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?
Getting to the Bones of Google Reader
In celebration of, oh I don’t know, Otou-san’s balls or Google’s new Sidewiki launch (which is unfortunate that it works only w/ Google Toolbar thus far), here above is the next leg of the joke.
Japan 2009
It’s a little odd, but I think of going to Japan for the sake of some live performances, shopping and hanging out with friends just like what I do at an anime convention. I might or might not bring my camera; I might or might not go to a maid cafe; I might or might not see cosplayers; I might or might not care about any of that.
However, I will definitely try to eat my way around. I guess that part is something unique to international traveling. Food culture is something integral to the human life experience. It’s diverse, nourishing, and a great way to appreciate culture using most of the sensory perception methods you have. It’s one place where America is on equal grounds with Japan, that both incorporates foreign culinary concepts and spin them into strange, delicious but nonetheless interesting eats. While I can’t really say who does it better, but this is one free market exercise that make us all winners.
Putting 2 and 2 together we get…Japanese food con in America? Seems like a good idea to me! Someone’s done this already, right?
Breaking bread among friends is one of the larger guilty pleasure I share, even if they’re just random guys from the internets! Over Anime Expo this weekend I hope those who are going will take that opportunity as well. People looking to replicate the same thing at Otakon? Looks like the Anime Diet guys are trying to do something. At least one of them anyways.
If there’s a point to this post, it is that if for some reason you read an Evangelion 2.0 review on this blog, you’d know it was because I was somewhere out of town catching a film of said thing. Same with going to a certain concert. Or maybe even this other one… And (more likely?) if you don’t see anything, you know what’s going on.
An Instrumental Rock Music Detour
I’m not a huge fan of Explosions in the Sky, but I rather liked their live shows that I’m more than willing to go to them repeatedly. It’s definitely a very different experience than listening to their music as one normally do nowadays–from headphones off a PMP. I guess it would probably be more accurate to say that I’m a big fan of live music in general.
But at the same time why instrumental rock? I get the feeling there’s some kind of affinity between the people I run into that digs anime and people I run into that digs, say, World’s End Girlfriend. If by affinity I mean the power to combine and create singular people who like both. In one body. This gentleman over here is an upstanding example.
Well, I mean I guess I could write a post about people liking sandwiches and liking anime, but somehow post rock just hasn’t gotten that much headway into the mainstream, despite the small successes a band like Explosions may have had. I don’t even think this is the kind of music your average music lover would get into, even if they can appreciate it. In other words, it’s not an arbitrary match; it’s no mere correlation between post-rock fans and English-language anime otaku online. There has to be some reason besides statistical collision of a large thing against a small thing. I suppose anime is pretty large?
I wish I can offer something other than my anecdotes, but I cannot. Instead I’ll talk about how Mono, which is probably one of the more notable Japanese group in the genre, rocks out with an orchestra. This detour is brought to you by Twitter, which now consumes probably more attention than it deserves out of my life.
My Loss Is Your Information, MeGUI Says Yes We Can
A slightly different approach with this post. Because I don’t want to write five pages worth of nonsense. You hear that, you train freak?
Today’s Recipe:
How to encode hardsubs for your PS3/Xbox/PSP/iCrap/etc.
