It’s very common for successful Kickstarter (KS) projects to include a lot of end-user communication (or at least, the promise of) in which the backers are also the target market and a market sample. This communication will happen throughout the process and in the case of a successfully funded project, during the process in which the promised thing is being developed. Depending on the nature of the project that communication can also be part of the service the project provides (think of bands that use KS to fund studio albums). For backers, not only they can look forward to the end result, they also realize there’s some amount of risk involved. A natural thing is for KS projects to have fairly low cost of entry, both because of its consumer-facing nature and to reduce the element of risk. The wikipedia article lists some of the best-funded examples.

Well, how does crowdfunding has to do with anime at all? I guess it can provide enterprising creators some incentive to produce independently published works. Given the relatively low barrier of entry in the doujin scene, one would think this is probably unnecessary. Or rather, the bottleneck is in distribution and not initial fundraising. This is really the very first question we have to ask in order to go forward.

When it comes to anime, fundraising is a much more serious endeavor. Typically anime is created in such a way, where a pitch gets sold to potential investors (and from what we can tell it varies from typical committee and their holding companies to anyone who has money to pitch in). Once there’s the financial green light, the process move forward.

There are other components in which anime-related (and it doesn’t have to be–games and manga and all that can be handled in this way) things can be done for a consumer base who are willing to pay ahead. While I don’t really see how international licensing could work in a way that makes it viable, something more along the lines of creating and marketing a product (say, a PVC figure of Ritsuko Akizuki for mass production) can be handled in this way. At least, not taking financial viability into consideration. And as I alluded to earlier, some projects are more suited than others. The hard part would be the whole “working internationally on a shoestring budget” part.

Which is to say, if I was an “established player” with the connections and channels, I could then solicit the right artists and pony them up for this kind of thing. They would be guaranteed a payment (whoever’s finally in charge probably has to pony up something to get it going even on KS) and then if the fundraiser is successful, the hired guns will crunch out the thing. As long as the producer person is familiar with the idea behind a successful KS and executes, it shouldn’t be a whole lot different than most projects.

There are some actual examples of this. I think in the figure world, there are a lot of examples of similar kind of thing where an established company do a limited pre-order run of some figure. When GSC’s oversea shop went live they had to struggle with shipping those damned thing, and it is a distribution problem that all indie projects have to struggle with in one way or another. In the figure example I can see it being a particular boon being able to communicate to fans as to what they want and what you can expect early on. I guess in the context of a company soliciting funds, it’s really just a matter of plugging the users in with the creators directly.

At any rate, I think it’s easy to identify a potential need in the distribution model to lower the cost of producing independently financed or crowd-financed goods. It’s in that context in which KS is just one facet of a bigger solution.

Anyway, that’s just my thoughts. You can read more about it in this thread over at Fandom Post. Just note that the post is more about the value proposition of the high rolling importer and the role of the “real” Japanese otaku who are fine with paying $300-600 for a 1 or 2-cour anime.

I always wanted to make something pretentious like this. Just for kicks.

Over the holidays I got access to a new camera, so maybe that combined with a limited edition figure that I foolishly purchased, I feel kind of excited.

Man, I don’t know why camera companies hold back on these sweet CMOS from the masses, because an APS-C sensor does wonders to a point-and-shoot kind of paradigm.

For now, just a few pics. Once I get some real time to shoot at it and time to pour over the pictures maybe I’ll post them (LOL fat chance). Click on image for larger versions (but you knew that, right) hosted off somewhere else, since WordPress is lamers.

I was looking at this picture in photoshop and I was like, man, she’s got some big cans. Big enough to pass for a body builder with those flaming heart tattoos. It’s in the exercise of  reading in between the slender lines that we come to appreciate Miku’s roaring personality in Koi wa Sensou. It is in the exercise of seeing beyond the absolute zone in which we understand the redeeming feature of this figure.

Probably my favorite pick from this session.

Just in case you can’t hear her.

In case you want to know more about the figure, you can find out about it here, here and of course at MFC–see everyone else’s potshots! Koi wa Sensou Miku is very photogenic, as long as you don’t mind her facial expression, roaring with angst. A new meaning to the term siren. I always had the impression that the air raid siren took up a special place in the trauma of Japan. (Second to the earthquake siren, surely.) Is it true? I don’t know. But it sure looks hella good.

This change in perspective aside, it feels very much like the two are really the same. I suppose Furuba puts on hardcore girl-pandering when it comes to some of those 12-Chinese-zodiac things, where as Inu x Boku is more about the male audience crossover. I suppose that is the difference of the source material being serialized in a shoujo manga mag versus a shounen manga mag. These days though I’m not sure if that distinction means fewer girls are buying either types of magazines. Well, I don’t know what Inu Boku manga is like, so I can’t really say much about that.

I think when it comes to making late-night anime adaptations of manga that are otaku-aware, it’s the ultimate challenge–create something that can appeal to a growing number of more hardcore subgenre fans. Or at least, so it seems. I’m not too sure how well Inu x Boku does this schtik, but it does try. I guess the question is then are there any girls watching it?

I think it is an ultimate challenge sort of thing because it takes a big risk–it’s the classic tale of going after two birds and getting none. But even in the era of one bird-in-hand beating two-birds-in-bush where anime production committees tend to play it safe, I think it’s natural that you want to position franchises and promote ideas that sells to more people. Invariably this issue comes up.

I guess I’m just curious: Does anyone who likes Furuba like this show?

Life’s pretty chill when you have time to rest when you are weary and things to do when you are not. Kick back and relax to something like:

• The “Hanakana“
• The “Itou Shizuka“
• The “Asa-nee“
• The “Pikasha“

Help yourselves.

===

Author explains his thing about Haganai. I am sympathetic because I didn’t agree with the general discourse on the topic from the blogs I’ve read either. Like, the whole thing comparing the anime to the manga. I thought the anime was slightly more authentic in that the girls are genuinely unlikeable, versus some kind of semi-tsundere moe that gets you in the manga. I understand the whole “clumsy but likable” distinction but I didn’t think that was the point of the original works? But I didn’t really care about Haganai beyond the visuals and voice acting, so I didn’t really want to state an opinion. Well, I guess on occasion it was genuinely funny, and that was why I watched it in the first place.

The thing I wanted to see the most is that proposed crossover between Seitokai no Ichizon and Haganai. I hope they make an anime based on that.

Also, I kind of like the OP, even if it happened right in the middle of that Aki Toyosaki stalker drama. Props to Tom H@ck. I also have a history of liking these painful anime OP, so take it with some salt.

===

Con season 2012 is still a ways away, but now that Halko Momoi is landing somewhere a bus ride away, I will try to oblige. See you there?

===

I understand why, in theory, a Ritsuko or Kotori figure would be desirable, but I think this is a good real-life example.

===

MOOOOOOOOOOO MOURETSU! The PV and the live dance OP are, well, common idol schticks, but I can’t imagine iM@S to come up with something like this, even if songs like Honey Heartbeat rivals it in awfulness. These two videos have a strange addictive qualities to them. I recommend checking them out just for how weird they are.

The fusion of idol and anison is power!

I’m inclined to think on the whole, that’s just not true. I mean I bought every “main” Sakura Taisen game and where’s #6? And I’m not even counting the US release of ST5. It’s probably better to just concede that the thinking about paying into what exists in the future is just not a reliable indicator. Every single franchise that died had paying customers, and before someone exlaims about not having enough of them, it needs to be established that there has to be a limit (ie., when is it ever enough?), and a personal decision to buy something should have no impact if everyone else is buying the same thing. Certainly that’s not a criteria to any media criticism unless, well,  you actually sell media for a living. Or if you are a normal Joe Schmoe who buy games partly motivated by being able to talk about said game with other guys (for example).

There is a case, however, where it’s really, really clear cut. iM@S DLCs. The other day there was an announcement about how if you sign up for that iM@S Visa credit card, you can get a 10% discount on all future DLC purchases. It’s a small motivation, second to having, well, an iM@S credit card. I mean that would be why I sign up for one (if I could, and I can’t). The bigger issue is that it is until only recently that I realize how much all those DLC stuff costs. PS3′s iM@S2 contained the first 3 “volumes” of iM@S2 DLC available to the Xbox 360 version of the game, which totals to like, 25000 yen. That’s precious money some poor otaku has actually spent on the game. I mean, it’s news enough for Kotaku (well, that doesn’t mean much). It’s more than the cost of the PS3 iM@S LE box set. There are like, what, 8 DLC volumes now for the Xbox iM@S2 line? Imagine if someone had that credit card at the start–they could have saved like $50. And the game is not even a year old.

To me, that kind of numbers says that iM@S is a line of game that will continue to exist, just because it’s so expensive, and yet people are still buying it. I mean, surely that sort of money means there will be iM@S content from now to the infinite future, right? SakuTai Kayo show tickets are way less than that. And that’s just on the Xbox, which is pissant in terms of total reach in Japan. The PSN-PS3 combination will bring in some real cash, surely.

Another missing piece to the puzzle of seeing the “value” of iM@S DLC is understanding how attractive it is. I guess I’m saying it is a missing piece because I didn’t know how it was until I started playing the game. Now I have to fight these urges of trying to plunk down 200-300 bucks on PSN network cards so I can buy all the songs, at 1800 yen a pop.

Yeah, the singing tracks of 12 idols (do Ami and Mami use the same track? LOL) probably warrants a price more than your average CD single. But 4 of these kind of tracks equal the game itself, and 9 purchases of these songs equates to the freaking superduper BD-Game boxset.

But the DLC is really just scratching the surface. I haven’t even mentioned the G4U nonsense (truly, truly) which is like, what, 8000 yen every month times nine, at this burn rate? That makes buying the anime on BD like child’s play (what a great deal! I guess). Or collecting the massive amount of CD content fairly tame.

The list goes on. I think it’s only since the anime adaptation did Bamco really step into the merch game (I really dig these) beyond their software nonsense. But at the prices they’re charging at, this nonsense extrudes the notion that it ought to be hella profitable.

On the flip side, it’s much more difficult to see  how the money rolls in when it’s a cheap thing that is sold in bulk. Like BL on the Kindle store or Funimation’s top sellers. Or almost anything anime-related in America.

I think in a nutshell that is the problem I have with Ano Natsu–there’s just not enough of the pin-pointed hooks that distinguished Toradora from many other light novel romance drivel for boys. Let’s get it on the record that I definitely adore the show thus far, and find it entertaining enough to watch it twice a week, once fansubbed and a second time on CR (not to mention the exercise is a good way to hammer out the nuances in the translations; there’s a fair amount of word play in the script). In terms of my time commitment I’m spending 2x more time on this show than any other this season. Well, maybe except Mouretsu Pirates.

Oh, right, my problem: the show is lacking a lot of key things that catch people’s attention. Granted at episode 6 we’re still half way in the climatic vacation arc. If you think Taiga and Yuusaku Kitamura’s confession in episode 2 of Toradora was pretty neat, remember that a couple has already got together and done it by episode 7 of OneTi. That’s the kind of things I’m looking for. (No, not the “doing it” part although I’m all about Mio dialing up her game, coincidentally. Go for it!) Of course, none of this stuff happened yet. Yet. Is it yet too late?

In a nutshell, it’s fair to say that Kuroda’s writing has improved by this much since Onegai Teacher. One could say the handling of romantic frustration in AnoNatsu is pretty slick. I’m not here to disagree with any of that. I’m just waiting on the payoff. The Minori Kushieda moment. The Ami-awakening moment. The cut of Yamada sulking in the rain. None of that has much to do with Kuroda I think.

Oh right, Nagai also worked on Honey & Clover, in case you didn’t read about it in the links earlier. So then, when will it happen? It has to, right?

I’m patient, however. I think it would be ironic to say the least that I can handle 5 episodes of Marika getting to learn the ropes of being a pirate, versus six episodes of romantic frustration build up like a bottle rocket, waiting to shoot into the skies. But I think I can only take so much of this sophomoric teasing for so long. [Nagi's vocals is excellent aural sex, by the way; fits a dirty label like I've Sounds to a tee.]

I remember Onegai Twins. There was something similar–more like a bottle rocket of awkwardness in which results in that cute, dark-hared girl with glasses taking the short end of the stick. She was a champ, I thought, but it brought only short-term relief and a messy out for that character. It’s just like Herikawa’s post-confession wet-rag status. Well, it’s more like she became a defined, determined being and I ended up cheering for them even more. Is this what pushes the buttons for me? Is this moe? At any rate, the confession was just the midway point. The problem maybe is just that.

This is the school of adolescence through hard break hearts, folks. There are already enough tigers (and cougars?) on earth that when you’re orbital bombarding bombshells, the good girls do not stand a chance.

I think it’s a good opportunity and it feels right to bring up Mikuni Shimokawa’s CXCO’s past. They debuted around the same time as Morning Musume (1998) and this Akimoto-P project obviously didn’t fare as well, and disbanded only after a year. Shimokawa was 18-19 years old at the time, and she was one of the top girls in that lot.

Well, it feels right because I’ve been playing iM@S all this time, surely. It’s also nice to see how Shimokawa’s career twisted and turned in the past 10+ years, making her solo debut right around that time. If you remember your early 00s anison themes you  might remember that occasionally some idol will do an OP or ED here and there.

I know I’m not the only person who really enjoyed Mikuni Shimokawa’s variety of light pop music over the years. And she’s been associated with a few projects of note over time. Well, you know her songs, like her FMP tie-ins. But have you seen the idol vids she was in? Here are some more, OH MAN SO OLD.

• Hajimari
• Saisho no Kimochi
• Dakishimete

I’ve been listening to Shimokawa ever since 2002. She’s been with me all over the place, on trips abroad and at home, while at work or writing at my desk during some grim and happy times. It’s got some wetness to it, all these memories that I can associate with her music. So it’s a lot of fun to reminiscence to her music, with this latest announcement. Plus there’s this “remember the fallen” aspect to this, LOL, with forgotten idol groups. I wonder if AKB48 people even care?

Idols and idol groups may come and go, but Shimokawa’s contribution to anison is just as valuable; if you’ve been reading those 2ch repost blogs you might have noticed some study about how up to a third of teenagers have purchased an anison CD today. That means in another 40 years something like a sixth of Japan’s population would have done something like this. That’s pretty amazing. Of course nobody can pin that to the efforts of one person or even one group, but I’d like to believe that everyone chipped in, and laid down a brick to build that house of anison.

I think it’s important to go to episode 1 and understand why the two spying Bentenmaru members went on a discussion on anachronism. To be sure, the maid cafe is a fad-sort of thing. It is costume play. The best maid cafe in Japan actually provides that sort of European-y high class atmosphere for your dining pleasure. But 99.9% of maid cafes are just normal cafe with a cosplay theme, and the stuff we do at a maid cafe different is pretty much unique to them. It’s closer to a host club than a cafe sometimes.

To say that something like a maid cafe survives in to the distant future, hundreds of years later, and then in a civilization light years away from Earth? It’s close to text book anachronism.

The same can be said of piracy; or perhaps better put, privateering. If you subscribe to a Star Trek-ish view of the future, well-managed societies, even space-faring, probably would not need to take up arms to plunder luxury space cruiser-liners. Spaceships are still expensive, it makes little logical sense to jostle billion-dollar wares and putting your life on the line to rob what may be carried on persons, unless everyone is hauling millions of dollars worth of gear on them. I mean, of course, space travel may be something very inexpensive in Marika’s world. I don’t know. But it seems unlikely given how big of a deal it is to travel to the stars. That is a setting’s leeway.

Certainly it makes even less sense for privateers, who pirate out of some hired-gun contract. Aren’t they technically employed? I would imagine they pirate out of some personal desire to make careers out of it.

Here is the first thing to consider. Maids working at a maid cafe provides the illusion that they are maids hosting their masters and madams or whatever they call their patrons. They aren’t actually maids in the “live in” or “indentured servant” or “slave” sense of the term as it is classically used. Right, they’re just paid to roleplay. In the same manner, Bentenmaru’s brand of piracy is the same kind of put-on show where everyone go through some kind of preconception about space piracy (And…who has these kinds of preconceptions? And more importantly, what are they?). Instead of a maid uniform, Marika wears some ludicrous Harlock-lite thing.

In other words, maid cafe maids aren’t really maids, they just pretend to fit your maid-fitting fantasies and take your money. Likewise Marika’s space piracy is  not really about piracy (they’re privateers to begin with), they just pretend to fit your pirate-themed fantasies and take your money.

To segue to the next point, the Maid Cafe crosses with Piracy, in that both are also jobs. That make money. You know there is some value in having kids take up a part-time job when they are in  high school or college, the whole training in the work place sort of thing. Gone is the concept of a pirate being some kind of romantic Kentucky-born actor. In, is the idea that, at least on the Strip in Vegas, they don’t literally rob those who stand and watch the free show at the Treasure Island hotel. It still beats being a plain robber on the high seas, I suppose, because real pirates don’t last very long. I thought the Maid Cafe thing actually comes around and becomes not only an useful metaphor but also a fitting job for Marika in terms of the career trajectory she’s on.

Anyways, this fake-pirate thing is a nice headtrick. But at the same time it makes you wonder what is going to happen to the actual piracy aspect of it. I suppose by today’s standards, gone are the stories about a maid (eg., Mahoromatic) and in are the stories about people pretending to be maids (eg., … Mahoromatic and every other anime with a pretty girl in it). The same could apply exactly to pirates, if there were enough pirate anime around to make a statement about piracy (if not, just blame One Piece). I mean fictional accounts of pirates are wonderful and all but it would be a whole new adventure when our play-to-pay pirates run into some dangerous situations and still go through the same piracy hijinks. It’s like if your live-in maid was a hamster of epic (erotic) proportions, or if your live-in maid had a thing for breast enlargement and ran on batteries.

I guess, the real question left to ask is, just what about piracy can we expect of Mouretsu Pirates? Because both maid cafes and space privateering, arguably, are anachronisms. What is the spin? Would it involve getting into a dangerous situation and being able to get out of it using Marika’s talents at decision making, while at the end, to never forget ring up a customer? These are important qualities to cultivate at a young age, folks.

Two girls one cup indeed.

PS. What about the Marika in a school uniform? That one is the fun one to talk about.

This is it (minus a couple stubs that I lost).

I figured I need to wrap it up sooner or later, and it’s already late.

Because I saw only a screener of Arrietty and I’m not suppose to blog about it until some pre-determined time, I’ll keep my impressions mostly focused on the things you really should know. Well, I guess given it’s due out next week, RIGHT NOW is the time to blog about Arrietty, right, Disney? Never mind that the Japanese Blu-ray has been out for some time.

So I saw Arrietty some time in January. I figured it would be a great way to cap out the 12-days-of-Ghibli thing I’ve had going. And it was. Except it was not the 12th film. More like the 10th film. And I didn’t ever get to number 12. It was on a snowy afternoon that I trained up the west side to Symphony Space. The place was packed, given that it snowed quite a bit the night before. Lots of kids, as it was an 11am showing.

Well, no matter. I made it just in time and the screening was even delayed. I figured it also had to do with the snow.

Walking out of the theater I was actually stoked to find out that the NY International Children’s Film Fest, the #1 destination of new anime films in the city, was hosting A Letter to Momo. That and Shinkai’s Hoshi ou o Kodomo. The latter I’ve seen enough times (thanks Otakon!) and knowing what the former is, I am really excited. You should go see it when you can. Anyway.

Arrietty is awesome in the sense that there’s a real impression of scale and sound and smallness and the oppressiveness of large, vertical archetecture. And there’s some parkour-ish stuff. The dub was solid. For Ghibli, it’s rather intense.

Also, gosh, that hairclip. SO MOE.

Film #11 was Graves of the Fireflies, and I cheated here: It’s just something I saw on home video because it has been way too long since I’ve last seen it, I had to come up with something of an opinion on the film for a feature I’m working on for Jtor. I’m always kind of conflicted counting Graves as a Ghibli film, because it is not–they don’t own it. It is Ghibli-made, so that’s what counts, but as a result of not owning it (or rather, their parent company not owning it), you never get to see it along with the rest of the Ghibli films and they can’t publish it in the same trade dress that Disney is pumping out in Japan for the BD re-releases of Ghibli’s lineup.

I’m not sure what is there to say about it besides that it’s definitely the best Takahata film. I would also like to call it the best slice-of-life anime, motivated because that’s what it is and I want to mock people who group anime by such a label.

The other thing is, as much as it is a quality war flim, Graves was a much better experience for me as a film about poverty–the inability to meet the needs of the neediest in society. Sure, there’s this war context that drives the changes in the lives of the children, but it is a giant decoy. The problem is not so much about the circumstances, but the human relationship that was driven and tested by the circumstances. When you stop and actually think about the story (something I recommend you do with caution, for Ghibli films, unless it is Spirited Away) you might have different opinions based on your context with WW2 in Japan. But that’s not really the focus here. It’s plainly the tragedy as a result of the war and the breaking down of the social structure, that safety web, which normally holds a society and the people in it together. It isn’t that everyone in Japan is a starving war orphans–in fact, plenty of people are doing fine, even if many are strained by the events going on. It is the most vulnerable and unfortunate among society that suffers the sort of fate we see in Graves.

What is truly shocking is that this is something that happens over and over again, across the world. Even today. But if you were stuck on the war context you might not be able to connect the dot. I mean, ever read The Grapes of Wrath? Many different things can drive that sort of unraveling of societal ties. War is just the easy one.

Of course, I think the film can be enjoyable if you just allow yourself to wallow in the pitifulness of it all. And maybe that is its intent. But I think that would be short-changing a fairly powerful portrayal of suffering. Furthermore, it’s really a downer! How can you enjoy something like this without at least contextualizing it a little? It’s like, it feels bad feeling good seeing the way those slick American bombers were illustrated, bringing horrific suffering to innocent civilians. But dude, they’re so shiny!

And thus ends the Ghibli Challenge. GKID’s Ghibli festival has already made landfall in California and some other place I think. It’s going to be Austin this month, so catch it there! Catch it everywhere!

Lamenting on lack of time and interests aside, one of the biggest draw for Aksys’s localized version of the thing is (aside from being translated) hearing Tange Sakura as Saber Extra. The Red Saber. The Saber with see-thru skirt. Whatever. I kind of enjoyed that a lot, despite PSP’s built in size limitation in terms of how much voiceover it can possibly hold.

I went for Rin in my only playthrough, on the other hand, and they really need to give her more lines.

The only lure left is to play through the game again using Caster, with Saito Chiwa. I mean, right? I don’t think they were beating around the bush at seiyuu selection.

There’s a little bit of me inside wanting to play it through again just so I can get to Ryogi Shiki, but that would be a spoiler–well, not exactly. She’s one of those optional unlock bosses you can find in the New Game+ scenario.

There are a lot of interesting things to Fate/Extra that nobody talks about. Probably because it really is not important, and those who would probably can’t withstand the tedium of playing rock paper scissors so many times.

I wonder if it sold well enough to warrant Fate/Extra CCC, or at least so I can download it by the time I end up with a Vita (which I assure you is not likely this year). On that note, I should say something about my SIGNIFICANT DISAPPOINTMENT with GameStop with their preorder program. It happened that I preordered the game before I moved, and I forgot to change my address on my preorder when I did. Eventually it came up with GS by the time they wanted to bill me, so there was a back-and-forth. When the issue was resolved with GameStop CS they decided to not ship me the preorder bonus with the game. I sent an email and they said they will ship it to me, except it has not yet happened. And this is about 3 months ago now. Because I totally would not have bought the game physically (or even with them) otherwise!

As for Red Saber, I think her story is kind of sound although I have a hard time buying in. It seems to mimic reality a lot better than normal Saber’s plea to genderswap, which somehow made it easier to question the details?

I guess the only angle I have on Red Saber’s legacy is one that is like Guilty Crown’s Hare’s First Love. Not that it’s like how history paints it. And here ends with answering one spoiler with another. It’s unfortunate that I’m doing a cop-out here, since all the interesting stuff are probably spoiler of some sort.

Speaking of not-spoiler material, at one point in the game I realized there are actually only so many R/P/S patterns to memorize, and they don’t even all show up on the same level. It worked great because you get to run each level of the dungeon maybe 2-3 times per game-week. All I had to do is go through the fights once and it’ll come to mind which moves to guess when it comes down to guessing. It also helped that Saber was very error-tolerant.

Well, it’s a fun diversion, if it took a little longer than I wanted. I probably didn’t have to grind so much near the end. Is it worth it? Only if you like Type-Moon and the voice cast/moe/otaku nature of it. But you probably didn’t need me to tell you that. What you probably didn’t know is, unlike some possible kusoge, the system is smooth and doesn’t try to get in your way. As long as you remember that the square key teleports you and the triangle key skips the dialog, it’s a good time.

I mean if “omg Omo finished a JRPG! It can’t be good” makes sense to you, well, you should be happy that this reaffirms the same.