Category Archives: Modern Visual Culture

April 22, 2008

CLANNAD the Movie or Incremental Upgrades Leaves the Heart Wondering

By omo

I enjoyed the CLANNAD movie. But I realize it became a very narrowly tailored exercise in, well, dramatic reenactment of something that’s probably more powerful.

The problem with CLANNAD, and to some extent the Key anime adaptations we’ve seen so far, is that there is no way to traverse through all the key “checkpoints” without making a mess of the story. The story either loses some of the impact because of that, or the story just gets too convoluted for a straight-faced narrative.

In a more general sense, multi-pathing visual novels are like arcade racing games. Specifically, it’s those games that takes a couple tokens to play where you have to not only beat your AI opponents, but make various checkpoints to get more time. When you run out of time, even if you are ahead of the pack, you basically lose.

In this modular way to look at drama, where trying to hit every gut wrenching twist and turn becomes the purpose of an unstoppable, artfully sly narrative, we should see quite a few of those checkpoints in the duration of the story. But when as applied to visual novels, the difficulty arises when your checkpoints are not dotted across one race track, but in a city of one-way roads that necessarily limits you to only a subset of all possible checkpoints available in the game out of the total.

The approach in a theatrical adaptation is necessarily much more single minded. We want to go in and get it done in an hour-and-half. TV series can pursuit forks in the road, but movies lack the luxury of time to backtrack (so much).

And in exchange, the CLANNAD movie took us deeper and all the way through with Nagisa’s story. But at what cost? Was it worth it?

I think how you answer those questions will be the litmus test to determine what you enjoy the most out of an exercise in drama.

Perhaps more relevantly, with each iteration, each Key adaptation, both Toei and Kyoto Animation do a better job. At least that was my impression.

1 comment | posted in Clannad, Modern Visual Culture

April 16, 2008

Huggles Boggled

By omo

Blogging and journalism are like salt water and freshwater; to some anyways. Today, they are mixed; you can see the afternoon newspaper dying in the streets and reborn online with the likes of industry, pro bloggers and journalists who release bits of news in a blog format.

But are they suppose to? I guess this guy probably doesn’t think so. What surprised me was my own reaction about he being surprised at ANN’s relatively new tack in regards to internet reporting.

Li Mei Fong...by Asako Nishida

Undeniably true, however, is that ANN is getting more traffic the more they dabble in this so-called “huggle” readership. If you read the comments in that In Search Of post, one of the commenter mentioned this and, well, that’s what blogs are all about! At the same time, unlike other news blog sites that we might be familiar with, ANN is sort of in mid-transition between a more traditional news website to a news blog.

As one of the first major anime fandom company on the internet, I didn’t really pay ANN any mind because it utterly failed to serve my needs (mainly protonews and a source of industry hubbub which was primarily what AoDVD was for). At least, until their mighty encyclopedia started to gain momentum. As a factoid, the first anime entry in the database is Angel Links. That should give you a clue to its vintage.

[Coincidentally that was one of the first series that I’ve had the joy of watching the digital raws while the series was airing. (And the subsequent joy of dropping it.) Anyways.]

So, yes; if we took a look at what fan blogs are about this day and age, we’ll see how things break down:

  • Episode reviews, previews, retrospectives
  • News – Both straight-up news and entertaining news. Does Mainichi Daily News counts? But I was thinking more like, say, akibablog or Canned Dogs.
  • Special features – Like a March madness tournament. Like blogging about your company’s Blu-Ray strategy. Like a sound clip from Yukana. But usually just reports from cons–the home of the huggles.

A lot of blogs mix them up, including this one. But I think that just lays out the things you will see ANN do more of. Being a commercial entity they already have a leg up on getting special interviews, so as a potential reader I hope they can do more of those.

The role of editorial bloggers and editorial blogging, however, is something else. To an extent, the power of blogging comes from the ability to do whatever you want with disregard to any kind of professional standard. If quality writing, professionalism and speed are important things for any publication, why is ANN getting the readership it gets?

Perhaps a better way to see the big picture is to understand how people gather information using the internet. And quite simply put, as long as it isn’t a time intensive and otherwise pain in the neck kind of a thing, people are quite content reading the words of a recent ESL person versus someone who has been writing professionally for decades. What is important is the information within, and does the information in the format presented serves the needs of the person looking for it. Or at least that’s how I judge the quality of information.

But that’s just how I see ANN, as a source of information. Different people perceive ANN as different things, after all.

That’s blogging in a nutshell IMO. After that it’s just a long sliding scale from awful to awesome. We are here to serve our huggling overlords, and many bloggers double duty as both. It doesn’t matter how we call ourselves, our readers can tell the difference (so we believe).

After all, it is the non-Serious-Business nature of internet blogging that makes amateur production feasible; there may very well be no incentive for a person to improve his or her blog if there is nothing to gain from it…much like how ANN has no incentive to improve the quality of its services?

It might be healthy to be obsessed with your blog’s traffic after all?

 

1 comment | posted in Blogging, Modern Visual Culture

April 13, 2008

It’s About Bitterness, or Yes, Gundams Don’t Kill People, Tomino Does.

By omo

Looks like I got called out? I appreciate it, actually. People looking for Gundam ranting shouldn’t be expecting it in the rest of this nonsense I’m writing. Fair warning.

But I don’t really have too much to say on this topic. I mean, companies don’t make anime, people do. Companies just make it possible. After all, a company is just a label for a type of organization, and you need a certain level of organization to accomplish a big task like making an animated TV show or full-length feature film.

But what he says here is pretty much one way to explain why that is, and it’s a good way to look at it. (Well, bitterness is a terrible motivation to withhold information if you ask me).

First thing first: if you worked at any corporate outfit (as in, far most non-mom-and-pop operations) you will sign a nondisclosure agreement. Nondisclosure agreements generally all say the same thing–that you can’t say “secret” stuff about work! What’s “secret?” For example, time-sensitive information that has value (either because fans crave (as in, you can sell it) or because withholding it gives you an economic advantage (as in, if you tell, you lose out)). Obviously that is the first and the foremost reason why anime industry people don’t give out juicy details. This little note is something people take for granted but I think some of the younger anime fans online probably wouldn’t know how pervasive this is. It’s an old-man knowledge.

Second: Anime is really marketed as a consumptive good. And for that matter, it’s disposable and almost fungible. Who made what is not exactly something marketed save for people who’ve made a name for themselves, and so naturally the viewers aren’t peppered with this information.

This is particularly true when it comes to the more grunt-y jobs like in-betweening, marketing, and producing shows. In light of that it’s sort of easy to keep tabs on directors, art directors, designers, actors, composers, and even the SFX guy. (I mean heck, that’s actually important and it’s so rare to see anyone talk about the studio/people that does sound effects for anime.)

Let alone animators.

But, yes, people make anime. The business stuff is interesting and all and it’s amusing to look at how Lawson is sort of two-faced on Bandai Visual, but that gets into TL;DR territory for me. Bottom line is, as long as people make rational decisions based on both their long term and short term needs and potentials, both fans and companies stand to profit.

And bitterness is not a rational motivation.

I guess here’s a hat off to every single fansubber and commercial distributor who bothered to translate credits, because, believe it or not, it does make a difference.

 

Leave a comment | posted in Modern Visual Culture

April 9, 2008

Kallen Eleven

By omo

I know why Kallen in episode one of Code Geass R2 was mad cool.

LOL WAH. And November 11 !=? Kallen Eleven

I was never much of a Kallen fan back in Code Geass season 1 days, probably because the show didn’t take her seriously until later on. Perhaps I didn’t take her seriously (as a result, or just because). She always seemed like a silly girl yet she is quite dead serious about her goals and her feelings. Hardly a paragon of competence, Kallen is the contrast to that “JUST AS PLANNED” hook some Code Geass viewers dig about the show, so her popularity is spotty as well.

But why the bunny girl outfit? Well for starters CLAMP can design very sensual, attractive characters. Priming their MID-AGER LAZERS to “lol shounen anime” the results are somewhat annoying if boobs are not your thing. But at the same time CLAMP excels at clothing design, so the combination of a bunny girl outfit, which is a fairly spartan uniform if you think about it, and a CLAMP character in a shounen anime, is just jarring.

All the more that’s why there’s already like, 5 pages of this crunk on danbooru?
Season 2 Design docs!

Well, if I was Kero-chan I would’ve definitely checked:

1. The neck piece. It looks fairly generic but even the shape of the neck cuff is fairly distinctive

2. The adornment on the waist. It helps that we’ve got two other bunny girl models to contrast poor Kallen’s costume, both with slight differences in terms of their … loadout. It adds a bit of character to something so generic, and anchors the various lines going on that you see on a bunny girl outfit. If her boobs aren’t doing that for you anyways.

3. The ears. The ears are one of the most important part of the outfit, and in Kallen’s case it doesn’t sit drooping as it would in most other instances of such an outfit. Of course, she was bouncing around quite a bit.

4. And yeah. Gainax Bounce anyone?

The first episode of Code Geass R2 is almost a tongue-in-cheek self-reference crossed with pop-anime-cultural reference. At least, it is if you look at it that way–with all things Kallen, and with the parallel in respect to the first episode of Code Geass season 1.

The real objection I have is that, ultimately, Kallen in the first episode is just a distraction. It’s a distraction so maybe the viewers forget where we are plot-wise. And maybe that’s a good suggestion, since we’re kind of missing all of that in the pilot episode. Let’s rejoice in the return of one of our favorites from last year, and its ensemble cast. Let’s rejoice in boobs and bunnies. Let’s rejoice in hot school teacher jumping on her student. Let’s rejoice, just as some have planned.

 

Leave a comment | posted in Code Geass, Modern Visual Culture

April 7, 2008

Never Running Out of Things to Say

By omo

Some people are very detail oriented, directed, motivated, focused and ultimately, verbose.

I can’t quite say that about Makoto Shinkai, but that is how he came across when I spent the good half hour reading the wall-of-text interview on the 5cm DVD (R1 release, thx ADV!). He doesn’t ramble–in fact it seemed like it was well-planned, almost as if he has had time to think up answers to the open-ended questions these interviews tend to make them answer.

What was impressive was seeing the same degree of attentiveness to detail to his works. And it’s not so much in the animation but in the degree of control he exercised over the work that made it seem like he knows what he is doing–what exactly he wanted to say to his viewers, and how he wanted it done.

I won’t parrot what he said in there, but I will say there was even a lolcat moment.

Even though it was well planned, it seemed that he did not have anything to read back from, so the speech was natural (and at parts, edited for brevity) when he hits the various points to answer a question. The question he gets asked all the time (such as “are you telling us a story from your own life?”) he answers rather concisely; but some of the more descriptive questions surrounding 5cm’s production gets much more fleshed out.

And how he transitioned from what lifts him up from his daily grind as an office guy to a way of life; a hobby turns into a full time job. It’s probably worthy of being told in a film all by itself.

In a nutshell, while some advertisers may jump quickly and claim Shinkai’s successorship as the next Miyazaki, I see him as someone who has simply mastered storytelling in this one particular style. Perhaps today’s media industry lacks people who knows how to tell stories, especially in this style, but it will be up to him to combine his talents, dedication, and finding the story that he wants to speak to us about. That’ll be the defining prereq of his true masterpiece.

Still, I have a hard time running out of things to say about 5cm. Sure, it really spoke to me, and many others, but much like Satoshi Kon’s works (and he’s another very detail-oriented person) there’s just a jam-packed amount of stuff in the film. Not only it takes a long time to unpack all that’s in the film, Shinkai has made it fun to do so. In light of the new Spring 2008 offerings, I am still mostly ambivalent about that in light of what has transpired in an year-old film that ran just a tad over an hour.

In one of those soul-searching moments, a stroll in the valley of introspection and self-reflection, things like 5cm is exactly what props me up and reaffirms that there’s something worth being a fan for in this business.

And 5cm says it so simply. Concisely.

5cmmoon

 

Leave a comment | posted in Byousoku 5CM, Modern Visual Culture