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

Of all the people to write something about a Pizzicato Five album, I am the least qualified. I am neither a music person, nor am I cool enough. However, I’m a sucker for the music enough to write something about it, so I figure I’ll try my hand at a CD review, despite knowing nothing of music, music history or the music industry. This will not turn out well.

Being a poor student living on the wrong side of the Pacific, the only Pizzicato Five albums I could really get my hands on were those put up on the internet by awful pirates like me  for awful pirates like me. These albums were–of course–the more well known records put out by the group (at that point a duo consisting only of Konishi Yasuharu and Nomiya Maki) and were rife with their cleaner, snappier, more streamlined sound.

I quickly grew to like P5’s music, as it owed a lot to old jazz, soul, funk and whatever else P5 found cool enough to latch on to. This mix of sounds and influences resonated in me particularly because I grew up around a lot of jazz (particularly Bossa Nova) soul and funk music growing up, and all of these mixed together, presented in a uniquely Japanese package, was in some ways the ultimate fusion of childhood nostalgia and my modern day tastes. My love for P5 transformed into a general interest in cool-guy Shibuya-kei music, but I haven’t had much opportunity to explore the genre outside of a few acts, most of which aren’t even “real” Shibuya-kei. But I digress.

Even though I really liked P5’s music, there was something missing. What was lacking was a good number of full on jazzy tracks. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of P5’s stuff is pretty groovy, but of the albums I “had” there were few straight up jazz-inspired compositions. Which is just fine by me, but with the few short flings P5 had with the pure jazzy songs in these albums, I yearned for more. I then caught wind of one of their older albums–Couples–and managed to pick it up at my local BookOff during my time in Japan. Between listening to that album a lot over there, and having just come back into contact with it here in the US, I have to say that Couples is the jazzy slice of heaven I was looking for.

Inspired primarily by Burt Bacharach’s sound (According to the CD insert, anyway. “A collection of some Bacharach-ish syncopations and AABA’s…”, it reads.) Couples is defined by its slow horns and seductive strings as they work together to produce some of the most chill chill-out music I’ve ever heard. The tracks aren’t all slow, though. Far from it. The album dances between laid back tracks like its opening cover of Magical Connection and more upbeat numbers like What Now Our Love.

While I enjoy all the tracks on this album, I find myself gravitating towards the slower ones. Cuts like Magical Connection, Serial Stories, The Apartment and Two Sleepy People are perfect to listen to while sitting down with a glass full of something expensive, perhaps while puffing on a pipe. A lot of the tracks that fall somewhere between slow and upbeat such as Summertime, Summertime, They All Laughed, Seven O’ Clock News, The Odd Couple And The Others, and My Blue Heaven are also quite cheerful to listen to, breaking into smooth extended instrumental sections more often than not. My least favourites are actually the most upbeat tracks like What Now Our Love and Every Time We Say Goodbye. There’s nothing wrong with them per se, but I feel the energy present in them is better suited for P5’s later style. There’s a singular instrumental track on the album–Party Joke–which is a playful interlude that comes in near the end of the album’s 12-track run.

All of the tracks do great to fantastic jobs of interweaving the horns, strings and percussion into both simple and complex compositions that shift in tone from relaxing, to seductive, to just plain fun. An ever-present reverb in the background makes the album feel as if it was recorded in the 1960s as opposed to the late 1980s, and suggests a dream-like atmosphere across the disc. This would probably sound great on vinyl.

The vocals are primary reserved and laid back. Female vocalist Sasaki Mamiko’s voice is certainly more fitting than Nomiya’s in this CD–while Nomiya’s vocals in later P5 albums are more deliberate and full bodied, Sasaki’s are airy and natural, fitting the tone of the instrumentals. They seem effortless in a good way–as if singing well is just easy for her. Kamomiya Ryo provides the album with a masculine voice which works well alongside Sasaki, but on his own his vocals aren’t as enchanting.

Couples is a nice blast from the past, especially if you’re interested in what one of the most prolific Shibuya-kei acts sounded like before they hit it big. Free of a lot of the precise production of later P5 albums, Couples is a more natural sounding record that’s better suited for a quiet time than a party. I highly recommend picking it up. Not like my musical taste is worth anything, though.

(To learn more about Shibuya-kei, I recommend reading Marxy’s old articles on the subject.)

Original Post

Kind of pissed off today due to retarded computer issues, so this rant will be more terse than usual. I’ve more or less given up on talking about anime in this space, by the way. Stuff like that is better suited for individual blog entries.

I doubt anyone will see anything resembling humour in this comic. I mean, moreso than other comics. I think the only way you’ll find this funny is if you live in Japan, and know just how deeply Monster Hunter has invaded the lives of otaku over there. This comic is actually taken directly from an exchange that happened at the manga club in Sophia University. I’ve changed almost nothing, except for spicing up the language accordingly to capture the spirit of their words. I thought it was pretty funny, so I figured I’d eventually turn it into a comic. No one else but me cares, though.

Another obscure reference in this comic is the drink that Hikki’s Manken friend is holding. I actually hadn’t heard of this drink until IRC super star Ichimaru told me about it, but once I heard about it I had to include it in a comic some how. You can’t really see it, but the drink is called JUNGLEMAN. Which is a real drink.

The art isn’t stellar, but I like how it all turned out. Instead of sampling too much, I’ve decided to instead reproduce the shirts I dress my characters in, along with various other objects–like the JUNGLEMAN bottle–myself. It looks a bit more natural. Posters and game/anime screenshots are still from sampled images, though. Those with a keen eye will notice that I forgot about the PSP logo at the back of the PSP. Whoops!

No comic next week because it’s Thanksgiving. That’ll give me time to refine the next couple of scripts I have planned out, anyway…

Speaking of Haruka and her secret, there have been some people (read: two) who have noticed that the second season of one of my favourite shows from last year is no longer about her secret. They also put forth that this is detrimental to the show. I will admit that the staff has kind of forgotten about Haruka’s secret after about an episode or two, but I’ve been enjoying the other episodes just as much, specifically episodes four and six. I think instead of referential fanservice, they staff is going more for overt “oh my god, Haruka fell on Yuuto in her underwear” fanservice, which is 100% fine by me.

If anything, though, I do think the show is falling into some patterns that I don’t quite like. These things were always present in the show, but they never bothered me. For example, in this current season, whenever Mika and her group of misfits wants to cause trouble, there’s always some outside force preventing them from doing so. Similarly, Haruka and Yuuto’s relationship is progressing at a pace of one step forward, two steps back. Like I said, things like this were present in the first season to some degree, but now they’re getting a bit tired, so I hope they spice things up a bit in further episodes.

What I liked about season one was that while Yuuto clearly had  harem, the relationship between Haruka and him was more or less set in stone, and it was the focus of the show. As such, it was less of a harem show and more of a cute light romance, a genre which is–quite frankly–of short supply these days. The second season is falling back more on harem tradition, especially in the way it gives certain characters glamour episodes allowing them to activate flags with Yuuto. While this doesn’t bother me too much either (I did enjoy the episodes focusing on Tsundere-chan and Alice) it is distracting when Yuuto and Haruka are already a couple. The focus on Shiina is especially laughable, since I’m pretty sure they wrote her off as a  love interest a few episodes ago. I mean, she is kind of cute, but doesn’t hold a candle to Haruka.

I do however think that the show’s highs make up for the lows, even if the highs are simple things like Haruka being naked or in cute outfits more often, but the writers should really bring the otaku angle back for a more balanced viewing experience. Yes, I like seeing Haruka’s nipples poking through a Santa outfit. That’s hot. But I also like seeing Haruka getting excited over whatever random anime she’s watching. I also enjoy focus on loli characters like Alice and Mika but… Actually, they can keep focusing on Mika for as long as they want, she’s my second favourite character.

But anyway, balance. That’s what it’s all about. I think this new season has lost the balance that made season one successful in my eyes. Maybe they should fall back on novel material for a change. I want to see Haruka and Yuuto in London!

You need to click if you want to see more! And don’t do it at work!

I’ve been drawing a lot lately mainly for practice. The reason why a lot of the poses are straight on is because I want to nail basic poses before attempting more dynamic poses.

I always like doing deadly serious Zetsubou Sensei art because the openings for the show are just so twisted, and it contrasts nicely with just how goofy the whole show is. As such, this picture is comically emo. I hope you enjoy it!!

Original Post

Hi guys, here’s a comic.

It’s pretty hard writing jokes about shows you like, so instead I use the show as an excuse to rag on the characters, I guess. I had this script floating around in my head for a while, but wasn’t sure about using it. It then became Thursday and I realized I should probably make a comic or something, so I just used this script. I think it’s kind of funny. I’m also kind of happy with the artwork, except for the faces in panel two are really bad. I tried to fix them, but they still turned out weird. Rets’ face probably needs to be longer. Other than that, it’s fine.

The comic production time has been steadily going down in recent weeks, to the point where it now takes exactly four hours to colour a normal three-to-four panel comic. This is great, since last time I checked it took something around eight hours. I don’t know how I cut the time down so much, but I guess I have. The sketching still takes around an hour or so, so that brings the entire production time up to about five and a half hours, but I usually do the sketching in classes, so it’s not exactly a big strain on my free time. So yeah, that’s great. Hopefully I can cut the time down to two to three hours and maybe put out more than one comic a week regularly. I doubt it, but a man can dream, right?

Oh yeah, I was on the Anime 3000 panel talkin’ ’bout life in Japan as a stinky Gaijin along with two other guys who have been living there for a lot longer than I did. It was fun, and I think we covered a good amount of ground when it comes to being a not-Japanese person in a country filled with them. Unfortunately, some of my best stuff (mostly stuff about being an Otaku in Japan) got cut. However, if you have an iPhone, you can buy A3000’s iPhone app and download the cut footage there. I don’t have an iPhone, so I can’t get it.

And that’s all for this week! Hopefully I can churn out some blog posts this week instead of doing absolutely nothing.

And maybe we can also sub more Kirumin :V

There was other media represented in the book, but I didn’t care about any of them except for Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu. And I guess Railgun.

I paid 60 bucks for this, and considering I got a nice dakimakura cover out of it, I think it was a good deal. Would have rather had paid 2000 yen at Mandarake or something though.

Yeesh, just when this blog was getting classy with reviews of obscure manga shorts and interviews with cool people, I throw it all away. Now Matt Alt won’t ever want to link to the interview.

Ｉ’m going to pretend this dinner was made by Kaede and it was actually very delicious and not crappy.

She for some reason went from one state of undress to another when I brought the cake out, don’t know why.

I think I will keep a record of the birthdays of all my favourite characters then eat cake with them to make this blog even more kimoota.

Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Part II of the Matt Alt interview! Topics covered include MOE anime, Gundam, Eva and Tokusatsu film. My many thanks go out to Mr. Alt for agreeing to come on this dirty show.

Guests

• Matt Alt

Songs

• Opening Song– “Senaka goshi ni Sentimental” by Miyasato Kumi
• Ending Song– “Anime Ja Nai” by Arai Masato

I forgot to mention this in the site update just now, and Dreamweaver is already closed so I don’t feel like going back and editing anything. But yeah, today is the blog’s third year anniversary. Last year I was talking about Zettai Karen Children and still talking about Dark Mirage. I think I’ll mention Dark Mirage each year just because.

No Zettai Karen Children this year because Synergy SP is making that Cross Game show I’m not watching.

Original Post

This is one of them comics that only me and few other people will get. You can probably still derive a laugh from it, but you kind of need to know about this guy called MINAMIZAWA JUUHACHI. See, this fellow MINAMIZAWA JUUCHACHI (his given name means “18″) directed a bunch of ero anime in the early 2000s. The interesting thing about some of the ero anime he directed was that they looked very similar to the works of our beloved Shinbo Akiyuki. Furthermore, one of the studios that produced some of these works is said to be the alter ego of studio Shaft. So, basically, Shinbo probably directed porn. I’ve seen it. It’s pretty trippy.

But man! A year since the last Life and Times of Shinbo. The art kind of got better, but these last two panels still look a bit wonky. I have to say, I do quite enjoy my depiction of Yamamoto Yutaka. You have to note that this comic takes place before he got famous, which I think makes the attitude I forced upon him kind of funnier. Maybe he simply knows he’ll be famous one day. I don’t know if Shinbo and Yamamoto actually speak to each other as friends, but Yamamoto does talk about Shinbo all the time.

I don’t have much else to say, so I’ll leave it at that. No idea what to do for next week!

Dirty Work (1998) and System of Romance (2000) are two shorts by manga-ka couple Sadamoto Yoshiyuki and Takaha Mako. I came upon both of these a good amount of years ago, but due to a recent IRC conversation they returned to the forefront of my mind. Seeing as I haven’t done it already, I figure I’ll write a little about these two quirky short stories.

I don’t really read much  manga (I’ll get into the why of that in a post that may or may not come to being) but a lot of the manga that I do enjoy tends to have something of a strong grounding in reality; more so than the types of anime I watch. I really enjoy it when these realistic settings are used as stages for somewhat dark–but not too dark–stories, especially those in which emotional teenagers are instrumental to how things play out. I also like weird short stories, and considering these tales have only enough substance to really fill around 30 pages, I quite like them.

Before I continue with the rest of this post, I’d like to direct you to links for both of these stories here and here. My spiel has spoilers, so if you really care it’s better to read the stories before reading my thoughts on them.

The main theme that runs across both of these stories is that of young people starting to grasp the concept of Adult Life while in the midst of doing stupid spur-of-the-moment things that only teenagers do. In Dirty Work, Tatsuo carries out vengeance for his childhood friend turned one-sided lover, Kana, against people that assaulted her (sexually or otherwise) in their farming town known for producing eggs and fertilizer.  In System of Romance, the (near as I can tell) un-named main character finds out that a man she met on a singles chatline–who she then had sex with–is in fact more dangerous than she thinks.

Dirty Work in particular portrays a setting that is very real in its gritty nature–a farming town known only for its “eggs and chicken shit” in which teenagers carry out acts of violence in the name of love. Tatsuo and Kana are both well aware of their situation, and what they’re doing. There’s nothing glamorous about Tatsuo’s assaults, and there’s similarly nothing glamorous or romantic about his failed attempts to win the love of his already-taken childhood friend Kana. The characters exchange down to earth, cold dialogue with subdued expressions on their faces.

There is a strong sense of hopelessness–these characters won’t ever be released from their life of “eggs and chicken shit.” Tatsuo applies to universities in Tokyo expecting to fail, so he has a bunch of local backups. Kana is resigned to her fate as a farmer, even when Tatsuo offers an alternative. However, in the middle of all this hopelessness is an attempt to move forward. Tatsuo doesn’t kill his target this time–he lets him live. The two characters speak of re-incarnation, in hopes of attaining a life better than what they’re living now.

The saddest part of the story is how Tatsuo resigns himself to the fact that he’ll never be with Kana. Because of this, he’s forward and unashamed with his advances towards her, knowing they’ll fail. He knows he has nothing left to lose. They’re both half-assing it like teenagers always do, but that’s what makes the story poignant and realistic.

System of Romance is more of a straightforward story about The Mistakes of Youth, but it ends on a twist. The girl in System of Romance is portrayed as a laid back girl without a care in the world. But unlike, say, Hirasawa Yui, the girl in Romance is simply bored with life, and doesn’t really think about the consequences of her actions until put in a near death situation–one which was in part brought about by her own foolishness.

In the process of being raped by the serial killer/rapist she met on a chatline and then proceeded to have sex with a year ago, the main character regrets how she’s acted towards her family, and her friends. She realizes just how cruel she  might have been towards others when she thinks it’s all too late, and regrets not having lived a better life. However, at the end she’s spared. The murderer doesn’t kill her. Resolved in the fact that he’ll be caught soon, the murderer leaves her. At a flash-forward near the end, she comments that no one else made her heart flutter quite like he did.

While more of a quirky and dark love story than anything else, System of Romance does a good job of capturing the sort of feelings we’ve all had at some point regarding our life. We regret the little jabs we’ve  made towards people we hold dear–it may not be in as extreme a situation as the one detailed in the story–but it happens to all of us, I’m sure. However, in a way, the twist at the end tells us not to worry about it. Even though she was put in a near death situation due to her own stupidity, it turned out to be one of the best experiences of her life. Sure, it’s a not great moral, but it’s an interesting way of looking at what would have otherwise been a typical story about considering the outcomes of your actions.

Sadamoto has a way of depicting teenagers that’s extremely different from any other artist out there. They’re young characters, but there’s a hard-edged adult nature to them, which I think comes through in his angular style and somewhat lanky character designs. The characters in here are also very plain looking. Well designed mind you, just very down to earth, which suits the stories well. Sadamoto similarly does a good job depicting both rich urban and rural Japanese settings, which inch their way into panels as needed, and are gracefully left out when not. This use and lack there of creates a good variety of moods for each set of panels that complements Takaha’s dark narratives.

One thing I love about manga is that it’s a great medium to tell visual stories that probably wouldn’t get the kind of funding needed for any sort of anime production. Dirty Work and System of Romance are both great stories that make wonderful use of their medium, and deliver something not usually seen in a lot of mainstream works–be it anime, movies or visual novels. This brand of gritty realism matched with youth drama is not something we often see come out of otaku media, and because of that both of these stories are quite refreshing, and I hold them as all time favourites.

So please, someone, translate Archaic Smile.

One of the many things that divides old fans from the new is a preference towards either older cel animation or newer digital animation. Older fans will argue that digital animation is dull and bland, while newer fans will argue that cel animation is dirty and clumsy. Me being someone who isn’t a close-minded motherfucker can enjoy both of them, and can see the advantages and disadvantages between the two media.

Considering it’s the older medium, a majority of the anime that exists in this world has been painted onto cels. If I had to pick any one aspect of cel animation that I think makes it stand out, it would be its texture. What defines the look of cel animation is the obvious marks of traditional instruments, an element of noise that comes through in the filming process, and striking fully painted colour palettes. All of these factors (and more) come together to create a look that’s very rich and bold. When it has money behind it, anything cel animated just looks impressive, simply because it’s obvious a lot of work went into it. Cel animation isn’t easy. Just the process of photocopying the lineart to the cels, then laying down the various layers of paint for the base colours and shadows is an extremely painstaking process, especially when you’re going all out with five layers of shading. But, when all that’s done well, it simply looks amazing.

That said, considering the budget and time constraints placed on most outfits that make Japanese animation, a decent number of cel-animated productions with TV budgets behind them don’t look spectacular. Sure, the not-quite-perfect look to older shows from the 70s, 80s and 90s can be charming, but it’s really difficult to make something that looks good cheaply. That doesn’t stop a lot of cel-animated TV series from looking fantastic, but bad cel animated shows simply look really bad. Also, cels are just really expensive.

At the turn of the century, most anime production companies switched over to digital means to produce anime. I think now every anime–even Sazae-san–is produced digitally. The best part about digital animation is that you can make things look good a lot easier and for a lot cheaper than you can with cel animation. A lot of the time consuming work of cel animation–the photocopying, the painting, the filming–is all streamlined with the use of animation programs. It’s also much easier to pull off special effects and complex lighting situations. You can apply all manner of effects to your cartoon and make it look nicer all with the push of a button. Things that once took hours of work now take no longer than a few minutes, and can be executed at a fraction of the cost. As a result, I think a lot of beautiful looking shows have come about due the convenient nature of digital animation.

This ease and cheapness of production can however be quite negative. If you look at a lot of early digital productions (and heck, a lot of current ones) a lot of them look cheap. I think this mostly has to do with the digital colour palette. You can doll up your cut of animation with as many layers of shading as you want (perhaps even all five) but it’ll still going to look like crap if your colours suck. What it comes down to is that the base colours on your computer’s colour picker simply don’t have the depth of a Gouache painted cel that is later photographed to film. As such animators have to put a bit more thought into the colours they use to create something more natural looking and less sterile. This issue of cheapness also shines through in simple digital shortcuts used to cut down on production costs even further. Of course, some studios can do this with style, but most can’t.

While I didn’t go as in-depth as I thought I would (words for this post were coming to me a lot easier two weeks ago than they are now), this more or less outlines what I think about both digital and cel animation. They’re both wonderful media, and a lot of beautiful productions have come about from both of them. At the same time there’s been a lot of duds, too. If I had to choose one I liked better, I’d have to side with cel animation due to its tactile nature, and simple nostalgia value. That said, I love what a lot of the more talented studios out there do with the digital medium, and think a lot of digitally produced shows are great looking, too.