[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTJ24v9LMEs[/youtube]

Earlier this year there was an American anime convention called Otakon that took place in Baltimore, Maryland. There a small recorded panel of two discussed views on sexism in anime fandom and convention gatherings. The primary points covered by the panel and Anime Diet is that new anime is dominated by male targeted anime, harassment of cosplay dressed convention attendees is prevalent, and about how genders are visually displayed in anime. Both panel speakers are openly into feminism and they themselves label their views as feminist.

Amount of Animation for Males
The panel dives into the difference in number of anime that targets male audiences than female with the shounen genre as example. It is difficult not to assume that they suggests somehow separate and privately owned studios and animation companies are obligated to make a more equal balance of what genders should be focused on. While acknowledging fans will watch and read whatever of their interests are in regardless of the boy girl genres, they state that the higher volume of male anime is apart of male dominate culture. The point in running a for-profit business is to create more profit than previously and that would clearly mean catering to a group if it yields more profit and viewership. That leaves others to capitalize on different viewers if they find an unfilled opening or growth in other viewer audiences.

Harassment of Cosplayers
People visit conventions to hear about the industry, shop, and to meet other people of similar interests. A social gathering for speakers, sellers, and the fanatics that may often dress as their favorite characters from anime. Those cosplay fans however are the main bit that is thought of when conventions are discussed. People spend a lot effort and time in their appearance and in better examples their mannerisms. Both of which are visual in nature and done to be seen or to win a cosplay tournament of some kind. To be seen is the key component in this where it is unnatural to think that you would not be looked at with a chance of having judgement of cosplay dedication. While asking politely to take a photo is always polite, it is not realistic to think that your colorful, unrealistic, abstract, cheesy, revealing, or spiked up outfit won’t attract attention and those that will want photos of what made their day special. In the panel they place percentages onscreen to show that this is an issue for both genders, so one would conclude that there is not a sexism issue.

Convention Staff
Just as soon as harmful behavior at conventions is mentioned, it starts with how there are so many female attendees and about an attendee survey on how more so than not convention staff are seen as unhelpful in harassment situations. Enforcement of behavior on one gender and not the other is not fair and is sexist itself. All too often males have nowhere to go or any legal means in handling such kinds of harassment. Take it like a man and quit crying.

Other Notes
I cannot comment on the specific anime or the characters mentioned in their panel outside of Melfina from Outlaw Star, but the anime did have three main females to show various personalities. Sound quality and background noise plagues the video and distracts attention, so perhaps better acoustics can be put into consideration in conventions when recording.

Speaking out on bad behavior is great. Be loud, be angry. Support and demand more of what you enjoy.

<HuhWhat> I haven’t watched it, but anything featuring tanks and schoolgirls is encroaching too far into my personal fetish niche; and I don’t like that.
<xX_bLuE> lulz
<xX_bLuE> shouldnt you normally
<xX_bLuE> like shit
<xX_bLuE> that fits your personal fetish
<HuhWhat> No, because I LIKE BEING ESOTERIC.
<HuhWhat> The whole allure behind girls riding tanks is because THERE’S NO ANIME TO RUIN IT.

Seriously, what the fuck is up with the anime Girls und Panzer? I am a huge fan of Sailor-fuku to Juusensha, but nobody outside of Japan reads Champion RED Ichigo so I always felt safe and comfortable in the driver’s seat of my bandwagon, and in ignoring all those hitchhikers. However, my position is threatened by the introduction of this anime. There is only one solution: the people behind this anime must die…

Except for the ironic coincidence that the mangaka behind Sailor-fuku to Juusensha, Takeshi Nogami, is listed in the staff page. Fuck.

By the way, I don’t care if the subject makes sense. I don’t speak German.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX1ed-Re6e8[/youtube]

This trailer proves to be the only reason I waste 23 minutes every week watching K.

An anime series has never dripped with this much homosexuality since Sengoku Basara. I am sexually comfortable, so I can deal with blatant faggotry, but K is… how do I put it… special. That’s because every single character in this god-forsaken show is “DARK FLAME MASTER“.

The resemblance is uncanny.

In middle school there is a particular crowd of people who believe they have special powers or possess cursed magical items that make them different from the retarded normal people, aka “muggles” and “mundys”. They doodle on their arms, wear an eyepatch or a trenchcoat and talk in a manner befitting a member of the upper echelon of Hell. Good lord, I do remember someone like that…

Well, everyone in this show is far too old to be suffering from “middleschool-itis” yet they seem to have no problem spouting the lamest lines I have ever heard in broad daylight. I feel sorry for these voice actors.

Every scene depicts them doing something that just screams, “chuunibyou“.

Time and space shall bend to my will! Chuunibyou!

Go forth and devour, mein sword, Freyr! Chuunibyou!

To healthy people, this is just a marble; for the sick it’s the gateway into the soul! Chuunibyou!

God, I’m sick and tired of this crap. And the blatant faggotry is not helping.

Could you hold me even tighter?

I was both impressed and disappointed by the first episode of, MAGI – The labyrinth of magic.

Features a little shota that’s just ASKING for it.

I understand when a series makes the leap from one medium to another, it is acceptable for there to be differences between the two. It would only make sense to allow the production studio to grab hold of the reins and present its own liberal interpretation. After all, the demographic isn’t always the same, and a certain amount of room for changes needs to be available; if not only for different tastes but to iron out any inconsistencies from the manga. One also has to take into account time constraints, since twenty-three minutes is not enough time to properly hook viewers without plenty of action. And because I understand all this, and I respect the time and effort that is placed in the animating process; I have to excuse A-1 Pictures for completely skipping the first chapter of the manga. Oops, that’s right: Spoiler.

MAGI is one of only a few shounen titles I consider worth reading these days, and as painful as it is to see them animating this I bit my tongue and watched the first episode ready to criticize at every turn. Overall, it was not bad. They decided to trek the harder route by erasing the existence of two minor characters, and then had to rewrite the script so events from the first and second chapter intertwined. It was commendable that it worked out; but in the chopping process they had to introduce unnecessary elements like a slave carriage and a character that wasn’t supposed to be in the episode yet: Morgiana.

Ali Baba tricks a naive young boy into his home with promise of candy.

Wait, let’s track back and explain the plot. MAGI stars a little boy by the name of Aladdin who travels out into the world in search of friends. On his journey he meets up with Ali Baba, a cart driver with a mysterious past, whose destiny is set in motion by his chance encounter with the magi, Aladdin. It’s a very simple plot designed to be vague for growth and development. In this world there are “dungeons” that when cleared bear high rewards in the form of treasures and powerful magical creatures known as “Djinns.” In the arcs to follow, the MAGI manga deals with a multitude of topics ranging from politics and war to even darker themes such as slavery, poverty, corruption and death. At times it makes me wonder if it’s actually intended for children. Rather than summarize the whole episode I chose to describe the subtle differences between the manga and the anime via its introduction of the characters.

Self-explanatory… I think.

Ali Baba, one of the protagonists of the series, is introduced as a weak and feeble character whose hesitation is his biggest drawback. In the manga his overall persona is roughly the same, but when push came to shove he went out of his way to make the right decision with no regard to his personal well-being. This facet of his personality is what attracted Aladdin to him and serves as the groundwork for their friendship. Yet in this first episode where he is supposed to be the hero of the story, he is more of a supporting prop. During his one moment of spotlight he is out-shined by Aladdin and Morgiana. When a little girl falls into the stomach of a Desert Hyacinth, a monster found in the desert, Ali Baba is shown hesitating to rescue her and a televised minute nearly goes by featuring his inhibition to abandon his own security. Morgiana ends up being the first to attempt helping the girl, while Aladdin does most of the dirty work later on. I think the animated version of this important scene downplays Ali Baba as a key character.

Our token under-appreciated female lead. They keep her age ambiguous.

Morgiana tends to stick out like a sore thumb in the anime, mostly due to her red hair. In manga, things are either black or white so she sort of faded into the background most of the time. That is nearly impossible now. I have to agree she looks much better in the anime, but that’s the only improvement from the manga. Let’s face the fact, Morgiana is an awesome badass in the manga. This first episode over-emphasizes on her femininity to a point where she becomes another weak female heroine that is in constant need of saving. She’s supposed to be one of the strongest characters in this series, and yet she falls into a Hyacinth and is unable to do anything? That doesn’t even make sense. I realize it is a ploy to fool viewers, and in the coming episode she will display an uncharacteristic explosive bout of power, but it’s retarded to attempt deceiving viewers when you have her kicking in the heads of giant tigers in the opening theme.

Aladdin is pretty much how I expected him to be, except they emphasize his perversity to a degree where I can’t help but feel betrayed. I have nothing more to comment on this character.

A-1 Pictures is not known for producing long series, so I imagine this will be cut short to a 13 or 26-episode series. The manga is still ongoing, so unless they are willing to change the entire content of the story I do not know how they plan to do this. I just hope they don’t decide to start writing their own thing and end the series prematurely with some half-assed scenario where all the bad guys get taken out in the last two episodes.

Here we have Zuko, the young prince of a corrupt imperial nation who must constantly battle with his own inner darkness all the while plotting plans to usurp his country’s leader. Whoops, I meant Hakuryuu. Same shit.

On another note, despite all that this series has going for it, I just can’t help but draw similarities between this and The Last Airbender sometimes. I wonder why. Magi just has more elements to bend.

What’s with this sudden surge of anime about online games? Seriously, stop it.

As a matter of fact, they should stop making anime about NEETs and Chuunibyou’s as well.

I watched the first episode of Kyo-Ani’s latest garbage, chuunibyou demo koi ga shitai. Now I have to go to the clinic and have myself checked.

In other news, agua burger turned out to be pretty fun, despite how slow it is. I’ve also picked up Tekken Tag Tournament 2. As I have no experience with Tekken in general, this will be my introduction to the game series. Perhaps that was a mistake…

I’m hungry.