What I currently consider the most important 2019 Anime is the one where I was shocked to learn how old the source material was. YU-NO has in general made me want to learn more about the history of Visual Novels.
The most satisfying Adult Swim based experience I had was watching the Lupin III show that aired last year. And that is only the tip of the iceberg of how much I've increased my Lupin cred. It might be accurate to say I've doubled the amount of Lupin III I've seen this year. I can currently say for certain that the only Lupin III Anime which has been Dubbed I haven't seen is most of Part II.
The Magical Girl Warrior genre was always a favorite of mine, but this year I've set out to see enough of it that I now feel I'm as much of an expert as I can be without it being the only Genre I significantly care about. Much of that was concentrated around MahouShouJune, but some happened both before and after then.
I've also increased my Mecha knowledge by getting started on Macross, and my Isekai knowledge by watching the first season of the El-hazzard OVAs. My Vampire Anime knowledge by watching Serpah of The End when it was on SonyCrackle, and my non magical Shoujo knowledge by checking out some Marmalade Boy and the first two episodes of Goldfish Warning!. I'm watching Flying Witch via AnimeNetwork on demand. And going back to stuff from just last year I really liked SSSS.Gridman. I had also watched a few 2017 shows before making that top ten of 2017 post.
I'm pretty sure it was also this year I watched Slayers, and made some progress on the Lodoss War franchise. And I watched the first Tenchi movie.
And I've been inspired to do a research project on 90s Hentai. I'm not sure when or if I'll actually post it, but right now the three center piece examples for it are stuff I watched in 2019.
In addition to all that I've also devoted some time to re-watching what I'd seen before. Pokemon movies still help cheer me up when I'm down. I finally did a full re-watch of Stiens:Gate when it was on SonyCrackle. And most of Railgun I can say I've watched twice this year.
I have gained some enjoyment from what's new this year. Given how fall started I'm suprised how many shows I'm currently following. Isekai Cheat magician also proved pretty cool.
Outside of Anime, it's weird how the hot mess surrounding Rise of Skywalker has actually made me want to watch Star Wars content more then I had for awhile, expect posts about The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars early 2020. And I'm very amused by the new Harley Quinn cartoon. Also I loved the first three episodes of the CW's Crisis on Infinite Earths. And I already posted on why I think this was a great year for movies.
The saddest news of course is that my Mom passed away on November 26th. That's mainly why I posted so little in November. I'm handling it pretty well though, I have Faith in the coming Resurrection.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Monday, December 30, 2019
The Sequel Trilogy needed a Male Princess
Note to readers, I still haven't seen Rise of Skywalker and am trying to keep what I've heard about it out of this post. Imagine this as something written a year or two ago as I was thinking about this already that far back. Then we can discuss in the comments if that film vindicates or fixes my concerns.
Dismantling traditional patriarchal gender roles requires more then just having women do what previously only men could, it also means allowing men to do and be interested in what previously only women were allowed to. In the context of Star Wars that means allowing a woman to play the role of Luke Skywalker is only half the battle, you also need to allow a dude to be Princess Leia.
Now I know some people are inclined to argue Poe is the Leia of the new cast, his arc seems to be about being prepared to be the future leader. But he's only being trained to be a military leader.
And that issue is precipitated by The Force Awakens making Leia merely a General now. A lot of people who claim they understand the message of Revolutionary Girl Utena seem to come away thinking the words "Prince" and "Princess" are the problem. To me making Leia only a General is making her less then she was before. If you wanted to remove the feudalistic implications of such terms then call her Senator like her mother was, or better yet this long later make her the Chancellor of the New Republic. But someone made the decision to just get rid of the New Republic, destroy everything the OT heroes fought for without even allowing us to visit it.
That's the thing, while Disney keeps throwing little bones to us Prequel fans, which sometimes I myself fall for, the fact that this Trilogy was chiefly designed to pander to the loud minority who hated the Prequels is shown by it's approach to politics. It reacted to people's negative reaction to Prequel Trilogy politics by seeking to be even less political then the Original Trilogy was. But guess what, the old EU didn't shy away from exploring the politics of the post ROTJ Galaxy, and the same hypocrites who hated on the Prequels loved all that stuff.
People keep saying The Last Jedi embraced the nuances the Prequels added to Star Wars because Luke is talking about how the Jedi failed. But the idea that the Jedi code needed fixing was not that difficult to figure out from the OT alone, remember Luke saved the day by going against what his mentors wanted him to do. On the one hand Yoda was teaching him the Jedi shouldn't use the force aggressively, but on the other they thought the way Luke was going to be their savior was by assassinating the Emperor.
The backstory Disney created for it's Sequel Trilogy is going against the messaging of the Prequels by saying that the New Republic's mistake was being too passive, that they demilitarized when they shouldn't have. It's vindicating the narrative of those who say we can't just pull out of the middle east because then ISIS will take over or Turkey will massacre the Kurds. As well as those in Japan who want to re-militarize. I'm all for the New Republic having to deal with the same flaws as the old, but this is not that.
In AOTC Padme personally despised Count Dooku from the start (they must have met between episodes), but even though she doesn't like the Separatist movement and the Capitalists funding it her goal was always to vote against creating an Army no matter what. She didn't know Palpatine was her real enemy till it was too late, but she still understood what the Jedi didn't. Morally and Ethically Padme is the only character who's right in Episodes II and III, or at least not as wrong as everyone else.
The Last Jedi meanwhile is trying to teach us that tactically speaking there is more to winning a war then just killing the bad guys, which is nice and all, but still exists in a narrative that is contrived to not allow being Anti-War to be the right option no matter how much it wags it's finger at the profiteers who make money off selling to both sides. I'm sorry Peter Coffin but the Prequels are far more Anti-Capitalist then the Canto Bight diversion, perhaps neither is truly Anti-Capitalist but the Prequels are a more meaningful critique of the Militarily Industrial Complex.
But let's get back to the gender issue. Because Poe is only being set up as a successor to General Leia his function in the plot narratively is more the other half of the Skywalkers' in the first two trilogies, and maybe some Han, being an Ace Fighter Pilot and sometimes a military commander. Because the ST lacks anyone of any Gender to be a Padme or a Leia or a Mon Mothma, or a Duchess Satine one wonders what the point of beating the First Order even is if they have no seed of what they'll build after? They've made no attempt to actually argue agaisnt having a Galactic Government to begin with either. I could argue The Phantom Menace makes that argument since Amidala wound up saving her planet with what she already had, which I think is the reason big Government EU supporting liberals don't like it.
Leia in the original trilogy is never really seen doing the political side of her job, but I can still imagine her doing all the same Senate stuff that her mother did. I can't imagine Poe or anyone else we've met in these movies having the slightest clue how to set up a Third (hopefully more Communist this time) Republic.
Now you can argue that Leia and Padme were transgressive enough to begin with and that their wardrobe is the only thing that would make it unusual for a male actor to play them on stage. But in the context of that being the most prominent male role among the protagonists while it's a woman who's having the Laser Sword fights with the evil space wizards is still way more feminist then having Finn and Poe go on the same conventionally male story arcs we've seen before while Rey does nothing but fail to flip the main antagonist and then move some rocks.
And The Clone Wars cartoon, as much as I'm more critical of it then most people, actually provided us a potential model for what to do since it essentially created a male Padme to be Ashoka's love interest (though I'm of course more interested in shipping her with Barris, I'm hoping both show up in season 2 of The Mandalorian) named Lux Bonteri.
However a useful comparison outside of Star Wars would be the current fall 2019 seasonal Anime High School Prodigies have it easy even in Another World, where a teenage boy who somehow became Prime Minister leads the party, but both actual action heroes of the group are women, a Samurai and a Ninja.
Dismantling traditional patriarchal gender roles requires more then just having women do what previously only men could, it also means allowing men to do and be interested in what previously only women were allowed to. In the context of Star Wars that means allowing a woman to play the role of Luke Skywalker is only half the battle, you also need to allow a dude to be Princess Leia.
Now I know some people are inclined to argue Poe is the Leia of the new cast, his arc seems to be about being prepared to be the future leader. But he's only being trained to be a military leader.
And that issue is precipitated by The Force Awakens making Leia merely a General now. A lot of people who claim they understand the message of Revolutionary Girl Utena seem to come away thinking the words "Prince" and "Princess" are the problem. To me making Leia only a General is making her less then she was before. If you wanted to remove the feudalistic implications of such terms then call her Senator like her mother was, or better yet this long later make her the Chancellor of the New Republic. But someone made the decision to just get rid of the New Republic, destroy everything the OT heroes fought for without even allowing us to visit it.
That's the thing, while Disney keeps throwing little bones to us Prequel fans, which sometimes I myself fall for, the fact that this Trilogy was chiefly designed to pander to the loud minority who hated the Prequels is shown by it's approach to politics. It reacted to people's negative reaction to Prequel Trilogy politics by seeking to be even less political then the Original Trilogy was. But guess what, the old EU didn't shy away from exploring the politics of the post ROTJ Galaxy, and the same hypocrites who hated on the Prequels loved all that stuff.
People keep saying The Last Jedi embraced the nuances the Prequels added to Star Wars because Luke is talking about how the Jedi failed. But the idea that the Jedi code needed fixing was not that difficult to figure out from the OT alone, remember Luke saved the day by going against what his mentors wanted him to do. On the one hand Yoda was teaching him the Jedi shouldn't use the force aggressively, but on the other they thought the way Luke was going to be their savior was by assassinating the Emperor.
The backstory Disney created for it's Sequel Trilogy is going against the messaging of the Prequels by saying that the New Republic's mistake was being too passive, that they demilitarized when they shouldn't have. It's vindicating the narrative of those who say we can't just pull out of the middle east because then ISIS will take over or Turkey will massacre the Kurds. As well as those in Japan who want to re-militarize. I'm all for the New Republic having to deal with the same flaws as the old, but this is not that.
In AOTC Padme personally despised Count Dooku from the start (they must have met between episodes), but even though she doesn't like the Separatist movement and the Capitalists funding it her goal was always to vote against creating an Army no matter what. She didn't know Palpatine was her real enemy till it was too late, but she still understood what the Jedi didn't. Morally and Ethically Padme is the only character who's right in Episodes II and III, or at least not as wrong as everyone else.
The Last Jedi meanwhile is trying to teach us that tactically speaking there is more to winning a war then just killing the bad guys, which is nice and all, but still exists in a narrative that is contrived to not allow being Anti-War to be the right option no matter how much it wags it's finger at the profiteers who make money off selling to both sides. I'm sorry Peter Coffin but the Prequels are far more Anti-Capitalist then the Canto Bight diversion, perhaps neither is truly Anti-Capitalist but the Prequels are a more meaningful critique of the Militarily Industrial Complex.
But let's get back to the gender issue. Because Poe is only being set up as a successor to General Leia his function in the plot narratively is more the other half of the Skywalkers' in the first two trilogies, and maybe some Han, being an Ace Fighter Pilot and sometimes a military commander. Because the ST lacks anyone of any Gender to be a Padme or a Leia or a Mon Mothma, or a Duchess Satine one wonders what the point of beating the First Order even is if they have no seed of what they'll build after? They've made no attempt to actually argue agaisnt having a Galactic Government to begin with either. I could argue The Phantom Menace makes that argument since Amidala wound up saving her planet with what she already had, which I think is the reason big Government EU supporting liberals don't like it.
Leia in the original trilogy is never really seen doing the political side of her job, but I can still imagine her doing all the same Senate stuff that her mother did. I can't imagine Poe or anyone else we've met in these movies having the slightest clue how to set up a Third (hopefully more Communist this time) Republic.
Now you can argue that Leia and Padme were transgressive enough to begin with and that their wardrobe is the only thing that would make it unusual for a male actor to play them on stage. But in the context of that being the most prominent male role among the protagonists while it's a woman who's having the Laser Sword fights with the evil space wizards is still way more feminist then having Finn and Poe go on the same conventionally male story arcs we've seen before while Rey does nothing but fail to flip the main antagonist and then move some rocks.
And The Clone Wars cartoon, as much as I'm more critical of it then most people, actually provided us a potential model for what to do since it essentially created a male Padme to be Ashoka's love interest (though I'm of course more interested in shipping her with Barris, I'm hoping both show up in season 2 of The Mandalorian) named Lux Bonteri.
However a useful comparison outside of Star Wars would be the current fall 2019 seasonal Anime High School Prodigies have it easy even in Another World, where a teenage boy who somehow became Prime Minister leads the party, but both actual action heroes of the group are women, a Samurai and a Ninja.
Wednesday, December 25, 2019
The Prequels were perfectly executed
I'm getting to the point where I'm almsot more frustrated with the people saying "the Prequels have good qualities but....." then I am with insane haters who trash every detail. Almost like how my fellow Leftists are so annoyed by Centrists.
Most importantly is the increasingly common attitude that they work "on paper" that the basic story could have been good, it was just all executed poorly. Rick Worley's video was all about the execution. So Uncivilized is another new YT channel with good content. Full Fat Videos has some SW vids that are a mixed bag.
Some of these people are being disingenuous, like you can't say the basic story is fine but still hate on it "beginning with a taxation dispute" there is no way this story doesn't begin with a taxation dispute, if you want it to be a commentary on how modern right wing politicians and capitalists corrupt and subvert democracy then it has to begin with a taxation dispute.
Maybe you wanted at least the first paragraph of the Crawl to say something about the deep lore of Star Wars, but ANH's crawl didn't do that and nor did the old Saturday matinee serial crawls these are meant to imitate.
Q Reviews is not being disingenuous however. He made a pretty good video on the political commentary of the Prequels (leaving aside how it continues the trend of treating Fascist and Totalitarian as synonyms) but continues to idiotically call them poorly made movies and even "unwatchable", I watch them all the time and grow to love them more with each viewing. There is not a single second of screen time that doesn't fill me with joy.
The acting and dialogue are often a first target of this.
Well I already did a post on how this is really just a specific modern taste in acting. To me calling Natalie Portman's acting in these movies stiff or wooden is frankly a joke. But the real main target of that is the two actors who played Anakin. Guess what, Anakins is SUPPOSED to be awkward and cringey, that's part of the entire message about how the Jedi's attitude towards emotions was the problem. You don't have to enjoy watching it, but you can't say it's poorly made when the very reason you're unhappy is that it had exactly the intended effect.
It's also intentional that Obi-Wan comes off as a bad teacher, he admitted in ROTJ that he failed Anakin, but fanboys wanted that confession to be just token humility and so no it wasn't really his fault even partly.
Dialogue is one of the things I have half a mind to concede to them sometimes, but not really. Guess what, dialogue is one of the few things I'm kinda picky about, and frankly lots of beloved universally praised movies have dialogue that comes off as inherently unnatural and I often wonder if I'm truly alone in being bugged by this. Some Star Wars dialogue is like that, but others are the opposite, they are the few times I actually think what I'm listening to is a real conversation between human beings. And again, Anakin is specifically not supposed to be a a smooth talker.
People also don't like the simplicity of Lucas' directorial style. But ya know what I'm sick of the camera constantly trying to disorient me in modern action movies. I just want to see what's happening, I'm not impressed by your fancy camera tricks.
However the other thing people have in mind when they say the execution is bad is the tone. They feel there is something inherently wrong with the Trilogy that should be so much darker also being so much goofier and more cartoony then the original trilogy.
The story of the Prequels is a tragedy because of how it ends. But it makes perfect sense for the OT's overall tone to be darker when it's about the world created by that tragedy. The dark tragic ending of Revenge Of The Sith actually hits harder when we'd seen before that this Galaxy was a pretty bright place however flawed, definitely far more a world I'd actually want to live in then the OT.
The fact is I like tonal inconsistency. A lot of popular Anime is far more tonally all over the place, like Slayers which goes from being an outright parody of it's genre one minute to being as emotionally intense as Frodo in the Crack of Doom later in the same episode. Digbro who ironically is a Prequel hater has a great video on Anime Tone Shifts.
But there is western precedent for it too, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Xena Warrior Princess managed to be fondly remembered parts of pop culture in-spite of their tonal whiplash. And so have the Prequels, the haters are still merely a loud minority. Star Wars has a message Lucas wants to tell, but they're also supposed to be fun Saturday Matinee serials.
Ya know what Patrick Willems, the Prequels are the movies that should be defended by making a "this is a movie about space wizards" meme. The Last Jedi's central flaw is that it wanted to be the Watchmen of Space Operas, the Neon Genesis Evangelion of Space Operas, and so the humor it contains feels forced by a studio that also wants MCU style fun. And those Deconstructions worked because they weren't new installments of beloved franchises, and when DC does do something like it with Superman and Batman they don't do it in the main continuity.
I'm really annoyed when people claim the Prequels have the same Nostalgia pandering as the new Disney Star Wars. Like this youtuber saying people only liked ROTS because they got to hear Vader's first breath. Well guess what I had and still have no Nostalgia for the OT, I am a fan of Star Wars for the Prequels first and foremost, I have grown to like the Original Trilogy only for the depth the Prequels add to them and for the Happy Ending TORJ provides for the Prequels.
There is a lot of stuff Lucas could have done for Nostalgia pandering but didn't. The only thing referencing the future movies that's even close to being unnecessary is making the key Bounty Hunter of Episode II the predecessor of Boba Fett. But that story needed a bounty hunter regardless. Maybe you could see putting Chewie and the Wookies in Episode III is close, but again Yoda needed to be on a different planet regardless.
The prequels truly brought us to new worlds, not just basically the same world with a new name. And even when he had to go to Tatooine he choose to create a new city and not just visit Mos Iseley again, Abrams or Rian Johnson would have had it be Mos Isely again and had someone inform Obi-Wan that it's the most wrenched hive of scum and villainy in the Galaxy.
Basically even the allegedly bad "execution" is still that they are not the Star Wars movies these Boomers expected.
Most importantly is the increasingly common attitude that they work "on paper" that the basic story could have been good, it was just all executed poorly. Rick Worley's video was all about the execution. So Uncivilized is another new YT channel with good content. Full Fat Videos has some SW vids that are a mixed bag.
Some of these people are being disingenuous, like you can't say the basic story is fine but still hate on it "beginning with a taxation dispute" there is no way this story doesn't begin with a taxation dispute, if you want it to be a commentary on how modern right wing politicians and capitalists corrupt and subvert democracy then it has to begin with a taxation dispute.
Maybe you wanted at least the first paragraph of the Crawl to say something about the deep lore of Star Wars, but ANH's crawl didn't do that and nor did the old Saturday matinee serial crawls these are meant to imitate.
Q Reviews is not being disingenuous however. He made a pretty good video on the political commentary of the Prequels (leaving aside how it continues the trend of treating Fascist and Totalitarian as synonyms) but continues to idiotically call them poorly made movies and even "unwatchable", I watch them all the time and grow to love them more with each viewing. There is not a single second of screen time that doesn't fill me with joy.
The acting and dialogue are often a first target of this.
Well I already did a post on how this is really just a specific modern taste in acting. To me calling Natalie Portman's acting in these movies stiff or wooden is frankly a joke. But the real main target of that is the two actors who played Anakin. Guess what, Anakins is SUPPOSED to be awkward and cringey, that's part of the entire message about how the Jedi's attitude towards emotions was the problem. You don't have to enjoy watching it, but you can't say it's poorly made when the very reason you're unhappy is that it had exactly the intended effect.
It's also intentional that Obi-Wan comes off as a bad teacher, he admitted in ROTJ that he failed Anakin, but fanboys wanted that confession to be just token humility and so no it wasn't really his fault even partly.
Dialogue is one of the things I have half a mind to concede to them sometimes, but not really. Guess what, dialogue is one of the few things I'm kinda picky about, and frankly lots of beloved universally praised movies have dialogue that comes off as inherently unnatural and I often wonder if I'm truly alone in being bugged by this. Some Star Wars dialogue is like that, but others are the opposite, they are the few times I actually think what I'm listening to is a real conversation between human beings. And again, Anakin is specifically not supposed to be a a smooth talker.
People also don't like the simplicity of Lucas' directorial style. But ya know what I'm sick of the camera constantly trying to disorient me in modern action movies. I just want to see what's happening, I'm not impressed by your fancy camera tricks.
However the other thing people have in mind when they say the execution is bad is the tone. They feel there is something inherently wrong with the Trilogy that should be so much darker also being so much goofier and more cartoony then the original trilogy.
The story of the Prequels is a tragedy because of how it ends. But it makes perfect sense for the OT's overall tone to be darker when it's about the world created by that tragedy. The dark tragic ending of Revenge Of The Sith actually hits harder when we'd seen before that this Galaxy was a pretty bright place however flawed, definitely far more a world I'd actually want to live in then the OT.
The fact is I like tonal inconsistency. A lot of popular Anime is far more tonally all over the place, like Slayers which goes from being an outright parody of it's genre one minute to being as emotionally intense as Frodo in the Crack of Doom later in the same episode. Digbro who ironically is a Prequel hater has a great video on Anime Tone Shifts.
But there is western precedent for it too, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Xena Warrior Princess managed to be fondly remembered parts of pop culture in-spite of their tonal whiplash. And so have the Prequels, the haters are still merely a loud minority. Star Wars has a message Lucas wants to tell, but they're also supposed to be fun Saturday Matinee serials.
Ya know what Patrick Willems, the Prequels are the movies that should be defended by making a "this is a movie about space wizards" meme. The Last Jedi's central flaw is that it wanted to be the Watchmen of Space Operas, the Neon Genesis Evangelion of Space Operas, and so the humor it contains feels forced by a studio that also wants MCU style fun. And those Deconstructions worked because they weren't new installments of beloved franchises, and when DC does do something like it with Superman and Batman they don't do it in the main continuity.
I'm really annoyed when people claim the Prequels have the same Nostalgia pandering as the new Disney Star Wars. Like this youtuber saying people only liked ROTS because they got to hear Vader's first breath. Well guess what I had and still have no Nostalgia for the OT, I am a fan of Star Wars for the Prequels first and foremost, I have grown to like the Original Trilogy only for the depth the Prequels add to them and for the Happy Ending TORJ provides for the Prequels.
There is a lot of stuff Lucas could have done for Nostalgia pandering but didn't. The only thing referencing the future movies that's even close to being unnecessary is making the key Bounty Hunter of Episode II the predecessor of Boba Fett. But that story needed a bounty hunter regardless. Maybe you could see putting Chewie and the Wookies in Episode III is close, but again Yoda needed to be on a different planet regardless.
The prequels truly brought us to new worlds, not just basically the same world with a new name. And even when he had to go to Tatooine he choose to create a new city and not just visit Mos Iseley again, Abrams or Rian Johnson would have had it be Mos Isely again and had someone inform Obi-Wan that it's the most wrenched hive of scum and villainy in the Galaxy.
Basically even the allegedly bad "execution" is still that they are not the Star Wars movies these Boomers expected.
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
Palpatine did NOT know Darth Plagueis secret
Everyone remembers that iconic scene in Revenge of The Sith where Palpatine tells the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise. However there is a later scene people keep forgetting.
After Anakin formally turns and is christened Darth Vader Plapatine admits that only one ever learned the secret to cheating death. In other words he LIED when he said the Apprentice of Plagueis was taught everything.
I have always liked this nuance of ROTS. When in 2012 I started getting into Paul Feval and BlackCoatPress and reading material on CoolFrenchComics about Joseph Balsamo as written by Alexandre Dumas I noticed how Balsamo killed his mentor Althotas before ever learning the secret of his Alchemical Elixir of immortality. And that made me like ROTS even more, another very old mythical concept echoed in Star Wars.
Because of this there was never any doubt in my mind that it was Plagueis who caused the conception of Anakin. The idea that it was Sidious who did it never even crossed my mind.
And I always wanted to maintain the theory that the existence of this ablity was a lie to begin with, something Plagueis said he could do but really couldn't. Maybe he somehow knew about Anakins' conception on Tatooine and simply claimed credit for it. Thus maintaining that only the Light Side can truly lead to immortality.
However fan theories have a long history of ignoring this. Like the theory that Padme really died because Palpatine was sucking the life force out of her.
Then Disney came along, and one of their Comics literally confirmed that it was Sidious who caused the conception of Anakin. And now Rise of Skywalker is entirely predicated on that whole force life sucking idea.
So no, I'm not gonna be okay with RoS simply because it ticked off TLJ's fans. Even the way it goes about saving Kylo is lame and meaningless to me.
The thing is I don't have to acknowledge the new movies. I can still pretend in my Headcaon that they lived Happily Ever After at the end of ROTJ so there is no reason for me to carry on a grudge.
Update January 2020: Apparently that scene from that comic was misinterpreted, they never intended to confirm or deny anything about Vader's conception. And if you pay attention Shmi is already pregnant when the scene starts.
After Anakin formally turns and is christened Darth Vader Plapatine admits that only one ever learned the secret to cheating death. In other words he LIED when he said the Apprentice of Plagueis was taught everything.
I have always liked this nuance of ROTS. When in 2012 I started getting into Paul Feval and BlackCoatPress and reading material on CoolFrenchComics about Joseph Balsamo as written by Alexandre Dumas I noticed how Balsamo killed his mentor Althotas before ever learning the secret of his Alchemical Elixir of immortality. And that made me like ROTS even more, another very old mythical concept echoed in Star Wars.
Because of this there was never any doubt in my mind that it was Plagueis who caused the conception of Anakin. The idea that it was Sidious who did it never even crossed my mind.
And I always wanted to maintain the theory that the existence of this ablity was a lie to begin with, something Plagueis said he could do but really couldn't. Maybe he somehow knew about Anakins' conception on Tatooine and simply claimed credit for it. Thus maintaining that only the Light Side can truly lead to immortality.
However fan theories have a long history of ignoring this. Like the theory that Padme really died because Palpatine was sucking the life force out of her.
Then Disney came along, and one of their Comics literally confirmed that it was Sidious who caused the conception of Anakin. And now Rise of Skywalker is entirely predicated on that whole force life sucking idea.
So no, I'm not gonna be okay with RoS simply because it ticked off TLJ's fans. Even the way it goes about saving Kylo is lame and meaningless to me.
The thing is I don't have to acknowledge the new movies. I can still pretend in my Headcaon that they lived Happily Ever After at the end of ROTJ so there is no reason for me to carry on a grudge.
Update January 2020: Apparently that scene from that comic was misinterpreted, they never intended to confirm or deny anything about Vader's conception. And if you pay attention Shmi is already pregnant when the scene starts.
Star Wars never had the problem you think The Last Jedi fixed.
I still haven't watched Rise of Skywalker yet, but watching the way certain fans of The Last Jedi are hating on it brings to mind one praise of TLJ that I haven't addressed directly in my past criticizing of it.
It keeps being suggested that before the Sequel Trilogy the Star Wars saga had this unintentionally pro Eugenics subtext where only people of exclusive elite bloodlines could be Jedi or Sith. And that's why TLJ saying even the child of a nobody can be a hero was so important to them. And now they feel betrayed by a perception that RoS is undoing all that. I enjoyed this YouTube video responding to the idea that RoS somehow undoes that message.
My problem however is I disagree that Star Wars ever had this problem to begin with.
Yes the whole Skywalker family stuff established that if one of your parents was Force Sensitive you almost certainly will be too (I disagree that that implication was only created by the Vader being Luke's father reveal, in A New Hope we already knew Anakin was a Jedi and that was the only reason Obi-Wan had to take an interest in Luke as a potential Jedi). But that never meant the reverse was also true. In fact that only one parent being Force sensitive doesn't give you any less potential then if both were proves it was never functioning like Eugenics or Phrenology.
The Prequels very clearly told us the reverse can't be true because normally the Jedi don't get married and have families, they live like monks. The Phantom Menace establishes that normally Force Sensitives just randomly pop up and the Jedi order detects them. Qui-Gon inquired about Anakin's father only because Anakin had a uniquely abnormally high Midichlorene count.
The Midichlorenes' role in all this is also misunderstood. TPM established that EVEYRONE!!! has them. And while Yoda and Anakin's well above average counts are significant that doesn't mean there's always a correlation between how many you have and how powerful you are. And given how genetics works it's not impossible two people with a low Midichlorene counts can have a child with a high one. And since they're partly based on Midochorndia we can infer it's possible to increase your count beyond what you're born with through training.
The fact that so many fans thought that's what the implications of the Star Wars movies were says more about them then it does Star Wars. Especially since it's mostly a perception of people who trash the Prequels. They clearly never actually understood the Saga.
The fact that so many fans thought that's what the implications of the Star Wars movies were says more about them then it does Star Wars. Especially since it's mostly a perception of people who trash the Prequels. They clearly never actually understood the Saga.
So all this talk about Rey being the first Star Wars hero to not be a hero because of who's family she's from really annoys me. Who were Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's ancestors? I don't know about the EU but in the main films they never mattered and Obi-Wan was the actual main hero of the Prequel Trilogy, he was a failure as a mentor to Anakin but a damn near Mary Sue at everything else and then makes up for his failure with Anakin by being a better mentor for Luke. And that's not even getting into the non Force Sensitive heroes of the saga. Meanwhile Anakin was the son of a slave.
And no, TLJ wasn't saying anyone can be a Jedi in a way the old movies didn't already because ancestry or not Rey and Broom Boy still can only do it because of an innate talent they were born with. There is nothing to suggest you could now teach Force powers to someone who didn't already show the signs of it that Anakin and Rey showed.
And no, TLJ wasn't saying anyone can be a Jedi in a way the old movies didn't already because ancestry or not Rey and Broom Boy still can only do it because of an innate talent they were born with. There is nothing to suggest you could now teach Force powers to someone who didn't already show the signs of it that Anakin and Rey showed.
Rey's parentage was not a big deal in the fan theorizing simply because she could use the Force (in fact it was going on before we knew for certain she'd be the Force user of TFA), it was treated as a big deal because Abrams made it a big deal. And while much of how TFA does that could have been compatible with TLJ's reveal, that moment about Rey between Han and Maz Kanata is not. And while the deep insane depths of fan theorizing sometimes came up with familial backgrounds for Finn and Poe too, it wasn't as ubiquitous with them because Abrams didn't tell us to care about their backstory.
Now Rey's parents being nobodies was never part of why I disliked TLJ, I was fine with that in-spite of the plot hole I just mentioned because guess what I agree with Patrick Willems on Plot Holes.
The other major area where TLJ fans feel betrayed is redeeming Kylo Ren, and that one does go hand in hand with one of the major reasons why I hated TLJ. That one isn't as universal, the GreedoShotFirst duo were willing to be okay with that. But it's brought up by both Linkara and Quinton Reviews.
Here's the thing, even leaving aside my on principal hatred of saying "some people can't be redeemed" which I've elaborated on elsewhere, since I do like plenty of fiction with not redeemed villains in-spite of that value of mine. In this particular case, making the ONLY child of Han and Leia a complete failure who's existence caused only harm would have utterly destroyed the legacy of the Original Trilogy. In fact so is making it so they only had one child and he was a mostly negative influence on the galaxy till his last 30 seconds of life still tarnishes the OT in a way I can't forgive this Sequel Trilogy for.
The ending of Return of The Jedi was such a great ending to the Hexology partly because the love between Han and Leia is supposed to represent the new life to come out of all this War. That the new Jedi order isn't going to be rejecting Love the way the old order did in the Prequels. But now because of the multiple ways the ST destroyed Han and Leia's relationship people like MrCynical can continue to say Star Wars always punishes romantic love.
And that's why on some level I never fully got behind any other explanation for Rey's backstory including her being Luke's daughter, I wanted her to also be the result of Han and Leia's love for each other so their legacy didn't depend solely on what the films did or didn't do with Kylo. But I accepted that as unlikely as soon as TFA ended.
I didn't want Rey to be a Skywalker because I felt only Skywalkers can be heroes because of some medical devotion to hereditary monarchy, and I certainly have no devotion to Eugenics since I don't even believe in Evolution. I'm a Christian who bases his theology on how Paul said God UNATURALLY grafts people who don't biologically descend from Abraham into the family of Jacob. I wanted the Sequel Trilogy to not undo that Han and Leia's love created the future of the Galaxy. You had the spin off films to hype up heroes who have no Skywaker connection. But they couldn't do that either, instead Rouge One is most praised for how it used Vader and Leia at the end and then they made a movie about Leia's future husband.
I do still like that Rey is a Skywalker by adoption which is something I argued all the way back in 2016. But in that context I wish she could have spent more time with her adopted family before they ALL died. [Wow, I just reread that post and realized I kind of unintentionally predicted what happens in RoS, doesn't mean I'll like it.]
However I also suggested back then a way to redeem Kylo Ren that wouldn't just be repeating ROTJ. They didn't do that, and it could have still worked with TLJ's themes.
https://jaredmithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2016/04/kylo-ren-and-theme-of-redemption-in.html
However I also suggested back then a way to redeem Kylo Ren that wouldn't just be repeating ROTJ. They didn't do that, and it could have still worked with TLJ's themes.
https://jaredmithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2016/04/kylo-ren-and-theme-of-redemption-in.html
Saturday, December 21, 2019
Kuudere-Kun's Saving Padoru Padoru
Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas is a movie I haven't seen yet but basically know what it's about and what happens in it from watching YouTubers trashing the movie for different reasons.
I have mixed feelings about the movie because I know the people making it are very politically Conservative, the kinds of Christians I'm very often specifically arguing against on my other blogs since I'm a Communist and LGBTQ Ally.
However I try very hard to view these disagreements as a disagreement within the family. I still value much of what I've learned from the likes of Kent Hovind, Chuck Missler, Chris White and Rob Skiba, and those individuals are in some ways to the right of Kirk Cameron. And of all the recent trend of Evangelical movies, this one is kind of the easiest to separate from their politics. And the BreadTubers as much I love them are taking a lot out of context when they try to paint the film as if it's main message is F*** poor people.
What Kirk says near the end about "imbuing old symbols with new meaning" is what the Church has always done. And I find it amusing how people while mocking the movie want to call that deceptive when they promote Death of The Author elsewhere. The first people the movie is actually against are those Christians saying we should reject Christmas for being UnBiblical, he's trying to say if it bothers you so much make it Biblical. It's what Peter Hiett is doing when he says to "watch the Harry Potter movies looking for Jesus" in his Acts 17 sermon. And it's what I sometimes do looking for Jesus in Anime.
And that's where I come in. Because I see that quote from the movie as partly his call for others to continue doing what he started. And who better then me to start creating Biblical meanings for uniquely Anime related Christmas traditions?
One uniquely modern Japanese Christmas tradition you might notice in Anime from time to time is eating KFC at Christmas time. It apparently had it's beginnings in an old KFC marketing campaign. Well Chicken is commonly interpreted as being a Levitically clean animal, Chickens aren't directly mentioned in Scripture but when comparing birds that are clean to birds that aren't Chickens seem to fit in with the clean ones, being similar to Quail, Turkey, Geese and Ducks, some of those were already common Christmas meal options in the West. In fact it's even become acceptable in modern Rabbinic Judaism to eat Chicken instead of Lamb for Passover. The rest of that connection should be self explanatory.
I said last year that in the context of it's position in the conversation about what makes a Christmas Movie I consider Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's to be the Batman Returns of Anime. So I seek to make it a personal tradition of mine to watch that Anime every holiday season. The Christian meaning I see in it is about the same as I usually do in the rest of the Magical Girl Warrior Genre, themes about Love and Found Family and saving even the villain of the story.
However my main event tonight is what has over the last few years become a Christmas tradition of the Anime Meme community. For those of you who don't know what Padoru Padoru is, here are some links.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/padoru
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gKr96s8sxk
It doesn't take long at all to connect this to Christianity. Because the character who started it all is the historical Roman Emperor Nero re-imagined as a Cute Anime Girl because..... well because Anime.
She is sometimes refereed to as "Saber Red" or "Red Saber" which can create confusion with Mordred in Fate/Apocypha.
Nero is traditionally viewed as the first Emperor to persecute the Church. I have argued that the Neornian Persecution is actually ahistorical. But Fate/ is not aware of any of that niche historical dispute, and they didn't ignore the issue either. They included the Persecution as part of Nero Claudius's backstory, but also gave her character depth and nuance.
Even the sin of persecuting Christians is one Jesus can and Will forgive, it was after all Paul's sin which is why he called himself the Chief of Sinners. So this image of one who once persecuted the Brethren of Christ thousands of years later joyously celebrating the Birthday of Christ fits perfectly what I believe in as a proponent of Universal Salvation.
I have mixed feelings about the movie because I know the people making it are very politically Conservative, the kinds of Christians I'm very often specifically arguing against on my other blogs since I'm a Communist and LGBTQ Ally.
However I try very hard to view these disagreements as a disagreement within the family. I still value much of what I've learned from the likes of Kent Hovind, Chuck Missler, Chris White and Rob Skiba, and those individuals are in some ways to the right of Kirk Cameron. And of all the recent trend of Evangelical movies, this one is kind of the easiest to separate from their politics. And the BreadTubers as much I love them are taking a lot out of context when they try to paint the film as if it's main message is F*** poor people.
What Kirk says near the end about "imbuing old symbols with new meaning" is what the Church has always done. And I find it amusing how people while mocking the movie want to call that deceptive when they promote Death of The Author elsewhere. The first people the movie is actually against are those Christians saying we should reject Christmas for being UnBiblical, he's trying to say if it bothers you so much make it Biblical. It's what Peter Hiett is doing when he says to "watch the Harry Potter movies looking for Jesus" in his Acts 17 sermon. And it's what I sometimes do looking for Jesus in Anime.
And that's where I come in. Because I see that quote from the movie as partly his call for others to continue doing what he started. And who better then me to start creating Biblical meanings for uniquely Anime related Christmas traditions?
One uniquely modern Japanese Christmas tradition you might notice in Anime from time to time is eating KFC at Christmas time. It apparently had it's beginnings in an old KFC marketing campaign. Well Chicken is commonly interpreted as being a Levitically clean animal, Chickens aren't directly mentioned in Scripture but when comparing birds that are clean to birds that aren't Chickens seem to fit in with the clean ones, being similar to Quail, Turkey, Geese and Ducks, some of those were already common Christmas meal options in the West. In fact it's even become acceptable in modern Rabbinic Judaism to eat Chicken instead of Lamb for Passover. The rest of that connection should be self explanatory.
I said last year that in the context of it's position in the conversation about what makes a Christmas Movie I consider Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's to be the Batman Returns of Anime. So I seek to make it a personal tradition of mine to watch that Anime every holiday season. The Christian meaning I see in it is about the same as I usually do in the rest of the Magical Girl Warrior Genre, themes about Love and Found Family and saving even the villain of the story.
However my main event tonight is what has over the last few years become a Christmas tradition of the Anime Meme community. For those of you who don't know what Padoru Padoru is, here are some links.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/padoru
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gKr96s8sxk
It doesn't take long at all to connect this to Christianity. Because the character who started it all is the historical Roman Emperor Nero re-imagined as a Cute Anime Girl because..... well because Anime.
She is sometimes refereed to as "Saber Red" or "Red Saber" which can create confusion with Mordred in Fate/Apocypha.
Nero is traditionally viewed as the first Emperor to persecute the Church. I have argued that the Neornian Persecution is actually ahistorical. But Fate/ is not aware of any of that niche historical dispute, and they didn't ignore the issue either. They included the Persecution as part of Nero Claudius's backstory, but also gave her character depth and nuance.
Even the sin of persecuting Christians is one Jesus can and Will forgive, it was after all Paul's sin which is why he called himself the Chief of Sinners. So this image of one who once persecuted the Brethren of Christ thousands of years later joyously celebrating the Birthday of Christ fits perfectly what I believe in as a proponent of Universal Salvation.
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Jango Fett knew exactly what he was doing.
So one of the things I sometimes see from really dumb uninformed Prequel haters is an accusation that Jango Fett was really incompetent for sub contracting the assassination of Padme.
The fact that anyone would say this is weird to me because it's really obvious if you payed any attention to the plot that what happened in exactly what was supposed to happen. Jango was not actually hired to kill Padme, that's just what Dooku wanted Newt to think A Jedi being lead by that dart he used to kill the female shape shifting assassin to Kamino to find the Clone Army was absolutely essential for Sidious and Dooku's actual plan to play out.
In a way this is very parallel to what I explained about Palpatine's real goal in The Phantom Menace.
Now, Jango does die because his Jet Pack malfunctioned. But being beheaded by one of the top Jedi Masters on the Council is still more dignified then being accidentally knocked into the Sarlaac pit by a blind man.
Quinton Reviews just made a Prequel Video. And it's annoying, he's saying many correct things about how they deal with politics and war but insisting on making dumb generic criticism of their "film making" quality.
The Prequels are Better movies then you Deserve needs to be required viewing for anyone who wants to talk about the Prequels from now on.
The fact that anyone would say this is weird to me because it's really obvious if you payed any attention to the plot that what happened in exactly what was supposed to happen. Jango was not actually hired to kill Padme, that's just what Dooku wanted Newt to think A Jedi being lead by that dart he used to kill the female shape shifting assassin to Kamino to find the Clone Army was absolutely essential for Sidious and Dooku's actual plan to play out.
In a way this is very parallel to what I explained about Palpatine's real goal in The Phantom Menace.
Now, Jango does die because his Jet Pack malfunctioned. But being beheaded by one of the top Jedi Masters on the Council is still more dignified then being accidentally knocked into the Sarlaac pit by a blind man.
Quinton Reviews just made a Prequel Video. And it's annoying, he's saying many correct things about how they deal with politics and war but insisting on making dumb generic criticism of their "film making" quality.
The Prequels are Better movies then you Deserve needs to be required viewing for anyone who wants to talk about the Prequels from now on.
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Turn of the Century Magical Girl shows.
I've already talked quite a bit on this blog about how the late 90s and early 2000s were a transitional period in Anime. Often with a particular eye on the Magical Girl Warrior sub genre.
Something interesting I've recently noticed is two now relatively obscure shows that were airing at the turn of the Millennium.
Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and Corrector Yui were airing at about the same time over much of 1999 and 2000. Both qualify as Magical Girl Warrior shows with somewhat distinct twists. But certain differences in their aesthetic and tone result in my kind of viewing Jeanne as the last Magical Girl show of the 90s and Yui as the first of the 21st Century.
Perhaps I should try harder to explain the difference I'm thinking of. But it's kind of a ,"you'll know what I mean if you've seen enough of them" kind of thing. That Yui doesn't from what I've seen so far have a Tuxedo Mask analogue is one minor example.
Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne was a Toei show airing with a lot of carry over creative staff from Sailor Moon and Cutey Honey Flash and so definitely feels like it's their spiritual successor, (it also has a connection to Wedding Peach via Sukihiro Tomita). And would be the last show to really fill that role till we got the Live Action PGSM. It's also hard not to see it as partly derivative of Saint Tail.
Corrector Yui is not a Toei show, Toei was prototyping the Pretty Cure aesthetic around this time with some Magical Girl shows of the non Warrior variety like Fun Fun Pharmacy, Yume no Crayon Oukoku and Ojamajo Doremi. But for a Magical Girl Warrior show this one kind of feels the most like PreCure before PreCure.
And beyond the Mahou Shoujo realm Corrector Yui is kind of .Hack and Sword Art Online before either of them existed in any medium. It's not the first Anime to deal with the Internet obviously, I've talked about others on this blog already. But it is perhaps the first to really reflect how normalized the Internet had become by the end of the 90s.
It always fascinates me when I can see one era ending and another beginning at the same time.
Something interesting I've recently noticed is two now relatively obscure shows that were airing at the turn of the Millennium.
Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and Corrector Yui were airing at about the same time over much of 1999 and 2000. Both qualify as Magical Girl Warrior shows with somewhat distinct twists. But certain differences in their aesthetic and tone result in my kind of viewing Jeanne as the last Magical Girl show of the 90s and Yui as the first of the 21st Century.
Perhaps I should try harder to explain the difference I'm thinking of. But it's kind of a ,"you'll know what I mean if you've seen enough of them" kind of thing. That Yui doesn't from what I've seen so far have a Tuxedo Mask analogue is one minor example.
Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne was a Toei show airing with a lot of carry over creative staff from Sailor Moon and Cutey Honey Flash and so definitely feels like it's their spiritual successor, (it also has a connection to Wedding Peach via Sukihiro Tomita). And would be the last show to really fill that role till we got the Live Action PGSM. It's also hard not to see it as partly derivative of Saint Tail.
Corrector Yui is not a Toei show, Toei was prototyping the Pretty Cure aesthetic around this time with some Magical Girl shows of the non Warrior variety like Fun Fun Pharmacy, Yume no Crayon Oukoku and Ojamajo Doremi. But for a Magical Girl Warrior show this one kind of feels the most like PreCure before PreCure.
And beyond the Mahou Shoujo realm Corrector Yui is kind of .Hack and Sword Art Online before either of them existed in any medium. It's not the first Anime to deal with the Internet obviously, I've talked about others on this blog already. But it is perhaps the first to really reflect how normalized the Internet had become by the end of the 90s.
It always fascinates me when I can see one era ending and another beginning at the same time.
Thursday, December 12, 2019
My Top 17 Anime of the 20tens
The sheer volume of Anime I’ve seen favors the last decade, about half of everything I’ve completed. Probably a natural result of that it was within this last decade I started watching Anime full time. Still my absolute favourites lists tend to favor stuff at least a little older, but that’s subject to change, I think in the future I may start considering more 2010s Anime to be 3x3 worthy once they’ve stood the test of time. And that is all the more reason why making a list of just this decade can be useful.
I’m deciding to do this list of the decade as beginning with 2010 and ending with 2019, like most decade lists. I am however one of those nerds who thinks Decades should perhaps properly be defined as beginning with 1 and ending with a 0,.and that's why about a year from now I may make an updated version of this list that is for that Decade. The slight shift in which 10 years are eligible might not be the only reason it’d be different, my mind could change on especially Anime of the last couple years in that time, and simply what I’ve seen may increase, there are still some key shows of the Decade I haven’t seen yet.
The list may sometimes be arbitrary in terms of when an entire franchise is one entry and when I’m just counting a specific installment. But there are reasons. If so far pretty much all of that franchise’s Anime incarnation is within said Decade that helps it count as one entry. But also whether or not the franchise is an anthology by nature matters.
I don't usually like to do Honorable Mentions. But for this I feel the need to include Sword Art Online and Attack On Titan. I can’t call them personal favorites but their status as two of the big mainstream Anime of the decade has made them in different ways important to my Anime journey and I’ve gained plenty of enjoyment from both.
17: SSSS.Gridman
A masterful homage to Power Rangers style shows. And perhaps has some of the best villains of the decade.
16: YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at The Bound of This World
An interesting historically significant Anime. Aired in the last year of this decade and indeed seems like a product of its trends, but is really an adaptation of the first truly ambitious Visual novel from 1996.
15: In Another World With My Smartphone
I still feel compelled to include this one, it’s what got me hooked on Isekai and still the best approach to Polygamy I've seen in Anime so far.
14: Engaged to The Unidentified
This show is what got me into Slice of Life/Cute Girls Doing Cute Things.
13: Yuru Yuri
For this decade my favorite Slice of Life/Cute Girls Doing Cute Things show.
12: Yuki Yuna Is A Hero
This will always remain a favorite of mine, it's played a key role in how I went from just casually interested in the Magical Girl genre to it being perhaps my favorite Genre.
Movies interlude Pokemon: I like the XY and Z movies, have very mixed feelings on I Choose You and love Power Of Us. Haven’t seen Evolution yet.
11: Citrus
Still my favorite Yuri of the decade, I don't care if you find that offensive.
10: Symphogear
Watch it
9: Sailor Moon Crystal
Yes, I went from being pretty hard on Crystal at first to now seeing it’s true value. Just watch the Viz Dub so you know you’re getting the BluRay rips. I’m including all three seasons here.
8: No Game No Life
For now I’m going to rank this as the top Isekai Anime.
Movies interlude PreCure: All but the first of the PreCure crossover movies are in this decade. I think the best of them are still the earliest ones.
7: Hugtto Pretty Cure
This is the best PreCure of the Decade.
6: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Usually I’m not likely to actually rank Madoka as the top Magical Girl anime of the era it started. But for a list like this cultural influence should be factored in. And my mind does constantly shift on how to rank Magical Girl Warrior shows.
5: Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine.
This is right up there with Utena as the most important Feminist Anime.
Movie interlude final: Three of the movies from my movies 3x3 are from this decade. But they are also all capstones on series from the prior Decade. K-On’s movie, the Gundam 00 movie and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.
4: A Silent Voice
The only proper entry a movie has on this list. I saw it finally in the last few months and the only reason it isn’t on my movie 3x3 yet is because I haven’t updated it and can’t decide what to kick off.
3: Steins;Gate
This is probably my favorite strictly SciFi Anime, and perhaps my favorite piece of Time Travel based SciFi in any medium.
2: UFO Table Fate/ Anime.
It’s hard for me to choose between Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works. The former is what I recommend as the ideal normie entry point to the franchise, but it’s precisely because I’m already an Anime person that the latter often satisfies me more. The second Heaven’s Feel movie also did not disappoint.
1: A Certain Scientific Railgun S.
I only watched any of Raildex pretty recently, but this show has quickly climbed it’s way to the top in my reverence. I already made a few blog posts about it in 2019. And Railgun S is definitely the height of that franchise so far.
I’m deciding to do this list of the decade as beginning with 2010 and ending with 2019, like most decade lists. I am however one of those nerds who thinks Decades should perhaps properly be defined as beginning with 1 and ending with a 0,.and that's why about a year from now I may make an updated version of this list that is for that Decade. The slight shift in which 10 years are eligible might not be the only reason it’d be different, my mind could change on especially Anime of the last couple years in that time, and simply what I’ve seen may increase, there are still some key shows of the Decade I haven’t seen yet.
The list may sometimes be arbitrary in terms of when an entire franchise is one entry and when I’m just counting a specific installment. But there are reasons. If so far pretty much all of that franchise’s Anime incarnation is within said Decade that helps it count as one entry. But also whether or not the franchise is an anthology by nature matters.
I don't usually like to do Honorable Mentions. But for this I feel the need to include Sword Art Online and Attack On Titan. I can’t call them personal favorites but their status as two of the big mainstream Anime of the decade has made them in different ways important to my Anime journey and I’ve gained plenty of enjoyment from both.
17: SSSS.Gridman
A masterful homage to Power Rangers style shows. And perhaps has some of the best villains of the decade.
16: YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at The Bound of This World
An interesting historically significant Anime. Aired in the last year of this decade and indeed seems like a product of its trends, but is really an adaptation of the first truly ambitious Visual novel from 1996.
15: In Another World With My Smartphone
I still feel compelled to include this one, it’s what got me hooked on Isekai and still the best approach to Polygamy I've seen in Anime so far.
14: Engaged to The Unidentified
This show is what got me into Slice of Life/Cute Girls Doing Cute Things.
13: Yuru Yuri
For this decade my favorite Slice of Life/Cute Girls Doing Cute Things show.
12: Yuki Yuna Is A Hero
This will always remain a favorite of mine, it's played a key role in how I went from just casually interested in the Magical Girl genre to it being perhaps my favorite Genre.
Movies interlude Pokemon: I like the XY and Z movies, have very mixed feelings on I Choose You and love Power Of Us. Haven’t seen Evolution yet.
11: Citrus
Still my favorite Yuri of the decade, I don't care if you find that offensive.
10: Symphogear
Watch it
9: Sailor Moon Crystal
Yes, I went from being pretty hard on Crystal at first to now seeing it’s true value. Just watch the Viz Dub so you know you’re getting the BluRay rips. I’m including all three seasons here.
8: No Game No Life
For now I’m going to rank this as the top Isekai Anime.
Movies interlude PreCure: All but the first of the PreCure crossover movies are in this decade. I think the best of them are still the earliest ones.
7: Hugtto Pretty Cure
This is the best PreCure of the Decade.
6: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Usually I’m not likely to actually rank Madoka as the top Magical Girl anime of the era it started. But for a list like this cultural influence should be factored in. And my mind does constantly shift on how to rank Magical Girl Warrior shows.
5: Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine.
This is right up there with Utena as the most important Feminist Anime.
Movie interlude final: Three of the movies from my movies 3x3 are from this decade. But they are also all capstones on series from the prior Decade. K-On’s movie, the Gundam 00 movie and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.
4: A Silent Voice
The only proper entry a movie has on this list. I saw it finally in the last few months and the only reason it isn’t on my movie 3x3 yet is because I haven’t updated it and can’t decide what to kick off.
3: Steins;Gate
This is probably my favorite strictly SciFi Anime, and perhaps my favorite piece of Time Travel based SciFi in any medium.
2: UFO Table Fate/ Anime.
It’s hard for me to choose between Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works. The former is what I recommend as the ideal normie entry point to the franchise, but it’s precisely because I’m already an Anime person that the latter often satisfies me more. The second Heaven’s Feel movie also did not disappoint.
1: A Certain Scientific Railgun S.
I only watched any of Raildex pretty recently, but this show has quickly climbed it’s way to the top in my reverence. I already made a few blog posts about it in 2019. And Railgun S is definitely the height of that franchise so far.
Sunday, December 8, 2019
I'm going to try watching Cutey Honey Flash
Cutey Honey is one of those franchises I know a lot about even though I haven't actually watched much of it yet. I just over the last 24 hours watched the Sentai Dub of Cutey Honey Universe and that is the first Cutey Honey Anime I've completed. I once a long time ago temporarily owned the New Cutey Honey DVD but watched only the first episode where my mind perhaps read too much into some parallels to The Dark Knight.
Cutey Honey Flash aired right after the 90s Sailor Moon Anime finished, taking over it's time-slot and involving a lot of the same creative staff. It is known for being much more Shoujo in style then the franchise usually is, because Toei wanted it to fill the shoes of Sailor Moon.
It's not a highly regarded entry in the franchise from what I've seen. I think that's partly because the very demographic they were trying to appeal to with this change in approach instead felt insulted. Lots of women liked Cutey Honey already as she was, so it felt kind of sexist to assume you'd have to turn it into Sailor Moon season 6 to appeal to young women.
Ironically it just may be the people most inclined to like this the best of any Cutey Honey show are people like me, Cis-Het Men who are tired of patriarchal assumptions about what does and doesn't appeal to the male demographic. I'm tired of the assumption that a female Superhero needs to be constantly objectified in order for us to be interested, and that we're only minimally interested in romantic melodrama. I am interested in the basic premise of Cutey Honey but would like a version where she isn't constantly ogled and groped. And the very things a lot of women are tired of being told they're supposed to be into are things I'm tired of being told I'm not allowed to be into.
My main concern as of not actually starting the show yet is the apparent insertion of a Tuxedo Mask clone. Honey already had love interests (both male and female) they could focus on. I like Tuxedo Mask, but his clones in a lot of other Magical Girl shows I feel often seem to be missing the point of his character. However this issue has not yet been enough to completely break my enjoyment of one.
The thing about certain of these 90s and early 2000s Magical Girl shows being made to capitalize on the success of Sailor Moon is that they actually have some of the same key creative minds behind them as the 90s Sailor Moon Anime.
The main writer of Cutey Honey Flash, Ryota Yamaguchi, was also the head writer of Sailor Stars. The Series Director of CHF had previously been an Episode Director on Stars, and the Series Director of Stars (who also worked on prior seasons even going back to Goldfish Warning!) was an Episode Director on CHF. CHF also had four other Episode Directors who'd been directing Sailor Moon episodes, one of them being the director of the S and SuperS movies. We see a similar phenomena with the Assistant Directors.
To get the common Visual Aesthetic connection we could also mention Yoshiyuki Shikano, Miho Shimogasa, Shigetaka Kiyoyama, Katsumi Tamegai, Kenichi Tajiri, Hidekazu Nakanishi, Hashimoto Kazuyuki, Taniguchi Junichi and I'm sure more. (Masahiro Ando contributed to the movie at least.)
However not all of Cutey Honey F's former Sailor Moon staff were ones who's most notable contributions were arguably to the last two seasons. Katsuyuki Sumisawa had been a Sailor Moon writer for the first three seasons then left to be the lead writer on Gundam Wing, but then he returned to Toei for CHF. Some of his Sailor Moon episodes are personal favorites of mine, for example he did a number of the Ikuhara directed episodes including the Lesbian Animators episode from the Nephrite arc and the episode that introduced HaruMi. He also wrote the two parter once known in English as Birthday Blues, which were episodes I greatly enjoyed. He also wrote a couple key episodes of the Doom Tree Saga and it's Minako and Rei spotlight/attack upgrade episodes. And in the future he will be the lead writer of the first 26 episodes of Corrector Yui, another show I've been meaning to watch but keep putting off.
Some people make it sound like Flash has the least Yuri appeal of any version of Cutey Honey. But one of those was a person who also seemed to think Universe was lacking in Yuri so that I can't take seriously. I don't want to get my hopes up going in, but given Sumisawa's involvement in some of Sailor Moon's Yuri highlights, and how much Wing appeals to Yaoi fans, I would not be suprised if Flash has some queer subtext most people are overlooking.
There is one Cutey Honey Flash writer who is more notable for what they've done since then what they did before, and that is it seems also the only Woman on the writing staff. Reiko Yoshida would go on to write much of the Maria-Sama Anime, Girls Und Panzer, Romeo x Julliet, High School Fleet, and she's on the staff of the newest Pokémon series interestingly. But most important of all she's the writer of almost everything directed by Naoko Yamada, they seem to be a pretty good team.
Cutey Honey Flash aired right after the 90s Sailor Moon Anime finished, taking over it's time-slot and involving a lot of the same creative staff. It is known for being much more Shoujo in style then the franchise usually is, because Toei wanted it to fill the shoes of Sailor Moon.
It's not a highly regarded entry in the franchise from what I've seen. I think that's partly because the very demographic they were trying to appeal to with this change in approach instead felt insulted. Lots of women liked Cutey Honey already as she was, so it felt kind of sexist to assume you'd have to turn it into Sailor Moon season 6 to appeal to young women.
Ironically it just may be the people most inclined to like this the best of any Cutey Honey show are people like me, Cis-Het Men who are tired of patriarchal assumptions about what does and doesn't appeal to the male demographic. I'm tired of the assumption that a female Superhero needs to be constantly objectified in order for us to be interested, and that we're only minimally interested in romantic melodrama. I am interested in the basic premise of Cutey Honey but would like a version where she isn't constantly ogled and groped. And the very things a lot of women are tired of being told they're supposed to be into are things I'm tired of being told I'm not allowed to be into.
My main concern as of not actually starting the show yet is the apparent insertion of a Tuxedo Mask clone. Honey already had love interests (both male and female) they could focus on. I like Tuxedo Mask, but his clones in a lot of other Magical Girl shows I feel often seem to be missing the point of his character. However this issue has not yet been enough to completely break my enjoyment of one.
The thing about certain of these 90s and early 2000s Magical Girl shows being made to capitalize on the success of Sailor Moon is that they actually have some of the same key creative minds behind them as the 90s Sailor Moon Anime.
The main writer of Cutey Honey Flash, Ryota Yamaguchi, was also the head writer of Sailor Stars. The Series Director of CHF had previously been an Episode Director on Stars, and the Series Director of Stars (who also worked on prior seasons even going back to Goldfish Warning!) was an Episode Director on CHF. CHF also had four other Episode Directors who'd been directing Sailor Moon episodes, one of them being the director of the S and SuperS movies. We see a similar phenomena with the Assistant Directors.
To get the common Visual Aesthetic connection we could also mention Yoshiyuki Shikano, Miho Shimogasa, Shigetaka Kiyoyama, Katsumi Tamegai, Kenichi Tajiri, Hidekazu Nakanishi, Hashimoto Kazuyuki, Taniguchi Junichi and I'm sure more. (Masahiro Ando contributed to the movie at least.)
However not all of Cutey Honey F's former Sailor Moon staff were ones who's most notable contributions were arguably to the last two seasons. Katsuyuki Sumisawa had been a Sailor Moon writer for the first three seasons then left to be the lead writer on Gundam Wing, but then he returned to Toei for CHF. Some of his Sailor Moon episodes are personal favorites of mine, for example he did a number of the Ikuhara directed episodes including the Lesbian Animators episode from the Nephrite arc and the episode that introduced HaruMi. He also wrote the two parter once known in English as Birthday Blues, which were episodes I greatly enjoyed. He also wrote a couple key episodes of the Doom Tree Saga and it's Minako and Rei spotlight/attack upgrade episodes. And in the future he will be the lead writer of the first 26 episodes of Corrector Yui, another show I've been meaning to watch but keep putting off.
Some people make it sound like Flash has the least Yuri appeal of any version of Cutey Honey. But one of those was a person who also seemed to think Universe was lacking in Yuri so that I can't take seriously. I don't want to get my hopes up going in, but given Sumisawa's involvement in some of Sailor Moon's Yuri highlights, and how much Wing appeals to Yaoi fans, I would not be suprised if Flash has some queer subtext most people are overlooking.
There is one Cutey Honey Flash writer who is more notable for what they've done since then what they did before, and that is it seems also the only Woman on the writing staff. Reiko Yoshida would go on to write much of the Maria-Sama Anime, Girls Und Panzer, Romeo x Julliet, High School Fleet, and she's on the staff of the newest Pokémon series interestingly. But most important of all she's the writer of almost everything directed by Naoko Yamada, they seem to be a pretty good team.
Update November 2024: However as far as the continuity of the Magical Girl genre goes, it is notable that Reiko Yoshida wrote the original Manga for Tokyo Mew Mew.
Thursday, December 5, 2019
The writer of Noir
I've been becoming one of those who thinks that for both American movies and Anime we perhaps sometimes give directors too much credit (or blame) and the writers not enough credit (or blame). And I have brought this subject up before, but I figure the best way to properly introduce this idea to my blog would be by looking at the writer of my absolute favorite Anime, Noir.
Noir is a good example for this subject not just because it's my personal favorite of an entire medium. You see while I like every aspect of Noir considering how it was handled perfect for what Noir is, I would have guessed even before checking the credits that the writing is the chief thing that sets it significantly apart from other Bee Train shows. And the credits verified that, it has the same director as several other Bee Train shows, and Yuki Kajiura does the music for most of them, but this is the only Bee Train show written by Ryoe Tsukimura.
And Tsukimura is the only writer, a lot of other shows I've looked at there is usually one writer who does the most but still some separate writers for individual episodes. But as far as ANN is aware Tsukimura single handedly scripted all 26 episodes and has the Original Concept credit.
Looking at his other work, of what I've seen already it's all stuff I also like, but mostly not stuff I would have guessed had the same writer. He was the head writer for Tenchi Universe (and worked on two other Tenchi projects), and while I'd observed before it kind of being similar to Noir in how it is structured as a 26 episode show, the nature and genre of the story in question is different. Tenchi and El-Hazard get dramatic but they also have a lot of Otaku style humor that is absent from Noir.
What does perhaps anticipate the nature of Noir more is that he scripted 6 episodes of Revolutionary Girl Utena. Two of them are two of the key Juri and Shiori episodes, (their Black Rose episode and the first Ruka episode). What perhaps shows the level of trust he had was that he's the only person besides Utena's head writer (who may be the subject of a future post) to write any of the final Apocalypse Arc, the two prater about the final Duel with Touga.
So in the future I want to watch some of his stuff I haven't seen yet. Perhaps UFO Princess Valkyrie would be a good introduction for me to the Magical Girlfriend genre.
Update: Well before that I decided to watch one mid 90s Hentai OVA he's credited as writing. And there is a character in it who is absolutely the prototype of Shaoli from episodes 15 and 16 of Noir.
Update: Well before that I decided to watch one mid 90s Hentai OVA he's credited as writing. And there is a character in it who is absolutely the prototype of Shaoli from episodes 15 and 16 of Noir.
2022 Update: If you do want to learn more about Noir's Director check out this cool video from Trixie The Golden Witch called The Anime Director I Admire The Most.
Monday, December 2, 2019
The Doom Tree Saga and the Magical Girl Warrior Genre
Earlier this year I had my somewhat chaotic post about my mind changing on the issue of comparing the Sailor Moon 90s Anime to the Manga/Crystal. I have now come to a somewhat more coherent conclusion.
The core overall story is always more solid in the Manga/Crystal, there is a lot less (in the writing) to nitpick and some of the emotions simply land much better. That said a lot of the "filler" you only get in the 90s Anime is still vital to why I'm a Sailor Moon fan in the first place and is material I still treasure to this day.
Sailor Moon is the founding franchise of an entire Sub-genre, the Magical Girl Warrior (Mahou Shoujo before Codename Sailor V were not warriors). Like a lot of franchises that started genres it doesn't always fit what is expected of said genre a generation later. Sailor Moon never feels like a Deconstruction of what the genre it created became the way some works do. All of what I consider the core elements of the Genre are in early Sailor Moon somewhere when you combine the Manga and the 90s Anime. But some of them are not a part of Sailor Moon as consistently as they are future examples of the genre.
That creates a scenario where something that is pure "filler" in the context of Sailor Moon could become important to the genre as whole. And I think that is exactly the case with the Doom Tree or Makai Tree arc which spans the first 13 episodes of Sailor Moon R.
This Arc is pure Filler, it's based on nothing in the Manga and what makes it arguably not skip-able in the context of the 90s Anime version of the story could have easily been solved by a single episode.
However as an installment of the Magical Girl Warrior sub-genre, it is the beginning of the redeeming of the villains being an important part of the formula. With Sailor Moon that was never really a thing in the Manga. And earlier in the Anime there was a redemption of sorts for Nephrite but that wasn't in any way prompted by any actions of the actual Magical Girls, it just sorta happened.
This would not be the last time Sailor Moon did it, we see something similar in the R movie and it would be done selectively with villains of the Black Moon Clan and the Death Busters. It is mainly in Sailor Stars where Sailor Moon really starts seeming like the rest of the genre in this regard. But we have no way of calculating how dependent these later developments were on the existence of the Doom Tree Saga.
Outside of Sailor Moon this was becoming standard for the Genre as early as Wedding Peach in 1995, the Makai Tree saga aired on Japanese television in the Spring of 1993. And the future lead writer and co-creator of Wedding Peach wrote 3 episodes of the Doom Tree saga.
So never underestimate the value of good filler.
The core overall story is always more solid in the Manga/Crystal, there is a lot less (in the writing) to nitpick and some of the emotions simply land much better. That said a lot of the "filler" you only get in the 90s Anime is still vital to why I'm a Sailor Moon fan in the first place and is material I still treasure to this day.
Sailor Moon is the founding franchise of an entire Sub-genre, the Magical Girl Warrior (Mahou Shoujo before Codename Sailor V were not warriors). Like a lot of franchises that started genres it doesn't always fit what is expected of said genre a generation later. Sailor Moon never feels like a Deconstruction of what the genre it created became the way some works do. All of what I consider the core elements of the Genre are in early Sailor Moon somewhere when you combine the Manga and the 90s Anime. But some of them are not a part of Sailor Moon as consistently as they are future examples of the genre.
That creates a scenario where something that is pure "filler" in the context of Sailor Moon could become important to the genre as whole. And I think that is exactly the case with the Doom Tree or Makai Tree arc which spans the first 13 episodes of Sailor Moon R.
This Arc is pure Filler, it's based on nothing in the Manga and what makes it arguably not skip-able in the context of the 90s Anime version of the story could have easily been solved by a single episode.
However as an installment of the Magical Girl Warrior sub-genre, it is the beginning of the redeeming of the villains being an important part of the formula. With Sailor Moon that was never really a thing in the Manga. And earlier in the Anime there was a redemption of sorts for Nephrite but that wasn't in any way prompted by any actions of the actual Magical Girls, it just sorta happened.
This would not be the last time Sailor Moon did it, we see something similar in the R movie and it would be done selectively with villains of the Black Moon Clan and the Death Busters. It is mainly in Sailor Stars where Sailor Moon really starts seeming like the rest of the genre in this regard. But we have no way of calculating how dependent these later developments were on the existence of the Doom Tree Saga.
Outside of Sailor Moon this was becoming standard for the Genre as early as Wedding Peach in 1995, the Makai Tree saga aired on Japanese television in the Spring of 1993. And the future lead writer and co-creator of Wedding Peach wrote 3 episodes of the Doom Tree saga.
So never underestimate the value of good filler.
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