♪ Welcome to Your Slice of Life O.P.S.! - Natsu no Sora Edition
This is just a cheap ploy to prod at what really matters–when your HAL Film Maker (best known for the animated Aria adaptations) overlords work with Osamu Kobayashi (probably best known for his Gurren Lagann episode 4 nonsense to kids on the lawn today?) to create a very interesting mash-up between what is real and what is on the borderline of superflat, it turns into some kind of countryside magic about puppy love and the wonderfulness of youth?
It’s about this magical summer show–Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora.
But first thing first–which concatenation would you prefer? The official websites have dubbed it as “soramahou” so I think I’ll stick to that short name. “Let’s make this summer magical”? Or something. I’m up for a better one if you folks know what’s the standard/popular one being used around.
Anyways. As we know, the shtick about Soramahou (well, all the spinoffs of the series I think) is about some country girl who moves to a big city as a teenager and does stuff: a lot of heart, soil and toil, tears and some pretty magical fireworks to go with it. And as a character drama, its first order of the day is to sell us the protagonist characters. In the first episode, we learned about Sora, and I think she’ll be a fine undineprotagonist.
Memento says it as much.
I don’t think how a honest examiner of Soramahou can dodge the question about Osamu’s Photorealistic Shortcuts we see in the first episode. For starters, I call it a shortcut–but I don’t know if it really is a shortcut. Well, it is probably harder to draw it up like that from scratch ala. Makoto Shinkai or Ufotable’s Garden of Sinners. And if the illustrated parts of the background mean anything, there is a subtle tension between what is comic and what is not exaggerated. The random bushy grass really does clash with that concrete. And the tension increases multitudes more when you get your near-SD sketches moving in the foreground.
I have to admit however that the technique is not repulsive. In fact, it’s quite charming in its own way. The problem is more like it just stands out and viewers will just have to get used to it. Once the story kicks off as Sora lands in Tokyo’s cityscape, maybe things will get better as lifelikeness in a concrete jungle is a little easier to swallow than countryside scenery.
There is one thing I do like about the blatant use of those photo backgrounds though, and that is it really breaths depth to the scenes. If you are not watching this show on high definition, you are sort of missing out. It some ways, episode one was like the tourism video that Aria never was. Kudos to the director!
You Can’t PiQ the Interest of the Dead
Just talk to people who used to run Ex. They’ll tell you that if e-zines were dead, then printed zines are living on borrowed time. New geek zines are not gonna fly unless you really push, and that cost lots of money.
And I guess this guy had the misfortune to learn it the hard way. And to be fair, it wasn’t terribly executed by any means. PiQ, while alive, had some value. But like most new blogs, it had an identity crisis.
It also occurred to me, because on my Google Reader I put Gia’s news blog in the same category with other news sites like Engadget and Gizmodo, that her blog is just really shaping up into, well, the anime version of those news editorial blogs. It’s a bit like Author’s little joint, functionally, but with the intensity of a thousand nontenki moe dolls. Gia is even a letter away from Giz, for what it is worth. The blog has even those crappy photoshopped pictures that breaks the news for you. Only God will know what will happen when we clone it with science and multiply the throughput.
WTB cloned Zepy, btw.
And I think this is a good approach. We need something like this to interface fans with corporate interests. Avatar’s rants about taking abuse from fans, as industry online persons, is not without merit. Many anime industry guys of today used to be fans just like us, but things don’t work the same once you’re on the other side of the transaction. The corollary is that a lot of those people will and do talk to fans, because that’s who they are; that’s how they learn it the hard way. From a news-bot’s perspective, the hard part is to be able to encapsulate their thoughts in a way that provides anonymity and enough sensitivity that doesn’t piss people off. That means you gotta have the network and the professional insight, and a lot of people who look fondly at your operation.
But that also means a certain casualness and professional detachment that does not fit this particular organization…although they are up to the task. Maybe that we don’t have something like MOON PHASE in English (I suppose AoDVD is the next best thing) is a sign that the scene is not big enough yet.
Anyways, internet journalism is definitely not like old school journalism when it comes to finding the right pitch to sell your material. For starters, do we even know if there’s enough people reading (ie. $ in the pot)? The ABA reportedly has over 10k unique visitors over the course of its run, which nets about total Alexa rank on par (if a little better) with a typical, 2-year-old anime blog that has built up a readership. If you are the Prince of British East India Company, you can do better… And there are other ways. I mean, this is not bad at all, and we know 90+% of the traffic goes to like, 3 sites on AB.
I guess it’s still not good enough? Just how do we do this journalism thing right when it comes to anime? Did someone do it and I missed it?
The Other Buddy Review - Makkun’s Tribute Album
I figured you ought to just read j1m0ne’s shorter review of this cover album, Buddy, a tribute to Masami Okui [some referral links in this post]. I’ll try to keep this one short, too.
But a bit about tribute albums first–I’m not a huge fan of them, compared to cover albums; analogically they’re like crossovers under the broader category of parodies. Okay, that’s not a great analogy but the primary exercise of a tribute/cover is the idea behind it. A mediocre cover track can still be interesting like a poorly drawn parody picture; likewise the concept itself tickles enough that some fans can forget the lameness of the re-rendition.
Thankfully we got people like Masaaki Endou on this CD, so it can’t be bad…He just released a pretty L-O-L cover album himself this month. Anyways, more on that later. I’m just going to go down the track list.
I always thought Kuribayashi’s style and the songs she sings match Makkun’s style the closest, and I think TRUST is a good example of this. I like the song as one of the “later” Makkun’s representative works, so I thought well of this opening track.
Minorin’s Rinbu Revolution is probably the most controversial track on this CD. But rather than railing on Minori Chihara or on the arrangement for an inadequate tribute for the awesome original track and one of Makkun’s most popular songs ever, I just thought of Yoko Takahashi. I mean, the way Minorin tries to do this song is exactly how Takahashi would sound! Or maybe Chiaki Ishikawa? The arrangement does make sense but it is like as if upon each vowel, Minorin would sound on cue or sound deflated, creating an uneven experience.
Jounetsu by Misato Aki is pleasant–which continues a trend on this album–taking some of Makkun’s back catalog and playing them down a notch. She was able to deliver the chorus, which is probably the hard part for Aki, in matching the original image of this song.
INTRODUCTION…well, for starters is one of Makkun’s lesser-known songs, so it’s a bit of a surprise that it gets the cover. But at the same time this rocking rendition is probably more enjoyable than the original. I wonder what a KOTOKO song would sound like if Endou got his hands on one. At any rate, this song is certifiably 90s rock no matter who sings it, or if it did come on a 2004 album release. If this man can do a full of 80s and 90s rock covers of not just anisong, but also tokusatsu stuff (Go Go Power Rangers!) then Introduction is piece of cake. By the way, do go buy his cover CD; it’s quite good.
Olive is Yoko Ishida’s tribute track. It’s a pretty normal, light pop take of Olive and not some para para take of…something. Thank God? But considering her new para para CD came out the same day, this is just a smart move no matter how you slice it. This arrangement of Olive was pretty much the same as the original, so it’s not too slow and has plenty of oomph to it. Strangely Ishida sounds a bit hollow in the recording for reasons beyond me.
Iiwake was delicious; Suara here is like an extra dry version of sour apple Jolly Rancher…I guess that might just be my favorite flavor of the Jolly Rancher line. Needless to say she does justice to the song, and the rearrangement is pretty spot on too. Heck, it’s nice for karaoke in general, much like the original track but in a different way.
Otomegokoro Mugen is from Evolution, which is a late 2006 album. But this one track harks back to her 1996 days. Megami Paradise anyone? I think Tomoe Ohmi got it right with that cheesy anime vocal thing–charmingly soft and just catchy enough. If it wasn’t right before Momoi’s Koishimashou it would’ve left a stronger impression.
And yeah, like Endou, Momoi took a Makkun fan fave and personalized Koishimashou, Nebarimasho into something out her own library. And I think anyone who’s been following Makkun and Momoi as long as Momoi has would agree that there are few, if any, better song to cover for her. Cyber Team in Akihabara was on the air (one of the earliest dempa anime that few shows today can even top) in Akiba when Momoi was just getting started during the early part of her career. I’m not sure how much mind she paid to it (but she’s quite the geek after all…), or how sentimental this could be for her. It’s well done, to say the least; she impressed me yet again with great selection and delivery. Sometimes I wish Momoi’s own songs have this much impact :)
The album winds down with Wasuregusa. Hironobu Kageyama, in my opinion, is a better ballad singer than rocker, but he can do both. The song choice is not much of a fan fave, but he did play acoustic guitar in the original version? I think if it was an acoustic act alone with him and his guitar, this song would’ve rocked even more. As is, it’s kind of average.
Chihhi rounds out this album with HAPPY PLACE. Being long time co-worker, friend, collaborator, and probably the contemporary with the most similar works during Makkun’s 15 years, it’s no surprise (and sort of good) that Chihiro Yonekura gets the last say here. I’m not sure if the song fits, being “Happy Place” and all, but the heartful delivery works well once the song throttles up like a motorcycle racing down the lonely, coastal road with a sunset to the side. (As an aside, Chihhi’s decidedly mellow, unplugged, cover album came out on the same day, too; it’s got more Makkun tributes!)
A lot of people have grown out of the scene, gotten tired and couldn’t justify following an evolving and growing artist like her, which is fine. However, honestly, all this tribute stuff makes me wonder just how much life Makkun has left as a performer. I think she’s made a good transition to the production side of things but actually I still want to see more of her stuff! Selfish fan ranting aside, it’s an occasion to celebrate one of the influential anisong artist! I hope she holds out doing shows and making songs until I get to see one of her proper lives XD
In the end, let me just share a little tidbit about CD Japan. As much as I whore them, I also found it ironic that a search for “masami okui” for people on their site will not take you to this delicious tribute album. It does, coincidentally, show you the new Megumi Hayashibara/Slayers gigantic 3-CD set, which somehow has Makkun’s name attached.
And for some reason, I think that may be more of a tribute to some.
Blogs Are My Neo Venezia
This is part threefour of a semi-embarrassing series of posts inspired by the Aria anime.
It’s not exactly the first or last time anyone would map the “otakusphere” to a geographic representation, a geometrical representation of online fandom. I’m just taking that a baby step further.
One of the reoccurring themes in Aria the Natural is just that–there is a web of relationship that ties us together and forms the thing that is Neo Venezia. And to that end, blogs and bloggers (and, it’s not just limited to blogs) are the features of this “blogosphere” or “otakusphere” or whichever non-word you prefer to use. I prefer the word “community” myself.
But who am I?
Woody? Akatsuki? Al? I didn’t know at first.
If bloggers are like undines, what would Aria Company be parallel to? Is Animeblogger.net Orange Planet? Jeff Lawson Alicia-san? Sounds like flattery at first but it isn’t if you really think about it. Those things are not what makes Neo Venezia the place I found so charming. And it’s not the countless pan shots of its aquatic scenery that makes it charming (unlike most travel videos).
We are all pieces of a big puzzle.
What is charming about Aria is how shamelessly Akari explore and highlight the stuff that happens. Stuff of people’s hearts and desires. Of the reasons why good people do good things. And how great good things can be. It’s totally embarrassing. It’s just as embarrassing to cover up your own motivation with lofty $5 words about theme, character, various worldviews, and descriptions of how authors, their works and the audience relate to each other. Aren’t you embarrassed when you defend shows like Naruto? I would be if I did.
There is a degree of shamelessness that is necessary to really enjoy Aria. It’s not unlike how some people enjoy fanservice, boobs, and declaration about admiring teenage pilots’ butts. But sometimes it takes a dose of courage to stand up against negative and unpleasant feelings, too, and Aria didn’t shy away from that entirely.
Maybe it is flattery to call someone a slutty-eyed blond who is shy about sharing what’s on her mind? I guess. But finding your own orientation and how you are connected to the rest of the society is rather important. And sometimes to acknowledge that you need to stop being shy or excessively prideful.
It’s a longing question.
The mind longs for what is missing?
But all the more, I think Aria is a story about why. One way to look at Aria is that it does a great job laying out a framework that can be applied to any organic, human society. Being over 50 episodes of “why things happen” gave Aria a lot of time to cover a wide range of material and train the audience to approach these issues with the right tack.
I don’t know if it is conscious on the part of the writers for the show, but one head trick Aria uses frequently is by not explaining why something happens, it actually focuses and highlights the “why” issue clearly for the audience. After so many episodes of stuff happening not knowing why, we learn to look for the reason. It’s a bit like some other, slice-of-life (what a taboo metaphor) exploration-sci-fi like:
Canal Trek: The Next Generation
And Aria is generational. Aria explored the theme about generational torch-passing. If you are the parent of a teenager, maybe it has a tip for you? But for bloggers who has blogged, has stopped, and has picked it up again, but differently, you may be no different than Grandma–a silly girl who took after a fat, alien cat. And that is fine too. It’s somewhat interesting to see how all these ex-undines stopped doing it, but are still a part of the big picture. And likewise I think a significant number of influential bloggers today are probably no longer blogging.
It would also explain well why bloggers come and go, why some band together while others do not. Some strive for the next level and some are content where they are. Many are just happy that they’re here; others enjoy their relationships but question their rightful place in the community and the greater society at large. Everyone leaves a footprint, and it affects not just those who are walking behind you today but also those who have a ways yet to come.
Beyond Neo Venezia
I believe it’s a human tendency to long for and find a place they belong. Perhaps you are like Akari who has found something to live for. Perhaps you are like Aika who has something trusted to your care. Perhaps you are like Alice and it only made sense to apply your talents where they belong. The image Aria paints for us is one of interdependence in that a square peg longs for a square hole.
Sometimes the square peg needs to realize it is already in a square hole? I think Akari taught us this lesson well.
And it’s seen in blogging. Some of the most popular blogs are episodic review blogs with some comments, and there are no shortage of such thing; but at the same time, each blogger is given an unique perspective, tools and talents. And some of us are just really good at something, so we apply just that. An organic, online social network can exist independently, in an interdependent web without the harbor of some third party (like Facebook or Livejournal).
A healthy, 21st century-minded, online social network may indeed span across all of those platforms, a contextually-loose but well-related individual makes the best guide to the internet. It is just that some of us chose to be undines–some do it because they love to discover and navigate, some do it because they are called to guide, and some are just really good at it.
Most likely, all of us are a bit of all three.
The internet is a world without national boundaries besides the limits we choose to impose on ourselves. That goes for bloggers, people who read a single internet forum/Usenet group/IRC channel, and anyone with the freedom to do the things they want online. Perhaps you found where you belong, and that is good; but when that isn’t the case, remember there’s more stuff out there that you don’t know, smarter smartasses spewing nonsense, and people who are even more embarrassingly ludicrous than you can imagine.
And that is the healing message of Aria as applied to people on the internet.
The Phases of the Moon on Neo Venezia…
“Why is it that slow, slice-of-life series like Aria are extremely popular and adored in the blogosphere, yet never transfer over to the rest of the anime-watching crowd that feeds on a steady diet of Naruto and Bleach? Are bloggers really such a different breed of fan?”
The sequences of my reactions were:
1. Wait, extremely popular?
2. Aria is extremely popular among blogs? Really?
3. Blame Jeff Lawson. (And Momotato.) But really?
4. I guess we’re proto fans–people who read Moonphase and stuff like that; and Aria is popular among Japanese otaku too, and…
5. What does the average anime fan think about when they see the word “moonphase” anyways?
6. [Thanks MueySanri:]
7. … Nah. Ok let me bang up a few sentences and get this out of here.
8. ???
9. Do people even read blogs? I know people barely write blogs covering purely anime, so that’s no surprise that the blogs have little penetration into the average narutard demographic.
10. How about things like Anime Insider? Do we even have marketing data?
11. Oh dear this comment is way too long. Maybe I’ll write a post on it.
12. On second thought I’ll just rewrite this and keep it short.
13. What the hell is a shoujo…anything anyways? I mean, it means “girls” of a certain age. But what does that mean in this context? Didn’t we already beaten this to death a while back? Again? And again? I lost track. Maybe someone can bring up those dreaded 3-letter thing called OEL and distract us. Guh marketing.
14. Maybe all this fangirl nerdrage can be summarized simply by lamenting upon the poor distribution of accurate information within anime fandom. It isn’t that bloggers get things right or anime magazines get things wrong, and it might be too much to ask of us to get stuff right. But can’t we at least all be wrong together? Is that what this is an attempt of?
15. Maybe a certain someone of the industry should start reading and blogging. Nerdrage has a strangely addictive effect on you…
16. Hmm, I notice how I sidestepped the whole “slice-of-life” thing. If Wikipedia has already declared it a mangled metaphor then we really are in no place to discuss this. I guess I won’t.
17. How the hell am I suppose to blog about this?
18. Profit!
