Posts Tagged “advertising”

So I was scanning my local paper while eating Rice Krispies and a pear for breakfast (the “snap, crackle, and pop” sound is a novelty that will never fade for me) when I spotted the above in the Cost Plus circular and decided I HAD to scan it for a jocular post.

Firstly, I don’t think Ramune is very new at all considering I’ve seen at local supermarkets for a few years. Secondly, the phrase “Japan is just wild” demonstrates the kind of naive fascination that comprises the average consumer’s perception of the chain. Thirdly, I would rather wait until I go to Japantown to buy Ramune for about a dollar a bottle and instead indulge on an 80-cent bottle of Jarritos that has twice the volume.

On a more positive note, I did learn that lychee was a flavor and (from the back page) that they have 6-packs of Buffalo Bill’s Pumpkin Ale for sale, which I am considering trying closer to October. If you care to see the above listing in its full-page context, you can see it after the jump.
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Chris Beveridge posted a complaint Monday about the lackluster marketing and solicitation efforts of ADV Films and FUNimation to the broader non-hardcore audience. I personally haven’t had as bad a problem with on-box descriptions but I’ve had more of an issue with minimalistic ads, such as the above from the June issue of PiQ that I got in the mail late last week.

At first, I was like “what the hell is Shattered Angels?” and the one-line copy – “Why Choose?” – wasn’t helping me understand what the hell they were trying to advertise. It took a quick search engine query to divine that Shattered Angels is actually Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora under another name. (I later noticed that the image credit mentioned the production committee in the lower left corner but tiny, grey text on a white background is not very readable to the average eye.)
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Even though my Internet access right now is limited to use of university computer labs on weekdays and Internet cafes at the rate of €1 per hour, I am still trying to keep up with my usual information absorption methods through podcasts and RSS feeds. I was not particularly aware of the recent “anime is just entertainment” discussion that happened over the past week and frankly I didn’t really care about it. (My short response: anime is entertainment by definition. It is the viewer that chooses to see depth in it, if any in fact exists with the work in question.) Same goes for the “anime is dead” and “how does one define anime” discourse of the last month or so. I felt that if I happened to fashion a post on the above topics and those of similar ilk, it would get lost in the noise and not get read with as much credence or attention as the first couple people who chimed in. Though I probably would have written a “What are you talking about?!? Anime is alive and kickin’!” post if I had thought of it at the time instead of just now.

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Kazuki Akane, the director of the anime Noein, was quoted as calling the series “anime’s version of Stand By Me” in an ad I saw in the October 2006 issue of Newtype USA. Now I’ve seen the entire Rob Reiner movie but only the first episode of Noein; I suppose the analogy works because both have a group of young friends who find something strange together but the time traveling and sci-fi elements seem to offset those similarities for me between the two. Anyone who has seen most or all of Noein, please comment and say if Akane’s statement rings true at all. Anyway, his comparison of an anime to a western movie made me think of what other cross-Atlantic generalizations could be made. Read the rest of this entry »