Anime Spring Season 2010

Just a quick post about the two new series I'm watching this spring season.

Hakuouki is the one I can definitely recommend to everybody. The story is about Chizuru, a young girl in Edo, whose physician father takes a temporary position in Kyoto and then goes missing. She disguises herself as a boy and travels to Kyoto, where she witnesses some rather paranormal, vampirish-looking samurai attacking another group of rogue samurai. The Shinsengumi intervene and take Chizuru captive. They discover that the man that they are looking for also happens to be the man Chizuru is looking for: her father. The Shinsengumi then agree to allow Chizuru to stay at their headquarters, still disguised as a boy, while they all search for her father.

This is a serious presentation of the Shinsengumi. The action sequences are exciting and realistically bloody, and the tone is all drama.

Much has been written in the anime blogosphere about Hakuouki's bishonen character designs. For me, that's just an added plus here: the story and characters are what make this series. The stirring background music and beautiful art design are further quality features. In sum, even if you don't particularly care for samurai stories, you might give Hakuouki a try.

The other series, well... There are good series that happen to feature bishonen character designs, and then there are series where bishonen character designs and screaming shonen-ai subtext are the main reasons for that series to exist. So let me briefly mention Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru, or Uraboku for short.




A young man can read people's minds when he physically touches them. He's a nice guy and has no idea why he has paranormal abilities. He frequently gets rescued from danger by a dark, sexy man, and when he does, memories of being somebody else seem to surface...

If you guessed that this young man was a female in his former life, and the girlfriend of the dark and sexy man, then you are: 1) an old anime hand who has seen this plot a thousand times before, and/or; 2) a shonen-ai and yaoi fan who will watch this kind of thing regardless of lack of originality, if the character designs are attractive enough and your favorite seiyuu are in it.

I'm in the latter category. I get that this story isn't exactly stunningly original, but it's pretty to look at; and Takahiro Sakurai, Souichiro Hoshi and Akira Ishida are in it, so I'm in for the long haul. ;) I can only recommend it to other shonen-ai and yaoi fans, however, as the rest of you are likely to either fall asleep or run screaming at the sight of it.

Hope everyone is enjoying this spring season of anime!

A Mangaroll Proposal

Anime News Network ran the following news brief yesterday:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-04-16/weekly-shonen-jump-editors-discuss-unauthorized-copies

What the news brief basically states is that Viz and its Japanese parent company Shueisha are planning to crack down on unauthorized uploading of manga to online sites. The publisher also noted that the amount of unauthorized uploading is so "overwhelming" that they literally cannot deal with all of it, and asked for "the readers' support" in this regard.

It's amazing to me that Shueisha doesn't seem to understand what the "overwhelming" amount of unauthorized uploading really signifies: a fan base of young people who cannot afford to buy manga volumes but who are nonetheless ardent, devoted readers of manga. In other words: future customers.

In other words: people that you really shouldn't be trying to alienate, but to accommodate in some way.

There is no recognition in this announcement of the fact that there's a middle ground of alternatives here, one of which - as far as streaming anime goes - has already proved itself a success: Crunchyroll.

I'm a paid subscriber to Crunchyroll. Crunchyroll is the perfect alternative for those of us who simply want to watch streaming episodes of various anime series, without wanting to own them. There are a lot of fans who want to watch anime, but have no desire to own the anime in a permanent fashion such as on their computer hard drives or on DVDs. Digital distribution is already accepted as being the new model for home entertainment. Netflix is offering ever more movies as digital downloads straight to your computer. This is a reality that the industry seems slow to recognize.

While Viz and Shueisha have the right as intellectual property holders to enforce their licenses, I think they're missing a few important factors as far as the U.S. anime and manga market is concerned.

First, as I said, many fans don't want to own anime or manga: they just want access to anime episodes and manga chapters. Regardless of how it is in Japan, anime and manga are niche markets here in the U.S. Niche markets are by definition small markets. When you have a limited market, you don't try to force one model on your consumers; instead, you do all you can to encourage, support and grow the market. Their stance feels almost antagonistic to the fans; and it's also shortsighted thinking in business terms.

Here is what I mean. Anime and manga are mostly serial forms of entertainment. An anime series results in a number of DVDs; a manga series turns into a number of manga volumes. And anime and manga are forms of entertainment that are skewed toward young people.

As such, it's unrealistic to expect, say, the average 15-year-old anime or manga fan to be able to afford to buy a DVD anime box set or 10 manga volumes; and not just for one series, but for every anime or manga story that they like. Honestly, that would be a lot to ask of most working adults, let alone teenagers. Add to that, that fans don't care to own most of what they watch or read anyway - and I think it's clear that the industry has unrealistic expectations of exactly who comprises the U.S. market and what kind of money they have. ;)

In addition to the Crunchyroll subscription model, there are other middle-ground alternatives such as placing advertising or commercials on licensed sites that stream anime or display manga. That way, the very cash-strapped fan, or the 13-year-old fan who has literally no income, can watch anime or read manga and the original creators and distributors will receive some compensation. And again, this 13-year-old will likely grow up to become a fan who will spend some of his or her income on anime DVDs, manga volumes and related merchandise. Another possibility would be manga libraries, with a portion of the rental fees going to the original creators.

What I'm saying is: The fans are not your enemy. Recognize that most of your consumer base are young people who can't afford to buy large quantities of anime and manga at full price. Compromise and seek a few middle-ground solutions. Make it easy for the fans to consume anime and manga in ways that ensure the original creators and distributors will also receive compensation. Help anime and manga fans to remain fans, and grow your market by creating ways to introduce potential new fans to anime and manga. It's clearly not impossible, as Crunchyroll has shown. There are ways - beyond insisting that fans spend hundreds of dollars that most of them don't have, or else not have any access to anime and manga at all.

To clarify my own position in this: Do I buy anime DVDs? Yes. Do I buy manga volumes? Yes. Do I for every single anime and manga out there that I am interested in? No. If the industry wants my money for those remaining properties, then here's what I propose.

Somebody needs to start a manga subscription site similar to Crunchyroll. Let's call it "Mangaroll." For a reasonable fee, say $4.95 per month, Mangaroll would feature the latest chapters of manga from different publishers. (The fee would be less than what Crunchyroll charges because manga takes up a small amount of bandwidth and requires minimal technical set-up and maintenance, compared with streaming anime.) As with Crunchyroll and anime, the Mangaroll site would contract with manga publishers for the license to translate and display manga online at their site, and the manga publishers would then also receive a percentage.

Does what I'm saying make sense?

As with Crunchyroll, I would be among the first to sign up for Mangaroll. I am ready with my $4.95 right now.

Somebody start this service, please. ;)

Draw Faster, Tite Kubo!

The long drought is over for Bleach fans: this week the anime series finally returned to the main story after ten months of filler episodes.




Most fans hate filler episodes. Admittedly, the quality does vary with filler arcs, but I think they're worth watching if you love the series. I watched all of the Bleach fillers these past ten months. The Zanpaktou arc that just ended was actually very good.

What anti-filler purists may not be considering is that all anime episodes contain some 'filler' in them. The average chapter in Weekly Shonen Jump in Japan is around 17 pages long. There's no way that only 17 pages of comic can translate to 24 minutes of anime; so the producers always add scenes, drag out other scenes in length, and try to make several anime episodes out of each manga chapter so that the episodes don't gain too quickly on the manga.

I saw Tite Kubo, Bleach's creator, at Comic Con in 2008. He's a somewhat shy-appearing man in his thirties who wore sunglasses during his presentation.

(A note to Comic Con producers: The next time the creator of an internationally-successful, multi-million dollar franchise like Bleach appears at your convention, you might consider putting him in a room that seats more than just a few hundred people. When I came out of the panel there were hundreds of people waiting in line, still hoping to get in.)

The audience was attentive and respectful, hanging on his every word. One funny story Kubo told was about Kon. Apparently there was no design reason for Kon to have a seam running right down the middle of his face; he just wanted to drive home that Kon was a cheaply-manufactured stuffed animal that was unwanted by the little boy who'd won him as a consolation prize at a fair. He threw him away, which is why he's lying in the middle of the street when we first see him.




Someone asked Kubo what his hobbies were. He replied, a little sadly: "All I do is draw."

Like all successful mangaka, I expect Tite Kubo has a number of assistants that help him get the chapter out each week, but the answer was telling nonetheless. Of course, Kubo doesn't only draw Bleach; he's also the sole storyteller, writing the story and all of the dialogue, as well as - at minimum - designing the composition and drafting the line drawing of each panel. One wonders if any manga creator is ever quite prepared to become a huge success; if they really know what's in store for them schedule-wise. Having to crank out a chapter every week for a weekly comic magazine is undoubtedly draining, and once on that wheel, it's easy to believe that all Kubo does these days is draw.

But Kubo is a blessed soul, and I'm sure he knows it. Every writer and artist would love to have a platform and audience for their work as Kubo does, and I'm sure the millions of dollars would probably also be appreciated by many of us. ;) To have a vast audience that loves your work should be a spur to creativity and a spur to work. So, sorry to crack the whip, Kubo-sensei, but... please draw faster. :)

The Romance of the Shinsengumi

I am currently finishing the writing of a novel called Kaminishi. It's a time-travel yaoi romance about a samurai warlord and a modern-day American graduate student. It's mostly set in Japan in 1851.

Now, 1851 is a tricky year to try to recreate. That was two years before Commodore Perry arrived with his black ships - so the Japanese characters, particularly the samurai, need to be described as looking authentically late-Edo period in their clothing. While doing research for this novel, however, I discovered that there are a lot of movies that are set either in the very late-Edo period - the Shinsengumi period, when the shogunate was about to lose power and bite the dust as an institution - or in the Warring States period, around 1600, with Kenshin Uesugi, Nobunaga Oda and all those guys. But there aren't a lot of movies set in-between those two times, or more specifically, in the period just before Perry landed; in other words, the period I need to recreate visually for the reader in terms of what people wore, what the cities of Kyoto and Edo (Tokyo) looked like then, what foods they ate, etc.

The Shinsengumi period (1860s) still had samurai, and it is late-Edo - the end of the Edo period, in fact - so it's been tempting for me to try to use movies and anime set in that time period for research. The problem is: not only Western ideas, but Western fashions had already begun to infiltrate Japanese society, even the samurai, by then.

Some samurai began wearing Western-style soldier dress. But thankfully - not the Shinsengumi. ;)

The Shinsengumi fascinate me and it's easy to romanticize them, as it is to romanticize the last of any breed, culture or group. They were the samurai holdouts, the representatives of a dying era and cult of ideals.

As part of my research, I recently watched Peace Maker Kurogane, a rather uneven anime series about the Shinsengumi. The protagonist is an annoying brat named Tetsunosuke Ichimura:




Tetsu joins the Shinsengumi, for whom his older brother Tatsunosuke already works as a bookkeeper:




Both Tetsu and his brother Tatsu actually existed and are documented Shinsengumi members. I kind of doubt the real-life Tetsu looked like that, however. ;)

Peace Maker Kurogane begins as a rather comical and lighthearted series, but in the last four or five episodes it turns gut-wrenchingly, hideously violent. It's as if a 24-episode TV series started off as Pokemon and then turned into Silence of the Lambs around episode 19 or 20 or so. (One could write a post just on bizarre tone shifts in anime. And Peace Maker Kurogane should top the list.)

If you watch any movies or anime about the Shinsengumi, the major players become familiar quite quickly. For us fangirls, Soji Okita is a favorite.




Historically, Soji Okita was supposed to be tall and dark. He was an excellent swordsman, and he died of tuberculosis. If you're watching a Shinsengumi story and a samurai suddenly starts coughing up blood, that's Soji.

In Peace Maker Kurogane, Soji is so beautiful that he looks female. Soji Okita, for some reason, has been personified as a bishonen in Shinsengumi recreations, including the movie Gohatto where he's played by Shinji Takeda; and the TV series Shinsengumi! where he's played by Tatsuya Fujiwara (Light Yagami in the Death Note movies).

The two leaders of the Shinsengumi were Isami Kondo and Toshizo Hijikata. Here's Kondo in Peace Maker Kurogane:



... and Hijikata:




What I'm about to show you next may shock you a little.

This is Isami Kondo.



And this is Toshizo Hijikata.




One thing about the Shinsengumi that differentiates them from other samurai is: we have photographs of some of them.

Most historical figures are a little misty around the edges. We read about their childhoods and adult lives, their exploits, triumphs, failures... and they seem more like characters in a book than people who actually lived.

But starting in the mid-19th century, even in isolated Japan, some of those figures were forever immortalized by the new technology: photography.

When I look at the photos of Kondo and Hijikata, it jolts me. Suddenly all the romantic imagery of the end of the samurai and Japan's pre-industrial era come smack up against hard reality. The Shinsengumi were samurai in an era when the samurai actually had to fight again. After hundreds of years of an indolent peace in which they largely engaged in cultural pursuits, the Shinsengumi were the last samurai to take up arms; and they went out in a fierce, bloody blaze of glory. Kondo was captured and beheaded in 1868 at the age of 33. Hijikata was killed a year later on the battlefield at Hakodate. He was 34 years old.

A new Shinsengumi anime series, Hakuouki, just started this spring. The legend of the Shinsengumi continues to evoke the dream-like beauty of that historical era in Japan and the long twilight - and violent end - of the samurai culture in our imaginations. The drawing to a close of that era is a theme in Kaminishi. When the novel comes out, in the tradition of kigo, or change-of-seasons imagery, look for a lot of falling autumn leaves. ;)