Death is NOT Good Actually

I have in the last decade become a huge Anime fan, now most of the Entertainment media I’m particularly into is Anime or Anime related.  And in my praise of the many things I love about Anime I sometimes go a little too far in making Anime sound morally superior to Western Media.

There are some common moral themes in a lot of Anime I don’t like.  And chief among them is one I noticed being a thing when I watched Manmode’s video on Darling in The FranXX.  Now I am also a bit of an apologist for that show, the common criticisms of it I don’t agree with.  But Manmode correctly observed that one of the morals in this show’s worldbuilding was that Humanity would lose what makes us “Human” if we actually stopped dying.  He also sees this as a common theme in many Trigger/Gainax style shows with it even being awkwardly shoehorned into SSSS.Gridman in one scene in the last episode.

And even beyond those two studios it comes up a lot, though often just in making one villain's individual refusal to accept their own death a root cause of much of their villainy.  And yeah no one disagrees that Zouken Matou in Fate/Stay Night Heaven’s Feel II: Lost Butterfly saying that he would gladly kill everyone else on earth if it would prevent himself from Dying is very Evil. 

But this broader philosophical notion that Humankind needs Mortality to motivate itself isn’t limited to Japanese media of course, it's a theme in the “Christian” world building of Tolkien and Lewis as well, The Elves view Mortality as a Gift that they are envious of..  I put Christian in Quotes there not to deny that those two were Christians, they were, but this aspect of their worldview is AntiChristian, it is the very heart of Paganism going all the way back to the Epic of Gilgamesh.

What separates the New Testament 1 Corinthians 15 Gospel of The Resurrection from the many “dying and rising gods” that Mythiscists obsess over is that for Paul the Resurrection is NOT mere Symbolism, it is other things that are made mere symbols of The Resurrection.  The Gospel is the promise that Death is Temporary, that one day it will not exist any longer.

And the reason I’m still a Young Earth Creationist even though I have no interest in telling anyone they are required to be one to be a “True Christian” is because tied into that is a Belief that Death was not originally a natural part of Life, it’s existence is a consequence of Adam’s Sin, it is a Curse that the Last Adam is liberating us from.

Returning to Anime this is why I am glad there is a counter example.  The Black Moon saga of Sailor Moon (as it was in the Manga and second cour of Sailor Moon Crystal but not the 90s Anime which removed this element of the plot) involves a future where Death has ceased and everyone is now immortal, and the people who think that is a bad thing for exactly the reason Trigger thinks it would be are the villains, and the narrative has no sympathy for their perspective at all, not even the slightest nominal consideration that maybe they have a point.  The reason why this is one of the awkwardly worst Arcs of the 90s Anime is that it tried to make these villains more sympathetic while dropping their motivation.  But in Crystal I love it, I love finally seeing an Anime say FU to this popular Pagan idea.

HIDIVE is really Frustrating

 I’ve tolerated a lot of BS from HIDIVE I wouldn’t if it weren’t still the Cheapest Paid Streaming Service.  If CR was suddenly dropping one of the main shows I count on having this often I would have stopped paying them over a year ago.

There was a time on this BLog when I was HIDIVE’s biggest Evangelist.  Part of why was them having the best Horror Anime line up to recommend ever October.  But now Higurashi is gone and the two Zombie Anime aren’t consistent.

What has inspired my most recent frustration however is Princess Principal now being off the site.  HIDIVE Dubbing that show after it was trapped in AmazonStrike Jail was a blessing I was very grateful for.

Another show I loved using HIDIVE to watch that was removed and never came back was Angelic Layer.  I also miss the TV Anime version of Penguindrum.

So even with how Cheap HIDIVE is I’m at my limit, if something like this happens again I'm likely to just cancel my subscription.

The Luca Brasi Effect

 So I’ve decided to propose a Trope concept that is distinct from The Worf Effect though I suspect many at TVTropes might be seeing it as the same when it occurs.

This post will contain Spoilers for both The Godfather Trilogy and the Anime School-Live!, aka Gakkō Gurashi!

The story began when I was listening to the Audio Commentary for The Godfather on its old DVD release and Francis Ford Coppola talks about the character of Luca Brasi but more particularly when Luca Brasi is killed.  Saying that after establishing Luca Brasi as this tough, reliable bodyguard for Vito Colreone his suddenly being taken out is meant to be a sign of impending danger for the Don.

And then in the Audio Commentaries for Part II and Part III he talked about other characters in those films repeating the same role.

So while the Worf Effect is about a seemingly tough character losing a fight to make the new villain look dangerous, this is about a Protector of the protagonist(s) being removed from the scenario entirely to create a sense of vulnerability.

That’s what Coppola intended, but in execution Luca Brasi does seem more a Worf Effect by virtue of us never seeing him successfully protect the Corleones from anything on screen and what we’re told about him is more stories of him being an offensive muscle. And then his analogues in the sequels were never even named on screen that I can remember.

However there is an Anime that I feel did what Coppola talked about here far better, and that’s my long time favorite Zombie Anime School-Live!

Kurumi Ebisuzawa is established throughout the show as the casts’ Muscle both offensively and defensively, her skill in taking Zombies with her Shovel is a vital piece of why the characters have mostly lived blissfully peaceful lives during this Zombie Apocalypse.

So when Kurumi gets bitten by a Zombie and incapacitated in Episode 10, it does very effectively signify the impending end of their Eden.

Shy and Superhero Anime

One topic I talked about on this blog a few years ago is how as someone who was an American Comic Book Nerd for ages before Anime took over my brain, the Anime that to me have a similar appeal to my favorite DC Universe stories are the not the ones explicitly drawing on American Superhero aesthetics like My Hero Academia and One Punch Man but rather shows like Code Geass, the Raildex franchise, Detective Conan/Case Closed, and I’d now add Durarara! which I watched this year, twice now.

However starting with the Fall of last year a new Superhero Anime has entered the fray, Shy who’s second season is currently airing.

While HeroAca and OPM put the aesthetic trapping of American Comic Book Superheroes onto a show that is essentially a conventional Battle Shonen, with Shy it is the Magical Girl Warrior subgenre putting on Western Superhero clothing.  That actually works far better because the Magical Genre has its origins in part in western Superhero influences. 

Naoko Takeuchi has admitted to being partly inspired by Wonder Woman in creating Sailor Moon, something the recently re-adapted final arc makes more obvious with the Bracelets plot point.  But there’s also the additional indirect influence from how the Transforming Tokusatsu Superhero genre was inspired by Shazam and the 60s Batman show and so forth.

So Shy kind of winds up feeling the Genre returning to its roots in some ways.

90s Magical Girl Warriors like the Sailor Scouts and Wedding Peach wear costumes that fit in with how we typically think of American Superhero Costumes from the Golden, Silver and Bronze ages in that it would not feel inaccurate to describe them as some form of “tights”.

Today however your default parody of a standard Magical Girl is more likely to be wearing a frilly or fluffy dress of some kind and that is a largely the influence of Pretty Cure which in Japan has long surpassed Sailor Moon as the most popular Magical Girl franchise, (but it's Anthology nature means no single team has had as many canonical adventures as the Senshi).

And so Shy wearing a Western Superhero style costume coincidentally looks more like a 90s Magical Girl then any new Magical Girl franchise we’ve seen in 20 years.

But Shy is not completely removed from the history of the Magical Girl, it definitely shows some influence from the Post Madoka era of the genre, with what the villains are doing reminding me of Daybreak Illusion more than anything else.

The main difference between Shy and other Magical Girl shows, in fact the main reason it’s probably not officially going to be considered one is that there are Male Superheroes.  Of course the Nanoha franchise also had males who had essentially the same abilities.  The British Superhero keeps reminding me of the antagonist of Superman Vs The Elite for some reason.

All of this kind of makes Shy the antithesis of how I’ve been thinking about the 2008 OVA School Days: Magical heart Kokoro-Chan.

As one of the very few American Otaku who loves School Days both unironically and not because I view it as some kind of “deconstruction” I was very curious to see what it’s take on the turn the little sister character into a Magical Girl spin off trend would be.  And what I got kind of confused me.

First it starts off by also having a sort of Sentai parody, which would be cool enough.  But then we get to this classroom scene where everyone starts talking about Superheroes.  And Makoto and Sekai started saying things that sound like J. Jonah Jamenson, in my head I was like “I dedicated one of the most overly long posts on my blog to defending you two and this is how you repay me?”.  Then Setsuna starts talking and I think “finally my Waifu will bring some sense to this” and then she starts spouting a “Superheros cause Villains” monologue.

Basically this Magical Girl Parody decided to have the metatextual commentary of a Western Superhero Comic.  In Magical Girls shows and Super Sentai the villains come first and the heroes are a reaction to them, the exact opposite of what Setsuna just said.