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Adventures in Anime-land?
Jan. 15th, 2007 11:52 amCross posted from the Tousando Pro Boards at http://tousando.proboards18.com/index.cgi
"Renown is a funny thing." - Otagiri Tatsuzou
This morning I received an email addressed to "My Lady Jehanne (Makiwara-san)" from a stranger. (This tells me she has heard of me through SCA circles, but probably not here [Tousando] or on SCA-JML. Her name tells me she does not apparently have a Japanese persona, at least not yet.)
She asked if she could ask me about a fictionalized character's kimono whose design elements she was trying to figure out the most authentic arrangement thereof. The phrasing of the question causes me to ask cautiously, is this for SCA? Post 1600 costuming, about which I warn her I have not studied very much? Cosplay?
The next thing I know I have been sent half a dozen cartoon images of some gaunt, bearded guy in a straw jingasa who bears a disturbing resemblance to my yojimbo except for the fact that Fujimaki would not be caught dead in a pink flowered uchikake. (Unless maybe he was trying to bust out of Osaka castle disguised as a Toranaga's mistress or something.) On the upside, the accompanying questions are intelligent and coherent. There is a Problem That Must Be Solved. OK. I'm in. I think.
At this point I warn the young lady that she should be aware of the existence of possible biases on my part that will affect my ability to help her - I am not a fan of anime, I don't know who this is or what sort of character he is supposed to be. The gifs keep causing my media reader to close abruptly so I am forced to ask for a name for this character and go wading via Google Image Search into something called Bleach, which I always thought was what you used to keep your gym socks from looking dingy.
At this point I say, "OK. I think I can do this. It's kind of like peering at Momoyama screens and emakimono for garb research." So Gaunt Bearded Pink Kimono Guy is called Shunsui Kyouraku and he's supposed to be badass despite the poofy green bow knot in his obi and the pink uchikake - I guess he would have to be. He's also supposed to be several centuries old.
Fine. So I look at some pics. I weigh in on manly Momoyama men wearing colorful, flowered garments and explain why the Pink Kimono isn't stylistically like them. It's really freakin' weird. All the decoration is at the top of the garment, from the sleeve bottoms up, the rest of the thing is plain pink. It's like someone took a bolt for a ladies' irotomesode and sewed it together upside down. From this we conclude that manga artist was messing with his cosplay obsessed audience....
We try to identify the random - and it IS random - assortment of design motifs scattered across the top third of the Pink Kimono. We enthuse over the merits of the Otomiya design motif gallery at http://www.otomiya.com/kamon/index.htm
I make suggestions on how to get a gradation of pale to darker pink by playing with dye saturation. In other words, I survived my foray into the land of cosplay and I think I managed to help her understand a bit about how to look at real Japanese textiles and determine whether a manga artist is replicating something real or having fun going off on an artistic tangent.
It was actually fun - and took my mind off my runny nose for a bit.
"Renown is a funny thing." - Otagiri Tatsuzou
This morning I received an email addressed to "My Lady Jehanne (Makiwara-san)" from a stranger. (This tells me she has heard of me through SCA circles, but probably not here [Tousando] or on SCA-JML. Her name tells me she does not apparently have a Japanese persona, at least not yet.)
She asked if she could ask me about a fictionalized character's kimono whose design elements she was trying to figure out the most authentic arrangement thereof. The phrasing of the question causes me to ask cautiously, is this for SCA? Post 1600 costuming, about which I warn her I have not studied very much? Cosplay?
The next thing I know I have been sent half a dozen cartoon images of some gaunt, bearded guy in a straw jingasa who bears a disturbing resemblance to my yojimbo except for the fact that Fujimaki would not be caught dead in a pink flowered uchikake. (Unless maybe he was trying to bust out of Osaka castle disguised as a Toranaga's mistress or something.) On the upside, the accompanying questions are intelligent and coherent. There is a Problem That Must Be Solved. OK. I'm in. I think.
At this point I warn the young lady that she should be aware of the existence of possible biases on my part that will affect my ability to help her - I am not a fan of anime, I don't know who this is or what sort of character he is supposed to be. The gifs keep causing my media reader to close abruptly so I am forced to ask for a name for this character and go wading via Google Image Search into something called Bleach, which I always thought was what you used to keep your gym socks from looking dingy.
At this point I say, "OK. I think I can do this. It's kind of like peering at Momoyama screens and emakimono for garb research." So Gaunt Bearded Pink Kimono Guy is called Shunsui Kyouraku and he's supposed to be badass despite the poofy green bow knot in his obi and the pink uchikake - I guess he would have to be. He's also supposed to be several centuries old.
Fine. So I look at some pics. I weigh in on manly Momoyama men wearing colorful, flowered garments and explain why the Pink Kimono isn't stylistically like them. It's really freakin' weird. All the decoration is at the top of the garment, from the sleeve bottoms up, the rest of the thing is plain pink. It's like someone took a bolt for a ladies' irotomesode and sewed it together upside down. From this we conclude that manga artist was messing with his cosplay obsessed audience....
We try to identify the random - and it IS random - assortment of design motifs scattered across the top third of the Pink Kimono. We enthuse over the merits of the Otomiya design motif gallery at http://www.otomiya.com/kamon/index.htm
I make suggestions on how to get a gradation of pale to darker pink by playing with dye saturation. In other words, I survived my foray into the land of cosplay and I think I managed to help her understand a bit about how to look at real Japanese textiles and determine whether a manga artist is replicating something real or having fun going off on an artistic tangent.
It was actually fun - and took my mind off my runny nose for a bit.
