Fandom Generations: My Take

My bro causeiambetta told me about the travesty that is the Stony Brook Anime Club. Reputedly, they played Wii all of the time, which is a bit unusual. Most otaku pride themselves in being at least a bit ridiculoun, which entails at least a PSIII, Xbox 360, or a vintage system. Mentions of this group, evidently, elicited snickers from the elite geeks at the SF Forum.

As I've probably mentioned before, I was throughly spoilt by the Animation Society at my college. We thought of anime as something precious. We hoped that it would come to these shores and would stay. I tried to corrupt -er- show anime to my friends, and thought there was an obligation to spread the underground gospel so that it wouldn't disapper.

The thought of an anime society that spends it time playing guitar hero, if the allegations are true, is a bit depressing. Also, they are unoriginal in light of the manga & anime Genshiken, which is about an anime club that is caught between other fandom societies and becomes the odd one out.

This surely as a sign of the times. I tend to split the times into five periods:

1. A legendary group that was into anime before there were really commercial releases. They got the ball rolling for the rest of us. Think Toren Smith [1].
2. The group that were high schoolers or adults when Starblazers or Gundam were released. The majority of their viewing were probably multi-generation raws [2] with scripts or fansubs.
3. These were my friends and I who got hooked on Robotech, Voltron, or Mysterious Cities of Gold as kids. There were a few translation companies. Fansubs were prevalent. The Sci-fi channel used to have a weekend block. The term Japanimation didn't sound wierd back then.
4. The Toonami transition phase who had Sailor Moon, DBZ, or Pokemon. Gundam Wing fanboyz 'n girlz and the Big O were the tail end. An editted version of Tenchi hit the airwaves, too. This was when anime went on widespread TV and got recognized as such. At this point, I was crossing my fingers hoping that anime was here to stay, despite the travesty that was Fox-caflowne. [3]
5. Narutards & up.
   

I judge these groups based on their attitudes toward anime & fandom and the advent of the internet. Back in the day (Gen 2 & 3), just owning some tapes was the admission to the club. Later on, peer-to-peer networks made this a moot point. Conventions became the center stage for fan displays and cosplay became more competitive.

Group 4 also saw the emergence of the fangirl, which evolved into the seacow of the 5th Gen fujoshi. And they are the ones that squeal at the Cons.

This is the group that the current guys jamming to Guitar Hero belong to. However, they are also the future of fandom and will there be a 6th group?

[1] He had an anime character named after him and had Noriko from Gunbuster call his name. Lucky bastard. Reeeeaaally lucky bastard.
[2] I'm talking magnetic tape: VHS or Beta. For those who don't know, these degraded with each copy.
[3] No forgiveness!

Come what may...

Another shi-ite-ty day at work. But come what may, the second movie of the Evangelion remake has been scheduled 06-27-09, and I'm going to watch it. The Eva movie 1.11 will be out in the U.S., soon.

My soul has been lifted by a super-shaman.

Chaos;Head - Bits 'n Pieces

Last time, I established a baseline anime that fell under the barely watchable category. That sets up my impressions of the Chaos;Head anime. There were numerous, promising pieces there

• The opaque mystery reminiscent of Lain
• Paranoid atmosphere like Boogiepop
• Eva-elements including the Rei-like singer named FES
  
• A long haired tsundere
  
• good female character designs
  
• whacky blades.
  

It was like a dating sim with swords. In fact, it's roots are a dating sim with swords, as I found out after posting the first draft of this review. And it does little to rise above the limitations of that genre.

The opening episodes were unappealing, to put it mildly. In Evangelion, the weak anti-hero Shinji was drawn along by the extraordinary events. Chaos;Head's main character is portrayed as a sniveling, disgusting otaku. As a fanboy and video-game playing otaku myself, I mean disgusting when I say it. Takumi has delusions about a game gal being his wife and plays an mmorpg all the time, then spends two episodes fending off the come-ons by a pretty student by the name of Yua Kusunoki.

The only reason why I continued watching was because I knew that she would betray him and the blood would start flying. I had read the first chapters of the manga scanlation [2]. When the audience gets a taste of gruesome New Gen crimes and Takumi is accused of the killing by Yua, the series begins to get off of the ground.

The opaque mystery gives tantalizing hints, but instead of letting them unfold, the answers are dumped into the otaku viewer's lap like a bucket full of ice. The ending is so full of tropes that it even had the evil council that was actually lame and the random evil corporation. I'm convinced that listing "megalomanical plot" or "apocalyptic project" in the investment information packet must add at least 50 points to the gain on the IPO.

As I was saying, there were elements there, such as the singer Fes. She's a bit like Sister Creep from "Swan's Song". She's crazy when the world is sane, then is the best equipped to handle the craziness when the crap hits the fan.

There's a gorgeously animated scene where the long haired tsundere whips out her blade with Soul Caliber effects. There's also the voice actress of Kawashima Ami playing the sweet girl, who seems to betray Takumi.

In the end, it never integrates the tantalizing pieces into a work that's greater than its parts. The 12 episode work overall achieves half of a step above Yukikaze and can be entertaining in a looser fanboy kind of a way, but there are better works out there.

My gut instinct tells me that the Chaos;Head anime owes some of its mix of atmosphere and mystery to Paranoia Agent [3], but I haven't actually seen Satoshi Kon's work, so I can't comment.

[1] Fansubbed by m.3.3.w Fansubs
[2] Scanlated by SCX-Scans
[3] Drawn from trailers and comments of people that have watched it.

Baseline

My usual baseline for bad is Battle Fairy Yukikaze. I watched it fairly recent, and it managed to leave an impressively bad taste in my mouth with weak characterization, random plot elements and an unfathomable man-man-machine love triangle. Even more incomprehensible was the remake, which changed some of the planes to women, as if the audience wasn't bludgeoned numb by the mecha-sexual symbolism already present in the unfortunate anime. In the credits, I was horrified to find out that the half-assed storyboarding was a second look based on a manga.

One particular scene compared unfavorably with the GI Joe episode when Shipwreck believed that he had returned home from the war. The main character in Yukikaze thought that he was being treated at a friendly base, which had actually been taken over by the JAM. The aliens tried to seduce him having the mannequin-like nurse shove his face into her chest. I had a hard time figuring out which was worse. That scene or that the wooden nurse was not out of place with the rest of the cast. BTW, I watched that scene in Japanese and English, and writer didn't give either versions much of a fighting chance.

There are works that are worse than Yukikaze. Princess Army Wedding Combat comes to mind, as well as the middle of the drawn out Tenchi TV series. However, Yukikaze establishes a sharp baseline for barely watchable. Some kitsch is simply so bad that it goes so far that it hyperspatially warps from bad to mockably good, kind of like an Atari enemy going off the screen. Yukikaze manages to avoid this and just remains plain bad.