Just got home from watching Kamiyama Kenji’s latest movie, Ancien and the Magic Tablet, or Hirune-hime ~ Shiranai Watashi no Monogatari. It’s good. But this is what I wanted to spam all the time after the film was over:
Light spoilers ahead.
Million Live 4th: Thank You for Smile
The Fourth Anniversary live for Million Live, for me, was something about me and less about IDOLM@STER Million Live. Kokochan said it during her final MC on day 2, that the idols are a reflection of the producers. In a way that’s why I think the show is only good as the emotional baggage you’re carrying into Budokan. If you are a die-hard ML producer then ML4th will reach stratospheric sublime territory. I thought ML 3rd was already very good, but 4th topped it in a way where only a 3-day, closely knit-together rollercoaster could. I think it was only possible because there are still a very solid group of Ps cheering them on in the usual ways.
On the technical side of things, ML4th did some stuff well, such as opening up the northeast and northwest seats, which gives people a sense of being there while not being there to see the same show the rest of the venue does. It did well with sending us the right surprise guests, in a very no-nonsense way, which is exactly what works best. You can complain about the acoustics on day 3 but day 1 and day 2 were pretty okay. Most importantly the way the stage was set up, there are very few bad seats in Budokan.
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????????????????????????????????2017?????????????? pic.twitter.com/jw5x7CxWjU— ????? (@todamegumi) March 14, 2017
IM@S DB has the set list, and more importantly, all the performers. Day 1, day 2, day 3. For handy social media coverage (the performers and fans cover the event best), check out the matomes for day 1, day 2 and day 3.
Animal Watching: Friends Explaining Kemono Friends
I did say, there’s some novelty and amusement from seeing people trying to figure out what’s Kemono Friends about. I tried to take a crack, too, it’s only fair, but let’s talk about some of the other attempts.
I think there’s a very narrow/thin layer between this and this. FWIW I thought the CR take is bad, and in poor taste. I think credit should be given where it is due, in that the product is good–as good as anime typically gets. That said, it is a difficult task, so maybe I am too hard on it. The problem is explaining why it’s good is difficult, in that like most good anime, it’s not just one or two things that are good, but a bunch of things. You can pick and choose, or you can say it’s good without really doing a good job saying why. Neither really captures what makes Kemono Friends popular, though.
In other words, the Venn diagram between peak academic interest, good aniblogger critique, and “clickbait traffic riding that meme money” in this situation is “why is Kemono Friends so popular”? Only if it’s easy to figure out!
The point I’m trying to make is explaining why Kemono Friends’ meteoric rise to popularity feels meme-like. It is because what makes it good is something that you get like how an entertaining meme propagates itself. It’s both textual and contextual. It’s kind of like good animation, where it doesn’t take a genius to enjoy the dancing in Maid Dragon or Konosuba, but in this case you can’t explain it with an animated gif.
This is why I find the CR take a little bit problematic. The issue isn’t world building, although that is going to be the thing in the front of your mind space when you think about the show at least at first. It’s what drives the conspiracy theory. But to chalk it up as archeological take onto fictional world building misses all the nuances that makes Kemono Friends good–namely, there are a lot of good things about the show the article just doesn’t even talk about. It feels like the writer doesn’t get why the show is good. Conspiracy theories and good world building can’t lead to two million people watching episode one of a janky CG show.
To be fair, it’s good to have these articles, and it’s a difficult topic, so I hope more people take a formal crack at it.
????ANOTHER pic.twitter.com/OR3kF5Va26
— sasakure.UK (@sasakure__UK) February 27, 2017
It’s also fair to continue to pick at what Kemono Friends do right. A lot of the early thoughts are centered on conspiracy theories and the like, as to why humanity has declined. But I think that aspect of the show is the carrot on the stick, the real story about this story is that so far, it has been a story in which the protagonist learns about herself.
There is a category of literature in which the concept of finding yourself is the central gist. I think of Kemono Friends as a Greek epic, in which this post-apocalyptic society builds around the person who asks, “who am I”? The journey may not be larger-than-life but Bag-chan’s smarts help them move along the way to overcome various problems. There’s even an oracle. It’s kind of funny that Bag-chan was told that she is human, but what is human? Isn’t it the unique attribute of our self-consciousness that separates us from animals? The story where Serval escorts Bag to the great library, on its face, is an epic, in which both Serval and Bag learn about themselves.
But this is not why Kemono Friends is memetically explosive in its popularity. This is just one of many reasons why Kemono Friends is good. It’s also good in that it doesn’t get into the philosophical stuff (probably because it’s unintended), even though the setup is there. It’s easy to hook on an “it all comes tumbling down” sort of event to end this show, but it would be a mistake. Instead, the human is someone who is smart, who can use tools, who can read, and who can cook. (But amusingly enough an alpaca can make tea, and the owls are deceptively manipulative.) Let’s see where it goes!
Kemono Friends: Friendship Is Lost Technology
A is for Apple is a common refrain for children educational multimedia programs. I’ve seen it (or something close to it) in books, on TV, on a DVD, in a video game, in a board game, in all kinds of toys, and obviously on the internet. Learning and trying to understand the basics of our world is what little kids do. If learning is lifelong, we all do it when we were little at any rate.
Kemono Friends sort of reverse engineers the experience for us. We learn how cable carts work. We know how a cafe works. Or what a bus does. Or how to cook, in general. The mysteries of life are about the questions we don’t realize we could ask, and not just the questions we have no answers to. All Bag-chan wanted to know is who she is. This is the existential question, of all existential questions. Arguably it’s the only question that truly matters.
In its ruthless-but-with-baby-gloves inquiry, Kemono Friends reveals obvious answers to obvious questions: Yes, it is as we think, Bag-chan. But in the process it only answers every other question we dare to dream to ask. And since this is a Japanese cartoon, Kemono Friends is set in a post-apocalyptic world, unlike another show I’m trying to infer to with this blog topic. Because it’s anime, we are concerned about trauma, not just happiness. The ending sequence of post-bubble, abandoned amusement parks does more talking than the rest of the show. It isn’t just about furries or they are girls. It’s about the overall messaging.
Which is to say, when you’re like this guy, it’s like trying to create an anti-abuse subsystem for Twitter, but all you get to use is a TI-84. There’s some novelty and amusement from seeing people trying to figure out what’s Kemono Friends about–not so much to do what I try to do, but to merely put it in one of their mental bins. I think that’s kind of why humanity is in decline, I guess. But I think, much like Bag-chan, this journey is only fun if you come unencumbered. The messaging may be meme-tinted, but people stay in Japari Park because there’s something worthwhile behind it all.
Well, maybe not that worthwhile. Pretty okay for an anime though.
AMV as Performance Art
Just want to opine and pine on a fandom thing out west, the anime music video. TL;DR is that Twitter has killed the AMV, much like how overall, social media transformed blogging, cosplay, and fandom in both general and specific ways.
First of all, I liken AMV like performance art. It’s like what you do in a very elaborate and purposeful Vine (RIP). There is always power in putting motion to music, and this is why it is only exaggeration to say AMV is dead or someone or thing has killed it. But that scene isn’t growing, at least from the consumer side. Just like stand up comedy or theater tropes in the age of mass media, those things will still continue to exist, just in a different way, not like how they were before cable TV or the internet, for example.
The big “get” in my mind is how AMV is different than, say, fan art, fan fiction, or the doujinshi, in that it is not really a platform. People make AMVs because they evoke emotions, because they are funny, or dramatic, or whatever. It’s not because the latest fad is the Emperor Penguin or the Shoebill, and Bin1’s modus operandi is to cross anything with IDOLM@STER. Or that you’re using a fan-fiction-concept content publishing platform like an actual fanfic or a slash artwork, because you thought your idea needs to be put into form.
Well, which is not to say people make AMV not for those reasons, but people don’t watch AMVs for those reasons. Instead, they go to a booru or tumblr or whatever. If you put a bunch of people inside a convention programming room and show some cool anime that solicited their emotions along with English-language (usually) music, that would be pretty neat. Just like how MST3K to, say, Lensman anime, can be pretty neat in the same setting, but it doesn’t mean people care about Lensman anime or even want to touch it with a 10′ pole.
In a nutshell, people made AMV because they were cool, not because they wanted to express something unique to the medium. It isn’t to say there are no AMVs that were made like that, or people who think differently than what I’m describing, but that’s not what AMVs were known for. Cool animation put to almost-random songs is definitely how 99% of AMVs are.
To look at things differently, in this day and age, JP MADs still exist and new ones continue to be relevant, but they too have been changed over time to fit the social medium paradigms of the day. JP side focuses largely for comedy (which is probably the main flag signaling the difference in why people created MADs vs AMVs, considering the genre gaps), and as alternative narrative platforms, a bit more like vlogging or fan videos (at least from my IM@S lens bias). But the odds of people finding relevance of a supercut loop of Toradora, in 2017, is much higher than anything Naruto to Linkin Park, just because of memetic reasons. Those reasons live on, even if nobody watches the original video anymore.
As someone who grew up as a fan with cons, in a way, I have some fond memories of AMV viewings as I used to go to them all the time. I stopped only because it took more effort to follow than what I was getting out from it, and while it’s easier to make an AMV than ever, I pursued it only as a fan of the source material. I think it’s fair to say a lot of people don’t follow AMVs anymore because of social media changing the way we consume these little things. We don’t typically put the enjoyment of such on the same level as what we are fans of. But even if you are, and you check out the AMVs to your fav works, that’s really just a recipe to find interesting narratives but mediocre works. It’s about people who are talented that keep at it and still do it to convey an actual message, not just to put cool scenes to nice songs. Performance art is fine by itself, but it is no longer relevant in this cultural economy, unless you take it a level higher.