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BEST MALE CHARACTER
Koibuchi Kuranosuke (Kuragehime)
A handsome ladies’ man from a wealthy background with a talent for crossdressing, Koibuchi Kuranosuke is larger than life, the kind of character who you would almost be able to say is “too unrealistic” if weren’t for how natural and convincing he is as an individual, and if you’re used to this sort of thing via extensive experience with shoujo and josei, he stands out that much more. Straightforward yet enigmatic, helpful yet selfish, intelligent and savvy yet frightfully naive at times, Kuranosuke is equal parts intriguing stranger and close personal friend, and it makes him both fascinating to watch and easily relatable.
From the very first time he saves Clara the jellyfish and enters Tsukimi’s life, you know that Kuranosuke is a man you can respect, even before you know that he’s a man. He’s not a saint and he won’t solve everyone’s problems as he has his own to deal with, but he tries hard to help others, in particular working to help Tsukimi and the rest of the “Sisterhood” recognize that their stereotypes of themselves are self-imposed. It’s a fight I can definitely get behind.
BEST FEMALE CHARACTER
Kurumi Erika, Cure Marine (Heartcatch Precure!)
Though I can describe Kurumi Erika by her general traits — talkative, friendly, clever, energetic– I feel that it doesn’t quite do her justice. With Erika you have someone who is much more than the sum of her parts, an endearing character whose traits cannot simply be divided into “strengths” and “flaws,” but are aspects of Erika that have both positives and negatives. Erika’s gift of gab is tempered by the perils of being a motormouth. She is incredibly hardworking and focused when it comes to her interests and will go out of her way to accomplish her goals, but can be incredibly lazy and ignorant towards anything that fails to inspire her passion. All of this stems from Erika’s sense of emotional honesty and her full-speed, no-brakes approach to life.
In a series with particularly strong characterization, Erika stands out in a big way, and I hope that she and her fellow Cures have a positive impact on not just the way characters are written for anime, but also how they are received by the fans and how they may influence those watching to better themselves. Erika feels real, not in the sense of evoking reality or being a simulation for it, but in that she is an emotionally complete individual. She is an inspiration for anyone who has every hesitated due to fear of being unable to grow as an individual.
Final Thoughts
Though not intentional on my part, I realized while writing my thoughts on Kuranosuke and Erika that the two have much in common. Both are outgoing with sunny dispositions. Both are highly passionate about fashion and believe in the positive transformative effects it can have on people. And both are eager to meet and help others, but their enthusiasm and extroverted natures can make them seem abrasive to those who can’t keep up with their pace. They feel human. On an additional storytelling level, both are able to show that you can have incredibly straightforward and simple characters that are also complex and fully developed, whether it’s a show for adults (Kuragehime) or for children (Heartcatch Precure!). Perhaps most importantly, having people who can encourage you to grow for the better can be incredibly uplifting, whether they’re real or fictional, and that’s exactly what they do.
It’s called “Big Eyes, Big Mouth.”
This review is a part of the Reverse Thieves’ Secret Santa Project for 2010.
Mobile Police Patlabor: The Movie is a film by Oshii Mamoru, director of Ghost in the Shell. Though it predates Oshii’s most famous film by a few years, there is no mistaking its pedigree.
In the world of Mobile Police Patlabor, mankind has embraced the use of giant robots to help with large-scale construction and manual work. Referred to as “Labors,” it wasn’t long until some people started using them for less altruistic purposes, creating a new problem in the form of Labor-related crimes. In response, the police begin deploying their own Patrol Labors, or “Patlabors” for short. One such force is the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Special Vehicle Section 2, Division 2, a group of misfit officers whose ranks include a tomboy who names all of her pets Alphonse (her Patlabor being the latest), an overly aggressive gun nut, and a seemingly dull and lazy division chief. Nevertheless, they do their best to serve and protect despite their spotty reputation.
Given this scenario, you’d probably expect some combination of cop show drama and ensemble comedy with a dash of mecha, and you’d be right, normally. But while most of the Patlabor franchise falls along those lines, Patlabor: The Movie is instead a cerebral mystery. A recent string of “berserk” Labors threatens the completion of an important project and the most likely suspect, programmer Hoba Eiichi, is already dead, confounding Shinohara Asuma, the Division 2 member who has taken it upon himself to investigate. All the while, the film explores the continuing onset of technology and the eternal struggle of new vs old, with numerous biblical references strewn throughout. Given the tone and content, Patlabor: The Movie is like a stepping stone towards Ghost in the Shell and the eventual direction Oshii’s oeuvre would take.
The film still has a lot of the requisite elements of Patlabor; it has those same goofy characters (all of whom act as they should), robot fight scenes, and a personal feel to the setting. In fact, you need not have watched any of the previous material to understand the movie or to get an idea of the personality quirks and relationships of the characters. However, those aspects of Patlabor are either more subdued or less frequent in the film, instead putting the spotlight on the mysterious culprit, “E. Hoba” (Jehovah), and his motives. In this respect, it reminds me of another movie, Sengoku Majin Goshogun: The Time Étranger, a sequel to a super robot anime featuring a decidedly different tone and absolutely no giant robots, only Patlabor: The Movie is somehow both more extreme and less in its deviation. Patlabor: The Movie really feels as if Oshii (who also directed the Patlabor OVAs) was trying to push the franchise beyond the limits of its basic premise and bend it to his own personal will. It actually works pretty well overall, maintaining suspense throughout and giving quite a bit to think about, but I’m not sure if Patlabor was the place to do it.
In short, imagine Oshii Mamoru trapped in a giant paper bag called Patlabor, trying to punch his way through until he ends up wearing the bag like a Halloween costume, and you have Mobile Police Patlabor: The Movie. He’s pretty dashing in that getup.
Looking to take a break from my typical online mahjong sessions without straying too far, I’ve begun dabbling in 3-Player Japanese Mahjong. It is arguably both more stressful and less stressful than 4-Player, and I wanted to just jot down my thoughts on the gameplay and dynamics of 3P mahjong.
Just to get my bias out of the way upfront, I find 3P mahjong to be inferior to 4P, and its primary strength is as a backup measure in case you can’t get a fourth player. Despite that, it is still very fun and captures much of the mahjong spirit, especially when you’re playing with some rad personages.
3P Mahjong is an incredibly volatile game, and this is primarily due to three reasons. First, is the revised role of the North (Pei) tiles. With no fourth player, North is considered a “neutral” wind, and now carries with it an additional property: if you have a Pei in your hand, you can exchange it for another tile. In doing so, you also gain an additional dora for every Pei you come across. Like all dora, these North dora cannot be the catalyst for a winning hand, but they can bolster one that’s already able to win. Incidentally, if you draw your winning tile due to exchanging a Pei, it counts as Rinshan Kaihou, only it’s better because you also have the inherent dora from the Pei itself. Rinshan Kaihou being her signature move and all, I’m sure Miyanaga Saki would have a blast with 3P.
Second, is that the game removes the Character (Man) tiles numbering 2 through 8. With only the 1-man and 9-man remaining, this makes players far more likely to draw tiles of the same suit, a high probability made even higher when you remember that there is 1 less player than normal. Honitsu (Half Flushes) are incredibly common, and the normally fairly difficult-to-achieve and more valuable Chinitsu (Full Flush) is often well within the range of possibilities. It’s also the only time I have ever seen anyone get a Honroutou (only 1′s, 9′s, and Honors) or a Chinroutou (only 1′s and 9′s), as the removal of 2-Man through 8-Man means they don’t get in the way of those hands from forming.
Third, is the fact that 3P mahjong indeed has one less player than normal, so useful tiles have a higher likelihood of reaching you. When combined with the comparative ease of forming high-value hands and the boost given by North dora, and you have the volatile scenario of which I spoke. The game almost always reaches a situation where everyone’s sitting there with an absurdly valuable hand and everyone has the tiles everyone else needs to win. Of course, that means that just as you poised and ready to declare your victory and watch your score skyrocket, so are your opponents, and greed can definitely be your undoing. Also, as everyone has a greater chance of achieving tenpai generally, if you happen to have a particularly worthless hand in a round it hurts a lot more than it does in 4P mahjong.
The game does have some factors to balance out the precariousness of 3P mahjong, namely the prohibition of stealing tiles to complete a straight (chii), and the fact that everyone starts off with 35,000 points instead of 25,000 points. The former keeps hands from being completed too easily, and the latter acts as somewhat of a buffer against the frequency at which powerful hands appear. Just to give you an idea, I actually got a yakuman (32,000 point) hand once, and I still ended up placing in 2nd by the end. Still, I feel like these countermeasures aren’t quite enough, and while I generally enjoy having luck be a factor in my games, 3P mahjong feels like it has just a little too much luck and not enough things to mitigate damage in a bad luck situation the way 4P mahjong does. It gets your blood pumping.
The last thing I want to mention is the modification to scoring, where you get more points for having someone deal into your hand than you do from drawing the tile yourself, which never happens in 4P mahjong (Ron haneman is worth 12,000 while Tsumo haneman is only 9,000). In addition to being an interesting contrast with Chinese mahjong styles where self-draw is way more powerful than winning off of someone else’s discard, it also enhances the high-pressure feeling of 3p mahjong.
“If the emphasis in moe anime is on the female characters, where does that leave the male characters?”
I asked myself that question, and after some deliberation it turned into, “What do you look for in male characters in moe anime?” I want to turn the question to you the reader as well, provided you’re someone who has enjoyed moe anime in the past, even if you’re not necessarily a fan. Keep in mind that I don’t mean that the male characters themselves have to be “moe,” but just that they exist within those types of anime. If you want to extend the question to yuri shows as well, that is also okay.
For me, the first thing that popped into my head was Maria-sama ga Miteru, namely the all-male student council that exists outside of the all-girl school where Marimite primarily takes place. Marimite has a heavy emphasis on female characters, so when one of those male council members, Takada Megane, talks about how he loves to work out and eat meat all while flexing at the girls, it really stands out. It’s as if Takada and his muscles are inadvertently shattering the yuri-heavy atmosphere of Marimite, and the first time I saw him I thought, “Yes, you are the best male character in this show.” Applying that back to my own question, it makes me think that while I definitely enjoy Marimite for what it is (and own almost all of it on DVD), I like the idea that there exists something a little beyond the world of the girls, even if it’s not that far removed, and male characters who act kind of contrary to that setting actually serve to emphasize the feel of Marimite.
One concern I have is a possible philosophy that the male characters in such series don’t matter, as I feel that even if they’re out of the spotlight they can have a huge impact on the work itself.
So what do you think?
Three months after my unceremonious descent in online mahjong rankings, I have managed to not only claw my way back to my original ranking, but also surpass it and move up to the next level. I am now a “3-Dan” on Tenhou, and I’ve learned a few lessons since September. Hopefully I keep them in mind so I don’t drop down again.
As much as it would appall Akagi, trying to go up the ranks on Tenhou encourages fairly safe and conservative play. The only way to actually lose points and risk dropping down is to get last place, so while being 1st is ideal, being 3rd isn’t so bad either as it means you are as far as you were last game. At the end of the day, if 1st place is way out in front, it’s generally not worth it to try and make a desperate counterattack, as it might just land you in 4th, something that has happened to me on many, many occasions.
In one match I was in 4th place in the last round. However, I was less than 1000 points behind 3rd place, and in this final round 3rd place was also East, meaning that if he wins he gets more but if another player wins by self-draw then he pays a higher price. So after seeing another player Reach, I simply abandoned my chances of winning and counted on that player drawing his winning tile, as it would allow me to barely get 3rd without doing anything. That’s exactly what happened in the end and I got away without losing any ranking points just by, as Sub likes to put it, “playing to not lose.” It was kind of dirty, but that was the reality of the situation.
Watch out though, as aiming for not-4th can be a trap in itself, as you can end up in a situation where you’re behind and desperately aiming for anything to keep you in the game, which in turn can make you prone to rash decisions. This is pretty much what killed me when I first dropped back down to 1-Dan, as you have the disadvantage of not only of letting your emotions get in the way but also giving up too soon. Doing so may even blind you from the fact that you could win if only you had the patience and clarity of mind to see that.
Though it might seem to contradict what I said about aiming to not lose, it’s actually all just a part of gauging your situation at all times. Let’s say you’re in 4th place. Ask yourself, in my current situation, what would it take to get in 1st? What’s the point difference? How likely is it for me to get a hand that can overcome that difference? If there’s no hope, what are my options then?
Now keep in mind that this is doesn’t have to be cold, hard logic. You don’t have to be calculating statistics, and can even be based on how the game feels at the moment. A small loss in points isn’t as bad as losing a lot of points, and if you’ve lost a lot of points you could always potentially drag down 3rd place. And if you drag down 3rd, you might be in range to get 2nd. There’s room for optimism, however small.
So while Akagi obviously scoffs at “digital” mahjong, that is, a style based on analyzing ratios instead of playing based on “feel,” it’s clear that going up the ranks in Tenhou isn’t all related to probability. Just as you’re trying to claw your way up to 1st, so is everyone else, and inevitably there are human traits to exploit, be they greed, fear, or even relying too much on statistics.
Though deep down, I feel like this is my limit when it comes to online mahjong. At 3-dan, getting 4th place actually makes you lose more points than you would gain if you had gotten 1st. Whether I can overcome such odds is something I’ll just have to see. Still, that I’m here in the first place is something I can be proud of, even if I’m not the best mahjong player out there.
Lastly, to celebrate:
Note: This post is part of the Manga Moveable Feast.
If you had asked me six years ago whether I preferred Naruto or One Piece, I would have said the one with the ninjas. At the time, I had hit a stumbling block with One Piece in the form of the Skypiea Arc, which I found to be rather lacking compared to what came previously. Naruto on the other hand felt stronger than ever. Little did I know though that One Piece would overcome this hurdle with aplomb and continue to improve, while Naruto would eventually hit a bad spot from which it still hasn’t ever completely recovered.
It seems as if almost every popular boys’ fighting manga eventually hits that point of no return, the moment where you can say a series shounen jumped the shark. Hokuto no Ken, one of my favorite series ever, has a clear defining line where it goes from good to terrible. Dragon Ball isn’t quite the same after the fall of Freeza. Yakitate!! Japan, for all its fun and humor, just could not quite maintain itself. This is all the more reason to consider One Piece is a rare feat among rare feats in the world of manga. Going strong for almost 15 years now, it has probably been the most consistently good despite, or perhaps because, of its longevity. But what does One Piece have that its contemporary peers do not? What keeps it going?
When I think of shounen series that were able to keep up their quality throughout their entire run, the first one that pops into my head is Kinnikuman. An 8-year-long series originally detailing the adventures of a comically inept superhero, Kinnikuman would eventually transform into an over-the-top dramatic intergalactic pro wrestling manga where friendship is so powerful that it is literally referred to as “Friendship Power,” leading to a final arc where the titular hero must wrestle to become king of his alien planet and defeat the evil muscle gods who conspire against him, and I think what makes Kinnikuman so consistent is that it has no real rules to abide by. Nonsensical wrestling techniques, achilles’ heels based on the most suspect logic, secret origins and an abundance of replacement limbs, all of this is as common as water in the ocean for Kinnikuman, but the series just rolls along , not allowing the reader to stop and consider how amazingly ridiculous it all actually is. Except when they do and the experience is made better by it.
Similarly, One Piece continuously rewrites the rules of its own universe, changing the meaning of “sensible” along the way. Monkey D. Luffy’s first few crew-mates are fairly normal; though their abilities might be bizarre or unique, they’re still mostly human in appearance. Then he befriends a bipedal physician reindeer. Later on he’s joined by a cola-powered cyborg in speedos and a re-animated skeleton. The Straw Hat Pirates travel the world from island to island, meeting friends and defeating adversaries. Then upon entering the Grand Line, the first big goal of the series, and what it means to be a body of land surrounded on all sides by water gets thrown right out of the window. There, in the most fierce and dangerous area of all, are islands with radically different climates and animals all within relatively short distances of one another. There’s a desert island, an island literally made out of trees, and yes, even an island in the sky. The world of One Piece continues to grow, and seemingly nothing is ever too unusual.
A good portion of One Piece‘s freedom to expand lies in Oda’s art style, which evokes a sense of fun, excitement, wonder, and comedy. It can expand its limits comfortably in a way that series more beholden to pseudo-realism such as Bleach and Naruto cannot. It makes you easily accept the fact that a man can wield three swords simultaneously with one clenched between his teeth or that an island of powerful and deadly transvestites exists.
And yet, just having a setting where almost anything can happen is not an automatic formula for success. Quite the opposite, it can cause a story to spiral out of control and to lose what made it really work in the first place, if it ever worked at all, and this is where One Piece‘s creator is truly amazing. Certainly the aesthetics of One Piece help a lot Oda is able to take this increasingly convoluted world and focus its explosive energies into a tale that is remarkably consistent in tone, theme, characterization, and overall feel. Although the series could easily get out of hand, it never completely goes off the deep end, which is a chaos that Kinnikuman itself only avoids by embracing it entirely. It’s as if One Piece tests its own limits so often that doing so has become the standard.
One Piece‘s approach to world-building and the comedic art style that supports it are certainly not the only reason that One Piece succeeds, but I think it is a good window into its real core strength, which is its ability to stay fresh and exciting, and to make it feel both comfortably close and yet also dramatically distant while also continuing to push those boundaries and distinctions. Much like the human body, One Piece constantly renews itself and grows stronger as a result.
