The video game
SEGAGAGA, a Japan-only release for the Dreamcast, is an incredibly odd bit of gaming history. A business sim (of sorts) it tasks the player to lead Sega to victory over its rival the evil DOGMA Corporation (a thinly veiled analog for Sony). Loaded with in-jokes obvious and obscure, it is a love letter to Sega fans, and it was one of the last Dreamcast games made before Sega went third party. After a four-year hiatus,
the Segagaga fan translation project has resumed work on localizing this most unusual game.
Intro video.
Edge Magazine interviews the director.
[more inside]
posted by JHarris
on Mar 23, 2011 -
24 comments
Satoshi Kon, the director of such celebrated anime movies as
Perfect Blue,
Millennium Actress, and
Paprika, has died (reportedly of cancer) at the age of 47.
Kon's movies dealt with the slipperiness of the boundaries between performance and reality, truth and illusion. His death leaves the status of his next movie,
The Dream Machine (Yume miru kikai), in doubt. As outsourcing and a long recession have taken their toll on Japan's increasingly insular anime industry, David Cabrera notes,
I cannot think of a single person alive in the Japanese animation industry who would have been a greater loss than Mr. Kon.
posted by Jeanne
on Aug 24, 2010 -
99 comments
"Nisan didn’t mean to fall in love with Nemutan. Their first encounter -- at a comic-book convention that Nisan’s gaming friends dragged him to in Tokyo -- was serendipitous. Nisan was wandering aimlessly around the crowded exhibition hall when he suddenly found himself staring into Nemutan’s bright blue eyes... 'I’ve experienced so many amazing things because of her,' Nisan told me, rubbing Nemutan’s leg warmly. 'She has really changed my life.'
Nemutan doesn’t really have a leg. She’s a stuffed pillowcase — a 2-D depiction of a character, Nemu, from an X-rated version of a PC video game called Da Capo." The New York Times' Lisa Katayama on "2-D lovers" in Japan, the latest outgrowth of
otaku subculture.
posted by digaman
on Jul 23, 2009 -
166 comments
Anime Music Videos. Yet another
remixing web subculture, they're usually a source of amateurishly produced angst. From the
competitive perfectionists, though, come
well lipsynched,
action packed,
meta-mashuped, and occasionally just
filthy stuff for cartoon nerds. Besides the usual metal, ballads, and pop rock, there's some
Daft Punk,
club,
and downtempo accompaniment. Or you can just go to
hell. Wear headphones and no-one will know.
posted by anthill
on May 28, 2007 -
22 comments
Densha Otoko (Train Man) is the true story of a japanese
otaku who finds love. After saving a beautiful woman on a train from the unwanted attentions of a drunken groper, an anonymous poster writes about the incident on the the Japanese mega messageboard
2ch. With the encouragement of his fellow internet geeks, he pursues her romantically and posts every detail to 2ch. Japanese media has been obsessed with the story all year, and the
original postings were adapted into a best selling
book, a major
motion picture, an enormously popular
TV show, and even a
stage play. Of course, it may not be
real.
posted by JZig
on Dec 11, 2005 -
31 comments
"Michael Lohman is sick" read the email to students in MAT 308: Theory of Games, explaining why the Princeton mathematics graduate student had not yet graded their homework. Not sick as in "flu"-sick, but sick as in "squirting his bodily fluids into unsuspecting women's drinks and cutting off locks of their hair for unspeakable acts involving mittens"-sick. And not just any women, but exclusively Asian women. An extreme case, to be sure, but the Western
"otaku" lusting
after (and often having much
success with) Asian women is a quite familiar
and often disturbing trope for those of us who have spent much time among the
disaffected English majors, anime fans, martial artists,
dirty old men, and various other Asiaphiles. Yet decidedly
non-nerdy folks have expressed a definite preference for
Asian women as well.
Where does this preference (which certainly
goes both
ways) come from? As such
interracial couplings increase, should we even try to distinguish relationships based on
"Suzie Wong" stereotypes or even outright
economic exploitation, and relationships that are somehow more "acceptable?" Or will non-Asian guys with Asian girls constantly be forced to prove it's not just a case of
"Yellow Fever?"
posted by banishedimmortal
on Apr 13, 2005 -
148 comments
