A couple things.
Category Archives: Popular Culture
Robotic;Notes Is Google’s Ingress
What is Ingress? It’s Google’s first real video game. “Real” because it’s not their first game, just the first one that is actually a game product, not some bonus feature. For the uninitiated, it’s a game you play on your smartphones (Android ones for now)–it loads up this simple map with various landmarks, you go to these landmarks, and you can do the game stuff at these landmarks. The point is to create “fields” by creating lines between various landmarks, and the sides with the most number of people under their fields win? Something like that. The other point is to follow the chain of clues provided by the various Google Ingress social network entities and figure out the larger narrative behind the game. The game is currently in invite-only beta. You can find out more about the game here.
There’s a pretty interesting interview that came out today related to this, where the game lead discusses his ideas behind Ingress. You can read it here. Basically, John Hanke (a bit like a SF name if I might say) describes how these new mobile games not only lift player out of the couch, but also melt them within the bigger world, outdoors. The game (and the increasingly small, portable and geo-aware devices that run the game) integrates this experience, and not isolate the player from the external environment like a bubble.
Well, you probably get what I’m trying to go with this with Robotic;Notes. IRUO plus Airi is basically what Ingress is. The Kimijima Reports are like the nonsense from Ingress’s in-game “intel” items or what you might find here or here. There isn’t an elaborate unlock mechanism–at least not the kind you expect from Robotic;Notes, just Googlers’ nerd-grade ciphers. I don’t think we’re looking at a doomsday scenario with XM and the enlightened versus the resistance the way that Robotic;Notes is, playing up with its potential mechanical, time-traveling hijinks with solar flares.
I wonder how Chiyomaru Shikura feels about Ingress. I guess this is sort of an eventual convergence of event–inevitable given the way the existing technology, adaptation trends, user experiences and media has portrayed the new ways people use these portable electronics. People starting and working from different sectors of life and industry might arrive at a similar conclusion when working independently. Well, I think there’s still the KillBallad angle to Robotic;Notes, and that could be pretty interesting as that plot thread resolves in the second half, let alone the giant robot they’re making along with the actual conspiracy being alluded to via the robots club, Frau’s mom and Gunvarrel.
The story to Robotic;Notes is, thankfully, multifaceted enough that it is only in the past few weeks that it resembled the puzzle-gathering RL game that Ingress is. Hopefully it’ll come out of it soon. But on the other hand, Ingress has real-life applications, which you can read about in this other interview from a Google Maps team guy on the future of maps. It’s no coincidence that Google’s Field Trip is made by the same team that did Ingress. Now they just need to figure out a way to integrate Airi/Kugyuu in my phone, telling me that the Greek restaurant near me is the #1 rated place in a 500-mile radius.
Straightening Out Katyusha
So I read this, and I’m like, OK that’s pretty good.
But here is the thing:
The Crunchyroll stream of Girls und Panzer spans not just the US, but also Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and South Africa. So it’s not a simple (or more likely, technically risky, logistically complex, and expensive) thing to do. Second, Sentai is really the party with the North American license here. Why look to CR to do anything? (Don’t answer, I know.)
I actually contacted CR customer service and they said basically they knew this was going to the case, they asked, and the licensor decided to just not do it. Lvlln’s wax poetry about copyright does not point out the not-as-obvious thing that DiGi Kerot points out–the song is not in the credits for the CR version. That kind of make it obvious that this is a Japan decision, to edit the credit scroll like that.
Now, is Katyusha in public domain in Japan? I actually have no idea. You would think if Japan’s copyright law respects WIPO then it would be life + 50, and given how the creators of Katyusha did not pass away until 1973 and 1990, the song would still be in copyright in Japan. There was probably some complex wrinkle in that so it would be prudent to err on the safe side, but given the production committee nature any Japanese copyright would’ve been easily cleared by the publisher.
At least no aniblogger is trying to claim Apple’s patent is provisionally invalidated. That sort of reporting is just outright public disservice. You’re better off watching a TEDx talk about chanting mantra for Gaia. Again, the “refrain” goes: copyright is too complicated, don’t even try to decipher it, not even your average lawyer can hack it well enough–expert only please.
Slicing Life and Narrative Force
I think it comes down to this. I would like to just lay out my overall thoughts on this topic rather than simply object to what seems like an useful term.
In a nutshell, slice of life is a metaphor, a tortured one, if you will. It describes the kind of pacing and descriptive narratives in which the plot revolves around the everyday life. It’s why I proposed replacing “life” with “everyday life.” It would make a much more accurate descriptor if we want to pin it on the narrative or plot as a point of distinction. It’s like splitting hairs versus splitting a watermelon.
The truth is, the everyday life can have as much narrative force as anything else. This is partly why we can make moving, lovingly crafted biographies. It’s pretty obvious that we watch and read stories where the chain of events follow the characters in the story in a day-to-day manner, and it might even follow traditional trajectories of plot where there are exciting build-up to climatic showdowns and revelations. This is one of the biggest grey area in calling slice of life as a genre or an element.
And then there is K-ON. K-ON is often used as a consensual example of slice of life, but that show is one of the best examples of what constitutes watching a chain of events unfold to drive home some story. Even if often the story is just cute and humorous antics that die to bring forth rich characters, week after week. And K-ON cashes in on that build-up very hard, with entire climatic moments that brings genuine tears in eyes! I don’t know, this is pretty rare even for kuuki-kei anime. I’d go as far as to argue that no “slice of life” anime has done that with the same scale.
There are other works that are labeled in the same way that has amazing stories, and that is why we flock to them. I think Hidamari Sketch and Aria are both prime examples of this, which I think occupies a very different spot even among kuuki-kei anime. To put it simply, there are kuuki-kei pieces that focuses on who, like K-ON, and kuuki-kei pieces that focuses on what and where, like Yokohama Shopping Log or Mushishi.
Compared to, say, a typical Jump manga story, it feels more like a focus on what happens next. I guess that’s where the narrative knife falls. But even then it’s not a clear cut; the more I think about it, the less clean and elegant the metaphoric rule about plot seems to be. Do I care if Takumi yawns in the morning and scratches his butt while talking to his father about racing teams? Where does the knife falls on the entirety of Sket Dance?
And there are other boundary conditions. Consider shows that are made up of short stories, such as Sengoku Collection or Seraphim Call, where each episode or episodic pair unveils some conclusive arc but reveals a little bit about the overall universe. How are these shows different than, say, Darker than Black or Cowboy Bebop, in terms of the nature of the narrative form?
That is the one question I wish people would try to answer, because I have no idea what that should be. I know some people who didn’t like Cowboy Bebop because it lacks that cliffhanger-chained, conveyor belt of a narrative, that there is not much to make of a start or an end, in terms of logical progression of events or in the way the story is told chronologically. But is this something we really want to define via a negative space descriptor? Isn’t it just being lazy? Or is it more about not having the right tools or vocabulary to describe these things? Can we just leave the tortured metaphor about cutting things up, alone?
Anyways, if people think the term has meaning, I’m not against people using it. But what does it mean, and to who? It certainly doesn’t mean much to me, having seen it being used to describe everything from Black Lagoon to Love-Hina, from Bunny Drop to Cosprayers (damn it’s gone from Wiki). Well, that doesn’t bother me much when this fandom still regularly calls Love-Hina as “shoujo.” I think what bothers me is more precisely how we use this fuzzy logic indicator [by the way: what is a chair?] and pretend it is some grand o’ thing. Slice of everyday life is no more or less grand than, well, Takumi scratching his butt. It’s the stories in Aria that are grand, for example, not its genre tags.
What is great is that in the ever-going and never-ending to apply our instinct to categorize the fandom we’re immersed in, we’re coming up with new constructs to describe and explain these new experiences and things. In anime’s case, it’s new also because for many of us, it’s our first and foremost taste of Japan [Insert LOL California roll LOL joke here]. Anime and manga are stories from a strange new world, beyond just as a figure of speech. But that’s just it. If I want to make things clear, I should avoid those terms like slice of life. You’d think my writing is confounding all on its own already, going by the way some people respond to it. Let’s not make up new words [LOL kuukikei] to make things more complicated, unless we have to. And if we don’t need to label Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts slice of life, we certainly don’t need to for Yotsuba& or Yokohama Shopping Log.
Lastly, let me just go back and give props to 2DT and his essay on Aria. The truth is when we rely only on fuzzy logic, we also invite fuzziness. Is that something we actually want? You are trading for usefulness and in return up new possibilities that might better describe the situation. That’s fine when we are treading familiar and established grounds, but is it in this case? I’d say no, resoundingly. The superior way is to just call it by what it is. And you do that only when you watch it closely.
Production IG Kickstarter Offers a Glimpse of What?
Kickstarter is not a thing hidden in some corner of the universe. It’s a major deal, reported in the news worldwide. It was just a matter of time that fine arts project like Japanese animation ends up on one, and a full-blown legit sort of deal. For Masaaki Yuasa’s kickstarter, I think this write-up sums up the general feelings I have for it. But it’s more than just that.
Of course, being the first of its kind, Yuasa’s kickstarter just a high art short film from the acclaimed animator/director. The attempt at the KS is fairly elementary and lacks the sophistication that well-gamed Kickstarts do to back-load backer incentives and incremental updates that encourage people to tell people to back the project. Its conservative Japanese-ness pervades the endeavor. Its “low risk” assessment lends it an air that makes me feel that they would probably bankrolled this anyway, sooner or later.
But that sells shorts of the potential of an anime kickstarter. It’s one thing to say “patronage” but ultimately what Kickstarter (the organization) worries about is turning into a retail outlet, an empty marketing machine on the inside. That’s kind of the mode of backing for most of us, but that concern is a non-factor when it comes to kickstarting anime projects like this…because it is the point. We can talk about risk shifting, but that is besides the point; all established Japanese companies are serious about their customers. It’s more about the interface. Typically, the biggest thing about Kickstarter is giving creators a direct connection to fans and consumers, often around the publisher or distributor. We see a lot of this in the indie game scene (electronic and tabletop (especially tabletop)). But I don’t think anyone thinks it is not Production IG behind Yuasa’s kickstarter, even if they wisely let Yuasa take the spotlight. At least, the copyright notices on the promo images say as much.
The fact that Kickstarter provides an existing framework to allow a worldwide audience to be involved in Yuasa’s project, or any future project, (as an aside, Kickstarter requires a US individual/corporation to process its payments, so IG’s international reach does matter) is what makes Kickstarter valuable to anime, as I see it. That it’s a sliver of light through the muddy cracks of anime’s marketing problem overseas, is how oversea fans can value a Kickstarter anime project. They don’t have to reach around regional licensees at all–this is straight through the magic of the internet, and it’s not some half-baked Japanese attempt at web 2.0, thanks to KS’s hard work. It’s win-win for both us and for them. Kickstarter is an extremely low-cost way to gauge interest, to pitch a marketing spiel without ruffing the wrong feathers (much). It also taps into that highfalutin arthouse market that Japanese anime always had a hand in, in a much more direct way. That’s right, French in the Kickstarter page. (…And before Japanese was put on it.) It gives IG the control to sell as little of it as it can, to market it as weirdly as it can, and not worry about how popular an idea would be to a non-existent mass market–not like anyone would anyways.
Of course, like all art kickstarters, the value proposition is suspect. But at least it’s spelled out here for you. For most of us the mode of consumption for anime video purchases involves first watching the thing, to determine if we like to buy it or not. You get none of that here. Rather than the Sins of A Solar Copyright Empire on our backs as a motivation to “support the industry” we can just, well, support the industry by giving the creators we like money straight up (after KS takes their cuts). But in this case, we don’t get anything (yet).
The unfortunate reality behind anime produced by production companies is not some secret. So if you’re like Dave or Daryl you’re all set. But me? It’s more complicated.
My problem is more about the content. Let me use a concurrent example. There’s this popular Kickstarter going on right now called Project Eternity, which is an isometric PC RPG along the lines of Neverwinter Night, Temple of Elemental Evil, Baulder’s Gate, and Icewind Dale–from some of the same creators, no less. Fundamentally I enjoy these types of games so I backed it. Their reason was that they wanted to make another one of these isometric games, but they couldn’t find a publisher to back them as it is a “dated” sort of game dynamic, so they’re going to Kickstarter. [As an aside, this is kind of a hard-to-swallow reason given how the Firaxis XCOM reboot is.] On day one, the kickstarter had this early bird thing for $20, which is well within how much I want to spend on a game like this, so I was in from the beginning. But as the Kickstarter gain steam (it’s one of the top grossing live Kickstarters right now) they begin to release more info, and the more I read about it the less I like it. To put it to perspective, I really enjoyed the first BG game, and TOEE. Those are my sort of things. I kind of enjoyed Iecwind Dale but after a while it was a pretty dreadful experience because it is repetitive and while it gets slowly more difficult, the difficulty comes more as a test of patience rather than skill or intelligence. And quite frankly I’ve had enough after IWD1. NWN is another series of game that I managed to beat but hated it pretty much all the way, until the 2nd expansion (the first wasn’t a lot better) in which it finally got fun. But by the time NWN2 came out I had already lost any interest in “more of the same.” Of course, what I want is not far from what we all want: another Planescape Torment. And there is zilch coming out of Project Eternity’s teasers that say anything to the extent that they’ll make a game along those lines. If anything, they’re setting things up in the opposite direction.
In the very same way, the more I read about Kick Heart, the more weirded out (okay, delightfully weirded out) I am. I think it’ll be a fun little short to watch, maybe even own (disclosure: I backed the $30 tier). But this is not where I would put my money, compared to, say, a Kaiba localization Kickstarter, where I would offer up a lot more–because it is actually valuable. The bottom line is, Yuasa & Prodution IG still has to earn it by delivering something that has an appropriate value, not just by trying to do something new and perhaps improving the status quo of anime marketing and funding. Like “selling” us a possibly Japanese-produced Blu-ray disc of something (they are), or giving us a chance to have dinner with Mamoru Oshii. That’s value. And because they’re doing stuff like this I think this Kick Heart Kickstarter will really go places.
I guess the Kick Heart Kickstarter is a really a glimpse of meta.