Gen X Otaku 1971: the OG blog

Another brief aside about libraries & collection policies, re: periodicals

Otaku USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One depressing reality about both Academic and Public Libraries is that while they are amenable to public suggestions on potential new titles to purchase, the only suggestions actively considered by collection development committees tend
to be restricted to monographs, i.e. printed books. Other media, from DVDs to CDs to especially print periodicals, tend to be supplied en masse by a specific vendor for purposes of efficiency and saving costs on staff time & salaries that would otherwise
be expended doing all the work “in house”. While this tends (arguably) to provide the “greatest good for the greatest number” in the aggregate, and provides “adequate” coverage of major print publications according to specifically marketed “package” deals
offered by vendors on behalf of publishers who agree to participate in bundles, etc., all this efficiency and ease tends to make libraries VERY reluctant to consider any niche print publications that fall outside the mainstream aggregators, because they require
hands-on special processing, special cataloging, etc. which translates to more staff time & salaries, possibly additional staff at larger institutions, etc., all well beyond the subscription price on the magazine cover. While a monograph purchase is essentially
“one and done”, a magazine subscription entails an ongoing cost commitment to maintaining that subscription indefinitely into the future, with hidden costs beyond the mere subscription price. Depending on a library’s available shelf space and retention policy,
these costs could include sending back issues to a book binder to create bound periodicals kept for archival & research purposes. This tends to be restricted to academic research libraries and is virtually unknown in most public libraries due to the cost
and shelf space requirements. Back issues are tossed into paper recycling after a certain set period of time, i.e. the library will retain only the most current 6 issues, for example.
 
The upshot is, if you ask your local library to, say, add
Weekly Shonen Jump to their current periodicals, there’s virtually no chance of them doing so. The additional maintenance costs that would be required to service a new subscription like that outside of existing package bundles is a strong deterrent
against adding any new print periodical.
 
Upon listening to the latest ANNCast, I discovered mention of a UK anime print publication known as “NEO”, which is the only other English-language print publication dedicated to Anime besides
Otaku USA (which I already subscribe to myself and renew every 2 years). Looking at current WorldCat holdings,
Shonen Jump reports holdings in an impressive 708 libraries worldwide, and
Otaku USA comes in with a respectable 282 holdings in libraries worldwide, and even the now defunct
NewtypeUSA (a publication of the now defunct A.D. Vision, parent of ADV Films) still reports holdings in 87 libraries worldwide. Lamentably, however,
NEO isn’t held by any libraries worldwide, and was cataloged and added to the WorldCat database by the Danish National Library and Union Catalog, not even The British Library. Apparently
NEO is available on some American newsstands in select Barnes & Noble bookstores, etc. If you tried to persuade your local library to pick up a subscription to the monthly
NEO, your request will go nowhere, not least because literally no other library had opted to collect it, not even in its home country of publication. No one wants to take the risk on a print periodical that will take up shelf space that no one
will look at. Now, as anime fans, we KNOW there would be North American teens & 20-somethings who WOULD, most definitely, have their curiosity piqued by seeing just the cover of
NEO and would at least pick it up and leaf through it quickly. But librarians in the main don’t know this and wouldn’t be willing to lobby for their institution to take the risk with this magazine. 

 
My own curiosity was piqued, and although the cost of a “Rest-of-World” subscription for the monthly
NEO is quite expensive at £70 GBP, I decided to take the plunge and paid for a subscription over the weekend for one year. I don’t visit Barnes & Noble all that regularly, and in any case, I doubt any of the ones in my area would carry
NEO either. Once I start receiving it, I plan to start sharing my back issues with fellow anime fans in the area. I have been (gasp!) tossing my back issues of
Otaku USA into the recycle bin, but I think I will start sharing those around as well. While I don’t see myself extending my
NEO subscription beyond one year, I am eager to read it and compare it to my old standby,
Otaku USA, which I adore and hope continues indefinitely. As long as they keep printing it, I’ll keep subscribing to it, so deep is my love for anime and its related media. I look forward to my yearlong experience with
NEO and plan to report about my experience on this blog. Stay tuned!

Recent screening: Hanayamata

I recently attended a screening of Hanayamata (ハナヤマタ, also stylized as HaNaYaMaTa); Sentai Filmworks was screening the first four episodes.  I had my doubts at first, reading the series description, but really, this series is all about the emotions of the girls involved, their friendships, their petty jealousies, their self-esteem, and the pains of discovering who you are that come with adolescence.  

It has a very soap opera quality to it, and the ornate traditional Japanese dance style that the girls decide to learn is really coincidental to the story itself.  In much the same fashion as boys' sports anime, this show is all about the characters and their emotional lives and emotional growth as people.  I really grew quickly attached to all of the girls and wanted to see what happened to them next.  Sentai Filmworks, in a stroke of brilliant marketing, set up a booth outside the theater and sold a limited number of Blu-Ray and DVD editions of the series.  Alas, they ran out of both by the time I reached the head of the line after the screening.  They were also selling t-shirts featuring Esdeth and Akame from Akame ga Kill! (Japanese: アカメが斬る! Hepburn: Akame ga Kiru!^?, literally meaning "Akame Slashes!").  I was interested in these as well, but they were only available up to size XL.  I joked with the Sentai Filmworks staff that they needed to study the average North American Otaku and realize that "Japan sizes" just won't cut it for us.  The were apologetic and advised me to come to the next screening and they will bring more diverse shirt sizes and more copies of HaNaYaMaTa.  I nodded, but really, they should've brought more copies to sell because even though they were full price I was so emotionally invested in the story by that point I would've thrown down for it so I could rush home and finish watching it while the passion still burned hotly within my breast.  By now the ardor has cooled somewhat.  I want HaNaYaMaTa, as much as I also want Beyond The Boundary, but I can wait for the prices to drop a little on Amazon first.    Beyond the Boundary uses a Dojikko (ドジっ子) lit. (adorably) "clumsy girl" as the main female protagonist.  Her tragic past and klutzy nature make her immediately a sympathetic figure and inspire feelings of wanting to protect her in the male viewing audience.  They're both visually gorgeous shows but also very deeply emotionally engaging for me personally, which is the most important part.

Addendum: Finished Slayers Excellent

In case you were curious from the previous post below, yes, I did finish Slayers: Excellent and yes, I enjoyed it very much, too.  The best part(s) were in the extras, the actual interviews with voice actresses Cynthia Martinez (young Lina) and Kelly Manison (Naga).

The unique thing about Slayers: Excellent is we're treated (in flashback) to the very first moment of Lina and Naga meeting each other and deciding to team up.  The OVAs themselves are amusingly ridiculous, like much else in the Slayers franchise.

I very much enjoyed the interview with Cynthia Martinez, though of course I also listened to her on the commentary track for the original Slayers: The Motion Picture.  More interesting for me was the interview with Kelly Manison, on how she developed Naga's voice and more specifically that unforgettable haughty laugh!

Looking back, I have thoroughly enjoyed my trip through the Slayers universe.  I couldn't possibly pick between Lisa Ortiz or Cynthia Martinez as the voice of series Lina and young Lina respectively.  Both performances are brilliant, though I guess if I think of Lina Inverse, I tend to hear Lisa's voice in my head first.  I think it comes down to the strengths and weaknesses of the ADR script, which are not the fault of the actresses.  I think the spell incantations in the television series are more poetic and memorable, while in the prequel movies they're more elaborate but don't have the same flow and cadence as they do in the regular tv show.  I'm going to think of Lisa narrating the Dragon Slave incantation more often than I can recall to mind the version Cynthia had to say.  Plus with Gourry in the mix for the television show, and in only one of the prequel films, Lina has more emotional range by default.  Does she love Gourry or is he "just a friend"?  Will they or won't they?  Slayers teases this romantic tension constantly.  Season Three does reward us with their first on screen kiss, only to steal it back by blanking both their memories of it as a product of being in altered existential states.  Lina doesn't exactly deny it when Amelia and others ask her point blank of Gourry, "You love him, don't you?"; She just blushes hotly and changes the subject.  I think Lina likes Gourry just as he is....big, dumb and handsome.  In other words, he's totally her type.  She knows she's smarter than him and wants to keep it that way.

Uneasy relationship: Libraries and Anime

During the early Anime boom (bubble) after the year 2000, it seemed that libraries were collecting anime on DVD at an impressive rate.  I watched most of Last Exile from DVDs checked out from Houston Public Library (they have since been withdrawn from the collection).  But this trend has (unfortunately) begun to taper off.  I asked a friend who works in collection development why this is the case, and she said that anime on DVD is hard for some librarians unfamiliar with it to figure out where it belongs in the collection.  If they put it with children's animated films (usually a mistake), there are frequent parent complaints.  Even if it gets put in the adult collection AV section, teenagers find it and depending on the content (violence, ecchi) again there are complaints, etc.  It's very hard, my friend said, to figure out the ratings and age appropriateness for Anime titles, so for the most part our library just doesn't bother anymore.  At least we are more bold when it comes to manga, and we do have a fairly impressive manga collection throughout the system, including one or two BL titles I noticed.  This is much better than the Sikeston Public Library in SE Missouri that I visited after Thanksgiving a few years ago and found they had ZERO manga at all in their library.  When I asked about this, the person at the reference desk said it "Just wasn't very popular here" and directed me to the local comic book store down the road.  I found this very dubious and wonder if this wasn't a decision made higher up by an even more conservative library board than our own back in Texas. 

When you do find Anime in a Library DVD collection, it is often a nostalgia trip, as you see lots of titles from the early 2000s, but few if any from more recent years.  This was the case the last time I dropped by the Rosenberg Library on nearby Galveston Island last October.

(actual photo of the Rosenberg Library DVD collection from a few years ago; most of these titles were present last October as well)

One area where libraries have become an unexpected source of often old school anime is where they have begun to expand their digital holdings with partnered streaming services like Freegal and Hoopla Digital.

Yesterday, I obtained a Library card with the neighboring Brazoria County Public Library system at their West Pearland branch closest to where I live.  Library cards are open to all Texas residents with valid photo ID and proof of current mailing address (like a recent utility bill).  With that Library card barcode, I was able to gain access to their electronic resources which includes a digital streaming service that was new to me called "Freegal", which apparently started out as being related to music, mostly, but recently began offering access to movies on streaming.  They divided movies up into categories, and the anime movies were tossed in with other animation.  There weren't many titles, to be sure, but I did find most of the Ghost in the Shell "recap" movies and Solid State Society.  More importantly I found and watched the Macross II movie which dates from 1994 and is actually something like 6 OVAs stitched together as a feature film that is over 2 hours long.  The library only offers the English dub of this movie but I sat and watched and enjoyed it late last night into the wee hours.  As Macross movies go, I have only ever seen Macross Plus, which I watched on a different library streaming service, called Hoopla Digital.  I have seen the original OVAs in English, and the recap movie in Japanese.

I already have library cards (and access to digital services like Hoopla Digital) from Harris County Public Library, Houston Public Library, Fort Bend County Library, Rosenberg Library and now Brazoria County as well.  When I returned from Brazoria County Public Library's West Pearland branch, I had lunch out in Sugar Land, listening to a favorite podcast, then I came home and set up a new Hoopla account with Brazoria County Public Library and began a binge watch session to finish up Season 1 of Aria The Animation (and start & finish Ep.1 of Aria The Natural, i.e. season 2 of this series).  I also finished up Season 1 of Emma: A Victorian Romance and started (and finished) Ep.1 of Season 2 of the same show.  This one I've heard jokingly called the "Jane Austen of Anime", but I really do love it.  It's a shame it never got an English dub, but the sub version is fine and it gives me all the same "feels" as an episode of Downton Abbey.  I also made progress in getting further along in The Rose of Versailles.  That this series from the 1970s served as the artistic inspiration for later Revolutionary Girl Utena is pretty obvious.  But I also get some nostalgia for L'Chevalier d'Eon watching The Rose of Versailles as well.  Anyway, yes, I managed to binge-watch all TEN (10) Hoopla Digital checkouts open to me in a single day and it was glorious.  I look forward to getting on with Season 2 of both Emma and Aria but I only recommend Emma as a viable candidate for binge-watching.  Aria is more of a palette-cleanser slice of life dose of cuteness.  I only binge-watched as much as I did of that show to finish out the first season.  I don't recommend it, as it gets to be rather a bit much after more than 2 episodes in one sitting.  At least The Rose of Versailles also lends itself to binge-watching, too; like Emma it is also an fictional historical drama from a specific time and place.

Fair warning, this next section CONTAINS SPOILERS:  I really do like Emma very much, though I feel like the creators took certain liberties with their depiction of Victorian England.  Prince Hakim would definitely have worn out his welcome and been kindly (but firmly) shown the door by now.  Moreover, I'm not sure that even Indian nobility would be treated all that well outside of India proper.  British Victorians would've been far more blatantly racist, if the recent PBS drama Indian Summers is any guide.  That show is set in the 1930s, though one imagines the 1880s would not have been any better and possibly quite worse.  Minor historical quibble aside, the show does depict class consciousness and class antagonisms fairly well, though again, they make light of what would've become an actual scandal in Victorian London, namely Jones getting locked in with Emma at the Crystal Palace overnight.  The rumors alone (think of the American pop song "Wake up, Little Suzie" from the 1950s!) would've been enough to destroy Emma and make her unemployable as a maid going forward.  Again, just look at attitudes about dating and sex in PBS's Downton Abbey for comparison.  Yes, that show is from the 1910s and 1920s but the attitudes and mores one imagines would only have been more strict in the 1880s and 1890s.  Still, that Crystal Palace episode was really sweet and the first season's emotional climax for William Jones and Emma (their first kiss).  I also question the depiction of how they portray events unfolding after the untimely death of Emma's employer, the Governess.  This forces Emma to decide to leave London in search of new employment on a country estate.  I find it curious, since the Governess was a widow with no children of her own.  Unless she was massively in debt and her home was to be sold off at auction to satisfy various creditors, I can't imagine the Governess being so cruel or so thoughtless as to not leave the property to Emma in her Last Will and Testament.  There were no other living relatives to inherit the house so far as we know.  All this is left unexplained and Emma simply loses the roof over her head in London without explanation so that the story can send her out into the English countryside to continue the narrative.  Emma had given some thought to returning home to hear seaside village, but as we see in flashback, it wasn't a particularly happy life there and there's really nothing to go back to.  I have to give Emma (the series) props for being brave enough to skirt the edge of going to some really dark places.  Young Emma is kidnapped and nearly sold to a brothel at the age of 14 and could have become a London prostitute but for her quick wits and blind luck, escaping her captors to wander the cruel streets of London for a time, begging for food or work, selling flowers for pennies, etc, until finally being hired on as a garden attendant by a prominent household, then hired away sometime later by the governess as a house maid when she turned 15.  The Governess sees intelligence and potential in Emma's eyes and wants to see what education can do for the young waif.  Emma learns practical skills as a maid, but also learns to read and appreciate literature at the tutelage of the Governess.  Emma is 20 years old at the start of the narrative, as she often remarks how it was "only 5 years ago", at age 15, that she came to live with the Governess as her maid.  William Jones has been attracted to Emma for quite some time but his father and family do not approve of their relationship.  Prince Hakim also finds Emma attractive but ends his flirtation with her out of respect for William's feelings.  He wishes William would just act on his feelings and continue an active pursuit of a relationship with Emma, but this is easy for a foreign royal to say; much harder for a nouveau riche landed gentry to pull off.  The Governess does what she can to encourage this budding young love despite their class differences.  The Governess was William's private tutor from an early age until he grew up and she finally retired.  I look forward to seeing where things go in Season 2.

I'm looking forward for all my Hoopla Digital checkouts to refresh in February 2016 so I can continue these journeys.  I feel like this is the future of Japanese Anime in public libraries, e.g. increasingly as part of a working public library's digital holdings rather than part of its physical media collection.  And as such, Libraries are becoming an unexpected legal source of a lot of "old school" and very out of print "classic" anime titles from the 1990s in particular.  I've watched so much Central Park Media releases I otherwise would've missed thanks to sources like Hoopla Digital.

In the meantime, I'm making increased use of advert-supported Crunchyroll and my paid account with The Anime Network and of course Netflix.  I've let my FUNimation account expire for the time being but plan to renew it once the newest batch of Fairy Tail dubs drop & street.  On physical media, I just finished a binge of the Slayers prequel movies & OVAs and am halfway through The Record of Lodoss War original OVAs.  On Netflix, I've been enjoying the hell out of Seven Deadly Sins, engaging in some binge-watches of that show as well.  Was about to do so last night but stopped after 2 episodes to squeeze in the over-long Macross II movie and test out the Freegal service for the first time.  The whole Macross franchise is really kind of silly, with its hippy-dippy "power of love and singing" vibe, but you just gotta roll with it, it is what it is.  But in any case I still prefer the English dubbed Macross Plus OVAs in terms of story and in terms of superior animation.  Anyway, that's what this anime fan has been up to lately.

Slayers Binge

Been on a bit of a SLAYERS binge lately, having recently concluded Slayers: Evolution-R and also ordering and watching the 5 prequel Slayers movies originally dubbed and distributed by ADV Films. Last night I finished the 3-OVA disc


Slayers: The Book of Spells. I have only one more disc, Slayers: Excellent to conclude tonight. One of the last of the prequel movies, Slayers: Premium reunites Lina with her regular television series travel companions, Gourry (voiced by Chris Patton), Naga’s idealistic little sister Amelia (voiced by Luci Christian), and Zelgadis (voiced by a returning Crispin Freeman), with Xellos making a brief appearance as well. Only 30-some-odd minutes long, this movie has the best animation of the lot, incorporating CG elements for the first time, including a very arresting “bullet time” sequence with Gourry jumping and swinging his legendary Sword of Light in a wide arc to devastating effect. Young Lina is still voiced by Cynthia Martinez, but her costume has evolved over time to look like she does in the regular TV episodes. Slightly older Lina is voiced by Lisa Ortiz, and slightly older Amelia is voiced by Veronica Taylor in the television series. Lina’s original travel companion and sometime rival, the bombastic Naga the Serpent, makes a brief cameo in Slayers: Premium then does not resurface again until possibly Slayers: Evolution-R, where it is speculated that the intelligent suit of armor with the soul trapped inside, going by the name of Nama, is in fact, Naga.
 
Slayers is a classic anime and I really like the “updated” look of Slayers: Revolution and Slayers: Evolution-R. It’s great to hear the original cast back together, still faithfully bringing their characters to life one last time. It is the most recent iteration of the Slayers grand narrative of which I’m aware, and has an emotionally satisfying finish. It’s an acquired taste and many fans do not like the English dub. For me, I appreciate the utterly cheesy nature of the dubbed version. Lina can be grating
on the ears and rather annoying but she also makes me laugh out loud because she’s basically the embodiment of every obnoxious RPG “power gamer” ever. Flawed as she is, Lina is a paragon of virtue next to Naga the Serpent, who is buxom, beautiful, with long brunette hair and has a piercing, haughty laugh that echoes for miles. She’s every bit Lina’s rival as a spellcaster. Luckily for Lina, Naga is also vain, greedy, and kind of stupid. These vices are often her undoing over the course of several of the prequel movies. I appreciate equally the performances of Cynthia Martinez (young Lina) and Lisa Ortiz (older Lina). I happen to think the spell incantation of Dragon Slave in the television series is a good deal more poetic and beautiful than the version uttered in the prequel movies.
 
After I wrap up Slayers: Excellent, I plan to dive back into Record of Lodoss War (OVAs), picking up where I left off, at the start of disc B. As with the Slayers franchise, you can definitely suss out the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons roots of this show. Ms. Lisa Ortiz reappears, performing in a more restrained and understated way as Deedlit, the Elvish fighter-magic user. While Slayers is an action-comedy, Record of Lodoss War is a more sober drama. Once I conclude the original OVAs, it’s on to the 27 episode television series of the same name, which takes place later in time than the events of the original
OVAs. Record of Lodoss War is an old CPM/US Manga Corps title and you can tell from the DVD main menu that standardization had not yet set in, as the layout differs markedly from a standard DVD one would access today from FUNimation or Sentai Filmworks. I do hope that Sentai Filmworks will license-rescue and re-release the original
Slayers prequel movies and related OVAs, since all are out of print. FUNimation has licensed and re-released the original television series of course, but the fate of the prequel movies remain in limbo as of this writing.