The Hidden Legacy of Walt Disney's Fantasia

As a stand alone project Fantasia is a pretty highly regarded work of Art.  But Walt's ambition for it was at face value a failure, arguably Walt's greatest failure.

He wanted it to be an ongoing project.  To be the birth of a whole new medium of entertainment, a new way to experience both Music and Animation by bringing them together.  A new kind of Artistic Expression.

And there is no denying that it didn't happen exactly the way he envisioned it, as Fantasia being repeatedly re-released with old segments being swapped out for new ones.

But in the modern Internet era there is a new flourishing Artform that I feel can be viewed as kind of fulfilling Walt's vision in a sense.

The AMV.....

.....Anime Music Video.

That is a collection of experts from some of my personal favorite AMVs.  At the bottom of this post I'll provide links to each of them.  I put a variety of different kinds of AMVs in there, to show the different kinds of Artistic expression they are capable of.

Now this is a theory, I can't solidly prove a connection.  Disney has had a lot of influence on Anime in general, early Toei films and Osamu Tezeka drew inspiration from Disney in different ways.  And Anime fans have been making AMVs since the 80s.

Two interesting YouTube videos on the subject of AMVs I recommend are one Pause And Select made AMVs and Transformative Storytelling, and one from Mother's Basement about Linkin Park AMVs.  It'd be interesting to see Mother's Basement do more videos on AMVs, it's kind of a natural spin off from being the OP guy, since OPs and EDs are basically Canonical AMVs.

Now part of Walt's Vision was this being on the big screen, in theaters.  I'm not sure, but I think at Anime Conventions sometimes you might get to see popular AMVs on the big screen, maybe during the AMVs contests they hold.  I don't know since I still haven't gotten to attend one.  It's something they should do if they aren't.

Now Disney the company might not be very interested in celebrating this possible connection, since some want to see AMVs as a possible violation of our Draconian Copyright Laws, and Disney is largely responsible for them being how they are now.  So they maybe aren't fond of there being a YouTube videos that puts footage of Attack on Titan over the only good song from Mulan.

I wonder if any of those AMVs made way back in the 80s can be found on the Internet now? I'd be curious to check some out, even though most of the Anime I'm into didn't exist yet back then.  The only AMV in my montage that even hypothetically could have been made back then was Rose of Versailles to a song from the Les Miserables Musical.  I'm disappointed there aren't more of those, there are a few other songs that fit just as perfectly as Do You Hear The People Sing.  There are a number of AMVs of the Les Miserables Anime, Shoujo Cossette, to the Musical, I wonder if some day there will be enough to potentially experience the whole Musical via Shoujo Cossette AMVs?

I haven't made any real AMVs myself.  I doubt I'll ever be able to.  The above video I'm kind of proud of how I handled all the transitions (and I like how it demonstrates my bias for Yuri when I didn't really plan for it to), but I don't think I could make one from scratch.  I do have Yui Castanets to Snoop Dogg's Betta Days, which is just K-On!'s first Meme and what I still consider Snoop's best song.  And a video looping the Lucky Star OP to Bone Thugs' Flo Motion.

There is definitely more I'd like to see AMVs do.  There are many ideas for AMVs I have that I'd like to see someone try to make.  The Metropolis Anime to All Along The Watchtower.   Angel Beats to Tha Crossroads by Bone Thugs N Harmony.  I'd like to see one called Smooth Criminal Bear, that would be a YuriKuma Arashi AMV to Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal focused on Ginko Yurishiro.  There is already an AMV of Lucky Star to White and Nerdy, but I was disappointed by it, it should be done under the premise that Patty is the one rapping it.  And It'd be pretty cool to see the UFO Table Fate/ Animes to Battle of The Heroes from the Revenge of The Sith soundtrack.

But also as a homage to the very premise I've presented here.  I'd love to see one of Puella Magi Madoka Magica to Night on Bald Mountain/Ava Maria.  First of all most people don't know this but the Night on Bald Mountain segment of Fantasia is NOT depicting Halloween but Walpurgisnacht.  And then there is the fact that Ava Maria is played in the last episode of Madoka, during her Apotheosis.  The first reason the name Wampurgisnacht is used in Madoka is as one of it's many homages to Goethe's Faust (A subject I intend to eventually write about on my comparative mythology blog), but the use of Ava Maria right after has me thinking Fantasia must have also been an influence.

Here are the Links

Rose Wars - Utena
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ6T-NYgoeM
Bohemian Rhapsody - Evangelion Opus Remastered (HD 1080p)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdUPwR6mzXo
Amv YuriKuma Arashi Take me to church
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj5GlZfXRBk
All The Things She Said[Mahou Shoko Lyrical Nanoha]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PmOF9gnqWU
Do You Hear The People Sing? Rose of Versailles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TCej2mdjHQ
AMV Linkin Park Breaking the Habit Noir
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLSN2rF819E
-Till I Collapse - Eminem - Sword Art Online AMV-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFTrQ92Erao
C The Money AMV Mo Money Mo Problems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ovNU4RKl00
Amv Davo ft. Kwoat - I Don't Wanna Be A Playa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBepeSOECKs
toradora amv !!!! tangled up in me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrYWm41vQvQ
Yuru Yuri AMV: If You Were Gay from Avenue Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnxrCyA_fOw
I Kissed A Girl~A Strawberry Panic! AMV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giOzD8X5rGk
I Want You Bact (AMV)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl9skWhegNc

All should also all be found in this Playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4CWxmx4wepgy3hqbg1JVT1PYeoiLc7_r

Update April 2021: So the AMV Montage originally had no Copyright issues but now Breaking The Habit has become a problem.  I've added the unaltered version to the Internet Archive.

archive.org/details/amv-montage

Winter 2018 Simuldubs Week 1: The Jack Nicholson of Anime Dubs

[update: the entire discussion of Monica Rial here was a msitake, I don't stand by it at all anymore, she's still great.]

The Solution to Gender Double Standards should never be to give Men the restrictions Patriarchy puts on Women.

Doing that runs counter to the point of Progressiveness in my view, it should be about increasing Freedom not taking it away. We should be liberating Women (and Men) from the shackles that patriarchal gender norms have long placed on them.  Not forcing the bull-crap women have always dealt with onto men.

What has largely prompted this was seeing some people respond to Lindsay Ellis recent Video About Twilight, by saying "we need to start holding media aimed at boys to higher standards".  I am inherently against higher standards for Media consumption, period. I want more wish fulfillment fiction about Taboo and Problematic relationships, whether I agree with it being wrong in real life or not. These fantasies are something we need.  Back in the 90s it was conservatives saying immorality in media leads to immorality in real life, now many on the left have become what they used to hate and have no self awareness of it.

There are a few details of Lindsay's video I disagree with.  The whole Bella was leaving her family for her Boyfriend thing I addressed last month in Clannad and Twilight.  And I might be doing something in the future on the accusation that E.L. James is guilty of plagiarism.  But over all that video is saying what I've been saying for years, but much more eloquently.  In posts like My Feminist Defense of "Cute Girls doing Cute Things" and Yuri Anime.

But leaving Twilight aside, let's move on to something much more directly relevant to actual Political discussions of what should and should not be legal.

I can also see people mocking me for seeing anything progressive about the Open Polygamy in In Another World With My Smartphone.  It hasn't happened yet, but I can see it coming.  'A male with multiple female lovers is still a male fantasy, only other kinds of Plural Marriage can be viewed as progressive, Polygny is Regressive.'

Yes, I'm well aware that for most of human history in most cultures men having multiple lovers was accepted and even expected (even if in Greco-Roman and most Christian societies they could only have one actual Wife), while Women could be punished with death for the same thing.  But again, the solution to that Double Standard should have been allowing more Sexual Freedom for women, instead we did the opposite and now men are being held to the same unreasonable monogamous restrictions women used to be held to.

Not to mention how opposition to Polygyny is frequently tied to religious bigotry towards Mormons and Muslims.  The abuses associated with how Polygyny has been practiced in the worst forms of those religions can be made perfectly illegal by outlawing arranged marriages, (and helped out by our statutory rape laws).  But forcing Mormons to go outside the law to practice what many view as a central tenet of their faith violates the First Amendment, and only makes it harder to prevent those abuses, just like all other forms of Prohibition.

The Polygamous resolution to In Another World With My Smartphone's Harem is completely consensual, in fact it was one of the women who first suggested it.  I see quite a bit of Feminism in a group of women agreeing to share the man they love, considering how often in fiction women liking the same man seems to inevitably lead to conflict that could potentially end their friendship.  For the most part these girl's friendships began with their liking the same guy so it's quite the opposite of that problem.

I hope it becomes a trend, and I do want to see it expand to more diverse kinds of Group Marriages.  But if it takes a male fantasy to get the ball rolling then so be it.

Michelle Ruff is the best English Voice Actress for Fujiko Mine

The role of Fujiko Mine has had eight different English Voice actors in the various Dubs that have been recorded.  Michelle Ruff is I think the best by a pretty large margin.

Of course she arguably has an unfair advantage in having had most of the best material to work with for the character in question.  The FUNimation/Adult Swim Dub of Red Jacket, the best of the four Dubs of The Secret of Mamo/Mystery of Mamo.  The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, and most recently Blue Jacket.

Basically she gets the role when FUNimation does the Dub.  And in general I think FUNimation's are the best Lupin Dubs, and with the other characters it's not easy to say only FUNimation got the best material.  It baffles me that FUNimation didn't get Jigen's Gravestone, which is supposed to at least thematically bridge the gap between TWcFM and Blue Jacket.  I hope they get to do Italian Game and the upcoming series about Lupin returning to France the homeland of his grandfather (I would advice FUNimation and whatever studio in Japan owns the rights to consider hiring Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier as consultants for that project, they are the best at translating the original Lupin from French into English).

Ruff hasn't gotten to do a Dub of Castle of Cagliostro.  Thing is as popular as it is to call that the best Lupin movie, I can't particularly recommend it to people watching Lupin mainly for Fujiko.  Fujiko is good in the movie, I like that she has no jealously towards Clarisse, but her role isn't that major.  Still just for the sake of the other characters I'd like to see this cast get to make their own Dub of Castle of Cagliostro someday.  And perhaps do the Miyazaki written and/or directed episodes of Green Jacket and Red Jacket (which the old FUNimation dub didn't get to) as Blue Ray bonus features.

[[Apparently there is contradictory information out there about whether or not FUNimation did the Dubs that feature Michelle Ruff as Fujiko.]]

Still, in general I feel Mystery of Mamo is a better movie to introduce one to the Lupin mythos.  Cagliostro is a great film, but it's a Miyazaki film more then it is a Lupin film.

I can't really call any of the other English Fujko actresses bad.  I've only watched Ruff's dub of Mamo all the way through, but from YouTube clips I've seen comparing the four Dubs,  Fujiko is the one character who sounds acceptable in all four of the them.  The Fuma Conspiracy has the worst Lupin dub cast (it's like they tried to repeat what was hated about it in Japan), but even there Fujiko sounds the least horrible.  I've watched half the projects where Meredith McCoy voiced Fujiko, she's very good but the only one where Fujiko gets a spotlight is the one where she had amnesia for most of it, still I enjoyed that one for the Yuri subtext.

Perhaps I'm just such a big fan of the Femme Fatale archetype in general, that I'm easily impressed by any actress doing that routine, I'm simply an easy man to seduce.

So that's why it's worth noting that I'm a pretty big fan of Michelle Ruff doing completely different roles as well.  Tsukasa in Lucky Star and Yuki Nagato in Haru Suzumiya.  And Shinon is also probably my favorite character in Sword Art Online, another show I've only watched Dubbed.  She's good as the Viz voice of Luna too, though I'm personally nostalgic for Luna sounding British.  In Code Geass she's Euphemia, Lelouch as a kid, and Arthur the cat.  And probably the first role I ever heard her play was Doujima in Witch Hunter Robin, another where her character was my favorite.

Anime Gataris comes to an end

Between shows that already ended and shows I dropped (Violet Evergarden couldn't keep my interest through episode 2) for this Anime Weekly Update I have only the finale of Anime Gataris to comment on.

It was fun.  And overall I highly recommend the show.

Ya know I've spent so much time talking about how Meta a lot of my favorite Animes are.  That during the last 2 episodes here I realized there was a kind of Meta I hadn't seen in Anime that often, till now.  Like what I enjoyed about Garfield and Friends, Tiny Toons and Animainiacs back in the day.  Breaking the Fourth Wall to the point where it practically doesn't exist anymore.  It's like the Anime version of those kinds of shows, Animeniacs.

Besides currently airing shows.  I've started shows like Eureka Seven and Maze.  I've obtained a few movies I intend to get to soon, the Godzilla Anime, Barefoot Gen, and Space Adventure Cobra The Movie (it should be the UK Dub).

Tonight the Winter 2018 Simuldubs I intend to follow should start.  Depending on how the schedule looks, it might be more then a week before the next update, or less then a week.

Subverting Expectations is not a substitute for actual Imagination.

I really didn't think my praise for The Last Jedi would fade with time like it did for The Force Awakens.  Yet once again the more I think about it the more it does.

I still find the movie highly entertaining, definitely a better movie then TFA, thanks largely to John Williams being on his game again.

A lot of the praise of the film has been predicated on how great it is that they subverted fan expectations, being almost kind of Meta about it.  And I guess it's because I watch so much Anime that the mere idea of doing that isn't so inherently impressive to me.

Doing plot after plot of making the audience think it's gonna do the same thing SW has done before only to swerve on us.  Doesn't change that the end result of the movie is ensuring the conflict will continue to be an outnumbered band of Rebels against a massive Empire.

Oh some people seem to think it's different that the Rebellion is even smaller now then it ever was during the OT.  But that is not interesting to me.  I'm not a big fan of the stories of the old EU, but at least they actually had an interesting complicated geopolitical scenario for the post ROTJ Galaxy.  Most people were assuming after TFA that the Republic must still exist, it's capital system can't be all there was to it?  But nope, TLJ has made it clear that was all there was.

It could have been interesting to have the Bad Guys be the rebels, or to have the good guys and bad guys on equal footing.  Or to have more then just two sides.  Something to make it so it wasn't just the OT formula repeating itself over and over again.

I've been in willing denial of the fact that these Disney movies are pandering to Prequel Haters as much as their marketing is.  But now it's become apparent that they didn't want to have a Republic in these movies because that would be too similar to the Prequels.  Even though the story potential for a newly reformed Republic as opposed to an old one could have been vast.

Whatever stupid problems you might have with the Prequels.  There is no denying that they made this fictional Galaxy feel larger then it ever did before.  While these new movies have made it feel smaller.

Again we have no truly visionary ideas for new locations.  I don't care if you say it's Salt not Snow, we know full well the point was to create a similar look.  Just throwing Red in so you can create moments that look like Bloodshed but really isn't.

And the whole illusion that these Dark Side users are something distinct from The Sith is totally thrown out the window by the fact that this is the first time we ever actually saw the Rule of the Sith play out.  The first time we actually see an Apprentice overthrow his Master.

The idea of failure being a theme is undermined by all the superficial victories designed to lighten the weight of each failure.  Finn's mission failed but he got to beat Phasma in a fight.  Rey failed but still gets to have her Savior moment and doesn't lose a limb like past Heroes of the saga did at this point.  Poe partly caused this dire situation but still gets entrusted with leadership at the end.  All things I would be okay with if they weren't in a movie about failure being a theme.

And there is a fine line between subverting expectations in a way that expands what Star Wars is about, and doing so in a way that feels like a rejection of what Star Wars has been about.

Actually discussing the fact that the Jedi of the PT era grew complacent and failed the Galaxy, and that the future of the Jedi needs to be something different is exactly what I was hoping for.  However that Luke saved Vader even though his Mentors didn't think it was possible was part of that narrative.  Now Luke is where his mentors were before and this time that attitude is vindicated.

The rejection of Redemption couldn't come at a worse time for me, where the primary thing alienating me from other people who hold similar political and social values to mine, are annoying me with an increasing attitude of 'we shouldn't forgive people'.

I would have liked the idea of going in a more nuanced direction, of saying the Dark Side isn't inherently bad.  But no this movie seemed to be equally rejecting that option.

And responding to the criticism of "why didn't Holdo tell Poe the plan?" with "you didn't learn the lessen Poe was supposed to learn" is really offensive to me.  The whole moral of "soldiers should just trust their superiors no matter what" is an inherently Fascist one to me.  And therefore totally destroys the whole notion that the good guys are the ones opposing Fascism. 

I think 2011 was the beginning of my Era of Anime.

My top two favorite Anime may be shows much older then that, Noir and Lucky Star, as well as two other shows that had formally been up there before I watched more shows, Code Geass and Utena.  But those are shows I feel were ahead of their time.  And the main advantage they have over their modern equivalents is how less common it is for shows to be two core now.

I suspected this before I started going over 2011 on MAL and seeing even more basis for it then I first thought.  And some of the 2011 shows I haven't seen yet I'm very much wanting to check out now.  Perhaps that'll result in future updates to this post.  Plus I'm (mostly) not even gonna count here shows I started then put on hold.

None of these shows I watched at the time, or even when their Dubs were new.  This is stuff I was drawn to and really liked after getting more fully into Anime starting around late 2014 and early 2015.

In the Winter season of 2011 was Puella Magi Madoka Magica.  And the start of Suite Pretty Cure, the first PreCure pair I think is good after the OG team.

Spring 2011 had Steins;Gate, Aria of the Scarlet Ammo, C:The Money of Soul and Possibly Control,

Summer 2011 had Yuru Yuri season 1 and Mawaru Penguindrum.

And then the Fall had Mirai Nikki and season one of Fate/Zero.

It's not just that there was a lot of stuff I liked, not all those are even 10s.  It's that I don't think any year has more shows I like that were trend setters.

All these trends have precedent that came before.  With Madoka some people feel compelled to go and on about how there were dark Magical Girl shows before, but there were sort of slasher films before Halloween as well.  Madoka had something the Dark Magical Girl shows before it didn't, that shows since have inherited.  I don't feel qualified o explain what it was, but I definitely know it does.  Regardless of that debate however Madoka was indisputably what triggered the current trend, no one likes Yuki Yuna Is A Hero more then me (now that the Two Fat Guys Talk people are less happy with season 2 then I am) but I'm not gonna deny it wouldn't have gotten green-lite without Madoka.

Light Magical Girl shows also had a transition this year.  Suite Pretty Cure topped the previous PreCure sequels because it began the trend of giving each season a distinct hook, and this is what has kept PreCure shows since then fresh.  And I can't help but feel that musically Sailor Moon Crystal is indebted to Suite PreCure.

As I'd said before, the 2014 Sailor Moon revival is what brought me to Hulu, then Madoka was a recommended show on the Sailor Moon and SMC pages, and that's what sent me down a spiral towards Anime consuming my Nerdiness.

Fate/Zero wasn't the first Fate/ Anime, but it's the first that was a major hit and launched the Fate/Mania we've seen since.  And Mirai Nikki caused an upsurge in Yandere popularity.  Aria of the Scarlet Ammo is a show where I like it's spin off,  Aria of The Scarlet Ammo AA, even more.

A lot of people have considered it interesting how certain 2011 Anime came out the same year Game of Thrones started (to be exact, season 1 aired congruent with the Spring Anime season), given claims they appeal in a similar way.  But while GoT I grew tired of by some point in season 4.  Anime descended from these are still fresh to me.  The Martiness of some popular 2011 Anime kind of helped make SAO, Attack on Titan, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, and Re:Zero possible in the following years.

But for me personally the more significant corresponding western media was Pretty Little Liars. It started the prior year but only half a season aired in 2010.  In 2011 aired the second half of season 1, the first half of season 2, and the first of it's infamous Halloween specials.  It caught my attention in 2010 but it was in 2011 is became a favorite.  And it overlaps with what I look for in Anime in a number of ways.  It's essentially a Four Girls show with a convoluted murder mystery, lots of pulpy Film Noir homages and Yuri.

Of course somethings in 2011 Anime can also be seen as the end of the era that came before.  Like the K-On movie which I didn't mention above as I was just going through TV Anime.  But while the K-On movie marked the end of one era of Cute Girls doing Cute Things Anime, the start of Yuru Yuri began a new era, that made shows like Is The Order A Rabbit and Engaged to the Unidentified possible.

Update September 12 2018: Some other 2011 Anime I should mention are the Carnival Phantasm shorts and the Kampfer OVA.  And the third PreCure Allstar movie.  Also the Toradora Bento Battle OVA and the Fate/Prototype OVA.  All these I had already seen before I first made this post.

On my MAL I currently have listed 291 Anime I've completed, I'm probably gonna soon add the Death Note Recap movies which I saw awhile ago but neglected to add.

140 are shows who's Air Star Date was after the end of 2010, so that's approaching half of all Anime I've completed.  And remember even most  post 2010 Anime I saw wasn't brand new when I first saw it, I only really started following seasonal currently airing Anime in the Winter of 2017.  I still only follow a handful of currently airing Anime at a time, usually favoring what gets Simuldubbed.

Only 58 of my completed Anime are pre 2000.  And when it comes to pre 2000 Anime I think I've nearly bottomed out on what interests me.  I'm eventually gonna watch more Lupin III and Gundam stuff, and if it ever gets available in English La Seine No Hoshi.  But generally speaking my attempts to try out 80s and 90s Anime leave me concluding their appeal is limited to my tastes.  For the so Bad it's good Dubs I find it more efficient to just watch Anime Abandon videos.

I like Sword Art Online

Sword Art Online, or SAO for short, is a very flawed anime, some of it's flaws bug me more then others, some arcs are more flawed then others.

None the less I enjoy it, and I like it the most of everything I've watched within it's Sub-Genre, which is Anime about being trapped in a Virtual Reality MMO video game.  Digibro says Log Horizon aired in a time-slot usually devoted to educational programs, and frankly it shows. And .Hack was a show so boring even Yuki Kajura music couldn't save it.  The rest I've seen are just Isekai using Video Game references to pander to that demographic.

I'm a fan of Digibro, some of his criticisms I agree with and some I don't.  But in general his initial diatribe is one of his weakest videos, he's learned since then.

I already did a blog post where I explain that it's wrong to view SAO as a Death Game anime and thus Mother's Basement's objection to Yui offends me.  Now I'm going to break things down by Arc.

The Aincrad Arc I have very few issues with.  I wish there was less Anime Style Fanservice, especially seeing the show's youngest character in her underwear.   And in that older post I commented on the murder mystery two parter.

Besides that most of my issues are connected to the Kuradeel story-line.  Like Digibro I wish they'd stuck with Ausna killing Kuradeel as she did in the original Web Novel version.  Overlapping with the above complaint I wish the accidental Boob Grab wasn't there.  And I also don't like the image of Asuna cowering behind Kirito.

I mostly don't share people's issues with the ending.  I like Kaiba being a mystery.  The plot point with the resurrection device I view essentially as explaining why Kirito and Asuna could live at the end, because there is a 10 second delay before the Nerve gear fries your brain.  They should have just included a little more exposition explaining that.  I can again agree with Digibro that it would have been better if Kirito and Asuna had came back and finished off Heathcliff together.

Xoh is a YouTuber who's made a lot of videos responding to SAO critics.  Some of his points I agree with and some not so much.

When people talk about why SAO is inaccurate to what MMO RPGs are like, it largely reminds me why I wouldn't like to play them.  I would like the community aspect, but not being seemingly unable to play alone.  I would be more interested in something like a MMO Breath of The Wild.

Much of what I like about SAO is how especially the first two Arcs can be read as Gnostic allegories.  That's a subject that will some day be it's own post on my recently launched Comparative Mythology blog.

The Alfheim Arc I'm inclined to agree is the worst part of SAO, though even it I see value in.  Mother's Basement did a video on how to fix the arc, and I pretty much agree with that one.  But I can add a third option to Suguha's romantic resolution, since I ship her with Shinon.

Gungale Online aka the Phantom Bullet arc, is perhaps the most complicated to explain my feelings on.  It has enough stuff I like that I can maybe say I like it more then Aincrad even.  But it has issues including being the most gratuitous yet in it's Anime Style Fanservice.

With both Alfeim and Gungale people addressing the in-universe game designs of these games seem to assume from how Kirito gets his Avatar that there is no customization possible.  I just see it as Kirito being given a default Avatar pretty randomly and just sticking with it.  Frankly I don't feel his presumably Customized avatar from the first episode of Aincrad looked all that imaginative either, I think Kirito maybe usually just doesn't care much about that part.

Digibro expressed confusion at so many people in Gungale just hanging out at that in-game bar/nightclub or whatever you call it, and not actually playing the game.  And that just makes me think about how often I've turned on my N64 to "play" Ocarina of Time just to look at the Temple of Time and then turn it off.  Or put in Majora's Mask just to hang out in Clock Town, I've still completed only half of that game.  I've done similar things with Twilight Princess.

It is exactly that part of Gungale online where SAO started reminding me of the missed opportunities of Caprica, the BSG spin off series I really liked at first, and in-spite of how much it started to annoy me I was really upset it got canceled.

Digibro claims it's inherently bad to do exposition scenes in dinners or restaurants and such places.  But says it was tolerable in the first two arcs of SAO because of how Taverns like those are stables of the Fantasy genre.  Well such things are also staples of the Genres Gungale is referencing, Westerns with their Taverns and Brothels, and Film Noirs with their seedy Night Clubs and Casinos, like Rick's place in Casablanca.  Not to mention how this Arc draws on Star Wars.

Which leads me to a criticism I can agree with.  Giving Kirito a Light Saber so that he doesn't have to actually learn to use a new kind of weapon and fit in with the arc's actual theme.  And while I would not consider the mere idea of a Laser Sword plagiarism, using the exact same sound effects for it I think is.  Gundam has their Light Saber like weapons without recycling the exact same sound effects.

They could have at least given Kirito something like that Blaster/Light Saber hybrid Ezra created in Star Wars Rebels, that Canaan figured out how to use properly in the first season finale.

I'm fine mostly with Death Gun.  How obvious of a Vader Clone he is doesn't bother me.  The premise behind revealing he was two people I feel worked well.  But adding a third felt like nothing more then to have a sequel hook for future story-lines.

Once again I'm uncomfortable with the Rape aspect of the plot.  Ironically I feel it's handled a little better this time, but that they took that rout to make their new villain so evil twice in a row is really lazy.

Shinon should have won the Battle of the Bullets.

There is one aspect of my personal interest in Gungale that I'm going to save for it's own post.

I don't like Asuna (and to a lesser extent his other friends) being sidelined. I get why Kirito doesn't want to get them involved, that's a pretty common attitude for this kind of hero to have.  But usually the plot contrives a way to get them involved anyway.  Here however they find out about it, but still never get to actually help.

The thing that really bugs me however, is how Kirito was in Gungale on an undercover mission but never actually reported anything he learned to the person who sent him in the first place.  We see him spend time back in the real world between qualifying for the Battle of the Bullets and entering it.  Yet when we meet up with his government contact during the BoB he clearly had not even been informed about there being a Laughing Coffin member in Gungale.  And given he was diving in a specially arranged hospital room, why wouldn't they set it up to record everything he was seeing and hearing?

The rest of season 2 I have no issues with at all, Mother's Rosario is absolutely SAO at it's best.  And that I can recall there was no what I would consider Anime Style Fanservice.

Ordinal Scale has turned out to be similar to how I feel about The Dark Knight Rises.  As a stand alone film I have no issues with it at all.  But as far as the on going SAO story goes, it's really annoying how after what had defined much of Kirito's motivations in season 2, he does not care that this AR technology allows them to basically interact with Yui in the real world.  And I think it's really going to show in time how it was written in 2016 to comment on things like Pokemon Go and Google Glasses, but is a Prequel to Light Novels written years before all of that.

Looking forward, I'm very curios about the Gungale based spin off.  And the next arc of the main story-line which it sounds like will start delving more into the A.I. theme of the story.

Winter Anime is Coming

Second week of 2018 Seasonal Anime coverage.

Code:Realize ended on Tuesday.  It was a good show, not what I was hoping it'd be, but it was good.

I watched the first episode of Violet Evergarden.  I probably wouldn't have if it wasn't the only new Dub starting at this time, Netflix and KyoAni were able to come to an arrangement so the Dubs can drop right when the episodes drop in Japan.

It's a well done show, not sure it can maintain my attention however, I grow weary of "those poor war veterans" type stories.

Anime Gataris episode 11 was insane, I'm absolutely loving this show, it's definitely the highlight of Fall 2017.

I decided to drop A Sister's All You Need in the middle of episode 11, I finally got bored with it.

Outside of Seasonal Anime.  I watched both Gundam Origin episode 5 and Thunderbolt Bandit Flower.

My only real issue with the first Thunderbolt movie was it's handling of female characters.  Bandit Flower was in that area better.  But in other areas it's inferior, the weird cult story-line feels out of place to me, and the usage of Music was not nearly as great as in the first one.  And it's cliffhanger means it doesn't feel as much like a complete film.

Gundam Origin is still good, but I do not recommend watching it before seeing the proper Gundam Trilogy.  It's not as good a Prequel story as the SW Prequels or Fate/Zero.

I also watched Akira and 2001's Metropolis.  I don't have anything to say about them here just yet.

And I also just watched Hoshi no Koe, which is a pretty little short film.

I'm not going to watch Devilman Crybaby

I respect that it seems to be mostly satisfying it's target audience.  And that Netflix is helping fund new Anime projects.  But it's not the kind of show that appeals to me.

It's existence I would probably not comment on at all if it wasn't for Netflix involvement guaranteeing it'll be part of the face of Anime in 2018.  Because It embodies one of the boxes most people put Anime into based on what got localized in the 90s.

As much as certain people within the community complain about "Cute Girls doing Cute Things", outsiders still seem to mostly not even know that kind of Anime exists, or if they have seen it around they still have no idea it's become the dominant trend.

The thing that annoys me about how often people still put Anime into such limited boxes, is that Anime refers to all Animation from Japan.  And the truth is Japanese Animation has MORE variety then American Animation.  It's American Animation that mostly fits into only three (sometimes overlapping) categories.

1. Stuff for Kids, or maybe "the whole family" which kind of means the same thing to some people.

2. Adult comedies, from Simpsons to South Park to Adult Swim stuff.

3. Super Hero Comics.

Anime has equivalents to all of those, with arguably more variety within them.  And then plenty of stuff that can't fit into any of those.  From trippy art-house Anime, to Historical Fiction, to adaptations of classical literature, to teen dramas, to stuff that's kinda like Sit-Coms, to full on Porn.

So in addition to stuff like Devilman, I want to also see Netflix help fund more Anime that is reflective of what modern Anime is like and show that Anime is more then just Edgy violence.

The first week of 2018 is over

So in the first post on this I said what day of the week it happens may change.  While at the start I realized I may sometimes want to have this up before Sunday's over, it depends on the timing of things.

Code:Realize is not as great as I was hoping it would be.  But it has been fun, nothing I can say is wrong with it.

Yuki Yuna is a Hero season 2 has finished.  I would have preferred a longer season, but overall I like what they did.  I think it might have been better received as a movie.

Anime Gataris episode 10 was awesomely ridiculous.  It is definitely The show of the fall 2017 season.

A Sister's All You Need episode 10 ruined my hopes of getting something truly gender subversive.  I normally wouldn't drop a show when I've already seen this much of it. But in this case I might.

Meanwhile I just watched season 1 of New Game, and I'll probably watch season 2 soon.

I'm glad Amazon ended their Anime Strike service.  Now we just need to find some way to resolve Netflix's disagreement with the Anime Community.  I don't want to lose the effort Netflix puts into getting stuff Dubbed.

Update: Overlord Season 2 has been added the list of FUNimation SimulDubs for the Winter Season.  So I'll be watching that as well.  I may have already decided to consider adding other additional shows, but I don't want to commit to trying anything else just yet.

Yuki Yuna is Over

I'm kind of not entirely sure what happened.  I'll probably comment on it again on Monday.

It avoided my main fear.  So for now I've given it an 8 on MAL, that may change.  Hopefully it all gets dubbed some day.

Bat-Anime

So I talked about Batman Gotham Knight in a post last year.  Now I've learned another Anime Batman project is in the works, Batman Ninja.

I'll check it out.  But I feel that it like Gotham Knight but in a different way is still based on a limited idea of what Anime is from people who don't watch much about it, stereotypes it still has in some circles based on what got localized in the 90s.

I'm not that interested in seeing Batman in old Japan, as far as Batman as a period piece goes I still don't think we've gotten that right keeping him in the west yet since I don't share the reverence many have for Gotham by Gaslight.

First off lots of Anime is set outside Japan, so I'm curious how a Japanese Anime studio would Animate Batman in his usual setting.  But if you want to put Batman in Japan, put him in modern urban Japan, he need not be any more "Ninja" then he usually is.

I've been a Nerd of some sort all my life.  Batman is my oldest fandom, Anime is kind of my latest.  Perhaps that my interest in Anime is so relatively new means it might be a fad I'll move beyond.  But I don't think so, once I discovered what Anime is really capable of I felt like I found what I'd been looking for all along.  So there possibly is no one more interested in the idea of bringing Batman and Anime together then me.

Since Batman can be re-imagined a number of different ways, there is no one way to do Anime Batman right.  Still I have my preferences that I feel I should share.  And I will share them by mentioning Anime that already exist that appeal to me in ways that overlap with what I like about Batman, and/or want from future Batman stories.

My absolute favorite Anime is still the show that is in a sense my first Anime Anime, Noir.  Given what I said above it's perhaps no coincidence that what got me into Anime was one that made me think of Batman.  It's very title is based on how it harkens back to the same roots as Batman, Film Noirs and French Pulp Crime Fiction.  When I first watched it I felt like it was something Nolan could direct.  Chloe's movements often have a very Batman like quality to them.

And there are other Anime of a similar Genre to Noir, like Canaan or it's Bee Train sisters.

But then in a different way there is Kara no Kyoukai.  In Digibro's first video on Kara no Kyokai he talked about how the first film does a great job at giving the city personality.  And that is something Batman stories always try to do with Gotham, which Nerdwriter did a video on., YMMV on their successes and failures.

Many fans lament how post No Man's Land Gotham isn't really "Gothic" anymore, but rather a more realistically modern city.  But that is I feel a superficial definition of what Gothic means.  Yes Gothic originally refereed to a style of late medieval European architecture, Gothic Romance however as a genre moved beyond that.  Tyler Tichelaar likes to talk about how the origins of modern Urban fiction are tied to moving the tropes of Gothic Romance to a then contemporary setting.  And that of course overlaps with what I talked about in The Mysteries of Gotham.

And so perhaps giving a Gothic personality to a truly modern urban environment is exactly where  Anime like Kara no Kyoukai and other Light Novels Digi would call Faust style Light Novels, are more successful then a lot of post No Man's Land Batman stories.

I can't exactly leave out Lupin III, since I already talked about how the original Lupin is also a literary ancestor of Batman.  But in terms of style, most Lupin III is either goofier then I prefer my Batman, or going for more of a retro style then I technically want for Batman.  In the latter category is The Woman called Fujiko Mine.  Fujiko is beyond any shadow of a doubt the Catwoman of Anime.

I may add more to this post in the future.  Naturally sometimes stuff slips my mind.

But one thing I like about Anime is how much Genre stuff there is with female leads, or at least nearly gender even casts.  Batman Ninja is looking to be another Batman cartoon where it's mostly only the males of the Batman Family who will be joining him besides Catwoman.  I really want Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain to finally get a spotlight in Batman animation.  How perfect it could have been for that to also be a Batman Anime, but alas it is not to be.

Update August 2018: I can't believe I forgot to mention Death Note. Subtract the Supernatrual elements and it has a lot of Batman qualities.  There have been some mash up trailers of it to Nolan's Batman films.  Chief Yagami is the closest thing Anime has to a Jim Gordon, and Misa Amane has a very similar appeal to Harley Quinn, though so do Yanderes like Yuno Gasai.

Anime Weekly Updates

So for 2018, I’ve decided it might help better organize my Anime coverage to devote one post a week to my covering whatever currently airing Anime I watched.  I’ll make a tag specifically for it and thus normally not include them in the regular Anime tag.

What day of the week I do it may change, depends what the schedule each season is like.  I’m starting the year with the finishing of Fall 2017 shows doing them on Monday.  There might be some weeks taken off, particularly as we transition from one season to another.

These posts may sometimes include comments on other Anime I’d been watching, but no guarantees.  Also an Anime being covered in these doesn’t entirely preclude them from having posts dedicated specifically to them, but I’ll try to wait till the season is over before trying that.

The last episode of Yuki Yuna Season 2 will still get it’s own post, I’ve made a commitment there.

To start the year I’m finishing up what’s left from 2017, Simuldubs of Code:Realize, A Sister’s All You Need and Anime Gataris.  And the final episodes of Fate/Apocrypha and Yuki Yuna is a Hero season 2.

Code:Realize 10th episode aired on the last Tuesday of 2017.  It’s been fun but not as great as I was hoping it would be.

Fate/Apocrypha finished, and I found it pretty enjoyable.

For the Winter 2018 season.  Certain shows I’m interested in I’ll try to wait for the Dub for no matter how long that may be, like Overlord season 2.  So I’ll mostly be following Simuldubs.  Though I may try the new PreCrue season, Hugtto, but that doesn’t start till February.

A few Simuldubs I already know I plan to watch.  Some may be added to what I’ll list here.

Citrus, I’m worried this may only get half length episodes like Netsusou Trap had.  But Citrus is better source material to start with, if I have a favorite Manga it’s Citrus.  It is a truly wonderful Yuri.

Death March to A Parallel World Rhapsody, hopefully this will prove as fun for me as Smartphone did back in the summer.  I am a new convert to the Isekai bandwagon.

Katana Maidens also has my attention, but I have no idea what to expect from it.

I would like to follow the new Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card.  Thing is I’m far from caught up on the original (and since I never added it to my MAL I don’t even remember exactly where I left off).  It’s supposed to be a sort of Reset so one doesn’t necessarily need to be caught up, and I didn’t watch old Kino before trying the new Kino.  So basically this one is complicated.