All of my posts on this Blog are meant to be Conversation Starters. I never want to be the final word on any topic. I'm trying to put ideas out there that hopefully others more knowledgeable and skilled then me can expand on.
I just watched it and enjoyed some of it. But it really didn't feel like the kind of story you should be wasting the visually homaging Universal Monster Movies gimmick on.
As someone who's brain has been thoroughly poisoned by Anime, at the beginning I quickly found myself thinking "oh it's the Battle Royal/Death Game/Holy Grail War" set up. But then also about how the thing that makes Anime with a premise like this work is that at least some of the characters are ordinary people who were drawn into it. Everyone involved being a hardened monster hunter completely changes the vibe.
This of course reminds me of Patrick Willems criticisms of the post Whedon MCU in general, the lack of the perspective of ordinary people that for example the Raimi Spider-Man movies used so well.
And doing a supposedly Classic Monster Movie throwback really draws further attention to it. When everyone in the story is used to dealing with monsters then there is no one to be quite as horrified by them as the average viewer would be. Moon Knight exists somewhat in this same corner of the Marvel Universe but it works so much better because Grant was living a pretty normal life when it started.
I also think about the rather lazy handling of Ted. Again what an Anime Protagonist might have done is taken a shot on actually being kind to the monster without already being told in advance it's actually a chill dude. That much better serves the "don't judge people by how they look" moral that is supposed to be the point of having a monster that's not actually evil.
The most recent movie I've watched is Morbius and it was good, I think the best live action theatrical Superhero movie since Endgame, it's refreshing to see one that isn't about the a plot to destroy the entire city or world or universe and also isn't a semi self parody.
The first almost 40 minutes were flawless, then when it became clear Milo was gonna be the villain I felt that could have been handled better. Giving them the ability to Fly when they don't grow wings was stupid, and I didn't like the fridging at the end, but plenty of flaws comparable to those exist in great movies.
I think the hate this movie gets is mostly just the weird hate boner much of Internet fandom has developed for Jared Leto. What flaws this movie did have were not on Leto at all, he was great.
I also re-watched The Batman, and I still think it's decent. I had commented before on it being the most like a Film Noir of any Batman movie so far, and it is. But a pure Film Noir would have ended during the scene of Batman talking to Riddler in prison, a good Film Noir ending would have ended on Batman reacting to the revelation that he inspired the villain, and Riddler's hysterical reaction to learning his idol doesn't approve. It even had already had a full feature length runtime.
The final act with the plot to drown the city is the typical Superhero movie BS, and I increasingly feel Batman is exactly the Superhero who doesn't need that.
I also finally watched Cloud Atlas, it was a great movie, but the best Wachowski film is still Speed Racer.
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 was also great fun, I highly recommend it.
The Anime films I've watched I'm pretty sure I've already talked about on this blog. Except maybe the latest Prisma Illy movie, that was pretty good, didn't disappoint, but I am getting annoyed at the cliffhangers and wondering when this Arc will finally end.
Incase I hadn't mentioned it anywhere, I also saw Redline and it was phenomenal.
I now own the Heaven's Feel movies on VUDU, I may give them a rewatch in the near future.
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.
I'm late to the Marvel Netflix party, and right now I still haven't watched most of it. But I enjoyed The Defenders miniseries which seems to be uncommon.
Most of the criticisms of it I've seen so far are levied mainly at The Hand being allegedly weak antagonists. I already made one blog post on why I am okay with Superhero stories where the villains are weak.
And frankly the kind where I least care about the villains are the big team up stories, or at least the first time a Superhero team of people who also have their own solos adventures team up. In fact in something that's film length, 2-3 hours instead of 8, I'd potentially consider it an impediment for the villains to take too much attention. Loki in Avengers worked because he was Thor's family so he brought more to Thor's character then antagonism.
The point of these stories is seeing these characters people already like on their own come together and play off each other. For reasons I can't explain I'm vaguely watching these Netflix shows out of order, I went into this having seen the first 2 seasons of Daredevil and 2 episodes of Jessica Jones. In that context it perhaps worked for me that they took their time assembling them, this wasn't Nick Fury premeditating forming this years in advance. So I got a sampling of how the ones I wasn't already following tend to look on their own. My main point is, what I watch a team up for this provided, I found all their chemistry fun even though I wasn't a fan of most of them going in.
That said, a lot of the complaints about The Hand I don't get. I mean I am uncomfortable with how Yellow Peril they come off, especially on Daredevil, but that's not even the focus of the Patrick Willems or Nando v Movies video essays on the subject.
They are indeed not motivated by an ideology strictly speaking. But the confusion these critics express regarding what they are driven by I simply don't get. It's about a group of villain who want to live forever and have been prolonging their lives, and lately they've been acting more desperate because they need to replenish how they've been doing it. I've gotten quite used to antagonists like that from all the Anime I've watched, but I suppose it's a theme the West isn't generally used to.
Sigourney Weaver's character was humanized in a way I feel works just as well as what everyone praised about Wilson Fisk. They are far from my favorite shadowy secret society, but they did what they needed to do for this show just fine.
On a related note Daredevil season 2 is sometimes considered not as good as season 1. I think a lot of the complaint there is how the Hand and Punisher storylines are so unrelated. I have criticized TV shows for having different storylines that are too unconnected to each other, True Blood starting in season 3, Game of Thrones, and more recently Gotham. But in Daredevil season 2 they are connected by that Matt Murdoch is involved in both stories. And maybe Superhero stories should do that more often, show that there is no guarantee you'll only have to deal with one Supervillain at a time. And for the middle act of the season it's largely Punisher is Murdoch the Lawyer's job and The Hand is Daredevil's problem, so their being otherwise unrelated is where the double life drama comes from.
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.
Infinity War was the first Superhero movie to actually feel like an Event Comic as a movie. It wasn't the first named after an Event Comic, but the Civil War movie is much smaller in scale then the Comic was, it felt like less then a normal Avengers movie not more.
Avengers Endgame however managed to feel even more like an Event Comic. In truth both movies together are the Event, and the post credit scenes of Antman & The Wasp and Captain Marvel are the cinematic equivalent of the tie in Comics.
Endgame is something that does not work as a stand alone film, even Infinity War could kind of work on it's own. But in Endgame things like most of the cast not being there till the final act yet being treated as of equal importance once they show up could never work as a stand alone film. But in this case that isn't a bad thing, because the meaning it has is worth it.
Again, my experience with Comics are almost all DC ones, so I'm a weirdo loving these Marvel movies for recreating the experience I get from some of my favorite DC Comics.
No Event Comic actually succeeds in making every one of it's hundreds of characters equally important, you have to accept that sometimes your favorite character might get just a couple cool moments. What can be interesting is how some Events are quite surprising in who gets to be important.
In the main DC Events the big three are always important, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, for the MCU those are Iron Man, Captain America and Thor, and the Endgame Video Essays on YouTube I've seen so far have mainly been about how their meta arcs came to satisfying conclusions.
But after that things can seem random, like the group of heroes and villains the Monitor originally assembled for Crisis On Infinite Earths, or Power Girl and Superboy's importance to Infinite Crisis. And in Endgame one example of that is Ant-Man's key role in how the resolution became possible. But what's most fascinating to me is Nebula.
In the first two Guardians of The Galaxy films Nebula is an important supporting character, but still there mostly as an accessory to Gamora's character development and what their relationship infers to the audience about Thanos, and it's the same in Infinity War but with even less Screen-time.
But in Endgame she is now part of the core avengers team, we open with her having amusing interactions with Tony. And now 2014-Gamora is basically just here to compliment Nebula's story.
I think that's a pretty interesting pay off if you're a fan of the character or of Karen Gillian.
I myself in the past on this very blog have repeated the common notion that having a great villain is a requirement for a great Superhero story. But a lot has happened to change my mind on that.
It would be pointless to go on about great Genre stories that have no villain at all like the third Pokémon movie or Star Trek IV or the book of Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Because that's irrelevant to the argument that if there is a villain the villain needs to be a very engaging and/or entertaining character.
Now I do love great villains, from cartoon villains played by a charismatic actor having a great time hamming it up to complex nuanced psychological profiles. SSSS.Gridman provided one of each of those making it perhaps the best Anime of 2018 in the villain department.
But there is no story where every character is going to be a super engaging stand out character. I need some to be fun and/or interesting for me to get into a show or movie, but it's okay if not all of them are. Even some characters who have a lot of screen time and narrative importance in a given movie are basically just talking plot devices.
This post is about the fact that we tend to see the role of antagonist as one that's uniquely not allowed to be of lower priority. No one is confused when a Superhero film is well received in-spite of the love interest character not being all that highly regarded. But I'd argue the person we're supposed to believe the Hero is In Love With should be more important to get right then the person the Hero is trying to beat up. The old Batman movies got away with relegating Pat Hingle's Jim Gordon to just an exposition device, but when they get one of the villains wrong everyone loses their minds.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe was for awhile perceived as being pretty weak in the villain department besides Loki and maybe a few others. But those movies were massively successful in-spite of that and certain internet critics were pretty confused, lamenting that society has lost something in allowing villains to get stale.
Now over the course of phase three there is a perception that the MCU has been getting better in the villain department. I personally like some of the older MCU villains particularly Ultron, and am not as impressed with some of these highly praised recent ones, especially Killmonger and Hella. But that's not the point today.
I would argue that in the early years of the MCU general audiences and even some Comic readers didn't consider the lack of scene stealing villains a bug and maybe even saw it as a feature.
The 90s Batman movies were largely treated like episodes of the 60s TV Show just now on the big screen and separated by years instead of weeks, and so the fact that each movie had a different villain was treated as the main thing setting them apart from each other. And to a large extent the 2000s pre-MCU Marvel Superhero movies followed their example. When Batman Begins came along and the marketing largely underplayed the villains for the sake of selling it as Batman's Origin Story a lot of us thought things would be different. But low and behold for the sequels it was once again The Joker and Bane who were really selling them.
I think it's possible when the MCU got going many found it darn right refreshing that these Superhero films were not so villain driven, even if often the marketing was seemingly trying to be business as usual in this area. Even the MCU films that critics weren't so kind to still did well at the Box Office.
Thor: The Dark World is constantly treated by YT Video Essayists as among the worst of the MCU films, but for me it's the best Thor movie by far. And criticisms of the movie largely come down to finding Malekith a bland boring uninteresting villain with unexplained motives. I can't even remotely understand criticizing anything else about the film.
The movie isn't actually about Malekith, it's about Thor and his relationships with Loki and Jane and Odin. And in my opinion all of that is handled beautifully whether or not it was predictable. Malekith being just an external threat to advance that narrative is perfectly fine and I would possibly even have disliked screen time being wasted on trying to make him more sympathetic or understandable.
Ronin in the first Guardians of The Galaxy is viewed as being the exact same "problem" as Malekith yet it doesn't seem to have hurt the overall critical reception of the film nearly as much. In that film I think Ronin being a bland character was recognized as being actually thematically relevant, it contrasts him to the fun cast of quirky heroes being established, it even plays into how he's defeated at the end. And maybe the same idea was at play in using him in a minor role in Captain Marvel.
Malekith's blandness may not be so thematically justified but I'd certainly argue it's narrativly justified. He's someone who wants to destroy the Universe as we know it because he wants to eliminate all light and return existence to perpetual darkness. Would it really make sense for that to be a fun one liner dropping character? And knowing why he is like that or wants that would add nothing to what the film is actually about, it would only be a distraction.
Going outside of Comic Book Superhero movies I feel similarly about the aliens in Darling in The Franxx, and many of the villains of the Pokémon movies, and Count Dooku. Some Pokémon movies have great villains, like anyone connected to Team Rocket (even if that connection only exists in the Dub). But it's totally fine that the villain in Pokémon 2000 is just there to start the conflict and then become irrelevant, and that plenty of later ones were just basically that formula being recycled, because the villains are never what I watch a Pokémon movie for.
And maybe it's a problem that for so many Comic Book fans the villains are what they watch Superhero movies for?
Update July 3rd 2019: I have stumbled upon on old YouTube video that perhaps overlaps with the ideas of this discussion. Though I suspect they're critical of more Plot Device Characters then I am. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGtKCATsUuA
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.
The Wolverine is so far the only of the FoX-Men movies I really like, though I haven't seen the Deadpool movies yet. To me even the first two X-Men films are overrated and I kind of flat out hate Logan.
The Wolverine isn't perfect, all the Jean Grey stuff was just a distraction thrown in to tie into a movie most people forgot about. And I could go on about how Yukio's ability doesn't make sense as a Mutant power, and how I further feel "you're technically dead if your heart stops for a few seconds" shouldn't count towards paranormal premonitions, yet it constantly does when a fictional story needs it to. But all things considered it's a good Superhero film.
What's interesting is how it relates to my history as an Otaku. I've been on this blog defining my deep dive into Anime as beginning in 2014, and I didn't truly become an Otaku till some point in 2016. But I remember when this movie came out in Summer 2013 already knowing enough about one particular aspect of Anime to immediately recognize a possible allusion to Class S in the relationship between Yukio and Mariko, and I have indeed shipped them ever since, I think I'd mentioned it on Tumblr at the time.
Still, I re-watched the film recently and how much more I "know" about Japan now definitely added to the experience, the film's use of Honorifics and Sibling terminology, the Pachinco Parlor and the Love Hotel, all things I notice now that I didn't really notice back then.
I have never read the original Comic Story-line about Wolverine in Japan, I might in the future. But it's interesting how even the role that plays in my ability to enjoy this film more then most Nerds relates to how my lack of Manga and Light Novel reading helps me enjoy Anime. I'm not constantly looking for changes to complain about, just enjoying the film for how it works as a film. For plenty of other Western Superhero franchises I do know enough about the source material to care somewhat, but the X-Men have never mattered that much to me.
I'm going to say something controversial, I hope no one has to die to undo the Snap in Avengers 4. I hope they truly follow through on Cap's declaration of "We don't trade lives".
I watched a Video Essay Criticizing Antman and The Wasp for how they didn't follow thorough on their "tough choice". This is like the Bathos issue in how my disagreement with common MCU criticisms are directly related to how much I love Anime. Both the Magical Girl genre and what Digibro calls the "Otaku Hero's Journey" are predicated on saying "screw that crap, we will save everyone and make sure no one has to die no matter how much you insist that's impossible". From Steins;Gate to Prisma Illya to No Game No Life. I'm divided on how much Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha As fits this.
Now Antman and The Wasp still isn't as good as those Anime, it does feel a little like the resolution just sorta happened. Thing is I also feel this "tough choice" was unearned to begin with, Laurence Fisbourne had no real reason to believe his plan would work anyway, yet this Video Essayist acts like it was such a real tense dilemma ruined because no one actually had to die. In-spite of that nit pick however I did enjoy the movie, it was fun, my Mom watched it 4 times in 3 days.
This Video Essay also talked about how "Sacrifice" is a long standing tradition of the Superhero Genre. Well I'm like Linkara in that I'm tired of every Event (which there are 5 of every year now) needing to kill a few people off to have real "stakes". I'm a Christian who Believes in Universal Salvation, Jesus Sacrificed Himself to save all Human Beings, even the ones who killed Him, and He Will Succeed. And yes His Sacrifice was real because he still has the Wounds, that's the difference between His Resurrection and ours.
My Love of Anime has to do with how often the fiction of these modern Japanese Secular Shintoists comes closer to the True Gospel then what the Western Church has been saying for over a Thousand Years.
Another YouTube video I watched said Tony has to die because his story arc is over. And that really annoys me, why does having no more story to tell have to equal death? Why can't he just finally retire and start a family with Pepper?
I think there should be a Sacrifice but not one that's a truly permanent death. I suspect our heroes will have to regather the Infinity Stones, and thus someone will have to be Sacrificed for the Soul Stone. I think that should be Cap leaving the mantle of Captain America to Bucky for awhile. But like Gamora he'll still be alive in the Soul Stone, maybe his going in will also let Gamora out. Either way the potential to get him out in the future will be in place.
I'm not super optimistic about this however. You see I reject the notion that Killing a popular character is the brave route, maybe it was in Comics in the 70s. But Western media criticism is so obsessed with the notion of "consequences" and "equivalent exchange" that I know the Critics would never forgive Avengers 4 for actually having the Guts to do what I'm suggesting.
Infinity War's dark route was a bold move in the context of the general MCU tone leading up to it, but responding to it with a complete reversal would in fact be ten times bolder.
Meanwhile there is nothing brave about killing off Tony Stark when no more solo films staring him are likely to be made anyway.
There has traditionally been a pretty harsh dichotomy to how this issue is approached. Either they are super strictly determined never to kill even in scenarios where no real Jury would convict a real person of Murder. Or you have the Punisher and Rorshach who exclusively kill because they have given up any hope that criminals can be reformed. Some reasonable middle ground is rarely taken.
There was a time when marvel Comics official policy was that Captain America never even killed anyone when he was fighting in WWII. Yes they were so determined to keep his hands free of Blood they wouldn't even admit he killed f----in Nazis on the battle field. Meanwhile in Steven Spielberg and George Lucas's universe.
In real life actual Law Enforcement is traditionally taught to always shoot to kill and never any less. Maybe that is part of the problem our society currently faces and I would fully support a movie saying it's wrong that we train Cops that way. But pretending Superheroes can do their job with the polar opposite policy is not the answer to that problem.
Linkara says he views Superheroes as like modern Knights Errants which is why he brings up the movie Camelot sometimes when talking about Superhero comics. And that's cool and all, but even the Romanticized Arthurian version of what Knights were had no absurd blanket rule against killing the enemy, they were soldiers fighting in wars.
That's part of why I found the MCU so refreshing. Because right from the start they were willing to acknowledge that if a Billionaire is gonna fly a f-----in Gundam to Afghanistan to stop a warlord from massacring a village, he's gonna have to kill some people.
What I find so ironic about all this talk of why the DCEU and MCU are so different, is that what really bothers people was Zach Snyder applying the MCU policy on killing bad guys to DC's Big Two. But also unlike Marvel let this change in approach actually be thematically relevant, while Marvel was just hoping people simply wouldn't notice that Iron Man blew up a clearly maned Tank right in the trailer.
And I get it, people are used to these two characters in particular being usually uncompromising on this issue. And some even like the irony of DC's Dark Superhero being the one who's strictest on his no kill policy (except when he's not).
But even as I do prefer Batman to stick to his No Killing and No Guns policy much more strictly then either Snyder or Miller's Batman does. I am pretty baffled by how easily fans accept the "If I kill this unrepentant mass murderer who keeps escaping and killing more people then I'll become just like him" argument he makes in stories like Under The Red Hood. That logic is pretty stupid.
The killing Batman does in BvS can be put in a few different categories. First of all the nightmare Future Vision kind of shouldn't count, the whole point was everything about that was his worst nightmare including becoming a literal solider (Snyder films tend to paint the military as a necessary evil at best). And in terms of him being reckless in scenes like car chases, let's stop pretending Nolan's Batman wasn't also pretty darn reckless. And likewise with the disposal of KGBeast, I find it funny how a scene ripped directly from most Nerds favorite Batman Comic is treated as a huge betrayal of the character but "I don't have to save you" wasn't.
The branding is what's truly most controversial, with some acting like this makes Batman worse then The Punisher. And to be honest even I think that plot-line could have been handled better, but not how you might expect. And I'm even gonna set aside the Lex was actually behind the branded criminals dying in prison aspect which wasn't made clear enough in the theatrical cut.
First of all it is, even in the theatrical cut, presented as something Bruce just started doing, with that news paper we're shown being seemingly even Alfred's first time hearing about it. Yet some people act like this Batman has been doing it for 20 years.
Secondly, the only person we ever see branded was a Sex Trafficker. Those kinds of criminals tend to get that treatment in prison anyway. It's almost as if the only purpose the Branding really serves is to give people, particularly Clark, a reason to blame Batman for it even though that would probably have been that guy's fate in prison regardless.
I think it'd have been interesting if the Brand was intended to have the opposite effect, like the Mark of Cain, saying "I don't want this guy getting off that easy so if you kill him you answer to the Bat". But then that one is killed how he is because he was transferred to Metropolis and Clark simply wouldn't know the full context at first. And maybe that was the original plan before the script got revised, who knows.
But my point is in the final product it is far more worth criticizing as a plot contrivance then as the worst violation of the No Kill rule any version of Batman's ever committed.
What really bugs me though is how the same people so offended by Snyder's two films also think Wonder Woman was DC finally getting it right, finally depicting a Heroic Superhero. When in fact Wonder Woman is far more of a killer then the title characters in either Snyder film, and the killing itself far more condoned by the narrative.
In BvS we're supposed to view Batman as going too far, and he does abandon this dark path for a more optimistic outlook at the end (so Angry Joe saying "it'll be weird if he's not killing in Justice League" was always stupid of him). And in Man of Steel Clark was trying not to Kill Zod, seriously I'm surprised no one's yet made a "Superman should've killed Zod sooner" argument. But even if he couldn't have killed Zod sooner then when he had him in that Sleeper hold, he was still at that point pleading with him, he was trying not to have to kill him even though it was always inevitable.
Meanwhile Wonder Woman's mission was an assassination mission from the start and no one cares, she even kills the wrong person the first time, and nobody cares.
Is it because we see Wonder Woman as being in a literal war? Even though the character Superman killed is called GENERAL Zod and he'd basically declared war on the planet. But they're not in period piece cosplay so we don't register it as a "real" war. Frankly I see it as pure hypocrisy to be okay with the Amazons killing Germans invading their island but not Superman killing someone only he could stop on a genocidal rampage.
Of course all the way back in 2005 the OMAC Project/Infinite Crisis story-line brought up a lot of talk on how Wonder Woman's no kill rule had "always" been less strict then Batman or Superman's, and so she was naturally the one to put in the situation of killing Maxwell Lord. But to me that is the sad irony of how these characters have changed since the 40s.
In their earliest golden age appearances neither Batman or Superman had any hesitation to kill, Superman was modeled after Samson by his Jewish creators remember. It was Wonder Woman alone who had a more pacifist policy right from her introduction, Marston wanted to reject the more violent and "Masculine" approach of most superhero comics. So Wonder Woman preferred to reform her enemies EVEN when they were literally Nazis like Paula Von Gunther (though due to Marston's Racism I doubt we saw equivalent stories of Japanese villains being reformed).
You see Marston would not qualify as a Feminist according to Tumblr Feminists calling modern Anti-Feminists idiots who can't read the dictionary. Because he did not view the genders as equal but unapologetically preached female superiority. So among other things he held the problematic view that violence is inherently Masculine. He'd frankly be disgusted to learn that by the 2000s his Amazons were being depicted as basically female Klingons.
Marston's ideology had a lot of issues, but what I do like about it as a Pacifist and a Feminist (and a Non Monogamist) I feel is embodied in a much better more refined way by the Magical Girl genre in Anime and Manga. As much I did enjoy 2017's Wonder Woman, it'll never be the ideal depiction of Diana to me, to me Diana should be the West's Sailor Moon and Yuki Yuna. DC has Big Barda to be their muscular sword wielding warrior woman.
What I'm saying is I like Snyder taking a more realistic approach to Violence in Superhero stories. As opposed to Nolan wanting to kill off half his villains but also wanting to pretend he kept the No Kill rule intact.
Look, I'm writing this as someone who is firmly against the Death Penalty and strongly Anti-War. But those morals of mine relate to why in real life I disapprove of Vigilantes in the first place, even if they had a no kill rule. So rooting for Batman already requires me to set aside my real world ethics when watching this fictional setting.
Technically Sam Raimi was the first to get to direct the third film of his Comic Book Superhero movie franchise. But he might as well not have, he was forced to include two characters he didn't want to in Spider-Man 3, Gwen Stacey and Venom.
In fact Christopher Nolan was the first to direct a full "Trilogy" in this genre, and really is still the only one. The MCU has let few even do two films. Even their once worshiped Joss Whedon wasn't allowed to stay for the third film. Meanwhile Snyder may be a credited director for three movies, but he had full artistic control of none of them and for the last quit part way through due to a personal tragedy.
Justice League and Suicide Squad are films being looked at as examples of dreaded executive meddling interfering with Directorial Artistic vision and ruining what the movie could have been. And every time that happens a lot of fanboys go "why won't they realize meddling never turns out well?".
But there are plenty of films that went wrong for the opposite reason, because the Director had so much clout that he had no leash on him. Peter Jackson's King Kong and the Hobbit movies are films where I myself agree, Jackson needed a leash. However I'll disagree when it comes to say Batman Returns, I still love that movie.
This is a nuanced issue that I feel many want to over simplify.
I'll say this, if you're one of many right now saying the MCU deserves it's massive success, and their films of the last 2 or 3 years are mostly their best yet. Then you don't think Executive Meddling is inherently bad, so stop pretending pure Directorial vision matters to you. I have enjoyed all the MCU films so far, but I do wish Rangnorock had actually been a Thor movie and not GOTG 2.5.
Frankly we would have had a DCU sooner if Nolan hadn't become a god DC didn't want to piss off. The Dark Knight Rises killed the ability for Nolan's franchise to ever lead into a Shared Universe, because he explicitly didn't want that. As a stand alone film I love The Dark Knight Rises, it's perfect. But it's not how The Dark Knight should have been followed up.
Whether or not Executive Meddling ruins something depends on what the conflicting visions are.
When a Director wants no leash on their creative control, they should stick to creating original properties, or Public Domain ones. If you're agreeing to direct a property for a Studio that owns it and has a vested interest in it's popularity beyond when you'll be done with it. You don't get to just do whatever you want.
What the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been doing well that most people seem to think others haven't been for the last 2-5 years or so. Is the ability to provide over the top Escapist Popcorn movie fun, while also having Heart and Thematic resonance. Other films seem to be trying to pull off what Marvel is but failing.
I can't entirely disagree, but my takes on these movies are more complicated.
Some people want to say Star Wars is being handled the same way the MCU films are because of both being Disney. Yet ironically my overall reactions to the Disney Star Wars films so far (I won't be seeing Solo theatrically) have been the same as for the last three DC films. Very high praise upon first leaving the theater, but the more I think about it the more what's disappointing about it sinks in.
I'm starting to feel like 2008 was an important transitional year in Cinema. But do you know what 2008 movie anticipated the MCU formula in advance? It's not the actual MCU films made that year, it took awhile for the MCU to find it's footing and Josh Whedon was important to how it did so. Iron Man I did the and still do think of as Batman Begins light.
It was Speed Racer, yes that film that mostly flopped at the time but has a lot of loyal fans now. It anticipated the MCU formula by being more like a Comic Book then the Comic Book movies of that year. And guess what, Speed Racer is how it is because it's an Anime adapted by fans of Anime.
That's the thing, in American Cinema it may be only the MCU that's been pulling this off recently. But Anime has always been good at it. Like the Nanoha franchise, the first two seasons are like MCU films but double the length. I feel like maybe Reflection has succeeded at being similar, but due to the language barrier I may need to watch it a few more times to know for sure. As well as seeing Detonation which I probably won't be able to till a year from now.
But even getting into something more controversial to speak highly of. Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale is basically an MCU film, in both formula and execution. And I see it as purely hypocrisy to think that movie is trash but the MCU films deserve their success.
I've been enjoying the MCU films. However they aren't the formula I want all films or Anime to have. And so I enjoyed Jurassic World far more. And now that I've seen Batman V Superman a third time I think I can firmly say my overall opinion of it is a positive one, I think in time it'll be vindicated by History.
Now Avengers Infinity War has broken from the standard MCU formula a bit. And that factors into why I like it the best so far. And there is Anime I could easily compare it too, Thanos motivation makes him like a lot of Anime Anti-Villains.
That I have been watching and liking so much Anime kind of makes up for that. But as someone who choose to at the start of 2017 brag about how easy I am to please, I don't like that I haven't truly been able to be that enthusiastic about the Blockbuster movies I've watched.
Infinity War has possibly broken this trend. So many past movies I've raved about on this Blog after first watching them I was already starting to sour on by this point since seeing it, whether I admitted that publicly or not. So that I still feel the same as what I said about that movie two weeks ago, maybe even appreciating some aspects more, is important. Before that the last Live Action film that I kept loving as much as when I first saw it in the theater was Jurassic World.
Even Wonder Woman, which because of my Feminism I actively refused to say anything negative about while it was still fresh because we needed a Female lead Superhero film to be a hit. The truth is it didn't take me long to realize that I think it's in the same place Superman The Movie and Batman 89 were, good enough that it'll be treated as perfect as long as there isn't another take on Wonder Woman to compare it to, but once there is, the conversation about it will change.
One factor might be I haven't been rewatching stuff as much I used to (that's true for both Anime and western cinema). Becoming a regular Anime follower has caused me to have a lot more to watch then I used to. And in terms of Films, I used to make a point to always give a film I liked a second theatrical viewing. But now with ticket prices going up while I have had a lot less money, I don't think I've done a repeat theatrical viewing since before I started this Blog. There was a time when I would never fail to see a Comic Book Superhero film in theaters, but in 2017 I skipped out on all the Marvel movies till home video.
The Dark Knight I saw 10 times before 2008 was over, 6 times in theaters and 4 on DVD. For the next few years I wouldn't go more then 6 months without watching it. But Batman V Superman I've still only seen twice and those viewings were not of the same edit. Maybe if during the gestation period of my opinion on The Dark Knight I allowed myself to go over a month only thinking about it without watching it again my mind would have poked more holes in it.
Digibro likes to say the re-watch is the real watch of something. In fact he's specifically said it can take till the third viewing to be certain what your opinion is, that the second viewing you'll notice more flaws then you did the first time but then the third viewing be back to loving it as much as the first. That describes my relationship with The Force Awakens somewhat, I certainly enjoyed my third viewing of it more then I did the second.
But why have I watched TFA more times then BvS? When I care about that franchise less to start with and ultimately feel like I probably like BvS more? Something about BvS has been making me afraid of coming to terms with it.
The lack of repeat viewings can't be the only explanation however. Cause I still only watched 2008's Speed Racer twice when I first saw it last year and I still love it and honestly think it might be able to compete with The Dark Knight as my favorite western movie period, being perhaps the opposite side of the same coin.
Now some of you might say "dude it's because you like things so much you watch it more" even though I kind of already addressed that. Even with the Anime I've been watching, a decade ago something I enjoyed as much as I did In Another World With My Smartphone or Princess Principle I have have watched 3 or even 4 times by now. But I simply have less viewing time available.
None of my issues with Batman V Superman are of it as a stand alone film. The complexity of my relationship with that film is on a purely Meta level. (I'll be talking more about this in future posts.) As a complete film and a work of Art I still think it's the best the DCEU has made and will probably stand the test of time better then most MCU films. I predict 20 years from now the general perceptions of it and Captain America: Civil War will have swapped places.
This post may make good context for a number of upcoming posts I want to make about DC and MCU films, and films in general that have come out since the start of 2015. But those posts will be less personal exploration and more like actual points.
It might be this is a natural consequence of getting so into Anime, the Anime I've watched has raised my standards and perhaps spoiled me to even the best of what America has to offer. Both for escapist popcorn fun and for deep philosophically challenging tragedies. After all some of what I may have to say about Infinity War in the near future is about comparing it to Anime.
Update: Since first posting this I have seen Batman V Superman a third time. Some of the Jump scares and explosions still make me Jump even though I knew they were coming. That's something that's never happened with my home viewings of any MCU films.
I like Event Comics, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis, and Superman Our Worlds At War are among my favorite Comic Book stories. I don't like how they've become overused, how it feels like there are no breaks between them now. But they are a concept I can get behind and at least a few have been executed really well. I want to read more of the ones I haven't gotten to yet, from Final Crisis to the ones the 90s had.
They are one aspect of what I love about Comics I figured would never get translated to film, not even in Animation. And it amazes me that the world of Live Action Superhero films tried it and succeeded at it before any Animated project did.
I was never really buying that what The Avengers film was doing was so difficult. In terms of the kind of narrative it is, it had absolutely been done before, we'd had movies about Superhero teams before, and X-Men was just as star studded. And we'd seen them plenty in Animation. The Avengers was only different in that they were a team of characters from prior movies, but we'd also had crossover films before.
I scoffed and still scoff at the idea that Civil War proved you needed the emotional investment of the prior movies to make a Versus film work. I remain of the opposite mindset, a Verses story is only acceptable to me when it's how they meet. And so for all my issues with Batman V Superman I still maintain it to be a better Verses movie.
But the unique feeling of an Event Comic, especially one that felt built up to for years as Infinite Crisis did in 2005, is what you truly can't do without a Shared Universe.
Cause you see I've never read a Justice League or Teen Titans comic truly caring if the continuity between the team and solo stories lined up, it's nice when they do and some such references exist. But all you need to do is look at is Dick Grayson's love life to see that those respective writings teams weren't actually on the same page. And so that's why the animated ones worked just fine as stand alone films.
It's the event Comics that when handled well feel like everything in many prior comic story-lines were building up to it in some way or another. Both the solos and the team ups. Bringing together events from different corners of the universe, and in a sense different genres. And that is where Infinity War has truly justified the MCU. I don't agree with everything in today's Mother's Basement video, but it's still a good break down. Thanos Is the Protagonist - How Infinity War Works.
It juggles it's cast well, has interactions between established characters I never would have thought of, like Bucky and Rocket. And while the story was scattered for much of it, everything was basically brought together by the end.
The good Event comics are ones where the basic story absolutely does work with only the actual limited series. But reading the tie-in comics can still feel like they add to it in meaningful yet not required ways and isn't just an excuse to put the event's name on the cover. And that is the one aspect Infinity War can't really have an equivalent for. Some might compare what's going on in the TV shows that I don't watch anymore, but at the end of the day even they will be events set before or after it, not another angle on during it like Teen Titans Life and Death is for Infinite Crisis.
But that's the only factor really missing, yes it's scale is still smaller compared to any true Crisis, but the other DC events I've read are on the same scale as Infinity War or below it.
That's the weird thing, in terms of Comics I'm mainly a DC fan, but am loving this MCU film for evoking similar feelings in me as some of my favorite DC Comics.
What is similar to that is the lead in story-lines. Of the many that lead into Infinite Crisis, I feel only Identity Crisis and OMAC Project even come close to being required reading, they make a good trilogy. But others add it, like Villains United, the entire Geoff Johns Teen Titans run, the Powergirl and Supergirl story-lines (the latter spinning out of Superman/Batman: Public Enemies), JLA Crisis of Conscience, Superman: Sacrifice. And that's just stuff I took an interest in, fans of other DC comics from 2003-2005 could list many more. (I left out a lot of Batverse stuff that also comes out of War Games which is it's own can of worms I have complicated feelings on.)
The other thing I like about having a proper shared universe are what I call not the small things but the medium things. Things that are less then a full team up but more then a mere throw away reference or brief cameo. These things are why Spiderman Homecoming worked, the one aspect of Spiderman as a teenage Superhero missing from the pre MCU films was him a teenage Superhero in a world with adult Superheroes. That's the role Tony Stark plays in it. And the one reason something like a Tim Drake Robin solo film I figured could never be made was that his comics rarely have Batman gone eternity, they are solo adventures but still of an active sidekick. And I assumed you can't have a movie with Batman that isn't going to be Batman. But Spiderman Homecoming tells me that maybe they can make a Robin movie work some day, with Ben Affleck having the same amount of screen time as RDJr did here.
The true sign of the MCU's victory over DC is that certain DC fans like myself feel like what I want from DC is being provided by Marvel.
It's difficult to explain my feelings here. Since on an individual basis I have generally been liking the Phase Three MCU films the best so far, and yet at the same time was kind of tiring of them as a whole.
But I really wanted the DC Cinematic Universe to be better as someone who's more of a DC fan. And so when I wound up feeling disillusioned with Batman V Superman it began a slow fading out of my interest in the genre. And it helped that my discovery of Anime gave me something to fill that void.
It would never have been completely gone, as Batman in particular is my oldest Fandom and and for a long time this genre was the center piece of my Geekdom. But the last three DC movies were all ones I left the theaters with initially high praise for but that I slowly soured on. And that it's been basically the same with the new Star Wars movies had me feeling that I may have only Anime to rely on.
But Infinity War was amazing, it managed to truly feel like a Crisis level Event done on the Big Screen in Live Action with Live Actors.
And the knowledge that Donna Troy will be coming to the Titans show they're making also livens me up.
So my investment in this genre is renewed. Anime is still gonna gonna be what this Blog talks about the most. But I no longer feel like it was going to inevitably become an Anime only blog.
One of the things talked about a lot with Superhero movies is how they can be combined with many different genres. Now this is something that some including I have been saying since before the MCU started. But over the course of MCU Phrase Three it's become a greater emphasis in how people praise the genre then ever before.
It's primarily the Films where this aspect becomes a big part of their very promotion, and perhaps sometimes other Comic Book adaptations. And that's Ironic because in a way the adaptations have been less flexible.
You see this ability to experiment with genre has always been in the Comics. One of many things Frank Miller is endlessly mocked for his Film Noir obsession. But the films especially have been fixated on designating specific genres to specific heroes, if a Genre has two Superheros it's because Marvel and DC each threw one at it.
It is apparent right from the comics how some genres suit certain Superheros more then others. But it's not as rigid. Wonder Woman and Thor aren't the only Superheros who've encountered ancient mythologies. Spiderman (and Superman in Prequels) isn't the only one to deal with High School Drama. And obviously Frank Miller isn't the only writer to draw from the Film Noir well.
Now the serialized nature of Comics gives it more room to let the same Superhero have different kinds of stories, which is why TV sometimes does more of this, or used to. Smallville did a lot of experimentation.
But even understanding that reason for it. It bothers me to hear things like the WB being concerned Wonder Woman and Aquaman can't both be about mythology and so they decided to down play the Greek Mythology aspect of Wonder Woman, and that's probably why the gods were killed off in the back story.
This is another reason why I'm glad I've gotten into Anime. Anime truly surpasses even Superhero comics with it's ability to flat out defy Genre.
When I first reacted to Civil War, I couldn't fully put my finger on what bugged me about it. Now I can.
It's that it puts so much effort into setting up only to subvert the whole "of course they'll come together in the end" expectation of a versus story. I know the comic didn't end with them coming back together, well I don't like the Comic either but at least the Comic didn't have a subplot dedicated to baiting and hooking fans who like that message.
And it's insulting to me in regards to how this movie is compared to Batman V Superman. BvS may have a darker tone. But BvS ended on a message of hope and unity that Civil War literally said "____ You!" too.
In BvS things were darkest just before the dawn. Civil War was just another Marvel movie all about setting up future movies. BvS had a couple scenes that were there just to set up future movies, but with Civil War the very plot itself was only made to be a cliff hanger.
It was entertaining. But like any versus movie it frustrated me, and it not being as endlessly dark as BvS isn't enough to make this movie based on far inferior source material a superior movie.
Here's what I find funny though. Age of Ultron had a lot of material dedicated to assuring us there were NO Civilian Casualties, all for the purpose of sticking it to Man of Steel and appealing to that film's haters, and I criticized that aspect of it at the time. And now they did this storyline which is entirely dependent on there being civilian casualties. So it's like they are reveling they lied to us before.
