White Album Summed Up in a Picture
Nowadays when some of my friends gather and chat, they’re afraid of people who are born in the 90s. I wonder why, besides that it makes us aware of how old we’re becoming.
But I think there’s something to be said of being born in a particular era. The latter half of the 20th century, conveniently thanks to globalization and WW2, we’re synched around the world by decades of American years. So when people speak of the 70s and 80s, there are some relatively clear understanding of what that meant. And I think in another 10 years we’ll understand the 90s very clearly too. I think.
Which brings us to White Album. It’s by all means a game made and released in the 90s. Perhaps there’s a bit of lag in Japan, that some of its early 90s pop cultural references are more like 80s by American standards, I don’t know. The anime though, is pure bred 21st century stuff.
So that calendar shot of Rina Ogata screams two things at me: the 80s, and the present. The aesthetics, the line art, the use of shading to bring depth and manage distance between the audience and the picture, the attitude, the tribute to the attitude, the guitar that looked cooler than it really ought to be, the hairstyle that looked more modern than it should have been…
It’s almost like the 90s. Creepy. It’s like that–people trying to refine and make better while innovating on what made the 80s a memorable time in many people’s lives.
I guess that’s a bit of a curse of having spent significant time in Asia in the 80s. I know how tacky and terrible things were. And a part of me deep inside is quite thankful that White Album manages to evoke that 80s feel, however unauthentic, without resorting to realism.
And honestly, that’s the best thing about White Album–it has this unique take on the aesthetics. If I forget that it’s suppose to look like an era piece, it might fool me into thinking that it’s original in some way. And I guess it is. It can pass as some kind of 21st century thing, a modern kind of visual.
That isn’t even all the fun. Why is Rina holding a pick in her mouth? Music got her tongue? Why December? Why a rifle? The look of distain in a red dress…a simple statement dressed with gold-color hair. Well, that’s just hypotheses and nothing particularly worth stating, but it sure is a fun thing to do.
And I guess that’s why the 80s is worth remembering. A fun time that feels sufficiently removed, 20 years ago, that it hits hard enough like a world built thousands of years ago or in a galaxy far, far away. Too bad it’s just not as accessible to the younger generation as it is for old otaku geesers. But I guess that’s just par for the course.
In response to the inquiries you posted towards the end, allow me to take a shot. The reason why she’s posing for the December month with a rifle is clearly a reference to the Decembrist revolt in Russia which was violently suppressed by Tsar Nicholas I and would be one of many events later honored and memorialized by Bolshevik leaders (hence, the red, damn commies). Her look of disdain is one of contempt, directed towards the bourgeoisie, trying to profit off the works of the proletariats like herself.
(Yes, I’m being facetious here. Don’t take this post too seriously. I just thought it’d be amusing to tie down White Album as taking place in an era where the Soviet Union was nearing its collapse and looking back on the Bolshevik Revolution itself.)
From a cultural standpoint, the Cold War was definitely a driving factor to the prevalent attitude of youth popular culture of the 80s, so yeah. Being facetious is fine but lol, maybe too close to plausibility.
>>Why is Rina holding a pick in her mouth? Music got her tongue?
She obviously just came out of her newly revolutionized Eruption-esque tapping run, and when you press the GUNTAR trigger it automatically turns whatever note you’re on into a wailing pinch harmonic ;)
I’m guessing you’re early 80’s, and me being an 89′er, well, I don’t really associate myself with the year the wall was torn down or anything 80’s related. I’m a 90’s kid, but “90’s kids” are these weird, young things that I don’t understand all too well =p.
Well, whatever conclusions people draw from Rina’s People’s Revolutionary Pose, all I can say is that I’d take a poster of her in that pose over a poster of Che Guevara any day.
I would refrain from comparing Rina Ogata with Che…
I’m older than the 80s, which is why I can remember it. I vividly remember the deluge of news coverage as the wall came down and how people would mail pieces of it as presents! It was nuts. Silly Asians.
GUNTAR, eh? I’ll have to remember that.
[…] much more enjoyable this time. No Rina’s M-16 guitar was not the crowing achievement despite what omo and Kabitzin might think, rather it was the funniest episode to date as Touya wept like the pansy […]
I think your comments on the ideal of the 80’s versus the reality of the 80’s perfectly captures the feeling I get when I watch movies from the 80’s; pop culture representations of it always manage to make it seem just so cool, even though I know that it was, really, just the way things are now in many ways, and people’ll probably feel similarly when they watch movies from now whenever they’re my age twenty years from now.
Anyway, I wanted to be a pain in the ass and discover that the guitar is not in fact modeled after an M-16… but my raging need to be obnoxious was shot down when I looked at it and realized that it is… oh well.
Also, @ zzeroparticle - She clearly needs an AK-47 if she’s trying to channel Mother Russia. But I do believe the Beatles’ White Album featured the song ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’, so perhaps the M-16 was simply an oversight on the part of the artist, and you’re right about the connection to ye olde communist Russia.