The future is now

Things are changing apace in the world of licensed manga. I was kind of shocked to find that Rumiko Takahashi's latest series, Kyoukai no Rinne, is already available to read in English, direct from Viz. For free. Online. This is insane.

Of course, anything by Rumiko Takahashi is going to get the blockbuster treatment. What remains to be seen is what other stuff will follow in its footsteps. Just popular shounen works? Shoujo? Seinen? There are also lingering questions about online reading. Will they eventually put it behind a pay wall? Ultimately, some sort of online, subscription-based service seems likely. That sounds reasonable to me; however, kids who aren't getting a paycheck may not be so enthusiastic about the prospect.

Similar things have been happening with digital distribution on the anime side of the fence. Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood is probably the biggest thing to be streamed so far, and a surprising number of shows from the current season are also streaming from Funimation. Crunchyroll is expanding its roster of legal titles, and some of them don't suck, for once. 

As this trend continues, will fansubbing and scanlation face an existential crisis? To some extent the lines have already been drawn: there are the "drop when licensed" groups, and then the others. The latter will continue unless they receive legal threats, and the truly hardcore may even go underground. But for what? In this era, where licensors are sensitive to fan concerns about source fidelity and censorship, there are fewer and fewer reasons to go it alone. On the other hand, traditional (by that I mean those who drop when licensed) will face slimmer pickings as time goes on.

So, is a golden age coming to a close? In a sense, yes. But it's come about because fan-translation has fulfilled its promise of bringing anime and manga to the mainstream. 

GAH

daisuki nante arigatou

watashi mo zutto suki dayo

motto kyou wo

motto ashita

jiyuu na iro de hirogetai

Rie fu - Vintage Denim

This is something I was looking at, quite a few months ago. Since then, I've increased my knowledge of Japanese significantly, I'd say. Plus I can use the dictionary much more effectively.

Rie fu's "Vintage Denim" is from her Rose Album. It's mostly in English, and the Japanese parallels the English, but there's some slight differences here and there. I feel confident enough to tackle a mostly-Japanese Rie fu song now, but anyway, here's the few Japanese lines of "Vintage Denim":

VINTEJI no DENIMU o haite KAATEN o aketara sotto

Wearing vintage denim, the curtains softly brighten with the dawn

amai RINEN ni dakare KAATEN o maku youna

Embraced by sweet linen, as if rolled up in curtains

BIGGU BEN ni akari ga miete miagetara sore wa ookiku

You see the light from Big Ben, if you raise your eyes to its greatness

tsutsumikonde kono machi mo atatakai

Wrapped up, this city is also warm

tsumetai kaze ni hokorimamire no kutsu

In the cold wind, shoes covered in dust

They say that Rie fu isn't that popular in Japan, which is an understandable shame. I see her music as a synthesis of American and Japanese styles. She's got the harmonic and melodic complexity of Japanese pop, with the instrumentation and rhythms of American pop. And her voice -- it's an honest voice, with a twang that probably came from the time she spent in Maryland. Going up against the Oricon with this innovative hybrid takes some guts, and I'm surprised that Sony has marketed her so consistently. Lately though, her music has seemed more commercial in nature -- the Tobira Album feels more produced, and has less of what I've come to regard as the Rie fu trademark: long, drawn-out explorations, with unconventional song structures and complex chord progressions and melodies. Perhaps she's feeling pressure to be more mainstream, to "succeed" in the Japanese market. I can only hope that she hangs on to the rawer blues/rock influences that drove the (really impressive, I thought) Rose Album. 

Finally, some Sazerac

For a while now, I've been wanting to get my hands on the Sazerac-label rye, a six-year-old item that seems to be a standard-bearer among ryes. Presumably it has something to do with the glorious Sazerac cocktail, made with rye, absinthe, and bitters. I was in the city today, so I dropped by Cask, the spirits store that's an offshoot of Bourbon & Branch, and picked up a bottle.

My usual rye is the Wild Turkey 101, which packs quite a bit more heat than the 90-proof Sazerac does. I'm sipping my way through a bit right now, and it's taken some sips to recalibrate my mouth's expectations. So far, I can say that the Sazerac is a complicated dram: beautiful aroma, astringency in the mouth that becomes tender sweetness, and a pleasant lingering burn down the throat. (Very tsundere.)

I was in the city to see the dentist, got a filling replaced and whatnot, so my cheek was numb for quite a few hours. I walked up to City Lights Books, read through a few things. First time I've been there, but it felt just like other quirky bookstores in the Bay Area. I read a bit of Kenzaburo Oe's A Personal Matter, which I'll have to find some time to read in its entirety. Then I looked through James Gleick's Faster, which had a riveting opening but seemed to run out of steam. Then Ross Duffin's polemic about equal temperament caught my eye, and I flipped through his arguments about how ET is not always the best, and how various other tuning systems have gone in and out of favor through history. I ended up taking home James Gleick's Chaos, and the All Over Coffee book, which I've been meaning to obtain ever since it came out.

If you're ever in the SF Financial District for lunch, you should go to Muracci's, which makes the best tonkatsu I've ever tasted. I had it for lunch today, and just thinking about it makes me salivate for more.

Fall 2008 impressions, part 1

A few days ago, I was reading around the manga-related sector of the interweb, which appears to have expanded significantly. Reading longer-form pieces makes me want to produce some of my own, especially as my essay-writing skills need some honing. Through my years at college, I was only able to write one essay where I felt I had done a really good job. Part (most) of it was procrastination, and the rest lack of inspiration. With anime and manga I'd have ample inspiration, with the challenge of constructing a thesis and collecting supporting arguments. We are cursed to live in interesting times, and I am cursed to imagine that I have something substantive to say about them.

The task currently at hand, though, is to relate my first-episode impressions of the Fall 2008 anime season. My comments will probably not be as snarky as I had anticipated when I first started this blog; the all-corrupting moe has gone to work on me and lowered my standards. Anyway, in rough order of consumption:

Toradora!

Out, damned spot, out I say

So I read the novel translation over at Baka-Tsuki. I read the manga scanlations. For whatever reason I can't get tired of this franchise. For sure it's Yet Another Chibi Tsundere Series, but it does get to be more than that. Later I feel that it becomes "neurotic girls are neurotic", but I digress. The first episode of the anime is fairly well done. It's not particularly brilliant, but it's competent. I will probably end up watching it.

Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka

Sure, Rozen Aso is the PM now, but a more lasting solution to Japan's leadership crisis is...

I expected this to be bad, but it's not as bad as I had expected. The voicework is pretty good; the animation is lazy. The only distinction seems to be a preoccupation with stocking-related camera angles. I didn't expect Katagiri to be so damn moe though. This will be this season's "trashy romance series" for me.

HYAKKO

Oshi-

This was pretty ambitious. Pretty insane, too. I approve. The most insane part was the next episode preview: seiyuu talking in their normal voices? Tripped out, man. Note to people thinking about more manga based on the four-girls-in-high-school setup: please, susser Tod, no. (Pontera, I'm talking to you.)

Kannagi

Do you eat taiyaki headfirst or tailfirst?

Not bad, not bad. Much is being made of the fact that "Yamakan", the original director of Lucky Star, is heading up this one; the OP is certainly lol-worthy. And it does seem KyoAni-like in that the animation is well done. Nagi's got the right amount of condescension in her voice too. I'm looking forward to the rest of this.

More to come.

Sigh

So I took the GRE yesterday. I could have done better, but I did well enough, I think.

Anyway, I went to Kinokuniya afterwards. I got more stuff than I had anticipated:



From left,
よつばとしろとくろのどうぶつ - Yotsuba & Monochrome Animals
この世界の片隅に（中） - In This Corner Of The World (middle volume)
ぱにぽに６ - Pani Poni 6
お茶にごす。１ - Ocha nigosu. 1
もっけ８ - Mokke 8
アリア７ - Aria 7
さよなら絶望先生１４ - Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei 14
へうげもの７ - Hyouge Mono 7

I got the Yotsuba book on a whim. It's pretty much a children's book, fairly minimalist.

In This Corner Of The World is by Fumiyo Kouno, the author of Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms. I really like Kouno-sensei's art...

I picked up Ocha Nigasu because I was intrigued. I was hoping for more tea ceremony stuff, but for most of volume one it seems like a gimmick. It's largely just delinquent stuff. The art's kinda cheap/minimalist, but there's some good puns.

Ordered more stuff from bk1 last week. I got sea shipping this time, so we'll see how long it takes to get here...

Progress

I just finished reading Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. It's not a book that I can claim to have understood totally, nor does it lend itself to easy explanations. In addition to that, it's quite a different book than what I expected, though in retrospect it's very Murakami. (The only others I've read are Kafka on the Shore and After Dark.) What I expected was some sort of validation of my jazz-listening, whiskey-drinking, resigned existence. That's exactly what I got, actually, but with a whole bunch of other madness tossed in that brought it to a completely different plane. I feel relieved, somehow, and strengthened in my resignation. As ironic as that sounds. In any case, I will have to ruminate further on this subject -- with Murakami novels, the rumination never ends.

On other fronts, I voted in Saimoe for the first time in my life. Thanks to a number of sources, some outdated, I cast votes for Ayano and Asou. Only Asou won, which is fine. Ayano isn't that great; Shinra is too much of a repackaged Haruhi; the darned StrikerS and Sky Girls crap needs to go away; and I haven't watched true tears yet, so I have nothing to say on that matter. I think I will stay away from Saimoe until there is someone truly worth voting for. Like, today has Kaga from Zetsubou, but she's never going to win against Shana. Plus I bet if I watch/read Shana, I'll be quite a willing Shana fanboy.

On the anime side of things, I am feeling rather fatigued. Geass R2 is the only thing I've really kept up with, and it's sapped my energy for following anything else. This is because R2 has been FAIL for quite some time now. Yes, 21 was mostly fail too. They may as well have brought on the LCL -- in stunning 3D. Geh. I'll forgive Sunrise if they crank out a whang-biz ending, but I'm not holding my breath. They've already thrown away so much promising material in the pursuit of empty expediency.

Manga's always great, though. I'm going through MangaScreener's back catalog.