Originally a companion blog to AnimePodcast.net, now commentary, opinions, and more or less general angry thoughts about anime and Japanese pop-culture fandom in general.
Still no cure for Foot in Mouth Disease. Before anyone goes full WHARRGARBLE about the term "SJW" being used here, please keep in mind that it is not the same as when drunk-uncle or some Fox News chud uses it. This is pure internet circa 2006 traditional meaning of basically someone who develops an overly-righteous sense of impetus for immediate action, to engage in activities that are actually harmful to the very causes they explicitize their support for. In short, picture the Ralph Wiggum from The Simpson's "I'M HELPING" meme combined with Social Justice Sally from way back when.
I set the standard brah! Not you!
With the release of Ghosts of Tsushima, The White Man’s Burden of the 21st Century awakens within the campus collective of SJWs shooting themselves in the foot and saying “look at me, I make virtue signal!” with all the self-awareness of the hive-minded student body and staff of Oberlin College. The same crowd that boldly stood up to the oh so egregious cultural oppression of a non-Asian actress playing a character who uses a cybernetic body based on a European design, in a future where the global population is super-portable from location to location and rapidly erasing genetic racial differences, in an English language movie from a Hollywood studio that was obviously doomed to fail as a commercial film – is now trying to scream bloody murder because a successful commercial venture in video games has not conformed to their standard rubric of what is appropriate when global business spans more than one specific socio-cultural group.
Notice no one got upset when an "Asian" character was played by this guy. Yeah... total mystery.
The argument of requiring a pre-existing qualification to engage in story telling as commercial entertainment being necessarily tied to the actual race or nationality is mindbogglingly stupid, yet through the efforts of these people it has almost become ipso facto default in American entertainment media. To make matters worse, this absolutism is zealously pushed by a mentality that would have Chairman Mao saying “wow that’s a little too intense” and all by groups of idiot morons who can not differentiate between “race” and “nationality.” Furthermore, these mentalities actually devalue cultural practices and histories by indelibly tethering them to things like “nationality” turning cultural practices into compartmentalized commodities that are confined to convenient little boxes they can access as memes and use as tools when they have some meaningless discussion about “identity” and “diversity” in a racially segregated safe-space. This completely ignores the very real fact that nations can have many cultures within them, and that cultures can span the borders of nations. When these people look at things like race, culture, and nationality, they don’t see wide areas of sociology and anthropology too large to be fully understood, but rather they see poker chips or Pokemon cards, to be used to strengthen their own hand in their posturing and pontificating about what they know is best for specific groups of people.
Such an outrage mechanism was engaged when Ghosts of Tsushima was released and some American noticed it wasn’t made part and parcel 100% by genetically pure Japanese. This was a problem that the enlightened ones would not sit still for. Those of the proper higher education were here to protect those unfortunate victims of “cultural appropriation” or whatever, even if the people of the culture being appropriated are so simple and basic that they can’t tell how appropriated their culture is getting, and how it must be stopped before they totally run out of it (just like what happens when you over-mine molybdenum, you’re gonna run out of it forever!). Yes, this was all needed despite the game going over well so well in Japan it scored 40 out of 40, 4 times in Famisu. Just in case you forgot, they know more about video games and the video game business than anyone reading this. Yet there they were, the ever-outraged SJW Brigade who support their America-centric assertions with an absolute authority that comes from being born and raised in Reseda with a Vietnamese mom and Pilipino dad, half way through a weaboo inspired trek through Japanese 201 at whatever-college …because “Asian!” You know, just like how some guy outside Boston who has Irish grandparents is a default authority on Serbian history and culture because “European.”
Hunting with Good Will.
So having a game, set in Kamakura period Japan with a sprinkle of Edo anachronism here and there, made by a company that is not owned by Japanese investors, not located in Japan, and not staffed 100% by Japanese citizens of Asian ethnicity; is apparently a serious affront to ...either all Japanese nationals or all Asian people from Palau to Kashmir (you can’t really tell with these kinds of half-assed arguments). Jeez, I guess Japanese owners of Ferrari or Audi with right-hand drive should feeling very much of shame not buying Japanese cars! And these people from outside the existing contemporary culture that is Japan (no, watching a lot of anime and learning hiragana does not get you anywhere near that), go on a crusade of moral righteousness, to save the people of Japan and video game consumers around the world from Namibia to Nunavut, from what they know is oppression in the form of Red Dead Redemption set in Tsushima.
What happened next is the ultimate manifestation of White Man’s Burden of the 21st Century. Japanese markets embraced the game en masse, and regular average fans, as well as luminaries in the video game industry reacted with a perplexed dismissal at the notion of the game coming from a source that was not racially pure enough being something that would detract from its quality or entertainment value. At that moment, basically all of Japan was labeled “Uncle Tom” and cast as simpletons who simply don’t know what is best for them. Japanese lack of their own “cultural identity awareness” was something that needed to be addressed and it was now up to the American (notice this didn’t happen in France), ivory tower enlightenment-class to bring “civilization” to wield the flaming sword of Social Justice in their defense. Japanese-ness had to be preserved, and the Asian American with their white allies(tm) were just the ones to install such preservation, keeping it un-corrupted like a perfectly unchanging museum piece to be looked at and admired for its own unique-ness-of uniquecallitisity in a uniquely unique way. Like the perfect example of a pure-bred dog, no outside influences shall be allowed to taint such an elegant specimen worthy of cultural admiration.
And then as if that wasn’t stupid enough, the land mine of foot-in-mouth disease was trod upon with all the subtlety of a drunk elephant. And yes, I am of course referring to the performance of Cornelius Boots at E3. Genius level jingoist racist Dani Jo and company a took one look at this and deemed it to be entirely unacceptable that a non-Asian person (not necessarily a non-Japanese, just non-Asian… but something tells me if it were some dark skinned dude from Bangladesh, she wouldn’t be happy either) was playing a traditional Japanese musical instrument to promote a video game. Did she know Cornelius Boots was considered a master of the shakuhachi? No. Did she do anything to find out about him at all? No. Did she look up the word "shakuhachi"? ...No. What she saw in that single observation was enough for her to pass judgement with the unassailable authority of “I are Asian.” By her standards, the shakukachi by its very nature can only be played by someone who is racially and nationally pure enough to meet certain pre-determined standards. She also called the promotional costume he was wearing “traditional Japanese” in her self-righteous ignorance, when what he was wearing was as traditionally Japanese as the outfits at Medieval Times are “traditional” Middle European (ie. they’re not). It was marketing for a product promotion, the same way people put on George Washington costumes for President’s Day mattress sales or the Bacardi group sends out people in cinematic themed pirate costumes with eye patches and shoulder parrots to yell "aarrrrggg." It evokes a modern notion of “concept A” in most people, and that formula is being used to sell stuff. Dani Jo and those who followed suit were quickly shut down for being an embarrassment, because when you apply the same level of diligence in your arguments as flat-earthers do, jingoist racial zeteticism shall get you nowhere (other than relentlessly ridiculed).
Do you think Dani Jo would have said the same thing if the shakuhachi was being played by a very non-Asian black Congolese woman? ...yeah I didn't think so either.
The culturally appropriated rage onslaught did not stop there, and further delved into the trivial idiocy that only has value to their owned warped perceptions. Arguing about the “correct” conjugation of 続くthat’s “tsuzuku” meaning “to continue” actually started happening. Yep, people who live in suburban America with no JLPT scores were ever so sure that the version as written in the game was “wrong” and therefore un-Japanese enough to cause outrage. The correct response to this notion is simply “shut the fuck up” and nothing more.
It was not saddening to see game media like Kotaku, Polygon, Technocodex, and even The Washington Post twist in the wind trying to appease the SJW commandments they have sworn themselves loyal to and say something bad about this game without making their motives obvious. After Ghostbusters 2016, media critics became worthless. What was saddening was seeing potentially meaningful SJWs decide to use their time on something like this, while Black Lives Matter is still happening, at a desperate point where it needs to make significant headway. Nice use of your time, dickheads.
Still a thing. A much much more important thing.
In the end the keepers of objective reality have had a victory against an opponent who we didn’t even notice was trying to fight us. Their arsenal of misconceptions, double standards, and factual inaccuracy, simply had them trying to land punches with fists made of smoke. But in doing so, they exposed their willingness to embrace the White Man’s Burden of bringing education and enlightenment to those who are all but too underdeveloped and savage to even know they need it. The noble SJW Burden, has them bringing American academic social concepts to nations, cultures, and ethnic groups in the name of “helping” them, for they no not what they need protection from. Somehow the perpetrators of such insidious evil believe themselves to be righteous. May their efforts fall as flat as this every time.
March 2017 News and Event Roundup ...With stuff, and things.
In thelast post of every month, we look at stories we didn't cover, either they weren't big enough for a whole post, or they just slipped past us. Additionally we will leave you a recipe for a Japanese dish that you may have seen featured in an anime or two that you like.
High School of the Dead, dead.
Daisuke Satō, the artist and creator of High School of the Dead, has himself become dead at the age of 52, which for a Japanese person seems way too early. It is very sad that we're likely to never get any more of this awesome series any time soon. Maybe in his will he left instructions for George Romero to pick up the torch and carry on. Hell, I'd take Ric Romero if it meant we got even one more episode of this awesome series. Probably not going to happen though. At least he kept the jiggle alive.
Photo from Animate Ikebukuro, Tokyo, 2010. ...I think.
He will be missed.
JonTron becomes Destiny's child (and the internet's bitch).
So there's this guy on youtube who I am told regularly produces funny and entertaining content, and his channel is called JonTron. And boy did this guy step in it recently. I was actually planning on checking out that channel at some point because I've heard good things, but now I don't know if I can enjoy it. That's because regardless of content, I know I will have to engage in mental gymnastics in order to keep what he said over on the Destiny channel separate from the contents of his entertainment videos. That's like, actual work, and a big detraction when it comes to the enjoyment factor. Regardless of what anyone thinks of that issue, one of the end results of the 2 hour incoherent mess between those two was the following:
Yep, bitch got fired. Consequences will never be the same! To which my reaction is:
What a dumbass. C'mon you should have known better.
The back and forth itself between JonTron and Destiny doesn't last for the entire video, but it is still like enduring a mental root canal when the only anesthetic available was Fugu Venom mixed with Sriracha and then injected it straight into your eyeballs. Both parties involved seemed to know disturbingly little about what they were talking about (25% at best), and JonTron spewed forth mindbogglingly ignorant fallacies based on conjecture and jingoistic assumptions, and tacit racism. On the flip side, Destiny seems to trip over his own face in his spastic reactionary attempts to refute the mental misfires that JonTron delivers... which should NOT be hard to do. It was like watching an animal shelter burn down but being too far away to do anything about it. JonTron's arguments are, (for the most part) easily blown out of the water, but it seemed as if Destiny had the only gun and not the ammunition to do it, as there were a lot of things he himself seemed to be unaware of or just not acknowledge for one reason or another.
Don't say I didn't warn you (seriously, it took me 3 days to get through all of it, even that self-congratulatory stuff at the end), but if you really want to check out all 2 hours 1 minute and 5 seconds of this disaster, you can follow the link to the youtube video here. However, if you would like a more concise and mercifully brief summary of the conversation, please take a look at the below video which I believe sums it up perfectly:
Yeah, it was an hour and a half of that.
So the fallout; Jon Jafari goes on to blither a whole bunch of jingoist nonsense and sprinkles a bit of tacit racism dust over it for good measure (see, he's totally notbeing racist, but just offering up arguments which seem to need mechanics that most people would consider racially biased in order to be valid, and that can make people interpret it as racist sometimes. Oh, wait that's what being racist literally is). And the guy did it as JonTron all within the public sphere. Is Playtonic being reasonable by Removing him from Yooka-LayLee and any (or presumable all) of their upcoming releases? Hell yeah they are, what do you expect a company to do when faced with that kind of thing? Seriously, what can you expect? Remember how fast Nike dropped Tiger Woods? What, did you think they were gonna double down and start a new campaign with him, with commercials going "check out how much our guy gets laid... yeah! So, just do it. Nike!" ...yeah what were they thinking missing out on such a golden opportunity like that </sarchasm>. Companies are always super-touchy about this kind of thing (and that's not a new phenomenon, it's been that way for a long time).
But Platonic gave such bullshit reasons; "oh we're so self-rightous, and we are sensitive to the great cultural struggle of blah blah blah!" (shut the fuck up). Yes, it's the UK and they do have thought police over there, so maybe they're afraid to not say something like that. Over there, if you don't constantly "support the cause" you can expect a visit from the modern equivalent of The Committee for Public Safety to escort you to the guillotine for being counter-revolutionary, so maybe they're hedging their bets, but c'mon, Playtonic can't pretend this isn't totally about the money. Because it's about the money.
What's really going on is, JonTron is a brand. That is the asset that is being payed for, and when potential customers now have to do mental gymnastics to try and separate the performance of JonTron from the now very public pariah persona of JonTron, and it takes a lot of work. Having to do that work, quickly causes the evaporation of any potential enjoyment the customer might otherwise get out of this entertainment product. It also signifies a support of what that person did/said, which is not something they should do. JonTron took a shit in his own Golden Grahams. I don't even care what the points were because it was an absolute shit-job making them... he really did. In terms of businesses in general, no company is going to let something like this hurt their own bottom line. JonTron is probably still going to get paid for his initial work, as he should (even the Animaniacs had pay or play), and this is just about Playtonic engaging in damage control rather than actively punishing someone. If he did a better job separating the JonTron brand from what happened, and had more of a (well let's face it) more of a not-biggoted adult discussion, he most likely wouldn't be in this situation.
The one thing I think shouldn't happen is people asking for refunds, or not buying the game even though they had planned to just because they booted JonTron, or didn't boot him fast enough or whatever, it doesn't matter. It just hurts the employees and the other workers who had fuck-all to do with this or the subsequent Playtonic decision later. They're just working stiffs, don't punish them because of this fucking mess.
Long story short, JonTron came is a dick and now I am going to move "checking out his channel" much much much very-a-lot further down (off) my to-do list. Geez after enduring "debate" or "interview" or whatever you can call it, I need a Gin-tonic, forget Play-tonic. Gin
donations can be sent to our Patreon, which we do not have, so go give it to our other blog Pinky Mixology which also doesn't have a Pateron. ...Just mail us gin... that works. Tequila is fine also... bourbon too. Ya know what, we're not picky.
Move over Ken Olson, SONY is the new fool in town.
Sony Motion Picture Group Chairman Tom Rothman just opened up SONY's 2017 Cinema Con presentation using the phrase: "Netflix My Ass" with absolutely no self-awareness what so ever. It may just be pandering to an audience who view the proliferation of streaming as the greatest threat to their industry, but when that industry collapses, this quote is sure to displace the infamous Ken Olson quote that always tops articles and trivia lists with titles like; "The top 10 times corporations got things super wrong" or "Top 5 worst technology predictions by CEOs."
Seriously, this guy's entire life is now defined by this one thing and that's never going to change.
This kind of statement not only shows contempt for Netflix, but for the entire Netflix subscriber base, which (news-flash) have 100% overlap with customer base of Sony Pictures. That statement not only insults those people, but also the entity that they derive a significant value from. Contempt for your customer used to be the norm, but now that's really only something Airlines and Comcast can do. The "Netflix My Ass" statement is going to become the indelible marker on the timeline of progression of entertainment media consumption and delivery, where every analyst, student, commentator, and industry publication will look at and say "right there" when trying to find the exact moment when the old-guard of the industry passed the event horizon and was no long in a position to adapt to a changing market (even if they wanted to, which they don't).
In 5 years, Sony's Tom Rothman will have to be handing out resumes, but he might as well just hand out head-shots with "I'm the guy who said 'Netflix My Ass' that one time" written on them, and just hope someone out there hasn't heard of that yet. Sony will sluggishly continue but will learn nothing, because we are talking about the same company that thought putting Barbra Streisand's hairdresser in charge was a genius move. Actually, speaking of companies which are painfully out of touch...
GameStopped.
In what should be a shock to
absolutely no one, GameStop has announced the planned closure of over
200 of its retail locations. GameStop is a textbook example of when
"just keep doing what you're doing" can take a company down when they
forget to keep track of what's going on in the outside world. In this
case it was a combination of failing to keep up with media technology and a complete ignorance of the massive cultural
progression in terms of the general popularity of pop-culture and its
growth into multi-billion dollar industries (yeah, vidjya games included).
GameStop
is one of those pop-culture entertainment companies founded at a time
when it was seen as good business to have barely restrained contempt for
your customers. The locker-room Alpha Male was still the embodiment of
the perfect executive, and nothing said alpha-male more than shitting
on those "nerds" and "geeks" that were into stupid stuff like video
games and comics. (Hell even the owners of Anime Crash did that until the very end... made it impossible to get any effective marketing done). This also caused many of these retail spaces to give off a a
vibe of a particularly hostile environment to potential female customers, so strong
that even Vivian James is like... "man, fuck this place" (again I'm talking about back in 1999-2002, not like 6 months ago).
This vile contempt also manifested itself into some of the most
counter-productive sales tactics and business decisions. Combined with
the disastrous environments created by studios with poorly executed
pre-order strategies, and neglecting of beta testing. Remember when I said that in today's business landscape only Airlines and Comcast can show open contempt for their customers? Well, even though you can't really count the people who use it as "customers" the DMV springs to mind as well. See, it's a place where everyone inside would rather not be there if they had the option. When you're a business that operates like that to your customers, then you really have to hope that any alternative option to you, doesn't come along any time soon. Basically, if your company acts like a douche, don't be surprised when no one wants to be anywhere near it if they have a choice in the matter.
This now puts
Game Stop on the same path as Borders Books or Blockbuster Video, being a
place so unpleasant and inept at filling the expectations of customers, that the hemmoraging of said customers away from them is going to prove fatal. That migration when there was an alternative to getting
the same thing from a different source, has in fact occurred and can not be undone. People have flocked to alternative providers in droves and
have no intention of coming back.
This is actually in the GameStop strategy handbook under "dealing with customers."
These kind of death-spirals are usually where incompetent executives and CEOs do the most damage, implementing quasi-effective penny pinching cost-cutting measures that serve only to alienate customers and lose more money for the company (yea, that really annoying thing you did saved the company $100... but the fact that the customer you pissed off was planning to come back and spend $1,000 and has since changed their mind because of that, kind of puts it in the loss column don't ya think?). They erode any goodwill or consumer trust they had, treat employees like crap, and then go on to do unethical things banking on it being worth it because of the chances they won't get caught.
In an age where there are so many examples of "fucking up" in terms of retail chains, it's amazing how their management never notices when it is happening to them. If they were smart, they would become an online marketplace to facilitate people re-selling their unwanted games and take a piece of the transaction in exchange for facilitating an indemnified and trustworthy purchasing environment which is something Craig's List can't and won't do. Close your brick and mortar, your own customers (through their use of the service) will also function as your inventory managers, and you just cut overhead by 80%. You're not gonna beat Amazon on the new stuff, but this is a great place to be. Well that is if the Supreme Court doesn't ruin it, because...
Justice is Blind (from eating lead paint).
Yes, the Supreme Court of The United States of America, the bag of robe wearing dildos who brought us the judiciary shit-stains of Morse v Fredric, Citizens United v FEC, who hate your "num chuck sticks," and know less about technology than a sea slug, are now about to potentially further fuck over America even more, by hearing a case about product repurposing and re-selling as it applies to patent law. This is a horrifying prospect, because if the case is decided in favor of Lexmark, it has the potential to make unlawful, the second hand selling of anything patented, once it's been altered in any way.
Even if this only extends to hardware, a decision like this would be the rallying cry for Intellectual Property holders to make the same grab at limiting what people can do with the physical packaged media they buy. They have tried this before, but if they smell blood in the water they will gladly make another try. SONY, Electronic Arts, Warner, Marvel, Disney, all those companies would love to make it a violation of their copyright protections for you to take a movie, game, book, music album, or anything physical that has one of their properties on it, that you legally purchased from a retailer, and directly sell it to someone else. Get ready for some new awful challenges coming in the future.
One thing we can get optimistic about is that as Americans, we know our government is run and influenced by large corporations and pretty much nothing else. And one of America's largest would really hate it if this case went Lexmark's way. Mega-retailers (all of them), the credit card and finance companies that enable their sales, logistics companies, and a few other major players are worried about an impossible onus of tracking down the source of every original patent, and being commercially liable for not getting it right. When all that corporate power wants something to happen, it's going to happen. And as insane as it sounds, we can actually add "hopefully" to the end of that sentence.
For the first time ever, this might be a good thing.
Keep your ghosts in shells and wash your whites separately.
Non-Japanese actors playing Japanese characters in Hollywood adaptations? What is this, 1961 Breakfast at Tiffany's? We need to end casting decisions that don't take race and nationality into account at the highest level. Not only has a non-Japanese actor been chosen to play a Japanese character, the actor isn't even Asian.
End racism in Ghost in the Shell! Remove Lasarus Ratuere from Ghost in the Shell! A non-Japanese actor being shoehorned into a role of the clearly Japanese character of Ishikawa is just intolerable!
Like, so OMG racist!
Oh... you thought I was talking about Scarlett Johansson. ...well I guess the same would apply. Both are clear cases of casting decisions which obviously don't take the race and nationality of the original character into account. I mean, if you feel that way about Scarlett Johansson but not about Lasarus Ratuere then... what kind of criteria are you using again? Yeah, see what I did there... Taking that position is not one you can really come out of all smelling like roses. So if you bitch about Scarlett Johansson but not about Lasarus Ratuere being cast in Ghost in the Shell, then it's you, you're the one being racist. Also can we please remember this is a Hollywood production that will just become another temporary shitstain on the giant list of movies in the ceaseless dumpster fire that is Mainstream American Cinema.
Well, lets see what the "victims" of this horrible cultural appropriation think about the situation...
I know you've seen it already, but it's still here... still a thing.
Of course the only opinion that matters is that of Masamune Shirow, but I think Shirow still in his stasis chamber (it's either that or he's still too busy counting all the money from the ginormous payment coming out of this). Somehow I doubt shit given either way. With the trailer making the movie look like "Jason Bourne with Robots: pew-pew-pew! wooosh! ka-boom! Matrix stiff!" or as some have named it "Bland-Runner" ...I don't think I really want to be first, middle, or last in line to see the thing anyway.
Fearless Extended.
Fearless Girl, the new and very talked-about art instillation in Lower Manhattan, remains temporary, but its presence in its current placement will be extended to February of 2018.
NYC Public Advocate Letitia James is leading efforts within city government to make the statue permanent. You can still support her in her efforts by contacting the Office of the Mayor, your NYC Council Representative if you live within the City, and ...I dunno, maybe The Parks Department or something? In dealing with government, writing hand-written letters is always much more effective than emails, twitter, or some online petition that no one is going to read. So seriously, it's not that hard to just buy a stamp and send something on its way. they take this thing seriously.
An Ai for Art,
Artist Ai Weiwei will be doing art in NYC. So... that's a thing.
You got a Weiwei in your eye...
Looks cool but y'all know the pigeons are just gonna crap all over them things in the first week anyway...
You Smell That?
I know last time I said I'd put up Teriyaki, but something happened, so too bad, it's not happening. In it's place, we shall be showing you another Japanese staple of cuisine you may have seen in one anime or another, Omu-Rice. Yes omu-rice, rice in an omelette, with... like ketchup on it. The filling can often vary but is usually some default of beef consume cooked rice and some stuff. Although, filling it with straight up mac & cheese w/ bacon is also an option.
Beef flavored filling;
So start by making some rice.
While that's cooking, misen your plus by taking 3 eggs out of any refrigeration and just setting them someplace where they will come to room temp.
Chop yourself up half an onion into itty bitty bits.
Mash 2 cloves of garlic into mush (or you can boil them before-hand and they'll spread like toothpaste).
You can use ground beef, or just use some shredded slices of roast beef from the deli counter, if you're looking to same time and not deal with raw meat and so on.
So start up a pan with butter/sesame oil/olive oil/lard/whatever, and add onions, and the meat. Let that cook for a bit while adding soy sauce beef broth or bullion, and any spices you like or whatever. As it cooks, add your cooked rice in with it and stir it around, getting everything mixed together evenly. You may want to continue to add water or just have some around to prevent this from burning. You can add things to make it spicy, sweet, savory, or add shreadded cheese to make it all Philly Cheesesteak or cheese-burger, or even taco spices for taco style. Anyway once that's all cooked up (doesn't really matter what you cook it in) put it aside and get the eggs ready.
Ends up looking like this mess but that's ok because this isn't the part people see.
Eggs and such;
Regarding the eggs, it's best if they are already at room temp when you start, so take them out of the fridge before hand. Eggs in the USA and Canada are scrubbed, so they don't have their protected membrane covering the outer shell, which means refrigeration them is a good idea. Anyway, whisk 3 together in a bowl, and then add 1oz of water (seriously, do this, your eggs will cook better and not stick. No, don't add milk, milk burns, add water it doesn't burn).
In an omelette pan, or something with curved edges, add more oil than you think you're going to need, get it hot, then pour in the egg. move it around a bit, and as it cooks just kill and bubbles that get too big. The heat from the oil is mostly likely enough to cook this stuff on contact enough so that sticking won't be an issue. once it's half solid, add the filling and you can probably kill the heat.
Don't put the filling in the center. Put it 1/3rd from the edge.
Then flip the top while plating and get it under there so that everything's bundled up. Add ketchup, mayo, bbq sauce, whipped cream, whatever you want really.
Time-saving cheat; Just get some whatever-fried-rice from your local Chinese take-out place and use that. Maybe jazz it up with a little pepper sauce or something. Perfect for creatively dealing with bland and boring leftovers.
Browning is to taste. The less oil you start with and if you skip adding that water, the more browning will happen. I like browning but some people don't.
Here is one broken in half, which is how you'll often find it in presentation windows at omurice restaurants. Except I just mashed this one because I was about to eat it.
Then you eat it. And remember, the best part of omurice is that there is really almost no limit on what you can stuff in there. Mac & Cheese, pizza sauce and pepperoni, pulled pork, poutine, loaded nachos ...something healthy I am assuming. All that good stuff.
And that's it for this post. Go get ready for Hanami or something.
That means stock up on saké. Might we recommend a domestic variety? It's good. Not Harushika good, but still good.
The once unthinkable has happened. For generations the people told themselves that such madness would never come into positions of power which would allow such sweeping changes to the fundamental dynamics of the world in which we live to be implemented by the personification of abject madness that seems naught but a relic of a bygone age. I speak of course of the contamination of the Legend of Zelda universe by DLC via a Season Pass or as Nintendo calls it, an Expansion Pass ...which does not make it better. My god, this is the worst thing to happen... oh, wait.
Hold on, don't cry and hide under your blankets kids, just remember this is NOT the worst thing to happen to Legend of Zelda.
Before you were born, something way worse happened.
Unlike 98% of all anime, the Japanese video game industry actually does have to care about international markets quite a bit. While throughout the world DLC and expansion packs have run the gamut from a lauded grand-slam of awesomeness, to crimes against humanity that need to be tried in The Hague, some long running institutional properties seemed to operate in a world separated from such things where "no, not that one, we don't do DLC with that one" was an explicitly understood unwritten rule. Such separation is no more.
How earth-shattering is this? Well with even Forbes covering it, and with still-fresh memories of some significant blunders shaking up the industry in general, such as No Man's Sky, Duke Nukem Forever, Doom, and a few others, this Zelda release is going to be the focus of a lot of a lot of attention. Video games are a big industry. The thing is, DLC was all the rage in 2005, but that was a long time ago. We have since learned that (like just about every technological advancement) it isn't some magic pixie-dust that you can just sprinkle on literally everything to create boundless improvement. It only is a positive if other conditions are right, and Zelda Breath of the Wild is missing one component that usually helps DLC fit into the "value added" category of purchases and not the "why the hell am I going to waste my money on this?" category. Multi-player mode. Unless it's some incarnation of Smash Brothers, Link and Zelda should never ever be in anything that's "multiplayer," which is something that anyone who has actually played the games before would instantly realize so succinctly that it would just be one of those second-nature thoughts like "don't try to breath underwater" or something like that. Deep down in your brain, you aren't seeing the DLC as an extra thing you buy, you are seeing it as part of a game you already bought that's now behind a pay-wall. It's going to be the source of some consumer hostility, passive-aggressive or otherwise. Somewhere in your head there's that little voice looking at Nintendo, saying "I thought we had a good thing going?" to which Nintendo turns around and, shrugs, and keeps giving an hand-job to its preferred stockholders.
That's not to say that DLC can't be successful without multi-player mode, but it is known to provide customers motivation to buy DLC, and so this game isn't going to have that, and will need to create a motivation by other means. Those other means are going to have to be premium game design, a story you simply can't look away from, and a few bells and whistles so addictive that they become in-game staples for all future releases. Or they could just throw in a Hot Coffee Mod and hope for the best now that Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton are out of the limelight.
I wouldn't hold my breath of the wild for that last one.
So is this really a regression rather than Zelda joining many other more modern game franchises? I think it is. It hearkens back to a way of thinking that paid DLC can be shoehorned into anything and everything. This was very prevelent between 10 and 12 years ago. I am sure there was once an idea of paid DLC for Tetris where you get more long ones if you buy the "expansion pack." We have since seen enough to know that there is a right way and a wrong way to do this, and there are some red flags here. Most notably that the "hard mode" is part of the expansion and not part of the regular release. What could possibly be the reason for that? If it were free DLC then ok, it means they missed a deadline or something, but making you pay for it would only be justifiable if "hard mode" meant that a completely new type of enemy would now be included in the game where it previously was not. The second red flag is that they're including in-game clothing... That's lazy. I know that sounds like a standard, but when a company throws a a whatever on a character it seems like they are using a very cheap solution to compensate for a significant shortcoming. It's like someone giving you a free iPhone in the hopes you don't notice that they crashed your car into a tree. With Nintendo being tight lipped and only releasing a vague "please trust us" video, there is not much to go on. Furthermore, there is always the looming all-encompassing peril of an incongruity of sensibilities between Japan and the rest of the world. What might have Japanese consumers ready to go into "shut up and take my money" mode, might have virtually no effect in other markets around the world. I think they're making the right choice to make the expansions more of the same thing as the game, you can never really get enough Hyrule, it will probably be a moderate success. But with Nintendo's world-famous ability to piss away success like a freshmen on spring break in Mexico pisses out used Corona, they've probably pinned all their hopes on this one thing, that just will not be big enough to carry it all. It might be helpful new revenue stream, but in the grand scheme things it's like bringing a garden hose to a house fire. Yes it will spray water on it, but without something fundamentally different, that house is burning down.
Would this face lie to you?
Of course not, he's not saying anything of substance at all.
Unlike the sad death and inexplicable release of the lifeless corpse of Duke Nukem Forever, the construction and intended release of Doom 4 was undertaken by a team which not only had a clear goal they wanted to achieve, but a very strong understanding of the benchmarks they were setting out to meet said goal. Additionally, there was obviously very effective communication during that process, and an important divestment of personal feelings and cognitive identity from the concept of Doom itself.
The professional detachment that allowed for this self-titled "right decision" is such a valuable asset for an entertainment media company. This implies, healthy amounts of flexibility within management, abilities of setting realistic goals, and also the capacity for failure-acknowledgement. Now, failure-acknowledgement is a very important quality for just about any company to have. It is not the same as sunk costs, but the two do go hand in hand in that they can and do cause poor decision making from people who's decisions are ones that impact projects and possibly the entire company in significant ways. Sometimes those decisions are to delay an announced (and pre-ordered by retailers) release to fix quality issues that a later patch, to surrounding yourself with no one brave enough to say "no George, Jar Jar is a terrible idea and shouldn't be part of this," and the results are often so obviously apparent to everyone except the person with their hands on the wheel.
There are a number of well known disasters ranging from animated movies to full corporate insolvency brought about by the lack of failure-acknowledgement. Notice the term is not failure-recognition. Recognition is what you do to a failure that you're not involved in. Failure-acknowledgement is what you have to do when it's your own, and sooner rather than later is always good. A CEO or other executive being able to say to themselves "well, swing and a miss" is so very important to the health of any company that has the intention of existing for more than 12 months (seriously the quick-buck investment bank mentality has really hurt knowledge assets in many countries and will probably continue to wreak havoc for years).
A look at what is happening to SEARS right now shows that a brand and entity can be around for over a century and still be destroyed by a dumb-ass who insists they're not driving the wrong-way down a one-way street, and powerful enough to make sure no one else questions his assertions even as that truck is barrelling straight towards them. Here's a nice way to visualize the difference of what it probably is like between Bethesda and SEARS in therms of simple internal communication and environment:
Not being open in interdepartmental communication and further open to the ideas of others when it comes to whether or not the crow's nest can see something coming that the bridge can't, does not necessarily mean any media company is going to do poorly just because of that one fact. Look at Disney, they have one way of doing things and probably a literal dungeon where they throw people who step out of line in there.
That works for some, so if you're a company that's found what works and can just use your money to buy more money, then you may not need failure-acknowledgement. Very few entities fall into that category however, with Bethesda being smart enough to realize they are light-years away from it. However they have generated some serious elements/assets during the development process. Will they make it into something great, or simply ham-fist it into another existing property where it might not be helpful? Only time will tell on that one. I actually trust them not to fuck it up too bad, even though;
I'm actually still angry at Bethesda for their lack of action as a licensor in the whole Jones Soda Target exclusive disaster where Target managers and employees ended up purchasing all the bottles of Nuka Cola (a beverage product based on the popular Fallout franchise from Bethesda) before they were ever made available to the public. This happened twice, and first time is understandable, but second time they could have been more involved. But if anything it shows that Bethesda is smart enough to wisely pick its battles, and the majority of the responsibility and subsequent fault, lies with Jones Soda and Target, So that's just more smart decision making. And wage-slaves are going to take every chance they get to make extra money on the side, and if selling collectables to people willing to pay for them is what it takes, then just plan on them to do that). Target isn't known as the nicest place to work, and Target customers aren't the nicest people to be around, so for some abused clock-puncher there's no incentive not to hoard the stuff.
I'M AT SODA!
It's never pleasing all of the people of the time, just remember that sometimes it about not pleasing all of your people all of the time either.
- When companies are out of touch: In PR, you're not supposed to get what you pay for.
All out of bubblegum.
The saga of Duke Nukem Forever is a tragedy. If it had simply never been made, and remained an unreachable dream composed of the collective musings of what might have been, it would have been a beautifultragedy. However the fact that the game was actually made, released, and has invaded the imaginary notions of what Duke Nukem Forever would be. Notions that had built up for over a decade, makes it an ugly spectacle. A crime against nature, a product that was taken too far by someone who was not stopped in time, and now flails around the market place grasping at any source of revenue with its deformed limbs.We all remember that sinking feeling we got when we first saw JarJar show up in Star Wars I-III, and the disappointment of Axel's Chinese Democracy. Like those over-awaited things, Duke Nukem Forever had an impossible task before it, a task that wasn't always impossible, but had become so via circumstances created by egomaniacal managers who chose their own subjective reality over real reality, and were too rich and insulated to be told otherwise by outside observers. A perfect situation to trap the game in development hell for a long enough time for our imaginations to conjure up something so fantastical (or maybe fan-testical) as to be unrealistic in terms of being realistically achievable. It could do nothing but fail as a game to live up to expectations, and yet chose to go ahead and fail anyway.
If you spent a serious portion of your life actually working on Duke Nukem Forever, this realization may cause some distress. The main nucleus of this distress, is that a negative (or at the very least lackluster) reaction of independent media, grassroots ratings, and consumer communities, creates an intense sense of loss. Loss (or even potential loss) is one of the bigger psychological factors in motivation (see; organizational behavior), and it tends to be amplified when the object of that loss is partially intangible, which leads to overestimation of what is actually the subject of such loss. But you accept that in the media business. You know that the mystical intersecting point of pleasing "all of the people all of the time" is like some quantum dimension which only exists on the pages of theoretical calculations and therefore it is unattainable. You know and accept this risk as part of what makes PR and the creative entertainment industry function.
Invasion of the finance majors:
Colleges are churning out brand new business majors even as Lehman Bros. and Bear Sterns vomit the old ones back into the job market. They have to go somewhere. When you realize that these people might be finance majors, the nonsensical behavior of PR firm The Redner Group all of a sudden becomes very clear. Thanks to "consultant addiction" all American businesses have come to see even the most skilled labor as disposable, corp. structure is constantly reformulated for short-term gains, and non-core activities are outsourced to an infinitely expanded professional service market where the "invisible hand of the market" keeps prices low, and employee turnover dangerously high. Although for all I know Redner Group is just 3 guys in a closet in Santa Monica.
Here we have a firm that does PR, and like most modern service firms, is probably dysfunctional from on over-concentration on maximizing short-term goals. The Redner Group sees their activity not as traditional PR, but as something closer to investment banking. They work hard and expend resources, and expect a positive return on that investment. They approach their task as if they were a customer, doing nothing more than buying exposure designed to increase unit sales and brand awareness (and brand equity can be monetized with the right kind of powerpoint presentation). The Redner Group spent money paying its employees and maintaining a distribution database and network for early review copies of Duke Nukem Forever. They don't see this activity as PR, subject to intangible market mechanics and the basics of journalism, but rather they see their efforts as a creation of a financial instrument, backed by a formula based on the resulting discount rate from their activities producing a specific IRR coming from expected unit sales as a function of exposure & reviews. To put it over-explicitly; In the mind of The Redner Group, they are a paying customer of video game media, and they expect specific results which further their goals.
irr can get complicated.
Sidestepping for the moment that this is the wrong way to approach PR; The Redner Group's reaction is normal for an entity with such a mind-set when confronted with such a situation. To add general context: If you went to an auto shop to have your muffler fixed, and they did a shitty job, you wouldn't go back there for an oil change - not as an act of retaliation (that's what lawyers are for), but simply because you want a certain thing and they didn't provide it when you paid them. This is how The Redner Group has approached their function as a 3rd party provider of PR for an entertainment product. This is a terrible thing to do, and it's exactly how you lose clients. Generating press doesn't work like that because game reviewers and other media are not service providers. The implied obligation to help sales of the game was simply a function of The Redner Group's imagination. The twitter threats they issued are unmistakable evidence that there was a fundamental failure to realize that. The implication of entitlement from investment is so apparent here, that it can send no other message that The Redner Group sees media entities and grassroots gaming communities as nothing more than vending machines for advertising metrics. They put in their dollar and pushed the button, but when the wrong item came out, they felt cheated... they felt a sense of loss, and reacted emotionally. The crux of the matter is not that they shouldn't have acted emotionally, it is that they should never have felt that sense of loss in the first place.
Ironically, 2K Games (the company with the most to "lose" in a situation such as this, because of the emotional connection to a lot of hard work that went into making the thing) has not fallen into such a mental trap. This is most likely because games are their business, and they are well aware of how the market works, including the things you should and should not do. I do hope 2K's decision to drop The Redner Group is a permanent one. Old dogs, new tricks, yada yada ...they won't learn. But that leaves the "outsourcing" problem to deal with. A company like 2K Games hiring a full-time PR staff is kind of wasteful when you use those "consultant addiction" formulas of figuring out how much it ends up costing per release. But when you go out and hire outside firms to promote your releases, you risk losing out on access to loyal workers who have built up substantial experience into an arsenal of tacit skills that are simply non-transferable to just anyone.
The solution is that creative companies like 2K and others, need to create the executive position of "Product-Ronin." Kind of a Product Manager on steroids that goes into total immersion at the 3rd party facility. This is one very experienced person who physically supervises and contributes to operations that are outsourced to 3rd party service providers. 1 marketing person from 2K who knows the game industry well, could have stopped this mess before it happened. 1 pro who knows the anime market in the US could have stopped many a terrible dub before it ever got made. 1 person with an alternative perspective could have pointed out that the artistic subtlety in your design goes away when you put this ad on a giant billboard outside:
Oh, no one's gonna have a problem with that image... it's so edgy.
The job of the Product Ronin, is to frequently leave the confines of the home offices and immerse themselves in whatever major 3rd party services that the company is using, and use their tacit-skill set and experience to stop stupid shit from happening. Creative media and entertainment companies need to create this position, and fill it with a trusted, long-time, well compensated employee. Smart service companies will accommodate them and benefit from the experience and knowledge they create there, which they can use to better serve their clients and manage their operations. Dumb ones will think they do a good enough job already.
On a completely different subject; the fading away of Duke Nukem can be seen as kind of a metaphor for the "old world" of male dominated misogynist type gaming dying out and a new global game world where things are quite different. Go talk about that if thinking about turning a brand equity formula into something that produces IRR gives you a headache. ...I know it does with me.
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Housekeeping Items: #1) New Format: As you can see, we're including pull-quotes here and that will be the standard from now on. Additionally, some older articles may be retro-fitted with them, as to lessen the tl;dr factor. If you don't know what tl;dr means, then you fail the internet.
#2) Friday is the new Monday. Posts will now go up on Fridays. Their frequency is still being decided between weekly and bi-weekly.
#3) The final post of each month will be a review of something (except this month where it will probably be July 1). The subject of the review may range from film & television, to video games, books, food & drink, or even special events and travel venues. This is open to suggestions.
#4) This blog has always been link-free and anything here can be reproduced in whole or in part in any non-commercial entity.
Once again, Gen X and beyond is getting screwed by the Baby Boomers.
No, I’m not talking about the recent midterm elections, in which for whatever reason, over 65 voters turned out to vote almost 2 to 1 over the under 30 crowd. Once again it looks like younger people in America have (rightfully so) given up any inkling that their voice genuinely counts in any kind of open arena or community in which the baby boomers have entrenched themselves. Some of this comes down to life-style, with younger people tending to have jobs that are much less forgiving in terms of scheduling flexibility, and tend to be in sectors that have “election day sales” where entitled boomers argue about paying too much for a 90% off made-in-China thing they don’t need on their way to vote for “family values” while muttering about how the youth of the country don’t give the boomers enough credit for the “revolution” of the 60’s or the inflation-fest of the 80’s.
This subject is something I’ve talked about before, and anyone who likes anime or goes to a convention is used to the uber-wide social gap of understanding which is why your mother never understands your jokes or why she gets confused by the “I’m on a horse” ad and it’s various parodies.
Case in point #2, the “because I say so” self-important opinion gambit, where boomers often believe that because of their age and experience, their all too often ill-informed opinions are not only valid, but can somehow trump arguments that are in the right, just because that factually correct opposition comes from a gen-x or gen-y source. It is an insane trap of self delusion whose apex seems to be the notion that the “government is going to get involved in your Medicare.” ...yeah.
There’s a point... wait for it.
Take a recent real world example of this in media; Cook’s Source Magazine totally cluster-fucks it’s way into internet famous-ness (that’s totally a real word). Apparently, it’s not plagiarism if you and your old-media take it off that wacky internet that the kids use. TL;DR version of all that is; a food blogger Monica Gaudio posted a recipe/article for an apple pie or something on her own website. This was later found, slightly altered, and re-published by Cook’s Source Magazine with Gaudio’s name on the byline, however Gaudio was never informed or compensated. When confronted, Cook’s Source Magazine Editor Judith Griggs notes she’s got “30 years experience” in the publishing business, and then acknowledges the situation. Finally she follows it up with one of the most obtuse notions ever, that being that everything on the internet is Public Domain and perfectly usable as content in a for-profit publication. It’s a textbook example of both the baby boomer gap of understanding how new media and technology work while at the same time playing the “my opinion carries more weight than your argument simply because you’re too young to understand” or more accurately the “because I said so, child” maneuver. The belittling of importance of media, simply because it’s in a form that uses new technology that one can not understand, often leads the boomers to violate codes of behavior, and explicit laws out of a sense of self righteous ignorance, which almost always leads to the detriment to younger generations.
Another footnote in the making of “Making 'Generation Screwed;' a Baby Boomer Production” ...I just made that up.
Why is this important for an anime / Japanese pop-culture blog?
No this didn’t happen to me, my posts are simply too crunktaculatastic to be reprinted in old media. But recently, the issue of “violent video games” the replacement boogey-man that replaces Twisted Sister and the Tipper Sticker, has in fact made it to the Supreme Court of The United States of America. Scared by a medium of creativity they can’t possibly comprehend but believe they can adequately judge, the boomer generation is trying to regulate free speech by using scare tactics. Now, banning a violent game sounds as ridiculous as banning a violent book to those who can understand both of these mediums, but you have to be born after 1975 to be able to know that.
What should scare the crap out of everyone reading this, is that the panel of SCOTUS judges in this case has consistently demonstrated their inability to notice that it’s not the year 1970 anymore. Moronic questions demonstrating the lack of even the most basic knowledge of how email and cell phones work, the inability to correctly spell or pronounce Nunchuck, and a notion of under 18 year olds as non-citizens which do not have first amendment protection, are all things I except someone’s angry grandmother to spew forth, not something to come from the soo-preem-fuking-kort!
Yet it is this untouchable cabal of culturally and technologically illiterate bunch of boomer-mentality superiority of opinion judges, which will either strike down, or support a law which clearly violates the U.S. Constitution but for the fact it’s being applied to a medium which these people can not understand. Change out “video game” with “book” in this case, and we wouldn’t even be here.
Kotaku has put up a piece that gives a hopeful picture that the outcome won’t be retarded, but let’s not forget, if you're reading this here, you are coming into this with our own superior understanding of how this technology actually works, and how it is not bound by specific age groups (the “video games are for kids” notion). Conversly, the SCOTUS is fumbling around in the dark, putting their hands on inventions that they’ve never seen before, all while looking for the oil lamp to shed some light on the situation.
On the bright side, it seems that Kagan knew what Mortal Kombat was, although she relegated it to “something her clerks did,” thereby demoting it to a plebeian activity of the younger generation in her mind I'm sure.
This one could go either way.
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The "Angry Otaku" is a licensing and media professional who has lived in New York and Tokyo, and has licensed media properties around the world.
M.B.A., 一橋大学
I set the standard brah! Not you!
Notice no one got upset when an "Asian" character was played by this guy.
Hunting with Good Will.
Still a thing. A much much more important thing.
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