High School of the Dead recently began airing and has brought the irrepressible zombie to a media which has peculiarly ignored their archetypes in favour of more culturally relevant afflictions such as demonic possession and the like. Based on the manga of the same name, in only two episodes the series has shown a remarkably sympathetic hand for including genre sensitive elements - is that the signature tune for 28 Days Later at the end of the first episode?
it says volumes that the only females to survive are curvaceous and beautiful
Widely credited with the creation of the zombie movie genre, George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead is one of his earliest and most widely known movies and champions a lot of the situations and scenarios that High School of the Dead apes. More interestingly though, Dawn of the Dead and its mall setting is a scathing commentary on the decadent consumerism and hedonism of the period which is still just as relevant today. Like the best fantasy and sci-fi its fiction was a critique of society and culture, a relevance which very few zombie movies have managed to achieve since.
The trailer for the latest Silent Hill instalment to come from Konami filled me with a rare kind of glee. However, I haven't played a Silent Hill game since Homecoming and haven't completed one since the The Room and it made me wonder why I still get excited about the franchise. The series has seen Akira Yamaoka mutate from music director to music god to game producer, but has now left the nest to join Grasshopper games, so it is certain that his iconic and atmospheric music will not be gracing the eighth entry. The music from the trailer sounds sterling though and while an unabashed fan of his music for Silent Hill, I didn't greet the news of him leaving Konami and the franchise with anything more than a "huh".
far harder is it to see a series slip into confused mediocrity than to precipitously burn out
I fell in love with Silent Hill, both the town and the game series, during the second and third iterations. The third bizarrely came out in the UK before the rest of the world and was one of the first games I got for the PS2, likewise the second game came belatedly to the Xbox and was another firm favourite. After them however the series faltered and hasn't really recovered what made it special - certainly all the individual components are present in games such Homecoming but the spark has never been seen since. And yet I still wanted to tear apart the latest trailer and put the pieces under a microscope, examining them for clues and hints as to what was to come.
I am abjectly terrible at fighting games. This didn't stop me from seeking out arcades in Japan to hamfistedly fondle the seductive BlazBlue machines, or importing the US version when it was released, or venturing online to be emasculated in short order. I may appreciate their focus and purity but a lack of innate talent and free time means I'll never be as good as I desire. Talent is not in question, but is my ineptitude really an issue of time?
waiting for a time when I've run out of series to review and ideas to explore
Certainly a nine to five job blocks out close to ten hours of the day, but leaving a modest six hours for sleep that still leaves eight hours for hobbies and the minutiae of life. Pondering the issue more, I could only conclude it is still fundamentally a time issue, but it would be more apt to brand it as a lack of dedication. When that invisible plateau is reached where the time to become better encroaches on the ability to enjoy other games and anime, that dastardly analytical part of my brain takes over.
Even when I'm waist deep in Noel's story and practically giddy from her soundset when facing Litchi, a mental flag pops up. There's new anime to be watched! New games to be played! Things to do. Sometimes very good games can override this, dragging me under for weeks at a time, however all it takes one slow section to send me gasping back to the shoreline. This sounded like a good enough reason: essentially a free time defence mechanism; and it certainly fit with my habits, but it doesn't explain why the balance between video games and anime I used to maintain had been broken, marginalising former in favour of the latter.
A lot of anime deal with identity, but in different ways: whether it is the all-encompassing, driving force behind the movie and series extravaganzas that are Ghost in the Shell and Evangelion or as an undercurrent to more prevalent themes like with Guts in Berserk or Faye in Cowboy Bebop, it is fair to say that many different anime use identity as at least part of their narrative thrust. Even looking at disparate, popular shows like Bleach and Naruto reveals a simplistic version of the theme with the push to become strong and protect - a topic that is an essay in itself. It's only when investigating beyond the obvious that it becomes apparent identity is prevalent in so many different genres of anime that it begins to reflect how they were conceived and upon the creators themselves.
how flippantly cyborgs view gender when the possibility of reproduction is removed
Identity is a wide and multitudinous topic that has been researched by psychologists and philosophers alike for centuries so it's no surprise it is present in a culturally reflective medium as anime. Perhaps the most subversive and comedic is gender identity and the question of what defines gender. The earliest anime I can recall that toyed with this is Ranma ½ which had the titular protagonist switch from one gender to the other with the application of cold and hot water - it is played for laughs more than as a thoughtful treatment on the subject but the enforced gender switching is in so many other series from Kashimashi to Kämpfer that it can hardly be ignored. This is without mentioning the less extreme sex swapping with cross-dressing which has of course birthed one of the most cherished anime cultural staples: the trap.
By some bizarre fluke I have managed to squeeze through the second round of the AniBlog tournament with a win despite my expectations otherwise. Much respect to hontou ni for a close-run tussle, there were times when there were less then five votes between us which made for some frantic checking. I am up against Ogiue Maniax in the next round which is a daunting prospect but I wish him all the best for the next round, hopefully it will be a interesting match up. Musing on the tournament though has brought to the fore a lot of ideas that stem from it - primarily why participants are voting and commenting like they are.
Many people who watch anime, one can imagine, do only that - whether that's on TV (either American, Japanese, European, Malaysian or any other location) or anything they find to download or stream, it's probably fair to say that the majority don't interact or otherwise think about anime beyond that. Apart from them however there is a gumbo of different ways of passing information around about anime whether that's forums, instant messaging, Twitter, blogs, IRC, conventions, podcasts, conversations, university clubs or myriad other possibilities. The problem those mediums and the nature of fan communities suffer from though is that they naturally foster insularity. It is, as a fan, very easy to become entirely engrossed in a select few avenues of communication to the knowing or indirect exclusion of others. But being aware of those other groups and paying them respect is something I feel a lot of anime fans don't do and the AniBlog tournament has, among many other things, exposed.
