Watching Gurren Lagann invariably leaves me in a contemplative mood; so, I wasn’t surprised when my recent rewatch of it ended with me reflecting on the quiet heroism that my grandfather (on my mother’s side) displayed throughout his life, which includes fighting in World War II. I decided to be a bit selfish and write something for this blog about him so others can read how incredible he was. I chose today to this so I could also remind people to thank a vet for the sacrifices that they have made.

My grandfather was a man of little words and he didn’t like talking  about his experiences in WWII or his earlier life so I’ve only heard parts of the story of his life from other family members over many different times and have had to put them together. It goes something like this.

Like so many other immigrants living in the Mahoning valley, my grandfather’s father worked in the steel mills and in those days it was a dangerous job. So, it wasn’t all that surprising that his father was killed while working in a steel mill nor that my grandfather’s mother decided to remarry. (That there was no welfare state like there is today probably contributed this decision.) Several years later, my grandfather’s step-dad contracted a bacterial disease while working in a steel mill and, since this was a couple of decades before the invention of antibiotics, he ended up passing away too. This left my grandfather’s family in a bind. By now there were several younger siblings that needed to be fed as well as my grandfather’s mom; so, even though my grandfather was still elementary age (once I was told he was in fourth grade and another time in sixth grade), he dropped out of school and got a job in a steel mill to support his family. Which he was able to do.

He continued to work in a steel mill until WWII and eventually joined the Army Corp of Engineers. I’m not sure if he was drafted or volunteered to go but he ended up going to the European theater and seemed to primarily work on building bridges. Like I said he didn’t talk often his war experience but I do remember hearing that he went to France soon after D-Day. (I think D-Day+3 but I’m not too sure.) One thing he did say about his time in Europe was that he disliked the French because they were a rude people.

After the war he returned to Youngstown to settle down and raise a family; he rarely left the area again. One of his war buddies offered to set him up to be an apple farmer in Washington state but he declined (thankfully, or else I wouldn’t be here ). He continued to work at a steel mill, tinkered with machines, and single-handedly built an addition onto his house when the family got to large. He literally did everything from digging out a full basement to laying the roofing shingles. The backdoor steps that he poured where so massively overkill that when a drunk driver tried to drive his full-size SUV at a high rate of speed through my grandparent’s house about ten years ago, those steps were able to stop the SUV before it could hurt anyone in the house or even cause major structural damage to the house.

I wish he’d have lived a little longer then he did because I was just starting to get old enough that his curmudgeon-like nature no longer scared me and I could appreciate him. Looking back I love how he’d show up for a family doing for about 30 minutes – just long enough to eat and engage in a small amount of socializing – before going back home. I have a couple mementos of him including his telescope and the wooden box he built to hold it and the various accessories.

In keeping with remembering Veteran’s Day, here our some pictures and postcards that have been digitalized that come from his time in WWII.

Picture of my Grandpa and Grandma at Mill Creek Park

Picture my Grandma sent over for my Grandpa while in Europe

I believe this picture was taken while he was still in training.

The next three are pictures that my Grandpa wrote notes on the back of.

I don't know if this is one of the bridges he helped build or just one that interested him.

They look cool in this picture

edit: I was looking through some of the other pictures I got and was wondering what exactly this contraption was:

I love how my Grandpa writes "of" as just an extra loopy "f".

Filed under: anime, off-topic, other wallpapers and pictures

Simon and company go out to find Nia and the anti-spiral homeworld.  However, they’re led into one trap after another, leading to many sacrifices by team Dai-Gurren to help them escape. Meanwhile, Nia tries to fight off the anti-spirals who are trying to probe her to find humanity’s weaknesses.

Our mechas our bigger, our women are hotter and our pecks are more manly than anyone else's in the universe!

Overall, I think this series ended on a better note than it could have. The sequence where the Dai-Gurren sacrificed themselves, then the fight to get out of the ultra-dense space sea where both pretty good I thought.  However, I think the final battle with the anti-spirals could have been a little less cheesy, though it certainly could have been worse. Of course, leave it to GAINAX to have an ending where the hero ends up having to sacrifice everything, though luckily Simon ended up being still a good guy at the end, even if he was somewhat of a hermit, as opposed to say, someone like Suguru from Mahoromatic.

As for my overall feelings about this series, it’s been a while since I watched the first half of it, but it was still an interesting ride. If someone asked if it was worth watching, I’d say yes, but I’m not really sure it’s the epic show it’s been made out to be. I guess if one is a huge mecha fan, then sure, it might be just because by the end you have galaxy-sized mechas fighting each other. But for someone like me, the series kind of went over the top at times, and there isn’t much one can do during some of the battle scenes but just kind of watch explosions and all because there isn’t really a story to take in much of the time. Sure, there were parts of the series that had a pretty decent story and advanced the plot, and it’s those parts that make this a not so bad series. But what I think some others take as some sort of epicness, I kind of felt was over-the-topness.  But that’s just my feeling.

The anti-spirals launch their attack on earth, while Rossiu tries and imprisons Simon.  However, as the situation becomes ever more dire, Rossiu has no choice but to let Simon pilot Gurren Lagann once again in order to defeat the anti-spiral attack and save Earth.

Go Gundam Go! Oh wait...what?

I think the start of this series of episodes was going pretty good – it continued on the arc dealing with the political instability of the human’s new society, and I thought that was going in a good direction.  However, I think it started going a little downhill when Rossiu decided to try and sentence Simon to death.  I could get the arresting him part, but just realistically, I’m not sure how Rossiu would be able to survive by doing such a thing when pretty much literally everyone else in the government disagreed with him. I suppose the temporary calm he brought might have been enough to not go against him, but I just felt that there would be no way Simon’s friends would just stand by at let Rossiu execute him.

After that, it was basically fighting, fighting, and more fighting.  I think Gurren Lagann leveled up twice in one episode, first by joining with the arc, and then joining with the Moon, which naturally was a Gunman itself. And what happened to all the debris that fell off the fake moon when the gunman was activated? I’m sure that did a nice piece on the earth when it crashed into it.

Anyway, after they started fighting again, the series seems to have devolved into people screaming, Gurren Lagann leveling up, people screaming, leveling up, more screaming and so on.  Hopefully now that they’re going after Nia and the anti-spiral homeworld, things will start to improve again on the storytelling front.

It’s been almost five years since I’ve last seen the anime blogosphere go so completely head-over-heals for an anime like what’s currently happening for Puella Magi Madoka Magica. That last time was for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya and it pole vaulted everything from it’s voice actors to it’s animation studio into instant super-stardom. This time it’s the well-known combination of the Shaft animation studio and it’s super-director Akiyuki Shinbou. Which is a bit surprising, given the prolific nature of Shaft/Shinbou; there isn’t that blank slate to work their magic on which KyoAni had with Haruhi.

And much like Haruhi, the PM3 fascination is well warranted; even for this long time Shaft/Shinbou fan, I was astonished how quickly this anime become special. The logical next step for a blogger would to blog about it but did I really want to be the 89th person that pointed how just how creepy Kyubey is or how dark and twisted this world is or how Shinbou was deconstructing the magical girl genre. The answer probably should have been yes since the alternative – coming up with something slightly more unique – took more work.

I eventually thought of something and all I needed was to call on the power of graphing and Gurren Lagann and an idea that’s been bouncing around in my brain for awhile.

The idea started out awhile ago when I realized, when doing my weekly anime review posts, that splitting an anime series into smaller intervals (individual episodes) and focusing only on those smaller intervals it gave an incomplete picture of the series as a whole. I needed the equivalent of calculus to find the area under a curve when all I had was a handful of rectangles to use.

Conversely, looking at just the final grade for an anime series was helpful in a different way but so much was hidden behind that number. A series that started out great but then coasted could get the same grade as a series that tried to be ambitious and missed the mark by just a little or a series that was mediocre at the start but built up to a thrilling conclusion.

I had a half-formed thought about using some sort of graphing but when my weekly anime posts stopped, I stopped really worrying about implementing a new system. For Puella Magi Madoka Magica, I dusted off these ideas with the view of that I needed a good way to quantify how good I thought PM3 was and how quickly it had gotten good.

The result is the graph below. It’s still not perfect but it’s much closer to what I want then just saying the first four episodes of PM3 have all been 12/12 perfect episodes. Basically, the colored areas overlay my numeric grading system and correspond to levels of achievement that are possible once an anime displays a certain level of quality. These levels are progressively harder to attain and are a reflection of watching enough anime that I can accurately grade an anime. A note for clarification, the stripped triangles for each anime series shows my guess at the future potential of the show.

Photoshop is helpful when trying to make a graph look pretty but it makes generating the graph difficult.

I used Gurren Lagann to compare the new series to because it is my number 1 show and the yard stick to compare all other anime series; though, the path Gurren Lagann took to reach number 1 is very interesting by itself. For instance, the big jump it took at the very end where it goes from being a fringe Top 10 anime to being my favorite anime corresponds to episode 26, aka the best episode of anime ever.

I put Puella Magi Madoka Magica into the “High Quality” level right away. It was during episode 1’s conversation between Madoka and her mom in the bathroom that I just knew. When the second episode showed no signs of letdown but only continued to impress me, it was upgraded to probably one of the best shows of the season (as measured against a “normal” season). The surprise at the end of episode 3 pushed the show into most likely earning the top spot for the winter season, assuming the rest of the series didn’t see a decline in quality, and moved it very close into earning a spot as one of the best series of 2011. (Again assuming a “normal” year, with this being just the beginning of the year, I’m using the past seasons and years as a guide in estimating.) The fourth episode didn’t disappoint either and Shaft/Shinbou made it clear that it had plenty of tricks left to play; meaning, PM3 is now all but guaranteed a spot on my top anime of 2011 list.

In picking the upper and lower bounds for how PM3 potentially turns out I decided even though it’s currently far surpassing where Gurren Lagann was at this point in time – it probably doesn’t have the spiral power to beat out Gurren Lagann in the end. Instead, I used the highest position of a Shaft/Shinbou anime series (Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei) as the probable cap. I could be wrong and it could go higher but I think PM3’s episode count being only half will limit it. For the low end, I just don’t see the show imploding and finishing any lower then maybe #3 for the winter season. My guess as to it’s most probably course would be for Puella Magi Madoka Magica to land in the top 5 – maybe 3 – of 2011 and just outside of my top 10.

I could have stopped here but there was plenty of space to graph several other new shows of the winter season.

The most talked about show behind PM3 is Fractale, the latest creation from disgraced anime director, Yutaka Yamamoto. Some have loved it, some have panned it, some just note the high degree of similarities it has with other well-known anime works. I see it’s potential but it hasn’t impressed me in the slightest, especially since I don’t think Mr. Yamamoto has learned from his previous disappointing efforts. I don’t mind the recycling of ideas used elsewhere if Fractale was going to do something interesting with them. And I don’t mean – “hey lets do a Miyazaki movie but add in fan-service and potty humor”. Better story-telling would help it’s chances, like getting us to like a character before the director kills him off. The result is, unsurprisingly, that it’s been hovering around my drop line (anything below a 6/12 B- is in real danger of getting dropped) and I don’t see Fractale ending that high. Maybe if it does everything right then it might just creep up to around a 9/12 A- level but I don’t think so. It’s more likely to finish in the 5/12 C+ to 6/12 B- range.

Currently keeping Fractale company is the “comedy” Rio –Rainbow Gate– from Xebec. The mere possibility that Rio could finish higher then Fractale is mind-boggling. I don’t think that’s going to happen; I thought the latest episode of Rio signaled that the creators were fast running out of entertaining ideas (the gate battle in this episode was so boring) but the possibility still exists. The problem is that it’s too difficult being unintentionally hilarious week-in and week-out; eventually the animators figure out how to just be generic and that ruins all the fun. Which is a shame because having visited Las Vegas twice, I sort of wanted this anime to be a success.

Another show I wanted to succeed was Mitsudomoe 2. The first season was inconsistent but ended strongly and I had a feeling that a second season would be awesome. So far that’s been pretty much the case but it has a problem as well – it’s only going to be 8 episodes long and I’ve already seen half of them. That makes Mitsudomoe have to work much harder just to keep up with shows like PM3 and Level E when there’s such a difference in episode count. The last episode, in particular, seemed to display the animators at the top of their game and it reminded me of the splendid work they did on Minami-ke S1. If the remaining four episode can stay at that level, Mitsudomoe 2 might just land near the top this season.

The final show I graphed was the anime that most astounded me this season for being actually good – Level E – and the only anime that I think that has a shot at beating PM3. Not a great chance but it’s not zero, which would be enough for Simon from Gurren Lagann.  It should be mentioned that it bears no connection to any other anime that has “something E” in the title, which was why I initially passed it over – I thought it was a sequel. Nor does it rip-off the central idea to Men in Black because the manga actually predates the movie by a couple of years. It’s a SF/comedy series from the pen of the author that wrote Yu Yu Hakusho (which really deserves a new adaptation itself) and it’s refreshingly entertaining. Level E also has the largest potential range because I’m torn between how good it’s been so far and worrying about things that could drag it down. I wonder why this hasn’t been adapted in the 13+ years since it originally came out and if it’s short length (only 16 chapters) means that it doesn’t have a good ending and will the comedy hold up.

At this point, I figure putting any more series on this graph would just be overly messy looking so this is were I’m going to stop for now. I might revisit this graph with different series in the future but we’ll have to see. And in closing, I’ll say it again – Kyubey is freakishly creepy; though, I wonder if Kyubey barbecue tastes good.

Even though this disc had 4 episodes, it effectively only had 3, as episode 16 was completely a recap episode.  In any case, we finish the first half of the series with the defeat of the Spiral King and his warnings that he was actually protecting humanity, and that once “a million apes” were on the surface, basically something bad would happen.  However, beyond this we don’t really know anything, other than the fact that the Spiral King seemed to believe that he was acting as a guardian against Simon’s spiral power.

You might to get that checked out by a dermatologist

As for the “7 years in the future” part, it’s going to be hard getting used to the characters being older now.  However, the new government under Shion seems to be suffering from the same ills of many revolutionary governments: it starts out strong as a result of the initial enthusiasm and idealism, but soon gets weighted down under the weight of the fact that many of the people leading the nation are neither very competent to do so, and don’t really want to in the first place.  While Shion seems competent, he doesn’t seem very enthusiastic, and while others may be enthusiastic, they aren’t very competent.  Meanwhile, people who see this, in this case Rossiu, get frustrated and radicalized by the fact that his fellow revolutionaries, well, suck at governing (and, in conjunction with the attack of the anti-spirals, cause mass unrest) and decides to take over the place himself.

I’m still not sure why the anti-spirals think that the spiral energy will cause the destruction of the universe, though I guess my thought is this:  if the spirals have a tendency to advance rapidly, and have rather unchecked passions, that could lead to several consequences such as, say, the destruction of their own planet.  However, if you expand this thought upward, perhaps they fear that spirals wouldn’t stop at a planet, but might cause the self-destruction of a galaxy or even the universe itself.

In any case, this series seems to have gotten a bit more interesting now that we’re in this new time frame.  We’ll have to see if it just resorts to massive mecha battles like it did to begin with, but hopefully the plot will start getting expanded some.  There is already evidence that it is, with Rossiu taking over.

So after one last episode of emo Simon, he finally got out of his funk and decided to be kickass, largely thanks to Nia, who has breathed some new life into this series, both for comedic relief, but also prop up the non-mecha fighting part of the show as well.  Speaking of the mecha fighting, I guess it’s the usual.  I guess I have to give some props to there being some variation in the types of mecha they’re fighting now instead of the same old, same old.

Nia and Simon. The Most Aweseome Awesomest Team Ever in the histoy of Awesome

I think Nia has quickly shot up to being my favorite character so far, though Simon is up there as well as long as he isn’t being emo.  Yoko still just seems mostly annoying, although one can’t deny that she’s an integral part of the team.  I have a feeling there may be some future fighting between Yoko and Nia over Simon, however.

They cleared through the 4 generals and got to the spiral king pretty quickly.  I don’t see them fighting the Spiral King for entire second half of the series, so I really don’t know what’s going to happen after that’s done.  I figured the Spiral King would be the end of the series, not the mid-point, so we’ll see I guess.

Overall I guess this series is holding it’s own for now.  It’s still somewhat over the top, but it’s not over the top to the point of being stupid yet, at least.

Well…plusses for DVD #2: Simon doesn’t seem as whiny (though now he’s gone all emo with Kamina getting killed, which kind of surprised me having such a major character apparently killed off so early).  Minuses for DVD #2: It’s still basically the same stuff.  I guess if you like giant robots fighting, then you’ll like it.  Otherwise, I’m still not sure how much there really is here to enjoy (and I’m not necessarily a giant robot person).  There is sporadic humor, anyway.

There's no way I'm dyin'! It's only episode 8!

I guess the one thing that can be said is that they’re starting to expand the story some – with the Spiral King and the Four Generals – though I still have doubts about how exciting that plot line will be if it solely consists of giant robots fighting each other.  I guess the main things to watch from now on are whether there is more to the series to that, and how does Simon (and other characters like Yoko) grow through the series.  However, overall I’ve thusfar been rather underwhelmed with not much reason to think it’ll get much better.  Maybe the one bright spot in the future is what role the daughter of the Spiral King will play in the future.

Apologies to Random Curiosity for stealing a screen shot. I lost my screenshot after having to reinstall my OS.

If you’ve been following my Twitter feed at all, you know that I was at New York Anime Festival (combined with New York Comic Convention) this past weekend. I’m working on a proper writeup of the convention overall, but in the meanwhile, enjoy some photos of the great cosplayers I took over the weekend. You can find all the cosplay photos I took in my Picasa web albums: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. The resolutions have been reduced from their original 12MP so that they don’t take up insane amounts of space, but if you’d like the full-res version of any of them, just ask. And to all the cosplayers during the convention, thank you!

Day 1

Friday was a short day, starting from 1PM. I also wanted to attend a lot of panels that day, so I didn’t manage to take a lot of pictures. Still, I got some good ones, including Alex Leavitt and his girlfriend as the pair from Toradora! – if you’ll recall, Leavitt is the guy who ran panels at both PAX East and Anime Boston earlier this year. He ran a discussion panel called “Anime in Academia” which I attended most of.

That's them. Leavitt is a tall dude, but there's still not enough of a height differential.

The only Working!! cosplayers I saw all weekend.

I like the reflection in this one. Don't know what song they're from, but I'm pretty sure they're Miku and Luka.

Some Haruhi cosplayers before the screening of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. The one in the middle is wearing the costume from the movie.

Day 2

Saturday was absolutely insane. I wish I had taken more, but most of the time, the area was so packed that a good photo just wasn’t possible. It was on this day that I noticed that Durarara!! seemed to be one of the more popular shows to cosplay. Makes sense, I guess, since it’s mostly pretty easy, there are some unique designs, and the guys are perfect yaoi material. Some good Shizuos that I unfortunately couldn’t get pictures of.

Also, there were a lot of Vocaloid cosplayers, just like at Anime Boston, somewhat expected because there was a Miku “concert” that day with a couple of the creators of Vocaloid, including the CEO of Crypton (the company that produces the software). Among those, Kagamine Rin seemed to be a close 2nd to Miku.

These were actually official cosplayers at Bandai's booth.

The Kagamine twins or couple, depending on your interpretation. They were in line for the Miku "concert," which was filled very quickly. It prompted an "encore performance" later that evening so that everyone who missed out could go.

The only Bakemonogatari cosplayers I - or they - saw in the con. I tried to get them to re-enact the scene from the end of the Suruga Monkey arc, but they didn't remember it. Notice Suruga's shoes - great attention to detail there.

The Laughing Man. Simple, easy, clever.

Day 3

Sunday might have been a short day just like Friday, but it was almost as busy as on Saturday. Again, not a lot of chances to snap pictures, but two really stood out to me. One was Tissue-hime, the Nico Nico Douga celebrity known for dressing up as Yuki Nagato, wearing a cough mask to cover his face, and playing the guitar. The other was a near-perfect replica of the Old Spice guy.

There was also a K-On cosplay event at the Bandai booth, to which I arrived too late to get any good pictures.

Now, was this a crossplayer like Tissue-hime, or actually a woman? If the latter, would that make HER a crossplayer? I didn't ask.

One of many blind shots I took from overhead, behind the crowd of people who got here before me. I believe the Mio on the way right might be one of the dub VAs as well.

A large portion of the cast of Durarara!! I like that Shizuo's brother is there, too.

In retrospect, I should've asked her to hold the gun sideways. It really was a thing of beauty.

Well, those are some of the highlights. Again, plenty more in my Picasa albums, links to which I have at the top or as the headers for each section. I probably didn’t get even half the pictures I would’ve liked to just due to how crowded and busy it was, but, well, there’s always next year.

Pre-thoughts

(I’ll probably add some preliminary thoughts to series I haven’t seen before on the first post)

I’m a little hesitant about heading into Gurren Lagann, because most everything about it says that I probably won’t like it.  Whether that’s because it’s GAINAX, it’s one of those “OMGWTFBBQ THIS IS THE BEST SERIES EVAR!!” series, or because I’ve heard some rather…questionable…things about it’s fan service (bolstered by the art and clips I’ve seen).

Nevertheless, since this is one of the more recent “Big Things,” I thought I’d give it a try.

Series: Gurren Lagann
Media: Part 1, Disc 1 (Episodes 1 – 5)

Well I guess so far this show isn’t as bad as I thought.  It seems to be staying more on the funny side rather than the stupid side (though not by much).  Though hopefully Shinji Simon will stop complaining sometime soon because it’s getting kind of old.  Kamina is probably the best character so far, even if he is a bit crazy.  Yuko, meanwhile, seems to exist to fire her pretty useless gun, go provide bouncing boobs, and to have absolutely no modesty about shoving her boobs into the guy’s (especially Simon’s) faces (or vice versa).

So far there isn’t much of a central point, really, other than the trio fighting off the Gunmen (hur hur).  Perhaps the most disturbing part so far was their pig thing tearing off it’s ass to give Simon and Kamina a bite to eat cause their machines weren’t working due to them starving.  Throw in a foursome of siblings who ride around on dogs…backwards, and many things on this show are downright weird so far.

Also, I’m not sure what was up with the animation in episode 4, but it seemed kind of…off.

A hint about my top pick, and no, it's not as simple as it seems.

I was not planning on taking this long to finish this part of my top 10 anime but as I tried to write something for each anime, I found it increasingly difficult to do so. Some of the anime on this part I could write thousands of words about and still not get everything said I want to say about them which made writing only a paragraph or two about them extremely challenging. I finally finished, though, and present the second half of my top 10 anime of all-time now.

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Vintage: Summer 2005, OVA1 – Spring 2007, OVA2 – Winter 2009
Director: Takuya Sato
Studio: Daume
Times Watched: 4

It’s only been a year since I first watched Ichigo Mashimaro, aka Strawberry Marshmallow, which makes it the newest-to-me anime on this list. I avoided it for several years because it just didn’t look that interesting to me but I finally decided to give it a try after I realized it was made by the same studio that did the first season of Minami-ke, my favorite anime comedy. I realized almost immediately that, underneath the cute, slice-of-life feel to Ichigo Mashimaro, the characters and their roles in the show were deeply thought out and expertly put together allowing it to excel in many of the same ways that made Minami-ke so good. Miu, much like Kana in Minami-ke and Haruhi in the Melancholy of Haruhi, is the spark plug that directly or indirectly creates and drives the show; take her out, and there’s no show. Chika plays the straight-man, Ana and Matsuri play the victims (Ana wants to hide the fact that she no longer remembers English even though she was born in Cornwallis, England as well as her last name and Matsuri is an innocent soul willing to believe anything that’s told to her), and Nobue plays the lazy authority figure that allows everything to happen and sometimes is the facilitator of the action.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a show being cute, having a relaxing slice-of-life feel to it, or the ability to lighten the viewer’s mood. Last fall, after my younger sister’s guinea pig died, I used Ichigo Mashimaro to get her to smile again after days of crying and being completely crushed. And I used Ichigo Mashimaro to help get through this past February when it snowed practically every day and the sun totally disappeared for the month.

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Vintage: Fall 2007
Director: Masahiko Ohta
Studio: Daume
Times Watched: 4

Squeaking past Ichigo Mashimaro is Minami-ke which I was just saying is my favorite anime comedy. As many of you know, the second and third seasons of Minami-ke were handled by a different animation studio and since those seasons were so glaringly deficient, I’m not including them here. The difference between them boils down, I think, to two key differences. The first was that Studio Daume was able to handle the large cast to Minami-ke, never spending too much or too little time with the various characters, and the second was Studio Daume had great comedic timing.

One of the reasons why Minami-ke is my favorite anime comedy and my number 4 top anime is because the show is built around three sisters and the family comedy on display here reminds me of my family growing up. I’m the oldest of 6 siblings but after me came 4 sisters and the first 3 younger sisters have personalities that the Minami sisters emulate pretty closely.

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Vintage: Summer 2000 – Spring 2001
Director: Kazuya Tsurumaki and others
Studio: Gainax
Times Watched: at least 9

FLCL was another series that Cartoon Network introduced to me but unlike Paranoia Agent I never stopped watching FLCL; it’s like an itch I need to scratch every so often. As a result, it’s been a constant companion as I’ve grown in my anime fandom and it seems like every time I watch it, there’s still something new to appreciate about it. I still remember the first time I actually got the Lupin references in FLCL and recently, the realization of how old South Park is dawned on me when I saw it referenced in FLCL.

When I first watched FLCL, I didn’t give much thought to it’s uniqueness; I thought it was a typical anime show and that I could find many more shows like it. I eventually learned otherwise; FLCL showcased Gainax at it’s creative best, with everything – story, plot, characters, animation, animation style, music, and voice work – working together perfectly and there’s almost no one that can come close to competing. Even having Gainax hitting that same level of perfection is exceedingly rare, by my count it’s only happened one other time, though the near perfect efforts by Gainax (like Magical Arcade Abenobashi) are still treats.

FLCL is unique to me in another way. It is, so far, the only anime that I enjoy the English and Japanese dubs equally as much.

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Vintage: Spring 2003
Director: Ryutaro Nakamura
Studio: Studio Wombat
Times Watched: 4

Outside of being one of my favorite shows, Kino’s Journey also became quite influential in turning me into the anime fan I am today and helped ensure that I would stay an anime fan. Before Kino’s Journey I had only watched and been exposed to shounen/action anime like Yu Yu Hakusho and Kenshin and I thought this was what anime was. If I would have continued to operate under this impression, eventually I would have grown tired of anime but I happened to give Kino’s Journey a shot and it opened my eyes to what’s possible with anime. From there, I started discovering the many various types of shows anime offered, especially if one removed the filtering agent known as R1 DVD companies, and now I’ve taken the search one step further and try to watch everything, relishing the moment when I find a great anime show in an unlikely place.

Kino’s Journey remains one of the shows I most want to see a sequel of, though I realize with each passing year it becomes less-and-less likely as are the chances of every getting to read the light novels that Kino’s Journey is based off of. I remain hopeful, maybe once the current crop of anime fans start getting tired of the current big action/shounen shows and start wanting something different there’ll be a chance to introduce a show like Kino’s Journey to them. Which reminds me of the most recent time I rewatched Kino’s Journey. It was with my youngest sister and I’d been waiting until she seemed old enough to appreciate the show. I wasn’t surprised that she really liked it; nor was I really surprised when she told me afterwards that she’d watched a couple of episodes over my shoulder, years ago, and didn’t like it one bit.

Kino’s Journey also remains, due to it’s ability to be very entertaining and very thought-provoking, part of my gold standard when evaluating new anime.

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Vintage: Spring 2007 – Summer 2007
Director: Hiroyuki Imaishi
Studio: Gainax
Times Watched: 5

Drilling through the past favorites and kicking all new competitors to the curb is my top anime – Gurren Lagann.

By rights, Gurren Lagann should have failed at some point; it took so many risks with it’s story (character deaths, characters being introduced late, time skips, plot twists, etc.) that it seems inconceivable that Gainax pulled every single one off. It made for a very thrilling and memorable viewing experience that first time because no one, except the Gainax staff, knew what was going to happen. Watching Gurren Lagann the first time the way I did, having to wait a week for the next episode to air and be fansubbed, also allowed me look at the series in a much deeper way then watching it on DVD ever could. I couldn’t marathon the whole series in a few days or even watch multiple episodes at one time or go read spoilers; instead, the only way to feed my desire for more Gurren Lagann was to watch the episode multiple times, pick it apart, and try to guess what was going to happen next. Of course I bought it when it came out on DVD but, much like Haruhi, if I hadn’t been a fan of Gurren Lagann before the DVDs came out I don’t think the reviews over here would have convinced me too.

One of the reasons I really liked Gurren Lagann and think it’s deeper than many people give it credit is it’s portrayal of heroism and the costs heroes have to pay to become heroes. It’s not something that’s seen too often on American television anymore or discussed about in society so I liked when Gurren Lagann focused on it.

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Did anyone figure out the hint? I used a screenshot from the latest Evangelion movie because it felt like Gurren Lagann was definitely on the minds of the creators of Evangelion when they put together the second movie. See also the screenshot below for another example.

Replace that missile with a giant drill and doesn't it remind you of a certain scene in Gurren Lagann?

Filed under: anime, anime rants/views

Saburo Sakai

Subtitled: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Naval Air Force by Saburo Sakai with Martin Caidin and Fred Saito

Every kid growing up seems to think they’re either extremely special, extremely plain, or extremely weird; I fell into the weird category. Almost from the moment I learned to read I sought books normally reserved for “adults”. By sixth grade that meant Tom Clancy novels like The Hunt for Red October, The Cardinal of the Kremlin and military history books. My focus eventually shifted onto greener pastures and I never picked up another book in either genre until just recently.

I had this book sitting around on my one bookcase for many months; it was a hand-me-down from my Dad, he thought I might be interested since I watch a fair amount of anime and am interested in learning more about the country and culture. I was slightly interested but this wasn’t the type of book I read anymore so I just let it sit there. Coming off a multi-day party at my sister’s house with people coming in from all over the state and featured lots of D&D, barbecuing, and fireworks over the Memorial Day weekend; I needed something to unwind on that didn’t require much effort and I decided now was as good as time as any to give Samurai! a chance.

When I finished reading Samurai!, I mentally kicked myself for not picking this up sooner and since I figure there’s probably at least a few people out there that would really enjoy this book as well, here’s my review.

Final  Score: 11.5/12  Near Perfect
Rereadablity: 3.5/5  Medium

Pros: Fast-paced, gripping, deeply interesting from a historical standpoint and also from the standpoint of learning about the life of an amazing person, easy-to-read and doesn’t require the reader to be an expert on the Pacific theater of WW2
Cons: Would have been perfect except the book stops at the end of WW2 and from what the book mentions, in passing, of Saburo Sakai’s life after the war, I would have really loved to read an in-depth account of what happens to him after the war

Book Review

Samurai! was originally published in 1956 and is an autobiography of Saburo Sakai, one of the greatest Japanese pilots of WW2 and either it’s first or second top flying ace to live through the war. Sakai talks about his humble birth, early personal set-backs, his career in the Navy as a fighter pilot from the early conquests of the Japanese empire to it’s crushing defeat and his eventual marriage while facing the uncertainties of living through the war.

I expected a book such as Samurai! to be one of those dry historical books that even someone like me, who likes history, to find boring. At least, I thought to myself, I could find out if this was a good book to read when I needed something to put me to sleep. I should have known better; how many times have I had an anime completely surprise me? By the fifth page I was hooked and hooked badly; everything else was a distraction until I could finish.

What I failed to properly account for, among other things, was the quality of character that Saburo Sakai possessed and the deeply interesting life he lived. Reading the book one realizes how humble he was; for a man with 64 confirmed kills and dozens of more probables during WW2, I expected long accounts of his kills to convince us of his great skills but that wasn’t the case. Instead, he spends a great deal of time talking about his friends, his subordinates, and his exemplary superior officers. He also repeatedly goes in-depth about the courage and determination displayed by Allied pilots that he witnessed firsthand as well as his mistakes. One specific example was his description of the time that he survived being attacked by 15 Allied planes at once without sustaining even a single bullet hole on his plane. His comrades on the ground watched his aerial acrobatics and mobbed him in joy, praising his flying ability when he came back alive but he berated himself then and in the book for making such a rookie mistake that allowed those 15 planes to attack him.

I don’t want to spoil too much more of book so I’ll end the book review section by saying that I highly, highly recommend Samurai! – it has positively everything a person could want in a story, including a love story.

A very injured Saburo Sakai.

Connecting Anime to Samurai!

Expect spoilers of both the book and the anime shows I talk about, so read on at your own risk.

Gurren Lagann has been on my mind recently; everyone, including myself, knows it’s over-the-top and absurd and a bunch of other adjectives that let people dismiss it as, at best, a supremely entertaining but shallow anime. Yet I always had a nagging feeling that there was depth to Gurren Lagann that raised it above the moniker of being entertaining but shallow into being a truly great work; I just couldn’t convincingly say why I thought that though.

Reading Samurai!, I began thinking about how grounded in reality Gurren Lagann actually is. Saburo Sakai was born into a profoundly poor family in a poor area of Japan and had to eek out a living on a 1-acre farm. His father dies while Sakai is young and he turns into a teenage delinquent when all his hard work in high school doesn’t translate into good grades and he feels frustrated at his low status as a result. He eventually falls for the first girl he becomes acquaintances with after leaving his village. He joins the Navy as a means to prove his worth and rapidly raises from the very lowest rank to becoming an officer in only 11 years. When he visits his old village after becoming an accomplished pilot, the village master suddenly is very proud that Saburo Sakai came from his village. Even how, after surviving the war Sakai is denied a truly happy ending when his wife dies very young a few years after the war ends, reminded me of Gurren Lagann.

Most amazingly, Sakai witnesses a series of events that is eerily like Kamina’s death scene. An explosion has knocked everyone on a Japanese bomber unconscious except for the flight navigator. The navigator takes control of the plane, even though he has no knowledge of flying, and barely gets it back to base where a new problem appears. He absolutely has no clue on how to land the plane and is very hesitant to try since he’ll probably kill everyone on board so he starts flying in loops around the base. On the third loop, with fuel running out, the navigator begins the landing and Sakai can tell it’s not going to end well when the pilot suddenly wakes up. The pilot lands the plane and then lapses back into unconsciousness.

So maybe that’s it, at least part of the reason for the greatness of Gurren Lagann, if one strips away the fluff to Gurren Lagann, we’re left a very accurate portrait of heroism and a testament to what one person can really achieve.

Connecting Saburo Sakai’s life to anime doesn’t stop there. If his life up to the end of WW2 seemed very Gurren Lagann-esque, his life after the war took a very Kenshin-like turn. He made a vow never to kill again and declined the repeated offers to join the new Japanese Air Force. Instead, he opened a printing shop and hired the widows and other family members of close friends that died during the war. He didn’t live in the past and found friendship with the Allied pilots he fought against.

And once again I find an amazing similarity between Sakai and an anime. The forward of the book was written in 1956, just after the cease-fire on the Korean peninsula and Sakai ends the forward by saying that if Japan needs him someday in the future because Communist forces threaten the nation – he would fly again to defend his country but he prayed fervently he won’t need to. Fifty years of hindsight knows that turn of events never happened but in the case of Kenshin, he was called upon to save the nation from Shishio even if that would mean breaking his vow.

There’s other moments in the book that reminded me of a specific anime to a lesser degree. I question the high number of christian schools found in anime so I had to chuckle when I read that Saburo Sakai’s high school was a school run by American Methodist missionaries. There was also the Melancholy of Haruhi moment when Sakai, who had been his small town’s top student, discovers that he isn’t special at all when he goes to high school in Tokyo and finds hundreds of better students. And the story of how he got to the marriage altar felt like something straight out of a Key story.

In conclusion, I wasn’t looking for it but after reading Samurai!, I gained a new level of respect for shows like Gurren Lagann and Kenshin. I already liked them a lot because it’s nice to find shows that showcase true heroism but I never really thought how true-to-life these shows could be.

About a week ago, 2-D Teleidoscope made a post titled The Sexy Otaku Manifesto, in which he wrote about “getting back into shape” and called out to other “geeks” and “otaku” to do the same. 21stcenturydigitalboy wrote a response on Fuzakenna, The Inauthenticity of Nerd Appearances – All of Us Are Slaves, And Most of Us Are Liars that elaborated on the idea further, going also into the mindset that leads otaku to be unfit. He also told a bit of his own story and that of his friends/relatives regarding fitness.

These posts piqued my interest because personal fitness is a (dare I use the term?) passion of mine. I understand their sentiment, more than you can imagine, as I’ll try to show in this post. But something about the posts bothered me. They rubbed me the wrong way. I believe that they got their message all wrong. If you want to engender change in behavior relative to fitness, if you really believe in some “Sexy Otaku Manifesto,” you don’t do it by telling others that they need to change or by calling them liars.

Let me back up. Each of those posters said something about their own personal fitness history or goals, so I think it’s appropriate that I share mine. I’ll start almost 2 years ago in July of 2008. I’m 5 feet, 9 inches (175cm) tall and have been for about a decade now. At that point, I weighed 217 pounds (98.4Kg). For those of you without a BMI calculator handy, that’s a 32.1 BMI, or well into the “obese” range. And even though BMI isn’t the best measure of fitness, believe me, “obese” was the right word to describe me. I was the very image of the fat otaku.

OK, so I wasn't THAT far gone. But believe me, it was pretty bad. I didn't even get Persona 3 until 2009.

I can’t tell you what or if anything even clicked in me at that point. But I decided that I had had enough. I set what I felt then was a reasonable goal: lose 50 pounds in 2 years. By the end, I would weigh 167 pounds (75.7Kg), right under the 25 BMI boundary between “normal” and “overweight,” and that wasn’t even 1/2 pound a week! Piece of cake, right?

I started to eat right. And I started running. At first, I could barely make it to 100m before I had to walk. But if I had to walk, I kept walking until I could run again. I got my running endurance from 30 seconds to a minute. Then to 2 minutes, then 5, then 10. I still remember the first time I ran for 30 minutes. I had just passed the 3 mile marker when my watch finally read “30:00.” I was so busy looking at the watch, I tripped on my own feet and landed face first. Fortunately, I had maintained enough control to fall to the side, onto the grass. The dirt was sweet, and it was September.

Then from 30 to 40. I leveled off at that, spiking upwards only when I really felt good. It was a cold, snowy winter that year, but it only made me more excited. By the time the calendar had rolled around to 2009, I had run more than 50 minutes exactly once, covering 6 miles in 54. And I weighed 169 pounds (76.7Kg). My BMI was pretty much right on that 25 line that I had shot for.

Then came the strength training. I won’t bore you any further with the numbers regarding that. Right now, 1 year 10 months after I had made my choice, I weigh 144 pounds (65.3Kg). That’s a BMI of 21.3, right around the middle of the “normal” range. I can squat 3/4 of my body weight, do 14 pull ups, run a 10K in 42:44 (6:53/mile). I’ve become fit.

What am I trying to say here? Am I trying to brag? Maybe. I do feel proud. But on the Internets, everyone is a tough guy. Everyone is a man’s man and everyone looks like someone from 300 (I wonder how many times that movie has been referenced in relation to fitness?). There is no reason for you to believe me, so I don’t think I’d be accomplishing anything by bragging. Maybe I just wanted to write it down to make me feel good.

On the Internets, everyone's a tough guy.

But the purpose with which I wrote this is to put a proper context to what I’m about to say. When it comes to fitness and weight loss, I’ve been to hell and back (That’s not to say that I’m done. I’ll continually be reaching for more for for the rest of my life). And I did it effortlessly. I never once looked at my plate with dread or despair over the contents. My heart only pumped harder with excitement when it was 20 degrees outside and I had a date with 4.5 miles of road. I got the gain with no pain (well, except for that knee injury I had in spring 2009). I believe that my message holds true even if you ignore my history with fitness, but I believe having it in mind strengthens it. Take it for what you will.

Maybe the ease with which I had achieved my goals fills me with guilt, which is why my sensibilities were offended by some of the content in 2DT’s and 21stcenturydigitalboy’s posts. They have the right idea, at the high level: put your mind to it, and your body can be what you want it to be. And if you don’t care how your body looks, think very deeply about why that is. Are you being honest to yourself? Are you being fair to yourself? I don’t pretend to know the answer for anyone; I can barely answer the question for myself. But if you can say yes, you’ve reached a state of mind that few of us can ever hope to reach.

But it’s wrong to think you can cause behavioral change by simply telling them to change or by calling them liars. At best you’re just insulting them. At worst, you’re only contributing to the cycle of low self esteem that can lead to bad fitness in the first place. Real change comes from within. And no one can control that but the person himself.

And that’s what I’m really trying to get at here. It’s not anyone’s place to tell others that they should look a certain way. We choose to be who we are. Some of don’t prioritize our fitness as highly as others. Some – most – no, probably all – of us lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel better. But that’s our choice. It was my choice to become healthy, to become fit, and that’s why it worked and has lasted. Change not of our own choosing is meaningless and cannot survive.

If you really want to see others change, give them the tools, the encouragement, the ideas of change. First, let them understand that it’s possible. Then, give them the choice. Maybe give them a nudge, but don’t push, because they’ll only push back. 2DT himself seems to understand this when he writes, “The people I’d really like to reach with this message will likely never read it, or simply ignore it.”

I had said that getting fit had been easy for me. It’s true. But what allowed that was the biggest change in me, which was in my mind. As my mindset changed, I learned to like – to love – the things that would naturally cause my body to become fit. It was gradual, and I only realized it after the fact.

But I’m not naive or arrogant enough to think that just because I found the change to be easy, it should or will be for others. It was only in looking back that I realized just how much my mind had changed. I had become a different person, and I had barely realized it in the process. It’s pretty daunting to think of at times. I refuse to trivialize it by telling others to simply go do it.

So what really can I contribute? What can I do if I want people to change? If I want others to make the same kinds of decisions regarding their bodies as I made regarding my body? There’s no knowledge I can offer that you can’t find in a million other places. (except maybe this: People on /fit/ are assholes, but they know what they’re talking about. If you can stand the heat, take a gander over there and read some threads, even start one. I take no responsibility for the consequences).

To paraphrase Hitagi from Bakemonogatari episode 12, “What I can offer is my body.” It is yet another example of people changing their fitness for the better. There’s no reason why your body can’t be one too. I’m going to invoke Kamina here, just like 21stcenturydigitalboy did with his post. Not for his perfect body, but rather for his message. Believe in yourself. If you can’t, believe in me, because I’ve been down the same path, and I believe that you can do it too.

What do Archer, Shizuo, and Kamina have in common besides being perfect physical specimen? They got to where they are by doing what they believed in. (OK, fine, Shizuo kinda had an unfair advantage. But you know what I mean).

If you get nothing else out of this post, if this is tl;dr, let me just try to get this one message out: don’t judge. Just think about what it means to be an otaku. Like, how they use the word over in Japan. It’s a term used not only for anime fans, but for hardcore fans of anything particularly niche. It means liking something that few others care about to an extent few others care to understand. And that’s why in order for a community to form among otaku, judgments need to be held at the door. Let others be who they are.

Stan Lee has been responsible for a bevy of awesome superheroes and growing up I watched and liked the cartoon adaptations of his X-Men and Spiderman franchises. So, the fact that this anime is based on a comic that Stan Lee started serializing in the Japanese manga magazine Monthly Shounen Gangan was enough to make me interested and then I heard that Bones was doing the adaptation. This made it even more interesting to me because they’re one of the top animation studios in terms of quality animation and they are well acquainted with making an action anime series with Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood being but the latest example. Did this fusion of trans-pacific talent yield a shining new hero, as I hope, or will Heroman turn out to be just a Loserman?

Rating for episodes 1 to 5 – 3/12  D
Anticipation Level: 0.5/5  Very Low

The Story

Set in a smog-free copy of Los Angeles, dubbed Center City, our protagonist is Joey Jones – an androgynous, back-boneless middle school boy – who gets picked on by an All-American beefcake of a guy, Will, because Will’s younger sister is a cheerleader who’s into weak, androgynous, back-boneless boys. Luckily for Joey’s health his best friend, Psy, can protect him from Will. Watching the first episode it was obvious that something about Psy unnerved Will; though, I’m not sure if it’s the crazy hairdo or because Psy was obviously picked to be the token minority character or because Psy was also picked to be the token handicapped character or all three.

One day Joey finds a broken Heybo robot, the hot new toy from Japan, and decides to fix it up because he really wanted one but is too poor to even think about buying one. After he gets it repaired something very unexpected happens, it gets hit by lightning and the toy robot can now transform into a life-sized robot with superpowers and only Joey can control him. This is pretty cool and Joey thinks so too but, before Joey can start contemplating what he should do with this robot, aliens show up to take over the world and it quickly apparent that the world needs Heroman to save it.

The Fine Print

I really, really wanted to like this but no level of wanting is enough to plaster over it’s many faults. If it was a total failure, I wouldn’t feel so disappointed but there are parts to the show I do like. There’s the animation; it’s your typical high-quality Bones effort. I love the design of Heroman, it makes him look so cool and his red-white-blue paint job tickles the patriotic part of my brain. I also love the setting for the show; Center City is obviously an American city and it feels refreshingly different from the standard Japanese city setting that’s the default in anime. (I’m not saying I expect Japanese anime to be set in America but the difference is a nice change of pace.) Not all the characters are annoying; strangely, I like Will the bully and find little fault in him trying to keep Joey away from his younger sister. There’s also the Professor, Psy (who would have made a better main character), and my favorite, Joey’s grandma.

As I see it, there are two big problems with this show that combined sink any chance of this show succeeding. The first problem is the choice of enemies for Heroman to fight. An alien invasion is just too vast of a enemy for a single super-powered hero to fight so the aliens have to be unbelievably gimped to give Heroman a chance. There can’t be too many aliens to fight, especially since Heroman isn’t that super-powered compared to the aliens, so the aliens only bring one lousy ship to invade an entire planet with. If this is the summit of alien war planning, they’d’ve been wiped out by other aliens long before coming to bother Earth. Nor can the aliens be too effective in their destruction of Center City and presumably the world, so after shocking us with their amazing disintegrating rays they follow up with … wait for it – giant marbles. Seriously. The only way to make this a winnable contest for Heroman is to let the aliens fight with maybe 5% of their capability and that’s no fun to watch. The obvious answer to this was to pick a smaller threat for Heroman and Joey to fight.

The other major problem to Heroman is the complexity of the show. It’s very, very simple and shallow and the characters are so brain-numbingly one dimensional. If this was the first time I saw something by Stan Lee, I’d think he was a second rate hack that must of blackmailed someone important to get this anime made. Luckily for me, it’s not and I’m well aware of his earlier and much better work. It’s so below the typical quality of anime, especially for a Bones show, that I’d be tempted to say it was made as if it was for the American market but I’ve watched plenty of quality superhero series over here so I know it’s seriously under-performing even for an American market show.

And saying it’s a kids show so it’s supposed to be simple is not a valid excuse. The makers of Gurren Lagann said it was meant for kids and it’s one of my favorite anime of all-time. There’s also Kemono no Souja Erin, it’s also a kid’s show and it displayed no lack of depth and complexity and is one of my top titles of 2009. There’s also Studio Ghibli movies like Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro, meant for kids but is every bit as good from an adult standpoint. Looking closer to home, Pixar films are kids shows that adults love and cherish as well; I seriously thought UP deserved to win best picture last year and I’m so excited about seeing Toy Story 3 when it comes out this June. And a look at comics, even if one just restricts themselves to other Stan Lee comics, shows that Heroman fails to even come close to the depth and complexity that’s pretty standard in comics.

I could go on but this show really isn’t worth wasting any more of my time. Heroman becomes the first and, so far, only spring anime that I’m dropping.

It does seem like someone was thinking about Gainax shows while working on Heroman.

Ditto

Ditto

With the timing of Al Gore and the intelligence of Joe Biden, the recent rant by Bang Zoom’s President about the impending death of anime is so sad, it’s hilarious. If it was a well-written piece I might feel like I needed to write a rebuttal but it wasn’t, not by a long shot, which leads one to ask – “Why are you bringing up Mr. Sherman’s rambling rant?” Well, I’d answer, there are some things I wanted to mention related to issue at hand and this is as good of a time as any.

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Where I Blame Mr. Sherman and Bang Zoom For Being 35% of the Problem Facing Anime In America

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I bought an anime DVD the other day.

Not a big surprise; I, like many people can be enticed to buy something even if we have access to it for free. That goes for my copy of the latest Dresden Files book and it goes for this DVD. What is this mysterious anime DVD that I, as a member of the dark underbelly of the internet bought? The complete box set of Baccano.

The big surprise to this purchase is that I bought the complete box set of Baccano for it’s dub. That’s right, I bought an anime DVD for it’s dub. Crazy, I know. Even more crazy when you start listing all the awesome Japanese voice work done for this series but here I am, giddy in anticipation over watching an anime dub.

Someone well acquainted with the past dub quality in anime might ask what makes this dub different from the years and years of mediocre dubs that American fans have had to put up with? Simply put, Funimation used voice actors that sounded right for their role, had genuine talent, and the drive to give a performance on par with their Japanese counterparts. I wouldn’t think it was possible but Funimation did it and if you don’t believe me, you can go to their website to watch the dub episodes for free.

Fine, someone might now say, why does a sublime dub convince me to buy the DVD? Another simple question , Baccano’s dub gives the DVD a much higher value in my eyes then a sub-only DVD or a lousy dub DVD would. For instance, I can now watch Baccano even when it’s not possible to read subs all the time like while I’m cooking or cleaning or eating or, in the case of my sister, when she wants to do a bit of knitting. Also, most Americans don’t like to read subs so having a quality dub of Baccano means I have an anime to show those people when I want to convince them that anime can be awesome (without having to worry about the voice acting souring my chances with these potential converts).

I can hear the question coming at this point – what does Baccano’s dub have to do with Bang Zoom and the problems facing anime in America. At the time of reading Mr. Sherman’s rant I knew Bang Zoom was a dubbing studio but I didn’t know of what shows so I went to the ever informative Anime News Network. And according to ANN, Bang Zoom had nothing to do with the Baccano dub but they did do the Haruhi (my #1 top anime of 2006), Lucky Star (my #2 top anime of 2007), and Gurren Lagann (my #1 top anime of 2007) dubs.  A light bulb clicks on at this point. I have the limited edition Haruhi DVDs and found the dub just slightly better then mediocre; Haruhi’s English voice actor totally failed to make Haruhi as awesome as Aya Hirano was able too and the whole show comes off as a much lower quality show because of it. I saw the trailer to Lucky Star and was so turned off by the dub that I refused to even consider paying money for such an inferior product. In the case of Gurren Lagann, I watched it dubbed on the Sci-fi channel and was so infuriated when a poorly picked English voice for Kamina was able to completely change his character for the worse.

In all three shows I sensed a common theme – Bang Zoom pumping out a mediocre dub which might have saved a couple bucks but hurt the show in the long run. Consider what an anime DVD is worth if the dub track will never be listened to and watching it subbed means putting up with that ugly yellow font and poor handling of signs and watching it as a DVD means having to settle for the resolution a DVD offers? Even Mr. Sherman must know, in his heart-of-hearts, that an anime DVD like that isn’t worth very much. If, however, that same DVD offered a great dub then it’s worth would be much higher and as a result, more DVDs would be sold because the consumers would be able to get something they like in return for spending money that could have gone to a dozen different diversions and hobbies.

As I looked at it more the more I became convinced that Bang Zoom and Mr. Sherman have been more detrimental to anime in America then fansubs have ever been. Consider the anime companies Mr. Sherman mentions in his rant as having closed or suffered massive trouble. Two of those four companies (Bandai and Geneon/Pioneer) use/used Bang Zoom extensively to do their dubs – coincidence? Could it be, those market forces of capitalism that work in so many other industries to keep prices down and quality up have shown up here as well? Could it be, American consumers aren’t quiet the dumb sheep that people like Mr. Sherman think they are?

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Where I Show Mr. Sherman’s Statement That Japan Is “struggling to bring out quality titles” As Another Symptom of The Problem Facing Anime In America

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Assuming, of course, Mr. Sherman wasn’t lying through his teeth and he knows that Japan isn’t struggling to bring out quality titles. Which is a possibility but if one looks at what types of shows that generally get licensed and brought over then his statement fits into an idea I have.

I was looking at the those wonderful charts that chartfag has been putting together and I noticed something when I compared the 2008 chart with the 2001 chart. Here’s the charts, can you see it too?

If you look at the 2001 chart, it looks like the TV stations and animators where targeting young boys with the overwhelming majority shows being action shounen shows and the secondary market seemed to be young girls with the cute shoujo shows. Now look at the 2008 chart and something strange has happened. There’s still those action shounen shows and cute shoujo shows but there’s all these new types of shows: Aria, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Spice and Wolf, Natsume Yuujinchou, Hidemari Sketch, Clannad, Natsu no Sora, and Kaiba to name just a few.

It’s almost like the audience watching anime in Japan is diversifying and getting older; shocking, I know. A look at the American anime market shows that, for the most part, it’s still a 2001 mindset. It’s very slowly getting better (thanks in part to fans refusing to accept business as usual from the DVD companies) but there’s still a wide gulf between how shows like Bleach and Naruto are treated in America as opposed to how Natsume Yuujinchou, Clannad, or Aria are. What must American anime company people like Mr. Sherman think when they see shows like Bakemonogatari as being top DVD/Blu-Ray sellers in Japan? Their years and years of relying and pushing action shounen titles must make it so they can’t comprehend how a show that’s hyper-stylized and spends all it’s time showing characters talking could ever possibly sell in America.

So these American anime companies pass on shows like Bakemonogatari and wait for the next Naruto and complain that fansubs are killing anime because their waiting for the next Naruto obviously means something is wrong with anime. The funny thing is they might be right about the difficulty in their ability to sell shows like Bakemonogatari to America but let’s remember that it’s these same company executive’s limited mindset that has stunted the ability for the mainstream anime fandom in America to grow with their Japanese counterparts, causing a near incompatibility between the two.

To further compound this problem, American anime companies sticking to a 2001 mindset also cause yet more problems. People, including anime fans, get bored of watching the same type of shows over-and-over again; look at the cyclical nature to American prime-time television as a great example of this. So what do these bored anime fans do when they get tired of watching anime that bores them? Either become former anime fans or head to the dark, dangerous underbelly of the internet and find all the titles they’ve been missing out on. And even if you can find anime fans that don’t tire of watching the same type of show over-and-over, by watching only those action shounen titles targeted towards the younger audience it’s very probable that these anime fans will decide one day that they’ve “outgrown” anime because it’s meant for kids and, unless someone steps in and shows them the wider possibilities found in anime, they will stop being anime fans.

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Where I Mention Another Market That Alarmists Have Said Will Die “If Something Isn’t Done!”

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Print science fiction. Except in the case of print SF, people have prognosticated it’s immanent death since at least the early 1980’s. Hasn’t happened yet and it probably never will, provided great SF books/stories are still being written. So, I put little stock in any statement about the immanent death of anime as long as great anime is still being made and a quick look shows that plenty of quality anime is still getting made.

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Where I Remind Mr. Sherman the Easiest Way To Get Rid Fansubs Is To Put Out a Superior Product

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I asked earlier how much is a DVD worth if the dub track will never be listened to and watching it subbed means putting up with that ugly yellow font and poor handling of signs and watching it as a DVD means having to settle for the resolution a DVD offers. The answer is not very much and it looks even sadder when compared to the standard fansub I can find in the dark recesses of the internet put out by unpaid amateurs.

If anime companies in America can come up with a better way to give anime fans their anime then fansubs would go the way of the horse & buggy, the record/8-track players, the canals, the walkie-talkies and the elevator operators. Until that happens though, the anime companies in America will be the ones in danger of disappearing and not fansubs.

And will anime die if every single American anime company shuts down? To answer, I’ll first have to assume this scenario is possible because if anime is anything like print SF then as companies close down, new people with new ideas start new companies and pick up where the old companies left off and there’s never a point when somebody isn’t producing anime/manga/ print SF. So, assuming this worst case scenario, would anime die if every single American anime company shuts down? I’d have to say no, I don’t think so.

For all the bluster that Mr. Sherman displays in his rant – America don’t actually make the anime, we’re only a secondary market to Japan. If we were truly important to them then we’d be able to leverage better treatment from them. Remember how in the case of Haruhi the overwhelming amount of fans in America wanted the DVDs released in TV order and the Japanese license holder would only allow the TV order as an “extra” for the limited edition DVDs and only as a subtitled release. Or the continued reluctance of the Japanese rights holders in allowing us Americans to release anime Blu-ray discs. They couldn’t let the remote possibility of reverse importation mess-up their true cash cow even if that makes fansubs all the more enticing to everyone else.

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Where I Write a Conclusion and Hope Someone Has Read This Entire 2300+ Word Blog Entry and Derived Something Positive From It

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Let’s Recap: Mr. Sherman, President and CEO of the dubbing studio Bang Zoom writes a rant about the impending death of anime and I find it funny for being so out-of-touch with reality. It didn’t rate a response until I realized this was a chance to talk about how unexpectantly awesome the Baccano dub was (thanks Funimation!) and to snub Bang Zoom for screwing up three recent great anime shows by providing poor to slightly better then mediocre dubs and to talk about how the worth of an anime DVD changes drastically depending on the quality of it’s dub. I also realize that I can take this opportunity to voice my displeasure about the history of licensing only certain types of shows for America and to point out how these studio executives are too short-sighted and/or dumb to realize the consequences of their licensing patterns. And I realized I can mention what I think about all these Chicken Littles who want to make us believe the sky is falling and also to remind Mr. Sherman (who probably won’t actually ever read this post) that the surest way to get rid of a product is to produce a superior product and watch capitalism work it’s magic and let the inferior product disappear.

So after realizing all this, I got to writing this blog entry and here we are, a dozen hours of writing from me and 2300+ words written. I hope at least one person out there enjoyed this post and got something from it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some anime to watch.

There’s just something “wonderful” about a snowstorm that all forecasts say will only drop 3 – 6 inches (~7.6 – 15 cm) of snow in your area and you wake up to find that 19 inches (~48 cm) of snow has fallen. So on the day I was planning to write a few posts up for The Null Set – maybe get to a few winter impression posts or mention how much I’ve been liking Kobato lately or get to my top 2009 picks or figure out what else I should do with the 400 screen shots I took from the latest Gurren Lagann movie – instead I was out shoveling snow. I can’t really complain, though, I saw video from the mudslides in California and I have to say that I’d prefer snow removal over mud removal any day.

While I was out today, I took a few pictures and figured I’d share since it’s not everyday that a person gets so much snow dumped on them.

Click on any picture to enlarge, if you so desire.

Bird tracks in the snow

I'd've love to have seen that squirrel as he made his way through the snow.

Even on a day like today, the birds are cautious.

Two of the really big crows that live in our area.

The amazing thing is about 20 minutes after I took this shot, the street department actually plowed our street. It normally takes several days for them to bother.

Filed under: other wallpapers and pictures