It’s fair to say that the past decade has been a little light on the Anime Almanac front. I burned out on the blog mid-way through 2010 and then life hit me hard when I lost my job at the start of 2011. But I bounced back, and ultimately ended the decade married, at the top of my professional career, and raising my first child.
While anime was not at the forefront of my decade, it still kept a very steady hum in the background. I kept my Crunchyroll subscription active the entire time, and eventually joined Funimation Now and (reluctantly) HI-DIVE. My wife and I would somewhat regularly attend anime cons. And since the birth of our son, we reserve all of our baby sitter time to go to see one-night-only anime Fathom events.
I would also tweet every few months, usually to makesomekindofdumbjoke or point out somefantasticEngrish. In 2016, I started noting my top 10 anime of the year. At first just one list at the end of the year, and then one thread that I update after every season. It was a good way to keep myself updated on the latest series while also reaching out for recommendations on what I was missing.
I guess you could technically go through those lists and create a top anime of the decade list as I have seen so many other do, but frankly, I miss a lot of my favorite series the first go around and only get see them in the year or so after they were released.
That is why I decided to take some time to think about the decade as a whole and call out some specific titles and clearly defined the decade for me.
In the months before his birth, the empty nursery served as a shrine to My Neighbor Totoro. The large one sat in the corner under an oversized leaf from Ikea. The medium and small one marched across the elevated changing table. Soot Sprints danced along the edge of his closet. And a large Cat Bus cautiously walks along the top of his crib.
But for the first 18 months of his life, the images never connected. That is until we finally sat him down, popped in the Blu-Ray, and showed him the movie for the first time.
The Anime Almanac was doing very well for itself seven years ago. I had a great following on Twitter that kept growing and growing. I was also receiving boxes from FUNimation and manga publishers every week filled with the latest releases to review on the site. But the part that meant the most to me was attending anime conventions with press credentials. With those credentials, I was given the opportunity to sit down with artists, actors, musicians, and industry folks and tell their stories to my audience. I had a blast doing it.
But we were also deep into the recession at that time, and while I had laughed it off in the first couple of years, could see in 2010 that things were not going so well with my day job. The fear and pressure of losing my job weighed heavily on me, and it prevented me from writing. Convention reports and reviews kept piling on my “To Do” list, but never getting done. I had entire interviews with guests recorded on my iPhone that never saw one word written about them.
And then it came crashing down at the start of 2011. I was laid off from my job and forced to look for something new. I was afraid of the blog becoming an issue with potential employers, so I had taken it down completely. I had to email my PR contacts in the industry to ask them to please stop sending the review copies.
Once a year Baltimore opens her arms wide to welcome the Otaku of the world. This year, on the 20th anniversary Otakon, her arms were open even wider. The con felt more alive and more packed than ever before. From the minute I arrived in town to the minute I left, I felt the love and warmth around me.
And that wasn’t just the summer heat.
Over the past few years I have developed friendships with many people within the anibloggers/podcaster community through Twitter and Facebook. Otakon has become the place where I can actually wind down and hang out with these very same people in person, and I look forward to it all year. This year was certainly no exception. I got to spend time chatting, drinking, and laughing with so many wonderful people. I was even able to meet a few people for the first time. This convention honestly wouldn’t be as great without them.
While I was at a panel at AnimeNEXT last Saturday, I received a series of press release emails from FUNimation on the latest license acquisitions they had just announced at a convention in Texas. Among them was the currently on-air anime series We Without Wings.
“Why?” I ask myself out loud after reading that.
“Huh?” asks my girlfriend sitting next to me. I show her the email on my iPhone. “Oh…. why would they license that?”
I look over the email a little more trying to figure it out. I pressed the reply button to send an email back to Jackie Smith, FUNi’s PR manager and my contact within the company.
Dear Jackie,
Why?
-Scott
I almost sent the email as just that, but I realized that she probably wouldn’t be able to give me a response to such a rude and condescending question. So I deleted the message and left it at that, but the question has still continued to ponder in my head ever since.
The Twitterverse was buzzing today over the news that MX Media, the team behind a lot of the translations that appear on the Crunchyroll simulcasts, was going to stop including Japanese honorifics from their English translations. The announcement caused rage with some fans, and a number even threatened to quit Crunchyroll because of it.
Was this announcement really all that Earth shattering? Just how important is it to include honorifics in subtitles?
While we simply use “Mr.” or “Mrs.” in English as a sign of respect in very particular situations, the Japanese utilize honorifics almost every time a name is uttered. The suffix you use to address another person often depends on your familiarness with the individual and / or their relation to you in the “pecking order” of society.
Ever since Mr. Miyagi called his pupil Daniel-san in that 1984 Rocky Jr. film, mainstream America has had just a small understanding of the Japanese honorific, if only for the novelty of it all. But anime fans have had much more exposure to the concept through their viewing. After many examples of what characters are called -san, -chan, -kun, or -sensei, they often pick up a very good understanding what situation calls for what suffix.
So after the American fans have learned this fundamental concept of a completely foreign language, they feel more educated and more cultured in the ways of the Japanese. And by MX Media now saying that they’re not going to bother explicitly writing it in their translations, the fans feel like they’re missing out on the authentic experience of watching anime.
But when it comes down to it, how important are the damn honorifics to anime anyway?
Well, I actually consider it to be very important.
Konami Kanata’sChi’s Sweet Home is a story about as simple as a story can be. When a gray-striped kitten is separated from his mother, he is discovered by a family with a young son, Yohei. The problem is that Yohei’s family lives in an apartment complex that doesn’t allow pets, so they secretly keep the kitty around as they search for a permanent home for her. But after a while, Yohei, mama, and papa eventually grow attached to the kitten, and they even name her Chi. It becomes obvious that they are never going to give away the kitty as she has quickly become a part of their happy household.
It is no secret that I love Chi, and it certainly ranks up there as one of my all time favorite series. I already own most of the comics in Japanese, and the anime earned the #2 position on my Top Anime of 2009 list last year. So I am expecting a lot out of this title when Vertical releases it later this month. In fact, I have never anticipated a comic’s English release more than I have with Chi’s Sweet Home.
And so I am thrilled to report that Vertical’s release is very, very well done.
