Hatsune Miku + Corolla = ?

Hatsune Miku is a “vocaloid,” which means, rather than synthetic music, she is a synthetic singer with an unnaturally high pitched voice through the use of a computer program. Being a product from the ground up, she – and the software to “make” her “songs” – has been promoted with great fanfare. Now she is serving as a poster girl for the Toyota Corolla.

I’m not sure who thought this would fly in the American market, but someone decided to give it a whirl. I’m not sure how many people even know who/ what Miku is. (The kanji for “Hatsune” reads as “first sound,” and “Miku” is suspiciously close to the English “mic” but with a cuter pronunciation.)

Anyway, here’s the video from the very much official Toyota web page.

Old Times, Good Times

Super Turrican is one of the games for the Super Nintendo that, owing to the system, had “Super” tacked onto the front. Featuring a man in an armored suit, with some similarities to Metroid, this action platformer featured some incredible synthesized music. I have included a sample of this music below from Stage 1-3.

My only personal connection with this game is through game rentals in my early teens, but I remember the music of this stage well, even now. Amusingly, in spite of the action nature of the game, this music instilled a Zen-like state of peace in my mind. Perhaps the better to go out shooting things with. Perhaps.

Listen for yourself and enjoy the experience. – J

Once upon a time in my former career as a translator, I came across a company called DigInfo (as in, digital information) that regularly posts videos about cool things from Japan on YouTube. This is one example: a short video on a 2012 model Honda motorcycle called the Goldwing (ゴールドウイング).While some DigInfo videos are translated into English and English dubbed, the one I use here as a demonstration is not.

Now, if there’s one thing that can really said here, it’s simply this: the machine looks good. All the things that I’ve praised in the craftsmanship that goes into a genuine Japanese katana is reflected in the care and workmanship and aesthetic on display with this piece of machinery.

At any rate, I felt that some may simply wish to experience a minute and a half of Japanese commercial culture, even if they can’t understand a word of it. Anyone further interested should go right ahead and subscribe to the DigInfo channel on YouTube. I’m so busy that I don’t watch their videos enough but, you really get a sense of what boundaries are being pushed from Japan in machines, technology, and even gaming.

The above is a gameplay video on YouTube showing the first stage of one of the potential main characters in Super Robot Taisen (“Super Robot Wars”) Z the 2nd, on PSP, sequel to SRW Z, on PS2. As usual, new “original” mecha and pilots are used with a wide mix of mecha anime crossover plots, machines, and characters for a lively mix.

The rough version of the above: the main character, whose name reads like “crow” or “claw” in katakana but is probably representing the name Crowe (while giving the aforementioned impressions), is a man with a million G in debt.

(Eat your heart out, Bernacke; Super Robot Wars apparently functions just fine on a gold standard. Ahem. Anyway…)

So, a desperate man down on his luck due to debts left by his father (and the collapse of his father’s company) makes him receptive to an offer that he really can’t refuse: test pilot an experimental combat machine and earn the money to pay off his debts and be a free man. Since Japanese like to express certain figures in units of “man” (万, or 10,000), the “100 man man” means, in our terms, the million dollar man (or at least, the man in debt for that much!).

As one might cynically expect for the first stage of a video game, it’s not quite some little milk run; a bunch of terrorists are attacking the world’s foremost financial group, but Crowe makes it inside and a deal is struck. I don’t want to vouch for what the name of the machine should be yet, but it reads almost like “Blastia” (like in Tales of Vesperia or something).

Anyway, the terrorists go down fast but, in this completely time-space messed up Earth, there’s such a thing as “Dimension Beasts” that show up to cause more death and destruction, but a mysterious “ally” (?) shows up in the form of Wufei from Gundam Wing, complete with the Shenlong Gundam. The rest of what you see in the video is simply the action.

While the tactical map is all traditional portable SRW type 2D, the battle animations are pretty good, and I found the original music to be not bad at all. Gundam Wing’s music has never been hard to listen to for me.

Now, stage 2, below, introduces another element of this strange new world, the Gundam 00 universe’s content. There’s going to be quite a lot of it in this game.

Prior to the stage, you see some “intermission” (in-between “episodes” i.e. game stages) bookkeeping type work to manage the as yet one-bot army at the player’s disposal. This army will greatly expand in the course of the winding plot. However, this next stage isn’t truly about Crowe; it’s mainly a kick-off of the Gundam 00 plot, with Setsuna starring.

The rest doesn’t require any explanation to fans of Gundam 00, so watch and enjoy. I’m finding the music to be represented pretty well here. – J

Oh and, definitely count me among the mecha crowd. I’ve played the predecessor of this PSP game exhaustively. Rather than babble about my experiences, those inclined to see a sampling of the various series and mecha should just watch the video above. Have fun! – J

Above: “Absolutely not!!” (ironic promo image used for the subject of this post by Ken Akamatsu, creator of Love Hina, and thus the actual holder of the intellectual property thereof.)

いいえ、本当かも

（It Really Might Be For Real!)

The Gist:

Ken Akamatsu, the creator of Love Hina, has founded a project that promises to be the YouTube of Manga. I am not making that up; this blog post (it’s in Japanese, FYI!) uses that exact premise. (There’s also a comparison to Nico Video, which is a Japanese, YouTube-style service.)

This is something that the manga industry has desperately needed for years. For serious fans, the sheer physical size and weight of a manga collection is a major burden. This is why, in spite of being a voracious reader of Japanese, I own very few physical manga myself. And I used to translate them for a meager living! (Well, TokyoPop always got the copies back after I was done with them, but that’s another story…)

The Idea:

Manga creators will be able to upload their works in the simplest of manners, .jpg format images in a Zip file, and the site will automatically unpack the data and make it available both in web reader format and in PDF format. Now, I’m not the greatest fan of PDF, but there will be no DRM whatsoever and you can give the stuff to friends at your own discretion. It will also be 100% free, using per-click revenue distribution to reward the authors without thick, thick piles of publisher bureaucracy, red tape and all the massive costs of physical printing and distribution.

Why This Matters:

Manga has been a declining industry for a while. Ken himself has asked the obvious question: what comes after Bleach and Naruto and One Piece? What? These three pillars are holding up the entire industry, and a lot of very good and very creative stuff rests in their shadows. More importantly, the sheer infrastructure of it all is hard pressed to keep up with the modern world… and digital distribution has been a bright light, but has never been implemented in a workable way.

On Nov. 26, we’ll see if this way will work.

Ken is wealthy enough to not need to make one dime on it. His interest is promoting creativity, authors, and getting both as close to the fans as possible. Realistically, this will be covering a lot of out of print works, but that’s OK. There’s a lot of out of print titles people haven’t read.

Ken leads the way with all 14 volumes of Love Hina, which will therefore be available for free download and viewing once the full site is up.

I haven’t actually read the manga, and I only saw a few episodes of the anime (like 3, I think?), so I will be reading.

As a former manga translator (of high skill and great pride in my work), let me tell you my simple and honest opinion: the industry NEEDS this. That includes the U.S. side, though contracts and rights issues may make doing the same thing on U.S. shores more difficult.

If it ever does happen, I would do everything possible to support it myself.

I even have my own dreams of novel writing, for the works of great Japanese artists inspire me deeply and really make me want to create on my own. It’s ideas like this that give me some hope in this world.

This is an idea whose time has come. We’re not all carpenters. We can’t just build shelves to store 100 volumes of manga. Even if you have to pay for it, and believe me, I’m all for supporting creators and artists, the point is having it in a good format that you can have on a hard drive or portable device.

Why can’t you be able to enjoy manga on PC, or iPad, or PS3 image viewer, or PSP, or anything of the sort? Why not? Let’s strip the barriers down, get the support to these artists that they richly deserve, and spread the joy of artistic creativity to the fans and readers who will enjoy and appreciate it.

The YouTube of Manga? It’s time.

Let’s do it.

This is a 60 second video lesson with good looking animals and the Japanese names for them (along with the English, not because viewers are unintelligent, but because it may help provide an audio memory anchor for better remembering). Thanks. – J

This is a little video on Japanese sentence structure, narrated by yours truly, Jeremiah Bourque, as used in my private Japanese tutoring lessons. Thank you very much.