Omonomono

I blame my recent addiction to Rock Band in bringing back to my mindscape all these 90s recycled radio hits. And promptly stuck there until I master them at the appropriate difficulty (which is currently somewhere between medium and hard on the drums). Been tempted by the downloadables too. I hope they rotate in some Hootie & the Blowfish (although a Stone Temple Pilots is fine too I guess…or, lol, Cake)…

But these temporary distractions are just that. I’m not at all like Jeff Lawson on his fairly busy life. I got a ton of crap to do too but somehow I’m dedicated enough to squeeze anime in there. It’s as if my life has, somewhere down the road, been retooled to be a mean anime viewing and chewing machine. I’m not going to say I’m trying to make my life interesting; rather, I’m just doing what my fleshly desire is pulling me, in its eternal tension against the forces of good and what is proper.

In a season of lull it may very well be sensuality and its usual tricks pulling me to one crappy anime to another. But in the midst of nonsense fanservice I always trip over some nugget of worth. It’s like spotting a coin in the gutter. Or a gem in the rough. And that’s what keeps me watching anime all year long, year after year. It makes a lot of sense to me why the Japanese otaku subculture is so keen on the lolicon–that tension between what is good and what is better but worse. I’m just thankful that sometimes anime is not so pandering, and is rather mature without being mechanically dry. At times it can be refreshingly naive, or surprisingly cunning. There’s still 10% of the good stuff even if the other 90% sucks with a vengeance. And even so the vengeance (sometimes) comes with good action sequences and nice butts.

Contrary to popular belief, I believe people who do watch a lot of stuff don’t often get jaded. Critics do because it makes them more credible, I believe, and also as you accumulate experience it becomes easier to be critical. Being critical, however, doesn’t mean you have to look down at something or have an excuse to be harsh. Some people do get jaded after watching anime after a while, but I don’t really think these folks have really seen all that much. It is better attributed as another form of burnout.

One thing we all have to realize is that anime, historically, is young. Many people credit Astro Boy for being the first “anime” as we know it, but that’s barely 50 years old. Seeing just how many anime titles are being pumped out of Japan today we need to also realize there’s more anime on the air, on DVD, and on the internet now than ever before (and how few there were back in the days). If you are new to this fandom (in the past 5 years) then you need to know that the past 35-40 years worth of anime history has been compressed, filtered and condensed to a tee in the form of cultural history and knowledge. Yesterday’s best is still today’s classics, but last year’s crap is forgotten. As a result when we see today’s crap, we need to take the right perspective. Sometimes this means to revisit old shows.

But sometimes it means to leave them. Old shows are just that, old. New shows are not. It’s sitting there to be discovered. To appreciate the ongoing evolution and the dialog between the audience and the creator, we have to move on. I’m still haunted by the awesome dialog at the start of ef episode 6. Isn’t that the heart of the matter?

And too often we’re just haunted by mere burning memory, running in an empty arena, driven by the burning longing of something past but hoped for. Don’t fall into that trap. Take your anime as they come to you. Real burning passion is not a passing fad. Kamina died for not just you, but also those who have yet to come. Even for the passionless they can just enjoy anime as it is, and not as some kind of thing bigger than just the show and culture that surrounds it. Love your Evangelion-sized gravitas but don’t forget it’s not a serious business. Feelings are uncontrollable but actions are controllable.

He’s going the distance
He’s careless about speed
We’re not alone
Cuz we got all we need!

Omedetou Kazuki!

March 22nd is the world pillow fight day. You can read all about it on their website, which is pretty simple and straightforward. I mean, it’s a flashmob armed with pillows, exercising their freedom of assembly as strangers and comrades in arm, may it be feather, cotton, or something else more sinister. Or oops, not a flashmob. Just a bunch of people doing something people don’t do.

What’s more interesting for me is March 21st. The Pillows is hitting up Anime Boston that weekend, a con I never bother to visit and is sort of kind of a local thing for them anyways. On Friday March 21, however, they’re playing a gig in New York City, where Ryusuke’s friend died. I guess.

Having been to a prior show with a similar lineup (Noodles, the Pillows) back in ’05, I can say with some confidence that this is a pretty fun gig that you don’t want to miss if you’re at all a weeaboo, or otherwise have affinity with this breed of rock.

Speaking of that breed of rock, I just got Rock Band the other day and it’s a pretty addictive and fun game. Especially with a group of folks. Kind of like this picture.

I think my overall impression is summed up well here.

But there is still something to the theater. Things like home video, internet video, and the bicycle treadmill are not substitute for a wholesome, family night out at the movies. At any rate I caught it at the Kennedy Center this past morning, and it is always a pleasure to watch movies with an audience like that, seeing the director introduced the film for us.

You should ignore reviews like this entirely.

But how can you not talk about Piano no Mori without mentioning the Toilet Princess? That’s like talking about Nadesico without mention Ruri, or not use the letters “f,” “u,” and “n” to spell “funny.”

Honestly there are a lot of lack in Piano no Mori, but without reading the source material I can’t say if this for-the-family rendition on the silver screen is lulz, or merely a good balance between what’s funny and entertaining and what’s charming and endearing. It’s not an epic thriller nor is it a gripping tale of a Fugitive. I’m not even sure if it is slice of life.

What I am sure, is that Piano no Mori appeals very widely. There’s some merit about the complaint regarding lackluster character development for some of the more stoic characters–namely Amamiya. But for the rest of its cast, Piano no Mori does a splendid job of making the audience care about everyone else. How can you be not endeared to the likes of Takako or Rei-chan? But they are by all means minor characters, foils and mirrors for our protagonist. It seems incredibly potent, and the show makes good use of that power on its minor characters.

Maybe that’s why the movie seemed shallow and generally not something that’ll bring you to tears…unless you subscribe to the same sense of humor most of us does, then you might squeeze one out with the help of our Toilet Princess.

She still needs rainbow colored unicorns!

I lack the bravado and skill to do this kind of self-insert, so I’ll just rant on some more about retailing. Saint Valentine’s day is a retail holiday after all in Japan.

I’ve been actually writing a long piece about the business end of this anime business. Or the non-business end, whatever. Where rubber meets the road. Where society pays out to creators for their copyrighted expressions. Where you and I pay in to get our fix. But the more I read my own writing the less I want to publish it at all, says this creator.

I think Shizuki’s written a good shakedown in the ongoing conversation about not just curry but also how we value DVDs and how we are asked to value them. It’s not about blame or who’s got the better way to do things or what, but merely a challenge to you and I; a dare to spend money. It’s a no-brainer why that the anime industry suffered when the retail industry did; Suncoast folding was a huge deal since it is a primary retail customer of our staple region 1 importers. It’s not a big surprise that online stores like AN and RightStuf stepped into licensing because both have ran relatively successful retail operations in this market. We (as fans and as an industry) all have to grow–some vertically.

To be more precise Shizuki’s discussion reminded me of the Tenchi Muyo OAV box that Pioneer put out in the early days of the DVD switchover. I remembered when Pioneer was dumping its LD catalog and going all DVD. Was DVD to be an premium format? It didn’t turn out that way. Today we have people watching (crappily produced) DVDs on their $75 portable DVD player with a craptastic 5″ LCD screen, mono sound out of a set of $5 headphones. It just doesn’t compare to the home theater system few people first had back in ’98 with their $1000 DVD/LD combo player. That’s what DVDs are as a format now and back then, respectively. Like newspaper and cell phones, we junk the old ones we had since yesterday or two years ago, simply because they are worth slightly above nothing today.

And this does have something to do with the curse of collectors, too. Aside from your personal satisfaction and peace of mind of ownership of some…random anime in its limited edition format, on the whole there is very little market value for used anime DVDs. I suppose people do trade them in at game stores or used media stores for some petty cash/credit, but we’re talking about a large depreciation of value. Or rather, what value we see for used anime DVDs (say, on eBay) is derived purely out of people’s personal valuation for those items, and not so much a fair market valuation based on consistent supply and demand. Or am I wrong?

As the global media industry grapple and come around to embrace the fact that we no longer treating music and movies as albums and DVDs, but as music and movie and as a part of our popular culture and life, we are left to deal with the business end of it. How do we make it work? Media companies can no longer peddle that same bicycle, try as they might. Or maybe they can upgrade their bicycle into hi-def, or over the internet. Or peddle something else all together different like the new wave of internet music and video sites. I don’t know.

To me, this is the real nail-in-the-coffin. It’s not about fansubbing, but it’s about how people value disposable entertainment media. If people valued it, even fansub “pirates” would buy them simply because they are worth the money (presuming they can afford it in the first place). This intangible value is what’s missing. It is what all those collector’s edition trinkets are trying to pump up. It’s what limited edition, limited print runs are trying to make. It is about being able to pay a good amount of cash and get something really cool, versus paying very little to get very little (that we can live without). The former bargain just doesn’t quite exist anymore, so we’re all going for the latter.