There is an interesting read that’s in last week’s (I think) ESPN the magazine on racism in soccer, specifically focusing on how racism has permeated throughout Italian soccer fandom. One interesting tidbit is a note on cultural conflict between Northern Italy and Southern Italy where as the article seems to put it, the north is very right-wing, traditional, and focused on preserving tradition, which somehow the south seems to threaten by being the “less wealthy” of the two, as well as the portion that has more immigrants migrate there. And there’s one specific right-wing political group, Lega Nord, mentioned whose goal is to have the North split from what they see as an “economically dependant” south. Which reminded me of Gunslinger Girl’s main antagonist faction The Five Republics Faction, and this article helped provide a lot  more sociopolitical context in the many factors that lead to the complicated setting of the series, as well as some of the motivations behind the characters especially in the last couple of volumes before the final one that’s recently come out.  Granted, all this information was available beforehand if you knew where to look, but I didn’t think that an article on sport would lead me to it though.  You never know, I guess.   I’d recommend reading the whole article even if you aren’t a fan of the show or of soccer, as its incisive writing regardless.

And now for something a lot less serious. From Aida Yuu’s twitter.

Ohikkoshi is an anthology of short stories from Blade of the Immortal‘s Hiroaki Samura.

Blade of the Immortal has always looked too violent for me, so I’ve never looked into it — though I can appreciate the artistic talent of the creator.

Ohikkoshi, published by Dark Horse, is a collection of three comic short stories set in the contemporary world.  The title story is about a collection of college-age ne’er do-wells drinking, forming bands, encountering Italian assassins, and missing connections when it comes to love.

Ohikkoshi’s concerts come complete with absurdist lyrics (one song, “Banana Spirit” is either a wonderfully absurd pun, or a mistake in translation for “Banana Split”) — probably the former, because a few pages before one of the characters is drunkenly musing about misheard oddities of the English language.  Nothing happens.  People live their lives, have little joys and little disappointments. I’d happily follow a series about the crew of nebbishes that populate Ohikkoshi.

The second major story, Luncheon of Tears Diary, is the story of a young manga-ka who makes the mistake of taking the advice of her lecherous editor.  The resulting changes in her popular series drive away her existing fans without attracting the fans the changes were aimed at.  Her popularity plummets, and her series is cancelled. Despondent, unemployed, she has a series of increasingly over-the-top misadventures, alternating between higher peaks and deeper lows, until she finally returns to manga, capturing her experiences in a prize-winning manga series.

The final story, Kyoto super barhopping journal — bloodbath at Midorogaike tells of a tour of Kyoto, guided by natives with a taste for good bars and haunted locations.

The comedy comes from good dialogue — one character is fond of teasing jokes (and good at them), violations of the fourth wall (at one point a manga editor tosses a manuscript aside saying, “It stinks — those historical samurai mangaka just can’t do comedy”).

Sometimes it’s nice to read manga that’s not about chuunibyou teens and their super-powered adventures. Reading this, it makes me wish Dark Horse would pick up Kei Toume’s Sing Yesterday for Me.

A recent Jason Thompson column about Yumekui Kenbun — Nightmare Inspector sent me off to the library. This is a delightful mild-horror series. The art is very nice (with some wonderful dream concepts). In the first three volumes, at least, I’d say the writing is stronger than that of xxxHoLic, in a similar genre. xxxHoLic makes better use of drifting smoke and textiles, Yumekui Kenbun is a little better at the fantastic, I think.

Hiroku is a baku — a dream-eater. He hangs out in the Silver Star Tea Shop (which basically destroys the shop’s business, as only people afflicted by nightmares go there). While at first the series seems pretty nightmare-of-the-week episodic, by the third volume we’re seeing links among some of the dreams and dreamers. After reading the first few volumes from the library, I’ve decided this is a series I want to add to my collection.

The dreams are simultaneously real and surreal. Hiroku is interested only in nightmares, and many of the dreams come to suitably nightmarish conclusions.  More than once, the people who seek out Hiroku’s help learn that they should be careful what they wish for. The series has a reasonable patina of pop-Freudianism: dreams are messages from the unconscious (sometimes, they are passive-aggressive messages).

We learn why Mizuki, the impoverished (and moe) tea-shop owner puts up with him in volume two.

Oh, yes, there’s another feature: this series is set in the Taisho Era. Taisho Baseball Girls (and a lot of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei‘s aesthetic) have given me a taste for the fashions of that time (if Senbonzakura turns into an OVA I’ll be thrilled, if uncertain about the political message).

(I’ll add a recommendation for Jason Thompson’s column — he’s introduced me to several manga series that I’ve enjoyed quite a lot.)

I came to Girls und Panzer very late and for an odd reason — the soundtrack amused me.  I’d written the series off as moe fluff (it is that), but something about the soundtrack on top of all the enthusiasm for the series prompted me to give it a try.  I started watching the series a week or so ago, and found myself plowing through all the episodes.

Between its production values and charm, it’s no wonder so many people rated the series so highly.  I’m sure it’s been talked to death.

But I want to express my appreciation for one thing the series does that’s rarely done so successfully: we see a brilliant tactician at work.  We see Miho being brilliant, we aren’t just told how brilliant she is.  We see her scanning the landscape through her binoculars, we see staring at her knees as she mentally tabulates her resources and the resources of her opponents. We see the flash of inspiration that leads to the audacious move that carries the day.

Anime (nor any other fiction) rarely pulls this off.  After all, it takes a bit of genius to show us the work of a genius (you can borrow some of that genius though: I suspect the military otaku have dissected each of Oarai High School’s battles and found possible inspirations in the history of tank warfare for Miho’s successful maneuvers).

Fortune favors the prepared.  We rarely see genius, even less often do we see the 99% perspiration that accompanies the 1% inspiration that makes up that genius.

We see it just a bit in Girls und Panzer as Miho spends a late night contemplating the forces tomorrow’s opponent will array against her.  We saw it as Marika in Bodacious Space Pirates struggled for sleepless days to hatch a plan to take on the shocking new opponent who had appeared and was destroying her fellow pirates.

One of the best renditions of the genius-by-sweat-equity was portrayed by the character Shinon in Starship Operators.  Throughout the series we see her strategic cunning at work. Then at the end of the series, when the odds looked hopeless, Shinon spends several days in the simulator, running battle plan after battle plan, looking for one that has a prayer of keeping them alive through the coming conflict.  She emerges with a plan that uses her ship in a completely unexpected way, and they live to fight another day.

(I guess we do see a lot of the “hard work and guts” school of winning the day through sheer determination and strength of will. I’m not talking about that, here.)

Girls und Panzer does this subtly and well.  It was a joy to watch.

In 2012 I watched about 30 or so series, OVA and movies related to anime, and while I thought that was a lot, according to this handy page, it barely scratched the surface. Time flies, work calls, and other stuff seemingly keeps coming around the bend in terms of this pastime. How I’ve watch anime  has changed by necessity, with my laptop currently on the road to brickdom and utilizing streaming to the fullest extent on my Kindle Fire. That being said, there’s been plenty of stuff that’s piqued my interest, but it’s been hard to write more substantially about them other than “WOWTHATWASCOOL“. I’ve tried to stay away from that sort of writing style because it felt to me like people wouldn’t get much out of that. And crazily enough, most of the time I try to write, I want whoever reads the finished product to get something out of it other than, “so that’s what TheBigN thinks”. It’s hard to get out of this way of thinking, though I should, especially since there’s fun stuff that happens over the year related to anime, both in the medium, and in the culture surrounding it (like the Otakon Music Festival. Fun times that). So I’ll try at least to shift the quips about anime I drop on Twitter and IRC onto here a little bit more. Whether or not that will be a good thing will be determined, I guess.

As always, I give a big thanks to dm00 for dropping his own bits of experience, excitement, and exposition to this endeavor. Thanks to the readers/glancers/etc. who stick around or follow this blood for our impressions.

It’s interesting to get to a point where the question “what else is there to say?” jumps around. I feel like there’s more to come than what’s been done so far here (although there’s been less and less as the years have gone, I think), so I’m hoping to never find out that answer.

Happy six year anniversary, DMAB.

Though I still like to think of DMAB as a blog of many hats. Picture by 腔子: http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=19196614

Slow, fast, faster: Sengoku Collection will ensnare even the most jaded.

If you are interested in Japanese history, you should check out The Samurai Archives, particularly if you are interested in the Sengoku era.

(Not so) Recently, they hosted Stevie Suan, talking not enough about his forthcoming book, The anime paradox, in which he examines anime through the lens of traditional Japanese theater.

Part one. This episode is mostly about the idea of viewing anime through the precepts of Japanese dramaturgy, in particular, the idea of Jo-ha-kyu, “beginning, break, rapid”, or “slow, fast, faster” — a fifteenth-century framework for Noh that has been inherited by kabuki, and plausibly applies to anime as well. Sadly, they just touch on the thesis and evidence for it, but they certainly make the book sound interesting (I haven’t looked to see if there is any discussion of the podcast in the Samurai Archives Forum). Stevie Suan sounds like he knows his anime, and is on to something in comparing anime to traditonal Japanese drama.

(Amusing aside: one of the podcasters, a military historian known for his disdain of anime, spends a bit of time marvelling at the way he’s been sucked into Sengoku Collection — and how Sengoku Collection illustrates part of Suan’s jo-ha-kyu framing.)

Part two. This episode is mostly about anime as a gateway drug for Japanese cultural studies, and the general trend in the humanities of cross-fertilization (e.g., 16th-century Japanese politics through the lens of modern political theory).

The book is forthcoming enough that Amazon doesn’t yet have it up for pre-order, but keep your eyes out for it.

And check out the Samurai Archives podcast. I spent many happy hours last year going through their archives. There’s some great stuff in there, especially if you’re interested in the Sengoku era.

Update: Here’s the publisher’s prospectus for the book. Eek, $133. Maybe a university library near you will get it.

So far, of the shows  I’ve watched so far this season (a list which slowly grows the more free time I have and the more interesting statements I hear about it from others), Kotoura-san two episodes in has been the one that’s grabbed me. It helped that I didn’t know anything about the show before hand, as a large part of it is the pathos that they try to induce by quickly dropping misery on the namesake character, and whether or not they’ve done too much with depends on the eyes of the beholder, I guess. While I can easily seem some moments in both episodes so far that could give me a feeling of “they’re trying too hard here” (in episode one, DAT CAT. In episode two, the lonely house as examples), I haven’t come out having that feeling as of yet.

The show’s been trying to advance the idea of  ”how someone with psychic powers is ostracized in today’s society” with the heavy dump life takes on Haruka in the first half of the show, as well as how it still affects her (and Yoriko) in episode two, and it’s been effective for me. In fact, I wish they could have been more visceral in some ways, such as actually showing Haruka’s emesis in episode two instead of a discretion shot. If it went that far however, I’d assume many people would be scared off by watching something that intense (might be too serious for something that’s supposed to be a romantic comedy). That being said, it’s hard not to notice that I’m trying to be played like a violin in order to care for Haruka as she comes out of her shell. And it’s pleasant for me that I know this and (so far) I don’t care about that.

So far, it’s hard for me to fault her. Picture by muneyuki: http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=32893426

One thing that I’ve noted in the past on this blog was the fact that while I don’t mind being emotionally manipulated to care, how it’s done is the important thing. My favorite personal example of how well it worked for me was with Mai-HiME  (to the point where I don’t care about how the ending worked), where I didn’t know how much I cared about the characters throughout their cooking contests, cosplay karaoke, and other hijinks until they were forced into the battle royale that drives the second half of the series. Or in Madoka Magica, where episode 10 was nicely executed in crystallizing Homura’s struggles regarding Madoka’s destiny to the audience. In a more recent example, being disappointed with the ALO arc of Sword Art Online, as there was a strong loss of the urgency and struggle to survive and thrive after the setting changed from the initial premise of the show.  A personal example of how a show doesn’t work for me was with the AIR anime, as I felt brow beaten into caring for Mizusu’s plight (“FEEL SORRY/HAPPY FOR HER, DAMMIT!!“) to the point where any impacts that came at the end came to me as incredibly muted and unsatisfying. Of course, one of the things about this concept is that while the aim is to touch as many people as possible in the right way, each viewer has their own personal preference with how subtle or strong a work has to press to get a genuine reaction. As a result, trying to get the right balance ends up being guesswork to the point where I feel that most shows don’t try to do this. Or maybe shows I watch fail so hard at doing so that I don’t even notice they’re trying to do it, I guess.

For a show like Kotoura-san that has its roots as a 4-koma comedy (which I didn’t know until after the fact), the attempt to go for our heartstrings with Haruka’s “crappy” life and her responses to it have so far hit me harder than most of these works with (karmically?) put upon characters. While what sets off her breakdown and decision to isolate herself from others in the first episode might have been silly ( She shouldn’t have cheated and spilled the beans to start it all off though), the execution wasn’t quite that silly (or maybe it’s just that I’m really bothered by that sort of thing.). The music choices (even the ending music after the shift in tone), the shots of Haruka’s devastated faces, and the choice of when to have her mind read/speak or not makes the moment either that much more powerful, which it did for me, or that much more off-putting depending on who you talk to. And during the fortune-telling confrontation in episode two,  Haruka’s response to Hiyori’s rude thoughts with vomiting was powerful, taking into account both the ostracization she experienced at her previous school as well as her knowledge of the latter’s thoughts regarding Manabe, so far the only person who’s paid interest to Haruka in a positive way)

It’s interesting to know that for some viewers, Haruka’s reaction and the resulting bullying coming from it made it seem to them as if Hiyori was deliberately attempting to invoke that type of physical reaction in the first place. The vomiting itself was an unplanned response,  and the mean trio like all bullies do took that moment outside of the norm and ran with it, but at that time we’ve been caught in that spell of manipulation. Which is why some of us can feel exultant when Manabe sticks up for Haruka, or why some of us can let Yoriko’s manipulation slide because she directly was affected by trauma to someone having psychic abilities in her past too. And while each of these elements have been done before, with probably better writing and execution, as long as we get hooked from the first go, it’s easier to disregard how well things are compared to how well they could have been. Trust  between the viewer and the show has been built, one might say.

I am a little worried that as Kotoura-san continues, that trust will be easily broken, and I’ll lose that quickly invested interest in the show and in Haruka. Partly because as the focus likely becomes more comedic, that emotional play won’t be put at the forefront any more (which can be a good thing, depending on how nicely done the rest of the show will be executed). And partly because of the chance that the emotional investment I’ve begun to have with this show could be decreased or destroyed if the writing doesn’t improve, the execution remains heavy-handed, or something else might make me feel that I’m being forced to care rather than naturally stepping into it. I don’t want to feel like I’ve been taken advantage of, even though others might already be feeling that way. If that does become the case though, I’m hoping for a good return of investment at least.

Triela armed for bear.

Well: that’s pretty conclusive.

There’s not a lot one can say about the sixth omnibus collection of Gunslinger Girl without bringing in spoilers, but I am going to try to avoid them.

This book is full of ghosts. You know it’s going to be grim by the time you get to page three.

Triela, whose self-awareness has always been a critical part of this series, has a couple of truly wonderful moments in conversation with Hilshire. The bumbling Hilshire (along with Petrushka’s Alessandro) has replaced Jose as the center of sanity among the fratelli. The choices that Hilshire and Jose make in this volume might not be the ones you have been expecting.

And damn, Alessandro (Petrushka’s fratello) is in full Sherlock mode. In a book that’s been nonstop action for 200 pages, I think it’s a brilliant move to have the climax come in the form of a drawn-out conversation.

Triela, Hilshire, Petrushka and Alessandro appear to be different replies to the stories of the characters who find themselves using others as tools. Some embrace that exploitation, some are torn with guilt as they see themselves doing it, some reject the exploitation at first, but then their focus returns to the ends they think justify their means.

The action is just a little confused — there are a lot of second-generation cyborgs in the action sequences, so there are a lot of new characters. There’s a lot of young people among the Padanian terrorists, too, so it’s sometimes hard to know who is who, especially when you add the new fratelli to the mix.

The book has many pages of “the world of Gunslinger Girl” — cultural notes about Italy.
Jason Thompson just mused on the topic of manga as travelogue in his column at ANN. It’s easy to see Aria as a tourist brochure, but surprisingly, maybe Gunslinger Girl is one, too.

There’s one more volume to go, even though there aren’t many loose ends left (and there are a surprising number of threads brought into play in this volume). I’m wondering if the next volume is going to be a “20 years later” sort of epilogue to the series.

The final volume of the series will be released in July. When it is, I expect to re-read the series from beginning to end.

Tom Harris has started an experiment picking an episode of Aria at random each Thursday and watching it.

Also discussed here.

Today: Season 2 episode 4.

There is always a hope of being wow’ed by something that comes up while watching anime. Something intriguing enough for me to actually post for the first time in months, I guess. :/

What caught my interest this time was the (I guess 1st, knowing how SHAFT does things) opening to Nekomonogatari covering the “Tsubasa Family” arc, one prequel to the story introduced in Bakemonogatari. By itself, the story of how Araragi gets to know my favorite character in the show, Tsubasa Hanekawa, as well as the anomaly that comes to inhabit her is intriguing enough as is for me. There wasn’t much necessary to pump me up for watching it (can’t wait for Kizumonogatari later on as well), but I was blown away by the opening to this adaptation: To preface though, I still have not watched the full episodes yet, so there will be plenty of randomness and likely BS to follow the video.

The song itself grabs me, reminding me a little bit of the Chobits 2nd ED “Ningyo Hime”, but here, “Perfect Slumbers” goes on its own path, striking a hopeful tone despite Tsubasa’s thoughts of an unrequited love. The cinematography coupled with the motifs used in the video such as the bookmarks (so many forms!) , the guitar/headphones/record, the sun becoming the moon, and the train lend help me further define her character, of which we already know a “fair” bit about. “Isolation” comes to mind here, and it helps that right until the end, she’s the only person in this OP world. And then when the guitar dissolves, and turns into a bed of flowers setting the backdrop of Koyomi prostrating himself in front of Tsubasa, as it looks like he can seemingly do nothing before the anomaly comes out is “the shot” for me. Of course, I’ll see how powerless our main hero really is in the actual work, but the shot of Tsubasa right at the end seems resigned to whatever comes regardless of any attempted interventions.

The marriage of the music and visuals together created a dazzling experience for me, and I too quickly compare it to the live action  and animated  (both links not safe for work) OPs that were done during the “Tsubasa Cat” arc of  Bakemonogatari, which isn’t fair. Since while those do a decent job at showing the Tsubasa’s duality, despite the intensity and shock value (especially of the animated version), I doubt they will have the staying power in my mind that this opening will. 

SHAFT x Shinbo already had me at Hello in animating more Hanekawa, but this is icing on a cake I haven’t even begun to have yet.  It’s not a bad deal.