Hige vs. Otaku

So, 2009. I’ll admit right now that, for me, you were more a year of manga than anime. And you were certainly more a year for music, film and gaming in a broader sense. But still, there were a few notable moments that gave me a lot of joy and reminded me why I stick around to see what’s coming next. The list below is purely a personal selection – I make no claims that it is definite or even the slightest bit objective. I likes what I likes. Also, the blog’s title is a reference to the PJ Harvey album of the same name.

Eve no Jikan (eps 4 – 6)
The latter part of Yasuhiro Yoshiura’s Eve no Jikan, or Time of Eve, came out this year and concluded one of its most unique series. Unique for its distribution, really pushing the streaming media method with an unholy alliance with Crunchyroll and unique for its visual flare, perfecting Yoshiura’s penchant for 2D/3D synchronicity with amazing effect. And while gorgeous to look at Eve excelled most at characterisation, achieving a fantastic level of depth in six fifteen-minute episodes.

Initially tipping all manner of hats to sci-fi tenants of yore, Eve quickly moved away from Azimov and became concerned more with the psyche of its characters, giving full emotional range to humans and robots alike. Primarily a consideration of how we would behave in a world where androids had become self-aware, Yoshiura and Studio Rikka took an authentic approach and ran the gamut of fear, empathy, intolerance and love. No flights of whimsy crept in needlessly, removing events so far from reality that we as an audience didn’t have to think about what we were watching. Fundamentally, like all good science fiction, Eve no Jikan took the familiar, offset it somewhat and asked us to consider what we would do if our moral and ethical compasses were challenged.

Children of the Sea (vols 1 – 3)
Another sort of pioneer of digital distribution, Children of the Sea is Daisuke Igarashi’s ethereal trip into the deep unknown and the flagship title of Viz’s SIGIKKI imprint. Notable for being one of the first series by the publisher to be released online for free before receiving a hardcopy release as well as being the first title of Viz’s commitment to straight-up-legitimate Seinen, by way of Japan’s IKKI anthology magazine.

Children of the Sea stands out because of its irreproachable distinctiveness. Igarashi’s idiosyncratic artwork seemingly flits between fantastically detailed to sketchy, almost cursory, while losing none of its charm or effect. His eye for natural beauty particularly stands level with Mushi-shi’s Yuki Urushibara and both share the same masterful flare for the cinematic. The story is as enigmatic as the characters it follows, but the journey they take and its ability to inspire awe from the natural world will move you and feels unlike you’ve read before. It’s environmental without being hamfisted, opting to show us why we should care about our surroundings rather than dryly lecturing, and the story takes a similarly indirect, visual approach. It feels special, all the more so once you get a copy of the lovely print edition in your hands, and needs to be read.

Other SIGIKKI titles to keep an eye on are Bokurano, Dorohedoro and Saturn Apartments — all of which are available to read on the site.

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0
The prospect of two children trying to be reunited with their parents Against All Odds sounds trite on paper, but in practice Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 moved away from cliche and focused more on how actual people would behave in the situation (warts and all). The two kids are completely convincing – Marai is a moody tween, too inclined to humour her immature pessimism, and her brother Yuki is a spirited little boy who finds adventure at every opportunity. The two offset each other fantastically while behaving in a believable and honest way. Miri, their makeshift guardian, has her own problems weighing heavy but still finds it in herself to protect them and be the kind of every day heroine you’d hope to meet in those circumstances. The series goes through all the emotional peaks and troughs you expect but still maintains a sophistication that avoids mawkish sentimentality.

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 was a natural disaster story with a lot more heart than most natural disaster stories; a considered and genuine look at the possible events that would follow a 8.0 scale earthquake in the Tokyo metropolitan area, and a sincere study of human endurance and heroism.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Everyone knows Fullmetal Alchemist is great, but I only took heed of the praise this year with Brotherhood and it was the best anime-related decision I’ve made all year. I’m including this purely to acknowledge how reliably brilliant it is from week to week and show love for the only show I remember to watch on the day it becomes, uh, available. I’ve written at length about the reasons for my love of this series elsewhere, so I won’t go on about it here. Just know it’s one of the best shonen anime available and should be on your radar if the ritalin-deprived child deep within is still thrashing about.

Darker than Black II: Gemini of the Meteor
Thus completes the BONES trifecta of excellence for 2009. The sequel to the beloved Darker than Black, it returned equipped with new characters, some old familiars and a wholly more tolerable narrative framework. My love and respect for this second series comes initially for its choice to jettison the frustrating two episode arcs of the first series. They worked fantastically for a DVD watch or marathon but man alive it was irritating when you followed the weekly schedule. DtB II opts to tell its story in a more continual way and lets the slow-burn develop more consistently.

Granted, those two episode arcs had many benefits, and the general lack of meaty character development in this series is its biggest fault, but I stand by it as an excellent companion piece to the main series and one that had all the highs and lows that attracted me to it in the first place.

Its ability to recast previously supporting characters into spotlight roles is particularly commendable. July takes the role of Yin in the retooled ensemble, somehow carving out his own sense of personality regardless of being an emotionless doll, and is possibly the most moe thing I’ve ever seen. Hei’s dramatic fall from grace gives his character a bit more mileage – as does Yin’s mysterious omnipotence. The new characters fit nicely into the established world, too, particularly protagonist Suou who is suitably existentially tormented. The brutality and headfuckery (oh, the last episode . . .) are as present and vivid as ever and it gave me everything I wanted from a sequel. Maybe just not a, uh, cogent, comprehensible conclusion. Thems for sissys anyhow.

Ponyo
What feels like the spiritual successor to Totoro and a complete achievement in unabashed children’s film making, Ponyo is a force of nature. That recurring sequence of Ponyo nonchalantly running across a maelstrom of waves seen in trailers is apt in summarising the spirit and vigor of this film. I’ve never been so swept up in Miyazaki film before and while not as sophisticated as his previous films, it’s no less magical. I’m not going to preach to the choir about why you should see a Ghibli film. All I want to do is encourage you to see it sooner rather than later. It’s a complete joy to watch.

Oh god, the puns. THE PUNS.

Gaijin Top Fives (based on UK release dates) after the break

I’ve been sleeping on a couch half my size for the past seven nights. The good news is that the coming week promises an actual-factual mattress; the sad news is that my excitement over this prospect is depressingly immense. My body has yet to comment.

itsubun has dubbed me a wandering rurouni and it’s a spot-on anime analogy for my current nomadic existence (sans the epic samurai skill0rz and fawning bitches). I’m flitting from one friend’s house to the next until I venture off to pastures huh huh yeah dude green in Amsterdam on the 15th, after which I’m going home until September. The going home bit is when I’ll actually have access to anime and the time to write about it. I can’t explain how much I’m looking forward to this.

So, this is your standard ‘not dead, certainly not on hiatus’ stopgap post. Sorry for not having the imagination to compensate, but destitution is a surprising time-consumer. As is melodrama (this post took me, like, ten minutes to write, seriously). Anyhow: plz standby, BRB.

Normal blogging will resume when I have a house. And some money. And a job.

FUCK YOU, LIFE CHANGE. FUCK YOU.

This is just a swift entry to announce that Hige vs. Otaku is now officially listed under 9rules anime community. The Triad are made of all sorts of win and I’m honoured to be apart of their citadel of quality. I’m also in the company of many excellent animublogs and judging by the successful candidates list, the best is yet to come.

In other news, I started my 9 to 5 job today. After falling asleep at a friend’s house while watching Deadwood tonight, my greatest fear has already been realised: I am now a tedious human being. Urgh.

Bateszi’s new Afterimage, a rather robust example of the recent spat of microblogging in the community, made me consider why these microblogs exist. The reason is easily presumed: convention. Bloggers, especially those who have been around for a while, feel that their main blog has a set of conventions – ones that relate to the writing style and content themselves and others that relate to the supposed expectations of outside sources (i.e. readership). These standards become all the more exacting as the blog grows in age; as they home into what’s popular, what suits them as a writer and perhaps most importantly, what fits into the perceived identity of the blog itself. These unconscious dictums at once help the blogger build a distinct character for their blog but equally stifle and repress any desire to stray from the formula.

These microblogs, then, seem to exist independently from the main blogs because they don’t fit within these prescribed conventions. But while IKnight and Owen’s microblogs are perhaps more a practical example of wanting to quickly log thoughts as they happen, Bateszi’s new blog suggests someone that feels trapped by the expectations he has of himself and what he perceives others to expect of him. The formers are a practical solution to lapses in memory (often acting as annotations for future ‘legitimate’ blog entries) while the latter seems more in turmoil over what his main blog has become and how it doesn’t necessarily suit him as a blogger anymore.

I sympathise with Bateszi. My place in the community isn’t as notable as his, so the outside pressure he may feel isn’t the same for me, but it is the same in how my self-imposed expectations have limited my methods of communication. Often I’ve read a blog that has said something in an interesting way, yet I discount it as unsuitable for my own. The reason? It just wouldn’t suit the bizarrely indistinct set of conventions I’ve made for myself over the years. I honestly have no idea where they’ve come from – perhaps a desire to maintain a level of quality in my writing – but their constraints are surprisingly acute. But why can’t a brief three line thought on a show be just as communicative as five hundred words? Sometimes saying ‘I like it because it’s awesome’ really is enough, but overcoming that nagging feeling inside that shakes its head, saying that isn’t enough, it isn’t productive, is nigh impossible.

So many times I’ve become so flustered with my inability to overcome these perceived conventions that I’ve wanted to do what Bateszi has done: start again and be free of the bullshit that doesn’t actually exist outside my head. And this is the important point: it doesn’t exist where it actually matters. If I suddenly turned this blog into a microblog that was nothing more than brief brainfarts on what I thought was interesting then my readership wouldn’t abandon me, accuse me of laziness. Some might even say its an improvement over the convoluted mess I usually churn out. Bateszi’s Afterimage is particularly comprehensive in what he reflects on, too. So much so that if he just posted those reflections on his main blog then people would receive them with the same appreciation and respect as they always have done. But the blogging identity Bateszi has formed, a product of that shaping convention, means he can’t. It’s a complete bitch and something I wholly relate to. I suppose in writing this editorial I want myself and others that feel trapped by it to be free and do whatever the hell they want. Expectations, perceived or otherwise, mean nothing when we do this for fun. Blog in a manner that suits you, that makes you happy. Fuck the rest.

Blogging awards are funny things. They seem to mark a particular point in a community’s lifespan that suggests establishment. Establishment in the chronological sense of showing a robustness of community in supporting such ceremonies, and establishment in the sense of drawing out a canon of popularity, influence and age.

I hate them as a rule. They impose a sort of food chain that, regardless of the original egalitarian intent, feels dangerous in how it entrenches bigotries and draws very specific lines around things that are wholly subjective. Equally, they just seem so obvious and redundant. I remember in the early days of blogging when an award ceremony appeared and Kottke swept the decks. It’s not hard to imagine the resounding NO SHIT SHERLOCK that immerged from the lips of those who read the results – like it’s no surprise that exactly the same thing happened with Anime Bog Awards’ nominations and what’s happening with its results.

I don’t mean to attack the ABAs particularly – it has a number of good qualities that, if they existed independently from the back patting, I’d wholly support. I’m just worried about what it will do to a community that I’ve loved because of its nebulous existence – because people have had their own favourites without any particular authority to validate or deny them. There’s nothing wrong with recognising bloggers who occupy important roles in the community, but I can’t see the point of overtly awarding them for something that is expressed through other, healthier means. We all know who is important in this community; the influential are explicit by their nature of being, yknow, influential. As are the humorous and the thought-provoking. I know who influenced me, I know who gets me thinking and makes me laugh. Surely these personal things are so subjective that to canonise them is to dilute their meaning completely?

It’s all very doom and gloom to say this, I know, but the ABAs do have elements I love. Ideally if it was just concerned with awarding new blogs then I’d be enthused to the point of irritating. And the ABA is commendable in how it gets new blogs some attention. I just fail to see why categories like Most Influential etc need to exist when their participants speak for themselves. Do we really need to know who is Most Most Influential? Don’t we all know, in a general sense, that Hop Step Jump, Memento et al are the reason for the existence of most current blogs? Their recognition is implicit through practice – in the way they spur others to start their own blogs – which feels the ultimate form of community building to me. My biggest fear is that by standardising their position with a shiny gold badge it alienates the potential influence of other blogs and the different approaches they present.

My main point, then, is that award ceremonies compromise the natural growth that keeps a community healthy. It’s funny that Impz, one of the core responsible for the ABAs, also produced the best alternative to it: a nostalgic snapshot of our history. Because fundamentally this is all the inaugural Anime Blog Awards will be: a history lesson and statement of the bleeding obvious.

Yes, it’s that time again. I subvert the main principles of an editorial and use it purely to explain why I’m such a terrible anime blogger. You’d think after three years of repeating exactly the same process it would alert a man to his ebbs and flows, to the innermost core of his blogging soul. But no, the cycle of neglect and guilt continues and I roll out another editorial to explain away my negligence to the five people that still read.

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In Search of Number Nine recently posted an interesting article on anime and the pretentious, using the analogies of Hemingway and Joyce as proponents of story-telling and artistic purpose (for lack of a better phrase) respectively. My reply comment verged on the epic, nearing 400 words (as a Lit student and possible future journalist, my life revolves around the dreaded word count) and it whipped up all sorts of thoughts on the subject. Enough, I thought, to justify an entry of its own.

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On a whim (that had been gesticulating for ages) I decided to register www.higevsotaku.com this evening and map it to my Typepad account. This means all my posts now follow that url as well as the original hvo.typepad.com. Nothing major will change; your links, RSS feeds and suchlike will be as functional as per usual. It just means my e-pen0r has grown slightly and is now a heathly thats-average-isnt-it-dear? six inch love machine.

But to those who link me on their sites, seeing as you’re all sexy beautiful people, I’d greatly appreciate if you’d update your blogrolls to the new spangly dot com address above (without the /hvo extension). I’m planning a few big changes in the new year and this domain is going to be the bridge between the old and the new. Your cooperation will be appreciated with undying, awkwardly over-the-top gratitude.

I’m not one for linkblogging, but with the semi-recent talk of visiting Japan I thought this article posted on The Guardian’s (Britain’s premier wishy-washy lefty newspaper – a personal fav) web site would interest.

It has a good selection of hotels based on budget, pretension and culture, with cost of rooms per night listed as well as local bike rental fees for good measure. #1, Tokyo Ryokan, does sound the most appealing, but more for its domesticity and lack of curfew rather than the obvious budgettastic value. To quote the article,

The Japanese equivalent of the family-run B&B, Tokyo Ryokan
is a good bet for travellers hoping for a brush with traditional Japan
during their stay in Tokyo. Only three rooms, but all suffused with the
life-affirming aroma of fresh tatami mats, plus sliding fusuma paper
screens and tasteful wooden furnishings. No curfew and guests are free
to spend their days lazing in their rooms if they wish. Showers and
baths are shared, although a dip in the nearby sento public bath is
recommended. The ryokan doesn’t serve meals, but with every possible
style of Japanese cuisine on your doorstep, that’s hardly a drawback.

· All rooms 3,000 yen (£13) a night per person. Bicycles can be rented nearby from 200 yen (90p) a day.

I love articles like these (there are others on Tokyo shop and restaurants, too), but they are hateful evil things for making me want to visit Japan. Only essay deadlines and bloated Victorian novels are allowed preoccupy my thoughts at the moment. Bad, Guardian web site, bad.