The biggest dilemma for a blog like this is trying to say something useful without trying to come off as an absolute authority, which seems to be the cause of most flame wars. I know a few things about a few things, but some people are like, if you don’t know everything, just shut up. I can’t live like that.

Blogging has to be a mix of fact and personal opinion. Otherwise, the content would belong in an encyclopedia. So a blog must be a personal act.

One thing I try to be careful about is to not blog in a way that is political. There are simple reasons for this which hardly require explanation. It’s just best left avoided.

Anyway, I’ve tried to do blog posts here that are from a fairly objective standpoint, providing a fairly neutral stance, trying to shed some light on matters relating to Japan’s culture. But, this is still a blog. After spending some time meditating (or more to the point, procrastinating) about what to write here, I think I shall write more that is my opinion… so long as it is clearly marked as such, and not presented as fact.

Lo and behold, Sensei’s Corner has been born.

Now, I’m not a very active teacher, though I’d like to do more to change that. I’m actually between jobs. I’m going to be the webmaster of a startup corporation that has heavy family involvement. It’s a good project. It just hasn’t finished starting up just yet. That’s life. I’m trying to do things in the meantime.

I write this as an explanation for why I’m not spending all of my time doing things that would prevent me from blogging a single word. Put simply, I do not live a perfect life, with a perfect income and perfect happiness. I’m working to deal with it. If anyone wants to complain about it, I will note your complaint and then move on with living life.

Even so, well, not everything I’ve done has exactly been a waste.

A couple of mornings ago, I heard from a former student from one on one tutoring I did over Skype. This was a way back, like, last year. Once he dropped off the grid, he was working his rear off to help get the money to go to Japan and enroll at a language school, which is where he is now. He only regained internet access about, oh, five days ago.

So, I told him not to feel any concern about my having been dropped like a hot potato. (I’m kidding.) I’m just another guy here. I just had a natural interest in if everything had worked out. Well, he wants to study at university in Japan, so this is a stepping stone in that direction.

I asked him if my lessons had prepared the groundwork for him. He said, yes; in particular, my lessons on Japanese particles were serving him very well. This made the “Sensei” in me very happy.

You see, it is the nature of language courses and language schools that everyone is working on a tight schedule. This is the same for language instruction to native speakers in high school. Once you reach a certain point, instruction in basic grammar and spelling and vocabulary stops. Your mistakes may get flagged and marked, but we get past “correction” to the point of simply punishing those who didn’t learn 100% what they ought to have at a lower level. These students fail upwards, and are the kinds who are cranked out of school without functional literacy. Many more simply come out with bad English, which is another thing I’d like to address more and more – just not on this blog.

With Japanese, particles are a core feature of the Japanese language, starting with “Watashi wa Jeremiah desu”. Yet it took me years as a translator, and some frustration as a tutor, to truly understand the particles and the roles they play to the point of being able to smoothly and reliably instruct others in it.

Not to dwell on the fine details but, I’ve read explanations that portray “Watashi ga” as if WATASHI was in ALL CAPS, and “Watashi wa” as if Watashi is in regular writing. This is badly astray. I mean, in some sense, there’s a point, but this is way, way off from the grammatical roles of “wa” and “ga” and will lead the unsuspecting student to a frustrating lack of full comprehension of short, basic sentences.

Suffice to say that this makes effective learning harder.

So, knowing that this young man was benefiting from my particle lessons gave me a sense of relief, because I know from past discussions with him about his research into language schools, and independent research, that language schools will not teach this thoroughly or properly. In other words, if you come in not knowing it, you’ll be bouncing into walls unnecessarily for a long time, and brute forcing the problem is a lot harder than just understandings the “shinjitsu” (objective truth).

So yes, the Sensei in me is happy. He’ll be benefiting from what I taught him for literally years to come.

Moving On

Anyway, aside from telling that story, the point of this was to tell anyone interested that I’m going to be doing more classical blogging. That is, I’ll write in the first person, give opinions, present more of my mind to you, the readers, and hope that this entertains thee.

As I said, I’m in between jobs, and I never really managed to find a business for teaching Japanese in the locale where I live (and where I will work in the family business as fate would have it), so I’m not doing this for money. I’m just trying to keep it clean, speak my mind as much as public decency permits, and have a little fun with it, and try to make sure you have a little fun with it.

We’ll see how it goes. – J

When Anime Insiders’ Oxen Are Gored

For the context of this, you should look at Random Curiosity’s review of episode 8 here, and for what I’m about to quote, original credit goes here.

Essentially, this episode was about a bubbly girl author’s hopes and dreams getting hit with, as Random Curiosity’s reviewer puts it, the reality bat when faced with animation staff. Through interventions by her loyal big brother, and also, by her friend and fellow writer “Kuroneko” (“Black Cat”), show star Kirino gets most of what she wants and is very happy – and never finds out what was done behind her back, it seems. This is in spite of Kuroneko not even liking Kirino’s style of work (and taste), but she wants Kirino’s work as an artist and creator respected because she’s a creator, too.

Anyway, that’s the short version. The show goes into the issue of how works get modified, sometimes very heavily, when adapted to anime (TV or film).

But, apparently the episode itself was altered compared to the novel version. More on that another time, though.

The point is, Ito Makoto, the anime producer of “School Days” and “11 Eyes,” has made a Twitter statement to the effect that this OreImo episode made him distinctly uncomfortable.

Basically, his point was that this is a delicate issue for producers and original authors to begin with. Why stir it up? Why portray the two sides as antagonists? In his mind, it’s a cooperative effort, not an adversarial one.

I’m hardly going to call this a bad statement. I’m cursed with the ability to see all sides of any dispute. (It’s inconvenient, I tell you.) But I think that there’s a side to this that may not have been obvious when watching the show.

The Fan View

It’s not really about the authors feeling that their works are being butchered. It’s about the fans feeling that their favorite authors’ works are being butchered… and with high irony, this includes this very anime episode, which you can see in the Random Curiosity comments (in which I have myself commented). There’s criticism that this episode strayed too far from the original author material… though there is a reason for that.

Anyway, the point is, there’s mouthpiecing for the usual fan complaints that anime is too altered from the original. Surely we have all seen this. There are things where original material simply doesn’t “work” on the screen; Monster comes to mind, and yes, I have read the manga from the first volume to the bitter end. There are also works where a film is so wildly different from the original material that one wonders why anyone bothered.

And so forth.

So, this episode took two sides.

Side #1: There really are many considerations that must go into an anime version, like it or not. This includes the schedule.

Side #2: Producers and their staff bear a responsibility to be as faithful to the original material as possible, not to just butcher it out of laziness, and even out of intellectual spite that they have to work on “popular crap.”

Of course, side #2 is what got Ito-san worked up. I understand that.

But, I think that the real message was to the fans themselves. That is, be very grateful when your favorite work (like uh… Ore no Imouto Ga Konna Kawaii Wake Ga Nai, itself?) gets animated and is as close to the original material as it is, because there are a LOT of barriers in the way, not just to get a show on the air at all, but to keep it faithful.

If this sounds like a backhanded apology of some sort, that’s because it kind of is.

The Story Behind The Story

Spoiler tags below, because this would spoil the plot of the third novel volume. (And I’m working hard to make these work properly on my site – J)

show

So now you know… the rest of the story. …I’ve always wanted to say that line once.