The End of 2021 marks 5 years of me following Seasonal Anime.

Since I really started following currently airing shows with the Winter season of 2017.  I had some vague awareness of currently airing Anime in 2016, but that was basically just the most well known stuff.

So I figured I should celebrate this landmark by talking about some of my favorite shows from each of these 5 years, maybe even sometimes specific seasons, it depends.

For the winter of 2017 Dragon-Maid was probably the stand out, but I also enjoyed ACCA, Tanya the Evil and Gabriel Dropout.  But that's just stuff I watched at or near the time, I eventually watched Scum's Wish and now would say my favorite of that season was Chaos;Child.

For the rest of the year, Fate/Apocrypha, In Another World With My Smartphone, Princess Principle, and Anime Gataris are what I consider the best new shows, but also season 2 of Yuki Yuna Is a Hero and it's prequel episodes that came with it were great too.

For 2018 it's perhaps easier for me to name my favorites of the movies.  Both Maquia: When The Promised Flower Blooms and Pokémon: The Power of Us were fantastic.  For TV Anime, Citrus was awesome, Legend of The Galactic Heroes The New Thesis was very good, Hugtto Pretty Cure was fantastic. Meanwhile Darling in The FranXX was decent and SSSS.Gridman was great. And then at the end of the year That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime started, and the early part is what I liked best of that show.

For 2019 YU-NO: The Girl Who Chants Love at The Bound of This World was definitely the best TV Anime, Boogiepop and Others has great material, but some big flaws early on.  And then Weathering With You was a great movie.  Also we got some fun Lupin The Third content that year.

For 2020 A Certain Scientific Railgun T I still consider the best, Bofuri was also fun, while In/Spectre and Tower of God are both interesting.  Most everything else I consider notable from 2020 was in the Fall season, and that stuff like everything I've watched in 2021 is perhaps still a bit too recent for me to fully parse yet.

But I'll attempt to list some 2021 Favorites anyway.  Pokémon: Secrets of The Jungle was another satisfying PokeFlick, and then Pokémon Evolutions was pretty cool as well.  High-Rise Invasion which dropped on Netflix was a big stand out, as was Eden later on.  So I'm A Spider, So What was perhaps the most fun I had for much of the year, and Wonder Egg Priority was an interesting little experiment even though the ending fell off a bit.  Star Wars Visions I did a post on already.  And also at the end of the year Yuki Yuna Is a Hero The Great Mankai Chapter was a good Coda to season 2, nothing else from Fall I've really gotten to watch yet, same with some of what interested me back in the Summer, and there's also some Movies I haven't seen yet  So my 2021 faves will probably need revision in the future.

Catching ya'll up to speed

I just watched the 8th and final episode of Pokémon Evolutions, and LEAF IS FINALLY ANIMATED!!!!!!  I was not expecting that, I had basically given up hope.  And she was Bad @$$.  They called her Green, but I'm gonna it was Blue in the Japanese, throwing back to the Manga names.

All of Pokemon Evolutions was great, what they chose to do for the Johto Generation last week I found very cool.  I recommend all of it.

I also today watched the first Fate/Grand Order Camelot movie, it was decent.  And the the first episode of Girls Und Panzer Das Finale was also quite fun.

Last Friday I finished Yuki Yuna Is a Hero The Great Mankai Chapter, it was great as well.

Soon after I made my last update I finished Legend of The Legendary Heroes, which it turns is an unfinished Anime, it was fun though.

Besides that's I've mostly been re-watching stuff.  I finished the YU-NO Re-watch I was talking about, then I did Pretear, then Serial Experiments Lain, then Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child and the first few episodes of Godzilla Singular Point.  

I'm planning soon to re-watch Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya for Christmas, then probably also Robotics;Notes and Steins;Gate, and Kanon once it starts snowing here, I want to re-watch that show in the proper seasonal mood.  I think I'm gonna wait till sometime in January to start Binge watching a bunch of Fall and Summer 2021 shows i haven't finished or in some cases even started yet.

Outside the realm of Anime, Wheel of Time I can't make a verdict on yet, my feels towards it are mixed.  The Dune movie was very good though I have some complaints, and Matrix Resurrections was great, to me it was the perfect way to epilogue to the trilogy.

Raildex Watch Order Again

I feel like giving another Update on my recommended Raildex watch order, which is strictly neither the chorological order or the broadcast order.

But first I've talked about how I like Railgun the most, I do enjoy Index and even Accelerator, but I can imagine there being some people who'll only be able to find Railgun watchable.  I've also said that I recommend newcomers on your first watch of Railgun to skip episode 2.

But it has occurred to me to recommend to people who might give up on Index early on, that between watching Railgun S (the Second season) and Railgun T (the third season) there are two episodes of Index season 2 that are very specifically about Railgun stuff that did not get an equivalent depiction on Railgun proper.  Those are episodes 6 and 7 of Index II (30 and 31 of the series as a whole), the Tree Remnant Arc.

Alright so here is my new updated recommended watch order.

A Certain Scientific Railgun (season 1)

A Certain Magical Index (season 1)

A Certain Scientific Railgun S

A Certain Scientific Accelerator (season 1)

A Certain Magical Index The Movie: The Miracle of The Endymion

A Certain Magical Index II

A Certain Scientific Railgun T

A Certain Magical Index III

The Problem with Show don't Tell as Film or TV criticism.

I did an anti "Show Don't Tell" post on this blog once already, but this time I'm going to try to be more nuanced about it since I've learned more.

The origin of "Show Don't Tell" as a writing rule was specifically in the context of Prose, and in that context "tell" refers only to information simply told to be audience by the author, "showing" refers to anything that happens within the story itself, including dialogue spoken by a character within the story. 

So the problem with how YouTube angry reviews and analytical Video Essays apply this to talking about Movies or TV shows or Anime, is that in those mediums unless there is a third person omniscient voice over narration, nothing actually fits the proper original literary definition of "tell".  So instead it just becomes an excuse for these critics to treat their personal dislike of expositional dialogue as some objective criticism, when it's absolutely not.

"But Film is a visual medium" one might shout from the roof tops to justify finding a way to make "show don't tell" relevant to film criticism.

Paintings, and maybe like Comics are the purely visual mediums of storytelling.  Silent Films could perhaps be considered more visual then anything else.  But modern film is a multimedia art form, as explained in this Video Essay criticizing when a Director simply uses Classical Music instead of composing an original score.  All the tools of that medium need to be respected as part of how it works, not simply the visual ones.

Not all Films or TV shows or Anime are going to be the same.  Some creators might choose to be minimalist when it comes to the talking and I can respect that artistic choice, but it won't appeal as much to my personal tastes.  Dialogue is what I enjoy more then anything else, including the world building expositional dialogue that conventional YT critics find lazy and/or boring.

I'm the kind of person who'll for fun watch hour long seminars of an Evangelical Christian I no longer even agree with on most things explain their interpretation of History and Theology and how they fit together, and the equivalents of that from people with other world views as well.  A World Building Exposition dump is just the in universe version of that for a Fantasy or SciFi setting, it can be inherently entertaining so long as you make the character giving it charismatic or interesting to watch/listen to.

And you know I've been in real life conversions that in a movie would absolutely look like "explaining something everyone already knows for the sake of the audience".  Sometimes real life isn't "well written" by the standards of some critics.  But what about the opposite of that Trope?

Early in episode 5 of Fate/Apocrypha the rest of the Black Faction shows up after a few vital plot developments just happened.  Right when the characters who were there for that are about to explain what happened to those who weren't, it jumps cuts to after that conversation, because they figured why show the audience characters talking about what the audience already knows.  That annoyed me, because you see I already made a post on how if the audience already knows is the last thing I care about, after all on a re-watch I'll absolutely know everything already.  I like watching characters react to learning things, as well as seeing how a character would explain what just happened.  This show basically skipped exactly what I wanted to watch, and created an awkward looking Jump Cut in the process of doing so.  All to appease critics who think "pointless " dialogue is the worst thing an Anime can have.

Another product of trying to apply "show don't tell" to mediums it wasn't meant for is an overuse of flashback scenes.  Flashback scenes can be good, but sometimes TV writers feel the need to flashback to any past event they've made even mildly important, sometimes it's best to just leave exactly what happened to the audience's imagination in a way that "showing" rather then "telling" doesn't allow.

And even in the present, sometimes what we don't see can be more impactful then what we do.  This is a lessen that I feel creators of Horror and Suspense and War films should always keep in mind.  But they wind up being in tension with this popular misuse of "show don't tell".

Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child both have good Anime adaptations actually.

I can't claim to have no understanding of why people think at least Chaos;Head's Anime is bad when I myself had originally given up after a few episodes and mentioned that on this blog before.  However what I speculated on in that prior reference was that my issue with Chaos;Head was probably the story itself not the Anime as an adaptation.  And I never said it was horrible or anything, just that I was having trouble getting into it.

In the years since that first attempt I've gotten more used to VN based Anime of it's type, while still not actually playing VNs themselves.  I started the show over from the beginning and wound up giving it a 9 out of 10, then I gave Chaos;Child a bull blown 10.

I give Child a higher score partly because Head is more difficult to get into, the early episodes are a bit disorienting but ultimately that served a purpose and things will get clarified.

What gets me about how hostile to these Anime their VN fanboys who've made YouTube videos on them are, is they keep saying these "horrible" Anime give people bad impressions of these brilliant ingenious Visual Novel masterpieces.  But the truth is the only people who think these Anime are horrible abomination are VN fanboys overreacting to even the slightest creative adaptation choices they don't like.  Non VN fans who just watched it like they did any other Anime at worst simply went "meh" and moved on.

Their average MAL rating is between a 6 and 7, that's between Fine and Good.  Given all the 1s and 2s being hurled at these shows from those haters, clearly there are many who also gave it higher ratings then the average.  I haven't written any reviews for these shows on MAL, among those who have are people giving them 8s, 9s and even 10s.

Most 5s, 6s and 7s given on an out of 10 rating system generally mean one of two things.  Either that person respected the execution but just couldn't get into the premise or the characters, or they see the potential value in the premise, characters and story but had issues with the execution.  The latter group are probably fully prepared to assume it's something great in it's source material.  And the former were not going to get into that VN even if VNs are a medium they're into.

To RedBard specifically, the problem with these Anime seems to begin with them being single cour, unlike Steins;Gate and Robotics;Notes which had 2 cour Anime.  Everything more specific is really the same stuff VN fanboys whine about in the VN based Anime widely considered to be great, even Steins;Gate isn't immune to these complaints.  Every YT video about recommending these VNs with little comment on the Anime doesn't mention any vital story element or themes the Anime hadn't already conveyed to me.  Information about how they're played however does tell me I wouldn't enjoy playing them as much as I do watching the Anime, even compared to other VNs.

I do prefer 2 cour shows in general, but these I felt worked as 1 cour just as well as Madoka did, which means I don't think dragging them out longer would have resulted in anything good. I did not feel like anything was missing, no criticism I might have would be fixed by adding more context.  It's only people comparing to the source material and know what's missing that can't stop themselves from thinking about it's absence.  But their perspective is the wrong one, most Visual Novels are longer then they need to be, that lack of restraint is largely what's holding the medium back, and I'm saying this as someone who defends three hour cuts of Superhero movies.  I recently tried to play YU-NO and I'll probably try again, but I was not prepared for it to take half an hour to get through the first 5 seconds of the Anime, I gave up before even reaching a save point.

I spend a lot of time watching Adaptations of things I have no source material familiarity for.  And often I can tell when something is missing, when an issue I'm having is probably because of something that was cut, that is where criticism of something as an adaptation and criticism of it as it's own stand alone piece of Art overlap.  

However any criticism that does not exist without comparison to the source material is irrelevant to judging the adaptation on it's own terms.  So you're not gonna convince me an Anime I enjoyed watching, and maybe even made my cry (as Chaos;Child and Umineko both did), is actually very bad because it left out some memorable internal monologue you really liked.

I am a defender of voice over narration and internal monologues in Anime and movies, I HATE the popular YT reviewer use of "show don't tell".  But Visual Novels aren't like the way these tropes pop up in Light Novel based Anime or Hard Boiled Detective novels. VNs are incredibly over indulgent with massive amounts of text of the protagonist pondering things that I'm sure build on the themes and characterization but really are not nearly as intrisincly necessary as their fanatics think they are.

The reason Steins;Gate's Anime was much more successful then any other SciADV Anime was because it simply had better luck getting seen by the non VN fans who would be into it's premise.  Part of that is how the Chaos;Head Anime kind of wears it's VN roots on it's sleeve a lot more.  Part of it might be Steins;Gate being more actively promoted in general (Chaos;Child was the only spring 2017 show I never even knew about while it was airing).  But it mostly comes down to something I'm going to say that might shock some people.  Steins;Gate is the most Normie friendly of the SciADV franchises, while both Chaos; shows are the least.

Trixie The Golden Witch likes citing Steins;Gate as one of the top Otaku Pride shows because it's set in Akihabara.  Yes Steins;Gate has lots of Otaku references, but it's really not actually about any of that.  Being set in Akihabara is perhaps itself a cause of this, like how people who live in New York have never visited the Statue of Liberty.  The status of Akihabara as an Otaku center is most relevant to Ferris's subplot.  Akihabara's older significance as a tech hub is probably more relevant to the main plot, since that's why it's a place one would look for an IBN 5100.

I know exactly how to recommend Steins;Gate to Normies, I tell them it's the best SciFi Anime and in my opinion best Time Travel story in any medium.  If they like the Denzel Washington film Deja Vu, you can tell them Steins;Gate has a premise like that but much more elaborated on due to it's serialized format.  Even the Hououin Kyōma persona seems more like an American B Movie Mad Scientist then anything specifically Anime.

Steins;Gate became the only one of these that most non VN players have even heard of not because it's Anime is sooo much better at being an Anime, frankly I think it's Animation style and Art design is much blander then Chaos;Head.  It simply is a far more accessible story with inherently wider appeal then the rest.

Robotics;Notes is a giant love letter to the Mecha Genre, but more specifically a Sub Genre of Mecha the American fanbase never got into (Glass Reflection saying the in-universe Mecha show is basically Gundam really annoys me, it's clearly a Shounen Super Robot show like Mazinger Z).  I do consider it and even Occultic;Nine potentially Normie accessible, but still a tougher sell then Steins;Gate, one tactic I use is to describe Robotics;Notes as the msot Speilbergian Anime.  But with Robotics;Notes it's precisely what's more Otaku about it that makes me personally like it more.

Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child however are the embodiment of almost everything Anti-Otaku Anime fans hate, they will never respect them in any medium.  Going back to the discussion of MAL scores, if any non VN players have given these Anime truly low scores on MAL, it's probably those Anti-Otaku types being disgusted by their very premise.

Chaos;Head is about an antisocial shut-in literally named Taku who'd rather talk to his hallucination of his favorite Anime Girl then real people becoming the only person who can save this town that he hates.  That's a true Otaku Hero's Journey.

Then Chaos;Child..... well I'm gonna have to spoil it's central twists here.

Overdue update

If my blog has regular followers, you've probably deduced I've given up on consistently posting updates on my Seasonal Anime viewing.

I've dedicated to start more often waiting to binge.  I've finished the simuldubs I was following and all of them were good shows.  I'm now only still following Yuki Yuna is A Hero and once that ends I'll probably be following nothing for awhile.

The shows I do want to still follow weekly are ones that are more episodic with minimal overarching plot.  But it's difficult to know what shows are going to be like that up front, your seasonal round up videos on AniTube are usually going off just pilots.  I do know I'll at least start the new PreCure.  

LN adaptations I would be interested in binging by Novel or Arc, if I can know for certain when a given arc ends.

In the meantime I've bouncing around between semi-binges.  Re-watching YU-NO as I already mentioned and I may have even more to say primarily about that show, I've also obtained the Switch version of the VN which I'll give a try after finishing the re-watch.  I'm also 7 episodes into EdensZero and 20 into Legend of The Legendary Heroes.

I also watched D-Frag which I think is the most underrated comedy Anime of the 20tens.  I watched the movie Aura: Koga Maryuin's Last War which was good, what distinguished it from Love, Chunibyo and Other Delusions can't be communicated by a plot description, it has a very different tone which makes it a good a companion piece.  I also enjoy what I've seen of Sabagebu and would like to see it get dubbed.  Also the show Shattered Angels is fantastic Shoujo Melodrama with cool action thrown in.

On November 19th (today as I'm typing this and hoping still when it will be posted) I watched the first three episodes of Wheel of Time on Amazon and all 10 episodes of Netflix's Cowboy bebop.

WoT is one of those classic Fantasy franchises I have bene aware of for a long time.  These opening episodes are interesting,  I don't think it'll feel worthy of it's source material's legacy till we actually visit a setting that makes me go "wow, that could have been in a movie".

Cowboy Bebop I decided needed the perspective of someone not simply comparing it to the original all the time, a role I've given myself before.  It's a fun Space Western with likeable characters, that is perhaps goofier then some old school fans would prefer, but it does get serious when it needs to.

Cowboy Bebop was originally a homage to certain American genres like Western and Film Noirs and other pulpy stuff.  This show having more "Whedonesque" dialogue then the original fits how those genres have changed.  We're now in the era of Guardians of The Galaxy rather then The Fifth Element.

YU-NO again

I'm currently doing my third watch of the 2019 Anime adaptation of YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World.  My first time was following the Simuldub one episode a week for half of the year, my second was in early or mid 2020 doing a standard binge watch of all the episodes in a day or too.  This time I'm doing it at a more fluid pace.

I'm also re-watching it in the context of how much more Anime I've seen since, dedicating a good chunk of 2021 to watching more Anime adapted from Visual Novels, both highly revered and poorly regarded.  With an emphasis on some of the earliest stuff, and seeking to learn more about VNs and their history in general.

YU-NO didn't get the attention it deserved because the Western Fandom never got the memo on how old and influential the source material was.  It's like the frustrations many western media Nerds had at seeing people who didn't hear of Dune till this year calling it an attempted next Star Wars.  But YU-NO's simultamious influence and obscurity runs deeper then that even, perhaps more comparable to John Carter of Mars, or for a comparison to how it's tied to the English speaking world being deprived of it till we'd gotten used to it's imitators, Paul Feval's The Blackcoats or Ponson Du Terril's Rocambole.

YU-NO is probably the most important Visual Novel left out of Bowl of Lentils The Origins of Visual Novels video.  The culmination of that history lesson is chiefly Leaf's Visual Novel Trilogy which originally coined the term.  YU-NO was first released in January of 1996 between the second and third instalments of that trilogy.  The Leaf VN trilogy however becomes less focused on it's fantastical and genre elements as it goes on with To Heart being the first primarily High School Harem VN, the foundation on which's Key's Seasons Trilogy built.  YU-NO's importance however partly lies in how the sheer ambition of it's story dwarfs anything else that can be called a Visual Novel or Sound Novel that came before it or it seems for awhile after.

YU-NO is pretty much the genesis of at least two sub-genres of Otaku media, the time looping to thwart a bad end scenario exemplified by Higurashi and Steins;Gate.  And Isekai in the form it's most commonly associated with today.  But like Sailor Moon's relationship to the fully developed form of the Genre it started, it lacks a certain core conviction I would be less forgiving of if it weren't the innovator.  The fact that Takuya is forced to accept that Mitsuki can't be saved, the later Otaku media spawned from it are about defeating Fate, and later in the story that applies to more then just her.  [Turns out an epilogue OVA I didn't know about resolves this issue somewhat.]

One of the few pieces of discussion about this Anime as an adaption that was floating around when it started airing was a statement from the people making it about Mio being "even more Tsundere" and some parallel statements about other characters, which was taken as a bad sign for the adaptation and I understand why as someone who's reacted similarly to quotes related to Batman projects.  But trust me Mio in the 2019 Anime has not been flanderized into a standard modern Tsundere caricature.  In fact when I compare her to the characters usually propped up by even the most cynical AniTubers as the good "well written" Tsunderes, I consider her more balanced and stable then any of them.

I had observed on this blog before I knew about YU-NO how in the early and mid 90s the Anime characters who were doing the Tsundere bit were mainly the protagonists of Shoujo Anime.  The term Tsundere was coined probably on 2channel in the early or mid 2000s mainly in reference to Visual Novel characters who at the time mostly hadn't been animated yet.  Mio is the model on whom that VN archetype was based, and as such is perhaps the missing link to verify my observation, I really think she was written to be like a 90s Shoujo protagonist.

Anime's Original Big Three

In our modern world post Anime being Revolutionized in the 2000s, the phrase "big three" in relation to Anime tends to mean Naruto, One Piece and Bleach, I'm probably the only Anime fan my age who has never seen a single episode of any of those three shows.

Instead I remember when the top three mainstream Anime franchises were Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z and Pokémon.  All three I have fond childhood memories of watching, but only two I am still an active fan of, DBZ and the genre it represents I can respect but they have no appeal to me personally anymore, which is probably why the 00s Big Three never interested me.

What I want to talk about today however is how for us Western fans those three all represent the same era, we got our first taste of Sailor Moon a bit sooner, but it was the late 90s and the year 2000 ruled by all three in daily syndication.

In Japan they are more or less three completely different eras.  Pokémon debuted on the 1st of April 1997 a couple weeks after Sailor Moon's finale.  Sailor Moon started in March of 1992.... so technically Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon's Japanese broadcasts overlap, but after checking various Japanese airdates for DBZ I am very willing to say it's best days were behind it when Sailor Moon started.

Ya know how we often divide Decades into thirds?  Early, Mid and Late?  Well it's almsot like for Children's Anime in Japan the Early 90s is DBZ, the Mid 90s was Sailor Moon and the Late 90s was Pokémon.

Of course people who care more about adult late night Anime would prefer to define the Late 90s as being "post Evangelion".  Well the thing you should remember is Animated shows are in production for a long time before they start airing, on average around 2 years.  Even a show the premiered exactly a full year after Eva's premier like Martian Hunter Nadesico would have had to have already been in production already before Eva became a runaway hit.  So I would be willing to say the first real "post Eva" Anime was a show the premiered the day after Pokémon did, Revolutionary Girl Utena.

What's kind of sad is how the 2010s couldn't produce it's own Big Three, not really.  Toonami and Adult Swim were merged together by Cartoon network so now on western TV Shounen shows air as part of a block their actual target audience is not supposed to be watching, and nothing else airs on TV anymore but on the same streaming apps as the Ecchi shows too raunchy even for Adult Swim to handle.  So Fairy Tail, My Hero Academia and Pretty Cure have been talking points of the established Anime community, but no actual kids are watching them in the West.

I fear this is bad news for the future of the Western Anime community, we need to get the stuff made for kids where kids can actually find them in order to keep reproducing.

Zelda Theory: Ocarina of Time's Forest Temple is a Martyrium

Afraid I won't be doing much for Zelda Month this year, just this idea I'd had floating around in my head for awhile.

The Forest Temple of all the OoT Temples is the most mysterious in terms of what kind of Temple it could be.  The others were built by some group in the region to serve some purpose. But the Kokiri certainly didn't build this Temple.

One thing I notice about the Forest Temple is that it has some thematic Death associations shared only with the Shadow Temple, like Stalfos showing up.

Let's look at a map of the Forest Temple, focusing on the First Floor since that gives us the best look at the overall outline.  I had to screenshot this myself since no fansites just use the official Maps anymore.

Here some Screenshots of the main Room.

Notice how the celling looks like the inside of a Dome?  I wonder how no one ever observed that before?  Also, the main room's octagonal shape. That last one without the black sidebars isn't mine but one I found before deciding to resort to making my own.

That basic lay out reminds me of a Byzantine Martyrium.  

Here is the layout of a Cathedral from Bosra Syria.

Here is the Sergius, Bacchus and Leontius Cathedral in Istanbul.

Here are the Ruins of the St Philip Church of ancient Heirapolis in Turkey.

Similar kind of Octagonal structure with a Dome.  

But in this comparison where the actual Ciborium designating the resting place under the Dome would be is the 4 Torches and the Elevator going down to the lowest level.  Perhaps the Boss room was once a Tomb?

Whose Tomb would this be?  The Royal Family were buried in Kakariko.  Maybe it was the Tomb of the First Hero?  And that's somehow connected to how his garb became the basis for how the Kokiri dress?

The 2000s were Anime's most Revolutionary Decade

I don't think Anime has changed more in any single decade then it did in the 2000s.

At the start it looks a lot like the late 90s and by the end it looks almost like what 2010s Anime has been.  That's normal of course.  My point lies more in how radically different the 90s are from the 2010s.  In a lot of ways the early 90s only looks a couple upgrades different from the late 70s.  However comparing what was airing in December of 1999 to January of 2010, it can be hard to believe that took only 1 decade.  

The 2010s meanwhile as much as I've loved the Volume of Anime they've given me (about half of everything I've watched), do feel like they've mostly been defined by a handful of trends.

The 2000s were the most experimental decade, a decade where seeds planted in the 90s were nurtured and cultivated to eventually fully blossom into what we see now.

How did the Magical Girl genre go from Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura to Madoka Magica and Yuki Yuna?  Well stuff like Magical Girl Lyricla Nanoha fills in the gaps.  But in the world of Magical Girl shows that stayed strictly kids' shows, the first 6 years of Pretty Cure laid the foundations of everything that franchise has been doing since.

When it comes to the really out there trippy stuff, yeah everything in the 2000s may be standing on the shoulders of Eva, Utena and Lain, but that just helps them reach greater heights.

Is Mecha dead?  That's a question that's been haunting Anime discourse for awhile now, and I'm not interested in answering what most people mean by that question.  What I miss about the late 90s and 2000s was how Mecha just sorta popped up in shows that weren't mainly Mecha shows.  Like oh you're gonna do Futuristic Space Opera Anime Count of Monte-Cristo, of course the duel is gonna be with giant robots instead of swords or guns.  And even among stuff that Mecha could be considered the main genre classification, today they are usually one of three things, trying to be Eva, trying to be Gundam, or very rarely trying to be Mazinger Z.  It's only in the 2000s that we had a lot of Mecha shows that don't easily fit into any of those.

The nature of these transitions were complicated.  Partly in how often Anime is behind it's source material.  A lot of the trends that have defined mid to late 2010s Anime were already flourishing in these more niche mediums in the late 90s and early 2000s.  Remember when the Sword Art Online Anime debuted it's source material's original publication was already a full decade old, older then some well known franchises that got animated a lot sooner.

Light Novels have existed and been an occasional source material for Anime longer then Visual Novels have.  But in the 90s and very early 2000s the kinds of stories an Anime fan would associate with the term "Light Novel" were completely different.

You could conceivably take any year from the 2000s and argue it to be a key transitional year.  But for the rest of this post I shall focus on arguing for 2006, simply because some shows from that year have been on my mind.

Prior to 2006 no Visual Novels got any 2 cour Anime adaptations, AniDB may list some but I'm pretty sure those are based on games that don't properly count as VNs under the strictest definition.  But in 1 year 2006 saw the debuts of three 2 cour Visual Novel Anime, Higurashi, Fate/Stay Night and KyoAni's Kanon.  Two were instant hits that were in some way followed up immediately.  The one that didn't quite take off as immediately eventually dwarfed the rest to become one of the most all consuming brands in all of Anime.

And in the world of Anime adapted from Light Novels, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya single handedly changed everything.  Though The Familiar of Zero also got it's Anime that year.

In addition to shows that were seemingly giving birth to the 2010s in that year, there were also shows that were in some ways send offs to trends of prior eras.  Nerima Daikun Brothers isn't technically the last Nabeshin Anime, but I feel it was mostly the last gasp of the style of Anime comedy popularized by Excel Saga.  Meanwhile Strawberry Panic felt like the Magnum Opus of everything the Yuri Genre had been for the prior half century.

And Pokémon quite literally transitioned from Advance Generation to Diamond and Pearl.  At the same time it's English localizers made some production transitions.

There was also plenty of stuff that feels just as related to what came before as to what came since, but still while being innovative.  Code Geass, Death Note, La Chevlair D'Eon, Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl.  And then there was a show that wound up making a good case study in Anime obscurity.

Update: On my Twitter thread promoting this post I wound up talking about an interesting 2007 show.

https://twitter.com/KuudereKun888/status/1459123983417229338

Mark Millar's Moonie denial

In JLA issue 27 cover date March 1999 written by Mark Millar, the Martian Manhunter disguises himself as a Japanese Woman and uses the name Rei Hino.  Bruce Wayne immediately knew that was J'onn because he recognized that name as having something to do with Mars.

Sailor Moon fans immediately deduced that J'onn was naming himself after Sailor Mars, and apparently Batman was also familiar with Sailor Moon.

Thing is Mark Millar has denied that this was an intentional Sailor Moon reference, saying...

"I was told it translated loosely as POET OF MARS, which is what J'onn's occupation was back on his homeworld. It had zero to do with Sailor Moon."

But that explanation doesn't make sense.  Rei Hino does NOT mean "poet of mars".

Hino means "of Fire", the Kanji for Fire in that name is also part of the Japanese name for the Planet Marts, Kasei which means "Fire Star" but is spoken differently in that word.  So in context Hino is a fitting surname to give someone you're associating with Mars, but it's not on it's own inherently a reference to Mars.

Nor does Rei mean Poet, according to Wordhippo the Japanese words for Poet all have "jin" in them.  The Wikipedia page for the name Rei lists many different Kanji and meanings for Rei, but none is Poet.

So either Mark Millar is lying, or someone lied to Mark Millar.  Who told him this name translated that way, and why were they offering a translation of this name specifically?

Millar wrote this individual Issue, but it's actually still during the Run of Grant Morrison.  There are things about Grant Morrison that make me suspect he would like a lot of Anime, including Sailor Moon.  So is it possible the real culprit here is Grant Morrison?

If I described the premise of the Black Moon saga (the Manga version not the 90s Anime) to a bunch of DC Nerds but avoided like names and stuff, they'd probably say "that sounds like a Grant Morrison comic".  But Naoko Takeuchi did that before it became Grant Morrison's thing.

Morrison's key theme for his JLA run was equating each JLA member with an Olympian deity.  So it's easy to imagine he was researching lots of ways those deities were used in modern pop culture, especially stuff that can be considered Superhero stories.

Clannad season 1 is underrated

It doesn't surprise me that most discussion of Clannad is always going to involve the actual ending of the story.  But every Video Essay on Clannad is never bringing up any season 1 specific content at all, or even the early part of season 2 really, since what "After Story" strictly means in the VN doesn't start till the High School stuff is over, I think, I haven't actually played it.

I feel that unintentionally gives newcomers the impression that you could practically just skip season 1.  Though I also think some of these snobbier Essayists very intentionally do wish they could just skip the High School Harem anime and get right to the adult life tearjerker.

Thing about season 1 of Clannad is it only feels incomplete if you know there is more story because you played the source material, saw the Dezaki film, or read a wiki.  As a two cour Romance Anime it's as satisfying as Toradora, it ends with the main couple having not only gotten together but done something as a couple.  And what the final episodes focus on is the wrapping up of what was nominally the show's main plotline from the start.

And in the meantime all of the secondary Waifus got their time to shine.  The ones the OVAs focus on are said to have not had their Arcs properly covered by the main Anime.  But the Twins never needed an Arc, they just are fundamentally entertaining whenever they're on screen, they work best as side characters to everyone else's stories, the R2-D2 and C-3PO of Clannad.  And Tomoyo does become President, her longer term end goal isn't achieved on screen but who expected that to happen in High School anyway?  Well by Anime standards I guess everyone.

But while Season 1 can be a satisfying stand alone Anime without the After Story, After Story doesn't work without season 1.  It admits in it's very name that it is merely the Coda to the Love Story told in season 1.  The goofy Harem Anime antics are what gets us invested in the characters enough to care what happens After.  Everything in season 1 that seems irrelevant to the core of After Story plot wise is a compliment thematically.  After Story is a sequel, a very good one, but still a sequel.

I'd been wanting to make this rant for awhile, and I wish I had done so before watching Kanon in September, because now I can't praise Clannad without adding that I like Kanon more.  Objectively Clannad is Key's Magnum Opus due in large part to the ambition of After Story.  But the characters of Kanon are simply more appealing to me personally, specifically how they are in the English Dub.

I would recommend new fans watch the KyoAni Key Seasonal Trilogy in the order they were animated.  I haven't watched Air yet (I'm annoyed it's NOT on any of the legal streaming sites), but as a single cour show it's bound to be the least satisfying to me.  But being shorter may also be what would make it a better entry point to this style of Anime for some newbies.  So Air then Kanon then Clannad then After Story.

Update: I've started Air and the one cour limitations are showing and maybe it wasn't a good idea to guess it'd be the best entry point.  I'm enjoying it because it is still essentially more of what I liked in Kanon and Clannad and since I've seen them I can imagine what the more fleshed out versions of these arcs would be like.  But as someone's first exposure to Key's style it might not be a great first impression.

It turns out it was mainly just the arcs covered by episodes 3-6 that felt very trimmed down, the rest of it was solid.  But I would still now say to start with Kanon.

Anime Update for last two weeks

YuYuYu season 3 episode3 continues the saga of Mebuki-San, and it’s pretty good.  It was also amusing to see our usual Hero Club from an outside perspective.

Million Lives Isekai episode 20 was decent.

The third episode of The Detective Is Already Dead wasn’t as good as the first two.

Battle Game in 5 Seconds episode 8 was good.

I checked out the first 3 episodes of Pokemon Evolutions, and they were pretty good.

The Saints Magic Power is Omnipotent episode 11 was neat.

And Slime Incarnation episode 44 was also fun.

The fourth episode of Pokemon Evolutions was nice.

Episode 4 of YuYuYu season 3 jumped around a bit.

Episode 21 of Million Lives Isekai was fine I guess.  I think I might be about ready to move this show to On Hold.

The Penultimate episode of SSSS.Dynazenon was pretty good.

Realist Hero episode 7 was interesting.

I’ve moved The Detective is Already Dead to On Hold.  Both of the first two episodes were great, but once I found out this is another one not consistently coming out every week, I decided episode 3 wasn’t compelling enough for me to keep up with it.

Well I watched Loups-Garous for the heck of it, and it was good.

Battle Game episode 9 was good, but the CGi animation for the big guy wasn’t pretty, it gave me flashbacks to the latter part of SpiderChan.

I’ve finished The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent and rated it as Very Good.

SlimeIncarnation episode 45 was pretty Dope.

Frankenstein is a lot older then Dracula

Because of their Iconic Universal Films both coming out in 1931, and then Hammer doing their versions close to each other, then the 90s 'put name of book Author in film title' versions (and as a Weeb I should add their Toei Anime TV movies).  We tend to think of their histories as being parallel.  But they weren't always.

In 1931 Dracula was in the grand scheme of things still a fairly new addition to popular culture.  The same age Harry Potter and Pokémon will be in 2031, and about the same age Late 80s stuff is now, or Star Wars a decade ago when the Disney buyout first happened.  There were people alive in 1931 who remembered when the original book came out, in fact Bela Lugosi himself was a teenager then but not in the right region to have likely read it that early.  Also Stoker's wife was still alive when it's sorta sequel was made.

For Frankenstein however, 1931 was the same year as the Centennial of the Novel's THIRD edition.  There is still less time separating us from the Universal Film then separated the Universal Film from the original novel's publication in 1818.  The Creature being popularly thought of as a tall green skinned flat headed monster with bolts in his neck has been the case for less then half his existence thus far.

This fact is technically well known, but I don't think we often process the implications of that, we think of the Universal Film as still close to the beginning of Frankenstein's cultural legacy, even though it's very much not.

Between the novel's 1st and 3rd edition was a Stage version in 1823 called Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein.  A lot of the pop culture Frankenstein mythology not in the book which many assume began with the 1931 film is actually already in that 1823 play, like the Creature being created in a Castle.  Mary Shelly's own comments on the play cite a memorable moment being the Doctor shouting "IT LIVES!!!!!".  The actor who played The Creature in that version passed away 20 years before Boris Karloff was born.

Ya know the not in the Book trope of Dr. Frankenstein having a Hunchbacked assistant named Igor?  Well Igor being the name originated with Ygor played by Bela Lugosi in 1939's Son of Frankenstein.  In the 1931 Universal film that character was named Fritz and played by Dwight Frye, and that was also his name in the 1823 stage play.  Fritz was the name of this character for longer then Igor has been, it was Fritz for over a century but one Bela Lugosi performance changed it forever.

An 1826 French Play by Charles Nodier called Le Monstre et le Magicien (The Monster and the Magician) is considered an unofficial adaptation of Frankenstein by the people at BlackCoatPress.  Frank Morlock wrote an English translation and they published it alongside Hugo's own Notre-Dame de Paris stage version (the same one Lindsay Ellis talked about) in a volume called Frankenstein Meets The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, the title being justified by a thrown in original short story by Morlock himself.

But guess what, Frankenstein and his Creature had even already encountered a Vampire a decade before Dracula was published in the 1887 musical burlesque Frankenstein, or The Vampire's Victim.  This YT video features a song from it.

That of course brings us to how if you defined Dracula by more then just the name and consider him him an evolution of Lord Ruthven, he can be considered exactly as old as Frankenstein being born from the same legendary Ghost Story competition in 1817, and did get a lot more Stage versions in between.  For more on that subject I recommend the book Stage Blood: Vampires of the 19th-Century Stage by Roxana Stuart, and also the translations of French Ruthven productions published by BlackCoatPress, the plays translated by Frank Morlock and a Novel by Brian Stableford.

Halloween Anime Recommendations Redux

I figured I’m long overdue for an updating of my Anime Halloween Recommendations.  This one will mostly not be about ranking them besides that I will start with is my Number 1.  Instead I will divide it into sections.

I’ll try to always identify places where you can legally stream them, but some can’t be legally streamed anywhere and I feel it's risky to publicly name any unofficial sites on my public blog.  Note anything I say is on Crunchyroll should also be on VRV, but at this point VRV is no longer worth the extra money it costs. I think more of these are on HIDIVE than any other single site, fortunately HIDIVE has a fairly cheap monthly subscription, and they offer a 14 day Free trial.

My Absolute Number 1.

Is still Higurashi When They Cry.  But it has become necessary recently for me to qualify myself.  Start with the first season of the original 2006 Studio Deen Anime which you can watch on HIDIVE, sadly only that of the older Higurashi Anime was ever Dubbed.  Then watch Season 2 also on HIDIVE which is also called Kai.  

Then take a break, sit on that material knowing that for a long time that was the entire story besides some ambiguously canonical side stories.  

Then watch the Rei OVAs also on HIDIVE, then the Kira OVAs which aren’t.  

Then watch Umineko When They Cry which also isn’t legally streaming anywhere, most hardcore fans hate that Anime especially but I prefer it to the VN’s story.

Then take a longer break, and consider watching Gou and SOTSU which are Higurahsi When They Cry New on Hulu.  I find these to have worthwhile content but not nearly the masterpieces the original story was.  So please treat their canonicity as optional.  [August 2022 Update: Gao and Stosu are also on Crunchyroll now including an English Dub.  I hate that this has a Dub but not Kai or Rei.]

Part 2: Some Retro Recommendations.

I mean truly retro, like even most Millennials can't remember when they were brand new.

The Vampire Princess Miyu OVAs from the 80s which are on three Free streaming sites, TubiTV, RetroCrush and Midnightpulp.  It’s a four episode OVA originally but sometimes it’s streamed as two Volumes in which what is usually referred to as the second episode is part of Volume 1.  Also in this case only the Dub is streaming for some reason. [Update March 2023: it's gone from Tubi now but still on the other two.]

Vampire Hunter D, the original 1986 film which holds up better than it’s overhyped sequel.  HIDIVE streams this one both Subbed and the Sentai Dub, which is a good Dub.  But it seems that you will have to turn to Piracy or finding old VHS tapes if you want to experience the original Streamline Dub.

Kyoufu Densetsu Kaiki! Frankenstein called in English The Monster Of Frankenstein or Frankensteins Monster, Horror Legend - Bizarre! Frankenstein.  This movie also isn’t legally streaming anywhere. I watched it on YouTube, however it might not be there anymore since it’s Toei and they've gotten more aggressive recently as PreCure and Sailor Moon focused YouTubers have learned.  It has a Dub that was actually recorded in the 80s, like one of the very oldest Dubs in existence.  I reviewed the movie on MAL a few years ago.

Part 3: Some Millennial era Stuff.

Nightwalker which is an Anime I talked about earlier in the Month. [Update: it's now on RetroCrush]

Hellsing, I only recommend the original, never Ultimate.  This one’s on Funimation.  [Update August 2022: Hellsing is on Cruncyhroll now.]

Witch Hunter Robin, which I’m personally very nostalgic for, but I don’t know how many others remember it.  It’s also on Funimation.  [Update March 2023: and now it's on Crunchyroll.]

Princess Resurrection is more Campy Halloween fun than ever actually scary, but I enjoyed it.  It’s another one on HIDIVE.

Part 4: If you’re into Fate/ try some other Nasuverse Type Moon stuff.

Kara No Kyoukai, called Garden of Sinners in English, can now be streamed on Crunchyroll but it doesn’t have a Dub.  It’s from UFOtable who did the Fate/Zero Anime, the TV Anime of Unlimited Blade Works and the Heaven’s Feel movies so it looks as great as they do.  And Yuki Kajiura does the music which is always a treat.

Tsukihime has an older Anime from 2003 which does have a Dub but isn’t legally streaming anywhere.  Many hate that Anime, but I’m baffled by people who continue to dismiss it but defend Deen/Stay Night. I feel it holds up far better.  Because Tsukihime is more Horror Genre then Fate/ I feel it’s “cheaper” looking presentation suits it better then Deen/Stay Night, similar to Deen’s Higurashi stuff [Update too late: turns out Tsukihime is on HIDIVE as well and I didn't notice.]

Part 5: Zombie Anime

If you want an Anime Version of a George A Romero Zombie movie, I recommend School Live! on HIDIVE.

If you want something more like Zach Snyder’s Zombie movies I recommend HighSchool of The Dead also on HIDIVE. [Update: I also spotted this on Hulu today.]

If you want something outside the standard Zombie format altogether but that still feels appropriate for Halloween, Sankarea was a good show.  I could have sworn I stumbled upon it earlier this year on either Hulu or Netflix, but now it’s showing up only on Funimation.  [Update August 2022: This is on Crunchyroll now.]

Part 6: Something very Modern.

In/Spectre from last year was a very fun and thought provoking show.  It’s on HBOMax and I’m sure other sites too, but I want people to choose sites like HBOmax, Disney+, Netflix or Hulu over Anime specific sites when they can to encourage those sites to consider Anime worth investing in so more Anime can become more easily accessible.  [Update August 2022: and thanks to recent devleoptments I no longer want to encourage people to Sub to HBOmax, fortunately In/Spectre including the Dub is on Crunchyroll now.]

Ms. Vampire who lives in my neighborhood is a slice of life Anime with Yuri undertones about Vampires.  It’s on Crunchyroll and apparently it has a Dub now, I’m pretty sure it didn’t have a Simuldub and thus I had watched it Subbed.

Carmilla adaptation Pet Peeves

This can be viewed as a companion piece of sorts to Carmilla should be allowed to be a Bad Girl.  But here I shall talk about things that bug me in Carmilla adaptations that some may view as a bit more arbitrary but do regardless annoy me.  Some are not the complete deal breakers others are, the lower on the list the more tolerable it is, but it also depends just how well done everything else is.

Depictions of Carmilla can fit into two categories, ones that are in some way an adaptation of the original story however loosely.  And new stories featuring the same character, presented as perhaps in continuity with the original story, or a version of it.  The Pet Peeves I shall vent about here are all things that can be equally relevant to either.

Pet Peeve No. 0: Carmilla In Name Only.

I’m not properly numbering this one because all of them are often symptoms of it.  But it does annoy me when a story just uses the name Carmilla because she's the only female Public Domain Vampire with even close to the same name recognition as Dracula.  There are other more niche ones you can choose, a lot of them come from 19th Century French Literature.  Clairmonde  of La Morte Amoureuse by Theophile Gautier would be the most traditional for a Het Femme Fatale Vampire, the others I’m thinking of don’t have English translations that are PD so we have to turn to BlackCoatPress.  But if a female counterpart to Dracula is all you're going for just use the one in Dracula's Guest, or Dracula's Daughter, or make a Vampire out of a female historical figure comparable to Vlad Tepes like one who'll come up later in this post.

You could say Dracula is also subject to this, but he has so many more depictions in total that the In Name Only ones feel less offensive in their very existence.  But also all the major Dracula depictions, however many liberties they have, still feel like a take on Stoker’s character. The same can’t be said for Carmilla.

And no being a Lesbian isn't enough to make one more then in name only.  Being Lesbian itself isn't a character trait, it's how her attraction to women effects that story that makes it part of Carmilla's character.

Pet Peeve No. 1: Straight Washing Carmilla.

Given how much of Carmilla’s defining characteristics are tied to being a lover of Girls, any “Carmilla” who is completely Hetersoexual is obviously also an example of No. 0.  Perhaps you don’t even believe me that this has happened, but trust me it has, I no longer remember any titles to single them out, but they exist.  [Update: 2005's The Batman Vs Dracula made Carmilla the name of Dracula's wife, so that's one example.] 

The gray area is, can Carmilla swing both ways?  It can seem like Bi Erasure to say definitely No when the original Novella does imply she had a male lover during her human life, and suggesting her orientation changed as a symptom of being a Vampire would be very problematic.  However we don’t know that story from her POV, only how it’s told by a generations later kinsman of a person said to have been her lover.  Carmilla The Return is a Prose Novel I liked but some things are blurry in my memory of it right now, I think that Carmilla might have been a little Bi but only in Threesomes where another girl was present, but again I could be remembering it wrong, Lauren in the novel is definitely Bi.

Lust for A Vampire is the second film of Hammer’s Karnstein Trilogy, and probably the one I like the most.  As a Carmilla film it does most of my Pet Peeves. But like how many say the 98 Godzilla would be a fine Kaiju movie if it weren’t presented as specifically Godzilla, this is one of the better Hammer Vampire movies.  The 98 Godzilla however perhaps wouldn't have been watched at all if it didn’t have the Godzilla name, this movie puts neither Carmilla or Karnstein in the title.  The informal name of the Trilogy is Karnstein not Carmilla, so why couldn’t it just star another vampire of the same house?  Yutte Stensdaard is one of my favorite On Screen Vampires of all time, she has exactly the vibes and look I would want a Bisexual Femme Fatale Vampiress to have.  She just shouldn’t have been called Carmilla.

Pet Peeve No. 2: Making Carmilla’s origin story that she committed Suicide.

I don’t know why this is so common.  The original Novella does supply an origin story and it’s not that.  There is some evidence that one of the old superstitions about Vampires is that they are sometimes products of Suicide (The Virgin Vampire is a 1825 pre-Carmilla example of a Vampiress with a Suicide origin story).  So it makes sense that there is some Vampire fiction exploring that, but I don’t get why it’s so common to make that specifically Carmilla's origin story?

Sometimes it’s not Carmilla herself who committed Suicide but Suicide is still made a theme of the story. .Even then I’d rather not have that heavy subject crammed into Carmilla.

Pet Peeve No. 3: Making her some epic Rival to Dracula.

So with my writing this in 2021 many may take this one as a stab at specifically Castlevania, and it partly is.  But it also kind of begins with Hammer.  And Castlevania’s Carmilla I firstly consider an In Name Only example.

The Vampire Lovers is by some metrics the most faithful adaptation of the book, the same kinds of metrics that give that title to Coppola’s film for Dracula, indeed it takes more from it's book then any of Hammer's Dracula or Frankenstein films.  However one thing that ruins it’s ability to feel like the Novella is that the Novella is a very intimate story, The Vampire Lovers wants to feel like an epic battle between good and evil.

However one thing the Hammer Karnstein saga couldn’t make up its mind on is if Carmilla is actually the most important Karnstein or just the one we happen to be following the most.  You see I’m fine with the idea of the Karnsteins as an Aristocratic Vampire House doing some Game of Thrones type stuff in a secret Vampire Underworld.  But Carmilla herself should be neither the progenitor or head of the family but rather someone more concerned with her own personal Sapphic conquests than any Vampire Politics.  Ideally she should be the Tyrion of the family.

I think this is one of the causes of Carmilla being conflated with Countess Elizabeth Bathory. I decided not to give that one it’s own number since I only know of it happening once, in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, but that once is enough to annoy me and cause me to fear discovering that it's been a trend I hadn't noticed.

Pet Peeve No. 4. Making Carmilla Blonde

Actually any hair color other than pitch black will bug me, but Blonde is what usually happens.  Also the person who should be Blonde is Laura.  You can call this my most superficially pedantic complaint, but the way these characters are described in the original story is vividly etched into my brain, it’s difficult to accept any deviation on that point.  That movies keep changing it, often swapping them completely, baffles me.

As far as movies go I think only Meg Tilly in the 80s Nightmare Classics TV movie looks right.  Though if we count films that are not Carmilla in name but clearly modeled after her, then Ernessa in The Moth Diaries has a great Carmilla look.

Pet Peeve No. 5: Carmilla being harmed by The Sun.

The concept of the Sun being Fatal to Vampires was born out of a misunderstanding of what happened at the end of the 1922 film Nosferatu.  Bram Stoker’s Novel provides some prior precedent for the Sun having some kind of effect, but Stoker’s Dracula definitely has no trouble walking around freely in it.  No pre-Stoker vampire has even that, when they’re Nocturnal it’s because of a positive relationship to the Moon not a negative one with the Sun.

This is one of the few things Hammer’s Karnstein Trilogy got right.  Even once they drifted far from being even remotely connected to the original Novella, Karnstein Vampires remained unaffected by Sunlight.

In this case modern adaptations retconning in the Sunlight weakness like they do for all Pre-Dracula Vampires doesn’t bug me as much as people analyzing the original story wanting to retrofit it in.  Their argument seems to be based on LeFanu’s oft memed overuse of the word “Languid”, they seem to think the Sun is what’s making her Languid.

There are perhaps two reasons to describe a Vampire as “Languid”.  Number one, in normal humans it’s a pretty natural side effect of staying up all night getting what little sleep you do get during the day.  And then there is how The New Testament refers to physical death as being asleep, so there is a natural logic then to depicting the Undead as seeming like they should be sleeping right now but can’t. Remember the name of the original anthology Carmilla was apart of was a paraphrase of Paul.

One of the most memorable quotes of the Novel to me is Laura saying “the sunlight did not diminish her beauty”.

That’s not the only traditional Vampire weakness people try to retcon into the story. Her reaction to the Funeral procession is taken as evidence of standard vampiric aversion to religious relics and symbols.  However elsewhere she herself bought Laura a trinket said to repel Vampires, it obviously didn’t repel her.  There are potentially two things going on with the funeral scene.  One, the dead girl is one of her victims, and maybe this is a hint at Carmilla’s conscience.  Second the scene also reflects Carmilla's classism, she’s expressing her Argath level disdain for peasants.

P.S.

There used to be on YouTube this independently made dramatization of the opening scene of Carmilla that I really liked, it’s tone was perfect.  But now I can’t find it.  It could be just too buried under all the newer post viral Webseries Carmilla content, but I even tried using Google to look for specifically older stuff.

December 2021 Update: I found that dramatization on YouTube of the opening scene I was having trouble finding, turns out it was buried in my favorites.  It's called Carmilla (first 3 minutes).

https://youtu.be/9yIcyAq2DHw?list=FL75vHmAjjxxgZ61xHMmWNMg

Anime Gaiden, upping The Halloween

I finished Princess Resurrection and it was fun.  Another Anime I recommend for Halloween season is last year's In/Spectre which you can watch Dubbed on HBOmax.

I decided to watch the Live Action Japanese movie Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl.  It was weird but entertaining. I should warn you however that there are Ganguro girls, and in live action they are not pleasant to look at.  It’s amusing to me how by 2009 the sympathetic Vampire trend had reached the point where they made a Dracula vs Frankenstein movie where the Frankenstein Monster was the villain.  

SSSS.Dynazenon episode 10 used a very common trope, but did something I wasn’t expecting with it.

I’m Standing on a Million Lives episode 19 (or 7 of season 2) was interesting.  The new girl I’m pretty sure is voiced by Wendee Lee.  I thought she was semi-retired and so was quite surprised to hear her in a seasonal Isekai that gets no actual respect.  Her character’s also a Lesbian, no subtext she just outright said it.  That’s exactly what people like Erica Freidman have been wanting more of.  So that’s pretty exciting.

We also learned that for once more than just people from Japan are getting Isekied to this world. Apparently the MC has been speaking too “formally” however this refers to nuances of Japanese that aren’t really translatable.

So episode 2 of YuYuYu season 3 was mostly about animating the Mebuki stuff which LN readers knew about way back during season 2.  But they still won’t animate NoWaYu.

Pokémon: Secrets of The Jungle was great. It’s one of a number of Pokémon movies that are trying to be quite a bit about Environmentalism, but it’s the best of that bunch in my view, regardless of my Nostalgia for some of the earlier ones.  These Pokémon movies are often compared to Miyazaki films like Princess Mononoke, but Pokémon's philosophy on this subject is very different from Miyazaki’s.  Miyazaki, even at his most empathetic to Humanity is still ultimately misanthropic.  Pokémon's message that Humanity and Nature can find a way to live in balance, and that even technology can ultimately help us do that, is much more appealing to me as a Communist.

I watched the Leiji Matsumoto Bohemian Rhapsody video which I learned existed because of Trixie’s recent videos on Star Wars Visions, it was good.

I decided to watch Vampire Hunter D again. I watched it on HIDIVE which obviously has the more recently made Sentai dub. I'm pretty sure I first watched it when the Streamline Dub was still all that existed, but it’s been so long I can’t remember what those voices sounded like.  At any rate I think I liked it more this time than I did the first time.  John Gremillion as D sounds like Liam Neeson, I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but he really does sound like him.

Realist Hero episode 6 provided some interesting world building.

I finished Castlevania on Netflix and it was fine, it’s still not Anime but it’s fine.

The Detective is Already Dead episode 2 was pretty cool, I now get the point of telling a story with this title.  The bad reviews of this show are critiquing it as a Mystery show when that’s really not what it’s trying to be at all.  And even if it was, well I already made a post on that subject.

Episode 7 of Battle Game in 5 Seconds referenced the Hello Fellow Kids Meme, in the Dub at least, and I rather liked it.

The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent episode 10 proved pretty good even though I felt a little bored at the start.

Well in SlimeIncarnation episode 43 the Battle is finally starting.

I've still seen more Anime from 2017 then any other single year

43 entries I've watched to Completion on MAL.  It's not by a super significant margin since second place is 37 and a few are about 33.  But it's interesting.

Again 2017 is the year I started truly following Anime seasonally, in 2016 I had only started becoming vaguely aware what was airing in the later half.  So before that a lot of the flash in the pan shows I'm less likely to have even heard of.  

And even the 2017 shows I didn't watch at the time but watched later I was aware of at the time and my memory of the discussion around them was a factor in my eventually watching them.  Except for ChaoS;Child, for some reason I didn't hear about that at the time even though it's related to a huge franchise so that's weird, also that one show technically takes up 3 of my MAL entries due to the movie and episode 0.

So that explains why I've seen more of 2017 then any prior year, but I've stayed following seasonal Anime, and gotten better about being aware of even the more obscure stuff as I've increased my connections.  2020 had less stuff then usual, but still 2018 and 2019 generally had more stuff, at least of the Genres that most interest me.

Maybe it's the sentimental factor of it being my first year.  I oddly became nostalgic for it as soon as it was over.  And there are still shows I haven't watched or finished yet that I want to, I even keep considering returning to some of the shows I dropped.  With the years since some shows I waited to binge, but most of what I passed on at first I still haven't given a second thought to.

Perhaps it's a good time to revisit my rankings as they have changed.  In Another World With my Smartphone still has a special place in my heart, but I'm no longer willing to call it the best of the year simply for my special relationship with it.  I really do think the best show of 2017 is probably Fate/Apocrypha, it was on my mind a lot at the time and it holds up when I return to it.

Anime Update, entering Halloween season

Episode 9 of SSSS.Dynazenon finally dropped, and it was good stuff.

The Seven Samurai arc of Million Lives Isekai had a satisfying ending.  I’ll at least start the next arc when next Friday rolls around.

The first Episode of Yuki Yuna Is A Hero: The Great Mankai Chapter was fun.

The first episode of The Detective is Already Dead was pretty good stuff.

Battle Game in 5 Seconds episode 6 finally had the MC use his ability to obtain something other than the Hand Cannon.

On October 4th after watching Trixie’s video on Digimon I decided to at least watch the original short film, since it was written by Reiko Yoshida who’s called one of my favorite Anime writers.  I decided to watch it Subbed because the presentation of “Digimon The Movie” is an awkward mess.  It wound up being a fitting movie for October since it’s essentially a Kaiju film.  It’s a pretty good atmospheric little film.

Speaking of watching stuff for Halloween season.  I already made a post on NightWalker, and I also started watching Princess Resurrection.  

The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent episode 9 was good.

Slime Incarnation episode 42 introduced some new characters and clarified some things.  Only 6 episodes left for the season, things should get moving now.

Follow my Anime viewing in real time at these links.

https://myanimelist.net/profile/KuudereKun

https://twitter.com/KuudereKun888

Vampire Private Detectives, there was even an Anime one

Back in the late 2000s I caught a handful of episodes of a TV series called Moonlight which first aired in 2007-2008, who’s basic premise reminded me of Buffy’s spin off Angel, particularly its first season and a half which aired in late 1999 and 2000.  I sometimes went to Moonlight’s IMDB board where I found that naturally I wasn’t the only one to see the similarity.  However others pointed out that the Vampire Private Detective Idea had been done previously by a Canadian TV series called Forever Knight which aired from May 1992 to May 1996.

Fast forward to 2021 and I’ve become a Weeb looking into the history of Anime Adapted from Visual Novels (and Adventure Games that often get confused with Visual Novels), and on AniDB I find that the Summer of 1998 had both of the first two TV Anime it lists as Visual Novel adaptations, one is called Night Walker:Mayonakano Tantei.  It’s official English Title is Nightwalker: The Midnight Detective but it seems a more accurate English translation of the subtitle would be Eternal Darkness.  The Game it was adapted from came out in 1993, it seems the personality of the Main Character was changed significantly.  The Anime didn’t get it’s English localization till 2001.

I still haven’t seen a single episode of Forever Knight, and as of my starting to write this have only watched the first 3 episodes of Nightwalker.  Still I am fascinated by how many notable variations this one very specific concept had in less than 2 decades.

The idea of having a reluctant Vampire be a Private Detective is one I can easily imagine multiple creators coming up with independently.  It’s a pretty natural way to combine Pulp/Film Noir tropes with Urban Fantasy.  In both Angel and Moonlight the protagonist’s Sire serves as a sort of Femme Fatale.  But in both Nightwalker and Forever Knight the protagonist had a male Sire which I’m sure resulted in some Yaoi shipping.

The Anime nature of Nightwalker certainly makes it stand out within this Tetrad.  The Demons behind our Vampire’s cases kind of have a Youkai vibe.  He also makes weapons from his Blood which anticipates Deadman Wonderland.  And for reasons he has a secretary who’s a Japanese School Girl who wears her School Uniform on the job even though I know in real life you’re not allowed to wear your School Uniform doing other things in Japan, but Citrus is the only Anime to ever acknowledge that.

The Music is interesting, it has this one Guitar riff that keeps making me think of Jesus Christ Superstar.

The Dub is one of those Dubs where the only character who feels off is the main character, this should have been a Crispan Freeman role.  Okay I realize some will assume Hellsing is the Freeman role I’m thinking of given the Vampire context, but in this case I’m actually more thinking of him as Amon in Witch Hunter Robin.

In episode 3 we’re told he became a Vampire centuries ago, but the brief Flashback footage we’re shown has him already in his very 20th Century business suit.  So I’m wondering if there’s an explanation for that or if it's just a huge blunder?

After watching episode 4 of Nightwalker, screw what I said before about Shipping, Cain explicitly calls himself an ex Lover. Also for only being episode 4 it felt pretty big, like a season finale or at least a mid-season finale.  I suspect the source material had enough story for a two cour Anime, but one was all the network felt like investing in.

Well I wound up completing Nightwalker.  It was mostly all good stuff, but the last episode annoyed me a bit.  Also there are dangling plot threads, they were clearly hoping for a season 2 that never happened.

Carmilla should be allowed to be a Bad Girl.

There has been a trend online lately of people complaining about how a lot of these modern Disney remakes and reboots making their classic Villainesses more sympathetic ruins what their original appeal was.  But comparatively they’ve had it a lot better than Carmilla, at least they are still allowed to have some Edge.

Carmilla in the most well known recent adaptations isn’t even allowed to be an Antiheroine, she has to be made completely innocent of any wrong doing in order to be considered good “reclaimed” Lesbian representation.  And I’m seemingly the only person who’s not fond of it.  And no I'm not counting the many In Name Only Camrillas who pop up in franchises that were not originally about her, that Castlevania wanna be Anime's take on the character is a Joke to me.

One thing I want is a genuinely faithful direct adaptation of the original Novella. So many people talking about Camrilla just assume a book written by a Male in Victorian England must have actually had a homophobic agenda and there can’t possibly be any positive pro Lesbian reading to the original text itself.  So we have to change things in order to make it Gay affirming.  One YouTuber in their video on Male Bisexuality in Vampires went into a lot of speculation about Bram Stoker’s own Sexuality.  But no one’s willing to do the same for LeFanu.  As a connoisseur of Lesbian content written by people who were assigned male at birth from different cultures, for reasons I can’t explain Carmilla feels to me potentially like the work of a Transbian Egg who never hatched.

But regardless of what gender LeFanu actually was, something about the Ending, how Laura still misses Camrilla in-spite of everything, tells me Laura was a Lesbian herself, not just a victim of one.

In the 1970s we saw the opposite of this trend I’m complaining about now.  The Lesbian Vampire craze of that decade shows us what it looks like when Straight men write Lesbian erotica while still actually morally condemning it.  They are titillated by it in spite of viewing it as a threat, like how many White Men fetishize their fear of the Black Man’s Penis.

Most of those films were not officially adaptations of Carmilla, but regardless what symbolizes them as a counter point to this modern approach to making Lesbian Vampires more Woke is the Het male Romantic rival for Carmilla, the difference is whether that Het male is a Hero or not.  He's the coin with two sides.

So if you really need to add something to your modern retelling of or sequel to Carmilla to make it more unambiguously Pro-Gay.  Instead of pretending women can never be just as abusive and manipulative as men can, add a Lesbian Romantic Rival, make it a full Lesbian triangle.  In part this is what The Moth Diaries is, which is mostly what I like about that movie, but that film also has this “maybe the MC was just imagining it all” plotline which distracts from that and also just can’t work on film as well as it did in the original Book which I own but haven’t read yet.  There is also a Yuri NTR Manga I like called Your Fault who’s code on a certain website is 115990.  Take that story, make Senpai into Carmilla, but also switch the Hair Colors of the Carmilla and Laura analogues, (I’m also very pedantic about how Carmilla should have Dark Hair and Laura should be Blonde), and you have the start of something pretty good.

I'm not saying she needs to be a one dimensional villain, she should have depth and complexities, and maybe as a part of grander saga one of those villains who seems less evil once you get to contrast her with the greater threats.  And maybe even eventually character developed into more of an Anti-hero.  But her introductory baseline should still be as a Lesbian Femme Fatale.

I could now go deeper into the complex relationship in my mind between Yuri Anime and Lesbian Vampires.  Or the broader problems with making Vampires an allegory for Marginalized groups.  But those are potentially their own posts.  However the next Vampire related post I might make on this Blog for October 2021 will mostly be about Male Vampires.

There are some decent Carmilla adaptations already in existence.  A Radio Drama you can find on YouTube, I think it was a BBC one.  A Polish movie that I can’t fully critique because it’s never been Subbed but it looks better then most glancing at it.  And a Comic Book adaptation that I bought, you won’t find it on Amazon searching for Carmilla because it’s in an Anthology, look for Gothic Classics: Graphic Classics Volume 14.  Due to its lack of Color you could almost mistake it for a Manga adaptation.  And if you want something 80s, try the Nightmare Classics TV Movie starting Roddy MacDowell and Meg Tilly, but even that has some twists I don't like.  I've meanwhile still been unable to find a way to watch 2014's The Curse of Styria.

Among those of us who are true fans of the original Carmilla Novella, the word “Languid” is practically a Meme.  And as someone who likes to intersect my various Nerdy interests, I've started wondering if there is a Dere type I could use to explain what Languid means to my fellow Otaku. An argument could be made for either Nemuidere (Sleepydere) or Darudere (Sluggish).  But The Dere Types Wiki has not proven all that useful in helping me understand these more obscure Deres (as a self identifying Kuudere, I hate their Kuudere page). What I will say is that one Anime character I would definitely describe as Languid is Mako Reizei from Girls Und Panzer.  Margaret Burton in Madlax could also be described as Languid.

Update: So Curse of Styria is on Amazon called Angels of Darkness which doesn't register to me as a great name for a Carmilla adaptation.  It's a decent film, but manages to in it's own way annoy me as an Adaptation.  I guess Carmilla is the one subject where I am everything I hate about VN fanatics hating on every VN Anime.  But the changes I'm being petty about are comparatively far more story relevant.

The End of September Anime Update

I watched the first three episodes of The Pet Girl of Sakura Hall. They were amusing but not sure how motivated I am to continue it.

I also gave Chaos;Head a second chance and this time I completed it and liked it.  The Rocker girl says a lot of stuff that sounds Christian, but that’s really because she’s processing all of this through a Western Fantasy Novel she read, I’d like to think of it as the work of an alternate World-Line C.S. Lewis, or maybe Geroge MacDonald.

Chaos;Child might be even better though.  It has quickly become one of those shows where everything I want to say about it is a spoiler that I don’t want spoiled.  Episode 10 really hits though.

I also started Kanon.  It’s unfortunate that new Anime fans are usually gonna wind up watching Anime based on Key Visual Novels in reverse their release order.  Kanon was probably a groundbreaking franchise in 2002-2006, but now it’s hard not to see it discount Clannad.

Battle Game in 5 Seconds episode 5 was very good once again.

The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent episode 8 was also good.

Episode41 of SlimeIncarnation finally ended their Council of Elrond.

I then finished Kanon and gave it a 10/10, it’s really underrated, people who love Clannad will also love this.  I of course watched the 2006 two cour Anime form Kyoto Animation via its English Dub on Funimation’s website.  The single cour Toei Anime from 2002 doesn't have a Dub and so I didn’t and probably won’t bother.  The Dub was great, never listen to complainers.

Well HigurashiSotsu finally ended, and they played that song the VN Fanatics love so much.  I’m going to have to sit on this for a while still before coming to a true final verdict.

Autumnal Equinox Seasonal Anime Update

Battle Game in 5 Seconds episode 4 was very good.  I think this will probably be my favorite show of the Summer.

In Slime Incarnation episode 40 the Council just keeps Elrondining along.  It also seems to be the only Funimation Simuldub consistently coming out weekly.  SSSS.Dynazenon seems to have just stopped like a month ago. 

Star Wars Visions got it’s own post.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2021/09/star-wars-visions-is-excellent-anime.html

Well, HigurashiSotsu episode 14 was exciting. I’m just happy they included the Chair Meme.  Also something about them having a fight that randomly jumps across different stock franchise settings reminds me of what Evangelion Thrice Upon A Time did.

Million Lives Isekai episode 17 was pretty morally dubious.

Realist Hero episode 5 was fun, they finally got the Polygamy conversation.  I don’t recall if the Manga also mentioned that women with multiple husbands are also allowed, but I’m glad that was included here.

Star Wars Visions is an Excellent Anime and passable Star Wars.

I had my skepticism before it launched given my disappointments with prior attempts at crossing over Anime and a mainstream Hollywood franchise, as well the overall failures of Disney Star Wars.  But now that it’s out it’s precisely as someone who’s ultimately more of an Anime Fan then a Star Wars that I like it.

Now my least favorite episodes are unfortunately the first and the last.  The last is definitely the least, like I get why they felt they needed an episode with a Bad End, but did it have to be the one they actually ended on?  The first episode mostly just looks the least like an Anime, it’s style is more evocative of Ralph Bakshi’s LOTR and Wizards oddly enough, while it’s tropes are more old fashioned Samurai film, so it’s definitely still interesting, but not what the phrase “Star Wars Anime” makes me think of.

Cosmetically there is no reason Anime Star Wars can’t be a thing, the potential conflict is in the themes and morals.  RikaDot has a series of videos on George Lucas’s moral philosophy, the Kreia video, The Heart of Star Wars and The Foundations of Star Wars, and so like him I’ve come to terms with that I enjoy Star Wars in spite of the morality it preaches not because of it.  Meanwhile the Anime that I'm a fan of couldn’t be more antithetical to this. "Attachment is bad" philosophy.  So I knew a Star Wars Anime would have to betray one of them, and I’m glad Visions over all sided with Anime.  

The Shota Jedi Band Leader was attached to his bandmates, and he got their happy ending without even drawing his Lightsaber, instead taking the Macross approach.  The Male Twin defies his Sith Upbringing because of his attachment to his Sister. And then the Bunnygirl heroine of episode 8 is running on pure attachment.

My favorite episodes have the least “let’s do Feudal Japan but in space”. That approach to making an “Anime” version of a Western Property does fit Star Wars more than it does say Batman since the roots of Star Wars to begin with are partly Kurosawa films so I’m not deducting any points for it.  But the fact still remains I’m not actually a Weaboo, I don’t watch Japanimation because I think Sengoku era aesthetics are cool.  I’m an Otaku, what interests me is the Art of a SubCulture the emerged out of modern Tokyo.

Kara in The Ninth Jedi looks exactly like what some people said Rey’s problem was, she is naturally gifted with The Force, no training was needed.  But guess what, we Anime people are much more prepared to accept that, a PreCure doesn’t need to learn how to be a PreCure, she just is. Rey’s problem was her lack of actual personality, Kara has more in this 20 minute short then Rey did in a full Trilogy.

The sixth episode is a throwback to Astroboy basically. It finally destroys the Biological Determinism interpretation of The Force so many complain about by outright having a Droid becoming a Jedi.

Episode 8 is the first time we’ve seen them explore The Empire doing actual Colonialism, and they had the balls to present the Collaborators with actual understanding, the kind of Nuance Anime War stories have all the time, but that Star Wars is too afraid of because of the whole “their supposed represent Nazis” baggage.  Well guess what even many collaborators with the actual Nazis had reasons that had nothing to do with approving of Genocide.

Episode 4 I don’t have any specific comments on, but it was also very well done.

Futari wa Pretty Cure's first 26 Episodes

I have before on this blog claimed we need more 2 Cour ideally 26 episode Magical Girl shows, that the genre is limited by being mostly stuck between single cour shows that have limited time to make their characters stand out, and kids shows it that go on all year.  The Pretty Sammy TV Anime is the one 26 episode show that exists and I give high praise but it's not very accessible right now.  The third season of the Nanoha franchise is 2 cour but it's barely still a Magical Girl show by that point.

However I had forgotten to really acknowledge that the first 26 episodes of the original Futari was Pretty Cure, the very start of the PreCure franchise, pretty much is a 26 episode show.

Every season of PreCure has some kind of midway point climax happen around this point, but it's not the same. To make a comparison to people only familiar with the Sailor Moon formula, most seasons of PreCure have at this point an event that feels similar to the Nephrite and Naru arc's resolution, or the resolving of the Tailsman hunt in episode 22 of S, or finishing the Amazon Trio at that point in SuperS.  However episodes 24-26 of Futari wa feel like 44-46 of the Dark Kingdom, and then episode 27 feels like a Reboot or Pilot of s new series just as much as the first episode of MaxHeart or Sailor Moon R does.

These first 26 episodes even go through a full set of 5 generals.

This aspect of how the first season is structured isn't talked about much, it comes up in neither Tyranno or Magical's videos on season 1.  But I find it fascinating.

I suspect the writers of this show originally simply planned a 2 cour show, and then when Toei said they wanted it to go all year like their prior Magical Girl shows, they decided to simply write a second season instead of dragging out their original plan.

I wish more seasons could have played out this way.  In every other way the future PreCure seasons are generally less "generic" then the original in their storytelling and ideas.  But this is a factor in why I really do think the original has the best pacing, and maybe more of the later shows would have kept me watching longer if they could have had the original's pacing.

And it proves you could write a version of Sailor Moon's Dark Kingdom Arc as a 26 episode show.  In this early part of PreCure each general has on average 5 episodes, you could increase that with only 4 generals instead of 5.  

And when you remove from the 90s Anime's Nephrite and Jedite arcs their most expendable/forgettable episodes, about 7 each is what they had.  So yeah for those Arcs I could almost show you what their 2 cour version would look like by just saying what to skip, except that I wouldn't kill off Nephrite before introducing Mako.