There are a few dozens of narrative strands you can go with on Macross Delta, but the one that came to me happens to be the way I went into it with any interest at all: a Flying Dog PV that is inconveniently Youtube Red-Blocked for us Americans:
Category Archives: Franchises
Of Minimum Spends, Weekenders, Panels and Health Warnings
Just a bunch of random thoughts.
A Korean Liver apparently tried to make UO ramen by pouring UO fluids into instant noodle. What happened was the hot water vaporized the UO fluid, and it causes burns. As you can imagine, bad things happen if you inhaled it. Said Liver went into the ER for this reason, although he was smart enough to evacuate his home when the smells came so he ended up without much damage. As someone who enjoy UO kanpais let me be clear there are some responsible way to do this and please do not play with glowsticks in any other way. I also feel bad for proliferating this practice but I guess it cannot be helped to see…uh, the Darwin Awards apply? I don’t have a link to this because all this is screencaps shared on SNS. Do people even hyperlink anymore? Is this something that cuts into internet’s openness?
The trip to see ML3rd was technically a weekender. I took 4 days off, which is more than a typical weekender (this is like an Anisama weekender) and I spent the extra time to enjoy some company with the guys and to game airline fares (namely, having 3 layovers both ways). There is also much to say to ML3rd Makuhari trip than the two lives themselves. Will I get to it? Will I get to talk about Kawaii Kon? Sigh.
There is some thinking behind Japan’s aging and shrinking population, namely the young people of Japan and the shrinking workforce. There’s some hewing from foreign press or English-language news on this, mainly in terms of the economic, immigration policy or what have you. Enabling more elderly and women into the workforce is likely to have an impact with otaku stuff. Fujo pandering works will likely grow as more women get into the workforce, as there will be more disposable income available over time. The fact that anime and manga (and kakkin mobages) tend to target young people might be a counterbalancing point but this day and age adults enjoy them too (clearly) so I don’t think it’ll be a big deal. In a roundabout way, this also explains why Japanese cartoons target adults more and more, because where are all the kids at?
Speaking of kids, I’m enjoying Haifuri mainly for Mocho and the Trysails. If you drill into the cast for this show, it’s full of seiyuu who do idol works. Three of them are in Deremas, two from Nanasis, two WUGs, and vets like Kobayu…with Asumiss and Kanaechan (I don’t think they’re vets?). This is some serious seibuta material and enjoying it that way actually works. It helps that the story and concept isn’t bad. I’m blogging it at Jtor BTW.
I’m doing a panel at AnimeNext. I’ve gotten the skeleton of it down since early this year but sometime between now and then I have to flesh it out. It’s really about Bandai Namco and their management of IP… Okay it’s about IDOLM@STER but not the characters? Come and see. AnimeNext is in Atlantic City this year and that’s a bit of a pain to get to, but I’ll persevere. As long as they don’t schedule that panel on top of Kouno’s stuff… Excited about Kouno Megumi for sure. ZAQ concert is almost like icing at this point, but it does seal the deal.
Ahhh Chokaigi tomorrow will set my summer in motion. Probably.
Anime-wise I’m still trying to 1-ep everything. Definitely falling behind a bit, and not picking some stuff up. Like I don’t want to rewatch Unicorn but the TV series might get me to finish the OVAs finally. I’m also cleaning house on a few shows from last season. Like Dimension-W…need to marathon it soon.
With Anime North firmly in the front of the windshield, I think planning for it is going smoothly. We were able to book a venue and all in the nick of time, and hopefully the public-facing information for our offkai will be available this week…before whatever happens at Chokaigi derails us. Or whatever AX seems to have up its sleeves.
I saw some dubbed anime in theaters during FUNi’s screening of Empire of Corpses. The film itself is worth a watch. It mixes elements such as steampunk, zombies, and philosophy about animated corpses and souls with a good dose of BL. The sum is not my thing (and honestly I would not approach Empire of Corpses on those terms unless I am a marketing shill) other than the great animation and the philosophy stuff. The dub worked well because the characters and setting are international, with a lot of British and Russian characters. It still robbed me Houko in a funny role and Hanakana being the token female lead. Oh well. In a couple weeks they’ll show Harmony, which is something I am a lot more familiar with.
I am still jetlagged, mainly because work asked me to pull some late shifts since I returned from Japan. It’s not fun but I can live with it. Weekender training has some use after all.
Million Live Believe My Dream! event beckens. I am raking for two. Given how much I’ve spent on this game this month I think that’s the very least I can do.
What GATE Means to Me
First read this Clickhole article about Bernie Sanders. Yeah, it’s gonna get political, because that’s what my problem is with GATE. It might also get spoilery so consider yourself warned on both counts.
It would not be fair to boil down GATE as a simple power fantasy about Japan and its SDF arm doing what it’s good at doing. But unfortunately there’s not a whole lot to go on in GATE in the theme department. It is a very pure kind of wishful hypothetical.
Unfortunately that sort of thinking also is sort of what Japan’s Asian neighbors find abhorrent about Japan’s behavior during WWII. You can ask the people of Taiwan, for an example, on how they felt about being Japan’s model colony for roughly 40 years. Yeah, model colony. I believe the Japanese can do a way better job as a colonial power than many European countries of the day, too, so this I share with GATE’s SDF author. It might not even be too different than from what you’d get if you asked the hapless farmers and tribals the SDF rescued in the show. Of course, that’s missing the point.
What’s missing from GATE are all the important stuff that sort of spoils the fantasy, basically, just like how a statement is missing in that Clickhole article about propping up puppet dictators. Or colonialism is problematic and inhumane. Or you shouldn’t really write a story where the SDF basically installs a puppet government. FWIW there are some recent movies where the bad guy’s end game is to do this! I don’t think Japan’s public has gotten that memo on colonialism yet. To be fair back then they didn’t have the internet! We’ve long since moved on from it! Maybe Japan’s post-war generation failed to take note on international politics and explained how things work to the Lost Generation because they were too busy building their economy? “Yo guys, but we’ve gone from colonies to just plain dictators that we prop up that serve our international interests, and proxy wars like Syria.”
Deresute: Week 33 – Next Steps
At this point, with the release of the last Tripri member’s SSR & the latest upgrades to social/opening up new game modes, I think we’re at a good place to recap the first 30 weeks of this game, and to look forward to the next phase of IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls: Starlight Stage. So let’s start here.
Just looking at the amount of money this game makes, it’s every bit justified to have a SMAP guy in your commercial. It’s gross, and it’s insane. I’m glad. I mean that’s about the same rank as Ahnold Schwarzenegger, right?
One point of curiosity is going to Reddit and skimming the reaction of that group of early adopters who would play Japanese F2P rhythm games with idols in them. How will they adjust to a post-voiced-idol reality in CG? There are no “trash idols” in CG, right? That speaks more to Love Live SIF than Deresute, but it’s a curious decision both companies have made creatively in the direction of where they’re going with all this.
The strong outpouring of support on DereSute has to mean well for the franchise. Does this mean we’ll get more CG anime? I think it’s not unlikely. It’s more a matter of timing and scheduling. All of 2015, in some ways, can be said as paving the way for this ultimate trojan horse that is DereSute–between all the IM@S 10th and DereAni promotions, at the least–and this is how they collect money based on all that good will. In the big picture, it’s not just a story of a big franchise putting on its walking shoes, so to speak, but it can even be seen as struggling development company hitting gold as the JP tech press may have reported, a different kind of Cinderella story in this unforgiving games marketplace.
The game itself probably have really pivoted when Tulips event happened. It’s full of post-newgene, small fries characters that barely got any DereAni treatment. It’s like the current event–like who are even the fans of these characters? Unless you are a dedicated CG P, which largely are hard to find even today…
Which brings back to my initial feeling about an English language port of this game. Will it happen? I don’t see why it shouldn’t, but it does make me think just how successful it might be. And if I, a cheerleader for the franchise for all practical purposes, question this, how does Bamco feel?
Kizumonogatari Part 1
Kizu was a good time. Just a few points to a short movie that’s more akin to a very long TV episode here.
I watched it twice, once in NYC and once in NJ. The NYC showing gave out better loot, although it’s nothing significant. The crowd was also “better” in NY in that people more or less kept their wits together and it was less like a laugh-a-thon. These are just minor nitpicks for people who care about this stuff. Watching it twice also gives me the chance to focus on stuff other than taking the movie in, at least during the second go-around.
Kizumongoatari is the most impressionistic (for lack of a better term) thing out of Shaft that I’ve seen since maybe that vampire loli anime, or even Soul Taker. Like, that Kizu used French titles (and not even thoroughly!), is both humorously pretentious and yet appropriately chosen. They could’ve gone with a number of other languages, after all.
The feeling I can’t shake was that if I wanted an adaptation of Tsukihime, this is how I wanted it to be done.
The animation is great, I guess this is something you just have to see for yourself. There were a lot of visual references and nods. For people who didn’t come into Kizu with Bake under their belts the jokes might be lost on them, but it is all per se meaningful and perhaps most meaningful in that way to interpret the material. I thought also that if we take a step back and consider Bakemonogatari (and others) in the same way, where the only pitfall of Kizu’s predecessors was the production quality to impart the technical necessity that Kizu did not lack, but the others did, maybe I would not have gotten tired of the Monogatari series so fast.
It’s like unless the prurient stuff were of interest, there isn’t a whole lot that separates Monogatari the series with, say, Mushishi. And I think it’s a certain sort of doom when a subcultural artiste’s work is best compared to a National Geographic documentary (or its anime equivalent), (if) only in terms of content. Well, there were some token pervy jokes as you’d expect, and I’m glad there were, if only to keep the contrasting heavy and light feels of the film going.
The voice acting was good. It’s as you would expect out of our four notable voiced roles, although I think Hocchan stole the show. Sakurai’s Meme was extra irritating, which is credit on his part. Hearing the older-bodied Kiss-Shot was nice, especially in that kind of traumatic state. I guess they had to go to a baby crying to kind of make it sound at least plausible.
Kousaki Satoru’s soundtrack was tops actually, it’s appropriately knock-off in the sense that Kizu’s sense of style is equally knock-off. I was taken most particularly to the music used during the conversation between Hanekawa and Araragi, as if it was kind of ripped half from Evangelion and half from the rest of Kousaki’s works. Please forgive the drawn-and-quartered analogy in advance, but it is kind of like trying to enjoy driving a Lexus makes me want to just get back into a BMW all the more, but you would think the Lexus justifies the price tag, and is a well-appointed mechanism worthy on its own rights.
Which is to say, yeah, there is a visual/sound gag that kept resonating with the weeb audience and I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Let’s just say I hope the directorial crew for the movie got that feedback from the test audience in LA. Some jokes westerners get & like, which are sometimes not the same ones as the domestic audience.
I went into the experience already knowing what Kizu was about, and how this is part 1 of three, that you should expect about an hour, and that it is well animated. It was exactly what I expected. And it’s probably worth watching it twice in theaters. But this is mostly because I am already some kind of hardened otaku who is arguably the heart of this target audience, despite my distaste for Nisioisin…well, he has some good stuff, and some stuff not as good. More relevantly, there’s just too much of all of this, what people call TV anime. Having an elevated, polished and well-presented video entertainment as Kizumonogatari Part 1 is a welcomed change, if anything.