Mystery Box Storytelling can be good, J.J. Abrams is just bad at it.

Now I know the first response is gonna be that Abrams coined the term so how can he be the one doing it wrong?  Did he identify a type of storytelling but not fully understand it?

I myself in the past have sometimes gone along with those saying Mystery Boxes are inherently bad because that's how you get Disney Star Wars.  And I still agree that it shouldn't have been the approach taken to Star Wars, that the Original Trilogy was Absolutely not Mystery Box storytelling.  Abrams' problem seems to come from him seeing it everywhere.

But since I think this idea particularly is done dirty by it's very name it's perhaps necessary to define it.  It's not any Mystery at all, it's certainly not twists where we weren't expecting there to be one, nor even every twist where we were expecting there to be a twist, and it's not anytime a character isn't named in the very first scene they appear in.  

A Mystery Box is something the story presents as being an unanswered question early on and builds up to revealing, possibly for quite a long time relative to the story's total length.  But I would also argue it only truly exists in serialized storytelling and doesn't include any question both asked and answered in one self contained Episode or Movie.

I feel bad about claiming I agreed with Mystery Boxes being inherently bad in the past because I've absolutely loved plenty of TV Shows and Anime that Absolutely did this, and specifically enjoyed engaging in that mystery speculation.  And that includes ones where the answer to the Mystery can be considered disappointing because it was either very obvious or not something I ever had a fair chance at solving in advance.  Because I truly believe in the adage that it's about the journey rather then the destination.  But the thing is I can hold the view that the answer to the mystery doesn't really matter and still enjoy engaging in all that speculation and coming up with theories of my own anyway because it simply is fun.

There is no actual tangible rule that explains what the Mystery Box stories I like did differently from Abrams.  The closest I could come to is saying the good ones don't have that as the only thing going for them, they are stories where I was actually invested in the characters and so the investment in the Mystery is about how the Answer is relevant to them, or at least they think it is.

But the thing is that's subjective, plenty of the shows I'm about to talk about loving are hated by others, and plenty of people like Abrams's Star Wars Movies, even Rise of Skywalker, I know because depending on my mood I've been one of them.  Yes I just admitted that the last part of the title of this post is Subjective, in fact it's a subjective opinion I have based on very limited information because his Star ____ movies are the only Abrams things I've seen, I haven't watched any of Lost.  Maybe it's really more Abrams being bad at explaining it in that Ted Talk people meme on then actually bad at doing it, artists are like that sometimes.

My favorite Live Action TV show and my Favorite non Japanese TV show was Pretty Little Liars, it's Mystery is ridiculously convoluted and ultimately doesn't hold up under scrutiny, and I don't care, I enjoyed every stop of the ride to get there.  It means way more to me then any Star Wars does, even The Prequels.

But the Mystery Box approach is also core to Twin Peaks and Game of Thrones going back to it's books.  Deliberately withholding information is Absolutely vital to what they were doing.

But what I'm most into is Anime.  Right now the most well known Mystery Box style Anime is Attack on Titan, and I enjoyed the first "Three" seasons of that show.  I stopped enjoying it during the "Final" season but not because I found any reveals bad or disappointing, everything about the show had changed basically which isn't inherently bad but I just wasn't into it anymore.

However my personal Favorite Anime of all time is Noir.  And it too had a Mystery Box, who killed Mireille's parents and why does Kirka have their Watch.  If you think you've solved that mystery from just the information I provided you in that sentence you are correct, the answer is that simple and obvious but it didn't matter, I still love the scene where it was revealed and love that they pretended it wasn't obvious.

Witch Hunter Robin, Madlax, El Cazador de la Bruja are other fairly obscure 2000s Anime I enjoy in part for their Mystery Boxes.

Even Revolutionary Girl Utena and Neon Genesis Evangelion are Mystery Box shows, the objection you may make to explain why they are not are equally applicable to The Force Awakens as far as the people who still like that movie are concerned.

Basically the Mystery Box is one of those story telling devices that people insist on claiming is inherently Bad and then come up with endless excuses why the ones they like don't count.

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.

Umineko's Anime is Great

Umineko is different from most cases of my defending a Visual Novel based Anime hated by fans of the source material.  Though my basic argument that the Anime needs to be judged as it's own thing first before bringing source material comparison into it (which VN zealots constantly refuse to do) remains.

In those other cases the Anime adaptation doesn't fundamentally change anything about what happens, it's mostly fans being upset about stuff cut that they liked, but all that cut stuff is probably still Canon in the Anime it's just off screen or in most cases literally in a POV character's head.  In Umineko however actual changes happen making it so what is happening in the Anime can't be the same as what was happening in the VN.

Before I get into those changes however, I want to describe for you my experience watching the Anime as someone who went in knowing only that it's a spiritual sequel to Higurashi.  Because I knew the connection to Higurashi I figured the timeline would restart every 4 to 6 episodes but nothing else.

It starts as an Anime take on a fairly generic murder mystery set up, the first 4 and a half episodes do a good job of establishing the characters and making me interested, and there was definitely a sense that it was being self aware about the clichés it is playing with, I happen to like that style of metafiction.  I was having a good time but it was not something I'd recommend outside the specific context of Anime to watch during October.

Then in the midst of episode 5 during what seemed to my Higurashi memory like an Arc's climax the show suddenly cuts to the characters sitting around talking about the "bad end" having a conversation that feels like one of those non canon Meta conversations characters often have over the next episode preview.  Then Battler starts questioning things and then stuff starts happening and then the Witch shows up, and he starts arguing that witches don't exist, to the Witch standing in front of him.  Then it cuts to Lady Bernkastel and I'm like "she looks and sounds familiar".

Then the show goes off the rails in the best way possible, it gets so absurd and wacky and over the top and I loved every minute of it, the Brass knuckles, the witch battles, the juggling between realities and time periods.  But as all that's happening I also start to get genuinely more invested in the characters and before I know it the penultimate episode makes my Cry, something that then still happened to me fairly rarely, this show that I was a few hours ago tweeting about as a show to watch for the absurd ridiculousness now has me in tears.

When a show or movie makes me Cry it's pretty much a guaranteed 10 out of 10, there would have to be some significant problems to cancel that out and Umineko had none.  So no matter what the VN differences were gonna turn out to be, the Anime as it's own stand alone piece of art irreversibly earned it's status as an Artistic Masterpiece.

Now as I discus the VN differences I will have to get into spoilers, though I'll try to keep them minimal.

Reveal scenes are lame when it is being revealed only to the Audience.

Obviously this excludes exposition and world building where the audience has to be informed of what the people in the story already know.  But none of that is ever presented as a shocking reveal scene.

There are occasionally "reveals" where it is only the audience learning something we didn't already know and any characters who didn't already know this still don't.  Those reveal scenes are no longer interesting on a re-watch.

In fact a lot of my favorite reveal scenes are ones where the audience already knew the relevant information and it's only characters in the story learning something new.  Like scenes where the Superhero we're following reveals their true identity to someone.

This relates to my advocacy for watching the 6 Star Wars movies in chronological order.  If you think that scene in Empire Strikes Back is somehow pointless if the audience already knows Vader is Anakin then you didn't get what the scene is actually about at all, it's about Luke learning that information and his reaction to it.

This issue is never a deal breaker.  In fact because I like in scenes where the characters learn something for the audience to not be distracted by being equally suprised then revealing it to the audience early to set that up can work out fine.  That's why I tolerate how PLL season 3 handled the Toby working with Mona story-line.  PLL gets away with breaking a lot of my rules actually.

Sometimes a very long running show, I mean shows so drawn out it takes them 30 episodes to cover what PLL covered in 10, will try to spice up the show by revealing something to the audience but no one in the story not even the people most effected by the reveal in question.

In season 1 of Sailor Moon the audience obviously always knew that Mamoru/Darrien was Tuxedo Mask whether the show was treating that as known information or not.  And this is further complicated by how what I'm about to talk about was the case only in the 90s Anime version of the story.  But a certain episode reveals that Mamoru doesn't know he's Tuxedo Mask, it's like a split personality or something.  But this is "revealed" only to the audience.  And the thing is that particular issue is resolved before anyone else ever learned who Tuxedo Mask was, so it kind of never actually went anywhere.

Then Sailor Moon R has a few episodes that are trying not to feel like filler episodes, and yet the only even slight change to the status quo is in how much the audience is supposed to know.

Basically reveals that reveal things only to the audience give the impression of a change to the status quo that really isn't a change at all.  Even if some of these seemed cool the first time, on a re-watch where you the viewer already know everything, they are complete duds.  

Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a show known for it's twists.  However in each case the point where this "dark secret" is revealed to the audience is also when some character in the show first learned it. To me it is those characters learning this information and reacting to it that actually makes those scenes good scenes that hold up even on repeat viewings where I already know everything.

And that's why as I've said before it annoys me that Madoka spin offs are always creating new twists instead of just letting the dark secrets the universe was originally built on continue to drive the drama, I wanna see how different characters would react differently to the same information.  Surprising the audience is not what actually made Madoka a good show.

Pilot Episodes in Anime and American TV

The Three Episode rule is a concept that exists in the Anime community allegedly to account for the fact that first episodes will often be weak and so you need to give a show a bit of a chance to prove itself.

The irony of this being thought of as an inherently Anime things is I feel Anime first episodes generally have a better track record then American TV, even though all those hour long dramas I've watched had twice the runtime to work with.

Now for both Anime and American TV there are lots of older cases where because of how I got into them the first episode was not my actual first impression of the show.  Buffy and Angel are the big western example though I can also add One Tree Hill, but for Anime this was even more common applying to Sailor Moon, Pokemon, (ya know I still haven't properly seen the first episode of DBZ), Noir, Madlax, Wedding Peach, Code Geass, Gundam 00 and even as recently as Attack On Titan.

Witch Hunter Robin might actually be the first TV Anime where I actually watched the first episode first because I just bought the complete box set on a whim.  Maybe that's why it plays such a unique hard to define role in my Anime Nostalgia.

Since I started becoming more of a full time Anime viewer in 2014 I've generally avoided letting this happen, I literally won't let myself watch a random Toonami episode, which is perhaps unfairly limiting.  So by now the majority of my MAL are shows where the first episode was indeed my first impression.  And as you can see skimming my dropped list I don't always follow the 3 episode rule, but I'm a rule breaker by nature.

When The Vampire Diaries started was before that.  That show I did watch as it aired from the start until the middle of season 5 because I was in my Vampire phase then.  And I wasn't the only early fan of the show telling people that the Pilot wasn't a great first impression and you really need to give it a few to really get a proper sense of if you'd be into it or not.

The Passion of The Nerd in his video on Buffy's Pilot attempts to argue it's better then the pilots of a lot of other TV shows, with the examples listed/shown all being American.  That segment of the video amused me, because as much of a Buffy fanboy as I was, comparing Welcome to The Hellmouth to most Anime Pilots absolutely makes Buffy come up short.

Now it might sound like this is an argument of someone agaisnt the 3 Episode Rule.  But you see Anime is of inherently such high quality to me that their Pilots can be better then other Pilots but still below the average quality of the shows they're piloting. What I've done here is point out that pilots having issues is a universal thing, and Anime given the chaotic way it's often produced is not gonna be immune to that.  And I'm someone who's notoriously easy to please anyway.

The reason why with Anime it's often 3 episodes specifically is because back in the 90s the Home Video releases were usually of three episode sets, and the Anime industry typically made more of it's money back on the home releases then when the show actually aired.  So the shows were written with the assumption many will watch all of the first 3 together regardless, and to in general work in three episode chunks well beyond how it starts.

My first viewing of the opening episodes of Pokémon was via watching that three episode VHS tape.  And those episodes do feel like a three act story in how they set up the show's premise and world, followed by episode 4 being almost the first filler episode.  Suede has pretty positive reviews of both the 1st and 3rd episodes but was more critical of the second, I think the second was phenomenal, but I'm more into unconventional story structuring in general.

For Sailor Moon however the west didn't get the same experience Japan did since it's second episode was also the first one skipped by DiC.  When you watch it's original opening trio it has a similar vibe with episode two introducing a few things the Manga did in the first chapter and then episode 3 introducing the Lunar Pen.

And even though those technical reasons for this structuring of how to start a show don't apply anymore, the people making Anime often default to that out of habit.  Code Geass came out firmly in the DVD era but it's first 3 episodes are very much the same effect.

SFDebris's reviews of Madoka Magica observed how it's structured as 4 sets of 3 episodes.  Madoka however may ironically have been the end of this being a consistent pattern in how Anime is made.  Since after Madoka a lot of shows have made a deliberate effort to wait more then three episodes before taking their Mami's head off.

However some shows still follow that pattern to this day.  Citrus had basically the exact same 4 sets of 3 episodes structure going for it.  And it early on had to condense two chapters of Manga into one for the second episode to make that work.

A lot of people dismissing the three episode rule like Digibro's three part video series on the issue or Zeria in a recent twitter threat, I don't think can actually honestly remember what their actual first impression of the first episode was.  They are always looking at episode one in the context of what the show became.  I say this as someone who when it comes to what I currently consider my favorite Western TV show, Pretty Little Liars, absolutely don't trust my current memories of how I feel about it's pilot, that show made every detail of that pilot iconic to long time fans in how it constantly referenced back to it.

If there is literally nothing about the first episode you liked then sticking for two more probably won't be worth it.  But if you see potential then give the show more of a chance.

Update April 2021: This new Pause and Select Video helps further explain the reasons for the 3 Episode rule.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhtm2TS99ko

I have watched PLL The Perfectionists

All 10 episodes, which it turns out are all the show is going to get.

I enjoyed it, there is a lot of fan-service for fans of Pretty Little Liars but I also liked the new characters.

Spoilers will abound.

It's popular now to be cynical about this kind of fan service.  They all organically serve the plot at hand in my opinion.  And in my view no different then any completely new show that implies a lot of back story.  Hell I still think the reign of the Mad King would make a better TV show then Game of Thrones.

But I ultimately don't and can't have the perspective of someone watching the show as a complete stand alone.  As much as I loved PLL I currently have no interest in watching new shows of the same genre, not on American TV anyway.  I was tuning in first and foremost to get more Ali and Mona and what they gave me was a treat that brought back all my positive memories of the show but none of the negative.

I will be talking about my criticisms below, but be aware my overall opinion of the show is still currently a positive one.

The decision to make the new Ali a male character was perhaps a short sighted one.

The reason a character like Alison DiLaurentis can become a Hero to Feminists in-spite of the almsot villainous first impression we're given of her is because of the role her archetypes plays in how Sexism works.  How girls in real life and other fiction are condemned as far worse over doing far less.  Because before PLL shows about Dead Girl murder mysteries were usually from a male perspective, and the inevitable shift of her perceived moral character goes in the opposite direction.  The brilliance of PLL was that as much as it started seeming like a generic Teen Girl Drama it became a feminist subversion/deconstruction of the tropes popularized by Twin Peaks.

But a character like Nolan, a Ciz White Male (and Het as far as the public knows) blackmailing and manipulating his sexual partners who come from marginalized groups, and hurts the woman he loves to protect her, comes with a completely different baggage.  The kind of people who would like seeing that character turn out to be an Anti-Hero rather then villain are completely different and not as likely to be in PLL's target audience.  Fortunately this show wasn't built around flashbacks as much as PLL was.

I felt this 10 episode season was decently paced in terms of the actual plot structure, but the escalation was weird.

It kind of has the same premise as the prior show in that the Secrets our protagonists are dealing with are at first pretty typical of moderately well off teenagers.  But they still do to keep them a secret instead of just coming clean causing the stakes to escalate until the original simple answer of "just tell the truth" is no longer viable.  And then the anti-authoritarian themes of the show undermine the idea that simply going to the cops to begin with was ever a good idea.

But on PLL Classic Version that escalation took years, while this show takes us from the stakes of PPL Season 1A to PLL Season 5 in only 10 episodes.  Which when watching it as an Allison and Mona show works fine, but for the newbies it feels like making someone start playing Ocarina of Time at The Water Temple.

What's amusing is how they handle the phase of the story where they think the person blackmailing them isn't the same person as the killer.  This is a fundamentally weird route for a mystery show to take this early, but it does so because on PLL that was always how things actually played out.  It's in the context of being a sequel to PLL that the finale's reveal that they actually are the same is a twist.

The show ends with the mystery unresolved, and in any other context I'd wish they'd tried to avoid that.  But for PLL it was maybe for the best.  I can head-canon that the Professor is simply Alex Drake and Jeremy another of her Wren contacts.

The character named Luke in the last episode I was expecting and hoping was indeed going to apologize for his past bullying.  However what I also specifically didn't want was the "I did it because I was a repressed Gay" reveal, VraiKaiser has written about why that seemingly Woke trope actually needs to die.

Again, all those issues aside it was an enjoyable show.  Because I was first and foremost watching it as an Ali and Mona show.  It's a fun satisfying epilogue to the saga of Pretty Little Liars.  And so in that context I'm hoping it will be for awhile the last time I talk about the show on this blog.  I want to end my relationship with PLL on a positive note.

Still not watching any actual 2020 Anime yet.

But I need to vent about how episode 11 of Kabukichou Sherlock aka Case File nº221: Kabukicho betrayed me.

I was liking the show, recommending it as on par with Elementary, the BBC Shelrock and the RDJr Sherlock Holmes movies.  I was thinking of writing something specifically on Episode 10.  This episode I was enjoying even as I guessed who Jack actually was, finding that trope on it's own annoying but tolerable, then they began revealing why.

If you're familiar with when I used to talk about Pretty Little Liars, well this is that all over again, the sin that forever tainted PLL's legacy was repeated here.  I was naive enough to think that Anime would never do this, at least not since the 90s ended.

I was recommending this show on my twitter, where I have followers who are Trans and Non-Binary.  They might have watched this show because of me and got to this episode weeks before I did because they aren't Dub Scrubs like I am.  And that makes me feel guilty.

Shows that are first and foremost mystery shows generally aren't my thing, the last 3 seasons of Anime have had an inordinate amount of them and this was the only one I watched because I have a thing for modern stuff directly drawing on Victorian through WWI era pulp.  And PLL was the only murder mystery of the American 20tens I was highly invested in.  So why am I cursed like this?  Why are the few mystery shows I get into the ones actively trying to hurt the Trans Community that I want to help?

I'm not sure I'm going to drop it yet, I feel like at least watching episode 12 and finishing it's first cour.  It's advantage over PLL is that arguably this villain isn't the only Trans representation.  But the show is unclear on what Hudson's actual gender identity is, and either way largely treats them as a joke.  So I am certainly done recommending the show, unless I report back that it somehow redeemed itself don't watch it.

Fortunately I don't have only Bad News to report.  I completed Assassin's Pride and am giving it an 8 for now.  If you're interested in a show that at first looks like a modern Light Novel Anime but is really a covert throwback to 90s Shoujo then this is for you.

Episode 10 of Fate/Grand Order: Babylonia was hilarious.  And the Isekai shows I'm still following are also holding up.

And tonight will also be the Toonami/Adult Swim debut of Sword Art Online Alicization War of Underworld.  I intend to update this post once I've seen and have an opinion on it.

Update.  I saw it and it was a pretty good start.  My main issue with Alicization part one was how it ended.  So we'll see how things go.

Magical Girl Anime as the Cure to Toxic Masculinity.

I’m not gonna claim to be a Cis-Het Male who is or has become completely immune to Toxic Masculinity.  I do have a temper that I sometimes lose control of.  But to a typical dude bro who’s offended by the phrase itself, I’m definitely a Beta Cuck.

I have had an attraction to certain media that is presumed in the mainstream standards of American Society to be “for girls” almost my entire life.  Also in the more traditionally male oriented stuff I like I frequently find many of the female characters the most relatable and/or likeable.

The thing is Sailor Moon may very well be the first.  I have memories of watching the show early Sunday mornings on the UPN, meaning before it’s Toonami run and before Buffy was ever on TV.  And I never watched any Buffy till 2000, likewise Xena I didn’t get into until it was already airing its last season in 2000/2001.  And the chick shows I got into that are considered even weirder for a guy to like mostly came much later, besides maybe Party of Five but even that I didn’t catch till Scream 2 was already on home video.

My relationship with Sailor Moon was rather complex.  There was a time when I thought of it as a guilty pleasure, for some reason more hesitant to admit to liking it then Buffy and One Tree Hill which I talked about on my main IMDB account but used a sock puppet for posting on the Sailor Moon board.  That went away over time of course.

Also for a long time being into Sailor Moon didn't much lead to me watching other Magical Girl Warrior shows.  I caught some Wedding Peach during the same era I got into Noir partly because it's Dub was being made and promoted at the same time by some of the same people.  But I didn’t complete that show till last year or maybe the year before.  For some reason I heard of Saint Tail on some website and was interested but never really tried to watch any of it.

It was in 2014 that began to change, my interest in the Sailor Moon revival is what brought me to Hulu and then the recommendations Hulu had on the Sailor Moon pages lead to me checking out both Madoka Magica and Utena, and then other Anime not so closely related to the Magical Girl genre like Rose of Versailles.  And from there I dove down even further and have now seen countless hours of Pretty Cure and then most recently the stuff I talked about at the start of this month.

The fact that I cared about Sailor Moon enough in 2014 to be that interested in the revival had a lot to do with how into Pretty Little Liars I was, I knew there was overlap between those fandoms because of my Facebook friends.  What I’m not so sure on is to what extent having that past history with Sailor Moon was a factor in my being open to PLL in the first place.

I really feel like I became the true Feminsit and LGBTQ ally I am now from watching PLL and engaging in it’s Fandom for seven years.  My thinking on those topics used to be more “centrist” for lack of a better word.  But now I feel I’ve become as radically Lefitst as a Cis-Het Male can be on those topics.  And reading everything Heather Hogan said while talking about PLL was a factor in moving me on that path.  However, the fact that I watched Utena and then read VraiKaiser’s analysis of Utena in the midst of that period also sped things along.  And Utena I probably wouldn’t have watched without knowing it’s connection to Sailor Moon.

I’m sure there are many with experiences similar to mine.  The thing about the Magical Girl Warrior is that even the most properly Shoujo incarnations have the ability to appeal to guys, girls, and others who wouldn't usually watch girly stuff because they’re essentially Superhero shows.  And then the versions presumably marketed at men do not lose the feminine heart of the genre.  If there are a lot of people watching only the late night Anime Magical Girls and not the Shoujo ones, I think it’s more the massive number of episodes you have to plow through then being turned off by them being even more girly.  In fact that issue is why completing Wedding Peach took me so long and why I still haven't finished most not Dubbed Pretty Cure seasons or the two Magical Girl Thief shows I'm interested in.

There is also of course the cynical assumption that many guys only watch these shows because they like looking at girls in short skirts.  Ironically my personal tastes tend to find them Sexier in the Shoujo shows.  The characters in Nanoha, Madoka and Yuki Yuna are cute but not sexy.  If you wanted to ask me which Magical Girls are even sexier then the Sailor Scouts I’d point you to Wedding Peach.

The thing is Magical Girls aren’t the only girly media where the girls are Sexy.  Every actress on OTH and PLL is a pretty damn attractive and some friggin Lifetime movies are among the Sexiest films I’ve watched.  But your typical dude insecure in his masculinity isn’t gonna actually watch those shows or read those books to Fap to them, there’s no need when a simple Google Image search will provide more than enough pics of the actress in question.  No, anyone actually watching a Magical Girl show likes the product they’re seeing beyond that.  At first it may be just for the Superhero stuff, and for some it may stay that way.  But there are many for whom watching this stuff has opened their minds to a more feminine perspective.

There are plenty of times when these shows address masculinity in an interesting way.  Like the Pretty Sammy episode with the hyper masculine delinquents.  They make an effort to help normalize guys being feminine and girls being masculine which undermine certain more cynical assumptions about the genre.  Many Feminist love that Be A Man song from Mulan as an unironic celebration of the positive traits society codes as Masculine, in a way the Magical Girl Genre has plenty of moments that can be just like that.

You Don't Tug on The Railgun's Skirt

Today I'm going to do something that "Respectable" Anime Anyalists do a lot more often and discus Character Arcs, well one in particular.  I'm not against Character Arcs, I'm just against the common attitude that they are required for a story to be good, or that a story is required for fiction to be good art.

As much as I might like to I can't actually spend all of June watching and talking about only one Genre.  But A Certain Scientific Railgun is an interesting companion to the Magical Girl Genre.  It shows the variety in options Anime provides us by showing that Magical Girls are not the only kind of Superheroines Anime has.  In addition to all the technical reasons that Railgun doesn't qualify as a Magical Girl show or even come close to following that formula.  Mikoto Misaka is simply a very different kind of character from a typical Magical Girl protagonist, a personality type like her could be a supporting character in one but not likely the main character.  But she's not the antithesis of a Magical Girl either, if you're looking for the Anime version of an Edgy 90s Anti-Heroine I'm afraid I'm not currently the one qualified to make that recommendation.

In one of RavorFists's more recent Noirchives he talks about how one of the Flanderizations of the Film Noir genre is that their protagonists were all cynical nihilist anti-heroes.  He mentions that  quote of Raymond Chandler "Down these means streets a man must go who is not himself mean".  That quote was also used but changed slightly in the Pretty Little Liars episode Shadow Play "Down these means streets a girl must go who is not herself mean", that fits Mikoto Misaka in Academy City perfectly, she is a true traditional Film Noir protagonist in the form of an Japanese Middle School Girl who can do everything Pikachu and Magneto can do, but do it better.

The second season of Railgun, A Certain Scientific Railgun S, has spoiled me for all other Cyberpunk, nothing else in my mind could possibly do Cyberpunk as well.  Railgun S was missing from my previous discussion of Film Noir in Anime for two reasons.  1, I hadn't watched any Raildex yet back then.  2, I chose to dodge the entire Cyberpunk sub section of that topic, I didn't think it was really possible for me to enjoy Cyberpunk before I watched Railgun S.

RazorFist also said, possibly in the same video, that he considers the number one non-negotiable requirement for qualifying as a Noir to be "setting as character".  That may well make the Anime called Noir impossible to qualify, which I would want to fight him on.  But it certainly helps Railgun, in fact the entire Raildex franchise is largely built around Academy City itself being the real ultimate main character, but it works better on Railgun since Index often leaves the city to get into the Magick and Religion based story-lines which Railgun has so far ignored sticking to being pure SciFi.

Misaka's main character Arc is also in Railgun S.  But Railgun S needs the groundwork of season 1 in order to fully work.  Season 1 is great television on it's own, though I recommend skipping the second episode.  Still there will be some people to whom Railgun S is the story that they would be into, so I'm asking them to just trust me and take a 25 episode leap of faith.  Misaka does learn some important lessons in season 1, but the main Character Arc there is Saten's.  But I don't mind that, I actually wish more Batman stories would be about other characters and let Batman just be Batman.

From this point on I'm going to get into Spoiler territory as I talk about Misaka's Character Arc and some other subjects.

Could Buffy reclaim her throne?

Noir was my original favorite Anime, it had been temporarily dethroned by Utena for over a year at least, but once I did a more recent revisit of Noir it took the position back and now Utena doesn't even make my 3x3.  I still love Utena, it's a fantastic work of art and I don't think anyone should be allowed to claim to be an expert on Feminist Film theory if they haven't watched Utena (and I suppose that includes anyone wanting to discus how well Buffy holds up as a Feminist show).  But it's just not for me re-watchable enough to keep calling it a personal favorite.

So could the same happen with Buffy?  Now that I'm revisiting my Buffy fandom can she take her former throne back from Pretty Little Liars (hence forth called PLL for short) as my favorite Western TV Show?  If it does it would be largely on the strength of how much it ended better.  But comparing their first 4 seasons PLL was absolutely much more consistently great then Buffy was.  In fact with PLL season 4 was the best season, how often does that happen?

Now PLL was still good all the way to the end, even it's finale episode has material that will probably stick with me into Eternity.  But the moment a certain change happened in season 5 it started losing something, and then in the middle of season 6 it makes that massive mistake it never fully recovered from that I've already talked about more then I feel I'm qualified to.

What I'm about to say probably makes me unlike most Buffy fans, but the last 3 seasons rather then the first three are what I'm most nostalgic for.  Dawn is my favorite Buffy character, Spike my favorite male character from the show, and the Magic Box was a more natural base of operations then a school library.  Now character wise neither Glory, the First or Caleb were the best Big Bads, but the Big Bad was always a plot device first and a character second.  Remember as I've already shared I used to be a major Spawn shipper.  And I've seen the MOTW Superhero show in a High School setting done as well or better by Magical Girl Anime and Smallville.

Season 6 was probably my favorite season of the show.  And season 7 I think was one of the most successful final seasons in TV history, in-spite of how it kinda does some things I think a final season shouldn't do.

The Gift was a good episode on it's own, but in an awkward situation because of the first season being only 12 episodes where it has to be both the 100th episode and a season finale.  What I want from 100th episodes and season finales are inherently not the same, a good 100th episode should be almost more about past seasons then the current one which is why it's convenient when they fall exactly in the middle of season 5.

But back to season 7.  My first instinct would always be to advise someone NOT to introduce new regular/recurring characters during the last season, winding things down is not a good time to suddenly start whole new character arcs.  The one exception could be a final Big Bad, but they should be introduced early in the season and connected to earlier story-lines somehow.  Buffy season 7 clearly goes against this a lot between the Potentials, Principal Robin Wood, and waiting till the last 5 episodes to bring in Caleb.

Now Buffy season 7 does still demonstrate why I feel this way, which is why it fails to outdo season 6.  The Potentials I'm particularity mad at since I think they ruined what Dawn's role in the finale season should have been.  And as for Wood, he is a very interesting character who's background was a neat idea to add to the lore, but being in only one season limited the ability to flesh that out.

But over all season 7 was a pretty solid final act for the show in-spite of all that.

For finale episodes, my advise tends to be focus on being a good season finale first, and if the final season works as a final season it should naturally make a good finale episode.  And Chosen mostly does just that which is why it's a great series finale.

On the subject of bringing back characters we hadn't seen in awhile, I believe final seasons should try to do that, but the finale episode should not, it should just focus on ending the story-lines of the characters who stuck around to the end.

Now you might think Angel's involvement in Chosen violates that rule, but he's an acceptable exception because he was only at the very beginning, and being the lead of a spin off meant that in the fan's minds he was never completely gone.  You might also think Faith's involvement cuts it close but coming in five episodes from the end proved enough to reintegrate her.

PLL's final season and final episodes both do these things I said you shouldn't do, and doesn't make up for it as cleverly as Buffy does.  Again I always enjoyed the show, but it's last 2 seasons were deeply inferior to the first 5 and also certainly don't make as satisfying an ending as how Buffy ended.

Thing is no single episode of PLL ever got as bad as some of Buffy's low points.  And I'm not sure if any of my favorite episodes of Buffy can beat my favorites of PLL.

One thing both shows have in common is that some of my favorite episodes are their Halloween episodes, might have something to do with the weird fact that I was born on Halloween.  But comparing them, PLL's Halloween specials win out with their epicness, the one that's a back door pilot for the failed spin off is the weakest of them but still pretty good.

It's hard for me to pick a single favorite episode for either.  But for PLL Shadow Play is a strong candidate and for Buffy it would probably be Once Moor With Feeling.  Comparing a Noir Episode to a Musical probably doesn't seem fair, but I think PLL wins here because for Buffy's my favorite character was kinda sidelined while on PLL Spencer was the focal point of this episode.

PLL never had a Musical which is a shame.  And Buffy never had a Noir Episode, the Buffyverse did it's Noir stuff on Angel, where again I'd say no single episode of Angel is as good at being a Noir as Shadow Play is.

My Life as a Shipper

I’m not sure I can accurately name this post since it’s not an attempt to comprehensively go over every ship I’ve ever shipped.  I just wanna share some things.  And this won’t exactly be chronological either.  Some of this reminiscing is about Fan Fiction I did read, but plenty is also more about stuff I imagined, that I would have written myself if I wasn’t so lazy.

It may surprise my followers (if any exist) to learn that my earliest ships were all Het, I’ve been a Yuri shipper for a long time now, but not quite from the start.  And to a certain extent I’ve never abandoned my Het shipping, I am still ultimately a Cis-Het Male after all.

Early on I did a lot of imagining myself into shows having storylines with the female characters I was attracted to.

My first real ship was shipping Dawn and Spike from Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  It’s weird looking back on that now since it’s not the kind of thing I’m likely to ship today at all.  But I have fond memories of exploring now long dead Dawn themed fan fiction sites, where I mostly got into stories about this ship but did read others.  And for context you should know I’m exactly the same age as Michelle Trachtenberg, so I wasn’t seeing Dawn as the little girl of the show, she was rather the only character I could come close to seeing myself in.  But I shipped her with Spike not because I had any attraction to James Marsters but because she canonically had a crush on Spike and so I wanted her to get what she wanted, and they did have chemistry.

The early Het Ships I shipped that I still care about are the Zelda ones interestingly enough.  I was a big Link and Malon shipper, which included Link/Marin and Link/Romani and also Link/Cremia.  I read an old Zelda Universe article called The Girl with the Red Hair: Malon + Link, which I really liked, and it still exists.
https://zeldauniverse.net/2010/11/28/the-girl-with-the-red-hair/
I think that’s a reposting however, because it’s dated to 2010 and I’m confident I’d read this before Twilight Princess came out.  Because as we were learning more about it I felt like it was confirming the theory of that article, TP Link must descend from the Hero of Time and Malon.  YouTube videos about Malon theorizing seem to be when on her as a love interest mostly just indirectly repeating that article but then adding the TP element.

The Fan Fiction I was into back then, on both the Dawn subject and the Zelda subject, included a lot of angst.  I was into scenarios about triangles and jealousy and unrequited love.  Some of them even got pretty Dark.  I think I would have become a Non-Monogamous shipper sooner if I’d simply learned of that being an option sooner.  But make no mistake, my current desire for everyone being happy in the end stories doesn’t mean I don’t see the appeal of angsty triangle melodrama.  A number of Dawn fics were between seasons 5 and 6 or between episodes of season 6.  I was also interested in the idea of stories about a post Majora’s Mask Link having his dark side drawn out by the Fierce Deity Mask.

It’s hard to say where my Femslash interest truly began.  When I was into Dawn fics I read some Femslash ones about her, some with Buffy, some with Faith, possibly one with Tara.  But they weren’t what I actively shipped.

Noir was my introduction to Yuri.  I first stumbled upon that show by surfing my family's On Demand service and seeing it on Anime Network On Demand, where episode 9, the second part of a two parter, was the earliest episode currently up.  Watching that episode was the first time I ever saw 2D Girls Kiss.  And as I continued the show I got really into Chloe and her unrequited feelings for Kirika.  However it took awhile strangely for me to realize Kirika and Mireille were also canon, I still had some heteronormativity to get over.  I remember that the first time I saw the word Yuri was on Noir’s IMDB forum, someone had posted a thread called “Noir Yuri Pics” or something and I originally assumed it must mean something more specific then just lesbian.

Around then was also when I started actually reading DC Comics, and Stephanie Brown became my favorite Comic Book character, and it didn’t take long for me to start shipping her with Cassandra Cain.  But another niche Het Ship I supported was Tim Drake and Darla Aquista.  I also like Linkara supported the controversial Donna Troy and Terry Long relationship.  There was an old fansite I really liked that is now gone called Donna Troy Woman and Hero.

I’ve also engaged in some Pokemon shipping over the years.  More so game characters though, filling in the blank slate that is Leaf.  Anime wise that I like May and Dawn way more than Misty makes me pretty controversial.  My imagination always treated Lass as a single character rather than a class, a Fille Fatale who flirts with both Red and Leaf.  Basically there were little if any existing fanfics I found to serve my tastes there.  I did enjoy a series on FanFiction.Net about Leaf and Dawn.

I was also someone who’s interest in the Twilight ignited Vampire craze lead me to research the Pre-Dracula stuff, which lead to me reading and really liking Carmilla.  Because of Paul Feval that Vampire interest lead into and overlapped with my French Pulp Fiction interest which allowed me to learn about Eugenie Danglars and Louise d’Armilly.

The Vampire craze also lead me to The Vampire Diaries, where I found another of my top Het Ships, Jeremy and Anna, played by Stephen R McQueen and Malese Jow.  That ship was prominent in my early Tumblr activity.

Then came the era of Pretty Little Liars being my favorite TV show, I became a strong Sparia shipper and looked into other ships as well.

Back to Zelda.  Prior to Skyward Sword I quite liked how Nintendo was mostly avoiding making Link and Zelda a couple.  But then Hyrule Warriors comes along implying they’re always destined to fall in love and I was quite annoyed.  So I’ve always had hostility towards Link/Zelda shipping.  However the Skyward Sword Prequel Manga included in the Hyrule Historia (which I saw glimpses of before I properly got to read it) kinda won me over on it.  Though that’s technically Link and Hylia.

Zelda is one franchise where my Het Shipping is still strong.  But I have became a supporter of Zelda Femslash.  For both Skyward Sword and Hyrule Warriors I like to ship Zelda with Impa, and for Twilight Princess I like Zelda/Midna, and I see Ashe as a Lesbian on principle.  I also now support the theory that Cremia actually had feelings for Anju in Majora’s Mask.

I developed an interest in various Tolkien and Silmarillion related Femslash ships.  Like Nienor Niniel and Nellas, as well as viewing Nessa, Haleth and Tar-Telperien as Lesbians.

I started a Final Fantasy Femslash tumblr that I’ve mostly let die since my interests there are limited.  I ultimately view Terra Branford as Asexual and yet I still crave material about her and Celes.  I also strongly support Agrias and Ovelia from Final Fantasy Tactics.

Since getting much more actively into Anime starting in 2014 there are a lot of ships I’ve become supporters of, from Magical Girls to Cute Girls Doing Cute Things to the better Harems, and the occasional specifically Yuri show/OVA.  But I’ve supported some Het stuff too and even learned to appreciate Yaoi and Otokonoko.  But strangely nothing I’ve found in the last year and a half has really compelled me the way my old ships did.  Though perhaps they just need time, again I haven’t been rewatching stuff as much as I used to.

However recently learning about SaGa Frontier thanks to Yahweasel has made me a supporter of the Femslash potential it provides.

Will I watch The Perfectionists? (The PLL Spin Off)

Given how I still call Pretty Little Liars at it's peak the best Western TV show of all time, and how much I invested in following it for seven years.  It's pretty surprising that I'm now pretty uncertain I'll even bother with it's spin off.

Part of it is how falling down the Anime rabbit hole has made me mostly give up on Western TV altogether.  I'd also never have imagined a day would come when I wouldn't even be following the shows based on DC Comic Book properties.  (Titans I will give a shot since it was in theory what I wanted the most, but I'm still pretty Ambivalent about it.)

Part of it is previous attempts at giving us a PLL spin off or sister show didn't work out well, Ravenswood and The Lying Game.

But mostly, it's what I've already talked about regarding how PLL's biggest fumble soured it's legacy.

What this spin off needs to do to win me over is provide us some positive Trans representation to balance out the Charlotte debacle.  Preferably a character or characters played by actual Trans actors.

If I hear good things in that department, I'll give it a try.  Otherwise a PLL spin off that doesn't have a Hastings in it is of no interest to me.

Magical Girl Site, Transgender Representation and The Batman Question.

For the second week in a row Magical Girl Site is the only show I really want to comment on.  But I'm still enjoying all the shows I'm currently watching.

I mentioned in my Astolfo post how I don't use the term "Trap" to describe characters who are actually Trasngender.  The only problem with making that hard distinction is Japanese media doesn't always use the same terminology we use in the west, so it's not always clear what the writers are going for.  For example I'm still not sure what we're supposed to think of Ruka in Steins;Gate, I like that in the new series they seem more comfortable with their gender identity, but I'm still unsure what it's supposed to be.

Episode 7 of Magical Girl Site has introduced the character of Kiyoharu Suirenji.  Going off what we see in this episode alone I would have to conclude she is a Trans woman and not merely a Crossdresser because of her using the girl's bathroom and that being an issue.  I don't think a CisMale Crossdresser would use the girl's bathroom.  However her seemingly not objecting to others calling her a boy complicates the matter, but it could be she's just someone who doesn't want to get confrontational about it.  But I also could have missed something there since I'm watching it Subbed because there is no Dub.

In the episode's MAL forum one user who's read the Manga says the character is definitely a Trans woman.  That user is defending using the proper terminology to refer to her.  However there is at least one user there being very blatantly Transphobic.

Most of what we see of the character in the episode I like.  However we are given a glimpse of the character having a dark side, with her saying she'll get revenge in the distant future.  Now this is a Dark Magical Girl show where most characters have something dark about them.  But I'm still recovering from the disappointment of my favorite Western TV show of all time, Pretty Little Liars blowing it with it's handling of this issue.

People sometimes ask whether bad representation is better then no representation.  It is interesting that if this show had never brought the issue up I would probably have never singled it out to criticize for lack of Trans representation.  But as soon as they provide some representation it doesn't take long for me to start being on edge about her possibly being mishandled.  I'd been praising the show for it's unsanitized depiction of Bullying, I should then be thrilled to see that theme expand to showing the bullying Trans Women endure.  But instead I'm worried about the implications of this character either turning evil or dying.

But I now realize that, yeah, I should be criticizing Magical Girl shows for failing to include trans representation (and even Sailor Moon fails to include any true Trans representation, the Starlights were simply a gender bending gimmick).  They frequently try to have very diverse casts allowing many different kinds of girls to be magical girls, representing many different forms of the adolescent female experience in Japan.  I think we're long overdue for a Trans Magical Girl and it's unfortunate that the Dark Magical Girl Genre which people are backlashing against now was the first to do it.

This subject happened to be on my mind already before I saw episode 7.  You may have noticed I posted about a Batman movie that features The Riddler yesterday.  Well Batman and The Riddler being on my mind reminded me that back when I spent a lot of time trying to imagine what kinds of Batman films I'd make if I could, I had came up with a concept that re-imagined The Riddler as a Trans Woman.  But then decided that I wasn't comfortable casting a Trans character as a villain in our current climate.

Homosexual representation in media has reached the point where you can have Gay villains without it automatically reinforcing the same harmful stereotypes that used to keep Gays as only villains or tragic victims in American fiction.  But Trans representation, especially for Trans Women, has not, as clearly shown by what happened with Pretty Little Liars.  I absolutely believe the writers of that show had the best of intentions, they wanted to say Transphobia is the ultimate cause of the tragedy, but regardless Charlotte being the only Trans representation the show had left the LGBT community who at one point loved the show feeling deeply betrayed.

Ironically this Trans Woman Riddler idea had developed in my mind before season 6 of PLL happened.  And yet my vision for The Riddler was influenced by PLL before the Trans Woman aspect was a part of it.  PLL started airing back when some Batfans were still hoping The Riddler would be in the third Nolan Batfilm.  And I from day one immediately felt how -A operated on PLL was a good reference point for how to "Nolanize" The Riddler.

So in hindsight Charlotte DiLaurentis kind of resembles the Trans Woman Riddler concept I'd been thinking of.  And how that whole controversy helped shape how I think about this issue was a factor in why I dropped the idea.  Still my envisioned backstory for her (which I don't entirely remember) was far from identical.  And of course I also regardless of the character's gender or ethnic identity prefer The Riddler to not be a murderer.  It would be admittedly hard to keep that in tact when making The Riddler the main antagonist of a big budget Hollywood blockbuster, but I do think it's workable. So in that sense my Riddler was closer to Mona then Charlotte.

But now I can't help but wonder if outright abandoning it was simply the Cowards way out (Realistically I'll probably never get to make a Batman film anyway, but this is all hypothetical).  For example if I have good guys in the movie who are also Trans that could certainly help make it salvageable.

Part of what was so harmful about the Charlotte story-line was caused by the need for it to be a twist, that the character who turned out to be "Charles" had been posing as a Cis Woman.  And that's the main problem with my initial concept here.  The starting premise before any Gender issues factored into it was allowing a Batman movie that's actually a Mystery/Detective story by having us not know who The Riddler is going in as opposed to who's cast as The Riddler being the centerpiece of how it's marketed.  But I now realize that the concept can be reworked so that whatever name She is using before the reveal she can still be openly Trans.  The thing is I'm kind of killing that mystery aspect for future use by giving it all away publicly now.  Only way it could work for someone who'd read this post is if multiple Trans Women are in it.  Oh wait, that happens to also help keep her from being the only representation.

The YouTube Channel FilmJoy did a video last year called The Batman Question which I watched today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwzE2J7bo0c&t
It was about the idea of allowing more then just CisHet White Men to play Batman and other major Batman characters.  Janelle Monae was a choice brought up a lot, and she responded that she'd rather play The Joker.

And that reminded me how members of Batman's Rouges Gallery are Pop Culture Icons and that almost every Actor wants an opportunity to play one.  And I personally would cast an actual Trans Woman to play the role (The Pedantic Romantic could make a good Riddler).  So perhaps we shouldn't exclude the Trans Community from being able to play those roles out of fear of how it can go wrong.  The Riddler is often viewed as Batman's smartest nemesis, his greatest intellectual threat.

After all Eartha Kitt wasn't counterproductive for Black Women.  KyleKallgrenBHH in his recent video on The Watermelon Woman talks about how for a long time Black Women weren't allowed to be Sex Symbols in America.  So in that context one getting to play the greatest Sex Symbol of American Pop Culture was downright revolutionary.  And so in today's climate maybe Catwoman should be the first Bat Rouge to consider allowing to be a Trans woman?

You may ask, why was it that my mind went there for The Riddler first?

Another question you may ask is, how would I handle naming this Trans woman reinterpretation of Edward Nygma?

Well the answers to those questions are kind of the same.

When I started thinking about what I'd do for a Nolanesque Riddler story.  I first decided "The Riddler" should be a name given to them probably by the media.  They would identify themselves in their messages as simply -?  Again influenced by -A on PLL.

Then I first started thinking about the character's Gender as I was playing around with the inherent pun of E. Nygma, and the idea entered my head to use the name.....

....... Annie Nygma......................

And from there I thought first just of making The Riddler a woman, an idea which technically had been done before at least by Cosplayers.  But I also thought about having her use multiple names and for the sake of Nolan style realism not having any Nygma name be her birth name.  Then I heard of this Edward Nashton name that had emerged as an alternate name for The Riddler, I don't know who used it first but I heard of it via The Riddler Blogs, a fan film project derivative of The Joker Blogs.

And then I thought about how Trans men and Trans women naturally tend to change their names from what they were given at birth.  And so the idea popped in there to have Edward Nashton be the name assigned at birth, and Annie Nygma the name she chose when she accepted her Gender Identity, because she was into Riddles and Puzzles.

I'm not Trans, I can't actually relate to these issues.  So I simply don't know what the right answer is.  Perhaps it's a good idea for me to put this idea out there and let someone who is Trans use it for their own Fanwork if they see value in it.

Part of the reason I was ashamed of this for awhile is it didn't originate much from a place of caring about representation.  I've always been a believer in Trans rights, but it was in recent years I've become much more sensitive to this and other Social Justice issues.

The more recent ideas I've come up with for characters who are Trans have been making them heroes.  Like the idea of the Vordenberg who Carmilla had a romance with being a Trans woman.  Or my desire to tell a story about Lancelot as a Trans woman (using the name Lanzelet), as well as Perceval as a Trans man.  And my idea for a fictionalized French Revolution shared cinematic universe involved using Chevalier d'Éon in the Captain America/Wonder Woman/King Kong role as the one who's origin story film is set in a previous era.  And interpreting d'Eon as a Noble Honorable and Heroic Trans woman, not doing weirder ideas like the Anime about her and Fate Grand Order do.  The only Fantastical aspect will be keeping the character young in the 1790s.  And I have my unique reason for interpreting Judas Maccabeus as Transgender.

I think 2011 was the beginning of my Era of Anime.

My top two favorite Anime may be shows much older then that, Noir and Lucky Star, as well as two other shows that had formally been up there before I watched more shows, Code Geass and Utena.  But those are shows I feel were ahead of their time.  And the main advantage they have over their modern equivalents is how less common it is for shows to be two core now.

I suspected this before I started going over 2011 on MAL and seeing even more basis for it then I first thought.  And some of the 2011 shows I haven't seen yet I'm very much wanting to check out now.  Perhaps that'll result in future updates to this post.  Plus I'm (mostly) not even gonna count here shows I started then put on hold.

None of these shows I watched at the time, or even when their Dubs were new.  This is stuff I was drawn to and really liked after getting more fully into Anime starting around late 2014 and early 2015.

In the Winter season of 2011 was Puella Magi Madoka Magica.  And the start of Suite Pretty Cure, the first PreCure pair I think is good after the OG team.

Spring 2011 had Steins;Gate, Aria of the Scarlet Ammo, C:The Money of Soul and Possibly Control,

Summer 2011 had Yuru Yuri season 1 and Mawaru Penguindrum.

And then the Fall had Mirai Nikki and season one of Fate/Zero.

It's not just that there was a lot of stuff I liked, not all those are even 10s.  It's that I don't think any year has more shows I like that were trend setters.

All these trends have precedent that came before.  With Madoka some people feel compelled to go and on about how there were dark Magical Girl shows before, but there were sort of slasher films before Halloween as well.  Madoka had something the Dark Magical Girl shows before it didn't, that shows since have inherited.  I don't feel qualified o explain what it was, but I definitely know it does.  Regardless of that debate however Madoka was indisputably what triggered the current trend, no one likes Yuki Yuna Is A Hero more then me (now that the Two Fat Guys Talk people are less happy with season 2 then I am) but I'm not gonna deny it wouldn't have gotten green-lite without Madoka.

Light Magical Girl shows also had a transition this year.  Suite Pretty Cure topped the previous PreCure sequels because it began the trend of giving each season a distinct hook, and this is what has kept PreCure shows since then fresh.  And I can't help but feel that musically Sailor Moon Crystal is indebted to Suite PreCure.

As I'd said before, the 2014 Sailor Moon revival is what brought me to Hulu, then Madoka was a recommended show on the Sailor Moon and SMC pages, and that's what sent me down a spiral towards Anime consuming my Nerdiness.

Fate/Zero wasn't the first Fate/ Anime, but it's the first that was a major hit and launched the Fate/Mania we've seen since.  And Mirai Nikki caused an upsurge in Yandere popularity.  Aria of the Scarlet Ammo is a show where I like it's spin off,  Aria of The Scarlet Ammo AA, even more.

A lot of people have considered it interesting how certain 2011 Anime came out the same year Game of Thrones started (to be exact, season 1 aired congruent with the Spring Anime season), given claims they appeal in a similar way.  But while GoT I grew tired of by some point in season 4.  Anime descended from these are still fresh to me.  The Martiness of some popular 2011 Anime kind of helped make SAO, Attack on Titan, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, and Re:Zero possible in the following years.

But for me personally the more significant corresponding western media was Pretty Little Liars. It started the prior year but only half a season aired in 2010.  In 2011 aired the second half of season 1, the first half of season 2, and the first of it's infamous Halloween specials.  It caught my attention in 2010 but it was in 2011 is became a favorite.  And it overlaps with what I look for in Anime in a number of ways.  It's essentially a Four Girls show with a convoluted murder mystery, lots of pulpy Film Noir homages and Yuri.

Of course somethings in 2011 Anime can also be seen as the end of the era that came before.  Like the K-On movie which I didn't mention above as I was just going through TV Anime.  But while the K-On movie marked the end of one era of Cute Girls doing Cute Things Anime, the start of Yuru Yuri began a new era, that made shows like Is The Order A Rabbit and Engaged to the Unidentified possible.

Update September 12 2018: Some other 2011 Anime I should mention are the Carnival Phantasm shorts and the Kampfer OVA.  And the third PreCure Allstar movie.  Also the Toradora Bento Battle OVA and the Fate/Prototype OVA.  All these I had already seen before I first made this post.

On my MAL I currently have listed 291 Anime I've completed, I'm probably gonna soon add the Death Note Recap movies which I saw awhile ago but neglected to add.

140 are shows who's Air Star Date was after the end of 2010, so that's approaching half of all Anime I've completed.  And remember even most  post 2010 Anime I saw wasn't brand new when I first saw it, I only really started following seasonal currently airing Anime in the Winter of 2017.  I still only follow a handful of currently airing Anime at a time, usually favoring what gets Simuldubbed.

Only 58 of my completed Anime are pre 2000.  And when it comes to pre 2000 Anime I think I've nearly bottomed out on what interests me.  I'm eventually gonna watch more Lupin III and Gundam stuff, and if it ever gets available in English La Seine No Hoshi.  But generally speaking my attempts to try out 80s and 90s Anime leave me concluding their appeal is limited to my tastes.  For the so Bad it's good Dubs I find it more efficient to just watch Anime Abandon videos.

My final thoughts on Pretty Little Liars

For a while this may be my last post on the subject of PLL.  I have my doubts I'll bother with the Perfectionists.  So I want to give some final thoughts before the year ends.

I wasn't quite watching the show exactly from the beginning, but I did jump on before season 1A ended.  When I started the show I was still calling Buffy my favorite TV show of all time, but a more relevant context is that my favorite currently airing show at the time was The Vampire Diaries.

By the time unmAsked aired it had become my favorite current TV show.  It was during Season 4B, which I still consider the show's best half season, that it became my favorite TV show of all time.  And it's still my favorite western TV show, as well as favorite live action TV show.

Once Ali was made part of the regular cast, the show lost some of it's original mystique, but remained pretty entertaining for awhile.

For the first nearly 6 and a half seasons the show provided the best Lesbian representation on TV.  Then came Game Over Charles and the show's legacy within the LGBT community was tainted indefinitely.  It was real sad watching Heather Hogan's passion for the show deteriorate.

I still enjoyed plenty of the last season and a half, including the final episode.  But it wasn't what it once was.

In a lot of ways revealing CeCe to have been the second -A could have been perfect, if they just hadn't added the whole Charles narrative.  There is something about introducing her and using her as a red herring repeatedly, then seemingly explaining her role at the season 4/5 cliff hanger and besides a cameo or two mostly forgetting about her till the big reveal came, that worked perfectly.

And I could have been fine with the main villain of the show being a Trans woman if she hadn't been the only Trans representation the show had.  Charlotte is a great villain, and the show does make Patriarchal Transphobia the cause her issues, but her being the only representation Trans women have on the show is still really problematic.

None of these issues with the show's final act were enough to destroy all the enjoyment I had and make it no longer my favorite American TV show.  But it is really unfortunate that it had to end that way.

My recommendation of the show to others shall always be that the first 4 seasons are perfect.

Alex Drake

This is going to be an awfully short post for one I'm so late in making.  But I should before this year is over talk more specifically about PLL's final twist.

I'd heard about the Twincer theory before, mainly from the BrosWatchPLLToo people bringing it up.  I never took it seriously, they already satisfied the people who expected some sort of Twin reveal.

So as I was watching the final episode.  We got to the point where Spencer woke up, and was looking at her "reflection" and I instantly thought "they're trolling the Twin theorists" because the finale had already done that kind of meta trolling a few times.  Then I noticed that the mirror had some little holes in it and found that odd.

Then the hand dropped, and my brain just froze, I was stunned.

That reveal was pretty damn well executed, and Troian gave a great performance because she is the greatest actor of all time.

But it still feels cheap to me, to have the final Big Bad of the show be a character who effectively only existed during the last episode.

I also agree that it was dumb to have it be Toby rather then the Liars who figured out which Spencer was real.

The last episode was fun but flawed.  Doesn't matter that much cause as I've said before it's about the journey not the destination.

I want to make new Anime Fans

And that is why I can't agree with Pedantic Romantic's opinion that Netflix is worse then Amazon.  Netflix's treatment of it's exclusives may not be the most convenient for those of us already into Anime.  But lots of people have Netflix for other reasons, so it can help grow the Anime community when I can just tell someone they already have access to a bunch of Anime.  I don't want to recommend a show to a Normie till it has at least a full season anyway.  And a newbie is going to watch them Dubbed so Digi's complaints about Netflix's subtitles aren't relevant to that either.

Meanwhile Amazon's exclusives are not only stuck behind a double pay wall, but it seems like they don't get Dubbed.  And this season they have at least one show that I think could be a good show to get people into Anime with, (I won't know for sure till it's done).

Now some people might disagree with my desire to bring in new fans.  Digibro has expressed a few times the mentality that it hurts a Niche property for it to become more mainstream, it dilutes the purity of it.  There are lots of things I could say to counter that, like how new fans are needed for something to survive at all.  But mainly the reason I can't see it that way is this.

I was incredibly late in getting into Anime.  I'm about 5 years older then Digibro, but based on when I finally got full time into Anime I might as well be 10 years younger.  That means there are at least 15 years of being an Otaku I missed out on.  Yet lots of things about me show I was an Otaku at heart all along.  I was definitely a Yuri shipper before I knew that word.

Now some Anime I was familiar with during that time.  Pokemon, Sailor Moon and DBZ were part of my childhood to varying degrees.  Then I fell in love with Noir and it's sister serieses, plus Witch Hunter Robin during the period of my life that mostly revolved around waiting for The Dark Knight.  Then after that I randomly got into Code Geass, Gundam 00 and Death Note.  Thing is, those mostly don't reflect well what my current taste in Anime is, half of them I probably only still like because of Nostalgia.  Lucky Star is now my second favorite Anime, yet I didn't watch it till the summer of 2016, when it was nearly a decade old already.

The lack of easy accessibility to Anime is the reason I missed out on it so much.  (Noir is a show I've still never watched streaming online, I found it via Digital Cable's On Demand service, and then bought the DVD.)  So I want to expand the reach of Anime so more people don't miss out like I did.  If someone gives Anime a chance and they don't like it, that's cool.  But I want to get more people to give it a chance.

The one thing Netflix needs to do to help it serve this purpose is increase it's selection.  Though I'd prefer it not make anymore exclusive.  For this season their exclusives aren't the best entry points anyway.  Fate/Apocrypha is for people already into Fate/, (but fortunately they have UFOtable's Fate/Zero and Unlimited Blade Works), and that gambling show is not exactly going to refute negative perceptions of Anime.  Doesn't mean those shows aren't good, they just aren't good places to start.

But Little Witch Academia can work, it's like Harry Potter meets My Little Pony.

Since a lot of what Netflix currently has seems to be Aniplex stuff, I feel like recommending they work with them to dub the Kara no Kyoukai films.  But I haven't seen those yet and so don't know how good of an entry point Anime they would make.

SFdebris is good proof that Madoka can make a good first impression for Anime.  It seems the only people who have a problem with Madoka are old fashioned Magical Girl fans.

For others who want to make new fans.  I'd recommenced trying to stick to legal streaming sites (like HIDIVE) to introduce people to Anime.  People who are entrenched in the community seem to underestimate just how much outsiders are not likely to be comfortable using a technically illegal site.

So for the rest of this post I want to help explain which Anime are better for introducing new people to Anime.  These "rules" aren't universal however, sometimes what I think is the worst Anime to make a first impression with may for some weirdo be exactly what gets them into it.  So keep what you personally know about a person in mind.

Try to avoid ones that engage in Anime Style Fanservice.  Doesn't mean excluding shows that are Sexy, just try to avoid ones that feel creepy.

It's also important to understand that many Americans who aren't in High School anymore don't wanna watch fiction set in High School.  (Though someone who still enjoys Spiderman or Buffy or Smallville may be an exception to that.)  That is part of why Fate/Zero is the best way to introduce someone to Fate/.

Steins;Gate is a good show to recommend to SciFi fans, as is Gundam 00.  For a Fantasy fan have them start with Nausica of The Valley of The Wind.   The original Gundam film trilogy is a good recommendation for people into Space Operas.  I wish I knew more about what Anime to recommend to people into Westerns and Neo-Westerns, the only thing in that category I've seen much of is El Cazador, and I love it but it may not be the best to get someone started with.

Noir is something good to recommend to people who are into Film Noirs, or are in general Francophiles.  Especially the kind of Francophile who buys BlackCoatPress books.  If you happen to know someone specifically into Paul Feval's The Blackcoats (Les Habits Noirs) series, recommend Noir to them and tell them that I have a fan theory that the Bouquets are related to the Bozzo-Corona clan of Corsica.

Related to that, let's talk about Lupin III for a minute.  My first exposure to Lupin III was The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, for most people I don't think that'd be the best impression to lead with, but for the kind of person who loves Noir like me it might be.  In General the two 70s Lupin movies make great introductions. So could some of the TV specials that got dubbed, of which I've seen five.  Blue Jacket, who's Dub is currently airing on Adult Swim can also be a decent enough place to start, though you may have to warn people that some key characters are unique to it.  But absolutely do NOT use any 80s Lupin work as an introduction, the 80s was the worst era for Lupin.

If you know any Pretty Little Liars fans, recommend them good Magical Girl shows like Sailor Moon, Pretty Cure, Madoka and Yuki Yuna.  Or shows like K-On.  If they are specifically a BooRadleyVanCullen type of PLL fan, then you have a potential Yuri Fanatic on your hands.  Meanwhile from what I can tell so far Princess Principal could be a very good show for PLL fans, but unfortunately it's trapped by Amazon.

Any Feminist who hasn't seen Utena yet needs to fix that immediately.

Likewise, anyone who's into Slash and/or Femslash fan fiction, is a potential Yaoi and/or Yuri fan.

Yuri is one genre where I'm not sure where to start, so much Yuri Anime has never been Dubbed. But I know you should NOT ever start with Kannazuki no Miko.  Yaoi actually has a pretty definitive entry point now with Yuri on Ice.

This October I will be a making a Halloween themed recommendations post.

I would not recommend someone start with Sword Art Online.  Which is ironic because it has already been the first for many.  I think the SAO haters wouldn't be nearly so upset by it's rather standard Anime flaws if it hadn't become one of the most mainstream Animes ever.

The thing in general about the really mainstream shows of the last 10 or 15 years, (SAO, Attack on Titan, Death Note and One Punch Man), is they have probably already brought in all the new fans they're going to, so there isn't much point to recommending them now.  If you know someone who's watched those shows and nothing else yet, perhaps you can use their opinions on those to get an idea of what to recommend them next.

Evangelion is not something to recommend to newbies, someone has to be very into Anime already to in 2017 tolerate it's many many many many many flaws.

I miss how Hulu used to be

With all the debate I'm seeing in the Anime community right now between Crunchyroll's model and the new additions of Netflix and Amazon's Anime Strike service. I just find myself remembering how much I loved Hulu not that long ago.

The majority of time I have spent streaming Anime online legally was on Hulu from 2014 to a certain point in 2016.  They ran smoothly, I could watch and even comment (via Facebook) on the video without needing an account, but was also able to make a free account so I could have a Queue and favorites.  And the ads were placed in the designed commercial break spots.  I might have complained about some small things at the time, but now I really appreciate what I no longer have.  The only real improvement they needed was even more shows to choose from.  Plus they included the Dubs just as Free as the Subs for almost everything that had Dubs, Sailor Moon and Attack on the Titan were the only exceptions there.

From when I first watched Noir till sometime in 2014 I was not an Otaku, not knowingly, I was just a Nerd who happened to have seen a few more Anime then the average American nerd.  Finding TVTropes in 2012 started increasing my Anime curiosity (since due to the Alphabet the Anime and Manga examples were first on almost every Trope's page), but I wasn't feeling too compelled to jump into all that just yet.

The hype around Sailor Moon's comeback is what first lead me to Hulu.  And from there It was on Hulu I first watched Madoka, and Utena (including the Utena movie) and The Rose of Versailles.  (A few others Animes I watched at that time I don't recall if Hulu or Funimation's website is where I watched them.)  And I re-watched Death Note and El Cazador there, I noted that they had Noir and Fujiko Mine but those I had on DVD so I didn't need Hulu for them.  And they had lots of other options.

Doing all of that mostly on Hulu was how I first got really into Anime.  Eventually to the point where I almost felt like I didn't need anything else.  How easy and convenient it was is what made it possible.

In theory everything I loved about Hulu should apply to Crunchyroll's current model.  But for me it just hasn't ran as smoothly the few times I've tried to use it.  Maybe that can be blamed on my cheap Laptop, but I used the same Laptop for Hulu.  Plus Crunchyroll frequently doesn't include Dubs, at least not for free.

But then Hulu changed.

Two things happened.  They dropped most of their Anime, the most notable thing they still have is the exclusive streaming rights to the original Sailor Moon and it's official Viz Subs (and some of the Viz Dub).  

But even worse is that a lot less, possibly nothing by now, became possible to view without a paying subscription.  I first noticed this with non Anime stuff, a few non Anime shows I'd watched there, and I had wanted to use it for Pretty Little Liars last half season so I could just not need my TV at all anymore, but then found it wouldn't be view-able for free.

Now even Sailor Moon can't be viewed without a subscription anymore.  (And I inherently don't trust Free 30 day trails, my family has gotten billed for things we canceled before.)

Some of the few shows they do have I might feel inclined to try right now, after all I should maybe look at Vampire Knight for the Halloween Recommendations post I'm working on for October.  But I don't have the ability to pay for it.

Amazon's double pay wall is people's main annoyance with it.  What bugs me though is how none of the stuff Amazon gets seem to get Dubbed, unless I've missed something, I haven't really checked all of them, but they had Vivid Strike which ain't getting Dubbed.  I'm still unclear how all the licensing stuff works.  As someone who prefers Dubs, knowing every Netflix show will get Dubbed is a major relief.

Amazon most annoys me when it gets what I feel could be a good entry point Anime.  Princess Principal could be a great Anime for the people I know who are into New Pulp stuff. But I can't expect them to pay all that money just to checkout one show.

What's funny about Netflix is how for Western Television their Binge watching model is being viewed as the wave of the future, people think the success of the Marvel Defenders shows is making this the eventual new standard. 

But for Western Anime fans it's basically the opposite, since we used to mostly not hear about shows till they were complete in Japan.  The ability to now watch shows relatively close to when they first aired, especially doing so legally, is a new experience, so going back to waiting till we have a full season to binge feels like an attempt to turn the clock backwards.

Of course that wouldn't happen if the shows weren't airing on the normal weekly model in Japan.  If the shows got made for the Binge model release to start with like Marvel's shows are, there would be no difference in how this practice is viewed for Anime and how it is for Western TV.  What annoys Western Fans is being forced to wait for something others aren't.  For centuries that was the unavoidable norm with imported media, but one of the benefits of the Internet is supposed to be tearing those walls down.

Thing is even for Western Television I think the Netflix model will turn out to be a fad. While I do want to see every show become Streamable once each episode airs.  The experience of knowing that at a certain time many other fans are watching at the exact same time you are, and being able to live tweet and post on forums and groups about it as it airs and right after.  And then spend a week speculating about what will happen next together.  Is as fun for fans of Western TV as it is for Anime fans.  I know this as someone who just finished spending 7 years as a PLL fan, and before that did TVD and Smallville.  And so in time I think the novelty of what Netflix is doing will die out.

But in the meantime I wish Netflix would focus on giving Dubs for older shows that simply didn't get Dubbed.  They tried that with "Glitter Force" but dropped the ball by Americanizing it.  This time drop Saban and try another PreCure series, like maybe Suite, and do it properly this time.  I'd also like to see Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, Rose of Versailles, and La Seine No Hoshi.  And there is sure as heck a market out there for Legends of the Galactic Heroes.  Also some of the Gundam series that fell thought the dubbing cracks like Turn A Gundam.

And/or get into the business of doing New Dubs for shows where the old one is flawed, or generally hated.  Like Utena, or Higurashi, or their own failure with Smile Pretty Cure.  Also really old stuff like Space Battleship Yamato, and a number of Mecha shows.  For languages other then English, it sounds from what I hear like France deserves a do over on it's Rose of Versailles dub.

That leads me to thinking, perhaps in general the compromise should be giving us the Subbed version right away but then hyping the drop it all at once gimmick for the Dub.