Technically, Honey and Clover ends this way. The hero doesn't "achieve his goal", so to speak, but it's specifically because of that ordeal that he's able to deal with his early-20's dissatisfaction and grow up.

This is false. I am alive.

I used to thumb through /jp/ for the mahjong threads. /jp/ is the worst.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq-mhHNUsZQ
SARA
It's not just someone else
But it may be you.

Play

Always happy shapes.

I dunno if they're that close to the same. I will say that Gunsmith Cats has cute Sonoda girls going for it, and BGC was a big deal back in the day so it's no surprise that the GSC manga was one of the early titles to come out back then.

Koike REALLY pushes the boundaries of good taste with almost everything he does, especially in Mad Bull 34. It's frankly a wonder that ComicsOne took chances with (and I can't imagine did too well with) titles like Wounded Man and Offered. The art isn't really appealing to the "anime" audience and it's gritty, ludicrous trash for old guys. Mind, I'm not saying I don't like it. I'm just sayin'. If I was a manga publisher, I wouldn't bank on the title either.

Close to none. There are always SOME people who play them seriously, but such groups are extremely small. The tourney scene, especially since SF4, is mostly dominated by the games with the largest amount of players. In turn, this means that these games have the highest level of competition (I'd argue that SF4 play in the west is absolutely on Japan's level), so the best players play those games, and the cycle feeds into itself. Small games already don't have a chance in this arena, so fan efforts have less of a shot than that. Even Blazblue appears to have kind of sputtered out in the western tourney scene.

Also, a note about genealogy: from what I know, Darkstalkers was never really seriously played here, but in Japan Darkstalkers/Vampire was a major tourney game (Daigo started on Vampire Hunter, if I recall). Guilty Gear is something of a logical extension and refinement of that game and the Vs. series' ideas, and GGXX was the single most influential fighting game of its decade. It was also never really a tourney favorite outside of a very small crowd, and games influenced by it (most doujin titles and many other smaller Japanese fighters) don't seem to appeal to Western tourney players at all.

The word "anime" and related terms are often used in a derogatory manner when talking about these games. A lot of fighting game guys learned the word "loli" from seeing Arcana Heart and don't actually know what it means, so you have people saying inane shit like "ANOTHER ANIME LOLI WEEABOO GAME" to stuff like Skullgirls and Under-Night. So there's a stigma in the community, and perhaps among gamers at large, to anything that even looks cartoony (note MVC3's attempt to look both dark and colorful at the same time). That doesn't really help these games. It's kind of ironic that people are like that in a scene for a genre that was born in Japan and is heavily otaku-influenced, but there it is.

Anyway, I'm hype for Skullgirls.

AH3 is a pretty solid game. I've been playing (not too seriously, mind) since the first one. There are a lot of unique things about the game-- the Arcana system, all the flying around-- that make it a must-play for any genre fan.

The aesthetic is indefensible, honestly. It's not just that it's an "anime" fighter (see Melty Blood), or even that it's a "moe" fighter (see Asuka 120%), it's that the animations always veer headlong into otaku sleaze, and the ending images are often sleazier.

It's something that I let slide given the high quality of the product: see also the aesthetic of Super Meat Boy, whose cutscenes I always, always skip.

I'm going to make a popular choice and say The Room. I've seen a lot of bad movies, but not a lot of painfully bad movies, movies that really kind of hurt. The most uncomfortable thing about The Room, even more so than its incompetent production, is that it's extremely, bitterly personal. It's made by a guy who was dead serious. He clearly envisioned it as his great artistic statement. And it's a howlingly, screamingly bad movie.

And though I'm sure the money makes up for this to some point, Tommy Wiseau goes around the country watching midnight movie crowds laugh their asses off at this awful film that he somehow saw as his masterpiece. He has to lie and pretend he made a comedy. So all that just makes it worse and more painful and also funnier.

Stubbed toe.

It's fine. Disagreement is great! We disagree with each other all the time. The most recent article is a pretty good case in point: not a lot of the CD crew would be caught dead watching Madoka.

She would probably use the principles contained in that book to lead her team to victory in the nationals. In a way, the players are like the customers. Let's market to our customers.

Alright, it’s been a couple of years since we started CD. Why not talk about this?

The premise of this question is that Colony Drop exists to trash anime as a whole, and that’s not really the case. I like anime. All the guys who staff Colony Drop like anime.

Saying “I like anime” is not an all-or-nothing proposition. We don’t sign up for the entirety of the medium and the culture that surrounds it just by having enjoyed a Ghibli movie, or Gurren Lagann, or Death Note, or K-On, or Super Cult Animation Genocyber. In fact, I just named a bunch of anime that couldn’t be further from each other taste-wise. Nobody has to like it all. Most people won’t.

Everybody at CD has pretty distinct tastes. We have many fundamental disagreements on such matters: for example, Jeff and I are watching Madoka and the rest of the guys wouldn’t go near it with a ten-foot, heart-tipped magic wand. We have guys hanging out in the IRC channel who love stuff that the majority of us hate. We don’t give them shit for that, and they don’t apologize for what they like, just like we don’t. We deal with each other’s preferences and we move on.

Obviously from reading the site, you’re aware that there are things that we don’t like. The most popular articles (that don’t deal with porn) on the site are ones where we choose particular topics to “drop a colony on”, as folks like to say. I don’t have to hate anime to dislike Haruhi, call out Tokyopop’s old OEL contracts for being exploitative, or debunk various anime fan myths.

Just because one likes anime doesn’t mean they need to be satisfied with the products, the industry, or the fandom. People act as though you throw out your right to be critical of something when you’re a fan, and that’s bullshit. We speak up because we want things to get better.

Of course we’ve got a character and a voice going. When I write pieces for my blog, I write just like I’m talking to a good friend: a very informal voice. When I write something for ANN, I don’t make any snarky comments whatsoever, no matter how many I think of while I’m reviewing that Strike Witches action figure. I do this because I’m writing for a specific audience, and I know that an audience reading an toy review isn’t looking for criticism or snark about the source material. (On the other hand, as I’ve said to my fellow ANN staffer Erin before, it’s a good thing that I don’t write Shelf Life.) When I write something for CD I absolutely turn up the snark that’s already comes to me naturally, and I play it up until it’s just a little silly. It’s our bit, and it’s not changing. I think it’s fun. A lot of people aren’t going to. So be it.

As I was saying, these are by far our most popular posts, and they make our image. I’m content with that. However, we run plenty of reviews of anime we do like. Some of them are titles you wouldn’t expect, like my own glowing review of Marimite. These articles aren’t looked at or discussed or remembered half as often as the inflammatory posts. This is how it always goes.

When I look at the front page of Colony Drop right now, I see an April Fool’s gag, an early industry time capsule, a thoughful Ghibli review, two medium-snarky stories about anime/manga, fandom, and the industry, a reserved and cautious writeup of a Danny Choo panel, and of course Shit Otaku Say. I don’t see “bashing anime” in any of that. It’s definitely not our goal.

I'd consider it a luxury if to know when the world was going to end. More likely we'll just be hanging out and then bam engulfed in flame.

So long as Shonen Jump titles exist, the US anime business will not die. I don't have numbers, but I'm willing to bet that Naruto and Bleach do better numbers than the rest of the anime/manga business combined.

But yes, let's say it disappeared altogether. What happens? The internet fandom remains as it is, but without mass-exposure avenues like TV, Japanese animation more or less disappears from the pop culture radar (where it is presently a tiny, tiny blip at best) and shrinks into obscurity as a punchline of the Wacky Japan internet meme next to "sadistic game shows" and "used panty vending machines".

A lot of folks don't see the problem with that, and I beg to differ. I think good anime deserves a lot more than that. I don't dream of the same things that the anime fans of the 90s did-- anime in prime time slots on mainstream TV channels being watched by normal folks like there's nothing weird about it. Anime's gotten on TV here and Americans won't watch a cartoon, the end. But I do think that a lot of this stuff has reach to other geeks, and that they'll never ever see it. That's the sad part.

When I read the last story in Moto Hagio's "A Drunken Dream", my eyes got all weird and I couldn't see anything. Like it was raining or something.

Kung Fu is definitely the best. She's the only one who puts up a fight. I think she's everyone's favorite.

Sure, I'll do this one today. Merry Christmas.

Barring divine intervention, my V-Day to-do list is looking like "go buy a videogame" and "write an article on a plastic girl". And I don't give a damn what someone thinks of that.

You know why? This is what I've been doing. I'm not saying I wouldn't like a girlfriend, but was I working towards a relationship? Not particularly, no. So why am I suddenly entitled to something that other people put a tremendous amount of time and effort and tears into? Why am I so special that I'm licensed to bitch and moan about it because of the day of the year it is? Please.

Let the couples be happy and move on with your life otherwise. You can cry or you can keep pushing forward. Don't put your sense of self-worth at the mercy of something that doesn't even exist in your life. I'm runnin' my things and that's that. Listen to this short song for further inspiration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlW11EfZXgk

As for your holiday, I appreciate the man that I am every damn day.

Play

The first thing I think of when I put the phrases "otaku" and "sex-negative" together is the otaku purity scandal. You know how Aya Hirano has been purposely distancing herself from her fans by acting like a normal woman who (gasp) likes sex? Remember the Kannagi virginity drama? Otaku, especially in Japan, have certain expectations of what a Good Woman does and doesn't do. Particularly in the moe phenomenon, we often see these ideals hyper-exaggerated into a fantasy Stepford Heroine. She's not human, she's not supposed to be, but she's made out of the characteristics that male otaku would ideally like human women to have. Are these ideals sex-negative? Sure! Just not for the guy. There's a ton of misogyny among otaku, especially on the so-lonely fringes-- just read really hardcore discussion spots like /jp/ on 4chan for a little while-- but that's another essay.

Look at idols, who unfortunately must actually give the appearance of living these ideals. Can't speak your mind in public, can't have a lover, always barely legal. Everything's in service to a hundred thousand paying customers, each of whom is putting down big money to support the fantasy in his mind that this girl is his. That's more than sex-negative, it's humanity-negative. At least cartoon characters are just cartoons, at least Vocaloid is a little more humane than the actual idol business!

As for hardcore fanservice anime, I think that anything at or beyond the point of Kanokon or so only really differs from actual pornography in that they aren't showing penetration. It's about titillation first and foremost, or the viewer wouldn't be there. Is porn sex-negative? That's another question entirely outside the scope of this discussion. I'm pretty sure that somewhere, academics are fighting over it as we speak!

There's an anime running right now (direct to video, not on TV) that combines all these elements into one skeezy whole, actually, and it's called Koe de Oshigoto, ("Working with Your Voice"). It's about a naive, too-young girl who's forced into doing voice work for porn games, and of course it's all about titillation: it's about the blushing, trembling embarassment of the pure girl as she does dirty work and of course she winds up getting off on it... etc etc etc. You know how this goes. Is that sex-negative? I dunno, but it is creepy!

Shit Otaku Say is the premiere "observation archive" for one of the Internet's most fascinating subcultures. So long as this website stands, the bizarre statements of the "otaku" will forever echo throughout history.