Iwa ni Hana

An introduction of 'March Comes in Like a Lion (3月のライオン)': New manga series from the creator of 'Honey and Clover'

So Umino Chika (羽海野チカ), the manga artist who produced Honey and Clover, has started a new series on Young Animal magazine. The title of her new series is March Comes in Like a Lion (3月のライオン). As you may well imagine, there is something behind this strange title:

Apparently, there is a Japanese movie directed by Yazaki Hitoshi that is also called March Comes in Like a Lion (1991). In the movie, there is a line that goes like this:

三月は、氷の季節と花の季節にはさまれた嵐の季節、獅子の目覚めるとき。
March is the season of storms caught between the season of water and the season of flower, the time when the lion wakes.

Lovely line, is it not? It may be a reference to the English old saying: March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb.

I have skimped through the first two chapters quickly and I like what I see so far. The plot goes like this:

Kiriyama Rei is a 17-year-old young genius at shougi. He has just won a match against his old master. However, he is very introverted and socially awkward. His name Rei - meaning 'zero' - seems to refer to the fact that he has nothing. He has no family, few friends, and no place to which he belongs. However, he is the acquaintance of a family consisting of a young woman, Akari, and two young girls, Mono and Hinata. He deliberately goes to a high school where there is no shougi club. He has something that passes for friendship with a teacher at his high school, and with a rich young man who is something of a rival at shougi.

It seems to me that it is a slice-of-life story about finding one's ibasho ('the place where one belongs') in this world. Anyway, let us hope that this will be adapted into an anime series. I seriously think this has the potential to exceed even Honey and Clover.

(I am not sure if the manga story bears any reference to the 1991 movie though. I gather that the movie is a story of incest: A younger sister is in love with her elder brother. The elder brother lost his memory and she lies to him that they are actually lovers. Then they begin to live together as lovers...)

Markerting strategies of English anime ads and Japanese anime ads

I just noticed a curious thing about anime ads in English-language press - there are almost always quotations from critics.

Compare and contrast these two ads of Le Chevalier D'eon -

The English ad obviously has a few obligatory quotations from critics (though those critics do not seem to be well-known). The ad also describes the plot in the third person ('Obsessed with her murder. Possessed by her soul').

The Japanese ad, on the other hand, has a first-person voice: 'I shall offer all that I have (私はすべてを捧ぐ).'

Come to think of it, almost all English ads I have seen of anime have without exception quotation from one critic or another. Check out the ad of Howl's Moving Castle on the left.

Japanese ads, by contrast, seem to favour slogans in the first person. Check out the ad of Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo on the right, which says: 'Age of seventeen, just learned how to time leap.'

Granted, this may be accounted for by the fact that Japan has no anime critics as we know it in the English-speaking sphere.

A very interesting contrast this is.

Could this be a manifestation that English-speaking fans tend to objectify the anime-watching experience, whereas Japanese fans tend to subjectify it?

Two illustrators from the PRC: Rain and Wei Liu

Of late, I discovered these two illustrators from the PRC:

• Rain (More scans at Aethereality)

I have seen this artbook of Rain called Hua Ye (画夜) being sold at bookstores for some time now.* I must say, that the ephemeral and classical beauty in her work is something dear to my heart. Also, her artstyle reminds me of the artstyles of Amano Yoshitaka and Okano Reiko (of Onmyouji fame).

• Wei Liu (柳瑋)  (More scans at Aethereality) 

These illustrations are from her artbook Sou Lin Nan (鎖麟囊). According to traditional Chinese custom, when a young woman gets married, her mother would give her a sou lin nan, or a bag of treasures for her own use in her married life. In that sense, this artbook is like a bag of treasures (albeit one with a BL slant, it seems).

You know, these two illustrators definitely have the 'hardware' to be manga artists - all they need is the 'software' of thoughtful and well-told stories to make their name. Just looking at their artwork, they both strike me as artists with something unique to say. I for one am curious to know if the illustrations could be linked into some sort of a plot... I could only imagine the splendour it would be if some sort of story from the hand of these two artists were animated...

(I am not happy about the anime series in the coming fall season at all. That's why I took to brooding about anime series that could have been, you see.)

* I first saw this with Ori-dono, actually. And we both agreed that w-dono would love this artbook to bits.

DCAJ to license around 20 anime series to Chinese video portal 8850.com of Wangyou Media

I was skeptical when I first read this news from a Chinese anime forum, but a search on Google seems to confirm that the news may not be bogus. Here is the gist of it:

• In the trial period from September 2007 to March 2008, around 20 anime series will be licensed from DCAJ to the Chinese video portal 8850.com belonging to Wangyou Media.
• New episodes will be free within 2 hours to one week of the Japanese airing time. If you want to watch older episodes, a monthly fee membership is required.
• The videos will be DRM-protected and subtitled in Chinese. The transferring speed would be 300～500kbps.
• A report will be made to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry at the end of this trial period.

This is intriguing news indeed. Here are some questions just from the top of my head:

• Will 8850.com block foreign IP addresses, like so many licensed Japanese video sites?

It looks to me that you have to be a customer of a Chinese internet service provider in order to have access to that site. Besides, it would make sense for them to block Japanese IP addresses if only because of direct competition with Japanese video sites they may have licensed the same series to.

• Why are they trying this out in China out of all places instead of, say, the US?

China has a great anime pirating industry, of course, and this trial is supposed to investigate the means by which anime piracy may be eliminated. However, one would have thought that in terms of disposable income and relative strength of currencies, the US would be a much more lucrative market for this model of distribution to be launched in.

• What does the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) have to do with it?

Could it be a METI-directed economic policy to promote the Japanese anime industry, just as METI and its former bodies used to direct the heavy industries in Japan? One could only wonder.

[UPDATE: 16/08/2007]

Here is a Japanese article about Wangyou Media's cooperation with GONZO. I will comment more later:

ttp://www.gdh.co.jp/news/20070815.html

[Newsflash] 'Franz Kafka Ein Landarzt (カフカ 田舎医者)' by Yamamura Kouji (山村浩二)

So it's in the news that Director Yamamura Kouji is working on a project called Franz Kafka Ein Landarzt. Since his official website is bilingual, for once I actually do not have to do much by way of explanation and translation:

ttp://www.yamamura-animation.jp

And Shochiku's official website thereof, though not yet open, looks to be a bilingual one as well:

ttp://www.shochiku.co.jp/inakaisha/

As with the director's previous arthouse fare, I would expect this project to be a creative exercise in absurdism.

(Incidentally, this is the only work of Japanese animation other than Genius Party which actually has a bilingual website in my memory... which only goes to show how different the tastes of overseas fans can be...)

'Byousoku 5 Centimeter: a chain of short stories about their distance (秒速５センチメートル)' by Shinkai Makoto (新海誠)

Rating: 4/5
Gallery of screen captures

[Spoilers ahead]

The first thought that crossed my mind when I finished watching Director Shinkai Makoto's Byousoku 5 Centimeter was a passage from Romain Gary's novel Europa:

Goethe said that's what love is - when you can be with someone and still go on imagining him. When you see the person as he is, you may go on loving him, of course, but only because he reminds you of the other, the real one, the one you go on inventing.

I think this pretty much sums why it is so difficult for Toono to let go of Akari all these years, because he keeps her alive in his imagination and he keeps feeding 'life' into the imagined Akari, even though the real Akari and he are miles apart.

Look at those scenes where Akari and he are together in his imagination/dreams:

My knee-jerk reaction was that this is what 'eternity' would look like if I were to give a graphical representation of 'eternity'. It seems that they are on the other side of time, staring back into the mundane real world.

Which brings me to the next point I wish to raise, why bother to animate a story when you could have shot it with real people in real settings?

Just look at the precision of details:

Why bother to draw all of that when you would have easily captured the same images with a digital camera?

After all, Byousoku 5 Centimeter is a story about ordinary people and does not involve the likes of mecha or magic powers - there is little technical barrier to shooting it with real actors in real street settings or film studios.

I think this question goes into the heart of what makes anime attractive - or, to put it another way, what anime fans share in common that make them attracted to anime in the first place.

I have an untested theory that anime fans tend to be... by disposition not attached to the physical world. They get by with the education mill and then join the workforce - some of them may do extraordinarily well, some less so. Their level of participation in society at large tends to stop at earning their bread - they are just not the type who get anxious in not participating in the mating rituals, climbing the greasy pole etc. I think it is mostly because their mental life is too occupied with something else better than the real world has to offer. It is not that they are maladjusted - they tend to do this by choice.

In other words, anime fans are like Toono. In some corner of their minds, they have already carved out a more beautiful place for themselves, from which they stare back into the mundane world.

I know this by itself still does not answer why the story has to be animated. I just know by instinct that it would be wrong to have it shot on film. Perhaps one cannot explain art after all.

What are your thoughts? I would like to hear some feedback and hopefully I may be able to bridge the gap in explanation.

High frequency words in anime OP & ED: 'Tsuyoku naru' + 'Mamoru' (I)

There are words and phrases in the lyrics of anime OP  and ED that seem to be 'done to death':

• Mirai ('future'): kanaitai mirai ('the future one wants to bring about'), mirai wo sagashite ('find one's future') etc.
  

• Yume ('dream'): yume no hajimari ('beginning of a dream'), yume no tsuduki he ('towards the continuation of a dream') etc.

• Michi ('path'): michi naki michi wo erande ('choosing a path when there is no path'), michi wo yuku ('to walk down one's path) etc.

However, I wish to focus on a pair of phrase/words for the purpose of this post: tsuyoku naru ('to become strong') and mamoru ('to protect').

You see, it all goes back to a conversation with a Japanese friend I had about the most appropriate English translation of kimi wo mamoritai in those love confession scenes in shoujo manga, otome games, mainstream anime etc. The straight translation, of course, would be, I want to protect you. But depending on the context, it would probably be  more natural to translate it as:

i) I love you.

ii) I want to take care of you

I was then asked what is the difference in nuance between I want to protect you and I want to take care of you in English. My answer was: The former presumes a state of danger in the outside world, whereas the latter presumes a state of want. To take care of someone has the meaning of supporting someone economically, but to protect someone does not have the same meaning. (I wonder if this says something about subconscious beliefs in the Japanese mind and the western mind.)

In other words, where it would be natural for in English to use I want to take care of you, it would be more natural to use I want to protect you in Japanese.

Which brings me to tsuyoku naru. To protect someone from a state of danger, one has to become strong. But strong - ill-defined in English as it is, is even more ill-defined in Japanese. I am pretty sure that the phrase otoko no tsuyosa means something entirely different from its English equivalent of male strength. There seems to be a sanctified 'halo' around that Japanese word tsuyosa ('strength'). Those of you who know Japanese would know what I mean. 

But then come to think of it, most of the high freqency words in anime OP & ED have 'halos' around them.

There is something forward-looking about anime OP and ED as a genre, and many words in the lyrics have 'halos' around them because the songs sing of the future (ie. hope). Seldom do you hear an anime OP or ED singing exclusively of the past (though it may sing of 'moving on'). The OP of Gankutsuou may qualify as one that losses in the past, but then it is an English song sung by a French artist.

I shall return to discuss this in more depth.

Just a rambling post on the latest doings of Wabi Sabi in the realm of anime

... besides being absorbed in Mononoke, which I cannot do enough to pimp recommend.

• Translation of the Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto spin-off novel.

This is still provisional but very likely Ori-dono, a long-standing fan of my now inactive Iroha blog, will be paying me to translate the novel. But this will not happen until September though.

The good news is that I will be translating it into English - so English-speaking fans can.. ask Ori-dono to 'help' them read the novel. The bad news is that I think the story probably lends itself more readily in Chinese translation than English translation. Ori-dono is quite concerned about preserving the poetic /literary quality of the story, and I think Chinese by far does it greater justice. After all, I guess Ori-dono hired me mostly because of my translation of OP's lyrics into faux archaic Chinese and all the faux archaic Japanese poems I wrote. Still, I shall do my best with the English language as it is.

• Dropping a bunch of July shows.

... including Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei, which started off with some promising black humour but soon degenerated into a silly show. Director Shinbo Akiyuki has tons of talent when it comes to visual aesthetics - you see flashes of it in Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei, which makes it all the more painful a reminder as to the splendour he is capable.

And Baccano! - I am putting this show on hold until I hear positive reviews from sources I trust that it is worth the time. The story seems too scattered to draw one in at the moment.

And Shigurui -  this show makes very bold attempts to use symbolic visuals rather than dialogues to advance the story. But the bloodshed and violence are just too heavy-going to be my cup of tea.

And Mushi-uta - I just lost interest within ten minutes of the first episode.

• Being bitter about the lack of any groundbreaking show on the horizon for the October season.

In a few days when the September issue of anime magazines will have come out in Japan, there will be waves of information about the shows to debut in the fall season. Not that we have not been hearing news here and there though. I for one have been waiting for the one big news that will make me panting for the fall season to come - but so far, nada. I know Production I. G. will be selling Ghost Hound hard, but the more I learn about Ghost Hound, the less I am convinced that I will be a converted fan...