Mega Megane Moé
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Posts tagged Analysis
[Rapidfire] The Touhou Conspiracy, Part I: Analyze it slowly! Yukkuri
Jul 9th
Although TheBigN beat me to it, I’ve been dropping hints left and right that I’ve joined the mass that is Touhou Anonymous, least of which would be an amusing cry for help on my mini-blog, but I think it’s time to make this official: my name is CCY … well, my psuedonym is CCY … and I’m a Touhou addict.
Who knows what it is. The manic gameplay that shoots adrenaline through your veins as quickly as the characters shoots bullets, the immense music scene from its hard-rock remixes to the drug-like addictive flash songs and everywhere in between, or just the sheer size and limitless bounds of the fandom … perhaps I’ll never know a reason until I fall out of Touhou.
But until then, in my typical analytical style, I can’t take it lying down. I’m very bad at admitting I simply like things because I do, and so it’s time to dig up the roots of, at least, my Touhou fandom and shine some light on some of the intriguing, curious, or just plain weird ends of the Touhou universe.
There’s a method to every madness, and it’s time to find mine, in this mini-series of mini-posts. And target number one …
Memorializing Makoto: School Days, one year later
Jul 3rd
Apologies for a quick entry, but that just means I’ll have to leave the discussion open-ended instead of just babbling on forever. We’ll see if this incites more comment.
But, anyway, if I do manage to get this post finished in the next half-hour, it will have been roughly one year since the airing of the first episode of School Days, the infamous harem (some say anti-harem) show that was groundbreaking or shocking in so many ways. Truly it is one of the most unique shows the anime world will see – maybe not in concept, but in execution, you just have to wonder what kind of ideas were running through the producer’s heads, for better or worse.
I thought it would make an interesting topic to look back from much further down the proverbial river (hey, you make the boat jokes, not me) back at School Days, and see if it’s still everything it was cracked up to be. Read the rest of this entry »
Eating Your Cake Too: Shippers Anonymous and the curiosity of desire
Jun 25th
As much as I begin to unintentionally obscure my roots in the United States through my pursuit of foreign culture, sometimes I find myself having a distinctly American approach to things regardless.
And while I may not be chewing down on countless hamburgers or invading foriegn nations or driving pick-up trucks or however the wildly offensive stereotype goes, I do exhibit more than one trait in common with our most popular American, George W. Bush (or at least his government), in wanting to mess around with things that are distinctly not mine.
While perhaps the stage of anime is not quite as important as the global one, I was reminded of this way of thinking of “no, I want it THIS way” while watching some recent popular shoujo shows.
Maybe it’s not just an American way of thinking, but rather a fallacy of all humans, to want more than what is currently presented, but either way, I’m finding the topic of shipping to be one that’s sent me, as usual, on a variety of tangents; some serious, some sarcastic, some squeal-y, but all entertaining.
So put on your Cologne of Rabid Fanboy Protection +1 and let’s take a dive into one of the more divisive ways that a fandom manifests itself, into a lair typically more well frequented by the opposite sex (y’know, the kind that doesn’t exist on the internet … er … women), that of shipping.
[Rapidfire] Shuffle! returns, selling out, Howl’s Moving Castle and emotional connection
Jun 15th
The rumors of my blogging laziness have been greatly exaggerated.
In the midst of the working world and of real life another Rapidfire post rises from the ashes to inject a thousand-odd words of anime ranting and raving into the bloodstream of a starved anime fan.
Well, in all honesty I hope you’ve been reading elsewhere too, so you shouldn’t be starving, but in any case, I’m just starting to go off on random tangents, having already written all the content out of my head (yes, the pre-jump section comes last here) and now desperately typing random, fourth-wall referential content in an attempt to fill space.
In case you’re interested in what’s on board for today, there’s a news section announcing a new Shuffle!-like substance for the PC, a short metarant involving ads and websites, and a good long analytical-type thing about Howl’s Moving Castle – one of the popular Miyazaki films – and the power of emotional connection versus logical appeal.
Well … uh … how about that Nagato?
Read the rest of this entry »
Otaku Paranoia: Ressentiment and the NHK Conspiracy
Jun 8th
I’ve been going on an interesting, almost existential-type tangent in my anime fandom of recently. Perhaps it’s a slow time waiting week-to-week on all the latest shows, or an over-saturation in pink happy-happy fluffiness, but I’ve been challenging my mentality (and perhaps sanity) recently with some new material.
Those who recognize the two works (or at least one) in the title should already know the common link bonding them and that is that they take realistic, sometimes disturbing close shots at the lifestyle of the manic anime fan.
It’s an eye-opener in the sense that they are mirrors into your own life – if you’re reading this blog, you probably have, or have felt at one point, at least some degree of similarity with the characters in these works. You might not be as grossly distanced from reality, or as disillusioned with real people, but certainly it’s a thought that has crossed your mind. “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice for life to be like anime.” “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if real girls were like that.”
Well, think again.
The tones of these two shows are markedly different so far, at least with just one episode of NHK under the belt versus 25 chapters of Ressentiment, but both of them do have at least some power to inspire inner reflection, with a almost black-humor tone coating them a la a Zetsubou Sensei with less random imagery and comedy and more close-to-home hits.
I’ve enjoyed them a lot, for the same reason I enjoyed an anime like Kaiji or a visual novel conversion like H2O, and that is because they are unmistakably different from whatever you’ve seen before. And ironically, this concept of ‘being different’ is what they are all about.