Hige vs. Otaku

Nintendo’s WiiWare feels different to its competitors’ equivalents. It accomplishes the same thing – relatively small, downloadable games that cost much less than their boxed siblings – yet two of its launch titles stand out as particularly distinct from the standardised fare of so-so indie games and revamped retro titles (luckily the Virtual Console removes the need for the latter entirely). Frontier’s LostWinds, a British game that’s sending people into throes of ecstasy, and Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, an unconventional contribution to the series, both offer something a bit more magical than the norm. They may well be the exception to the rule when it comes to consistent quality – god knows Nintendo no longer abide by their golden seal these days – but judged on their own merits both are excellent games.

FFCC: My Life as a King stands out because it’s the first WiiWare title released by a major third-party developer, it’s substantially longer than the other launch titles and, particularly for this blog, it’s Japanese.

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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.

First, props are due to the wealth of coverage Kaiba is getting in the ‘sphere lately. Not only is the attention surprising (though wholly deserved) but impressive, too. This is why left-field anime shouldn’t be feared; it’s not out to rape your mind and make you feel stupid (like Mike Tyson with a First from Cambridge). It makes beautiful and intelligent things happen.

So, seeing as I’m hopelessly slow with my coverage of the show, I’m going to use Mike and itsubun’s recent postings on this episode as points of reference. Both consider different elements while tapping into the general consensus well, and direct acknowledgment avoids any shifty acts of plagiarism. I guess those coat tails are just little too inviting when you’re slow on the uptake.

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Kaiba’s third episode is testament to the strength of the show’s core themes and ideas. Chroniko’s story of naive devotion to her aunt-cum-adoptive-mother and the subsequent betrayal of this devotion is startlingly affective considering its brevity. It drives home the disposability of physical bodies in the universe of Kaiba and subsequently how this disposability has royally fucked its value system – all within a very short but intensely moving story arc.

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Shigofumi seemed like a show at odds with itself. Like its protagonist Fumika, it had two personalities – one of candid introspection and one of flamboyant, often clumsy, extroversion. Its introspection offered many moving insights into Japanese adolescence, yet it played them out through such jarring melodrama that often felt awkward and difficult to relate to. JC Staff and their writers obviously had interesting things to say in their analysis of Japanese school life, and sometimes they succeeded when due subtly was employed, yet they constantly botched it with paper-thin characterisation and messy storytelling.

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I think it’s fair to say that the green space ostrich of Kaiba’s first episode is the coolest animal sidekick in anime since Dennou Coil’s Densuke. Or, dare I say, since Nausicaa’s Teto and/or Kai. Its first appearance, swooping into save the titular character, heralds the most energetic moment of the first two episodes which, in all honesty, isn’t saying much.

Yet it goes some way in debunking the expectations of those piqued by Maasaki Yuasa’s previous effort, Kemonozume. Kaiba is not an action show. It has its moments, but the contrasting art styles speak volumes in how each show differs in purpose. Kemonozume’s jaggy aesthetics never felt like they stopped moving, that its frenetic action sequences were only ever moments away. Conversely, Kaiba’s visuals don’t lend themselves well to dramatic movement. Rather, they fumble along like the characters themselves and rarely does an action show worthy spectacle occur.

What is spectacular about Kaiba is how completely magical it looks and feels. Its synthesised design, the bastard lovechild of superflat and Osamu Tezuka, creates strangely saccharine but completely absorbing world. It’s no hyperbole to say that Kaiba lingered in my mind for days afterwards. I watched the first episode in the midst of my finals as a guilty pleasure and could not forget what I’d seen, nor the innate desire to see it again. Kaiba perhaps lacks the ostentatious flash of many new anime yet it processes something much more vital – the power to adsorb and captivate. My one soundbyte in this sense is that Kaiba is the most colourful dystopia you will ever see.

Of course the story is a key constituent in manufacturing this immersion and Kaiba offers a massive amount of depth to compliment its magical, though constantly disturbing, visuals. itsubun mentions the strong classism vibe that run throughout these episodes (with interesting analysis of the dividing electrical cloud and the colour motifs) and these Marxist overtones particularly stood out in episode two. In Kaiba society is split into two distinct classes: the rich upper and the plebeian lower, and true to Marxist form the lower class is exploited wholly by the upper class for their own benefit. The analogy of the upper classes literally stealing the lower classes’ bodies might be a little heavy-handed in exploring the Socialist criticisms of capitalist society, yet it sets the scene brilliantly and makes the show feel unique.

Kaiba almost drowns in its own implication during this pair of episodes. How does the mind and body relate to one another – and is the former directly influenced by the latter? How does the disposability of the body affect morality and ethics? In the broader sense, how redundant is the notion of ‘status quo’ when the physical appearances of the show’s characters are so interchangeable? Every one of these dilemmas is completely thrilling and I can’t wait to ponder more. Kaiba, if you hadn’t noticed, is rather special.