Depiction: The Gundam 00 qan[t], shortly after entering the quantum portal in the Gundam 00 movie. No spoilers – watch the movie if you want to see where the destination is.
Pretty, isn’t it? This just underlines how Gundam 00 is the hardest core “science fiction” Gundam ever made. That is, there’s more elements that could fit comfortably into Star Trek (besides the Gundams themselves) than in any other part of the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise.
An idea advanced by Japanese writers, directors, and thinkers in general, goes something like this: if we only understood what was in each others’ hearts, war would cease and we would become a better, more advanced race with eternal peace among ourselves.
This is naive.
Usually, when お疲れ様です (o-tsukaresama desu) rolls off the Japanese tongue, it can be safely understood as “Thank you for your hard work.”
The “o” part means that this applies to someone else. The “tsukare” part is a direct reference to fatigue.
The “sama” part… in kanji, this is the same “sama” that is used as an honorific, but there is another, highly relevant reading here. This kanji is used in words and idioms relating to situations. Or rather, what something seems to be.
Example:
様子 (yousu) = appearance
様式 (youshiki) = pattern
様相 (yousou) = aspect
It is in this sense that 様 marks that someone else (because of the “o” honorific) seems to be tired.
The “desu” is simply a copula adding a verbal punctuation mark affirming the sentence in a polite manner (as it is the polite form, not a plain form like “da”).
So, by idiomatically remarking upon how someone else is tired, this is implicit recognition of that person’s hard work.
In the mecha anime television series Godannar, puns are heavily involved in the names of people and machinery. But never mind that. We’re focused on a different pun.
When the leading character of the show, Go (shown above), is done his “work” for the day (he’s a giant robot pilot, that’s his day job…), he gets mobbed by staff who keep going
「お疲れ様です」
in different speaking styles. At the end of the ritual, he wearily remarks
「疲れてねえよ。」
“I’m not tired.”
(The writer of this article takes a brief moment to laugh.)
Now, where it really gets funny is… at the start of the show, it’s his wedding day. (So of course some giant monster picks that day to attack. Of course.) And his angry left-at-the-altar wife pursues him all the way onto the battlefield, not being the “nobly waiting” type.
To boot, she calls him by her pet name for him, Go-chin. Rather than -chan, this uses -chin because put together, this is an… impact sound effect. gachin, gochin… it sounds very similar. It’s like the sound made when an anime hero smashes something with his fist, like Go’s personal combat style.
So with all this revealed in front of his co-workers, he is greeted with the following:
「お疲れ様です、ごーちん。」
“O-tsukaresama desu, Go-chin.”
(The author rolls on the floor, laughing.)
So after that, Go says very wearily,
「疲れてねえよ！！」
“I’m not tired…!!”
Perhaps not in a physical sense…
So there you have it. A gag based largely upon a literal response to a figurative expression.
Did you know Japanese had it in it? Did you? Well they know how to do pun gags too. Note it for future reference. – J
Gosick is animated by Bones, which I have lauded in the past; I liked Heroman, but at any rate they tend to do far out and artsy stuff which I respect. Pronounced “gothic” (and you see this clearly in the katakana for the title), just using a funny English spelling, this is based on a highly acclaimed novel which really hits the high notes of mid-1920’s murder and mystery featuring a “goth loli” named Victorique, shown above.
My experiences with the new anime Fractale began innocently enough with this article in the Asahi Shimbun (official romanization; ‘shinbun’ in text but ‘shimbun’ as spoken in Tokyo dialect).
Long story short, director Yutaka Yamamoto sees a glut of formulaic “moe” anime that directors like himself are pressured to make because that brings in reliable dollar bills, like “the formula” in romance novels or “the formula” in action movies. He thinks this has made creators not want to work in Japan and has led to a critical shortage of real creators. So, he looks to China and Korea for creativity, since Japan is a dry fossil (or more so).
Late in the article, Fractale is mentioned. He’s pitching this towards non-anime fans and people who were once fans and who have dropped out of anime.
So then I watched it, and…
I don’t write these words lightly, but good God, people!! This is a Miyazaki clone.
The characters.
The setting.
The background.
The “mecha.”
The French cultural influences (police are “securite”).
It goes all the way down to specific behavioral mannerisms and specific dialog styles.
It walks like a clone, it quacks like a clone… it’s a clone.
I don’t have time to put down links for all this stuff, but go and Google, oh, Nausicaa, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and things like that. Oh, and Totoro. You can find a Wiki on the director himself and his famed style here.
The only thing Fractale is doing differently is in that some sort of holographic people vibe and pieces of advanced computer technology (in a world that looks rural 1910 otherwise) takes the place of where Miyazaki himself would use magic, or spirits, or some other fantastical element.
This is creativity? This is a revival of Japan’s anime industry?
I mean, yeah, I can see how people who saw Totoro as a kid and haven’t seen a thing since might find this nostalgic but… man.
Anyway, this story has a third act.
Hitotsu! Funimation was supposed to air a translated simulcast of Fractale for American audiences before even most of Japan would get to see it. (That’s not hard – outside the Tokyo area, Japanese viewers might have to see it on satellite, with an up to 40 day wait.)
Hitotsu! (Explanation of term & use) So English fansubbers ripped Fractale episode 1 off the stream (that is, the Funimation stream) and illegally distributed it.
Hitotsu! Even as Funimation puts its anti-piracy team in motion, the Fractale production committee hereby declares: since this episode is in the wild, you have let us down, Funimation, and you may not broadcast this anymore. So there.
Americans, no Fractale for you.
Unless, of course, you pirate it.
Aside from obvious jabs I could make, like referring to Ahab and certain white whales, I see a trend here.
Now, there’s no question that the Fractale creators have every right to do this, as self-destructive and childish as it may be. If I thought that harr harr harr, a pirate’s life is for me, I’d fansub myself. I’m a more than good enough translator. I don’t. It’s not legal. I don’t lend any support to it… and I know legitimate translators, too.
But that’s not the point.
Here we have, at the drop of a hat, a complete banning of the anime for Americans. I mean, what, they didn’t think piracy takes place? Do you think Japanese viewers in non-Tokyo areas typically wait 40 days to see these shows? Do you? They have ultra high speed internet in spades in that country, and Japanese people are not shy about using it, but the studios aren’t demanding a crackdown on that.
Perhaps Director Yamamoto is so focused on a revival of the Japanese anime industry that he really did not take much convincing to decide that Americans should not be privileged to watch his show. If so, that’s a terrible message to send to the rest of the world.
Americans are not the bad guys here. The people who were legitimately logging onto Funimation’s website to view a professional localization of a new anime with high billing, not least of which from Director Yamamoto himself, should not be punished because unrelated people decided to pirate. It isn’t grounds for a temper tantrum. Everyone else’s stuff gets pirated too, but they understand that they are conducting a business.
Singling out Americans is not sound business, nor is it just.
I appreciate what this guy’s trying to do, but I’ll say it again: it’s a Miyazaki clone. It reeks of clone-ness. You can’t impress a serious appreciator of Japanese culture by cloning and calling it originality. In fact, my appreciation makes my ability to call a clone a clone, all that much more refined.
So my sympathy is out the window.
Context: Yamamoto publicly chewed out his own employer when he was working on Haruhi (yes it was about the Endless Eight reality loop, but still), and he was fired when working on the very moe Lucky Star. So he’s a known malcontent. Perhaps the fact he’s been hired again proves what he said about a lack of creators to be true, otherwise he’d never get any work in Japan again.
I just wish he’d stuff this attitude in his pocket.
Creation, good. Tantrum, bad.
We clear?
The easiest reading of 一つ (ひとつ、hitotsu) is one. So how can we explain something like this? Behold: Continue reading
Nothing much from me here, just the fact you might want to look over this article over at Asahi.com (in English). It’s about one anime creator’s feeling that the Japanese anime industry has grown too insular and that there is a critical lack of creators, that is, people who can drive new material.
The problem is, the creators that do exist are under a lot of pressure to do “moe” characters and situations. It’s like action movie or romance novel formula plots. It’s still a business. There is a balance to be struck, though, and this guy hopes that Fractale (which I haven’t laid eyes on yet, but it’s just starting to air) is part of a new trend of creativity.
I’ll probably watch Fractale just because of this article, just to see how it goes. Like I did last season, I’ll post “early impressions” after I’ve seen at least two episodes of the anime I’m tracking, since first episodes created like “hooks” tend to have far too little of the detail I’m looking for to make judgments.
I’m a great analyst if I have enough information. It’s my virtue and my vice. For the new season, I’m still getting a handle on everything. – J
Warrior MonksAlthough the word sohei is usually translated as warrior monks, the hei part fits “soldier” much better. These are monk-soldiers, but as English has no such term, warrior monks will generally do. The image above is a procession in sohei costume; as a serious armed group, the sohei met their end long before the samurai did. Continue reading
This is an artist’s impression of Thor used as a representation of the mythological figure in the Playstation 2 game, Persona 3. As opposed to other games in the “Shin Megami Tensei” franchise, also abbreviated as MegaTen or SMT, the mythological entities in Persona 3 are alter-egoes, or “personas,” rather than fully corporeal entities. In other words, they’re on the inside, not the outside. Continue reading
OK, the basics: this is not Yosuga no Sora. This is not porn. The relationship at the heart of the show usually translated as “My Little Sister Isn’t This Cute” (it’s a convoluted title, I point no fingers over its translation) is what I would call doting; the big brother dotes on his cute but annoying little sister, and the little sister has a big brother complex while being in fierce denial about this having anything to do with her very ordinary actual big brother.
But it’s so much more than that. If you want to know why, read on. Continue reading
