Of Children and Layered Reality
I started writing this post pretty much right after I saw Wall-E on opening weekend. It is now my favorite Pixar feature-length movie for several reasons. But I’m still having some trouble to come up with a narrative to describe what I want to say in response to seeing it.
We all know that Denno Coil is about today, more so than the future. In some ways it is a cautionary tale for children and parents, about getting lost within virtual reality and both the benefits and trappings an augmented reality brings to the next generation.
Augmented reality is a reality today. Just looking at what the various iPhone applications are out there, it brings me some degree of confidence that soon enough kids will play hide and seek with GPS, play catch with accelerometers, and tell ghostly stories with its reflective screen.
Just like the last generation of kids, I suppose.
But like Wall-E, Denno Coil’s story is a layered thing. I say layered rather than multi-faceted because one thing has to build on another. It’s not so much there aren’t aspects of Wall-E that are tangential (such as the romantic side plot), but there are both themes and settings within the show that commonly come in bundles. Nations run by corporations? A pollution-ravaged Earth? Mankind’s exodus into space? Intelligent robots doing our bidding? Rogue AI? Search for leafy vegetation? and All it needs is more sex, technobabble and a katana-wielding kayak maker. Or a GECK.
Denno Coil’s layering is probably just as ingenuous, but it’s not subtle. It paints a near-real-life picture with AR, but at the end it’s about a bunch of kids doing the Tom Sawyer thing about some urban legend. Parents are probably still better off spanking them and spending the time to figure out what is going on, rather than just letting them be kids. It’s quite Japanese in a way.
Where the two are different is in the order of things. For most people, Wall-E is a cute story about robots in love, about loneliness, about standing up for your inheritance, and the usual heroics. But its science fiction trapping paints a impressive and cautionary imagery about the world today–pollution, the addiction to luxury, and growing isolation of individuals with his or her heritage, neighbors, and the environment. Yea, the irony is there how it’s telling this to a bunch of theater goers and eventual couch potatoes.
Denno Coil, on the other hand, draws the viewer in with its imaginative altered reality. The murder(?) mystery element and its impressive setting are major draws. But the show is mostly about human relationships, about adolescence, and what happens if you do something dangerous on your own without heeding any warning. There’s the heroics and a very brave dog (Densuke FTW) but what of the actual human beings who suffered the very real consequences? That stuff is what is going on in the back drop of Denno Coil–a real person laying in a hospital room, in an unending coma.
What’s more disturbing? The happily glossed over, post-apocalyptic Earth? Or the fact that little girls can lose their lives to … internet predictors? I guess neither really is unless you pick them out like that.
I think the layering presentation is particularly good because it gives the audience a wide variety of takes. Making good children’s entertainment that adults can enjoy is hard; the layering allows people to combine ideas and filter the experience using the audience’s level of experience and sophistication.
This layering is characterized by the integration of common themes across layers, however. Without it we would just have a bunch of not-so-related ideas. I think Wall-E works because they do well integrating that whole theme about loneliness. In Denno Coil, a similar thing goes on with loneliness and that whole Japanese character stereotype with personal responsibility and no manYoko is an island.
It’s fair to say these two shows are examples of powerful storytelling styles and they use the form wisely in family entertainment. But what happens when these forms are powerless? We’ll find out hopefully in the sequel post of this two-part series. It should also answer how I stumble upon a way to focus on a narrative about Wall-E.
Satoshi Kon Covers It Himself
So Satoshi Kon came to NY for a visit a couple weeks ago. I went to the Friday showing with the on-stage interview of Paprika. I was also 45 minutes late…not that it matters considering I’ve seen Paprika on 35mm at least twice now. I did the usual recording thing and there were a lot of juicy stuff at the interview worth spinning out; it’s just the recording came out pretty badly. Because I was late I didn’t get a good spot; so yes, unlike Tokikake this showing had a good attendance.
So what do you do? You Google around to see if anyone else have done it. It’s about not reinventing the wheel.
And Satoshi Kon probably does the best job himself.
Short of copypasta, though, I’ll just list the questions that I recorded here. I apologize ahead of time for the crappy transcription.
Kon took the stage after a brief intermission at the end of Paprika. At the end of the intermission they played Kon’s Anikuri 15 clip “Good Morning.”
He then took the stage with applause with the MC and translator.
I wasn’t able to get the recording for the first bit of the interview, so from memory I recall… First he spoke about this retrospective, and mentioned something how he’s getting it in America with just 4 films. But was honored anyways and hope to have this again when he is properly old and got lots o film?
At any rate, the MC started to field questions, starting by asking Kon about the Anikuri 15 segment. I remember this well because he starts by panning NHK by saying how it is accused by the public for misappropriation of funds. In order to improve its image NHK asked the top animators to produce a short, and he was asked and he made a short.
I was able to get the recording thing going soon after that. I’ll try to paraphrase; the whole session was rather long IMO.
Why did Kon choose to be an animator? He likes it when he was little? Watching animation growing up, Kon makes a comment: the disposable nature of anime today; back in the days, there was more anticipation and fans digested each work better. (I agree; people consume anime very differently today.)
How was it being a mangaka and how does it compare? He said people always asked him about it, but he likes moving images so he likes making anime better.
How did he get to do Perfect Blue? He’s been doing a few things, and some producer approached him and they went ahead. Same with how he got to be an animator from being a mangaka. He is not ambitious and people approach him. [There was suppose to be a joke here.]
At this point we watched a clip of Perfect Blue; namely the lead up to the rape scene and the rape scene itself.
So how does he feel about it: He feels bad about putting that rape scene in for the main character now. He didn’t know very much as a newbie director. Originally they planned PB to be OAV so he/they wanted to add something that makes it stand out, so there was the rape. But it got turned into a theatrical piece half way so they kept it.
Role of pop culture in his show? [The question kind of got lost in translation]: Want to recreate the time and feel of Tokyo for BP.
Layer of viewing in PB: It reflects Kon’s own perspective. He works and draws, a part of him watches that and directs, another part of him watches the director, etc. [takes picture use audience as an example]. Just by taking a picture the audience is now being watched by Kon rather than Kon being watched. The shift in perspective is one way he communicates with his audience.
Control? Just partial. Full control is boring and no control is chaotic. 50/50, but sometimes it tilts. Perceive control versus actual control, etc.
We then moved onto a clip in Millennium Actress, around the part of the sennen tea.
Ever watch your own films? Just when it’s on TV when at home when it’s on, and he always finishes it, out of some misplaced sense of duty.
Japanese film history in your works? Didn’t start out MA with that in mind–was about dream and reality and movies, but it turned out that way. Ended up meaningful the way it evolved.
How do you categorize your film in terms of Japanese cinema? It’s kind of by itself even in terms of animation; a lost child. He would be honored that it can be considered as a part of Japanese cinema history in its small way!
How do you create a character, say, Hana? Not good at chara design. He does stories and plugs characters in. In TG, it’s characters drive the film, hmm. He doesn’t have any transsexual friends, so when he wrote Hana he did some research–dressed up like him once. (The audience lols, naturally.)
How was it writing for a TV series? Compact animation, in movies he can stuff it in; but in TV there are a lot of limits so he can only tell so much stuff at a time. The basic question for both is how to get the audience’s interest from the first scene. Solving and creating more mystery until the end.
How did you get to the end of Paranoia Agent? They want to create it piece-wise because they want to be in the audience’s shoes in not knowing how it’ll end. So they didn’t know. By episode 10 or 11 the crew realized they can’t wrap it up and the screenwriter was in a bind to try to wrap it up. At that point things feel really pressed; he needed to figure out how it end and there was a lot of stress; and it felt Shonen Bat may come. Sympathy for the characters.
The audience fields some question now.
Did Kon ever watch [Konishiba] [Can’t spell it right] (picture with rolling music)? No, not that old.
Music is uplifting and energetic but often opposite of what’s on the screen? For example, if for a sad scene, everything is sad, the feeling of sadness gets away. However if you flip the music so it’s not sad, it actually feel sadder. Juxtaposition.
Akiba knifing? Difficult situation; can’t explain. The perpetrator said that he couldn’t care who he kills, and likewise does it matter who the perpetrator is for this to happen? At first we thought about whose fault it was, but it’s still the actual person’s fault. What is striking is that the person looked like a stereotype of someone who committed a random crime and less as an individual person. It seemed it could have been anyone. No answers.
Otaku culture and his fans? Otaku has been around for 30 years; he’s a first gen otaku. It’s fine if it refers to someone who pursuit what they love very much. Kon is reputed to be critical of otaku in that it is not good to live an unbalanced life and unable to work with society at large. As long as you can function with society it’s fine.
A word for inspiring animator? Here or Japan? Japanese animators are super poor so I don’t recommend it. For someone who love to draw and animate, for CG or hand drawn stuff, as long as you love it very much pursuit it and everyday get a new feel and find a new way to look at it, you’ll be good.
Perspective, people see themselves–personal or abstractions? Becoming a public figure, there will be people who know the person of me but don’t know me, but there will people who know me better than I do. People closest to me probably have a different idea of me than myself. I have an idea of who I might be and it may be not very close; someone else may have a better idea of who I am than myself. That gap is something I want to show in my characters. Oversea or in Japan, I’ve had opportunity to meet fans. In Japan, 70% of the time his fans said he is actually scarier? It’s enjoyable to observe that gap.
[The weeaboo question which the recording didn’t get well.] Thanks for asking it in Japanese. I don’t think I purposely create anything complex; the stories are simple. The delivery is complex. [It’s in the flavor?]
That’s it!
At the end of the session most of the crowd took a stroll over next door to the theater. They have a bunch of Kon art on display, including that hawt Perfect Blue jigsaw puzzle picture. And it took the edge off my complaint how no one asked about his new work. What kind of fans are they?
Lastly, Reverse Thieves has the write-up for Kon’s Monday showing sponsored by ANA. Kon’s blog also lists more details on his trip if you dig around. If you have any question about my indecipherable transcription feel free to ask. I probably still have pieces of that stuff stuck in the back of my brain from two weeks ago.
This Is My Kind of Denpa Anime
Mission-E expands on the setting told to us through Code-E.
But what’s really strange is this is the setting Gunsmith Cats told us through … Gunsmith Cats.
Or was it El-Hazard?
Just gimme my 80s rock and transformable motorcycle already!
Momoi’s got it right–it’s got a good, easy feel, and we agree.
I think most people will still find Birdy up near the top of the list as their primary form of old-school, action anime entertainment this season, because Kazuki Akane is just better at this as a director and Studio Deen…is not the best group of people to be animating action-packed stuff. But Mission-E is 12 episodes ahead on the character development and making sure that omo will find Chinami totally adorable right off the bat. If you’ve seen Code-E already, you owe it to yourself to see how things turned out a few years down the road and have a bite at that dangling carrot hanging over our collective heads last summer. This was what most of us were half-expecting!
Of course I guess more of you didn’t watch Code-E, and that is okay. You can always go back to it; it’s slow and meticulous and mostly a romantic comedy that is more fustrating than romantic and more weird than funny, but it wasn’t bad. It definitely paid off for me, but it might not be worth your time anyways.
Actually, I take back one thing–Studio Deen does one kind of action well: car chases.
No Pants, No Service, or WTB Skirts?
Well, this guy gets it.
I think it isn’t really a problem (some might even find it funny) per se that there’s an overall lack of pants in Strike Witches. In fact when Mio beseeched Yoshika’s mother in traditional old Japanese swordsman manners, it was good juxtaposition.
And comparing seifuku over sukumizu against the pantsless + leather jacket combo that was the eyesore of GITS SAC season one is unfair because in the latter case it was really a per se, aesthetics problem. In Strike Witches, even while stuffing the audience’s face with close-up crotch shots, Yoshika and her friends-to-be are still relatively palatable characters and designs. To me, what’s really weird is seeing how everyone else is equally in such fetish-catering attires that the whole experience feels like a cheap yaruge.
Is this what Strike Witches is going for? Maybe in parts. At least we know it is trying to cram in every single otaku fetish, archetypes, and moe triggers that invariably the whole experience feels very flat. It is as if the audience of the show is like some kind of dating sim where there are flags and buttons to be pressed to get us interested.
And maybe that is fine–if that’s what you expect out of it. My problem with Strike Witches is that I expect it to entertain along the lines of this anime. I guess if I was to draw comparisons, the two shows are opposite takes on the same mechamusume fetish; Sky Girls take it relatively seriously and is actually borderline outside the genre. Strike Witches…well. I want to say it is hardcore somehow; the girls in the show are actually not mechanized (save me, Chise!) so in some sense it is just like Sky Girls, or Code Geass, or any show with the attractive female character bending over to pilot a mechanized weapon. But at least Strike Witches is true to the mechamusume fetish.
I guess the first episode did well to lower my expectation, so it has succeeded in that front. It’s a common thing to say that the show is not to be taken seriously and put off negative comments on a stupid show for being what it is, but that’s still inexcusable when we’ve seen very stupid shows like this that still shine even under scrutiny. Just because the premise is ludicrous doesn’t mean there’s a license to goof around.
The Fan in Fansubs
Originally I was going to talk about the different between trespass and theft, but I read this morning an interview of Shawn Kleckner, the Dark Lord of RightStuf/Nozomi (DLK). What caught my eyes was this little statement in respond to their niche license/release strategy and how they’re hounded for not dubbing their stuff:
But we haven’t done that with some of our sets, like Aria, which I think will have a very niche appeal but which has a great fanbase that we want to support.
Bold emphasis mine. I mean, what the hell? A company that wants to support the fanbase? Inconceivable! To me it just sounds so 180 degrees away from these self-righteous doomsayers who think they’re saving the industry that I had to stop and marvel at the PR magic DLK is pulling here. And DLK is right–it is about supporting the fans. Because we all know the fans either all reciprocate or all wish the industry can shrivel up and die?
I hope my sarcasm is not lost on you. Fans are not a homogeneous group of people; and fans behave differently, sometimes even at odds with each other. For that matter, nor are all companies the same. And I hope the implication about Aria fandom is not lost on you either. Who are the fans of Aria? Why are they wonderful? It was the Aria fans who had to ask ADV “when is the next volume of Aria coming out” until it got passed onto Tokyopop? Sounds familiar? Aria fans are like Hikari no Kiseki, who partied up the fansubber’s code of ethics like it’s 1998 (but it might’ve been 2003, I can’t tell)? Some are embarrassing bloggers? We are not a mass market group that are likely to hover the latest Naruto or Bleach torrents. We’re much more likely to be aware what is going on in the industry. We enjoy a genre of a niche medium few in the US do. Aria fans are likely to watch fansubs and otherwise engage in productive fan activities.
I think RightStuf is a very special case. Like AnimeNation and what used to be AnimeGamerz (ok I guess it is not that special), they are rooted strongly in retail. And I am pretty sure because they have a retail side they also have better connection and access to the fans–enough to know to not piss them off by saying they’re a bunch of pirate who are burning down the ship they sail (whether true or not). And really, retail is where the rubber meets the road as a part of the car that is this anime industry. It’s where, at least in America, local licensees make their money. It’s why when Suncoast went away, Geneon Entertainment USA pretty much went with them.
And even from the bottom of the chain we can see that life isn’t easy–internet retailing is tough cookies at the turn of the century. A lot of those internet things died during the dot.com bust and the post-9/11 shockwave. RightStuf is a surviver in that regard. Moving up the chain you can see some of the issues that surrounded Geneon’s eventual demise in the retail space and ADV’s cuts, as well with the overall crowding of DVD on store shelves leads to increased competition not only among fan activities but also retailer’s shelf space. With the growing library of licensed anime on the market, licenses are being cannibalized, becoming less profitable and ultimately cutting into bottom lines of licensees and localization producers. And again, American economy is not in the greatest shape today as we seem to head into another cyclic bust.
Moving up the chain we have to deal with the uncertainties of the home video market; only recently did we survive a format war between BRD and HDDVD. During the war, while most adopted a wait-it-out stance, the uncertainty didn’t help anyone. The one US anime publisher that did adopt a format end up having to pay for it (thankfully not a whole lot). With the tightening of the market, too, the squeeze is on to make thinpak sets and sell at a lower price point; gone was the day where you can expect people to swallow up a cheapo boxed volume 1 and collect the rest. I’m hoping the days of gimmicky sales based on worthless extras (as opposed to worthwhile extras) are days of the past, but I doubt that day has come. And of course, DVDs are being squeezed by downloads, too, legal and illegal.
We also have to talk about digital distribution too, of course; everyone’s doing it. And the interview with DLK spells out the problems as we approach the top of the chain: the Japanese are behind. I think it would be fair to blame them for the bulk of the ills we’ve seen with how slowly the anime industry is adopting to the new ways of monetizing anime distribution. Anime fans tend to be internet-savvy and young, and I think most American companies are likewise ambitious and they want to capitalize on this. But it is a tall order.
So that’s that. But why did I even bother going through the last 4 paragraphs?
The primary reason why a company like ADV or RightStuf exists is to support the fans. Of course, all companies have to make money; that goes without saying. But they are suppose to make money by helping fans get what they want. (Note the cause-effect relationship. Only people like Steve Jobs can actually make people want the random junk a company has to give.) And here’s what’s mind blowing–fansubs are the way fans support the fans. Well, it’s pretty obvious. People make fansubs because people watch them. It’s a way to get a show out there, that interested people can check it out, and maybe they’ll become fans. It’s how fans help fans by giving them what they want. However, unlike doing it legally and for profit, fansubbers can cut the crap and avoid the last 5 paragraph of difficulties and hurdles legit companies have to deal with.
The pitfall is that fansubs are seen as a way that eats into total sales. I think that is a fair assumption. But I think of it like how a big box store think of shrink. It happens, it’s unfortunate, but it’s life. You can add anti-theft devices but if it’s done at cost of pissing off your paying customers, well, you better think of a better way to handle the problem, even if it means eating the loss. It makes sense to tell people to not steal, but that’s not going to work at all because we’re not stealing.
So here’s the main point of my post–when companies go head to head with fansubs, it is a losing fight. And by that I mean both fans and the industry lose (with a small exception). For one reason–the industry is a capitalistic mechanism. While I am not going to say anime is going to go away if American licensees don’t make money, but ultimately, as suggested in the DLK interview, the anime industry is here to serve the fans. If the people serving my needs are well paid, happy, and doing their jobs the way I like and working hard for their keep, I think that is a good thing.
(I mean, like DLK says, I can’t download a plush. Nor can I download that blasted Misato figure they will probably never ship to me. I have to rely on them to serve my need here.)
This is the ultimate reason, no matter if you watch fansubs or not, why you should support (or not support) the industry. And this applies to any industry. I want to also be clear that how much you support the industry doesn’t really factor into how big a fan you are. When it does, it becomes a matter of being a fan of the industry rather than being a fan of what that industry is about. (And it is hard to feel good about supporting an industry where some of the most important workers are paid below the poverty line–the animators.) Anyone who tells you that you are a bigger fan just because you spend more money is telling you a lie, in my opinion. But I do think big fans spend lots of money, if they have it, even if the latter does not justify the former.
What makes the fan in fansubs is actually a different topic all together (maybe a part 2 for this post), but let’s just say it has more to do with passion and motivation than ethics. If companies are serving your needs, you should pay and use their services. If they are not, then don’t. It’s not rocket science. But at the same time, understanding what fansubs are helps answer the question of what the industry needs to do to complement and minimize the impact of fansubs, rather than to fight it. It’s not only a road to greater profits but also one that helps everyone sleep better at night.
I think the ranting and raving as spurned by the poor condition of the anime industry is more a fault of people who fail to capitalize key segments of the market’s demands more than fansub pirates, on top of the various ailments beset on the rest of the economy. It’s hard reading the ebbs and flows of the economy ahead of the time, after all. But seriously, I would like to see some of the numbers that Avatar flaunts all the time. I hope they’re not just comparing it to tracker counts on popular torrents and have something more specific, ones broken into demographics. Thanks to people like JP I have slowly learned how to examine bikinis very closely. Or should I thank Super Rats? Or Strike Witches? Anyways.
To end on a positive note, reading that interview, RightStuf seems to be doing well for itself financially. DLK sells a lot of DVDs, so he says. Here goes hoping his dark magic keep RightStuf true.
