2chan.us

More 2ch copypaste since I’m bored and can’t turn on my lights to read manga since that’ll attract bugs. This is probably already reproduced somewhere on animesuki, but oh well. “Source is 2ch”, though I bet if you checked on the Oricon site or went to the diet library and took a look at Oricon Biz that you’d find numbers that agree with this! “Discs sold” is the number of discs listed as sold for the highest-selling single volume released of a given series.

But first, some pie charts:

from a Kadokawa booth at some convention or event or another.
Red = (light) novels
Green = manga
Purple = original
Blue = game
Yellow = other

I need a drink. As posters note, at least we’ll be able to count on Angel Beats! Hm, maybe two drinks.

Or “Sales Barriers for Anime”

This was originally going to be named “how 2ch reads sales charts” but then I remembered that trying to classify any part of 2ch as a singular is a rather foolish thing to do unless you want hits. Wait, oops.

Anyway, this is obviously not gospel truth, but a neat, simplified guide by someone who is clearly somewhat of an industry watcher and a brave warrior on the battlegrounds of the 2ch sales threads. Disc sales numbers referred to here are Oricon numbers.

~500
Mostly anime where disc sales are not a main concern from the beginning; either truly insignificant shows ((keep in mind that the kind of poster who would make this chart judges a show’s worth by its economic performance. original term 雑魚, or “small fry”)) or close to it.
Ex: NHK anime, Children’s anime, Pay channel shows (WOWOW, etc), Nippon TV late night shows, Gonzo shows, IG Original shows, etc

501~800
Mostly insignificant shows. Shows in this area generally failed to attract any interest and are looked upon as endangered, shadowy species.
Ex: Gin’iro no Olynssis, Hyakko, Hero Tales, Shikabane Hime, Akikan!, etc

801~1200
The line between significance and insignificance. Depending on the week, the title may chart if it gets lucky. However, these titles are normally frightened away from the charts, as they’re afraid that Totoro might squash them.
Ex: Yozakura Quartet, Blassreiter, Simoun, Kaze no Stigma, Nabari no Ou, etc

1201~1800
Significant enough to not count as insignificant. However, their poor sales are generally enough to chart, often causing people to only feel pity or sympathy for them.
Ex: Ghost Slayers Ayashi, Galaxy Angel Rune, Kimikiss, Our Home’s Fox Deity, Kyoran Kazoku Nikki, etc

1801~2300
Light novel anime often falls in this category. Might be enough to turn a profit with Kadokawa DVD pricing. The title considered the hurdle is now quantified as a single unit of sales, as in “one Zega.” Anime in this category is considered to be in dangerous territory, as Manabi, the problem child, often makes faces at these titles.
Ex: Rental Magica, Goshusho-sama Ninomiya-kun, Kurenai, Shinkyoku Sokai Polyphonica, Zegapain, etc.

2301~3000
Many titles fall in this category. Marginally performing shows, many of which didn’t sell as much as their popularity would make you think they would.
Ex: Manabi Straight!, true tears #1, Sketchbook, Gun X Sword, Yami to Boshi to Hon no Tabibito

3001~4000
The line of profitability. Also the line at which one could say a title is doing okay, but some may call some titles that sell this many a failure, so it’s quite hard to judge.
Ex: Denno Coil, Soul Eater, School Days, Linebarrels of Iron, Super Robot Swars OG, etc

4001~5000
Titles that gathered a reasonable amount of attention and sold reasonably well. Posters may still make fun of these titles’ sales, but they’re rarely considered “failures.” Growth stocks.
Ex: Seto no Hanayome, Bamboo Blade Garei -Zero-, Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, Planetes, etc

5001~7000
The point where a second season looks likely, and a reasonable number of discs one can hope to sell. Producers seem to begin to be praised at this point.
Ex: Strawberry Marshmallow, Rozen Maiden, Hidamari Sketch, The Familiar of Zero, Darker than Black, etc

7001~9000
Impressive sales, favorites that can easily be called “hits.”
Ex: Spice and Wolf, Full Metal Panic Fumoffu, Nodame Cantabile, My-Otome, Sgt. Frog, etc

9001~11,000
The entry point into the world of five-figure sales. There is no problem with calling regular late night anime that sell this much a “major hit.”
Ex: Toradora, Shakugan no Shana, Natsume’s Book of Friends, Pani Poni Dash!, Fafner in the Azure, etc

11,001~15,000
The top class of sales for titles that target the narrow otaku community. Praiseworthy honors students.
Ex: Minami-ke, s-CRY-ed, Da Capo, Strike Witches, Eureka Seven, etc

15,001~20,000
The point at which people who normally don’t buy DVDs begin to buy a title. Outstanding works brimming with frontier spirit.
Ex: Gintama, Death Note, Big Windup, Aria the Animation, Negima, etc

20,001~25,000
Properties with many strong, ardent, and powerful supporters. Major stars with deep fanbases.
Ex: Air, Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Clannad, Hetalia, etc

25,001~35,000
Titles in between the above and below categories that stand as influential and steadfast titles.
Ex: Lucky Star, Azumanga Daioh, G.I.T.S. SAC 2nd GIG, Initial D 4th Stage, Fate/Stay Night, etc

35,001~50,000
New leaders that become the talk of the industry. Incredible flamewars break out between supporters of titles of this group and titles in the next tier.
Ex: Full Metal Alchemist, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Code Geass, Macross F, Gundam 00, etc

50,001~100,000
In a completely different class from the rest. Godly sales.
Ex: Gundam SEED, theatrical anime (Kara no Kyokai, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time), Bakemonogatari, etc

100,001~
Theatrical anime or anime made for the public at large. The stars of the industry.
Ex: Ghibli anime, Eva films, Zeta Gundam: A New Translation, Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, The World of Golden Eggs, etc

, as chosen by 2ch and condensed into readable format by Kajisoku, who I don’t feel all too bad about stealing content from because affiliate blog lol

There were a whole lot of incidents I had no idea about, but first, the standard host of “incidents” that you’d expect in a thread like this:

• The first post is, of course, “Nagi-sama virginity incident” (quickly followed by “the ‘incident’ part was the people who posted in response to the manga, right?”)
• Electric Soldier Porygon incident
• episode 4 of Gurren-Lagann (lol)
• a pretty exhaustive list of Yashiganis (1, 2, 3, 4, Valanoir
• Asuna’s cremation in Negima!
• The existence of Tsuyokiss (or maybe it was all a dream…)
• The existence of the Idolm@ster anime
• The existence of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
• The existence of Buddha Saitan
• The ending of Kashimashi TV
• Endless Eight
• etc etc

Stuff like that makes up a good half of the thread or so. However, the other half is full of hilarious stuff that may have otherwise been lost to my poor memory and the straits of time!

• Red tinting on the Japanese Spirited Away DVD release (English article, image)
• TV Tokyo pushes back Inukami episode due to world table tennis championships running long, man who set his recorder to automatically tape Inukami during the normal time slot sends cremated remains to TV Tokyo in protest (article)
• Episode 26 of Animentary Ketsudan, a right-leaning 1971 historical anime series where the first 25 episodes are about important decisions made during World War II, becomes an episode about Kawakami Tetsuharu’s decisions as the manager of the Yomiuri Giants. Apparently the episode was originally going to be on the final days of the war, but mounting pressure by parent groups over the program’s politics lead to the change.
• Nippon TV, Tatsunoko Pro, and Kuri Ippei are sued by Katsukawa Katsushi over claims that they plagarized his character design in their show Doteraman, temporary pulling the show from the airwaves. (Katsukawa would later lose the suit)
• Incredible scheduling botch when TBS tries to push Ichigo Mashimaro ep 5 back by 5 minutes in order to air a special live news report on a hurricane. (youtube)
• Broadcasting error on 8/15/2007 leads to a 65-minute long frozen frame of Sanji’s eyebrow (One Piece) on one channel. Japanese
• The Musashimaru Tragedy
• Episode 17 of Samurai Troopers is accidentally broadcast in lieu of episode 18, forcing the production company to shorten the show from 40 episodes to 39.(image)
• The staff of the Prince of Tennis anime decided to make a staff doujinshi of the series and sell it at summer Comiket 2004, but are forced to give it away for free when the original author takes notice. (scans on nico)
• Spanish terrestrial broadcast TV channel “La Sexta” airs ero-anime Daiakuji without actually knowing what it is, causes general moral outrage
• The ending of Might Gaine, where the characters find out that the ultimate enemy is actually Takara and other toy companies. (No really, I’m not kidding)
• The opening credits of episode 11 of City Hunter 3, broadcast on Christmas Eve 1989, featured a one-frame flash of Aum Shinrikyo leader Asahara Shoko. This was apparently done as an production in-joke, as one-frame insertions like this are present in shows like Urusei Yatsura and Patlabor TV, and there was no backlash at the time. In 1993, Yomiuri TV asked them to remove this for later rebroadcasts as they were afraid that uncredited insertion of living people’s photographs might lead to a image rights issue. However, TBS would later attack Nippon TV over the original sequence during the heated weeks after the Aum sarin gas attacks, saying it was a subliminal message. (Image here, video footage of an indescribably bizarre cult-recruitment tool/Aum video game which features a clip from the video here.)
• Not in the thread, but related to the above 2 entries: The 6th show in the Yusha/Brave series, The Brave of Gold Goldran (Might Gaine was show #4), had a one-frame flash in the opening credits of the first 13 episodes where, in the background of a scene where the titular robot could be seen, the phrase “An anime that’s easy to make toys out of / by Sunrise” can be seen handwritten in the background. Oh, those crazy disgruntled Sunrise animators! You can catch it at around 1:12 of this video.

At school, not wanting to drive home in my long break between meeting my advisor and a film screening cause of rush hour. Therefore, this hastily-done silly translation of a spreadsheet some 2cher made of various popularity rankings for summer season anime. Any questions should be answered by the notes, but if not, just post a comment! Click for large, obviously. Oh, and Stolen from Yunakiti, just like all the cool guys do.

I wasn’t going to post this originally since it seemed too out there, but now that Hagaren’s cast has changed I feel marginally more comfortable posting these completely unsourced rumors from a random 2ch post, many of which have already, by pure chance, come true! via yunakiti since I am a busy adult with no time to actually read 2ch

Munto will be 9 episodes long â—‹
Basquash getting aired on 10 channels across Japan, is 2 seasons long â—‹
Strike Witches S2 in 2010, based on the light novel â—‹
April Haruhi airing will be a mix of season 1 and season 2, aired in chronological order
Shangri-La will be 2 seasons long
Asura Cryin’ will be 2 seasons, one in Spring, one in Fall
Seitokai no Ichizon airing in July â—‹
Omamori Himari getting an anime adaptation ○　(this, Seitokai, and SW s2 were posted in late January)
Railgun getting an anime in 2010
The Final Negima OAD won’t be produced by SHAFT (? i might be reading this wrong)
Mangrove doing Seiken no Katanakaji
Many changed voice actors for the new season of Hagaren â—‹
Wolf and Spice s2 in July, 12 eps in all â—‹

I guess we have to sit back and see how this pans out! Maybe it’s all part of Kadokawa’s master plan. even this very blog post.

Translator/blogger’s Introduction: I’ve started reading more Japanese blogs as of late so that I don’t have to rely on slanted, NWS English-language rss feeds for nerd news. Some of the aggregators I started keeping an eye out on link to regular folks’ blog posts, which led me to Tamagomagogohan, a blog run by Tamagomago-san. (ironically, link may be nws, especially if you live in Canada or Australia.) I found this wonderful post by Tamagomago-san on the Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei OPs on Friday, and was kindly given permission from him to post a translation of it here. I have to warn you that this may require some more reader participation to follow his argument than the average English-language blog post, but that’s just how Japanese essays seem to be. There are translator’s notes interspersed throughout the article. The author also frequently uses the technique of putting the characters for an idea or concept in quotes, which works out a lot cooler in Japanese than it does in English. For this reason, I’ve included the original Japanese characters in addition to my translation where I felt it would be enlightening to those familiar with moon runes. I hope you enjoy! Please don’t hesitate to comment if you’d like to offer any suggestions or would like any sort of attempt at clarification. Finally, I’d like to once again suggest you take a look at the author’s blog if you can make sense of Japanese and are interested in a good read.

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The final episode of [Goku] Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei has been released.
That’s it for the OADs. Hmph, so sad :(. I’m hoping for a third TV season.

The Tale Created in Zetsubou Sensei’s OPs: The Story Until Now

Well, I’d like to start with a little review of OPs until now.
First, season 1.

Shoujo Objectification and Dismantling as Seen in the Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei OP.
The OP song is “Hito Toshite Jiku ga Bureteiru”.
It’s an intense OP where the show’s girls are erotically both dismantled and bound.
While eros is a theme here, so is this:

Yes, it’s “Depression” (鬱). (tl note: Haruhi fans should be familiar with this kanji!)
As one goes deeper and deeper into a world overflowing with eros, they turn to more and more extreme paths in that world. Despite the incredible sense of lust, Sensei’s heart is being eaten away by depression.

Kafuka’s pregnancy scene.
This is a mysterious scene, profound yet unexplained.

Next we have the second season, [Zoku].

This OP is a grotesque one, with persistent images of organs. The OP song is “Kuusou Rumba.”
Unlike the first OP, this one started out in monochrome. This OP had the special trait of changing throughout the different episodes, cutting off midway in some versions and finally appearing in full color, surprising quite a few people.
The Manic Heart and Ero-Guro Nonsense seen in the [Zoku] Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei OP
The Mystery Hidden in [Zoku] Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei’s OP
The theme of this OP is “Mania” (躁), acting as a pair to the first season’s theme. It’s all extremely high-tension, wouldn’t you say?

Despite the OP’s colors being in plain monochrome, its actual content is so excited that you feel like you’re about to go mad.
Once color is added to all of this, a new, vibrant world is born.
Though, there is one girl who stays the same here. This girl:

That girl is the girl who we saw in season 1 pregnant with Zetsubou-sensei’s children, Fuura Kafuka (Pen Name).

Next, the [Goku] OVA series.

Now things are at the point where you can’t even figure out what’s going on. While it was called “A Professional MAD”, we can see a complete lack of living characters here, the girls instead fully turned to objects.

[Goku] Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and Jan Svankmajer: The Eroticism of Objects
Via “Depression”　(鬱), we fall into the confusion of “Mania”(躁), and also into “Chaos” (混沌).
Feeling a sense of raw “Eros” and gazing at “Grotesque” death, we come to an underlying “Objectification” (物体化).
While wriggling between the boundary of “Truth” (真実) and “Pretense” (虚像), their form changes shape and color.
While each of these views are incredibly symbolic and interesting possibilities, we discover from whose perspective these openings are all from in the final part of [Goku].

You’ve probably guessed by now. It’s Fuura Kafuka.
The reason this world is constantly changing is because of this girl’s inner fragility and instability.

Ambivalence Seen by the Girls’ Eye(s).
(tl note: Japanese has the luxury of being able to be vague on pluralization, relying on context to clue the reader in. In this case, I’m fairly certain that it is pointing to the girls’ eye (singular), but that sounds kind of awkward in English. Almost as awkward as a long translation note.)
The music this time is an arrangement by “Rapbito”. While that may be surprising, there doesn’t remain a trace of the previous OPs’ sense of parody. Instead, they’ve created an entirely new work.

It’s almost as if it’s a MAD created by Gekidan Inukaree (note: Gekidan Inukaree, literally “Dog Curry Troupe,” is the individual/group responsible for the OP).
This OP is quite obsessed with certain details, one of which being that if you look closely in the corners of the frame, you can see characters representing the two sides of each girl.
Chiri is “Chaos” (乱)and “Order” (整).
Abiru is “Kick”　(蹴) and “Punch” (殴).
There’s also “Good” (善) and “Evil” (悪), “Victim” （加) and “Aggressor” （被), “Seme” （攻) and “Uke” （受), “Poverty” （貧) and “Wealth” (富), and so on.
Each character is represented by a pair of characters in this manner. (Well, kick and punch aren’t really opposites, but…)
Each girl’s “Existence-as-Presented” (イメージの存在) is made up of two contradictory ideas. This dangerous tightrope act is at once fascinating and terrifying.
So, what about Fuura Kafuka, the girl in question?

“Mania” (躁) and “Depression” （鬱).
In other words, the OPs until now (Season 1: Depression, Season 2: Mania) have been expressions of the core of her inner world.
As you probably noticed by comparing this picture to the previous two, this image of the audience being nothing but Kafukas is once again symbolic, while also eerie.

Fuura Kafuka isn’t her real name. It’s a pen name. While we don’t officially know her name as of now, we see glimpse of it as “something like *this*”. However, it’s never confirmed.
We even see a glimpse of this in today’s episode.

It’d be hard to say that this isn’t a young Kafuka. Her nametag reads “An.” (tl note: other possible romanizations are Ann and Anne. However, my overactive gaijin mind associates “アン” with a homonym “æš—”, “darkness”, so I’ve kept it as is.)
Of course, this doesn’t really go beyond another guess. While our main character, the Sensei, has relatively few mysteries surrounding him, Fuura Kafuka is nothing but mysteries.
Let’s take a look into such a girl’s state of mind.

The sorrowful psychedelic as seen by the girl’s eye(s).
Halfway through the song, the scenes introducing the girls one-by-one end, and the OP shifts to Kafuka and Sensei’s duet performance.
Well, since we might be seeing a story created by Kafuka’s psyche, we might technically call it a solo performance.

For example, the image of Kafuka dancing madly on a flower bed.
If we take a close look at this scene, we see a fairly awesome scene. (tl note: “awesome” in the biblical sense, not in the contemporary slang sense)

She’s actually dancing on top of the rubble of her classmates’ bodies.
Though, these aren’t really “corpses”. The reason I say this is because the girls in the [Goku] series up to this point have already been objectified and dismantled.
If we were to see blood or organs spilled, this could be said to represent death, but since this MAD uses the technique of “Destroying the image”, the “Girls’ Image” is replaced with lifeless objects.
Hence the girls’ world is an extremely inorganic one, one where the senses are fuzzy.

The scene with Sensei and Kafuka looks like this.
While Sensei has been turned to an image, barely resembling any sort of living being, Kafuka herself is also turned to a strange creature.
Nonetheless, if we look closely, the flowers here are, interestingly, “raw” ones.

In the background we see “Falsehood” (嘘) and “Truth” (真).
Once again, there’s a sense of ambivalence.
When one holds ambivalence like this, one is forced to choose to either struggle against it, or become an empty shell of a human being.
It seems as though Kafuka’s displayed positive attitude may be a result of her attempts to escape her own extreme thoughts of despair and uncertainty, replacing them with the ideas “all is inorganic” and “all is meaningless”.

Of course, this interpretation is reliant on these OPs which are in some sense “professionally made derivative works”, so its relevance to the work as a whole might be questionable, but the world we’ve seen up until now is full of contradictions. In order to stay alive in this world, one can’t choose A or B, but must simply float in between the two.
That the normally-hanged Sensei’s neck is nooseless this time, and that Kafuka is the one hanging seems especially symbolic. Also, the fact that the previously inorganic images in the OP are replaced with more and more live flowers also interests me.

Perhaps the inorganic paper-mache world is trying to break through the wave of “Depression” and “Mania” in order to then revive itself?

I just can’t figure out what color Kafuka’s world, the world illustrated by these OPs, is.

————————————

Revisiting the Zoku OP with “Fuura Kafuka’s Point of View” in mind, he gradual fading followed by sudden jump into color in the final episodes seems to also make sense.
On the other hand, we could also see this as “Fuura Kafuka as seen by Sensei.” In that case, we’d have to understand the OP in a totally different way, but there is that shot in the part 3 OP where we see Kafuka with her eyes downcast, possibly crying.
I think the key to figuring this all out is Kafuka’s attempt to objectify the world while Sensei tries to protect the flowers, which symbolize life.
Is it symbiosis, or is it codependence…
Finally, though this is about the main feature, the final episode of a three-part series having so much development shocked me. Check the manga story for more detail…

So apparently a few people on that 2ch site are kind of angry at doujin circle Hachimitsu Kuma-san over a recent job posting on the circle’s site as well as on their mixi.

In essence, they are looking for someone to do odd jobs for them, basically filling in whatever need they have at the moment. A few more details:
*Must live within an hour of Omiya city in Chiba prefecture.
*Must be able to be on call even after midnight on days off.
*Will work for free. (this part is only mentioned on the mixi posting.)

Sounds like a dream job, right?

Well, apparently those nay-sayers at 2ch don’t think so. What a bunch of negative nancies! They’ve even gone so far as to post a lot of copy/pastes making some pretty harsh allegations about Hachikuma-san’s business practices, but you can find those on your own, or I’m sure some other blogger will post them as The Absolute Truth, cause 2ch kopipe is never wrong. Anyway, any of you folks out there thinking of applying?!

(via katoyu–)

nicovideo just wished me happy new year. happy new year to you too, nicovideo!

(This link is old, but it’s new to me!!)

Now, I know a lot of folks aren’t the biggest fans around of Seven Seas Entertainment, after all that KnJ unpleasantness and whatnot, but between trying to break into the US market with a whole bunch of light novels, trying to bring stuff done by Closet Child over here, and on top of that sending me a free copy of Shinigami no Ballad just so that it could be subjected to the verbal diarrhea better known as “me reviewing things”, they’ve got a place in my heart.

With that in mind, after reading this thread on their forums, I want to go to their offices and give them all (especially this Adam Arnold feller) a great big hug. Or maybe a big pat on the back or something, that seems less creepy but unfortunately more patronizing. I mean sure, 2channelers might burn multiple volumes of your manga, but any sort of entitlement complex that “nagi is a slut” betrays pales in comparison to the average American message board poster if this thread is any indication. After that thread I feel like I need to go spend all my holiday Amazon gift certs on light novels, yeesh.

first and foremost, hats off to the anime team for the spoo reference.

Second, weblab.ota has a great flowchart describing what in the world is going on with this whole mess, if you can manage to read the Japanese. I’d love to read it for you, but I have a 10 page paper due in 48 hours.

Finally, the current rumor circulating around the internet around Takenashi’s health is that she fell down a bunch of stairs due to anemia, if this mystery barebones blog site by some light novelist who may or may not be referencing Takenashi when she talks about “U-nyan” is correct. Kind of a stretch, I guess?