The amazing thing about this video is how well the two anime fit together! Although the idea of Gendo joining the SOS Brigade is scary.

Can’t wait for the next episode (if there is one) where Yuki and Rei meet each other!

It’s amazing how on the money Monty Python were about politicians in general, considering they were writing in the early Seventies about politicians in the United Kingdom.

i

Is it time to rename this anime 'Japanese Pop Culture No Video'?

Danny Choo recently stated on his blog that he was adopting the term ‘Japanese Pop Culture’ to refer to what was previously known as the Otaku Subculture. He said that this was because:

1. The term ‘otaku’ isn’t widely known outside Japan
2. Otaku subculture is now big enough to ditch the sub- prefix
3. The mainstream Japanese media has often used the terms ‘Cool Japan’ and ‘Japanese Pop Culture’ to refer to otaku topics.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I have a history of criticizing the terms the community uses to refer to itself and its members. Some people see this as a form of needless semantic nitpicking, but I strongly disagree. Despite the now-cliched old Shakespearean line about roses by any other name smelling as sweet, I believe that names have power, largely the power to define identity and associations. Heck I have the gall to call this blog Project Otaking, after all.

Roses smell just as sweet by any other name, but I doubt your date would be impressed if you gave her a bouquet of Pigscrap Cowsvomit Blossoms, no matter how intrinsically identical to roses they actually were.

These otaku would seem far less benign to us if the official media term for them was 'Pillowhumper-kun'.

I mean, I can understand why Danny Choo would benefit from repackaging something as scary as the otaku subculture into something that sounds safe and approachable, like ‘Japanese Pop Culture’. He’s in the business of selling it to Westerners (and countries heavily influenced by Western culture, like the Philippines). Otaku brings up connotations of lolicon, getting married to two-dimensional characters, and bad hygiene. Japanese Pop Culture calls up sparkly, squeaky-clean images of Shibuya and Roppongi, instead of cramped, dimly-lit Akiba alleyways.

And considering Choo’s high-visibility projects like OTACOOL, the man has stored up enough geek cred to make statements about the scene in general… right?

Come on. A guy who comes across as this cool gets the right to rename an entire subculture, right? Right?

Me, I’m not so sure what to think. See, I’m thinking of the publicity fallout when John Mayer recently used the N-word during a Playboy interview. Later he apologized, saying he was trying to ‘intellectualize’ the use of the term. This from an interview where he claimed that his dick was a ‘white supremacist’. Right.

Back to Danny Choo, cosplay, and the otaku subculture. Cosplay is at a turning point, with the purist hobbyists going one way, and the people who want to take the hobby mainstream (complete with government funding) in another. Danny Choo is from the latter camp, with OTACOOL2 pretty much cementing that impression in my mind, turning the often-scary world of cosplay into a glossy package you can sell at a mainstream bookstore.

The term ‘otaku’, similar to the N-word Mr. Mayer foolishly blurted out (honorary hood pass or no), is usually derogatory when non-0taku use it, and a badge of pride when otaku use it to refer to themselves. And just like the N-word, it is very hard to turn into an easily-marketable package. It has too much accumulated baggage associated with it. But Japanese Pop Culture is not the same thing as the Otaku Subculture. There are simply too many types of otaku, many like military or SFX otaku spilling outside the neat little marketable boundaries of ‘Japanese Pop Culture’.

Here's Konata, a Japanese Pop Culture Icon who also happens to be Otaku. These two things are clearly NOT the same thing.

The nuance isn’t nitpicking, and it isn’t difficult to sort out. The key, I think, comes from Danny Choo’s post itself when he says that the Japanese media uses “Cool Japan” and “Japanese Pop Culture” to refer to the otaku subculture.

Japanese Pop Culture is a name given by the outside media to refer to the broad group.

Otaku is the name we give ourselves.

So... if the story says I'm a senior, but I LOOK like I'm 10, and my story was written yesterday, am I 17 years, 10 years, or 1 day old? What about, I'm a CARTOON you morons!

So many of you are aware of the Christopher Handley decision by now, where apparently customs officials opened up a package from Japan addressed to Mr. Handley which contained manga depicting minors ‘engaged in sexually explicit acts and bestiality’. Last week our intrepid manga fan was handed down a six-month sentence for violating the US Protect Act, which which outlaws cartoons, drawings, sculptures or paintings depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, and which lack “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

The interesting is that the Protect Act is actually narrower in scope than the so-called Anti Hentai Bill authored by Rep. Nikki Teodoro of my very own district in Tarlac. (As if she weren’t irritating enough to begin with.) The Anti-Hentai Bill covers persons in possession of “any representation, whether visual, audio or written combination thereof, by electronic, mechanical, digital, optical, magnetic or any other means, of a child engaged or involved in real or simulated explicit sexual activity”, and appoints cybercafe owners as sort of a cyber-Gestapo, requiring them to police what their customers are surfing.

I’m sure the legal and moral implications of these things have been combed over by many other writers. Privacy concerns, what constitutes child pornography, and so on. I’m not interested in covering old ground, despite the fact that both laws are so broad they will get you in jail if you so much as draw a big stick figure riding a small stick figure.

What I am interested in is that the US and Philippines have higher crime rates and cases of pedophilia than the demonic Japanese culture that is churning out this filth despite this sort of official prudery, based on local ’standards of obscenity’. So we know for sure that this isn’t an effective deterrent per se.

So what happened? The key is a difference of culture. The U.S. (and therefore by extension the Philippines) revolves around a belief system that punishes you for thinking wrongly. Even thinking about sinning is a sin. We are societies founded around the idea that the stories in a particular book are literal truth instead of allegorical fiction, and this is why we think playing violent video games will turn us into serial killers, despite the fact that the evidence does not reflect this assertion. But we’re not big on evidence as a society anyway.

On the other hand, Japan distinguishes from one’s private and public persona, one’s tatemae and honne. We read books and watch movies and tv shows with plots involving murders and rapes all the time. (CSI comes to mind, whatever the flavor.) Japan understands this. In fact the whole idea of being a salaryman during the week and then cosplaying as an anime character on the weekends is understood as simply exercising one’s free choice to do whatever the hell one wants to do over their free time, provided that during the rest of the time one pays one’s debt to society. The Japanese also understand the difference between the symbol and the symbolized.

We don’t. Or at least we like to pretend that we don’t. Actually each one of us goes through the day filled with thoughts of murdering the driver of the car in front of us, or messing around with a co-worker on the sly, or lifting the wallets of obnoxious, pushy, overweight businessmen. We just pretend we’re not like that, because the thought of committing a sin is a sin.

So we throw the people who make the mistake of getting caught thinking these thoughts into jail, and the rest of us publicly denounce them as monsters and fiends, and we turn a blind eye to our own growing corruption, which is reflected in the corruption of our entire society. So the moralists continue to pretend their shit doesn’t stink, telling us that every new trend comes from the devil. Every new thing is a threat to the orthodoxy, and a threat to the orthodoxy is a threat to people in power. So we persecute imaginary crimes, and we ignore real ones.

Meanwhile, Japan quietly advances into the future, leaving us cultural prudes behind, focusing on the real but frolicking in their imaginations, unburdened by our prudishness or self-righteousness or the thought that somewhere, imaginary crimes are being perpetrated on imaginary people.

It’s just a matter of culture.

The Hierarchy of Disagreement. Learn it. Use it. Live it.

During the past year or so, upon returning from the hallowed halls of the Judicial System to the Wild West of Otakudom, I have been subjected to many arguments from people who think calling someone “GAY” is equivalent to scoring some sort of metaphysical point. Coming from a line of work where precision of argument is of the utmost importance, I would like to disabuse these people of their delusions.

Look at the scary Maslow-like diagram above. Don’t worry, it won’t bite. It is the Hierarchy of Arguments by Paul Graham. It is arranged from the least valid objections at the bottom to the most valid ones on top. The bottom 4 tiers contribute very little to the actual discourse. The top 3 are better, but don’t guarantee that a refutation is valid, they simply increase the probability that a counter-argument is sound.

Since the whole thing is a bit abstract at this point, let me illustrate using real-world examples.

1. Name-Calling. We all know what this is like. We don’t need to spend too much time on this one. Example: You’re a dirty old man pedophile fag slut. *highfives gang*

2. Ad Hominem. This appears to be another favorite. This is a step up from Name-Calling because the accusation may be relevant, but doesn’t actually address the argument directly. Example: Of course he would side with her. He’s a White Knight. Another example: What does he know, he bought his costume instead of making it himself.

A very popular response to name-calling and ad hominem attacks. And just about as valid as they are.

3. Responding to Tone. Finally we see a response to the actual debate, but not to the content. After all, it’s better to be flippant and right than respectful and wrong. Example: You might be right, but you shouldn’t be so arrogant about it. (Btw, I get this a lot for some reason. )

4. Contradiction. This is the lowest form of actual response to argument, where you state the opposite case without little or no supporting evidence, often combined with Responding to Tone statements. Example: I can’t believe you’re so snarky about cosplayers who don’t make their own costumes. Cosplayers who don’t make their own costumes are cosplayers too.

With the next 3 tiers we finally get arguments that address the actual issues.

5. Counterargument. This is the first form of convincing disagreement. This is contradiction plus evidence. Unfortunately sometimes counterarguments aim at a different point than the original argument, either unintentionally or through intellectual dishonesty. It’s common for two people to fire off counterarguments at each other when they actually agree on the central point, or for one person to use counterargument to perpetuate a disagreement that is already resolved. Example: You make a good point about her popularity as a community figure, but she’s a terrible role model for the young because she’s glorifying the objectification of the female form.

6. Refutation. This is the most convincing form of argument, where you find the mistake in the argument and then, often using quotes, directly show why the original speaker is mistaken. Example: You said that the Endless Eight episodes were filler episodes by KyoAni done as an attempt to save money for the movie. But if that was the case, they would have simply reused cels from previous episodes, and used the same recorded dialogue, instead of freshly animating and dubbing each new episode.

7. Refuting the Central Point. The strength of a refutation depends on which point you refute. Many people prefer to refute peripheral arguments of their opponent instead of honing in on the very thesis of their argument, the very point he or she is trying to make, and then demolishing it with evidence and quotation. Example: You explicitly said at a public forum that “people who wear costumes for pay are not cosplayers, but models,” speaking on behalf of real cosplayers. But didn’t you also receive remuneration for wearing your very finely self-crafted costume that one time? Your status as a cosplayer is beyond doubt, of course, but doesn’t that leave your original statement in shambles?

Is that much clearer now, children? However, like I said above, just because your argument is higher up on the pyramid is no guarantee that that argument is correct. We do not deal in certainties. What it does do, however, is indicate a higher probability that the argument is valid.

So feel free to ignore arguments from the bottom 4 from now on, okay?

Hey, here’s something fun you can all try: Let’s look at debates involving our favorite fandom, and try to find out from which tier each speaker is coming from. It’ll shed a lot of light on how they think. So… where should we begin? Any suggestions?

[The above image is from CreateDebate, an awesome site you should check out if you're at all interested in being a more effective debater. Read the original essay by Paul Graham here.]

I first heard about Setsubun no hi from an episode of Urusei Yatsura, where Ataru drives Lum and Ten-chan out of his house by throwing beans at them. It’s a Japanese festival celebrated on February 3 every year, where people throw beans to drive out the evil spirits of the old year and the disease spirits of the new year. Of course, I’m not sure I would throw beans at Lum. I don’t really want to drive her away, and even if I did she would just zap me. Plus I’d have to smuggle beans into the house just like Ataru and Shinobu.

Note in particular how Shinobu is trying to quietly banish Ataru’s inner demons of lust.

Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!

Welcome to the Kawashima Mystery Cafe! Be generous!

Cabel’s Blog LOL reports on a strange cafe in Kawashima, Japan, where you get what the last person ordered, and the next person gets what you ordered:

For the record, here are the rules of the Ogori cafe:

1. Let’s treat the next person. What to treat them with? It’s your choice.
2. Even if it’s a group of friends or a family, please form a single-file line. Also, you can’t buy twice in a row.
3. Please enjoy what you get, even if you hate it. (If you really, really hate it, let’s quietly give it to another while saying, “It’s my treat…”)
4. Let’s say “Thank You! (Gochihosama)” if you find the person with your Ogori cafe card.
5. We can’t issue a receipt.

So what would you do if you found this cafe? Would you try to score while being cheap to the person next to you? Or would you be generous even if you didn’t know who was next?

The American bloggers who stumbled onto the cafe chose the latter option:

Mike went up to the cafe, slapped down a couple thousand yen (~$25), and ordered a little bit of everything: some ice cream, some snacks, some candy, some drinks, a Japanese horn-of-mysterious-plenty intentionally set up as a shocking surprise for the next lucky customer. (After his order, Mike received single iced coffee.)

As we walked away from the cafe, with just the right amount of delay, we heard an extremely excited “arigato goazimasu!! thank you so much!!” yelled in our direction, from an ecstatic mom and her equally excited young son. They truly appreciated the surprise.

It was so worth it.

Oh Japan

Eeek! They're leveling faster than me! Keep them AWAY!

So I ran across a public Plurk the other day that said:

“People who started later then me in WoW [World of Warcraft] are now higher level then me. ^^; Guess that’s the price of having a life. Good thing there’s a level cap.” (lol)”

“The price of having a life.” There’s an implied value judgment in that statement, equating a slower leveling pace with a better quality of life, a snobbery that dismisses everyone who levels faster than the speaker as “Not Having a Life.”

I guess the term that encapsulates this is “Snobbery”.

You're recruiting *him* for our guild? Have you seen his mount?

But snobs aren’t people who are merely discriminating or choosy. After all, there’s nothing wrong with finding the best doctor to cure your ailments, the best school to send your children, the best tank for your party, and so forth. For snobs, there is an additional step:

“The distinctive mark of snobs is not simple discrimination, it is an insistence on a flawless equation between social rank and human worth.” –Alain de Botton

Put differently, snobs select a few traits (or sometimes just one trait) and use it to gauge your entire value as a person. Or in the Plurk above, whether you “Have a Life” or not.

Snobbery permeates every subculture. From anime snobs who sneer upon ignorant fools who don’t even know what ’sempai’ means, to cosplay snobs to insist that even contact lenses have to be handmade by the wearer, to blogger snobs who use increasingly esoteric metrics to show that their e-peens are bigger than everyone else’s, snobs infect geek culture just as much as they infect mainstream culture.

Snobs insist that your worth as a human being can be reduced from its infinite complexity down to a few markers. In the mainstream monoculture, determining those markers is relatively straightforward: The car you drive, the clothes you wear, the people you hang out with. What your family name is, where you went to school, where you live, what your job is. “What do you do?” is a harmless-sounding question asked at parties and social gatherings that attempts to gauge your entire worth through your occupation.

For the last question, I find that the answer “I’m a lawyer” shuts up most people. (Except for lawyer snobs, who ask the additional question “What firm do you work for?” But you can’t please everybody.)

The trouble is that snobs beget snobs. Being the target of snobbery is unpleasant in the way only social rejection can be. And just like new seniors who look forward to (mis)treating their juniors the way their seniors (mis)treated them, victims of snobbery eagerly await the day they can be snobs to a new batch of newbies. “I was around from the beginning!” the snob says, as if it justified treating another human being like dirt. Or at least members of a lower caste.

But snobbery actually indicates a deep-seated insecurity about the snob’s own station. It takes a very fragile ego to feel ennobled by the act of tearing other people down instead of resting upon your own bedrock of self-worth.

Don't worry, Naruto. Greater skill actually means they're less l33t than you.

The thing that confuses me the most about above-mentioned Plurk, however, is that it was made by the Head GM of a local MMORPG company. Perhaps this is the attitude they take toward their own customers? A deep-seated disdain toward the very people who excel within the pocket universes they rely upon for revenue? A condescending perception of the shepherds toward the so-called sheep they herd?

Or maybe he’s just a snob.

(Have you seen his grammar though? “Then” instead of “than”? He must be a terrible person… )

Azumanga is totally better than Lucky Star so SHUT YOUR TRAP!

So the other day on Plurk Magnetic Rose, who always has her finger on the pulse, called my attention to the recent Anime Expo mass resignation fiasco. A couple of days later another friend of mine gave me the inside scoop into the whole Alice and Rabbit Multiply mess.

Now I’m not privy to either incident, except through second-hand information — which means I don’t feel confident enough to make any pronouncements about either situation specifically.

What did strike me was the conclusion of many observers that all this was simply a sign that the otaku scene is full of dramu no matter where you go.

What’s worse is that, unlike my first impressions of the scene, there doesn’t seem to be any single reason why this is the case, unless you’re a fan of the vague and largely-unhelpful suggestion that all of this is simply ‘human nature’. It’s like an anime Pandora’s Box: there’s a bit of envy, a healthy dose of ‘picking on your perceived inferiors’, a shot of the old persecution complex, a touch of snobbery, and a whole lot of ‘fighting over who gets the biggest slice of the pie’. And sometimes it seems like people will use the slightest hint of disagreement over ANYTHING — which anime is better, how much your costume cost to make, or which particular people you should never be seen in public with — to bully the other side, just to feel good about themselves.

But what’s the alternative?

I mean it’s not like blind optimism or getting-along-for-the-sake-of-getting-along is helping things. I personally think a certain level of conflict is healthy for any community. Some days an indignant part of me wants to ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWER, and I can easily tell when I’m going through this phase because I act as though a monolithic, faceless enemy stands between the True Otaku and victory — and there’s no such thing. There’s people, and then there’s more people.

On other days, I just lie back and watch the fireworks. There’s just something perversely entertaining about watching other people blow themselves up.

Popcorn?

So which type of otaku neglects personal hygiene?

So Sankaku Complex reported the other day that 2ch has classified otaku into 2 distinct types.

(Great. Like we needed more ways to marginalize each other.)

To wit:

Type A:

A person who simply enjoys “anime.”
Is proud of Japan’s anime.
Evaluates anime based on direction, voice acting, art, etc.
Hates shallow anime with no real content.
Story emphasis >>>>> Moe anime.
A recent example would Higashi no Eden. Fans of anime like Lain or Ghost in the Shell would probably be this kind.

Type B:

A person who simply enjoys “characters.”
Will watch an anime if it includes cute or beautiful characters.
Doesn’t care if story is awful, as long as the characters are of interest.
Evaluates anime based on which seiyuu are in it and what the characters look like.
Loves moe elements. Doesn’t like complex anime.
The otaku the media picks up on are usually this kind.
Doesn’t know that much about anime and so is often criticised as by Type A otaku.
However, they make much better customers than the more discerning Type A otaku.
Recently there has been a huge increase in anime targeted at Type B otaku.
People who like K-ON!, Queen’s Blade, Strike Witches and so on would be in this class.

This got me thinking. I like to think of myself as Type A. My favorite anime is Utena, possibly because its symbolism and literary allusions are often as opaque as chocolate milk and it gives me a misplaced sense of superiority to be able to make sense of any of them. I actually like Mamoru Oshii films, and Lain, and so forth.

But then I have a whole bunch of character goods, and character goods tend to be from Type B anime. I blew most of my Tokyo shopping budget in Akiba, on stuff like this:

Pinky:st or Figma Haruhi? Both pl0x!

So there it was: I apparently belonged to both types of otaku, which to my mind rendered the whole debate pointless. I was going to ignore the entire thing until I saw the following comment by a certain JimmyKitty:

Put me down for TYPE A , please!
I admit it, I’m a snob.

Okay, I confess… I’m a closet TYPE B.

Which I think = TYPE H.

Hah!

So there you have it. I’m a Type H Otaku. Note the complete lack of surprise from everyone who knows me.