The Yard Sale
Consume smarter:
Myanimelist, Myfigurecollection, feeds, Twitter and FB for sales info
Consume faster:
Streaming and simulcast anime, mobile apps to watch things on the go or when away from home, day-date international releases and Japanese releases with subs
Consume better:
High def digital distribution, anime on Blu-ray disc
Consume harder:
Mo anime, mo problems
Being able to watch the latest episode of Fate Zero every Saturday morning: priceless.
I’m not a huge fan of the typical fanfare pilot episode where you gotta make things interesting to hook people in. I’m more a fan of “make every episode interesting.”
Take the Fate Zero tl;dr mess of 47 minutes of episode 1. Gia points out a long moment where we’re just looking at a relic. Sure, we could be looking at something slightly more interesting (like Iri’s knockoff/hand-me-down gown she got from the Lunar Princess) while the notion of a conceptual weapon is explained to us. Instead we were just looking at the conceptual weapon itself.
But if you are a so-called fan of the franchise, that’s exactly what you want to see in episode 1. It’s like watching for the old crew from Patlabor in the second Patlabor movie. Or Saito in Tsuiokuhen. Or Akito in Prince of Darkenss. Or any One Piece character in Strong World. You get the idea. The scabbard of Excalibur is such an important icon in the Fate story that you can probably spin off a series just on the quest for it. It’s like one of those D&D RPG thing where the weapon has got its own epic tale across the time and space, because its soul still burns, or something.
Back on topic; a big bang opening is nice to see, but I can’t get the distaste of it out of my mouth–the 2000s were full of them from Hollywood. I think that is why I also think this is not as good of an idea as it claims it is. When you get 50% or more saturation, the same rhythm and pacing really can get on your nerves. It’s like, okay, when I go to a club I expect UNCE UNCE UNCE but when I put on some classical music I hear the same UNCE UNCE UNCE it’s going to be more annoying than Pachelbel’s Canon and its prevalence in music. When every action movie has the same structure and pacing and there’s nothing that surprises me (except for things that are surprising bad), it’s like having too much candy.
That’s not even the worse of it.
I remember Dogs Days. (Grats on S2 btw.) It’s a nice show, and some people really like the animated “American Ninja” sequences sort of thing. Great. Those game shows are fun to watch and have been around for decades in Asia. In the anime format it’s also pretty fun. So that’s why when we turn on to Majikoi and Horizon this week we see a similar schtik playing out. It somehow doesn’t surprise me at all that I find Horizon’s take a little easier to like, hypnotic swaying of large mammaries not withstanding, because it’s the anime equivalent of a car chase. And we know how there’s no real good car chases these days except in car films, let alone in anime where they are as rare as they come already. I guess all I’m saying is that even in doing the same thing, there are some stuff one can do to significantly distinguish itself from the rest. It’s like a good hook; it doesn’t have to be big, it just has to catch on. So rather than going big, it’s better to just, you know, go.
Which, compared to the subdued dialog torrent that is Fate Zero episode 1, it’s no wonder people found it dull. How do people survive high school these days? It’s way more dull and that’s compulsory and much longer.
I like to give my first impression of Fate Zero, but it’s tainted; I read the fan-translation of the novels already. Is it a surprise that I had some problems initially keeping track of characters…in Hourou Musuko? I’d like to chalk that one for dropping the anime adaptation in the middle of the manga volume 3 or 4 or whatever. Can we do the same for dropping you in the beginning of a prequel? Or just the fact that this is truly an adaptation for an audience who probably already had access to a series of books by a mildly famous light novel writer, at least among the anime otaku crowd? I’m not sure. But I can imagine people new to Fate Zero having some trouble keeping everything straight and getting their attention span working fine during the middle stretch of the first episode. I suppose when I was reading the novels I had a little problem keeping everything straight, too. I guess blaming Urobuchi is always the safest thing to do.
Instead of complaining about Ei Aoki’s treatment of neophyte viewers, I would rather just complain about Aniplex’s distribution of information about their awesome simulcast. From what I can tell, here’s the thing:
1. Episode one of Fate Zero was a 2-ep length deal, or an hour long with ads. This means the simulcast’s 11 PM JST time lined up right when it ended its first airing in Japan. That was when ep1 went live today. Which is 9AM PDT or 12 noon EDT. It is right on target as far as Niconico’s English Fate Zero portal goes. Note that it is a nicovideo.jp site, and not associated with the nicovideo.com site.
2. On Aniplex USA’s site, it says 8:30AM Pacific. That’s 10:30 PM JST time right now, thanks to daylight savings. Soon that’s going to be 9:30AM Pacific so those west coast guys don’t have to wake up THAT early to catch the simulcast. This means to me that they will simulcast the next episodes right after the Japanese domestic first airing ends, so that is moving up by 30 minutes compared to today’s broadcast time.
3. From what I heard today on Twitter, there were some load issues from international viewers. Not sure what that was about; I refresh monkey’d at right around 11:59am Eastern and it worked like a charm.
Someone at AWA please go talk to the Aniplex reps? Or maybe they can answer my emails or something? :3
As for the show itself? It’s awesome. Especially the magi-stereo segment. That is almost Phantasmoon good.
Edit: Aniplex USA returns my email (On a Saturday night!) and confirms the 8:30 PDT time for next week. All’s well in the world.
This is a pretty cool way to get your canon or must-watch hard-on addressed. I mean, if you want to approach it academically and build a syllabus or something, the end result would be a little bit focused on ideas, than just what you like.
Because a liberal education approach seems to fit in this topic most easily. It’s not like people want to become animators, right? Right? We’re beyond just posting our favorites here.
So what would I do? I’m going to start where once upon a time when Satoshi Kon was answering a question at the screening of Paprika during one of this so-called “retrospective” Q&A session. The question was about what Kon would recommend an aspiring animator to do, and the answer was something like he wouldn’t recommend you to become an animator in Japan. Not that he recommends against it, but I hope you know how it goes. The notion is that a good survey of anime information today will give you the full picture as to why he said what he said, and understand why he said what he said. In more details, these are the concepts and questions that will guide this hypothetical course:
Why would a well-recognized and talented Japanese animator not recommend being one? What sits at the core of this conflicting opinion? Why would we accept this opinion as reasonable (or not)? And so, in other words:
Why would Japanese young adults aspire to become animators?
As for the substantive portion of the course, I’m not sure how I would approach it–maybe from a film study perspective? It’s not an area of expertise for me, but I think for a semester survey class worth of maybe 3 credits (I guess that typically translates to 6-9hr/wk since credits are often tabulated differently) US undergraduate workload, the amount of work you can assign really is the number one limitation rather than how good the prof is at demonstrating knowledge and analysis. (Is this how all film studies prof feel?)
The topics? I guess to use the question I set up as a guide, it would include at least (in no order):
Then to address the “why would” question, probably case-study some shows that were quoted as “top” picks? Here are some examples; I don’t have the time to really dig into which animator quoted for which shows–shows that were singled out by other animators as their favorites or as example of great anime–but just a few off the top of my mind (in show – director pair)
Anne of Green Gables (select eps) Â – Yamakan
Future Boy Conan (select eps)Â – Kazuya Murata
Gundam (original movie trilogy) – somebody?
Lupin III (select eps) – someone else?
Castle in the Sky – Shinkai
Rose of Versailles – STAR DRIVERUtena/Ikuhara
etc.
For each named director I would probably select something more excerpted. The chronology of the course and syllabus would follow by the study of the specific works, and the topics will be worked into the syllabus based on what gets studied. For example:
et cetera.
Depends on the course load, you can add more content per week and the compare-contrast sharper (I was party hardy at undergrad and the weekend would toast my memory with a DC10 save vs willpower or something) so the material could be better viewed back to back in the same week. Also that would free up later parts of the semester to watch the really interesting things. Like Nanoha or Fractale. LOL.
Man, now I want to go and dig out all those interview questions about what shows Satoshi Kon watched when he was young. I remember him making references to it but I don’t remember what it was. Because I have to work in Millennium Actress in there somehow. Maybe some future animator can call dibs back?
I appreciate that cohesive trail of bread crumbs leading me from pasture from pasture, with sharks that you can jump over (while wearing leather jacket and a hairdo from the 70s) in between. I also greatly appreciate the work people pour into talking about Mawaru Penguindrum, and discovering the depth of its internal cohesion. I won’t link to them again, so I hope you know where to look already.
I just want to highlight something probably profound, and it sums in a nutshell the core complex as demonstrated by Ringo up to this point. This is in the form of a translated liner note from Utena R2 DVD release volume #2. Or rather, someone else had highlighted this—
Let us suppose that a certain man has fallen in love at first sight with an idol he saw on TV. The possibility of him making the idol his lover is near zero, but it is not entirely zero. However, rare is the man who would strive with all efforts to make the idol his lover. Instead of making such effort, he buys her records, goes to her concerts and enters her fan club. In other words, he enjoys her as an “idolâ€. Such behaviour blurs his feeling of wanting to make her his lover. This world of ours is full of such blurriness. To say “no†to such blurriness and to strive for the object of your desire, you have no choice but to become a duelist and confront the world and all its cruelty in the face. Episode 7 (“Unfulfilled Juriâ€) is a story about “miracleâ€. Arisugawa Juri, who is a student council member highly regarded by all teachers, a national-level fencer and a beautiful young woman, had one weakness – “miracleâ€. It may seem contradictory that she believed requited love would be a “miracle,†and yet she denied that such miracle could possibly occur. If she truly believed that such love was unrequited for certain, then she might as well call it an impossibility instead of calling it a “miracleâ€. She called it “miracle†precisely because she wanted it to occur even though it was unlikely to occur. The reason why she wanted to deny it is because she knew the pain of not obtaining it. May we not say that Juri was the most duelist-like duelist in the sense that she continued to be a duelist fighting for this miraculous power called “the power to revolutionize the world†while knowing this pain? Juri challenged Utena to a duel because the latter said she could believe in miracles. Juri was probably jealous of Utena’s innocence and felt angry. Juri lost the duel even though she was technically the superior fencer. Just as Miki who lost the duel due to “the shining thing†which was his weakness, Juri was defeated by Utena who fought the duel without such mental distractions.
To say “no†to blurriness, and to be defeated by the very thing that one stood up to fight for while knowing full well the hurt it would bring – that is the duelist’s sad fate.
What it reads like, to me, is some kind of fable in a modern world. It is serious! I mean, it’s a message that you can really take it to heart, and change the way you think about certain things in a drastic way. That’s great.
To switch gear completely: For me, what made Utena stick was not just its beautifully crafted visual and aural magic of modern themes, but also its spot-on comedy. Yes, in other words, I watch Mawaru Penguindrum for the penguins, too. What I find kind of disturbing is how few people find that an important part of the show.
Well, I should correct myself: a lot of people probably do; but it isn’t in vogue to talk about comedy. Still, it’s such an integral part of the presentation. It’s really a matter of perspective in which I ask this question, thus:
Does Ringo make you laugh?
She does for me. She also goes over the line a lot of the times, and that’s partly what makes it a little weird to laugh at or with her.
I half think that when we see those 3d-popup children’s book scenes, that’s what’s really what we’re suppose to see, the lens in which we overlook Ringo’s conquest of Tabuki. There’s also another meta perspective about this: we already see the difference between Yuri and Ringo’s play on Keiju’s mind and emotion, when Ringo and Shoma do their slapstick show involving carps, frogs, and what not. I mean, sure, someone did get run over by a car and that is not a laughing matter (in real life), but is it here? Not if #2 has anything to say about it.
In a way I think 2dt’s point about that “enjoy the show” mysticism is just a high brow brush to acknowledge that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and just by looking at the parts individually, we are at risk of missing the big picture. I think one of the risks is, like all jokes, the toaster oven of over-analysis. You don’t want to dry this stuff up of its humorous juices!
