Category: 2021

The Wonderful And Spectacular Composer Yoko Kanno

Published October 21, 2021

With the news that Yoko Kanno is returning to the Cowboy Bebop franchise by composing for the live-action adaptation, I thought it might be time to take a look at her history and career. Famous, and justly so, for her work on composing soundtracks for anime, this is merely one facet of her work and only one reason why the composer Yoko Kanno is so wonderful and spectacular.

Let’s start by looking at her early life. Yoko Kanno was born on the 18th of March, 1963 and found herself fascinated and drawn to the hymns sung at the church she attended. She learned how to play the piano at a very young age and ended up participating in a variety of composition contests. She eventually attended Waseda University, majoring in literature although she did end up joining a band elective where she discovered popular music such as pop and jazz. During this time, a company named Koei, which later merged with Tecmo to become Koei Tecmo, approached Yoko Kanno and asked her to compose the soundtrack for a game called Nobunaga’s Ambition. She accepted and the success of the game ended up jump starting her professional career.

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I Really Miss Western Traditionally Animated Films

Published October 18, 2021

I recently played the two Dragon’s Lair games and, besides how hard they could be, I was mesmerised by the beautiful 2D animation. The game ended up making me hungry for more Don Bluth animation and I recently ended up watching All Dogs Go to Heaven and have ordered several more Don Bluth films that I was lacking in my collection. However, watching these films as well as looking at the history of Don Bluth and his passion for 2D animation has made me realise how I really miss Western traditionally animated films.

I should clarify that I’m referring primarily to the American animation industry when I talk about Western 2D animated films. The Japanese animation industry is still primarily animated in 2D and has seen many box office successes such as Your Name and Demon Slayer: Mugen Train. There are also a lot of 2D animated films produced in other countries such as the films of Cartoon Saloon, French animated movies etc. (although I’d question the popularity of these films due to low box office grosses). However, while many of these films are unquestionably good, these movies lack the grand scale and set pieces that American animation possessed.

The theatrical poster for All Dogs Go To Heaven.

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Why Single-Player Video Games Are Not Dead

Published October 14, 2021

One of the joys of playing video games in the modern age is the sheer variety of titles that are on offer. From AAA games to amazing indie titles, it seems the video games industry has never been better. However, as time has progressed and technology has developed, we’ve seen multiplayer games steadily grow to the detriment of single-player. EA infamously declared that single-player video games were finished (i.e. dead), something which would later prove to be quite ironic. However, I truly love single-player video games and I thought it worth discussing why I like them so much, why they are not dead and their place in the modern video games industry.

To begin, let’s discuss what a single-player video game is. As the name suggests, a single-player video game is an experience designed for a single player and has, historically, been the primary way that games have been designed. Admittedly, there are a few games that seem a little less obviously single-player than others. For instance, Dark Souls is, for most intents and purposes, a single-player game where the player explores the world by themselves, interacting with NPCs and progressing the story. However, there is an asynchronous multiplayer aspect where players can leave messages, either helpful or deceptive, for others to find. Additionally, other gamers can invade the player’s world and attempt to kill them or be summoned as allies to help fight the bosses. I still consider the Dark Souls series to be inherently single-player but I do confess that games like Dark Souls blur the line between single-player and multiplayer.

A promo image for Dark Souls Remastered. — Is Dark Souls a single-player game? I believe it is even though it has multiplayer elements.

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The Influence Of Manga On The Dark Souls Series

Published October 11, 2021

As I’m sure readers of my blog are well aware of, I’m a big fan of the Dark Souls series and, in turn, the works of Hidetaka Miyazaki. Understandably, as with any creator of media, he’s been influenced by a wide variety of media such as other video games, literature, Western tabletop games etc. However, I thought it might be particularly interesting to take a look at the influence of manga on the Dark Souls series since it feels like we don’t often hear of the influence of manga on other media.

Let’s start off with the manga most often referred to when it comes to the influence of manga on the Dark Souls series, Berserk. Created by the late Kentaro Miura, Berserk is set in a dark fantasy world and follows Guts, a swordsman who ends up joining a mercenary division named Band of the Hawk, led by Griffith. The manga was critically acclaimed, has been adapted into several anime TV series and films and has been cited as an influence on various manga series and video games.

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Eiichi Yamamoto: One Of The Amazing Pioneers Of Anime

Published October 7, 2021

I was deeply saddened to hear that legendary anime director Eiichi Yamamoto passed away recently. One of the amazing pioneers of anime, it is hard to overstate how important Eiichi Yamamoto was to the medium. Therefore, I thought it worth taking a look at who he was, his body of work and how his legacy has helped to shape modern anime.

After Eiichi Yamamoto graduated from high school, he joined Otogi Pro, a company established by mangaka Ryuichi Yokoyama to experiment with animation. It wasn’t long afterwards that Osamu Tezuka established a new animation studio called “Mushi Production” and Eiichi Yamamoto ended up joining the company. He would go on to be heavily involved with the new studio’s two initial offerings, the experimental short film “Tales of a Street Corner” and the television series “Astro Boy”, arguably the most important anime series of all time!

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The Four Dere Archetypes Found In Japanese Popular Culture

Published October 4, 2021

There are a lot of tropes that can be discussed when it comes to Japanese popular culture but certainly some of the more popular ones are the four “Dere” archetypes found in these media. Admittedly, I was only familiar with two of these archetypes prior to researching topics for this article so I was quite surprised to learn that there were more than I was already aware of. Given that, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at and examine these archetypes.

First, let’s take a look at the general term “Dere”. Dere, written in Japanese as デレ, is a shortening of the word deredere which means lovestruck. Within Japanese popular culture, these dere archetypes are typically female although there are occasional male examples. It’s also important to note that, while dere is famously associated with Japanese media and has been named thusly, there are plenty of examples of characters from other cultures that fit into these archetypes.

Tsundere

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Discussing The Exciting But Not Straightforward Nvidia Games Leaks

Published September 30, 2021

I was perusing some gaming websites, in particular PC Gamer, and I came across a news story that momentarily got me incredibly excited. It turned out that a developer named Ighor July managed to find a complete list of games within the GeForce Now database which included some games that were recently announced and, much more interestingly, numerous games that have never been announced! The sheer number of games that were potentially leaked is unbelievable and near unprecedented. However, several details have since surfaced that have both confirmed the validity of these leaks as well as how some of these games may not actually be in development. Therefore, I thought it worth discussing the exciting but not straightforward Nvidia games leaks.

First, I should give some background on these leaks. GeForce Now is a cloud gaming service run by Nvidia allowing users to play a variety of games for a subscription as well as some games you own under a “bring your own games” system. According to Ighor’s own blog post on Medium, he accessed the console.log when you download GeForce Now, found app configurations and used them to fetch “the list of all of the games from GFN servers”. This resulted in a list of over 18,000 games which included a lot of game development applications but, more importantly for this article, also included numerous games that haven’t been announced yet.

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The Incredible Importance of the Year 24 Group

Published September 27, 2021

Having recently spoken about the history of the medium of manga as well as the gekiga movement, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the incredible importance of the Year 24 Group, whom I’ve spoken about before in plenty of articles but have never dedicated an article to.

Let’s begin by discussing their name as well as how it’s also a bit of a misnomer. The name “Year 24 Group” refers to the year Shōwa 24 which is equivalent to 1949 in the Gregorian calendar. The implication here is that the women who made up the Year 24 Group were all born in 1949, something that only applied to a few of them. The name also makes you think that they were a collective who all worked together but, in reality, the term merely categorises a group of women who were born around the same time that would go on to reinterpret what shojo manga was.

Various characters drawn by the Year 24 Group. — A collage of characters from Year 24 Group manga.

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An Overview Of The Ghost In The Shell Franchise

Published September 23, 2021

I’ve recently been reviewing the Ghost in the Shell manga on my YouTube channel and it has truly surprised me how different the Ghost in the Shell manga can be compared to the anime films and TV series that I’ve watched. Whereas I tended to think of Ghost in the Shell predominantly as an anime franchise, which in many ways it is, this experience has made me think about the Ghost in the Shell series as a whole and I recently decided that it was time that I provide an overview of the Ghost in the Shell franchise.

Of course, the most logical place to start with an overview of the Ghost in the Shell franchise is the original manga that started it all. Originally serialised from 1989-1991, Ghost in the Shell was written by Shirow Masamune, who previously got his start by drawing an original doujinshi story. The manga is set in the near future and follows Section 9, a special division of the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs that deals with cyberterrorism and cybercrime. While Section 9 is made up of many members, we predominantly follow Motoko Kusanagi, often simply referred to as “The Major”, as she investigates a series of seemingly unrelated events that are not what they first appear to be.

The cover for the first manga volume of Ghost in the Shell.

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Japanese Words That Are Used Surprisingly Differently In Other Languages

Published September 20, 2021

I’ve always found the differences between the Japanese language and other languages to be particularly fascinating. I’ve touched on this before when I discussed “Literal Vs Adaptive Translation: Which Is Better?” and brought up the fact that English and Japanese are from two completely differently language families, meaning that many Japanese sentences can be translated in multiple ways and still be “correct”. However, something that I’ve wanted to discuss for a while are Japanese words that are used surprisingly differently in other languages.

The first word I would like to take a look at is a word that I’m sure many of you are intimately familiar with, anime. Written as アニメ in Japanese, notably in katakana to denote that it’s a foreign word, the word anime is an abbreviation of the Japanese word for animation, アニメーション, which in and of itself is a loanword from English. However, what I find quite interesting is the difference in the use of the word anime between Japanese and other languages. Outside of Japan, the term anime is used specifically to refer to animation that is produced in Japan, albeit with some entities trying to change that definition, while in Japan, the term anime actually refers to any and all forms of animation. I’ve noticed that some people struggle with this concept, the idea of anime referring to anything animated probably seems preposterous, but that doesn’t change the fact that that is what the word means in Japan.

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