Err on the side of no

Moe moe! Oishii Canade?

nchilada — Tue, 11 May 2010 13:07:21 +0000

Kawaii! A pancake - in the shape of a panda!

My wife and I made our first visit to a maid cafe last week. With my brother as a guide (himself no stranger to such places) we trawled the streets of Akihabara collecting leaflets from maids advertising their various cafes. We first stopped by @home - the most popular maid cafe – but the queue was horrendous so we thought we would see what other places had to offer. The choice was ridiculous (in both senses); there were traditional maids, maids with bunny ears, naughty goth maids and big-busted maids to name but a few.

As we were new to this sort of thing, we thought we would opt for the classic, traditional maid cafe and accosted a slightly bewildered girl in a cute pink maid’s outfit for directions. She led us away from all the bright lights of Electric city to the second floor of an unassuming building. This was home to Maidreaming 2 (so good they have 3 of them in Akihabara alone!).

First impressions?

Well it was small and very very pink, with fluffy cushions strewn all over the place. The cafe was no more than 10 metres in length, l-shaped with two breakfast bars that ran from the kitchen area to a little stage in the corner of the room. On the stage was a microphone and more fluffy cushions, and we were ushered to a tiny table next to the stage.

The menu was a collection of saccharin sweet drinks and ice creams, all with cute faces drawn on them by the maids. I opted for an iced coffee and a panda pancake (pictured), my brother went for an ice cream and my wife tried to hide her shame behind a coke.

No such luck! The maid came over with our drinks and, holding her hands in the shape of a love heart, told us that we all had to repeat after her a magic spell to make the food more delicious.

Moe moe! Oishi canade, oishi canade!

It really did work, as my iced coffee was disgusting before she did her magic over it.

Who does it cater for?

Well, everyone I saw seemed to be slightly embarrassed; there was a group of normal looking teens (two boys, and two girls) who we had followed in on the understanding if they were going there it had to be an alright place to go, a fair few lads slung low in their seats, and a solitary otaku sat behind my wife who could barely speak to the waitresses but threw his napkin on the table in an affectedly disaffected manner. A bit like he saw someone do in an anime I should imagine. He looked a bit like he might kill everyone any second.

A couple of lads had bought the extra special ice cream sundae which afforded them 30 minutes of ‘dreamtime’ according to the menu. It was difficult for us to judge what dreamtime was, except that a maid announced that they should come to stand on the stage with the other maids, wear some bunny ears and have their photo taken with the girls. Seeing as how maid cafes operate a strict “no photographs of the girls” policy, I guess this was pretty special. But not exactly dreamy.

I didn’t leave with an understanding of maid cafes exactly, but I think I know why people go there. It’s a little bit like being in a really sickly anime, where you can be the cool guy that gets all the attention. Like a lot of things in Akihabara, it’s aimed at the guy sat behind my wife – the borderline psychopath. Having said that, I enjoyed myself, but I doubt I would be able to convince my wife to visit again!

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Lucky Japan Super Strike!

nchilada — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 21:06:18 +0000

Tokyo won't know what's hit it!

So part of the reason for my prolonged absence is that I’ve been spending a lot of my freetime planning a trip to Japan. I’m very excited about the prospect. It’s my third visit, but my wife’s first, so I’m looking forward to showing her a lot of the things that I think makes the Japan great, as well as trying to fit in a fair bit of hiking in the Japanese countryside.

My brother has been living in Japan for about 4 years now, so the trip is also an opportunity to catch up with him. Unfortunately I can’t really rely on him to show us around Tokyo as he’s only recently moved there from Nagoya.

The plan is to spend about a week in the Tokyo area – taking in such sites as Nikko, Hakone and myriad Maid cafes – then south to Kyoto on the bullet train, further south to Hiroshima, back up to Kobe then super-south to Ishigaki-Jima, one of the southern most islands. We’re doing it all under our own steam and I have managed to organise all the flights and accommodation. We have two nights in a Ryokan in Kyoto, which I’m looking forward to immensely.

I will try and post some pictures and thoughts about the trip on this website, but if anyone has any particular suggestions as to places we should visit then please let me know.

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Osamu Tezuka: The God of Manga

nchilada — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:44:40 +0000

The God of Manga

OK, so first of all, sorry it’s been a long time. It’s been a busy Christmas and we’re just about covered in snow at the moment. Nevertheless I should try and be better at writing these entries; so no excuses.

Talking of Christmas, I received two Black Jack books from my lovely wife this year. I’m a huge fan of Tezuka’s work, particularly his more serious adult manga (such as MW or Ode to Kirihito).

Of his long running serials, Black Jack is probably my favourite – Astroboy is a little too childish for my tastes (although it’s reinterpretion in Pluto by Naoki Urasawa is fantastic) and I simply don’t understand what is going on in Dororo. I like the squeam-inducing surgery, and the aloof arrogance of Black Jack (predating Gregory House by half a century). There’s also something quite lyrical about the plots; sometimes ending with a moral, but often ending with a character’s change of heart.

Oddness and absurdity as humanity

Having said that, I do find Black Jack’s relationship with his daughter / wife very strange (even if you discount the fact that she’s actually a reconstructed tumour!). Pinoko’s baby-speak and childish made up phrases sit, for me, somewhat uncomfortably with her infatuation with Black Jack.

But although I find their relationship to be slightly awkward and occasionally discomforting, their relationship feels believable. Tezuka does seem to like mixing the absurd with the serious, and frequently even in his most serious books (like Adolf) comedy characters will appear or he will use a sight gag to provide levity in an otherwise dark moment.

Tezuka is often described as a humanist, and I think that it is the slightly unusual relationships, and odd mix of humour with horror that ironically, make his characters feel more human. It is human nature to spot the absurd even in the blackest of situations. Tezuka, I think, recognises that real life doesn’t compartmentalise neatly into sad moments and silly moments – and that real people don’t always consistently act nice, or nasty. I have always admired the way that Tezuka avoids good guy / bad guy characteristation, and it is often the “evil” characters who make the final noble or redemptive action.

Surgery and superficiality in Black Jack

Tezuka seems to suggest that he believes that a soul is forged by adversity, and many of the stories in Black Jack follow the pattern of a superficial character presenting themselves to Black Jack and being refused. Then, either through accident or through Black Jack’s design, they undergo trials before they learn that surfaces do not matter, and family and self-worth are more important. When they learn this, Black Jack allows them to be saved. The surgery then serves as a metaphor for looking within; literally removing the surface of people and seeing what’s inside.

But although the lesson is a valuable one, Tezuka does not paint Black Jack as a hero. Instead, as mentioned above, the trials that his patients undergo are often inflicted by Black Jack, rather than external forces. Black Jack comes across as cruel and arrogant as often as he does kind. His insistence that people need to suffer in order to earn their reward is dogmatic, and sometimes vaguely psychotic.

A young girl with a beautiful voice is treated by Black Jack when she discovers she has a nodule on her vocal cords. He tells her that she must not speak for a few weeks but her friends visit and make her laugh. Black Jack is furious and tells her that she will never be able to speak again, but that he can fit a false voicebox if she can remain silent for a year. She does so and becomes an outcast herself. After the end of the year Black Jack tells her that she actually doesn’t need a voicebox, and that it was all a trick to teach her to take it seriously.

In this sense the surgery also serves as a leveller - Black Jack and Pinoko are already society’s outcasts; essentially because of how they look (Black Jack is covered in surgical scars and Pinoko is an 18 year old woman in the body of a young child). The girl in the story above is forced to live without her gift, and has a taste of Black Jack’s life. Any doctor, like Black Jack or Tezuka (who trained as a doctor before he started a career in manga), will tell you that even the most beautiful person looks the same as you on the inside.

Open your senses. Go to synesthesia.

nchilada — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:10:53 +0000

: Light, colour, sound and input

I am a little tired today, as I was up pretty late singing at the OK Karaoke bar in Leeds (seriously, my version of Tenacious D’s “Tribute”, two words – Amaze – Zing.) But this got me thinking about music in videogames.

I’ll save discussion about Guitar Hero and Rock Band for another time, because I think these games are worthy of separate discussion, and because I think the purpose of these games is slightly different to that which I want to talk about here. Guitar Hero and Rock Band allow you to experience the feeling of playing music, but the game I want to write about today, Rez, aims for something else.

The role of music in videogames

Music serves many functions in videogames, including:

1) To heighten mood; that is, to increase the emotional depth of moments in gaming, for example creepy music for a haunted house, or jolly jingles for the happy mushroom worlds that the Super Mario Brothers inhabit. A good example of the former was the time my friend Joe and I played the first Alone in the Dark, with the lights out, and the speakers turned up. We were stuck in the first room of the game for ages, since every five minutes the game would chime with dischordant strings and my hand would leap away from the mouse as if I thought it was going to bite.

Deadly Spiders - Alone in the Dark OST

2) To establish tone; the example springing to mind is the way that the Grand Theft Auto games use their soundtrack to help you identify the time period they are set in, as well as establish cultural points of reference – songs recalling moments in gangster films for example.

3) To form and stimulate memory; signposting certain actions or behaviours with particular noises or tunes to make them stick in the mind. Examples of this would be the tune that is played in the Zelda games as a treasure chest is opened. Zelda games do follow a pretty set pattern, but rather than breeding contempt, the familiar tunes and noises mean you a develop of sense of your actions being steeped in history and tradition. The tresure chest tune stimulates memories of treasures found before, in other times and with other Links.

Zelda Treasure Chest (Reorchestrated)

Why Rez is more than this

As the examples above hopefully establish, music is a powerful catalyst in games for emotion and memory. In Rez, this is taken to near trascendent levels. Rather than use music as a means to highlight a particular moment, every action in Rez is perfectly married with music.

Rez is an on-rail shooter, and every shot is a beat, every hit is a pulse. The neon landscapes of its visuals throbs in time with the music. The graphics conjure up the wireframe shooters of the early arcade (particularly, for me, the Star Wars arcade game) and the atmosphere of a rave.

The game was marketed with the tagline ”go to synesthesia” referencing the condition of “seeing sounds“. For me though, what is interesting about Rez is the fact that it could not exist in another artform. Whereas cinema can synthesize sound and light, Rez does this and adds personal input, creating a total feedback loop with the game and the player. The effect is not that you feel like the director of a film, but more like a cyborg super-DJ, your set-list big enough to create ripples in the walls of the world. In quieter moments in the game I find myself just rapidly shooting at nothing just to hear the effect, so that every play through becomes another remix.

Rez’s influence

Other more recent games have also played with synesthesia; the community game Groov, and more notably the WiiWare game Bit.Trip Beat. Both games tie the music to player interaction, and Bit.Trip Beat also uses an 8-bit aestheatic reminiscent of Rez.But Rez remains the most successful at sustaining the illusion that your actions are actually making music as opposed to simply activating samples.

It is a shame then that so few people seem to have heard of it or played it despite Rez receiving almost universal critical acclaim. I know that when I have tried to introduce it to other people, they’ve described the graphics as “basic”, or found the gameplay too simple. It’s a shame because I think Rez might point to a future where videogames are more accepted as an artform, able to explore the emotive power of interaction, rather than simply trying to ape cinema.

There are other things that we want to create

nchilada — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:48:50 +0000

: Bladerunner + casual misogyny = Policenauts?

Hideo Kojima is, of course, most famous for the Metal Gear series, but he has made one or two other videogames of note. This would include Snatcher in 1988 for the PC-8801 and MSX2, the Boktai series for the GBA and DS, Zone of Enders in 2001 for the PS2, and Policenauts.

Policenauts was originally released in 1994 for the PC-9821, but was later ported to the 3DO and Playstation. It was never released in the UK or the US, and an official English translation was started, but aborted with Kojima claiming that the programmers were struggling to sync the English dub to the lip movements of the animations. Nevertheless, a fan translation was recently finished by some extremely clever people at www.policenauts.net (the patch is available here, and a documentary about the translation can be seen here). I had read about this project a couple of years ago, but only became aware that it was complete when I read a retrospective in GamesTM.

Why aren’t I doing anything?

Policenauts is set in broadly the same universe as the Metal Gear games, and is often seen as a kind of sequel to Snatcher. Like that title, Policenauts is more a work of interactive fiction than a videogame. You wander around, ask everyone about everything, click on everything until there is nothing more to click on, and wait for the next cut scene to kick in. Then, when the cut scene kicks in, you wait for it to end so you can get back to clicking on everything again.

But then, anyone who’s played a Metal Gear Solid game knows there tends not to be much interaction in Hideo Kojima titles. And in this respect, Policenauts probably represents the quintessential Kojima game. Kojima has always struck me as a game designer who would much rather be making movies, and Policenauts is practically that. The FMV sequences in particular are fantastic – with proper cell-drawn anime in the Playstation version.

The plot of Policenauts

The plot, inevitably, is a convoluted one. It revolves around Johnathon Ingram; part of a team of policemen trained as astronauts – the eponymous Policenauts – who were tasked with keeping the peace in the first space colony. There is an accident and Johnathon is lost in cryogenic sleep for 25 years. When he is eventually found and woken the world is very different. His Policenauts team have gone their separate ways, and his wife is married to another man.

Overall, the story is excellent; concerned with political corruption, narcotics, corporate machinations and film-noir betrayal. It has overtones of Bladerunner mixed up with Lethal Weapon(with the two main characters designed to look very similar to Mel Gibson and Danny Glover).

The problem with Policenauts

The game has two significant flaws. Firstly, in the occasions when you are tasked with actually doing something – light-gun sequences where you need to shoot the bad guys and avoid the civilians. Here the sedate investigative pace is suddenly thrown aside and the difficulty dramatically increased. What is frustrating is that by this stage you are involved in the story, and to be thwarted by your own uselessness hardly seems fair.

The main problem is with the female characters, and it’s here that you begin to think you understand why it was never translated for a Western audience. It is terribly misogynistic and whilst I don’t believe female characters are ever particularly substantial in Japanese anime or videogames, the women in Policenauts are awful; falling into one of three types:

Femme fatales, in the Basic Instinct mould (in case you thought we were talking Raymond Chandler here)
Cute little sister types (the word is moe)
Vacuous sex objects

What is particularly disconcerting is the way the game provides options for you to touch these girls up. Click on the chesticular area and the ‘touch’ option appears – click again and they wobble (with accompanying sound effects). What takes this into the absurd that the women barely bat an eyelid at your molestations. The furthest they ever go is to say ‘this sort of thing could be viewed as sexual harrasment’, surely a contender for the understatement of 2013.

The result is that you feel that Johnathon Ingram is the sort of pervert that really ought to be on some kind of register, rather than out solving major crimes. The only exception is Metal Gear regular Meryl Silverburgh – who at the very least can take care of herself. But even she will let you feel her up if you can beat her at target practice.

What’s wrong with being sexy?

Whilst in the West I think we can be a bit po-faced about this sort of thing generally, it’s hard to see what Kojima was aiming at. The truth is that Policenauts’ treatment of women is not particularly funny, is completely out of keeping with the tone of the story, and is slightly embarassing in a creepy old man in trenchcoat kind of way.

It’s a pity as Policenauts has a lot to recommend it. Just not to the ladies perhaps.

Like a stroll in the woods

nchilada — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:55:11 +0000

: Goblins be thine?

I had intended to write this entry yesterday for Halloween after having rewatched Ring, but settled down with a box of shortbread bat biscuits to watch Sam Raimi’s Drag me to hell instead. Whilst that was an enjoyable film, I know that it won’t leave the same lasting impression on me that Ring did.

In some ways, I feel that I won’t ever need to watch Ring again, so completely has it wrapped its nasty yellow nailless fingers around my brain (which means buying the DVD was a waste of money). And the fact that it managed to do so with so little gore, so few cheap shocks, and on a 12 BBFC rating still astounds me. Though any parent that would take a 12 year old to see Ring is completely sick in the head. Sit them down to watch Evil Dead 2 – they’ll realise that ultraviolence is funny.

Ring‘s plot

The plot for Ring revolves around a TV journalist investigating an urban myth of a cursed videotape; if you watch it you’ll die within seven days. She interviews a young girl who claims to have seen the videotape, and the girl dies shortly afterwards. She tracks down the tape to a rented cabin the young stayed in and, in typical stupid horror movie protaganist style, watches the tape.

I’m sure that if you haven’t seen the film you’ll be thinking, “this just sounds rubbish”. And I’ve had a hard time convincing people to see this film. When I first saw it, I had to literally drag my girlfriend crying into the cinema.

But I remember being sat surrounded by a kind of static electricity, so strong was the sense of other peoples’ fear. My girlfriend, who you will have realised is no great fan of Japanese cinema, clung to my arm for the whole film. I had never been to see a film before where there were so many loud “oh god”‘s from different people in the audience, and the only film that has delivered the same feeling since was its sequel.

Ring‘s influence and J-Horror

Ring kick-started film-goers interest in horror films again, after the ironic post-modern teen films like Scream had threatened to kill them off. It sparked an sudden interest in Japanese film-making, particularly in J-horror, with films like Audition, Ju-on: The Grudge and Ring‘s director’s Dark Water also having success in the West. It also spawned a number of inferior American remakes, which I haven’t bothered watching because my brother told me that they have a scene where a horse commits suicide.

Translation issues

Ring isn’t without its flaws. Aside from the somewhat hocky plot, there are some particularly odd choices for the English subtitled translation. The real stand-out poor decision is the creepy nursery-rhyme mantra recited over the cursed videotape, “Shoumon bakkari shiteru to, boukon ga kuru zo” which means “Play in the water too much, and the monster will get you”. This is translated in the subtitles as “Frolic in brine, goblins be thine”. You can see what they tried to do, but “goblins” just don’t conjure up much menace. [Incidentally, I'm not super-clever at translating Japanese, I just looked it up on the Internet.]

Ring‘s use of the horror of concealment

So what is it about Ring that makes it so special? It’s certainly well-directed by Hideo Nakata, and the score makes creepy use of strings to great effect. But I think that the menace of Ring comes from the way that it updates Japanese folklore. Ring is fundamentally a fairy-story – with cursed objects and ghosts – and it is the way that this is projected into a real world contemporary setting that I think is so disturbing. All fairy-tales are brutal and ugly, but are distanced from us with a simple use of “once upon a time” or “a long time ago”. Ring breaks this spell, treating everyday objects like videotapes and televisions in the same way as magic swords or flying carpets.

The film explores the dark places in the real world, where we secretly all believe evil magic things could still survive. Cabins in forests, the crawl-space under your house and dank wells. Brilliantly though, it also explores those times when those nasty things could creep into our houses; when the lights are off and there’s just the flicker of static on the television. And as the final killer blow, it gives us Sadako, a monstrous little girl with dank wet hair and worn down fingernails. A poisonous reminder of the times when we think that the devil-things could be hiding inside us, or our loved ones; when we can’t read their expression, when their hair covers their face, when they are hidden behind a blanket or a towel. Ring turns everything around us into treachery.

This was ably demonstrated to me when I got back to my girlfriend’s house after watching Ring 2 with her and one of her girlfriends (she loved Ring by the way which just proves that I’m always right). Her friend had gone upstairs to get ready for bed. The TV was on, but I was flicking through the channels and it was resting on static. The lights in the hallway were off, so the only light came from the TV. Her friend came out of her room wearing a white nightdress, with long black hair covering her face.

I tell you what, I screamed like girl.

My sword is unbelievably dull

nchilada — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:35:44 +0000

If you had a convenience store then I would live with you.

Garzey’s Wing is a Japanese anime, which was a flop on its original release in 1996 but has subsequently gone on to achieve a measure of cult notoriety. The series was written and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino (the creator of Gundam) and revolves around a half Japanese teenager named Chris who is taken to another world and told he is a holy warrior.

The point about Garzey’s Wing is that it is, in my opinion, the absolute worst anime series ever made.

What’s not wrong with Garzey’s Wing

The animation in Garzey’s Wing is fine, as is the music. The plot, though sometimes a bit rushed, is no worse than a lot of other similar anime OVAs. I have never managed to watch it all the way through to the end, so I couldn’t tell you about the awesomeness of the final showdown. What raises this series above all others is the sublime majesty of its dialogue. Simply put, it is terrible.

Garzey’s Wing‘s horrendous dialogue

To be kind to Yoshiyuki Tomino, it is likely that something is lost in the English translation. But even that can’t explain sections like this:

Chris lands in an alien world, naked, for no reason. He has been taken there by a invisible giant duck (this is never explained). There are dinosaurs. He is disappointed with the quality of his sword. In a conversation with another version of himself he breaks down the situation.

I was bruised all over my body
because I had to fight naked.
There is a war going on
Even, dinosaurs are here…
And they use bows and arrows
My sword is unbelievably dull.
I’m not joking! 12th, 13th century
foreigners surround me
I must somehow makes sense
of our convoluted situation!

Exposition is frequently handled with this kind of deft and subtle touch, making skillful use of nonsense and non-sequitors:

It is the evil despot’s palace. We know he is evil because he has a beard and drinks wine badly. A camp looking knight rides up to the palace, even though he is told specifically by the guard that he is not allowed to bring horses in. He is obviously a maverick. He jumps off his horse and kneels before the king. His horse dies unexpectedly and without explanation.

King Fungun: Oh! You came back Zagizoa!

Zagizoa (for it is he): Please forgive my rudeness I’ve been troubled by this incident.

Which incident is he talking about? We will never know.

King Fungun: How come you have returned from your war with the savage western tribe?

Zagizoa: It’s a leap year.

What does he mean???

What happens when you employ actors who couldn’t care less?

But the real magic comes from the fact that this woeful misuse of the English language is then read verbatim by its dub voice-over actors. Whoever directed the voice cast was able to ring great subtlety from their performances; their bold decision to use no emotion other than apathy to deliver lines that they clearly don’t understand, pays off immeasurably.

Never have characters appeared to be in so much trouble or pain and yet sounded so much like they were bored.

This is best showcased in the first 5 minutes of the show, which is a whirlwind of flat delivery and unexplained plot elements. We learn in the first few minutes that Chris has failed his exams twice (he is clearly a maverick), is obsessed with attending the class reunion pool party (this will become a recurring theme) and that his girlfriend is aggressive, and emphasises the wrong words in sentences. Pay particular close attention to the discreet use of subtitles to help English viewers understand what a shrine looks like.

I think Garzey’s Wing offers great comfort to all writers, film-makers, story-tellers, actors and artists. You couldn’t possibly be as bad as this is.

You are so easy going!

Use the escape route we originally planned

nchilada — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:58:48 +0000

Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: Then stop

Beginnings are difficult things to get right. The first words committed to paper, or typed into a keyboard, can feel like pushing against a great weight (already on this introduction I have deleted more sentences than I have saved).

I think beginnings are so difficult because they set up a promise; and the weight you feel as a writer is your future readers’ expectation. I find myself thinking that if I start in a particular way, it will tell you something significant about how I intend to continue. If my introduction is terrible, it is a kind of promise that the rest will be terrible too.

In the past this pressure to begin has been enough to prevent me writing, or I spend so long starting something that I am sick of the whole idea and give up once the introduction is written.

And so I turn to a film which has become source of protection against this fear; to Garzey’s Wing, a film which sets up such a promise of sublime awfulness in its first 3 minutes that my worries melt away into nothing.

Ultimately there are no beginnings or endings anyway. I don’t know what this means, but I thought it sounded profound.