Category Archives: Franchises

August 5, 2012

Manabi Straight on Blu-ray

By omo

It’s always kind of a gamble to buy a BD release of a show created during the post-digital, pre-high-def era of TV anime. That’s pretty much any show created between like 1998 and 2008 or so, which includes Manabi Straight. Manabi Straight is one of the last TV anime that was created for the 4:3 format and watching it gave my plasma temporary burn-in. LOL for cheap TV I guess.

That unfortunate circumstance aside, I lament that I just don’t have all the time in the world to rewatch this gem. I managed to just catch the last episode, the OVA episode (now slotted chronologically onto disc 3 of 4) and the Machiasobi event from last November (also on disc 3). It’s a little odd to see Nonaka on stage again, after just seeing her not too long ago in person. Equally odd was how the event is about showing the audience the PQ difference for the Manabi BD box, and get everyone to sing the Seiou Gakuen Kouka. I mean, a sing-along event with a video of Horie Yui teaching you (well, it’s a joke) how to emote it? Okay.

The oddness of the event bleeds into the home video version. At the event, they have this kind of small screen on stage where they showed you side-by-side between DVD and BD of episode 11 (and some other clips). It looks great on home video because, well, you see the actual video. I just don’t know if anyone present at the actual event can tell from that distance.

I haven’t taken a close look at anything other than disc 3 and disc 4. Disc 4 contains the final 4 episodes of the series, plus all the TV spots (TV ads and DVD ads), trailers, and the karaoke video for the five image songs for the main characters. But what’s probably more of interest to perspective buyers and Viewers Like Myself is the last episode and how it’s “reshot” or whatever ANN uses to describe the work ufotable put in. To make it clear, episodes 1-11 + OVA episodes have had their composition redone for the BD release, but they went out and redid episode 12 by recreating the CG effects. If I know Japanese I probably could tell you, because they talked about this at the Machiasobi event. Yeah, I think it’s odd to have Nonaka and the King Record producer guy tell you how good this transfer is, in the thing you just bought.

If composition is what I think it is, redoing it means now the scenes are rendered at a higher resolution as it is being composed by whatever software they use. This is drastically different than doing an upscale because the software that spits out the re-composed scenes are working from the original property, rather than the end result video that gets interpolated by the upscale software. I guess you can think of it as being one step closer (in reality, probably more than one step). And I think given the way anime is put together these days,  that might be the best thing you can do for a TV anime of that vintage. What is amusing is I can totally see someone do this to 2k or 4k, give them another 10 years.

Anyway, this is also why the CG, which is sometimes generated dynamically at composition, need to be re-done. Because it would look like ass otherwise. Since I don’t have a BD drive I can’t cap them for you, but let’s just say the cherry blossom scene at the beginning of episode 12 (this is the naming convention used by the BD box; OAV episode is labeled as such, not 6.5 or whatever) looked reminiscent of 5cm/s. There are a lot of pans and sky cuts in episode 12 and they look gorgeous. When Mikan popped out in the epilogue by herself I thought “only if Evangelion TV on Blu-ray would look this good.” There’s just all this detail in the scene when Mei was driving to the airport with the crew.

However, when you just look at the normal foreground animation, they don’t look too different than the previous episodes. It looks better than upscaled; the lines are well-defined, if a bit rough. The show has its share of derpy faces, after all.

The other notable thing about Manabi BD in terms of PQ is the stop motion ending. It looks great, and that should be the case because I’m going to assume they shot the whole thing using some DSLR, and that means it was put together using whatever-megapixel photographs. 1080 is only 2 megapixels; 4k is only 9.4 megapixels.

The intangible details aside, here are the stats [Amazon, King Records, ufotable]:

  • 4 BD discs, 1 DVD disc (materials for your PC…?)
  • contains episodes 1-12 plus OVA episode (on disc 3)
  • Discs 1, 2 are single layer, discs 3 and 4 are dual layer.
  • Comes with a slip case with a huge obi-thing that covers the bottom and the back of the packaging.
  • Also has a 108-page book containing all sorts of supplementary material, fits in the slip case.
  • Discs sit inside of a 5-part digipak that holds all 5.
  • First week sales: below reporting threshold

You can get more nitty gritty if you see the listing on Amazon and the like. There was a contest where people can vote for the cover image on the BD BOX, on ufotable’s website. It ran for about a month and you can get all the non-winner pictures as A4 postcard-things if you buy the BD BOX direct from ufotable.

Rewatching the series is definitely on my to-do list. I’m due one anyway.

2 comments | posted in Manabi Straight, Modern Visual Culture

August 3, 2012

The Other 2.5D, Scarlet Rain

By omo

You know how there’s a furry scale? There’s probably something like a mecha scale too.

No, not really about Strike Witches (even if that’s a good example of both types of scales). Actually, one of the more attractive aspect of mechanical design for popular media is its ability to transform. A big reason people like the F-14 is its moving-sweeping wings. It is not a surprise to see the now-retired assault aircraft pairing off with futuristic valks in Macross Zero. And as you know, these witches transform into furry beings by magic and military weapons by mechanical parts.

The value in transformation almost implicitly point out that the degree of mechanization for a mechamusume is not a quantized value, but a sliding scale. It’s one thing to paint a girl’s picture to the side of your aircraft or bomb or tank. It’s another to replace the giant robot and replace it with a girl-android-thing. Maybe we can even put, at the extreme ends, just girls piloting these things on one side, and girls piloting these other things on the other end of the scale.

You know Aegis from Persona 3? She’s a pretty much middle-of-the-road for mechamusume. Now by definition mechamusume is combing traditional mecha with that moe bishoujo aesthetics, like “girl+tank” or “girl+RX-78“. Aegis is just a straight-up android, and by definition human-like robots will exhabit some humanlike-ness. If that style of femininity is what the android has, it might be difficult to consider that as mechamusume. Perhaps as a new dimensionality?

But to a degree one end of the mechamusume spectrum is kind of like how people get off on guro or, say, ableist porn–it’s all normal except insert-the-blank, where the blank is some kind of abnormal physiology. Androids approach this idea from the opposite, in that the question is how human-like that they may be, except for their ears and the on-off switch, as an example. I would say these kinds of mechamusume are almost just normal people; that’s kind of their schtik. That’s the 0%. After all we don’t quite put Miku in this category.

I think Scarlet Rain is a pretty good example of both the more extreme form of mechamusume, as well as the idea of this non-fixed value of how much of a mechamusume a character could be. For one, in Accel World, you are your avatar, and it isn’t something you pilot exactly–you could kind of control it, but it is ultimately presented as the version of you in Accel World. So in that sense, when Scarlet Rain is doing her bit of the story inside the Accel World universe, she’s only known as Scarlet Rain, and not Yuniko. It’s a pretty serious transformation in contrast with Strike Witches, don’t you think?

Or maybe better yet, perhaps we can posit that it is Strike Witches that is progressive in combining the mechanical aspect of the girls with the innate identities thereof. Yuniko is still just Yuniko in the real world, after all. To the degree Power Ranger Pink can transform from mundane to magical (sometimes with the hardware), it speaks a lot about the place our characters inhibit within the scope of what makes of mechamusume. As I would put it, it’s about venturing into that 2.5D land, that gap between the common-sensical and the fantastically two-dimensional construct of the mechamusume.

I suppose Drossel has met her match, though. Long live the (tsundere imouto) Red King!

[I wrote this before Summer Wanfest 2012, so for reference check out this and that. Or this plamo KOS-MOS, the most moe weapons platform]

7 comments | posted in 3D-2D Modeling, Accel World, Modern Visual Culture, Strike Witches

July 22, 2012

You Had Me at Episode 3: Summer 2012

By omo

Coming in, I thought this season is a weak season. But after looking around, it’s probably not that bad; maybe even slightly over average. It’s not as great as last season for sure, but looking around I see a lot of bloggers thinking this season is weak. I don’t know. If we throw all these shows on the wall and see which sticks, there might be an average amount of winners in that bunch. Wish times like this I have a magical power that summons empirical studies of whatever at my command. Like, “Magical makeup! Summon science!” [Of course, if you are one of those people who think Fujiko was the best anime last season and only one worth watching, you can save us some time and just go die in a fire.]

I’m ordering this by no order, and shows I don’t list are either ongoing, dropped before I get to 3, or in a couple cases, I didn’t even try them. Hopefully I didn’t miss anything [edit: now that I added Joshiraku].

  • Jinrui wa Suitaishimashita: Thumb up. Solid satire with some bite, and easy to go down like all good satire. So good, I can do episodic, and tempted to do so!
  • Total Eclipse: Thumbs missing. My initial impression of Muv-luv Alternative: Total Eclipse was actually this “pervy” figure of Cryska, followed by Yui with a SMG. You can tentacle some armada if you are interested in more details, plus some backdrop to the Total Eclipse story. I got my first real piece of the action at AX where we got backed-to-back episodes one and two right after a Kurinoko/ayami performance. I think I liked that more. But to be fair, the first episode after the two set-up episodes felt like kind of like this, where it’s trying to “throw back” to a Top Gun-ish narrative. I’m going to wait to episode 5 before really risking for a call since to me the story didn’t quite begin until ep3.
  • Tari-Tari: Thumb up. It paves its own path, which is reason enough to watch if you are interested in the subject matter at all. Looks sharp and entertaining for the most part; just waiting for the story to gel and the CDs to come out.
  • Oda Nobuna no Yabou: Thumb up. Probably the one dark horse anime this season. It’s surprising competent, production-wise. Studio Gokumi x Madhouse = woah. Kanae’s performance props the show up as much as the good pace things are going. Its only drawback is that some prerequisite knowledge about history through the games really helps your enjoyment.
  • Campione: Thumb down. The only things going for it are the delicious fanservice and voice cast. The concept could be interesting but it’s executed in a very dull way.
  • Kokoro Connect: Thumb up. Character drama needs good acting and we have it. I feared Hisako Kanemoto would be the weakest link but with the Yui episode come and gone, she actually did a pretty good job. The animation seems like that knock-off Kyoani style but there’s nothing offensive about it.
  • Sword Art Online: Thumb down. I don’t like it but it’s a compelling watch. The production value is nice and I can empathize with the grief…as in, oh hey you just got trained sort of grief. Or in episode 3’s case, some one in their guild went Leeroy. I suspect though at the end of the series that might become true for actual viewers of this anime, at least the griefing part. The best strategy is to enjoy what little kernels of joy each episode provide you now, rather than later.
  • Kono Naka ni Hitori, Imouto ga Iru: Thumb down. Nakaimo is a trash show you can drop but it’s definitely the one good trash show out of the rest of the trash show this season. Main credit for being interesting in terms of plot and presentation. Conceptually it is way worse than most shows this season…if not THE worse. Which also is a credit to its favor if you look at it the other way.
  • Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate: Thumb down. I like this show’s approach to politics and elections but it’s not going to cut it. Only for harem/visual novel types (eg., this is kind of trashy). Not thrilled about the art style, but it does the job. I’ll probably end up watching it LOL.
  • Dakara Boku wa, H ga Dekinai: Thumb down. Sorry to say, Aya Endo fans, but this is worse than QB season 3 I think.
  • Natsuyuki Rendezvous: Thumb up. Why? Because I like the persistent take from the NTR angle. It really juices up this otherwise kind of boring josei fantasy. I’m also impressed how it can fit both manservice and womanservice in that tidy package. Kou Matsuo and his crew aside, it’s back to the basics of noitaminA, which is usually worth at least a look.
  • Binbougami ga: Thumb up. Another show with a potentially downward outlook, the opening episodes have a big impact but it’s the kind of show that often will settle into a pattern and it’ll get repetitive quick. I won’t be surprised if I end up dropping this show in a few weeks. It’s good to hear Hanazawa in an unusual role but I’m not a big fan of this performance. Toilet-level slapstick comedy, however, scratches my itch. It’s like the companion piece of Jintai.
  • Hagure Yuusha no AESTHETICA: Thumb down. Speaking of toilet humor, this one reached bottom first. I think I probably would enjoy this show if it can crank up the level of ridiculous over time, but that also means this show is not for most people. Perhaps if it looked better, a few of the more voracious viewers would give it a chance and get as far as the Kanatan-voiced, stoic-dere loli character….which is to say, yeah, you’re not missing much. If you’re on the Kana Ueda yuri-kei train of thought, though, consider Hagure Yuusha that bullet train from Yuriseijin taking you to heaven. If you like the populist nonsense in this show…well don’t get too serious.
  • Utakoi: Thumb up. Because it’s kind of the dirty josei/shoujo stuff some of you like, but also it’s better than average for its category (edutainment). I probably should drop it, but given how all the shows I want to watch airs between Thursday and Sunday, it fits into those empty Tuesday-Wednesday slots.
  • Joshiraku: Thumb up. I have a soft spot for the stuff that goes on in the ED, but that aside, the jokes tend to come at a good clip and enough of them hit. And sure, I like the girls enough, but more as people than as cute girls. (Are they even cute? Even Kigu?) I realized I can enjoy enough of the jokes raw (which is to say, not very many at all) but the tedious buildup to the punchline makes the whole thing not fun when you’re mired with the not-funny stuff. So I guess dropping this show would be the thing to do if the fansubs stop.

I think that’s it. Other shows of note:

  • Eureka 7 Ao: Episode 12-13 kicks things up a gear, which is sooner than the first series. The setting plays a bigger role than ever, which is nice for long-time fans. I wonder if they can actually tie this in with Xam’d setting-wise wwwwww.
  • Rinne no Lagrange: In Stellvia we have the group-cry episode. Now we have the group-yuri episode. Thanks, Tatsuo Sato. At least you are consistent!
  • Space Brothers: Yawn.
  • Yuru Yuri: Yawn♪♪
  • Sengoku Collection: At least I have no idea what the next episode is going to be about! But it’s getting kind of boring, at least in the past month; they need to spice stuff up.
  • Moyashimon Returns: Put me in the camp of people who think season 1 was special and season 2 is missing that special something. Nonetheless it is still a decent watch.
  • Dog Days: Hopefully season 2 will way surpass season 1. So far it has. But I’m not watching this show~
  • Accel World: I was hoping to see this plot concept earlier, but I guess it’s okay to have this story now.
  • Hyouka: Still really dull, even if the school festival episodes have been really a treat.
  • Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere 2: The barometer is, “will I doze off during any of their long exposition/tirades?” If yes, it’s a so-so episode; if no, it is a good episode.  So far the count is about 1 to 2 and I suspect by the end of season 2 it’ll come close to even.

And I’m still watching Sket Dance. It’s still my type of humor.

PS. What is amazing (again) is that other than Hyouka and Joshiraku, every show on this list is getting a North American “stream.” (Funi’s 2 new shows aside, which I presume they will play catch up at some point in the very near future.) I wonder why…

PPS. I’m actually keeping up with over 20 shows at the moment. And I thought it would get better after last season….time to cutcutcutcut. I guess I did with AKB0048 already…

PPPS. Yep I missed a show. To make up for it, here are some links to peeps from GG and their notes on Joshiraku. It’s pretty fun to read. Check it out.

PPPPS. I went back and watched Joshiraku 3 and slotted it in. And removed Ebiten because, well, it’s just clutter at this point. So yeah. By the way, Ebiten HP is LOLs.

9 comments | posted in Binbougami ga, Campione!, Dakara Boku wa, Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, Joshiraku, Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate, Kokoro Connect, Kono Naka ni Hitori, Imouto ga Iru!, Modern Visual Culture, Muv-luv, Natsuyuki Rendezvous, Oda Nobuna no Yabou, Sword Art Online, Tari Tari

July 22, 2012

From Dennou Coil to SAO: We’ve Gone Post HCI

By omo

https://twitter.com/Fencedude/status/226879040613666816

Technology moves really fast, especially in areas where there is a lot of economic incentive to innovate. HCI stuff, big time. But it wasn’t too long ago that science fiction begin to imagine what it would be like in the next “dimension”; the orthogonal turn from linear improvement of, say, how fast and power computers are, but to how these faster and more powerful computers enable things that we cannot even dream of doing before. For example, AI is one of those very staple thing, but mimicking intelligence is as old as when the first monkey learned from mimicking the next. None of these forefathers were big about, say, streaming from the cloud. Or being able to torrent to dropbox. Or be able to control sex toys via USB.

The reality of the situation is that, well, reality has long since caught up to fiction. When Google demoed their skydiving glasses (go to 1:27:00 or so) during this past Google I/O, the only thing missing was Densuke. The reality was that wearable visual augmentation hooked up to a computer with network capabilities was something that was around since I was in undergrad, and that was a long ass time ago. It was just a problem of how practical you can make it, and figure out what the heck people would use it for. I think Brin & co is still working on that.

So what does fiction do when reality has caught up to it? In Japan’s case, you make a moe heroine and pour some kind of white, viscous fluid on her, using this new technology. Yep!

Well, entertainment and fanservice aside, I think Sword Art Online approaches the whole virualized reality thing by playing on the experiences of hardcore MMORPG gamers. And by that I mean games like UO, EQ or FFXI, and by that I mean definitely not WoW, although WoW probably gives players enough of an in given how similar that was to those two games. While it probably isn’t the first anything to build on some kind of new HCI paradigm, SAO is the first one that I know which builds on the newly introduced concepts that came with the advent of MMORPG.

By definition, MMORPGs are constructs that are significantly different than their historical, single-player-offline sort of deal. Compare that to, say, Dennou Coil’s Densuke or thermonuclear beard war, people probably have an easier time imagining dealing with the mechanics of SAO (the game) than having to walk Densuke everyday, even if we do walk our dogs and what not. There’s just too much of a gap between walking your dog versus walking your virtual dog that lives in your glasses; or rather, since we have no idea how it walking your virtual dog, we can only think of it like walking with a real dog. On the other hand, we can imagine a virtual reality WoW experience easily, and it is nothing like actual WoW.

(The point I want to make by excluding games like WoW is because I get the feeling SAO is created by someone who has realized how punishing and annoying some of these games are. And WoW is basically the polar opposite of punishing. The whole exclusive, “leet” streak Kirito takes is all too much for me to take seriously without questioning the credentials of what’s at stake, or how this story got to the point it did by episode 3. Soloing in a game means different things if you grew up with FFXI versus, say, any WoW and post-WoW games, let’s just say.)

Anyway, I think it would be interesting to see if SAO is indeed pulling from the viewer/reader’s experience to construct the emotional context that the story takes place. It certainly is considered otaku material, so we do have that going. If we contrast SAO with Accel World, I feel that connection is the biggest difference between the two. In SAO you feel like playing a MMORPG (albeit in a very chuu2 way); in Accel World it feels like just another chuu2-shounen manga formula.

PS. You know SAO is otaku lit when the game is populated largely by guys. In reality more women play MMORPGs than any other types of games! At least, in the west.

16 comments | posted in Dennou Coil, Modern Visual Culture, Sword Art Online

July 17, 2012

Jintai 3 Redux: We Are, Again, All Part of the Problem

By omo

I looked around at the various reads on Jintai 3 [is animenano even picking up most of the blog posts with that tag?] a little and I think we can go the extra mile, do you agree? For starters, I’m going to take this as a proper satire. Furthermore I’m going to assume certain norms as the de-facto positive assumed by Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, or Humanity Has Declined.

For example, the ability to occasionally have meat to eat is generally a well-considered thing. It is in this context in which we consider the livelihood and living standards of our lovely UN mediator, the Main Character (MC). I guess here’s the third thing–I’m going to take the episodes not in an individually-wrapped vacuum, but all together. The fairies and their factory, their sentient chickens and mysterious industrial products, the village girls’ inability to slaughter these things.

Actually, it appears that while the country life MC lives in looks more like life in the 19th or early 20th century, the prevalence of electricity and other amenities such as books and steam automotive suggests not so much a perceived “tech level” but a thematic setting. Perhaps European-inspired? I can’t say too much, because it seems prudent to assume a certain level of malleability in the way Jintai includes popular cultural references using the setting. For example, I’m not sure how to explain that the livelihood of MC and her friends are under the charge of some regulatory agency (such as, no eating of mysterious canned goods), which is an artifact of the late 20th/early 21st century living for the most part. Or that there’s electricity available in the home.

Anyway. There is ultimately a pervasive feeling that I had about episode 3 that reminded me of the settings of fabulous British literary luminaries such as Bronte or Austen, the same stories in which made them a require read in American mandatory education. Naturally so, those influences continue their pull from beyond the respective authors’ graves, even in Japanese culture so many years later. Even in the development of the subculture of BL. I suppose even moe culture today can be traced to 19th century German lit? I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

Can we say the same about the smooth yet cunning satire in Jintai? That I think is up for debate. My personal opinion is that ultimately the subject matters in the first three episodes are not really painted in a positive manner. At all. I think it is fair to say there are some issues, and these issues can be multifaceted. Some of the different sides of the issues being explored by Jintai have been picked and absorbed in its probably-post-apocalyptic setting as a show of farce. Others are just made fun of. Some are once-overed as food for thought. Indeed, we cannot fly.

I think it is fair to extrapolate episode 3’s subject matter of BL and fujoshi mockery to include popular entertainment and fan-driven culture in general. I believe this is ultimately supported by Y’s primary mission, as I previously mentioned, that to archive the human history, technological advances and culture, is a job nobody really cares too much about in the end. That is the key concept in episode 3 which gets repeatedly reinforced by the little plot things. Such as how the UN doesn’t really care about what Y is doing; society doesn’t really care about Y’s comiket-reference; and Y doesn’t really care about Y’s assignment.

I think it’s fair to conclude, furthermore, that this attitude in which allows Y to do whatever she wanted, using technology and resources that might be better served in other efforts, is actually the key attitude being mocked by episode 3. It might be okay, at least based on one read, to have the girls all over the country to carry on in their own merry ways, turning and tossing in their sleepless nights, wondering about the plot of some romantic escapade in a yet-to-released volume of some manga. It might be okay for otaku culture to continue to exist. Episode 3 explicitly validates its cultural value and the mechanism cultural values propagate, after all. But how can anyone look at what Y was doing and think it is a good thing, without basically ignoring the entire setting to the show? Perhaps it is permissible, but is it beneficial?

In fact, I think this is one of the universally-taught, quality trait to satire. It again reminds me of Austen and her ilk. Perhaps Jintai is more like Swift? I guess it behooves me to stop here, lest I want to talk myself into a particular circle of hell reserved for that kind of people.

2 comments | posted in Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, Modern Visual Culture