we, the otaku: the magazine! issue 2
DESCRIPTION
ÂTRANSCRIPT
So lets start off with the good: Code Geass: Akito the Exiled.
A quick explanation of this new chapter of the Code Geass franchise. During the time Lelouch Vi Brittian-ia took on the alter ego “Zero” to build up the Black Knights army, the Euro Universe formed a special divi-sion to battle the forces of the Holy Brittannian Empire. The special division, known as the W-0 division, con-sists of a young pilot by the name of Akito Hyuga, for-mer Britannian aristocrat Reira Marukaru along with other Japanese teenagers whom are to to battle against incredible odds in which the survival rate is only 5%.
In the Gundam tradition of the use of side stories occur-ring at the same time as the major conflict, Code Geass: Akito the Exiled could have as much promise as Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08 Team (one of our personal favor-ites). Perhaps even more. Not only does Code Geass: Akito the Exiled add a good concept into a very strong original story with most of the staff from both seasons of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion returning for this project, the OVA brings in some of the anime world’s heavyweights to sweeten the deal. Voice Actress Maaya Sakamoto (Ciel Phantomhive of Black Butler, Matsuri of Naruto, Hitomi Kanzaki of The Vision of Escaflowne, as well as at lease 50 more other characters) will not only play the voice of Reira Marukaru but will also perform the theme song composed & written by Cowboy Bebop’s Yoko Kanno and Yuho Iwasato, respectively. Interest-ing enough, this is the same trio who created Sakamo-to’s debut song “Yakusoku wa Irari” - theme song for The Vision of Escaflowne anime. With all of this in play, Code Geass: Akito the Exiled has so many components to make this project a huge hit this early summer with its 10-theater run throughout Japan before its DVD/Blu-Ray release.
Speaking of movies & films, Yoshitaka Kawaguchi, the producer of the Code Geass anime franchise, announced that a film adaption of the original Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion is planned. Very Gundam...very Gun-dam, indeed.
And now, the bad.
So with a side story & a film adaption in place, how can the Code Geass franchise go wrong?
Nunnally in Wonderland, perhaps?
Here’s a quick sypnosis via Anime News Network and let you be the judge:
“In this all new story, Lelouch makes the ultimate use of his Geass power for his sister Nunnally, who loves Alice in Wonderland.”
That comment about Mamoru Oshii (Ghost In The Shell, Patlabor, The Sky Crawlers) in the first issue’s ar-ticle “Is Guilty Crown an Idea of an Idea of an Idea?” comes back to mind...the current anime is mostly otaku-centric and made to be turned into merchan-dising. How ironic that Guilty Crown’s inspiration (in our opinion) would go down such a route. (Just in case you haven’ done so yet, you can read the ar-ticle “Is Guilty Crown an Idea of an Idea of an Idea?” in Issue #1 of We, The Otaku: The Magazine for more details.)
So for our opinion....
Look, we get it. The anime industry relies on profit & revenues as any company but should it be at the expense of the art? Even if you could argue that it could be the case of an alternate story such as the Code Geass: Nightmare Of Nunnally manga, it just seem too much like a gimmick than an addition to the work. Then again, we could have it wrong. In-deed. After doing a basic Google search of the key-words “Nunnally in Wonderland”, there seems to be an interest in the story. Oh well...as fans of Code Geass, we must endure it. At least the Code Geass: Oz the Reflection project looks interesting. Just Google search “Code Geass: Oz the Reflection” for more de-tails.
And now for the ugly...
Nope, we are not referring to the Code Geass social game being launched on Mobage or the Code Geass pachinko slots...We are referring to the plays.
Yes, PLAYS!
While it seems that Sunrise (the company that owns the rights to Code Geass) has taken a page out of Marvel’s (the now Disney owned company) playbook with its Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark play, Sunrise decided to one up the famed webcrawler with not just one but TWO plays.
But wait it gets better.
One of the plays will be an all male cast musical! (Sud-denly, an image of Glee: The Ashford Academy Edition just ran through our minds...) We could see this as a Sunrise’s apology to the female fans of Code Geass for all the fanservice used to draw in the male audience with-in the first episodes of the Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2. Then again we could be wrong. Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark has gained critical acclaim. WOR proclaims that Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark as “A Spectacular For The Ages!” as one of the slide of the play’s website reports. Who knows...the Code Geass plays may stand a chance. We say let them run. In our opinion, this may be the closest possibility of that yaoi scene of Lelouch and Suzaku that a number of fans de-sire. Even with such a tempting scene, you can keep our ticket. We prefer our Code Geass in the 2-D formats.
In conclusion, Sunrise owns the rights to Code Geass so they can do whatever they want with the property. We wish that they wouldn’t dilute its artistic value in the hopes of cashing in on its popularity. Code Geass: Le-louch of the Rebellion and Code Geass: Lelouch of the Re-bellion R2 are masterpieces. So good, if fact, we know of non-otakus who purchased both seasons on DVD just because the story was THAT good. Just imagine the love for Code Geass from anime lovers such as us. But at the end, all we can do is wish.
Like we mentioned before, Sunrise owns the property.
This article comes from our blogging archive written by our Editor-in-Chief years ago. Although some
of the prices have changed, the concept still remains. So before everyone decide to start flooding our email with corrections, this was wrote in 2007! Please, and we mean please, take this into consideration. Happy read-ing.
It’s the saying that every otaku (for those who is just joining the class, that’s the name for an anime & manga fan) either knows by heart, heard, or uses: An-ime, Crack is Cheaper. Now to those who are new to anime, manga, or otakudom it’s pretty funny statement while to those who are otakus have heard it so much that it’s close to becoming as cliché as someone saying “Live and Let Die” or “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” (and yes, I do listen to a little Country so I know where the second example stems from). So I was thinking to myself and I said, “Self?” and myself replied, “Sup?” Then the question follows, “Those the statement holds true? Is being a crack addict more cost-efficient than being an otaku?” So I decided to put on my thinking cap, which I blew the dust off of it and almost choked, and started to create a hypothesis.
Let’s say we have two people and we’ll name them Subject O for the otaku and Subject C for the crack ad-dict.
Now Subject O is introduced to anime by watch-ing Bleach on Cartoon Network one Saturday Night (quite similar to my introduction to anime by staying up one weekday night and watching Gundam Wing at mid-night) and now becomes more interested in the series. So Subject O decides to search online for anything per-taining to Bleach. Once they finish passing through all the Clorox ads, they finally reach all the Bleach fansites, the Ichigo & Renji shrines, & the Orihime hentai pics the Web has to offer. If Subject O isn’t turned off by the sheer obsession of the fans or the udder perversion of over-exaggerated hentai versions of the characters, they would find the site for the local anime club and check out their next meeting. With the help of Wikipedia and a peek at some fansubs (please don’t sue me..it was an accident), Subject O is overwhelmed with the knowl-edge of the huge episode gap between the Cartoon Net-work version and the Japanese version. After hearing about the YouTube banning of the anime on its site and learning of the difficulty of finding the earlier episodes,
Subject O decides to take heed of a veteran otaku’s ad-vice and read the manga to catch up with the current storyline (without fighting though all the “Bounto” filler). So Subject O heads to the bookstore to buy the manga and to their surprise, Subject O notices 20+ volumes of the series going for $7.95 a book! After re-covering from the initial shock, Subject O figures they have $40 spending money and buys Volume1 through 5. And figuring that they’ll have $40 dollars left over from their check every week for the next month, Sub-ject O will purchase 5 books a week. Now, as we do the math:
$7.95 x 5 books x 4 weeks + .07 sales tax (Florida Sales Tax) = $170.13
So the first month goes by and now Subject O is hooked. They try to wait every Saturday night to catch another episode but finally gives in and buys one volume of Bleach DVD each week for $24.95/ each. Currently, there are 4. Now, for more math:
$24.95 x 4 volumes + .07 sales tax = $106.79
So in two months (if we also include a Bleach T-Shirts, keychain, plush doll, and a wall stroll), Subject O has racked up a grand total of:
$170.13 (Manga) + $106.79 (DVD) + $16.04 (Wall Stroll plus tax) + 19.25 (T-Shirt plus Tax) +
$12.83 (Plush Doll plus Tax) + $7.48 (Keychain plus Tax) = $332.52
(Yeah, it’s that serious)
Now I can understand that $332.53 over two months isn’t a big deal to many of you but to myself and many other O.O.B (Otakus on a Budget), that can put a pretty huge dent in your wallet. Now just imag-ine if Subject O decided to become a Naruto fan...they would’ve needed to take out a loan to buy all those DVDs. So ends our observation of Subject O and be-gin our observation of Subject C.
So Subject C goes to a friends house to try out the video game God of War 2. After Subject C gets tried of his butt being handed to him on a silver plat-ter by the Colossus of Rhodes, he and the friend de-cides to call it quits and watch some TV. The friend
waits until his parents leaves to pull out a pipe and begins to blaze up. Subject C is under the impression that his friend is taking some green self-prescribed herbal medi-cation (and we’re not talking about green tea here) and decides to take a hit. To Subject C’s surprise, his friend has moved on from the “gateway” drug and moved on to something a little more potent. After figuring out what his friend have gave him, he storms out the room vow-ing to never talk to the friend again. As he gets home, he begins to feel the “high” from the drug. The “high” is such a strong & pleasurable sensation that he decides that he’ll get back onto good terms and do it again. After he apolo-gizes to his friend, he asks him where he can score some “rock”. His friend points him to his supplier and they both decide to get a “nickel bag” apiece. (Now for those who believe that the “Crack Epidemic” is something that is only in the inner city or the “ghetto”, let me inform you that according to Wikipedia the estimated U.S. cocaine market exceeded $35 billion in street value for the year 2003, exceeding revenues by corporations such as AT&T and Starbucks. So with those type of numbers, being under the assumption that “it’s not in my neighborhood” would be quite naive. Many “Crack Addicts” could be your co-workers, neighbors, church members, and other esteemed & established people who knows how to hide it better than others. But with that being said, neither you, I, or anyone else have the right to judge someone. Although many people may believe that “perception is reality”, take the time to understand that there lies many facets in a person’s life which we don’t know about and be-cause their beliefs does not fit the measurements of your “moral ruler” it doesn’t make you any more right or them any more wrong. So for those who feel that they are moral and just, do me a favor, first remove the plank from your own eye and then you may see clearly to remove the speck from another’s eye. Enough with the sermon...back to the numbers.)
With that out the way, we can get to the math of Subject C’s newly found addiction:
$5 (the price of a nickel bag) x 15 + $10 (the price of a dime bag, because the nickel bag doesn’t provide the same “high” as before so he decides to double
up) x 15 days = $225
Now a month has passed and Subject C has become disgusted with the path that smoking crack is lead-ing him. He decides to get some help and joins a drug treatment program. After the initial shock of the price of treatment, he decides to do whatever it takes to break this habit. He takes the four month treatment plan and figures the payment for the first month:
$20 (per urine screen a week) + $100 (per individual session per week) + $ 100 (per group session a week)
x 4 weeks = $880/ month
So in two months Subject C has racked up a bill of:
$255 + $880 = $1,100(Yeah, it’s THAT serious)
So according to my hypothesis, the price of a starter otaku (plus accessories): $332.52; the price of a star-er crack addict (including treatment): $1,100. Now I can understand that my hypothesis may be a bit skewed and if you changed a couple of the factors (such as Subject O would’ve became a Naruto fan rather than a Bleach fan OR the number of anime Subject O would’ve decided to buy OR if Subject C decided not to go to treatment OR many other sce-narios) it may not hold true but just from my obser-vation and the factors given, it proves that the popu-lar otaku saying is MYTH.
Anyways, this ends my observation through a back-of-the-envelope calculations. This is H.D. Campbell, signing off...
On January 18, 2012, something beautiful happened. Thousands amongst thousands of people, websites,
and organizations united under one cause:
To Stop Internet Censorship.
The call to action vibrated through many of all walks on the web. From Internet giants like Google and Wiki-pedia, to government officials like California Congress-woman Anna Echoo, House Minority Leader Nancy Pe-losi (D-CA) and presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX), to musicians such as Peter Gabriel and B.o.B., and back to the thousands of website owners & Facebook profiles. To say this this was HUGE would be an understatement.
So what can cause such an action that could unify sites like the Drudge Report and Boing Boing? Two ac-ronyms that are synonymous as many other four letter words:
SOPA and PIPA
What are those you ask? In a nutshell, American lawmakers wanted to pass these bills that you help intel-lectual property owners fight piracy of their Intellectual Properties (IP) online. Understandable, right? With the fall of music sales and the sale of counterfeit products on-line, anything that helps...right?
Err...not exactly.
The problem lies in the “how” they plan to help. Their plan? According to the SOPA Wikipedia entry:
“Provisions include the requesting of court orders to bar advertising networks and payment facilities from con-ducting business with infringing websites, and search en-gines from linking to the sites, and court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to the sites.”
Hold up. Blocking access to sites? You mean CENSOR-SHIP!?!
Even if SOPA and PIPA supporters (which includes the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, Macmillan US, Viacom, Nike, L’Oréal, and Acushnet Company) argue that “it will protect the intellectual-property market and correspond-ing industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws, especially against foreign websites.” says the Wikipedia entry.
But with the use of CENSORSHIP!?!
Indeed. According to the opponents of the bill, all it would take is just one web page throughout a whole Internet domain to block the entire domain. To put this in perspective, if one person on Facebook was to stream unauthorized music on their profile page alone, this law would allow the government the power to shut down Facebook...the ENTIRE site, including your pro-file page even if you didn’t have anything to with it. Even if this a hypothetical situation, it is possible situ-ation. And if you can think of that kind of power be-ing in the hands of a few, especially from those whom could abuse such power for the sake of their own self-interest, it is a scary situation. In their eyes, their inten-tions may be good...but as the old adage goes: Hell is paved with good intentions.
It’s a good thing the people wasn’t having that.
Throughout the web and the world, many gath-ered together to bring awareness of SOPA to the mass-es. Before January 18, 2011, action was already taken. Mozilla used a censor bars across their logo on their home page to help bring awareness of the case. Many chose a mass exodus of their domain names as a form of protest as one situation shows from Go Daddy as the company showed its support initially. Later, others chose to launch a “Google Bomb” at Go Daddy to re-move it from the number #1 spot on Google search for the term “domain registration”.
As of December 29, 2011, Go Daddy is was a supporter of SOPA.
Even Twitter became the weapon of choice of many for their opposition of SOPA including actors Ashton Kutcher, Alec Baldwin, and rapper B.o.B. Sim-ply put, SOPA and PIPA have pissed off a lot of people (us included).
Then came January 18.
This protest really caught the public’s eye. And shouldn’t it? Everyone begin opening their eyes when they noticed the 12 to 24 hour service blackouts of many popular sites such as Reddit, Craigslist, and Wikipedia. Or that nice censor bar over the Google logo that lead them to information about SOPA and PIPA. Or the 115,000+ other sites that participated using censor bars (like Anime News Network & Wired) and other ways to bring awareness to the cause. Or 10,000,000 petitions signed through Free Press, Don’t Censor The Net, Avaaz, and Move On. Or the 4,000,000+ emails sent through EFF, FFTF, and Demand Progress. And we can’t forget the numbers of the people protesting in the streets of New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. And the tweets...oh man, the tweets!
And the result?
Worldwide news coverage, supporters of the bills (including companies, organizations, and govern-ment officials) jumping ship and abandoning their previous position, pissed off heads of the supporting organizations, and last but not least (as quoted from Wikipedia):
“On January 20, 2012, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Smith postponed plans to draft the bill: “The committee remains committed to finding a solution to the problem of online piracy that pro-tects American intellectual property and innovation ... The House Judiciary Committee will postpone consideration of the legislation until there is wider agreement on a solution.”
In other words: The Internet won.
From all of us here at We, The Otaku to the people who fought to help keep the liberties of all from the hands of the few, we sincerely thank you for your hard work and passion for this cause.But be aware, SOPA supporters feel as though they have a lot to fight for so they may return.
Be ready for the next strike.
For more information about how to fight back if they decide to rise up again against our freedoms of free speech on the Internet, visit SOPAStrike.com. Not only will you find way and techniques to fight back but also find screenshots, data, and the list of people whom helped in the bat-tle against SOPA, the number of tweets sent in protest, & the victory that put this beast to rest...for the moment.
