Happy Kinnikuman Day

Before getting yelled at by security at the 6th annual Kinnikuman Day Muscle Museum, I managed to snap a few shots of original artwork:


Mask Hunting poster illustration


Jump Comics volume 23 cover illustration


Torn from the pages of Yudetamago's high school notebook!


Reportedly the first manga inspired kimono ever made.


For just 3813.07USD you can own your very own life-sized ethnic Kinnikuman, limited to 5 pieces!


Magical Mosh Misfits' take on Warsman




I waited in line with a full bladder for over three hours to get a ticket which allowed me to wait in line another hour and a half to get this. A small price to pay as Nakai-sensei rarely does signings these days, especially as a duo with Shimada-sensei.

View the entire Flickr set here.

Madoka Magica: Growing from Chara to Character and Beyond

Puella Magi Madoka Magica, the anime event of the decade, has come and gone. Speculation regarding the finale will rage on far longer than the show's compact broadcast period, and the next generation of creators will hold its influence close to their hearts. Will it prove to surpass Evangelion, as frenzied fans had clamored?

As Kyubey promised Madoka as he persuaded her to form a pact, "You have the power to change the rules." But before we understand the potential impact caused by Madoka, we need to understand where the rules stand, and to do that we'll explore the concept of chara and character.

A chara exists as an icon composed of visual shortcuts. The success of a chara lies in their moe value, or lovability. Chara represents marketability. Hello Kitty is the ideal chara—A simple yet instantly recognizable design, cute as a button, and with no context outside of the fact that she is Hello Kitty.

In contrast, a character can exist independently of their context. They develop a sense of presence and verisimilitude through their actions that allows them to continue on after the text concludes. A strong character has a clear worldview and personality.

Shinji Ikari, despite his flaws, or rather precisely because of them, is a solid character. He may not give the audience what they want, but the fact that his ambivalence is frustrating to us shows an emotional attachment. We want to see him succeed, do well, and overcome himself. The drama of the series rides on the personal investment we make. If we don’t care about the character, the plot falls flat. 



With his ten-dollar haircut and reserved personality, Shinji was designed to be an everyman. And while this helps us project ourselves onto him and form the necessary emotional bond, it hurts his marketability. He has no chara. He’s got no zazz, no visual punch. Shinji’s got no moe. 

Which brings me to my next point:

It does not follow that a strong character be a strong chara. Fully developed characters may lack the elegance that makes a chara compelling enough for a consumer to purchase their goods. Likewise, a chara may have no redeeming features as a character, but be iconic enough to move a product based solely in their design.


Pokemon stands at the pinnacle of chara recognition. What they lack in personality they make up in moe factor. You’d have to make a concerted effort not to like them. The "Who’s That Pokemon?" segment that bookends commercials proves their primal appeal. We can pick them out by silhouette alone, a useful skill when navigating the toy isle filled with products jockeying for our attention.

Superheroes possess this same recognizability. Their costumes, from color schemes to logos, provide a visual feast of bite-sized iconography. This in turn is enriched by decades of back-story and character development, which is then digested into a compact symbol that represents a whole greater than its parts. 


Take Superman’s S as an example. Its iconography suggests truth, justice, and the American way; leaping tall buildings in a single bound; secret identities, the last surviving son of an extinct planet. All coiled up in a single striking S. The S stands for "super moe."
This is a good time as any to mention what is known by critics as the “moe database,” or a library of visual shorthand that has grown to also encompass personality traits. Imagine you have two columns—Symbols in Column A (glasses, pig tails, maid uniforms), and archetypes in Column B (tsun-dere, Goth lolita, little sister). From here you can mix-and-match a chara from any number of presets, like building an avatar for an online game. 

These established cues can make a chara an instant success with the target audience.

But a mishmash of personality quirks doesn’t make a character worthy of investing emotional capital. Characters are built on the internal consistency and believability of their actions.

We open our wallets to chara, and open our hearts to characters. Icons who possess both tend to stand the test of time.

Rei Ayanami is a modern representation of the harmonious union of chara and character. Her mysterious character draws the audience in, building up expectations only to betray them to great effect when she shows rare glimpses of emotion. On the other hand, her trademark red eyes and bob cut form the core of a chara that powers the Gainax marketing giant. But even after you take away these visual shortcuts, you’re still left with a solid, interesting character.

How do the magical girls of Madoka Magika perform under a similar stress test?

A cursory glance over the color-coded cast reveals a lineup of tired stereotypes transplanted thoughtlessly from any generic magical girl or moe anime.

There’s the irrationally exuberant best friend Miki, the busty older-sister Mami, the bratty candy-chomping kid sister Kyoko, the taciturn tsun-tsun Homura, and the ditzy heroine Madoka destined for great things by mere virtue of her status as the main character.

No one could blame you for closing your browser in disgust after the first episode. Hell, after the first ten minutes!

But then you’d miss the greatest slight of hand ever attempted in anime. Once they make their initial impression on the audience, these genre tropes are sided out for a deck of ironic punishments dealt out with wickedness and pathos not seen since the Divine Comedy.

Miki plunges from the height of hope to self-destructive despair; Mami’s role as a mentor meets a Faust-like end after achieving true happiness; Kyoko’s snacking cements her fate as human cattle chewing it's cud; Homura’s detached nature stems from the trauma of watching her friends die agonizing deaths ad nausea as reward for attempting to save them; Madoka is erased from existence, her memory as forgotten as her impact during life.

The inherit limits of their chara give way to relatable characters. You stare in awe as the dull chrysalis splits into a dazzling butterfly. Will it survive to take flight, or be crushed on the stalk as it waits helplessly for its newfound wings to harden? The death of a character hits twice as hard, weighted with the impact of lost potential. There is a romanticism in that—You mourn what the character could have been, and never lament the failure they became.

A show like Madoka wouldn’t have been possible twenty, or even ten years ago. Not due to a lack of creative vision or technology, but because the infrastructure wasn’t there—No moe database means no pre-fabricated chara, which means no expectations to betray, no twist of the knife, and no subsequent drama. 



Madoka is the end result of everything that has come before her, all the reiterations of the same settings, all the repeated players acting out their lives in slightly divergent ways.



Now ask yourself: For the length of this article, have I been referring to Madoka the heroine, or Madoka the TV series?

Both. I argue that the series and character are one and the same, and should be viewed as such. Allow me to explain.

One of Madoka’s central themes is karma, the idea that all past actions (causes) define our present self (effect). A great miracle will result in equally great despair. The life of the universe expands itself into dead entropy. All sums cash out at zero. Madoka’s god-like powers were further augmented each time Homura spun the wheel of Samsara—the Buddhist cycle of life, death, and reincarnation—before eventually burning out into nothingness.

In the same way, the artistic impact of the show itself is amplified by everything that’s come before it—years and years of magical girl nonsense and moe tripe. The karma of the industry. How is it that Madoka exploded like a supernova when it should have collapsed under its own weight like a black hole?



Recall what Madoka’s mother said in Episode six in reference to Miki—make your best mistakes when you’re young and still have the energy to bounce back from them. And more importantly, if I may add—when you can still learn from them. Past errors pave the way to future greatness. Suffering under the yoke of moe was a burden necessary to till the soil for Madoka to bud forth. Ten years spent enduring hellfire in the crucible of Akiba-Kei anime proved to be well worth the suffering. The industry still has a bright future ahead of it, if we’re willing to pay the price.

Does this make her, and by association the anime, a martyr? Not a chance. Especially because her noble sacrifice, the so-called Deus ex Madoka that has the interwebs clamoring with speculation, was not a sacrifice at all.

Step back and consider for a moment exactly what quality it was that Homura’s time warps brought out in Madoka. It wasn’t some ill-defined strength or gimmicky super power. It was her inherent love, her compassion that could relieve the suffering of all sentient beings in the universe. When I said that Homura spun the wheel of Samsara I was not being figurative. Homura didn’t reset anything—remember that all sums are equal to zero—she merely carried everything equal steps backwards, the karma of each character weighed only heavier on their shoulders with each reincarnation, resulting in an increasingly tragic scenario with each go.
Madoka did not die for your sins. Rather, she literally escaped from underneath the Karmatic wheel of death and reincarnation to transcend into Buddhahood. Forget Jesus—a more apt celestial comparison would be Amida (or Amitabah), the Buddha of comprehensive love who appears before the dying and escorts them to the Pure Land. Madoka sheds her tears for you, not the other way around.



This notion can help us find solace in the otherwise heart-wrenching scene at the end of the series between Homura and Madoka’s would-be-family. The mother quips, “Madoka? Is that some anime character?” This line could as easily either make your bottom lip quiver or be dismissed as a 4th-wall breaking throw away gag that production house Shaft is infamous for. Yet there’s so much more to it.

The mother and son are stand-ins for the audience. People in the real world are having this exact same conversation as you read this. “You don't know Madoka? You need to see it!” Five years from now critics will be saying, “That's so Madoka.”



Madoka has transcended chara and character. She is a now a key word, free from the limitations of the medium and liberated to spill over into our word. A true God. The question is, did her advent save the industry, or damn it to another generation of derivative works? The wheel of Samsara continues to turn. All I can say for sure is this—I’ll gladly wait another decade for her second coming.

Killer Snake Wreacks Havoc in Harajuku

As if it wasn't congested enough, megaphone toting police had to be brought in for crowd control as all of Harajuku looked on in terror while this snake slithered up and down the station street sign this afternoon. Imagine my glee every time it threatened to slink down the pole, sending goth lolis and drag queens running and screaming in all directions!

Banned in the Name of Good Taste

Banning a product is a gamble by the powers that be. They always run the risk of garnering negative publicity for the thing they hoped to burn with the trash, a lesson exemplified by the surge of interest in the otherwise niche woman stalking simulation Rape Lay after the British Parliament rallied to smite it from Amazon.com.

As Oscar Wilde once said, "the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about," and indeed, sometimes the ban hammer has the desired effect and obliterates its quarry from the public conscious. Lucky for the reader, we're here to open up old wounds and maybe add a dash of salt in the process. Never forget!

Dakko-Chan

If this toy makes you uncomfortable, it's because it reminds you have racist you are.

From kogals with loose socks to Shibuya gyaru with fearsome fake nails and blinged-out rhinestone cell phones, high school girls have always been the front runners of obnoxious fashion trends. The post-war generation was no exception and jumped out of the gates in 1960 with Kinobori Winky, an inflatable vinyl doll that hung on you arm and winked at passersby with its lenticular eyes.

Lovingly christened by the media as Dakko-Chan (something akin to "Little Huggums"), this innocent tar baby rode the arms of schoolgirls across the nation to define a generation. The hottest thing to hit that summer, it was an overnight success and demand far outstripped supply. Storefronts were hammered by waves of customers waiting to buy redemption tickets, which gave them the privilege to line up again later for a chance to buy the actual doll. Nearly 2.5 million units were moved in just six months—everyone was in love with Dakko-Chan. 


Well, nearly everyone. Detractors criticized the hugging mechanism as undermining the moral fiber of society, and the winking gimmick as downright poppycock. Not to mention attacks from human rights groups who, in the 1988 anime and manga reforms, called out the toy’s black skin, swollen lips, and bushman skirt as racially insensitive.

This was all directed at a country who doesn’t know a golliwog from Mister Popo or Pokemon's Jynx. The maker Takara Tomi caved in and eventually released variant colors sans the outrageous lips, setting the stage for Bobby Ologun to take his rightful place as the average citizen’s first exposure to an African stereotype. Ironically, with all the effort put into making Dakko-Chan politically correct, nothing has been done to subdue the spread of Japanese hip-hop and reggae, something truly offensive to persons of good conscious the world over.

Everyone’s Ta-Bo


Proof positive that ignorance is bliss.

With his eyes fused shut in bliss and a chronic case of slack jaw, Ta-Bo was Sanrio’s answer to the motivational posters loved by school guidance counselors. Go to bed early and get up earlier! Smile and the world smiles with you! This positive propaganda machine was born in 1984 to slowly fade from greeting cards and stationary as we moved into a cynical 21st century.

Reasoning follows that the character was cycled out due to a lack of popularity, but it’s easy to connect the dots leading to a sinister, though equally rational conclusion—mouth breathing space case Ta-Bo was seen as an offensive caricature of mentally handicapped children and was pushed off the market by irate parent groups. 

Ta-Bo’s profile is still up on the official Sanrio site, leading the author to believe that they’ve made his disappearance a public secret to avoid further inquiry. Hang in there, baby! 


King Piccolo

How many fingers am I holding up?

So-called "reverse racism" in the form of initiatives such as Affirmative Action can be viewed as the White Man finally coughing up back taxes for their social lottery winnings. The plight of the privileged makes itself known in Japan as well, for their homogeneous society beguiles a legacy of class-based discrimination whose reparations are being paid for even today. I’m talking about the untouchable caste, the invisible Buraku.



The pre-Meiji system was one of rigid castes determined at birth with little hope for upward mobility. The upper crust composed of rich samurai and aristocrats sailed by on the sweaty backs of the peasants who tended their fields. But below even the proletariat was another group who took on the tasks deemed uncleanly by Buddhist scriptures—most notably butchering livestock and tanning their hides.

 Damned by the Gods and shunned by their fellow man, the Buraku class were exiled to ghettos on the outskirts of the village.

Though the Meiji administration banned the caste system in 1869, it was difficult for ex-Buraku to wash away their social stigma, especially when their outcast roots could be easily traced back to the hamlet of their birth. There was even a secret gesture to call people out inconspicuously: Tuck in your thumb and show a palm of four fingers, representing the four-legged animals that Buraku tended to.

You can bet the special interest groups were not pleased with the original incarnation of Dragon Ball’s King Piccolo.

The studios were in a tizzy. How were they going to broadcast an anime where the main villain was perpetually giving Buraku the finger, so to speak? Lucky for them, author Toriyama Akira flubbed up in Volume 13 and drew Piccolo counting down from five—on five fingers! Executives jumped on this snafu and the version of the iconic character we know today was born. If anyone has info on four finger Piccolo merchandise send it my way!

For more information about Buraku and Japan's meat industry, check out our visit to the Shinagawa Central Wholesale Meat Market.

ZELDA

I'll bet you didn't know that the Guinness record holder for longest running girl band of all time belonged to Japanese new wave pioneers (and later awful reggae unit) ZELDA until just now. You're welcome!

Exploring Japan's Yokai with Shonen Magazine

Chimera-like Nue versus the Monkey God.

Parents are always looking for new ways to trick their children into leaving the house and experiencing the world. The most recent ruse is train station stamp rallies where you get your card stamped at various towns to be redeemed for a prize upon completion. Two words: BO-RING!

Everyone knows that kids love monsters, so what better way to send them outside to skin their knees and fall out of trees then with a Yokai hunt? Magazines these days only advertise video games and toys, but the grandpappy of Kaiju, Ohtomo Shoji, and his boys at Shonen Magazine were there to provide dreams to a post-war generation brimming with imagination but short on cash.

Behold, the Yokai Hunter's guide to Japan divided by region and complete with maps detailing where these bizarre beasties are said to roam!

Hokkaido and Tohoku Regions:

The child-thieving giant Kamasu offers a sharp contrast to the squat Ainu witch doctor in the upper right. If we're counting indigenous people as Yokai, is it PC to include Pygmies as well?

Kanto Region:

The Seven Wonders of Honjo (modern day Sumida) presented here are mostly harmless, as exemplified by the giant stinky foot that demands to be washed every night. What you really need to watch out for is the Kama-Itachi, or Sickle Weasel, that rides on the wind to lop off your extremities with its scythe hands.

Chubu Region:


These bone eating foxes prowl crematorium grounds and suck the marrow from discarded skeletons. The Guzu in the lower left is a demonic transformation of the Sculpin, an actual amphibious fish that resembles a mud skipper more than the prehistoric beast in the illustration.

Kinki Region:

History shows that encountering giant spiders is usually fatal and the fire-breathing Kumon-Bi eliminates any chance of survival.

Chugoku Region:

The Western seas are not safe! Lurking between the flotillas of garbage from Korea are some of the most utterly unfair monsters imaginable. Take the snake woman Nure Onna in the lower left for example. When you walk by, she thrusts what appears to be a bundled baby into your arms. Your immediate instinct is to say screw the baby and fling it away in a mad dash to safety, but doing so causes it to lay heavy on your body like the weight of your sin, thus making escape impossible. And if you make the noble choice and flee with the child cradled close to your chest, the Nure Onna's tail snakes back around the length of three towns--you were doomed from the start.

Shikoku Region:

From Daruma to lacquerware, every region of Japan credits themselves as being famous for something, with Shikoku's main export being Tanuki. The island's been lousy with these over-sized raccoons and their even bigger testicles ever since Kobo Daishi, founder of the Shingon Buddhist sect, chased out the previous mythical animal, the trickster Kitsune foxes, after he found them too arrogant for his liking.

Kyushu Region:

According to legend, a vampiress appeared before a castle on the brink of collapse, and to repay the blood she had sucked from its samurai, she transformed into the giant turtle Bakegame and rebuilt the edifice upon her shell to act as a mobile fortress during battle.

If you liked this article, you can see more of Ohtomo Shoji's projects with Edogawa Rampo's World of Grotesque Beauty and Robot Empire.