No matter what romance media might have you believe, romantic love is not the only kind of love.
Love can be expressed in many ways: a sweet kiss on your parent’s cheek, a new chewing bone for your buddy, an tight hug to your best friend. It can also be expressed as a token of affection to the ‘things’ that make us happy: fictional characters, favorite movies, nostalgic songs. We, as fans, know a bit too well how that goes, as we shower our favorite creations with love every single day.
Scroll down to your first news for this week to see how the anime fandom expresses their love. We also have more Valentine’s Day articles for you after the news section.
Keep the flame alive.
If you want to talk chocolates and relationships, don’t forget to join our Discord channel. We are more than just anime and manga and games.
I am Ura, your ready-to-receive-chocolates tour guide in this amazing journey into Japanese pop, geek, and sub culture.
Thank you for joining us.
1
Restoring the origin of a legend.
The Daicon III and Daicon IV short films helped catapult the career of several Studio Gainax founders back in the day, but have remained in legal limbo ever since. One fan is changing all that.
FriskyNoodle on Twitter recently released a brand new cleaner capture of Daicon IV from the original LaserDisc, passing through various different filters and using the Domesday Duplicator hardware technology. The result is a restoration that strikes at the very heart of anime fandom, updating a legend for the modern day and bringing it to new audiences.
What’s more, the in-progress Daicon III restoration is based on an actual 8mm film reel transfer of the short, meaning that it has the potential to look even better! FemboyFilms has since reached out to FriskyNoodle to help with the preservation efforts, and the images that have been released so far look phenomenal.
Chris Cimi explains why they’re so important: ‘The DAICON story embodies the best possible scenario that could come from any type of fandom: a group of young aspirationals, end up creating, solely out of love for their craft, a work so groundbreaking it jet sets them off to careers that will change their industry and the world forever.’
Amen.
2
Challenging the idol industry.
Former Hello! Project idol Ayaka Wada recently spoke with Tokion, talking about the need for change within the industry, social justice, feminism, and more.
Wada joined the Hello! Project when she was just 10 years old and said that she ‘started ‘increasingly feeling a bit confused about things’ when she entered her late teens. Within months of leaving the group, she used her platform to speak out about LGBTQ+ issues and criticize the Japanese government on their plans to withhold funding from an exhibit about the country’s war crimes. In doing so, she hopes to be a voice for change.
‘The interview then centered on how all that can change through activism. The idol industry has recently undergone a slow process of transformation and reform, seen by how Denpagumi Inc’s Furukawa Mirin has both married and announced her pregnancy while continuing to work, and by how WACK groups challenge the ‘clean’ image of the idol,’ explained Alicia Haddick.
‘Still, even if the image of the idol has changed and fans are more open about supporting idols, the industry is stubbornly archaic.’
It’s worth a read.
3
Putting the ‘horror’ in Haachama.
Just when you thought Hololive virtual YouTuber Akai Haato/Haachama couldn’t get any weirder, she goes and cuts off her own head.
This is part of an ongoing narrative for the channel that sees the creator treat the two names ‘Akai Haato’ and ‘Haachama’ as two different personalities, with very disturbing results: Haachama was originally just one of her nicknames before becoming something else entirely during the course of last month.
Particularly worth highlighting here is the hour-long #FREEHACHAMA livestream, which culminates in a genuinely disturbing segment towards the end where ‘Haachama’ appears to break into Haato’s department, declares that there will be ‘no more FreeHaato,’ and cuts off her head.
Don’t worry, you’re not alone: ‘For the uninitiated, this can appear quite bewildering. To be fair, even to regular Hololive viewers, this is incredibly out of the ordinary; no other personality is doing anything quite like this right now, which is why Haachama’s content is so exciting.’ (Jacob Parker-Dalton) She also recently just hit 1 million subscribers.
4
Taking film beyond the frame.
VR filmmaking sounds like a strange prospect, but there’s apparently enough of it to fill an entire festival this weekend, featuring Japanese and worldwide releases alike.
The lineup includes Beat by Keisuke Itoh, The Book of Distance by Randall Okita, and Blue Thermal VR. That last one is directed by the genius behind One Cut of the Dead, Shinichiro Ueda. There’s also the horror VR project Go Home by Takashi Shimizu and Yoshihiro Nishimura that won’t be for the faint of heart.
If you don’t have a VR headset, then worry not: Alicia explains that ‘Obviously, the films are best experienced with a VR headset and full immersion, but if this is not possible, viewers can use a smartphone or PC to wander around and view the films.... A good substitute if not so immersive, it’s nice to see some other method being offered to experience these films.’ Indeed.
Joining prolific Japanese filmmaker Sion Sono as one of the festival’s judges will also be virtual YouTuber Uka Todoki, who will take on the role of navigator.
That’s quite a combination.
5
Wacky merchandising.
There sure is a lot of wacky Evangelion merchandise, so much so that many of our articles start off with phrases like ‘There sure is a lot of wacky Evangelion merchandise.’ This might go deeper than you first think, however.
Why does slapping imagery from Hideaki Anno’s iconic 1995 series work on just about anything? That probably has something to do with its iconic visual language: everything from the color palettes to the font choices ooze originality and form part of the identity of the show.
As Cimi puts it: ‘With 25 years of experience, Evangelion merchandise makers succeed by utilizing the entire iconic visual language of the show. Audiences respond in kind because, instead of just being provided ‘Rei on a pencil’, we see so much of what makes the anime memorable visually translated into the real-life objects we can touch, use, and wear.’
That makes even stupid stuff like Evangelion-branded legal currency and gaming chairs look pretty awesome, actually.
You just have to learn to love them.
6
Detective Worldwide.
The latest Detective Conan film, The Scarlet Bullet, will be the first in the franchise’s long history to get a simultaneous worldwide release when it launches on 24 April.
Previous Conan films have released in other territories before, but nearly always after a significant delay. This time, however, the time afforded to TMS Entertainment since the film was pushed back from last year has allowed them to pull this together ahead of time, releasing in five languages and twenty-two countries on the same day worldwide.
‘Detective Conan movies typically get strong cinema showings in Asian theaters and in select other countries... Yet these were released a few months after the Japanese premiere. With an extra year under their belts to work on this new Detective Conan film, a dub has been produced in English, Korean, German, and Chinese.’ (Alicia Haddick)
That’s good news for international fans of mystery.
7
The dark side of the moon.
Square Enix finally unveiled a bunch of Final Fantasy XIV information last weekend, including the MMORPG’s latest expansion. It’s set on the moon, by the way.
Usually, such announcements are made during the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest event, but the continued spread of COVID-19 makes holding such a large event impossible right now. Still, lead director Naoki Yoshida didn’t hold back on delivering the exciting news, such as the fact that players would be able to take up two new jobs, delve into an entirely new storyline, and explore several locations. Yes, that includes the moon.
‘Up until now, all expansion stories were not finished until further later in their patch, but in 6.0 the story will complete before patch 6.1, which will start a brand new adventure that is not part of the Hydaelyn and Zodiark adventure… He [Yoshi-P] stated that the story will be similar to Shadowbringers in the fact that it is very complex and will have a bunch of surprises.’ (Corey Prasek)
To be fair, if you already have a FFXIV player in your life, then you probably know about this already.
They don’t tend to stay quiet about it!
8
Round and round the rumor mill goes…
Considering the enormous success of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, it’s almost surprising that season 2 hasn’t been announced yet. Some fresh rumors give some reason as to why.
According to tabloid website Shueisha Josei Prime, broadcaster Fuji TV are pushing for content changes to the original manga as Zenitsu and Inosuke don’t appear in one of the upcoming arcs. They’re also worried that some of its more mature content might brush up against content guidelines. These are rumors, though, so take them with a pretty big grain of salt.
The big problem with this is that Fuji TV aren’t on the production committee, meaning that Shueisha, Aniplex, or ufotable could easily find someone else to broadcast Demon Slayer season 2 if they wanted to. That being said, the unfortunate situation surrounding The Promised Neverland season 2 right now makes Jacob think that changes to the manga for the popular anime’s sequel might not be that unlikely.
9
Saga’s greatest ambassador.
Popular voice actor Mamoru Miyano is using his talents to help the countryside prefecture of Saga once again with Saga Meshi Anime, a new short series heading straight to Twitter to promote the area’s local cuisine.
Miyano previously starred as Koutarou Tatsumi in Zombieland Saga, a full-length anime produced by Studio MAPPA that drove a lot of tourism to the area thanks to its utilization of real-life locations in the prefecture. Now, the voice actor is back at it again with these shorts, which are said to be especially produced for the vertical format.
We don’t know what these shorts will actually entail, other than exploring such local delicacies as ‘Oysters from the Ariake sea, ramen stewed in pork-bone broth with fresh seaweed and succulent egg, and locally produced beef.’ Cimi’s zombie joke, though, is too funny not to put in: ‘We hope he’s not too full on the human flesh, which is a hack Zombieland Saga joke FYI.’
10
Lost in… Roboco?
No one is a bigger Jujutsu Kaisen fan than Roboco from Me & Roboco, which is why she was over the moon to receive an official parody of the series’ first ending.
Produced in cooperation with the production committee over at Studio MAPPA, this parody is notable for how hard whoever animated it went. Seriously, there are so many little touches in here with regards to both knowledge of Me & Roboco and Gege Akutami’s series that it had to be put together by a super fan, or maybe even Roboco herself.
Commenting on Twitter, Roboco said ‘I screamed about my love for Jujutsu Kaisen so much that I made a collaboration happen! I wonder if I dance it well… I’m so thankful to the Jujutsu Kaisen production committee for making this happen!’ Her love for the series and the character of Satoru Gojo in particular should be pretty obvious to anyone who has read the series, given how much she talks about it.
Valentine’s Day
As we promised, here are more Valentine’s Day articles to get you into the spirit for Sunday.
What Your 90s Anime Valentine Says About You
The Best Anime Confessions to Boost Your Confidence for Valentine’s Day
Video Corner
‘Last week, Square Enix announced their latest expansion, Endwalker at the Final Fantasy XIV Announcement Showcase. Hosted by director producer Naoki Yoshida and translator writer vocalist Michale Koji Fox, they ran through all of the things we can expect to see later this year. That’s all exciting, but one of the big things I was looking forward to is the newest CG trailer, created by Square Enix’s in-house animation studio.’
See you next week!
The OTAQUEST team.
P.S. If you have any suggestions, ideas, tips, tricks, or you just want to talk otaku with our awesome community, join us on Discord!
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for more pop culture news from Japan.
We also have a Twitch channel where we build Gunpla, play videogames, and talk about Japanese culture!
If you got this email forwarded, then congrats; you have some amazing friends who really care for your well-being.
Subscribe now and get the most interesting newsletter of the Japanese culture community in your own inbox.