AltJapan

License to Iriomote

Long-delayed photos of our trip to remote Iriomote Island, part of the Okinawan archipelago, in spring of 2007. A lot of people are surprised when they hear I like spending my vacation time outdoors rather than in the mung-encrusted halls of Nakano Broadway or the back-alleys of Akihabara. But for better or worse, I live and breathe this stuff. And while having turned Japanese subculture from a hobby into the way I make my living is a great source of satisfaction, when the time comes to take a break I don't want to spend it in the game aisle of some Akiba chain store.

That's why we head for the reefs and mangroves of tropical islands whenever we get the chance. This time, we spent most of our time on the extremely isolated far side of Iriomote island. The little guy above is a tiny, tiny mud crab -- those "boulders" are actually grains of sand. What can I say? Hiroko's got the macro skills to pay the bills.

The full photo album is right here. Enjoy the odd mix of kamikaze suicide boat hangars, whip scorpions, and lionfish! And for the truly Okinawa-obsessed, you can read about last year's experience here.

Mascot Taxonomy

Hiroko and I were interviewed by the Daily Yomiuri newspaper about "working characters," the super-kawaii mascots that fill the lives of Japanese citizens and the pages of our book Hello, Please! You can read it here.

Please, Hammer! Don't Hurt MC Kommier

Way back in 1990, on my second visit to Japan, I stumbled across an amazing CD. Entitled "Puriizu Komiya Donto Haa Temu" ("Please Kommier Don't Hurt 'Em"), it was a CD single of MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This"... all in Japanese. The icing on the cake was the cover art, which featured "tarento" Takayasu Komiya with a Hammered fade and golden-brown tanned skin. Not exactly blackface, but perhaps a hint of things to come with the Gosperats a decade and a half later?

For better or worse, it isn't a direct translation but rather a pair of zany Weird Al-esque parodies. One version replaces the "can't touch this" refrain with "Kentaiki desu!" (Say it fast and you'll get the idea.) "Kentaiki" translates into "marital ennui." The other -- because really, it's so funny they had to parody it twice -- is "Kentoshi desu!" What are "kentoshi"? Japanese envoys sent to study Chinese culture and technology in the 8th century. Talk about "diggin' in tha crates," yo.

You can get a taste for that "dope" MC Kommier sound on on this website. (Click the little speaker icons in the table at the bottom of the page to play 'em.) Could there be any more fitting coda to Japan's bubble era than a parody of a high-flying star who went bankrupt?

Beet It

Late last summer, I interviewed famed mecha-designer Shinji Aramaki about his new film, "Appleseed Ex Machina," which just opened in Japan this weekend. Perhaps "interview" isn't the right word; it was more like a freewheeling discussion in a back-alley yakitori joint. The resulting text was so long it had to be split into two parts, both of which will appear in Otaku USA magazine. The first half is in issue 3, which is on sale now.

Over the course of the conversation, we occasionally plunged so deeply into nerd obscurity that even a "protaku" like editor-in-chief Patrick Macias felt the need to edit the text down in a desparate effort to keep his readers' heads from imploding. Here's the only significant part that didn't make the final cut: an interlude about an obscure '80s toy series called "Beetras." Let me set the stage: the lights were dimmed, enka music is playing in the background, the scent of soy sauce and yakitori is in the air, and I'm about to prove what a total frickin' toy-nerd I am once and for all...

Sofubi Tengoku

A selection of robot mini-vinyls from the 1980s. Click to engorge.

Hamburger Anime

I had the pleasure of interviewing Tekkon Kinkreet director Michael Arias for Otaku USA magazine a few months back. The result is now available online. Enjoy!

El Festival de los Robots

A mind-bending mashup of an Italian dancer and some maniac in a foam Jeeg costume, posted by the always affable Mr. Dandy. The lack of any sound makes the scene all the more surreal.

Having grown up what could charitably be called a drought for any form of imported animation in early- '80s America, I've always been amazed and mildly jealous of the reception that giant robot anime recieved in Italy and Latin America during roughly the same period. It may be hard for whippersnappers raised on "Toonami" and Gundam Wing to believe, but back when I was a kid you had to hunt and dig to find even the tiniest scrap of information about the vast majority of Japanese robot shows, let alone get to see obscure series in their entirety (and in one's native language to boot!) What made 'em so popular in Europe and Latin America as opposed to the 'States? A quirk of culture? Lack of broadcasting restrictions? Open-mindedness? Desperation from a lack of other quality programming? Whatever. Viva los robots!

Hello, Please : Perfect Memory

What would a book about super kawaii characters be without its own super kawaii mascot? Japanese "mook" (magazine-book) artbooks feature obsessive retrospectives of the design process for various anime characters. In this fine tradition, I bring you an obsessive retrospective of the design process for Mr. Book, the official mascot character for Hello, Please! Very Helpful Super Kawaii Characters from Japan. Above: a late color-test of the final design.

Character designer Yutaka Kondo produced this sheet of rough illustrations very early in the design process. As you can see, dogs, robots, and even a suit-wearing professor were all contenders.

A proposed splash-page for "Instructional Characters" rejected as "too violent" by the editor! We ended up axing the monitor with an axe in it for a more sedate approach.

More to come. Being involved in the creation of even a simple character such as Mr. Book was an eye-opening window into the Japanese character-design process. Hello, Please! wouldn't have been the same without it.

Manga Shrine

Nestled in the hills of Kamakura can be found a Shinto shrine known as Egara Tenjinja. It was established in the year 1104 to venerate a 10th century politician long revered as a patron saint of scholarship. (It's been there in some form for over nine hundred years. It's at times like this that it hits me just how short, really, my own nation's history is.)

More recently, Egara Tenjinja has become a shrine for Showa-era manga artist and longtime Kamakura resident Kon Shimizu (1912 - 1974) as well. He rose to fame in the '50s with comics featuring the exploits of the yokai creatures called kappa, and particularly for his pioneering portrayals of sexy, voluptuous she-kappa (as seen in the homage above.) You can get a sense of his style from this charmingly old-school animated TV ad for Kizakura brand sake. (On that note, Kizakura has posted an entire gallery of the commercials organized by year on their official website.)

Inside the shrine's keep is a stone carving of one of Shimizu's kappa, captioned by no less than Nobel Prize winning author Yasunari ("Snow Country") Kawabata, and a stone pillar modeled on an artist's brush. The brush is covered with ceramic reliefs of characters donated by famed comic artists, including Osamu Tezuka.

Hiroko and I happened to be visiting Kamakura yesterday, and we stumbled across the shrine. Lo and behold, they were having their annual outdoor exhibition of art by manga-ka both renowned (including Takashi Yanase, creator of "Anpanman") and not-so-renowned, all of it on the theme of "passing school entrance exams." Most featured kappa, in homage to Shimizu. That manga are everywhere in Japan is an observation so well-documented that it borders on trite, but it's still fascinating to see comic art displayed at such a crossroads of Japanese tradition, history, and culture as a Shinto shrine. After the exhibition, the art is burned in a traditional kuyo, or memorial rite, as a sign of respect. (You can see photos of last year's ceremony here.)

Here's a gallery of some of the best illustrations we saw. Click to see more detailed descriptions.