アニ・ノート

Seen at ANN:

Bandai Visual USA President Tatsunori Konno has updated his blog after his company announced the delay of Shigofumi: Letters from the Departed, true tears, and sola. He notes that the move is part of a larger strategic shift that affects Bandai Visual in both Japan and the United States. Both regional arms of Bandai Visual “are now rushing to reschedule all future releases, focusing on Blu-ray” for both new and old titles. Konno emphasizes, “It does not mean we will not release any standard DVDs at all, but we will concentrate on expanding our Blu-ray catalog.” The company plans to reschedule the three delayed titles, but not before summer.

I was afraid they’d bump off the sane part of the family, Bandai Entertainment, but apparently it worked out differently, which is a relief. Too bad for delayed release though. They may still hope to strangle the sane Bandai subsidiary gradually as BD takes over the DVD…

UPDATE: Astro observes:

They’re an awfully young company to be re-inventing themselves.

Ouch. But it’s understanable:

Now I’m sitting on three different pre-orders (5cm, NHK, and Shigofumi) with no expected date in sight. Sheesh. I’m never going to order an in-progress series again.

You said it, brother. I saw Gurren-Lagann DVD v.1 on Amazon today, and very nearly bought it. But then I thought: “let’s wait, see how it goes…”

Looks like he liked it:

Jubei-chan is a very Daichi-y anime. It has some spunky characters that get into slightly absurd comic situations (his sense of timing also greatly heightens the absurdity) with occasional flashes of serious business and occasional flashes of absurdist comedy during the serious business. The show then applies this template to a sort of magical girl-y, fighting series-y template, so you have some spunky characters that get into slightly absurd comic situations with occasional flashes of serious business and occasional flashes of absurdist comedy during the serious business and then a 30 second fight scene because that’s all the time that’s left in the episode.

Indeed. Also:

Hell, now that I think about it, he’s one of the few anime TV directors that I can name. They’re usually that nondescript, but for some reason I just keep forgetting about one of the few that isn’t.

Ohh, the realization of sameness. This brings the memories of Mikaze saying “onaji” to White Tiger, unfortunately it’s J2, not Jubei-chan, so I cannot use it yet. But yes… The only director I know is Shinbo, and only because of his “supervision” of ef. I cannot even name the director of Azumanga, for shame! The late Mr. Wada was the director of animation, but the series director…?

Actually this post is not about Ani-nouto in the same way Damien’s post is about the technicalities of Moe Check. Instead, I just want to make a play on a play on a meme, in a post about a different but related meme: Kyonko. There is also a second play: everyone knows about Kyonko by now, so this post is redundant. In fact, the whole site is.

Nonetheless, here’s picture he posted (Kyonko on the left, Itsuko on the right):

Too bad there’s no Miss Taniguchi.

I am not amused by the sex swap per se, primarily because I think Ranma squeezed that particular lemon dry back in the 80s. But the layers upon layers of memezation, and the unexpected strength of Lucky Star as a recognizeable symbol are amusing to me.

P.S. Truth to be told, Kyonko does play some angles on the swap which Ranma didn’t. Specifically, the favourite joke of Kyonko is how all the relationships and actions become ridiculous after the swap, e.g. Mr. Yuki Nagato inviting Kyonko to his room late in the evening. It’s the schtick advocates of colorblind society enjoy a lot, and it never gets old. So, Kyonko is not completely redundant, unlike Ani-nouto.

UPDATE: Daniel of Animanachronism (in comments elsewhere, rascal):

Kyonko is indeed moe. I’ve been wondering about this myself. The original Kyon wasn’t moe, but he had a compelling personality (a good thing too, since the whole show’s filtered through his experience), so I thought maybe part of Kyonko’s attraction is the tantalising idea that she’s a witty and sarcastic girl with whom we’re almost familiar.

I’m wondering. Koyomi Mizuhara was certainly compelling… Then, we had Kagamin. But coincidentially, both were defined by a oppositional relationship. Would such a character stand alone?

Quite a few people got their panties in a wad over the Crunchyroll last week; the industry-leaning inhabitants of AoD forums especially were bubbling. I didn’t cover the PR condemnations by Funi et.al. because I assumed everyone knew about it anyway, and it would play itsef out in time. Also, the site was years old (a blogger wrote that his japanese teacher suggested to look at Crunchyroll). And guess what, the story is playing itself. J.P. sez:

So I’m kind of confused about what to think about this whole Crunchyroll development. At first, I thought “Oh noes! They’re getting venture capital to use on making money off of other people’s work!” Of course, then I realized “Wait, Nico Nico serves ads too.” Then, when Gonzo announced that they would partner with them to release some shows, I was excited since maybe now the industry will be able to lurch towards some kind of speedy internet delivery for its content.

Indeed. And:

Even commercials in the streams aren’t so bad. When I watched an episode of Bubblegum Crisis on AOL’s streaming service, there would be one 15 second, unskippable commercial every 10 minutes. That’s a lot better than even broadcast TV gives. The problem there, however is that it is often pointless with international viewers. […]

I expect this to be something the magic of geolocation can fix. If BOST adjust their content for regions today, surely splicing ads into a video should not be too difficult? Granted, dorks who wrote the ADV’s website managed to fail this task and so I their video stream terminates for me on the ad boundary. But I hope, perhaps irrationally, that it’s nothing more than imminently fixable incompetence.

Also, same place:

After reading these reports, I actually went to Crunchyroll for the first time in probably a year. I was actually surprised by how much unlicensed anime was on there. There was the occasional Naruto or Bleach, which is always eye-rolling, along with a few currently-airing titles like Erosario + Vampire and Clannad, but the majority of the titles for the 100 or so pages that I looked through were really old titles that would in all likelihood never be licensed. I’m talking titles like Marvelous Melmo, which was a sex ed instructional series produced by Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka, if you didn’t know, was a licensed medical doctor with a Ph.D. in biology.

I didn’t know.

Seen at Avatar’s:

More Fate in the future, to be followed by the newly-translated Unlimited Blade Works (Rin route, basically.) And to hear tell, the third path, Heaven’s Feel (Sakura route, dark x e^100) should be finished soon too. I tried to convince Author to try it out, but it seems he won’t run it if it won’t run under Linux. Definitely a mistake, I think - if you like the concept of visual novels as a format, you owe it to yourself to at least look at the best examples thereof.

So this is what “UBW” is, good to know.

About the “best examples”, I’m not quite sure it works that way. Since I do not like manga, and VN is nothing but colored manga which I cannot read at my own pace or away from a PC… I don’t think the “best examples” of the medium are going to do anything. I’m not disparaging VN, but, like Hollywood movies, it’s just not something I like on the whole. I can take this comparison even further and say that the same movies have “best examples”, such as Jackson’s LoTR.

P.S. Blogging about Fate, it’s impossible not to notice that the fandom is heavily game influenced. The coverage at Beta-Waffle is typical: 90% game, 5% anime. And you know, I am just not into it. I come from the outside, appreciate the anime, ignore the game. If you’re not interested, read DiGiKerot.

P.P.S. Rin is hot, Evirus is right. But you know, Saber is hot too, in her tragic way. I still cannot decide who is better.

UPDATE: DiGiKerot writes to correct the record:

Regarding your comment that Fate coverage on blogs is 90% game, 5% anime, I’m not sure that’s quite right - it’s more 90% figures (largely being format-neutral), 3% game and 1% anime. Seriously, it’s one of the most heavily merchandised shows outside of Evangelion., and the number of figure releases is pretty incredible.

For the record, I actually rather liked anime version of F/SN - I thought it was all pretty well handled all round - it’s just that by the time I watched it I didn’t really have anything to say about it that hadn’t been said many, many times before elsewhere (I guess that’s what happens when you wait for the DVD release, but given that Geneon USA actually co-produced the show I figured I’d just wait for it). In any case, it faired better than the adaption of Type-Moons Tsukihime, which I enjoyed but had gaping plot-holes for anyone who hadn’t played the original VN.

Didn’t have anything to say? That’s humble. And I’m sure my impression of FSN was unoriginal. But when I started searching what people wrote about it, pickings were slim, unlike, for instance, ef (which owes to a game, so makes a fair comparison). It was all the game all the time for FSN.

Steven is trying to stir up trouble… And it may even work, I’m going to watch the comment section. Meanwhile, the thought to fisk the post and expose his massive ignorance has crossed my mind, but somehow it does not seem like fun. It would play like this:

What does [Naruto] give me that DBZ doesn’t give me better?

For one thing, when people are killed in Naruto, they stay dead.

Right… If I wanted this sort of thing, I’d be posting to forums instead of blogging.

Truth to be told, Naruto has lots and lots of problems for which any other series would get racked over coals, but since most of the critics (except Don et al) seem to concentrate on rubble-rousing (starting with Naruto’s attire), any discussion quickly degenerates and questions which need to be asked never get to be asked. OK, some people do ask, sometimes. I collect links and quotes and perpetually plan to address them at an undetermined future date, but somehow it never happens.

Wakaranai:

Because I like to be different, and I’ve had a long-held, almost superstitious aversion to the mecha genre, I’ve never really been keen on getting involved in the fandom of either of the two mecha giants, Gundam or Macross. In my ignorance, I dismissed both franchises as being a meaningless decoction of transforming robots and shouneness bred for the sole purpose of quenching the thirst of hordes of machine otaku. […]

This must the 10,000th post on the same theme, but what can you do? We all have to walk the same path.

I think I’m going to watch Macross F.

UPDATE: Animanachronism takes off the same post to compare and contrast:

[Unlike Gundam,] Macross has aliens, sentient computers and faster-than-light travel, and the franchise is closely identified with mecha that not only transform, but transform between three rather than two configurations.

I never bothered to give it a serious thought, because “everyone knows” how robots come in a great variety of magical power. According to the above, Macross is a kind of a middle ground, together with Vandread, perhaps. On the opposite side of Gundam are the likes of the galaxy-tossing Gurren-Lagann and RahXephon, who is not so crude, but turns into a god who can remake the world at will. So in a sense, the difference between Gundam and Macross is not unexpected. But it’s interesting.

Yomiuri (via Owen on IRC):

The nation’s four Internet provider organizations have agreed to forcibly cut the Internet connection of users found to repeatedly use Winny and other file-sharing programs to illegally copy gaming software and music, it was learned Friday.

Nice. But this is not all. Here’s the Japanese idea of due process:

The Internet provider organizations have, however, judged it possible to disconnect specific users from the Internet or cancel provider contracts with them if they are identified as particularly flagrant transgressors in cooperation with copyright-related organizations, according to sources.

…

According to the new agreement, copyright organizations would notify providers of Internet protocol addresses used by those who repeatedly make copies illegally, using special detection software. […]

So, basically, if Mr. Yamada works for RIAA(J), and Mrs. Tanaka refuses to have sex with him, he uses Sony’s spyware to look up her IP, enters it into the database and presto: instant leverage. Way to go, Japan.

It’s quite amazing that the idea of “Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers” and “Association of Copyright for Computer Software” being real criminals does not enter the Japanese mind. Instead they are concerned about… privacy. No, seriously:

Resorting to cutting off the Internet connection of copyright violators has been considered before but never resorted to over fears the practice might involve violations of privacy rights and the freedom of use of telecommunications.

Score one for America. Of course there’s this whole mass-filing by RIAA and bankrupting students thing that we have. But like I said, MPAA/RIAA are the real criminals. At least we realize that much.

It’s old, it’s mecha, and it kicks butt. Say what you want about Patlabor, but it certainly is entertaining [1]. It oozes with forgotten simplicity of purpose (or at least this is what I think so far).

BTW… I became so used to the cliches from the turn of the century that Clancy badly confuses me. She seems to have “evil” and “agenda” stamped on her forehead. The eyes, the askew glances, cold demeanor… I cannot believe that they are part of the character and not a stereotype. But apparently it’s only a coincidence.

Noa though? Earnest like Naruto.

[1] I’m watching the OAV (actually it was broadcast; some OAV, that).

Regarding the donation meter I added to the sidebar, here’s what Maestro has to say about the donation drive:

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The Cafepress thing was news for me. Apparently we have two detailed mascots now. Both are young girls, which I suppose is the perceived face of anime…