New Anime Song Tie-Ins from Abroad
Anison or anisong? Anyways–
So it’s a spur-of-the-moment question, but what are some new acts in Japan that are western transplants? What kind of a list I can come up with just through westerners who consequently moved to Japan and got signed up by a label there? For the sake of simplicity I’m going to ignore Japanese acts that were born in Korea, China and other East Asian countries. And while the likes of Hikaru Utada would fit in this category, let’s just stick with newbies for now. More fun and challenging IMO.
- I wrote about HIMEKA earlier. What makes her a little bit more buzz-worthy than others is that she engaged in the whole fandom thing, online and at cons, before she headed to Japan. But I think she’s also the newest in this bunch. Props for being able to publish a cover of a song you like, you anison otaku you.
- I found Kylee through Xam’d. It seems she’s only 15 years old. So much talent and so young! I guess we have to stay tuned to see if Pedobear gets a hold of her or not.
- There’s Becca, who’s a little bit under the radar but I guess people like Kuroshitsuji or something (and not UV044). Also she seems to be somewhat more of a full-fledged musician, having spent time working the Pacific Northwest scene, among others.
This thought exercise is brought to you by pre-con fever. I’m not going to suggest that this thought exercise helps with anyone with that little contest but it’s something to do. Especially if you’re also interested in this other little club thing. Two plugs in one!
An Otome-kei Nitpick towards Purity in Yuri
Traditionally yuri manga and anime are made for girls (generally, I guess, teenagers/young adults). Is this how Americans consume yuri manga and anime?
I guess it’s also a bit of a misnomer, being a marketing term nowadays.
This question popped into my head while reading Voiceful, an almost-one-shot manga published by Seven Seas. What struck me as interesting was reading some of the author’s notes at the end which said something about it not being very “yuri” and will focus on writing about stories with relationships only girl can have with another girl. The author is nawoko, and it was originally published in a yuri magazine, Monthly Yuri Hime. Actually you can read about it from massive-yuri-maniac Erica Friedman herself. And Voiceful really isn’t that “yuri,” or whatever that means.
The first possibility as it occurred to me why nawoko would say such a thing was that maybe someone told her so, or maybe compared to the other publications on the scene. Or maybe Voiceful doesn’t lend itself to the more erotic or romantic relationship found in her doujinshi? I don’t know.
As I read through the comic, the story was not focused on the yuri-ness. Quite the opposite, it focused on a relationship between two girls, each who struggled with life in a big way, and each was able to see a reflection of herself in the other and beyond. Actually, that sounds typical of yuri material, right? But this…is not really unique to a girl-girl relationship. In shounen manga this is quite common of a theme between rivals, at least that’s exactly where I’ve seen it repeatedly.
For what it is worth, the way the relationship unfolded was uncommon, may it be yuri or otherwise. It certainly could be something that only happen between two girls. You have a shut-in who lived on an emotional thread hanging by the balance on top of a voice over streaming radio. The other girl is the voice behind the website, but she’s just using that voice as an outlet for her own emotional needs. The best part of the story might be that third girl who took in the lonesome canary and nurtured her. She gave her an occupation to deal with it and released her music on the web. It’s like the story has places to go but it ended just right as the shut-in and the singer begin to develop their relationship beyond what may be socially.
But it sort of bothers me. Why do I read yuri stories and watch anime with those themes? On one hand, I totally avoided shows like Strawberry Panic, but I adore things like Marimite. It’s like I am forced to discern something within this category, this relationship genre, that there is something wholly good and something kind of terrible. I don’t know what it is. It’s like that funny feeling when you finish reading a serious but light-weight relationship manga between two girls, and the ads at the end of the book wants you to check out Kashimashi. To me that’s like putting ads for Eiken (for example) in Comic LO, or something.
Why? Is this one of those “STRAIGHT FROM JAPAN” nonsense? It’s not that Strawberry Panic or Kashimashi are bad titles per se, but they’re like the Queen’s Blades of the Anime RPG Fantasy/fanservice genre, as applied to yuri. I can understand why some people (like Friedman) would love to strut those titles, but I’m uncertain how can anyone recommend them to someone like me. [Then again, I do watch that silly fanservice anime…] Or anyone else indiscriminately.
I just don’t buy it. But why are all yuri titles pushed along alike? Why does it seem these goggle-wearing fans work the agenda indiscriminately? It’s more than what I can take seriously. In other words, I think yuri is fine if it’s the side effect of some great relationship as told through a story about the said relationship. I have no problems with Simoun’s asexual/bisexual/heterosexual/homosexual mixed-up mother goose; in fact I adore it as it fascinates like few other sci-fi/fantasy settings in all of anime. But when it stops being about the relationship and become something on its own, it just is laughably bad.
Maybe I’m just all about the otome-kei moe style and when I deal with non-otome-kei moe-type yuri (is there such a thing?) it pisses me off? I don’t know. It’s more like I have Maria+Holic playing in the background of my brain when I try to take stories like Strawberry Panic seriously. And the sad thing is, I think Maria+Holic is better at it (at least when it comes to the anime).
This post is brought to you by The Good Witch of the West, volume 2. Now that’s good yuri right there.
Anime Boston 2009 Wrap
Keeping this one simple. So I can spend more time cropping and uploading pics, more time sleeping, and less on writing. I also added title pics from, lol, my phone cam, to the old Anime Boston posts:
Wow, I did almost a full coverage of this con, barely even blinked. And I’m not even done yet. What’s in store is at least one full TL;DR article on Aniplex, and probably some re-writing of the stuff so it’s more link friendly. I can even write about Surat’s moe nonsense. But anyways let’s get it going…
Anime Boston 2009 Day 2
Day 2 was the big Saturday or whatever.
As a note on con attendance pattern, one thing that I thought which sets two types of con goers apart are those “casual” goers and those who are much more serious, like new-con buddy Jabel who flew up from FL, is which and how many days they’re at the con. I guess if I lived in Florida I’d jump at the chances to go to places like San Jose or Boston just because it would be hella less hot up north…
But yes, con attendance for “mid-size” cons balloons on Saturday. I think this is true for almost all cons out there except AX and Otakon. Why? Because there are a lot more people from those cons who go all three day and for AX and Otakon, while they do have more people going on the proper weekend dates, the influx doesn’t outnumber the all-weekend attendees so much.
Going to a con all three days doesn’t mean anything in itself. But if you were going to Boston from FL for a con, you are likely to go to it all three days. Even if you lived nearby and wanted to go to AB for all three days because cons R SRSBZNS and you got a room in the party block, you would go all three days. See what I’m getting at?
With that in mind, Saturday had a lot of people. A couple bloggers I recognize visited the con for the day and according got their money’s worth in Kalafina fandom and luls. The Kajiura encores are definitely special…especially since I missed them ;_; Nonetheless there were consolation prizes as I got my AquaAge soundtrack autographed! Not her best, but by far my favorite.
Lesse–Funi panel. I wrote a long list of crap but most of it can be found on ANN now. It’s just “moe economics” and some dub actors. Ironically actually the only main dub actor for Eva I liked was Misato’s Allison Keith. I’m fine with this! In retrospect, it’s also kind of amusing that the Japanese had to struggle with getting the same dub actors for their Eva movies…
After that, it was delicious Thai food. I forgot to mention that we went to this seafood place for lunch, which is why we were NOT at the front during the concert. It was expensive but they had this lobster sale that…I should have taken advantage of. Kind of hitting myself for playing safe on delicious local cusines. Then again, $30 for two 1 1/4 pounders is not cheap for guys chipping away at hotel costs by loading it up with 8 people.
The rest of the evening was filled with random wandering, working on writing up crap, touring the artist alley–it was BIG–and generally killing time with a few con chasers as I dub them–people who run to cons for the guests like me. It’s also nice to find people who’d chat it up with strangers in the same lines you’re in. By that I mean ALL the lines you’re in.
I also spent the first hours at the dealer’s room on Saturday. After the AoDVD panel I went to show off the crappy loot I got at the dealer’s room (kransom was doing time with Hen da Ne, who will also take all your monies using Carnelian artwork), and found Media Blaster’s full lineup on sale (almost bought that Tweeny Witches box….). It’s a great graphical representation how much in volume that they are selling that is, well, porn. Their wares are lined up in a L shape. The top of the L is the usual anime stuff you’d see at, say, Funi’s booth. After about 30% down the verticle part of the L it turns into hentai. The horizontal part of the L is their live action lineup (which is probably also mostly porn, I didn’t investigate). I think Sirabella was there sitting, looking sort of tired. I didn’t have the courage to disrupt him.
Sat in on Daryl Surat (and sorry I forget who’s the other panelist–Christian Daly) panel on moe and it being “the spectre of evil” or some such. It was pretty good of a panel coming from someone who has given the whole moe issue some thought. It presents a warm argument about the problem of moe, as narrowly defined. I think however a lot of people who are resistent to the idea defines moe a little differently than they do. There’s also a question (or questions?) of motives that requires further research to fill out. The overall presentation is based on the Takashi Murakami’s book of essays “Little Boys.”
I think the random guys I crashed with at the con also spent a lot more time on Saturday getting to know each other and we chatted about all kinds of stuff. Good times.
Lastly, I spent some time in the game room. Nothing really special besides that they have two of them. I’d say it’s almost underwhelming actually, but who am I to say anything about console gaming…
Besides Kalafina’s show, there’s not a lot of very memorable stuff. Be sure to also read DS’s report for more lols details involving me!
OK, I think that’s a wrap. Next up should be the conclusion/final con report/uploading a lot of pics.
Kara no Kyoukai, Anime Boston 2009 Day 3
I’m just going to throw stuff in here for brevity’s sake. This is going to be a TL;DR post… Also, I updated the Kajiura concert report based on a real fan’s low-down. I confess–I am not a Kalafina fan even if I do like their music! It’s probably not a good excuse though, but you should always get your stuff from a real fan who actually waited in line for hours!
Day three started the same way for me as day 2, except with half as much awkwardness because I think we all bonded with each other in that magical, “convention == Neo Venezia” way. If you get what I mean by that, you win a cookie.
At any rate, after we picked up breakfast and ditched our luggage, I hung out with Jabel and kransom again. Joining the line camp are a few NY-area(?) con goers. Or should I say they’re like me and Jabel–con chasers? Anyways, we sat around and talked about random nothings until the group behind us in line (for the Kara no Kyoukai panel) started to talk about those Seventh Heaven promo posters somehow they are now giving out to people who bought from their booth at the dealer’s room. With only 30 minutes till showtime, we just said “meh.”
Whatever.
