I figured that after dragging myself unexpectedly through the ringer this last week with Katawa Shoujo, watching a movie might be nice break. It’d be some light mental junk food to cleanse my palette. At least that’s what I thought the opportunity came up to watch Scott Pilgrim vs. The World with Nursehella. I mean, it’s based off a fairly cartoony looking comic I hadn’t read, and it was directed by Edgar Wright (of Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame.)
See article title.
Yeah, instead I was treated to an amped up version of some of my own experiences with surreal fight scenes interspersed. I could spell that out, but the people who know me probably get it, and the people who don’t know me aren’t owed details. A lot of the plot points and best lines might as have been shuriken or piano wire. When they hadn’t been said/done to me, I’m the one who had said/done them. It almost violated the film’s sanctity. I figured that at worst, my critical side would’ve been picking apart the special effects, and best I would’ve just been enjoying the story. Instead, I was pretty much just indexing actions and lines against my own experiences past a certain point. It was unnatural.
I wish I’d read the comic. I might have saved a lot of good people some trouble since my life isn’t as warm as the film’s end. The things I can take from it are lessons I was already taking from the rest of this week’s self-inflicted emotional roller-coaster. The good endings come from doing things for me while still being considerate of the perspective and feelings of others, even when I can’t fully fathom that viewpoint. It’s a pretty odd set things to take to heart in someways.
Might as well watch Ano Natsu’s second episode and see if that’s a kick in the ribs too.
Frankly, I should probably go back and bundle this all up a little more cleanly as review for toonzone.net, but for now, I think I can indulge myself in some more relaxed writing. In fact, if only because I’m supposed to blog for my writing class, I feel I can voice my opinions here and then double dip later. Nobody really reads this page anyway.
Back on topic, I’ve gradually stumbled through some more of Katawa Shoujo. I’ve been playing it honestly, and rather than aim for a character, I’ve let the chips fall where they may and answered everything honestly. The result actually has surprised me. I completed the path for Emi Ibarazaki with the good ending, and that alone kind of felt unexpected. I am not an athletic person by nature, but I made the decision I would’ve made if in the same situation – if it’s run or die, I’ll get up and run.
The more richly surprising part is the extent that certain aspects of the Emi path have mimicked my own relationship history. I didn’t expect my responses in game to lead to a progression with parallels to my real world habits. I almost feel like I’m gaining new insight into my own behavior and choices. I’m not sure exactly what that says about the writing in a quantitative sense. If nothing else though, it has me suckered in. I want to play through another route, and see whether it’s just the nature of the game, or something deeper.
In fact, maybe the game isn’t good at all, and I’m just having too much fun thinking about the Lacanian aspects of the visual novel medium for the first time as I play. Is a visual novel only good so long as you see yourself reflected the visual novel’s Other? Does the player only feel like they been reflected because they want to believe their choices impact the Other? Does this mean the player will enjoy the game without regard to it’s objective qualities because of the very structure of the game? I mean, is it only good because it’s fitting what I’ve been led to believe are the patterns I’d fall into naturally? I don’t know because I’ve never thought about it before. I do think there is a certain rose tinting that comes into play here, but that’s the human condition to some extent. Where does one’s limited perception end, and the manipulation of that limited perception begin?
Of all the things I would’ve thought could engage my contemplative side, Katawa Shoujo should’ve been at the bottom of the list. Maybe that’s the best I can expect since the game probably wasn’t intended to spark these questions. I guess that constitutes quality.
On the flip side, it breaks up my over-intellectualizing up with some genuine humor in between the odd and possibly imagined parallels. Laughs are laughs, and even if some of them are a bit morose or surreal, they are there. How bad can a smile be?
So, like many other internet savvy otaku, I have long been aware of the Katawa Shoujo project. At least a few of my friends have cosplayed as characters from the title, and I had seen the little fan comics that have floated around the internet about it. However, I imagine that like most people, I figured nothing would really come of it.
After all, countless internet forums have had their goofy ideas for projects created by forum members, but usually you’re lucky if you get passed the idea and concept art stage. If that it doesn’t stop there, you’ll maybe see a very mediocre first level or some very rough animation at best. In fact, I can think of at least 2 or 3 I’ve been involved with myself in some small way. Usually, creative projects on the internet are most productive when one or two people do something with little-to-no external input.
Yet, here we are with a full visual novel game with good art and good music, all inspired by single page joke from a decade-old doujinshi. It’s a miracle that it exists at all. However, that won’t stop me from nitpicking.
While a lot of the aesthetic aspects of the game are remarkable for an independent, no-budget project, the writing starts off very, very slow. It’s vastly too wordy (perhaps like these blog posts?,) and the tone is a little too inwardly focused on the protagonist. To make matters worse, that inner focus is a bland self-loathing, the kind that you’d think an otaku-made project would avoid considering how commonplace that complaint is in regards to anime and manga. It’s also a bit inauthentic. One gets the feeling sometimes that the writers lack the life experience to communicate the right feeling in some of these scenarios. Maybe that’s to be expected a bit as well, but while it may make for an interesting meta-commentary, it’s a hassle to sit through walls of text that don’t really engage the player. To make matters worse, there are a lot of different dialogue options, especially early on, and that feels off for a game like this. Being able to take some ownership of the protagonist is critical in visual novels, and I wouldn’t have minded a bit more in Katawa Shoujo at all.
Troubles aside, I can’t seem to really let it go now that I’m into it. It’s clearly a little undercooked, but I still can’t help but marvel that it was served at all. There are also a few sharp bits of characterization and humorous dialogue that manage to string the player along in spite of themselves, and that’s quite impressive since those pieces have to override the drawbacks. I’m certainly glad that I did a little tribute track to the game which will turn up on my next record because, if nothing else, it’s a nod to the efforts of people who beat the odds for fan projects on web forums.
Good show.
So, I have a new review up on ToonZone.net about Usagi Drop. It figures that long after I’d put the review to bed, it turns out the manga manages to have a bit of a train wreck ending, but the anime cuts it off while it’s still heart-warming and sweet. A rare moment where I really must say the show is better than the book.
Speaking of reviews, it looks like one of mine has been quoted on the front page of FUNimation’s site for Princess Jellyfish (screencap here.) I really do hope the title does well for them. It’s a bit of a risk since it’s a fairly offbeat title. I suspect if it doesn’t payoff, I may not be quoted on another FUNimation webpage anytime soon, as I seem to have a habit of latching on to the offbeat lately, and they did post my review of Princess Jellyfish to their facebook page as a means of gauging whether a DVD/Blu-Ray release should be done.
So, assuming I can come up with a simple way of doing so, I am going to join in the big SOPA/PIPA/OPEN Protest with Reddit, Wikipedia, WordPress and everyone else on the internet.
This isn’t a political statement either (Baha’is are banned from participating in partisan politics after all,) it’s a simple application of the categorical imperative. If you can ban one type of speech from the internet because it threatens the livelihood or comfort of one group that is otherwise fully capable of protecting themselves, there is no philosophical reason that shouldn’t be applicable in any similar instance, and that seems intrinsically broken. The lack of due process in these laws only makes that worse as it’d be up to the accused to prove their innocence rather than the accuser to prove the guilt of the accused. The possibility for abuse seems close to limitless, and the odd splits between foreign and national websites seems entirely ignorant of how websites are hosted in the modern world. Thus, regardless of any ideology beyond reason and functionality, these seem like objectively negative and ill-conceived laws.
I should mention I say all of this in spite of the fact that people pirate my music constantly (and when no money changes hands, I don’t care much because I doubt I really lost a sale in that instance,) including for-profit Russian pay download sites that sell my music without paying me royalties. I would benefit in that one instance, even as an independent artist, from SOPA/PIPA/OPEN passing. Justice would be served if that site was shut down, and/or they were ordered to turn over any proceeds from selling music without my permission.
Unfortunately, much of the rest of the internet would likely be so paranoid about linking to any content without explicit permission it’d grind to a halt. Getting my name out to people is difficult if the sites I post content to have to dramatically alter their operations to comply with these laws. Without a reliable way to promote myself across the internet, my ability to find my niche audience is dramatically injured.
Oh, and I know all the legislation acts in different ways, and there might even be enough exemptions that someone like me wouldn’t be affected in regards to my outward business. Alas, none of these laws can ever truly stop those who want to pirate media or counterfeit brand names, or rather, for them do so effectively might damage free speech in most instances. It’s a digital, democratized society, and we all have computers on our desk whose potential is effectively infinite in regards to creation and distribution, or at the very least, the only limit is the person behind the keyboard. It’s only going to be more intense as 3D printing gets cheaper and more precise. Want that that designer bracelet? Print it. Shoot, innovate on the existing design to make it more personal, cooler, better fitting and generally more useful. You can’t tell me that doesn’t sound radical yet exciting, and this is a world we are about to enter. Maybe there is even a market for selling branded designs for home recreation, but if there isn’t, that doesn’t mean the technology should be banned nor should it be ham-stringed by some kind of DRM-system that gets in the way of honest use.
To put it another way, I know the idea that I can sell music and perhaps one day even merchandise is a bit dated as we near an era of home replicators. However, I would never risk free expression on the off chance I make a buck off of it, and I certainly wouldn’t want such a thing to be law. Free expression is why I can write music, write blog posts, have interesting things to read online and so on.
Anyway, check in on Thursday for a decidedly fluffier and less weighty blog post.
At the end of the last anime season, I genuinely pondered what I’d be watching next. None the titles really seemed to jump out at until I happened upon a forum thread about Ano Natsu De Matteru. Apparently, it’s from the same person who created the Onegai series, and that fact couldn’t be more obvious. The premise is virtually identical – a buxom, red-haired, alien girl falls right into the middle of a high school boy’s previous droll, pastoral life, much to the dismay of the boy’s childhood friend who happened to have romantic feelings for him.
There are some key differences: in Ano Natsu the high school boy’s parents are dead instead of his sister, the uncontrolled decent of the spaceship’s arrival on Earth kills the high school boy in the opening minute of the show, and now only the alien girl’s kiss can keep him alive. Additionally, the alien girl is only an upperclassman this time, not his school teacher, and it seems that the childhood friend is let in on the alien girl’s secret identity from the start. Those little changes amongst others may have a dramatic impact on the flow of the show, even if many of the other characters in Ano Natsu are near facsimiles of the characters in Onegai Teacher.
That said, while seeing an author who had previously breathed new life into the shonen romantic comedy genre simply phone should’ve left me bored, it’s actually really worked so far. The few bread crumbs that are different are so radically different that I genuinely wonder where they might lead. It doesn’t feel setup to reach the same finale either, at least in any obvious sense.
Besides, the series had sold me in it’s first minute before they killed the lead. Much like Onegai Teacher, Ano Natsu’s first episode opens with a monologue from the male lead, and those monologues sold me then and now. It was so simple, so eloquent and clear that from those words that the creative staff have set the show up for a very poignant yet sweet journey. Well, with any luck they should’ve; Onegai Teacher maybe a timeless anime, but Onegai Twins was slightly mediocre. Perhaps that risk makes it compelling as well – it’s a romantic comedy fused with NASCAR.
Anyway, I’m quite glad it’s been pre-licensed by Sentai Filmworks – I’ll probably be catching it on DVD or Blu Ray by the time CrunchyRoll finishes streaming it.
More Soda.
The Mixtape:
Ultraklystron – Storyboard [The Animatic Mixtape]
Also on Bandcamp and coming soon to Google Music.
Enjoy.
Don’t mind me, I’m just enjoying some flavorful sodas. Certainly no song leaks in the background of these soda reviews:
So with that seemingly gratuitous OFWGKTA reference out of the way, some thoughts on the Godfather of Nerdcore’s most recent outing.
As I listen to Solved, I think the best way to think of it is that Solved doesn’t have a ton of immediate gratification. It’s consistent and no question the cleanest production on a Front album to date for the most part, but it’s also not as out of the gate punchy as previous releases. This is in part because the theme songs aren’t quite as snarky as some of his previous releases (barring perhaps the perfectly honed “Nerd vs. Jock” and the cosplayer-watching to self-commentary anthem “Victorian Space Slut”,) and in general it’s a little more sedate. The pace is literally less frenetic most of the time, and it doesn’t substitute in crazier production choices to make up the gap.
In a sense, it’s a victory lap record, released ten years after the first rumblings of Nerdcore as genre started to come together, but it’s one coming off two (Final Boss and Zero Day) albums that had a surprising immediacy and intensity in retrospect, and that certainly had songs that were no question natural singles and plenty of them. In a sense, that’s the concept of the record – everything is solved, no problems, no “the man is ruining your life/you are the man ruining some one’s life” dark notes – but part of what I think some people came to Front for were the more charged moments. The jabs at power and privilege were ultimately a much defining characteristic of Front than I think anyone was conscious of, and even if it’d be weird to write like that when you have the band with the 4th biggest rock song of the past decade guesting on your record, it’s part of people’s perception I think, and perhaps where some find issue with the album. There is a bit of that flavor in the skits, but it’s much inwardly focused. It’s funny because really, he could make that conflict and self-deprecation the center piece of a song or album these days and people would love it. Well, maybe that’d be too far in the other direction.
That said though, while it’s a different, relatively happier Frontalot, it’s not a bad Frontalot, and perhaps better than if he had tried to keep up doing songs about voter fraud and protesting without feeling it or coaching it in a more themed/comedic song about a military computer taking over. Even if the album doesn’t have much of that kind of punch, it’s still a really fun, enjoyable LP that gets better with every listen, and the production is just stellar the more I think about it. At a listen it’s not an obvious album, but it’s better with each spin. You should give it a listen or three, if not a purchase. You may not find the Front you expected, but you’ll find something great nonetheless.
So, after MONTHS of scene internal hype, Nerdcore Now Volume 1 (edit: try their front page too,) the spiritual successor to old RhymeTorrents compilation series, has dropped with a couple of reviews and articles, all pretty positive on the compilation. Of course, it’s all nerd media staples giving it ink, some of which liked my contribution, and others which weren’t so hot on me.
However, since one of the many hats I wear is critic, I figure I’ll do a sentence or two on each of the contributions… after the break.