I haven’t done one of these in a while because it’s hard to get used to the “train of consciousness” type of writing. In fact, I won’t really do that. I’ll break this up into little sections and make it easier to read that way.

Mouretsu Uchuu Kaizoku (Bodacious Space Pirates)

I still find this to be a really good show. The best part is very much the interaction between girls, and now there’s a princess who looks like Sailor Moon wearing a middle school fuku to attract attention. She’s quite adorable, really. Being a crazy-good hacker adds to her charm, but she really wasn’t prepared to be borrowing Captain Marika’s pirate outfit (with a pleated skirt) in Episode 9.

Anyway, this show has teased certain things but we know that things will get a lot more “serious” in episodes to come. The pace is rather Goldilocks: not too frantic and not too slow. Of course some may disagree on that. The show also has a memory, like about Chiaki’s weakness for parfaits. (Then again, why would any self-respecting girl resist…?)

Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai

I made a little review of this on this blog, but just to reiterate: I liked this show more than I expected, but actually, what drew me in was a really zany Monster Hunter spoof, since I have played many of those games. As usual, I’m not quite the game fanatic some of my friends are, but still, it was interesting. Anyway, the show rose above cheap comedy and became more complex comedy with a lot of laughs, cheap and otherwise. It’s hard for me to watch a show about ordinary people in comedies, somehow. This bunch of weirdos makes it somehow pleasantly tolerable.

Food and Fashion

I’ve been expanding my reading material lately. One is a food blog called Just Hungry; the other is a fashion site called Tokyo Fashion. Both are about Japan’s food and fashion, of course. I have to say, my hardest translation jobs – at least, before finding broader, more thorough Japanese sources – were always: a) food; b) songs; c) songs about food, in ascending order of gratuitous work. (Mahoromatic manga, I mean you.)

Petty Japan Politician Griping

There’s a lot not to like about the political situation in Japan. Recently we saw the sitting Prime Minister declare that no one bears individual responsibility for the Fukushima disaster. First, when everyone’s responsible, no one is. Second, the very idea that a single person should be a scapegoat for a powerful earthquake and subsequent tsunami is patently ridiculous. I know that’s not exactly what was being talked about, but really, it’s close enough.

I’m still not happy about finding out that all the (mostly) spent fuel rods stored in those reactor housings were there because environmentalists sabotaged every effort to find/ build a better place for them, greatly raising the possibility that if there was a disaster, it could get ridiculously out of hand.

There’s also the constant denial that they can do without any nuclear power at all and still have a reliable and functional economy. I appreciate the faith of the anti-nuclear crowd, but unless they’re willing to go back to an agrarian society with dirt-poor peasants, they need energy. Energy that doesn’t cost them internal organs would be good. This whole mess with Iran isn’t helping them at all, but if they don’t cooperate in shunning at least 20% of the oil they import from Iran, the United States has essentially promised to destroy their banks’ ability to do business with America and its ‘real’ allies. Not pleasant.

Gundam AGE

I shunned this show for a long time. Now that there’s a 2nd arc running, I can tolerate the apparently obligatory references to the first Gundam and the heretical idea that the “friend on the other side of the warring nations” would actually spare the protagonist’s life. Well, he did, or we wouldn’t have much of a show left.

Right now, this show is more than tolerable. I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth, people. I’ll see where it goes.

Aquarion EVOL

This show has to be some of the funniest stuff around right now… for a mecha show… oriented towards guys. Actually, I’m assuming it is; there’s certainly pretty boys stuck in there for show for someone. At any rate, the show isn’t afraid to get ridiculous… in a good way.

Armitage III

It’s only taken me over a decade to see this Original Video Animation (4 episodes). Well, at least the ending wasn’t complete suck. Better for the characters, but like was intended, it sure makes you wonder what side was right, whether any of the struggles really mattered… but, they mattered to the characters, so maybe that’s what counts. Anyway, not a bad show in the slightest, for as long as it lasted anyway.

Brave10

I didn’t gravitate to this right away. I watched episode 8 (or was that 7? I can’t remember) then found a little of the manga to read to understand the basics of where this all came from, then watched episode 9 where a major plot point is dropped, and no, spoiling wouldn’t be a good thing here. I half-suspected the twist but I had no idea why anyone would go that route. Guess I’ll see. This is the kind of show that could have been a lot more annoying but doesn’t really feel that way.

Unemployment Blues

I’m still stuck between jobs. Somehow I need to build contacts all over again and get some translation or tutoring work to fill a gap before my future job comes into being. It’s coming, things are just too darn slow. Establishing a company isn’t easy, apparently. I’m helping my father prepare for production where and how I can, but the gap is still really annoying for everyone involved. Even so, I love languages, so I’m going to have to do something about it. – J

Better Than I Expected

When I first started watching “Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai,” which I mentioned before in saying that “haganai” as a nickname had to do with reading “wa” as “ha” (though in this grammar role it is NEVER pronounced anything other than “wa”), I expected simple zany comedy. It became more than that.

While this certainly is a comedy, the characters are not one-dimensional, though they act like it a lot of the time. The characters are… well, the expression, “She’s a real character,” comes to mind. As in, these are oddballs. They know they’re oddballs. We know they’re oddballs. And yet somehow it works. We feel relieved of the obligation to gauge them against the actions of normal human beings, not because they shoot fireballs from their fingertips, but because their personalities vary so wildly.

At its core, this show is about a bunch of oddballs who don’t fit anywhere normal, and so, as if reeled in by force of gravity, become part of a club ostensibly about “making friends”. There’s quite a lot of comic conflict between the girls involved. One girl in particular, Sena, fits the anime fan role of a pin-up model on the Internet. But never mind that. The strength of the show is that ostensibly ordinary things go crazily, horribly wrong, but relationships still manage to deepen as the club members become a tight-knit little community.

Having said that, without spoiling, this series can’t be truly enjoyed without making it all the way to episode 12 (the final one). This episode essentially rewrites the first episode and manages to leave a good taste in the viewer’s mouth. A good ending is a truly valuable thing.

Rating: 9.5/10 for characters and situations I actually found quite funny, extremely high production values (cel/ voice/ sound), and pacing that manages to work. – J

“Bodacious Space Pirates” 

I’m not sure whose idea it was to translate the title as “Bodacious Space Pirates,” and perhaps it’s from the Japanese studio, but that’s OK. “Mouretsu” usually stands for something more like marauding, or at least that’s what I’d use. Episode 8 just aired, and it’s a really good show.

Before getting a bit more into the meat, here’s the quick hits so far:

• Endearing characters and lots of them
• Very funny in numerous places
• Serious and deep science fiction when it wants to
• Pacing allows viewer to ease into a deep, complex world
• Excellent production values
• Intelligent writing
• Nothing ecchi; safe for sensitive viewers

That last part is important for some people so I mention it prominently. I’m really enjoying this show, though some have accused it of having a “slow” pace to start. I address that a bit below.

Plot & Premise

This show has received such hype that it has the confidence to start in a way some may call “slowly”, with the main character, Marika, discovering in the middle of Episode 1 that she is the heiress to a pirate ship captained by her father, who she knew basically nothing about. In this futuristic environment, pirate ships must still operate by a variety of public laws, and piracy is partially tolerated, but dangerous in the wrong circumstances. Only blood heirs can inherit. Marika’s new status as a potential captain, for she hasn’t decided yet, makes her a target, while her new homeroom teacher – a member of the Bentenmaru crew, who served under her father – arranges for an “education” to test her mettle and prepare her for the job.

Marika

The girl in the image at the top of this post is Chiaki, who is very good at denying her interest in seeing Marika in her outfit at a maid cafe in a part-time job. Chiaki obviously has some pirate involvement herself, but I won’t spoil exactly what. She’s capable, smart, prideful, and has a secret soft spot for Marika, in spite of Marika starting out as a girl with big, glaring holes that call into question her fitness as a potential captain.

What Marika does have is amazing decision-making capability and a massive amount of drive and effort. This is demonstrated by the end of the first arc in Episode 5, where a “school trip” in an actual spaceship (a former pirate ship converted to a training vessel) results in a cat and mouse game of electronic warfare and other festivities with a vessel trying to take their ship over. Marika leads a student counter-attack, which takes an unexpected turn as the other side, seeing their computers about to be taken over, simply turn the computers off and start taking beam gun potshots through manual, optical aiming. I won’t spoil more but, seriously, why can’t you do just that and pull the plug? People with thinking caps on wrote this script.

By the end, Marika has found her calling and agrees to push to become the full captain of the Bentenmaru. This isn’t a spoiler, since without this, there wouldn’t be much of a show left.

By episode 8, Marika has engaged in a couple of “pirate takeovers” with a really funny twist: namely, that she appears before the passengers who must surrender their valuables like a sort of rock star. (It’s a bit difficult to explain out of context, but man is it entertaining.) At the end of her second “raid”, a stowaway comes aboard: a real, live princess who becomes the engine for the plot for the foreseeable future.

In Episode 8, “The Princess and the Pirate”, our lovely princess becomes a transfer student at Marika’s high school. (That goes a way towards shutting up any notion that she was kidnapped, I imagine.) I don’t have a picture I can upload yet, but the girl has a schoolgirl look that greatly resembles Usagi from Sailor Moon except with four thin braids instead of two thicker ones, both sets dangling from twin “dango” (meatballs) in a very blond hairstyle with blue eyes, as represented. (In anime, even Japanese girls can be shown with all sorts of hair and eye mixes for differentiation; it’s useful to tell people apart, you see. Everyone just goes along with it.)

The show’s shaping up to be quite something, with a lot of characters who add to it, lots of good science fiction, and we get to feel like we’re learning about the world along with Marika. It’s a good feeling and I expect great things from the show as it continues. – J

Summary: Tasty, but pack your suspension of disbelief and a thick skin with your lunch box.

Ben-Tou ostensibly refers to bentou lunch boxes, a staple in Japan with an incredible amount of variety. The title’s style of display makes it sound like sentou, i.e. “combat”, and this may be intentional; I’ll never know because the title’s in katakana, not kanji. (^^;)

Ben-Tou is about a hidden world of food fights: hungry “wolves” (okami) who battle for dibs on half-price tasty bentou boxes at stores and restaurants of various kinds. These battles have highly evolved customs, with the most notorious of combatants being known by noms-de-guerre. The main character picks up the “second name” of hentai, which is partly his own fault, and partly just bad karma and things inflicted by his friends and acquaintances.

So is it good? Yes, actually, it’s very enjoyable. The show stays true to itself until the very end, never lets up in animation quality or characterization, and has an overall strength to it. I must mention some important caveats, however.

This is a show that requires a thick skin for two things: violence and fetishes. In particular, this show is written by people who worship dominant female figures of various sorts and revel in showing them in what can only be described as sexual teases. The teases go far beyond any ecchi content actually shown, but nonetheless, mature viewers are recommended. (As in, don’t be too immature when you watch this stuff in spite of its absolute hilarity.)

On that note, this show’s very funny. You must have a thick skin and not worry too much about pesky details (like, where are the cops!?) in order to ride the wave and appreciate that this show is very funny and highly entertaining. Of course there will be tropes of various kinds, but it’s in the quality of the presentation that these things must be measured. Ben-Tou excels in presentation and deserves credit for that.

It wounds me to have to slap a rating to this, because it’s not for everyone but is great for those who can appreciate it, but I enjoyed it 8.0/10 because the “human spirit” and sincerity to oneself themes, hot girls and overall humor didn’t get stale. So get your Ben-Tou when it’s hot and appreciate it before it’s all gone. – J

Without giving potential spoilers, the plot has certain differences from the anime, which is unsurprising. It also covers only up to the showdown with Karla the Grey Witch. There are things explained better, or at different places, as a novel should, but of course not all of this can “translate” to anime, which requires poignant visual images and numerous opportunities for excellent voice acting.

I found the novel to be quite interesting.

It’s been a while since I’ve been writing in this blog, but it’s not really because of anything bad. Actually, a number of minor and major problems have been fixed so I feel like I have the luxury of blogging a little more. Part of it is health related, and I’ll keep details private, but it is good to be on the right path when it comes to health. So, I’m more 元気 (genki) in the physical health sense.

Yesterday a power outage zapped my Windows XP profile’s user settings. I was a bit worried, but after taking a large chunk of the day doing long-overdue defragging and optimizing of my boot drive (my C: drive), it’s in far better shape now. Then, a reboot successfully brought back the old settings. I guess Windows realized it needed to take a step back. In the meantime, I fixed a huge ton of registry errors with the help of a free trial of an AVG-related program. I really can’t complain about the results so far.

Actually, most of what’s been killing my blogging time is practicing writing fiction. I wanted to get back to the level I was at before I began learning Japanese some fifteen years ago (!). Or maybe it’s 16, it’s hard to recall the exact date. Anyway, I had no prospect of finding a book agent. Frankly, I still don’t. But that’s not the point here: I’m older, wiser, and have a lot more experience to draw on.

The most challenging thing right now has nothing to do with skill. Due to a rather… embarrassingly extreme amount of experience with running role-playing games for close friends, I am accustomed to a lot of character creation and development, and I have always had a knack for dialogue and writing action. It’s setting up the scenarios in a way that satisfies my amateur anthropologist mind and having a plot worth pushing that holds a lot back… and well, time. Writing sucks up a lot of time, you see.

Having said that, I’m at the point where, if I had a clear plot to work with, I could crank out mini-novels in no time at all. My typing speed is ridiculously fast compared to a lot of people, and mostly, it’s about having ideas and flow. But since plot matters, it’s not as if I want to be a fast food writer, either.

In terms of anime, I’ve caught up on some things a little, but I’ve been enjoying things other than anime where I can for quite some time. Mainly, I’ve been getting really impressed at the fundamental beauty and meticulous story crafting for Guilty Crown, one of this season’s greats that looks every bit as good as a feature film should. Animation has come a long way, though my understanding is, right around where I watched the last episode, there is a switch from computer graphics animation to more cel-based animation for the mecha.

I will say this: today’s anime can come up with some truly spectacular background shots. This has CG assistance too, apparently, but it’s not really the same; when things aren’t in motion like a giant robot, you get to appreciate all the subtleties of the extremely detailed and high resolution art involved. The vibrancy is just incredible. People in centuries past had famous painters; I have my high-res backgrounds of vast flower gardens and bodies of water. My human experience has been enriched.

Now, I will say this: I don’t necessarily want to talk just about Japan stuff here. It’s just that I can’t really walk ten feet without bumping into something related to it. While waiting for my father’s business to finish setting up for manufacturing (and for me to play secretary/ customer support/ online marketing demon), I’ve been toying with the Japanese version of the RPG Tales of the Abyss, which has some of the most incredible character development for a main character ever seen or even heard of. Of course explaining it would spoil, but the bottom line is this: I am so glad I play these games in Japanese. The voice actor casting is often what you might call, well… absolutely perfect for a given character’s personality, and this game emphasizes the characters, the personalities, and it always comes back to clinging to hope for a better future.

Another anime I caught up on is “Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukinai“. The hiragana shortened version comes off as “はがない” , which is confusing because that’s not “ha”, it’s “wa” as pronounced. Anyway, “I have few friends” is one translation suggested to me. It’s based on novels, where some of the best stuff comes from (largely due to the extremely intricate plotting and dialogue; hey, if you don’t have artists cranking out every cell, your dialogue had better be good). It’s also notable for an “anime blonde” girl who is, well… let’s just say she is popular with the masses.

But really, I’ve been distracted by the writing and other issues. I don’t want to idly rant too much about the writing stuff (and the background research I’ve been doing) to any great degree, but I just wanted to let people know the broad outline. – J

So why do I like Japan? （なぜ、日本を大好きですか)

It’s not complicated. Japan is a land of beautiful nature (美しい大自然), rich culture (豊か文化), an interesting history (面白い歴史),  a resilient people (頼もしい人), and, in spite of a great deal of conformity (「出る釘は打たれる」のくせに、) there is a huge amount of creativity that emerges from Japan. (莫大な創作力がある).

One of the true reasons, and unfortunately, the one that I can least share, is that the intricacy of the Japanese language allows Japanese people to reveal a great deal about what they think and feel to others, with as much vagueness or specificity as they prefer. The language is truly a window into the soul.

That’s my reasons in a very short list.

One enduring feature of Japanese storytelling is that, if there is ever to be a good ending, protagonists must appropriately suffer before it, and so must the viewers. Some shows can get very hard to watch. And not all endings are sweet.

I won’t name names, to protect people from spoilers, but I just finished one of the shows I have liked very much in recent times, and while the ending is not a “bad” one, the show spared no effort to create vast doubt about this until the last moment. Fortunately for my memories of the show, the ending was not a bad one, but the general point is worth commenting on.

From what I understand, in older times, Japanese stories had lots of suffering… and then bad endings. That was the dramatic element: tragedy as eternally destined, something to bring tears rather than a warm heart. But Japanese storytelling, too, has evolved over time.

Again, not all endings leave me with an ureshii feeling, but I’ll take what I can get.

(P.S. Heading reads, “That was quite a hardship.” – J)

A fair bit of what I have translated professionally (in the past) is what might be called pulp fiction, manga and “light novels” that fit neatly into popular culture. However, the Japanese publishing industry is both large, and intensely competitive. When only the strong survive, the general quality available improves accordingly.

I think that Japan has always had a strong storytelling culture. It is hardly alone in this, but the rise of broad-based literacy propelled local mythology into national lore. Once Japan’s nationalistic/ WWII phase was fully resigned to history, and Japan was finally recovering economically and spiritually, manga and, still in its early strides, anime, rose to deliver broad-based entertainment to the masses… but have never displaced the hon (本), or book. Indeed, more and more highly successful anime are now adapted from successful books, giving them a strong plot and a built-in audience.

A manga I have just begun to read is called Cage of Eden. If I was to summarize it in one sentence, I would call it a cross between Lost and Jurassic Park. That is, Japanese high school students returning from a field trip stranded after a mysterious plane crash on an apparently uncharted island filled with prehistoric, and deadly, wildlife.

You can do this in a black and white manga for immensely less cost than a big budget movie. The only limit is the finite number of pages a chapter can bear and the creativity of the manga-ka (and his or her staff). The tools are roughly the same for everyone, but it’s what you do with them that sets the great storytellers apart.

Anyway, I just thought I’d write a few things about it. – J