Category Archives: Modern Visual Culture

July 25, 2006

Who in the World Is Ayako Kawasumi

By omo

YA RLY.

WHODAT?

Ayako Kawasumi’s wikipedia.jp article is a good start, if it isn’t a little fanboy-ish. There just hasn’t been a good write-up for her that I’ve come across, that has been keeping up to date, in English. As tempting as it may be, I’m certainly not qualified to write about her beyond parroting what others have said.

A good and brief bio would go a long way to help me ask questions at Otakon! It’s a little rare to get a relatively new generational voice acting guest from Japan who is in the precious position she is in–venerable and respectable and makes both Alex and I having a hard time picking an autographable item. She has (relatively) little hype, yet she’s in a billion shows. Well, that’s on top of the fact that she has long, long since overcame “the problem” plaguing Mamiko Noto when it comes to voice acting :)

The fact that she is going to be here means a few things, such as she’s taking a (minor) break this season. I would too if I had to play a main role in Fate Stay Night…. Anyways, I’m pretty excited, even if now is not the height of her popularity in Japan.

But discovering or re-discovering Kawasumi’s talents has been a bit of an eye opener even for me. I know she has her solo CDs, but I didn’t know Taku Iwasaki was a part of Primary (or I might have just forgotten). And funnily her rather amatuer style of composition fits my mood lately as it totally reminds me of a game like this. It’s also a good time to rewatch Piano.

Even if most people would find her more emblematic as Mahoro, Fuu, Saber, Lafiel, Koishi Herikawa (one of her best performance ever IMO!!!), or even Hinako from KOF, that’s all fine. I am excited! Aren’t you?

3 comments | posted in Modern Visual Culture, Seiyuu, Idol, Pop

July 22, 2006

End of the Road

By omo

JAL’s blog always makes a good springboard.

It’s not so much that I don’t watch anime any differently than most people who do–we probably download it some time after it comes out off Share or torrented, and watch it when we get in the mood and have the time. I consume it as I would any other kind of media. To put it into context, it’s times like this when people drop out of their World of Warcraft addictions and back into other stuff? What makes you switch on something else and off the world of anime?
What keeps me going? Do I like it? Sure, I can’t imagine why I would be doing it if I didn’t. Perhaps it makes sense to see that as a person watch more anime, his fill would be met at some point. What was fresh just isn’t anymore. By the same rationale I can see that not only people would be offended by seeing, say, the new TMNT or Transformer moving Hollywood is putting out, but also because they got fed up with it.

But I think the magic of being a fresh anime fan all these years lies within those moments (and just how people are not fed up with what they were obsessed with as a child). Thinking back to my youth, I was riding pretty high on the TMNT wave, but I was nowhere nearly materialistic enough to actually own that much swag. I don’t even think I owned a TMNT game, although I did play it plenty at friends’ places. I had a couple action figures…and that’s it. I think I made my own iron-on TMNT shirt and used it as a poster in my room.

Invariably as kids grow up, though, the nature of their consumption changes. It becomes more and more purpose-driven. Why do you sit down and watch TV? Why do we have to have reasons to like what we like besides to explain why? It’s a change from “I like this” to “I like this.” Identity through preference. When we put passions into words, I think part of the charm disappears.

(Alas, that’s also why particle physics is so awesome. And puns.) But that aside, I think those who receive much has to also give much. It’s natural and almost a law of nature. If I watched a lot of anime and didn’t give it any mind, that would be odd and numbingly meaningless. Perhaps I laugh, cry, and otherwise get emotionally entertained or intellectually stimulated while watching anime, but that alone only goes so far. I can get the same with just talking to friends and family, by thinking, playing music, or even by taking a class.

There needs to be a reaction, a change, something. For me the humanist train of thought is a great reason, but also it reaffirms, in a way, a set of morals that I identify with. Of course at the same time the stuff itself is overflowing with passion as well, and it’s hard to not to get caught up in it. A lot of the time it is what you bring into watching something that makes it enjoyable, too. As much as sitting in front of a tube is a passive experience, enjoying it takes as much work as you put into it.

For me, the internet community, friends, people in Japan, cons–they are all a part of the network which keeps me locked up. I spend more time writing and thinking and discussing the various aspects of anime and fandom than spent actually watching anime. It’s a bit sad, but it is pretty fun.

Leave a comment | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Modern Visual Culture

July 18, 2006

The Thousand Shades of 水銀燈

By omo

“Did you miss me while you were out looking for yourself?”

PEACHPIT has a Suigintou, Suigintou

She largely ignored me–stealing just a quick look, darting her eyes back towards where she is going. Ah yes, people rarely do well with my wry attempts at humor.

“Junk.”

She remains unphased.

“Junky junk junk junk junk junk–.”

And this is why I don’t write fanfiction.

I suppose lately I’ve been in this odd mood where I want to tease every tsundere-like personality around. Thankfully I’m rarely alone on this, and others are just better and faster to the punch usually.

Does that sound like the premise of Tsuyokiss to you? The magic of the tsun-tsun-dere-dere? I think women generally has been described as people with many faces. It’s not that they are internally inconsistent, but rather they have several behavioral modes, moods, and emotional states even when they seem to be rather normal. It’s like the open sea, right?

I have no idea. Nor is it all that important if it is true or not. A cursory glance will reveal what is attractive to tsunderekko–the changing in between. I call this being a valiant.

Yes. The world longs for valiant women. In fact, I state this plainly for both fanboys and normal, everyday men. How do I get this “tsundere” thing to honorable and courageous? I think it makes sense once you start to think about it, but maybe we can go through an example.

Sugintou, for instance, is a valiant girl. She has very clear motivations as a person, as a personality, and as a force of plot. Like the rest of the Rozen Maidens she wanted something. Shinku may have taken the elegant road by wanting what she’s got and not getting what she wants, and making due with what has been given to her. As we know, there’s this “junk” character flaw which plagued Suigintou’s body and her mind, as a result forcing her to not only participate in the Alice Game, but she can’t be bothered to cope with someone like Shinku.

What’s the honorable thing to do? To run the course of her creator’s objective means living like the broken doll that she was, and to lose and perish? She faces the music and dance, if she should play the villain, she would. Destiny is both a companion and a slave master. To live as such is to have the courage of something more, something beautiful. Same could be said of the several other Maidens. That’s not to mention the greater feat of strength she managed in the second season.

Leave a comment | posted in Modern Visual Culture, Rozen Maiden

July 17, 2006

Popular Science

By omo

Schrödinger's Inspiration

Having an undergrad education in physics meant many things. I’ve remember seeing college football players in NCAA majored in the same topic and I wondered if they can not only score hotter girls than I can, but crunch gaussians better and faster.

Jokingly aside, I’ve always been troubled by my natural ineloquence, let alone when attempting to explain to people the fundamentals of particle physics and what little of the standard model that I know. Forget about telling people what the hell chiral symmetry means in application to QCD–I barely remember what it means myself. Having lacking formal education on modern physics made things difficult to some degree. Quantum math notation looks familiar but means little more than gibberish to me.

Well, that’s not the worse part. If you are asking me to explain these things to you, it probably means you are even worse off. Trying to explain the basic idea of M-Theory isn’t out of my reach, when I’m talking to my friend who has a PhD in chemistry. Trying to explain why photons have no mass is a magnitude harder when I’m talking to my sister, who barely passed high school math. Why do I lament? Or bother in the first place? Because theoretical physics is wonderful.

When Makoto Shinkai teased about teleportation of matter off our 3-brane in his wizardry, ivory tower in the trailer for Beyond the Clouds, I was excited. In fact, knowing his shtick it was the only unexpected element in his then-new film that left me curious plot-wise. It’s a terribly uncertain plot device, and for good reasons.

And it was to good effect for those who know. I fear that’s not a large group. However now that I’ve given some thought as far as if some breed of M-theory were to debut in popular fiction, this is possibly the most elegant and mood-matching way to do it. For starters, it is just nigh impossible to even come up with an abstraction that we can visualize. PBS’s series on string theory tried pretty hard and it works for the most part, but that kind of luxury is reserved for documentaries. Even if in reality all that wonderful science served not much more than wallpaper for background scenes, evoking the proper subtext to uphold (at least) my suspension of beliefs was a treat of a lifetime. Or at least I hope as it being the first of many to come.

But to be fair the quantum divide is not new. John Bell‘s entanglement experiment is marvel, and you can read about it even in science fiction books (or catch Noein). One could even consider Rahxephon in such a light. Granted, the show itself didn’t at all evoke the science, but the science fits the show to a tee. From the divide of Tokyo Jupiter to its liberal aural allogories, it all draws from the same spring physicists draws their inspirations.

Einstein did say imagination is more important than knowledge.

I sort of miss the days when science fiction was the predominant form of geek entertainment. It’s not to say the old days were better than the new days, but in our pursuit of the Good Story or Perfect Flair, we can forget that details may warrant our attention in as of itself. Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of such example, and the details were what made its equally compelling drama credible. It is the glue that allowed for a harem with giant robots to be taken seriously. I can say even more about Serial Experiments Lain–some of its fans are fans only of its subject matter. Even a show like Scrapped Princess relies on its careful symphony of pressing the right sci-fi/fantasy buttons in order to take us the whole way through Pacifica’s philosophical dilemma.

It matters.

1 comment | posted in Modern Visual Culture, Popular Culture, Scrapped Princess

July 14, 2006

Love Languages For Lonely Losers

By omo

Living from moments of affirmation to the next, challenged by the harsh reality of both that they are rare and they are sometimes colder than what you’d expect, I return to question how I live as a fan, and as a person.

That’s what really pushed a story like Welcome to the NHK to my mind’s fore. The manga takes a much more worldly and humane road. Do people even think about having your parent walking on you while masturbating? Or rather, they probably don’t do so out of a positive force, but out of fear. That’s something I can’t really relate to well, but maybe you can tell me just how often this happens.

But we need not to go there–that’s just funny hijinks which makes Welcome to the NHK an edgy story that may be relevant to our interests. What is definitely relevant to mine is how it talks about the NEET/hikkikomori generation. How luxury provided us with escapism. How while hard work pays off usually, but laziness pays off now always. Or for some people, the journey to find your soul is long and tedious. Idealism battles realism, and unfortunately sometimes one has to die. Or sometimes it is just a sad fact of life: not everyone can make it out there. Rejection is a part of life.

In as far as generally emo people are difficult to confront and communicate with, anime can be a powerful platform to communicate something. Real life caseworkers for hikkikomori patients do rely on some of these common topics like video games and manga to start knocking. Persistence to push them to face the music works sometimes, too. It’s about communication, either by charm or by force.

Originally I was going to talk about love languages, but this thread of thought bridges the divide from literary to the literal. The sad fact is that a large number of Japan’s youths are locked up. It happens for all kinds of reasons which I won’t get into here. Be it a middle school in Hokkoaido or Neo Venezia on the Planet Aqua, there’s a connection. It’s about the uplifting message of humanism.

KOTOKO said so as much when she was asked. No man or woman is an island, and it’s hard overcoming that oppressive lie, that gap between what you think it ought to be and what it really could be. People like her puts that kind of emotion into the work they produce. It’s sympathy, compassion, love.

And just in so many ways love can express itself, we are not going to see what we are not looking for. If your definition of love is narrow, you are going to miss a lot of love speak. If you can’t sympathize, you will have problem understanding a lot of love speak. If you can’t love, then there’s nothing to be said. In as much reality is cruel, it’s important to hold onto some trace of innocence and ideals to keep you living like a person who can speak love.

Leave a comment | posted in Christian Living, Modern Visual Culture, NHK ni Yokoso, Seiyuu, Idol, Pop