Memories of Eternity – Page 14 – In search of anime enlightenment

Community

12 Moments of Anime #8: Keionbu and Gakuensuki

I hope you didn’t facepalm when you heard the word “keionbu.” If you did, you probably won’t like what I’m about to say.

K-ON was a bit more controversial than most moe shows, and needlessly so. While its premise isn’t anything unique, the over-the-top presentation and glorification of moe was a bit too much for some to handle, forcing it to play the role of either a punching bag or an object of worship. From a meta perspective, it was pretty much a scapegoat for moe haters and fans to attack and praise.

Really, there’s not much to say about the show that everyone on the internet hasn’t already said, but to sum it up, it’s a spectacular example of how to do moe right. I always say that it’s not easy to create the kind of characters who end up with hundreds of posts on Danbooru, despite the superficial appearance of moe characters being a flat set of traits, and I think K-ON proves that. In the eyes of many, including myself, it’s one of the finest examples of pure, fluffy, delicious 2D bliss.

– – –

In other news, back in the summer, lolikitsune released a demo of his meta visual novel, CCY-senpai wa 17sai. The final product is probably still a long way off, but since blogosphere parody/commentary style games aren’t too common (the only other one being Hinano’s RenAi Blogger), it garnered its share of attention.

This is a bit of a pointless reward since the final product won’t be released in 2009, but from the taste I’ve gotten of the game, I can honestly say that I’m looking forward to it. Games like this are usually irrelevant to the people outside of the community, but for the bloggers and readers involved, the experience is like nothing else. Everything from the dialogue to the character designs look great, and there’s even a bit of potential in the story – I still like to think of Gakuensuki as a metaphor for our blogging “careers”, but we’ll see about that. The bottom line is that if you’re an active anime blogger and you haven’t played the demo yet, it would be a NICE IDEA to do so.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

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Community

12 Moments of Anime #9: A Brass Concerto for Visual Novel Fandom

Brass Restoration is what I would call a hidden gem. It’s a game that flew right under the radar, despite being translated by TakaJun of Mirror Moon and Kara no Kyoukai fame. I spent about half a post talking about the game when I first finished it, but I never did talk about the themes or story since it’s fairly self-explanatory.

I think Brass Restoration‘s most distinctive trait is the fact that it’s self-conscious. That might sound like a bad thing, but for a doujin visual novel targeting fans who have already played their Key and Type-Moon and Circus, sometimes it’s more important to be different than good.

Luckily, this one is both of the above. Despite its typical slice-of-life galge appearance, there’s a painful story lurking at its core. Like Fate/stay night, the protagonist’s development is arguably more important than the heroines’ development, and ultimately, love takes a back seat to the psychological crisis that the player must overcome. While the game isn’t meant to be dark, its bitter setting is enough to slowly ease the happy-go-lucky antics of the “trunk” portion into the heavier, more intense and thematically relevant branches. In reality, each of the routes explores the protagonist’s dilemma from a slightly different angle, and they tie together the theme of the value of having a dream. Brass Restoration is no F/SN, but you’d be wrong to dismiss it on account of its traditional appearance. It’s a worthy memory of 2009 because it makes use of its doujin status to tell a surprisingly moving story to even a seasoned audience.

– – –

On a similar note, the visual novel editor and owner of TLWIki, Moogy, has done a few good things for the VN community this year. Well, I suppose he’s been doing good things for the community for a while now, but as far as I know, his editing and translation guides are a new idea.

I’m going out on a limb here, but I assume that most fans of visual novels and anime have some respect for the people who bring them to an English-speaking audience, and many of the community’s more active members take part in the process at some point in their “careers.”

From that perspective, Moogy’s guides are a spectacular help. True, experience is the best way to learn these things, but it’s always helpful to do some background reading in advance. If you want to write a book, you can probably find a million semi-helpful guides online or in bookstores, but how many people write about something as obscure as the VN translation process? Though it might be common sense to the active translators, many VN players have a limited knowledge of the process, and guides like these can be a great stepping stone to help aspiring translators hit the ground running. I’m not sure when I’ll venture into the community myself, but whenever I do, I can only hope that there will be more things like this to ease the learning process.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

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Community

12 Moments of Anime #10: Out with the New, In with the Old… and the New

In 4chan’s words, I’m a newfag. Or a moefag, however you decide to put it. Like many of the /jp/ denizens and unlike many of the most established editorial bloggers, my area of preference – and my specialty – will always be within the modern moe/eroge scene.

However, as we all know, level grinding to increase only one stat well result in a terribly unbalanced character. Unique skills are only useful when they can be backed up by a decent foundation. Knowing this, when I finally finished my initial trek through the world of VN adaptations and my favourites list was more or less solidified, I decided to take a journey through the annals of history – to the days before I was born, to VHS and beyond.

In today’s world, Mobile Suit Gundam is really more of an icon than a TV series or movie. It’s symbolic of a lot of things, relevant to – as they say – everyone’s interests. It can be a symbol of the early days of the real robot subgenre, it can be tangible evidence of the growth of anime as a medium, or it can simply be the spawning ground of memes that have been echoed out-of-context for decades. But either way, there is no question that Gundam is significant – and to tackle Gundam is less like watching a TV show and more like stepping into the infinite world of a ridiculously large MMORPG.

Looking at it that way, Gundam – and similar shows – make up my 10th memory of 2009, from a literal I-witnessed-the-Bright-Slap perspective and a more meta I-see-where-the-oldfags-are-coming-from perspective. Of course, my main focus is still on the general moe/VN/doujin culture, but with a bit of experience under my belt from the decades long past, I can start to understand what mecha fans mean when they debate the intricacies of LoGH and squee at the thought of meeting Tomino. I can’t promise that I’ll finish even half of the old-school anime classics in the next year, but I can say with certainty that my curiosity has been piqued to the point that I won’t automatically dismiss anything made before maid cafes and Megatokyo.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

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Community

12 Moments of Anime #11: The Blogosphere’s Branches and the Disappearance of the World’s Greatest Hikikomori

[kohinata sora]

Hayate no Gotoku was a great show. I can say that without a moment’s hesitation. I wasn’t on the internet while the first season was airing, but it made its rounds among my friends at school, and even with my meager experience at the time, I adored everything about it. Between the consistent and often clever references and the childish nonsense of the comedy, it was a pleasure to watch, which is more than I can say for a lot things.

I can see why a person might complain about the second season, though. For one, it’s a sequel to something good, so it has to come with a few complaints. More importantly, though, the focus on Hinagiku and the “love” story can be a bit of a turnoff since the show never had much of a plot to begin with. Still, I think Hayate no Gotoku really excels in its portrayal of its characters rather than in the characters themselves. It has the makings of a truly generic rom-com, but the intentional veneer of a kids’ show and the cheesy jokes and punchlines are what really make it shine. Despite the suspicious and disappointing absence of Nagi Sanzen’in, whom I deem to be greatest tsundere loli hikikomori in the history of everything, the show never ceases to be entertaining, and that’s what I love about it.

– – –

The blogosphere’s “branches” is an awfully ambiguous metaphor to use in a post title, but its meaning isn’t as abstract as it might sound. I’m actually talking about sideblogs: the little branches and twigs that bloggers create to manage and filter their thoughts. It’s almost like installing a few extra filing cabinets in your brain, giving you more places to dump your stuff and allowing each folder to specialize in something specific. Of course, while you’re busy pouring out your ideas left right and center, you’re also branching out into a different readership and indirectly growing more established.

I think the blogosphere has seen the emergence of quite a few sideblogs and projects throughout the year. I won’t even attempt to link to all of them, but I started my own a couple months ago (though it won’t hit full stride until the new year). Ghostlightning also came up with a novel idea to keep track of comments, and Moritheil’s meta blog is still going strong. CCY’s Saimoe blog is now but a memory, far as I can tell, but it was an interesting idea while it lasted.

The bottom line is that as bloggers gain more experience and the act of writing about anime becomes less exotic, many of us search for ways to experience fandom from a different perspective and discover something new. This is obviously a good decision for us individually, but it’s also great for the community because it adds more variety and assures that we don’t get trapped in an endless cycle of episodic summaries and lit-crit essays on Tomino and Tezuka. Just don’t let it detract from you real blog!

~ ETERNAL
つづく

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Community

12 Moments of Anime #12: The Vocaloid Revolution and the Summer of AIR

[moonknives]

Despite how convenient it might sound, I did not watch AIR this summer. I watched it during the summer of 2006, when I was inexperienced enough to not know the definition of the word eroge.

I did, however, partake in a certain OVA that seems to have all but disappeared over the years: Air in Summer. It’s not a particularly memorable story; in fact, it’s really just a more personal look at Kanna’s arc from the anime. It lasts for a total of two episodes – the same length as some battles in long-running shounen – and it doesn’t say much about anything.

However, that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

What really got me about Air in Summer, and what made it good enough to make the 2009 Christmas countdown, was the fact that it’s downright pleasant. It feels like it’s been a lifetime since K-ON aired, and it’s been even longer since the KyoAni + Key combo graced my TV screen. Ryuuya’s sharp wit, Kanna’s endearing clumsiness, and Uraha’s carefree ara ara~ personality are all staples of the anime adaptations of Key games, and they’re traits that I love more than a lot of things. Witnessing all of my favourite aspects of some of my favourite anime, written on top of a surreal setting with a vaguely bittersweet atmosphere, was undoubtedly one of my most pleasant memories of anime this year, with or without a plot.

– – –

As for the Vocaloid Revolution I mentioned in the title, I wonder if revolution is truly the right word to use. Our lovely idol Miku is already two and a half years old – plenty old enough for her popularity to catch on. Maybe it’s only because the latter half of this year was my first experience with Vocaloid-literacy, but I can’t help but feel that the Vocaloid subculture is becoming ever more mainstream. While Miku and her fellow electronic pop stars will always be more known in Western fandom for their endless pages of fanart, the release of Project Diva combined with the birth and growth of blogs like Vocaloidism, Polymetrica, and even a fairly comprehensive wiki, the word “revolution” might be fitting after all.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

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Editorial

The Surrealism of Yasuhiro Yoshiura

I’m not sure if surrealism is the technical term to describe this unusual director’s vague yet distinctive style, but Yasuhiro Yoshiura of Eve no Jikan fame is undoubtedly an oddball in the industry.

And I say “oddball” with the most respect that the word can connote. Though I’ve spent less than an hour viewing his works, I’m already unquestionably entranced with his well-thought-out direction, delicious eye-candy, and ambiguous yet unpretentious storytelling.

However, the best part of it is that you don’t have to be an academic to figure out what he’s trying to say.

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