Category Archives: Franchises

June 24, 2011

Picking On Chris: On Transforming Fanservice

By omo

I generally don’t pay Chris B’s simulcast coverage any mind, because I think Chris’s context is sort of odd when it comes to simulcasts (a bit like this, in fact), but this season he shells on two of my favorites: Steins;Gate and OreTsuba so that makes him a natural target. He also kind of misses the point to Sket Dance (OMG I’m watching a JUMP anime), but I think that one is actually forgivable because the anime exposes the problem the manga kind of has. (Compared to Kaminomi, where the anime greatly enhances the original material…IMHO. But that’s another post for another day.)

And I’m just going to talk about these two shows. There are other disagreements, but I, being not Chris, will have a different opinion on things. That’s not what gets to me. I just think he got these titles wrong entirely. And well, many people didn’t like OreTsuba, so I probably should say something about that regardless of anyone else.

First off, read CrunchyRoll’s AMA on Reddit. And I quote, more pertinently (you might want to read the whole thing anyways):

Kuiper 5 points 15 days ago
Are there any “sleeper hits” that turned out to be unexpectedly popular, or do you generally have an idea of the kind of revenue pull you’ll get from a certain show at the time you secure the distribution rights?
[]
i_work_at_croll  14 points 15 days ago
It’s always hard to predict, but it’s not a complete gamble either.
A few shows that performed better than we expected are:
Blue Exorcist
Ika Musume
Steins;Gate
[]

[Formatting and links removed; partly because it’s hard to quote and make it look okay. Last Retrieved 6/23/2011.]

Since Rob P’s departure, we no longer have a steady source of Crunchyroll viewership ranking  (AFAIK; if you do know a source, please share!). Going by online buzz, it’s pretty clear that Steins;Gate has relatively good viewership, and generally the trend is on the up as it approaches the midway point. And even CR confirms this. So how am I suppose to interpret this statement:

With the show now hitting its halfway mark, it’s a difficult show to really get a handle on. In a way, I’m often surprised that the show hasn’t been canceled.

Does it seem wrong to you? I mean, I’m probably being too harsh: I think if we swap out Steins;Gate with Serial Experiments Lain, his statements would apply just as much. And he would be wrong just as much. But if history taught us anything, it was that there are more than a few people who slammed Lain and yet it sold. More importantly, there’s a lot of great stuff going on in Steins;Gate (and Lain…I think) that just is not being picked up by Chris. I guess he does admit as much.

What is the takeaway here? I don’t really know, besides that I don’t think he gets what a lot of today’s simulcast-viewing people are after. Which may very well be a totally different group of people than those who buy anime on DVDs in America, which is what he represents better.

As for OreTsuba, it might be just a matter of taste. And I don’t have any taste when it comes to fanservice. (Although that is also a taste in itself, arguably.) But I can’t take it as serious criticism if Chris says:

[…] and the show has so many surprisingly raunchy and poor taste moments that it simply doesn’t work well at all. When it makes some of its revelations at the halfway mark, it’s pretty much a too little, too late point.

Really? Poor taste moments? Can Chris honestly be a judge on taste? I mean, he’s probably the biggest porn anime reviewer out there. He gave Kanokon a B? I mean, you can go to Mania.com and look at all the slutty anime he reviewed. Really? OreTsuba got “actively dropped”? That’s actually some very high praise in that it’s probably not like anything he’s seen before.

It’s like, I heard you like some boobs so I put some boobs in your boobs show so you can boob your boobs? [Qwaser S2E10 FTW.] OreTsuba doesn’t need to rely on memes to get its points across–it can become the meme that gets its point across. I think that’s what’s really brilliant about it. And that brilliance is precisely in the execution. The fact that Chris can’t enjoy a show like this is not my business at all; my problem is in his inability to recognize that there may be a method to its madness. Maybe OreTsuba is too clever by half, sure, but he didn’t even say this. I just hope he never reviews Seitokai no Ichizon.

The saddest thing is, I think Chris has a good grasp on what sells in R1. And while I actually agree OreTsuba may not sell in R1, I think the other strength OreTsuba has is precisely in its ability to appeal to a R1 audience through its strong character writing. The scrambled narrative is what I think may hinder its uptake, but OreTsuba is very story- and character-driven, and for its ensemble cast of 8 or so main characters (plus side characters), a lot of exposition and development happen within the 1-cour length. It does things as fast as Baccano, basically; the story is misleading up to the end, and while the audience may feel deceived at times I think there’s a lot to chew on.

For this genre of anime, OreTsuba is a real gem. Well, maybe it’s just me who enjoy a misleading narrative, especially when the excuse for it is to illustrate the convoluted plot device, but it comes together. And you know what I love.

Again, like I said, it comes down to taste in a lot of cases. Chris is an easy person to pick on (nothing personal) because he is easy to read–I mean, he says it. Back in Kanokon’s review, he’s fessed up:

Kanokon isn’t a deep title, but it’s one I had a lot of fun watching because it knows it’s not meant to be taken seriously. And it goes further in a lot of ways with its sexuality yet doesn’t feel completely over the top. But my standards probably aren’t the norm after watching these kinds of shows for twenty years…

Well, assuming you’ve seen Kanokon (unlikely), then hopefully you’ll get what I’m trying to say. This guy gets it. That’s why I still care about his opinions, because I can relate to where he’s coming from. (And just before I further incriminate myself, no, he’s still the expert on anime porn that I will never become.) (That said, I think Kanokon on DVD is uh, polished up from the TV release.) So it’s a little more disappointing that he doesn’t quite dig the new wave of meta anime, especially ones involving fanservice.

I think that the iterative seasonal TV anime offerings from Japan is evolving, changing, and offering viewers new types of shows. Especially in the past year or two; things are moving in a new direction. Things that are tried and true may continue to sell, but unless these established, old-timing reviewers pick up on these trends, they’re just going to poop on these opportunity to organically grow the fanbase. If Funimation wants to go out on a limb on OreTsuba and put some marketing muscle behind it (I hope they do), great. It doesn’t seem like a high risk title, I don’t know, but I am glad that they’re doing something about it. But if we want to transform this season’s simulcast viewers to next year’s DVD owners, I just don’t think Chris’s perspective will cut it.

Lastly, it is usually the case that anime of a certain genre sells better than others in America. So short of just saying “this anime doesn’t belong in this genre” is there any value to the whole “license” and “dub” thing? Because to me “dub” is just a “how much it will sell/target audience” thing. I mean, this guy thinks Lotte no Omocha deserves a license. That’s probably the low bar for this season in terms of how marketable something can be–how do you market the whole “this guy is in this 11-yo succubus’s ‘harem’ but he is also her mom’s lover and his daughter is the succubus’s half-sister, all before the thing about how she has to extract his semen to stay alive” bit? (And for the record I am watching it, and think the anime is pretty okay for what it is.)

Leave a comment | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Modern Visual Culture, Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai, Steins;Gate

June 20, 2011

Akasha, Religion And Chair

By omo

In the middle of a discussion about what makes for “chuunibyou,” I thought about Nasu’s… Nasuverse. In that world, mages are people who take magecraft like a trade: you have teachers, craftsmen, unions and guilds, rivals, people who do it for fun, people who do it for profit, and people who do it for the hell of it. You have artists and salarymen, parents, children, and heroic spirits. Swords and sorcery? People who are dead because they are killed? People who are the bones of their swords? It’s, in a word, chuunibyou to a tee.

But in that silly world-creation exercise, Nasu laid down some foundations that I particularly like in this kind of setting. It’s a bit like Fuyumi Ono’s Twelve Kingdoms, where the laws of the world are absolute; Gods and emperors speak with not so much authority but with reality-bending, “let there be light” powers. I like that sort of thing.

The cool thing about Nasu’s magecraft is in its adherence and pursuit of the akasha, or the origin. In a way, the attempt to understand Nasuverse’s notion of origin is just like a mage’s pursuit of understanding of origin of humans and the world, existence in general. [Cynical: both are fraught with irregularities and illogical examples!]  The cute thing (and adding to its middle-schooler-illness) is that the notion is not original. I just think it’s a beautiful parallel to the act of introspection: when we examine deep within ourselves, conflict invariably will emerge. When mages fight each other in Nasu’s universe, it is a clash of different origins, cloaked by the personalities, motives and external reasons (eg., fate) behind these conflicts. These conflicts are external manifestation of internal turmoil. These conflicts are thematic.

Because, after all, the darkness inside of ourselves is the one that brings about the most enduring and endearing conflicts. Tsundere, I’m looking at you.

The other neat thing is that this is a central concept that perpetrates consistently across all of Nasuverse. In a way it feels like those Tolkein-style students of arcane magic, living inside their towers, honing their art. It just has taken a 21st century turn of events. And of course, these Nasu-mages are hardly anything akin to a D&D mage in practice. It’s the thin veneer that keeps his works at least somewhat credible, sure, but I appreciate at least the consistency.

The way I model these things in my mind is kind of how I look at, say, how one could reconcile religion with anime. For example, Mike’s the real deal. And I find it an uplifting testimony to read. It’s more about us than the anime that we watch. It may be reasonable to say that Nasu’s writing is horrible (I don’t know, I can’t tell anyways), but it resounds with others, with a purpose, so it is fine. I see it specifically in pursuit of science. It, too, revolves around the notion that we are students of the world; we are learners, not teachers. Because we know we don’t know, it is why we do these things. It is why GlaDOS gets away with the things she does. It is why Academy City exists. It is why we pursuit the study of the world. Scientists are eternal newbies: that’s where the action is, that’s where the new revelation is, that is where the new science happens. It is driven by the same budding curiosity and imaginative power that makes Steins;Gate an amusing watch on principle. In other words, it is the same force which powers chuunibyou bubble. Scientists, too, are just human beings with all the contradictions humans have, seeking the origin of all things.

Times like this I wonder if THIS CHAIR is just a reference to AI development.

Leave a comment | posted in Bishoujo Gaming, Kara no Kyoukai, Modern Visual Culture, Steins;Gate

June 17, 2011

A Cynical View of Moshidora

By omo

So coincidentally, I found that my American-style of thinking does suggest why I can’t take a story about Drucker’s style of management, written for a 21st century audience, seriously. It even doesn’t imply anything about cynicism for Americans (Are we more cynical? I have no idea).

Forbes columnist and econ writer (among other things) Steve Denning wrote the other day (hey thanks JP) about some book that I didn’t read, but I went away with his highlight on some of the challenges facing the American economy in the new century. Among them, chiefly, is one about management. You can read his blog post here. And you should, because I’m going to quote it right here:

Over the last couple of decades, there has been an epochal shift in the balance of power from seller to buyer. For the first two-thirds of the 20th Century, oligopolies were in charge of the marketplace. These companies were successful by pushing products at customers, and manufacturing demand through advertising. But this situation changed.

Today customers have instant access to reliable information and have options: they can choose firms who delight them and avoid companies whose principal objective is taking money from our wallets and putting in their own. The result is a fundamental shift in power in the marketplace from the seller to the buyer: not only do customers not appreciate being treated as “demand” to be manufactured: now they can do something about it. If they are not delighted, they can and do go elsewhere.

The second is a fundamental shift in the workplace where the nature of work has shifted from semi-skilled to knowledge work. Meeting the business imperative of delighting customers can only be accomplished if the knowledge workers contribute their full talents and energy to contribute continuous innovation. Treating employees as “human resources” to be manipulated undermines the workforce commitment that is needed.

As a result, the 20th Century management system—the goose that laid America’s golden egg—stopped delivering. The monumental study by Deloitte’s Center for the Edge shows that the rate of return on assets of US companies is one quarter of what it was in 1965; the life expectancy of firms in the Fortune 500 has fallen from around 75 years half a century ago to just 15 years today and is falling fast. Only one in five employees is fully engaged in his or her work. And a study by the Kauffman Foundation showed that firms older than five years produced almost no net new jobs in the period 1980 to 2005 (whereas firms younger than 5 years created around 40 million jobs in that period.)

And right after that, Denning starts a section with this title.

The world changed but management didn’t[.]

Drucker’s landmark book was published 1973. It was the pinnacle of 20th century economic power indeed.

If you recall, some basic and fundamental key concepts are used in Moshidora as chapter heading. The two I want to highlight are “customer” and “innovation.” And maybe the whole thing about result-oriented view of measuring success.  Those terms and concepts still mean the same thing in Moshidora as it does in Denning’s blog post. I believe those fundamental concepts introduced in Moshidora are the most valuable things it offered in the way of teaching management. But the way how Minami transformed Kodobuko’s baseball team is a classic sort of thing that today’s marketplace leaders of America (ie, people whose companies with RESULTS) do not do.

When I saw it, I was like, hurrrrrrr. Maybe we should just go back to DRRR and understand how someone like Mikado transforms and apply his human resources. Because that is the way of the future. Or the present. And the way of Moshidora is like “oh Japan, you’re so post-war.” I guess I am more a victim of exposure to random management ideas and not so much a sound schooling of the classics ideas of management. But what good is the classics if what’s happening to Japan’s economy is any demonstration of the results of that line of thought? Besides, if I was teaching kids on how to manage a baseball team, I wouldn’t try to teach them managements concepts, I would teach them the value of cyclic innovation and the benefits of empowering autonomous, small groups. The rest will come naturally.

Leave a comment | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Modern Visual Culture, Moshi Kouko Yakyuu no Joshi Manager ga Drucker no "Management" o Yondara

June 15, 2011

Satsuki And Hiroko

By omo

Evirus isn’t the first or the last person to make the comparison, but it doesn’t come to mind at first, at least to me.

The parallels between Satsuki from Hanasaku Iroha and Hiroko from Hataraki Man are easy to make at first. At a glance, it seems that both are career women who write for magazines. Both are not really attached to a SO, even if Hiroko does have a steady boyfriend and Satsuki has…whatever she has. But once you get beyond that, I don’t think the two are really a good pair for comparison.

I mean, Satsuki raised Ohana on her own.

It’s the one big secret behind Hanasaku Iroha, I think. It’s the question it is begging people to ask, but not really: I think what will happen is that they’re going to save this as a surprise for later.

I don’t want to play up the whole single mom angle, but the fact nobody paid it any attention in their analysis of Satsuki seemed almost like a social injustice. It’s also probably the singularly most progressive part of Hanasaku Iroha’s strange clash of viewpoints. If one can even see it that way. Perhaps it is no big deal to see a line-up of elderly women as the matriarchs of small businesses and clans, as it’s a trope of some sort. (I’m just not sure how realistic that is.) Seeing single parents coming through the way Satsuki does, however, is rare anywhere. Except maybe in anime, lol.

The more proverbial glass ceiling that Hiroko explores is something that women face everywhere. Its approach is honest and simple, actually, and I think that’s how it wins readers. Single-motherhood is a tough subject to be sympathetic about once we get beyond the pity factor and when we start to analyze the real difficulties and hurdles they have to overcome. It’s not a common thing people experience, so it’s difficult to just throw it in there. It wouldn’t surprise me if the schtik in Hanairo was more akin how it is in every other anime, and is just an easy way to add a chip on our protagonist’s shoulder, or something.

Leave a comment | posted in Hanasaku Iroha, Modern Visual Culture

June 8, 2011

After Madoka: The Past-Due Future

By omo

Now that a couple months have lapsed since I first saw those spoileriffic conclusion to easily the most talked-about anime in 2011, what is there left to say about Madoka?

This post is spoiler free.

My own view of the show is not too far from Wah’s, at least on a technical level. [I get the feeling that he “criticizes” it only because he didn’t like it, compared to the average Shinbo x SHAFT production (which he is borderline irrationally in love for), so I doused it with the proverbial grain of salt.] If I had to use one word to describe Madoka, it would be inventive. The most inventive thing about Madoka is its visuals. A lot of its sharp and jarring directorial cues and visual tricks were already hallmarks of another best-selling anime, Bakemonogatari. And others. To that end, and especially if you subscribe the view that SHAFT’s anime are like things coming out of an iteratively refining process, an assembly line of adaptations, so to speak, then Madoka is simply the latest and best thing.

In other words, I think what’s really inventive was all the contractors the producers roped into putting Madoka together. SHAFT is a studio that contracts out to some of the rising stars from the scene for their work, to the degree that they could. Madoka isn’t the first time they’ve done it; it’s better to say that they have been doing it for years, and the whole thing is finally coming together. It is a refinement. Still, in essence, Madoka was very much of a 1+1=2 product, in that the end result is the sum of its parts. Great parts, they are; I think people were right to assume that Shinbo x Urobuki x Aoki x Kajiura made a powerful combination, and the hype was well-deserved, if we can still remember the months leading up to Madoka’s debut.

Of course, I think it wouldn’t be fair to just say that Madoka was “just sum of its parts.” For one, great parts don’t always make great anime. It’s safe to say that the Madoka collaboration works because Shinbo is pretty good at this now. The original anime gambit pays off because things went according to plan, earthquakes and tsunami aside. There is evidence that magical girls show can sell if it channels some kind of character-centric pathos. And Urobuchi is pretty much one of the top VN hack dudes at this sort of thing. It’s funny, because compared to “Buchi’s” CV, Madoka is, hands-down, uplifting.

So you get an “uplifting” show with strong character-driven pathos as hook while featuring innovative visuals, hacked into the magical girls framework and expectation. The end result is a best-seller is probably not a big surprise to anyone. Well, it’s kind of a surprise in the sense that it bucks the trend. There are a lot of magical girls anime over the years, and especially the ones that appeals to that mysterious group of people so-called otaku; Madoka bucks that trend. And what makes it so is the something that still made Madoka a little more special, a little more attention-hoarding, than the average otaku anime of the same pedigree.

But that something isn’t something we’ve never seen before. I believe it’s the same thing that sold three seasons of Zetsubo-sensei and Hidamari Sketch, or Bakemonogatari. It’s the reason why Wah loves his little SHAFT thing. It’s also the same thing that I am getting rather weary of. Back in 2008 this someething was the bee’s knees, but in 2011 it feels that Madoka was the corner that Shinbo should have turned years ago; instead of Bakemonogatari, we should’ve had something a little more ground-breaking already. In fact, one could even see the original Nanoha series as attempt #1, if we read into the history of magical girls for adults. Were we ready for this kind of stuff back in 2004-2005? We may never know. But to me that is just a sign that we’re years behind where we could have been.

I ask this question because I still remember 2005.  I can tell you that something like Madoka is what we needed in 2005, something to punctuate the moe trend during its loudest hour. Because something like Madoka can actually stick, maybe, and by sticking I mean trending. Or alternatively, we just weren’t sufficiently sick and tired of it at the time and we didn’t complain as loudly as we do now. That is besides if Aniplex’s mercenaries can even do something like that, to pull off the troll, to get hype, during the coolest hour of Cool Japan.

Maybe we were not ready; maybe SHAFT still had a lot of kink to smooth out (see: how badly Bakemonogatari was delayed). Maybe the global great recession was at fault. I don’t know. It’s the fresh breath of air that we could’ve used, is all. It’s the thing that ef was (except nobody took it seriously), but now with 100% more star power (Tenmon is better than Kajiura, you heard it here) and not trapped by the weirdest content owners for anime ever. Madoka is great. It just came up a little too short, a little too late. I just hope SHAFTxShinbo and the rest of the industry are going to keep on playing catch-up.

[Homework: Imagine Geneon USA’s last license was a show named Madoka instead of Nanoha…]

Leave a comment | posted in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica, Modern Visual Culture