Category Archives: Franchises

August 24, 2012

Manabi Straight Press

By omo

Does the role of Momoha Otori in Manabi Straight reflect a particular philosophy about press and its place in self-regulating societies?

I don’t think I can jump and say that the specific circumstances reflected by Manabi Straight Episodes 8-10 parallels some larger, real-world political situation. Maybe it is similar to some real-world student movements within the confine of schools, I don’t know. At any rate that is not what I want to discuss. It is more relevant from looking at how Momo is written to be this detached, aloof individual who records the actions of the student government and understand the plight of those girls first-hand. She reports that, the plight. That is exactly where Momo plays her role in the show–to show the viewer, what she reports is the truth, albeit re-arranged in her own ways.

In a sense, this is very different than the typical view of the press in the typical student council-type anime. Pretty much the view of the press in the school setting is the opposite–some self-motivated go-getter whose objective is to sensationalize by characterization to troll viewership. Even in the latest Hyouka episodes, the relationship between people and press comes out a little closer to a classified service. Which is, coincidentally, how the press is for a lot of people who have to directly work with the people behind mainstream press orgs, in the real world. It’s better than zero-sum, but invariably it feels a degree removed from what the audience understands as truth. Perhaps both ways of viewing the press understand that ultimately the press, still, functions as a narrator or a storyteller. There’s some kind of narrative which invariably spins in some way. It’s really just if this spin reflects some acceptable version of what we feel is truthful.

Of course, the truth is not so simple. The great thing (perhaps the one of many concepts that played out in the show which earns its self-titled moniker “utopia”) about Momoha in that story is that despite the truth isn’t a very complicated thing (eg., they need % support to make the festival happen), how the people understood even such a simple situation varied greatly, and reacted to it very differently. While ultimately Momo is appealing to emotion for Mutsuki and Mei, when she hijacked the broadcast, the effect of something relatively simple becomes profound because people understood it very differently, and now they get to see something they couldn’t (ie., why the student council desperately wanted the festival to happen). It’s the kind of activist behavior that we typically do not associate “real” press with. It’s different than, for example, the promotion video, which is suppose to impress, even if it also is informational.

In essence, that is the role of the press. Or rather, it’s what happens after just the facts. There is a lot of space in which the press re-arrange and re-mix something simple and give it depth to tell something that is beyond the surface. Say politician wants policy X to happen, the press’s job is to tell the world why the politician wants it to pass, etc. To an extent, that is exactly what the public needs to know to make informed decisions in a democratic society. I think that’s kind of at the heart of the way Manabi Straight depicts Momo’s role.

Of course, what passes for moving and amusing montages of cute girls doing cute things in one place is sappy political propaganda of opposition party platform at the other place, in another world. Once we go beyond the facts, it might be fair game for anything and everything. But blah, that’s no good. It’s important to recognize that understanding the perspective of an other is actually the ultimate calling in interpersonal communication and one of the greatest achievement for journalism in my mind.

5 comments | posted in Manabi Straight, Modern Visual Culture

August 22, 2012

Hyouka Is Really Japanese

By omo

I’m no authority or even a studied person on what constitutes Japanese-ness, so take this more like a reactionary response than any level-headed discussion about cultural attitudes or the way how Japanese people behave in stereotypical social situations. I think I might have taken a course in undergrad to this extent, but that was it. I got an A playing weeaboo music for the class project and comfortably being the only person in that class that wasn’t also taking a Japanese language course. Easy A was easy. At any rate I forgot a lot of the course, despite walking away with some wide brushes about how Japan is like an onion or the way people communicate (such as BICS and CALP) and the way it affects how we interact socially. I also learned (more like forgot amirite) about passive aggression, in a textbook context.

The truth is, I think deep inside I have a hard time liking that full blown, stereotypical Japanese mentality. There’s always just a little bit of it that rubs me the wrong way. To turn it around, I understand its pragmatic approach to life and its sense of aesthetics, but I smirk when I read things like this Hideki Anno quote, or sigh when I read about Hideki Matsui’s porn collection. I mean, seriously, sometimes it is in good fun, but at the same time it is not a reality I would like to imagine myself in, for example, working for a Japanese company or just dealing with the everyday in Japan, like sorting trash (okay I guess that isn’t so bad, I do it already). Culture is great and all, but so is progress.

I think Hyouka ultimately is about this sort of throw-back, classical way of looking at the world. To engage the anime on the level of its animation, or character development, or even the way it dissects classical detective fiction, these are all great ways to enjoy the work. But ultimately a lot of the themes and core issues Hyouka dealt with, 17 episodes later, are just very Plain Jane Japanese problems. The sense of aesthetics from its inaka-y locales down to the way how Irisu taught Chitanda how to manipulate men are all very, well, traditional Japanese. It conforms to all sorts of stuff. The feeling that you are going to the township library to look up an old newspaper excerpt to understand how your 7th grade teacher feels about helicopters almost speaks of a sort of mannerism that, almost, no longer exists today, the sort of feeling that exist more for inaka societies and absent in that fast-paced, urban way of life. There’s a sort of charm in that, of course, but it also seems just really quaint.

For entertainment, being quaint is okay. It’s not even that part of the show I dislike per se. At worst, it’s just dull. The thing I dislike the most about the way this Japanese-ness perpetrates Hyouka is its use of passive aggressiveness as the central complex for its emotional motivation for far majority of these human mysteries. And invariably so, every Hyouka mystery revolves around decoding the motivation of a specific individual, and almost every time it is because that individual has some unspoken or bottled-up problem. It’s because they are passively aggressive. In the Movie Club arc, this “issue” was at its apex, at least in terms of both how retarded and how creepy it can be. It doesn’t come across in the same way as, say, Higurashi, but in a way the true cause of the script writer change is almost akin like someone being “taken home” and the victim’s best friend is actually helping to cover it up. It makes for a fitting mystery but also an extremely dull motivation, at least when nobody actually dies or when it doesn’t cause some homeroom drama. To put it to perspective, it’s hard to imagine how enjoyable Higurashi can be without its supernatural elements, or simply imagine…Ookamikakushi.

Despite my general hesitation towards that specific pitch of the Japanese mindset, Hyouka still has something for me to like beyond the animation. Think back to the first story arc, we’ll recall that the ultimate punch line is in English. The way a native-English (or non-Japanese, at least) speaker react to that revelation is entirely different than a Japanese kid in the 古典部. In other words, I can’t help but to laugh. It’s that sort of half-baked grafting of foreign (or perhaps, progressive, like … Niece of Time w) notions which gives Hyouka the balance that it needs, although it can be easily argued that it still isn’t enough. I thought the manga club “let’s troll Mayaka” session during the school festival arc was the show’s highlight, complete with the right costume play for the right characters, enough to say something. It’s like you have this pre-arranged semi-team-bully thing going on but what is being tested is the strength of an individual, because they don’t want to get their way, or rather, get her to go their way. In a way it also sums up the impact of certain foreign schools of thoughts (see: repeated references to Holmes and Christie books) affect traditional group-think, shedding light to something rather traditional.

PS. Watching Hyouka every week helps me understand all the people who hated on Guilty Crown and still watched it every week. I think this might be the first show in a very, very long time where after the episode ends every week I exclaim some variety of “man this is the dullest anime ever,” “man this is so boring,” “LOL that is the stupidest motivation,” or some variety thereof.

PPS. I think the SNK cosplay by Mayaka’s senpai is very meaningful, in contrast of the vocaloid outfits. I’m not sure if it’s just me thinking there’s something more to her outfit choice or what, but it has to be on purpose. In a way I guess that is a little similar to the Joshiraku episode 4 scene, in which the selection of cosplay is trying to say something.

PPS. Hyouka is the sort of show where the “gap humor” is great when you summarize each episode/story arc in one simple sentence. And invariably you can always do it.

PPPS. Hyouka feels like 10 years too early compared to say, Un-Go.

5 comments | posted in Hyouka, Modern Visual Culture

August 21, 2012

The K-ON Movie Is about K-ON

By omo

You know you’ve done it when I can approach a franchise as an “experience.” Down in Orlando, FL, there’s a place called Universal Studios where big-time American film franchises (and increasing, TV shows) get their own “experiences” in the form of a ride or something. In those situations the customers literally put themselves in a place where their senses are surrounded by stimuli that represents that franchise. The Harry Potter theme park down there is probably the best recent example.

I’m not exactly writing the K-ON film review that way, even if there was a K-ON event sort of thing at Universal Studios Japan in order to promote the film back in December 2011. What I’m referring to is that ultimately, K-ON has been about a singular experience. It’s no longer about the story (which in K-ON’s case, the story is not much to talk about in a very literal sense) but more about the way the customer associates and relates to the franchise. Coming in to the film as a voracious consumer of anime media is not the way to go, oddly enough. Coming into the film as a fan of K-ON, however, you will be surely rewarded with both the emotional revisit to that “Tenshi ni Fureta yo” moment and being able to again see the same girls on the big screen that you previously enjoyed seeing.

Well, basically I’m saying is it only works if you buy in to K-ON. I do, so I thoroughly enjoyed the film. However, I was really suspicious before going in to the film–there wasn’t much in terms of encouraging things to say about the film for the most part. After all, the drink-tea-eat-cake reputation is as honest and truthful as K-ON being an anime about high school girls being themselves.

The funny thing is, after all this, I’m not too sure what is particularly moe about K-ON. The girls are cute (in the Hello Kitty sense) and the subject matters they broach (in the movie, that’d be their graduation, music culture, sightseeing London from a Japanese tourist POV, songwriting, etc) somehow don’t quite mesh with that image. It’s a dissonance not unlike what I find attractive in denpa music. On the flip side, tune to “No Thank You!” or in the Movie, “Singing!” and you can see how this girl power band stuff work just like how it does on the Billboard Charts, even to the degree that it projects this illusion to what the K-ON show is about for people who aren’t familiar with the show.

What is K-ON about? It’s easy to take the movie in conjunction with the first two seasons and see how the movie fills in the gap in the overall story and let it continue to build on what we already know. After the credit rolled, I thought about why the movie was about these things, which kind of fall neatly into 3 acts: before the trip, on the trip, and after the trip. That’s the same formula K-ON uses to tell all its stories: pre keion club, keion club stuff, and when after it is all said and done. Supposing myself as a total K-ON newbie, I can probably watch just the movie and get a good idea what K-ON is really about. It does a great job summarizing and boiling down what makes K-ON interesting and attractive.

Part of it, naturally, is the animation. This is the second Kyoto Animation film that I’ve watched, and I am so thankful it is a good 40-50 minutes shorter than the last one. In fact, it feels just right; the statements about the K-ON movie being two or three glorified TV episodes glued together has some merit here, so it is good to see the film keep things tight and not overstay its cake-and-tea-fueled attention span. You can tell the production team scoped out their shots from London and captured the more expressive motifs among the character animation for the Londoners. It probably is as much of a travelogue as it is a matter of sympathizing with potential domestic Japanese viewers on their own personal experiences. Is Azusa really 17 years old? Certainly, in cat years. And that’s just a little thing.

I always thought the most impressive thing about K-ON was its ability to channel zeitgeist. It captures sort of the feeling about life that you wonder about or occasionally witness. Maybe this is why there are more girl bands in schools in Japan today than there were in 2008. Uncharacteristically, the movie almost makes some outward statements about this in the film when Sawako-sensei reflects on her own high school experience. Life was somewhat different then. Life is somewhat different in London. But in the end that may not really matter.

Leave a comment | posted in K-ON, Modern Visual Culture

August 13, 2012

Manabi Straight Blu-ray Versus the Most Worthless PQ Test

By omo

As I slowly work my way through the Manabi Straight Blu-ray box, you probably should expect a series of Manabi Straight blog posts. I think the show earned a spot on my list of favorites precisely because it evokes so much thought on watching it. And I really didn’t write all that much about it the first time around, just … a lot of posts “around” it. There are a lot of heavy themes and concepts thrown around in that show. Anyway, here are some more tl;dr about the Blu-ray release itself first.

My friend is a quality whore and he rigged his MPC-HC to whatever nonsense that these guys are saying. It makes some sense, when you own a Dell U3011, but to me the notion of “best” is kind of a lamer marketing term as PQ is to an extent subjective. When you start adding filters you are playing with fire. But I’m a live and let live sort of person, so it doesn’t bother me until the sharpening filter is depixelating grains or computer-generated visual effects from the video itself (which it invariably does with a show like this).

But man, my friend’s Dell U3011 is very nice. So we ended up watching some Manabi Straight side-by-side with whatever he found on BakaBT on his 27″ Dell monitor, whose model I forget (one of those 1440-line displays). We didn’t touch the BD video stream (played from a PS3) but he did (or whoever encoded it did) for the downloaded version of whatever it was. The results are pretty much what you’d expect. We also found how the home video went back and corrected some animation errors, mostly continuity sort of stuff.

We specifically checked out episodes 1 and 2 and I alone checked the last episode. We watched the first two because my friend actually never watched Manabi Straight beyond the first episode (his meticulous logging noted that he watched episode 1 in Jan 2007 at around 3:30 AM), and he didn’t quite remember what happened in the show besides Manabi’s “landing.” Olympics, right. The first two episodes make up a pretty solid pilot, if you recall.

To the meat of the post: the interesting revelation was that the last episode actually doesn’t look that much better, compared to the previous BD episodes. There were specific places where it did, but overall it feels mostly like just any other episode. The lines looked sharper than DVD, but compared it to a HD-broadcasted TV rip, there wasn’t really that much more details in the BD version. What survived largely were special effects and digital effects which died horribly on the TV rip both because of post-processing on my friend’s end or simply because the encode’s bitrate is just too low to capture everything. Like their later works, ufotable’s approach to composition is somewhat cinematic, featuring a lot of effects that create intentional blurring or things that look foreshortened. There is also a good deal of digital effects too, that as we know that tend not to survive upscaling well.

I guess the conclusion on this stuff is that the BDs are definitely the best version of Manabi Straight you will be able to find. But the TV rips were pretty good, if you can live with it. It’s not a night-and-day kind of a difference as with, say, episode 5 of Kara no Kyoukai. It’s probably less drastic than watching the DVDs (I guess I owe you guys that at some point) side-by-side to the BD. Of course this is also ignoring that the content is slightly different. The animation is patched up a little on the home video release. But with enough post-processing crap laid on top of it, the TV rips are passable, if that’s your sort of thing.

Continue reading

Leave a comment | posted in Manabi Straight, Modern Visual Culture

August 9, 2012

The Underrating of Nobuna Oda

By omo

I don’t want to pick on anyone, but it’s easier to just point you to an example. Take a look at this.

Is that a fair statement? I think it’s a valid opinion and probably a common opinion, and the post itself seems fine. The opinion might be fairly considered given what he has stated. It’s just as someone who’s just 5 episodes in, I think the show has long since survived the falling-on-swords-of-mary-sue-moe-genderswapped-sengoku-reenactment. Five episodes! Is that so much to ask for people who review anime? In fact since episode 3 my opinion on Nobuna hasn’t really changed. The latest addition, the Yui Ogura loli-kei character, feels like a major distraction actually. Granted, she is kind of a cool character for what she is (ie., loli fanservice draw), the show is rock solid with or without the latest Nobuna haremite.

Of course, I am just as biased. After 5 episodes of this Sengoku gender-swap mary-sue, it is still impressing me, and it does not go by the name of “Sengoku Collection.” (Actually, Sencolle stopped impressing me after episode 8, in which it pulled the Alice-in-Wonderland directorial schtik; it isn’t to say Sencolle is no good now, but my expectation has long since adjusted to match.) I really didn’t expect Nobuna’s Ambition to be the show that it is today, however, so I find that kind of criticism I linked valid only in that magical, alternate universe where the anime ended after 1 or 2 episodes.

And that’s just it. It’s a game about expectations and consistently blogs confound their opinions and feelings with actual critical judgment. The funny thing in the example I quoted was that there was actually a lot of nods on what Nobuna has done well. It’s the assumption that it’s just another moe sengoku genderswap anime which makes the review incredibly shallow. To clarify, that’s like assuming a root beer float is a root beer float, so it’s bad? What’s wrong with this particular version of the sengoku genderswap (or any version)? The lack of burly dudes in lead roles (wait, which part of “genderswap” did you not get)? Dumb characters? Nobuna’s right tit? I have no idea, after reading that post.

In the grand scheme of things, Nobuna is still just your average, garden variety of romance/comedy/adventure anime. It might not be worth writing home about unless you enjoy historical game/RPGs especially the various Nobunaga’s Ambition spinoffs. It might not be as charming as Ankori Pasta Rice, but who would have given either show a second thought if they were thinking any anime with a main character and a harem was no good? Well, maybe it is no good, if by good you mean “Cowboy Bebop” or LOL “Redline.”

Come to think of it, on a very basic level, there just are not too many adventure anime these days that has those components, and still can be finished in a cour or two. Nobuna’s Ambition fits that description. We won’t retread what is good: the solid writing and good animation/direction. We won’t even talk about the way how the main character actually sticks to just Nobuna, despite his unavoidably awkward interaction with the rest of the (and like in-game generals, disposable) female cast. Certainly we won’t talk about that there’s an intended audience for this show, which may be a valid justification for someone like the guy I quoted to react in the way he did. Maybe some people don’t like cute girls in their anime, or ninjas that stutter. Or anything to do with mary-sues. Maybe this is why replay novels never really took off in the west.

On a very fundamental level I could say that our act of gauging our expectation is influenced by the show we watch, however little. Perhaps you can find that type of mismatch as a result of the show. However, for example, I know for every whiner about Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere’s character designs and fanservice, there’s a genuine concern about either cultural smashing or simply a distaste for aesthetics or something like that, which is invariably going to happen as long as the world has more than one flavor to choose from. That is opinion worth taking into consideration. But that’s a very different thing to talk well of shows you like and talk badly of shows you drop. It’s a very different thing to judge a show based on your incorrect assumptions. It’s like reviewing a sports car as a mini-van. Or chocolate ice cream for someone who’s tired of chocolate.

Which is again really just the continuing and constant problem of decontexualization that oversea fandom of anime suffers from ever since the very beginning.

12 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Modern Visual Culture, Oda Nobuna no Yabou