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 video 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 transitional point 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 at the last minute.  The second cour follows an Anime from 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 Kingdom Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand"

This is a Bible quote most famous in America for how Abraham Lincoln used it (changing Kingdom to House), but I find it amusing how his use of it is perhaps undermined by acknowledging that Jesus was specifically talking about the Kingdom of Beelzebub when He said this (arguing it is absurd to accuse Demons of helping someone cast out Demons).  Doesn't necessarily debunk it's applicability, but it's funny to think about.

What I want to talk about today however is the weird irony of how often writers of fiction want to believe the Kingdom of Beelzebub is exactly the Kingdom that would be incapable of following this advice.

A lot of kids' shows in particular want to preach the value of teamwork by suggesting that the bad guys always lose precisely because they can't actually work together.

It's a lot more jarring however when these same tropes pop up in more "adult", "serious" or "realistic" settings.  Where the big bad thinks making the cashing in of their bounty on the hero a competition will increase the odds of success when what it really does is cause the assassins to spend half their time saving the hero from each other.  In Arkham Origins when it turns out it was The Joker doing it to cause Chaos it works, but when the real Black Mask does it in the recent Birds of Prey movie.... I like the film overall but that part does annoy me a bit.

Or when in Rise of Skywalker General Hux betrays the First Order to the Resistance because his personal hatred of Kylo Ren suddenly now trumps his devout loyalty to Authoritarianism so strongly established in The Force Awakens.

However the example that is most pertinent on my mind right now is Sailor Moon.  You see one of the things Manga fans really harp on the 90s Anime for is the way this trope is strongly at play in that version but really never was in The Manga.  However 90s Anime fans feel the Satou and Ikuhara versions of these villains have more "depth" since we spent more time with them.  But when all that depth merely functions to make them less effective as antagonists it's ultimately a hollow depth, to some viewers at least.

Thing is it could be all this infighting was partly because of the 90s show drawing things out longer, they need to explain why it's taking so long for this many super powerful black mages to accomplish anything.  But it's also partly because 90s Toei didn't want the Senshi killing the bad guys as directly as they did in the Manga, so Zoisite kills Nephrite, Mimette kills Eudial, Tellu kills Mimette and so on.

I've been slowly but surely watching my way through Cutey Honey Flash, the 97 Cutey Honey reboot designed to serve as a successor to the 90s Sailor Moon Anime, and this trope is again at play here in a way that as far as I can tell currently it isn't in other versions of Panther Claw, but I'm no expert on that franchise.

Perhaps it is inappropriate to bring The Bible into this particular trope discussion, since this quote was about Demons not Sinful Human Beings who have presumably more complicated motivations. However villains in Magical Girl shows and Power Rangers sometimes are treated as more Demon then Human.

But more importantly this Trope often happens for the trope's own sake without putting any thought into why these characters are acting this way.  If they don's care about this cause enough to put it ahead of their personal animosity for certain co-workers why are they fighting for it at all?  If this villainous organization itself isn't driven by an ideological goal what is driving it?  Those questions could have good understandable answers, but usually the show is hoping we won't ask in the first place.

A lot of those Sailor Moon Manga fans frustrated by the 90s Anime love the mid 00s Live Action show commonly known as PGSM.  On that show the Shitennou wind up not being all on the same page but why actually does make sense in the context of that re-imagining of the story.  Parts of what was done with them in the 90s Anime work great, I love Nephrite/Naru and Kunzite/Zoisite.  But the complete picture is never painted at all, the 90s Anime is the one version to never even explain the part about them being originally Prince Endymion's loyal retainers.

The Black Moon Clan has it the worst, for them the 90s Anime almost completely removes their motivation.  They were supposed to be the most ideologically driven of any of the Sailor Moon villains so them spending the Anime constantly betraying each other over petty BS is completely nonsensical.

But the Infinity Arc is the most Lovecraftian Sailor Moon story-line, the Deahtbusters are meant to be like one of those cults Nyarlahotep founded, so their infighting in Sailor Moon S doesn't make sense either.

You can have villains fighting each other because they weren't part of the same "Kingdom" to begin with.  You can have rivalries within an organization so long as those rivals can put that aside when it's time too actually fight the heroes.  You can have someone in a villainous organization who actually has their own agenda.  Or you could attempt to debunk these rules I'm making altogether by making it make sense.

But a lot of the time villains are undermining each other for no reason other then people expect villains to behave that way.

Update: The closest thing to a TVTropes page for this says it's not a pervasive trope at all but rather that it's a rarity when this happens.  I guess when a Trope is annoying you at the moment it seems more pervasive then it actually is.

Update November 2024: I just watched episode 14 of Corrector Yui and it's entire moral is again about the bad guys not being able to cooperate.

I've seen over half of Cutey Honey Flash now

I made a post about this Anime before I saw any of it yet.  Perhaps you can say I should have finished the show before making the follow up, but right now after finishing episode 23 I want to chronicle how positive I currently feel about the show before it's third "season" has the chance to potentially spoil it.

The first arc, which was the first 13 episodes, I already had a positive opinion on, but had few specific thoughts to analyze, it simply was about what I was optimistically expecting when I made the pre-viewing post.

I then waited awhile before returning to it, and watched the next ten episodes and it's movie in the last couple days.  I knew the movie premiered the same day as episode 18 aired and so decided to watch it between episodes 18 and 19 even though I expected it to not really matter much like the Sailor Moon, Pokemon and PreCure movies.

So far the movie is the only thing about this Anime I'm willing to call a disappointment.  It's not bad, but I was watching this show under the meta knowledge it was something made to fill Sailor Moon's void, so I was expecting it's ambiguously canonical filler movie to at least feel on par with the three Sailor Moon movies even if it wasn't as good as they were.  Instead it's something that could have been a two part episode of the show, except it'd be disappointing then in a different way because there is literally nothing else in the second arc that I consider skip-able.

The second arc revolved around the character of Seira Hazuki/Misty Honey.  This is the first incarnation of Cutey Honey to include any kind of "Evil Counterpart" or sister for Honey.  And I also feel this story-line is the only time I've seen the Dark Magical Girl Rival trope play out in a properly Shoujo Magical Girl Warrior show, so that makes it quite interesting to begin with and in my opinion pretty damn well executed.  And I was more then satisfied by the Yuri Bait it inevitably provided.

This show as I was hoping lacks the overbearing Otaku pandering style fan-service typical of this franchise, but it is still Sexy in the way a lot of Shoujo Anime are.  Seira in particular is quite shockingly in my strike zone.

I talked before about the creative staff this show shares with the 90s Sailor Moon Anime.  It might be the most important staff position not held by a Sailor Moon alumni was the Musical Composer Sahashi Toshihko.

The 90s Sailor Moon Anime had an iconic theme song and some other good insert songs like Ai No Senshi.  But the actual score was mostly forgettable elevator music, even the people least forgiving of what DiC did are inclined to admit it gave the show better Music.  But the Music on Cutey Honey Flash isn't just better then that Music but actually very good.  And oddly enough I think perhaps musically anticipates Sailor Moon's future.  One of the songs used for Transformation scenes sounds to me a lot like the Sailor Venus transformation theme on PGSM.

This show is also interesting to compare to Utena.  For one thing the classic 70s Cutey Honey Manga and/or Anime is clearly among what Ikuhara wanted to homage, that teacher who nags Utena in the pilot is clearly based on Miharu Tsuneni.  This version being designed to be a more Shoujo incarnation of Cutey Honey is almsot built around playing strait the same tropes Utena was deconstructing.  And yet it was airing for the same number of episode at close to the same time, it started out a few weeks ahead but had more weeks off allowing Utena to catch up and then pull ahead.  So it's kind of the perfect case study to watch along side Utena.

I'm going to try watching Cutey Honey Flash

Cutey Honey is one of those franchises I know a lot about even though I haven't actually watched much of it yet.  I just over the last 24 hours watched the Sentai Dub of Cutey Honey Universe and that is the first Cutey Honey Anime I've completed.  I once a long time ago temporarily owned the New Cutey Honey DVD but watched only the first episode where my mind perhaps read too much into some parallels to The Dark Knight.

Cutey Honey Flash aired right after the 90s Sailor Moon Anime finished, taking over it's time-slot and involving a lot of the same creative staff.  It is known for being much more Shoujo in style and presentation then the franchise usually is, because Toei wanted it to fill the shoes of Sailor Moon.

It's not a highly regarded entry in the franchise from what I've seen. I think that's partly because the very demographic they were trying to appeal to with this change in approach instead felt insulted.  Lots of women liked Cutey Honey already as she was, so it felt kind of sexist to assume you'd have to turn it into Sailor Moon season 6 to appeal to young women.

Ironically it just may be the people most inclined to like this the best of any Cutey Honey show are people like me, Cis-Het Men who are tired of patriarchal assumptions about what does and doesn't appeal to the male demographic.  I'm tired of the assumption that a female Superhero needs to be constantly objectified in order for us to be interested, and that we're only minimally interested in romantic melodrama.  I am interested in the basic premise of Cutey Honey but would like a version where she isn't constantly ogled and groped.  And the very things a lot of women are tired of being told they're supposed to be into are things I'm tired of being told I'm not allowed to be into.

My main concern as of not actually starting the show yet is the apparent insertion of a Tuxedo Mask clone.  Honey already had love interests (both male and female) they could focus on.  I like Tuxedo Mask, but his clones in a lot of other Magical Girl shows I feel often seem to be missing the point of his character.  However this issue has not yet been enough to completely break my enjoyment of one.

The thing about certain of these 90s and early 2000s Magical Girl shows being made to capitalize on the success of Sailor Moon is that they actually have some of the same key creative minds behind them as the 90s Sailor Moon Anime.

The main writer of Cutey Honey Flash, Ryota Yamaguchi, was also the head writer of Sailor Stars.  The Series Director of CHF had previously been an Episode Director on Stars, and the Series Director of Stars (who also worked on prior seasons even going back to Goldfish Warning!) was an Episode Director on CHF.  CHF also had four other Episode Directors who'd been directing Sailor Moon episodes, one of them being the director of the S and SuperS movies.  We see a similar phenomena with the Assistant Directors.

To get the common Visual Aesthetic connection we could also mention Yoshiyuki Shikano, Miho Shimogasa, Shigetaka Kiyoyama, Katsumi Tamegai, Kenichi Tajiri, Hidekazu Nakanishi, Hashimoto Kazuyuki, Taniguchi Junichi and I'm sure more. (Masahiro Ando contributed to the movie at least.)

However not all of Cutey Honey F's former Sailor Moon staff were ones who's most notable contributions were arguably to the last two seasons.  Katsuyuki Sumisawa had been a Sailor Moon writer for the first three seasons then left to be the lead writer on Gundam Wing, but then he returned to Toei for CHF.  Some of his Sailor Moon episodes are personal favorites of mine, for example he did a number of the Ikuhara directed episodes including the Lesbian Animators episode from the Nephrite arc and the episode that introduced HaruMi.  He also wrote the two parter once known in English as Birthday Blues, which were episodes I greatly enjoyed.  He also wrote a couple key episodes of the Doom Tree Saga and it's Minako and Rei spotlight/attack upgrade episodes.  And in the future he will be the lead writer of the first 26 episodes of Corrector Yui, another show I've been meaning to watch but keep putting off.

Some people make it sound like Flash has the least Yuri appeal of any version of Cutey Honey.  But one of those was a person who also seemed to think Universe was lacking in Yuri so that I can't take seriously.  I don't want to get my hopes up going in, but given Sumisawa's involvement in some of Sailor Moon's Yuri highlights, and how much Gundam Wing appeals to Yaoi fans, I would not be suprised if Flash has some queer subtext most people are overlooking.

There is one Cutey Honey Flash writer who is more notable for what they've done since then what they did before, and that is it seems also the only Woman on the writing staff.  Reiko Yoshida would go on to write much of the Maria-Sama Anime, Girls Und Panzer, Romeo x Julliet, High School Fleet, and she's on the staff of the newest Pokémon series interestingly.  But most important of all she's the writer of almost everything directed by Naoko Yamada, they seem to be a pretty good team.

Update November 2024: However as far as the continuity of the Magical Girl genre goes, it is notable that Reiko Yoshida wrote the original Manga for Tokyo Mew Mew.