The Anime Almanac

I think for a majority of American otaku, the word “yuri” conjures up only a few images. There’s the boy-turned-girl by aliens stuck in a love triangle between two other girls. Or the girl in the huge black witch’s hat flirting with a female swordsmen. Or probably the image of Catholic school girls adjusting each other neckerchiefs.

For the most part, my experience with yuri has only been these highly erotic stories obviously targeted to a male reader, and that turns out to be general description of the word by professional manga translator and genre expert Mari Morimoto.

“It’s kind of like live-action lesbian porn in the US,” she explains to her “Gay” Manga 101 panel at the recent MangaNEXT convention. “Most of it is just girl-on-girl action for the straight man.”

But every once in a while, an actual lesbian artist will create a comic targeted toward the lesbian community, and it just so happens that a pioneer in this genre was a guest speaker for the convention that weekend.

When Rica Takashima began serializing her comic Rica ‘tte Kanji for the lesbian magazine Anise in 1996, she broke the mold of what was considered yuri. Instead of a highly erotic story of “forbidden love” between two women, she created a super-cute tale of realistic lesbian lifestyles and relationships.

I read through the book when I arrived at the convention that weekend, and found it to be really different than any other manga I’ve read before. So I had plenty to discuss and ask when the convention hosted a “Book Club” session with the artist herself the next day. We all sat at a large round table, and Morimoto joined us to translate for Takashima. Such an intimate setting allowed us all to dive deep into the comic and the subject matter behind it… sometimes a little too close for comfort.

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Note: This post contains very explicit images and discussions of sex and homosexuality depicted in comics. Read at your own risk.

About a month ago, I hung out with the team over at the Reverse Thieves blog in New York City. We went to a used Japanese bookstore, and I was thrilled to find a copy of Kodomo no Jikan, one of my favorite manga series, for sale. When I showed off the find to the others, Narutaki immediately indicated to me that he was disgusted by the title because of all the controversy surrounding its lolicon content.

“No, really, It’s a great series,” I tried to convince him. “Don’t let the lolicon fool you, there’s a great story behind it!” But he wouldn’t accept it. As Narutaki told me in an email later, he becomes upset and uncomfortable by any sexual portrayal of children in manga whether it is lolicon or shotacon. No matter how good a story it might be, he believes that he would have a hard time bypassing that fact.

So they issued a fun challenge for both of our blogs. The Reverse Thieves would go beyond their confront zone by reading the first two volumes of Kodomo no Jikan to see if they can find a good story despite its lolicon content. But in exchange for them giving that series a try, I would have to take the time to read and write about a certain genre of manga that I would be very uncomfortable reading myself…

Yaoi.

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Note: You may not want read the latter part of this post you are easily offended by sexuality or profanity.

I have always been a fan of the small MangaNEXT convention. Universal Animation, the group behind the AnimeNEXT convention held every June in New Jersey, had created it as a manga-centric spin off to be held in fall – generally after the traditional summer convention season. As the name implies, its defining premise is that the center of discussion is to be only about that black-and-white medium that often get lumped with anime.

After Anime Boston 2006, I had dropped out of the convention scene to focus more on finishing college and landing a job. I didn’t go back to Boston or Otakon or even AnimeNEXT for some years. But something seemed right about MangaNEXT. The timing, location, and size of the event seemed very manageable even with my busy schedule. So during my hiatus from the convention scene, I still made my way to the first MangaNEXT in 2006, and returned again in 2007.

Because of that, I can honestly say that MangaNEXT is the only convention I have attended since the very beginning, so I have seen its evolution through out the past three years. But I dove back head first into the convention scene this year, and I have attended four much larger cons so far this season. So now that I’ve experience such a wide variety of major anime cons so close together like this, how does this small manga convention stack up against them?

Still pretty damn good.

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I’m live at the Doubletree Hotel in Somerset NJ for the third annual MangaNEXT convention this weekend.

MangaNEXT is the spin-off of the AnimeNEXT convention I reported on back in June. As the name implies, it focuses mostly on manga-themed events and panels. This year’s guests include yuri comic artist Rica Takashima, OEL manga artist Misako Rocks!, and one of my personal favorites, manga translator Mari Morimoto.

I will be posting small updates and cameraphone photos all weekend long on Twitter. Be sure to follow my Twitter account or check out Anime Almanac the Live to catch my live con coverage directly from the convention floor.

“DON’T PANIC!” reads the first slide of FUNimation’s powerpoint presentation at the New York Anime Festival, and once again, the audience lets out a nervous laugh. It is the same slide that the company has shown at the last Otakon, Anime Expo, and any other convention they have been to this season. It comes after a year in which fans saw the fall of two giants in the industry, Geneon and ADV.  The company means to calm the worries of many fans about the future of anime in America. However, a single slide didn’t really bring that much reassurance, as the news seemed to continue to get worse as the summer rolled along.

But things were a little different for this convention. Since Otakon, ICv2 had released a report on the current state of the anime industry, and it was revealed that FUNimation actually made up 32.7% – nearly a third – of the entire market. They were way ahead of the second largest company, VIZ Media, at 15.9%, the comatose ADV at 10.5%, Bandai Entertainment at 7.7%, and Media Blasters at 5%.

FUNimation makes no effort in hiding this fact at their NYAF panel, and very quickly admit that they are probably doing much better than anyone else right now. But still, having them announcing that we should not worry about the state of the industry sounded a little cocky this time. Of course they aren’t worried about the industry! At a third of the market share, they are industry! What a huge power for one company to hold.

But as the old Spiderman quote goes, with great power comes great responsibly. Instead of leaving the “Don’t Panic” statement at just that, FUNimation spent a little bit of time explaining their strategy for the future of the industry right there at the NYAF. And I have to admit, the optimism of this company finally convinced me the tide is just about to shift, and FUNimation is going to be the one to change it.

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A group of a dozen aspiring voice actors gather in a small recording studio in Midtown Manhattan. They are there to participate in a day long voice acting workshop hosted by Bang Zoom Entertainment. Not only have they paid quite a lot of money to attend this class, but their promptness in showing up at 9:00 on a Sunday morning is a clear indication that they are all serious about this.

Their instructor for the day is Tony Oliver, veteran voice actor and dubbing director. “This is a professional class,” Oliver warns his new pupils. “I’m not mean, but I don’t pull punches.” For a full eight-hour day, Oliver will be working with each student in the basics of anime voice acting.

This idea of fans getting into professional voice acting has always fascinated me. Back when I ran anime clubs in college, a few of my members wanted to get into the business. Some of them even took acting classes and pursued theater degrees just to get into anime voice acting. It is also hard not to notice that at almost every voice acting panel I have attended at anime cons, at least one fan will ask the professional guests, “How do I become a voice actor?”

So now that these aspiring voice actors are actually inside of a recording studio for full day, what exactly were they going to be doing? How hard is it to voice act? What kind of lessons could they learn from the pros? What will happen when they go behind the mic for that first time?

Bang Zoom was kind enough to let this blogger observe this workshop, and must say, this was one of the most amazing events I have ever witnessed in my years of fandom. So for this week, I’d like to take you inside of that New York recording studio to see what it is like for a fan to finally get behind the mic.

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On October 24, 2007, the website Anime News Network launched its newest feature, a weekly webcomic by Robin Sevakis called Anime News Nina. In the opening five panels, we were introduced to Nina, a cute but bewildered news elf whose sole purpose in life is to learn everything about… umm…

“Anime!” her annoyed director yells at her. “You’re going to learn everything about anime for the Anime News Network.”

And in just those first five panels of cute artwork, establishment of a lovable main character, and one hilarious sarcastic punch line, I knew this was going to be one great comic. I was hooked on Nina.

Nearly a year later, the comic is still going strong with a weekly release schedule on the news site. Nina has reached such a high popularity that the New York Anime Festival offered Sevakis a chance to come to the convention as a “Featured Guest” this year. Quite an impressive achievement for a first-time comic artist.

So being the unashamed Nina fanboy that I am, I asked to sit down with Sevakis during the convention to learn more about Nina and the clever artist behind it.

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I love New York. With it only being a 100-minute bus ride from my apartment, I often find myself going there at least once every month to escape the boredom of Central Jersey. But you would think that being such an iconic city would just be a great place for an otaku to completely geek out on his fandom, right? Surprisingly, this is not the case.

My first anime convention was actually the Big Apple Anime Film Festival in 2003. It was the first time I got to experience cosplaying, panels, and a dealers room like that. That was also the first time I saw what would become my favorite anime of all time, Millennium Actress. Since it was the US premiere of the movie, the film’s brilliant director Satoshi Kon was in attendance. After seeing the film, I was able to give the man a standing ovation. What an amazing experience for my first-ever convention!

But alas, that was the last year of the BAAFF. The con was canceled and our city was left with little to offer for hometown otaku for many years. That was before Peter Tatara and Reed Exhibitions stepped up to the plate and brought anime back to the city with the New York Anime Festival last year. As Ani-Gamer’s Vampt Vo wonderfully wrote in this article, Peter and the NYAF has done so much in this past year for anime in New York, and man, do I appreciate it!

So once again at the NYAF’s second annual convention, I just felt an absolute love for a great convention put together by great people. I did my normal “live” Twitter coverage over the weekend and I am in the process of putting together some great stories to be posted in the weeks ahead. But for this week, I want to highlight some of ways I really felt the love for the NYAF this year.

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Let me take you back to the spring of 2003 when I was in my final months of high school. One of the “senior privileges” my school offered was that we were allowed to leave campus during our study hall periods. Well, none of my friends had study hall with me and I most certainly didn’t want to stay in school for that afternoon period. So I made a daily routine for myself.

First, I’d walk on over to the nearby 7-Eleven to buy myself a Slupree. While I was there, I would check their magazine rack to see if the latest Raijin Comics issue had come out. If there was a new issue, I’d buy it. I would then take said Slurpee and magazine to an outside bench, take a comfortable seat, and then spend the remainder of the period reading the manga and drinking the cool drink on that warm spring afternoon. It was a great way to get through that last semester of my secondary education.

Raijin Comics was a weekly – let me repeat that – weekly manga anthology produced by newcomer Gutsoon! Entertainment that had started in December 2002. It launched at the same time Shonen Jump USA launched, but Raijin was clearly going for a more mature audience with a wider variety of titles. This included some old shounen classics like comedy-adventure City Hunter, the extremely violent Fist of the North Star and Grappler Baki, and the popular sports manga Slam Dunk. But mixed in with these older titles were a couple of newer comics like the harem comedy Guardian Angel Getten, the political drama First President of Japan, and the absolutely adorable talking animal comic Bow Wow Wata.

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Some months ago, I wrote in my Avatar retrospective that the humor in anime comedies just could not compare to that of our domestic cartoons. The Japanese and Americans have two different senses of humor, which are buried deep into our cultural upbringing. Domestic cartoons featured more sarcasm and cynicism into their humor, which are both concepts not that prevalent in Japanese culture. On the other hand, anime comedies feature a lot jokes from the tsukkomi-boké formula, where a straight man (tsukkomi) punishes the stupidity of an idiot (boké). While tsukkomi-boké can translate to a vaudevillian slapstick to an American viewer, it mostly fails to produce the same kind of laughter as it does in Japan.

Well, not long after I wrote that, I came across one anime show that completely blew this generalization right out the window. At the start of August, I signed up for Fios TV service in my apartment, and much to my surprise, it came with the FUNimation Channel. Now, the FUNimation Channel is still very new, and from what I hear, it’s only available over Fios. That is why it is no surprise that the channel only appears to air about a dozen shows on repeat. But even with the limited selection of shows, they had one that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while now, Haré + Guu.

Haré + Guu is the story of boy named Haré who lives in a small jungle village with his mother, Weda. After a night of partying, Weda unexplainably brings home an adorable pink-haired girl named Guu to live with them. But after a while, Haré discovers that Guu is not at all what she appears to be, and she makes his world a nightmare with all her crazy antics. The original Japanese title, Jungle wa Itsumo Hare Nochi Guu, is a play on Haré’s name meaning “sunny and nice” and can be interpreted as “the jungle was always nice, and then along came Guu.”

And my God, this show is funny!

It is really f@#$ing funny!

It is the funniest anime I have ever seen and clearly does not just play into the traditional tsukkomi-boké formula. There is something very unique about this show that you don’t get with other Japanese comedies. So this week, I’d like to take an analytical look at the humor of this show and why it translates so well even to this American otaku.

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