Richard Fukuoka of Japanese tech bible Weekly Ascii materialized in San Francisco late last week for the Apple World Wide Developers Conference. He’s here in the USA to promote Ascii’s latest endeavor, “Tokyo Kawaii Magazine”, a English language magazine for the iPhone, available in both free and paid versions, filled to the digital brim with – as the flier puts it – “Anime, Fashion, and Tokyo Topics”. My company jaPRESS is handling localization for TKM, and we’ve also been hired to oversee translation and rewriting of a Certain Ascii Media Works Manga That Shall Remain Nameless (for now, at least).
Although I wasn’t expecting anything more than a simple meet-and-greet with Richard, he whipped out his iPhone and iPad to show me two things that blew my mind wide open. Believe me, my facial expression did a complete 360 after I saw....
1. The “augmented reality” feature from Konami’s Love Plus game, in which a simple paper printout of a symbol (in this case, a plus sign and a heart mark) creates a 3-D image of a Love Plus character in the finished photo when taken with a webcam (see above). It even automatically adds the correct copyright information to any situation, whether you want it or not. Talk about a killer app...
2. The Hatsune Miku concert from March 2010, in which the virtual Vocaloid idol finally became as “real” as virtual idol can with the aid of state-of-the-art projection and a special curved screen. Finally, the holographic promise of anime pop concerts in Macross city (or Megazone 23, your choice) has been made manifest, and the only natural reaction to this alien lifeform, judging from this audience, is to cheer or scream...or both.
Maybe you've seen both of these examples before. Fuck, maybe you're even waving around a glow stick as I type this. Either way, what I saw gave me acute future shock. That's in part because philosophically, we're at a dead end. The simulations just keep getting better and better. But that's besides the point...As much as Japan pundits are now wringing their hands over the nation falling behind in the tech and gaming sweepstakes, here are two startling examples of Japan doing things that fall into no other category other than "magic" with emerging and existing technologies.
The precedents go back to the post-war era, when Japan pioneered the art of miniaturizing transistors and became a world leader in the consumer electronics racket. Japan didn't invent the TV or the radio or the cassette player or the computer game, but they sure managed to put a big old Made in Japan stamp on them.
So, at the risk of sounding really naive, I’d like to think that the ever-increasing Apple and Android-ization of our daily lives will give the guys in the lab (especially the really old guy who smells like an ashtray) another chance to hit a home run. Not saying they will, and all bets are off, but it's hard not to feel like there's at least another brass ring up for grabs...unless it too turns out to be a hologram.
The catch is that otaku desire and obsession seems to be in the driver’s seat this time, rather than the needs of the nuclear family (see also: anime). Lots will depend on whether the corporate owned tech that gives birth to Love Plus and Vocaloid will ever be developed beyond 2D fetishism. I don't know. Maybe otaku themselves should put down the doujinsji and figure out how to 3D laser-project? After all, military radar helped to create television, and World War I was the cradle of wireless radio...
Augmented reality is nothing new. Idea has been tossing around for some time now,
The PSP had a game based on it.
Even idol groups are using it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoKgCxNj868
Its in the first few minutes
Not sure if these guys who created it the one for Love Plus but heres a photo of them with the idols
http://alternativedesign.jp/2010/05/smileage/
Posted by: Dave | June 07, 2010 at 03:20 PM
Yeah, obviously the idea of augmented reality is not new, which is why I referred to it as "existing and emerging" tech. I wasn't trying to position Love Plus as the very first example...just my first time experiencing it hands-on, so whatever. Anyways, thanks for the links.
Posted by: Patrick | June 07, 2010 at 03:26 PM
Technological innovations are frequently made in times of war.
Japan's otaku tribe has agreed, by and large, to give up on the world at large, lock their doors, and comfortably sink into a couch in front of a machine that randomly assembles codified character traits into fantasy worlds that create synthetic empathy.
It naturally follows that if Japan really wants its otaku to get up and produce, they're going to have to start a war INSIDE of fantasy-land.
100 hours into Love Plus 3 the bombs will start to fall inside of the player's DS, and if the player doesn't complete certain socially beneficial meta-goals (egged on by their loving wives, who are in constant danger but hold out waiting for you, only you, player) their waifu gets sniped and their savegame gets wiped forever. There will be achievements for curing cancer and building the perpetual motion machine.
Talk to me, Konami. We can save the world.
Posted by: David Cabrera | June 07, 2010 at 05:27 PM
I miss the Hot Tears of Shame podcasts. Any chance for a new one with you and Matt Alt?
Posted by: Jason Fetters | June 08, 2010 at 01:14 AM
I have no reason to believe 'Vocaloid' is the endgame in this effort, (no more than that flying paper airplane in the first CG proof-of-concept film) but I still shudder with revulsion when I watch it.
Is it the utter lack of substance (both literal and philosophical), the uncanny valley phenomenon, or just me being 45 years old? Seeing such a technological miracle immediately relegated to vapid pop music performances seems like a reversal of how it's supposed to go. I'm all for cutting-edge in the hands of the people, but if this is all we do with it, then we are, as a species, self-indulgent retards.
Don't stop here, Konami, is all I'm saying.
Posted by: Tim Eldred | June 08, 2010 at 08:22 AM
Having been aware of the Vocaloid craze for over a year, I was completely surprised by the actual live concert. I guess the next step is to build the Macross Fortress.
Posted by: James Leung | June 08, 2010 at 12:10 PM
With the number of life-sized robots being announced lately, a true-to-life SDF-1 being constructed wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.
Posted by: MattAlt | June 08, 2010 at 05:58 PM
I suspect they'll be some Hot Tears podcast action later this year...
Posted by: Patrick | June 08, 2010 at 08:45 PM
I would not be surprised if eventually the artists behind Gorillaz uses this technology to actually have their characters perform in front of the audience, with the actual band behind the screen.
There is also a goth-metal band in the Philippines called Mistula. They are much like Gorillaz in that there are real humans playing their music, but the characters are quasi-virtual. Only quasi-virtual, in this case, because the physical representations of the Mistula characters are Asian Ball Joint Dolls. One would have to enlist the aid of 3D scanning systems and CGI software to take Mistula to this next level, but it could be done.
/me looks at her vinyl pals (two Volks, one Obitsu) and thinks...hmm...3D scans plus Blender might have interesting artistic possibilities...hmmm...
Posted by: Msgeek93 | June 11, 2010 at 10:59 AM