I have something against the Otome Villainess Genre

I enjoy some of these shows, but there is still an issue I have with the premise at its core.

I remember in one Lindsay Ellis video she said she couldn’t enjoy Frozen because she fundamentally disagreed with its perceived critique of prior Disney Princess films.  The problem is the message that you shouldn't rush into marriage with someone you just met is objectively a good one to teach young people, it doesn’t need to be some metatextual commentary on prior works in the same genre or from the same corporate brand to work.

However that same defense can’t be made of this Reincarnated as an Otome Villainess genre, and its other variants. As a subgenre of modern Light Novel Gamer Isekai the perceived commentary on prior works of fiction is explicit in the Text not mere Subtext.

Is there a single actual Otome Game that fits the generic framework all the hypothetical Otome Games imagined by this Genre share?  A Magic School in a Victorianish setting where the protagonist is the only commoner attending and her romantic options include The Crown Prince and her Ojousama Rival usually experiences some horrific Bad End alongside the Heroine’s Happy Ending?

I admit I’m pretty Anime Only when it comes to all these Genres, but none of the Anime I’m aware of that are adapted from Otome Games are at all like this.  There is usually not both a Reverse Harem and a Romantic Rival to the protagonist, that’s a bit too complicated for a truly generic Dating Sim to handle.

I feel this is a cynical perception of not just Otome Games specifically but Shoujo media in general held by Men and NLOGs who've never actually consumed any of it directly.

Classic Shoujo Anime and Manga are in fact always by default very sympathetic to the Romantic Rival and/or Ojousama character (they aren’t always the same person), and so I refuse to believe an accusation that Otome Games made for the same demographic were ever any different.  

Sometimes they are way more sympathetic to Bully characters than a lot of Western fans can handle.  Take Peach Girl who’s “Villainess” is the Trope Namer for the Wounded Gazelle Gambit, even she is given an arc and becomes a good person by the end.  In Pretear the Ojousama character is mostly comic relief but shows her own heroic qualities in the climatic episodes.  There are even Shoujo where the Protagonist outright admires her Rival like Princess Tutu and Shattered Angels.  

There are also Shoujo Manga as old as the 2000s where the Spoiled Rich Girl is the Protagonist like Pink Innocent. 

I talk a lot about how part of what I love about Otaku Media is how often Saving even the Villain is explicitly the goal.  Well that’s a Value modern Otaku Media inherited from Classic Shoujo, it comes principally from the Magical Girl Genre.

One YouTube VIdeo I watched on this Villainess trend says it’s a “dead unicorn trope” meaning it may have been a thing in the past but isn’t anymore.  But I doubt even those old ones ever treated these characters so unfairly.

Amelie Doree has a video on a Game that can be considered the Ur Text of the Otome Game genre called Angelique.  And while it does have somewhat of a proto Ojousama Rival character she is not treated as a “Villainess” at all.

Batman is great because of his variety.

The basic concept can be taken in so many different directions, you have so many different mutually exclusive takes on the same character.

So it’s interesting to think about how 20 years ago those who wanted to limit what Batman could be wanted only the Dark and Gritty and Realistic takes while now I’m seeing multiple YouTube think pieces about how the Fantastical stuff NEEDs to be there.  

It seems like people will say yes different takes should be different but only in cosmetic “style”.  That certain Fantastical Elements are absolutely required to show up or your Batman Universe just isn’t real Batman.

First of all there is so much stuff in the Batman Comics Lore that you can never fit all of it into a single film Trilogy or even a 7 season TV Series of 22 episodes per season.  Even an Anime with as many episodes as Detective Conan would struggle to find room for absolutely everything.

Are there a lot of Batman who could never have justice done to them in Movies and Shows in the vision of Nolan or Matt Reeves, yes.  But there are more than enough who can fit just fine that you really don’t need to go beyond those to fill out a trilogy of movies and a few spin off Minserises.  Plenty of them are just normal criminals with a gimmick.

Some of these villains have changed so much over their history that toning down the Fantastical parts of how they’re popularly viewed today would actually bring them back to their roots.  The Golden Age Clayface was just a crazy guy in costume.  And with Poison Ivy I kind of hate how fantastical she usually is now, I want to go back to her just being an Eco Terrorist who can invent some things that probably could never exist in real life but still is herself a normal human.  I'm tired of the green skinned plant monster Poison Ivy.

I will disagree with those who say Robin can't exist in a realistic Batman setting,  Dick Grayon is on the short list of characters who needs to exist in some capacity by at least movie three so I do dock points from Rises for doing it’s silly homage instead.

I keep seeing this argument that putting Batman in a Realistic Setting only draws further attention to how fundamentally ridiculous it is.  That it’s easier to take him seriously when he’s not taking himself seriously, and this is the kind of weird cynical “everything needs to be a deconstruction” logic I hate.

I”m not even really a fan of the Matt Reeves Batverse so far.  But given that we will be getting a Batman filled with Fantastical stuff in the coming James Gunn lead DC Universe it’s silly to sit here and demand he force fantastical elements into his artistic vision is frankly another case of Fan Entitlement.

A Batman movie or series made by me would be more Fantastical then what Nolan or Reeves is willing to do, but there are also still a lot of things I would not include.

Isekai Rewatches

Lately I did some rewatches of a few Isekai shows, some of the most disposable and forgotten about Seasonal Isekai of recent years.

In The Land of Leadale which help up great as a chill spiritual successor of Smartphone season 1.

She Professed Herself the Wise Man's Pupil which is still a fun show that got me to thinking about a few things.

The 8th Son show is also still good.

Saving 80,000 Gold Coins is still Amazing as well.

So I think I'm gonna try to do the same with some more, like maybe Skeleton Knight before it's season 2 comes along.

As a true Unironic Apologist of this genre I wanted to test that the ones I like weren't just a passing in the moment enjoyment.

I also finally watched all of season 1 of Log Horizon, it's first handful of episodes I'd seen before but my prior attempts to watch it I got bored when the Economic stuff started.  It's a good show and so I do intend to get to seasons 2 and 3 eventually.

Isekai is fun, not every fantasy setting has to be super unique to tell a neat story.

Screenwriters matter even in "faithful" Adaptations.

My priors posts about how I feel Writers for TV Shows and Movies matter just as much as Directors (and maybe sometimes more even) has focused on Anime that either aren’t adaptations or drawn out Adaptations with a lot of Anime Original “Filler” content so that I could say the basic plot of what’s going on doesn’t always come from the Source Material.  

But I’ve decided to start thinking more about the subtle ways they can matter even in a very direct adaptation.  Because most Anime Directors, especially Episode Directors, are more like Ron Howard than a visionary Auteur, they frequently just direct the script given to them.  It’s simply the Auteurs whose names you’re more likely to recognize.

And I decided one good case study for that happens to be the Anime Adaptations of SciADV Visual Novels.

Now I happen to like all of them, but the thing is I can still tell the differences between them and have a sense of why some are viewed as more poorly executed than others.

Robotics;Notes is the least talked about of the SciADV Anime.  Well Occultic;Nine is about equal in lack of discussion but it’s the one who’s source material isn't a game but a Light Novel series, as a LN Anime it reminds of Baccano! and Durarara! But there are no behind the scenes connections to vindicate me in that observation.

Steins;Gate is the one SciADV Anime that is viewed as a success, even beyond SciADV specifically it’s the one VN Anime even the harshest of VN Purists have trouble saying anything too bad about.

Chao:HEad and to a lesser extent Chaos;Child are among the most virulently hated VN based Anime, treated by fans as something you should ignore the existence of on the same level as Tsukihime.

When I recommend Robotics;Notes to people I express my very genuine belief that as an Anime and an Adaptation it is far more similar to Steins;Gate then it is to either Chaos: show.  That it has 22 episodes is an easy place to start. But none of the SciADV shows share the same lead Director, and they have too many episode directors for me to bother verifying if there is zero overlap.

However, Steins;Gate and Robotics;Notes have the same trio of writers, Jukki Hanada, Masahiro Yokotana and Toshizo Nemoto, none of whom had anything to do with any other SciADV Anime.  I think they are why the Robotics;Notes Anime is paced and structured similarly to Steins;Gate.

That they have different Directors and lead Artists doesn’t really surprise me, Robotics;Notes does look different, in ways that make it more inline with my general tastes in Anime. 

Masahiro Yokotana also wrote Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines which was pretty popular last season.

Magical Girls can use Swords

Clearandsweet is very much of the opinion that a Magical Girl ever using a sword would violate the Genre’s unwritten rules and betray its underlying moral ethos.  He loves citing a scene from Hugtto Pretty Cure to prove this point and it is a big part of his criticisms of Sailor Moon Crystal, Eternal and Cosmos and the original Manga compared to the 90s Anime. 

Interestingly the people I’ve seen most vocally express disapproval of Magical Girl Anime taking away the swords these Magical Girls had in their original Shoujo Manga source material are women, like the ladies at the Love And Justice Podcast or Aishyo in her recent video on Wedding Peach.

Frankly I also see a weird cognitive dissonance in Clearandsweet being so symbolically opposed to Magical Girls using Swords when he made over 24 hours of content arguing Madoka Magica is the most Platonically Ideal Magical Girl show with it’s very bombastic love of Gunplay.

I am a Pro-Gun Rights Leftist, I understand that weapons themselves are not the problem, only how they are used ever is.  

Likewise yes Jesus said “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword” but he also said “he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one” and “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”.

Yoda said in Empire Strikes Back that a Jedi uses his Lightsaber for defense never to attack, that’s what makes a Sword Wielding Magical Girl different from a sword wielding villain or antihero.

Let’s be real here, pretending Magical Girl Warriors are using totally purely pacifist methods to resist evil just because they often lack the symbols of violence seen in Shounen and Seinen Anime and American Action Movies is silly.  They are always fighting, they are violently resisting the enemies who threaten their world, that’s literally what the Warrior part of the subgenre’s name means.

Magical Girl Warriors are supposed to be in part Hyper Feminine Knights, that’s the imagery the word Senshi is supposed to evoke.  Sailor Venus’s Sword is because she is the Moon Princess’s loyal Knight.  Cure Sword in Doki Doki Pretty Cure is also a Knight.

The real reason swords, especially realistic looking swords like the one in the Sailor Moon Manga, were not allowed in the Anime versions is because they were heavily merchandised Toy Factories, Japanese parents did not want their kids playing with realistic looking weapons. When Wedding Peach did their DX OVAs they were no longer driven by the child friendly merchandising and were thus now given swords and even a gun.

Hugtto Pretty Cure had the same series director as the first 5 cours of the 90s Sailor Moon Anime Junichi Sato.  But in between there was one more unambiguous Magical Girl Warrior show he directed, Pretear, it was geared a bit older and was a single cour so this time he did not take aware her Wind Sword, he could have, other things were changed from the Manga for that Anime, but he did not object to the Sword even though it would have been very easy to come up with a different Wind Elemental attack.

So I don’t think that sword based plot point in Hugtto was intended to defend how he adapted Sailor Moon, that sword represents something very specific in that context and it is not a statement about Swords in this genre as a whole.

But I also do not think a man like Sato get to decide what is and is not allowed in a genre first and foremost meant for young girls. 

Magic and “Science” are not actually different in the ToAru Universe

My knowledge of ToAru lore beyond what’s been directly revealed in various Anime is mostly via watching videos on the Aeon of Horus YouTube Channel.  I feel the need to make that clear up front.

I haven’t even seen all of what’s Animated btw, I’ve so far been strictly Dub only with these franchises so all the OVAs and Specials that the Dub has ignored I still haven’t seen.

A detail revealed in the first Arc of A Certain Magical Index that I used to forget about because I generally rewatch later arcs more is Index reveals that Magick began as mages trying to mimic what Esper could do.  But if Espers have existed for longer then why are they now so firmly associated with this less than a century old futuristic city-state?  

Well that’s where the Gemstone distinction the Anime has never gotten into comes in. 

Gemstones are the naturally occurring Espers whose powers do not in origin have anything to do with Academy City’s curriculum.  While the term and concept of Gemstones hasn’t been properly explained in the Anime yet two Gemstone Espers have been seen, Aisa Himegami whose ability is called Deep Blood and Sugita the 7th ranked Level 5.

Paradoxically however these Natural Gemstone abilities seem the least Scientific, they seem like the highly magical superpowers someone would have in the Nasuverse.

Academy City’s Espers are the products of an attempt to artificially recreate what the Gemstones are, they are doing the same thing the Mages are just with an aesthetically different method.  Academy City was, after all, founded by one of the most infamous of Mages.

The core of how Academy City tries to scientifically explain what Espers are draws on the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment, just like many Visual Novels.  That’s why there is all the “personal reality” talk.  But the way Mages powers work also has a similar mind over matter quality to it, remember the villain in Deep Blood was defeated by his own lack of belief in what he could do.  

The simple fact that Touma’s right hand can cancel out both feels like proof that they aren’t that different.  And that ability is called Imagine Breaker.

Like the Gigalomaniac powers in Chaos;HEad and Chaos;Child both Magic and Esper powers in ToAru seem to have their roots in the Transcendental Idealism of Immanuel Kant.

Academy City produces Espers whose powers seem like SciFi rather Magical abilities because the kinds of minds drawn to and bred by Academy City can only Imagine in Scientific sounding terms.

The Remotes Misaki Shoukuhou uses are normal TV remotes, not things specifically designed for her, they are just a tool to help her imagination.  In a way that’s not at all unlike a Magic Wand.

We’ve seen plenty of Magical Abilities that would not at all be hard to imagine as Esper Abilities with only superficially different framing, like Style’s fire elemental powers.

Then there’s how the entire description of what a Level 6 is supposed to be reminds me of the Kwisats Haderach from Dune.

Arifureta Season 2 Watch Order

I just finished season 2 and will start season 3 shortly, but first Crunchyroll includes in it's season 2 some additional episodes that they place all at the end.

What Crunchyroll calls season 2 episode 13 the Detour episode actually seems like it's best watched as an optional bonus episode between season 1 and season 2.

The OVA is a single episode on MAL but CR split in two for some reason.  They seme to take place between episode 6 and 7, but they again should be watched with the knowledge that they aren't part of the main plotline.