Ever been within inches of a passing semi truck on a busy freeway, whipping past at 70 mph? Even in your car, you get thrown around like a leaf? Yeah, that was SDCC for the remainder of the weekend.

While I’d love to share pics, I’m still on borrowed time — my flight back home departs TODAY, thus I can write to you all, but I have roughly 500 pictures to sort, weed out and organize into a functional blog. In the meantime, let me tell you all — California rolled out the red carpet, and I had THE BEST — excuse me, *ahem* THE BEST time at a convention since the Blizzard of 2003 during Katsucon. That’s no small feat.

This was geek Mecca. Direct your prayers of Dr. Horrible and new episodes of Eureka just south of the setting sun, folks. While no show is perfect, and Murphy’s Laws prevail, I will say that the positives of the experience far, FAR outweigh the negatives. In other words, don’t feel bad. Everyone else is broke too.

So, in the meantime (while I’m 30,000 in the air for several hours) here’s my take on:  FIVE THINGS I LEARNED FROM SDCC.

(1): No one in their right mind should ever move an event or convention from San Diego. It’s PRIME real estate. I’m not the man behind the wheel, so there’s no telling what the future holds — but I will say that San Diego embraced the convention with open arms, and there was PLENTY to do and see beyond the convention walls. Go to lunch at the Tin Fish restaurant. Get around on the trolleys. Check out the best damned reuben ever at The Field.  Speaking of fields, the Padres play at Petco Park right up the street (say what you like about the Padres.)  Even the train station is a photo op waiting to happen!

(2): Your Mileage May Vary.  And oh, did I rack up a few.  Now, you can actually stop and get a breather throughout a good portion of the con, you just have to be… creative about it.  And not have any hangups about sitting on cold floors, corners of huge displays or just around the corner of an artist table.

(3): You have to be extra special, determined or crazy (or maybe a heady combination of the three) to actually get the Rare Collectable Merchandise Given Out Only At The Con Wherein You Must Stand In Line For Several Hours For The CHANCE To Get It.

(4): Besides, there are scores of people hired just to hand out free flyers.  Save the earth, collect them all!  I bet you could fill a phone book with all the mini posters, cards, flyers, and extra bits.

(5): Some personal tips to share with you all:

-Bring a camera, and break a bank book on batteries.

-When you’re done packing, open your bags again, take out half the stuff you packed.  You’re not going to need it.

-Say “yes” to whatever absurd means it takes to get there, short of risk to person or possessions.  This place is worth it.

-Water.

-Plan ahead.  There is for even the regular attendees, four whole days worth of events to attend and people to see, things to buy (or have a conniption over whether TO buy) and while you CAN do it all in a day, if you’re around for the whole thing, space it out.  Get some rest.  Eat hearty.  Because TONIGHT WE DINE IN — *ahem*

I’ll be back with photos, folks!  Sorry for the delay, but right now it’s time for me to say goodbye to perpetually sunny San Diego!

(Oh yeah, and there was an earthquake yesterday.  Most bizarre damned thing I’ve ever experienced.)

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Otherwise known as the first day of the convention!

Hey readers, coming to you live from after the convention!  It’s 2am, Thursday morning of SDCC, and ALREADY it looks to be a phenomenal event.  The best of comics, animation, illustration, video games and more are front & center in sunny San Diego for — and I’m really avoiding hyperbole here — an epic, auspicious event for all of geekdom.

[0] San Diego itself deserves mention for being an absolutely BEAUTIFUL piece of real estate.  I’ve been to many, many conventions; this one is loooong on looks.   Also — and bear in mind this was the exception, not the rule — most of the registration lines were very quick and despite the sheer scale of it, for a pre-registered guest, the wait never exceeded an hour’s time.  Most of the convention center staff; much less the staff for SDCC itself seemed pretty open and receptive.  If there was a place to be, they’d point it out.  If there was somewhere someone wasn’t authorized to go to, it was handled quickly and fairly.  Kudos to San Diego for making the show a true EVENT.

[1] Did you know, I have an entry in the Street Fighter Tribute artbook by Udon Comics & Capcom?  Please ignore the shameless self-promotion, and pay attention to an encyclopedic, 320 page monster of an artbook, with nearly EVERY notable artist in the world today — from Udon’s inner circle, to most online artists, to even the likes of Jorge Gutierrez (El Tigre!)  Simply marvelous!

[2] It’s telling that the video game creators man one of the main entries to the convention floor.  Capcom, Square/Enix, Konami, Activision, Sony, Microsoft, all within spitting distance of each other, and it isn’t until you’ve plowed through the first five or so minutes of people that you reach the television and animation venues.  Just an interesting note — by all means, there are enough people to really, REALLY fill in  the space.

[3] There is no number 3.

[4] This will be a day-to-day update affair.   I’m VERY excited to upload and post pictures for you all to see!  This is more or less one of the great geek Mecca of the world, so it’s not just one minor day’s post worth of material.   I’ll be back tomorrow night with more on SDCC!  If there’s any questions you all want to ask, I’m all ears!

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Honey, I’m home! The gig at PiQ magazine didn’t end up working out, so it’s time to come back to the gig I love - dissecting the sprouting and burning of the anime/game/manga world.

This week’s topic is one that bridges the burning and sprouting worlds. As Gainax co-founder and master of bounce Yamaga Hiroyuki told a Fanime panel introducing a fresh Guren Lagann, “Boys love drills.”

It’s true, too - going all the way back to Getter 2 with Drill Missile and up to Guren Lagann on the burning side. Some time in the last few decades of anime, drills became a staple of the sprouting side of anime, too - attached not to robots, but to hair. It’s a fascinating crossover phenomenon that appeals to both sides of a growing young Japanese boy.

Drills on robots are relatively easy to explain - they were easy to animate in the old days. Draw a few frames of a drill spinning, and you’re set for the next 26 episodes. It’s also very dramatic to see a drill kicking up a storm of sparks against the armor of an enemy robot. Plus, it’s a surrogate penis, and boys love those things.

Drills on girls, on the other hand, take a bit more explaining. For example, take a look at a couple of girls with different forms of iconic drill hair: Houjou Reika from Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun (whose hair isn’t nearly as drill-heavy as that of others, but is important for the sake of discussion later), Karin from Street Fighter Alpha, and the Archer from Disgaea (who is so identified with her drill hair that in Disgaea 3, she actually says “Doriru!” as one of her combat noises).

Aside from being visually interesting and physically impossible short of wigs wrapped around foam, drill hair has three major features that lends itself to frequent use in character designs. First, it implies that the character spends a hell of a lot of time working on her hair in the morning, implying certain levels of leisure time combined with vanity. Second, the pointed nature of a drill and its resemblance to colonial European wigs adds to a general look of sharpness and nobility to a character design. Third, the standard drill is an upgraded cousin of the Twin Tail hairstyle, which has long been associated with tsundere. Add these three together and you have an easy route to the ojou-sama character archetype, the haughty character who looks and acts like a queen.

Pretty much every drill-haired girl will fall into this character type, from the above-mentioned Reika and Karin to Yurika from Project Justice and Char from Shuraki. Drill hair is character design shorthand at this point, giving you a bunch of character information in just a character’s hair and a little flag for ojou-sama or tsundere fans just like glasses are a giant flag for the tastefully named Richard Kim.

As a random note, Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun also included a highly amusing bit about how anime drill hair is made - Reika wakes up late one morning, and has to manually drill up her hair by sticking her finger in her tails and spinning it at about the speed of an egg whisk. It’s more than a little silly, and wholly hilarious.

Are you a fan of the drills? Do you wish I’d talked about something else? Didja miss me (or not miss me?) Let me know in the comments!

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Just like the Round Table of Camelot, the Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history evokes images of a time when the world was simple and magical: Men were Men, Heroes were Heroes, and Great Beauties were Great Beauties.

The Three Kingdoms period has been kept fresh in the minds of the Japanese by a great many re-imaginings and retellings, from manga adaptations to the mega-popular Dynasty Warriors game series, in which Men are Great Beauties, Heroes are Men, and Great Beauties are Heroes.

So, of course, with Japan being Japan and money being money, there have been a great many Sproutifications of the Three Kingdoms characters, the most prominent being Ikki Tousen (Battle Vixens here in the states).  Ikki Tousen and its constant mix of action and fan service picked up the bakunyuu (爆乳, lit. “bursting boobs”) title from Tenjo Tenge, which lost fans with its endless stream of rambling crap (no, I’m not bitter about TenTen, why do you ask?) and used characters from the Three Kingdoms era to provide an excuse for big-titted teens to rip each other’s clothes off.

But the liberties Ikki Tousen and the Dynasty Warriors series take with the seminal epic of Chinese culture pale compared to a couple of recent travesties, which have made my Chinese friends weep at how horribly their history has been raped in the name of making money.  First up, you have Tsukisase! Ryofuko-chan, which turns the mighty warrior Lu Bu into a little magical girl (hey, at least Red Hare is still badass) designed to tickle the fancy of fanboys with Lolita complexes.

That one’s pretty bad, and has melted the minds of several friends of mine, but what really takes the cake is Koihime Musou, which started out as an H game (link for those who aren’t at work) and, because the Japanese have no taste, became popular enough to be converted to a PS2 game.  In Koihime Musou, the main character is thrust into an alternate version of the Three Kingdoms period, where the Men are Great Beauties, the Heroes are Great Beauties, and the Great Beauties are gay men (voiced by Wakamoto Norio, which is awesome on at least six levels).

You don’t even need to know Japanese to see how wrong these are - just poke around the sites and marvel at just how far moe peddlers will go in their quest to make money.  It’s pretty impressive.

By the way, don’t click on this link unless you’re secure in your sexuality and libido: here’s the Koihime Musou version of Diao Chan.

You’re welcome!

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I’ve gone into my Anime Wayback Machine and pulled the wondrous Giant Robo off of my shelf, and I can’t tell you how great this show was back in the ’90s.  Not only did this show have old-school giant robot action, but it was full of wire fu and went so far over the top that it shot straight past Fun right to Glorious.  Magic, martial arts, boxing, drinking contests, Giant Robo was full of Manly Men and Awesome Women.  Come on, it has the Experts of Justice fighting against Big Fire, how can you hate that?
Of course, it was incredibly frustrating to follow, too - 3 years passed between the release of episodes 6 and 7.  I wasn’t one of the people who had to wait for it (I got into Giant Robo late, long after the suffering), but people who followed The Pretender for a while can probably sympathize with those who had to wait years before seeing any kind of ending to their favorite series.

Anyway, try watching Giant Robo some time - you can find it on NetFlix pretty easily, and it’s a fast watch.  Hell, if you’re willing to listen to the recommendation of a grumbly old-timer like me, you should be able to find the whole thing (including the wonderfully hilarious GinRei specials) for $40 or less.

It’s worth it.  Trust me.  Action, passion, comedy, and Robots!  All the things that are best in life.

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Here’s a quick thought about the inherent silliness of giant robots, especially the homages to giant robots.

Opinion: Daizengar, or DyGenGuard, is one of the most popular and well-liked super robot among the Banpresto originals in Super Robot Wars. (honestly, it doesn’t have much competition in this category, considering its number of appearances and the fact that it’s one of maybe 4 or 5 supers in the Original Generations games. Plus, it’s badass.)
Fact: According to the Super Robot Wars OAV, Daizengar/DyGenGuard uses a muscle trace system similar to the controls used in G Gundam - as in, the cockpit is basically a motion capture room that has the robot mimic its pilot’s movements.

Conjecture: What does this mean for Tatsumaki Zankantou/Tornado Blade, where Zengar/Sanger’s best friend turns his mech into a horse for the Dynamic General Guardian to ride?

Conclusion: Real men ride each other.

Yes, Super Robot Wars players have been wondering this for years. But, before I go…

Parting thought: Is THAT why Zankantou grows like that?

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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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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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As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by myself, the late ’90s were a dark era for fans of giant robots, mecha, and general Burning.  Shows were dark, brooding, incomprehensible, and largely unsuccessful - a backlash was inevitable, and mostly welcomed.

One of the shows that started the anti-angst movement was Gate Keepers, by GONZO.  Gate Keepers was a direct response to the Eva Effect, returning to the simpler sensibilities of the ’60s and ’70s.  It was about as straightforward and old-school as you can get - Ukiya, the hero, is a hot-blooded young man with a strong belief in the fundamental goodness of mankind.  He’s surrounded by cute girls who all love him in various ways, but he’s too thick to notice.  There are a lot of attack names shouted out by the characters, and really, beyond a few of the villains, no one spends too much time pondering the meaninglessness of existence.  While not a giant robot show in the purest sense of the word (the Gate Robo doesn’t really get much screen time), Gate Keepers marked a major turning point with its return to older, simpler, and lighter sensibilities.

The biggest sign that the Age of Angst was over was the release of Gundam SEED in 2002.  The Gundam juggernaut returned to its own roots through the series - in many respects, Gundam SEED is considered to be a reworking of the original Mobile Suit Gundam story, with ZAFT taking the role of Zeon and the Earth Alliance being equivalent to the Earth Federation.  With Gundam back on the airwaves for the first time in 3 years (6 years, if you choose to ignore Turn A Gundam like many other Gundam fans do) and becoming wildly popular without the help of cryptic plot twists and overbearing darkness, studios pulled themselves out of the post-Eva funk and started returning to the roots of their giant robot and mecha  shows, making them fun to watch again instead of post-modern wastelands.

At the same time, there were attempts to add more moe of the sprouting kind to the previously testosterone-dominated genre, but that’s a subject for another time.

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As I’ve mentioned before, the late ’90s were a rather sparse era for properly Burning robot shows.  This wasn’t just a wasteland for musical cheese, though.  It was a result of the marketing juggernaut  known as Neon Genesis Evangelion and the quest for the quick buck.

Eva had an effect on the anime industry that was very much the same as the effect Watchmen had on the comics industry and The Lord of the Rings had on Hollywood.  It was so popular, so critically well-received, and most importantly, so hand-over-fist profitable that other companies fell over themselves to imitate it and make “the next Evangelion.”

The time period that followed was quite accurately described to me back in 2000, when I spoke to a member of the GONZO staff (this was right after they made Blue Submarine no. 6) at Anime Expo.  He said to me, “Everyone wants to be the next Eva.  So nothing makes sense.” In the wake of Evangelion, you saw shows like Gasaraki and Brain Powerd, which concentrated on what they thought were the main selling points of this new style of robot anime: extreme plot obfuscation.  It was hard to tell what was going on anymore, and just like M. Night Shyamalan movies, everyone kept trying stranger and stranger concepts with even stupider twists.

Existential angst, which had previously mostly been limited to things like “Oh my God, I killed Lalah by accident,” “I don’t like you and won’t combine robots with you until you admit you’re a prick,” and “My parents named me goddamn fucking Camille,” became an all-encompassing emotion that colored every frame of animation.  Life sucked.  The world sucked.  Robots were stupid (or were Mom, but that’s a different discussion entirely).

This wasn’t entirely the case, of course.  At the same time you had kabuki robots and mysteriously translucent space jubblies, you had such gems as GaoGaiGar, which taught people the meaning of courage, and Nadesico, which questioned the black and white moral simplicity of its predecessors while also paying homage to them.

But honestly, if a robot show came out between around 1995 and 2001, there’s about a 90% chance that it wanted very hard to be Evangelion and as a result sucked donkey balls.  I’m completely serious about this.  Don’t try to look for them.

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