Category Archives: Modern Visual Culture

August 24, 2012

Manabi Straight Press

By omo

Does the role of Momoha Otori in Manabi Straight reflect a particular philosophy about press and its place in self-regulating societies?

I don’t think I can jump and say that the specific circumstances reflected by Manabi Straight Episodes 8-10 parallels some larger, real-world political situation. Maybe it is similar to some real-world student movements within the confine of schools, I don’t know. At any rate that is not what I want to discuss. It is more relevant from looking at how Momo is written to be this detached, aloof individual who records the actions of the student government and understand the plight of those girls first-hand. She reports that, the plight. That is exactly where Momo plays her role in the show–to show the viewer, what she reports is the truth, albeit re-arranged in her own ways.

In a sense, this is very different than the typical view of the press in the typical student council-type anime. Pretty much the view of the press in the school setting is the opposite–some self-motivated go-getter whose objective is to sensationalize by characterization to troll viewership. Even in the latest Hyouka episodes, the relationship between people and press comes out a little closer to a classified service. Which is, coincidentally, how the press is for a lot of people who have to directly work with the people behind mainstream press orgs, in the real world. It’s better than zero-sum, but invariably it feels a degree removed from what the audience understands as truth. Perhaps both ways of viewing the press understand that ultimately the press, still, functions as a narrator or a storyteller. There’s some kind of narrative which invariably spins in some way. It’s really just if this spin reflects some acceptable version of what we feel is truthful.

Of course, the truth is not so simple. The great thing (perhaps the one of many concepts that played out in the show which earns its self-titled moniker “utopia”) about Momoha in that story is that despite the truth isn’t a very complicated thing (eg., they need % support to make the festival happen), how the people understood even such a simple situation varied greatly, and reacted to it very differently. While ultimately Momo is appealing to emotion for Mutsuki and Mei, when she hijacked the broadcast, the effect of something relatively simple becomes profound because people understood it very differently, and now they get to see something they couldn’t (ie., why the student council desperately wanted the festival to happen). It’s the kind of activist behavior that we typically do not associate “real” press with. It’s different than, for example, the promotion video, which is suppose to impress, even if it also is informational.

In essence, that is the role of the press. Or rather, it’s what happens after just the facts. There is a lot of space in which the press re-arrange and re-mix something simple and give it depth to tell something that is beyond the surface. Say politician wants policy X to happen, the press’s job is to tell the world why the politician wants it to pass, etc. To an extent, that is exactly what the public needs to know to make informed decisions in a democratic society. I think that’s kind of at the heart of the way Manabi Straight depicts Momo’s role.

Of course, what passes for moving and amusing montages of cute girls doing cute things in one place is sappy political propaganda of opposition party platform at the other place, in another world. Once we go beyond the facts, it might be fair game for anything and everything. But blah, that’s no good. It’s important to recognize that understanding the perspective of an other is actually the ultimate calling in interpersonal communication and one of the greatest achievement for journalism in my mind.

5 comments | posted in Manabi Straight, Modern Visual Culture

August 22, 2012

Hyouka Is Really Japanese

By omo

I’m no authority or even a studied person on what constitutes Japanese-ness, so take this more like a reactionary response than any level-headed discussion about cultural attitudes or the way how Japanese people behave in stereotypical social situations. I think I might have taken a course in undergrad to this extent, but that was it. I got an A playing weeaboo music for the class project and comfortably being the only person in that class that wasn’t also taking a Japanese language course. Easy A was easy. At any rate I forgot a lot of the course, despite walking away with some wide brushes about how Japan is like an onion or the way people communicate (such as BICS and CALP) and the way it affects how we interact socially. I also learned (more like forgot amirite) about passive aggression, in a textbook context.

The truth is, I think deep inside I have a hard time liking that full blown, stereotypical Japanese mentality. There’s always just a little bit of it that rubs me the wrong way. To turn it around, I understand its pragmatic approach to life and its sense of aesthetics, but I smirk when I read things like this Hideki Anno quote, or sigh when I read about Hideki Matsui’s porn collection. I mean, seriously, sometimes it is in good fun, but at the same time it is not a reality I would like to imagine myself in, for example, working for a Japanese company or just dealing with the everyday in Japan, like sorting trash (okay I guess that isn’t so bad, I do it already). Culture is great and all, but so is progress.

I think Hyouka ultimately is about this sort of throw-back, classical way of looking at the world. To engage the anime on the level of its animation, or character development, or even the way it dissects classical detective fiction, these are all great ways to enjoy the work. But ultimately a lot of the themes and core issues Hyouka dealt with, 17 episodes later, are just very Plain Jane Japanese problems. The sense of aesthetics from its inaka-y locales down to the way how Irisu taught Chitanda how to manipulate men are all very, well, traditional Japanese. It conforms to all sorts of stuff. The feeling that you are going to the township library to look up an old newspaper excerpt to understand how your 7th grade teacher feels about helicopters almost speaks of a sort of mannerism that, almost, no longer exists today, the sort of feeling that exist more for inaka societies and absent in that fast-paced, urban way of life. There’s a sort of charm in that, of course, but it also seems just really quaint.

For entertainment, being quaint is okay. It’s not even that part of the show I dislike per se. At worst, it’s just dull. The thing I dislike the most about the way this Japanese-ness perpetrates Hyouka is its use of passive aggressiveness as the central complex for its emotional motivation for far majority of these human mysteries. And invariably so, every Hyouka mystery revolves around decoding the motivation of a specific individual, and almost every time it is because that individual has some unspoken or bottled-up problem. It’s because they are passively aggressive. In the Movie Club arc, this “issue” was at its apex, at least in terms of both how retarded and how creepy it can be. It doesn’t come across in the same way as, say, Higurashi, but in a way the true cause of the script writer change is almost akin like someone being “taken home” and the victim’s best friend is actually helping to cover it up. It makes for a fitting mystery but also an extremely dull motivation, at least when nobody actually dies or when it doesn’t cause some homeroom drama. To put it to perspective, it’s hard to imagine how enjoyable Higurashi can be without its supernatural elements, or simply imagine…Ookamikakushi.

Despite my general hesitation towards that specific pitch of the Japanese mindset, Hyouka still has something for me to like beyond the animation. Think back to the first story arc, we’ll recall that the ultimate punch line is in English. The way a native-English (or non-Japanese, at least) speaker react to that revelation is entirely different than a Japanese kid in the 古典部. In other words, I can’t help but to laugh. It’s that sort of half-baked grafting of foreign (or perhaps, progressive, like … Niece of Time w) notions which gives Hyouka the balance that it needs, although it can be easily argued that it still isn’t enough. I thought the manga club “let’s troll Mayaka” session during the school festival arc was the show’s highlight, complete with the right costume play for the right characters, enough to say something. It’s like you have this pre-arranged semi-team-bully thing going on but what is being tested is the strength of an individual, because they don’t want to get their way, or rather, get her to go their way. In a way it also sums up the impact of certain foreign schools of thoughts (see: repeated references to Holmes and Christie books) affect traditional group-think, shedding light to something rather traditional.

PS. Watching Hyouka every week helps me understand all the people who hated on Guilty Crown and still watched it every week. I think this might be the first show in a very, very long time where after the episode ends every week I exclaim some variety of “man this is the dullest anime ever,” “man this is so boring,” “LOL that is the stupidest motivation,” or some variety thereof.

PPS. I think the SNK cosplay by Mayaka’s senpai is very meaningful, in contrast of the vocaloid outfits. I’m not sure if it’s just me thinking there’s something more to her outfit choice or what, but it has to be on purpose. In a way I guess that is a little similar to the Joshiraku episode 4 scene, in which the selection of cosplay is trying to say something.

PPS. Hyouka is the sort of show where the “gap humor” is great when you summarize each episode/story arc in one simple sentence. And invariably you can always do it.

PPPS. Hyouka feels like 10 years too early compared to say, Un-Go.

5 comments | posted in Hyouka, Modern Visual Culture

August 21, 2012

The K-ON Movie Is about K-ON

By omo

You know you’ve done it when I can approach a franchise as an “experience.” Down in Orlando, FL, there’s a place called Universal Studios where big-time American film franchises (and increasing, TV shows) get their own “experiences” in the form of a ride or something. In those situations the customers literally put themselves in a place where their senses are surrounded by stimuli that represents that franchise. The Harry Potter theme park down there is probably the best recent example.

I’m not exactly writing the K-ON film review that way, even if there was a K-ON event sort of thing at Universal Studios Japan in order to promote the film back in December 2011. What I’m referring to is that ultimately, K-ON has been about a singular experience. It’s no longer about the story (which in K-ON’s case, the story is not much to talk about in a very literal sense) but more about the way the customer associates and relates to the franchise. Coming in to the film as a voracious consumer of anime media is not the way to go, oddly enough. Coming into the film as a fan of K-ON, however, you will be surely rewarded with both the emotional revisit to that “Tenshi ni Fureta yo” moment and being able to again see the same girls on the big screen that you previously enjoyed seeing.

Well, basically I’m saying is it only works if you buy in to K-ON. I do, so I thoroughly enjoyed the film. However, I was really suspicious before going in to the film–there wasn’t much in terms of encouraging things to say about the film for the most part. After all, the drink-tea-eat-cake reputation is as honest and truthful as K-ON being an anime about high school girls being themselves.

The funny thing is, after all this, I’m not too sure what is particularly moe about K-ON. The girls are cute (in the Hello Kitty sense) and the subject matters they broach (in the movie, that’d be their graduation, music culture, sightseeing London from a Japanese tourist POV, songwriting, etc) somehow don’t quite mesh with that image. It’s a dissonance not unlike what I find attractive in denpa music. On the flip side, tune to “No Thank You!” or in the Movie, “Singing!” and you can see how this girl power band stuff work just like how it does on the Billboard Charts, even to the degree that it projects this illusion to what the K-ON show is about for people who aren’t familiar with the show.

What is K-ON about? It’s easy to take the movie in conjunction with the first two seasons and see how the movie fills in the gap in the overall story and let it continue to build on what we already know. After the credit rolled, I thought about why the movie was about these things, which kind of fall neatly into 3 acts: before the trip, on the trip, and after the trip. That’s the same formula K-ON uses to tell all its stories: pre keion club, keion club stuff, and when after it is all said and done. Supposing myself as a total K-ON newbie, I can probably watch just the movie and get a good idea what K-ON is really about. It does a great job summarizing and boiling down what makes K-ON interesting and attractive.

Part of it, naturally, is the animation. This is the second Kyoto Animation film that I’ve watched, and I am so thankful it is a good 40-50 minutes shorter than the last one. In fact, it feels just right; the statements about the K-ON movie being two or three glorified TV episodes glued together has some merit here, so it is good to see the film keep things tight and not overstay its cake-and-tea-fueled attention span. You can tell the production team scoped out their shots from London and captured the more expressive motifs among the character animation for the Londoners. It probably is as much of a travelogue as it is a matter of sympathizing with potential domestic Japanese viewers on their own personal experiences. Is Azusa really 17 years old? Certainly, in cat years. And that’s just a little thing.

I always thought the most impressive thing about K-ON was its ability to channel zeitgeist. It captures sort of the feeling about life that you wonder about or occasionally witness. Maybe this is why there are more girl bands in schools in Japan today than there were in 2008. Uncharacteristically, the movie almost makes some outward statements about this in the film when Sawako-sensei reflects on her own high school experience. Life was somewhat different then. Life is somewhat different in London. But in the end that may not really matter.

Leave a comment | posted in K-ON, Modern Visual Culture

August 18, 2012

The Tragedy of Cheap Localization

By omo

I wonder if there are any intangible benefits to dubbing a show, in the context of how a lot of shows are now sub-only as released in the US. I think that’s not looking at the big picture, after thinking for a bit. The point is, ultimately it’s about how much money you are willing to spend to produce a show. Given a certain price point and demand, you will only be able to extract a certain amount of revenue from a show. If dubbing makes this unreasonable then that’s too bad, but there’s more to a dub than the dub itself.

In other words, it does not stop there. In order to slim down on production costs dubs are not the only thing that gets cut. I’m basically just making a beeline argument for the value of marketing.

For most people, marketing is worthless beyond a certain amount. However I think that also means the marketing problems that I have begin to outline earlier will not get fixed if no money goes into marketing. The value of marketing extends beyond just advertisement, or sending review copies out, or partnering with RightStuf and send out snailmail postcards about specific titles to their VIP customers. For one, people like myself benefit greatly from marketing not via the aforementioned things, but via, say, convention partnerships and seeing some of my favorite creators at cons I go to.

But that’s not even all there is to it. Two basic points.

First, we need to internalize is that today’s popular media is largely commercial. It’s almost miraculous to see Homestuck or Touhou taking up such a large thought space both in the scene, at a con, or in certain online circles, but those are exceptions. Marketing contributes a great deal to that sort of thing/think. If we graph out the ideas and memes from popular culture that gets passed around on the internet today like it was territory, much of it would have to be commercial. This is not quite it, but it works as a proxy to show you how it breaks out. Note that a lot of those sites are used for marketing; people read/post/network with it. When you cut marketing, fewer people will, even if it is an artificial thing.

A good example is Strike Witches’ marketing about War On Pants. It’s cute and catchy and it helps to bring awareness to this title to a largely mute American audience. I don’t know how well it did but I guess the title sold enough to warrant the S1 BD re-released by FUNi. This is purely a localized creation and it’s that sort of effort in which adds to the internet meme compost pile. Or in other words, enriches the lives of the people? I don’t know. It’s a far cry from, say, Ufotable cafe or, say, OGI☆STAR MEMORIES C82. But given that Funimation is made up of dub actors, graphic design types, marketing people, video nerds and business people, I think they could do something pretty neat if they put their minds to it. Under the banner of brand management, there are more arsenals and more creative ways to both contribute as fans do but also as a way to advertise, that hasn’t been put into use.

Second, dubbing (or bigger localization efforts in general) helps marketing. It’s one thing to parade your dub actors around the local con circuit to promote a new dub, it’s another to sell through your dub actors because he’s worked on all your shows, so his fans will buy your shows. It might not sound like much but if we think of domestic DVD sales in the 4-digit scale, at an Otakon or AX you could push through a couple hundred easily just to promote that dub guest, during the various autograph sessions or what not. That’s not to mention every time that con does PR for that guest, your show gets a nod, and there are dozens of cons all across North America each year. In short, dub actors are PR people too, and they sell shows they worked on.

The convention context is where my gripe comes from. I like marketing from Aniplex and from NISA and RS whatever. Through their marketing, a real-life meet & greet with people like Yui Horie and Tatsuo Sato and Ai Nonaka were made possible. I think it’s a big loss for some of us when the US industry trimmed that down, although it might not matter much for most. In the reverse, I can’t say if people wouldn’t have had opportunities to do so even without the help of some of these companies, at least financially.

I really didn’t think about the implication of low-cost localization until I looked at how K-ON is treated. It’s safe to say that K-ON is a show with some mainstream success in Japan. It’s not a reliable indicator of its success outside of America, but I feel that it is a waste to see a title like that simply sits Sentai’s library, getting what little marketing treatment that it had. K-ON  gets as much marketing as, say, Book of Bantorra or Oblivion Island. Heck, probably less than Oblivion Island. It’s not given any chance to really thrive in a capacity where marketing is required. The whole word-of-mouth thing has limitations. Another tangent with K-ON is to see how the marketing was for K-ON when it was a Bandai title, and how it is now. Anyway, all this is to say that it feels like the whole thing is kind of under-promoted for whatever reasons.

2 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Modern Visual Culture

August 15, 2012

Search Rank, Piracy, Anime’s Marketing Problem Part N

By omo

Google Search now consider DMCA takedowns in part of its rank algorithm. I want to know: how many people use Google Web Search for actual information, and not download links?

How many people use Google to search for download links anyways? When I did, pretty much one out of 4 or 3 links at best (first page) were legit, and rarely it’s the top link. Maybe one out of a handful of times. It’s very much a SEO game when we’re talking about obscure Japanese crap, the sites gets the better google ranks will bubble up, and often they have nothing to do with the search term I use. I guess I am just one data point, but I’m pretty much dissatisfied in the opposite case: when I google up a show, I don’t want to be shown half a dozen stream sites or scan sites that I’ll never click on because, well, I want to read up and research the show, not to pirate it.

This is kind of like, the ghettofying of the internet all over again. Wikipedia is great, but I don’t want to search specific sites if I can help it, and if Google supports that sort of cross-site search to begin with. It’s a totally different story when you google terms that are not some item in trade that you can’t just download.

I guess here’s the basic idea behind Google’s search. Basic in that, well, isn’t it ultimately about relevance? Regardless of the implementation, if the users don’t find what they are looking for, it defeats Google Search’s purpose. I believe by downranking download sites it is a win-win for Google, their whip-cracking masters in the media industry, and everyday Joe users like us.

I already whined about how anime industry in English-language realms have a marketing problem. Working with Google to get your links bumped up should be a priority, if anything, as a way to compete and provide a service that is currently filled by less-than-legit outlets. Funi submit DMCA notices for their stuff. I wish more poeple did; the internet is international and crap stream sites should only come up when people input the right key terms in their search queries.

In the case with social network type situations, there’s this. Yeah, why isn’t Youtube downranked (I guess it will be, however slightly; and probably not notably so if you do a video search), though I think they mean it in terms of DMCA takedown requests issued to Google Search, not Youtube or the website being ranked.

On the flip side, it’s generally something unpleasant when Google resorts to having DMCA takedowns as a metric. Not just the valid concerns in regards to the lack of transparency of the Google ranking process, but simply the DMCA takedown process is hardly foolproof and frequently causes false-positives. As anime fans, though, I feel this is one of those situations where if I look left, I see all this copyright infringing efforts, but if I look right I can’t even find a commercial or promo video or OP/ED of some show on Youtube, even for review/marketing purposes uploaded by the copyright owner. It’s really the same problem and the longer this problem is left to fester, the worse it’ll get for all of us.

7 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Modern Visual Culture