Fumbling the license.

If there's one thing that really shits me these days, it's religious fanatacism. But I'm not going to talk about that. In any case, there are MANY things that really shit me these days and the one I want to talk about right now is incompetent licensing.

You may (or may not) have heard that anime and manga companies are cracking down on fansubs and scanlations of series. OneManga, one of the biggest online manga archives, has just announced that they're closing up shop (metaphorically speaking of course, they never charged money) before they get sued and a lot of scanlation groups are throwing in the towel, regardless of whether or not they've already received a Cease and Desist from the companies.

I can't really blame them. They can sense the way the wind is blowing and are smart enough to realize that they honestly don't have a legal leg to stand on. What they're doing IS, after all, taking a product that is intended to be sold to an audience and which isn't theirs and distributing it for free to as many people as feel like helping themselves to it. And much as you might argue that they do a lot to raise awareness among readers or viewers about new manga and anime, if you attempt to claim that they don't financially impact on the creators and distributors then you're a goddamn idiot. I for one have read every single scanlated chapter of Naruto but scoff at the idea of actually PAYING for it- not because I'm a cheap-ass pirate (I buy a LOT of stuff I've already read scanned/watched fansubbed, most recently the DVD release of AIR) but because Naruto really isn't worth paying money for these days (don't get me started, but it jumped the shark ages ago). I probably owe Viz upwards of $800 for that series alone. I don't want to get into an argument on the relative vices and virtues of fansubbing/scanning, partly because it's hard to debate without anyone to debate with, but the point I'm trying to make is that legally, giving in is the smart thing to do, which is why so many of them are doing it. You can go underground if you want, but you sure as hell can't fight.

But that's not my point this time. What shits me off is that companies like Tokyopop and Viz and the like are closing down the scanlators and fansubbers while being generally incapable of replacing them with a viable alternative. Sure some of them are experimenting with online manga or anime streaming, but it's just not as efficient or expansive. Worst of all is when the companies acquire a license, choke off any illegal distribution, and then utterly fuck it up. For me personally, this is more of an issue with novels than manga or anime, although it covers all areas.

My prime example: Shakugan no Shana, which was licensed by Viz a few years back. I was reading it off the Japanese novel translation site Baka-Tsuki when Viz licensed it, so Baka-Tsuki, being the responsible and legal-minded fans that they are, immediately pulled down their translations. Viz released the first 2 volumes, then dropped the series. Completely. They released the first volume in April 2007, the second in October 2007 and haven't released another volume since. That seems pretty fucking conclusively dropped to me. Maybe the first two volumes sold particularly badly so they decided they couldn't justify continuing to release it. I can understand that, Viz is a business, not a charity. The thing is though, they still hold the license even if they don't intend to do shit-all with it. As a result, Baka-Tsuki still have no intention of reuploading their translations and as far as I'm aware no-one else it translating the novels either, even though the series is now up to twenty-three volumes and still going. With the third season of the anime taking forever to be released (and it'll take years longer before I can see it if I don't get it fansubbed- the second season hasn't even started to be released in America yet!) I've kind of been left hanging regarding where the hell the story is going.

Then there's Full Metal Panic, one of my favourite stories. I read the fan-translated volumes from Owaru Day By Day (the 2-part story 'The Second Raid' was based on) to Tsuzuku On My Own (the volume where, if you'll pardon the vernacular, shit got real). And then Tokyopop licensed it. Ouch. They release it at a rate of approximately 1 volume per year, if that- I think they've stopped altogether by now, although given the trouble they're in that's not surprising. I have the first 3 volumes they released and now I'm grinding my teeth with frustration about not knowing what happens next (they really SHOULD make another anime, but I think the property has gone dead).

Then there's all the lesser-known stuff that simply gets ignored by the companies but not by the scanlators (this is definitely a manga thing as pretty much every anime gets licensed these days). Manga like Sahara Mizu's My Girl (a story about a young single father raising the daughter he never knew he had), Kei Toume's Hatsukanezumi no Jikan/Hour of the Mice (a story about a group of teens at a mysterious school for the gifted struggling to come to terms with the fact that they're part of a giant social experiment) and Mysterious Girlfriend X (a story about a boy who gets possibly the weirdest girlfriend ever) just don't get picked up. Hell, even a series as well-known as friggin' Elfen Lied remains solely the preserve of the scanlators! Given how high-profile the anime was a few years back (and how much more in-depth the manga is than the anime) this is almost beyond belief.

Finally, there's the next worst thing- really lousy release schedules. Yen Press, who are doing a decent if not outstanding job in the market, licensed and released the first volume of a series called Bunny Drop recently. I picked it up because it looked like an interesting entry in a particular subgenre I like (inexperienced single daddy-figure raising a tooth-rottingly cute young girl, see also Aishiteruze Baby and the aforementioned My Girl) but when I had a look at their website for the release date of the next volume I was outright revolted. One every six months?! That's only 2 volumes a year and this series is already 7 volumes long and still running. That's 3 1/2 years just to get up to date with where it is now. This is NOT compelling me to buy the official release, this is just enough of a tease to tell me, loud and clear, "GO FIND THE SCANLATIONS!" Think about it.

Now I don't work in the manga or anime industries so there's probably a LOT I don't know or understand. And I do understand that a lot of these series' just aren't practical to bring across. These are COMPANIES after all and they need to consider what will turn them a profit. But I have to ask them: if you take away our scans and our fansubs, what are you going to do for us to compensate up for what you are depriving us of? Talented scanlation and fansub groups can get a translated version of a chapter of manga or an episode of anime online less than a day after they come out in Japan. If I want to wait until that chapter or episode is available in an official format I can be looking at anything up to 3 or 4 years. Online streaming is a step in the right direction, but it's not enough, not when you consider how much we're losing.

So anyway, a final word: please, fellas- if you take a license, either release the damn thing in its entirity, or let it go. Hanging onto the license indefinitely for no reason is just a dick move.

Stuff I Love and Shit I Hate - The Crow

I had this idea that I'd do a sort of weekly series of posts going into depth about my favourite and least favourite things. I decided to alternate weekly between my loves and hates, starting with my one of my favourite movies, so if you come back next week you'll see me rant about something I loathe. Since I was going to be talking about stuff I love and shit I hate, I figured that was as good a title as any for this column.

So this week, one of my all-time favourite live-action movies: Brandon Lee's The Crow.

Based on the comic book by James O'barr, The Crow is the story of Eric Draven, a rock musician who was murdered together with his beloved fiance Shelly Webster by a gang of thugs one night shortly before their wedding. Long story short, a year later Eric rises from the grave as an indestructible force of vengeance, guided by a supernatural crow, to seek out and kill his killers. It's your basic revenge story, only with the undead. But it's the style, the details, the direction and the performances that make this movie one of the definitive revenge stories of our time, together with classics like Sweeny Todd and The Count of Monte Cristo.

Brandon Lee's Eric is a nightmare clown in black and white facepaint, like a member of Kiss gone psycho, but he manages to be one of the coolest characters ever to stalk the shadows. He revels in his invincibility, hurling himself off rooftops, inviting his opponents to take their best shot at him before he kills them and doing it with impeccable style and no mercy. In this he is matched by Top Dollar, played to perfection by Michael Wincott in the role of a classy, stylish, elegant, cultured complete monster. Wincott is absolutely magnificent as he deadpans his way through the movie with black humour, such as when he stabs a man through the throat with a rapier and exasperatedly tells him "oh for fuck's sake, die will you?" while the man chokes and gurgles on his last breath. But it's still Lee who owns the movie, rightfully so as this was the one that took his life when he was killed in a tragic accident with a prop gun. I once heard Lee's Eric described as being like a heroic version of Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight and the tragic irony of that does not escape me. It's also an amazingly adept comparison as like the Joker, Eric is just such a magnetic character that whenever he's on screen you're constantly waiting for him to do his next awesome thing. Like Ledger, Lee's presence haunts every frame, only even more so- while Ledger's real person was subsumed by the power of the Joker's character, Lee is actually playing a dead man walking.

The Crow is so many things. It's an action movie but it's also a tragic love story. It has an awesome hero and an equally awesome villain. It's a revenge story, but Eric also finds time to transform lives (the scene where he reminds Darla that her daughter is out on the streets while bleeding the morphine out of her veins is a personal favourite). It's Hollywood action, but it's practically art- just watch the early scene where Eric leaps across the rooftops as the crow leads him to his first victim. And the soundtrack is simply awesome, featuring such bands as The Stone Temple Pilots, Nine Inch Nails and The Cure. This is one of the tiny handful of live-action movies I care enough about to buy on DVD and one I'll take any excuse to rewatch. It's a masterpiece of its genre and if you haven't seen it, you have a hole in your life.

(I was going to put the YouTube trailer here, but I can't work out how to embed it properly. I'll work on it for next time. For now, here's the link.)

Allow me to ruin your life.

So anyway, before I discuss anything else I figure I should introduce my readers to my source of reference. It'll save a lot of time on explanations in my future posts.

Since I first created this blog, I discovered a site called Television Tropes and Idioms. As the frontpage says, it's the net's biggest archive of writing conventions, stereotypes, tricks and devices. It's also a database of not only countless works of fiction that use these tropes, from TV series to movies to anime to video games to books to music, but also creators involved in these and non-fiction topics such as politics, sports, countries and famous historical figures and events. So it's a database to rival Wikipedia, at least in certain areas, but what makes it so addictive is that There Is No Such Thing As Notability. Basically, anything interesting enough to go on there is wanted, there is none of the stuffy formality or organization of Wikipedia and you're free to invent new tropes for the archive as long as you can cite enough examples of it to prove it actually exists. I myself was the original inventor of the Stupid Sacrifice page (inspired by a particularly stupid example from Gantz). Anyway, the reason I'm showing this to you now is because I'm going to make a lot of references to tropes when discussing stuff in the future, so it's better to make sure you know what the hell I'm talking about in advance: whenever I Post Something With All Capitals Like This it's usually a trope name. Like Fan Dumb, Crowning Moment Of Awesome, Tonight Someone Dies, or Impaled With Extreme Prejudice. There, that should be enough to get you started.

So why the title? Because TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life. Seriously, they even have a page dedicated to that very concept (getting meta there)! Reading the endless examples and getting Wikitreed (my name for what they call a Wiki Walk) is worse than on Wikipedia itself. Sorry in advance for consuming the rest of your life, but... to be honest I regret nothing. I consider TV Tropes to be essential knowledge for anyone who wants to be interesting and in any event it's my favourite website bar none. So enjoy it as much as you can.

Just... try to get to bed before 4 in the morning.

So just in brief: what am I doing at the moment? Would you believe playing Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil? Yeah, I know it's old. Does the fact that I'm playing it even though I have more recent games to play suggest anything to you? How about that it's good? Yeah. HELL yeah. Double-barelled shotgun, I love you. I'll go into it in more detail another day.

So what the hell, right?

So yeah, 3 1/2 years ago I had a bit of trouble with this blog; I couldn't log in any more because of an account issue. Or something, I don't really remember any more. Anyways, although it irritated me, I didn't want to make a big deal over it, so I just left it. A couple of years later I come back after a few changes and glory be, I can log into my own blog again (getting a proper Google Account helped I think). So whatever, right? I might as well pick this up again. No-one ever read it, but it gives me a space to vent. Besides, a lot that's new to talk about has come up in the last 3 1/2 years.

I'll just keep this initial post fairly short and put up something more detailed tomorrow mayhaps. I've given up following the news recently (every time I look at it I just see something else that depresses) but the one bit I couldn't miss was the election coming up soon. Julia Gillard vs Tony "the mad monk" Abbott. My vote is preselected- I'm voting for Labour of course. Not that I believe my vote matters anyway, I live in a safe Labour seat, but I'd sooner cut my own throat than vote for a douchebag like Abbott. While I'm a bit ticked at Gillard replacing Kevin Rudd without the by-your-leave of the Australian public, Rasputin there would just ruin the entire country- he's as conservative as bloody Howard and a religious nutjob to boot.

Ugh, politics. I'll post about something less depressing later.