I spend a LOT of time on the internet. Sometimes in my travels I read and watch some fascinating and informative things. Sharing is caring, so here are some of my favorite things from the past week or so:
Links
Anime and Mental Health: The Connection – There are a surprising number of anime that feature characters with various mental illnesses. PTSD and depression seem to be the most common mental ailments, but there are others and one of the things that I like about anime are the variety of characters with which I can identify as someone who suffers from anxiety and depression.
I agree with the author’s choice of Shinji Ikari as an expression of depression and I think Shinji gets unfairly hated by people who don’t have a lot of real-life experience with depression. Some examples I might add to the discussion are Mirai, the main character of Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, who loses a close family member during a huge earthquake and spends the back half of the anime series struggling with accepting their death, and Yuki from Tsuritama who deals with social anxiety.
The Rise of Masashi Ishihama: From the New World to Garakowa – Kevin Cirugada has written some great articles so far at Anime News Network that focus on the actual animators that help bring our favorite series to life. This article focuses on Masashi Ishihama who directed the TV anime adaptation of From the New World, one of my favorite anime series, and has a new movie called Garakowa which is avialable at Crunchyroll. I haven’t watched Garakowa yet, but being reminded of From the New World makes me want to carve out some time.
Minnesota Conventions to Cosplay at in 2016 – Are you a cosplayer local to the Twin Cities? Here’s a handy-dandy list from Twin Cities Geek of all the local conventions coming up this year.
An Unbiased Look at the Best Picture Nominees of 2016 – I’ve been making an effort to see all of this year’s Oscar nominated films, but this article sums up a lot of my feelings about the one’s I’ve seen so far, as well as some I haven’t.
Innocent World is having a Winter Sale! – Any other fans of lolita fashion out there? Innocent World is in the midst of their Winter Sale at this very moment. They had a couple of flash sales prior to this, but I’m guessing this sale page will stay up now until things are sold out. I grabbed a few accessories earlier in the week, and there are still some dresses/coats/larger pieces left too!
Videos
Cooking With Dog makes homemade cheese from yogurt, milk, and cream – This is one of my favorite Youtube channels, and not just because it features a cute dog as a narrator. In this week’s cooking video, Chef creates fresh cheese spread from some very basic ingredients.
Maangchi’s Korean Fermented Soybean Paste and Soup Soy Sauce – Maangchi is a Korean home cook with a great Youtube channel. She’s also come out with a really excellent cookbook, a copy of which I received for Christmas. In this video, she demonstrates how to ferment soybeans to create both soybean paste and soup soy sauce. The process took a year to complete, and this video (which clocks in at nearly half an hour) recounts the whole thing and contains some nice video of places in and around New York City, where Maangchi lives.
I no longer self-identify as a gamer; the fandom started to attract too much controversy and as someone who didn’t really appreciate where AAA gaming was headed, I finally bailed out (no hate towards people who identify as gamers, though). I’m someone who doesn’t enjoy being involved in drama, and what I was seeing was truly beyond the minor geek drama we all know and occasionally like hearing about; women questioning the status quo started getting death threats, the industry attitudes weren’t really changing to reflect real-life demographics… I just felt unwelcome and a little bit nervous to boot. There are a lot of brave women out there who continue to engage with the fandom – Anita Sarkeesian is the “big” name (and a controversial one, but I like her videos and the type of analysis she does, haters gonna hate), and Leigh Alexander is one of my favorite writers on the subject, hands down. But I, personally, am just too nervous to directly engage anymore. Maybe that makes me a wimp; I like to say I have a well-developed sense of self-preservation.
I have, though, gotten into casual gaming over the last year or so. Anime is my main fandom and it’s where I devote the majority of my energy, but sometimes I just need a little break and if I can pop in for 10 minutes and play something, that helps me a lot. My recent favorite game for this purpose is a little something you might have heard of called Neko Atsume.
The utopia I have created for myself. Copyright Hit-Point.
Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector is a cell phone/tablet game that you can download for free for iOS and Android systems (you can pay money for items in the game, but you can have plenty of fun for free). In the game, you have a yard that you can fill with things to attract the neighborhood kitty cats – cushions, scratching posts, toys, cat trees… the list of items is really extensive. If the cats enjoy what you’ve provided, they leave you fish – silver and gold – in exchange. You can then use those fish as currency to buy bigger and better toys, and the cycle continues until you lose interest. All of the cats eventually give you special trinkets if they like your yard well enough – they’re items that are technically worthless, like birthday candles, books of matches, and broken toys, but to a cat they are special gifts that demonstrate the true extent of their love. There are also “rare” cats that show up if you meet certain requirements, mainly by having special/unique items placed in your yard.
The game fits into a weird genre called “maintenance games” in which there really aren’t any end goals in mind or even a plot to worry about; the fun comes from cultivating a certain aesthetic, collecting things, enjoying the atmosphere, and appreciating the cute artwork. The Animal Crossing series of games are a much more famous example from this genre; anyone who’s played and enjoyed the games from that series will understand that what’s “fun” about those games are the exploration aspect as well as the satisfaction that comes from collecting all the items for the museum, designing and renovating your home, getting all the different fruits to grow in your town, and building up your infrastructure. It can be incredibly engrossing, especially for a genre that’s considered very “casual” and doesn’t get a lot of love from the mainstream gaming fandom.
I, frankly, don’t have time to play many video games. Neko Atsume is really the perfect solution to that. I have it downloaded on my Android phone and check in on my kitties a few times throughout the day (and occasionally during the night if I’m having one of those nights – one of my friends mentioned that she thinks the game might be on “Japan Time” since that’s where it was developed, making certain cat appearances likelier to happen when we’re asleep in the US). I refill the cats’ food dishes, switch out items in the yard, take photos if something cute is happening (one of the things you can do is have a photo album for each cat), and see if the kitties have left me anything. On paper it’s completely low-stakes; nobody gets hurt and there’s no tension or hard goal. You can play the game how you want. But I always have a positive feeling when one of the cats leaves me something special or a new cat visits my kitty playground. As someone who could be a crazy cat lady if the stars aligned a certain way, playing this game helps fulfill that desire without having a house full of cats.
I think some people appreciate having a concrete goal in mind when they’re playing a game. I find that I have a lot more fun when I’m the one deciding how to have my fun. Just like enjoying the freedom that games like Minecraft and the Elder Scrolls series provide, I like being able to define my own success in games like Neko Atsume. It’s a nice change from the daily demands and expectations of boring old real life.
“For high schooler Kei -and for at least forty-six others- immortality comes as the nastiest surprise ever.
Sadly for Kei, but refreshingly for the reader, such a feat doesn’t make him a superhero. In the eyes of both the general public and governments, he’s a rare specimen who needs to be hunted down and handed over to scientists to be experimented on for life-a demi-human who must die a thousand deaths for the benefit of humanity.” – Vertical Inc.
Summary of Episode 1: Kei is like many high school kids; he has a steady group of friends, cares about his family, and spends a lot of time worrying about passing his entrance exams. Unfortunately, his current life has come as the result of some sacrifices, namely his close childhood friendship with a boy named Kai. Kei’s mother disapproved of the friendship since Kai was carefree and significantly less studious; in her eyes, the road to maturity is paved in part by the cultivation of one’s relationships, and only those who exhibit positive traits are worthy of association. Kei and Kai still see each-other around town, but their interactions are strictly limited to wordless acknowledgement.
Kei realizes with horror that he is one of the reviled Ajin. Copyright Polygon Pictures.
In school, Kei and his classmates are learning about Ajin, a new species of intelligent life that appeared during a war in Africa seventeen years ago. Ajin are unique in that they can be mortally injured but cannot die. This makes them of great interest to several world governments, and once they’re discovered (generally when they are injured by chance and are able to quickly recover), they’re captured and experiments are performed on them in captivity. Kei seems disturbed by the concept, and as he crosses the street deep and thought, he’s hit by a truck. And then, his mangled body rises up from the bloody pavement and Kei realizes – he’s been revealed as one of the most hated beings on the planet. It isn’t long before the police begin searching the town’s outskirts for him, and Kei calls the only person he can think of who might possibly not try to turn him in to the police – Kai. Kai has already begun setting things in motion, and rushes to save his friend, no questions asked. The two ride away in the dark of night, fugitives for the crime of being other than human.
First Impressions: First of all, it bears mentioning that this series is another of Netflix’s late-casts, similar to Knights of Sidoniaand The Seven Deadly Sins, so it will be appearing in an official capacity at a later date (they’ve said “Summer 2016” but not given a more accurate time frame). Normally it would be my practice to watch an official version of an anime series since I really believe that anime streaming has virtually removed most of the need to watch fansubs (and now most of the sub groups are either ripping official subs and adding stuff like -san and -chan, or their translations don’t demonstrate a clear understanding of English spelling or grammar – I think all the good translators have probably gone legit). In this case, though, I was personally interested in the show from reading the manga, didn’t see a lot of other impressions of it (since it’s not easily available), and wanted to see ahead of time if it was worth checking out in full at a later time (I have a Netflix account but for some reason it’s like pulling teeth getting me to actually use the service that I pay for every month.) I think this is why I never checked out Knights of Sidonia (though I did buy the DVD and will watch it… eventually). I didn’t want a repeat self performance.
As for the first episode of Ajin, I was pleasantly surprised. I’m familiar with the general story from what I’ve read of the manga (I’m not far in but have at least read what’s covered in this first episode), and this is a good adaptation. One of the fears I had going in stems from the fact that this is both 1. the story of a teenage boy who (unwillingly) gets some special (and very violent) powers and 2. the general concept puts the series in the “edgy” category. I’ve had supremely bad luck with this sort of thing in the past – Deadman Wonderland is a good example of something that was really popular and people on the internet swore up and down was really intelligent and edgy, but turned out to be so, so violent and mean-spirited without much of a coherent message. I was worried that this would end up being another “sad teen fights violently with a bunch of people” anime.
Kei finds himself cornered by the police. Copyright Polygon Pictures.
I think what quelled that fear for me, in both the manga and this episode of the anime, is that the friendship between Kei and Kai seems to play such an important role in establishing the plot. Their relationship seems to represent a microcosm of what is happening out in the world – Kai is misunderstood and assumptions are made about his character because of how he looks and the way in which he disregards school, just as the entire world has made assumptions about Ajin and how “othering” them has given society at large an excuse to mistreat them and remove their rights as human beings. In a way it’s a sort of clunky allegory for race relations and the way we have treated almost anyone who is “different” – disabled folks, people on the autism spectrum, trans individuals… the list is extensive. In any case, one thing I really appreciated was that Kai was ready, no questions asked, to help his friend despite the fact that their relationship hadn’t been close for several years. It’s a level of kindness and emotional maturity that surprised me, especially since teen boys in anime tend to be given short shrift when it comes to being given any sort of sensitivity or basic humanity.
I’m betting many of you are wondering about the animation in this series, and it’s definitely worth mentioning. We seem to be entering an age when 3DCG animated anime is becoming an actual thing. I have a lot of mixed feelings about that. Anyone who’s watched the anime series Shirobako (and for those who haven’t, you really should because it’s downright excellent) will probably have a greater appreciation for the role that CG plays in anime and the work that goes into making convincing 3D elements, and I really try to keep that in mind. Unfortunately, I don’t think that CG is yet up to the task of convincingly recreating the look of typical 2D anime, and in many chases the movement of the characters just seems… off. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why this is and why it’s so difficult to accept that 3DCG anime is probably an inevitability, and I think what it comes down to is consistency. One of the hallmarks of Japanese anime is just how inconsistent it is. When you see characters’ faces from different angles, the mouth positions and how they appear don’t actually make sense a lot of the time, but it’s a type of stylization that we’ve come to expect and accept as consumers of the medium. There are also often vastly different animation styles and frame-rates even within one episode of anime. Important scenes are given more attention and often certain animators are given free reign to go off-model and demonstrate their particular command of movement, and I find that these special scenes really give me a thrill and are one of the reasons why I enjoy watching anime. The use of computer animation removes that unexpected attribute.
Kei makes his escape. Copyright Polygon Pictures.
That said, I think what Polygon has done in this series actually looks pretty good. It took me until a few minutes into the episode to stop being distracted by the 3D models and the cell-shading and such, but much like watching Gankutsuou (which you should also go watch as soon as you have the opportunity if you would like to see why people used to like Gonzo), once your eyes have adjusted the look kind of becomes a non-issue. It’s not my favorite, but it’s admittedly a lot better than watching a show that’s consistently off-model for reasons that have nothing to do with artistic style (side note: people complaining about Ping Pong being off-model need to go educate themselves). I think people who are not married to anime’s particular aesthetic will be even less distracted and will likely not be bothered at all (this is a series I would show my parents, for example – my mom isn’t an anime fan, but she does like horror and thriller-type series so I bet it would be up her alley).
I really liked this first episode. I don’t know if I’ll keep up with it right now since now I feel kind of bad about downloading an unofficial video of something which is going to be released officially, even if the official release isn’t technically a simulcast. It’s funny how your conscience can adjust like that, isn’t it?
Pros: The show takes a concept that could easily be mishandled and injects it with enough humanity to keep it from becoming one-note. The friendship between the two male characters forms a believable core.
Cons: The 3D animation will definitely be an issue for some. It’s a Netflix late-cast, so the official release won’t be available for several months.
I spend a LOT of time on the internet. Sometimes in my travels I read and watch some fascinating and informative things. Sharing is caring, so here are some of my favorite things from the past week or so:
