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 scene 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.  Ned's investigation is framed as about finding out why not if.

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 asking, 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 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 also 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's writing 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 rather then to show off what they already know (and 90s Shoujo Isekai was largely the same).  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 (in Lewis's view) 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 or Political movements 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 there, 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.  There are 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 Aslan 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, the same passage that is also the main Biblical basis for associating Lion imagery with Jesus.  

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 horrifying, 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.