Economic Revolutions in Isekai

Anime that are talked about as being about Economics in all genres tend to be the ones that seem the most Pro-Capitalist, largely because Market Liberals Get-Keep who gets to be considered an Economist.  The Anime that are the most Anti-Capitalist don't really get into the actual weeds of Economics, Capitalism is just a Machine that people feel very angry emotions in opposition to.

But this can often feel the most pronounced in Isekai and other Fantasy Anime of this Isekai era.  Whether it's the nation building Isekai like Realist Hero or the Japanese Gordon Gekko character of High School Prodigies, or just the unforeseen consequence of starting a small business like in Ascendence of a Bookworm.  The notion that introducing Capitalism into a Feudalist Society is a necessary part of "Modernizing" it is a recurring theme.

And the thing is it's a theme a lot of Leftists aren't even fully prepared to disagree with, because the Marxist Analysis of History also maintains the assumption that Capitalism was a necessary improvement over Feudalism.

Now I have come to grow suspicious of the kinds of Socialists who think Capitalism is objectively worse then Feudalism because certain reactionary objections to Capitalism often get wrapped up into such narratives.  The question of which is worse or better between those two Class Based modes of productions doesn't really have a simple answer and is besides the point because the goal should be to make something new.

What I have come to really object to about the Marxist analysis of history is the assumption that you can't go right from Feudalism to Communism, that Capitalism needs to come first for Industrialization and so forth.  Sometimes people argue the failures of the Bolshevik Revolution came down to trying to apply a Marxist approach to Socialism in a society that hadn't been Capitalist yet.  But the thing is the Bolsheviks were operating under the assumption that they had to do Capitalism first, they were simply trying to Speed Run it, and the Mensheviks would have mostly been the same.

I believe the Socialist Revolutionary Party are the faction that should have won the Russian Revolution because they had ideas for how to truly make a Communist Society out of Tsarist Russia without needing to do rapid rushed industrializing first.

There were also Communist theorists and philosophers well before there were Liberal/Capitalist ones, Communist Revolution was proposed at the height of Feudalism by John Ball.  In fact Communism is a truly Ancient idea thanks to Zeno's Republic which was a response to Plato's Republic and Laws whose ideas were basically where Feudalism came from.

So I'd really like for a change to see an Isekai where the modern visitor to a still Feudalist Fantasy world leads it directly to Communism with no Capitalization necessary.

Update October 2024: I recently learned about William Morris a Victorina Era English Marxist who was also a Medvialist and wrote some Proto-Fantasy stories that influenced Tolkien.  Maybe his works could provide good inspiration for what I'd like to see.

Batman 66 WAS Bad Actually (but not for the reason you think).

The problem is that for a few decades everyone had the wrong understanding of why it was Bad.

For the last decade or so internet discourse about Batman 66 has been about defending it because it's okay to have Batman stories that are fun and goofy and not so Dark, and I agree with that.  The problem is from my point of view there is no darker take on Batman then Batman 66.

Chuck Dixon who was born in 1954 recounted once on the playground when the show started saying in reference to it "that's not my Batman"  An eleven or twelve year old Batman fan in 1966 before any truly Dark Batman stories ever existed (even those early Kane and Finger stories are not what you've been told they are) would not have been saying this on the grounds that the show isn't dark and edgy enough for him.

Saying the show was faithful to the Comics of it's time seems justifiable on paper at first when you narrow down "it's time" to being not the whole Silver Age but the Jules Swartz era that started in 64.  The problem is a specific aspect of the tone.

You see Silver Age Comics could often be goofy and silly and dumb, and were often I think self aware of how goofy and silly and dumb they were.  But the core premise of the characters themselves was never the butt of the joke.  They were sincere, as were the Schumacher Batman films, and the Brave and The Bold Cartoon and the Justice League Trapped in Time animated movie, there was a core emotional resonance they each took seriously just like my favorite goofy and silly and dumb Anime or The Princess Bride.

The 66 Batman show was inspired by William Dosier and his friends laughing at the 40s Batman serials, not laughing with them.  They were not an affectionate parody of the comics but a heartless mockery of them.

A Batman who's response to watching someone die is to make a lame pun is far more of a cynical deconstruction of the character then any dark and edgy stories where he kills, because most of those take the concept of Batman killing seriously and have something to say about it, the message in Batman V Superman is that Batman should not kill, the message in Batman 66 is "who cares it's a dumb premise you shouldn't take seriously" they never even consistently kept track of it's Batman's attitude towards a criminal dying.

But people of Dixon's generation who didn't read the Comics or weren't as savvy to all this developed Nostalgia for it without actually understanding what it was doing as did younger generations watching the reruns.  And then as the fans who resented the show wound up getting what they wanted from Bronze Age and Post-Crisis alternatives that were visually Darker at the same time they slowly forgot the real reason Batman 66 was offensive.  

Then came the backlash to the relentlessly Dark DC stuff of the post New52 era lead by youtubers who only see cynicism and nihilism in scenes that are poorly lite with blood and scowling everywhere and so to them Batman 66 must be a happy optimistic Batman because it has bright shiny colors and characters who smile.

Kuudere are Stoics?

I’m pretty usual among modern people interested in Ancient Stoic Philosophy in that I’m mainly interested in their Metaphysics and in the Political Philosophy of Zeno’s Republic (which later Roman Stoics disowned) rather than what it means to live like a Stoic.

But as is often the case with me, the thoughts I do have on the subject relate to Anime.

First however I need to comment on how the casual understanding of a Stoic Demeanor causes Stoicism to be misunderstood.  Stoicism isn’t about having no emotions or suppressing them.  It’s simply about having them under control, trying not to make emotionally impulsive decisions, or in debates to not make arguments that are emotional rather than logical.  

The Roman Stoics I don’t like probably would agree with what Ben Shapiro means by “fact don’t care about your feelings”, but Zeno Stoics would not, they would understand that Gender is based on more than just your sex organs, as would Paul based on Galatians 3.

One of the articles in Stoicism in Early Christianity argues that the very Emotional Characterization of Jesus in The Fourth Gospel doesn’t conflict with a Stoic reading of The New Testament but supports it.

And so in that context we come to my thesis that some Kuudere Anime characters are the true Stoics of modern popular fiction.

Kuudere is mainly a description of a character’s demeanor (which is where the Stoic comparison begins, all Kuudere are Stoic in that casual sense) and so can refer to a variety of different kinds of characters.  Some I suppose are the bad misunderstanding of Stoicism I referred to above, some are really Rei Ayanami clones, and some just come off this way because they’re Introverts.  And like Tsundere it seems to have originally referred more to the specific character journey of some Visual Novel Love Interests, being at first cold and seemingly indifferent to the protagonist as opposed to the hostility of the Tsundere.

But the Kuudere characters I’m thinking of when I refer to myself as a real life Kuudere are ones who are not unemotional or suppressing their emotions but are in fact entirely motivated by their emotional desires, just in a particularly calculated way.  For some their Tragic Flaw is their tendency to place the emotional needs of their loved ones ahead of their own.

To be trendy I think I’ll mention first the most recent addition to the Anime Kuudere canon, Misuzu Gondou of Tomo-chan is A Girl.  She’s the reason I watched the show, the actual main couple bugs me.  She’s the smartest character in the show, but spends much of the latter part questioning herself.  She’s also just really fun to watch.

Shizuku Sangou from Kampfer is fun in how she’s perhaps the least susceptible to the Tragic Flaw I mentioned above.  She decides she wants the protagonist pretty quickly and does not hesitate to act on it.  But she’s also the one most motivated to advance the plot because of her past girlfriend who died.

Ayase Kishimoto from Chaos;HEad is perhaps the closest Anime character to my Christian Stoicism thesis.  She is a fan of a fantasy novel that seems like this world’s version of Narnia so she’s constantly interpreting the show’s Sci-Fi concepts in religious sounding ways while talking almost like a Prophetess.  Unfortunately what the Sci-Fi premise of the Chaos: shows is can be interpreted as Platonist, though I feel Steins;Gate in the same universe has an ultimately Stoic take on Fate.  So maybe there is a Stoic impetration of what's going on Metaphysically in Chaso;HEad and Chaos;Child??  I don't know.  [Occultic;Nine very potentially has a Stoic understanding of The Soul and the Afterlife.]

And that brings me to the culmination of this post, Setsuna Kiyoura of School Days.  Like most School Days characters she is better handled in the original Visual Novel than in the infamous 2007 Anime, but for the most part she is still essentially the same character. She’s the smartest character in the story and is principally motivated by her loyalty to Sekai but that is complicated by her own feelings for Makoto.  The circumstances under which Makoto has sex with Setsuna in the VN are very different from the Anime, in the VN it’s a very unique premise for a love scene that I find very emotionally moving.

She is my Avatar on most websites because she is the best.

Update: April 13th: 

I didn't originally plan for this to be one of those posts I'd come back to adding new sections later, I really felt that Tetrad would be sufficient to convey the idea I was trying to get across.  But I've since watched the first 5 episodes of Re:Creators and already I find Meteroa Osterreich to be possibly even more of a Classic Stoic.

It's interesting how her not the male nominal protagonist or the Asuna looking deuteragonist is basically serving as the leader of the group, the one figuring things out and doing most of the talking when they have to negotiate with the SDF and the Government.  She does it all with a very calm and cool demeanor but she does have emotional motivation for her role in all of this.

Update May 2024: I have decided Miyu from Prisma Illya is also relevant to this thesis.  However that Anime is one of the most difficult to get into if you're not used to certain.... aspects of Anime.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/05/miyu-edelfelt-supreme-kuudere.html

Mahou Shoujo as a Genre name really doesn't work.

Mahou Shoujo as a term to refer to a type of Anime or Manga was first coined by Toei Animation to refer to a string of shows they aired in a specific timeslot on a specific network in the early 70s the first of which was Sally The Witch a show stated to be inspired by Bewitched but it's functionally more similar to Sabrina The Teenage With.  But in terms of Manga source material Akko-Chan actually came first, it too was basically a Sit-Com with some magic in it.

The term become informally associated with similar shows not made by Toei, but was not applied at the time to Cutey Honey even though that was Toei.  Then in the 80s another Genre of Anime was born that would become linked to this term though I haven't bothered to see if it was at the time, the Magical Idol Genre with Creamy Mami.

When Sailor Moon took over the timeslot of Goldfish Warning! in March of 1992 it wasn't already one of the most iconic and recognizable brand names to ever come out of Japan, Toei revived the Mahou Shoujo branding for Sailor Moon since both words technically applied to help sell the show.  Sailor Moon was associated with this term for Marketing reasons not because it was conceived by it's author or adaptors as a continuation of their legacy or genre.

This is why it irks me when I see people say "Sailor Moon wasn't the first Magical Girl".  Because it's technically accurate yet misleading to people who don't already know what you're talking about.  Sailor Moon absolutely is the first of what she is, well Codename Sailor V actually came first, the Sailor Moon franchise is the first of what people mean by Mahou Shoujo when they are using that phrase of Sailor Moon and countless other shows that came since like Pretty Cure and Madoka Magica.

Now Sailor Moon didn't emerge in a vacuum, she was a daughter of Genres and Trends in Japanese media that had been going on for awhile.  But prior Mahou Shoujo wasn't one of them, or at least was far from the most important of them.

The grandfather of Sailor Moon is the Transforming Hero genre, which was and is a mostly Tokusatsu genre but has it's notable animated manifestations.  So Cutey Honey is part of Sailor Moon's lineage, but she's not a missing link between Sailor Moon and Salley The Witch, she's a link between Sailor Moon and Kamen Rider.  The creator of Kamen Rider was Ishinomori Shotaro who was the mentor of Go Nagai the creator of Cutey Honey.

But there is another perhaps more directly relevant link between Sailor Moon and Kamen Rider and that's the Toei Fushigi Comedy Series specifically it's 1990 instalment La Belle Fille Masquee Portrine also written by Ishinomori.  Tuxedo Unmasked has a very good article on it's influence on Sailor Moon.

https://www.tuxedounmasked.com/what-magical-girl-was-sailor-moon-based-on/

So I'm not saying we should abandon the term, but we need to realize it's not useful as a name of a Genre.  Sally The Witch and Creamy Mami and Sailor Moon are not all somehow the same Genre simply because this term was used to described them.  

The first two Magical Girl genres had American equivalents emerge organically at about the same time as their Japanese versions.  But when talking about them everyone understands that it's silly to pretend Sabrina The Teenage Witch and Gem and The Holograms are somehow slight variations of the same thing simply because both involved Girls using Magic.

On TVTropes the more specific term used for the kind of Magical Girl genre that Sailor Moon started is Magical Girl Warrior.  But because of what I see as the genre's core values I'm uncomfortable with associating it with the word Warrior.  Because of it's actual Parent genre Magical Transforming Superheroine would perhaps be better.

And even in Anime there are shows not called Mahou Shoujo even though both words apply just as much, like Slayers, but they aren't genres who's defining shows were made by Toei.