Behind The Nihon Review » Akira

Once Upon a Time in Akihabara

Akira — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:29:31 +0000

The saddest sight in the world.

It’s the night before Comiket 78. In about a few hours, I will be joining hundreds of thousands of others like myself, lining up in the sweltering heat and braving stampedes of foul-smelling young men in a quest for books, goods and trinkets. On the eve of battle, I sit alone in my Tokyo apartment, five minutes from Akiba. The lights are dim, Aoi Hana is playing softly from my computer’s speakers and I sit in my chair, reflecting upon my long history with Akihabara.

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The Nihon Revue, Episode One

Akira — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 06:46:33 +0000

This is what my face looked like when I first inspected my mic quality.

That’s right, kids— The Nihon Review now has a podcast! It’s called The Nihon Revue, and features the ever-so-charming Sorrow-kun and everyone’s least favorite blogger (yours truly) doing what The Nihon Review does best: reviewing anime.

For our pilot episode, we have for you five of last season’s hits. Most of these shows have finished only recently. Here’s the program:

Bakemonogatari: 0:30

Angel Beats!: 5:50

Senkou no Night Raid: 11:05

Working!!: 13:30

Arakawa Under the Bridge: 19:25

Total runtime is 27:40.

We realize that there were a lot of things we could have done better— this podcast is a work in progress. We’re hoping to put one of these out every season for everyone out there. Also, I definitely need a better microphone, but I’m currently abroad, so bear with me on that one. Thanks for supporting us, and enjoy:

Also, a download link if you so please.

Don’t forget to come join us down at #nhrv @ irc.rizon.net. We always welcome new faces, so drop on by.

Copyright © 2010 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Akira | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Tweet! | AnimeBlips - vote it up!
Post tags: Amagami SS, Angel Beats!, Arakawa Under the Bridge, Bakemonogatari, High School of the Dead, Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakama-tachi, Sekimatsu Occult Gakuin, Senkou no Night Raid, Shiki, Strike Witches Season 2, Working!!

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The Gap

Akira — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 06:44:40 +0000

Long time no see. I’ve been on an extended break from the anime fandom since mid-June, mostly because of a little thing called the World Cup.

Now that I’m back, I’ve realized that, much to my horror, that I am experiencing something absolutely unprecedented:

The current anime season is so god-awful that I’ve actually run out of things to write about. Absolutely nothing is worth talking about.

So let’s do a little something different today. Readers of Behind the Nihon Review, I present to you…

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Copyright © 2010 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Akira | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Tweet! | AnimeBlips - vote it up!
Post tags: Amagami SS, B Gata H Kei, Kodomo no Jikan, Kugimiya Rie, Kurenai, Working!!

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Elitists: A Reflection of Our Aniblog Tourney Run

Akira — Fri, 28 May 2010 21:29:03 +0000

Is Time a better publication because it is more popular? Is Foreign Affairs a better publication because it is more academic? Does the question even matter?

Our pithy little blog, Behind the Nihon Review, was pitted against Random Curiosity, the mother of all episodic anime blogs, for the second round of the Aniblog Tourney. To nobody’s surprise, we lost. This post should not be viewed as an attempt to justify our failure in the tournament, nor should it be seen as an exercise in hateful finger pointing. I intend to do nothing of the sort.

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Copyright © 2010 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Akira | Permalink | 31 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Tweet! | AnimeBlips - vote it up!
Post tags: Aniblog Tourney, K-ON!, Lucky Star, Strike Witches, Yamakan

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The Purity Fixation

Akira — Sun, 16 May 2010 16:22:24 +0000

This article is also titled "In Defense of Dirty Hoes." Because who wouldn't defend a ho like Nagi?

Two years ago, a comic serialized in Comic Rex stirred up a huge controversy after the sexual purity of its main heroine came into question. Flamewars were had on 2ch, and over-zealous fans teared up their tankobon volumes in protest. The author fell deathly ill after the controversy occurred (in an unrelated and extremely unfortunate incident), and she has not returned to drawing manga since then. To this day, there is no official resolution to the controversy.

Have you worked out what series I’m talking about? Correct. The answer is Kannagi.

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Minorigate, or, How to Piss Off Otaku Without Really Trying

Akira — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:29:27 +0000

The probability of BtNHRV receiving a DMCA injunction from minori just rose twentyfold.

There’s been quite a hubbub in the eroge-playing community this week, sparked by minori (ef, Wind, eden*) inducing an edit war on TLWiki’s eden* page. Now, for those of you who remember, minori was one of the first eroge companies to block website access from foreign IPs last year after the Rapelay controversy exploded, citing a fear of “violating local laws and causing trouble for foreign fans” as motivation. A year has passed since then, and the minori website has remained shut to foreigners. Last week, minori emerged from its isolationist shell to delete the eden* translation project in its entirety. For a more detailed and comprehensive account of the events, please read these articles. The gist of minori‘s argument: We hold the copyright to these games, and we don’t want them to be translated. Therefore, we’re going to delete all of your translations and request that you stop. Reasonable, right?

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Spring 2010: Less Moe, More Substance?

Akira — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 12:18:29 +0000

Koji Kumeta telling you what's up.

Sorrow-kun has just given his opinion on the new season, and I’ve discovered that the new shows have a subtle, but important, shift in focus away from the “moexploitation” shows of past seasons. While I am not foolish or naive enough to conclude that Spring 2010 will be known as “The Season that Moe Died” (especially with Strike Witches 2 just around the corner, HNNNNNNGH), the shift is still interesting and worth examining.

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Copyright © 2010 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Akira | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Tweet! | AnimeBlips - vote it up!
Post tags: Angel Beats!, Arakawa Under the Bridge, B Gata H Kei, Durarara!!, K-ON!, Rainbow, Senko no Night Raid, Sora no Woto, Working!!

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The Rise of the New Guard?

Akira — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:42:46 +0000

Queens of a new dynasty?

Over the past few years, we’ve seen the meteoric rise of several fairly small-name animation studios such as A1 Pictures, Brains Base and, most famously, Kyoto Animation, among others. Certainly, KyoAni has enjoyed unprecedented attention both domestically and abroad with very well-received series such as Lucky Star and Haruhi. There has been talk on the Internet of a “revolution”, a “changing of the guard”, in which old, outdated studios (Sunrise, Toei) are replaced with new generation animation studios like Kyoto Animation. Are the old guard truly being replaced? The answer lies, naturally, in statistics…

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Copyright © 2010 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Akira | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Tweet! | AnimeBlips - vote it up!
Post tags: K-ON!, Kyoto Animation, Lucky Star, Sunrise, The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi

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A Different Approach to the Translation of Ero-Scenes

Akira — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:40:24 +0000

This is Nishino Aki, my assistant for this article. She is not amused at what I am about to put her through.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about how I translate sex scenes (エロシーン, ero-scene) in visual novels. It is one of the least pleasurable aspects of my hobby, and I’m rather glad that I never had to deal with ero-scenes during my time as a fansubber. Ero-scenes are notoriously difficult to translate well; several inherent linguistic barriers prevent accurate and succinct translation. What I am proposing here may not be new, or radical, and by no means is it perfect, but I believe it to be a different take on the translation of the ero-scene. This system will not make the reading of an ero-scene enjoyable. An ero-scene is an inherently cheesy, silly thing to read, and nothing that I, or any other translator, can do would change that. Rather, this is simply a way for translators to cut their losses. I have always facetiously advocated that there is no such thing as an ero-scene translation that is good; there are simply those that do not suck. Leave the sucking to the heroine, I say.

(WARNING! This article is filled with boring linguistic technobabble. In addition, people might think you’re a freak if you read this at work, or at any other time, for that matter. There are no NSFW images in this article, I promise. Also, please note that this does not represent my general translation philosophy. It is an extrapolation thereof, and in no circumstances should be applied to non-ero scenes. It would be a terrible choice.)

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Looking Back, Looking Forwards: This Decade in Anime

Akira — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:48:53 +0000

As this decade draws to a close, we celebrate the last ten years in anime. Certainly, the industry has progressed far in the last ten years: anime has become more popular, both domestically and worldwide; it has matured significantly as an art form, featuring cutting-edge CG technology and beautiful, streamlined animation; and it has become massively commercialized, with anime goods proliferating and saturating the market, far outstripping demand in many cases. The rapid, irreversible commercialization of anime has been further exacerbated by a (relatively) new artistic movement in the industry: moé.

Certainly, moé did not revolutionize the anime industry. The artistic beginnings of moé were not in this decade, or even the last. Like all artistic movements, it underwent periods of growth and development. What this decade did see, however, was the exploitation of moé. Instead of utilizing moé as a set of aesthetic choices, used to bolster, reinforce and beautify a work of anime, it became an end in and of itself. The industry quickly realized that their idealized representations of women— well-mannered, upbeat, bright and beautiful— resonated well with anime’s predominantly teenage male audience. Thus, the industry shifted more and more towards the production of moé-oriented titles, especially during the latter half of the decade.

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Copyright © 2010 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Akira | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Tweet! | AnimeBlips - vote it up!
Post tags: Akikan!, Fight! Ippatsu! Jyuuden-chan, Ikkitousen, K-ON!, Kodomo no Jikan, Queen's Blade, School Days, Shuffle! Memories, Sora no Otoshimono, Strike Witches

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