Joe Is Japanese
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
This is a teaser/trailer for Joe Is Japanese, a new web-based animation series that is launching soon. It looks pretty cool. (Thanks Karen!) From his MySpace profile:
The show is based on (mostly) true events from my life. It wasn’t easy growing up a half-breed. No one culture will ever be yours to embrace. No matter how hard I tried, I could never really be Japanese, and as I got older I realized that I might have overcompensated and became too Japanese. You’d have to be Japanese to understand what I mean by that one…
…I get to tell random stories like that. Stories that made up my life… they made me into what I am today, (mostly) Japanese. So why an anime about it?
Well, I have got a friend that runs an animation studio that I’ve known for 15 some years. I’ve told him a lot of stories I believed were in strict confidence. Not the case. We’ve got into a lot of trouble and I kinda thought we’d never share some stories with anyone else. Not the case. In fact, I guess we’re telling the world all about me and everyone I’ve had an interesting experience with.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
deb wrote:
Cool! And it’s not all crude lookin’ either. Guess it’s nice to have friends who run animation studios.
Posted 15 Aug 2007 at 10:26 am ¶
Natasha wrote:
Hmm… seven characters listed and only one of them is female… oh, and she’s naked in her profile pic.
Posted 15 Aug 2007 at 11:09 am ¶
atlasien wrote:
Fascinating!
Posted 15 Aug 2007 at 11:10 am ¶
Kimchihead wrote:
Hilarious!
Posted 15 Aug 2007 at 11:33 am ¶
gandalf mantooth wrote:
Could be interesting with more stuff like the first clip rather than the chinpara stories. The characters appear to be stock however time will tell whether that’s the actual case.
Posted 15 Aug 2007 at 11:51 am ¶
Alicia wrote:
yeah, I’m diggin’ this.
Posted 15 Aug 2007 at 12:02 pm ¶
Andrew/Animelee wrote:
I saw this a few months back. I like it, I just didn’t like the part with the cat…
Posted 16 Aug 2007 at 2:28 am ¶
EvilAngelfish wrote:
The clip about calling the phone company is dead on. Actually, it kinda reminds me of the “He speaks so well” bit from Chris Rock’s ‘Bring the Pain’…
Posted 16 Aug 2007 at 6:00 am ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
I will totally be watching this.
But…. I am concerned about Mr. BarakkuJapanese…that doesn’t seem to bode well…or maybe I’ve just read a few too many mangas/manhwas where black people act like/are compared to apes/savages…
Posted 16 Aug 2007 at 6:27 am ¶