Otaku Review

Seeing undergarments that feature animated characters is that not uncommon. Seeing anime characters on undergarments… a little more rare but still not unheard of in the least. So when I read the story last night that there was going to be new Eva undergarments released in Japan this year, it didn’t really phase me. The movie is getting a big four part theatrical re-release (Part 1 has already been licensed by Funimation while Part 2 will premieres this June in Japan). What made me stop and pause however is the marketing behind these undergarments.

In the report on ANN, the men’s underwear line comes in six different styles: Nerv, Seele, Angel Monogram, Ugoite yo, 6^th Angel and Nigecha Dame. So far everything is just fine. Six different styles of underwear for the male Eva fan in your life. The issue I have is with the Nigecha Dame style which is stated as being used for psyching oneself up; such as when you are going to have to deal with stress or going on a date.  Wow, because there’s nothing that gets me psyched up more for the first date with the girl of my dreams than my lucky anime underwear.

The second bit that caught my attention was the women’s dresses being inspired by Eva 2.0. Again, absolutely nothing wrong with that. With the second movie heralding the return of Asuka to the franchise, dresses are very appropriate. Perhaps a drastic and wild new take on the classic yellow sun dress that Asuka is so famously known for?

“Mobile Collection, is offering an official Evangelion fashion line that includes women’s dresses inspired by the EVA-01, EVA-00, and EVA-02 weapons in the anime.”

Oh touché Japan!

Can I just say that I love Japanese inventions? It seems that no matter how advanced something becomes, there is always a way to improve it that no one ever thought possible… or even truly necessary. Example you say? Well, how about this cell phone from Japan. Not only is it a fully functional phone but it also contains special ringtones. Ringtones that are so special that they can actually clear your sinuses. Forget about all of those napkins and handkerchiefs that you pick up randomly from shops in Japan now you can just use your mobile!

According to the article, the creator based his invention on scientific studies and basically involves people downloading special ringtones for their particular gender (men get 440 hertz ring tones, women get 532 hertz) and then holding their mobiles to their nose for thirty seconds as the ring tones play. Voila, no more plugged up nose.

Before those of you suffering from this year’s “death plague” shell out the cash for these however keep in mind a few things:

1)      ~ Note that the creator says that he based his invention off of scientific studies but doesn’t say anything about conducting the experiments himself. Possibly just a mental slip?

2)      ~ He also notes that the ringtones won’t work for everyone… maybe he meant ANYone?

3)      ~ How stupid are you going to look holding your mobile phone up to your nose for thirty seconds every time you feel stuffed up?

So what do we think everyone, next big thing or next big stupid thing? Any readers in Japan with a stuffy nose want to share experiences with how your mobile cleared your nose?

So tell me if you’ve ever had a conversation that sounded remotely like this:

“What are you listening to?”

“Oh, just some anime themes/Japanese pop”

“Oh you speak Japanese?”

“A little”

“So how can you enjoy it if you can’t understand it?”

And that’s the big question. I swear, if I had a nickel for every time I could remember this conversation taking place I’d have… a quarter. But if we included all the times that I don’t remember I assure you that we’d be hitting two quarters… with possibly an extra dime. It’s a legit question that a lot of anime fans get asked though, why do we enjoy Japanese music if we’re not fluent enough in the language to actually understand every word?

Once again I can only speak for myself on the matter. I like J-pop, admittedly I started off much like Patricia Martin and only listened to the anime themes. It didn’t take long for me to put two and two together though and realize… if I like the song that the performer did for the anime, than just perhaps they might have other songs that I would enjoy as well. Brilliant!

And that’s how my iPod got absolutely slammed with a heap of new Japanese music over the years. I’ve made it abundantly clear in the past that I am not fluent in Japanese though I am learning as fast/best that I can but that does mean that I am in the group that doesn’t understand every word being said. Even worse, I listen to Japanese rap and sometimes I wonder if even the people of Japan can understand what they are saying half the time.

So why do I do it even if I can’t understand all of the words? Well lots of reasons not the least of which is that it helps me learn new words. But more than that though, my own personal reason for enjoying Japanese music is how much more complex the compositions are to my ears. American music is good but Japanese artists never seem to be afraid of using instruments that normally aren’t included in rock or pop songs. You don’t often hear strong violin harmonies in American rock or pop but it’s harder to NOT hear one when you listen to enough J-pop.

Admittedly the lyrics aren’t that much more substantive on one side of the Pacific than they on the other but as long as the music and beats keep calling out to me, I’ll continue to be a listener.

So upon one of my many adventures through twitter, I happened to stumble upon this picture. It was posted on Gizmodo (found via japanifyme ) and when I first saw it, I was stunned speechless.

Now, when one sees this photo for the first time I’m sure that there are a range of emotions that overcome you. Unfortunately I don’t have anyone handy so we’re going to have to use me as an example. Now, after I managed to wrap my head around what I was seeing I did the normal WTF. But then I started to look deeper and realized you know what, I have faith in Japan. Now I grant you that normally when you hear the phrase ‘weird porn’ your mind instantly goes to Japan. But this is also the country that brought us wholesome things like Hello Kitty! Surely there must be a more logical explanation for this photo than what it obviously implies! Luckily for you, I happen to be a man with way too much free time on his hands. So now I give to you, my perfectly logical* an explanation or four for what this is actually a photo of:

~ It’s just taken from a weird perspective! It’s actually a perfectly normal sized girl stepping over a miniature train. She just looks weird from that angle.

~ She’s just calling her giant puppy that we can’t see out of frame

~ She’s actually about to sit down and crush the train so it’s ok!

~ The train is carrying her to the giant horse waiting for her

When you are a collector of anything, it won’t take long before you realize that you have a weakness. When it comes to otaku anime collectors, that weakness can take many different forms. For some, it’s a driving compulsion to have as many of the little figures as they can. Some people just have to have those art boxes of all their favorite series or their life won’t be complete. I could go on and on citing various examples but instead I’m going to come clean about my weakness: limited edition releases.

I don’t know why I have such a weakness to the phrase ‘Limited Edition’ but every time I hear it in conjunction to a series that I am a particularly big fan of, I have to instantly stop what I’m doing to find out more. And then come the phases… it starts with curiosity; (Oh, I’ll just have a look to see what kind of stuff that they are including). On some rare occasions when I am lucky, this is where the process will end. Sometimes I take a look at the set and realize that it’s filled with things that I really don’t want or need to have cluttering up my work space and move on.

That’s the rare occasions however. In reality the process is usually much longer; See set (Oooh, it has CDs and a shirt! Well that is special), pretend like I’m weighing both sides of the issue in my mind (Do I really need that Wedding Peach beach ball?), justify it (Yes, I do… for stuff) and finally order it (mine! None can touch it! Back I say!). Luckily for me, working as a starving writer for hire does not allow me to partake in this ritual very often but when it does, that’s pretty much what is going through my head.

While not everyone who reads this blog post will identify themselves as an ‘otaku’, more than a few of those reading this would be willing to identify themselves as a ‘fanboy/girl’ of some kind. It’s become very difficult lately to not eventually be converted into a full fanboy (I’m going to keep using ‘fanboy’ for the rest of the post, don’t read anything into it) on something or other. It was even added to the dictionary this past year!

Being a fanboy can be a great time but there are always some bad habits that someone will fall into. It’s only natural and anime fanboys are no exception. Everyone is guilty of displaying poor fanboy behavior at some point but there are still those out there who make these mistakes their life missions. So here are my top five annoying fanboy actions, perhaps you’ve seen a few?

~ Sprinkling random Japanese vocabulary words into your speech – So you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve watched A LOT of anime in Japanese. So much that you can now even recognize some of the easier and more common words. Great for you, give yourself a nice little treat. Now stop using those words in your everyday speech as an accent to every other sentence. If you don’t speak the language, stop using random words for no real reason.

To be fair, even I have been guilty of a stray ‘Nani?’ when someone is trying to get my attention but not everything is ‘kawaii’ and I’m not going to attach an honorific to your name so stop asking me.

~ ‘More Otaku than Thou’ – You’ve seen every episode of Fullmetal Alchemist, Dragonball Z, Bleach AND Naruto? Wow, you have a lot of free time on your hands but it’s good to hear that you’re finding series that you enjoy that much. However, you’re not an expert on anime. Hell, I’M not an expert on anime (random trivia: It actually bothers me when someone calls me an expert) so hearing your ‘otaku-er than thou’ rants aren’t going to impress anyone. So the next time you utter the sentence ‘you mean you haven’t seen *name of anime here*?’ or ‘Well, my collection is actually bigger/better because I have…’ (also known as compensating by the way) with any sort of scoff or disdain, keep in mind that it’s actually painful to those around you who have to hear it.

~ Voice Actor/Seiyuu Obsessions – This is probably the easiest of the bunch in terms of visibility. Now let’s be clear here: Having a favorite voice actor where you follow the roles they play and possibly geek out a little when meeting them at a con; very cool and fun to do! Talking about the hot voice actors that you want to get together with or getting wrong impressions because they happen to be able to play sexy characters in a convincing manner; very creepy!

~ Sub/Dub Snobs – Stop already! Seriously, this debate has been going on for decades and it’s time to just let it go! Drop it! Hey… no, drop it! Good boy!

~ Fandom Wars – Has no one learned from the ongoing war between Trekkers and Star Wars geeks? No one wins these wars, give peace a chance! Come on, both pirates and ninjas have some damn fine qualities that I’m sure we can all enjoy. And I’m sure that if we all look hard enough we can all find something within 4chan to enj… actually let’s skip that one.

There are many more (and probably better) examples of annoying fanboy behavior and as I think of them (con season is fast approaching after all) I’m sure that this list will gain the sequel: ‘Five MORE Top Annoying Fanboy Habits’.

At the end of the month, there will be an album released featuring six popular seiyuu covering twelve classic punk and grunge songs. Among the artists listed on the album are many familiar names such s Yuko Goto who will be covering Nirvana and The Clash and Halko Momoi covering The Exploited and Blondie plus more with perhaps the bravest of the six seiyuu on this album would be Rie Tanaka who will be covering both the Sex Pistols and Rancid.

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About a week ago it was announced that the fast food franchise, ‘Church’s Chicken’ is running a promotion to hype the video game based on the anime film ‘Afro Samurai’. At first my initial reaction was to not touch this story with a ten foot pole because there are just way too many aspects to this story that could get me into trouble.

But really, are you kidding me? Let’s start with the obvious flaws to this story… ‘Afro Samurai’ and a restaurant promotion. Alright, I’ll grant this much because it’s a hot property and there had to be someone out there who wanted to get a piece of this. But really, they couldn’t find a better restaurant chain than a fried chicken franchise?

And let’s not forget that this video game is based on a very mature anime film. Do you think that the promotion is going to extend into the kids meals? What kind of ‘Afro Samurai’ toys does one get with a chicken kids meal? “Hurry in this week kids! While supplies last, every happy meal comes with an official Afro Samurai afro pick!”

They aren’t just going to be slapping the character on their in store products however. The promotion is going to extend out to television and radio as well. Wait hold on… I’m getting a weird flashback… the world is going all wavy….

So, what do you think about fast food chicken teaming up with Bandai Namco to promote ‘Afro Samurai’? Great idea that someone should have thought of sooner or the worst corporate stereotyping since… well, that.

It was announced recently that the Canadian publisher Harlequin (yes, the romance novel publisher) will be opening a monthly magazine in Japan featuring one shot romance manga. Now, some of you may not know this but when I’m not watching anime I do like to pick up the occasional romance novel. Not Harlequin… but romance none the less. So with that in mind, I’d like to pitch a few titles for their upcoming romance mangas which they are free to use:

“My Bishie, My Love”

“Bishoujo Has My Heart”

“My Harem Across the Sea”

“Sexy Otakus Out Late”

“Akihabara Days, Shibuya Nights”

“The Lonely Dutch Wife”

“The Magical Girl Transforms Me”

“Space Cowboys Excite Me”

“What Do You Mean I Can’t Marry My New Mikuru Figure?”

“Melting the Tsundere Heart”

Do you have your own suggestions for Harlequin romance manga?

If you’re an anime fan, there’s a good chance that you have one those friends. The friend that doesn’t actually have any interest in anime but you know that if you just found the right title, they could be swayed. Naturally, I have a friend that fits that description. When it comes to anime, her and I are on two different planets and there’s nothing wrong with that but no matter how long I’ve known her, I’ve always wanted to sway her over. Not for any real reason, mostly just for the challenge.

My first attempt at getting her into anime was with the series ‘Higurashi no koko ni’ (released in the US as  ‘When They Cry’). This is one of my favorite horror series of all time and I really thought that the psychological aspect of this series would be right up her alley. Instead she couldn’t past the early cute stages between Keiichi and Mion. ‘It’s the eyes,’ she would later confide in me.

Over the months, certain progress has been made. She’s grown to enjoy bishie art work and she thinks yaoi is one of the greatest inventions known to man. Not quite the victory that I was hoping for but certainly enough to call it a half win.

Fast forwarding a few months though brings us to yesterday when I got an IM from this friend. So, there I was sitting in front of my laptop just kind of getting some work done when suddenly a message appears on my screen. It is from my friend and contains a link along with the message ‘whoever made this obviously owns cats.’ My curiosity piqued, I clicked the link and proceed to fall to the floor.

She found an anime. An anime that she enjoys and finds entertaining enough to watch more than one episode of.

It was ‘Chii’s Sweet Home’.

The impossibly cute series aimed at children about a kitten with three minute episodes. For months I racked my brain trying to find the proper adult series for her and THIS is what it took in the end.  It took me ten minutes to form a reaction to this but when I did all I could say was ‘I think you just broke my brain.’