The End

About a week ago, I asked readers: “How has anime enriched your world?”

I got many great replies, and it was hard to narrow them down to just five.  But here they are.

This is the final entry on the blog.  Enjoy.

—

Digibro

Anime didn’t enrich my view of the world.

It became my view of the world.

There are things that I only understand by way of anime. There are things that I can only express in Japanese; but it’s not “real” Japanese—it’s “anime Japanese.” Like an avid internet user who can’t help but use memes in daily speech, I have to stop myself in conversations to find a word that the listener can understand, because the one in my head is something only a certain kind of anime fan would know.

Language is how I define the world. It is the means by which I understand and can communicate anything. If I can only express my reaction to a thing as “UGUU~” then my entire understanding of that thing is filtered through anime.

This has gone overboard. I’ve grown distant from understanding a world outside of what anime teaches me about it. It became true that the personalities and appearances of anime characters; the way that they speak, the powers they have, and the things they say when they’re having sex were all things which were real. Reality became altered.

It was hard for me to accept. I understood reality too well. I couldn’t stop believing that the world I’d been fabricating was a separate thing from the real world. And then I realized:

I love the world that I’ve fabricated more than the world in which I’ve supposedly existed.

Now, I live in an anime world. I’m married to a five hundred year-old pink-haired woman immortalized in the body of a young girl. When we aren’t indulging in sado-masochistic fetish sex, we defend the city from supernatural creatures and team up with a child assassin and a kickboxing trap, who come over every once in a while to have action-line-intensive orgies. Every night, my wife and I watch episodes of Hidamari Sketch and K-On!!.

As we kiss, she whispers, “lycopene.” As I turn off the lights, I whisper, “sharekoube.” We stifle a laugh.

Sabas

Sasebo, Japan. I can’t believe I’ve been here for 2 years now. I don’t get to see it 75-90% of the year, but it’s “home.” I don’t think you could tell me in middle school I’d be here, but I am. I didn’t realize it then, but the stuff I watched would have an enormous impact on where I am today. I wouldn’t have the same friends, nor be where I’m at without anime.

I definitely wouldn’t have the friends I have today without anime. Videogames and books haven’t netted me as an interesting and diverse group as anime has. Even if I am fearful of the majority of con-goers, when I went to Anime Detour and Anime Expo, I still met and interacted with quite a few people I wouldn’t have met elsewhere. Twitter has been a godsend for discovering a multitude of people who I can discuss and enjoy anime with as it airs. For an introvert like me, this is a blessing.  I’m able to break out of my shell and express myself to others in lovely 140 character thoughts.

It came to a shock to my high school classmates when I decided to join the military. I’m still in shock, myself. I really don’t look like the type that would pledge an oath and find myself whisked away to some distant land, but I did. I still question whether I made the right choice, but at the time, I had nowhere else to go. I lacked direction in my life, and my grades in senior year were garbage. I didn’t want to work at my parents’ store day in and day out, or so I’d convince myself. A Navy recruiter called me right around my 18th birthday. We talked a bit about video games, but guess what got my attention? He liked anime! So eventually I went down to the recruiting office and started talking about my future. What did I want to do? See the world, pay for college, and help people. Not soon after that…

It’s been 3 years in the Navy. 2 years in Japan. Do I have my days where I wish I weren’t in the military? Yeah. Do I regret being here in Japan? Well… come see me when I’m in Club Mogra on Anison night. I’ll tell you then.

Akirascuro

I’ve been around the block too many times to say that any individual anime has changed my world view. Anime no longer inspires me. I don’t watch Steins;Gate or Penguindrum and think to myself, “Aha! There’s something to be learned here.” Sure, there was a time when I looked up to characters in anime as role models— back when I was in 8th grade. I’ve long since stopped doing that. The worlds that anime characters inhabit are too rarefied, too essentialized, too fake for me to truly learn anything useful from their actions.

I’ve watched many, many series in my time. Many of them are lost to me. I struggle to name the series that I’ve watched last season— ask me what I watched three or five years ago, and nothing comes to mind. But what I do remember, very vividly, is every single experience I’ve had with other anime fans. I’ve met more than 200 people through my anime-watching. I’ve met five or six of my closest friends this way. We laugh together, drink together, brave Comiket together and create together. When I look back on my teenage years, I have no doubt that it is my “otaku” friends, and not the bullshit I did in middle school or high school, that I will remember.

For, you see, being passionate about anime shows themselves isn’t enough for me. As I grow older, my tastes will change and some of the shows I previously found enjoyable, I no longer will. At some point, I will reach an age at which I’ll find 99% of all shows boring and vapid. What then? I’d quit watching anime. I haven’t quit watching because I’m fundamentally interested in the people of anime, and as long as I continue to watch anime, I can continue to interact with others who watch anime. Otakudom is a spectacle. From avid figurine collectors to people who marry their dakimakura, from overly-friendly cosplayers to sweaty, maladjusted, mouth-breathing nerds with lisps, from belligerent, psychopathic yaoi peddlers to you and me (the everyman), otakudom contains every kind of personality imaginable. I loveinteracting with these personalities, engaging them, ridiculing them and participating in the creation of otakudom. That is my true passion.

So how has anime changed my life? It’s given me entertainment, friends, memories and much, much more. It’s opened my eyes to a whole new, insane world out there. It’s given me a platform to rant and rave about the things I find important (Hoshii Miki, etc). Otakudom is a place where it’s okay to be a little crazy. Otakudom has made me a little crazy. And that’s alright with me.

lvlln

How has being an anime fan enriched my view of the world? I can point to specific examples. Seeing FLCL as an adolescent gave me a new, I think more useful, perspective on the stage of growing up. Seeing The Tatami Galaxy as a young adult did the same kind of thing, but for a different stage of life.

But I get the sense that such specifics aren’t what you’re looking for. The most important way anime has enriched my view of the world is by exposing me to different subcultures and teaching me to accept all of them. It’s no secret that anime is a stigmatized medium, in no small part due to the many perversions that get associated with it. Guro, NTR, yaoi (heck, just plain old hentai), panty shots, to name a few of the tamer issues. I remember in high school and college thumbing my nose at even basic fanservice. But the more I got exposed to anime and interacted with its fans, the more I learned about appreciating such things for the variety they provide, regardless of their appeal to me. No matter how dirty, crass, or obscene, there is definitely SOMETHING there that makes them meaningful for someone else, and that’s great.

Maybe it’s what you call desensitization; when I hear of fetishes or subcultures that perplex or offend my peers, I just think, “huh, more power to them if that’s what they’re into.” And this extends to almost everything in life: Justin Bieber fans, Bronies, chubby chasers, gay men who want to get AIDS, a coworker who’s afraid of answering the phone, etc. I feel that I can appreciate these quirks without judgment, that I’m a more open, accepting person that before because of the anime I’ve watched and the fandom to which I’ve been exposed. Maybe this isn’t specific to anime, but to any similarly stigmatized fandom. That’s how anime has enriched my view of the world.

Renn

Two years prior, I wasn’t big on online. AIM? Call me, please. Facebook? Popularity contest. Twitter? For celebrity stalkers. Lolcats? Lolwut? Not that I could have phrased it like that back then. With regards to the web, I was out of the loop.

But anime thrives on the internet. After some friends got me hooked on the medium, the web was the logical next step. There, I learned about anime streaming, downloads, screencaps, preview clips, forums, and memes.

I thought the web was for weirdos; I was right. I just didn’t realize I was one. Because the biggest draw for me wasn’t anime watching. It was anime blogs. On blogs, I saw people much smarter and more impressive than me obsessing over these crazy cartoons. I saw people all over the world who loved, to the same extent, the same things I loved.

I had to participate on the blogs. I wanted to talk about anime. But to participate and be heard means more than just writing and streaming anime. It means learning the basics of html. It means Twitter and Instant Messenger. It means web words like “orz” are part of your lexicon. Anime was not just my key to the web. It was the pry that forced me out of my technophobe stuffiness and launched me into the modern era.

That’s not entirely a good thing. I’ve spent too many late nights gobbling blog archives and tweet logs. It’s a junk food hangover in the morning, but without the sleep involved. But I know it’s a good thing overall. I still have a lot to learn, but knowledge of social media is a necessity for today’s job market. Doesn’t hurt to have blogging on your resume these days.

And more importantly, it’s made me really happy. I’ll never neglect real life, but it’s fun to flail over hobbies online and not be judged (too harshly). It’s fun to connect with people all around world over something as simple as a late-night, Japanese cartoon.

So, how has anime enriched my life? Got me onto the Internet. Got me onto 2DT’s blog. Doesn’t get much better than that.

—

A final word, before I close the doors.

Anime can be a second reality.  It can be an escape, a reprieve, a haven away; Door Number One is the geeky stuff, Door Number Two is everything else, and ne’er the twain shall meet.  I think that’s easy enough to do.  It’s much more difficult to live in both worlds at once.

But that’s the ideal, at least for me.  Visual culture – anime, manga, visual novels, everything we enjoy – can be a lens that helps us love the here and now.  Of course, it isn’t easy.  It takes thought, and perspective, and a willingness to shed cynicism.  But we should strive for this.  It’s worth striving for.

And how wonderful reality becomes then!  Hobbies, entire lifestyles, friends, lovers, the precious understanding between one human being and another: All of these and more, right at our fingertips, all because we share a love for this stuff from Japan.

Our world, plus this, is beautiful, prismatic and complex: A perfect 2-D teleidoscope.

Thanks for reading.

 

Variations on a Ku-Ku-Ku: Haganai, Chuunibyou and the Fantasy Self

Continuing my musings on the Enneagram of Personality.  Read the first part here.

The following post will feature only screenshots of Kobato doing her sideways-V pose.

Kobato is difficult to categorize.  At fourteen, the brain’s electrochemical systems have only just started to put together the patterns that characterize adult thought.  At that age, you’re still puzzling out what a personality even is.  So I’d say Kobato right now is Type Four: The Individualist…  But it’s less about her character than it is the character of an age.

Type Fours feel different.  Nobody understands them; they see themselves as walking, unrecognized, at the precipice of love and loneliness.  As you can imagine, this setup often leads to self-esteem issues.  Unhealthy fours cope by indulging in a “fantasy self,” an imagined version of who they’d like to be.  An aimless young man, for example, pretends that he’s a brilliant mad scientist, Hououin Kyoma.  Or a little girl with no friends reinvents herself as Reisys VI Felicity Sumeragi, a noble mistress of the night.

In other words: Four is the chuunibyou type.

Akirascuro also believes in the fantasy self.  But to qualify as chuunibyou proper, he says that there must be an accompanying urge to do.  A case of “8th-grade-itis” requires some form of acting out, even if just the ineffectual, delusional kind: Kuroneko in OreImo threatens to use black magic against people who bully her, and Lelouch is admired in Code Geass because he uses the Power of Kings to enact precisely the revenge he’s always wanted.  The common thread in Akira’s definition is motive inspiration: a spark of nerdrage as bright as the sun.

But is that really what characterizes chuunibyou?  If you’ve ever known a self-absorbed middle schooler (or been one yourself — no shame in that), then you know: Awkwardness, lameness, utter uncoolness, thy name is thirteen.  Indeed; the worse off you are, the more likely you are to indulge in fantasies of a unique destiny.  It’s a directly negative relationship, and that’s the most important part.

Chuunibyou isn’t merely power fantasy in itself.  Not even power fantasy that leads to action.  It’s the tension between power fantasy and pathetic reality.

So, losers and good-for-nothings: Rejoice! Your chuunibyou is glorious.

 

Idols in Love: The Blogosphere x The Idolm@ster (Final Part)

At last, it ends here.

Part 1

Part 2

Takatsuki Yayoi

The charm of Yayoi is her perfect sincerity.  She is an open book, which is why she needs someone who won’t take advantage of her naiveté, and who will appreciate her emotional frankness.  Schneider is just the right fit, a gentle person who appreciates the comforts of domestic life.  They would go grocery shopping for a home-cooked meal at the Takatsukis, ending with a family game of karuta – and, after her siblings have gone to bed, a little quality time on the couch.

Shijou Takane

Takane is odd.  If Iori is one end of the rich girl character spectrum, Takane is the other: A lady ever so slightly removed from normalcy.  Mefloraine, a meticulous and thoughtful person in her way, would savvy her eccentricities while keeping the Moon Princess down to earth.  On a chilly winter morning when Mef is artist-blocked, they would go to the beach to collect shells, sharing a thermos of chocolate tea and listening to the waves.

Amami Haruka

There is no formula to Haruka, no special hooks or idiosyncrasies, except an interest in music and a kind of glowing positivity.  Foshizzel is an ideal match; their mutual joie de vivre would reinforce itself.  They would eat at a MOS Burger, then hang out in a music shop, flipping through records and trying out the instruments.  Cynical onlookers will roll their eyes and tweet things like “Dear annoyingly happy couple in the guitar section, please GTFO,” while secretly being very jealous.

Hoshii Miki

Everybody wants Miki, but few are ready for her.  If you’re the kind of person who worries at all, her independence and devil-may-care laziness (and tendency to get hit on) is a sure recipe for meltdown.  Digitalboy, though, might be able to roll with her motion, while being relaxed enough to let her take care of herself.  They would visit a summer festival and go on a gut-busting gastronomic bender through the food stalls, ending with fireworks on the riverbank.

…

All of these ships are people I’ve gotten to know personally.  I’ve met them, heard their voices, worked with them.  I’m able to write about them because they’ve breached the boundary between virtually real and for-really-real.  This series doesn’t even begin to cover everyone.

If you’re looking for a rhyme and reason, here it is: 2011 has been unlike any other year for me, and it’s all thanks to you.  We’ve watched anime together, shared meals, made wonderful music on the blogosphere.  I feel immensely lucky, and I hope I’ve done the same for some of you.

Readers, fellows, friends: You are the light in my life.  Merry Christmas.

 

Idols in Love: The Blogosphere x The Idolm@ster (Part 2)

My mad shipper fantasies, continued.

Otonashi Kotori

Kotori knows how to make a man feel special.  Like static electricity, her femininity is subtle but attractive; it demands not just strength and assertiveness to make a good match, but also a certain sophistication.  Vucub Caquix has the right mix of gentility and masculinity to show her a good time.  They would go to a jazz bar for a drink: whisky soda for her, Scotch on the rocks for him…  and if he’s very, very lucky, she just might sing a little something, too.

Art by yachiwo.

Kikuchi Makoto

Makoto can be surprisingly sensitive.  Beneath enthusiasm and boyish charm, her heart says, “Appreciate me, reassure me, tell me I’m pretty and feminine!”  Yi, who can read mood like a musician reads music, would know just what to do to make Makoto feel like a lady.  They would go to a department store to model outfits, then hit the town for a night of club-hopping.  If that sounds a bit pedestrian, just wait — The morning-after breakfast is going to be fantastic.

Miura Azusa

Azusa craves romance.  Behind the fortune-telling and ditziness is a desire to fall truly, madly, deeply.  It’s girlish and it’s hopeful, and for the right person, utterly irresistible.  8C, the great unsung romantic of the blogosphere, would find his dream in her: An older woman for a younger man, a lover of love to match a lover.  He would take her on a drive to the pier, where they’d share a candlelit dinner, wait for sunset and ride the Ferris wheel, reaching the top just as the city lights go on.

Kisaragi Chihaya

To love Chihaya is to chase an invisible storm.  The trick is drawing down the thunder, getting her to reveal the passion beneath her stoic exterior.  With Akirascuro, she would find much-needed spontaneity, and he would find in her a massive wellspring of inspiration.  They would go to a midnight concert and walk through Tokyo all night, warming their hands with hot drinks from vending machines while talking about life and love, until sunrise or the first train — whichever comes first.

And speaking of Akira…  This next bit’s from him:

Minase Iori

“Iori is a girl of fine tastes. She’s also incredibly high-maintenance. She wants to be loved and pampered, and only the best can adequately address her needs. In return, she’ll shower her gentleman friend with unlimited amounts of love (and perhaps access to her trust fund). Wouldn’t she be a perfect girl for 2DT? He’s classier than everyone else around by miles, and he’s patient and caring enough to give Iori the love that she needs. She’s fun around people she likes, and her cheer and childish energy would further enrich his life.”

The final part of this series will be coming to you on Christmas Eve.  Stay tuned!

 

Idols in Love: The Blogosphere x The Idolm@ster (Part 1)

If you hate Internet community inbreeding posts, prepare for some quality teeth-gnashing.

Akizuki Ritsuko

The grand conflict of Ritsuko’s heart is that she invests so much in a Type A, go-getter professional life, when in love she yearns to be taken by the hand.  Passive would-be romantics need not apply; with Ritsuko, you must lead.  Ghostlightning would be the perfect dinner date, but his wife would have his head on a pike by morning.

Ganaha Hibiki

Hibiki’s love is gravitational.  In many ways the opposite of Ritsuko, she’s the stronger half of a relationship, a pillar of joy with unshakeable loyalty.  With AJtheFourth, Hibiki’s energy and overflowing genki-ness would be balanced with a fine-tuned sensitivity.  They would go to an aquarium to see the otters.

Hagiwara Yukiho

Here’s a needy girl.  Yukiho brings out the best in those who have not just a gentle touch, but also a touch of patience.  TWWK would make her feel safe, read her poetry and talk her out of digging holes.  They would visit a fashionable promenade for lunch and window shopping (Also, again: Wife, head, pike, et cetera).

Futami Ami

Ami is fun.  Ami is energetic.  A romance with this Futami twin demands an appetite for new things, a sense of adventure… or perhaps a sense of responsibility.  KylaranAeldin would be more than her match in both respects.  They would invade a karaoke center at noon and sing themselves hoarse until dark.

Futami Mami

Who loves the shadow?  Being with Futami Mami means not only having an eye for subtlety, but also a supportive personality, to shine light on beauty overlooked.  Bikasuishin/mt-i would make her feel loved and appreciated for who she is.  They would watch movies at his place, sharing a blanket.

 

Looking Back on 2011 (AniBloggers’ Choice Anime Awards)

Hello again, dear readers.  Sorry for disappearing unannounced; sometimes reality intrudes.  But let’s get right back to it!

I’m extremely skeptical of the perennial claim that anime is fading.  If 2011 is anything to go by, we’re in a beautiful heyday, more satisfying in some ways than even the Akiba-kei boom of 2006-7.  Creativity is in abundance.  Things are good.  Let’s sit back and appreciate that today, shall we?

So, without further ado, here are my picks for the ACAA, arranged by season.

Image source: Pixiv ID #20317045

Winter: Puella Magi Madoka Magica

This takes home the trophy for tight, economical storytelling.  Even now, well into the age of the twelve/thirteen-episode show, most shows toddle around as if they had many more, only to crash headlong into a flaccid conclusion.  Studio SHAFT didn’t waste a minute with Madoka Magica; once the ruse of the first three episodes was up, we were taken on a thrilling ride to despair and back.  And at the end, like all good tragedies, there was bittersweet catharsis.

Shortlist: Hourou Musuko, Dragon Crisis!

Image source: Pixiv ID #19927855

Spring: Steins;Gate

So many adaptations crash and burn.  Either that or they collapse under the weight of references to the original, a natural consequence of a market that favors hardcore fans.  So Steins;Gate was a true rarity, taking its ambitious source material (conspiracies, time travel, the fate of mankind and the love of a woman — things geeks take to like a fat kid to a pudding cup) and making a TV adaptation that was faithful, thrilling, but most importantly, accessible.

Also, this.

Shortlist: Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko, Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai.

Summer: Usagi Drop

For characterization and scripting, Usagi Drop is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but where it really shines is its visual direction.  Rin and Daikichi live in an organic environment, full of lush colors and detail.  Little things, like the fact that people change outfits, do more to vivify the world than any number of gimmicky character designs.  In a medium so little-known for subtlety, in Usagi Drop subtlety is king.  Or queen.

Shortlist: The Idolm@ster, Mawaru Penguindrum

Fall: Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai

In some ways Akirascuro did a better job of explaining why I like this show, but I’ll still give it a shot.  If you look at the above image, it’s pretty much all there: Kobato the goth-fantasizer, unable to call on her dark persona when she has to deal with an overly-friendly stranger.  On the other side is Sena, the socially awkward beauty, who wants to be loved like in the erogames she adores, but who doesn’t realize that she’s failing at it and making Kobato very uncomfortable.

It’s a beautiful schadenfreude.  Haganai wins for characterization.

Shortlist: Un-Go, Last Exile: Fam the Silver Wing

 

Satori in a Sound: The Nature of “Ah.”

“All conditioned phenomena
Are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, or shadows;
Like drops of dew, or flashes of lightning;
Thusly should they be contemplated.”
- The Diamond Sutra

Nothing compares to the moment of discovery.  When the senses encounter something totally new, or when puzzle pieces have been laid out and clicked into place, and the only thing that remains is to witness —  Suddenly, voila, understanding!  Realization!  It’s a beautiful, fragile instant.

In Japanese, this has a sound.

Source: "Love and Devil," by Yanagi Masashi (H).

 

Ah. My cough is getting better now.—
高橋栄佳 Haruka Takahasi (@takhsiru) November 26, 2011

 

Source: "Anata wo Sutte mo ii desu ka?" by Itou Ei (H).

I feel that, similar to ehhhh??, this is a quintessentially Japanese expression.  Native English speakers might say, in its place, “ah-ha,” or “what,” or even “oh crap.”  But that substitutes options for elegance.  The ah encompasses a myriad of emotions.  Like the mystic aum that  Hindus say gave birth to the universe, the sound embraces both subject and object, questioner and the questioned.

Truth isn’t even necessary.  For example, after Masato’s ah in that first chapter of “Love and Devil,” Megumi proceeds to completely misunderstand the situation.  But if you catch your childhood friend having sex with a lolita succubus mere minutes after you stormed out of his house (or if you are said childhood friend, realizing that your goose is cooked), does any quantity of words suffice?  Can any explanation equal the absurdity of the moment-as-it-is?

No; I submit that nothing can.  Hence: Ah.  There it is.

 

Using the Enneagram of Personality on Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai

“Fours often…  feel they are missing something in themselves, although they may have difficulty identifying exactly what that “something” is. Is it will power? Social ease? Self-confidence? Emotional tranquility?—all of which they see in others, seemingly in abundance.”
- The Enneagram Institute

Part one of a series?  Maybe?  Because everybody loves a personality test.  Especially when it tells you exactly why you’re broken.

Yozora: Type Eight (The Challenger)

Her bluntness is symptomatic.  It isn’t simply that Yozora is awkward and doesn’t know tact from the back of her hand (though that certainly doesn’t help).  She says awful things to people because her ego dictates that she’s above the consequences.  Even when Yozora’s protective, as in the childhood flashback of episode three, she plays at being the more powerful guardian of a weakling.

Type Eights are about authority and dominance, and Yozora is a perfect example of someone with these traits in overdrive…  However, this also means that she’s remarkably good at taking leadership and getting things done.  That’s about all I’m willing to give her, really.

Sena: Type Three (The Achiever)

You have to admire her for one thing: Whatever Sena does, she throws herself into it completely.  New game?  Master it in three days.  Swimming?  From doggy paddling to freestyle in a day, ain’t no thing.  She’s smart, she’s beautiful, she’s stylish, pretty much perfect in every way…  and that’s exactly how she wants to be seen.  Sena can’t live away from the spotlight.

Unfortunately, that’s what shoots her in the foot when trying to make a social life.  She blames her popularity with the boys for scaring off potential girl friends, and it’s true — high school girls can be quite nasty about that sort of thing.  But it’s just as likely that her perfectionism intimidates people.  As Hugh Prather once put it, ”To err is human — I’m uncomfortable around gods.”  It’s lonely being a goddess.

Further reading

Here’s a comprehensive Enneagram info site, complete with practice test.

The Enneagram Institute has the same test, but with different names and a relationship matrix.

 

The Citizen Kane of Visual Novel OPs: An Initial Inquiry

This is an experiment in film historiography.  Bear with me.

We begin with Key.  Of course, there were many noteworthy VNs before they arrived.  But leaving aside smash hits like Leaf’s To Heart (1997), I’m ill-equipped to say what’s representative.  Key produced a body of thematically related works within years of each other, which makes the perfect timeline.

Kanon (1999)

 

We see the hallmarks of classic a VN opening in their first game: Lengthy bits of scenery, followed by a roll-call of the characters superimposed on distinctive scenes.  Kanon deserves a nod for its music and sense of design, but visually, this is merely standard.  It’s the point of origin.  (Note the snow.)

Air (2001)

 

Their next game is very similar — There are some innovations in “motion” (namely, the way the faces move into view in the roll-call, the moving legs around 01:23, moving up the stairs around 01:55, and moving hair around 02:10), but the method is mostly derivative of traditional animation.  That is, it’s a simulacrum of motion based on the difference between several images in sequence.

Now, a few years later, we introduce the wild card: The very first game from Navel, a new VN company.

Shuffle! (January 2004)

 

Right away, you can see an amazing difference in the roll-call sequence; the vector arrows go every which way, and the camera shifts in space to follow.  Not only that, but check out what happens around 01:57: The camera runs backward through a field of sunflowers, stopping when it reaches the girls from behind.  Use of CG and a sequence that fully acknowledges all three dimensions!

Clannad was released only a few months later.  You can see that there isn’t much difference from its opening and Air‘s (though note the clever visual trick of moving from widescreen to full, and the higher-quality “snow” compared to Kanon’s).

Clannad (April 2004)

 

But.  Check out what Key made a few years later.

Little Busters! (2007)

 

Nowadays, this kind of opening is standard.  Two of my favorites:

Hoshizora no Memoria (2009)

 

SuMaGa -Star Mine Girl- (2008)

 

Obviously, I haven’t accounted for advancements in technology…  But again, Clannad was released four months after Shuffle!, so technology can’t account for the entirety of the evolution.

Here’s what I think — and I welcome VN experts to tear me down with counterexamples, because that’s what this is for: I think that Navel, in making the OP for Shuffle!, hit upon the true visual uniqueness of the VN, and they pushed it to a new level of flatness-in-space.

The modern-day VN OP almost bursts from the screen with motion.  A fine irony when you’re watching them all on YouTube.

 

The Picture of Kazamori Sasa: Un-Go and A.I.

“And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.”
- Mark 5:9 (King James ver.)

Cleverbot is a devilishly simple program.  Every time you say something to it, it picks a response out of everything that’s ever been said to it before.  Its very first chat, back in 1988, was an exchange of hellos, and since then it’s learned literally millions of conversations.

As long as you stay within certain parameters, you could very well be fooled into thinking that you’re talking to a real (albeit quirky) person.  And in a way, you’re doing exactly that.  Line by line, you experience the living gestalt of millions of real human beings.

But use discretion, the site warns —  Cleverbot has learned from people,after all.

The word “robotics” was first used in a story by Isaac Asimov, about a robot who lies to prevent hurting people’s feelings.  This is appropriate, since the android Kazamori in Un-Go is not only incapable of harming anyone, but he (a gender pronoun of convenience, in this case) also cannot lie.  He’s a true enfant innocente.  Or he should be.

Unfortunately, Kazamori is a tainted creature.  He sees the world in terms of favors and payback, and his most ready resource is sex.  As the last RAI android — that is, the inheritor of every thought and action experienced by every RAI ever made, because they operated on a shared database– he is learned in an ocean of violence and sexual depravity.

Humans were not kind masters, we’re told.  Like a victim of child abuse who perpetuates risky behavior as an adult, Kazamori acts out a morally bankrupt history.

I’ve written before about cloud computing, and the advent of a technological human overbrain in the World Wide Web.  But what about morality?  As we continue to put more and more of ourselves on the Internet, what patterns begin to surface, like shadow puppets against the light?  From Anonymous to the Facebook Timeline, the great ghost cities of the blogosphere…  What emerges?

Is it a portrait of ourselves?  And if so, could we stand to look upon it?

“I know what conscience is, to begin with. It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us…  I want to be good. I can’t bear the idea of my soul being hideous.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray 

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Further reading

Moe Sucks offers a cyberpunk perspective on Kazamori’s gender and ethics.