#It’s not entirely wrong to say Nagai was involved and he owns it now but getter *is* ishikawas baby

[no1ryomafan]

Man not to get depressing about Ken Ishikawa because the man’s legacy has been honored and will likely continued to be but sometimes I think about how it’s sad how Getter is the only works of his that really gets acknowledgment when you compare him to his mentor, Go Nagai, who has at least three main series that come to mind when his name is mentioned. Ishikawa wrote so much in between the second and third arc of getter when toei stopped making an anime for it, his art style and narrative themes changing so much that in a way it shaped the later arcs of where Getter would go, but none of it gets super acknowledged despite the fact the getter OVAs referenced them.

Ryomas iconic appearance from Arma? Stole that fit from Shinichi, main character of Majuu Sensen. The entire time travel arc in new where they get sent to the past and the gods who show up later? All taken out of another one of his works, Kyomu Senki. Majuu Sensen got the luckier side of being translated but Kyomu Senki I hear still hasn’t gotten it, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg for the stuff he’s written that’s been forgotten about.

We were really lucky to get arc anime but will ishikawas other works ever see the light of day getting more adaptations in this day and age when they’re hardly acknowledged outside of his actual diehard fans? Probably not. Which is a god damn shame.

[recentanimenews]

INTERVIEW: Roland Kelts On Fantasy Worlds And The Impact of Streaming

  Roland Kelts, half-Japanese author of JAPANAMERICA: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S., has made a name for himself covering the unique nuances of American and Japanese cultural-exchange. Kelts recently presented a talk titled "Anime and Race" with Arthell Isom for this year's Virtual Crunchyroll Expo. We had the opportunity to ask Kelts a few questions about the impact of streaming, adapting international webcomics, the appeal of isekai, and of course, Twitter.

  English-language and Japanese-language editions of JAPANAMERICA

  With Crunchyroll hitting three million paid subscribers as of July, it’s evident that anime streaming is thriving, especially with young adults. Simulcasts now allow essentially anyone access to the latest hours after airing in Japan. How have you seen this constant finger on anime’s pulse change how fans engage with Japanese pop culture, versus the heavily curated experience of exclusively watching whatever made it to American television networks?

  Everything’s faster. Fans I meet from Boston to Kansas to Los Angeles now ask me about shows that were just released months or even weeks ago on my TV in Tokyo. And simulcasts have also made the US fans hungrier, more demanding, sometimes even whiny. (“Why don’t we have this yet? When’s this coming out? Where’s that title?”)

  At the same time, it creates a zone of delusion, a kind of third universe between the US and Japan where fans think they know everything that’s happening in Japan and what’s right and wrong about the anime industry and how it works just because streaming media delivers the entertainment they want when they want it. 

  I still call that third universe JAPANAMERICA, neither here (Japan) nor there (US) but some kind of hybrid space, and in some ways streaming has only expanded its borders. 

  Image via Netflix

  Anime produced and released for streaming services have seen major cultural impact lately. In 2018, Netflix released Devilman Crybaby to critical acclaim, and more recently Crunchyroll has begun streaming its own originals shows like Tower of God in 2020. In previous interviews, you’ve described younger animators butting heads against the old guards in Japan’s traditional anime industry, compared to other industries like games or design. Nowadays, you have younger studios such as Studio Trigger and Science Saru signing streaming deals to distribute their shows to a wider demographic. Do you see this pivot to web-original anime as a way for younger animators, producers, and even veterans to exercise new ideas they may otherwise not be able to explore?

  Definitely. Masaaki Yuasa told me that if it weren’t for streaming services, Devilman Crybaby would be an old-school OAD collecting dust in the adult video corner of Tsutaya that may have aired once in wee-hour programming on domestic Japanese TV. 

  Two years ago, Go Nagai, the manga artist who created the original Devilman in 1972, told me backstage at Anime Expo in Los Angeles that streaming was the only reason he’d been invited to Los Angeles. “Hey, I’m an old man,” he said, laughing.

  There were always innovative upstart studios like Trigger. The difference is that web-original anime and streaming platforms get Trigger’s works screened in major American cinemas by national distributors like GKIDS, and around the world online, and gets Trigger artists and people like Yuasa and Nagai the VIP treatment at overseas anime cons.

  Emilia and Subaru from Re:Zero

  One of the biggest trends in anime recently is the boom of a genre called “isekai,” i.e “another world” stories where average protagonists get transported into fantastical worlds. In the last ten years, isekai has already explored virtual reality MMO worlds like Sword Art Online to self-aware “Groundhog Day” stories like Re: Zero. Although portal fantasies have always been present in traditional Japanese folklore and a staple of global speculative fiction, why do you think this particular narrative may have gained so much traction with young adults recently?

  One of the trends I write about in JAPANAMERICA is how the constant presence of the internet in our lives can diminish our satisfaction with the real worlds we inhabit. 

  You’re right, of course: portal fantasies have long been a part of Japanese literature, folklore, fantasy, and spirituality. 

  But the world-within-the-world of the internet has arguably overtaken our realities. It’s not only ever-present, it’s superior: brighter, freer (we can click on anything and almost immediately see and hear what we want), and faster. It’s also portable and ubiquitous. 

  Many of us greet the morning not as sunlight through our blinds or the sound of birdsong, but as the OLED or LCD light from our smartphone screen. Our sense of “home” is the emails we recognize, the apps we check, our news, our weather, our sports updates. It ain’t called an “I” phone for nothing. Online, everything’s for me.

  So it makes a kind of sense to me that young adults might be kind of bored with stories that don’t feature immediate and easy access to virtual realities and other worlds and role-playing lives. Stories without isekai-type narratives might feel outdated, boring, even irrelevant to the way we all live now.

    Original creator comics, such as Webtoon series like God of High School, have recently been adapted into series exclusively streamed on Crunchyroll. Series like God of High School feature diverse characters from all across the world in a tournament set in Seoul, a setting we rarely see in television anime. Although many Japanese web novels and amateur projects have since been adapted into professionally produced shows, such treatment is less common for non-Japanese properties. In terms of broadening the horizons for intellectual property, did you ever anticipate the world of Japanese animation and international webcomics to cross paths? 

  I wrote about it in JAPANAMERICA and thought it would happen sooner, actually. On book tours at anime cons, fan artists and amateur comics artists ask me to sign JAPANAMERICA and hand me a copy of their own work in return. I’d read their work on the plane to the next city and sometimes I’d think, this might make a great anime series or feature. 

  But I couldn’t generate much enthusiasm when I got back to Japan. Part of the problem was obvious: language and culture barriers. 

  But also, the Japanese industry is sitting on piles of great intellectual property from decades of manga about every imaginable type of topic and character, plus all the great doujin fan-art that powers the record crowds at the biannual Comiket and fills the floors at Mandarake. Why would they reach overseas to work with someone who doesn’t speak the language and/or understand the codes of cultural and business behavior to take a risk on a property from a foreign land?

  Obviously, the increased involvement of non-Japanese producers like Crunchyroll and others are changing that. Also, newer generations of artists from outside Japan have an even greater sense of how Japanese-made anime works, how it gets made, and how to behave in Japanese business transactions. Plus, I do think online translators, as bad as they may be, have helped ease the transition between languages on both sides, Japanese and non-Japanese.

  Tokyo Big Sight during Comiket 96 last year (photo by Daryl Harding)

  Fourteen years ago, there was no such thing as Twitter. It goes without saying it’s huge now, especially among anime fans. With major events like Comiket canceled this year, alongside dozens of conventions in the states, more fans than ever are converging online. Nowadays, it’s not only incredibly easy to find anime, but also discover a whole community buzzing with activity regardless of what language you speak. How much of a role do you think social media has played in pushing anime from niche to ubiquitous, and what do you hope to come out of this zealous digital convergence for fans everywhere?

  I write about the importance of fan forums and chatrooms in JAPANAMERICA. Anime fans were one of the key drivers of Usenet groups and BBS sites back in the day. In a chapter I called DIY (“do it yourself”), I explain how anime fandom is a bottom-up phenomenon, fired by shared communal passion and the sharing of that passion. 

  But I didn’t know how massive social media platforms would become, or how crucial they would be for Japanese pop culture fandom.

  What sucks is that the discourse on social media is so coarse. When you go back and read exchanges between diehard anime fans on Usenet and old chatrooms and forums from the mid-2000s, they read like middlebrow literature compared to what you see on Twitter, Reddit, and Discord. So many social media posts are made just to get hits, not to communicate or share ideas, and the most provocative, cruel, or just plain daft stuff gets liked and retweeted a thousand times. 

  An ex-friend of mine once told me he was going to market his book entirely on Twitter. I said, well then you’ll get a bunch of responses from people who don’t read a lot of books. But he said he just wanted to sell a lot of copies. He didn’t care about the quality of the people who read them or followed him.

  But I guess that’s the state of most things in America right now, politics in particular. Mass appeal is all that matters.

    Roland Kelts' blog can be found here. Follow him on Twitter at @rolandkelts!

More information on JAPANAMERICA can be found here. A Japanese-language edition is also available from Kodansha.

      Blake P. is a weekly columnist for Crunchyroll Features. He is still thinking about Hellshake Yano. His twitter is @_dispossessed. His bylines include Fanbyte, VRV, Unwinnable, and more.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[recentanimenews]

What if Voice Actors’ Characters FOUGHT EACH OTHER? You Decide the Outcome!

  Voice actors have one of the coolest jobs in the world: they get to play lots of cool, powerful characters. Some stars have become legendary simply because of the sheer number of awesome heroes and villains they've lent their voices to — from robot pilots and overclocked alchemists to magical girls and megalomaniacal moms.

  That got us thinking: how would a voice actor's many and varied roles stack up against each other?

    We've looked back at the roles of some of our favorite anime stars and come up with a series of battles. This isn't about popularity or coolness (because honestly, they're all cool): we just really want to see them fight. More specifically, we just really enjoy imagining these three voice actors voicing both sides of an epic anime battle. Until the day that actually happens, this is the next best thing.

  To that end, we're not choosing a winner for each round: you are. Remember, it's not about popularity or preference — we really want to know who you think would reign supreme in these fights. And once you're done, we want your takes on these match-ups (and other voice actors whose characters should go toe-to-toe), so be sure to join us in the comments!

  Note: This article may contain spoilers for the series Fullmetal Alchemist, Kill la Kill, Boogiepop and Others, and Puella Magi Madoka Magica. If you don't want to be spoiled for any of these series, read on at your own risk.

  First Battle: Romi Park

Edward Elric vs. Ragyo Kiryuin

   Voice actress Romi Park has an epic CV, full of fascinating characters. She debuted as Kanan Gimms in 1998's Brain Powerd, and her roles have just gotten more and more epic since. You may have heard her as Temari in Naruto, Toshiro in Bleach, and Madam Red in Black Butler, just to name a few. But today, we're focusing on two of her most explosive, reality-bending roles to date.

    In both 2003's Fullmetal Alchemist and 2009's Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Park played the titular character, Edward Elric: a pint-sized alchemist with a history of taboo activities and a lot of self-contained power. Together with his brother Alphonse, he's looking for a way to restore their bodies (his arm and leg, and Alphonse's in its entirety).

  Ed has some obvious advantages, the big one being that he doesn't need to draw a transmutation circle to get things done. He's also no slouch at the actual science of alchemy (especially considering some of the things he's attempted in the past). Being able to control matter is pretty cool ... but what if he was up against someone who could do the same?

    Ragyo Kiryuin rocked Kill la Kill with her appearance, pulling the spotlight from daughter Satsuki. This rainbow-haired Bad Mom has been studying the nature of certain overclocked elements — and instead of the Law of Equivalent Exchange, the only rule she's beholden to is the Rule of Cool. She also doesn't exactly have the same family loyalties Ed does, so she'll be more than willing to cut her losses in a pinch.

  But does that really put her ahead? Both wield colossal power above and beyond what most humans have. Both have devoted their entire lives to their respective fields and all that entails. Both want something very badly and have already gone to incredible lengths in search of it.

  But the final answer is up to you:

    Second Battle: Akira Kamiya

Ryoma Nagare vs. Ryo Saeba

  It's only fair to include a round for the voice actor who singlehandedly inspired this feature! Akira Kamiya was a big hitter in the '70s super robot anime boom, and is still going strong today. Fans of Super Robot Wars will already have heard multiple Kamiyas go into battle side-by-side, as he has voiced Roy Focker in Macross, Akira Hibiki in Raideen, and Sanshiro Tsuwabuki in Gaiking, to name a few. He was also Kenshiro in Fist of the North Star ... but almost any fight involving Kenshiro would be a walkover.

  For this battle, we matched two of Kamiya's well-known antiheroes who are known for working in teams: Ryoma Nagare from the original 1974 Getter Robo, and Ryo Saeba from the long-running City Hunter. But these battles are one-on-one — no teammates allowed.

    Unlike a lot of Go Nagai's leads, Ryoma isn't known for being a bare-knuckle brawler. However, he has a less-explored advantage: he is a master swordsman, thanks to training from his father. We don't see Ryoma cross blades very often, but it's a skill that serves him well when he's out of the robot. Which is fortunate — because without Getter Robo, he's going to need all the help he can get, especially against the legendary City Hunter. Well, half of it, anyway.

    When you write "XYZ" on the board at Shinjuku Station, you're getting not one, but two people on your side. That's not to say Ryo Saeba isn't the muscle of the City Hunter operation. He's an amazing sharpshooter and brawler versed in a variety of weapons, thanks to his training as a guerilla fighter in his youth. But Kaori keeps his eyes on the prize (and off anything in a skirt), occasionally with the help of her giant hyperspace mallet.

  So, how will the pair fare without their teams? Is Ryoma bringing a knife to a gunfight? Or will Ryo get distracted by another pretty face at the wrong moment? You decide:

    Third Battle: Aoi Yuuki

Boogiepop vs. Madoka Kaname

   Aoi Yuuki made her voice acting debut in 2008, but she came to broad attention three years later as the lead in Puella Magi Madoka Magica. The sweet-voiced heroine led to more and more roles across a seriously impressive range. Fans have heard her swivel from Maya Fey in Ace Attorney to Tanya von Degurechaff in The Saga of Tanya the Evil, from Tiamat in Fate/Grand Order to Tsuyu in My Hero Academia.

And speaking of swiveling, one of our fighters in her round is the mysterious Boogiepop: a hidden personality that bubbles to the surface within otherwise normal schoolgirl Touka Miyashita. And speaking of otherwise normal schoolgirls ... well, we could hardly do this without Madoka, could we?

    Who and what Boogiepop of Boogiepop and Others is is explained, re-explained, debated, hidden, and otherwise confused throughout their various media appearances. Boogiepop is an urban legend, a benevolent spirit with a dark edge, a protector of the world, a protector of the misunderstood. Most importantly for our purposes today, Boogiepop has some shinigami-level powers, a whole bunch of razor wire, and no fear.

    And then there's Madoka Kaname, the girl who never asked for any of this. In her final form, she's galactically powerful, able to defeat witches and save magical girls all throughout space and time. That's definitely more than enough to stand up to Boogiepop ... or is it?

  Both are saviors of Earth in their own way, especially influenced by the magic or paranormal. It's hard to imagine a situation in which they'd be on opposing sides, but — for the sake of argument — just for now, they are. Which superpowered schoolgirl could bring down the other?

    In all three cases, whoever wins, the battle would sound super cool.

  How do you think these fights would go? Are there any other voice actors whose characters should totally fight themselves? Would you like to vote on another round of battles? Let's talk about it in the comments!

  By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com