Thoughts After Watching Final Fantasy: TSW

I know, I haven't posted in forever. I'm not really sure what the point of this post is, but I have thoughts running around in the brain and no one's on AIM. I need an outlet. That's what these blog things are for, right?

This morning, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within came on TV. I hadn't watched it in a LONG time. Five years maybe? I have the DVD, but honestly, it's not that good of a movie. And it's not that I think the CG is creepy, or the story is convoluted, or that it doesn't feel like Final Fantasy - the usual complaints I hear about the movie. No, it's mostly the fault of the characterization (or lack thereof). The only entertaining characters in it were ripped straight out of "Aliens" and those not torn from that movie are flat, uninteresting, two-dimensional, static, everything a film or book character should NOT be. The acting was a bit stiff in places too, but I genuinely think the actors did very well considering what they had to work with. The point is, if your characters suck, I'm not gonna care what happens to them. Whenever a death of a main character happens in the movie, I just don't care. I don't believe any of these people could really exist, you know?

Anyway, I still watched it, and honestly, it was still a geek-out moment for me and I was enjoying the experience immensely, JUST BECAUSE IT WAS ON. I surround myself with Japanese media all the time - anime, dramas, TV variety shows, and especially music. I often forget how rare & wonderful it is that anything from that world comes on TV. I feel like there's alot of Anime on TV, but that's just because I know it's there, I know when it's on. I don't get that excited listening to japanese music because it's really all I listen to on my computer. I can easily download japanese dramas and watch them anytime I want. It's commonplace for anything asian to be on my computer. But FF:TSW is a movie based on a Japanese video game series, directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, with a freaking L'Arc~en~Ciel song played at the end.

Sure, I listen to L'Arc all the time. They're just a part of my life. But it is still so exciting to me to hear hyde's voice coming from my TV speakers, with the knowledge that this isn't a DVD or video that I'm watching, this is actually on TV right now - someone else somewhere could be hearing it & thinking "hey, this song is pretty cool" and looking at the credits to see who did it. It's not really likely, but it's possible. And the song being played on TV validates the band for me somehow. As though it's proof that they're real, and that there's an audience for them even on this side of the ocean, outside the usual Otaku subjects.

But this movie came out 8 years ago. Why, 8 years later, is this still exciting to me? Why is Japanese music still not getting any attention here? I do two j-entertainment podcasts. J-music is covered on Gaijin Kanpai, and dramas are covered on GK Dorama Club. After 25 episodes, GK has a moderate audience. After 3 episodes, GKDC gets way more feedback & listeners already. Japanese TV dramas have more of an english-speaking audience than Japanese Music does, and I cannot for the life of me understand why. As much as I love being excited to hear Japanese music played during a movie, I don't see why it should still be exciting 8 years after L'arc gets an american movie theme. By this point, J-music should be at least common among music geeks, but it's not. Why?

There have been various attempts over the years to release j-albums legitimately. Two examples I can think of are Mars Colony Music, who released game music, and Tofu Records, who released Sony Music Japan artists' releases. Neither company exists anymore, as the expenses of licensing & releasing the music to its tiny audience here couldn't be recouped. Asian artists who've tried to americanize their sound & release material here, such as Utada, have failed. Asians in general don't get much recognition in the music world save for very tiny underground & indie circles (Pizzicato Five and DJ Krush, for example, have done okay - but very few people know who they are, regardless).

I almost feel like asian media really had a shot to come over here in the early aughts - Anime & games started to skyrocket in popularity. But american-made games by the folks at Valve & Blizzard have pretty much overtaken the asian games by the likes of Square-Enix, and the geekiest of the Anime fans were unfortunately the loudest, so Anime is back to being something for dorks with no lives rather than regular people. Any chance asian music & movies had of reaching the mainstream was lost when anime & games were no longer a curiosity to the general American public.

On the one hand, I would like to hear BoA and Utada on the radio, or see them on TV. But on the other hand, I saw what happened to the Anime industry when it got big here. I no longer feel at home among other Anime fans. Geeks who just wanted to be themselves used to be able to watch fansubs of the newest series in Japan, watch old DVDs of the classics, and make fun of bad dubs together. It was cozy and nice. Now, Anime's just too big - too many series are being dubbed & brought over, and it's not special. So I wonder if I should be wishing for J-music to get more of a fanbase over here. Part of me really likes saying "you probably don't know any of the artists I listen to," and I LOVE meeting other people who know J-music simply because it's so rare a thing to come across. In the earlier days of my anime fandom, I wanted my group of anime-loving friends to grow. Then it did, and I wished it hadn't.

So, while I do want the inherent racism against Asians in the media to go away in America, at the same time, a very big, very selfish part of me wants my small group of j-music loving friends to stay warm, friendly, and cozy. When and if BoA's "Energetic" video comes on TV alot, I know obnoxious 12 year old girls are going to be singing the song in the middle of Claire's or wherever it is the kids shop for little cheap things these days. I want that to happen, but I don't.

I kinda wanna always be excited to hear "Spirit Dreams Inside" when the Final Fantasy movie comes on tv.

But I kinda don't.

Weird.