The possibly unavoidable problem the Abridged Series medium faces.

(This can potentially apply to a lot of Internet Content that is serialized and composed of more then just a person talking.)

Most of the fun I've had watching Abridged Serieses on YouTube has been me discovering ones that were already old and so had a lot of episodes I can binge (like how I've gotten into a lot of Anime).  Starting with SMA (Sailor Moon Abridged, the one made by Megamie33), and then Wedding Peach Abridged and a number I looked for based on Attack on Titan and Code Geass and so on.  I've had hours of fun with stuff like that. 

But when one that's just starting catches my eye, and it's inevitably months or even over a year till we get a new episode, it's kinda hard for me to stay interested.  I'm currently subscribed to two channels airing Abridged Serieses of Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works, and by the time a new episode drops for either my memory has no longer even kept tract of which one was which.

This is not me criticizing the people making them, I know this long amount of time between episodes in unavoidable.  It may seem at first like they're easier to make then an actual Anime since it's using already animated stuff.  But however true that may be is more then counteracted by these being done by single individuals not entire studios, they have far less resources and usually are doing it as a hobby and so also have school and/or a real job to worry about.  So I don't expect them to drop their lives and do nothing but slave over dumb comedy videos for my amusement.

And yet the consequences of this problem are still real.  It's much easier for me to invest in something if I have a reliable schedule to expect new installments, even if it's more then the standard weekly wait of old media, but A Slap On Titan season 2 failed to keep even it's attempt at a monthly schedule.  These shows do build fan bases in-spite of this obstacle, but they could be much larger.  Because I greatly value the potential of this medium, I love Mel Brooks style parodies, but it's much funnier to me now to simply see the actual original show I love dubbed over comically.

Basically it's an art-form I feel has a lot of potential being held back by the fact that it only ever will be done by amateurs.  Professional studios won't treat works they own this way because they want them to be respected, and they also won't engage in something so copyright ambiguous with another studio's work because they want to maintain a moral high ground when they defend their own IPs.

The first thing that enters my mind as a potential solution is the idea of simply not releasing anything till you've completed a whole season.  But again while something like that is a viable risk for professional studios working with Netflix, an amateur probably won't want to put all that work into the later episodes before they even know if they can get a fan base.  Plus I think they value the fan interaction influencing future episodes, sometimes jokes they make about the comments section are part of the fun.

One thing I don't know is whether or not it was always so normal for new episodes to take so long.  Those old SMA videos don't look as polished and sophisticated as the new Fate/ ones I've been following, and it looked like most of the VAs were like actually living in the same city.  In fact it doesn't seem like that series even ran long enough for how long it'd take a current Abridged Series to cover 50 episodes.  But the current artists value the modern advancements and so aren't gonna want to sacrifice them for the sake of getting stuff done faster.

There is one feature of modern Abridged Series production that I personally think is worth throwing out whether or not it would save any time.  The Cartoon Cipher did a video about why Anime Dubs don't edit the lip flaps which of course had to bring up how Abridged Serises do edit them, or do now anyway, it doesn't look like SMA ever did. The fact is the actual Anime in Japan doesn't care if the lip flaps match. Thus I don't even agree with how much legit Dubs bend over backwards to make them match, so I certainly don't get why friggin parodies want to take this one technical aspect more seriously then the original product did.  But regardless I highly doubt dropping that alone would make Abridged Series production significantly more timely.  And I will say they sometimes do make the lip flaps look kinda funny.

I wish there was a way to fix this problem, but I can't think of it.

Well I think Abolishing Capitalism might for at least the creators who don't want to do anything else and only do because they need money to live.  But that isn't gonna happen under this President.

Augustus Month is nearing it's end.

Episode 16 of Steins;Gate 0 was pretty intense.

Episode 4 of Overlord III was fun, a pleasant surprise.

How NOT to Summon A Demon Lord episode 5 was nice and entertaining.

Happy Sugar Life episode 7 was unexpected but good.

I’m not sure what to make of episode 7 of Revue Starlight.

Episode 5 of Ragnarok was a lot of fun.

In Mother’s Basement video trashing on the show he compared the villain to Gilgamesh (with Fate/Stay Night’s Gilgamesh clearly being the intended reference), but in this episode he actually reminded me more of Fate/Zero’s take on Iskandar(Alexander The Great).

The MC seems to think he’s on Earth in the past and not actually a different world, I have no idea if that’s supposed to be correct or not.  Strictly speaking the weird anachronism I commented on previously of using Norse mythological names in a Bronze Age Near East setting conflicts with viewing this as compatible with real history.  But I’m a long time nerd of this kind of stuff who’s aware that the Prose Edda claims the Æsir descended from an ally of King Priam of Troy.

You see the reason I’m loving this show in-spite of all the valid flaws you can point out, is that rather than reminding me of the usual Fantasy lineage that Isekai anime draws on (MMORPG/JRPG descended from Table Top Games descended from Tolkien) it instead reminds me of old Italian Peplum/Sword and Sandal films that I sometimes have a craving for.  And old cheap American and British films drawing on the same kinds of ideas.  Those films were fun in-spite of being not exactly Cecil B Demille quality, and often quite anachronistic.  It’s definitely something different for this genre.

And that’s why the comparison to Fate/ characters is poignant, as that franchise can also remind me of that genre when dealing with Heroic Spirits who were eligible to be subjects of those films.  From Gilgamesh to Iskandar to all the Greek mythology figures, and now the Biblical ones added by Grand Order.  And there were two films about Semiramis, The Slave Queen of Babylon staring Yvonne Furneaux was one of my favorite films of the genre, most are mainly So Bad it’s Good, but this one is worthy of a legit analytical video essay from Lindsay Ellis or Kyle Kallgren or someone.

The second episode of Attack on Titan season 3 was very good, I was quite surprised how much progress happened.  The Dub is taking next week off for Labor day, and if I have as little to say about most shows as I did this week I may do the same.

The Old Fake Nobility Trope

So I've been reading some Manga adaptations of recent female lead Isekai Light Novels.  In Another World, I'm Called: The Black Healer is the closest to seeming like the standard formula gender flipped.  But the one that inspired me to make this post is Saving 80,000 Gold Coins in the Different World for My Old Age, I'm going to call it Rougo for short.

Rougo is very different from a standard Isekai.  The protagonist can actually warp back and forth between our world and the other world.  At 10 chapters in I've detected no hints of a Reverse Harem.  And the Different World in question does not actually seem to be a fantasy world, the MC has Magick but no one else seems to, so far it just seems like an alternate Medieval (or sometimes more Victorian looking) world.  She also forces an American Militia group to sell her guns and train her to use them.  It's pretty interesting.

What inspired this post however is a scene where she introduces herself to a Noble family by pretending to be a member of a Noble family of a far away land.  And that of course reminded me of a few years ago when I was reading a lot of 19th Century literature because of my Paul Feval/BlackCoatPress fixation which itself kind of spun off from my earlier involvement in the post-Twilight Vampire craze.

Those novels involved a lot of characters, sometimes protagonists and sometimes antagonists, posing as Nobility when they really weren't. The examples of this that are still reasonably famous today would be The Count of Monte-Cristo and Dracula, and to a lesser extent Carmilla and Lord Ruthven.  In the case of the Vampire examples however there is always the implication that they were real nobility when they lived, so Monte-Cristo is the purest example of this that is still reasonably well known.  Alexandre Dumas was of course influenced by what Paul Feval had done earlier with The Marquise of Rio-Santo, the leader of The Gentlemen of The Night in his serialized novel The Mysteries of London.

It's a trope we don't see a lot of today.  Partly because of a perception that you simply couldn't get away with it nearly as easily since we now have Google, I suspect every still active title of European Nobility has a Wikipedia Page.  Plus it's 19th Century viability had a lot to do with Germany and Italy being broken into innumerable mini-states so of course there could be one you haven't heard of.

The thing is in a lot of those stories once people got suspicious of them investigating it was possible.  And today we still have African Prince email scams, and con-artists claiming to be lost heirs to the Stuarts or Louis XVII that actually have supporters in fringe history circles.  The success of this scam was always mostly about people being too trusting and often wanting to believe the exotic story they were being told.

The lack of this trope in modern fiction is more an assumption that no one reveres that old Feudal concept of nobility anymore, and so modern Vampires like Lestat would rather be Rock Stars.  And yet the fact that there is so much fiction looking back on this era, or about Fantasy Worlds with this system still in place, tells me there is a sub-concise desire among even many Americans to still romanticize it.

The reverse of this trope definitely still happens in modern fiction, a commoner who finds out they're secretly the heir to some Noble or Royal inheritance.

A liberal or Leftist moderner might be inclined to accuse the villainous examples of this trope of being a conservative attempt to avoid actually vilifying the Nobility.  But trust me as someone who's read a lot of this stuff real nobles were often worse people.  Even the explicitly conservative writers like Paul Feval and Ponson Du Terril wrote about villainous nobles.   They idealized the ideal but seemed to feel the Feudal System's downfall was brought about by their own decadence.

This plot in Rougo reminded me of all this, but also does certain things with it only Otaku media would do.

I'm posting this update early.

I want to start generally posting these after watching the Saturday shows.

The 4th Episode of How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord was surprisingly good.  I would have liked to see Rem handle her situation on her own, but it was still good regardless of that.

Happy Sugar Life episode 6.  That Fingernail part might have freaked me out if I hadn't already seen Higurashi.  But compared to Higurashi's it's nothing.

Episode 6 of Revue Starlight I don’t have any particular thoughts on.

I enjoyed episode 4 of Ragnarok.  Mother’s basement decided to make a video bashing it the same day.  I mean it’s probably technically my least favorite Isekai too, but the genre doesn’t have as low an average with me.  What bugs me more about the video was his jabs at In Another World With My Smartphone, which is probably my favorite Isekai, that he choose Death March to be the one post 2016 Isekai to give a positive review too baffles me, it is inferior to Smartphone in every possible way.

The premier of Attack On Titan season 3 was pretty good.  But I should have known the girl I didn’t quite recognize would get stuffed in Levi’s refrigerator.

The 28th episode of Hugtt!PreCure was fun.

The Death of Superman animated movie

I'm not sure I'd even be as fond of this as I am without the 2007 travesty to compare it to.

It's nice seeing specific 90s Superman characters many thought we'd never see again.  But it's odd throwing these 90s Nostalgia references into a universe that has a New52 aesthetic.

I frankly feel like the only way it'll ever work to re-imagine this story with a more normal Lex Luther would be with a history where he and Superman hadn't been openly antagonist yet.  When I first read these Comics I didn't have all the context for the Alexander Luthor Jr stuff, but I know I rather enjoyed the dynamic of everyone kind of getting along with Lex while he was keeping his evilness hidden.  That might be something important to me because I read them while growing up on Smallville, that show also makes me crave more nuanced takes on Superman and Lex's relationship.

Mostly though, what I wanted from an attempt to do this story-line in only two movies is for the first movie to simply have the Superman vs Doomsday fight be the first act/half of the movie and then the rest be Funeral for a Friend.  Honestly some of the most memorable moments in Comics to me are early in the World Without A Superman trade paperback, how much time is spent in the moments right after he died, trying to revive him and just generally dealing with the shock of it.  So seeing multiple adaptations jump right to the funeral within 30 seconds always feels like a waste to me.

Now I know that would be an odd structure for a movie, the opposite of conventional action movies, but it can work.  Just look at the last Gundam The Origin OVA, it's about the same length as this movie, and all the real action in it, the Battle of Loum, is in the first act of the film, the rest is chronicling the aftermath of the battle while getting things exactly where they were when the original Gundam series started.

"But that was the last movie in a series not the first" you'll likely respond.  Yes it was, but in this case the Superman we're following had been in a trilogy of Justice League movies.  But they could also have just done a normal Superman solo cartoon before this (we hadn't had one since before Man of Steel came out) where they deal with him revealing himself to Lois and establish this universe's Lex and so on, and then ended with a cool "Doomsday is Coming" cliff hanger.  Maybe base it on the Eradicator story-line.

But regardless of all that I don't need that much context, the first Superman Comic I ever read was World Without A Superman, I didn't even have the context of how he died.  My prior familiarity with Superman was stuff not in the same continuity but that was enough.

I'm optimistic that I'll enjoy the Reign of The Supermen film a lot more. This film wasn't bad, just still far from how I want this story to be treated.  The best dramatized adaptation is still the BBC Audio Drama.

Summer is arguably half over

But since I stick to Simuldubs I'm not like a quarter of the way through mostly.

The third episode of How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord was surprisingly interesting.  I said after the first I was unconcerned with being able to make a Feminist defense of the show.  But episodes 2 and 3 both have sequences about other men being unwilling to listen our heroines explain the situation because they jumped right into white knighting mode. 

The thing about Anime Feminist’s review of the first episode was they wanted to rant as if it has some relevance to real world slavery, when it isn't about a legal institution of slavery but a magick spell.

Having an cliffhanger ending at only episode 3 is a pretty bold move.

Happy Sugar Life episode 5 was awesome, it was great, I loved it.

Revue Starlight episode 5 was hilarious.

Episode 3 of Ragnarock was pretty cool.  I continue to be intrigued by this world looking like an old Italian Sword and Sandal setting, but the names largely coming from Norse Mythology.  We also got Yuri Twincest with one of them being voiced by Monica Rial.

Episode 27 of Hugtto!PreCure was another Shinzo Abe commissioned episode.

Episode 8 of Steins;Gate 0 was okay, but not likely to be one of my favorites.

Overlord III it seems is gonna be similar to season 2.  But that’s alright, at least this time it’s mostly characters we already know.

Am I the only who finds it odd that they consider posting an adventurer request more self independent then asking a person they know for help?

Enri is totally Bisexual.

Does anyone else get a Kelly Hu vibe from Narberal’s Dub Voice Actress Anastasia Munoz?

For those who like when I talk about more than just Anime, I’ll like be writing something on the recent Death of Superman animated movie soon.  I’m also contemplating writing something on Magical Girl Raising Project.

Evangelion's symbolism was not meaningless.

Bennett The Sage is one of those who likes to take a certain quote from one of Eva's writers as proof that all the Judeo-Christian imagery in Evangelion was meaningless and gratuitous and had no thought behind it.

The problem is the context of that quote was about the fact that some people actually thought Eva was a Christian Anime who's creators were secretly Christians or something.  I don't get how anyone came to that conclusion, Symphogear is closer to being something that could take place in the same Universe as The Bible (at least based on the first two seasons which is all I've gotten to yet).  I mean the Anime I do like to read as a Christian allegory probably wasn't intentional either, but I base it on deeper analysis then just "oooooo Crosses".

The symbolism is frequently more Kabbalah then directly Biblical.  But the key filter in how it uses Judeo-Christian imagery is how such mythological motifs were used allegorically by old psychologists like Freud and Jung. Because the show's theme is depression and other psychological hang ups.  For example Shinji has an Oedipus complex and Misato has an Electra complex.  But others have already written on that better then I could.

Why am I doing this here rather then the Comparitive Mythology blog?  Because it's not all that comparative really, it's something Anime fans would care about more then Religious Scholars.

First of all the use of Biblical sounding names is in Universe just what Sele calls them. They're not what the first ancestral race called themselves.  They're not saying they think this Adam is the Biblical Adam or what any Biblical stories were actually based on. Sele just called the one that seemed male to them Adam and the one that seemed female Lilith.  And the Dead Sea Scrolls aren't supposed to be the same scrolls found at Qumran, just Sele's internal documents.  But they did have logic behind calling these things what they did.

When I first watched through the series and the Staypuff Marshmallow Man nailed to a Cross was identified as Adam, it made sense to me in the context of Jesus being the Last Adam in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5.  But when it's later revealed that it's really Lilith buried deep underneath NERVE, that also makes sense because Kabalaistic Traditions also have Lilith trapped in the Underworld.

Eva is how Eve is spelled/pronounced in most of Europe, and I'd noticed before how right in the Greek Text of the New Testament the spelling of Eve is coincidentally also the first three letters of Evangelion, the word for Gospel.  The reveal that the Evas are made from the flesh of "Adam" perfectly echos the origin of Eve in Genesis 2.  And the Evas housing their pilot's mothers, with being in the Eva feeling like returning to the Womb, echos Eve being the Mother of all Living.

That Lilith and not Adam is the ancestor of humanity can first be explained by what I said above, Sele named them based on what they thought their Genders were and nothing else.

But it could also reflect traditions that separate the Genesis 1 Adam from the Genesis 2 Adam.  Which often say Humanity only descends from the Genesis 2 Adam.  One implication of that is often making the Genesis 1 Adam The Messiah, or for Christians an Arian or Semi-Arian view of Jesus.  Meaning you could view Kowaru as a Christ figure of sorts.

So the imagery clearly did have thought put into it.  But it was also molded to fit the story Ano wanted to tell and it's themes.

People following me on twitter may be surprised to see me make such a positive post on Evangelion.  Well it's mostly End of Evangelion that I despise, but even it uses this symbolism consistently with my explanation here.

Now I will again leave you with this Meme.

Summer Simuldubs continue to start

The second episode of How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord was quite fun, and to my surprise they’re already planting seeds for Yuri Shipping.

Happy Sugar Life episode 4 was less intense then last week.

The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar episode 2 was good.  I think I’ll just start calling it Ragnarok for short, there is other fiction with Ragnarock in the title and even other Anime, but the context of these posts are right from the title about currently airing Anime unless stated otherwise, so that should be enough to identify what I’m talking about.

The first episode of Girl’s Musical Revue Starlight’s Dub has dropped.  I’ve built myself a reputation for being pretty easy to please with Dubs, this one is kind of challenging that.  Maybe I wouldn't be so critical if I hadn’t watched 3 episodes subbed first.  There are other Anime I enjoyed Dubbed when I saw the Sub first, but usually there is a longer time-frame in between.

Only one VA is someone I’m sure I’ve heard before, and her voice was never a favorite and I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten far in a show where she’s the lead which she is here.  The Giraffe has a completely different vibe now.

It looks like the singing during the Revues will be left in the Japanese voices.  This always bothers me when it is the characters in universe singing.  I can tolerate it in something like Love Live that isn’t trying to be on Ikuhara's level, but here it just plain doesn't feel right.  It’s easy to say it’s for the best if I have no confidence in the ability of these VAs to sing, but regardless the disconnect it creates really hurts the illusion.

For awhile now I’ve kind of really wanted a Dub to just not translate Baka.  It is a meme among Anime fans, and I honestly don’t think it’d ever take a casual long to deduce what it’s supposed to mean (Idiot, Fool, Stupid, Moron, Dummy).  And in the case of this show, the coming episodes will create a word play, Bakaren, which they can't incorporate now since they’re not gonna say Baka.

Episode 14 of Steins;Gate 0 was pretty good, the plot has thickened.

I went ahead and watched episode 4 of Revue Starlight’s Sub.  This was clearly a breather episode.  It seems BaKaRi has been coined as the ship name for BaKaren and Hikari on the Yuri Nation blog.

Episode 2 of Overlord III was an interesting start to a new arc.  The basic premise of the show remains kind of hilarious.

I’m hoping next week I’ll have more to say on the three Isekai Funimation Simuldubs once they’ve each reached their three episode mark.

Summer Simuldubs have started

I watched the first episode of How NOT to Summon A Demon Lord.  This is a show I’m not for the time being going to attempt to defend watching as a Feminist.  I’m a Feminist, but I still have fantasies that don’t relate to my real life morality, and they can be both Femdom and Maledom.  The episode was quite entertaining, and the Dub cast is good, the Catgirl sounds Purrfect.

Revue Starlight episode 3 pretty quickly swerved our expectations.  I’m also surprised how quickly the Fansub was available this time.  And I now know the Dub starts August 4th.

Happy Sugar Life episode 3 was a much darker experience.

The first episode of the Simuldub of… this is gonna be a long one, The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar, was pretty entertaining.  I like that this world is not a Medieval Fantasy world but rather based on the Ancient Near East.  I do want to see more of the Isekai sub genre where the MC becomes a head of state.

Hugtto!PreCure episode 26 was good.  I’m afraid I don’t have more to say about this one.

Overlord III’s first episode was a fun slice of life episode.

Food/Stay Night episode 8 was nice.  That one isn't a Dub of course.