Hey y’all,
This Saturday (i.e. tomorrow), I’ll be appearing with such luminaries as Yamila Abraham, founder of Yaoi Press and Reno Avorellis, the Prince of Yaoi at Denver’s Animeland Wasabi, where we’ll be stone cold jivin’ about Masaaki Yuasa and Mamoru Hosoda, two directors we’ve singled out for doing some pretty darn cool stuff.
For a sample of the stunning insight I’ll be providing, check out my review of Kaiba.
If you’re in town, come on by. We’re on at 11 AM.
We here at Colony Drop are known for complaining about the decline of the Japanese animation industry, due in part to the Japanese companies’ increased interest in pandering to certain groups of fans. Nothing guarantees sales like getting on your knees and serving up enough obvious fanbait to make brain-dead fanboys (or fangirls) tune in.
It isn’t hard to see why this practice is creatively bankrupt: a focus on fans’ desires over the creators’ ideas means having to sacrifice originality in the name of surefire profit. We, the eternal optimists behind Colony Drop, aren’t so naïve as to claim that this hasn’t always been a part of the anime industry/fan relationship, but in recent years, it’s become downright epidemic. As you may expect, such pandering generally makes no attempt to woo the sensibilities of the discerning Colony Drop staff. However, times have changed, and, for once, someone in the Japtoon-making business has wisened up and created a new cartoon that caters to dudes just like us: Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn.
As we first mentioned some five months ago, we’re planning on doing a fanzine for release sometime this summer. Despite months of silence on the topic, we’re still planning on doing it. Submissions are due by the first of April, at which point we’ll start work on putting everything together. We’ve got people working on layout and a cover, so it should look pretty swanky.
If you’re at all interested in either writing up an article or providing some art for the ‘zine, we’re still accepting contributors. Get in contact with us at: colonydrop.staff@gmail.com.
I’ve had a couple of books from Viz’s new prose fiction line, Haikasoru, sitting on my bookshelf for months now. Given my history of commentary on the cutting edge of Japanese fiction in translation — and Mark’s Yukikaze review popping up on the blog backend — I figured it was about time I told you all what to think about Viz’s fine, not-at-all-light novel-related products.
So, what better place to start than an anthology of horror/suspense short stories written by a Faust contributor? I’m not really a huge fan of grim and gruesome horror stuff — heads flying off should be a joyful and light-hearted occasion, not something that makes me feel ill. Luckily for me, Otsuichi tries his hand at a number of genres and tones in ZOO, and a couple of the stories are really funny, something that doesn’t come across as much in Viz’s marketing for the “dark fantasy” book.
Chohei Kambayashi’s Yukikaze opens with a formation of fighter-bomber jets carrying out a pounding airstrike on an outpost of their mysterious extraterrestrial foes. The strike appears to be a success, until, seemingly out of nowhere, enemy interceptors ambush the squadron, badly decimating the fighter-bombers in the chaotic dogfight that ensues. The squadron leader can only grit his teeth behind his flight mask, as he watches most of his planes go down in flames.
None of the aforementioned events or characters actually matter to the narrative of this novel. Yukikaze is really about the reconnaissance plane and its pilot, who slowly circles over the carnage, dispassionately observing the destruction of his comrades before declaring the mission complete and returning to base, leaving the survivors for dead. In a book so slappily happy eager to churn out allegory and extended metaphors, this piece at the very beginning is the most ingenious. Kambayashi perfectly evokes the state to be experienced by the reader for the remainder of the book: numbly watching events from a distance as a passive, indifferent observer, without a shred of care about anyone who comes into view, let alone whether they live or die.
This is a Japtoon so mediocre, it doesn’t even deserve vitriol.
No, the appropriate response to Tekken: The Motion Picture is almost certainly a simple sigh and a shake of the head. The last thing it deserves is for someone to acknowledge its existence in the form of a review, but it’s Theme Week here on Colony Drop, and I pulled the short stick.
The 1997 VHS release of Legend of the Crystals stands out amongst the releases of effectively-defunct Japanimation publisher Urban Vision. The majority of their catalog is firmly rooted in the “Not Kids’ Stuff” marketing of the 1990s: violent and grotesque gothic horror, darker-and-edgier superhero remakes, and Golgo 13. A light-hearted tie-in to a video game that wouldn’t be released (officially) in English for several years doesn’t really jibe with the rest of their catalog, even taking into account the gold rush of videogame adaptation releases following the breakout success of Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. But there it is: MADHOUSE’s 1994 Final Fantasy OAV series, easily the best non-game production to wear the franchise’s name, chilling on Blockbuster Video’s Japanimation shelf.