It’s a highly-flawed show that is nevertheless engaging enough to draw you back for another. Or maybe not. Read on…

Nao Kanzaki is a down-to-Earth honest-to-God girl who has probably never told a single lie in her life before, i.e. a super boring and fictitious person. One day, she finds a box containing a hundred million yen outside her door, along with an invitation to participate in the “Liar Game Tournament”, a game where, as its name implies, you are supposed to lie and cheat other contestants out of their money, i.e. the worst game a girl like her could possibly take part in.

“Hi, I am Nao. Please cheat me of my money.”

Now it may seem like no big deal to get cheated out of your gajillion yen since yen is worthless and the money was provided by the organizers in the first place. However, the catch is that at the end of the game all players must return a hundred million yen back to the organizers or they will own your sorry ass with a camel whip. So if you manage to steal/cheat/rob money from other players, you will earn a net profit after returning your original portion of the money, whereas those gullible fools who got cheated will become sex slaves for the organizers to repay their debts. Players are allowed to use any means of obtaining their opponents’ money within a time limit of 30 days with no risk of being prosecuted by law.

“Those whose names are written in this notebook will…” Ops wrong show.

All the above rules were explained by this clown-like creep, who is apparently the dealer of this game, in this video tape that came along with the invitation. That thing freaks me out. It spent the entire duration of the video oscillating back and forth in a vaguely menacing manner while its face is transfixed in a perpetual fusion of shock and joy. And just what kind of secret organization powerful enough to be immune from law uses VHS tapes in this day and age. It would have been much more apt if the introductory video was sent via YouTube.

Fear my shiny bald head!

Of course Nao, being the kind and honest girl that she is, got owned by her opponent before the first commercial break. Boohoo. Desperate for help, she turned to an expert conman, Shin’ichi Akiyama, who was coincidentally just released from prison. He agreed to help her on the condition that he receives half of her prize money, which works out to fifty million yen. (Two hundred million yen in total between the two contestants, one hundred million goes back to the organizers, therefore the maximum prize money is one hundred million and half of it is fifty. Wow I are smart!)

Ignorance is bliss.

If Nao is the stereotypical good girl with a heart of pure gold, then Shin’ichi is the cold and fierce-looking misunderstood guy with a sad angsty past. What am I talking about, they ARE exactly that. These people do not exist in real life. They both piss the hell out of me with their predictability and shallow characters. So anyway, he agrees to help out and together they pull off a somewhat clever plan and etcetera etcetera. You can guess the rest.

“I am bad!”

While it sounds like I hate the show to its core, that is absolutely not true. The premise is actually pretty interesting and creates enough suspense for the viewer to feel a sense of anticipation for the final revelation of each arc. Although you have to admit that the timing of this whole thing most definitely points to an attempt at cashing in on the whole hype over pseudo-intellectual psychological thrillers started by Death Note. (Erika Touda, the actress of Nao, played Misa Misa in the movies.)

Ooo… lanterns.

Speaking of Erika, she, along with Shouta Matsuda (Shin’ichi), are the two largest flaws in the entire series. They just can’t act. I think she did a lot better as Mariko in Nobuta wo Produce because she didn’t actually have much acting to do. The thing she does best, and about the only thing she does well, is looking cute. Shouta on the other hand makes me want to punch his face out with his forced “I don’t give a damn” look that is more like “I’m trying to look like I don’t give a damn but I have no idea what I am doing”.

So far three episodes of Liar Game have aired and it appears that every two episodes will be one round of the tournament, with one “introductory” episode and one “revelation” episode, though I have never read the manga so I am not sure.

Despite the weak acting and other imperfections, the series benefits a great deal from its story concept and thus manages to maintain a sufficient level of interest for me to recommend it. So, uh, go watch it…or something.

P.S. the best part of episode one was when Nao was chased away by this Chinese road sweeper lady who basically said the equivalent of “fuck off” in Mandarin because she was sleeping in front of a shop house in this Chinatown-y place. Cool stuff.

What if Kyon gets the Death Note and Yuki is L? Who will die first? My bet is on Taniguchi. Pretty cool MAD video. XD

[ Source: おもしろまにあっくだvia Japanator ]

This has huge implications for anime fansubbing. For good or for bad.

But first, let’s take a huuuuge detour and look at a little comparison between fansubs and official DVD releases…

Speed

Fansubs have always been faster than commercial releases. Even if a show was pre-licensed and released with subtitles only, physical distribution just can’t beat BitTorrent.

Fansubs win by a wide margin.

Quality

Fansubs appear to have the upper hand with their fancy karaoke effects and typesetting, but in reality commercial translations are of significantly higher value. Personally, I would rather have professionally translated and edited subtitles than colourful effects. Official translations are done with the original script on hand, which makes a lot of difference compared to me translating Happiness! by ear.

Of course there are exceptionally good fansub translators, such as crustol who used to translate for AnimeOne, but they are extremely rare because if you are that good, you are usually getting paid to translate. Watching Triad’s Nanoha reminded me of just how bad fansubs are…

DVDs win. But I guess some people, such as Doremi fanboys, don’t care about translation quality. :P

Price

R1 DVDs are certainly not as overpriced as their R2 counterparts, but even factoring in the manufacturing cost, quite a huge portion of the price tag goes into overheads (wholesalers, retailers, transport…). Fansubs, like all other forms of piracy, are not exactly free. There is a moral cost involved which is dependent on your conscience and a risk cost involved which is dependent on your country’s copyright enforcement. Generally speaking, most fans want to support their favourite series and in that sense official DVDs have the advantage of providing a warm and fuzzy feeling after you purchase them…until you look into your emptied wallet.

It’s hard to compare this, so I have come up with a brilliant formula instead.

Makes no sense? Well I thought so…

To put it simply, fansubs are not free because money is not the only cost involved. However, fansubs generally still enjoy a “price” advantage because we are all heartless pirates and Big Brother has more things to worry about than cartoon pirates. Unless of course you live in Singapore. Ops.

Conclusion

Commercial releases are of higher quality than fansubs, (again, unless you live in Singapore. Ops.) but physical distribution is the fail. The only reason people like me buy DVDs is for the extras that come with the limited editions, which defeats the point of having DVDs at all.

In this age where data can be copied as many times as desired for almost no cost, it’s only a matter of time before the death of physical media arrives. Well, except for books because they provide a significantly different experience than from reading an e-book, whereas watching anime off a DVD or an exact digital copy makes zero difference to the viewer. So books are safe, that is of course until digital paper technology is perfected.

iTunes recently overtook Amazon as the 4th largest music retailer in USA. It’s only a matter of time.

What about anime?

It’s not going to happen overnight, but eventually the best model for the anime industry (at least IMO) is to legally distribute the anime episodes themselves as cheaply as possible to an audience as large as possible over the Internet, and then make a killing off selling merchandises (i.e. things that still hold meaning because they cannot be digitized…yet). It’s like how non-label bands give away their songs for free online and make money by holding live concerts and charging people $5 for a can of Coke.

By switching to digital distribution, the speed advantage of piracy is automatically gone. Commercial releases will still enjoy the advantage of higher quality. Because the overheads associated with physical distributions are gone, the price will be low enough (with a little push from fanboyism) to “underprice” the guilt+risk factors involved in piracy.

Now if only someone would take the first step…

…Or did Viz already?

I believe in a digital future. :P

Movie guide sold with all movies in Japan.
As if the movie tickets weren’t expensive enough.

There are a few major differences between the manga and the movie. Shiori is Raito’s girlfriend and Naomi (the FBI agent’s fiancee) plays a much larger role in the movie than she did in the manga. There are also numerous original scenes added, though not all of them suitable. For example, in the manga there was nothing about what happened between the time Raito picked up the Death Note and when Ryuku appeared in his room, whereas the movie fills that part in with some new scenes. Raito Yagami also seems to be a much more… emotional character in the movie than the manga, especially in the first half.

The FBI incident is also changed quite a bit. Naomi follows Raye (the FBI agent) onto the train and witnesses his death. She then vows to avenge Raye, which she does by holding Shiori hostage and threatening Raito to kill her if he wants to save Shiori.

The movie covers the mainly the introduction and the FBI incident, thus you don’t really get to see Misa Misa… As a fanboy that is bad. But she does look cute, almost as close as you can get to the manga version. Misa fans, look out for the second movie because it will cover the Misa chapters. :3

On another note, I’m not sure how many movies there will be, but the maximum number should be three. This movie is 前編 (First Part) and there will be a 後編 (Last Part) coming out in November.