Nutbladder Ranking: 2010-06
Believe it or not, I’m going on a jet plane in a few hours… So this edition will have only nine nutbladdery goodness. I think one is reserved for either Senkou no Night Raid or Arakawa UB, but I’m behind on both and haven’t really made progress this month. Chalk it up to cons; they eat into my anime time.
9. Wave’s Nene – I woke up one morning only to find this parked on the feed reader. I think despite the rap swimsuit figures get, Wave’s beach queen line have a lot going for them. They remind me of the best Kotobukiya figures, at a fraction of the cost (but also at a smaller size/less detail count). It was a good day.
Angel ef Beaten no Woto
Angel Beats has the problem of Sora no Woto’s ending (if you can call it a problem), but I don’t think it is nearly as defensible–this guy has a valid point. However it would be too far to say that Angel Beats is completely crap versus that it is simply crappily completed–this guy is only partly right.
Because, on some grounds, Angel Beats is what a failed attempt at making ef would look like. (Of course, sans the artsy-fartsy Shinbo-inspired auteurisms.)
I want to get one thing out of the way first–Jun Maeda is responsible for this mess. I still remember my generally poor first impression for the first episode–seeing it on a sunny Saturday morning inside a cave of villainy of nonexistent youths (aka., WAH’s temporary housing) I witnessed Jun Maeda’s script implode from too much of his genius. Simply put, what he tried to do is unfit for animation as most people know it. It being solid story telling and cohesive progression from episode to episode. It being consistent character development and methodological deconstruction of pathos. It being emergence of the audience’s emotional stakes, to give us enough to suspend our beliefs of Maeda’s imaginary afterlife.
And that’s fine. After all Maeda is relatively a novice at this, despite being the multi-talented guy that he is. Despite the people working with him to make the finished product. And despite what he tries to achieve. There is a distinctively amateurish flavor to Angel Beats, regardless how you like it (and for most, I imagine, a feeling of dislike).
And in some ways that is the story of ef in a nutshell–the TV series are two halves of a whole, yet each half is independently enjoyable. That should have been the approach for Angel Beats; its multi-perspective narrative would have accommodated that perfectly.
As such, I think the anime is incomplete. In fact, if you paid any attention before it aired, you knew it was incomplete. That’s why you could have read the novelizations, the manga, and who knows what else, to start to fill in all the massive blanks in your context-poor, pirated anime experience. On that ground, Angel Beats is not half bad. Too bad tight cross-market organizations like that gives me the creeps.
I still think it’s the best parody anime in the last 5 years. Even if it might not have been intended as one. Or maybe instead of a parody, it is simply a series of great and ironic things. But it’s still a good parody.
And in some sick, twisted way, I revel in how some people are so up in arms about the ending. I think it makes a great beginning, rather: it is both a starting point to exactly what I said earlier about coming up with a sequel piece that complements the TV plot line, like ef, and it is also a great way to open up the gates of fan imagination.
It’s so right, yet so wrong.
Augmented Love
Over at Plot Shield, we’re talking about good, old-fashioned deconstruction of culture via trends it adopts. Ian elaborates on his article at Metropolis, which is some English-language Japanese zine, in detail.
The question isn’t to ask why real is real and herbivore are eaten by carnivores. The question is why do herbivores survive and thrive, and why is Love Plus such a big deal? To do it ani-nouto style, I quote:
The issue of whether the girls in Loveplus are fake or real is irrelevant; the chap I interviewed for the Metropolis piece, Endo-san, is an intelligent person and it’s very clear from talking to him that his interest in 2D girls is made with full awareness of what distinguishes them from real women, simply that he accepts the distinctions on their own terms, and actually prefers 2D ones. Perhaps the real controversy with games like Loveplus is not that they blur distinctions between reality and fantasy (this has been the purpose of art since for ever), but that they reveal how easy it is for fantasy to substitute for reality, and that they ask questions of reality that it cannot answer except by reflexively replying “but I am real!” The game’s reply to that is simply, “I know I’m not real love, but I argue that I am an improvement on reality. I am not love, I am Love Plus.”
By the way, my copy of Love Plus+ is somewhere over the Pacific.
It’s probably worth noting that to hype up the release of Love Plus+, Konami is throwing a beach-side festival featuring Love Plus AR displays. AR here means augmented reality.
I want to draw out a question I asked Kenji Kamiyama over last weekend. Basically, I asked why AR? He answered, to paraphrase, that even if the works he has created (that included AR as part of the story) are SF works, he wanted to create something that has closeness to daily living. It goes to show part of how this is trending: augment reality is also “actual” reality, in the sense that it is here to stay. On my Android phone there’s this application called Layar (also available for Apple devices). Perhaps what Love Plus is for your romantic life is what Layar is for tourists visiting NYC? It’s newness only enables that blurring Ian mentioned, a new technology that sits between the real and the even-more-real.
Perhaps in some ways, it’s no different how Facebook augments friendships, how eBay augments estate sales, or how 4chan augments the LULZ. Or how airplanes augment long-distance travel, or fire augments food preparation.
Or a very cool music video (on Nico).
Prepping for the Anime Expo 2010 Smorgasbord
There is so much stuff going on at AX this year, it’s insane.
Once you add on top of the parallel media/PR activities that are not related to AX, it gets even worse.
And on top of that, there’s the usual fandom gatherings. And there are some seriously blur in that category.
It’s also a week away.
But let’s break it down~
What’s on the schedule:
The AX schedule gets updated all the time, with each passing announcement. They have 2 more TBA panels on Saturday as of this writing, so logically that suggests they still have something to announce in the next week (or were planning to). Well, I think it’s extremely safe to say that AX2010 has way too many guests and special events. I mean let’s forget the con drama, the cost SPJA incurs, and the logistical nightmare of herding otaku and non-otaku, from Japan and from elsewhere. There is just way too much going on, too many similar programming tracks that nobody can go to everything they want to go. Unless of course, none of that stuff really interests you.
Single-mindedness, or loyalty, perhaps, is a desirable trait. If you are a huge Megumi Nakajima fan for example, well, you would be able to prioritize her events over everyone else’s events. And there are (thankfully) enough of her events that those who do not prioritize her over everything at the con can still play along. It’s a win-win solution for true hardcore fans, but a logistical nightmare for wannabe wotas like myself.
Speaking of which, Danny Choo has a meet-up! You gotta RSVP, but it probably is not the best place to make a Chinka joke. (Well, there are few places if any I suppose.) And I think he’s saying that the sneak peek of Black Rock Shooter OAV is going to happen at his panel on Sunday. A good time if I might say.
And yes, there are “good” and “bad” time slots at the con. This is based on current information so uh, it’s safe to say that’s subject to change, with caveats. And of course, this is my estimates, which is based on programming I would like to attend.
Sunday however remains a safe day, because there aren’t that many things going on in general. It just is; it’s the day to pack up and go home, but those who know better party till the sun sets. That Charity Auction thing is not for the faint hearts and thin pockets, but it would yield some pretty serious loot. That’s on top of the usual sales in the Dealer’s Room, which AX has one of the best as far as US cons go in terms of diversity and selection. Not so much in price though.
Friday on the other hand is terrible. I am basically booked from the first thing in the morning to late at night, sometimes double booked. There’s way too much going on.
Early Saturday is also kind of iffy with a few parallel tracks of programming that overlap, that are both interesting.
Thursday is a solid block too, and if I was into AKB48 I would have died. But I’m not, so I can actually get some autographing done if I can scope out what’s happening on the ground, on the battlefield. It’s no joke. This AX is going to be like, war. And I don’t mean the crowd it draws, as it always grew year to year. I mean the logistics, the principalities, the mode of consumption and the temptation to give up. Fight the power? No, there’s no reason-kicking or to-curbs.
What’s not on the schedule:
There are, however, a lot of unknowns. Information is ammunition. For example, MangaGamer is hosting a scarily large list of guests at AX. What’s scary is that we don’t know what MG is going to do. When’s their little stage show? How can I confirm the size of Minami Kuribayashi’s “cheeks” otherwise? Anyways, joking aside, there are so much stuff going on that it’s hard to get a grip on who’s doing what, even if they did announce it. It can get lost in the flood of information. This war is one about the quality of information, too.
WTB Anime Expo version of Izaya.
There’s a bit of a competing track going on over at Club2theMax. Like Yoshiki’s party and the play and Erina’s movie and the AniMaid people. Without going into details, it’s just more things to do, although they do provide a potential detraction for some AX attendees.
To repeat what I said before, for another thing not on the schedule, the Black Rock Shooter sneak peek is supposedly on Sunday.
And sometimes what’s not on the schedule is stuff like the autograph ticketing policy. That is important if you want autographs, because it links panels with autograph sessions that you have to attend in tandem. There are countless con-related logistics things that needs to be figure out, and probably we will know at a time no sooner than the very last possible moment.
As you can imagine, with twitter and the iPhone app, it’s a new and crazy world at cons this year. Live updates!
What’s not even on the radar:
I go to cons to meet people. I can’t say if I can make it to various meet-ups because I don’t have all the information I need. I still make a best effort, right? If you don’t know about it you can’t make a best effort. So I’ll just drop a couple.
1. I think Deb Aoki is organizing something for bloggers.
2. I think these guys just want to talk about stuff. Japanese is OKAY! Intimidating, yet so interesting! And these guys know when to pick a time!
There’s probably another gathering happening that I will try to attend, but that is yet to be determined!
Did you know they’re showing the Trigun Badlands movie again? It didn’t do very well in Japan but I’ll take what I can get. Look for it in your schedule.
What you might not even know:
Who the hell is she? (Maybe it doesn’t help to know.)
What’s going to be at the charity auction?
Who’s MangaGamer’s next guest announcement?
Is Sunday’s autograph session Free-For-All?
DJ Schwarzenegger? I might buy a CD. (And he’s on the official site! Okay, so you might know.)
They aren’t fronting translators for press interviews? Booo.
Shingo? At AX? Woah.
Peter Beagle? Really? Wonder if this has anything to do with CrunchyRoll.
But what will you do?
I have no idea. But hopefully within all of this we can make better plans at AX and get the most out of all of this noise. If I missed something interesting (and I am sure I did) that you know, please share!
B Gata H Kei
It’s been a while since I wrote a straight-up recap-style review, the critic bones in me itched. And it’s tantalizingly so when the anime is titled as a pun that you can take in in more ways than one.
I love multi-level puns.
The term “B Gata H Kei” (B型H系) can be translated several ways. Its real meaning seems to be the composite of all of the meanings as translated on a sliding scale of liberalness. On one end you have “B-type H-group” (I believe they’re class H at school), on the other end you have “small-breasted slut.” Somewhere in between is the tongue-in-cheek nature of the fact that this term conceals both sorts of extremes, as embodied within the story.
Like the title, B Gata H Kei is a clash of several modes of duality. These seemingly-opposing instincts are probably a good approximation of a subset of typical teenage behaviors and motivations. Lust, hormone and emotions, inexperience, lack of information, juicy rumors, self-doubt and over-estimating the other, and a laughable treat for a serious social problem. I’m sure if we dig down, there are more to explore, but there’s a lot already. More importantly, who cares?
If anything, laughable is the word for B Gata H Kei. And to me that was largely why B Gata H Kei was worth watching at all. Its self-aware satire streaks aside, when the show hits its stride, the punchlines are sharp and true, as they fall like a flurry of of punches, much like a rapid paging through its 4-koma roots.
When the show isn’t hitting its stride, and for several episodes this was the case, it still had Yukari Tamura’s voice acting and the aforementioned self-satire streak to keep it going. As such, it seemed almost as if there were two or three episodes with which purpose is purely to make one single joke about it not being a story of a petite-chested pervert, but normal adolescence and anime’s most tiresome sort of hijinks. It may have a punch, but it got a little slow and boring.
I mean, compared to Misato, Yamada is downright pure and virgin. And Misato didn’t really get into the picture way later on.
Another way to look at the difference in Yamada’s duality about sex is similar to someone who takes something way too seriously, that it ceases being just a part of her life and consumes her wholly. Which is different than someone who understands the place that thing fits in her life. Sort of like otaku and anime, don’t you think? It’s not natural anymore. It’s a great show for a crowd that’s hung up about sexuality (aka. you late night database animals)!
To go with that, B Gata H Kei goes into fanservice in a straight, late-night-anime sort of way. Except it’s straight like a surgeon’s blade and ethical like the good doctor. Maybe. The fake “product placement” operates in a way that oddly database-ish, from the boxes of condoms (which, you know, is stressed whenever intercourse is possible) to the flying talisman-like censor blocks that hide Yamada’s naked form when it happens. The interjecting minor deities, the little-man-Kousuda, and the random drop-in of Takeshita all do a good job penetrating the steam, the tension. Like commentators in a shounen fight show. Like Dragon Ball, but about different kinds of balls.
And the stray condom boxes serve even as plot elements. I mean that’s almost like the Code Geass school festival pizza.
Surgical cleanliness is what saves B Gata H Kei from the gutter, in a way. The jokes operate on the gutter level of indecency, and after finishing each episode it feels like you’ve just spent 25 minutes in a gutter if you dared to recall what just happened. But it just doesn’t feel like it while watching the show, starting from the opening riffs in the delightfully choreographed opening and the cutesy love song that wraps up each week’s installment.
It’s a good tease, is what. But did it deliver? It’s up to you to decide if your expectations were low enough from the beginning. Or if teasing is your thing even.
For the uninitiated, Wikipedia has a good synopsis of the premise:
B Gata H Kei revolves around 15 year old high school student Yamada whose lascivious nature causes her to aspire to one day achieve sexual relations with 100 different partners. However, her insecurities as a virgin leads her to reject every guy that attempts to make a move on her. In order to hurdle this mental barrier Yamada goes on a search for her “golden cherry“, an inexperienced boy whom she will bestow the right to be her first.
To be more cynical about it all, there are almost no reasons to assume that B Gata H Kei offers much more than the average romantic comedy besides explicit sexuality that you’ll never see. However stories about sexuality is rare enough in anime that even in this gutterfish form, there’s something redeeming about its exaggerated honesty. For once, this is an anime that is worth its late-night time slot…
Honesty besides that Kosuda got lucky, anyways. But as some might say, “luck is one of my skills.” And some might even say that B Gata H Kei lucked out from being a trash show and is something actually funny. And it’s our luck to hear Mamiko Noto in one of the best scene-stealing role ever, among other things.
In summary: John Sirabella, please get this show, dub it, and slap it silly so I can pick it up for the LULZ.
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