An excellent, excellent open letter to the anime industry.

The last section is what hits it home for me. ADV and Viz have attempted to branch out into allowing legal downloads, but their ventures were doomed from the start. Not because fans don't want legal downloads, but because ADV and Viz went about it in an entirely asinine way. ADV launched its downloads with a lineup of terrible series (seriously, Godannar?!), and now that they've branched out to offering good series (like Princess Tutu), they're still offering dubs only. I would love to be able to download Princess Tutu from the ADV website, but I want the Japanese language track, dammit. Likewise with ADV's much-vaunted Anime TV network; it took them an entire year before they started broadcasting subtitled shows, and even then, it was only during a very brief programming block. I think that's still the case. As for Viz, well... They made a big hullabaloo about offering subtitled Death Note episodes concurrent with the Japanese broadcast, and then completely fell through with that promise. Bad PR. Very bad PR.

The solutions seem so simple. Stream subtitled episodes and offer them for download, for a reasonable fee. (There are more people who refuse to watch dubbed anime than there are people who refuse to watch subtitled anime. That's a market reality.) Do it in a timely fashion. Beat the fansubbers in the timing game, or else you lose the market. Worry about DVD releases and dubbing tracks after the fact. And when you release DVDs, make them AWESOME, like the Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi DVDs. Like Sevakis said, if you can't make people want to buy your product, then you're out of business.

At this point it's impossible to stop fansubbing and piracy. So the only solution is to make a better product than what the pirates can offer. It's not THAT hard to do. So why is the industry dragging its feet?

ETA: Ask John weighs in. His point about Japanese anime companies expecting Americans to solve a problem that begins in Japan is spot-on. Like when FUNI went after those still-unlicensed fansub series earlier this year, apparently on behalf of the Japanese copyright holders. The Japanese companies target American fansubbers while completely ignoring the rampant piracy in Japan because they don't want to piss off their Japanese consumer base. Nice!

ETA 2: Jason weighs in with his two cents, and points out the obvious: that HD anime looks better as a digital video file than it ever will after it's been transfered to DVD. It was the anime companies themselves, when they rushed to embrace HD, that have begun the obsoletion of the DVD format.

Linkspam > Boredom. Let's go.

( Behind this cut, the internets are awesome. )

Bonus awesome: How to Make a Real Taco. Although I maintain that there is no shame in making and eating the Americanized version, however, as it's quite a tasty invention. As long as you're not fooling yourself into thinking that you're eating a REAL MEXICAN TACO, that is.

Well, it's that time again. October means the start of new anime series in Japan, and everybody and their dog is throwing up a "fall preview" post on their blog or livejournal. I was thinking of doing that too, but first, I went back and looked at what shows I predicted I would watch last spring, and laughed a bit at myself. Then I started thinking and writing, looking back on a year of watching free anime in wonderful Japanland, and, well...

I guess it's the normal procedure to wait until December to do an "anime year in review" post, but I think that fall would actually be a better time for me to do so. First, in Japan as in the United States, fall is the nominal start of the Year in Television. Second, I arrived in Japan last fall, so if I wanted to write about a year's worth of anime, of course it cover the span of time from autumn to autumn!

So without further adieu, here is my year in anime. ( Behind the cut. )

And, to conclude this amazingly long post...

Recommendations?

Level One: If you breathe air, you will probably like this series.
Seirei no Moribito/Guardian of the Sacred Spirit
Romeo x Juliet
Dennou Coil


Level Two: Recommended, but your mileage may vary.
Gurren Lagann (must love old-fashioned schlock done right)
Code Geass (must love old-fashioned schlock done horribly, horribly wrong)
Claymore (must be able to love a good story despite terrible art)
Hataraki Man (must not be grossed out by onscreen depictions of people eating natto)
Moonlight Mile (must have tolerance for slow pacing)
To Terra (must be able to love that old-school space opera)

So, if I had to sum up all of the above in one sentence, it would be this:
Everybody should watch Seirei no Moribito.
That is all.

Via ladykleo

"Of all the late night animation series which debuted in Japan during the fall of 2006, Hataraki Man remains No. 1 in overall television audience ratings."

That's right. It beat Death Note.

A late night anime, based on a josei manga created by one of the few overtly feminist manga-ka working in Japan, debuted without ANY of the hype or advertising that preceded its competitors. And it rose to the top of the rankings! A frank and honest story about a middle-aged woman working as a magazine editor beat out the tried-and-true formula of a high school student and his shinigami sidekick.

Maybe there's hope for Japan yet.

Psalm of Planets Eureka Seven is brilliant. I can't believe that I missed this series the first time around. (Well, "the first time around" was when I was still in college and had no life outside of research and occassional bouts of eating and sleeping, so I guess I can believe that I missed it.) A lovely person in Iida lent me his DVDs and I've been marathoning it for the past week.

For those of you unfamiliar... Eureka Seven is basically Solaris. Yes, that's pretty much it. It's Solaris right down to the last ethical what-if, only instead of a bleak ending Eureka Seven ends in a burst of beautiful hopefulness. Unlike Solaris, however, there are very dark parts wherein the alien entity in question defends itself from human intrusion in violent and quite frankly absolutely horrifying ways. Oh yes, and there are also surfboarding giant robots. And there are references to Dostoevsky and Sir James George Frazer (Golden Bough FTW) that I am ashamed to admit I did NOT understand, and that I had to resort to fansubs and Google and Wikipedia before I "got" them. Yes, I am a failure as a college-educated upper-middle-class white person. I am not literate enough to appreciate the depth of this anime series about surfboarding giant robots! Woe.

Also, the fourth opening song is the best use of "Amazing Grace" in Japanese dance-pop EVER.

Eureka Seven is interesting to watch because it's told through the eyes of its young hero, Renton. Renton is, of course, an immature and wanky teenage boy. At the beginning of the series he thinks that he's setting off on some big happy adventure with a bunch of lovable counter-culture rogues who are only interested in having fun. (This is so, so wrong.) Renton thinks that when he and Eureka defeat the "bad robots" this is a cause for happy swelling music and sparkly uplifting fun-ness. (And indeed, it is, at the beginning of the series, where the narrative voice of the series itself is basically Renton's point of view.) Only later does Renton realize that fighting the "bad robots" and sticking it to the man means, you know, killing people. Nobody ever hid this fact from Renton, he was just too much of, well, a dumb kid to realize it. Eureka Seven is essentially a coming-of-age story about both Renton and Eureka, but unlike so many other anime that attempt to be heartfelt coming-of-age stories involving kids and giant robots, Eureka Seven doesn't suck. It's painful to watch at times, especially when Eureka and Renton are thrust into ugly situations in which there is no clear or good answer. Overall, though, the characterization and the writing of these two characters is just so damn good. Really, truly beautiful. The supporting cast is great too, and the villains (particularly Dewey and Anemone) are truly memorable. This is a fantastic series.

Speaking of giant robots... I don't care if Code Geass is a rip-off of everything under the sun, it's simply more fun and entertaining than half of the things that it's ripped off. Most of its entertainment value comes from its badness, however. Which is always fun. The premise and half of the character designs are play-by-play Gundam Seed. There's also shades of Death Note (dissatistified genius boy suddenly granted god-like powers and doing horribly unspeakable things in the name of "justice") and even Suzumiya Haruhi (particularly the pervy fangirl student council president who thinks it's a good idea to have everyone come to school in swimsuits). The character designs are vintage CLAMP, right down to the girl who is blind and thus is always drawn with her eyes closed. Because, you know, blind people always keep their eyes closed. Lloyd looks so much like Yukito from Cardcaptor Sakura that I keep thinking I'm watching an AU version of Yukito who is an insane evil genius that cackles a lot and refers to human pilots as "parts" for his giant robots. Oh yeah, and the hilarious SUBTLE OVERTONES OF JAPANESE JINGOISIM which are totally SUBTLE. You know, the way that the political message in Marvel's Civil War is totally two-sided and SUBTLE.

Karen should be an interesting lead female character. Unfortunately, for some reason, I find her as boring as toast.

One thing I will praise Code Geass for, however: I believe that this is the first anime series I have ever seen that suceeds in making a beautiful play on words in English. (The play on words in question would be "Knightmare.") The linguist within me squees with delight. And I know that this is cheesy and manipulative, but I actually like how every episode ends with a DUN DUN DUN! cliffhanger. At least it makes me actually want to see the next episode.

Because I like to take my sweet time before I jump on a bandwagon, I only just recently started reading/watching Shakugan no Shana. So far it looks as though it will follow the pattern established by Fate/Stay Night: A lovely and incredibly cool kick-ass heroine, a creative premise and a fascinating plot, and rampant sexism everywhere except where the main heroine is concerned. Other than Shana, the female characters who have appeared so far are a woman with giant boobs, a maid, a shy girl-next-door, and a potentially cool female classmate of the hero who gets killed off in the second episode. So yep, pretty much exactly like Fate/Stay Night, only with bonus minus points because of the maid, and the lack of mythological characters reincarnated as bishounen.

Death Note anime already premiered. The same guy who did Tamaki's voice in Ouran is doing Light's voice. I'm still kind of WTFing over that.

I picked up some more Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Hollow Atraxia official doujinshi anthologies at Heiando today. It's always a shot-in-the-dark buying these things, because there's no way to preview them in the store. The first couple that I bought, I am definitely dumping on ebay soon. But the ones that I got today are keepers, yay. My favorite story so far is a short about Gilgamesh hanging out at an Animate store and buying all of the Saber posters, wallscrolls, figures, plushies, and postcards that they have. Then he goes home and cuts a bunch of Saber pictures out of some anime magazines, and glues them into pictures of himself. AHAHAHAHA. Poor Gil. Honorable mentions among other doujinshi stories include all of the men transforming into magical girls, Ilya bringing Heracles to school for show and tell (that was priceless), Lancer being slashably slashy with everyone, Medea being slashably slashy with everyone, the apocalyptic volleyball tournament, Issei getting some serious "screentime" (yay Issei), and finally, Lancer pulls a Mara and gets a part-time job at a fast food joint, only to end up accidentally saving the universe through the power of hamburger (long story).

Lancer is awesome. So is Chibi!Gilgamesh. (In Hollow Atraxia Gil pulls a Peorth and ends up in the body of a ten-year-old boy, which does much to humble him and much more to bring teh funny into the story.) Medusa is just awesome because if anybody tries to steal her takoyaki she can turn them into stone. Useful power, that.

0. Ah! My Goddess 3D adventure PS2 RPG game. Because quiz games are lame.

1. Reading the draconian instructions to figure out the rules for the send-away service for this month's limited-edition Suzumiya Haruhi and Blood+ telecards. I mean, studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.

2. Red Garden. Yes, it's GONZO, and yes, there's opera music used in the preview, but that doesn't automatically equal pretentious suck. (Gankutsuou also had opera music in the preview and it was not full of pretentious suck. I swear!)

3. Winter Garden. Finally, some DiGi Charat that I won't feel totally guilty for enjoying. ^^;;

4. Suzumiya Haruhi capsule toys in October. For those of you who can't afford the Haruhi or Mikuru PVC, or who missed the send-away Haruhi-absuing-Mikuru Animage figure (which BTW was more expensive and decidedly more crappy than the other PVC figures, but whatever).

5. Shana OAV, Death Note anime, second part of the Death Note movie. Tie.

6. Achi Teacher's annual get-drunk-and-rowdy party on Friday. A tiny little part of me actually does want to see all of the teachers at Achi drunk out of their minds. Just a tiny part.