Otaku Links: The Internet never forgets

Otaku Links

12 years ago

How Homestar Runner changes Web series for the better. I remember when I discovered Homestar in 10th grade. It’s great that, unlike other Flash videos I watched back then (ThreeBrain, We Drink Ritalin), this gem wasn’t forgotten.

Or maybe the Internet never forgets. The Miami New Times just checked in with “Loli-chan,” 4chan’s youngest camgirl. She’s now 20!

Here’s a fresh, funny strategy for reviewing a new season of anime. It’s almost like watching a comedy AMV. NSFW for panty-shots.

I don’t usually link public policy articles, but this one is an exception. Juggalo society as an empowering restructure of America’s lower class. In case you forgot, I’ve got a long-running obsession with Juggalo fandom.

Why do you read anime blogs? Deremoe did a survey on that question, among several others, and shared their stats.

Yuricon writes about the one important thing about manga licensing that fans don’t understand. I didn’t understand this either until I read her article.

“What do you find sexy about Magic: The Gathering?” This Glamour Magazine article is 2 years old and I’m still laughing about it. The final guy interviewed, Brian Kibler, is actually one of the top ranked players alive.

(Illustration via HomeStarRunner.com.)

Why you might already be an otaku journalist

Journalism

12 years ago

Here’s one thing I never told you: some of my most esteemed otaku journalism heroes never considered themselves to be otaku journalists. I’m talking about:

Oprah Winfrey, whose passionate reporting got her fired from her first job.

“As a reporter, you’re not supposed to empathize with the people that you’re reporting on, and it’s very difficult to be writing copy when somebody’s been in an accident,” she said later.

Today, Oprah’s empathy for her interview subjects and audience alike is what has made her so unique and relatable among TV personalities.

Rachel Carson, who wrote about what she loved intending to help her audience feel the same. Her poetic environmentalist opus, Silent Spring, doesn’t come from a distance.

Though she was careful to meticulously fact-check every detail, Carson let her writing speak through the everyday voices of farmers and housewives—along with noted biologists. Her writing wasn’t so much about the science behind pesticides, as it was about introducing readers to the people and communities who felt its effects most intimately.

As Carson once said, “It is not half so important to know as to feel.”

Tom Wolfe, who helped found “the New Journalism” and, more so than writing mechanically about the events of his day, told entertaining stories that happened to be true.

Wolfe believed that the journalist was as much a character in his stories as any source. He argued that his entrenched position in the community he was reporting on lent him accuracy.

“I am the first to agree that the New Journalism should be as accurate as traditional journalism,” he said. “In fact my claims for the New Journalism, and my demands upon it, go far beyond that. I contend that it has already proven itself more accurate than traditional journalism—which unfortunately is saying but so much…”

What I call Otaku Journalism has gone by a lot of different names. It’s been called “Saturated Journalism,” “Submersion Journalism,” “New Journalism,” and even, “The New New Journalism.” Sometimes, it’s in the first person, sometimes not. But every time, it refers to a kind of reporting that acknowledges the reporter’s flawed position as a human observer—and makes attempts to enhance, rather than minimize, the reporter’s impassioned stance.

After all this time, aspiring journalists are still taught to put away our leanings and to keep our distance, even though we know this doesn’t actually lead to more interesting—and certainly not more accurate or informed—journalism. I also don’t think that acknowledging your humanity and that of your audience is at odds with a carefully fact-checked, true story.

I coined “Otaku Journalism” because, as a geek, the kind of deep involvement that I saw in my favorite journalistic essays immediately looked like otaku fandom to me: the obsessive, life-consuming passion for absorbing everything there is to know about a subject. I still prefer this title to the vague “New Journalism.” It makes it apparent that, in my opinion at least, the reporting worth reading is done by the journalists who geek out about what they do.

The truth about Boys’ Love and rape culture

Anime, Fandom

12 years ago

A few days ago, my colleague Fruzsina Eördögh quoted me in an article about Boys’ Love, that niche, distinctly feminine genre targeted at girls who like boys.

It’s just the latest time I’ve been asked about my thoughts on BL, by a list of people that includes friends, colleagues, former employers, and even prospective employers (I guess I’m in a particularly unusual line of business in this respect).

Lately, especially when I’m speaking to outsiders who don’t watch BL, or even anime, I tell them something simplified, a little bit like what I said to Fruzsina:

“Two guys together is a safe sexual environment, free from rape and women’s other worries about sex and violence.”

In my defense, this is only the first line of a long conversation Fruzsina and I had over Gchat trying to unpack what it is that makes BL so alluring to women, especially young women. But let me explain myself a little further.

A “safe space”… for women

When I say BL is “free from rape and women’s other worries about sex and violence,” I really mean the viewer. In a BL romance, there is no female avatar to worry about. When you take the woman out of the equation, the female viewer is free to not worry about danger for a change.

In a hetero romance show, there are a lot of disasters that could befall a female love interest. She could get killed off, in order to motivate the male hero. She could get raped to move the plot. She could be slut shamed for her sexual feelings.

Really, it’s that last part that makes BL such a safe space for young women. Men are “supposed” to have sexual feelings, and they’re never shamed for them in the media. So when women consume romances between two men, the feelings of guilt they’d otherwise have for enjoying it disappear.

Basically, there are several different reasons young women could be drawn to BL, and none of them say anything good about our society’s relationship with female sexuality. It’s nothing like the “two is better than one” explanation of why straight men like lesbian porn. For one thing, BL isn’t even supposed to be pornographic most of the time.

Why is rape a BL theme anyway?

The other problematic part of my quote is when I say BL takes place in a “safe sexual environment.”

If you’re a BL fan, you’ve probably got alarm bells going off. As fans know, rape and non-consent are hallmark cliches in BL classics like Gravitation, FAKE, even Junjou Romantica, the series Fruzsina used to illustrate the article!

But that’s the really difficult part. Since concern about getting raped is such a traumatic part of daily life for women, why are BL fans consuming so many series with non-consent themes?

First, it’s important to note that most BL is VERY tame. The most we ever see on screen is kissing. Implied sex, and implied rape, take place off screen and are referred to after the fact in order to drive the plot.

Perhaps in BL, the line between fantasy and reality is so strict that female viewers can let their guards down. BL is highly fictional. It’s not meant to portray a realistic gay relationship. (There IS another genre targeted at gay men, called bara or Men’s Love.) One common BL trope is to have a seme, a masculine aggressor, and an uke, a feminine submissive.

These character types look so different from actual humans that they give us hilarious memes like “yaoi hands,” a syndrome where the seme’s hand is bigger than the uke’s head. When creators resort to rape as a plot device (and I say “resort” since I think it’s uncreative), it perhaps seems as surreal as every other aspect of the relationship. Maybe. I don’t have a final answer for this, and apparently, neither does anyone else.

My sordid BL backstory

I got into BL the same way Fruzsina did—the same way a lot of teen girls do: real boys are scary. (I didn’t realize that I thought this way because of the media indoctrination I’d already received.) I certainly wasn’t ready to date them, and I didn’t even want to think about what it was like to be with them. BL let me explore my sexuality without worrying about either of those things.

I wrote terrible, childish fanfiction where my favorite anime characters had crushes on each other and occasionally got to first base. My middle school friend group obtained a copy of FAKE, one of the first BL titles released in the US. I pirated Gravitation, even though it took more than a week to download. (Sorry, anime industry! I own it legally now.)

And then, I just stopped liking it for a long time. In high school, I started dating boys who were, unsurprisingly, nothing like the boys in my BL shows or fanfiction. (If it isn’t clear by now, BL characters are young women in male bodies, mirrors of ourselves.) I didn’t need the safety of BL anymore once I was ready to learn what boys are really like.

Weirdly, I didn’t get back into BL until after I was married. Free! came out this summer and it was like BL junk food. It felt good to watch a show that was targeted right at me for a change. I ended up watching it with my husband and a mutual friend, who both got kind of hooked on the plot.

Going online to check out the state of BL fanfiction, I was floored by the sheer amount that exists today compared to when I was a teen. There’s not just BL, but slash, a genre of fanfiction/fanart for pairing together same-sex couples from basically anything, from The Avengers to real life hockey teams. Slash is just as old as BL; it just wasn’t on my radar before. That means women who aren’t even into anime are taking part.

BL isn’t going away; it’s actually getting bigger. And until our culture starts telling a different story to young women about their sexuality and bodies, the appeal of BL is just going to grow.

(Image sources: Free!, Gravitation, gargarstegosaurus, lemonorangelime.)

Otaku Links: Let’s agree to disagree about Crunchyroll

Otaku Links

12 years ago

Since I watched no fewer than 5 shows last season, I’m trying to stay disciplined and just watch one for fall, Gundam Build Fighters. I made the right choice. It doesn’t take itself seriously at all, and Ramba Ral makes a cameo in episode one. You can watch it legally on YouTube.

If you’re still decided what to watch and where, my Twitter friend Scott took notes and it looks like Crunchyroll is streaming 30+ shows this season. I’ll just leave my Crunchyroll affiliate link riiiight here.

It’s pretty obvious I support Crunchyroll as it exists today. But not everyone feels so warmly toward the site, which does have a sordid past. (Before it made things right, it was an illegal streaming site.) Here’s why the Seventh Style bloggers think supporting Crunchyroll is bad for the anime industry.

Here’s why cosplayer Chaka Cumberbatch is demanding better representation for black girl nerds in geek culture. The best part of this article is the story in the last two paragraphs.

Mo’ fandoms, mo’ problems? If you think so, you’ll love the fact that there’s now an advice column exclusively for fangirl problems. You’ll notice my friend Lisa, who guest-blogged last week, wrote this article.

Nothing beats this 2011 birth announcement baby name. And to think, that kid is now two years old!

TIL there’s a maid cafe in New York City. Has anybody been there?

How 2013 made anime academic Charles Dunbar love anime again. I’m glad The Eccentric Family was one of the reasons. Welcome back to the fandom, Charles!

(Screenshot via Gundam Build Fighters, episode one.)

The Eccentric Family and the Japan that never was

Anime

12 years ago

Tanuki mischief. Tengu justice. The Seven Lucky Gods.

The Eccentric Family takes some of the most notable hallmarks of Japanese mythology and invigorates them in a twenty-first century retelling. What’s old is new again as traditional Japanese folklore finds a new home in modern Kyoto.

I decided to marathon this anime before the fall season after hearing other bloggers’ rave reviews. As a fan of Natsume’s Book of Friends, it was to be expected that I’d instantly fall for this close-knit tanuki family. In both shows, supernatural themes eventually take a backseat to the far more fulfilling drama of human relationships—between siblings, lovers, teacher and student, father and son.

The Eccentric Family focuses on Yasaburo, a shape-shifting tanuki, and the people he loves most. His dangerous crush on Benten, a human woman who eats tanuki hot-pot without a twinge of remorse. His curmudgeon professor, a tengu who can no longer fly. And the mystery of his revered father’s untimely hot-pot death, which he and his family struggle to solve for the duration of the series.

That’s the plot. But what really grabbed me was the vibrant Kyoto backdrop against which it takes place. The Gozan Fire Festival. Urban settings and modern clothing alongside traditional kimono and tatami rooms. The background music, with traditional Japanese strings and flutes. And on top of all of it, the pervading superstition of supernatural creatures that walk among humans.

The Eccentric Family is the latest from Tomihiko Morimi, a manga artist perhaps best known for Tatami Galaxy. A Kyoto native, most of Morimi’s works take place in the Old Capitol. Designed for a Japanese audience, perhaps he’s trying to capture the nostalgia, the old mixed with new that Kyoto is supposed to merge.

But watching as a foreigner, it’s also a fantasy portrayal of a Japan that doesn’t really exist. No more than a show set in the American West with elements of tall tale mythology would have anything to do with America today.

I love the line in Peepo Choo in which Milton discovers that Japan is nothing like his Japanese anime. “Don’t arbitrarily make our country your weird Neverland,” Reiko tells him. It’s a wake-up-call for American otaku who think our problems would be solved if we moved to Japan. It reminds me that I can watch anime all day and still not know a thing about the country it came from.

The Eccentric Family gets as close to that false otaku Neverland as you can get, mixing the best of modern and ancient Japanese humor and beliefs. In some ways, it’s the picture of Japan I see in my head.

I just can’t wait to actually visit Japan some day and see how wrong I was.

You can watch The Eccentric Family on Crunchyroll. Click here for a free Premium trial.