Month: December 2009

Visual Novel Logos Part 1: . . . sad bloggers in snow . . .

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This all started with a random observation. Narutaki and I were looking over what shows we wanted to sample from the new season of anime. While researching one title we had not heard of we went to the series’ homepage and I instantly knew the anime was based on a visual novel from nothing more than the title treatment. This sparked the realization that there was a common design theme in visual novel logos with similar content. I then researched over 200 visual novel logos to assess the commonalities in design.

In a rare, though interesting turn, we take a look at the logos of visual novels purely from the point of view of design. Even though the famous saying is “don’t judge a book by it’s cover,” you can actually tell a lot from them! This is less of a conversation and more of an observation. Unfortunately, we can’t for the life of us remember what that show was that started this whole thing! But thank you show, wherever you are.

The first major group we discovered is centered around “crying girl games.” Crying girl games, as exemplified by Key games, usually send the player through an emotional roller coaster and are famous for getting their audience to cry during the most tragic scenes. First take a look at all the crying girl game logos we have at the top. They usually have thin blue letters sometimes with black or green as an accent. There is usually some type of subtitle included. There is usually an item in the background, feathers were particularly popular but other light symbols or abstract shapes were used as well. Overall I feel this design aesthetic is trying to invoke that same feeling of the beauty that can be found in sadness and loss that the game attempt to do. The logo for Wind: A Breath of Heart is an exemplary example if this aesthetic style.

Oh, you can click that image up and there and you will see a bunch more logos to examine. The first thing that hits me is the color palette and an almost exclusive use of the color blue, of course often associated with sadness, as the primary and then green coming up sometimes. The type is rendered in thin, clean strokes with a tendency towards flourish or script styles. While the color palette is rather gender neutral, the type seems distinctly feminine but possibly in an innocent form. I also included the three most popular Key game properties to show some differences. Take the Kanon logo, with its use of pink it really stands out and it also looks much more childish. The Air logo falls close to the others in its field. Then the Clannad logo, while still holding on to the thin strokes falls much more to modern and minimal, practically giving away nothing about itself in its design. The feeling of these logos evoke to me is whismy, softness, and a hint of melancholy.

I am curious if other people agree with our observations or have other good examples to add to our case files. And this is only the first in the series! Please look forward to our next visual novel logo article.

Visual Novel Logos: Part 2 Part 3

Ongoing Investigations: Case #069

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So I decided to go a little crazy and try to put together a perfect grade RX-78-2 Gundam aka original Gundam kit a while back. I really wanted to either get a master grade RX-78-2 Gundam or a master grade RX-93 Nu Gundam. But when I saw the perfect grade RX-78-2 at AnimeNext I knew I had to have it. I also decided to splurge and get the extra weapons kit. I mean it comes with a Gundam Hammer on a real metal chain. What more could you ask for? When I initially opened up the box and saw pieces in sheets labeled from A to Z I was quite daunted by the task. But when I got into the swing of things I mostly found my previous Gunpla skills did not make it that much harder than anything else I had put together. When it came together it looks really nice. I would definitely not casually buy another perfect grade kit but I thought it was worth the extra money and effort.

The latest episode of Anime3000 features this very blog and the Otaku Diaries as its main topic of discussion! It was a bit unexpected but I think we did alright and it made us feel special. The podcast is a little more insight into the whole project and what our future plans are if you’re curious. There is a also a bonus segment where you can hear us go on and on about what shows we are sticking with from the new season and we even manage to throw Cross Game in as well.

Continue reading →

Otaku Diaries Part 6: The Otaku post for people who hate Otaku.

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#0096
You cannot set foot in a convention without being ashamed of fandom.

This is sort of a follow up post to the Otaku! Threat or Menace? article. However, this time around we delve a little deeper into those little pieces of fandom make you just that much more otaku. And still another post will follow this one soon about that question of just what do otaku think of fandom past and present and where is it all headed. But here you will see that anime is this creature that affects people in different ways and has a draw for people that runs both shallow and deep. And amidst all that is the wonder how the community gets along at all!

I see more and more a very disturbing attitude among anime and manga fans. This idea that they are “too good to be anime and manga fans.” The idea that them and maybe a few other people are above the hoi polloi with their horrible taste, bad manners, and overall immaturity that makes people have a bad impression of the fandom. The problem is that so many fans now a days have this feeling it means at least some of them are wrong. Either the majority of anime fans are not as bad as they think or some of the people are that part of the problem see themselves above. We are going to try to see how prevalent and pervasive this feeling is in our participants.

#0039
I don’t really feel disgust towards fellow fans because I did the same things they’re doing. I can just hope that they try to turn themselves around as I’m slowly doing.

#0016
It generally goes along with adding ‘-chan’ to everyone’s name and asking boys to kiss each other.

#0094
Sports fans can be just as sad as anime fans. I just happen to be an anime fan so shitty anime fans piss me off more. I mean there are a laundry list of reasons to be proud of anime fandom and to be ashamed.

So, the sexy statistics. You might assume that anime fandom is made up of horrible people with sickly fetishes seeing how some people talk on the Internet. But overall most people had rather mundane tastes. Guys were unsurprisingly into large breasts and oral sex. In fact that was so mundane and ubiquitous we did not bother tracking it. The most common fetishes were uniforms and glasses which were popular with both sexes. We did have 4 self confessed lolicons, 2 people into futanari, and 2 people who said they preferred 2-D girls to real ones. But they were mostly the same people. So while there were people that get much negative attention they were in the minority. I was surprised that women went into very little detail about their fetishes in anime. Also there were only 2 women who said that she was into yaoi in the fetishes question despite the fact that several women said they were fujoshi. I had always assumed that we reached the point were women were just as comfortable talking about what turns them on as much as men but that might not be as true as I thought.

Okay, can I just say that large chests and oral sex are not fetishes. They mean you are a dude. It would be a fetish if you DIDN’T like those things, thus why we listed flat chests. The only real knowledge gained from this question was that most people are still run of the mill when it comes to their fetishes. Anime otaku aren’t just made up of a bunch of sexual deviants. But just the same with only a sampling for 40 people, prominent tastes like lolicon stand out with about a 10% cut. I, too, was blown away by the lack of yaoi mentions. I am not even sure why it happened because plenty of people mentioned yuri, so it’s not as if people just overlooked these things. However, with our sample of females being very low (only 11 participants) perhaps it just wasn’t large enough to show a more open manner with regards to sexual proclivities.

#0015
. . . being a yaoi fan I often feel quite ashamed of my fandom. I know that yaoi isn’t exactly high art, it’s a pandering genre meant to be instantly gratifying, and so it’s not surprising that it doesn’t attract the most intelligent people. Still, I wish that most young yaoi fans weren’t quite so loud and obnoxious, it really makes the rest of us look bad.

#0079
If I’m ashamed of any sort of fan, it’s the fans who hate what they don’t like with a passion equal to how they like what they like.

#0019
The behavior of other fans tends to irritate me . . . and it’s only recently that I realized that the “at least I’m not a fucking loser like THOSE PEOPLE!” defense is just a defense mechanism that redraws the line a lot. I’m so far over the line of normalcy without ever having crossed the line and become “one of those people” that the line I drew may as well have been meaningless.

Almost everyone who took the survey felt that other people in fandom disgusted them at some point but only a third of the people surveyed ever felt any disgust with themselves. These results can be used to paint two different pictures. The first is there is this small group of anime fandom that gives everyone else a bad name. The second is that there is circular finger pointing at everyone else who they think is the problem. The fact of the matter is both are true. There are people who are just outright embarrassing fans. Only the most lenient in the survey did not bring up people behaving badly at cons. The other problem is best summed up with “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?” There are lots of fans who are overall good fans but have distinctly nasty habits. They see the bad habits of their peers but gloss over or ignore their own faults.

#0040
I’m a crusader against 4-chan culture. It’s disgustingly base and I’m a slave to the good and beautiful.

Most telling is that almost all fans were ashamed of other fans, but most not of themselves. So either most participants were upholding their high ideals of fandom or people don’t always see themselves as they actually are. The “it’s not me, it’s them” defense is what us and most other people probably think off the bat. However, that idea contrasts with much of the other answers we’ve gotten for other questions in the survey. People have been rather open about a myriad of personal things. Is it possible there is a disconnect when it comes to their fandom? Are people so caught up in it (otaku afterall) that they can’t really take a step back to evaluate that part of their lives? Or is it that other common happening of a few ruining this for the many?

#0014
Helped me be a better person? Find solace in a shared experience? Provided a comforting, reassuring presence when all around is chaos? . . . Been an inspiration helping me to discover new ways of seeing and thinking? Absolutely.

#0060
I don’t think there are too many good life lessons in anime. Sure, shooting a woman after sleeping with her may work for Golgo 13 but I’m thinking I just can’t pull it off in quite the same way.

Both the internet and cons have similar situations that become out of hand and can cast a shadow on anime fandom as a whole, and have cast a shadow as the opinions here express, which has many people fed-up. Biggest problem, as I see it, it too much information syndrome. And screaming it at the top of your lungs to anyone and everyone who is even remotely involved in your hobby. In a day and age where everyone is comfortable talking about anything, people just wish you wouldn’t. This coupled with, how many participants put it, the younger fans running wild in any anime meet up setting is making fellow fans cringe. But at the very same time, the internet and conventions is what has brought so many fans together. It even made doing this survey possible and as many people mentioned it allowed them to finally connect with others. More than a few people met friends and significant others through this very hobby. And as much as everyone complained about the anime community, almost everyone on the survey wants to continue to be apart of it. Just look at how many fans go one step further and create fan works or write about anime.

Overall I think this trend of anime and manga fans who hate anime and manga partially comes from this idea that people are surrounded by nothing but vile idiots. They enjoy anime and manga but see it as a fandom filled with people everyone should avoid. They get this attitude that they are above such things so they are thereby separated from what they dislike in fandom. But the answer is not to separate yourself from the community. It is to see the value it what makes anime and manga fandom great and and trying to encourage what is wonderful and productive anime being an otaku.

#0029
. . . it has provided a way for people in high school to stereotype me, which makes it hard for me to break through barriers and befriend new people. Pretty much I am know as the “anime kid,” so it takes some effort to convince other kids that I’m a normal, rather friendly person, and not some sort of bumbling social reject.

#0030
I wouldn’t be friends with nearly as many people and it kind of gives me a sense of belonging.

Despite what people said about hating their fellow fans I think the evidence points to people not being a hostile as they might let on at times. 80% of the participants had tried to learn Japanese at some point. There seemed to be a genuine interest in learning about Japanese culture and the Japanese language. A good deal of the people had contributed to some sort of activity for the anime community to enjoy be it a blog, podcast, fanzine, AMV, fan fiction, or fan art. And most everyone else who did not do one of those at least partook in the efforts of someone else who did.

What I really took away from this part of the survey is a desire that everyone wants to be a better fan. Everyone recognizes bad behavior so it is only another step to seeing it, and correcting it, within ourselves. And more positively is that people want to be apart of their hobby, anime fans maybe more than others. With few means to actually communicate with or becoming involves in the creative process of anime, fans are looking to connect themselves in different ways, some fun and some thoughtful (some a little of both). Anime fandom has a huge, and vocal, community and people want to be apart of it even if there are deterrents to it.

As much as they complained about hating other fans they usually had kind words about the people they had connected to. Anime fans want to make connections to their fellow fans and often do. There was rumbling of displeasure with their fellows in most peoples surveys but they were also able to talk about what they liked and who they felt exemplify what had drawn them and kept them in the fandom. The people who took the time to fill out this massive survey obviously cared enough about anime fandom to make their voices heard and that if nothing else is a good sign of people who still care.