Scott Spaziani

I’m pleased to announce that I will be presenting “When Gundam Goes Bad” at Anime Boston 2013 at 11:15am Friday May 24th in Panel 309. This is the second time giving this panel so it’ll be a slightly tweaked version. It was first presented at ConnectiCon 2013. I plan to be at Anime Boston all day Friday, with a possible stay over till Saturday. Anyone who wants to meet up can hit me up on twitter.

When Gundam Goes Bad

“The U.C. Gundam franchise has been held up over the past twenty years as the father of modern mecha anime. But while those original Gundam series were innovative and exciting, there is also a side of it there is extremely silly. We go over the details on when Gundam is extremely good, and when Gundam is laughably bad.”

 There is a poison that has been growing in gaming culture for some time now. In the last year or so I think it’s reached a zenith, and it is time that consumers start fighting back. The core gamers are told that there are threats to their hobby. That congress is legislating against their games, that iPhones and iPads are causing dedicated game consoles and game capable PCs to disappear. However, the real threat to gaming culture is internal, and is inflamed by PR firms who want to manipulate and gamers into buying into their story so they can sell games. Hype. Hype is the greatest danger to the gaming market and it is time that the majority of core gamers realized how they are being manipulated.

Of course, this could be a problem with the greater geek culture that has risen to prominence in the last ten years. Fans line up for hours to watch ten minutes of a film they are going to see in theaters in a few months. That waste of time and money has always baffled me, as I have always found myself with more media to consume than time to consume it. In gaming I’ve seen fans line up for hours to play a few minutes of Portal 2 at PAX East less than a month before release. The same for L.A. Noir, a game that wasn’t even worth playing even after the price had bottomed out. At NY Comic Con fans waited in line to watch game play of Batman Arkham City only a week or two before release.

I love podcasts. I listened to some podcasts before even iTunes started to support them but it wasn’t until they got rolled into the iTunes store that I became seriously dependent on them for entertainment during my daily commute and the more mundane tasks I have to suffer through during work. And now, as a podcast producer, I have a vested interest in the ecosystem around podcasts.

Before iTunes allowed podcasts into the store the way to actually get and listen to podcasts was tedious at best. Users had to download them using a desktop based RSS feed reader to download the audio files. Then the user would listen to it in their preferred MP3player on their PC or sync it onto their iPod or other MP3 players. After iTunes worked it into their store, things got a lot easier. Users could find and subscribe to the podcasts they wanted, and then iTunes would download them and delete them from the users computer and iPod after they listened to them. Users would still have to sync with their computers but the management of the audio files had become invisible.

This year has been insane, monumental… overwhelming. Two of the Podcasts from the Maximum Fun network both celebrated 2012 as a year for getting things done, and getting yours. “My Brother, My Brother, and Me” embraced 2012 as 20-does, in which they encouraged people to “get it done.” On “Jordan, Jesse Go!” the hosts declared the motto of 2012 “More Powerful Than Ever: Going Ape.”

Last year probably represents the biggest changes I’ve ever had... it was a huge amount of life experience crammed into a tiny year and I’m overwhelmed and burnt out by all of it. It’s as if I played catch up and then jumped ahead of where I should have been all within the same few months.

I’m not sure how to describe the total of what happened in 2012 in any kind of coherent way. I’m the same person I was a year ago in most ways, but at the same time I feel very different from even six months ago.

In 2012, I entered my first long term relationship; purchased by first new car; got a promotion to a much more exciting and high paying position, and purchased a my first home which marks the first time living on my own..

There is nothing really much more to say. I took got extremely lucky with some of it, and most of it I just pushed forward and took what I wanted.

Of course, some things suffered. I haven’t posted a blog post on Otaku in Review since October and haven’t been writing much outside of the “HEY LOOK AT MY HOUSE” posts on this blog. I also haven’t been seeking out any photography in the last few months…other than “ OH HEY, I BOUGHT A HOUSE.” Those hobbies have been replaced with learning how to paint and maintain a condo that is mine now… also paying for it.

I also kind of… let my diet fall apart at the end of the year with all the holidays and other distractions. So I’m at the weight I was when 2012 started. So the year 2013 will be the year that I not only endeavor to drop to my goal weight but hopefully learn how to adopt healthy eating habits. Low-carb dieting is how I lost the bulk of my weight but that really isn’t how I want to eat for the rest of my life.

So the general things I promise myself to do every year still stand. Fix my sleep schedule; which is a constant problem; get better organized, write more, take more photographs, and lose weight.

I do want to add another goal to this year: Go completely paperless. Not in getting rid of books or other such things but scanning mail and getting rid of it, moving to digital notebooks exclusively, using Evernote to transmit hand written notes. I don’t think “going paperless” means getting rid of all paper, but hand written notes should be catalogued digitally and then destroyed because there is no effective way to store and search it. So that is what I’m going to work on accomplishing this year: dump as much paper from my life as possible.

Happy New Year! Hope your 2012 was as great as mine and I hope you accomplish your goals for 2013!

So I had no idea exactly how large of a project this was going to be. After the last photos I enlisted help and cut everything in twice, rolled everything again, painted all the trim, touched up the ceiling in all the areas I painted, and then had to slowly fix the wall because the ceiling paint leaked. I’m wrecked, but I’m extremely happy with the way it’s turning out.

The kitchen still needs the back splash painted, I decided not to bother with tile at this point because the project has just gone out of hand. The wall is pretty much the color I pictured and I bought the table with it in mind before I even closed on the condo.

Also, sorry for the quality of some of these photos, I went through quickly just for some updates and now I’m pissed off at the quality but blah.

Painting! Look at my crazy colors! 

The main living area is in a moderate beige which I really like, but upstairs I decided to go a little more bold, which I normally don't… but I felt like while most of the place should look stylish and modern I wanted color in the more personal areas. I might get sick of it… but at least for now I think it's beautiful.  

 Living room

Going upstairs

Office

I hate wallpaper. Even if it was tasteful, it is difficult to change and only the worst people wallpaper over wallpaper. So that was the first thing that had to go. I've done it before, in my current room before I moved in. At the time it was tough because there were multiple layers of wallpaper, even using the wallpaper steamer. So I figured this time it would be easy. I was wrong… it will never be easy. What I assumed would take a day, took several. Here are some photos of the wallpaper removed, or in the upstairs bathroom's case with it MOSTLY removed.

I had planned to start looking for a place to buy after the winter, some time around March. But my father, who is a real-estate agent, found a foreclosed property on the market. We made an offer, and three days later they accepted. The events that followed aren't unique, apply for loans and waiting, but I finally closed on it a week ago and I'm ready to start working on it. For a foreclosed property it is in great condition, so the only things to fix are cosmedic. I plan to post the process of redecorating and doing the minor fixes I plan to do here, but first let me post the before photos:

Garage

Stairs up to kitchen

Kitchen

 I will be writing a full convention report about Otakon over at Otaku in Review but I wanted to get some details that are not exactly relevant to the convention out in this post, more of a vacation wrap up than a convention post.

I left early on thursday and made it to Baltimore around 3PM. I only stopped twice on the way, the second was for lunch at Waffle House which holds a warm nostalgic value for me. The food is delicious in a “this is bad for you and hastily prepared” sort of way. I had a Waffle with eggs and grits with sausage and toast. A carbo-load for a day filled with walking.

When I got into the city I went to the hotel but saw no place to drive up and unload my bags. Later I found that the valet parking area can be used for this, but at the time I just wanted to get there so I drove to my parking space a half mile away. Not being in the inner harbor proper the price was far better, $17 a day, and I got a deal with Parking Panda which made the four day stay a total of $60. In an area where parking will murder you, I claimed this as a huge accomplishment. Of course, I had to drag my suitcase, tote bag, and backpack three-fourths of a mile to the hotel. It was probably worth saving the money.

We sat for a bit and then went to get our badges. From there we met with the Out of Time Production crew  to Edo Sushi. I’m not a big sushi fan, although I tried one with raw salmon that I liked, but the consensus was that it was an overpriced mediocre Sushi place. Considering the thousands of Japanophiles in the area for the convention I’m, sure they cleaned up over the weekend. It had a nice Japanese atmosphere inside with waitresses dressed in Yukata and all the trappings of a high priced Sushi restaurant. I ordered an Asahi which I liked. It was a dry beer with a nice flavor and no after taste. For dinner I ordered a beef Teriyaki and expected to get some beef strips and rice but received a full steak covered in Teriyaki sauce. The meat was cooked perfectly and melted in my mouth, the teriyaki was slightly sweet and complimented the meat beautifully. For dessert I got some Green Tea ice cream, a favorite of mine at Japanese restaurants. Frankly, anything Green Tea flavored is an easy way to win my heart.

On the road to Baltimore!

— Scott Spaziani (@ScottSpaziani) July 26, 2012

Stuck in traffic in NYC :/

— Scott Spaziani (@ScottSpaziani) July 26, 2012

Breakfast of champions twitter.com/ScottSpaziani/…

— Scott Spaziani (@ScottSpaziani) July 26, 2012

Making my way through New Jersey, the parking lot state

— Scott Spaziani (@ScottSpaziani) July 26, 2012

I'm at Waffle House (Elkton, MD) 4sq.com/QdYmDb

— Scott Spaziani (@ScottSpaziani) July 26, 2012

In Maryland, stopped at a Waffle House because aww yeah Waffle House

— Scott Spaziani (@ScottSpaziani) July 26, 2012

Delaware is only three miles long yet costs $8 to drive through

— Scott Spaziani (@ScottSpaziani) July 26, 2012

Kyoto Animation is known for creating the most popular anime among the serious, hard core Otaku in Japan. It’s hard to believe that they haven’t attempted to create an original work before Tamako Market. They’re success has come from taking already popular work among those handful of hardcore fans and applying their animation ability to it. Tamako Market represents their attempt to apply what they learned from their adaptive works and try to create something without the need of outside licenses.

Tamako Market is about Tamako Kitashirakawa the daughter of a Mochi seller at a shopping district. The show mainly follows Tamako and her family as they go about their lives in the shipping district. The one odd thing the show tosses in is the introduction of Dera, a talking bird who is on a quest to find a bride for the prince of an island nation.

Dera acts as the viewpoint character, and is constantly making comments about the situations he finds himself in. His role goes from being the central focus of the narrative to a sideline character to the normal routines of the Shopping district. The show is structured with a breakneck pace with an entire year taking place during the twelve episode series. The show covers favorite Moe anime tropes, including a valentines and beach episodes but moves far too quick for any structured narrative to develop. Instead the show focus’ in on it’s characters. Tamako herself represents the idealized Moe heroine, always cheerful and always optimistic. The side characters are far more interesting from her eccentric carpenter friend, the rivalry between the two Mochi shops in the district, or the beatnik café owner, their brief moments on the screen spoke miles as to their personalities and their roles in the tight nit community of the shopping district.

Japan being an island nation with a long and rich fishing tradition I’m surprised that fishing hasn’t snuck into more Japanese animation. At least, few anime that have made it over to the United States. Looking at the synopsis, a show focused around fishing didn’t sounds appealing but what I got was less a show about someone fishing but a science fiction adventure with a sweet message of friendship.

The colors in Tsuritama are incredibly vibrant, a fantastic looking show which captures the whimsical nature of Haru, an alien who arrives on Enoshima and befriends the island’s new transplant Yuki. Yuki has moved around with his grandmother and has never had the chance to make friends. Haru immediately latches on, to Yuki’s dismay, to the loaner and recruits him for a task that requires fishing. 

When I first saw the previews for Moretsu Pirates I was instantly excited. Space! We get so little anime about space these days that I will take anything I can get. Of course, being deep in the moe era of anime we can’t have an anime about space that isn’t also about cute high school girls doing cute high school girl things, but it’s also about space so it’s going to be different, right? Space is awesome. Statement of fact. 

Well, yes and no. Moretsu Pirates suffers from the industry’s attempts to chase after a duality, create the perfect anime that will appeal to not only moe fans but also a larger audience. The goal is to break the anime industry out of their small group of a few thousand dedicated fans but at the same time not alienating that audience. Because of this goal, the show suffers from balancing its two opposing sides. Time spent with Marika Kato in school and at her job at a maid café is standard high school anime fare, enjoyable because the character is a ball of energy but avoids any interesting narrative steps. The show will go from those school scenes and jump right into semi-serious space pirating, where Marika has to deal with intergalactic conspiracies, lead massive fleets, and make split second combat decisions. The two sides of the show collide when it is “necessary” for Marika school girl yacht club to take control of the pirate ship. The merging of the two sides becomes the most enjoyable arc of the show. The original crew, unable to join with the ship, panicky had to prepare documentation for the inexperienced crew to man the highly customized pirate ship. The use of the girls was fine, again far too silly for the overall tone of the space parts of the show. Watching the mostly serious crew freaking out over the new crew of teenage girls attempting to figure out how their precious space ship worked and becomes a good analogy for the show. The serious side of the show bends to serve the moe aspects of the show, to facilitate its existence.

 In some ways 2012 was a great year for anime. But that came in the form of long shows and unfortunately, two of the shows I’ve watched and enjoyed the most in 2012 didn’t end and don’t qualify for my list. While I haven’t watched a lot this year, what I did get to was some incredibly fun and innovative stuff. While I’m disappointed that my own rules don’t allow some of my favorite shows to make the list, what is included are shows that definitely should not be overlooked.

  5: The K-On! Movie

K-On! deserves to make the list for one spectacular reason: It’s the best K-On! that has yet been released. The K-On! Movie tosses the characters into more conflict than in both seasons of the TV show combined. Watching the characters get lost in London and attempting to speak english sis both adorable and extremely satisfying. Those aspects combined with the stellar animation quality that Kyoto Animation puts into a theatrical production and K-On! The Movie is the ultimate experience of the franchise. For that reason alone it deserves to make the list.

There are so many barriers to entry in Chihayafuru that if it wasn’t freely available streaming I doubt that I, and many others who have been singing its praises, would have even attempted to touch it. It’s a sports anime that is about a card game rooted in ancient Japanese poetry, and that doesn’t sound like it would have much appeal outside a small number of specialized hobbyists. However, Chihayafuru is an anime that transcends it’s subject matter, and even it’s genre, to become something truly spectacular.

The way Chihayafuru is constructed feels like the perfect combination of all popular anime genres. Chihayafuru is based around a card game, which is treated like any other sport. So, it is essentially a Sports anime where character interaction is based around and connected too the single sport. It’s also a romance, with a flavor of the “separated childhood friend” trope that pops up so commonly in Shojo romances. The tournament sections of the show remind me of Shonen tournament stuff especially when the “Master” and “Queen” characters, the best Kurata players in the world, are fleshed out. Their super human ability and the constant stress at how large the skill gap between them and the heroes barrows heavily from Shonen tournament and fighting shows. Finally, Chihayafuru features a group of friends focused around a school club which has become a popular trope in Moe anime after the rabid popularity of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. 

 After the horrors of Double Zeta Gundam I was excited to watch the final chapter of Tomino’s Universal Century Gundam franchise. Char’s Counterattack takes place three years after Double Zeta and about thirteen years after the original series. Char returns from hiding with a newly created Neo Zeon force carrying an asteroid with them. With the goal of rendering the Earth uninhabitable, Char sets to drop it on the planet but Amuro Ray, Captain Bright, and the elite Federation Forces team Londo-Bell are dead set against stopping them.

The movie doesn’t waste any time getting into the action. The first scene shows the unveiling of Nu Gundam, whose construction had to be accelerated because of the appearance of Char and his Neo Zeon army. Following that, Amuro Ray battles against Char’s forces while attempting to stop the astroid from falling on Earth. While the conflict rages just above the planet, the Federation Forces admit to being powerless against the oncoming asteroid. 

The set up of this movie contains most of its problems. That opening scene doesn’t quite make any sense. For starters, this is the first we’ve heard that Char is alive! He was assumed dead at the end of Zeta Gundam, killed in the final battle against the Titans. Second, Amuro Ray was retired from military service, which was covered in an arc of Zeta Gundam. If Amuro wanted to fight again why didn’t he just return to the Argama when Kamile was put out of commission, or even before, and pilot the Gundam? It feels like the movie begins twenty minutes after it should have because the audience is missing some important pieces of information.

 There is only one thing I can think to say about Otakon that sums up my experience. It’s the Mecca for American Otaku. I’ve attended Anime Boston for the last couple years and I’ve had nothing but complaints about the people who attuned the convention and use it as a social gathering rather than a celebration of Japanese animation. This has been a common complain around anime conventions, where the majority of attendees don’t seem to be interested in Anime as the chief reason for going to the convention. It’s common to see half of the costumes are Video Game, comic book, or Doctor Who related. Noted, I’m not saying that expressing fandom other than anime is a bad thing but when the event is designed to be an anime event then I’d expect... anime related costumes and fandom to be the majority of what I see.

At Otakon there are all of those problems. People are hanging around in the halls, using the event as a social gathering rather than an anime celebration, and homestuck and non-anime related fandoms were prevalent. However, it’s the size of the convention that makes up for the sizable group of people who are not displaying anime fandom. The pool of people is so great that the group of hardcore anime fans is big enough to make a huge impact on the convention and because of that, Otakon has maintains the feeling of a celebration of Japanese Animation. The programing, guests, and grand size of the event made me feel for the first time in a long time that anime fandom was alive and well.

I'm four weeks late. FINE! But I had a crazy month and lots of content coming in video and podcasts and a few more reviews that I'm really excited to post. I only watched five shows, I think that is going to be the standard going forward. So here is my Summer Preview! I picked shows I wanted to watch and shows I saw that were excessively decisive. So, here we go! 

Sword Arts Online

In the year 2022 the new Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying game “Sword Arts Online” is released and bought by ten thousand dedicated gamers. In a twist the game designer has turned the game into a death match where players must reach the 100th floor of the game without dying, and any attempt to leave the game will cause their death. Kirito strives to use his experience as a beta tester to stay ahead of the rest of the players and reach the end of the game. 

 I came at this show tainted by the memory of .Hack//sign but the show does a good job of building a realistic situation with the types of people who would obsess over the new release of a hard to get game. There are some beautiful little moments that, as a gamer, I appreciated. The scene where the pristine, beautiful avatars fade away replaced by what the players actually look like takes on a whole range of standard gaming tropes from the young kids to the unkempt twenty somethings. The best is the female characters who suddenly became old, balding men. It rang a little too true. 

The little interfaces that pop up, from the game menus, experience information after battles, and life bars take the audience out of the beautiful fantasy world that the characters have been placed in, which is exactly what they are designed to do. The show wants the audience to be reminded that they are in a game, and those little touches destroy the emersion of an MMO and they are a constant reminder of the show’s set up. 

 I’m worried that once the show starts it’ll devolve into standard fantasy combat but right now the setup is enough to keep me interested for a few episodes. I like the main character, the isolated, lonely gamer; and I can’t wait to see if it turns a rather monotonous sounding task; clearing 100 levels; into something exciting to watch. 

I was warned. Cautioned. Told, specifically, that Double Zeta Gundam was not something that I wanted to experience. But I made a pact with myself. A sworn vow. I was going to watch all the Universal Century Gundam! As an anime fan, as someone who has used the screenname "Gundampilotspaz" for the last ten years, I need to at least have seen all of the shows in the original Gundam universe, right? Well, even Bandai must have had better sense than I did going into this series. Double Zeta Gundam is the only chapter of the original UC Gundam that has not been released in the United States. Maybe I should have taken the hint?

After the success of the reedited Gundam trilogy movies the new 50 episode Zeta Gundam series was massively successful. Ending on a cliffhanger, the show needed a sequel in order to conclude narrative threads started at the end of the series. So enter Double Zeta Gundam! However, from the first episode the series takes on an obvious tonal shift. By the end of Zeta Gundam, the show had become exceptionally bleak. In fact, the show ended with Kamile, the main protagonist and Gundam pilot, mentally damaged after his final battle with Haman Karn. While the Titans are defeated in the final battle the return of Zeon promises that the work of the Argama crew is no where near complete. 

Double Zeta begins by quickly having Kamile rolled off to a hospital, leaving the Argama without a main pilot. The damage to the ship and crew looks bleak but we are introduced to an entire new group of young men who have mobile suit experience! Unfortunately for the Argama crew, they are more interested in stealing the Gundams and scraping them for profit than fighting the forces of Zeon. The first six episodes or so follow this pattern: Judau and his friends manage to steal Zeta Gundam and scrap it, Zeon appears and attacks, Judau defeats the enemy, the Argama somehow gets the Gundam back. That is the pattern for the first six episodes! The most puzzling aspect is in most of the battles they keep coming up with reasons to leave the cockpit doors open. Sometimes it's because Judau isn't sure how to close to hatch, other times the Zeon officers take mobile suits that don't have doors installed. For some reason, Tomino decided that for the first few Gundam battles the hatches had to be open. Humor? It might be humor?

Today New York Comic Con announced that New York Anime Festival will no longer exist. Attendees of the convention weren't surprised at the news, but disappointed. This means that there is no large anime convention in New York City! How insane is it to think that the most populated area in the country lacks an Anime Convention?! How did this come about? Some of us had hope when they announced the merging of the two conventions, but it was quickly clear that the two cultures couldn't co-exist. 

Attendees of the past two New York Anime Festivals have been more than vocal about how dissatisfied they were with the event. In 2010 the event was shoved into the basement of the Javits convention center, quarantining anime programing; artist alley; and the mass of anime fans away from the pop culture convention going on above. It was a suitable solution to the problem of combining the two conventions, but no one was completely happy. In 2011 fan run anime panels were nearly abolished entirely while the artist alley was moved to the top floor of the Javits center. The “anime ghetto” returned and it was clear that the two conventions would never be able to live side by side. While anime’s presence at the convention grew ever smaller, the convention itself was bursting at the seams with people interesting in comics and the other pop culture events going on. The tiny anime convention that happened inside the massive New York Comic Con went by unnoticed by the majority of attendees.

Reflecting back, New York Comic Con 2011 was mostly a miserable experience. It was fantastic to see “Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below” and all the events around Makoto Shinkai, including my own interview with the famous director, are experiences that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. But the convention itself? It was loud, hard to navigate, and even on the slowest days of the convention was packed with people who were more interesting in the shopping bazaar than in the culture of the convention. 

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This week we talk about Anime Sols, as well as a quick review of what games we’re playing right now and news.

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This week I talk about playing through Super Meat Boy and desperately trying to get done with the Podcast so I can put my new computer together. Michael reviews the final volume of Negima! and gives his overall impressions of the series.

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This week Scott gives his detailed review of the anime “From the New World” on top of talks about San Francisco, gaming machines, and a whole bunch of other stuff I can’t remember.

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While Scott is off in beautiful San Francisco for work Michael is joined by Greg fromRisen Goes to School by Bus to discuss the sequels premiering in the Spring Season, a ton of news, and more!

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This week we’re joined by Greg fromRisen Goes to School by Bus and Jon Ingoglia fromMoe Moe Bacon Kun to review the 2013 Spring season. However, we mostly just play with Michael’s dog.

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Ed Sizemore joins us to discuss Tamako Market and more.  

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This week Michael and I talk about doing lots of Japanese stuff! Then we take listener questions.

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Michael and I talk about people who need to consume the latest in all things and OMG it’s so great you have to watch this why aren’t you watching this! Aso, My Little Pony manga is coming!

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Michael and I talk about the missteps that Crunchyroll made in how it ran Jmanga, and how they lead to it’s announced closing later this year.

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Jon Ingoglia from Moe Moe Bacon-Kun joins us to discuss Kyoto Animation’s Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai. Also lots of gaming talk because: who likes anime?

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This week Michael gives us his impressions of the first half of the manga “Limit.”

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This week we’re joined by former co-host Jon Ingoglia from Moe Moe Bacon-Kun as he reviews Sword Arts Online and Girls Und Panzer.

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This week we’re joined by Greg from Reisen Goes to School by Bus and Charles Dunbar from Study of Anime to discuss Katsucon 2013!

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This week we talk about hypocrocy, snow storms, and Tamako Market

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This week on the Podcast we confront Michael’s obsession with Korean pop culture and I review the fishing anime Tsuritama.

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This week we derail the podcast with an off topic video game argument. Also, Michael reviews Mayo Chiki!

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This week we talk about free MMOs and Moretsu Pirates.

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This week we’re joined by Greg from Risen Goes to School by Bus and Jon Ingoglia from Moe Moe Bacon Kun to review the 2013 anime season. It’s a wild ride through SO MUCH ANIME!

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We answer listener questions, also Michael fears for his job.

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This week we’re joined by Greg from Risen Goes to School by Bus, L.B. Bryant from Ani.me, and Ed Sizemore join us to give their top three anime of the year!