Legit Kannagi, too

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.

Japan '08: Akiba Fun

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.

Upcoming Anime: Kannagi

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.