Shameful Otaku Secret!

I hate to leave even a small portion of my meager readership out of my topics (in this case, non-North-Americans), but something I’ve wanted to write about for a while is the recent explosion of legitimate streaming anime online. It’s a unique time that we’re living in right now, where the anime industry is finally starting to follow in the footsteps of the music world. Fortunately, for all the notorious stubbornness of the Japanese, the change is happening from the inside, without a Metallica/Napster sort of high-profile catalyst to get it going (no, Scott Von Schilling vs. the Fansubs doesn’t count). And with at least one bigtime US distributor, Funimation, facilitating faster (often realtime) licensing, things are finally starting to look practical for the legit anime streamer.

Problem is, it still ain’t perfect. Each channel and method has its own downfalls and drawbacks, so I intend to swallow a couple bucks to provide a reasonable practical guide. I had planned to co-write this series with Riex for Oi, Hayaku! quite some time ago, but of course we didn’t quite get to that, and now I’ve been beaten to the punch by Reverse Thieves and their very well-done analysis of Crunchyroll’s anime membership.

I want to preface this whole journey with one of the fundamental problems behind any streaming or online distribution method. At least for the forseeable future, both studios and licensors get their cash from DVD sales (well — that and merch). Any online distribution is seen as just a promotional tool for those DVDs. That’s a big reason why we haven’t seen a lot of HD/high-res/TV-watchable stuff out there yet. Younger generations of folks don’t necessarily need physical media — and considering that most anime started its life in a fairly transient way, as a television series, who can blame them anyway? More and more people are connecting PCs to TVs, and a lot of anime viewers aren’t interested in leaving their computers (which have higher-res screens than TVs) to begin with.

If you saw the recent half-off anime sale at Best Buy (aka Margin Eliminators, Inc.) you know that those plastic discs are not doing it like they used to, but there’s still a ways to go before we see anime companies on either side of the Pacific fully embrace digital, with or without DRM. That out of the way…

Enter the Apple

iTunes is a perfect candidate for cracking any tough market, since it persuaded a Napster-crazed America to start actually paying for music. Not only that, it persuaded us to pay for low-quality (128kbps), DRM-handicapped music. Granted, the DRM worked better than the ultra-crippling Windows Media kind, but it wasn’t the quality or portability that won customers over — it was Apple’s trademark ease of use. When they brought video to that, suddenly 5 bucks to rent a low-res movie didn’t seem that bad to people. It still does to me, especially as a longtime Netflix user, but it is portable, and every once in a while you end up with an iTunes gift card so what are you gonna do…

The first thing you’ll notice about finding anime on iTunes is that it’s really fucking hard to do. That’s because categories are pretty broad in the iTunes store and there isn’t one for “TV Anime.” There is one for Movies — and it fails hard, just check it out — but not for TV Shows, which is the meat and potatoes of the anime viewer’s diet. So Ouran High School Host Club falls under “Animation,” but your average tit-filled Gonzo action-fest is in the “Sci Fi” section.

FUNi Factor

The second thing you’ll probably notice is that, like a lot of the digital channels that I’ll be exploring, FUNimation rules the roost. Each site and store has its own unique players (like Joost’s Gong or Toei on Crunchyroll) but Funi is like the Visa commercial, everywhere you want to be. Also, I’m assuming that original licenses probably didn’t apply when they started going digital, so it’s far from being all of Funi’s stuff. That means a lot of Gonzo. If you’re not interested in the likes of Speed Grapher, Afro Samurai, Burst Angel… you get the picture, your choices start to drop tremendously. That’s not to say Funi doesn’t have good stuff on iTunes — Ghost Hunt, Ouran, FMP: The Second Raid, and Gunslinger Girl for instance — or that some of the Gonzo titles aren’t worth watching.

Gong Anime, a fixture in streaming sites, doesn’t really have a presence on iTunes, but the Anime Network does, and they have a few interesting titles: Tsukihime, Mahoromatic, Angelic Layer, Saiyuki, and Pet Shop of Horrors. Nothing earth-shattering, but hey it’s better than just watching Speed Grapher all day long.

Manga Entertainment, most famous for the “THIS SHIT’S NOT FOR KIDSSSSSS” trailers at the beginning of their VHS tapes of 90s OVAs (also for being the people who will never reprint End of Evangelion, thankyoujebus I bought it back in the day), has a few titles as well and most are really solid. Among them are Astro Boy, Stand Alone Complex, Gurren Lagann, Robotech, Macross Plus, Macross II, and Now And Then, Here and There.

And of course, tons of Dragonball, Naruto, Bleach, and other popular Toonami-style shonen action series, along with their accompanying movie versions, abound in the store.

There are a few other movies, which makes iTunes the clear winner in that department (I think CR has… two?), but it’s not much of a win. You’d expect Disney properties like Ghibli flicks to be here, but not so. However, search a little and you’ll find Paprika, Tekkonkinkrit, and a few others.

Crowdsourcing

Most sites and stores feature user reviews. So can you trust them? In iTunes’ case, reviews vary depending on what you’re looking at. For the longest time, all any of them ever said was “Get Naruto! Vote Zero if you want Naruto!!!!!one!!” This is, as you can imagine, not super awesomely helpful. Now that iTunes HAS Naruto, these sorts of things have ironed themselves out a little, but reviews still tend toward the not-too-helpful. iTunes buyers also seem to be DVD buyers, and range from people just like my friends to the superior-otaku “I know lots about anime because I have 6 boxsets at home” attitude. If you’re not 12, and if you own more than 6 DVDs, you will see through that. And one of Macross Plus’s reviews talks about how these days it’s all computers, and things were much better back then without all the computers. Macross Plus. Look it up. Now who’s the superior fan? HUH?

Anyway, here’s the breakdown, in a format I’ll be using for the rest as well:

So… anyone here buy iTunes anime? What are your thoughts?

With this, I take my leaf

Sometimes, even otherwise-good anime seasons will grace us with surprisingly good series that are a notch above what we’re normally stuck watching. While Kannagi may not have managed to make the top spot for Fall ‘08, it probably did manage to be the biggest surprise.

Story

Kannagi centers around Jin, who carves a wooden sculpture of a mysterious shrine deity he saw as a kid. When it comes to life as Nagi, eyes will roll, but what you’re predicting doesn’t ever really come to pass. In fact, somehow a hilarious show comes out of this clichéd and idiotic setup.

Rather than being the ultra-omnipotent type of god, or the typically naïve magical girlfriend type, Nagi is a pun-loving layabout who spends her time eating Jin’s food, watching TV, and very occasionally catching “impurities” with a dime-store Mahou Shoujo wand. The shape of the story is very much sitcom, so it’s more than a little off-putting to find the series ending on a serious note. The end just doesn’t work all that well. For 10 episodes, we’re given nothing but laughs, and if those 10 episodes make you a fan, why would you want to see a bunch of moping around (and sudden devotion to the supposed plot) for the other three? It’s not that I don’t care about Nagi’s identity crisis, it’s just that it’s foisted upon us pretty late in the game.

Characters

As Kabitzin mentioned, the characters are probably the primary strength of Kannagi — or for me, one of the two main strengths, along with the animation. The story is flimsy, not that interesting, and mostly unexplored until those last episodes, but the characters manage to be a huge pile of charm. Soft-spoken Jin is a bit more than your typical harem hero. Zange-chan the idol, who dresses like a slutty nun and can’t sing for shit, is funnier than the average interloper. Tsugumi is the kind of cute childhood friend that you can root for, just like you’re supposed to. And the art club’s cast of weirdos all generate their own kinds of laughs. At the center of that is Nagi, the pun-spewing screwoff god. Haruka Tomatsu (also great as Chika in Kyouran Kazoku Nikki and not so good as Lala in To Love-Ru) brings her to life masterfully — when reading the manga, it’s impossible to imagine Nagi any other way.

Animation and Music

The execution of Kannagi, by A1 Pictures and erstwhile Lucky Star director Yutaka Yamamoto, was the second of its strong points, and one you can’t just chalk up to good source material. Yamamoto proved himself brilliant at both LS-style fan-pandering and impeccable comic timing. Minimal background music and large periods of silence often reinforced the sly delivery of jokes. As far as the animation itself, it was true to the manga, looked good, and maintained a consistent level of quality throughout. I’ll just repeat myself:

Like Lucky Star’s cartoony-yet-realistic body language helped create a million Kagamin fanboys, the execution here makes Nagi more real when she scratches her leg with her foot while watching tennis on the floor, as Jin saws frantically at the glued-on wand behind her. Or, best of all, when she describes the circumstances surrounding how the wand got glued to the exact center of the table.

When combined with Nagi and Jin’s excellent voice acting, the animation style drove home their classic two-man comedy routines.

Bottom Line

Kannagi ended kinda poorly, all full of emo and previously-absent clichés, and that took it down from being one of the highlights of the year to a show that probably won’t be as fondly remembered as say, Toradora, with its more cohesive story. But I went back and watched a couple of the funnier episodes, and when this series was on, it was hot. In hindsight, I wish there had been more of a story, but at the time I was watching most of the episodes, the lack of a “point” didn’t bother me at all. It was just funny and entertaining. If Kannagi were to get a second season, I would most definitely watch more.

When three’s not a crowd

You may have noticed that since I randomly sampled a bit of Futakoi Alternative, I haven’t posted much. That’s because I’ve been watching it. On recommendations from Kabitzin and TheBigN, I dove headlong into what turned out to be one of the best series I’ve seen in quite some time.

Story

In Futakoi Alternative, which takes place in the same female-twin-infested universe as an (apparently crappy) harem series called Futakoi, Rentarou Futabo inherits a detective agency from his father and operates it with his young twin assistants. It’s not exactly a normal premise in itself, but add in crooked cops, a tofu salesman obsessed with crawfish, a Yakuza boss with a Mazinger Z fist, a vast underground conspiracy involving humanoid squid, and an arranged marriage in a castle in Germany, and shit starts to go all over the place.

Nearly every episode bounces around chronologically. At first, that’s a little disorienting and just a smidge confusing, but in the end this method works wonders for the emotional impact of the story.

Characters

Characters are foremost in driving Futakoi Alternative’s 13 episodes, especially Rentarou. He’s one of anime’s finest male leads — neither a spineless harem loser who can’t make up his mind about what he wants, nor an emotionless caricature of manliness. He’s a regular guy who you get to watch grow from a somewhat indecisive kid to a young man who takes things into consideration before ultimately tackling his problems head-on. The main theme of Alternative has more to do with Rentarou accepting who he is, and what it means to be his father’s son, than it does with squid conspiracies. He does, however, smoke a cigarette in one drag during an especially awesome scene, and if you think that’s great, you’re right.

Sara and Soujyu, the twins, aren’t as deeply characterized but they’re not one-dimensional moe shortcuts either. Sara’s strength and unhesitating decision-making are the trigger for the second half of the plot, and the vulnerability she ultimately shows is the ironic product of her unwavering resilience. By the same token, Soujyu, the shy and accomodating one, gains a quiet and believable strength in that second half.

Side characters aren’t very well-developed at all, but they are highly entertaining and more than serve their purpose, especially the crawfish-catching Gen.

Animation & Music

Alternative has some of the best background music I’ve seen in a TV anime. It almost always enhances the mood greatly, and anyone who’s seen it should probably identify with the words “disco fight scene.” Animation (by ufotable with flag and feel.) is capable and never drops in quality, but the directing goes far beyond the call of duty. Action sequences are over-the-top and frequently resemble Kazuya Tsurumaki’s wacked-out FLCL, while the more melancholy stuff can be gut-wrenching without slipping into Key-style melodrama.

Vibe

I have to mention that one of Futakoi Alternative’s greatest strengths (if not the greatest) is its constantly-shifting mood. The first half is manic, hilarious, and action-packed. We get a bit of angst off Rentarou as everyone including the spectre of his dead father pressures him to be something. But overall, it’s a free and easy (if very wild) time. You feel as if there can’t be more fun packed into 20 minutes. Then, abruptly, the second half cuts a wide gash through your fun, just as it does with the characters. That manic energy is ripped away and replaced by alternating sweet sadness and hopeless desperation. By the time the middle of the story starts winding into the end, the only happiness the characters have seen for weeks was in their own bizarre and delusional fantasies. But by the end of the story, frenetic action and laughs are back, augmented this time by a fist-pumping “fuck yeah” factor that would make Simon and Kamina proud.

Bottom Line

Just watch it. It’s got brains, balls, and heart. And, it’s got something for almost everyone: romance lovers, missile spam fetishists, FLCL fans, and even bigamists. I would love to own the show, but it seems unlikely at this point that we’ll get a license for R1 and I’m almost never willing to pay R2 DVD prices for stuff, so my enjoyment of this series is a bit bittersweet. Much of what we watch as far as TV anime is throwaway, even the best of it, but I can see myself easily enjoying Futakoi Alternative again. I can recommend this wild ride without any hesitation.