http://simpsonswiki.net/wiki/Manboy

Discuss. ㋼

The result is Wish Upon the Pleiades (放課後のプレアデス, or Hōkago no Pleiades). One would assume, being sponsored by a car manufacturer, that said show would be about driving. Y’know, like Initial D or something. But no, that just wouldn’t cut it! Yes, Magical Girls are back in fashion this season, so what better way to promote your range of automobiles than with a cute, colourful cartoon that has nothing to do with cars?

Perhaps I’m jumping the gun here. It’s more representative of the Subaru brand than the Subaru product line; the word Subaru, as well as being the name of the main character, is the Japanese word for the Pleiades star cluster – hence the name of the show – and the girls do get to ride around on some magic wands that make engine noises… Yeah. It’s probably better if you just watch it first. And, thanks to a wonderful lack of region locking, you can! Right now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmR3cqgoldU

They even provided English subtitles! That was nice of them. Not that you need them to tell what’s going on: A girl stumbles upon a secret room in her school, meets a boy…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMvrukJrrDU

In the second part, she stumbles upon another secret room in her school, discovers a secret extra-curricular club that one of her friends is in, joins said club, becomes a Magical Girl…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpUi8XMeqrE

It covers a surprisingly decent amount of character and story development for just one episode. Some shows’d take months to get this far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BU2ayif4cs

So that’s Pleiades. I enjoyed it! It’s cute, it’s charming, it tells a nice story, it’s brevitic, the soundtrack is nice… The ending kinda reminded me of Black★Rock Shooter in the way that the title character defeated the bad guy with the Power of Friendship, but it’s a nice ending nonetheless. (I also detected some hints of Nanatsuiro Drops and the works of Makoto Shinkai in there, but they’re not that noticeable.) I’m not sure how well it works as an advert for Subaru, but it did give me that primal urge to purchase Pleiades-related merchandise. I guess that we can call it a success!

Your move, Honda. Put that power of dreams to use and sponsor a cartoon of your own! ㋼

It’s said that of the 70% of planet Earth covered in ocean, mankind has only explored a small fraction; it’s practically an alien world down there. Indeed, when video game developer Tomihiro Nishikado created the iconic aliens of Space Invaders, he drew inspiration from author H.G. Wells and designed them based on marine life such as octopus and squid.

It cannot be a coincidence that Squid Girl, too, is an invader.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzBQsnNhfYg

In Squid Girl (Shinryaku! Ika Musume), the invader comes not from space, but from the bottom of the sea (as the subtitle, “The Invader Comes From The Bottom Of The Sea!”, emphatically declares). A self-proclaimed ‘messenger of the sea’, Squid Girl comes ashore with determined ambition to conquer the surface world, punishing the human race for polluting her home.

Any underlying ecological themes are, however, promptly brushed aside; as it turns out, Squid Girl is no better at subduing humanity than Invader Zim was. Despite her special squid abilities (bioluminescence, a personal armada of tentacles and a seemingly never-ending supply of squid-related puns), she only gets as far as a beachside café before she, herself, is subdued by the kitchen staff; a demonstration of her squidly powers only results in her being forced to work there to pay for their newly tentacle-damaged wall.

Having presumably lived as an ocean-dwelling squid her entire life, Squid Girl harbours a childlike naïveté when it comes to land matters; many episodes feature Squid Girl discovering a new, exciting aspect of human culture, getting to grips with it and factoring it into her plans of conquest, often with hilarious consequences. But as the series goes on, Squid Girl makes many human friends & acquaintances and discovers that there’s much more to the surface world than she anticipated…

Broadcast last Autumn, Squid Girl is one of Japan’s latest animated series to make a splash online, inspiring many fan tributes. And it’s not hard to see why; the title character’s counterpoint of cute innocence and overzealous would-be dictatorship stirs up appeal in all facets of the Japanese – and international – fandom. But it’s more than just a simple cute-’em-up; Squid Girl’s interactions with the colourful cast of characters (including a scientist who’s convinced that Squid Girl is a space invader; a young boy who becomes her playmate; even her own personal fangirl) provide some great scenes, and there’s even the odd moment of melancholy: the final act of episode five, in particular, is a beautiful dialogue-free short subject guaranteed to leave you in tears.

At just twelve episodes, Squid Girl doesn’t require a huge time investment, and earns a hearty recommendation from me. With its cute, clean character designs and universal appeal, Squid Girl is a charming comedy with real laughs and real heart. Squidalah! ㋼

An English-subtitled version of Squid Girl can be watched for free on Crunchyroll.

The image that you see above has been my desktop wallpaper for four months now. It is also the primary reason that I have been highly anticipating this particular show. Milky Holmes, a franchise that has so far spanned the media of card game, UMD, plastic figurine, wrist towel and audio CD alongside desktop wallpaper, is now receiving its inevitable anime adap. And, like much of today’s animated fare from Japan, it’s getting an English-language release much sooner than one would have expected in the past.

See, piracy is an ever-existant problem. Television series are posted online within hours – or even minutes – of their broadcast, and, with the rise of easy-to-use subtitling tools and the fall of translation quality standards, an episode of a popular Japanese television series could be ripped from its home, slapped with a quick-’n'-nasty subtitle track and hoist, kicking and screaming, out to thousands of BitTorrent leechers. The English-language anime distribution industry, recognising this problem, decided to counter these “fansubs” by lowering themselves to their level; with permission of the Japanese publishers, anime episodes are released to the masses as they are broadcast in Japan, with a slap-dash translation that at least bears the privilege of being legitimately funded. To the end user, the benefit of not having to wait the 10-18 months for the traditional home video release is apparently worth sacrificing almost all other benefits.

This New & Exciting™ distribution method is known as simulcasting, which, as you may infer, is all about simultaneous broadcasting. Usually, the term refers to the transmission of the same programme on more than one television channel at once, such as an international sporting event or some other live broadcast along those lines. As anime simulcasting relies on pre-subtitled, pre-encoded files streamed from a server (as a couple of premature leaks have revealed), it’s not strictly simulcasting in the literal sense, but that’s what everyone calls it for some reason. Perhaps the most popular service of its kind is Crunchyroll, a once illegitimate anime-on-demand website that has since changed its tune and now makes an honest profit out of giving fans the newest – and, therefore, best – anime series that they can get their hands on.

I've already amassed a fair pile of Milky Holmes-related rubbish.

With all of the promotion that Milky Holmes has been receiving, a Crunchyroll simulcast was inevitable. I was perplexed that they announced it only one day before its premiere, though, when they really should’ve coincided their announcement with Hyper Japan 2010, a recent London event dedicated to Japanese culture featuring a prominent presence by Bushiroad, the driving force behind the Milky Holmes franchise, who brought along the four lead voice actresses as well as a few boxes of merchandise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DSY3ElFCGM

During the Q&A at the presentation, one audience member asked the panel what Milky Holmes was actually about. The brevitic response from the translator: “They are all detectives.” Aside from the characters being named after famous detectives and possessing a variety of obligatory superhuman abilities (called TOYS – I assume that the T stands for “telekinetic” and the other letters also stand for words), mystery-solving would appear to be the sole premise. Coupled with the fact that the show is currently only available online, this’d be the sort of production that I’d usually skip. But I’d been looking forward to this one; I wanted to at least give it the benefit of the doubt. So, although Crunchyroll’s subscription-only episodes become free-to-view after a week or so, I decided to give their free trial a try and experience the first episode of Tantei Opera Milky Holmes in glorious subtitled H.264.

Being a simulcast, I wasn’t expecting a particularly good translation, but alarm bells started to ring when I checked the announcement and found that they had referred to main character Sherlock (or “シャロ” for short, which I read as Shirley) as “Sheryl”. This is to be expected from a hastily-transcribed press release, but, remember, this is simulcasting that we’re dealing with; this apparent mistake was, indeed, present in the show’s subtitles. Aside from a couple of other questionable decisions (TOYS is now lowercase & plural, some of the names are given in Japanese order for seemingly no reason), the subtitles are cheerfully adequate. The awkward phrasing and timing issues are certainly not something that I’d expect from a home video release, though.

The episode itself begins with the title characters locked in combat with the bad guys, a standard issue four-strong group of “Gentlemen Thieves” who, we can assume, will serve as the sole antagonists throughout the series. As the evildoers make their escape, there is an explosion and, in the confusion, the Milky Holmes girls realise that they have lost their TOYS for seemingly no reason. We’re then treated to a sample of what their life is like a month later; being students at the prestigious Holmes Detective Academy, losing their abilities has also lost them their powers of deduction and their high social standing within the school. What’s more, the bad guys from earlier are now stationed at the academy, posing as students and/or members of staff, whose nefarious goal is apparently to drive the girls out of the school and generally make them miserable. Still, despite their accommodation being downgraded to a wood cabin at the hands of the villain’s leader/student council president, they appeared to be in reasonably high spirits as the episode came to a close.

With my expectations as high as they were, disappointment was guaranteed. But from the first episode alone, which was practically nothing but exposition, it’s hard to gauge an opinion. The animation was passable, I suppose. The art style didn’t make me want to kill myself. And I’ve got to give it credit for actually succeeding at being cute, unlike the attempts of other popular franchises. I think that the thing that annoyed me the most was that this preview clip (which appears to represent the PSP game) featured a lovely little activation jingle when their TOYS are enabled, but in the show they just made a generic “ka-shing” sound. Maybe they’re saving it for when they inevitably get their powers back. I dunno. Seeing as they didn’t actually solve any mysteries in this first episode, I’ll be suspending further opinion until later on in the series.

Signing up for Crunchyroll, by the way, was relatively painless, although I had to give them credit card information in order to begin the free trial (which, I’m told, I can cancel at any time). It does automatically sign you up for their e-mail newsletter, so watch out for that. My main issue with Crunchyroll is not so much that it’s also a social network, but that there appears to be no way to disable social features like comments on the video page. I don’t need to join yet another social network and I don’t want other people’s opinions showing up whenever I’m watching something. If I wanted commentary, I’d go to Twitter. I did, however, think that it was nice – if a little tacky – that they have an achievement system.

My very first Crunchyroll achievement. Emotions overflowing.

I’m not going to continue my subscription after the free trial’s up. Crunchyroll still doesn’t have many shows that I care about; I prefer watching my anime on the ol’ CRT; I am morally against simulcasting; they put their shows up for free anyway. But for the time being, at least, I’ll be sticking with Milky Holmes. It’s cute.

And so are these exclusive Milky Homes statuettes, individually bundled with the upcoming home video release of the series. I must have them. Even if they do end up costing me another £250. ㋼

The day that I thought would never arrive has arrived.

Uta∽Kata, an anime series that I consider to be the one of the greatest ever made – second only to Giant Robo The Animation, in fact – is to be released this November on DVD with full English subtitles. This release is being handled by Section 23 and Sentai Filmworks, who, along with their collective predecessor, ADV Films, have produced some of the best English-language anime releases in North America and the UK, and I can think of no company that I would rather have produce an English adaptation; I’m sure that they’ll do a worthy and respectful job.

Instead of explaining the series, I’m just going to copy×paste the synopsis from the press release. It’s a better description than I could ever give.

“Before you make a deal with a girl in a mirror, reflect seriously on the source of the offer. Ichika Tachibana fails to take this advice in order to retrieve a lost charm, and as a result suddenly ends up with the magical forces of a Djinn at her command. Sounds like a good deal, right? Wrong. At first things seem wondrous, with her new friend Manatsu assisting her via text messages and the occasional spell; but as her powers grow, Ichika’s situation quickly goes from magical to nightmarish, and she finds herself drawn into an ever expanding web of deceptions, lies and increasingly dangerous situations. For what she’s really done is subjected herself to seeing mankind as the Djinn see them. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to place a high value on human life. Not all fairy tales are for children as small charms lead to deadly conclusions in UTA-KATA- {sic} THE COMPLETE SERIES!”

I urge all of you to buy a copy. It’s a Region 1 USA-only release, so you’ll have to use a computer or a multi-region DVD player. Trust me. It’s worth it.¹

I cannot thank you enough, Sentai Filmworks. Now, if you were to release Angel Beats!, I think that I’d have to marry you. ㋼

1. The Super Spong Brothers would like to take this opportunity to remind you that Everything Is Subjective™.

I am angry again.

The second series of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is being released in the United States. This is a good thing. The licensees, Bandai Entertainment USA, are giving it the same care and attention that the first series received, including a proper, full-cast English translation. This is a great thing.

And the whole 14-episode series can be had for under £40.¹

This is a brilliant thing.

There are some people, however, who have chosen to throw a wobbly over this last point.

If you’ve seen the series, you’ll be familiar with the Endless Eight storyline. The characters are trapped in a time loop for eight episodes. Instead of running the same episode eight times, the producers handed the same source material to eight different teams, who each produced a similar yet slightly different episode. These were broadcast over a period of two months. Viewers complained that it was a waste of schedule. Now, people are complaining that it’s a waste of money.

I used to measure the value of anime videos in terms of “price-per-episode”: the price of the video divided by the number of standard 25-minute episodes included. Overall, this isn’t a fair measurement system — it doesn’t take into account bonus features, quality of translation or distribution medium — but for the purpose of this blog post, it’s as good an indicator as any.

So. £40 for 14 episodes. That’s about £2.85 per episode. “But Endless Eight was just the same episode over and over again,” you cry. No it wasn’t, I reply, but let’s go with it anyway. The Endless Eight are now one. £40 divided by seven episodes. £5.70 an episode. That’s not too bad, I reckon.

But it is here that we discover the problem. Apparently, £5.70 per episode is too bad.

All of a sudden, anime is just too expensive. People are up in arms about the recommended retail price of Haruhi series 2 — how DARE they charge this amount of money for this amount of content! — despite the price of anime in the UK and the USA now being cheaper than ever. It was just a few years ago, in fact, that I bought my first four-episode volume of My-HiME for £20. If people are complaining about spending more than a quid or two on a single episode, English-speaking anime fandom has surely lost its way; for years, £5 per episode was considered a fair asking price for a professionally-produced anime translation. (I’m sure that older fans will tell me how it was “even worse” in their day.)

But even that’s not enough.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I bought copies of the Magipoka boxsets. As it doesn’t have a proper English release, I had to import them from Japan.

4 episodes to a set, plus one DVD-exclusive bonus short episode each.

All together, I got about 13-or-14 episodes’ worth of content. All together, it cost me £242.70.

£242.70. That’s £18 per episode.

Let’s look at a more contemporary example. The first volume of the popular new anime series Angel Beats! just went on sale in Japan. It’s done incredibly well; even in its first day on sale, over fifteen thousand copies were sold.

The first volume contains 2 episodes and costs ¥5250. Assuming that you don’t want to splash out on limited-edition bundles or Blu-ray discs, you’re looking at £20 per episode. No translations. No bonus features beyond an equally untranslated commentary track. No frills.

Angel Beats! isn’t even that expensive. K-ON! is dearer. Haruhi Series 2 is dearer still. Don’t believe me? See for yourself.

You see, in Japan, when you buy an anime DVD for the domestic market, you’re not just paying for the right to watch a couple of episodes on your television. You’re funding the series. Next to sponsorship deals, domestic DVD sales are the main source of income for anime producers.

Some English anime consumers complain that the prices of anime DVDs should be brought in line with the average costs of locally-produced television series sets before they’d consider buying them. This point of view doesn’t take into account the fact that British and American television shows tend to be commissioned by a broadcasting corporation or suchlike, while anime producers have to pay the Japanese TV stations to get their shows on the air. It’s only through merchandise and DVD sales that the average anime series can break even, let alone make a profit.

Needless to say, with English-language anime DVD prices as cheap as they are, the anime producers themselves don’t see overseas earnings as being particularly significant. Don’t get me wrong — every officially-licenced English-langage DVD purchase results in royalties going back to the original producers — but your purchase also subsidises license costs, translation costs, marketing costs and so forth on the English-speaking side. Imagine how the revenue shares for each purchase are split. Imagine how little each party must receive.

Sadly, this undervaluing of anime is happening among the licensees themselves. Companies like FUNimation release slim boxsets for peanuts and dump anime series on their website for viewing at no charge to the consumer. While you may think that a copy of Kanon for £13.03 (54p per episode!) is a good thing, consumer demand for cheap-as-free anime will soon cause the major companies to stop making profits, declare bankruptcy and cause the Great Cheap Anime Bubble to implode spectacularly. That’s my theory, anyway.

Let’s step back and take this all into account. A 14-episode series can set you back up to £300 if you live in Japan. In North America, however, you get the same content for only £40; maybe even less. Even in the glory days of £5 an episode, you were paying 25% of the original asking price. Now the English price-per-episode is less than 15% — or, in the case of the 54p-per-episode Kanon, less than 4%² — of what a Japanese fan would pay. And that’s not even taking into account all of the lovely extra features, like, for example, a full English translation, that you don’t get in the Japanese release.

So, Haruhi fans, what’s it going to be? £320 for the regular edition of series two? £382 for the limited edition of series two? Or £40 for a special, English-language 14-episode collection with bonus features, lovingly put together by people who love the series just as much as you do?

If you’re still not convinced, I can’t force you. If you don’t think that it’s worth the asking price, don’t watch it. If you’ve got better things to spend your money on, spend your money on them instead. You don’t have to watch anime, you know. ㋼

Prices for Japanese DVDs were taken from CDJapan. XE and Wolfram|Alpha were used for currency conversion and calculation.

1. At time of writing, the complete series set can be pre-ordered from RightStuf for $58.74 (postage inclusive), which comes to about £39.24.
2. Eight Japanese DVD volumes at ¥6300 each ≈ £375. Incidentally, the Blu-ray disc edition is ¥62580, or £466.83.

“It wasn’t as wet as I was anticipating.”

This time a few days ago, I was in Venice. (The one in Italy.)

I was told about a month earlier that I’d be taking an Easter holiday in Venice. Unlike previous Easter holidays, this excited me. Last year’s trip to Pisa was well-received, but a severely late flight on the way back was an experience that I would not want to repeat. The holiday a year prior to that took place in Amsterdam. It’s probably a lovely place if the weather’s not torrentially snowy. And if you’re a pothead.

So when I heard that we would be visiting Venice, I thought that this time we’d got it right. I only knew Pisa for its leaning tower and Amsterdam because it was a lyric in that song about a little mouse with clogs on. Venice, on the other hand, is a place that I had been made all too aware of through my exposure to anime.

I was warned before I went that it would be packed with tourists, possibly Japanese. It’s possible that Japan has some fascination with the city, but it’s likely that it’s a worldwide thing. Whether or not the Japanese in particular have a fascination with the Venetian city of Venice (it could well be universal – Brother told me that authors who have been to Venice generally write about Venice), there are several notable Japanese things with Venice in them. And while I could dedicate a blog post to the heart-wrenching, life-changing experience that is Pokémon Heroes (set in the sunny city of “Altomare” – like Venice but with Pokémon and CGI excessives), I will instead focus on Aria.

It goes like this: In a post-apocalyptic world, mankind is forced to abandon mother Earth and colonise new planets through the magic science of terraforming. One such planet to’ve undergone this operation is Mars (probably because it was the closest one that they could find), now renamed Aqua (presumably because it’s got water on it now). It’s important to note that this backstory is only alluded to in the show itself; Aria is actually a slice-of-life story about a group of young, modestly-attractive female gondolier operators living in the city of New Venice¹, Aqua. They live their lives. They wander the city. Sometimes they discover things. Everyone’s happy all of the time.

It’s very relaxing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOUbZ6Aqn0g

Aria has the odd distinction of being both underexposed and overrated, but it’s by no means a bad show. Providing, of course, that you are not driven insane from the constant annoyances of the repetitive, repetitive, repetitive catchphrases (“No sappy lines allowed!” “Ehh?” “My, my! Ehehe!” AT LEAST TWICE PER EPISODE) and the awkward antics of series mascot ‘President Aria’, a disturbingly personic cat-thing that looks more like a dog-thing who spends most of his time being as “cute” as possible. It’s a jolly good thing that the rest of the show makes up for these potential blood-pressure-raising shortcomings with its gentle pacing, charming soundtrack and general lack of plot. If nothing else, Aria proves that filler is not always a bad thing.

But there is a problem. Aria is set in New Venice. Not Regular Venice. Neither is Pokémon Heroes. In fact, very few of these Venice-based fictions are actually set in Venice itself. They’re always some idyllic utopian place based on Venice, liberties taken as the story requires. In short, these stories take place in what Venice should be like.

And even though I knew all of this, I had set my expectations unreasonably high. I had managed to convince myself that Venice was a place where miracles actually happen. A soul-cleansing place of purity, untainted by the progress of humanity.

This, as you must be aware, was not the case. Rather than an escape from reality, Venice was just another facet of it. I didn’t mind so much about the thousands of tourists piled into the scaffolding-enrobed St. Mark’s Square everyday, but even the quieter residential areas recommended by the guidebook had people there. Brother said that he doesn’t like being away from humanity for too long; I’m the opposite. I suppose that complaining about the level of tourism during the first major holiday of the year is just being picky.

As it turns out, Aria is more a depiction of what Japanese life, rather than Venezian life, embodies. New Venice celebrates the same holidays as the Japanese; they have the same customs, the same expressions, the same language (although the latter’s justifiable). In the second series, they dedicated a whole episode to New Venice’s postal service (far more efficient than Italy’s postal service) that appeared to be based directly on the Japanese post office, even down to the logo. Must be great if you’re Japanese. Familiarity with Aria does not equal familiarity with Venice.

Aria aside, Venice wasn’t as wet as I was anticipating. The weather forecast predicted a wide range of rains throughout the holiday, but this didn’t happen, making the weather, at least, correlate with the more idyllic depictions of the city (if dangerously high sun levels are your idea of idyllic weather). But I pictured Venice as being almost entirely laced with canals. I imagined paths at sea level. I imagined the impossibility of getting around on foot. I imagined not being able to find a large patch of land without a significant body of water a couple of metres away. Once again, I had set my expectations too high. I found Venice to be a highly walkable city, clocking up over 30,000 steps on one day. (Step counts brought to you by the Pokéwalker device. I’m not a Pokémon fan, by the way.) After a poor night’s sleep upon arrival, I strove to thoroughly tire myself out during the day to ensure peaceful sleep on subsequent nights. I set myself the goal of walking to each “corner” of Venice, but my enthusiasm was significantly diminished after a distressing discovery in the north-west corner of the island: an industrial district complete with train station, sky shuttle and car park. Cars on Venice‽ This is madness!

I won’t say that I was disappointed. Like I said, I knew what to expect. It wasn’t the first time that I’d been to Italy. Even so, it wasn’t the same. One thing that impressed me in Pisa was the ubiquity of anime and comics. One channel (we had satellite television in the hotel) was showing GTO at 11 in the morning. If I was familiar with GTO, I’m sure that I’d've been impressed. In Venice, however, we only had analogue. (We didn’t watch much TV.) At the airport newsagents last year, I was impressed to see a wide variety of graphic novels on sale alongside the newspapers; at Venice Marco Polo’s newsagency, I was disappointed to see a much smaller selection hidden away in a corner. Okay, so maybe I was a little disappointed this year.

But I don’t regret going. Venice isn’t a magical place in either the literal or the figurative sense, but if you’ve the money (like all good tourist traps, prices are significantly higher in Venice than in Tesco) I’m not going to ruin your fun.

Just don’t expect a miracle.

Incidentally, I found out that Aria is Italian for Air. I walked past a sign that said “Air conditioning” in both languages. ㋼

1. The subtitles use the transliteration Neo-Venezia. The “Neo-” prefix appears to be the Japanese equivalent of the English “New” suffix, and Venezia means Venice, so New Venice is the way that it should be written. Probably. Ignore me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg_VDhsCBu4

Discuss. ㋼

Like most generalizations, this is complete rubbish.¹ Different people like or dislike different things for different reasons. There are several qualities that may make a series seem good or bad, each entirely subjective. At least, that’s an idea. By my reckoning, likes and dislikes (in my case, at least) occur more-or-less at random. But I digress.

About a year ago, the sequel to Kiddy Grade, which had previously existed only as a pilot episode and some sketches, was greenlit for a full-fledged series. Now, I believe that Uta∽Kata is the best non-Giant Robo anime ever made, so although I wasn’t the biggest fan of the original Kiddy Grade I was really looking forward to this new series from gímik, the production triforce behind all aforementioned (non-Giant Robo) titles. I even made a blog post anticipating it!

It didn’t live up to my hype. Of course it didn’t. Things tend to not. But I continued watching. I sat through episodes filled with in-jokes and references that remain impenetrable to anyone who doesn’t spend most of their life on Nico Nico Douga. Sure, there was plot, centimetring away under the everyday antics of the maids-who-are-actually-secret-agents, but it lacked the interconnectedness of Kiddy Grade, the subtle foreshadowing of Uta∽Kata.

One (half-)episode was nothing but a string of Lucky☆Star-esque voice actor-related gags. I’ve said that the presence of Norio Wakamoto is never a bad thing, and, well, it wasn’t. But I maintain that it was a thoroughly pointless episode; it introduced no new running characters, had no effect on the overall storyline and was never mentioned again.

But I persisted.

I’d watched the original Kiddy Grade. I’d watched Uta∽Kata. I knew that we were being lulled into a false sense of security, building to a massive plot turnabout.

And then it happened. Two major characters died, leaving our heroines without idols/mentors. Sad. Moving.

Meh, I thought.

It seemed that after eight or so episodes of nothing really happening, attempts to shake up the formula didn’t faze me. Maybe I thought that it should’ve been this way from the start. Maybe I was just in a bad mood that day. Either way, the series did become generally less painful to watch after this point, even though the overlying plot still didn’t make much of an effort. You could say that I had the mindset of a “Type A” anime fan at this point.

After an episode of mourning, episode 11 gave us a look into the lifestyles of the antagonists. (There are a bunch of characters in this show.) I thought it was a great episode; it may’ve been low on plot, but it was low on unfunny gags, too. Plus, we got to know the bad guys a lot better. They have feelings and stuff! Who’d've thought it?

Episode 12 added some much needed plot, featuring some well-appreciated continuity in the form of acknowledging the original series, revealing what happened to the principal members of the original cast and definitively linking both storylines. This is it, I thought. The halfway point in the series where everything changes. From now on, everything’ll be deadly serious.

The next episode was a beach episode.²

As beach episodes go, it was okay. It turns out that some computer broke down which trapped them there and they had to fix it or blow it up or something in order to save everybody. But the story isn’t why I find it notable. (No, neither was the mandatory dress code.)

As this episode played out, I found myself emotionally connecting with the main characters. I smiled along with them, cheered them on; they looked so cool in the denouement when they defeated the whatever-it-was terrorising the other characters that they were keeping their ES-Member-status a secret from until now.

And it was then that I realised that, for perhaps the first time ever, I wasn’t watching a show for the story. Sure, I enjoyed the plot and I continue to look forward to seeing where it goes, but that’s not why I care.

Over twelve hit-and-miss episodes, I had shared the adventures of these two girls. Together, we dealt with the strange situations that we were placed in, and, with time, it almost felt like we had become friends. It didn’t matter that they just happened to be a pair of young, good looking female-types; it was their personalities, not their bodies, that won me over. Going back over the older episodes looking for screenshots for this post, I found myself appreciating the show a lot more now that I knew.

I cared for these characters more than I cared for the series that brought us together.

And I still managed to write this whole post without mentioning their names. ㋼

1. “Every generalization is false, including this one.” – Mark Twain
2. Technically a holiday resort episode.

That title up there should probably say “Kanon Turned 10”. I started writing this post in May.

But it’s still 2009, and this year marks the 10th anniversary of the release of one of Japan’s most beloved visual novels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qiQcqCpLB8

Kanon takes place in Winter. There is a main character and some other characters as well. Some of the other characters are more important story-wise than others, and the main character has to talk to them for the story to happen. (That’s what one does in a visual novel, after all.) Hopefully, I’ve managed to describe it to you without spoiling anything. Please don’t stop reading here.

Kanon is notable for being the first work produced by Key, who would later go on do create Air and Clannad (which you may have heard of), as well as Tomoyo After, Planetarian and Little Busters!.¹ (Which you may not’ve heard of. Don’t read too far into any of those Wikipedia articles if you don’t like spoilers.)

Nayuki is my favourite character. This is a picture of her.

Evidently, some people (i.e. Toei Animation) thought that Kanon was worth adapting into an animated series. So they did. It wasn’t very good.² A few years later, after the exceedingly poorly paced Air TV series somehow became liked by folk, anime megahouse Kyoto Animation made another one. And it was good. So good that they eventually brought it over to North America, translated it into English American³ and released it on DVD, which, due to issues, quickly went out of print. Until it was re-released in a horrible boxset that tries to cram the whole series on four discs and typesets the subtitles in a highly annoying font.

At the time, one could've expected to pay this much for one of these. That's four episodes, y'hear? Well, I suppose that it's better to get 24 episodes for £30 than 4 of those episodes for £200. Even if the subtitles are harder to read.

To further appease the English-speaking fans, an unofficial fan translation of the original visual novel had been in the works for many years; before the story was animated, in fact. After much work by many hands, it was finally released earlier this year for anyone who owns a copy of Kanon Standard Edition, the slightly enhanced re-release.

Haeleth (who I believe started the project) mentioned on his website that HimeyaShop was a good place to get visual novels and the like. So I did. What I didn’t know is that since Haeleth’s now out-of-date page on Kanon was posted, all of the 18+ rated visual novels that they sell have been moved to a separate website, so I ended up with the “all ages” version.⁴

Now, Japanese programmers do things slightly differently to the way us Englishmen are used to. I’m no hacker (heck, I barely know any HTML), but one can tell from looking at the way that the game installs itself that the Japanese are used to a much different computing experience than us. (Do they not have the Program Files folder in Japan?) Perhaps the biggest cultural difference is that Mac users are generally left in the cold when it comes to visual novels, with most pretty much all of the major releases being Windows-only. This is a problem for me, as I have been a Mac user for nearly three years now.⁵ With barely any hard drive space remaining on the ol’ MacBook and Brother choosing to use his computer most of the time, there was only one way I’d be able to play Kanon.

I bought a MacBook Pro.

I wanted to take a photo that showed off the anti-glare display because I couldn't find any photos of the anti-glare display when I looked for them when I was thinking of getting a MacBook Pro with an anti-glare display.

I suppose that you could tell from my brief description up at the top that I haven’t yet finished Kanon in any of its forms. But just you wait. The moment Windows 7 is released (and my beautifully cheaper-than-half-price pre-order copy shows up), I’ll shove a Boot Camp installation onto that glorious solid-state drive and have Kanon running better than anyone could’ve imagined. (No, I did not write this post just to show off the new computer. I haven’t even turned it on yet.)

But soft. If you’re running Windows 2000 or XP or so (and have a working DVD drive), you too can experience the story of Kanon — regardless of your knowledge of Japanese.⁶ As mentioned before, Kanon Standard Edition For All Ages (to give it its full title) can be purchased at HimeyaShop.com. They post internationally! (But they don’t bother to fill out the Customs declaration, so be prepared for extra charges once it reaches your nation’s borders.) If you want the full version with the added nature sequences (which you might as well get, seeing as it’s the same price and the fan translation allows one to disable the sex sections if one wishes), you’ll have to go through ErogeShop.com (direct link provided so that you don’t have to look at the more trashy selections). The English update can be found up here (the link is buried at the end of the second sentence from the top of their section on Kanon). Use 7-Zip or something to extract everything in the “Patch files” folder to wherever you installed Kanon, and that should be it.

Finally, I will mention that at the time of starting this post, there was an ongoing online thing called the Key 10th Anniversary Letter Project, which attempted to collect fan submissions of thanks and congratulations to Key on reaching their decennial year. That date has now been and gone, and I’m not sure what the status of the project is, but it looks like they need help more than ever. If you can lend a hand with managing the project (or want to contribute a letter of your own), please give them a moment of your time. Who knows where it’ll end up?

When I first experienced Planetarian, I was moved to the point of giving a care — not something that comes easily for me. When I finished the Clannad anime series, I felt a similar way. Let’s hope that Kanon does the same.

Additionally, Japanator tells me that today is Moé Day. So this post isn’t so irrelevant after all! Hooray! ㋼

1. No relation.
2. Or so I have heard.
3. Nayuki sounds like a man. Still, they got the drowsiness down; in the Japanese version, she just sounds like a duck.
4. Many Japanese visual novels, particularly the kind where there’s one guy and more than one girl, contain sex scenes. (Hence the nickname “erotic game”, or “erogé”.) Having sex isn’t necessarily the goal of the story; these scenes range from being tightly integrated into the storyline to just thrown in there to tick the box. (“Game’s not selling well? Add the obligatory sex scene and watch the copies fly off the shelves!” –The Thought Process of the Common Erogé Producer) Kanon falls into the latter category, and versions with the naughty bits removed completely were released without any major changes to the storyline. Incidentally, neither of the animated adaptations feature such scenes.
5. My excuse: They don’t make Logic for Windows anymore.
6. Not that it’s a brilliant translation; the names are written backwards, with the first name last and vice-versa (for what I can only assume are unavoidable technical issues), honourifics are bizarrely ignored & transcribed without any explanation and certain words and phrases are left untranslated and highlighted in purple. If you click on them, it tells you what they mean and why they decided that it was a good idea to not translate them. They might’ve fixed all of this in the latest patch, though.