Ah, shounen episode titles. Gotta love ‘em.

That aside, I’m pleased to say that after a seemingly long adventure, I’ve returned home; to the internet, and the aniblogosohere. I may not have a confession under a firework-lit sky planned, but I’m sure I gained something from this reprieve, even if it’s something intangible. Life changes, after all. It keeps rotating, like that weather vane I’ve seen countless times while rewatching Honey and Clover. But things have a way of smoothing themselves out, one way or another.

Anyhow, I realize that I’m not making much sense, and that’s quite fine. During my break, I conclusively realized that blogging is very much a personal journey for me, and that it’s more for the sake of educating myself than to educate others. In retrospect, that might explain some of the shaky analyses and mock-intellectual writing I’ve churned out from time to time, sometimes succeeding, other times failing. It’s only natural, I suppose, since you can’t improve without failing a few times. I also realized something quite obvious: that there’s a lot to do in life and very little time in which to do it. I have a year of high school left and I can almost guarantee that I’ll have to disappear for a bit next June, but even aside from that, people and situations change with time. They keep revolving.

But at the end of the day, there’s one thing I do know: the blogosphere is a community that I enjoy spending time in and that I’ve learned a lot from, and I have no intention of doing anything to hinder that learning process.

In other words, I’ll be here for a while.

And with that said, I’d like to say another temporary goodbye since I’ll be heading to England for a couple weeks with my family. I’ve got a few posts planned, though the longest (and either the most insightful or most tedious) won’t come until I get back. After that, I’m not quite sure what I’ll do, but after almost a year of getting to know this little sphere in the vastness of the internet, I think I’ve got a good feeling for what I want to accomplish and the direction I want to walk in.

Until then, this story is still “to be continued.”

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2009 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

Anyway, as much as it pains me to say it, I’m afraid that the dreaded H-word has finally seized control over me after a thoroughly enjoyable 9 months of blogging. I’m not burned out: I’ve been watching anime for years and I know that I still have a lot to learn. I’m not sick of the blogosphere: I”ve actually learned more about the world from you guys than from the mandatory careers class at school. I didn’t give up: I know that it takes time to get better at anything, and I’m nowhere near ready to abandon my dreams.

So why did I succumb to the almighty Hiatus Disease? Most likely because I need a break.

That’s all there is to it, really, and I’ll keep this short since it definitely isn’t a goodbye. I’ll probably still be around Twitter (follow me if you’re not already), I’ll be watching anime whenever I get time and I’ll try to keep an eye on the blogosphere, but unfortunately, I need a break from writing. A large part of this is due to the fact that I’ve started working on one of my fictional stories (you know, those), which will be occupying most of my brain power for the next little while. When you add that to the fact that aniblogging doesn’t work without watching anime, and the fact that all I really want to do is kick back with a few VNs and the remainder of the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, I simply won’t be able to keep writing.

But I definitely won’t be gone for long. My estimate is somewhere around a month. Really, I’m not sure if this warrants a hiatus note, but I don’t want anyone thinking that I got cocky, subscribed to the Slow Blogging theory, and started assuming that people will still care about me even if I post twice a year. (It works for some people, I know, but I wouldn’t take the risk). I always do what I can to keep up a decent post flow, and because I won’t be able to do that for a fair chunk of the early summer, I owe it to you to at least mention it.

Anyway, I’ve droned on for long enough. Keep writing, keep reading, and keep watching anime; I’ll be drifting around the interwebs in the meantime, and you can look forward to a full-forced return in approxitately a month’s time.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2009 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

Spring has sprung and con season has begun, but unfortunately for some of us, it has already come to a close. Canada’s biggest anime convention, Anime North, has been a tradition for me since my early days of fandom in junior high, and it has once more left me with a bottomless pit of bittersweet memories. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but anime cons are a great occasion for fans to get together, geek out, buy questionable merchandise, take pictures of attractive goth-loli cosplayers, eat overpriced Pocky, and avoid contracting the Narutard virus.

Strange as these things may sound, however, they all come together quite nicely when you’re with friends, and even if you’re not, there’s some kind of aura present at conventions that allows for the impossible. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a hotel room and I don’t have a car so I didn’t spend 100% of the weekend at the event, and I was too busy lazy to take many pictures, so think of this as a general impressions post rather than real coverage.

Would have been more awesome if he were standing in the middle.

To make things simpler (for me), let’s go in chronological order. Friday is always my shopping day. Why? Because I find it nearly impossible to resist the allure of the Dealer’s Room, and because I never like to take the risk of letting the good stuff disappear. Besides, shopping for otaku goodies always gives me the equivalent of a sugar rush, and it’s a nice follow-up to the general hype that builds up to and climaxes at the moment you walk through the doors and into the vast space of the TCC.

As for my purchases, I wound up spending a decent amount ($300+), though I didn’t buy a single figure. Most of my loot consisted of artbooks and miscellaneous manga/light novels that I could have gotten off Amazon but was too lazy to do so. About half of this stuff was from The Labyrinth, which is a great otaku bookstore located near University of Toronto. Loot pic is forthcoming.

It looks pretty nice when it’s all laid out like that. I’ve been wanting to take a picture like this since I started blogging.

Anyway, as you can see, my purchases are almost entirely Dead Tree Format (incidentally, The Animanachronism is the second Google search result for the term). Starting from the bottom, we have some sort of bishoujo picture collection by a variety of well-known artists, less than half of which had names that I could actually read; a Serial Experiments Lain artbook in the middle, which looks great but I have yet to open; and a Pita-Ten book, which I bought for shallow reasons and has subsequently convinced me to watch the series for equally shallow reasons.

Above, we have a collection of manga and light novels with titles/covers that you can read for yourselves; notable purchases include Pluto by Naoki Urasawa, mangaka of Monster and 20th Century Boys, and Strawberry Panic, just because I can. I think I also have some more yuri fodder in there. The Zelda book looks quite interesting - it’s this one, about the philosophy in the series - and it looks like it might make a good read for the Super Fanicom folks. I don’t think I’d tackle it just yet, but it’s obviously a worthy purchase for any fan of the series. I later picked up some doujins from Twinbells Doujinshi and a Type-Moon Complex from Hen Da Ne (link not working at the moment). Needless to say, the store owners did a good job of keeping me and my friend occupied while we thumbed through the boxes of porn erotic Japanese art (and, ironically enough, TM Complex isn’t even hentai).

Finally, I got some great prints from what I will continue to call the Artist Alley, and I have Mou-s and Aka-Shiro to thank for that. I will never cease to be impressed by fanart that looks like it belongs in a professional anime or visual novel. I would have gotten some Kaze-Hime prints if I didn’t already have a few from last year, though I think I’m already regretting that decision. The con has really opened my eyes to the world of good fanart, much to the benefit of my otaku spirit and the detriment of my wallet.

Last but not least, I got a couple VHSs from the Nominoichi - a Golgo 13 OVA and the Ghost in the Shell movie. Why? Because I could, and because their combined cost was less than KFC on a Tuesday.

I heard there were a couple more Mio cosplayers but I only got one. Moe moe kyun~

I concluded Friday by attending a live recording of the Anime Roundtable Podcast, which was fairly entertaining. They took a while to setup, but it was interesting once it started moving, and one of the listeners did a good job of reminding the audience that quality high school anime clubs really do exist. It’s just that they’re about as common as a shiny Pokemon.

Fast forward through an adrenaline-filled car ride home, a sore right shoulder, and a surprisingly decent night’s rest that led me to 9:00 am the next day: Saturday was panel day for me, and it was far more enlightening than I expected.

Writer’s Gene? (Saturday 11:00 am)
Not spectacular, but not bad either. One of the panelists is a sci-fi author with a few published books and short stories, and the others had positions in various places in the industry. They all talked about the dangers and reality of selling out and reminded me of why I’d hesitate to take up creative writing as a means of putting food on the table. The publishing industry can be harsh, and potential is often never discovered unless by chance. That said, their message was not entirely discouraging, and was nice to see them take a realistic approach to the art of writing.

Anime Soundtracks (Saturday 12:00 am)
The panel was pretty empty and I didn’t have much to contribute since I hadn’t put much thought into anime music until recently, but suffice to say it was great. The panelists knew what they were talking about and they didn’t seem to be too old nor did they try to be professional - it’s like what I’d imagine an anime music panel run by lelangir and zzeroparticle to sound like. I get the feeling they’ve been doing the panel for a while, and I’ll definitely go next year.

Fan to Pro (Saturday 1:00 pm)
What was I just saying about younger panelists being more approachable? Fan to Pro was run by a man in IT, old enough to be my father, and it was great. With age comes experience, as they say, and his professional, seminar-like presentation was as entertaining as it was informative. He explained a lot of what I had already realized, focusing on the skills we gain in fandom without even realizing it, but he articulated the concept far more clearly than I had ever done. I wouldn’t go again since the information will more than likely be repeated, but I’d recommend going if he does it again next year.

Mythology in Anime (Saturday 2:00 pm)
This one was a bit trickier since the room was full when I got there - there’s very little buffer time between panels - and the questions were very scattered. The downside was that the panelists hadn’t seen a lot of anime that they probably should have seen, rendering them unable to discuss things like Mushishi and Ergo Proxy, but they seemed to be educated enough in the field of mythology. Not a bad panel, but a bit too Q&A oriented to be truly informative.

Being Cool AND a Geek (Saturday 10:00 pm)
It’s applicable to about 75% of con attendees, and it’s something we’ve all thought about at some point. Unfortunately, nothing of value was gained, though I blame the lackluster questions and responses of the audience for that. At least one of the panelists seemed to know what she was talking about and touched on the cold truth of the social hierarchy, but there was too much otaku circle-jerking for anyone to have left the panel with a higher chance of not failing at life. Fortunately, the event was at least thought-provoking and there were a few key comments that reinforced my own theories, but in many ways it was just a recycling of information that your elementary school teachers tell you about self-confidence and uniqueness.

All in all, I was very pleased by the panels, and all except the last one left me with at least a fragment of new information. After that, I met up with some friends and passed the rest of the day hanging out - the very crux of the con experience in my opinion, save for a good concert or video game tournament. I passed on gaming in favor of having fun - and fun was certainly had, especially since I was with people that I rarely get to see outside of AN weekend - and I very much enjoyed sleeping in on Sunday. I didn’t bother going back for the last day since there’s never anything much to do, but the experience from a full two days was more than fulfilling, and like always, it’s left me with the burning desire to continue to delve into the depths of otaku culture as fast as humanly possible.

Totally forgot to mention that I found this in the Nominoichi. Fake? Maybe. Worth it? Definitely.

To summarize, the weekend of Anime North was great, and it gave me a slightly better picture of how to further enjoy the con scene next year. Of course, a convention wouldn’t be a convention if there weren’t at least a few lessons learned - the most notable one being that it’s arguably more fun to shop for porn than to read it - and I know that I gained a lot from the experience. Here’s to many more years of anime convention goodness, a limitless supply of the noobs and elitists that maintain the balance in the community, an Artist Alley filled with yaoi and a doujin shop filled with hentai, fat Konatas and petite Soras, and maybe even a crossdressing Sailor Moon or a Shiori; but most importantly, here’s to you, and me, and everyone else that partakes in the enjoyment of anime and the con experience. Until next year!

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2009 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

Mutsumi Sasaki is another one of those popular eroge artists that you’ve probably noticed at one point or another. He’s been in the industry for quite some time, designing characters for the Memories Off franchise (the anime adaptations were mediocre, but that’s another story), and, more recently, titles like Chaos;Head and Myself;Yourself. Putting the inappropriate use of semicolons aside, neither of the aforementioned shows struck me as anything spectacular, but one of my favourite aspects of them was the character designs. Why? The answer should be obvious. I love Mutsumi Sasaki, and while he might not be my absolute favourite artist, his work always holds some sort of mysterious control over me. Est is his most recent professional artbook, and suffice to say, I wasn’t disappointed.

Like with all of my artbook reviews, the scans are mine and are not meant to be professional in quality. And since I can’t for the life of me figure out how to use WP-Highslide, you’ll have to expand them the old fashioned way.

Many of the images in the book were from Memories Off, which is understandable considering it’s a long running franchise. The recent Myself;Yourself also got quite a bit of figurative screen time.

Some of the pictures look quite a bit older than others, presumably because Memories Off started a decade ago.

I first got this book before I knew who Ushio was. Funny how things work.

That backpack looks like it has wings on it. Hmm…

You really can’t go wrong with Santa costumes, though I always wonder where the tradition started from.

She must have had an interesting Bad End.

Good old fashioned moe.

As you can tell, Mutsumi Sasaki’s style is entirely bishoujo. His characters look more mature than some moe artists like Noizi Ito and Goto P, and they fit in well with the standard dating sim look. It’s no wonder that shows like Myself;Yourself look totally normal when placed beside any other visual novel adaptation - and that can be a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective.

My take on it is that the man is a good artist. It’s the simplest and most effective way of saying it. His designs fit the industry standard, yes, but they also look great, and they were the highlight of the trainwreck adaptation of Chaos;Head (though the animation quality did quite a number to them anyway).

On top of that, we have the fact that Est is a great collection of some of his best work, and it’s one of the two options that overseas shoppers have, short of searching for doujins on Yahoo Japan. If you’re a fan of his work it’s obviously a must-buy, but really, I also recommend it for any self-proclaimed bishoujo fan, lest your badge of twisted pride be taken away by the gods of all things 2D and delicious.

In other words, it’s worth it.

Name: Mutsumi Sasaki Art Works Est
Purchase From: beNippon, Anime Castle
Scans/Reviews: Moe Moe Rabu

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2009 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

I was an otaku before an anime blogger, I played my first visual novel before reading The Animanachronism. I collect things that have pictures of attractive 2D females printed on to them just because I can. The acronym of my blog’s name spells a familiar word. If I wore glasses, surely they would be rose-tinted.

But that’s not the point. The point is Akiyama Mio. You know, Mio. That Mio, that Mio, that Mio, that Mio…and yes, even that Akiyama Mio. So what does this mean, aside from the fact that Nasu’s pen has infected me? It means that Mio is popular.

…

…And it also means that I’m going to try and figure out why, because that’s what I do!

Let’s start with the obvious aspect: Mio’s tsukkomi to Ritsu’s Boke. Much like Kagami and Kontata, their relationship begs fans to toss around the word tsundere, but none of this matters since it doesn’t change her character in the least. Whether Mio is more tsun or dere is irrelevant: for now, let’s call her the “serious” one. She’s the cool, collected, levelheaded one in the group, and she just so happens to be in a group filled with not-so-levelheaded people. Mio plays off of Ritsu’s vast quantities of energy, forces Yui into doing something productive, and puts the band as her first priority. She might not be refined and delicate and lesbian like Mugi, but she has an air of maturity about her that sets her apart from her friends.

However, unless she possesses the mystical powers of Nagato Yuki, she won’t be able to win the heart of fandom with just subtle maturity. But don’t forget, she isn’t silent, and she’s more than capable of being nice. In fact, we’ve already seen signs of a girly side - or should I say, a light and fluffy side?

Alluding to Mio being “light and fluffy” might make the wrong impression, so I’ll settle it by calling her…sentimental. Well, that’s probably the wrong word, but it’s obvious by this point that she’s figuratively soft on the inside. She might look like the leader of the group, and I question how far the light music club could have made it without her, but one can never accuse her of being cold. She’s cold on the outside, but warm on the inside. Like fresh taiyaki on a winter’s evening. Or like a good tsundere.

Not that she’s a tsundere at all by any definition of the word, but she shares some of the important traits, and subsequently some of the appeal. She plays with the viewer’s mind by altering conveniently between the kind of person a young guitarist could talk to earnestly about music, and a clumsy VN girl that just wants to be loved and protected (and loved once more in whatever way you see fit). This may or may not have been intentional, but certainly, her incredible appeal in the male fanbase is due to more than a nice character design and a flashy ED.

Now, this is where I believe Mio diverges from other characters of a similar archetype, as well as the reason why I believe she’s worth devoting a post to. Like with everything else, the secret lies in the finer details.

Like barnacles. Those things are scary! Well, maybe the viewer wasn’t supposed to agree on that point - it was one of those awkward moments where you find yourself attracted to a trait that you already have, like a meganekko fan looking into a mirror and seeing his own glasses -  but it definitely worked. Mio’s natural shyness is somewhat of a replacement to the hesitance tsundere feel toward the thought of confessing their feelings, and it’s a more plausible substitute for other devices that beckon protection like physical frailty and the dreaded Keyicitis. Mio’s weaknesses are all mental, and they’re noticeable enough to be adorable yet not serious enough to warrant real worry.

And then there’s the fanservice. Oh boy, the legendary KyoAni fanservice. If there’s one thing they know how to do right, it’s this: fanservice that doesn’t even come close to crossing the line, but hits you harder than a thousand episodes of Queen’s Blade. (That is, it hits your Burning Otaku Spirit harder, not your IQ, which is bound to decrease after a thousand episodes of Queen’s Blade).

The thing about KyoAni fanservice is that it’s innocent, and yet…not innocent. It’s brilliant, really. They know their boundaries and they stay within them, but in playing with an otherwise pure series and inserting their own little…moments…they can toy with the hearts of their fans and produce earth-shattering results.

Because I can.

Mio is, in effect, a more realistic, accessible, and relateable psued0-tsundere that gets the best from both worlds. Her violence is comic rather than annoying, and she’s doesn’t seem like the type to go yandere; her soft side is cute, and appeals to much of the otaku population, if not much of the male population; and to top it all off, she’s intelligent and diligent, assuring that she can never be called a moeblob. You want someone who can teach you algebra? Sure thing! But she won’t be rude or condescending when teaching you, and she’ll probably make a few careless mistakes of her own - and what’s worse, she’ll even find those careless mistakes embarrassing. Assuming that you’re a stranger, she might try to cover it up with something to hide her shame, but a little teasing will be enough to make her blush. Not that anything more will happen, of course, because K-ON is pure!

And that, I believe, is the glue that holds Mio and the rest of the cast together. Their story is told through innocent eyes, in a world untainted by H-doujins and fanservice - it’s the perfect breeding ground for moe. Whoever is responsible for the creation of Mio’s character either thought things through or came upon an extraordinary fluke, because she takes traits that we all know and love, builds upon and develops pre-existing archetypes, shows her weaknesses in relateable, everyday scenarios, and ices the cake with a subtle showing of shimapan.

…Er, you know what I mean. The point is, she does everything, and not in a disturbing patchworked sort of way. It actually works. All she needs is a pair of glasses.

…Oh wait.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2009 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

Serious business is serious. And it’s also important. Very important. Life, after all, is usually pretty serious, and since many works of fiction take on darker subjects than real life contains, it’s only natural that stories should be suitably heavy-hearted. However, the funny thing about seriousness is that there’s a very fine line between “serious” and “too serious,” and I’m sure we’ve all seen far too many times cases in which the creators of a show fail to notice that line.

The problem is, understanding how much seriousness to use is ridiculously important, to the point that a careless mistake can destroy an otherwise good story. And yet, the right balance between dark and light subject matter can make a good story even better. It’s one of those simple aspects of a work of fiction that’s easy to understand but hard to master.

Of course, this all begs the question: how serious is too serious?

A question like this can be answered using nearly anything as an example, and taking a random look around my room, I spot a Type-Moon figure. So there we have it: seriousness in the Type-Moon visual novels. How does it work? And more importantly, does it work?

I think many would agree that Nasu has a good feel for how to structure his stories in a way that is neither too heavy nor light. There were a few times in Fate/stay night where I felt as though the comedy was a little forced or drawn out, but by and large, they did a good job. The plot-centric moments remain untainted, the story knows how to take itself seriously, and the overarching plot, both in terms of mythos and character interactions, is good enough to be taken seriously. In other words, it works.

But what about, say, Da Capo? Or most any harem/visual novel adaptation? The DC anime is far less serious than a Type-Moon game, but as anyone who has watched the series can contest to, the seriousness is often too much. Admittedly, there are a few moments that work, but the anime attempts to throw Key-level drama at the viewer before doing much to earn his or her respect. The characters are all right if viewed from the perspective of a dating sim, but there isn’t enough substance - in the adaptations, at least - to handle the quantity of drama. The end result isn’t exactly bad, but I don’t think it qualifies as good, either.

Not a bad game until it decided to take itself seriously.
(I’m talking about Snow Sakura, and no, the crab is neither relevant nor serious)

Lower-tier VN adaptations are the best examples I can think of in terms of stories that take themselves too seriously. Other infamous culprits include bad shounen and some JRPGs (the idea for this post first came to mind while playing the second Tales of Symphonia). The fact of the matter is that a bad story that thinks it’s good is arguably worse than no story at all. No one complains about the few serious moments in Lucky Star, but what if the entire second half of the series were dedicated to Konata’s family issues?

Obviously, the reverse can also be a problem. I believe a few people were bothered by the comedy in Darker than Black, though I was personally fine with it. At any rate, the argument is that the comedy breaks the plot apart. And that’s true, in a sense: too many lighthearted distractions can kill the atmosphere of an otherwise excellent story. Incidentally, I’ve also noticed this in a few RPGs, particularly the ones that like to throw in random minigames, but the problem is also present in Code Geass and Macross Frontier. My opinion of both shows is positive, but I can’t blame someone for questioning why Sheryl’s panties require as much screentime as a space battle - and we’re not even talking about real fanservice!

For the sake of avoiding needless verbosity, I’ll wrap things up by stating the obvious: that seriousness only works in the right amounts, and that it can destroy the original material if used in incorrent amounts. Saying it like that, it reminds me of some form of powerful medication - necessary, but only when used flawlessly. Many a story has been harmed too much comic relief and ineffective melodrama, and much of this comes back to the fact that seriousness is easy to use inappropriately. Thankfully, the shows that do it right seem to outnumber the ones that don’t - I’m looking at you, RahXephon and Clannad - but it’s important to remember the fact that seriousness is the kind of thing that either helps or hurts, rarely anything in between. As viewers, there’s little we can do about this delicate equilibrium unless we decide to write our own fiction (preferably not of the fan variety), but it always helps to note when and where flaws show up - and when debating things like Kannagi and Love Hina, seriousness is likely to be the word of the day.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2009 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

Pardon me for going off topic - yes, I have no way of justifying this post and claiming its relevance to anime - but as I shift in and out of the mood to pursue Japanese cartoons with unparalleled amounts of zeal and energy, irrelevant ideas occasionally cross my mind. Having recently mentioned gaming in a post that was intended to have far more to do with anime than it did, I found myself taking a little break from this medium that we know and love, and indulging in a few solid hours of adventure and conquest.

Now, as for how this is relevant to the topic at hand: in taking a good look at the medium of video games from a perspective that has widened dramatically in the last several months, I’ve come to realize a few things that I never noticed before. In short, I think the enjoyment that players derive from games can be divided into three broad categories - entertainment, competition, and art - and that the mystery behind why some games appear to be “good” while others are “bad” is far less of a mystery than it appears.

Let’s start with the obvious category: entertainment. As we all know, media exists to entertain. People derive fun from stories, interactive or otherwise, and so we are willing to spend money on them- supply and demand, the birth of an industry. Ignoring the inconvenient loophole of piracy, the fact that media is produced proves that it is used for entertainment, also known as “fun,” and gaming is no exception to this.

I like to classify entertainment as the simple feeling of fun that one derives from any particular activity. For instance, playing Mario Party might be “fun.” So might owning n00bs in Halo 3. However, both of those games are very different. Hence, the experience that one gains from playing a game might not fall into one specific category - in fact, it will probably fall under all three.

But that isn’t the important part of the categorization. While fans of party games would claim Mario Party to be entertaining, and FPS fans would surely do the same for Halo, there is a tremendous difference in the intention of the developers. While all games are “fun” on some level, far more people would see Halo as competitive than the amount that would see Mario Party the same way. The enjoyment that one feels from playing both games might be “entertainment,” but in the grand scheme of things, a game like Halo falls far closer to competition than a party games does.

Mario is always great for entertainment, especially when he’s 2D.

And now we enter our second category: competition. Competitive gaming has grown in leaps and bounds, not just in Korea, and many gamers play games the way athletes play sports. It’s fun for them, in a sense, but it’s also a job, and the real enjoyment comes not from running around and shooting stuff, but instead from engaging in a battle of wits and reflexes against a living, breathing opponent. Once more, a game that is competitive can also be entertaining, but some games are simply built to be competitive.

The obvious example in this case would be the fighting genre. The mere fact that many fighters are first released in arcades is evidence enough that they are meant to be competitive, but it doesn’t help that some console ports lack innovation as well. Often times, the console version of a fighting game will be identical to its arcade counterpart, with an art gallery or unlockable skins/costumes to make the purchase slightly more enticing. In other words, people don’t buy the latest Guilty Gear or Street Fighter for achievements or single-player glory: they play it to learn it, and to compete with their newfound skills.

Nothing says competitive gaming like a good round of Starcraft.

Due to the fact that fighting games are so focused on gameplay, there is little…for lack of a better word, let’s call it the x factor. The kind of magic that enraptures Zelda fans, the skillfully-woven layers terror and fear that survival-horror fans devour; the unnameable, elusive elements of games that are both intangible yet integral. That’s the kind of beauty that causes legions of fans to rally behind epic Final Fantasy adventures and engrossing wars like Fire Emblem, and without having any precise way of describing it, I’ll call that factor art.

I don’t mean to encroach on the is-anime-art debate and simply replace anime  with gaming, but it seems unfair to claim that video games cannot be artistic. Take a closer look at games like Okami and the Metroid series. They can both be challenging, yes - they are both held together by solid gameplay - but isn’t there something more to them? Many developers have imitated the action/adventure genre and implemented their own unique stories and mechanics, but by that logic, every game with decent combat, a plethora of sidequests, and a large world can equate to Okami. But by that logic, the latest Barbie platformer is Mario’s female equivalent.

La Pucelle Tactics is analogous to Final Fantasy Tactics in that they both involve heroes fighting against villains using SRPG gameplay, with a semi-religious setting and conflicts that are both small and large in scale. But what do the games have in common, save for being SRPGs? This isn’t to say that one is superior to the other - opinion plays no role in this kind of categorization - but certainly, the games share very few characteristics. Nippon Ichi games tend not to take themselves seriously, while FFT is more serious business than a gattai between Cruel Angel Theses and Bateszi Anime Blog; LPT treats the player to comical and entertaining gameplay that can be both relaxing and challenging while Final Fantasy’s SRG endeavour is straightforward and to the point.

Forgetting about one’s personal opinion of these two games, what is the main difference between them? Simply put, it’s the intent of the creators. La Pucelle Tactics is about fun and gameplay and fun gameplay, with a bit of  a serious plot tacked on to it, while Final Fantasy Tactics is about telling a melodramatic tale of war and magic, and it does so through well-refined conventional gameplay mechanics. FFT focuses on the artistic aspect of gaming, using the interaction to tell a story.

Fable has good gameplay, but one look at it is enough to tell that it’s more than just action.

In the end, I urge you to remember that none of these categories are concrete and that many breach into one another’s territory. As I said in the beginning, Halo can be both fun and competitive - and depending on how you view the engrossing single-player campaign, it can also be art. Most games fall into this category, where elements of each category converge to create an appealing whole.

However, any gamer would know that certain games were developed to accomplish certain goals. Perhaps this is why the debate between “casual” and “hardcore” games will never end - because both sides try to force these games into being something they’re not. This might also be why fans of fighters and FPSs will never get along, or why there will always be animosity between Zelda and Final Fantasy - each set of fans believes their franchise/genre to be the best of its kind, and they refuse to acknowledge the worth of another similar category of game.

This might also be the root of the trouble people have with games like Super Smash Bros Brawl and Hoshigami, where the former is accused of not supporting competitive gameplay while the latter is inaccessible to many gamers and nearly unplayable by new SRPG fans. After all, SSBB was meant to be a fun multiplayer game that anyone can enjoy, and Hoshigami was meant to be a rigorous SRPG for those who love challenge - when it comes down to it, there’s really nothing to criticize. I believe that this is where the “casual vs hardcore” issue comes from, where players expect games to please both audiences at once, but that’s a different scalding hot kettle of fish (ready to explode at the mention of Wii or MLG).

Writing a post without at least one picture of an anime girl just isn’t my thing.

In conclusion, I believe that video games are a highly versatile medium that can accomplish a variety of different goals. Whether the developers are after philosophical sci-fi epics or old-school finger-murdering action, games can deliver - it all depends on the goal that each game sets out to accomplish. Some games succeed in blending genres, such as the interactive adventure of Fable - the gameplay aids the story and vice versa, detailing the legend of a hero that is none other than you. Other games like Gears of War are all about the gameplay and the chainsaw bayonets until you look closely at the campaign and realize that it could make an excellent futuristic war film if anyone cared to do so.

Ultimately, games are tools for developers to express their thoughts and ambitions; sometimes these ambitions are to create a competitive RTS game that will last a decade, and other times they might consist of a humble dream to entertain a 6-year-old that can barely hold a controller. It’s good to have an opinion, but the important thing is not to classify one category of gaming as superior or inferior - it’s to understand the difference between games, the fact that expecting all games to be similar is akin to expecting all anime to possess the mythos of Type-Moon and the entertainment of K-ON, and to learn to determine why a game is the way it is. Everyone understands what games are and how they’re made, but in understanding the why, we can learn to enjoy what we might have flamed, and save the flames for the products that truly are mediocre.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2009 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

As you can infer from the title, this post bears little relevance to you if you happen to not live in or around Toronto (which is the case for many people). Feel free to read if you enjoy wasting your time, but really, it’d be more productive to clear out the other unread items in your feed reader.

Having said that, however, I’m sure that there are at least a few of you that are planning on attending the con, and for those of you who are, I wanted to write a post in the name of raising awareness. Following CCY’s lead in campaigning for Fanime, I felt obligated to mention the con a few weeks in advance: and here it is, my not-so-informative and all-around useless post that could technically be classified as filler!

Useless as it may be, however, I urge you to click that little blue link below if you’ll be in the area from the 22nd to the 24th. Organization is the secret to success!

Well, “organization” might be an overstatement since I’m not actually organizing anything. But these guys are (I hope). If you didn’t know, ACG is a group that aims to build a community around otaku, gamers, and all sorts of nerds, and I believe they’re planning a meetup for the con. And even if they’re not, they’re probably the most organized local group that can provide a fun time for everyone who cares to meet them, so if you’re interested, do us all a favor and contact them.

Failing that, you can always comment here, or use your common sense and contact someone; meeting people at anime conventions isn’t a science. However, it wouldn’t do us much good if you stay silent, so assuming that you’re not one of those real-life lurkers that likes to hide in the shadows and wear a mask under the guise of cosplay, there should be several opportunities to meet up and enjoy the event.

Because, as many would testify, the people are what make anime cons what they are - not the mediocre shopping which can usually be topped by HLJ and Amazon Japan, not the panels with industry spokespeople that are worse than the editorials at ANN - it’s the fans that make the $55 worthwhile. Admittedly, Narutards and Sailor Moon Men aren’t exactly my idea of fun, but with the right group of people, an anime con can create an experience than no number of chat logs on IRC can amount to.

So, with that surprisingly not-so-long-winded speech out of the way, I sincerely hope that the convention gets as many guests as possible, and that we can enjoy ourselves while we’re there. Unfortunately, I don’t have any enticing bandage-moe rewards to offer you like the Fanime goers, but then again, I’m certain that Hendane can cover for that.

So, to summarize: info is here, organizers are here, and I hope to see you there! (And maybe, if we’re lucky, No Name Losers will be there and hold a panel…hint hint)

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2009 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

Believe it or not, I’m not here to beat this dead horse, nor am I interested in whatever dorama was stirred up long before I knew that the anime blogosphere existed. Incidentally, I read that post when I first discovered aniblogs, which was before I knew wildarmsheero - I enjoyed it devoid of its original meaning.

But I digress. To summarize, DarkMirage wrote something about the bias that many fans have toward older series, and the fact that nostalgia can blind. It used to bother me when I was still in elementary school, innocently enjoying my Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker when the so-called vets would harp endlessly on Link to the Past. It also bothered me when I first started watching older anime, and I wondered how some of the Ghibli classics like Nausicaa could ever be better than modern anime films like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

In other words, I agreed with the sentiment without having put it in words, I agreed with it when I first read that post around a year ago, and I still agree with it today. But it’s also important to remember that nostalgia isn’t necessarily harmful.

I was always one of those GameFAQs kids. You probably won’t care to hear this story so I won’t bother elaborating, but the long and short of it is that I spent most of my childhood internet hours in one of the biggest mainstream gaming communities in the world. Starting as a literal 12 year old - or possibly younger - I eventually grew into someone who could make fun of n00bs by calling them 12 year olds, and I later grew into someone who couldn’t care less either way.

But that isn’t important. What is important is that I grew up with my N64 and Gamecube, with Mario and Link and Pokemon, and that the internet was filled with old-school gamers who were first acquainted with these franchises in the NES and SNES days.

Needless to say, nostalgia bothered me. Why is an older Zelda game automatically better than a new one? A handful of people might be able to justify their opinions in a series of coherent sentences, and a few of those might even be able to argue objectively about how the 2D games were better than 3D - but for the most part, it was like arguing about whether subs are better than dubs. Neither side says anything that isn’t either common sense or 100% subjective, and I’m sure many of you would agree that the mere sight of a thread entitled “Subs vs Dubs” is enough to drive anyone away from a forum.

But now, things have changed. I might still be younger than many gamers, but I’m in no way the youngest; I’m sure many casual Maple Story players grew up with Final Fantasy X and Katamari Damacy rather than FFVI and Chocobo Racing. And having distanced myself from video games for quite some time, I’ve found an entirely new form of joy that I can derive from playing mediocre N64 kart racers and repetitive Pokemon Stadium minigames.

Put simply, nostalgia can blind, but it can also be a beautiful thing.

Maybe this could allow Nintendo to reach out to an untapped market?

For the sake of brevity, I’ll adopt DarkMirage’s argument since I agree with it in its entirety. It’s foolish to say that something is better because it’s old, or to say that something is bad because it isn’t old. It’s just as bad as saying that Shugo Chara is better than Card Captor Sakura because it’s newer. I have nothing against those who argue that UC Gundam is better than Gundam 00, but please, find a way to articulate your argument into a sentence more meaningful than “Gundam Balls is for teh noobs who don’t understand the true DEPTH of Char’s burning manly passion,” or quite simply, “yaoi ftl”.

But like I said in the beginning, this isn’t a rant against wah - I respect the guy enough to listen to his podcast archives, which is pretty crazy in and of itself. It just so happens that this old post represents so much of what I’ve believed in since childhood, and I’m glad to finally understand nostalgia for what it really is.

I am not worthy to think of a witty comment to follow this.

The way I see it, nostalgia is something to indulge in. I won’t criticize you for enjoying something for the sake of enjoying it - as my anime list proves, I spend far too much time indulging in mediocre harem and fluffy VN adaptations when the same time could be spent on something like Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Indulging is great - nostalgia is great. Halo Wars looks like a great game, which I admittedly haven’t even touched, but I might very well have more fun booting up my old copy of Pokemon Blue. Something as simple as listening to the music, however few bits it’s comprised of, might be enough to soothe me like a good shoujo does.

In short, nostalgia is one of the few things with the power to heal.

That’s why I think the most important thing is to identify the feelings of nostalgia and separate them from the rest of your judgment. I learned to describe Clannad as both “the show that crosses shoujo with slice of life and drama and explores the challenges we face in life while searching for happiness,” and “the show with the dojikko moeblob that likes dangos.” Both descriptions accurately portray my opinion, but I acknowledge that they are two very separate feelings. I do not call K-ON the show of the season: Eden of the East is easily my top pick. But if I had a new episode of both sitting on my hard drive, I’d almost certainly pick the former.

It would do us all a great lot of good to learn to separate our nostalgia from our personal feelings, and to keep both of those from our objective opinion. A “review” that consists entirely of blind fanboy praise isn’t worthy of the word, and an argument based on nostalgia is void. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy something in the name of nostalgia. I know that The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya will always be special to me, just like Super Mario 64 and Star Fox 64, but if and when KyoAni does something with the remaining novels, I’ll be careful to enjoy the show for what it is and not bash it for failing to surpass a personal, irreplacable memory.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2009 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

It’s a Saki post in disguise!

If there’s one thing we know about anime, it’s that everything seems more exciting in 2D. The beginning of a school year doesn’t mean less free time and more math homework, it means encountering a mysterious transfer student under an eternally blossoming sakura tree! Being a maid isn’t about doing tedious housework that no one wants to do, it’s about serving your master and tending to his psychological needs! (Or in some cases, protecting your master through whatever bizarre means necessary.)

Likewise, in the world of anime, mahjong is not just mahjong. It’s epic mahjong. In fact, it’s epic Crazy Loli Yuri Mahjong. But is this trend to lean towards the over dramatic a good thing? How does the use of extreme exaggerations affect the viewer, especially when the line is crossed by a mile?

Personally, the use of exaggeration and so-called Mary Sue characters doesn’t bother me if it’s a stylistic decision. Take s.CRY.ed, for instance. Unusual name aside, would the show have anything worth bragging about if it didn’t give its two heroes ridiculous powers? Well, I suppose it’ll always have that whole My Balls thing, and DRASTIC MY SOUL has been more or less immortalized in the aniblogosphere, but for the most part, the distinguishing aspect of the show was the over-the-top action. That’s what shounen is about, after all. The action doesn’t yield to logic - it shatters logic with its Golden Finger in much the same way that Hayate no Gotoku shatters the fourth wall.

However, while this kind of exaggeration works at least moderately well in the shounen genre, would it work as well it other shows? Perhaps shows that deal with less battles for the fate of the earth and more mahjong games between friends?

The use of over the top effects in Saki has been brought up before, usually in a negative light. After all, summoning lightning from a single mahjong tile doesn’t exactly match the definition of normality, especially when the game is being played indoors. Some would say that the use of effects like this decrease the show’s credibility - they make it seem like more of a joke than something that can be viewed for its objective merit.

And, in most every way, that judgment is sound.

Realistic? No. Stylish? Well, no, but it looks cool, and sometimes that’s all that matters.

The thing is that most shows that employ these effects aren’t looking to be taken seriously to begin with. Is Prince of Tennis an ambitious, realistic story about a young man’s dream to become a pro? I’m not sure since I haven’t seen it, but I doubt anyone would watch it expecting real, believable, and plausible tennis matches. Instead, a tennis or shounen fan might watch it for an exciting tennis match: because they want to see how anime can make the sport more interesting. After all, real tennis is always an option for those who enjoy realism.

Likewise, the shining mahjong tiles of Saki don’t bother me in the least, because we all knew what we were signing up for. It’s not a serious show by any stretch of the imagination, and anyone who expected Tactical Mahjong Action obviously didn’t look at the character designs. I wouldn’t say that lack of realism hurts Saki any sooner than I’d say that fantasy hurts the Ghibli movies.

However, this entire post isn’t necessarily in Saki’s defence. There’s still one aspect of the show that bothers me, and it’s part of the same topic - it’s simply easy to overlook when you’re blinded by the light from a Certain Magical Mahjong Tile.

Enough said.

The problem I have with shows like this is that the characters are unreasonably strong. No, not because they can command the power of nature - looking unnaturally cool/cute is just another ubiquitous aspect of anime. What I’m talking about is the fact that the characters are good at what they do, and they’ve done precious little to earn it.

For lack of a better example, I’ll bring up the relatively obscure light novel, Zaregoto. Put simply, the story is about a group of geniuses that are called to an island to spend time with some rich girl or the other. Apparently people start dying after that, but I haven’t finished the book yet, and it’s hardly relevant. The point I’m trying to make is that a group of characters in their twenties (who act like your average anime teenagers) are able to do things like wreak havoc across the nation with their hacking skills, work on three monitors at a time, read minds, and cook and paint like the best in the world. True, they’re supposed to be geniuses, but the line should be drawn somewhere.

And that’s where shows like Saki start to bother me. I’m fine with Ichigo Kurosaki shooting beams of energy out of his sword if it makes the battles look better, but accomplishing something in three days that takes most people several decades? I haven’t seen the show in years so forgive me if I’m mistaken, but that sort of thing pops up all the time in shounen. I don’t mind ridiculous abilities if it’s for the sake of style, but please don’t try to convince us that a girl who only played casual mahjong with her family can be good enough to beat one of the best high school students in the country.

At the end of the day, it’s all about the implied yuri.

Admittedly, I don’t really have a bone to pick with Saki. I’m only watching it because it looks fun, and I’d say it’s been fun so far. Shows like this aren’t meant to be taken seriously, so I wouldn’t bother ranting about how the lack of realism detracts from the story. However, I think it’s worth noting the difference between Mary Sues in the name of style and Mary Sues for the sake of. I’m all for planet-shattering energy beams and, in the case of Gurren Lagann, what resembled the flinging of solar systems, but you can’t expect anyone to believe that Some Random Kid from Some Random High School can hop into a mech and defeat trained soldiers. It doesn’t work in shounen, it doesn’t work in loli yuri antics, and it won’t work in whatever genre it forces itself into.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2009 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.