From the M.J. Political Desk

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

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

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

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

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

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.