The AFA 09 in Singapore is here again, and I was thankful that they actually emailed me to offer me a media pass. Honestly, work has been so tiring these days that I had to sadly ignore NovaJinx’s calls on Friday because of intensive meetings at work. On a pleasant note, I didn’t expect the communications team for AFA to remember a random folk here. I mean, I am not exactly employee of the month, I couldn’t go to the press release because I am at work (2 pm is not a friendly time for a working adult) and I didn’t even promote on AFA at all. I promise I will be diligent next time at the very least.

After visiting the conference, I will probably be making a simple post about the overall state of AFA. I am quite sure that many blogs will offer you the sights and sounds of the conference, while I will probably do a more boring entry about the improvements and regressions from AFA08 to AFA09. Stay tuned if you are keen to hear what I have to say.

For now, I am still fully engrossed in Kimi no Todoke and Kobato, both good series that never fails to have that fuzzy feeling in your heart. I remember a comment from my girlfriend who noted that this season would make GAR lovers squirm in agony from all the lovey-dovey moments in the better animes. I am PERFECTLY glad if that happens every season. The bad news is that I will then haunt this blog much more than you wish for it. Whether it is a good thing or bad thing, I wouldn’t personally know myself.

I do apologize if people are expecting me to blog systematic articles of particular episodes. I believe the other bloggers could cover it. I also find myself hard to devote onto a specific series these days, considering my time constraints and workload. It’s definitely fulfilling to find a job you enjoy that surprises you everyday, yet it can be tiring at times when you struggle to figure out how to make it work. I am not sure if anyone could give some advice, but I will be glad to hear from you about your work-life balance.

Side note:

I have been enjoying the blog entries about the PSC scholarship through DarkMirage’s entry and Moto’s entry, who were/might have been high fliers within the public service. As I am hardly of that caliber myself, I find it fascinating to see how differently they consider things from the elite point of view. Perhaps, this is why they and many others might have left. Still, I cannot dive in deeper to publicly voice my views due to the confidentiality of a currently hired civil servant. Those who might be interested to listen to my views could always contact me on my MSN when I have some spare time to come on.

As fans we all have certain moments while watching anime that really capture our hearts. A moment or a scene that we really experience as closely as is possible with a fictional event. Everyone has their own. They may not always be the most technically well done scenes, the most artistic, or those with the most significance to a story. But something about them connects with each of us in a very strong manner. In this editorial I list ten of my own, and invite you to list yours in comments. Or even to write your own post and put a link to it. Join me as I nerd out about my favorite moments and hopefully communicate some of their significance to me as a fan.

NOTICE: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. I have chosen images and headers that are not spoilers in and of themselves, but if you haven’t seen the series (and don’t want anything spoiled) for Char’s sake scroll down to the next one! I would also ask comments to be setup in a similar way so that people can read the first line and know whether to skip it for spoilers or not.

The idea for this article originated from Scamp over at Bokutachi no Blog. He wrote a similar list of his own favorite moments after an off-topic comments exchange in one of his posts that we had concerning Code Geass episode 22 (though the post was about an episode of Hetalia, go figure.) Just so you know, he’s cool with me stealing using the format, heh. This is why the fandom is great: conversing with each other, sharing ideas and influencing each other in turn! *clenches fist to chest and cries manly tears of respect* Now, my ten moments, in something of an order leading up to my singular favorite. As a note, I attempted to find a video link for each scene, but in some cases it wasn’t possible to find one that doesn’t need to be fast-forwarded to the scene I wrote about, or in two instances clips that have no English subtitles (I could have picked an English dub for one, but it was pretty terrible.)

10. Kidou Senkan Nadesico episode 16

SCENE 8:24-9”25, sorry, couldn’t find English subtitles in an online video and you wouldn’t want to hear the dub.

Megumi: “We’ve all been tricked! These people are…”

Akito: “Human beings. Descendants of those expelled from the moon.”

…

Megumi: “Why are you stuck fighting such an old war?”

Akito: “You don’t understand. This has become our war!”

The crew of the Nadesico has just discovered that Nergal has been hiding the fact that the Jovian Lizards are actually humans that were forced off of the moon and then Mars a hundred years ago. Megumi and Haruka find the escaped pilot of one of their Gekigangar mecha and aid him in his escape, leaving with him to try and find out what’s really going on. But Akito has seen enough of the war that the Jovians have brought and now is solely focused on their destruction.

The fight with Akito in the Lunar Frame against the Gekigangar sent to destroy the Nadesico as it undergoes refit was perfectly grim and tragic because it was understandable. Akito kept fighting against the Jovians, humans or not, with a fury born of his personal experiences in the war. Mars, the death of Gai, the refugees in the lunar base. He’s not like some typical anime characters (usually antagonists) who keep fighting because they’re convinced that they’re right, or won’t listen to anything that contradicts their ideals, or because it’s all they know how to do. Akito started out as a cook not a solider, he’s listened to the broadcast, and he knows that his enemies are humans that have been wronged in the past. But he doesn’t care. The war is starting to turn against the Jovians, he’s endured and witnessed suffering at their hands, why turn back now when they’re finally getting what they deserve for what they’ve done? The way Akito’s change from reluctant to dead set was presented suspended that rational part of my brain for a time, the part that would go along with what the rest of the crew was trying to do (stop the war), and made me feel his hatred towards the Jovians control his actions, facts be damned.

9. Cowboy Bebop episode 05

SCENE, PARTIAL.

Fay ends up captured and used as bait to lure Spike into an ambush as we get our first major glimpse into the history that Spike and Vicious share. The scene in the abandoned cathedral still echoes through my memories. It wasn’t so much for content (though it is important to the story) but for the way in which the scene was presented. The organ music combined with electric guitar during Spike’s walk to the cathedral, the lack of music during the action scenes, and the choir music as Spike fell through the window set up a great atmosphere in terms of sound. Visually I thought the episode was the best combination of two of the major visual and thematic influences in the show, Film Noir and Hong Kong crime/shooter movies. The cathedral was cast mostly in slanting shadows and the color scheme almost entirely black, purples, and blues. The way the fighting was done reminded me more of the classic A Better Tomorrow instead of later films that often added a little too much (or way too much) stylization and acrobatics to the gunplay. Spike and Vicious have their personal duel and exposition ending in a draw when bombs go off and throw Spike from the building amidst flashback to his past and of Julia. Though the beginning really made the scene for me. “In the Rain” being played while Spike walked up to the front of the cathedral under an overcast sky has stuck with me ever since.

8. Toradora! episode 16

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Several important events happen during the school festival in this episode, but to me the crowning moment of awesome of the Taiga X Yusaku arc was when Yusaku was dejected from his (seemingly) one-sided love for Kanou, and Taiga decides to do what she can for him. Despite being in love with him, Taiga takes out her boken and hunts down Kanou after telling Ryuuji to stay by his side while she helps him the only way she can. Finding her in a classroom, lit with heavy, yellow beams of late afternoon sunlight, calls her out for being a coward about her feelings and challenges her to fight. She accepts and the fight goes from shinai/boken to fists, each combatant powered by their feelings for Yusaku even though one turned him down and the other know he’s not interested in her. Eventually Taiga calls Kanou a coward and she then admits that she turned Yusaku down because she knows he would follow her even if it wasn’t in his best interest. While it was melodramatic to express their opinions on each other and Yusaku by fighting, it was a hell of a powerful way to do so, and not so far fetched given the intensity of their feelings and their personalities. And it was the high note that the original Taiga X Yusaku arc went out on. As Taiga and Kanou are restrained by their classmates, Yusaku enters, saying that he was glad to have fallen in love with Kanou, and Minori also watches from the sidelines. The beginning of the next drama arc begins here just as the previous one ends, as Ami returns Taiga’s photos to her and speaks some story altering words to Minori.

7. Gundam 0083 episode 12

SCENE (fast forward to 20 minute mark).

Kou races to catch up to the colony and the Zeon forces guarding it, engaging in fierce combat as he makes a desperate run in the GP03 Dendrobium straight for the colony. The countdown to the point of no return, past which it will be impossible to divert the colony from Earth, is announced several times in the middle of the battle. But despite the best efforts of Kou, the Albion and other EFSF forces, the hijacked colony passes the point of no return. The defining moment for me was when the operator on the Albion announces “The colony…has passed the point of no return.” Absolute silence on the bridge and in the GP03’s cockpit. At that moment, despite all they did, there was no more that could be done (to their knowledge, Bask Om had one more card to play) and it sank in quietly, with just those words and silence. The silence spoke more than anything that could have been said by any of the characters, it descended over the Albion and over my mind like a fog. It was shocking and confusing and made you feel how despair and the desire to do something were straining against each other in the characters’ minds. Whether or not you had seen Zeta Gundam first or not (I had not), what happened was both dire for the characters and those on Earth, but also went against your expectations as a viewer. What do you mean the bad guys win?

6. Initial D Fourth Stage episode 08

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There were several moments of pure awesome in the various seasons of this show (if you’re a car fan like I am), but this one has always been my favorite and has always impressed me with how several great components all come together to make a great decisive moment in this race. Keisuke in his twin turbo FD3S Mazda RX-7 vs Kyoko in her nearly identical model FD, only modified with a large single turbo. Always a hothead to a degree even with his more recent training under his brother, Keisuke is having a difficult time with the roughly paved roads that he races Kyoko on. But slowly he starts to understand and learn, slowly adjusting the pressure he applies on the accelerator by tiny increments to stop from spinning the rear wheels. As he does this ‘Right Now’ by Dark Angels starts playing, a wonderful combination of eurobeat with some rock guitar. The two FDs are very close, making the same moves and as the music continues there’s even a point where Kyoko’s taillight light trail stays on screen after she breaks and then Keisuke’s brakelight fits the exact spot and brakes at the same point. SO COOL! Kyoko wants to keep racing with her crush, hoping to bring the match to a second round by keeping ahead. But while she’s thinking about this she’s distracted and lets her tires slip on the rough pavement, and letting off the gas causes her boost pressure to fall. Keisuke instantly notices and figures out the weakness of the single turbo, that it takes more time to spool up. Going around a corner, he slightly bumps her rear fender with the nose of his car, causing her to let off the gas for an instant, bringing them neck and neck as they exit the curve. Here Keisuke’s twin turbo system has the advantage, using its greater acceleration to get ahead before Kyoko’s more powerful single turbo can spool up. The music, the matching moves, the importance of the different turbo systems, Keisuke learning to control himself despite his brash nature, it all just came together to form a nearly perfect moment of racing.

5. FLCL episode 01

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From the first ‘tap tap tap’ of drumsticks as the instrumental version of Bran New Lovesong began, the scene where Naota runs feverishly to meet Mamimi on the bridge struck me and carved a place in my mind for the density, melancholy, and futility of what was expressed in it. The everyday life where ‘nothing extraordinary happens’ that Naota is both discontent with and accepting of is challenged by the arrival of Haruko, but what does do about it? He runs full speed back to it by running, out of breath to meet with Mamimi again. She’s once again smoking, and the first closeup is of her crumpled cigarette with “never knows best” written on it, seeming to comment on both her and Naota’s lives and their weird proxy relationship with each other. After this visual, as the song continues, Naota arrives with the left over, stale bread for Mamimi and he brings up the basis of their relationship and Mamimi’s with his brother in a way that was not spoken of before. He first asks if she likes him, and she replies with a list of similes “like a panda with a mean face…or the smell of a chalkboard eraser, or a Sunday when you wake up and it’s been raining”, an odd list that is still very real in its sublime and melancholy descriptions. She embraces him in the one-sided way that they’ve been doing things, and the atmosphere of the scene is just absorbed by watching it. Naota as a proxy for his brother, Mamimi not letting go now that he’s left for America, the desperation of Mamimi’s life, and their mutual acceptance of such a hollow but still desperately important relationship. They’re sad and kind of despicable, but you certainly feel the static desperation of the characters, accentuated by the music and set on the streetlight-lit bridge in the middle of the night.

4. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann episode 26

SCENE, key part starts at 3:50, sorry no subtitles.

Nearing the end of the fight, the crew of the Chou Ginga Gurren Lagann is caught by one final trap and imprisoned in a false reality that’s meant to give everyone their own personal dream and trapping them in this appealing illusion. But eventually Simon sees through the recreation of his childhood, breaking the illusion’s grip on his mind. As this happens he meets Kamina again. There they stand in rays of sunlight breaking through the clouds, the two leaders and friends together once more. The line that brought the moment to the highest point for me was when Kamina, after a word of encouragement, remarks to Simon that he’s grown taller than him. The time shift and aging of the main characters was one of the best parts about this show, but here is the culminating moment, when Kamina, great though he was, has now finally been eclipsed by his former younger follower. He’s now a hero in his own right, leading everyone on after Kamina and no longer the kid idolizing his brash sempai. His old friend is obviously proud of him, and they share a parting look and moment before Simon says it’s time to leave, leaving both the illusion, his best friend, and the shadow that he grew up in.

3. Honey and Clover season 2 episode 12

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This scene! It’s the last moment of my all time favorite series and it was so bittersweet that I’ll never forget it. All the other storylines, characters, and dramas have been resolved, and now Takemoto boards the train to leave Tokyo for his architecture restoration job when Hagu comes to see him off at the last minute and hands him a gift. They embrace, then place their hands next to each other on each side of the window, and as the train moves away Hagu chases it smiling and teary-eyed until she reaches the end of the platform. Sitting alone in the empty train car Takemoto opens the gift to find a stack of bread…and in between each slice honey and a four-leaf clover. His memories of her come flooding back as tears stream down his face and “Inaka no Seikatsu” by Spitz begins to play. All his memories of Hagu and thoughts about their failed love come back as he stuffs the bread into his mouth as if both trying to take in the memories like the bread and as a way to ease his emotions. Despite their love never materializing, the last line of the series is Takemoto’s “I’m glad that I fell in love with you.” Finally there’s a last montage of the other characters as the ending theme plays. This whole episode was an emotional experience just for the fact that a series I loved so much was ending, but the final scene at the train stations/on the train was the peak of it all. I cried. I felt emotionally and physically drained of all energy. And I still can’t listen to “Inaka no Seikatsu” or “Split” anymore. Hearing the music just brings back this scene and feels like my insides are being twisted. It was a great ending, keeping with the genuine emotional expression of the entire series as well as its realism; not everything works out for a happy ending, but you should still treasure the moments anyway. Gah, I need to finish up the part about this scene, I’m starting to feel that emotional drain again just from writing about it.

2. Code Geass season 1 episode 22

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Where were you when Season 1 Episode 22 happened?

Talking about this scene is what inspired Scamp to write the post that inspired this one, and I think I’ll reprise some of  the comments I made on his blog for this amazing moment. While on a much smaller and infinitely less serious level it’s kind of like one of those historical milestones that otaku point too like the regular public would the Moon Landing, Kennedy Assassination, 9/11 attacks, etc. The moment it happened kind of crystallized in everyone’s memory. Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first saw it. And after it happened, everything changed. Eupehmia has put together a plan for Japan to be run autonomously, Zero/Lelouch is onboard with his Black Knights, and all of a sudden his Geass becomes permanently active and a casual remark forces Euphie to order the killing of any and all Japanese. Not only was it a huge and sudden plot twist, but Euphie’s death at Lelouch’s hand early in the next episode began Suzaku’s journey to hatred and nearly Titans-level obsession with rooting out the enemy (which just made him even cooler in my eyes, both he and the Titans had good reasons even if they went overboard at times.)

For me I was in my Temple University Japan dorm room on study abroad one afternoon after class. It was a nice sunny day outside and I was relaxing after class and catching up on the shows I was following that season. It was such a rush of emotions as I had no way of knowing that it was coming. My mind just kept racing between ‘WTF’ ‘what now?’ and ‘OH S*** THEY DID FORESHADOW THIS SLIGHTLY!’ while I kept alternatingly yelling ‘what the f***’ at my computer screen and laughing at the insanity of it. It was by far one of the best moments in my years of watching anime.

1. Honey and Clover season 1 episode 15

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It may not be as overtly intense as some of these other moments, but when I think of moments in anime that I’ve watched over the years, this one scene has been the one I think back to the most, the one that can definitely point to as a favorite above all others. Maybe it’s because I was a big fan of Mayama and Rika throughout the series, maybe it’s because I’m just a cheesy romantic who is composed entirely of mush on the inside. But this scene just brought things from the depths of despair to the heights of hope and kyyaaaaa for me. After visiting Asai in the hospital Mayama finds out from him that Rika came to visit and mentioned seeing him in the park over the summer, something Mayama though was just his imagination at first and was driving him nuts. In the lobby he runs frantically to find her, finally spotting her in an elevator and running, shaky, slanted camera angle as he does so, to reach the elevator doors and holds them open as “Yoru wo Kakeru” starts playing. Throughout this series the use of insert songs was particularly amazing, this episode being the pinnacle in my opinion along with the scene where “Tamagawa” plays during episode 07. Upstairs they talk, and as Mayama has guessed in his internal monologue, things are still the same and Rika pushes him away again against the beautifully done backdrop of the huge windows and rainy skies outside. After she leaves to visit Asai again Mayama thinks to himself that things need to start again, and hours later that evening he is there waiting with a rental car to give Rika a ride home. But he intentionally (and he admits the selfishness to himself) drives the wrong way to give himself more time with Rika as the car spirals down the Daikoku Fuutou on the Wangan highway amidst the rain and orange lights.

Things start to change with this, though the rest of their relationship is by no means straightforward or easy. But it was a stunning combination of mostly restrained, subtle emotional content, Mayama’s dramatic chance taking, great music, and rich, artistic animation in the still backgrounds and rainy color palette, the placement of the characters both on the bench and in the car, angles from which they’re viewed, and the objects in motion parts such as the car’s blurred taillights. There was a great visual metaphor used in this scene too, contrasting stillness and motion. Mayama and Rika sit still on the bench, discussing the same things and having the same result as their relationship moves nowhere. But then as Mayama makes his play to change the status quo with the car ride, there’s a great deal of movement with the car, the windshield wipers, passing lights, and moving shadows on their faces as their relationship begins to ‘move’ again. And not only was this scene wonderful to watch the first time (and again and again), but elements of it will always be in my mind.

Hi all random THAT anime blog readers,

My nick is Impz and I currently reside in a place known as the abyss of bloggers. You know, the place where retired bloggers think about how cool they used to be and brag about their former glories. Obviously, I cannot even say that I have ever been popular, what with no one possibly remembering me. Self-pity is probably my greatest trait right now, so bite me. I want my random attention from random online people! With that out of the way, I can proudly announce the arrival of the newest afk blogger in THAT Anime Blog.

Nonsense aside, it has been a long while since I step into this blog. It’s really strange how I suddenly decided to pick up my keyboard, and decided to type some random things on this space. I thought I have gone past the hill and over the mountain when it comes to doing any form of blogging. A few days ago, Crusader messaged me and said that I have not blogged for three anime seasons. It suddenly dawned on me that it really has been a while since I last dealt with anything anime-ish. That is, if you exclude the obsessive reading of Skip Beat (DARN YOU, DICKTARO!) AND the rampant kyaa-ing for Kaichou wa Maid-sama manga. I also finally transited from a lazy student to a working adult in the Ministry of Education. It’s definitely a huge change. You will never appreciate weekends that much until you start on your first real job.

Anyway, fast forward 9 months to the present (I love totally terrible attempts at Segue). This season came with a bag of surprises. Kimi ni Todoke was hilarious, with Sawako an extremely adorable lead. I mean, who doesn’t like leads that are adorable without trying so hard to be the cute-kawaii anime girl? I am sick of anime girls who are pandering to anime fans simply through extreme crazy forms of cuteness. In addition, it has been a while since side characters become side characters instead of decorations. Come on, you have to admit that most side characters in shoujo series are like generic stereotypes that can be easily substituted with a dog… or a cheesecake. In addition, how can a shoujo fanboy find shoujo fare boring?

Yumeiro Patissiere is another shoujo, albeit more of a food series. It is hardly a form of artistic excellence by any measure; in fact you can even consider it rather childish. The main lead, Ichigo, is a very standard shoujo female lead. When I mean standard, I mean stupid, clumsy and generally a typical damsel in distress that needs her food knights to save her from getting fat screwing up all her baking and cooking. Yet, I find myself enjoying the silly childish antics. I might eventually grow to dislike the show, but currently I am lapping it all up.

Amusingly, I also found myself enjoying Kobato. Perhaps it is the light-hearted approach of the show. Perhaps, Kobato has that innocence that manages to penetrate this old cynical man. I cannot even accurately pinpoint what is right about the show. Is it the beautiful lush animation? Is it the fact that I enjoy Clamp works (I disliked Tsubasa Chronicles though)? I do not know, maybe you have an answer?

If you ask me if I will actually start blogging (or if anyone still cares to hear what I like to say), I don’t know. Still, it’s good to be back. If only for one post. That’s what all semi-retired unpopular bloggers like to say when they make a comeback, don’t they?

p/s: I also succumbed to the greatest sin of all anime bloggers: Watching Bleach with my girlfriend and actually liking it. It’s depressing, I know.

A Zeon worth fighting for.

Well now that work is out of the way and I am currently waiting for orders during Spring Break I am finally able to fully address IKnight’s “War Sucks!” post in a fuller manner. IKnight raises an important distinction between the war sucks theme and the prevalent misnomer that it essentially means that such a work is by nature anti-war. For the most part Gundam is anything but anti-war and with exception to a few animated works such as Waltz with Bashir and Grave of the Fireflies there aren’t many animated works that are at their core anti-war. For the most part Gundam is not anti-war since all mecha is a glorification of violence on some level and not an out right rejection of violence as a means to an end. In most cases those who do writing probably have never fought a war nor have ever served in uniform, even then there is a great deal of difference between a conscript and a volunteer. The only widely read writer that I can think of (note there are many more that may or may not have seen combat) who actually fought in a modern war was George Orwell, given that anime is done almost exclusively by Japanese writers and given that they hardly talk of the full scope of the last war that they fought it is unlikely that they are capable of fully understanding the great big mess that is war. IKinght is largely correct in deducing that opposition to one war does not automatically mean that such a person is anti-war, the notion that there can be a just war is proof enough that there are few true pacifists.

If there were to be an anti-war Gundam the protagonist would have to be a GM pilot, not some invincible kid.

I’ll be honest I don’t think that most civilian can even begin to understand what war is and how it is possible for decent people to irrationally enlist. Even if IKnight says that all the conflicts he hears about were in far off places he does ignore the situation in Northern Ireland or what it would have been known to him as “the Troubles” thereby demonstrating what I think is a fundamental issue with civilians in general and idealists in particular, willful ignorance. War is at its core death on an industrial scale nothing will ever change that, not the Geneva Convention, weapons bans, or the International Court of Justice. The creation of such institutions is simply a mark of the notion of a just war and a clean war which is in my experience rather prevalent in the     better off places in the world but by no means universally held even there. What mecha, and in keeping with IKnight’s example, such as Gundam does is vindicate acts of war on the part of the titular heroes, with notable exception to UC. In the case of UC it was the chronicle of a long running war with distinctions between good and evil harder to define as it dragged on since both the Federation and Zeon engaged in atrocities of one sort or another at various times. Most importantly of all is that no matter how great a pilot Amuro, Char, or any one for that matter none of them could put an end to it. For all of the heroism, camaraderie, and nobility none of mattered in the grand scheme of things, it was all in vain. More recent Gundams aren’t anti-war as they amount to little more than power fantasies of the lone teenage hero doing superhuman things on par with curing blindness there by dumbing down the issue of war down to moralistic platitudes of little if any value. Nevertheless ‘War Sucks’ is a universal theme in Gundam, along with all the romanticism associated with war adventure, romance, and heroics, and for good reason, since mecha in Gundam are machines of war and not machines that play basketball.

These days it seems child conscripts are quite fashionable, and as such there will be much tomfoolery and SNAFUs.

‘War Sucks’ is common enough sentiment but because morals differ from place to place making moral judgments on war is largely a futile exercise. The idea that there can be a just war ought to confirm to everyone that war will not be going out of fashion anytime soon. In the case of the Neo-Conservatives the 2003 invasion was justified, not every one agreed and heated and ugly arguments were tossed about across the globe largely over the rather pointless issue of whether or not it was right. Herein lies the crucial divergence of how a soldier and a civilian would think, for the civilian having the moral high ground is important, for the soldier the thing he/she cares about most is victory and how to live to see it. I know for me that once the die was cast there would be no take backs and the only thing that really mattered is and always will be victory, since in all honesty I’d rather deal with the consequences of winning than the consequences of losing and like Patton I’d don’t give two shits for some one who lost and laughed. Even if an indeterminate number of servicemen take issue with the dice being tossed in the first place assigning blame doesn’t help me or anyone else who is in country, but for any civilian that cares about politics (which is pretty much everyone) being right helps them in ways I don’t fully understand. The fixation on moral high ground and moral justification plays a large role in Gundam, sure the side they are on can be wrong, but the hero is always right and largely free of any sort of misbehavior and if there is even the slightest bit of ambiguity there is usually an excuse which is harped upon constantly. In addition the in the recent Gundam series there is a distinct lack of death on the hero faction which automatically removes much of the PTSD factor further making war a mere backdrop for mecha beating each other to pieces.

As for the those who actually volunteer there is much less bitching, though a lot more trash talk.

Within the mecha genre the most glamorous of all soldier subtypes is already chosen, the pilot. There is a great difference between a pilot and infantry, after all a pilot will rarely see the first hand the results of his/her handiwork in the same way a ground pounder would, the fact that pilots do put kill markers on their planes is indicative of how each group has different views on killing. Moreover a pilot is usually an officer with better pay and better facilities than the enlisted. Things are easier for a pilot since IFF is usually good and for the most civilians don’t go off getting in the way in fighters or mobile suits, hence by default a mecha pilot will rarely if ever accidentally kill civilians as opposed to the infantry whose environment is far more confused and IFF is depended sole on a snap judgment measured in milliseconds. For the most part if a pilot does pull off a blue on blue it’s because he/she hit a ground target that was misidentified. So by default Gundam and mecha can’t ever really be anti-war because they deal with a sanitized aspect of war the only more sanitized version would be something about sailors on ships bravely swabbing the deck, not to say that their contribution is unimportant (as the Carrier Battle Group is the primary arm of force projection) but rather that they do have a sanitized environment which they swab on a regular basis. Moreover pilots don’t as a rule have it any where near as bad as the infantry since the idea of digging a hole to shit in with toilet paper being a luxury item is often enough to disabuse anyone with a romantic notion of war.

Damn civilians always getting in the way, this is not a photo op people!

While IKnight is right that every serviceman thinks that war sucks, the important difference is that for the most part those who choose to enlist or accept a commission broadly fall into the following categories the guys with no where else to go, mild misanthropes, guys who want the benefits, the guys who believe in their nation, and any combination there of. The guys who only sign for the benefits are often the first to desert and flee to other places seeking asylum and as a result their thought processes are utterly alien to me. Of the remainder for the most part there is the prevailing belief that while killing is bad letting the Jihad-kuns of the world to go about unopposed is far worse and war being war casualties, even collateral ones, are inevitable since fitting everyone with IFF would be impractical not to mention hard to implement on consenting people given potential overtones of Orwellian Dystopia.

As distasteful as civilian casualties are, it is militarily difficult to solve the problem. First off since the advent of fast moving columns in the post blitzkrieg years armies can move faster than civilians can run (also since civilians have more fat people, children, and senior citizens among them speed is further hampered) and even when they can run some for various reasons choose to stay put or are abandoned, speed being a critical to the success of any campaign seizing the objective is going to take precedence over letting every civilian get a good enough head start. Secondly moving all civilians into camps away from the baddies only sounds good in theory even if they don’t die from bullets they can still die from neglect. Thirdly the Jihad-kuns of the world do like to hide out amongst civilians and since Mao wrote the latest best selling book (to get rich is glorious) on guerrilla warfare every revolution in the making makes a point to get civilians involved in a People’s War. You can make a smart bomb but even then it still relies on a kill radius and there is no guarantee that civilians won’t simply get in the way. Then there is the issue of a huge amount of dumb ordinance that militaries all over the world use, and sadly bullets are very democratic in that they generally don’t give a toss about what they pass through or what they end up in. More often than not any killing of civilians is almost always portrayed as a deliberate act, when the reality is that accidents do occur and a slight shift in the wind can result in unintended consequences.

Sure they look magnificent, but we all know how tough they really are…

Then there are the mild misanthropes like me who consider the entire concept of innocent civilian to be a farce, it’s not so much that the civilian label is disagreeable but the notion that humans are in any way innocent is something I for one consider blatantly disingenuous. In Gundam and most series dealing with war there are plenty innocent civilians to be killed by the forces of evil they are little more that objects to be killed and then mourned for so that the forces of evil can be made all the more abhorrent and ultimately easier to kill while remaining “noble” and “just.” Truth is in war civilians will screw each other over to get what they need, crime doesn’t stop, theft goes up during duress, misdemeanors are committed, felonies continue, and for the most part a declaration of war does not put an end to the petty squabbles and crimes of non-combatants. Profiteering also occurs, so I fail to see how every civilian can be considered innocent when you can have Ann Coulters, Al Frankens, Bernard Madoffs, Charles Mansons, and Josef Fritzls amongst the civilian population. You also have the Janjaweed Rifle Association and the Hamas Rocket Society under the aegis of civilian organization, even then even if captured the members of such associations can’t be shot as spies without some controversy. Lastly I am sure most if not all of you have bought stuff with the Made in China sticker and even with Made in USA the truth is perhaps it too was made in a sweatshop, so if you think about it the ubiquitous presence of Chinese goods means that most of us have taken advantage of sweatshop labor at some point. Given the complexity of the civilian label and the general treatment of most civilians as innocent civilians, most shows dumb it down any anti-war message is already compromised.

Freedom means different things to different people.

While the average mecha protagonist in the recent Gundams is an idealist, the prevalent cynicism within most formal all volunteer militaries, is absent. (I’d imagine that it be much worse for a conscript, but I wouldn’t know) It’s fairly easy to become a misanthrope, I used to believe in human decency and the notion of innocent civilian, but 9/11 changed everything (doesn’t it always). I remember clearly, I woke up at about 0630 local time heard about he attack over 106.1 FM, thought it was bullshit, turned on the news to see the second plane go right into the tower, went to school, attended my advanced algebra class, and then the announcement at about 0830 is made to go home. To my shock and surprise I hear the loud cheers of high school students at the early dismissal, only one girl was crying in that class showing any hint of grief her name oddly enough was Mary (who I am sure was a virgin at the time, the Virgin Mary), and it was then I came to the conclusion that humans are savages.

War ages people in unexpected ways.

It’s my belief that decency was only possible when people were given the chance to be decent and if that loud cheer I heard was indicative of anything it was that not all of us even choose to be decent when given the choice. After that I had no doubt in my mind what I was going to do after high school and in 2003 I started the enlistment process. Having venerated Prussians and reading books about war, and now that a war was inevitable, I answered the call that I had felt for most of my life. The question of whether or not I could live with myself after having participated in so cruel (and uniquely human) an endeavor that might harm innocent civilians was answered with a thunderous cheer, which resulted in a general loss of faith in the human species. I think that is something no one else can understand and as a result most character development from civilian to ace is, to me, fanciful. Fundamentally my reasons for enlisting were irrational, and perhaps that is the thing that is glossed over, humans are irrational. While everyone wants peace the caveat is that we all want it on our terms, and that’s the point of violent disagreement across the globe. It’s easy to say you will die to protect your countrymen, but if given the choice to take a bullet for David Duke…I’d rudely decline. Moreover no one ever won a war by dying for his country, he won it by making the other poor bastard die for his, as such the issue is not whether one is willing to die to protect people, but if they are willing to kill to ensure their safety.

Pretty much sums up Pumpkin Scissors, the setting is depressing, but her antics are odd to say the least.

While Gundam and mecha are not anti-war, what does come to mind when I think of anti-war themes is Pumpkin Scissors, though admittedly not the best series in the world, it nonetheless went to a place few anti-war themed works go, the post war period. It’s a romantic notion that once the guns fall silent that the worst is over, on the contrary, the widespread destruction of infrastructure, displaced persons, the break down of order, botched demobilizations, and in the case of the defeated nations that signed a mildly Carthaginian peace, occupation or reparations. Most worryingly of all is the emotional ill will and anger of the populace after a war, if it is long perhaps the feeling of relief will allay the worst of it, but in a short war hatreds persist because the sacrifices more often than not were simply minimal. Unless of course the victor was waging war in someone else’s backyard in which case the post war period needn’t be painful at all. Even if it was not handled superbly Pumpkin Scissors at least covered many aspects of the shitty post war period, wide spread unemployment, loss of infrastructure, meager harvests, continued rationing, banditry, women turning to prostitution, a generation of women who may not even find a husband, disease, illicit drugs, organized crime, etc. Had it been GRIMDARK it certainly could have succeeded in that regard, but a bubbly happy overtone makes it more digestible since the any overly serious treatment of it might have been to depressing to slog through for 24 episodes.

Tl;dr C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre. C’est de la folie.

Philosophy of adaption

Well, I think Kyoani and its creative minds were surely in a syncretic state – they had to balance viewer satisfaction with satisfying their own artistic minds. They had to balance – what Cuchlann and I fight about – the meaningless of art and the superimposed politics of art, entertainment. [This would probably apply to everyone who's ever had to publish something.]

So then let us say, “to excise, or not to excise, that is the question.” In order to provide the viewer with a narrative that avoids resets Kyoani would have needed to remove arcs, ends, and possibly rewrite some material. Yet they decided to include all the original material in the adaptation. The relationship between these two choices – that of “chastity” or “adulteration” – is not hierarchical. This is not a political question, it is a philosophical question¹, and as such, the significance is not in the result of the deed (higher or lower viewer ratings, more or less money) but in the inseparable morality of the deed itself – the two are merely artistic choices devoid of any intrinsic meaning, therefore, both having no meaning, they are equal to one another.

So for some reason I don’t like bringing up talk about the VN and aspects of adapting material. Yeah, Clannad is an adaptation, yeah, aspects of linearity fail sometimes, that’s inevitable. I’ve been working under the presumption that it is literally impossible to encapsulate the aspect of VN replayability in anime, therefore it’s rather silly to compare an anime to something it is intrinsically incapable of doing because, remember, we’re operating under the philosophy that, basically, the means justify the ends (not a typo). Even if you were to reverse the position, say that Kyoani alters source material, rewrites a few endings, there would still be things that version would be intrinsically incapable of doing, like providing those very reset ends you removed and so forth. [hear hear!]

Psychology of time

Valsiner (2005) writes that

[t]he co-existence of different bases for time measurement in human cultural practices reflects the historical complexity of measuring time. Efforts have been made to turn time into reversible units, similar to measures of length, weight etc. These static depictions of time can be seen as examples of “reversible time”. Surely such units are convenient cognitive illusions, yet they have their practical utility. Thanks to that, continuous events can be turned discrete (for example, there can be specifiable “end points” to experiences such as sitting in a lecture hall…). By trying to measure time, the duration notion is lost and time becomes represented in ways similar to space. Practical needs for social organization of life activities in societies guide the thinking of persons about time in the direction of overlooking the irreversibility of the duration.

In sum – time is irreversible as it flows, intricately linked with our experiencing our relations with our worlds. As a result of human cultural history, we have attempted to describe it in terms of stable units, which have served practical purposes. For the understanding of development, units of time that are used in science need to retain some features of irreversibility.

The take-away message is that in our viewing of Clannad (or any sort of time travel) we have to separate psychological time from narrative time.

fig1

[There are some epistemological nuances here - the narrative as a whole doesn't "regress" because the progression of the narrative is tantamount to a developing human psychology within irreversible time, but the narrative does indeed return to events that happened within a past that was established within the framework of relative events of the holistic narrative.]

Previously, Pontifus had written:

I’m having a hard time convincing myself that Clannad is tragic at all, ultimately, when all its tragedy is erased by magic.

But this is a reductive view which equates constant psychological time with narrative time. If we were to say truly that specific events onto which we have attached personal meaning were erased it be tantamount to memory loss of the viewer. Thus we can expand our graph:

fig2

Here, because excel sucks for 3-axis graphs, psychological time = ∆0 because it is always constant. For every instance of psychological time we establish a narrative event, that ratio is 1:1. But narrative events can regress, so even in a ∆0 of psychological time there can be a +/-∆x narrative time. Finally, emotion is always situated in irreversible time (psychologies cannot transverse time) and thus, for the sake of this study², we can set up some syllogisms:

∆emotion = ∆0psychological time
∆narrative time = ∆0psychological time
+/-∆emotion ≠ +/-∆narrative time

A change in emotion equals no change in constant psychological time.
A change in narrative time equals no change in constant psychological time.
A +/- change in emotion does not always equal a +/- change in narrative time.

Figure 2 is a hypothetical calculation of Pontifus’ psychology of Clannad. His psychological time is constant, yet as narrative time regresses his emotional level drops drastically. This is because, as he stated, “tragedy is erased”, which is just to say that narrative time regressed within a constant psychological time. But, as opposed to an Aristotelian notion of tragedy as an end product, it is clear that even a regression in emotion is a process that cannot disregard one’s history.

Even Nazarielle said:

…after what happened, it’s hard for me not to think that they were just trying to hit us as hard as they could, knowing that they could later reverse the sadness and make us all happy at the end. In hindsight, I can’t help but feel that it’s all rather artificial or fabricated. [emphasis added]

But for Nazarielle to explain his discontent, he must first explain the process by which this discontent arose. The process of emotion-building is invaluable because irrespective of what these emotions entail, they are always the basis for a developing psychology. And to explain more fully the process model within this developmental psychology, a fourth data series is need: reflexivity.

fig3

For someone like Pontifus or Nazarielle, or nearly everyone in the ’sphere, reflexivity is crucial – it’s writing, blogging. If there is one thing that is not altered by emotion in irreversible time nor narrative time it is reflexivity – it is cumulative, you cannot erase it (unless you perform a frontal lobotomy or something).³

notes

“You are both extremely excellent students. Your grades and living habits are flawless. Eventually, you’ll both become capable people who will heighten this school’s reputation even more. I look forward to it.”

Theory

It’s a trope of anime to portray high school administration as cold, aloof and mechanically bent on setting students on “the right track”. With typical recourse to half-gendo-glasses Kare Kano paints this one Kawashima-sensei’s administrative functionality as a suppressor of love, love being the general premise of the show. Others have noted that Kare Kano stands out because it subverts the cliché that all overachieving class representatives are prickly assholes lacking terribly in empathy and invigorating youthfulness! I do enjoy the show in this respect – it provides a fresher, deeper perspective into the (more or less) “complicated” psychologies of high school students and their particular personal histories.

What Kare Kano seems to be indicate of, however, is a certain mentality of the role of the student. The role of the student is to study, to achieve, to perform up to the discursive status quo of your socioeconomic class, race, gender, age, ability, and so forth. This the show addresses clearly. Miyazawa and Arima challenge the administration, stating that they have the ability, the agency, to subvert the institutionalized, coercive norm that has established irreconcilability between academic and nonacademic life; apparently, they can do both.

In one sense, Kare Kano misses the larger picture because our protagonist duet uses their agency not to combat the hegemonic ideology of the student, but, on the contrary, to reinforce it by raising the standards to which students deemed as “excellent” (see opening quote) must meet. Now, not only must you conform to the overly-rigorous academic standards in order to fit into the ideology of the exemplary student, but your social life must be teeming with youthfulness. Briefly, yet in more complicated terms, this is when hegemony appropriates counter-hegemony (when does fighting the system actually hurt us more than them?)

So, on the one hand, perhaps you could say that Miyazawa and Arima did an excellent job of using their agency to fight the suppressive ideology of the student by making visible the fullness of their identity – they’re not merely “students”, but individuals as well. And on the other hand, you could say that the two only made the ideology of the student that much worse.

This is the larger mentality which the show is indicative of – the intent not to rewrite the boundaries of discipline but merely to contract them. Kare Kano is so very acutely aware of the larger discourse in which it is involuntarily situated because it does not bring the ideology of the student fully out of the dark. Why? – because Kawashima-sensei’s consequentialist rhetoric (nonetheless pertinent) on “the future” and “your goals” is, incidentally or otherwise, a diversionary tactic which curtains the hegemony of educational institutions by placing blame on students instead of the institution. Thus, the more leftist answer is educational reform – install “critical pedagogy” (please, don’t get me started -_-’) in order for “students” to become more than mere “students”, those passive receptacles for academic knowledge which instill in youth this problematic ideology of institutionalized identity.

Practice

So, where’s the practicability of all this, you ask? For the most part, I can only extrapolate and provide some basic data:

(source)

Nor does this graph alone say anything, but let’s pretend that near 100% of the age group 15-24 is comprised of students. It’s also important because, apparently, Japanese high school freshman are 15 upon entering, and through a series of convoluted causalities would explain the huge jump in suicide.

Given, these are statistics from 1992. Kare Kano, the manga, was published in 1995, the anime was produced in 1998. There’s really no reason for me to try and get all “scientific” based on such deplorable evidence (alas, my tongue is not of the runes!), so I’ll just say that an overly-intense Japanese work ethic is the cause for a number of youth suicides every year. One way to prevent suicide is to, well, make school a bit less suicide-inducing for Japanese students. Recently, the Japanese government initiated a counter-suicide white paper to reduce suicide by 20% within a decade. The referred to article states:

“The White Paper exposes the traditional approach in Japan of ignoring the issue altogether and presses for the kind of basic research into causes that is standard in most developed nations.”

This alleged “ignoring [of] the issue altogether” seems highly reminiscent of the anime we were just discussing – how Miyazawa and Arima merely try to prove themselves worthy of the institution’s status quo instead of trying to change the institution and its coercive status quo. That could count, if not as “ignoring the issue altogether”, then “ignoring one significant cause of the issue.”[1]

Ethics

RELEVANT!

Kawashima-sensei is surely not a pernicious conservative whose aim it is to destroy the lives on his liberal students. Perhaps I’ve portrayed him that way, but I’m certain that he has his own ideology and personal history. He’s probably from the war era, when times were tough, when, perhaps, love was secondary to financial security – love is indeed a sociopsychological privilege (more like burden?) of those affluent enough not to be worried about how many children it will take to farm your fields when you’re not able to anymore. So Kawashima-sensei’s “consequentialist rhetoric” is very important – unless you change the very structure of the global economy, you should indeed be concerned over the future of your financial security. Here is the main ethical concern of discourse (or as some scholars like to floridly call it, semiotic demand setting): should we be concerned with the immediate or the long-term? How do we reconcile the two? By directing discourse towards the suppressive features of Japanese pedagogy we then label the positive aspects of such pedagogy as “diversionary tactics”. On the flipside, ignoring your financial future in favor of high school rabu rabu could indeed ruin the rest of your life (possibly leading to suicide!). Whatever the most pragmatic answer is, I think the first step (and in related scenarios) is to be aware of the extent of the situation and all its possibilities of development. The first step, at least for me, is political consciousness.

Back to the damn anime

Does Kare Kano directly address most of the aforementioned stuff? No (nor any other anime I’ve seen). The anime is a love story about two high school students overcoming obstacles that impede their love, it’s not about complex social theory. I don’t think the anime sympathizes with Kawashima-sensei as I have. That makes the anime that much more shallow – it’s an empathy based on cliché binaries of good and bad. The anime does not present complex and problematic ethical questions, but merely an easy way for the viewer to relate to the typified struggle of high school romance. Finally, this is not to say that all I have just excreted is false – cultural texts are always situated, involuntarily or otherwise, in political and ideological terrains. Blah blah blah, watch the show, it’s enjoyable!

“Ne, lelangir-san, lelangir-san~!”

“Nani, eruke?”

“For the awards, do you nominate your favorites or the ‘objective’ best?”

“wut”

Here, lolikit and lelangir take a look around the ’sphere and discuss whom they would nominate for what if the Anime Blog Awards were to take place this instant. We only address those categories we thought would give us things to talk about, and, of those, some are more organized than others. Please weigh in with your own thoughts on the topics at hand in the comments, as this is more than a popularity contest.

Best Editorial

Editorial is a broad term. I guess in my own view, you have the bateszi/IKnight/Lawson style of commentary, and then there are the more analytic pieces. Not that styles and bloggers are mutually exclusive, of course.

Lawson-style is, in more cases than not, just fanboying about something with airy diction that makes said fanboying sound harmless. All the while it infects his readers and turns them into automatons of love and moe! It is a disease! A diseeeeeeeease!!

Favorite (non-meta) commentary: IKnight & bateszi. I’m not surprised it’s the brits with the flowerly writing. I don’t read bateszi, I think because Owen’s hero-worship turned me off. If you hold him in such high regard, maybe I should change my ways? I guess it’s like eating, as IKnight would say, a very dark, rich chocolate cake.

Well. I’m going to throw some nomnomnominations the way of Mike and jpmeyer, because I am living in the past. Take that! I remember jvaldez being an enjoyable read, but he’s been kinda dead lately.

Most Thought-Provoking

For little old me, thought-provoking in the ’sphere has come to mean “RyanA, ghostlightning, Cuchlann, and lelangir debating something on a grossly meta level, replete with literary references and the names of psychologists.” That gives me over nine thousand directions to go in for listing blogs, as we’ve got RyanA’s one blog, Cuchlann’s two, ghostlightning’s three four, and… well, I can’t even begin counting all the blogs lelangir posts at. Ten, I think.

If you were to put a gun to my head, however, I’d list the following three for most thought-provoking:

Super Fanicom

It’s a powerhouse of insight. It’s got three of the deepest writers in the ’sphere. I must admit that I am not too familiar with Kaiserpingvin, but to be fair he’s only written on the site twice. I’m a special fanboy of Pontifus because he waxes literary on Aria from time to time, which gets me bothered and hot. I’d say, no offense to ponti-dono, that Cuchlann is easily the most thought-provoking blogger in the ’sphere. I think OVER 9000 WORDS can attest…if you’ve read it. He basically kicks my ass and proceeds to rape me. I never said Pontifus was deeper. Just sexier. Not everyone has a rape fetish (to the relief of my next pick!). LOL, I finally get that joke after reading “public enemy #2″; priceless, really.

Anime Almanac

No, this isn’t a joke. Nor is it a troll. The reasoning behind this pick might not be what our “ever lovable blogger” SVS might hope for, but I think it’s justified: Anime Almanac gets me thinking about why certain lines of thinking fail and why certain styles of blogging are better than others. I guess it’s harsh to say “your failure has made my mind stronger,” but it’s true. Thanks, Scott. Ah, you see, this is one reason why the category “thought-provoking” fails. A blog you find stupid can be very thought-provoking. Hell, I find Sankaku Complex fairly thought-provoking at times. Does that mean it fails? I don’t think so. We still have “Best Editorial” for those blogs that have truly good… well, editorials.

We Remember Love

ghostlightning, beyond collaborating with lelangir and others (myself included), has helped me reexamine my place in the ’sphere. He has given me reason to continue applying “lolikitean understanding” (IcyStorm’s testicular prespiration helps (ønlÿ For WôRMs LIKE Yöu who dó nOT Understand!)) in my reading of anime, and he has caused me on multiple occasions to pause and… for lack of a better word… think about things more than I otherwise would. In other words, he’s kept me in check, kept me pondering, kept me sharp. That’s thought-provoking, and that’s ghostlightning’s ever lovable (no joke here) blog. Well, what would you expect from a 30 year old dude who’s studied philosophy and literature? You could say, “just as planned.” He’s like the Kamina to my Simon…

Coburn at Claiming Ground

Coburn was one of the first blogs I frequented when I was starting out. What I like about his writing is that it is very theoretical, often providing frameworks with which to analyze anime. I don’t see this very often, but another great case is IKnight’s seminal pieces on GAR. I will specifically mention coburn’s “Reaction Porn” theory which insightfully distinguishes between character “development” and “revealment,” though he’s told me elsewhere the distinction thereof has more to be said.

Best Meta

If there’s one important lesson that the recent crop of metablogging has yielded, it’s that “blogs” don’t define blogosphere content as well as “bloggers” do. As such, it would almost be counter to the teachings of meta-anibloggery to nominate blogs in this category.

Actually, fuck hedging.

It would be counter to the teachings of meta-anibloggery. [but that's why I said the ABA should nominate bloggers not blogs...]

There, I said it. And I make no nominations.

I think you’re forgetting ani-nouto and anitations. Yes, author is probably the best meta-blogger out there. If you don’t like his trolling, don’t take him seriously. I’d like to say anitations has great meta value because it’s a proxy. I lens content, as RyanA would say. So far, these are two of a kind…

I don’t know if I’m forgetting them; mostly I’m thinking about you guys as bloggers rather than blogs. I don’t see how that makes a difference… It’s hard to divorce lelangir from lelangiricism. Meta-anibloggery essentially preaches separation of aniblog and aniblogger. Wait, we need to expand “meta”. I’d take “meta” for discourse on discourse. Introspection counts too. And in that case, I’d nominate usagijen for her awesome introspections. BigN and Jacob Martin come in close as well. Doesn’t TheBigN say the same thing everytime, though? Something about love, peace, and pancakes? No, =p =p =p =peace =pancakes Q.E.D..

Best Music

I’ll let you handle this one, lelangir. I don’t read music aniblogs; as far as I’ve heard there aren’t many, they aren’t diverse, and they tend to suck. All yours, capitan. Zzeroparticle. He’s like, the only person that writes consistent music reviews. I don’t think I’ve ever seen musical analysis besides mine either…

Then we are agreed: this is a category that actually fails. Yes, that’s kind of a shame, because the music community is so pathetically underdeveloped. I wish it were developed, but sadly, it isn’t… I’d love to see that, too—I hear you’re thinking of starting something up? But – and this is a constant debate in the metaverse – society isn’t up to the level of technology. Usually technology is a product of society. But I can’t just go make a music blog if there’s no plausible readership or niche there. It’s like that Heisei Democracy post where there’s this manga cafe in San Francisco. It can’t work because they’re attempting to transplate Japanese culture in America – they’re trying to force society to adapt to them, and it’s like trying to move an elephant with a toothpick. Makes sense, yeah. Well, best of luck should you try in the future!

Rookie of the Year

ghostlightning, digitalboy, and lelangir all seem like fairly solid choices to me. I’m not familiar with too many of the newer blogs, but those three are all rookies who bring a fuckton of positive energy to the table. ghostlightning is Mizunashi Akari if she were to fangirl about something. digitalboy is Mizunashi Akari if she were to make home videos and introduce profanity into her vocabulary. lelangir is Mizunashi Akari if she were the biggest slut ever. And as you all know, I love Mizunashi Akari. Yes I am a whore.

What? … digitalboy isn’t a rookie? Older than one year.

Fuck that shit. He’s a noob, and I’ve got no one to refill his place. The halo glows away…

You’re forgetting coburn, pontifus and itsubun – they’re my three picks. It’s a shame that itsubun died off so quickly, but she made quite a large impact on me when I was starting out, especially with the dorama surrounding her and Sasa, lol. The pointless, idiotic drama between two idiots who just can’t leave well enough alone… sigh. Do they at least get points in the drama category? You’d be surprised, I took quite a bit out of some posts, as they really were great food for thought. That was not the impression I got from reading Sasa’s posts and talking to Mr. Pippers. The impression I did get was that some people were overreacting to each other and accomplishing little. There was one post by adventure_killy which was one of the most insightful posts I’ve read to date. It really got me thinking about the “location” of the otaku, and how we use loan words and how culture is transplanted.

I can’t say much for coburn nor do him justice, only that his intelligent editorials are always a pleasure to read.

Best Multiple-Author Blog

Oi! Hayaku [hands down] [my hands are down too]

Yes, you may think that OH is really a team blog but their content isn’t – as far as the reader is concerned – heterogeneous. I have heard there is quite a bit of teamwork behind the scenes, but if that teamwork is used only to produce homogenous content, I can’t see much difference. In any case, OH has the most awesome content (and at a prodigous rate) on an aggregate blog I’ve seen in a while. Did you somehow miss the two weeks of team posts (lame example)? In any event, you’ll be changing your tune by the ABAs… OH! has some sick shit to unleash! I’m concerned about these GATTAI posts, whether they’re actually any good or not…oh shi- They would be if Riex had us using Google Docs for collaboration. Talk about underused utility!

Aaaand… who else? I’m disinclined to give awards to the would-be shoe-ins THAT or Yukan (THAT isn’t even qualified this year, right?), for the sole reason that they’re just same-old, same-old. An aggregate blog gets a bit tedious after a while, especially if the authors come and go without changing much.

How’s it like over at Calamitous Intents? To be honest I don’t read them much, but they seem fresher than THAT-spawn. I don’t read them much either since I don’t follow the media they blog, VN’s and the Naruto manga.

Super Fanicom is good aggregation I guess, since it’s the home of a lot of awesome posts by a lot of awesome people. And what, ghostlightning hopped on board while we were writing this post? Shit man, this is what I mean by a “fast-paced” aniblogosphere.

Shall we move onto true team blogs now?

Best Team Blog

I’m stumped. Did we decide there are no true team blogs? OH! is trying to be one, other aggregate blogs aren’t trying, and whorish team bloggers are sort of wrecking the status quo’s shit. Fun stuff! Yes, I haven’t seen any true tream blogs, per se (I don’t know if epicwin counts), though many blogs and their constituent bloggers exhibit teamwork. Oh. Epic Win! Why did I forget them? They definitely count.

GO TO EPIC WIN!! GO TO EPIC WIN!! I’ll show you the true meaning of epic win…

Most Influential

I’m calling #1 right now – derailedbydarry.com Its influence should be obvious; “we hold these things self-evident.”

And my favorite influential blog would be lovelykitsune.com

I’ve said this a million times in a million posts, none of which I’ll link here, that Lovely Kitsune was the one person who introduced me to anime blogs. While Jason Miao is technically the catalyst of the reaction that created “lolikitsune,” if it weren’t for LK-senpai I never would have even gotten that far. I never would have discovered the then-AOMM, I never would have begun blogging, and, as I point out in my most digustingly self-loving post ever, the aniblogosphere would have developed very, very differently. You make a point – it’s hard to determine “influence.” I can’t say I directly copy or strive to emulate any particular blogger to the point of fetishism, and because I don’t read Danny Choo or Dark Mirage or Jason Miao I’m kind of clueless on how these big guys have influenced the entire sphere over the years. It’s not that we aspire to emulate (though I did emulate Miao as a joke for a while), it’s that these people used to be big players in a very small sphere. Now that the ’sphere has grown, the percentage of said sphere that is these Ancient Ones’ penises is smaller. So they’re less directly influential on new people… but they shaped the sphere in big ways.

Hm, well, I guess I have to give credit for IKnight for being my gateway blogger. If it weren’t for his MAL profile and “Colonial Code Geass & Narnian Nerve Gas” I might not be here today. I can see IKnight being a huge influence, especially for the editorial types who came before him and were like “OMG! I gotta shape up!” (here’s looking at you, Mike *clink*). I…I…I..it’s n..n..not that I’d call blogging about soap influential or anything!

Best Dorama

I make a point of ignoring this shit as best I can because more often than not it’s sparked by spiteful elitists. My favorite drama would be Omo x Owen on Twitter, but does that count? I don’t know; it’s certainly not a blog, though. Perhaps we could award Owen with something for sparking so much drama (he was getting me good, at least, in mid-November), but that might be erring on the side of “too close to home.” Actually, these past few months, I’d give best dorama to a sort of plane of bloggers revolving around the fansub thing, Von Schilling et al. It even gets IcyStorm all hot and bothered. Oh yeah. SVS. Sigh. I guess… I guess I WOULD give him this award. (Let’s see how that affects his self-perception as “ever lovable.”)

Best Satire

Obviously I think I should win in this category. I won’t make any nominations here because I don’t want it to look like I’m setting up losers, but I will gladly comment on lelangir’s picks. I also like lolikit’s satire because, while it is hilarious, it is also lucid and insightful. Though I enjoy lolikit’s meta-satire moreso than when he satires anime. Of course Baka-Raptor is up there when he makes fun of anime. Who’m I kidding? Baka-Raptor is a king of satire. Hinano is also quite sharp quite frequently, as is JP (and now that they’re on a single blog it’s only one nomination! Take that, blogger’s bloggers!). I was never really into HINANO RAEG… Her blog posts are usually better than her tweets. Maybe it’s just the emoticons? They make me laugh while thinking, “man, this shit she’s posting about, it’s so shitty.” You know I’d put IKnight up here too. His satire is subtle (it’s British), but boy is it hilarious. Didn’t he quit blogging or something? lol he’s been alive for quite a few posts now. He was pretty active while in blogohiberation anyway. Not to say inactivity’s going to stop me from making my third nomination in this category…

LovelyKitsune.com

I’ve beaten this dead horse to the metaphorical pulp, but I’ll beat it again. Lovely Kitsune is my hero. If it weren’t for him, I never would have discovered three important things: loli, yuri, and a sense of humor. Oh, and a fourth: the aniblogosphere. He’s a shoe-in for most influential, but the important thing here is how he roped me in, and that would be masterful satire played to its fullest. His wit broadened the anus of my sense of humor and left me wanting more. … “dial-up would never suffice again.”

OmoxOwen aka HarukaxYuuta

Yeah, well, him and Owen having sex is pretty funny to watch. Especially on twitter. Agreed, but refer to what I wrote under Best Dorama. Their bickering isn’t satire… it’s high school girl idiocy.

“WHORE! WHORE!”

AAAAAND that’s it. This is lolikit bee tee dubz, stealing lelangir’s color briefly. Just wanted to wrap stuff up with extremely awkward and un-funny words such as these. I hope you read everything, as there’s some good stuff up in there. Again, please weigh in on the “discussion”—this is more than a popularity contest; there’re issues addressed in the above with implications affecting the entire ’sphere. Also, could we get some applause for Google Documents? An omiclap, perhaps? Thank you.

I recently joined Team Blue, a group of informal friends in real life and on the web. As many of the group members are united by anime (be it otaku levels or pretty nonchalant like me), some of them have an anime blog to their credit. Recently, they started a Round Robin where members would be coerced invited to join in this exercise so that there will be cross-reading between blogs in Team Blue. Of course, you are more than welcome to chat in the #TeamBlue channel.

The topic for the inaugural Team Blue Round Robin is whether the anime blogging future belongs to team blogging. As part of a team blog that has been around for a while, I think that I can answer that accurately to a certain extent. This post can be broken down into two categories: the logical fallacies of team blogging, and how team blogging can or cannot succeed.

In short: Maybe, in some cases.
In long: Read on.

For the most non-TL;DR writing of this topic, do check out Scorio’s entry on his blog or Gargron’s entry. Now, tell me if he’s not succinct enough.

The logical fallacies of team blogging

First off, I don’t think “team blog” is a very operative term. To be brutally honest (no offense to the butthurt), here’s a basic list of blogs that I don’t really think are “team blogs”: THAT, Yukan, Drastic, RandomC, Seaslugs, Calamitous Intents, Scrumptious, Hey Say Anime.

And here’s a list of blogs I think are actually “team blogs”: Epicwin, OH. [I'm tempted to put superfani here just because of OVER 9000 meaningless words and the Superfani Voice Module, but those are the only two cases.]

THAT et al. aren’t team blogs because, while there is a generalized diversity in voice (me vis-a-vis RV), there isn’t nearly any collaborative effort at the level of content. Just because a blog HOSTS a “diversity of opinion” doesn’t in any way make it a “team” effort. THAT to me appears as simply a blog host with a shitload of readers rather than a place to collaborate with people. Don’t yell at me though, I’ve talked to Maipeisu about blogging Natsume SII in an Epicwin (literally) style. And I am even hesitant to call Cawalain appending his thoughts to the end of angry Crusader posts “teamwork”. I am even hesitant to call what I am doing now as “teamwork”, as I could just as easily copy the same exact content on another blog.

Superfani, Epicwin and OH are team blogs because their content is sometimes produced by multiple voices. Consider the blog post the consitituent, empirical unit of the blog. If the empirical unit is homogeneous (crafted by one voice), it will attract a certain readership. If the empirical unit is penned by several people, a readership prone to one author cannot sift out the other voices to find his favorite author because the post will then make very little or a lot less sense.

In short, where’s the teamwork in team blogs?

Team blogging has become increasingly popular. If you take a look at the blogs that are being created, you will definitely find that there is a growing significant number of blogs that are starting out as team blogs. Despite possibly lumping a lot of blogs into very generic stereotypes, the formation of a team blog often derives from certain specific motivations. These motivations include.

1. It’s an easy way to start anime blogging.
2. A site started up by friends who is using the blog as a social exchange of communication between themselves.
3. Clueless critter who are lazy and thinks team blogs mean someone will be pressurized to blog.
4. It’s a fast track to popularity.
5. Creating a diverse discussion of topics as an one-stop blogging platform by already established solo bloggers.

Some of these motivations do make a lot of sense at a quick glance. Let’s examine some of the underlying assumptions that are likely to be based on those motivations above. First of all, team blogs create this social responsibility within each member to write something to fill in the space. Correct, that’s not true, except for OH, which has deadlines. Second, with more people, it seems to make perfect logic that there will be a higher frequency of posts that generate activity. Third, team blogs are a good way to communicate not only between friends, but to a whole web of readers when the blog eventually becomes popular. And as I said previously, this is definitely a misconception. In addition, with others along with you, blogging becomes easier because you do not worry about having an identity. Lol. However, if anyone assumes that team blogs are the “Band-aid” to making a blog popular, you are solely mistaken. In fact, I will say that team blogs set up by the first four reasons are more likely to fail than single blogs. This needs a bit of clarification. The birth of a single-author blog is dependant on a few factors, all of which we cannot simply label as successful pre hoc just because it’s not a Team Blog. Take, for instance, ghostlightning’s We Remember Love, which was a huge success due to (1) the fact that he was a lurker; (2) he whored it around traffic-dense blogs (trackbacks to THAT); (3) he is a good writer with good content. Also, look at the formation of IKnight’s Animanachronism, another hugely successful blog due to his pre-nascent lurker-status (so I’ve heard, his MAL blog helps as well). Also, take gaguri’s new blog, which seems to be doing fine because bateszi linked to it on twitter. Simply starting a blog out of nowhere from scratch without lurking is not easy to develop to heights. I can attest to that. Do not mind me for my pessimism but the likelihood of a team blog that are set up for the first four reasons are lately to disappear after a few months. Try to figure out the major logical fallacies with the above assumptions.

Sad to say, many of these new team blogs recently were set up simply because of the first four reasons. Really, I can see difference only in scale between THAT et al. and dasaku.net or animeblogger.net. These dime-a-dozen blogs lack any direction in their blogging, and are merely a regurgitation of content where readers can get it from established blogs. I know this comment will hurt some egos out there, but it’s simply following the idea of preferential attachment in a scale-free network. For a dilettante, blogging might be fun for a few weeks before turning into a major chore. This is shown in a collective manner in team blogs. When the ship is floating, everyone stays around. Who stays below a ship that is sinking (when it does not look like the blog is getting popular or nowhere)? The possibility is high because few blogs succeed, and starting out as a team blog pulls you down based on two reasons: personality and more specifically in the current climate: the delusion that it allows the lack of innovation.

Team blogs are NOT the way to succeed if you are starting out totally from scratch, and your blog is even more likely than a solo blog to die off. I think we need to clarify between joining and creating a team blog. Obviously, I am not saying that popularity of a blog should be the means to the end. If you just want a team blog for the sake of friendship between a small circle of buddies, go ahead. This is referring more about those who feel that team blogging is the best way to go for popularity. Sadly, it isn’t.

How can team blogging work then?

How can team blogging work then? Realize that it doesn’t take a team blog to do team blogging. We’re so caught up in the farce of centralized content that we forget about the significance of the author which is not an inert entity. Itsubun’s round robin is one example of content and a macro level. It briefly established a content-oriented microsphere. CCY’s 12 days thing is also another case, as well as the flurry of posts on Salinger’s The Catcher in August.

Some of the major issues with team blogging are the exact things that will hinder the proliferation of big and long-staying team blogs. Of course, any blog can succeed with the right strategy in advertising and expanding through public relations, but that cannot save any blog without the right content. People who set up team blogs often assume that readers will come eventually because of the rapid number of posts. However, new blogs often find it hard to start off without any good strategy to advertise themselves.

To explain this, it is best to use an actual example by a blog that I deemed to have succeeded from scratch. Oi Hayaku would be my example here. The difference here, as Impz says, is that the blog did not start from scratch. That makes all the difference because the readership for its constituent authors already existed prior to the construction of the aesthetic container in which the BLOGGERS are housed. The key difference between an “abortion” blog (like my original lelangir.wordpress blog) and a “surrogate” blog (like OH) is that my readership did not exist. I had to forge my own, while OH comes replete with its made already. The unintended dorama and the stringent manner to get established writers in their team blog were key ways to generate publicity. These bloggers in Oi Hayaku are already established writers in their own blog genre, and are easily among a small circle of prominent communicators who would eventually spread the word out to others about this new team blog. This generates a vicious cycle of publicity (negative/positive) and perhaps one of the key ways to get popular, and fast. Needless to say, Oi Hayaku is one of the more up-and-coming team blogs out there. How many new team blogs have the fortune to have such a big advantage at the start?

A larger problem that hinder the possible growth of most team blogs is how they often start off on the wrong footing by recruiting anyone who is willing to come. COUGH, looks at Yukan, cough. That is the sure way to disaster because you create a mash of writers that lack any writing direction. Of course, you might run into luck by picking some great writer that will be awesome. What are the chances, I wonder, of him/her eventually flying solo or quitting on you after five posts due to his/her loss of interest?

In THAT for example, we have a policy where the writer must contribute significantly in a different way to current writers, and be a better writer than most of the existing writers before they are accepted. You can call it an elitist view of recruitment, but team blogging requires even stronger personalities than a solo blog. I think that Impz should instate a “trial period” much like Riex’s because I haven’t seen Mr. Prince/Jiff/Phuzy post in ages. In that same way I’d be pretty fucked for several of my other blogs… Writers of weak personalities easily get consumed within the team blog, and people get bored when the voices sound just like everyone else. What we need to realize is that THAT has not one readership, but several constituent author-centric readerships. Your EOY post confirmed this. Readers come for Crusader, not THAT. Compare this to a blog whose empirical content is diverse in and of itself – the readership must intrinsically come for all authors that collaborate on such heterogeneous content. Think about forming a unified readership. If you want your blog to work out, why have a team blog that repeats the same old thing (episodic summaries)? It’d be awesome if THAT had two front pages, one column for currently airing shows or summaries, another for everything else. No one will care enough for a team episodic blog because you already have Random Curiosity churning out summaries as much as McDonald’s 60 second promise. I will dare say that team blogs that generate a mix of content not including episodic summaries are likely to succeed, and below is why.

An important element that must exist in a successful team blog is the mix of forceful personalities in the blog. I am not sure if you read as vivaciously as me, but it is probably hard to read a team blog where there are no distinct personalities within a team blog. It’s even better when the authors have different personalites but are centered around one theme, like Superfani. Bunch of esoteric crap but we have very diverse opinions on theory. So our discussion is very localized and narrow, but diverse at the same time. That’s much different than simply having Crusader and Reverse Vampire hosted on the same blog…where’s the teamwork? Call it a mascot, a leader, a dictator or a chief, any team blog often requires someone with a strong personality or character to bring the blog around. In THAT, you will probably know the characteristics of the prominent bloggers here, be it the military/mecha man Crusader, fanservice loving Calawain or shoujo-loving Impz. People know that we have a very strong like or dislike, and hence have distinctive opinions about certain anime. That makes it easy for people to see that this is a team blog that have enough diversity that they need not go to another blog for information.

One major issue that is pertaining to the current climate of blogging is the lack of innovation in team blogs. They rest on their laurels that having a team will succeed, without understanding the underlying reasoning for a team blog to work. A team blog only works when the mix of personalities and views create a sphere of different content that caters to different reader groups out there. It’s useless if you have three writers writing on shounen, and have similar views. What for? Simple logic tells you that people like novelty, and the current new team blogs other than a select few are not giving them that.

On a personal level, I still see solo-blogging as the best means of communication. Hypothetically, insofar as THAT v4 had several front pages, that would constitute solo-blogging. The fact that readers quickly gaze over your content adjacent to someone else’s is incidental to your classification as a “team blog” – might as well call it aggregator. You are your own tyrant, and your personality flows through easily in the entry because it is uniform. If public relations and advertising is the way to create publicity for a new blog, the clear personality in your writing on the blog is the way to keep these readers there. A new team blog, without any time to create that personality, will often falter due to the mixed voice in their writing unless there are established writers that are willing to be the mainstay. Why dilute yourself and lose your own voice in a team blog when you can establish yourself with your unique ideas through your very own possessive blog?

I feel that team blogs are really popular because it has the perception that it is easy. I hope I dispel that image because it’s a whole can of worms when you start to open it up. I will advice any new writer to start out as a single blogger to see if blogging is for you. If you eventually think that goal number 5 is your primary goal to having a team blog, go ahead. Hopefully, with that experience your solo-blogging got you, it will bring you success. It’s often that you get success by planning ahead, and team blogging is a whole bunch of diplomacy.

←[101] The majority of AMV’s suck. Few are good. But the ones that are good have the potential to be trailers. Yes, there’s not much difference between a PR trailer produced by a company and a fan-made AMV. However, the difference that is evident is subtle yet has much larger implications.

So let me list out some things:

1. AMV’s are a means and ends in itself by (a) being fun to make and (b) encouraging people to buy the original work.

2. However, if the art of AMV-making becomes so advanced that fans are able to produce with relative ease an AMV that views the anime through very rose-colored lenses, people that rely on AMV’s as previews will become skeptical (after they waste their precious money) and possibly turn back to fansubs etc.

3. #2 is wholly feasible, under certain circumstances. There is really little incentive to making AMV’s. Of course there are contests at conventions, and this is where the majority of stellar AMV’s I’ve seen originate from. This means that companies need to branch out and, perhaps, give AMV material (the series itself) to fans. This is a win-win situation really: the company gets free PR, possible sales increase, and development in both ’spheres. I think this is already happening though, and on a small scale thank goodness.

4. AMV’s need to remain short. They should remain proxies. They shouldn’t develop to the point of doujin, where the proxy transforms itself into a substitute, therefore decreasing sales.

5. Of course it’s totally possible that AMV’s increase piracy.

6. And that’s why there needs to be more collaboration between the companies and the fans. I think this really necessitates the existence (if it’s already out there) of an AMV sphere. AMV blogs and AMV forums, discussion about proper software to use, film techniques, film theory, discussion on effective music, etc. Really, this hypothetical AMV sphere isn’t much different than out own aniblogging sphere – it’s just the content of our discussion. And insofar as this AMV ’sphere exists, companies, using whatever social networking media, can contact the big guns of the AMV sphere and give them free material as incentive to produce bitching PR. Everyone’s happy.

7. In fact, a company could start a feedback mechanism. They can distribute a set amount of free content (a few episodes perhaps, or specialized, segmented content) available for download – and it would be doubly effective if they distributed the first episode (as “teaser” in itself) – for fans to make AMV’s out of. The winner(s) of the contest receive free material on a future unreleased series, out of public eye. Those fans with the SACRED MATERIAL then produce AMV’s, public trailers with which to tease fans into buying them when they come out.

8. On second thought this is very hard to perceive, because to make a bitchin’ AMV, the maker may need to know the series inside and out to really capture its essence. Thankfully, because these would be “secret”, the AMV-maker doesn’t need to know its inside jokes and tropes to make comic AMV’s that funny. In fact, if angled the right way, a comedy series AMV can use memes to broadcast itself to an even larger audience.

9. #7 I think is very effective because the material comes from the fans themselves, making it so much more accessible/believable and “down to earth”. This itself perpetuates social incentive (’sphere development) for AMV production – “hey, this looks fun, I can do this too!”

10. This is where the whole speculative AMV sphere is realized – it only works insofar as people buy the real thing and not download fansubs. So companies (Gonzo, etc.) need to step up more with the digital distribution of “professionally” subbed material to disintegrate the fansubbing industry.

11. A last remark – when using AMV’s as proxy material, we must inevitably question its authenticity and deviance from the source. AMV’s may be a personal art, but in the context I have lined out, its purpose is also political. The obscuration factor of AMV’s can be cleared on the company’s side by authorizing only AMV’s they see depict the series in a good way, which would probably be the most rose-colored, but let’s not hope for that. On the fan side, mavericks will pop up (in youtube comments or elsewhere) proclaiming that the “objectivity” (oh jeez) of an AMV is questionable. This would be for older series because other people will have seen the show at hand, and possibly for new series if company employees actually go out and comment on these fan-based productions. I think that has greater implications for how the public perceives companies (corporations, etc.) as faceless things or with actual human employees that are accessible.

12. I would make a remark about the globalization of anime and how outsourcing is and can be involved…but I don’t know anything about economics.

Forgive my ignorance if all this is in progress already, i..i…it…it’s not like I care about AMV’s or anything! Here’s a Samurai Champloo I enjoyed a lot.

This is actually a reaction post after reading Deftoned’s discussion about how ANN hates Nanoha (and the always excellent Jpmeyer as usual writes a LOL! entry about the incident). I do not profess to be able to write anything as great as these two writers, but I have a discussion with my girlfriend after looking at some of the rather sarcastic forum exchanges between the ANN editorial team and the Moe loving fans. In particular, one thing interesting that came from these forum exchanges is the high ground that the ANN editorial team gave, that they are critics and are attacked by moe-loving dumb fans.

When I really think about it, what makes them an anime critic? Are there specific criteria for someone to be an anime critic or at least call themselves as such? I do not think that anyone who describes and reviews on an anime should be called a critic. It’s just a yapper talking about something related to anime. Yet, as much as I do not agree with ANN’s reviewers most of the time, I personally find myself conferring them a professional position on anime opinions (Aka, they are professional anime reviewers, albeit rather elitist).

So, what is an anime critic? I do not clearly know, but there are some things that are not how anime critics should portray themselves. If you hate to listen to high horse rhetoric, you can stop now.

I am right, and you better listen

I personally believe that an anime critic got to be humble. There is often this sad phenomena where anime critics became anime assholes because they find themselves way too good to watch what the “commoners” would ever watch. You will sometimes catch me doing this when I diss fanservice or mecha, but I have learned to curb my snobbish attitude. At least it will never be done to discourage anyone from enjoying what they like. Our mouths have become so gaping wide that we no longer know when to close the mouth.

In fact, you probably see this disdaining group of people in ANN, in blogs and in almost everywhere on the Internet. They tell you that what you are watching is horrible, and the only good anime are anime that THEY watch. If that is where they stop, it is all good but they will convince you that you should be them. They also often use grandiloquent and pompous language to confuse and make fun of others. Might I ask who ever made you the authority in deciphering anime or deciding what is good for others? That becomes very sad when we become the center of the review, rather than the anime that we are reviewing.

Yes-man/fanboys

A cosplay of Danny? What’s next, a cosplay of Crusader the gundam hater? Bah.

I am definitely not advocating that we should all be extremely agreeable and not say anything bad about anime. I am not asking you to compromise your own position and try to be nice all the time even if it’s very hard to say something nice about something. That is also a problem because we became merely fans that are worshiping the anime without thinking. If an anime critic merely agrees and says that every anime he watches is good, then we will never know if an anime is really good. Why is it good? Are there issues that should be worrying the viewer (and every single anime has that, no anime is perfect).

***holes

I believe strongly that anime critics should critique in a fair manner, write on genres that they have some interest and knowledge in, and tries to be strict without being condescending to any target readers. If you cannot resist saying something bad about a really bad anime, don’t say anything. The spiral of silence is always the most powerful weapon that we reviewers possess. I think that the likelihood of finding someone who actually enjoys an anime, critically analyzes the anime and yet stays relevant to the readers is almost zero.

My ears are closed

Do you ever read an entry of a person who sounds like that any feedback or objection toward the person’s review or view will cause a vicious reply from that said author? It is like how many Naruto fans, being overly zealous of their anime, tends to attack anyone who will say anything dismissive of genuinely poor production values. No matter what a reader says, this writer just goes ahead and make fun of you without even listening.

The worst type of critic is one that does not listen to what his critics have to say about his views. It is always said that any person who professes to be an expert or leader is also a person who is most willing to listen to other views, and answer them with grace and decency. If you are a critic that only bothers to attack and not listen, why even call yourself a critic? You are only an empty shell that is trying to embarrass yourself, and disgrace the art form that you are supposed to celebrate.

So what makes you an anime critic?

So what makes an anime critic after listening to such negative examples? I believe that it is an idealistic wo/man that likes his or her anime, yet never losing sight of the fact that he or she has to be objective in the discussion of the anime. S/he should never try to think that s/he is the center of the review, but only as a facilitator to communicate the goodness and problems of the anime to the reader. S/he listens to feedback, discusses intensively with readers with a personal feel and a professional touch.

Is this even possible? Is there an ideal anime critic?

←[82]

Read the first part here.

Kiaoshin: “I think what is good for the blogosphere more than anything else is seeing that more variety in the tone and type of message is introduced in the coming years.” It’s really funny. I was about to post this [the first post] on THAT, and it was scheduled to be posted in nine hours or so, and then the next day I look and my post usurped by an episodic post on vampires (yeah, THAT puts episodic priority over editorial but whatever). That was pretty funny, pretty humiliating. I guess I try to diversify the content on THAT, to try and break the flow of constant episodic posts, but if my writing is easily trampled over (access is removed), there’s just as little point in writing if there’s no reading.

Ryan: (1)

The single-author blog spans a single individual’s perspective, while the team blog is a parent wrapper of single-author blogs, in which a sense of conformity is found. This allows the wrapping distribution of content to become more diversified than what a single author would provide.

When we relate blogging to content, however, I think the team blog may need some redefinition. OH is probably the best example, since there are no episodic posts and the content is very diverse. But, even then, content becomes a fickle word. Is THAT diverse, even if 90% of its content is episodic? Do we differentiate between content and form? Is form a kind of content? Yes and no, I think.

(2)

The social role of blogs is on the order of expressing opinion in which readers may be able to relate to, confronting issues objectively, and/or providing a form of entertainment to readers.

This is similar to what I was saying in Omisyth’s original post: some blogs, specifically episodic posts, function as phatic modes of communication. It’s not necessarily about the content or the discussion, but simply a reaffirmation of the existence and presence of the audience, an acknowledgement of one’s place in the subculture. This is enforced by the fact that a lot of bloggers have those pesky back-logs and really, a sense of duty, a sense of connection to the community which cannot be fulfilled by any means other than raw communication.

(3)

By speculative state I assume team-orientation, or bloglomerates. While I do worry that the vertical intensity of subject matter is not going to stimulate positive development in the blogosphere, I don’t believe grouping authors is solely a negative aspect. For instance, a group blog with solid diversity of perspective vs one where the authors agree on everything to watch [or more crucial, what not to watch]; I have seen the latter case and wondered why there were 5+ authors, when there was no discrepency between them … redundancy -_-

Well, content-oriented blogs do not necessarily “engender” or attract bloggers with no differentiation between opinion. In fact it could be the opposite: five bloggers on a single blog writing about a single anime could have very diverse opinions which open up quite an array of discussion that really spreads the anime out in such a way that separate, unconsolidated bloggers wouldn’t be able to achieve. Similarly, I enjoy how Crusader and Cawalain double post stuff.

The solidarity affirmed by a single space is also a big plus; but on the other hand, with interblog groups like round robins and the defunct ABC, a different, more “transcendental” solidarity is created which makes participants seem connected in a way that surpasses the medium of the blog and is about a specific goal or ideology that a blog/space can’t always create through the merits of its materialism alone – materialism as in the “tangible” interface of the blog. [This isn't to say that a blog cannot be ideological, though. Also, a material blog can be the product of an abstract ideology, like Calamtious Intents, a product of the AGRR, an effort towards greater female anime/blogger/fujoshi/whatever solidarity.]

animekritik: “Ideally the blogger has a certain perspective that allows his readers to connect to their favorite shows in a new, deeper way.” Hmm. This is an interesting point. It brings up the question “what is the thing we really get from anime blogs?” Is it specifically about the content, the anime, or is it about the author’s perspective/ideology and methodology? You can get both, and you can get to one through the other; it depends on the personality of the reader. These meta posts are a good example. They’re not about anime, so the only thing we can convey are our thoughts on the mechanisms behind anime blogging, which may, indirectly, open up for viewing our ways of engaging with our social environments and negotiating with the social terrain, for example, where we post (I guess that only applies to me), who we trackback to and why, how much trackbacking, comments (that’s a huge area in itself), and so forth.

“I’d rather there were 5 million bloggers debating with each other than 5 forums each with a million participants.” Well, what’s not to say that you can create a cohesive group of five million people that collectively debate with another set of five million? Obviously those numbers aren’t possible, but I could see some collective debate, like, OH vs. THAT or RandomC vs. Drastic. Actually, that would be really interesting to witness, if not partake in. But even then, it’s hard to homogenize even the small team blog.

“By providing the blogger with a stable identity, his/her message will get across more effectively and the level of discussion will rise, rather than get drowned in a foamy forum.” Yeah, I think this is the case, generally speaking. Moderators probably have much more voice in forums, though, and have a similar quality of authority as bloggers do when commenting within their own blogs as administrators.

Ghost: “When I told myself that I want to emulate Cuchlann in being a uniter and not a divider, it didn’t necessarily mean I wanted to be the definitive mecha (or even Macross) blogger, nor do I intend to be limited by that identification.” I think the distinction between unison and division gets rather tricky the more complex things become. My view is that I strive to be a united divider. Similar debates frequently arise, however subtly, in college classrooms between people of very different opinion. The point is not to force equal views upon everyone, hence the irony of “indentured democrat”, but to strive to flesh out differences and then build cohesiveness upon that dissonance. It’s a rather “post-modern” (uh-oh) view, where you can build affirmation on argument, methodology on madness, comfort on chaos. When two oppositions collide, you needn’t be restricted to viewing things in those limited terms of the binary – there is the hybrid, conflicting space creating at the cusp of those two colliding forces, and it is this very interesting space I would like to utilize.

According to Panther, it seemed like some of the other Singaporean bloggers have received an invitation to Dannychoo’s Animax Blogging Workshop that I sent my entry to. Obviously, it turned out many other Singaporean bloggers has received their secret email invitations too. This is obviously an insult to my pride as a Singaporean anime blogger in the blogosphere since I consider myself to be decently loved by others. Being the egoistical great blogger that I am, I cannot fathom how everyone and their armpits gets an invite, and I am the only odd one out of this mass orgy.

Going back to my thinking cell, I started to wonder why I am not invited into this exclusive club where all the hip boys are hanging out. Is there something that I am lacking which resulted in my non-direct involvement into the cool group of kids that gets an automatic invite? Below are my speculations to why I am not in this club.

1. Impz is uncool compared to other Singaporean bloggers

When the Wintrain of otaku comes, sit on it.

I believe this is one of the most critical points that has caused me to lose ground against other Singaporean anime bloggers. First off, I should give a tip of the hat to Panther because he gets the invite and boastfully mentions how awesome and proud he is at receiving that exclusive invitation. I mean, he is part of an elite group of anime fans with money to waste on things that are totally useless. Which proud anime blogger will not do that? That is the mark of coolness if you ask me, and that is why he gets an invite despite being a total tsundere about receiving one from Danny Choo.

In fact, I bet he is smirking right now at my inability to even snag a RSVP and he is waving the e-peen ticket at me now. This is why cool boys in the club enjoy their figurines and some of them might secretly demand Tsuruya to be their 2D wife. I don’t have that coolness in me to like the two dimensional world too much. Is that why? IS THAT WHY I DIDN’T GET THE INVITE? Is it because I actually have a real life girlfriend of more than two years? I am sorry for loving the three dimensional. From today, I am suspending my campaign of being a prude, and openly accept the otaku way of life.

Of course, if we are talking about Impz being uncool enough to get the invite, we have to mention the coolest Singaporean anime blogger on the Internet. Darkmirage the biggest anime blogger in Singapore obviously got an invite to Dannychoo’s workshop (I bet he did) since he is the only one who did not have to pay in order to talk to May’N. I mean, no one except for Darkmirage can give such an awesome interview that any spammer can fill in. Moreover, he knows Japanese and watches his anime via raw. Since I am not as awesome as him in the Japanese language, it seemed logical that I am not considered to be cool enough by those people in Animax. Also, a call out to Bj0rn who everyone knows despite not even blogging about anime anymore. I bet he also gets an invite, which makes me very unpopular indeed.

I mean, even TJ the lame troll who tried to make a totally ineffective blog dorama on UFOtable probably got an invite from the Animax community. I guess it is because he gets to be featured in a JAPANESE newspaper, while I only manage to land a front page in the national newspaper proclaiming about my weak and feeble love for anime. Note: You got to be in a freaking Japan newspaper to be anywhere popular.

However, it is just a low blow to be more uncool than a blogger that I have never heard of in my entire blogging community career. So, I am worse than that, huh? Thanks for the reality check.

2. Anoy finds Impz anonymous.

Even Drm trolls me. I must be freaking uncool.

In addition, it is equally painful that many anonymous commentators have told me about how unpopular I am lately.

Anoy A: You know, I know all about Yukan, TJ and Darkmirage. Who’s that faggot Impz anyway? He blogs about the indissoluble peregrination for the procurement of ratiocination right?

Anoy B: Even that major otaku awards fail to include THAT Anime Blog in the list. Who does that Impz think he is?

Anoy C: Impz is old school. He blogs on anime after all. Which anime blogger REALLY blogs on anime anyway?

Anoy D: I think you interpret too much into that email.They probably just went ahead and emailed pretty much any SG Blogger.They probably found you via TeamBlue?

I get it. You guys just hate me because I am not cool enough.

3. Impz doesn’t blog on the cool things

I bet one of the key factors for my non-inclusion is the fact that I am blogging actual anime series such as Kuroshitsuji, Ga-rei Zero and Skip beat. Real anime bloggers just talk about their wish list in Amazon, complaining about Haruhi anime merchandise or being alive. I am a fake anime blogger trying to pose as one. I am sorry. It is only now that I realize that writing an anime blog means you are supposed to do anything but that. I am sorry to be so arrogant.

4. I am not otaku enough

According to Panther, one likely reason for his invitation was his trip to the Toy and Comics Convention. So, it’s my fault to hate any intensive otaku activities? I didn’t know that you have to dress up as a stormtrooper just like a fanboy of Danny Choo to be eligible as part of the fanclub group. I am not awesome enough to wear a stormtrooper cosplay in the middle of the street. That just sounds so ridiculously cool that I am unable to fathom myself in that form of dressing. I should have thicker skin to worship Danny Choo and be eager to see him in the flesh. I should never have joined the Workshop simply because I thought it is fun to socialize despite thinking that most of the advice is pretty useless to a FAKE anime blogger.

5. I am not like Danny Choo

Last of all, I am just not Danny Choo. Honestly, since Danny Choo is the super anime blogger, it is apparent that I do not blog on REAL anime stuff to be considered an anime blogger. I blog about fake crap that is undeniably non-anime stuff. In fact, he even has his own anime mascot. In response to that, Impz will set up a post later to have a mascot too for THAT. Stay tuned for that in a bid to make myself cooler as an anime blogger.

According to Animax, Danny Choo is clearly the epitome of anime bloggers.

Judging ‘The Animax Super Anime Blog’ contest is none other than Danny Choo, who will personally be in Singapore ahead of the contest to offer blogging tips to our viewers at an exclusive anime blog workshop proudly hosted by Animax!

According to my meager knowledge of Danny Choo, he writes on Japanese culture and figurines. Those stuff are real Japanese anime entries, not my junk. He also tries to make people like me feel good by blogging on fake anime stuff once in a while. In fact, he is the best placed to advise the general anime blogger compared to anyone else. Shin, a totally confused uncool soul, clearly does not know what he is talking about.

Conclusion

In a wise man’s words, you just did not make the cut. Sorry, you are voted off Impz.

p/s: If you actually took this post seriously, you fail. Owned. In other words, this is a joke post. DUN DUN DUN~

P/ss: Danny’s voice on the phone is very manly. I feel like a girl now.

This is NOT a quit entry or I will blog less entry. Before anyone thinks that this is a quit post by me, I assure you not. It’s an amusing thought whenever people read a title such as this, they immediately associate it with quit threats. Crusader immediately gave me a private message on Yahoo Messenger stating that I am “not allowed to quit” before he does. I guess I will be an eternal slave to the blog.

This entry is a challenge to myself and all the bloggers out there who are unhappy with the end result of your entries. This is a reflection to all who are thinking about whether their writing is good enough to attract others to comment. This is a rant about how to give enjoyment to our beloved readers and commentators. This is in essence an entry that talks about writers and the dynamic relationship of bloggers with readers.

This is an entry about you and mainly me.

This entry came about because I was very unhappy with my writing, both in the blog and also in my academic writing. In the blog, I didn’t feel that my heart was completely into the writing of the entry. When I was reading my Koihime Episode 9 entry, I feel that it could be been much better. The jokes were not enough to stimulate laughter. It didn’t feel like I am creating more discussion or interest to readers. It was depressing. It was annoying and most of all, it was simply bad. Perhaps, I have a huge expectation of how I should be writing, and it just didn’t feel like I have hit the right spot recently.

As a writer, I feel that I have not done my best to convey my thoughts, my anger, my happiness and my heart into the words I wrote. It just feels empty when you know that you can do much better but somehow misses the mark. For some of you, it might not matter but I always wish to bring entertainment and spark some discussion about anything in any entry I write. Most of you consider anime to be entertainment, and blogging about it should entertain you. If not, I will merely be blogging to a wall of text, and that is NOT FUN. I am sure many of the new anime bloggers will understand how it feels to be “ignored.”

It is the same with my academic writing. I seldom talk about my real life events, because My professor has said in no certain terms that my writing is bad, and he feels somewhat embarrassed to associate my writing with him. Despite my rather depressed outlook on writing, I know that writing as a skill is something that takes time to nurture, and “my progress is very slow.”

I am unhappy with my writing, but that does not mean I do not want to write. I want to, yet I do not want to simply write some verbal rubbish. This is NOT WRITER’S BLOCK by the way. If you have faced it, how do you solve it? When you are repeatedly told that your writing is terrible, and you are not good enough compared to others (and your livelihood is based on it), how do you handle it? This is a question I am still asking myself, and I will continue to write, improve and write more to find the solution to this.

First Alphonse Elric I’ve ever seen = WIN.

I am rather amused to admit that this past weekend (August 8th – 10th) taught me something very interesting about myself: three days with no Internet access and no way of checking THAT is enough to drive me up the wall. I really, truly adore you traps, Net vamps, digital boob-chasers and lolis. It’s great to be home!

If you can’t guess from the title, I’m back from my annual trip to the United States’ second largest confluence of fanboys and fangirls — the one, the only, OTAKON!!! According to a recent article by Anime News Network, Otakon 2008’s attendance hit a record high of over 26,000 full-time attendees. This figure does not include the drifters, who typically boost the headcount to upwards of 60,000.

Being something of a veteran who has faithfully haunted cons since the ripe young age of twelve, I have to say that this year’s Otakon was a very different experience. For the first time, I approached the con from an acutely journalistic standpoint, focusing my attention on Q&A panels and industry announcements instead of leaping headlong into the usual ‘watch-anime-till-my-eyeballs-rot-and-fall-out’ routine.

Um, WHAT? And the eye in the middle was glowing red, too! INSANE!

Nothing beats watching the Baltimore harbor be invaded by legions of otaku. Like the monsoon, or seven-year cicadas, Otakon is a highly-anticipated (and dreaded) force of nature that unfailingly sends downtown Baltimore into a panic, year after year. For the restaurants, street vendors, and small businesses in the periphery, Otakon is a field-day; for local residents, it’s a nightmare.

Coincidentally, a engaged couple had planned a decently sized wedding (around 30 to 40 people, I’m guessing) in our hotel, complete with tuxedos and live music in the ballroom. Well, surprise surprise, the Radisson Lord Baltimore just happens to be one of the hotels that publishes a discounted con rate every year. You can imagine their horrified facial expressions while seeing hordes of cosplaying otaku shuffling in and out of the hotel lobby all night long. It was priceless watching a guy dressed in a tux awkwardly worm his way into an elevator full of sweaty fanboys holding cardboard swords. Talk about bad timing.

Speaking of bad timing, my decision to change this into a reconnaissance mission was rather poor timing on my part for two reasons: 1) the attendance number was through the roof and 2) the Otakon staff were stricter than ever about following safety codes to the letter, conditions that translated into hour-long lines congregating in front of panels that consistently shut out about half of their would-be participants. I’m talking about lines stretching WAAAY down the bigass hall connecting the two sections of the Baltimore Convention Center, all just to squeeze into a tiny room for official Bandai announcements or the like.

Behold, the legions of FANDOM!!!.

Apparently, the days of standing in the backs of the rooms and crowding the entrances are over. Otakon’s upgrade was a double-edged sword; on one hand, the Otakon staff did its best job to date in keeping things orderly; but on the other hand, you were S.O.L. if you didn’t have a DSLite to keep you occupied (thanks Extrange!) and a wristwatch to keep on top of the schedule. Events started on time, drinking water was abundant, the air conditioning was on full blast; things moved like clockwork. My advice for Otakon 2009: get a DS and headphones, bring a watch, plan to dine in the Harbor, and reserve a room at the Days Inn as early as possible, which sells out fast because it is right across the street. Why, I’ll be reserving my room tonight .

This post will include the best of my cosplay pictures (please don’t hate me for being a horrid photographer), a few tidbits about my experience and massive purchases (*w00p w00p* FANBOY alert), and most notably, a transcription of my notes from the industry panels, the highlight of which was an open discussion/clash of the titans between famous fansubbers and U.S. licensing companies. Skip to whatever tickles your fancy.

Maipeisu’s Highlights and Other Fun Stuff

So, here is a quick rundown of the activities I made it to, with some brief impressions…

[Friday (08/08)] Freedom Project Episode 1-2 (HD theater), Media Blasters Q&A (industry panel), Kappei Yamaguchi Q&A (industry panel), avoided the Naruto Fan Panel like the plague, GaoGaiGar Episodes 26-32, Ultimate Hellsing Panel (fan panel), and Friday Night Fan Films. Friday was probably the most difficult day because I was struggling to use my nearly-defunct cell phone to keep in touch with my two friends, as well as ramming my skull like Eva Unit 00 against the harsh realities of lines, room capacities and fire hazards.

Checking out Media Blasters was tons of fun. They are definitely one laid back anime company, and it was very reassuring to infer from the discussion that true fans were at the helm of their important marketing decisions. The truth is, the big boys in the anime market are not always the big fans. Business is business and numbers are numbers, so if you can produce results, that’s all that really matters. However, for MB, licensing anime thankfully does not seem to be all about profits. More on the Media Blasters panel later.

Code Geass’s finest, complete with Pizza Hut.

Yamaguchi, a PROLIFIC seiyuu who has performed a long list of famous roles like Ranma, Inu-Yasha, and L, was surprisingly down-to-earth for a voice actor who has worked so extensively in the anime industry. I’ll admit, I expected a very different type of individual; his youthful enthusiasm took me by surprise. Yamaguchi-sensei gave some very interesting responses to deeply personal questions about his experiences, such as a brief tale about how he accidentally locked himself out of his hotel room, nude, during a business trip for one of his earlier roles, and how on a human level, he strongly relates to certain characters he voiced.

Oh, and GaoGaiGar is a fricking AMAZING ‘transforming robots’ mecha anime that is required viewing for all fans of big robots. The designs and mechanoid fusions are outstandingly intricate. After listening to Ms. Mulroney go on and on about it and seeing a few episodes only hours later, it probably won’t be long before I grab the box set.

[Saturday (08/09)] Masao Maruyama Q&A (industry panel), AMV Contest (main events), the long-awaited Fansubber and Industry Discussion (industry PLUS fan panel), Saturday Night Fan Parodies, and Excel Saga Episodes 22-26 (after a hard decision to skip out on The Machine Girl and the infamous “drill bra”). In my opinion, which possibly contradicts that of the populace, 2008 was one of the first years in which the Upbeat and Comedy AMV categories were stronger than the Action and Drama ones.

Factually, this was probably the first year that Otakon copped out on the Parody category because their legal counsel advised against displaying several of the entries… at least this is the first year I recall it happening. My favorite video, the champion of the “Upbeat” category, was an amazing mash-up of various anime called “Word Play”, and was set to “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Daft Punk. Another goody, a yaoi-parody set to Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” entitled “The Harassment of Kyon” took the grand prize for 2008’s AMV submissions. Regardless of what you may feel about the song (wink wink), it definitely deserved the recognition it received.

Not sure who the HELL this is, but I had to get a snapshot of her anyway!

Masao Maruyama’s second panel (the one I made it to) was probably much less crowded than the first, but it was nonetheless engaging. Maruyama-sensei’s outwardly carefree demeanor and sanguine disposition belie his identity as Madhouse’s renowned animator giant, a man who was worked on an endless list of extremely popular and successful titles. He walked in and sat down a row away from me so casually, I thought he was another attendee until he climbed onto the stage. Although this is the first time I’ve seen him speak, he is a frequent guest at Otakon, with 2008 marking his sixth appearance.

After a brief DVD preview of some upcoming titles, Maruyama expressed that he is a HUGE Stitch fan and is very excited to be working on the Japanese rendition of Sutichi; he also explained, in response to a question about his feelings on working with Disney, that because Walt Disney was like a father to Osamu Tezuka (who in turn was like a father to him), he is also very honored to be involved in the project. I scoff at Stitch in the Fall Preview (as you will see), but having been moved this man’s charm and humble insight, I am now more than willing to give it a chance. The DVD preview of Stitch was cute in a way that was both Japanese and heartwarming the way a good Disney film ought to be.

[Sunday (08/10)] Bad Anime, Bad! (fan panel), Urusei Yatsura TV, State of the Industry (industry panel), and the (perhaps) most-awaited ADV Announcements (industry panel). Bad Anime, Bad!’s victim this year included Vampire Wars, which amounts to little more than a supernatural action plot clothed scantily in an utterly illogical vampire romance. I’m definitely watching it for lulz!

Since no one else showed up for the State of the Industry panel, it metamorphosed into another Q&A for FUNimation. Good for me, because I got squeezed out of the first one. Also, I burned an hour pwning an octopus monster (on the new FFIV DS) waiting to get into the ADV panel, which turned out to be a bit of a letdown. My condolences to all the fans who waited patiently to hear substantive news from ADV; we will need to hold out until AWA 14 for the big scoop. More on this later.

Very cool. These types of cosplay are quite rewarding for con shutterbugs like myself.

The gaps between events listed above were spent either running back to the hotel to make onigiri (thanks again, Extrange!) with my handy-dandy, kawaii Zojirushi rice cooker that I decided to bring to the hotel; slithering across the 25K square foot dealer’s room hunting for rarities; or waiting hour in line for panels that I may or may NOT have gotten into. Those that I missed I will conveniently omit from this post out of a mixture of disgust and despair.

The Spoils of Battle

And out of sheer embarrassment, I am NOT going to discuss the amount of money I spent nor the full extent of my purchases, especially when I have bills to pay and owe someone money for accidentally backing into their car O_O;. Twenty-five thousand square feet of space transforms Otakon’s dealer room into nothing less than a bazaar of vendors, with a bazaar-appropriate amount of garbage and ripoffs lingering at every turn. But therein lies the adventure in the whole experience; getting lost in the dealer’s room for hours on end hunting for that special thing that catches my eye is a must-do for every Otakon.

I subsisted almost entirely on a diet of freshly-made onigiri, water and Japanese snacks. Bringing the rice cooker to the hotel proved to be an excellent strategy to save food money typically wasted on the $10/slice pizza that’s sold in the convention center. My friend, a native of Japan, taught me how to make onigiri for the first time.

No, I am not the type to hurl wads of cash at the first Nyanko-burger plushie or ugly PVC figurine sporting non-separated ‘flesh mittens’ for hands that I see. As much as possible, and leaving aside the obligatory DVD and manga purchases that I feel I owe the industry, I aim for rarities, relics and “true” collectibles. I long for the good old days of laserdisc boxsets with gatefold art, and cheaply-priced animation cels. Nowadays its all fake katanas and Star Wars posters.

A classic. Couldn’t resist the radiant yellows and amber reds. This is not the kind wall scroll made for public consumption, but a kind manufactured specifically for conventions; I was in the mood for Ranma after hearing my friend rave about the manga and listening to the original seiyuu’s praise for the anime

Fortunately, I found some interesting things. My highlights for this year’s purchases were a brilliantly yellow Ranma 1/2 event wall scroll, an even larger, vinyl Urusei Yatsura event poster (probably the only of its kind in the world), a Record of Lodoss War draft cel of The Grey Witch (the lady first possessed by the crown, rather) called a dokan if memory serves, and a Yoshitaka Amano artbook for Vampire Hunter D. I had NO idea that the same genius that drafted the characters designs for Final Fantasy 6 was responsible for Vampire Hunter D as well. Supposedly, this artbook is now out of print. Needless to say, these lovely goodies have found a new home with MP.

Another classic. Urusei Yatsura is a fantastic show, by the way.

News Updates

Finally, the good stuff. These are the news bytes that I gleaned from my note-taking in the panels. I’ll save the best for last.

[Media Blasters Q&A] Listening to representative Meredith Mulroney bubble on enthusiastically about Voltron, old school mecha anime and the Alteil card game probably made Media Blasters the most interesting of the industry panels that I made it into, and definitely gave me a clearer perception of Media Blaster’s niche among U.S. licensing and distribution companies. They are on record for admitting that they have successfully weathered the rash of recent Internet fansubs by selecting titles that are either less well-known or not in danger of being fansubbed into oblivion before a legitimate product can be pushed past Japan’s red tape and into domestic markets.

This includes (obviously) old-school mecha anime such as GaoGaiGar and a slew of yaoi/yuri that other companies are too chicken to lay their hands on. Kudos to Media Blasters for enduring the blistering financial climate of the U.S. anime market. Although not verbatim (due to me taking notes with my DS), here are a few paraphrased questions and answers that popped up during the panel:

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Before the question and answer session, the company played a preview of a dubbed release of Seirei no Moribito, a masterpiece fantasy anime produced by Production I.G. that I plan to review in the near future. Seirei no Moribito will be airing on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim this fall. In addition, they also heavily promoted the Alteil card game and are currently working on Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan, Magical Witch Punie-chan, Kujibiki Unbalance, a yuri manga entitled Maka-Maka and another manga called Akihabara@DEEP.

[ADV Q&A] Word has it that many people came to Otakon 2008 just to see what big news ADV had to drop in this panel. Well, the big news is that ADV was unable to announce one single anime title other Indian Summer due to binding contractual agreements; the disclosed list consisted of five live action titles. …So much for my hour-long wait. ADV also noted at least twice that they would be able to reveal more during Atlanta, GA’s Anime Weekend Atlanta Convention, which is only about a month off. At any rate, without further delay, here are some of the questions and answers:

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ADV has plans to license five live-action titles including Attack Girl Swim Team vs. The Undead, Cruel Restaurant, Gluttonous 1 & 2 (a double release), Female Prisoner Epsilon, and another Kunoichi movie. The remaining animation titles will be announced sometime in the next month or so.

[Fansubber and Industry Discussion] What could have easily degenerated into a bloodbath was actually a surprisingly well-mannered, moderated discussion of the effect of Internet fansubs on the anime industry, both in Japan and in the United States, as well as a bit of brainstorming for possible resolutions to the conflict between legitimate anime distributors and illegitimate fansubbers. As expected, the massive Panel 4’s auditorium was packed to the very last seat with curious otaku gathered round to witness the bizarre and yet exciting spectacle of industry giants and Internet giants coming together for 90 minutes of civil discourse. A sight to see, indeed.

It would have been incredibly unrealistic to expect this panel to produce a neat resolution. The Internet is large, the Earth is large, and the problem, too, is large; one that runs far and deep, and portends rippling consequences for many different layers of the industry. Yet, while none rose to slice the Otakuan Knot with the same grace and singularity of Alexander the Great, what we all gained from attending was a broader perspective on the present condition of the worldwide industry and an understanding that each of us — corporate high roller, torrent-hording brat, or otherwise — shares a common interest in Japanese animation and that we should assume some degree of responsibility in our conduct if we want to see the tradition continue.

For example, this means that fansubbers should be aware that animators deserve to be remunerated for their hard work, and at the same time, companies need to be equally aware of consumer demands, and ready to adapt accordingly. In the world of economics, the consumer’s preference reigns supreme. I do not think this is a matter of right and wrong so much as it is a clear comprehension of the facts. One consensual observation that emerged from the discussion is the fact that the industry is in a state of flux, and that innumerable things will continue to change over the next few years.

Guests included YaoiBoy and GetFresh of LiveeviL, Interactii of Dattebayo, Hisho of Shinsen Subs, Marketing Director Lance Heiskell of FUNimation, John Sirabella, CEO of Media Blasters, and another MB representative henceforth known as (7) because I do not have his name handy at the moment. Questions (scripted beforehand) and answers follow:

Show ▼

A few other interesting facts were traded here and there, such as how the fansub groups represented in the panel do their utmost to control the spread of torrents from their websites, try to remove shows from the Internet once they become licensed, and the reasons why doing so is beyond their control most of the time.

Any commander who names their ship Lili Marleen is already a winner in my book.

Given the rather insipid amounts of anime not meant for a crazy militantly religious zealot this season I have been taking a merry crusade down the old back log and browsing through the archives while painting madly in order to have less models in boxes. During one such revisiting crusade I came upon Gundam 0083 though a series overview at this point is pretty much moot since 0083 is considered one of the weaker links in the UC saga (G-Savior did not exist any reference to it having existed is a lie). Nevertheless even the least of the UC series is better than some of the other Gundam series made…mostly because while Kou was a whiny punk, Gato was an ass, and Nina was a bitch, there was an ensemble of supporting characters that made it much more tolerable, like South Burning, Monsha, Captain Synapse, Mora and her crew, and most notably Cima Garahau. Besides when was the last time you saw grunt suits continuously taking names and kicking serious ass? Minor characters in anime are a vital ingredient in any series, it never hurts to have a good amount of back up and if the mains don’t hold up they might at least make the series tolerable.

It seems that time was not kind to Cima.

Sad to say that what Cima really looked like and how she was portrayed in 0083 showed much disparity.

Lady Cima does not tolerate jokes about her age…

I think that minor characters should be to the mains what artillery units are to frontline forces. Powerful enough to help hammer awe into the audience, but they should not be relied upon to carry a series. The latter usually indicates that the writers have failed at some level. Other than that I am not sure about what specifics should go into a minor character since they should still be unique in their own right, and add a unique point of view to the events of the story without being a nuisance. I do however know an example of what a minor character should be, Cima Garahau.

Cima could bullshit very well.

To show her utter disdain of Gato and Delaz Cima had a fan and sat on tiger skin of an animal she personally strangled.

Cima also fucked up her share of enemy pilots as well, and in suits that weren’t Gundams or Mobile Armors.

Cima Garahau made Gundam 0083 much more enjoyable because she added some insight into the attitudes of the Zeon forces in the wake of the One Year War. While Char had already turned his back on the Principality before, Cima was a former grunt who had her life ruined by those who commanded her. Whereas Delaz and Gato were deluded with the ideals of Zeon cloaked in a veneer of false pride and nobility Cima and her crew were reduced to outcasts due to some of the decisions of the Zeon big wigs who Gato and Delaz served and idealized. Cima and her crew unwittingly committed a war crime after their superiors lied to them about the nature of their mission, and from then on they were criminals after gassing a colony. To add insult to injury the big bad Zeon death ray was built using their home colony as the basis for the space laser. The laser was a huge non-factor in the war and did little to avert defeat at the hands of Federation. Labeled as criminals and made homeless by their social superiors like Gato and Delaz, Cima and her crew were forced into piracy because it was the only way they could survive. Hunted by the Federation and shunned by the remnants of Zeon the bitter years hardened Cima to the point that she felt no loyalty to the old cause which robbed her of everything and deceived her into doing things that continued to haunt her dreams.

Cima was the mayfly of space, Zeon took from her everything, her home, her honor, and her youth.

As you can see the scowl wasn’t permanent.

Oh boy some one is going to get some harisen…

The chivalric nature of both Gato and Delaz basically hid their ugly nature behind a fair façade. They were not above using nukes and colony drops to attain their goals attacking both military and civilian targets. They sought to revive a war that they had already lost and were insisting upon more death and more destruction so that the old Principality could be resurrected along the lines the Gihren (arguably the worst of the Zeon heirs) had envisioned. Their blind devotion to their cause made both of them believe that it was impossible for other former Zeon soldiers to betray them and be unwilling to fight for the old cause once more. Both Delaz and Gato experienced the war from a more distant and clean perspective, one was an ace from the palace guard and the other an old man who remained safely on a bridge while grunts like Cima did all the hard work. They suffered probably the least in the One Year War because they still had their pride and a place to flee to, sure the lost friends and family, but Cima and her men lost that and more. Cima and her men had nothing once the war was over and only had a life of being fugitives to look forward to. It was this social disparity that added a new dynamic to the formerly monolithic entity that was Zeon, while Char was probably doing his own thing, defeat allowed the differences between the big wigs and the grunts still nominally Zeon to differentiate themselves.

Meeting with Delaz and listen to the old bint talks was extremely taxing.

Gato and Delaz actually accomplishing their goals?

LOL!

Cima wore her ugliness in the open, while her character design left much to be desired underneath it all was an old soldier who had come to hate the old cause and the lies that surrounded it. Delaz and Gato were not fighting for freedom they were fighting for the old order and restarting a war that they had lost. Grunts like Cima fought as hard as they could, the Zeon defeat was not due to poor soldiery, but by daft decisions by the higher ups who doomed efforts on the ground. Nevertheless Cima was devious and smart enough to use Operation Stardust as a means to rid the universe of the same liars and cheats that made her a criminal and made things worse for the colonies. On the surface Delaz and Gato were being some what noble their cause was already lost and its true horror only hidden by the fact that their victims would be faceless masses. Cima not only set her sights on killing Delaz personally but also warned the Federation about the colony drop and thus, perhaps unintentionally, tried to save the lives of civilians who Gato and Delaz were targeting. She wanted her revenge to be the death blow to all those part of the Zeon Old Guard who had brought nothing of benefit to the colonies they were supposedly fighting for. Cima tried to do the right thing and her failure due largely in part to the Albion’s continued hostility towards her fleet. She died tragically despite being one of first to realize just how stupid Delaz and Gato were and how no sane person would want anything to do with the old Principality.

Delaz’s success only led to the creation of the Titans and did little to revive the old spirit of Zeon. Not even Haman and her Axis Zeon movement enjoyed the support of the spacenoids who became disillusioned with the lies of the old Zeon hegemony. Only Char was able to rally the old base for one final push against the Federation. So in the end Cima’s actions were vindicated. She saw through the old lies of the Principality and fought against those who tried to revive the lost cause. While she was motivated more by a personal grudge than any sense of duty to protect those who could not protect themselves, she did add to the richness of the Universal Century continuity by putting a face on the poor Zeon rank and file that were abused by the aristocratic leaders of Zeon and Neo-Zeon movements. Gato and Delaz represented the lies and horror of Zeon while Cima represented the poor abused grunt who wanted nothing to do with the old cause. Nevertheless the chivalric nature of both Delaz and Gato gave them a better reputation than Cima because it was Cima who was willing to do the right thing even if the right thing involved betraying the same people who had betrayed her scant years before. For Cima there was no more glory and honor to be found in war only death and vengeance, which is a message about real war rather than the ideal of war.

That is why I think Cima is a good example of a minor character she was unlike anyone else in her series and added a view point that was unique and later expanded upon with subsequent UC Gundam series.