|
||
|
September 4, 2008
The Montreal chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH is holding its season opener with an open-air screening in the park next to their usual haunt, the Society for Arts and Technology. Selections from the 2008 Computer Animation Festival will be shown, and while the event is free, you can pick up your annual membership to help support the chapter. "Doors open" on Saturday, September 6, at 9:30 at Parc de la Paix. There's more info on the SAT website. 2008 SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival trailer September 3, 2008
 La cinematheque quebecoise is screening recent Chinese animated shorts on Thursday, September 4th. Marcel Jean is the guest programmer. I've provided a loose English translation of what he wrote on the CQ website. Faced with feeding it numerous television stations, China has recently become, on a quantitative scale, one of the most important producers of animation in the world. Seeking to limit imported productions from Japan and Korea, Chinese officials are basically encouraging local production by creating high production quotas and encouraging the creation of major schools, equipped with cutting-edge technology, which trains thousands of animators on a yearly basis. Labels: China, Cinematheque quebecoise, Montreal, shorts September 2, 2008
Via MangaBlog and Sankaku Complex (NSFW) we learn that Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
is set to put into action a plan which would enshrine in law special “cyber-districts”, where authors using commercially held copyrighted works in their creations would be legally allowed to ignore the usual requirements for permission and royalties. Slowly but surely, Japan is getting more and more organized about its copyright policy. This is another example of a steady shift in thinking as Japan figures out how to reconcile the bizarre love triangle between licence-holders, doujin-ka, and consumers. As interesting as the idea is (imagine a gated Akihabara) I do wonder how enforcement will work, or what execution will look like in general. According to SC, the Yomiuri article is a bit vague on what would count as an "author," or how one could be recognized as such. Will there be Board Certified Otaku in Japan's future? Would they be required to work in this grey-market-made-flesh, or just hold their offices there? What if you live outside -- do you have to take the train? And what about stores like Mandarake and others, that sell doujinshi? Will they have to close branches outside the designated area? Is Akihabara soon to become the world's first copyright ghetto? Labels: Japan August 27, 2008
 Much of anime production goes on in the suburbs of Tokyo, in Mitaka-shi and the surrounding region. (Former visitors to the Ghibli Museum will remember this particular train station, but studios like Pierrot, 4C, and Production I.G. all have their offices in parts beyond. Most maps of Tokyo don’t include details on this region, perhaps because they assume that no one in their right mind would be interested.) Similarly, Comikket occurs at the Tokyo Big Sight – and like most convention centres, it’s at the edge of town. In both cases, finding in-the-flesh otaku culture can seem like it requires a bit of hiking. Then you hit Mandarake. Shibuya is likely the most-filmed location in Tokyo. When visitors say that Tokyo looks like Blade Runner, they’re likely referring to Shibuya. It’s a series of upscale shopping malls, karaoke towers, music shops, used clothing stores, and dessert stands all wedged together like crooked, glittering teeth. Tower Records shares its playlist with a whole city block. Stories-high monitors broadcast commercials for manga-to-film adaptations. Everything is disposable and transient. It’s all very William Gibson. But it’s also the location of a COSPA store (where you can purchase, of all things, a p  air of Evangelion-themed jeans) and the gem I stumbled upon: Mandarake.We almost missed it. We were exhausted, our feet were sore, and it was beginning to rain – though the humidity made it seem as though the skyscrapers were simply condensing. I paused to take a picture of what appeared to be a manga-style mural advertising a club. But the grubby television screen above the door showed us closed-circuit surveillance footage of the interior: stacks of manga. After a long, spooky climb down a mirrored staircase lit entirely by red stage lights and blinking strobes, I emerged into what is perhaps one of the finest comics shops in all Tokyo.
Every city has a good comics shop. (Toronto, where I live, has several, and residents feel about their favourite store the way the English do about their local pubs.) But few can boast a good shop for fans. It’s a subtle-but-important distinction: good comics shops will have plenty of merchandise, helpful and knowledgeable staff, and enough room to move around. However, they might be missing out-of-print or rare items. They might not have a good buy-back policy. And if you live outside Japan, it’s almost guaranteed that you can’t buy doujinshi there. Mandarake is a comics shop. It’s also a doujinshi shop, video store, cosplay vendor, antiques dealer, and all-around hobby house. It’s the place to go if you want first-edition capsule toys, models (both official merchandise and fan-crafted sculptures), out-of-print comics, manga and doujinshi (both Japanese and otherwise), cosplay items, rare promotional materials like posters, t-shirts, and toys, soundtracks, drama CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, cassettes…if it exists, it’s either at Mandarake or in someone else’s private collection. “Ah,” you’re saying, “but with such a selection, and in such a tourist trap as Shibuya, it must be mainstream.” Well, that depends – on what you call mainstream. The rumours about Japan are true, in some respects: your local kombini will have both pornography and hentai manga (and manga of every other variety) next to the newspaper and Japan’s seemingly-endless supply of craft magazines. And yes, some of those will be shounen-/shoujo-ai. All of this is great, of course – bookstores in Japan are epic enterprises (the one local to our hotel has 9 floors), and it’s nice to find so much reading material on the way to the train station. So, is Mandarake mainstream? Yes – for Tokyo. Meaning that the kids we saw dragging their reluctant parents behind them were in fact leading them into a den not only of comics, but pornography, and not only pornography, but gay pornography. I love this city. This isn’t to say that Mandarake is strictly a porn vendor. There are plenty of “normal” funnybooks on offer – we picked up a hilarious Evangelion doujinshi omnibus apparently sanctioned by GAINAX, which features a skyscraper-tall Misato defeating an Angel that looks suspiciously like the Flying Spaghetti Monster – and many of them feature straight people in heterosexual relationships. It’s just that there’s a whole room for yaoi/yuri comics (the room is marked “comics for women”), and a whole hentai area, too, all of it surrounded by glass cases full of antique AstroBoy and Godzilla toys. I cannot tell you where Mandarake is. Tokyo has the most bizarre and frustrating systems of address on the planet (echolocation would be more efficient), and many of the streets have no number or name. I can’t even show you photographs of the interior, because photography is forbidden. The store is like Avalon – wander long enough to get lost, and you’ll find it. Turn your head for two minutes and it’ll vanish behind a veil of soft rain and neon light. If you’re lucky enough to stumble across it, make sure you stay a while. August 25, 2008
 While much of the flavour of the Japan Media Arts Festival is Japanese (duh), they actively look for contributions from around the world, and indeed foreign entries have won top awards in the past. The Japan Media Arts Festival is very open in what they look for; when they say media, they include animation, manga art, Web works, photographs, installations, still photos, commercial work, independent work, amateur work, etc. (What I cover for Frames Per Second is just a fraction what they display every year.) This is what makes their categories so rich and interesting, in my opinion. Like last year, the Festival is again seeking recommendations from people about works they may have missed. Complete details for people who want to enter or make recommendations can be found on the Japan Media Arts Plaza. Better hurry, though: while submitters have until September 26 to get their works in, aficionados only have until August 29 to submit their recommendations. Labels: anime, festivals, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival August 19, 2008
 Honestly, what's surprising is that it's taken this long. A couple of companies have started catering to the anime fan/cosplay market by releasing extra-wide contact lenses that will give your eyes the wide-eyed anime look. Priced at $30-$50, they'll even match them up to your particular prescription.  So far it looks like they're only available from Korean companies Geo and Dueba. But hey, if Michael Jackson could go all werewolfy on us in the early 1980s, I'm sure Rick Baker can spend a few minutes to develop something for otaku to channel their inner C-ko.
August 17, 2008
Every year there's something in the Japan Media Arts Festival's Entertainment Division which also happens to be animated, and worth a mention. (The categories are porous like that.) This year that honour goes to the music video for Ryukyudisko's "Nice Day." The entire video is a progression of still photographs starting somewhere in the 1970s, with a couple getting busy under the covers and producing a young boy. We watch him get older, get a job, and then he hits the clubs and meets a girl–and the whole starts going into reverse, as we go back into the girl's history. However, we find ourselves going back even farther than her parents, for reasons that eventually become apparent—and the eventual trip forward again carries its own surprises. There's a lot of whimsy in this video, and the pity of the Flash-based video above is that you lose some of the detail in the historical photos, as well as the deliberate colour choices to replicate older film (up to a point—director Junji Kojima skimps a little when he starts getting into the 1930s and earlier). By the way, if you think the tune is catchy you can drop a couple of sawbucks for an import of the single at Amazon. Labels: anime, Beat Crusaders, festivals, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival, Junji Kojima, music videos, Ryukyudisko, shorts  Veterans of animation festivals know that the term "short film" is pretty elastic, from Malcolm Bennett's 30-second Rocky to Yuri Norstein's 29-minute Tale of Tales. They also know that the longer films are usually programmed at the tail end of a given screening, and that prior to the end of the Cold War many of those films were from Eastern Bloc countries—often gorgeous, sometimes inscrutable, sometimes dark. What's surprising about the 2007 Japan Media Arts Festival's award-winning works is that there are four films that pass the twenty-minute mark. The longest, Love Rollercoaster, is the most straightforward. The remaining three are reminiscent of those old Eastern Bloc films. I'll start off with the 21-minute Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor because (a) director Koji Yamamura pretty much roped me in with his Mt. Head and The Old Crocodile a few years back; (b) it's actually based on the work of the Jewish-Czech Kafka, which gives it that weirdness that can be supplied only by Eastern European creators in general, and Kafka in particular; and (c) I can't help re-watching it whenever I can. Like any Kafka story, A Country Doctor starts with a seemingly normal premise combined (a country doctor is summoned at night to take care of a young patient) with some bizarre aspect ("unearthly horses" transport him there instantly). As in Kafka's better-known The Metamorphosis, the introduction of the preternatural element marks the moment the protagonist can never go back to the way things were. As in Yamamura's Mt. Head, the pace, sketchy images, and hand-drawn transformations complement the story nicely. At the rate A Country Doctor has been racking up awards, I think Yamamura's going to have to put serious thought into new shelving.  Ryu Kato's The Clockwork City also mines the surreal with traditional tools. The film is pretty much wordless, and you should expect to have to work at sorting some aspects of it out. A young visitor comes to a new city, and it's quickly apparent she doesn't quite fit in—every person, every bird, and even a few buildings have these wind-up mechanisms stuck in them, and she doesn't. After exploring the city for a little while she meets with the town's honcho (who wears a wind-up crown) and exchanges fruits and other goods. Soon after the city goes to war with an unknown enemy, its soldiers identically featureless and wearing blue ties and white shirts. In the aftermath, our protagonist confronts the top man and his flunkies over the discovery of a giant wind-up key; what mysteries does it hold? This is definitely on my "must rewatch" list. Yusuke Sakamoto's The Dandelion Sister takes us into the realm of stop-motion animation, where a young girl has to contend with her older, sick sister—who happens to be a giant dandelion. There's a lot going on here: There's the younger sister missing out on social activities because of her responsibilities; her resentment of how much attention is heaped on her sick sister; her inability to draw, and express her feelings; and her fear of her sister's death. Like The Clockwork City, The Dandelion Sister is wordless, but as its concerns are more grounded in reality it's open to a number of interpretations about adolescence, caring for sick relatives, and acceptance.Labels: anime, festivals, Japan, Japan Media Arts Festival, Koji Yamamura, Ryu Kato, shorts, Yusuke Sakamoto  Akihabara, or "Electric Town," is one of those places that otaku have to visit. It's just required. (Not least because your fellow otaku have a shopping list a mile long that includes all the things they can't buy this side of the Pacific, and have sent you on a quest to tick off all the boxes.) Akiba is a major tourist destination for foreigners and Tokyoites alike. Sundays are the busiest days, and not even the steadily-increasing, surprisingly-chilly August rainstorm could keep out today's visitors. Hugging our arms, we discovered that the rumours are true: you will find maid cafes, you will see goth lolis, you can buy things there that you can't in North America. Akiba is a very loud place. Seizure-inducing displays are everywhere, and the pachinko parlours never stop. Greeters use megaphones. Anime (most of it moe this season) blares from sidewalk televisions. After some time shopping, we wound our way through the noise to the Tokyo Anime Centre, which the website touts as some kind of museum. What we discovered instead was little more than a glorified gift shop. (In fact, that's a good description of Akiba in general. Imagine an anime-themed casino, then picture the attached gift shop. Now stretch it over several city blocks. That's Akihabara.) Although there is a glassed-in soundbooth for voice actors, and although we saw four women doing their thing inside it, that's about where the education ends.  However, the TAC is useful for one thing: finding out about other museums. In our case, we got lucky and found a brochure for the Suginami Animation Museum . The SAM is way out on the Maranouchi/Chuo Line, but it's open on weekends and features far better content. Among the highlights are the anime reference library, which holds rare films and manga for public use (I watched other people watching Grave of the Fireflies, Crayon Shin-chan, and Russian animation), an anime theatre with regular showings, and workstations where you can learn how to do your own key animation. The museum is geared toward a hands-on approach to showing viewers how anime gets made, and it does the job -- watching short films of animators doing work on both Jin-Roh and One Piece proves how loving and careful these people have to be, even with high technology at their disposal. The SAM is a tiny museum, but that's because it's concise and not too self-congratulatory (which cannot be said of many special-interest museums). It hosts special exhibitions, and it's accessible for viewers of all ages. It's out in the suburbs, away from the noise, and it's worth the trip. Do as we did: visit Akiba (and K-books) for some fresh manga or artbooks, hit the Akiba Ichi food court (you can't miss it; it's in the same building as the TAC), then get on the train. You'll be glad you did.
|
|
