The ladies by the pool and beach are an excellent indication of what season it is…

Ah… Three weeks removed from my 6th semester of college, I’m finally ready to put some things down on this site once again. There are some reviews (Spice and Wolf, Shigofumi, Hatenkou Yugi, True Tears, Clannad) still left on the draft table, and between the three of us, we’ll have to discuss whether or not any of those will be worth presenting at this point. But the winter season is so 7 weeks ago, right? So let’s put that aside and start talking about Spring 2008.

Jun Fukuyama, the “man-whore” seiyuu of 2008 (CG2: 9 Episodes In, Special A: 9 Episodes): It seems like everywhere you go, there Jun is. I won’t even talk about his roles in Vampire Knight of Macross Frontier because I’m not watching those anime this season, but with Spice and Wolf last season, and now CG2 and Special A this season, Fukuyama-san is aggressively cementing himself as one of the premier male seiyuu in the business right now. And why not: with the momentum from CG1 and the fan-favored Ghost Hound (still got to get to that), stock on Fukuyama is way up. I’m not going to compare his roles in the two anime, because peanut did it already, but lets talk about the anime. Special A is starting to nose dive. Take away the comedy, and the anime is nothing more than a 20 min exercise in dialogue between a guy who could possibly be getting some with a girl if she wasn’t so dense. But the comedy is very good, and maybe if Hikari gets the picture, this could still finish strong. Code Geass 2, well, I don’t really think what I say here will change very much: if you’re watching it now, you’ll still watch episode 10, and the obversion is also true. They weren’t kidding about this becoming a global affair. And that’s good, because it reduces the amount of time you spend in Lelouch’s head this season from last season by about 50%. This is a much bigger set of dominoes being set up. I can’t wait to see one fall.

Is what I currently think about Jun Fukuyama: you dirty, dirty seiyuu.

Interesting Art (Allison to Lillia: 9 Episodes, Kaiba: 7 Episodes, Soul Eater: Bits and pieces of the first 3 episodes): Artistically, I’m very intrigued by this season’s offerings. A to L and Kaiba both have an aged art-style look to themselves, especially Kaiba, which feels like it has come out of the 60s. There’s a hint of American animation in it, and I think the interplay between western and Japanese animation is very good. Nevertheless, I’m verily disgusted with the negativity Kaiba got through preview season. Get to episode 3. If you still don’ t think it’s very good then, then fine, make judgement, but don’t write it off just because it’s too “trippy” or the animation is not “pretty”. It is quite possibly the gem of the Spring season.

Peanut (kame) and I are still trying to figure out what that “thing” “Kaiba” is riding is.

On the other side of the spectrum, there’s Soul Eater. I was introduced to it by my buddy, and I haven’t really gotten through an episode of it yet, but artistically it looks very polished. The colors are vibrant, and from the bits I saw, the story doesn’t seem that bad either. I will definitely look to make a more concerted effort to check this out as the summer progresses.

Anime de Nihongo o renshuu shiteimasu!: And lastly, with the summer, Chigau gets 3 months with a bit more free time than usual. Furthermore, this summer will mark the first summer with basic comprehension of the Japanese language. Even though I killed both semesters of Japanese I took this year, I’m still deficient in one important facet: listening comprehension. Perhaps anime can fix that. The only problem: I don’t know where to start. So if any of you have any suggestions for an entry-level anime to watch RAW for comprehension, that would be super awesome. As long as it isn’t Moetan.

I, like Matsuri here, are trying to cross the language barrier. I would ike to say I’m further ahead than she is, since I already know “gray” is “haiiro no”

And with that, Chigau’s out for now. Drop me a comment, or, for those that or so inclined, I have a Twitter. I’ve found that Twitter works very well in the “mass communication of random, in the moment, trains of thought that may be meaningful for other people” department. Anyway, as I was saying, I’ve made one for the anime community here. Hoping that the viewers out there will subscribe, and perhaps we can use that site for spur of the moment discussion/random feedback.

There are a ton of people at work with Aegis-related stuff in their cubicles. They’ll probably think that I’m on crack if I tell them that bubbles and foam can take down the USS Arleigh Burke. The one thing I don’t understand from that Geass episode is why they used so many DDGs in such a tight formation. You’d think Britannia would only need about a few in a loose formation with a backup group (especially since the Britannian DDGs look like USN’s DDG-1000 with the technology). Sigh. I guess the USN > the Britannian Navy when it comes to search and detect ASW technology.

Once again, my work consumed most of my time these past few weeks as we scramble to get more testing done. And once again, work has taken time away from anime watching (let alone blogging). I’ve been so out of the loop with the spring season set (Geass R2 and Vampire Knight being the only two shows I’m following consistently). I can’t even remember where I left off from some of the older shows I was watching (with my myanimelist being outdated). With the summer season looming around the corner, hopefully I can get back to watching regularly.

Today, instead of the normal anime thesis post (I don’t have any anime technology designs in my head right now), I’m putting a callout for another “What is a good anime wallpaper?” discussion. In this case, I’m asking: “What is a good methodology for an anime wallpaper for your work computer?” I would like to have some anime wallpaper for my work laptop screen which is somewhat reflective of my anime fandom (I run dual screens with the company logo on my monitor screen). I don’t care for any mainstream anime wallpaper (Naruto, Bleach, Deathnote, etc.). I had put up wallpapers of sola and Clannad before.

My main concern with anime wallpapers in the workplace is the classic “What will my fellow coworkers think about this?”. Given that the shows I tend to watch lean towards the moe side of the moe-gar spectrum, I feel like I run the risk of being perceived as a weirdo or receive an obscene material work infraction or both. So I need some suggestions as to how to spout my anime fandom at work. Is there any specific anime, layout or theme behind your anime wallpaper on your office computer? What about the rest of your desk area? What do you do to decorate your cubicle to make it a shining temple of anime fandom (or in my case, a moe shrine)? Someone from the white-collar otaku workforce has to have thought of this before.

If all of the science and engineering research assistants look as cute as Otome, then everyone would be doing research and we’d have military grade combat mecha by now (or we’d get no work done). Sigh. Such is the unfortunate state of being an engineering and science nerd.

Recently at work, my project has entered another stage of testing. What made this development version interesting was some of the new integration components. Testing of some of these new components requires cooperation with other software programs within the system. This is fine for most systems. But when dealing with the redundancy requirements for a military grade system, both the system and software engineers have to pay special attention to the various states of each computer component in the system. Knowing the possible conditions of the computer component and its connected counterparts makes diagnosing problems in the system easier.

My mind sorta stayed in that mindset in the past few weeks and when I read tjhan’s attempt at tsundere mathematical modeling. After looking at one of the best math graphs I’ve ever seen, one idea popped into my head: I can model the same thing using my short professional career as a systems engineer. Designing the tsundere computer system is what I will discuss today.

In both computer science and computer engineering, a state machine is a system which can be described as a set of states and the transition between these states. It is considered to be finite (FSM) when states in the system are known to be of a limited number or the system is reduced to definite number of states. In both computer fields, state machines are used in a number areas from to modeling programming code flow to creating sequential circuit systems. Computer science and computer engineering students are taught the basics of these systems in the undergraduate level. (In comp sci, I believe it’s taught in the theory of computation which leads to automata theory. In comp eng, state machines are the building blocks for computer organization.)

State machines have also been used to study areas outside of computer systems. Human nature can be described as a form of an emotional state machine. If I asked someone “How was your day?”, the response may be different depending on how that person is feeling. I could ask that same question at 5pm every day for 7 days and I could get a different response each time even though my input stays the same. However, it is widely understood that human nature should be modeled at least as an abstract state machine because of the numerous amount of states one can process from things like gender and race.

Yet, the world of anime has graced us with the tsunderekko which works well with an FSM model. The reason being is that tsundere characters only have two primary states. With such a small number of states, the number of transition states are only a handful which make the state machine easy to model. Below is my attempt to generate such a model:

There are a couple of things to note here:

• I introduced a normal state into the processing. This is to add some stability into the system. Any interactions outside of the tsundere state set (tsuntsun and deredere) are in this state and most of the time, this is the starting state. There are some shows where the tsunderekko would never reveal the normal state to the audience. Again, this is to make the design complete.
• Note the two non-normal transitions: The Tsundere Moment transition is the key state interaction needed for the tsunderekko. Without it, a tsundere character would be incomplete. The dashed connector for the normal-deredere transition is also important. I find the best tsundere model is one where the character never enters the deredere state until she enters from the tsuntsun state first. This makes the first Tsundere Moment transition more impactful and allows for any deredere state to be traced back to the original defining tsundere transition.
• I did not include a transition from deredere to tsuntsun. Some would argue that the transition (possibly modeled with a dashed line) is needed to be complete. I found it unnecessary. The deredere state is too consuming to the tsundere character. Transitioning to the tsuntsun state without traveling through some “wake up” (normal) state is too quick of a change. For some characters, the dere-to-tsun transition is fairly active and works ok (Kumiguya Rie characters come to mind). The model without that transition should describe most tsundere characters.

One characteristic of state machine models is that they can be expandable. Each state can be broken down into smaller sub states with more transitions. Knowing that, I’ve decided to generate a detailed state machine model of one of my favorite tsundere bishoujos: Kyou from Clannad.

To model the Kyou FSM, I used a Mealy machine model which models state transitions based on the current state and the current input. Each connector has both an input causing the transition and an output caused from the transition. I color coded the transitions to make the paths a bit easier to read (starting state = normal state). I also highlighted the major tsundere path that we all know from Clannad TV series.

So what can you do with these models? Like I said before, FSM models are used in a number of areas within computing. As for the general tsundere FSM and the Kyou FSM, you can apply these into many implementations. The one that comes to mind is high level AI generation for various types of computer programs from the fairly simple Ren’ai conversation tree to possibly as complex as an android (which this blog will 100% support any university attempt at MCRC Kyou persocom development).

A visual screenshot representation of an emotional state path. In this case, the scene is the memorable Kyou-Tomoyo confrontation and the screenshot order is the annoyed state, the competitive state, the competitive-surprised transition input, the surprised state and the embarrassed state. Note that being in an emotional state does not have to last long since the last three screenshots occur in about 4 seconds.

There are two other things I’d like to note about tsundere FSM models. First, I don’t think I can replicate a tjhan’s mathematical model of sinusoidal wave. If I place integer outputs on the states or the transitions and attached a counter, the one-way primary transition from the tsuntsun to the deredere state causes a number of problems. The model would end up converging in one direction either towards +infinity or -infinity depending on the viewier’s bias.

Second, looking at this makes me realize that the tsundere archetype is very limited and simplistic. Now, I was able to take only high level estimation of a tsunderekko. However, I modeled about 70% of the Clannad TV’s Kyou in less than 10 states, far from the multitude of complex states in a human ASM. It is disappointing to see how otaku (including me) are attracted to the simplistic and predicatble representations of female personalities in our world.

The MCRC is still looking for new researchers for a number of projects. Among these, tsundere computer development is at full speed with Shana persocom development and the Hinagiku defense system additions. Combine that with the Combat Waitress program and the MCRC is among the elite in moe research. So please submit your CV’s. We will not let the Mecha Research Triangle make the latest developments first!

]]> http://animeacademy.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/moe-computing-research-center-mcrc-tsundere-computer-development/feed/ koneko-chan whitehatazn-48.jpg http://animeacademy.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/seiyuus-comparing-characters-with-characters/ http://animeacademy.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/seiyuus-comparing-characters-with-characters/#comments Fri, 16 May 2008 13:01:16 +0000 kame-chan http://animeacademy.wordpress.com/?p=320

Rina Satou is a jellyfish? I can’t lose!

As finals and my birthday creeps around the corner, I try to think of something new to post. Everyone has their lovable seiyuus and sometimes watch certain anime because of them. Well, I decided to take some of their characters and compare them with their other characters of this Spring Season. Enough of the introduction! Let’s get this started!

Jun Fukuyama - Almost everyone knows how Jun Fukuyama sounds so awesome as Lelouch but what about his other characters this season? Kei Takishima from Special A reminds me of Lelouch’s intelligent, jerk, and caring side. They’re both smart in their schools and have the same amazing laugh that I love. They both have the will to protect the one they care for while showing the hate hate hate when someone tries to get in the way. To me, Takishima and Lelouch’s mind work almost exactly the same and that’s pretty awesome.

Another character to compare Lelouch with would be Hanabusa Aidou. Aidou reminds me of Lelouch’s fun joking side. Unlike Lelouch though, he is usually the one being made fun of. So far, Aidou seems to also be intelligent and I have yet to see enough of him being pissed off.

Yoshinori Fujita - Some people would remember him voicing Kaoru Hitachiin from Ouran. Fujita is the seiyuu of one character that I’d like to compare Kaoru to. That would be Ginka Midarezaki from Kyouran Kazoku Nikki. They are both the fun, loving type of the group. Willing to give a helping hand with someone from their family, such as Kaoru to Hikaru and Ginka to Yuuka. It could be just me but, they seem like the really girly-type of males in their families as well.

Is it just me, or is Ginka trying to be a cosmonaut?

Ryou Hirohashi - Viewers would probably recognize her if I said that she’s the seiyuu of Kyou Fujibayashi from Clannad. Well she’s also Hyouka Midarezaki from Kyouran. The most I can do is compare them to how much they care about their siblings. You can tell how much Hyouka cares about Yuuka even though you haven’t seen much of “it”. Well, all I can say now is, a seiyuu switching from an awesome high school, basketball shooting, tsundere girl to a cool, laser sword wielding robot that can talk and destroy the world raises my liking of them.

That’s all I can compare so far. I had other characters in mind but their character plot hasn’t advanced enough for me to compare them to old characters. Feel free to compare any other characters that I’ve missed or say something about my list. Like I said in my Random Anime Moments post, it’s just fun observation.

“I’m back… muhahahahahahaha…”

Hello everyone. I apologize for my rather lengthy disappearance from blogging. I once again blame this mostly on work (right now we’re understaffed on engineers so they basically tossed the entry-level engineer into the deep end and said “swim”). I’m actually quite happy that there was some content on this site while I was away especially since I’m not the only one pressed for time. UPenn is closing on their finals so bro (chigaimasu) is pretty swamped for the next few weeks. As for sis (kame-chan), I’ll explain her situation a bit later.

Instead of the usual multi-page long theses I tend to write here, I’m just going to blurt out the random thoughts in my head today. It’s not because I have nothing to say (there’s about 15+ drafts between all the writers sitting on the dashboard). I just don’t have the time this week to really analyze stuff like I normally do. So here’s the random bits of stuff floating about in my head today.

Crunchyrolls… mmm… tasty…

I did get the chance the past few weeks to take a look at Druaga on Crunchyroll. And while it was an easy-to-use service, I wasn’t as impressed as I thought I would be. Part of it is Druaga’s genre not as appealing to me and my slight bias against Gonzo in general. I just find Crunchyroll to be incomplete. There are only two corporate-driven shows out of the site’s vast library of illegitimate content. The site feels like a youtube site with a sprinkling of a free itunes site. Crunchyroll needs a few more partners to nullify this two-face vibe I’m feeling from the site. Outside of maybe watching Gonzo’s latest cliff jump, Crunchyroll just doesn’t have my attention.

Spring 2008 - Turning up the sakura blowers

I haven’t seen much in the Spring 2008 season yet (again blaming work and other commitments). Of the stuff I’ve picked up, one of these is Code Geass and I’ll agree with most of the anime blogosphere that the show is quite impressive. Outside of Geass, I’m really liking Vampire Knight which is a bit of a shock since I tend to not like this kind genre/atmosphere. But Yuuki, somehow by Hocchan’s solid voice acting or by her character design, is slowly working her way up my bishoujo rankings. I’ll get a better grasp of this season once I find some time to watch more stuff.

ai sp@ce - When your dakimakura isn’t enough…

Speaking of bishoujos, when I came across the ai sp@ce news article a few weeks ago, I just shook my head. As much as I like seeing the ladies of some of my favorite anime shows in a MMORPG, the premise of this game is really disturbing. Unless I’m misreading the various articles on this, allowing someone to “dress up” and “personalize” a virtual bishoujo girlfriend has me thinking that there are plenty of messed up people in this world (even more messed up than me). Don’t get me wrong. I think online anime character NPCs are a good idea. It’s just that this particular game has the misguided idea to pander to the current Japanese otaku fanbase. It would be cool if Kotonoha or Keade were summons and would attack enemies with their kitchen knives. Or how about Shana and Tomoyo as payable NPC mercenaries? Personally, I think a Kyou NPC mercenary with attack spells, a FFX-2 style black mage outfit and a mage’s book thrown like a boomerang would be excellent.

It’s a good post anytime I get to use a Kyou picture… Praying for KyotoAni to make a Magical Girl Lyrical Kyou spinoff…

Anime Blog Awards - “I just want to thank the Academy…”

The Anime Blog Awards finished the nomination stage recently. The registered bloggers can select a top blogger’s choice in all the categories. If you don’t have a blog, you can still vote on the people’s choice line in all the categories. The nomination results are also posted and I’m personally happy to receive 2 nominations for best team blog. As for the voting, I’m going to take my time on it like I did with the nomination process. I find myself torn between some really good blogs on a number of the categories. So I will once again defer my superdelegate (since I heard every little thing from the PA primary while going to work in the past few weeks) vote until the end.

“The Oddly Shaped Waltz”

As I already stated at the beginning of the post, sis (and possibly myself as well) should be soon quite busy outside from blogging on this site. The reason being is another big family event happening soon. It seems like every summer, one of the families (usually mine) creates a large event to get all of the extended family on the east coast to show up. Last year was my college graduation. This year, our lovable kame-chan will turn 16 and mom is all set to hold a traditional Filipino sweet 16. Mom is the kind of person who will go all out when focused on something, so she wants to “do it up big” with this party by setting up a cotillion dance as well. Mom hired a dance instructor and the first practice with the dance instructor occurred at our house last Sunday. After watching some of sis’ friends stumble about as they do the waltz, it actually reminded me how impressive the Yuuichi-Mai ballroom scene in Kanon 2006 was and one of my first posts on this blog. I mentioned all this because I can see how our blogging regularity will drop between sis and I in the next few months. Hopefully when sis and bro finish up this semester, we can put up more content on a regular basis.

Now that I think of it, I’m a little bit disappointed at KyotoAni for choosing the waltz. If they animated a more flashy dance like swing, it would’ve been more amazing.

Cooperative Blogging - “Cuz teamwork makes the dream work”

One of the things I love about anime blogging is the discussion formed by a post. Often times, I find good posts made better by the comments that follow. This is why I like cooperative multi-writer posts. Cooperative posts initiate discussion from the beginning which increases the likelihood for extended discussions through comments. I plan to start a few cooperative posts with some guest bloggers. In some ways, this will be something similar to what the Anime Blogger Collective does but different. I’m not planning to undermine the ABC which does rather excellent theme-based posts. My idea is focusing on a specific subject or set of specific questions. The result hopefully leads to multiple bloggers expressing their viewpoints on a topic in a centralized location. Right now, the details are a bit jumbled (along with all the other stuff in my head). For now, I have at least one idea which has a few interested people. Once we get one started, we’ll see where we go from there.