Source: Alafista (click image for full article)

Maaya is one of the few VAs I’ve paid much attention to: after seeing her name crop up so frequently a while ago, I checked her ANN profile and realised how often I’d heard her voice, both as a singer and an actress. Similarly, Kenichi is another industry veteran and it turns out that they’ve often worked together and have known each other for some time. Compared to, say, the negative reaction to Aya Hirano making certain details of her private life public, the messages of goodwill from the fans at this piece of news are both heartwarming and completely justified.

This is an appropriate time I think to explain my opinion on why Maaya is one of my personal fave VAs, and why she’s so worthy of fans’ respect. Firstly there’s the range and diversity of her roles: getting her big break as a young fantasy heroine (Escaflowne), she’s worked in SF and mecha shows (Gundam Seed Destiny, RahXephon, Gunbuster 2), offbeat comedy (Arakawa Under the Bridge) and more serious and demanding series (Usagi Drop, Mushishi, Kara no Kyoukai). It’s also worth remembering that she has been able to consistently find work and do her job well in an industry that’s often fickle and rarely sees its stars spending long periods of time in the limelight.

She also has an impressive back catalogue as a music artist, working with the likes of Yoko Kanno and occasionally co-writing her own songs. Again, my scant knowledge of Japanese prevents me enjoying the vocal/lyrical content as much as I want to, but she has one of those pleasant and easy-on-the-ears voices with a wide range of pitch and expression. Everywhere is a good compilation of her work to date, but the studio LP Shounen Alice is my personal highlight and one I especially recommend.

Kenichi is a seiyuu who I must confess I’m not nearly as familiar with (I’m one of the few people who actually enjoyed the Tsukihime anime adaptation, so maybe that counts for something? ^_^), although he’s won a few awards and enjoyed some success as a music artist as well. Part of the reason I think why their pairing has put a smile on so many faces is that he and Maaya have been such a good match professionally: in hindsight, it explains why the on-screen chemistry between the two leads in KnK for instance felt so natural and convincing.

From the fans’ perspective then, this is probably one of those pairings that has many fictional parallels (life imitating art and vice-versa) but I’m now reaching a time of life when people my age seem to be getting hitched left, right and centre; stepping away from the otaku point of view it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling of “it couldn’t have happened to nicer people.”

In closing then, my sincere congratulations to them both and best wishes for a happy life together.

Their sound is described as partly shoegaze, but to my ears the similarities are somewhat limited next to the early-90s bands of that genre; they do make use of the female vocals paired with distorted guitar-based arrangements and they also strike a balance between catchy melodies and experimental noise though. The songs are also quite punk/new wave- and powerpop-influenced so I’d say they share as much with the pillows and early Supercar as, say, My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive.

Before guitarist Chiemi Ishimoto left the band (for personal/medical reasons rather than musical ones; not that it makes it any less saddening for all concerned) their overall sound was focused around her jangly guitar riffs and Natsuko Miyamoto’s tooth-rattling distorted bass lines. Yoshino Tsutomu eventually filled the role of permanent drummer after Reiko Gotoh’s departure that occured just before their breakthrough recording deal but the song arrangements are very tight and up-tempo so the importance of a good percussionist/drummer shouldn’t be understated.

It’s also important to mention Natsuko’s vocal style, because it’s so distinctive: powerful and emotionally charged, but not screechy or shrill. Unlike the more commercially successful outfits that rely on poster-girl good looks, Masu Dore followed the indie route in that they’re reliant on the songs themselves and the unbridled energy of their live shows. The main reason why I think Natsuko is such an egaging stage presence is this frantic yet skilled musicianship as opposed to her image; she’s the kind of performer who’s cute in a scary-beautiful kind of way because she doesn’t seem to be trying.

Discography

The Kirameta demo is comprised of three songs that reappeared on their self-titled debut mini album but the two closing tracks of the latter have more in common with the up-tempo sound and power pop template of their more recent material (undoubtedly benefiting from Dave Fridmann’s production). It also features Endroll, a wonderful nine-plus minute instrumental more reminiscent of Acidman’s jazzier moments, and the opening tracks share this looser, softer feel.

Echoes of the Fridmann influence carry through to World Is Yours, which is generally more focused and structured without losing the signature sound. I’m reluctant to call this one ‘heavy’ because it isn’t, but it’s certainly punchier; it’s closer to what I’ve heard in recordings of their live performances. There are more overdubs and even a few instances of double-tracked vocals, reflecting the more professional and polished production. The bass parts are more complex and sit higher in the mix too, so it keeps the sense of immediacy and barely-controlled chaos without feeling commercial or overproduced.

Their third record, and first full-length, Zero Comma, Iro Toridori no Sekai, is probably their most polished and commercial-sounding to date and was released a few months before Chiemi’s departure. This was actually the first of theirs I heard but as much as I love it, this one probably isn’t their best so far. That said, it doesn’t discard the aspects of the band’s sound that fans know and love…it’s just a bit of a worry that Natsuko’s the only remaining member of the original line-up (at the time of writing they still have at least one live date on the horizon). Of course, Shonen Knife’s current incarnation have only one founding member in common with their original roll-call, so I don’t want to write off Masu Dore just yet.

It would be a shame from a personal point of view to see a band disintegrate or lose the quirkiness that makes them special so soon after discovering them, but I really hope they can move forward and hopefully achieve the level of recognition closer to what they deserve.

The inescapable factor is the Serial Narrative Compression Effect or, to put it simply, the fact that an episodic TV series has to be squeezed into two hours or less of screen time. Certain details have to to be left on the cutting room floor, others are shuffled around and the thematic emphasis shifts too. Itsuwari no Utahime (a.k.a. The False Songstress) does suffer from these limitations but the streamlined plotline and the production values stemming from the feature film budget are where it really shines.

Looking at previous experiences, there were several options open to Kawamori for this movie. Alienating new fans may not be an issue when the franchise has such a broad appeal to begin with, but anyone who’s seen the Unlimited Blade Works without watching the Fate/Stay Night TV series first will tell you how the experience can be a little frustrating. The remake has to offer something new on its own; it has to leave us surprised.

The summary-style effort whereby existing footage is merely edited down is another option, and is even less desirable. The hack-job that is RahXephon: Pluralitas Concentio proves that this approach can’t offer a smoothly-paced and coherent storyline: if a set of production notes in the DVD box is essential to make sense of who’s who and what the heck is going on, something has gone very badly wrong.

An alternative approach, which The False Songstress takes in my opinion, is to retain the general concept, character traits and relationships but make use of the second chance with a bigger budget to tell the same story with new footage. This way, it’s an acceptable compromise through keeping much of what made the original successful in the first place, but isn’t held back by trying to twist the old structure into a new shape.

The end result is a surprisingly enjoyable film, albeit with some sacrifices made. Alto and Ranka already appear to know each other and the two hour duration means that, between the battles that form the opening and finale, the pacing slackens off quite noticably. Even so, it’s still the Macross Frontier story I know and love – there are none of the jarring changed allegiances and character roles that made the Eureka Seven movie so difficult to enjoy.

As a matter of fact I’d say the majority of us who loved the series will find much to love here too. The feel, the chemistry, the spirit of Frontier is unchanged; there are just some minor tweaks to keep it fresh and exciting. In fairness this is mostly on the presentation front because when it really matters this movie looks…pretty damned awesome actually.

I was wondering what Yoko Kanno’s Universal Bunny mini-album was in aid of, but it appears that the new songs were written with The False Songstress‘ concert scene in mind. Quite frankly this is one of the movie’s highlights because the sheer spectacle of that segment is up with the best of the Macross universe…which I think was a deliberate gesture. The name-dropping of Sharon Apple, Fire Bomber and Minmay herself felt like this particular offering was a genuine attempt at breaking the fourth wall and providing fan service of the highest order on both sides of the screen. And it worked.

Similarly the space battle business is I imagine breathtaking on the big screen and is the point where objective assessment of how well it fares overall goes flying out the window (not that you should assume I can be entirely unbasied about anything Macross-related anyway). It also makes this a genuinely worthwhile experience and saves it from being just another cash-in. The final shoot-out is set in motion by what is, as far as I can tell, the only significant deviation from the TV storyline; and it presents yet another take on how the power of galactic pop can save the day.

The Alto/Ranka/Sheryl love triangle is effectively set up, albeit without any more verve than before, but the subplot about Sheryl being suspected of spying but eventually financing a rescue mission on her Galactic Idoru credit card was indeed the movie’s Crowning Moment of Awesome. Her role in the story is already somewhat different from her fallen-star TV incarnation, and we’re not even yet into the second half.

There’s only so much I can write about how I was a one-man Reaction Guys re-enactment at that point, grinning so widely that the top of my head was ready to drop off. For all its flaws The False Songstress is about placing familiar characters in a bigger, bolder and more expensive-to-animate spectacle…but crucially keeping the essence of Frontier intact along the way.

Perhaps the best way of summing it up is that it’s just different enough to keep the viewers on their toes and spectacular enough visually to justify the cinematic budget. Seeing how similar ventures had failed in the past perhaps made me more relieved than I ought to have been that the Macross franchise won’t be joining them. Even discounting the “it’s good because it could’ve been so much worse…” argument though, it’s left a few new threads for the second film to pick up…and then there’s the music. Goddamn it, that music…

Oh yeah. A happy new year to everyone! It feels good to be able to write again.

Click for full size

An extreme example of the importance of context that I stumbled on is William Gibson’s Neuromancer. It’s an enjoyable enough cyberpunk novel but not as enjoyable for me as I expected: I’m finding it tedious in places but when I remind myself that it was written before any of that stuff related to the internet, VR and even the cyberpunk genre itself were commonplace, I admire it more. Not that it makes the book itself more fun, but it makes its limitations at least understandable.

Yukikaze is a pretty old novel in its genre too (the same age as Neuromancer, coincidentally). It also deals with issues concerning A.I. and the interface between humans and machines…again back in the mid 80s before such things were regular themes in either scientific research or science fiction. It too was ahead of its time, but time doesn’t stand still.

In some ways then the real world has caught up with the technology of Yukikaze, which takes the futuristic edge off things like fly-by-wire control systems, on-board computers and the general performance of the planes depicted in the novel. On the flipside, it’s a little easier to visualise how they would look and behave IRL because there are now some pretty cool pieces of hardware in service today that aren’t far from Kambayashi’s vision.

There’s also an element of the ‘knights of the sky’ ideal that’s lasted right from WWI to the present day in perpetuating the notion that fighter pilots are a breed apart. Kambayashi has married that mystique of the elite magnificent men in their flying machines and added a SF twist by giving the machine a mind of its own. To its credit, that element of the novel still holds quite a lot of its magic.

The portrayal of Yukikaze is full of tantalising contradictions: a poetic name painted on the fusalage in stylised calligraphy that was nevertheless chosen at random and borrowed from a WWII warship; a machine designed for death and destruction, yet Kambiyashi’s prose paints it as awe-inspiring and beautiful with a mind and will of its own. As a military hardware geek, I consider it to be beautiful in its own way, at any rate.

One curious thing about Yukikaze’s A.I. is that it’s hard to work out what, if anything, it’s really thinking. Similarly, the novel doesn’t even answer the question about whether the JAM are more interested in the planes than the people piloting them; introducing the idea of the aliens being more interested in our tech than us as a species is neat in itself and only adds to the cool, detached ambiguity of everything that’s going on.

The story demands a hero of few words; the fact that this character trait is pivotal to the story doesn’t make the reading or viewing experience more fun however. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Fukai’s humanity is ever in danger of being lost altogether because the devotion and care he would have otherwise lavished on the humans in his life are directed at his plane. I suppose he’s an aeronautical dori-kei, to steal the term from Eve no Jikan.

Such things as Fukai’s feelings towards his plane and the people around him come across better in print because in the cinematic or animated format everything has to be either spoken outwardly or implied with imagery as opposed to internal monologues (see what I mean by ‘glaringly obvious’?). A hero who rarely speaks would either require infodump-style exposition or text overlays, which may not sit well with the target audience of a production that sells itself on air-to-air combat with aliens.

That’s not to say that Kambayashi can’t write a good action scene; hell, the combat in Yukikaze leaves the likes of Tom Clancy standing. One of my favourite scenes is when the flight envelope protection limiter switches off and the plane does a missile launch maneuvre backwards that makes Fukai black out and takes the JAM by surprise – it’s true edge-of-your-seat stuff and the OAV captures that sort of moment very well.

I guess the crux of this post is that some of these aspects work better in print than on screen, and vice-versa. Yukikaze the OAV is a companion to the novel – if I were to rewatch it I’d probably enjoy it more than I did the first time around. It’s not however a replacement for the novel: the combat looks awesome but there’s a lot more going on at a thematic and characterisation level that the OAV either leaves out or is unable to address. Long story short, if you want to see Yukikaze dance in the skies of Faery, buy the DVDs. For everything else, read the novel. Or just read the novel because it’s an excellent and thought-provoking read.

Which leads me to Unlimited Blade Works. Like the OAV of Yukikaze it’s a shortened retelling of a story that was originally comprised mostly of words rather than moving pictures, which at least partly explains why certain things didn’t come over as well as they did in their original format. If I observed it correctly, the writers wisely opted to use CGs from the VN in the movie so if I were to recommend the UBW movie purely on the combat and the general approach to animating the characters on a feature film budget, I would. So I do.

Even so, UBW suffers the same problem as the much-maligned Tsukihime anime; that is, there’s too much quality content squeezed into too little time. Simply put, the film was too short. There, I said it. There’s no escaping the cold hard fact that the editing was choppy and the plot jumped uncertainly from scene to scene rather than progressing smoothly. The opening scenes, bringing the story up to the point where the plot diverges between the Fate and UBW route, feels like a last episode recap. Which, appropriately enough, is I think what it is.

I asked myself who would bother with this movie unless they had played the VN or at the very least watched the TV show. I haven’t had chance to check for interviews with cast and crew, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was deliberately aimed at people who were already familiar with the franchise. Half of the viewers in its theatrical run probably knew exactly what would happen…but just wanted to see it animated.

As far as I can tell the movie doesn’t do or say anything the VN didn’t, but if it’s merely an act of animating Takeuchi’s artwork and Nasu’s strings of text, is that actually a flaw? The jerky editing is something I think the movie should be criticised for, but failing to stray from the source material is a perfectly acceptable aim.

That said, if cinema tickets and DVDs of the two-hour cinematic adaptations of Paradox Spiral and Murder Speculation Part 2 can sell like hot cakes on a cold day, I don’t know what the excuse was to keep the running time to a mere ninety minutes here. If the Industry is having trouble finding audiences outside the ‘safe’ minority of existing fans, surely it’s disadvantageous to exclude casual viewers with such an insular narrative approach?

What I will say in this film’s defence is that it only needs to place emphasis on the aspects that work better in the animated format to avoid failing altogether. But yeah, it could’ve done more than that without betraying its source material, even when doing the tricky transition from prose to cinema. Part of me is wishing that Heaven’s Feel is left well alone after all now.

If it makes you feel any better (it certainly did for me), the sequel to Yukikaze will be out sometime next year. Yay.

I remember watching this for the first time when I was around four or five; the reruns were a few years later, when I was around seven or eight and able to appreciate it more. At that point my family had a single-floor house in Norfolk with a cherry tree in the front garden; rewatching this has dredged up memories of living in that place and sitting in front of the old 4:3 CRT Sony TV set. Good times…and now I can see how good they were.

For the benefit of readers who weren’t around back then, MCoG was a collaboration between a French team of writers and a Japanese studio, the now-infamous (if only for Naruto) Pierrot. Nostalgia value is an important factor here but even so, there’s plenty on offer in this series to make up for the so-so dubbing and cheesy 80s synth soundtrack.

Hell, I can’t even recommend this on animation quality. This is typical early 80s: recycled animation, 100% hand-drawn cels (and does it show) and Westernised yet rather primitive character designs. The children’s VAs did a convincing enough job but as for the supporting cast…I’ll say it’s a dub that shows its age and leave it there.

I can’t stress enough how large an impression this left on me as a kid though. The premise is the typical children’s adventure story set in a far-off exotic land with epic journeys and tales of hidden treasure, but MCoG has a lot more going for it than other saturday morning 80s cartoons; perhaps because of its multi-national origins, this doesn’t feel particularly Japanese at all. For one thing the imagination invested in it is in a league of its own, which is why its storyline and ideas stayed with me.

It’s a combination of a fantastical story and a background based on some real historical figures and events (early episodes even feature the notorious conquistador Francisco Pizarro). This lends an element of realism and more importantly draws on a wide range of known facts, archeological conjecture, myths and legends, then throws it all into one big melting pot that cooks up an unpredictable yarn that I’d never experienced before…and haven’t seen the likes of since.

I admit that it’s still constrained by some of the conventions of the genre – some plot points and feats of heroism are a bit improbable to my cynical adult eyes – but within those constraints it seems to be aiming higher than merely entertaining little tearaways so their parents can sleep in or make breakfast in peace. Every episode is rounded off with a live-action documentary segment that references the events that precede it; be it ocean travel, Inca architecture or South American geography. I guess they were intended to be educational, but it’s delivered as bits of trivia so the young viewer learns a thing or two without realising it’s trying to teach them something.

Whether this show succeeded in nurturing my own interests in geography and history I can’t say for sure, but one thing I’ve noticed now I’m looking at it in a more grown-up light is how it presents heroism and the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters. The Spaniards are by and large greedy buffoons but the GAR navigator Mendoza seems to be equally motivated by gold fever and concern for the welfare of the youngsters. Part of this fatherly concern is I think due to the fact that he rescued Esteban, the protagonist of the story, as a child but his morality is harder to pin down early on in the series.

Esteban is inquisitive and courageous but, like the other two younger main characters and unlike the adults, he travels to the New World in order to learn the truth about his father. In true kids’ adventure style, the children want to be reunited with their families while running rings around the grown-ups, who of course are obsessed with finding treasure and Cannot Be Trusted. It’s a neat example of a show that exploits the generation gap by making the young viewers feel like it’s ‘their’ thing – my parents couldn’t see why I enjoyed this show, but I was actually happy about that.

On one hand it’s a playful romp in which the three kids see amazing sights and do cool things, but the setting is one of turmoil and quite brutal moments of history; nevertheless it’s not nearly as sanitised and played-down as a more modern show of our political correctness-obsessed age might be. Interestingly the heroism they show isn’t gender-specific either; by which I mean the boys don’t go about the action and derring-do while the girl sits around waiting to be rescued. The Inca girl Zia shows a few traits of the now-familiar Miyazaki heroine as she steps into harm’s way, solves puzzles and keeps up with Esteban and Tao on their perilous journey.

Although they show moments of childhood trepidation and occasional terror, the three of them overcome the obstacles with boundless reserves of energy and determination. It’s a more old-fashioned approach I suppose in which the young viewer relates to their fears but looks on in admiration when they overcome them and looks forward to the next instalment. Again, it’s hardly gritty and true-to-life for all the research that must’ve gone into the historical backdrop, but as innocent escapism goes I’m hardly complaining.

Way back in my childhood I loved the way the series showed far-away places, bizarre technologies, lost civilisations and brave kids on the adventure of a lifetime; the only productions that even got close during the intervening years are perhaps Miyazaki’s Laputa and Akane’s Vision of Escaflowne.

So, yeah. Production values and the sheer age of the thing make MCoG a bit of a hard slog at first, but I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s on a similar level as those two. Memorable characters and cool ideas count for a lot – for what it’s worth, there was another show that was airing in Japan around the same time that proved it too…a certain quaint little animated nostalgia-fest called Macross.

Classy

I’ve been following High School of the Dead and Shiki only a couple of eps behind people who’ve kept up with them properly but K-On!! is the one thing I’ve found time to watch every week. My earlier attempt at explaining my position only caused misunderstandings, although the resulting discussions made up for the disappointment I felt at the time. I just can’t bring myself around to the view of the hypothetical ‘haters’ for the simple reason that the series shouldn’t elicit a stronger negative reaction than a mere lack of interest…a view I can explain with my view on moe. And cats.

The idea of it being a moe show is in fact relevant to me. Because I don’t consider myself to be a fan of it, nor do I care for working out which of the contradictory working definitions is the ‘right’ one, it might seem strange that I’m enjoying the show partly because it’s a moe series. Incidentally I’m going on it being ‘a non-sexual appeal of cuteness that brings about feelings “Aww…~” from the viewer.’ If that really is what moe is all about, I don’t see why people make such a fuss (positive or negative) over it. Anyway.

K-On!! is well-made, no-brained feelgood TV. I don’t feel any sort of attraction towards a bunch of 16- and 17-year old adolescents either (except for Mio perhaps, since she often behaves like someone older than 17… re: two pics of her here). I couldn’t however put into words why I enjoy sitting down for twenty-five minutes every week watching this sort of thing. That is, until I stumbled on the awesomeness that is Maru.

Image taken from his official blog

Maru is an internet celebrity who’s achieved the feat of being a lolcat in a very literal sense; as opposed to being a meme/fictitious character invented by people with a pirate copy of Photoshop and too much time on their hands. When real-life cats aren’t asleep they provide endless hours of amusement just by being themselves, which is something you either appreciate or you don’t.

In the same way that K-On!! will either entertain you or bore you to death, some won’t see the appeal in the company of a cat as shown in Maru’s Youtube antics. Like K-On!!, there isn’t a planned storyline or underlying message; it’s merely Mugumogu’s photos and home videos of what her pet gets up to around the house. Most cats provide some degree of this entertainment value in addition to the companionship, although Maru is exceptional with his tricks involving the boxes.

Even so, it never fails to put a smile on my face…in pretty much the same way that watching each episode of K-On!! does. Maru is just a cat doing ordinary cute, dumb cat things for the amusement of the viewing public but the girls of K-On!! are doing ordinary, dumb, cute things…and I like both.

This is hardly a great leap for me: Azu-nyan==lolcat

We watch different shows for different reasons. Mock The Week is lowbrow satire on current affairs that makes me laugh, High School of the Dead is an edge-of-the-seat gore-fest, the BBC three-parter of Sherlock was a murder-mystery, Shiki is…well, I’m not sure what to make of it yet. Watch this space and all that. Both K-On!! and Maru are both about doing ordinary cute activities, or doing very little at all.

This is fairly similar to the iyashikei concept, except it’s cheering me up in a way that requires the smallest amount of conscious effort or thought, as opposed to giving the sense of serenity and introspection of Yokahama Shopping Trip or its upbeat spiritual sibling Aria (which coincidentally also features a cat that does very little apart from lazing around and being awesome). I do love iyashikei but I get a similar, yet distinctly different, kick out of K-On!!. Or indeed watching vids of Maru, or sitting around at home with my current houseguest.

I was hoping that the second season would feature more of the music now that Asuza is a full-time member of the band and when they’ve used some genuinely enjoyable songs for the end themes (I don’t care much for the OP Go! Go! Maniac!, although Utauyo! Miracle is an improvement). A personal highlight though was the Fujirock segment because it conveyed how live music events can be so inspiring and how that particular festival has something UK ones don’t: tidiness. Honestly, I’ve promised myself to go one year if only to enjoy the music festival experience with fellow fans who clean up after themselves.

I also love the attention to detail: Mio uses D’Addario bass strings, presumably to suit her student budget (our old bassist swears by Rotosounds), and AKG studio-quality headphones (I love my K-240s when monitoring for the clear sound and the comfort). for a show that seems to pride itself in simplicity and straightforwardness, there are those little things that I still appreciate – deep down, I want it to be more about the music, because that can still convey the message of friendship while taking things further than sitcom-style gags.

As someone who doesn’t usually care for moe, I don’t consider it to be an important factor when deciding whether I enjoy a series or not but I’m hardly offended or turned away by its presence either. My guess would be that there are those of us who are more concerned with it interfering with other elements that make a TV show or film entertaining and successful in what it sets out to do for the viewer.

Beautiful. That is all

So for heaven’s sake, don’t take this as another pointless attempt at rationalising or justifying the K-On!! lovers or haters, or a declaration of what I think moe ought to mean to the rest of you. I’ll save my energy for in-depth intelligent posts on Despera (when it airs) and Mouryou no Hako (when I get around to finishing it). And I’ll save the criticisms for the people who think that The Sky Crawlers sucks. Besides, the state of the Industry is a complex issue that has little, if anything, to do with the appeal of moe in of itself.

And if it starts to get on my nerves, I just sit back and watch a cat play with a box.

So I thought I might as well write about Perfume. Music dominates a lot of my spare time: I immerse myself in as much as possible, ignoring the usual boundaries of time, trends and genre in favour of my own so sometimes my tastes are a bit unpredictable. My fascination with Perfume is a guilty-pleasure kind of thing, but not completely so.

As in, I’m again asking myself “why am I enjoying this when it’s such a departure from everything else in my collection?” They are after all commercialised and have this aura of image, of marketing, of popular shallowness, for want of a better phrase. And no, I’m not going into that K-on business again after what happened last time. I’m merely saying it’s a departure from most music I listen to.

Bands that sound like this don’t usually appeal to me but I really enjoy Perfume…and not just because it consists of three attractive ladies in cool outfits (although I’m not denying that helps). I have a feeling that they aren’t a typical manufactured electro-pop girl-group (I’m using the distinction between ‘group’ and ‘band’ very deliberately here), and my acceptance of them can largely be attributed to that.

I’ll admit that on the surface they sound and look manufactured. I’d even go as far as to say they represent everything about commercialised pop: they’re marketed as a sound and image rather than self-made songwriters, they sell zillions of records and the lyrics are generic to the point of being nonsensical at times. I even find the voices peculiar.

The vocals are put through so much digital studio trickery that their own mothers wouldn’t recognise them; I’d put money on them being indistinguishable from a skillfully-used piece of Vocaloid software in the next five years (and I don’t think that has to be a bad thing). Hell, the visuals at their gigs look like something from Sharon Apple in Macross Plus (again, not a bad thing?).

Perfume are therefore a textbook example of a commercially successful, chart-friendly electropop group that projects a futuristic, popular image. I also admit that my own personal methods of appreciating and classifying music are weird enough anyway…

Let’s start on ‘genre’: the concept that music fans hate because it unfairly pigeonholes things, but we grudgingly accept because it’s useful on occasion. I like alt-rock, post-rock, classic rock, shoegaze, nu-gaze, blues, classical, electronica…but where does Perfume fit into this nebulous world of mine? It’s too poppy to be alternative, to electronic to be rock…and clumsy self-conscious people like me are generally averse to dance music (I’m working on it. Not the dancing…just the appreciation of dance music).

I found this pic at The Bonkurasu Brigade ages ago and found the manga-style artwork cool…I finally have an excuse to post it

How would I classify Perfume? Here’s where it starts to get interesting. A while ago I jokingly referred to My Bloody Valentine as ‘post-pop’ in the sense that, despite it being a form of sonic experimentation that sounds like nothing before it, chief songwriter/guitarist Kevin Shields insists that he sets out to write straightforward guitar songs. Nobody who listens to Isn’t Anything or Loveless can call it *just* guitar pop – nevertheless it is, beneath the pitch bends and liquid reverb atmospherics, five-or-less minute songs made up of ordinary guitar chords. Perfume are *just* electro-pop…only not.

Before going any further I have to link to the official promo video for the Triangle version of Edge, which is possibly my favourite tune of theirs so far (the album overall isn’t their best though). The video itself is really fun – it has images from End of Evangelion mixed up with concert footage, wild computer text strings blinking across projector screens, and is a neat test for whether you have photo-sensitive epilepsy or not if you hit fullscreen in a darkened room.

It shows Perfume as an energetic live experience, which makes them more than some sterile studio-only act. Making records is one thing, but putting on a live show that draws people in is a different matter; some artists are more comfortable in the studio while some attain fame/notoriety through live gigs. Jumping around like mad AND singing is damned hard (are their vocals dubbed for gigs? Feel free to clarify this for me)!

The title track to the GAME album is another example of the quirky Perfume sound: there’s this tooth-rattling fuzzy bassline that cuts through the pretty-shiny girly shimmer and feels so unexpected and incongruous…to the point where I felt the need to invent a new genre definition for it and the caffeine rush of Edge: ‘bubblegum industrial’.

Listening carefully to the arrangements, this robotic and meticulously-produced electro isn’t quite in the same league as the usual chart music to me. I don’t follow the UK or Japanese charts but what I’m used to hearing is more formulaic than this – it has to be in order to be ‘safe’ from putting mainstream fans off and losing sales (not that it stops Lady Gaga…). As significant as they are in terms of financial revenue, Perfume’s cybernetic heart may well be an indie one.

Towards the end of the Edge promo the screens display the line “what is DISCO?”, along with some eccentric stage work that’s different from ordinary choreography. What I’ve heard of Yasutaka Nakata’s work on Capsule covers similar ground to Perfume’s current sound but he strikes me as being more eclectic and experimental; my assumption is that Perfume’s songwriting duties can largely be attributed to him, and as such they’re an experiment on his part to dabble in the mainstream and challenge its conventions.

Does Nakata dislike formulaic, commercialised chart music and wants to subvert from within? Or are Perfume a demonstration of his closet love for it? Or, more interestingly still, are they an attempt to marry popular marketability with indie cred and imagination to push the electro-pop envelope? I haven’t had chance to listen to their early Shibuya-kei-inspired material for comparison but I view Perfume in their current incarnation partly as a vehicle for Nakata’s songwriting.

The end result shouldn’t matter when the songs are as fun as they are, but part of the appeal that Perfume holds for me is that they come across as band who have gained the acclaim of a headlining pop act – even playing the Budoukan – but underneath they’re an experimental outfit that innovates as well as entertains. Because they placate the Industry – playing the GAME[sic] – with the choreographed dance moves and catchy hooks, they can get away with the commercially riskier innovative moments.

I would hardly dare to argue

Granted, she doesn’t appear much in the middle portion of the series, but trying to make sense of the Senjougahara Fascination phenomenon became a bit more important when I found myself a part of it. What the hell is this? Am I developing a 2D complex? Well, yes. And no. Idle thoughts coming up.

I don’t think less of someone for being a hardcore gamer, a yaoi fan, a furry, a figure collector or lolicon (apart from the last one. Those guys really are weird). I just don’t really get any of it. I don’t understand them because I don’t share their interest; conversely, I doubt everyone can relate to going weak at the knees over the Shinkai and Kon movies, vintage guitar gear or anything Type Moon or Macross-related. I raise a defiant Brofist to those who share my weaknesses for them though.

I certainly thought I was immune to the 2D complex: after all, I’d sooner seek real-life interaction with a female human being than a fictional representation of one, right? We all exhibit an attachment to certain shows and characters to some degree or other though. Rest assured I won’t condemn you for sitting alone in your basement fapping to the product of some overseas comic artist’s pencil and I don’t want those who do to take offence, but I don’t share your penchant for it.

I don’t experience the same empathy and affection for anime characters as I do for real people but I can’t escape the fact that I can still be on the edge of my seat or the verge of Manly Tears when a really emotional moment happens. Some characters stick in my memory: Nausicäa (from the Miyazaki manga), Shiki Ryougi and Saber (from Kara no Kyoukai and Fate/Stay Night respectively) share a special place in my mind, as do Noriko in Battle Royale, Lee Geum-ja in Lady Vengeance or Vivian Sternwood in The Big Sleep. Hitagi Senjougahara is another memorable female lead for me.

Hitagi’s appeal ought to be obvious: her personality is both a knowing take on the tsundere archetype and a source of entertaining one-liners. Placing her character alonside others that are represented by real, flesh-and-blood people rather than animated pictures in their respective stories might be an unfair comparison, but attachment to anime characters and those from live-action movies and books isn’t so different, to me at least.

You do have to think about what makes them appealing though: in my case I happen to consider Aki Maeda to be cute and Lauren Bacall was quite a knockout back in 1946. Personally however it’s not the fact that the image of an anime character is physically attractive: the resulting image of a real person in my imagination is memorable and appealing. This is easier for me to explain in, for example, Vivian Sternwood’s portrayal in Chandler’s novel, or other written, rather than drawn or filmed, characters.

Just as alluring in print? I can’t wait to find out

The circumstances are different but I found myself fascinated by Senjougahara in the same way that I was by Haruki Murakami’s character Sumire in his Sputnik Sweetheart novel. It’s not his best work in my view for reasons I don’t have time to set out here but one thing that stuck in my head was Sumire’s character. Being a novel with no televised or cinematic adaptation I don’t even have a screencap to explain why she’s awesome. A mere description of her is however enough to bring her character to life:

“I can’t cook or clean the house. My room’s a mess and I’m always losing things. I love music, but can’t sing a note. I’m clumsy and can barely sew a stitch. My sense of direction is the pits, and can’t tell right from left half the time…I’m bashful for no reason, and have hardly any friends to speak of.”

Sputnik Sweeheart, © Haruki Murakami, 1999, 2001

What the reader or viewer experiences when they encounter a memorable character is build up a profile, visual or otherwise, and find themselves thinking, how cool would it be if this person really existed? This is Sumire describing herself early on in the novel, and aside from the narrator’s own description of her that’s probably the best indicator of her character. The thing was that after reading this, a vivid and affecting image of a complex and fascinating individual popped into my head and I had a new favourite literary heroine.

Elsewhere Sumire is painted in an unflattering light as far as looks are concerned: even the narrator, who is deeply in love with her, admits she’s skinny, clumsy and not attractive in the conventional sense. She’s just a really unpredictable person, a departure from the usual type of fictional heroine or romantic lead, who shows her unique attractiveness in an unusual way, just like Hitagi does.

So then, if it’s possible to get sentimentally attached to a character who amounts to little more than words on a page, am I really playing devil’s advocate in defending otakus who go misty-eyed over 2D girls? A 2D complex in which the hapless fan dismisses the appeal of real humans in favour of pictures, animated or otherwise, isn’t something I’d call healthy but it’s an extension of the very commonplace experience of empathising with fictional characters. The degree to which this affects their interaction with real people should be the real cause for concern.

Writers do after all intend to create fictional characters that stick in readers’ and viewers’ minds, and more often than not we can identify with them to some degree and muse over how fun and rewarding it would be if we met someone like them. If I were in my local coffee bar or bookshop I’d certainly find it tempting to say hi to the young lady in an ill-fitting coat eyeing up the Kafka paperbacks, even if I was risking getting a stapler shoved in my face. I’m sure it’s a familiar feeling, so if you have some personal not-at-all-real heroines or heroes of your own, ‘fess up in the reply form below.

A security barrier near the entrance to a shop in Akihabara

If it’s anime/manga stuff you’re after, or just anything electrical, Akihabara is the most obvious place to go. Elsewhere there are the chain stores: Tower Records and HMV are good for CDs, while Book-Off stock DVDs and graphic novels. My favourite spot is Yodobashi Camera which, as its name suggests, is an epic camera shop but is also a full-on department store for all things electrical, be it DVDs and CDs, toys, household appliances or computer parts. There are plenty of comic book shops that sell both new and used (the used stuff is actually very good value for money since it’s a lot cheaper but is in my experience in very good condition). Oh yeah, I’ll list the results of my shopping to prove that it’s easy to visit Japan on a budget but it’s also easy to spend a lot of money if there’s stuff you want to buy.

I wanted a number of thingsthat were either very expensive or difficult to import to the UK. I caved in on a DVD of 5cm per Second despite the fact that it doesn’t have English subtitles because I know the film back-to-front so don’t need subtitles in the first place; until the Western release emerges proper, this is the only way I can help finance the studio as a fan/customer. I would’ve bought the Blu-ray version if it weren’t for that damned region locking…

I picked up some nice OSTs that I can now enjoy on legal CD format instead of downloaded torrent files.

• One More Time, One More Chance (CD single) [NOTE: it's amazing that, despite packaged media allegedly dying out, the CD single of all things is still alive and well in Japan, and selling quite well]
• Place Promised, Beyond the Clouds OST
• Darker than Black OST
• Macross Frontier OST 1
• Macross Frontier OST 2

There are many shops that stock these and material from domestic artists. There were many Jpop/Jrock titles I had my eye on, although they are often relatively expensive. ¥3000 is what you should expect to pay unless you dig around for one of those lower-priced ‘nearly new’ second-hand items that are helpfully graded for their physical condition (A=practically new, B=slightly shabbier but still decent, and so on).

• Acidman: And World
• Boom Boom Satellites: ON
• Doriko featuring Hatsune Miku: Unformed [which I recently reviewed]
• Kalafina: Seventh Heaven
• Mad Capsule Markets: OSC DIS
• Mono & World’s End Girlfriend: Palmless Prayer/Mass Murder Refrain
• The pillows: Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
• Supercar: HIGHVISION

Add to this a Boss BD-2 Blues Driver distortion pedal, a PSP with Macross Ace Frontier and a load of souvenirs for my family and you can see how expensive a holiday can be. Some things (such as the guitar effects box and the PSP) are noticeably cheaper when bought in Japan, while I knowingly paid more the DVD and CDs because the chance to get hold of them wouldn’t come up otherwise. I wound up getting a 1:100 scale model of a VF-25 from Macross Frontier to placate my inner fanboy too…it’s going to look really smart and shiny on display in my living room! ^_^

A restaurant in Machida, part #1

Walking around Akihabara I noticed that Macross is a favourite, although the Gundam anniversary thing eclipses it a bit. The enduring presence of Evangelion took me by surprise though: I expected a lot of advertising what with the second Rebuild movie coming out soon but you can’t walk the length of a shopping street without seeing a billboard or similar. It’s still very, very big business after all this time.

K-On! is also really huge. There was actually a girl cosplaying as Mio outside one of the shops…I ought to have got a shot of myself standing next to her or something. Purely because it was a Fender Jazz Bass she was holding… ¬_¬ The popularity of that show may be a ‘latest big thing’ type of effect that you see with every new season, as opposed to NGE‘s eternal place in otaku (de)culture. Haruhi Suzumiya is popular too of course: I only noticed the fact that the second season was out when I checked the anime blogs on my feedreader, however.

A restaurant in Machida, part #2

Haruhi’s re-appearance was a bit of a surprise, then. There were cardboard stand-ups, soundtrack CDs and displays for K-On! all over the place but the Haruhi merchandise that I did actually see could just as easily been regularly-replenished stock from when the first season, then the Youtube spin-offs, aired for all I knew. The marketing is well played on KyoAni’s part I think.

Priceless Engrish T-shirt is priceless

Trying to find the 5cm per Second disc was tricky, and the likes of Satoshi Kon movies are also pretty rare. There’s a lot of emphasis on new titles in comparison with the UK (where the DVDs are often reprinted and on the shelves for as long as the distributor holds the licence to them), so if it’s an older title you’re after, second-hand is your best chance. I asked one of my travelling companions if this was due to market saturation or the transient, fad-driven nature of the marketing machine but apparently there’s also a more practical factor at work here: Tokyo-dwellers are short on space at home so are quicker to sell on music and videos.

As is this. Larger version in case you can’t read the caption

I daresay there’s the issue of titles diminishing in popularity quickly but I can understand why fans are forced to sell their old discs when they run out of room when living space is at such a premium. Watch or listen to it, enjoy it, then sell it back to the shop and pick up something else: it’s an interesting theory that explains quite a lot of what I saw on my numerous shopping trips. Anyhow, that kinda spills over onto my less otaku-centric impression of the place so until then…

The best thing of the past couple of days is the fact that it’s the Sanja Matsuri festival, one of the annual events that are held in the local area. I mentioned previously that Taito City, and Asakusa in particular, are pretty quiet and laid-back but in the last couple of days it’s become much, much livelier.

The portable shrines are carried around town and even in rainy weather, as is here (see above and below) it doesn’t seem to lessen the locals’ enthusiasm to dress up and have a good time. I found their adherance to the old traditions and the atmosphere in general to be really heartening…the partying spirit is infectious and it’s quite something to see the local communities join together; something that doesn’t really happen back in the UK, for any reason.

The rain was a minor nuisance but Harajuku was still worth the trip. Beyond the bridge is the old temple in Shibuya dedicated to the old emperor Meiji and his wife Shouken. It’s built in a wonderful wooded area (allegedly founded with 100,000 trees!) and is reputedly one of the most spectacular in the country. I see no reason to disagree.

There were several weddings going on at the time but thanks to my excessive sentimentality I felt a bit uncomfortable taking pics of the processions themselves as they passed through the main courtyard. To be honest it felt like I was looking in on a very private event and mere pictures wouldn’t really do the whole spectacle justice. Suffice to say they were quite simply exquisite.

I’m not sure if it was anything to do with the festival going on in Asakusa and the surrounding districts but an entire street of Shibuya was closed off for a traditional style dance featuring people in local attire; considering that we were just passing through on our way home (via one or two shops) this was a nice surprise. Not as much of a surprise as this though…

Hatsune Miku crossplay? Believe it. Gives me one or two ideas for Ayacon actually. >_>

I’ve also discovered that certain things are cheaper in their country of manufacture – I’ll be picking up a PSP with a bit of luck, and have already splurged out a considerable sum of money on a Boss Blues Driver guitar pedal on the grounds that it’s cheaper than in the UK. Needless to say I’d pick up one of the Fender Japan Jazzmaster guitars if I could find a way to fly it back with me…seriously.