Anime And The Tech Lifestyle

SenshiNeko writes: "This week's "Work" column on the Bay Area arts&culture Web site Metroactive explores the apparent overlap between anime fandom and the technology/computer industry/community... and why increasingly, in an American pop culture that doesn't represent them, 'geeks look to anime for their entertainment and self-images' and the portrayal of something that resembles the way they live their lives." Recently I've been watching Key the Metal Idol, Tenchi Universe, and Ranma 1/2. Very different series, but each entertaining while I wait for the next Cowboy Bebop. I've also recently begun collecting Anime cels. I feel like American television has let me down (with a few rare exceptions like South Park and That 70s Show) and while I'm not looking for media to "represent the way I live my life", I am looking for it to be interesting, original and entertaining. Sadly very little of what I see on cable is any of these.

Quality is Where You Find it

Be careful about lumping our "community" into one way of thinking. It just ain't so; I know lots of geeks (actually, I think of myself more as a nerd) who don't like anime... be that as it may, we do watch anime, usually on tape. Thank (insert your god here) there's an anime store just a mile away from our new domicile...

We lived for ten years without regular network/cable TV, even though we have young kids in the house. My wife and I did, however, have a VCR, and my wife has always been big on anime.

Me? I just like cute girls in short skirts with purple or green hair... ;)

We watch the Naussica(sp?)-like films, which have solid plots and reasonable values. Get the original Japanese, not the ruined American translations.

Violence is fine so long as it provides something other than an excuse for splattering blood. I've no interest in the crude vulgarity so popular with many in the hacker community. I'd rather watch a Pokemon movie than South Park, thank you. And I'm no fan of Pokemon...

As for cable TV: We have it now, because I wanted a cable modem. I can watch my NASCAR races, tape the occassional flick like King Kong or Key Largo. The kids watch way too much Scooby Doo when we don't monitor them... you know, I never knew there were that many episodes of Shaggy and the gang? ;)

As for quality network TV: Farscape and Lexx come to mind. Well, Lexx really isn't quality so much as it is fascinating. I still haven't figured out why I watch it.

Representation, labelling, and what a geek is

I'm rather depressed over the thought that the so-called geek community is losing touch with its roots. It wasn't long ago that we took pride in how we were different. No geek I know will ever forget what the price of that difference was - it changed who they were. Whether it was getting in trouble with authority in high school, the law, the community, or their family, most every person I consider a geek had a trial they had to endure. It's the distinctive mark that sets them apart from other people. And they were better for it.

But beyond that, I see little in common from geek to geek beyond creativity, a playful spirit, and a drive to create.

Yes, maybe anime appeals to a certain type of geek, but it isn't representative of the whole. Nothing can be representative of the whole, not even alittle. We seem to have forgotten the lesson of what it was like to be labelled and compartmentalized. Comeon people, don't forget your roots - we are all unique, even from each other. Make it a point of mentioning this, and reflect it in how you say things.

Animation is Pretty Remarkable (Tangental)

It is. When you look at the best shows on TV, they're almost consistently cartoons. South Park, is consistently witty, and manages to address major issues without being preachy, or seeming like it's trying to push an agenda. Take a look at Futurama, arguably, the best written Fox show now that the Simpsons is lagging a bit. Finally, shows like the Family Guy and the Simpsons are still better than 99% of the crap on TV nowadays. (Who actually watches Everyone Loves Raymond, it's god awful)
There are minor exceptions, in the form of shows like the West Wing, but the intelligent drama always ends up getting cancelled in favour of the 30 minute sitcoms which permeate.
Before you moderate me as offtopic, I think all these shows owe a bit of a debt to anime. I should mention that I'm not a big fan of anime, but the anime community as a whole has maintained forever that cartoons are not just for children. And even if I don't like most of their output (mostly because they go for the epic most of the time) I can see the value of this opinion. As a former animation student, I can definitely see the value of such incredible artistic talent, though to be fair, I think South Park is brilliant just because it doesn't try to have any.

So I'm rambling. I guess I should summarize what I'm saying for those of you who just read the first two lines and moderate -1. Anime, and American cartoons in general have one basic thing in common. They allow the writer to focus on the story, rather than the bloated egos of most television actors, and that is why those of us who have, or like to think we have, a clue tend to enjoy them more.

"...But that's NOT why people watch TV! Clever things make people
feel stupid and unexpected things make them feel scared!
...You see? TV audiences don't want anything original. They
want to see the same thing they've seen 1,000 times before". - Philip J. Fry (Futurama)

Re:I used to hate anime...

Depends on your tastes, really. I mean, anime isn't so much a genre as a style, so its difficult to predict what everyone will enjoy. With that in mind, here's a list of what I consider the creme de la creme of what anime has to offer:

1. Neon Genesis Evangelion: Part Hitchcock, part Twin Peaks, part Kubrick, all wrapped up in a rather deceptive tale of giant bio-robots and the end of the world. Lots of Judeo-Christian imagery, and the character interplay is fascinating. The major problem with the series might be that it tries for a little too much, and, as a result, gets a little cramped, particularly towards the end. But brilliant anyway. Also recommended is the movie Wings of Honneamise, by the same director (Anno Hideaki), which, while different in tone, is equally beautiful.
2. Serial Experiments Lain: The ultimate nerd anime; a thinly veiled allegory about modern life and the Internet. Great opening theme, too. Its difficult to sum into words without giving too much away, but its well worth a watch.
3. Revolutionary Girl Utena: Although only the first quarter of the series has been released in America, and the series doesn't start getting really good until about halfway through, this one takes the bill for style alone. By the creator of Sailor Moon, although that says very little about what is essentially a psychological drama with some very disturbing undertones (and some excellent music ::grin::)
4. Saber Marionette J: What starts off as a seemingly straightfoward sci-fi adventure, about a world populated by refugees from a crashed space flight, maintained solely through cloning, since there are no women, evolves into both a touching and exciting drama which seems to owe a lot to 2001: A Space Oddesey.
5. Cowboy Bebop: Part of a recent trend of "outer space westerns," Cowboy Bebop is one of the best. The story of two bounty hunters, Spike Spiegel and Jet Black, and a opportunistic woman named Faye Valentine. Half humor and half action, its a great watch.
6. Trigun: Another excellent entry into the aforementioned western genre, this one is the story of the legendary "Humanoid Typhoon," Vash the Stampede. But when two insurance surveyors set out after the fiend, they find that reality seldom lives up to legend, and that Vash may not be so much a villain as a klutz....
7. The Slayers: A humorous fantasy adventures starring ace sorceress Lina Inverse in her attempts to find fame, fortune, and a bite to eat. Fast, furious, and hilarious.
8. Perfect Blue: Described by legendary B-movie veteran Roger Corman as what would happen if Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney had teamed up, this movie descibes the descent into madness of a Japanese pop vocalist in sometimes grusome detail.

Just a sampling of what I like: there are other good series and movies out there and the best thing to do is to look into them, as everyone's tastes can, and do, vary.

Re:I think...

... there must be some appeal in the rather large-breasted anime women.

Those are eyes, not breasts.

"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up

Generalization, maybe

I'm a techie/geek/whatever and have been one all my life. At 37 I'm not an "old" geek but I'm definitely not a young one, either. I mention this because...

It's funny that this article sould come up. I was just thinking about sending a message to CT, et. al. asking why Anime is even being mentioned on /. since it has no connection with techies in the slightest. Now I find that it does. Guess I was out sick when the memo came through.

While I do like quite a bit of Anime I do not feel it has any connection with techdom as it relates to me. I still find more in F&SF (Gibson, Stephenson, Brust, Azimov, Card, etc.) that reaches my soul. I never would have connected Anime with techness until this post.

Anyway, that's just one insignificent mans point of view.

---

Are you crazy??

I feel like American television has let me down

Well, then, you aren't watching enough television. :P Let me go through some of the best American animation there is, and you tell me why it totally has let you down...

The Simpsons - The best American comedy on television. Also the longest running - coming up on its 12th season on the air, The Simpsons is the longest running sitcom on television, animated or not. And who can't like the really well thought out irony with real world implications?

Batman: The Animated Series - From the mind of Paul Dini. This is the only animation I know that has both a very dark, gothic feel to it (and even adult themes) and has made it onto network television. The story lines were perfectly done, and the animation was excellent - not too detailed, but not plain and dull like many Looney Tunes.

Spawn - Another very gothic and dark series, although it only aired on HBO due to nudity and much more adult themes than bad guy vs. good guy.

X-Men - X-Men was just a great Saturday morning cartoon. The story lines were great, and who doesn't like the X-Men anyway? :P If you haven't seen the X-Men at all, Fox is going to start re-airing the episodes from episode 1 starting August 21st at 4 PM weekdays.

Futurama - Another Groening masterpiece. Many people don't like it because it's "not The Simpsons." But that's exactly what Groening wanted to do - something "not Simpsons," but still packs a punch.

Family Guy - This is another one that seems to get dumped on a lot. But people don't seem to realize that it's just as not-PC as South Park, and it's managed to stay on network television as well. Stewie (the baby) is the absolute greatest - he's bent on killing his parents to escape his daily drudgery and he does it all with a British accent :P

Seriously Taco, there's good stuff that comes out of America. You just have to look a little.

Bishoju Senshi Sailor Moon

The original Japanese series was awesome. Watch the original three part ending sequence to the first season, the finale in Day Of Destiny, a two part episode. The drama in even half of one part of that two parter outstripped all the drama in the entire DIC dub. The original series was just so much better. Strong themes of loyalty, ends vs. the means, redemption, "be careful what you wish for", relationships(on both a silly and serious level). I would recommend picking up or borrowing Pioneers subtitled release of the uncut Sailor Moon R movie. That shows the best of the series. Mamoru/Endymion(Darien/Prince Darien) was amazing, it shed more light on his troubled past(not to mention one of the best entrances in all of anime). His all consuming devotion to Usagi is shown and even at the worst he tries to save his friends soul despite the friend having tried to kill Usagi on multiple occasions. The original unbutchered series is awesome, great to watch on the same level as the DIC dub or on higher levels.

Hentai lovers would prefer teh original as well. Lesbian scouts, Granppa Hino being a lecherous old man, gay villians, scenes and entire episodes dropped from the dub due to skirt lifting, slutty outfits, actual full nudity... Violence for the most part wasn't edited out, with the notable exception of when Ami slaps Usagi across the face cause shes being a crybaby. Yes I mean Sailor Mercury.

All in all the DIC version isn't horrid, its entertaining, but as with virtually all anime, the original is far better.

Re:I used to hate anime...

See, this is why I have a hard time getting in to anime. I've seen a lot of it, and there are quite a few titles that I love, but the ones that seem to get most highly recommended are, well, crap.

Of your list:

Cowboy Bebop
Interplanetary bounty hunters - an ex-cop; a former mafia hit man (??); an amoral, beautiful, thieving, cheating, woman with a huge debt; and a somewhat feral uberhacker. Kicks the most ass of anything that's come out recently.

Haven't seen this one yet.

Macross Plus
Two old friends, now enemies, flight-testing new transformable planes for the military. And another friend working with the first computer capable of singing. Great stuff.

This gets consistently high ratings, but from the one episode I saw, it's just another fucking soap opera. And worse, it's a soap opera with interminable 80s-top-40-style music, not just as background noise, but central to the story!

Escaflowne
(This is actually coming out _soon_, though it's already on VHS) A high school girl accidently gets teleported to a hidden sister planet of Earth, called Gaia. Where she gets in the middle of a huge conflict between various countries, all of whom use mecha (they haven't generally developed electronics; they're 99% gears and flywheels) Eerily similar to Star Wars after a little while, and they always knock you flat on your ass every fifth episode.

Haven't seen this one, but I must say, when the description says ``high school girl'' and ``mecha'' I think, wait, haven't I seen this about 50 times already?

Castle of Cagliostro
There's a series of French novels about Aresene Lupin, a master thief. This movie is about his grandson, Lupin III, who's not terribly serious but knows what he's doing. This is the best of the Lupin movies, and the director, Miyazaki is one of the best in Japan. People always seem to like his movies.

The main character's an uninteresting asshole, and the animation is only slightly better than Speed Racer. Yawn.

Patlabor 1
In order to avoid rising sea levels and to get more land, Tokyo Bay is being dammed and reclaimed. To speed it up, construction mecha - Labors - are developed. But soon, people start using them for criminal activities (sharing mp3s perhaps ;) so the Police also get mecha - Patrol Labors. This is one of two movies after the long-running TV/OAV series. It's got a lot more mystery than action, but it's really very good. The 2nd movie, not yet released is excellent.

I saw one episode of this series, and it was yet another soap opera about the ``new guy'' and how embarrassed he was to be working at the factory, or something like that. About half way through, there was an evil industrialist, and some robots punched each other. The animation seriously failed to impress (lots of cheap tricks like ten seconds of a still frame that looked like it was moving because of the zipping lines on the background.)

Grave of the Fireflies
A really sad movie involving two siblings, set in the closing days of WWII, in Japan. Excellent movie, but really depressing. Very much worth seeing.

Haven't seen it.

Record of Lodoss War
This was someone's Dungeons and Dragons campaign, I'm sure. Novice warrior, grizzled dwarf, a thief, a wizard, a cleric and a cute elf girl save the world from the forces of Evil. (one of whom looks like Evil Spock ;) It's pretty good, and I understand that there's a sequel coming out in the states now.

AAAUUGGHH! MAKE IT STOP! I think I already used the word ``interminable'' in this post, but I have to use it again here, even though that word doesn't even come close to describing how insanely boring this was! To put it in D&D terms, I think they got about five rounds into the game by episode four! If this was based on an actual game, I can't imagine how the actual game could have taken as long to go somewhere as the cartoon did! And again, shit animation with lots of cheating on the action sequences.

Serial Experiments Lain
Creepy series about a girl who gets email from dead people. But this seriously explores computers and what happens when we create an infosphere, and what can be done with it. Takes a couple watchings at the end to figure out what they're doing precisely. And 'Arisa's name is actually Alice, those morons.

One of the best things I've ever seen, any genre. I absolutely loved this one. The animation was great, the sound design was incredibly cool and well integrated, and though it was a little slow paced, the mysteries were played out well, and I actually cared about finding out what was going on. Lain is absolutely brilliant.

And in that respect, pretty completely unlike just about all other highly-ranked anime.

Tenchi Muyo!
I no longer even keep track of how many versions of this series are out there. I liked the original OAVs, which aren't on DVD. You might like the TV series better. Cartoon Network is showing something, who knows what. Go wild.

Some adolescent boy fantasy about getting chased around by alternately dominating and submissive girls. YAWN. This one actually made my skin crawl.

Other ones that I like:

• Ghost in the Shell is definitely one of my favorite movies ever;
• Akira is beautiful to watch and listen to, though the plot is kind of dumb (it's a lot like 2001 in more ways than one);
• Bubblegum Crisis is pretty good;
• I got a kick out of Dominion: Tank Police, though it was pretty typical in a lot of ways;
• Ranma 1/2 was hilariious in the early days (the original TV series) but I find the movies and the OAV series to be fairly awful. Any episode with Shampoo or Grandpa in it sucks, and that seems to be all of them lately.
• I remember liking Appleseed and Battle Angel, though it's been long enough since I saw them that I can't remember which was which.

So how do I find anime that's more like Ghost in the Shell, and less like this saccharine soap opera 12-year-old-boy domination fantasy panty sniffing crap?

I want good science fiction movies, not ``Days of Our Lives'' set in Neo-Tokyo. The fact that it's animated does not magically make it watchable.

Re:Geek 'culture'

hrm.. okay..

[Otaku Mode On]

This has always bugged me. Anime is not a genre, it is a medium, and like in any medium, there is good anime and bad anime. Much anime is poorly scripted pure fanservice trite (ie dragonball, battle athletes, love hina, etc) but on the other end of the spectrum are the compelling stories, and intellectual and emotional challenges (ie. evangelion, lain, grave of the fireflies)

Just as there are quality hollywood films and crap hollywood films, so to is with anime. I know several otaku fanboys that will buy any anime that comes off the shelf.. Ive become more picky in my age and have tried to thin out some of the crap.

The previous poster called all anime "pure fantasy," which I find considerably odd due to the numbers of anime based on true stories. You go watch grave of the fireflies without tearing up, yes its based on a true story, and you can come back to me about anime being pure fantasy. (and besides, pure fantasy isnt a -bad- thing.) Correct me if im wrong, but hasnt fantasy been part of being a geek for decades? I miss those 7+ hour long dungeons and dragons binges we used to go on.

[Otaku Mode Off]

oh well, while im posting check out atanime.com [atanime.com], an anime mag I write for.

oh yeah, I wonder why slashdot didnt post about george lucas being in negotiation w/ anime companies in japan? cant seem to find the link now. bah.