Category Archives: Modern Visual Culture

August 23, 2011

Making Doujinshi in America

By omo

I was walking through the artist alley at Anime Expo this year with Tom and the thought kind of came to me: in the US we sell crap as it is in the Artist’s Alley–character merchandise labeled with our favorite ideas, like t-shirts with sarcastic or funny phrases on them. In this case it also doubles as a stylistic option given the artwork on your hat or pin or the print you hang in your bathroom wall. [I’m so hanging that pretty neat Miku print I got last year in my new bathroom.]

The whole thing is more along the lines of an arts and craft show than a maniacs-of-franchise swap-a-thon, the latter being the case of Comiket, where fans flock to pick up their doujinshi or whatever. From a copyright perspective the differences between American and Japanese fans explain the nature of copyright enforcement in this practical application of law between the same two countries. At the same time, it feels like the American artist alley wares fill in a gap in the consumer market: the lack of licensed merchandise and goods at the right price.

Except that isn’t even quite the case anymore. There are licensed merchandise for a lot of this stuff available in the US. It may be hard to find sometimes, and there may be smaller gaps (licensed “sarcastic t-shirts” are hard to find and really expensive when you do; always make me a tad bit sad when I see those Jlist shirts) that are not fulfilled, but merch presence is by and large there in some way. What’s a fan to do in this context as a producer of stuff to sell? The thought came to me about doujinshi, then, as what market segment it really fills.

I mean in some ways there were always American fans putting together these coterie magazine like EX or that new Colony Drop zine or Super Rat’s zine. There are plenty of examples littered across the past 20 years. Even now, I know some folks I work with on Jtor also are interested in making that kind of stuff. There’s a particular attraction to that publishing format. I think especially today in America, where e-readers and tablet computing are truly the order of the day, there’s a rich visual space now available that would really suit publishing for this kind of material. (Not to mention that for photogs there’s also something a nice print offers that your monitor is definitely missing.)

It just makes me wonder why people don’t flock to this format in the artist alley. I suppose, comparing workflows, it’s way less work and pressure to just make prints of random stuff you draw or make buttons or whatever. In Japan people bust balls (often together!) trying to put together their 16-page manga or whatever before the various deadlines for the various doujinshi events. It feels like the former is run like a lemonade stand and the latter is run like an actual project.

I’m not really here to minimize the contribution and hard work of artist alley types or lemonade sellers. I’ve bought my fair share of things from them, and some of those arts and craft stuff are well worth of our money and attention (in fact, I want to highlight that here). And we all know lemonade makes a delicious summertime drink. The artist alley concept is fine to have these vendors and artists participate, and for the most part the notion of artist alley as we know it works perfectly, and each con’s add a piece of the local flavor and culture to the overall convention experience. But culturally, the con artist alley is a creatively dead space, full of two types of things: people making a quick dollar on derivative copyrighted works and well-known trademarks, and artful people making cool art stuff. Sure, there are still some people doing their original stuff here and there, but I mean, I want my US counterpart of the doujinshi market to be able to provide an environment where a Tsukihime or a Nyoro~n Tsuruya-san will be able to thrive. But I just don’t see that being ever possible with the way things are.

Where is this happening? Where everything else is happening: the intarwebs.

The mode of consumption, I wager, has completely screwed the pooch in terms of where “content” buyers go to shop. People who buy crap at the artist alley at an anime con are shopping for some kind of image-based good. They want merch; they’re not as interested in content. By this I mean we’re after just ideas, icons and signals; not narratives. For that we go buy anime or manga, even web comics, forums and fanfiction. If we want a cute story about Cirno, for example, we can go read a Japanese doujinshi. And I imagine any American doing the same thing is likely going to publish it online anyways. It’s like, you can’t make it as an artist in the artist alley; you make it as an artist somewhere else, and you use the artist alley like a dealer’s room: sell crap.

With that in mind, I’ll cop a line from Makoto Shinkai’s Otakon press panel (my version w):

With the changes to animation and computer technology, how have things changed in the past 20 years as an artist?

Shinkai: Today the circumstnaces are better, the hardware is better, and there’s the internet to help distribute. There’s better software. The truth is what you want to express in your work is still the basis of that. When you are creating it on your own, the effort goes into making it look good. So today even when the circumstances are better, if the artist doesn’t understand that you need to express through from what you want to show, then things hasn’t really changed much.

So how do today’s independent artists accomplish this, at least in the context of the artist alley situation? To me the solution is obvious for an organizational body. Tap into the fan-creation communities (lots of places) and make a call for self-published works in the long format. Work with an online print company to organize some kind of infrastructure where you can do, for example, print on demand, bulk, negotiate on infrastructural burdens and prices for those things. Set a deadline for submissions, screen the submission and assists authors and creators with their work, and submit the end results to the print-on-demand service. Be the go-between for the printer and the artists. Set a fix date (like a week) where people can buy the doujinshi from the site at a discount and they will be all shipped together at the end of the period. Market the hell out of the online event during that time. Debut all those submissions at the start of the week and take them down after it is over. If you’re awesome, you can also make them purchasable via e-reader/tablet-friendly format.

  • Divorce the “con” culture from the nature of the creative endavor but still put it in context of the fandom; use the internet instead.
  • Reach the people who are already interested in these expressive forms of discourse by marketing to specific grottoes on the internet
  • Create value for POD/publisher by bundling eyeballs online and attach their brand to the effort
  • Create value for buyers and artists by bargaining collectively and sell in bulk, reduce shipping charges
  • Provide the middleman for technical help and billing, education and generally assist artists in online sales.

There are a myraid of technical challenges along the way, but the biggest question in my mind is what would people want to buy? Doujinshi as we know it? Doujinshi as it is in reality (ie., a lot of text-based things)? Music? Games? I see things like, say, Altogether fitting this idea closely. Translating a doujin game is a very different process flow than running a lemonade stand. But what else? I think people would buy photo books of figures. Even more people might buy your garden variety cartoon for adults, but that runs into some problems. Who would buy some home-grown Touhou doujinshi? Is this like the field of dreams, where if someone builds a cheap, accessible way to create, sell and buy doujinshi, people will come?

And again, to address my previous point about artist alley, in reality it isn’t the fault of anyone that our American artist alleys are like that; it is just much easier and natural to do a lemonade stand than to manage a project on the scale of a properly-made doujinshi. It’s also much easier to run something like a dealer’s room than to manage something like Comiket. So rather than to change a thing that works, maybe I’m just looking for something that’s not offered by that space.

Though, this isn’t a chicken-and-egg problem. Comiket and its kin can’t exist without doujinshi, and doujinshi cannot exist without passionate creators and fans. So at the core of it all are dedicated fans who want to semi-formally communicate with each other (and also less-dedicated fans) about the stuff they love. Maybe that is the true test of the nature of America’s fascination with Japanese pop culture from the lens of anime, manga and games. I have no doubts that these people exist, I just don’t know if they can be organized enough to build on top of the same feelings and emotions that drives them.

Leave a comment | posted in Bishoujo Gaming, Conventions and Concerts, English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Figures and Models, Modern Visual Culture

August 21, 2011

Ask Me Enishing!

By omo

If one finds sites like Formspring an exercise in social media vanity, does that make Hanasaku Iroha episode 21 an exercise in social media Engrishing?

It’s this sort of questions that boggles my mind on an ordinary day, along side with “Why is the USD:JPY exchange rate still going the wrong way?” Or “Why can’t I write that blog post about Hanasaku Iroha where I describe the character design as it appeals to an realistic view of human proportions?” Or “Why did Mayo Chiki get better? Why can’t I drop it?” Or “Why is everything airing on Thursday nights?” and its part-2 question “Why am I compelled to watch them on Thursdays?”

I hope these things, like the puzzle pieces from Mawaru Penguindrum, have a rhythm behind it.

The marriage thing in the latest episode of Hanasaku Iroha is kind of puzzling; it’s playing to some kind of pre-assumed cultural mindset in that it both conform and deviates to something. This something, I don’t really know what it is. Am I suppose to be surprised about their marriage? Are the previous episodes good enough of a lead-in? I can only hope that subsequent episodes reveal these things satisfactorily.

Lastly, if someone told you to watch Steins;Gate episode 1 again, you should probably listen to that someone. It’s also a means to get people to watch it if they haven’t even seen it yet.

Leave a comment | posted in Hanasaku Iroha, Idolmaster, May Chiki, Modern Visual Culture, Steins;Gate

August 18, 2011

Redline’s Hype Gap?

By omo

Talking to our Blu-ray pushing buddy on twitter, I feel like spinning this thought out a little more:

@muhootsaver_7:  Why do some ppl think REDLINE is “hyped”? If the worst comment about the movie is “bland storyline but still a great eye candy”…

@omonomono:  because some people say it’s the best thing ever (not disagreeing)!

@muhootsaver_7:  BUT IT IS. Jokes aside, I don’t think it’s overrated if not underrated. Haven’t felt this satisfied after a movie for a long time

@omonomono:  Anytime when someone expects to like the show they’re going to see due to “word on the street” and ends up disliking it…

Just to be clear, we’re talking about the Madhouse-produced animation flick REDLINE, or Redline, and not the 2007 live action movie. And there is strong evidence that there is hype, even if it is not very wide-spread hype.

Basically, I’m wondering if there is a hype gap. I’m thinking given the lack of dimensionality of Redline’s modus operandi, the filmmakers were likely only caring for a narrow segment of animation fans. Perhaps in 1995 that would overlap with most animation fans in the west, but certainly not by 2005 standards, let alone 2011 standards.

Having not yet watched Redline (saving this cherry until when the time is right), I can’t say if my assumption about dimensions apply or will the animation be so viscerally communicative in which it can bridge the differences between any open-minded viewer of itself: so vastly different people can come together about it. So I won’t make any assumptions about that for Redline. And it is well-given that any works of modern entertainment of big enough viewership will have its detractors.

But isn’t the obvious answer, rather, that Redline is what is commonly called an art film? Twitch compares it to Mind Games. And Mind Games is no blockbusting pleaser either. And it’s almost a shared virtue that the mainstream audience just don’t dig art house fares. I would almost say that Redline’s particular penetration in certain segments of the west is probably just as big of a testimony of Redline’s obvious qualities mixed with the nature of how that particular fandom has developed from ages ago, during the era when “japanimation” is synonymous with gratuitous sexuality and violence.

I mean, speaking of sales figures, how are we suppose to interpret it? It may be bad that it cannot sell 40000+ copies, but is that expectation even within a nautical mile of realistic? If Redline sold 4000+ copies of Blu-ray and DVDs, isn’t it good for the film? [How many units of Fractale is that? LOL? 5?] Maybe it is fair to say that a lot of good anime don’t get a fair shake at the box office or Oricon charts. But that would be making the assumption that these are good anime (by some common metric). And since I said I won’t, I won’t.

Not until I watch the damned thing, at least. You know, for something that is potentially market-transcending, they sure are doing one heck of a job burying it in terms of marketing. The hype is not very wide spread, even if it is there. And maybe that is for the best!

Leave a comment | posted in Modern Visual Culture

August 16, 2011

Hanasaku Iroha: Food Induced Coma

By omo

A few weeks ago I talked to someone about curry and how that played a role in Penguindrum. Here’s a recipe inspired by it. (Apple in my curry, tho, not my thing.) On Sunday I made “chicken rice” and wrapped it in an egg skin for breakfast. I guess that qualifies as omurice. I guess that also tells you I woke up to HanaIro on Sunday! I also took a note from Penguindrum and added Sriracha sauce in the egg. Because that’s just how I roll.

Ingredients:

  • 3 eggs
  • small amount of diced spring onion, or some diced onion.
  • rice (probably 2 cups of cooked rice is fine; any variety is fine but short grains are preferred)
  • enough chicken (could be any, as long as boneless) to go with the rice (I actually used some leftover rotisserie chicken breasts)
  • pepper
  • salt
  • ketchup
  • cooking oil (vegetable oil, lard, chicken skin, anything really)
  • optionally hot sauce (I prefer Sriracha with this, but whatever works)

I was amused when Ohana thought Minko couldn’t make it. But since omurice is like, home-style all the way, there are a lot of different varieties. As we learn this week. This is the super simple you can do it if you are a single man in your bachelor-pad style. And ideally your cooking surface should be better than a hot plate…

I used a really deep skillet (almost like a wok but with a flat bottom), because that’s just what is handy. You want to basically make fried rice. For omurice you probably don’t want to season it that much, unless you prefer it to be like Chinese or southeast Asian style. I just added ketchup and pepper. But that is especially true if you want to spike the eggs. The goal is that when you eat it with the egg, you can taste both and the rice goes with the egg. If you are using raw chicken pieces, you can also season them more heavily since it will stand out when you chew on it. Marinate it even. However for fried rice, you want to cut it fairly thin and small.

Heat up your wok or whatever, and toss in the spring onion or onion. You want to cook those pretty well and caramelize it. I just throw it in whenever. When the cooking apparatus is hot enough, put the meat in. Stir lightly until they are just done. If you are using leftover like me, this time is just long enough so they are kind of warmed up. Seasoned veterans of leftover fried rice construction should feel free to substitute any other meat or vegetables in here, but for omurice you want to keep it simple.

Simple is delicious sometimes, you know?

So as the chicken is cooked, you put in the rice. Cooked rice. If you don’t have any, you will want to make the rice first before any of this, since that takes a while. Cold or hot it doesn’t matter, just stir it up so the ingredient mixes well. Add ketchup and pepper to taste. I think omurice tastes better with more ketchup. Some people even like a little char. Whatever, man. You can also add salt here, but I prefer to add it in the egg.

When the rice looks good enough to eat, it’s time to set it aside and make the egg part. You can do this on a hot plate if it’s big enough, a wok if you’re skilled, or just in any skillet or frying pan. But first you want to deposit the eggs in a bowl and mix it up well. At some point you can add some salt to the mix. Also, some hot sauce, if you want it all over the thing. It’ll give you a more subtle flavor rather than a strong kick. That is, if you don’t add too much.

Ad a bit of cooking oil for your skillet. When it’s hot enough evenly mix in the egg mixture so it forms a thin skin, hopefully big enough to fit the fried rice you’ve whipped up. If you made too much fried rice, that’s fine, you don’t have to add all of it in. Anyways, it’s like making an omelet. If you can do that, you can do this. First carefully dislodge the egg skin. Carefully scoop in the rice towards the center, about 1/3 of the way from the edge. If you’re a noob, don’t add too much rice. Close it up, and then carefully slip it out of your pan onto your serving dish.

Omurice is really easy to make. It’s also really gimmicky. It’s like, if you just want to eat egg with your rice, you can put that egg directly in the fried rice. Why bother when you’re cooking it for yourself? It’s more an opportunity to display that extra loving tender touch for the ones you cook for. Like Ohana’s super broccoli omurice for her mom. Or the maid cafe flair. It works. On somebody else.

One last note; I actually applied hot sauce on Sunday directly on the rice right before I rolled it up in the egg. It’s probably a little more potent and you can localize the flavor this way. I  wouldn’t recommend drawing hearts and crap with Sriracha sauce though!

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

August 14, 2011

Mid-Summer Review, 2011

By omo

When the humidity is high and the  sun is making waves on steaming pavements, do you want to watch an anime like Aria, where the same is sometimes protrayed, or do you want to watch something from the deep freeze, like a scene from Spriggan? I don’t know, and it’s not like I’m getting either this summer.

So, a list of stuff I’m kind of watching.

I’m still keeping pace with No. 6. I want to start this post about No. 6 out because those … homoerotic gazes kind of bothers me when it’s put at the fore, so let’s put that to the fore. Those scenes bother me in the sense that “wait, there’s this long pause in which I am suppose to be feeling some kind of tension between the two male protagonists, but what kind of tension is it? Why is this pause here?” It kicks me out of the mind set in which I’m following this mystery about killer bee things, which is probably the main draw for the show. At least for non-fujoshi types. On a normal, sunny day, I typically like to think critically anyways. But when the show gives me a chance to–scratch that, more like when it invites criticism, I can’t help but to think in the negative. It isn’t necessarily a “wrong” on the show’s behalf, but that’s just how I roll. Some anime invite you to introspect, to reflect and consider what is happening in the story from a third-party perspective. Others invite you to take part in the action, to get the audience wrapped up in the narrative. There’s nothing special or good or bad about either approach. But sometimes the beams cross, so to speak. In the game of Magicka, it usually means an explosive, suicidal death. Thankfully anime is not some European-made exercise at self-infliction of pain.

I bring up Magicka because it is a game sold on its solid gimmicks. Gimmicks can be solid. I think this is why I still like R-15 a lot, half way through. The gimmicks, compared to, say, Yuruyuri, are random as hell and yet somewhat organic. It’s kind of like Xavier’s School for the Gifted; you have a bunch of kids who have some kind of special powers. Except by “power” we don’t mean cool mutant powers, but “the most random, most Japanese crap-anime plot generator” you can think of. Some of these “powers” are really creative; in order to top some of these, I have to go to fanfiction. And we typically don’t want to go there.

It’s easy to point to some show and say it is more organic than Yuruyuri. Because Yuruyuri is very…inorganic. I don’t know why and how, it just feels very stale in terms of its timing? Direction? Animation generally? I can’t quite put my finger on it. The writing works pretty okay with whatever that I feel that is stale, and once we can begin to tolerate the main characters, the jokes come alive. I think that might just be the strength of the writing to a degree. I don’t think the staleness is particularly a bad thing, it just makes it difficult to form a good first impression. When done right, staleness gives a show a unique flavor. Sometimes stale bread tastes good too!

Speaking of stale bread, Yune has the cutest scene with stale bread possibly in the history of anime. I mean, it isn’t something that comes into play on a regular basis. Croisee is a sharp anime, but it feels a little bit, shall we say, out of the water? It’s missing something, something big, that pushes the enjoyment level over the edge to the next level. For Aria, it was how it channels the mono no aware stuff, for example. As is, Croisee is just a cute and well-executed show.

That’s also what I’m going to say about Ro-Kyu-Bu. It’s just somehow one gets you branded as a lolicon and the other doesn’t, when in reality they’re kind of the same thing.

I am really enjoying Usagi Drop, but I also don’t really want to talk too much about it right now. Maybe when it’s all done. And maybe I’ll read the manga then.

I’m also really enjoying Mawaru Penguindrum, if it wasn’t clear. In a way this is the anime I always wanted after watching Utena. So it’s a long time coming. I just don’t think words do much against it; there’s a simple, calculated yet visceral point to the way the show is directed. It feels very theatrical (as in, a play) but yet not that over the top. Maybe I’m just too used to over-the-top stuff, but for a cartoon this is pretty okay. Given its Thursday lineup and the equal doses of girls-side pandering, I’m half suspect that this is real free-market competition versus noitanima.  Also it makes me suspect which show has done it before. It’s time to pander harder, Fuji TV.

I’m still keeping the pace with Sket Dance. It’s probably some form of penance. I guess without the trappings that Gintama is surrounded by, I find Sket Dance a cleaner version of kind of the same thing. It also slightly reminds me of Nadesico, in the way that Yurika and her crew would consistently making peace signs at the camera–something I am also watching it (similarly to how dm is watching CCS).

And oh, episode 16 was AWESOME. For a show as inorganic as this advance-formula Jump anime.

Blood-C? I guess I’m behind, but it isn’t bad. Just not really engaging until you get to episode 5…and I’m behind. It’s kind of a dangerous thing; nico comments boosts its entertainment value drastically, but I can’t say too much about the source material like this.

I’m also behind on Blue Exorcist and Tiger and Bunny. I just don’t have the time to catch up now that I’ve fallen behind. Maybe soon! I enjoy both shows (especially T&B) so hopefully I can make a run before some major climax goes to town.

Back to fresh stuff: The IdolM@ster is doing well. Is it canon to spell it “The Idol Master”  when the @ is an illegal character in the title? Or what? Anyways, this show doesn’t disappoint, but I don’t think my expectations was high in the first place. Still, given how much I loved episode 1, episodes 2-end have a lot to live up to. Also, this is definitely an anime that is made for the game fans, which is kind of refreshing. It’s done well enough to not bore me, giving us something of an episodic character focus while expanding on the rest of the crew, at least as much as they reasonably could. The Producer main character is interesting enough, which highlights something interesting coming from the game, too. Maybe someone can go wax poetic on the importance of assertion of the other self in first-person ADV games where the overall narrative is driven by intercharacter drama. Something a mix between Sakura Taisen and IdolM@ster?

Kamisama Dolls is pretty okay; I don’t particularly dig the character designs either (but it does make Utau cuter than she ought to be) but the story is snappy and enjoyable. There’s a little bit of everything to make it worth watching, even if the end is kind of telegraphed.

As for telegraphing, there’s a lot to be said about that in Nichijou. It’s pretty quality textbook example of how to do it. Is it doing the telegraphing right? For the most part; but that doesn’t automatically make the jokes work. For meta-humor of the direct kind…I’m not sure how to put it into words. It’s like if Nadesico (again) is an anime about meta of everything about itself, then Nichijou is just meta enough about the execution that it tries to do something about it. Where as a show like SeiZon is just straight-face meta. It’s like how in MLB, hitters adjust their swings to counter-game the scouting on them, over the long season?

Mayo Chiki is kind of the Seizon kind of meta, except it’s straightforward enough to make the jokes internally. Sadly it’s kind of boring if the lead characters don’t sell you. I’m not sure they’ve sold for me yet.

It’s a busy summer season that continues from a busy spring. Maybe Hanasaku Iroha continues to be the “bar” this year as to measure the effectiveness of anime to entertain. It flounders periodically and yet it hits the mark periodically, and like many series this year, the presentation is overall solid. What lies in the differences is how good they are at telling their stories. It’s also not a surprise the best storyteller anime (at least for battering average) is also one of the most popular and most anticipated series this year, Steins;Gate.

As for stories, totally random last note here, but big grats on Maaya Sakamoto x Kenichi Suzumura marriage. It is pretty awesome– they have canon OTP roles! There’s Shiki x Kokutou from Rakkyo, Haruhi x Hikaru from Ouran Host Club, Lunamaria x Shinn from Gundam SEED Destiny…and some not-as canon ones, like Sakaya Nakasugi x Shamyalan from Birdy Decode. Both are from the same agency, and despite the 5-yr age difference, Sakamoto got her debut before Suzumura. I guess they see themselves as from the same “era” or whatever. Anyway, congrats to two of my favorite voice actors! You can find a full pairing list here.

Leave a comment | posted in Hanasaku Iroha, Idolmaster, Mawaru Penguindrum, Modern Visual Culture, Nichijou, Sket Dance, Steins;Gate, Usagi Drop