Mistakes of Youth: The Blog (Powered by EXCELLENCE!)

Gonna talk about Kaiji. There’s gonna be spoilers.

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…but not in the way that you may think.

See, what I’m confused over is whether I like the show or not. Each individual episode is well put together, yet instead archiving the show, I find myself deleting each episode after I’m done with it. I think it’s because when I look at the show holistically, there’s not much there. If you take a look at the first 13 episodes, very little has happened between all the astral projection and science lectures. While that’s all fun and good, the show doesn’t feel especially filling, and is almost forgettable.

Also, this show should have more girls in it so instead of a bunch of shotas running around as ghosts, we’d get a bunch of Enma Ai clones doing the same thing.

Dragonaut is a terrible show. It is so terrible that it goes full circle and becomes good again, which is really the only reason why I’ve been able to stand it for something like 20 episodes. Episode 20 had some of the most laughable writing I’ve ever seen. It’s like they made sure to use every single cliched line ever, or at least variants of such lines.

Tell me, how many times have you heard this one?

Yes, Dragonaut had a wacky timejump in which all the former heroes of the show became the villains. And they don’t even explain this. Well, maybe they did and I just wasn’t paying attention.

This next one is great.

LOL

And finally, the best one ever…

See, the thing about this one is, you have to see the show to get it. The “bond” Kazuki is referring to is the the time that he spent staring at Gio in awe while Gio was stuck in a tube, and the two seconds that they were together, and Gio pushed him to the ground. Yeah. Some bond.

I can’t wait until this show is over.

It’s that time of year again. Yes, the spring season is fast approaching and… wow, it looks terribly lacklustre. 2006 had Haruhi, 2007 had Gurren Lagann and 2008 has… man porn? Well, I guess there is the sequel to that Gode Ceass thing, but that’s a sequel. There doesn’t seem to be any earth-shattering original titles on the horizon, but despite that, I have managed to throw together a list of stuff even longer than my picks from last year. I guess the selection isn’t too bad then, even with the horrible excess of sausage. I guess some execs somewhere noticed that girls where reading manga. What a horrible discovery.

Anyway, picks listed from most important to garbage.

Gotta watch it… GOTTA WATCH IT ALL!!

• Code Geass R2: Yeah, yeah, yeah– I give this show a lot of shit, but I do enjoy it. It’s a simple, ridiculous action story that’s good to turn the brain off to. Season one left its viewers off on an unforgiving cliffhanger, but given my experience with how the Japanese handle such cliffhangers, this second season will start off as if nothing has happened and only reveal to us WHAT HAPPENED NEXT at like episode 13.
• Golgo 13: Guys. It’s mother fucking Golgo 13. What other reason do you need?
• School Days: Magical Heart Kokoro-chan: Yeah.

Gotta… check it out! CHECK IT OUT!!

• Kamen no Maid Guy: Dom, of Megatokyo fame, wrote about the manga for this years ago and it has always sounded wonderfully quirky and crazy. Hopefully the anime adaptation doesn’t suck, since chances are I’ll never read the manga, ever.
• Kure-nai: The promo art for this one caught my eye immediately. If a show uses a picture of a little girl holding the hand of some tall faceless dude to promote itself, you know it has to be good. Story wise, it seems it’s kind of a dark-ish, violent tale of a high school kid who has to protect the young heir to a corporate syndicate. Character designs are good, even if the noses are a bit hueg. Animation is by Brain’s Base, known for Kamichu, Baccano! and… Innocent Venus? Also, from the trailer, the dude sounds like a pushover and the loli sounds more bratty than your typical rich-girl-loli. Hmm.

Don’t really gotta… do much of anything, but these shows could be ok

• Allison to Lilia: By the Kino’s Journey guy. I’ve never seen Kino since it sounds horrible, but this has 1930s technology and stuff so I guess it could be ok. Don’t really like the colour scheme.
• Chi’s Sweet Home: Show with a cat. Will never get subbed, but it’ll probably be totally watchable raw. If raws surface.
• Kaiba: Some random arty thing by Madhouse.
• Kyouran Kazoku Nikki: Should be something of a cute comedy. Has nice character designs.
• Real Drive Sennou Chousashitsu: Production IG has been doing a good job of making shows that either don’t look interesting at all (D’eon, Reideen), or are just boring as shit (Seirei no Moribito.) They’ve kind of regained my trust with Ghost Hound, but only by a bit. This show could either be extremely interesting or another snorefest.
• Toshokan Sensou: Why would you not watch a show called Library Wars?

And the rest of it

• Blassreiter: A Gonzo show with CG that mostly looks kind of not shitty. Has potential to be an awesome action show, but also has potential to be totally and completely horrible.
• Crystal Blaze: Could be awesome but could also be manporn. The only image we have so far is of a gun, bullets and a glass of random alcoholic beverage.
• Kanokon: Raunchy harem thing with nice character designs. If it has a budget it just may be watchable.
• To-Love-Ru: Because I can’t get enough of horrible Jump adaptations. Maybe this’ll have more of a budget than Rosario + Vampire.
• Zettai Karen Children: Could be funny, but the character designs look old, and I mean in the bad way.

If people start saying various other shows are good, I may give them a look, but I think I covered all the potentially good stuff already.

Original Post

I was quite surprised to see that when I woke up this morning (at around 11am) that the site had already garnered 2000+ visits, which is more than I usually get in a single day. Right now it’s up to 3,500. Turns out someone posted one of my comics on Stumble Upon, and the site seems to be getting a lot of traffic from that. I can’t say I’m not happy, but the art in that particular comic is so godawful, I feel bad about it being exposed to so many people. Oh well. Traffic is traffic. Thanks to whoever posted it.

Anyway, on to this comic. This is probably the worst comic for a new reader to stumble upon (LOL) given it requires knowledge of the characters and running gags. The point of this comic was to bring all the main characters together, since up until now, they’ve not all been in the same comic. I kind of like this one. The idea of Rets and Tina doing a double assault on Brad with horrible porn is amusing to me. Not sure if it will be for everyone else. The art in this comic is fine. Nothing amazing, but solid. I like the panel layout. Lately I’ve been making an effort to have things flow better. This one was easy since there were no speech bubbles, so that was one less variable to worry about.

I watched The Cockpit the other day. For those who don’t know, The Cockpit is a set of OVAs based on old Leiji Matsumoto comics about WWII. I thought they were fine. The subs I got weren’t the greatest, so that probably played into my impression of the work as a whole. I’d like to see a professional release of this, since I’d most certainly buy it, just to see it in the hands of a competent translator.

That’s all I got for now. I know for certain there will be an update next week, since I actually already have that comic done with.

I ain’t going to fool anybody here– Candidate for a Goddess, or “Pilot Candidate” is a shitty anime that should be watched by no one, but I’ll be damned if its opening song isn’t spectacular. Actually, the only reason why I remembered its opening was because I was listing off all of the shows that I hated (for no particular reason) and remembered that while Candidate is a horrible piece of shit, its opening is just great. So give it a listen, will ya?

Anyone know if a longer version exists? Also, does anyone know if this composer did any non-shitty anime? Thanks.

Seems he hasn’t done much anime work, but he did do Queen Millennia, so that has to count for something.

I figure I’ll bunch all this stuff into one entry, just because.

Thanks to an overseas DVD trade between Shiro and myself, I was finally able to secure the first volume of Nurse Witch Komugi. Having finished SoulTaker a few months back, naturally the next course of action was to dig into these wonderfully fluffy and sugary OVAs, hilariously completely different from the work which they are derived. As of right now, I’ve seen three episodes– 1, 2 and 2.5. In other words, the whole first volume.

A long while back, some fool told me that the jokes would be quite difficult to get, given they referenced seemingly obscure things. As such I was ready for a Pani Poni Dash! styled barrage of weirdness, but almost thankfully, I got something slightly more sane. The show really is your typical otaku moe-fest, with its share of reused gags and routines. It’s very entertaining, well animated, and easy to watch. The only parts where people may get thrown off are at the ends of each of the episodes, which usually feature a reference to something uniquely Japanese. For instance, the first episode had Komugi fighting against a giant Mona (complete with kopipe-beam and other associated 2ch madness) and the second episode had Komugi (all five of her, for some reason) done up as your favourite Science Ninja Team. I suppose if one doesn’t know anything at all about anime, then such things may come off as alien, but for the most part, this shit is basics. Perhaps it gets wackier later on– I don’t know. In the meantime however, I’ll just conclude that the guy who was on about this show being impossible to crack is an idiot, because, well, he is.

The funniest part about this DVD is that you can really see its age in the translation, mostly due to the fact that “moe” is translated as “charming.” I can just imagine the translator wracking his brains over this word which, for the most part, was pretty unknown to US fandom at the time. The image of him trying to define the word for himself and then finding an appropriate English equivalent simply sends me into fits of uncontrollable laughter. “Charming” Medical Shower, lol.

Well, I suppose it makes more sense than “turn ons”

Apparently Kadokawa is cracking down on fanworks for some asinine reason. I can kind of understand the logic behind knocking openings and endings off video sites (even if doing so is incredibly stupid) but cracking down on fanworks is tantamount to shooting any love for your product in the fucking face, especially when it comes to properties such as Haruhi. Haruhi is driven by its fandom– the reason so much attention is still focused around it almost two years later is due to its insane fandom. Telling fans to stop making works of love based on your property is basically the same as telling them to not like it. Is it so hard to see that fanworks are pure and unadulterated works of love? Why squash that creative spirit? It doesn’t hurt the company at all– in fact it only helps them, given it’s fucking free advertising. Doujin sales ain’t gonna hurt you Kadokawa, so chill. Neither will MAD movies, for that matter.

Shinbo is motherfucking holding out on us all for not revealing where he gets his drugs. I’d go as far as to say that the last third of Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei episode 7 is a landmark in Japanese animation for just how fucking out there shit can get. They don’t just switch between different animation styles in one segment, they go through different techniques, even brining flipbooks and claymation into the mix. It’s fucking bizarre. I’ll supply for your the tip of the iceberg of madness in the form of a screencap right now.

Yes, that is Bob Ross painting Konata. And it only gets weirder from there.

Original Post

This is something of a true story. Yes, it is true that in my English 101 class last year, our first assignment was to write about anything we wanted. I however, did not write about moe. That happened about two years earlier in my Junior year of high school. See, in high school I was doing the IB, and part of trying to get your IB diploma was to write this 10 page essay called the Extended Essay. Me, being more of a Japanophile then than I am now (if your mind can fathom such a thing) wrote an “anthropological study” on otaku. The paper is horrible, and if I tried to read it again now I’d probably rip my face off. Anyway, the paper had a bit on moe. Now, when I wrote this (I guess back in… 2004? 2005?) I didn’t really know much about moe past the word. So I read a bunch of essays, and basically wrote about it as a desire to protect innocence and cited examples of certain works and magazines. Some time after I wrote it, I gave it to my English teacher to look over, and he said exactly what the guy in this comic says, word for word. As far as art goes, I don’t really like it. The drawings are sloppy and rushed. I do like the backgrounds and the lighting, though. I also like dressing the English teacher up as Lupin III.

I’m kind of running short of comic ideas. Nothing airing at the moment really inspires me to write anything funny. Well, I could do something about the two horrible Gonzo shows playing, but that’d probably be the same as that Soul Link comic I did a long while back. I do have a good supply of scripts that should last for a good 15 weeks, but reading them over, they seem very not funny. Eh. I probably need to give some of them a good editing job. Whatever. I kinda know what I want to do for next week, so that’s fine.

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Yeah, yeah, everyone else and their grandmother, dog and father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate did their smart and insightful post on the industry when Geneon died. But, hey, I feel like writing one now since Anime World Order was just all over these kind of issues a few weeks ago. Talking of AWO, a lot of what I say here may sound similar to what they were on about some weeks ago. A lot of what I say will also sound similar to what you’ve already read on Dave Merrill’s LJ and Subatomic Brainfreeze. Know why? That’s because I have no fucking idea what I’m talking about, so I’m using those guys’ words and others as a basis for my argument. So, basically, chances are you read all this shit before. But whatever, I’m still doing this.

It’s no secret that the US anime industry is a situation similar to that of a snowball hanging out in hell. Geneon recently sank like the Yamato at the end of the Final Yamato, and ADV is currently bleeding from every bodily orifice. So, what can be done? Well, it certainly won’t be an easy thing to recover from, but I’ve come up with a handy three-step-solution that is sure to to work 100%!!! (no.)

Step One: FIGHT THE POWER

What both Japan and the US have got to learn is that, unfortunately, we no longer live in the 1980s. No, not unfortunate because City Hunter is no longer on TV, unfortunate because anime today just lacks the wide-spread appeal that it had back then. You’re no longer selling Yamato, Macross or Go Lion anymore. This isn’t an age when you can sell a show for a high price and expect it to be bought at a high price. Those times are over. See, according to this interview with Shinji Aramaki that I read in OTAKU USA issue I forget, shows used to get produced just because the mecha designs would make for good toys. Even if your show was a massive failure, people would still probably buy the action figure. By virtue of that fact, these shows had to have wide-spread appeal to facilitate them being seen by a wide variety of people so the toys could be bought. Yes, shows now-a-days are still made with the yens in mind, but they appeal to a core group that, for the most part, only exists in Japan. That stuff doesn’t sell here. Japan’s gotta learn that, and America has to stop taking their shit.

I’d hate to think of what kind of ungodly sum ADV paid for that crap-fest that was Magikano. Probably more than they could make back, especially when considering they’re selling that dreck for 30 bucks a pop. No, this has got to end. Japan has to learn the worth of what they’re putting out these days. Most anime that comes out of Japan today has about zero market potential here in the US. US companies need beat that into the Japan’s head as hard as possible. Basically, they have to keep knocking their heads against each other until the one with the thickest skull prevails. Licenses just needs to be sold for cheaper. Once that’s all sorted out, we can move on to the next step…

Step Two: Sell Out

Put more anime on TV. No one’s going to buy a DVD of some show they’ve never seen, especially when the entire show is spread across 6 DVDs at 30 bucks a disc. Putting anime on TV no easy task, though. As I made quite clear in Step One, a lot of what Japan pumps out these days is made for perverts like me, and that shit wont fly with average Joe America… but a lot of other shows may! There’s an entire legion of shows that are perfect for US TV, but for some reason they usually go totally unnoticed. Yes, I’m mostly talking about seinen and jousei anime– Honey and Clover, REC, Hatarake Man and so on. This stuff needs to be acquired and given the royal treatment. What do I mean by that? I mean good dubs– really good dubs. I mean not using the same goddamn actors that they always use. I mean getting people with professional US TV standard acting ability to dub over these shows for TV. A bad dub is insulting to one’s intelligence, and we’ve got to appeal to these people, not insult them.

It is at this point were I’d say something about people being reluctant towards watching cartoons, but it seems lots of people watch things like Family Guy and stuff, so if a cartoon comes along that offers an audience more than just laughs, perhaps they’ll come back for more? Also, having stuff like Death Note on TV is a great start, but you have to put it on a time when people will actually be awake to watch it. (PS put Monster on TV)

After this stuff gets on TV, it needs to be put on DVD. Since companies would’ve presumably done a brilliant job at marketing their shows and dubbing them, everyone will love them, buy the season collections at reasonable prices, and billions will be made! Along with DVDs, they’ll also sell CD soundtracks, singles, t-shirts, wristbands, condoms, etc. With those billions secured, it is possible to move on to step three…

Step Three: Be A Cheap Bastard

Let’s say Steps One and Two were a success. Trillions are made off Honey and Clover. The US loves it. It’s a nationwide phenomenon. Now that US companies can bathe in money, it’s time for them to be true to their inner fan and license the otaku shows. Now, the question is how to sell them. For starters, don’t spend any time or money on a dub and writing over the openings and endings. The people who care about these shows don’t care for any of that stuff. Significantly less time can be spent putting together decent inserts filled with translation notes and reference guides. After all, it’s easier to Google stuff/look at Japanese wiki/mine 2ch/copy fansubs and copypaste that stuff into a DVD insert than it is to hire actors in order to make them try and fail to act moe. Also, sell this stuff at 15 dollars a disc.

I know the guys who watch these kinds of shows. A lot of them will just download them, and not buy them when they come out. These same people own a lot of manga, which is conveniently low-priced. If you can sell to these guys exactly what they want, and at a price that costs a little more than the books they buy often, I think you could probably at least break even on most of these things.

There you have it! Brilliant, is it not? No? Well, yeah, I know. This shit could never happen, but it’s good to have ideas!