Donna Troy: The Woman and The Hero

Is one of many now long dead Internet 1.0 Fansites that was a pretty important part of my early history as an Internet dwelling Nerd.  But in-spite of how Nostalgic I am for it I sometimes misremember the name by dropping the definite articles as "Donna Troy: Woman and Hero".

The Website is Archived via the Waybackmachine, but in a way that concerns me.  My first instinct going there is to want to find what the website looked like when I first found it in 2003 or 2004.  However while it says there are Captures from those years they don't properly load.  So the closest I can get is a Capture from June 2005 when the latest Update was the March 2005 Update when it covered the Return of Donna Troy special being announced, I remember when I saw that update happen, 2005 was a very pivotal year in my DC Fandom.

The most recent Capture before that which actually loads is an August 2002 Capture when the latest Update to the site had been in October 2001.  The revelation that even Waybackmachine Captures aren't guaranteed to last forever has me worried about a lot of our preservation of a lot of Internet History.

Now those of you who know Donna's history may have noticed that I just outed myself as a Donna Troy fan who is strangely most Nostalgic for when she was dead.  That's because this is when I became a fan, see I got into Donna reading this site before I'd yet read a single Comic Donna actually appeared it.  

It's interesting really to become a fan of a Western Comic Book character while they're Canonically dead, especially during this Post-Crisis yet pre Infinite Crisis era, the same phenomena applied to my Stephanie Brown Fandom.  It's hard to be as mad at the story that killed her as most of her fans are when that was already part of her Lore when I got into it.  And hard to be that upset at not getting any new stories (for awhile) when all her stories are new to me.  I'm first learning this character's history as a story with an already defined beginning middle and end, or in Donna's case several beginnings and a middle and an end.

Donna Troy is one of a few DC characters for whom how her origin keeps being messed with by Crisis related shenanigans is a commonly made fun of Meme.  But as things stood during this period I really saw her history as indeed uniquely complicated but not incoherent.  Like each new Retcon was adding to what we already had in a way that fleshed her out rather then replacing or discarding anything.  But maybe it only felt that way to me because this Fansite did a good job of presenting her History as one cohesive Story.

However in time DC grew obsessed with starting absolutely everything over from scratch every few years.

This site's last update was in 2009.  Now we finally have her in Live Action and while on paper The Titans show doesn't give her a history very similar to this Era of the Comics, Conor Leslie's performance is great and somehow managed to feel like exactly the character I became a Fan of in part via this Website.

Sailor Jupiter is different in the Manga

The first Sailor Jupiter centric post on this blog is a bit outdated now that I've become a much more informed Sailor Moon fan.  

With Sailor Mars and Sailor Venus the way they are pretty much completely different characters in the 90s Anime to how they were originally written in the Manga is very well known.  Sailor Mercury is on paper the same but criticism does exist of how the 90s Anime sometimes Flanderizes her.

However Sailor Jupiter real name Makoto Kino was also drastically changed by the 90s Anime.  In the Manga chapter that introduces her the moral of the story is about not judging a book by it's cover.  Rumors that Mako liked to get into fights existed but they were actually not true, there is to my knowledge no evidence in the Manga or Crystal that Mako even knows a single move of Karate.  [Correction: there is some reference to her knowing Karate, but it's a lot less the emphasis, and they come later possibly as a reference to the Anime.]

Mako in the Manga is not even remotely a candidate for being "the Tomboy of the group", she is actually arguably the most traditionally hyper feminine and her femininity was only ever called into question because she was taller then average for a Japanese Female Middle Schooler.

In Japan Manga is actually more widely read then Anime is watched, over there most Sailor Moon fans were also reading the Manga.  In the west however the Anime was always normally the default understanding of Sailor Moon.  But in time certain Manga facts became well known even to those of us who never read it.

But another difference about Sailor Moon fandom between Japan and the West is that in Japan Ami was the most popular character, always getting the most votes in Anime magazine popularity polls as the show aired and even beyond her influence lives on in how most of the Blue Pretty Cures are kinda just Ami with a new name.  But in North America it is more common for fans to say Sailor Jupiter was their favorite.  

But that popularly was specifically for Mako as she was in the Anime, that she was the one who could win fights even untransformed and yet still be very feminine at the same time.  Because on American TV at the time that was rare, we didn't even have La Femme Nikita or Buffy yet, and on Xena at least early on there was a distinction between the Girly characters and the ass kicking characters. While in Japan female characters like that were already starting to become the norm.

So when American Sailor Moon fans are told that Mars or Venus or even Mercury is better written in the Manga because they're less of a caricature even ones who still never intend to read the Manga are prepared to say "I could believe that".  However those same fans were a lot less prepared to accept that half of what they liked about their favorite character was actually a product of the Anime kinda missing the point.

But what surprises me is how even the segment of American Sailor Moon fans who hate the 90s Anime and keep talking about how the Manga was better still give little attention to specifically how different Mako is.  If they're doing a Podcast on comparing specifically all the different versions of Mako's origin story the difference will be acknowledged, but compared to how they just can't stop complaining about other changes it's basically a foot note.

I have become a fan of both versions of Mako, but that's all the more reason I want the difference to be acknowledged more.

A couple years back Toho made an interesting Trans Affirming commercial using Godzilla, but it also included a clip of Sailor Jupiter playing a role in Minilla's trans awakening.  That Sailor Moon would be referenced isn't that surprising there is a long history of Queer Sailor Moon fandom, but why Sailor Jupiter specifically? Especially when in Japan Ami is more popular?  The clip used may have technically been from or based on the 90s Anime but as this was made in Japan it's important to remember the 90s Anime characterization is a lot less the default understanding.

As someone who was myself assigned male at birth and lived presuming myself to be a Cishet Male for most of my life but have been increasingly questioning my gender identity in recent years.  I can say that while Mako isn't Trans in either version her Manga struggle is easy to see as relatable or even inspirational to Trans Women, a Girl who excels at Femineity even though a physical characteristic she has makes people assume she wouldn't.

Characters like how Mako is in the 90s Anime are role models many Girls in general need, Cis or Trans.  With a greater variety of Anime now available to us we have plenty of other characters who have the same appeal consistently across all incarnations of their franchise, like Ran Mouri from Detective Conan aka Case Closed. But Lita was the first for many 90s kids and she will always be important for that reason.

Dating Sims vs Visual Novels, what's the difference?

The reason I feel this is necessary is because Anime Database websites when saying what the source material of an Anime is will classify as Visual Novels a number of different kinds of Games that have some similar elements but aren't actually the same, Dating Sims are just one of them but probably the most inherently confused with Visual Novels.

YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound Of This World is in fact neither but really a Point and Click Adventure Game with a lot of Text to sit through between all the pointing and clicking.  I myself have called it a Visual Novel on this blog in the past, mostly because I naively took others calling it one at their word.

The first Anime adapted from an actual Visual Novel was To Heart in 1999, the source material of To Heart was the 3rd Visual Novel ever made and the first to have essentially the same narrative premise as a Dating Sim.

In a pure Visual Novel like the original Leaf trilogy the only interactive element is the branching paths, the dialogue tree, it's basically a digital choose your own adventure book.  While in a Dating Sim like Tokimeki Memorial or Doukyuusei you have a calendar and a map, and sometimes more numbers to keep track of then most RPGs.

Notice I said "pure", there is a kind of spectrum between pure Visual Novels and something I wouldn't consider a Visual Novel at all.  Doki Doki Literature Club has the poem creating minigame, but it's mostly just an elaborate way to choose which girl you currently want to pursue, so it's mostly still a visual novel.  School Days has a status bar telling us which girl Makoto is currently leaning towards, while Shiny Days has a similar one focused on only one girl.  But the Dialogue Tree choices are still entirely what effects that status bar so they're also principally Visual Novels.

School Days and Shiny Days are the only Visual Novels I've actually played and only DDLC have I watched full play throughs of.  So my ability to comment on other less then pure Visual Novels is limited, but what I've heard about how say the SciADV games function they have significant other variables that make me question them.

So when exactly a Visual Novel has too many other elements to still be a Visual Novel is difficult to pin down exactly, but there is a limit.  This kind of overlaps with the debate about if Visual Novels qualify as Video Games, pure Visual Novels I'm inclined to agree do not otherwise every Choose Your own Adventure novel would be a Game of the non visual variety.  And I guess my point here is the more of an actual Game you make a Visual Novel the less it still is a Visual Novel.

JRPGs as a concept are an American Misconception.

Years ago I watched an Extra Credits video on YouTube about JRPGs and Western RPGS and I always considered it a fairly bad video but now that I know so much more about the history of RPGs I realize their first mistake was conceding the very idea of JRPGs as being a thing in the first place.

I'm not arguing there are no differences between RPGs in the West and RPGs made in Japan caused by distinct cultural differences.  But they are the same as how every genre and medium of story telling seems different in Japan.  The only other one where the Japanese version is virtually treated as a completely different thing is Animation aka Anime.  In that case though it is increasingly well understood now that what we think of when we hear the word "Anime" is principally certain kinds of Anime that even in Japan are actually a niche interest.

When you look at the history of Japanese RPG Video Games that either never got localized, or even if they were were never as popular over here as they were in Japan, or if they did get popular over here were popular in a way that kind of compartmentalized them from other RPGs in how pop culture thinks about them.  You'll realize that what American Gamers think of when we think of JRPGs is really much more specifically Squarsoft Games of the SNES and PS1 (and not even all of them really), Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, the SaGa series, Super Mario RPG ect.  Just look at that old College Humor Video parodying JRPGs, every specific game it will make you think of is Square, it's story is mostly a Parody of FF7's plot with visuals taken from Final Fantasy Tactics and Mario RPG.

The main example for that third situation is Pokémon.  I saw a Twitter argument sometime last year where some people were getting annoyed at other people not counting Pokémon as a JRPG.  And yeah Pokémon officially is one, but it's just as different from our standard perception of a JRPG as any Western RPG is.  When you compare the first Gen Pokémon games to prior Game Boy RPGs mechanically and visually it kind of is a natural development, but Game Boy RPGs were never the foundation of how JRPGs were defined, even series that started there gained their true notoriety when promoted to home consoles.

Recently I was watching YouTube videos about NES and SNES Video Games that were officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons games.  And in one the person making the video talked about not liking pseudo 3D first person Dungeon Crawlers but referred to that as being specifically a characteristic of Western RPGs in contrast to "what they do in Japan", but I'm well aware that there are plenty of Japanese RPGs that also do that.  I also dislike that kind of dungeon gameplay, but since I have such a unique history with how I learned about RPGs I never thought of it as something you'd go to Japan to get away from because my first experience with being annoyed by it was Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System, and then learning the Megami Tensei games also did that is why I never tried to play any of them.

In Japan DragonQuest is the most popular RPG franchise, it doesn't just edge out Final Fantasy it dwarfs Final Fantasy.  And there is one Trope we Americans associate with JRPGs that DragonQuest has pretty much been the exact opposite on.  The Killing God or God being Evil trope is mostly a Square and Atlus thing, in DragonQuest God is usually The Goddess and pretty benevolent.  And that is a more accurate reflection of general Japanese Spirituality where Amaterasu is arguably the centerpiece of the Shinto Pantheon.  However back in the 2000s when edgy Atheism was still the trendy thing in Online Culture the Megami Tensei and FF Tactics approach was what American internet Nerds latched onto.  The subject of Goddess Worship in Japanese Media is something I may have to go deeper into someday.

DragonQuest so thoroughly dwarfs everything else in Japan that every Manga or Light Novel or Anime set in a "generic RPG setting" is very clearly using specifically DragonQuest III as the model.  And secretly I think that's the key to why so many American Weebs be hating on these shows.  The reasons they say they don't like them I think are disingenuous, the truth is these American Gamers would much rather be Isekaied to a discount Final Fantasy.  Hell I personally would love an Anime set in a world modeled after SaGa Frontier.

But as is the Anime I would recommend to Final Fantasy fans are more Anime that were an influence on Final Fantasy rather then the other way around.  These include Ghibli films like Nausica of The Valley of The Wind and Castle in The Sky.  And I feel like I'm the only person who notices that Sephiroth's character design was clearly inspired by Kunzite from Sailor Moon.

But going back to that Extra Credits video, their main thesis was that JRPGs are not really the same genre but some coincidental independent development.  And that ignores how Western RPGs are played in Japan, specifically the Ultima Series was a very well documented influence on early DragonQuest and early Final Fantasy as was Wizardry.  The RPG is a Western concept in origin including the Role Playing Video Game specifically, that Japanese Gaming Culture made several different distinctly Japanese variations on, but only one of those was ever popular enough in America during the formative years of Gamer Culture to really define how American Gamers stereotype Japanese RPGs.

Update: On Mastadon this interesting conversation was brought to my attention.

https://beehaw.org/post/664403

On Second Thought The Eminence in Shadow might qualify as a more Final Fantasy Esque Isekai.  It's resemblance to "Magic Academy" Anime breeds a similarity to Final Fantasy VIII, and then there's the very concept of a prominent background character named Cid.