Quotes of August, Part III

Jason Thompson on Hoshin Engi: "(Also, if Dakki's evil plan is just to have a good time and bankrupt the country with her expensive lavish parties, won't everyone just rebel or stop paying their taxes and leave? Then again, I guess it's nice to have a villain who doesn't want to just destroy the world for once.)"

Feriket in comments: "Aka, objectify responsibly. People are people before they are objects in fantasy."

Foxy Lady Ayame in comments: "Objectification is part of normal fantasy. Respect should be part of every day life."

Rij in comments: "But it is a fantasy, and as long as I acknowledge the fantasy and do not imagine that it resembles the real world or try to involve actual living people in the fantasy, I don’t think that I’m doing anyone wrong. Every bit of fiction is offensive to someone and if we weren’t allowed to enjoy problematic stuff, our world would be much too boring."

Some Dude Named Evan: "Furthermore, I really enjoy marathoning anime which go for raw emotional manipulation. As such, I love to marathon the Key/Visual Arts adaptations which Kyoto Animation produced back in the day, though, for obvious reasons, not all of them at once. However, I will say that such melodramatic marathons are more enjoyable to me when combined with copious amounts of hard liquor."

Brian Hanson: "Steve makes a Ghost in the Shell pun SO BAD it has put me in a Tachi-coma . . ."

Why Salaryman Kintaro Is Awesome

I've read some very unfavorable reviews about Salaryman Kintaro, so I thought I'd balance things out by talking about why this show is outstanding for a certain audience.  Sure, it's not nearly as fun as Dai-Guard, but it's not trying to be.  It's an earnest, sincere, heartfelt drama about a former biker gang leader becoming a white-collar office worker and kind of gathering a harem/flock of admirers of all genders all while learning to navigate the jungles of office politics and being a single parent and helping people all the time.

Things that make Salaryman Kintaro a challenging show to enjoy:

• It has no dub.  I do not think this is a problem (ever, really), but I know it can throw some people off their stride.  However, I think the decision not to dub this was the right one because we really don't have an equivalent for the biker-gang thug/tough guy speak that Kintaro sometimes lapses into.  I've seen some not-quite-successful attempts in other dubs, and, overall, there's just something that makes it work in Japanese.
• It's about a guy working at the office of a construction company.  Can't get around that.  There are corporate politics and policies and procedures.  It would be deadly dull if not for the sociological fun of observing another culture and having my expectations slapped back and forth.  Well, and all the action livens it up, too, what with the bike and car chases, disasters, sabotage, and saving families before their cars fall off a cliff, and stuff.
• It is SO Japanese.  There are assumptions made (I would like to state that grown men ogling nekkid photos of 14-year-olds is NOT OKAY EVER).  Values are after-school specially emphasized.  There are Lessons Learned.  Something these lessons make No Sense to Americans, but are obviously Completely Understood by Japanese.  There is a lot of foreign culture incoming (foreign because it's Japanese but also because office culture is its own culture, and Japanese office culture is just exponentially strange.)  There are no helpful footnotes.  You kind of have to know your Japanese culture, or this will be even stranger (and possibly more offensive and/or impenetrable) for you.
• It has not-so-great animation.  It's very dated.  Purposefully so in some ways, but, well, it's not lavish or amazing.  I think that just adds to the overall cheesy synergy of the whole, but your mileage will vary.

So, if those things are deal-breakers for you, I feel bad that you'll be missing out on the following

Things that make it an awesome show to enjoy:

• It's MANime.  But not nearly as bad as it could be.  GTO was gleefully offensive (this is more YuYu Hakusho than GTO anyway).  Moonlight Mile was kind of gratuitously masculine.  Yugo the Negotiator got pretty psychological and brutal.  Area 88 . . . was actually shonen, wasn't it?  Anyway, we don't get much seinen drama here in the States, and while some of the adult content might bother people who'd be too bored to watch it anyway, it's not hentai.
• It's roMANticized.  And the romance makes sense.  It's very male dreamworld, like Westerns for American men.  No milquetoast lead here, folks, no flavorless, easy-to-identify-with-loser everyman.  Kintaro is a MAN, not a macho poser, not someone who throws his strength around to control or browbeat the weak, not an over-sexualized mass of testosterone, just a very Japanese Manly Man.  People admire him, fear him, respect him, look up to him, even love him in a variety of ways.  The harem gets a tad out of hand, but it's still within the realm of believability, and the show gets major points from me for that.  He's a single father, but he's not even looking for any kind of relationship.  He actively resists them, in fact, politely and without angst or martyrdom.  The fact that so many different people are so drawn to him--and the reasons why--are shown in such a way that you will not have to deplete your willing suspension of disbelief or want to claw your eyes out when you see them following him.
• It has outstanding extras that offer unique insights on what goes on in the anime director's and producer's chairs.  Each volume has part of a longer interview with the producer and the director, and they get honest and in depth about stuff you will probably never hear anywhere else.  This is great stuff. 
• It will feed your inner armchair sociologist.  (Translation: It will teach you about Japan.)  Are you interested in Japanese culture, not just anime?  Did you read Tokyo Vice and love its insight into American perceptions of Japanese culture?  Did you think (one of) the best parts of Nerima Daikon Brothers was those awesome commentaries/interviews where the same director talked to very different people, giving a really clear and completely unintended lesson on interaction between Japanese people?  Kintaro is equally informative but also more baffling.  You may think you know where the afterschool special is leading, but then Japan will step out and beat you with a crutch. 
• It makes you dream/wish/long/hope for a moment that maybe your corporate culture could be changed, too, by someone willing and able to stand up like Kintaro and tell it like it is (with or without that great, rolled-r, guttural, gangster-y cadence).  Or maybe you just wish he'd come in and tell off your boss.  Anyway, that spark of hope that rises in you is a beautiful, beautiful lie, but the hope that flares for a time makes you feel all warm inside your frozen, corporate drone heart.  If you (still) have one.

Anyway.  Here are some other voices on Salaryman Kintaro.

Needless to say, I got a huge, huge kick out of this show for its quirky and offbeat oddness.  If it sounds like a show you'll love, it probably is.  If it sounds like something you'd rather live through that first Asian arc of Yugo the Negotiator than go through, it probably is.  You know where your tastes lie; I just figured I'd give you some additional info to find out if Salaryman Kintaro is where your tastes lie.  I hope it is.  If so, please let me know how you liked it.

Welcome to the NHK?

If you've never heard of it, Welcome to the NHK is an anime (based on a semi-autobiographical [?] novel) that centers on a young man who has withdrawn from society and lives with as little human contact as possible until a girl appears who says she can save him from his self-imposed exile.  Lots of adult content because adults can legally make their own stupid choices.  (NOTE: the first ending theme song may be one of the most disturbing I have ever seen.)

It's hard to watch Welcome to the NHK, especially after finishing Hurry Down Sunshine: A Father's Story of Love and Madness (Vintage), a memoir about mental illness as seen from the outside.  I recognize symptoms (paranoia, mania, depression), and the armchair sociologist in me starts flipping through scattered notes about hikikomori and increasing loneliness and social withdrawal as technology rises.

It's painful to watch Welcome to the NHK as a fan (who happens to be a somewhat shy, introverted person).  Sometimes, I feel the pull of being a hikkikomori.  I mean, seriously, if someone were paying your bills, and you didn't have to leave the comfort of your home, wouldn't you stay in? 


Especially if the alternative was working a crappy customer service job that puts you inescapably face-to-face with the decidedly less-fine aspects of humanity all the time?  Wouldn't you want to stay where you couldn't hurt and offend or be hurt and offended by others, where you wouldn't have to be angry or frustrated so frequently?  Where you wouldn't have to pick up after other people's inconsiderate leavings all the time?  Where you wouldn't have to smile while people are rude and dismissive and contemptuous to you, bully you, or hit on you (when they're not being infuriatingly slow, unhelpful, and forgetful, or assuming you have god-like powers)?  Where you wouldn't have to deal with an unqualified, incompetent boss immune to logic, reason, or any other method of discourse?  Where no one expected anything of you?  Where no one tried your patience?  Where the only person you could disappoint was you?  Where you were more in control of everything (everything having shrunk down to your apartment)?

Understanding that pull makes watching the show more difficult.

Tokyo Vice gave some good (and sad) examples of how mental illness is viewed and dealt with in Japan.  There's that whole wa concept (and fitting in and not standing out and the nail that sticks out getting hammered down and all that). 


Japan would be a painful place to withdraw from social contact, which makes me wonder how much more painful it is for those who do withdraw to maintain contact or try to reestablish it.  It gives me more sympathy for the seemingly hopeless, boneheaded protagonist of Welcome to the NHK.  He's still trying to re-connect even through that added pain.  He screws up so badly, but he's trying, so you can't help but pull for his eventual success.  You know his story is based on a real person's story (you think so, even if you might be wrong), and you want there to be a happy ending, to have been a happy ending.

I wonder if people in the U.S. who are writing all these books about the rise of loneliness and social withdrawal as technology makes living without people possible are looking to Japan to learn about what this kind of mass withdrawal can do to society.  I wonder if someone's written about it somewhere.  I wonder if all the anime fans who've seen the series or the manga fans who've read the manga adaptation or the original novel have thought about the sociological implications of this sort of thing in their lives in their countries in their fan communities.

I wonder if my sister would say I'm thinking too hard about this.  :)

Watching Welcome to the NHK is a struggle for many reasons.  I'll let you know if I think it was worth it in the end.

Yawara and feminism

I talked about how I was getting a kick out of Yawara, but I didn't mention the one thing that was making it harder to get a kick out of it.  I am hardly a feminist, and I understand that this manga and anime take place in a different culture a couple decades ago, but come on.

From what I can tell, Yawara attends school, studies for college entrance exams, does all the cooking and cleaning, practices judo, and hones her passive-aggressive skills.  Her grandfather eats, invades her privacy, and manipulates her life (sort of from the shadows) mostly so he can get other people to buy him food.

One scene that made me genuinely mad included a few old men having a meeting in front of a TV several feet away.  When they wanted the volume turned up, they ordered the elderly wife of one of the men to turn the TV up even though she was further away and probably busy cooking or cleaning. 

My sister who taught in Japan confirmed that this last was not fiction and that it used to drive her and another teacher bonkers, to the point where they wouldn't even go to certain homes because they couldn't stand dealing with the chauvinistic crap.

I wonder if the girl who really did go on to win that gold medal in judo also attended school and did all the cooking and cleaning . . .  I can't think that's physically possible.

On the flip side, Yawara's mom leaves all the time to chase down her absentee husband when she probably should be cooking and cleaning and sitting on the grandfather.  That's independence, right?  Sort of?

So if this sort of casual, "traditional" Japanese male-dominance sends you clawing up the walls, you might not be able to enjoy Yawara as much, but there's still more I haven't seen, so maybe things change in the larger arc of the story.  (I am not holding my breath.)