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.
When Will Yotsuba&! Come Out?
When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out? When will Yotsuba&! come out?
Thx, gia.
Just because Anime Expo is this shiny thing near the side of the road and online fandom has the attention span of a fleeting wet dream, don’t expect us to forget. I think ADV might get to make a big announcement at Otakon this year, so let’s not forget to harass them there…
♪ 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!
