After a long absence, I return with a vlog! This past weekend was Kumoricon, and I went. Here are my thoughts on the con, and the schtuff I picked up.
Tag Archives: Anime
About Pricing, Anime, Manga, & Video Games, and Privilege
This is a thing that’s been bugging me for quite some time. There’s this mindset that’s been bugging me for quite some time among people who, well, make their living criticizing anime – people like Justin and Zac of Anime News Network for instance. The idea is, that because the anime industry has demonstrated the market cannot support the levels of cost for mass production of Anime DVDs, and manga as books through regular channels, to levels that will cover the costs that the Japanese rights-holders want for licenses, prices will have to go up, and we, as fans, will have to live with paying $80 for four episodes of a TV show again (the amount Aniplex is charging for the first four episodes of Madoka Magica), just like in the old days, and prices for Manga will similarly go up.
The problem I have is this. Currently, while the US economy is supposedly in a recovery, it’s still somewhat in the crapper. The recovery has only really benefited a small number of people, with millions still unemployed, some who have been unemployed for several years. For example, I’ve been unemployed for about 3 years, and recently I’ve started going back to school. If I spend over $30 on anything, I basically have to justify it. Most of the time, I can’t. I can justify spending money on textbooks, I can justify spending some money on food, I can justify spending money on my web series (which I need to get back to, once my course-load permits), and so on. I cannot justify spending $80 on anime. I can fit Netflix into my budget, so if a show is on Netflix Streaming or available as a disk, I can watch that (I watched Redline that way). I can fit Crunchyroll into my budget. That pretty much covers it.
Thus, when Zac Bertchy and Justin Sevakis say that anime fans are just going to need to stop being “entitled” and accept higher prices, the same way that Video Game developers crow over systems that will be completely unable to play used games, I can’t help but wonder if the people saying these things realize just how privileged they are.
For those who aren’t familiar with the concept of privilege, here’s the general idea – you have privilege if you have a social or economic benefit that puts you above someone else. White people are privileged over Black people, due to the history of socioeconomic discrimination that African-Americans have been subjected to through systematized racism. Heterosexual people have privilege over homosexual people, and so on. That’s the privilege I have. However, as a person with a mental disability, the majority of people reading this (those who do not have a disability, or who are “neurotypical”) are privileged over me. If you are employed, odds are high that you have more financial privilege than I do. Currently, I’ve been unemployed for so long that I currently have no choice to live with my parents. This puts a crimp in my social flexibility. While this would theoretically provide me with a source of disposable income, I still have to pay for school, I have to pay for fuel for my car (which I need to get to and from school), I have to pay for tuition and books. Thus, I have relatively little disposable income.
Even before that, when I was in middle school and high school, I had even less. If I wanted to watch anime, if I wanted to read manga, I had to go to the local library. That was it. I discovered Ranma 1/2, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Ghost in the Shell, and Akira that way. Frankly, it’s a great way for someone to get into the genre. The only better way to get into the genre is to have someone loan you DVDs of shows they recommend, or to someone to put something on for you. However, by putting everything online, or putting it on mobile apps, and behind paywalls, makes things far less accessible. You make it harder to share with your friends. Who is going to take their Roku box to a friends house, just to show them a few episodes of a show that’s paywalled.
Once upon a time, Science Fiction Fandom was the most socially relevant and visible aspect of geek culture. When it waned, it’s because it was eclipsed by Anime Fandom. If we continue to paywall in our hobby, and make it inaccessible for new fans and lower income fans (new and old), it will die a slow death like in the Cask of Amontillado. We will then wonder why everyone at anime conventions are a bunch of old fogies, bemoaning the fall of our hobby, and wondering whatever happened to us.
Who knows – maybe the new fans will instead go to Science Fiction conventions.
Book Review – The Rough Guide to Anime
Finding a “canon” of important works in any field is generally difficult to settle on. Do you go by popularity, artistic merit, influence on other works, early works of prominent creators, or a combination thereof?
The Rough Guide to Anime, by Simon Richmond – in Penguin Books Rough Guides series, probably has the best “canon” list of anime titles available, and certainly makes for the best English language primer to anime currently in print in the US, and makes for interesting reading for long-time fans and newcomers alike. Continue reading
Anime Review – Area 88
Get Area 88 from Amazon.com
In the anime portions of Gainax‘s OVA series Otaku No Video, there’s a sequence where the main character is being shown the various types of Otaku that the members of his friend’s club are part of. There’s the vehicle and mecha otaku, who is a geek about engines and how things work, and so on. One of the members of the club is an animation otaku, and he demonstrates his affinity for animation by pointing out the detail in an animated sequence (taken from the DaiCon IV video). I, personally, haven’t had many moments in animation where I felt compelled to freeze frame a video and stop to appreciate it – until I saw the OVA Area 88.
The Handly Case – This Is How Liberty Dies (or is at least Badly Wounded)
One of the news stories I’ve been following recently is The Handly Case, which is an obcenity case in Iowa – the state which was sufficently progressive enough to legalize gay marrage (an act I support), involving Christopher Handley for posessing recieving child porn – in the form of a Hentai (porn) Manga (or Japanese comic book) containing sex involving people who are underage.
I’m not going to defend Lolicon here. For starters, Lolicon isn’t my thing – and in any case, if the material was prosecuted as being obcene for an entirely different reason (bondage material) that still wasn’t my thing, it’d be hard to defend it – because it’s hard to defend a kink that’s not yours, especially to a someone who doesn’t have that kink (and besides, if they already have that kink, you don’t need to defend it to them). I’m going to refrain at this time from going into my kinks anyway because they’re irrelevant (and if you really care what they are, you can post a comment and ask – this doesn’t mean that I’ll answer, but I’m not getting into them in this blog post).
I’m also not going to get into the free speech reasons why this case is bad, because, frankly, Neil Gaiman did it better than I possibly good. I strongly encourage you to Neil’s post, because it’s excellently well written, and explains why you can’t slack off in the defense of free speech – because unfortunately, if you let icky speech be outright banned in a particular medium (video games, comics, film, etc.) it becomes easier to ban speech you support. This doesn’t mean you can’t marginalize certain types of icky speech (hate speech, NAMBLA), but banning icky speech outright bad (note: I’m not defending actual photographed and filmed child porn as icky speech – a crime must be committed in its creation, thus making it by its nature illegal – though I find the prosecution over sexting absurd, but I’m digressing – just read Gaiman’s essay.) Continue reading
Anime Review – Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage
Well, we got Season 1 out of the way, now on to Season 2, appropriately titled “The Second Barrage.” There are spoilers here.
Anime Review – Black Lagoon: Season 1
Having watched both seasons of the show on RPG.net for a Where I Watch thread, I’d say it’s about time to pass judgement on the show, and how good it actually is. There’s enough of a difference between seasons for me to split the review between seasons as well. I’ll get the second season’s review up tomorrow.
Another External Review
I’ve got another review up at Bureau42.com. This one is a review of Project A-Ko, the first of a series of reviews covering all 3 films. Read, enjoy, and, hopefully, comment!
Movie Review – Ghost in the Shell
Normally, when I write a review of a movie, I do it right after I actually watch the film. This allows me to strike while the proverbial iron is hot. Ghost in the Shell is different. Here, I really had to think about what I was going to say. I think about what I’m going to say anyway, but this is different, because Ghost in the Shell itself is different. To explain why, and to explain why I think the way I do about the film, I have to give some background, not necessarily about the film, but about me.
Ghost in the Shell is one of those anime films that everybody needs to see once. Every “anime fan” or “otaku” or “geek” or even “film buffs” in general. Everybody needs to see it at least once. If they don’t like it, they never have to watch it again, but they need that first time. This was my first time, sort of. I had seen bits and pieces before, back when I had satellite TV, and when we had Starz. I’d heard big things about the movie before, and the manga. However, I’d never seen or read either. What I saw of the anime intregued me, but because there was nudity and violence, and because I was just getting into High School, I couldn’t see a way to watch it without my parents knowing. So, I read the manga, written by Masamune Shirow instead. It intrigued me, having a mixture of humor, action, and sexy characters, with a deep story in both the political and philosophical arenas.