Western Otaku usually still have a limited perspective on Anime

Last October, when the Pluto Anime went up on Netflix was the first time I ever watched any Anime of the Atom or Astro Boy franchise. I liked it a lot.  But it’s interesting to think about.

I’ve been considering myself enough into Anime to call myself an Otaku since late 2016.  This followed an increasing interest in Anime that went back to at least 2014.  But I’ve kind of had some limited interest in Anime most of my life since I first caught DiC dubbed episodes of Sailor Moon on Sunday mornings in 1996.  Yet it wasn’t till late 2023 I finally watched something featuring the character who arguably started it all.

Imagine being into American Animation and Comics for 7 to 27 years without watching or reading anything with Superman in it?  But that is the equivalent.  Yet I don’t think that’s at all unique to me for a Western Otaku.  We all know of the importance of Astro Boy but are frequently not too motivated to actually watch it.

And it’s the same with Mazinger Z and other Super Robot shows of the 70s, or Sally The Witch or Detective Conan.  All shows we know of and some of us sometimes actually watch but not always.  I know some people complain that not enough American Anime fans watch Lupin III or Gundam or Macross but those shows are damn near ubiquitous compared to the shows I’m talking about.

Thing is this isn’t an issue I’m even at all motivated to fix in myself.  My ability to enjoy Animation that predates my own birth on either side of the Pacific is limited.  I can respect and appreciate the groundwork they laid, but it’s nor what I’m personally into, what I mean when I say I’m into Anime is mostly specific kinds of Anime, trends and styles that started in the 80s but really took off in the 90s.  So Detective Conan I’ve gotten way into because it started in the 90s, but for most stuff pre-1985 it would be a disservice to them for me to be the one finally making Video Essays about them, I’m not qualified to explain their appeal.

There are exceptions, I’ve watched and loved The Rose of Versailles and both animated Lupin III movies from the 70s.  But the 70s Anime I want to watch the most is one still not even subbed, La Seine No Hoshi.

But it’s not just with older Anime that Western Otaku aren’t watching as much as they think.  Even with current seasonal Anime, what we even talk about is a small percentage of what’s actually airing on TV in Japan. I don't just mean the shows all of us are watching, I mean even the seasonal shows with only a small group of evangelists.  Even the people making YouTube videos predicated on claiming they’re watching literally everything aren’t actually watching most of it.

I’ve seen more Anime from 2017 than any other single year, and the Winter season I’ve possibly seen the most of within that year.  Yet when I go to the MAL page for that season and filter it to show only shows I haven’t seen even one episode of, sorted by most members, there are still 2 or three that are well known even though I didn’t watch them (Konosuba season 2 and Gintama mainly).  Yet even them combined with what I did watch are still dwarfed by the number of shows I don’t recall ever hearing anyone talk about at all.  And that’s just going off TV Anime that started that season with at least 12 episodes and at least 20 minutes per episode runtimes.  When you go down to what’s continuing from prior seasons it’s not just the two cour shows from fall 2016 and the three long runners everyone makes fun of, there’s dozens of shows that started in the 80s and 70s still airing that have never even remotely been on our radar.

It’s important to remember that even those of us who seek to present ourselves as knowing more and going deeper than most are still barely paddling out of the kiddie pool.  It’s like how the Roman Empire referred to itself as ruling the world when in fact most of the earth’s surface they’d never even visited and a good chuck they didn’t even know existed.

Re:Creators and the Crisis on Infinite Earths

 So I finally watched Crisis on Infinite Earths Part One recently now that it’s on MAX and I liked it, the unique framing they chose was pretty cool.

It of course get me thinking about the 2017 Anime Re:Creators again. One of the things I’ve been thinking about that show since I finally first watched it last year was that it has, perhaps by pure coincidence, some structural similarities to Crisis on Infinite Earth.  The scale is ultimately much smaller but the parallels you can make are neat.

Souta Mizushino plays the thematic role of Pariah to some extent.

Meteora is The Monitor and Altair the Anti-Monitor.

Mamika plays a role similar to Supergirl.

My thoughts on this really weren’t all that worthy of an entire post, but that’s fine.  I might take a break and not post anything else till sometime in May, it all depends on if inspiration strikes me.

Update: And I did not know when I wrote this that Amazon let the license to Re;Creators lapse so now it's not possible to legally watch at all.  Very frustrating.

Anime Neo-Westerns

 I have little ability to actual proper Westerns and yet something about Neo-Westerns in Anime I’m able to enjoy quite a bit.

They have the ability to recreate what can be fun and entertaining about Westerns but while also feeling sufficiently divorced from what Westerns represent Socio-Politically in American Culture.  Westerns are loved by the right and loathed by the left for multiple different reasons.  And even the “Subversive” Westerns that some Breadtubeers seem to like reflect how what I want from left wing media is often the opposite of most of them.

There are indigenous to the U.S. examples of Western Tropes being translated into Sci-Fi or Fantastical settings, but they usually bring the politics with them whether they want to or not.  I liked the recent Fallout series on Amazon Prime and The Mandalorian/Book of Boba Fett, but they aren’t the same as these Anime Westerns.

Spaghetti Westerns are the more well known example of the Western being taken on by another country.  However a lot of them still involve certain Hollywood figures like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.  And Italy is still part of the West.  

It’s not that I think these Anime westerns are “Apolitical”, they are always saying something about the internal politics of their own worlds at least.  But certain issues are so fundamentally different in Japanese politics that an Anime couldn't do them the same way an American movie would, certainly not by accident, and if they tried I'd trust their external perspective to have some value.

This is a post I was thinking about writing at several points last year then semi-forgot about.  But I was inspired to return to the subject after watching Grimm Variations which recently went up on Netflix, where episode 5 the Town Musicians of Breman took this Neo-Western approach.  I'm not familiar with the original fairy tale so can’t judge it on that grounds, but as a throwback to this niche Genre Anime it was great.

And it is a throwback, the golden age of this particular Sub-Genre of Anime was the 2000s.  

El Cazador De La Bruja was my first exposure to it which I watched for its thematic connection to Noir and Madlax, and it was great, it still holds up to this day.

Burst Angel is another very fun mid 2000s Neo-Western that I recommend everyone check out.

Gun x Sword is a show I  haven’t finished yet but I like plenty of what I’ve seen so far.

Sands of Destruction has some western vibes going on at times but I wouldn’t necessarily say this is it’s main genre.  Same with Black Cat from 2005 but in a very different way.

I haven’t seen any of Gun Frontier yet but I plan to eventually, it’s annoying that it isn’t on any of the official streaming sites. (Most of the shows I just mentioned should be on Crunchyroll, Sands is sadly one of those that was still only on Funimation when it died).

Now I know that many assume Cowboy Bebop should be one of the first shows mentioned when talking about Anime Neo-Westerns, but to me Bebop has little of the western in it, it is much more built on the Film Noir tropes.

Vampire Hunter D is a good example of an older Anime with Western influence, I like to describe it as a Sergio Leone film drenched in Goth.  The first movie is the only one I personally like, Bloodlust does some things with its Vampire lore that really grind my gears.

Are Giant Robot Anime about Giant Robots?

So a number of weeks ago I watched a YouTube Video from the channel The Bellam called Anime Cryptids that begins with the author talking about hearing people praise a given Mecha Anime, most often Evangelion, for being a Mecha Anime that “isn’t about the Robot”, and then goes on to explain how no Mecha Anime is actually about the Robot, especially not Gundam.  

And yet to me the obvious response to this annoying type of Evangelion fan should be “what do you mean Evangelion isn’t about the Robot?”  If anything Eva is more about the Robot then Gundam since in Eva the Robot is actually a character with sentience of its own, but mostly the point is key to why Eva should be compared to Super Robot shows like Mazinger Z rather than Real Robot shows.

Still I find it amusing that to both sides of the debate in that video it’s treated as a good thing for a show to not actually be about the Robot.  I feel like especially in shows that are named after the Robot that should not be the case, it should never be a good thing for a show to be named in-correctly.

Clearly we are dealing with different people prioritizing different senses of what a show is “about”.  This video’s argument for Gundam not being about the Robot is the abstract philosophical themes of the overarching metanarrative of the Gundam Franchise. On that level no piece of Genre fiction is actually about the premise of it’s Genre, but no one feels the need to defend the integrity of their favorite Batman story by explaining how it isn’t actually about the Billionaire dressing up like a Bat to fight crime.

The author of this video clearly strongly feels only someone who hasn’t actually seen Gundam would think it is actually about the Gundam, but I’m not so sure.  I explained above one reason for viewing Gundam as less about the Robot the Evangelion.  But on the other hand Gundam feels more structurally built around the Mecha battles then Eva does.

Now I have to admit I did not initially respond to this video with the strong disagreement I’m expressing here. I initially left a comment saying something like “Robotics;Notes is actually about the Robot and that’s why I like it”.  But why did I feel that way?  At the time I would not have been able to explain myself and the counterargument that it doesn’t even exist yet for most of the show could easily have been thrown in my face.

It feels more narratively about the Robot then a lot of other Mecha shows because building the Robot is explicitly the Goal of the main protagonists, as an end unto itself not merely as a tool to achieve something else.  The build up of the Evil Conspiracy they will wind up having to thwart is mostly treated as a background plot till the final stretch of episodes.  But I guess even then the creator of that YouTube video could argue the Robot is actually just a symbol of something else like Communism maybe.

So I guess the answer to the question is both Yes and No.

Mark Antony, the most Dramatic Actor of the Last Century BC

The Shakespeare Play that is named after Julius Caesar is primarily about Brutus and Cassius, yet in all its Hollywood movie adaptations top billing always seems to go to whoever plays Mark Antony.  He is also much more conventionally the main character of another Shakespeare Play.

And back in the Golden Age of Hollywood Historical Epics the biggest movies set during this century tended to be movies about Cleopatra where inevitably Mark Anthony becomes the male lead.

Something about Mark Antony, or the popular perception of the kind of person he was, makes him the character of this era Actors of a certain caliber most want to perform.  A compelling combination of Honor and Hedonism, Impulsiveness and Cunningness, Rage and Romance.

As someone who’s often very cynical about the more gritty and “realistic” approach usually taken by more modern fictionalizations of the Ancient World, Antony is a character I particularly fear would lose his appeal.  I can admit how a character like Caesar could benefit from a more three dimensional modern writer.  Antony however is character I tend to cynically presume will just be turned into a caricature.

Not to mention my more complex feelings on how the art of acting has changed. I don’t consider any actors you commonly see in contemporary Movies and TV to be bad, but the style of acting I enjoy the most has gone out of fashion in Hollywood.  I can’t picture any MCU actor competing with Marlon Brando, Carleton Heston and Richard Burton.  In contemporary acting I'm most a fan of the Voice Acting you hear in English Dubs of Anime. John Michael Tatun, Crispan Freeman and Dan Green are each actors I’d love to hear play Mark Anthony.

So imagine my surprise when during this last week I almost 20 years late to the party finally watched HBO’s Rome TV series and James Purefoy completely blew me away.  Now I have to admit he kinda seemed like what I was cynically expecting early on, but by the end of episode 6 I was suddenly sold, but it’s in season 2 that he really gets to shine.  He’s distinct from the classic takes I referred to above, yet still inline with them in a way I didn’t expect from something so modern.

Now this shows takes historical liberties already in season 1 but they become more significant in season 2.  But I don’t care about that when I’m being entertained by what I’m watching.  And this show was entertaining all around.  I’ve seen complaints about how Cleopatra is depicted but I found it refreshing, not how I’d write her but refreshing nonetheless.

But I made this post to talk about Mark Antony's fictionalizations.  I titled it “Dramatic Actor” rather than “leading Actor” because he’s never been the sole title character, he’s Cleopatra’s Lover and Caesar’s Avenger, and an Antagonist in the more rare works that portray this history with Octavian as the protagonist.

And all this meaty dramatic material comes from still drawing on only select portions of his life and career.  As a Christian who likes to look at at least all BC History as revolving around Jerusalem it’s notable that he had been in Judaea at least twice, as a young man under Gabinius in the 50s and then in 37 BC during the Triumvirate when he defeats the Parthians and Mattathias Antigonus.  Maybe there have been Israeli movies depicting at least the latter of those, I wouldn’t at this time know.

HBO Rome covers some stuff not usually covered but missed plenty of other opportunities like the above.  I’d really like to actually see Fulvia onscreen for a change, she sounds like a compelling potential Anime Girl.

I have been a pretty vocal critic of the Great Man Theory of History. I can imagine some who miss the point of that debate would find it weird for me to then make a long ramble about one of those titular great men.  The dispute between Great Man Theories and Materialists is about what drives History.  And the story of someone viewed as a Great Man of History even though he ultimately lost in the end is a great opportunity to demonstrate how Material Conditions can doom anymore no matter how capable or “Heroic” they are.

It’s possible the real Marcus Antonius had little in common personality wise with the idea of Mark Antony I’ve been talking about.  Those who criticize the adage “History is written by the winners” are often taking it too literally, the point is to pay attention to the biases of who’s writing.  If it was 100% literally true all the time we’d still popularly view Antony and Cleopatra based on the utterly demonized portrait Octavian's propagandists tried to paint.  However the positive depictions however indirectly eventually go back through that propaganda.

However in my view Historical Fiction needs to be viewed the same as other adaptations, the desire of some people to moralize about getting history wrong in fiction I find annoying.  People shouldn't be using fiction to learn history in the first place.  Mark Antony the character I like watching so much should on some level be viewed as a legend inspired by History just like King Arthur.

Serial Experiments Lain is a show I like Weirdly

Honestly I really struggled to decide what to name this post and still don't think I made the right choice.

Serial Experiments Lain is an  Anime I like a lot but for seemingly very different reasons than most people.  Or at least not the things people usually talk about in their Video Essays.  

All the talk about it as Prophetic about the nature of the Internet is the product of Zoomers and Younger Millennials who don’t remember how quickly the Internet caught on.  The theories about it being related to the Collective Unconscious concept are possibly valid but not my main reading.  And nothing is more disappointing than watching a video that just explains what happened in the plot.

It is a part of my Reverse Gnosticism in Anime thesis, that is the closest I come to thinking about the show Philosophically. 

Its fascinating simply how for a show so incredibly popular NOT influential it’s been Aesthetically speaking, to my knowledge not many other shows look and sound like Lain even in exactly the time period when all the Lain knockoffs you’d have expected the industry to greenlight in the wake of its success would have aired.  The only one I can think of is Boogiepop Phantom from 2000, so yeah I recommend that to Lain fans who don’t already know about it.

It’s also very fascinating in how it tells its story.  I can’t think of any other show where we spend most of our screen time with one specific character and yet that character remains an enigma.  This a moment very early in the pilot, before she even becomes aware of the plot’s inciting incident where how she acts still confuses me.  In Anime especially it’s very rare for me to question if the main character might actually be the villain, but in Lain I do even on a rewatch where I know what’s going to happen.

In the episode focused on her sister, the first time I watched it I thought the only ambiguity was if she did that to her sister on purpose or by accident, that she wasn’t responsible at all never even occurred to me. It also wasn’t till the third time I watched the show I figured out when it happened.

But another thing about Lain is that I like the show a lot even though I also lament the non-existence of what I thought the show was before I watched it.

TrixieTheGoldenWitch on her old YouTube Channel currently named YGG Studio has an old video titled Aesthetic Is Narrative, a segment of the video is about what a certain Lain related image means to her, in which she describes Lain as a girl who’s become a Goddess of the Internet even though she’s lonely offline.  Now that is not exactly an inaccurate description, but the first place it led my brain too was a show that would not necessarily have any SciFi or Supernatural elements.  A Girl accidentally or intentionally building a cult of personality around herself on the early Internet, in ways that would fundamentally not work the same today.

Study of Swords MIGHT be wrong about Deconstruction

 A YouTube channel named Study of Swords has a video titled You Are Wrong About Deconstruction, and I have very uniquely mixed feelings about this video.  Sometimes I feel like I agree with it entirely and sometimes I feel like it’s led astray by a myopic perspective on the subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiXzVaqdIgo&pp=ygUieW91IGFyZSB3cm9uZyBhYm91dCBkZWNvbnN0cnVjdGlvbg%3D%3D

The gist of the video’s thesis is that the modern Internet Culture understanding of Genre Deconstruction is entirely the invention of TVTropes and that it’s both to unrelated Derridean Deconstruction and not something that any work of fiction has ever truly done, certainly not intentionally.  And if one did it would be inherently bad.

Here’s the thing, all the specific examples of alleged Deconstruction they are annoyed by are Anime examples.  And their defense of that is that they are an Anime centric channel and that’s the discourse they are in dialogue with.  However the video isn’t titled “You are wrong about Deconstruction in Anime” or “Otaku are wrong about Deconstruction” and TVTropes didn’t build their concept of Deconstruction on primarily Anime examples, they built it on Watchmen and Game of Thrones (the books before it was a TV show) and Scream and Shrek.

In 2003 The History Channel aired a documentary called Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked. I'd recorded it on VHS when it aired so I had watched the entire thing multiple times back then.  However I had gone years without rewatching by the time I first discovered TV tropes and still didn’t rewatch it again till after I’d watched this YouTube video.  It speaks to the unreliability of memory that I had basically incepted myself into thinking they actually used the word Deconstruction or Deconstruct in the segment on Watchmen, in fact they did not.  However the basic idea of what TVTropes means by Genre Deconstruction was there.

The quote they put at the start of their video is telling “Deconstruction is when a thing I like is a Genre I disrespect”.  Because within the Anime Community that definitely feels like it’s often the subtext, the community is filled with Anti-Otaku like Noralities who can’t admit to liking an Isekai without going on about how it’s not like all the other Isekai.  And while this sentiment doesn’t get expressed much recently, there definitely were some early Madoka fans who were open about liking it and not the old Shoujo Magical Girl shows.

Thing is that’s not really the case when it comes Deconstruction outside of Anime.  No one who calls Watchmen a Deconstruction while explaining why they like it hates the rest of the genre, rather everyone understands you need to love the genre in its standard forms to appreciate the Deconstruction.  Same with the relationship between GoT and Fantasy, or Scream and Slasher films.  Despite it’s technically etymological relation to the word Destroy it’s not actually meant to be malicious, it’s about taking it apart to assemble something new, like a Lego set.

Because I was a Nomrie nerd for over a decade before Anime became my main interest, my perception of terms like Deconstruction isn’t as inherently filtered through Anime discourse.

Even among people using the word to describe an Anime they like I don’t think the intent is universally malicious.  I currently oppose labeling Madoka a Deconstruction, but early on I was different, I did defend calling it a deconstruction in the past, but it never went with some hostility towards other Magical Girl shows, rather I got into Madoka soon after I became mature enough to finally be willing to publicly admit I like Sailor moon and always have.

This of course isn’t the only AniTube video that is in part about denying certain Popular Anime qualify as a Deconstruction, others do know to make the comparison to Watchmen, in so doing show their ignorance of the place Watchmen actually holds in the history of its Genre.  Like when TrixieTheGoldenWitch did a video on the subject arguing certain things aren’t Deconstructions because they didn’t do anything that hadn’t been done before, unlike Watchmen.  Watchmen didn’t do anything that hadn’t been done before, all through the 70s there were already Superhero Comics that were Dark and dealing with real world social issues and politics, there were already Antiheroes and Heroes turning into Villains and Villains turning into Heroes, already stories with moral complexity.  Watchmen didn't do a single thing that was completely new, it was all in the complete picture it painted.  Madoka however did things that had rarely if ever been done before and that’s why it’s not a Deconstruction, none of what’s Dark about feels like a commentary on prior stories because all of it is tied to what’s mechanically distinct about it.

But maybe this misunderstanding of how inherently critical a Deconstruction is supposed to be has seeped outside the Anime Community.  Consider all the Breadtubers who think it’s important to “Deconstruct” what’s Problematic about the Superhero and Fantasy genres. Consider the YouTuber Worm’s Hole who seems to think the Darker version of a Genre is always better because they expose what’s dark and ugly about the real world.

In discussions of both Watchmen and Game of Thrones I commonly see the phrase “Critique of Power” used to describe what both Alan Moore and George R. R. Martin are trying to do and that’s why no it isn’t Feminist to root for the Dragon Lady Girl Boss.  I don’t entirely agree with either side of the Daenerys debate, but I am not the kind of Leftist who puts too much emphasis on critiquing Power as a concept that needs to rethink their priorities.  I’m neither a Tankie or an Anarchist, if I’m a Marxist at all I’m somewhere between Kautsky and Luxemburg.

We do not in the 21st Century need to worry about arguing against Feudal Style Monarchy anymore.  If anything the knee jerk reaction of many Liberals and even some Socialists to anything that even looks like Monarchy is a problem, whether Cuba or Vietnam qualify as a “Dictatorship” or not is irrelevant to if they are successful Communist experiment.  The Greek word Tyrant was not originally inherently derogatory, it was made derogatory by the same Laocophile to whom the word Democracy was Derogatory.

So the title “You are wrong about Deconstruction” is probably increasingly correct when directed at a good number of people.  But the video’s understanding of why is flawed.

Septimal Anniversaries of Spring 2017 Anime

This is a follow up to the beginning of my series on revisiting 2017 Anime.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/01/septimal-anniversaries-of-2017-anime.html

I’m not gonna structure this the same as I did my coverage of Winter.  First I’m gonna talk about what I remember I was actually watching at the time. 

It’s still true that most are on CR but Dubs are less guaranteed.

Twin Angel Break I found to be a neat little Magical Girl show that stood on its own quite well despite being a sequel to shows I hadn’t already seen yet.

Eromanga-Sensei was Fun Trash, very Trashy but Fun.

Attack on Titan season 2 I watched on Adult Swim so it was Summer when I finished it. I don’t regret my time spent with the first three ‘seasons” of AoT but the “Final Season” lost me quickly.  From a Yuri standpoint this is the season that had the most YumiKuri.

Those are the three TV Anime I watched to completion as they aired.  I also saw the Washio Sumi movies as soon as they became available to me, I no longer remember exactly when that was, they were good.

Clockwork Planet I watched maybe half of as it aired then dropped it for a while but wound up finishing it in 2023.  It’s a neat, fun show with an out there SciFi premise you can guess from the title.

Grimoire of Zero I’m pretty sure I did watch and finish before 2017 was over, it’s a good non Isekai Fantasy show that doesn’t even feel like a Quasi Isekai either, I highly recommend it. It’s on HIDIVE.

Little Witch Academia I already talked about, I’d seen more then half before 2017 was over but didn’t finish it till years later.

And I’m pretty sure that’s it for any TV Anime of this season I’d even partly seen before 2017 was over.  Besides the ones still on my dropped list but I don’t feel like mentioning them.

WorldEnd: What do you do at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us? Is another good Fantasy show that isn't’ Isekai or Quasi Isekai but also different from Grimoire. So I highly recommend it as well to Fantasy Fans.

Sword Oratoria is a spin off of DanMachi, a show I haven’t seen, yet it stands on its own well enough.  It’s the closest to a Quasi Isekai the first half of 2017 provided.  I won’t recommend it as highly but I enjoyed it.  It’s on HIDIVE.

ReCreators I also talked about in the first post of this series and others even older than that.  I didn’t watch it until 2023.  I don’t have more to say on it right now.

In the OVA department was Kase-san, which is good but I prefer my Yuri to be a little trashier. I think 2018 was when I saw it near when I saw it’s longer follow up which I have the same opinion on.

April had the 21st Detective Conan movie The Crimson Love Letter which I first saw in 2022 by digitally renting it on PrimeVideo.  I like all the Detective Conan movies but we are in their weakest era here and I don’t have anything special to say about this one.

ChaoS;Child Silent Sky isn’t really a movie but more of a bonus epilogue episode to the series I talked about in Winter.  It's not Dubbed so I haven’t rewatched it as much, it’s interesting but I don’t have anything to say about it right now.  They aren't needed, the ending of the series is satisfying enough on its own.

I like when a Cool Intimidating Villain is Metaphorically Castrated in a sequel, adaptation, reboot or remake.

 In the original 1997 TV Anime Revolutionary Girl Utena the character of Akio aka End Of The World is a very cool and charismatic villain, he needs to be for that original version of the Utena story to work the way it does.

But then Ikahara made a movie called Adolescence of Utena that was a reimagining of the entire premise of Utena but also maybe ambiguously a Sequel somehow???  Either way this more than any other Anime Film borne from a TV Anime it is not a stand alone work of art, every detail is wrapped in the Symbolism codified by the original show.

In the movie Akio is no longer cool or charismatic, his first screen makes a Joke out of him and then later he’s presented as absolutely Pathetic.  And this was a deliberate artistic choice with deliberate meaning behind it.  VraiKaiser in their discussions of the movie breaks it down way better than I can.  

https://vraikaiser.com/2014/01/20/i-know-why-she-turns-into-a-car/

https://vraikaiser.com/2015/07/04/the-adolescence-of-utena/

Originally of course a good chunk of the fanbase had a negative to this decision, how dare you take the coolness away from the cool character I liked. This sentiment was in Jacob Chapman’s review of the movie back when he was known as JesuOtaku.  However in this case continuing to feel that way has become more rare, WhiningAboutYuri on Tumblr was very critical of the movie but supported this specific choice.  And it wouldn’t surprise me if even Jacob himself has repented of that old bad take.

However The Joker is a different story, that character most people still want to see treated with respect.  JackSaint’s video on Suicide Squad’s take on The Joker argues that Leto’s Joker is supposed to be an uncool cringey edge lord, which is also hinted at in Josh McNamee’s Sixteen Attempts to talk to you about "Suicide Squad".  

It is a good idea to remind people that the real life Jokers of the world aren’t cool or charismatic but pathetic losers, and the same is true of Adult Men in positions of Authority who take advantage of teenagers.  That doesn’t actually make them not dangerous, but it does make them less glamorous.

However there is a certain kind of fan who identifies with such characters even if they would never approve of their actions in real life. And there is a not insignificant overlap between these fans and the kind who become Internet Neo-Reactionaries.

I’m not arguing the “cool” takes on these characters shouldn't exist, I do believe most people can separate fantasy from reality and those who can’t have deeper problems than how they read fiction.  I’m simply defending the innate value in taking that coolness from them.  The intended message behind having a Pathetic villain is more potent when done to one previously seen as cool then it would be with one who was always depicted as pathetic.

Now for both of those examples I’ve already demonstrated that I’m far from the first to make this defense of them.  However as far as I’m aware I’m still the only person to read the Netflix Cowboy Bebop’s take of Vicious this way.  And even if I find out others have, I'm still confident I claim to be among the first since I was reading him this was the day of the show's release. Largely because I was already familiar with these two discourses, so I was prepared.  But if you’ve seen someone else talk about Vicious this way please link me to it because I would read or watch it.

Netflix Vicious is entirely driven by how insecure in his masculinity he is, a problem that began with his daddy issues.  He is all through the show exposed to be a manchild who wants to be seen as intimidating far more than he actually is intimidating.  And the people who have that problem in real life who also watch Anime want to be like the Vicious of the original Cowboy Bebop or some other similar kind of Anime villain.  I’m not saying everyone who had a knee jerk negative reaction to this reinterpretation of Vicious did so because they are that kind of person, but I am saying this is why they should reconsider the value of this artistic choice.

Now it’s only with Ikuhara that I’m confident this reading was intentional.  Ayer and Leto have both said things that lead me to suspect that this isn’t what they intended.  With Netflix Bebop it does seem to be outright quite a bit that's what the message is, but you can never certain with Netflix  But it doesn’t matter because the Author is Dead, this is a valid reading of the text whether those who wrote it like it or not.

And I want to see this done more.  As someone who’d devoted a chunk of the online identity to being a Star Wars Prequel Apologist I should show I’m not a hypocrite by saying I’d support Palpatine being given treatment.  Of course I’m already Free from hypocrisy here, Batman is my oldest fandom. During the late 2000s and early 2010s I loved quoting Heath Ledger’s Joker to seem cool as much as any else did.  Yet I didn’t have a knee jerk negative reaction to Leto’s Joker, I didn’t in 2016 understand yet why I liked it, but I do think on some level this was always why.

In the context of Anime however I think the problematically Idolized Villain who needs to be taken down a peg the most is Light Yagami. And maybe to the fans of Netflix Death Note that’s why that movie works.  But the thing is there are lots of reasons I don’t like that movie, all three movies or shows I praised above have a lot more to like about then just doing the thing I named this post after.

More importantly though the way in which Light Turner is Pathetic for most of the film functionally exonerates him of being fully culpable for his sins, his psycho girlfriend is the real monster and she is cool and charismatic (or at least the movie wants her to be).  The way the three villains above are Pathetic highlights how horrible they are.

But also the three examples I praised are not at their core entirely different characters from the prior versions that so many people found cool, we’re simply seeing them now from different angles, in different contexts.  They do act differently in ways that would make them hard to see as in the same continuity, but the most basic character description is the same, or at least can be.  Light Turner lacks any actual similarities to Light Yagami. I don't see him as a different interpretation of the same character, he simply is a different character.

Netflix Cowboy Bebop holds up on Rewatch

 As one of the few people who unironically loved it when it dropped in late 2021, I have decided to verify its rewatchability before doubling down on my defenses.  And I’m glad I did because I’m appreciating it even more this second time around over two years later.

I don’t love all parts of it equally.  The conversation about Faye not having Orgasm before I find cringey, and since it’s not getting a season 2 the bleak way it ends doesn’t sit well with me.  I’ve said before that my preference for happy endings doesn’t mean I can’t respect the artistic choice to end a story more tragically, but in the case of Cowboy Bebop I really don’t find it justified.  So yeah I wanted Bebop to be Bowdlerized.  I agree with Mother’s Basement that Netflix Bebop is the less Woke version at least where its take on the Police is concerned, but MB is wrong in thinking Carol and Tuesday is Woke, its ending is fundamentally Centrist.

At least one of those complaints is the opposite of what most hate about this show.  To them Bebop is supposed to be gritty and dark and tragic.  The truth is the original also had its goofy and silly and kind of stupid elements and this remake also has real emotional resonance.  The exact balance between them is different and that’s good.  Batman fans have spent almost 20 years now learning to accept that different takes can have very different tones, much wider differences then these two Bebops have.

Cowboy Bebop was always an homage to old American genres like Westerns and Film Noir, and for many that comparison is the first thing they mention when explaining why this remake is so bad and insulting, but the thing is those Genres were never Highbrow or Respectable and they kinda still aren’t.

One specific proof that way too many Cowboy Bebop fans take the original way more seriously than it was ever meant to be taken is how this remake’s take on Faye is responded to. I criticized one scene involving her but the rest I love.  The haters hate how in the Netflix version Faye is an awkward Dork who’s actually very Bad at being a Femme Fatale, she is competent at other things but bad at that.  And that is exactly how I’d describe her in the original show too, like it’s really obvious to me that that’s always what they were going for.  But instead people wearing Nostalgia goggles decided that she actually unironically was the Fujiko Mine of our generation, which is a notion I can’t take seriously.

I think a big factor in why I’m more okay with this adaptation is that I have actually been into American Superhero Comics and their adaptations for longer than I have been into Anime even though now I’m into Anime the most of all my Nerdy interests.  Anime fans who are familiar with the source materials of Anime are used to relatively direct adaptations, where even if lots of changes are made it still essentially follows the same basic plot besides the occasional Filler Arc or dreaded Anime Original Ending.  Superhero fans are more used to adaptations that take the elements of the source material, characters and settings and lore concepts, and mixes them around, completely reimagining some, to create a fundamentally new story, but that still feels like a love letter to what came before.  And that’s what Netflix Bebop is, a new work of art still clearly crafted out of love for the original.

Netflix Bebop is fun, and that’s what Bebop always was, pure fun.  I do like the original show, but the Netflix Bebop is more the kind of Fun I enjoy.  It actually feels more like an Anime to me then the Anime did.

Now the thing I like most about the show I’m going to save for a different post since it’s kind of an entire thesis statement on its own.  So stay tuned.

Film is not ONLY a Visual Medium

One thing I’m sick of seeing among those who critique films for being too dialogue or exposition heavy or not following their understanding of “show don’t tell” properly is the rather dogmatic declaration that “film is a visual medium”.

Film and Television and Animation are mixed mediums of storytelling designed to in different ways stimulate both sight and sound to convey whatever their artistic intent is.  A purely visual medium would be things like paintings, something way more visual than anything else would be Comic Books/Manga or the very modern artform of motion comics.  Something that’s not visual at all would be Audio Dramas and Music Records.

I make posts like this to defend allowing artists to make what they want and the audience to enjoy what they want.  I am not someone who devalues the visual aspects of film or opposes films that prioritize the visual elements over everything else.  Such films have less appeal to me personally but I absolutely respect them, and absolutely do appreciate the visual elements of the movies and shows I do like.

That said there are sometimes bad directorial decisions made because of this over prioritizing of the visuals that YouTube critics defend simply on the principle that they did “something” visually instead of “nothing”.  Take for example JustWrite’s video on Rise of Skywalker where he is very critical of that film (more than I am really) but still defends Abrams as a Director over Lucas by showing a scene from a non Star Wars Abrams film where the Camera is spinning around some characters talking as inherently more “interesting” than the Prequels' more muted directorial style where the camera is still while characters talk.  As someone who likes Dialogue I don’t appreciate the Camera trying to disorient me while I'm trying to follow a conversation.

But that doesn’t mean I'm always against having some motion going on during a dialogue scene.  As an Anime fan I love the scene in the first episode of Fate/Zero where Kerie’s father and Tosaka walk in a circle around him while recruiting him into their scheme.  But it’s not nearly as disorienting as that Abrams scene and more importantly serves an artistic purpose beyond just avoiding the accusation of being boring. ReplayValue has a video essay on the scene that explains it way better than I could.

The Irony of all this is how some visual aspects of film get disrespected by this dismissiveness towards anything not purely or primarily visual.  When a character is talking, more is going on than just the words themselves, are they being sincere or manipulative or is their trustworthiness ambiguous?  How do they feel about what they’re saying, are they talking about something that traumatized them or does it give them great Joy to talk about?  Is there maybe something else they are failing to say?  These ideas are in part conveyed by how they say it, their facial expressions and how they’re moving.  In Live Action that is pretty much entirely in how the Actor performs it, however in Animation the more visual aspects of Acting are done by the Animators, so no you're not respecting them by dismissing dialogue scenes, sometimes the visual performance of a character talking is the best work they’ve done.  Maybe none of these people intend to dismiss all that when they say “film is a visual medium” but when saying it in the contexts they do that’s the implication.

That’s why it offends me when Zero Woolfe says sarcastically “what a great way to use this VISUAL medium” about Andrew Garfield’s performance in No Way Home because he has some ideologically problem with simply saying what was previously unspoken.  His praise of the Marc Webb films are good, it’s the looking down on everything else that bugs me.

But that’s just how this attitude towards film can unintentionally disrespect visuals when it comes to a single scene. When a film gets perceived as an overly talky film it can cause the things that counter that narrative to be willingly ignored.  Back when the IMDB forums existed, one forum I liked to spend time on was the 1963 Cleopatra film.  And there was such a strong narrative there about how much “overacting” Elizabeth Taylor did in that film that I feel like I’m the only one who noticed near the end when she sees the ring she gave to her son earlier on Octavian’s hand and realizes he’s lying and her son is already dead.  That is an understated moment not conveyed in dialogue at all, but because it goes against a common narrative no one talks about it.

Thing is these people know non Visual elements are important because no one would dismiss the value of Music in films and be taken seriously.  George Lucas can describe Star Wars as almost just a glorified Music Video for John Williams score and no one goes “um film is a visual medium so why are you putting so much emphasis on an audio element:.”

It’s just talking that seems to bother these people.  Maybe they’re Introverts who don’t talk much in real life, but the thing is, so am I.  I like watching fictional characters who can do what I can’t, from Flying to Changing Gender at will to talking good.

Maybe it’s just the opposite. Maybe they love talking in real life so much that they want the characters in films to just shut up so they can talk over them and not miss anything.

Update April 2nd: Once again I found a Video Essay that had already argued what I am here with different examples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWdoqVkXcwo

Suicide Squad Isekai has Anime Writers

That's why I think it has a better change at feeling like a true Anime then other recently announced Anime takes on Western Nerd properties like The War of The Rohirrim or Scot Pilgrim.

I know it seems counterintuitive to some people but the way it's Animated and Drawn is not the main reason I like Anime so much.  I have developed a deep fondness for various Anime Art styles, but it's because I already associate them with so many stories I like that give it that meaning for me.

Principally the two people slated to write Suicide Squad Isekai are the main writers behind Re;Zero and Vivy the later of which I just watched.  Both are very good and do I think show them to be the best Isekai writer to take on the this section of the DC Universe.

Teppai Nagatsuki also wrote Warlords of Sigrdrifa which I liked a lot.  

Eiji Umehare wrote Pokémon: The Power of Us which is definitely the best of the most recent Pokémon movies.

People who care about the Director may be concerned that this seems to be the first thing Eri Osada has directed, but I think it'll be fine.

The Music is gonna be from Kenichiro Suehiro who also did the music for Re:Zero and Uncle from Another World and The Eminence in Shadow.  I'd have preferred Yuki Kajiura but those shows sound perfectly fine.

So all in all I'm excited for this project.

Some more Anime Writers

So there are some Anime Writers I've taken note of now that I don't think I've spotlighted on this Blog before.  For all of them I still haven't seen everything they've written.

Code Geass was for a long time my second favorite Anime, and it still securely has a place in my top 10, and since it's an Anime Original I figured I should take a look at it's writers.

Ichiro Okouchi was probably the head writer of Code Geass, more recently he was the head writer on Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury.  He wrote 5 episodes of RahXephon and 10 episodes of Angelic Layer and Princess Principial.  He also wrote much of Lupin III Part V which seems to be most people's favorite Lupin project of the last decade.  Two things he's written for I haven't watched but which are notable are Lupin Zero and Kabenari of The Iron Fortress.

Another notable writer for Code Geass was Hiroyuki Yoshino, he also wrote the Anime for My-Hime and My-Otome, and some of the notable Anime original content for Raildex like the Miracle of The Endymion movie and much of the Febri arc.  He has the Series Composition credit for Izetta: The Last Witch but no individual episodes.  He's written a lot of stuff I still haven't seen yet but might in the future.

Another key writer on Witch From Mercury was Yasuhiro Nakanishi who was also a lead writer on My Love Story with Yamada-Kun at lv999 probably the most underrated RomCom Anime of 2023 and an upcoming Isekai called No Longer Allowed In Another World.  Also Kaguya-Sama Love Is War but I don't know how much Anime Original Content that series even has.

Bowdlerization is Good Actually

 The term Bowdlerization comes from the name of Thomas Bowdler who’s 1818 Edition of William Shakespeare changes the text in a lot of ways many deem to be “Censorship”.  Now in the sense that the term strictly speaking originally refers to the act of changing the text of an older work and presenting it if that simply is what is now that I don’t want to defend.

However the drift of the word is often used primarily of one particular change a lot of Bowdler’s versions made, changing the Tragedies to have a happy ending.  And as such is often applied to adaptations and reimaginings of prior stories, not merely edited editions.  

So it’s in the context that treating the act as fundamentally wrong bothers me.  Because retelling a story that originally had a Happy Ending to subvert that ending is often praised as a bold and brave artistic choice.

There is an attitude among a certain time of Leftist that feels like Bad Endings are inherently more subversive, or at least endings that are not completely happy, where something is still lost, there is still some “consequence”.  That the first and foremost goal of Left Wing Art needs to be to show how bad things currently are.  However Karl Marx was a fundamentally optimistic person who believed a Communist future was inevitable, so there is plenty of room for Left Wing Art that plays into that optimism.  

But I also don’t need to agree with the politics of something to enjoy it.  I I can artistically respect stories with bad endings, but as far as what I like personally I’d generally prefer a conservative story that makes me feel good to a fellow Leftist trying to depress me with all their cynical observations I agree with.

So let’s go back to the Shakespearean context of the word’s origin.  It’s fairly well known that almost all of Shakespeare's Plays were based on some older story, some even already had prior Elizabethan Stage Plays.  What’s relevant here however is that some of his Tragedies were a lot less Tragic in their original versions.

Even Hamlet, one of the top two most well known of them all.  The original Danish Legend of Prince Amleth does end with him taking the Throne rather than dying.

However no Legend is in my view more cursed by having its popular perception entirely filtered through Shakespeare than that of King Lear and his daughter Cordelia.  Shakespeare probably got Lear from Holinshed's Chronicles but the oldest surviving account is from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain where Leir of Britain reigned in the 8th Century BC.  Now because it’s a chronicle of the entire history obviously they died eventually, but the sequence of events Shakespeare is dramatizing ends with Cordelia restoring Leir to the Throne and then succeeding him as Britain's first Ruling Queen.  That happy ending is undermined by knowing that Cordelia’s sexist nephews are going to overthrow her in a few years but still it was something, could have even made great thematic propaganda for the recently passed Queen Elizabeth.

King Lear is among the plays that would get a changed up happier ending, but still not restoring the original ending since it has Cordelia marry Edgar (a character not in the original source at all, the whole Gloucester family stuff Shakespeare took from a different source) seemingly forgetting that she was married to the King of France/Gaul.  Now of course I’d be all for having Cordelia reign as a Polyandrous Queen but I don’t think that’s what these editors intended to go for.

I’d change the outcome of the Leir saga to make it even happier, have Cordelia reign longer and have her Nephew’s coup fail and have her usher in a Gender Egalitarian Communist Utopia.  Because one thing I disagree with Marx on is that we had to do Capitalism first, I think going right from Feudalism to Communism was theoretically possible and I’d love to see some Speculative Fiction explore that theory.

Thing is if I ever wrote my own version I’d still include some stuff from Shakespeare, Shakespearean Fools are always fun, and the complexity the Gloucester plotline adds is thematically useful, but I’d try to subvert the Bastard son being the bad one.

But let’s move the conversation to stories that were already Tragedies in Shakespeare’s source material.  The notion that it's sacrilege for any story calling itself “based on Romeo and Juliet” to let them live happily ever after I mostly just find boring and unimaginative. But I more so think any adaptation that also makes them the same gender is morally obligated to give them a happy ending, being doomed to only tragic endings is an old trope the Gay community doesn’t like being reminded of.

However Othello is the one that I really think needs to be allowed to end differently.  It is the one Shakespeare Play everyone wants to see as about Race, and Shakespeare's story was indeed more Anti-Racist then his source material.  But the nature of how Racism works has changed, so much so that some feel it’s anachronistic to some people to even call anything that far back Racism.

I think a lot of modern people want to read the play more allegorically, they Iago represents systemic forces that push Black People into Crime.  But that doesn’t work. Bad Individuals make Bad allegories for Systemic Racism.  And Othello is in a more privileged position than a poor Black person living in a modern American inner city.

The fact is Conspiratorial White Supremacists never actually make Black People the Evil masterminds of their Conspiracy Theories, they refuse to see Black People as capable of that level of intelligence.  Their world view is built on seeing them as aggressive, easily manipulated pawns of Evil White People, or at least people who can pass as White like Ahskenazi Jews.  Iago is etymologically a form of the name Jacob so maybe it’s not a coincidence this play is set in the same city as the explicitly Antisemitic one.

And then there’s how Race issues aside, modern people no longer think adultery justifies murder,  There was this movie in 2001 called O that was about remaking Othello as a High School Drama.  And its decision to end the same way is really jarring, Odin not realizing murdering his girlfriend was wrong till he learns she didn’t cheat on him yet still telling everyone they’re racist if they blame him for his own actions really doesn’t work.

So it would actually fight Racism more if the villain who thinks the Black Protagonist can be pushed into violence over such base emotions is proven wrong.

Shakespearean Anime

I’m going to list these by how Shakespearean they are, not how much I generally like them.  They are all stuff I recommend.

Romeo x Juliette

This Anime is not an animated staging of the Play, in fact it’s far from the only Shakespearean Play this Anime is drawing on.  It uses lots of random quotes and vaguely Shakespearean language.  But for the specifics of other plays it’s story could be compared to the first that comes to mind is Juliette being put in a Hamlet situation, however Romeo is arguably in a Prince Hal situation.  The presence of a Senate cna remind one of the Roman Plays.

I’m not the biggest fan of how it ends, but that only affects the last 2 out of 24 episodes.

Requiem of The Rose King.

For this one I recommend the Manga more so then the Anime, in fact I was originally very harsh on it’s 2022 Anime but I gave it a second chance just recently and the pacing of the early episodes still bugs me. Eventually it either gets better or I got used to it.

It’s based on the Henry VI plays and Richard III, but again not a direct adaptation.  Its starting premise is reimagining Richard’s deformity as being Intersex and deconstructing his popular demonization.  

The tells that it is still partly filtered through Shakespeare are things like William of Suffolk having been Margaret of Anjou’s Lover rather than Beaufort (the Beauforts aren’t mentioned at all).  And its use of Joan of Arc.

First of all the name itself, this is the only Anime that says “Joan of Arc” rather than ”Jeanne d’Arc”, there is a lot of Jeanne d'Arc in Anime and usually even the English Dubs keep that more properly French Pronunciation.

However, on the subject of Joan, there is one cut the Anime made from the manga I do still have to complain about.  Having Joan’s ghost haunt Richard feels a lot more random when they’ve removed the reference to it being Richard of York who burned her at the stake.  And that itself is a deviation from the history that comes directly from Shakespeare, every other fictionalization of Jeanne doesn’t mention York because they know he didn’t come to France till years later.

This is a Shoujo Anime, where Richard has a pretty large Pansexual Harem.

Now it is still Problematic, not by ever endorsing any Transphobia (or whatever you call Bigotry against Cis Intersex people) towards Richard, but in its Internalized Misogyny.  The only Female identifying characters who aren’t ever vilified are Anne Nevill and Elizabeth of York.

Now I really like this take on Margaret of Anjou, she can be read as a manifestation of Internalized Misogyny even more potent than Cersei Lannister.  I could take or leave its handling of Elizabeth Woodville.  But what bugs me is the decision to slander even Catherine of Valois to explain Henry VI’s trauma, I happen to really like Catherine.

Code Geass: Lelouch of The Rebellion.

This show gives me Shakespearean vibes more so than any objective reason to say it was definitely influenced by the Bard.

Death Note is similar to Richard III in a very different way from Requiem, rather it’s like how House of Cards is compared to Richard III in how it kind of makes the audience an accomplice to Light.

Gundam The Witch from Mercury of course draws on The Tempest as much as it does Utena.

And that’s it, there’s kind of shockingly little of Shakespeare in Anime.

There are random references here and there, a movie with "A Midsummer Night's Dream" as it's subtitle but no actual connection to that play I could notice.  Shakespeare is himself is a character in Fate/Apocrypha but he doesn't amount to much.

It definitely gets me to thinking how I wish there was more.  What unique takes on Shakespeare could only Anime do?

Henry V should be adapted as a Mecha Anime since it is the Shakespeare Play most about War, and at least can be interpreted as Anti-War.  Other plays have battles but their just plot points, in the Henry VI plays they only serve to explain why who's in control has changed.  In Troilus and Cressida the Trojan War is a framing device but what's actually about is Netorare.

I'm not even joking, I totally think PoRo should make an adaptation of Troilus and Cressida.  Of course it's not the only Shakespeare play with NTR, given the abstract nature of how NTR Hentai can work I'd say it would count to have Richard III seduce Anne Neville on her dead Husband's Coffin.

And remember I have in older posts quoted Much Ado About Nothing to demonstrate that the basic concept of the Tsundere is nothing new, (I suppose I should acknowledge that I got that from TVTropes before Hbomberguy comes after me).  So imagine having Beatrice played by an Anime Voice actress with experience voicing Tsunderes interpreting the character through that lens?

Let Detective stories do what they want

Last time I did a post about how Detective Fiction seems to have less permission to break its perceived Genre Rules than any other Genre was before I got into Detective Conan in early 2022.  Since then I’ve become more of a fan of this genre and become even more passionate about the opinions I expressed back then.

Now the Detective Conan aka Case Closed franchise has plenty of cases that will satisfactorily play by the rules these critics care about so much, in fact other people praising this franchise online will praise it on exactly those terms.    But thinking about this genre in its specific Anime forms has brought another argument to my attention.

I’ve recently seen a few YouTube videos explain how no Mecha Anime is actually about the Mecha (I would argue Robotics;Notes is but it's definitely unique) in response to all these noobs who think Eva or something else is oh so innovative for being “a Mecha show that isn’t about the Mecha”.  I don’t think how much a given Mecha is or is not about the Mecha should matter to its quality, but it is telling.  Normally we understand that certain Genres refer to plot devices or narrative framing devices not what the individual story is actually about.

Mysteries however are treated the opposite, one that doesn’t treat getting the mystery itself right as it’s number one priority is considered to have been badly written.  And the rules they care about so much are in tension with each other, they want there to have been a fair chance for the reader/watcher to have figured it out before the answer is formally revealed, but at the same time it’s bad if it’s too obvious.  Striking that balance is rewarding, but it shouldn’t be an absolute requirement.

Well the first and fourth Detective Conan movies are two of my favorite Detective Stories ever written and yet they fail this metric in opposite ways, almost as a perfect case study.

Naturally I am about to Spoil those two movies.  You have been Warned.

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In The Time Bombed Skyscraper it’s really obvious, Leo Joel looks like a villain the moment we meet him (and in the Japanese he's basically named Moriarty) and the only Red Herring provided is a Cop which you should never expect a Detective franchise this mainstream to be willing to commit to.  It doesn’t matter because the real drama of the film is about other things and then Leo Joel simply is a very good villain, he’s basically Howard Roak of The Fountainhead and I hate that I can lead with that when recommending the movie to people since it’s technically a spoiler.

Captured In Her Eyes has the other issue which is ultimately the one people hate more, there is no fair chance at you solving the mystery on your own, the killer winds up being someone never even presented as a suspect.  But it's fine because who the killer is is even less what the movie is actually about then the first one.  And in the English Dub the killer is voiced by John Michael Tatum so once he takes his mask off he’s a lot of fun.

Sailor Moon S and Marmalade Boy 30th Anniversaries this month

March of 1994 saw the premier of two Toei shows, Sailor Moon S and Marmalade Boy.  

Sailor Moon S is often considered the best season of Sailor Moon. I personally still prefer the era when Junichi Sato was the series director but this is the best season after that, and the only good one with Ikuhara at the helm.

Thing is there was a brief hiatus very early on and so episode 3 the proper introduction of HaruMi didn’t air till April 16th.

To some extent it’s semantics that this is considered a separate series on MAL from the prior and following one, the OP changed but the Theme Song did not, in most ways the creative team is the same.  Pokémon's first 5 or 6 years is one MAL entry even though Kanto, Orange islands and Johto saw objectively more drastic changes.  However, that Sailor Moon’s character designs change at exactly this point does make S and SuperS screen shots of Sailor Moon instantly distinguished from season 1 and R.

Marmalade Boy is a Shoujo Anime, one of a string of them that aired in a special usually Shoujo Time Slot that since 2004 has been occupied by Pretty Cure.  Of shows that aired in this time slot during the 90s this one is one of the few that has an English Dub.  Its premise I am tempted to describe as the Het version of Citrus.  I’ve only seen a handful of episodes so far so can’t say much about it but I think it’s decent.

The end of 94 and beginning of 95 are what I consider the transitional period from the Silver to Bronze Ages of Anime.  These shows are perhaps two of the last significant new shows of the Silver Age and I’d say they are a decent swan song.

What you already know can effect how you perceive a scene.

In the first episode of the first season of the HBO TV Series Game of Thrones which is adapted from the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire also called Game of Thrones, the first scene featuring Cersei and Jamie Lannister is an original not form the Book with them in King's Landing before leaving for the visit to Winterfell.

What I say next is going Spoil some plot points from both the show and books.

I first watched this show not even knowing it was based on a book already over a decade old with 4 sequels.  I also didn't know we were supposed to be thinking of this as a Who Done It, it seemed not even up to debate that Cerise and Jamie killed John Arryn and sent the assassin after Brann.  If it was like a Detective Show at all it was the Columbo kind.  

The reveal in later books that no they didn't do either of those things actually to me reads like a twist not answering a question.  It's like when people explain why Abrams is wrong and the original Star Wars Trilogy was never a "Mystery Box", the fate of Luke's father was never presented as a mystery so when we're told it wasn't what we were first told it didn't answer anything we were already thinking about, it simply changed our perspective.

So imagine my surprise when I'm watching multiple YouTube Videos from ASOIAF book fans talking about what the show changed even early on and they claim this extra Cersei and Jamie scene partly spoils the central mystery by revealing right away that they didn't kill John Arryn.  This is clearly a result of them interpreting the scene through the filter of what they already know.  To me that scene still only makes sense if they did kill him, making it a plot hole when season 4 reveals the truth.  They aren't wondering who did it, they are wondering if he told anyone what he knew with the clear subtext that they killed him over what he knew.

Screenwriters deserve more Credit

When I started my Writers tag for discussion of how often Writers don't get enough credit and/or blame and Directors get too much, I always intended for it to eventually talk about more then just Anime but Anime was already becoming the main focus of this blog.

The YouTube Channel CinemaSix has some good videos on the forgotten Co-Writer of Quentin Tarantino's early films, principally Pulp Fiction.  Tarantino of course is legitimately a director whos' also a writer being a credited writer even on films he didn't direct.  I feel however feel like most of the time the Director is only also given a writing credit because of the way he changed the script on set, meaning they didn't Write anything so much as ignore what was written.  Other times the basic idea of the film may come from the director but they still needed a professional writer to actually make a script they can start shooting.

I specified Screenwriter in the title of this post because obviously when a film is an adaptation it's not at all uncommon to suggest it's enjoyable in-spite of the director rather then because of them.  Or even when not hating on the director everyone knows Mario Puzo wrote much of what makes The Godfather so quotable.  

It's writers who write specifically for Film and TV that only get respect when they also direct.

In the very Director obsessed world of YouTube Video Essays some writers will only get mentioned when it's something the Essayist doesn't like.  JustWrite argues that David S Goyer explains what AppleTV's Foundation and Man Of Steel have in common, but no one will talk about how much credit Goyer deserves for Batman Begins, how he's the one who kept Nolan's Realism fixation in check and is also why Begins has more witty dialogue then it's sequels.  If you're one of those who likes Begins the most of the Nolan Trilogy you're probably actually a fan of Goyer but simply don't know it.

And that's not the first time a Batman movie's writer was screwed over.  Sam Hamm wrote the script for Tim Burton's Batman, and every deviation Burton made from the script was for the worse.  Burton is a good director, his style is a big part of why his Batman movies work, but they could have been even better if he hadn't over estimated his ability to Write.

And on the subject of Batman writers Alan Burnette was important to Batman The Animated Series success and had before that proven his skill at writing Batman by writing The Fear an episode of the 80s Superfriends cartoon.

Christian Isekai, or how I'd do Narnia differently.

One of the characteristics that separates the modern Isekai trend of Anime/LNs from older classical stories the word applies to, both in Japan and in the West, is how modern Isekai protagonists are Nerds who are very Genre Savvy about the kind of story they’ve been thrown into, a more subversive one may have them be a bit Wrong Genre Savvy sometimes, but still the concept itself is far from alien to them.

However, George MacDonald and Frank L Baum and J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis wrote stories about protagonists who go on a fantastical Journey to learn not to show off what they already know.  And so Narnia works as a Christian story the way it does because the Pennevises are not very Biblically or Theologically Literate, Narnia has to teach these children what modern education neglects.

And yet I as a Christian who has a lot of theological and doctrinal disagreements with Tolkien and Lewis even though I’m a fan of their fiction, feel like the Modern Anime Isekai approach is actually a better framework for Christian Fiction because you can frame it as a missionary journey, a quartet of modern Christian Nerds like myself sent to like Paul and Barnabas bring The Gospel to people that hadn’t heard it yet.  

I’m also more Politically and Socially Leftist then either Tolkien or Lewis and that'd be reflected in anything I wrote as well.  They are sent to preach the Gospel to those willing to hear it but NOT to impose anything, as believers in Universal Salvation they won’t go around telling anyone they’re going to Burn Forever if they don't accept their message.  If they do wind up influencing any Governments it’ll be in a Communist direction.  Instead of siblings the four will be Polyamorous Pansexual Lovers. 

I’d also take the approach of a world that has had migrants from our world in the past, in fact I'd trace all Sapient life back to Earth.  But I'd have all prior contact be B.C., or at least before Christianity reached the part of our world they came from.  I’d have a portion of the “Lost Tribes” wind up here, in fact I’d probably name the world Arzareth as a Book of Tobit reference.  I’d have the Elves of this world descend from Cain with sub divisions based on the four children of Genesis 4’s Lamech.  And if I include Talking or Anthropomorphic Animals I’d explain their origins as being Genesis 2:18-20.

And speaking of Furry Bait, I want to rant about the whole “Aslan is Jesus’s Furrsona'' issue.  A few different animals you can find Biblical Justification for making a symbol for Jesus, but a Lion is the last one I would chose to outright make Jesus’s Animal form, and the reason why is reflected in the Text of Narnia itself, every time they emphasize that Alsam is “Wild” it makes me uncomfortable, that sounds like the characterization of a Pagan god not Jesus.

Revelation 5 tells us what animal Jesus’s Fursona would be in verses 5 and 6.  

And one of the elders saith unto me, "Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof."

And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.

Now I wouldn’t do the full The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe premise, The Passion is something that only has to happen once, and His only Incarnation is as the Son of Adam.  But if I had Him appear in an Animal like form in a Symbolic Vision or something It’d be as The Lamb.  He’s The Lion of Judah only as a title to describe his specific relationship with that Tribe.  It would not be very relevant to mention at all in a setting with no Israelites, or one like my hypothetical here where the only Israelites came from the Northern Kingdom.

Now there is some debate over just how Zoologically flexible the Greek words for “Lamb” used to describe Jesus are, the possibility that they could include Rams or Goats does exist   Jesus as a Goat would have potential significance to the Tribes of Joseph based on Genesis 37:31 as well as to people who are into Yom Kippur. Exodus 12:5 even says Goats are equally valid for Passover. And it’d be an amusing subversion of expectations given Pop Culture’s love of assuming Satan is a Goat, (Biblically Satan is the Great Dragon and the Old Serpent).  But I'd most likely just go with a regular Lamb like most visualize anyway.

Baby Yoda and Elves

 I love Baby Yoda as much as everyone, but I can’t help but find the concept of being a Baby who can’t even speak yet for over 50 years kind of bizarre, and I’ve seen similar tropes done with the aging process of some Anime Elves.  I remember thinking a more serious world builder would just explain how their very long lived race matures to adulthood at about the same timespan humans do and then their aging slows down dramatically.  

But then I learned that in some of Tolkien's more obscure writings it’s clarified his Elves were also envisioned as taking like 100 years to become adults.  

The growing that we humans experience for the first 25 years of our lives and the decaying that defines the rest of it are very different biological phenomena, that both can be described as “aging” doesn’t make them the same thing.  So the later being massively slowed or even frozen for a fantasy race doesn’t inherently mean the former has to be slowed as well.

So any Elves in a story written by me would grow up perfectly normally.

Witch Hunter Robin's Adult Swim 20th Anniversary

In my prior posts about being in the era of 20th anniversaries of early 2000s Anime I have a few times mentioned how Western Fans seeing these shows for the first time usually happened a few years later.  It really is not that difficult to find out what those western localization release dates were, I just didn’t feel like doing research that was more complicated than checking MAL.

Well thanks to a random YouTube Video from MrTopTenList about forgotten Adult Swim Anime I now know the Adult Swim broadcast of the 2002 Anime Witch Hunter Robin began in February of 2024.  I didn't watch the show then, I randomly bought the DVD box set a few years later (it is the English Dub I watched however).  But still for other fans of this show, perhaps most of them, now their memories of it are starting to turn 20 years old. 

I also really wanna see that April Fools day broadcast now, I’m certain I would get a kick out of it.

The current official place to watch Witch Hunter Robin is on Crunchyroll.

2003 was the initial Adult Swim Run of Reign The Conqueror (also in February, interestingly), I wish I’d known that last year so I could properly celebrate it.  So someone born while their Dad was watching Reign premiere on Adult Swim will be old enough to Drink this month.

Late Spring and Summer of 2004 was the broadcast of the Funimation Dub of Detective Conan which was renamed Case Closed, not all of it aired on Adult Swim though, only like 48 episodes.

So let’s get the 20 year Nostalgia Cycle boom going for these shows.  Most of the stuff in that YouTube Video are not shows I ever watched but I may be checking them out soon.  I have a fascination in general with the kind of Anime we got in the 00s that just aren’t made anymore.  Not all of it even got localized, but what was on Toonami and Adult Swim and other blocks from 2002-2005 is exactly what should be ready for resurgence now.

I don't know what the oldest SciFi channel Anime Blocks were called.  My earliest memories of watching Anime on the SciFi channel was the AniMondays block when it aired Gundam 00.

Frieren is not the Best Anime of 2023

I realize the Anime most prominently featured in the Thumbnail of a Best of ____ YouTube video is usually not given the number 1 slot because they want that to be a bit of a surprise.  But giving Frieren this role in your Thumbnails still endorses that it's the easy pick to be at least near the top and I really would not put Frieren even in 2nd or 3rd place.

First of all, Frieren in 2023 specifically is fundamentally incomplete. I realize some may find it unfair to rule out from AOTY contention any multi-cour shows that straddle the Gregorian New Year change over. But in the case of Freiren the way the final episode to air in 2023 doesn’t even finish the Arc it’s a part of is just really on the nose with it.

Now obviously a popular show from Fall having this role is partly a result of recency bias but ya know what as someone who’s actively tried to avoid that I feel like Fall 2023 may genuinely deserve it’s current dominance over the year as a whole simply because there aren’t a lot of Seasons that I’ve already completed this many shows from within a month of it ending, 9 TV Anime and two ONAs of comparable size to a TV Anime with more I likely will complete later (that's not counting how I've seen all of the 2023 episodes of Freiren).  There are older seasons I still haven’t watched close to that much of.

I do like Freiren, I’ve been recommending it as one of the best, not even vaguely Isekai like Fantasy Anime we’ve gotten in recent years. I recommend it to old fashioned Tolkien and Lewis style Fantasy nerds who have no tolerance for Anime BS.  But the thing is I am an Otaku, for my actual Anime rankings Anime BS is a feature not a bug and that’s just one reason Frieren isn’t in my top three even of Fall 2023 specifically.

First I’m gonna mention Spy x Family season 2, if you're gonna make a contender a show that is incomplete within the year in question I’d rather have an Arc that was built up to rather than an introduction.

But I think the actual best shows of Fall 2023 are two Netflix ONAs we got in October.  Good Night World and Pluto both get 10/10s from me, Frieren I doubt will get that even for the entire first season much less what is in 2023 on its own.  Pluto will likely be the subject of its own post on this Blog in the future.  Good Night World is a show I found fun and interesting from the start yet still managed to emotionally hit me way more than I expected.

But even comparing Freiren to other first cours of something still incomplete, SHY and I’m In Love With The Villainess both justified themselves as somewhat stand alone first seasons way more then the 2023 content for Freiren did even though Frieren had a few extra episodes to work with.  But I won’t put Freiren at the bottom of this sub sub category either, as much as I am still a fan of 100 Girlfriends I think it’s season 1 struggled with pacing slightly that form what I’ve heard about the Manga future seasons will at some point not have anymore.

There are at least  two TV Anime of Fall 2023 that stand on their own completely whether or not a season 2 of some sort ever happens and those are Tearmoon Empire and 16bit Sensation. 

All that is just Fall, shows from earlier seasons include second seasons for Jobless Reincarnation, Eminence in Shadow, Vinland Saga and The With From Mercury each of which I’d personally rank higher than Freiren.  Zom100 which was phenomenal.  Maybe some of you think I’m biased against Freiren for not being Actiony enough, well I also place Rant-a-Girlfriend season 3 above Frieren, and maybe also My Love Story with Yamada-Kun at Lv999.

Winter 2023 does compete with Fall 2023 in terms of how much of it I’ve completed.  But only 3 I’d call AOTY contenders, The Magical Revolution of The Reincarnated Princess and The Genius Young Lady, Onimai and Buddy Daddies each of them is better than Freiren.

Actually maybe a 4th if we count Eminence in Shadow Season 1, I would generally rather count a MAL entry that started the prior year rather than ended in the next one.  But in this case only 7 episodes of season 1 aired in 2023.  If we just counted all of Eminence as one candidate ignoring the MAL divisions it would be top 10 for certain.

So basically no Freiren as great as it is can’t even make my top 10 of 2023.

Even if your agenda is specifically to bias a Normie accessible show, Vinland Saga season 2 has even less Otaku elements then Frieren and Pluto is designed to be a new modern entry point to Anime's oldest franchise.

No movies are not worse now then they used to be.

People have always somewhat felt like the present quality of Cinema is the worst it's ever been, exactly how prominent that discourse is does have it's spikes and we seem to be in one right now.  "Justified" by how financially poorly the film industry did in 2023.  People are going to theaters less because of the lingering impact of the pandemic and normalization of streaming, I don't think it'll be permanent, I think it's gonna go up and down, but it definitely does not speak to the quality of 2023 films.

I even saw the title of a YouTube video I didn't watch explicitly saying "No you aren't just nostalgia blinded", I refused to even dignify such a claim with views.  I guarantee you in 20 years people will be Nostalgic for phase 4 MCU and DCEU films and Live Action Disney remakes.

The current Golden Age people look back on is the 90s and early 2000s, but I unlike most my age don't just remember the movies from that time, I also remember the internet discourse around them, and it was essentially no different then now, only the details of the theories on why things got worse might have changed.

To an extent what percentage of movies are considered to be good or bad isn't actually viewed as being any different.  It's just that the "forgettable" movies of the past are forgotten and the old "bad" movies still considered bad people talk about in ways that emphasize their charm, how they're a product of their time made in ways you won't see today, or from a respected director who's fanboys refuse to see no value in even their "worst" films.  While everything today is just "soulless" focus tested corporate mandated garbage. 

And people who insist on maintaining that the revaluated films shouldn't be revaluated blame it on Meme Culture, on people watching bad movies ironically and Memeing themselves into liking them.  And that issue may tie into a potentially entirely different thesis, I may write something about the concept of "So Bad it's good".  With movies like the Star Wars Prequels it is well documented that the people who like them always existed, the GenX haters just lost their control of internet discourse.

However an interesting case study here is The Mummy film from 1999, the people hyping it up as an unironically great example of the kind of 90s/early 2000s film they don't make them like anymore seemingly don't even know there ever was an Internet Echo chamber that considered it a very bad movie and an example of how 90s and early 2000s attempts to "rip off" Indiana Jones pale in comparison to the real thing.  My memory of the era is that people who liked the movies existed but GenXers who hated it for not being a pure Horror Movie also largely dominated Internet Group think.

There are plenty of films, even Hollywood Genre films in 2023 that are not all that controversial to consider good, the Super Mario Bros movie, Across The Spiderverse, Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves, each considered perfectly fun movies that at the very least succeeded at what they were going for.

Now as far as the movies that I liked just fine but that enough Internet Group think hates to make them be perceived as failures, no thesis about why current movies are so bad fits.  Peter Coffin's "Wookieepeditis" thesis doesn't explain The Flash which made Canon more flexible then ever.  And culture war stuff influencing both films and internet discourse about them isn't new either, it's just the exact terminology that has changed.  

On the subject of Indiana Jones anyone who thinks Kingdom of The Crystal Skull is worth redeeming but not Dial of Destiny has no consistent logic, both are exactly parallel in how much they either follow or break from the formulae of the 80s Indiana Jones movies.

I'm also going to just assume Anime films aren't being considered in this Normie discourse since it's technically a completely different Industry.  But at any rate we got the best Detective Conan film in a decade, Maboroshi which I was not expecting but was awesome, a new Psycho-Pass movie that was great though I had issues with it's message which stem from those I always had even of the original show.  And a new Miyazaki film which I haven't seen and probably won't but most people seem to think lived up to the expectations.  I will see the Sailor Moon Cosmos films when they are Dubbed and I'm fairly confident they will be great.

There is a common claim some people make that children will enjoy everything they see and thus potentially be Nostalgic for it as Adults so the existence of very young people who liked something can never be a vindication.  I hated Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory as a kid, I have Anti-Nostalgia for that movie.  And it's not just that, even at my youngest there is plenty of stuff meant for my age demographic I saw and didn't enjoy.

My firm position is that if anyone liked something no matter how much I don't like it that vindicates it as being Good in some way, even children, especially children if they were even partially the target audience.  

The problem with Nostalgia, the thing that can make it Toxic, isn't the positive feelings it provides you for your happy memories of the past, that is objectively what's good about it.  It's when it causes you to irrationally hate the present by seeing every difference as only for the worse.  So what bugs me now is people ironically using their critiques of Nostalgia to justify saying movies are worse now because Hollywood can't make anything that isn't pandering to some generation's Nostalgia.

New IPs are being created for future generations to be nostalgic for, it just may less often be movies and Triple A Video Games.  And the truth is I think these people are massively underestimating how much of what they're Nostalgic for was also in part made to appeal to the Nostalgia of their Parents or Grandparents or even older siblings.  Millennials have Nostalgia for Tiny Toons and Muppet Babies and Adult Swim Cartoons which were made by GenXers to parody cartoons they were Nostalgic for, and Degrassi's reboot which seems to have overshadowed the original.  Hell I have a lot of Nostalgia for watching Nick at Night reruns of Happy Days.

Anime Recommendations for Inklings.

Anime is such a vast and diverse medium that I truly believe it has something for everyone even though a lot of it will struggle to appeal outside the specific subculture that created it.  So one recurring theme of this Blog is me as a person who was once a more normal western Nerd with a wide range of interests for a long time before Anime took over my brain appointing myself as an expert recommender.  And of course one of my top Western Nerdy interests is J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

Now if any long time followers of this blog exist you may think I’ve already covered Tolkien and Lewis like Anime in various ways, but the truth is the prior examples of one or both of them and Anime coming up in the same post were more the other way around if anything.  In this post I want to focus on Anime that I think could have appealed to Tolkien and Lewis themselves if they were still around, not merely fans who like their work but also a lot of stuff very unlike them.

So for example while I’ve made a few posts on why Fantasy Anime even at its most Generic and Gamerfied would appeal to someone whose tastes in the Genre were shaped by them more then the slew of GOT wannabes that western “Prestige” television spewed out in the 2010s.  I am still not insane enough to think either of them would like a show that’s basically literally about being in a Video Game.

Maquia and Frieren are the top two Fantasy Anime I would truly call Tolkienesque.  Maybe Grimoire of Zero and Dawn of The Witch could fit in.  Something that actually qualifies as Isekai would have a better shot with Lewis but not most modern Isekai.  Lewis and Tolkien’s different views on Allegory would have me recommending something like Princess Tutu or an Ikuhara show to Lewis way before Tolkien.  The third Pokémon movie Spell of The Unown might be able to appeal to both.

Also Tolkien's anxieties about Technology and Nature make him a bit of a kindred spirit with Miyazaki but that's not something people needed me to learn about, there's already a YouTube Video Essay on it.  I have also already stated that the ending of Nausicaa counts as a Eucatastrophe, also an observation I didn't make on my own.

However I want to remind people that Tolkien was capable of enjoying more kinds of fiction than just the genre he's most well known for writing.  

For example I was intrigued when I learned that Tolkien was a fan of Arthur C Clarke’s Childhood’s End.  Now the first Anime that I would recommend to any Clarke fan is the Gundam franchise, the Childhood’s End influence is there right form the original Mobile Suit Gundam, I often feel like I’m the only western fan who notices that the term Newtype itself is basically a Childhood’s End reference.  However I feel the best Gundam in many ways including as a Clarke homage is Gundam 00, now 00 like a lot of non UC Gundam Anime in my opinion struggles in its early episodes. I was lucky I caught Gundam 00 randomly in the middle of season 1 on the SciFi channel.  (The Witch From Mercury finally avoided this problem by just making its Pilot a remake of Utena’s pilot).

Heck I’m gonna leave Anime for a second to mention how I see a lot of thematic similarities between Tolkien and the works of 19th Century French Novelist Paul Feval.  They are most apparent in The Companions of The Treasure the 6th and in my headcanon last Volume of The Blackcoats saga, a Tolkien fan reading it will be reminded of a number of things.  Part of it might be how Feval was also a Roman Catholic seemingly specifically to be contrarian (it wasn’t rare in his nation like it was Tolkien but was among those writing serialized novels for newspapers).

Anime that remind me of Paul Feval are also something I’ve already talked about on this blog.  But which ones do so in specifically a way that speaks to why I compare Feval to Tolkien?  Well I suspect Princess Principal may exist at exactly the right crossroads for that.

Since Tolkien was a Linguist first and foremost he might have been amused by some of those Detective Conan episodes that play on language for a key clue.  Like episode 651 which used differences between the Kansai and Kanto dialects of Japanese.  Or that subplot from the latter part of the Clash and Red and Black where Conan used a sort of reverse Shiboleth.  

Thing is I have no idea if Tolkien ever had any interest in Detective Fiction as a genre.  Lewis did make a Sherlock Holmes reference once and I will definitely recommend Detective Conan aka Case Closed to any Holmes fan, it’s a way better modern reimagining then what the BBC and Hollywood have given us in the last 20 years.

Given the interest Tolkien seemed to have in the idea of Cursed objects that kind of Doom their possessor I’m almost inclined to wonder if even Death Note would have an appeal.

Update February 10th: I recently learned about both Tolkien and Lewis being fans of Voyage to Arcturus thanks to the Media Death Cult youtube channel.  I'm sure there are a number of Anime you could compare to Arcturus but they aren't on the tip of my tong right now.