Monday, June 28, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
Hakuouki: Last Thoughts - Not!
Warning: Spoilers for the plot such as it was for Hakuouki's first season.
I was all ready to write a full-on rant about how the last episode of Hakuouki left everything unresolved. Then I read the following:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-06-19/hakuoki-2nd-season-green-lit-for-fall
Well, cancel the rant. ;) But only just. Because honestly, even though there is now going to be a second season, I don't know that that's an excuse for a first season that moved... at the... speed... of... mud.
Take the Shinsengumi, add vampires, and a girl who's looking for her missing father. Introduce several oni clans, reveal a shocking fact about the heroine (she's an oni!), and... and... that was about it, actually. Has there ever been less of a story told in twelve episodes?
Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan, the anime series, was based on an otome game. I'm not a gamer, but from what I understand these games give you several different endings. In particular, otome games are romance games - you can have the heroine end up with different male characters.
In Hakuouki, Chizuru ends up with... nobody.
Not only that - she doesn't even come close to becoming involved with any of theBishengumiShinsengumi, and there are plenty of candidates: young Heisuke, who is her own age:
... the tall, gallant Harada with his wicked naginata weapon:
... the cheerful and brave Shinpachi:
... the beautiful, doomed Okita:
... and the silent, mysterious Saito.
Instead, the only character who makes her blush is Hijikata:
Hijikata, who would be around 29 years old in the timeframe of the story. Chizuru looks to be about 16. Hijikata is certainly attractive, but the attraction seems a bit unrealistic, as well as one-sided - the Shinsengumi vice-captain is as protective of her as the other men are, but he doesn't seem to view her in any special, romantic way. So, if the main point of an otome game is to have the heroine end up with the best possible match, the anime takes this in a direction that doesn't seem to make sense.
It may be difficult to adapt a video game with no set plot and make an anime series out of it - but it's not as though there wasn't enough material to build on. There's the actual history of the real-life Shinsengumi for starters, which to be fair the series has followed at least somewhat accurately. There's also the oni/rasetsu angle, with the characters drinking a mysterious red liquid medicine - called ochimizu - which turns them into rasetsu, or faux oni with superhuman powers. And then, of course, Chizuru is searching for her father, the physician who researched and created the ochimizu on the Shogun's orders and who experimented on the Shinsengumi to create "super soldiers." There was enough from the video game, in other words, to have filled these first twelve episodes with more than Chizuru getting rescued from danger umpteen times, and scenes of her sweeping the grounds of the Shinsengumi headquarters, vaguely wondering where her father could be.
Chizuru has turned out to be a disappointment as a female lead. At first she was cute in her samurai boy-drag, with her little sword, but she never developed into a heroine you could get behind. The video game apparently has her being trained to fight by commander Kondo, but you never see this in the anime. Instead, Chizuru is one of those girl leads who gets rescued time and again by the men around her. She also never develops much of a personality; she shows no particular passion or focus. There's nothing driving her - even her desire to find her father is muted, and seems almost to be forgotten as time goes by and with the dailiness of her duties with the Shinsengumi.
Hakuouki, at least in its first season, worked best on two levels. The first is simply as a feast for the eye - and I don't just mean the bishonen. The art design is truly gorgeous to look at: the late-Edo period Kyoto cityscape, the brilliant Shinsengumi uniforms and yes, the men as well.
The second is as an elegy for the Shinsengumi. Where Hakuouki has been most affecting is in its quiet moments, in its sense of the Shinsengumi being the last generation of samurai and representing the end of an era for Japan. The series may have dragged its feet on advancing the plot, and given us a semi-irritating helpless heroine - but it shines as a mood piece.
Here's a wonderful AMV - based entirely on the video game - that gives one a sense of what the first season of Hakuouki could have been like... if they'd remembered it was supposed to be a romance:
I especially love the montage from 3:20-3:44, with its sense of the men of the Shinsengumi walking into legend, into history.
So after everything I just said, yes, I'll be watching the second season come this fall. It hooked and reeled me in enough. I do hope that the producers remember that Chizuru's father is still missing, and further, that - since there's no guarantee of being renewed for a third season - more action and plot advancement in the second season would be an extremely good thing. ;)
I was all ready to write a full-on rant about how the last episode of Hakuouki left everything unresolved. Then I read the following:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-06-19/hakuoki-2nd-season-green-lit-for-fall
Well, cancel the rant. ;) But only just. Because honestly, even though there is now going to be a second season, I don't know that that's an excuse for a first season that moved... at the... speed... of... mud.
Take the Shinsengumi, add vampires, and a girl who's looking for her missing father. Introduce several oni clans, reveal a shocking fact about the heroine (she's an oni!), and... and... that was about it, actually. Has there ever been less of a story told in twelve episodes?
Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan, the anime series, was based on an otome game. I'm not a gamer, but from what I understand these games give you several different endings. In particular, otome games are romance games - you can have the heroine end up with different male characters.
In Hakuouki, Chizuru ends up with... nobody.
Not only that - she doesn't even come close to becoming involved with any of the
... the tall, gallant Harada with his wicked naginata weapon:
... the cheerful and brave Shinpachi:
... the beautiful, doomed Okita:
... and the silent, mysterious Saito.
Instead, the only character who makes her blush is Hijikata:
Hijikata, who would be around 29 years old in the timeframe of the story. Chizuru looks to be about 16. Hijikata is certainly attractive, but the attraction seems a bit unrealistic, as well as one-sided - the Shinsengumi vice-captain is as protective of her as the other men are, but he doesn't seem to view her in any special, romantic way. So, if the main point of an otome game is to have the heroine end up with the best possible match, the anime takes this in a direction that doesn't seem to make sense.
It may be difficult to adapt a video game with no set plot and make an anime series out of it - but it's not as though there wasn't enough material to build on. There's the actual history of the real-life Shinsengumi for starters, which to be fair the series has followed at least somewhat accurately. There's also the oni/rasetsu angle, with the characters drinking a mysterious red liquid medicine - called ochimizu - which turns them into rasetsu, or faux oni with superhuman powers. And then, of course, Chizuru is searching for her father, the physician who researched and created the ochimizu on the Shogun's orders and who experimented on the Shinsengumi to create "super soldiers." There was enough from the video game, in other words, to have filled these first twelve episodes with more than Chizuru getting rescued from danger umpteen times, and scenes of her sweeping the grounds of the Shinsengumi headquarters, vaguely wondering where her father could be.
Chizuru has turned out to be a disappointment as a female lead. At first she was cute in her samurai boy-drag, with her little sword, but she never developed into a heroine you could get behind. The video game apparently has her being trained to fight by commander Kondo, but you never see this in the anime. Instead, Chizuru is one of those girl leads who gets rescued time and again by the men around her. She also never develops much of a personality; she shows no particular passion or focus. There's nothing driving her - even her desire to find her father is muted, and seems almost to be forgotten as time goes by and with the dailiness of her duties with the Shinsengumi.
Hakuouki, at least in its first season, worked best on two levels. The first is simply as a feast for the eye - and I don't just mean the bishonen. The art design is truly gorgeous to look at: the late-Edo period Kyoto cityscape, the brilliant Shinsengumi uniforms and yes, the men as well.
The second is as an elegy for the Shinsengumi. Where Hakuouki has been most affecting is in its quiet moments, in its sense of the Shinsengumi being the last generation of samurai and representing the end of an era for Japan. The series may have dragged its feet on advancing the plot, and given us a semi-irritating helpless heroine - but it shines as a mood piece.
Here's a wonderful AMV - based entirely on the video game - that gives one a sense of what the first season of Hakuouki could have been like... if they'd remembered it was supposed to be a romance:
I especially love the montage from 3:20-3:44, with its sense of the men of the Shinsengumi walking into legend, into history.
So after everything I just said, yes, I'll be watching the second season come this fall. It hooked and reeled me in enough. I do hope that the producers remember that Chizuru's father is still missing, and further, that - since there's no guarantee of being renewed for a third season - more action and plot advancement in the second season would be an extremely good thing. ;)
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Eureka Seven: Unknown Pleasure
I generally only make announcements about - and list in my Amazon store, in the sidebar - books where I was the rewriter or English adaptation writer. The books that I do copy editing or proofreading on, I don't consider myself to have had enough input into to make it worth mentioning.
I'm making an exception, though, for Eureka Seven: Unknown Pleasure. I'm not sure how many fans are aware that Bandai Entertainment is translating and publishing light novels set in the Eureka Seven universe. I say Eureka Seven universe, because these volumes are not a novelization of the canon story. As the forewords to both the first novel, Eureka Seven: Blue Monday, and this second novel state, this is an alternate story with the same characters in the same universe. In other words, Renton still leaves his grandfather and joins Holland and the Gekko State - but the adventure that follows is apparently a different one than what happens in the canon series.
Blue Monday - which I had to read, in order to work on Unknown Pleasure - sets up this alternate story nicely, but this second volume, Unknown Pleasure, was really exceptional. I'm at somewhat of a disadvantage as I have only just started watching the anime series, and therefore can't really compare it with this alternate story; but if the canon series shows anything like the depth of characterization and engaging storyline that I read in Unknown Pleasure, then I will truly be looking forward to watching the rest of the series.
Robert Napton at Bandai was kind enough to give me the credit as copy editor for this book, even though I was brought on to the project fairly late, so a thank-you goes out to him for that. :)
If you're a Eureka Seven fan, you should definitely consider reading this light novel series. This alternate story will conclude with Volume 4, to be released later this year.
Friday, June 18, 2010
One Year Later
I was planning to try and write something profound (or at least, moderately entertaining) for today's post, but alas, life got on top of me this week and I didn't get around to it. So the following will have to do. ;)
Today marks the one-year anniversary of this blog. I think my thought process initially was that I would be writing posts for people like myself: longtime fans of genre entertainment like science fiction, who suddenly and unexpectedly found that they'd fallen hopelessly and headlong in love with anime and manga.
In the past year, I haven't reached any conclusions as to who, exactly, I'm writing this blog for - or to. I give this blog URL out all the time to industry people I work for and/or want to work for, as a freelance editor and English adaptation writer. So in a sense, I've used this blog as kind of a calling card, to show people in the industry that I'm not only a professional who can write semi-intelligently (I...hope), but that I am also a fan - someone who truly loves these art forms of anime and manga. I sometimes write posts with an eye toward this 'calling card' function, but actually, I mostly just write as a fan - in other words, when I have something I want to say about these topics.
Since the start of this year, I've also tried to open up and write a little more about my non-anime and manga writing and art activities. I still haven't posted too much on that, but with Kaminishi, my next novel, coming out this year, I expect to be writing more posts about my other work.
I'm not sure if few or many people read this blog, but I appreciate everyone who does, in particular Yumeka - your loyal support of this blog humbles me. :) I've had a fantastic time writing this blog in its initial year. Thanks for reading!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
Follow the String
"An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet,
regardless of time, place or circumstance.
The thread may stretch or tangle,
but it will never break."
-ancient Chinese belief
In the most recent manga chapter of Naruto, a character mentioned the "red thread of fate."
I first fell in love with this concept when I read a Hikaru no Go fanfic story about Hikaru and Akira being tied together with a 'red thread of destiny.' People seem to use this metaphor exclusively for the soulmate idea, but I prefer to think of it as applying to every relationship and every connection we have in life: our friends, our interests, the events that lead us to our careers, and so forth.
Anime and manga came into my life through a red thread of fate - a thread that led from one thing to the next. I had always been a genre fan, mainly science fiction. I was also an old-time slash fan and when I saw Mirage of Blaze with its yaoi overtones, I was fascinated and started watching other anime series. I discovered there were many different types of anime stories, began browsing through the manga section at the bookstore and as a result, anime and manga have become part of my own life story since 2006.
My theory as a writer and artist has always been to "follow the energy." What I mean by this is that I have always followed my interests. When something captures my interest, I will follow where that energy seems to be leading me to. I say "follow the energy," but it's quite possible that within that energy is hidden one of those fated red strings, leading me on to new discoveries, activities and people to engage with.
Recently I've been captivated by Hakuouki, an anime series about the Shinsengumi and, well, vampires. ;) I've fallen in love with Sannan, especially with his voice, which is acted by seiyuu Nobuo Tobita.
Tobita-san has a beautiful, soft voice that I simply can't get enough of at the moment. Of course, when this happens, the next thing to do is to look at other animes he's been in, and track down some of his character songs and listen to them on You Tube.
So I've been doing this, as well as rewatching some Hakuouki episodes. In rewatching the episodes, I found myself staring at Sannan a lot. I mean, like - really staring. I finally realized that I was fascinated with his simple but attractive samurai outfit, with its deep green kimono and dark blue vest.
And, in following that string, I suddenly got that I wanted to wear that outfit myself. So for the first time in my five years of being an anime fan, I will be cosplaying this year. I am going to Anime Expo dressed as Keisuke Sannan from Hakuouki.
In the past week I found myself - a third-generation Japanese-American - trying on and buying a kimono for the first time. The white collar, fake samurai swords and tabi socks came next. I am now looking for a dark blue vest and slippers, and wondering if one of my black skirts will do, or if I should invest in a pair of hakama pants (which I would be unlikely to wear outside of cosplaying at conventions - unless I take up kyudo archery, lol). If all goes well, I will look something like this:
I have the hairstyle, glasses and ethnicity down already. ;)
So this time, the thread has led to an area of fandom that I never imagined myself participating in. We'll see what comes out of my new cosplay adventure. It's good to follow the string.
regardless of time, place or circumstance.
The thread may stretch or tangle,
but it will never break."
-ancient Chinese belief
In the most recent manga chapter of Naruto, a character mentioned the "red thread of fate."
I first fell in love with this concept when I read a Hikaru no Go fanfic story about Hikaru and Akira being tied together with a 'red thread of destiny.' People seem to use this metaphor exclusively for the soulmate idea, but I prefer to think of it as applying to every relationship and every connection we have in life: our friends, our interests, the events that lead us to our careers, and so forth.
Anime and manga came into my life through a red thread of fate - a thread that led from one thing to the next. I had always been a genre fan, mainly science fiction. I was also an old-time slash fan and when I saw Mirage of Blaze with its yaoi overtones, I was fascinated and started watching other anime series. I discovered there were many different types of anime stories, began browsing through the manga section at the bookstore and as a result, anime and manga have become part of my own life story since 2006.
My theory as a writer and artist has always been to "follow the energy." What I mean by this is that I have always followed my interests. When something captures my interest, I will follow where that energy seems to be leading me to. I say "follow the energy," but it's quite possible that within that energy is hidden one of those fated red strings, leading me on to new discoveries, activities and people to engage with.
Recently I've been captivated by Hakuouki, an anime series about the Shinsengumi and, well, vampires. ;) I've fallen in love with Sannan, especially with his voice, which is acted by seiyuu Nobuo Tobita.
Tobita-san has a beautiful, soft voice that I simply can't get enough of at the moment. Of course, when this happens, the next thing to do is to look at other animes he's been in, and track down some of his character songs and listen to them on You Tube.
So I've been doing this, as well as rewatching some Hakuouki episodes. In rewatching the episodes, I found myself staring at Sannan a lot. I mean, like - really staring. I finally realized that I was fascinated with his simple but attractive samurai outfit, with its deep green kimono and dark blue vest.
And, in following that string, I suddenly got that I wanted to wear that outfit myself. So for the first time in my five years of being an anime fan, I will be cosplaying this year. I am going to Anime Expo dressed as Keisuke Sannan from Hakuouki.
In the past week I found myself - a third-generation Japanese-American - trying on and buying a kimono for the first time. The white collar, fake samurai swords and tabi socks came next. I am now looking for a dark blue vest and slippers, and wondering if one of my black skirts will do, or if I should invest in a pair of hakama pants (which I would be unlikely to wear outside of cosplaying at conventions - unless I take up kyudo archery, lol). If all goes well, I will look something like this:
I have the hairstyle, glasses and ethnicity down already. ;)
So this time, the thread has led to an area of fandom that I never imagined myself participating in. We'll see what comes out of my new cosplay adventure. It's good to follow the string.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
No. 2 Tries Harder
I'm no corporate shill, but I'd like to say something on behalf of the best chain bookstore in the U.S. as far as manga fans are concerned.
Borders has been going through a tough time in the past few years. What with the economy and with anime and manga sales going down, the chain has been battered pretty badly. But I'm still a loyal Borders customer - for the following reasons.
The most important reason why I buy my manga at Borders and not Barnes & Noble is because Borders stocks yaoi manga and yaoi novels, and Barnes & Noble does not. I'm not sure what the corporate reasoning is behind B&N's refusal to stock
Add to that the fact that B&N's customer loyalty card costs $25 per year, while Borders' customer loyalty card is totally free, and there's another reason why I shop at Borders.
I'm dating myself with the following reference, but... B&N and Borders remind me of Hertz and Avis, the rental car companies. Hertz has the greater sales, but Avis years ago came up with the advertising campaign, "We're No. 2. We Try Harder."
B&N has the greater sales, but Borders tries harder. Do they ever try harder. Because I usually spend between $50 and $75 a month at Borders on manga and other items, I am absolutely inundated with Borders discount coupons in my email inbox. The coupons range from 25 to 40 percent off, and often as soon as I use one at a Borders store, I will return home that evening and literally find yet another coupon in my inbox for use starting the next day. In addition, after you spend a certain amount of money they give you $5 "bonus bucks" coupons, which give you an additional $5 off your total on your next visit there.
They've also started a new deal in their cafes, where if you buy five coffee drinks, you get one free. So the free drink coupons also flood into my inbox. Honestly, Borders' next move is likely to be to send a car service to pick me up at my home and take me to their nearest store so I can spend money there.
It's nice to know one's patronage is appreciated, but... their zillion coupons have begun to feel a little desperate to me and hence, this post. I'd hate to think that Borders' continued survival hinges solely on whether or not I buy the next volume of The Prince of Tennis at my local Borders store, so I'm putting the word out there. If you care whether manga continues to be available at brick-and-mortar bookstores in your neighborhood, give a thought to buying some volumes at Borders. Because I can't keep the chain alive on my own. ;)
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