Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
Anime has its fair share of eccentric creators. More than its fair share. From the grumpy and filiphobic attitudes of Hayao Miyazaki to the bombastic arrogance of Yoshiyuki Tomino, it's hard to stand out in a world of such striking personalities. But one man made it his mission to be more aggressively over-the-top than any of the competition, and that man's name is Shinichi Watanabe.
If you've never heard of this man I don't really blame you. His time in the limelight was in the era of the early '00s, with his fame coming mostly from his appearances in the Excel Saga and Hayate no Gotoku anime. And yes, "appearances". For while your average director is satisfied with just putting their ideas to animation, Mr Watanabe's does not hesitate to insert his own likeness into every possible story as a character in his own right. As the man himself said:
"I really like animation. And I really like myself. So combining the two you get animations of myself, which is something I really really like."From the various interviews with him it is clear to see that his mission in life is to stand out from the crowd. He donned his iconic red suit and yellow tie explicitly for that purpose, with his natural afro adding to the eccentric look. But Shinichi had been dealt a bad hand in life in regards to his name: being but two letters off from the (more) famous director Shinichiro Watanabe of Cowboy Bebop fame. And so he adopted the nickname "Nabeshin", a combination of elements from his first and last name. His attire has often been compared to that of Lupin, a comparison which Nabeshin adamantly denies, saying: "We just happened to have very similar taste in clothing!"; the fact that Lupin III was his directorial debut being a mere coincidence. But he doesn't claim everything comes from his own mind. When asked in an interview where his nickname originated he said "It came to me from God. God himself came down and told me 'YOU ARE NABESHIN'". A humble man indeed.
Nabeshin's most recognisable work is the 1999 anime Excel Saga, one of the most eccentric and surreal comedies ever put to TV animation. In the first episode Nabeshin fights the original mangaka for control of the narrative, in which the poor mangaka is portrayed s a feeble nerd who stands no chance against the strength of our brave director. And so, over the course of the show Nabeshin slowly takes over the protagonist role from the original characters, fusing conventional manzai comedy with surrealist and meta story-telling: literally demolishing the fourth wall with a submachine-gun.
But it wasn't enough. The next year he would step it up a notch in the tour-de-force that is Puni Puni Poemi. A thought-provoking deconstruction of the magical girl genre, featuring Nabeshin as the neglectful father of a nuclear-powered magical girl who is out to destroy the world. Nabeshin is crucified and dies, only to be resurrected and save the day in his role as "director-father". This work is truly his gesamtkunstwerk, although its not an anime for the weak of heart.
After this Nabeshin would appear in most of the works in which he was involved, often taking over the episodes he directed. His appearance became a running gag within the projects he worked on such as Eyeshield 21, Komugi-chan Magikarte, and my favourite anime: Mahoromatic. His most notable work in this era was with the long-running shounen romcom Hayate no Gotoku, to which his erratic style served well.
Apart from his profuse self-insertion, his directing repertoire includes facets such as his use of off-model character animation and "noodle limbs", non-linear and dream-like narratives that flit in and out of various levels of reality, leaving the viewer bewildered as to where the story truly begins and ends; a style similar to the skit-segueing of Monty Python. This leads to anime where the focus is placed entirely on the characters, the story confusing itself into non-existence. And while such a frenetic nature can be taxing, in small doses he creates anime nobody else can: or at least nobody else would dare to.
