03.07.10
Posted in Experiments, Fandom Tags: bloggers, Otaku Cook Up at 3:16 pm by reversethieves
Okay, if you haven’t heard, Tim Maughan added this challenge to his Otaku Man Up! campaign. The idea should be fairly straightforward, it is a step in the process of “manning up” to be able to prepare food for yourself and others. And it is also quite satisfying. Being that I love to cook, I couldn’t sit this one out!
Ingredients:
- 8 oz. ziti pasta
- 26 oz. jar of pasta sauce
- 32 oz. ricotta cheese
- 2 cups mozzarella cheese
- 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
- 1 egg
- salt & pepper
Preheat over to 350 degrees.
Boil pasta for 8 minutes then drain (it will finish cooking in the oven).
In large bowl combine ricotta, parmesan, 1 cup mozzarella, 1 egg (beaten), salt & pepper. Mix well until it is all the same consistency.
Coat the bottom of a 10X13 pan with some of the pasta sauce.
Then alternate pasta, sauce, cheese mixture for 2 or 3 layers.
Top with remaining cup of mozzarella cheese.
Cover pan with foil and bake for 35 minutes. Uncover and bake til top is bubbly and slightly brown (10-15 minutes).
Take out of the oven and let stand for 15 minutes before serving.
*Add punching people and/or food to make this recipe have anything to do with Zeta Gundam.
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03.02.10
Posted in Fandom, Final Denouement, Video Games Tags: character analysis, Fate/Stay Night, rant, Sakura Matou, Type-Moon, タイプムーン, フェイト/ステイナイト, 間桐 桜 at 10:00 am by reversethieves
It is no secret that I love Fate/Stay Night but there is one thing that gets my goat (to say it politely without swearing like a sailor who broke his arm.) I cannot stand people in the Type-Moon fan base who call Sakura Matou a slut. I know that it has mostly grown into a joke just like the controversy with Kannagi. This means most of the people saying it now are just doing it because they think it is funny not because they honestly care. But this whole attitude comes from a seed of true belief. There are people who brand her with the label of slut and that gets on my nerves.
I will admit that of the three main heroines of Fate/Stay Night, Sakura firmly ranks third on my list. But I find her a hard character to hate. If anything Sakura might remind me a little too much of myself for me to be anything but slightly uncomfortable about her. Our positive and negative qualities are scarily similar. But she has many traits that people who love visual novels tend to look for. She is shy, sweet, hard working, and loyal. In the normal ending of Heaven’s Feel she dies patiently waiting for Shiro to come home even though she knows that day will never come. Fans usually eat that up like chocolate, bacon, and Ambrosia flavored love. Sakura is strong with the moe side of the force which earns her points as well. And the fact that she is very buxom cannot be overlooked as well.
And yet people hate Sakura despite the fact that all signs points to her being a fan favorite. They call her a whore because her moe purity is broken when you learn she has been raped. She has been sexually assaulted for years by her brother Shinji. It is made painfully clear that Shinji has an abusive and dominating hold on her and all sexual activity between them is nonconsensual. The mere concept of blaming a rape victim for the crime committed against her angers me to no end. To punish her on top of that compounds my fury one hundred fold. While Sakura might come onto Shiro very aggressively in Heaven’s Feel I still find the accusation of her being a slut uncalled for. Since she is no longer a virgin she is no longer worth affection? Because she can be aggressive she is no longer worth affection?
People are free to dislike Sakura for any number of valid reasons. But if you hate her for being a “slut” then I feel free to dislike you. It might seem odd to get worked up about a fictional character but it is not so much the hate for the character that annoys me as much as the attitude towards women and sexuality that gets under my skin. I feel it is a sign of deeper sickness and misogyny in parts of the male anime fanbase that makes me ill. As long as it exists I will continue to complain when it rears its ugly head.
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03.01.10
Posted in Anime, Experiments, Fandom Tags: analysis, fan community, fans on fans, Otaku Diaries at 10:00 am by reversethieves
#0091
Anime has been a part of my life for this long; I can’t imagine not being entranced by anime.
Speculating on the future can be very tricky and the more complex the system you are trying to predict the harder it becomes to be accurate as anyone who understands chaos theory and the butterfly effect will attest. But as anime fans we continually try to speculate on the future of our hobby. What shows will come out next season, what trends will become prominent, what fads will fade away, what will get licensed outside of Japan, who will be voice actors on what shows, and a multitude of other topics are constantly a part of otaku conversations. We may be wrong and we may be right in varying amounts but we are always trying to see if we can guess where this crazy train called anime and manga is going.
In an surprising turn of events everyone said they’d more than likely still be watching anime in 10 years. . . . well, I should hope so! This is the OTAKU Dairies afterall. But beyond the initial response, I found something interesting and possibly (unintentionally) pessimistic. A number of fans responded in the conditional form of “yes, . . . if there are still good shows.” or something similar to that effect. At first it seems like an obvious response, but at the same time it makes me think “what makes you unsure there will be good shows?” However, it must be said that many more people said plainly “yes,” “absolutely,” and “why wouldn’t I?” And then there were a few in the affirmative but with a theory that they would be a more casual fan in the distant future. So while the short answer was a resounding aye, the things ticking below the surface were still diverse.
#0094
Even if I get married, have kids, move, get a new job, or the such there will always be room in my life for anime.
I suppose that anyone willing to fill out a survey this long is in it to win it. Therefore everyone seeing themselves watching anime in the future should be unsurprising. I see this hesitancy to say anything without caveat being partially to do with the chicken little syndrome that tends to be a part of anime culture. There is always someone going around saying that anime as we know it is dying forever. Compounded with a weak economy and some turmoil in anime production companies in the present, it can be easy to make people wonder in 10 years down the line will they still be making shows that will interest them. F0r most people taking the survey there will always be something from them to watch but I understand where this fear comes from.
#0019
The people who are kids now don’t really seem to be growing up into fans like me over time. They seem to just grow out of it entirely, replaced by new kids just like they were.
#0034
Once the current recession passes and they figure out how to [make] money out of online distribution, I think the industry will stabilize at a level where there’s still plenty of good stuff being produced.
#0080
I think fandom will continue for all of eternity . . . there will always be a new generation to pick [up] where the last one left off. It may be possible that the “older” anime fans will dwindle but there will be people like me to pick up for them.
#0060
The advent of a generation that is internet savvy will only lead to more access to anime with less appreciation for it.
#0045
It will be a little less the “in thing to do” that it seems to be now, and fall back into the hands of the fans who loved and supported it from day one.
Asking what the future of anime fandom is is a very broad question to put to people because it partially depends on where you think anime fandom currently is; whether it is health or not or what that even means; and how you yourself fit into the whole scheme of things. I actually learned a lot from the answers in this section. One sentiment that really got me thinking was this theory that the gap between older fans and newer fans would continue go widen, age-wise. There was a prevalent idea that young fans are coming into anime fandom and then instead of becoming older fans they are becoming non-fans; they stick with it for a while but drop out soon after college. So while I didn’t myself think of this, I really found myself following the logic behind it and was able to apply it to what I’ve seen and experienced.
#0079
As long as acceptable strategies are found for legal distribution for new series shortly after their broadcast in Japan, fandom might contract for some time but never lose its appeal. Maybe.
#0029
. . . then in fifty years our fandom will die of old age like sci-fi fandom is about to do.
#0049
I think there’s going to be a point where things all balance out. The moe fans will have stuff to watch, and the not-moe fans will have plenty to chew on, too.
#0011
Some of the short term fans who liked it because it was trendy are starting to drop off from what I’ve seen, and the popularity is starting to diminish slightly.
#0021
. . . a majority of these young fans will eventually grow to become financially independent and upwardly mobile adults who will have children of their own creating a generation of people that are more receptive to anime and more likely to disseminate anime throughout the culture.
An important question is how long do most people stay in any hobby when push comes to shove. All hobbies will have fans who come in and leave due to a wide variety of factors. Is the ebb and flow of anime fans any different than fans of stamp collection, basketball, or even American comics? I can’t say what if any the difference is but I would be curious to see the numbers. As long as there is a steady stream of new fans there will always be some people who stick around to mature and expand their tastes. Opinions on the future of anime fandom ranged in optimism. There were predictions of everything from growth to utter collapse. Most of the participants felt that the bubble of anime and manga had burst and that there was still some normalization in the market to take place. Everyone seem to agree that anime adapting to online distribution was the key. How effective that would be and how quickly and effectively it could be profitable was a major point of contention. Most participants agree that the casual viewers would ebb and flow but there would always be a dedicated fans base that always carry the torch.
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02.24.10
Posted in Conventions, Fandom Tags: con survival, guides at 10:00 am by reversethieves
With the convention season coming up, and us hard at work on Otakon plans, we decided to to re-post our Con Survival Guide for everyone to use! While the full blown con season does not start for a little while yet, you must remember that planning months in advance is the most important thing you can do if you are in charge of a group going to any anime con (even if your group consists of only one person). So if you are thinking of attending any cons this year you should look over the posts because you just might learn a thing or two and avoid some common convention mistakes we all make.
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder is famous for saying that, “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” This is especially true of any and all planning done for cons. I have yet to go to an anime con where everything went exactly as planned. Something or someone will always fall through often at the worst possible time. Vital items will be forgotten or left behind. The posted schedule almost always changes day to day sometimes hour to hour. Oddly enough though even though this is a truth you are doomed if you don’t have a plan for going to a con. A small amount of planning can turn a disastrous or boring anime convention into one of the highlights of your year.
But therein lies the problem, if there is no plan nothing will get accomplished. The plan will inevitably change. No matter what. The only way a plan can run perfectly is for only one person to be involved, so unless the con is just you in your basement it will involve others. If you are going alone you still have to worry about traveling (which involves all manner of other people) and the con itself may not run smoothly so your plan even less so.
I will tell you that Narutaki is correct. I was the only person at Hisui Con 2007 last year in my basement and it went off without a hitch but I found that it had no atmosphere what so ever. Roald Amundsen said that adventure is just bad planning. My friend Ben’s infamous road trips always stick out in my mind as to what happens when you take no care to plan you trips in advance. Ben is famous in my little circle of friends for spontaneously planning road trips at the last second and having many a horror story because of it. Tales of him driving half asleep in misty unknown parts of North East while trying to find somewhere to stay for the night before falling asleep at a rest stop to find people rather creepily staring at him when he awoke immediately spring to mind. So much of Ben’s interesting little “adventures” could have been avoided by some planning before setting out.
Disaster can be averted! The first thing you do, is decide to go. So let’s start now! Okay, so the first step has been taken and you haven’t broken a sweat. So why not take the bull by the horns and plan your trip yourself, leave it to no one else!
I myself have up until recently have been more of a passive participant in convention planning. I have always been fortune enough to either have anime conventions near me or to have someone in charge of planning things for me. Narutaki is usually our group’s main chief of planning. But when CLAMP was at Anime Expo 2006 Kohaku and I were forced to make plans for ourselves. It turned out fine but it was the first time I had to fend for myself. I’m also had to plan out my solo journey to the Providence Anime Conference. I will say the the less people you have to plan for the easier it is but the more good friends you bring the more likely you will have a good time.
I have worked with people to plan for 20 and to plan for 2. I’m slowly but surely becoming a seasoned organizer for these types of excursions. Every year something new is learned and every year something unexpected happens. So our guide will be a multiple post, ongoing series initially coming out once a month (the last Monday of the month).
The Con Survival Series:
Why are we doing this? As the average age of the typical anime fan gets younger and younger while the number of people going to anime conventions increase it means that many con goers are totally green to the con going experience. Just look at any message board for you local con and you will invariably see a thread asking for advice and suggestions. Having the battle scars of years of mistakes, failures, learning experiences, and triumphs we have decided to pass along our wisdom in hopes of teaching first time con attendees what to do and what to avoid in planning their first con experience. Heck old timers might pick up a new trick or two as well.
Okay, yeah, we are going to tell you the mostly overly detailed way of doing things. To the point of madness at times, but this is just a guide not a set of laws. Heck, we may even forget to do some of the things we’re going to tip you off to. The goal is to remember all the great stuff about the convention, not the screw-ups. So hopefully a little help from us you can accomplish just that!
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