There's a scary big two-page interview with me in the new issue of Japanese music magazine TONE.
It's the '90s retrospective issue, with Damon Albarn and Paul Simonon on the cover. My feature is called "The Rise, Prosperity, and Decline of American Otaku" - a typical rambling brain dump that covers (in no particular order): Nirvana Vs. Teenage Fanclub, Jellyfish, ELO, Satanic Majesties Request, Danzig, and how I pretty much only listen to anime and tokusatsu symphonic suites nowadays because Myspace and MP3s killed the music.
'Otaku USA Magazine' Launching in June
Patrick Macias Named Editor in Chief
February 28, 2007
Sovereign Media Inc., an active interest niche magazine publishing company that publishes SCI FI -- the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel, is launching Otaku USA Magazine in June. Patrick Macias, a correspondent for the NHK World Television show Tokyo Eye and author of Cruising the Anime City: an Otaku Guide to Neo-Tokyo, and Tokyoscope: The Japanese Cult film companion, will be editing the new magazine, which he described as follows: "Each issue of OtakuUSA will be oversized 9 x 10 7/8, with a poster bound in the center spread, and a DVD inserted onto the front cover, with full- length Anime features and game demos. In addition, each issue of Otaku USA will include a full manga feature, printed as a pull-out section. My aim is to make Otaku USA the best, most comprehensive Japanese pop culture magazine in the marketplace."
The typical issue of Otaku USA, which will have a cover price of $9.99 ($11.99 in Canada), will be at least 150 pages long and printed in full color on glossy paper. The bimonthly magazine will cover manga, anime, computer games and J-Pop, and it will be written by an American staff from an American point of view.
Curtis Circulation Company, a division of Hachette, will be handling all national and international newsstand distribution of the magazine. Using Curtis' connections Sovereign Media has purchased checkout display pockets at every Borders, Barnes & Noble, Walden Books, Hastings and Books-a-Million in the U.S. According to Sovereign Media's CEO Mark Hintz, "Our targeted first issue distribution is well in excess of 125,000 copies."
Counter-ESPY has allowed me to present you with additional information regarding the increasing proliferation of Leiji Matsumoto-inspired products at last weekend’s Wonderfest model and figure convention in Tokyo2.
It is my personal observation that Space Battleship Yamato is on the verge of a medium sized comeback both among fans here and in the marketing departments of Certain Companies That Shall Remain Nameless.
Could the new visibility of Yamato be tied to the rising surge of nationalism in Japan? Is “The Nish” involved somehow in all of this? And can we ever fully afford to trust a nation that has long believed the axiom "War is bad, but space battleships are great"?
I offer the following images for your consideration and await your reply via the Overtones...
As Professor Outa’s reading of the Yamato 2 episode “Challenge of the Rainbow Galaxy” has shown us, the Yamato itself psychologically functions for many as a surrogate penis. I’m not sure if this is the case for Matsumoto himself, but the old duffer sure likes looking at it a lot.
Most fans tend to poo poo the Yamato films and TV episodes that followed the Comet Empire storyline. That's their problem, I guess. Meanwhile, the Wonderfest dudes are totally high on the Dark Star Nebula saga. These are from modeler Einosuke Hino’s table. I was only slightly disappointed to see that they don’t come packaged in imitation Bandai boxes as shown on his website.
A closer look at that sweet Comet Empire, about the size of a grapefruit half and sold out at about 70 bucks.
Despite my usual indifference to “moe kei” figures, I can’t help but squeal a bit at fan interpretations of female Yamato crew members. You can’t really see them in this photo, but Nova got some pointy ass nipples…
Sasha Mio, the Leah Dizon of the Yamato saga. This looks more like a Matsumoto character then the version seen in the Be Forever film. I know, because I’ve watched it about a million times.
Ok, it wasn’t all Yamato all the time. This guy was selling Tochiro’s bullet ridden hat from Galaxy Express 999 as well as an elegant stuffed Tori-san.
I’d like to hang this memorial plaque of Captain Okita over my desk so his spirit can come to life in a time of crisis and convince me to crash my laptop into my enemies. But it would probably just fall down and land on my head.
Here, in all of its early morning glory, is the line to get into Wonderfest, Japan's biggest figure and model convention. The first people at the gate had been there as long as 5pm the previous day. Man, it was cold out there! Later inside, you could figure out who waited the longest on the basis of their cracked and scabby lips.
Some video of the 10am opening of Wonderfest 2007. Note menacing zombie-like lurching giving way to a full scale otaku riot.
It is said that holding the official Wonderfest program over your face temporarily renders one invisible as well as irreproachable no matter what kinds of figures you collect.
What makes otaku run: limited edition figures, many of them made up of little girl parts.
"Hos, Thugs, and Scrilla" otaku style. Someone is throwing down around $480 bucks for five figure kits.
As sick and twisted as things get at Wonderfest, you can always count on your old pal Godzilla to bring some relief from cries of "moe!"
This was one of the few flesh and blood young girls brave enough to endure Wonderfest. Her dad, manning a Godzilla booth, looked like a tracksuit yakuza, so maybe she was safe from harm. Still, by the end of the con, she was hiding under the table and wobbling Godzilla's tale around. I am not making this up.
"ShodaiGoji" seemed to be the most popular design for kaiju fans to choose from this season, with "KinGoji" following closely behind. What the hell am I talking about? If you know, go and take a look in the mirror. There before you is a big fucking nerd.
I always wondered who was interested in those creepy giant life-sized figures you see in Akihabara. Turns out, they are a bunch of crazy otaku!
To wit: The strength of "hypercapitalizzm" is the willingness to expand markets without much in the way of moral considerations. In other parts of the world, collectors of lolicon and moe figures would perhaps be marginalized as sexual perverts. But in Japan, they are just another demographic to make a buck off of. End of lecture. You may now shout "moe!"
...and then this gaijin showed up and ruined all the fun and exclusivity of our cool trip to Tokyo! Oh wait, it's just Matt Alt ignoring the ladies, as usual, because robots is around. We also recorded some stuff for a new Hot Tears of Shame podcast that I'll put up soonish.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention...I was there at Wonderfest with a TV crew from NHK to film a new segment for Tokyo Eye. On top of that was *another* film crew following us around for a "Making Of" special. If I look even more tense and nervous than usual, its because I am standing next to Araki Gentaro, the greatest ero figure maker of his generation. I asked him for an interview and he tried to steer me as far away as possible with his Wave Motion Gun remote control.
Space Battleship Yamato was out in full-fucking force at the con. The high priest of the genre was easily Einosuke Hino who has dedicated his life to making kits of the most minor Yamato mecha imaginable. His webpage is totally cool too.
There was plenty of competition in this department, however. A table nearby was offering dandy models of the Comet Empire (sold out by the time we got there) and Dark Star Nebula war craft.
At the same table were the winners of the "Most Obscure Spacecrafts From a Film or Television Production" award: a selection of ships from "Sayonara Jupiter."
Matt spent a good portion of the con hanging out with a dealer behind this pop culture crash-up of a table.
I hear his retinas are finally beginning to heal from all that sweet superhero eye candy.
Japan's birthrate may be in decline, but the population of nasty figures is ready to burst.
(Insert caption here)
The best thing I saw at the entire show were these foam rubber hand puppets of Godzilla monster heads.
So fucking rad. So fucking expensive.
The show stopper for everyone else seemed to be the one million yen Unit 01 figure. People approached it like it was the crucifix at the Sistine Chapel or something to confess their sins and throw money at.
Over in cell block D, there was an impromptu idol concert held at the massive Max Factory booth. A bunch of Otage (all singing, all dancing, idol otaku) were doing their stuff. Read the fine print on that shirt. As if there could be any doubt!
"Best In Packaging" goes to these loopy Matango and Godzilla on Tricycles toys from M-1.
Do-It-Yourself Doller Kits (handguns not included, sadly)! Lifesized anime masks for you and your buddies to customize and wear! Hopefully, these will go on to become the next craze from Japan to take over the world ala Iron Chef and Pokemon!
Thee OTACKERS tried really hard to enjoy the crap out of it, but the new Spirits of Zeon Gundam game kind of let us down. PS2-level graphics, less than thrilling first-person perspective, and not much in the way of immersion beyond the buzz saw sized gun you get to hold. Anyway, it still looks pretty hardcore in the arcade there, surrounded by all those UFO catchers filled with stuffed animals and boxes of Crunky, but it’s no wrinkle on the recent Golgo 13 and Cobra TV Games.
"Oni Gary" swears by icons of the Glowing Pregnant Torso of Machida, which are said to have miraculous healing properties by old bent over women with osteoporosis. The real one is rumored to be tucked away somewhere inside of Machida City Hall, but reproductions can be found all over the place in like this one on the 5th floor of the Odakyu department store.
Nishi-Shinjuku slow pulse sunrise pouring late spring light into the canyons, revealing lines of suits (Mr. Dandy) forming ghostpack around Macrossnalds hamburger stands. Skyscraper world here powered by cigarettes and impeccably marketed coffee products. Bought and sold, but to whom?
From the 109th floor of the Outa Hotel we can clearly see the top of the Royal Host building below; a monster sized circular plug that the Government of Darkness, invisible and all around us, sips collective instant life-force from. Maybe that’s why I, Pedro “Impitsu” Edogawa, can barely get the strength to pull myself out of bed. Instead, I’m crumpled up on my back staring at Yuka Yuka’s latest media endeavor: a morning show called “The Honey Drip.”
She is teeth and clavicles, sitting prim in a teal-colored blazer behind a glass table. Yuka tries her best to read off the headlines but is continually plagued by tiny toy bees that carry commercial bumpers with them, depositing them into her hair. Yuka is the not the host, she is the hive: an apiary for the move to privatize ESPACE.
Even I get sick of the acronyms sometimes, but they make up most of what I’m to do while I’m here. And you have to wonder, why would ESPY would see fit to deposit me here at the epicenter of G.O.D.?
Can I ask you a personal question? Ever been to the Shinjuku Wald 9 theater before? I ask because it looks like they are showing Adieu Galaxy Express 999 (i.e The Greatest Anime Movie Ever Made) until Friday. That catch is, it only screens during the extremely taxing hours of 11:50pm to 2:10am when my abilities to appreciate epic battles between "freedom fighters" and immortal machine men are at their lowest (see also: jetlag). Largely, I'm terrified they are going to show it in ghetto digital, which tends to happen a lot these days with revivals. Either way, I'm kinda tempted, ota-tempted...so how about it, Mr. Harrison?
Here is my beast friend Yoshiki Takahahi’s entry into the Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriquez sponsored GRINDHOUSE TRAILER competition. SHOGUN TORTURE IS THE MOST BRUTAL JAPANESE FILM EVER MADE!! Filmed in Japan where life is cheap and fresh fruit is expensive!
Trivia! The sleazy English voice over is provided by none other than Matt Alt, of Super #1 Robot and Hot Tears of Shame fame! I'm sure it will look good on his resume! We’re all going to get beery and stupid later on tonight. No idea how many of us will wind up dismembered and disrobed on the floor while some nutcase (probably Yoshiki) laughs at us.
I'm off to Tokyo for the usual Counter-ESPY tour of duty. It's going to be pretty "twisted." Expect more TV shows, podcasts, toy shows, shopping sprees, nerd vomit, rock concerts, and hallucinatory Taishomei voodoo.
Call or email if you're in town and something is up...
I recently recorded an interview with research-journalist Kent Daniel Bentkowski for Studio Voice magazine about his pretty astonishing interpretation of Stanley Kubrick’s EYES WIDE SHUT.
Bascially, Kubrick was a member of a secret society who was killed for revealing too much in his final film.
Unbeknownst to me, Kent also taped the interview, transcribed it, and recently put it up on his blog! None of my scribbling for Studio Voice has been available in English until now, so anyone interested in my growing patch of non-overtly otaku work might want to check it out. The actual article will run in the April issue of SV.
In case you haven’t seen it yet over at AltJapan, this is the monster sized animation cell - plus background – that Matt Alt and myself found in a pile of rubbish in Shinjuku Kabuki-cho a few months back (this most momentous event also forms the climax of our most recent Hot Tears of Shame podcast!).
Said image is from Gordian (nee, Guardian), a pretty minor robot show as far as these things go. Still, I’m certain that everything that’s great (was great?) about anime is summed up perfectly in this one single picture: the confused faces of surrogate sister-mother figures, triple-decker man-machine worship, uncertain science fiction agenda, and a grubby faced kid commanding it all like a symphony suite sponsored by Bandai.
This is art. Actually, it’s better than art. Which is why I call bullshit on the whole Superflat thing and any anyone else who “appropriates” anime/manga imagery and tries to get away with it in a gallery context. Because the real thing will always be richer, even if its worth nothing in the here and now.
Otaku trash piles are the future caves paintings of Lascaux.
I was interviewed the other day by TONE magazine about “otakuisim in music,” whatever that is (an attempt at creating a new subculture rather than reflecting a pre-existing one, I do suspect!).
Being a trip down memory lane, the conversation made me recall this wild old Glenn Danzig (The Misfits, Samhain, duh) interview done by Pushead for Thrasher in June 1986. This was back when my older brother was a skater and I, just for kicks, used to flip through his magazines while he was out McTwistin'. Suddenly, between ads for Bones Brigade videos and Scarfing Material recipies there were all these pictures of a room weighed down with Japanese toys that looked suspiciously like my own. "What the fuck?" I wondered, and on I read...
Pushead: How did you get into all this Japanese stuff?
Glenn: First, with animation when I was a kid; 8th Man, Kimba, Astro Boy, Gigantor, all that stuff. After not collecting for a long time I started collecting comics. I was at this show and there was a guy selling Japanese books and toys, but basically paperback books.
There's this character called Captain Harlock. He had a skull and crossbones shirt, a big massive scar down his face, an eyepatch, hair hanging in his face just the way I was wearing my hair at the time. I immediately identified with all these heroes. He rides this space ship in outer space, as a space pirate, and tries to stop greedy enterprising corporations which have taken over the earth by exploiting it and other planets. They are hoarding all the stuff which only rich people can afford. Like super rich. I'm talking people who control worlds. So it's a pretty cool story, and he thinks nothing of blowing people away. Blowing their whole bodies to pieces. He doesn't care about his reputation, he's really taking care of business and I respect that and I'm really into the Harlock thing.
And then I got into finding Astro Boy books. These Astro Boy cartoons are really good animation. This is really good stuff, it has personality too. Look at a cartoon right now and you'll see they have no personality. The budgets on American cartoons have been slashed so much and the work force on them has been cut so drastically that there isn't a semblance of what they used to be like in the 50s or 60s. While the American animation companies were getting worse, the Japanese were getting better. The Japanese had a sense of honor, sense of pride, bravery was shown in every cartoon, a moral, emotion... Things you could use in your daily life. Like the old Bugs Bunny cartoons had a sense of realism.
P: That started what you have here, the giant collection of toys...?
G: The toys, I just really got into the toys. It started with the books and then, "Wow, look at this, a toy of such and such. I'm gonna pick it up." I love this old animation stuff. Cyborg 009, Astro Boy, Gigantor, Mazinger Z, Getto Roboto, Captain Harlock, Captain Future...what else...
P: Devil Man?
G: Devil Man is my favorite character, again that's all good versus evil. I can relate to him on a personal basis, it's a on a parallel to something I'm doing.
P: Toys are big again, like in the '60s.
G: I think its good, I'd rather see kids buying toys than drugs. That's just my opinion, basically I think drugs are for jerks. I don't care, if someone wants to go out and kill themselves with drugs, fine, go do it. Toys are happening, if you want to get 'em, get 'em. If you don't, you don't.
Today, we all know that Danzig is a sucker for adolecent power fantasies of the Asian stripe and it’s all fine and well that ex-skate kids covet designer vinyl and haunt Tokyo toy shows. But back then, this early appraisal of Devilman, Captain Harlock, and even Captain Future in cod-Nietzschean terms seemed genuinely revolutionary...if not a little scary too!
So now I wonder, did this one article create the crossover between (suburban) punk and Japanese pop culture appreciation that we see today? And what if Danzig had just been a Trekkie instead? Are we still irradiated by that brief and shining moment when Fred Patten had the same taste as the guy who sang "masturbate me"?
I’m off to Washington DC (nee, DX) tomorrow to lay down some nuts and bolts on Superhuman Samurai Secret Project 2007. I’ll be back in Tokyo on Feb/20 where new the seeking out of new frontiers in gaijin otakudom will begin apace. That’s it.
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