Category Archives: Popular Culture

Rethinking the Origin of Value for iDOLM@STER

If I said human existence is full of contradictions, I would be exaggerating. If I said when iM@S fandom ships producer with his idols and that hits too close to a pimp and his prostitutes, that would be exaggerating. But I guess that would be a contradiction!

The truth is, I am steadily descending that slippery slope into iM@S fandom, and while the ride is enjoyable, I see too much stuff that I’m not entirely comfortable with, producer shipping notwithstanding. Maybe to some extent idol fan culture is always a little toxic. Talking with the AKB-whatever fans I know, at least, that’s a bit of what comes across. That truth gets shared and strengthened by also whatever idol fan culture that is over here in the US.

But just like chemical addictive in an artificially flavored and preserved treat, idols and idol fandom is robust and often fits your fancy, just how you like it. The toxicity is not without benefit. I think Japanese-style idol fandom likes projecting and shipping, which coincidentally goes with the whole “no dating” strategy that industry employs. There are some advantages, especially when the idols themselves can’t do anything, as in the case of animated cartoon characters from video games. The fans can move and groove the idols themselves.

But I suppose you can’t ask for too much; we get what we paid for, at least when it comes to fan creation. Is it even a fair statement though? If I were to buy all the PS3 iM@S2 DLCs I don’t really think for a second I would have thought anything other than “I just got ripped off like a man dripping with blood in a dunk tank with an hungry great white shark.” Even if I bought the cheapest addon song Â¥1200 DLC I feel as if I just got tricked into doing something that my parents would have been ashamed of, and that is not because I bought some video game addon for raising Japanese idols but because I just wasted a bunch of virtual money. Well, that goes for most other idol fandom; do we ever get what we pay for? In the era of mass media it all feels like a “free taste! But if you want more please deposit your wallet and bank routing info here” kind of gimmick.

It’s in light of this that I slowly crawl and fight my way down the slope. While it would be fun to buy ten Â¥10,000 PSN point cards and just go to town, that does not seem like the “fair” deal in which you can spend almost as much and buy the entire iM@S anime on Blu-ray, which isn’t so bad in comparison. It is why I reject buying the ¥20,000 PS3 limited edition box, or why I still don’t know if I will buy any of the older iM@S CDs (the animation masters look like the ones to go for, plus the Best Ofs). Or why should I even listen and enjoy their back catalog, or the M@STER version tracks, or anything they are peddling beyond the core video game experience. I mean, I am okay with buying DLCs and the game, if that is what iM@S is. Or maybe the anime or the music, if that is what iM@S is. Is it?

That would explain why I actually do look forward to the 7th Anniversary concert on Blu, because that seems like what proper idols do. If AKB48 can perform almost everyday, it means there’s this other interface in which a fan can spend his money by having the idols entertain him or her, like how performers have done it throughout the ages. I’m probably still going to spend money in the meta (I think I spent more on iM@S figures than on DLC right now) but let’s get a grip and look forward to what being idols really means in this day and age. Because we have to ask ourselves: when did iM@S become some kind of framework in which we plug our wallets into so we can buy things and ship people and do what Touhou fans do? What is that worth?


Nanoha Aces; The Verge Loves Anime

Today is the Japanese debut of the second Nanoha theatrical remake. Its meme-tastic “Friendship through overwhelming force” concept will now join its first iteration as  the namesake protagonist befriend even more fan favorites on the big screen.  I always thought seeing things in the theater provides another dimension home video screenings just tend to lack. At my own home, my meager, sub-2k home theater is sufficient but it does not replace the experience of a proper movie-going experience. I thought that was the ticket in terms of giving Nanoha’s theatrical remake a real reason for existing.

The first film, I think, adds little to the experience of the original series, at least when it comes to what it was good for. Plainly put, if you’ve seen the series before, it is just not worth watching unless it’s in theaters as it adds that extra little bit and can really alter your impression. But don’t take it from me, take it from someone who has seen it there.

In light of that, same can be said of seeing the Evangelion films in that way, despite that both of the home video transfers on Blu-ray achieve enough of a facsimile to the theatrical experience, enough that it really doesn’t warrant much of a note. With Evangelion Q on the queue this winter, hopefully Japanese theaters will replay the first two and give people another chance to experience those gorgeous and emotive Khara works.

It’s along those lines that makes me want to experience things like the K-ON movie or the to-be-released Mouretsu Pirates film, in theaters. It’s going to be a grand ol’ time! I can see some theaters do the Kara no Kyoukai marathon too, when Mirai Fukuin goes live…

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I took a look at the very long (and getting longer) promoted forum post on The Verge about anime recs. It’s really just people listing shows they like. I’ll keep this to a list.

  • The OP: I’d say whoever asked for recs knew a thing or two, or at least knows people who know a thing or two about anime. That image came from somewhere? I don’t know how the Verge forum works.
  • The comments: Basically it’s just people posting what their favorites are. It stopped being a recommendation thread when like, 50% of the titles mentioned were repeated by the OP. Com’on guys.
  • The lowdown: Most titles are the usual couple dozen of early 00s bubble-era pieces. You know what they are; we all know what they are, at least if you spoke English.
  • The old: Not a lot of older titles being recommended! I think it breaks pretty clearly into the late 90s, and that’s it.
  • The new: A few 2006 or newer titles represented, but largely landmark crap (Redline gets a few nods, fewer than I’d expect actually) and things like the usual Post-Haruhi hits like Madoka or Gurren Lagann. Kyoani wagoneers move on chronologically: very few Lucky Stars (if any) but a lot of Hyouka, I guess that’s just what’s on their minds. Strangely enough Fate/Zero makes a strong showing, which is good on them. Steins;Gate too.
  • The usual: Invariably a thread like that in a place like that you will get the usual archetypes posting stuff. Like the guy who says Gungrave is the best anime he’s ever seen, but he’s only probably see 5 titles ever. Or the guy who just lists a subset of the OP list and forgets to add “Cowboy Bebop.” Or the person who recommended Night Raid (whattt). And invariably people will be listing shows I forget about from the mid ’00s, like D.Grey-man, Abenobashi or Otogi Zoshi. Seriously? I guess what takes the cake is the one person recommending Ergo Proxy. I mean, it’s not bad I guess. It’s just so niche.
  • Elfen Lied: is this why (some) people like anime? I think so. Like CLANNAD I guess. It’s gotten to the point where I think those moefags who are super wota are less disgusting than actual CLANNAD fans, those who don’t even know who are the (Japanese) voice actors of the show or what Kanon 2002 was. Maybe this is why people like Urobuchi? :-)
  • My favorite thing about the post: the top image

National DVD Ripping Day, Sept. 30, 2012

You’ve already read the background, right? So you know that the newly amended copyright code in Japan now not only carry prison (and obv., criminal) terms for illegal downloads, but also for home ripping and anti-circumvention stuff, right? So you get the joke in the post title, right?

You know when law school ruined you when you read this article and the one sentence stands out is the quote from the Bar Association (Japanese Federal BA), besides how it saps your sense of humor:

“Treating personal activities with criminal punishments must be done very cautiously, and the property damage caused by individual illegal downloads by private individuals is highly insignificant,” the group said in a statement.

I mean, I think it doesn’t need to be said that criminalizing this is the wrong way to go, and it doesn’t even come from the IP debate perspective. It comes from a social justice and criminal punishment perspective. I guess crime rate in Japan is so low, they need more inmates for their prisons to justify their existence? I don’t know. At any rate, it’s going to be interesting to see the impact of this law on the actual practice of illegal file sharing. But for countries busy locking up people doing pot, putting people who download rips in jail seems like a huge waste of the government’s time, money and resources. I mean, all for what, protecting some wag-the-dog media content industry? [I think Verizon still generates (much) more revenue in the same period than the total retail sales of music in the US. (Add AT&T and you get the US home video industry.)]

It’s kind of interesting to see the impact of this law on legal filesharing. Well, more like the hypothetical Youtube or NND cases–does this mean someone in Japan can break the law enough to go to jail just because you happened to click on a link that plays back some to-be-DMCA’d material that was hosted on a Japanese server/site? I think it’s bullocks in the sense that why does anyone consider this? I don’t think it’s going to have a serious impact with existing players. Japan just doesn’t work this way.

Let’s put it another way. If you read this article it might give you the impression that the copyright amendments passed without really any fanfare, and the legislature just rubber-stamped it. Why? Because politically it just isn’t that important. It’s kind of the thing that gets shoved through as the course of normal business in the Japanese legislatures. One org pushes one way, the other relents only to get some other favor their way later. Contrast this with B156’s passing rites, it is a huge difference, despite ultimately the Tokyo metro ordinance (rather than a national one that’s this copyright law change, by the way) doesn’t really impact individuals but rather publishers. (And thanks to that, I got to watch some cool ACE streams off Nico!)

Well, maybe that is not a fair comparison. Everyone reacts to child pornography (even if it’s the fake kind). But yeah. I don’t expect Japanese kids and youths (people under 40 years old) to stand up for their rights. I just don’t have the respect that I have for your parents (despite the bad pun on ice cream)…unless you take away their To-love-ru Darkness (which, as expected, does not happen).

Silver lining (maybe… not): Hopefully this is yet another opportunity for some internet people to learn the difference between “illegal” and “criminal.” Because that change is a major highlight of the amendment.

PS. If I was in Japan and I published this post, the top image alone will get me in trouble!


Tentacle Bento Puts the Tentacle In Kickstarter

So a couple days ago there were a couple articles on Kotaku and Insert Credit and as of 15 hours ago Kickstarter canned Tentacle Bento’s project. They have since then move to their own site, as they were overfunded by a lot. That just means people wanted to buy this game.

For one, I applaud more tabletop games with anime-style themes. It’s unfortunate that rape makes such an interesting…plot twistgame mechanic and it is kind of a joke in the scene. It isn’t unfortunate, however, that it is funny. There are a lot of sad and twisted things in this world that are funny. Humor, especially the dark sort, is some of the best gifts God gave to mankind to cope with those sort of tragedies (eg., actual rape). That silver lining often is ironic.

I think the moral/rights/nonsense part of the issue is kind of straightforward. Kickstarter can choose to allow or not allow any kind of project. Here is what they say. I bolded the potentially relevant items:

[]There are some things we just don’t allow on Kickstarter.

Alcohol (prohibited as a reward)
Automotive products
Baby products
Bath and beauty products
Contests (entry fees, prize money, within your project to encourage support, etc)
Cosmetics
Coupons, discounts, and cash-value gift cards
Drugs, drug-like substances, drug paraphernalia, tobacco, etc
Electronic surveillance equipment
Energy drinks
Exercise and fitness products
Financial incentives (ownership, share of profits, repayment/loans, etc)
Firearms, weapons, and knives
Health and personal care products
Heating and cooling products
Home improvement products
Infomercial or As-Seen-on-TV type products
Items not directly produced by the project or its creator (no offering things from the garage, repackaged existing products, weekends at the resort, etc)
Medical and safety-related products
Multilevel marketing and pyramid programs
Nutritional supplements
Offensive material (hate speech, inappropriate content, etc)
Pet supplies
Projects endorsing or opposing a political candidate
Pornographic material
Raffles, lotteries, and sweepstakes
Real estate
Self-help books, DVDs, CDs, etc
Promoting or glorifying acts of violence

I mean, it’s offensive? I guess any kind of rape anything can be offensive? Who is the judge? And violence! Tons of games with violence on KS go untouched. I suppose those are not “inappropriate content”? I guess it’s okay if they don’t really come up with any objective standard, personally. It’s going to have consequences, but so be it.

In as much I think the Insert Credit article is wrong to compare the allowance of funding for one project versus actually creating a project, it is a valid argument in terms of “does world class organization should be associated with XYZ”? I think that is a stance ultimately bad for free speech, but since Kickstarter is a private sort of thing and isn’t like, say, a publisher like Apple is (BTW they are totally content Nazis), they can probably get away with it. By the way that was the only valid argument in that Insert Credit article that I can really get behind. And that is also unfortunate.

When I first learn and read about this Tentacle Bento KS ban, my initial reaction was more like, “well too bad so sad.” But the second reaction was, “can someone sue Kickstarter for its association with a project that got into legal problems due to content”? Actions have long, fetching consequences. And I think you can. Moreover by censoring a game like Tentacle Bento on the basis of content, just because it’s vaguely borderline to project guideline as far as I can tell–it might be evidence of KS’s involvement in knowingly selecting or condoning specific projects. That is potential litigation fuel–hopefully fuel that will never get used.

The other thing I thought about is just how given the increasing diversity of subgenre and scenes for online nerd scenes, and the deep-drilling niche prjects that Kickstarter enables, there’s a huge risk in terms of misunderstanding the context and nature of, say, tentacle rape. Because that term carry very different meaning between people. Which word speaks louder: tentacle or rape? As the database animals march on, what used to be acceptable interpretation of potentially offensive material may get meta-twisted into parody spinoff games and what not, and I guess those things should not count on Kickstarter for funding from now on. Yes, I’m saying the Insert Credit article just doesn’t quite get it (especially in 2012 terms) but his view is probably common enough to represent a large group of people who will run into more weird situations like this as more niche things find ways to emerge from obscurity.

The more I think about it as an instance of cultural misunderstanding, the more I wonder if the problem isn’t so much how society views rape, but how westerners view Japan. I mean, most Japanese cultural coverage in English media is along the lines of “Oh you silly/weird country/people group” and there is really no real attempt to understand it by the mainstream. I mean, it’s almost hypocritical of Kotaku to talk down on tentacle rape, despite having some of the best tools to be able to get deep into this otaku crud, and rely on it for hits. I probably learn more about Japan from the New York Times than Kotaku, and that is not exactly a shining example.

PS. If you want to read about a cool Kickstarter that breaks a few guidelines, check this out. And do you understand by what I mean by lawsuit? Like, Kickstarter is ripe for some enterprising plaintiff’s attorney to take them to court? Oh yeah.


That Media Blaster Thing

So basically last week before I took off on vacation the word was that Media Blaster got tagged by the NY State for non-payment of taxes. Knowing MB I didn’t think it was a big deal, since they were probably just putting off taxes as much as they could and probably missed something. But in the forum thread of that ANN post the ignorance came about about how so-and-so is no longer a corporation or whatever. The juice also got juicy when Media Blaster got back to them and stuff that happened that I don’t really care for. There was even some mention of something about some paper at some trade show? I don’t know, but it sounded juicy.

So now I am finally reading it. You can read this, but I think ANN just got it wrong by giving it the wrong spin and obviously Sirabella did not take to it in a way that is all that diplomatic.

If they want to cover legal crap like this, they need a tax lawyer or a tax accountant at least. I mean, seriously, corporate tax law is not exactly the most transparent thing. You’ll need experience to interpret this stuff because it’s more about process and what happens than what some paper may actually say. This is not like getting a traffic ticket. And that goes for the rest of us–if you see coverage of commercial legal preceding that does not have some lawyer being quoted on this stuff you will need to take it with a grain of salt. Furthermore, if you see someone quoting from the statute (as opposed to just referring to it) in a news article that is not actually about the statute, it is usually a red flag that whoever is writing about it is not a subject matter expert. I mean, com’on now, the average state tax code is already an alien language to most lawyers, how can you expect the average anime geek to understand it?

Well, I don’t want to be too harsh. This sort of thing happens all the time now, especially in tech reporting given the various patent and copyright wars being waged by these tech firms. But it really is not an easy thing to understand. I can say with good confidence that at least when it comes to copyright, even lawyers don’t understand it, it’s that complicated. So to me there’s a great need, an unfulfilled need in reporting in this area, especially when you have these horde of poorly paid, inexperienced bloggers writing up the news online, may it be Gawker or ANN or any other site.