Category Archives: English Language Modern Visual Fandom

December 5, 2006

Things to Consider in Making an End-of-Year List

By omo

As the year comes to an end it may be kind of a stereotypical behavior to recollect and remember the highlights of the year. I hope this can serve as a primer.

When it comes to anime we should always take that step back (if you can) and remember that anime is a vague label applied to Japanese animation–it can be odd and unavailable as Paprika; cartoony but uninteresting like Animal Yokocho (just kidding); or plain and teenager-ish like Gundam Seed Destiny. People invariably like different kinds of shows, so they’ll be able to talk about those shows they saw. Not a lot of people watches everything across the board, so these kind of “best of 2006” lists are a good way to figure out what sorts of shows they like.

But invariably, too, that there are only so many shows any one person can watch in a year. There are only so many shows the country of Japan (with help from Korea, China, and even US and Europe) can produce in a year.

This all just means one simple thing: list the shows how you like them. It’s nigh impossible to assign some kind of objective value, so if you like a sucky show, just say that you like a sucky show; if someone knocks your top favorite, no big deal–it just means they have different tastes, or don’t understand what’s so good about it.

But there are some things you can do that can make life easier. The first thing is to actually figure out what you’ve seen this year, and make sure the shows you list are actually from this year, or whatever. It’s nice to have some internal consistency so your favorite list this year isn’t just your all-time favorite list because you rewatched everything on your all-time favorite list every year, and you just go by what you’ve seen that year. You could, but that’s boring.

If you’re the kind of person that watches 2-3 series a season, you probably would have seen something like 9-12 new shows this year. If you make a top-10 list from that, it would just mean that you’ve exercised little to no selective brain muscle. On the other hand if you make a top 5 list, suddenly you are engaged in the difficult yet joyful activity of mentally debating what is worth that little bit of honor you bestow to your favorite shows.

Of course if you watch like 50 shows a year, a top 10 is definitely a little too restraining. And I’d guess restraint might not be your forte. So why stop there? We also need people to talk about the dinky shows that few others have seen yet these shows could carry some redemptive value that only you did not oversee.

If you’re like me, you probably would like to watch a bunch of different kinds of shows, for all sorts of different reasons. Spending some time to explain why you think Suzumiya Haruhi actually deserves your #1 spot is a good thing. Talk about why you like something is really what I love the most about these kinds of exercises; or, alternatively, figure out why by looking at the list and puzzling it with what you know about that person. Which is to say–if you put something like PriPri as your #1, please do NOT explain why, I’ll just step away…

Most importantly, take your time. Think back to shows that went on from last year. I’d imagine Noein and Black Cat are not shows fresh in people’s minds, for example. How many people caught Mushishi? How would we evaluate Asatte no Houkou fairly? It takes time to figure these things out.

This end-of-year season I want to encourage everyone to talk about what they love this year. I’d like to think 2006 has been a superb year for anime with a lot of landmark shows and surprises. Ups and downs rocked this little subculture several times, and it’s good to savor these moments. A boring list alone doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what has happened.

4 comments | posted in Blogging, English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Modern Visual Culture

November 21, 2006

Rabid Kanon Fans Blow Hot Air or Illogical Harem Hate

By omo

To really do Kanon and Air, as two franchises, justice, we really need a solid footing in history. It just makes no sense to head into it without getting your bearings right. Sadly, I’m not sure if I’m qualified to even try.

Well. I did try, but after writing a few paragraphs I realized it’s futile to explain it in detail. It’s beyond me. Instead, let me just be brief and sweet.

Kanon is about the girls, their stories, and the fable feel in that fantasy winter wonderland. Or winter tragicland. It’s enough, more than enough, to gather its own fans just based on the merits of Kyoani’s animated adaptation alone. The power of moe transcends petty franchise labels, after all.

Older Kanon fans, either from the Toei era or from the original uproar of Key‘s success, will enjoy the new anime just like how the fans do. I’m not sure what that means, but just seeing Mariko Kouda back in action (older, mellower, and more moe!) is enough to send me to that winter wonderland. It probably vary between each fan, and you know the drill.

But to compare it to Air? Sure, you can, but there’s so much one could say about the two beyond the superficial. In fact, you really have to get to the root of both adaptations: that they were sister games in a true sense. Kanon was a proof of concept, and Air is more radical and original which came at the wake of Kanon’s success. It shows in the nonlinear storytelling. It shows in the choice of narrative devices. it shows in the simplicity.

These fundamental differences surface in their adaptions. Kanon was by all means a straight-up harem, and Kyoani’s Kanon currently is just that. It’s no surprise people who are, for one reason or another, coming to be allergic to harems generally “don’t get it” why so many of their equally-jaded fellow fans like it.

The moral of the story, I guess, is to read Wikipedia. It’s common to mock Kanon as an eroge, but that’s kind of like laughing at Michael Jackson as a man with black skin–you could, but it betrays a good-faith understanding of the situation. It’s stupid and ignorant. It’s also a little disingenuous to compare Kanon and Air just on the grounds that one is really a harem and the other isn’t really a harem. There are probably a lot of great insights we can gleam from such an exercise, but we got to go deeper to grasp it.

Analysis GET!

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

November 7, 2006

The Rise of a Networked-Economic Giant; or Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, But Nobody Wants to Die

By omo

In Yochai Benkler’s book The Wealth of Networks, he explored the internet’s potential in transforming human society by comparing behavior of people living in advance economies between a industrial mode of information production and network mode of information production. In some ways it is a repackaging of the common, copyleftist argument about freedom–“free as in free speech, not free beer.” However, Benkler raises a contention that a networked, non-proprietary approach to creating valuable, marketable information can be just as good, if not superior to a classical, industrial mode of production of information. Benkler does this through both economic ally and in social and political terms. While his example of the open-source movement in the software industry is a common banner that copyleftists rally under, the generalized approach Benkler used to explain the situation can be applied across-the-board, to most, if not all, useful information that is produced today under an industrial mode of information production.

Taking a bottom-line, cynical approach, I ask: Is Google’s long-term strategy as a business entity to create a niche in the market and in the landscape of copyright law, a sustainable goal? While the public cannot be certain what goes on in Google’s board meetings, one can reasonably construe their recent actions, marketing strategies, and overall philosophy to suggest several things:

1. If one can fairly presume that Google is full of smart, intelligent managers, lawyers, and businesspeople, then their success thus far these past few years means a switching of gears that they are going to be in this business for the long haul. Google has not existed even for 10 years, and many years less in the eyes of the public (and investors). Given their position as a leader in the internet-related industries, they now have the wherewithal to take new kinds of risks and pioneer the future in this mostly uncharted area of business and law.

2. Jessica Litman’s Digital Copyright lays out a solid foundation and a rather cynical view of US copyright law. In part, she argues the current statutory regime is the direct result of many elaborate and complex negotiated-for bargains between the traditional players in the copyright industry. While Litman, Benkler, and many others warn the senselessness and unfairness of applying laws meant to enforce economic competition between businesses to everyday Joe and Jane, the fact that Google (and the majority of players in the higher level of abstraction of the internet market–to exclude telecom interests and ISPs from the picture) had no say during the late 1990s round of legislative negotiation, it leaves new players in new media little choice in dealing with laws that are designed keeps the old players in power. Indeed, this entire school of thought did not start to mature until years after the passage of the DMCA. (Perhaps talk about Yahoo here?)

3. Are Google’s lawsuits a form of impact litigation? No doubt, by bringing novel and new issues before courts, Google is trying to set laws in favor to itself. In fact, if Litman is right, the court may be the only real legal venue where Google can seek relief; and especially if the legislative process is as slow as Litman (and in the history of US copyright law) claims. But as a rule, outside the court room, lawsuits have deep and complex implications for businesses. One of the key implication is in the battle of mindshare. (Bruce Keller’s presentation about the ad-based model of Google and the comparison to TV and radio elicited in me a feel of irony in light of the big picture.) Google is viewed in the eyes of the public directly, and its good will with the public affects its earnings in a very direct way (as opposed to book publishers or the Author’s Guild, as examples of Google’s opponents). Thus, Google has a stake in swaying the law to embody a wider fair use, or more free use, in alignment of public interest. Google can paint its opponents in a light of how established players, lacking that judicial agility, fight to retain the way they do business against innovative technology. It is both a marketing ploy and a legal strategy.

4. This ties in with the perceived, Lessig-like argument about fair use. It is generally accepted that a business method relying on a legal interpretation of fair use is an extremely risky one. While that never stopped VHS and Betamax manufacturers, the full force of the copyleftist argument is that some of the new things we can do through new media seems to violate the section 106 bundle of rights, they shouldn’t. These uses should not even be “fair use,” but free, un-infringing use. However short of legislative changes, Google’s only alternative is to have a court declare that it is “fair use.” Once realized that these reforms are very pro-public and against the interests of the established, entrenched corporate interests in old media, the public will tend to rally towards Google, its free services, and its vision of a freer informational future.

5. The nature of a internet search engine cannot be reduced to the like of a yellow pages or any analogous argument someone may make in court as a biased counsel. The web itself has been transformed entirely by search engines; Google’s success alone is more than enough to testify to its significance. It can be fairly said that ultimately Google is a middleman in the balance of consumers, creators, and middlemen, but how will the courts appreciate the value Google adds to our economy today? How will the courts appreciate the value of YouTube? MySpace? Will it go the way of Grockster; or the VHS?

Conclusion: What does Google stand to lose if they do not press on at this time? This is the $64,000 question, but does sound business sense means anything in an industry that is fast-changing, dynamic, and highly developing? With high risk comes high rewards. The fact that Google is such a threat to traditional players in consumer media (and an ever-growing list of other traditional players), there are reasons to believe this is going to be the case only if Google breaks the ties of the legislative binds that hinders it as a corporation in competition with other economic entities interested in the same slice of the consumer pie. Why say yes to licensing when you can always say yes to licensing later? The cost of litigation plus even a poor settlement seems little when the entire future of the world’s information industry is in the balance. To call Google’s attorneys as “believers” is probably more fitting rather than calling them prophets, but that is exactly what is in the balance for them.

===

Yeah.

The above is a rough outline of what I plan to write in a week’s time into a short paper. (And forgive the random references that I make with no clear meaning as to what it refers to, just for my own sake.) The relevance to all things anime is small but it’s an answer to a question plaguing the content industry. The internet has long since been the worst kept secret to wealth in this information revolution. How do you make a buck? How do we work with fansubbing to make a buck?

Indeed, if what keeps fansubbing alive is the monetary barrier to bring a suit to a wide range of people all over the world, to sue potential customers of Kadokawa Shoten, Bandai, MediaFactory, King Record, and what have you…

1. Why hasn’t there been more concerted effort to bring “fansub groups” down?

2. Fansubbing has evolved. But where will this go next? To elaborate, since the days where we pipe text through a genlock to mail SVHS tapes in a SASE envelope to today where we can produce MTV-style parodies with Aegisub and put it on YouTube, things has changed. The legal liability and economic incentives changed. The use changed. The users changed. And it will continue to change. I find it disturbing that I have to make a distinction between fansubbing in various contexts.

3. What other relevant questions can we ask? What are all the stakes? Whose stakes are important? To whom?

What I would really apperciate are references and critiques if you can throw them my way. I’m still in mid-research, so to speak, so that sort of stuff can be very valuable for me. Pretty please?

8 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Modern Visual Culture, Off Topic, Popular Culture, The Law

October 24, 2006

Girls On Film – Anime & Feminism

By omo

Sometimes I wonder: just how much media do you need to consume to get a good picture of what you’re talking about?

Is there space for the otaku academic? I don’t want to find out on my own…

...a Neviril Scorned

The gender revolution in Japan underlies all of this talk. In the past several decade we’ve seen a lot of changes in the cultural, social, and even in economic and political realms regarding the role of women. Looking at this from the media consumer’s perspective is just one of the many lenses academics use. And when we talk about Japan, we gotta involve the “popular visual culture” or whatever namesake that one can make of from Genshiken.

But I think most people are finding that, for now, the change is modest when viewed from the lens of anime and manga. If anything, my own experience indicate as so.

In Zyl’s column we see that some people think this is so as well. I get the feeling this is so because the way Japanese media works–being as corporate and entrenched by big money as the rest of the industry world-wide (most notably in the US). The point continues in the treatment of the academic literature about women and their reflection in popular media, in manga and anime. The old fogies opining inside their ivory towers? Not at all an unusual thing. Especially when we’re looking at groups where women are rare and few. Even more so when we’re looking at anime that is marketed primarily to men. Most anime are adaptations from shounen and seinen manga, after all, especially the ones that make it across the language divide.

I’m going to spin some of my reactions from Zyl’s column and the subsequent comments out in the remainder of this post.

First: Just what makes a good example for the feminist empowerment concept as a character in anime? Commonly western scholars point to Miyazaki’s heroines–often Chihiro from Spirited Away and San from Mononoke Hime. I guess not enough people have seen Howl’s Sophie but I think she is way better as an example.

Age. Sophie conducts herself as a young adult; San and Chihiro are still notably childish. Being child-like isn’t really anything that is particularly poignant, and that’s the problem with spinning a feminist critique from a child, even if she is a female. It’s not really probative. Perhaps another example along with Sophie is Kiki. I’m not so sure about Nausicaa, and that’s because, well, we’ll get to it in a bit.

Gender-based achievement. One problem that bothered me with Chihiro as an example was that many of the things she did was something that any attention-paying, careful and thorough child could have done. If Gillian Anderson’s Wolf-God in Mononoke adopted a boy instead of a girl, will San remain the same? I think as a movie, no, but as a character and a plot device, probably yes. On the other hand, I just can’t say the same about Sophie, and maybe even for Kiki (but there’s more wiggle space there).

The role of gender in the film. I think Kinsella definitely has pointed out something awesome about Spirited Away and its parallel to the whore houses of days old. I think customarily it would have been odd for a boy to work in the capacity Chihiro has, although it was fancifully ambiguous in the context of the film. I think, however, you can construe that point either way in regards to the cultural significance and the interplay of the female gender in today’s society. The traditional chinese tale that was the original work for Disney’s adaptation of Mulan tells probably a similar message about piety and both celebrates female ingenuity, tenacity, and overcoming dire difficulties. The question is just that–is gender role merely yet another difficulty that both of these heroines overcame? I think my objection with Nausicaa also has to do with this. As to San, I think she acts as a foil for Ashitaka, but again, I didn’t think she was a she for much anything particular, maybe only to highlight that romantic undertone.

But enough Ghibli bashing. I’m sure we can find some wholesome, positive examples (Eboshi Gozen, for instance) outside of the flagship North American Ghibli titles. My point is we shouldn’t just look so superfically and we should apply some healthy dose of context.

Second: The role of men. I think when we talk about women we also have to talk about men. This is particularly a point that shows up when someone raises Major Motoko Kusanagi. She’s a girl in a boy’s world. I think no matter where you look in real life, there are always more male law-enforcement folks than female. Her rag-tag team of ex-military coupled with Aramaki’s politicking says a lot of things about…politics (yet another male-dominant field). The oddity of the Major’s disposition, in a setting that resonant with real life’s tendency to repeat these same sociological makeup, may be making a point. Kinesella says it’s fantasy-fulfillment, it’s a bunch of “phallic girls.” I can’t see how it can be truer for Ghost in the Shell.

But I think there’s also something to be said that in the Ghost in the Shell TV series, we see a slightly different Motoko Kusanagi. What comes to my mind is the motherhood episode, but outside of that it’s really a dog-eat-dog world, and the Major uses her sex appeal and gender positioning as a tool to manipulate.

Still, compare Ghost in the Shell with any of your standard fair, girls-with-guns, it makes you wonder. Maybe oldies like Gun Smith Cats comes closer? Or should we just go straight to Black Lagoon? Or…

Third: Urosukidouji–or alternatively, let’s pick the right show to talk feminism. I think it makes almost no sense to use, say, Aria THE ANIMATION. It makes some sense to use Naruto and One Piece. It makes even more sense to use Paprika, but probably not much sense to use Ghost in the Shell: Innocence. What criterias am I looking at?

Who is going to watch it: Paprika is an arthouse film, but it’s based on a renowned sci-fi author’s work in Japan. It also focuses on, heh, gender roles. One Piece has a HUGE fangirl-base, and Naruto has some. Aria is escapist seinen fantasy. GITS: Innocence is another arthouse film, but it is one that is fully preoccupied in telling/saying one very specific set of things.

What it’s about/what does it say: Paprika is about the story of a woman coming to terms with herself in a maze of dreams, realities, networked dreams, a chain of real-life mysteries involving life and death. Aria is about girls in a fantasy Venice learning to be gondola operators / tour guides. One Piece is about pirates and “getting crew and loot.” Naruto is a teenage self-redemptive story. GITS: Innocence is about a detective learning to cope with a new reality with his good friend and ex-partner who turned into a … computer thing, while solving a criminal mystery.

I think part of the problem, as my first couple paragraphs alluded…is just that the academia seems to just lack that beef with the familiarity of these works. You have to not just tap into the otaku pulse, but actually watch the shows and read the books they tell you about. If we’re going to use this lens seriously, we need not only people who has the academic wherewithal but also someone who has already been looking through the lens in its full glory.

There is probably more to be said on this. Like being able to naturally reassign your sex at 17 is one of the most empowering things that can happen to a girl. Talk about a feminist subtext!

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

September 21, 2006

Fall, Spiraling Away into Seasonal Melancholy

By omo

Koyori

Looking back at these past 9 months, a lot has changed. Suzumiya Haruhi’s lasting impact in the minds of the fan-sphere is a weird one. For people like me, we cling to it. But like many of Kyoto Animation‘s works, it lacks that consistency which reminds me of warm, home-made breakfasts; toasty winter holiday family fests; and that cup of hot chocolate on a chilly winter day. The fallout is evident but surprising despite the cynical blog-sphere and fan scene. Its strong fan response in Japan is trapped within the cultural context and language barrier, unable to affect the outside world in any significant way.

The more I dwell on Kyoto Animation’s Kanon, as a result, the more it boggles the mind. I suppose one could say that by the end of Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid, one would have a good grasp as to the style they are after. Fumoffu won us over with its crisp juxtaposing humor, but when it comes to writing a teenage mercenary’s real life, they have a ways to go.

Yet with the delivery of Suzumiya Haruhi (as an adaptation) and its tender treatment on the tragic subject matter within AIR, we’re left with hope. This tender feeling, for someone as cynical as I am, is, well, tender. It’s like a lonely candle flicker on a chilly autumn night, its end only the next breeze away. Yet my hopes are up only because Kyoani’s track record. Only because Kanon’s potential as an anime hasn’t been depleted by Toei. Is this on solid ground I stand?

Inherently the process from start to finish, animation is complex to create. I think for every one think Kyoani gets right, there is probably one thing they could get right, but it’s out of their reach. For one thing Kyoani gets right, there’s also probably 3 things that could go wrong just by luck. Considering how bare-bones the typical Japanese animation production team can get, it’s not an unfathomable fear. Or is it? I’m just putting numbers down just to scare myself. Why? It’s obvious…

I want to enjoy Kanon 2. I want to be able to embrace the fan splooge. I want to see a good mood anime piece with Nayuki. I’m fed up with TEROGE adaptations. I want to be able to come home and melt into the emo embrace of an exemplary Sad-Girl-in-Snow story.

But I think somewhere I also want to see Kyoani struggle with failure. They’re due one. Maybe it won’t be this time, but who knows?

2 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Kanon, Modern Visual Culture, Suzumiya Haruhi no Uuutsu