Fantasy and Science Fiction

I’ve made a few posts on this blog before the line between Fantasy and Science Fiction and stores that straddle that line.

But I’ve recently come to a final conclusion about how to define these genres that is important.

Science Fiction is defined by what can’t happen in it far more than Fantasy is.  Because the point of Science Fiction is to try and stay theoretically scientifically possible no matter how out there it gets. The supernatural can never unambiguously happen in Sci-Fi. But it goes beyond just what literal things can and can’t exist in the universe, there are certain kinds of stories that at their core are Fantasy stories no matter how Futuristic or Scientific you try to make the setting. A Sci-FI story would never begin with “Once Upon a Time” or something analogous to that. 

Fantasy meanwhile is defined by its lack of limits, anything you can fantasize about can be Fantasy. That’s why I once argued that Sci-Fi can be in its entirety viewed as a subgenre of Fantasy, from a certain point of view. 

However nothing that is at its core a Fantasy story can become Sci-Fi by draping itself in cosmetically Sci-Fi elements like space shops and lasers. 

And that once again brings us to Star Wars, the most contentious franchise in this debate. 

The Midichlorenes do not make The Force scientific enough to qualify as Sci-Fi, they tie this fundamentally mystical concept to Nature in a way no different then how The Lifestream works in Final Fantasy VII.

But what’s really funny is when the Prequel Haters who hate the Midichlorenes for allegedly demystifying The Force also want Star Wars to be allowed to qualify as Sci-Fi.  They fail to see how their interests conflict. 

The people who really want to be allowed to classify Star Wars as Science Fiction are basically insulting Fantasy as a genre, because it’s clear however much they don’t want to outright say it, that this comes from a palace of viewing Sci-Fi as more respectable. 

And it says something about the modern world that in this unique case the younger Genre is viewed as the more respectable one, by some people at least.  Science Fiction as a distinct genre begins with Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein at the absolute earliest. Fantasy meanwhile is the oldest genre there is, The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Mahabharata and Ramayana, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Beowulf and the Mabinogion.  All of them are Fantasy stories in a modern genre classification context. 

Andor is the one piece of Star Wars media that feels like it could count as Sci-Fi if only it weren’t in the same Universe as all that Force stuff. And sadly I think that’s a factor in why it’s the closest to universally praised any Disney Era Star Wars project has been. I liked Andor well enough but do consider it overrated, I’d rather have more stuff like Ahsoka and The Acolyte which actually delve into Force Lore. 

Charred Corpses in a Galaxy Far Far Away

A common trend in YouTube videos about Star Wars during the past Decade or so has been to cheekily dismiss the idea that the original Star Wars was “for kids” by showing Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s burned corpses.

Funny thing about this is as someone who’d been a watcher of these movies since sometime before 1997, I didn’t notice that their bodies were actually visible onscreen in that scene till these very modern video essays. I thought we were just being shown that the farm was burned down and the actual bodies were offscreen or maybe completely disintegrated. 

And that shouldn’t be surprising, they were not zoomed in on, there was smoke everywhere, and I was originally watching these on VHS on CRT TVs sitting on the other side of a living room. These modern BluRay rips the YouTubers are using are not what the experiences of this scene was like for most of its existence. 

I’m not saying they were impossible to see before if you were looking for them, but the kids these people keep trying to prove Star Wars was never for would not have been looking for them. Heck at first I didn’t really notice them in these modern YouTube videos trying to draw my attention to it.

Not understanding something doesn’t make you stupid.

Then there is a Movie or Anime I like that is hated on by people who say they couldn't follow it or understand what was happening in it, and then I talk about how I found it pretty easy to understand actually.  It’s difficult for that not to be taken as me claiming to be smarter then the people who didn’t understand. It doesn't help that I usually lack the ability to explain what I understand about it. 

The thing is I understand that intelligence isn't linear, I’ve partly based my entire ideology on understanding that. Herman Cain was a brain surgeon, something you cannot do without being very very intelligent in very specific ways.  But that didn’t stop him from sounding like a dimtwit when he discussed politics while trying to run for President. 

There are in fact Anime and Movies I don’t understand, I don’t see the deeper meaning that other people do. But instead of insisting they’re seeing something that isn't there in order to feel smart, I simply trust that they saw something I can’t. A prominent example of that is Shoujo Kageki Revenue Starlight from 2018. I feel like I'm the only person in its hypothetical target audience who didn’t enjoy it or get it, and that’s fine.  

Part of the reason why it’s so easy for me to understand when it comes to this is because others do believe those who didn’t understand something they did objectively are stupider than they are. 

I unsubscribed from Rick Worley’s YouTube channel when he made his big J.K. Rowling simp fest. But the other day I decided out of morbid curiosity to see what he’d talked about since and the one that most caught my attention was a video on Megalopolis.  I like Megalopolis, I think it’s a neat, fun movie and I understood the Becket reference. But to Rick Worley people who found that movie difficult or "impenetrable" are just dumb or intellectually lazy. And also to him unironically liking a movie like this obviously mutually exclusive with unironically liking Ghostbusters Frozen Empire, well I unironically like both.

Worley has built his whole personality on a belief that big corporate movies like Superhero movies can’t be real Art, and to me gate keeping what qualifies as Art is fundamentally reactionary thinking.  Even the most corporate mandated micro managed films are still made by people who are putting some of themselves into what they are making. 

And the thing is a movie like Megalopolis is no less a Corporate Product, it’s just that the Brand they are milking is Francis Ford Coppola rather than a Comic Book. 

I firmly reject the notion that Bad Art exists, all Art is Good, you just aren’t going to like all of it. 

The notion that most movies or Anime or anything else are bad and the good ones are rare Jems you have to fish out from all the slop and trash is a symptom of the justifying ideology of Capitalism.

Q is Chekhov’s Gunman

I’ve currently only seen three James Bond films in their entirety, the first two Daniel Craig movies and most recently earlier this year The Man With The Golden Gun.  But I’ve seen clips of over movies before and I watched a bunch of Bond relevant Video Essays on YouTube this year because they simply were what was trending a few times.

Bond has been a very influential franchise,  so I can see Bond’s fingerprints on plenty of other media I’ve consumed.  Lupin III has been called the James Bond of Japan, a few of the 60s and 70s Godzilla films are referred to as being James Bond influences.  There are direct James Bond references in the Anime Moriarty The Patriot. 

What’s interesting though is how one of the key signs that something is really leaning into the Bond influence structurally is if there is a Q analogue. When Batman Begins was being hyped up Nolan was very open about the James Bond influence, and a key factor always pointed out is Lucius Fox as played by Morgan Freeman being Bruce’s Q.  Nolan's love of drawing on Bond continued with Inception and Tenet which both have their Q analogues. 

And a thing I’m sure I’m not the first to notice about Q is how his role is essentially to provide Chekhov’s Guns.  Professor Agasa has been referred to as Detective Conan’s Q, and it's in several of the movies that is really on the nose, just like Q he introduces some new invention early on which then plays a key role in the climax. 

The wording of Chekhov’s Gun is that because something is seen early on it should be used.  But no sane person is really going around criticizing every time some innocuous detail from act one doesn’t come up later. No it’s considered good writing advice for the opposite angle, anything that plays an important role in the resolution should be set up earlier, that’s how you avoid a Deus Ex Machina accusation. 

So Bond style movies without a designated Q character still have a scene or two that like the Q serve the purpose of introducing something that will be important later. Maybe the protagonist themselves invented whatever gadgets they’re going to use. 

And this is why I struggle at being an actually interesting blogger. I make lots of observations like this I want to share, but they don’t always lead me to any profound revelation.  Rather than continuing this Chekhov’s Gun train of thought I kind of want to share other random Bond related thoughts I’ve had this year. 

Ya know the Obi-Wan Kenobi parts of Attack of The Clones could be compared to a Bond movie just as much as they can to Film Noir Detective films. Ewen McGregor has a similarly dry sense of humor to Roger Moore and Christopher Lee is the villain.

I watched a Book YouTube video that separated all the Bond Novels both by which they felt were the good ones and which ones’ namesake films are a reasonably faithful adaptation of at least the same basic sequence of events. And the only novel that was both good and doesn’t have a close enough adaptation is Moonraker, which is interesting for having a villain who is a surviving Nazi War Criminal, not the most original idea for a Pulp Villain but they annoyingly keep staying relevant. 

When it comes to the various pitches Bond fans keep saying they want for the next movie, I kind of hope the Period Piece idea is the one Amazon doesn’t do.  Because when the Bond Novels (except maybe Thunderball) enter the Public Domain pretty much everywhere but the United States in a decade, period piece films that directly adapt those noble distinctly unlike how the Movies have typically been are exactly what people independent of Amazon will be able to make without Amazon shutting it down.  

So I say an old fashioned Black and White mid 50s set Moonraker adaptation is exactly what some independent filmmakers should right now begin preparing to make. In fact you can already do it in Canada. Maybe give it a different name since Pop Culture so much associates that name with something distinctly NOT in the book. 

My other advice for people planning to make their own PD James Bond projects in a decade is if you want to avoid Spectre because of the question mark that might still hang over Thunderball, just use Paul Feval’s Les Habits Noirs translated The Blackcoats as your international criminal secret society. Their English branch is sometimes called The Gentleman of The Night and their leader The Lord of The Night is sometimes plotting to liberate Ireland from British rule which I mention because another Bond video I saw talked about the lack of Ireland in the Bond movies.

In some small ways certain writers have always gotten away with treating Bond like he’s quasi PD.  Like incorporating the Mycroft Holmes was the original M fan theory.  Is there any fictional character from the same era whose name happens to begin with the letter Q who was also a scientist/inventor?

Frieren and Goblin Discourse

As played out as this discourse may seem I feel like I have something different to say about it.

First, while I am of the opinion that it is problematic to have inherently evil fantasy races, I can be fine with it if it’s done passively, if it’s just there and never drawn attention to. But when you take the time to raise the question only to take the deterministic answer, that's when I’m bothered.  Freiren does do that, but it’s so far only directly relevant to one Arc of the Anime and not many more in the Manga form what I’ve heard so I can grit my teeth through those parts and just enjoy what I like. 

Freiren’s predecessor in the world of Anime in this discourse was 2018’s Goblin Slayer, that one I couldn't finish because it was too innate the entire premise of the show. 

What really bugs me about a lot of the people so determined to attack those criticizing Freiren on this issue is not that they aren't bothered by it but that they are talking about those who are as Normie Tourists bringing Woke Politics into Anime.  Frieren and Goblin Slayer stood out to Anime fans because it is precisely in the context of Anime that this is unusual.  I’ve yet to see a high profile Western Medieval style High Fantasy Show or movie with Goblins that are good actually, even in Game of Thrones the White Walkers were soulless monsters.  It’s in Fantasy Anime where the default is to humanize even the enemies. 

Goblin Slayer aired the same season as the first cour of That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime which took the exact opposite approach to Goblins, that show has 3 seasons and a spin off now and a 4th is likely coming. We see a similar approach to conventional fantasy monsters in Tsukimichi Moonlit Fantasy,as well as So I'm A Spider, So What.  Mushoku Tensei is often alleged to be in its source material the origin point of the modern form of Fantasy Light Novels, and it has a major storyline about Demons not being evil. Even in Solo Leveling, a show recently bashed as mindless trash there is an arc where the Demons are revealed to not be all evil.  Hell, even Gate, a show I see a lot of Fascism in, does not depict any race intelligent enough to speak as immutably evil. 

It stretches beyond just Fantasy btw, in Wedding Peach the agonistic society literally referred to as Devils are ultimately proven to not be inherently evil, which is exactly how the Magical Girl genre always does it.

There is a lot of strawmanning of what everyone on the “Woke” side of this debate is saying.  It’s not about saying you can never have a society or tribe that is in their current state opposed to the greater good.  No one is saying it’s wrong to kill the Goblins that are currently attacking you.

There has been talk of what Frieren does as a “Subversion of the Subversion”, that saying Demons aren’t inherently evil has become so common now that subverting that is more subversive. But a Double Subversion that just goes back to a regressive status quo is not interesting beyond the initial shock value of it. But let me tell you how I think a Subversion of a Subversion could be interesting. 

I am a bit tired of Frankenstein’s Monster being made completely innocent, where if he kills at all it’s always either self defense or an accident.  In the original novel he is a sympathetic character, who is driven to his monstrous actions by how he’s treated.  But he still intentionally killed a child to frame an innocent woman and cause her to be hanged, as just one example. The fact is the Creature’s characterization in The Novel is both literally and connotatively that of what we’d today call an Incel. 

I definitely want the Creature to be redeemed of his sins by the end, but it'd be nice for people to stop pretending he was without sin. 

Visual Novel adaptations

Visual Novels are a medium of entertainment I’m unable to consume myself for reasons related to my ADD and perhaps other undiagnosed disabilities I may have, it’s not that I’m unwilling or lazy it’s that I’m literally unable.

But they are an artform I greatly appreciate because they have been the direct source material of several of my favorite Anime while even more are the parts of franchises that started as VNs. So I want to advocate for them as much as I can as an outsider.

However a lot of Visual Novel fans have decided to resent their Anime adaptations, even the best of them, instead of appreciating them in return.  And to some extent I feel it shows the immaturity of the western VN fandom that they are like this.  Could you imagine if the film adaptations of Jurassic Park and The Godfather and the many highly regarded Dracula and Frankenstein films were constantly being called garbage because people who read the books were defining them solely based on how much content in the books aren’t in the films?  

I’m going to put the various Visual Novel based Anime into different categories. 

First are VN Anime I consider absolute masterpieces, as stand alone works of art these should be considered top tier no matter how unlike their source material they are.

Robotics:Notes

Steins:Gate

Chaos;Child

Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works (the TV Anime by UFO Table)

Higurashi When They Cry (The original 2006 Studio Deen Anime and it’s 2007 sequel Kai)

Kanon (2006-2007 Two Cour Kyoto Animation version)

Clannad + Clannad After Story

Rumbling Hearts

White Album

Comic Party

Next are ones I like about as much as those, but I do have a sense they could be done better.  

YU-NO: The Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World (2019 Tv Anime)

Fate/Stay Night Haven’s Feel (UFO Table Film Trilogy)

Air (Kyoto Animation TV Anime)

Shuffle 

To Heart

White Album 2

Yosuga no Sora

Next are Anime I do consider flawed in some way, but still also see immense artistic value in.

Umineko

School Days

Steins;Gate 0

Chaos;HEad

Fate/Stay Night (2006 Studio Deen Version)

Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works (Studio Deen Film version)

Tsukihime

If there’s a VN Anime you like I didn’t mention it might be because I haven’t it yet, I’m still holding out hope for Muv-Luv getting a Dub.  Or I may not think of the source material as sufficiently qualifying as a VN like Neptunia or all those Gacha Game Anime.

I also for the sake of simplicity excluded ones that are just Hentai OVAs, plenty of them I do have thoughts on, but now isn’t the time for that.

All that also excluded that Anime that are spin offs rather than direct adaptations.

Another post about Anime Screenwriters

There's a Pokémon YouTube Channel I discovered recently called Funyarinpa Foundation that has some good videos talking about various writers of the Pokémon Anime.  I highly recommend their videos on Aya Matsui, Hideaki Sonoda and the 44 minute Serena videos talks about a writer associated with her episodes.  He's also discussed Takeshi Shudo in a number of videos, YouTubers talking about Shudo is far from uncommon but his perspective is still a unique one.

Reiko Yoshida is a writer I've talked about on this blog before and I keep discovering more about just how uniquely prolific she is. She's not the only writer to have written for both Dragon Ball Z and some classic Mahou Shoujo. But add to that her importance to the Digimon Anime, and that she wrote a Studio Ghibli film The Cat Returns, and the Anime adaptation of classic Shoujo Yuri Maria-sama ga Miteru, and unique 00s hidden Jem Romero x Juliette and multiple 2010s "Moe" shows like Girls Und Panzer and High School Fleet and most of what Naoko Yamada directed for Kyoto Animation.   And I find it hard to imagine anyone else who has such a wide variety of Anime in thier resume.  But there are many who know a lot more then I do.

And that's just stuff I'm familiar with that I consider her one of the main writers for. There are so many other shows she wrote a smaller percentage of episodes for, from Angelic Layer to Pokémon Journeys.  And then even more I still haven't watched any of.  

Her role in the history of the Magical Girl Warrior sub-genre is interesting for how it helps build a genealogy. She wrote for Cutey Honey Flash alongside veterans of both Sailor Moon and Wedding Peach. After that she then wrote the Tokyo Mew Mew Manga from 2000 through early 2003.  This seems to be the only Manga she ever wrote, she is mainly an Anime writer. Tokyo Mew Mew I view as kind of a key transition in the history of Magical Girl Manga and Anime, as someone who took way to long to even learn of the show's existence I quickly noticed ways in which it anticipated aspects of Pretty Cure. 

I just learned while writing this that she wrote a third of Shirobako. 

As the most popular and highly regarded Anime about making Anime I do appreciate the role the writing part plays in the show. The show starts with an Anime already currently airing so it's lead writer's job is presented as mostly done till he's called back in when the director wants to change the ending.  The second core follows an Anime form the start of it's production and so we see more of what the writers do with the guy we meet only briefly in the first cour serving as a mentor to the young aspiring writer who's a friend of the protagonist. 

The lead writer of Shirobako was Michiko Yotoke.  She also has ties to the Magical Girl genre having written 3 episodes of the Pretty Sammy TV Anime and 11 episodes of Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and the Scenario for Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, and a number of shows that others might be more inclined to count as part of the genre then I would, most notably Princess Tutu which I do count more then I do say Utena.  Besides that she's written for a lot of stuff I've seen but not many I'd consider favorites.  Though normies might be interested in that she wrote 8 episodes of Cowboy Bebop.