Perpetual Bewilderment with Haruka Nogizaka
I am still unable to pin down what about Haruka Nogizaka and her secret that made it what it was. I think while the general consensus is relatively accurate–a comfortable romantic comedy about sensitivity, trust, and blossoming into who you are; but of little else–it doesn’t quite capture everything remarkable.
I’m feeling a bit of the same for Kannagi. The obvious thing about Kannagi is that it is very well produced, and things look…very nice. The acting is fun and the whole setup is amusing enough. It’s entertaining yet so fully dripping in cliche that it becomes comfortable rather than irritating been-done.
Perhaps that line is where Haruka’s Secret straddles. For the most part, both shows are nothing really to write home about. There are trace amounts of suspense, of slapstick comedy, and a variable amount of drama. Romance seems like a carrot-on-a-stick but both boys and girls of the era of late-night anime fandom expect it. How can we complain about romantic side plots in Hollywood blockbusters; or worse, are we bottom feeding mimicry of our mainstream shadows? Does that explain why there’s so much crap about anime on tvtropes?
But none of that is truly bad, and none of that is desirable (obviously). It’s like a good stir-fry of leftovers that somehow produces a dish that you would like to eat again once in a while? If moe-blobs are a type of flavored soft drink, then the Nogizaka brand is probably a blend of healing properties with familiar flavors. Which is why it wasn’t so hard to stomach the same taste day in and day out in a blend that isn’t so soothing. Kannagi would just be a premium brand of the same, minus some of that tenderness.
At the same time it’s easy to understand those who protest exactly those flavors. What I don’t understand is how suddenly these protesters could turn around choose the same flavors, but perhaps packaged slightly differently. Maybe that just means I don’t quite understand myself.
I’ll give up for now.
Nana, Xam’d Updates
Since Sony’s video store ops have no inclination to pump out press releases or blog posts or anything in regards to the switching on/off of series, all I have is speculation.
Speculating is fun, right? We know that Xam’d came upon the anime scene much like the Second Coming, just nowhere as purportedly awesome. But it’s like a thief that came like the PSN Video Store announcement, day-date. And a healthy “what the hell is this? how do you say it?” when people are pummeling the preview video and episode 1 rips around the web. Heck, it still doesn’t have an English-language, official homepage dedicated to the show itself. Hey Sony, did you dropped the ball and couldn’t find it or what?
This past weekend I was out of town but somehow I was able to show that same trailer in front of a half-dozen people. It impressed at least one. But at the same time I wasn’t able to camp the PSN site like a hawk. Maybe I should just take a clue and check only on Wednesday mornings. The new PS3 firmware update is suppose to come out soon, but maybe in a future one they should add a RSS feed reader linked to their store?
Who am I kidding, you can just go to the web version of the PSN video store and see what has been added from the web.
Going back to speculation, the Japanese PSN Video Store (and its dirty, 30-day rentals) is putting out 2 episodes of Xam’d each week since September’s launch, so they’ll catch up roughly in another 2-3 weeks to episode 12. I hope from that point on they will do day-date Japan/US releases, or at least that’s the sensible thing to guess. If not, then there’ll be hell to pay.
Of course, that speculative reality begs the question again. Without being 100% exclusive, will it increase or decrease the incentive for me to keep buying, $4 a week? Probably not. Obviously it’s still exclusive in terms of being translated to English, and I think those of us who’ve stuck to it are a bit hooked. As you know, Xam’d is excellent and having 5.1 sound and hi-def to go with, it’s a tough thing to say no to once you’ve seen how good it looks with your own eyes. Rationalizing only does so much against physical impressions.
Being fans, we can distract ourselves with massive QQing and /b/-type antics on the Playstation Blog or something, until the next episode comes out. Not a terrible idea IMO.
Well, clearly this means I’m not going to blog Xam’d the next couple weeks, unless something positively surprising happens. Sorry folks! The leaked episode 13 is definitely intriguing but I don’t think I’m going to write about it even if I do end up watching it. Not until the official release anyways. I guess it’s like, lol, a vacation. And maybe the service disruption might actually cause some mindless fansub sheeples to ask “where’s Xam’d 13-14-15-16?” and figure out it isn’t a fansub like any other and it’s totally just warez-out goodness. Mmmm warez.
In other news, Nana has turned from Osaki to Komatsu. That good news should brighten someone’s day…?
ef: esoteric femininity
Of the myriad things the letters ‘e’ and ‘f’ can stand for, that one stood out today. For that matter, of the myriad new shows this season, many solid entries, too, ef stands out like neatly folded (or unfolded, for that matter) underpants.
It is an unintentional effect, but maybe that is because my brain really lives inside my balls? When the blood gets flowing, my mind makes way not for fleshly instincts but ascends. Like a leaping whale breaking the surface of the sea, a momentary clarity that pierces through complexity to reveal its simple underneath, or in reverse, reconstruct the intricacies of a simple, elegant principle in motion.
Like how the gaze of a thousand men and women that pierced Nagi Hirono’s naked body? I think there’s something to be said about that, the scene, and why it’s there. As terse as some may do so.
Thematically, hoping to state the obvious, ef catches the attention of its viewers with a striking view of its heroines. Okay, bad pun. Can we even call the way ef present them as “view”? I think the women in the show are the reason; they are what makes ef such striking visual amateur-avant-garde-SHAFTxSHINBO festivals. It’s like, you can’t put a tropical fish in a freshwater tank; and girls like Miyako, Chihiro and Kei (and Nagi, Yuko and Mizuki, hopefully), their issues, and their charm points have to be framed in their own special way.
Because women like them don’t exist in the vacuum of our real world. Or when they do, they don’t stand out like a single rose out of a patch of brier. It’s not like Chihiro’s memory of Renji, at any rate.
The game of finding and producing moe blobs and selling character appeal to the moe-otaku crowd is not always won by logic or reason, so the popularity of ef (Yay? Chihiro made it past Saimoe ‘08 QF?) in the same character-driven, character-appeal-driven market stands strong because of the unique characters, their equally unique characterization, and a shameless plea towards the esoteric. Make no mistake; it’s not because they are “better” characters by logic or reason. The femininity displayed in ef is still mostly ordinary; I would point them out if I was better equipped to analyze what makes an anime girl an anime girl, but I’m not.
But that is not important. At the hands of an artful storyteller, even the ordinary is radical.
Viva Vita
It’s hard to decide if it is a permanent fixture, a miniturized display of raw emotion, or simply a tribute to an all-time favorite.
But without that imaginary photography studio in the sky, Vita can only sigh and dream of brighter times when she would actually be walking around, being the bundle of energy that she was, and as only as intense as how the fate of worlds rested in the balance. But like her trusty Graf Eisen, there’s something REALLY BIG on the other end of that scale to keep things from tipping over. I call that something heroism, but sometimes you think it may just a very real feeling of longing, of being cuddled by her master.
Oh, right, statues can’t sigh, even.
Creator Focus
Author points out something interesting but at the same time what’s more amusing is that his blog, despite having no automatic feedback mechanism, dare to ask a question.
I’m posting to answer, but I think that is only because it is an interesting question with a simple answer.
So, why concentrate on people or studios?
The simple assumption is that anime comes from people and studios. Human tendencies are such that we are fascinated with the process of creation, and the creator is invariably a major part of that process. That fascination only grows exponentially when the creation triggers our fancy, captures our imagination, and depletes our savings. That’s the short answer.
The shorter answer is that: yeah, how good an anime is depends on how “good” the people making it is, so who is making it matters a lot.
The TL;DR take is multi-prong.
1. Association. To be simple, Author is incorrect to say that “[i]n general, no matter who you take, the record is nearly always mixed on the average, past performance is no guarantee of future performance, and so on.” Mainly because 45% of statistics you read on the internet is made up of thin air. But what is tried and true is that people pay attention to makes and creators because the human brain is programmed to make that connection. When the same guy made 2 shows you like, you keep an eye out for the next show the same guy makes because of the good track record. Never mind that between those two shows there were 3 bad shows by the same guy and you didn’t hear about two of the bad ones. If you are a discerning fan, any indication of a new production that could be good is something to note.
In the aggregate, that’s what makes reputation worth caring for. Reputation is built on fame and notoriety. Kyoto Animation is a good example, and it’s a good example because they have a relatively slim catalog of shows, and Kyoani’s reputation and the work-product are plain to see. But reputation is even more flimsy of an indicator because it is a secondary factor. Anime studios make anime, not their reputation.
2. At the same time, a small pet peeve (well-illustrated by this post) is that people make brand claims without investigating further. Studio this and studio that means nothing if Kyoto Animation was to set out to animate the next chapter of Musashi Gundou directed by Yamakan? I think it still would. But it won’t be the same epic adventure as the one made by ACC Production Studio. To lead in, what I’m trying to say is that people make anime, studios are just the corporate entities that organize these people. So I think Author’s half wrong about studios and completely wrong about people. A refined example is Makoto Shinkai. Some of us eat up everything he makes! And what’s more he is actually doing a lot of the nitty-gritty that goes into the show directly, too, so it makes you wonder just what he does that makes his shows the way they are. Sunrise, for example, is a big budget studio that make a lot of stuff, but if we don’t see who are at the helm of their productions we are fairly clueless about what will come next. Much the same can be said of Gonzo, too.
3. The industry perspective. There is power in brand. (And trademark lawyers make a meager living.) There are reasons to produce brands. At the same time this is not something well-observed in the anime industry. Leveraging that socially engineered habit about brand association goes a long way to make people care, but unless you are Pixar or Hayao Miyazaki, that good will serves little more than free marketing. This I can agree with in regards to Author’s ultimate point in his question. I mean, if the stuff is good then then stuff is good, who cares?
4. Who cares? People who cares about the creation does. When I look at, for example, Yoshitaka Amano’s works, I sorta care about how and what he was thinking that were consequently reflected in the works. He’s been a pro illustrator for a while and a lot of his stuff are emblems of SRSBZNS titles, like, the whole Final Fantasy thing. For fans, his inspirations are a big deal, and so are influences and (a big one people neglect to ask) prior knowledge and experience. To make a specific example out of Amano, I know my share of map/cartography aficionados out there (all two of you) and wasn’t it a great insight into how FFXI’s maps were drawn (man, I totally forgot about that, should’ve gotten my copy signed) when Amano explained it? But I guess if all you wanted to know was which of the new shows this season are good to fap to and not a pain in the butt to follow, you wouldn’t care who’s who and who made what.
5. But so what? If I was making a new game and I wanted an awesome map, now I know who to commission. Or for that matter, a metal album CD cover. Odds of me doing either of those are slim to none. But if I wanted to appreciate an awesome map, or a funky CD cover, now I have just one more bit of context to do so.
Art is ultimately an expression. It doesn’t stand very well in a vacuum. It needs context. As much as the mass media evolution has ‘cleanroomed’ today’s anime for greater portability, fungibility and for a wider audience, knowing where it comes from gives us context. Certainly, people can make due without, but there’s nothing odd about looking for context.
Although, taking in the context of what Author was talking about–being prodded by your producer–that’s what’s important.
