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Omonomono

The Consumer Experience

Another way to approach the context problem when it comes to fansubs and exported media is looking at it from other fields where it can be a problem. Talking with zzeroparticle on twitter, I was reminded about something. Something delicious.

Let’s say I start a foodie blog. Odds are that means being all snooty and elitist, going to fancy but affordable eats, and write about what I ate and how it was, and how that transient experience affects the way I live or something equally silly as you’d find in an average post about Yokohama Shopping Log or Aria.

But if you’ve studied dining at all, it’s quite complex. It’s certainly much more than just the food itself, although that is definitely the most important aspect of dining.

So, thus, how does that apply to anime and reviewing it?

Or in the original case, if I pull some C78 releases from the internet, may it be manga or music or game or whatever, is that giving me the same experience as someone who enjoys a physical copy? Someone who braved the crowd under the Big Site or even someone who just waltzes in and out of a Mandarake or MelonBooks?

I am not saying either way about it. I enjoy delicious food both for taking out or eating in, after all, but I would like to see more people respect that difference. It can be an ethical difference even. It’s also something truly “oldfag” to wax nostalgia about LaserDisc or something, but the mourning of the medium as the experience is something more of us should come into terms with, and not just under the cloak of piracy.

Link List

I’m basically tossing all this into one post just so I don’t forget them. Feel free to check them out or whatever.

- Japanese table top games and role playing games, as expected, exists. Some got translations. This is going to be one of them, but I was reminded of another two just the other day.

- The second volume of that Strike Witches doujinshi is available for mail order for overseas. Still as expensive as ever… Also, it’s sold out as of now. Get it while you can, LOL.

- More doujinshi news, it looks like Kransome and Alex are going to translate some Japanese essays from a Japanese doujinshi and republish an English version of the same. The doujinshi is originally Japanese, but includes English-language authors’ works that was translated. It’s all about this modern visual Japanese culture criticism stuff. So, yeah, it will be a Japanese-style doujinshi in English. Aiming for November, supposedly. Not holding my breath on that though.

- Next item is not exactly doujin, but indie gaming. I need to remember to grab that silly RPG-shop game in a month or so. The stupid name keeps on escaping me, so I am writing it down. Recettear.

- My Satoshi Kon word-wall will happen sometime later today or tomorrow, but the best one I’ve come across is probably Wabi Sabi’s. She basically takes my angle and spins it the other way, with even more dryness. This is also a good set if you want something more moving and less personal. [Update: my post is up now. The thing is, you can ignore most of it and just look at the picture~]

This is kind of a prelude to a nutbladder post, isn’t it.

Greiving for Satoshi Kon

It seems silly to grieve for someone who I met for a few seconds and barely knew beyond the numerous interviews and hearsay accumulated in my metaphorical inbox over the years. And “over the years” is a number less than 10. It’s weird, because I never grieve for famous people like this. My attachment to pop culture is light, so when famous people die it doesn’t “do anything” to me.

Finally it has happened. It’s alarming, and I’m not sure what I should do. I think 2DT has a good idea, so I might follow suit. I’m really busy lately anyways. But the one thing I do know to do is to write about it.

So meanwhile I’ll be faking tear drops on the copy of New York Times I have here with his obituary on it. It is for a proper retrospective that I’ll post … later. You know, a bit of “watermarking”? Chatting with someone who’s known Kon through means beyond his works, she probably would like the stock photo the NY Times used, featuring a smiling, balding man rather than the serious long-face that most web coverages used from what I’ve read. It doesn’t show off his geeky shine; guys, Kon was one of us, too.

I guess that’s partly why I take this harder than I usually do.

To that end, let me just link to some of them should you be interested in what the world has to say about a great dead animator–

• NY Times obit (page B11 in 8/26′s print edition for NY)
• Sub’s tribute, which I find charming in its own ways.
• Ben explains why Kon rocks so much, better than anyone out there.
• I also agree with this. Leave that downfall of industry junk out of it. This is wholly a different kind of thing. Like superlasers and…cat lazers.
• Someone drew this, which unsurprisingly came to mind almost immediately after first hearing the news.
• ANN has the low-down, but lastly:
• You have to read Kon’s last words to the world. There is some social network buzz about this in Japan, as you imagine. I think the first 2ch thread hit 1000 posts merely hour(s) after Gainax’s Takeda leaked the news on twitter. The word got out a day before the official PR stuff came out from Madhouse and Kon’s survivor, his wife. Which is a day before the translated last words became available. When Kon’s last words came online at his blog, it got /. badly. Anyways, go grab a hanky and go read the words of someone who moved you once before, because he might move you just yet again.

I apologize for further contributing to the noise surrounding this media event, but this time it got kind of personal.

Satoshi Kon…

Is too awesome to simply perish like this. He’s not even 50 yet.

I’ll definitely miss this guy.

It’s pretty rare that someone old enough to die has made a big impact in my life that isn’t someone I know personally, but his films have done a number to me, and I’m sure many others.

Death of the anime industry? This is more like it. Screw that finance jibberjabber. When talents like Kon disappear it is as if Vader just blew up Alderaan. What happens when your Gross Planetary Product goes to zero? It’s the silent scream of the void, of the creative ideas, films and other works that have not yet appeared, but would have, that set us back. Perhaps it is a blessing that we know not what we are missing that makes us be able to sleep every night.

Silver lining: does this mean my autographed copy of Millennium Actress R2 DVD is going to be worth more?

The irony aside, it’s just disheartening the more I try to write about Kon. He has what it takes to do great work, and I’m not just talking about his ability as director, as a story telling guy, as someone whose manga-style storyboards look almost as good as the real thing. He has a vision, he has a purpose, sort of. More importantly, he has all of that, together. But we don’t have him anymore.

I will definitely remember his timid, earnest, if eccentric, ways, that he was among of the ranks of the critical directors, of those who saw things as they are, and was able to show us through some of the most amazing films the anime medium has to offer. Again, we’ll miss you dude.

Silver lining 2: Who’s going to take his place? I can’t wait.

Harmony: The Other You

Haikasoru’s Harmony by Project Itoh is, if anything, a very compelling read. Unlike most of Haikasoru titles so far, this one actually reads like a western-style story.

The plot unravels alongside an international mystery where we follow protagonist Tuan Kirie through both of her past recollections and present discoveries to paint a picture about the future of mankind.

It’s a bleak work, and some aspects of the world painted by Itoh seems a bit tongue-in-cheek. It has at least one of my pet peeves in SF, which is a setting that doesn’t sit consistently with the internal logic presented by the story itself.

None of that matters by the time Tuan landed in Baghdad. And if you ever enjoyed Metal Gear Solid, especially its latter iterations, you might want to check out Project Itoh specifically. That is, if you don’t already know who he was.

I didn’t know anything about Project Itoh, or Itou Keikaku, but Google does, and it says something that he worked with Kojima and the MGS project, having penned a novelization of the Guns of Patriots. Kojima himself has been quoted that Itou understands the MGS project better than anyone. You can see that almost bleed through Harmony; not so much MGS, but that Tom Clancy-ish international politicking based on intrigue, military ops, and geopolitical hand-waving. Those are not prominent aspects of the read, but they’re there.

But more importantly, this is a book about philosophy, about social criticsm, about Itoh’s vision of the future. If I were to stick Harmony into a SF subgenre, it would be about transhumanism. Transhumanism via nanotechnology, via social networking, and through bioengineering. But that’s only because it is the fun part of the book. Two-thirds of it seems to be about social satire and what not, as with the underlying themes of the book. But that one third of science fiction is quite enjoyable.

Well, I guess it is rather like MGS?

On the main Haikasoru site there’s this pitch about healthcare. I don’t think it really gets at the heart of the story in Harmony, but it’s one aspect of a large set of social issues Harmony addressed. Speaking of marketing, they really did a crap job of it; I think every man woman or child interested in MGS should be lining up for a copy? Or at least that ought to be the goal.

To talk about Harmony means spoiling it. So sorry guys. Skip to the comments now if you’d like. I’ll try to keep the rest of this post short and light on the specifics.

To the immediate eye, Project Itoh ended Harmony on a down beat. I believe this is only partly the case. The most tragic thing about the ending of that book was seeing how two blank pages later, I read for the first time about Itoh’s death and how he was editing the novel on his deathbed in 2008. Considering the book was published in 2008 and won a couple big literary awards in 2009, the year he died, and that he was struggling with cancer for over 7 years, it might just have had a bit influence within the confines of Harmony?

More than just a bit as you can imagine.

Itoh was 34 when he passed away. Is this why he dreamed of a world beyond consciousness, an unimaginably pleasurable place that isn’t characterized by happiness or joy or sadness or contrast from a hard day’s work? The parallel with Tuan, Cian and Miach as different “deliberators” within Itoh’s head is just speculation my part, but you can’t help but to wonder.

Maybe this is why Harmony does the oppressive-pink idea, and why it did it so well. Or how about the fact that the idea of dying seems so intimate to the story? Its logic surrounding death is well thought-out; I can’t imagine Itoh didn’t ponder his prospects after facing the grim news about his eventual demise. But then again, so will we all; this is one way he connected with his readers, I imagine.

If I read it correctly, Harmony spent quite a bit of time being hung up on individualism. It’s almost Kantian. But I am not sure if that is just proxy for the inner struggle about death, cloaked in different terms. Near the end of the book we are introduced to the idea of another death, the death of individuality. The death of one’s consciousness. The death of “me.” By killing the “me” as the owner of these tits, do we liberate them? It’s such a foreign idea that it is difficult to understand. Is it the ultimate sort of satire of a loss of individualism, or rather the cohesive merging of individualism? I don’t know. At the same time, the story unequivocally makes the point that individualism is a catalyst of change, of evolution. In the Harmonized society, what would take its place?

Will the new, harmonized way of life reproduce the process of rational deliberation within the context of an ordered society? Will the group possess self-awareness?

Seems to me that self-awareness is something the book didn’t really touch on. And I suppose that had to be the case in a nary 300-or so pages of SF lit.

But that was more than enough room to punch out an effective ending. I read it as a positive ending, in the sense that if death is the ultimate frontier of human experience, Itoh’s afterlife is harmony. Because, as you guessed, we all are going to die; sweet death comes just mere earlier, when we give our collective of individual consciousness the “omedetou” thing and a round of applause for its hard service under the wheels of macroevolutionary leaps.

Which goes back to the sad fact that this inspirational guy just left his newly-branded readers in the wake of his demise. Now that is nothing harmony or even individualism can fix.

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