Obi-Wan Kenobi's first two episodes were pretty good

I'm enjoying the show so far even though it's not really the premise I was hoping for. 

When the PrequelMemers started creating a demand for a Kenobi series, the idea in my head at least was Obi-Wan having fun little side adventures with some slice of life stuff about being a Hermit on a Desert Planet.  I was not thinking of yet another Episode 3.5.

But since that's what the show is I'm going to accept it and move on.  

The Recap of the Prequel Trilogy actually made me notice I haven't watched any SW films in even HD quality yet, I'd been just using my old DVDs.  Now that I have Disney+ maybe I should fix that.

First thing that really struck me was just seeing Ewen's Obi-Wan call himself Ben, in terms of his performance and mannerisms he a did a great job of slowly becoming more like Alec Guinness's performance over the course of that Trilogy.  But the fact that we aren't shown him taking the name of Ben proves Lucas wasn't doing the generic Prequel fan service stuff everyone accuses him of.  For the purposes of this show obviously the Ben name is established now and seeing Ewen use it a nice treat.

So Leia being a part of the show I was not expecting.  But why create a new Droid to be her little pet when she should be building up her relationship with R2 and 3PO by now.

Obi-Wan learning Vader is alive is technically a gap in the narrative being filled, not one that needed to be but since we're here might as well make a thing out of it.

In my post on Force Healing I mentioned that if Obi-Wan was indeed doing it in Episode IV it must be something he learned (maybe from Qui-Gon) in between the Trilogies, and at this point I can say I will be disappointed if that isn't one of the plotlines of this show.

Only reason I'm doing a post on this show this early is because May is Star Wars month so I might as well do one more Star Wars post to close it out.  Visions and these Live Action Disney+ shows are the Disney Produced Star Wars content I've enjoyed the most, I hope they keep it up.

Ashoka is the show I'm looking forward to the most, I like her character, and even though I never read any old EU content I'm conceptually interested in Thrawn enough to be excited for him being the villain of something Live Action finally, and I hope Barris is also in it.  But first a few shows come before that. I will watch Mando season 3, but I have no interest in Andor.

But I am perhaps most conceptually curious for The Acolyte, finally seeing a completely different era of the Galaxy should be a fun opportunity.

When an Adaptation is made Too Late

A lot of the time it seems like it's for the best to wait a long time to adapt something, especially when we're talking about Live Action adaptations of significant prose works of Sci-Fi or Fantasy, it can take 20 or even 50 years for the technology of Film making to catch up to the imagination or the original author.

However the thing about Otaku media is that the aesthetics of where Otaku culture was at that time are more important then the geopolitics or fashion trends of the real world.  In any other context something being too much a product of it's time just means you adapt it as a period piece, but Otaku art is different.

Boogiepop and Others, YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World and Magic Kaito 1412 are examples of source material from the late 80s or 90s that didn't get a proper Anime adaptation till the 2010s.  And I like all three of those Anime to varying degrees, they are all good shows.  But I can't help but feel like something is lost in them being done in these very modern artstyles when at their core these are 90s characters who should be immortalized with 90s character designs.

Animation is not limited in what things it can show the way Live Action is, even TV Anime which is done on more limited of a budget was in the 80s already doing some High Fantasy and Hard Sci-Fi.  However the aesthetics and styles of Anime constantly evolve, and with them the very tools used to animate are replaced.  So it's really just not even possible to animate something today but make it look like it could have been animated in the 90s, the substances behind 90s Animation no longer exist, so nothing animated now can ever be Homousian with 90s Anime.

As someone who lived through the 90s I can still sense the 90s sensibilities in these Anime in ways I can't really explain, even though at least two were updated to the present in the adaptation.  But that's all the more reason why their looking so standard 2019 feels off.  

It also matters that all three were works who's source materials were very influential, a lot of stuff following trends they set got animated way sooner. But when those of us who know try to explain that to the average contemporary seasonal Anime viewer, it's hard for them to even believe us when YU-NO looks at first glance like every other generic Isekai of 2019.

It helps that we got glimpses of what aesthetically a more contemporary Anime for each of them could have looked like.  YU-NO has the animated opening cinematic made for the Sega Saturn port and the absolute madness that was it's 4 episode Hentai OVA.  Boogiepop Phantom was basically an animated side story made in 2000 and serves as the only Anime I've ever felt was drawing aesthetic inspiration from Serial Experiments Lain.  And Magic Kaito made a number of appearances on Detective Conan, most notable are the first half hour of episode 219 and OVA 4 which each adapts a story of the Magic Kaito Manga.

That's not to say they needed to be adapted immediately, lots of great Anime came 5ish years after it's source material, sometimes one decade proves to not be too much.

I've argued before that the 2000s were the most transitional decade in Anime history, so maybe that's the real problem.  Some 90s source material is done well adapted in even the late 00s, and plenty of great 2010s Anime was adapted from even early 2000s works.  It's particularly the change to digital Animation that makes it hard for most 90s Character designs to feel right in modern Animation.

Maybe it's not absolutely only an Anime thing.  The DCAMU adaptation of the Death and Return of Superman doing at times scene for scene recreations of stuff from the original 1992 Comic Book storyline but in their New52 based artstyle feels similarly off-putting, more so since I fundamentally hate the New52 style more then I do almost any Anime artstyle.  But this kind of thing is I feel more pronounced in the way Otaku aesthetics work.

May the Anime be With You

 Before I talk more about the shows I’m currently following, let me mention some stuff I’ve added to my Completed list.

I watched World’s End Harem, subbed since I doubt it’ll ever get a Dub, and it is indeed a very fascinating thought provoking show, one I may have more to say on in the future.

I then watched the movie Belle on Amazon Prime, it was an instant classic, I gave it a 10 out of 10. 

And the second Fate/Grand Order Camelot movie was okay.

I also watched two somewhat older shows. Aokana has quickly become one of my favorite Fantastical Sports Anime.  And then 2017’s WorldEnd which was also very good.  WorldEnd is a Fantasy Anime that not only isn’t an isekai but doesn’t feel like one either, by which I mainly mean doesn’t feel like a Gamer Anime.  Such Anime has become increasingly rare in recent years.

I also finally got to watch the Prisma Illya Movie, Licht Nameless Girl, and it was pretty good.

I finally finished the second cour of 86, it was great.

Now back to the Simuldubs I’m following.

Episodes 4 and 5 of EstabLife were both very fun episodes, this show is a real treat.

Episode 7 of season 3 of LOTGH new Thesis was fantastic, everyone hating on the New Thesis for not looking like the 80s needs to get over themselves.

Skeleton Knight, Fruit of Evolution and Tsukimichi are all three proving to be perfectly fun generic Isekai shows, I hope they never stop making these.

The Executioner and Her Way of Life’s simuldub started on HIDIVE, and its first episode was quite interesting.  I’d been hearing about this one for awhile, so I’m excited for it.

Spy x Family is half done now and it’s still holding up well.

I can also now confirm that the first episode of Takt Op. Destiny takes place between episodes 4 and 5, if anyone would prefer to watch the show Chronologically.

The best episode of Lupin III part 6 so far was episode 4, Killers in The Diner, it was a neat little Lupin short story.  But the most recent episode aired on Toonami as of my posting this is the start of what could be a fairly interesting mini-Arc.

I’m also still enjoying Trapped In a Dating Sim, though I wasn’t able to watch episode 6 in time for this post thanks to Crunchyroll’s Beta issues.

Sometimes it's actually unethical not to Spoil a story.

When Doki Doki Literature Club first blew up back in 2017, one aspect of the conversation around it was occasionally how the Tigger Warnings at the beginning kind of Spoils the game, and yet it would still be wrong not to have them.  Fortunately the game is good enough at immersing the player during the hours it spends pretending to be a normal Visual Novel that you may very well have just forgotten about the Warnings by the time stuff starts happening.

DDLC's trigger warnings fortunately did not have to be very specific, there are lot of things they could have been referring to.  And even more Fortunately one potentially Triggering trope DDLC does not do is have a twist where a character we thought was a Cis Woman turns out to be a manipulative psychotic Trans Woman serial killer.  If that had happened, it would in my opinion warrant a more specific trigger warning.

That is a very specifically problematic trope that may be very potentially triggering to some people not necessarily inherently bothered by any broader trigger warnings it could be classified under.  But it is also a trope that is inherently a twist, you can't warn someone that it's coming without Spoiling the story in-question.  But I have no respect for the artistic intentions of creators who choose to use that damaging trope.  I am still a Libertarian when it coms to Free Speech, I have no desire to ban works that engage in Problematic tropes I hate, but the people who want to avoid this Trope also have the right to be warned about it.

In the case of this Trope it goes beyond being unethical to not spoil it, I'd call it outright Immoral to try to prevent people from giving this plot point away on the grounds that preserving Twists is some inherent virtue of your personal Internet Ethics.

I'd been playing by the old rules even though I've felt this way on the inside for awhile.  The Umineko Visual Novel does this trope yet I still didn't discus it till after the Spoiler warning in my Umineko post.  And NezumiVA is a Trans Woman Anituber who did an hour long spoiler free video on Umineko.  Some Trans Anime Fans aren't bothered by what Umineko did, but they need to understand that their being okay with it doesn't mean others will be, and some younger Trans Anime Fans may assume that because someone like NezumiVA recommended it without any qualifiers it must be completely free of any Transphobic tropes only to be very triggered when they invest countless hours into the VNs without any warning of what's coming.

Again I've been guilty of what I'm criticizing here myself in the past, I increasingly feel guilty how often I've recommended Pretty Little Liars to people while forgetting to bring up it's use of this trope in it's last 2 seasons.

That's just one example of an inherently Problematic Twist, there are others I'm sure, but this is the one I have personal experience with.

But after that is the perhaps more trivial but still worth discussing matter of cases where how something is marketed makes an aspect of it a Spoiler that clearly shouldn't be based on how the text itself is written.

Catwoman: Hunted is an animated movie that has no twists, saying exactly how the villain is defeated in the end can still be called a Spoiler, but the identity of the villain certainly is not.  The movie is NOT a mystery, who the main antagonist is is obvious very early in the film, way to early to at all be worth calling a spoiler.  Yet I got in trouble with a prominent YouTube channel on Twitter for referring to that villain on the grounds that it's a Spoiler.

The only reason the identity of the villain can at all be considered a Spoiler is because it was Marketed as if Black Mask were the villain. he's the only antagonist on the Cover.  But in the text itself he obviously is not the main villain, he is set up as less important then Minerva from the start.

I don't know why they did this.  It could be the film entered production before Wonder Woman 84 came out with the expectation that it would make Cheetah a big deal, but then after it had poor reception from the loudest online Nerds they decided to avoid the now tainted character in how they promoted it.  Either way though when something clearly not a twist in the script is inexplicably concealed in the marketing, I feel professional reviewers and other such online Fandom Influencers have a responsibility to clear up that Bait and Switch, not collaborate with it.

Now since Minerva doesn't take on a Cheetah look till the final battle, and some casual viewers may not instantly know to associate the name of Minerva with Cheetah, perhaps this Minerva becoming Cheetah you can argue is sufficiently a surprise.  But the Tweets I made didn't even say Cheetah, so to such a casual fan all it really gives away is that it's not Black Mask, and again anyone planning to watch this movie as specifically Black Mask fans should know going in that he is even less significant then he was in the Red Hood movie.

You would have to be fairly in the know to get specifically Cheetah from "most overused Wonder Woman villain" which is really only even true in the specific context of Animated DC projects.  Even then exactly what Cheetah is has been inconsistent over the years, I did not give away what kind of Cheetah you'll be getting.

But these DC Animated films are not made for casual fans, they are mostly made for the people who will recognize every obscure name they pull out.  And if Catwoman: Hunted were an exception they wouldn't have been so nonchalant about having a group of Crime Bosses summon Demons, Aliens and Robots to battle in the middle of a film that started as a simple Heist movie.  Even the most fantastical Lupin III movies are not that casual about their fantastical elements.  Only Superhero movies are this all over the place genre wise.

Kuudere list

 Since I’ve started defining myself online as a Kuudere, I figure I better break down this Anime archetype by talking about the ones I’m most into, and try to list them basically in the order they came into existence, though for some their Anime came quite a bit later.

The Tsundere and Yandere are the Dere types most well known and the only ones ever the subjects of any serious Video Essays I know of.  I honestly have no idea if my perspective on who is and isn’t a Kuudere even agrees with most Otaku.  Also I’ve still only seen a small percentage of Anime that exists, and it’s perhaps revealing that my Kuudere timeline begins in the 90s.

First is Rei Hino in the Sailor Moon Manga, most casuals don’t know this since the 90s Anime changed her personality completely making her much more of a Tsundere. But Manga/Crystal Rei Hino, as well as PGSM, is very much a classic Kuudere. Some may also count Hotaru during the Infinity Arc as a Kuudere, as well as Rei Ayanami in NGE, but they are a type of Kuudere distinct from what I have in mind when I call myself one.

Second is Kanna Hateno in 1996's YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World.  This early Visual Novel was huge in Japan, one of those classics of Otaku media that western fandom doesn’t fully get the influence of since it didn’t get a proper Anime adaptation till 2019.  Just as Mio was vital to the development of the Tsundere, Kanna is a key genesis point for the Kuudere.

Third is Ai Haibara who was introduced to the Detective Conan Anime in 1998.  She is a cool and collected character, in how this show models itself after the Legacy of Sherlock Holmes she is perhaps in a sense Kudo’s Irene Adler.

Fourth is Mai Kawasumi in the 1999 Visual Novel Kanon, she’s an early example of a Kuudere who’s also a Samurai.  After this point I’m not really gonna number them anymore.

Next is Yumera Kirika in the 2001 Original Anime Noir.  The character of Chole also qualifies in different ways, so this show provides two.

But Chiefly of all is Setsuna Kiyoura from the 2005 Visual Novel School Days.  This is the character I’ve been using as my Avatar since I started calling myself a Kuudere and I've ranked her as my number 1 favorite character on MAL.  So for me personally she is the standard I hold all other Kuudere characters to.

Amazingly there is another Kuudere I really like also named Setsuna in the 2007 Anime Shattered Angels.

Then in April of 2008 came Ayase Kishimoto in the 2008 Visual Novel Chaos;HEad which got an Anime adaptation the same year.

Those 9 are the big ones, plenty of other characters in shows I’ve liked could be argued to count, but these are the core to defining what being a Kuudere means to me personally.

Update: October 2022: Now that I've seen all of Karin (2005-2006) for this Halloween month I want to add Anju Maaka, she's similar to Kiyoura in how she's the Kuudere but alos kind the brains of the cast, certiany the smartest member of her family inspite of being the youngest.

It occurs to me that Humora in Madoka Magica probably qualifies.

Update May 2024: I made a post on Miyu from Prisma Illya who I really should have included from the start.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/05/miyu-edelfelt-supreme-kuudere.html

Catwoman: Hunted

I mentioned this movie in my last post rambling about Western Cartoons alleged to be Inspired by Anime even though I hadn't seen it yet.  Was any of my brief assessment presumptuous?

Frankly I might have been too generous in assuming it would at least succeed in looking like an Anime Artstyle.  It definitely looks like it's going for that, but still drawn by people not used to drawing that way.

As far as everything else, from it's OP it was clearly trying to go for a Lupin III OP vibe, which is what I should have expected,  naturally that's the genre of Anime one would reference for Catwoman, Fujiko Mine is basically Japan's Catwoman.  But as I said in the prior post what I'd like to see from Western Animation writers taking inspiration form Anime is them trying of the very genres or Sub-Genres that pretty much exist only in Anime and it's source materials so far.  For Catwoman as a Lupin III film I'd rather WB/DC just let people in Japan who've made actual Lupin III Anime give it try, ideally the staff behind The Woman Called Fujoko Mine definitely deserve a shot at doing Catwoman.

But let's go back to that OP, it and other music in the movie is trying to be evocative of Lupin III, but the Composer is still not actually Yuji Ohno, so it's like one of those rare Bee Train Anime without Yuki Kajiura, the Music is trying to sound like her, but it's still off.  Now the composer for this movie is Japanese and has done some Anime, but not exactly a lot and usually not Lupin style stuff.  Yoko Kanno is someone I could also see working for a film like this.

I also could have accepted the movie as Anime Adjacent better if it at least had Voice Actors I recognized hearing from Anime Dubs instead of the same kind of casting most of these DC animated movies go for.  Kelly Hu as Cheshire is perfect, and Elizabeth Gillies as Catwoman was pretty good (on a meta-level I'd love to see her Catwoman interact with a Poison Ivy played by Ariana Grande).  But everyone else ranged from fine to to bland, Kate Kane sounded flat and dull.

If they wanted to sell this movie as also a quasi Lupin III movie, why not cast a Fujiko veteran as Catwoman, there are quite a few to choose from, since this is part of a trend of modern depictions wanting Catwoman to also come off as vaguely Latina, Christina Vee could have been a perfect choice.  And since they seemingly wanted Kate to come off as Butch rather then Femme, just hire Erica Mendez to do her Haruka voice.  

If you just want to watch the film like any other DC animated film, the fact that the Artstyle was clearly trying and not quite succeeding to have an Anime vibe might still annoy you.  Other then that it's pretty good, about what you'd expected from a Catwoman solo project at first, but then starts bringing in fantastical stuff that really wasn't necessary.

I appreciated the incorporation of the Classic Purple Dress costume for the ball at the beginning, but when she changed to the main costume of the movie the actual line about "keeping up up with the times" I found odd considering this is the costume primarily popularized by Hush 20 years ago, have the comics really not introduced any new Catwoman Costume since?

As much as I ragged on the the DCAMU films, I certainly preferred their take on the Kate Kane/Batwoman.

I also wish they'd revived Red Claw instead of making the main antagonist of this Batman spin off film being the most overused Wonder Woman villain.  She could have fit the Anime inspiration because I've for awhile felt like she was a little bit Panther Claw inspired.

Force Healing is a positive addition to Star Wars Lore

I'm not saying this as some huge Disney apologist, Rise of Skywalker is a mess with lots of stuff I hate and lots of stuff I like.

The first criticism is always "if only Anakin had known about this",  but that's the point.  

Darth Sidious basically admits he doesn't actually know Plagueis's secret as soon as he had Anakin turned.  It should always have been part of the Tragic Irony of all this that it was only the Light Side that could give Anakin what he was looking for, but the Jedi Order had actually locked themselves out from the full potential of The Light Side with their rigid pseudo-Stoicism.

Both Grogu in The Mandalorian and Rey in Rise of Skywalker discover Force Healing because they embraced the kinds of Emotional Attachment the Jedi Order had rejected.

Now I recall hearing something about George Lucas saying Obi-Wan did Force Healing on Luke in A New Hope, if so that's something he learned as part of his Force Ghost training with Quo-Gon post ROTS.

There is a part of what I loved about Book of Boba Fett that I left out of my last post.  Grogu calming the Rankor with Force healing was so much like a Magical Girl show, this is what those rigidly anti-violence Star Wars fans like Linkara have been waiting for.

Book of Boba Fett, Fans need to stop hating on Fanservice

Today I mean Fanservice as in Nerd/Fandom Fanservice, not Anime Pantyshots.

I'd watched the first three episodes of The Book of Boba Fett when they aired, but then watched the rest yesterday, and I enjoyed them a great deal.

It's basically season 2.5 of The Mandalorian, both stylistically and ultimately narratively as well.  I liked both seasons of The Mandalorian, they are going back to some of what influenced Lucas in the first place, classic Westerns and Samurai films, with even the basic premise owing a debt to Lone Wolf and Cub which is probably the most influential classic Manga to still not have an Anime adaptation, but it had some Live Action films in the 70s.

So the fanservice these shows provide isn't even just Star Wars fanservice, in Book of Boba Fett we got to see a classic Sergio Leone style showdown between Raylan Givens and Cad Bane, a character no one ever expected would appear in Live Action at all.

Book of Boba Fett goes beyond either season of Mandalorian in the fan service department.  There is a type of Star Wars fan who's always loved to express annoyance at Boba Fett's popularity in the fandom when he never even did much, and I'd mostly been one of them, giving him his own show naturally seems to be the embodiment of what those fans don't like.  But you see Boba's whole Arc in this show is acknowledging that he was a useless loser during the time period we see in episodes 4-6 and seeking to be something better now.

When episodes 5 and 6 aired there was a bunch of whining on Twitter about "Boba Fett's barely in his own show", that's two out of 7 episodes one of which he still has a lot of screen time in by the final act.  Any TV series needs to be ultimately an ensemble no matter how you named it.  But that title, The Book of Boba Fett. is clearly modeled after things like books of The Bible, there are books in The Bible where the title character is absent for significant chunks, Daniel isn't in Chapter 3 of The Book of Daniel, Samuel dies less then half way though the two volume text named after him, meanwhile Mark and Luke don't appear in their books at all besides a couple debatable cameos for Mark.

I liked Dawson's Ashoka more here then I did her Mandalorian episode, her little moment with R2 and telling Luke "so much like your father" sell me that this is that character I love from those cartoons brought to Live Action more then any exposition dumb describing the plot of a Clone Wars or Rebels episode could.  I am more excited for her own show now and I kind of hope she gets a cameo in the Obi-Won show too.

"But there are scenes that are basically just exposition dumps describing Clone Wars and Rebels episodes for the fans who only watch Live Action stuff" and yes I enjoy that stuff too, it's just not the key to making me buy a new actor portraying the same character.  Cad Bane and Boba Fett seem to be describing some history they had together on The Clone Wars, but I haven't seen those episodes, and as someone who hasn't I can assure you it doesn't makes the exchange impossible to follow, they are old Bounty Hunters with some history, just like a lot of scenes in classic Westerns.

A good chunk of this show's Fan Service was specifically to Episode I, finally returning to Mos Espa and the Naboo Star Fighter, like they're trying to apologize for the lack of Prequel references in the Disney Trilogy, like it's trying to be the Episode VII Prequel fans wanted.  

But those superficial ties to Episode I compliment that the show is also revisiting the core theme of Episode I, the different disparate people groups on a planet being forced to come together agaisnt an evil Capitalist threat, realizing that they form a Symbiant Circle and what happens to one will effect the others.

Funimation is being phased out as a brand

That's what was announced a couple months ago, but it's taken awhile to really even start the process.  There are now currently no Simuldubs streaming only on Funimation's website.  But a good number of completed shows still are like the recently finished The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation out of Debt.

But those recent shows will probably be the ones they prioritize getting moved over, especially ones with upcoming sequels.  I'm more worried about older shows that are even within the Anime fandom still somewhat of Niche if not outright obscure.  Some of these I feel could easily get lost in the shuffle, heck they could be shows who Funmation's license to was limited to begin with and thus the new management may not see the value in renewing.

There are currently 5 shows that have been on my mind a lot in the last half a year or so and that I've been dependent on Funimation to watch and are still at this moment not on Crunchyroll yet.  Kanon, Pretear, Shattered Angels, Chaos;HEad and Legend of The Legendary Heroes.  

Plus Serial Experiments Lain I know is currently only on Funimation but that's a pretty important show I doubt they'll let fall though the cracks, but I wouldn't put anything entirely past them.

There's also plenty on Funmation so Niche even I haven't watched it yet.

Those 5 I listed above are the main concerns for me personally partly because I happen to own a few Physical Home Media releases.  Some are shows I like that I would depend on Funimation to watch Legally (at least Dubbed) if I hadn't spent more money on Anime then I probably should have including Steins;Gate, Robotics;Notes, A Certain Scientific Railgun and it's second season Railgun S, Lucky Star, YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World, Burst Angel, Record of Lodoss War and it's TV Anime spin off show, Aria the Scarlet Amo, Noir, Witch Hunter Robin and El Cazzador de la Bruja.

Annoyingly a couple of those shows are on Hulu but only Subbed.  I really wish Hulu had the same requiring a Dub policy that Netflix has, seeing a show I know has been dubbed on there but discovering they only have the Sub kinda feels like being blueballed.  Railgun T has it's Dub on Hulu but not the prior seasons, that has me worried even T could be taken off eventually.

But again the Raildex franchise and Steins;Gate are big and popular enough that I'm sure their Dubs will be added to Crunchyroll or somewhere before Funimation's streaming site gets shut down completely.  But even the other SciADV shows are at risk I fear given how much the loudest people in that fandom hate them.

There are plenty of Shows Funmation had in the past that because the license couldn't be kept up are now not legally streamable anywhere, or at least the Dub Funimation made for it isn't, like Magical  Girl Lyrical Nanoha and it's second season As, or their Dub of Case Closed/Detective Conan's first 123 episodes and 6 movies.  Not to mention Air a sister show of Kanon and Clannad.

I have no idea whether or not Madlax ever was among what Funmation obtained from ADV's old library, but I know it isn't on Funimation right now even though it's sister shows are.  By unfortunate coincidence it's the only of that trio of shows I don't own physically.

There are also a few recent shows that Funmation has made a point not to put on their app but sell on home media release alone.  Actually a good percentage of Anime films tend to not be allowed to Stream, I suspect that's because of the old fashioned attitudes some of the studios back in Japan have.

Wixoss is actually a fairly recent show that it seems Funmation has already let go of. 

Anime Updates Gaiden returns

 Well since my last seasonal Anime update things have changed.

I dropped Love After World Domination during episode 2 and Shikimori during episode 3, their main joke tired quickly and were not quite what I was wanting either to be.

I finished both Land of Leadale and Genius Prince, the latter of which unexpectedly released all of the final four episodes at once.  Both were fun shows I gave high scores to on MAL.

Estab Life episode 2 blew me away with its amazing premise, and then episode 3 was neat as well.

Legend of The Galactic Heroes: New Thesis is still holding up pretty well.

I then added 3 additional shows for Thursday to my pile, Skeleton Knight, Tsukimichi and Fruit of Evolution, both have interesting starts so far, but I can’t be sure I’ll keep following.

Spy x Family and Takt op-Destiny are both holding up.  I also discovered Lupin III Part 6 is airing on Toonami so I don’t necessarily need to wait till Monday.

Trapped In A Dating Sim is also still holding strong at 4 episodes.

Star Wars was never Left Wing

 Not by any Political Compass other then America's and even then not really.

I am still a Prequel Fan, I don't have to agree with a movie's politics to enjoy it.  But in the past I'd often tied to tie my Prequel fandom into arguing it's the most Anti-Capitalist part of Star Wars, but that doesn't mean much when none of it really is at all.  

You see so many Leftists living in online echo chambers really do have no idea how people who disagree with them actually think, as someone who was once an Anti-Communist, I can assure you most Conservatives and even Libertarians do believe most rich people are evil greedy mustache twirling villains, they simply disagree on what policies serve their interests.

If you watch those deleted scenes from A New Hope, there is one were Luke and Biggs talk about how the Farmers are having their farming needlessly complicated by the Imperial bureaucracy's regulations.  That sounds like Libertarianism, this movie was made when Neo-Liberalism was on the rise.

Peter Coffin really loved insisting that Canto Bait was some huge critique of Capitalism beyond anything Star Wars had done before.  It isn't, again it's mainly right-wingers who have their fantasies about the élite decadent ruling class flying off to remote locations to be decadent together while funding both sides of every war.

In The Prequels the stuff about evil rich people is at least more then just one segment of the film's C plot.  But still I see so many people going all "this corporation has representation in the Senate, and they're doing all this over having their Taxes raised", and yeah that seems more like a Progressive commentary then that OT deleted scene did.  But if this were really a Leftist Critique of Capitalism then they would be the final boss, instead they are being manipulated and controlled by the real evil as much as the government is.

I am also retracting the title of my old post titled "Star Wars was always about Fascism", the "Fascism" Star Wars was about was always cosmetic, The Empire is just a generic totalitarian dictatorship, calling "Stormtroopers" what would really be more accurately the Wehrmacht.  Fascists and Nazis aren't the only people who use those colors or wear fancy military uniforms.  There is no Populism or Xenophobia ever brought up in any of the mainline films anyway.  If you listen to George Lucas's audio commentaries the historical inspiration he most prefers to talk about is actually Napoleon III.

The Empire doesn't quiet fit the actual definition of Fascism, nor does it fit the Palingenetic Ultra Nationalism theory or Eco's thesis, nor does it fit Caleb Maupin's pet definition, or any of the Marxist definitions being discussed in the 1930s.  The only theory about what Fascism is and how it works that could possibly match the way Palpatine seizes power is the way Fascism was talked about by old Paleo-Conservative Conspiracy Theorists like Alex Jones during the Clinton and Bush years.

The Sith are basically the Satanists of the Star Wars Universe with the Sith Code popularized by KOTOR being modeled after the ethics of Anton Levy's Satanism.  Meaning them controlling both sides behind the scenes is just like the Evangelical right wing conspiracist perception of the Illuminati.

I feel the same way about John Carpenter's They Live, he gets so offended at the Nazis trying to claim it but no it's your own fault, when your "allegory" for Capitalism is demonic looking Aliens disguised as humans, it does become the exact same thing Far Right Conspiracy theorists believe in, for a small but notable subset it's not even an allegory.

So it likewise probably wasn't Lucas's intent to endorse Conspiracism, but that's what happens when you half hazardly mix a watered down superficial critique of Capitalism with Gothic Horror inspired Space Wizard Supervillians.

When we get to the Disney Trilogy, there was constantly a perception of Kylo Ren being representative of like a GamerGate style neo-reactionary.  But the truth is, given just how obsessed the entire Disney Trilogy was with being Meta about everything, Kylo Ren was I think written in part to be someone you could read as an allegory for Entitled Star Wars fans who hated the Prequels and Special Editions, even though Abrams and others involved weren't Prequel fans themselves, they did try hard not to 100% alienate those fans.  It simply turned out there was a decent amount of overlap between Entitled Star Wars fans and GamerGaters.

Update December 2022: I'm glad I wrote this before Andor came out because it would have tripled the size if I felt compelled to break down everything people are overhyping about that show.

Andor's "Anti-Fascism" is the same Star Wars always had, it's different in how it's putting that more in the foreground.  But the Empire still has no actual ideology besides being authoritarian, and in fact have been made more Demographically Diverse then they've ever been before.  And all the Rebel Manifestos's we've been given are just Liberalism, not actual calls for Communist Collectivism.  It's still a fundamentally Centrist ideology.

In my Memory the Late 00s and Early 2010s tend to blend together.

And I have a feeling I'm not alone in that.  As much as we love to by default correlate eras of modern history to Gregorian calendar Decades, including plenty of how I've talked on this blog, how quickly or slowly things change doesn't always line up that way.

For American political history the Gregorian decade changes work better for the 20th years which are also election years, and coincidentally usually not reelections, they have usually been the ascendency of a new President.  But for the period I'm talking about 2010 was merely mid-terms, Obama was elected in 2008 and reelected in 2012.  Of course for me personally that era of American politics was my Ron Paul phase.

The Dark Knight came out in 2008 and The Dark Knight Rises in 2012, then 2013 was the start of Man of Steel being the center of DC film discourse, and in the Comics this was also the era of Grant Morrison's Batman run.  The MCU started in 2008 and Phase 1 culminated in 2012 with The Avengers.  Star Wars: The Clone Wars started in 2008 and it's 6th and final season ended in 2013 after the Disney purchase of Star Wars in late 2012.  The first Twilight film came out in 2008 and then the last one came out in 2012, with The Host in 2013 serving as a coda of sorts to that era of YA Novel based films.  Nintendo released the Wii in 2006 and didn't replace it with the WiiU till 2012.  Also iCarly started in 2007 and ended in 2012.

Twitter started in 2007, or at least that's when I first recall hearing about it.  But what Twitter and Social Media in general was like changed drastically because of events around 2012, that's when MySpace fully died and when Video Essays began to replace Channel Awesome style angry reviews.

During this time period I wasn't yet into Anime nearly as much as I am now, yet in my observations about Anime history a similar pattern can be seen.  I think it can be said that there was an era of Anime that begins with some of the 2006 shows I talked about in my last posts on 2000s Anime and was capped off by Robotics;Notes and Accel World while the contemporary Sword Art Online gave birth to a lot of how Anime has looked since.  This era I would call the Golden Age of Visual Novel adaptations and the Silver Age of Light Novel adaptations, but it was by no means without interesting Manga adaptations and Original Anime.  

For Pokémon this was the era of the DS Games and their corresponding seasons of the Anime.

And for Detective Conan, the Clash of Red and Black saga from 2008 I do happen to consider the end of Classic Detective Conan, yet 2012 when Sera and Amuro are introduced is arguably the real beginning of modern Detective Conan.

The Phantom Menace is a Stand Alone movie

There is this commonly restated belief that of course A New Hope is the ONLY Star Wars movie that can truly entirely work as a stand alone film, because everything else is derivative of that.  But Lucas always intended that film to feel like jumping into a series in the middle, while the film he called Episode I should, like any good first episode of a film series, be the one that most stands on its own.  And it does.

When you look back at how the film was marketed, yes the teaser focused on Anakin and Obi-Won and the fact that it was a prequel, but the main full trailer doesn’t mention Anakin and barely gives Obi-Won any attention, because the main plot isn’t actually about Anakin at all.  As a stand alone film it’s about Queen Amidala’s dilemma but also told chiefly from the point of view of the Jedi Knights sent to help her.  And in terms of how things are resolved it’s also about reconciling the relationship between the Naboo and the Gungans which is why Jar Jar Binks is important.

Now you may respond “okay it has a stand alone main plot, but isn’t the time devoted to Anakin a waste when viewed through that lens?”  Well no and here’s why.

First of all, think about the part of the first act where they’ve finally escaped Naboo with the Queen.  No good fantasy adventure story would actually allow them to be able to go right to Coruscant, cinematic tension and drama demand something delay them and force them to stop somewhere else along the way.  If the medium of this story were a video game or something serialized then multiple stops would probably be made, 3-7 most likely, but a film with only 2 hours to work with only has time for one.  And the conventions of this genre would also demand each stop add a new member to the party, and it’s even normal for that new character to become the focus during this section, and then that party member should also contribute something at the climax/resolution so that everything feels like it mattered.

Those are the Genre convention reasons for the role Anakin and Tatooine plays in the story, but what about Themes?  What about how it helps tell the stories of the main characters?

Padme encountering the existence of Slavery on Tatooine and the fact that the Republic is doing nothing about it is her first reality check that the Republic isn’t all she thought it was, and it prepares her for the more directly relevant to her situation reality check she shall receive when they reach Coruscant.

And the new party member added being a Force Sensitive potential Jedi allows us to learn more about the Force and the Jedi and how their order works, thus providing context to help us better understand our POV protagonists.

Now the film does have some blatant sequel hooks at the end, but so what, The Godfather in its last act has a few moments that at least in retrospect feel like set up for Part II, they don't make that film not a stand alone film.  Any good Fantasy Adventure story should leave potential for more stories, even if lack of success means they don’t get made, that just allows the viewer to use their imagination.  

A New Hope comparatively leaves far more unresolved with The Empire still standing, Vader most likely still alive, Luke having even less of a start to his Jedi training, and the bounty on Han still being a Sword of Damocles over his head.  None of those kill the ability of that film to stand on its own and the same is true of anything you can say about The Phantom Menace.

Now maybe someone will turn around and say “well that just makes it a bad first episode of the Saga if the ultimate main character is of little importance”, but no it doesn’t.  It’s like The Ring being a small side plot in The Hobbit.  And in MrSundayMovies recent Symbiants video he observes how the main plot of the movie which Anakin is mostly watching from the sidelines is essentially his first lesson in how The Force works.  So it does all tie together.

Stoicism vs Gnosticism in Star Wars

Every time I see someone complain about how the Midichlorians “Demystify” The Force, all I can think about is how limited the modern West’s conception of Mysticism has become thanks to the influence of Pythagorean Dualism and Platonist Idealism.

These same people will mention how The Force as a concept drew on ideas from Eastern Mysticism, the Yin-Yang of Taoism and hints of Shintoism Lucas may have picked up on in all those Japanese Samurai films he watched, for example how he defines The Dark Side as being an infection or virus fits Kegare better then it does Taoism.  But they failed to do their homework on all of that, if they did they’d know this idea that factoring anything biological into explaining how The Force works somehow makes it less Spiritual couldn’t be any more alien to Taoist or Shinto ways of thinking, to them Biology is Spiritual and Spirituality is Biological.

I myself have often been one of those who keeps saying Star Wars is Fantasy not Sci-Fi.  But I’ve come to realize that the Anti-Midichlorians mentality that has always annoyed me is a product of the exact same limited western mindset that lies behind making a hard distinction between Sci-Fi and Fantasy.  Now it is still useful to point out how core aspects of Star Wars’ narrative and thematic intentions are more similar to LOTR than Star Trek.  However sometimes even Star Trek Metaphysics are rather Spiritual and even Tolkien can be more scientific than you might expect.

So ScreenRant has an article called 15 quotes about The Force that when quoting Obi-Wan's main Force exposition in A New Hope and Yoda’s in Empire actually has the gall to claim The Midichlorian reveal “retconned” them, but fortunately it quotes them directly allowing me to refresh my memory.  Both quotes talk about The Force being generated by Living Things, not only is that compatible with the Midichlorian reveal but it pretty much proves something like that was how it worked all along.

Rick Worley has a video called What are The Whills that goes in depth into this aspect of Star Wars lore, but if you want a shorter cliff notes version on just one aspect of it watch MrSundayMovies video on Symbiants.  However I myself am a White American Christian whose understanding of Japanese spirituality comes mostly from all the Anime I watch.  So I have no desire to claim to be some great expert on Eastern Mysticism.  Instead this post shall focus on the implication in what I said at the start that the West didn’t always have this problem, at least not so nearly universally. [Update: I really regret recommending this video now that Worley has gone full Terf.]

Star Wars fans getting so offended by the Midichlorians, insisting The Force is no longer something spiritual if you’ve also made it Biological or Physical or “Carnal”, wreaks of Gnosticism to me.  It reminds me of when I watched this YouTube video from a Full Preterist responding to the accusation that their de Physicalizing of The Resurrection makes them Gnostic, he said he’s not Gnostic because he doesn’t believe the Physical world is fundamentally totally evil, thing is not all ancient Gnostics necessarily exactly believed that either, this video went on to talk about his distinguishing between the Spiritual and the Carnal.  And then in the comments section I saw someone express how they found it so disturbing that Futurists (and by implication also Partial Preterists) want the Resurrection to be Carnal, they saw it as a rejection of Spirituality that so many Christians have an attachment their fleshy carnal bodies, they think Christians should want to Let Go of them.

Now Star Wars has been accused of being Gnostic.  Ryan Reeves in one of his videos (I don’t remember which one) references a quote from Yoda in Empire Strikes Back where he says “Luminous being we are, not this crude matter” and yeah that sounds pretty Gnostic out of context, like how some quotes from Paul and the Fourth Gospel are taken out of context to make them sound Gnostic.  But even the immediate context of Yoda’s fuller quote undermines that Gnostic interpretation, much less how utterly Anti-Gnostic the Midichlroian reveal is.  Perhaps this quote wouldn’t have been so easy to misconstrue if only a “just” had been added, I do consider the OT not as precisely and carefully well written as the PT.

In April I made a post about Gnosticism in Anime where I also brought up Stoicism in the context of Final Fantasy VII.  I talk about this stuff more on my main Theology Blog, in posts about the Pagan Greek Origins of Puritan Sexuality and Stoicism in Early Christianity.  It is my view that Gnosticism is Pythagoreanism and Platonism taken to their logical extreme, and that New Testament Theology, if you want to compare it to any pre-existing School of Greek Philosophy, was closest to Stoicism.  Many are surprised to learn this, but during the first century proper Platonism was a minority position, Plato’s influence was felt in all schools to an extent, but among Greek Philosophers who believed in mysticism at all, Stoicism was the dominant perspective.  Though it was a form of Stoicism in some ways detached from the founding principles of Zeno.

But one of the core differences between Christianity and Stoicism is that Stoicism has no Resurrection, instead the Stoic view of the afterlife was the individual Soul eventually fading back into the World Soul, as well as a belief in endless cycles of destruction and rebirth. This is basically the After Life view of Star Wars as expressed by Yoda to Anakin in Episode III and further delved into in those season 6 Clone Wars episodes, the Personal Force equating to the Individual Soul and the Cosmic Force equating to the World Soul.

It is the cyclical aspect that is key to what makes Stoicism similar to Eastern Mysticism.  When I was watching the Netflix Anime film Bubble on April 28th with this post both above and below this paragraph mostly already written, I was reminded of all of it.  It uses the modern Big Bang Theory based scientific understanding of the Universe to evangelize this cyclical mysticism

In Stoicism the word Pneuma (which is the Greek word translated Spirit) was NOT a word for something intangible like Plato’s world of forms, Pneuma is Hyper Corporeal rather than non Corporeal.  And their sense of the word is what was dominant in the first century.  And when you really dig into it, I feel it can very much be compared to both the Lifestream in Final Fantasy VII and The Force in Star Wars.

There is a YouTube channel whose avatar is a low quality picture of Rika Furude from Higurashi and whose username is simply a Period.  This mysterious YouTube channel has a video called The Foundations of Star Wars, this video digs into the moral philosophy of Star Wars and what the channel finds horribly wrong with it.  This Moral Philosophy is basically the same as that later Roman Stoicism I spoke of, Stoicism after allowing itself to draw too much influence from Plato especially The Laws.  And I think the fact that neither this YouTuber or George Lucas himself can find a way to make the existence of the Force compatible with a more pro pleasure pro attachment morality is tied to just how lost and forgotten the original Stoic Morality has become.  Zeno was a Free Love Hippie who even defended Incest, he did not intend to create a Philosophy that would become synonymous with being an unemotional Vulcan.  Likewise Diogenes and the original Cynics would hate the connotations that word now has.

Zeldom has a series of videos on The Legend of Zelda’s Force which are interesting.  But perhaps the Sci-Fi/Fantasy media that truly is Zeno’s Stoicism in contrast to Star Wars’ Roman Stoicism would be the Magical Girl genre of Anime.