Andrez Bergen's Blog, page 8

Smile Precure!

Well, it was bound to happen - Toei does it around February every year, and this will be the ninth time in succession.

I'm talking up the Precure anime, which I'll admit to having watched every Sunday morning with my daughter Cocoa for over two years now (her excuse is she's just turned six; I'm not sure what mine happens to be).

Every February Toei, the anime production house behind the series, revamps the cast and crew and reimagines the series.

In 2010 the best series screened - HeartCatch Precure, which was, in fact, my choice of anime series of the year for 2010 (something difficult to swallow since it's a shojo girls' show aimed at little kids) - and this year Suite Precure♪ has struggled to hang onto the coattails of its predecessor but isn't doing so badly now that characters Beat and Muse have jumped into the fray.

Anyway, the new line-up has just been announced, along with the customary annual name-change.

2012 will see Smile Precure! (スマイルプリキュア) hit the screens, replacing Suite Precure♪. The character designs do look cute, while still not in the same league as Yoshihiko Umakoshi's designs for HeartCatch Precure.

Well, as with all things Precure, only time will tell. And what else do I want to do every Sunday morning anyway?

Yumiko Kayukawa: Double-O-Something

Let me confess here that You Only Live Twice is my favorite Bond film, slightly pipping Goldfinger.

While otherwise often maligned by Bond aficionados, I love so much about the film. There's the rousing score (by John Barry, with Nancy Sinatra doing the vocal bit on one of the series' most memorable songs), and Little Nellie remains one of Bond's most quaintly unprepossessing technological contraptions.

On top of this, it was set (and much of it filmed) in 1960s Japan, so we get often hilarious doses of sumo, ninja, sake, a Shintō wedding, exotic pearl divers, devious salarymen, and Himeji Castle. Siamese vodka and piranha are also shoo-ins.

I first saw this movie on the telly back in Melbourne, when I was still in primary school. It was my first dose of 'Japan' – and is probably one of the minor and/or subliminal reasons I moved to this country 10 years ago.

So when I saw the painting, above, that leads into this article, along with the one of two pearl divers, by Japanese artist Yumiko Kayukawa, I was hooked. Kayukawa's also did a brilliant Bond image (below) that captures the atmosphere of the '67 film along with several key elements, and it's just so – Pop Art, a movement that also had its genesis in the 1960s.


There's something quite magical about Yumiko's style – a heady, often surreal blend of Western and Japanese elements in which voluptuous, too-beautiful girls share space with ukiyo-e tsunami, pink flamingos, and kimono imprinted with hyenas.

Luckily for me she also turned out to be a friendly, approachable, funny individual who was ready to indulge me with her time when I hit her up out of nowhere for the following interview that appeared today online over at Forces Of Geek. Just click on the title (left) to have a gander.

The Flawed Mountain Goat

Just got a GREAT review from Marcus Baumgart @ The Flawed Mind. Here's a taste:

"Andrez offers us one imagined future for Melbourne, and it has to be said that things don't look so good. The dystopian Melbourne of Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, pitched at some distance into the future, has the unique distinction of being the only city left in the world. Unfortunately, things are not going terribly well in terms of civil liberties, the political climate or the environment. In fact, things are comprehensively fucked up on all fronts, and the portrait painted is of an overcrowded, polluted metropolis groaning under the control of a government vested in corporate interests and busy herding non-conformists and misfits into extramural death camps styled as 'hospitals'.

"Despite this undeniable grimness, the novel is also pretty amusing, and it mines the noir vein with gay abandon, to use an old-fashioned phrase. Andrez wears his pop-culture influences on his sleeve, and the result is a compote that mashes up a plethora of fictional frameworks into a believable, seamless whole. Readers who know Melbourne will enjoy seeing the geography of the city rezoned and remapped, polarised by the presence of a dome over the CBD that shelters the wealthy elite. And god help you if you find yourself in Richmond, which Bergen transforms into a demilitarised wasteland; Abbotsford and other inner suburbs don't fare much better.

"I for one appreciate someone taking the time to imagine an Australia of the future, as it is a welcome change to the ubiquitous North American setting of much popular fiction, and science fiction. Nevertheless, that wouldn't be enough to recommend it. Happily, TSMG is also a ripping yarn in the best dystopian, gumshoe tradition.

"Oh, and on a final note, you will thoroughly enjoy the company of the protagonist, Floyd Maquina – he is ruggedly handsome and generally ruined; witty, self destructive and self-effacing with his air of gracious defeat..."

You can check out more at Marcus' website.

We have a swag of other review and interviews up at the Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat website HERE.

Personally speaking, this is wunderbar encouragement since I'm currently in the middle of writing the next novel, which goes under the acting title of One Hundred Years of Vicissitude. More about that shortly, or you can check out the Facebook page (I got in early) here.

Genji: Modish Millennium Man?

As outlined here a couple of entries back, I recently slunk back to Tokyo after three of the most über-intensive days' traveling in my life, down in the grand old capital city of Kyoto.

Despite a decade living in the newer capital (Tokyo) I'd never actually been to Kyoto before - as inexcusable as that sounds—and it was one of the best jaunts I've had in recent years.

At the same time I'd also started to attack a new novel, which has the current title of One Hundred Years of Vicissitude. This is, I stress, the interim title only and - yes - it is partially a cheeky reference to Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (shhh), though the main character in the novel is a centenarian and there's a lot of change going on. If I get a letter from Señor Márquez or his lawyers I'll probably consider also changing the name of the bugger.

Concurrently in my other job (teaching English) I've been yacking with a lot with students and friends about a famous 1,000-year-old Japanese tome called The Tale of Genji (源氏物語 Genji Monogatari), and have been itching to run something about it with my mates at Forces of Geek.

Anyway, as they conspire to do, these various things got together and chewed out my brain a bit, resulting in a novel that's shaping up - in the early stages at least; I'm only up to page 67 - as partially an inane travelogue.

I'll probably shaft some of the passages, ditch others, find a ghostwriter, and rewrite the remainder. By the way the ghostwriter reference is a pun since a dead man narrates the story. One Hundred Years of Vicissitude is possibly going to be a five percent sequel/prequel of my other novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat - and 95 percent something else entirely.


At the moment, in the existing manuscript, this is a section/riff that gets across the whole background of The Tale of Genji so I thought I'd snatch that and share it with you, instead of writing up a fresh article from a journalistic perspective.

To be honest I also hope you don't mind plodding through to uncover the historical morsels. This is barely edited and unnaturally long-winded stuff at times, plus I'll probably toss out some of the dialogue/asides if I end up using it in the novel - at all.

If curious and/or at all interested, you can read more @ FOG.

Tokyo Disneyland: Rodents Galore

You might know Disneyland. Then again, it's possible you may not.

The keys to this particular magic kingdom have been handed into the care of an organization of amalgamated Japanese companies best known under the alias of the Oriental Land Company (or just plain OLC), which originally contacted the Walt Disney Company in the 1960s with plans for an amusement park - but were knocked back.

The company reapplied a decade later, and this time succeeded in arranging a licensing contract.

Tokyo Disneyland opened to the general public on April 15th, 1983, and has developed into the most frequently-visited theme park in the world – with over 17 million visitors a year.

Now, with over 45 rides covering an area of 115 acres, Tokyo Disneyland continues to experience larger crowds by the day - aside from a few weeks after the March 11 earthquake, which damaged some of the carparking area - to the point that there's barely room to breathe, let alone stroll, and queues of up to three hours are often the norm on weekends and public holidays. Right now they have the whole Hallowe'en thing happening there and it's an extremely popular time of year.

One time in October three years ago we were forced to queue for over two hours for one of the older school, more humdrum rides - Snow White's Adventures.


Tokyo Disneyland is pretty much modeled on L.A. Disneyland, except for one important omission – there's no Matterhorn - while the Haunted Mansion here is located in Fantasyland and has the same facade as the one in Walt Disney World in Florida.

There are also attractions unique to Japan's visitors: the Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour, which features Disney villains, and Pooh's Hunny Hunt - which is a surreal and hilarious spin-out of a ride that just begs to be experienced.

And where else will you experience swash-buckling Pirates of the Caribbean rabble-rousing and carousing... in gruff jidaigeki-style Japanese voices?

If all this isn't enough, right next door is Tokyo Disneyland Resort's second mega-attraction: Tokyo DisneySea, opened in 2001, and boasting its own array of rides, shows, dining, and so on – including Journey To the Center of the Earth, Sinbad's Storybook Voyage in the faux Arabian Coast area, Storm Rider, Ariel's Kingdom, and the Indiana Jones Temple of the Crystal Skull ride.

And, dammit, as much as I despise Mickey and I don't want to dig the place, it's downright fun.

Kyoto 京都

I just got back from three rather intensive days in the grand old city of Kyoto.

In fact I skipped out on a rather legendary contemporary music festival (Labyrinth) to douse myself in some old school culture down in the former capital. Why? Well, even after a decade living in Tokyo I'd never actually been to Kyoto (crazy and inexcusable, I know).

I'd always wanted to spend more than a week down there to really experience it, but a group of my favourite students decided to take matters into their own hands - and treated me to three of the best days' traveling that I've had in years.

There was, of course, Kinkaku-ji (金閣寺 The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, above left), also known as Rokuon-ji (鹿苑寺 Deer Garden Temple). You've probably seen the postcards of this baby, or you may even have read Yukio Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion ...or you might've just glimpsed the photo in the desktop picture art of Apple's OS X computer operating system (shh!).

Anyway, it's a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto established back in the 14th century.
The current Golden Pavilion, however, was built far more recently (1955) since the original was burned down by a mad arsonist monk in 1950 - the subject of Mishima's novel.

That doesn't stop the place being so damned stunning, however.


Aside from 13 other temples and shrines, plus assorted rock gardens and Nijo Castle, we also took time out to investigate Gion (祇園) on Saturday, around dusk.

Gion is of course the home of maiko, geisha, ochaya (tea houses), kaiseki (multi-course dinner restaurants) and okiya (geisha/maiko lodging houses). Plus a swarm of tourists like me soaking up the atmosphere and trying to spy a maiko (an apprentice geisha, the flashier ones).

I took more than 250 photos on the trip, and sorry to share just two of 'em - but, then again, I don't want to bore you senseless with my own happy snaps. Make sure you get over to Kyoto to take your own. The city is brilliant.

Not-so-Oblivion Island

Production I.G's first 3D-CGI feature film Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror has received a slew of recognition thus far as Animation of the Year at the Japan Academy Prizes, Jury Recommended Work in the Animation Division of the 13th Japan Media Arts Festival (2009), the Nippon Cinema Award at the Nippon Connection Film Festival (Germany), the Visual Technology Award for the animation section of the 9th annual Video Technology Awards, the Digital Content Grand Prix 2010 - DCAJ Chairman Prize, Feature Films Competition Special Jury Prize at SICAF 2010 (South Korea), the Jury Special Mention at Fantasia 2010 (Canada), Jury First Mention at Expotoons 2010 (Argentina), and Jury's Special Mention at the 18th Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film 2011 (Germany).

Now add the Gold Kite for the Best Feature Animation Film for Young People and the Signis Argentina Jury Special Mention at the 10th annual International Film Festival "Nueva Mirada" for Children and Youth, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from September 1 to 7, 2011.

Otherwise known here in Japan as Hottarake no Shima - Haruka to Maho no Kagami (ホッタラケの島 〜遥と魔法の鏡〜), you can check out the official website here.

Great news for I.G, the people behind the Ghost in the Shell franchise.

The animation direction is by none other than Naoyoshi Shiotani (the director of the South Korean SICAF 2008 Grand Prize-winning Tokyo Marble Chocolate) and it's directed by
To fully appreciate the controlled, irreverent madness here you'll need to brush up on your basic knowledge of Inari shrines - plus a re-reading of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and re-screenings of Spirited Away, Toy Story, The Empire Strikes Back and the Rankin/Bass-produced 1964 stop motion version of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Here's a taster:

Prima donna plastic-fantastica?

Licca-chan (リカちゃん) was born on May 3, 1967 to Orie Kayama, a Japanese fashion designer, and Pierre Miramonde, a French musician. Her papa Pierre apparently liked his wife's family name (Kayama) so much that he adopted it as his own surname.

Licca's favorite books are Anne of Green Gables and A Little Princess – both extremely popular girls' titles in Japan and themselves made into anime series. As it turns out, Licca-chan not also loves dogs, eating Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and reading the manga series of Doraemon, but also likes cross-dressing and role-playing. 



For instance there's Choro Q Licca, aka Race Queen Licca (who has her own racing car) and quite a few Hinamatsuri (Doll's Festival) Licca-chans worth up to ¥289,000 (US $3,750).

Then there's bridal Licca, Chukyo Women's University High School Licca-chan, fast-food chain Mosburger Licca, the über-tanned Loco Neo Licca, Super Doll Knight Licca, and rollerskating Licca-chan; back in the '90s there was even Street Licca – who was a DJ in pink Converse runners carrying a très cool Rough Trade record bag – as well as a special ice-skating Licca for the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics. And in 2001 a pregnant adult version of Licca-chan was introduced to coincide with the birth of Aiko, the daughter of Crown Prince Naruhito and his wife Masako.

Here's the original 1967 commercial:



YOU CAN READ MORE ABOUT LICCA-CHAN @ FORCES OF GEEK.

Melbourne book launch of TSMG

So I'm now back in Tokyo, after a two week sojourn in Melbourne - the more prominent Melbourne in Australia rather than its silly namesake in Florida, which is 32 years younger. I get parochial about this because the Melbourne in Australia is my hometown, and also the setting for my novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat.



I went down this time not only to rendezvous with friends and family, nor just to soak in the sights, sounds, smells and brilliant foodstuffs that the city does indeed boast. Because the novel was only recently published, it was high-time I did a book launch there; any excuse to have a party, and all that jazz. Anyway, we ended up doing the propaganda jaunt at a superb 1853 blue-stone abode in the city called Miss Libertine on Wednesday 10th August, and the turn-out was brilliant.





Suitably enough it was also pissing down with rain that evening.



I got in early to cut my teeth with some beer; I also cut up wads of cheese and a smoked sausage that, in Australia, we call cabana (suitably kitsch old school '70s art exhibition style, and far cheaper than serving up sushi!) plus we had salt and vinegar chips and chocolate teddy bears since they appear in the novel.



There were hiccups - the three-hour background score I'd put together, which included musical influences, soundtracks from appropriate films, my own hack Little Nobody muzak and some self-indulgent ditties, failed to fire-up. We also had technical problems with the DVD projector so we couldn't screen most of what I wanted to show. I skipped out on doing a book-reading - a part of me thought that a wee bit too pretentious in the circumstances - so I opted to opening myself up to an informal Q&A instead.





The only problem was that between the hob-knob of the occasion and scrawling inane messages on copies of the book, I had to remember names, catch up with mates and family members who showed up, and generally remind myself to make time for a sip or two of ale squeezed in between gas-bagging - so the Q&A fell on the back-burner a bit.



But management at the venue were wunderbar (thanks, Bo!), the vibe was fantastic, I had a couple of great happy-snappers (in particular Jason Maher) and no minor problems seemed to matter anyway.



Massive thanks to everyone who showed up and thereby created the vibe I talked up a sentence back - you all rock. While I'll admit to having been a bit stressed before the event, during and especially after I had a ball.



That's Melbourne (Australia) for you.



I forgot how much I missed the place, even now - a decade after I left - and it just seems to improve with age. I think anybody who bothers to read this blog (hello? Anybody?) might've noticed I like to talk up fine wines, and there're some nice drops to be found in Australia. So the image of Melbourne aging away in a dank cellar - since I love my vintage stuff - is actually a positive one.



We're not talking dusty, damp and archaic, though there's plenty of gorgeous Victorian architecture to be found in this city with its fair share of mold. Melbourne has a comparatively short history but has hung on to a lot of that, while at the same time developing new twists and turns as it goes.



But I think being away gave me the detachment necessary to set my novel in a post-apocalyptic Melbourne in which the proverbial shit has hit the fan.





Anyway, a couple of days ago I left again, going straight from around 6°C in the early morning in Melbourne to 36°C and humid here in Tokyo - nice and sizzling in the sun; steaming in the shade.



And I'm buggered, but it's brilliant to be with the girls again. And missing Melbourne already - what a city.



Now I just need time to recuperate.



Photos by Jason Maher & Andrez Bergen.

Tsukiji: Big Fish out of Water

Stats have it that there're almost a hundred centralized wholesale markets in 56 cities across Japan: 50-odd for fish, 19 for flowers, and 10 for meat. Tsukiji, here in Tokyo, is the heftiest of the lot; in fact it's the biggest fish market in the world. Remember the scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the U.S. government stores the Ark of the Covenant at the warehouse that stretches off into the horizon, without apparent end?

Tsukiji (東京都中央卸売市場) is just like that.

Also known as the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market and as "Tokyo's Kitchen" - or more simply Tsukijishijo in Japanese - it everyday handles somewhere in the vicinity of 2,000 to 2,900 metric tons of seafood, dabbling in over 400 varieties of aquatic vertebrate, crustaceans and cephalopods (this includes 300 kg slabs of tuna).

Employed to oversee the whole circus are around 65,000 people. This in effect makes Tsukiji the largest fish graveyard on the globe, as well as one of the bigger wholesale food markets in general.

It's located near Ginza, just a quickie stroll from Tsukijishijo Station on the Toei Oedo Line or via the Hibiya Line's Tsukiji Station.


Inside the market they have auctions in the wee hours, and the best time to be there is around 5:30am - though don't wear your best footwear as parts of the place are awash in fish blood and hosed-down produce. It's not really for the light-of-heart or vaguely animal rights-conscious, let alone people on the cusp of vegetarianism for ethical reasons, as you're going to see a lot of sea creature carcasses, guts, squirming eels, and very big live craps tied in shoddy Gordian knots.

But you also get to witness people practicing their slice-and-dice techniques on both frozen and fresh tuna and swordfish, using intimidating sword-like shivs of their own that're over a metre in length - just steer clear of the gas-powered go-carts and the guys lugging around huge blocks of ice, as they're even more dangerous.

Set up early on in the 17th century by shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa, this sprawling hub was originally a more humble affair located near Nihonbashi Bridge, not far from the current Tokyo Station.


But after the general destruction of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, the market was shifted to reclaimed land in the Tsukiji area - right next to a small Shinto shrine called Namiyoke Inari-jinja, built on the water's edge of Tokyo Bay (before land was reclaimed from the sea to eventually house the market) in the mid 17th century.

Inari is apparently quite the chipper deity in Japan, with around 32,000 shrines (over a third of Shinto shrines in this country) dedicated to the Japanese kami of fertility, rice, agriculture, industry, worldly success - and foxes.

Thus the shrines are usually decked out with not only vermilion-coloured torii-gates, but also a bunch of statues of kitsune (foxes) who may or may not be messy eaters since they have bibs tied round their necks.

Namiyoke Inari-jinja itself also goes for much dragon and lion iconography, since the original attempts at land reclamation, commenced in the 17th century by the Tokugawa government, were often washed away in storms. When success was actually achieved, people celebrated by lugging round dragon floats - symbolizing control of the clouds - and a huge shishi lion's head, renowned for its oddly calming roar that was probably aimed at virulent nature itself.


After the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market was relocated next door, Namiyoke Inari-jinja became the unofficial guardian shrine of the marketplace, and it's dotted with memorial plaques and statuettes donated by several of the market's trade groups.

In June every year, the shrine plays host to the rather wild Tsukiji Shishi Matsuri festival (see video below) which harks back to the original purpose of Namiyoke - lions, dragons, and all - and in turn underscores the more recent relationship with the neighbours, as many of the market's traders are those people sweating under the mikoshi.



But Tsukiji isn't just festivals, shrines and fish.

It was the star of the 2008 film Tsukiji Uogashi Sandaime (築地魚河岸三代目, also known as Third Generation Tsukiji Fish Market Man or The Taste of Fish), directed by
Tokyo's Kitchen also pops up in the '90s manga version of Shota no Sushi (将太の寿司, Shota's Sushi or King of Sushi) by Daisuke Terasawa, and - while I'm unsure if it appears in the live-action spin-off that played on Fuji TV in 1996 - I have it on good advice that the market features in Haikei, Chichiue-sama (拝啓、父上様), a.k.a. Dear Father, starring Kazunari Ninomiya (Letters from Iwo Jima, and the voice of Kuro in Tekkonkinkreet), which was broadcast on the same channel 11 years later.