12 Moments of Anime: HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Day 12 of THE 12 MOMENTS OF ANIME, SPONSORED BY CCY.

I’m probably the only person to link my hobbies to religion.

Unfortunately, if I told you because of it, I have gained a new appreciation for animé, you’d call me crazy. But it’s true.

And if I told you I’m Christian, you’ll probably sneer at me and think me a loony, even though what I just said is all true and I’m not a bloody fundie.

It’s strange, really, because I’m the only guy who can claim to be a Christian and still consider myself to be an animé fanatic, even though most conservative Christians (at least, as much as I know) tend to stay away from the medium due to preconceived notions. Which are not incorrect, especially if one looks into the history of art and eroticism in Japan. To say Japan is sick in the head is an understatement.

And yet, I’m at a rather unique crossroad, where it was due to my hobbies bringing me to faith, as opposed to the more conventional methods of coming to faith, so…

Maybe a quick rundown as to HOW I GOT THERE would suffice.

• 2006-ish: Got my hands on a copy of Planetarian, with English patch.
• 6 December 2006: Played it again, still didn’t know why.
• 25 December 2006: Did I mention I returned to church on this day?
• 31 December 2006: Woo.
• Also not mentioned: Being exposed to religion as a young kid. Both the pagan and not-so-pagan sides.

I think it was CS Lewis who said this.

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

I take the same approach. Not many will take the this approach, but then again, when your luminaries are famous trolls, an apathethic faggot, and uncontrollable firebrands with sticks in their butts, not to mention the Danny Choo wannabes, Sankaku Complex and, well, a so-called community driven more by flaming and trolling than enjoying animé, one has to wonder why we’re such a miserable.

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. Or maybe not. It was rather interesting racking my brains embarking on this project, even through a raoring fever. It helps when one of your posts is simply a picspam.

12 Moments of Anime: Anime Festival Asia 2009

Day 11 of THE 12 MOMENTS OF ANIME, SPONSORED BY CCY.

Actually, I lie. It’s not AFA itself I’m going to talk about. The convention was nice enough, and there are things to keep me interested, but seriously, without that Anisong karaoke machine, most of the stalls don’t hold a lot of interest to me.

Instead I’ll be talking about the concerts. Those concerts were the reason I blew almost 200 dollars in the first place.

Now, I’ve never been to a concert before, and probably won’t attend most concerts, since mainstream music is not my thing.

And then Fukuyama Yoshiki decides to drop by to do a concert. There goes 200 bucks.

…Wait, no one said he’d be rocking out starting with KING GAINER OVER. OH MY GOODNESS WORK GUY. SON OF A BITCH MAKKA NA CHIKAI. HOLY SHIT HE’S DOING A MACROSS 7 MEDLY WITH MAY’N.

That was the best concert ever.

Incidentally, it recharged my batteries. I think I’m good to go for at least another 12 months of enjoying animé and the like.

:3

12 Moments in Anime: The Macross Experience

Day 10 of THE 12 MOMENTS OF ANIME, SPONSORED BY CCY.

I’m not too sure how I got started with Macross. I kinda remember seeing either SDF or 7 at a very young age, but that’s about it. I do remember playing a Macross 8-bit game that had Shao Pai Lon looping, but at the time, I didn’t know.

Fastforward to 2008, when the show started to air. I caught the first 4 episodes, and that was it. Until I heard about how it would rock my pants silly. And then I. JIZZED. IN. MY. PANTS.

And then I accidently everything Macross (Okay, not Macross II, but for a good reason).

I can’t believe I missed out a whole epochal franchise until recently. EPOCHAL MAN. EPOCHAL.

Unlike most people, I watched Macross in reverse. After Frontier, it was Macross 7, then Plus, then SDF Macross. I think. I dunno though.

I’m still not too sure why I like 7 over the entire series. Plus had a much better narrative and SDF was just mindblowingly good. Frontier was basically my gateway Macross (for good reason) and I’m still partial to Macross 7. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

I dunno, but man, Macross is one cool show.

Also, Alto X VF-25 is my OTP.

12 Moments of Anime: Blogging in General

Day 9 of THE 12 MOMENTS OF ANIME, SPONSORED BY CCY.

If you haven’t noticed, blogging about animé nowadays has been reduced to what one could concievably call “LOL I TROLL U”.

If it isn’t Owen S bing a dick (which he has NOT over the last few months, THANK GOODNESS.), it’s either some stupid drama from Sean of Colony Drop, or the OEG trying to piss off everyone by claiming to be the all-authority on being otaku, or gg trying to troll.

Ladies and gentlemen, animé-blogging has been reduced to TROLLING about animé, and not about animé itself.

Okay, I admit, things don’t look so bad since Kaioshin cleaned up his act and there’s still ghostlightning and a few other people who should be up and blogging, but I get the feeling that all that matters nowadays is how many people you manage to anger.

I mean, we should be talking more about animé itself, and NOT try to egg on the others to wreck one another in online spitting matches.

Yeesh. Can’t a guy positively contribute these days?

12 Moments of Anime: Iriya No Sora, UFO NO Natsu

Day 8 of THE 12 MOMENTS OF ANIME, SPONSORED BY CCY.

Wait, can’t make the whole [INSERT YEAR HERE] is 2009 joke because you need the last number of the year to end with 9.

This was what I was doing instead of rotting my brain either by pretending to be a Chinese pedo hobo, mindless fanservice, missing episodes of Astro Fighter Sunred (which more people should totally watch), or watching HARDCORE PORN. (Aki Sora is totally hardcore incest porn and you know it. Dongs notwithstanding.)

OKAY I TAKE BACK THE DEPRESSING BIT. THIS IS NOT DEPRESSING AT ALL.

It’s sweet. It’s light. It’s so cute you swear having a pile of cute baby animals in front of you don’t look as cute.

It has ups. It has downs. It probably didn’t resolve very well. But I didn’t care. It still held it’s charm 2-3 years after I originally watched it.

I’m glad I did it. Sure I may have missed out on all the Chinese Pedo Hobo jokes, but I’m glad I did it.

12 Moments of Anime: Colony Drop

Day 7 of THE 12 MOMENTS OF ANIME, SPONSORED BY CCY.

I am seriously conflicted with Colony Drop.

On one hand, they write so well, one could actually forgive them for actually trolling us (in as much as they do admit to trolling for the sake of hits).

They also believe in (what I hope is) leading by example. They call the entire ‘sphere utter trash, and proceed to show us how things are done. And quite simply put, THEY ARE. Which puts to shame a ton of people who write for the sake of trying to piss everyone off for MILES.

On the other hand, one of their members has a raging hardon for what I term being extremely combative and insulting. Picking fights when it doesn’t exist and whatnot. Especially when outside the CD blog. People rarely know this, but they are, in a way, ambassadors for what they believe in, at the very least. And this is especially so on the Internet.

And to be honest, they aren’t reaching out as much as I had hoped. I wish they commented more, but that’s another story.

Still, great writing is a good start to a lot of things, even if one of them is trying to use it to subtly attack people.

Compare with the OEG, who are simply picking fights over arbitrary definitions of a word and using that as an excuse to attack people for not living up to their standard.

If there’s only one thing to say about this, trolling is less of being critical, snarky and cynical; it’s about who is the biggest asshole on the Internet. Third-rate trolls wave their penis, while classier ones take the effort to create a fansubbing front to piss off people for YEARS before announcing their retirement, just to irk mainstream fans off while looking honourable in the meantime 1.

CD could be classified as one of the classier ones. Very classy ones at that.

1. For those of you utterly clueless about what I just said, I’m talking about Dattebayo Fansubs. For those of you who have yet to catch on, it’s staffed entirely by GNAA members. Or maybe not.

12 Moments of Anime: OVERMAN KING GAINER

Day 6 of THE 12 MOMENTS OF ANIME, SPONSORED BY CCY.

Totally not related to the fact Fukuyama Yoshiki sang this as the oper for his concert in Singapore. Totally not related at all. (Admit it, it is totally appropriate for him to open any of his concerts with THIS.)

Totally not related at all.

Oh man, the wonderful memories. THE TOTALLY WONDERFUL MEMORIES.

In all my time watching animé (even the TV stuff aired in, oh, 2000-ish?) I don’t think many shows can top the zanyness, sheer amount of recockulum, and quite simply, the amount of  fun and glee I get (and not in a “guilty pleasure/braindead” kind of glee) when watching. A feat not to be matched until recently, when I was introduced to Macross 7, relived my childhood watching Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko (Shinbo X JC Staff X sizeable budget = WOAH) and more recently, the exploits of the Nadesico.

I am surprised that no one actually watched the show past the first few episodes, or had some grave criticisms. The critics are to be expected, to be honest, but the show has DANCING in the OP. Expecting a fairly serious story with THAT has got to be one of the biggest leaps of logic I know. Not to be insulting to people I know, but this show is a must-watch. Even if it does start off slow.

After all, anything with an OP sung by Fukuyama Yoshiki can’t be all that bad, right? (Macross 7, THIS, Busou Renkin, I am totally right about these 3)

AFA brought back all those wonderful memories. What a trip. Better than LSD and opium combined. Guantareed.

12 Moments in Anime: Visual Novel Translations

Day 5 of THE 12 MOMENTS OF ANIME, SPONSORED BY CCY.

YAYS:

• Started out with a bunch of people who loved these “interactive picture books (kinda)” enough to translate and/or localize them in English
• …And then people started being dicks and decided to pirate planetarian, which caused one of the pioneering groups to throw a massive hissyfit.
• Which led to al|together, which… … … didn’t turn out so well.
• Flashforward to today: we have many groups translating visual novels. And we have JASTUSA partnering with Nitro+, and Mangagamer licensing Shuffle! and Higurashi. Mangagamer also approves of fantranslations. YAY!

BOOS:

• Gipface is a dick. And is still alive. And the biggest loser in the visual novel translation scene. HURR.
• BREAK THE SUPPORT DISC, which was extremely famous and known outside this little community.

12 Moments in Anime: CHEEBEE MEEKU SAN

Day 4 of THE 12 MOMENTS OF ANIME, SPONSORED BY CCY.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

12 Moments in Anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion

Day 3 of THE 12 MOMENTS OF ANIME, SPONSORED BY CCY.

Unfortunately, unlike most people, I consider Eva to be a horrible, horrible show.

While I am all for sticking diseased dongs into Freud and psychoanalysis (while disregarding how shallow the  so-called symbology was), the thing is, I have never been so horrified in my life. The show was an exercise in seeing how much I hated myself. This is even worse than reading about failed LSD experiments being shrugged off and people bing blasted with Barney music 40,000 times (Yes, those really happened. There was a Newsweek article on it. And this book is now a major motion picture.).

Halfway through the show I had to stop watching it.

Personally, I like enjoying what I watch. Even if it’s nothing but titties, asses, panty flashes and the like. The Japanese, for some reason, like to trivialize things like incest, making it seem like nothing. And then you have Eva, where the concept was so depressing, so horrible, that even the staff themselves were NOT enjoying the production run, above and beyond what is normal for an average production.

However, the only good thing about Eva was that it spawned Ebichu, which, for some reason, is a joy to watch, in the sick, perverted manner one reads about the wacky things the USAF has done and approved of.

I really, really tried to like Eva, but 13 episodes in, I asked myself if I actually hated myself. I promptly switched to Gurren Lagann and that was the end of that.