnected with the US market realities, even if that is a good thing. Because that is the whole point to the localization business.

But I think this is not a story about good and bad, people or business decisions. This is a story about how things are changing. Here we have Napton, a guy who got into anime because of Star Blazer. Now we have people like EJ, who … what does he even like? I mean it in a “is this guy just a dude workin’ or is he like, a fan?” kind of way. Napton namedropped a bunch of the new guards of marketing. He even namedropped some Japanese guys who get it, like LOL Henry Goto. Well, good for them. I just hope all these baton hand-offs resolve with fewer stranded licenses and laid-off employees. It’s the least that could be done.

Kiraboshi!

Instead of a billion post-scripts, I just want to highlight other notable points of the podcast. I mean, that’s why this is worth listening to. I’m not really a podcast guy but there are some quality ANNCasts after all, such as this one.

According to Napton, they sold out of FLAG at A-kon. Why? Is it because of some autographing tie-in? That’s my best guess. FLAG underperformed, which is no great secret, but somehow it sold well in Texas and nowhere else. Wonder why?

He mentioned Anime Expo 2007. I think some of my fellow seiwota chasers agree that it was a tragedy of a con. Napton didn’t go into details, but I’ve heard enough from everyone else to figure out what was going on… You should too. I think you get the best “heat” if you actually go to AX and interview some of the people in line for autographs. It’s things like this that bonds Marketing Directors with congoers.

Yamakan got a name drop. His statements that rattled the 2ch-types got referenced to. And yeah, spot on bros. And the Endless Eight dub idea sounded neat–Napton said there was an internal idea about having different people dub E8 and have role switches, but it didn’t work out so the idea didn’t go.

His point about the Bebop dub and how those actors connected with R1 anime’s humble beginnings made a lot of sense. As someone who doesn’t track dub actors directly but is invariably always just one degree removed from that scene, it’s a pretty fascinating look.

There were a fair bit of discussion regarding Bandai Visual. It seems that where it failed isn’t the idea but in the execution. While the strength of the titles as an issue was obvious from the get go, the whole distribution aspect is something you wouldn’t know until probably a good bit after the fact. I wonder how Loy got roped into that in the first place.

What’s equally enlightening is the “changing of the Bandai Entertainment” image. I guess I never really saw it that way, partly because anime itself has changed in a similar way, so it was more like out of the growth of the licensing more titles? I don’t know. It always licensed shows like, say, FLAG, anyway.  There was always the Gundam series of the day. Bones shows. I think maybe when Bones started doing weird things, maybe then? I can understand why Napton namedropped Soul Eater. That did feel like a Bandai title. Heck, Full Metal Alchemist (both series) felt like a Bandai Entertainment title. I guess you can see how it goes. Maybe the better question to ask is, are they changing the image in part due to the licensing pressure as a result of having too narrow of a focus in a field that isn’t widening? I suppose Lucky Star was like, the one turning point for them.

In some sense, this podcast isn’t as “enlightening” on a factual level. I thought it was more like a canvassing of an era (90s and 00s) from someone who was both in it and as an observer. But there are some pretty interesting stuff, especially if you followed this sort of news throughout that period.

Leave a comment | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Popular Culture