COMING SOON TO A (computer) SCREEN NEAR YOU

Me: Chunhyang.

You: What?

Me: You know, that Korean legend.

You: Wait, seriously, what?

Me: Exactly! That's why in the near future I'll be putting up posts as part of a mini-series of mini-analyses of Chunhyang adaptations! Neato, right?

You: Are you trying to be funny here? Just answer my ques--

Me: I won't be including just manga analysis (any CLAMP fans here?), but also branch into Korean dramas and cinema. You'll see it sometime around December or January. Get excited!

You: Why am I even reading thi--

Hope to you see you there,


--Blackbird

PS: For real, though, if you don't know what it is, check out its Wikipedia article for a little background info. There's even this nifty little tool that lets you search on the Internet for anything you want; you might have heard of it hee hee.

Dewey Decimal be my Valentine!

I gobble up scanlations at such a rate these days that I'm continuously browsing for the next, but the browsing process is labor intensive. OneManga has more than 900 separate manga while MangaFox has upwards of 2000 with more added all the time. There's a lot of overlap, but there's no denying the swamp of available scanlations.

Now when I'm in the mood for manga, my craving is often very specific. For example, I might be looking for a plot about a love triangle in the entertainment industry. It's not an uncommon plot; I could read Skip Beat, Ashita no Ousama, or Cat Street to name a few. How do I find these manga? I use the search terms shoujo, josei, or romance and I wade through the slew of results for the next couple hours.

MangaFox has 36 genre tags. They describe the publisher's idea of the target audience (shoujo, seinen), basic plot ideas (romance, adventure), special interests (sports, mecha) and broad literary categories (tragedy, comedy). My first pick today, Skip Beat, is tagged as Comedy, Drama, Romance, Shoujo, Slice of Life. Comprehensive? Hardly! This list covers the bare minimum. A search with the same list returns Gokusen and Fruits Basket. What do a yakusa school teacher, a shape-changing family, and an aspiring actress have in common? Well, aside from those search terms not much. Considering the number of recycled plot devices in the average manga, it should be relatively easy to establish very specific sub-genres, but starting with categories like Romance, it's hard to see where to start.

Supernatural is a genre of a more manageable size. Just by looking at the titles of supernatural manga, a few sub-categories readily present themselves. Vampires, ghosts, or shinigami all feature heavily in the titles of members of the supernatural genre. Obviously, each unearthly species needs a tag. Then, if I consider one species, vampires for example, I can tighten the net further. There are vampire assassins and vampire high schools and vampire Chibis. The possibilities for sub-categories are endless.

In the new and improved search menu, I would chose from a list similar to the following:

The protagonist is:	spunky a vampire an only child an aspiring actor/actress
The romantic interest is:	rich a vampire younger a member of a motorcycle gang
The comic relief is:	nerdy a vampire older brother
The plot is:	protagonist vs. antagonist protagonist vs. nature protagonist vs. self Cinderella

Thus by cross referencing sub-genres, the search algorithm could pick out the perfect manga for me every time. Now, all I need to do is compile the algorithm and enter all the necessary data from the 3000+ available scanlations. Just imagine my savings in time and effort!


--Starfish

An Ode to Anime Conventions, or My Disillusionment

WARNING: The following is a long post that is long overdue. But it's finally here! The Animazement report thing! Please don't be discouraged from reading. Or skimming. Or commenting.

Quite an impressive spread.

Back in Manga Meditation's blog drafts are two entries detailing Polecat's and my (Blackbird) recent adventure to Animazement, a now twelve-year-old convention newly located to the Raleigh Convention Center in Raleigh, NC. These posts, however, haven't been published like we had promised earlier. The reason? To be honest, they were a little boring to write. That, and the descriptions were becoming a little mean.

When I was twelve I followed my much cooler and wiser friend to my first anime convention. She dressed up, what as I can't exactly recall. Cosplay was something I first thought was somewhat strange, but also something I learned to accept as I immersed myself in the strange world of all nerd conventions. It was actually cool to like manga and anime! I could wear silly hats with cat ears, don pins with Edward Elric's scowling face, and get my ass kicked by thirty-year-olds at Super Smash Brothers in the game room and still be considered normal.

I even tried to acclimate myself to other strange rituals. I was hugged by a random girl while in line for the cosplay event simply for wearing a Yuki mouse hat from Fruits Basket. I got Watase Yu to sign one of my tankubon and got my picture taken with her. The year after, I invited one of my male friends who I had enthusiasticaly encouraged to come to the convention. "It's sooo much fun I spend sooo much money," I told him. While waiting in that tedious, long line for the cosplay show, one of my other friends, a fan of yaoi, jokingly encouraged him to hold up a sign reading "man sex please." We began a mini rave in the otherwise demure line, and my poor friend was subjected to some fake, um, anal penetration by an older guy passing by. A strange and disturbing even that the two of us remember so many years later, a fond memory we'd both like to forget.

Regardless of all those oddities, at the time I couldn't think of anything else that was as fun as that convention, an event that spruced up an otherwise drab middle school life. I saved up all of my money every year for four years in anticipation of the event, and I allowed myself to relax and have fun with friends with whom I shared an obsession.

I saw many adults milling about the convention and thought, "Yeah, I think I'll be into this stuff when I'm that age," without a shred of irony.

Going back to Animazement this year was a poignant experience. It was as though I was confronting this event, something so prominent to me in my awkward preteen years, something I had not gone to for a few years and had forgotten. Now, not only was I in a different stage in my life, but the convention itself was now literally, for the first time, in a different location. No longer in the small Sheraton Hotel in nearby Durham, Animazement had moved to the much, much larger and nicer location in Raleigh.

I wasn't sure how to feel about it. The new space was so large that it became tiresome to go to each location. Finding the dealer's room, the anime nerd mecca, was frustrating and not as easy with the multiple flights of stairs and expansive carpet floors.

However, the space was also much more impressive, if a little overwhelming. Artist's Alley, formerly the narrow hallway to the dealer's room, not occupied a large room of its own with all of the artist's dealing their wares in a setup not unlike the dealer's room itself. The real dealer's room was much larger than in past years, but not necessarily in the number of dealers; about a third of the room was empty. Regardless, they sold what dealers always sell including cat ears, busty figurines, and of course manga and anime. Polecat and I even bought some stuff. Admittedly it was mostly Star Trek posters and cute Japanese planners, but at least we bought something.

Instead of having to get food at that one hotel cafe that smelled like vomit (I KID YOU NOT MY SANDWICH WAS IMBUED WITH THE PURE STENCH OF STOMACH BILE), or live off of Pocky and Ramune, the dinner of choice in past years, convention attendees could now get overpriced pizza and hotdogs at a small food court. I suppose this was all right, but I feel like some of the Animazement character was lost when they decided to actually institutionalize the food. Call me a romantic.

While this was all okay, a little boring but a good way to kill a few hours, there was one thing that ruined our otherwise innocuous day.

Uchuu Sentai NOIZ.

I don't ever remember concerts coming to Animazement. This had to have been a result of the much larger digs. I can't go into detail for why this band irked me so (not yet, at least), mostly because I don't have our copious notes, and I might become a little too derisive here. Basically, the music and environment reminded me of carefully sliced, moldy bread dusted with glitter. Now try eating that and you'll know what it's like to listen to Uchuu Sentai NOIZ.

The one thing that Polecat and I thought we would be able to depend on was good photographs. I buttered up the cosplay she was going to see, and we were deliriously happy with the prospect of putting up photos without having to put credit or having the fear of being sued. However, our photographic endeavor became somewhat derogatory and really just a transparent way to make fun of people. We became a little ashamed of ourselves, to be honest. It was then that we came to a realization.

As much as we tried to enjoy the convention, even as the Manga Meditation brand of the "self-aware fangirl," it seemed that it was impossible to enjoy the convention without already being completely immersed in its culture. We were outsiders looking in as we always had been, but this was the first time that we were truly confronted with that role.

Perhaps one day those two convention reports will be published, but I think this post is a better reflection of my experience there. And at the end of the day, I think that's more important than a detailed account of the day's events. If anybody really, really wants to see them, please leave a comment! Or tell us what you would like to read about!

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT PLEEAASE.

I apologize for the lengthiness of this post. I just wanted to do my twelve-year-old self some justice, you know?

Until later,


Blackbird

The Megane-CHANGE!

I got my first pair of glasses when I was in 6th grade. Completely innocuous on the shelf, my pair of choice had light blue frames, rounded triangular lenses, and a polycarbonate coating to prevent scratching and chipping. When they arrived, all shiny and new, I innocently put them on without even thinking about the consequences. However, as soon as those baby blue frames settled on my face, a drastic transformation took place. My hair became rattier, my skin became mottled, my face broke out, and a group of boys running by yelled "HEY THERE FOUR EYES!" at me. Mortified, I quickly snatched off my glasses...and watched as my hair smoothed out, my skin cleared up, and the group of boys immediately changed directions and asked if they could take me roller skating. "Ahhh," I thought to myself as I fended off my new-found suitors, "so THIS is the transforming power of removing your glasses."

Obviously, the above story is a load of shenani-bull-crap, but I made it up to demonstrate a common plot point in many many MANY mangas I have read: the transformation that the main female character undergoes when she removes her glasses. For some inexplicable reason, the accessory of glasses does much to dissuade the attentions of other people, either platonic or amorous in nature. Those two pieces of concave glass do much damage indeed to one's social calendar, for the bearer of such unfortunate but necessary evils is regarded as an uninteresting, socially inept, total freak-o nerd girl, not worth the attention of anyone in her school, and certainly not worth the attention of the most handsome boy in the school.

Such a transformation!!!

But wait! Once she removes her glasses, be it by force (such as a group of boys teasing her about her glasses and snatching them off), accident (tripping or falling such that her glasses go flying), or by her own volition (oh, I have something in my eye and I must remove my glasses to get it), she becomes absolutely irresistible.

"Such beauty to behold behind those glasses!"

"How could we have missed it?"

"Ah, it was those clear pieces of glass that were obstructing our view!"

At this point, half the school then becomes enamoured of the former bookworm/social pariah, and her life is duly transformed. All because of her glasses.

This isn't just a Japanese/Korean comic thing; Hollywood pumps out numerous chick flicks every year, and a lot of them focus on this drastic transformation of sans glasses. "She's All That," for one, epitomizes this change, as the main character morphs from a geeky, artsty fartsy, nerd girl to a siren-in-a-red-dress-and-heels. Sigh. Preposterous. But entertaining.

My personal pair of beauty masking lenses: they have eggplant colored frames!

Now, as a glasses wearer going on 8 years here, I can definitively assure you that this has NEVER happened to me. If it had, I would be whipping my glasses off left and right in front of every cute boy on campus. Actually, I would probably go and stalk all the available men in Hollywood and make them succumb to my charm (Target #1: George Clooney, the perpetual bachelor). But that's not how it works. And that's not how things will EVER work. For ANYBODY who wears glasses.

I suppose it's an easy way to somehow get two characters interested in each other. It certainly has entertainment value, as the idea of the school nerd and school prince getting together is bound to raise some blood pressures, inflame passions, and provoke the extension of claws among the more catty. We'll have to wait until a new way is developed to incite romantic interest in the removal of another accessory, such as your earrings, or maybe contacts even (so much is concealed behind those concave, clear sheets of silicone!). But until then, glasses it is.


~Polecat

PS: Manga featured - Kare First Love, by Kaho Miyasaka. Credits to onemanga.com!

MJ EVA AMV

I remember closely following my friend’s silhouette as she led me into the cool, dark room filled with booming music and sweaty anime nerds sitting in front of a large screen. As soon as I walked in I found a place along the perimeter of the room, folding my arms with insecurity. I was preparing to be bored, I admit, but instead I found myself somehow transfixed to that large screen.

Anime music videos. I never really expected to develop a crush on them, not at my very first convention of all things, but for some reason the combination of music and video, when done right was, I realized, kind of cool.

(Apparently I had never heard of this thing called a “music video,” but whatever.)

The video that played was amazing to my young, impressionable ears. Awesome. Cool. Exciting. When it finished I’m not exactly sure of how I felt, but I wanted to watch more. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder, and I quickly forgot my euphoria as my friend led me back into the mass of anime and manga that was the rest of Animazement.

That night was the cosplay contest, and while that was fun and all, I was more excited to see the AMV reruns. I read every preceding title card carefully, taking note of the song and artist. And you know what? The anime in that AMV looked pretty cool too. It would be in my best interests to at least check it out while I was off looking for that song, too.

But when my favorite music video, the one from earlier in the afternoon, began to play shortly after that title card reading “‘Scream:’ Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson,” I couldn’t believe it. That was Michael Jackson? And the anime? Neon Genesis Evangelion.

What is a little hard to account for is the fact that I couldn’t recognize both a) one of the most famous entertainers of all time and b) one of the most famous animes of all time, both of which were contained in that video. But I was also more interested in Marmalade Boy and Cardcaptor Sakura pins at the time, so yeah.

My first true love.

Of course, all of this is just hindsight. Because at that moment, I didn't know anything else except that I loved that video. Every second, every lip-synced moment, every musically-coordinated robot fight was the coolest thing ever, period. That video alone is what spawned a love for AMVs that, I admit, still persists somewhere in the depths of my increasingly cynical heart.

And that, my friends, is my modest tribute to Michael Jackson. I know that it all seems a little late, and a bit trite, considering the intense media coverage and the fact that he passed over a month ago. But I thought it would be appropriate; it was an interesting, if insignificant, coincidence that he died only a month after I attended what will probably be my last Animazement, and probably anime convention.

I also think that my experience is a bit of a testament to his work. His music was so universally appealing that even an anime nerd in the far reaches of civilization, in the dark caves of AMV viewing rooms, could love his song. And not only that, it couldn’t have been more appropriate that, as the undisputed pioneer of the music video, a Michael Jackson song was the soundtrack to my first AMV. I like to think that it was my little MJ moment. Which could possibly be the cheesiest thing to say right now. Oh well.


--Blackbird

PS: And of course, the music video above belongs to its creator, Ermac Studios, and I own no rights whatsoever to any part of the little masterpiece(s) contained in that there video.


Epilogue

“Speaking of conventions,” I hear you say, “didn’t you kind of sort of promise me, the loyal reader, a convention report of sorts? Or are you some kind of liar?"

I’m very, very sorry for this delay. I promise, there is an Animazement 2009 convention report, ready for editing, sitting somewhere. It’ll surface one day. Please don’t hate me.

It's about time...It's about CHANGE....of hair?

At the end of the school year, after the stress of finals was over and the scent of summer was in the air, the atmosphere here at Manga Meditation was one of anticipation for change...a change in hair! The arrival of summer had effectively chased away all need for the heat-retaining, long and bushy look, and all three of us were itching to try out cute summer cuts, similar to the edgy new haircut of pop singer sensation Rihanna. A short journey to the beauty salon later, all of us had chopped off the excess keratin and now sported beautiful, swishy, shiny, bouncy bobs!

While it is easy for us to cut off our hair, it is not so simple in the manga world. Characters often look similar (if not exactly the same) without hair, and a signature hairstyle, be it short, spiky, long, curly, or blue often times is the only way to distinguish characters...especially in shoujo manga.

However! Not only is hair an important characteristic in physical distinction, it also creates certain impressions regarding the personality of a character. Based on the manga that I've read, I've compiled a list of character hairstyles and the personality traits that seem to correspond most commonly.

I'm cute with long hair, but even cuter with short!

Short Hair: The boy cut, most commonly found in characters who are well-liked, gregarious, yet hopelessly naive and ignorant in terms of social relationships outside of friendships. Usually denoting athletic excellence, the short hair is also often paired with the alpha female personality, the "cool beauty" that other girls have semi-serious-but-not-really crushes on. (Shown: Mizuki from Hana Kimi)

I look 16, but I act like I'm 30!

Long Hair: Most commonly found in the beautiful, these girls walk into a room with their hair floating behind them, often times when there is no wind and their hair should be stationary. Screentone bubbles and fuzzy geometric shapes are usually added as well to show the arresting affect they have on everyone. Long haired girls tend to have more persnickety personalities, although they also tend to be more mature. . Besides the long haired beauty, there is also the longhaired bitch. With the same social viciousness with which the Plastics attacked each other in the brilliant movie, Mean Girls, these characters usually have long hair so they can flip it over their shoulders after delivering a particularly biting remark. The largest color gradient is found in this category, from teal to purple to blue. (Shown: Meiko from Marmalade Boy)

Chin Length: Chin length hair means you have glasses, which means you are studious, which means you are not very interesting, which means you are a secondary character. You stand around giving sometimes-helpful-but-not-really-because-the-main-character-always-does-whatever-they-want advice, but your interaction is mainly limited to saying, "Oh ho ho, how entertaining," in regards to the (often romantic) situation that the main character is embroiled in. Basically, this is the generic hairstyle that mangakas use for filler characters.

Such innocence! Who can resist?

Curly Hair: Meant for the innocents, the characters who are cute as buttons, perfect in every way, and are as sugary sweet as Shirley Temple. Often times, they are romantic rivals to the girls with short or long hair, resulting in the development of an inferiority complex in the short/long haired girls as they always feel like they can't compete with such perfection. Not much depth is placed in this character, as they are usually whisked in and out of the story within a couple of volumes (Shown: Rumi from Akuma de sourou)

Boyaaa, I can KICK yo ASS

Straight forehead bangs: You are a warrior, a master at martial arts or kendo, and you don't take crap from anyone. You also misinterpret every little interaction with the opposite sex as threatening or inane. (Shown: Akane Tendo from Ranma 1/2)

I must remind the reader that these are, of course, my own personal observations, and as always, there are exceptions to the rules. Many people fall into neither category, as I have short hair and I am neither a cool beauty nor a perky, naive athlete.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Other characters that fall or don't fall under these stereotypes? Pray, leave a comment before the summer days carry you off!



~Polecat

An Apology of Sorts

To our devoted readers:

As you may have noticed, our little online community has been sorely lacking in any type of updates much to the chagrin of us administrators. The seductive powers of summertime have proven to be too powerful for us and the goal of "updates once a week", which seemed laughably easy at the beginning of June, has now become a feat equivalent to Hercules' 12 labors.

However! A recent meeting of minds over the tesla-magnetic-supersonic-ultra-complex waves of Skype has rearranged the priorities in our respective summertime schedules, placing this blog at the top of the list. No longer shall we give in to the smell of barbeque in the backyard. No longer shall we be tempted by the sight of our swimsuits and towels and the idea of a day excursion at the beach. No longer shall we run outside to catch fireflies every time we see a flash outside our window. We serve a higher purpose, and by hook or crook (or by excessively guilt-tripping each other) we shall fulfill our quota of one post per week.

So away with ye, summer distractions. And onwards with our continuing mission to explore the manga world, to seek out new series and artists, to boldly mock where no one has mocked before (yes, even more than two months after the Stark Trek movie, we are still slightly obsessed).

--Manga Meditation