DS822: Ravenwood's Anime Pages

Getting Ahold of the Goods

Anime and manga tend to come to the US in two waves, these days. The first wave is the fansubs or scanlations of anime and manga being released this season in Japan. The second wave is the commercial license and release, which involves much higher quality materials but may lag years behind the Japanese publications.

Second wave items are easy to acquire. All you need is money. Barnes & Noble, Borders and Waldenbooks have all started stocking manga, and you can also buy direct from the publishers such as Viz, Tokyopop and Del Rey. Anime is also starting to appear in the video sections of bookstores, but the easiest place to get it is probably Amazon.com, supposing you have access to a computer (which, if you’re reading this, I assume you do). If you prefer the mall, check out Suncoast. Again, you can generally also buy direct from the distrubutors such as Urban Vision, Central Park Media, Viz, Pioneer (now Genon) and ADV.

A note on buying used: When you look at used anime, some of them will have extremely low prices, often for boxed sets. These will frequently be labled as the “import” version. Be aware that this means a Hong Kong subtitle. HK comes in two flavors: good quality, illegal pirated rip of the US commercial release; and homegrown subtitles, generally in Chinese and English. The latter are translated from Japanese to Chinese, and then from Chinese to English, often by people who know very little English, and they suck harder than a starving ant eater. Unfortunately, sometimes, as with Yuugi-ou, the HK version is the only uncut, subtitled version available. Check Import Anime to see what is available and be sure what you’re getting.

First wave items are both easier and harder to get. Easier because you don’t have to pay for them. Harder because centralized locations to find them are far less permenant then, say, your local bookstore. In general, anime episodes are released in .avi format and manga issues in .zip format. The most common way to get these files, currently, is via Bittorrent.

Bittorrent is a distributed method of file sharing. You download a .torrent file, open it in your Bittorrent client, and the client downloads the .avi or .zip file associated with that .torrent file. Needless to say, to make this work, first you need a client. Personally, I’m fond of Azureus, but many others are available. Just feed “bitorrent” and “client” into Google and take your pick.

Once you have your client, you need to find the torrents.

Some major torrent trackers:

Scarywater, Point Blank, Anime Suki.

Isohunt is a torrent search engine, and wonderfully useful.

Once you have your download, you need to open it, of course, and .avi is not precisely a format so much as it is a container. The codecs for reading the files vary wildly. The best program I’ve found for reading all files, cross-platform, is VLC Media Player.

Getting Ahold of Other Fans

A good deal of anime/manga fandom has moved onto LiveJournal, though there are also quite a few forums up and running as well.

LiveJournal, if you are not familiar with it, is a service that allows individuals to keep online ‘journals’ which other users may post comments on (or not, if the user has ‘locked’ the entries from public view). Its use ranges from personal diaries to outlets for posting fanfic to what I can only call persona-performance-art. LiveJournal also provides communities which individual users may join and make posts to.

To find communities and personal journals related to fandom, run a search for the title of an anime/manga as an “interest”.

Some other good starting points are the Multi-Fannish Meta Guide, which offers some non-series-specific pointers to LJ fandom locations, and the Crack Van, which offers both overviews of particular fandoms on LJ and specific fic recs. Both of these are skewed toward domestic media fandoms, but do feature some very useful anime/manga offerings as well.

You are more likely to find forums by feeding the title of an anime/manga into Google, possibly with the word “forum” if your first try does not give you a forum in the first twenty hits. One place to start which will have a thread for just about any anime you may want to talk about, though, is Anime Suki.

Theoretically, fanlistings also provide a way to find other fans, but as best I can tell they’re useless as actual points of contact. Personally, I consider them the Big Mac wrappers on the information superhighway.

Some general resources:

Internet slang and acronyms (also emoticons). If you have not been online in an environment that let you learn these before, it may be helpful to take a look through these lists.

Fanfic Symposium. This is one of the better collections of thoughtful essays on fandom stuff, and someplace to start if you like to think and talk about fic and fandom.

A Few Really Basic Tips

1. Read the rules. When you enter a forum or community, take ten mintues to read the rules before you dive in to post. It makes for far less embarrassment all around, and the tone of the rules may help you decide if you really want to partake of this comm/forum/ml at all.

2. Watch and wait. While I can understand the urge to make connections to other like-minded souls as quickly as possible, remember that connections may be easier to make than to sever. Watch your prospective community for a little while before making overtures; it gives you a better chance of being sure that the other soul really is like-minded.

3. Never demand. Really loving something and wanting more of it is a basic fan-thing. But don’t let your eagerness turn you into a nuisance or worse. If you want more fic, or another song translation, or the next issue/episode of your favorite anime/manga, that’s fine. Demanding it is not. Asking politely and humbly greatly increases your chances of getting what you want.

Don’t even ask the fansubbers. Never, ever, ever whine to the fansub groups about how it takes them a whole two weeks (months, years) to put out the next epiosde. Fansubbers are not getting paid, and they have lives of their own. If you want your anime any faster, go learn Japanese for yourself. And, while you’re at it, give thanks that these things aren’t done on VHS any longer. The only thing you should say to the fansubbers is “Thank you very much”.

Recommendations

Things to start off with, divided by genre. My genres, that is.

Feature Length Gorgeous

Vampire Hunter D–Bloodlust. Fairly simple quest plus romance plot, but nice round characters and mouth watering visuals.

Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi. Girl’s adventures in the spirit world. Everything you expect of Ghibli, visually, and a really sweet story. Released in the US as Spirited Away.

R.O.D.–OVA. Librarian as secret agent; what could be cooler? Comes with funky technological moments and lots of fantastic action scenes.

Altered World, Complex Plot

Cowboy Bebop. Future science fiction drama. Very much adult oriented. While there is wonderful humor, it’s not a light storyline. Gorgeous, gorgeous anime, though, and magnificent music. Also available commercially.

Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi). Set in a world that isn’t exactly early 20th C Germany with the addition of alchemy. Major political and ethical themes. Both anime and manga, though the plotlines diverge fairly quickly as far as character histories go. Available commercially.

Escaflowne. This is a classic. It’s an alternate world drama with some mecha and some romance tossed in, and a major philosophical theme of fate and free will. It’s available commercially.

Bleach. It starts out looking like a simple fight-anime/manga, and in some ways it is. But the world is wonderfully complex and rich, and the writer is absolutely brilliant at telling the story of a multi-sided conflict where no one is completely in the right. Manga is being released commercially, and the anime is being subbed by several groups. I favor Lunar.

Mai-HiME. It’s loosely shoujo with a lot of light, silly humor, but an increasingly dark and dramatic storyline as it goes on. School setting. Could be categorized as Magical Girl Mecha. Static Subs released this one.

Get Backers. This has a lot of plot hung on a lot of fights, and revolves around some “is the world what we think it is” mysteries. The main characters are very lovable, and are constantly getting into trouble either because of their quixoticism or their lack of money; often both. The anime has ended, but the manga continues. Be aware that the manga features a whole lot of gratuitous T&A shots, and if you don’t like that kind of thing you’ll want to stick with the anime.

Weirdly Mythological

Angel Sanctuary. Manga only–there was a three ep OVA made, but it’s trash. This is very, very loosely based on Revelations, only with the addition of high techology for both angels and demons. Lots of reincarnation and gender twisting and it bears very little resemblance to any actual Christian theology you will ever meet. But it’s a good story. Very character driven, though, I should warn you. This is coming out commercially, and nearing completion.

Utena. Set at a school, but the whole thing is a huge metaphor practically dripping with mysticism and commentary on the subconscious. Plus swordfights. Commercially available.

Fruits Basket. Completed anime and manga. The anime is lighter and got a moderately happy ending. The manga is progressively more dark and twisted. The story centers around transformations and curses and deep, dark familial mysteries and gets fairly disturbing in places. Both are commercially available.

Saiyuki. The anime of this one has been disappointingly watered down. Stick to the manga. It’s loosely based on the Chinese classic Journey to the West, and features lots of gods and demons. Also lots of blood and guts, both physical and psychological. Commercially available.

Samurai Stories

Rurouni Kenshin. Set at the start of the Meiji period. It’s comparatively light, available as both manga and anime, and I recommend both if you like it. Both available commercially

Peacemaker Kurogane. This one is especially nice if you know anything about the history of the civil war that ended the Edo period, but it will rip your heart out and tear it to tiny shreds. It’s coming out as manga, though there is an anime that covers only the first arc and is less… serrated.

Samurai Champloo. A journeying story. A bit wierd in places but, again, fairly historically accurate in setting and a nice balance of light moments with heavy, thought-provoking ones; very slick animation, too. This one focuses on only three characters, which may be easier to keep track of than the previous two.

Samurai Seven. A retelling of “The Seven Samurai” with technology mixed in. Very engaging remake of a classic Japanese story.

Mostly Mecha

Evangelion. The classic of mecha anime, this one runs lovely mecha fights alongside a very dark psychological thread revolving around a lot of characters who don’t have their heads on very straight.

Gundam Seed. I think it’s the most thoughtful and least objectionable of the Gundam anime. It’s certainly the one that best combines pretty ink with a meaningful examination of war. And cool women, too.

Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040. This is a nice character drama with cool mecha to make it shiny. This time, the girls get the mecha. Lots of reflections on what it means to be human.

Fight Stories

Yu Yu Hakusho. Ghosts and demons make a backdrop to a whole lot of Our Heros fighting. The characters are engaging and very diverse, though, and their bond as a group is very sweet for such a bunch of little thugs. Anime is commercially available.

Hunter X Hunter. In this one, the fights form a sort of story-spine on which to hang the personal journey of the characters. The weapons are fairly bizarre, in places, but the whole thing is charming. This is both a manga and an anime, both of which have managed to keep on going without jumping the shark. Commercially available.

Fight Stories by Other Means

Prince of Tennis (Tennis no Ouji-sama). Middle school boys on tennis teams trying to make it to Nationals. Remarkably engaging characters, given the limited view we have of them, and a huge cast. I recommend the manga, which is being brought out commercially. Though the anime has lovely voice-acting, it rather flew off into the crack-o-sphere by the time it ended.

Initial D. Car racing in the sticks. The animation style can be a bit offputting for some, but the characters have some real weight to them. Anime and manga, both ongoing. Very exciting for anyone who likes things that go vroom in the night.

Yuugi-ou (Yu-Gi-Oh!). This is a bit of an odd one, in that there are three completely separate anime series, the first of which is very hard to find. The first two series are based on the manga. Only the second is commercially available, and the “uncut” release is not, in fact, uncut or well translated. The manga is commercially available, and I recommend starting with that. The story revolves around inhabiting spirits and the nature of the competitive spirit as revealed in games.

Hikaru no Go. Two boys and their search for transcendence via the game of Go. The suspense produced is amazingly high, given that it all revolves around a board game. A nice lot of vivid characters.

Light and Sweet

Fullmetal Panic Fumoffu. This is the second season/series of Fullmetal Panic, and very episodic. It focuses on romance and comedy, though I can’t quite call it romantic comedy. Lovely animation, not too slapstick, adorable characters. You do not need to have seen the first season (which is a bit of a Gundam knockoff) to understand it.

Cardcaptor Sakura. The uncut, subtitled version only, please, this was one of the anime that got badly mangled in dub. Basic quest story with some very humorously bizarre targets. Romance in the second and third seasons.

IFW (Incredibly Fucking Weird)

FLCL. …there is really no good way to summarize this one.

King of Bandit Jing OVA–Seventh Heaven. Incredibly trippy, you’re never sure if it’s a dream or hallucination or what. Scenes change radically from moment to moment and are never quite rational.

Excel Saga. The entire thing is a massive parody of anime and manga, and it’s hysterically funny if you get all the in jokes. You may wish to wait on this one until you’re fairly well steeped in anime. If you try it sooner, prepare to be both dazed and befuddled.

Not Quite Recommendations

Things that I don’t exactly recommend, but you may well hear mentioned.

Classic Trash

These are poorly produced and often plotless series that nevertheless manage to have a big fanbase who are willing to overlook the flaws. Light viewing for when you have nothing better to do.

Weiss Kreuz. Flower-shop boys by day, assassins by night. Cheese and angst in about equal measure, in the anime. Do not, as you value your sense of self-worth and your latest meal, try the novels or audio dramas.

Gravitation. Boy-band struggling to make it as pop idols; features gratuitous rape at one point. The manga turns into one huge, ongoing non sequitur by about half way through.

Take It or Leave It

Series that have their good points, and often a very broad fandom, but tend to drag on.

Naruto. Young ninjas, and lots of repeating history. Very much a fight story.

Inu Yasha. Demons and magic, and a quest for bits of a jewel that just keeps getting broken.

Ranma 1/2. Neverending sex-changing slapstick. Really silly renditions of martial arts, too.

Tenchi. Bunch of interstellar babes inexplicably fixated on earth-boy.

Looking More Stuff Up

Anime Info can tell you at least a little about just about any anime title released in the past ten years.

Anime Cafe has both reviews and fannish amusements. Of particular interest is the Laws of Anime.

Anime Academy has excellent reviews plus some very useful introductory essays.

For detailed reviews of some popular series, check out Memento and Athena.