REAL TECH in Anime

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A huge thank you to Vesey for sponsoring what I do here on Dinky Channel.

The year 2011 gave us an epic and surprisingly dark spin on the magical girl genre called "Monica Magika." Every couple of years or so, nostalgia for my early fandom gets me re-watching it. The last time I did, one scene caught my attention midway through the series. One of the characters, Blue Sayaka, goes to visit her friend Kiyosuke at the hospital. The dude is a violinist who's run into health complications and so he can't play anymore.

Hold up! Cause a CD player that's open... My first thought was okay, it probably just exists in the show, but let's dig deeper. Out of curiosity, keen-eyed Redditors did some digging and found it to be real – sort of. The CD player turned out to be based on a concept from 2007 that never materialized into an actual product.

It's certainly of its time, the designer made it as a hybrid CD slash MP3 player. Of course, this was in the middle of the iPod days and people were still trying to figure out whether they wanted physical or digital, and a lot of us ended up having both. I would have loved to have one if not just for the novelty of the design.

But it's not to say that the concept is totally impossible. While not exactly the same thing, look back at the heyday of Sony innovation in the late 80s – it's the Discman D88! If you guys are genuinely curious about this product, there's a really cool video on the Tecmo channel doing a full breakdown.

The D88 is genuinely a fascinating product. Absolutely impractical to play in public, especially since CDs scratch if you so much as look at them again... This thing literally spins your discs out in the open! But come on, for the 80s, this thing's pretty cool!

A bit of an obvious statement, but the scope of technology doesn't just stop at the physical items you can hold with your hands. Devices are mere vehicles for software ecosystems, ideas, and concepts... As you'll see with the next few examples, abstract facets of technology can play a huge role in the environment an anime takes place in and can even affect its characters and stories.

While many of us are begrudgingly letting Web 3 into our lives, Fame director Mamora Hosoda used the Metaverse as the backdrop for his 2021 film "Belle." It's best described as a modern-day take on the classic "Beauty and the Beast."

The way the film explores the concept of people living different lives in the virtual world through avatars is equal parts positive and negative. It can break people out of their shell to become better versions of themselves, but likewise, if there's anything the internet has taught us already, it's that anonymity can also give way to people being the absolute worst.

In my opinion, I think it does the whole Metaverse thing pretty well at least considering that this is a film made for general audiences. Mamora Hosoda is all too familiar with making movies about bleeding-edge tech – apart from Belle, back in the year 2000, Hosoda directed the "Digimon: Our War Game" film.

Which featured real aspects of tech back in the day – we're talking computers running Windows 98, email viruses... But of course, anime is truly the best when it's visual and active, not just static shots of computer screens. So, Hosoda used tunnels and 3D spaces to visually represent the internet in a space separate from the real world.

Go figure for a movie based around digital monsters in a digital world – but that Digimon movie turned out to be a beta for what would be his 2009 film "Summer Wars." Which is basically that Digimon movie but with a standalone story and incorporates more online gaming and esports into its thematic makeup.

It's pretty safe to say if there's any significant advancement of tech in our lives and culture, Mamora Hosoda will probably be there to make a film about it. There are so many other interesting real-tech references in anime that I want to cover, but sadly, this is all the time I got for this video.

If you liked it, give me a thumbs up and let me know what other anime tech you'd like me to cover next. Thank you for getting Dinky Channel to over 50,000 subscribers! And otherwise, I'll catch y'all later!

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enlast time we looked at tech companies that collabed with anime brands to make all kinds of special merch but today we're going deeper to find tech in anime that's actually real let's talk about it hello and welcome to denki channel my name is ken when it comes to works of fiction like anime writers and directors include aspects of mundane life in their storytelling so that viewers can better empathize with what's happening on screen take anime set in the current day it's hardly a surprise when we see characters say use a smartphone and post on twitter or instagram after all tech is that deeply woven into our culture these details can go a long way toward immersion even if it's granular in the scheme of world building and so here are some of my favorite moments when anime featured real life tech as spoiler free as i could possibly make it just like most forms of content anime isn't immune to product placement but in the scheme of a few hundred works released every single year it's not as common as you might think run your mind back to every time an anime featured a mcdonald's over a mcdonald's without getting in the weeds it makes a whole lot of sense when you consider that the rights to use brand names is generally a headache for everyone involved but on the rare occasion that product placement rears its head in an anime it certainly stands out someone that actually uses this as a tool in his arsenal is director makoto shinkai the creator behind the immensely popular 2016 movie kimi no nawa otherwise known as your name he's one of my favorite directors with how meticulous he is with his visual direction shinkai utilizes the hustle and bustle of tokyo as the backdrop for many of his films then takes visual effects and vivid lighting to amp up the look even further the end result is a tokyo that not only looks real for anime standards but is arguably better than real if your name was already one of the most beautiful immersive anime movies around its spiritual successor weathering with you upped the ante even more and one of the ways it did this was with brand and product placement to make his interpretation of tokyo way more believable i mean think about all of the advertisements and businesses that are in the city the film not only featured a very real mcdonald's with a very real big mac that looked better than any other big mac i've ever gotten weathering also featured brands like honda pepsi and for us apple peep the 12-inch macbook good choice an iphone and even airpods now shinkai said in an interview that he needed to go through hoops to get mcdonald's to give him the okay to use their image and likeness for the film but i have a feeling that working with apple to include them in the film was probably way easier to pull off than with the golden arches you see shinkai is publicly known to credit the mac as a primary tool for his work his early breakout hit voices of a distant star was written directed and produced basically by himself on a power mac g4 back in the early 2000s and it seems like his loyalty toward apple hasn't gone unnoticed either with him and his works being featured in ads and promotional materials for the company in japan and it wasn't too long ago that he tweeted his praise over his new mac studio it's one thing to scatter brand names all over the screen but for shinkai i'd like to think that his apple placements were out of genuine admiration for the brand if you wear knitted shoes as much as i do you know how comfortable lightweight and breathable they are but step in a puddle by accident or walk in the rain for just a few minutes and my socks get soaked and my day is immediately ruined that's where the sponsor of today's video vessi comes in knit with sustainable 100 vegan dymatex material they have no right being this waterproof let's just put the shoe in got a big tub of water oh my god wow my toe is dry what socks completely dry how is it doing that their cityscape shoes in this charcoal gray colorway look really stylish while offering the comfort and durability a daily driver should i've been running errands with them going on walks best part vessi has lots of styles to choose from delivered right to your doorstep to get a pair for yourself check out the link in the description and if you use the code denky at checkout you'll get 25 off and huge thanks to vesey for sponsoring what i do here on dinky channel the year 2011 gave us an epic and surprisingly dark spin on the magical girl genre called monica magika every couple of years or so nostalgia for my early fandom gets me re-watching it and the last time i did one scene caught my attention midway through the series one of the characters blue sayaka goes to visit her friend kiyosuke at the hospital the dude is a violinist that's run into health complications and so he can't play anymore hold up cause a cd player that's open my first thought was okay it probably just exists in the show but let's dig deeper out of curiosity keen-eyed redditors did some digging and found it to be real sort of the cd player turned out to be based on a concept from 2007 that never materialized into an actual product it's certainly of the time the designer made it as a hybrid cd slash mp3 player of course this was in the middle of the ipod days and people were still trying to figure out whether they wanted physical or digital and a lot of us ended up having both i would have loved to have one if not just for the novelty of the design but it's not to say that the concept is totally impossible while not exactly the same thing look back at the heyday of sony innovation in the late 80s it's a sunny and you'll find the discman d88 if you guys are genuinely curious about this product there's a really cool video on the tecmo channel doing a full breakdown but the d88 is genuinely a fascinating product absolutely impractical to play in public especially since cds scratch of you so much as look at them again this thing literally spins your discs out in the open but come on for the 80s this thing's pretty cool a bit of an obvious statement but the scope of technology doesn't just stop at the physical items you can hold with your hands devices are mere vehicles for software ecosystems ideas and concepts as you'll see with the next few examples abstract facets of technology can play to the environment an anime takes place in and can even affect its characters and stories while many of us are begrudgingly letting web 3 into our lives fame director mamaro hosoda used the metaverse as the backdrop for his 2021 film belle which is best described as a modern day take on the classic beauty and the beast the way the film explores the concept of people living different lives in the virtual world through avatars is equal parts positive and negative it can break people out of their shell to become better versions of themselves but likewise if there's anything the internet has taught us already it's that anonymity can also give way to people being the absolute worst and in my opinion i think it does the whole metaverse thing pretty well at least considering that this is a film made for general audiences mama hosoda is all too familiar with making movies about bleeding edge tech apart from bell back in the year 2000 hosoda directed the digimon our war game film which featured hello real aspects of tech back in the day we're talking computers running windows 98 email viruses but of course anime is truly the best when it's visual and active not just static shots of computer screens so hasoda used tunnels and 3d spaces to visually represent the internet in a space separate from the real world go figure for a movie based around digital monsters in a digital world but that digimon movie turned out to be a beta for what would be his 2009 film summer wars which is basically that digimon movie but with a standalone story and incorporates more online gaming and esports into its thematic makeup it's pretty safe to say if there's any significant advancement of tech in our lives and culture mamarosota will probably be there to make a film about it there are so many other interesting real tech references in anime that i want to cover but sadly this is all the time i got for this video if you liked it give me a thumbs up and let me know what other anime tech you'd like me to cover next thank you for getting denky channel to over 50 000 subscribers and otherwise i'll catch y'all laterlast time we looked at tech companies that collabed with anime brands to make all kinds of special merch but today we're going deeper to find tech in anime that's actually real let's talk about it hello and welcome to denki channel my name is ken when it comes to works of fiction like anime writers and directors include aspects of mundane life in their storytelling so that viewers can better empathize with what's happening on screen take anime set in the current day it's hardly a surprise when we see characters say use a smartphone and post on twitter or instagram after all tech is that deeply woven into our culture these details can go a long way toward immersion even if it's granular in the scheme of world building and so here are some of my favorite moments when anime featured real life tech as spoiler free as i could possibly make it just like most forms of content anime isn't immune to product placement but in the scheme of a few hundred works released every single year it's not as common as you might think run your mind back to every time an anime featured a mcdonald's over a mcdonald's without getting in the weeds it makes a whole lot of sense when you consider that the rights to use brand names is generally a headache for everyone involved but on the rare occasion that product placement rears its head in an anime it certainly stands out someone that actually uses this as a tool in his arsenal is director makoto shinkai the creator behind the immensely popular 2016 movie kimi no nawa otherwise known as your name he's one of my favorite directors with how meticulous he is with his visual direction shinkai utilizes the hustle and bustle of tokyo as the backdrop for many of his films then takes visual effects and vivid lighting to amp up the look even further the end result is a tokyo that not only looks real for anime standards but is arguably better than real if your name was already one of the most beautiful immersive anime movies around its spiritual successor weathering with you upped the ante even more and one of the ways it did this was with brand and product placement to make his interpretation of tokyo way more believable i mean think about all of the advertisements and businesses that are in the city the film not only featured a very real mcdonald's with a very real big mac that looked better than any other big mac i've ever gotten weathering also featured brands like honda pepsi and for us apple peep the 12-inch macbook good choice an iphone and even airpods now shinkai said in an interview that he needed to go through hoops to get mcdonald's to give him the okay to use their image and likeness for the film but i have a feeling that working with apple to include them in the film was probably way easier to pull off than with the golden arches you see shinkai is publicly known to credit the mac as a primary tool for his work his early breakout hit voices of a distant star was written directed and produced basically by himself on a power mac g4 back in the early 2000s and it seems like his loyalty toward apple hasn't gone unnoticed either with him and his works being featured in ads and promotional materials for the company in japan and it wasn't too long ago that he tweeted his praise over his new mac studio it's one thing to scatter brand names all over the screen but for shinkai i'd like to think that his apple placements were out of genuine admiration for the brand if you wear knitted shoes as much as i do you know how comfortable lightweight and breathable they are but step in a puddle by accident or walk in the rain for just a few minutes and my socks get soaked and my day is immediately ruined that's where the sponsor of today's video vessi comes in knit with sustainable 100 vegan dymatex material they have no right being this waterproof let's just put the shoe in got a big tub of water oh my god wow my toe is dry what socks completely dry how is it doing that their cityscape shoes in this charcoal gray colorway look really stylish while offering the comfort and durability a daily driver should i've been running errands with them going on walks best part vessi has lots of styles to choose from delivered right to your doorstep to get a pair for yourself check out the link in the description and if you use the code denky at checkout you'll get 25 off and huge thanks to vesey for sponsoring what i do here on dinky channel the year 2011 gave us an epic and surprisingly dark spin on the magical girl genre called monica magika every couple of years or so nostalgia for my early fandom gets me re-watching it and the last time i did one scene caught my attention midway through the series one of the characters blue sayaka goes to visit her friend kiyosuke at the hospital the dude is a violinist that's run into health complications and so he can't play anymore hold up cause a cd player that's open my first thought was okay it probably just exists in the show but let's dig deeper out of curiosity keen-eyed redditors did some digging and found it to be real sort of the cd player turned out to be based on a concept from 2007 that never materialized into an actual product it's certainly of the time the designer made it as a hybrid cd slash mp3 player of course this was in the middle of the ipod days and people were still trying to figure out whether they wanted physical or digital and a lot of us ended up having both i would have loved to have one if not just for the novelty of the design but it's not to say that the concept is totally impossible while not exactly the same thing look back at the heyday of sony innovation in the late 80s it's a sunny and you'll find the discman d88 if you guys are genuinely curious about this product there's a really cool video on the tecmo channel doing a full breakdown but the d88 is genuinely a fascinating product absolutely impractical to play in public especially since cds scratch of you so much as look at them again this thing literally spins your discs out in the open but come on for the 80s this thing's pretty cool a bit of an obvious statement but the scope of technology doesn't just stop at the physical items you can hold with your hands devices are mere vehicles for software ecosystems ideas and concepts as you'll see with the next few examples abstract facets of technology can play to the environment an anime takes place in and can even affect its characters and stories while many of us are begrudgingly letting web 3 into our lives fame director mamaro hosoda used the metaverse as the backdrop for his 2021 film belle which is best described as a modern day take on the classic beauty and the beast the way the film explores the concept of people living different lives in the virtual world through avatars is equal parts positive and negative it can break people out of their shell to become better versions of themselves but likewise if there's anything the internet has taught us already it's that anonymity can also give way to people being the absolute worst and in my opinion i think it does the whole metaverse thing pretty well at least considering that this is a film made for general audiences mama hosoda is all too familiar with making movies about bleeding edge tech apart from bell back in the year 2000 hosoda directed the digimon our war game film which featured hello real aspects of tech back in the day we're talking computers running windows 98 email viruses but of course anime is truly the best when it's visual and active not just static shots of computer screens so hasoda used tunnels and 3d spaces to visually represent the internet in a space separate from the real world go figure for a movie based around digital monsters in a digital world but that digimon movie turned out to be a beta for what would be his 2009 film summer wars which is basically that digimon movie but with a standalone story and incorporates more online gaming and esports into its thematic makeup it's pretty safe to say if there's any significant advancement of tech in our lives and culture mamarosota will probably be there to make a film about it there are so many other interesting real tech references in anime that i want to cover but sadly this is all the time i got for this video if you liked it give me a thumbs up and let me know what other anime tech you'd like me to cover next thank you for getting denky channel to over 50 000 subscribers and otherwise i'll catch y'all later