Nokotan's Subs vs Dub

Due to the unique circumstances of Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan aka My Deer Friend Nokotan I've actually been following both it's Sub and Dub.

And going against my usual biases I am in fact preferring the Sub.

The Dub is not as bad as I'm sure some people will say it is.  But the issue is that like the 50 Episodes of Detective Conan aka Case Closed dubbed on Tubi last year it's largely a Miami based cast different from what we're used to.

I want to give new VAs a chance, but a lot of times these Miami ones are really struggling with the particulars of how Anime is dubbed.

Both with DC on Tubi and this show a lot of it sounds fine but a lot of it sounds awkward.

With DC on Tubi I was kind of in denial how much I was disliking it, I really wanted to just appreciate finally getting more Conan Dubbed.  But at this point I'd rather they focused on getting official Subs for everything CR has skipped before trying to Dub any more.

Nokotan's comedic slice of life wackiness oddly makes it easier for me to watch Subbed then a lot of other shows, like how Engaged to the Unidentified and Yuru Yuri were among the first seasonals I ever watched Subbed.  

Still this kind of show can be dubbed well, Azumanga Daioh, Paniponi Dash, Lucky Star, Nichijou all have great Dubs.

Jobless Reincarnation and Polygamy

When I wrote about why In Another World With My Smartphone is still the best Poly Anime, the closing episodes of Jobless Reincarnation season 2 hadn’t aired yet.  I as a Dub watcher waited till it was all done to binge the last 6 episodes.

Light Novel fans however knew this was coming and if they saw my post at all were perhaps annoyed at me being so presumptive. Thing is I still like Smartphone the best actually, but this has things going for it that I can see why some would consider it better.

The Polygamy in Isekai so often comes with the convenient explanation of how perfectly legal and accepted it is in this world.  Here however we see that Polygamy is still disapproved of by the dominant religion, so some degree of cultural Intolerance is implied.

And I know what the responses to my argument for why I prefer the idea starting with the girls if it’s going to be specifically Polygynous is.  The difficult situation of being a guy asking for it is exactly the challenging part some people want to see a protagonist have to deal with.

Thing is in the pilots of those recent shows with the word Girlfriend in the name, it’s done so quickly and so comically that it doesn’t feel very relatable to how such things would usually happen in real life.

Jobless Reincarnation However by spending around 50 episodes building up to it actually created a version of that scene that does potentially feel real.

Cousin Marriage is not even considered Taboo in Japan

I'm not making this post to claim that’s why it shows up in Anime sometimes.  Most Anime is Niche even in Japan and in fact does feature Taboo subject matter frequently.  In fact Cousin relationships show up less in Anime then more actually Taboo forms of Incest do.

But when an Anime or a Manga or a Light Novel or a Visual Novel/Bishoujo Game deals with Brother-Sister Incest the fact that it’s Taboo is relevant to how it’s framed.  Maybe it’s being presented as Toxic and unhealthy, or maybe they’re actually unironically defending it, or maybe it’s just for shock value or fetish fuel, but it’s definitely relevant.

Cousin Relationships however when they do show up are treated much more casually, the framing doesn’t acknowledge it as a Taboo or even comment on it as noteworthy which is why a lot of Anglophone Anime viewers get all confused and baffled by it in a way they don't for actual Incest.

One of my favorite Visual Novel YouTubers when talking about Kanon assumed Nayuki being the MC’s Cousin must be some compromise between Key wanting no weird Taboos and the Otaku audience who want a Sister option in everything.  But it’s not, the reason narratively Nayuki is his Cousin is to explain why he has childhood history with this remote town that isn’t his hometown.  Which I relate to actually as someone who’s mostly only ever left my Hometown for Family related reasons, which includes visiting small towns I wouldn't otherwise know existed.

In Elfen Lied I imagine it’s easy for some viewers to just think the Cousin relationship is only a nonissue compared to all the other transgressive madness in that show.  But it’s not, their budding Romance while essentially adopting all these traumatized kids into their family is the source of the show’s Wholesomeness.  If anyone in Japan was willing to raise even the slightest eyebrow at Cousin Marriage it couldn’t have played that role.

Explanation Point really exposes his lack of research in his horrible Mushoku Tensei video when he acts like it’s a given anyone from our modern world should know you shouldn’t bang your Cousin, when referring to a relationship that isn’t even First Cousins and which the framing of the show clearly sees as a non issue.  Another Western critic assuming Western values are more universal than they actually are even though they make their living critiquing non western media.

It’s not just Japan though, in the grand scheme of Human History most Cultures for most of their existence have seen no issues with marriage between Cousins.  The most prominent exception is “Christendom” or “The West” or whatever you wanna call it.   

And even there it was a late development, prior to AD 380 there was absolutely no Jewish, Christian, Greek or Roman precedent for there being any objection to Cousin marriage.  But then Theodosius I made the first laws against Cousin Marriage and Augustine of Hippo became the first Theologian/Philosopher to argue it was a Sin.  This time period is usually viewed as a period of either Rome being Christianized or Christianity being Romanized but this sudden problem with Cousin Marriage just emerged whole cloth from nowhere, even Plato’s Laws say nothing about Cousins.

The Bible not only never condemned Cousin relationships in it’s three chapters coving Incest (Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20 and Deuteronomy 27), it even encourages them sometimes like with the Daughters of Zelpohehad situation.  Or if like the Catholics you consider Tobit to be Canon, that book is entirely about a Cousin Marriage.

So to me the biggest unanswered question in the history of Sexual Morality is why this sudden surge of anti Cousin Marriage sentiment started in the Mediterranean in the late Fourth Century?

Inbreeding doesn’t result in deformities, that’s a myth.  The kinds of issues that Incest increases the risk of have a 2% of risk occurring no matter what, between First Cousins the risk is only increased to 4%.  And I kind of consider it Eugenics to make laws about such things to begin with.

Sometimes you’ll see someone say all those generations of Cousin Breeding is why the Habsburgs died out.  But they didn't die out, they still exist.  Karl von Habsburg is in the European Parliament right now and has children.  They stopped being sitting Monarchs because they were on the losing side of WWI.

To many in the west who have been conditioned to be grossed out by Cousincest almost as much as any other kind of Incest, it can feel like seeing someone defend Cousin relationships is a gateway drug to defending all Incest.  For me while as a Social Libertarian I would prefer it all to be legal I definitely consider Brother-Sister or Ancestor-Descendent relationships to be ill advised.  

But Cousin Marriage being viewed as Taboo is absurd, I can’t understand why so many people refuse to see how silly it is.

Goldfish Warning! would not be assumed to be Shoujo if it came out today.

And that is fascinating given my thesis that a lot about modern Otaku Anime is the product of 90s and early 2000s Otaku being influenced by Classic Shoujo.

The basic plot description of this show's Pilot seems so much like a modern Cute Girls Anime adapted from a Seinen Manga, I was also reminded of it during the Nokotan Pilot yesterday.  

It's eccentric Pink Haired co-protagonist seems like the kind of wacky Genki Girl Anime character that a Western Anti-Moe "Oldtaku" would assume could only have been written by a Creepy Man for Creepy Men.

I myself still have a lot of ignorance about the history of Shoujo Manga and Anime adapted from them, so I have no idea if Goldfish Warning! originated any of it's Tropes I'm thinking of here.

Goldfish Wanring! is often treated as if it was not very influential in it's own right, being historically significant only for it's role in the Pre-History of Sailor Moon.  It's Manga being published in the same Shoujo Magazine, and then preceding it in the same Tv Asahi Timeslot while also being the prior project of all of the 90s Anime's directors.

But maybe not, it aired in an important timeslot and so could have had maybe at least a subconscious influence on many Japanese TV watchers of the Millennial Generation.

PureMail OVAs

PureMail is a 2 episode Hentail OVA from 2001 that is an adaptation of a 2000 Bishoujo Game/Visual Novel made by Overflow the same studio that made School Days and its “sequels”.

It is also in the same universe, the character named Miki Sawagana is the older sister of Taisuke Sawagana.  That’s the familial connection that is made obvious by surname, but I'll get to the matter of Overflow Universe world building later.

First, what do I think of this OVA as a stand alone work of art?

The thing about Erotic Art that wants to be more than just Porn is that I want it to be more than just a Good Story with good fappable Sex Scenes, they need to inform each other, to be firmly integrated.  There are lots of mainstream movies where it’s part of the Plot that sex happens, but it doesn’t need to happen fully on screen.  In Erotic Art it has to be more than just that Sex happens but the specifics of the Sex have to matter, some of the character development has to be tied to how they do or do not enjoy it.

And it’s that test which PureMail fails.  I find the story and characters very interesting and I found at least some of the H scenes Fappable.  But those H Scenes also feel like they’re interrupting the story rather than enhancing it.  There are times when the conversation happening after the sex directly picks up where they left off before, but because it’s separated by 5 minutes of mindless screwing the viewer loses the train of the conversation.

I’ve watched two versions of PureMail.  I watched its English Dub unedited and uncensored on a Hentail website I won’t name here. And I watched an English Subbed version on YouTube that has the explicit parts edited out.  And it demonstrates my above criticism that the edited version actually felt like it had better pacing.  It removed vestigial organs while in ideal erotic art removing the sex scenes would be removing the heart and soul.

Unfortunately that edited version is no longer on YouTube, I neglected to download it and I don’t remember the name of the Channel, so it looks like it's probably now Lost Media that only I care about.

School Days and some of its “sequels” are known for not being presented how most Visual Novels usually are but being basically interactive Anime.  PureMail as far as I can tell wasn’t like that, it was a more normal Visual Novel.  I bring that subject up here because it means the actual source material for the Days series can be compared to PureMail’s adaptation at being an Erotic Anime.  Now I currently have not seen all the Erotic content that School Days HQ and Shiny Days have to offer, but I’ve seen some that definitely do succeed where the PureMail OVAs failed.  Even if it would be hard to argue anything is specifically absolutely necessary; they still convey things about the characters which those so easy to edit out PureMail scenes did not.

As the title of PureMail implies it involves some characters communicating via Email, so it’s perhaps one of the earliest Hentail to feature the Internet as a plot point.

One thing that I feel vindicates my vocal interpretation that Otome raped Makoto in episode 9 of the School Days Anime is that that Women Raping men is a theme in these prior overflow Overflow works.  The MC of Large PonPon was abused by at least 2 older women.  And in PureMail at least in the OVA version Kei is Blackmailed and Raped by Yumi Matou, and it’s framed as traumatizing not comedic or harmless.

So yeah there is good material here, if that edited version were the official version I’d probably give it a higher rating.  But I also imagine like many VNs adapted with so little runtime the storytelling was also hurt by being condensed and trying to make everything fit one timeline.

Now let’s return to world building.  The Overflow Universe Family Tree is a bit of a Meme to those of us who know it exists.  But in a way PureMail’s connections to all that shows how perhaps not well thought out it actually is.  Again I like most English speakers have no first hand information about these games, I’m mostly trying to draw conclusions from the Overflow Fandom Wiki (I wish I didn't have to use Fandom but no one’s cloned this content on an alternative Wiki network.)

These PureMail OVAs are technically the only onscreen Anime appearance of Tomaru Sawagoe. In the games his onscreen appearances are all in the Radish Trilogy, only they have character designs for him, and even the first of them came out after these OVAs.  Going off the OVAs Kei’s father isn’t mentioned by name and there isn’t even any hint at that father not being who he gets the surname Ogata from.  The OVAs felt they needed to actually animate a flashback and in it the character design of Kei’s father has a generic White Trash Wife Beater type look and seems to be “Lower Class”.  Tomaru in the Radish games has a more distinct and flamboyant style and is very wealthy owning the titular restaurant chain and a hospital.

Basically Kei’s father being identified with the villain of the Radish series feels like a Retcon.

Online discussion of all these Overflow games focus on how they relate to School Days because only it ever became truly infamous in the general Anime community, especially in the Anglosphere.  So Tomaru Sawagoe is defined first and foremost as Makoto Itou’s father and all the games set before School Days are talked about as if they are prequels to School Days even though they were all made before School Days.

Snow Radish Vacation was made as a prequel, but to Large PonPon, Overflow’s first game.  The Inou and Sawagoe surnames originated there and then become the focus of Snow Radish Vacation; no surnames you recognize from the core cast of School Days are in either of those games.

Large PonPon, PureMail and School Days all seem like they are set in the then present of when they were made (1999, 2000 and 2005) like the average Visual Novel.  It’s only the Radish Vacation games that have to be period pieces for the Timeline to make sense.  But I have no way of knowing how good they are at feeling like period pieces, or if they even bothered to try.

Summer Radish Vacation was a sequel to Snow Radish Vacation, but Summer Radish Vacation 2 is in some ways more of a spin off then a sequel.  School Days I think was originally made without how it connects to the other games being all that set in stone.  In fact I’ve learned there was originally a family tree chart published by Overflow which made Sekai and Setsuna children of Tomaru rather than of Shun.

Summer Days' relationship to School Days is more of a completely alternate timeline rather than a Sequel or a Prequel.  But thanks to Shun’s role it’s actually more of a direct sequel to Summer Radish Vacation then Summer Radish Vacation 2 is.

Point is, the core world building starts with Large PonPon then goes through the Radish Games to end with the Days series.  PureMail and other Overflow games mentioned on the genealogy are largely afterthoughts.  The genealogy makes Ayumu the father of multiple PureMail characters and I really doubt the game was originally written with that in mind.

Septimal Anniversaries of Summer 2017 Anime

 First an update, what I’ve seen of Winter 2017 has recently increased. This June I watched all of Nanoha ViVid and Vivid Strike including its OVA specials from January-March of 2017.

The Summer of 2017 is definitely a big part of my early Anime fandom development.

In Another World With My Smartphone season 1 remains a personal favorite show of mine.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/05/isekai-smartphone-is-still-best-polly.html

Fate/Apocrypha has similarly refused to leave my mind.  Astolfo is that show's biggest contribution to Pop Culture, but it seems in time other characters have started getting the appreciation they deserve as well.

Classroom of The Elite is a show I still enjoy even though I’m not gonna be a huge evangelist for it.  Its 2nd and 3rd seasons did not disappoint.

Princess Principal is another show that has held up on rewatch quite nicely, Yuki Kagiura music plus how it reminds me of my Paul Feval/Shadowmen interests adds to it’s personal appeal to me.

Can’t forget the second half of Re:Creators, it too should have been an instant classic.  It’s unfortunately no longer on Amazon PrimeVideo, there is now no way to legally watch it in English.

Vatican Miracle Examiner is a show I haven't finished but I still highly recommend it based on its opening 4 episode arc alone, it’s a great B Movie Horror premise.  Fortunately it’s still on Amazon Prime Video.

New Game!! is a show I’m disappointed hasn’t stayed in the Anime public consciousness more, its hype at the time felt like it was shaping up to be the leading Cute Girls Doing Cute Things as Adults show.

Gamers! Is the TV Anime from this season I took an interest in most recently.  It’s like a Gender Flipped version of Jane Austen’s Emma for Gamers and Otaku.

Netsuzou TRap is a show I was too hard on when it first aired.  I finally just watched it in June and it’s great.

Hina Logic: From Luck & Logic is a cute fun little kinda Yuri Magical Girl show that's been unfortunately forgotten.

Kakeguri season 1 I enjoyed but still haven’t seen season 2 of. 

Symphogear AXZ is obviously great if you saw the prior seasons.

Action Heroine Cheer Fruits I’ve still only seen one episode of so don’t feel like commenting on too much.

I’ve seen 5 movies from this season but none are entirely stand alone.  

Pokémon I Choose You I wound up deciding is pretty fun in its early parts but gets more mixed over time.  

No Game No Life Zero is neat.

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya Movie: Sekka no Chikai aka Vow in The Snow is fantastic.

I also in June finally rewatched the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection and Detonation movies, they hold up pretty well.

The last of the Washio Sumi movies was of course good.