Mai Mai Miracle is WOAAAH
Since Summer Wars is out on DVD/BD this week, you can watch it pretty easily. But Mai Mai Miracle is not going to happen for a while still, and my goodness.
If you like Omohide Poroporo, or know what inaka means and like anime, then you owe it to yourself to watch Mai Mai Miracle. I am actually not exaggerating at all; the film is all about that inaka-crap. For the record, I probably don’t qualify for either, so maybe this is just over-reaction or something.
It’s been years since I last saw Omohide Poroporo, but I still remember it vividly, if spottily. And as much as I hate to pin Mai Mai Miracle on that excellent Ghibli production, I think I have to, out of my inability to stand on anything else to criticize it.
Which is to say, I think Maimai Shinko to Sennen Mahou doesn’t quite stand up to that work, but at the same time it isn’t equally boring. Make no mistake; it is still boring. I saw the film with a theater full of kids, and a lot of them are fidgeting throughout the affair. You can hear it. It’s definitely a low octane experience. Still, it’s a visually competent work with good music and all that as you’d expect from a Madhouse feature film that opened just a few months ago (Began screening in Japan back in Nov. ‘09). It just doesn’t have as much of that softness, that human touch, than the Isao Takahata masterpiece. On the other hand, Shinko’s life in the boondocks was notably less controversial and friendly to certain things and ideas.
The story itself is based on the autobiography of a writer, and it’s set during her childhood. The presentation is, actually, like another Madhouse film. I hope that got you curious enough. It was my first impression. I even wrote it on the ballot… A writer is akin to an actress, but even more powerful since she created whole worlds from scratch; but I guess on the silver screen, we’re given the treat the same way, no matter if it originates from an act or a script.
On some level, this is a film that’s mainly for kids, or Japanese people. But the film’s presentation isn’t exactly the most easy thing to understand for the young as it overlays fantasy over reality and it’s quite the raw countryside (well, packaged nonetheless) experience to well-to-do New Yorkers and their children. I’m sort of at a loss as to how foreigners should engage the work besides as a, well, foreign film. But maybe that’s why the term “slice of life” is still a butchered metaphor rather than anything else, despite the earnest desire of people trying to use it to describe something way more profound than they realize.
As obligated, I’ll write more about both this and Summer Wars. Summer Wars is notably more mundane in comparison. I mean a mainstream-appealing action-adventure work with attractive Sadamoto designs is a win-win formula, but we’ve had just that a few years ago. Well, see for yourself.
The screening I attended featured Mamoru Hosoda himself, and after the screening he gave us a good 30-40 minutes of Q&A time. As this was the NYICFF, about 70% of the questions came from kids, as in people who looked like kids since they were yea big. There might be a few adults who actually asked questions, as in certifiably people over age of 25, total, out of the 2-3 dozen questions he entertained.
This was simply the best, most delightful Q&A session involving something anime in nature that I’ve attended. The questions from the kids were earnest, straightforward, and even thoughtful (as kids could be). Like why the Love Machine was called that (not just a Momusu thing). Or the big diss on lacking on juice. I had a great time anyways. Hosoda had to entertain the kids, but he also asked them some things to get feedback. And boy did they give feedback… I was amused when Hosoda was trying to explain the concept of internet-based multiplayer gaming to this kid, who looked like 7 or 8 years old. Well, you get the idea. Appropriately he went for a smoke after the time spent w/ the general public; it’s a tough crowd.
I’ll save the comparison with Tokikake and the rest of the review for later, but the thing that struck me about Summer Wars the most was the references. I mean, we all got the John & Yoko bit (and to the NY crowd, that’s a funny joke, if you are over the age of 20). But I just can’t help but to think that the Hanafuda Koi-Koi game is like Mahjong, and Natsuki is like, well, Nodocchi.
Came for Kanno, Stayed for Natsumi Kiyoura
I have this bad habit of gambling on debut albums. Thankfully it happens only once every year or three. It’s no big deal; only $40 tops down the drain tops… Maybe that is why I kept on doing it.
This time, it is Natsumi Kiyoura’s first solo album, called 19 Colors. CDJapan actually wrote it up better than I could have. To save you the trouble, I’ll just word drop a bit:
- A song produced w/ Yoko Kanno
- Spice and Wolf Season 1 OP
- Sasameki Koto OP/ED
- Keroro ED14
- Some song from Ristorante Paradiso (full version)
- Sketchbook OP new version
And other stuff.
If you read that CDJ promo piece, you might wonder why people compare Kiyoura with Maaya Sakamoto. Besides the Kanno connection, I guess, that is because both of them are child talents that grew up into this weird acting/music/seiyuu niche after they aged out the children’s talent bracket. Maaya is roughly 10 years senior of Natsumi IIRC.
As for the Yoko Kanno connection, the Kanno song, “Ano ne demo ne,” is not much to write home about. It reminds me of Maaya’s pop-ish tracks from, I dunno, Dive. It is a little jarring considering the rest of Kiyoura’s album is laid-back, jazzy, and overall nowhere nearly as intense as Maaya’s sound. I didn’t like it much, and you know I whore out for Kanno (who’s actually on the keyboard for it) any day.
On the other hand, unlike Maaya’s very early work, Kiyoura’s songs actually are cohesive, and the overall product is spot on if you enjoy crap like, well, Ristorante Paradiso. It’s like, sometimes these seiyuu-pop-idol types need a while to find a sound that works with their voice, but Kiyoura has already got it. Or is closing in on it, at any rate.
In short, just need more songs like Tabi no Touchuu yeah? Yeah. I’m not going to break the tracks down one by one; not my style anyways. I think it’s a good thing rather than a bad thing when the album goes down smooth without dips, but also without many outstanding marks. The more rock-like tracks on the album sound like “winded down idol group music” for lack of a better term, but even so Kiyoura adds a notable touch to the sound. It just isn’t so haunting or so memorable as her most outstanding track.
I was oddly surprised by Nijiiro Pocket however. The full cut is so much better…
Random factoid time.
- I think there really are a total of 19 colors on the album if you add something to something.
- The studio live that’s on the DVD were televised at one point? Not sure how they got on Youtube in the first place. Nice to have on DVD nonetheless. There are 4 performances, total, acoustic arrangements, I had a good time playing it in the background.
- The front cover of the insert booklet, which you see as the album cover, writes the album name “19 Colors” in (American) English. The rest of the album, at least everywhere I looked, writes it in kanji (十九色). I take this to mean that the proper way to refer to the name of this album is by its translated term in whichever language you choose. At the same time, the first track, also the title track, has the same name, and it is labeled itself by kanji only. For that I used the romanized term. Seems inconsistent but oh well.
Track list–
- Jyukuiro
- Tabi no Tochu
- Ano ne Demo ne
- Giniro no Kanashimi
- Neverland
- Nijiiro Pocket
- Kanashii Hodo Aoku <album version>
- Pallet
- Kaze Sagashi <full-colored samba mix>
- Bokura no Aikotoba
- Nanairo
- Midnight Love Call
PS. Limited Edition and Regular Edition at CDJ (affiliate links).
Shiro Emiya and the Economy
Shiro Emiya in UBW is all about the hero who “saves one meaning not saving another.” In other words, when you choose to save one person, you lose your chance to save another person because there’s only so much you can do. It’s the limited resource constraint in economics.
There is no way we can save everyone. There is not enough resources for everything that everyone wants to do, if it is even possible to achieve it. The anime otaku is intimately familiar with this concept, simply because it takes a large amount of time to consume all the anime a real otaku would want to watch. There are limited numbers of minutes and seconds in a person’s life, after all. We have to drop some shows!
That is the basic criticism as seen here, as applied to economics. A unit of money spent in infrastructure project via taxation means a dollar of money not spent being invested in a private enterprise which may very well drive the same infrastructural development. Or maybe it’ll sit in some safe investment portfolio, not doing much. I’m not saying which way to spend the money is better than the other, but that there is a dichotomy. A sound fiscal policy doses both the pros and cons of a spending policy, as well as the pros and cons of an if-we-didn’t-spend-the-money-could-have-done-that policy.
A more relevant example than brick-chucking hoodlums can be seen in the video game resale issue that some are making things out to be. The scenario is, if you are unfamiliar, is that used game sales do cannibalize into new game sales especially as many people purchase new games and used games from the same store, where the same games, new versus used, are displayed in proximity for shoppers. While the marginal profit retailers make on new games are small to none, they make much more off used games, usually purchased from the very same customers, sold for credit. In order to try to get in on the used game action, publishers are trying a variety of things, but invariably at expense of customers of new games.
The “limited economics” reversal as applied to the used game situation is summed up simply here. TL;DR, it just means that because people trade in old games primarily so they can buy new games, by meddling with used game sales, it makes more expensive effectively for people who trade in games, and with that could mean fewer people buying new games as it raises the effective cost of new games.
I think in UBW, Shiro comes to terms with his ideal (borrowed, perhaps, from classical economists) both by trying to double that dollar, to save two birds with one projection magic. This way you traverse two alternatives at the opportunity cost of one. Then again there WERE two Shiros so that was a possible route, AMIRITE.
Shiro is oddly the strongest example of this principle that I’ve seen in all of anime/manga/games, and even so the stories themselves are fairly weak examples. Are there any better ones?
The Crab Club
This week at Crab Club–
Anime no Chikara: The Soul of Pachinko?
1. Pachinko is big bucks for franchise owners. Ko is like a hound on this stuff. So I’ll share some of the stuff he shared, and other things–
- Rio anime (and also to some extent Umi Monogatari yeah?). We get pachinko anime because it’s a good crossover media marketing thing.
- Brad summarizes what Ko said. More pertinently, pachinko machines are an exploding market of sorts? Marketing is fierce and tie-ins are worth the big bucks. I mean sure, I will put in a few yen into a Nadesico machine. Or a My-Hime machine. Older franchises revive because they are big-time, well-known signifier.
- I wonder if Sailor Moon is going to take the plunge with its global revival soon… These revivals tend to lead to more SKU tie-ins (Mai-Hime BDs come to mind) and possibly one-shot animation or whatever like Fist.
2. Listen to this inadequate Ian Condry lecture about the interplay between merchandising and animation. Inadequate because it lacks video! But worth it if just for the Code Geass pitch session anecdote. Props to Alex L. for making it possible.
The Condry lecture painted a cloud-like picture. Online social networks, predictably, will continues to move to increasingly commercial in nature. I think it fits well with anime fandom in a sense that it is also very commercial (and not really all that revolutionary social/economically speaking) but yet very much a collective of individuals, as opposed to a “group.” Interaction from the commercial entities to the “cloud” is usually in two layers, one as an agent and the other as an insider. The difference is in the motivation–one shills, the other serves a personal self-interest implying an at-odds relationship with the commercial entity. Both are necessary; one for the purpose of recognition and the other is to disseminate actual information and add credentials. And both roles are increasingly not as much as what it seems to be. Kind of like you get the guy who blogs for Microsoft, and the guy who leaks MS info to the press.
The fact that most anime media companies ignore the whole fan scene on the face despite basically living off them (if this means anything) seems to suggest that likewise fans behave in a similar way–that we partake in a commercial relationship and in a way which identifies ourselves in relationship with these commercial entities. Like, for example, WAH loves Akiyuki Shinbo and would not mind having his child. That is an identity he shares with other fans and in context of the industry. WAH spent $4 (IIRC, correct me if I am wrong) on a copy of Tenamonya Voyagers is another kind of identity in which he relates to the industry, but it is an individual, personal fact. [Coincidentally WAH also asked a question in that recording.] Well that’s not the best example, but it’s like how some people pride on consuming only fansubs and not buy any actual licensed goods, or in reverse like how some people only watch anime on DVDs and never fansubs. (Or that they sometimes flaunt these personal decisions.) And subsequently, how that kind of thing is considered flaunting. On the other hand it’s much more acceptable to say “Senjougahara is mai waifu” or otherwise identify with something that constitutes actual fandom. Sort of. Even when both dimensions of the fan individual are crucial, if anything, as marketing data to commercial interests.
The difference is kind of like what I talk on my blog and what I do my social networking with on twitter and forums, versus the actual anime I consume, maybe?
