Kaze Tachinu is Miyazaki's criticism against resurgent Japanese nationalistic past.

Kaze Tachinu, latest movie from maestro, Hayao Miyazaki has generated controversy for lack of cuteness and very somber tone - in fact some people felt it is a veiled criticism of current Japanese crawl back to nationalism that cost the nation so dearly in World War 2. In fact some quarters in Japan hit back at the film maker, asking him to stay away from politics.

"Right after you see the first successful Zero flight there's a scene where the ground is littered with smashed planes, which is his message right there." - a poignant statement to me.

I haven't watch the movie yet but this views have gave me a lot of pause for thought and needless to say, makes me more intrigued about it than ever.

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Toyota and Evangelion? Ah.

Evergreen and genre changing Evangelion now used to promote Toyota Prius hybrid. Marketing, marketing, Toyota is banging on the fact that most anime fans of the 90s will form biggest purchasing power and they intend to capture this. First promoting their products with Miku now this.

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Anime in real girl....(shivers)

I cannot brain this. Good reason why reality and anime should not mix. Ouch.

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Japanese sport, Baotashi

Seen this few times in anime, now this vid will shed some light what the hell is it all about.

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Miyazaki talk with R.Kelts at UC Berkeley 2009

Still cranky after this years, the old man hasn't lose much of his spirit. Hee. Kelts wrote for Japanese newspaper on pop culture, specifically anime scenes nowadays.

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School Uniforms from various popular animes

Some of the uniforms here are ridiculously designed. And none of the female uniform have pants. LOL. Perhaps the most normal is Detective Conan.

Merry Xmas to all by the way.

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Bill 156. What does it mean?

Someone asked what does the bill mean. This is what I understand so far.

Well for starters, DPJ has agreed to support the bill that specifically aimed to tackle the perceived otaku social issues. Why DPJ counts? Because they still have clout in political Japan and if they willing to support any Bill, it most probably will pass the voting. The formal process to stamp the Bill to be in effect is on Wednesday. The one who proposed this Bill is Tokyo Metropolitan Government which led by notorious right winger Governor Ishihara.

Stuffs like underage characters in explicit situations, yaoi or yuri stories or anything that is seemed to impede desirable youth development in Japan by suggestive content that glorifies anti social stuff. Problem is the Bill is very subjective and almost everything under the sun can be censored or banned. It is so easy to abuse this interpretation: "unjustifiably glorify or exaggerate" certain sexual or pseudo sexual acts". The word "pseudo" is giving me heebie jeebies. What does it qualify as "pseudo" then? (slaps head in confusion)

This one too: “rape and other sexual acts which violate societal norms”. Fine, rape is bad. But "other sexual acts?" Another big hole here.

What is more intriguing that this law is very specific on anime, manga and games. Why they do not examine films, tv series or novels especially those from "pinku genre"? Some otakus are enraged by this very specific targeting by lawmakers.

What does it mean for anime fans around the world?

Well beginning next year June or even earlier, no more panty shots, no more hot springs scene, no more beach scenes, no more stumbling into female changing clothes scene, no more males or females engage in intimate behaviour and possibly most interesting is no more school life scenes. There is even reports of publishers already banning depictions of school uniform in light of the Bill. Pretty extreme.

The famous Japanese school girl phenomenon will probably die with the wider adoption of this Bill.

Some titles like popular Love-Ru or School Days might be banned, needless to say stuffs like Sekirei or Rosario might in danger of being cancelled too. Seinen stuff like Index or ToraDora! might not survive this Bill too. Even mega popular stories like Evangelion or Fate/Stay Night could be in hot soup too.

Maybe games like Love Plus or those countless eroge VN will be in trouble since they emphasize a lot on romantic encounter with school girls.

Another scenario is there will be less anime or manga output since most of them will be branded adult which means higher cost of production since market is smaller for them. Less anime content in Japan, even lesser for rest of the world. Less anime means less stuff for subbers to translate too. So every anime fans around the world, legit or not, will suffer from this law.

No more glorious years of 2002-2006. Or even worse, anime stories will be more stale since it is gonna be so kosher/clean.

Am I too pessimistic?

I don't know but looking at the wordings of the Bill 156 certainly very open to interpretation. The word "pseudo" is very worrying and too convenient for anyone to ban any works without much examination. Not helping when anime/manga industry in Japan is declining and now have to face this bizzare law that further squeeze their market from usual demographic.

I will be hard pressed to see how any mangaka or animators going to make a living with this law in force soon. Not surprising when 10 major manga publisher companies decided to withdraw support from Tokyo Anime Fair 2010 which is chaired by Ishihara.

Dark days indeed for anime and manga.

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Mangakas gave middle finger to pirates / "fans"

Few days ago, an irate mangaka of Black Butler / 黒執事 (Yana Taboso) posted a scathing entry on her blog when she literally pissed off by smug pirates / "fans" who wrote to her on how good her work is but paid zero for it. Her entry is pretty dramatic, along lines of "It is not okay to starve me to death while you enjoy my manga for free!". She literally blew her top, I guess she must have a bad day.

Recently, Rei Horie who is famous for his love of gun toting babes and outlandish action wishes a certain someone who posted Black Lagoon manga chapters in single zip to have some kinda form of cancer on his Twitter which followed on by another famous mangaka Kouta Hirano (Hellsing); he wishes it will be more than just "normal cancer", he wishes a disease so rare that the uploader will be inflicted by it so can be recorded in medical posterity.

All these are signs of creators are fed up and if situation did not improve anytime soon, they might just give up doing it one day. That time, it is lose-lose for everyone. Sometimes I wonder what kinda idiot "fans" who wrote to this mangakas and rub it into their face that they are not paying for their work. If you pirating the works, the last thing you want to do is inform the creators about it, right? Anyway, I do not condone the piracy but the ballsy "fans" truly amazes me with their blatant rudeness.

I believed the solution is adopt the medium on how this mangas to be distributed to the fans; by using Internet more pro-actively. So far the big guns of the manga industry seems to be leery to adapt it. The publishing companies were making fat profits by adding cost and royalty on the product, make it impossible for average fan to buy the originals in sustainable exchange. Perhaps traditional book bound manga is not way to go? Afterall with advent of I-pad, Kindle or e-readers nowadays, they should really seriously look on it to make the hobby affordable in long run for fans.

Fans too have to play a part by buy the originals so the mangakas will be continue their work instead of zero sum game which currently prevailing right now. Mangas took time and effort to be made, a financial compensation is rightly theirs to take. To be continuously take their work and not paying it is a tantamount of stealing no matter how you dress it, the bottomline is still the same.

Things don't have to end up like this, it can be better for fans and creators.

Cheers.

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Manga publishers missing the boat

Guess what, a coalition of publishers in USA and Japan decided enough is enough, they going after manga scan sites such as Mangafox and many, many others. Most of them are based in China or Taiwan (heh not surprised at all) but what is different this time that they also targeting English scanlastion sites too. Woo....scary! To me, it sounds like Japanese manga industry is desperate to pin blame on anything,anyone but themselves in current malaise of manga industry in Japan. Same goes for the US people.

They sound pretty serious in smashing the pirate sites that make mockery of their investments by providing mangas FOC using the Internet as the medium. Sounds familiar? Napster, if anyone remembers. What exasperated me here is these people of the industry seem to be so anti-Internet. Instead learning to use it as a tool of making money, they keep trying to destroy it which it is utterly stupid and wasteful. Why bucking against inevitable juggernaut of civilization? Is their vision so short sighted that they fail to see that using Internet can actually help they make money?

As more and more young generations of manga fans raised on cyberspace and Internet, their preference for information gathering has changed remarkably too. They prefer e-stuff more than tangible, traditional book stuff. Where is the marketers have been looking at all these years? Are they even listening? Their expertise are made of fail so far from what I can see. Many people snorted that books are better but technology has catch up pretty fast and stuff like I-pad or Kindle provided quite comfortable reading experience for users. Things are catching up and old books will be consigned to same place that now houses papyrus scrolls, rocks etc soon, ie: they're history!

Vested interest especially those middle people who made fat money also don't like this new method of delivery. It is no small wonder that they were the most vocal and angriest bunch of people when comes to this oh so delicate issue. After all, they don't give a damn about the fact books cost paper which means trees will be chopped off to feed their business model.

Just offer a chapter of manga at affordable cost like .99 cents or 1-2 bucks and I can be sure that will be a majority of fans do not mind to pay for it. Pay attention to Itunes for example. The latest trend is people are reading mangas from handphones or Ipads. Create some technology or invest in something that make payments easy. Also develop some sort of technology that make the chapters can be downloaded from buyer's HDD 3-4 times before it becomes locked. Or offer the chapters for free but make sure that users click on some ads before they can read it. Anything but try to force manga fans to buy books. Some people don't like the idea of buying volumes of manga that will take up space in their room or house etc (for example, Ranma has 38 freaking volumes!). I balked at the thought that I have to allocate more space in my room for manga housing since space is a precious commodity in living especially in city. Having electronic copy is great boost in space management, honestly. Not every manga fan can afford a big room to host big collection of mangas.

Have these so called captains of industry think of that? Guess not.

My prediction as soon this current storm blow over, the pirates will be up again, offering illegal manga chapters for free at expense of hardworking mangakas. Back to square one. The more you try to grasp it in iron grip, the more it will slip away. Just like water. Pfft!

Sorry about the rant. I just totally disgusted about this.

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Wall Street Journal Discussion on State of Anime Industry now

Basically this article talks about poor state of animation industry workers and struggling economy as pointed earlier in this blog. Osamu Tezuka pioneering work in anime also brings in the concept of cheap pay for mass production of anime, this is recent result of his vision.

The more detailed link from WSJ.

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A real guy marries a girl from some game...WHAT?

Oh humanity! What kinda retarded shit is this?



And Japan was wondering why they are running out of kids now. Basically this dude goes by pseudo name of SAL 9000 marries this character from some game. The rest I leave it to the video to elaborate further.

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Church of Nerv? What?

I never thought of this. Honestly. They even have the logo from old series as their emblem?

I am amused by this....

Hmmmm,

Despite the predicted horrific sales prospect for Haruhi S2 DVD/BD sales because of much maligned Endless Eight arc, it did pretty well. The 2nd disc of Endless Eight arc sold close to 12,900 (benchmark is 3000) copies showing that Kyoto Animation magic still held true with massive support from loyal Haruhi fans. First volume of the arc sold about 14,000 copies, much to surprise of many people.Many pundits said that the other remaining volumes of the arc will breach the 10,000 mark each based on this example but it remains to be seen. Seriously, this did not make sense to me at all. The only thing I can think of is moe-tardism: The fans were so enraptured by the moe factor that they willing forgive almost everything, even with such massive trolling by the studio. I cannot imagine any other normal series can pull this off without incurring any wrath from fans. What I fear now that in future anime studios will churn out more craps because they believe the fans will lap it up despite angry reactions from the public. As long it have enough moe and nicely packaged to appeal to more baser instinct.

Like my friend said it once, market forces do not apply to otakus. By the way, the Haruhi movie is scheduled for 6th of Feb 2010, but it is subject to change.

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Hatsune Miku the singing robot

Hatsune Miku, the famous virtual idol that took the world by storm now featured in this video as singing robot. Pretty freaky if you ask me, to be honest. This is another video of her development history from her makers.

What's next? Saber?

Fancy a Masters in Anime and Manga?

Kyoto Seika University (KSU) established bachelor's program in manga & animation and became the first real, accredited university in the world to do so in 2006. Now, KSU has upgraded its manga & animation program to the graduate level. Starting in 2010, you can earn not only a bachelor's degree but also master's degree in manga and/or animation.

KSU's "Faculty of Manga" department consists of cartoon art, comic art (story manga), manga production, and animation. Professional manga artists, anime creators, producers and editors from industry teach those courses. A legendary shoujo manga expert Keiko Takemiya (Fly Me to the Moon, To Terra..., Kaze to Ki no Uta) is one of the professors.

However, all the classes are taught in Japanese so international applicants must pass Level 1 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test for admission.

It means the applicant must have studied the language more than 900 hours, mastered 2.000 kanji characters and 10,000 vocabulary words, and is able to discuss manga & anime in Japanese. Ouch.

English homepage of KSU

LDP anime political ad, part 2

Taro Aso is counting on anime softpower to stave off defeat in upcoming election this end of August. This is part 2, showing the opposition leader promising impossible stuff to customers with unrealistic manifestos.

Does it work? No idea. But Taro Aso future as Premier of Japan looks pretty gloomy.

Chinese anime music video; Super VC.

MV version



Story version

Pretty interesting music vid from Chinese rocker band Super VC. All latest Chinese military hardware is on show here and it is very patriotic. Top notch animation too. So yeah, Chinese hate Japanese but still consume the cultural memes from Land of Rising Sun. Heh.

Cheers.

Tokyo 2016 Olympic Captain Tsubasa

The man who responsible for Captain Tsubasa series, Yoichi Takahashi, launched few illustrations to bolster Tokyo's bid to host 2016 Olympics. Reportedly the series inspired a lot of current superstars of soccer such as Torres, Del Piero and Totti. Tokyo Olympic bidders, learning a cue or two from Taro Aso's softpower concept and diplomacy hoped to inspire local youths to support their bid for 2016 Games.

Source

Soft Power Discussion no 7: The End of Rozen Aso?

With impending fall of Premier Taro Aso, his stimulus program for Japanese softpower which including establishment of pop art center/"anime palace" that will showcase manga and anime is now very much in doubt. DPJ, opposition party already mounting offensive on Taro Aso's plan to strengthen Japanese softpower (164 billion USD right now), citing it is non sustainable and export reliance will not guarantee Japanese economy revival. DPJ argued for trimming budget and more cuts on domestic front to ease the fiscal pressure instead of Keynesian economics practiced by Taro Aso.



Taro Aso popularity slid into red zone prompting his own party seniors to ask him step down to prevent LDP complete defeat in upcoming snap election scheduled on August 2009. His approval rating is 18.6 percent, polled on 15th July 2009 by local media which pretty much nailed the end of his era as Japanese premiership.

Even domestic anime industry did not really embrace Aso's vision and setting up of anime palace plan (called National Center for Media Arts), citing it has no real goal and inadequate budget to help the ailing industry in meaningful manner. Some even feared possible censorship from the proposed body, stomping on freedom of expression.

Only a miracle can save his doomed government.

The analysis of manga market in USA

This paper outlines the historical development of the US manga (Japanese comics) industry from the 1980s through the present in order to address the question why foreign cultural products become popular in offshore markets in spite of cultural difference. This paper focuses on local publishers as “gatekeepers” in the introduction of foreign culture. Using complete data on manga titles published in the US market from 1980 to 2006 (n=1,058), this paper shows what kinds of manga have been translated, published, and distributed for over twenty years and how the competition between the two market leaders, Viz and Tokyopop, created the rapid market growth. ......

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