Blessed Are The Geek

Read about it here.

And now a summing up from Martin Lawrence…

This is what happens when an anime God kinda burns out from too much power.

So Satoshi Kon is dead, and you know what? This isn’t the first bloody time an anime god has fallen from his mecha throne.

How you ask? Need I remind you of the loss of Osamu Tezuka – possibly one of anime’s biggest innovators in the medium’s history – and yet although Japan was devastated by his death, anime moved on. You see, what happened to Osamu Tezuka was, he didn’t actually invent anime and manga. He just developed on it in his own way and became highly successful about what he did. Osamu Tezuka’s death may have been a turning point in anime, but keep in mind he wasn’t the only guy making anime and manga back then. Round about the 1980s, this dude Hayao Miyazaki, who would turn out to be one of Tezuka’s biggest critics – began to take off in his career and by the 2000s he netted himself an Academy Award, being the ONLY anime director who had done so, living OR dead. So anime moved on without Tezuka, because Tezuka never really “owned” anime in the first place. Anime, is just the Japanese word for animation. Sure, he’s called the God of Manga, and he deserves that title – but as we know from religious studies, any God whether a legitimate deity or just a random dude who’s really good at drawing stuff – in the end has no influence over the moral choices human beings are able to make, because most religions assume that human beings have free will to follow the teachings of a religion or not.

And most newer religions, say, Buddhism out of Hinduism, or Christianity out of Judaism, came out of a dissatisfaction with the old way of doing things that had worked for another religious group for then hundreds or even thousands of years. In short, Miyazaki is to anime what Siddartha was to Hinduism, he saw what was going on in the industry and disagreed with Tezuka, creating his own path for himself.

And Satoshi Kon will probably become one of those pantheon of dead anime masters, and is likely to be seen eventually as the anime equivalent of Jean Vigo, that French director who had a very small output of films before he died, but remains an astounding influence on  the medium of cinema long after his death.

Anime isn’t going to die just because an innovative dude in the industry died, besides, anime directors are trying to be animators, not necromancers. They’re meant to bring life to new ideas of their own, not resurrect the shambling corpses of the industry’s past achievements.

* * * * *

Text Copyright © Jacob Martin 2010, All Rights Reserved, Australia

Where else can you see Akira set to the music of Regurgitator? Sounds crazy no?

I went to the Graphic Festival at the Opera House because I was bored, or just wanted to avoid dealing with a tough end to a week in which I had Vietnam style flashbacks to when Germaine Greer verbally tore me a new one when I had my first art critique of the semester from my 60s feminist art teacher. Don’t get me wrong, feminist art teachers are cool, I’ve had one before that actually liked my work, but she was younger than this one. This one… called Sailor Moon a prostitute because she thought my Subcultures assignment related photo of a Sailor Moon cosplayer offensive. This experience quite possibly ruined the weekend to come, where my new, confident self got shafted and impaled on the malice-tipped spikes of my old Tatsuhiko Takimoto idolising self. What was it that truly devastated me about a woman who liked my ideas in all honesty but didn’t get what I was trying to say visually?

Let’s go deeper into my dire despair so we can find the silver lining shall we?

Continue reading →

Manly yes, but a real man, no. He's just a cartoon 80s "Japanimation" fans see as their big brother.

There is a lot of talk that anime is dying, but really what’s happening is a reshuffling of what “anime” itself means as an animation term. In my last post I talked about how some moe anime are like romance dramas for men, and in this post I want to talk about not so much the state of the industry – but certain clues that hint towards the future of what is essentially a Japanese medium which may or may not be in crisis, particularly in terms of male characters people can look up to in anime.

Continue reading →

Just think, this, THIS is a love story... for men.

I’ve had a lot of beef with moe, believe me, I didn’t like it much when I began to get a bit jaded and to be honest in the brief period when I kind of liked it, it didn’t do my sense of reality any favours. What it did do good however, was make me begin to understand why Japanese men like romance in their fiction whereas the Western fiction market hasn’t yet evolved to the idea that men too can be romantic.

Continue reading →

This post by AngryOtaku makes me, well, angry, because America is so far away from us Australian anime fans that we don’t matter much to American execs who license anime as a sort of entertainment middle-man.

I’m actually really concerned for Japan at the moment. I’m concerned for my country at the moment, but at the same time we have one of the healthiest birth rates in the world. Japan on the other hand doesn’t. I’m worried that Japan will become to Earth what the Elves are to Middle Earth – less in number because birthrates are dropping, even though more and more people want to know more about them. Imagine the Fellowship filled with Hobbit weeaboos who are very excited to be “Elf-friends”. That’s pretty much where Japan is headed by the looks of things.

Continue reading →

I solely blame my lapse into self-pity and emo bullshit on this man.

The above post title is a reference from Welcome to the NHK where Misaki is quoting some scholar to justify her absurd claims that she has any power to help Satou.

I come to you in a time in my life where I have to put my anime blogging on hold. It’s a hard choice, but I think my blogging will be better for it if I give anime a rest for a while.

It’s not going to go away I don’t think, but if you’ve seen Toy Story 3, you might imagine how I’m feeling as going back to University looms.

Young boys grow up into men. They gain new friends and lose their old ones gradually if they fade away from contact. Ah, this is the sorrow of our times when Facebook is lipservice to 1000 friends you never intended to talk to after graduation!

But what will I be doing? I have a book blog called Throw The Book At Him where I review books and DVDs I’ve been watching or reading, and of course you can read the articles of Jacob Martin, Esquire at Fortress: Ameritrash where I will bring to you some of the interesting board games I’ve come across and have been playing.

I like anime, I just don’t think that obsessing too much on it right now is the answer though. The dire straits of my old self is dying because I shot it with the Nerf gun I will leave behind with my childish things.

In short, I’ve been starting to notice some of the same problems I used to suffer from as a younger man returning, and instead of kissing Takimoto’s arse for the billionth time I want to do something about my social status.

Things like going outside and meeting new people. Saving money just in case, because one cannot live on books and other possessions alone. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve hit rock bottom in terms of how low my self esteem can go, and now it’s climbing again I want to stop myself from getting too lapsed from reality. Because I didn’t exactly have a good time of it the last time that happened.

I’m on Break Time, and if you still read my blog when I return I promise I’ll think of new things to post about.

* * * * *

Text Copyright © Jacob Martin 2010. All Rights Reserved.

I could have gone with a depressing Gainax screenshot but since I'm feeling generous I went with Sasuhara X Ogiue.

Many Western anime fans feel alone in what they like, trying to fit in by hiding one’s hobbies from the world. TV Tropes once said it best by describing it as “keeping your power levels low” but here’s something I noticed while finishing up watching anime shows I should have finished a long time ago.

Continue reading →

So I finally saw Toy Story 3. Wow. Just wow. There’s been a long, LONG time since I’ve seen a Pixar film in the cinema – but I knew I had to see this one. Because it means something to me in the context of “before I was an anime fan” – that weird block in my life’s chronology where I wasn’t entirely aware they still made cartoons for children that were any good. But Toy Story 3, man, just go see it now no matter how weeaboo you are – because I haven’t had a flood of tears from watching an animation like this since I saw Mary and Max. I’m about to finish watching Azumanga Daioh – so I’m guessing it might have a similar bittersweet effect on me as Toy Story 3 did.

Spoilers for Toy Story 3 ahead.

Continue reading →

At first I wasn’t gonna do a post till I finished my Supanova writeup – but this tweet from adun50 amused me for a very strange reason:

The courier system fails for people who have goods delivered home but work during office hours. And I’m not having it delivered to work.

Oh the woe adun50! But you do not realise that the 1950s ideal of men going to work all day to earn money isn’t always the case. There exist some loving fathers who work at home! And if your father works at home, he can be your Konata Dad to your Konata.

Continue reading →