Media observation #11

Hello everybody!

Disclaimer: Includes Yuri on Ice spoilers. ":D"

I'm gonna talk a little about fujoshi pandering/fujoshi baiting (to me, they're the one and the same). First to clear some terms: fujoshi is Japanese for "rotten girl", not a very nice term, but it means girls who are into reading/watching series that have gay guys or implied gay guys in them. Or just guys but the fujoshi want to see them together anyway. This term is used when talking about Japanese animation or Japanese comics mostly, I don't really know a word for a person who likes gay guys in Western media. Maybe "fujoshi" applies to them too.

Fujoshi baiting is pretty much the same thing as queer baiting. Let me quote Wikipedia: The term refers to what happens "when people in the media (usually television/movies) add homoerotic tension between two characters to attract more liberal and queer viewers with the indication of them not ever getting together for real in the show/book/movie". So, baiting is purely a marketing gimmick.

Fujoshi baiting has been a hot topic for the past years because a lot of the sports anime is about guys so the creators add little hints of "these characters might or might not have something going on" to attract fujoshis. Why do this? Because if a fujoshi likes what she sees, that means more money. It's like baking a cake: most of the eaters (=non-fujoshi) like it as it is and are willing to buy your cake but if you add one little cherry on the top you get a whole bunch of new potential cake-eaters (=fujoshi). This is why fujoshi baiting exists, at least in my opinion.

Case in point: Free! Iwatobi Swim Club. Totally not full of fujoshi baiting moments.

Why I'm talking about fujoshi baiting now is because of this on-going anime "Yuri!!! on ICE" or YoI for short. To me this anime is the most extreme fujoshi baiting series to this day. I honestly wonder how far the makers of this anime can take things without actually admitting that "yes, these two are into each other". I also wonder how anyone can watch this and not get the huge gay vibe it gives off. Um, let me show in a couple of pictures.

...and these are just a small portion of everything that's going on between them. The whole plot develops and moves forward because these two interact with each other. The writers basically write this huge tension between them and everyone's hooked. There's a lot of discussion whether these two actually will end up together or will this series just end up being a massive bait. I'm positive this will be a bait but that will make the series badly written in my opinion. The whole plot up to the middle of the first season is about the main character's sexual awakening which is all thanks to this silver-haired man appearing into his life. So if that's just brushed off as something that never happened, I'm gonna judge the writer pretty badly.

I wish the fujoshi baiting would stop actually. I only become sad because of it. Give me actual romance, not just hints that are never confirmed to be true. I've been longing for an anime that has a romance between two guys that develops just as normally as any other romantic relationship. Such thing just doesn't exist. Now some of you might raise their voices and ask "What about BL and shonen-ai?" (BL = boy's love, shonen-ai = romance between boys, both are genres). Well, BL or shonen-ai anime is not what I'm looking for. I've yet to find a shonen-ai anime that has this sort of slowly developing normal romance setting. In shonen-ai there's always somebody kissing someone else against their will or rape attempts or just otherwise stupid plots. I just want to see a normal romantic story. There's actually one movie I have my eyes on that seems promising, but can't say for sure yet because I haven't watched it .

I don't actually know what gay people think about fujoshis and fujoshi baiting. Do they see it as fetishization? This would also be an interesting topic to make research on.

Happy thoughts,
Oona

Oona talks about the presidental election as schoolwork: The blog post

Except that I'm not gonna talk. I don't know anything about politics. I personally loathe Trump for the things he has said and done, but I know nothing of Hillary and clearly she has done some bad things in her past because people are so emotional. I'm so tired with the world right now, everyone throwing insults and dead threats to each other. I don't want to discuss my personal views any more, I'm just gonna link this very angry man here.

Media observation #10

Hello everybody!

A week ago (4.-6.11.) there was an expo weekend in Helsinki, consisting of DigiExpo, GameXpo, Skiexpo, BoardExpo and Lätkä&Säbä (ice hockey and floorball). I went there with Pirre! Our main reason to go there was because the Finnish cosplay championships were a part of GameXpo and I also got a free ticket because the expo used our musical's prop as a decoration there.

Me and our sweetie Gyarados, who was doing a superb job at being a decoration!

The expo hall was quite big and everything fit there surprisingly well. However I'm used to sharing nerdy culture with other nerds so it felt a little odd to walk there among all the non-nerds who were there for for example the Skiexpo.

There were mainly lots of booths. In the GameXpo section there were booths for Xbox, Nintendo and Playstation, but also for Turku game research lab, a board game association and some others too. There was a Just Dance booth where you got energy drinks if you just played one song so all the young boys were dancing there in hopes of getting an energy drink. It was funny. Keep on dancing fellas!

At Digi-Game stage were held small gaming competitions and also short interviews with game makers. I went to partly listen to some small speeches about VR and AR. I was expecting a little more from those but then again I just went to Mindtrek to hear about those things so no wonder there was nothing new for me.

Program on the digi-game stage.

I used the time before the cosplay competition to wander and goof around with my friends, some of which I hadn't seen in a long time. I didn't attend all the expos even though I could've (the ticket included all of them), but I did take a peek at DigiExpo and Skiexpo. Otherwise there wasn't much to do since the program wasn't interesting enough and all the gaming consoles were swarming with teenage boys. So yeah, I was goofing around.

I was personally very excited about the cosplay competition because three of my friends were competing there and my favourite Finnish odottemita group PUREmode was also performing. The competition was pretty nice, I liked it a lot more than the basic cosplay competitions you see in Finland. I also was more entertained than while watching the European championships so good job Finland! Hapsu's Barbossa skit was exceptional, it really made me laugh a lot! Congratulations on winning the solo competition! If I'd have to give some negative feedback to the organizers it was the volume of the music: it really hurt the audience's ears. But I heard it had to be loud because there was a rapper having a gig nearby the competition stage... Maybe a better expo scheduling would've been in place or the competition could be held in more suitable environment.

The winners and runner-ups. The first three from the left were the winners of the group category and the winner of the solo competition is the fourth from the right. Photo taken by Nyymix.

I'm proud of my friends for competing even though they didn't get a prize. I'm so happy that they got their beautiful costumes and skits done in time and had the courage to take part in the competition. ♥

As an experience the expo was OK. I probably will not attend again unless the Finnish championships are held there again. Someone has suggested that a better environment would be a handicraft expo and I partly agree on that. So, we'll see where the future takes us.

Happy thoughts,
Oona

Media observation #9

Hello everybody!

Since I'm at the storytelling & scriptwriting course at the moment and narrative has been a topic on this course as well, I thought I'd write a little about the movie "How to Train Your Dragon". This post is one big spoiler about that movie so don't read if you still haven't seen it!

When this movie first came out, I wasn't interested at all. I found the theme of "dragon hunting vikings" a bit boring and maybe even old-fashioned. My friends and the people in internet however love this movie so I got a little interested in it and finally ended up watching it this week.

I'm not going to write out the whole plot here but this is basically how the movie starts: The movie tells a story of a young viking named Hiccup. He lives in a viking village which is constantly under attack by dragons. It's a tradition that vikings kill dragons and Hiccup is eager to become a true viking. He's a pretty small and slim boy with a tendency to be clumsy so other's don't really see him as a potential dragon slayer. One night the village is attacked by dragons once again and Hiccup goes hunting for the legendary dragon called "Night Fury", which nobody has seen. With the catapult Hiccup made himself, he manages to hit a dragon which falls down to the middle of the forest. He goes searching for his prey and finds out he'd captured Night Fury. In the end, he's unable to kill the dragon and frees it, however they'll cross paths again...

As a practise, I tried to think of how the movie would fit the Syd Field "Paradigm", which is an example of the classic Hollywood narrative. I can't say if the results of my thinking are exact but at least I tried!

ACT I
I'd say the inciting incident is when Hiccup captures Night Fury. That sets the whole plot into motion. The 1st plot point would be the moment when Hiccup tries to tell his dad that he's unable to kill dragons and his father refuses to listen, making Hiccup join the dragon hunter training.

ACT II
First half
Hiccup joins the hunter training and tries to train Night Fury/Toothless in secret at the same time. I'd say the first pinch would be when Hiccup almost falls off of Toothless' back while flying.
Midpoint
Hiccup makes progress in school and with Toothless' training.
Second half
I think the second pinch is when Astrid finds out about Toothless. The second plot point would be when Toothless comes to protect Hiccup in the final test of his school's training and is captured instead.

ACT III
Vikings set sail to dragon's nest making Toothless to lead the way. The climax would be the battle and victory against Red Death, a gigantic dragon. The resolution to the whole plot would be humans becoming more friendly towards dragons.

I think the movie did fit the classic Hollywood narrative pretty nicely. I also tried to compare it to Hero's Journey but the plot didn't seem to fit it that well.

I liked this movie for many reasons and I'd like to list a few of them down below:

• The main character was a nerd: building all sorts of machines and things
• It promoted the message of understanding each other instead of just killing the enemy
• I always love it when a boy doesn't have to be a manly macho man to save the day and get the girl (Although we can argue about the necessity of the love story between Hiccup and Astrid...)
• At the end, both of the main characters have a prosthesis. It's always nice to see big movies include a wider spectrum of people as main characters.

I'd recommend this movie to people who like watching animations. It's a bit cheesy and corny at times but at it's core it's a sweet story. I'll probably watch the sequel(s) too at some point!

Happy thoughts,
Oona

Media observation #8

Hello everybody!

This time I'd like to give a small shout-out to one of my favourite (if not favourite) animation troupe: gekidan INU CURRY, which composes of Doroinu and 2shiroinu. It's a troupe from Japan and they take inspiration from Russian and Czech stop-motion animation styles. They've most known for making witch animations for anime series called "Puella Magi Madoka Magica", which is also my favourite anime series, partly thanks to gekidan INU CURRY creating a wonderful atmosphere with their graphics.

Above you can see some of their work in Puella Magi Madoka Magica from around 0:26 forward. The girls are not animated by them. As you can see, their style is very naive yet very nightmarish at the same time. I really like the contrast. Also Yuki Kajiura's music really compliments their style and vice versa.

They've also done other works as well, for example Usagi Drop's and Maria Holic's ending sequences but also a music video for Maaya Sakamoto's song "Universe". I recommend taking a look, I embedded the video below.

I find it hard to find information about them online, mostly because I don't really understand Japanese. But I really adore their style, it's so cute, creepy, creative and full of surprises. Their art makes me want to experience different styles as well and test my artistic boundaries. They also have a webpage (where I took the images below), but it seems that they don't really update it any longer.

 

I hope you guys found this interesting because to me it's super interesting!

Happy thoughts,

Oona

Delivering news on events through VR

Hello everybody!

Our task this week at class was to think of a new way to deliver news. We thought it would be cool if there were VR news about different sorts of events. We had been talking a lot about VR on the passing weeks so this idea came to us pretty naturally.

So the concept of this news channel is that we'd get to experience events via VR. For example, an art museum, a gig, a football match etc. could be what the service provides to it's viewers. I thought that some of the footage could be a reportage of an event and some would be just pure live stream where you'd get to experience things from your own home.

We were thinking that the service would be available online and maybe through an app as well. These services would have an "upcoming events" list as well. In my opinion our service is best enjoyed with a pair of VR glasses but watching a 360 video without the glasses should be interesting too.

Since our "news channel" is all about delivering cultural events, we thought it would be nice if people could give heads-up about upcoming events that could otherwise be left unnoticed. Different sorts of exciting events should keep people coming back. Also we'd have a chat where you could discuss about the events, which you could also do in our social media channels. We'd also allow people to send their own (moderated) footage.


I would really enjoy this sort of VR news service because there are a lot of events all around the world I can't attend. I would've totally watched a couple of gigs in Japan through VR if that would've been possible. But I'm positive things are moving towards that direction anyway.

I've included the slides from our presentation in this blog post, as you probably noticed!

Happy thoughts,

Oona

Media observation #7

Hello everybody!

As some might know, 2016 is the 20th anniversary of Pokémon! Pokémon is a game series from the beginning of the 90's which has grown to be one of the most popular series ever with lots of spin-offs, animated series and a whole bunch of merchandise. The goal of these games is usually to catch creatures called Pokémon, beat the bad guys and become the best Pokémon trainer by defeating other strong trainers.

For the celebration of Pokémon's 20th anniversary, Nintendo is publishing new Pokémon games called "Pokémon Sun" and "Pokémon Moon". They will include new Pokémon alongside the old ones and also new "Alolan forms"of already existing Pokémon. I find the idea very interesting, because of course when species live in different areas they mutate to look a bit different. Some Pokémon are executed very well, like Exeggutor and Vulpix, but some of them (at least for me) were a huge letdown.

Alolan Exeggutor. So bad it's good.

The reason why I'm writing this thing (alongside being a huge Pokémon fan for most of my life) is because I stumbled upon this article. Pokémon Sun and Moon are already breaking records even before their release! They're the most pre-sold games in Nintendo history and their special demo has been downloaded more than any other Nintendo 3DS demo. Way to go Pokémon! I'm excited to see if the games will break any sales records when they're officially released in November.

I'm of course getting myself a copy of Pokémon Moon. I'm actually not too excited about the new games, I mean I love Pokémon and I want to celebrate it's 20th anniversary but Nintendo has made some changes I'm unsure about so I'll see if the games are actually worth the wait and money when I get myself a copy. The predecessor games Pokémon X and Y were SO good it'll be hard to top them. But I'll try to stay positive. At least there's this new little friend, Mimikyu! It even has it's own official song... ;__; #TeamMimikyu #MimikyuSavesEverything

Gotta catch 'em all!
Happy thoughts,
Oona