SAO: Progressive - Aria of a Starless Night, Retcons stuff

I finally got to see Sword Art Online the Movie: Progressive - Aria of a Starless Night now that it's up on Crunchyroll English Dub included.  And in execution it's very good, has most of what makes SAO fun and none of it's most egregious problems.  The issues I have with the movie are only as someone already somewhat of a fan of prior SAO content and wouldn't be relevant to someone watching it as a stand alone or choosing to start their SAO experience here, if that's you then the rest of this post really isn't relevant and I say you should go ahead and dive in, it's a better first impression for Normies then most of the original first season is.

And the principal new character of the film Misumi/Mito is good, I like her and her story in this movie.

There are two types of Retcons.  One is the kind that reinterprets or recontextualizes old events in a way that is not actually absolutely a contradiction, and when they fix continuity problems rather them causing them this kind I tend to be fine with or even like.  Mito's very existence can be considered this kind, she explains the paradox of how Asuna both never really played an MMO before and yet so quickly becomes one of the highest ranked players, she had a Beta Tester Mentor even before she met Kirito.

But sadly this movie also has the more conventionally bad kind of retcon, the kind that is definitely changing what happened.

First is how Asuna and Kirito's first meeting is moved up, and then what was their original first meeting is expanded on.  Some fleshing out of that specific scene could have been fine, but I really always liked that Asuna and Kirto's Meet Cute wasn't predicated on him saving her.

Now this next bit may be a misunderstanding, but it seems like they've also went and implied the Sachi/Moonlit Black Cats incident already happened on the first floor in this new canon.  If true that really does annoy me, to whatever extent I was interested in seeing more of Kirito in the Progressive Movies it was seeing Kirito between episodes 2 and 3, seeing more of how he was before that trauma became such a defining part of him.

But the thing is in general I wanted minimal Kirito in these movies, the premise of the series I already knew going in is a Light Novel/Movie for each floor which based on the original timeline means there should be more movies then the Infinity Saga of the MCU before we reach what Asuna was doing at the time of Episode 3. And the other part of the premise was that it's Asuna as the main/pov character now, which means the new material should be stuff Kirto wouldn't have been privy to, especially when retelling events we'd already seen.

And the way the original series presented things, Kirito and Asuna do first meet in episode 2 at the end of the first floor but most of the romantic development starts in episode 8 with episodes 5-6 being of debatable relevance.  In the original SAO Light Novel it jumps from the events of episode 2 to episode 8, everything in 3-7 is short stories published later.  So there is prior precedent for Reki Kawahara deciding to add interactions between Kirito and Asuna in between, but what happens in 5-7 is still consistent conceptually with them not being regular partners yet but only occasional acquaintances.

So the ending of this movie basically amending the ending of the second episode of the show so that Asuna and Kirito are still part of a party going into Floor 2 really bugs me.  I wanted the Progressive movies to be Asuna with maybe occasional cameos from Kirito.  More stories about Kirito and Asuna as a power couple there is plenty of room for at much latter points on the timeline.

I'm now caught up on Titans

Clearly there are others who enjoy this show, you don't get 4 seasons on brand recognition alone, but they aren't the people making YouTube videos on it.

I talked about the first 2 seasons of the show on this blog previously giving them probably one of the most glowing reviews they'd had.  Now originally when I tried following season 3 as it aired I got frustrated, I got annoyed at them doing mostly Batman stuff instead of using more villains from the Teen Titans comics.

But just recently I decided to give it another chance, and it's fine, once we got into the latter half of the season Raven and Donna's returns made things a lot more enjoyable.  And also once they started getting into the head of this take on Scarecrow I decided that this is a pretty decent interpretation of the character, different from what we've seen before but still distinctly Scarecrow.

Season 4 is 4 episodes in and doing actual Titans storylines again, so the show is back on track.

This show is far form perfect, it is again far from what I would write, but I still maintain that it captures the Spirit of the Titans Comics I love better then the more universally praised mid 00s Cartoon.

A lot of the Credit for that goes to the Actors, the Actresses they got for both Raven and Donna embody the characters as I've always thought of them perfectly.  And most everyone else does a good job too.  

The show has real Heart to it, it flexes it's Edgy Muscles constantly but as someone who's watched Fate/Zero multiple times this show's darkness is child's play to me.

Party like it's Ninteen Ninty Nine

The previous post on this blog was about early 2000s Anime, but I technically mentioned a couple that are really from 1999, To Heart, Steel Angel Kurumi and the starts of Johto Era Pokemon and One Peice.  When you take stuff back to it's source material even more of what I mentioned there has it's roots in 1999, Comic Party's original Video Game and a lot of stuff based on weekly Shonen Manga that got animated in 2000.

At face value To Heart seems difficult to justify as relevant to the early 2000s at all, it's a single cour show that was done halfway through 99 and based on source material from 97, the others at least had active continuations.  But first of all it's directly relevant to Comic Party, I'd dare say it's almsot required viewing for Comic Party in the same way Haruhi is required viewing for Lucky Star.  But it's also simply that when I look at To Heart I kind of still see 90s style Animation but I more see how much of 2000s and even still 20tens and 2020s Anime is built on foundation that To Heart laid.  And it getting sequels in the mid 2000s proves it was at least in Japan consistently still popular all through the time in-between.

But those shows aren't the only examples of how much Anime in 1999 feels like the 2000s started early, Excel Saga, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, Corrector Yui, Ojimajo Doremi, Hunter x Hunter, Digimon Adventure, The Big O, and Turn A Gundam are all interesting examples of shows that started airing in 99 and ended in 2000.  And then for Detecive Conan January of 1999 was the Anime introduction of Ai Hiabara in episode 129 (136-139 of the international numbering).  And on the subject of Source Material for future Anime, Kanon came out in 99 launching Key and adding the next layer to the foundations laid by To Heart.

For the sake of organizing our memories we like to try to define drastic changes in culture as correlating to decades of the Gregorian Calendar, but 1999 sticks out to me as an interesting case study in how culture isn't actually paying attention to calendars when it changes.

As someone who used to be more interested in following Music then I am now, I've always noticed how 1999 was the year Eminem, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore and Jessica Simpson all became stars, all of them are now mostly more famous stuff they did in the 2000s not to mention how much people who started their careers later were influenced by them.

In the world of Video Games the Sega Dreamcast and Sonic Adventure were released in late 98 but reached the U.S. in 99 thus starting the Sixth Generation of the Console wars.

Pro Wrestling at first glance doesn't seems like it fits what I'm talking but rather the opposite, the first year and a half of 2000s Wrestling feels like the end of 90s era Wrestling.  However I feel like mid 99 was a sever drop in quality for both WWF and WCW, I know I'm nearly alone in this, most pretend WCW stopped being good as soon as Sting vs Hogan was botched and the WWF stayed impeccable till the Invasion storyline was botched, but for me everything I dislike about post Attitude Era wrestling really did start happening in 99.  And of those that so amusingly both Anti Vince Russo people and Pro Vince Russo people will connect the quality drop  that happened in 99 to which company Russo worked for changing, but for me the problems on both sides started a couple months before that, it started in the Summer, October marked a noticeable change in WCW but not so much WWF.

In the world of Western Superhero Comics, the Batman No Man's Land storyline is definitely the beginning of what early 2000s Batman Comics were like, as well as The Titans run that started in 99.  And in the world of adaptations of Superhero Comics Batman Beyond and Spiderman Unlimited changed things.  Sonic Underground feels like it's of a similar zeitgeist to those shows.

When it comes to Theatrically released movies from 1999 there are three that I mainly recall, the first Star Wars Prequel, the first Stephen Sommers Mummy movie and the first Pokémon movie.  Again all three were first not lasts.

In Japan the first Pokémon movie was in 98, but in the U.S. the franchise as a whole made it's debut in late 98 and I'm pretty sure it didn't catch my attention till it was 99 already.

Early 2000s Anime is overdue for it's Nostalgia Boom.

After stumbling upon and enjoying Comic Party and it's sequel Comic Party Revolution I watched some YouTube videos discussing the franchise from 4-6 years ago.  And one of them lamented how Anime from about 2000-2004 is pretty neglected in online discussion for being both too old to be modern but not old enough to be Retro.  And I remember feeling the same way at about when those videos were made as I lamented the lack of online Fandom appreciation for shows like Noir and Witch Hunter Robin.

But now the 20 year Nostalgia cycle for that era of Anime should be in effect, yet it seems to be slow in starting.

And the thing is at that time Nostalgia for other stuff of that era was already taking off.  Maybe the Star Wars Prequels Nostalgia boom was bumped up by getting the new Disney stuff, but there was already a spiked up interest in Raimi's Spider-Man movies and other stuff.

The Internet has always been to a large extent driven by Nostalgia, and I'm fascinated by how we've entered the era where the Nostalgia the internet celebrates now includes Nostalgia for the early Internet itself.  YouTube videos documenting Internet mysteries and old Fandom Dramas, even whole channels getting most of their views from that kind of content.

Anime more then most mediums was going through particular growing pains at this time, chiefly the transition from Traditional to Digital Animation.  However with Video Games there was also once a narrative about the awkwardness of early fully 3D games but now those aesthetics have become charming and nostalgic.  I've been feeling that way about early Japanese Digital Animation for awhile and I was not actually into much of it at the time.

Part of the problem may be how we forget that the Western Fandom was frequently behind, sometimes not getting these shows till a whole 5 years later.  So even if today Western Otaku are always citing the Japanese airdates because that's what's on MAL and ANN and AniDB in many cases our actual memories of these shows aren't 20 years old yet, two decades ago today we were mostly still getting delayed releases of 90s stuff.  I'm pretty my first experience with Noir started in 2005.  But we did make a big deal out of 2016 being the 20th anniversary of Pokémon even though it didn't make it's American debut till late 1998.

A certain type of Western Anime fan resents this era for being when MOE was truly taking over.  A lot of the redemption arc MOE has seen began with TrixieTheGoldenWitch leading the charge in singing the praises of K-On.  So the MOE stuff that predates KyoAni's Golden Age often simply gets neglected rather then hated or defended.

I want to play a role in getting some of these classics the fresh perspective they deserve.  Rumbling Hearts and Comic Party Revolution are among some shows recently added to Crunchyroll.  Sadly the original Comic Party and To Heart and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and Madlax are still lacking an official streaming option, while Noir and Pretear and Witch Hunter Robin are still only on Funimation a site that's supposedly being phased out. [Update: all three of those shows are on CR now.]

And then there is the subplot of what this era was for certain long running shows.  For Pokémon this is principally the Johto and early Advanced Generation including the Pokémon Chronicles side series and specials like Legend of Thunder and Mewtwo Returns.  

Probably the most not neglected stuff from this era are the long running Shonen that started then, Naruto, One Peice, Yugioh, Inyuasha ect which are kinds of shows I've personally never been into.

But I have this year been getting into Detective Conan, and for that show this era largely is the Vermouth Arc, from her introduction in episode 176 in January of 2000 to the big epic showdown in episode 345 in January of 2004, an arc that produced a lot of great episodes.  The movies during this era are 4 through 9 of which only movie 6 I wouldn't rank in the upper teir of Conan films.  And interestingly episode 304 a 2 hour special from January 2003 is actually connected to the most recent movie 25 the Bride of Halloween.

But thinking about a show I discovered recently reminds me that I need to watch more myself, other Anime based on Leaf or other early VNs, and Steel Angel Kurumi being another work from the same studio as To Heart and Comic Party.  And as a fan of Comedy there are more Nabeshin shows I need check out as well.  Galaxy Angel has also interested me for awhile but I keep putting it off.

Vandals in the Time of King Arthur.

This is a sequel of sorts to the post I made a few years ago suggesting that the Gaiseric of Berserk may have more then just a name in common with the historical Vandal King Gaiseric.  Since then I have watched the 97 Berserk TV Anime, in fact I think I did before the Manga Author passed away.  But this post shall be even less about the actual Berserk franchise then my first one.  But actually seeing the Anime has firmly convinced me that Midland is mostly just based on France not Middle Francia.

Gaiseric's Kingdom continued for awhile after he died, his successor was his son Huneric.  The next Vandal king was Gunthamund the second son of Gento the fourth and youngest son of Gaiseric.  After that was Thrasamund the third son of Gento.  Then Huneric's son Hilderic finally took the throne in 523, but because of Hilderic's conversion to Chalcedonian Christianity Gelimer lead a coup against him.  Hilderic is referred to as Gelimar's "first cousin once removed" on Wikipedia.  It was Gelimer who was defeated by Belisarius in 534 AD.

Now I've seen it claimed more then once that Procopius says the entire Vandal nation sailed away in ships after Gelimar's defeat.  It's also worth noting that late antiquity sources like Procopius use Vandal/Vandals and African/Africans interchangeably when identifying this kingdom and it's people, since their capital was Carthage previously the capital of the Roman province of Africa which was no where near the entirety of the continent we today know by that name but mainly the northern most Mediterranean coasts of north western Africa.

Geoffroy of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain is a mythologized account of British history from the Welsh POV.  I do not take it at face value, but I do think it can provide glimpses into history not recorded elsewhere, we just need to consider what it says carefully.  In book 11 about a generation after the time of King Arthur during the reign of a Briton King who Geoffroy calls Keredic/Ceraticus and the Brute Tysslo calls Ceredig, a King of "Africans" who had been doing some plundering in Ireland named Gormund makes an alliance with the Saxons.

I'm not the first to suggest this mysterious "African" King suddenly popping up in a semi-mythical account of mid to late 6th Century Brittan was actually a Vandal, the name Gormund fits in well with the names the known Vandal kings used.  It's further mysterious how after this Gormund succeeds in defeating Keredic he simply hands over England to the Anglo-Saxons.  

While the term "African" doesn't come up till the time of Keredic in Book 11, given the confused natured of Geoffroy's sources maybe some references to Ireland or the Irish before this are also really this Vandal presence in the British isles?  Back in Book 9 the "King of Ireland" is named as Guillamurius, that name sounds like it could be an overdone variant of Gelimar who was contemporary with much of the Reign of King Arthur.

Awhile later at the end of Arthur's reign at the start of Book 11, which would be after the downfall of Gelimar, four Irish leaders are mentioned among the killed in battle allies of Mordred and Chelderic, they are Gillapatric, Gillamor, Gistafel, and Gallarius.  Those names also sound like they fit in with Vandal names.

Mainstream historians don't consider there to be any evidence of Vandal presence in Ireland or Britain, the idea that there was is in terms of historical references only this somewhat coded reading of Geoffroy who isn't a reliable source on his own anyway.  However I feel there is DNA evidence.

I believe the presence of Y Chromosomal Haplogroup I in Europe is primarily via Germanic Language speaking peoples, with  I2a1 being specifically the East German Language Tribes.  Most of I's presence in the British Isles is via the other two major subgroups as one would expect since the Anlgo-Saxons and Franks were West Germanic and the Normans formally North Germanic.  But I2a does have a small presence, strongest in part of Western Ireland, and there is no alternate theory to this Vandal one for East Germanics leaving any DNA behind in the British isles at all.

The Alans were also a part of the Vandal Kingdom for awhile, as a Scythian/Iranian Tribe their dominant DNA Y Haplogroup would have probably been R1a, it too has a faint presence in Brittan and Ireland.