Category Archives: English Language Modern Visual Fandom

December 13, 2012

In Jormungand, Guns and People Both Kill People

By omo

It’s a pretty staple rhetoric for the whole US domestic firearm ownership/regulation debate about how guns don’t kill people, people do. I think that’s true for the most part, but the reality is much more difficult to describe than that. I think this is why I stuck with Jormungand so far–it takes a surprisingly nuanced approach to some of the grim and realistic problems at the core of the story, despite a fairly understandable story about a weapons runner and the deadly business she runs.

I think it kind of reminds me of Patlabor. In one way, just as a police squad in charge of piloting giant robots is kind of out of our realm of realistic association  it’s the same with an international arms dealer running with a heavily armed mercenary gang and fending off private and public threats in stings and assassination attempts. Of course, illegal buying and selling of weapons is a very real-life problem, no matter the scale. But how many of us are actually all that familiar with the type of high-expense, selling-to-rogue-government kind of weapons trafficking? Where half the stuff she sells is more about logistics, like UAVs and radar arrays? Or that what HCLI pawns in terms of a 3rd party logistical support via its own satellite network? That’s very MGS if you ask me–and maybe that’s the sort of place we gleam some kind of connection with Jormungand’s world.

I think in order to have at least a chip in the game, Jormungand gave us some genuine sob story, as expected–namely in the life of Jonathan. We saw how Koko recruited a wide variety of men from their local armed forces, namely both for their savvy and specialties, and the men (and I guess a few women) join her for their personal reasons. For that matter we saw the same with the profiles of Koko’s antagonists and allies. But Jonah is the odd one out. It’s in the same way that we also see Koko herself being the odd one out, even among other arms dealers, and it’s where the show pay some attention in the way the lives of these two tend to balance on the turning point of the debate about war and peace, regarding the role of weapons and the human condition.

Of course, all of that makes sense until we factor in Valmet. That is the “Black Lagoon” part of Jormungand. In a way, that is just the sort of action-fanservice, Hollywood-style (think Rambo) otaku material and I don’t really know how it fits besides as a way to round out the psychological profile of Koko’s gang. It’s like how a harem anime needs to have a tsundere.

I’m also kind of glad Jormungand didn’t quite take the Lord of War approach, which seems at best disingenuous. Maybe this is because fundamentally Jormungand is otaku anime, the sort that is pro-guns, and pro-conservative values, that guns don’t kill people, people do. But it obviously spends the rest of the time focusing on the horrible things people with guns do, while asking us (and the characters too) why these people do these things, and if the world would be better off without the likes of Koko and her wares. Season one even featured a couple arcs namely driven by local warlords’ delusion of power fueled by ownership of said weapons. In season two, it even asks us what people without guns do to kill people. So invariably, I answer that with a yes–both guns and people kill people.

And I think that is fundamentally one of the deep-seeded problem post-war Japan has. It’s pacifistic yet so aggressively conservative, and that drives people crazy. To counter that, Jormungand thus apply that manga brand of humor, a mix of irony and self-depreciation. Yes, the CIA director is buying us Five Guys. Hey you, you impoverished, pre-teen mercenary from a war-torn central-Asian wasteland, is this the first time you had a burger like that? Is it time to whip out the SD? It’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but it connects the audience with the problem all too succinctly, without making any big gestures that would set off our verbally-worn triggers.

Sure beats Setsuna F. Seiei.

He is Gundam

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

December 12, 2012

Slowcast Season

By omo

Some companies take it easy–Anime Network most notably often releases their shows months after the initial broadcast dates. Others make a living getting it as soon as it’s legally possible. It’s not as interesting to grind out reasons why 3 or 7 days after first airing qualifies (or not) whatever it is as “simulcast.” Take this as an anecdote to the actual impact of delaying things. And realistically speaking, what counts for “too late”? At what point does the quality of service drops? What are the levels of impact?

I imagine it is going to vary from person to person, but here is my take. I’m also kind of curious as to what impact it is (which I know) versus what the delays are (which we’ll find out below).

Of the shows I’m still vaguely following and is being simulcasted, here are the release schedule as far as I can tell (thanks to Hashihime). Note that daylight savings is tricky but I’m factoring it in the calculation. Japan does not observe DST and the US does DST differently in some cases, and versus other countries. This means, namely, that the Spring and Autumn seasons cross the boundary, shortening or lengthening the delay by an hour. (This was a big deal for Fate/Zero S1 last year, if you were a East coaster following the simulcast.) To translate from JST to EDT, wind back 2 hours and flip AM/PM. So 7:00 JST would be 5PM EDT the day before, and 17:00 JST would be 3AM EDT of the same day.

  • Space Bros: Sunday 07:00 JST / Saturday 11PM Eastern (CR) – 6 hour gap. Note I used the main page show listing for the CR times.
  • Magi: Sunday 17:00 JST / Wednesday 1PM Eastern (CR) – 3 days and 10 hours gap.
  • Teekyuu: Sunday 22:27 JST / Sunday 10AM Eastern (CR) – 1 hour and 33 minutes…wait who cares about this show anyway
  • Muv-luv Alternative: Total Eclipse: Sunday 25:35 JST (Monday 1:35AM JST) / Sunday 1:30PM Eastern (CR) – 1 hour and 55 minutes gap
  • Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo: Monday 24:30 JST (Tuesday 12:30AM JST) / Wednesday 3:00PM Eastern (CR) – 2 days, 3 hours and 30 minutes gap.
  • Girls und Panzer: Monday 25:00 JST (Tuesday 1AM JST) / Wednesday 11:00AM Eastern (CR) – 2 days gap.
  • Jormungand: Perfect Order: Tuesday 24:30 JST (Wednesday 12:30AM JST) / Thursday 11:30AM Eastern (FUNi) – 2 days, 1 hour gap. Note I used the simulcast listing here for the times.
  • Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai: Wednesday 24:30 JST (Thursday 12:30AM JST) / Thursday 10:30AM Eastern (AN) – 10 hours gap. Note I used the mouseover text for listing on episodes 11 and 12 on this page.
  • Ebiten: This is a joke, but it is airing on Wednesday at 25:00 JST. Because I have no idea when it streamed on Nico last season LOL.
  • Medaka Box: Abnormal: Wednesday 25:30 JST (Thursday 1:30AM JST) / Friday 2:35AM Eastern (CR) – 1 day, 15 hours and 5 minutes gap. This is a weird one.
  • Psycho-Pass: Thursday 24:45 JST (Friday 12:45AM JST) / Thursday 11:45AM Eastern (FUNi) – 1 hour gap.
  • Robotic;Notes: Thursday 25:15 JST (Friday 1:15AM JST) / Friday 12:15AM Eastern (FUNi) – 1 day, 1 hour gap.
  • Hidamari Sketch: Honeycomb: Thursday 25:25 JST (Friday 1:25AM JST) / Monday 11:25AM Eastern (AN) – 3 days gap. Note I used these dates (mouseover) for episodes 11 and 12.
  • K: Thursday 25:30 JST (Friday 1:30AM JST) / Thursday…afternoon Eastern (Viz) – I can’t find the precise time listed but it’s advertised as Thursday afternoon, giving it up to 7.5 hours for gap, although it could be as short as 0 minutes! As you can see I’m not following this one that close.
  • Zetsuen no Temptest: Thursday 26:00 JST (Friday 2AM JST) / Thursday 3PM Eastern (CR) – 3 hour gap.
  • Oniai: Friday 23:00 JST / Friday 12:30PM Eastern (FUNi) – 3 hours and 30 minutes…by that I mean 1 WEEK 3 hours and 30 minutes gap because FUNi’s stream started a week later.
  • Shin Sekai Yori: Friday 24:30 JST (Saturday 12:30AM JST) / Tuesday 3:40PM Eastern (CR) – 3 days, 17 hours and 10 minutes gap.

I wonder if DST the reason why FUNi’s Psycho-Pass is an hour behind. Was it also an hour late in October? Even more side speculation: did AN move back their Hidasketch stream? Anyway, these are just side questions.

Some immediate observations. You can reconcile them to those above data as you will.

Simulcast with 1 week delay is no longer very useful. I’d say it even loses its main purpose for existing. I watch the fansubs for Oniai, because I have to watch it week-to-week, even if I do have access to FUNi’s simulcast. “Why do I have to be in a hurry?” I don’t, and I am not, but then I would be doing a pretty lousy job of episode blogging. That’s okay, the onus is on me, but obviously here “simulcast” is not an enabler as per its moniker on a practical level. However imagine if you didn’t have FUNi’s Elite access–you’ll be waiting 2 weeks to watch it. That takes all the air out of following a show up to date; you’re basically better of waiting until the season is over. And in that sense, 2 weeks of delay is not so different than 13 weeks of delay. I’m not quite ready to say that for 1 week of delay, however.

I do watch some shows right when it comes out via simulcast. For whatever the reason, historically, I watch noitaminA shows the day it airs (well, < 36hr), partly thanks to FUNi’s vigilant effort, which gets proper follow up by CR. Now that FUNi is doing it this season, it gets the job done partly…for the most part. Here is the first new finding: I associate Psycho-Pass with Robotic;Notes because of their brand name, programming segment. So in that sense, if I am reminded to watch one I will also watch the other. Unfortunately, because of the 1-day delay between the two streams I end up watching Robotic;Notes often days later (during the weekend), since I am usually unable to remind myself of Robotic;Notes if I already watched Psycho-Pass on Thursday. It’s funny and it shows me getting longer in the tooth, but more than once I would try to watch Robotics;Notes on a Thursday and go “oh, it’s not out yet.”

The second note is that simulcasts during the week often works okay if it’s delayed until the weekend. I don’t know, I can watch more anime during the weekend. I don’t often do so, but I can catch up if the opportunity presents itself. This tends to happen with K, Chuunikoi, and Jormungand, even if those aren’t really delayed so much (in K’s case, not really even).

Some shows just makes putting off easier than other. I think despite Space Bro and Muv-luv being simulcasted on the weekend I tend to watch them during the week. Part of that is also my weekends tend to be pretty busy, and both shows screen on Sunday, which I always have less free time than Friday night or Saturday. You can’t pre-catch-up to a show that hasn’t aired, etc. If it means anything, I used to watch both shows last season right around when they first come up, or at least by Sunday night at the latest; not so much this season.

I don’t have an AN account anymore, so I don’t even follow Hidamari Sketch and Chuunikoi very closely and I probably shouldn’t count them as I have no access to those streams. Even so, I watch them within 14 days, usually less than 7, of broadcast. Actually I don’t even keep track of their airing dates, and I look for them during lulls in my viewing schedule. If we use this as some kind of control case, I probably average 1-2 days for Chuu2koi and closer to a week for Hidamari Sketch.

It seems any delay less than 24 hours is not a big deal. I tend to watch them with that sort of lead time. I’d say 36 hours, maybe. I stopped tracking when things are released when the delay gets more than 1 calendar day off, however. Medaka Box is a show that has a tight window but I tend to put it off, despite that it might be a nice show to watch on the dot every week, and despite that it has a relatively short delay. It does have a relatively harmless delay on top of being short, too, so it mitigates things.

When it comes to Sakurasou, Shin Sekai Yori and Girls und Panzer, I’ve been pretty good at dodging spoilers. I don’t have to so much for Magi for some reason, but it is still possible. Thanks, people who tweet the episode and actually don’t offer opinions but simply describe what happens with statements of the obvious in the form of exclamation-baked … exclamations.  And LOOK AT THIS SCREEN SHOT! As a practical matter, spoiling on the internet is always something of a risk and simulcast timing doesn’t really help that much. The main thing is once we move past the initial 6 or so hours, most people who will watch it ASAP has already done so. And honestly if your simulcast may be 0-minute delayed but I won’t be able to watch something that airs at 12:30PM Eastern until I get home, which is at least 6 hours later anyway.  There’ll be some stragglers who will do the same over the next 48 hours and having a faster simulcast time will cut that down, but that typically is much less often.

To boil it down, these are probably the these most relevant factors to make more people watch simulcasts:

  • Day of the week. It is better to stream shows on Thursday, Fridays and Saturdays than Monday through Wednesday. Primarily, it’s because people tend to get more free time later on in the week and the way the news cycle begins and ends usually on the weekend. This is very much the biggest beef I have with this season. I actually don’t mind if everything comes out Thursday, that gives me time to watch them over the weekend and by Monday I’d be ready for the next round. FUNi’s delays on Jormungand is a good example of doing it right, where as Magi, Girls und Panzer, and Sakurasou are the ways to do it wrong. Magi especially is a double-offender, because it could get a Saturday PM simulcast, but noooo. All three shows also miss out on being in the wheelhouse of the JP news/reaction cycle since by the time they’re available, it’s half way through the week and it’s the time to watch all those Thursday shows.
  • Type of story. Some shows are more of a nail-biter, cliff-hanging than others. And then there’s Teekyu. I imagine this is not usually a major distinguishing factor, but imagine if Madoka episode 13 was spoiled to you in this way. That kinda sucks. More importantly, this is an argument for always 0-day simulcast, all the time. It’s just some shows are more resistant to delays than others.
  • Things that prompt people to watch. For me this is blogging, and seeing one show and how it reminds me of another. This also can mean seeing blog posts showing up in their feed or twitter time line when others are watching the shows. By being aware of how these things work, you can delay shows for more or less to minimize opportunity cost of your viewers’ limited attention span. I also touch on this for “day of the week” because there is an internet news cycle, and it does remind people to watch things.
  • Don’t confuse your viewers with funky release times. Talk to your licensees and delay things as need be, but make it easy to follow.
  • And I probably shouldn’t need to say this, it’s almost 2013 for crying out loud: A week is too long. Tell your licensors to not even bother if this is a constraint, save yourself the money or whatever.

And also, AN, fix your website, it is a usability sinkhole. I’m surprisingly okay with “Thursday afternoon” regarding Viz’s timestamps, but I appreciate more precision (like, by the hour). Well, I suspect this has to do with getting your shows out on a weekday before the evening so I can just watch it at home, so “before 6PM” is sufficient.

I guess I should put this disclaimer here: it’s uncertain as to when do most simulcast viewers watch their anime: during the week? On the weekends? On their commute (no way)? In the AM? In the PM? Between classes? Lunch breaks? I have no answers for you. But I think my pattern is not unlike most working persons’ pattern, since there’s a notion of what people do once they get a job. Do most anime fans work normal 9-5-esqe jobs? Maybe in another 5 years? I suppose if you work weekends and take the odd weekday off, your schedule will invariably differ.

Another disclaimer here is that I’m going to assume if there’s a simulcast, you want people to watch it. You being the provider of these services. So hopefully these observations go to that goal.

2 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom

December 10, 2012

Straightening Out Katyusha

By omo

So I read this, and I’m like, OK that’s pretty good.

But here is the thing:

The Crunchyroll stream of Girls und Panzer spans not just the US, but also Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and South Africa. So it’s not a simple (or more likely, technically risky, logistically complex, and expensive) thing to do. Second, Sentai is really the party with the North American license here. Why look to CR to do anything? (Don’t answer, I know.)

I actually contacted CR customer service and they said basically they knew this was going to the case, they asked, and the licensor decided to just not do it. Lvlln’s wax poetry about copyright does not point out the not-as-obvious thing that DiGi Kerot points out–the song is not in the credits for the CR version. That kind of make it obvious that this is a Japan decision, to edit the credit scroll like that.

Now, is Katyusha in public domain in Japan? I actually have no idea. You would think if Japan’s copyright law respects WIPO then it would be life + 50, and given how the creators of Katyusha did not pass away until 1973 and 1990, the song would still be in copyright in Japan. There was probably some complex wrinkle in that so it would be prudent to err on the safe side, but given the production committee nature any Japanese copyright would’ve been easily cleared by the publisher.

At least no aniblogger is trying to claim Apple’s patent is provisionally invalidated. That sort of reporting is just outright public disservice. You’re better off watching a TEDx talk about chanting mantra for Gaia. Again, the “refrain” goes: copyright is too complicated, don’t even try to decipher it, not even your average lawyer can hack it well enough–expert only please.

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

November 29, 2012

Slicing Life and Narrative Force

By omo

I think it comes down to this. I would like to just lay out my overall thoughts on this topic rather than simply object to what seems like an useful term.

In a nutshell, slice of life is a metaphor, a tortured one, if you will. It describes the kind of pacing and descriptive narratives in which the plot revolves around the everyday life. It’s why I proposed replacing “life” with “everyday life.” It would make a much more accurate descriptor if we want to pin it on the narrative or plot as a point of distinction. It’s like splitting hairs versus splitting a watermelon.

The truth is, the everyday life can have as much narrative force as anything else. This is partly why we can make moving, lovingly crafted biographies. It’s pretty obvious that we watch and read stories where the chain of events follow the characters in the story in a day-to-day manner, and it might even follow traditional trajectories of plot where there are exciting build-up to climatic showdowns and revelations. This is one of the biggest grey area in calling slice of life as a genre or an element.

And then there is K-ON. K-ON is often used as a consensual example of slice of life, but that show is one of the best examples of what constitutes watching a chain of events unfold to drive home some story. Even if often the story is just cute and humorous antics that die to bring forth rich characters, week after week. And K-ON cashes in on that build-up very hard, with entire climatic moments that brings genuine tears in eyes! I don’t know, this is pretty rare even for kuuki-kei anime. I’d go as far as to argue that no “slice of life” anime has done that with the same scale.

There are other works that are labeled in the same way that has amazing stories, and that is why we flock to them. I think Hidamari Sketch and Aria are both prime examples of this, which I think occupies a very different spot even among kuuki-kei anime. To put it simply, there are kuuki-kei pieces that focuses on who, like K-ON, and kuuki-kei pieces that focuses on what and where, like Yokohama Shopping Log or Mushishi.

Compared to, say, a typical Jump manga story, it feels more like a focus on what happens next. I guess that’s where the narrative knife falls. But even then it’s not a clear cut; the more I think about it, the less clean and elegant the metaphoric rule about plot seems to be. Do I care if Takumi yawns in the morning and scratches his butt while talking to his father about racing teams? Where does the knife falls on the entirety of Sket Dance?

And there are other boundary conditions. Consider shows that are made up of short stories, such as Sengoku Collection or Seraphim Call, where each episode or episodic pair unveils some conclusive arc but reveals a little bit about the overall universe. How are these shows different than, say, Darker than Black or Cowboy Bebop, in terms of the nature of the narrative form?

That is the one question I wish people would try to answer, because I have no idea what that should be. I know some people who didn’t like Cowboy Bebop because it lacks that cliffhanger-chained, conveyor belt of a narrative, that there is not much to make of a start or an end, in terms of logical progression of events or in the way the story is told chronologically. But is this something we really want to define via a negative space descriptor? Isn’t it just being lazy? Or is it more about not having the right tools or vocabulary to describe these things? Can we just leave the tortured metaphor about cutting things up, alone?

Anyways, if people think the term has meaning, I’m not against people using it. But what does it mean, and to who? It certainly doesn’t mean much to me, having seen it being used to describe everything from Black Lagoon to Love-Hina, from Bunny Drop to Cosprayers (damn it’s gone from Wiki). Well, that doesn’t bother me much when this fandom still regularly calls Love-Hina as “shoujo.” I think what bothers me is more precisely how we use this fuzzy logic indicator [by the way: what is a chair?] and pretend it is some grand o’ thing. Slice of everyday life is no more or less grand than, well, Takumi scratching his butt. It’s the stories in Aria that are grand, for example, not its genre tags.

What is great is that in the ever-going and never-ending to apply our instinct to categorize the fandom we’re immersed in, we’re coming up with new constructs to describe and explain these new experiences and things. In anime’s case, it’s new also because for many of us, it’s our first and foremost taste of Japan [Insert LOL California roll LOL joke here]. Anime and manga are stories from a strange new world, beyond just as a figure of speech. But that’s just it. If I want to make things clear, I should avoid those terms like slice of life. You’d think my writing is confounding all on its own already, going by the way some people respond to it. Let’s not make up new words [LOL kuukikei] to make things more complicated, unless we have to. And if we don’t need to label Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts slice of life, we certainly don’t need to for Yotsuba& or Yokohama Shopping Log.

Lastly, let me just go back and give props to 2DT and his essay on Aria. The truth is when we rely only on fuzzy logic, we also invite fuzziness. Is that something we actually want? You are trading for usefulness and in return up new possibilities that might better describe the situation. That’s fine when we are treading familiar and established grounds, but is it in this case? I’d say no, resoundingly. The superior way is to just call it by what it is. And you do that only when you watch it closely.

Look within.

6 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, K-ON, Modern Visual Culture, Popular Culture

November 20, 2012

Seasonal Ghibli Afflictions, 2012 Edition

By omo

It [NSFW] might not cause pain per se, but it’s a hassle to catch a bunch of movies in the span of such a short time. And it’s often on a weeknight. Invariably each movie is a hit in the wallet and in the overall consideration of time, but invariably it is all so very much worth the while.

The North American distribution of Ghibli works, GKIDS, is throwing another feast of Ghibli screenings in NYC starting this week and ending on Dec. 20. Hopefully I will be able to catch a bunch, most notably the ones I missed from last year. Well, I’m not sure I will watch twelve movies again, but definitely at least 2. Spirited Away is up next, and hopefully Castle in the Sky and the Yamadas will finally make their entries in this blog at some point. I still owe Kiki a date! So that’s 3-4 films, and hopefully I can catch them all. (What’s scary is that I think I can watch Porco another three times! It’s been about a year, after all.)

You can find all the details here.

More realistically speaking, I think I’ll end up watching: Spirited Away, Kiki’s, Howl’s, Ocean Waves; maybe Yamada’s, maybe Totoro, and/or maybe Pompoko. Whisper, Porco and Laputa are long shots. Hopefully, also, I can catch the “dub that I haven’t seen before” for some of these, as I’ve heard only the English dubs for some, and Japanese dubs for others. Well, I’m not going to worry too much on missing the English dub other than Kiki’s (which I have at home anyway). So even if I go for broke I’m not going to catch 10 or whatever many films that I did last year. That’s a good thing.

 

2 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom