Category Archives: Popular Culture

May 12, 2006

The Harem Fallout

By omo

I tried so hard, and got so far. But in the end, it didn’t really matter.

Honey & Clover Movie Cast

We all long for a harem. Men, women, children. The young and the old. We form societies in which the purpose is to allow for harems. Religions that purport the inner desires justified by divine social order. Philosophical restructure of social order that recognizes the good things harem can bring to humanity.

The reality is today, harems have fallen out. It is the subject of mockery and hatred. Something innocent and tender, that young children dream of, has become excuse for sexual abuse, emotional harm, and physical trauma. The spirit of harem broken on the rock of commoditizing people’s fantasy and in term twisted into cheap print matter and late-night animation. Yet in disillusionment, people are still slaves to their dreams and fantasies. People pay to see harems. To experience harems. To relive them vicariously from one franchise to another. The weather is nice, the girls/boys are fine, it’s just as you like it. They pay for their fantasies. The commoditization continues–a vicious cycle.

Has the harem changed so far from what it used to be, as some elusive ideal to some concrete representation on ink or on the tube? Maybe. Invariably differences and space to innovate and differentiate occurs. The protagonist-focused narrative, for example, is a key distinction in our selection of harem-like traits–but is it even necessary? Isn’t that just a by-product of limitations in storytelling? A real harem may be seen as several girls on one guy, or several guys on one girl, but it doesn’t have to be. The harem itself is an organization where everyone plays a role. You just can’t have a harem with the same kind of people; diversity is important, for example. And just like solar systems, you can have harems with a bunch of girls over two guys, for example. Perhaps another key distinction we forget about harem as a result of the limitation on narrative is exactly, the alternate perspective. A romantic harem is still a romance story with more than one party doing their thing. While it is important to tell a story involving empathy of the protagonist to another–we all need to do this in real life–the story is a lot more complex than that. Very few harem anime goes beyond merely telling the story from the characters’ perspectives, for instance.

What is a harem is a question that will have different answers depending on who you ask, and in the end I don’t believe it’s important to answer that question. It’s probably more important to understand what makes a harem attractive and how to make use of those elements. It’s easy to see the sensual/pornographic element of a harem and it’s no surprise many anime capitalize on that aspect. But there is a lot more than that. The relationship is easily the second tier, but even then a relational web alone isn’t enough….or is it? Character driven versus story driven? Or both? How about external factors? Tension? Acting? Dialogue and mood? Not only I don’t know if they matter as elements that makes a harem desirable, I don’t know if they are a part of a harem fantasy or just something else extra.

In some ways I am thankful of the harem concept because it put a name and face to something rather elusive. It has always been there as well as the despised pandering that goes on. Maybe it can all be solved simply by stopping just that.

Leave a comment | posted in Honey And Clover, Modern Visual Culture, Popular Culture

May 10, 2006

Bloging 101 – Creation-Traction

By omo

In the big inning, God soloed.

Babe Yuki

The internet, the blog, and you. How do you ripple your readership’s heart-string? Find their weak spot? To dazzle by brilliance, or to baffle by bullshit? To surprise, to educate, to entertain. To brighten up their life; to be “the link” people pass around at work or at school? How do you relate to them? How do you create traction?

When the world was simple and there weren’t a lot of things, there were a lot of space to innovate. To take anime blogs for example–Jascii’s review and preview site served an important purpose. It was convenient because he would watch those raws anyways, and it becomes a good first-glimpse that many of us in the internet fan community can use to gain a grip to what’s coming down the pipe.

But Jascii’s is pretty simple. It’s not fancy nor elaborate like many blogs today. It is dead, frozen in perpetuity. To give it credit, it was one of the first blogs to gain enough traction through lifting of contexts. Given that anime fandom on the internet is still mostly a fan-run machinery, doing something Newtype USA does goes a long way before Newtype USA fits the niche was rather big, if you ask me.

And NT-USA does fit the niche to an extent. Problem is, for the most part, as marketing, it smelled like marketing. It smelled like Japanese, low-grade imported bastardized marketing for the large US market. Let alone the fact that it isn’t an interactive forum like how a blog can be–there’s not much of a community alone through the publication. There is a lot of grasping but not a lot of traction. Fact is the internet fandom gets their news, like every subcultural following, from other fans straight off the internet. NT-USA doesn’t have the right context. It’s grasping at straws in an aquarium.

The shiny, pictorial editorial is very obvious form of grasping, so to speak. It takes no time before we have what we have here today–a massive sea of anime bloggers who speaks as much as through their caps as through what little (or a whole lot) they have to say. If you’re reading one of these blogs I guess you’re probably interested either as a prospective audience or as someone who saw the stuff and want to hear what the bloggers have to say. Of course framing is very important, and these blogs frames both the caps and the episodes we watch in the bloggers’ various contexts respectively.

But once you start doing that, you’re left with very little context to innovate. Recall Jascii’s blog–that was mostly innovation (granted it was an obvious idea). Now all we can do is differentiate between what shows we blog about, how our site looks like, and how we frame each episode we blog. That’s just bleh for me. For one thing, like framing pictures, you can go to a store and look at the various frames, and the pick some and see if your painting looks better in whichever one. The analogy goes, at least, with various perspectives and various shows. If I want Frame-Hayama, I can imagine just how he’d frame a show like, The Reptilian Brain. Which is to say, the only time where I get excited about reading that kind of blog is when I can’t imagine how the framing would work out with the painting. It happens fairly often, approximately only when each new season comes about, though.

How else can we bloggers innovate? If you blogged or read blogs in its first rising years (2002…?) you’d find out that a lot of blogs are just soap boxes. I personally have a slight distaste for them simply because informativeness is a virtue. Or at least, the work bloggers put in should be somewhat constructive. A LJ-style ranting doesn’t go very far no matter what you’re blogging about, unless it’s hella funny (and 90% of the time people are laughing at who wrote it).

Well, I guess I rather should say that I dislike pure soap boxes. On the other hand, I rather like those editorials that have a good point and provoke thought. I also like those editorials that simply tackle lateral/meta questions (The Harem Fallout), or latent yet interesting questions (although it can get a little too academic very fast). For example: the genre and medium divide of anime–defining what it is. Another one I like is the marketing perspective of cultural commoditization when it comes to anime and manga franchises. One thing that is pretty cool is that there are an increasing amount of academic work published about these kinds of thing. The problem I have is most of them still draw from academic contexts that I just don’t have. I’m no pop-cultural anthropologist–it’s not quite gobblygook but I find myself unfamiliar with some of the ideas and constructs/frameworks that gets referred to. But a brainy anime blog, eh. Who’s up for that kind of thing?

Maybe that’s why I still read Heisei Democracy. Not to say that porn doesn’t have traction–it gropes and sucks like all kinds of nasty. Problem with that is it becomes kind of lame and it’s fairly near sighted. But yes, this brings us to the next innovative paradigm–content. I’m sold by content. It’s what keeps me reading Penny-Arcade. It’s what I pay for when buy gyuudon from Yoshinoya. Indeed it’s not just merely ranting, or merely capping, but actually saying something interesting, too.

It’s what you do once you grasp what you gained traction?

Leave a comment | posted in Blogging, Modern Visual Culture, Popular Culture, Suzumiya Haruhi no Uuutsu

April 26, 2006

Emerging Trends – Reffing On Haruhi-ism

By omo

Renton Reffing

Day in, day out, a stereotypical wage slave minds his own business. He may chat up something with his cube mate, go out to lunch with some buddies in the neighborhood or within the same company. He would probably maximize his commute from home with a nice cellular phone plan or some time to himself and his car stereo.

But for someone who watches anime day in and day out, do we even go that far? Well-off aficionados deck out their dens with HDTVs, walls of shelving, and probably a portable DVD player so they can put in the time on the mill and squeeze in something while at it. Of course, the more deranged of us probably have room full of other stuff too; figures, hugpillows, drawn porn, what have you.

That’s nice and all, but somehow I feel we need to strive beyond that. Month by month? Year by year? How long down the road do our anime sugar daddies like, say, UFOTable, timetable their projects? Long-term corporate strategies? How to become a leader in the industry? Does the various anime companies have their hands on the otaku pulse? Or are they going after the big bucks a.k.a. the Mainstream?

For those of us who feel concerned about things like that, the immediate question is, why? Do we watch American Idol, caring about the slew of reality TV shows modeled after it? What are the implications? I think indeed if I spend so much of my time and attention, it’s gotta be worth the price. After all, that’s what TV ads are paying for. I’m sure some are worried about their wallet, too. There’s also the always artistic tension that exists in a mass media format; would artists be free and get paid? Will the networks and producers get paid?

The fact that Haruhi has taken the fandom by storm is probably one manifestation of some emerging trends. It also reassures me that I’m not alone. It seems that plenty of people, consciously or not, actually do mind emerging trends. They notice how things were, and how things are.

I am not sure just how popular Negima was. I am not sure just how Gundam Seed Destiny was. I am not even aware of all the shows they watch over there. But if they’re like me at all, they’re probably pretty tired of harems. They’re tired of comedy based on the same routine they can see on TV and in hundreds of episodes of other shows in the past. They want fresh. They don’t quite want realism, because that’s everywhere; even on TV. But like everybody we want to be able to sympathize and yet surprised and intrigued. Some things works; tried and true–like team para-para. Some things always work, like top-notch animation quality.

But that’s just scratching the surface of emerging trends. Dilbert, for instance, was a successful harvest of such collage of ideas and forging an identity. While that budding force got snipped when corporate America got nailed from 9/11, Haruhi-Ism is just starting. We’re at the forefront of something, if someone took charge to tend to it; to put a name and face to it.

Someone to ref it!

But that said, it can go either way. I am no oracle and I cannot see this bubbling wave’s eventual apex. It takes a lot of power and money to ride this kind of a wave. Not of water but of otaku mindpower and influence. Not for exhilaration (well, possibly) but for mass profit. But unlike a surfer, if you fall you’re not going to be able to just bounce back up and watch for the next Big One.

Or, rather, the likes of Kyoto Animation has been in the shallows chasing waves for a few years now. It’s just that they’ve finally tapped a new one. It’s not like Ghibli and their own private beach, nor are they Gonzo, who’s got some kind of jet ski thing going. Or Bones…I suppose they’re really reffing after FMA now, huh?

Ultimately I guess all I’m trying to say is…look at the big picture sometimes. Watching your favorite anime is not like watching Holland doing a nice drop back turn, but seeing Talho and the rest of the Gekko State doing an orbital launch. It’s a team effort–some guy out there has to have the IP bit, and everyone pitches in their work product, feeling their way. It marks the difference between an experienced, well-financed, well-managed group with a real good idea, versus anyone else.

Leave a comment | posted in Eureka 7, Modern Visual Culture, Popular Culture, Suzumiya Haruhi no Uuutsu

April 19, 2006

Okane Muyo GXP – NY International Auto Show

By omo

It’s good to be home.

Fuzzy Honda Light Show
(Apologies for the crap photos. The camera I used is probably worse than most phone cams–it’s a freebie from one of my dad’s training exercise giveaway. It uses SDRAM and doubles as a decent webcam; but once you remove the internal AAA batteries, you lose all photos stored. A fine pin-hole camera, on that note, even if it overexposes like crazy. Anyways, it’s not like you need my pictures; plenty of professional images of these babies online.)

Wednesday the week after seems to be a good day to visit the 2006 New York International Auto Show. It’s becoming an annual tradition for my father and I; especially now he works in the auto industry, it’s unavoidable. A grunt worker like him actually benefits the intel, and I got a bit of his sales pitch when we were doing “how fast can you fold down the back seats of an Odyssey?” versus “LOL I can fold down the back seat of a Sienna faster than you.”

But he’s good company; his perspective takes him to a weird place that’s something between a detached critic and a zealot Honda boy who doesn’t care for things like the S2000 or the Civic, si senor? I mean, which Honda boy doesn’t? So he isn’t one. Maybe until the 4-door ones come out :).

The first vendor we hit up greeted us over the PA with slightly accented English followed by “Konnichiwa, Minnasama” and the Japanese (for service?) was pretty surreal. Sadly most of their new Nissan models were the preproduction 2007 line, so we can’t even sit in them. The new Sentra GTR is way better than what my friend Steve drives, that said. I spotted the infamous X-Box360-mobile and took a shot, failing to locate the sweet new GTR prototype… That didn’t really bother us, all said and done. Infiniti’s simple offering reveals just how badass the M35/45 are when it comes to interior pimpage. So nice. We sat in the Q after that and the design just wasn’t up to standard with the new M’s. In retrospect we should’ve came back to Nissan some more, but oh well.

Toyota and Lexus offers much the same. Avalon is still a nice old fogie car, and it really makes you wonder if getting something like the new ES or GS is worth it. They are nicer, but are they worth the tags? The new LS is definitely really nice, but I don’t know if I can really appreciate the difference. In any event you can’t help but to compare them with the Infiniti M45…still doesn’t match up. And now that there’s no more MR2 or Celica, Toyota is eh.

Of course, the bad boys of Europe still offer the most affordable (at least they let you sit in the cars), top-of-the-line luxury. The innards of a Mercedes S550 is still remarkable. The BMW 650 is nice, but not that nice; considering they’re almost the same price-wise, eh. I’ll stick to a BMW 550 or just go for the M6. Which looks just like a M5 from the inside. They really like them paddle shifters, too! It’s in like every damn car.

We grazed through some of the American offerings on the top level. Woo Pontiac. Woo Dodge Woo Saturn. Woo Chrysler. The new ‘vette is not new anymore, so that’s pretty boring. They still don’t let you sit inside the viper. The Charger Super Bee is the cutest muscle car I’ve ever seen, and I think they’re copying the interior from the Mustangs, or something.

Around the bend and through what’s left of Saab is the land of Ford. Well, besides THEM APPLES. Mmmm apples. The A3 is as expected, and if you can bring the price tag down by a few notches it would really be a nice car to own for yuppies. Yuppies with paddle shifters and DSG and nice zoom-zoom…hmm. The Q7 is crap, that said; you would expect a high-end consumer label from Europe to pimp their ride better.

Before I forget I should also mention we breezed through Honda somewhere back there. We played black magic with the Fit’s back seats and we did the same with several other hatchback small-fries. I think a couple other cars came pretty close, like the A3, but dang, the Fit is Go–go stuff the hell out of it. Then again, the Aveo still starts a couple G’s below (even if it evens out once you add the safety options).

But yes, the land of Ford. And there is like, 20 Mustangs out there. All it did was confuse me because they all look different, some are even modded. I was like, “zomg where is the Shelby Mustang?” Oh, not that. Well, not too much excitement; we spent more time looking at the new sedans. Mazda wasn’t too exciting either; sat in the Shinka and the MX-5… it is more refined. I was kinda surprised at the Pontiac Solstice; the GXP model has like 350HP or something, and it looks just like a meaner MX-5 (with hardtop!) that cost just a tad more. It’s definitely an American alternative. Copying? It’s always good to have options at that level; even if when the newer cars can also be like crap (relatively), like the Saturn Sky Redline. All the more makes this really pretty baby hopeful. Com’on Mazda, you can do it!

Volvo is still boring, that said. I sat in a Lincoln Town & Country for a breather. Then I realized luxury only makes impression when you can excel at something truly special. Like having a mad amount of interior room; or awesome console design and ergonomics? Super leather work (yeah, Jag XK is badass)! Which automatically brings me back to the M.

Downstairs are where the trucks and SUVs are, plus some of the other vendors like Mitsubishi, Kia, Subaru, and VW. We did the tour fairly fast; played backseat magic with Sienna and Odyssey. And then there was ZOMG WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? The boothlady was doing a spiel on the new Dodge concept, which seemed to be the way they’re going. It’s basically out-Ridgeline the Ridgeline. Now that’s free market economics at its best. If you’re a car critic that rated the Ridgeline to be some badass thing even if everyone else you know bought a damned Avalanche, thank you. I look forward to hearing about the Rampage.

Some other notables include the VW Eon. It felt like something in between a Jetta and a low-end Passat. I guess if you think the TT isn’t for you, this will fit the bill. And yeah, paddles and DSG… Speaking of which, the GTI interior is rather nice, so if you’re looking to do that, you have my blessing.

The new WRX is more refined; but that doesn’t mean very much. The new Eclipse is also more refined…and that also doesn’t mean very much. The other surprise, as far as refinement goes, is the Subaru Tribeca. I always despised the car because it’s got an ugly rear, but the inside is really pimp. It almost reminded me some of the German copycats like the Mercedes R. For 3 and a half grand it’s a good deal. On the other hand the Kia Amanti went up in price but dropped a bunch of interior niceties. It also marks the first time I put my butt in a Rio. It’s not too bad.

We looked at some pickups, walked inside a Sprinter–my dad has some weird attachment to that car–took some pictures at the Toyota Nascar thing (just for you Zek!) and call it a day. We’ll skip the marketing up on the third floor and head home. Well, that’s not before stopping by Scion (they always have fun prototypes) by parking my rear in a tC and the Mazda thing outside across the street from Javits Center.

Kero-Chan Check style list:

  • Best Luxury Offering: Infiniti M45. Sweet design wins the day.
  • Most Innovative Vehicle: Dodge Rampage. Hopefully beating the Ridgeline
  • Best Prototype: Mazda Kabura. I want it already~
  • Biggest Crowd: Ford. People like them. They be from da hoods, yo!
  • Best Value: Pontaic Solstice, Porche Cayman S. I didn’t know they were so “cheap”!
  • Coolest Car: Audi RS4. Dang, man.
  • Interesting New Pick: Acura RDX. It’s CR-V Si.
  • Best Looking Car: Charger Super Bee, Audi S4. I’m a sucker for classic.
  • What’s In: paddle shifters, GPS
  • What’s Out: gadgets, exotics and pure sports.
  • What’s missing: Nissan GTR prototype, the new Lamborghini

Leave a comment | posted in Off Topic, Popular Culture

April 10, 2006

Law of the Blog?

By omo

Do you think, for us American bloggers with our sites hosted in the US, with an English, non-discriminating (aside from subject matter) audience, are we entitled to our First Amendment rights? Do we violate copyrights by including caps, lyrics, quotes from other texts (commonly other blogs, news, wikis, etc)? How about music? Designs (like a WP theme)? How about flaming and things like that?

IMO they’re all valid questions–just where the line is drawn? Obviously there’s little in terms of previous instances where a court said something. Blogging is generally new. We all know the Internet is the super copyright infringement machine, and even in that area of law the dust is far from settling. The niche that bloggers belong to seems like the least of all worries. Just how marketable are blogs? I guess they are as long as you’re not comparing them to selling CDs and DVDs.

I don’t have any real answers. What I’m trying to get at is that are two opposite but converging perspectives to look at the issue: free speech versus copyright. At times these two views are in conflict, but that’s rare; usually they mind themselves. But just when should good faith and interest in free expression overcome commercial interests?

After all, ultimately as long as you’re not just doing detail summaries with screen caps, you are probably putting a lot of copyright-able material into your blog. That’s good. It’s important to cite back either with a simple text saying where, or a trackback, or whatever, when you cop something. It is good to avoid plagerism. But neither is the case we worry about usually; or rather, it’s the opposite. We don’t want to be just merely pawning off pretty pictures from anime to “generate a lot of site traffic” or merely retelling a textual by-the-book synopsis as a public resource. There may be places for that, but are those uses “fair”? Is the world a better place without blogs telling you what’s hot in Japan so you can infringe copyright in a smart and efficient manner?

I don’t know. But it’s good to look on the other side of the coin every now and then.

Leave a comment | posted in Blogging, Off Topic, Popular Culture, The Law