The 35th Japan Academy Awards nominated Ghibli’s flop “Kokuriko-zaka kara”, an adaption of Tezuka’s epic “Buddha”, a youkai story called “Toufu Kozou” based on a bestselling adult novel, and a movie from the Detective Conan series, which has the wonderful distinction of having been nominated for a Japan Academy Award every year since the “best animation” category was introduced in 2006. Oh yes, and K-On! The Movie.

Web tabloid Searchina notes that of these five, K-On! is the most unlikely nomination recipient, saying that the Kyoani production could “hardly be said to be a household name in Japan”. This is untrue in my personal experience. I mean, there’s a 12-year-old at one of my schools who has this attached to her pencil case:

In case you are puzzled by that image, that’s the girls’ character Capybara-san sitting on the head of a K-On! character (whoever she is, I don’t watch these moéblob shows goddamn you) who is sitting in her Houkago Tea Time mug.

There’s also a 10-year-old at that school who hassled me for K-On! merchandise every day until I found some to give to her.

So, K-On! is no longer otaku stuffs, it now belongs to everyone in Japan who likes cute things and is staying on top of… uh… whatever kind of cultural currents transmit the latest cute things to children. This certainly represents a new wave in mainstream anime, but it could hardly have been a controversial choice for the academy. I mean, “Toufu Kozou” was popular, but I imagine there are plenty of people who never heard of it.

So, congratulations to Kyoto Animation for their first Japan Academy Award nominee. I don’t think K-On! will win that Academy Award though. It’s an anime about girls who eat cake.

http://2chan.us/wallpapers.zip

Not sure I remember how to write in English at this point, but more contentful posts hopefully coming soon…

I should note that someone with a gushing opinion of this movie put it on BitTorrent, which combined with what I already know about Happy Science, gives me a suspicion that they might actually approve of non-Japanese people downloading and watching it. Here’s a DDL link too. I’m bad at concealing spoilers so you might just want to forego the review and take a look for yourself.

tl;dr version: Do you want to see an evil Heian period demon reincarnated as a businessman riding on a UFO made of bats interrupting a major league baseball game to duke it out with CG angels and some guy riding on an elephant? Then this film is for you!!!

Who is John Galt?

Strengths

The animation and cinematography in this film is very good. Each of Happy Science’s productions seems to be an order of magnitude better than the last, technically speaking. And not even a Ghibli production could measure up to Happy Science’s evangelistic prowess: there are subtitles in 13 languages, and 4 audio tracks. I wouldn’t bother with the English dub, though you might try your luck with the Chinese or Spanish ones.

Unlike “The Laws of Eternity”, which was frankly unhinged in its references to Thomas Edison as a Bodhisattva and Space Hitler summoning an evil Megazord and all other kinds of craziness, “The Rebirth of Buddha” actually has a fairly coherent plot. It takes place in modern-day Japan, with realistic sensibilities and economic woes, and delves into Japanese thought on religion in ways that prior movies didn’t.

The realism is pretty much limited to that, unless if you think UFO attacks, telekinesis, and mass hypnosis are things that actually happen on an everyday basis in Japan. However, if you can suspend your disbelief that much, it’s a pretty interesting story and a good look into both Happy Science’s placement in Japanese society and its image of its own history (more on this later).

Plot Analysis

SPOILERS – SPOILERS – SPOILERS – SPOILERS – SPOILERS – SPOILERS

The plot is a fairly obvious reimagining of the most famous event in Japan’s postwar religious history, the March 1995 Aum Shinrikyo gas attacks. Any Japanese person who was alive in 1995 will be able to identify that the film’s villain, the religious poseur Tousaku Arai, is a symbol for the cult leader Shoko Asahara who ordered the attacks as well as various murders and attempted assassinations. If you’re not totally sure whether this is intentional, some images have been snuck in to confirm it, such as the siddham script logo of his organization (shown above), paralleling the sacred Aum used by the real world cult as a logo. To summarize the two hour film, Arai tries to teach people a Nietzschean dog-eat-dog morality (“yakiniku teishoku“), and to make his teachings more appealing (?) launches a UFO attack on Tokyo. This plan is foiled, as well as his mass hypnosis plan, so he ends up kidnapping the main character and riding with her on a UFO into a baseball stadium.

Arai’s cartoonish, Doctor Evil-esque machinations are frankly less frightening than the memory of Shoko, an enigmatic figure with a long beard who cultivated ties to the Dalai Lama, the Russian government, and current Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara. Shoko projected a bold image of national and religious revival, even as he instructed his followers to obtain and research various forms of chemical weapons. With Tokyo subway sarin gas incident the country learned that this major religious group had been nurturing a psychopathic streak for years, and this revelation poisoned the image of religion generally. Since then, not even the biggest movement Soka Gakkai has recovered its pre-Aum levels.

What most Japanese people may not know is that the general layout of the history being represented in The Rebirth of Buddha is true. Happy Science was deeply opposed to Aum Shinrikyo, and as portrayed in the film, abused Aum members really did flee to Happy Science. In February 1995, a covert Aum murder team attempted to assassinate founder Ryuho Okawa with VX gas (they also tried to kill the Soka Gakkai leader, twice). Just days before the gas attacks, Happy Science held a public protest outside Aum headquarters. In a sense, the story of good and evil Japanese religious groups duking it out is kind of real.

It only makes sense that Okawa might be thinking his side of the story has not been told well enough, but this anime neither reveals that commendable history nor makes any similar boasts about Happy Science’s record. In fact, as with the previous anime, Ryuho Okawa is not portrayed directly; his altogether more handsome stand-in is a guy with the cute name “Sun Of-the-sky” (Sorano Taiyou). The religious identity of the film is thus anonymized, and the viewer is invited to learn about Ryuho Okawa and the true faith for his or herself. This is a pleasant bit of modesty that makes the film a bit easier to watch.

Where the film fails, of course, is its metaphysical nuttiness. Shoko boasted of supernatural powers. In this film, Arai really does have incredible supernatural powers, and the world can attest to them; the only problem is that he’s using them for evil. All that is needed, in the film, is for Arai to be countered with the superior supernatural abilities of Mr. Sun. Admitting the uncomfortable reality, that Shoko’s real evil power was to be found in his large stockade of poison gases, would have made the movie less entertaining. This does not do much to combat the easily reached conclusion that Happy Science is living in a fantasy land.

Post Tohoku earthquake, the tsunami scene is also a little uncomfortable. The tsunami is actually a hallucination caused by Arai, so Okawa’s Mary Sue character simply comes on the TV and tells people to wish the tsunami away, and just like that it disappears. It should go without saying that real disasters cannot be handled in this way. Perhaps some understanding of Okawa’s religious views can be gained from seeing people turn from fear and panic to calmness and resolve, but a scene that may have been fit for a silly disaster movie in 2010 just no longer works in 2011.

Weaknesses

Geegle

I hate the title of this movie, although it’s Happy Science canon, drawn from a 1989 Ryuho Okawa tome where he claimed to channel the spirit of Buddha. I don’t know how Okawa can think he’s getting away with messing up one of the most basic facts of Buddhism. Buddha has passed into Nirvana; he is not around anymore to be reincarnated. Buddhist sutras state that we are living in the post-Gautama Buddha age, and when another Buddha arises it will be a different person entirely. According to Happy Science, it seems, every Buddhist text throughout history was corrupted, and Buddha actually said that he was coming back to be reborn as Ryuho Okawa in 1945 or whatever. I guess if you’re a pledged Happy Scientist you’re willing to disregard all sorts of inconvenient facts.

And now let’s talk about the gross xenophobic twist the director put on the film. “Laws of Eternity” portrayed an impressively multicultural Japan, in line with Okawa’s belief that foreigners in Japan should be given an easy path to naturalization, and a general love of foreigners found throughout Happy Science literature. For some reason, in this film all that goes out the window, and instead we have the gag foreigner caricature who speaks with a horrible accent I’ve never heard a real gaijin use, and who does dumb crap for laughs like yelling in a hospital. Oh well, I guess this is just like any anime ever.

The shaman from the previous movie gets a cameo in this film, as a talking head on a variety show. I don’t know why they did this but it blew my mind.

Overall, this film is like a 7/10 on entertainment merits alone, but if you want to know about Happy Science, or if you already know about it and want to see what it’s pulled off this time, you’ll love it.

Source: News4VIP via BIP blog

6.
Azunyan dies in every episode.

8.
Ritsu is black.
Illustration

11.
All the songs would have “Fuck” in the lyrics.

12.
There would be a laugh track.

4.
After School Drugs.

13.
After School Barbeque.

25.
All of them would have babysitting jobs.

29.
It would be dubbed in Japanese by Koichi Yamadera.

31.
After School Tea Party.

40.
There would be a very special episode about Ritsu’s pregnancy.

Is this Degrassi?

44.
Yui: “Shit! I cut my finger!”

61.
The first one killed would be a funny black guy who listens to rap.

64.
>>61
Azunyan?

68.
Mugi’s eyebrows would be salami.

??

77.
After HTT saves the school from being blown up by Islamic fundamentalists, they become heroes.

Cheerleaders: “We were wrong. You’re cool after all!”

83.
“Hamburger wa Okazu”

100.
There would be an annoying hairy alien living in Yui’s house.

106.
Sawako’s old band would have done Marilyn Manson covers.

113.
The club room would be covered in graffiti.

#114 is good but is beyond me to translate.

147.
Mugi would actually be a lesbian.

196.
Mugi’s shirt would have some nonsensical kanji on it.

202.
>>196
Don’t you mean Yui’s dressing gown?

Not a lot has been written about Makoto Shinkai’s new film Hoshi o Ou Kodomo (Children who Chase the Star/Planet) outside Japan so I thought I’d give it a highly critical review here. This movie has some twists, they’re not really essential to enjoying it but they do reveal a lot so I’m putting this behind a spoiler warning.

My recommendation for this movie is to skip buying any movie tickets, plane flights, or poor quality cams, and watch the HQ fansub if bored. It has some pretty pictures that are best enjoyed on your computer screen. The plot has some good elements but is overall incoherent. Character development was apparently ignored. Overall, Shinkai needs a co-producer.

“Plot”

A girl with a large nose, whom I’ll call Hapless-chan because I can’t remember her name, is listening to a magical radio with what is UNMISTAKABLY Nausicaa’s pet catbeast Teto. Suddenly a dead god from Princess Mononoke assaults the two of them, but she is rescued by Ashitaka/Shun. This guy is apparently her first friend ever. He immediately jumps off a cliff and dies forever. Now she has a new Japanese teacher at school. He has them read the myth of Izanami in Yomi from the Kojiki. She barges into his apartment after school and he tells her that the earth is hollow and people live within. Now Shun appears again, actually it turns out it’s his brother Shin, but she doesn’t understand the difference. This leads to the following highly memorable dialogue:

Shin: I’m Shun’s brother Shin.
Hapless-chan: Where’s Shun?
Shin: Shun wa shinda (Shun died).

Suddenly a military helicopter comes out of NOWHERE and shoots at them– don’t these things make noise?!– and they are chased into a cave by military people with flak jackets and big guns, one of whom turns out to be her Japanese teacher…! The crystal from the radio opens a magical door and the three of them get into an underground lake that’s filled with the breathing liquid from Eva and they fall into the center of the earth somehow.

The next half-hour is spent traipsing around the hollow earth, showing off ruins and stuff. We learn that the professor fought in the British Army in World War II, which is strange because he doesn’t appear to be 80 years old or British! Next it turns out that shadows in the inner world are carriers of some kind of zombie, apparently only some kind of shadows because there are shadows everywhere (how do light sources work inside the Earth anyway?) but anyway these zombies serve as pointless plot devices for Shin to save Hapless-chan from certain death. Some bullshit happens that’s irrelevant to the plot for a while. Teto dies and is eaten by the robot from Laputa. Shin fights to save Hapless-chan’s life, and loses, but the people fighting him get bored and leave. Despite his saving her life three times, the connection between these two seems remarkably forced, especially since she can’t stop talking about his God-forsaken dead brother whom she only knew for about two days.

The Laputa thing eats Shin and Hapless-chan then jumps into a bottomless pit and turns into sparkles. This efficient mode of transportation leaves the pair of Laputaesque child travelers, one of whom as noted above closely resembles Ashitaka, in a good position to rescue their professor friend, but also at the bottom of a bottomless pit. I won’t spoil the end of the movie (suffice to say it’s as bizarre and disconnected as everything else I’ve mentioned here) but they are shown getting out of the pit somehow during the end roll and it’s not really clear to me how that happened. Also there are still zombies everywhere, correct? Nothing was resolved in this movie at all. Hapless-chan goes home and has fond memories of her friends Shun and Shin and Crazy Professor Dude, none of whom she will ever see again. She apparently forgets about her dad or whatever. We skip the scene where she tries to explain her month-long unexplained absence to her mom, and she is shown graduating without being on suicide watch or anything. The end?

Also everything takes place at sunset.

Character issues

Hapless-chan is hapless. Despite being the protagonist she just follows people around and is unable to fend for herself or even coherently state why she’s there. In a revealing scene, when the professor wants to talk about his mission and meaning with a village chief, Hapless-chan gets bored and walks away to talk to Shin, who just wants her to go away.

Shin is a stock hero character.

Shun dies…?!

Professor dude is actually kind of cool with his encyclopedic knowledge of stuff, but after the interesting initial scenes is suddenly horribly recast as a cold and calculating World War II veteran-cum-Man In Black.

Good bits

The background research on mythology and earth legends was great.

The night terror scene was genius, if you’re going to watch this movie I guarantee you will like that at least.

This image is suddenly more significant with the new relevations about Homura’s magical pocket. Unfortunately, it’s a bit too much for me to translate at the moment, but I assure you it’s very convincing.

Also that was a really amazing episode!!

Source: Anime sales thread material repository on livedoor bbs, presumably from 2ch originally.

These numbers are per-volume averages, with each DVD in a box set being counted as an individual volume. (*) indicates series still being released when the list was made in 2010/05.

List of 2000-2010 TV anime DVD/BDs with 10,000+ sales

Who says SHAFT needs industry awards?

I used Google Blog Search to blogisearch the aniblogisphere and I discovered that there is a severe lack of pseudointellectual blogspounding on Panty & Stocking. So I decided to blog about it on this very dead blog. Blog.

Heheh, that’s a word.

I fucking hate superheroes. Not because they’re embodied wish fulfillment, because all fantasies work that way, but because they represent a morally stunted wish. Superheroes are pseudofascist agents of God who do battle with some sort of Satanic power and none of this has any basis in real life. Normal people judge others by their actions, but if you buy into the superhero concept then you simply pick one side to be “good” and approve of everything they do.

Recently there have been “complex” superheroes who do dangerous things. This makes me hate the concept even more. The entire idea of a superhero is that good guys don’t need to follow the rules because their goodness is independent of their actions. Did anyone root for the Joker in Dark Knight just because Batman was tapping some phones? Yeah. Didn’t think so. Now, knowing that the Joker is out there, will you allow the federal government to tap your phone without court permission? Just keeping you safe. From the Joker.

I’ll admit that antiheroes are slightly better than superheroes. But they’re still absolutely worthless as a character in a socially meaningful story. Yeah, we get it, your life is filled with pathos and the world is a gloomy and morally ambiguous place. God is dead, etc. You’re still jumping over buildings and shit. I couldn’t tell you a lesson I learned from Watchmen that I could apply to real life. Actually, I can’t really remember what happened in that damn movie, other than everything was Doom 3 dark and there was a lot of blood and other squicky things. It felt kind of cool to watch, then I realized it was a lengthy tech demo with no relevance to my life. What a waste of $20 that was. Should have bought two copies of Minecraft with that money.

So, Japan doesn’t usually do superheroes, for the reasons outlined above. Yeah, they have magical girls and super-baseball players who star in cartoons aimed at 9 year olds. But in shows aimed at adults, the characters tend to be, well, adults. Panty & Stocking breaks that mold as well as a lot of people’s heads. Because it’s an extended riff on superheroes, it’s drawn like an American cartoon. But the plot is absurd: the good and evil literally become a Christian apocalyptic battle between angels and devils (ghosts?), both of whom appear to be evil.

I think this is the real catch with the show, at least episode 1: Panty & Stocking are both deeply flawed women who would by American standards be cast as antiheroes. The “adult” show ought to be playing up these “big intellectual questions” like, ohhh, if they’re so bad, how do we know who’s really good? But they don’t give a shit, and neither does anyone else except for their tightass priest friend Garterbelt. Their utter immorality is a joke. They go out and kick ass, and then go back to fucking and pigging out afterwards. They are superantiheroes.

Which is the way it ought to be, right? As long as they’re saving the day, who cares what they do in their private lives? Even they don’t care about their retarded “angel” backstory. That’s my kind of superhero. Batman is comparatively a sissy.

I love the transformation scene, which makes a brilliant travesty of superhero culture. It’s like the ten millionth magical girl transformation scene parody I’ve seen, and its reference to Japanese majo shows is pretty shallow, but the message with regards to American cartoons is comparatively deep: “Before defeating this bad guy, I’d like to remind everyone here that I am perfect evil.”

Something utterly profound about the bad guy in the second half of Episode 1 goes here. I liked it. Deep moral lessons were learned by all. Or not. That’s the point I was making, right? Was I making a point? Eh, let’s move on..

There hasn’t been much going on so far besides pure silliness, but I think there’s some real potential in this show. Too bad it airs at like 3am or whatever.

Average yearly salary, in tens of thousands of yen. (100,000 JPY = roughly $1100)

1. Toei: 864
2. Toho: 837
3. Shochiku: 735
4. Tokyo Rakutenchi: 710
5. Gonzo: 654
6. Toei Animation: 651
7. TYO Productions: 620
8. OS: 620
9. Tokyo Theatres: 619
10. Subaru Enterprise: 615
11. Kokusai Hoei: 607
12. Aoi Advertising Promotion Inc.: 605
13. Tohokushinsha: 604
14. Flight System Consulting: 571
15. Marvelous Entertainment: 534
16. Sotsu: 518
17. Shizukatsu: 512
18. IG Port: 501
19. Omega Project Holdings: 490
20. TMS Entertainment: 485
21. We’ve: 483
22. Kin-ei: 444
23. Nakanihon Kogyo: 435
24. Musashino Kogyo: 430
25. Tokyu Recreation: 383

Sales Rankings, in hundreds of million of yen (100,000,000 yen = roughly 1.1 million USD). Number in () after studio name is rank in above list of average employee salary.

1. Toho (2): 2134
2. Toei (1): 1076
3. Shochiku (3): 949
4. Tohokushinsha (13) : 681
5. TYO Productions (7): 311
6. Tokyu Recreation (25): 277
7. Tokyo Theatres (9): 232
8. Toei Animation (6): 217
9. Aoi Advertising Promotion Inc (12): 167
10. Sotsu (16): 159
11. TMS Entertainment (20): 141
12. Marvelous Entertainment (15): 101
13. IG Port (18): 71
14. OS (8): 65
15. Gonzo (5): 63
16. Tokyo Rakuenchi (4): 37
17. Kin-ei (22): 37
18. Nakanihon Kogyo (23): 37
19. Kokusai Hoei (11): 34
20. Flight System Consulting (14): 30
21. Omega Project Holdings (19): 30
22. We’ve (21): 30
23. Subaru Kogyo (10): 24
24. Musashino Kogyo (24): 20
25. Shizukatsu (17): 11

They are as follows:

Company: Ascension
Director: Hongo Mitsuru (Dir. Spirit of Wonder, Outlaw Star, Reideen (2007), various Crayon Shinchan incl. 5 films)
Producer: Mogi Hitoshi (Prod. 7+ Crayon Shinchan films, Summer Days with Coo)
Provisional Title: Kizuna Ichigeki

Company: Telecom Animation Film (Also a wholly-owned subsidiary of TMS Entertainment)
Director: Takiguchi Teiichi (Dir., Anim. Dir., Kara no Kyoukai movie 4, Key Anim., The Cat Returns, Tekkonkinkreet, Whisper of the Heart)
Producer: Takeuchi Koji (Prod. Lupin III: The Fuma Conspiracy, Ramen Fighter Miki)
Provisional Title: Ojiisan no Lamp

Company: P.A. Works
Director: Yoshihara Masayuki (Asst. Dir., Eden of the East, Moribito, Key Anim., Ghost in the Shell series)
Producer: Horikawa Kenji (Prod. true tears, CANAAN, Angel Beats!, Series Comp., Popolocrois Monogatari)
Provisional Title: Bannou Yasai Ninninman

Company: Production I.G.
Director: Kise Kazuchika (Anim. Dir., Patlabor the Movie, Patlabor the Movie 2, Bungaku Shoujo, Evangelion 1.0, Ghost in the Shell, Key Anim., Evangelion 1.0/2.0, Ghost in the Shell, Rojin Z, SPT Layzner)
Producer: Terakawa Hidekazu (Prod., IGPX, Jin-Roh, One Piece: Defeat the Pirate Ganzak!, various game animation work by I.G.)
Provisional Title: Tansu Warashi