Will He Post Again???
Egad. This template is both lurid, and nauseating. It must be stopped.

All in good time.

Now Do You Believe Me?
And, in other, unrelated news: Arrrr! That was darrrrn good!

Tree is not a trend 'dere, Stairmaster.
Just because I've posted three days in a row now doesn't mean I'm posting daily.

'Cause I'm not.

Don't you even think it.

'Cause, you know, it's all about the benjamins. Word?
Just started a new (and intended to be temporary) job doing disaster recovery. You know, fire, flood, plague on all the firstborn children in Canton. The usual kind of stuff. My first day consisted of a fire cleanup after a minor kitchen fire - minimal substantive damage, but a fair bit of smoke discoloration. And as I sat cleaning a large tub of hot wheels, Lego and action figures with a toothbrush, it occurred to me that having this kind of kitchen fire was kind of like the home insurance equivalent of hitting the lottery...

Look honey, a candle has set fire to the large painting of the Madonna and Child hanging over our kitchen counter! Now Ed McMahon will come and pay a bunch of guys in worksuits to hand-wash every item in our house while we take a free hotel vacation. Go get the kids!

I know. Any fire is disruptive and traumatic.

The hotel is not really that nice.

They didn't really bring the kids in to watch the Virgin Mary burn.

The insurance auditor's name wasn't even really Ed McMahon.

But part of me still feels like it's not a bad way to get a head start on spring cleaning.

Some people get really mad at manga-style art in comics and RPGs. For why?
In some cases, I think it's just a matter of parochialism, in others, frustration at seeing the art robbed of its cultural underpinnings. Another source of distress, and one I know I sometimes feel, is sadness at the degree to which manga-influenced art is supplanting traditional western styles of illustration in many media.

I love anime and manga, but I do find it kind of depressing to see how enormously influential it's becoming in the comic book world and elsewhere. I'm 30, (today, in fact!) and therefore basically a member of the last generation to grow up without any real awareness of anime. (I loved Robotech in jr. high, but I had no idea it was Japanese - I thought of the characters as having 'video game faces' because they all looked like the headshots in Nintendo games.) If you had any artistic talent, you slaved away over your Marvel Universes, trying to draw like Byrne, or Kirby, or Neal Adams (and later, Todd Mcfarlane). You goggled over the awesomeness of Frazetta book covers, or (sad, but true) Boris Vallejo posters.

Today, the role played by those comic book artists has been almost entirely taken over by mangaka. Take a look around the web - try to find a high school student whose art page is not filled with earnest strivings for anime mastery; it's well-nigh impossible.

This doesn't signify the end of the world; heck, it doesn't even signify the end of the western illustrative tradition. It still saddens me though - I hate to see all these kids missing out on the richness of that tradition, knowing they're so wrapped up in anime they'll probably never get to delight in the wonder and magic of Rackham, the sinewy energy of Frazetta, the dynamism of Kirby. It also depresses me because I know it means that ten years from now, the world of professional illustration will be overwhelmingly dominated, at least for a while, by manga style art.

Like I said, not the end of the world, but I can't help but feel a tiny twinge of bitterness. I want new Kirbys and new Rackhams and new Michael Whelans. Why can't we just trust the Japanese to provide new Shirows and Otomos and Toriyamas?

What's Wrong with Exalted?
I'm a pretty enthusiastic anime/manga fan, and I like Exalted reasonably well, but I was put off pretty badly by it's "anime" artwork. I've seen westerners who can do solid manga-style work, or who understand the aesthetic well enough to capture it's spirit without slavish obedience to its rules, but I don't see that in Exalted.

Mostly, I see people mimicking Joe Madureira, which is kind of tragic, since his work is a shaky pastiche of anime styles to begin with. Some of the imitations are remarkably faithful, but they're still second generation imitations of another culture's art. It's sort of like Christian ska bands that try to sound like The Specials: Are they good at it? Sometimes. Do they understand the cultural underpinnings of the music they make? Debatable. Perhaps most tragically, most of their fans have never even heard of The Specials, much less The Skatalites.

(At this point, having brilliantly drawn parallels between Pat Lee and The Supertones, I should probably acknowledge that this Christian ska digression is of, at best, limited relevance. I will admit that it is unlikely that many people are formulating their concept of Manga based on the Exalted MRB.)

All that said about the art, while I do like Exalted, I feel the same shortcomings are present in the game itself. When I heard that Exalted was going to be Anime-inspired fantasy, I was curious to see what that would mean in practice. On reading the MRB, I felt that for the most part, they'd latched on to a number of anime fantasy trappings, (e.g. materia, the de rigueur forgotten high-tech civilizations, etc.) without capturing any of the fundamentals that make anime fantasy interesting. It was, in other words, anime fantasy pastiche. This is particularly unfortunate, because, with notable exceptions, most anime fantasy is, in fact, bad pastiche of western fantasy, making Exalted a pastiche of a pastiche. Not the ideal situation.

Much of what makes anime interesting (to me, at least) is inextricably tied to the rich well of history and cultural heritage the genre draws from, from the cultural obsessions which repeatedly inform so much of the work of its creators. (Ever try counting the number of atomic bomb metaphors you run across in any given anime or manga? It'll make your head spin.) When you rob anime of its alienness and cultural underpinnings, you lose something of tremendous value.

Now, with all that spleen vented, let me reiterate that I think Exalted is a good game. It was not made with the intent of capturing the nuances of Japanese pop culture, and should not be judged on its success in that regard. I just think that they did miss a good bet by approaching anime the way they did, and find myself less enthused about the game than I might have been as a result.

I’d also like to note that I feel they did a much better job incorporating wuxia elements, and should be applauded for doing so.

Finally, I must also confess that as much as I dislike most of Exalted’s art, I cannot diss Leanne Buckley. Ms.(?) Buckley has mad atmosphering skills, and can illustrate my roleplaying game anytime.

Anudder one a 'dem 'dere posts, Hamstray.
Fine.

FINE.

I'll succumb to peer pressure. I'll blog. Just call me Bandwagon Jumpin' Johnny Come Lately.

And just you watch. I'm gonna be cool. Next I'm gonna get a tattoo and pierce my tongue.

And start listening to Nü Metal.

But don't any of y'all go expectin' me to update this sucker daily or any crap like that. 'Cause I won't.

Nyah.