Frieren and Goblin Discourse

As played out as this discourse may seem I feel like I have something different to say about it.

First, while I am of the opinion that it is problematic to have inherently evil fantasy races, I can be fine with it if it’s done passively, if it’s just there and never drawn attention to. But when you take the time to raise the question only to take the deterministic answer, that's when I’m bothered.  Freiren does do that, but it’s so far only directly relevant to one Arc of the Anime and not many more in the Manga form what I’ve heard so I can grit my teeth through those parts and just enjoy what I like. 

Freiren’s predecessor in the world of Anime in this discourse was 2018’s Goblin Slayer, that one I couldn't finish because it was too innate the entire premise of the show. 

What really bugs me about a lot of the people so determined to attack those criticizing Freiren on this issue is not that they aren't bothered by it but that they are talking about those who are as Normie Tourists bringing Woke Politics into Anime.  Frieren and Goblin Slayer stood out to Anime fans because it is precisely in the context of Anime that this is unusual.  I’ve yet to see a high profile Western Medieval style High Fantasy Show or movie with Goblins that are good actually, even in Game of Thrones the White Walkers were soulless monsters.  It’s in Fantasy Anime where the default is to humanize even the enemies. 

Goblin Slayer aired the same season as the first cour of That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime which took the exact opposite approach to Goblins, that show has 3 seasons and a spin off now and a 4th is likely coming. We see a similar approach to conventional fantasy monsters in Tsukimichi Moonlit Fantasy,as well as So I'm A Spider, So What.  Mushoku Tensei is often alleged to be in its source material the origin point of the modern form of Fantasy Light Novels, and it has a major storyline about Demons not being evil. Even in Solo Leveling, a show recently bashed as mindless trash there is an arc where the Demons are revealed to not be all evil.  Hell, even Gate, a show I see a lot of Fascism in, does not depict any race intelligent enough to speak as immutably evil. 

It stretches beyond just Fantasy btw, in Wedding Peach the agonistic society literally referred to as Devils are ultimately proven to not be inherently evil, which is exactly how the Magical Girl genre always does it.

There is a lot of strawmanning of what everyone on the “Woke” side of this debate is saying.  It’s not about saying you can never have a society or tribe that is in their current state opposed to the greater good.  No one is saying it’s wrong to kill the Goblins that are currently attacking you.

There has been talk of what Frieren does as a “Subversion of the Subversion”, that saying Demons aren’t inherently evil has become so common now that subverting that is more subversive. But a Double Subversion that just goes back to a regressive status quo is not interesting beyond the initial shock value of it. But let me tell you how I think a Subversion of a Subversion could be interesting. 

I am a bit tired of Frankenstein’s Monster being made completely innocent, where if he kills at all it’s always either self defense or an accident.  In the original novel he is a sympathetic character, who is driven to his monstrous actions by how he’s treated.  But he still intentionally killed a child to frame an innocent woman and cause her to be hanged, as just one example. The fact is the Creature’s characterization in The Novel is both literally and connotatively that of what we’d today call an Incel. 

I definitely want the Creature to be redeemed of his sins by the end, but it'd be nice for people to stop pretending he was without sin. 

Visual Novel adaptations

Visual Novels are a medium of entertainment I’m unable to consume myself for reasons related to my ADD and perhaps other undiagnosed disabilities I may have, it’s not that I’m unwilling or lazy it’s that I’m literally unable.

But they are an artform I greatly appreciate because they have been the direct source material of several of my favorite Anime while even more are the parts of franchises that started as VNs. So I want to advocate for them as much as I can as an outsider.

However a lot of Visual Novel fans have decided to resent their Anime adaptations, even the best of them, instead of appreciating them in return.  And to some extent I feel it shows the immaturity of the western VN fandom that they are like this.  Could you imagine if the film adaptations of Jurassic Park and The Godfather and the many highly regarded Dracula and Frankenstein films were constantly being called garbage because people who read the books were defining them solely based on how much content in the books aren’t in the films?  

I’m going to put the various Visual Novel based Anime into different categories. 

First are VN Anime I consider absolute masterpieces, as stand alone works of art these should be considered top tier no matter how unlike their source material they are.

Robotics:Notes

Steins:Gate

Chaos;Child

Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works (the TV Anime by UFO Table)

Higurashi When They Cry (The original 2006 Studio Deen Anime and it’s 2007 sequel Kai)

Kanon (2006-2007 Two Cour Kyoto Animation version)

Clannad + Clannad After Story

Rumbling Hearts

White Album

Comic Party

Next are ones I like about as much as those, but I do have a sense they could be done better.  

YU-NO: The Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World (2019 Tv Anime)

Fate/Stay Night Haven’s Feel (UFO Table Film Trilogy)

Air (Kyoto Animation TV Anime)

Shuffle 

To Heart

White Album 2

Yosuga no Sora

Next are Anime I do consider flawed in some way, but still also see immense artistic value in.

Umineko

School Days

Steins;Gate 0

Chaos;HEad

Fate/Stay Night (2006 Studio Deen Version)

Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works (Studio Deen Film version)

Tsukihime

If there’s a VN Anime you like I didn’t mention it might be because I haven’t it yet, I’m still holding out hope for Muv-Luv getting a Dub.  Or I may not think of the source material as sufficiently qualifying as a VN like Neptunia or all those Gacha Game Anime.

I also for the sake of simplicity excluded ones that are just Hentai OVAs, plenty of them I do have thoughts on, but now isn’t the time for that.

All that also excluded that Anime that are spin offs rather than direct adaptations.

Another post about Anime Screenwriters

There's a Pokémon YouTube Channel I discovered recently called Funyarinpa Foundation that has some good videos talking about various writers of the Pokémon Anime.  I highly recommend their videos on Aya Matsui, Hideaki Sonoda and the 44 minute Serena videos talks about a writer associated with her episodes.  He's also discussed Takeshi Shudo in a number of videos, YouTubers talking about Shudo is far from uncommon but his perspective is still a unique one.

Reiko Yoshida is a writer I've talked about on this blog before and I keep discovering more about just how uniquely prolific she is. She's not the only writer to have written for both Dragon Ball Z and some classic Mahou Shoujo. But add to that her importance to the Digimon Anime, and that she wrote a Studio Ghibli film The Cat Returns, and the Anime adaptation of classic Shoujo Yuri Maria-sama ga Miteru, and unique 00s hidden Jem Romero x Juliette and multiple 2010s "Moe" shows like Girls Und Panzer and High School Fleet and most of what Naoko Yamada directed for Kyoto Animation.   And I find it hard to imagine anyone else who has such a wide variety of Anime in thier resume.  But there are many who know a lot more then I do.

And that's just stuff I'm familiar with that I consider her one of the main writers for. There are so many other shows she wrote a smaller percentage of episodes for, from Angelic Layer to Pokémon Journeys.  And then even more I still haven't watched any of.  

Her role in the history of the Magical Girl Warrior sub-genre is interesting for how it helps build a genealogy. She wrote for Cutey Honey Flash alongside veterans of both Sailor Moon and Wedding Peach. After that she then wrote the Tokyo Mew Mew Manga from 2000 through early 2003.  This seems to be the only Manga she ever wrote, she is mainly an Anime writer. Tokyo Mew Mew I view as kind of a key transition in the history of Magical Girl Manga and Anime, as someone who took way to long to even learn of the show's existence I quickly noticed ways in which it anticipated aspects of Pretty Cure. 

I just learned while writing this that she wrote a third of Shirobako. 

As the most popular and highly regarded Anime about making Anime I do appreciate the role the writing part plays in the show. The show starts with an Anime already currently airing so it's lead writer's job is presented as mostly done till he's called back in when the director wants to change the ending.  The second core follows an Anime form the start of it's production and so we see more of what the writers do with the guy we meet only briefly in the first cour serving as a mentor to the young aspiring writer who's a friend of the protagonist. 

The lead writer of Shirobako was Michiko Yotoke.  She also has ties to the Magical Girl genre having written 3 episodes of the Pretty Sammy TV Anime and 11 episodes of Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and the Scenario for Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, and a number of shows that others might be more inclined to count as part of the genre then I would, most notably Princess Tutu which I do count more then I do say Utena.  Besides that she's written for a lot of stuff I've seen but not many I'd consider favorites.  Though normies might be interested in that she wrote 8 episodes of Cowboy Bebop. 

A Fantasy World needs to feel Alive in order for me to become invested in it.

Magic Knight Rayearth is in my opinion one of the most overrated Fantasy Anime.  There were some aspects of it I did enjoy, but what really stifled my investment was how the world never felt lived in, our heroes on their journey only ever visited one village.  It really felt like the only people who exist in this world are the ones who play important roles in the story.

And that is one of the most important things in selling a Fantasy Setting to me, it’s what Tolkien and Lewis excelled at and even Game of Thrones early on took some time to consider.

Whether or not the world actually feels alive, feels like it is filled with people and cultures worth fighting for is more important to me than whether it actually feels “Unique” or distinct from other Fantasy settings.  

This is a factor in why I don’t get tired of the modern trends of Isekai and Quasi-Isekai in Anime.  More cynical Anime critics keep mocking how they are all the same discount Dragon Quest worlds, with identical looking medieval towns and D&D Fantasy Races.  But I don’t care because even at their most generic each of those succeeded in making its world feel alive.

This is perhaps one of the most blasphemous opinions you can have in the Anime Community, to suggest that one of these Classic Shoujo Isekai, one written by the Clamp Team, actually has worse world building then In Another World With My Smartphone.  But that is my honest opinion.  Even the modern Isekai that even I haven't gotten into beat Rayearth in this area. 

No one is more disappointed that I was disappointed in a Clamp Anime than I am.  I like Cardcaptor Sakura. I love Angelic Layer, I recall liking the TV Anime version of X and I've enjoyed Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle so far [Update: I also really want a full Anime adaptation of Angel Sanctuary].  So I really expected Rayearth to live up to its hype, but it didn’t. 

Some of the most misleadingly named Anime are the LN adaptations with really long titles.

Take for example the currently airing My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero's at 5 episodes in how the Assassin protagonist compares to the Hero does not feel like remotely the point at all.  Now this could change later, but I don't see how it could ever over take everything else the show is currently about.

But for a more nuanced example let's look at my personal favorite Anime that has this kind of title, In Another World With My Smartphone.  The protagonist's Smartphone is a prominently used plot device but it's not what the show is about.  For myself and I think most other fans it's true distinctive feature is it's approach to taking the non Monogamous resolution to it's Harem.  It's no longer the only Anime or even Isekai to do that at all, but it's distinct approach to it still stands out to me as the best which I already wrote a blog post on.

Since it's so popular to insist Mecha shows aren't actually about the Giant Robots, I should be allowed to argue that the Smartphone Isekai isn't actually about either the Smartphone or even really being an Isekai.

As far as I can tell the first Anime with this kind of title was My Little Sister Can't Possibly Be This Cute, and it is indeed one of the least misleading, it conveys that the story is about the relationship between a brother and sister that may or may not go in an incestuous direction  But even then is Kirino's "Cuteness" really a deciding factor in why anything happens?

So why does this happen?  How the do the stories that devote the most words to titling themselves most often get it wrong?  I can't even say this is an example of why you shouldn't prioritize plot over story in how you title something because I often don't even think they're the best descriptions of the plot.

Remembering how a lot of Light Novels started as Web Novels on random websites, I feel like these sentence long titles were often originally writing prompts the author was using to get themselves started but never something all binding to what the story became.

But it's interesting how there are Anime with single word titles where I still struggle to deduce how that word at all describes the show.  Yet none of those titles feel actively misleading in the way one of these sentence long titles that at the very least does accurately describe an aspect of the story.

More Detective Conan episodes are up on Netflix now.

 With it being a new themed collection, it becomes necessary to start explaining to new comers what the chorological order of episodes is.  

So far it's pretty simple, the first two episodes of the show start the Black Organization collection, then watch all 11 currently in the allies and rivals collection then return to the Black Organization collection.

Part of me is a little disappointed this drop was all episodes already part of the Funimation Dub.  yeah that Dub isn't legally streaming right now but I have them DVD.  It is interesting to compare though.  Now that we have all these very early episodes part of the new Dub the moonlight Sonata Murder Case being missing stick out, it may not be important to understanding any recurring guest start but it's arguably the most important to Conan's character development, and it will be called back to in the next Heiji case.

The second Cour of this selection will almost certainly start out still in the firs 123 as well.  The first 2 hour episode is bound to be included since it's the second Ran suspecting Conan episode and second featuring his parents and introduces he Gunam Inspector.  And then there are some more Heiji episodes including the introduction of Kazuha.

Once it does leave the first 123 I wonder if they'll include the case that immediately followers Haibara's introduction, it's important to cementing her as a main cast member and is the first appearance of Officer Sato though she doesn't do a lot in it.

Update: They went the Boston rather then Southern option for the Kansei accent, the first time I've seen that in awhile.

Episodes 5 and 10 are the ones I'm most surprised to see included, I didn't think they'd be in any collection.  Episode 10 is now an episode I've seen with 3 different English casts since for random reasons it's the only episode I've seen of the original Singapore Dub.