Marketing Otaku Anime
An alternative take at the eternal struggle of copywriting (read the comments there!) anime for an American audience–the shoppers of America’s big-box heartland–is that it really doesn’t matter. At least not in the way fans think of it.
Let’s take a well-known import of Japanese media in America–wacky Japanese game shows in which the contestants are battered and embarrassed by a barrage of otherwise unimaginable activities if not for the fact that somebody out there had to imagined them first for it to exist. It’s on par with weird sex videos from Japan in terms of sheer otherworldliness.
It’s not unexpected for the people who gave us the high school girl that asked for nobody other than aliens, time travelers and espers to befriend her, perhaps. But the subtlety of that concept is already a mile beyond the veracity an one-liner could express, with the likes of “octopus porn” or “a story of love, dreams, and perseverance” or “watch silly Japanese get dunked in goo!”
Let’s re-examine this divide between works that are layered and works that are less so. Author gave us some other examples which goes to the heart of the matter. For instance, Manabi Straight, he says, is a political thriller. I’m in no position to disagree, having claimed it being one of the best demonstration of the Kingdom of God I’ve laid eyes on. Religion and politics! (No wonder nobody licensed Manabi Straight.) These forbidden family dinner topics would hardly be the first thing one expect to grace the cover of such DVDs, I admit, but it’s there if you choose scratch deeper.
But what is probably a better example is Simoun. It is light years beyond the likes of Divergence Eve’s “come for the tits, stay for the sci-fi thriller” fishing. It’s a show where you don’t need yuri goggles to see the yuri, but the yuri is actually a lie. It’s the kind of anime that even a 500-word post would fail to really get to the heart of what makes it a great story to a wide range of viewers. It’s unreasonable to expect 1-liners to capture even a fraction of Simoun’s glory.
Perhaps another way to think is that copywriting is just some cheap marketing. It’s like the barkers that work out front of strip joints and gentlemen’s clubs. Do we expect people to purvey works that pander to immediate gratification or through thorough research, sampling, and the testimony of critics, fans and friends? In the case of most anime, it’s both. But copywriting obviously is just one form of marketing, to aim for the former. All this is to say, if we take the frame of mind of a fan we would naturally feel ill towards copywriting, like how some feminists may feel ill towards women who work those joints and the related forms of degrading marketing.
But when it comes to anime, there are notable exceptions–when a show it’s constructed with a certain disposition in mind. Say, Excel Saga? Divergence EVE? Or Simoun?
If I want to make just one point, it would be that otaku anime (unlike, say, Saiunkoku Monogatari) aims at a specific audience who are familiar with the work pandering to them. It isn’t to say no one else would like otaku anime, those outside of the target audience, but those kinds of shows generally dispenses the pleasantries and instead exercise their art within the difficult-to-define space within that genre. It’s like saying a $15 bowl of ramen is the best ramen you’ll ever eat in NYC–how do you justify it? And how can you explain it with a simple 1-liner? It’s extremely difficult to do copywriting for a general audience for a niche work, that’s just how it is. So why fret?
And we see that not all anime does this. Excel Saga is a good example of a gag anime that has some universal appeal but is very otaku in terms of its target audience. People ate the humor and the gags up, but to understand its full excellence requires an appreciation for the numerous in-jokes that most people just would not understand, let alone finding them an important addition to their Excel Saga experience. It’s a step up from Divergence EVE, which has this fanservice factor, a candy shell if you will, that dresses something probably more substantive, filling for the audience that enjoy that sci-fi space genre. I mean, that’s true for a lot of anime that use fanservice as a way to get people interested, to try out the show in the first place.
Simoun, ultimately, is the kind of show that plays to this marketing limitation. There’s no point trying to say how awesome a show is just on the cover. It can cite to reviews (or better yet, awards it won…LOL) but for most anime in America, it’s a crap shoot. The only thing Simoun got going at first is just the very natural girl-on-girl covers with all the naughty poses and body positions. It is the only barker speak Simoun has. Those quick, tender kisses and flowing tresses might have a certain appeal, but I don’t think that’s what makes the show worth watching.
At the same time, fans of the show may read and see those things and think “hey this is not (quite) what the show is good for!” And they would be right. However I think the series itself is a bait and switch, so when that marketing speak reaches the eyes of someone who is curious but ignorant, it actually accomplishes the proper effect. The misleading copywriting actually sets up the lies. It is a trap.
And Simoun is better off with its traps, I think we all can agree. When the traps are not so good, that’s when copywriting becomes misleading and people whine and all that. Worse, you get the people buying something totally misleading!
It would be perfect to wrap up this post with some copywriting from Simoun’s R1 DVD release, but the blurbs on the DVDs read more like, well, honest-to-goodness plot summaries. All that is to say, I think, whoever wrote them actually saw the show? It’s a wild guess, but in the end fans do the best at promoting the shows they love, right? Modern technology transforms copywriting via things like customer reviews might work better!
Year in Review: She’s Going the Distance, a Great Feat of Strength
Going to mention a list of 12 lists of 12 items each. So a nested list. All 144 items. Annotated for the most part. Don’t ask me why I use these pronouns the way I do…
Hyakko’s Tight Rope Act
Over the course of years I realized that voice acting can and sometimes does make or break a show.
Another thing is that despite all of my forceful indifference towards Aya Hirano, I think she did make Manabi Straight a more fulfilling experience. It’s not that I liked her acting in particular, but I realized she was able to convey honest emotions through her acting and that’s really the heart of acting. At the same time, both Marina and Hocchan were able to deliver a little bit more of the sublime between the gaps of what they don’t say, through those thoughtless “um”s or “etto”s. Perhaps it’s only fair to chalk all three of their acts to good writing and directing, too.
But will Hyakko, perhaps the immediate analog of Manabi Straight since, well, Manabi Straight, say much the same? I hope not. It is certainly not because I didn’t like what was expressed in Manabi Straight, but this is not something so simple that a writer can copy and generate the same or better effect. It is like hoping, praying and giving your own children guidance to what they want to become when they grow up. It may be troublesome if both of them seek to take over your estate, and it might be for the best if that black sheep ends up moving to a big city and make a (different) name for herself.
Still, with any ragged-tagged gang of mercenaries, dim-wits, rich busybodies and earnest adventurers, it takes time for that chemstry to jell. If heart-felt harmony (Azumanga Daioh?) and (r)evolutionary unity (Mikan Straight!) are what await us at the end of the journey, then Ayumi Nonomura’s ragged-tagged gang has a long(er) ways to go! Chemstry? What chemstry? How do you jam someone like Michiko Neya in there? I guess we’ll find out with Aya Hirano right in the center of it all.
And if Hyakko doesn’t take the oft-trod path (Strawberry Marshmellow) to do it, all the better.
Momotato Updates, Omo Cheers
And there was order in the world yet again. Peace be with blog-kind and may we wish good will to all in this now-annual tradition.
And I really don’t have much more to say about that. What you could do, however, is to help me help all of us by goading Momotato back into blogging. Since all he does is watch anime off nico^2 (we really could use a blogger who tackles stuff from that perspective, but that’s for another day) anyways, it’s definitely easier for him to, I dunno, write stuff and put it on the internet instead of downloading stuff then watch it. Goad him, how? You can just send an encouraging message either using his email (which is momotato -> google mail) or write embarrassing but flattering things about him in the comments of blogs he reads.
Why? It’s fun and he’s a jolly fella. And I think there’s something we all gain when we bother him, especially those of you who used to read his blog but have since moved on. You guys are really something special and you should let him know, one way or another. Even if it’s just a “happy new year” thing.
And lol what Michael Bay? I guess Manabi’s skateboard does transform…
Random off-off-topic note: I just want to highlight this blog post. In Search of Number Nine is pretty solid of a blog, but purely speaking as a blog. It’s always good to see what some light-weight fans have to say about something you’ve taken for granted years ago, but better.
Year in Review: United and Live
So why am I talking about Manabi Straight besides I like it a lot? I don’t know.
Manabi Straight is a subtle thing. Sometimes I fear that the more I talk about it, the more it gets cheapened. And a good joke explained is rarely funny anymore.
Maybe I can say something about UFOTable. Manabi Straight is an interesting organism in that it is not produced by the same process your typical TV animation is. For starters, it is something conceived by some folks at UFOTable and serialized as manga at first. It also utilizes a team of directors that rotate on working on each episode, breathing life into the work but also mirroring that team spirit told within the show.
But like other UFOTable works, Manabi Straight shares some similar shortfalls. Or perhaps, it salvages itself from them? I’m not sure. One example that comes to mind is the realization of Manabi Straight’s inter-character dramatic potential. In just 12 episodes there have been a lot of character development and realization. Episode 4 and Mei showed how it was possible, but unexpectedly we didn’t really do a round robin of character expose. In fact we started at Mei, then Mikan…and stopped at Mikan, at least formally. Even if we take into account of the OAV episode we’ve only scratched the surface of the massive potential. If you look at Futakoi Alternative or Coyote Ragtime Show, there are a lot of subtle stuff they play with but also hide. In fact in FutaAlt that’s part of how it drags the series down–UFOTable spent way too much time trying to show you something subtle without telling you what it was.
Back in Manabi Straight, Mucchi especially was a subtle character that glowed with realism and its matching subtlety that made her easily my favorite out of the 5 if not for Mikan’s overpowering cuteness and Momo’s equally subtle but totally unreal characterization.
Being the fanboy that I am, I am probably a little too much to ask for to review the ins and outs of an UFOTable title. Also I just think a lot about these kinds of stupid things, the things just out of reach but not out of sight. In a pastel-color world with gradient hair and happy-go-lucky carebears, subtlety can only be detected as far as it is put out there to be seen. It could be a criticism or a praise, but it’s irony either way.
Irony. Yes, that was what I was thinking, about Mucchi, while she was eating her ice pop in that summertime episode. (And also “just how much lolicon pandering was this suppose to be?”) But that’s a prime example of a very real moment. Sometimes, when you are with friends, it’s just silence. Some of my friends talk about themselves, others don’t. Sometimes you have to pry, other times you’re just being annoying. It’s totally cool when you drop by, with a pretext of checking out some harmless video game, and drop a line that you know will do something to poke a friend who’s down. Or maybe it will not do something, but you’ve done what you think works the best.
And that’s Momo’s entire basket of gags in all of Manabi Straight. You know how Kyousuke said about observing wild animals and the camera not interfering? Well I think Ms. Odori will take that and shove it up someone’s behind while screaming some dadaist reference to off-the-air sitcoms. (Imagine if Momo shot a documentary about penguins…well I guess you can do that with Hatsune Miku now?) That’s journalism (and, oddly enough, film making) in a nutshell, the power to change the viewers by giving us the right perspective, even if they’re all reinventing that perspective. In the anime she’s a bit of a deus ex machina, but at the same time she’s the punchline. Plus cockroach-tan is just pure awesomeness all around, of course.
In retrospect, Manabi Straight is an incredibly subtle series. Or rather, in good anime form, it makes an exaggeration of a lot of subtle things (or at least as much exaggeration as you can get with them). My favorite example is where we see what Manabi sees when she shows Taka-chan her vision of the future. Maybe that’s why Manabi Straight had such a big impact on me. When I saw her in that scene, I think “vision” rather than “hallucination” or “plan.” But that’s the only way to explain why she acted as if things have already came to being. It is a prophecy, but not really so pre-ordin-ary? LOL. She’s just working to fulfill her dream, I guess. But I like my interpretation, because it would explain why UFOTable gone the distance to stretch that simple scene for, like, 4 minutes. And with the softball, and water dripping, and of course, those ominous clouds. They were being subtle at being not so subtle to point out a subtle concept. What the hell, right? In real life, those moments come at us at light speed. You blink and it’s gone!
And in some ways 2007 ended at light speed too. Personally I’ve gone through a lot this year, some good, some bad. One really great moment was when I went to this rock concert and jumped around a lot (tip: see blog title). What was good at the show was not just the music and performance, but it was also fun jumping around with a few thousand other people (…and a lot of other things). The same feeling is the summit of the “Year in Review” serialization I’ve been posting–I want to share it with you why anime and all this related stuff like blogging or fandom or cons or music, and hopefully some of you will also share with us the same.
Speaking of jumping around, Jeff Lawson may not be a religious man, but I am not one either at least by the Christian sense. Or maybe I am, just one in disguise as your prototypical Asian-American anime fanboy blogger. But I am religious in the sense that I know to cross reference his ending comment with the parable of the mustard seed. Jesus is subversive, oh yes. And even if you are somewhat versed in the allegory, I recommend you to check out that Wikipedia link for the full picture of what it means.
In other words, what’s inside Manabi Straight is an authentic slice of life. It describes a simple but profound concept, that those who are fortunate enough to experience it in their own lives will likely to recognize it when they look for it in Manabi Straight. It’s not just a rainy afternoon or “going to high school.” It’s subversive, it’s not something you can bottle and sell, or teach and follow from a plan. It’s the fundamental essence of happy living. That’d make Manabi Straight the ultimate iyashikei anime–it not only makes you feel good, it gives you a road map to achieve happiness.
This is the 8th entry about 2007 highlights and awesomeness. まっすぐ Go!! And remember folks, even if my favorite anime is better than your favorite anime, you can まっすぐ Go!! too!
- Introduction
- Part 1 - Makoto Shinkai
- Part 2 - Baccano!
- Part 3 - Sola
- Part 4 - Hitohira
- Part 5 - Gurren Lagann
- Part 6 - Code Geass
- Part 7 - ef, Hidamari Sketch, Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei
- Part 8 - Manabi Straight
- Conclusion
