Fandom can be a lot of fun for both fan and object of the fandom. Let’s be honest. It can be a real thrill for a fan to come up with a new way of expressing appreciation, and it can be just as thrilling for a creator to see what fans come up with. (“You made a copy of my main character out of spun sugar and vegetables? Really? That’s AWESOME!”) Where might I be going with this? Good question.

I was thinking the other day about designs for various craft projects and I was bouncing around the internet and I stumbled across this. Ok, ok, it’s not the most amazingly exciting thing ever, but it got me thinking and the more I looked the more 8-bit quilts I found. I found Zelda. I found Mario. I found Q-bert! I found GALAGA! It made my nostalgic heart glow.

I didn’t find any newer characters, though. I’m somewhat disappointed! I’m sure someone out there is quilting the Master Chief. I know someone’s curled up on the sofa with their PSP and Sonic the Hedgehog wrapped around them. I have faith- FAITH!- that somewhere, someone is putting the last stitch in the Alliance Insignia to show just what World of Warcraft faction they swear allegiance to, and to warm themselves with on cold snowy nights after a successful raid. I just know it. And as soon as I get my sewing machine here at my new place I will be one of those people.

Aaaand now you know I quilt. You already knew that I knit Woolen bags. How do you show YOUR fandom?

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Here’s a game review from Joe Chan. Lineage II looks very shiney, but you don’t have to take MY word for it!

It turns out there’s this little-known MMORPG out there that only about 1.5 million people worldwide play called Lineage II. I first checked out this game a little over a year ago where I was greeted with breathtakingly stunning visuals and PC archer fire from the treelines which kept me from ever getting past the boundaries of my starting city. But there was one thing in particular that caught my eye — and I’m not talking about that last arrow that bounced me back to the spawn point.

I’m talking cheesecake.

I mean, dang, there’re some drop-dead gorgeous female avatars kicking my butt in that game.

So, when my friends at NCSoft invited me and a few other press folks to take a personalized tour of their newest Lineage II campaign arc, The Chaotic Throne: The Kamael, I was ecstatic. I mean, now I could check out those hotties without getting beaten to a pulp.

Lineage II has always been heavy on the PvP, though they have been adding more features to make it friendlier towards solo-play as well. However, to truly enjoy the bulk of the game, you’d have to join in the PC genocide and slaughter player avatars alongside your fellow gamers. Join in a clan and participate in a planned castle siege, or take down some of the epic bosses in the game. There’s a ton of stuff to do that you can’t accomplish on your own.

This latest installment of the Lineage II saga introduces the rediscovery of a race known as the Kamael, winged war machines that were once so badass, they had to get one of their wings clipped to seal the bulk of their power away. New to the game are features such as fortress sieges, which allow you to put together parties to take on strongholds 24/7, new armor slots, transformations, and, of course, a new playable race: The Kamael.

But, c’mon now. I wasn’t there for the new feeps. Though I smiled and nodded graciously at my hosts’ words, I was really there for the hands-on demo that would finally grant me the chance I’ve been waiting for and I know it wasn’t just me. I exchanged knowing glances with my fellow journalists, and we knew that soon we would catch a glimpse of hot elf booty.

Finally, the long-awaited moment had arrived. I was seated in front of a brand-spankin’ new Dell Dimension XPS with a 24-inch widescreen LCD as my guiding light, and as the game revved up, I slid down my chair to mask my giddy glee. There it was: the world of Lineage II and all it had to offer at my fingertips, and let me tell you, my friends, I was not disappointed.

cheesecake

After giving us a brief moment to run around to check out some of the new game features, greeting us at our rendezvous point was our host and tour guide, a pale elf lass in silk and lace. I didn’t want to seem like I was ogling, so I complemented her on the spiffy hat she was wearing while my eyes drifted lower. I was instantly teleported elsewhere. I forgot she had GM powers.

orc!

I found myself outdoors, near the entrance to one of the instanced dungeon areas, where before me stood a towering orc gal who looked like she could easily kick my ass and eat it too, with a side of fava beans and a glass of chianti. But my, she had some impressive assets. I chose to side with caution and tried to avoid staring for too long, but she still noticed me looking and growled. I never knew a game avatar could piss itself.

elf

The tour guide took pity on me and brought me back to the rendezvous area. She shooed me off towards the rest of the group after admonishing me, and I slunk back in feigned defeat. After all, I had caught sight of another looker. Another elf, this time decked out in glittering white armor. As I edged closer towards my companion while preparing a few choice pickup lines, a voice not unlike Barry White’s issued forth and … oh for crying out loud, it was a guy! Curse those elves for all looking too pretty. I ran down the corridor, crying.

female human

I suppose that due to my reaction, my fellow party members thought that I had encountered a mob. They chased after me thinking they were rushing to my rescue. I turned back towards the sound of armored feet clanking on the stone floor and caught sight of a mini-skirt-clad human woman in a most vulnerable upskirt position. I grinned stupidly as she paused long enough to beat me to a pulp. It was worth every cut and bruise.

fight!

As it turns out, there really was a mob right there in the room with me. The redhead left just enough life in me to let the monster finish me off, before she proceeded to beat on it with almost everyone else. I say almost everyone, because there was a second human girl that just stood there, staring at my broken, bleeding body while the others were fighting for their lives. I weakly raised my hand to beg for a heal plz!!!, but she just giggled and walked off. Damn her. Those cat ears were a nice touch though.

winged cheesecake

I awoke to find myself in a chamber surrounded by strange creatures. As it turns out, they were actually one of the newer features of the game, temporary transformations so that players could take on other forms. Of course, from my vantage point, all I saw was this scary four-winged Amazon hovering above me. For a brief moment, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, but I couldn’t see under that scale mail loincloth, so it had to be hell. Then she kicked me in the head and forced me to get back into the game.

dwarf… girl

After some aimless wandering, I found myself staring at a most incongruous sight. There, in the middle of the room was a dwarf… girl — the problem is that those dwarf women look way too cute to belong in this game — and yet there she was, twirling and sparkling like some anime magical girl. And the kicker is the sight of her in a birthday hat and a full-metal chastity suit. Talk about mixed signals! I only stared long enough to gawk since that hammer really scared me. Oh, and if anyone discovers where the key is supposed to go, I’ll give you $10.

female Kamael

Turning away from the diabetes-inducing sight, I literally ran smack dab into one of the new denizens of the game — a female Kamael in all her one-winged, battle bikini hottie goodness. This time, I couldn’t help but to gaze; after all, my head had bounced right off her steel bustier. She just perched there, smiling, hand at her hip. You’re looking at exactly what I saw right before I learned that the female Kamael specialize in crossbows.

She laughed, shot me in the face, and sent me back to the spawn point.

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Breaking up sucks. Even if it’s the best possible thing that could happen to you, breaking up is no kind of fun.

There are two general ways to handle the break up. There’s the cold break where you cut off your ex from your life entirely, then there’s the sort of warm break where you’re not dating but you still can tolerate hanging out with each other. Then there’s the break up with benefits where you still snog, but don’t really communicate with each other much beyond the physical intimacy. So we’ll just ignore that one for now.

I’m mostly familiar with the cold break seeing as how divorce is pretty damn cold.  We never had kids and there wasn’t a splitting of assets so there was no immediate need to try to keep in contact with each other, I felt it best to cut my ex off entirely.  Sometimes I wonder if this was the most healthy approach to take.  Clearly, I harbor some measure of animosity towards my ex.  After all, she was the one who left me.  Gradually, that’s grown to a good measure of indifference.  But I wonder if there wasn’t a better way to handle the split.

I’ve always been impressed with people who are still friends with their exes.  They somehow manage to recall the happy times spent together and either move past the reasons for their split or joke about them.  They’ve clearly hurt each other in the past, but they’ve managed to move on and get passed that.

Certainly no good can come from holding a long standing grudge against someone.  Holding on to such anger can manifest itself in health problems and added stress.  And often times the target of your acrimony may not feel as strongly as you.  You may end up doing yourself more harm than good.  By the same token, attempting to keep in contact with someone who merely reminds you of the pain and bitterness of your break up can be equally as damaging.

So, gentle readers, how do you handle break ups?

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Raise your hand if you remember Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (KimiNozo), otherwise known as Rumbling Hearts. You know, the heartwarming story of a boy, his girlfriend who gets hit by a car, her best friend he’s in love with, and their years of mental breakdowns. When it came out in game and anime form, it became famous for its overwhelmingly depressing mood, which led to the creation of the term 鬱ゲー (utsu gee, or Angst Game) for it and its legion of imitators.

Now raise your hand if you managed to watch Akane Maniax (AkaMani), the pseudo-sequel to Rumbling Hearts - which is the heartwarming story of a brilliantly stupid anachronism and the romance/giant robot action series he keeps living out in his head. For the short version of how diametrically different this is from its predecessory, you just have to watch the openings of each: here’s KimiNozo, which starts out with a report on the victim of a hit and run, and here’s AkaMani, in all of its burning/sprouting wonder. It’s hard to believe that both games/anime came from the same studio, and that studio’s transformation from Angst Peddler to Creator of Glorious Stupidity is a funny story to follow.

The game company age (warning: not all links safe for work) released its first game, Kimi ga Ita Kisetsu, in 1998, but the game that really put it on the map was KimiNozo in 2001. The story and characters really connected with fans, in spite of (or because of) the story’s constant abuse of emotion - nothing good ever really happened to the characters, and many of the stories were spirals into depression, PTSD, and depression. It was so massively popular, it spawned a TV series, a couple of re-releases, and a bunch of fan discs that are worth a mint today if you can find them.

However, as a response to the overwhelmingly dark atmosphere of the original work, the age staff packed as much humor and stupidity into the KimiNozo omake discs. First, they made all of the theme songs parodies or outright ripoffs of old burning anime. Here’s the opening for one of the omake discs, Daikuuji Kiki Ippatsu! Please note the similarity to the classic Saint Seiya opening, Pegasus Fantasy. To add even more Fake Burning to their games, they contracted out a few JAM project singers to belt out their parody hits, striking up a strong relationship that continues to this day - a topic I’ll get to when I get to Muv-Luv in a few weeks.

Akane Maniax represents the peak of age’s period of pure silliness. It is filled with parodies of Tekkaman Blade and Gundam: Char’s Counterattack, most of which occur in the imagination of ’70s throwback Gouda Jouji. In the anime (I’ve never had the pleasure of playing the game), all things close to angst are resolved by mental battles with the evil robot King Irresoluter, piloted by a masked villain eerily similar to the main character of KimiNozo. It is, in short, the best thing ever.

After Akane Maniax, age has worked pretty much exclusively on its Muv-luv series, which straddles both burning and sprouting equally - which means you’ll see me talking about it a lot more in upcoming weeks.

Final tangent: age is part of the “Chiyoda Federation” (千代田連合, or ちよれん for short) along with two other companies with neighboring offices: 0verflow of School Days fame/infamy, and Nitroplus, who gave the world a similar dose of angst in Saya no Uta and also made up for it with giant robot cheese in Demonbane. This tells you all you need to know about the influence these companies have on each other.

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So, in a very clumsy play of devil’s advocacy, I proposed last week that games are not art.

“Games aren’t art! Hah! Poo-poo to you! And your opinion!” -your author, last week.

Well, without getting into the hazy world of art philosophy (not yet anyway), I thought I’d spend this post stacking the deck with reasons to argue for the legitimacy of games as art.

I’ll do my best to be impartial & fair, but remember folks, this is just a blog post.

*Ahem!*

STAGE 1 ===================================================

-Video games, as they’ve evolved till now, still fundamentally depend on the input of a user (player), and within the structure and rules of the game itself, interact (play) within this virtual space (levels, boards, stages, areas, etc. etc.) Ultimately, said player attempts to complete a specified objective (reach the flag at the end of the run, defeat other players, collect X number of items, etc.)

For example, the player in Tetris, organizes seven arranged shapes to fit seamlessly together as they fall from the top of the stage to the bottom, and [every horizontal line created is automatically cleared, as long as the stage remains clear enough for the player to place more shapes. When there is no more room, the game is over.]

The player in Halo 3 utilizes a selection of weapons and vehicles, with the aid of non-player characters to navigate an area of space, defeating enemies to [reach the next area checkpoint and/or complete the particular mission’s objective.]

You can fundamentally break down almost any game out there into a sequence of player & environment/parameters of play/[objective.]

So… what happens if you remove this dynamic? What happens if one of the links in this chain disappears? What if there’s no “reason”, no [objective] to achieve?

STAGE 2 ===================================================

The player in the Grand Theft Auto series is introduced to the virtual city through opening cutscenes, given a brief instructional tutorial on how to navigate the area, and is free from then on to choose missions, collect items, explore and open up new areas of the map, and interact with characters. The player can approach the game at any time, in any way they see fit, and can ignore even narrative-based objectives with no consequences that would end the game.

There’s no hard defined way for a player to fail the game of Grand Theft Auto. The narrative opens up only when the player chooses to interact with that aspect of the game. “Sandbox gaming” encompasses this idea. A player loses a match in Tetris if they fail to clear lines of blocks. A player loses in Halo if they are defeated by the enemy before they reach their mission result. But that aspect of gaming without borders, leaving the player free to approach it as they wish, is what makes this and similar titles truly notable. Let’s explore that further, and take the player ***out*** of the virtual world…

STAGE 3 ===================================================

In the MTV Music Generator series, the virtual studio space allows the importing (and exporting) of samples into a series of sound channels, assigning a sequence of notes on a scale. [Musical compositions ranging from classical, modern, to experimental ones can be created, saved and even used as non-copywritten stock in a professional production.]

While there is a “virtual studio”, there is no player avatar. There’s no representation of a character or facsimilie of the player, unless one counts the cursor that allows a player to select their options & save their work. There’s technically an objective of creating sound or music, but this is a game devoid of a mascot or symbol that directly interacts with the game enviroment. Furthermore, the enviroment remains fixed, no matter what the player does. There’s no destructable walls, there’s no timed event scripts where a secret passage opens or a non-player character appears. A creator in Music Generator can plug-and-play with samples, and script out music, but there’s no way for that user to alter the interface directly. Mario smashing bricks with his head, obtaining powerups from question blocks and kicking turtle shells into enemies and obstacles *and defeating or destroying said obstacles* is a drastic influence of player + environment – a hallmark of interactivity.

So, let’s complete the trinity, and take the environment ***out*** of the equation — or can we?

STAGE 4 ===================================================

Magic Pengel & Graffiti Kingdom allow you to virtually construct new avatars, and remarkably accurate player characters completely from scratch… that won’t work…

Fable offers [drastically changing sequences of objectives] and influence over other non-player characters, as well as the effect on the player themselves… no…

Now, in the realm of homebrew & doujinshi gaming… Fraxy allows the player to craft an array of enemy machines, assigning weapons and power cells, and even affecting their schemes and frequency of attack. The player is only able to select their own weaponry loadout and is largely attempting to defeat their own creations. Though there is an “environment”, it’s extremely loose in definition — there’s only a backdrop that the player can select from (up to three.) [There’s no obstacles outside of the enemy and projectiles themselves, and as long as the enemy creation remains within range of the player’s ‘radar’, the game ends only when the player or enemy is destroyed.]

The SimCity series gives the player an absolute blank slate or at least a raw “environment” on which they attempt to attract citizens, assign and build city zones and provide resources for this virtual city to grow. External factors such as riots, disasters, bankruptcy and disrepair affect the city, but [the starting wilderness given to the player is up to them to forge into a metropolis], and they have a fair degree of control over excavating new areas or building up natural resources as well.

Interesting, isn’t it? There are games that can eschew the ‘fundamental’ structures of their design; games that don’t depend on or rely on all three aspects of a player, a set of rules or an environment in a rigid definition. But then, all these games still have an arguable structure in place to maintain their interactive nature. But…

STAGE 5 ===================================================

Imagine a game of Mega Man wherein he fights the enemy robots without ever setting foot in ANY stage. They tumble endlessly in a gray void, where only their attacks separate success or failure. Any attempt to navigate just moves them around in aimless directions. No environment, no level structure, not even a stage selection.

Imagine a game of King Of Fighters where there are no fighters. The player has control over the foreground and background elements… but can’t directly interact with another fellow character. Even in a less extreme case, how about a vs. fighting game where you only watch two selected player avatars fight and have no direct control over the match. (Many genres of games actually have a mode dedicated to this, or at least have an option wherein two ‘bots’ could be posed against each other.) A game that has no players (can it play itself then?)

Think of a Sonic the Hedgehog game where there is no enemy, no Dr. Eggman to antagonize or Chaos Emeralds to collect. Sonic has the ability to run and jump seamlessly across ALL his levels at any time, limited only by the player’s choosing (and the speed at which Sonic can tear through a level.) Because the environments themselves are highly dynamic, there’s still an element of interaction, but with no objective, that clearly would change how the game is approached — or regarded.

Metroid and Castlevania are built more around the exploratory aspect of gaming, but they still function with a clear objective. Even a series of subquests in those games drive the player to an endpoint. A game without an objective at all, becomes observation and experimentation instead of narration.
A piece of art however, only needs a viewer to interpret the sensory signals (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste) given. Art easily has a participant (player), and be it a canvas or sound stage, has a place or time in which it’s displayed (environment.) But does the Mona Lisa have an end-of-stage marker? Does Duchamp’s installation of a toilet seat support multiplayer or online play? A player could set up an HDMI TV and a PS3 in a Franklin Lloyd Wright house, but the consequences of destruction and death in the latest Warhawk only go as far as the screen and not in the real world…

STAGE 6 ===================================================

Interaction in the arts is a realm of postmodernism, where the creators challenge the nature of a gallery space (allowing visitors to actually “invade” the secure distance between works, forcing the viewer to be a physical part of the piece, etc. etc.) But there’s a de-emphasis of any sort of narrative goal. Instructions and or definitions of the “rules” in an interactive gallery space are left to the viewer to stumble through and determine on their own terms. Games do offer options to customize and craft their own control schemes, levels of difficulty, and more… but a game that eschews a cohesive virtual world for a nebulous, subjective one? Is there such a thing? Ever played a “game” that was entirely up to the “player” to interpret, their actions impacted the nature of the “game” itself — defining the parameters in real time? Or maybe seen a “game” that eschews all manner of player/environment/rules — a game that refuses to be played, conquered or interacted with? (A doujinshi flash game, “The Life Ending Adventure” is pretty close…)

Sit back & think about this for now. The Art of Games is next week.

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Not Curly.

First, my apologies for the lack of posting recently. Holidays, being sick, and work all prevented me from having the time to think of a good post.

Then my fellow poster, Mr. Win-Myun Kim, gave me something to build on.

Tsundere is one of my favorite moe, as some of you may remember. But before tsundere became a standard moe, and heck, even before the idea of moe was unified, as it were, there was the idea of ‘takabi’.

Takabi, short for ‘takabisha’, is a term used for ‘princess types’. In anime, this would be the rich girls, the actual princesses, the women (and sometimes men) who were or felt that they were socially superior to you/the main character. (Some more uncouth people might call this archetype the ‘rich bitch’)

Good of examples of this kind of character are Kuriko Kazetsubaki from Maburaho, Mira Kagami from Tokimeki Memorial, and Aeka from the Tenchi Muyo series.

How is takabi a predecessor to tsundere? Here’s a comparison:

Tsundere

• Cold/mean in public to the main character
• Eventually grows to like the character, but often only in private

Takabi

• Cold/mean/commanding in public to the main character
• Eventually grows to like the character
• Often rich or socially higher than the others in her group

Admittedly, there’s not much to the archetype. But still, that’s the kind of character that was prevalent in anime and such until the tsundere archetype came about.

So, do any of you like tsundere and/or takabi girls/boys? Who? And why do you like the archetype?

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I spent this weekend mostly playing Okami, which is a basic good-versus-evil adventure sort of game. I will admit that yes, it is very very well designed visually speaking, but that’s not why I’m drawn to play it. I play it because of the writing. This game manages to weave a number of Japanese myth cycles into a really rich, interesting game world, and the characters I’ve encountered on my way along have been so well scripted that I find them very compelling. There’s even one character that I’m basically keeping track of because I really really want to see him get a pie in the face or something.

I’m a sucker for a good story, to the point that I’m willing to give any flaws a lot of slack. In Okami your major weapon is the Celestial Brush which is a serious pain in the ass (and my fingers) to use. I have to push one button to activate ‘brush mode’ and then use a joystick and another button to draw my intent, which let me assure you is excruciatingly tough. Don’t even bother trying to draw a straight line. Meh.

Story is my thing. It always has been. Even lame fight scenes, horrific editing, and somewhat retarded gameplay are forgivable in my eagerness to hear a good tale told, but that’s just me. Is there anything you particularly enjoy from movies or games?

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This week’s article is brought to you by the lovely and talented Jekka Cormier. More of her work can be found at Seraphic Blue.

When I first started cosplaying I was in a pretty good situation. I had a steady fulltime job and not too many responsibilities. Combine that with my insistence on details and you can probably see how some of my first costumes easily climbed into the 300-400 dollar range of cost.

If only those days could have lasted! Long gone are the days I could splurge on meticulous embroidery for my Edward Elric coat. Since then I’ve learned a lot about how to make my dollar stretch as far as possible and more than a few tricks about how to get my costumes to stop breaking the bank (even if the shoes still tend to break my feet.)

One of the most important ways to limit my spending, first of all, is to limit the amount of new costumes I’ll allow myself to put together in a year. This is something I decided right from the start: no more than 3 new costumes in a year. Any more than that and I need to start thinking about which one I don’t need, or which one I can put off a little longer. (This year’s three winners were Allen Walker, Cardcaptor Sakura, and as-of-yet unfinished Digimon pajamas.) So that’s a good way to make sure you don’t get too crazy on your spending. Set realistic limits on yourself.

Assuming you can sew or make props on your own, it’ll almost always cost less to make your own items rather than have them commissioned or buy them from a retailer. Even then you need to consider the materials that you’ll be using. Wal-Mart generally has a good selection of 1 or 2-dollar fabrics, but you’ll want to be careful about using a fabric that doesn’t flow well or gets easily wrinkled, or is too thin (thus rendering your otherwise awesome costume more see-through than you might have been prepared for.) I made a mistake like that with the red cotton for my Chrono the demon costume – it was inexpensive and I needed a lot of it, but it wrinkles so badly that in retrospect I wish I’d splurged a little more. If you buy your fabrics and material from a retailer like Jo-Ann Fabrics, sign up for their newsletter. They mail out 40% and 50% coupons regularly and you can end up saving quite a lot on your fabric.

If you can work without a pattern, that’s pretty darn awesome. I’m visually stupid, though – I definitely need a pattern or it’s just going to come right. Some patterns can run expensive, $15 or so, so be sure to visit a craft store while they’re having a pattern sale. I try not to buy any patterns unless it’s during one of those sales, when I get one for $1.99 or $2.99 or so. It’s another good reason to sign up for their flyer, as you can find out in advance when those sales are going to be. Even if you haven’t got anything planned just then, there are some patterns that are just a good idea to have on hand for costumes. I recommend having a basic kimono pattern, a pleated skirt pattern, and maybe some sort of hooded coat. I have several patterns with hoods, but that’s just a thing of mine. I love hoodies!

Another great idea to save you some money is recycling. This has a few different meanings. Look around your house for any clothes you might already have than can be altered or adapted to work within your costume. If you can tweak a turtleneck or a labcoat into a piece of your cosplay, that’s one less turtleneck of labcoat you need to buy fabric and thread for and spend all that time sewing and finishing. How about some shoes that you don’t particularly need to wear out anymore? Wrong color? Spray-paint those suckers (in a well ventilated environment and with care of your surroundings, of course, because wow does spray paint ever get all over everything!) How about having two cosplays that use a common piece? It could happen. Is there a piece of a cosplay that you’ve retired that could be altered for a new cosplay? Make it happen!

Speaking of recycling, keep an eye out for things you could use for props and such that might otherwise just get tossed out. I’ve made a few staves out of thin PVC piping (the kind I used to make boffer weapons out of in college); I have a friend who made the most amazing staff I’ve ever seen out of some foam core she rescued from a dumpster. That’s right, folks: cosplayers, saving the planet! Saving some green, even. Oh, oh, that’s funny…

Right. So, there’s one last nugget of advice I have for my cosplaying brethren who find themselves a little on the broke side, and that’s to believe in the power of the yard sale. I love eBay, and Cosplay.com has a Spam board where people sell off their old retired cosplays, wigs they don’t need, fabric they don’t need, shoes they don’t need… the list goes on and on. You can sell off what you’ve got lying around and don’t need, and if you’re lucky you can pick up something you need for a fraction of what it could have cost you otherwise.

Hope that helps! Until next issue, I’ll see you guys in the halls.

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When you initially get together with your new love, you can’t imagine ever being apart. It’s taken you this long to get together, why would you want to be anywhere else? However, eventually you will need to come up for air. You need some space between you both.

Before you got together, you each had your separate lives. Your new found relationship doesn’t necessarily herald the end of your previous you. After all, that’s the you that your significant other fell in love with. Make an effort to stay connected with your pre-relationship self. Make a point to call your friends and hang out with them. Certainly bring your significant other along to meet them, but also have the courage to hang out without your significant other. Encourage your significant other to do the same.

It’s far too easy to get sucked into the relationship black hole, but that’s not always healthy for you two. You may not believe it, but if you stay in the same place with the same person for a long enough time, you will start to get on each other’s nerves. Little quirks that seemed cute before will start to annoy the ever loving shit out of you! Reconnecting with your previous life can help stave off the ill effects of the relationship black hole.

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As I mentioned back in Feel the Burning #3: Music to Burn, the formation of JAM (Japanese Animation song Makers) Project in 2000 was an earthshaking moment in anime music. In the name of “bringing the old, good anime song spirit to the 21st century,” Mizuki Ichiro gathered up some of the most recognized and popular singers in the field to create anime music he could be proud of.

Take a look at the names and discographies involved and it’s easy to see why Japanese otaku quickly became devoted to the project:

- Mizuki Ichiro: Active anisong maker since 1968. Famous for Getter Robo and dozens of other old-school themes.
- Kageyama Hironobu: Active anisong maker since 1985. Famous for the Dragon Ball Z theme, Saint Seiya and a lot of tokusatsu/Power Rangers themes.
- Matsumoto Rica: Active seiyuu and anisong maker since 1988. Voices Satoshi (Ash) in Pokemon and sings its iconic theme song.
- Okui Masami: Active anisong writer/singer since 1993. Famous for Di Gi Charat, Utena and much, much more.
- Masaaki Endou: Active anisong maker since 1995. Famous for the GaoGaiGar opening and passionate shouting.
- Fukuyama Yoshiki: Active anisong maker since 1994. Best known as the singing voice of Basara in Macross 7.
- Kitadani Hiroshi: Active anisong maker since 1999. Best known for One Piece opening “We Are!”
- Sakamoto Eizou: Vocalist for cover group Animetal. No longer active in JAM Project.

JAM Project’s music is designed to remind many of its listeners of the songs they listened to when they were young, especially since many of their listeners actually did grow up listening to Mizuki and Kageyama. They don’t worry about sounding lame or outdated, and don’t feel at all self-conscious when they shout out giant robot attacks in their songs - examples include Masaaki Endou busting out with “DIVIDING DRIVEEEEER” in GaoGaiGar and the whole group shouting “SUPER ROBOT WAAAAARS” during Break Out.

Due to their burning blood and fiery passion, they’ve become the default performers for modern giant robot shows, and they’ve become an integral part of the Super Robot Wars franchise. A JAM project song is guaranteed to add balls-out energy and full contact awesome to anything, from giant robot fight scenes to fantasy epics and even ero games (it’s a long story and I’ll talk about it next week).

Heck, the Lucky Star opening as sung by JAM Project worth listening to (and a top 10 single in Japan)! And that’s impressive in and of itself. You should check out their music some time if you’re looking for a good energy boost.

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