Here’s the sequel to my original post about the Happiness Realization Party, in which I discuss their amazing party platform. This article has zero relevance to anime, but after the original story was posted to MetaFilter I feel like this blog is the best place to put it. I’ll make it up to regular readers next month with a post about The Laws of Eternity.
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The new religious movement Happy Science started a political party in May called the “Happiness Realization Party”, or HRP for short. Today the Japanese government announced figures which showed that Happiness fielded the most candidates of any party in the 2009 government elections. These figures are likely to be translated by American reporters sometime this evening or tomorrow. 2chan.us scoop! Must credit Shii/Kransom!
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I totally bought Kannagi even though I didn’t watch it. $35 for 7 episodes :o
I also didn’t take notes, so I’d better write this down before I forget any of it…
Facts about Yamakan:
Highlights of his panels included an Asian guy, possibly from a mysterious land known as “#denpa”, dancing the Kannagi OP.
Facts about Kikuko Inoue:
Tomorrow I’m going to do something other than sitting in guest Q&A panels, I hope. Like sitting in Surat’s panels.
Last year, I was sitting in a lecture hall in Kyoto Seika university, I believe at a guest lecture Takekuma Kentaro was giving, when the speaker mentioned a radio show that featured anime director Mamoru Oshii grilling Ghibli producer Suzuki Toshio on Ponyo. I forgot about it for a bit, until all the buzz about the US release of Ponyo started heating up. I soon discovered that the radio show this conversation took place on, Suzuki Toshio no Ghibli Asemamire was available for free online! The episode in question is the August 2008 broadcast, “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea vs The Sky Crawlers.’ An mp3 was available for download on the site from here (next to 2008/8/12), and I also discovered a unofficial transcript of the conversation on this blog, so I used these resources to create an unauthorized fan translation of this radio show. If you can, I suggest listening to the radio show alongside the transcript in order to hear more of the emotion in their voices, but that is obviously optional. A dvd of over 40 hours of the radio show is also available for purchase.
The often-heated but always-friendly conversation touches a number of subjects, from Ponyo and The Sky Crawlers, to the state of the Japanese animation industry and the fate of hand-drawn animation. I hope you find it as interesting as I found it, and as usual, please don’t hesitate to contact me through comments or email with any corrections, suggestions, or questions. Also, if you are a rights holder of any of the materials that I have translated and would like the material taken down, again, please contact me through the email address found on the sidebar.
Suzuki: Have you seen [the new] Indiana Jones?
Oshii: No.
S: You should see it. Basically, it’s present-day Harrison Ford playing Indiana Jones, and about his grown-up son that he had when he was messing around with women in the past, right? So, I was wondering, why is it that everyone’s making movies these days about parents and children? Look, Miya-san is doing it, you’re doing it… If I wanted to sound like a critic, I’d look at you three and say that what’s interesting is that your movies are in the sky and in the ocean… They’re in unexplored territory.
O: That’s right.
S: So then, what’s here and now doesn’t matter to you. That’s what I found interesting. Don’t you think?
O: That’s standard, patented Suzuki Toshio sophistry of the highest order.
All: (Bursts out laughing)
O: Tell me what you personally found interesting, okay?
S: I was just thinking. It was a thought.
O: A thought? Isn’t it obvious that someone getting older is going to make stories about parents and children?
S: Yes, that’s exactly it! Miya-san is 67, right? And Spielberg is 62, 63?
O: Around 63.
S: Right? And Oshii-san, you’re 58?
O: 57!
(laughter)
Staff: So that one gets a rise out of him! (laughter)
S: So, all of you are working with the same theme, you see? The details between each film might be different, of course. But still, it surprised me. And what I was thinking was, whether your stories are in the sky, or in the ocean, or in uncharted lands, they’re all the same thing. They’re all about the afterlife.
O: Well, that’s inevitable.
S: Huh?
O: If you’re older than 50 and making movies that don’t deal with the afterlife in some way, something’s off about you.
S: Yes, yes, yes. (Impressed)
O: I saw Ponyo the other day and figured something out. I realized, “Oh, Suzuki Toshio had absolutely nothing to do with this movie,” and I was certain about it.
Staff: Absolutely nothing? (strained laughter)
O: That was a 100 percent Miya-san movie.
S: Well, it really is Miya-san’s movie.
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> mkvextract attachments \[gg\]_Umineko_no_Naku_Koro_ni_-_02_\[F5D5399B\].mkv 1:BALZANO_.ttf
> ftxvalidator BALZANO_.ttf
====== BALZANO_.ttf ============================================
------ sfnt: Balzano, sfnt ID: 10644 ------
Error: Glyph 0 has no visual appearance
Error: ascent (0) less than or equal to zero
Error: ascent (0) is smaller than or equal to descent (0)
Error: descent (0) is greater than or equal to zero
Error: Postscript name (index 13) has non-ASCII character(s)
Error: multiple postscript names: 2
Yeah, I think I’ll put off fixing this one.
The long-standing issue of how exactly to define moé has been resolved by ECPAT (End Child Prostitution and Trafficking) International. I quote:
The analysis estimates the market for moe products (books, images and games), which are related to anime and manga, was worth 88.8 billion yen (US$800 million) in 2003. The term moe is used in a neutral sense for economic analysis. But taken literally it refers to a fetishist sexual attraction that some fans of computer games, anime and manga have for female child characters, who may be depicted in pornographic and erotic contexts within games, animations and illustrations. Moe web pages sometimes link to other pages containing images, stories and chats in which very young characters are the objects of sexual violence, abuse and fantasy. A proportion of the moe market may therefore be regarded as related to child sex abuse images. The report expected the market for moe products to expand.
I am quoting page 32 of their information pamphlet “Violence against Children in Cyberspace“. Perhaps some of us are glad that this controversy has at long last been resolved. If you actually enjoy moé artwork, though, chances are you disagree with ECPAT’s characterization of your hobby. What’s even better, the only citation in this paragraph was a link to WaiWai News.
Now, recall that RapeLay was released in 2006, but mysteriously became big news starting on May 28.
Yesterday the investigation culminated with EOCS changing its regulations, by brute force, without a joint vote, to outlaw naughty games.
Who could have such political sway?
Especially with Taro Aso being a bizarrely intense force for promoting anime and manga,
and the Diet in general being completely ineffective since Koizumi retired.
The softhouses came up with a creative answer to this question.
Somehow, somewhere, a cabal of foreign politicians had convened to ban rape games.
They decided this without any evidence whatsoever.
Furthermore, since there was no public evidence that anyone outside Japan cared, this must have been a secret conspiracy!
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