The shark says a: Exploring the appeal of VTubers

VTubers. These 2D streamers have been all over the place the last few months. If you don’t know what any of this is about that you’ve been seeing on Twitter and in your recommended YouTube videos, you were exactly where I was in the middle of this year. Back then, I wondered a bit about the whole VTuber thing — I was familiar with the original self-proclaimed “virtual YouTuber” Kizuna Ai, a peppy sort of virtual idol who started making short scripted comedy videos a few years back using what looked like a MikuMikuDance model. But 2017 may as well be ancient history as far as the internet is concerned, and I didn’t know a thing about this new VTuber movement that seemed to have exploded from 2019 on.

And look at me now: still falling down that infamous rabbit hole. People joke about it, but it’s a real thing: I peered into this hole out of curiosity back around July, thinking I’d just make a study of it. And it fucking pulled me in.

And it was the rabbit herself who was most responsible.

But what is the appeal of VTubers, exactly? I get why someone wouldn’t understand it. When popular Japanese VTuber agency Hololive’s English-language branch debuted on YouTube back in September, I saw some very confused people on Twitter asking why these streams and video clips featuring anime girl puppets were suddenly being recommended to them, and wondering who this shark girl was people wouldn’t shut up about.

Firstly, what is a VTuber? To put it very briefly, it’s a person controlling and speaking through an animated model. These models take all sorts of forms — they’re usually cute anime girls of some variety, though there are male VTubers out there as well. It’s apparently not really that difficult to become a VTuber yourself; just rig up a model however that works (I admit I have no idea about the technical side of this, except that Live2D seems to be a popular program to use) and stream with it, and hot damn now you’re a VTuber, congratulations.

However, there does seem to be more to it than that. I was never very big on following streamers myself aside from a few people I know personally, but VTubers seem to have a particular appeal. But what could that appeal be? Instead of trying to describe it first in a general sense, I want to take a look at a few of my favorite VTubers and see what sets them apart. Starting with the primary culprit:

Usada Pekora

Pekora goes first because she was the one who got me into this whole mess. A 111 year-old rabbit from a country called Pekoland, Pekora decided to emigrate to Japan to become a streamer. At first, she presented the figure of a cute, demure girl, but that soon gave way to the Pekora people know today:

Pekora says she’s an idol, but most of her fans insist she’s a “comedian” to her great distress. It’s not hard to see why they think of her that way, though. Pekora is fast-talking and very smug but a bit of a buffoon; she’ll often be bragging about how great she is just before getting killed in a game or defeated by one of her VTuber friends. This leads to a weird sort of streamer-chat relationship in which chat members laugh at her many misfortunes. This clip from one of Pekora’s talk streams shows some of that relationship, in which Pekora tries to act like a proper cutesy idol much to the dismay of her fans.

But it’s all in good fun, and Pekora is a highly entertaining streamer. Even though I can’t understand most of what she says since it’s almost all in Japanese. Bless those clippers and translators. (I do love when she speaks English, though.)

Kiryu Coco

If any VTuber was responsible for getting a ton of English-speaking viewers into the whole VTuber thing before Hololive EN came about, it was Kiryu Coco. This Yakuza-loving dragon girl (apparently she took part of her name from Kiryu Kazuma) is fluent in both Japanese and English and for a long time acted as a sort of bridge between Japanese and overseas fans because of it. She also has an understanding of American culture in particular that a lot of her colleagues don’t, making for some interesting videos like her “Reddit meme reviews” where she reviews overseas fans’ many shitposts with her friends.

Coco, more than most of her Hololive colleagues, just doesn’t seem to give a damn and will push the boundaries sometimes, which in itself has become a bit of a joke. But that’s part of why fans love her as well. I suspect that’s also part of her appeal to western fans, since many of us don’t get a lot of idol culture standards that somewhat restrict what idols (and even these streamers) can talk about. Here, for example, is Coco delivering some wisdom to a fan who wrote in. Or maybe this is Coco corrupting the youth. Maybe it’s both?

I find Coco’s approach refreshing and a lot of fun to watch. And she speaks English sometimes in her streams as well, so if you don’t know any Japanese you might still be able to follow occasionally.

Amano Pikamee

Hololive contains many of the best-known and most popular VTubers, but they’re not the only game in town. There are other agencies like Nijisanji and the newly created US-based VShojo. There are also plenty of independent VTubers out there doing their thing, and Pikamee is one of them. A VTuber connected to the independent project VOMS, Pikamee describes herself as a five trillion and one year-old electric-type monster. This might make her sound like a terrifying entity, but she’s really just a nice girl who likes playing games on stream and talking to fans. Her streams are also supposedly “family-friendly”, though that standard doesn’t always get maintained:

Like Coco, Pikamee is fluent in both Japanese and English, but she uses both languages almost equally in her streams, switching between them fluidly and basically translating herself for her audience most of the time. This also makes for some interesting situations with her colleagues Hikasa and Monoe, who aren’t quite as fluent in English:

Pikamee is pretty much a ray of sunshine, that’s all. And her tea kettle laugh is infectious.

Gawr Gura

Well shit, yeah of course Gura. This shark girl is currently the most subscribed among the VTubers, at least as far as I understand. But that’s not why I’m talking about her — it’s because her streams are pretty damn entertaining.

Even before her debut back in September as part of the Hololive EN English-language crew, Gura was attracting attention. During her first livestream (which yes I was watching, I was there live I admit) viewers were piling in, and when she announced that she was going to close out with a song, a lot of people were expecting her to sing that irritating “Baby Shark” meme song, Gura herself being a small shark and all. But instead she busted out with this Tatsuro Yamashita surprising everyone with both that pick and with her voice. I’ll also submit her jazz lounge take on Renai Circulation, along with this performance of “Plastic Love”:

Good stuff. Gura is also just pretty fun in general; she has an easygoing and comfortable style in her streams that I like. She seems to have a special understanding of internet culture as well. I don’t know if Gura’s first tweet, simply the letter “a”, was an accident or intentional, but she instantly turned it into one of her signatures. I don’t know how the hell something like that catches on, but it worked for her.

I could go on talking about the tomboy duck Subaru, best dog Korone, rapping grim reaper and fellow Persona fan Calliope, dirty-minded pirate captain and fellow Touhou fan Marine, or the complete mystery that is Haachama. But I think I might be able to make a case based on what we have here, at least from an American perspective. More than anything, I think this VTuber movement resembles a massive, constantly ongoing variety show. These used to be very popular in the US, with series like The Carol Burnett Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and The Muppet Show running comedy skits and musical acts. Today, the only TV shows I know of here that do anything like that are Saturday Night Live and the various late night shows, which don’t hold much appeal for younger audiences (or they downright suck for the most part, as with SNL from what I’ve seen of it the last several years.)

I think Hololive and other networks, along with independent VTubers, offer something like that, only far fresher than today’s stale TV fare. One reason for this might be the sheer variety of streams on offer: there are the expected game streams, but also art streams, singing and music streams, talk streams, ASMR streams (which I still don’t really get, but a lot of people seem to like them) and even a morning show (Coco’s “Asacoco”, which includes comedy skits and parody advertisements.) The variety of character types available is also an important aspect; there are all kinds of VTubers out there to suit just about anyone’s tastes.

However, I think the biggest draw to the whole VTuber phenomenon, what really sets it apart, is the interaction with the audience. Chat moves at light speed in the more popular streams, but even there a weird sort of culture seems to develop in each VTuber channel, and there’s quite a lot of streamer-chat interaction that sometimes makes for comedy in itself. And maybe even for more than that. It’s understood that most VTubers play a character. We obviously know Gura isn’t really an ancient shark girl from Atlantis, and we never actually see the real-life three-dimensional streamer behind that character, but that’s all an accepted part of the act. Even so, sometimes the VTuber breaks character and talks pretty openly about themselves. Some VTubers even start out with a character that seems to slowly turn into something more natural, probably much more closely resembling their real selves, leading to some interesting and surprisingly intimate moments.

After all that, though, maybe you still don’t see the appeal of VTubers. Or maybe you have a more cynical take on the whole setup than I do: that these are just some cute anime girl models with cute personalities and voices designed to eat up superchat money, and that I’ve become a brainwashed shill. I understand why someone would feel that way. I also acknowledge that this business isn’t all fun and games — the agency-based VTubers’ connection with idol culture in Japan seems to have brought along some of the strange hang-ups some idol fans carry around with them (though again, I can’t talk too much about the idol thing. I haven’t even played an Idolmaster game so what do I know.)

But I still see much more of a positive than a negative effect here. It goes without saying that this year has been rough for just about everyone on Earth and that a distraction was sorely needed, and it’s possible that the rise in VTuber popularity this year had something to do with that (and also the whole being stuck at home thing.) But after seeing both the size and sheer dedication of these fanbases and the actual quality of the talents and their programs, I don’t believe this is just a passing fad. I would put money on it: the craze will probably die down a bit, especially after life gets back to something like normal, but VTubers are here to stay. And there’s always room in the rabbit hole for one more. 𒀭

The Seasonal Anime Draft: Cop Craft, ep 2

Yes, we’re back to Cop Craft after just a few days, because I got this series started a bit late.  First things first: I just realized that I didn’t mention last post how good this show’s OP is.  It’s extremely good.  I’m a fan of this kind of jazz stuff anyway, and the theme is catchy. The OP itself also suggests that this show isn’t going to be 100% serious, which I’m totally fine with if that’s the case.  Anyway, on again to the review.

Summary: The second episode starts out exactly where the first ended, in a gunfight with Kei and Tilarna taking cover behind an old sofa that’s apparently able to absorb bullets really well.  The bad guys shooting at them aren’t going down despite taking several shots to the face and body, so the pair make a break for it when the fire stops, drawing their enemies out into the alley below and killing them.  Well, sort of — as Tilarna explains to a frustrated Kei who wanted to bring them in for questioning, these guys were already dead and being controlled by a third party with an interest in keeping the illegal fairy trafficking trade going.

They still haven’t addressed that magical girl transformation Tilarna pulled out in episode one, or what those puffballs in her battle outfit’s headdress are for.

A trip to the morgue and a talk with Cecil, the police coroner and Kei’s ex (not sure if girlfriend or wife) confirms that these guys were in fact zombies or something like it, and Tilarna says that it’s the effect of the consumption of “latena”, a substance made from fairies.  Kei then decides he’s ready to go home and get some sleep after that deadly gunfight, so he drops Tilarna off at what looks like a luxury hotel she’s booked at, but she calls him a few minutes later complaining that they kicked her out after she refused to leave her sword with the concierge.  After telling her to fuck off and sleep on the sidewalk, Kei begrudgingly turns his car around and goes back to the hotel to pick her up again and bring her to his shitty apartment in an industrial part of town.  We then get some character development and learn that Tilarna and Kei both like cats, or at least the cat that Kei temporarily adopted after a drug dealer he was chasing hit it.  Tilarna comments that Kei is more of a softie than he lets on, and Kei tells her to shut up and wishes her a good night while he grabs a beer and goes to bed, presumably leaving her the couch.

smuggirlholdingcat.jpg

Meanwhile, out by the docks somewhere, a bunch of new characters are conducting a highly illegal arms sale.  A terrorist (did they seriously need to name him Mr. Kareem?  For fuck’s sake guys) presents a suitcase full of Benjamins to one Mr. Elbaji, a young, rich Semanian dude who has an entourage that includes an old combination powerful mage/butler guy named Zelada.  Elbaji is selling a sort of kidnapped-fairy-powered flash bomb that turns humans that are exposed to its light into undead familiars, and he proves its effectiveness by testing it out on two cops who respond to his own fake 911 call.  The cops are manipulated like puppets by Zelada after being turned into living corpses and end up actually dead at the end of the ordeal, and the bloody scene is discovered by Kei and Tilarna the next day after they attend Kei’s partner’s funeral (the guy who got his neck snapped in episode one.)

Guessing this is going to be a plot point that will come up later when our protagonists go up against this guy.

Tilarna uses her sense of smell to determine that these officers were also dead before they died, just like the two guys in the shootout at the beginning of the episode.  Everyone’s puzzled about it, so Kei and Tilarna go to a diner to think the problem over (it can’t be a cop show without some scenes at a diner, right?)  Kei somehow pulls Elbaji’s picture up in Google Image Search while investigating fairy kidnappers on his phone, and Tilarna demands they go arrest the bastard right now.  Kei tries to explain the concept of probable cause to Tilarna, but she gets up, leaving her sword behind and pretending to go to the bathroom but actually sneaking out the back of the restaurant, presumably to get the perp herself.  Kei sighs and runs after her, carrying her sword, and the episode ends.

Analysis: The second episode of Cop Craft is some table-setting combined with some very quick character development.  It sets up a pair of antagonists in Elbaji and Zelada and starts to build the relationship between Kei and Tilarna, one that’s still rocky, but more understanding than before.  This episode also spent some time showing that Kei isn’t actually a completely jaded, bitter asshole, despite the icy front he puts up — aside from not leaving her out on the street after she’s kicked out of her hotel (which would probably cause an interdimensional incident anyway, since she’s a noble VIP after all) he also makes an effort to occasionally speak to Tilarna in her native language as a courtesy.  That’s not to mention the whole story about his cat Kuroi, who he keeps despite having a cat allergy that he has to wear a mask for.

Not that the mask keeps him from drinking beer, or at least I think that’s what it is.

Tilarna also seems to be softening up on Kei.  A whole lot, in fact, considering the fact that she was threatening to kill him at the beginning of the episode for accusing her of being a criminal spy.  And it’s not that hard to guess where this might be going.  It’s probably not a coincidence that this episode established Tilarna’s age — despite looking like a kid, it turns out she’s 26, or “18 in Earth years” as Kei points out, which I take to mean that years are a little shorter on Tilarna’s home planet.  So this might be another one of those “she’s really a 500 year-old witch, so it’s okay” setups, only not nearly as dumb as those usually are.  Well, maybe I’m wrong about this, but we’ll see.  In any case, the back-and-forth between Kei and Tilarna is the most interesting aspect of Cop Craft so far.

The fairy-trafficking plot is still unfolding, though.  We don’t yet know why Tilarna is so committed to getting that kidnapped fairy back, but it seems to be personal.  The overall plot still isn’t totally grabbing me, and there was one really weird instance of QUALITY animation in this episode that stuck out in a bad way, but I can forgive all that right now.

There are some really nice looking scenes as well; hopefully they didn’t tear through the animation budget early.

Until next time!

The Seasonal Anime Draft: Cop Craft, ep 1

Welcome to the site’s newest feature, which I thought of today while stuck in downtown traffic: the Seasonal Anime Draft.*  The idea behind this feature is that at the beginning of each new season, I’ll pick one anime series to watch and review episode by episode.  My pick will be based purely on what I think I’d like from the plot synopsis and previews, but even if I end up hating it, I won’t drop it: I’ll keep the reviews going until the very end of the series, along with an all-around review of the entire season at the end, even if it turns into absolute garbage.  That’s a promise.  My apologies to all the real anime bloggers out there: it’s been actual years since I wrote anything substantive about an anime series, but I hope I can contribute something meaningful with my own dumb opinions.  Also, this feature is going to be an addition to, not a replacement of, my usual stream of infrequent game and music reviews and bitter, drunken complainy rants.  Rest assured, I still have plenty of games to play, music to hear, and complaints to air.

So, what’s the first series to receive this great honor?  I don’t know why I’m trying to build tension, because it’s in the title of my post: it’s Cop Craft, an adaptation of a light novel series written by Shoji Gatoh and illustrated by Range Murata.

I won’t lie: the fact that Murata is involved is most of the reason I’m picking it to review.  If that sounds like a silly reason for watching a show, you might be right.  But Murata has such a unique style combining realistic, futuristic, and fantastic elements that I have to believe any show he works on is going to be special in some way.  Hell, I own two of his artbooks, so I’m bound to check out anything he’s associated with.  Of course, nice visuals alone don’t necessarily mean a show will be good, or that it will stay good throughout its run, but that’s the gamble we all take when we start watching something, isn’t it?

Anyway, on to the review.

Summary: Sgt. Kei Matoba is a gruff detective living and working in San Teresa, a coastal city situated near an interdimensional portal that suddenly appeared over the sea one day and that a bunch of aliens and fairies and demons have entered Earth through.  Matoba loses his partner during a sting operation involving the illegal sale of a fairy trapped in a jar that ends in a gunfight with two suspects.  Matoba believes a powerful group of wizards from the Farbani Kingdom is to blame , since they apparently have the power to possess people’s minds and control their actions.  The main perp manages to escape with the fairy, who seems to have great importance, though it’s not yet clear why or to what effect.

If your name and titles take more than one subtitle to say, they’re too long.

Shortly after his partner’s death, Matoba is sent off on a ship to the portal to meet a noble VIP from Farbani named Tilarna Exedilica (her full name is a lot longer, but she shortens it for our convenience, which is nice.)  Tilarna is a knight and apparently an important official of her native kingdom, despite being a kid.  Or maybe she just looks like a kid, but she’s really not.  Either way, she’s come to Earth to look for that kidnapped fairy from the first scene of the episode, and as a consequence she’s named Matoba’s new partner.  Tilarna and Matoba don’t get along, and both object to being paired up at first.  But they’re convinced to go along with the arrangement and start their investigation for the greater good and all that stuff.  Matoba starts out treating Tilarna like a kid he’s been given to babysit, but it turns out that Tilarna is both great with a sword and able to literally smell danger, both of which come in handy in a fight.

“Stop or my extradimensional cosplay girl partner will slice you with her blade!” doesn’t roll off the tongue so well.

After getting a tip from a corrupt priest who runs a combination church/brothel (yeah, I don’t know, that’s my best guess of what that scene was about) Matoba and Tilarna conduct a raid on an apartment and end up in the middle of a gunfight with a couple of bad guys, which is where the episode ends.

Analysis: Are you fucking serious?  Ending the episode in the middle of a gunfight.  These guys have some nerve.

Matoba and Tilarna have a cute dynamic going on so far.  He’s a bitter, jaded detective who’s seen everything, and she’s a haughty noble girl who can kick ass in a fight but who also doesn’t know how elevators or cars work.  Even though the two don’t quite trust each other, it seems that they need each other’s skills to solve the case they’ve been tasked with.  The funny thing is that this is exactly the kind of setup your standard buddy cop show has.  I’d find this boring if it were taking place in a totally realistic setting, but the fact that one of the cops is a sword-wielding alien girl makes it better somehow.  Sort of like how Men In Black was different from other buddy cop movies too.

I also like the art style.  Maybe it’s just the fact that Tilarna stands out so completely, both from the environment around her and from the other characters, all of which are taken straight out of your typical cop show.  She also goes through an extremely quick magical-girl-style costume transformation before she’s ready to fight, which is a bit weird.  Maybe they’ll address that next episode.

Ready for action!

Hopefully now that the basics of this setting are established, the pace of the next episode will slow a bit.  Despite the infodumpy feel I got from this opening episode, though, it did get me interested in the series.  I’m not one for cop dramas, and that’s exactly what Cop Craft seems to be.  If it weren’t for the fantasy/sci-fi element, there’s no way I would have picked this show to watch.  But it’s there, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the writers do with it.

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*After writing this post, I realized the acronym for this series is SAD.  Which makes it the perfect name for the series, since I am a sad excuse for a human being, so I’m definitely keeping it.

Anime for people who hate anime: Planetes

Caution: there’s a spoiler in this review about a relationship between two of the characters in this series. It’s not really that much of a spoiler if you can draw real basic conclusions from character dynamics in episode 1, but still. Read on if you want.

Set in 2075, Planetes centers on the Space Debris Section of Technora Corporation. Derisively called Half Section because of its small staff and cramped, shoddy office space, this department is looked down upon by pretty much everyone. Despite the necessity of space debris cleanup, nobody really wants to do it because it’s both unglamorous and hard work – yet that’s exactly where Ai Tanabe, a recent graduate, ends up because she couldn’t get a better position elsewhere.* Tanabe is a bright-eyed, almost annoyingly optimistic young woman, and she immediately gets on the nerves of Hachirota Hoshino, a/k/a Hachimaki, a young astronaut who has a lot of talent but also a sour, sarcastic attitude. The complicated relationship between the optimist Tanabe and the realist Hachimaki is a big part of the story of Planetes.**

Tanabe (left) meeting Hachimaki (right). Note the space diapers. Being an astronaut is not as glamorous as Miss Tanabe thought.

Planetes is a hard science fiction manga-turned-anime. There’s nothing especially fantastic about the space travel going on in the series; it’s pretty easy to imagine actually happening 60 years from now. There’s a large base on the Moon, but otherwise most activity in space occurs in near Earth orbit. The governments and corporations of Earth are planning to send a mission to Jupiter, however, and Hachimaki desperately wants get out of his dead-end job and land a spot on the elite crew to make the first trip. The mission to Jupiter sets the stage for a lot of the drama in the second half of the series.

Despite the mundaneness of their jobs, the crew of Half Section get involved in a lot of action. Several episodes feature situations in which the crew must recover runaway satellites and other such dangerous, potentially life-threatening hazards. Any fans of realistic science fiction or dramatized accounts of real space flight missions (for example, the film Apollo 13) will probably enjoy these scenes. I even read somewhere that the animators increased the number of cels used in scenes involving zero gravity (which are a lot of scenes in Planetes) to increase the realism of the movement of characters and objects.

Points to the reader who’s already figured out that Planetes is, in part, a love story. It’s pretty obvious from the first episode that Tanabe and Hachimaki are going to end up romantically involved, because they’re about the same age and they have a weird kind of love/hate thing going on for the first half of the series.

I usually don’t go for love stories because I’m an asshole who doesn’t believe in true love. The romance aspect of Planetes works, though, because it feels realistic and Tanabe and Hachimaki have believable character traits and flaws and a relationship that the series builds upon from the first episode until they end up hitting it off. It also doesn’t overpower the larger story. The romance plot of Planetes in that sense is the opposite of the one in Titanic, which both overpowered the larger story and was fakey and unbelievable. Seriously, watch it again. Jack and Rose are perfect characters with zero flaws who “fall in love” within one or two days of meeting each other. This is okay though because Rose’s fiancé is a two-dimensional rich shithead who only cares about money. Fuck you, James Cameron. Fuck you and your billions of dollars. You rich shithead.

This is way more what an actual relationship is like: screaming at each other from the very first episode.

Tanabe and Hachimaki are the most central characters in Planetes, but the series gives a lot of screen time to the other crew members of Half Section. Also present are Fee Carmichael, a chain-smoking, eternally stressed female pilot; Yuri Mikhailkov, a pilot who lost his wife to an accident caused by space debris; and the clerks and accountants of the office, who usually stay inside during cleanup operations but also play a part in the struggles of the department. Some of these characters are more comic relief than serious figures (for example, the office-bound department chief and his assistant, a divorced accountant from India with several children who is usually seeking out a way to pay his massive child support bill.)

Planetes also doesn’t focus exclusively on the positive aspects of space exploration. There’s a subplot that runs through most of the series about a terroristic resistance to humanity’s expansion into space – because it allegedly takes resources away from and ignores the needs of the third world. Planetes doesn’t condone such acts, and it definitely seems to lean towards the “space exploration/expansion is good” viewpoint, since its protagonists subscribe to that view. But the series does ask the question, and that’s significant in itself.

Forget the fact that Planetes is an anime series. It is simply one of the best TV shows that I’ve ever seen. I do like Akagi and Kaiji better, but Planetes is really a completely different sort of series. Despite the fact that Planetes is mostly set in space, its characters and story are far more grounded than the insane gambles and superhuman feats featured in Fukumoto’s works. (By the way, here’s just another reason why the whole “anime as a genre” idea that seems to be so common is silly and nonsensical.)

Anime or not, I’d honestly recommend Planetes to most anyone. Unless they’re into Keeping Up With The Kardashians or that kind of shit. Then they probably won’t like it, I guess.

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* I know this experience all too well, because I’m going through it right now.
** Planetes manga writer and creator Makoto Yukimura apparently had some fun with his protagonists’ names. The Ai in Ai Tanabe is written as 愛, meaning “love”, and Tanabe, as an optimist, believes in the power of love. Hoshino, Hachimaki’s last name, is written 星野, which as far as I can tell means “star-field”. That name makes sense for Hachimaki considering his goals.

Anime for people who hate anime: Welcome to the NHK!

I’ve consumed plenty of books, games, and shows that I’ve enjoyed. But only a few have really hit a nerve with me. Welcome to the NHK!, a novel-turned-anime series aired several years ago, is one of those few.

NHK is not, as I first thought, about a young journalist starting a new job at Japan’s biggest national news network. It is instead the story of a hikkikomori – roughly speaking a jobless, asocial shut-in. Tatsuhiro Satou is 22 years old and a college dropout. We soon learn the reason he left school. A powerful scene depicts Satou walking to college from his home, all the while imagining the thoughts of people he passes on the street: “Disgusting”, “what a loser”. Of course, these thoughts are purely in Satou’s head, but the anxiety they produce drive him to shut himself into his tiny apartment until he’s kicked out of school for non-attendance.

The first episode of NHK gives us a depressing look into Satou’s daily life. He sits inside all day, sometimes watching TV, eating and drinking, but mostly sleeping (16 hours a day, as Satou himself narrates.) He receives no visits from friends and effectively has no life outside his apartment. He ventures outside only to buy food and other necessities and to visit a nearby park at night, when no one else is around. Without a job, Satou relies on his parents for support, but conversations with his mother suggest that source of support is about to run dry. Satou knows very well that his life is going nowhere, but he feels powerless to stop his downhill slide. On the contrary, in the course of his isolation, Satou has started to imagine a nationwide conspiracy keeping him in his miserable state, blaming his problems on the Japan Hikkikomori Society (or NHK in Japanese. Hence the title of the series.)

One day, someone comes to his door. This surprise visitor is a sort of door-to-door religious missionary lady. Satou isn’t interested and tells her to go away (while simultaneously freaking out a bit at having to talk to another human being.) However, as she leaves, Satou notices the young woman helping her.

Satou tries to put her out of his mind, but the very same young woman ends up dropping by later on to drop a message into his door’s mailbox asking him to meet with her at his regular park haunt that night. Satou has no idea what this girl might want with a shut-in loser like him, but he finally decides to go to the park after fighting with himself over it. As it turns out, this girl, Misaki, has a plan to “cure” Satou of his hikkikomori-ness and get him out into the world.

Satou reacts to this surprise pronouncement from this girl he barely knows in the same way most people would: “Who the hell is this person?” Regardless, Satou agrees to Misaki’s “program” and even signs a written contract to that effect.

Misaki and Satou. The bizarre relationship between these characters drives the story of NHK.

As the series proceeds, we watch Satou’s character change in serious and sometimes unpredictable ways. Satou’s progress isn’t always forward, either: he meets with some serious setbacks as well, with funny but also depressing results. He’s introduced to MMOs and spends hundreds of hours addicted to a game that is Final Fantasy XI but that the show can’t call that for legal reasons. He’s unwittingly drawn into a suicide pact and into a pyramid scheme, both by different former female classmates. He wastes a week of his life downloading hentai to the point that his hard drive is full. A lot of this action is moved along by Kaoru Yamazaki, Satou’s next-door college freshman neighbor and other former classmate, who fits the nerd stereotype perfectly (more specifically the otaku anime-loving nerd one.)

NHK manages to both be genuinely funny and emotionally affecting. Satou, Misaki, Yamazaki, and the other few secondary characters that show up are interesting and three-dimensional, and this helps the viewer care about them. Despite the wacky situations the characters sometimes find themselves in, nothing in the show really comes across as unnatural or forced. One of the best scenes in the show depicts Satou spying on Yamazaki’s meeting with one of his female classmates in the hall at their college. He’d formerly claimed to Satou that this classmate was his girlfriend, but after tailing Yamazaki to school, Satou discovers that Yamazaki was bending the truth: she’s no more than a casual acquaintance. Yamazaki continues to insist she’s his girlfriend, though not in a creepy or obsessive way – the viewer gets the impression that Yamazaki has a thing for this girl but simply can’t admit to himself that she’s not interested in his nerdy self. It’s funny and pathetic, and it’s also a feeling that I’m willing to bet you can relate to.

If don’t you know what Yamazaki is talking about in this screenshot, that’s a good thing.

Despite a lot of its otaku trappings (trips to Akihabara to buy figures, a running plotline about Satou and Yamazaki creating a dating sim, Yamazaki’s pining after “2D girls”, etc.) NHK can also appeal to people living outside that weird circle of nerds (of which I’m sort of a part myself.) The reason NHK spoke to me was its theme of social anxiety and the devastating effects it has on people’s lives. I was never quite as bad as Satou – I never physically shut myself into my room or my apartment – but I did mentally and emotionally shut myself in, shoving away potential friends. Those feelings of despair and worthlessness that drive Satou at the beginning of NHK to sit inside every day and dog him throughout the show are all too real for countless people around the world. I’m not even sure they totally go away. Even now, as a more or less normal person (at least as far as public appearances are concerned) those poisonous thoughts nag at me occasionally. It’s hard to describe if you’ve never been in such a situation – as if you just missed out on some vital information on how to live life that everyone else in the world seems to have been born with. It’s a lonely, painful experience, and NHK addresses it in a meaningful way.

So that’s Welcome to the NHK! It’s a genuinely good series that I believe has appeal for viewers both in and outside of the “typical” anime-watching crowd. I should also note that NHK is based on a novel by Tatsuhiko Takimoto, a writer who I think must have experienced some of Satou’s travails, the story tells them in such a realistic way. I haven’t read the novel or the following manga series, but I understand they’re quite different from the anime in terms of where their stories lead.

Up at 3 am scrolling through hentai image sites: welcome to the NHK

What a way to start the new year. To everyone, but especially to those wrestling with social anxiety, insecurity, a lack of purpose, and all those inner demons that drive you to seek solitude, I wish you a happy one. Remember that, for better or worse, the future is unpredictable. Life is never worth giving up on, even though it might seem like there’s no light at all at the end of the tunnel – hell, I still feel that way sometimes. Satou might be a fictional character, but his story is a real one, and his final “recovery”, even though it’s not quite complete, is a part of that story too.

Anime for people who hate anime: Legend of the Galactic Heroes

More travel stuff is coming soon, I promise. In the meantime…

Wow. I don’t know why I’m doing this. Not because the 80s-early 90s anime series Legend of the Galactic Heroes isn’t good – it is extremely good. The reason for my apprehension is that it is a massive series, with 110 episodes and several hour/hour and a half-long films, at least two of which are required watching if you want to follow the main story and understand certain characters’ motivations. All of this is based on an original (and also very long) series of comics. LOGH could really have an entire blog dedicated to it alone. Instead, I’m going to try to cram all of that into one post. The reason this review is short and worthless is that it’s near impossible to describe what this behemoth is about in less than 10000 words.

LOGH is not only big in the sense of length, but also in its sheer scope. Here we have a series that deals with a galaxy-wide war between two great powers (well, not galaxy-wide really; that would be way too big. Stellar cluster-wide, maybe?) The two powers are the Galactic Empire and the Free Planets Alliance, a democratic breakaway state. Right off the bat this might sound like anime Star Wars, but it isn’t. It really, really isn’t. If you’re looking for anime Star Wars, stop reading right now.

For one thing, Star Wars didn’t feature long discussions between its characters about the merits of various political systems (unless you count Star Wars II, which I like to call Star Wars: C-SPAN in Space.)

How isn’t it anime Star Wars, you might be asking. LOGH turns the typical “Evil Empire working to crush Good (and Plucky and Underdog-ish) Democratic Alliance” model on its head. It does so by telling the stories of two characters, one from the Empire and one from the Alliance, and their rise through the ranks to the tops of their respective navies. This rise involves their meeting several times in battle. The trouble (?) for the audience is that there’s really nobody here you can “root against” characterwise among the main lot. Reinhard von Musel, one of the Empire’s greatest admirals, is a principled young man who believes in justice and in social reform of his stagnant homeland. Yang Wen-li, one of the Alliance’s premier tacticians, is a popular naval officer who hates war as wasteful and evil and just wants to go home to study history. Both of these men are likeable and have mutual respect for each other, and they spend a good amount of the series thinking about how to kill each other in battle.

Another relative surprise is how the respective governments act towards their citizens. The Empire early in the series is basically the old German Empire in space (think 1870s-1918 Germany, not the later Nazi one) and it’s pretty much an old ossified piece of crap that Reinhard wants to completely overturn. However, the democratic Alliance government is equally shitty – full of self-interested politicians who use their admirals’ victories to win reelection and who send their citizens off to the front lines just because they can’t look as though they’ve “failed”. The characters’ motivations make Legend of the Galactic Heroes one of the most realistic series I’ve ever seen, actually – despite the fact that it is an anime series set mostly in space. It’s not the setting that’s realistic, but the story, because you can easily imagine these characters as real people, their motives are so understandable and human.

Speaking of, Reinhard and Yang naturally aren’t the only characters in the series. LOGH boasts a massive cast of hundreds. Reinhard gains his own group of dedicated officers who join his fellow naval officer childhood friend/”sworn brother”-style character Siegfried Kircheis. Yang has his own similar circle. Both of them have to deal with the powers that be in the government, who usually have elements trying to plot their downfall (because, after all, popularity is a dangerous thing.)

Kircheis (L) and Reinhard (R). No, they’re not gay, despite how this scene looks. At least I don’t think they are.

The cast is so huge, in fact, that the various characters and their positions might get very confusing after a while. Fortunately, the series realizes this and often gives the viewer a subtitle with the character’s name and rank/relation to some other character on the screen when they show up for the first time or after several episodes have passed. And as spider web-like as the series’ intertwining plots and intrigues are, it handles them really well – nothing is left unresolved, and it’s generally easy to follow who’s going where or talking to whom and why. Chalk it up to good direction in the ordering of the scenes, I guess.

Those who are put off by the intensely 80s look of the animation shouldn’t worry too much – once you get absorbed in the story, you won’t notice anymore, even if you were, like me, raised on late 90s-early 2000s stuff like Neon Genesis Evangelion that boasted amazing artwork and animation. Because unlike Evangelion, LOGH is a story that isn’t filled with DEEP religious imagery, creepy fanservice of 14 year-old girls and the weird sexual insecurities of its maker (don’t get me wrong; I love Eva, but it’s undoubtedly fucked up, and not in a good way.)

That’s not to say that LOGH doesn’t also have some good action scenes, however.

LOGH really gives you the whole package, because both of these characters are very interesting and have their own backstories in addition to trying to kill each other in a flashy way.

So, yeah. If the above sounds good to you and you have about ten free years to spare, why not watch LOGH? It’s never been licensed in the US, so you don’t even have to buy anything: you can freely torrent the series or simply watch it on Youtube (starting with the film My Conquest is the Sea of Stars [Note: there used to be a link to the film here, but there seems to have been a copyright takedown of it. Shouldn’t be too hard to find online, though.]) If you need any extra enticements to watch, here go you: if you’re a fan of Game of Thrones, you’ll probably enjoy Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It shares a lot in common with Thrones, including the complex plot webs and political intrigues, the realistic character motivations and development, and the epic scale. The only differences are that LOGH is set in the “historical” future instead of an alternate reality past and that LOGH lacks all the sex of both the A Song of Ice and Fire novel series and its HBO Game of Thrones adaptation. Romance is a fairly common plot element in LOGH, but any sex that takes place in the series is fully implied. Which is just fine with me – who needs fanservice when you’ve got a good story?

P.S. This article does a great job at trying to narrow down why some people love LOGH and why other people can’t make it through a single episode. Check it out.

P.P.S. After watching most of the Chinese series Three Kingdoms and remembering reading some of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms years ago that it’s based on, I can see a lot of similarities between LoGH and RotTK.  Both have massive casts of characters, political intrigue, and whole episodes in which characters try to use deception in both diplomacy and battle to achieve victory.  I really recommend Three Kingdoms too, even though it’s also a million episodes long – the whole series is subbed in English and posted on Youtube, maybe because nobody can watch Youtube in China anyway (at least not legally.)  The guy who plays Cao Cao is really a great actor.