Our first “Season” is over and we talk about the past and the future of the A.A.A. Podcast.
Reviews: Sora no Otoshimono, Miracle Train, 11Eyes, Trigun
Impressions: Seikon no Qwasar, Ladies vs Butlers
Ever dealt with some negative anime stigma when you tell someone that you watch anime? Feeling frustrated about it? Is it one of the reasons you keep your anime addict status anonymous? We discuss our experiences with the negative anime stigma, where we think it stems from, and our suggestions on how to deal with it.
Reviews: Kamfer, Honey and Clover, Taisho Yakyu Musume, Vampire Knight, and Chii’s Sweet Home
Impressions: Aoi Bungaku, Shin Koihime Musou, and Kimi ni Todoke
Discussions on anime to get your friends addicted, even the ones you thought may never watch anime!
Reviews: Black Cat and Fullmetal Panic: Fumoffu
Have you ever been thinking to yourself how much fun it would be to watch anime with others who are equally addicted? Well we’re here to assure you that it not only is fun but also to give you tips on how to start your own anime club!
Reviews: Mushishi, Kara no Kyoukai and Piano no Mori
Impressions: Higurashi no naku koro ni Rei
Firstly, thank you Vic Mignogna for helping out the Anime Addicts! We have a line-up of important news, like a Dragon Ball MMORPG, and Eureka 7 in theatres. Then a discussion on fanfictions and dubbing with our friend Hatake. Following this, Chiaki is leaving for the “mothership”, as Valentine lovingly puts it, Japan! She gives the run-down of things to know before you go.
Reviews: Big Windup, Baccano! and Welcome to the NHK
Impressions:Basquache and Taishou Yakyuu Musume
Hello to everyone out there in the AAA community, and a special hello to Mitsugi and Chiaki in Japan, nice to have you back in the same time zone as myself again, perhaps I can catch the live show now lol. Anyway, what I want to talk about today is the overemphasis some put on the visuals of media products and how it causes people to miss out on some experiences they might have otherwise if they didn’t focus so much on how something looks. The two examples I’m going to use are anime and video games, as those are two types of media where this is most apparent.
Let’s start with anime, and how some people cannot bring themselves to watch a show simply based on the animation. This comes in a few different forms, like if a show is old by a certain number of years. There are some people who cannot watch a show if it’s older than the year 2000, meaning hand drawn anime because that’s roughly when the industry transitioned to computer based anime drawing. Conversely, there are probably people who don’t like computer drawn anime and will not watch anything after the year 2000, but I have never met a person like that. Some anime fans will judge a series on just the art style or just for seeing a few magazine scans. Examples of this are Code Geass and Gundam Age, which were both prejudged on their character designs. One turned out great and the other not so much. Sometimes people say they don’t want to watch a show because there is too much fan service, which I could see. For me, I will watch old shows like the original Gundam series, which is from 1979, and other stuff from the early 1980’s, but I haven’t gone further than that. I have seen Astro Boy, but I’m not sure if what they aired in Canada was the 80’s version or the 60’s version. Art style to me is kind of whatever, I prefer story over the visuals of anime I’m watching so I usually give a show a chance no what the animation is like. Finally, I don’t mind fan service as long doesn’t distract from the story and fan service part of the charm of a given anime show.
How this manifests in the video games industry takes the form of game graphics. Graphics are often pointed to by people want to claim that a certain platform is superior to another and it’s been this way for a long time. Examples of this today are; PC elitists who want everyone to drop playing games on any other platform in favor of the PC, PS3 or Xbox 360 fanboys who think their preferred console is visually superior to the other, and pretty much every other given game systems that have competed against each other. This is often the main or opening argument of people I like to call “graphic masturbators”, defined as people who favor graphics over every other aspect of game design. They seem to think that this is the atomic bomb of arguments and it automatically wins the debate. However, it’s my contention that these people miss the point of playing a game which is to have an enjoyable game play experience over eye appealing visuals. This syndrome has lead to game companies (at least the big ones) making trailers for games using just cut scenes form the and not actual game play graphics. This gives a false impression of the game’s graphics and leads to gamer alienation. The way a game plays is the most important part of the experience I get out of playing game, which is why I play games on various platforms.
The main thrust of what I’m trying to convey here with this article is the best summed up in the age old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover”. I think people need to go beyond just the eye candy in whatever media they consume. For us anime fans it means going beyond the new thing and checking out some of greatest entries in the anime genre. Because in the end visuals change over time and a good story transcends time, no matter what decade it is from.
Cheers and Beers,
Devil_Survivor
Hey all you crazy anime addicts out there, its me coming at you once again, the most interesting man on the AAA network, Devil Survivor. I have an extremely interesting, yet disturbing, and maybe humorous topic for you today. Recently, a survey was commissioned by the Japanese government on the attitudes of Japanese men and women aged 16-49 towards sex. So let’s take a look at the results of this study. Starting with the men 16-19, 36.1 percent said that have little interest in sex or even despised it altogether. Wow, I’m shocked that a teenage boy would ever say he hates sex, its like a Republican politician saying he hates cheating on his wife then claiming he is a family values candidate. That figure is almost double the figure reported in a 2008 survey. This survey, which was conducted in September of 2010, also found that 83.7 percent of Japanese men that are turning 20 this year are not dating anyone, and a further 49.3 percent said they have never had a girlfriend. The findings for girls in the same age group unfortunately are no better; 59 percent of them felt similarly like the young men about sex, which was up 12 percent from 2008.
So what does this all mean, you might ask. Well according to Kunio Kitamura head of the clinic of the Japanese Family Planning Association says it seems to confirm the notion that Japanese younger men are becoming ” herbivores” meaning men who do not actively seek out women or sex. What we are seeing here I think is the collision of two social phenomena at play in Japanese society creating a tsunami of sexual apathy. Women in Japan have been gaining empowerment in society in the past couple decades making more money and getting higher on the professional ladder, and this has caused Japanese women to raise their expectations of what their potential husband should make at his job. This has in turn caused Japanese men to believe that the expectations of women are too unrealistic and they cannot possible make enough money in their jobs. So more and more men are turning other means of romantic engagement such as dating sims, anime character figures, sex dolls, and other such things. Add to this the already extremely low birth rate in Japan and the high average age of the population, which is 44.8 years old, and things are not looking good for the future of Japan.
Some other findings from the survey that are of note; 40.8 percent of married couples answered that they had not had sex in the last month, up from 36.5 percent in 2008. Almost 50 percent married couples older than 40 also reported that they had not had sex in the last month. Thus confirming the widely held belief that getting married kills an otherwise healthy sexual desire haha.
This is a major social problem for Japan in a number of ways. In terms of the workforce and having a ready a supply of new young workers it would be disastrous as the birth rate is well below replacement. National defense would also be compromised as its hard to maintain an armed forces without young people to fill out the ranks. The population is projected to shrink to about 95 million by 2050 and this would cause the Japanese economy to suffer worse than anything before. Correcting this isn’t easy will probably take a generation or so to see signs of change.
Here’s the original article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/14/japanese-men-losing-sex-d_n_809271.html
Cheers,
Devil
Greetings and salutations, all you anime crack addicts anonymously looking for your next fix of deliciously, deviant, and decadent animated narcotic. Today I’m going to return a topic I talked to about in a previous post way back in September of last year; the Nintendo 3DS. However, this time I’m going to add in another element, the Playstation Vita now that its out. I’m going to be a comparison of the two on certain levels, but also an update of somethings I addressed last time and some extreme claims about the Vita.
Last time I discussed how a lot of people on the internet where predicting the doom of Nintendo and the 3DS because of the massive drop in sales about 5 months after the launch which was mishandled(if anyone can point to a really solid launch for a game console please mention it the comments). So time has shown that either is true, of course although I’m aware that the Nintendo prediction is kind of open ended because a company’s future is always up in the air, however the 3DS one has proved to be very wrong. Over the Holiday Season the 3DS sold almost 1.6 million units and the weeks following have been strong as well. Add that to the fact the 3DS sold more units in the first 8 months in the U.S. than the DS. One thing I was wrong about in the last article was my prediction of a possible redesign of the system which didn’t come about(yet) maybe because the sales have rebounded. I around thing I predicted was if a bunch of quality first party games would come out they the sales would go up; and that’s what has happened with the Mario and Mario Kart games. There are also some great three party stuff like the Monster Hunter game and more coming.
Ok on to Vita, and with its recent release in Japan on Dec.17th out of the way it looked pretty impressive with first weekend sales of 320,000. However, after that the sales have dropped off a lot and have been below the PSP. So now people predicting the end of Vita already. I really wish people would not make such wild and unfounded predictions about the future of a product that just came out. I think I Vita will pick up in the coming months, it might take a price cut, but I’m sure it will in the end. The launch library was kinda underwhelming even though there was an Uncharted game, but I think was better then the 3DS’s launch line up. Just give Vita some time.
Cheers,
Devil
Hey triple A community, its me Devil Survivor, the most interesting man on the AAA Network, and I’m finally back with a new blog entry. Today I’m going to shine the anime spotlight on the 1980’s classic mecha show Aura Battler Dunbine. Dunbine was directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, who is best known for directing the original Gundam series and a lot of other great anime series. Dunbine was the first fantasy\mecha series which inspired other series such as Escaflowne. It ran for 49 episodes and spawned three OVA sequels; Aura Battler Dunbine: Tale of Neo Byston Well , Tales From Byston Well: Garzey’s Wing, and The Wings of Rean. However, it should be noted that all three are considered to be of inferior quality to the original series. Let’s get into the story.
The setting for the story is in the parallel world of Byston Well which is kind of similar to 16 century Europe, but with one major difference; Aura technology, which allows machines to be built using life force as a power source. Chief among these machines are the Aura Battlers, insect like robots with great destruction power. The story centers around Sho Zama, a Japanese motocross racer who one night is pulled into Byston Well by a magical fairy called a Ferario to serve as pilot of a Aura Battler called the Dunbine. One of the several monarchs in Byston Well, Drake Luft has been maneuvering for sometime to attempt a power play and seize control of the surrounding kingdoms. Part of his plans involve transporting people from Upper Earth, including Sho, because they have strong aura power. Another person brought down to Byston Well to pilot a battler is Todd Guinness , the trash taking, racist, ace pilot from Boston. He becomes the main rival for Sho. Burne Bannings is Drake’s right hand man and the general of his forces,however he does not have must in the way of piloting skill. Sho eventually discovers the evil intent of Drake’s plans and defects to a group led by a noble opposed to Drake, named Nie Givun. Among this group is another person kidnapped from Upper Earth, Marvel Frozen a former cop from Texas. They along with their allies embark on a guerrilla war against Drake and to gather other kingdoms in an alliance to thwart the ambitions of Drake. After a long war in Byston Well, the story shifts to Upper Earth at the mid point of the series. Some people have criticized the series for the slow pacing in the Earth arc, but for me I think the second half of the show moves along fine, albeit with some rough spots.
Overall, Aura Battler Dunbine is a classic piece of mecha anime and one of better works of Yoshiyuki Tomino, which is saying a lot considering all the exceptional shows he has created and directed. I really enjoyed in when I watched it in 2009. So I would recommend it to any fan of mecha or fantasy anime. You can find reviews of each episode on the MAHQ website at this link: http://www.mahq.net/animation/dunbine/abdunbine/dunbinetoc.htm
Until next time, say addicted my friends.
Devil_Survivor
Episode Reviewed In: Episode 110
Alternate Titles: None
Original Japanese Release Date: July 2002
Episode Length/Run-time: 26 Episodes
Summary:
The story follows Robin Sena who is a “craft user” not to be mistaken with a witch. Craft users are raised by the Roman Cathloic Church to use their powers to hunt down witches. Witchcraft is a dormant trait which lies in human “seeds” when they awaken it drives a person, generally, to madness. Robin works for the STN-J a group which looks over seeds and hunts witches but through her work with them she begins to learn more about the witches she hunts and what her group really does.
Review:
I suppose I’ll start out by saying that Witch Hunter Robin is not an exceptional anime. It’s far from bad, and it’s downright entertaining most of the time, but it is hardly something which will merit acclaim, praise, or a second watch anytime soon. However, I am a huge fan of the occult and witchcraft so this series is right up my alley and tickles my supernatural bone.
The series falls under the old routine of monster of the week for about the first half. In my opinion you can watch episodes 1 and 2, then skip 3-11 and pick the series back up there. Some of the episodes are interesting and the DO progressively let you in on secrets of the STN-J group but it is filler, no ifs-ands-or-butts on the matter. The plot doesn’t really take off until the halfway mark, where they then take the non-existent buildup and your now over-familiarity with the characters to progress what is the real plot. Being a fan of the occult I didn’t hate the filler, and some of it was amusing, but filler is filler, they likely could’ve condensed it down a fair bit.
When the series does pick up, it really picks up and the plot moves quick. Not break-neck speed that makes you go “wooooah hold up!” but a good place that is enjoyable. The show is never riddled with action but has the pacing of a good mystery novel and uncovers things at a decent pace that makes it worth watching.
The atmosphere of the show and animation style are just fantastic, and really carries it along. I’ve heard it described as “neo-goth” and I can see how it fits really well. The show almost has such a good atmosphere it feels like TV shows like Charmed (without the silly fluff of Charmed) here in America.
The characters also make the show worth watching, from traditional clichés to people facing deep moral dilemmas. And the music is pretty solid too, I rocked out on my iPod for a while to it.
Overall, I may be a little biased because I liked this show so much because of the themes it used and the questions it asked. But I really enjoyed it.