Kalafina Anime Boston Live
Free wifi is the one single tool that marketing companies should offer to fan bloggers and the like if they want like, hyped words from the fatigued wireless army of today’s convention fandom. Not kidding. That is if they all had 10″ laptops with massive battery life, that is \o/
Kalafina’s concert at Anime Boston is actually a two-part deal. The Boston-local orchestra organization, Video Game Orchestra, opened for them. The group pulls the talents of a couple local ensembles and students from Berklee School of Music and forms a full orchestra. At Anime Boston’s show, however, we only got a 13(?) member detachment armed with powered amps and electric shredding capabilities. It was actually rather good, I thought.
I wasn’t able to piece together their set list, but it had a very nice 5-piece medley with Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross pieces. [Edit: you can read more about the game music portions of their show at OSV, including a set list.] A very nice Silent Hill piece with a vocalist and a track from Halo also stood out to be impressive. What sold me however were their two-piece Kajiura tribute. Supposedly they don’t play anime music normally, so this was definite a treat–Himeboshi and Song of Storm and Fire. The Mai-hime track was short and to the point and I always thought Kajiura’s best work came out of that show, yet nobody plays her pieces there. Lastly, and almost in an obligatory fashion, there’s always FF7 music. The VGO played in a way that was very pop and the more jazz-rock style worked well with a convention audience. If they play more anime music I would be so all over them…But enough about that. ..More
Anime Boston 2009 Day 0
Seafood is delicious, you must have it.
Honestly though, this is a big reason why I am here. It’s not so much the con has draws for me, even if it certainly does. It’s the people, the location (first time really spending a day++ inside Boston), and doing stuff in a relaxed manner. I have to say the hotel room we’re in for tonight is most excellent. I would prefer this even over the con hotels for cost considerations.
I think what would have made it perfect is able to pick up pre-reg! Alas, that’s why I’m here today I guess.
So dm is a pretty cool customer. Knows what I like. And it’s good to work with Jabel for mutual gain. Alex and Kransom are as I thought they are, and although I somewhat remain wary about this weekend’s arrangement I do hope for the best.
There must be a joke one could make during a dinner involving Simoun and oysters.
It would’ve been even more perfect if I had tickets to a game @ Fenway! Presumably if nothing goes horribly wrong (beyond standard deviation of the usual things that could), that is.
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.
On Light Music
It would appear he is not the only one.
Real briefly, the term is 軽音楽, and as wiki would have it, it describes not just “light music” as a dictionary would translate the term. Accordingly, in common practice (as in, the exercise of labeling high school clubs), it’s anything that’s non-classical and non-traditional. It might be better defined as an alternative to ポピュラー音楽. Well, either way, keiongaku is a loose category, as defined by negatives rather than a prescriptive definition. And of course, “K-ON” is just a cute play-on-Engrish on a shorthand.
It shouldn’t be surprising to see a music nerd think “why Krauser?” when revisited by his visage in K-ON the anime. There’s nothing “light” about Detroit Metal City, so why did Yui think of it when she approached the keion club? Or for that matter, why did Mio and Ritsu join the club in the first place? Is it because the music they want to make categorically is keion? We can only presume there’s a lot of common sense baggage lurking in the background that somehow makes sense to those of us who never had that Japanese high school experience, but only in part.
Which is also why those KyoAni-tards should go catch a viewing of Linda Linda Linda. It’s a very good example of the common “HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS ROCK BAND” story concept, done in an East-Asian-Japanese way. As long as you can handle real moeblobs (as opposed to 2D), that is. Linda is a stereotype-confirming experience; it is both entertaining and aspiring, and might just make that rewatching of Suzumiya Haruhi all the more exciting.
This post is brought to you by The Last Arial, Author, Sixten, WorkPanda and tayu. If you know better about this than I do (I imagine that is an easy feat) please chime in if you want to add anything. Including killer M:tG deck types.
WTB Merchandising Support
525 728
Frustration.
It’s worth blogging about because it’s appropriately meta and it’s relevant as an evidence of cultural clashing between different needs for merchandising support.
What do I mean by that? Let’s take trading or collectible card games (TCG/CCG) for example. There is an active industry for collectible card games in the US, and collectible cards in general. I still have my Premiere Limited Darth Vader from SW:CCG in an acrylic card case somewhere, for instance. (By the way, it’s worth just $20 on eBay). But you get the idea. In order to support this hobby, there’s a whole slew of product lines like card protectors, binders, cases, whatever. You could include things even like tournaments and conventions. And this is generally crossing the gap between “anime” and “non-anime” genres. Or “sci-fi” and “fantasy” or “live action” and “animation.” For example, I bought this cardboard box meant for Aquarian Age with Aoi Nanase art on it years ago, for example, because I can use it to stash what stray cards I own, and none of that was Aquarian Age (I think). (Also, I am irrationally weak against Aoi Nanase, but w/e.) But please note that these cards are the same size as all my Magic: the Gathering cards and Sakura Taisen TCG cards, and if I was weeaboo enough I’d go to one of them tournaments with said AquaAge box. Currently the said box is housing a bunch of different kinds of cards, including some stray baseball cards and outdated calling cards, collecting dust on a shelf somewhere.
Sure, it’s just a cardboard box. Even so, someone out there has to figure out about how big these boxes should be, what dimensions they ought to be so it’s not too loose, not too tight, and make different sized ones so they can sell me a box that holds 500 cards versus one that holds 2000 cards, or something. Standards make the world go around, in a way. And we know when it comes to TCGs, what Americans do are not unlike what Japanese do. It’s a fairly simple medium and as a merchandising concept. Maybe it has something to do with baseball, I am no historian but I could guess.
Anyways; I’m just trying to say there are these kinds of standards that are important to fandom as well. Things like “how to run a convention” or “how to master a DVD” or “how to use a sewing machine” are universal. You don’t need to be an anime fan to have an excuse to do any of those, even if being one could be an excuse to acquire all three skill sets. For another example, some fans cared about the Blu-Ray vs. HDDVD war because it’s a standard competition affecting the enjoyment of anime for the next generation. Or how DVD packaging sizes crib extravagant box sets for anime due to retail difficulties. Or one of the many other reasons how some industry standard gets in the way or facilitates being a fan.
The numbers 525 and 728 are the width and length respectively, in millimeters, of a JIS B2 sheet of paper. This is the size of vast majority of promotional posters in Japan. There is also nobody that I know who sells poster frames that accommodates this size (even with a healthy framing margin) in the US, on a non-custom-sized basis. There are framing kits and custom framers, but do you want to put a $15 poster in a $30-35 frame minimum? I guess if you got it autographed or something. Getting a 24″ x 36″ (or a 24″ x 30″ if you’re lucky) frame and frame it yourself? It’s a reasonable solution but it doesn’t look that good, plus you need the right tools to do a good job.
The better solution, as I see it, is for some brave soul to mass produce like, a bunch of 525×728 frames, and take orders from people that run anime con dealer’s rooms or something. Something like $20-25 retail price point would be reasonable, and you can just go for the cheap, cardboard-backed, plastic-front stuff.
Why do I want to frame posters? Posters are just something that need to be framed in order to be “used” properly. Sticky or non-sticky tacks both work fine…until you want to take it off your wall. And you don’t want to ask me about wall scrolls. That’s like asking why is AnimeJunkies the best fansub group ever. All of that is to say I’ve grown old enough that I want to appreciate and treasure my worthless junk that are loaded with sentimentality. Plus I’ve came across a few good ones over the years and they deserve better than to be rolled up in a corner collecting dust along with my Aquarian Age box.
Sigh. Well, if you got a better idea please do share. The goal is to lower the price enough but provide a permanent solution for poster protection and display that doesn’t require too much labor or special skills or tools. Ideally the less hassle, the better too. Considering people can make frames of any size in that range, this can’t be incredibly difficult to do for some people.
