Otaku, No Video

© Hinata Takeda, Fujimi Shobo

Author: Kazuki Sakuraba
Length: 9 volumes
Vintage: 2003–2007
Manga adaptation: Yes
Anime adaptation: Yes

Gosick is fundamentally a gothic thriller. The mystery is not nearly as important as the mood. Gosick wants to freak you out, not challenge you with an intellectual puzzle.

Now, this may be my bias. I grew up reading Agatha Christie novels, so I’m used to adult mysteries, with a large cast of suspects and a complex murder investigation. Christie and her ilk provided cerebral challenges, spiced with interpersonal drama.

Gosick is, well, gothic, in the sense of Victorian gothic novels filled with cloudy skies, crumbling manor houses, strange servants, and eccentric house guests.

Volume 1 of Gosick introduces us to Kujo, a bland Japanese teenager whiling away his days at a prestigious European boarding school, and fellow student Victorique (“Victoria” in some translations), a doll-like young girl who is clearly modeled on Sherlock Holmes: aloof, perceptive, unbelievably intelligent, and horrified of boredom.

She’s a tsundere, yes, and she has a reason for being one. Her rapacious intellect has consumed so much information that most people are perfectly predictable to her. Nobody interests her. I appreciate this; so many tsundere characters have no motivation for their behavior.

However, I grew tired of Victorique’s attitude by about the halfway point. Kujo’s a nice guy sacrificing a lot of his time for her, and she consistently puts him down. There’s a strong streak of unjustified brattiness to her behavior. Fortunately, the reader can basically ignore those bits.

And by the end (no spoilers here), they do grow a little closer. As with any good adventure story, the plot of this volume allows for a bit of welcome character development, particularly on Kujo’s part.

Fair warning: the plot includes some disturbing content, including violence towards children. I personally had a tough time with that material, and ended up skimming a few pages.

It’s also a bit strange to read a light novel that feels like it’s being written for animation. There are several bits–particularly the police assistants who hold hands and talk in unison while skipping together–that made absolutely no sense and felt like sight gags.

But overall, this is a moody, fun read, with intense characters and a strong atmosphere. I’m looking forward to reading the second one.

© Thomas LaMarre

I love this book, but man was it a tough read.

Dr. LaMarre builds a theory of anime as a medium of expression that is fundamentally different than American animation and other mediums.

He offers a complete argument for this position, and wonderfully, he repeatedly insists that he’s not arguing against other theories; he’s offering a new one. He is consistent in his respect for existing work and his refusal to establish himself in a position opposite to others’.

His basic theory: anime’s “limited animation,” which focuses on panning across the image and other easy kinds of movement, encourages different kinds of stories than Disney-style “full animation.” Because of anime’s history of limited animation (and Japanese aesthetics of simplicity and artificiality in its art), anime doesn’t even try to be realistic in the same way that cinema does, which opens up different possibilities in storytelling.

I did have two problems with the book:

First, LaMarre’s writing is dense and full of academic language. I had a tough time parsing his long sentences and jargon. It all makes sense, but it requires one’s full attention in a way that I felt could have been expressed more clearly and simply.

Secondly, he spends a large percentage of the book singing the praises of Chobits, presenting that series as a brilliant analysis of family issues, sexual issues, etc. I haven’t watched the series beyond a few clips, but I have a tough time believing that the protagonist’s sexual behavior is an ingenious statement about Japanese pathology. Chobits is meant to be popularly entertaining, and I argue that the protagonist is paranoid about his sexuality more to get laughs than to comment on general Japanese sexual identity.

But the rest of the chapters prove this book’s worth. It’s a brilliant analysis of anime as anime, as a medium unto itself with its own standards and devices, that deserves intelligent analysis like this.

© Susan J. Napier

First off, some of the feedback I’ve received on my criticism of this book included the defense that this is an old book. That’s not a defense against these criticisms. The mistakes here are timeless.

But first, I want to praise Professor Napier for her early and incisive analysis of anime. This book filled a critical gulf in early scholarly works about anime.

The book covers several major themes: body transformation (e.g. Akira and Ranma 1/2), hentai, high tech, shoujo, World War II, apocalypse, and the elegiac style in anime.

However, it falls into a common fallacy in scholarly analysis of pop culture: forgetfulness that the work being discussed is pop culture. It’s designed to be broadly popular. Stories often go in a certain direction not to make a point, but because any other direction would lose the audience.

This book repeatedly violates Occam’s Razor in attributing deep psychological import to plot twists that can much more likely be explained by catering to the audience’s desire for wish-fulfillment. Several sections in the chapter on hentai attempt to psychoanalyze Japanese sexual identity via plot twists in Twin Dolls. I’m sorry, but a mildly popular pornographic anime is no evidence of anything.

Fortunately, Napier does provide much insight in other sections of the book, particularly in how she analyzes Nausicaä as an idealized shoujo character, and her comparisons of Barefoot Gen to Grave of the Fireflies, pointing out that Barefoot Gen is arguably the more powerful work because of its straightforward presentation, as opposed to Fireflies‘ cheesecloth elegiac style.

So, a mixed bag here, including some infuriating over-reaches of analysis and some interesting points.

Ever wondered about Gainax’s early days?

Yasuhiro Takeda’s The Notenki Memoirs will tell you about Gainax’s really early days.  Before Evangelion, before The Wings of Honneamise, even before DAICON IV, Takeda reveals in this chatty memoir the events that brought Gainax’s core members together.

He actually spends very little time on Gainax’s anime production years, focusing instead on the years in the 1980′s they spent organizing science fiction conventions and running General Products, their garage kit store. A few interesting bits:

• The core Gainax group got their start as SF fans who organized a good sci-fi con, then got involved in (then-new) resin-based model kits.
• They never intended to be an anime studio.
• They actually organized Daicon IV, and brought in Hideaki Anno to animate the opening sequence (he was a rising animator at the time, who’d leave them to work on Super Dimensional Fortress Macross and Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind).
• The Wings of Honneamise came about because Bandai approached Gainax with a film budget. A similar thing happened with Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water: the TV studio was shopping around the basic idea (which had originated with Hayao Miyazaki, actually), and one of the studios who passed on the project recommended Gainax.

This origin has always been their biggest problem. They weren’t businessmen; they just did stuff that sounded interesting. They lucked into things that made money.  For example, General Products always turned a profit, and ended up partly funding their anime productions for a long time.

Ironically, Takeda points out another fundamental issue for the studio. Before they made Evangelion, they moved forward on four different anime adaptations of existing manga properties. These would be “easy money;” well-known manga practically guaranteed to keep them afloat for a while.

All four projects failed. Takeda explains that Gainax staffers just couldn’t get passionate about a story that wasn’t their own.

Soapbox incoming:

And here they are, so many years later, doing mostly adaptations of existing manga properties. Their original projects crackle with energy and passion (Abenobashi, Gurren Lagann), while their manga adaptations are mostly just there — what I saw of Hanamaru Kindergarten was cute, but could’ve been done by practically any anime studio.

Maybe they’ve changed; maybe they’re okay with that. I just wish they’d do more Gurren Lagann and less He Is My Master.

Watching Anime, Reading Manga is a collection of essays Fred Patten’s written over the years.  Who is Fred Patten?  He’s been a manga and anime fan since the early 1970′s.

The book offers a remarkable window into American anime fandom over the decades.  Yes, decades.  A few interesting takeaways:

• Early on, Patten worried about anime fandom establishing its own subculture outside of SF/F fandom.  He pointed out that the vast majority of anime has some science fiction or fantasy element, so why don’t anime fans consider themselves part of SF/F fandom?  I wonder if the much-complained-about elitism of anime fans can’t be traced back to this.
• He was writing articles about anime and manga for trade journals and other serious publications starting in 1980.  This stuff’s been around for a long time!
• He was shown a full-blown loli hentai magazine during a trip to Japan in 1984. Which he wrote about in the prestigious Comics Journal, as part of a long article about the state of manga in Japan.
• He was writing about anime soundtracks in 1986.
• American anime companies cracked down on bootlegs in 1995, as part of their “JAILED” initiative (Japanese Animation Industry Legal Enforcement Division).  They were going after the major operations who operated full-blown businesses by selling fansubs, but the crackdown quickly fizzled when fans worried that anime companies were going after them.  Think about that:  when American anime companies realized that fans were afraid of legal action, they stopped (publicly) going after major bootleggers.  (They still pursued obvious illegal activity, of course; they just didn’t trumpet it.)
• There’s a great article on the origins of Robotech.  Patten is good friends with Carl Macek (who wrote the forward to this book), so Patten got an insider’s view of the activity leading up to the creation of Robotech.  Did you know Macek was an anime fan before he got involved with Harmony Gold, and that he was the one who recommended they license Macross?
• Speaking of which, in 1999 Patten listed the 13 most important developments in anime up to that point, from the perspective of American fandom.  The list included the internet, conventions, video games, specialty magazines, Disney’s releases of Hayao Miyazaki’s movies, etc.  The #1 most important development?  Robotech.  It was that hugely responsible for turning regular Americans into otaku.
• There’s an excellent article listing the similarities (and differences!) between The Lion King and Kimba the White Lion (a.k.a. Jungle Emperor Leo), plus another doing the same for Disney’s Atlantis and Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water.

You get the idea.  All sorts of stuff hides in this book.

© University of Minnesota Press

In my post Real, Serious Books on Anime and Manga, I stumbled on an academic journal called Mechademia. In Borders a few weeks ago, as I skimmed through the manga bookshelves (and let us not forget how awesome it is that we have whole bookshelves devoted to manga in America), I saw volume 1 of Mechademia! I grabbed it, disbelieving my eyes.

I’ve been skimming through it, and I’m enjoying it from a purely academic standpoint. Most of the articles compare various works on interesting levels (such as the contrast of Marimete and Azumanga Daioh) and dive fairly deeply into their topics, while others stretch their subjects to absurd lengths. For example, one article on Revolutionary Girl Utena suggests complex phallic stereotypes in that show.

Even so, it’s a mind-broadening read. One article in particular, Thomas LaMarre’s The Multiplanar Image, begins with a discourse on various techniques for representing motion in 2D animation, and uses that as a platform to compare the cinematic styles of Mamoru Oshii and Hayao Miyazaki, 2D and 3D animation, American and Japanese animation technology, and a host of other topics, including the Superflat style.  LaMarre covered so much territory, and did so with such clarity and insight, that when I finished reading the article I felt slightly breathless.

And that’s just one of the twelve articles in this book, in addition to the seven reviews and commentaries that are often themselves fascinating.

If nothing else, almost every article is clearly written and presents a fascinating take on an anime or manga-related topic.

Don’t we need more of this stuff?  Wow.  You can find Mechademia on Amazon.

© 1998–2009 Shoji Gotoh, Kodansha, Tokyopop

Okay, first, a bit of reviewer’s context. I didn’t go into this novel fresh. I’ve seen the first half of the original Full Metal Panic anime, one episode of Fumoffu!, and all of The 2nd Raid. I’ve read all of the manga. So, I know these characters, and I know this story.

Briefly:  The light novel deepened my love for this franchise.

This novel tells the story that’s covered in the first 1/4 of the original anime, and the first few volumes of the manga. I won’t post any spoilers here; suffice to say that it covers everything up through the initial use of the Arbalest. Which was my favorite part of the anime, to be honest.

Therein, though, lies the problem. You will learn very little new about the universe of Full Metal Panic through this novel. There are a few little surprises, though now that I think about it, it’s been so long since I watched the anime that I may have just forgotten them.

But the novel really shines at getting into the heads of the characters. The relationship between comically serious Sousuke and the ever-practical Kaname makes sense here in a way that’s never fully explained in the anime (until 2nd Raid). Kaname finds Sousuke chilling at times. He’s a boy soldier, a high school boy who can pilot their world’s equivalent of an F-16. A classmate who kills without remorse.

Meanwhile, Sousuke has feelings for Kaname. He’s never really felt love before; camaraderie, yes, but not that wobbly-legged feeling. Not affection. And not only does that confuse him (causing all sorts of fun dramatic conflict), it compromises his effectiveness in combat. He can’t think straight. His feelings are explicitly dangerous.

I also want to point out here that the Sousuke in the light novel is a little different than the one portrayed in the anime and manga. In the latter mediums, Sousuke’s portrayed as an emotionless military brat. Heero Yuy, basically. No time for emotions.

In the light novel, Sousuke is more normal than that. He and Kurtz are army buddies. Sousuke rolls his eyes at Kurtz’s antics, and even makes a few dry jokes here and there. Sousuke’s essentially an ordinary boy who just happens to have spent every waking moment with guns and and warfare. That’s affected his outlook on life, obviously, but he’s not the simple, single-minded caricature that he often comes across as in the anime.  He’s a career military man.

There’s a wonderful moment (no spoilers) near the end of the novel where Kaname and Sousuke are running from danger through the woods, and they stop for a moment as Kaname freaks out a bit about all that’s going on. Kaname doesn’t know what to think any more, and she doesn’t trust Sousuke any more. His actions creep her out. And this is how he reacts:

When she felt the impulse to turn around and run, Kaname noticed Sousuke’s expression was not one of anger–it was one of hurt. He looked like someone who had been slapped unexpectedly by a friend.

He started to speak, stopped, and looked at the ground. Then, he finally spoke.

“You’re…afraid of me.” When she said nothing, he continued. “That’s a natural reaction. I’m sure I must seem…”

And a shadow of profound loneliness crept across his profile, finishing the sentence for him.

Painful, shocking, and it brings a new dimension to Sousuke.

Okay, so enough about my personal reactions. How’s the writing? Pretty plain, honestly. I had to push myself through the first half of the novel, as the writing was very matter-of-fact. Lots of simple sentences and dry descriptions. Of course, I don’t know if this is the translator’s fault or Gatou’s, though it feels like more of an authorial issue.

But the writing flowed more eloquently in the last half, to the point that I read the last third in one sitting, late one night. In the novel’s afterword, Gatou struggles to define the novel’s genre, and finally admits, “I intended it to be seen as an action B movie.”

Which is ultimately the best way to approach it.  This is not high conceptual art, nor is it a deep work of great moral significance; it’s a rollicking action-adventure story starring two polar-opposite but remarkable characters.  The fact that both exemplify tired anime and manga stereotypes, while still remaining interesting to read about, is a testimony to the novel’s basic appeal.

Basically, it’s fun.

Thanks to The Ranobe Cafe for the impetus to read this book.