Blog Archives
NOTICE: I Will Be in Tokyo From May 27
Hey guys!
I’ll be moving to Japan next month. I haven’t decided how long I’ll be staying yet, but for now I’ll be starting a new job in Tokyo. If you’re in the area and want to meet up, feel free to send me a message.
March 2017 Update: Sword Art Online and Naruto are Good, Actually
I’ve never understood the hipster mentality. While it’s true that not all popular things are good, I don’t see the point of getting mad about the duds or attacking the fans for being mindless sheeple or whatever. Take Sword Art Online, for instance. This series has a laundry list of flaws but the Youtube reviews in particular blow them way out of proportion. What is it about SAO that inspires so much ire? I have no idea, since its narrative flaws exist in just about every mediocre anime ever. Even if I disliked the series, it’s just not worth the energy to rant about.
The above paragraph is fairly moot since I actually like SAO, and I wrote multiple articles this month apologising for it. On Anime News Network, I wrote a piece on Reki Kawahara’s career, arguing that he’s improved as an author over the years and that SAO is mostly the product of his amateur web novel author days. On Crunchyroll, I praised SAO‘s visuals and pointed out that the anime is a good adaptation of the novels, all things said and done.
All this SAO talk was in anticipation of the Ordinal Scale movie. I was particularly looking forward to it because I got the opportunity to write interview questions for the creators, and I knew beforehand just how much love and hard work had been poured into it. The film was a pure fanservice from start to finish, but let’s not interpret that in a negative light. I think iblessall put it best in his review of the movie:
…it was delightful to see Ordinal Scale speaking a language only those who care about this franchise—warts and all—can understand. In the moment when we see Starburst Stream unleashed once again or Yuuki’s spirit embracing Asuna as the Mother’s Rosario Sword Skill appears in a burst of purple lights, the film clearly, unavoidably asks but one thing of its audience: “Remember. Because if you remember how you felt when you watched Sword Art Online, this is for you.”
I’m sure that this film has its fair share of detractors, but Ordinal Scale was unquestioningly Sword Art Online at its best (to me, at least). Can we finally agree that SAO has its legitimate good points?
February 2017 Update: I’ve Turned Into a Riajuu
These monthly update posts are starting to get repetitive. I keep complaining about how I haven’t been doing much blogging lately and coming up with vapid excuses for my lack of activity. So I figured I might as well fess up now and admit that I’ve turned into a riajuu pig lately.
Somehow, after all these years of only loving my waifus, I have become interested in a 3D person. This month, I have been engaging heavily in filthy, degenerate behaviour. In other words, going on dates. Whenever I think about what I have become, I think that I should explode.
Long story short, I haven’t been doing much writing lately.
The Isolator is Reki Kawahara’s Best Work
Reki Kawahara is well known for Sword Art Online and Accel World, but if you ask me, his best work is The Isolator, a sci-fi thriller and psychological drama series that only gets a new volume once a year. It’s based off a web novel Kawahara began writing in 2004, but he has rewritten the story heavily for its light novel release, and it is easily his most mature work.
Reflections on 2016: Mixing Anime and Reality
2016 was the year anime and reality started to mix.
Until this year, I had been careful to keep my online identity (and, by extension, my anime fandom) separate from my real life. This was mostly for privacy reasons, although if I have to honest, it was also because I’m more confident expressing myself through writing than through speaking. I still don’t put pictures of myself online, and that’s probably for the best.
Eventually, however, I ended up identifying under my real name for Anime News Network and Crunchyroll, and I’ve met several internet friends in person throughout the year. The result? Nothing really changed. On hindsight, I realise that there was never a clear separation between “reality” and “online” in the first place.
Reflections on 2016: How I Became “The Light Novel Blogger”
2016 was the year I finished writing my honours thesis and graduated from university. The thesis, which drew heavily from my personal observations as a light novel fan translator, was called “Exploring Foreignisation/Domestication Post-Editing Strategies in Machine-Assisted Fan Translations of Japanese Web Novels” (what a mouthful!). Later this year, I published two articles based on my research on Anime News Network, explaining the basics of the subculture.
And now, for some inexplicable reason that I can’t quite fathom, I’m known to the fandom at large as… “the light novel blogger”.
Reflections on 2016: Becoming a Freelance Translator
It’s that time of the year again. In the 12 days leading up to Christmas, anime bloggers around the world write a post every day, reflecting on the year as a whole. It’s called the 12 Days of Anime Christmas, but for some strange reason, it doesn’t coincide with the actual 12 Days of Christmas at all. Oh well, don’t think too hard about it.
The usual format is to write about 12 moments in anime that stood out to you, but in most years, I don’t watch enough anime in order to come up with 12 distinct moments. However, because this year has been eventful in so many other ways, I can actually come up with a list of things that happened in the anime world that impacted my life in some way, for better or worse. This is the first year I can actually do the 12 Days of Anime properly. Huzzah!
Yeah, baby!
So here we go. Let’s do this!
What’s the appeal of those “stuck in another world” fantasies? Some Japanese bloggers explain
During my adventures on the Japanese web, I rarely see people say anything good about the recent trend towards isekai (“stuck in another world”) stories, particularly in light novels and web novels. The stories are frequently dismissed as shallow, masturbatory and full of cheap wish fulfillment. It’s overdone, they say. It’s trite and cliche. Stop adapting so many of these stories into anime.
Japanese readers have even come up with memes to make fun of the recent trends. 「俺TUEEEE」(“I’m so stroooooong”) basically means “Overpowered MC”. When a story is filled to the brim with all the various wish fulfillment tropes, it’s referred to as a narou-type work. Narou comes from Shousetsuka ni Narou! (“Let’s become a novelist!”), which is far and away the most popular website for posting amateur web novels. If you check out the top-ranked series, the vast majority are isekai stories where the MC does pretty much nothing to earn his 俺TUEEEE status.
The Japanese fandom is like the English fandom in the sense that the majority of internet commentary about this trend is snarky and negative, but a significant number of people are hooked on these stories nevertheless. There are plenty of netizens who attempt to explain the appeal of the narou genre, but because they’re clearly disdainful of it, their explanations occasionally seem condescending, even pathologising (e.g. “it’s a shallow power fantasy aimed at nerds who will never find a girlfriend!”) Nevertheless, there are bloggers who articulate why they like the narou genre quite thoughtfully, so I thought I’d focus on their perspectives in this post.
Because I cannot accept their points at face value, I’m going to respond to them critically in this post. However, I invite you to come to your own conclusions.
My New Year’s Resolutions
Time to party!
Happy New Year, everybody! Here’s to a wonderful 2016 for all of us. I sincerely hope you’re all resting well and taking good care of yourselves.
As always, January 1st is the best day to make a bunch of half-baked resolutions and never follow through on any of them. In lieu of that, here is my list of New Year’s Resolutions!
- Don’t watch Idolm@ster
- Get better taste
- Become a magical girl without having to sign a contract
- Pick up a girl in a dungeon
- Destroy Twitter
I’m kidding, of course (…or am I?!) But seriously, I do have some cool things in store for this blog in 2016, so let me tell you all about it.
