Moetic Justice

Madoka Magica

2011-04-11T17:56:00.012-04:00

The magical girl show has been a well-defined genre of anime since the mid-1960s and Mahou-tsukai Sally. The conventions of mahou shoujo anime--a young girl is given supernatural powers by a mascot animal from another world, in order to fight supervillains and protect her home town--have become so thoroughly ossified that hardly anyone thought to question the implications. Aren't magical girls child soldiers? Could a plan to grant moody adolescents with amazing power and life-or-death responsibilities really end well? What are those inscrutable, beady-eyed magical pets thinking? Nobody thought about these sorts of questions very much, except apparently Akiyuki Shinbo and the gang at production studio Shaft, who have come up with the new anime of the season, and maybe the year: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica ~ Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

Madoka Magica starts with a bog-standard magical girl plot, with young protagonists fighting a righteous battle for peace and friendship, but the story quickly winds up in some ugly places. There are early hints that not everything is going to be bunnies and rainbows--what does the mysterious Homura Akemi have against mascot character Kyubei, and why is she so opposed to our heroine, Madoka Kaname, becoming a magical girl?--and episode by episode, events spiral out of control and the characters are dragged into a world of confusion and despair.

Madoka Magica is instantly recognizable as a Shaft production, with it's heavy use of bold, experimental visual techniques. The surreal alternate realities of the witches--one inhabited by animated photo collages of desserts and medical equipment, another consisting solely of color-coded silhouettes--practically scream "Shinbo." The look of Madoka's real world is comparatively tame, though the squashed-frog moe character designs, courtesy of Ume Aoki (Hidamari Sketch) are not exactly mainstream.

Previous Shaft projects have excelled as quirky works of art, but sometimes come up short as entertainment. Madoka Magica has achieved a better balance. The stories and characters are engaging on their own, not just as excuses for metaphysical monologues and psychadelic animation. The cliffhangers are gripping, and the plights of our heroines are affectingly tragic. It may be melodrama, but it's convincing, craftily paced melodrama.

Madoka Magica seems to be aiming at being the Evangelion of magical girl anime: the show that takes the conventions of an established genre, smashes them, and rebuilds the genre from the ground up into something that becomes the new standard. It's hard to tell how well it will succeed: Madoka Magica is powerful and compelling entertainment that has attracted a dedicated following, but it may be too narrowly targeted at an otaku audience to ever have much of a cultural impact (witness the chipper, fan service-y opening). We'll see how reaction to the show plays out at the end of this month; the finale, delayed by the Tohoku earthquake, and probably, sensitivity about scenes of ruined and flooded cities in episode 10, is scheduled for broadcast on April 22.

Ghibli Museum Films in Manhattan

2011-03-29T16:24:00.005-04:00

Ghibli Forest Films

This past weekend, Carnegie Hall held a special screening of two of the eight short films that play in rotation at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, near Tokyo, as part of the JapanNYC cultural festival. Normally, the only way to see these shorts is to go to the Ghibli Museum in person, so a trip to New York was clearly in order. The flier includes a rather stern indication that the Museum will not be able to entertain requests for more showings outside of Japan.

Carnegie's Zankel Hall.

Before the films started, John Lasseter of Pixar gave an introduction, talking about the small ways in which Ghibli has been trying to help with the aftermath of the Great Tohoku Earthquake, including showings of their movies at evacuation centers. The short films are apparently created in between motion picture projects, as a way for Hayao Miyazaki and crew to experiment with new techniques and concepts, which might or might not find their way into feature films.

JapanNYC program and earthquake addendum.

The films were excellent, as you might expect. First was the shorter Yado-sagashi (House Hunting), which was really experimental, with a simple visual style, and all sound and music done acapella by two voice actors, accompanied by manga-style sound effects moving around the screen. The story follows a city girl who takes a trip to the country, leaving offerings to appease the many nature spirits which she runs into along the way, including what looks a lot like a grizzled old Totoro.

Information on the films.

The second, and slightly longer at 15 minutes, film was Mizugumo Monmon (Mon Mon the Water Spider). This was more traditional Ghibli, with amazingly fluid animation and a fairly straightforward visual and narrative style. There's a silly but amusing story of a mopey water spider falling in love with a sleek water strider, but what stood out for me were the detailed tableux of microscopic living things in a pristine Japanese pond. Mon Mon is a really a beautifully-filmed nature special, in anime form.

Earthquake

2011-03-14T16:21:00.005-04:00

Akira Toriyama urges disaster victims to hang tough (via ANN).

The reports from regions affected by the March 11 earthquake seem to be getting more catastrophically horrible by the hour, with news of damaged nuclear plants on the verge of meltdown, and coastal towns where the majority of the population is "missing." Send money to the usual disaster relief organizations, or directly to the Japanese Red Cross (English-language Google Crisis Response link).

Moe Day 2010

2010-10-10T16:01:00.004-04:00

It's International Moe Day once again, and while I've been slacking off a bit on new anime viewing, I have managed to watch all of K-On!!, the recently concluded sequel to 2009's high-end moe musical school comedy, K-On! The transition between the two series was essentially invisible: designs, animation, music and voice acting all carried over seamlessly. Bandai Entertainment is in the process of bringing over the first series, with Blu-ray and DVD versions, and special editions available for each. I'm hoping we'll see an announcement for official K-On!! sometime soon.

Among new or upcoming moe shows, Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai (My Little Sister Can't Be this Cute; A.K.A. OreImo) seems to be the one to keep an eye on for the fall season. The premise--stylish and popular Kirino suddenly finds herself indebted to her painfully ordinary brother Kyousuke, when he discovers her secret otaku hobbies--seems awfully familiar, but the anime adaptation is easy on the eyes, and appears to be staying pretty classy in spite of a multitude of available failure modes. OreImo can be viewed as a legitimate stream from Anime News Network, and is ANN's first attempt at a simulcast.

Japan '08: Finale

2010-02-27T15:16:00.004-05:00

It's taken quite a while to get through my Japan travelogue. I'm tempted to chalk up the delays to wistful feelings about the trip never truly ending until I finish writing about it, but the real fault is more plain laziness.

On the final day, my group left Hongou by taxi, with one of us riding in a second cab that was filled with luggage. From Tokyo Station we took the express train to Narita Airport. We touched down in Detroit half an hour before we left Narita. A couple of days later I came down with a bug undoubtedly picked up on the plane, which persisted for a week. It was the sickest I had been in years, a particularly awful combination of virus and jet lag that I couldn't shake because I was lying in bed all day. It was so bad, I literally lost all interest in moe anime, which was a strange and disturbing effect. Eventually, I recovered.

I'd like to get back to Japan, but it will probably be a year before I could be ready for another vacation like that. It's tricky to organize the time and the money, but even if it wasn't for practical concerns, I don't think I would enjoy traveling overseas on a regular basis. The trip was a huge amount of fun, but it also took a lot out of me, mentally and physically. Japan is about as foreign a place as a New Englander can visit (at least counting destinations with paved roads and indoor plumbing), and while it is invigorating to be forced out of behavioral ruts for a time, it also exacts a toll. Sooner or later, though, I will return.

U-Con at UConn

2010-02-06T10:01:00.002-05:00

There's a small anime/sci-fi/gaming convention going on in my neck of the woods this weekend: U-Con @ UConn. It's being put on by the good ol' University of Connecticut Japanese Animation Society, among other campus organizations. I stopped in briefly last night, and it looked like people were having fun; if you're in the area, stop in. It's free!

Japan '08: Loot

2009-12-24T15:07:00.008-05:00

Kara no Kyoukai Special Edition DVDs.

My Japan trip wasn't all poking around old temples and hanging out in Maid Cafes with NTV film crews; there was also spending large amounts of money at dubious otaku shops in Akihabara. The photos below document a good chunk of what I hauled back to The States, though quite a few souvenirs were given away as presents before I thought to photograph them. Some other stuff not shown here just wasn't immediately available for photography (like back issues of Megami Magazine that got filed away somewhere).

Miscellaneous knickknacks, including omamori (charms) from Washinomiya Shrine, ofuda (the paper ward), and a fake charm from Furude Jinja, the fictional shrine in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.

More DVDs: Da Capo II, Kore ga Watashi no Goshujin-sama, Lucky Star OVA (Gamers Special Edition), Gedo Senki - Tales from Earthsea, Higurashi Kai. It was something of a struggle to find all of Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight, but eventually I tracked it down, though I payed full price for most of the volumes.

Loads of used PS2 soft: some Simple 2000 series odds 'n' ends, an igo game that mostly kicks my ass, Shikigami no Shiro, Ku-on, a Gundam Vs. series entry, the Lucky Star adventure game and the all-ages version of Demon Bane. I'll have to find my Dreamcast some day and play Kanon.

Suzumiya Haruhi green tea (cleverly--I thought--punctured on the bottom for drinking while still in Japan. I would have bought a case of these, but Kotobukiya was down to the last couple of cans and nobody else was offering it.), a 20th Century Boys t-shirt, and a beer bottle from the Ghibli Museum.

I don't buy figures (well, hardly ever), but Konata and the Hiiragi twins in Petit Nendoroid form called to me.

I also have very little interest in doujinshi, though somehow I did wind up with a Higurashi and a Kara no Kyoukai book, strategically obscured by Koisuru Camera, a photography + moe book from artist Siro.

Teacup set from a ceramics shop with Kiyomizu-style wares, with instant sweetened green tea with gold leaf flakes from Kinkaku-ji.

In total, the Japan trip cost around $4,000, with about half going to lodging and transportation to and from Connecticut and within Nihon. Food was in the neighborhood of $500, including a few meals at fancy restaurants. The remaining $1,500 or so was spending money, for the goods, movie and museum tickets, and other miscellaneous expenses. That is not the sort of outlay I could make on a regular basis, but it wasn't too bad for a two week trip to an expensive country on the other side of the world filled with shops hawking pricey gewgaws that I needed to purchase.

Japan '08: Kyoto II

2009-11-15T15:00:00.016-05:00

Canal next to Tetsugaku no Michi, the Path of Philosophy.

At this point in our Japan adventure, my group left western and central Kyoto and headed towards the Higashiyama (Eastern Mountain) district, by way of Tetsugaku no Michi (the Path of Philosophy) and city bus. Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Pavilion, is located at one terminus of Tetsugaku no Michi. Ginkaku-ji was established in 1482 as a retirement home for Yoshimasa Ashikaga, and became a center for Higashiyama culture, which was the forerunner to modern Japanese civilization.

The approach to Ginkakuji; persimmon tree with fruit at right.

We had some fried fish cake type thingies from a stand along the street leading up to Ginkaku-ji. That was a pretty decent lunch, but again, I regret not getting to a real restaurant for some more serious Kyoto food.

Looking west towards Kyoto over Ginkaku-ji. Kannonden at left, and roof of Tougudou at lower right.

The Silver Pavilion itself, technically called Kannonden but normally referred to as Ginkaku-ji, was under renovation when I was there, and covered up with scaffolding. It's not actually covered in precious metal, unlike Kinkaku-ji, and "silver" seems to refer to the white sand sculptures on the grounds.

Gardens at Ginkaku-ji.

The gardens at Ginkaku-ji were probably the most beautiful that I have seen in Japan; the trees, rocks, streams and ponds form an understated work of art around the temple buildings.

Ginkaku-ji moss display.

The moss gardens at Ginkaku-ji are especially fine, and there is funny little display of the local species in one corner of the grounds, divided up into special mosses that are carefully encouraged, and ordinary mosses that form the background or are weeded out as needed. There were several gardeners actively tending the moss, wearing slippers. We had to call one of these guys for help when my friend Ray managed to drop his camera memory card off the path and down a steep slope.

Outen-mon, the Heian Shrine main gate.

A bit south and west of Ginkaku-ji, more out in the city, is Heian-jingu, one of the largest Shinto shrines in Kyoto. It is actually a scale replica constructed in 1894 of Chodo-in, a building that existed in the Heian Era in Kyoto, about 1200 years ago.

Naka Shin'en (Middle Garden), behind the main Heian-jingu shrine buildings.

For a small fee, you can tour the gardens that surround the main shrine plaza and buildings. The gardens are in the Meiji Era style of the late nineteenth century. Heian Shrine is right in the middle of a busy part of Kyoto, but the gardens seemed isolated and peaceful.

Heian-jingu gardens at sunset, Taihei-kaku bridge at right.

My camera batteries gave out right after getting the above photo, looking west over the Heian-jingu gardens towards the shrine buildings.

Kiyomizu Temple entryway, early morning.

For the final day in Kyoto, the only activity was to see Kiyomizu-dera, which was just up the street from our ryokan. Kiyomizu is a Buddhist temple founded in 780 CE around a spring on the site (the name means "clear water"). Many of the current buildings date to 1633. We got any early start, though we weren't exactly waiting at the gates when the monks opened up at 6:00 AM.

Kiyomizu Dera.

It is probably a good idea to get to Kiyomizu early in the day, in order to get relatively uncluttered photos of Japan's most famous view.

Iron sandals and staves on the Kiyomizu deck.

There is a display of training equipment for the monks at Kiyomizu Temple, with iron sandals and two staves which visitors can attempt to lift. I couldn't budge the larger staff; did the monks really walk around with that?

Otowa no Taki, the waterfalls from the Kiyomizu spring.

I braved the line at the Kiyomizu spring to sample the water, which is supposed to have beneficial effects, depending upon which stream you drink from. You take a cup with a long handle from a UV sterilizer in order to retrieve some water; I'm not sure if I got the health, longevity or wisdom water. Maybe there's a spring that grants the strength to lift a staff that contains more metal than a Ford Explorer.

Tea house on the Kiyomizu grounds.

We stopped for refreshments at a tea house at Kiyomizu. I had zenzai, which is a sweet soup involving red beans and a chunk of mochi (rice cake); it's a cool-weather food.

Jishu-jinja gate.

Jishu-jinja is a Shinto shrine located within the Kiyomizu Buddhist temple complex; there wasn't any obvious way to even reach it without walking through Kiyomizu.

"Love fortune-telling stone" in Jishu-jinja.

The main attraction at Jishu Shrine is a pair of stones set into the pavement, a fair distance apart. These are labeled koi uranai no ishi (love fortune-telling stones); if you can walk from one to the other with your eyes closed, your romantic hopes will become reality, apparently. That sounds like an anime plot device, and the love stones have indeed turned up in a few shows.

Pagoda on hill south of Kiyomizu-dera.

After a short walk to the ridge to the south you can visit a small pagoda, which is prominently visible in the view from the Kiyomizu deck.

Ferns on the Higashiyama forest floor.

It was nice to get out into the woods for a little while, though the old cedars had been thinned out quite a bit to make way for new plantings of cherry trees, since the last time I was at Kiyomizu, back in the '90s. There were lots of interesting ferns in the forest understory, including the ones here, probably a Gleichenia at upper left and maybe (?) Asplenium at center.

Kyoto Station bentou box.

After Kiyomizu, we gathered up our stuff at the Ryokan, and headed to Kyoto Station to catch the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) back to Tokyo. I grabbed a tasty Kyoto-style autumn box lunch on the way to the train. Some of the assorted Tokyo sightseeing that I wrote about in earlier installments actually happened after the return from Kyoto, but there was only one full day left in the trip by this point, and it felt like my time in Japan was rapidly vanishing.

Shinkansen arriving at Kyoto Station.

Autumn 2009 Anime: Moe Edition

2009-10-10T13:12:00.006-04:00

Mikoto "Railgun" Misaka does not play well with others.

October 10 is (International?) Moe Day, a perfect excuse to get back to writing about the 2D world. This year’s autumn season offers a healthy selection of new, more or less moe shows. I haven’t checked out a couple of obvious bishoujo (pretty girl) offerings that are sequels to titles where I never followed the originals (Asura Cryin’ 2, the new Queen’s Blade), and I haven’t quite felt inspired to check out Sora no Otoshimono, descriptions of which sound… unhealthy. Here are three moe series that I do intend to follow.

Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu: Purezza
(The Secret of Haruka Nogizaka: Purity)
Genres: School Comedy, Otaku
Rank: B+

The original Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu anime was one of the pleasant surprises of 2008, and Purezza is looking to be at least a little above average for this sort of thing. In the sequel, average guy Yuuto Ayase and perfect honor student Haruka Nogizaka continue to s-l-o-w-l-y develop a romantic relationship while trying to hide the fact that Haruka is a secret anime otaku. Yes, that’s an improbable premise on several counts, but last year's version of Nogizaka Haruka had a certain sweet restraint that won me over.

One of the appealing aspects of the 2008 incarnation of Nogizaka Haruka was the show’s high technical standards. These seem to have slipped with Purezza, though the show itself still looks decent, and the opening is outstandingly well animated. The action exhibits signs of trending towards the unpleasantly frantic, unfortunately. The character designs remain lovely and distinctive, sort of midway between mainstream moe and the decadent excesses of 1980s shoujo manga.

Seitokai no Ichizon
(At the Discretion of the Student Council)
Genres: School Comedy, Slice of Life, Otaku
Rank: B-

Kurimu Sakurano is president of the student council at prestigious Hekiyou Academy, and has surrounded herself with officers of outstanding talent and beauty… with the exception of her vice president, the creepy and unnecessarily straightforward ero-game otaku Ken Sugisaki, who announces that he worked to get top grades and the vice presidency for the sole purpose of forcing his company upon the cute girls of the student council. Seitokai no Ichizon follows Ken’s delusional attempts to make the student council into his harem, and the student council’s attempts to ignore, or at least refrain from strangling, Ken.

Setokai no Ichizon seems like it will be saddled with unrealistic cookie-cutter character development (Ken, self-centered jerk with a concealed heart of gold, is a particularly egregious offender), and the production values of the show look cheap. High-moe character designs and a constant stream of anime in-jokes are enough to keep me watching for the time being, but Setokai no Ichizon has essentially zero chance of dethroning Lucky Star as the reigning king of all slacker otaku anime.

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun
(A Certain Railgun of Science)
Genres: Science Fiction, Supernatural Fighting
Rank: A

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun is a side story spinoff of Toaru Majutsu no Index (A Certain Magical Index), which received an excellent anime adaptation last fall. Railgun focuses on a group of second stringers from Index—some of whom didn’t actually appear in the anime except in the OP—centered around Mikoto Misaka, one of the most powerful Level 5 ESPers in Academy City.

As with Index, Railgun mixes shounen-fighting action with bishoujo characters, in a parallel world overflowing with clever sci-fi and supernatural elements. Character designs from the manga are from the clean, simple, relatively naturalistic strain of moe, and the anime has done a beautiful job of transferring them. The animation in Railgun looks downright slick, even better than the already quality work done on Index. I’m really looking forward to seeing what director Tatsuyuki Nagai, of Toradora! fame, does with this material. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun is looking like one of the best of 2009, though it will have a difficult time measuring up to the finale of Kara no Kyoukai and two juggernauts from Kyoto Animation.

Japan '08: Kyoto I

2009-09-15T17:10:00.007-04:00

Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion. Mac OS X includes a nearly identical shot as a desktop image.

We arrived in Kyoto from Nara in the early evening, and after hunting around for a place to eat for a fair amount of time, settled on a Chinese restaurant near Kyoto Tower, across the street from the station. It was OK-ish: one of my few regrets from the trip was that we never got to sample much in the way of genuine Kansai cuisine, which seems to be generally regarded as superior to the vittles available in the Tokyo area. After supper, we got a cab to our ryokan in the Higashiyama (Eastern Mountains) part of town.

Kyoto Tower from Kyoto Station.

The next morning, we took a cab back to the center of the city, and dropped in at the tourist office in Kyoto Station. The available guided tours looked a bit rushed and limited, so we opted for all-day bus passes, a bargain at 500 yen. Actually, just hailing cabs would have been a convenient and reasonably cost-effective way to get around Kyoto too, split three ways. It was easy enough to navigate using buses and the bilingual map from the tourist office, though. There are even three lines that specialize in covering the major sightseeing areas, called Raku Buses.

On the bus in Kyoto.

Kara-mon gate at Nijo Castle.

Our first major stop was Nijou-jou (Nijou Castle), which was constructed over the period of 1601 to 1626 by the early Tokugawa Shoguns. It's in the center of town, north of Kyoto Station. One can tour the outer palace, Ninomaru (visible behind me in the photo above), and contemplate its ancient wall paintings, but photography was prohibited indoors. Ninomaru Palace has uguisu-bari, or nightingale floors, which are designed to squeak when trod upon, as a security measure.

Chrysanthemum exhibit at Nijou Castle.

Cycas revoluta (Sago Palm) in the Nijou Castle gardens.

The Ninomaru Palace gardens are nice, with impressive ponds and rock features. It's warm enough in Kyoto for Sago Palms to survive outdoors.

Inner walls of Nijou Castle.

Nijou Castle has a second ring of moats and walls inside of it, surrounding a smaller complex of buildings, Honmaru Palace. You can't tour inside of Honmaru.

Nijou's Honmaru Palace, from the top of the inner walls.

The Japanese Maples (Acer palmatum) were just starting to change color, in mid-October, but it had been an unusually warm autumn. A few seeds managed to find their way into my luggage somehow, and I have some nice little Nijou-jou maple seedlings coming along now, back in the US.

Road to Kinkaku-ji

After refreshing ourselves with Fanta melon soda from one of those old vending machines that mix soda water and syrup in a paper cup, it was back to the bus stop to catch a ride to the northwestern corner of the city, and Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion. The Buddhist temple complex and the pavilion are officially called Rokuon-ji, but everyone seems to refer to the place as Kinkaku-ji. The original version of the temple dates to 1397, but it has been rebuilt after fires several times, most recently in 1950. The gardens surrounding Kinkaku-ji have remained more or less intact over the centuries.

Gardens outside of the Kinkaku-ji abbot's chamber.

The landscapes around temples and shrines look naturalistic, but they require heroic efforts to maintain. There were gardeners working everywhere at the places I visited in Kyoto. Note the guy pruning the pine in the photo above.

Kinkaku-ji, from across Kyouko-chi pond.

Kinkaku-ji is pretty much the most photogenic object ever created by human hands, and the crowds jockeying for position at good vantage points were overwhelming. It took a fair amount of patience and effort to get photographs like these, without dozens of people in them, though the gardens are arranged to mostly conceal visitors on the other side of the pavilion.

Next time, I'll write about some of the sights in eastern Kyoto.

Japan '08: Nara

2009-07-23T17:23:00.011-04:00

Street near Nara Park.

About midway through my group's time in Japan, we activated our Japan Rail Passes, used the passes to reserve tickets on the shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto and back, and headed west to the Kansai region. The ryokan where we were staying in Tokyo kindly offered to store the bulk of our luggage, so we weren't dragging around 50 pound suitcases of loot from Akihabara. Our first activity was a day trip to Nara, which was the capital of Japan from 710 to 784. Nara wasn't torched in WWII, and you can't throw a rock there without hitting a national cultural treasure or UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Rice fields from the train between Kyoto and Nara.

We got to Kyoto Station about as early as could be expected, for a vacation, and then took the JR Nara Line to Nara Station. The scenery between the two cities is fairly bucolic, with groves of bamboo and rice fields in the middle of harvest. The yellow flowers at the edge of the field in the photo are some goldenrod or other (Solidago sp.), a beloved native wildflower here in New England, and invasive pest in the Far East, apparently. Consider it payback for Kudzu.

My friend Ray was feeling seriously under the weather when we arrived at Nara, but decided to keep going, and managed to soldier through. Many of the famous sights in the city are located in Nara Park, to the east of the station. Considering Ray's delicate condition, we decided to take a taxi to the far side of the park, then work our way down hill, back to the station.

Looking west over Nara from Nigatsu-dou.

Yours truly in front of Nigatsu-dou.

The taxi driver suggested that we start in the Nigatsu-dou ("Second Month Hall") area of the Toudai-ji ("Great Eastern Temple") Buddhist temple complex, and was even nice enough to show us around a little bit. Nigatsu-dou is high up on a hill, with a good view of the city from a balcony that you can walk around. There were student tour groups everywhere in Nara and Kyoto; I don't know if it's always like that or if they only come out at certain times of the year. Some of the kids had an assignment to approach a foreigner and find out about his or her stay in Japan, in English, so Sujith and I (not so much Ray) were waylaid several times a day and asked: "Where are you from?," "What is your favorite Japanese food?," and a couple of other simple questions.

Hand washing fountain to the side of Nigatsu-dou. It was shady and cool in this area, and there was a quiet room where you could take a break and have some tea.

Sangatsu-dou / Hokkei-dou.

Sangatsu-dou ("Third Month Hall," also known as Hokkei-dou) is just next door to Nigatsu-dou. It is the oldest structure in the Todai-ji complex, built around 740-747 CE. For a small fee (around $5), we entered the hall to see the collection of Buddhist statuary inside, much of which also dated to the 8th Century. No interior photography was allowed, I think primarily to protect the ancient paint on some of the statues from harsh light from flashes.

Stairs in Nara Park, between Sangatsu-dou and Toudai-ji Temple.

Shop selling shika senbei (deer crackers) in Nara Park.

Nara Park is crawling with deer, which are semi-tame (they're mostly blasé about people, but don't seem to appreciate close contact) after many centuries of protected status. The deer aren't confined in any way, and meander out into the city to some extent. There was one, which I really wish I had gotten a decent photo of, standing at a bus stop with a bunch of people like a commuter. Concession stands all over the park sell special deer crackers, and usually have a few hungry deer hanging around.

Toudai-ji Temple: Daibutsu-den ("Great Buddha Hall").

The present Todai-ji is gigantic, and supposedly the largest wooden building in the world, but it is still only a 2:3 scale reproduction of a larger edifice first completed in 752. The present incarnation of Toudai-ji dates from 1709. The chairs in front of the building were being set up for a concert; the Buddhist sect that built Toudai-ji is now extinct, and the complex is now to a certain extent given over to secular purposes.

Daibutsu, the Great Buddha (main body and options*).

Inside of the big hall is the 500 ton brass Daibutsu. It's hard to get a sense of the scale of the Daibutsu from photos: it's bigger than it looks.

After checking out Todai-ji, we wandered back out into the city, and took a bus back to the train station for the return trip to Kyoto and our ryokan. The Nara segment of my Japan adventure was definitely rushed, and I would like to return at some point to see more of the sights, particularly Kasuga Shrine and its associated gardens.

--
*Joke stolen from Lucky Star.

Legit Kannagi, too

2009-07-16T16:35:00.003-04:00

It's been an interesting month for US licensing announcements. An official English-language Kannagi website has been up and running since May, and I expected that a release was in the works, but I did not expect a ninja release with the first DVD available the same day as the announcement (through Amazon, with Right Stuf getting in on the action tomorrow). After all of the reorganizations, cancellations and wobbly schedules from American anime companies in recent years, color me impressed.

Kannagi is probably the second best TV anime from 2008; it's very much a bishoujo (pretty girls) genre piece, but handled with more humor and sensitivity to character development than is typical. I wonder when we'll see 2008's show of the year, Toradora, in the US? There are vague indications that Funimation will pick that one up, but nothing definite yet.

Higurashi Sound Novels, in English, Legit

2009-07-04T19:36:00.003-04:00

Manga Gamer has announced that they will be bringing the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (Higurashi - When They Cry) games to English-speaking audiences this fall. The announcement is pretty bare-bones, but I think it's safe to assume they mean the original doujin soft sound novels for Windows, and not the PS2 or DS ports, or for that matter, one of the various incarnations of the Higurashi: Daybreak fighting game. Today's announcement was as follows...

We proudly anouce that we have started the localozation of 'Higurashi when they cry'. We have been getting a lot of requests from MangaGamer's fans to localize the title. We are very excited and happy to be able to relaese this best seller title from MangaGamer.com.

We target to release the title by the end of October. Please stay close with our release schedule.

What a pleasant Independence Day surprise!

--
Update: Anime News Network has more details, based on official word from Manga Gamer at Anime Expo. The first four chapters (the question arcs) are what is coming in October, with the next four chapters (the original answer arcs) to be released about two months later.

Also, I've added photos of the Japanese discs for the original eight chapters.

20th Century Boys, NY Premiere

2009-06-24T17:04:00.010-04:00

I got down to the big city this past Sunday to catch the New York premiere of the first two chapters of a planned trilogy of live-action 20th Century Boys films. The movies were shown as part of the New York Asian Film Festival, at the IFC Center in Greenwich Village. It's an involved process for me to get to lower Manhattan, but 20th Century Boys was well worth the trip: the movies were fantastic. The first chapter, especially, was riveting; the 2.5 hour run time flew by. The second film was a bit slower, and rapidly multiplying plot threads came dangerously close to causing the whole thing to come apart at the seams, but it still managed to entertain while setting up a third chapter that is going to be epic. Part 3 comes out in Japan in August, and the IFC people promised to try to bring it over as quickly as possible.

New York area fans who missed the first showing of the 20th Century Boys double feature will have another chance next month. There will be a repeat performance at the Japan Society on July 4, with complimentary food and beer during the intermission. The films are eminently worthwhile: Naoki Urasawa's sprawling tale of reluctant heroes, evils cults bent on world domination, pop nostalgia, and persistent childhood traumas has received an adaptation that does the original justice. You simply will not see better summer movies than these this year.

Japan '08: Tokyo Miscellany

2009-06-01T17:08:00.009-04:00

In this post, I'm going to cover a few odds and ends from my time around Tokyo. Next time, I'll leave the Kanto region and start delving into Nara and Kyoto.

This run down apartment building was just across the street from the first Ryokan where I stayed, in Hongou. It looks like classic Bohemian student housing. The architecture in residential areas in Japan seems to be much more heterogeneous on average than it is in the US; neighboring houses frequently vary widely in vintage, materials and style.

Here's me at a kaiten-zushi (rotating sushi) joint near the University of Tokyo in Hongou. I wasn't bold enough to place special orders, and just sampled what was going by on the conveyor belt. The plates are color-coded by price, and tea is self service via hot water taps and a tin of powered ocha with a measuring scoop. The other important culinary establishment in Hongou was Hotto Motto, a fast food chain where the bentou (lunch box) style food was hot, cheap, and surprisingly tasty.

I didn't spend as much time in Ikebukuro as I might have, just a quick visit near the beginning of the trip. I made a quick dash through the Tora no Ana branch there, then headed to Cinema Sunshine to watch the Gurren Lagann: Guren-hen movie, which was fantastic, though it was pretty much just a straightforward compilation of the first half of the TV series, except for its final 15 minutes. Fellow traveler Sujith went to see Hokuto no Ken: Zero, which was playing at the same theater, while Ray continued doujinshi shopping at Tora no Ana.

The most convenient way to get into the JR train system when I was staying in Hongou was to head to Ochanomizu, which is between Hongou and Akihabara. Here is one of a pair of picturesque bridges over the Kanda River, viewed from the Ochanomizu JR station.

Here's the view of the river and JR station from the western bridge, looking east. The brightly lit buildings on the horizon are in Akihabara, I believe. I saw this scene many times, transferring between trains after late nights in Akiba.

One of the best meals I had in Japan was in Ochanomizu, at an izakaya (traditional eatery and drinking establishment) called Kanda Wadatsumi. The sashimi was excellent, and we tried out some other odds and ends, too, like oden. A few items were above my Japanese cuisine rating, such as a grayish paste--I can't recall the name--apparently crab-based and meant to accompany drinks, but overall the American contingent made a good showing at the table. R-san gets the credit for recommending Kanda, and also kindly pointing us in the direction of one of her favorite brands of sake, Hakkaisan, which it turns out is available in the US. I recently picked up a bottle at the Mitsuwa shopping center in Jersey.

While waiting for the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) to Kyoto, I picked up a Tokyo Station bentou. Shinkansen stations each offer their own lunch boxes, made with local, seasonal foods. As prepackaged chow goes, it was awfully good.

Kalafina in Boston

2009-05-25T15:39:00.008-04:00

This past Saturday I attended Anime Boston, mainly in order to see Kalafina in their first American concert. I know Kalafina mainly through their role as the vocalists for the music in Kara no Kyoukai - The Garden of Sinners, though I certainly enjoy their other songs.

Producer/composer Yuki Kajiura with Kalafina signing autographs (there was no photography in the concert itself).

As expected, the concert was well worth the trip to Boston. Kalafina have what humorless pop-music snobs would probably describe as an "overproduced" sound, but they held up remarkably well in the live show. I get the impression that some songs, notably oblivious, are really designed with a fair amount of post-production work in mind, but Kalafina got through it in fine form. In the second half of the concert, especially, the audience and the singers started getting enthusiastic, and hearing sprinter towards the end of the show was definitely a chill-inducing experience. The encore was a real treat, and it's a shame that some people had to bail before it got started. For the encore, they ditched the canned instrumental music, and it was just Keiko, Wakana and Hikaru doing a couple of slower songs, with Yuki Kajiura herself on keyboard.

Crumby photo of Kajiura and friends signing my oblivious single.

The opening act for Kalafina was the Video Game Orchestra (Youtube Channel), which proved to be a pleasant surprise. If I were putting together a concert of video game music, I would probably want to cover Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, some Square-Enix standards, and, oh, maybe throw in something token from outside of Japan, like a Halo medley. That's exactly what they played. It was fairly awesome, and I would have bought CDs if they were selling them.

Garden of Sinners promotional flier from the Kalafina table in the dealer's room. Distributer Aniplex was at the convention, but apparently didn't announce anything solid about licenses.

Mmm, New Haruhi

2009-05-21T17:52:00.010-04:00

As people have suspected for a while now, the spring season 2009 rebroadcast of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) actually includes new material, starting with this week's episode. Most excellent. It looks like I've got something to add to the must-watch spring TV anime list, which up until now consisted of K-ON! and Eden of the East.

2008 was sort of a slow year for new TV anime, with only a couple of truly outstanding shows, mostly airing in the autumn. 2009 is shaping up to be considerably more exciting.

Japan '08: Nakano

2009-04-20T16:23:00.004-04:00

Nakano is a shopping and residential area on the western fringes of Tokyo proper. It was a bit out of the way for me, but I made two trips there, lured primarily by the shopping opportunities.
It's common in Japan for political candidates to harangue the voters from street corners, using vans with loudspeakers. Everyone seems to ignore them. As near as I could make out, this fellow in front of the Nakano train station was concerned about the recession and the evil influence of the American economy. My friends and I listened in while eating tasty imagawa yaki (cakes with red bean paste) from a store behind the van.

Nakano Broadway is a multistory shopping mall at the far end of the Sun Mall covered shopping arcade, just outside of the north exit from the JR Nakano Station. The first floor is conventional, but the upper floors are dominated by anime, manga, figure and costume shops.

The Mandarake Main Branch is located in Nakano Broadway, where it opened way back in 1987. Mandarake Nakano is fragmented into more than a dozen specialty shops scattered around the mall; this is the used manga outlet, which is the heart of the operation. In general, Mandarake and the other anime-related stores in Nakano Broadway seem to focus on classic material and used goods, compared to the trendier shops in Akihabara. Nakano predates Akiba as an otaku destination, after all.

Nakano Broadway seems to be in the midst of a decline, as was mentioned in one of the episodes of the TV anime Mahoutsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora last year. In the darker corners of the upper floors, there were quite a few storefronts that were permanently shuttered. Mandarake itself looked about as busy as when I was last there, in the 1990s, anyway.

Japan '08: Harajuku

2009-03-07T10:30:00.005-05:00

Entrance to Yoyogi Park in Harajuku.

There is an obnoxious stereotype that underlies much of the discussion of Japan on the internet, and even worms its way into supposedly serious consideration of the Far East in mainstream media. Apparently, the country's population consists mostly of pretty ladies in kimonos who spend their days performing tea ceremonies, and weirdos who wish they were American. Nobody I know in Japan fits into either category, but walking around Harajuku on a warm Sunday afternoon, you can sort of see where a naive visitor could get that impression. I would not presume to say that the guys in the photo above (or their poodle-skirted girlfriends) literally want to be 1950s Jerseyites, but they certainly have a peculiarly well-developed interest in certain aspects of American pop culture.

Walkway in Yoyogi Park.

Harajuku is in the western portion of Tokyo, midway between Shibuya and Shinjuku, and thus on the opposite side of town from where my gang was staying. We headed there on a Sunday, which is when amateur musicians congregate in Yoyogi Park, as well as a peak time for people to visit nearby Meiji Shrine. Quite a few fellow tourists apparently thought out their sightseeing itineraries along the same lines that we did. So, the place was completely overrun by visual rockers, goths, German backpackers and ladies in kimonos, and was eerily similar to the Japan of internet and TV fantasy, at least superficially.

Prime Addict at Yoyogi Park. These guys struck me as one of the more enjoyable and polished acts in the park that day.

The musicians congregate along the road through the southern side of Yoyogi Park (best reached from the JR Harajuku Station: just follow the throngs over the bridge over the tracks, and bear left). The performances ranged in degree of elaboration from lone guys with guitars, up to nearly professional bands with truckloads of equipment and cadres of groupies.

Path to Meiji Jingu from Harajuku Station.

Meiji Shrine, dedicated to Emperor Meiji (1852-1912), is one of the major Shinto shrines in Tokyo. It's located on the east side of Yoyogi Park, in a densely forested area that also functions as an arboretum of native trees. The trees at the entrance in the photo are Camphor, Cinnamomum camphora.

Giant gate along the way to Meiji Jingu.

I probably saw more people in kimonos during a quick dash through Meiji Shrine than on the entire remainder of the trip, including lengthy tours of Nara and Kyoto. It's a pleasant walk to the shrine from Harajuku Station; you'd hardly think you were in the middle of Tokyo.

Street protest in Harajuku.

Later, we ran into this protest march, which as near as I could tell was concerned with poverty and the banking crisis. 60s-style student radicals, with hardhats and bandannas covering their faces, were conspicuous by their absence, which was sort of disappointing.

John and Sujith at Fujimamas.

My ex-pat friend John was kind enough to show us around Harajuku for the day. After getting the tour, we headed to Fujimamas, an Asian fusion bar and restaurant that John frequents. The Japanese beer industry has long been dominated by a handful of giant breweries, which produce quality if somewhat monotonous product. Small independent brands seem to be starting to catch on, though, and I wonder if the Japanese beer market isn't going through something like the microbrew revolution that happened in the US 30 years ago.

Japan '08: Shibuya

2009-02-13T17:22:00.009-05:00

The 109 building in front of Shibuya Station. This intersection appears all the time in film and anime, usually viewed from above with thousands of people in the cross walks.

Shibuya is best known as a place for hip young cosmopolitan urbanites window-shopping for $400 shirts; in this respect it is not really ideal Matt habitat. Shibuya does include some prime sight-seeing opportunities, though, as well as a couple of O.G. anime shopping venues.

Here is the statue of Hachikou, in a little park just outside of the Hachikou gate in Shibuya Station. This is a really famous place to arrange to meet people, and like the neighboring intersection, frequently gets referenced in various media. The statue commemorates a loyal dog who would meet his master at the station every evening at the same time. Even after his owner died, Hachikou would come to the station and wait.

Mandarake, Shibuya shop: the Rulers of Time.

Mandarake Shibuya is one of the oldest Tokyo otaku landmarks (some half-hearted searching failed to turn up the date when it opened, but it was well established in the mid-1990s). Mandarake strictly deals in used goods, and carries a little bit (actually, a lot) of everything that has an otaku following: toys, anime, games, manga and doujinshi.

Shibuya Mandarake is intimidating. The stairs are dark and made up to be somewhat cave-like, and it's a surprisingly long descent to the Area-51-warehouse-like shop. The stairwell ends in the boy's-love section, in an arrangement that almost seems designed to scare off more timid souls, who would be well served taking the elevator in the center of the building. Once I was safely through the yaoi gauntlet and sorting through used anime DVDs, however, all was right with the world.

The Mandarake chain plays music over its P.A system, like all of the anime stores. Mandarake always had the best tunes, though, with famous themes from the likes of Z Gundam, Macross, Evangelion in heavy rotation, interspersed with more obscure material. I just about plotzed when I recognized the theme for Cougar-Man, the fake sentai show in Masami Yuuki's 1990 OAV Assemble Insert, coming over the loudspeakers at the Shibuya branch. A store that is playing the Cougar-Man theme for its patrons in 2008 is hard core: these guys are the rulers of time.

Bome 10th anniversary exhibit in Parco Factory, Shibuya.

After dragging ourselves away from Mandarake, Ray and I (Sujith was off playing Street Fighter IV at an arcade, I think) dropped in on the local COSPA, then checked out an art gallery exhibit on the history of bishoujo figure sculptor Bome, at Shibuya Parco, a hoity-toity department store. I'm not much of a figure collector, but it was fascinating to see the evolution of Monsieur Bome's talent from his garage-kit days in the 1980s. An early sculpture of Lum from Urusei Yatsura almost looks like something that I could have attempted in my misspent youth; his modern stuff is almost miraculous in the way that it takes fundamentally two-dimensional characters and makes them into three-dimensional objects.

Catalog and flier for the Bome Exhibition.

Lucky Star Tourism Research

2009-01-09T16:31:00.005-05:00

Lucky Star related visits to Washinomiya Shrine have been in the news again this week, with the start of 2009 bringing a record number of hatsumoude (New Year's visits)--about 420,000 people according to Animaxis--to Washimiya, with many pilgrimages no doubt inspired by the continued popularity of Kyoani's slice-of-life comedy. The Lucky Star tourism phenomenon is apparently starting to attract some academic attention, with Takayoshi Yamamura, a cultural tourism expert from Kyoto Saga University of Arts, recently writing a paper titled: "Study of the birth and development of a sacred place for anime fans." An abstract is available in English, though the paper itself is Japanese only:

This paper is a survey of how the town of Washimiya became the "sacred place" for anime fans ever since fans from all around the country rushed to visit the town after it was used as a setting for the animation "Lucky Star," leading also to the town successfully holding two events for these fans. The following three points were discussed.
1)The process leading up to the town becoming a "sacred place."
2)The process leading up to the town welcoming tourists.
3)The roles of tourist related corporations outside the town.
As a result, it was found that in each process the local commerce and industry association played a central role. It was also found that with the town's commerce and industry association at the core, a local shrine, local shops, fans, and corporations from outside the region (copyright owners and a tourist agency) were able to build a relationship of mutual benefit as a backdrop to the current success.

Anyone out there feel comfortable reading communication science papers in Nihongo?

Yamamura, T. 2008. Study of birth and development of "sacred place for anime fans": discussion of tourist promotions based on animated work "Lucky Star" focused on Washimiya, Saitama Prefecture. The Journal of International Media, Communication, and Tourism Studies 7: 145-164.

Japan '08: Ghibli Museum

2009-01-07T15:46:00.012-05:00

Studio Ghibli, of Totoro, Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke fame, operates a small museum on the outskirts of Tokyo, on the edge of Inokashira Park in Mitaka. The Ghibli Bijutsukan isn't a traditional museum so much as an attempt to recreate the ambiance of a Hayao Miyazaki film in three dimensions: the interior space is all dark wood, brass, wrought iron and rough stone; there are alcoves and stairs of doubtful utility everywhere and a lingering smell of cedar in the air. The grounds and even the roof the museum (where the Laputa robot in the photo lives) are landscaped with a chaotic half-wild mix of ferns, grass and trees. The closest thing to an ordinary museum exhibit is probably a studio mock-up, where you are permitted to leaf through original pencil storyboards (my group spent a good 20 minutes very carefully poring over Miyazaki's latest, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea). A visit to the Museum is, I suspect, a bit like spending a short vacation inside of Miyazaki's brain.

It's easy to find the Museum from Mitaka Station: just head out of the south exit, and follow the path along the stream angling off to the left, to the park. Or you can just look for the Totoro-themed bus (round trip tickets, purchased from a vending machine at the bus stop, are 300 yen).

Access to the Ghibli Museum is limited to a set number of ticket holders per day, and it tends to sell out well in advance. It's easiest and safest for American visitors to arrange for tickets through JTB before leaving the States. I used JTB for plane tickets and rail passes as well, by the way, and have nothing but good things to say about them; their airfares were cheaper than anything I could find through the usual online sources.

There's a fake ticket booth off to the side of the real entrance to the museum, staffed by Big Totoro. We visited on a national holiday, so the usual Connecticut schlemiels were joined by native guides R.-san and S.-chan, who had the day off.

Photographs aren't allowed inside of the Ghibli Museum, so my visual documentation is limited to the outdoor exhibits. Inside, we saw a film, Whale Hunt, which is one of a series of shorts only available for viewing at the museum. The film rotates every month, and R-san says that she returned in December to see the Totoro spinoff, Mei and the Kitten Bus. Whale Hunt was excellent, but I'm still jealous. Also inside the museum was a room full of animation-related displays and contraptions, the most impressive of which was a bunch of 3-D model tableaus involving Totoros on a table, which created a little looping animation when spun.

Here's me at the stone control panel on the roof. Presumably, only Miyazaki himself knows the incantation that causes the museum to self-destruct. I couldn't even figure out how to make the cafe give me a free beer.

Here we are at the deck outside of the museum eatery, the Straw Hat Cafe. There is a sit-down area inside, but it was totally jammed, so we ordered from the takeout window and ate outside. The menu has sort of a picnic theme, with a limited selection of sandwiches available. The cafe's exclusive brew, Kaze no Tani (Valley of the Wind) Beer, is good stuff, a bit meatier than the usual from Kirin/Sapporo/Asahi.

Japan Expedition 2008

2009-01-07T14:26:00.016-05:00

Stone lantern in the courtyard of Heian Shrine, Kyoto.

Last October, I spent two weeks on vacation in Japan. As I get around to writing about the highlights of the trip, links will be collected here.

Introduction - liveblogging Japan.
Overview - basic rundown on the trip, posted at Burger's Onion.
Lodging - where we stayed.
Washinomiya Shrine - the oldest shrine in the Kanto region, now the destination for a new type of pilgrim.
Asakusa - iconic Tokyo cultural sites.
Odaiba - Tokyo's artificial island utopia of the future, today.
Akihabara I - an introduction to the anime city.
Akihabara II - in which our heroes sightsee, appear on national television, and selflessly attempt to mitigate the Japanese recession through consumer spending.
Shinjuku - skyscrapers in the heart of Tokyo.
Ghibli Museum - a journey into Hayao Miyazaki's mind, with a goth-loli cosplayer guide.
Shibuya - old and new Tokyo collide.
Harajuku - indie rockers, ex-pats and Shintoists mingle in Yoyogi Park, in what is probably some sort of allegory about the importance of tolerance.
Nakano - before Akihabara, there was Nakano Broadway.
Tokyo Miscellany - quick odds 'n' ends from Ochanomizu, Hongou and Ikebukuro.
Nara - a day trip and 1300 years of history in one of Japan's old capitals.
Kyoto I (central and western) - another former capital. Bring spare camera batteries.
Kyoto II (eastern) - the Higashiyama district, the wellspring of Japanese culture, according to tourist pamphlets from prominent Higashiyama attractions.
Loot Roundup - K-Books is a harsh mistress.
Japan Trip Finale - all's well that ends well. Mostly.

Japan '08: Shinjuku

2008-12-23T16:32:00.005-05:00

Shinjuku looking southeast (Tokyo Tower is the orangish spire at center on the horizon).

Shinjuku, in west-central Tokyo, is the place with all the giant skyscrapers familiar from travel brochures. The most recognizable structure in the area is the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, with its twin towers. You can take the elevator to an observation deck on the 45th floor for free, for superb views of the greater Tokyo area.

This is the view out to the northeast, towards Hongou and my home base at Homeikan Ryokan. It's too far away to see much detail in that part of the city--Tokyo is mind-bogglingly huge--but I'm pretty sure you can make out Tokyo Dome a little right of center, which is fairly close to where I was staying.

Shinjuku is a high-powered business and government oriented place, with attendant upscale and semi-upscale restaurants where we wound up eating dinner on several occasions. We tried Toriyoshi on our first full day in Japan, on the recommendation of Ray's friends Manami and Hiromi. Toriyoshi is a small chain of restaurants that specializes in yakitori and other chicken-oriented dishes, and was good, if not exactly my thing. Ootoya, a nationwide chain, is highly recommended for tasty food, including many seasonal items, at reasonable prices.

The one significant failure of the trip occured in Shinjuku: we tried to catch Biohazard: Degeneration (A.K.A. Resident Evil: Degeneration) in the theater on its opening day, but it was sold out by the time we tried to get tickets. As setbacks go, that was pretty minor; Biohazard was relatively low on my list of movies to see in Japan.

Japan '08: Akiba Fun

2008-12-09T16:36:00.015-05:00

Nanoha-themed itasha on a Sunday in Akiba.

In some ways it's easier to deal with Akihabara on week days, but to get the full effect it is necessary to visit on a weekend, when the sidewalks and streets are crammed with otaku weirdos (and I mean otaku weirdos in the best possible sense: good people, salt of the earth). The crowd in the background of this photo isn't lined up for anything; there are just a lot of people everywhere on a Saturday or Sunday in Akiba. Supposedly, the crowds have thinned out a bit since a violent incident this past summer, but when I was there in October it wasn't exactly obvious how more people could have been fit into the place.

The anime and game-themed cars in the photo are known as itasha, and are owned by dedicated fans, not created as some kind of advertising gimmick. I saw about half a dozen different itasha around Akiba on various visits, plus an Aria Company car in Hongou near my ryokan (probably heading to Akiba).

Kannagi display outside of Tora no Ana, with suspicious foreigner.

Kannagi posters and ads were all over the place in Akihabara, but since the anime had just started, there weren't any Kannagi-related goods for sale except the original manga. That's probably just as well, because I probably would have feverishly snapped up anything that was available. This photo was taken mid-morning, while it was still possible to find some elbow room in front of Tora no Ana. The shops in Akiba keep otaku hours--meaning almost nothing opens before 10 or 11:00 AM--which was generally inconvenient but allowed for some unhurried early photography.

Evangelion coin lockers in Akiba.

Good ol' Evangelion is still popular, and probably experiencing a resurgence with the new movies now being produced. I should have taken a photo of the wall of lockers labeled with takeoffs on Eva jargon and episode titles, too ("Luggage Instrumentality Project," etc.). There are also new Evangelion pachinko machines, and pachinko parlors everywhere, not just in Akihabara, were heavily advertising them. I tried pachinko once, and couldn't wait for the game to finish, so I didn't actually feel the need to blow 2000 yen this time, even with the lure of an Eva theme.

Higurashi related ads inside of the Akihabara Animate.

I was happy to see that the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni franchise is still going strong, though I was in Japan a little too early to pick up a copy of Higurashi Daybreak Portable (the Higurashi fighting game(!)) for the PSP, advertised in the center poster. I did get some DVDs, fake Furude Shrine charms and other cool Higurashi swag.

Aso Tarou billboard along Chuo Street in Akihabara.

One of the stranger sights around Akiba this fall was the cartoon visage of Japan's Prime Minister as of September, Tarou Aso, on signs and packaged snacks, coupled with slogans like "Oretachi no Tarou" ("Our Tarou"). Aso has the reputation of being an avid manga reader, and friendly to otaku interests, if not exactly an otaku himself.

Signs outside of Maid Cafe Pinafore.

Just outside of the station on our first trip to Akihabara, the gang and I were approached by a cameraman and an interpreter working for Nihon TV, who were filming a special on otaku for News REALTIME, a national news magazine-type show. We talked for a while, and while the NTV crew seemed mainly interested in the subject of gravure idols--about which none of us (except maybe Ray) knows anything--we wound up taking a mini-tour of Akiba with the cameraman and then heading for lunch at Maid Cafe Pinafore, with the drinks on NTV. For the ordinary civilians reading this, maid cafes are mainly an Akiba phenomenon, sort of like Hooters but with French maid-ish outfits instead of short shorts for the waitresses.

So, we had lunch, did some interviewing, and hammed it up for the camera with the maids. Our hosts said that they would contact one of my Japanese friends before the segment aired, but nothing happened for quite a while, and I thought that was the end of it. But just last week, I found out that the RealTime otaku show had been broadcast on Thanksgiving, after being postponed three times, and that my friend Ryoko had recorded it (thanks, R.-san!). I received a DVD the other day, and while I think that our segment wasn't as embarrassing as most of the other extended interviews, we were clearly playing the role of crazy foreigners with an excessive interest in goofy Japanese pop culture. It's a fair cop, but society's to blame.

The News RealTime otaku show.

After Cafe Pinafore and the end of our Japanese TV career, Sujith was done with maid cafes, but Ray and I checked out other establishments on subsequent Akiba runs. The @home cafe is probably the best known maid cafe, to the point where it can be hard to get a seat, but it clearly deserves its solid reputation. Cafe With Cat, which occupies a floor at Tora no Ana ("The Tiger's Den"), was also quite nice.

Japan '08: Akihabara Introduction

2008-12-04T17:18:00.010-05:00

The Akihabara district has been known since the post-war period as Tokyo's "Electric Town," and there are still plenty of places to buy consumer electronics, and even a few claustrophobic shopping arcades with tiny shops selling diodes and resistors. But in the past decade, "Akiba" has become the center of 2-dimensional culture in Japan, steadily overtaken by waves of anime shops, arcades, visual novel stalls, maid cafes and doujinshi (fan-produced work) stores. No doubt the transition from open air home appliance outlet mall to moe Märchenland has been upsetting for some, but it's made things vastly more interesting to otaku like me: I didn't even bother visiting Akihabara when I was in Tokyo ten years ago (instead doing anime shopping in Shibuya and Nakano), but I practically lived in the place this time around.

Radio Kaikan; note the billboard for Toaru Majutsu no Index, one of the better new TV anime for the autumn season.

Akiba is completely overwhelming at first, but it's easy enough to start exploring. Akihabara Channel has a nice annotated map for planning ahead of time. Take the Electric Town exit from the JR Akihabara Station, and you'll find yourself on a closed off side street. Just across the way is yellow neon sign, marking the Radio Kaikan building, which is not only a good landmark for meetings with friends, but also hosts critical shopping locations K-Books and Kotobukiya. Kotobukiya offers a relatively non-threatening mainstream anime character-goods shopping experience, while K-Books is deep otaku territory. Radio Kaikan is also the meeting place for free Akiba tours, which are offered on a somewhat irregular basis and must be booked in advance. I wanted to try the tour, but the timing never worked out.

Looking towards the Akiba Electric Town Exit, across Chuo Street; Gamers on the left and the Radio Kaikan sign peeking out on the lower right.

Just up the street and opposite Radio Kaikan is the Akihabara branch of Gamers, one of two nationwide chains specializing in official anime character-goods (their competition is Animate). There is usually an information table on the sidewalk outside of Gamers, which offers free maps in English or Japanese. Past Gamers is the main drag through Akiba, Chuo Street, along which are located doujinshi emporium Tora no Ana, Animate, and several branches of electronics/DVD/game retailer Sofmap. On the far side of Chuo Street, to the northwest of the train station, is a warren of minor streets where the bulk of the remaining Akiba attractions are located, including Mandarake, Geestore Akiba (COSPA), and dozens and dozens of smaller independent shops and maid cafes.

More Akiba fun later...

Japan '08: Odaiba

2008-11-22T16:05:00.004-05:00

Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo, from the Decks Tokyo Beach shopping mall.

One afternoon, my friends and I trekked out to Odaiba, an area of modern developments on artificial land in Tokyo Bay. First stop was the Decks shopping mall, where we had lunch buffet (baikingu, or viking style as they say in Japan) at an Indian restaurant, Khazana. The food was pretty good, and the place had an outdoor terrace with a fantastic view over the bay to Tokyo. There was hardly anyone else around; presumably Decks would be a lot more crowded on a weekend.

Sujith and Initial D Arcade Stage 4 Limited.

We visited Tokyo Joypolis at Decks, mainly to check out some new video games. Joypolis is either a very large arcade, or an ultracompact amusement park, depending on how you look at it. Sujith waited in a short line (an advantage of coming on a weekday) to play Initial D 4, on a special setup with real cars on actuators. He didn't win his race, but he chose a tough course and the strongest opponent, against the recommendation of the attendant. And, he did get to use the tofu shop car. The guys also tried out House of the Dead 4 Special, while I found an old Puyo Puyo SUN machine in a corner.

Tokyo Big Sight

On the other side of the island, we made a stop at Tokyo Big Sight, known to us fanboys as the venue for Comiket, but in use the day we were there for some sort of business convention. Some people are apparently so impressed by the craftsmanship of the pyramids in Egypt that they wonder if mere humans could have built the things; it seems to me you'd have to be pretty hopeless as an architect to fail to design a workable pyramid. But constructing a building out of upside down pyramids: that is impressive.

Public art outside of Tokyo Big Sight.

Odaiba is a strange place, like a combination theme park and city-sized corporate campus. It's all empty public space, studded with eccentric modern architecture; the atmosphere struck me as downright surreal. Even the train line that services the area is like something out of a scifi dystopia: the trains are automated, with no driver on board. It was fun to see it once, but Odaiba would be pretty low on my list of priorities for a return visit, unless there was a chance to catch a Comiket.

Japan '08: Asakusa

2008-11-20T17:05:00.006-05:00

Kaminari Mon, the main gate leading into the temple complex and shopping arcade at Asakusa.

Probably the most famous temple and associated cultural sites in Tokyo are located in Asakusa, in the northeastern part of the city, not far from where we stayed in Hongou. The main attraction, Senso-ji Buddhist Temple, was destroyed in World War II, but rebuilt in the 1950s. Throughout October and up to November 25, they are having special celebrations to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the re-dedication of the temple.

Larger temples and shrines in Japan tend to have touristy commercial districts associated with them. The Nakamise shopping arcade inside of Kaminari Mon, along the street leading to Senso-ji, is especially extravagant. You can get a pretty decent lunch by hitting the food stalls, then shop for o-miyage (souvenirs). I bought some reproduction old fashioned money from the Nakamise Association booth, which technically could have been used like cash at Association businesses, though it seemed a shame to spend it.

Nakamise money and my fortune from Senso-ji.

Omikuji at Senso-ji Temple yielded kichi (good fortune), which is almost the best outcome. It seems to me that omikuji has a strong bias towards more or less happy fortunes; I've done it a bunch of times and never gotten one of the variations on kyou (curse or bad luck). It's too bad, because if you get kyou, you can engage in another odd little temple/shrine activity: folding up the paper and tying it to a branch or wire frame on the temple grounds, in order to undo the fortune.

Alter inside of the main hall at Senso-ji.

We visited Asakusa on a weekday, but things were still incredibly busy; the crowd was 10 people deep around the main devotional area in Senso-ji.

Japan '08: Washinomiya Shrine

2008-11-11T17:07:00.024-05:00

On our first full day in Japan, we decided to visit Washinomiya Jinja, a Shinto shrine in Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo, which is probably the oldest shrine in the Kanto region, having supposedly been founded by the god Amenohohi prior to 660 BCE. Rather more recently, Washinomiya has gained fame as the inspiration for some of the settings in the 2007 anime version of Lucky Star.

Washinomiya is located pretty far out in the sticks, relatively speaking, and getting there from home base in Hongou involved a couple of transfers, so the outing served as our baptism by fire into the Tokyo train system. We took it slowly, and didn't get lost. Actually, we never once got turned around on the trains the whole trip, which is partly due to preparation (Ray in particular gets props for figuring things out ahead of time), and partly due to the fact that the train system has gotten a whole lot more user friendly than it was when I was last in Tokyo, about 10 years ago. The signage in the stations and on the trains themselves is really thorough, and mostly includes romanized place names, and the stations on a line are now given consecutive numbers, which makes it easy to tell if you're going in the right direction.

Ueno Station in Tokyo, relatively quiet after rush hour.

The biggest improvement to the train system has been the introduction of prepaid fare cards that you just swipe at the gates at your starting point and destination, as opposed the old system (still available if you're a masochist) of trying to figure out what your fare is going to be from a map and buying tickets for the right amount at a vending machine. You don't even have to take the card out; it has an RFID chip that generally works if you nonchalantly wave your wallet over the reader. Probably the most important single piece of advice that I can give to prospective visitors to Tokyo is: buy a Suica or Pasmo card (the two competing card types are equivalent, so just pick one at random) as soon as you arrive at the airport. We got a special deal for tourists, that included a Suica card with some money on it and a ticket on the Narita Express from the airport to Tokyo Station at a discount price.

Washinomiya Station, with Sujith (L) and Ray (R).

Washimiya--the town--where Washinomiya--the shrine--is located, was about an hour and a half from Ueno Station, though we were taking our time and being cautious about catching the right trains. kc_komicer provides good directions. Basically, you take the Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line to Kita-Senju Station. There, catch the Tobu-Isesaki Line (the main train line through Saitama). We took a rapid train to Kuki Station, then got on a local train for a one station hop to Washinomiya. There might have been other options--it looked like there was a limited express from Kita-Senju that stopped at Washinomiya--but this route seemed like it would be quick and certain.

Garden in Washimiya with orange trees, persimmons, figs, etc.

Washimiya is a pleasant, quiet place, at least late morning on a Friday; my neighborhood in rural Connecticut is noisy in comparison. Use the East exit from the station, walk up the main drag and work your way over to the wooded area visible to the left, which is Washinomiya.

Washinomiya Shrine main gate, live action and anime versions.

Sadly, neither my friends nor the old guy sitting in front of the tea shop in the photo of the actual gate were much inclined to do the dance. The Washinomiya expedition was on October 10th (Moe Day, coincidentally) but it was pretty hot, especially out in the sun. According to the natives, the weather was unusually warm for that time of year; I wished I had brought more short sleeved shirts.

Walkway inside of the gates, 3-D and Lucky Star modes.

If I was really hardcore, I would have had some printouts of key Lucky Star scenes with me, in order to search for good photos. This shot of the entryway to the shrine was just an interesting view; I noticed it was present in the anime only after my return to the U.S. It's probably just as well my preparations didn't go that far; I received enough ribbing from my Japanese friends just for visiting Saitama to see anime locales ("Uwaa, mania sugiru!" or something along those lines). Much of the shrubbery to the right in the background is Osmanthus aurantiaca, (Kinmokusei, Orange Fragrant Olive), which was in bloom and gave the whole area a citrusy smell.

A cherry tree (sakura).

Cherry trees were planted all along the main walkway; it must be nice in spring. This was a particularly gnarled old specimen that must have an associated spirit or some such in order to warrant the shimenawa (ceremonial ropes) with shide (folded paper wards) around it. If years of watching anime have taught me anything, something interesting would happen if you tripped and broke the rope. Nobody tripped. The grassy green leaves growing on the side of the trunk are an epiphytic fern, probably Lepisorus thunbergianus, that was pretty widespread on old trees in Tokyo and Kyoto.

Washinomiya Ema stand.

Shinto shrines sell wooden plaques (ema) on which visitors can write their wishes and hopes (and sometimes just random chatty observations), and provide a place to hang the finished work. Washinomiya has been getting a good amount of otaku traffic since Lucky Star aired, so there are lots of funky ema, and even a few from foreign visitors.

Before you get to the main shrine plaza, there's a washing station, where you are meant to purify yourself before entering. Ray demonstrates: you wash your left hand, then the right, then take a sip from your left hand and rinse your mouth. Most people seem to drink the water, though you should read the signs (or watch what other people do if your Nihongo is shaky), because the hand washing areas at some shrines and temples are marked as being non-potable. At right there's a really impressive female Ginkgo tree, which was just starting to shed seed. I snagged a few fallen seeds and brought them back to the US, and will have to see if I can grow some Washinomiya Ginkgos.

Sujith and me at the shop.

Shrines and temples include stores where you can buy omamori (charms for protection in various endeavors: studying, childbirth, traffic safety, etc.), ofuda (paper wards with writing and seals), or get your fortune told via omikuji lottery. I picked up some shrine goods, and did omikuji. To get your fortune, you pay the cute miko (shrine maiden) 100 yen, shake up a container and draw a stick, tell the miko the number on the stick, and receive a slip of paper. At Washinomiya, I got shou-kichi (small fortune), which is so-so.

Shou-kichi or no, things seemed to work out well on this trip. For example, by dumb luck we happened to visit Washinomiya Shrine on one of its seven annual festival days. When we first arrived, around 10:00, the staff seemed to be doing something with relics in the inner part of the shrine, but the area was closed off to the general public and it was hard to see what was going on. Later on, the action moved to a public area, with music and much ceremony, all picturesque if more or less incomprehensible for us gaikokujin.

Ootori Tea Shop bulletin board.

After we were all matsuri-ed out, we headed back to the ancient-looking tea shop, Ootori Chaya, just outside of the gate. Ootori is a traditional eatery in most respects, but the local youth group that operates the place [ref.] has taken up the Lucky Star theme with a vengeance.

Their menu, for instance, lists the usual tempura, udon, soba and dango, but many items have been given names that are puns or references from Lucky Star or other anime. For better or worse, I did not sample Tsukasa's Balsamic Vinegar Parfait, though I sort of wish that I had. It's easy to say things like that, now that I'm safely thousands of miles away from Japan.

The interior of Ootori Tea Shop is decorated with Lucky Star memorabilia, including signatures from voice actors and anime staff who have visited Washimiya.

Ray, Sujith and lunch at Ootori.

The food was ordinary light fare, but tasty. After lunch, I snagged a few more souvenirs, including a Sacred Land Washinomiya t-shirt (visible behind the guys) and we made our way back to the city. That evening I caught a movie (Gurren Lagann) on my own, and then we all went out to dinner in Shinjuku with some of Ray's Tokyoite friends. All in all, it was a really satisfying day: a bit laid back, but with enough challenges to get us into the swing of things, and enough excitement and outdoor activity to keep 13 hours of jet lag from overwhelming us.

From the M.J. Political Desk

2008-11-05T16:17:00.004-05:00

I'm feeling pretty good about the election. No mistake, the problems that Obama will face come January are formidable, and all of us here in the U.S. should be prepared to hold the president elect's feet to the fire about bringing Bush's various wars to swift and humane conclusions, effectively re-regulating the economy, restoring eroded civil liberties, bringing balance, transparency and accountability back to the federal government, enforcing environmental regulations, awarding political and judicial appointments based on the merits of the candidates, ending government use of torture and secret offshore prisons, and fixing a thousand other things that have gone to hell in the past eight years. The really broad scale, long term problems that the world is staring down--environmental degradation and the depletion of natural resources--might be beyond the ability of any leader to address, no matter how capable and well-intentioned they are.

Still, and cheesy as it sounds, I felt something while watching the results last night that I haven't felt convincingly in a while: hope for the future of the country, hope that progress is possible, hope that something, besides video games and moe character designs, might have been getting better amidst 30 years of creeping neoconservative cultural rot. At one point after Obama's victory was certain, a reporter talked to some grizzled old civil rights activists, and the hardened veterans of a decades long and still ongoing struggle had to choke back tears of joy: the country had achieved something that they had never imagined could happen in their lifetimes. It may just be for a few hours or a few days, but I can't maintain a drop of cynicism in the face of a scene like that.

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I'll continue with Japan trip reports next week; election aside, this week is impossibly busy.

Japan '08: Lodging

2008-10-26T15:36:00.020-04:00

During the planning phases for our Japan trip, expedition members Sujith, Ray, and I quickly came to the conclusion that while staying in western-style hotels near major train stations would be convenient, it would also be relatively expensive and boring. So, we decided to reserve rooms at ryokans, or traditional Japanese inns.

Our first and longest stay was at Homeikan Morikawa Annex [Homeikan main site], in the Hongou area of Tokyo. It's about a 10 minute walk from the Hongou San-choume subway station, which is a little off of the beaten path, but convenient to Akihabara (two stops away, with a short walk to a JR station at Ochanomizu). Actually, you can just walk to Akihabara from Hongou; it took me half an hour, at a moderately brisk pace.

Hongou is an interesting place in its own right; the residential area where the various Homeikan branches are located is just across the street from what is possibly Japan's most respected institute of higher learning, Tokyo Daigaku (The University of Tokyo, or "Todai"). That's me in front of the famous clock tower, which actually seems to be the entryway to the cafeteria. Eat your heart out, Keitarou Urashima. The campus is a nice place to take a stroll, and I didn't have any difficulties entering, just marching by the security guards. The locals apparently take advantage of the open space for dog walking.

This is the alley in back of Homeikan Morikawa Annex. I thought the wall with spikes was interesting; I would vaguely imagine that it's a legacy of leaner, meaner times in Japan when the building was constructed, and can't imagine they serve any pressing security needs today.

Upon entering a ryokan, you take off your shoes and stow them in a cubby, and put on the provided indoor slippers. Homeikan Morikawa provides a computer for guest use is in an alcove at the right. The Morikawa Annex has a really pretty little garden at the entryway. That's Ray in picture, by the way.

Rooms at a ryokan have tatami mat floors and a table with cushions around it for lounging (hot water and tea making materials are provided, as well as a few snacks). Futons are put out at night, and rolled up during the day. At most places you can get breakfast and possibly dinner (no dinners at Homeikan) served in your room by exceedingly polite hotel staff, which is a good experience, though probably not very cost effective. This photo was taken the first day, before we unpacked and started shopping, which kind of wrecked the spare aesthetics of the place.

Facilities at a ryokan are all public; it's sort of like being in a college dorm. In the hallways there are sinks for washing up and brushing teeth, Maison Ikkoku style. All the places we stayed had western toilets, as well as the dreaded Japanese no-seat variety. As in private homes in Japan, there are special slippers to wear inside of the toilet room: you take off your normal indoor slippers as you enter, and put on the bathroom-only slippers.

Baths (ofuro) at ryokans are often communal, too, which is a bit awkward for us New Englanders. Actually, all the places we stayed had foreigner-friendly private bath options, with lockable doors. Whether you brave the public area or not, the general idea at a Japanese bath is to rinse off outside the tub, briefly enter the tub, scrub thoroughly while sitting at the faucets outside of the tub, and only when clean and rinsed enter the tub for a good soak.

At the end of our trip, we stayed for a couple of days at the Homeikan Daimachi Annex, which is a couple of blocks from Morikawa (which sort of felt like our home in Nippon). Daimachi was a larger, busier place, with perhaps a bit more room to spread out. We had the balcony pictured here off of our tatami area, for instance.

Homeikan Daimachi also had a lovely courtyard garden. The octagonal building sticking out into the garden is the private bath. Naturally, you take off your indoor slippers and put on a pair of garden sandals if you want to go out and contemplate the Podocarpus.

While we spent most of our vacation in Tokyo, we also made it out southwest to the Kansai area, where we had a ryokan in the old capital, Kyoto. Hanakiya Ryokan [official site] is located in the hills on the eastern edge of the city, very close to Kiyomizu-dera (Kiyomizu Temple). It was an amazing place to stay, right in the middle of one of the city's major tourist destinations, though not exactly convenient to Kyoto Station. We used taxis to get back and forth between Hanakiya and downtown; there's a major taxi and bus stop for Kiyomizu just up the street from the ryokan. The neighborhood got really quiet at night; everything but the vending machines closed down by dinnertime. It was quite a change from Tokyo!

We stayed in the Hanakiya annex building, which only has a couple of rooms, and had more of a bed & breakfast feel about it than Homeikan. There was a small common area, with a fridge and computer, where we hung out a bit with some guests from Poland and Austria.

Here's the neighborhood around the Hanakiya Annex building. Behind a retaining wall in back of the house there's a sprawling cemetery called Nishi Otani, and Kiyomizu-dera is maybe half a kilometer uphill. On the larger streets, there are a lot of gift shops and ceramics stores. Kiyomizu is famous for ceramics, and I bought some tea cups. The proprietress tried to tell me something about the form of the lip of the cups that is distinctive to Kiyomizu, but the adjective she kept using was beyond me.

M.J. Japan Adventure

2008-10-13T18:13:00.003-04:00

Matt at the gate of Washinomiya Shrine in Saitama.

Moetic Justice is now reporting live from Japan. I’ve been here five days, and a lot has happened--too much to waste time in Nihon blogging about--but it has been a superb trip so far, and there is a lot left to do. I am in Tokyo right now, and my friends and I have been spending time in Shinjuku, Nakano, the Ghibli Museum, and of course Akihabara, the Vatican City of nerds. Later this week we head to Kyoto and Nara for some legitimate Japanese Culture. More later, though any kind of systematic account is going to have to wait until after I return. おたのしもいに！

Summer 2008 Anime Rundown

2008-08-01T17:06:00.010-04:00

There are something in the neighborhood of 25 new anime starting up this summer [via Moetron]. The summer season is traditionally a bit slow, but there is a good range of material out there this year, and a couple of really strong new shows. I'll cover four that have attracted my attention, and briefly mention some others that I've seen. Ratings are based on the first two or three episodes.

Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~
(Important Things for a Mage - Summer Sky / Someday's Dreamers - Summer Sky)
Genre: supernatural, slice of life
Overall Rank: A-
MJ Rank: A

Natsu no Sora is set in the same mildly alternate Japan as the original Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto (2003) and has the same basic premise, but involves a new cast of characters. Sora Suzuki has the innate ability to use magic, and so is required to leave her agricultural hometown in Hokkaido in order to train with the Bureau of Magic in Tokyo. Sora has great potential as a mage, but experiences an awkward first day of class. She arrives late and then gets snubbed by one of her classmates, surfer-dude Gouta Midorikawa, who is strong and silent, but apparently unsure of whether he deserves to be at the Bureau.
Staff-wise, Natsu no Sora is in good hands with long time director and occasional voice actor Osamu Kobayashi, who is possibly most famous for his work on seminal '80s romantic comedy TV series Kimagure Orange Road. Visually, it's the most interesting of this seasons offerings, with ridiculously detailed backgrounds that seem to be a mixture of retouched photographs, hyper-realistic paintings, and CG. The characters designs are quite simple, and sometimes clash in funky ways with the scenery, though generally everything is well integrated. Story-wise, Natsu no Sora is going to be too slow for some tastes, though it strikes me as an ideal entertainment for lazy summer evenings.

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Other slice-of-life anime for the summer include Telepathy Shoujo Ran (Telepathy Girl Ran), this year's new NHK (Japanese public TV) anime. As is typical for NHK fair, Ran is a classy production, faintly old-fashioned and wholesome. In the shoujo-anime subcategory, there is Antique Bakery, a cooking show with boy's love undertones. Well, not even undertones, really; the shounen-ai themes are hot and heavy.

Natsume Yuujinchou
(Natsume's Book of Friends)
Genre: supernatural, shoujo
Overall Rank: A-
MJ Rank: A-

Takashi Natsume has always gotten into trouble because he can see yokai (traditional Japanese monsters) that are invisible to normal people. But his situation takes a turn for the worse when he moves to the country hamlet where his grandmother, Reiko, grew up, and yokai start to actively hunt him down. It seems that Reiko, who died young, really kicked ass--in the spiritual sense--and had gained dominion over the local yokai by collecting their names in her Book of Friends. Now, spirits who have gone bad, who are lonely without Reiko, or who want control over other yokai, are after Takashi and the book. Assisting Takashi in his quest to return the names to their rightful owners and not get killed in the process is Madara, A.K.A. Nyanko-sensei ("Master Kitty"), a cat spirit who is indebted to the boy.
The bonds and complex motivations that govern the interactions between Takashi and the yokai form the heart of Natsume Yuujinchou, and everything is influenced by Reiko's short but intense life, which is gradually revealed in flashbacks. In spite of a slightly cartoony look (which does grow on you), Natsume Yuujinchou is a serious and emotionally powerful drama.

Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu
(Haruka Nogizaka's Secret)
Genre: comedy, romance, otaku
Overall Rank: B
MJ Rank: A-

Haruka Nogizaka is the quintessential school idol: talented and intelligent; a formal and demure girl from the best sort of family. She would be a true Yamato nadeshiko (traditional Japanese beauty), if it wasn't for a dark secret: she's really an otaku who loves goony fanservice anime. Our hero, ordinary schmoe Yuuto Ayase, runs into Haruka while she's guiltily borrowing back issues of an anime magazine from the library, and promises to protect her secret. Naturally, the two grow closer in spite of the social divide between them.
Haruka Nogizaka no Himitsu is looking like a fairly predictable example of the anime-about-anime-fans genre, and presents an idealized fantasy version of fandom (a la Comic Party), but so far it has been executed with enthusiasm and a sense of humor.

Slayers Revolution
Genre: comedy, sword and sorcery
Overall Rank: B+
MJ Rank: B+

Slayers returns to the airwaves, after more than a ten year hiatus since its last television incarnation, Slayers Try. Over-powered and quick tempered sorceress Lina Inverse--as always, voiced by omnipresent 1990s voice actress Megumi Hayashibara--has concerns about declining numbers of her usual bandit prey, and decides to head to sea to incinerate pirates while the bandit population recovers. She's joined by the old gang--Gaurry, Amelia and Zelgadiss--and comic mayhem ensues.
There are more than the usual number of revivals of older franchises out there right now (e.g. Macross Frontier, Birdy the Mighty Decode), but Slayers Revolution has the strongest lost-can-of-film-melts-out-of-glacier vibe going on. There's hardly any way to tell that it wasn't broadcast in 1996, apart from the aspect ratio and animation that is somewhat brighter and steadier than could be achieved with cels. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on individual taste, though Slayers Revolution clearly isn't going to break much new ground. Back in the mid-90s, ironically, Slayers really was revolutionary, with designs that were modern or even fringe for the time. It was also one of the first TV anime, if not the first, to be based on a light novel.

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Other current fantasy anime include: Koihime Musou (恋姫無双 ...I know all those kanji, but can't imagine what they're supposed to mean in that combination. I'm not even going to try: everything I come up with sounds incredibly stupid. For what it's worth, Google Language Tools--and I emphasize that this is Google talking, not me--renders it as "Princess Love no Twin"), which is set in feudal China. The character designs are pretty, but they're shackled to a somewhat uninspired plot. World Destruction: Sekai Bokumetsu no Rokunin (The Six World Destroyers) is from the RPG-esque end of the fantasy anime spectrum. It takes place in a world where beast-men rule, humans are a despised minority, and some destruction is apparently in order.

Anime Mop Up - First Half 2008

2008-07-16T16:58:00.007-04:00

The Garden of Sinners

Here are notes on a few additional current or recently finished anime that I've been neglecting. I've been thinking of going back even further to write up some of the winter shows, as well, but most of the worthy ones have been licensed for release in the U.S., and I might as well hold off until I've had a chance to check them out on DVD. For me, the highlights from the January crop were Shigofumi - Letters from the Departed (voyeuristic and unsettling urban horror), Spice and Wolf (cheap-looking but charming Renaissance road story) and True Tears (taut, sharply-animated school romance).

Kara no Kyoukai - The Garden of Sinners
(The Edge of Emptyness - The Garden of Sinners)
Genre: modern horror, action
Overall Rank: A
MJ Rank: A+

ufotable is a relatively young production studio that is rapidly making a name for itself: they don't have a lot of throughput, but they do interesting, quality work. Their first original production, from 2006, was Coyote Ragtime Show, a messy pastiche of various space adventure anime from the '80s and '90s, that in spite of some glaring flaws managed to look great and entertain consistently. The studio first made a serious impression on me with another original story, last year's Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight!, a slice of life story that wasn't anything particularly weighty, but stood out with an engaging sense for character development, as well as rich and innovative visuals.

Starting late last year, ufotable began releasing what will eventually be a cycle of seven theatrical films: Kara no Kyoukai - The Garden of Sinners, based on novels created by Type-Moon, of Fate/stay night fame. Four installments have appeared so far, with a fifth premiering this month.

Kara no Kyoukai chronicles the life of Shiki Ryougi, a young woman with a mysterious past, whose worldly possessions consist of a kimono, a leather jacket, and a really vicious looking knife. She uses the knife to dismember dangerous supernatural entities, and possibly, the occasional human, too. In the first movie Shiki is working for a spiritual detective agency, trying to stop a string of suicides associated with an abandoned building. The next few movies in the cycle examine Shiki's earlier years, when she was, if possible, even more disquietingly eccentric than she is in the first installment.

In Manabi Straight, ufotable used obsessively detailed animation with a rich, dark color scheme to set a comfortable, homey tone; in Kara no Kyoukai they turn the style up a few notches to produce a remarkably moody, uneasy atmosphere. The characters and dialogue have the same sort of feel as the animation, if that makes sense: not exactly pleasant, but completely engrossing. The music is outstanding as well, and some sequences may even achieve that hairs-on-back-of-neck-standing-up effect. Kara no Kyoukai is probably the best new anime that I've seen this year; it gets my highest recommendation, and I hope someone brings it out in the U.S. before I decide to blow the rent on import DVDs.

Kurenai
Genre: slice of life, martial arts
Overall Rank: A-
MJ Rank: A-

Shinkurou Kurenai is a high school student living in an old-fashioned boarding house a la Maison Ikkoku (complete with overpowering but, probably, well-meaning housemates), with a part time job as a mediator for conflicts of the type that involve guys with tattooed backs and missing pinkies. His most difficult assignment yet comes in the form of Murasaki Kuhouin, young daughter of a rigidly traditional and absurdly wealthy clan, who has been taken from the Kuhouin inner sanctum, and will be using Shinkurou's rundown apartment as a safe house.

Kurenai is a funny mix--part fighting anime and part understated, old school harem anime--that manages to work far better than it ought to. It looks absolutely gorgeous for TV animation, for one thing, and the martial arts sequences flow with the choreographed grace of the better Hong Kong action movies. This meshes so seamlessly with a thoughtful, humanistic story that even its strangest conceits (such as the Kuhouin bodyguard who does all of her fighting in stiletto heels and Clintonesque pantsuit) seem natural and unaffected. Kurenai is arguably the best TV anime of the spring season.

Soul Eater
Genre: shounen fighting
Overall Rank: B+
MJ Rank: B

Maka Alban and her pals Death The Kid and Black Star are training to be Weapon Meisters, who use partners who can transform into blades or guns to hunt down those humans whose souls have become corrupted, and are in danger of becoming legendary monsters called Kishin.

Soul Eater is studio BONES' 10th anniversary project, and comes six years after RahXephon, the original production that first brought the studio to the attention of many fans (time flies...). Soul Eater is the first foray by BONES into the world of lengthy shounen fighting manga adaptations, but one expects them to handle it with their trademark combination of workmanlike consistency and above-average craftsmanship. The show oozes style, with quirky designs and settings, fluid motion and much use of exaggerated perspective. I'm pretty burned out on the genre, but Soul Eater has piqued my interest, and even if I probably won't follow it for long myself, it's clearly going to be a moderately big deal, and it would not surprise me at all if it showed up in slightly sanitized form on Cartoon Network next year.

Upcoming Anime: Kannagi

2008-05-24T17:35:00.005-04:00

I suspect that I'm not the only one who was forced to buy the Kannagi manga after a random encounter with the cover of volume 1 in a Japanese bookstore. Really, I'm basically an anime fan, and I hardly pick up any manga at all, but good god. Artist Eri Takenashi hits the moe sweet spot dead on, with clean, well proportioned designs and an excellent sense of perspective and color.

As a bonus, the actual contents of the two volumes that I've read are pretty sweet, too. The outline of the story is bishoujo boilerplate, with ordinary student Jin carving a statue out of wood from a sacred tree, and the statue cracking open to reveal Shinto goddess Nagi, who decides to hang around. But, the execution of Kannagi is well above average, with carefully fleshed out and appealing characters, gentle slice-of-life pacing, and a light, restrained approach to the supernatural aspects of the setting.

The ordinary lives of the characters in Kannagi are the focus for Takenashi, which is always a good sign in this genre. There are malevolent supernatural entities--called Kegare--in the Kannagi world, and Nagi even fights them once in a while, but these never seem like much of a threat, and mostly just lurk in the background like the creepy little pitch black insects in Ed Gorey illustrations. Relationship elements are similarly subtle: Nagi and Jin get along fairly well, but the tensions between them are only romantic in small part.

An interesting feature of the manga is that each volume includes a foldout pinup illustration by a famous visual novel creator. Volume 2 features Nagi and her menacing sister Zange, in a distinctly Higurashi-esque situation, courtesy of Ryuukishi 07. Too funny!

Kannagi is coming to television later this year (nothing definite has been announced, but one assumes fall season), and Megami Magazine has an enthusiastic blurb in the June 2008 Character Catch Up section. The director will be Yutaka Yamamoto, an episode director for Kyoto Animation who also helmed Lucky Star for the first four episodes, before getting demoted and subsequently quitting. So, at bare minimum, we can expect the anime to have an insanely good opening animation. The screenplay is being written by Hideyuki Kurata, who wrote Kamichu! (RIP, Geneon USA *sob*) and Bamboo Blade (which I really need to sit down and watch). With that kind of resume, Kurata would seem to be just about ideal for adapting a story like Kannagi's. Production will be by Aniplex, with assistance by Ordet, the company recently founded by Yamamoto. I'm eagerly awaiting further information; Kannagi is shaping up to be an obvious early contender for best new TV anime of the second half of the year.

Finally, for all of you with fancy-schmancy monitors in need of new wallpaper...
I might be persuaded to come up with desktop images in other resolutions, if anyone is interested.

Spring 2008 Anime Rundown, Part II

2008-04-27T18:52:00.007-04:00

Nabari no Ou (The King of Nabari)
Genre: ninja, action
Overall Rank: B+
MJ Rank: C+

A struggle is brewing to determine who will rule Nabari, the hidden society of ninja. One important player turns out to be Miharu Rokujou, who is heir not only to his family's okonomiyaki restaurant, but also to a dangerous sealed power. Classmate Kouichi Irie is aware of Miharu's potential, and sets about recruiting him for a school club that is a front for the local ninja organization. Nabari no Ou borrows a lot from Naruto, or at least makes use of the same underlying mythos, but is aimed at an older audience. Action sequences are slick in Nabari, and the impressionistic watercolor backgrounds stand out. It's unlikely that Miharu will replace He of the Orange Windbreaker in the imagination of fans, though, which is a bit of a shame.

RD Sennou Chousashitsu (Real Drive - Occult Brain Research Office)
Genre: science fiction
Overall Rank: A
MJ Rank: A-

The year is 2061, and Masamichi Haru is living in a nursing home on an artificial island, after emerging from a 50 year coma. The coma was caused by an accident during a psychological experiment, that for some reason involved free diving at great depths in the ocean. Haru and his volunteer assistant Minamo Aoi start noticing phenomena similar to what occured during the incident, and there is trouble on the island. The phenomena may be related to the Metal--a virtual simulation world created by cybernetic implants--or they may be part of the simulation, or it could be that something else entirely is going on.

Real Drive is of the school of science fiction storytelling that throws the viewer headfirst into a sea of jargon (thank you, original creator Masamune Shirow) and mysterious events, and hopes he or she learns to tread water, fast. This technique is often abused, but my initial impression of RD is that the story has been thought out, and that everything will fall into place, eventually. RD's animation--courtesy of Production I.G and veteran director Kazuhiro Furuhashi (Rurouni Kenshin, Chevalier D'Eon, etc.)--is impeccable. This is definitely the serious anime choice of the spring.

Special A
genre: comedy, romance, shoujo
Overall Rank: B+
MJ Rank: B-

Hikari Hanazono excels at everything she does, and is ranked second in the hothouse environment (literally) of the elite Special A class at her private academy. However, she always seems to be outdone by the dashing Kei Takishima, who has no qualms about rubbing it in. The romantic tension between Kei and Hikari is thick, and their good natured sparring looks like it will be a lot of fun. Special A is shaping up to be the superior shoujo anime option for the season.

To Love-Ru - Trouble -
Genre: science fiction, comedy, fanservice
Overall Rank: C+
MJ Rank: B

Rito Yuuki can never manage to confess his love to girl-next-door Haruna Sairenji, but through various fanservicey circumstances, he manages to get engaged to fugitive alien princess Lala. Vast swaths of the modern anime scene consist of fifth generation Urusei Yatsura clones, but To Love-Ru is one of the more straightforward attempts to reverse engineer Rumiko Takahashi's classic that I've seen recently. The differences are telling: gone is UY's adolescent swamp of hormones, jealous rage and topless nudity. In its place, we get pretty characters who are politely accommodating, and a lot of artful concealment of naughty bits. Times have changed in the bishoujo anime world. I'm still struggling to wrap my head around the fact that the To Love-Ru manga runs in Shounen Jump, where the times are apparently also a-changing.

Vampire Kishi (Vampire Knight)
Genre: supernatural, shoujo
Overall Rank: B
MJ Rank: C

Yuki Cross attends a boarding school with ordinary day classes, as well as a special night class, which consists of vampires who are theoretically learning to get along with humans. As a Guardian, Yuki attempts to keep the peace between the day and night classes, and prevent the norms from learning too much about their nocturnal school mates. Attending night class is Kurau Kaname, the gothically handsome vampire who saved Yuuki's life when she was a child. Vampire Knight is not at all my sort of thing, but it's well done, with a lighter touch than I would have expected from something in this genre.

Wagaya no Oinari-sama (Our Home's Harvest/Fox God)
Genre: supernatural, fighting, kitsune
Overall Rank: B
MJ Rank: B+

Tooru Takagami is being targeted by evil spirits, so his brother, Noboru, titular head of the Mizuchi clan of Shinto priests, is asked to unseal the guardian of the Mizuchi lands. Fox spirit Kuugen "Kuu-chan" Tenko defeats one of Tooru's supernatural tormentors, with some help from the shrine maiden Kou, but the boy is still in danger, and Kuu-chan follows the brothers back to their home in the city. On a technical level, Oinari-sama is not overly impressive, and I worry that it is going to settle into a monster-of-the-week rut, but the interplay between the Takagami brothers and the haughty Kuugen is zingy enough to convince me to keep watching, for at least a few more episodes.

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That's it for me so far, though I still need to check out a few more new shows, notably Soul Eater and Code Geass R2. I'll probably hold off on Code Geass and wait for the Bandai Entertainment DVDs... I haven't seen much of the first series yet, and I just recently worked my way through the stack of Gundam Seed DVDs that had been sitting in a corner gathering dust. So, I have the sense that I've done my civic duty watching Sunrise scifi melodramas for the time being.

From the current crop, I'll be following Maid Guy, Kyouran Kazoku Nikki, Real Drive, and maybe a few others. I've seen some more of Kyouran Kazoku since writing my review, and I'd probably bump my assessment up to an A- now: the proceedings have been leavened with a healthy shot of drama and character development, while maintaining a suitably high level of crazy. The Op is catchy, too.

Spring 2008 Anime Rundown, Part I

2008-04-24T16:17:00.014-04:00

It's kind of a slow spring, anime wise. There are 46 new shows premiering, which is, admittedly, too many for any normal human to follow. But, that's down by a third from spring seasons a few years ago. There are a couple of big deal, big budget projects, such as Macross Frontier and Code Geass R2, but as spinoffs from popular franchises, these smell like safe choices for production companies shell shocked by broad economic woes as well as the corrosive effects of illegal downloading. While I'd say there are no truly outstanding new anime this season, a fair number of solid shows are coming out, and most viewers should be able to find at least a few items of interest.

Rankings are based on the first episode or two and range from S down to F (with B- or C+ being about average). I give an attempt at an objective rating, then provide a wildly subjective Moetic Justice rank.

Bus Gamer
Genre: Action, Fighting, Shoujo
Overall Rank: B-
MJ Rank: C

Three mismatched hip urban pretty boys respond to a seriously suspicious piece of junk mail, and wind up entering an underground tournament called Biz Game, where teams representing corporations fight it out for trade secrets, using whatever means they think are necessary. Once you get past the improbable premise, Bus Gamer doesn't look half bad, and promises some interesting tactical machinations, as well as the possibility of good red-in-tooth-and-claw fight sequences.

Druaga no To - The Aegis of Uruk (The Tower of Druaga)
Genre: Sword and Sorcery
Overall Rank: B+
MJ Rank: B+

Tower of Druaga is based on an RPG, and follows newbie adventurer Jil, whose seemingly impossible quest is to reach the top of the eponymous tower, and defeat the eponymous evil god. Normally, a description like that is my cue to find something else to watch, but Druaga has a couple of factors working in its favor: studio Gonzo has apparently decided that this is a show where they are going to spend the money needed to make it look good, for one thing. Druaga also has a much needed sense of humor about itself. The opening sequence alone, which features the cast of characters mysteriously transposed to Tokyo, is worth the price of admission, and handily wins the Op of the season award. Druaga is notable for being available for legitimate download, subtitled, at Crunchyroll.

Itazura na Kiss (Mischievous Kiss)
Genre: Romance, Comedy, Shoujo
Overall Rank: C
MJ Rank: C-

Kotoko Aihara is a plain girl who has a crush on the cool, wealthy and smart Naoki Irie. Kotoko asks Naoki out, and is shot down. To add insult to injury, her family's new home collapses in a minor earthquake, and the Aiharas are forced to impose on an old friend, who turns out to be--you guessed it--Naoki's father. There's nothing new here, if you've seen the superior Marmalade Boy, or any of a dozen similar shoujo romps, and the Itazura na Kiss take on the genre looks to be thoroughly mediocre.

Kamen no Maid Guy (Masked Maid Guy)
Genre: Comedy, Fanservice
Overall Rank: C+
MJ Rank: A-

Naeka Fujiwara and her brother, whose parents are missing, are doing their best to survive on their own, but wind up living in squalor. Their grandfather, worried about the family reputation and the fact that someone seems to be killing off his heirs, decides to provide a pair of maids to clean up Naeka's act and protect her. One of the new hires, Fubuki, is pretty much what you'd expect from a maid show heroine, though handier with a nail-studded baseball bat than most. The other is the Maid Guy of the title, Kogarashi, who closely resembles a Hokuto no Ken villain in drag. Senseless violence and abundant fanservice (surprisingly explicit for a modern TV anime) ensue. Kamen no Maid Guy is morally reprehensible, but immensely entertaining.

Kanokon
Genre: bishoujo, kitsune
Overall Rank: B
MJ Rank: B+

It isn't clear yet if it's a trend or random chance, but fox maidens and cat girls seem to be all over the place this season. In Kanokon, the kitsune (fox spirit) turned busty human is Chizuru Minamoto. For reasons that are unclear as of this writing, Chizuru is constantly draping herself over inadequate-looking high school freshman Kouta Oyamada. Well, Kouta may be a late bloomer, but as the screencap demonstrates, he does have a nigh heroic capacity for maintaining eye contact. The character designs in Kanokon, based on illustrations by Koin for the original light novel, are clearly the main draw. The visuals in the anime are on the simple side, but consistent and relatively fluid.

Kyouran Kazoku Nikki (Diary of the Frenzied Family)
Genre: temporal lobe epilepsy simulation
Overall Rank: ??
MJ Rank: B+

Within five minutes of the Op sequence in Kyouran Kazoku Nikki, we meet the perpetually smirking Kyouka, who claims to be age 20, and is apparently the daughter of the legendary monster Enka. Befuddled government paranormal investigator Ouka Midarezaki brings Kyouka to his HQ, where the two are summarily married, and instructed to adopt the remaining children of Enka, with the hope that family life will mellow them. Or at least give Midarezaki the opportunity to keep an eye on the Hell spawn, and kill any that show inclinations towards destroying the world. For the remainder of the episode, the newlyweds track down the other children, who turn out to be a little girl, a jellyfish, a lion, an armored biological weapon, and a metrosexual guy who may have the hots for Midarezaki. This could easily degenerate into tedious weirdness for the sake of weirdness, but I'm watching closely for now.

Macross Frontier
Genre: robots, idol music
Overall Rank: A-
MJ Rank: B

Back in the day, the rule of thumb was that every other Macross sequel was worth watching, starting with Macross: Ai Oboeteimasu ka?, which is the most perfect possible earthly expression of the Platonic ideal of the franchise. By my reckoning, we're due for something good this time around, though it depends on how you count all the fiddly little Macross 7 offshoots.

Alto Saotome is an impetuous rebel without a cause who dreams of being a military pilot. In the chaos of an alien attack on the Macross Frontier space colony fleet, he crosses paths with galactic idol Sheryl Nome, and stumbles onto a Valkyrie transforming robot whose pilot has been killed. Parts of this may sound familiar: Macross F incorporates bits and pieces of characters, visuals, and plots from previous Macross series, with an emphasis on Macross 7 and Macross Plus. It's looking really solid so far, though, with my only technical complaint being the detailed but rather poorly integrated 3D CG sequences.

Mnemosyne no Musume-tachi (Daughters of Mnemosyne)
Genre: science fiction, action
Overall Rank: B
MJ Rank: D

Rin Asougi and her assistant Mimi are freelance troubleshooters--a la Gunsmith Cats--in an alternate 1990's world. Rin seems to be immortal, which comes in handy, because she's always running afoul of people who want to do terrible, terrible things to her. Mnemosyne is a not exactly congenial mix of female buddy anime and survival horror elements, but what really drags it down into the "actively avoiding" category is the show's pervasive recreational sadism. It's disconcerting to see fairly mainstream anime creators sipping the same torture porn Kool Aid that's all the rage in Hollywood lately, and I hope it's not a sign of things to come.

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That's all for now; reviews for Nabari no Ou through Wagaya no Oinari-sama will be coming shortly!

Moe Explained

2008-01-29T16:49:00.000-05:00

Abstract

Moe, in the strict sense, is recently coined Japanese slang describing certain types of cute, mostly young and female anime (Japanese animation) characters. The word also functions as a label for the emotional response of anime fans to such characters. Moe characters are neotenous, relative to actual humans, exhibiting juvenile traits at maturity. Moe imagery is a supernormal stimulus that evokes a potent mixture of emotional responses in susceptible viewers: nurturing or protective feelings as well as romantic or erotic love. Moe imagery may be thought of as a sort of recreational memetic drug, which produces pleasurable mental states in the absence of the proper stimuli for such states. The conventions of moe art have been evolving since at least the 1970s, in a largely unconscious process driven by selection pressures favoring styles capable of eliciting these positive emotional responses in viewers.

Introduction

Moe (萌え; two syllables: “moh-eh”) is an easily grasped, intuitive concept for fans of Japanese animation and related art forms, but devilishly tricky to define in a concise, complete and unambiguous manner. Moe, sensu stricto, describes a certain type of stylized illustration of a young, cute, innocent, most often female human (Fig. 1). The word also can be used for the emotional response that such illustrations trigger in viewers who enjoy moe imagery. Moe frequently functions as an adjective, but can be used as a noun, verb or interjection.

Originally a Japanese verb meaning to germinate or sprout, moe was hijacked for the slang usage described here by anime, manga (Japanese comics) and game fans in Japan sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s (Japanese Wikipedia), and has only come into widespread use since 2000 (and ca. 2004 or later in the English speaking world). The range of situations where otaku (fans) might employ the word has since expanded almost to the point where it has become meaningless—anyone or anything that might provoke some kind of positive emotion can be called “moe”—but for the purposes of this essay I will employ the narrow definition given above. Real, three-dimensional persons and things may be described as moe, and the meaning is more or less clear, but this strikes me as an abuse of the term: there are perfectly good existing words, in Japanese and English, for the feelings we have for actual friends, relatives and significant others, or non-anthropomorphic objects like trains. I won’t consider the possibility further here, but calling celebrities, or other people who are not personal acquaintances, “moe,” strikes me as being closer to the core meaning of the word: a famous actress is hardly more of a real, three-dimensional presence for her fans, than an anime character is for an otaku.

English-language analysis of the moe phenomenon is sparse, but there have been some illuminating writings in the young field of moetic studies. Wikipedia provides basic information, and John Oppliger (“Ask John” of AnimeNation) has written about the subject several times (providing a definition, discussion of moe in America, and some thoughts on male moe). Shingo of Heisei Democracy presents an eloquent overview of the subject, including a taxonomy of moe. He also discusses narrative aspects of moe that I will disregard here, not because they are unimportant, but because I wish to focus on visual aspects of moe that I consider to form the underlying basis of the concept.

Manga artist Ken Akamatsu has written about his theory of moe characters (translation courtesy of Matthew Whitehead), as has Japanese moe fan Tenkaise. Both are concerned with moe as an expression of idealized, maidenly femininity: they believe that moe characters are first, and perhaps exclusively, targets for paternal or maternal instincts. The American sources cited above (Oppliger and Shingo) are more inclined towards a concept of moe that includes a sexual component.

Here, I attempt to analyze the moe phenomenon from a biological perspective. I will confine my discussion to moe sensu stricto: two-dimensional art with characteristics that would be recognized as moe by enthusiasts. I will further restrict my consideration to the visual components of moe works, although I think that a parallel case for the biological basis of moe story elements or anime voice acting could be constructed, with few modifications. I focus on illustrations of female characters, intended for a predominantly male audience, because this is the most prevalent form of moe. Again, a broadly similar explanation might be crafted for male moe characters, which are a small but perhaps increasingly important part of the moe art scene.

I should express some caveats before proceeding. What follows is nothing more than armchair speculation, based on my own experiences with moe art, and conversations with others interested in the subject. My knowledge of neuroanthropology, ethology, sociobiology or other relevant subjects is strictly that of a layman, and I have not conducted any actual research into the application of these fields to moetic studies. That being said, I have taken pains to frame my ideas in terms that are potentially testable; that could be clearly, objectively supported—or refuted—by observation and experiment.

Furthermore, while I have tried to keep my discussion evenhanded and emotionally neutral, I realize that moe is a subject that is likely to provoke visceral reactions, either positive or negative, in readers. I would hope that anyone who has read to this point would be willing to consider the material in a purely academic spirit: I am attempting to explain the appeal of moe, not to pass judgment on the art style, or its partisans or detractors.

I. Moe Characters are Neotenous.

Moe characters are highly simplified, stylized representations of human beings. Some of the features typical of the art form are common to nearly all representations of humans in animation, comics and videogames, and have straightforward practical explanations: it is easier to draw faces without wrinkles, moles, etc., than it is to draw faces with these added complications.

Other differences between moe illustrations and more realistic portrayals of humans cannot be ascribed to mere labor saving measures, and indeed may add effort to the illustration process. Taken together, these special differences between a typical human and a moe character of comparable age define the moe style. Most obviously, the characters have large, rounded eyes with exaggerated pupils and irises, small mouths with de-emphasized teeth, thin lips, and noses that are reduced to the point where they are more suggested than drawn. Facial features are soft and rounded, and the head is large in proportion to the body (Fig. 2). Bodily proportions are often, in contrast, more or less natural, with secondary sexual characteristics developed as appropriate to the age of the character (mid to late teens, in the typical moe title). Other stylistic modifications are less frequently mentioned, but important: the face is foreshortened, with less distance between mouth and eyes than would be present in a human. The hair of moe characters is drawn using techniques to suggest extreme fineness (often appearing transparent if it overlaps the eyes, for example).

This list of moe traits can be neatly summed up by a single word: neoteny. In evolutionary biology, neoteny is the expression of the juvenile characteristics of an ancestral population, in sexually mature individuals of a descendent population, as a result of certain types of alterations to development (D.J. Futuyma. 1986. Evolutionary Biology, Second Edition). Humans are, in a well-known real world example, neotenous relative to our ancestors, who, based on evidence from the fossil record and comparative morphology, shared many similarities with the extant nonhuman great apes. The relatively large head and foreshortened facial features of an adult human are neotenous, and are strictly juvenile characteristics in apes. In a poetic sense at least, one might say that moe is an artificial extension of long-term trends in hominid evolution. Toy dog breeds are another biological manifestation of neoteny. Adult toy dogs retain certain puppy-like aspects—such as relatively short muzzles and large eyes—as a result of the action of centuries of selective pressures favoring cuter animals for use as pets. (Fig. 3).

Moe characters are neotenous relative to their “ancestral state,” which can be taken to be actual humans or naturalistic illustrations thereof. All of the moe characteristics I list—eye size, facial proportions, hair texture—are features of immature humans, which are conserved even in otherwise mature moe characters. The end result—an adult human, realistically rendered in certain respects but with other aspects indicating incongruous youth—is arresting, and for some viewers deeply appealing. Of course, neoteny in moe illustrations is only an analogy: actual neoteny involves alterations to the developmental trajectory of individual organisms, as a result of many generations of cumulative genetic change in a population, whereas anime characters are not subject to the laws of population genetics, and lack developmental trajectories.

A useful first step towards developing a rigorous, experimentally based understanding of moe might be to develop an experimental library of new moe imagery, with various characteristics of the images systematically varied, and have a large sample of enthusiasts rate the results for their moe qualities. I would expect that characteristics like the size of the eyes, the angularity of facial features, and the distance between eyes and mouth would be critical and very sensitive determinants of an image’s perceived “moe-ness.” Hair length, eye color or clothing style should be, on average, almost irrelevant.

The important characteristics of moe illustrations could be plotted against fan response to obtain a graphical overview of what qualifies as moe. The result would be a probabilistic map of the position of moe in the “Design Space” (D.C. Dennett. 1995. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea) of all possible illustrations of human figures, based on observable quantitative or qualitative characteristics (Fig. 4). I would expect that dozens of different characteristics (corresponding to different axes on a graph of Design Space) would need to be measured to distinguish moe art from other styles with any degree of certainty. Thus, in practice, moe would constitute a hypervolume within the multidimensional Design Space of human illustration. Knowledge of the position and shape of the moe hypervolume would be required for further investigations into the appeal and development of the style, as I will discuss below.

Fig. 4. Hypothetical two dimensional section through the higher-dimensional Design Space of illustrations of human figures. Darker colors indicate higher probabilities that an illustration will be perceived as moe.

II. Moe Imagery is a Supernormal Stimulus.

In the middle of the last century, Niko Tinbergen and Jack Hailman conducted experiments on the food-begging behaviors of herring gull chicks. They constructed models of the heads of parent gulls of various degrees of realism, and some with odd modifications, and recorded how enthusiastically the chicks responded (Fig. 5). These experiments are memorable for various reasons: there is an element of slapstick to the setup, for one thing. But, the results tell us important, and perhaps vaguely unsettling, things about how the vertebrate central nervous system integrates and responds to stimuli. As one might expect, many of the unrealistic models provoked little interest from the chicks. But one, just a yellow stick with horizontal red lines, actually elicited a greater response than a real parent gull. An artificial stimulus that evokes more of a response than the natural stimulus has been termed a “supernormal stimulus.”

Fig. 5. Models employed by Tinbergen and Hailman, with response intensity indicated by red bars. The simple stick with three lines is a supernormal stimulus. © 1986 W.T. Keaton & J.L. Gould. Biology, 4th Edition.

An intriguing interpretation of the behavior of herring gull chicks in response to the stick-with-lines, is that the chicks are on some level aware that the stick isn’t part of a real parent bird, and that they won’t be fed no matter how much they peck at it. Responding to the supernormal stimulus might be irresistible simply because it feels good to do so. In this interpretation, the supernormal stimulus is analogous to a recreational drug, which the chicks seek out because it alters activity in their brains in a pleasurable way, quite apart from any expectations of material rewards. I can’t say if the central nervous system in herring gulls is really capable of that sort of subtlety, but the central nervous system in humans certainly is.

The paintings of Pablo Picasso are sometimes cited as examples of supernormal stimuli in Homo sapiens, though the sort of response they might be triggering seems awfully ill defined. In a sense, many aspects of the portion of human culture we classify as art or entertainment could be regarded as supernormal stimuli, intended to provoke outsized mental or physical responses that parallel our responses to people, animals, landscapes and other real objects in the natural world. Moe art is arguably a particularly clear and compelling example of a human supernormal stimulus, which triggers specific primal mental activities in a straightforward way.

There is some variation in the way that the mental responses of enthusiasts to moe images is reported. It does, however, seem to be agreed that it is positive and emotionally charged, and that it is a social response, akin to feelings normally provoked by contact with other human beings, and not at all similar to the sort of appreciation that one might have for a flower or a colorful sunset. Given the reports I have heard and my own experience, and taking into account the concept of moe above (moe imagery intended for a male audience involves abstract neotenous portrayals of human females), I contend that moe is a supernormal stimulus for both nurturing emotions and sexual feelings: moe characters appear youthful, in need of nurturing and protection, and at the same time attractive as potential romantic partners. The illustrations achieve this result through a combination of physical cues for nurturing and sexual responses that are not expressed together in any actual human phenotype.

In mainstream forms of moe the sexual aspect is often secondary or nearly subliminal—popular moe anime and manga franchises are often astoundingly chaste compared to, e.g., teen romantic comedies produced in America—but it is always present at some level. Over the range of styles that are classified as moe, nurture and eroticism exist in varying proportions, and there seems to be an inverse relationship between them: actually pornographic moe works (mostly computer games, or fan productions) deemphasize nurture, while in titles with young, nurture-inspiring characters, eroticism tends to be rarified and innocent to the point of invisibility, existing as a vague future potential (Fig. 6).

The response of moe enthusiasts to the images undoubtedly has many forms, and people clearly get more out of moe works than gut feelings of nurturing and erotic love. Depending on the viewer and the specific work, moe characters might act as vessels into which the viewer’s own insecurities can be projected (see SDS’s essay at Heisei Democracy), or the focus of nostalgia for social and sexual mores that they imagine to have held sway in the past. The characters might be incorruptible symbols of a longing for eternal youth and beauty, or poignant reminders of the transitory nature of life and happiness, or any number of other things. But, I would argue that the nurturing/erotic aspect of moe appeal is foundational—both necessary and sufficient—and that other aspects of the relationship between moe character and viewer are optional elaborations built on this foundation.

In principle it should be possible to test the idea that moe images elicit feelings of nurturing and erotic love in viewers. As a first step, a sample of moe enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts could simply be asked about their emotional responses to a range of test images of varying degrees of moe-ness. Care would need to be taken in selecting images and crafting a questionnaire, to minimize ambiguity and confounding factors. The mere fact that enthusiasm for moe is far from universal, even among otaku, could provide a way of testing ideas about the underlying nature of the style’s appeal. If there are consistent psychological differences between moe fans and non-fans, an examination of the personality traits of the two groups might provide clues to the mental mode of action of moe imagery.

Brain scanning technology, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), might provide a more direct way of assessing mental responses to moe images, if emotional states such as nurturing love or romantic love can reliably be interpreted from such scans. Current brain imaging techniques might not be up to the challenge of distinguishing these sorts of emotional responses, which are, after all, frequently intertwined in the real world, but the technologies are advancing rapidly.

Looking back to the herring gull experiments, it is interesting to note that the supernormal stimulus bears almost no resemblance to its corresponding normal stimulus, as far as we humans are concerned: if you were shown the stick-with-lines in Fig. 5 without explanation, there would be little chance that you would guess that it was a stylized representation of a herring gull beak. But it looks very much like a beak, and in some sense more like a beak than a real beak, if your brain is wired like a herring gull’s. Similarly, modern moe imagery is so stylized that I wonder if the proverbial anthropologist from Mars would even realize that it was meant to represent human figures. Our brains are predisposed, even eager, to recognize human forms in visual information. To a brain not specifically evolved to respond to the sight of human faces, moe characters might not even be recognized as human, unless some helpful earthling pointed out that, yes, that is supposed to be a nose, that represents hair and those are the eyes. It is (perhaps barely) possible to explore the issue of how moe supernormal stimuli would be perceived by nonhuman minds through experiments with animals, trained to respond in different ways to pictures of humans vs. pictures of other animals or objects. How would an appropriately trained chimpanzee, for example, classify a moe illustration: as human, as chimpanzee, or as something else; as living or non-living? Under the supernormal stimulus hypothesis, it is expected that nonhuman animals would have more serious difficulties in interpreting moe images, compared to naturalistically proportioned but still stylized illustrations of humans.

III. The Moe Style is a Product of Rapid and Recent Memetic Evolution.

The word moe may have only come into common usage since the new millennium, but the characteristics of moe illustration have a relatively long history in Japanese pop-cultural visual arts. Indeed, most of the elements were in place, if not often combined or developed with any degree of sophistication, by the 1970s. Exaggerated facial features typical of moe, like big eyes and small mouths, defined the look of certain characters in what older American fans called Japanimation, decades before anyone had a convenient label for the style. If I may indulge in a little gratuitous jargon coinage, earlier works with some moe characteristics might be termed promoetic (“before moe”)(Figs. 7-10), while modern (mostly post-2000) works with highly developed moe characteristics are eumoetic (“true moe”)(e.g. Figs. 1-2).

The story of how promoetic physiognomies came to prominence in Japanese animation and comics is a subject for another essay. One argument, just for example, is that unnaturally large eyes were adopted as a simple means of making character emotions easier to portray. It is sufficient for my purposes to note that there arose a community of dedicated, adult or young adult connoisseurs of promoetic character designs, and that some of these fans, inevitably, developed pseudo-romantic feelings for their favorite characters. In the mid or late 1970s—which saw the rise of a fanatical following for Uchuu Senkan Yamato (Space Cruiser Yamato/Star Blazers, 1974)(Fig. 8), and the publication of the first dedicated anime magazine, Animage (1978)—the fan community reached a critical mass. Selection pressure in favor of characters with which the audience could feel certain kinds of deep emotional attachments came into play in the anime and manga industry, and an evolutionary path leading to the eumoetic style was opened.

The study of the evolution of ideas and cultural information, as a process analogous to biological evolution, has been termed memetics. A meme is some piece of information, such as a method for drawing eyes in animation, that according to the memetic hypothesis acts as a unit of heredity similar to a gene in biology (R. Dawkins. 1976. The Selfish Gene). A meme is replicated if it is imitated, and thus copied to another human mind. Replication may be imperfect, giving rise to memes that are variations on the original. If there are differences in the tendency of variations of a meme to be copied to new minds, a process similar to evolution by natural selection can occur, and variant ideas that are especially good at getting replicated can come to dominate the cultural landscape. Memetics is a science in its infancy, and the extent to which memes are similar to genes, and indeed the extent to which memetics can be made into a useful model of changes in human culture, is hotly debated. However, I would argue that memetic theory provides an informative perspective from which to think about the development of moe art, and that the history of moe is a potentially tractable subject for a formal study in memetic evolution.

In the promoetic “entangled bank” (Darwin's memorable description of the arena of biological natural selection) of 1970s Japanese two-dimensional visual culture, a very large number of memes about how to draw animation characters competed with each other for habitat: space in the minds of artists who would implement them with pen, paper, paint and cels. Those memes that succeeded—that were incorporated into works that attracted a large following—were replicated, sometimes with modification, by the minds of new artists. Something similar to natural selection could occur if certain techniques produced results that were in some manner more likely to be imitated: some illustrations were more appealing, more memorable, or simply easier to copy than others (Fig. 9). Moe evolved because significant numbers of television viewers, buyers of books and videos, and artists themselves found an appeal in characters whose appearance elicited the pleasurable emotional responses of nurture and erotic love.

A perhaps counterintuitive feature of the memetic theory of moe evolution is that it does not involve any awareness of the fundamental reasons why moe art is appealing, on the part of the artistic community within which the style originated. For example, artists would have recognized, consciously or not, that decreasing the distance between mouth and eyes relative to the height of the head made a character look younger, cuter, more lovable, or for the pragmatists, more marketable to a certain audience. The artistic utilization of this effect almost certainly did not involve any sort of academic contemplation of mental states engendered by the viewing of characters with foreshortened faces. The origin of this sort of meme may have even been accidental, the result of a novice cartoonist who didn’t understand how to properly draw a face stumbling onto an alteration of normal human proportions that produced a positive response in viewers.

Another feature of a memetic theory of moe would be that the evolution of the style did not proceed towards a set, preconceived goal in the minds of those in the artistic community: it was unplanned, its trends and direction identifiable only in hindsight. In other words, the types of derived moe character designs that are dominant today would have been literally inconceivable 30 years ago. There were thousands of talented men and women working in anime and manga in 1980, but none of them could have sat down and drawn something approaching a modern eumoetic illustration. Such illustrations are the product of decades of memetic replication, variation and selection in response to pressures that were understood dimly, if at all, at any given time in the moe evolutionary trajectory. This is not to minimize the individual creative achievements of the artists who have contributed to that evolution; the overall development of the style, however, proceeded without foresight or conscious planning.

Empirical testing of a memetic theory of the origin of moe would need to build upon the sort of research proposed in earlier sections of this essay. One would need, at minimum, an understanding of how the measurable morphological features of a two dimensional character contribute to its average perceived moe-ness: a map of moe in Design Space (Fig. 4). Armed with this knowledge, a researcher could begin gathering data on the evolution of the morphological features critical to moe-ness in the wild: in the vast quantity of anime, manga, games and books that have been released over the past 30-40 years (Fig. 10).

Rates and trends in moe evolution could be quantified, as could the contributions of individual artists. If moe is truly a memetic phenomenon, it is expected that no individual or short list of individuals has driven changes in the style; sources of innovation should instead be distributed more or less throughout the entire artistic community. When the evolution of anime art styles over time is followed in Design Space, the path to moe should be seen to proceed smoothly, incrementally, and not via a series of abrupt leaps into new and unexplored territory.

Since moe is such a recent innovation, many of the artists who have contributed to it are still living, and could be interviewed about their influences, and their motivations for adopting moe. Under the memetic hypothesis, the artists should show little understanding of why they were attracted to the conventions of moe, and no evidence of having planned the development of the style.

A serious—but potentially non-fatal—difficulty in studying memetic evolution in moe is the problem of identifying lineages of artistic style, analogous to evolving populations of organisms in biology. The potential for rampant horizontal transfer of memes between stylistic lineages would complicate analyses, for instance. Furthermore, even within a single title created by one artist, there quite possibly exist both moe and non-moe characters. One way of defining the main moe lineage might be to consider only those characters (from any title or artist from a given time period) whose measured morphology indicates proximity to the modern moe hypervolume in Design Space. The threshold position in Design Space would be relative to all other works at a given time, and the absolute value of the cutoff would be predicted to gradually approach closer and closer to the position of eumoetic illustrations. Another approach would be to analyze the genres and types of characters (which may be surprisingly consistent and identifiable over time and across creators) that are known to be the most moe: for example, high school age girls in romance/comedy anime marketed to boys.

IV. Conclusions: Whither Moe?

In the event that researchers completed the sorts of studies that I have outlined here, further avenues for investigation would open. For example, anyone who has been following the anime world closely for the past few years probably has the sense that he or she has at least a general idea of what moe is about and what sorts of drawing styles are possible in the genre. The number of possible distinct moe designs is nearly infinite, but all the remaining potential designs might be minor variations on themes that have already been visited. However, it isn’t at all clear that the space within the present moe hypervolume has been thoroughly explored; there may be large gaps, distinct types of designs within moe-space that produce the appropriate psychological effects, which have never been realized by artists. These gaps, if they exist, might even be revealed by a sufficiently detailed map of the moe landscape.

Moreover, we cannot say that the evolution of moe through Design Space is finished. It is tempting to think that moe has more or less reached its local peak of memetic fitness, and that any further modification of the illustrations would leave them less able to function as supernormal stimuli for nurturing urges and feelings of romantic love. Indeed, the more extreme current examples of stylization in the art form (Fig. 11) impress me as probably being near the edge of the theoretical moe hypervolume; if they were moved much further away from the space of naturalistic human representations, they would be too strange to provoke emotional responses in most viewers. However, the future path of evolution in complex systems is contingent on many unknown factors, and difficult to predict: my instinct that moe has settled onto an optimal configuration of stylistic modifications might easily be proved wrong, as the next generation of artists explores the present limits of moe illustration, and perhaps opens a path into uncharted regions of Design Space.

Matt Opel
Storrs, Connecticut, February 12, 2008

Game Review: Earth Defense Force 2

2007-12-10T17:56:00.000-05:00

Title: THE Chikyuu Boueigun 2 (The Earth Defense Force 2)
Publisher: Sandlot/D3 Publisher, 2005
System: Japanese Playstation 2
Type: third person sci-fi shooter, ages 12+, 1 Player/2 P split screen
Availability: NCS
Links: Official Site, Wikipedia, Youtube, Game FAQs

The year is 2019, and the Invaders have returned. Earth is overrun by millions of giant ants, alien walkers, Adamski UFOs, fire-breathing radioactive lizards, and hordes of other creatures straight out of a 1950s monster movie. Once again, the only thing standing between these terrors from Beyond and the good citizens of our world is the Earth Defense Force. So, strap on your motorcycle helmet, don your UN-issued gray coveralls or purple miniskirt/leather thigh-highs combo, grab a plasma rifle and join the fight.

Given that basic description and a few screen shots, some portion of my readership is already fumbling for their credit cards. My advice is: go with your instincts and buy EDF 2. Here is all you really need to know: the game is even more fun than it sounds, and it's a budget-priced Simple 2000 Series game, to boot. Visually, it's quite nice for last-gen, and gameplay is solid and stable. The number of different enemies and battlefields is adequate, and the arsenal of weapons potentially at your disposal is huge, as well as being entertainingly destructive.

The basic workings of EDF 2 are straightforward: select a mission, and kill everything with more than two legs. There are no epic cutscenes or wrenching moral choices, which is fine, because stuff like that would just get in the way of rocketing the hell out giant pillbugs and collecting cool loot. It is a PS2 game, so it is not going to have much in the way of dynamic particle lighting effects or realistic ragdoll physics, but the graphics are often surprisingly good looking: there is real menace in the mothership looming in the clouds, and things blow up in truly satisfying jets of smoke, flame, broken glass and green ichor. I'm pleased with the laser effects, too. They're graphically simple, but they just feel right in a way that's lacking in many a more sophisticated FPS. The pencil-thin beam, and the retina-searing halo of wavering diffraction patterns where it hits, seem to me to be exactly what you'd expect from a laser pointer hooked up to a dedicated nuclear power plant.

The American and Japanese monster movie ambiance of EDF 2 is pitch perfect, right down to the musical score, which includes pieces in the vein of the Godzilla March, and unless my ears deceive me, actual theremin music. The enemies and settings are drawn a range of TV and theatrical productions, from Them to ID4, as well as Fate Magazine alien mythology. For those who know a bit of Japanese, the radio chatter that goes on in the background during missions is a source of amusement unto itself: operators issue updates in clipped military jargon, veteran EDF soldiers make snarky comments, and green recruits run screaming at the sight of a few black ants. EDF 2 is well aware of the absurdities of its sources of inspiration, but it never degenerates into mere camp: the creators clearly love the material they're working with.

On a technical level, EDF 2 holds up well. Load times are fast, and I can't recall ever having the game crash. Slowdown does occur--the spider web effect, for example, makes the PS2 bleed, especially on higher difficulty levels where the webs get really thick--but it's not usually distracting. Clipping problems crop up here and there, so that you sometimes get attacked through a thin wall in underground stages, but overall the game seems reasonably polished.

Hope you remembered your sunscreen, invader scum. Tee hee. [weapon: ARC LAZR]

Before you get too deeply into EDF 2, I'd recommend messing around with the options, and switching from normal controls ("ノーマル,"which use an annoying auto-aiming system) to technical controls ("テクニカル,"which are standard console shooter controls). You can also turn off the cinematic camera angle that kicks in when you do something impressive, such as wasting a carrier UFO. The camera effect looks kind of neat, but the fixed angle makes aiming really difficult, just at the point where you're probably getting swarmed by whatever was escorting the carrier.

As with the original EDF, you choose two weapons from your arsenal before joining the fray, and aquire additional weapons and armor from items dropped by defeated aliens. One of the features new in EDF 2 is that you can also choose between two character classes. The Ground Soldier (male) has heavy armor, can drive vehicles (tank, helicopter or hoverbike), and uses projectile weapons like rifles and grenades. Primitive, but effective. The Pale Wing Soldier (female) is equipped with a portable power plant, jet pack and energy weapons based on reverse-engineered alien technology, so you can go all Saikano on some Invader ass (as my pal BZ remarked). The balance between the two character classes is interesting. The Ground Soldier is slow, but gets most of the good long range and explosive weapons, and can absorb a lot of damage (he starts with more armor, and his armor increases by about 1.5 points per armor icon picked up, compared to less than 1.0 point for the Pale Wing). The Pale Wing Soldier gets the best short range weapons, and can jet into and out of combat quickly, but is more vulnerable to attack, and runs the risk of depleting her batteries and losing the ability to fly, as well as fire and reload weapons, until they recharge.

When you think about it, the subprime mortgage crisis is what really doomed those homes. [weapon: G Launcher UM-XA]

Solid third person shooter action and rampant allusions to science fiction movie classics will draw the gamer into EDF 2, but what keeps her attention through 71 missions at five difficulty levels is the addictive RPG thrill of collecting new weapons, and figuring out the strategies needed to make it through "Inferno" difficulty in one piece. My review is basically done at this point (buy it); the rest of this post will be me waxing nerdy about the EDF arsenal and its usage.

The Ground Soldier

Assault Rifles (column 1)
Assault rifles--or more properly, "fast acting second amendment home defense freedom rifles," as our friends in the NRA helpfully remind us--are your basic meat-and-potatoes weapons in the early and middle phases of EDF 2. The Ground Soldier can pretty much get through anything with a decent assault rifle, plus something long range like a rocket launcher, at least until Hardest and Inferno difficulties. Later in the game, assault rifles don't keep up so well, and have difficulty dealing out enough damage per second to justify continued usage. Still, the really high-end ones like the AS-22RR and the AS-99 are good options on stages with a lot of small fry, and quite usable against robotic walkers, even. Remember: short, controlled bursts.

Sniper Rifles (column 2)
In general, EDF 2 is not the sort of shooter where it pays to set up a pup tent and hump your sniper rifle: the enemies are too fast, aggressive, and numerous, and the instant you plug one of them, everything within half a mile comes running straight for you. Still, sniper rifles are good against bigger, slower enemies like the robotic walkers, excellent for taking down carrier UFOs, and indispensable for the climactic mothership battles. Among the different models, there are trade offs between firepower, accuracy, and the time it takes to chamber a new round. For most purposes, I favor the Lysander series (ライサンダー), which emphasizes destructive power over rate of fire.

Shotguns (column 3)
If years of playing survival horror games have taught us anything, it's that when weird creatures attack, you want to keep a shotgun handy... for close encounters. I was disappointed to find that the shotguns that crop up early in EDF 2 are kind of useless: too slow and random to make up for their paltry increase in firepower over a decent assault rifle. But, shotguns come into their own in the end game, where the extra seconds a Ground Soldier might spend plugging away at a giant spider with a rifle are likely to get him surrounded. The SG-99 is my favorite so far, with decent range and a tight shot spread, reasonable reload time, and abundant stopping power. It puts down most of the bugs in one hit, even in the last missions on Inferno, and tears robots apart from a fairly safe distance.

Rocket Launchers (column 4)
A good rocket launcher, paired with an assault rifle, will get you through the first three difficulty levels of EDF 2, though maybe not get you through in style. I mostly use the Goliath series (ゴリアス), which tend to do more damage, with a larger explosive radius, than other launcher types with more ammo per clip or faster firing. These weapons don't fare very well with the increasing hitpoints of enemies on the higher difficulty levels, though. When you fire your favorite rocket launcher into a swarm of black ants, and they just get thrown into the air with their little legs waving around, you'll know it's time to learn how to use grenade launchers.

Missiles (column 5)
Missiles in EDF 2 are all fire-and-forget; they automatically home in on the single enemy that is closest to the player when the trigger is pulled. I don't have much use for most of them; by and large they're either too weak or too slow to be practical. The Soaring series (ソルリング) multiple-missile launchers are not bad against quick, flying enemies like the gunships: the player can concentrate on rolling and dodging, so long as he remembers to pull the trigger whenever the launcher reloads. The Lucifer S (ルシフェルS), which is awarded for beating all missions on Hardest difficulty, is big fun: a single missile flies up into the stratosphere, then rains down 32 powerful guided bomblets. It takes forever to load, but is worthwhile when fighting large, single enemies (especially the giant centipedes, which it tends to keep at a distance by stunning and knocking them into the air). It's also amusing to set off a Lucifer S when you've mopped up a mission, and all that's left is one poor ant.

Nuke 'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. [weapons: Lucifer S, SG-99]

Grenades (column 6)
Grenades are not for the faint of heart, requiring skill to aim and avoid friendly-fire injuries, but they become critical in the endgame of EDF 2. The Sucker Grenade D (サッカーグレネードD) is one of the Ground Soldier's best weapons against hordes of ants, and really his only decent method of dealing with red ant swarms: just shoot one on the ground right in front of you, and back away before the five-second fuse burns down. The G Launcher UM-4A (GランチャーUM-4A), and its upgrade the UM-XA, are some of the best weapons in the game, against pretty much anything. Both do tons of damage, with a wide splash, and have good reload times. The grenades are spat out at high velocity, so their arc is pretty minimal, and detonate on impact, so that they can be used almost like rockets. The UM-XA is devastating against anything from underground spider infestations, to carriers on the opposite side of the city, once you get good at compensating for the projectile's arc, and a develop a sense for the space needed to avoid getting caught within the blast radius. Oh man, I love me some UM-XA.

Special Weapons (column 7)
This category includes a lot of miscellaneous oddball devices, none of them very practical, but with a few that are worth messing around with on easier missions. The Firecracker (かんしゃく玉) series weapons are tiny impact grenades that the Ground Soldier tosses out by the handfull. They're entertaining, but not very powerful. Bound Guns (バウンドガン ) are assault rifles with bullets that ricochet all over the place. They're usable in tunnel missions, but there are probably better options. And then there are the Repair Sprays (リペアースプレー), which fix small amounts of damage to vehicles, take forever to reload, and are completely pointless.

The Pale Wing Soldier

Short Range Weapons (column 1)
This category includes the most ridiculously overpowered weapons in EDF 2, with the catch that you have to be standing toe-to-toe with the Invader menace to use them. Most short range weapons have the added bonus of loading multiple shots at once, so that you can fire for quite a while without draining your batteries (power is only consumed when a round is loaded, but most other Pale Wing weapons load only one round at a time, and so eat into your energy reserves whenever fired). The Rapier (レイピア ) series includes some of the best weapons in the game; a good Rapier will kill bugs almost instantly, and robots with a few seconds of exposure. Try farming for weapons on red-ant-only stages on Inferno with duel Rapiers (Pale Wing weapons reload passively, so you can be using one while the other is recharging), hopping backward when the ants get close; you can succeed surprisingly early in the game, and pick up crazy loot you shouldn't have access to until much later. Bring along a Ground Soldier friend in 2P mode, and he can share in the advanced weapon bounty, even if he doesn't survive (weapons are distributed evenly between players, regardless of who picks them up). Which he almost certainly won't. Some of the high-end Lances (ランス), such as the Demonic Lance (デモニック・ランス), are also quite good, dealing out huge amounts of damage in single shots.

Fun in the sun, with the Plasma Broom (a Rapier series weapon).

Mid-Range Weapons: Laser (column 2)
As with the short range weapons, these load a supply of shots all at once, and can be used without draining energy until the supply is exhausted. They're good as back up weapons, for use in self-defense in case a more power-hungry primary weapon gets the Pale Wing's batteries low or into recharge mode. However, their range and destructive potential are somewhat disappointing. The LAZR series includes most of the weapons in this category that I have found worthwhile.

Mid-Range Weapons: Electrical (column 3)
The weapons in this category acquired early in EDF 2 are uninspiring: energy hogs that don't do much damage, and are prone to reflecting off of surfaces and zapping the player. A couple of the more advanced lightning weapons are truly excellent, however. The Eclaire-LIM (エクレール-LIM) is still an energy hog that will reflect and instantly kill a player who fires on a target point-blank, but it metes out so much punishment that it's absolutely essential equipment for many Inferno stages. It's better than any other weapon in the game for dispatching fleets of gunships, small UFOs and flying ants, for example, and it's absurdly effective in tunnels, where the shots bounce along the walls frying everything in their path. The Thunderbow 30 (サンダーボウ30) is quite similar to the Eclaire-LIM; weaker, but with a capacity to load multiple shots that makes energy budget management easier.

Mid-Range Weapons: Particle Cannons (column 4)
Particle cannons are the Pale Wing equivalent of shotguns and assault rifles; they rapidly dispense discreet shots with so-so accuracy and range. There's a lot of garbage filling out this column, with a couple of minor gems in the mix. The Ixion Mark 4 (イクシオン・マーク4) holds its own pretty well, for example, with rapid firing, very powerful shots, and energy consumption so low that it's equal to the battery recharge rate (so, you can hold the fire button down indefinitely without running out of juice). The Ixion and other particle weapons have the property of becoming wildly inaccurate in flight mode, so jet-pack use has to be kept to a minimum when these are equipped.

Long Range Weapons (column 5)
Long range combat options for the Pale Wing are relatively weak and energy-intensive. In situations where it's essential to attack from a distance (for example, shooting down high flying carrier UFOs), the LRSL series of long-range lasers is often the best choice, particularly the LRSL-S and LRSL-AC, if you have them available. The MONSTER-S is tricky, but quite effective in certain special conditions. It's a laser that completely exhausts the batteries in a fraction of a second of firing, but it does such huge amounts of damage that it can be worthwhile to carry for use against distant carriers and queen insects, if the player has got a safe spot to hide out in while she recharges.

Plasma Weapons (column 6)
These are the energy equivalents of the Ground Soldier's grenades and rocket launchers; they're Pale Wing weapons with splash damage. The Plasma Launchers (プラズマ・ランチャー) and related weapons are nice in concept, but there is really nothing in this category that I use, except for messing around on easy missions. They've got good range, but chew up huge chunks of your battery reserves while doing mediocre damage.

Homing Weapons (column 7)
Like missiles, shots fired from these weapons automatically seek out the nearest target, and do some (usually limited) splash damage. The Sai Blade (サイ・ブレード ) series, and especially Sai Blade α, are fun, traveling in a straight line for a kilometer or so, then curving around to blast the heck out of some aliens. You can fire a Sai Blade up in the air and let it find distant enemies, or use it like a rocket against foes in your line of sight. The Mirage (ミラージュ) series of multiple homing lasers (the Mirage 15S may be the best) is good against agile airborne targets, though a bit weak for Inferno difficulty purposes. The Mirage series is also good for executing the "cheese technique," in which the player knocks herself down by shooting at her own feet, in order to gain a period of invincibility. Sometimes, it pays to take a break from the action, if really nasty stuff is incoming or weapons and batteries need to be recharged, or even for distracting an overwhelming wave of enemies, while a buddy lobs grenades into the fray from a safe distance. I dislike making use of methods like the cheese technique, but some particularly intense Inferno missions virtually require it.

Special Weapons (column 8)
These are all devices that create a stationary ball of plasma that emits lightning or beams. They are not aimed, so you have to hope that an enemy stumbles into the wrong place. Pale Wing special weapons are generally pointless, though Heaven's Gate α (ヘブンズ・ゲートα) can be surprisingly good against the large swarms of gunships that appear in some missions: just set it off and hang out where the beams are coming down, using the cheese technique to avoid taking damage if necessary. And, how can you pass up using a weapon called Heaven's Gate, at least once in a while?

--
Overall, EDF 2 gets the strongest possible recommendation from the M.J. Console Gaming Staff: there's no reason not to own this game if you have a Japanese PS2, and it may even be a reason to buy the system if, like me, you have fond memories of Saturday afternoons spent watching Godzilla spinoffs and low budget cold war invasion flicks. There's a European version of EDF 2, but the game hasn't been licensed in the US. Those in the US with an XBox 360 can, however, easily obtain EDF 3, known here as Earth Defense Force 2017. Graphics are much improved in the 360 version, of course, and there are some cool additions, like CPU support troops and a series of autonomous turret weapons. Unfortunately the game is basically a remake of the original EDF, with fewer stages and enemy types than EDF 2, and no Pale Wing Soldier at all. It's still a blast, but the definitive Earth Defense Force game is really EDF 2.

The final battle against the Mothership. Fission mailed.

Fansub Wars: Send in the Clowns

2007-11-27T13:20:00.001-05:00

The seedier side of the otaku community regularly voices a nasty little script, that starts off with something along the lines of: "I love anime, and I download it all the time, but I never buy it because..." What follows is inevitably disingenuous, myopic, and nauseatingly self-serving. These arguments stunk on ice when people spewed them onto Usenet in 1993, trying to justify their collections of fansub VHS tapes, and they haven't become any less grotesque in the interim.

There's been a lot more of this nonsense lately, thanks to a pair of commentaries on fansubbing and the anime industry, one from Arthur Smith of GDH International condemning the fans for, well, not really being fans in any meaningful sense of the word, and another from Justin Sevakis of Anime News Network that takes the industry to task for not adapting to the changing expectations of the fans. These commentaries were probably themselves inspired by the recent implosion of Geneon (or at least Geneon's US anime licensing and distribution arm), which served as a dramatic demonstration of the sinking fortunes of the anime industry. Smith and Sevakis both, I think, are guilty of some exaggeration, but their basic premises seem sadly accurate.

As if to prove Smith's point, an awful lot of the responses from the fans have been of the "I love anime, but..." type. The reasons these people give for not actually supporting the medium they say they love are various, but usually include some subset of: 1) nobody cares about downloading, 2) it's too much trouble to get DVDs, 3) anime dubs are crappy, 4) it takes too long for things to come out, 5) DVDs aren't HD, 6) downloads are like advertising, and 7) DVDs are too expensive. These are all pathetic, after-the-fact justifications for a policy of grabbing as much free anime as possible regardless of legal or ethical considerations. They're so transparently poor as excuses for bad behavior that it it hardly seems worthwhile to address them individually, but for what it's worth: 1) listen to what the creators say, 2) Amazon, Netflix, 3) "audio" button on the remote, 4) patience is a virtue, 5) upconvert player and decent TV, 6) nobody paid for entertainment before illegal downloading?

Pathetic excuse #7 has a special place in my heart, since I'm a veteran of the days when anime cost $100 for a 40 minute LD. I was a starving student back then, and I own shelves full of those LDs. American DVDs are cheap as hell; I've eaten crappy lunches that cost me more than the average anime DVD that I buy. If you're whining about $20 for five episodes of a show you supposedly like, you're a contemptible loser. I'm not talking about anyone out there who is truly poor, and watches Lucky Star on YouTube at the public library, as his or her sole mental escape from life in the ghetto. I can't speak for the anime companies, but as far as I'm concerned, he or she should go ahead and watch Lucky Star on YouTube. Everyone else, sitting in your suburban basements or patchouli-scented dorm rooms, in front of your $1200 laptops and $40 a month cable modems: just find another goddamned hobby. You're parasites, and the whole anime community--from the overworked, underpaid artists who create the stuff, to the kid saving his allowance to buy a Naruto video--would be better off without you.

Manabi wags her finger admonishingly at fans who don't support anime creators.

Whew. That's about enough of that. I usually try to keep the tone positive here at Moetic Justice, but a nice frothing rant once in a long while is cathartic. I'll close with a few of my own thoughts about the use of downloaded anime, with rant mode off.

I do watch fansubs and raws, as is pretty obvious if you glance at the M.J. archive (or the screencap in this post...). I guess that my rule of thumb for watching downloads has two components. First, I never watch anything via download, beyond a sample episode or two, that I don't wholeheartedly enjoy. Easy enough. Second, I buy or rent everything that I have found I enjoy, plus a healthy sampling of shows that are new to me, when they become legitimately available in the U.S. (and even pick up the occasional R2 disc). Overall, I probably wind up with more anime coming to my monitor from legit DVDs than from fansubs. I like to think that this scheme provides a sort of economic symmetry between what I love and what I pay for, that compensates the creators fairly for their efforts, supports the industry and encourages the production of more of the shows that I like. Who knows if it really does; half of it is still illegal, and the whole is probably terribly hypocritical. At best, it's the copyright infringement equivalent of borrowing without asking. Ah well, it doesn't sound so bad when I put it that way, and hypocrisy is the least of sins.

And, maybe there's a hopeful sign--amid all the recent portents of doom for the anime industry--in the fact that the fansub wars have been simmering for more than a decade. There have always been obnoxious scofflaws who point to their stacks of fansubs, and launch into elaborate explanations of how they love anime, but... However, these people were, and probably still are, in the minority, and anime has done pretty well in spite of them.

New York Run: New Kinokuniya Now Open!

2007-10-21T14:33:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, some friends and I decided to make a shopping expedition to New York City and the Mitsuwa shopping center in Edgewater, NJ. Things went swimmingly: we arrived at Mitsuwa early, then took the shuttle to NYC. The first stop was Rockefeller Plaza, where we poked around the old Kinokuniya bookstore for a bit; the place is looking a bit run-down, but it's still open for business and crammed with goodies. We then strolled over to the Nintendo Store, where expedition driver Suj T. snagged a copy of the elusive US Hajime no Ippo game for the Wii, and expedition navigator Ray C. very nearly bought an olive drab Nintendo jacket.

We ate a tasty and very filling lunch at Yoshinoya (mmm, gyuudon), near Times Square, then made our way to Book Off, on 41st Street, in front of the New York Public Library. I bought a cheap but still unopened copy of the Clannad game music 3-CD box set, and half a dozen volumes of manga, including Elfen Lied 11. I've been following Elfen Lied via the manga for a while now, and I have to report that the scifi plot devices and new characters are getting loopier by the chapter. There's still plenty of melodrama, nudity and richly-deserved decapitations to keep the reader distracted, but overall I get the impression that the anime chose a good point to wrap things up, three or four volumes back.

On the way back to the Port Authority for the return to NJ, we decided to check out the new Kinokuniya location, on the Avenue of the Americas, behind the Library and Bryant Park. We weren't expecting to do anything beyond confirm its location, since the old store was still operating and no official announcement had been made for an opening date. But, lo and behold, the door was propped, and Kinokuniya was open for business! We chatted with a manager, who was helping work out the bugs at the cash registers, and learned that we had happened to arrive on their first day. Even the previous day, apparently, they hadn't been certain when they would be opening.

The new location is really nice, and we had the place almost to ourselves. It's huge for a store in NYC, with three levels. Street level is devoted to magazines, English-language books, tourist information and other materials suited for a general audience. The basement has Japanese novels, business oriented publications, and other stuff of little interest to me. The second floor is almost entirely given over to manga and anime. It looked like they hadn't quite finished stocking it as of Saturday, but I would guess that it already has the largest selection in the Northeast; I spent maybe 45 minutes there, and didn't have time to do anything like a thorough inspection. The second floor also has a cafe, still unfinished. It'll be impressive when it's done, with a seating area overlooking Bryant Park through floor-to-ceiling windows.

Kinokuniya apparently plans to hold an official grand opening sometime in early November. Also, we learned that Takehiko Inoue (of Slam Dunk fame) will be at the store on Nov. 19 as announced previously, to paint a wall mural. However, the events of the 19th may only be open to the press, according to the employee I talked to. It sounds like there will be an attempt to arrange public events with Inoue on Nov. 20, but things seem quite up in the air. I'll be keeping an eye on developments, with a possible return visit in mind.

Loot from my inaugural Kinokuniya raid included the English version of the Welcome to the NHK novel, and the Lucky Star Official Guidebook. The Lucky Star guide, which covers the manga only, is small, but well worth the price (about$14), with 30 pages of color illustrations, then another hundred or so pages of black and white character guides, sketches, and a glossary of L.S. terms. I also picked up the latest Japanese volume of Yotsuba&!, published last Monday. It looks like it will be great stuff, as always, involving more simple, amusing adventures for Yotsuba and friends. One of the appealing aspects of Yotsuba&! is that it makes me feel good about my Japanse ability: the language is basic enough so that I can understand about 95% without cracking open a dictionary, and the other 5% is obvious from context. I wonder when there will be an anime adaptation? It seems like an obvious candidate.

After Kinokuniya, we retreated to Mitsuwa, had dinner at the UCC Cafe (mmm, curry rice), stocked up at the supermarket, and drove back to Connecticut. All in all, it was an excellent trip.

Summer 2007 Anime Rundown

2007-07-23T17:09:00.001-04:00

A useful piece of otaku jargon I picked up recently is yandere, which describes a character who is gentle and loving, but with a capacity for anger that can turn murderous. Yandere is derived from the verb yanderu--"to be sick"--and deredere, which is slang for mushy and lovestruck, probably by analogy to tsundere ("haughty and aloof but turning loving"). With an anime adaptation of the notoriously bloody visual novel School Days, and a sequel to When They Cry: Higurashi airing in Japan, the cups of yandere fans runeth over this summer. (Just to clarify, by "yandere fans," I mean people who appreciate yandere characters, not fans who seem pleasant enough, if clingy, until they go on homicidal rampages with icepicks.)

From the new batch of TV anime (22 in total), I intend to follow five shows (in approximate descending order of enthusiasm): Higurashi Kai, School Days, Doujin Work, Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei and Moetan. I've caught an episode or two of some other possibly worthy entertainments (e.g.: Nanatsuiro Drops (Rainbow Drops) for high-quality pseudo-shoujo magical girl adventure, or Mushi-uta (Insect Song) for shounen fighting with giant arthropods), but there's still a bunch of good spring shows airing, and stacks of DVDs to watch; one has to draw the line somewhere.

Doujin Work (Fan-produced Work)

These days, the anime scene has almost reached the point where it's tough to find a show that doesn't include the odd otaku character or anime in-joke; even relatively mainstream productions like Sgt. Frog include episodes that consist of 20% Gundam and Eva references (by volume), apparently without anyone batting an eye. Still, it's rare to see an anime that unapologetically wallows in otaku subcultural ephemera to the extent that Doujin Work does.

Najimi, whom narrative clues mercifully indicate to be older than she looks (about 20, I'm guessing), has just been fired. Under the evil influences of her artist friend Tsuyuri and natty Comiket veteran Justice, she decides that working for a living is for suckers, and that the real money is in drawing porn doujinshi (fan comics). Doujin Work is decadent, if not downright offensive, but also fast and very funny. Overall, it's a nice change of pace from the more sanitized view presented in that earlier anime set in the world of doujinshi artists, Comic Party.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai (When the Cicadas Cry: Solutions)

One of my favorites from 2006 returns, with somewhat more expensive-looking animation, a great new opening sequence (though maybe not quite as great as the first season's OP), and more clues to the mysteries that fueled many a late night bull session last spring. Higurashi Kai starts a bit slowly, with an episode set in the present day (i.e., 24 years after the main story), which functions mostly to review the events of Tsumihoroboshi-hen (The Atonement Chapter), where the first season left off. It then moves into new territory, with an anime-original story arc called Yakusamashi-hen (The Awakening Disaster Chapter), which will cover material from various early sound novel chapters that was omitted or downplayed in the first season of the anime. Yakusamashi-hen starts off innocently enough, with the Hinamizawa game club playing a round of "zombie tag" (definitely one of the more amusing club activities from the portion of the sound novels that I've read), but even here, there are hints of the paranoia, supernatural creepiness and abject terror that is sure to follow.

Higurashi Kai is sort of an obvious summer recommendation from me. Higurashi's mix of cute anime girls and slow-burn rustic horror appeals strongly to my sense of aesthetics, although I can see where it might put off other viewers. But, damned if this show isn't shaping up to be the best of the season, with all of the strengths of the original series intact, and the defects pretty well plastered over, like the door to a hidden room in the basement of a decrepit mountain farmhouse.

Moetan (acronym: Methodology of English, the Academic Necessity)

Moetan is loosely adapted from, of all things, the first volume [Amazon.jp] of a series of unofficial (very unofficial) English-language study guides with moe illustations, intended for Japanese high school students cramming for college entrance exams. A friend who teaches English in Japan tells me that some of her pupils have admitted--under pressure--to owning copies of Moetan and using it to study. English usage tends to be a bit funky in Moetan, but it's good enough for government work, I guess.

The Moetan anime has plot issues, as you might expect. The textbook incarnation included a running story about Magical Teacher Ink Pastel, and her mentor Aa-kun, who is a lecherous talking duck, trying to help ordinary teenager Nao-kun study and get into college, but most of the book is just English vocabulary and sample sentences (example: "Repair. The robotic maid was damaged to protect her master. It was impossible for her to be repaired."). The anime fleshes things out a bit, with more background for Ink and Aa-kun, and the addition of some new characters, but the story's a bit by-the-numbers. The main attractions in Moetan are definitely the POP character designs, which have made the transition to animation in fine form, and the periodic eruptions of mangled English. You can decide for yourself whether that's enough to carry a TV show through a season.

Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei (So Long, Mr. Despair)

Nozomu Itoshiki is a teacher in modern Japan (who seems to think that it's the year 1910), whose mood ranges from despondent to suicidal. His foil is one of his students, Kafuka Fuura, who is giddily, nay pathologically, optimistic. Together, they start a new school year, provide guidence and comfort to the troubled souls of Fuura's classmates, and generally do their best not to stumble into the black abyss of meaningless suffering and dread at the heart of existence. Without much success, I might add: it's Mr. Despair's world, and Fuura is just visiting.

Zetsubou-sensei is the sort of thing I might watch out of sheer amazement that somebody: A) animated it, and B) broadcast it on TV. But it's also quite an enjoyable viewing experience, if you appreciate gallows humor, obscure Japanese wordplay (Nozomu Itoshiki can be misread as "despair," if written horizontally with two of the kanji squashed together), and quirky to experimental visuals.

School Days

School Days is based on a visual novel (opening animation from the game, on YouTube), known for its lavish animated sequences, and love triangles that can go wrong in traumatic ways if the player doesn't pick the right path. Makoto Itou has a crush on Kotonoha Katsura, a school idol-type girl who is quiet and unapproachable. Makoto's classmate Sekai Saionji is a cheerful girl, who learns about his interest in Kotonoha and decides to help the two get together. In some bishoujo anime, relationships would develop smoothly towards a happy conclusion from there, at least for the chosen leads, but even someone who has avoided spoilers from the visual novel (as I've tried to) gets the impression that there will be serious complications and consequences in School Days.

The dark-eyed ultramoe character designs and high production values in School Days are reason enough to watch, as far as I'm concerned. Add to that the promise of sensitive characterization and the occasional shocking dramatic development, and the show is an easy recommendation.

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That's it for the summer, so far. My selections this time are pretty heavy on disturbing stories, possibly involving off-label use of gardening tools, and totally "maniac" otaku-oriented stuff. If you're in the mood for some healthier viewing, check out the late-starting spring anime Dennou Coil (Cyber Coil), a slice-of-life/adventure show about children growing up in near-future Japan, where a virtual world is subtly superimposed on the the real world, for those wearing special glasses. Coil is a high-end production from Japan's public broadcasting system [Welcome to the NHK joke suppressed], and is excellent in every way, apart from a willingness to borrow from Hayao Miyazaki films that occasionally verges on the actionable. Then again, there are worse places to swipe ideas for your anime.

Newtype in Lucky Star, and Vice Versa

2007-06-08T16:46:00.000-04:00

In Lucky Star episode 8, Konata gets her postcard published in the June 2007 issue of Newtype (she says the May issue in the dialogue, but the June issue shows up in the animation). Some people have been wondering what, if anything, appears in the actual magazine. Here it is...

Konata's card is the one showing Akira abusing Shiraishi, if that isn't obvious. The scrawl on the card reads: "Akira-chan, hang in there! yay." Above the card, it says "Are you watching Lucky☆Star?," then prints Konata's message: "Akira-chan, I'm pleased to meet you. You always make Lucky☆Channel so much fun. I'm a huge fan of the always-cheerful Akira-chan☆ I'll be rooting for you from here on, so hang in there, OK!"

The purple caption under the card says: "Saitama Prefecture/Izumi Konata, age 17: We wish you'd be a little bit more considerate of Shiraishi-kun."

To the left of the card, the commentary reads: "Lucky☆Channel, the same within the TV program Lucky☆Star or on the radio. Your message of support for that super-idol with the powerful personality, Kogami Akira-san, has been received."

I suppose there's an aspect of gratuitous corporate self-promotion to having a Lucky Star character submit Lucky Channel fan mail to Newtype magazine (they're all Kadokawa-Shoten properties), but it's also pretty darn entertaining. The scene in the anime is funny on its own, with Konata joyfully showing off her work, getting depressed when Kagami says that she's amazed they published something like that, then cheering up again when Kagami struggles to put a more positive spin on her comments. The anime never shows what Konata's drawing looks like, and when you run across it in Newtype, it's completely hilarious.

Spring 2007 Anime Rundown

2007-04-28T15:40:00.000-04:00

Busy, busy, busy. I’m going to try something a bit different this spring, and choose seven representative anime to review, out of the 50 new TV series. These seven are more or less the ones I intend to follow myself. I’ll briefly mention some others that I’ve seen, where they seem to fit in. Reviews are based on only the first two or three episodes of each show, and so will undoubtedly contain some misapprehensions.

Bokurano (Our)

There seem to be more than the usual number of Evangelion-inspired (to put it charitably) sci-fi anime out there this season, but for me, Bokurano has been the one that stands out. A group of 15 middle and elementary school students on a class trip to the seashore meet an absent minded professor-type named Kokopelli, who signs them on to try a “game,” where they will defend the Earth from a series of 15 attackers, using a giant robot. Of course, the robot and the invaders turn out to be real (as near as the viewer can tell, so far), and after showing them the ropes, Kokopelli leaves the students and their robot to fend for themselves.

I haven’t read the original manga, but it’s clear from the first two episodes that Bokurano is going to be bleak stuff: there are strong and early hints that the use of the robot comes at a high price. The robot itself is half a kilometer tall, a mountain of black armor atop impossibly thin legs, and it gives the simultaneous impressions of having an ethereal, dreamlike existence, and also of being tremendously dangerous. It’s almost like something out of Mamoru Nagano, but nastier, and thoroughly inhuman. Also memorable is the robot’s control room, which consists of a circle of assorted tag-sale chairs floating in the center of a projection of the outside scenery (best new cosplay idea for the spring: 15 friends and 15 mismatched chairs).

I’m intrigued by Bokurano: it’s got a great setup, a unique visual style, lots going on beneath the surface, and an opening that might have been the best of the season, if it wasn’t up against the unholy power of the Lucky Star OP. It’ll be interesting to see how the show handles its large cast, and lack of an obvious main character, though one possible strategy is suggested at the end of the second episode… As with other Gonzo productions, I’m also concerned about how well the animation quality will hold up. While the OP is impeccable, the CG robot action within the show is a bit clunky.

Other Eva-ish robot options this season include Idolmaster: Xenoglossia, which is recommended in spite of—or because of, according to taste—the fact that it seems to involve neither idol singing nor Pentecostal ritual. There’s also Gigantic Formula, a humorless hash of G-Gundam and several other better super robot shows.

Claymore

Set in an alternate medieval Europe, where monsters called yoma feed on hapless villagers, and Spandex was invented 500 years early, Claymore chronicles the travels of a monster hunter named Clare. Clare is a Claymore, half human and half yoma, who is able to detect yoma and fight them on equal footing. She’s too late to save one boy’s family in the first episode, though, and winds up taking on young Raki as a cook.

Blood-soaked seinen (young adult male-oriented) action ahoy! Dark and violent, Claymore invites comparisons to Berserk. It’s more action-heavy, though, and I suspect it won’t have the same depth of character development, or the slowly building sense of supernatural dread, that distinguished Berserk. On the plus side, Claymore does look like it’s working with a reasonable budget, unlike the anime version of Berserk.

For more young women killing stuff left and right, you might check out Murder Princess, an amusing new OAV, probably more comparable to Bastard!! than Berserk, which delivers—wholesale—exactly what the title would lead you to expect it to deliver. On the TV front, Kaibutsu Oujo (Monster Princess) follows the queen of the monsters as she battles rebellious former subjects, with the aid of a schoolboy she brings back from the dead, and, if the opening is to be taken literally, a chrome-plated chainsaw(!!). Also, Bee Train has produced another conspiracy-riddled girls-with-guns semi-sequel to Noir, called El Cazador de la Bruja (The Cazador of the Bruja*). Help yourself, as the New York Times TV reviewers used to write about movies they didn’t care for, but felt were good examples of their genre.

Hayate no Gotoku! (Hayate the Combat Butler)

Through various unlikely circumstances, the impoverished Hayate Ayasaki winds up working as the butler/bodyguard for young heiress Nagi Sanzenin, who is beset by a constant stream of kidnappers, assassins, and runaway military robots. Hilarity ensues, Shounen Sunday style.

I contend that it’s impossible to go too far wrong with an anime titled Hayate the Combat Butler. The humor in Hayate is somewhat scattershot, but the show throws out so many jokes per minute that there’s bound to be something going on to keep you amused at any given point. Highlights from the anime’s numerous running gags include regular breaks in the fourth wall, Hayate’s dubious original theology (featuring Santa as conscience and Lord of Creation), and Norio “Coach” Wakamoto—one of the most recognizable voices in anime—playing the Voice of Heaven. Glancing at Wakamoto's profile on ANN just now, I see that he used to work for the Tokyo Riot Police, which seems reasonable: if you were rioting, and Norio Wakamoto asked you to stop, you probably would.

Lucky Star

Those with an interest in, or at least a tolerance for, low key, character-based Japanese humor, small slice-of-life stories, and pastel anime girls, will do well to check out Lucky Star, the latest from production house Kyoto Animation. My other reader(s?) can skip a couple of paragraphs ahead, where I’ll list some alternatives.

Here is how Lucky Star works: high school friends Konata Izumi, the Hiiragi sisters, and Miyuki Takara go about their somewhat funnier than ordinary lives for a while; one typical and instantly famous/notorious scene consists of the girls talking at length about what they’re having for lunch. Then, a bitter and lethally sarcastic teen idol, Akira Kogami, and her long-suffering co-host, show up and discuss the episode for a few minutes. Next, the credits run, with Konata singing an obscure Nixon-era anime theme behind the closed door of a karaoke box. Finally, you feel compelled to start the episode again and watch the OP—which is the audiovisual equivalent of crack cocaine—over and over until you pass out.

Lucky Star is not really laugh-out-loud funny most of the time, nor is it trying to be, but the characters are engaging, and their antics are sure to keep you smiling. It’s arguably pretty lightweight stuff, though Cruel Angel Theses points out a possible feminist interpretation of the show’s undeniably subversive take on traditional gender roles. That might be reading too much into it, but it’s worth pondering. The simple, cartoony (as it were) animation in Lucky Star is not exactly what people have come to expect from KyoAni, but it fits the story, and is spot-on where it needs to be: character movement and facial expressions are superb. All in all, Lucky Star will be a most excellent way to spend Monday evenings for the next 21 weeks.

The following shows are radically different from Lucky Star: Darker than Black, a sci-fi/occult thriller from studio Bones, has a fantastic setting, great music (by Yoko Kanno) and cool action sequences, though the whole thing is a bit on the bloody-minded side. Over Drive is sports anime about a guy who starts off not even able to keep a bicycle upright and, you have to assume, ends up turning into some kind of ultra 2-times Lance Armstrong. Romeo X Juliet, studio Gonzo’s stab at adapting Shakespeare, is fairly enjoyable if you forget everything you know about the play. Done and done.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS (Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS)

Nanoha has become something of an institution among post-millennial anime fans. Earlier Nanoha series are well regarded for their dramatic plots, in which fundamentally decent people are forced into conflict by cruel circumstance. The franchise is also noted for its explosive magical girl-on-magical girl combat. Nanoha Takamachi’s most basic spell, Divine Buster—the spell she would hypothetically use to open recalcitrant jars of pickles—unleashes a veritable fire hose of million-degree plasma (image). Million-degree plasma and justice. Being a decent person, Nanoha stages her big battles out at sea, well away from any vulnerable island nations.

StrikerS is set 10 years after the events in the previous installment, M.G.L.N. A’s. Nanoha and friends, now magical women, are working as full-time mages, with Nanoha training new recruits for the time-space cops. The previous two series managed a steady increase in animation quality over time, and Nanoha StrikerS continues this happy trend. It does, however, seem less focused than the earlier series, in part because it has accumulated a very large cast of characters, who all need air time. There’s also a certain amount of tasteful fanservice in the new Nanoha. The franchise has always been pseudo-shoujo anime—with the form of a magical girl show, but aimed at an older anime-fan audience—but prior to StrikerS things were kept squeaky-clean. None of this is putting us off of StrikerS here at Moetic Justice, mind you; we’re made of sterner stuff than that.

Viewers interested in checking out some true shoujo anime this season are advised to try Lovely Complex, a romantic comedy set in Osaka, and loaded with Kansai region local color. I’d like to see more anime set outside of the confines of metro-Tokyo, in general, and working-class Osaka in particular is a city that interests me (I spent a few weeks there, years ago).

sola

Yorito Morimiya is up and about before dawn, preparing to take pictures of the sky at sunrise, when he runs across Matsuri Shihou, who is struggling with a malfunctioning vending machine. Matsuri vanishes before Yorito can free her canned soup from the machine. We learn that Matsuri is actually some sort of supernatural entity, and that she’s being hounded by other creatures of the night. Soon enough, she’s taking refuge in Yorito’s house, creating awkward situations with Yorito’s human girlfriend, and horrifying the mundanes with her questionable preferences in clearance-sale instant noodles.

Sola is being released as a nearly simultaneous blitz of manga, anime and game, so there’s no pre-installed fan base for it to rely upon. It seems to be catching on quickly, though, at least in part because of original character designs by Naru Nanao, the divine empress of moe illustrators. Matsuri herself is so moe, one suspects she’s secretly taking some kind of supplement made from ground-up mascot characters from old magical girl anime, in addition to whatever unspeakable nourishment she derives from the avocado ramen she consumes on-screen. Story-wise, sola is not terribly original, but it’s handled well, with an appealingly somber tone, broken up by periodic light-hearted moments.

There are plenty of other bishoujo anime to choose from, if sola isn’t your cup of tea. Touka Gettan (“Standing in Awe of the Moon, Under the Peach Blossoms,” is I think sort of what the title implies, maybe) holds some interest, but is mysterious to the point of leaving you wondering if it is about anything, other than beautiful young people standing around in storms of pink petals. Nagasarete Airantou (Castaway on Airan Island) is a harem comedy about a boy who finds himself stranded on an island with a 100% female population. As a biologist, I have some questions about the feasibility of that premise, but this post is getting too long as it is.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (Heavenly Breakthrough Gurren Lagann)

With Gurren Lagann, studio Gainax returns to the robot anime genre on broadcast TV, for the first time in 12 years. Protagonist Simon seems doomed to live out his days underground in a claustrophobic subterranean town, until, while going about his job of drilling out new living space, he finds a robot. Simon, along with his ne’er do well pal Kamina and the trigger-happy Yoko, make their way to the surface using the robot, and begin their adventures in a new world without sheltering walls.

A frequent running theme in previous Gainax works has been: real men and real women breaking out of their fated roles, and fighting the powers that be. In Royal Space Force, the antagonists were bean-counting politicians; Gunbuster pitted its heroines against the avatars of an incomprehensible, indifferent cosmos; in Evangelion the oppressor was, basically, God. More recently, FLCL started off with rebellion against the petty tyranny of ordinary day-to-day life, then moved into a cosmic struggle of almost Gunbuster-like proportions. Gurren Lagann looks like it will fall into the FLCL pattern (the director, Hiroyuki Imaishi, was an animation director for FLCL), with foreshadowing of epic space battles right from the first episode. The visual style of Gurren Lagann is also very much in the FLCL tradition, with simple designs, animated in a fluid, dynamic way, and chock-full of Freudian symbolism.

Gurren Lagann is shaping up to be a fantastic show. It’s not quite a return to the golden age of Gainax anime, but it’s a big step in the right direction. Let's hope that a messy online squabble between Gainax staffers and faceless whiney dorks ("fair and balanced" is our motto at M.J.) doesn't cause the studio to retreat from potential sources of future controversy.

Other sci-fi offerings this season include Rocket Girls, a light drama about a near-future project to create a manned Japanese space program. The emphasis in Rocket Girls is on realism (it’s the sort of show with space agencies listed in the credits), with minor concessions involving form-fitting spacesuits and 17-year-old pilots. For bombastic mythological space adventure in the tradition of 1930s pulp magazines, check out Heroic Age. The robot animation in Heroic Age looks a lot like Makoto Shinkai's works, which is not a bad thing.

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There’s a glut of good stuff out there this spring, but I’ll more or less be confining myself to the seven anime reviewed above. I guess I’m feeling especially enthusiastic about Lucky Star and Gurren Lagann. On the horizon for the summer, I’ll be looking forward to Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai, as well as the anime adaptation of Moetan, which has up to this point been a series of English language study guides** for the otaku generation.

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Here is one more chance for the Lucky Star OP to violate your cerebral cortex, on YouTube’s dime, and with stop-motion Gundam models instead of animation: Lucky Star OP, Gun-Pla Version.

*My Spanish is, if anything, even more hilariously inadequate than my Japanese.
**Given rather broad definitions of the terms “study guide” and “English.”

The Vegetable SOS Brigade?

2007-04-18T16:26:00.000-04:00

So, does this photo of a South African desert plant bear a resemblance to the final frame in the ending animation of a certain Kyoto Animation production, or is it just that my brain's been addled by borderline obsessive viewing of the Lucky Star OP?For reference, here's the grand finale to the ED sequence from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (YouTube)...
The plant in the photo is Dactylopsis digitata, a deeply peculiar native of the quartz flats of the Knersvlakte region of western South Africa. It's in full bloom and quite healthy, just a bit wilted and yellowed as it begins a long summer dormancy. The photo was taken by DJ Ambient, while he was visiting Mesa Garden, in June of 2005. DJ Ambient--who I know through botanical channels--emailed it to me out of the blue, simply because he thought I'd be interested in a good image of a plant that almost nobody cultivates. He noticed a funny resemblance to people dancing, but certainly knew nothing of Haruhi. The image has been 'shopped, but only in order to remove a busy background (the original can be seen here).

The match isn't exact--Dactylopsis Kyon and Koizumi are facing the wrong ways, and there's a blurry extra stem behind Dactylopsis Haruhi--but it's pretty close. It's more convincing, I think, than the water-stain Marian apparitions that reporters puzzle over on slow news days. What are the chances that five stems on the plant would grow that way, that someone would take a picture at just the right stage of the plant's senescence, and that it would get emailed to a person who would understand its significance, two years later? The mind boggles. I'm converting to Haruhi-ism.

A History of Fansubbing

2007-04-01T08:41:00.000-04:00

Part 3: Early Digital Subtitles.

This April, we continue a series of articles on the history of fan-subtitled anime in the English-speaking world, with a discussion of the almost forgotten early days of digital fansubs. In the early- to mid-1990s, growing fan dissatisfaction with analog media for exchanging anime, such as Video Home System (VHS) tapes and crude homebrew laserdiscs (LDs) fashioned from Tupperware and aluminum foil (see Part 2) led a small group of pioneers to experiment with distribution schemes for digital video. The internet did not exist as such at the time, however, and existing technology such as magnetic core memory proved too bulky and unstable to physically ship between fans. A high-tech solution for the distribution problem was offered by the invention, in 1992, of the punch card (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Legendary fansubber Bryce Carson edits his latest project (ca. 1993).

Punch cards are light and able to store large amounts of data, up to 6 kilobytes in a standard 25 kilogram carton of cards. Early fansubbers, often impoverished college students eager to save on postage, created an innovative compression method called American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) art, in order to pack as much anime as possible into a shipment of cards. Sophisticated subtitling groups such as the Urusei Yatsura Project (UYP) drew full-color ASCII art representations of every frame of animation, by hand, then applied nearly professional-quality subtitles, based on translations by members who had become fluent in Japanese by listening to weekly Nippon Housou Kyoukai (NHK) news broadcasts on shortwave radio (Fig. 2). Dialogue, music and sound effects were represented by rich, life-like 3-bit digital sound.

Fig. 2. Frame from the 1994 UYP subtitle of Top o Nerae! Gunbuster, ep. 3.

Other fansub groups, such as Polar Animation, focused less on the technical excellence of their subtitles, and more on translating large amounts of anime. Polar was able to release full runs of several dozen series, including Kimagure Orange Road (Fig. 3), by employing a cutting-edge automated program to rapidly generate ASCII video. This program ran on top-of-the-line Amiga computers, reported to be on loan from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). Early Polar subs were subject to some artifacting from the ASCII compression process, and sported translations that were often less literal than hardcore fans demanded, but most observers feel that these difficulties were adequately addressed in the group’s later efforts (Fig. 4).

Fig. 3. Earlier Polar Animation subs lacked refinement. (Frame from Kimagure Orange Road, ep. 17).

In spite of advances in compression technology, distribution of digital subtitles by mail remained relatively expensive and slow. A single 25-minute TV episode, which could be stored on about 80 kilograms of punch cards, would have cost $1.25 to ship from Utica to Bangor in 1994, or approximately $420.00 in 2007 dollars. With a shipping time of 3-4 business days, the postal method achieved transfer rates of only 0.000000088 kilobytes per second (kbps).

Fig. 4. Sample frame from a later Polar Animation subtitle (Maison Ikkoku ep. 62).

Resourceful fans living near estuaries developed a clever method of transferring fansubs via laminated punch cards, carried by the ebb and flood of the tides (Fig. 5). Multiple fans could take part in distributing a video file, with individual users retrieving cards from the water, duplicating them, and returning cards to the current for others to share. This method was called bit torrent (BT), and could reach transfer speeds of nearly 0.00000046 kbps. A related technique, direct download (DDL) was even faster, but was practical only in urban settings, where cartons of punch cards could be gravitationally transferred from a sender on the upper floors of a building, to a receiver (or “leecher”) at ground level. New York University students, in December of 1996, used DDL to transfer the entire Patlabor TV series—on 11.4 metric tons of punch cards—from the top of the Chrysler Building to viewers at street level. The students managed to record, at the moment of file receipt, a data transfer rate of 438 gigabytes per second, which is impressive even when compared to the speed of present-day cable modems.

Fig. 5. Bit torrent file transfer in progress at Hell Gate, New York, ca. 1996.

But even at the height of the first digital subtitle boom, the days of watching anime recorded on punch cards were numbered. Production of new digital subtitles was dealt a serious blow in February of 1997, when the entire Polar Animation staff died in a tragic Feng Shui-related accident, while attending a party in a dormitory lounge furnished in a catastrophically unharmonious manner. VHS tape, despite markedly inferior video quality, made a temporary resurgence. The final blow to punch card fansub distribution was delivered by the internet, which was invented on March 4, 1999, by Al Sharpton.

Please look forward to part 4 of A History of Fansubbing, titled “HD-VCD: The Future of Anime?” It’s coming soon, and will be made available on bit torrent.

Higurashi Matsuri Preview

2007-02-19T17:05:00.000-05:00

Here's a sample of the new Higurashi PS2 game; theoretically, it comes out this Thursday. If the whole thing is narrated or voice acted, as the video indicates, I'll totally be able to pick up 20-30% of it, maybe more for the bits that appeared in the anime ^_^ From watching this sample, I'm not quite sure if all the seiyuu are same as in the anime. We'll see, later this week! If it isn't delayed again.

U.S. Gunbuster DVDs!

2007-02-06T07:53:00.000-05:00

There have been significant advances in animation techniques in the past 20 years, as becomes immediately obvious to a present-day otaku watching just about any anime from the 1980s. In general, character designs have gotten more consistent and more attractive, backgrounds more detailed and realistic, animation of movement and action cleaner and more convincing. It's not that modern anime has become uniformly better, even on a purely technical level, but it's undeniable that current productions do more with their animation resources, simply because new and improved ideas about how to, say, animate an explosion, have been invented. Top o Nerae! Gunbuster (Aim for the Top! Gunbuster) is about the only anime from ca. 1988 that a naive viewer might almost think was a high-end modern OVA. Gunbuster was many years ahead of its time, and not so much because it happened to resemble what anime would become, but because present-day anime came to resemble Gunbuster.

Gunbuster was, for example, the first commercial "meta-anime," the first anime made by fans, consciously aimed at an audience of anime fans. Initially content to deftly parody beloved shoujo melodramas, hero shows, sports manga and robot anime, Gunbuster went on to surprise viewers by turning serious, synthesizing something new and unexpectedly powerful from its mélange of inspirations. Gunbuster pilot Noriko Takaya was probably the first anime character who was herself an anime fan, and writer Toshio Okada and writer/director Hideaki Anno weren't content with playing Noriko's otakudom for a few self-referential chuckles. Instead, they use it to turn the show's framework of relativistic space travel into a metaphor for the indefinitely extended adolescence of young people in prosperous modern societies (as has been noted by several commentators over the years, including Ryusuke Hikawa in the liner notes for the new U.S. DVDs).

Of course, Gunbuster is a heck of a lot of fun to watch, subtle and prescient social commentary aside. You know those Lively Internet Debates about which fictional entity would win in a fight? The answer is always Gunbuster. Both Death Stars, 500 Borg Cubes, any two Heralds of Galactus, Great Cthulhu and Dick Cheney with a shotgun and a coffee mug of Everclear? Gunbuster takes them all in style, with Noriko and Kazumi yelling out the names of the moves they're using, just before turning their opponents into smoking holes in the space-time continuum. The show dishes out apocalyptic space opera on a scale not approached before or since (with the possible exception of Ideon), in anime or film, and if you can keep yourself from giggling with glee as the Gunbuster starts incinerating carrier-class aliens the size of planets, you're a better person than me.

My region 1 DVD box arrived last night, and there was much rejoicing: I've been waiting for subtitled Gunbuster in some kind of decent, non-VHS format since, oh, about 1990. In most respects, the new set from Bandai Visual's boutique Honneamise line is everything I was hoping for: excellent video quality, a proper translation, and top-quality packaging and liner notes. Extras on the DVDs include all six science lessons (including the two made for the Okaerinasai LD Box set), original trailers from the '80s, and new short animations exploring facets of the story that are relegated to the background in the main OVAs, like the workings of the "Sizzler" mass-production Gunbusters. Totally sweet.

I really wish that this post could be a piece of pure, unapologetic boosterism for a new release of one of my favorite anime of all time, but there is a significant problem with Bandai Visual's Gunbuster. The training sequence in the first episode was originally set to a piece of music called Honou no Tokkun (Blazing Special Training), which is a pastiche of the theme from Chariots of Fire. Apparently, someone at the home office in Japan got spooked by America's litigious reputation, and replaced the training music with the preparation-for-battle music used in episode 4, Sakusen Kaishi (Commence Operation). The sound in this part of the episode also seems distant and fuzzy. I've got my tapes and LDs to fall back on if I want to hear the original, and I'm not sure that a more casual Gunbuster enthusiast would even notice that anything was amiss, but to me Sakusen Kaishi in the context of the first episode just sounds jarring and wrong. In the end, it's not the sort of thing that would stop me from picking up the DVD set, but it's a blemish on what should have been one of the anime highlights of the year for American fans.