Japen 2020 impressions

Japen 2020 is out! It was very fun to watch it during the premiere, which had about 800 viewers. Big events like this one are rare in our hobby so it feels amazing when I get to enjoy them.

Overall, I really liked it. The edit and all the Easter eggs show how much passion Iteza has poured into this project. The combos are a great representation of what pen spinning has been this year, both regarding the cast and overall visual effect.

The highlights for me were Jiv→Laku and AiMo→Rai as the last players. Seeing Jiv in was very emotional, he has practiced hard this year and appearing on Japen was well deserved. Both his combo and Laku's are also quite visually impactful, with the music being just on point for the transition. AiMo's combo is probably my favorite, the trick at 2:58 is awesome. Rai's precision and stability also made him perfect for the last player.

Ashrount did a great job with the music. It's relatively different to his other works and deviating too much from his area of expertise can easily go south, but for me it fits perfectly. I also get light novel vibes, ever so slightly. Which is cool because to me 2020 felt like a light novel. One that resembled Steins Gate 0 more than the usual romcom one but hey, a light novel nevertheless!.

Figure 1 - Laku being cool in a huge screen.

The CV has had a lukewarm reception among the international community. Most really liked Ponkotu's filtered combo, spinners like Mesi, Goat, Drowsy and Fukrou were expected but missing and the style of editing didn't quite resonate with them. This —like other things in pen spinning— results from a clash between two different sets of values. However, it's not like Iteza and Malimo are the kinds of spinners that just learnt the difference between 25 and 30 fps. Thus, regardless of personal preferences one should try to look for why things were done the way they were done, because they're most likely conscious decisions and not the result of chance or lack of knowledge.

When selecting combos out of a big pool of submissions there is a first filtering process regarding execution, presentation as well as other basic aspects. But just that may not be enough to yield a small enough subset. In the case of Japen, it's totally not enough. If Japen 12th TM/LM has shown us anything is that they could make quite a few CVs just from that year's submissions and each would be more stacked than the last one. So a theme has to be chosen. Then that theme may or may not be liked by the viewers, but Japen 2020's combo selection has a theme

Non-vector edits are usually hit or miss, and being 3D made it even riskier. In this case, the direction was clear: environments reminiscent of VR chat, backgrounds that allow for many references for people to find and interpret, but the technical aspects made this direction cloudier for the international audience. The aesthetics of the fonts, music and illumination are very early 2000s and yet the transitions, as well as some scenes (the ones with leaves) felt more recent, with motion blur and more elaborate shadows respectively, resulting in a somewhat dissonant experience.

As it is, for me, the edit is very endearing and I loved it. But I think that most of the international viewers would have preferred a fully raytraced render in Blender, or maybe a flatter style like that of 0+ the final. Well, let's be honest here, most wanted Japen 2020 to be DaTF but that's just not the objective of JapEn and it hasn't been for the last few years. Having such a big spotlight in pen spinning and yet choosing creative direction over just another safe 2D vector edit is nothing short of inspiring.

To conclude, it felt like the perfect collaboration to close off the year. I can only be hopeful for what 2021 will bring for pen spinning!