In My View: On PiQ, ADV and sentimentalism

So I meant to write this when it was a bit more topical, but I got distracted by Final Fantasy V.

And to be honest, there's something really fun about 16-bit graphics and turned-based combat. Something that reminds me of a time before computer RPGs got complicated by having to make sure you hit the X-button when the circle crosses the other circle so that you can get the full effect of your hit. No. If you hit, you hit. And if you don't hit, then we all know what happens. The Skelesaur is going to beat the crap out of you because you didn't level enough before you went up Dragon Mountain.

But in all truth, I'm a sentimental type of guy. I like little knickknacks of my past or at least the happier times of my past.

Which is why I hope that ADV makes it.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't have any illusions that the capitalist system should be a pastel picture filled with fields of flowers while dewy eyed moe girls stare wistfully off into the horizon. There's no room in the capitalist system for nostalgia or sympathy. The capitalist world instead is made out of steel and concrete, where those doe-eyed moe girls weep softly in the alley after being gang raped by a bunch of men in business suits.

And make no mistake; ADV has taken a lot of hits in the last few months. The least of which being losing Gurren Lagann, the Anime Network's Linear Service closing down, having their production held hostage for almost a month and cutbacks in Europe. And now PiQ is shutting its doors. I mean if ADV isn't heading for that slow slide into that good night, then I'll be surprised. They are as one person put it, a company that rode the wave when it was high and now can't find their footing once the wave has collapsed. Or at least that's what it seems like to my untrained outsider point of view.

But still, I hope that they find a way to make it. Because like Central Park Media, Geneon and for most part Media Blasters, they're an icon from a better time. Now as someone who has at least been on the periphery of this hobby for the last 10 years. I've seen it go through all of the stages: from the initial "Wow they're releasing it on VHS?" days in the mid-1990s to the "Cool it's actually on Cartoon Network" in the latter part of that decade, to "Neat, it's in Sam Goody" in the early part of the decade to now when it's almost become commonplace. (And dare I say mainstream. Although that's another post for another time.)

And more than anything else, it's that initial excitement that I feel nostalgic about. That feeling that anime was something different and new and kind of edgy or kind of silly. That it was something that could pull a few dozen people into a darkened room on campus so we could watch a few hours of it on a big screen because someone had bought a disk.

Granted, it was this same initial excitement that ADV capitalized on. And it's silly for me to feel nostalgic about that, they are just a distributor. They don't make anything. They just repackage it with subtitles and a fairly decent dub and put it out on the market. They've made their mistakes. They've gotten smacked by the market for it. That's really the end of the story.

But I can't help thinking that when they go a little of the magic of those times is going to go with them. I can't help but remembering watching the last two disks of RahXephon on no sleep. Or popping in the disks from Gasaraki. Or any of the other memories, I have related to their releases.

And I can't help but hope that they manage to make it. Even if sentimentalism doesn't have any place in a capitalist world.

Shampoo Planet: The siren song of Ergo Proxy

So I'm seriously starting to question my taste.

Ever since I ventured into the Otakusphere last October, I've seen almost nothing but derision for Ergo Proxy. I've seen it called heavy-handed, tedious and downright coma-inducing. In fact, the only good thing I ever read about it came from Anime Sophist, who called it the best series he'd seen in 2007. But I'd started buying it, so I kept buying it, because I hadn't had any problems with what I had watched.

So I finished watching it and well… I liked it. I'll be honest, I didn't find it overly preachy, I didn't find it heavy handed, yeah a few parts were slow, but nowhere near as slow as the last half of Texnolyze (which seemed to grind to a halt after episode 13.) I liked the characters. And believe it or not, I didn't have any problems with the world.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't love the show, but I enjoyed watching it.

Honestly, it'd be easy to prattle on about questionable religious connections. I mean the show throws around terms like Creator as if it meant you to see it. It also has enough allusions to classical literature and pop culture to choke a horse. We can run the gamut from Daedulus and Icarus straight to the "Mickey Mouse" episode. But I don't really think that's what appealed to me.

What struck me were two of the episode titles: life after God and Shampoo Planet.

Now the first one could have been a coincidence, I mean there's a lot of religious references in the show and a lot of philosophical references. It could have just as well been a reference to Nietzche. Strange enough, it's the title of a fairly lesser known book by Douglas Coupeland. But when I hit the second title (another reference to a Coupeland book) I figured I was on to something.

Honestly, what tickled my brain (and exposed me for the pretentious phony that I may be) was the fact that Ergo Proxy may not be about religion or philosophy at all. Or rather those things might just be trappings for the real allusion of the story which seems to me to be a sociological one, in particular the story of one generation clashing with another generation.

This is the land Our Fathers left us

Now what makes those references interesting is the fact that they both deal with Generation X. Now there's some discussion about where Gen X really falls in the timeline (at least here in America) but generally it's assumed that it starts at 1965 and ends around 1980 (some people put it at 1976, some people put it at 1981). And if I had to sum it up, I'd borrow a quote from Fight Club:

"God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off"

This is really at the heart of Douglas Coupeland's books (and Fight Club as well). What makes this strange and strangely intriguing is how much this reflect's Re-l's speech at the beginning of the series and Vincent's initial urge to be a "model citizen". They're both characters who start off without any real meaning in their lives, without anything that defines them as people. (Which is probably one of the reasons why they're considered boring, and in all fairness I did think Vincent was a little bland towards the beginning.) They're a generation of people who are doing even less than waiting to die, they're waiting to live.

Now arguably both of them are pretty much the classic Adam archetype (with the one exception being that the story actually doesn't start until the end of the first episode.) But that said, they're both forced to confront the world that's been left to them. Of course you could look at their Gulliver-esque travels as a series of thought exercises in philosophy. But there seems to be a consistent theme to all of the places that they visit. And that's the fact that almost all of the proxies (and the people) are looking for a way to fit in, trying to find a place to belong in the world that had been left to them. Someone could definitely argue that the people outside the domes did have factors that defined their lives, but that said, I find them more lost than found.

The siren song of Ergo Proxy

Inevitably, whenever anyone bring up "generations" someone will say it's rubbish or that it's a marketing ploy or that it's an overgeneralization. And to a point, I agree. We are individuals. We do experience life differently depending on our culture, surroundings, upbringing and personal beliefs. But having grown up during the height of Gen X and having friends and teachers from that generation, I'm inclined to say that there's something to all of the talk. I mean I went through the recession in the 90s, I went through the rise of the Internet and the destruction of the Challenger. I definitely felt that same ennui that was prevalent during those times. And ironically, I've seen it replaced with a generation that is much more socially and policitically active and cares more.

But what appealed to me about Ergo Proxy was that intentionally or unintentionally it recaptured that feeling of being undefined and unaccepted and it structured a pretty good story around it. Maybe that makes me a pretentious phony, but there it is anyway.

In My View: The myth of supporting the industry

(Please note: I'm arguing from a Libertarian ethical standpoint. Your mileage may vary.)

So there's been something that's been bothering me for the last couple of months, but I haven't really been able to put a finger on it. It wasn't until I watched the special features on the Haruhi DVDs that it struck me.

Tucked in amid all of the rest of the credits on the ASOS Brigade special feature was a fairly innocuous line:

A special thanks to

All of the fansub lovers who buy the official DVDs and help support more creative works.

No special thanks to

Downloaders/bootleggers who never buy the official DVDs

Now in all fairness this little piece of propaganda has gotten fairly common in these circles in the past couple of years, and has spread like a cold in an elevator ever since the Geneon collapse. Now even past the self-congratulatory smugness of this statement, there's something else that's been bugging me: the idea that buying is ethically good. So let me set my opinion straight on this, the act of exchanging money for entertainment can be either a good or bad thing depending on the quality of the entertainment. But the simple act of "buying" is not necessarily an ethical thing.

That is unless you watched the fansubs. And then buying isn't really an ethical act, but a form of penance, a way to pay back people who you took the entertainment from in the first place.

See what bugs me about this entire argument is that the focus is on the wrong thing. People seem to be confusing the cause with the effect. Anime is a product. DVDs are products. The anime industry, the studios, the directors, the distributors, they aren't products. You aren't and shouldn't be spending your money to "support the industry," you should be spending your money to buy a product. Now, I don't blame the anime industry, I mean they got to sell DVDs, so they're going to use whatever methods they can to convince people to buy. And I don't really blame the fans; I mean everyone wants to believe that they're the hero of their own story.

But, Jiminey Christmas, this idea that I need to buy to support the industry seems like it should come complete with children living in poverty stricken countries, while Sally Struthers tells us how, "You too can help the anime industry for low cost of $ .99 a day" And that's my problem with it. If the product is worth buying, then I'll buy it. If it wasn't worth buying, then I won't buy it. It's that simple. I don't need some sort of guilt trip to make me purchase a DVD. And I definitely don't need some sort of pat on the back to tell me what my ethics should be.

But if the industry is compelled to say something, and evidently they are, a simple thank you would suffice. Because being thanked for correcting an action that was wrong in the first place feels a bit slimy to me.