Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2009-10-02]
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la_contessa
Posts: 200 Location: Pennsylvania |
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First of all, Godannar is awesome. Glad to see I'm not the only person who loves it.
Second, I don't mean to be rude to Answerman, since I do love this column, but the answer about the 3D rendering of the Full Metal Alchemist opening is probably incorrect under Japanese law, and likely incorrect under the laws of the US and Brazil as well. As an IP attorney (among other areas of my practice), I am most familiar with the laws of the US, but I have studied Japanese law for fun, because I'm a big dork like that. I tried to research Brazilian law, but I didn't come up with much. I wrote out a whole thing as to why I believe the questioner's ideas would end up being infringement (whether or not the companies act on it--they do sometimes allow infringement to continue in the name of free advertising), but I figured no one wanted a 3.5 page long legal paper in the middle of the forum thread >_> So, I emailed it to Answerman!  Sorry, but I thought you might want to see that I'm not making things up.
Anyway, Japan and Brazil do not have fair use provisions in their copyright law, so there is no such defense as "fair use" for the questioner to rely on. Under US law, the courts would balance 4 fair use factors; although courts can go either way, it is my opinion that this would be too close to call (personally, I think it leans toward infringement, but I would not commit 100% to that analysis). US copyright law: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/ Now, there is another potential exception for the questioner, which is in Section 110(a) of the CA. This section allows the performance or display of a copyrighted work during face to face teaching in a classroom at a nonprofit school. There is an important caveat, though—the copy shown cannot be unlawfully made. Because the work is an unauthorized derivative work not subject to fair use, it is not lawfully made, and likely cannot take advantage of this exception, if in fact the questioner wants to show it to his class at school. Please note that your mention of the “time-consuming” nature of the Brazilian artist’s work is unfortunately irrelevant to modern US copyright law. There used to be a “sweat of the brow” doctrine that held that the hard work of someone who would otherwise be an infringer could bestow some rights on that person and insulate them from an infringement action, but Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991), essentially did away with the sweat of the brow doctrine. So, there is my reasoning, which is significanly less "tl;dr" than the version I am emailing in. I only bother speaking up (I usually stay quiet about infringement issues on the forums these days) because I don't want other people to get in trouble for relying on information which may not be true for their country or jurisdiction. Please note: this post is NOT legal advice. It constitutes my opinion only, and it should NOT be relied on for legal advice. If you need assistance with a copyright matter, please speak directly to an attorney. |
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Ai no Kareshi
 Posts: 561 Location: South Africa |
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I find the mentioned question missing from the article.
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PMDR
Posts: 140 |
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I had no interest in Godannar myself, for various reasons. I think Obari had something to with it and I don't care for his designs. But I am a solid old-school kind of person.
A female friend, who is decidedly NOT into old school, sat me down and "forced" me to watch the first couple Godannar episodes. She loved it. She hates robot animes. She hates old school. But not this one. It still didn't do anything for me but I am old and jaded. On the domesticity thing, I always took that as an attempt to show the depth of the relationship. There was a scene in the Borgman Lover's Rain OAV (I said I was old) where the main female character goes to great length to prepare a sort of fancy sandwich lunch for her man, the male lead of the story. She presents it to him in a very domestic manner. He, however, is rather mentally messed up at the point and doesn't eat it. The lunch is shown later unceremoniously dumped in the trash. The point of that small scene was to show the depth of the character's relationship (making a meal like that is significant in the Japanese culture), and also the pit into which it was falling at that point in the story. Subtle but effective in context. Scenes like that add realism to what are otherwise fictional stories. I mean, here's an OAV about monsters from another dimension, but these two hero characters are having trouble with their relationship just as real people might. |
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Shichimi
 Posts: 349 |
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I can maybe, kinda, sort of, just about see your point with moe and harem shows, but eroge?  C'mon man, that stuff has no real artistic merit whatsoever.
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Annf
Posts: 578 |
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Heh, Godannar's look is gaudy enough enough I can kinda see Obari coming to mind, but he wasn't involved. The character designs are Takahiro "Kimutaka" Kimura, the Code Geass artist. |
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Ralifar
 Posts: 205 Location: League City, TX |
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I'm going to have to disagree with your statement Shichimi. You may think it's crap, I may think its crap, the greater majority may even think it's crap, but as long as one person says it has artistic merit then it does. One of the times I went to the Houston Museum of Fine Art they had a special photography exhibit for 18+. It was explicit nude photos many of which depicted people in sexual acts, and it contained photos of drug use as well. I thought it was total crap for crap, but obviously there were enough people that thought it was "art" to get it it's own exhibit in a reputable museum. |
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vashthekaizoku
 Posts: 261 Location: The House of Rat |
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I still say the most embarrassing manga I've ever read was Miyuki-chan in Wonderland by CLAMP. Considering that when I was in college, a really hot girl in my Asian Humanities class told me it was great to masturbate to should have steered me the other direction, but curiousity got the better of me. CLAMP has done ecchi before, and it's well known that they got their start in doujinshi, but their venture into yuri is currently well hidden in my bookcase.
On the anime count, I'd have to bring up Orochuban Ebichu. Our college anime club president showed a random episode where one of OL's friend developed an attraction to Ebichu, and sitting behind me, my girlfriend called it "hamster porn." I thought it was just another example of Gainax's seriously messed up sense of humor, and occasionally re-watch it to this day. |
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PMDR
Posts: 140 |
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There's an anime version of that as well. It's unique. |
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Ktimene's Lover
 Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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Probably the most embarrassing manga I ever read was Banana Fish. I stopped reading because i read it was of the BL genre.
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bigheart711
 Posts: 108 Location: Celebrating in Atlanta, GA |
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I do feel a bit embarassed about telling people that I own the Strawberry Marshmallow manga, but I feel a lot more embarrassed about telling someone that I own the SuperGALS! DVDs. That's as far as I want to go.
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jvowles
Otakon Representative
 Posts: 219 Location: Maryland |
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Goldenboy....ah yes. That AMV with the bicycle race got me wondering, and then I ordered the thing. It remains, to this day, the only package I've ordered at work that required an adult signature (and resulted in every box I received for two years being hand-labeled with things like "NAUGHTY CONTENTS - OPEN IN PRIVATE" and "MUST BE 18+ AND A PERV TO VIEW" -- that last one on the box with the Totoro DVD, btw -- by my amused co-workers before it got to my desk).
Overt sexual stuff aside, I think the series itself holds up quite well and I have no real qualms or guilt about watching and enjoying it. |
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tissuebubble
Posts: 49 |
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So no, Japanese society as a whole doesn't condone or promote these crazy concepts.
How are those concepts any different from hugely popular things like Twillight in the US? And that is pretty mainstream here, I bet you those same concepts are just as mainstream in Japan outside of anime and manga. |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Which societies and cultures are you talking about exactly? Certainly, divorce laws in the US may favor women, and unfortunately, more comedies are relying on men behaving badly as a source of their humor. But in Japan, and most of the world, this is not the case. Remember that child custody laws favor fathers in Japan, as they do for most non-western countries. Socially, women in Japan are expected to quit their jobs due to marriage or pregnancy. I was shocked to learn recently that that the Japanese health care system did not cover birth control pills untill 1999! In fact, many feminist analysts claim that Communist China is strides beyond "free" democratic Japan in terms of women's rights. As for reverse harems-can anyone name one title in which a boy makes a meal for a girl? Or even goes out of his way to serve her? In Fruits Basket, Tohru cooks and cleans for the men she lives with. In Ouran, Tamaki daydreams about Haruhi making him a bento (and she has cooked for the gang on numerous occassions). The old saying "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach" holds true in all sorts of genres from Japan. In romances aimed at women in the US, it's not unusual to find a man preparing a meal for a woman, but I personally can't think of any examples from Japan. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4575 |
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Awesome, my reply made it in there. I wasn't sure if those e-mails were getting through.
I had a few friends take me to task (and rightly so) for completely forgetting about the one series above all others I should have submitted: the currently-running ecchi manga gem My Balls. I'm actually not a fan of the comic-book format in general, so I don't actively read any manga series...but I had to make an exception for this one. The plot essentially defines I'm Not Making This Up: the Demon Queen somehow managed to get herself sealed inside the testicle of a very unfortunate young man, and now he must essentially undergo the world's most horrific case of blue balls for a solid month in order to save humankind from total destruction. Oh, and he has to do this while being subjected to all sorts of sexual temptation/torture by both his girlfriend and any number of demons and succubi, who utilize just about every notable sexual fetish in the book...including a few I'd never even heard of before. This is about as close to straight-up hentai as it's possible to get without actually being so, but the whole plot premise and execution is so drop-dead hilarious, I can't help but love it. But again, if the other shows I mentioned were "Keep the door closed" material, this one is most definitely, "Wait until the house is empty, and then lock your door anyway just in case."
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