An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla

Otegami

Otaku bandwidth buzz tonight. Word of immanent outlawing of a certain segment of second-hand electronics in Japan. Akihabara to be hit hard, right where it hurts: in the the Showa-era AC adaptors (Poor old Super Potato and old dude who sells ancient LD players). And baby, that's cold...

The New Way is set to begin on April 1st, suspiciously around the same time as NTT’s UDX building is due to open. So far, so surgical. But all of this suggests a bid on the part of the Government of Darkness’ Business and Death division to monopolize the spectrum.

As anyone who’s been there knows, the overwhelming amounts of energy generated by electronics found in Akiba is causing time to vibrate faster than normal. By prohibiting the sale of certain consumer goods prior to 2001, and in turn offering the latest models at discount prices over at the Yodobashi Akiba super-store, G.O.D. is hoping to literally tilt the future in their favor.

Counter-ESPY is said to be holding high-level talks in ESPACE regarding these recent developments. Until they come up with a plan, the divisions already present down Chuo-dori (Akiba’s answer to the Yellow Brick Road) stand to get a whole lot deeper.

Za Suzunari

The final part of the Podcast of Darkness interview is up at Anime World Order. Me, very wasted at this point. Pedro Edogawa After Dark. Much frank discussion of Spicy Adventure Stories continues apace. Disco Thoughtbird. Download from the AWO here.

God Jesus Robot

All hail. My Kichijoji-Kyodai Matt Alt doth hereby begin blogging! And so, Alt hell breaks loose at Altjapan.

Only three posts in, it's already loaded with good shit like Takashi Miike, a consipiracy involving counterfiet maid cafes, and the Self Defense Force's attempts at turning those ding dong otaku into dead meat cannon fodder. So go there and leave some baffling comments for Matt to ponder, and find out why they call him "The Blue Eyed Gundamer."

As for me, not much to report except these three fearsome words: gaijin talent agency.

Shufuno Tomo

Part three of the Podcast of Darkness interview is up at Anime World Order. It’s a filth-ridden fan roast of manga writer Kazuo Koike (Crying Freeman, Lady Snowblood) sure to make your ass start giggling. Meanwhile, I like the sound of my voice so much that plans are being made for a series of solo podcasts soon...

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Work: I've whipped up a feature on Akihabara for 'Japan's No. 1 English Magazine' Metropolis. Looks like it will run on 3/3.

Maid Cafés Redux

People want to read about the maid and cosplay cafés now. I don’t know why. They just do. So here’s a slight rewrite, along with an update, of the Café Mailish chapter from my totally awesome book, ‘Cruising the Anime City: An Otaku Guide to Neo-Tokyo’ (2005, Stone Bridge Press).

Café Mailish
http://mailish.jp
FH Kyowa Square Building 2F, 3-6-2 Sotokanda, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo

A dour young man sits in a café surrounded by beautiful girls in ornate costumes. Instead of openly ogling them, he toys with his cell phone instead, pausing to drag on his smoke. He only takes a bite or two of the strawberry shortcake he’s having before shuffling over to the register where a girl dressed like anime dog-demon InuYasha rings him up. At least a dozen more guys just like him still sit inside the cafe, lost in impenetrable thoughts. It looks like a casting call for an otaku version of Taxi Driver. The place itself could even be a classic ‘50s American hamburger joint, right down to the stainless steel multi-mixers and swivel top counter seats.

You don’t come to Akihabara, let alone Café Mailish for the food so much as the fantasy. In the afternoon, classic French maid uniforms are standard attire for the staff. From five until closing time, skirts and aprons are traded in for dazzling anime cosplay. Amuro Ray from Mobile Suit Gundam pours the lemon tea. The girl running the register is a cross-dressing samurai (Rurouni Kenshin to be exact), with a crimson scar painted on her face.

Questions: Is this the modern incarnation of the geisha house? A PG-rated hostess club? Could this be a Japanese version of Hooters minus the hot wings? One thing is clear, the ladies of Mailish, working under fake names, are genuine cosplay enthusiasts and otaku themselves, getting paid to do what they love.

The typical customer is a young adult male fresh from an Akihabara shopping spree, deep in the mysterious grips of moe. You’d figure that in a place like this an attractive member of the opposite sex wouldn’t last sixty seconds before some loser fired up on Gal games would began harassing her. But when asked about it, the cosplaying Kenshin running the register swears that the men who come here are harmless. No one has ever tried to exchange a phone number, let alone make much in the way of substantial eye contact. What little social interaction there is happens almost by accident or by design.

To wit: the latest innovation in service include spoonfeeding, where the girl will gently blow on your food first if it proves too hot for baby. Mailish also sells exclusive goods, depicting the staff as big-eyed anime characters.

Those seeking a small dose of reality will find it conspicuously absent from the menu.
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2006 update: When I first visited Mailish, it was three years ago and the cosplay-maid café concept was still fairly new. They are not just for otaku anymore. The current buzz on Akihabara is bringing in housewives and whole families into the area where they can patronize over 25 different maid-themed businesses. Recent wrinkles on the theme include Maid Foot Massage and Butler Cafes.

There seems to be less anime-manga cosplay nowadays than there used to be, probably because it required a certain degree of nerd-literacy to appreciate the characters and uniforms. The one costume everyone knows and can agree upon wound up simply being the maid. Plus, who doesn’t like being called “master”?

Frankenstein no Kyodai

Toho monster music maestro Akira Ifukube is dead at 91. Sad, but we all gotta go sometime. Not much to say, except the whole of the Godzilla movie experience would have been silent Beast From 20,000 Fathoms without him. He always looked so cool: Japanese Cab Calloway, penguin suit, slicked back hair, a conductor’s baton in one hand, cigarette in the other. The sound: Ainu dancing Rite of Spring over huge chunks of Europe and Romanticism, tripping into the 20th century in a bad way. Elegiac in the end. Mourning or expressing sorrow for that which is irrecoverably past. All of us, giant monsters now thanks to Little Boy.

We used to chop fat rails on the Cal Expo mirror to the war march from Monster Zero. Col. Baldwin using the Prayer of Peace and Light from G ’54 for the opening of Specters of the Spectrum, not counting how many times Godzilla Fantasia was played as a pre-show at Other Cinema. And me. Dad’s tape recorder pressed to the speaker of an old color TV, trying to capture the sound for later on. Grab a vinyl toy, put on the music, and try and tell me you don’t Feel It forever.

I guess the original score he did for Godzilla was the only one you really needed: the sound of militant apocalypse pounded out on a stolen contrabass. But what came after made up the...

Desert island Ifukube (warning: may not be yours. Mine, and yes, I love his dread and the long spaces between the notes)

The Prayer of Peace and Light from from the Godzilla '54

Moving King Kong with a Bunch of Balloons from King Kong Vs Godzilla

The Mystery of Planet X From Monster Zero

Main Title from Frankenstein Conquers the World

Main Title from Destroy All Monsters

Dr. Mafune's Past from Mecha Godzilla's Revenge

Main Title from Mecha Godzilla's Revenge

An Ardor for Ballistics

It has already begun: the new Viz Media version of the Golgo 13 manga is on it’s feet as you hit the street. Vol. 1, Supergun, features cameos from such luminaries as Saddam Hussein, Bill Clinton, and Madeline Albright…but its Golgo, sporting a Dirty Sanchez, who gets the girl in the end (see above).

Comment-King Carl Gustav Horn is behind the editorial trigger on the project, and he’s supplied helpful bonus back page materials, including “Golgo 13: Physical Observations” in which the exact nature of the Supergun is finally revealed: “Lures all the women in the world to the ‘height of ecstasy’; at any rate, an amazing penis.”

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As some of you nerds might know, Golgo 13 comes from the pen of Takao Saito, who also did a nifty James Bond manga before cashing in with his own man of action.

All the international mucking about and popping people reminded me that I saw the movie Munich yesterday. Some fine cloak and dagger and sweaty palm paranoia in there between all the speech making and Hollywood bullshit…Basically, a murder contest in the Geto Boys tradition with lots of exploding objects and point blank ventilations from “Kill ‘em all Spielberg.”

But the best thing about the movie is Michael Lonsdale as “Papa” who previously played baddie Drax in Moonraker (a great performance in a rumpy 007). His character in Munich is a mix of the godfather, the devil, a TV gourmet chef, and Drax fallen to earth after Our Man’s orbital hit. If only there had been a scene where he sent a Kato-like assasin to kill Eric Bana...

And so, I can dream about it: a Papa manga-only prequel from honorable Carl-sama and Saito Pro...

The Thoughtbird, and Other Stories

Part two of the Podcast of Darkness is up. Topics include: Danguard Ace, Pink Lady, Jeff, Eiji Tsuburaya, Robot Jox, The Iron Sheik, Wonderbug, and of course, Kigurumi. Download it from AWO here.

Work has begun on a fictional Light Novel: Da Scarlet Gangster of Asakusa. The story follows an aspiring young systems analyst from MIT who comes to Taishomei-era Tokyo to study consumer patterns after the Gerotan invasion. After much hilarity and limited-edition urban vinyl, he winds up becoming an unlikely hip-hop mogul just slightly west of the Sumida river.

Kenka Professional

I got an email this morning from old pal Pedro Edogawa, currently interning at Kigaku Tenyu Kai, a fortuneteller inside of Nakano Broadway (located on the 4th floor, across from Mandarake Heya, a few doors downfrom the aura photo capturing service). He seems to be recovering OK from the Goka Jyu-pun Senso and says:

It’s the dawn of the Taishomei Era, the big psychic reboot we all needed, but you wouldn’t know it one whit from what we’re working on now, under orders from Nakamori-sensei (now convinced he’s the reincarnation of someone named Marsilio Ficino, and eating a lot of conbini-spaghetti as if to prove it).

He’s calling it the Anime Mundi: a tarot card deck with Japanese cartoon characters filling for the Arcana. He figured since previous decks by Yoshitaka Amano and Ryoko Ikeda have been steady sellers over the years, and since we’re located in nerd central station, that we can at least expect to break even after the licensors are paid off.

Yuka and me are lazy so we first wanted to coast on fan service with characters from Evangelion and Gundam Seed (Rei as the High Priestess, Zechs as the Hanged Man, etc.), but Nakamori threw out the proposal, opting instead for what he’s calling “Retro-Modern Hermeticism.” So it’s old skool all the way.

We argued away most of yesterday on the subject of Doraemon, with Nobita on his back, as The Chariot, before finally agreeing that it's more like a symbol of addiction and dependence instead of strength (we may end up using it for the Minor Arcana, maybe as the Four of Pentacles). Some of these are no-brainers, like Dr. Hell with Koji Kabuto and girlfriend Yumi in chains as The Devil. I wanted Golgo 13 to be Justice, but Sensei is insisting that it has to be a woman with a sword. Cutey Honey maybe?

We have to do 78 of these goddamn things, so any suggestions are appreciated. The Larry King School of English is looking better and better every day.

Special Holiday Issue

The crack of a whip and the whiff of tentacle. Another round of rewrites on Otaku in USA, this time on the Hentai chapter.

Including additional information on two fronts: the case of Texas v. Castillo (link) where a comic shop owner was convicted on obscenity charges for selling Demon Beast Invasion and the recent Peach Girl brouhaha in Orange County, FL that could have potentially sunk the US manga market, but instead went nowhere (link).

In neither instance was the finger ever pointed at Japan for producing such filth in the first place. Instead, blame was firmly placed on the channels of distribution. It's almost as if the US has given Japan a free pass to flood the market with, as MSNBC puts it artfully, “creepily childlike, creepily sexual, creepily violent” images. The questions are why, why, why, and why?

This basically a call for Carl Horn to do his best Harvey Birdman imitation, although you’re all welcome to chime in, play some castanets, and touch the wall of sound (below).

Download 06_bernadette_castro_a_girl_in_love_forgives.mp3

Super Robo Gajinda

The Government of Darkness versus the Anime World Order! I was grilled by the AWO astral entities, resulting in baby’s first podcast interview. Data Analyzing Robot Youth Life-form promises listeners “the secrets of the universe,” but it’s mostly the sound of someone sucking down a six pack of Anchor Steam occassionally shouting the words “Johnny’s Jimsho” every now and then. Geto Boys intro. Listen here to part one.