Funimation Is Finally Redundant and Fall Season Update

Hello again! It feels like a long time since I’ve posted.

I was distracted from the end of September until mid-October getting ready for a convention where I was one of the official authors. I had to order promo cards and arrange for my books to be sent to the convention, etc.

Now I’m back... and just today I took care of some leftover business with my anime subscriptions... namely Funimation.

Last year I wrote about the Crunchyroll-Funimation merger and how clumsily Sony was handling the whole thing. It took so long for Funimation’s catalog of titles to be transferred over to Crunchyroll that after a while I literally forgot about it.

I’ve done this before. I paid for a subscription to the Anime Network (anyone remember them?) back when they were the only site that streamed Zettai Karen Children (Psychic Squad). I kept the subscription long after I bought the entire series on DVD until I finally remembered to cancel it.

So after my convention was over and I had the time to take care of some things, I recalled that I still had my paid Funimation subscription and decided to check whether every series I cared about had been transferred to Crunchyroll by now.

I actually hadn’t logged in to Crunchyroll in months. Remember, my mainstay anime Boruto is currently on a long hiatus. The most recent cour of Bleach ended last month, but Bleach is on Hulu now and not Crunchyroll.

For years, logging in to Crunchyroll was a daily thing for me. It felt odd to log in again after months away.

It was a task to compare the Funimation and Crunchyroll catalogs. (It had been even longer since I’d logged in to Funimation.) I looked at my watchlists on both sites and tried to remember if there were other anime series on Funimation that weren’t on my watchlist but that I’d wanted to watch.

I’d kept the Funimation subscription mainly for four series: 1) Dragon Ball; 2) Junjou Romantica; 3) Hetalia; and 4) Heaven Official’s Blessing.

Funimation had all of the Dragon Ball series, while Crunchyroll only had Dragon Ball Super. I was relieved to see that Crunchyroll now has all of the Dragon Ball titles.

After I’d cross-checked that Junjou Romantica, Hetalia, and Heaven Official’s Blessing were now on Crunchyroll as well, I suddenly remembered The Prince of Tennis, one of my old favorites.

The Prince of Tennis has always been on Funimation but not Crunchyroll - or at least not consistently on Crunchyroll. However, the good news is that the whole series is now available on Crunchyroll... for the moment anyway. I get that licenses can and do end, but it’s good to know that Crunchyroll has it for the time being.

So I canceled my Funimation subscription today. I will be saving a whole $5.99 a month (lol). Well, it starts to add up if you include my now-deceased Netflix DVD subscription which was $7.99 a month.

And speaking of Netflix DVD... I was hoping that Netflix would have some kind of offer for loyal DVD subscribers after Netflix DVD bit the dust, something like a special discount for Netflix streaming for example. And then in early October I received an email from them that offered three free months for streaming with ads and $6.99 a month thereafter, which I’d say is a good offer from them. I also have a whole 12 months to accept the offer, which is cool.

Now that I’ve logged back in to Crunchyroll and updated my watchlist to include all the titles ported over from Funimation as well as everything I wanted to watch in the current season, I feel plugged into the animesphere again. And I have a ton of stuff lined up to watch.

I have to wonder when the Funimation site will be shut down for good. I’m not sure what it has these days that Crunchyroll doesn’t have. I hope people who still have paid subscriptions there will do what I did and cross-check their watchlists with Crunchyroll. Honestly, there doesn’t appear to be any reason to pay for both anymore.

"Everything You Left Behind/Became My Everything" - Given and the Power of Music

What comes to mind when I say the words boys love?

Is it the now it’s humorous, now it’s angsty worlds of Junjou Romantica and Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi, or the adult dramas like Youka Nitta’s Embracing Love series?

How about the bright comedic fun of Love Stage or an older series like Gravitation?

Whatever you thought of—Given is something entirely different.

Ritsuka is a talented teenage guitarist. He’s good enough that he’s in a band with two twenty-somethings: Haruki the bassist, and Akihiko, the band’s drummer.

Lately, Ritsuka has lost his edge. After starting out as a teen phenom with his guitar playing, at 16 he’s lost his enthusiasm and doesn’t know why.

A mysterious transfer student starts following Ritsuka around, asking him to teach him how to play the guitar.

This transfer student—named Mafuyu—is a little weird at first. He has a deer in the headlights stare and doesn’t express himself easily. He owns an expensive electric guitar, and Ritsuka wonders why he has it if he doesn’t even know how to play it.

Eventually—maybe out of boredom—Ritsuka agrees to teach Mafuyu a little guitar. Mafuyu tells him there’s a melody that keeps running through his head, and one day, he sings it in a wordless la-la-la way to Ritsuka.

Ritsuka is amazed to hear the quality of Mafuyu’s voice. He invites Mafuyu to session with him and the rest of the band.

Given is not for the impatient. The story moves an inch or two per episode, with Mafuyu’s past being revealed little by little. It’s a tale of young love and the loss of a loved one to suicide, which explains Mafuyu’s numbness and inability to show emotion.

As Ritsuka gradually realizes his feelings for Mafuyu, none of the hijinks one usually sees in teenage BL stories happens. There’s no mixed signals, no stupid misunderstandings that blow up into crises. Even the female classmate who’s attracted to Ritsuka and divulges Mafuyu’s past to him, hoping to get him to reject Mafuyu, is later ashamed of what she did.

Every character in the story is treated with dignity, including Haruki and Akihito, the twenty-somethings who each work three part-time jobs to support themselves as they pursue music as a career. Haruki is silently attracted to Akihiko who still lives with his ex-boyfriend Ugetsu, but without the relationship part anymore, as Ugetsu now dates another.

Mafuyu joins the band as rhythm guitarist and vocalist. For their initial performance as a foursome, he’s tasked with putting lyrics to the melody he’s brought to the band. He tries to find the words, but finally tells them he couldn’t.

On the night of the performance, the rest of the band assumes they’re going to play the song as an instrumental, but as the song begins Mafuyu opens his mouth and starts to sing.

It’s an astonishing vocal performance, raw and emotional. The slow build over nine episodes reaches its climax in this song, and all one can do is watch, open-mouthed and in tears, with chills running down one’s spine, as Mafuyu finally expresses all his feelings about his lost lover.

Given is only eleven episodes, but the manga story is continuing and a movie is in the works for 2020. With its unusual—for boys love—gravitas and adult-level regard for its characters, I’ll be there to watch whatever comes next.

Seven Years Later

Anime Expo is this weekend.

And—like last year—I’m not going.

Not making a statement or anything. I think it’s part of the process.

If you’ve followed this blog over the years, and especially in the past year, you know I’ve been going through changes as an anime fan.

I was into anime 1,000% from 2006 until last year. Last year, I felt a cooling in my interest, which continues to this day, though anime is definitely still a part of my life.

Case in point: Arslan Senki (The Heroic Legend of Arslan).

I’d stopped watching Arslan Senki in its first season because my life got busy. I enjoyed the series and always meant to get back to it.

A few weeks ago, I picked it up again, finishing the first cour of its first season. And found out there was a whole second cour I didn’t know about.

I marathoned the second cour in two evenings, all 12 episodes.

I’ve been so out of it as far as keeping up with what’s new each season, it then took me a while to discover that Arslan Senki has a second season that will begin a few days from now. When it does, I’ll be watching.

This past year has been like that. I watched the third and final cour of Durarara’s second season, and continued with new seasons of series I’d been enjoying like K, Haikyuu, The Case File of Young Kindaichi Returns and Kagewani (pictured at the top), but didn’t make the effort to search out new series.

I also marathoned the third season of Junjou Romantica on Funimation—and really liked it, a lot more than the first two seasons. So anime still holds surprises for me.

And to this day, I still totally love Kuroko's Basketball. One of my favorite ways to relax is to rewatch my favorite episodes/arcs from the series, especially the second Seirin-Touou game and the Seirin-Yosen game episodes.

I’ll continue to watch the series I enjoy. Not sure I’ll make huge efforts to find new anime series, as I’m enjoying the ones already on my list and my free time has been taken up with writing fiction and learning Japanese.

I’ve spent more time this past year on my writing career, and also on my Japanese studies—particularly learning kanji. In my work, if I can learn the kanji, it’s a huge boost in income for me. So there’s great incentive there. ;-)

Another interest that has captivated me is Star Wars.

I’ve been a Star Wars fan my whole life. I saw the original trilogy when it came out in the theaters, and the new movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens has brought all the old feelings back.

I’m especially intrigued by the fandom that has arisen around “Reylo,” the Rey/Kylo Ren pairing. There’s not only fan fiction, but a significant number of meta essays and posts on the topic.

So, I have no grand pronouncements or conclusions in this post, which marks the seventh anniversary of this blog. I’m still an anime fan. I still want to write about anime, though not as much as before. So this blog will continue.

A housekeeping note: I closed this blog to comments last year, as I was checking here less frequently and didn’t want to leave comments hanging without my moderation. Blogger unfortunately hides all past comments when you do this—it doesn’t let you close to comments going forward and also leave the past comments visible. If I get more active on this blog again, I will open to comments as before and the past comments will be visible again.

That's all for now. I'll post again when the mood strikes and I have something anime-related to say.

Until then, best wishes to all, and if you're going to Anime Expo - have a fantastic time. =D

Seiyuu Appreciation Day - The Engrish Edition

When I first became an anime fan I was surprised at how often characters would say a random English word or phrase. I'm used to it now but it almost used to annoy me, especially when I was studying Japanese. I'd be watching anime and listening for grammar and sentence structure, only to have my concentration disrupted by... Engrish.

Someone told me that Japanese requires fewer sounds to pronounce than English: in other words, if pronouncing English requires 200 separate and distinct sounds, Japanese only needs 75, or whatever. So it's harder for Japanese people to pronounce English words correctly than it is for Americans to pronounce Japanese correctly.

Of course, that doesn't stop either side from mispronouncing the other's language all the time. XD Usually for us watching anime it's Japanese speakers mispronouncing English, but sometimes it goes the other way. In Zettai Karen Children there are two American secret agent characters, Ken McGwire and Mary Ford, who speak Japanese with horrible-sounding American accents - and it's very funny.

Most of the time though, as anime fans in the west, it's mispronounced English in anime that we hear. Before I launch into some of the best anime Engrish clips I was able to find on You Tube however, I need to say two things.

When I was growing up as a Japanese-American in California many years ago, I didn't care for the term "Engrish" as essentially it made fun of Japanese people for switching the "L" and "R" sounds in English. Times have changed though, and now a site like Engrish.com or anime fans using the term "Engrish" doesn't come from racist attitudes as it once did: it's more just an appreciation of how funny English can be when it's misused or mispronounced.

In other words, the term "Engrish" used to offend me, but I don't believe it's used in a racist way anymore so I don't see its use (especially in this context) as offensive.

The second thing I need to say is that while the point of posting anime Engrish clips is because they're funny, when I laugh at these clips I'm not laughing in a mean-spirited way. In fact, I have the opposite reaction - I think Japanese seiyuu are quite courageous to try and act in a second language and in a language that is hard for them to pronounce. If I were trying to act in Japanese it would be at least a hundred times more unintentionally hilarious than any of the clips below. Plus, as you'll see with the last two clips, not all seiyuu speak English poorly: some are excellent at speaking English.

So with these disclaimers - let's anime Engrish!



I THINK THE SPRINKLER IS BROKEN

I think this is from Itazura no Kiss. I love the man's monotone, almost mechanical-sounding English. =D

Masamune Date in Sengoku Basara clearly deserves his own Engrish clip:



LET'S PARTY

In case you were wondering why a Japanese general from the Warring States era says things like "Crazy Storm" and "Blast Off" and "Let's Party" in English, well... welcome to the world of Sengoku Basara. There is no other explanation. XD



GET IN MY HOUSE

In this clip from Junjou Romantica, young Shinobu is conversing with a gaijin classmate of his while trying to avoid his older lover Miyagi whom he's mad at. That's Kazuhiko Inoue (Kakashi in Naruto) as Miyagi, by the way. =D

The next two clips are from Azumanga Daioh.



CRAP IT'S A FOREIGNER

I find this one funny because of that frozen look of horror on the girl's face when the gaijin turns around. When I went to Japan, Japanese people would look at my Japanese face and speak to me in (naturally) Japanese. When I opened my mouth and said something in English, they would get that same frozen look of horror on their faces. XD



OH MY GAH

This one is just plain funny. XD OH MY GAH

Finally, two clips that will restore your faith in Japanese seiyuu speaking English. Both are from Kuroko's Basketball.

The first clip is the funnier of the two. Main character Taiga Kagami (the red-haired guy) was raised in America, where he used to play basketball as a boy with Tatsuya Himuro. Kagami and his teammates come across Himuro in Tokyo at a street ball contest. What's funny about this clip is that this is our first time seeing Himuro so when the characters begin speaking English, it's completely unexpected. I won't tell you when in this clip the English starts so you can feel the same surprise as I did. When it starts it's like a sudden assault. XD Here it is:



I AIN'T KEEPING A POKER FACE IT'S MY NATURE

The English is actually very good here. The first speaker, Himuro, is played by seiyuu Kishou Taniyama, and he stays in character while acting out the lines (as opposed to just reading them in English) quite well. The same for Yuuki Ono who plays Kagami, and Kenji Hamada who plays Teppei Kiyoshi, the third speaker. It's funny because you're not expecting the English but otherwise it's a fine example of seiyuu doing a good job acting in English.

The last example is the best English spoken by a Japanese seiyuu I've ever heard in anime. Here's Yuki Kaida as Alexandra Garcia in Kuroko's Basketball:



JUST SHUT IT AND PUT YER PANTS ON

I actually thought at first that they got an American voice actress to play Alex and then she started speaking fluent Japanese. When I looked up who played Alex, I realized why the English was so good.

Yuki Kaida lived in San Diego, California for four years studying drama and English. She played Fuji in The Prince of Tennis and China in Hetalia, but this is the first time I've seen her really using her English and she's fantastic at it.

So the next time you're tempted to think that Japanese seiyuu just can't do English, just remember Kaida-san. "Hey! Who the hell are you guys?" XD

Latest News - Shungiku Nakamura Projects, Meganebu! and K

As we head into the fall season, I wanted to mention some recent news about a number of anime projects in the works.

Hybrid Child has finally been cast. The anime adaptation of Shungiku Nakamura's beautiful and disturbing manga will feature the following seiyuu:

Nobuhiko Okamoto - Kotaro
Daisuke Hirakawa - Hazuki

Ryohei Kimura - Ichi
Tsubasa Yonaga - Yuzu

And finally - as Kuroda, the creator of the Hybrid Children, and his love Tsukishima:

Yuuki Ono - Kuroda
Yoshitsugu Matsuoka - Tsukishima

Hybrid Child is Nakamura's finest work to date. I wrote about Hybrid Child in detail in this post if you're interested. It's taken the production a while to get off the ground, but I'm really looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Junjou Romantica is getting another anime production:

And seiyuu Toru Furuya discusses Zen Kirishima, his first BL role, in the upcoming Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi spinoff OVA anime The Case of Takafumi Yokozawa:



The clip is from Furuya's panel at Anime Revolution in Vancouver, B.C. Listening to the clip, it's apparent that more fans in Canada (at least the fans that attended this convention) can understand Japanese than American fans, based on the waves of laughter at Furuya's answers before they were translated into English. ;-)

The info about his Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi role begins at 4:10. I love Furuya's reaction to the male fan who indicated that he knew what "boy's love" was: "OTOKO JA NAI??"

And - I'm not sure I can say that this anime is highly anticipated exactly... but in the footsteps of Free! comes Meganebu!



I can't get over how a seemingly innocuous thing like glasses-wearing can become a fetish, but only in Japan I guess. =D

And finally, updates on K. Or rather, I wish I had updates on K, because apparently there are none. There was a movie due out this summer (2013), but now that's been pushed ahead to 2014. And an anime series - allegedly a sequel to the original series - was supposed to be included in the fall 2013 schedule, but I've seen no confirmation of this so far.

There are prequel mangas, but they're not licensed in the U.S. at the moment. In other words there's not been much movement on the K front recently, with the exception of the English dub cast being announced at Anime Expo this summer. Meaning, at least the DVDs should be on their way to a release in the U.S. at some point which is good news. Even better news would be a new series in October as had been promised. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. =D

Yaoi Con

This weekend I'll be at Yaoi Con at the Westin Hotel in Long Beach, California.

I'm hosting the Shungiku Nakamura Fan Gathering for Junjou Romantica and Sekai-Ichi Hatsukoi fans on Sunday at 10 a.m. in the Melbourne room, so stop by and say hello if you're at the con. :)

Junjou Romantica and Shungiku Nakamura's World of Men

One of the most popular mainstream shonen-ai/yaoi anime series is Junjou Romantica, derived from the manga by Shungiku Nakamura. (I say "mainstream" to differentiate it from hentai-type yaoi.) I just finished watching the first season of Junjou Romantica and I can't resist comparing it to Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi, the latest anime based on Nakamura's work.

Junjou Romantica tells the story of three yaoi couples. The main couple is Akihiko Usami and Misaki Takahashi.



Misaki is an 18-year-old new college student and Usami, 28, is a famous boy's love novelist. Despite Takahiro Sakurai's funny and charming performance as Misaki, I found the main couple in Junjou Romantica to be the least engaging of all three. Usami is unemotional, overbearing and/or depressed for most of the story and Misaki is a very young eighteen. Not all age-gap couples bother me but this one did, since Misaki is financially dependent on the wealthy Usami, in addition to being naive where Usami is a sophisticate. It felt a little like a traditional male-female romance story where the lord of the manor takes in a poor but proud servant girl - not the kind of story that I usually warm up to, I'm afraid. ;)

Junjou Romantica's other two stories each have their own sub-name: Junjou Egoist and Junjou Terrorist. Junjou Egoist features a tsundere college professor, Hiroki Kamijo, who falls in love with a student named Nowaki Kusama. The dynamic in this relationship is that Hiroki gradually becomes attached to the gentle Nowaki despite trying to keep a tight lid on his feelings. The story is super-heavy on the angst, which again, is not really my thing.

Finally, the couple that I least expected to like turned out to be the best one of the three. Junjou Terrorist tells the story of Yo Miyagi, a 35-year-old professor and colleague of Kamijo, who is the romantic target of his ex-wife's little brother Shinobu Takatsuki, now 18 years old.

The sub-name Junjou Terrorist comes from Shinobu's single-minded pursuit of the jaded and cynical Miyagi, who can hardly believe his ex-brother-in-law sees him in that way. Shinobu's grim little face as he tries to worm his way into Miyagi's life is hysterical, giving rise to the funniest scenes in the entire series.

Shinobu's determined efforts earn him the "terrorist" label from an increasingly unnerved Miyagi, who eventually stops Shinobu with the old "call his bluff" trick. Shinobu, who has pretended to be experienced with men and who quite clearly isn't, gets taken to bed by an exasperated Miyagi. Before anything can happen Shinobu realizes what Miyagi is doing, is humiliated, and runs off.

Miyagi can't quite believe it, but he begins to miss Shinobu. Eventually we find out why: Shinobu reminds him of himself at that age, when he fell madly in love with his old homeroom teacher. When the teacher died of illness, Miyagi concluded that "nothing lasts," and hence his aversion to relationships.

What made this third story work for me is that Miyagi's awakening is shown in such a realistic, matter-of-fact way. He's kind of a callous jerk before his realization and he's the same afterward; he's just more aware now, is all. The lack of forced sentimentality is refreshing. ;)

I still prefer Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi to Junjou Romantica, as I find Sekai-ichi's main couple Ritsu and Takano to be the most appealing of all of Nakamura's couples. Their having been in love as teenagers makes for a compelling back story and it's almost impossible not to root for them to find their way back to each other again.

I'll gladly watch Junjou Romantica's second season to see what happens next, as it's likely the relationships will be tested and get deeper. Shungiku Nakamura is a talented storyteller capable of much depth, as evidenced not only by these two series but by works such as the beautiful and disturbing Hybrid Child manga. Not all of Nakamura's male characters may float my boat, but her world of men is still one well worth watching.