Infinite Crisis and it’s tie-ins

Almost every DC Comic Book writer I consider myself a fan of comes with some catch, a part of their body of work I hate just as much as I love the stuff I like. 

Geoff Johns is someone I'm a fan of because I love his Teen Titans run and Infinite Crisis and a few other things. But I hate his contributions to Green Lantern and The Flash’s histories and most of his impact on Superman.  

The irony is Infinite Crisis is great in part because it’s a critique of Toxic Nostalgia, and yet what I don’t like about Johns work is when his own weirdly Toxic Nostalgia for the Silver Age comes in. And 2005 is the year he made Hal Jordan the main Green Lantern again, pandering to Silver Age nostalgia at the same time he’s vilifying Golden Age nostalgia, maybe that’s actually perfectly consistent from a certain POV?

The thing about Infinite Crisis is it’s one of those Events that is viewed as needing all its tie-ins to work, but in my opinion they don’t, certainly not all of them. But the tie-ins can add to the experience.  Some of my favorite scenes from the DC Comics come from unnecessary but awesome Infinite Crisis tie-ins. 

It’s a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, but not in a way where you need to have actually read that to follow what’s going on. 

The build up to Infinite Crisis arguably begins with Identify Crisis or more directly things that happened in the aftermath of Identity Crisis. Identity Crisis itself stands alone perfectly, it’s informed by when in the then current continuity it takes place, but everything you need to know it explains on its own. 

Identity Crisis shares the theme about Nostalgia.  And while CoIIE isn't as a whole about Nostalgia it's eventual sequel being a story with that theme is foreshadowed by it's very last page. 

There were four concurrent miniseries that DC promoted as being the Countdown to Infinite Crisis. 

The OMAC Project written by Greg Rucka.

Villains United written by Gail Simone

Day of Vengeance written by Bill Willingham

Rann-Thanagar War written by Dave Gibbons

But in my view the only one even close to qualifying as necessary, as being the main story of what’s going on in the DC Universe at this time, is the first of those. For one thing the bottom two I still to this day haven’t read and don't feel like I’m missing anything. Villains United is great. I absolutely highly recommend it on its own merits, but the main protagonists it’s following don’t even appear in Infinite Crisis. 

The OMAC Project is the only one featuring DC’s Big Three as prominent characters, it provides what serves as the equivalent to the Red Skies during Infinite Crisis. But most importantly it bridges the gap between Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis while building on their shared theme of Toxic Nostalgia. It is a great story on its own in my view, and also the second most important storyline to Infinite Crisis after Infinite Crisis itself. 

The Infinite Crisis Companion Trade Paperback collects DC Specials that were epilogues to those stories going on during the events of Infinite Crisis. They were needed precisely because Infinite Crisis itself did not tie up all of those storylines loose ends. But the one for OMAC Project is needed mainly just to cap off Sasha Boredeaux’s storyline. 

An Auteurist would suggest other stuff written by Johns this year are what should be considered most important.  I haven’t read his JSA run or his Green Lantern stuff (but it's safe to say Green Lantern Rebirth happens before any of the Countdown storylines start). His Powergirl story from the first four issues of JSA Classified included in the Powergirl Trade Paperback do set up where she is when Infinite Crisis starts and does also add to that theme. JLA Crisis of Conscience is similar, dealing with the aftermath of Identity Crisis in its own way and ending right before Infinite Crisis starts. 

His Teen Titans run’s main tie to what happens in Infinite Crisis is Connor Kent/Superboy’s importance since that’s where his character arc played out which had been his arc since the start of the run in 2003. 

The Future Is Now Trade Paperback first collects a Time Travel arc Teen Titans Vol 3 16-19 which takes place before Identity Crisis (these are as far as I can tell the only comics featuring Time Drake that seem to take place between the deaths of Stephanie Brown and Jack Drake), but it then finished with issues 20-23 an Arc that takes place after Identity Crisis and I would argue is the first real direct Aftermath of Identity Crisis as well as our chronologically first glimpse of the Secret Society of Super Villains. After that comes Teen Titans/Outsiders: Insiders, then The Return of Donna Troy then the framing device of Teen Titans/Outsiders Secret Files and Origins 2005 and then Teen Titans: Life and Death is events happening concurrent with Infinite Crisis. 

Superman is the main lead character of the DC Universe. So here are the main Superman Trades to recommend. 

Superman: The Healing Touch by Greg Rucka

Superman: In The Name of Gog by Chuck Austen and J.D. Finn

Are the Superman books from right after Identity Crisis. The Day of Vengeance Trade Paperback includes some Superman issues that take place about here as well. 

Superman: Sacrifice ties directly into the biggest climatic event of OMAC Project, and thus much is written by Greg Rucka.

Also regardless of how the cover dates may confuse you, Supergirl:Power the first 5 issues of Supergirl Vol 5 written by Jeph Loeb ends before Infinite Crisis starts.

Superman: Ruin Revealed By Greg Rucka and others.

Superman: Strange Attractors by Gail Simone

Superman: The Journey by Mark Verheiden

Are the Superman books that lead into and were concurrent with Infinite Crisis. 

Superman: Infinite Crisis collects the last Superman comics before the One Year Later leap forward. 

For Wonder Woman this is all happening during Greg Rucka’s run and the concurrent period is collected in Eyes of The Gorgon, Land of The Dead and Mission’s End. 

JLA: World Without a Justice League collects the JLA books during Infinite Crisis which were the end of JLA Vol 1.

The Batman books don’t feel as relevant, references happen but Batman’s mostly in his own little world. Under The Red Hood and War Crimes were the key Batman events this year.  Detective Comics mostly was doing City of Crime, a story that seems like it has to be set before War Games to make sense. Gotham Knights was doing Hush stuff which is best ignored. 

For Tim Drake/Robin the Robin/Batgirl:Fresh Blood, To Kill A Bird and Days of Fire and Madness Trades cover this period, and for Cassandra Cain/Batgirl also Fresh Blood then Kicking Assassins and Destruction’s Daughter. 

Someone Nerdier than I will have to deduce the ideal reading order for all the Comics I mentioned here. 

DC Stuff I watched in August 2026

I've now watched Batman Nightfall Part 1.

I've never read the original Knightfall comics, the prior version I'm comparing this to is the BBC Radio Drama from the 90s. 

I'll start with the main positive, it was great finally seeing Tim Drake in animation. The DCAU's Tim was in name only and the Tim in the Unlimited movies was forgettable. 

What made Tim special among the Robins back when he was being written by Marv Wolfman and Chuck Dixon and Geoff Johns and Bill Wilingham (I haven't really read much from the Jon Lewis run yet or Peter David's Young Justice) is that he was being set up to be the Bat Sidekick destined to one day surpass Bruce as the World's Greatest Detective. Looking back on that now results in my making Shinichi Kudo comparisons. And in that area this Knightfall film didn't disappoint.

Now for my criticisms.

First of all they cut Film Freak.  Cowards.

Secondly I have mixed feelings on the Artstyle, why not actually try to evoke the arstyle of 90s DC Comics? 

To amend what I said earlier i have read something Knightfall adjacent, the Robin Flying Solo Trade.  This is not that Artstyle. Is Red River can successfully look like a 90s Anime, why can't this look like a 90s Comic come to life?

Third, I'm amazed by how structurally disappointing it felt.

This end about where Hour 1 of the 3 Hour Radio Rama ended, but it felt like less happened not more. In that both the set up of Jean Paul Valley and Bruce's deterioration felt way more successfully fleshed out.

The Caped Crusader season 2 failed to engage at all, couldn't finish one episode.

I've also watched the new Supergirl movie now.  It's a good movie, it's entertaining, but it's not the kind of movie I want for Supergirl.

It felt more like a Star Wars movie much of the time.

I like the bronze Age Supergirl. 

I've also been watching Lanterns since my family currently temporarily has HBO for free. It's good so far.

Was 1990-2004 the Peak era for Fantasy?

I made a prior post inspired by a BookTuber named EverymanReads where he argued for that.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2026/02/booktuber-overing-classic-fantasy-novels.html

There we were talking just in the context of Prose Novels. Looking beyond that the case becomes even stronger.

For movies we have Hook, Army of Darkness, Peter Jacksons' LOTR Adaptations and the first two Star Wars Prequels to name just the first that easily pop into head.  For TV we had Hercules and Xena, that Sam Neill Merlin miniseries. And Urban Fantasy was largely defined by shows like Forever Knight and the Buffyverse and Charmed and Anime like Witch Hunter Robin. 

Speaking of Anime and Manga, this era had classics like Berserk and Escaflone and forgotten classics like Maze, and adaptations of some of those LNs I talked about, and most of the most defining entries of the Magical Girl Warrior subgenre as well as Battle Shonen.

But Video Games is where things were even more genre defining. It'd almost be easier to name what Video Games aren't either Fantasy or Sci-Fi in some ways, the defining franchises of the medium like Mario and Sonic and Kirby and Pokémon are distinct Fantasy settings that only Gaming as a medium could come up with. 

But even if we limit ourselves to Games that feel more inline with conventional Fantasy there is still a lot.  For Zelda this period includes A Link To The Past, Link's Awakening, Ancient Stone Tablets, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, The Oracle Games, The Winder Waker, Four Swords, Four Swords Adventures and The Minish Cap. All those genre defining JRPGs of the SNES and PlayStation that were important to prior post of this blog are this era, as well as much of the PS2 and Game Cube era. Then there's Castlevania and lots of classic Star Wars Games. 

And spinning off from that are Visual Novels like YU-NO: The Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound Of This World, Higurashi, Tsukihime and it's sequels and Fate/Stay Night. 

For Otaku media I almost want to shift it a year to be 1991-2005. I don't even know much what I'd be loosing dropping 1990, but I know I'd be gaining Fate/Hallow Ataraxia, Mai Otome, the second seasons of Nanoha and PreCure, most of the Shuffle Anime Adaptation.  Or heck maybe even 1992-2006.

Even EverymanRead's reading list doesn't include all English language fantasy novels form this era, it for examples includes no Star Wars EU novels. This era includes all the Bantam books and the first 5 years of Del Rey which includes the New Jedi Order series containing the Yuuzhan Vong War and the earliest Prequel Era novels. Maybe for Star Wars we could move the era up a year since nothing notable came out in 1990 but 2005 has Revenge of The Sith and a number of EU novels tying into it directly including the Dark Nest trilogy in the Post-Endor saga. Or with an April 91 through March 2006 timeframe we could include Timothy Zahn's Outbound Flight. 

The late 90s also includes the three Willow novels by Chris Claremont. 

Why limit myself to 15 years per era? Because it feels like that's the average for the pretty agreed upon language for talking about eras of American Superhero Comic Books.

And speaking of which the 90s and early 00s is when most of my favorite DC Comics came out as well, most of which have some degree of Fantasy in them. The Triangle Era of Post-Crisis Superman Comics begins in November of 1990. And related to the other timeframes I've mentioned, 1992-2006 is also the timeframe of the DCAU. In the Comics the first half of 2006 was Infinite Crisis, so more or less the end of the era of DC Comics I'm most Nostalgic for. 

Lex Luthor is proving a surprisingly difficult character to get right.

I like James Gunn’s Superman movie.  But I’m a bit annoyed by how over half the discussion of the film is about the film’s Lex Luthor with many saying it has the most perfect understanding of the character, when for me how the film handled Luthor is what I liked the least. 

First of all, as someone who likes the CEO Lex Luthor, it bugs me how many modern takes seem to feel forced to include the CEO element when they really just want to do the Mad Scientist.  This is what the Zach Snyder and James Gunn's takes on Lex Luthor have in common, to them the time as a CEO is just a step in the origin they want to get out of the way as quick as possible.  

I want years, maybe even over a decade of Lex Luthor secure in his CEO position before any type of downfall or prison time happens, that’s what we got in the 80s-90s DC Comics and Superman The Animated Series.  Lois and Clark is an interesting middle ground where I’d ideally want multiple seasons in a TV Series but at least getting a whole 22 episode season is better than only one single movie.  For comparison David Xanatos in the Gargyles Cartoon is a good way to handle things. 

However there is another issue I have with this take on Lex Luthor that would apply whether it’s a CEO or Mad Scientist take on the character.   Which is why I still prefer Batman V Superman’s Lex to this one. 

I dislike the very thing so many people are praising right now.

I don’t want Lex to be single-mindedly obsessed with Superman in the way The Joker is with Batman. He should hate Superman only because he’s in the way, Superman currently takes up a large percentage of his energy, and it can over time become somewhat personal.  But this desire to make destroying Superman the only real goal he actually cares about is something I hate.

Gunn cited Allstar Superman as an inspiration and yeah that comic is largely where this way of characterizing Luthor comes from.  And I honestly don’t mind it so much in that story as its own stand alone Elseworld thing.  But as the primary characterization of Luthor in what’s supposed to now be DC’s main Cinematic Universe, it’s really dull and short sighted. 

In the early history of the CEO Lex Luthor I prefer the way he was written by Marv Wolfram over John Byrne, making him a CEO was Wolfman’s idea in the first place and Byrne it turns out was a Right Wing Conservative so always out of touch with why most Superman fans think Superman’s best enemies are Corporate War Mongers and Slum Lords.  After that I again liked how he was handled in season 1 of Lois and Clark and STAS. I liked Lionel Luthor on Smallville (at least the first 3 seasons) as a glimpse of what a fully developed Lex Luthor could be like. And interestingly enough I liked the take on Luthor in season 2 of The Joker Blogs which is not official but an internet Fan Film project taking off of The Dark Knight universe. 

Ya know what story originally with a non CEO Lex Luthor could easily be rewritten as a CEO Luthor story?  Superman IV The Quest for Peace.  Luthor’s plot in that film could easily lend itself to a corporate War Profiter, and then you could also make him the guy buying the Daily Planet as well. 

Continuity Lock Out is an overrated concern.

This is post is possibly largely repeating things I've already said, but it bears repeating in light of what is my concern this month.

I first got into reading comics picking up random issues from the Death and Return of Superman storyline, and the first episode of Buffy I watched was This Year's Girl.  The allusions to continuity I didn't understand didn't make me go "I'm so confused I can't follow all this stuff" they made me curious about the continuity and want to know more. 

And I know I'm not alone, I've seen people express similar memories for how they got into DC Comics, and I know from the Sailor Business podcast that someone once got into Sailor Moon from Crystal Clear Destiny being the first episode she watched.

This is why I have no hesitation in suggesting the Detective Conan episodes currently on Netflix can be a great entry point for new fans.  Yes there are allusions to events from episodes not on there, but nothing that actually difficult to follow.  Any one of these cases could make a perfectly adequate jumping on point. 

My own Detective Conan experience has been largely jumping around and not even trying to watch them in order. 

What I said in June still stands, I do wish TMS however limited they're going to be in what they Dub would at least get absolutely everything Subbed and streaming somewhere.

But either way, I continue to recommend absolutely everyone watch the episodes on Netflix. Or even start with the 3rd one on Netflix since the first two episodes have some early instalment weirdness to them (and the first has some Fanservice I promise the rest of the show doesn't do).

Update: Here is a recent Bluesky post with a similar sentiment.

https://bsky.app/profile/ladyemily.nebula.tv/post/3lwsnbeqtr22p

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 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 trappings 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 Girl 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 like the Genre returning to its roots in some ways.

90s Magical Girl Warriors like the Sailor Senshi 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 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 Anime we’ve seen in 20 years.

But Shy is not completely removed from the subsequent 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 fine.  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 Girl shows and Super Sentai the villains come first and the heroes are a reaction to them, the exact opposite of what Setsuna just said.

DC Animated projects I’ve seen recently.

As much as I present myself as Enthusiastic about becoming an Anime Zealot I do sometimes feel some guilt for how much I’ve semi Abandoned by older Nerdy interests.  But I haven’t abandoned them entirely.

The Crisis on Infinite Earths Trilogy is fine but I still feel disappointed.  I was fine with the first film not really leaving the Tomorrow Verse much at all.  But I was hoping by the end there would be more from prior Animated DC Universes than just some token cameos.

But even with the token cameos at the end I was disappointed by how few.  Why no love for the Fleischer Shorts? The actual birth of DC in Animation and very important to the history of Animation beyond that.  Or The Batman and Batman The Brave and The Bold which have more vibrant fan bases then the DCAMU verse.

And all the DCAU got was Batman and The Joker (and a Batman Beyond who may or may not actually be the same Terry).  What about the STAS cast who were also staples?  Or Static Shock which is important to the history of Black representation in the Superhero Genre?

I still haven’t seen much of My Adventures With Superman.  I want to change that but I remain cynical of Western Cartoons trying to pass as Anime.

Meanwhile Suicide Squad Isekai is vindicating the optimism I had for it from it’s inception.

Batman The Caped Crusader I wound up liking a lot, and I kinda went in biased against it, feeling very cynical about the implication of Timm saying he wanted to go further then BTAS ever could.  It turns out that really wasn’t anything to be worked up about and all the episodes are pretty great.

That said, I do have some criticisms.  But rest assured nothing that a certain type of whiner is going to complain about bothered me.  I consider one of the literary ancestors of The Penguin to be Casper Gutman of The Maltese Falcon and of the 3 movie adaptations made of that novel, the 1935 film Satan met a Lady already had a woman play Gutman’s role.  So the way I see it the possibility of a Lady Penguin was always on the table.

I kinda hope Barbara Gordon as a Defense Attorney leads to them bringing back a certain forgotten Barbara storyline of the 70s.

I’m glad they went the uniquely nuanced route they did with Harvey Dent, I just……

Spoiler Warning.

…I wish they hadn't killed him off.

With Harvey Dent so much of the discourse is about his origin story and then attempts to Redeem him that may or may not succeed.  Which is all interesting but I’m tired of him actually being an effective Supervillain getting skipped over.

Re:Creators and the Crisis on Infinite Earths

 So I finally watched Crisis on Infinite Earths Part One recently now that it’s on MAX and I liked it, the unique framing they chose was pretty cool.

It of course get me thinking about the 2017 Anime Re:Creators again. One of the things I’ve been thinking about that show since I finally first watched it last year was that it has, perhaps by pure coincidence, some structural similarities to Crisis on Infinite Earths.  The scale is ultimately much smaller but the parallels you can make are neat.

Souta Mizushino plays the thematic role of Pariah to some extent.

Meteora is The Monitor and Altair the Anti-Monitor.

Mamika plays a role similar to Supergirl.

Magane Chikujouin plays the kind of wild card role you cna expect The Joker to play in a Crisis event.

My thoughts on this really weren’t all that worthy of an entire post, but that’s fine.  I might take a break and not post anything else till sometime in May, it all depends on if inspiration strikes me.

Update: And I did not know when I wrote this that Amazon let the license to Re;Creators lapse so now it's not possible to legally watch at all.  Very frustrating.

The Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages of Anime.

I notice a lot of online Anime Discourse, at least back in 2016-2017, talking about what was the Golden Age of Anime treating that term as just meaning whatever is the best when that's not actually what the concept of a Golden Age means.

The Golden Age of something is it's first era of greatness, some stuff can have came before but they're basically Pre-History in the grand scheme of things.  No fan of Western Superhero Comics actually thinks the Golden Age had a higher baseline level of quality then fully developed modern comics, or that most of the absolute best Comics ever made were made then, but they call it the Golden Age anyway.

Likewise I am going to say the Golden Age of Anime began with the premier of Astor Boy in 1963 and ended with the final episode of Lupin III Part II (Red Jacket) in 1980 even though I am personally into very little from that era.  

I will then define the Silver Age as spanning 1981 through 1994 and maybe even the first season of 95.  

The Bronze Age is then 1995-2010 (or maybe it wouldn't be completely wrong to include the Fall of 94) while the current Modern Age began with 2011 and is still going on as I write this. 

Significantly over 50% of all the Anime I've completed on MAL is Modern in this definition.  Partly because how much Anime gets made each year keeps increasing, but also because it was a few years into the Modern Era that Anime became a full time interest of mine.

However I would have to say the Bronze Age is probably the age I currently like the most, it contains most of the few Anime I actually do have Childhood or YA Nostalgia for.  And there are so many interesting kinds of Anime I feel were only made then.

Now my definition for the Golden Age is perhaps the most self explanatory.  That it ends right before Millennials begin being born makes it easy for us to see it as the Antiquity of Anime History.  

The Silver Age is then contemporary with the earliest Millennials growing from Babies to starting High School.  But I'd also say the key 1981 milestone to kick off this age was Urusei Yatsura while the swan song of the Silver Age was Sailor Moon S the last season of that Anime with Tomita, Yanagikawa and Sumisawa on the writing staff.

I already have a Post on this Blog about Anime in 1995 showing what a game changing year it was. But the argument for starting the Bronze Age in Fall of 94 would be Macross 7 & Magic Knight Rayearth and how DNA seems ahead of it's time as an absurd Harem premise. And I also already have a post on 2011 Anime showing how it launched many of the trends that define modern Anime Culture.  And even in that post I had not yet accounted for Psycho-Pass or some other shows I watched more recently, or how for Detective Conan the Holmes' Revelation Case can definitely be considered the start of the Modern Era for that show and Movie 15 the first movie to truly feel like modern Detective Conan movies.

But 2010 as the end of an Era is also interesting to break down.  War on Geminar was the last real OVA saga, since then OVAs have almost only been for bonus episodes of TV shows and Hentai.  Oreimo season 1 was the last real Otaku Rights show before Otaku culture became too tolerated for such a premise to feel relevant anymore (with that element being downplayed even in future Oreimo Anime).  White Album and Yosuga no Sora were the last Anime adaptations of retro Visual Novels made before modern Anime styles got in the way of such adaptations feeling Retro (I love YU-NO's 2019 Anime but I do wish it could looked more like a 90s Anime).  For Pokémon Diamond and Pearl is the last generation I personally feel can be considered a classic gen.  Legend of The Legendary Heroes was the last major Fantasy Anime before the influence of SAO and LN Isekai took over (a few shows and movies with the vibes of these kind of Fantasy still get made but they get drowned out).

For both Superhero Comics and Anime the change from Golden to Silver is shockingly clean, with if anything a brief gap that feels like neither rather then a transitional period that feels like both.  With Anime it's only the change from Silver to Bronze I consider debatable at all, Fall of 94 and Winter of 95 can each go either way.  I similarly do consider the transition from Silver to Bronze for Comics the most stylistically complex (other transitions are only debated more by DC nerds because this is the only one where the continuity didn't change).  None of the shows airing in both Fall 2010 and Winter 2011 I consider defining shows of either era.

What to call the era that follows the Bronze Age after it's no longer Modern is what isn't so standardized.  For DC Comics it's the Post-Crisis era, I'm of the generation of DC fans who grew up with the Post-Crisis era being the current Modern Era.  But when did the Post Crisis era end?  During the early-mid 2000s we felt like it was still the Post-Crisis era but in hindsight a lot of what was special about the Post-Crisis era to many who consider it their favorite era of DC comics was already being eroded by 2002, I consider the reviving of Oliver Queen in the Quiver arc from 2001 a key turning point.

So with about 15 years seeming to be the average, we Anime fans may well be near the end of our current era, which is perhaps what a lot of people tired of certain current Anime trends are hoping for.  But we probably won't notice the change as it happens just as DC fans didn't and just as I don't think we noticed the huge shifts happening in 2010-2013.  Madoka Magica was a big deal immediately, but how soon did people realize just how much it had changed the game for it's Genre?  Maybe the upcoming Madoka movie will help end the very same era the original show helped start?

But what will we call this era?  DC fans were lucky being given a convenient name early on, though it was originally used to denote continuity changes more so then an era.  We have been using some terms to describe the modern state of Anime, but they tend to refer to specific subgenres of what's going on now rather then all of it.  What do Dark Magical Girls, Isekai, VRMMOs, Magic Academies, endless Fate/ Spin Offs, and Battle Royal/Death Games all have in common?

I know sometimes the Post Crisis era is also called the Dark Age of Comics because of Watchmen/DKR influence.  And indeed some of those Anime trends are Dark but not all of them, Isekai is usually the opposite and plenty of classic style Mahou Shoujo have coexisted with the Madoka Clones.

Maybe "The Light Novel era" works.  LNs were a thing during prior eras and they portably will still be in future eras just as the Edgy Anti-Heroes of 90s Comics didn't just disappear.  But it does feel like this is an era where even some things that aren't LN based often seem like they are because of how pervasive their influence is.

Update: One could just continue the Greek Mythological inspiration and call the 4th age the Iron Age.

Donna Troy: The Woman and The Hero

Is one of many now long dead Internet 1.0 Fansites that was a pretty important part of my early history as an Internet dwelling Nerd.  But in-spite of how Nostalgic I am for it I sometimes misremember the name by dropping the definite article as "Donna Troy: Woman and Hero".

The Website is Archived via the Waybackmachine, but in a way that concerns me.  My first instinct going there is to want to find what the website looked like when I first found it in 2003 or 2004.  However while it says there are Captures from those years they don't properly load.  So the closest I can get is a Capture from June 2005 when the latest Update was the March 2005 Update when it covered the Return of Donna Troy special being announced, I remember when I saw that update happen, 2005 was a very pivotal year in my DC Fandom.

The most recent Capture before that which actually loads is an August 2002 Capture when the latest Update to the site had been in October 2001.  The revelation that even Waybackmachine Captures aren't guaranteed to last forever has me worried about a lot of our preservation of a lot of Internet History.

Now those of you who know Donna's history may have noticed that I just outed myself as a Donna Troy fan who is strangely most Nostalgic for when she was dead.  That's because this is when I became a fan, see I got into Donna reading this site I stumbled upon before I'd yet read a single Comic Donna actually appeared it.  

It's interesting really to become a fan of a Western Comic Book character while they're Canonically dead, especially during this Post-Crisis yet pre Infinite Crisis era, the same phenomena applied to my Stephanie Brown Fandom.  It's hard to be as mad at the story that killed her as most of her fans are when that was already part of her Lore when I got into it.  And hard to be that upset at not getting any new stories (for awhile) when all her stories are new to me.  I'm first learning this character's history as a story with an already defined beginning middle and end, or in Donna's case several beginnings and a long winding middle and an end.

Donna Troy is one of a few DC characters for whom how her origin keeps being messed with by Crisis related shenanigans is a commonly made fun of Meme.  But as things stood during this period I really saw her history as indeed uniquely complicated but not incoherent.  Like each new Retcon was adding to what we already had in a way that fleshed her out rather then replacing or discarding anything.  But maybe it only felt that way to me because this Fansite did a good job of presenting her History as one cohesive Story.

However in time DC grew obsessed with starting absolutely everything over from scratch every few years.

This site's last update was in 2009.  Now we finally have her in Live Action and while on paper The Titans show doesn't give her a history very similar to this Era of the Comics, Conor Leslie's performance is great and somehow managed to feel like exactly the character I became a Fan of in part via this Website.

I'm now caught up on Titans

Clearly there are others who enjoy this show, you don't get 4 seasons on brand recognition alone, but they aren't the people making YouTube videos on it.

I talked about the first 2 seasons of the show on this blog previously giving them probably one of the most glowing reviews they'd had.  Now originally when I tried following season 3 as it aired I got frustrated, I got annoyed at them doing mostly Batman stuff instead of using more villains from the Teen Titans comics.

But just recently I decided to give it another chance, and it's fine, once we got into the latter half of the season Raven and Donna's returns made things a lot more enjoyable.  And also once they started getting into the head of this take on Scarecrow I decided that this is a pretty decent interpretation of the character, different from what we've seen before but still distinctly Scarecrow.

Season 4 is 4 episodes in and doing actual Titans storylines again, so the show is back on track.

This show is far form perfect, it is again far from what I would write, but I still maintain that it captures the Spirit of the Titans Comics I love better then the more universally praised mid 00s Cartoon.

A lot of the Credit for that goes to the Actors, the Actresses they got for both Raven and Donna embody the characters as I've always thought of them perfectly.  And most everyone else does a good job too.  

The show has real Heart to it, it flexes it's Edgy Muscles constantly but as someone who's watched Fate/Zero multiple times this show's darkness is child's play to me.

Sometimes it's actually unethical not to Spoil a story.

When Doki Doki Literature Club first blew up back in 2017, one aspect of the conversation around it was occasionally how the Tigger Warnings at the beginning kind of Spoils the game, and yet it would still be wrong not to have them.  Fortunately the game is good enough at immersing the player during the hours it spends pretending to be a normal Visual Novel that you may very well have just forgotten about the Warnings by the time stuff starts happening.

DDLC's trigger warnings fortunately did not have to be very specific, there are lot of things they could have been referring to.  And even more Fortunately one potentially Triggering trope DDLC does not do is have a twist where a character we thought was a Cis Woman turns out to be a manipulative psychotic Trans Woman serial killer.  If that had happened, it would in my opinion warrant a more specific trigger warning.

That is a very specifically problematic trope that may be very potentially triggering to some people not necessarily inherently bothered by any broader trigger warnings it could be classified under.  But it is also a trope that is inherently a twist, you can't warn someone that it's coming without Spoiling the story in-question.  But I have no respect for the artistic intentions of creators who choose to use that damaging trope.  I am still a Libertarian when it coms to Free Speech, I have no desire to ban works that engage in Problematic tropes I hate, but the people who want to avoid this Trope also have the right to be warned about it.

In the case of this Trope it goes beyond being unethical to not spoil it, I'd call it outright Immoral to try to prevent people from giving this plot point away on the grounds that preserving Twists is some inherent virtue of your personal Internet Ethics.

I'd been playing by the old rules even though I've felt this way on the inside for awhile.  The Umineko Visual Novel does this trope yet I still didn't discus it till after the Spoiler warning in my Umineko post.  And NezumiVA is a Trans Woman Anituber who did an hour long spoiler free video on Umineko.  Some Trans Anime Fans aren't bothered by what Umineko did, but they need to understand that their being okay with it doesn't mean others will be, and some younger Trans Anime Fans may assume that because someone like NezumiVA recommended it without any qualifiers it must be completely free of any Transphobic tropes only to be very triggered when they invest countless hours into the VNs without any warning of what's coming.

Again I've been guilty of what I'm criticizing here myself in the past, I increasingly feel guilty how often I've recommended Pretty Little Liars to people while forgetting to bring up it's use of this trope in it's last 2 seasons.

That's just one example of an inherently Problematic Twist, there are others I'm sure, but this is the one I have personal experience with.

But after that is the perhaps more trivial but still worth discussing matter of cases where how something is marketed makes an aspect of it a Spoiler that clearly shouldn't be based on how the text itself is written.

Catwoman: Hunted is an animated movie that has no twists, saying exactly how the villain is defeated in the end can still be called a Spoiler, but the identity of the villain certainly is not.  The movie is NOT a mystery, who the main antagonist is is obvious very early in the film, way to early to at all be worth calling a spoiler.  Yet I got in trouble with a prominent YouTube channel on Twitter for referring to that villain on the grounds that it's a Spoiler.

The only reason the identity of the villain can at all be considered a Spoiler is because it was Marketed as if Black Mask were the villain. he's the only antagonist on the Cover.  But in the text itself he obviously is not the main villain, he is set up as less important then Minerva from the start.

I don't know why they did this.  It could be the film entered production before Wonder Woman 84 came out with the expectation that it would make Cheetah a big deal, but then after it had poor reception from the loudest online Nerds they decided to avoid the now tainted character in how they promoted it.  Either way though when something clearly not a twist in the script is inexplicably concealed in the marketing, I feel professional reviewers and other such online Fandom Influencers have a responsibility to clear up that Bait and Switch, not collaborate with it.

Now since Minerva doesn't take on a Cheetah look till the final battle, and some casual viewers may not instantly know to associate the name of Minerva with Cheetah, perhaps this Minerva becoming Cheetah you can argue is sufficiently a surprise.  But the Tweets I made didn't even say Cheetah, so to such a casual fan all it really gives away is that it's not Black Mask, and again anyone planning to watch this movie as specifically Black Mask fans should know going in that he is even less significant then he was in the Red Hood movie.

You would have to be fairly in the know to get specifically Cheetah from "most overused Wonder Woman villain" which is really only even true in the specific context of Animated DC projects.  Even then exactly what Cheetah is has been inconsistent over the years, I did not give away what kind of Cheetah you'll be getting.

But these DC Animated films are not made for casual fans, they are mostly made for the people who will recognize every obscure name they pull out.  And if Catwoman: Hunted were an exception they wouldn't have been so nonchalant about having a group of Crime Bosses summon Demons, Aliens and Robots to battle in the middle of a film that started as a simple Heist movie.  Even the most fantastical Lupin III movies are not that casual about their fantastical elements.  Only Superhero movies are this all over the place genre wise.

Catwoman: Hunted

I mentioned this movie in my last post rambling about Western Cartoons alleged to be Inspired by Anime even though I hadn't seen it yet.  Was any of my brief assessment presumptuous?

Frankly I might have been too generous in assuming it would at least succeed in looking like an Anime Artstyle.  It definitely looks like it's going for that, but still drawn by people not used to drawing that way.

As far as everything else, from it's OP it was clearly trying to go for a Lupin III OP vibe, which is what I should have expected,  naturally that's the genre of Anime one would reference for Catwoman, Fujiko Mine is basically Japan's Catwoman.  But as I said in the prior post what I'd like to see from Western Animation writers taking inspiration form Anime is them trying some of the very genres or Sub-Genres that pretty much exist only in Anime and it's source materials so far.  For Catwoman as a Lupin III film I'd rather WB/DC just let people in Japan who've made actual Lupin III Anime give it try, ideally the staff behind The Woman Called Fujoko Mine definitely deserve a shot at doing Catwoman.

But let's go back to that OP, it and other music in the movie is trying to be evocative of Lupin III, but the Composer is still not actually Yuji Ohno, so it's like one of those rare Bee Train Anime without Yuki Kajiura, the Music is trying to sound like her, but it's still off.  Now the composer for this movie is Japanese and has done some Anime, but not exactly a lot and usually not Lupin style stuff.  Yoko Kanno is someone I could also see working for a film like this.

I also could have accepted the movie as Anime Adjacent better if it at least had Voice Actors I recognized hearing from Anime Dubs instead of the same kind of casting most of these DC animated movies go for.  Kelly Hu as Cheshire is perfect, and Elizabeth Gillies as Catwoman was pretty good (on a meta-level I'd love to see her Catwoman interact with a Poison Ivy played by Ariana Grande).  But everyone else ranged from fine to to bland, Kate Kane sounded flat and dull.

If they wanted to sell this movie as also a quasi Lupin III movie, why not cast a Fujiko veteran as Catwoman, there are quite a few to choose from, since this is part of a trend of modern depictions wanting Catwoman to also come off as vaguely Latina, Christina Vee could have been a perfect choice.  And since they seemingly wanted Kate to come off as Butch rather then Femme, just hire Erica Mendez to do her Haruka voice.  

If you just want to watch the film like any other DC animated film, the fact that the Artstyle was clearly trying and not quite succeeding to have an Anime vibe might still annoy you.  Other then that it's pretty good, about what you'd expect from a Catwoman solo project at first, but then starts bringing in fantastical stuff that really wasn't necessary.

I appreciated the incorporation of the Classic Purple Dress costume for the ball at the beginning, but when she changed to the main costume of the movie the actual line about "keeping up up with the times" I found odd considering this is the costume primarily popularized by Hush 20 years ago, have the comics really not introduced any new Catwoman Costume since?

As much as I ragged on the the DCAMU films, I certainly preferred their take on the Kate Kane/Batwoman.

I also wish they'd revived Red Claw instead of making the main antagonist of this Batman spin off film be the most overused Wonder Woman villain.  She could have fit the Anime inspiration because I've for awhile felt like she was a little bit Panther Claw inspired.

No Anime still isn't Mainstream

Like a week or so ago I stumbled upon a Twitter thread where someone lamented how Superheroes have become Mainstream now, among responders were people saying that Superheroes have "always been mainstream" and that is of course debatable.

Then someone made a comment implying that Anime is just as mainstream as Superheroes, and I of course objected to that sentiment as someone who gets "Anime PFP don't take seriously" anytime I insert myself into an Internet conversation not specifically in the Anime community.

One argument thrown out as proof that Anime is mainstream now is that you can buy it at Walmart.  And I found that very odd, there is plenty of niche stuff at Walmart, at least in the entertainment section, heck the book section seems to be only stuff I haven't heard of.  The only reason there is a narrower range of DVDs and Blu Rays you can buy at Walmart then at a place like FYE is that FYE sells more older and used stuff.  Yet all that said the Anime selection at my town's Walmart isn't great actually, Ghibli films, Sailor Moon, Pokémon, DBZ and maybe a few things that are indeed mostly known only within the community.  But apparently even Fate/ stuff is still too obscure for our Walmart.

Then this person went on to respond "just because not all Anime is mainstream doesn't mean Anime isn't mainstream", which floored me a bit as I was preparing to make the exact opposite argument, just because some specific Anime are mainstream doesn't mean Anime is mainstream.

And at this point I guess we have to define our parameters.  The context is comparing Anime to Superheroes, which is perhaps an innately flawed comparison, one is a medium the other is a genre, there are after all Anime about Superheroes, even by the narrowest definition of what makes a "Comic Book Superhero", One Punch Man and My Hero Academia are clearly drawing on American Superhero aesthetics and tropes.  And not coincidently those are two of the most popular mainstream Anime franchises born in the 2010s.  

However Superheroes in the strictest sense of what we're thinking here are strongly tied to a specific medium, American Comic Books.  And in that sense you could almost argue Anime is more mainstream since with the Anime that are mainstream it is the Anime people are watching, the mainstreaming of Superheroes is largely via adaptations into other mediums, actual Comic Books have not improved their sales at all.  However most Anime are adapted from some even more niche (at least to Americans) source material, like Manga (basically Japanese Comic Books), Light Novels, Visual Novels and certain kinds of Video Games, and fans of those mediums feel a similar resentment towards the Anime being what most people know that Comic Book fans feel.

But setting all those semantics aside, the reason Superheroes as a concept are mainstream now but Anime is not, is that while plenty of specific Superheroes still aren't household names yet, the moment a new Marvel or DC character gets a role in a Movie or Streaming App TV show announced they will start trending on Social Media just as much as the latest Batman news.  The same is absolutely not true for Anime.

Now you could say that's more about Marvel and DC as brands, but then you have shows like Invincible and The Boys becoming huge Pop Culture talking points for being alleged "Deconstructions" of Superheroes.  Anime "Deconstructions" rarely gain such automatic notoriety, even Ikuhara's 2010s work didn't get noticed much outside the Anime community.  And Anime does have at least one corporate Brand that can compete with DC and Marvel, Toei Animation, a number of Toei franchises are among the most globally mainstream stuff Japan has produced, but is every Anime they make cared about simply for being Toei?  No absolutely not, even Pretty Cure still struggles to get noticed in the English speaking world.

This debate was also about how mainstream Superheroes have become recently, their current mainstream status is the product of the last decade, maybe 2 decades.  In the 90s certain Superheroes already had their place in pop culture, even ones that hadn't had a big Blockbuster movie yet like Wonder Woman, The Flash and a handful of Marvel's.  But most of what people who'd call themselves a Comic Book Nerd cared about was not, if you told one of them in the 90s that within their lifetime the Goddamn Peacemaker would be the star of a hit HBO TV show, and there would be big budget Hollywood Blockbuster movies with Multiverse shenanigans, they would laugh in your face.

Anime Fandom currently is where Superhero Fandom was in the 90s, our existence is acknowledged more then we used to be, but only so we can be the cultural punching bag that people who knew what Pre and Post Crisis meant used to be.

The Anime equivalent of the Goddamn Peacemaker getting an HBOMax show would be Summer Radish Vacation getting a Netflix Live Action adaptation.

Mark Millar's Moonie denial

In JLA issue 27 cover date March 1999 written by Mark Millar, the Martian Manhunter disguises himself as a Japanese Woman and uses the name Rei Hino.  Bruce Wayne immediately knew that was J'onn because he recognized that name as having something to do with Mars.

Sailor Moon fans immediately deduced that J'onn was naming himself after Sailor Mars, and apparently Batman was also familiar with Sailor Moon.

Thing is Mark Millar has denied that this was an intentional Sailor Moon reference, saying...

"I was told it translated loosely as POET OF MARS, which is what J'onn's occupation was back on his homeworld. It had zero to do with Sailor Moon."

But that explanation doesn't make sense.  Rei Hino does NOT mean "poet of mars".

Hino means "of Fire", the Kanji for Fire in that name is also part of the Japanese name for the Planet Marts, Kasei which means "Fire Star" but is spoken differently in that word.  So in context Hino is a fitting surname to give someone you're associating with Mars, but it's not on it's own inherently a reference to Mars.

Nor does Rei mean Poet, according to Wordhippo the Japanese words for Poet all have "jin" in them.  The Wikipedia page for the name Rei lists many different Kanji and meanings for Rei, but none is Poet.

So either Mark Millar is lying, or someone lied to Mark Millar.  Who told him this name translated that way, and why were they offering a translation of this name specifically?

Millar wrote this individual Issue, but it's actually still during the Run of Grant Morrison.  There are things about Grant Morrison that make me suspect he would like a lot of Anime, including Sailor Moon.  So is it possible the real culprit here is Grant Morrison?

If I described the premise of the Black Moon saga (the Manga version not the 90s Anime) to a bunch of DC Nerds but avoided like names and stuff, they'd probably say "that sounds like a Grant Morrison comic".  But Naoko Takeuchi did that before it became Grant Morrison's thing.

Morrison's key theme for his JLA run was equating each JLA member with an Olympian deity.  So it's easy to imagine he was researching lots of ways those deities were used in modern pop culture, especially stuff that can be considered Superhero stories.

TVTrope's Standard Evil Empire Hierarchy page

I'm going to make some observations I've wanted to for awhile about the TVTropes Standard Evil Empire Hierarchy page. It's one of my favorite of their pages to revisit.

The more elaborate a TVTropes page is, the more likely it is it's mostly something the community editing that site imagined themselves and not something more general literary analysis scholars would take seriously.  And this page is a perfect example of of that.  Because I really don't think a single Fictional Empire that perfectly fits all the requirements actually exists.  But to me that makes it all the more interesting to over analyze and speculate about what created these ideas in the minds of these Internet Nerds.

This is partly related to how many of the Evil Empires that inspired these Tropes were trying to at least partly base themselves on the Nazis regardless of often not caring about their actual ideology.  But the page currently doesn't have a real life section so they aren't trying to apply it to the Nazi Regime itself.  Naturally Star Wars is a big middle man here.

It seems to me like the original concept behind this Trope was about the way the Protagonists in a JRPG or other kind of adventure story encounter the Empire rather then a truly objective view of how it's organized.  But over the years many editing it and adding examples have lost sight of that.

The Guard's role in a story is chiefly as the first significant Underboss the Heroes deal with.  He's often associated with a Fortress or Base of some sort because it's usually whichever one of those is nearest to the Starter Town.  They are referred to as one of the least sympatric because their mustache twirling villainy is what establishes the Empire itself as evil, once that's established there is then room for more nuanced characters within it.

In Star Wars this role is played by Grand Moff Tarkin, but Tarkin's rank in the Empire is not a unique one, it's a type of regional Governor basically.  Being entrusted with The Death Star may imply he's one The Emperor has particular confidence in, but the rank itself is still not unique.  In the expanded universe we do get to meet other Moffs.

For Code Geass the page designates this role to Clovis which is probably one of the most accurate to my theory of the original intent of any Gaurds on the page in it's current form.

In fiction using explicit Nazis a good model for The Guard trope is perhaps Conrad Veidt's character in Casablanca.  He's probably not a big wig in the overall Nazi hierarchy at all, but is locally who the people in Casablanca are most concerned about.  But one could also look at Klaus Barbie in 2020's Resistance.

The big evidence of how this page has lost it's way here would be it's Tolkien examples.  Sauron in the First Age and Saruman in the Third Age can be said to be guarding something, but that seems to have not been the actual original point of The Guard.  If I were to use that logic in designating a Guard for the Nazi regime the best bet would be Himmler, he did have that old Castle he ran the SS out of.

The Security Officer position was not originally part of the page, it wasn't there when I first started visiting it as recently as 2012.  And for Code Geass giving this position to Cornelia feels wrong, she was just taking over the same position Clovis held, she's really just a second Gaurd.  But is also equally as worthy as Schneizel for what The General refers to.  Historically Reinhard Heydrich (Later replaced by Ernst Kaltenbruner) fits The Security Officer probably better then any other leading Nazi fits any of these roles.

The General is described as being the opposite of the Guard in how sympathetic they are typically depicted as being.   Dennis Hopper's character in the 90s Samson movie is a pretty text book example of this kind of fictional General they are thinking of, the movie respects and sympathizes with him a great deal even though it also sees him as needing to die with the other Philistine leaders.

That role is often a General because something in the collective subconscious of many Military fixated cultures like Rome, America and at one time Japan desires to respect a good General, even an enemy one.  

This is part of why Trotsky is sometimes spoken of positively even by stanchly anti-Communist Conservatives, he was the actual Military Mastermind of the early Bolshevik victories against the Western Imperial powers who invaded Russia to try and stamp them out.  So these War fetishists can't help but admire Trotsky a little bit. Snowball is Trotsky in the Animal Farm allegory, that's why he's a Bad Ass in-spite of the cutesy name.  

And to the extent that WWII has influenced how a lot of fiction about War has been written in the last 80 years, the (many would argue manufactured) reputation of Erwin Rommel has definitely played a role there, the honorable German General who wasn't really a Nazi.  Patton's admiration of Rommel was a plot point in his movie.

But taking being THE General of the entire Empire too literally might result in one designating this to Goring.  But Goring was actually quite bad at that job and only really kept it because he was a shrewd politician, so basically the Axis Counterpart of Douglas MacArthur.

In Code Geass the protagonist's main talent is largely being a good General, so the person literally playing The General is also his "Evil Counterpart", and over the course of the story Cornelia and Schneizel both fill that role.  Schneizel isn't entirely unsympathetic, but this aspect of The General's role is clearly much better fulfilled by Cornelia, while Schneizel is more filling the Evil Counterpart role as Lelouch's aesthetic and ideological antithesis.

For Star Wars TVTrope's desire to designate this role to someone in the Original Trilogy results in it being claimed by someone who's name most casual viewers don't remember.  In the old EU (called Legends now) Grand Admiral Thrawn is the archetypical General, especially when later books give him more nuance.

The Right Hand and the Hero's Evil Counterpart are often the same person because both are partly modeled after Darth Vader's role in Star Wars.  That naturally makes it the least "Realistic" when trying to apply these tropes to Historical Empires, but there are still some historical things I could note.

In the 60s BBC miniseries The Caesars when Tiberius makes Germanicus the "Commander and Chief in the East" and then explains his intentions to Piso the Governor of Syria.  He says he intentionally wants who actually outranks the other to be "unclear".  So whenever I see a Star Wars podcast express confusion over the actual authority Vader and Tarkin have relative to each other, I think of that scene.

The part of how The Right Hand is defined about him being outside the normal organizational structure does make me when looking at the Nazis think of applying it to Rudolf Hess (and later Martin Borrman) they were the Deputy Fuhrer of The NSDAP Party but didn't technically have a government position at all, (kind of like being the Chairman of whichever Party the sitting United States President represents).  But since everyone in a dictatorship's government is a member of the Party that does make them informally the number two figure.

Britannia in Code Geass really doesn't have a proper Right Hand.  Bismarck who TVtropes designates that I would say is more a Security Officer but also an Evil Counterpart to Suzaku (while Suzaku himself was the Evil Counterpart to Kallen).

Since the page is open to new positions being added, I think something like "The Propaganda Minister" or "The Press Secretary" or "The Spokesperson" should be added.  Since I think in order for any Fictional Evil Empire to be like any modern Governmental Regime someone ought to be filling the Joseph Goebbels role, and for a not so modern setting the equivalent role could be something like "The False Prophet".  

For Apokolips in DC Comics that would be Glorious Godfrey.  In V for Vendetta (the movie version at least) that would be Lewis Prothero.  Currently many and probably most Fictional Empires don't have one, but the same is true for The Security Officer, and none of them are entirely universal.

In Code Geass I would oddly enough say Detard plays this role at the start for Britannia but then later for Zero and in the end for Schneizel.

The Oddball is defined as usually a Mad Scientist or Dark Magician, but the inclusion of Bobba Fett suggests it's sometimes just a mercenary being hired by the government.  The page currently saying this is Suzaku's role in Britannia is pretty weird, it should be Earl Lyod Asplund.  For the Nazis this is basically Mengele and other notorious Nazi Scientists, or from the Occult perspective people like Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, Karl Maria Wiligut, Savitri Devi or Miguel Serrano.  But given how some Trope pages treat this almost as the miscellaneous position, I kind of feel you could give it to Albert Speer or Julius Streicher.

"The Man Behind The Man" is who the TVTropes page most admits to being optional.  In Code Geass V.V. fits this pretty well.  In Star Wars you could say it's The Dark Side of The Force itself (or just The Force from Kreia's perspective).  In some JRPGs with a twist the Oddball and Man Behind The Man wind up being the same like Kefka in Final Fantasy VI(III on the SNES) and Dimentio in Super Paper Mario.

With the Nazis it depends on how you view them.  If you insist on saying it's a logical end point of Capitalism then you could look at Emil Kirdof, Friedrich Flick, François Genoud and the other businessmen involved in the I.G. Farben and Krupp arrangement.  People who continue to overstate the Thule Society's role would say Rudolf von Sebottendorf.  But I kind of see this being the role of Alfred Rosenberg.

Rosenberg is the only major player of the Nazi Regime who was a member of the Party longer then Hitler.  In fact everyone else who's name you're likely to remember or I mentioned in this post already didn't join till after the Kapp Putsch failed in 1920 at the soonest.  Rosenberg however was a member several months before Hitler was joining in the same month it was founded (January 1919) and had previously worked on an Anti-Semitic newsletter with two of the party's four founders, Dietrich Eckhart and Gottfried Feder.  So it almost seems justifiable to call him the fifth founder, and thus the only founder still important when the Party actually seized power.

It was Rosenberg who introduced Hitler to the works of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, making Rosenberg a key connection to both individuals who have been called "Hitler's John The Baptist".  While his power in the Government was mostly just running some bureaucracies, he was the person who's job it was to to fully define and articulate what exactly Nazi ideology was.  It kind of feels accurate to call him the High Priest of The Third Reich.

But Ulrich Fleischhauer is also worth noting.

What are good Entry Point Anime for Western Superhero Comic Book Nerds?

It's kind of surprising to me how much these two fandoms don't overlap.  I tried to make a variation on the Dio meme that was about the Captain Atom/Monarch fiasco and nobody got it.  Plenty of people who are deep into one of those rabbit holes is familiar with the most well known Normie examples of the other, but that's about it.

As someone who's DC fandom is far older then my Anime fandom, and yet has come to now view Anime as what I'm more of a fan of then anything else.  I'm perhaps uniquely qualified to try and identify how to reel others in.

The Anime that are most explicitly made to evoke Western Superhero aesthetics, stuff like One Punch Man and My Hero Academia, actually don't appeal to me.  They're just Battle Shonen (one of my least favorite Anime genres) with more Capes and Masks.

The Magical Girl Warrior Subgenre was influenced by Superhero comics in a very particular way.  If you're of the opinion that Wonder Woman was only great in the Marston era and everything since Denny O'Neil has been a hollow shell, then Sailor Moon or Wedding Peach might be exactly what you've been looking for.  But I know there will be others that won't be able to get into that genre, at least not without being phased into the Bishoujo first.  So my focus today shall be more Seinen.

For me the show that wasn't my first Anime but the one that really felt like a unique and interesting approach to tropes and ideas I was already into from my prior Nerdiness was Code Geass.  There was a thread on IMDB once about comparing Lelouch to Simon Bolivar, I wasn't as familiar with that piece of history as I am now (which is still not a whole lot), but I left a comment on how I liked to compare Lelouch to Alexander The Great and Paul Atredes and Batman and Spiderman and Ozymandias, but there was also overlap with what I loved about the Star Wars Prequels.  Later when I started getting into Paul Feval his John Devil was added to that list.  The show also had Shakespearian qualities in some of it's dialogue exchanges that are more subtle then literal Iambic Pentameter.

But one thing I kept noticing when I rewatched the show earlier this year was how many Anime tropes and clichés it had that I wasn't prepared to recognize as such when I first watched it.  This was my first Absurdly Powerful Student Council, my first School Festival and even my first taste of some of Anime's special kind of degeneracy (wasn't my first sample of Yuri though).  It introduced me to those things but not in doses unbearable for someone who'd prefer not to have them.

Thing about Code Geass is while it was great for me others might need something even less perverted.

Death Note is a show I watched because it's lead was often compared to Lelouch.  The show provides a great Holmes vs Moriarty style battle of wits, for a certain kind of Comic Book Nerd it's exactly what they want.  But I'm more looking for what will appeal to those who's tastes are less dark.

For people like Linkara, I really recommend starting with A Certain Scientific Railgun (but skip the second episode on your first watch) and then the show it spun off from A Certain Magical Index.  Railgun is a Seinen show that could easily pass for Shoujo, and at times I feel like it has an appeal that is very similar to why Teen Titans is my favorite DC franchise yet I can't really explain why.

Railgun is better then Index at least in their Anime versions for a number of reasons.  The main thing that makes it a better entry point for Normies is having none of Index's egregious fanservice, only the most G rated allusions to that aspect of the culture.  

But also during Railgun T especially it proves to be a show where the battles actually put thought into making interesting use of the characters' various powers and abilities.

Once you are into this universe, you probably will want to check out Index and Accelerator eventually, because there are aspects of the universe only those shows can get into.

Update January 2022:  I wish I'd watched some Detective Conan before I wrote this, it's a show I was aware of but it's different then I expected.  Some of the shows above involve dual identified but how they function is a bit different.  There are occasional episodes of Detective Conan where Ran is very much on to Conan being Shinichi, and they way they play out constantly reminded me Lois Lane in the first act of Superman II.

Update Again: Months later and Conan is still holding up, it combines the Teen Drama Superhero antics of Spiderman with the Gadget wielding non leathal Detective antics of Batman.  And in time it develops an interesting cast of recurring villains.  

Also magic Kaito which it spun off from is good too, it's Manga is older but the Anime is newer.

The movies are often more action orientated then the show, and have on average gotten less cleverly written as time as gone on, but I find mostly all of them, even the dumbest Conan film is smarter then any MCU film.

Update August 31st 2024: I also now want to add Durarara! to the list, it has a lot of qualities that remind me of those DC Comics where you just kind of hang out in the DC Universe.

"You can't change the world without getting your hands dirty"

This quote comes from Lelouch near the beginning of episode 3 of Code Geass season 1, right before his first murder.

The thing about revisiting Code Geass now in the wake of my spending a lot of my post 2016 years engaging with DC fans who are really absolute on not wanting Superheroes to ever kill.  Is how that mentality, that desire for Superheros to remain pure in their battle agaisnt Evil, kind of overlaps with the same Centrist principals that hold back real Revolution, the idealizing of MLK and Gahndi's "non violent" resistance over the Black Panthers and the violent Indian rebels who's names I don't even know.

I know full well the appeal of murderous vigilantes like The Punisher and Death Wish is to a very Conservative mentality, and that's why many Leftist media critics don't want a Batman who kills.  I like Death Note for how it deconstructs that mentality and so no I don't think Batman should become an executioner of street thugs and mental patients.

But the real deeper Leftist critique of the Superhero genre is that the perpetual status quo always has the Superheroes fighting only the symptoms of society's problems and never bringing about any real systemic change, and if anything the worlds they protect seem to become more dangerous the longer they exist in them.  Code Geass appealed to me over a decade ago because of how it had a lot of the trappings of a Costumed Superhero story but didn't have the perpetual status quo, Lelouch actually does change the world.  And back when I first watched it I hadn't even developed my current Leftism yet.

Code Geass is also willing to criticize those who would abuse this sentiment to justify anything, like when Detard uses it in episode 18.  I do feel it's important the next real life Revolution avoids the mistakes of The French Revolution, we don't want another Reign of Terror.  I strongly oppose Capitol Punishment and that includes of the "Kings" we overthrow once the Revolution is victorious.

However a sentiment I sometimes see applied to historical analysis of the French Revolution is that The Terror somehow became inevitable as soon as the Revolution condoned any "political violence" at all, typically what happened when the Bastille was stormed.  This sentiment also applies to Extra Credits critique of the history of the Gracchi brothers.

That absurd notion that you damn yourself to complete homicidal madness once you get any blood on your hands at all is exactly the common "explanation" for why Batman can't kill even once not even The Joker or Lex Luthor, that it would somehow be impossible for him to do it even once without inevitably becoming no different then who he killed.  I've hated that logic since I first saw it expressed in Under The Red Hood but now that I see it's connection to how people condemn violent Revolution I better understand why it's so insidious.

There are good reasons why not killing should be part of Batman's character, especially as long as he's fighting "crime" rather then those who really make the world suck.  But more often then not this "if I do it even once I'll go insane" is the reasoning Batman writers and fans prefer to default to, putting that dialogue from Under The Red Hood into their anti Snyder videos as if it's a serious legitimate reason.

Something I commonly see in the discussion around the killing of Zod in Man Of Steel is that many people upset about it do not deny how justified it was, they are upset at the writers for writing Superman into that situation.  They are so used to Superman being allowed to maintain his innocence that to them it's a contrivance only when he can't, when the truth is fighting the kinds of threats he fights it is far more contrived that he can in some timelines do this for years or decades and never be in that kind of situation.  And it's fine to prefer those kinds of stories for Superman, I don't mind stories being contrived to suite what I prefer to see, but don't then insist there is an evil value in "contriving" the story differently then what you want.

KyleKallgrenBHH throws that scene into his video about the "Fascist" tendencies in modern Superhero and Action films.  The problem is that whether you like Zach Snyder's personal politics or not Zod is the one being a Fascist (and unlike most fictional characters refereed to as "Space Nazis" he can legitimately be called a Nationalist) in this movie, having proclaimed his desire to kill every single human being on Earth.  Saying Superman shouldn't have killed him is like saying it'd be wrong to kill an SS officer who is in the process of massacring Jews.

Suzaku can't really be compared to the kind of No Kill policy DC Superheroes usually have since he's a soldier fighting in a war.  But season 1 Suzaku is as close as you can get to that in this context with his absolutist rejection of the ends ever justifying the means, his stated motivation is to prevent people from dying, for some writing him that is the same way Batman's driving motivation is described.  He fits in very well with Linkara's preference for comparing Superheros to Medieval Knights as they are presented in the Musical version of Camelot (this Anime is kind of a reverse White Savior in how this Eleven is a more Chivalrous Knight then any actual Britanians).  Thing is Suzaku is a pretty brutal deconstruction of that, much better then any western Superhero deconstructions that instead remove the aversion to killing when trying to say "Superheroes would be a bad thing actually".  When you think about it, Suzaku is the ultimate deconstruction of Captian America.

Code Geass is a truly nuanced story, Lelocuh makes bad decisions, but that's how any Revolution will inevitably go, there isn't going to be a successful one that is perfectly innocent of anything for later generations to condemn.  Though there will inevitably be defenders of it who will seek to deny those sins as we see in how American conservatives view the American Revolution.

Lelocuh does try to minimize civilian casualties as much as he can.  This quote came from episode 3, it is however in episode 1 we get two quotes from Lelouch that will be brought up again later which really show why Lelocuh was an ideal leader for a Revolution.  "How can the king expect his subordinates to follow if he doesn't lead" and "the only people who should Kill are those who are prepared to be killed".

My Top 10 DC Animated Movies

DC Animated movies seem to be one of the few areas where I'm more critical than conventional nerd culture wisdom rather than less, saying DC is overall better at Animation is silly to me when no Live Action Superhero film will ever be as offensive to me as that Gotham by Gaslight disaster.  And I'm not even as in love with the fullness of the Timmverse as most people, but that's a rant for another day.  That said I have still gained plenty of enjoyment from them, even the ones I’ve been very critical of in the past history of this blog have had some redeeming value I’ve enjoyed.

So I figure it’s time I talked about which ones I like the most.  There do exist DC movies I haven’t seen.  But I’ve seen most of what people generally recommend.  The recent line of DC Super Hero Girls movies are the main thing I’ve missed out on, also the straight to DVD Lego movies.

Now the usual structure of a list like this is from the bottom up.  But in this case the very top of the list is actually very predictable, what I consider the very best, maybe even the entire top 3 is a pretty common conventional wisdom.  So I’d rather list these from the very best to the least of the best so the focus of the post can stay on where my opinions on them diverge from most.

1. Batman: Mask of The Phantasm.

As I said, a predictable opinion, why it’s so great is already better explained by others.

2. Batman Beyond: Return of The Joker.

Also an opinion I’m fairly certain is far from uncommon.  Again others have no doubt talked about it at length.  But my appreciation for it has only increased since I’ve seen Akira and now recognize the blatant Homage (the Laser fired from a space satellite looks exactly the same).

3. Justice League: New Frontier.

Perhaps I’m still unfairly biased towards this one for being the first of the 2007 initiated line I actually liked.  It’s a pretty decent Adaptation of an interesting Comic drawing on ideas popularized by Watchman and DKR, so it’s interesting how it got a movie before they did.

4. Scooby Doo & Batman The Brave and The Bold.

I already dedicated a blog post to this one.  It’s absolutely hilarious.  There is still more I could say and perhaps will after the next time I re-watch it.

5. Superman Unbound.

I’ve also already written about why this is my favorite animated Superman movie.  But I now feel more comfortable saying it may be my favorite Superman movie period.  Also the Superman animated movies I hadn't seen yet when I wrote that I have seen now and it hasn't changed anything.

6. Batman Under The Red Hood.

In a way I’m disappointed that this is by a significant margin the best we’ve gotten from a Batman animated movie not directly connected to a TV series.  But don’t take that as too much of an insult.  It arguably improves on its source material by streamlining things and cutting out the tie ins to other DC story-lines of the time.  I just wish Black Mask had been represented better and it’s Joker didn’t recycle jokes.  Kelly Hu is fantastic in her supporting role, she’d probably make my top ten list of performances from the main line of animated movies.

7. Justice League Crisis on Two Earths

This one was the biggest surprise for me, I was not expecting how well it would hold up.  Probably my main agreement with SUPER FRAME’s video on the DC animated movies is how high up he places this one (his unlike my list here is of only the specific line of films).  It’s another one that I could write an entire post on someday.

I only have room for three more, I think these bottom three might be the most influenced by my current mood and moderately interchangeable with the honorable mentions.  Above the order of 3-7 is also perhaps subject to change, but basically that is a pretty solid top 7.

8. Batman/Superman World’s Finest

Even though it’s transparently a 3 part episode of a TV crossover spliced together, it’s still the best take on how Superman and Batman first meet to date.  And no it's not the only multi-part episode once packaged as a movie I counted as a movie for consideration for this list.  I also love how it used both Mercy and Harley.

9. Allstar Superman

Most seem to like this the best of the animated Superman solo films.  I do enjoy it a lot clearly since it’s on this list, but even as someone who hasn't read the comic I sense how this is an abridged version of something larger.

10. Justice League Flashpoint

The most recent film from the actual line I consider even worthy of consideration for this list.  What I hate about it comes right from the Comics, as an Adaptation of a flawed Comic story-line this is perhaps even better then the above mentioned Red Hood.

The honorable mentions that almost made it would include both of the Adam West and Burt Ward animated movies made just before West passed away.  Together they might be a perfect send off for the Bright Knight.  Both Superman/Batman animated films which again arguably improve on their source material but the second of them is held back by an art-style I don’t like and the first by cutting Katana.  Both Green Lantern animated movies which I found pretty decent introductions to the GL mythos for newbies, but I controversially actually like the Ryan Reynolds movie more.  And finally the two Dark Knight Returns movies executed a lot perfectly, maybe even improved some details, and had great acting, they could have been on the list if they were one movie with the length of Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya and weren’t afraid of using voice over narration.

A failure to make that top 18 out of over 50 hardly means I hate it, I’ve given on this blog overall positive reviews to even stuff from the New52 based series, there are only a handful I have significantly overall negative feelings for. 

But those are the ones that exemplify what Superheroes can do in Animation.  I wish Marvel had made enough for me to consider such a list for them, but their only true shining achievement is Into The Spiderverse which was actually made by Sony.

The Lineage of The Magical Girl Warrior

In 1991 the Magical Girl Warrior Sub-Genre was born in Manga with Codename Sailor V and Devil Hunter Yoko which technically qualifies but came out too close to Sailor V for one to have influenced the other.  Of the two it is mainly Sailor V that is the literary ancestor of the Magical Girl Warriors who've come since, chiefly via it's more well known spin off Sailor Moon.

However I'd have to say the main literary ancestors of the Magical Girl Warrior were not earlier Magical Girls but other types of Superhero stories.

The original Magical Girl genre was mainly a Sit-Com premise, basically inspired by Bewitched but focusing on younger characters rather then a house wife, it's western equivalent would be stuff like Sabrina The Teenage Witch and Wizards of Waverly Place.  Next came the Magical Girl Idol sub-genre which is basically Jem and the Holograms but more like how the Japanese Idol Industry works, and it's most in the case of that Magical Girl sub-genre where I can definitely say the Japanese version predates the western equivalent, Creamy Mammy was popular for a few years before Jem came along.  Harmony Gold started work on a Creamy Mammy dub that never saw the light of day, so Americans in the Animation industry were aware of it.

I don't want to over emphasize the extent to which certain western works were an influence, directly or indirectly, on the genre.  But I have to talk about it somewhat since Naoko Takeuchi has publicly admitted to Wonder Woman being an influence.

Mechanically speaking it is mainly the Lynda Carter TV Show Wonder Woman who seems like a proto Magical Girl Warrior (Or Magical Woman if you prefer since she's an adult), since in that version she doesn't have her powers when in civilian form and has the spinning transformation.  And I'm unsure to what extent any other version of Wonder Woman would have been available in Japanese in the 80s and early 90s.  But I feel the spirit of the Magical Girl genre is more anticipated by Marston's original vision in the Golden Age comics which were often distinct from the Male Superheros of the Golden Age in how they were about at least trying to solve things non violently and reforming the villains.  And the Magical Girl genre has similarly been associated with sexual kinks being thrown in.

Wedding Peach might have been drawing even more on Wonder Woman, they got similar looking Bracelets and a general ancient Greek soldier aesthetic to the Magical Warrior costumes and using Aphrodite in a similar way.

The lineage of Superheros with Magical Transformations probably begins with Fawcett's Captain Marvel aka Shazam, I watched Linkara's review of the first Shazam comic and if only Billy were a girl and Shazam a cute animal it would sure seem like a Magical Girl pilot.  A little later the character of Mary Marvel was added to the Shazam mythos and since she doesn't age up when she transforms she is perhaps the first true Magical Girl Warrior.  Mary Marvel unfortunately wasn't included in the 70s TV version of the Shazam mythos, instead they created Isis another Magical Woman Warrior.  Then there are the many Western Superheros viewed as knock offs of Captain Marvel in some way, from Thor having a similar kind of transformation to Miracleman and Miracle Woman to Marvel Comics' Captain Marvel.

But leaving the transformation element aside, I feel Supergirl may likely have been a visual influence on the genre, in her early to mid 80s look (which is still her most iconic look) she anticipates the basic look of the Sailor Scouts and Love Angels in a lot of ways, especially Mina and Usagi being inexplicably Blond.  And it was largely Bronze Age Supergirl comics that first explored balancing the Superhero life with School Life using a female character.  Another interesting DC Proto Magical Girl Warrior was Amethyst Princess of Gemworld, but I'm unsure to what extent that character could have been known across the Pacific that early. And maybe She-Ra could be considered a factor as well.

But as I said the Magical Girl Warrior is a Japanese innovation.  In many ways the concept was arguably just a Hyper Girlification of the Tokusatsu Transforming Superhero formula most popularly exemplified by Ultraman, Super Sentai and Kamen Rider, but arguably the first was a character known as Gekko Kamen or the Moonlight Mask, the Moonlight Knight from the Doom Tree Saga of Sailor Moon was a direct homage to that character.  When I was watching SSSS.Gridman it really felt at times to me like the MC was a male Magical Girl.

And this Genre of Japanese entertainment had even already had Female Superheroes before the Magical Girl Warrior, but they were all more Science Based then Magick which is why they seem related to the Magical Girl genre only in retrospect.  The first of them, or at least first to be the main character was Go Nagai's Cutey Honey, Cutey Honey's perceived relationship to this genre is why after the 90s Sailor Moon anime went off the air Toei put a more Shoujo oriented reboot of Cutey Honey in it's time-slot, Cutey Honey Flash.

Once again however I don't think transforming characters were the only influence.  I can't help but wonder if La Seine No Hoshi was an aesthetic influence in some fashion.  But adding further weight to the possible DC Comics influence mentioned above, I have come to think Project A-Ko must have been a factor.  That movie used the same kind of Sailor Fuku that Sailor V and Sailor Moon would later wear, and it anticipated running late for school as a common recurring gag.  And all three of it's lead Seiyu wound up being on Sailor Moon, two of them as major characters.

Update: I have now learned that there were a few Toei Toku shows that were basically live action Magical Girl shows in the late 80s and early 90s as part of the Fushigi Comedy Series.  The most important being The Masked Belle Poitrine.

https://twitter.com/KuudereKun888/status/1301967357905170435

https://www.tuxedounmasked.com/what-magical-girl-was-sailor-moon-based-on/