Subatomic Brainfreeze

SO HOW'S THE COLUMN COMING ALONG is what a lot of people say to me lately

So I'll tell you. Doing the New York Otaku column has been a lot of fun and also quite difficult. Coming up with stuff for every weekday is no joke! Anyway, I haven't been linking it out as much as I should be, so I figured that I would go over the past month in the column and point out the ones that were particularly good.

A lot of what I'm doing is just letting my (imaginary) Japanese audience know things that I think nobody would ever tell them. A lot of it is kind of "yeah, I know" for American fans, but there are other things that I think would still be interesting!

Takashi Murakami and "there is no Cool Japan"- Given what I'm doing, I felt that when I saw this interview with Murakami I had to chime in as an American observer. Anime's image here is a hell of a lot more complicated than "Cool Japan", and also Cool Japan is kind of bullshit.

An explanation of the brony phenomenon as the direct American equivalent to Japanese moe fandom.

A story about Pocky and how American anime fans irrevocably tied up the snack food with their identity.

Of course, a piece on the very small trend of Japanese mahjong and American anime fans.

My all-time saddest otaku story. If I ever write a book about this stuff, it's probably going to be the first chapter.

And in which I out my friends on owning Japan-priced anime and get to talk about Akibaranger.

Akibaranger comes recommended. I thought it was going to be obvious, weak parody of the most-parodied subject in otaku-land, but it's really funny, not totally self-deprecating, and unexpectedly sharp. Give it a watch.

THANKS FOR COMING TO THE PANELS AT I-CON. ALSO I'M SICK

Hi, everybody, it's me, convention-sick Dave, and bluuuuuuuuuuuuuugh, I feel like shit.

But yes, if you're here from any of the panels, thanks for coming. If you aren't here from the panels, and that's the more likely case, I'm going to tell you what I ran.

MD Anime was gdgd Fairies, Idol Fighter Su-Chi-Pai, and the dubbed first episode of Garzey's Wing, which was dropped on the crowd Tomino-style with no explanation. All of these went over really great! I wasn't completely sure that people would be into gdgd's style or see the same mockumentary (BUT REAL OFFICE DESPAIR) appeal of the Suchie Pai stuff, but they loved it! Garzey's Wing, of course, I had full confidence in.

I used some tokusatsu intermissions for this panel to break it up: the first fight scene of Goggle Five and the Battle Fever J scene where the heroes first put on their suits... and dance.

MD Anime 18 was a guided tour of the Blood-C TV series, and after that the full length of MD Geist. Very simple panel, very effective. I combed through Blood-C for both its most boring parts and its most disgusting parts, and by the end the audience had both begged for mercy from the rampaging vampire hordes... and from Saya's songs about what she did this morning. Both the MDA panels were huge raving successes and again, thank you all for letting me entertain you.

The Game Center CX panel was okay? I actually spent the most amount of time on this one, and I think to the crowd it looked like the one I spend the least amount of time on. On a third straight hour of paneling with little sleep and too much caffiene, I actually felt myself crashing during the panel. Worse still, my presentation wound up shorter than anticipated, Media Player Classic started to crash on certain files... basically I could have done a hell of a lot better.

The mahjong panel I was late for. Really late. I apologize. First time I've ever been late to a panel. Blame me for going for a nice breakfast and not realizing exactly how long that takes in Long Island! I ran the panel at super-speed to a tiny but surprisingly interested group. Thanks to the people who stuck it out, and I'm so, so sorry to the people I abandoned. Won't happen again.

Other than that, I-Con was a good time as usual. Thanks to staff for arranging things: you all work too hard and I appreciate it.

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU UP TO, DAVE? A NEW COLUMN IN JAPAN AND A CONVENTION IN LONG ISLAND

Hey, guys. You've likely noticed that the blog's been alternating between Tenhou recaps and posts about how great Kamen Rider Fourze was this week. The truth is, I've been very busy elsewhere this week.

First, I have a new column at animeanime, a Japanese industry news site, called "Letters from the New York Otaku." This is a daily column that attempts to explain the American anime fan subculture to the mystified Japanese observer, or merely present perplexing things and leave the reader to scratch their head. I want to restate myself there: daily. That is going to be hard. No way around it. I've put myself on a killer schedule, but this is an amazing opportunity and I'm going to take it. Right now there's a deep backlog for the column. Expect stories explaining such topics as the failure of Gundam in the States, American anime fans' attachment to Pocky, and of course the bronies. I'm extremely excited about this column, and I hope you are too.

Will anime coverage at this blog decrease? Will I be writing less for Colony Drop? I'm just going to guess yes to both. I'm working on projects for both sites... but that stuff's definitely on the back burner right now. And when this week's stuff clears up I will be getting back to the Kawaiikochans' exciting adventures in gaming kingdom!

Second, I-Con 31 is this weekend at Stony Brook and I apologize for not mentioning it sooner. It snuck up on me just as fast as anybody else: this week has been writing the column, doing Astro Toy, and assembling my four panels all at once. I will be running:

-Most Dangerous Anime (and 18+)

-Riichi! (the Otakon mahjong panel)

-Old Man Vs. Old Videogames: Game Center CX (this is new)

And I'm putting the finishing touches on all of those panels as we speak, at the same time. I barely have time to be writing this blog post!

So yeah, I'm busy but I'm busy on the internet, so you're going to be hearing from me plenty no matter what. See the "my gigs" column in the upper left. I recommend you follow the Twitter (@sasuraiger), where I am rarely absent.

Dear Toei, WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT YOUTUBE

If you didn't know, Japanese media giant Toei requests more takedowns from streaming video sites than anyone else in the world does. This has a lot to do with the fact that they produce extremely popular anime like Dragon Ball and One Piece: in fact they just tried to sue a bunch of Americans over torrenting One Piece, a ridiculous case I doubt will go anywhere.

But I don't even want to get into the full-episode thing or online streaming. One Piece is streaming online, after all, and there's no reason Toei shouldn't ask Youtube to take down the full episode downloads that probably pop up constantly on the site. Toei doesn't just do that with their properties, though, or they wouldn't be the #1 requesters of Youtube takedowns in the universe.

Toei does its damnedest to erase any trace of any title they have the rights to from the internet. As watching Kamen Rider Fourze and Kuuga has gotten me more interested in Japanese superhero shows lately, I found out very quickly how impossible it is to find things like the openings for the shows on Youtube. And I don't just mean the current season shows, I mean any of them. Toei must have some kind of automatic deletion system going, because only the worst copies of those videos make it through. Like you might find a guy taping his TV, or a severely aged VHS copy, or something with Indonesian fakesubs on it. Search "Kamen Rider" on youtube and all that's left are the theme songs (audio only) and toy reviews. It may as well not exist.

The last straw that made me decide to write this post was when I noticed that a lovely subbed video of the opening to World Ninja War Jiraiya was removed from Youtube. Really, guys? Why? This show's gotta be thirty years old, it's not like someone's going to rush to the store and buy a $50 two-episode DVD or whatever!

Also, and this is a complaint that extends to the anime business, what possible harm is there in that 90-second sequence-- the sequence that was created specifically to advertise your show-- being freely available online? That's how people find out about shows, that's something that catches their eyes. It's supposed to. Ask fans of robot anime, we've all seen every single robot OP ever, even if the show's not available in English. I use Sasuraiger as a handle online because it sounds good, and I really love that opening scene.

The Toei thing actually gets worse, though. Toei actually has a Youtube channel where they post a large amount of full episodes their back catalog, mostly 70s and 80s stuff with a few Rider shows from last decade in there. When I saw that they were doing this, I subscribed. Well, guess what? The channel is region locked. You can't watch any of that stuff outside Japan.

So let's look at what Toei expects of you if you are outside Japan and interested in Riders or Super Sentai. Don't pirate the shows online, that'd be illegal. You want to watch them, though? Uh... go to Japan, watch them on TV, buy them on video for ludicrous prices (which is the sales model for super-fans who already saw the show on TV). If you don't want to do that, well, Toei says, our superheroes just don't exist. Please ignore the anniversary celebrations, Christmas trees, any action figures you may have on preorder, and 5 yearly team-up movies. We're in a global culture and the best thing to solve that problem is to just pretend stuff doesn't exist.

Meanwhile, import sites routinely sell out of cheapo toy henshin belts at ludicrous prices (I have an Astro Switch here, and I'm pretty sure it's just a repurposed printer ink cartridge) every god damn season, but Toei doesn't believe there's a market so you're all boned. Toei's a big, old company, and they're probably so big that people at the company know this and can't do anything about it... but policies like this don't benefit them. If anything, they are actively stunting the growth of both their existing audience and their potential audience. Youtube and other streaming sites have been powerful tools for the promotion of obscure and cult movies especially and this "it doesn't exist" strategy is a joke. We're fans, not suckers. Don't treat us like the latter.

In conclusion, I really wanted to put up some of Fourze's goofy scenes... but Toei would just have my Youtube account deleted. That's a shitty relationship to have with your fans! Instead, enjoy this Friends mashup on a site that Toei does not yet bumblingly police.

Astro Toy goes to Year Three: WHAT I THINK ABOUT JAPANESE TOYS AT THIS POINT

I've been nerding on Japanese toys for a long time, but the Astro Toy gig has really forced me to look out at lines beyond my particular interests and all around the business. It's been really interesting! Originally that last post was supposed to just be a listing of what I thought of the respective lines, but it really quickly turned into a "how and why" of the column that was much too long not to run on its own. So here's the post that was originally intended, as a part two instead. This might also function as a buyer's guide.

Figma: Boy, I have a lot to say about Figma. This is now the dominant action figure for the modern otaku, to the point where pretty much everything in otaku-world that doesn't belong to Bandai (Gundam, Tiger and Bunny, many others) becomes a Figma. Because they're the winners, it's easier to be hard on them.

Main points: Figmas are small, cheap (but not kids' toy cheap), and while very playable, their design philosophy values looks more than play. Given market trends, subjects are mostly girls. The line is perfectly average: like Revoltech, you can tell there were times when the people making the toy gave a damn (Golgo remains the best Figma I've looked at for the column by a long distance) and times when they didn't really.

Right now the review of Figma Guts is up and I found it passable by Figma standards. The reader response has been "No way! Look at that face!" There are a lot of elements that are a little cheapo-looking on that figure-- legs, detailing on the stuff strapped to the body, the mechanical arm-- but all of this falls under typical Figma for me. I don't expect amazing detail from a Figma, and as much as people don't like that face I think it's one of the better Figma faces considering how spotty they usually look. I have to wonder if my eyes are just gradually getting used to the line's middling quality.

Nendoroid is really straightforward: it's less an action figure and more a display figure that you put together. Kaiyodo used to do an Eva line like this, but it wasn't super-deformed. Pretty simple, and I can't even imagine how you'd get the idea wrong. These are fun to do columns for, but because they're so limited I try to buy two or find ones with lots of extras. Only drawback is that the stands are complete shit.

If you want to buy Figma or Nendoroid or any other Good Smile product you'd better be happy with what's out right now, because GSC's business plan is to make everything in small numbers and only do one production so that fans are compelled (or, in many cases, forced) to preorder if they want the figure. Online buyers in particular get screwed, as really popular characters like Homura sold out to preorders months in advance and were then never made available again. Figmas aren't good enough to pay insane collector markup (I've seen them go for $200) so seriously, don't even bother looking. I'm just glad I got the Kaiji figure while I could.

Revoltech: Revoltech is kind of the anti-Figma: toy first, everything else second. Heavy on visible joints and action features, something meant for the owner to actually sit and play with rather than set up for display just once. Mostly male characters and robots, given the nature of the toys. However, sculpts on these can get really ugly, especially lately. The "Fraulein" line exists but was, by all indications, a failure.

I admire these toys for the purity of their vision (Kaiyodo also sells a completely original line that's a clear attempt at Microman in an age when there are no kids left to buy that stuff), but that isn't necessarily folks' priority. Note, however, that I haven't bought a Revoltech in months because Figma has all the popular characters. This will change later.

Bandai stuff: Obviously Chogokin is my favorite. The modern Chogokin stuff strikes a balance between obsessively faithful detail, high-quality construction and playability that's just unbeatable. Every one of these I see is top-shelf, even in the scaled-down Super Robot Chogokin line.

Figuarts is a line that wildly varies in quality, to the point where I would only be able to recommend pieces individually. It is hard to believe that Figuarts' terrible figure of Kazuma from Scryed is in the same line as the wonderful Tiger and Bunny figures, for example. I'd be careful with these and take a close look before buying, but they seem to do costumed heroes (sentai and Kamen Rider) better than other stuff. They're fun to buy for the column because I have no idea what I'm going to get. I have Figuarts Fourze on preorder for my own personal enjoyment.

Bandai has a direct ripoff line of Nendoroid that's been coming out in force with Tiger and Bunny characters but I haven't had space to look at it, and it also kind of looks crap.

We have barely even done Gundam in two years. It's like this: most good Gundam stuff is in plastic kit form, and, real talk, they don't pay me enough to put in the hours involved in putting together a kit. I used to do Gunpla, and I know it won't even look good unless it's painted! Maybe if some nice diecast comes out for AGE (nice diecast Unicorn sold out a while back) we'll talk. The SDX figures are awesome though.

Myth Cloth is a pretty cool line but I doubt I'll be able to ever slip Saint Seiya into the column again, just sayin'. The huge Sagittarius figure is completely out of our range, even though it's 40% off at Amiami right now.

Other lines: Medicos' Jojo line does everything possible better than comparable lines for the same price. I was amazed to see how well-served Jojo fans are by the figure business: they must buy a lot. I keep trying to see if Griffon's Figutto line will get better, but they're basically medium-grade 1/8 PVCs with joints. Nowhere more evident than with that Marisa figure.

I am really looking forward to what Sentinel does going forward and I have a few things of theirs on order for the column (one is sitting next to me, actually), including an obvious and popular character I absolutely can't wait to get.

If all goes well with it, I'm buying something from CM's for the column soon. They only do stuff from old robot anime so it was really hard to find something of theirs for Astro Toy!

Evolution Toy's Squid Girl is the only time I've bought something so bad for the column that I'd never trust the company that made it ever again.

Astro Toy goes to Year Three: THE GUIDELINES

It's been two years on this column! I'm sort of shocked it's gotten this far, and we don't do anniversary celebrations or anything like that, so I thought it would be fun to just talk about it on the blog for a while.

It was a complete happy coincidence that ANN found me, but I've been buying toys from Japan for long before I took up this column. I was into Gunpla back in high school, but eventually I didn't have room for a "workshop" anymore as those kits required to look good. That led me into Japanese action figures, and because I love robots and wanted high-quality stuff, I was led towards the high end lines like Chogokin and so on.

The last thing I bought before I stopped buying toy robots was a Max Factory Gaogaigar. At that point I was completely satisfied. By the time I started this blog I was more or less done with figures, so there was never anything on here about it.

And then a couple years ago I was recommended to write Astro Toy, and by sheer coincidence I happened to have a history with the subject. My shelves have been cleared off, and most of my old toys put in boxes to be sold off one day. My shelves are stocked again with "keeper" toys and the rest are in more boxes to be sent off to ANN or given away at cons. I'm more involved now than I was before.

Couple things about the column, straight up: I'm free to pick what I want for the column, but my choices can and do get rejected every once in a while when management doesn't think the audience would go for them. (if you've ever seen me post a figure a lot on Twitter or something and it doesn't turn up in the column, then, well...) I aim to balance a couple of factors:

-quality of toy. No gashapons, no trading figures, no cheap stuff! This is important to me because this is inherently a nitpicking column, and the low-grade stuff usually doesn't deserve to be nitpicked. Yes, the sculpt on that gashapon set is poor. The paint doesn't hold up to inspection. Of course they're crappy, the figures cost 300 yen each! "Look at this crap" is only fun when it's something egregiously terrible, like a bootleg or something.

-popularity of character. If there's a decent, Figma-or-higher piece of a character from a really popular show coming out, we're always gonna buy it. However, it must be something decent. The popular Jump series are perfect examples: yes, you can easily get a figure of Ichigo or Naruto and yes, those guys are about a thousand times more popular than anything I post about on Astro Toy. It's probably a piece of crap six-dollar toy you distract a small child with, though. If it doesn't make for an entertaining read, or if it's obviously a product that isn't worth the money (I've mentioned the Alucard Revoltech in the column: I'm still considering buying it for the column but it really does look terrible), I just don't buy it.

-features, playability. This is pretty much why we don't do fixed-pose PVC on the column. It's not that I dislike them at all, I've got quite a few: I'm just expected to write a good-sized article, and there's little you can say about PVC other than the obvious comments about sculpt and paint. Heisei Democracy did great, insightful PVC reviews and they did them in 400 words. I have to say a lot more than that. Nitpicking a PVC just isn't a full article, and stretching out your nitpicking just to get more words on the page is one great way to write a shitty, boring piece of work.

I want to avoid, by all means, the column becoming an endless, boring parade of Figma, Revoltech, and Nendoroids of popular characters. It's not that those lines are bad, it's that they're very consistent at a certain medium level of quality, and there's only so much to say about one toy line no matter how many characters it produces. Readers will get tired of it, I'll burn out on writing it. I already repeat myself so much as-is, you know?

We all have to have fun here, myself included, or what's the point of doing the column? Unusual and lesser-known toy makers and lines, classic and cult characters, figures with fun gimmicks, and sometimes indulging my own weirdo personal tastes: all of that stuff is important to mix things up, and I do go out of my way.

This makes certain purchases obligatory (the great action figures for Tiger and Bunny, the wave of Madoka figures from Good Smile, big-in-the-West properties like Trigun) and certain figures infeasible no matter how much I like them (most super robot toys, the upcoming Saber and bike PVC).

The budget is covered by ANN--I would absolutely not spend this kind of money on toys myself-- and it's pretty comfortable, in large part because of the bad exchange rate sending the prices of even average Japanese toys out of control. The added cost of international express shipping  is tremendous too. When I started, a Figma was $35 or so shipped. They're now $50-60. Anything above that level starts to get into crazy land really fast. Barring big sales, really high-end lines like Real Action Hero or Soul of Chogokin are just out of the question.

When there are holes in the schedule, I try to fill them with deliberately wacky choices that the crowd either loves (nobody loved that near-defective Squid Girl, but the article was a success!) or hates (robots elicit near-total silence from the ANN crowd, but I buy one every couple months anyway). Again, I think it's really important to cover this weirdo stuff to give people a view of things that aren't even commonly found in Japan. It also means that since I'm constantly looking through toy listings, every once in a while I see something I really want for myself but can't possibly justify for the column... so I wind up spending my own money on it (Alter's Dizzy, Kamen Rider Fourze). Honestly, though, that's pretty rare. Last thing I bought for myself was Weissritter to complete the set with Alteisen: can't really justify buying the companion piece for the column when the readers didn't care about the hero!

Speaking of which, I'm always curious about my crowd reaction. I don't know anything about my pageviews, so I definitely use the forums as a microcosm of audience interest. Of course, given the very niche nature of the column, going by number of comments isn't a great idea... but when you get a crickets-chirping response you definitely take it into account for later. Only very rarely do I get hostile responses ("this column should be about PVC instead of ugly, boring crap!" was as bad as it ever got), so I think I'm running things alright.

So it's been a lot of fun, and I plan on continuing to run Astro Toy until either I no longer have time to run it or ANN gets rid of me. Thanks for reading the column, and an additional thanks to those of you who actually stuck it out through this mega post.

Treasure Island Sports tricked me into buying an empty box AND I DON'T WANT IT TO HAPPEN TO YOU

Alright, time for a toy public service announcement. After Christmas I found what I thought was a fantastic deal on a Soul of Chogokin Gold Lightan, a figure that's long out of production. $20 for this was too good a deal not to look into for a gold-plated transforming cigarette lighter robot, and so I put in an order on the suspiciously named:

Gold Lightan GX-32 18K Plating Figure Exclusive Wooden Box

The seller was Treasure Island Sports, and not to spoil the ending of this story, but Treasure Island Sports is to be avoided. The photo on Amazon was just a black box with the Saint Seiya logo on it. I assumed it was a placeholder.

Days pass. My buddy Mike Toole decided to go in on this too, and he suggests to me for the first time the terrible idea that this could just be an empty wooden box. This is possible: the Chogokin Lightan figure comes in a display box itself, and while it doesn't make a lot of sense, maybe the seller only has that part of the item. I would consider this a ripoff, but one where the seller could at least weasel into saying "this is what you ordered".

So here's what happened.

That's right, I got that damn Saint Seiya box in the mail. Nothing to do with Gold Lightan whatsoever. So this is definitely the wrong item, but it's still pretty heavy. Maybe there's something cool in there? Maybe I still got a deal after all?

Yeah, it's an empty god damn box. This is a display box for a Saint Seiya Myth Cloth figure. I believe it's a Bandai Hong Kong product, but there is no Bandai logo on this thing and it could well be a wooden box someone made and slapped the Saint Seiya logo on. It doesn't look like official merch, that's for sure. Again, this item has nothing to do with Gold Lightan. Adding insult to injury, the Saint Seiya logo fell off the front of the box the moment I removed it from the packaging.

So now I have to go through the process of getting a refund on Amazon. Unfortunately, Treasure Island apparently has a reputation for not getting back to their buyers, so we'll see how this turns out. Worse comes to worse, I'm sure that Amazon will refund me as soon as I have to bring this story to their attention: they did it for that defective DVD of Hollywood Cop, after all!

So, as always, be aware when you're shopping online. And don't ever buy from Treasure Island Sports.

 

November 20th, 2011: HOW DID KAMEN RIDER FOURZE OWN TODAY?

Yes, another one. Yes, I am writing real blog posts too. No, this is not necessarily a regular feature like the time I blogged Shin Mazinger, and no, I definitely won't be episode blogging anything this long. I really like this show, though.

November 13th, 2011: HOW DID KAMEN RIDER FOURZE OWN TODAY?

An essay in screenshots. I don't normally do this kind of thing, but I would have just done it on Twitter otherwise...

Never change indeed, Kamen Rider Club. You're the greatest.

MY FAST NEW YORK COMIC CON REACTIONS

I am aching and semi-conscious, but I really oughta make a NYCC post here before I finish my ANN work and hit the event up on Colony Drop.

There is a point at which the sheer attendance of a con becomes a detriment to it, and NYCC has been at that point for a while now. 100,000 people is simply too many. The entire Javits wouldn't have been enough to hold all these people, and we didn't have the whole Javits. Thursday, when the attendance was capped at 10k, was without question the best day of the weekend. From then on, the show floor was unbreatheable and I'm pretty sure that several of the lines were honest-to-god mile-long lines. As I said to people at the ANN panel, I really felt nostalgic for the relative peace and quiet of the biggest anime cons and their 20k attendance numbers.

If you had doubted my "anime ghetto" hypothesis at all, NYAF was back to prove it in style. Without getting too deep into it-- saving that article for CD-- the intent of this area is much more clear this year. NYAF is absolutely an event designed to corral anime con kids away from the main show floor: the space is little more than a huge lounge-- no open space, only seating, a stark contrast to the rest of the Javits-- and an artist's alley. Sure, there weren't many events or panels to speak of, but you could stay there all day if you were an anime kid-- and many did. The place looked even more like a daycare than it did last year.

I was also doing work for ANN: you can see my writeup of the Yen Press panel, and I gave an interview-- the first I've ever given in my life, imagine my nervousness-- that'll go up in a while. Feeling really "pro nerd" about now.

ANN panel went well: it was nothing more than audience Q&A with us, but the boss had some pretty enlightening things to say about the business end of streaming video. I got the best laugh of the panel, so I'm pretty content. Wish I'd brought more toys to give away: my two figures disappeared at lightning speed.

Skullgirls is gorgeous. Video doesn't do it justice, you need to go see the game on a TV with your own eyes. I didn't get to the other fighting games because even on Thursday, even with tons of cabinets, the lines were unreasonable. The reveal about SF X Tekken-- the gem system, by which the player increases base stats and other properties with equippable items that will very likely cost money-- sounds like an incredible, community-wide disaster in the making. We'll see.

I regret not actually making it to Pony Bar. I try to get a pint there whenever I'm at Javits. Oh well.