Alternative title: “Why I think Kyubey should find a new job.” This post is going to be one huge spoiler, so don’t read on if you haven’t watched up to episode 9 of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

I’m sure the latest episode has blown a few minds here and there. I thought it was an interesting development, but I always feel that trying to stick a half-baked science-y explanation onto what is essentially a standard fantasy setting tends to open the writing to unnecessary critical analysis that distract from the actual storytelling. And as much as that is a bad thing, people like me can’t help but run with it. So here’s my take on the subject.

Entropy

Entropy is one of the basic tenets of modern physics and chemistry. Often called the “arrow of time”, it embodies the irreversible passage of time.

Water goes down, vapour goes up. Never a miscommunication.

The general idea is that all chemical and physical processes in the universe have a natural tendency to become more disordered over time. Order and complexity such as stars, planets and life require energy to sustain against the flow of entropy, and the total mass-energy in an isolated system (i.e. the whole universe) is constant but entropy is increasing continuously.

Eventually, the universe goes into heat death unless someone/thing figures out how to either reverse entropy or introduce a source of energy that exists beyond our universe, both of which are improbable within the frameworks of modern physics.

Isaac Asimov, one of my favourite authors ever, wrote a thought-provoking short story about entropy titled “The Last Question” in which he imagined humans of near and distant future pondering the question of entropy as each successive generation draws closer to the universe’s final deadline.

The Loli Solution

In Madoka Magica, the solution to the ultimate question is pubescent girls, whose oestrogen-fuelled emotional turmoils apparently draw upon energy from a source that lies outside the universe. Dozens of physicists commit mass suicide because the ultimate solution to one of the greatest questions of science apparently lies in Twilight novels.

Kyubey can be thought of as the intergalactic equivalent of an oil field surveyor. Magical girls are precious resources, more literally than lolicons think. The battle between Puella Magi and their elder counterparts can be seen as a refinery process in which the full energy potential of crude emo is realized after being subjected to pressure and heat.

Madoka Magica is really an allegory for the monolithic energy industry and its apparent contempt for, and inability to comprehend, all things good and pure. But I digress, if that is even possible in an analysis such as this one.

They should figure out how to harvest tsundere energy

In any case, Kyubey’s people aim to combat entropy not by reversing it but by introducing energy from an unspecified plain of existence (“emoland”) and the gateway to this magical energy happens to be (emo) little girls.

The Other Solution

However, at this point in the story it is quite clear that the technology to travel back in time is apparently within the capabilities of Kyubey’s people. I say this because Homura travelled back in time and this was performed by either future Kyubey or one of his peers. (If he has any. FOREVER ALONE.)

The problem with travelling back in time is that it defies the natural progression of entropy, which is to say that it suggests (or perhaps requires) that entropy can in fact be reversed.

Given that Kyubey’s people have the ability to travel back in time, it should be possible for them to reverse entropy without the need for an extra-dimensional source of energy. In fact, directly addressing the problem in this manner should prove to be much more effective than using little girls like AAA batteries.

Alternatively, just use magnets

We know for a fact that the extra-dimensional energy produced by each Puella Magi is of a certain finite amount because Kyubey is constantly on the lookout for new recruits. This means that the net amount of energy Kyubey can generate at any time is limited by the total population size of human lolis and those of other suitable alien species.

If however entropy can be reversed, then unlimited energy is one of the guaranteed outcomes. For example, a suitable star can be harvested for energy and returned to its prior more-energetic state for as many times as required.

If such local reversal is not possible, then instead of sending a little girl back in time, Kyubey’s people can construct giant hydrogen bombs capable of creating stars and send them back in time, then harvest the resulting stars for energy to create twice as many giant hydrogen bombs and send those back in time again. This should be possible given that the feasibility of sending matter back in time has already been proven. And if they can also create wormholes, then a more direct radiation-based energy feedback loop can be used in lieu of the matter medium.

The Power of Wishes

In my brainstorming of this subject, it was suggested to me that perhaps Kyubey’s people are not actually capable of time travel but merely possess the unspecific “power” to grant wishes. My immediate feeling is that this is a cop-out since it basically goes back to the “a wizard did it” explanation which defeats the point of even coming here, assuming that such a point exists somewhere in the space-time continuum.

On QB’s planet, this is their version of Where’s Waldo?

After some thought, my refined conclusion is that Kyubey’s people are not capable of granting wishes; they merely possess advance technology capable of performing deeds that fulfil the requirements of the wishes requested by the girls.

For example, they have the ability to remotely manipulate matter, which they used to provide medical treatment to Mami and that guy whom Sayaka likes. They also have a sufficient understanding of human neurology to brainwash people into listening to Kyoko’s father speak.

Therefore, they must already be in possession of time-travelling technology or they would not have been unable to grant Homura her wish of having hawt yuri sechs with saving Madoka in the past.

The reason why I came to this conclusion is very simple. If their wish-granting ability were truly magical, omnipotent and capable of accomplishing deeds they themselves are not capable of performing, then it ought to be trivial for them to convince a random pubescent human girl to wish for a device capable of reversing entropy at the operator’s will or a truly limitless source of extra-dimensional energy. QED.

The Farm

Finally, if for some really good explanation I cannot think of there is a perfectly rational reason why harvesting lolis is a more effective solution than my proposed alternatives, then it stands to reason that it should be conducted in the most efficient and organized manner possible.

I am, of course, speaking of loli farms. Think Matrix but with arrays of lab-grown lolis instead. This can be done at a far lower unit cost than having Incubators finding and harvesting lolis in the wild, as demonstrated by humanity’s early and rapid transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer to agricultural and finally industrial societies.

An artist’s depiction of such a loli farm

Conclusion

The solution employed by Kyubey and his advanced intergalactic civilization, which I estimate to be at least Type III on the Kardeshev scale, appears to be ad hoc, rudimentary and a mismatch to the level of technological sophistication they have demonstrated.

Instead of addressing the issue of entropy directly, the use of extra-dimensional energy merely delays the eventual inevitability unless the supply of energy is limitless. Given that the nature of this mysterious energy source is unknown, it is entirely possible, if highly improbable, that this is true, in which case the solution may in fact work indefinitely with continuous eternal maintenance.

But if such is the case, reliance on a ready supply of young pubescent girls is nevertheless dangerous due to falling birthrates, erratic biological behaviours that may lead to species self-destruction and unpredictable cosmological extinction level events.

If alkaline batteries had feelings

It is recommended that Kyubey’s people explore a non-biological long-term solution based on the exploitation of either localized reversal of entropy or the feedback nature of time travel that is within their scientific capabilities. Should a biological solution be unavoidable due to other circumstances, a more scalable and systematic industrialized loli farm would be a more suitable alternative to insure against market fluctuations and sudden spikes in demand.

I submit this to the Internet for its kind consideration. Please forward any honorary doctorates and Nobel Prize nominations to my email. Thank you.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is set to pass new legislation restricting the sales of manga depicting certain sexual acts to minors under eighteen.

Contrary to what certain easily-excitable individuals may proclaim, this is not a ban and this is not the end of the anime. But it will certainly pose a huge problem to the industry.

Background

The proposed law has been working its way around the bureaucracy for months and started off as an anti-lolicon bill. A detailed guideline to classifying paedophilic content in manga was drafted by the person in charge, but this proposal was shot down for being too vague.

In the guideline, the author attempted to justify why certain scenes of nudity featuring minors (such as Doraemon‘s Shizuka Minamoto who loves to take baths) will fall outside the definition of child porn, but this was deemed to be too arbitrary by the committee who probably possessed enough mental capacity in their old age to realize that enforcing age restrictions against drawn cartoon characters is insane. The bill failed to muster enough support.

Months later, it was resurrected and rewritten to target depiction or glorification of sex acts that are illegal (e.g. rape) or immoral (e.g. incest which is not illegal in Japan), a criterion which was deemed to be much more enforceable and objective. This has the unfortunate side effect of making the law even more draconian than its original intention.

Yesterday, the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly’s General Affairs Committee approved the bill by a large majority after a last-minute compromise between the conservative LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) proponents led by Tokyo Governor Shintarou Ishihara (who famously cracked down on Kabukichou) and the DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan, the less conservative national ruling party) assemblymen. The compromise requested by the DPJ was to include a clause giving exceptions to works that demonstrates “artistic merits”.

The LDP, DPJ and Komeito voted for the bill and only the Seikatsusha Network Mirai and the Japanese Communist Party (i.e. pretty fringe oppositions) voted against it over technical disagreements rather than principled ones. Having passed the General Affairs Committee, the bill is expected to be passed by the main assembly tomorrow, 15 Dec 10, despite uncharacteristically intense protests from the industry.

Her name is Reon Kadena

Tokyo Anime Fair

Due to Governor Ishihara’s uncompromising attitude against the anime and manga industry, he is perceived by some to be carrying out a personal vendetta by pushing for this bill.

In protest of this, ten major publishing companies led by Kadokawa, including Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, have withdrawn their participation from the upcoming Tokyo Anime Fair taking place in March next year. Collectively, they own the rights to a large portion of the popular current titles. Unless this boycott is called off, Tokyo Anime Fair 2011 will likely be cancelled or at least totally lame and pointless.

When asked for his opinions regarding the boycott by a reporter, Governor Isihhara (who is technically the chairperson of the TAF organising committee but seems to be totally disinterested in it) responded angrily and effectively told the companies to fuck off and do whatever they want.

And late last night, Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who is not involved in this prefecture-level legislation, included a short postscript in his blog post describing this as an issue concerning the “Japan Brand”. He covered his base by saying that protecting the youth is important, but goes on to emphasise that promoting anime is also important as part of Japan’s soft power. He appeals for the parties involved to ensure that it will be possible for Tokyo Anime Fair to continue to thrive in Tokyo. This is interpreted by some as a warning to Ishihara not to push the issue too far.

Saaya Irie

The Law

Information on the proposed ordinance itself is scant online because Japan as a nation is terrified of the Internet and refuses to post any useful information online. If someone can find the full Japanese text of the bill, please link me. (UPDATE: Refer to the bottom of the entry for the relevant text extracted from the actual bill.)

But from what I have gleamed from Japanese new sources, the proposed law seeks to restrict sales of anime and manga titles depicting or glorifying sex acts that are illegal or immoral. The two examples given by all the newspapers were rape and incest, but presumably this is not an exhaustive list.

It is interesting that the law specifically targets anime and manga instead of generic creative works. This lends credit to the suggestions of certain conservative agenda at work. Or perhaps otaku were simply deemed to be harmless weaklings who would not be able to resist, giving an easy brownie point for the moral crusaders.

Please also note that this is a Tokyo Metropolis bill being passed by the Tokyo Metropolitan (i.e. prefecture) government and not the Japanese national government situated in Tokyo, so if passed it will affect only the Tokyo area.

Effective Ban

This ordinance does not ban anything. Hardcore pornographic manga will still be legal as they have always been, because they already comply with the proposed 18+ restrictions.

However, there are many manga titles targeted at working adults that will be affected by the proposed law. Off the top of my head, I imagine titles such as Kiss x Sis, Gantz, Berserk and various yuri/yaoi titles will be faced with a dilemma.

The problem is that being classified as “18+” is a commercial kiss of death similar to the AO games rating in the US. Book stores will either not stock the books or place them in a corner designated for pornography. This will be a huge distribution, retail and advertising disadvantage for titles that are not porn but contain select scenes that fall under the new law.

Yes, hardcore ero-manga has its lucrative niche in the market. But if Berserk has to be sold next to actual porn in a hidden corner of the shop, then how can it hope to attract the attention of its intended audience: adults looking for edgy seinen manga? In the long run, this results in a chilling effect on the creative freedom in storytelling, since publishers will be unwilling to fund such works given the risk of being branded 18+ by the Tokyo government.

There are existing retail ordinance regulating the sales of porn and 18+ materials. I am not familiar with the exact intricacies, but I suspect that restricted advertising and physical isolation are probably among the guidelines.

Additionally, there are online speculations about whether titles like Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai and Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt will be affected, but my feeling is that it won’t be that drastic, so don’t get your panties in a bunch just yet. Yosuga no Sora on the other hand…

Aki Hoshino

Opinion — Doujinshi

The enforcement of the law will presumably entail government bureaucrats spending all day reading manga and watching anime in order to decide which titles should be 18+ restricted.

This brings into question how doujinshi, being non-commercial and unfunded in nature, will be treated by the system. If right holders must submit their works for approval for an administrative fee, then this barrier of entry may effectively prevent doujinshi from being sold in retail stores in Tokyo.

This also makes me wonder about Comiket. From my experience, Comiket tries to group works of similar nature together (i.e. smut with smut) but this is not enforced strictly and in general the individual stalls lack any indication of whether their products are 18+ in nature (at least the ones where this is not immediately obvious).

I presume that Comiket has long been in violation of some kind of Tokyo ordinance governing sales of porn and the government was just sort of turning a blind eye on it. I was actually under 18 during my first trip to Comiket and there was no age limit of any kind being enforced. If the Tokyo government chooses to tighten its enforcement, I wonder what will happen.

Certainly, it will be extremely costly and difficult for the organising committee to implement any effective screening for doujinshi sold during Comiket, especially since many of them are finalized literally days before the event. At the same time, enforcing an age limit for half a million visitors will not be any less insane.

I wonder if there exist any venues outside of Tokyo with infrastructure capable of hosting Comiket should it come to that.

Saaya Irie

Opinion — Age Limit

I am a free speech guy. In general where possible, I prefer unrestrained expression and have argued this before. However, I agree that age restrictions can be necessary and effective. In this case, the problem does not lie so much with the intention the law, but rather in the implementation.

As adults, I think we can all agree that we want a level of entertainment that exists between teenage-oriented shounen titles and hardcore pornography. The problem with a 18+ or nothing rating system is that it makes it difficult to market such a product. Market it as 18+ and be relegated to obscurity or market it as all ages and get blamed when children buy it.

This problem is not new and the industry has always tried to side-step it through its own system of genre classifications. But there is no uniform guideline that informs consumers if a seinen title is unsuitable for the youth. This problem has long been solved by movies and video games, so it puzzles me why it continues to be a problem here despite being often brought up.

I suspect that this has something to do with the industry not wishing to spend more money on working out a age classification system. But I think it’s also because such age restrictions were never deemed necessary for novels and you can easily find explicit pornographic novels prominently displayed in any major Japanese book stores with no restrictions on them.

So, I think a more comprehensive gradient of age classifications will help to alleviate some of the political pressure being exerted on the industry. You can argue that children still get to play violent video games, but the point is for the industry to demonstrate that it has done its part.

Branding your own product 18+ is commercial suicide. But if a sensible classification system exists that allows adult-oriented entertainment to thrive while differentiating them from both shounen and porn titles, content owners may be more willing to classify their works properly, reducing the need for a clumsy bureaucracy to step in.

Yukie Kawamura

Opinion — Enforcement

I think one interesting food-for-thought for me personally is the enforcement process.

Manga is just drawn pictures. How do you prove that illegal or immoral acts are being portrayed or glorified? I’m sure it will be clear cut in many situations, but I can think of a lot of potential loopholes.

For example, you can prove incest in real-life through DNA test, but how will you do that in manga? What if the characters involved turn out to be not related by blood? What if they are not depicted as siblings at all, but the girl just likes to call the guy “onii-san”?

The other example used, rape, is similarly mind-boggling. How can fictional characters give consent? What constitutes manga rape? I can see plenty of room for contention if someone chooses to dispute a specific ruling.

Furthermore, are non-explicit yuri and yaoi manga “glorifying” immoral sexual behaviours? And, for that matter, will homosexuality be considered immoral? There are a lot of unanswered questions over which I cannot opine without a copy of the original legislative text. (Refer to UPDATE below for further information.)

Conclusion

This law will not be the end of manga and anime because Bleach, Naruto and One Piece will survive like how cockroaches will survive the nuclear holocaust. But it will probably make manga and anime a lot duller than they have to be, in the absence of a more sensible content classification guideline.

Given the number of manga titles being produced on a regular basis and the amount of bureaucracy that will probably be required to assess them using these highly subjective criteria, this law will inevitably add an invisible tax to an industry that is not exactly in its best days.

The most likely outcome is that future titles deemed to be pushing the vague lines drawn by the law will be canned by the publishers because of the undetermined risks involved. There will be a huge financial incentive for companies to self censor and err on the safe side. This will most probably achieve the conservatives’ intended effect of reining in the industry’s growing dependency on sexual titillation, but one wonders at what cost.

As the Papa Bear puts it, this fucking thing sucks.

P.S. I think my favourite comment on this whole situation comes from Diemeow23 in Sankaku Complex’s blog comments:

If this does get implemented then I’m glad I saw anime and manga at its most shining brilliance however perverted the light was

Update

I was linked to the legislative text in question (so Japan does do some things right :P). The relevant portion of the text that defines works targeted by the law:

第八条第一項第二号の東京都規則で定める基準　漫画、アニメーションその他の画像（実å†ã‚’é¤ãã€‚）で、刑罰法規に触れる性交若しくは性交類似行為又は婚姻を禁止されている近親者間における性交若しくは性交類似行為を、不当に賛美し又は誇張ãã‚‹ã‚ˆã†ã«ã€æå†ã—又は表現ãã‚‹ã“とにより、青少年の性に関ãã‚‹å¥å…¨ãªåˆ¤æ–­èƒ½åŠ›ã®å½¢æˆã‚’妨げ、青少年の健全な成長を阻害ãã‚‹ãŠãã‚ŒãŒã‚るもの

The criterion as defined by Rule 2, Paragraph 1, Article 8 of the Tokyo Metropolitan Law: Comics, animation and other images (excluding photographs) that improperly glorify or exaggerate, through their depiction or presentation of, acts of sexual intercourse that violate penal laws or sexual conducts or acts of sexual intercourse between close relatives who are legally prohibited from marriage, and as a result may be harmful to the wholesome development of young people and impede their ability to form healthy impressions about sex.

It appears that the law is not as far-reaching as suggested by initial reports. Since homosexuality is perfectly legal in Japan, this means that yuri and yaoi are safe for now. It’s funny how they have to propose a roundabout definition of incest since it is not actually an illegal act in Japan.

This explains why news outlets reported the law as targeting illegal and immoral sex acts — incest is technically not illegal. But it also means that other forms of “immoral” sex acts are not actually covered by the law so long as they are legal in themselves by the standards of the penal code. But it’s still amusing to have to judge the legality of actions committed by fictional drawings.

So, all in all, this issue seems to be worthy of protest and improvement but it is nowhere close to an end-game scenario for the industry, since most ecchi fanservice and softcore porn depicted in anime and manga are neither illegal (especially since the age of consent in Tokyo is 13, well below the age of most anime characters) nor incestuous.

“I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes”

WikiLeaks may turn out to be the real-life Laughing Man. Whether as a hero or villain, it has already secured a spot in history with the release of US embassy cables.

The release of a quarter of a million confidential to secret diplomatic cables will be remembered as another milestone heralding the rise of non-state actors as a major influence on the development of the global order. But is it still too soon for the digital rebel to triumph over the physical establishment?

The leaked cables themselves are so far largely over-hyped, both by its defenders and detractors. The “secret” classification sounds very sensitive but, as anyone who has ever worked in the government would know, it is actually a relatively low security classification. The leaked documents are unlikely to reveal any information that foreign intelligence services do not already know and should come as a surprise only to people who spend all their free time listening to Justin Bieber, assuming they read the news at all to even learn of WikiLeaks.

On the other hand, neither does the leak strengthen the foundation of democracy in any way. Like Tea Partiers who tend to confuse tax cuts with a sound fiscal policy, WikiLeak supporters often mistake anarchy for liberty.

A Force of Anarchy

A completely transparent government is a non-functioning one. Even the most obtuse should see this obvious fact. No supporter of democracy would argue that the Secret Service should publish its security details and shift schedules, or that the Pentagon should publish all its self assessments of its defence vulnerabilities. This is unless you believe that a non-functioning government is the best kind, which makes you an anarchist.

The act of whistle-blowing is an act of desperation that should only follow a systematic failure to address corruption and wrong-doings. It betrays the original duties entrusted to the individual and is the final option when all else has failed. It is the equivalent of sawing off a wounded leg to save the rest of the person — it’s not the first option you should be considering.

What WikiLeaks is doing now — the naive idea that all information should be known to everyone — is thoughtless overkill. So far, I fail to see the systematic corruptions that warrant the cables to be leaked. Where is the smoking gun? (Or the weapons of mass destruction in the parlance of our time.)

Information wants you to stop personifying it

Imagine you are charged with the handling of millions of classified papers. Among them, you stumble across one that details an illegal act perpetuated by agents of the government. You have a moral duty to expose this act. Do you 1) release this single paper, or 2) release all the millions of papers? If you answer the former, you are a whistle-blower. If you answer the latter, you are an anarchist.

This is not to say that I am condemning anarchy as a moderating force of international affairs. After all, the Laughing Man, despite the amount of collateral damage he and his copycats caused, did serve some purpose in the grand scheme of things.

Given that governments everywhere prefer secrecy even when it is not warranted, the rise of an international force of anarchy could possibly serve as a counter-balance.

But on the other hand, it might merely strengthen the case for totalitarian rule. After all, China’s secret files are unlikely to find their way to WikiLeaks any time soon, given that treason is swiftly met with a firing squad. From the US Government’s perspective, it is hard to argue why a leak of secret documents should compel it to become more transparent.

Physical Vulnerabilities

The Internet is still in its infancy. We are far from achieving the full potential of a global information network. For one thing, we don’t have cyberbrains yet.

In this latest episode, WikiLeaks, along with its Anonymous supporters, is holding its ground against the thousand-pound gorilla that is the US Government only because the US remains committed, to varying degrees depending on the particular person in charge, to the idea of democracy and rule by law. (China on the other hand…)

Even so, the US has managed to exert probably extralegal influence on Amazon, PayPal, everyDNS and, according to the conspiracy-minded, the Swedish government to isolate WikiLeaks.

These are the physical weak points of today’s aspiring digital rebels: server infrastructures and human beings. A less scrupulous opponent than the US could have done far more effective damage to those two vulnerable spots.

The effectiveness of digital anarchy in the coming future will depend on the development of technology to overcome these limitations. A cyberbrain may be a good start.

Maybe we can use Kinects to overlay spinning smileys over our faces in real time.

Rooster Coming Home To Roost

As I watch US Senators react like Chicken Little to WikiLeaks, I can’t help but wonder what their reactions would have been if the leaked documents had been Iranian or North Korean.

Would they have condemned WikiLeaks for compromising the national security of sovereign nations? Or would Julian Assange have been presented with a Congressional Gold Medal?

In its almost clichéd pursue of freedoms in foreign lands, the US plays a very dangerous game where it constantly risks getting left behind by its own rhetoric, whether in terms of human rights, environmental protection or economic reform. Unrealistic rhetoric discredits both the content of the message and the substance of the actions, however necessary and well-considered they may be in each case.

But looking at the Tea Party movement, perhaps the train has already left the station. Vapid political jingoism has taken on a life of its own and rational policy-making will have to play second fiddle.

Unreleased Cables

Given that WikiLeaks has so far released only hundreds out of hundreds of thousands of purported cables, it may be too soon to draw a conclusion regarding the amount of good/harm done by this leak.

But looking at the past modus operandi of WikiLeaks and considering the fact that the cables were not released in chronological order but rather have apparently been hand-picked for their gossip-worthiness, I am leaning towards the conclusion that the remaining cables do not expose any massive wrong-doings the way the Pentagon Papers did.

WikiLeaks have had months to go through the cables. If any US Government conspiracy existed in the leaked cables, then WikiLeaks would certainly have highlighted it by now, given its stated goal as a whistle-blowing site.

It’s hard to believe that, in face of significant public dissent, WikiLeaks is for some inexplicable reason holding on to the most sensational and pertinent materials instead of using them to justify its actions.

I may yet be proven wrong. Perhaps WikiLeaks has simply not gone through all the documents yet (which would make it uncharacteristically sloppy). Maybe the next Pentagon Papers are just around the corner.

But when it’s all out in the open and we find out that politician gossips and personal musings are all that we are going to get from this whole fiasco, then WikiLeaks would have done no more than the Daily Mail in keeping governments honest.

Of course, that is not to say the Daily Mail is not good entertainment.

Conclusions

The leaked embassy cables make for interesting gossip and are symbolic of growing individualistic forces at work in the modern international order, but ultimately do not seem to have achieved much and are over hyped by the eager mainstream media.

WikiLeaks, or its descendants/copycats, is capable of much more destructive anarchy as technology improves and more aspects of society are digitized. But for now, it remains at least partially vulnerable to traditional political pressure and its effects, and its access to the people, can still be mitigated by government intervention.

National governments, traditional wielders of political power, are capable of much more direct and sinister attacks against WikiLeaks and its future iterations should they feel the situation is desperate enough. So far, it apparently is not.

As for me, I am still waiting for the Laughing Man.

(Sauce)

Recently, renowned sci-fi writer William Gibson of Neuromancer fame annoyed a bunch of Miku fanboys when he tweeted, “Hatsune Miku doesn’t really rock me. I want higher rez, less anime.” This was immediately parsed by some to mean that he hates all things anime and wishes horrible things to happen to otakukind and hilarity ensued.

Coincidentally, I have been spending some time thinking about the concept of virtual idols recently and just picked up a copy of Gibson’s Idoru novel that touches on this exact issue. Incidentally, it has a pseudo anime-style cover.

While Gibson’s delivery of his message was highly ambiguous (we can all thank the ubiquity of Twitter in contemporary discourse for that), I think what he actually meant by his statement is that he believes a true virtual idol should emulate reality to a higher level of accuracy. This of course includes higher resolution graphics and the display technology to match it. I think there is some merit to that argument that goes beyond a matter of personal preference.

Idols throughout history have always been artificial constructs to varying degrees, but today idol-making has become a precise science. Outfits like Johnny’s and AKB48 assemble each idol from a list of proven ingredients and find a suitable host body to bring theory to life. They are basically idol factories, managing hundreds of manufactured personas and with hundreds more on a conveyor belt ready to replace them. These idols are actors whose talents are not singing or dancing but to give the fans exactly what they want to see. Auto-Tune fills in the rest.

The real game we are playing is the illusion of intimacy. The best idols are not the prettiest or the best singers, they are the ones who can convince the most number of people that a special connection exists between them and their fans.

This argument may sound overly cynical, but it’s only slightly. I’m not saying that all idols are being intentionally deceitful in order to be popular (only most of them), and indeed many of them probably truly believe in what they do and say in front of their fans. Some of them may even feel the special connection. But that all just means that even idols themselves are human beings who are susceptible to the alluring mirage of false intimacy.

I suppose the more astute reader would now argue, “But DM, by that line of reasoning is there really such a thing as real intimacy?” Let’s not open that can of worm, but I’ll just quickly add that at the very least, I think that real intimacy cannot possibly arise from a relationship in which communication is mostly unidirectional and systematically managed.

Now the problem I have with the idea of Hatsune Miku as an “idol” is not the art style or her glass-shattering voice, but the difficulty of maintaining this illusion with what is essentially an open-source meme. Her screen-projected concerts are not so much endearing as amusing; It’s something fresh and flashy, but after the first time it offers no obvious value over watching this YouTube video twenty times. That’s because seeing Hatsune Miku as an idol requires a suspension of disbelief far greater in magnitude than that required for a typical mass-produced humanoid idol. This is why virtual idols (and I suppose this does include anime characters in general) will remain a tiny niche for as long as display and rendering technology fail to convincingly fool our brains into giving willing fans an easier time to live in our selfish fantasies.

Of course, my obsession with the idea of emotional intimacy as part of the definition of an idol is subjective and probably too stringent for some. However, I find the distinction significant because a line, hard to define as it may be, must exist somewhere between regular fame and idolatry, or the concept of idol ceases to have relevance.

This reminds me of my current addiction: Valkyria Chronicles 2

In addition, the crowd-sourced nature of Hatsune Miku further complicates the situation. Everyone can participate in the creative process and all works produced can potentially be incorporated into the collective idea of what exactly constitutes Miku. The trademark leek she holds for example originated from a Bleach parody video. Given that idols, according to my cynical worldview, consciously calibrate their self image in a way that panders to fan expectations, letting fans have direct creative control over the entire process should arguably represent the ultimate form of idol creation, at least in theory.

I am undecided on this one, but I lean towards scepticism. If fans get exactly what we want because we helped to create it, doesn’t that just makes it more difficult for us to maintain the illusion that the virtual idol is an existence worthy of our worship? After all, how can the creator idolize his creation when he can see all through all the magic taking place behind the scene?

Personally, I see Hatsune Miku as a meme. The sense of joy we derive from watching her comes from shared experiences between fans more than it comes from her. It’s more like an open-source software community where everyone contributes something and we all feel happy with the result and less like Steve Jobs coming up with an awesome iThing and we all grovel at his feet. There are tons of shaky bits in that analogy, but I think it conveys my general feeling.

So that’s why they named her Apple…

So all in all, I do not see Hatsune Miku as a virtual idol. She’s more like the Laughing Man except less anarchistic and more merchandising. But in all likelihood, the idea of idol itself may be the one that is changed in this great social experiment. We’ll see.

Actually, I wonder why no one has yet to make a serious attempt at manufacturing a classic virtual idol. We already have the technology to render photorealistic people (at least for the purpose of making music videos or advertisements). Throw in some anonymous voice samples with Auto-Tune and some masked body doubles for concerts (perhaps even special effects make-up or plastic surgery) and you have an everlasting star who will work for as long as you need and who will never betray your corporate interests… Hmmm.

As for William Gibson, he eventually tweeted a follow-up message and said, “Hatsune Miku is clearly a more complex phenomenon than I initially assumed. Requires further study.” I wonder if he truly believes that or if he’s just saying that to get the fanboys to get off his back.

P.S. It’s interesting to note that a lot of Miku fan art is basically recoloured/traced illustrations of other anime characters. Perhaps Miku is more like the Borg: she absorbs and assimilates all our individual fantasies…

This is one of those rare posts I make about my personal life so that one day I may look back at this blog and realize that I was once a young and naive idealist. It is the cumulation of a train of thought that has been running on and off for the past six months and a snapshot of me at what I consider to be the first major crossroad in my uneventful life.

I was offered the Public Service Commissionâ€s Overseas Merit Scholarship (Open) earlier this year (2009). While it was an honour to be given one of the most prestigious scholarships in Singapore, I ultimately resolved to turn down the offer. It is a decision that few of my peers (and perhaps even myself) fully understood at the time.

Seeing as we are once again approaching the end of the year and a new batch of A-level graduates will soon be going through the same things I did, I thought itâ€s about time I finally put my thoughts down in words.

The Scholarship

PSC OMS (Open) is one of the many scholarships administered by the Public Service Commission, a state organ that manages and grooms public servants. It is given to Singaporean A-Level graduates selected through a standardized IQ/personality test, a psychological interview and a panel interview. It covers tuition fees, housing and allowances for the duration of the studentâ€s overseas undergraduate studies in exchange for a 5- to 6-year work bond with the government under various ministries or statutory boards. It is also an open secret that OMS scholars enjoy faster career advancement and better work opportunities than local scholars and non-scholars working in similar capacities within the civil service.

Just to make my position clear, I am of the opinion that OMS (Open) is an excellent opportunity in many ways (job stability, competitive pay, fast-track promotions, prestigious brand name) and that people intending to enter the civil service should definitely take it up. But unfortunately, it turned out that I was not one of these people.

The Commitment

There are many passionate arguments surrounding the merits and demerits of the work bond that comes with government scholarships. Here are what I feel to be some important points to consider.

A government scholarship is not just a simple exchange of goods and services, but a complete career package. It requires one to make a major commitment that will last well into oneâ€s early thirties. Many people I know see the scholarship as a simple work contract or even a form of student loan, but this view misses the bigger picture. The purpose of the scholarship is to develop future leaders of Singapore and its sponsorship of undergraduate education is but a portion of an extensive talent-grooming programme designed to produce future top-level management. If oneâ€s intention were to leave the civil service after having served the work bond, then the bulk of development would not have achieved the intended positive outcomes, both for the organization and for the individual.

While it is often said that the civil service (in Singapore) serves as an excellent platform from which recognized talents (i.e. scholars) can enter equivalent high-paying private sector jobs with ease, this is only true if we only consider management positions. Despite what the PSC claims to be a diversified career offered to its scholars and the highly corporate nature of Singaporeâ€s government, the civil service is ultimately an enclosed ecosystem populated by its own performance benchmarks and cultural oddities. Beyond corporate management positions that mirror those found in government ministries, there are few other careers into which one can easily transit, after having spent 5-6 years in this unique environment.

Therefore while it is true that an OMS (Open) award may not necessarily tie one down to public service, it does at the very least make things very difficult for one to move out of corporate management. That is, unless you are willing to start again from scratch at the age of 29-31 in a completely unrelated field, pitting yourself against fresh graduates who have yet to forget the things they learnt in their major. This is of course irrelevant for people who intend to remain within the eco-sphere made up by government-linked organizations and semi-private companies, but should be a major consideration for those who see scholarship as merely a mean to pay for college.

I personally cannot see myself either as a bureaucrat or a politician in the long run. I am not very good at following rules.

College Experience

This brings me to my second point: your college major. The fact that you want to spend four years studying something (presumably in a decent college overseas) should mean that you have at least some interest in the topic. (You should reconsider your choice of major if you donâ€t.)

The college experience, particularly an overseas one, is a catalyst for great change in a personâ€s life. New sights, new sounds, new people and new experiences will change you, no matter how impervious you are to external influence. Many of the famous startups of our time came from ideas incubated during their founders†years in college. During the four years of undergraduate studies, you may end up falling in love with journalism, philosophy, physics, politics or bio-tech. Most of these studies are unlikely to be put to any significant use during your time in government service.

My point is that a scholarship commits you to a bureaucratic career (albeit a well-paid high-flying one) at a stage of your life where you have probably next to no idea what your real talents are and what you truly want to achieve with them.

Although many would probably disagree, college to my naive mind is supposed to be where we find that certain elusive purpose that aligns with our natural and nurtured talents and interests. When I enter college, I wish to spend four (or five) years discovering and affirming my purpose in life, and I do not wish to commit blindly beforehand.

If one is lucky enough to discover that purpose and if it happens to lie outside the civil service, then the six-year bond that comes after graduation can only be seen as an unpleasant obligation, bringing us into the politically-incorrect realm of bond-breaking and all the passionate arguments it engenders.

Breaking Bond

I am personally against bond-breaking, but I do not subscribe to the blind patriotism message, nor do I believe that it is acceptable to accuse people who break scholarship bonds of being “immoral”. To me, bond-breaking is merely a pragmatic decision and a formalized part of the contractual agreement signed when one receives the award.

The whole of Singapore can be summed up by the word “pragmaticâ€. Every government decision has to be backed by facts in the form of spreadsheets and pie charts. Indeed, many of the talented scholars recruited by the government are put to use to churn out these reports and statistics on which critical decisions are made. The end result is a highly technocratic and prosperous nation, a classic success story that has instilled in the people a strong belief in the power of pragmatism.

Bond-breaking is therefore a natural outcome of such a fact-intensive system. If one stands to earn significantly more working in the private sector, then bond-breaking is the obvious logically-sound option after one weighs the facts. It is as simple (simplistic?) as the reasoning that if we raise our corporate taxes to provide better social welfare, foreign investments will run off to other countries — the government-promoted idea that we should not sacrifice pragmatism for sentimental reasons.

But if one, in spite of being a product of the system, happens to be a believer in the importance of the intangible irrationalities in life, such as compassion and social justice, then bond-breaking does seem like an unpleasant last resort. Of course, such a hypothetical person may not be best suited for the pragmatic culture of the civil service in the first place. After all, it is difficult to quantify compassion as a KPI in a PowerPoint bar graph. Stop me before I get too bitter. Heh.

While I personally see bond-breaking as a necessary evil that should not be encouraged, I find it offensive that bond-breakers are put in such a terrible light by the media when they are merely practising what has been preached. I mean even ex-PM Goh Chok Tong apparently broke his bond, so what gives?

All in all, the whole bond issue just seems to be a huge schizophrenic doubespeak mess that I donâ€t want to get myself into, so I decided not to.

Big Picture

At the end of the day, the intention of the PSC Scholarship is to recruit talented individuals to work in the civil service. The emphasis should therefore be on public service and not career advancement.

Unfortunately, the core purpose of the scholarship has been long lost in translation through all the glitzy publicity, scholarship talks and peer pressure. A lot of talented JC students become caught up in the idea that securing a prestigious government scholarship is the way to success, even though they have no prior interest in civil service and little understanding of what policy-making entails. Some may argue that this is an intended feature of the scheme: attract the talent first and then make them interested enough to stay on.

I personally find the merit of this methodology somewhat questionable. Given a limited pool of talents, the success of the PSC Scholarship in attracting talents will always come at the expense of something else. For every IPhO winner absorbed by the civil service, Singapore loses a potential future Nobel Prize winner. There is always a trade-off involved, a fact that is often overlooked when we talk about “grooming the next generation of leaders”.

If the PSC Scholarship becomes too effective in attracting top-tier talents, then what effect will that have on the rest of Singapore? The PSC Scholarship should therefore ideally strive to attract not merely talents, but talents whose passions coincide with its core purpose of public service.

It was once said that the economic boom of the nineties drew so many talented mathematicians and physicists into financial engineering that it might have statistically delayed the emergence of the next Albert Einstein by half a century. That may be a wildly simplistic guesstimation, but it describes the invisible economic balance behind talent management.

Before people accuse me of proclaiming myself the next Albert Einstein, my point is simply that I decided that the best I can achieve lies elsewhere. PSC can decide if a person is suitable for the civil service by offering him/her a scholarship, but it cannot determine whether the person might be better suited for something else. That is a decision that has to be made by the individual.

And from a larger perspective, I believe that Singapore would be better off as a whole if the best talents excel in the fields that match their abilities than if they were all concentrated in the government, even if we buy into the (debatable) basic assumption that the government is the most critical entity in ensuring Singaporeâ€s long-term success.

Conclusion

The extensive bond-based scholarship system in Singapore is both a blessing and a curse. It gives poorer students the opportunity to study overseas and richer students the added incentive to join the civil service, but at the same time it also serves to discourage organic growth and innovation in Singapore. Creativity and entrepreneurship thrive in uncertain environments and the comforting and calculated certainties offered by scholarships to our top talents are, in my opinion, not entirely beneficial to Singaporeâ€s efforts in cultivating future leaders. They grow averse to taking risks and that can only lead to complacency.

Having been through the system, I arrived at the conclusion that my life so far has been too smooth and well-planned. Though I do not come from a well-to-do family, my academic performance and luck have brought me to the top of the rat race that is our education system. I saw the PSC Scholarship as an opportunity offered to me to continue riding this boat to the end, and I decided that itâ€s time to try something else.

But ignoring all my personal ramblings about the macro-economics of scholarships and my somewhat unrealistic expectations of life in general, the overall take-home message is that it’s always a good idea for one to take a step back and seriously consider the personal motivations behind taking up a bonded scholarship. The excuse “everyone else is doing it” doesnâ€t work for drug abuse, and it wonâ€t work here either.

Of course, reality is always imperfect. Parental pressure, peer expectations and financial constraints are ever present in the decision-making process of every scholarship applicant. The reasons for taking up a scholarship are sometimes beyond the individualâ€s control, occasionally resulting in unfortunate situations where both the scholarship sponsor and receiver end up unhappy… That’s life I guess — a reality which may yet catch up with me. Heh.

A Tale of Interest

Let me end off with an interesting anecdote.

In Japan, there is a bond-free scholarship for foreign students called the Monbukagakusho (or Monbusho) offered by the MEXT. The undergraduate award covers tuition fees and expenses for five years of studies, including one year of language and foundation courses.

Singapore sends around one to two Monbusho scholars to Japan every year. The Japan embassy in Singapore conducts selection tests here but, until last year, the applicants were pre-screened by PSC to only include PSC scholars selected to be sent to Japan. The end result was that these PSC/Monbusho scholars were bonded to the Singapore government even though their education was actually paid for by the Japan government.

This amusing system, which as far as I know existed for decades, was abolished last year (at whose volition I have no idea) and the Monbusho in Singapore is now opened to all local applicants. (The deadline for 2010 is over, by the way.)

I think thereâ€s a moral-of-the-story in there somewhere about differing philosophies of scholarship in the two countries and Singaporeâ€s brand of ultra-pragmatism. Iâ€ll leave you to decide what exactly that is. :P

P.S. Longest blog post ever?

There’s a pretty good essay on Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong‘s call for young Singaporeans to “dare to dream” over at The Online Citizen. The gist of it is that this statement is highly ironic when interpreted against the realities on the ground, much of them the results of government policy. Predictably, the comment section is filled with comments that miss the bigger picture of the issue and see this as another scheduled anti-government ranting session, with the few thoughtful comments voted down.

The government is no doubt a part of the problem, but it is the mentality of Singaporeans at large that has created a hostile environment for socially deviant dreams to take hold, and the same can be said for many Asian societies.

As Westerners love to say, Asia is becoming richer and richer. The rise of Japan, the Four Asian Tigers, China and India were/are the stables of any economics review. But rapid economic development brings with it deeply rooted social problems that go beyond stress or corruption. Whereas Western societies has had two hundred years and two World Wars to adapt their cultures to fit an industrialized world, Asia is attempting to do the same in the post-colonial era barely half-century old. Some say that Singapore is a successful example of such an endeavour, and they are right in many ways.

Singapore is recognized by the IMF as an “advanced economy” and by the World Bank as a “high income economy”. It also ranks 28 on the Human Development Index, in the neighbourhood of Slovenia and Kuwait. By most measures of national success, Singapore, a country literally just over four decades old with no prior geopolitical equivalent (e.g. China is technically 60 years old but existed as a country long before that), is an exemplary one.

But due to the sheer speed of its development, its overnight transformation from third world to first world took place without a corresponding advancement in social values. Unlike the economy, development of social values cannot be fast tracked even by the most efficient governments, try as they might.

Foreigners visiting Singapore love to comment that it is a clean and beautiful place. The reality is that it is clean and beautiful because we have legions of imported workers who clean the roads of trash, sweep away the fallen leaves and repaint the chipping paint jobs every night and morning. In this case, economic success has allowed us to produce the appearance of social enlightenment. So hurray for us.

The reason why we have clean roads. Taken from The Keropok

However, developing a conducive environment for young people to chase after their aspirations is another ball game altogether. Asians in general are stuck in the survival state of social mentality. Having only recently climbed up the economic ladder, we are still shackled by the idea that money is everything in life.

Our uneducated grandparents worked hard to buy a house and send our parents to school. Our parents worked hard to buy a bigger house and a car and send us to a better school in that car. With even better education and opportunities available to us, we are then expected to earn even more money than our parents. The survival instinct that drove our grandparents to sustain their family has become the consumer instinct for bigger and better.

In a sense, the rise of consumerism has always been a point of debate in developed nations, but in Asia’s case it comes with added baggage — the idea that as our economies grow, our lives should be measurably wealthier. Material possessions are therefore the measures we have for successful development as a society. Our list of “necessities” in life is ever expanding and the bar for “success” is ever rising.

And this idea that our survival depends on economic success is what drives government policies. Some say that it is the result of government policies, but it’s really a chicken-and-egg issue. Society and government both agree on this idea and they mutually reinforce each other through their actions. The word “pragmatic” describes Singapore more than any other. Through the tinted lens of pragmatism, we see and judge every aspect of our lives.

An education is not a pursue of knowledge. To be educated is to become a more highly valued member of the workforce and knowledge is only relevant as a mean of achieving that goal. Interests are distractions from a successful education and the career that follows. Literature, history, philosophy and art are all non-practical subjects of study — risky options that only the rich can afford. Subject combinations should be chosen to match future career paths and not interest. Careers should be chosen based on a logical examination of supply and demand, chances of success and likely degree of success, not interest. Dreams are for the naive and real adults do cost-benefit risk analysis. Such is the life of a student going through the motions in Singapore.

The upside of this is a heavy emphasis on foundational education in Singapore. This is why we do so well in international math and science competitions. The downside of this is a dearth of culture. This is why we do so poorly in journalism, literature, art, music and almost everything else. For you see, the only kind of culture that is worth anything is the kind that brings in tourist money.

We applaud people who are successful businessmen and entrepreneurs, but talented musicians are just fascinating sideshows who will one day realize that they have wasted their lives away on the “wrong” career. Business, medicine and law are the officially recognized paths to success in university, and every other subject is for people who failed to get into one of the three and foreign students.

Japan’s university system is perhaps the pinnacle of an education system designed to produce productive workers. Come spring every year in Japan, a new batch of university graduates don identical looking suits and enter the job market to become salarymen and office ladies. The sight of the endless streams of similarly mannered people walking in and out of a busy metro stations rushing to work induces an overwhelming feeling of hopeless futility. This is the Asian equivalent of US suburbia.

Jump through the hoops, follow the markers correctly and be rewarded with a lifetime of comfort and luxury. We treat ourselves and our next generation no better than dogs.

We are all special!

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against capitalism or even consumerism. I am certainly not advocating that we go back to farming and self sustenance. In fact, I am arguing for the exact opposite: thanks to economic development and industrialization, it is now easier to earn a living than ever before and, instead of spending every waking hour tending to the crop fields, we now have free time to pursue our dreams and still feed ourselves. But that’s not what we are doing. We are instead pursuing the dreams of our parents and grandparents — to live a richer life than the ones before us.

One of the fundamental ideas of economics is the value of comparative advantage — the idea that the greatest net gain can only be achieved when we specialize according to our natural advantages.

The problem with Singapore and many Asian countries is that “gain” is measured only in terms of monetary value. The natural advantage of a talented artist is not given its due credit for its bettering of society at large and therefore goes under-rewarded. Those of us whose talents are not in the “correct” domains are naturally doomed to practise bad economics by pursuing careers in less ideal but more socially accepted fields, hence contributing less to society than we are inherently capable of.

It is sad that talented musicians relegate their interests in favour of pursuing business or law. But what’s even sadder is that many Singaporeans do not see a need for having interests and do not seek to discover their own talents. The real tragedy is not people being forced to consciously make difficult but understandable practical decisions between passion and financial stability, but the fact that an even greater number of people are not even aware that there is such a choice to be made.

The rat race is so deeply engrained in our collective mindset that we do not bother to seek alternate paths to success. It is one thing to explore the wilderness before returning to the well-beaten track, but another altogether to not even try. How can we dare to dream when we have no dreams but the one we inherited?

These people had no opportunity to discover their talents but we do

Some people say that our lives are too short to be spent on potential failures over guaranteed success, but I say that our lives are too finite too be spent on not trying. We all die eventually and the worst that can happen is nothing — we return to the grind and continue as always.

And ultimately we don’t live in the Dark Ages any more — we are not choosing between survival and everything else, but between a bigger house and pursuing our dreams. And the two are not even mutually exclusive: time and again it has been shown that actively pursuing one’s interest and making full use of one’s unique talents can and do lead to economic success.

Ahhh, good old meritocracy… It only works for results that can be measured quantitatively.

Those of you who played the 4th Ace Attorney (逆転裁判) game would be aware of the new jury system being implemented in Japan, first proposed in cabinet review committee in 2001 and subsequently passed into law in 2004.

After five years of policy fine-tuning and mock trials, Japan held its first post-war jury trial on Monday. The system consists of a hybrid of six layman jury members (裁判員) and three professional judges (裁判官) and is reserved for serious crimes such as murder. A majority opinion has to be supported by at least one of the three judges in order to stand.

I am on the fence about this whole “democratizing the justice system” movement. The idea that judges in ivory towers often do not possess the necessary life experiences to understand the social context of the crimes they judge has some merits. On the other hand, it’s hard to believe that a handful of randomly selected voters possess the technical expertise to understand the law and how it should be applied.

For example, in a case that involves minority rights, there is little guarantee that individual members of the jury understand the implications of such abstract issues on society at large, hence risking a judgement that stems from narrow first-hand experiences. A judge is also liable to make the same mistakes, but the very fact that he/she is (supposed to be) a learnt legal scholar with a wealth of relevant experience mitigates the risk of unilateralism greatly. That is to say, in a court of law, the legal experience of a judge is likely to present more relevance to any given case than the range of expertises possessed by the jury, an important point that should not be overlooked in the structuring of the system.

As with most things in life, the most important rule of thumb is of course to seek the right balance between the two so as to avoid dogmatic inflexible rulings that have no grounding in reality and at the same time prevent the law from being completely reinterpreted with each new batch of juries. In that regard, I’m not sure if letting the jury decide the punishment is such a good idea. The fine line between justice and retribution is further blurred when professional judges are replaced by the everyman who is expected to bring personal experiences into play. It’s good that the judges can veto blatant abuses in Japan’s case, but it does not completely wash away the lingering stench of mob justice.

And while US opinions are almost universally favourable, the fact that the system is somewhat controversial in Japan also indicates a difference in mindset when it comes to legal justice. Many English-speaking commentators see this as an issue of democracy, when it really should not be. At the end of the day, the value of any jury system should be the varied perspectives and expertises it brings to a trial, and not some abstract idea of democracy. A small selected group of pre-screened voters is no more representative of society at large than a group of judges. If anything, general elections of judges would make more sense if democracy were the ultimate intend, which incidentally is a really bad idea if elected politicians are anything to go by. (Then again, the lack of judicial independence from the political organs of government is already an existing situation in many countries.)

Personally, I would prefer to see public oversight in the judicial system take the form of an auditing role instead. Oh well, as long as it works out.

And at the very least, this has very real implications on future Ace Attorney games. Will the bald and confused judge still be there? Or will he be sidelined by a group of nervous salarymen and loud gyarus? (Hurray for stereotypes.)

P.S. Yes, I’ve been playing Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth.

I recently started watching Kannagi after reading about the 2ch shitstorm over the main female lead’s alleged past sexual experience. You can read more about this dorama over at Sankaku Complex. The gist of the matter is that Nagi may or may not be Negi in disguise a virgin because she apparently has an ex-boyfriend! Also, she’s not even human so it reminds to be determined if the concepts of virginity and copulation even apply to her. In any case, this revelation in the manga’s plot development led to a firestorm of otaku rage and book tearing.

Oh, the humanity.

When I was watching the first episode of Kannagi, I thought it was a pretty average show with some marginally interesting directing. The バラバラ殺神事件 sequence caught me by surprise and I actually laughed out loud, so all in all the show was actually surprisingly good and held its ground better than most love comedies founded on the age-old premise of having a poor sob’s life invaded by an overbearing sometimes-magical girl. (Toradora on the other hand made me want to fall asleep.)

I’m guessing there are many people who agree with me, because Kannagi seems pretty popular. (Then again, Naruto and Gundam 00 are popular, so perhaps that’s not a clear indication of intent.)

If Nagi weren’t a virgin, none of that would change. The jokes would still be funny, the Earth would still spin, and fujoshi would still write Sasuke x Naruto fan fictions. But of course this is all hypothetical talk since:

1. The manga hasn’t actually revealed anything beyond the existence of an ex-boyfriend.
2. The question of whether forest gods, of whom Nagi is one, can have “virginity” still hangs in the balance.
3. Nagi is a fictional character.

I guess you can tell which side of this issue I stand on. But what I really wanted to talk about is something else that’s being demonstrated by this incident.

As anime fans, particularly foreign ones, we like to claim that anime is made for adults, that it is a diverse medium of creative expression, and that it is not “just cartoons”. These are not lies — it is certainly a fact that many anime titles being made today are not targeted at children — but they are only partial truths.

Are most anime titles made for adults? I don’t think so. If the fan base of Kannagi were adults, then Nagi’s virginity wouldn’t have been an issue, just as for example the virginity of the characters featured in a novel written for adults would be a non-issue. I would, however, expect a similar backlash if Hermione turned out to be engaged in under-age hanky panky, because it’s the typical reaction from the kind of fans Harry Potter attracts. This means that Kannagi, along with a great deal of popular anime titles, is closer to Harry Potter than Haruki Murakami.

How dare she act like a real girl!?

The truth is that Kannagi, like most anime being churned out today, is not targeted at just any adult, but specifically grown men with underdeveloped social faculty. I am not making an assertion about everyone who loves otaku-oriented titles, since I myself find Kannagi and certain similar titles to be pretty entertaining, but I am addressing the fact that these somewhat niche titles thrive financially thanks primarily to a dedicated social class of unmarried Japanese salarymen, a significant portion of whom has an altogether unrealistic expectation of women. That expectation manifests itself in anime due to both its prevalence within the subculture that includes the creators, and its commercial usefulness as a tool for boosting sales.

On hindsight and in view of such a reality, it was a huge mistake for the mangaka of Kannagi to exercise a bit of harmless creative freedom in introducing this plot development. The truth is that manga and anime are seldom the empty canvass we imagine them to be, and fan expectations tend to run higher than in most other forms of storytelling. The fandom simply doesn’t want to see realism featured in a character whom they had thought would be a typical undefiled anime idol.

It’s a shame too, because I personally feel that such little bits of realism add character and depth to an otherwise flat (literally and figuratively) and often self-conforming medium of entertainment.

Forest god and all, how do people even know she’s anatomically female?

I suppose it’s the same old tragic tale of the self-selecting vicious cycle: because anime titles that try to take the high road of matured storytelling don’t do very well commercially, the way to make a living in the industry is to invest in cookie-cutter otaku baits, and this in turn drives away from the genre any potential consumer who seeks higher-order gratifications.

It’s a lot like election campaigns really. We all like to criticize negative campaigners for “taking the low road”, and yet attack ads work remarkably well in getting votes. Perhaps anime is in need of its own Barack Obama.

JoJo’s Bizzare Adventure, an anime series based on a manga by the same name, is currently under fire from the Middle East for having a villain in the show read the Holy Koran while plotting the death of the protagonist.

Rather stupid if you ask me.

[ Source: JapanProbe | Itai-News ]

The original scene in the manga did not show the contain of the book. Since it is unlikely that anyone working on the show can actually read Arabic, someone probably decided to copy and past the text from a randomly-selected online source without knowing that it was an extract from the Koran.

Though it’s not their fault, Shueisha, the publisher of the manga, has posted a public apology of their website in both English and Japanese, with the Japanese version being notably shorter. Personally I wouldn’t apologize for such triviality, especially if the mistake wasn’t even my own, but then again I don’t run a multimillion-dollar company.

Not Terrorists

I just find it absolutely hilarious (in a sad way) that the companies involved have received death threats for supposedly depicting Muslims as terrorists. Sort of like, “How dare you say that our religion is violent? I’ll blow your company up and kill your family!” Oh irony.

This was probably a simple mistake on the part of some anonymous underpaid animator, but even if it weren’t, it’s really no big deal. The fact of the matter is that some Muslims are indeed terrorists, therefore it makes perfect sense to have Muslim terrorists appear in an fictional Arabic setting. I mean, some white folks are serial killers, and we have no problems with casting Caucasian actors as horror movie antagonists. It doesn’t have to be a general statement about an entire community of people, and it often isn’t. I’m pretty sure at least a few anime villains have quoted or alluded to the Bible before.

If anything, the tendency to over-react in such situations does more to reinforce the violent stereotype of Islam than anything else. The same with most angry protests really. As much as I may (or may not) sympathize with their cause, watching people burn effigies (whether it be Bush, Osama or Dalai Lama) and scream their lungs out simply extinguishes any desire on my part to be associated with what they stand for.

Relativism

Frankly, I think in our blind pursue of political correctness, we often overlook just how frightening extremism and radicalism in religion can be. When someone incurs the wrath of radical Islam, we are quick to denounce him as “culturally insensitive” or “ethnocentric”, among other convenient labels, placing all the blame squarely on the often unwitting offender. It’s a reverse knee-jerk reaction.

Few people pause to consider the flip side of the coin, for it seems almost a given that once religions are criticized (unfairly or not), it becomes perfectly acceptable for the believers to do whatever they fancy in seeking “justice”. And if the offender-turn-victim happens to have his life taken from him in the process, he can look forward to many a posthumous “serves you right” lecturing from his supposedly more worldly peers. (Assuming afterlife does exist.)

I find this quite a sad state of affairs, but I guess that describes the entirety of the human condition since 200,000 years ago. (2.5 million if you consider the entire homo genus as humans. Or 6,000 if you swing that way.)

P.S. Marina is Jewish.

Surprise! I bet you totally didn’t expect me to blog Code Geass, especially considering that awful parody video I made which should best be left to rot in the depths of hell, my MySpace account and the fact that I used to own code-geass.com.

That said, the fact that I’m a huge Kallen fanboy has absolutely nothing to do with why I have decided to blog R2.

OP Sequence

Miku miku ni shiteageru~âª

OMG who made her cry? T_T

Hurray for racial stereotypes!

For King and Country

Whose illegitimate child is this?

I hope this won’t be the eventual pairing…

Summary

Season 2 starts off with a fast-paced bang that manages to give airtime to most of the major characters that we have come to love/hate.

At the end of the first season, Lelouch faced off his former friend Suzaku and the confrontation ended inconclusively. Due to his (Zero’s) absence from the front line during the critical moment of the Black Knights’ insurgency, the Order was eventually crushed, with most of its senior members captured. (Kallen escaped, though.) Zero himself was announced to have died. Due to the failed revolt, Elevens are now mistreated even more badly than before.

Since then, Lelouch’s memories have been sealed off, presumably by C.C., and he has returned to his regular life as a Britannia student in Area 11.

Kinky

Interestingly, Villetta (the platinum blonde Knightmare pilot) is now a gym teacher at Ashford Academy, placing her right in the comedic relief section of the Geass cast, although that is probably going to change soon.

And I must have missed a few memos, but out of nowhere, Lelouch now has a younger brother called Rollo. Whatever happened to Nunnally?

mai waifu~

In the first episode, Lelouch and Rollo go to a high-rolling casino where Lelouch intends to challenge rich Britannian nobilities to chess as usual. Unknown to him, the remnants of the Black Knights are betting all their remaining strength on a plan to reunite with him and bring back his memories as Zero.

A secret royal military unit meanwhile has kept Lelouch under constant surveillance to lay an ambush and wipe out the Black Knights when they make a move.

chuuu~

The episode ends in (predictable) bloodshed, and Lelouch regains his memories in a déjà vu sequence that feels just like the first episode of the last season. Still, C.C. fans can rejoice.

Kallen and the rest of the Black Knights are once again under the command of Zero. (It seems that they all know his real identity now.)

Opinions

I think it’s a pretty good start. The feel is a bit too similar to the start of the first season, but I’m sure the story will diverge soon considering the difference between then and now, content-wise. The fact that Lelouch regains his lost memories in the first episode suggests that the comedic aspect of the show will probably be short-lived as compared to before.

At this point, Code Geass is pretty hard to screw up. Even if we are served more of the same, the well-established characters will probably pull the series through to the end. That said, I really do hope that Sunrise tries something different. Looking back, the most awesome shows from Sunrise are always the ones that try to be different from Gundam, while the rest suffer from the burdens of their past (“staying loyal to the franchise”) and are inevitably overshadowed by their similar predecessors.

I mean seriously, Sunrise. Let’s be creative and go all out! Make Kallen the main character! Kthx bye.

Screencaps

Isn’t this scene from that ero anime…

A familiar sight

Bunny kick

This alternate future is screwed up

Fanservice @_@

Poison gas

Suzaku is totally the villain now

Now if you would excuse me, I have to write a one-page report on postwar Japan’s new constitution… in Japanese.