http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/yamahas-singing-robot-mee_n_312400.html
A few years ago, the world (or at least the internet) received its first real virtual idol in the form of Hatsune Miku. For those who don't know (it's been hard to miss if you read the internets), Miku is essentially two things -- an anime-style character, and a synthetic voice, both courtesy of Yamaha's Vocaloid software. Neither of these is particularly groundbreaking, but the combination somehow took off, and she's become an internet phenomenon. By dint of the Eliza effect, she's gained a projected personality and an enormous following; if you're curious, search for Hatsune Miku on youtube, and then don't blame me for the amount of time you spend watching. Now Yamaha's taken the next step by making a humanoid robot to go along with the Vocaloid software (surprisingly, it does not have green pigtails). World domination can't be far off.
The concept of a virtual idol has been around for quite a while now; I've traced it back as far as 1994, which I believe was the release year for both William Gibson's novel Idoru and the anime Macross Plus. Both stories center around AI singers who become international pop stars. This seems to have been pegged as a uniquely Japanese phenomenon; Gibson's Rei Toei is Japanese (idoru is roughly the Japanese word for idol) and of course Macross was written and produced in Japan. This could be partially a function of the era in which they were created -- in 1994, Japan was the leader in pretty much every area of technology -- but I think there's something more to it than that, as evinced by the fact that the first real virtual idol turned out to be Japanese after all. In my opinion, it might have something to do with the Japanese media's mastery of the art of characterization, about which more below. Japanese technology also has an unparalleled focus on the human element -- the focus is often less on the capabilities of a device (speech synthesis has been around for ages) than the interface and the way it's presented to the user. (I wrote a speech on this for class a couple years ago; if I can find it, maybe I'll post it and/or a translation.)
It's interesting to note that both Rei Toei and Sharon Apple 1) had AI-generated personalities, and 2) interacted with the "physical" world via hologram, whereas neither of these are true of Miku. These traits reflect the state of the art at the time -- in 1994, the internet had yet to really take off as a medium for media distribution, and Turing-test AI seemed not too far off. These days, AI as a field has basically collapsed (see earlier rants), and holograms are a dreadfully inefficient way to make a digital entity visible. Those two traits are both infeasible and, as Miku demonstrated, unnecessary. In particular, thanks to the effect first publicized by the infamous "ELIZA" psychologist program, there's no need for AI to create a personality for a character. Any program that displays even remotely humanoid traits will be assigned a personality by the people who interact with it. Her appearance and her voice are easily sufficient for people to decide that Miku is naive, energetic, a little clumsy, and so on, and countless other traits are ascribed to her by her legions of fans. This isn't all the Eliza effect, though; I think some thanks is also due to the incredible power of characterization that the anime style possesses, by which the smallest details of appearance encode a character's personality. (Look at me, tying all my previous posts together!)
I'm most decidedly not a futurist, so I'm not going to speculate about what comes next, though I will be absolutely amazed if a Miku robot doesn't follow close on the heels of this one. Are virtual idols the future of pop music? Well, someone still has to write the songs, but that's true for human idols as well. In fact, Miku has an advantage on that count, because her compositions are crowd-sourced: anyone with the software can write songs for her (and thousands have). The voices still need work, but Miku and her comrades are incredibly popular despite (because of?) the fact that they're obviously synthetic. Humanoid robots have largely fallen by the wayside everywhere except Japan, probably because they're not really useful for anything, but we may yet be surprised by how much difference it makes to have a physical object that looks like us. At any rate, it may be about time for me to sign up for the waiting list for tickets to the next Hatsune Miku or Rei Toei concert (I think I'll give Sharon Apple's a miss). I'll see you there!
Showing posts with label anime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anime. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Profiles in Awesome: TV Tropes
This is probably old news on the internet, but I just stumbled across this site, and became entranced for hours. It's basically what I was trying to do with the thing about hair color, in a wiki, and on a massive scale. Masses of recurring themes, subplots, character types, and gimmicks are recorded and described, with nice little illustrative examples from TV, movies, anime, literature, and so on. A lot of it's focused on speculative fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, and such), which makes it even more fun to read (to me, at least). And that's an important point: unlike sites like Encyclopedia Dramatica (an encyclopedia of internet memes -- reading it hurts the brain), this site is fun, at least to someone with my slightly unusual taste in entertainment.
One of the reasons it works so well, I think, is that there are so many different ways to slice things; you're bound to find at least a few that apply to your favorite movies/books/shows/bedtime stories. On a meta-level, it's also an interesting resource for looking at how we think -- what features of a story stand out? What attributes allow us to conclude that two characters are similar, or that one movie was ripped off from another? It's not academic, of course, and I wouldn't cite it in a paper (actually, I would, but I'm terrible about sources), but that doesn't mean it's not educational. And if nothing else, it'd be a great source of character ideas for a story or role-playing game!
One of the reasons it works so well, I think, is that there are so many different ways to slice things; you're bound to find at least a few that apply to your favorite movies/books/shows/bedtime stories. On a meta-level, it's also an interesting resource for looking at how we think -- what features of a story stand out? What attributes allow us to conclude that two characters are similar, or that one movie was ripped off from another? It's not academic, of course, and I wouldn't cite it in a paper (actually, I would, but I'm terrible about sources), but that doesn't mean it's not educational. And if nothing else, it'd be a great source of character ideas for a story or role-playing game!
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Profiles in Awesome: Dennou Coil
Yes, that's right, two posts in one day! In one hour, no less! It's extreme, I know, but sometimes it just has to be done. The circumstances are this: today I finished watching one of the best anime series I have seen, a show called Dennou Coil. My first impression of it was something along the lines of "Miyazaki does cyberpunk": an elementary-school girl and her little sister arrive in a new city, are left to their own devices, follow their strange pet, and end up having mysterious adventures. In other words, My Neighbor Totoro, except that the pet is a (adorably ugly) virtual dog that only exists in cyberspace, which they perceive by means of Shadowrun-style image-link glasses. (Note: while the show merits extensive comparisons to the great Miyazaki Hayao, it's not actually by him, and as far as I know he had no involvement in it.)
On further inspection, if one of its parents is Totoro, the other is the cult classic Serial Experiments Lain. As in Lain, the focus is less on the wonders of modern technology than on its effect on everyday life. Don't let the comparison scare you, though; it's much more accessible and considerably less creepy. And there are no little gray aliens, I promise. (On a side note, Serial Experiments Lain is also an awesome show, ranking up there with Evangelion in emotional impact, brilliant writing, and incomprehensible weirdness.)
The virtual worlds here and the creatures that inhabit them are fully as imaginative and charming as any of Miyazaki's work. As the children adapt to their new home, they various mysterious incidents related to the glasses and cyberspace. Interspersed are occasional self-contained episodes surrounding the fuzzy black animal-like entities called Illegals (which, again, bring to mind soot balls and dust bunnies). The asthetic isn't as smooth and perfectly proportioned as most anime, and is that much better for it, taking full advantage of the cuteness of ugly things. The storyline is compelling, the character design charming, the characterization spot-on, and the rare interludes that don't contribute to the main arc are wonderful in their own right. The basic premise of the glasses is a bit pseudoscience-y, but the writers keep the awkward non-explanations to a minimum, and it makes for such a good story that I had no problem forgiving them. It combines the sense of wonder and adventure of the best kids' movies with a fascinating fully realized near-future world, and neither the cuteness nor the technobabble ever become grating.
Megane-moe aside (sorry, couldn't resist), Dennou Coil is quite simply an amazing show. I'm not the only one who thinks so, either; my research indicates that last year it won the Japanese equivalents of both the Hugo and the Nebula awards (the biggest awards for science fiction writing in the country, in other words). If Lain showed the power of anime to depict abstract, amorphous concepts like cyberspace, Dennou Coil shows its power to connect them to (semi-)ordinary human lives, and tells a great story in the process.
On further inspection, if one of its parents is Totoro, the other is the cult classic Serial Experiments Lain. As in Lain, the focus is less on the wonders of modern technology than on its effect on everyday life. Don't let the comparison scare you, though; it's much more accessible and considerably less creepy. And there are no little gray aliens, I promise. (On a side note, Serial Experiments Lain is also an awesome show, ranking up there with Evangelion in emotional impact, brilliant writing, and incomprehensible weirdness.)
The virtual worlds here and the creatures that inhabit them are fully as imaginative and charming as any of Miyazaki's work. As the children adapt to their new home, they various mysterious incidents related to the glasses and cyberspace. Interspersed are occasional self-contained episodes surrounding the fuzzy black animal-like entities called Illegals (which, again, bring to mind soot balls and dust bunnies). The asthetic isn't as smooth and perfectly proportioned as most anime, and is that much better for it, taking full advantage of the cuteness of ugly things. The storyline is compelling, the character design charming, the characterization spot-on, and the rare interludes that don't contribute to the main arc are wonderful in their own right. The basic premise of the glasses is a bit pseudoscience-y, but the writers keep the awkward non-explanations to a minimum, and it makes for such a good story that I had no problem forgiving them. It combines the sense of wonder and adventure of the best kids' movies with a fascinating fully realized near-future world, and neither the cuteness nor the technobabble ever become grating.
Megane-moe aside (sorry, couldn't resist), Dennou Coil is quite simply an amazing show. I'm not the only one who thinks so, either; my research indicates that last year it won the Japanese equivalents of both the Hugo and the Nebula awards (the biggest awards for science fiction writing in the country, in other words). If Lain showed the power of anime to depict abstract, amorphous concepts like cyberspace, Dennou Coil shows its power to connect them to (semi-)ordinary human lives, and tells a great story in the process.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Dye your hair, and you too can be a superhero!
*switches gears* The traditional style of anime doesn't leave much room for distinguishing characteristics. Given that all faces are drawn more or less the same way in a given show (and often across shows), that choices in clothing may be limited by considerations like uniforms, and that anime faces are generally blank outside of the eyes, nose, and mouth, eye and hair color (and hair style) are some of the very few ways in which a character's individual personality can be portrayed in a design. (It might or might not be relevant to point out that this is often true in Japanese society as well, where dress codes at school and work limit the opportunities for self-expression through physical appearance.) As a result of this, there seem to be certain conventions dictating how a character's eye and hair color reflect his/her personality. (As a side note, the smoothness of most anime faces makes distinguishing marks stand out that much more; for instance, the freckle below his left(?) eye is a huge factor in making Vash the Stampede's appearance so distinctive and memorable.) Through a considerable amount of "research", I've come to some hypotheses on the relation between personality traits and particular hair colors. Believe them at your own risk. (Also note: many of these theories are heavily influenced by Evangelion. I think this is reasonable, since much of anime is also heavily influenced by Evangelion.)
brown: Somewhat surprisingly, brown seems to be the default color for ordinary Japanese people in anime. Even in movies like "My Neighbor Totoro", where character designs are fairly realistic, half of Satsuki's classmates have brown hair. Because of this, a main character will almost never have brown hair, unless he/she is meant to be an everyday person (caught up in events beyond his/her understanding, most likely).
blond: Blond characters tend to be cheerful and flippant, and often not too smart. They're usually class clowns or sidekicks. Of course, blond is also the default Western hair color in anime; I don't think these two are related, though I could be wrong.
red: Similar to the Western stereotype, red-haired characters tend to be energetic, outgoing, and quick to anger. (See Asuka.) This is only true of bright red or red-orange, though; crimson-haired characters are more likely to be serious, even grim.
black: Black is, to make a vast generalization, the Japanese hair color, and black-haired characters tend to hold to traditional Japanese values; they're usually serious and diligent. Drawing a character with long black hair is one of the quickest ways to indicate beauty (especially when the art style makes *everyone* look pretty).
blue: Oddly enough, dark blue seems to be considered a pretty normal color, like black and brown. I really have no idea of where this came from, but as far as I've seen blue-haired characters tend to fit into the "everyday guy" category. Of course, this doesn't extend to light blue, which is largely confined to hyperactive, silly people and Ayanami Rei knockoffs (no offense intended, some of my favorite anime characters are Ayanami Rei knockoffs).
pink: As in the West, pink is a very feminine color in anime, and pink-haired characters are almost uniformly girlish and naive. There are very few assertive characters with pink hair out there, and when it's done it's usually intentionally reversing the stereotype.
white/grey/silver: White-haired characters are usually serene, otherworldly, and mysterious. (See Kaworu.) It's pretty rare to have a white-haired main character, since a main character is expected to be more emotionally dynamic. Of course, this only applies to young characters with white hair; on elderly characters, I don't think it means anything in particular.
That's all I've come up with so far, but I think it's pretty interesting, and holds surprisingly often. Please post with questions, comments, or counter-examples; after all, this is science! Well, social science. Maybe. Not that I know anything about social science.
brown: Somewhat surprisingly, brown seems to be the default color for ordinary Japanese people in anime. Even in movies like "My Neighbor Totoro", where character designs are fairly realistic, half of Satsuki's classmates have brown hair. Because of this, a main character will almost never have brown hair, unless he/she is meant to be an everyday person (caught up in events beyond his/her understanding, most likely).
blond: Blond characters tend to be cheerful and flippant, and often not too smart. They're usually class clowns or sidekicks. Of course, blond is also the default Western hair color in anime; I don't think these two are related, though I could be wrong.
red: Similar to the Western stereotype, red-haired characters tend to be energetic, outgoing, and quick to anger. (See Asuka.) This is only true of bright red or red-orange, though; crimson-haired characters are more likely to be serious, even grim.
black: Black is, to make a vast generalization, the Japanese hair color, and black-haired characters tend to hold to traditional Japanese values; they're usually serious and diligent. Drawing a character with long black hair is one of the quickest ways to indicate beauty (especially when the art style makes *everyone* look pretty).
blue: Oddly enough, dark blue seems to be considered a pretty normal color, like black and brown. I really have no idea of where this came from, but as far as I've seen blue-haired characters tend to fit into the "everyday guy" category. Of course, this doesn't extend to light blue, which is largely confined to hyperactive, silly people and Ayanami Rei knockoffs (no offense intended, some of my favorite anime characters are Ayanami Rei knockoffs).
pink: As in the West, pink is a very feminine color in anime, and pink-haired characters are almost uniformly girlish and naive. There are very few assertive characters with pink hair out there, and when it's done it's usually intentionally reversing the stereotype.
white/grey/silver: White-haired characters are usually serene, otherworldly, and mysterious. (See Kaworu.) It's pretty rare to have a white-haired main character, since a main character is expected to be more emotionally dynamic. Of course, this only applies to young characters with white hair; on elderly characters, I don't think it means anything in particular.
That's all I've come up with so far, but I think it's pretty interesting, and holds surprisingly often. Please post with questions, comments, or counter-examples; after all, this is science! Well, social science. Maybe. Not that I know anything about social science.
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