Comic Site Rant: “How miserable, to live a life without eggs”
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.
I’ve registered for Anime Boston, finally. I won’t have an art table or anything, but if any readers are up for a meet up, we could certainly arrange one in the comment sections of various blog posts in the coming months. Drop a message if you’re interested. According to Google Analytics, I get something like 100 visits from Boston, so I’m expecting at least some people…!
Started on They Are My Noble Masters since a friend of mine kept telling me to watch it. It’s all well and good, but it doesn’t really leave much of an impression. It suffers more than a lot of the eroge adaptations I’ve seen in their conversion to TV anime, since it really does feel like a porno without the porn. The general raunchy tone of show is fun and all, but it’s all one giant cocktease, more so than your average fanservice fare. There are some wacky anime references thrown in here and there for good measure. While they’re funny, they really just come off as an afterthought. I’ll probably see it through to the end, though. It has Yuko Gotou playing a sexy loli, after all.
I figure I may as well say something about Mnemosyne, since it seems slightly high profile and shit. Yeah, it’s fine. Nothing mind blowing. It delivers good action and a serviceable plot along with slick visuals (that are unfortunately marred by shitty encodes) but it doesn’t hit me on any level deeper than LOL ACTION, which I guess is as deep as it wants to dig, so that’s fine. If it ever came out on domestic DVD, I’d at least rent it for the visuals.
Half-way through Today in Class 5-2, and I’m wondering where this show has been all my life. Cohara Sakuraba is a genius. I should really track down the original comics for 5-2 and Minami-ke.
That’s all for this week. I’m out.
I wrote a little paper about moe awhile ago. It’s there on my website link if you’d care to see. It’s kinda ramble-y and skewed for people who don’t know word one about Japan, but it’s not boring, at least.
The Lupin outfit and Shinbo/SHAFT reference are great. Joke is fun, too. I love how proud Rets looks handing in the paper.
un-proud I mean
Is it bad that that suit makes me think more of Nabeshin than Lupin these days? ^^;
So, Anime World Order or Mike Toole’s reveiw of Kannon?
Give me some eggs…
You know I’ve never written a paper on Otaku in specific or moe, but I did submit a paper about how my being such a fucking nerd in general (Star Wars, Games, Anime) has crippled my studies and person life. Got accepted at both BTW.
Whoops forgot the context. I submited it to two colleges.
The choice of clothes and words are great. Yeah Ret’s facial expression when the teacher asks him if he is absolutely sure that it is not pedophilia and his eyes glance away. Also it is a win because you said this is based on a paper you yourself wrote wildarmsheero. The clothes are like a Lupin because if they were Nabeshin’s they would be red and no other color lol. Anyways excellent work this week wildarm.
I know that moe isn’t alway paedophilia (I’m a NZer hence the ‘a’), and vice versa… its more of an interest/appeal, lol.
Anime Boston eh… Well, I’ll be visiting there spiritually since theres no way I ca get there from NZ without missing a lot of school. :D
The “zomg MOE = PEDO” crowd really kinda confuse me. I have to wonder if there’s some kind of subconscious fixation going on there. I can’t deny that some of the things we tend to identify as moe have a subtle (or not so subtle) sexual undertone… but others really aren’t sexual at all: I’m pretty sure Azuma Kiyohiko didn’t create Chiyo-chan as fap material. (Yes, I know there are people who fap to her. I’m just sayin’ that probably wasn’t the intent…)
By the way, a lot of the people I’ve known who get most upset over the moe aesthetic are HUGE fans of child beauty pageants. If that’s not sexualizing a minor, I don’t know what is… and frankly, they creep me out.
All the today in class 5-2 manga is out there for the taking, but only the first volume of Minami-Ke plus a few extra chapters are out there. And I’m telling you man, Ryofuko-chan is filled with some great loli fan-service and even has a gay guy that looks like the bench guy!
Kyou no go no ni is godly. I still laugh out loud every time I see that scene where they are trapped in the little thing to store gym class props.
Oh god, I did the same thing. Years back, I wrote a paper on the subject of otaku. I will always hate myself for it…
IB? That’s my anti-sleep.
I’ve gotta write that extended essay this year, but they recently (this year) made the topics much more stringent. You can’t write about whatever you want now, only things that relate to your higher level courses.
So I can’t write about moe because I’m not taking IB Otaku HL.
>>TheBigGSN5
Yeah. I read it, actually.
>>digitalboy
Shaft? I didn’t mean to make any direct references, but I guess it goes to show you how much they’ve influenced me.
>>DiGiKerot
Probably unavoidable. I’d wager that Nabeshin is more known than Lupin among English-speaking fans.
>>ConanSan
AWO, mostly. Toole’s review was just like “I don’t like it because I don’t like it”
>>BrendantheJedi
‘grats
>>Guhruht
Haha, they probably changed it to be like that after they read my essay and gave it a D.
>>everyone else
Yeah, moe isn’t really exclusively pedo shit, but if you try to explain it to a normal person, it sure comes off as such!
I just watched they are my noble master ep.1-5. It’s horrible. So Here is my contribution to the Otaku sociaty.
http://rapidshare.com/files/93423805/Aruji_ep1-5.zip.html
This is screenshots of all the ecchi moments I’ve found in the first 5 eps + a small video of a girl moaning. With this, there is actually no reason at all to actually watch the show.
Well maybe you should do a comic on Macross Frontier? They released a pilot episode in late December and it got a lot of the mecha community psyched.
“Yeah. I read it, actually.”-Much obliged.
“I’d wager that Nabeshin is more known than Lupin among English-speaking fans.”-Funny when homages or ripoffs are better known than the originals. Obviously Nabeshin is the former, of course.
“Yeah, moe isn’t really exclusively pedo shit, but if you try to explain it to a normal person, it sure comes off as such!”-Yeah, it’s a wonder anything moe-esque has been released in the USA. Even a remarkably clean series like Azumanga Daioh has probably spawned a “Why are you buying this DVD with a little girl on it?” question or two.
The first time I tried submitting this comment, it didn’t show up (the spam filter probably got it). So I tried submitting it a second time, and it got caught again. So I’m hoping it shows up this time.
You were in IB? I’m in my junior year of IB right now.
When I was in the 7th grade, we had to do this thing called the Clay Writes, and it was basically a standardized essay test thing. I wrote mine on J-Rock. I think I actually got a 5/6 on it.
>>Drew
Haven’t watched the new Macross yet. I haven’t really seen much of Macross at all, to be honest. I saw some episodes of Zero a long while back, but that’s it. Before I dive any further into the franchise, I at least want to watch Do You Remember Love?
>>FatHobbit
Yeh, filter caught your comments. Sorry :(
Let me know via email if you still need the Class 5-2 manga, I have the complete manga (scanslated).
Haven’t watched the new Macross yet. I haven’t really seen much of Macross at all, to be honest. I saw some episodes of Zero a long while back, but that’s it. Before I dive any further into the franchise, I at least want to watch Do You Remember Love?
Well then this should be good news. The people in charge of Frontier realized that many people in the current market probably haven’t seen Macross (or DYRL) or Macross 7. So they made sure those weren’t prerequisites. The only thing you would be missing out on are the bonus references and easter eggs.
I’m keenly aware. However, see, I’m crazy. I just need to see how this thing originally panned out before watching one of the many spinoffs. It’s like watching Gundam 00 without having seen Mobile Suit Gundam. But, in this case, it seems Macross F is actually good, unlike the pile of horse droppings that is Gundam 00.
We don’t know whether F will be good yet, though based on the 1st episode it’s pretty likely. 00 isn’t TOO bad. The recent episode were pretty good, though most everything before them was shit. If we’re lucky then the rest of the season will continue to improve.
If your looking for a good deal on the original Macross then I kindly point you towards the Robotech site. There offering the original MAcross series for 40$, but it’s subs only. Course it has better extras than the ADV release.
Sub only is fine, since I only watch anime in Japanese. Don’t really have any money at the moment, yet, but I’ll keep that in mind.
Lol, I thought exactly the same about clothes professor of English
and respect the letter of”MOE” I believe that anyone Not-otaku would think the same about that brotherly love =P