Lightweight people prefer Ruby and Haruhi

(tags presentation, Ruby, Japanese, English, China, criticism, anime)

Here's a "lightning talk" called "Diligent People. Lightweight people." done by Masayoshi Takahashi, chairman of the Nihon Ruby-no Kai, the Ruby programming language core and libraries developers (and support) group. (Thanks to _why's post "Chairman Takahashi in Taiwan") This is a rare English sample from the mainly Japanese presentation group.

Basically a lightning talk a short 3 minute speech with big kanji Powerpoint-like (or is it Evangalion-type?) visuals, usually on programming topics. Try it out here: "About Nihon Ruby no Kai" (日本Rubyの会について), but don't forget to maximize your browser.

So Takahashi makes an argument for lightweight ("lazy"!) people and processes instead of "diligent" people, but rather than spoil the humor I urge you to watch the video.

I realize when says "lightweight people prefer scripting languages like Ruby" he is expounding the strengths of unit-testing, dynamism, and less documentation, as much as a 3 minute talk can allow.

But his "lightweight people prefer Haruhi (light novel)" is just icing on the cake. He's definately not saying that Ruby is so like last year's anime, ie. old news. Still any programming language that can be associated with making people dance in the streets is novel.

Slap a "Made in China" sticker on anime

(tags anime, China, Japan, criticism, kawaii, season 2005/04)

One of my favorite English-based anime bloggers, Matthew, had an interesting report on how Futago Hime is being shown in the Chinese TV prime-time despite being a Japanese-made anime, because it is restamped as "made in China". This anime has all the audio parts in Chinese, voices, OP and ED songs, but the visuals are the same as the Japanese version.

He in turn links to a Japanese speaker who is conversant in the Chinese anime otaku scene with 3 posts (「ゴールデンタイムに日本のアニメを「中国で制作した」として放映？」:1, 2, 3) on this very issue.

Summarizing (hopefully not too crudely), the company that made the 2005 TV anime Fushigi Hoshi no Futago Hime (ふしぎ星の☆ふたご姫) is the HAL Film Maker Co,. Ltd, which is one company in the TYO Group. TYO Group also has a 31% stake in the Chinese company Da Lian Eastern Dragon Cartoon Development Co., Ltd, who is responsible for this "made in China" anime.

So the transfer of assets seems legitimate. It sounds like a business strategy to repurpose a successful product towards a different market. I'm sure that the "made in China" stamp is so that the show garners more eyeballs, which in turn will feed the toy purchasing.

But it's the same situtation as when any U.S. based (or elsewhere) dubbing company releases a Japanese anime. Do you call that product "made in the U.S.A"? I didn't think so.