I’m sorry that it took so long for me to get to this. The questions were really good this time and made me think, but it was just my crazy schedule that kept me from answering them, not the complexity. Thanks to everyone who asked questions for this round of “Now, This is Only My Opinion” and I’ll definitely look forward to the next round in spring!

***

Charles asks: Do you believe that Simoun might have been viewed by a larger audience if everyone in the series was Female?

After some serious thought on this, I have to say no. I think it would have been more popular if the bulk of the cast was female, but the lead was male and the plot was much, much simpler. There is a reason why harem anime is eternally popular and profitable. Complexity is not it. Dorky boys surrounded by beautiful girls who fawn over him, is. If the creators had gone for a Gundam-like franchise – which was not at all where they were going with Simoun – the lead would still have to be male for the average fanboy to care.

Haruchin asks: I was wondering if you might be able to identify some key characters in anime who speak in specifically accented Japanese? My favourite accent is the Kyoto dialect, so in the interests of narrowing the search, I’ll limit the question to Kyoto-ben in particular. We all know about Shizuru, but are there any others out there?

This did take some work, but thankfully not so much that I began to resent you. ^_^ Obviously, the Osaka-ben is instantly identifiable to many fans, and a lot of popular seiyuu use their Osakan roots to bring this across. Hisakawa Aya, one of my perennial favorites, is known for her Osaka-ben as Ichino in Battle Athletes and Kero-chan in Card Captor Sakura. And Ueda Kana, who also hails from Osaka, has used her native accent in several roles, including Mikan from Gakuen Alice. (Which really does explain the moment in the 17th Marimite novel when Yumi inexplicably speaks with an Osakan accent.) But as you say, Kyoto-ben is somewhat rarer. Interestingly, shortly after you asked this, I read a Mist magazine story in which one of the characters spoke with Kyoto-ben. It took me a moment to catch on because it looked so odd. ^_^

But, to answer your question, I found a nice little resource here which discusses “Kansai” accents and the qualities thereof: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KansaiRegionalAccent

They offer these characters as examples: Konoka in Mahou Sensei Negima, and Akesato in Peacemaker Kurogane.

I also found this surprisingly excellent answer on Yahoo Answers about the differences between the various regional accents and Standard Japanese that might be of interest to anyone who enjoys language in and of itself: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071201204112AAzJM2u

Anonymous wonders: Are there any academically peer-reviewed articles on yuri? What’s the state of yuri scholarship?

The answer to the first is “no.” The state of “Yuri scholarship” is that it is just starting to be a thing in and of itself. James Welker writes articles about lesbian readings of early BL/Yaoi magazines, and I have begun to get inquiries from people interested in pursuing research about Yuri, but as of yet, I have not seen any peer-reviewed academic research about Yuri. I hope the folks that have sent me inquiries will be kind enough to send me references to their works when they are published, but there is a general sense of frustration that no one has already written this so they can quote it. (Primary research is a bitch. ^_^)

I look forward to seeing some decent research on Yuri in the coming years.

Anonymous mentions: So why do some European cities have this bizarre spelling in English? Firenze is Florence, Venezia is Venice, Köln is Cologne, München is Munich, etc. What’s up with all of that?

Language. It’s totally freakish. I blame the Germanic tribes who came to England and didn’t know they didn’t know Romance languages, and the Normans who came to England who didn’t care about the right way to pronounce Germanic words. And above all, I blame Latin for being dead, but not dying out properly.

Anonymous writes: About how many people usually show up at the Yyuricon events? and do you know how seven seas yuri title sales doing compared to their other titles? and! is venus virus really not a yuri title?

I don’t keep exact count, because I really don’t care how many people come to an event. I haven’t seen any sales figures for Seven Seas’ Strawberry Line at all, much less as compared with their other titles. And I believe that there is not a single iota of anything like real affection/interest/desire between Lucia and Sumire, so no, it has no Yuri. It has Yuri-service, which is to say that screencaps and splash art imply a relationship that does not exist, so people with no discrimination see a relationship.

Scareknee wants to know: Currently, one of things I am looking to do as a job is be a librarian. How would you describe the job and how does one become a librarian? As in, any necessary degrees or whatnot?

I can totally answer that one! lol The job will differ depending on the environment you choose: academic, K-12, special, corporate, public, etc. And if you specialize in the technical aspects, you’ll be dealing with anything from the computer network to cataloging books, depending on your specialty. I’m a researcher, which means I do exactly what I’m dong *right now* all day long – answering people’s questions about who all knows what. lol And I love my job. I work in a corporate library.

The absolute best way to get any idea of what a library job can be like is to volunteer or get a part time job at a local library. You’ll get to see what it all means and how it all works. In order to get a “para-professional” job – that is, a job that supports the librarians, like document delivery, or library assistant – you’ll need at least a 4-year degree. For a professional job, you’ll want a MLS or MLIS as they call it now – a Master of Library and Information Science degree. If you put “MLIS program” into Google, you’ll see some schools with programs pop up. But you can also look at the American Library Association or Special Libraries Association websites for more info on a program near you. I went to Rutgers – its as good as any of them. :-) Best of luck to you – let me know when you graduate!

Anonymous inquires: Firstly, which flavours of pizza do you think each member of the Yamayurikai prefer? (my guess is that Shimako’s is whatever Sei-sama’s is…. and that Sachiko, if she could be persuaded at all, would have something like foie gras.)

Secondly, how would they resolve the inevitable dispute when ordering the pizza as to how much of each kind to get?

Sachiko is simply fascinated by the process of purchasing pizza, and she’ll eat whatever Yumi orders. Shimako favors strong flavors like anchovies and olives and Sei always asks for weird things, like taramosalata or corn smut. Youko prefers mushrooms, Eriko always orders pineapple because it makes everything else taste weird. Rei and Yoshino both like ham (and don’t mind the pineapple with that,) Noriko prefers plain old pepperoni, and likes olives, too. Yumi likes pepperoni or plain or corn. Touko doesn’t really have a preference, but she argues anyway. She eats whatever Yumi eats, too.

They never dispute the pizza issue. Whoever orders is considerate enough to get something everyone can agree on. They don’t let Sei order, or Sachiko. Sei orders weirdly and Sachiko takes too long, inquiring about toppings they don’t have. (Although Yumi is starting to think that she’s doing it on purpose.)

Frea posits the following: If you can only use one utensil the rest of your life for both eating and cooking, what would it be?

Spoon, no question. The answer was unanimous here. We’d all happily be spoons.

Have you read any good (non-anime/manga related) books lately?

Hell yeah. I am 7 pages from the end of Thomas Pynchon’s 1100 page Against the Day. Fabulous book – awesome writer. I also recently read a bunch of trashy lesbian novels which I have been and will be reviewing here on Okazu.

Have you read any of the other books of the Dune series? If so, how were they?

I read the first 5. The first one was excellent, then they degraded from there. The best part of the series is the National Lampoon spoof Doon, the Dessert Planet which I quote constantly.

What’s your opinion about fansubs/scanlations? Do you think they affect the anime industry?

I think that they are not a bad thing in and of themselves. Assuming we’re talking non-licensed material. They bring anime and manga that is otherwise not available to a wider audience and create a fanbase. BUT. They also bring a false sense of entitlement and ownership to the fans. The problem is, simply, that fansubbers/scanlators and their consumers are killing the anime/manga they purport to love. Justin Sevakis wrote a really cogent “open letter” to the industry both here and in Japan and I thought he not only summed up the problem exceedingly well, he also suggested a sensible way to approach an answer.

What is the origin of the terms “neko/tachi”?

This one took some work! Japanese Wikipedia on Lesbian Terms says that Tachi” comes from “Tachiyaku” the leading role of Kabuki, i.e., the male lead. There is no etymology provided for “Neko” on Ja.wikipedia, but just now, looking around I see one site (no sources) that says that “neko” comes from “nemu” + “ko” – meaning, the girl you sleep with.

Anonymous requests: Is yuri a reinvention of esu and ome? What’s the relationship between “esu and ome” and yuri? What has persisted from esu and ome? What has vanished?

That’s not really a nutshell answer question – it’s more like the subject of a whole paper. ^_^

“Ome” and the term that superseded it, “Esu” were both related to early 20th century socio-political feminist (and associated lesbian) movements. Like the American feminists of the 1970s, there was both an assumption of purity in an all-female society – a power in “sisterhood” (Esu) – and a split over whether the next step, political lesbianism, should be embraced or rejected. I won’t attempt to make any conclusions about any of the above. I’m just summing up the situation. The term “Yurizoku” was coined at just about the time that the “Lavender menace” appeared and again, it’s well beyond my ability to make any direct connection, except to say that the the post-Stonewall 1970s were a time of socio-political upheaval everywhere and gays and lesbians all over the world were starting to speak up.

In as much as one can say that every generation reconstructs the one before them, the answer to your question is yes – and no.

No first. No, because “Yuri” was reinvented, not by lesbians seeking identity, but by men using the newly coined word to label lesbian sex for their own titillation. These doujinshi artists and porn makers were not looking backwards to the roots of Japanese lesbian identity.

But, yes. Because *I* was. Yuri was imported to the west with that meaning of “porn for men.” Then I got a hold of it and reinvented the word to include not only the explicit lesbian porn, but stories of romance, and even more importantly – stories written *by* women, by lesbians, for a female/lesbian, audience (something that in Japan is still not called “Yuri.”) So, yes, I purposefully reached back to the roots of Esu, to Yoshiya Nobuko’s works, and gathered in everything that reflects lesbian experience under the umbrella “Yuri.” The fact that Yuri is commonly seen as a genre for women here in the US (I base this on the emails I receive and the interviews I have done) means that I’ve been successful in my “reclaiming” of the term.

I hope that this is a coherent enough answer, ’cause it’s all you’re gonna get without me being paid by the word. ^_^

Diana asks: Whenever or wherever I read manga or watched anime someone will said something like this to me ‘What are you? 12?’. As I’m 20 years younger than you, so, why do you think they said that to me and what am I suppose to tell them back?

The reason they say that is that their only experience of anime is Pokemon and the like. Face it – most anime is marketed here to children. Not teens – children. And this is that three-second moment you get when someone who doesn’t give a shit asks you something in an aggressive manner forcing you to respond quickly because they really don’t care, they just wanted to pretend to. Depending on your mood, you could try “I’m young at heart.” Or if you were feeling sarcastic you could try, “Yes. ‘Survivor’s’ too complex for me.” But it’s probably not worth the effort. I’d smile, shrug and say, “There’s more than just Pokemon in the world of anime” and move on.

***

Well, that’s it for this round! That was a lot of work guys! LOL but it was fun. Great questions – I hope my answers don’t suck. Thanks to everyone who wrote in!

I’m about 16 hours away from boarding a plane to head out for a week on a white beach under the dangerously bright sun for the first time in 17 years. I am in no way promising to review a damn thing while I’m gone. In fact, I sincerely hope to not think about anime or manga at all while I read trashy lesbian pulp novels and drink fruity girl drinks poolside.

But I will have access to the intertubes, so who knows. I might post. I will certainly read – if not respond to – my email.

So this seems like a good time to solicit questions for the twice annual Utter Nonsense fest. This time please feel free to ask questions that actually require a bit of research, as well as those I can answer glibly with a elitist intellectual sneer. ~_-

When I get back, or when I feel like it…eventually, at any rate, I’ll collect the set and answer the ones I like. :-) (I found an old one that I never answered, so we’re already off to a good start.) Questions can be about anything, I don’t really care, but again try and make the “reference” questions ones I can answer with a little work, not a research paper’s worth. And please, don’t try and stump me. I’m not a quiz show. lol

I’ll be doing one more review tonight before I go. Then, please feel free to read back over the 860 posts that are already here and get enraged at my opinions all over again for the first time. :-)

See you when I get back!

Some of you may know this already – by day I am an “Information Professional,” which is what we in the profession call the job that everyone else calls “Librarian.” :-)

I am a researcher for a consumer healthcare company and to be blunt, I love my job. I have the greatest job in the world. My job title is “Information Scientist” – if I was at a public library, I’d be called a “Reference Librarian.” I’m the person people come to to find out stuff they don’t know but want or need to know. Anything from a phone number to the kinds of products with certain ingredients on the market, to professional literature searches, to “we heard this thing about this company, can you find anything about it?” It’s a great job.

I am currently writing from a professional conference, at which lots of Information Professionals get together, network, train with other IPs and generally pretend to be extroverted. (And we’re definitely getting better at it. We’ve mostly learned to fake social skills to the point that most people who don’t know us well can’t tell that we’re not people people.) And, btw, Librarians are the *coolest* people in the world. We are so on top of the current technology, despite what some people assume, because of the mean, medieval Librarian they knew in middle school. Because we are geeks and can’t help ourselves :)

There are libraries who have Second Life presences, are active on Facebook, MySpace, etc, and a lot of Librarians run free chat services where you can ask a Librarian questions, and stuff like that.

If your local public library doesn’t have services like that, it’s most likely not because they don’t want to – even if you think that’s the reason. (For some reason we *always* erroneously attribute things like that to personal issues. E.g., “They hate manga.”) The real reason is that public libraries are run on public funds and they are probably horribly underfunded. Write your local council and tell them that you WANT more manga, chat reference and better services at your local library. It’s *your* tax dollars at work.

Want cheap manga? Don’t download – go to the library. It’s FREE. No strings, except that they ask you to bring it back when you’re done. It’s free, it’s legal and every book you take out shows them that there is interest in manga, so they get more.

My local library has a completely craptastic website…but they have an *awesome* manga section. It’s separated into YA and Adult and I browse there all the time. I wrote them and told them that they were doing a great job and they responded that they were doing their very best to do just that.

Your library doesn’t have manga? Ask. Trust me, the librarian *is* interested in what you want. Explain that it’s a fast-growing segment of the American book market, and that it appeals to and encourages young people to read. If the person behind the counter seems resistant, or confused – be patient. A lot of local libraries have mostly volunteers – many of whom are older and are probably not up on this stuff. Find the person who makes decisions (the “acquisitions manager” or person in charge of “collection development”,) and suggest that they read the “Graphic Novels” reviews in Library Journal (don’t worry if you’ve never heard of this…they have.) Get some local people to help you – friends, kids you know, your parents. Write up a proposal and get names from people in town. You *can* change things. If your local library is just too small to get the budget – go up a step to the county library.

(True story. About twenty years ago, I asked for a book at my county library. They InterLibrary Loaned (ILL) it for me. Then another and another. At some point I asked why this library didn’t have very much GLBT fiction and everything was coming in by loan. The Librarian, who was a very abrasive person, explained condescendingly that there wasn’t a big audience for it. I walked away, went into the reference room, looked up the county census – since it was a county library – and composed a letter to the head of Reader’s Services. I explained that at an estimate of 10% of the population of the county, XXX,000s of people were likely to be GLBT. I assumed that they might be interested, as well as straight people who might simply like one of those authors or stories, and concluded that there was, in fact, a sizeable potential audience that was not being served. A week later, three of the books I had ILLed appeared on the “New Books” shelf and they’ve been pretty good about picking up GLBT fiction and non-fiction since. The moral of this story is – no one messes with a Librarian, not even another Librarian. LOL. No, I’m joking, the moral is – this is YOUR library. You can make a difference.)

If you’re lucky enough to live in a well-off, cutting edge area, you might find your local library online, on LJ, on Second Life, etc., and you can probably access all their services right from your computer, even if they have a meh website. Chances are that they have their catalog and all sorts of databases for free – not to mention the professional expertise of people like myself, all to help you find what you need. Got a question? Call the library. Need an article/book/CD/DVD/podcast/manga/resource? Call the library. Don’t know where to start on the web to find something and Google is bringing up junk? Call the library. There are zillions of databases that have information that Google cannot find – but your local library can. (The wife wants me to tell you that she is on a first-name basis with the reference librarians at our library. Even with the web, and married to a librarian, she uses their expertise all the time.)

Every time I attend one of these conferences, I’m reminded how little time I have to really put Yuricon everywhere I want to be. As I’ve mentioned previously, I have accounts on LJ, MySpace, Mixi and I just opened up a Facebook account. I’ll always try to post news in these places, but there’s no way I have time to be active everywhere. If I had time, I would so have a SL account with a virtual 24/7 Yuricon event. How cool would that be? But I have that darn day job, so I can’t.

In the meantime, I will attempt to get the word about Yuri, Yuricon and ALC Publishing out there as widely as I can. I need your help – if you have an account on any of these networks, friend me and we can connect that way. Of course there’s always Okazu and the Yuricon Mailing List, which are the places I’m most likely to be found and that I always update first.

This morning’s keynote speech by Joe Janes was awesome. In it, he said that as reference librarians, we were *born* to answer people’s questions, to do research, to find out “stuff.” (And I am, absolutely.) He suggested that since we are already out there doing outreach, being present on a zillion sites, blogging, riding the leading edge – as Librarians always have – we ought to also be out there doing the reference we always do in these places. Joe called it “slamming the board” and mentioned Yahoo Answers as an example. I had to laugh – I’ve been answering questions there for some time. Sure I don’t answer every day, or every question, but when someone needs something that I can find or that I know, I do it. *Because I can’t help myself.* :-)

Which brings me to this: I am once again soliciting questions for my twice annual “Now This is Only My Opinion.” If you have questions about what I think – about anything, feel free to put them in a comment here. But this time, if you have a question that you’d like answered, something that might take a bit of work, I’ll see what I can do. No promises and please, don’t try to come up with something to stump me – I’m only doing this for fun! LOL

What was my point here? Oh yes – get thee to a library!!

So. I’m watching Nanoha StrikerS and two of my chief minions, Serge and Sean, keep telling me how much the fandom hates it. Apparently it is not epic enough, or loli enough or Yuri enough or something else enough. Or too much of all of the above. Or something else.

One of the most laughable complaints was that it wasn’t as incredible as the first season. Apparently the folks who agreed with that had forgotten (or perhaps were unaware) that the first season was a blantant ripoff of Card Captor Sakura. Nanoha was conceived of quite specifically as a “magical girl” series for guys,  as opposed to the audience of girls towards which CCS was targeted. With the usual retrofitting that goes on in fans’ heads that the first thing, the last thing, the anything-other-than-what-I-am-watching-now, was SO MUCH better, fandom hated StrikerS. (Go ahead, ask any fan what their favorite con was, and I guarantee that most of them will tell you that it was the first con their were at, without realizing it. “This con was so much better then” they will say without irony, not recognizing that it is they who have raised their expectations, wanting every year to somehow be as amazing as that first time, when they were new and it was all exciting.)

I don’t read forums. I don’t care about fandom. I enjoyed the hell out of StrikerS and hope it comes to DVD soon, so I can marathon it on a big screen with extra speakers. ^_^

The new You’re Under Arrest Full Throttle premiered, and once again, forum fandom panned it, I was informed. Not Yuri enough (No, really? That’s because it isn’t a Yuri series, duh!) Not something something enough. Or too much. I thought it was *exactly* what one would expect from YUA. Ridiculous chases, strong bond between Miyuki and Natsumi, absurd plot holes and “you can do it” ending. Call me crazy, but it looked just like You’re Under Arrest to me.

And then I read Zyl’s post on YUAFT. And suddenly, it all made sense.

Before I go into my moment of satori, I want to tell you a true story. I have a friend who was a big anime fan. But slowly, his involvement in anime fandom wore him down. He is a very sensitive, smart guy and a deep thinker and the constant barrage of stupidity in forums and lists ate at him. And then anime itself betrayed him by being insipid and tedious. He kept looking for an anime that made him think and wasn’t for the lowest common denominator. After a few that had potential turned out to be crap, he gave it up entirely.

Here’s the moral of the story: He had ridiculous expectations. Of *course* he was going to be disappointed, because anime is entertainment for masses of fans, not high art. Sure, once in a while a show that is significantly better than the rest will appear – and usually the masses will hate it, or not understand it, or just go “buh?” “Lowest Common Denominator” means something – it’s not just a phrase.

So here is my moment of satori. When Zyl quoted Galadriel’s monologue at the beginning of his post, I realized why I can enjoy anime when my friend can no longer. And why I LOVED StrikerS when fandom generally hated it. Or why I thought Simoun was brilliant when most of the people who watched it gave up by episode 3 because they didn’t understand it. Or Mai Otome when it was a stupid fanfic of the angst-heavy original.

Because I have no, or low, expectations.

It’s cartoons. It’s comics. This is time-sink entertainment. For *fun*.

I don’t go into any series – especially sequels, which in every media have historically been ass as compared with the original anything – assuming it will be anything at all, much less as good or better than whatever has come before it. And as animation, tropes of the genre, character design and fan expectations change over time, when we’re talking something like YUA, or Bubblegum Crisis, it’s absurd to assume that the new version can even be compared with the original. They are, essentially, two completely different things and should be approached as two completely different things. If it turns out to be on par with the original, well good. If not…oh well. The question one should ask is – is it at least good for what it is?

IF an anime or manga rises above the muck to attain something special, great. But it seems totally silly to *assume* that any particular anime will. (Fans who came to Yuri through Utena are especially prone to this kind of cognitive dysfunction, because that anime was so unique, there’s darn little that will even approach that kind of surrealism. In a sense that was what happened to my friend. he kept looking for the next Utena and when every other anime turned out to be tripe, he felt burned.)

But Utena was an exception – Galaxy Angels is the norm. “Service” serves the socially/sexually/emotionally immature and/or dysfunctional who are – no matter how many times we deny it – still a large portion of the anime audience.

To preserve my enjoyment of anime, I avoid forums generally, and series-specific fandoms at all costs. People get really freaky about things and it does burn one out. But, I also weigh each anime I’m watching on the greater scale of “For what it is – how good is it?” So something like Strawberry Panic for a parody, was very successful and after I got the stick out of my ass, I was even able to enjoy it for what it was. Simoun was a unique look at a complex society, was also very good and I was able to enjoy it because of what it was. Ditto StrikerS (action-adventure magical girl for moe fans) and Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora (recycled crap from Kaishaku strung together by a series of fetishes and a thin plot.)

I’m not saying that you should lower your expectations. I’m just saying that I think that I’m still watching anime with pleasure after more than ten years because 1) I avoid fandom in general, and; 2) I manage *my* expectations. ^_^

And that was my moment of satori.

Before I end today’s ramble, I want to share with you one more thing. In a few months, I will be doing my Top Ten Yuri countdowns, but the best anime of the year won’t be on them, because it is not Yuri in any way at all. So while we’re talking about managing expectations, I just want to say that, the BEST, by far and away, anime of 2007 – and quite possibly the best anime I have *ever* watched in my entire life to date – is Seirei no Moribito. Art, story, characters, music, acting, EVERYTHING, surpasses pretty much ever other anime I have ever seen.

This series epitomizes what anime can be. But once you’ve watched it, don’t spend the next few years looking for the next Seirei, or you’re bound to be disappointed. ^_^ Enjoy it for what it is (action, adventure, mythological epic fable of an ancient kingdom that never was) and then turn away and watch the next thing with a clear mind and no expectations. And then, you’ll probably enjoy that too. ^_^