What I really REALLY hated about anime in 2016.

is Quentin Tarantino directing 2016?

— Matt Oswalt (@MattOswaltVA) July 8, 2016

I think we all know that 2016 will be a year that we will just refuse to talk about in the future. It’ll be 2014, 2015, and then we’ll just skip straight to 2017. Some pretty bad things have happened this year, news-wise:

Donald Trump / Brexit / Growth of the Alt-Right movement / The sudden increase in racism, sexism, homophobia and Islamophobia as a result of the previous three / The continuing situation in Syria & Aleppo / David Bowie / Orlando shooting / Muhammad Ali / Prince / Flint still not having clean water / Zika virus / Leonard Cohen / Alan Rickman / Suicide Squad / Hurricane Matthew / Kids going all butt-hurt over this year’s Call of Duty / Cubs winning the World Series / Turkish coup / Gene Wilder / Bastille Day Attack in Nice / Charleston church shooting / Leicester City winning the Premier League / The UK going batshit crazy that The Great British Bake Off was leaving the BBC /  Murdoch now owning even more of the world’s media / Brussels airport bombing / Killer Clown craze in Halloween / North Korea still being an ass / England getting owned by Iceland in the European soccer tournaments in France

I also had to go to hospital in March after a series of violent seizures. My hyperactive nephew has hit puberty too, so that might be a pain in the ass. My favourite nightclub, Fabric, lost its license when a couple of kids OD’d on the dance floor (they got it back though). My nose unnaturally started to bleed in July, so that sucked. My first experience with a brony scarred me forever. Two of my favourite Formula 1 drivers retired (Jenson Button and Nico Rosberg). A cult got in touch with me when I wrote an article about some of their movies (not a bad thing…just bizarre…but I forgot to say thank you to them for reading the article, so in the off-chance that if they are reading this, The Golden Laws was actually pretty good, so thanks). You could even argue Pokemon Go had some role too in creating more of a dystopian society this year, even though it is a pretty cool game (despite it eating your data and phone battery).

And I’m still an unemployable piece of shit.

Anime and the general weeb culture wasn’t spotless either. Saying that though, it had its pretty damn fine moments: Final Fantasy XV and The Last Guardian finally came out after 9 or 10 years of development hell, Your Name, Hibike! Euphonium sequel, Overwatch, Hideo Kojima re-emerging after Konamigate with a pretty slick-looking game in the works, Stranger Things (hardly weeb but still a cool show), A Silent Voice (I didn’t like it, but so many people did), the news that Nintendo’s new console is coming out sooner than we think…

Last year I did a little piece over the worst things that anime did to us, which included Charlotte, the second season of Nisekoi (there was a sequel, in case you forgot, which you may have) and Gainax turning to product placement to make a mediocre magical girl show. Well time to do it all over again for this year; perhaps this year will be more significant considering all the other shit that happened.

(Remember: this is all personal opinion)

Happy Science, and their relationship with anime.

This is a post about Happy Science. You may not have heard of them.

They are one of many ‘Japanese new religions’ (or Shinshukyo) that still operate. No way are they on par with the likes of doomsday cults like Aum Shinrikyo (now known as Aleph). It would be wrong to call them a hippy cult, but peace, love and understanding is essentially what they are about. Believers and converts are required to follow a set path in life, and must have “the aspiration and vision to seek the way and contribute to the realisation of love, peace and happiness on Earth”.

The founder and leader Ryuho Okawa (the reincarnation of supreme deity El Cantare) claims to channel spirits such as Christ, Muhammad, Buddha, Confucius, among others. However, while the group doesn’t aim for monotheism like most major religions, it recognises many gods…I presume one idea of this is that they see no need for religious war.

So why on earth am I writing about them here?

I’m pretty sure that it was when I was looking into how some religious organisations use anime as a medium to show people their beliefs (and whatnot). I first came across the shorts made by Aum Shinrikyo/Aleph, showing founder Shoko Asahara using supernatural powers like levitating and phasing; the shorts are still scattered here and there on YouTube. But this didn’t directly lead me to Happy Science, though. I’ve had this interest and fascination of religious groups and cults for a good long while; not at all joining them, but instead I think about what drives people from mainstream religion to such beliefs that, to some, could be seen as threatening to everyday life. I researched some more into ‘Japanese new religions’, and pretty much one of the first things that came up was concerning some anime movies that Happy Science had produced to show its beliefs; not so much as propaganda, but to act as information. This, and spreading the message that a deity known as El Cantare is there for all of us, to shield us from greed and lust.

And so I managed to find these movies, and see for myself…

What happened when I watched: pupa.

This is, apparently, one of the most hated shows that ever exists. So of course this is something I have to do.

Apparently this was delayed, and then when it was eventually released, no-one gave it any real positive reviews. All I really know about it is that it’s a horror show, each episode is only about 4 or 5 minutes long, and that it features a weird brother-sister relationship. It could be a good thing that each episode is about 4 or 5 minutes long; perhaps it was that bad that even the people in the studio were tearing their hair out over it.

For the record, I glanced at 10 minutes in the past, and had made some kind of mind up about what all 12 ‘episodes’ were like there and then without actually watching all of them, so this is going to be fun…

NB: Possible rage below.

Why the McDonalds anime commercial is the best commercial they’ve ever done.

Right now here in the UK, McDonalds are churning out the usual factual commercials on how all of their burgers have British and Irish beef, how they embrace fresh ingredients, and about their new idea for putting books in Happy Meals (which on paper sounds great, but any kid would rather play with a toy). Their current ad campaign, though, focuses on how the assorted variety of customers have their “best times” at one of their restaurants (from celebrating a soccer match to finding your future wife), with an appalling piano cover of The Jam’s “That’s Entertainment” playing in the background.

On the other hand, like some restaurant chains, they like to ignore the glaring rumours about how they treat their employees. Here in the UK, McDonalds employees are often on what’s called ‘zero-hour contracts’. In them, the employer (McDonalds) isn’t obliged to give out any minimum working hours, while the employee (the poor hapless kid with spots occasionally getting your order wrong) isn’t obliged to accept any work offered. Sounds great, right?……but the employee must also sign an agreement that they must be available for work when and where-ever, and there’s still no guarantee they’ll get the number of hours they signed up for, meaning it could be anywhere between 1 to 48 hours a week.

With this, as well as the question behind whether their food is genuinely healthy (eg. due to the high amount of fat, grease and additives, a Big Mac can take up to 3 days to properly digest), McDonalds have been desperate to win peoples’ hearts for like forever. Everywhere in the world.

And as in Japan, where at least one McDonalds (or McDonalds equivalent) is found on every block, this generation’s kids are happy that they won’t always have to subject themselves to traditional Japanese cuisine and can splash out on Western food, despite the fact that westerners themselves usually frown on their food.

Tokyopop’s return part 3: Waiving your rights over a mobile app.

When this landed on me, I was surprised too!

Pop Media Holdings, which owns Tokyopop, has a mobile app, POP Comics. It’s basically an app where manga/comic creators can publish their work for app users to read. Their website seems to love the words ‘interact’, ‘monetize’ and ‘awesome’…plus it’s free to read as ads incorporate the app. All sounds cool, right? I mean it’s a decent enough sounding platform for indie artists to show off their work to the public. They get paid, the public see something new, and Stu Levy is more chuffed with himself.

Well not everyone reads the small print…

Putting in a nutshell, POP Comics can do whatever they want with their app without informing the user (or the creator who is publishing their work) beforehand. They can pretty much revoke your “creator-owned” status without telling you first, and if you have a problem with that, then you’d have to go through Hong Kong law instead of your own home country’s one. Also, if you have a problem or dispute with using the app (eg. a creator has issues with POP Comics showing certain stuff), you don’t have the right to actually file a lawsuit; something what is known as arbitration is used instead. Arbitration is favoured by companies because it doesn’t necessarily involve a real judge, and is much much cheaper for the company.

First we have a lot of people doubting whether Tokyopop is even worth its resurrection, then its issue of ‘raising awareness’ of shows by uploading whole episodes onto Youtube without the licensor’s permission, and now this? Sure having these dodgy-looking terms and conditions in a mobile app is something people are going to jump up and down about…besides there are better way for creators to show off their work.

Pixiv / Deviantart / pretty much any image-based social media platform

At this rate, I may end up writing more shit-hurling posts about Tokyopop (complaining how they should have stayed dead), and turn me into one great big SJW. Perhaps I should quit using WordPress and turn straight to Tumblr instead……I’d be able to both be chummy with other SJWs and at the same time have shit hurled in my face for no apparent reason.

–

Love goes to Bunnycartoon for finding this out and influencing me to write this. She haz teh conneketionz!!