Sensei's Gallery now open again

[sensei]

I've gotten some questions about my signature, asking particularly if I am doing a big update. Actually, I'm not, though once May comes along I'll have a few things to add. Mostly I'm doing deferred maintenance, replacing crappy old scans with new ones. Unfortunately, with the present Rubberslug platform, often the only way this can be done is to add the item to the gallery, copying the old description but using the new scans. That generates a spurious "Gallery Updated" notice on the RS main page, which I'd rather not do unless I am genuinely adding new material. So I've "closed" the gallery (actually just delisted it -- it is still live for anyone who wants to stop by and see how things are going).

In the process I'm doing a lot of work on the descriptions of sketches, to give more accurate identifications of artists. I've learned a few new tricks that help me supplement ANN's staff listings for shows that I collect with more detailed information posted by Japanese anime fans. So for instance I've been able to solve some mysteries in my Tenshi ni Narumon collection by getting a more detailed listing of who served as animation director (episode director, scriptwriter, etc.) for which episode.

So, as with some other newly updated galleries (Quacker's, for instance, and KuroiTsubasa4's) I'm developing the factual side of the descriptions to give more credit to the individual animators and give a sense of their trajectories in the anime world. There are surprises: who'd have thought that one of the junior animators for Tennimon would soon be character designer for Samurai 7? Or that TnN's Step 19, the surreal episode in which Noelle learns to fly through the power of flatulence, was scripted by an upwardly mobile writer who was to be the overall plot supervisor of, among others, Gravitation, Princess Tutu, Genshiken, and Squid Girl?

One of the challenges of collecting is to see the material in terms of art rather than in a purely fetishistic way of "owning" a character or a significant moment. As enjoyable as that is, I think as time wears on the actual significance of much anime art will have more and more to do with the artists involved, especially in sketchwork.

Anyone interested in this approach can have a sneak through my new "Quirky Tour,"which focuses on roughs and shuusei, the parts of sketch sets done by senior animators who can often be identified by name (and, when you learn their individual stylistic quirks, by sight). I'll give this one more proofread before I open back up to the general public, but the basic approach is there to try out.

Otherwise I expect to have the "Closed for Reconstruction" notice up probably through March and into early April as I work through several galleries needing attention and fix-its.

[Quacker]

Your new "Quirky Tour" is both a fascinating & informative read, providing a history to some really gorgeous pieces of artwork. I really enjoyed reading through each researched narrative; learning about familiar & unfamiliar names highlighting their past and future productions.

Cannot wait for the 'unveiling' in April/May.

[sensei]

Thanks, Quacker. Yes, the names are a little daunting, but, as with any form of research they start to become familiar after a while. A little bell starts ringing, loud enough to be heard above the tinnitus I live with, and I realize that I've crossed that same animator's path before, working on a (sometimes surprisingly different) series. I like that challenge because it reminds us that all of this anime art was brought into being by human fingers. Who were these fingers attached to? In lots of cases we'll never know, but it's a fascinating and (I think) necessary question.

[teggacat]

WOW some real fascinating stuff there, I just had chance to do a quick run through, but
later tonight I plan to spend some more time nosing around, Fabulous information! Very well laid out.
[oh and I like the daffodils too ]

[sensei]

Thanks for dropping by, Tegga. There's a lot more to do. Right now I'm working on the NieA_7 section, replacing old scans and updating information. (It's interesting that the first sketch set I bought from that series appealed to me because the character's expression looked so much like Hikari from Haibane Renmei. The animation director for that episode of NieA (Akira Takata) became the character designer for Haibane two years later. (Though to be sure the yoshitoshi ABe influence is mostly responsible for the similarity.)

You can tell where I've been because I'm also upping the size of the font to make my aging eyes happier. So when I revise a page, I always put in the "font size=2" markup, which also helps me remember where I left off yesterday.

[BuraddoRun]

I really admire the way you run your gallery, Sensei. Like you mentioned, a lot of us just want to "own" pieces of our favorite shows and characters, which is cool, and fun of course. But it is good to remember that anime is art, and a lot of work and love go into creating these shows that many around the world enjoy. The fact that you want to try and know as much as possible about the artwork you own, and give credit to the artists involved, and give as much background as you can to each individual piece and the series they come from, is, quite simply...GREAT!

I wish I had the patience you do to spend that much time with your gallery. Heck, I have a bunch of new pieces that I've been lazy about adding over the last couple of months. But anyway, keep up the good work, and as always, it will be a pleasure to spend some more time in your gallery in the near future and beyond.

[Lain]

Hi Sensei
I was just reading your lovely fluent illustration and great fun details and descriptions of the beautiful world of Animation and Anime.
And your Rubber Slug page well i just love the floral image you could almost just reach out and smell the fresh spring dew in the air.
Sensei i really enjoy everything you do.
No1

[sensei]

Thanks for the good words, BR and Lain. The research is not hugely difficult, thanks to online translations and the diligence of the Anime News Network encyclopedists. (But while it is a great place to locate specific animators, I'm finding that the Japanside wikis are much more complete in listing credits.) And it is an enjoyable way for an old researcher to wile away Lent, when I give up browsing auction sites.

I'm done with NieA_7 now, though I may replace a few scans. One practical advantage of little projects like these is that they alert me when I've filed my sketches in so many different places that I can no longer actually locate all the sheets from a given sketch set. (Yes, yes, my filing method is based primarily on size.) Now I've tracked down the last fugitive batches and so I may scan these. My old practice was to amp up the contrast until the lines were clearly visible. But now I find that this makes many of the sketches look more like photocopies than the actual autograph artwork, so I'm opting for much lighter scans now, even if in some cases they take some shift of perspective to see clearly on the screen.

Now I'm off to Gegege no Kitarō 5 (Toei 2007) where I'm revamping the descriptions in a gallery based on a plot line that only recently I was able to reconstruct with the help of Japanside websites that give detailed summaries. (The episode itself isn't available in this country.)

Turns out it has some interesting links to Japanese supernatural folklore, including a mysterious benevolent figure, Nami Kozō ("Wave Boy") who protects fishermen and swimmers (and, I gather, has become a patron yōkai for surfers, too). Shigure Mizuki, the mangaka and popularizer of the rich diversity of Japanese folklore, has recently celebrated his 91st birthday and is widely recognized as a national treasure equal in celebrity to Miyazaki and Osamu Tezuka.

Thanks, Tegga and Lain, for the compliments on the layout. It's a little premature, as spring is late this year, but daffs are definitely showing color now, and they are so common here that they are the first really strong sign of early spring. You can always tell where a farmhouse used to be, years ago, as the daffodils continue to come up in the front yard decades after the last sign of the building has passed away.

[sensei]

Looks like next week and the following will be busy weeks for me, so I went ahead and reopened. There's nothing new, but a lot of extra information around the edges on animators, directors, script writers, etc. And, as reported before, the "Quirky Tour" has been renewed to highlight "Roughs and Shuusei," as well as the animation directors (most now identified by name) who produced them.

The Gegege no Kitaro 5 gallery took more work than any: as the episode is unavailable in any form in North America, I originally had to guess the plot from the sketches that I got. A lot of it I actually got more-or-less right, now detailed plot summaries (some, helpfully, with screen captures that relate to my sketches) had become available online in Japanese-language websites. So it was time to sit down and get Everything right. This included the plot, the characters in the sketches, the production staff, and the actual folk legends on which the series was based. It took about a week, but in the end whole strings of things that had puzzled me about these sketches finally became clear. And getting the sketches themselves out to examine and re-scan (or scan for the first time) reminded me of how really special this set of layouts, roughs, and practice sketches really were.

As a folklorist, I'm intrigued by the series premise: Kitaro is charged with identifying a chosen band of 47 yokai warriors: that's one from each one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. So, among other things, the series is a tour of ghostly Japan, and each part of the country, with its regional supernatural peculiarities, gets an "paranormal all-star" who helps defend humanity from Bad Boogers like the funa-yūrei, or “ship ghouls,” who routinely sink ships and abduct the souls of the fishermen they drown. The somewhat bemusing premise of this episode is an unlikely partnership between an ocean-dwelling creature from Shizuoka Prefecture, site of some of the best surfing beaches in the country, and an ascended-master trout from the mountains of Gifu Prefecture, one of Japan's few completely landlocked political divisions. In the end, both yokai achieve "yokai warrior" status, but not without the predictable misunderstandings.

Kitaro is getting attention on the academic front, with websites and scholarly publications acknowledging Shigeru Mizuki's importance to the revival of interest in Japanese supernatural folklore. And with a translation of his original Kitaro manga now about to be published, I hope that anime fans begin to look into the series and see what could be done to make it more readily available in a form accessible to English audiences.

I also did a lot of work on TnN and on NieA_7, and as time permits I'm getting back into the CCS galleries to upgrade or correct descriptions of sketch sets. But I think the heavy Lenten reconstruction is done now. You can see where I've been as I've been making the size of the font larger, to spare my aging eyesight.

[Quacker]

Really enjoying the updates & additional information Sensei! I have basically spent the last two hours reading through your "Gegege no Kitaro 5" gallery (it's a "Sell" day on the local Markets and most of my clients have already Bought the stocks they want for the day).

I had no idea this Anime series even existed, but I am sure if I had, it would definitely be a series I would thoroughly enjoy. I am a History-buff, as such also find the 'Folklorist' premise to be especially intriguing.
Thank-you for taking the time & dedication to research into this series Sensei, shedding some light on what appears to be an engaging & intelligent yet already overlooked series; it makes for a pleasant change from the Harem/Mecha/Moe/Boobies trend that seems to have infested Anime these past few years.

While reading through the "Kitaro" section, I noticed your 'new' background border of the flowers (is it new or am I just slow on the uptake?) Pictures from your own Garden?

Looking forward to re-reading through both the 'Quirky Tour' as well as your TnN information updates. As you said, it provides quite the buzz being able to firstly remember a particular Animator/Director and then discovering on what other series' both past & future projects they worked on and in what capacity.

[sensei]

Really enjoying the updates & additional information Sensei! I have basically spent the last two hours reading through your "Gegege no Kitaro 5" gallery

Thank you, Quacker. I'm intrigued by the odd way that Shigeru Mizuki (the creator of the original Kitaro manga and publisher of many popular books on regional Japanese folklore) is a national icon in his country and is known only to relatively few academics in this region. He recently celebrated his 91st birthday to nationwide congratulations. He is starting to get some attention in the blogosphere and in websites. There is actually an English-language wiki for the Kitaro world, though it is not very developed. (Still, I got some valuable clues by hunting through there.)

And the original Kitaro manga is about to be released in English translation for the first time (I have my copy preordered). Followed in due course by an interesting graphic novel that explains how Japan entered World War II, as narrated by characters from the Kitaro universe. The primary narrator is Nezumi Otoko, the dishonest and scheming "Rat Man," which gives you a hint as to Mizuki's political opinions. He served in the Pacific front, losing his left arm in an allied air raid, and his memoirs of the war years are well known as a graphic account of the horrors of the war.

His home town has honored him with a walkway of bronze statues depicting the various yokai creatures that play a part in his writings. It is, I find, a very popular and much photographed tourist attraction.

While reading through the "Kitaro" section, I noticed your 'new' background border of the flowers (is it new or am I just slow on the uptake?) Pictures from your own Garden?

It's a snap from my front yard--from last year. This year's spring has been unusually cold (snow again last night!), and the daffs have been not nearly as brilliant, though they are starting to appear anyhow. I do try to change the background every month to keep the gallery looking fresh. With any luck, cherry blossoms in April!

Looking forward to re-reading through both the 'Quirky Tour' as well as your TnN information updates.

I've also done some work on CCS and MKR now as well. You can always tell where I've been at work, as you'll see that the gallery description is in the larger font. But family and Easter call, so I doubt I'll do any more until April.

[teppy]

I'd like to echo others comments and let you know that I really enjoyed your "Quirky Tour" gallery. It really does raise your cel gallery to, well, "gallery" status. It was really neat to understand more about the history of the animators, how the art displayed is shown in context with the production process and how it relates to a specific time in the career of an artist. Also, you are a good writer. Your work is a great treatment of the subject. Thanks for making it. I'm looking forward to exploring it more thoroughly.

[sensei]

Thanks for the look, teppy, and for the kind words. The gallery tour is kind of an experiment in mining out another layer of significance for animation art.

1. This is Kero-chan running off with a piece of ichigo daifuku in the second CCS movie.
2. I really enjoy this sketch because Kero-chan is my anime alter ego and I love cooking.
3. Mariko Fujita, one of the main CCS animation directors, did this rough sketch; she later was character designer/chief animation director for the long-running Galaxy Angel franchise.

Yes, it's academic, but in a way that fits with my sensei background, as it's kinda how I'd teach literature: this story is about Young Goodman Brown who meets the devil in the woods and learns that everyone in town had already sold their souls to him, except himself. I like it because it's never clear whether the events really happened or were just a paranoid dream of his. It is one of several stories by Hawthorne (e.g., The Scarlet Letter) that satirize the pretentions of insisting on moral perfection and argue instead that true virtue involves accepting human sinfulness. [Yeah, yeah, that's gonna be on the exam, so take it down in your notes.]