A Look Back

Well, to be honest, last year I was able to look through all my journals and look back at all the things I forgot. Unfortunately, most of my journals are back in the US, so I will have to make do with my own brain.

My dream when I was a middle school student was to work in Japan. I never had a real specific job, I just thought the idea of working in another country was so exciting that any job would suffice. I have to say, I am glad things worked out as they did. My job allowed me to experience an aspect of Japan that I only saw romanticized in books and movies. “Inaka,” or the rural part of Japan, is something that I will always treasure. The sort of relaxed feel of everything, the way I could walk outside and see a crane fly by my window, how I could just choose a road and walk until I found something interesting, it all felt like an adventure. I learned a lot, but I think the most important thing I learned was to both survive and excel on my own. Being able to identify a problem, solve it, and then to use my own drive to add my own spin and creativity to the solution is something that would be impossible to estimate a value on.

I think this blog is an example of that. I love writing my own thoughts and takes on things, but being able to start and complete COMPARTMENTALIZATION (start here) is something I will always be proud of. Like I said before, it was a dream of mine to write that story, and being able to see it through is something that still amazes me. It is something I still think about a lot. I have many ideas for a continuation, but I want to read and re-edit the original before I start on any sort of sequel. Maybe I will even get it published one day? Well, once I get back settled in the US, it is something I can start to act on.

Going back to the US is something I have also been thinking a lot about. I felt more this year more than past ones that I need to be closer to my friends and family. Not just because of emergencies or other worries, but because I miss the connection I had with many people I knew. As I am getting up there in age, I feel the need to re-cultivate and gather the people I haven’t seen in a while. Not just to network, but also out of my sense of curiosity.

This year felt like I was repaying debts I had (both literally and figuratively) and I got that perspective that I usually get when I am moving on with my life. I heard that for men (not sure why this doesn’t also apply to women, but I guess that is the problem with “hearing” something) changing the place they live is the most stressful thing they can go through. For me, cleaning things, throwing away others, and deciding what I should keep is something that is necesary. Being able to go through and choose what is important, and not just letting it exist because it is too much hassle to get rid off, is something I have needed to do for a while. It feels like the next stage in my life will start when I finally move back to the US and see what I own and then decide what I need.

When searching through all the stuff I have read, seen, and whatnot, I am happy to say this year was a good year. Oliver Sack’s Musicology both educated and inspired me. Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan felt like some of the best science fiction I have ever read. Rereading the Phantom Tollbooth also was much more enlightening than I thought it was going to be (that book can be read as cliff notes to being a happy, productive person).

With music, I ended up throwing away much more than a bargained for (though that is what I get for backing up my music on an old hard drive), but rebuilding my collection has been an adventure. Whether I like it or not, Ke$ha’s Warrior will probably be the most memorable album as going to the hospital to help my partner (in the same way she helped me when I was in the hospital) was probably the event I will remember the most. But as for best, I will have to go with Benoit Pioulard’s Hymnal. Though I still can’t quite figure out the lyrics, the soundscapes that Hymnal creates are sublime (check it out here). I also really liked Kishi Bashi’s 151A which feels like it combines an analog electronica sound with thoughtful lyrics.

As much as I would like to list every single memorable media I consumed (especially How I Met Your Mother and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon which both also helped me in those times we I frequented the hospital) I want to make sure I close with both a hope, and a wish to the future. As I am creating Plan A, B, C, and every other letter in the alphabet, I wonder what I will write here in the next year. Hopefully my big move won’t effect the blog too much, but just in case, I want to make sure I thank everybody that has read my thoughts over the years. Thank you so much, and hopefully I won’t make you guys wait too long!

The State of Video Games 2013

Last week I played a game called Proteus. In Proteus, the player finds themselves in the middle of an ocean and they can swim to an island to explore. The player is free to play and explore as they wish as the island goes from season to season. Then after 45 minutes or so, it ends. For me, Proteus gives me what I really want from a video game. The game shows me a world to explore, interpret, and at the end, I took something away that felt tangible.

When I looked at discussion about Proteus on the internet however, it seemed like everybody was too busy complaining that it wasn’t what they expected to have any sort of real discussion of the game itself. A discussion about what makes Proteus a game is a semantic one, but one that I think is worth having, but the discussion I read was more filled with vitriol and dismissal than any sort of thoughtful discourse. It is sad for me, because this sort of thing is happening not just with Proteus, but with many video games.

Maybe it is because video games don’t have a real stable foundation when it comes to intellectual discussion like other mediums do, or maybe it is just that video games haven’t warranted any sort of real critical thought, but I am getting tired of trying to answer the question of are video games a worthwhile creative medium. The assumption that always smacks me in the face is that art is this rational thing that if an person follows certain rules and regulations, it can be considered worth paying attention to. To quote Rodolfo Llinás, a neural scientist at New York University, “creativity is not born out of reasoning.” So a person trying to “reason out” any sort of emotions or feelings from video games just is pointless. At some point, if someone becomes happy, sad, angry, scared, or thoughtful when playing a video game, who is anyone to say these feelings aren’t as real and valuable than if someone were to experience them from a movie or book? And if a person created a video game to invoke those feelings, is that not worthwhile?

That is where I feel like video games are. They are in this weird uneasy state of some people believing that they are amazing, others thinking video games are worthless, and most people not really caring that much. It is easy to see this in the current zeitgeist of Kickstarter. Video games can’t get funding because no one will buy them, but a few will pay tens, hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of dollars to see them get made. With video games how they are, what will E3, the premier video game press event in North America, show us about the future of video games?

It brings in a lot of uneasiness, drama, and potential. Watching the press conferences from Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo were as eye opening as they were baffling. All three companies are getting ready to take the plunge into the future of video games, but all three are taking completely different routes to get there.

So, for your reading pleasure, is my analysis of the three conferences:

Microsoft:

I wonder if Microsoft should have advertised the Xbox One as more of the “social, Kinect, sports, TV box that can do everything!” than what they did. With the weight of digital rights management looming implicitly over every single piece of XB1 news, I would think the impetus should have been about proving how that DRM doesn’t matter because everything that is cool about the XB1 revolves around being online, but instead, Microsoft delivered many games that would honestly feel better on a souped up PC (with a Xbox 360 controller) than a XB1. I still think the XB1 has potential, especially if the Kinect is as good as they are saying (true high fidelity motion controls in games has the potential for something new and exciting), but their reluctance to release in Asia because supposedly they are making it so the Kinect camera works better there concerns me (how bummed out do you think Japanese developers exclusive to XB1 are that that their games won’t even be in their native language?). Is the new Kinect camera able to work better, or is it just another attempt from Microsoft to over-promise its functionality? Fool me once Microsoft…

Sony

The funny thing about the PS4 is that despite just doing a lot of the same things that the PS3 did, it seems to have garnered the favor of a vocal majority of people who pay attention to E3. Sure, it has a new Final Fantasy, and a new Kingdom Hearts, and a new Infamous, but it isn’t anything that the PS3 wasn’t doing. The only difference seems to be that at least they look prettier. I was impressed at the amount of support Sony seems to be giving independent games though. It is cool to see those smaller games get a big stage. I found myself liking the PS4 more because of the potential region free capability (though the Persona 4 Arena sucker punch of region restrictions left a bad enough taste that anything “free” is suspect) and Japanese support. I admit that is my personal bias, but I think the combination of Japanese and indie support is more exciting than Microsoft nailing down games like Titanfall (though Titanfall does look good, it is another “rather play it on my PC” game for me). Other than the new paywall for multiplayer, it seems like the PS4 is something to get excited about.

Nintendo:

Nintendo decided this year to not have a conference and instead send out a video. This would have made no difference to me if the video stream wasn’t so terrible (the lag made it unwatchable), but it does indicate a gear shift at Nintendo. They did something very similar in Japan years ago when they pulled out of the Tokyo Game Show, but while pulling out of TGS felt more like Nintendo was too big to care, Nintendo not doing a conference felt more like they were afraid they couldn’t compete. Though, maybe the real reason is that they weren't showing anything really surprising. Nintendo decided to bank on familiarity. This is the polar opposite approach to game companies trying to get hype for their game by showing CG trailers. I admire Nintendo for focusing on showing these games in real time instead of trying to fool people into buying into something they haven’t actually played yet, but they had a chance to really excite people about the WiiU and they flubbed it. The only thing that was close was the reveal of Super Smash Bros., which while expected, still was something that celebrated the Nintendo brand in a way that most companies fail to do. Nintendo still has a long mountain to climb before they can win over the hearts and minds of people enough to actually sell consoles, but until they do something that makes people pass that threshold and actually buy a system, Nintendo looks like they have a hard fight ahead of themselves.

3DS and Vita

As someone who owns a 3DS, a Vita, and a iPad (mostly due to people being gracious, and not because I necessarily have lots of money), portable video games have become the way I play most of the time. The iPad found its market long ago, and is doing exceptionally well, the 3DS has recently been able to find a good audience, and the Vita is still struggling. I enjoy the iPad, but I don’t usually use it for games (though the recently updated version of Final Fantasy Tactics I highly recommended). The 3DS would need to erase games before I would need any new ones. The Vita has become the “wild card.” In some ways, that makes it a risky proposition, but for me, it makes it much more interesting. It was disappointing that nothing “big” was revealed for the Vita, but I suspect that the Vita will be a system for people like me who like to dig in and find something interesting to play. To be honest, I don’t plan to buy any new consoles this year because I will be too busy with the portable games (not to mention the Wii, PS3, and 360 games) I already have.

GAMES OF SHOW

Metal Gear Solid V : Open world is exactly where the series needed to go, and I wonder if the game will touch on the previous entries (will “Saladin” meet Sniper Wolf? will we see a young Solid Snake?), but I am not sold on the Kiefer Sutherland voice yet.

Final Fantasy XV : In Nomura I trust…to be ridiculous.

Super Smash Bros. : I was expecting to not be excited by this at all, but the Animal Crossing Villager, the pitch-perfect Mega Man, and the amazing Wii Fit Trainer dragged me back in.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch: Just watch this trailer.

Super Mario 3D World : Reading a lot people being cynical about Cat Mario and a playable Princess Peach made me realize that I don’t care about what a lot of people think about video games.

So you had a bad day...

Sometimes a day is just bad. There is no silver lining, there is no room for interpretation, and no one can do anything but wait for it to be over. It is all relative of course, but sometimes I just have days that just are no good. In high school, I found myself having so many things that could make me happy or sad, but in the end, no matter what was happening, it felt like the entirety of my happiness was based on sleep. I could be having the worst day with everything going wrong, but as long as I had enough sleep, I felt pretty good. Now as an adult, I find that my body doesn’t just rely on sleep alone.

I have found that more and more what I eat determines if I am going to have a good day or not. My biggest enemy has been salt. If I eat too much, I begin to get a “hangover” of sorts. Spicy food and dairy products seem to also tax my body much more than they used too, but I am not sure if it is my body being intolerant or if it is too much to deal with.

The point I am getting at is that for me, good and bad days, or at least the potential for either, relies on my body. The difference between a “bad day” and bad things happening for me is an important one. Bad things happen all the time, but many of those things are beyond anybody’s control. The only thing a person can do is identify what they can do to make things better and act. Bad things happening is like a rain storm hitting an area, while an individual bad day is like a rain cloud that only rains on an individual.

This is not to say both can’t happen at the same time. The key is being able to see the things that a person can change and what they can’t. They say god and the devil are in the details, perhaps they didn’t mean both at the same time, but I interpret these proverb mix-ups to speak a truth: everything is in the details. Being able to change the small things for the better can be the difference between a good day and a bad day.

If none of that works, well, then it comes down to acceptance. Sometimes bad things happen, and whether they are your fault or not, they have to play out. If you are having a bad day, maybe the best thing is to lay low and try to learn something from it. Remember what Clint Eastwood said, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” Well, a character he played said that, but it works out all the same. If all else fails, hopefully this hit song from 2004 (which as far as I can tell, was required listening at Japanese schools from 2004 to around 2010) can turn that frown upside down.

Who is Hatsune Miku?

Meet Miku

There is something about Hatsune Miku that intrigues me. There is a mix of accessibility and bewildering strangeness that seems to emanate from her image. I wasn’t even sure what she (it?) was when I first saw her. It wasn’t until I saw her face on a Community Charity poster in a local school that I figured I should at least try and figure out what the deal is.

Hatsune Miku originally was the mascot for a music creation program created by Crypton Future Media. Her name is a play on the phrase 最初の音楽 (saisho no ongaku or “first music”) and the Japanese pronunciation of music (ミュージック/myuujiiku, which, shortened, is “miku,” though it also may be a play on the kanji for “future”). The selling point of Hatsune Miku music creation software is the “vocaloids” which allows the emulation of human singing. Not unlike how computers can read human speech, the program can sing with whatever speech that is inputted. It is like auto-tuning, but without the singer “middle-man.” Because of how the Japanese language is parsed out into syllables, it makes the program able to understand and output  any Japanese speech that a user inputs (unlike English, with its many letter combinations and different stresses depending on the meaning of the sentence, that can trip up any sort of computerized auto-reader, which makes any sort of English inputted into Hatsune Miku sounds more like Japanese than English).

The Original Music Creation Software box

Hatsune Miku became popular in Japan once people got their hands on the program and started posting their creations on the internet. Through video sharing sites such as Youtube and Nico Nico Douga (a Japanese video sharing site) and other avenues, people started sharing and linking to other songs using the program. As people starting making more and more, making both covers of popular songs and original creations, Hatsune Miku became a “star.”

“Star” being a relative term. Hatsune Miku was less of a person and was more of a mascot. Once she started becoming more and more popular though, she mutated from just being a symbol of the music vocaloids are involved in, to an actual character with likes and dislikes. As other vocaloids were released in other to give different tones of voices for both male and female singing, all those became characters as well. These characters were then defined by the type of songs they would sing, which would then lead to other songs. The instruments became characters and then the characters became instruments.

Characters/Instruments

This makes Hatsune Miku arguably the first true “post modern” artist. She has her own style, but it is completely defined by what her audience creates for her. There is already a backlash against musical artists relying more and more on technology, and Hatsune Miku can easily represent everything people hate about modern music. Creativity sacrificed for convenience. Where this doesn’t apply is the power Hatsune Miku gives creators. An international musical star like Lady Gaga or Beyoncé has millions of dollars and has to travel all over the world to be as popular as they are, but Hatsune Miku allows anybody with a computer and a internet connection to make music in the “diva” style and dabble in a genre that would be inaccessible to them otherwise.

The popularity can then translate to the various CDs, video games, and concerts that Hatsune Miku and her gang of vocaloids are involved with. For example, the popular Nyan Cat Youtube meme sensation was recently translated into a consumer product via the Vita/PS3 release of Hatsune Miku (which can be seen here). That game in particular is eager to show off both fan made and official art and music dedicated to Hatsune Miku. It is honestly tough to really tell which is the fan made stuff and what is the stuff created by professionals (granted, it was all edited by professionals, which is arguably the most important aspect of all).

Meet the Vocaloid Gang

The blurring of the line between what “professional” and “amateur” means is not just the domain of Hatsune Miku, but really of the internet in general. Though, Hatsune Miku does certainly represent maybe a more insidious side of “internet democracy.” You can create anything you want, but in order to get noticed, you will need to buy this program, and imprint your creation with this corporate mascot. This is not a necessarily uncommon practice in the Japanese pop culture space. There are various characters that indie creators on the internet will share in order to gain a following (another example being the Touhou Project, a Japanese indie shooter that has gone from a one man production to a media cornucopia), but this usually lead to these games not being released on any international scale because the rights management becomes muddled. Hatsune Miku is different because it is very clear that Hatsune Miku is owned by Crypton Future Media.

Professional/Amateur

So I guess the real question becomes, is the music any good? Well, if you happen to like Japanese pop music (especially music coming from pop idols), Hatsune Miku is incredibly similar (here is a sample). Much like Japanese pop acts, Hatsune Miku relies a lot on presentation and the image is a part of the appeal, but the output from many sources makes it so the music has many forms, and the vocaloids tie it all together. Then with the customization power given through-out the vocaloid catalog (especially in the video games), any sort of unappealing aspect can be tweaked. Don’t like the music video where two scantily clad women are dancing around, saying how much they like each other? Change it to two fully dressed men with rocket packs! The music itself can’t be changed as easily (without the original music program anyway), but one of the big appeals of the Hatsune Miku experience is how customizable it is.

It fact, customizability is most probably the reason why Hatsune Miku and the other vocaloids are so popular. You can dress her anyway you want, and participate in defining who she is. In the PS3/Vita game, you can even feed them (though this feels more like a stage manager job than any sort of wish fulfillment fantasy). They may not be real, but they can be more defined and accessible than the real life divas. In a way, Hatsune Miku is the true next evolution of Marilyn Monroe (which according to Gloria Stienem, was a “female impersonator,” which she meant in that every woman is a “female impersonator,”  how fitting then that the successor would then be impersonating humanity as well?). The vocaloids can be everything you could desire if you put in the time and effort to do so.

She's coming for ya'!

Whether or not this will ever appeal outside of Japan however, is yet to be seen.