Self-driving cars, Japan, and Rude Boy

If you can't watch the video, it shows a young man in a stylish leather jacket driving a Lexus IS through a mountain pass. “How do I explain it?” he wonders. “It was...exhilarating. Nimble. Responding to my every touch. Moving faster than the wind. That feeling of pure...driving. It was amazing.” The steering wheel disappears beneath his hands and suddenly he's sitting in a spacious self-driving orb, decades older, entering the outskirts of a major city (Toronto?). And then words appear onscreen:

“Enjoy the thrill of driving. While you still can.”

Yeah. Pretty much.

*

Reading the news today, it's hard not to come to a depressing conclusion:

Self-driving cars will likely be commercially available within our lifetimes.

The Weeknd in his all-red Lamb...borghini Aventador SV

Ok, so depending on who you are, that might not be depressing. It could even be damned exciting. I appreciate that not everybody loves driving like I do, or even particularly enjoys it, or thinks about it at all unless they're currently doing it. They're not against the concept, they just don't care. They don't don't spend all their disposable income on vehicles they don't need. They don't analyze the specs of cars old and new, calculating dollars-per-horsepower or power-to-weight ratios. They don't discover the entire library of The Weeknd because they saw an ad for the Starboy video and clicked on it to see what the car was.

That's fine. Self-driving cars are made by and for these people.

Some people, given the choice, would rather relax and enjoy the ride. There are people who are technically skilled, but so nervous and lacking in confidence that in practice they are a danger behind the wheel. And then there are people who should never operate a motorized vehicle under any circumstances. I'm actually hesitantly in favour of developing self-driving cars, especially if they could communicate with each other, dramatically improving safety and even alleviating congestion.

The only reason I'm ultimately against self-driving cars is because I am deeply afraid that if they become normalized in the public consciousness, real cars will be legislated against, and that if that happens, I'll never drive again.

I mean, Jesus, we practically have self-driving cars already: They're called BMWs. And grocery-getters aren't much better. Automatic transmissions, lane departure warning systems, fucking backup cameras, the entirety of automotive history has described an arc of human beings having to know less and less what the hell they're doing, to the undeniable detriment of their driving abilities. The new Civic Type-R, in spite of being standard-only, will actually fucking blip the throttle for you on a downshift, so that you don't have to learn to heel-toe. Because the last thing you want to do while driving is drive, apparently.

Kylie Jenner in her burnt orange Lamborghini Aventador SV

But Elon Musk, Waymo, Nissan, and everybody else researching autonomous vehicle technology don't care what I think. And one of my firm beliefs is that you can't fight the future: It's coming, and your only choice is whether to smile and hop on board or watch it leave you behind. I'm talking social justice in the 60s, the advent of the Internet, you can see it everywhere. I choose to get on board. I would even work for a company developing self-driving cars, if that came up. I'd hate to know that I helped sound the death knell of real cars, but if it's happening anyway, I might as well be a part of it, profit from it, and help make history. So I guess it's time to at least get comfortable with the idea.

*

There are, however, some alternatives to full autonomy.

Vehicle autonomy is currently categorized into four levels. Level 1 is what we currently have everywhere, and Level 4 is the long-term goal of zero driver input, ever. Level 3 is basically where the car can drive itself in any situation, but the driver still has the option of driving themselves if they want to.

Level 2 is where it gets sticky, and it's where we're stuck at present. At Level 2, the car drives itself, but it requires constant supervision from a human being, who must be as alert as they would be if driving themselves, ready to take over at a second's notice should the car's AI find itself embroiled in one of the numerous situations it is not equipped to handle. Do you...do you see the problem with this?

Instead, is there a way to make Level 1 safer? What Japanese automakers, in contrast to their American and European counterparts, seem to have arrived at is a broad swathe of features that help a human driver operate their vehicle more easily. In other words, the computer becomes not a chauffeur but a copilot. You gotta like that kind of lateral thinking from a business, filling a need we never knew was there.

Toyota:

Toyota Prius Super Bowl commercial. Source.

Here is where we have to pause to acknowledge that the Prius is an absolutely terrible car. The only car I've driven, so far, that was worse than the Prius was the Smart Fortwo (fingers crossed I get to drive a Lada someday!). Well, ok, Prius is surprisingly peppy in Sport mode. But in addition to being auto-only, on account of it's electric, the throt...um, gas ped...the accelerator isn't attached to anything, and feels like it. When you depress it, you aren't pulling a cable that operates the engine, you're asking permission from the computer to torque the drive axle a few extra times each second. Really stupid. (Although the Fortwo still wins the worst because its torque converter shifts like someone learning to drive standard, and not making a lot of progress with it either. Although it was shockingly peppy and oddly fun to wheel around...)

But you also have to acknowledge that the Prius is kind of an amazing piece of engineering, developed at a time when Toyota was on top and certainly didn't need something new and surprising, but chose to develop something anyway in order to avoid becoming stagnant. It's therefore fitting that it was chosen as the test bed for innovative developments in driver-assist technology, in partnership withresearchers at MIT.

The research project uses what the article calls “parallel autonomy,” human drivers assisted by a computer's detailed analysis and superhuman reaction times. These Priuses use what is quickly becoming a fairly standard combination of GPS, cameras, and LIDAR (light-based radar – so, “eyes”) to facilitate emergency automatic braking and emergency automatic steering. The researchers assert that people become inattentive when riding in a Level 2 vehicle, so instead they sought to augment Level 1.

Nissan:

WIRED: “Nissan's path toself-driving cars? Humans in call centres.”

“If the [self-driving] car hits black ice, it's in charge of staying on the road. But [human operators] can help out when the car encounters conditions it's unsure how to handle. A human operator would look around and use the car's cameras and other sensors to issue new instructions. The teleoperator is there to make sure the car doesn't just shut down when it's too dumb to know what's going on.”

I guess this one's cheating, but it's still an interesting unexpected solution.

Honda:

Acura NSX. Source.

Honda will apparently be using lessons learned from the Acura NSX to enhance the driving experience of its Regular Joe cars.

For example, the 2018 Accord will “match speeds with the car ahead, nudge the wheel to keep you from straying out of your lane, and it'll even bring the car to a stop if it detects an impending collision. It can even recognize traffic signs and display them to the driver. A multiangle backup camera is also standard on all trims. Blind-spot monitoring, front and rear parking sensors, rear cross traffic alert and a driver awareness monitor are optional.”

This is hardly an exhaustive list of all the developments in self-driving technology, or even just the Japanese sphere of it – that'd be a topic for a whole blog on its own – but it's a representative sampling of what's coming out of the country in that area.

*

And I kind of hate all this shit.

Elon Musk with a Tesla Model 3.

Tesla has actually recently included an option to allow their cars to go up to five klicks over the speed limit while in self-driving mode, which is unbelievably fucking stupid, because how the fuck did you not understand what you were getting into? Either accept that your car is going to restrain itself to the legal limit, or learn to drive it long distances yourself. Fucking rich people, hey?

And this actually speaks to my wider point: So, so many motorists are overwhelmed by their own sense of entitlement. I mean really. It's why they drive like complete dipshits on the highway, or send Mission Critical texts while driving, or drive while drunk or high. Traffic safety is one of the only things I take seriously. Because I love driving, I respect it.

“Oh, haha, but I actually drive better high, man.” Fuck you. Fuck. You. “But I only text when it's really important.” It's never important. You know it, I know it. It's certainly not more important than what's happening around you. When you say shit like that, what you're really saying is, “I think I'm more important than everyone else.” Oh, you literally think you are? Fuck you. We already went over this.

*

What's wrong with driver assist?

Takumi (AE86) and Keisuke (FD) race through the twisties.

Let's start with lane departure warnings. This is unbelievably stupid. How can you not notice when you're drifting out of your lane? Just pay attention to what the fuck you're doing! I'm annoyed this is even a thing. Besides, I intentionally drift out of my lane in the twisties, because that's where the best line is. Of course I never do it faster than I can see, because that's fucking obvious. Well, maybe this system could help wake somebody up if their attention starts to drift on the highway. Maybe that's legitimate. Alright. Alright.

Backup cameras? Well, OK, but the problem here is that people think that having a backup camera means they're free to just stare at a display on the dashboard, letting the beeps tell them when they're done. Um, no. You have to look all around the vehicle to make sure that pedestrians, other vehicles, etc aren't staggering gormlessly into your path, as they do. And you need to actually angle your car into the stall you want. And avoid knocking into anything outside the camera's extremely narrow viewpoint as you do it. A backup camera can be a handy tool. But like any tool, it's only effective for its intended use.

How about dashboard lights that indicate when there's a vehicle in your blind spot? Again, fine, as long as you remember that they're just tools. You still have to shoulder check and be certain the space you're moving into is clear, this is just one more safeguard in case you make a mistake. But that's not how most people will use them, is it? They will now trust the car to do their job for them, because no computer has ever had a glitch and no lighbulb has ever burned out. And by the way, when you have a spare moment, learn to adjust your mirrors correctly. Then you might not even have a blind spot. If you can see any part of the vehicle, you're doing it wrong.

Cruise control is bad enough. This stupid thing where it will now accelerate to passing speed without you touching the accelerator is even dumber. But I've already complained about this in another post, so we'll move on.

And now the worst one: Automatic braking. What the actual fuck? Excuse me. I am driving the car. I will decide when we brake. Full stop. No pun intended. Sorry, no, I am just fundamentally against anything that takes control and specifically decision-making out of the hands of the driver.

Yyyyyyeah.

So what happens the first time the feature malfunctions while you're doing 120 on the highway with an F250 tailgating you? Right.

On top of that, have you ever had your car do something unexpected, perhaps while moving at speed? It's not a great feeling, is it? Do you think it would be improved if it occurred as, say, a drunk driver ploughed into the back of a bus up ahead? Rather than thank their guardian angel, I think the average driver would be so startled by the car taking action without their input that it would actually hamper their ability to perform any other manoeuvres that might be necessary to avoid becoming involved in the accident – manoeuvres which would already be harder to perform under braking, by the way.

Besides which, setting aside how much I've slagged off the average driver throughout this post, how bad do you think people's hazard identification skills are? Most people's kneejerk (heh) reaction when confronted by any kind of driving situation is to hit the brakes anyway, even and maybe especially when the best response would be to accelerate, so the extra half-second is just not worth it.

Samson Drifter from Mafia 3. Source.

“So, Rude Boy, I suppose you hate ABS too.” Actually no. ABS is acceptable because it genuinely improves safety, is fairly reliable, and – and this is critical – behaves consistently, generally activating under the same combination of conditions (speed, load, brake input, and so forth), thus becoming no more than another tool in the driver's toolbox, augmenting her abilities and contributing to the driving experience rather than detracting from it. Yeah, you can grow to depend on it, but the average person will never again drive a car without ABS (most people under, like, 30 never even have), and for a majority of people, in a majority of situations, ABS is superior to no ABS. (Yes, you can, and indeed must, learn to balance the brakes right on the edge of locking up in a vehicle without ABS, but does that shorten your stopping distance relative to if it DID have ABS? No.)

*

Now there are, last time I counted, roughly a hundred billion companies competing in this space. Tesla is doing it because Elon Musk is forward-thinking as hell, hence the electric cars (OH MY FUCKING GOD ELECTRIC CARS UGH.) Uber is going for it because, presumably, they imagine a future in which they offer a fleet of self-driving taxis rather than contracting service providers. Google, via Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is in on it too, because since the day it was founded Google's business strategy has been “try a bunch of random bullshit.” And then there are the various startups focussing on just this one particular issue, many of them formed of refugees from some of the companies I just mentioned.

The significant thing here is that each of these companies has slightly different reasons for pursuing this goal – meaning their vision of the future of autonomous driving may actually vary more widely than you'd assume – and that they bring vastly different strengths and capabilities.

Mercedes's self-driving concept. Source.

Because it's not just tech companies who are in the game – traditional, non-Tesla vehicle manufacturers are having a go at it as well. It would be like if instead of getting Bill Gates to make Windows, IBM not only attempted to make their own software solution, but were actually competing against his at the same time. Toyota even partially funded the MIT project mentioned earlier. It's a new frontier in business, and in some ways it doesn't even make a lot of sense, but here we are.

I wonder if this is the beginning of a bigger trend? If it's good enough for Prius and Spider-Man: Homecoming, what other intersecting markets could benefit from collaboration between semi-competing companies?

*

The Prius article shares some words from the team lead: “I think we share the vision with Toyota that driving can be fun and people want to continue to drive.” And an unrelated researchers says, “Everyone thinks it's going to be super exciting to be in a self-driving car but it's actually going to be super boring.”

I still hope I never have to give up driving. If the Japanese government grandfathers in currently insured vehicles, I will keep all my current cars on the road until I die, probably in a spectacular traffic accident caused by human error and safety standards that are decades out of date. If they give everybody a hard deadline, say ten years, then my motorcycle will become my new daily. (Unlike most motorcyclists, I actually prefer driving to riding, but, if it comes to that, ten times out of ten I will choose to ride a motorcycle over being chauffered inside a robot.) If they take away our motorcycles – and they haven't so far, incredibly, so it's possible they never will – then I guess I'll just be hitting the track every weekend. I'd still be having a huge part of my identity ripped away, but at least I'd be able to get that comforting sensation of controlling a vehicle every once in a while. And I'll also, uh, play games like Grand Theft Auto, I guess?

Enjoy the thrill of driving. While you still can.

Star Wars vs Gundam: An unprofessional comparison

You probably haven't noticed since it hasn't really been mentioned in the news or on social media, but Star Wars: The Force Awakens recently hit theatres. Plenty have been showing Star Wars and only Star Wars for several weeks running. They are going to make a lot of money. Meanwhile, I, a longtime Gundam fan, am currently watching the original Mobile Suit Gundam for the first time. For its age, it's an incredible show; the quality of the animation is astounding, and the story is pretty timeless. Still, I can't help but notice that it came out in 1979. Know what else came out just two years earlier? The original Star Wars.

Creating the “space” genre, or merely repackaging it?

A lot of the Star Wars pre-game analyses I saw in the weeks leading up to the new film's release claim that Star Wars launched the space genre. Before Star Wars, commercially viable, intellectually accessible science fiction simply did not exist.

Bullshit.

I'm not just saying that because of Gundam. Gundam launched after, not before. I just explained that like two paragraphs ago. Jesus, please try to pay attention. No, I'm alluding to something interesting I read in a recent Cracked article:

“George Lucas, hot off the enormously successful American Graffiti, tried to buy the rights to Flash Gordon to turn it into a big-budget film franchise. They couldn't come to terms on a deal, so Lucas just decided to just write his own version. That's all it was. ... The rough draft of Star Wars was an incoherent rambling mess, borrowing entire scenes from other movies, mostly Akira Kurosawa samurai films (then again, Kurosawa had borrowed his from American Westerns). ... For the space dogfight that would mark the climactic battle at the end of the film, Lucas literally stitched together footage from war movies and documentaries, then just re-filmed them with spaceship models, shot for shot. In other words, Santa Claus isn't real."

Space Captain Harlock

Flash Gordon, "Buck Rodgers, Kurosawa, Westerns (Tattooine!), old WW2 footage. Sounds like Lucas had a lot of good material to draw on. But don't think that Japan was devoid of material at this point, either! It had its own “swashbuckling space adventure,” the 1970s anime Space Captain Harlock. It was popular enough to merit a revival a couple of years ago. And there's plenty more where that came from. 2001: A Space Odyssey, both book and movie. Or how about The War of the Worlds, an HG Wells story from fucking 1897. The decade preceding Star Wars even saw the rise of another space-themed series of TV shows and movies, an obscure property called “Star Trek.”

Metal Gear REX

Everything new steals from everything old. Harry Potter draws on centuries of mythology. Divergent mashes up Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, which in turn probably took ideas from Battle Royale. Metal Gear is a mixture of old movies, whatever is currently on Kojima's mind, and, inevitably, Gundam, because you can't tell me the series that launched the mecha subgenre did not in some way influence the eponymous war machines. Hell, even Gundam itself mercilessly cannibalizes its own plotlines to new purpose. Gundam Seed is just a repackaged Mobile Suit Gundam; 00 is just Wing for a post-9/11 audience.

Neither franchise “created” the space adventure. That door had already been slowly dilating open for decades. What they did was put an interesting spin on established conventions and make their own contributions to the cultural landscape. Which, given the flood of boring, derivative fluff we're inundated with every day of every year, is a huge accomplishment anyway.

Legacy

A steam-powered Oobu machine from Sakura Taisen. This one
in particular is piloted by the character Sakura.

Supposedly, less than 1% of people (English speakers?) have never seen any of the Star Wars movies. I was actually surprised it was that high! That's the power that these movies have. And besides Dragonball Z and Pokemon (in that order), I can't think of any other cultural treasure that has had a stronger or more enduring impact on the modern Japanese popular consciousness than Gundam. Final Fantasy? In Japan, Dragon Quest is bigger. Dragon Quest? Nice try, you sarcastic twit, because Dragon Quest is kind of only for nerds, while the other three are widely known by everyone. Sakura Taisen? You know what, now you're just annoying me.

I've heard that when making Sonic 2, Naka Yuuji wanted to pay tribute to the most popular things in America and Japan at the time, which he determined were Star Wars and Dragonball Z, respectively. Hence why Sonic collects seven Chaos Emeralds to transform into a golden, super-powered state, and why Eggman/Robotnik's latest creation is the planet-like Death Egg. I'm not completely sure if that's a true story, but it sounds credible.

The point is that both series have had such a – what? Oh, you think Gundam's not that important because Dragonball Z beat it out for a reference in Sonic 2? Go plan a day trip to Odaiba, tell me if you see anything interesting.

Close to 40 years later, both Gundam and Star Wars are huge, at least in their own countries. In case you forgot, The Force Awakens has just dropped. 2015 saw the beginning of a new Gundam continuity, the Iron-Blooded Orphans, which I haven't watched yet but is most likely far less silly than the English title makes it sound. Both have been the mother of sprawling franchises encompassing everything from physical toys, books, comic books, video games, all kinds of shit.

Merchandising

 “Lucas,” notes the Cracked article, “knew that he was, in part, making a series of toy commercials.” Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Why are there so many variations of Stormtrooper? Because then you can make a separate action figure for each of them. Ayla Secura gets an action figure. Lando's co-pilot gets an action figure. You can buy a goddamn Lego Death Star. The Expanded Universe is/was so successful because it explores intersting, in-depth stories within a compelling universe, but also because it allows for a nearly limitless number of concurrently developed products, with a huge install base, across every creative medium known to man. They had these novels about Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan pre-Phantom Menace, I thought they were just about the pinnacle of literature when I was a little kid. RIP Expanded Universe.

GAT-X131 Calamity Gundam

Now Gundam is an interesting case, it wasn't designed with the possibility of merchandise in mind, rather the プラモデル plastic models were designed first, and then Tomino was called in to create the anime in order to market the toys. When I first found out that Calamity from Seed was originally supposed to be 1.5 times the size of a regular Gundam, but this was changed because it would mean the scale model would have to be bigger and thus more expensive, it absolutely blew my mind that something so seemingly trivial could actually affect, no, constrict the creator's vision. Of course, back then I also didn't know that a lot of the best moments in movies were born from blind chance, that the stories and settings of video games are crafted in response to the gameplay mechanics and not the other way around, etc. Well, I was a child.

Which, while I'm on the topic, is why it always amuses/frustrates me when people complain that in making the prequels, George Lucas took Star Wars and “made it for children.” Uh, have you fucking seen the first three movies? THEY ARE FOR CHILDREN. Look at Luke – he is a hero made for children. His robot buddies are hand-made for children. And I'm sorry for treading well-trodden ground, but come the fuck on:

Star Wars is for children and always has been. And actually, so is Gundam. It's sophisticated enough that you can see it for the first time as an adult and still appreciate it, but let's be realistic, here, we're talking about giant robots fighting each other. It's only that Japan is a little less moralistic about its entertainment and coddles its youth a little less. (Broad strokes. Obviously.)

Themes

Char Aznable, fan favourite and one of the key characters of
Gundam's "Universal Century" continunity

　Psych! The two couldn't be farther apart. Gundam tells a nuanced anti-war tale in which there are no clear good guys and bad guys; the antagonists in the first series, the Principality of Zeon, want nothing more than independence from the oppressive Earth Federation (and I spent much of the series trying to figure out why the Federation didn't just give it to them). Later series continue the story from their perspective. As things develop, Mobile Suit Gundam scratches topics such as ecology (decades before An Inconvenient Truth) and transhumanism. Star Wars, meanwhile, is about how war is awesome, violence solves every problem, the good guys not only always win but always survive, and your enemies are all irredeemably evil.

Hero's Journey?

You could say that both Luke Skywalker and Amuro Rei follow a fairly typical Hero's Journey, one of the recognized plot structures in literature. Luke has humble beginnings (a moisture farm), gradually comes into his abilities, and finally destroys the Death Star in the climactic action sequence. It works even better on a trilogy-wide scale, with blind luck leading the way to victory in A New Hope, Luke screwing up and battling his inner demons in The Empire Strikes Back, and emerging in Return of the Jedi as a confident, skilled combatant.

Source.

Similarly, civilian teenager Amuro Rei is thrust into a combat role by circumstances, and initially depends heavily on the capabilities of his machine to achieve victory. Understandably, he develops (a fairly believable depiction of) PTSD after a few battles, stops eating and sleeping properly, and lashes out at the people trying to help him, including his closest friend. At one point he even deserts his ship, White Base, and absconds with the Gundam, which is military property in the first place. Eventually he comes to terms with his fear, achieves his potential, and becomes a truly skilled pilot bent on protecting White Base and its inhabitants.

Of course, I'm not sure this actually says anything substantial about these two series. It probably just indicates that the Hero's Journey is a good fit for a space opera. Which I guess is interesting in itself, actually.

Accidental retro-futurism

This is a common pitfall of science fiction: By the time the real world has caught up chronologically with the one you've created, it may have actually surpassed the technology you were envisioning, or gone off in a completely different direction. Early cyberpunk had conceived of the Internet before the Internet was the Internet, but it didn't occur to people back in the 80's that we would eventually be able to access it wirelessly.

"These days its design seems completely inadequate." Source.

 Again, even today I find Mobile Suit Gundam relevant and immensely enjoyable, but one does notice the occasioanl hiccough in technological progress. I think this is most noticeable in the viewscreens used by crewmen on White Base and in their mobile suit cockpits, which is to say they look like an old TV your father has stored in his basement because he hasn't bothered to throw it away yet, not like modern monitors and certainly not like anything we'll have by the time we're living on the moon.

Meanwhile, control panels on the shiny, just-finished Death Star look as though they're best suited for operating a Magnavox Intellivision.

Cutting-edge computer technology in the world of Fallout.

This can injure suspension of disbelief, but I actually really dig this. It's kind of like a fingerprint left on a work by the era in which it was created. You can always think of it as an alternate timeline, like in Fallout, where humanity pursued nuclear technology instead of computer technology, so that even computers manufactured circa 2077 intentionally look like they came out of 1950.

Destruction!

The Death Star destroying Alderaan is the cayalyst for sections of plot in A New Hope. Mobile Suit Gundam kicks off with the destruction of the protagonist's home, the space colony Side 7. Huh.

Laser swords

Lightsabre – beam sabre. Even the names are similar.

If there's one thing East and West could agree on in the 1970s, it was that laser swords are just plain cool. Or “totally radical,” I guess.

But all of this pales in comparison to...

Amateur mechanics

As a young boy, Anakin Skywalker built C-3PO...

...and as a budding scientific prodigy, Amuro Rei created the purely decorative robot Haro.

Anakin, of course, becomes Darth Vader. And in some Gundam series, Amuro occupies the role of villain.

Coincidence?

The crossover section of Fanfiction.com thinks not.

Nintendou has a new captain

Kimishima Tatsumi (君島達己)

Earlier this summer, the president of Nintendou fucking died. His name was Iwata Satoru, and while he wasn't necessarily the most beloved figure in the industry it certainly came as a shock. In the wake of this tragedy, Nintendou took the opportunity to reshuffle its upper-level management while considering his successor. Yesterdayish, the company released a statement naming Kimishima Tatsumi as the new head of the company.

Additionally, Miyamoto Shigeru has been the recipient of the newly created title of “Creative Fellow.” Head of Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development (formerly R&D1), ie the section of the company that actually makes the games, Miyamoto is responsible for Mario, Zelda, and other masterpieces. The new title seems to indicate more a recognition of his contributions to Nintendou than any change in his role within it. (Some fans expressed a desire for him to become president, which makes no sense. Miyamoto will never be president. Even if his creative skills were transferrable to the financial side of the company, if he became president he'd obviously no longer be making games.) Takeda Genyo, meanwhile, is now a Technology Fellow, seemingly the hardware equivalent to Miyamoto's software stuff. “Fellow” is a bit of a weird-ass ingredient to throw into a salad full of words like “Representative Director,” but oddly enough it kind of fits with Nintendou's style.

That said, Kimishima's appointment is the far more interesting and important part of the announcement. Beginning his career in banking, he joined The Pokemon Company in 2000. (Not to be confused with Game Freak, the development studio that actually makes most of the Pokemon games, The Pokemon Company is mainly concerned with marketing and licensing the franchise.) He then joined Nintendo of America for several years before coming back to Japan, where he was responsibly for various businessy aspects of Nintendou, like Human Resources and the always nebulous “General Affairs.” Clearly the experience and the skillset is there; the question now is how he will stack up to Iwata.

Iwata Satoru (岩田聡)

On the one hand, Iwata clearly had a deep and abiding love of games, believed in his company, and at one point appeared willing to take the fall for lacklustre WiiU sales. He took steps to make himself appear relatable and accessible to his company's fandom, such as through Nintendo Direct, where he “directly” addressed fans (customers) regarding current products and issues. On the other hand, this also gave some the impression that he was weak and simpering, and while “Please Understand” was a stupid, lazy meme, it did represent many people's dissatisfaction with the direction Nintendou was taking. Meanwhile, Iwata presided over one of the weakest periods in the company's history, financially and artistically. If you want to be charitable you can acknowledge that he was facing varied challenges the best way he knew how, and that shouldering the entire blame on one person is absurd, but you can't deny his responsibility for the disappointment.

In contrast to Iwata's attitude, I see one particular sentiment floating around the Internet regarding Kimishima: “He's a businessman, not a gamer.” There's a few things to unpack there. First of all, there's no doubt that Iwata was a gamer, but in the sense that he lead a huge business, how exactly was he not a businessman? I guess the answer would be that he was not a skilled businessman, or that his attitude towards the business was insufficiently businesslike. Except, the implication seems to be that having a gamer leading a games company is good and would naturally lead to high-quality products, while a businessman will bring us soulles cash-ins.

Sure, having a passion for your industry and its products can potentially be a tremendous asset. One way to put it is that as the head of a games company, you are in a position to create the kind of games that you would want to play. Individual tastes and all that, but you can be reasonably sure that a certain proportion of consumers will nod right along with you, and that whatever you make, it will at least have artistic conviction. You may also be better equipped to read the currents of popular feeling; how often have we heard the complaint about company executives being out of touch?

However, I am of the opinion that business acumen is also extremely valuable to have when conducting business. It's also wrong to say that a lack of personal interest necessarily equates to a lack of understanding. Suppose I got hired at P&G tomorrow. As it stands, I do not feel any deep emotion for household cleaning products, but if it were my job to know about them, you can bet that for the next few weeks I would be spending every waking moment learning. I would learn exactly which chemical compounds are most effective at scouring stains from carpet and the thought process that goes into Mrs MacMillan's purchasing decisions when she's at the grocery store. Naturally, games, which are art rather than science, are that much more dependent on instinct, but it's not like market analysis has never steered anybody into a bad business decision, anyway.

Personally, I'm intrigued. I never got as down on Nintendou as a lot of people did, because Mario and Zelda are just so much fun. Still, I feel as though shaking things up like this could really reinvigorate the company. Surely the gravity of his position is not lost on Kimishima. In Shadowrun, Nintendou would be an A-ranked corporation at least, and it is no small fixture of Japanese culture both at home and internationally. Hopefully we get at least a few good games out of it.

56 Flowers: China tries to AKB

Here's an Asahi Shinbun article from a couple days ago:

“An idol group composed of 56 Chinese women has been born. It is called '56 Flowers.' One can't help but think that it is meant to compete directly with Japan's AKB48. That said, the sense of propaganda in songs like their fervently performed 'China is the most Beautiful,' embodying Chinese head of state Xi Jinping's 'Chinese Dream,' is quite strong. Will they really be popular?

“56 is the number of officially recognized Chinese ethnicities. It seems that 56 Flowers is attempting to appeal to a sense of ethnic unity and patriotism. The particulars of the group's formation are unknown, it is supposed that Chinese authorities were involved.

“According to local media, it is formed of various ethnicities of girls, aged 16-23, with skill in singing and dancing. At Beijing Park in June, they stood onstage in front of the Chinese flage and images of Mao Zedong, wearing white blouses and black miniskirts. Staff apparently said, 'Unlike groups from Japan or China, 56 Flowers is not selling sex or looks.'

“There have been comments on the Internet in the vein of, 'They seem like a North Korean group,' and 'It smells like the Cultural Revolution.' (Shanghai)”

Here's another article, this one in English, with a little more information. For good measure, here's a video.

So you get 56 girls between the ages of 16 and 23, dress them up in cotton blouses and short skirts, and have them sing and dance for our entertainment. Totally not selling sex though!

This “various ethnicities” thing is nice, especially given China's historical...struggles with that issue. It only really works, though, if each member is actually a representative of that group. Please let me know if I'm wrong, but something tells me this super isn't the case. At least Team 8 really did go out and recruit a girl from each prefecture. And while I totally understand concerns regarding propaganda, I'm interested to see where this might go.

Anytime I think about the China Century theory, I suspect that it will not really equal the influence of America during the American Century unless it occupies the same cultural space. I mean, setting aside the possibility that we may have entered a period in history in which globalization is so prevalent that no one country can possibly dominate – you could draw some parallels. A rising economic star. Flirting with imperialism. That kind of stuff.

But what made America into America in the eyes of the rest of the world was, I think, its popular culture. The average American on the street cared about Tom Cruise, not Ronald Reagan. I guess the same is true of a lot of countries – probably most non-Japanese people you know can picture Goku, but not Abe Shinzou – so maybe this is a shallow point, but what I'm getting at is that I've always wanted to see what China could give us for soft culture. I can name a couple dozen Korean pop music groups despite having never even been there, but I can only think of two Chinese groups, and one of them is SNH48.

We've got wuxia – that's identifiably Chinese. And that's cool. Wuxia is cool! Can't wait for Iron Knight, Silver Vase! “Hong Kong action movie” is basically a genre, and Sleeping Dogs rocked (that's if we're counting Hong Kong as culturally part of China, but let's not get into that). What else though? By and large I'm gonna go ahead and say that Chinese pop culture doesn't really get much play outside of China, at least not in the English-speaking world. Isn't that odd? China is kind of really big, you guys. This seems to mark a deliberate step towards changing that, and I'm excited! I'd love people to step more Chinese songs for In the Groove. Maybe not “China is the most Beautiful,” but you know.

I'm also not totally convinced that this won't be like the forced hallyu of the mid-2000s up to recent years, where Korean artists started recording songs in Japanese, SNSD appeared on Letterman and there was even talk of getting Americans into K-dramas. This publicity campaign was the subject of much derision by K-bloggers, and the “movement,” such as it is, tends to be regarded as a bit of a failure. This could easily go the same way. It's still interesting, though, and it will likely have a very different character, if only because of the Chinese government and all that it represents.

To close the circle: Does 56 Flowers have a credible chance of competing against AKB 48? Uh, no. They're completely different products. AKB sing about first love, and hair scrunchies, and teenage prostitution. These are very relatable, easily digestible topics that transcend differences in lifestyle and cultural boundaries. The glory of the People's Republic of China is not. To be fair, I don't think it actually says anywhere that they want 56 Flowers to spread its influence beyond China; maybe it represents more of a pep rally for Chinese citizens. If so, they've got work ahead of them, because sadly, nobody cares about politics anymore. Also, they may be a state-driven propaganda machine.