anime

At this point in his creative career, Hayao Miyazaki has directed nine different animated feature films under his Studio Ghibli label, and every single one of them is available in the US, thanks to Disney and their talented team of translators, voice actors and dialogue-reconstructors. Take advantage of this.

While I have said before that I’m not a fan of what US television has done to anime, the films of Studio Ghibli feel like a beacon of intelligence among the horrible battling-trading-card-and-monster-shows-that-sell-merchandise which we’re now drowning in, or those cartoons that show just a few too many shots of schoolgirl underwear. While many of Miyazaki’s films focus around innocence, children, and the mystical circumstances they stumble into, rest assured that there are no underpants to contend with.

Disney has recently re-released some Miyazaki classics which you may have seen on the shelves a few years back : My Neighbor Totoro, Castle in the Sky, and Kiki’s Delivery Service. So, let’s dissect the differences of the US releases. It goes without saying that these are all excellent films – you can find detailed criticism elsewhere.

My Neighbor Totoro was released in 2002 by Fox, though this edition of the DVD was missing the original Japanese language track, and was presented in awkward fullscreen. It was again released in 2004 by Disney with an entirely new English voice cast, and again in 2010 – both of which are 2-disc sets which differ in special features.

The 2004 release, which features a colorful fishing scene over a river on the cover, includes a featurette with US voice actors Elle and Dakota Fanning, as well as the original trailer in Japanese and the complete film in storyboard form. The 2010 release, which uses a dark blue, rainy scene on the cover and a gold slipcase spine, features an extensive exploration of Studio Ghibli as they were making Totoro, previews for a few other films, and the same storyboard version of the film as the 2004 edition – as well as a beautiful little lithograph of the cover scene.

As a completist, do you want both? My favorite part of any animated DVD is the voice acting stuff, but the choice is yours. This film is so iconic that Ghibli uses Totoro as their logo. The earlier editions are currently out of print.

Castle in the Sky, which is also sometimes called Laputa, or a combination of the two, (and not to be confused with Howl’s Moving Castle, also by Studio Ghibli), was first released by Disney on DVD within the US in 2003. This version has a light blue cover with a tress in the center, and includes an introduction by Disney’s John Lasseter, the option to view the film as the original storyboards, the original Japanese trailers, and a behind-the-scenes feature with the voice talent.

The 2010 release, which has a floating girl and a gold slipcase spine, also includes the introduction from Lasseter, the original storyboards, and a new featurette about the awesome steampunk worlds of the film – but leaves out the voice actor features again, while including a small print of the cover. Both versions are still available at the time of this writing.

Kiki’s Delivery Service was also released in 2003, featuring a cover which uses a large portrait of the protagonist. This includes the same four types of features as ‘Castle’, while the 2010 release (depicting a girl on a broomstick flying over a cityscape), mimics the three features of the 2010 edition of ‘Castle’ also. All three of these films are being re-released now to accompany the release of Ponyo, which is the newest Miyazaki release.

One thing worth noting is that all of these are, and have been, available from other publishers which are not US-based. I’ve had a few experiences with attempting to purchase anime DVDs from discount distributors before, and the results have been completely disastrous. Unless it’s a producer that you trust and has a solid reputation for releasing films in the US, buying cheap anime DVDs is a colossal waste of money – unless you speak Japanese. Most often, the subtitles are completely unreadable, having undergone translation into Korean or Chinese, and then to English. Try doing this with any sentence in Babelfish and you’ll see what I mean. So, the only sure way to get your hands on these Ghibli releases and to enjoy them is to buy the real, Disney versions of them.

As someone who has been collecting action figures since junior high, I feel like I’ve seen a lot of shifting in the nature of figural collecting over the years. We’ve gone from simplistic to excessively complex, around to sleek, and back to the 3 3/4” figures of the 80s. During all of these shifts, the advent of the internet has created a huge influx of Japanese action figures into the American market. And they’re really weird.

While I love the large figures that are produced by Medicom and Hot Toys, one company that’s consistently my favorite is Revoltech, which manages to combine all of these things in a relatively tiny scale. When it comes to small action figures, there’s always the risk of snapping joints, but Revoltech manages to completely eliminate these issues by making solid figures of pliable plastic, and allowing the joints to pop out before they suffer any damage. These same removable joints allow for switching out parts and clothing. It’s a small stroke of engineering genius which I don’t believe is possible within the US due to bizarre sets of laws that govern small parts and toys, no matter what age they are intended for – and some of these are definitely intended for an adult audience.

There is no consistency in scale between figures and properties, and robots (which are presumably gigantic) appear to be the same size as your average anime hero – something that normally gets a lot of purist figure collectors in the US in a tizzy. In this way, each figure also establishes itself as a kind of iconic mini-monument to figuredom, and the cultural aspects of just what an action figure is. They make a statement, whether they intend to or not.

So, while much of Revoltech’s repertoire consists of warrior robots from both good and evil alignments, they have also incorporated a collection of anime heroines into the larger lineup under sub-series of figures, as well more cartoonish, animated characters.

I’m not a huge anime devotee, but I enjoyed Evangelion. This is what attracted me to the ‘Fraulein Revoltech’ line of figures, which is an ongoing line of female anime characters. Toy enthusiasts are aware that capturing female characters as action figures is usually a lot more difficult than depicting their male counterparts, simply due to body structure. Four words, my action figure friends : Marvel Legends Scarlet Witch. You remember. Revoltech captures everything perfectly, with plenty of interchangeable parts and accessories, and has even chosen a few characters with a great ‘future art nouveau’ aesthetic, such as Pocco.

And while the tiny robots are pretty incredible, the strangest release from Revoltech has been their ‘Queen’s Blade’ line of figures, which will essentially cause you to question all that is good and holy. A quick Google search will reveal a cavalcade of ‘NSFW’ images, which the anime community would call ‘fan service’ – a glimpse at a sexualized version of a female cartoon character. The anime itself follows a plotline that involves lots of women fighting each other in tiny costumes that have a tendency to get torn off. While not explicitly pornographic, it is definitely not for children. Or really very interesting.

While ‘cast-off’ figures, or figures with removable clothing elements and detailed bodies, are nothing new from Japan, Revoltech’s Queen’s Blade line brings it to a whole new level – as if it weren’t enough to have a character whose clothing consists of a translucent, semi-gelatinous mass and uses morphing hands for a bra. These figures are advertised as having both ‘S’ and ‘M’ configurations, with ‘S’ being some kind of ‘fighting mode, and ‘M’ being presumably standing for ‘mature’. These incorporate a whole bunch of variant pieces that can be swapped out to create a more sexualized version of the same figure, sometimes even including bodily fluids and alternate ‘pleasure’ faces. Six have been released, with at least three more revealed by Revoltech.

While many might see this as perverse, it’s been said that every new invention and every new technology will almost immediately be used for something sexual. And don’t blame Japan – we had US-based ‘Adult Superstars’ figures years ago which depicted porn stars in great detail. Subject matter aside, Revoltech is one of the best small-scale action figure makers out there, so it’s hard to go wrong.

As I was watching the ‘Pathetic Losers’ edition of American Idol last night, I was hit in the face with a big, fat stereotype. A self-proclaimed ‘otaku’ was auditioning to be part of the apocalypse that is televised pop music, and she was very enthusiastic. And terrible.

There was a time in college where I dabbled in a few different Japanese cartoons, and even enjoyed them. Unfortunately, the company that these habits entertained was less than optimal, and I bowed out before I fell in too deeply. I’ve known plenty of anime enthusiasts, and a good handful of them have been wonderful people – but just as with any hobby, there are very severe stereotypes that follow around those who are intensely interested.

Comic book collectors are all presumably bespectacled and awkward, and either terribly overweight or underweight. Toy collectors lean towards the overweight, balding, and unwashed demographic. Hot Wheels collectors are all middle aged and angry. Of course, these things aren’t true statements – but there are countless stereotypes that come to mind when the word ‘collector’ is mentioned. Hummel figurines, Pez dispensers, miniature gamers – all of these things come with a stereotype that is only marginally true. For a while, I collected anime.

I was initially drawn into anime because many shows actually feature a dominant theme of ‘collecting’, and even had real world artifacts from the show that were collectible. For someone who is inherently drawn to completing sets of things as well as animation, this was a very alluring space for me.

Pokemon’s classic tag line was ‘Gotta Catch ‘Em All!’, and I did. Even though the show was more about making little slave-monsters beat the living hell out of everyone else’s enslaved monsters and somehow attaining your superiority over other slave owners in this fashion than actually collecting monsters, the video games focused more on the ‘collecting’ aspect of Pokemon. The moment that the number of existing Pokemon went from 151 well-defined monsters into a countless number of poorly designed OTHER monsters, I gave it up. I still have a box of Pokemon stuff around here, including a number of plushes, various games, and lots of weird little artifacts from Japan. Collecting monsters was fun. The show, however, always sucked.

The story behind Cardcaptor Sakura held my interest for a while also. In this anime, a girl accidentally releases a whole mess of magical cards-slash-creatures into the world and she needs to go out and find all of these cards before they cause too much havok. Not only were these monsters pretty neat, but the cards themselves featured very nice art nouveau designs. When the show was eventually aired on Saturday mornings in the US, American TV stations edited out all of the pubescent sexual subtext (much of it homosexual) and any of the content that was actually meaningful. I lost track of the show and sold off all of my cards.

While I never intently watched InuYasha, I saw enough mixed in with my [adult swim] watching to know that it was about traversing a weird ancient, magical version of Japan to find a ton of tiny broken crystal shards (most of which were embedded in monsters or otherwise guarded by monstery things) that were dispersed in the series pilot. Again, collecting objects played a vital role in the plot.

Many of these shows are about collecting multiple powerful or magical items, rather than a single talisman, so it’s hard to ignore the idea that ‘collecting’ is a pretty unique aspect of Japanese cartoons. While the US blatantly airs cartoons to sell vehicles and characters from the toy shelves based on a recognition factor, anime creates these fictional talismanic items for the characters and then asks you to go out and buy them for yourself. Which is pretty hardcore – and sometimes, pretty fun.

Naruto, to any casual observer of Japanese animation, seems to be the new Pokemon. Sure, Pokemon still has an immortal presence in our media and attics, but things are surely a-changin’.

Here’s the formula : take an endless anime series about a kid on an frighteningly obsessive quest of their own devising that has no relevance to the real world, give it a prominent time slot on Cartoon Network, and lend the likeness to action figures, video games, trading cards and underoos. You have a formula for frenzy. Those Pokemon were just the adorable advance troops, but there are far more sinister things on the way, and their eyes are huge and sparkly.

The extensive line of Naruto video games spans dozens of titles across every current video game systems. How can the story of one overconfident kid who wants to be a super-ninja fill such a vast array of gameplay? Somehow, it does – when you transplant the same story into all genres of games – so while some of the games are turn-by-turn RPG quests across Naruto’s world, some are presented as a series of side-scrolling puzzle challenges, and some are plain ol’ classic fighting games, where two opponents face off and beat the living snot out of each other. Such is the nature of Naruto : Ninja Destiny for the Nintendo DS. I can always enjoy the simplicity of a good pummelfest, and the familiar process of knocking out one increasingly difficult opponent after another.

Of course, Naruto is a bit more complex than gems like Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat – first, because it’s presented in 3D. Since the camera always resituates itself to a level perspective, the game doesn’t breach the potentially dizzying world of the third dimension too boldly. The greatest advantage to fighting in three dimensions, besides the fact that it looks pretty, is that you can quickly sidestep your opponent’s attacks with a tap of the up or down arrows – which is a lot more stealthy and effective than blocking or stepping backwards. It’s almost a move that proves to be TOO effective, as it leaves the other fighter staring off into space and launching attacks at the air for a few moments while you land a few punches yourself. Tapping the L-button on the shoulder of the DS enables ’substitution jutsu’, a move that’s absolutely way too effective, since you immediately appear directly behind your oblivious opponent, who is defenseless for that moment – except for the ability to do the same disappearing act to you. What results is a long series of disappearing leapfrogs until someone misses a button and gets smacked.

The second screen on the DS system is used for touch-activated controls. For this Naruto game, this aspect involves a randomly generated set of magical power-ups that are activated by tapping this touchscreen. All of the fighting action takes place on the top, non-touchable screen of the DS, and since both hands are used to control movement and fighting, the practicality of an additional set of touch controls that requires you to abandon either your left- or right-hand controls is questionable, but not as distracting as one might think. Gotta use that extra screen for SOMETHING, and it’s a better use than useless data readouts about the battle, which some games resort to.

Running below your standard life meter is a ‘chakra meter’, which builds in strength as you hit your opponent, or are hit by your opponent. When this meter is completely full, a simple press of the B button will allow you to perform your ’special jutsu’ – a powerful move (which is different for every character) that seriously depletes your opponent’s energy, and plays a small animation of an action-filled, magical ultra-smackdown.

Fans of Naruto will see a collection of familiar characters to choose from when battling, though you start out with only 6. A total of 16 characters can be unlocked as you accomplish various victories. The instruction manual is limited to 5 pages of useful info, so much of this needs to be discovered on your own.

There are two modes of one-player action. In Story Mode, you’ll venture through a narrative of talking heads talking about how hard their lives are and whatever pseudo-political struggles they’re involved in before you get to fight each round. I have to be totally honest in saying that I blindly skipped over these, as I have no brain-space left to fill with fictional ninja clans and whether or not they’re jerks. My own willful ignorance aside, hardcore fans of the series’ story will completely dig it. While in Story Mode, the story will dictate which character you are to use for each successive battle.

Battle Mode allows you to choose one character to battle every other character with, one by one. The game also makes use of the DS’ wireless function, enabling two players with this same game disk to play against each other from across the room. The game, unfortunately, does not go online wirelessly for a worldwide ninja battle championship. Which would be pretty great. I’m a total sucker for any DS game that allows me to play against anonymous, live opponents at 4 AM when I get lonely.

Fortunately, the game allows you to choose between ‘normal’ difficulty and ‘hard’ difficulty, since I blew through both ‘normal’ modes on my first attempt and unlocked some unlockables. I’m not yet modern enough in my gaming to have a set catalogue of expectations for my handheld gaming experiences, since my brain is still enthralled with the oldschool green-and-yellow Tetris blocks dropping across my slowly disintegrating Game Boy screen – which makes the fact that I was able to pick up the mechanics of this game so quickly something of a testament to its intuitive control scheme.

I did enjoy Naruto : Ninja Destiny, as it miniaturizes the whole 3D fighting experience without skimping on any style or detail. Keep this in mind if you’ve played the other Naruto fighting games on larger systems – this is a DS, not a supercomputer, and it will behave accordingly. Unlockables make the game replayable, and 2-player action further improves the appeal – even if you’re not a fan of Naruto. We don’t even have to hear his annoying catchphrase every 15 seconds this time, which is like, a thousand bonus points.

When you think of the word ‘cartoon’, what’s the first thing that you think of?

If you’ve grown up in North America, it’s likely that some kind of humorous and vapid children’s fare sprung to mind. Cartoons are relegated to the world of exaggerated characters and zany sound effects while much of the potential of animation goes unrealized in the mainstream US media. This isn’t the way that they have it in Japan though, where the artistry of cartoons is far more realized and popular among a wider range of ages. Epic 26-episode sequential adventures, with characters and struggles and consequences. The potential is staggering.

Of course, most of the stuff that’s invading our TVs from Asia on Saturday mornings and after school is specifically geared towards children, as well as mistranslated and re-cut to eliminate any subversive elements that might not mesh with the relatively uptight American ideas of censorship. Did you ever see the Pokemon episode where a certain male character wears enormous female breasts and an old guy threatens someone with a gun? The Cardcaptors scenes where everyone is in love with everyone else, regardless of gender? I didn’t think so, but they’re out there. Instead, we get endless hours of capturing monster after monster and making them fight for your own personal glory. Which is, might I add, highly illegal here in the states, kids.

So, Disney and Buena Vista Home Entertainment have been working hard to both eliminate the stigma that anime currently has found in the US, (mostly due to things like Pokemon and the incomprehensible ramblings of Yu-Gi-Oh), as well as emphasize the true artistry behind the process of animation. They’ve teamed up with Studio Ghibli, which is the Japanese equivalent of Disney in terms of quality and popularity, and have been slowly releasing epic anime DVDs into US culture. These new versions are clean and official transfers, and all of them have the original Japanese dialogue with subtitles, in addition to new vocal tracks which feature popular American actors and actresses.

For collectors of anime, this is good news. Only recently has anime been imported to the US with proper translations. In years past, we’ve been forced to find odd DVDs on poorly translated websites, have them shipped over from across the ocean and hope that the translations were slightly comprehensible. It’s no surprise that the more pornographic titles have been in the US for a far longer time than the truly narrative works. There’s an undeniable audience, and it’s an audience where an exact translation isn’t really the focal point.

Here’s part of that last paragraph translated there and back again through Babel Fish (the weapon of choice for some amateur fan subbers), to give you an idea of what we’ve suffered through :

“It passed with year, we find strange DVDs of the web sight which is translated imperfectly, have shipping those from the ocean, the fact that desire barely you can understand translation make.”

And that’s on a good day.

Even those who have no interest in anime have probably heard the name ‘Miyazaki’ somewhere, as he’s respected as a creator and director, even though he ‘only creates cartoons’. The Ghibli movie library is pretty large, including over 20 epic films, and Disney seems to be methodically releasing them in the US, even despite some suggestive and violent themes present in them. It’s clear that they appreciate the films in their pure form. You can still poke around in the dark corners of the internet and find completely unfamiliar titles, but this is where the real epic moviemaking happens. This month sees the release of ‘Howl’s Moving Castle‘, which is based on a Diana Wynne Jones novel, ‘My Neighbor Totoro‘ and ‘Whisper of the Heart‘. Disney’s DVD releases of these films include behind-the-scenes voice acting footage, as well as various Japanese documentaries about the making of the films, so they’re an immense value in themselves just for the bonuses alone, which would never make it to the US otherwise.

With 11 DVDs in the Disney collection, there’s about 10 more that should be heading our way in the next few years, as well as at least one more epic in-production work based on the novels of Ursula LeGuin. Here’s some reviews of some of the older releases, also! You can leave the Monster Rancher for the brats – it’s time for the adults to have some fun with cartoons.