Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2007-07-06]
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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Don't know. No less a source than Animerica(when it existed) commented in their girl-power issue shonen ai was no longer used. Last I checked the glossary at yaoi-con (within the last 6 months) it agreed in Japan shonen ai has been folded into the yaoi title. Trust me, there's hardcore as well as shonen ai in pretty much all the yaoi anthologies I've picked up (Random, I thought, unless I'm just good at picking up smut. I was sure Qupid would be more shonen ai. It is if you like hardcore of 2 what looks like underage boys going at it) Actually it all seems to fall under BL. And the BL anthologies I've picked up contain hardcore. Be-Boy, Chara, Hana Ota Gorgeous manga, B-Rash, Gush, (ok, B-Rash & Gush do sound like they would be hardcore). I thought I was sampling a variety. And the Qupid I picked up had 3 sweet boys on the cover eating a peach. They were much busier inside. Not like the boys glaring off the covers of stuff like BeBoy as though the viewer is disturbing their play.
Sorry. It's sort of inherent in Americans at least-the rebel spirit. Toss the tea in the harbor mentality. I've always been in the camp where I loved when performers I like became more popular-just rewards for their talent, but too many become upset at suddenly more than 5 people liking them & start screaming sell-out. This site doing it's job as well as it did (I watched Del Rey at a Comic-con panel one year look up some titles at ANN the speakers didn't know about the comapny had licensed.) I was shocked a couple days ago when my daughter commented a couple of her little friends hated ANN-why? "Because it's user-supplied so there are inaccuracies." Whoo hoo-like Wikipedia? It's still fairly reliable for cast lists & the title descriptions may not EXACTLY match yours, but they seem overall correct. (I did buy the Tetsujin 28 box on your word Tomokazu Seki as Tatsu was a secondary character. spoiler[Tatsu doesn't make it to the 2nd ep & doesn't get a flashback. thanks. Of course Seki played half a dozen or so roles in the title with "Man in BLack" & Det. Seki" appearing an about 5 each, so yeah, he was regular enough. One just had to keep finding him (Reporter. Pilot) every ep. ] |
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mistress_reebi
Posts: 735 Location: Canada |
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YAY! It's back this week!
I find it strange how yuri isn't as popular as yaoi seeing as lesbien porn is more common in North America. I guess the yaoi that's popular here is more of a relationship between guys, same with yuri only opposite, while porn here is based on lust. Romance books are more popular with females so maybe that's why yaoi is more popular than yuri. lol "post-anime depression." I get that sorta but more with video games. I'm excited that I'm near the end but when it happens I'm sad that it's over. I wouldn't commit suicide over it or cry since it is a tv show/video game. I heard one country is having a suicide hotline for Harry Potter fans when the last book is released. I find reading/writing fanfiction while drawing/looking fanart makes me happy that the show is over. I know in Ontario it's illegal to have groteque porn where people's limbs are cut off and raped. I don't think they would lift that ban after Paul Bernardo and Karla Hamolka. |
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fighterholic
Posts: 9193 |
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Well, seeing as how big this site is, you get your own panel at AX, you have people working full time for the site, on top of people working part time. Which in turn would probably make the concern of the money coming into the site, is how it's actually coming in. Is it coming in a way that everybody could agree on, or are you guys getting money behind certain people's backs? But knowing you guys that's not how you operate, or so you assured me. Edit: tempest, were you by chance in the Westin Hotel lobby last Saturday? |
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HitokiriShadow
 Posts: 6251 |
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Well, in the U.S. (and I would assume many countries in which porn is readily available) lesbian porn is pretty popular. The question is whether or not people have much of an interest in actual relationships. While there is plenty of hardcore lesbian sex in hentai, yuri anime and most yuri manga have little to no sex. If you get Maria-sama ga Miteru hoping to see girls fondling and molesting each other, you are going to be horribly disappointed. That's the big problem with yuri: its heavily focused on the actual relationships, which many guys aren't going to be interested in if there aren't other incentives (be it fanservice, fighting, whatever). And I'm guessing a lot of those female buyers that power the manga market probably aren't very interested in girl/girl romance. |
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Cowpunk
Posts: 168 Location: Oakland - near the Newtype Lab |
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For those of you interested in the historical roots and useage of the term ero-guro I recommend :
Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times by Miriam Silverberg http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8868.html However the actual Japanese use is different than what folks have mentioned here. |
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Kyokat
Posts: 50 |
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No. Yaoi (aka shonen-ai, or BL - yaoi's a blanket term at this point, like it or not) fans did not sit around and whine that there was no yaoi. They found it and scanslated it, they wrote mounds fanfiction and drew art, they wrote suggestions to publishers, and a few even started their own companies (DramaQueen, for example, is essentially run by fangirls). And when yaoi books started to come out, the fans bought them. They bought so many that the the top 100 manga lists from ICv2, which is for the direct market and not even the bookstores where girls are much more likely to shop, are chock full of yaoi titles. You sure don't see that with yuri, or even straight hentai manga. So pardon me if I think you're just agitating for yuri because you're feeling slighted by the yaoi fans and not because you actually care enough to go to the same lengths the girls did.
Stand by a cash register at Borders sometime, or even the library. I have a feeling you'll be very shocked. |
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Cloe
Moderator
 Posts: 2728 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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Me, too. He's truly one of the masters in terms of technical skill, which is what draws me to his work. It might interest you to know that Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show was adapted into an independent anime/bizarre performance art piece, which is now available on DVD in France (it comes with subtitles in five languages, including English). Hiroshi Harada, the director and person who almost singlehandedly animated the entire 55-minute film, adequately captured all of those delightfully squeamish moments from the manga. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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@bonbonsrus: I did go to AnimeIowa last year, and I'm planning to go again this year. And then after that I'm going to try to not be unemployed
@ HeeroTX: Akon '06 wasn't my first con. It was just my first major con, as per my previous post. (Had to go back and make sure I didn't leave out "major.") My actual first was Nebraskon's inaugural 1-day event back in 2004. And yeah, Akon definitely is one of the least "anime" of the big cons, considering its roots as a sci-fi con and the large presence of other fandoms like teh furriez.
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CCSYueh
Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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As you're not part of the yaoi fandom, I know little about yuri otehr than I totally support you all getting more of it, particularly if it means guys will stop complaining about yaoi. Again, I default back to the Animerica Girl Power issue which claimed yaoi was basically by gals for gals(I have run across some male authors) & yuri was by guys for guys, but Clamp & Rumiko Takahashi are both good examples of gals who draw more than a fair share of female fanservice for the guys & Clamp has had many girl/girl love situations even if some are unrequited. My understanding from the article ANN, I believe, published interviewing the pres of DMP was when he was doing start-up, a yaoi publisher from Japan told him how lucrative yaoi was so he risked licensing Only the Ring Finger & it took off so he licensed more, then other companies noticed it was doing well & wanted a piece of the pie. While there's some griping in the fandom, most dealers I've spoken with say the gals come in & buy it so it's a no-brainer stocking it.
I'm not going to comment on the yaoi/shonen-ai thing because that's a fandom I'm not part of. But yuri is often used as a blanket term to refer to anything (sexually explicit or not) involving girl/girl relationships. And that seems to be the (slightly) more common usage. Believe it or not, when languages borrow foreign words, they don't always use the exact same definition. Japan does the same thing. Countless other English words have the same history.[/quote] THe Animerica article & Yaoi-con's online glossary (last I checked) stated shonen ai is no longer used in Japan--it's all referred to as yaoi or BL pretty much interchangeably. It's the West that wants to define the terms. I believe that's our (American) puritanical attitude towards porn. I see lots of people rail against hentai. You like it or you don't, why get worked up? There is nothing wrong with adults having porn. People who like porn aren't evil potential rapists or child molestors or deviant (depending on what they're looking at. Some stuff is just wrong-children. Animals. Snuff.) It seems a lot of people want to distance what they like from porn & there's no real reason for it. On the yuri front, though, yuri anime seems to have the disadvantage that it's probably cheaper to hire a couple no-name actresses for live action than the cost of animating 30 minutes of cartoon. Yaoi isn't directly in the same boat because, excluding those extreme fangirls glomping whatever, yaoi is fantasy & seeing it in the flesh just wouldn't be the same. I really don't want to see live actors cast as anyone in my yaoi manga titles. THey couldn't be as beautiful or sound as great as the VAs they usually cast in titles aimed at gals. Yes, you could find pretty boys, but they wouldn't be the guys in Gorgeous Carat or Yellow. Laures/Seimaden would probably look pretty fake. |
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Treetastic
 Posts: 164 Location: Canada |
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Feeling a bit light-headed now. I mean, the little illustration was sarcastic, I pre]sume, but... I always forget how squeamish I am until things like this come up. [In fact, the first draft of this post was incomprehensible jibberish due to me accidentally putting my hand a row up the keyboard. Yeah.]
As to what Xyex said, is it incorrect to assume that since 'ero guro'= 'erotic grotesque', 'guro' just means 'grotesque'? Then it would be understandable that there are less extreme works out there, right?
I empathize with you. However, words and phrases become corrupted all the time, and when they do, they aquire a different meaning. As one of many examples, look at the English word 'terrific'. No points guessing what that originally meant, and if you were to use it in the place of 'terrifying', it wouldn't be accepted. And that' a change over... a century, maybe? (My enemy among words: "terror-ific!" used to describe a horror movie. -_-) That said, We probably do need seperate words in this case, if only to stem the lynch mobs. Oh, those crazy lynch mobs! 
By the way, has anyone been to FanExpo? It's Canadian, and has an anime/manga section. Looking to be my first con, just wondering exacty how big it is. Big it does look. |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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I'll hafta look for those lists, but the comparison to hentai (and even more so for Yuri) is entirely unfair because of the stigma (in the case of hentai) and availability (in the case of Yuri). Are there even 5 Yuri titles licensed for release in the US? (no idea, not my interest, just wondering) And in the case of hentai, it is considered equivalent to buying a Playboy buying something from there AND they're often limited to "18 and up" only, whereas various Yaoi sneak by that on both counts. So I don't see how they're remotely comparable. (it should also be noted that at least here in Texas, a comic store owner HAS been sued for selling hentai (Urutsukidoji), while (AFAIK) that has never happened for Yaoi)
I go there all the time, I'm not saying I never see girls there, I just see plenty of guys too. I'm saying if the companies are trying to say now that girls buy all the manga so they're gonna sell to them, they're going to get the same issues they had 10 years ago when they said girls don't read comics and we'll just make CCSakura a "boys" show because girls will watch boy shows but boys won't watch girl shows. Actually, Bookscan data seems to bear that out too. If you assume Naruto sells to a 50/50 audience (half boys, half girls) and Fruits Basket only sells to girls, one could assume the boys all bought Naruto and the girls bought BOTH and the numbers work. (Naruto v. 1 in 2006 supposedly sold almost 100k copies, the top vol. of Fruits Basket for 2006 (v13) sold almost 55k) I also still have no idea what black magic ICv2 used to figure Kingdom Hearts sold more books than Fruits Basket, that line item alone makes their whole assessment suspect in my eyes. I can only assume it's some theoretical "average" for all vols of the title, which would be ridiculously unfair for some titles. |
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ryucross
Posts: 1 |
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Only time I've had post-anime depression was after Gundam 0080, but that's not as much hating that the series was over as much as it was reaction to the ending of the series. If there's a series designed to elicit a cathartic response, its War in the Pocket. To this day, hearing the ending theme from 0080 will sober me up.
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HitokiriShadow
Posts: 6251 |
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There is (and has been) plenty of scanlations/fansubs, fanfics, and fanart for yuri. And don't pretend there weren't plenty of yaoi fans that just complained about the lack of yaoi available and never created a fanfic or fanart or helped scanlate. And there is nothing wrong with that, not everyone as the abilities to contribute in that way. But don't go acting all self-righteous when yuri fans complain about the lack of yuri just like plenty of yaoi fans used to and plenty of people do for various anime and manga all the time. Also, I've never felt 'slighted by the yaoi fans' at least not in the yaoi market being there or the yuri market being negatively affected by it. Yaoi paddles and the stereotypical yaoi fangirls (they do exist), well, that's another story that isn't relevant to this discussion. Fortunately, that's not really an issue 99% of the time. |
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scrapps
Posts: 43 |
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I don't know where you live in Michigan, but http://www.youmacon.com/ is located in SE Michigan. And there are tons located in Ohio. But if you live farther north there's only Jafax, and it just isn't the same kind of experience as going to a larger or 24 hour con. |
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ironwarrior
 Posts: 151 Location: Under Clare's armor, Lewisburg, WV |
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Zac, reading your column often makes me want to throttle you, but I still like it and read it religiously. BTW, this:
"If, once the credits roll on the final episode of Lucky Star, you find yourself sitting alone in a dark room, beads of sweat rolling down your pallid visage as your teeth clatter on the unforgivingly cold barrel of a 9mm handgun while you panic inside, wondering if a world with no new Lucky Star episodes is a world you want to live in, your trigger finger twitching ever closer to its final destination, whispering to you the sweet promise of sending a glorious bullet through your synapses and splattering your consciousness all over the Haruhi Suzumiya wallscroll behind you... yeah, you should probably see a doctor about that." IS ABSOLUTE SHEER POETIC BEAUTY. I loved that! (bows to you). I would have just recommended they skip the doctor and pull the trigger. Forward them this GIF: 
------------------------ Interesting about the "ero guro" thing. I didn't know there was a name for this sub-genre. I've checked out various authors via Usenet, and while almost nothing shocks or disturbs me, most of what I perused got boring fast (the exception is this one series with these mutants and bugs, but the title escapes me). I have no problem with "shock" art or fiction, but the authors should balance the "disgust" factor with a somewhat coherent storyline (if coherent even applies in this case). ----------------------- As for the Flake of the Week, they should consider selling out to euthanasia. |
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) is almost nonexistent? Isn't that exactly what all the yaoi fans did to get yaoi released here in the first place? 
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