Category Archives: English Language Modern Visual Fandom

September 11, 2006

I Love Ufotable? TARTAN CHECK This!

By omo

I literally was rolling and laughing when I found out about Manabi Straight. Not because it’s UFOTable publishing both manga and picking itself up for the anime production, but they call their manga branch…

TARTAN CHECK.

What’s so funny, you might ask? That’s because I am a Tartan. Just looking at their checker-filled website fills my heart with giggly delight. If you’re unfamiliar with that kind of self-designation, you should consider reading up on college sports culture in the United States. It is crazy and possessive and a lot of fun.

Oh Japan, how you combine the weirdest things and gives me this out-of-context joyride. Mutant Dwarf has nothing on this one, well, for me at least.

Meanwhile you can read what little more about Manabi Straight that is available. Like how Horie is the voice actress for Manabi herself, Marina Inoue (of the Cossette fame) is going to also be in this show, and what other image CDs are going to be released…

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

September 6, 2006

Of Gaiman and McFarlane, Posner and Me.

By omo

Angela in ... Nekomimimoodo!

If you cared for English-language comics, you might have heard of the long, strange, and fantastical mess of things behind the ownership of Marvelman. It is just odd, and somewhat irrelevant. So, here’s a bit of exposition behind all this: Marvelman is some comic franchise/character Neil Gaiman, famous comic artist and scriptwriter, tries to revive, for some reason. At one point Todd McFarlene thought he had the rights, and it happened that Gaiman is a co-owner of some of the key Spawn characters, namely Angela, Cogliostro, and Medieval Spawn. Anyways, at one point Gaiman and McFarlene decided to trade the rights to Cogliostro and Medieval Spawn with Marvelman (as it was worth pretty close to nothing at that point, compared to having a piece of the Spawn empire at the time). This was 1997.

However things didn’t work out between them, and they had to call in the lawyers. And there were judges. I’m going to come clean: I’m totally interested in this case because of Posner, and how he deals with this topical matter, and the topical matter itself. I care for Gaiman a tiny bit and definitely do not care about McFarlane at all; which is probably more than how much I care for Spawn or Angela or Marvelman (as a character).

But when I read this, I just can’t imagine someone like Posner (or one of his clerks, more likely) that would pour over the general concepts of Spawn. I suppose by the time that he authored the opinion he would have had the chance to see the movie. Yeah, I’m a bit of a Posner fanboy.

Ah well, I’ll let his writing do the work:

We need to do some stage setting. Gaiman and McFarlane are both celebrated figures in the world of comic books, but they play different though overlapping roles. Gaiman just writes scripts; McFarlane writes scripts too, but he also illustrates and publishes the comic books. In 1992, shortly after forming his own publishing house, McFarlane began publishing a series of comic books entitled Spawn, which at first he wrote and illustrated himself. “Spawn,” more precisely “Hellspawn,” are officers in an army of the damned commanded by a devil named Malebolgia, who hopes one day to launch his army against Heaven. The leading character in the series is a man named Al Simmons, who is dead but has returned to the world of the living as a Hellspawn.

Al’s story is an affecting one. Born in a quiet neighborhood outside of Pittsburgh, he was recruited by the CIA and eventually became a member of an elite military unit that guards the President. He saved the President from an assassin’s bullet and was rewarded with a promotion to lieutenant colonel. He was placed under the command of Jason Wynn, who became his mentor and inducted him into the sinister inner recesses of the intelligence community. When Al began to question Wynn’s motives, Wynn sent two agents, significantly named Chapel and Priest, to kill Al with laser weapons, and they did, burning him beyond recognition. Al was buried with great fanfare in Arlington National Cemetery.

Now Al had always had an Achilles’ heel, namely that he loved his wife beyond bearing and so, dying, he vowed that he would do anything to see her again. Malebolgia took him at his word (“would do anything” and returned Al to Earth. But a deal with the devil is always a Faustian pact. Al discovered that he was now one of Malebolgia’s handpicked Hellspawn and had been remade (a full makeover, as we’ll see) and infused with Hell-born energy.

Returned to Earth in his new persona, Al discovers that his wife has remarried his best friend, who was able to give her the child he never could. He absorbs the blow but thirsts for revenge against Jason Wynn. He bides his time, living with homeless people and pondering the unhappy fact that once he exhausts his Hell-born energy he will be returned to Malebolgia’s domain and become a slave in an army of the damned with no hope of redemption. He must try somehow to break his pact with the devil.

Even better is when he goes on and describes Angela and the other Gaiman contributions regarding Spawn issue #9:

McFarlane’s original Spawn, Al Simmons, was a tall figure clad in what looks like spandex (it is actually “a neural parasite”) beneath a huge blood-red cloak, making him a kind of malevolent Superman figure, although actually rather weak and stupid. His face is a shiny plastic oval with eyeholes but no other features. Gaiman decided to begin Spawn No. 9 with a different Spawn, whom he called “Olden Days Spawn.” He explained to McFarlane that “[Olden Days] Spawn rides up on a huge horse. He’s wearing a kind of Spawn suit and mask, although the actual costume under the cloak is reminiscent of a suit of armour.” McFarlane drew “Olden Days Spawn” as (in the words of his brief) “essentially Spawn, only he dressed him as a knight from the Middle Ages with a shield bearing the Spawn logo.” To make him credibly medieval, Gaiman in his script has Olden Days Spawn say to a damsel in apparent distress, “Good day, sweet maiden.” The “damsel” is none other than Angela, a “maiden” only in the sense of making her maiden appearance in Spawn No. 9. Angela is in fact a “warrior angel and villain” who, scantily clad in a dominatrix outfit, quickly dispatches the unsuspecting Olden Days Spawn with her lance.

We learn that this event occurred in the thirteenth century, and the scene now shifts to the present day. Angela is dressed as a modern professional woman. The Al Simmons Spawn is lurking about in an alley and it is here that we meet Count Cogliostro for the first time. McFarlane had wanted a character who would be “basically. . . the wisened [sic] sage that could sort of come down and give all the information and assimilate it.” Gaiman interpreted this as an instruction to create “a character who can talk to Spawn and tell him a little bit more about what’s going on in the background and can move the story along. ” So he created an “old man, who starts talking to Spawn and then telling him all these sort of things about Spawn’s super powers that Spawn couldn’t have known. And when you first meet him [Cogliostro] in the alley you think he’s a drunken bum with the rest of them, and then we realize no, he’s not. He’s some kind of mysterious stranger who knows things.”

Gaiman further described Cogliostro in a draft of Spawn No. 9 as “a really old bum, a skinny, balding old man, with a grubby greyish-yellow beard, like a skinny santa claus. He calls himself Count Nicholas Cagliostro” (later spelled Cogliostro). In a brief scene, Cogliostro, drawn by McFarlane as an old man with a long grey beard who faintly resembles Moses–McFarlane had been dissatisfied with Gaiman’s verbal description, which made Cogliostro sound like a wino–explains to Simmons-Spawn some of the powers of Hellspawn of which Simmons is unaware. Cogliostro displays his mysterious wisdom by calling him “Simmons,” to the latter’s bafflement–how could Cogliostro have known? Angela then appears in her dominatrix costume, there is another duel, and she vanquishes Simmons (whose powers are in fact unimpressive), but does not kill him. He then blows himself up by accidentally pushing the wrong button on Angela’s lance, which she had left behind. Happily he is not killed–merely (it seems) translated into another dimension–and will reappear in subsequent issues of Spawn.

I mean, this is just brilliant. I don’t think many fans can even write and grasp the concept of Spawn so cleanly as Posner did. Granted back in 2004 when this was news, I wasn’t a Posner fanboy and I was equally ignorant of copyright law, so this didn’t ring a bell. Now I revisit the same material for class and I go all LOLOL over it. Sigh. At least you now know how it has to do with me. It does serve an important lesson for you fancy pants creative types, so know who you collaborate with!

Ahh, curiousities of American law and business methods.

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

August 31, 2006

Gadget Trial … Trial (Now in English)

By omo

Saishuuheiki Izen?

Copyright infringement is always best for your value, but it’s even better when you can just download the original demo of this episode-based strategy game from the official website, and apply a small patch to turn Mysterious Moon Language into English, and actually understand the how the hell you play the game. Of course if you’re a real pirate like me, you would have gotten Gadget Trial a long time ago and probably beat it by now. But nonetheless, this is a good sample of the mecha musume craze, with less infringement and more value! You wouldn’t have to experience the game crashing 5 minutes before you complete a map that took you 2 hours and 55 minutes. Without intermediate saved games. No sir.

And it’s yet another exhibit of the reason why bishoujo gaming will have a hard time penetrating the mainstream. For crying out loud… DINKY SPRITES ZOMG.

Just to talk it up a bit, Gadget Trial has a pretty good voice acting cast. Izen is powered by the same energetic voice behind Sora Naegino, and airhead Milfeulle as airhead Souka; balancing that we have Eureka as the morbidly silent Hisoka and the mysterious Ran as Nei. I guess that leaves the odd Souseiseki for the deliciously destructive Yu-ri. The dead-pan comedy either works, or doesn’t. The gameplay isn’t anything to write home about, but it is pretty fun.

Well, try it out already.

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

August 30, 2006

The Role of Fansubs in Today’s World: Food & Fuel for Fans

By omo

Canned Peaches

Aside from fansubbing for freedom, just why do people fansub? Who would commit copyright infringement of derivative work in producing a translated version of their favorite show, and do it again when they reproduce and distribute them?

I’m not sure how many people watch mainland Chinese-produced TV shows, but being able to watch some of the CCTV’s programming at my grandmother’s place via satellite, my impression was that they’re actually passibly ok. Granted sometimes it’s so obvious which segment is produced “with an agenda” and a lot of the TV stations there struggle to put content on the table, it’s not to say there are no interesting shows to watch.

But a Chinese fansub of Lost? Yeah, nothing like that. Definitely butchered Desperate Housewives just won’t fly with Chinese people in its purported ported form.

In retrospect this was almost like the case how anime took off in the US. We’ve had some anime on TV already for the longest time. Granted I wouldn’t call anime then really anything special, and anime as a form and as an industry has evolved in Japan over these decades, yet we had them in their rare dosage. Fast-forward to 2006; you can get relatively fresh anime on satellite/cable or even off the air with some regularity. Top hits like Cowboy Bebop and Naruto? Even family shows like Shin-chan? Crazy and unimaginable 10 years ago. HD anime? ZOMG.

But has anime as I know it landed on Plymouth Rock? In a lot of ways it has. Like Avatar? OEL manga? Otakon and AX? Manga sales in big-box bookstores? It has exploded, in some sense, in the mainstream of US. It’s even more pronounced in some other countries like France, where manga folds into the large print industry there like an adopted child from Asia.

Yet, in some ways it has not landed; in other words, how anime is in Japan (and indirectly so, the frame of mind behind the production thereof) has remained mostly a Japan-only situation. Partly, that’s what drives me to the internet in the first place–you could talk Pokemon and Digimon with people in real life, but not Magic Knight Rayearth. Some people knew about Evangelion, but most people didn’t really want to talk about it for the most part (lol). Best Buy may carry some of my favorite titles locally, but no one ever ask me to talk about them save once, when I worked there.

I suppose all I am doing is to suggest a new framework to examine the purpose of fansubbing. As an anime fan for a while and blogger for a short while, it struck me that while my preference is in the meta, anime fans still cannot exist without anime. That’s half of the reason why this blog exists. As such, fansubs are the fuel for fandom.

Fansub is food for thought; the carbohydrate culture where you cultivate fanboy germs.

It’s extraordinarily clear when it comes to Simoun. It’s just a huge pain in the ass to try to talk about this show: 1) It’s full of spoilers, so I can only really talk about it with people who has kept up as I did. 2) It needs subs, as the show itself is full of expository material, and hard to understand for me, and many others. 3) It needs a lot of subs, as the first bunch of episodes doesn’t really get into the show much, but rather more like an extended, no-apology extended introduction. Besides, all the juicy stuff happens later on.

Another example is FLAG. It’s a shorter series unlike Simoun, and it is very visual and visceral. However even if I can follow it raw, people just don’t pay attention to it out of lack of subs being available. At any rate, there’s a gap, imaginary or otherwise, between untranslated works and translated work. I think it’s fair to say, right now, FLAG is a show that has fallen through the fan network crack out of its poor fansub availability.

The idea that fansubs fuel fandom is predicated on a very obvious idea, I hope. If no one talks about the show, there cannot be any hype. The fan community thrives on words of mouths. People want to “take part” in the bandwagoning; the adoring and talking-it-up of a certain franchise. It’s half the reason why people hear about Fate Stay Night and Tsukihime, or even like it for some. We know hype, well, sells. But more importantly hype generates MORE hype, in the case of something genuinely interesting (and I mean that both in good and bad ways). It’s what drives fans, both people who flock to that and people who gets pissed off from hype. It’s why people bother talking about that stupid Bandai PR thing regarding Solid State Society.

But I did say Fate Stay Night, so I’ll be clear about it: yes, hype can exist in a vacuum without fansubs and anything like that. That is exactly why hype generates more hype–Fate is hyped already, and other fans feeds on top of it. Nonetheless you need something to start it off, and fansubs are one of those things. Again, look at Suzumiya Haruhi. (Inversely, hype also drives fansubbing.) And of course, the major argument today about needlessness of fansubs resides that the marketing machine is already in full swing as far as penetrating the fanbase online and the massive crowd of normal fan through more traditional outlets (TV, magazines, cons, store displays, websites that gives you the first ep for free, etc). Still, fansubs are a fairly unique way to market in which the substitutes just don’t go nearly as far. I think even today it is an important method to generate hype, if not the primary method to generate hype for titles that I am interested in.

If I had to say why, it would be because the historic nature of development of the anime fan scene has evolved in a way that is dependent on fansubs. Think of it as bonsai. See the next section for an alternative take on the effects of fansubbing on anime fandom.

While it isn’t conclusive or a solid indicator, you can get a feel as to popularity of currently-ongoing shows by just how widely available as fansubs that they are. Take Aria the Natural for instance (one slacking in being subbed), and compare it with Zero no Tsukaima (one that is right on top).

From another perspective, this role fansubs take on is just an extension of what they originally were for: to promote awareness of something wholly unavailable in one isolated demographic. However, that fansubbing is still alive and well today goes to show that the mission is not complete from some perspectives. Anime has yet to fully land on Plymouth Rock. The commercial infrastructure may be available, but it just hasn’t happened yet. Alternatively, what are fans to do when faced with this artificial chasm between the Japan scene and their local scene? News travel just as fast as these copyrightable “food for fans” and not even taking money into account, a fan will do what a fan has to do.

As fuel, fansubs sustain the internet fan infrastructure, and fans wear this badge in honor of the internet’s nature as a massive, unstoppable copyright infringement machine.

In essence, this is a description of fansubbing’s role in the meta. Just like the natural ecosystem which arranges the organisms in a food chain, the entire enterprise of fansubbing–from raw hunting to production to distribution to consumption to even talking about fansubs–affects the way how some fans perceive anime. In fact, given how anime companies outside of Japan are often run by people who at one point are a fan of the works because of fansubs or what have you, fansubbing historically may have left some mark in the way people look at anime as a business.

The reality is, though, that fansubbing is hard work. People do it because they like the material, because they like the process, and/or because they like the result. The flow of content from providers to consumers generates an imbalance. There is little apperciation for the fans (as they bitch about fansubs and don’t buy the local release) and little accountability for fansubbers (as they do things fansubbers shouldn’t to do).

And that’s not all. The amount of time fans spent talking and arguing about fansubs as if it is important alone is shocking :-) The legally-grey nature of fansubs only makes it all that much more the fuel for the fire. Fans treasure what feeds them, after all, so we would feel defensive about it naturally. It’s a bit of a paradigm shift especially from a fan’s way of thinking, stepping in the shoes of the corporate?

The historical basis is undeniable. Just like how we have workshops on fansubbing at cons and the now-defunct elaborate fansub trading networks of the 80s and early 90s, it was what it meant to be a fan for many back then. It’s the actual stuff you do besides talking about it with your friends or on Usenet. That shaped how fansubbing has lodged itself squarely in the heart of fandom, even if fans and fansubbers today are a different breed than how they were 10 years ago.

More seriously, I suppose what I am trying to get at is that unless you subscribe to some hardcore variant of the free culture idea, fansubbing and English-language anime fandom relate mostly on a historic basis. It is not going to go away until the gap between domestic commerical services of anime catches up with Japan’s level of service to the extent that it becomes easier for people like me to rely on the domestic labor (and pay them appropriately) to feed the inner fanboy.

One caveat I should raise is that while my premises are based on a generality, in reality no one owns a license to distribute anime in the US or any other country. Rather, they have a bunch of licenses to distribute specific shows in very specific capacities. So while one person can fairly proclaim that fansubs are unneeded/needed today, it’s only true for titles on his radar. Odds are there are still shows out there that could use the magical powers fansubs have demonstrated to have in the earlier days of English-language anime fandom. That said, it’s a whole different question as if the magic still works for those titles off our radars.

On the same basis, one should realize that fansubbing is a divisive topic and even the different R1 distributors have different opinions on the matter if you dig deep enough. It’s ultimately a decision that individual copyright holders and licensees have to decide individually in order to pursuit whatever course of action they think is best. I’m not going to speculate what that may be, but please do realize that these courses of action can be different.

Lastly I thank DarkMirage‘s little blurp slamming people bitching about Bandai’s threatening PR; and doubly thanks for calagie for the NYT article link.

14 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, FLAG, Modern Visual Culture, Popular Culture, Simoun, Suzumiya Haruhi no Uuutsu

August 24, 2006

Nanamania

By omo

Nana Mizuki ftw!

Nana Mizuki

Honestly speaking she wasn’t really much of a blip on my radar at the beginning. I noticed her first solo album garnered some attention and I enjoyed it. It left a lasting impression, although in its far-from-perfect form. I thought she has potential and it would have worked out better with a different production style. But even less notable, for me, was her voice acting work.

Yet in the space of a few year’s time it has all changed for the better. A recent variety entertainment show did a piece of voice actress idols in Japan from the very early Hayashibara days starting with Sailor Moon up to Aya Hirano from Suzumiya Haruhi, hitting a few others in between. You can watch the 7-minute program off YouTube. Nana Mizuki is the hottest one out there today.

The following of Nana Mizuki is international. Just like every other seiyuu idol we foreign fans, immune to direct marketing from Japan, catches glimpses of their glory from both their video releases and, obviously, from their voice works. I think all my friends who knows what anime is has watched Full Metal Alchemist and/or Naruto in part, and those more serious about it probably has seen Nana in some of her more popular roles already.

Sure, her appeal goes to seiyuu fanboys, people who realizes she is Ichiro Mizuki‘s daughter, and people weaboo enough like myself to pay attention to the people who makes anime. Maybe her appeals go beyond that? I’m not sure. But somewhere behind all the hype and well-produced CDs and oricon rankings, is she really that entertaining?

Take me for an example. In the space of a year and half ago I bought about 2 of her CDs and watched 2 of her DVDs (which is not a lot). Even in that little bit of time things grew to the extent that if she sets foot within a $600 radius of me I will probably fly and go see her, if I can work out the schedule. I don’t think I could do that except for my most adored artists. Perhaps I am easily influenced given that I live up in this media crap, and I think that probably does play a part. My friends involve some Nana fans, and for the most part I do acknowledge with them in her virtues and values as an entertainer. Yet, I don’t think I like her stuff that much; that explains why I don’t have her entire back catalogue. It also explain why I’m writing this piece of viral marketing with a lot of hesitation.

But can she take it farther and further? Seiyuu3, what do you say? I’m ready to become her fan. That documentary on YouTube, while meant to be a crash course in seiyuu-idol-ness, is a bit of a telescoping lense through time and history as well. If you don’t know who she is or what kind of entertainer she is, find out. It might just be worth your while.

6 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Modern Visual Culture, Seiyuu, Idol, Pop