Recently there have been many announcements that manga magazines in Japan are closing shop. Whether it is a lack of fans, sales or other important figures the number of magazines announcing there last issue has increased on Anime News Network, especially in the lats few months. The mangas move to another branch of the manga company, so you will still be able to read those mangas you love, but is this a sign of a shrinking industry?
If we look at America we see our print new industry has taken a huge hit with online new and media. The reason is clear; with online news you get your articles sooner, there is less cost, and of course, it’s free. many news outlets have gone to a digital form in order to keep with the times, dissolving there print media. truly, it is a smart move as it is a more cost effective a green business strategy. But what of those who love physical media?
Many people like to read there books on the iPad, using things like a nook app or comixology to read. you can read whatever you want without going to the store and buying your issues or worrying about the product selling out. Personally I cannot stand reading on a nook or iPad. I enjoy the feel of pages between my fingers, the sound of the spine cracking when its is first opened and the smell of the newly printed pages as I digest the words and picture in front of me. the memories from when i pick up my comics from the store and read them and the feeling of having the whole physical collection is one digital media cannot replace.
looking back at my comparison of print news papers going to digital format, we can also see the exceptions to the case. Newspapers like the Washington Post and The New York Times still have a physical platform while also have a digital one to appease both fans. In a manga related version, we still have Shonen Jump, as well as Shonen Jump Alpha for your digital comic addiction. So while i close this article up, I will go back to reading my first issue of Shonen jump i bought in elementary school, remembering the memories of my first reading of Naruto (boy was that a trip) and laughing at Luffy from One Piece. As long as the fans continue to purchase physical media, i do not see the manga magazine making a full transition to digital any time soon.
Hey everybody! I hope everyone is having a good Christmas season out there in the AAA community. What I’m going to talk about today is the first year of the PS Vita with all the ups and downs (mostly downs), and what the future might hold for the pretty little handheld.
So the Vita launched a year and a day ago as in Japan as I’m writing this, and it had a pretty auspicious start in the lands of the rising sun selling 325,000 units in the first few days, a good launch compared to other systems like the 3DS. However, in the next weeks the sells cratered dropping to as low 12,309 units in the week of February 13th, and being outsold by the PSP. Now the sells have recovered somewhat in the following weeks averaging about 40,000 a week worldwide. This pattern followed with the North American and European launches, initial sales was great and then sinking down to low levels. The black Friday and holiday sales good, but this is likely a temporary bump as with all holiday’s seasons sales always rise dramatically over normal sales figures.
So now let’s look the games released for the system so far. There are currently 158 games as of writing for the Vita. Of these 25 were the launch titles, including Little Deviants, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Wipeout 2048, Rayman Origins, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend etc. The best selling game is Uncharted with 850,000 units sold and will likely also be the first 1 million seller on the system. Not of the other games come close to Uncharted; however three games have about half the sales. Some of the games have been released to critical acclaim such as Persona 4: The Golden which is the highest rated handheld game in 2012 on Metacrtic. Gravity Rush has won handheld game of the year from some publications. So the Vita does have some games to answer that question people like to ask all the time about Sony systems haha. There are a couple games that came out this year that were suppose to turn the fortunes of the Vita around, the so-called “Killer App” that people are always talking about that sells systems, but neither Call of Duty: Declassified or Resistance: Burning Skies became the killer app as both suffered from bad controls and were a little short on content. One of the key selling points people were touting was the ability of Vita to play FPS on the go with the dual analog sticks. Now that two high profile FPS have come out and both have been utter disappointments and in my mind this has damaged the Vita brand.
There is isn’t much to say about what Sony has done to turn around the lackluster sales of the PS Vita because there hasn’t been a permanent price cut, the marketing has largely remain the same, and the Playstation Plus is now on Vita and that should help with sales, how much it will help remained to be seen.
Now I’m going to discuss some things that I think Sony can do to turn Vita around and get it selling good. Here’s the strategy I have conceived that Sony can follow to make sell well and make a profit. They cannot drop the price until the handheld can be redesigned into a form that makes a profit off each unit, otherwise Sony will be losing even more money then they already are on each unit sold. This could take a year or so, but in the end be worth it if they include the features I’m about to list. Include a drive to play all the PSP games; all of the people on the fence about buying a Vita that have a big PSP game library would have a huge reason to buy the system. Add an SD card slot; having only Sony memory cards as the only storage media on Vita has hurt the system even if its not the main reason people often point too. The Vita memory cards are expensive and are an unnecessary extra expense for buyers when they probably have a few SD cards they could be using to store games and data. Extend the battery life of the system; this is probably the easiest one to implement as it has been done many times for other handhelds. The most recent example being the 3DS XL, which added an extra 1.5 hours to the 3DS’s battery life, so it is not that hard. This could also be done through third party batteries such as the ones by Nyko, and that’s what I did with my 3DS and its battery life is actually better than the XL’s. Make games that are an unique experience to the Vita; I think the major problem with Sony’s ideology towards Vita is that they are trying to create scaled down versions of PS3 games for Vita instead of developing games from ground up specifically for Vita. In order to attract people to spent the money on a new hardware you need to have exclusive software that is found no where else. Marketing the Sega Genesis style; it would be extremely funny to watch Sony do some commercials along the lines of the ones done by Sega against Nintendo in the early 1990’s, and seeing how those worked well for Sega it could work for Sony as well.
Hello to everyone out there in the AAA community, and a special hello to Mitsugi and Chiaki in Japan, nice to have you back in the same time zone as myself again, perhaps I can catch the live show now lol. Anyway, what I want to talk about today is the overemphasis some put on the visuals of media products and how it causes people to miss out on some experiences they might have otherwise if they didn’t focus so much on how something looks. The two examples I’m going to use are anime and video games, as those are two types of media where this is most apparent.
Let’s start with anime, and how some people cannot bring themselves to watch a show simply based on the animation. This comes in a few different forms, like if a show is old by a certain number of years. There are some people who cannot watch a show if it’s older than the year 2000, meaning hand drawn anime because that’s roughly when the industry transitioned to computer based anime drawing. Conversely, there are probably people who don’t like computer drawn anime and will not watch anything after the year 2000, but I have never met a person like that. Some anime fans will judge a series on just the art style or just for seeing a few magazine scans. Examples of this are Code Geass and Gundam Age, which were both prejudged on their character designs. One turned out great and the other not so much. Sometimes people say they don’t want to watch a show because there is too much fan service, which I could see. For me, I will watch old shows like the original Gundam series, which is from 1979, and other stuff from the early 1980’s, but I haven’t gone further than that. I have seen Astro Boy, but I’m not sure if what they aired in Canada was the 80’s version or the 60’s version. Art style to me is kind of whatever, I prefer story over the visuals of anime I’m watching so I usually give a show a chance no what the animation is like. Finally, I don’t mind fan service as long doesn’t distract from the story and fan service part of the charm of a given anime show.
How this manifests in the video games industry takes the form of game graphics. Graphics are often pointed to by people want to claim that a certain platform is superior to another and it’s been this way for a long time. Examples of this today are; PC elitists who want everyone to drop playing games on any other platform in favor of the PC, PS3 or Xbox 360 fanboys who think their preferred console is visually superior to the other, and pretty much every other given game systems that have competed against each other. This is often the main or opening argument of people I like to call “graphic masturbators”, defined as people who favor graphics over every other aspect of game design. They seem to think that this is the atomic bomb of arguments and it automatically wins the debate. However, it’s my contention that these people miss the point of playing a game which is to have an enjoyable game play experience over eye appealing visuals. This syndrome has lead to game companies (at least the big ones) making trailers for games using just cut scenes form the and not actual game play graphics. This gives a false impression of the game’s graphics and leads to gamer alienation. The way a game plays is the most important part of the experience I get out of playing game, which is why I play games on various platforms.
The main thrust of what I’m trying to convey here with this article is the best summed up in the age old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover”. I think people need to go beyond just the eye candy in whatever media they consume. For us anime fans it means going beyond the new thing and checking out some of greatest entries in the anime genre. Because in the end visuals change over time and a good story transcends time, no matter what decade it is from.
Recently, I been reading a lot of articles on game sites I frequent in which the authors lament the fact that studies show that only about 20 percent of gamers actually finish a game they start. When I heard this I was a little shocked and thought no way that can be right but, then I started to see in multiple articles on multiple sites. So in my mind this is a disheartening for a couple reasons; one that developers put so much time into making a game that only a very small minority of people that play games see the end and that people paid like 60 dollars for a console game these days and that’s like getting only a portion of the value of what you paid for. I’m the kind of gamer that must finish a game’s story all way through. I’m what you might call a “game finisher”, however I’m not a completiontist by any measure as I don’t feel the need get every achievement or trophy in every game I play. Its more about seeing that the job gets at the basic level by simply beating the game because that is still is the base objective in any game even games that are multiplayer centric like Call of Duty and Battlefield 3. I finish a lot of games, this year so far I think I have finished maybe 20-25 so far this year, which probably puts me in the 1-5 percent of that 10-20 percent of gamers that finish games.
So that got me wondering what percentage of anime fans actual finish the anime they are watching? Now I don’t any figures for this like with game, but I’ll try to use what I know from anime fans I know have told me. The hosts of the anime podcasts I listen to will often comment that they have only seen a portion of a certain that is in a given discussion. This is probably because they are also reviewers and they have a lot anime to watch and its just not possible to watch the entire series. Also another difficulty is access to the whole show which is sometimes hard because maybe you cannot find in your country or its not very popular and thus not streamed or fansubbed. Then there is simply having not a lot of time to devote to watching anime, which is probably a problem we all have unfortunately.
So the point of me bringing this up is that I just think its a bit tragic that all these talented people put so much time and effort into making great anime and games and the vast majority of people never see them. Some tips I have to have to maximize your game and anime experience is to focus on perhaps a couple at a time and clear them out move on to the next game or series. In anime series skip the opening and ending credits as this can often save about 5-6 minute per episode of a series.So get out and actual finish a game of anime!
Here are some the articles taking about the low number of gamers that finish their games:
Recently, I imagine that you been asking yourself a question lately, ” Where the F#%k has Devil Survivor been for the last three months??” Well ladies and gentlemen I moved to South Korea and I’m teaching at a public high school. Its been a good time so far and finally I have time to write something. The topic this time is the second Devil Survivor game which came out in February. I have played through it twice now and I’ll give you a tour.
Background Story
The story in Devil Survivor 2 is a bit different then in the first game as the story this time takes place in different locations around Japan and in the first game you were locked down in Tokyo the whole time trying to escape. Again your a boy in high school, this time a third year high student instead of a second year student, who is coming back from an exam at school with his two friends. When at the subway station, they receive an email on their phones from a website that shows a video clip depicting their deaths in an explosion in the near future. The three students are able to avoid their imminent deaths because of a warning from an avatar from the site and then a train comes crashing and they run for cover. As they wake demons appear and a battle begins, after defeating the demons the students form a contract with the demons and become demon summoners. Soon after the heroes encounter a mysterious government agency known as JP’s that is trying to protect the remaining Japanese cities that haven’t been completely destroyed by the disaster that has struck Japan. They ally with JP’s in order to find out what is behind the disaster that has befallen Japan and find a way to survive.
Gameplay
The gameplay hasn’t changed much from the last game which used a turned based system combat system on a grid of squares. The combat system also featured teams of three, two demons and one of the human characters, and the game allowed you to use up to 4 teams at once. You can carry up to 24 demons in your party at any one time and a great feature of this game is the ability summon a new demon if one of your demons lose all its hit points. Another feature from the first game is ability to create more powerful demons by fusing two less powerful demons. A new twist has been added to this feature called the demon compendium which saves all demons used or created in the fuse application, and for a price you can immediately summon that demon back to your party as long you have a free space. A completely new feature is called the Fate System which is a social relationship system that uses a 0 to 5 scale to rate the bond between the main character and the other characters. The benefit of having a high level bond with another character is that it grants you certain special abilities that can only be used with that character. Again present is the branching story lines like other SMT games, although it seems like there are as many paths as was in the previous game. The demon auction also still in the game, but is less important now with the demon compendium in the game.
Graphics and Cutscenes
The graphics in some ways are not much improved from the original game. The environments looks more detailed and the bosses look quite nice. However, some of the artwork from the first game was reused, but if you haven’t played the first one then you probably won’t notice that. The cut scenes are where the game shines because the first game doesn’t have nearly as many as DS2. The cut scenes all look graphically bright and vibrant. Overall the game is an improvement in most areas in terms of graphics.
Audio and Music
The game’s soundtrack is exceptional, which is a hallmark of any of the SMT games. Each song seems to fit the scene its being played in. The sound effects for the different demon attacks and other actions fit nicely with the overall feel of the game.
Closing Comments
Comparing this game to the original devil survivor it holds its own, while bringing some new gameplay elements to the table. I think Atlus could have put some more effort into making some more new artwork for the character interactions instead of just reusing some of the character models from the first game. Overall, the game is improvement over the first incarnation. One final note, if you haven’t played the first game yet, don’t worry because you can jump right into this game because the two stories have no bearing on each other at and are completely separate stories in effect.
Hey all you crazy anime addicts out there, its me coming at you once again, the most interesting man on the AAA network, Devil Survivor. I have an extremely interesting, yet disturbing, and maybe humorous topic for you today. Recently, a survey was commissioned by the Japanese government on the attitudes of Japanese men and women aged 16-49 towards sex. So let’s take a look at the results of this study. Starting with the men 16-19, 36.1 percent said that have little interest in sex or even despised it altogether. Wow, I’m shocked that a teenage boy would ever say he hates sex, its like a Republican politician saying he hates cheating on his wife then claiming he is a family values candidate. That figure is almost double the figure reported in a 2008 survey. This survey, which was conducted in September of 2010, also found that 83.7 percent of Japanese men that are turning 20 this year are not dating anyone, and a further 49.3 percent said they have never had a girlfriend. The findings for girls in the same age group unfortunately are no better; 59 percent of them felt similarly like the young men about sex, which was up 12 percent from 2008.
So what does this all mean, you might ask. Well according to Kunio Kitamura head of the clinic of the Japanese Family Planning Association says it seems to confirm the notion that Japanese younger men are becoming ” herbivores” meaning men who do not actively seek out women or sex. What we are seeing here I think is the collision of two social phenomena at play in Japanese society creating a tsunami of sexual apathy. Women in Japan have been gaining empowerment in society in the past couple decades making more money and getting higher on the professional ladder, and this has caused Japanese women to raise their expectations of what their potential husband should make at his job. This has in turn caused Japanese men to believe that the expectations of women are too unrealistic and they cannot possible make enough money in their jobs. So more and more men are turning other means of romantic engagement such as dating sims, anime character figures, sex dolls, and other such things. Add to this the already extremely low birth rate in Japan and the high average age of the population, which is 44.8 years old, and things are not looking good for the future of Japan.
Some other findings from the survey that are of note; 40.8 percent of married couples answered that they had not had sex in the last month, up from 36.5 percent in 2008. Almost 50 percent married couples older than 40 also reported that they had not had sex in the last month. Thus confirming the widely held belief that getting married kills an otherwise healthy sexual desire haha.
This is a major social problem for Japan in a number of ways. In terms of the workforce and having a ready a supply of new young workers it would be disastrous as the birth rate is well below replacement. National defense would also be compromised as its hard to maintain an armed forces without young people to fill out the ranks. The population is projected to shrink to about 95 million by 2050 and this would cause the Japanese economy to suffer worse than anything before. Correcting this isn’t easy will probably take a generation or so to see signs of change.
Here’s the original article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/14/japanese-men-losing-sex-d_n_809271.html
Greetings and salutations, all you anime crack addicts anonymously looking for your next fix of deliciously, deviant, and decadent animated narcotic. Today I’m going to return a topic I talked to about in a previous post way back in September of last year; the Nintendo 3DS. However, this time I’m going to add in another element, the Playstation Vita now that its out. I’m going to be a comparison of the two on certain levels, but also an update of somethings I addressed last time and some extreme claims about the Vita.
Last time I discussed how a lot of people on the internet where predicting the doom of Nintendo and the 3DS because of the massive drop in sales about 5 months after the launch which was mishandled(if anyone can point to a really solid launch for a game console please mention it the comments). So time has shown that either is true, of course although I’m aware that the Nintendo prediction is kind of open ended because a company’s future is always up in the air, however the 3DS one has proved to be very wrong. Over the Holiday Season the 3DS sold almost 1.6 million units and the weeks following have been strong as well. Add that to the fact the 3DS sold more units in the first 8 months in the U.S. than the DS. One thing I was wrong about in the last article was my prediction of a possible redesign of the system which didn’t come about(yet) maybe because the sales have rebounded. I around thing I predicted was if a bunch of quality first party games would come out they the sales would go up; and that’s what has happened with the Mario and Mario Kart games. There are also some great three party stuff like the Monster Hunter game and more coming.
Ok on to Vita, and with its recent release in Japan on Dec.17th out of the way it looked pretty impressive with first weekend sales of 320,000. However, after that the sales have dropped off a lot and have been below the PSP. So now people predicting the end of Vita already. I really wish people would not make such wild and unfounded predictions about the future of a product that just came out. I think I Vita will pick up in the coming months, it might take a price cut, but I’m sure it will in the end. The launch library was kinda underwhelming even though there was an Uncharted game, but I think was better then the 3DS’s launch line up. Just give Vita some time.
Hey triple A community, its me Devil Survivor, the most interesting man on the AAA Network, and I’m finally back with a new blog entry. Today I’m going to shine the anime spotlight on the 1980’s classic mecha show Aura Battler Dunbine. Dunbine was directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, who is best known for directing the original Gundam series and a lot of other great anime series. Dunbine was the first fantasy\mecha series which inspired other series such as Escaflowne. It ran for 49 episodes and spawned three OVA sequels; Aura Battler Dunbine: Tale of Neo Byston Well , Tales From Byston Well: Garzey’s Wing, and The Wings of Rean. However, it should be noted that all three are considered to be of inferior quality to the original series. Let’s get into the story.
The setting for the story is in the parallel world of Byston Well which is kind of similar to 16 century Europe, but with one major difference; Aura technology, which allows machines to be built using life force as a power source. Chief among these machines are the Aura Battlers, insect like robots with great destruction power. The story centers around Sho Zama, a Japanese motocross racer who one night is pulled into Byston Well by a magical fairy called a Ferario to serve as pilot of a Aura Battler called the Dunbine. One of the several monarchs in Byston Well, Drake Luft has been maneuvering for sometime to attempt a power play and seize control of the surrounding kingdoms. Part of his plans involve transporting people from Upper Earth, including Sho, because they have strong aura power. Another person brought down to Byston Well to pilot a battler is Todd Guinness , the trash taking, racist, ace pilot from Boston. He becomes the main rival for Sho. Burne Bannings is Drake’s right hand man and the general of his forces,however he does not have must in the way of piloting skill. Sho eventually discovers the evil intent of Drake’s plans and defects to a group led by a noble opposed to Drake, named Nie Givun. Among this group is another person kidnapped from Upper Earth, Marvel Frozen a former cop from Texas. They along with their allies embark on a guerrilla war against Drake and to gather other kingdoms in an alliance to thwart the ambitions of Drake. After a long war in Byston Well, the story shifts to Upper Earth at the mid point of the series. Some people have criticized the series for the slow pacing in the Earth arc, but for me I think the second half of the show moves along fine, albeit with some rough spots.
Overall, Aura Battler Dunbine is a classic piece of mecha anime and one of better works of Yoshiyuki Tomino, which is saying a lot considering all the exceptional shows he has created and directed. I really enjoyed in when I watched it in 2009. So I would recommend it to any fan of mecha or fantasy anime. You can find reviews of each episode on the MAHQ website at this link: http://www.mahq.net/animation/dunbine/abdunbine/dunbinetoc.htm
Until next time, say addicted my friends. Devil_Survivor
Hey all you anime addicts, I wanted to share something with all of you. I’m about to finish a course that will certify me to teach English as a second language and I’m thinking about finding a job in Japan. This would be a dream come true for me because I love Japanese culture. I been so busy with the course that I have not been able to write much, but I’ll be back soon with some new stuff once the course concludes. I just wanted to throw this out there and get everyone’s opinion about this. It would mean a lot if this podcast had someone in Japan that could go to things and make reports, and I would love to do that. Anyway that’s all for now, see you soon on the ustream chat and on here for some anime action.
Romance is a genre or sub genre that I have come to appreciate over time, probably because it is the easiest way for me to connect to a character or characters emotionally and also because I love my drama. Drama in most anime tends to be a little over the top or melodramatic and while this may seem annoying at first, if done right it can be very moving.
As we all know by now Anime is a medium and most of its series are a mish-mash of all sorts of sub genres and if you are lucky you will get one with a good romantic sub plot. I wrote this article in order to examine and scrutinise how romance is portrayed in different kinds of anime and to possibly find out why some of them will bring you to tears and cripple you emotionally and why the others are just complete garbage. Just to make sure the views expressed are not completely subjective to my myself, I decided to bring three more opinions on board, 1 male and 2 female. I interviewed them all and they all had very interesting views on the subject.
The Chase or The Meal
That’s probably a horrible analogy for dating and being in an on-going relationship but bear with me. Most romance anime tends to tackle the dating or courtship aspect rather than the relationship building part. Personally, from a guys perspective, this is the most interesting and dramatic part of a relationship. Its easier for anime creators to carry the viewer along the protagonists story of trying to get to know the love interest and gradually befriending him/her before finally getting together, usually very dramatically at the end.
Super Korelle agrees with me, she said” I like stories about both courtship and about a relationship. With both you get to see the trails and errors the characters go through to be with each other and make what ever they have work. I find courtship to make for a better story line. Watching a character trying to get the person they like/love makes you (or at least me) more invested in the anime, praying and hoping they get them in the end.”
Kuuki also had a similar point of view, she said “I usually like the courtship better. Especially if the show is divided in two parts. I think it gives a greater liberty to the story to develop around the couple, the usual awkwardness and shyness of beginning romances. An established couple in a show centered exclusively around romance often becomes boring.”
Lvlln has a more apathetic view on the subject, he thinks “No preference. The vast majority are about courtship, though, so I’d like to see more good ones about an on-going relationship. That said, the reason the majority are about courtship is because courtship tends to be more fun to watch.”
So what is it exactly about the courtship route that keeps us coming back for more? The template is certainly over-used but the creators have found various ways to mix it up and make it refreshing for the viewers such as;
The Female Perspective
Take Kimi Ni Todoke for example, it’s a story about a socially awkward girl that slowly falls in love with the most popular boy at school. Sawako (the female lead) not only has to overcome her shyness but also find a suitable way to interact with Kazehaya (the popular boy) in order for him to regard her as a potential love interest. Needless to say it takes 2 full seasons to get some sort of final…closure but still the most interesting part of the story is trying to see just how Sawako will finally get to say she loves Kazehaya.
The female perspective may not necessarily be a groundbreaking form of story telling seeing as most shoujo titles are made this way. It’s the fact that Kimi Ni Todoke took ‘the chase’ approach rather than the relationship building one, Sawako never has a boyfriend in the entirety of the series, she doesn’t have to deal with commitment issues or anything of that sort, well not in the traditional way atleast.
The Love Web
By the way, they all hang out together
This has got to be my favourite aspect of romance in anime, rather than having the same old cliché love triangle some writers have decided to go all out and have created love webs. The best examples being Toradora! and Ano Hi Mita Hana No Namae Wo Boku Tach Wa Mada Shiranai (AKA Ano Hana)
I’ve talked about Toradora! and why I love it countless times so I’ll focus on Ano Hana on this article. In Ano Hana this group of friends has finally been reunited after drifting apart over the years because of the loss of Menma (The Loli lead) The reunion is not a sweet one because all these characters have gradually changed over time and some still hold grudges over things of the past. However, with the continuous passage of time and them spending more time with each other, old emotions buried deep within them start to come to the fold and drama ensues.
Again, they all hang out together
I think the fact that all these characters are friends makes the situation that little bit more dramatic, also add the fact that they have to overcome their old feelings of animosity towards each other before they could even come close to initiating a romantic conversation and you have Drama Gold. Again the main focus in this show was not the relationship building but watching as each character tries to woe the other, the chase.
Demographics
The courtship route is certainly interesting but it also has some glaring flaws, the most obvious being the age group it centers on. Dating or trying to get a boyfriend/girlfriend is a really big deal for adolescent teenagers and the idea of being in one is fantastically drawn out of proportion in their young minds (I know this because I was a victim of this terrible lie.) Writers capitalise on this and target most of their romance work to this demographic, which is why you get a lot of successful romance novels, like Twilight for example. The biggest problem that this trend brings is the fact that most romance stories will rarely focus upon on-going relationships or they will make them out to be a heavenly utopia which is not the case at all( shoujo is the worst offender when it comes to anime). It also means we rarely get to see romance stories focusing on grown adults.
“Teenage romance is interesting, but it’s very heavily represented in anime, so I’d like to see more of 20s-40s, prime ages when romance is a big deal.”
Romance is certainly a big deal after you lose those silly raging hormones, when you get older the whole dating thing gets old and you just wanna find your perfect match as quickly as possible so you can settle down.
“I would like romance anime to focus on the age group of 18-30 years old. I find a lot of anime to be with middle school or high school aged people. I am in the age group of 18-30 and would like to see more adult romance portrayed in anime. I have nothing against middle/high school romance anime, I would prefer to watch someone close to my age bracket going through the trails of love”
Most of those trials would deal with subjects young teenage minds might find hard to comprehend at first but are extremely vital, such as dealing with love after divorce or death of a spouse or having to quit your career in order to be a stay at home parent or even how to deal with relationships as a single parent.
“OLDER PEOPLE! I mean, I want less blooming high schoolers and more kickass older people. More stuff like Nana, more stuff like Usagi Drop. Please.”
Kuuki highlights some very good examples of anime that portray adult romance or atleast show it in a mature format. Both titles she mentioned are categorised as Josei, Josei is anime or manga meant to appeal to an older female audience, the adult version of Shoujo.
Josei
The romance side of things in Usagi Drop (the anime) is never in the foreground. However, it is executed so well that it engrains itself in the viewers minds. Daikichi the lead character is a 30 year old bachelor that decided to raise his 6 year old Aunt (watch the show its a long story) He is forced to demote himself at work in order to free up some time to care for Rin and also has to learn how to care for a child on the fly. His love interest is Rins’ best friends Mom Yukari, who is a 30 year old divorced single parent trying to raise a naughty 6 year old boy by herslf. Daikichis’ feelings are torn between trying to care for his adopted child and loving Yukari, he doesn’t know whether pursuing Yukari would be the right thing for him, Rin or Yukaris son. He has to gauge how each person involved would feel on top of that he is not even sure if the relationship would work out seeing as they are both strapped for time.
The amount of layers involved in that one relationship is so immense and you can see the struggle in both their eyes when they interact. Its love at its purest form, bittersweet.
Nana (which is my favourite manga by the way, you should all read it) deals with a college aged spunky female called Nana Komatsu. Nana decided to leave her parents home in order to live with her boyfriend in Tokyo. Nana starts off as a naive character with childish hopes and aspirations for her life such as being the perfect housewife for her future husband. Reality kicks in pretty quick as soon as she gets to Tokyo though, her boyfriend is still not capable of caring for her and she ends up having to live n her own and making ends meet.
The romance side of things get interesting when you realise that as a high schooler Nana was having an affair with a married man. Being young and naive she thought she had found true love when in truth she was only being used for body. This past continuously haunts Nana and how she perceives men in general. She believes that all men are as fickle as the wind and as long as she doesn’t satisfy any of their needs she will be left alone again just like that married man she was having an affair with did. And thats only half of what Nana deals with!
Harems
Whether you love them or love to hate them Harem anime will continue to be popular and will always remain a firm part of the anime industry. Some of the classics are harem titles like Tenchi Muyo and Love Hina for example. There have been some (and thats very few) exceptional Harems that have portrayed romance well but I think we can all agree that most of them are a horrible source for a sweet love story.
Kuuki had a lot to say on the subject.
” Hakuouki, which is a reverse harem anime suffers from the disease of the genre (the same reason why I can’t watch many harem anime), I can never believe how so many people fall in love or at the very least care that much for such a dull main character, so yeah it ruins the show. Its really hard for me to be able to believe in such a story if the main character is dull, sometimes we’re also presented with a harem where no real romantic conclusion is reached and we get the feeling everyone is in love with everyone.”
She gave examples of some of the Harem titles that just get to her.
“Kore wa Zombie desu ka? It’s the typical “everyone falls in love with the main character” type of story (and one of the rare I have finished) and while it is implied said main character is mostly in love with Yuu, it never is clearly established. In that aspect it wasn’t exactly representative of romance, but it had plot and it was funny so I managed to finish it.
As for others, I’d say MajiKoi? I’ve only watched a few episodes but it was boring and the main character was oblivious to everyone apart from his sister, very weak on the romance part, very heavy on the fanservice. Not exactly my cup of tea either.”
Surprisingly, there were some good examples.
“Kore wa Zombie desu ka? It’s the typical “everyone falls in love with the main character” type of story (and one of the rare I have finished) and while it is implied said main character is mostly in love with Yuu, it never is clearly established. In that aspect it wasn’t exactly representative of romance, but it had plot and it was funny so I managed to finish it.
As for others, I’d say MajiKoi? I’ve only watched a few episodes but it was boring and the main character was oblivious to everyone apart from his sister, very weak on the romance part, very heavy on the fanservice. Not exactly my cup of tea either.”
Surprisingly, there were some good examples.
“Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai( The World god Only Knows). It’s essentially a harem anime but Keima never falls in love and the girls who do forget afterwards, it’s an endless repetition of the conquest on a different character everytime, Keima has a strong personality and it never gets boring.
Strangely enough, I’d say Hakuouki too was a nice harem anime, mostly because it reaches a clear conclusion and because of the setting during Edo period. Lastly, I’m not very knowledgeable in the genre but Bakemonogatari would count right? Once again we reach a clear conclusion and the story doesn’t revolve exclusively around the romance.”
I enjoyed both Kami Nomi and Bakemonogatari, but Lvlln explains why Bakemonogatari is an exceptional ‘harem’ a lot better than I do.
“The romance between Hitagi and Koyomi made for one of the greatest single episodes of all time, but the show overall was not about their romance. There was a considerable amount of character growth for Hitagi, we saw her open up her softer side, using the romance to help her get over the traumatic experience during middle school of almost getting raped. For Koyomi, it was learning what it means to be a lover, that is, that there is nothing special in it, it’s enough just to be yourself and to be there for her.”
Bakemonogatari
So how do you feel about Harems in general?
“Harems tend to dehumanize the girls, turning them into a set of features instead of a whole person. Hard to have a good romance when one half of the relationship isn’t a full person.”
I would personally recommend any of the Key titles if you are looking for a good harem, both Clannad and Kanon are sweet stories filled with comedy and tragedy but they both still suffer from ‘the disease of the genre’ as Kuuki so subtly puts it.
Fanservice In Romance
I think the biggest problem with harems is that they are a manifestation of male (sometimes females) imaginations. Who wouldn’t want to be surrounded by beautiful girls all doting on you? Most harem titles are targeted at men and because of this they usually have a lot of fanservice, the distasteful kind. I find that this draws me away from the potentially good love story and it puts me off the show entirely. I asked the panel if they felt the same.
“Not necessarily, if it doesn’t feel forced (well, fanservice feels mostly forced but accidents happen) Take Bakuman for example, it has a few examples of fanservice but it doesn’t hurt the sweetness of the romance backstory the slightest bit (and that is helped by the presence of two couples too). And to be honest, romance or not, a normal human would look at the person he’s in love with, he’d look for the fanservice opportunities. We can’t really avoid it. I’d rather have fanservice in a romance anime where it would look more or less natural than random fanservice in the middle of something that has nothing to do with it (case in hand : Guilty Crown)”
Taking a bit of a stab at Guilty Crown there, but I do agree with the point she raises about lovers being physically attracted to each other. Having good looks is a major factor when it comes to picking a partner but I suppose this is a hard thing to portray in anime because nearly everyone looks amazing most of the time.
“In my opinion fanservice does hurt a sweet romantic story for me. One moment the characters are having a sweet moment together and next thing you know pantie shot or the girl loses their swim top in the pool. Sweet moment ruined in a matter of seconds. Don’t get me wrong fanservice is good, just not in a sweet romantic story.”
Lvlln is on the other side of the fence with this one.
“I haven’t seen any romance anime with distasteful fanservice yet. B Gata H Kei had fanservice in spades, but it only made the series better.”
B Gata H Kei really, how?
“Yamada’s attempt to seduce that Takahashi was the whole point of the show. The development was in Yamada and Takahashi learning what it means to be in a relationship and how to start a physical relationship”
On the topic of fanservice, I always wondered why it was always rare to see sex scenes in most romantic anime. I mean even day time soap operas have them. I liked how Nana dealt with their scenes, it made sense to have them shown and was certainly not just inserted (no pun intended) for fanservice purposes. It would be great to see more titles adopt this formula.
“Yes. Handled in a mature, realistic fashion as in Tsukihime. No need for porn-type sex scenes as in Yosuga no Sora.”
“Yes I would like to see more. It doesn’t have to be shown them going to climax, maybe just the beginnings of sex and move on to them waking up the next morning. I would also like it to be tasteful done and not full of fanservice.”
“Mmmh yes? Then again, I’m a huge perv so I guess it’s only natural. Now you mention it, it’s true it’s rare, it often happens or is heavily suggested in BL anime, there was a few in Paradise Kiss but it’s a very rare occurence.”
Paradise Kiss being another Aii Yazawa (Nana) manga which I should get to reading soon.
Boys Love
Kuuki brings up the topic of Boys Love to mind, I’m certainly not an expert on Yaoi but its pretty obvious that most of them deal with romance. I recall a huge uproar in the fandom last season when two titles aired concurrently, those titles were Yuru Yuri and No.6. Yuru Yuri was a show that was clearly meant to have Yuri it said so in the title, fans rejoiced, who doesn’t like watching lesbians right? But the response for No.6 which was a sci-fi show with implied yaoi got mixed reactions. I recall a tweet I saw on twitter stating ” You wouldn’t like Yuru Yuri so much if it was called Yuru Yaoi” and unfortunately I had to agree with that.
I had preconceived conceptions of Boys Love anime, being about men, I thought they would tackle the difficulties of being homosexual in an environment that still isn’t fully accepting of that while trying to deal with their romantic emotions for each other. Also the fact that BL is targeted at females I always thought they were a little more mature in their execution.
The sad truth is they are the exact opposite, characters fall in love with each other for no real reason whatsoever and the amount of times characters are quite honestly raped is almost comical. I asked the girls whether they thought this was natural or fantasy.
“I don’t know if you can call it natural, nor fantastical either, I think it depends on the author. While it can feel forced, and just plain unrealistic (well, it’s not like some shojo are much more realistic either so I guess I can forgive them) there are also some very good pieces. The thing with BL is that most manga are really short, it gives less time to develop a story and characters and most authors have to deal with that, it doesn’t always work very well, especially when you work with characters very different from each other.
But from a female point of view who’s reading pretty much every genre so I can compare, BL is special, it lets the girl who reads it stay out of the story, we’re not represented in it, it has nothing to do with us, so they can do whatever they want we don’t really care about it being realistic or not. It’s just enjoying a story for what it is, no pressure to find the prince charming or anything.”
So It’s basically a female fantasy…
“I have only watched one Boys Love anime and they portrayed romance in a bit of a natural but leaning towards the fantastical, if that makes any sense.”
Uhhh….okay I guess. So what would be some good BL titles?
“I don’t read many BL (to be honest I don’t even like the genre) and BL anime is rare, a good one is even rarer, but I’ll answer anyway. When talking about manga I’ll say Acid Town, because, while the BL is present it’s really toned down (for now at least) it’s mostly a story about criminals in a dangerous city and such. As for anime, I think I’ll say Antique Bakery because it’s sweet (in a lot of ways), and not only about love stories either.”
“I have only watched one Boys Love anime,that is Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi. I like how it is not two main characters that are being shown. They have a few characters going through different story lines. It just doesn’t focus on romance it has some comedic moments with characters, which is a nice balance with the romance.”
Favourite Romance Recommendations
I think anime with the best character development can mostly be found or is created with the aid of romance which is why I like the genre so much. Even shounen shows like Naruto or even Bleach add that element to make the series a little bit more deep. A lot of titles have been mentioned in this article already but I asked my panel to name a few titles that they would consider their favourites,
Lvlln chose;
The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya
The show was rather subtle about this, as much of it were episodics about various antics the SOS Brigade got into, but everything always kept going back to the feelings Haruhi and Kyon had for each other, and their journey to acknowledging their feelings for the first time. The climax of the show came only when both Kyon and Haruhi were forced to be honest about their feelings. The show was directed and paced well and pulled off the non-chronology meta game flawlessly, using it to slowly reveal to us the romantic plot.
Tsukihime
Less subtle than Melancholy, the romance in Tsukihime developed slowly as Shiki and Arcueid spent time together trying to hunt down the vampire in town. Their relationship developed organically, and though relatively fast by many standards (the show took place in under 10 days, IIRC), none of it felt forced. It is one of the few romantic anime to actually have sex, and it was important for the plot, not at all exploitative.
Super Korelle picked;
Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu
It had good character development, a good story line. It had its sweet romantic moments, as well as it’s funny moments. It also had a happy ending for the two main characters. Must be the romantic in me, but I like my romantic anime to have a happy ending. It’s nice to see a happy ending after the characters go through something.
Kuuki chose;
Arakawa Under the Bridge
Arakawa Under the Bridge probably, because Ric’s love for Nino is adorable and Nino’s love for Ric is sweet, in a very weird way. The story is funny and not only about them either, even though romance has quite a huge part in it. Billy and his girlfriend are wonderful in their devotion for each other. Maria and Sister are such an unlikely couple that it makes them perfect for each other. P-Ko’s love for the mayor is so innocent and he’s so oblivious to it all that they’re really interesting to watch.
And my pick, heh well I think you should all get to watch;
Lovely Complex
Probably the best shoujo title out there, the lead characters is designed to look like an average high school girl, she does not have super model looks but is still cute. Her insecurities about her physical features deter her from pursuing her love interest but she slowly overcomes this and confesses to the boy and this is when the show really starts. Its got great comedic moments and some sad ones, it even has a few love triangles along the way. You should definetly give it a go.
Special thanks to Kuuki, Lvlln and Super Korelle for participating in this, you can follow them on twitter by clicking on their icons and read their blogs as well.
