The secret to being a successful anime blogger is proper planning.

It sure has been raining a lot lately. I like the rain, though.

Sorry for the recent silence. I didn’t intend for the blog to go dark for such a long stretch of time, but it seems my brain is on vacation. I’m actually taking some time off later in the month; perhaps I’m getting an early start?

I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but voting is in progress for the inaugural Anime Blog Awards. Hop Step Jump has been nominated in three categories: Best Editorial Blog, Most Influential Blog, and Most Thought-Provoking Blog. Voting is open to the general public, so if you’re interested in participating, you can do so here. The polls close on May 15.

That’s all for now. I’m going to convalesce this weekend in hopes of finding some creative energy.

Snow, apparently.

I’m sure you’ve heard the news by now, but Aria has been licensed for North American release. For some reason, I’m not surprised. Right Stuf has gotten into the habit of licensing a lot of my favorite shows.

What’s interesting, however, is that the distributor held off on making their licensing announcement until a month after the show’s final season finished airing in Japan. I can’t help but wonder if they’re acknowledging the fact that many, if not most, of their buyers have been following the series in fansub format over the years, and would have been disappointed in a licensing announcement immediately prior to the series actually ending. It could just be a coincidence, of course, but the timing sure is suspicious.

Anyway, Aria is one of those rare shows that I’m always in the mood to watch an episode (or sixteen) of, so you can bet I’m looking forward to owning it on DVD. And I know I’m not alone. There’s an Aria fan born every minute, after all.

I’m sure if you asked someone who wasn’t particularly well acquainted with anime what its defining features are, you’d hear the standard responses: big eyes, neon hair, sex, and giant robots. Of course, every anime fan knows that there’s much more to the medium than, say, sexy big-eyed giant robot pilots with neon hair.

A lot of sexy big-eyed giant robot pilots have perfectly normal black hair, for example.

But people wouldn’t say those things if they weren’t true to some extent. Anime characters do typically have big eyes. Unnatural hair colors are a common sight. Sex is still a driving force in the industry.

And giant robots have never gone out of style.

It’s no secret that I’m not the world’s biggest mecha anime fan. I don’t actively dislike the genre or anything; rather, I’ve just never been all that intrigued by it. At the same time, I’m not much of a shounen action fan, and seeing as a lot of mecha series are, in part, shounen action series, I’ve steered wide and clear of the genre over the years. It’s not my thing.

But, I think there’s more to it than just that. As a child growing up, I never developed the same fascination with machines that many young boys do. My older brother had a keen interest in airplanes, likely driven by the fact our father worked in the aircraft industry. I had greater interest in writing, music, and other creative pursuits. And when we played together, I’d take my Legos and construct cities and buildings; my brother would build automobiles and spaceships. As we grew older, his interest turned to cars and architecture. Mine, to weather and maps. Today, he works in industrial design. I work in international business.

Or, to be more exact, I work in international business in the aerospace industry, spending my days surrounded by engineers who probably grew up with similar interests as my brother. Except, they’re still building their spaceships today. And when they talk about it, their eyes light up, and I realize how much passion they have for machines and what makes them work. And I think that explains a lot about the enduring popularity of mecha anime. If you accept that most Japanese anime fans are male and likely grew up with similar interests as my brother and many of my coworkers, you start to understand the appeal of mecha anime.

Of course, things change. I’m not entirely sure how to explain the growing popularity of moe anime and bishoujo game adaptations in a similar fashion - I’m not sure I want to know, to be honest - and as anime has spread around the globe, the diversity of its fans has increased tenfold. Mecha has held on nonetheless, but the focus has gradually shifted from the machines to the lives of the people who pilot them and the conflicts of which they are tools.

Or perhaps it’s been that way for some time already. It is the Gundam model, after all, and even though there’s no shortage of Gundam freaks out there who can tell you the thread length on every screw holding a MS-06J Zaku II together, there are just as many who spend their weekends dressing up like Char Aznable and waxing philosophic about the virtue of war with their Zeon comrades at the corner coffee shop.

Oddly enough, however, the one mecha show I consider a favorite is one in which the mechanics of the mecha themselves are both realistic and presented in such a way that many engineers would appreciate. Of course, I’m talking about Patlabor. With the exception of its oversized service revolver and gratuitous design elements, the Ingram makes sense. And many of the common Labors featured in the show look and function like the construction implements they are. I suppose you could argue that there are more efficient ways of doing construction work than utilizing giant bipedal robots, but from a purely mechanical standpoint, Labors are pretty no-nonsense compared to the giant robots in your average mecha series.

The fact that Labors are, essentially, giant machines is not lost on the show, either. Special Vehicles has more gearheads than police officers. Even a few of the police officers are mecha otaku in their own right. And the show spends as much time dealing with stories of industrial espionage and the politics of an increasingly technocratic world as it does stories of routine police work. The tag line at the end of each episode says a lot about the show’s outlook, I think: “This is a work of fiction, but in ten years, who knows?” Gundam is science fiction for dreamers. Patlabor, however, is science fiction for realists.

Not that there’s anything wrong with dreaming, of course. Today’s dreams are tomorrow’s reality, and all that jazz. But, while I have a little bit of dreamer in me, I’ve always been a realist at heart. It’s just one of the many reasons I love Patlabor as much as I do.

And when people ask me what I do for a living, and I say, “I work with a bunch of rocket scientists, but I just pretend to be a lawyer all day,” it’s not like I’m trying to make them laugh.

Honest.

You know, it never really occurred to me until now, but the cast of Aria is young. They’re all teenagers, if not a few years past twenty by the end of the series. The funny thing is, with the exception of Alice, whose great talent despite her young age is an ongoing plot point, the series doesn’t make much fuss about the age of its characters. Without the appropriate background, one could just as well assume that Akari and Aika are both several years older than they actually are.

Even more surprising is the fact that the Water Fairies are just as young. This, despite being the premier Undines in Neo-Venezia and mentors to three girls only a few years their junior. We know from Grandma’s long career that Undines aren’t exactly the Martian tourist trade’s version of the Japanese office lady, keeping busy until they can find a man to marry. But I can’t think of a single instance in the entire series where we meet an Undine who is clearly over the age of twenty-five. I guess they all moved up to middle management.

Of course, this is par for the course when it comes to anime. Even anime series that address the lives of adults, such as Patlabor and You’re Under Arrest, are stocked with characters younger than myself. And many of their viewers. An appeal to nostalgia is fine, too… I guess.

Now get your giant robot off my damn lawn, you little punk.

Just so you know, work and the sudden onset of Spring have conspired to suck up most of my spare mental and physical energy these past few weeks. I’ll be out of town on business next week, too, so I suspect the remainder of April is pretty much shot as far as blogging is concerned.

Sorry, but such is life.

Anyway, I’m still in the process of catching up with the Spring anime season. Here are some initial impressions of the shows I’ve sampled thus far…

Da Capo - More of the same. I’m man enough to admit that I have a soft spot for Da Capo. Through good times and bad, it’s always entertaining.

Kure-nai - I had been looking forward to this show for awhile, but I was also apprehensive given its pedigree and the fact I couldn’t quite figure out what genre to place it in. And while I still have a lot of questions about the show, I have to say that the first two episodes were quite good and more than enough to grab my interest. The art is attractive, the direction has style, and the acting is far more organic than what you’d find in your typical anime series. I especially enjoy the dynamic between the two leads. It’s surprisingly warm.

Itazura na Kiss - Who brought the time machine to the party? I’m having flashbacks to Marmalade Boy here. And I mean that in a positive way. Seriously, though, this is old school, traditional shoujo, and it’s just the sort of thing I have a history of getting hooked on. Great OP, by the way.

Kanokon - Kawasmui Ayako needs to talk dirty more often. As for the show itself? It’s funny in much the same way Girls Bravo was funny, and the boundary pushing fanservice is cute, but I see the joke getting very old, very fast. It’s been a blast, Kanokon, but I really gotta go now.

Macross Frontier - Yoko Kanno is in top form this time around. Victor best not be stingy with the soundtrack releases. Other than that, all I’ll say is that this is likely to be the, “damn, I can’t wait for the next episode,” series of the season for me. It’s good. Go watch it, already.

Special A - For some reason, this show has yet to click with me. The humor and writing feels unusually mechanical, and it sucks a lot of the charm out of what should otherwise be a fun show. However, it clearly has potential, and it could very well grow on me, so I’m reluctant to pass on it without watching another episode or two.

One thing I asked myself upon finishing Clannad was, “Of all the recent anime adaptations of Key visual novels, which had the most likable male lead?” After some thought, I settled on Okazaki Tomoya, but it was while evaluating Aizawa Yuuichi’s character that I tripped on something I had never tripped on before: the primary reason why I’m not a big fan of the Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi.

When the Kanon remake first aired, there was a lot of talk of how Yuuichi was essentially a clone of Haruhi’s Kyon, given their similarly sarcastic nature and the fact both characters were voiced by Sugita Tomokazu. I saw the similarity as well, but the two characters still struck me as fundamentally different. But why? It’s funny that I didn’t realize it until now, but the reason is quite simple. Yuuichi is likable. Kyon, on the other hand, is not.

Now, I’m sure there are plenty of Haruhi fans out there who will disagree with me, but my impression of Kyon was indeed negative. And since the show was structured in such a way as to emphasize his negative qualities, what with his neverending sarcastic narration and contemptuous observations on the events occurring around him, he grew more and more insufferable with each episode. I’m reminded of a conversation I had with Momotato in which he commented that he would have enjoyed the show more himself had it not been for Kyon’s internal monologue. I think I now understand what he was getting at.

Of course, complicating matters further is the fact that Haruhi is a somewhat unpleasant character herself. Perhaps that’s why Hirano Aya’s voice grates on me so much nowadays? That’s another topic all together, I guess.

Anyway, just a thought. I suppose it might be worth rewatching the show some time soon, just to make sure I’m not being unfair in my assessment.