Happy Figure Doujinshi, Regretful Figure Purchase
It’s hard to bundle up irrelevant topics into one fell swoop, so I’m not going to try.
First thing first–Happy Soda’s Super Rats is somewhat of a photographer, going at it in his home studio and snapping away. While what I may heap upon him seems little more than empty praise, I think the value of what fancy words I have for his work-product is at least as much as the $25 I spent on it.
The specific work product, beyond his figure blog, is a self-published photo book of some of the select photos he took over the course of his figure reviews. I would like to think he covered a wide variety of selections as far as picking out pictures to put in the book. But as much as the book features high rez figure porn, the book contain Super Rat’s arrangement, notes and random focus on different figures that tickles his pickles. YMMV on that one.
Besides a few amateur-ish flaws, there’s not a whole lot to say about the book. If you like the pictures on Happy Soda, then getting this so-called doujinshi is not going to disappoint. If you like figures of anime/game/whatever girls in various states of undress, then you will probably like both.
The doujinshi is made available from Lulu, which is a print-on-demand vendor with plants in Europe, US, Australia, and elsewhere I don’t know. Not sure about exactly where. This means you can get it with a fairly low shipping cost in much of the world outside the US. I got the book from them relatively quickly and the cost is reasonable for this sort of thing. The paper quality is fine although I sort of hoped the cover material is a bit better.
Again, the book is not perfect and it’s easy to look at it and come up with a dozen ways to improve it. But, it delivers what you expect, so it is a good thing.
Regrettably, the book is on sale from October 21 to October 28, so you really have no time left to make this purchase. Well, it’s his loss, although it’s not unusual for really popular doujinshi to go on multiple runs.
[You can grab a PDF of it as preview (it’s not 100.00% the same as the paper product, but it’s close. Speaking of which, the shot with Haruka’s lower half in the book had less of an effect than seeing it in 4-page quadrants as a PDF). ]
The second bit I wanted to talk about is 5cm/s. This topic keeps coming up not only because it’s worth talking about, but it just happens to be something so thought provoking that despite the relatively few people who got to see it, a higher percent of the viewers had to vent? And venting we did. People wrote a lot about it way-back-when. All the more it seemed appropriate that a word can simply nail it to the wall.
The third bit, going back to figure and regret, is this hasty purchase. Granted the experience itself was/is valuable (first time ordering from Kid Nemo), it reminded me why I ought to stick to his drawn stuff and not falter towards the flame that is Tony Taka’s luscious character designs, rendered in three dimensions.
As you may know, Kotobukiya has been doing some limited distribution runs in the United States. This means North American retailers can get their hands on figures at a large discount since they skip over the “importer” middleman entirely. A $65 Elwing figure can be had for $45. Yeah, you can get a bad case of regret if you got that $65 figure instead.
What’s amusing is I knew all about this in an indirect way. I just didn’t do dilligence before I pressed the confirm button. So now I will rely on what makes Kid Nemo different than many other retailers–not its higher price point, but supposedly existant customer service. We will see how it turns out!
Way. Too. Much.
If I had to characterize one thing about this fall-winter wave of anime it would be simply one thing:
There are way too many above-average but below-awesome shows that I don’t want to follow but I don’t want to drop.
Kind of like this guy, but probably worse. It’s hard work to hop, step and jump.
After you’ve been watching anime for a while you start to notice a few things. One of them is that it’s hard to watch and follow a lot of anime and still keep a level head. And when I say “a lot” I mean, a lot. Massive amounts. Like 50% or more of the shows being aired at any given time, plus the OAV/movies that trickle out on a regular basis.
A lot of anime out there is relatively terrible. I’m not saying this on an objective sense. It’s just that a lot of anime out there has low entertainment value to any one person. Now what is bad is subjective, of course, but it’s hard to find someone who enjoys even 50% of the shows every given season, simply because the diversification of anime as a medium has made shows increasingly and narrowly focused. That focus alienates a lot of people, even if overall it can improve the work in the specific. (And of course, make it very appealing for its target audience.) For example, people cry about cookie-cutter harems all the time, so one way to make a more palatable harem show is to make it a tongue-in-cheek parody. But unless you’ve had more than a few harem shows under your belt that parody is going to shoot over your head.
Another thing you might realize after following a lot of anime for a while is that your level of acceptable quality for shows to follow has started to drop. Or maybe these people don’t have much of a taste and are voracious. Actually I’m thinking people who do and can enjoy (or put up with) watching a lot of anime probably have a diverse set of tastes. And it’s something that you get better at the more you do. People who have no taste will probably get driven insane by the amount of mediocre crap out there some of the steadfast folks (like this guy) had to wade through.
I guess all that is to say that, yeah, I watch a lot of crappy anime and I can’t help myself.
Digging at Anime Conventions
Ok, so this convention got May’n to come, and you can go for the entire con for 8 :bux:
A while ago I had the chance to go to Anime USA but I didn’t because it had no programming I liked particularly. If the typical modus operandi at an anime con is to hang out with friends win a frenzy party atmosphere, is it worth $40? And considering that I could hang out with said friends while not at the convention, it seems like I’m paying a ludicrous cover charge to see someone getting spanked by yaoi paddles. Okaaay. It’s one thing to pay up and party up if you live in Durham, NC; it’s another if you’re 5 blocks away from the Big Apple. Or in Anime USA’s case, the crowded suburb of the DC metro area.
Let’s take an example and look deeper. Otakon 2008 raised its prices by $5 compared to Otakon 2007. A full 3-day pass was $65 if you got it at the door. But to be fair I should use the early registration price, which was $55. How did I react to its price increase?
Otakon justifies its rising cost by having [JAM PROJECT] and booking a nearby concert arena (that seats up to 14,000) on top of a relatively large convention center. But that’s just how I justify Otakon to myself. If you dig on their forums you can basically see that the cost of business-class flights from Narita to Baltimore has skyrocketed during that time. JAM PROJECT is not a solo operation, and that rolls up the cost. The 1st Mariner Arena, though, is legit for them as an expense and it’s easy to appreciate the cost of a large venue for everyone. That’s on top of the other cost increases due to one thing or another, regardless of who they invite to come to the con.
At the same time, people like the guy who runs NYAF may diss the city of Baltimore, and he’s not wrong in saying that it cost a lot more to run a similar operation in Manhattan–if even pushing it into the realm of impossibility. That’s just how things roll. But what does that mean in terms of people’s justification for how much they charge? The cost for attendees of NYAF is roughly equal to the cost of Otakon: $55 for early registration. Okay, that’s great, but did I get $55 worth of things out of NYAF? Maybe; but I think equivalently Otakon was easily twice the deal for the same price. That’s the value of Otakon as justifies to me. If I can get twice (more like a lot more than twice) the venue space and thus twice the programming at the same price, I think I can live with a third-rate city hosting my anime cons as long as it’s not too far away.
The metric of costs and spending and what omo (or you) get out of a convention don’t conclude so easily; I’m well aware that Otakon’s attendance is easily 5000+ more than NYAF’s, regardless of sales on VIP badges (as Otakon had none). Also Reed Exhibition is in it to make money; Otacorp isn’t. This is on top of running the con at a cheaper city, but with much bigger facilities and a more expensive selection of guests. Or I’m guessing it’s a more expensive–how much did it cost for Baby, The Star Shines Bright to make their American debut? Otakon’s age and prestige also suggest they have better, more industry and social connections and can explore better options for their programming, get more sponsors, etc. There’s too much detail about money that will never get disclosed, so I won’t go any further than I did just now. It feels like comparing apples and oranges.
What I do know, though, is that as a con-goer, I paid a price and I expect to get some level of satisfaction in return. That is relatively easy to compare and I’m sure most of us who do cons regularly do exactly that. And bluntly put, Otakon’s value pwns most other cons on those terms.
But that is also regardless of my personal opportunity costs: on top of things like the commute, hotel fees, etc. The personal evaluation of what you get out of a con will vary from person to person, naturally. For example, I remember Big Apple Anime Fest in 2001, and I think I still get a laugh out of seeing Giuliani’s pic, holding the ugly but symbolic convention t-shirt in the first days of the post-9-11 world. BAAF 2001 meant an attendee can own his version of the same shirt. It was LOLZ in a surreal time. It is an example of how “far out” things can get with anime cons that makes it worth the big bucks, time and effort.
And that’s the rub. Different people have different visions about anime cons. And cons fill different roles and purposes in our lives. Cons are social contexts and they are like dreams and aspirations. I mean, hey, Dramacon sold, right? But whose reality is that? And who am I to yell at kids on my lawn, paying $30-40-50 to go to a crap con that’s mostly just an exhibition hall and showing fansubs? People can celebrate anime and the more they do it the better, speaking purely as a fan; but to make a business preying on kids who should be saving their money for the upcoming economic harsh times is not very kosher in my book. Perhaps there’s nothing to be done about it, and when the hard times hit fewer people will hit back at anime conventions. Things will even out by themselves.
But the more I think about it, the more it behooves me to dig deeper. When the guys running the show aspire to the visions and methods that celebrate the arts, I would like to support those people. But if all I’m doing is propping some bicycle of a business that’s going nowhere fast, just so people can preying on dealers, artists and attendees alike, then no thank you. And the only way you can find this out is by digging deeper and digging into the past.
Take Otakon for example again. It’s certainly not the only anime con out there that brings foreign guests, domestic guests and fans together. It has also changed quite a bit over the years, along with the anime scene in America. It, however, still dedicates itself to bringing big-name, first-time Japanese guests to the other side of the globe. It has a relatively local focus, considering its partnership with Baltimore and that it runs off the East coast fan base; but it is not myopic in terms of what is going on and the needs of all the fans that do end up visiting the con that most local cons don’t even really care about. And that’s just one facet of Otakon’s operation.
Does your favorite convention have a vision? Does it set goals to improve themselves? Is it flexible enough to roll with the punches and move beyond setbacks? Does it take advantages of opportunities but stay from selling out of its long-term vision? Is it staffed by awesome people? Is it transparent enough that an attendee can even answer these questions?
No? That’s okay. Because nobody’s perfect. But considering the nonsense hubbub people cry over about the anime industry and whatever, it’s time that people give anime conventions a damn, as a major aspect of the anime industry and fandom.
Download to Own, Rental, or Streaming? It’s All DRM And We Deal? Pragmatic Outlooks.
I’m just thinking the distinction is kind of weird.
Some people tend to really champion one thing or another, like against digital rights management (DRM). I think regardless how you feel about the issue on digital delivery of anime, it’s important to look at it from the big picture.
The really basic concept here is that it cost money to create and deliver anime to us, so it makes some sense for us exchange money for it (or rather, for them to charge us money to watch it, or use it to deliver ads and have advertisers pay or some form of that).
Naturally, the purer form of the delivery, the better value. Things like DRM are, in a nutshell, giving the user less value. To an extent, “streaming” media is also a form of DRM in the inability (and lack of common knowhow) to record a stream, giving us less value. Think of it like radio. But at the same time, that kind of distinction is not all bad compared to a less-restricted format, much like how radio and streaming media can deliver to users who just have access to a wirelessly-wired portable device (eg. a radio, iPhone), versus having to carry around a personal media player (PMP; eg. Zune) and worry about storage. Of course, the better way to look at it is that streaming media is really just a DRM-laden, on-demand broadcast.
A rational consumer’s perspective is that if we are to receive a more restricted product or service for our money, in exchange, we ought to pay less. And vice versa–less restrictions mean it should cost more money.
Subbing Anime Is Not a Piece of Cake
Last time I tried this, (almost) no one got the joke. So I’ll try again.
