Worldbuilding doesn't and shouldn't matter.

I’ve increasingly come to feel there is nothing people should care about as an “objective criticism” less than “Bad Worldbuilding”. 

When the Worldbuilding in something is genuinely well thought out and holds up under scrutiny that’s a neat bonus, I love watching YT videos about the hidden depths of the lore in ASOIAF as much as anyone else who only watched the TV shows. But it should not be a requirement and certainly not an end in and of itself, and I kinda feel like what’s happened to that very franchise proves my point. 

Tolkien was a worldbuilder like none before him because he spent 20 years writing about this fantasy world just for himself before he actually published anything set in it. And even then he still had to partially rewrite The Hobbit later when he fully integrated it into Arda’s overarching history. Chances are you have not read the book that was published in 1937. 

I don’t care whether or not the world of a story makes sense, I care whether the characters are people I like spending time with and then if the story being told with them is compelling. And if anything related to worldbuilding as a concept affects my ability to enjoy a story, it’s not how detailed the history is, or how unique or unlike other fantasy worlds it is, or whether its internal logic really makes that much sense. As I explained in my post on why I couldn’t get into Magic Knight Rayearth it’s whether or not the world actually feels alive and lived in, like the people playing specific roles in the story are not the only real people in it. 

I saw someone say how a particular Urban Fantasy Pet Peeve of theirs is when the Economy doesn't make sense, and then went on about all the math they did regarding some story's Economy. The fact that you put more thought into this silly thing to even care about in the first place than the author did doesn’t make you a better writer than them. 

Update June 3rd 2026: Premise

So I watched a Video Essay titled How this Cabbage almost DESTROYRD Anime by I don't mind rotting (UOYKAHNTON). And their plot description of the 2005 Visual Novel Yoake Mae Yori Ruri Iro Na shortened Yoakena and translated Brighter Than the Dawning Blue, got me to thinking. 

The setting is centuries in the Future where a catastrophic war between The Earth and The Moon caused technological development to revert back to 2005, or as this video theorizes it originally plunged society back further and the present narrative is just when they caught back up to 2005.

Like a number of VN premises, it's a transparently contrived premise, the worldbuilding is only there to create the setting the writers want. It's a way to get a setting that they can in large part write as if it's set in the present but still have some Sci-Fi stuff going on.  And it's that kind of worldbuilding that critics of "Bad Worldbuilding" so often call lazy worldbuilding. Because no you realistically you can't get almost the exact cultural conditions of 2005 Tokyo from a different history leading up to it just like you wouldn't get something resembling 2017 Los Angelus with a point of divergence that starts 2000 years ago.

Yes I'm really defending Bright right now, I haven't seen the movie itself yet, but I feel bad about having ever passively agreed with Lindsay Ellis's video on it.

The people who made that movie wanted to make a movie that's a modern LA Buddy Cop Movie but with Orcs and Elves, I think the correct thing to do when criticizing this movie whether you like it or not is to simply accept that premise instead of being mad that they didn't create a completely different alternate history.  It is indeed not a premise I would make, but that's mainly because of the Buddy Cop part. 

Fantasy and Science Fiction

I’ve made a few posts on this blog before the line between Fantasy and Science Fiction and stores that straddle that line.

But I’ve recently come to a final conclusion about how to define these genres that is important.

Science Fiction is defined by what can’t happen in it far more than Fantasy is.  Because the point of Science Fiction is to try and stay theoretically scientifically possible no matter how out there it gets. The supernatural can never unambiguously happen in Sci-Fi. 

But it goes beyond just what literal things can and can’t exist in the universe, there are certain kinds of stories that at their core are Fantasy stories no matter how Futuristic or Scientific you try to make the setting. A Sci-Fi story would never begin with “Once Upon a Time” or something analogous to that. 

Fantasy meanwhile is defined by its lack of limits, anything you can fantasize about can be Fantasy. That’s why I once argued that Sci-Fi can be in its entirety viewed as a subgenre of Fantasy, from a certain point of view. 

However nothing that is at its core a Fantasy story can become Sci-Fi by draping itself in cosmetically Sci-Fi elements like space ships and lasers.  One thing some stories want to do is start as Fantasy but reveal it all to have been Scientific later, but that simply doesn't work, once I see a story as Fantasy no amount of Technobabble can handwave it away. 

And that once again brings us to Star Wars, the most contentious franchise in this debate. 

The Midichlorenes do not make The Force scientific enough to qualify as Sci-Fi, they tie this fundamentally mystical concept to Nature in a way no different then how The Lifestream works in Final Fantasy VII, or Magic Circuits in Fate/.

But what’s really funny is when the Prequel Haters who hate the Midichlorenes for allegedly demystifying The Force also want Star Wars to be allowed to qualify as Sci-Fi.  They fail to see how their interests conflict. 

The people who really want to be allowed to classify Star Wars as Science Fiction are basically insulting Fantasy as a genre, because it’s clear however much they don’t want to outright say it, that this comes from a palace of viewing Sci-Fi as more respectable. 

And it says something about the modern world that in this unique case the younger Genre is viewed as the more respectable one, by some people at least.  Science Fiction as a distinct genre begins with Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein at the absolute earliest. Fantasy meanwhile is the oldest genre there is, The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Mahabharata and Ramayana, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Beowulf and the Eddas, the Mabinogion, the Shahnameh, 1001 Arabian Knights, medieval Arthurian and Grail Romances.  All of them are Fantasy stories in a modern genre classification context. 

Andor is the one piece of Star Wars media that feels like it could count as Sci-Fi if only it weren’t in the same Universe as all that Force stuff. And sadly I think that’s a factor in why it’s the closest to universally praised any Disney Era Star Wars project has been. I liked Andor well enough but do consider it overrated, I’d rather have more stuff like Ahsoka and The Acolyte which actually delve into Force Lore. 

So the gist of what I'm saying is, everything that straddles the line will by default be Fantasy. 

But there is a respect for Authorial intent I'm including how I apply that rule.  If the intend is clearly to be purely Scientific but what they failed to hold up to scientific scrutiny I will still classify it based on the intent rather then the success.  This is what keeps Star Trek Sci-Fi in spite of all the entities that are basically gods but who we're supposed to understand as "highly evolved" aliens. To me that trope is bad Sci-Fi but still Sci-Fi. 

The Pseudo-Mainstreaming of Anime

So I’ve done a series of posts on this blog trying to debunk the notion that Anime is Mainstream now, and this recent hype over “The Vatican has Embraced Anime” has helped me realize part of the problem is how a vague understanding of the Anime Style is somewhat Mainstream.

Luce is not proof that anyone in the Vatican has seen any Anime just as someone throwing around the term “Big Brother” isn’t proof they’ve read 1984.  It’s just proof that everyone now knows how to draw the basic concept of an Anime Girl.

Just because people have heard of it doesn't mean it's mainstream.  People have always known who the Insane Clown Posse were, that didn't make them mainstream.

I realize this kind of distinction sounds to some like it’s related to the rhetoric of GateKeepers.  I don’t think you need to have seen all the Anime I’ve seen to at all qualify as being into Anime, I haven’t seen a lot of Anime others consider essential viewing like Gurren Lagan or any Satoshi Kon stuff.  I considered myself into Anime when I’d only seen a fraction of what I’ve seen now.  But my point has never been about how well versed in Anime culture any individual is.

In order for Anime as a whole to truly be mainstream the pool of specific shows and movies that are well known even to people who aren’t particularly into Anime needs to be much wider.

Feral Historian is a YouTube channel I stumbled upon recently, they are fairly conservative and so someone I disagree with a lot, but unlike a lot of Conservatives who talk about Nerdy stuff on YouTube he has actually insightful and interesting things to say rather than raving about Wokeness every time a protagonist isn’t a White Male.  He largely talks about Sci-Fi and some Fantasy stories usually with a focus on War, Dystopia and Alternate History.  He’s covered some very mainstream well known franchises and some fairly niche books and forgotten movies and tv shows.

So anyone who is very into Anime reading all that can probably quickly come with a long list of Anime right up his alley, but in fact the only Anime he’s covered is Cowboy Bebop a very mainstream show that feels barely relevant to the general themes of his channel.  For me 86 pops into my mind as the first thing I’m curious to hear his take on, but I’m sure others would more quickly jump to Gundam, Macross, Gunbuster, Evangelion, Code Geass, Psycho Pass, Attack on Titan maybe Darling in The FranXX.  But other niche even within the world of Anime options would include Muv-Luv/Schwarzesmarken, Rahxephon, Aldnoah Zero, Str.A.In, Kado the Right Answer, Babylon and the Sekaikei trilogy.

If Anime actually had the mainstream pervasiveness of Star Wars or Star Trek or Marvel and DC Superheroes there’s no way none of those Anime would have been covered by now especially since Bebop proves he doesn’t have an innate bias against Anime.

Update: Feral Historian's interest in Bebop stems form an interest in Western tropes translated to a fantastical setting.  And I have a prior post on the other Anime that can appeal to that.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/04/anime-neo-westerns.html

Update December 19th 2024: I realize I really need to explain better why I think this Random YouTuber not talking about Anime much proves anything.

It shows how much trouble the vast majority of Anime has leaving the existing subculture of people already particularly into Anime that there is so much Anime that is exactly the kind of SciFi this guy is into that he seemingly hasn't even heard of even though he does know plenty of Niche stuff.

Update March 2026: A similar point could be made about how I've seen two videos about the Symbolism of White Hair in fiction which included few Anime examples, to someone who's actually into Anime it's obvious there should an entire sub section for this topic on White Hair in Anime being associated with characters who are in some way artificially created. 

Are Giant Robot Anime about Giant Robots?

So a number of weeks ago I watched a YouTube Video from the channel The Bellam called Anime Cryptids that begins with the author talking about hearing people praise a given Mecha Anime, most often Evangelion, for being a Mecha Anime that “isn’t about the Robot”, and then goes on to explain how no Mecha Anime is actually about the Robot, especially not Gundam.  

And yet to me the obvious response to this annoying type of Evangelion fan should be “what do you mean Evangelion isn’t about the Robot?”  If anything Eva is more about the Robot then Gundam since in Eva the Robot is actually a character with sentience of its own, but mostly that point is key to why Eva should be compared to Super Robot shows like Mazinger Z rather than Real Robot shows.

Still I find it amusing that to both sides of the debate in that video it’s treated as a good thing for a show to not actually be about the Robot.  I feel like especially in shows that are named after the Robot that should not be the case, it should never be a good thing for a show to be named in-correctly.

Clearly we are dealing with different people prioritizing different senses of what a show is “about”.  This video’s argument for Gundam not being about the Robot is the abstract philosophical themes of the overarching metanarrative of the Gundam Franchise. On that level no piece of Genre fiction is actually about the premise of it’s Genre, but no one feels the need to defend the integrity of their favorite Batman story by explaining how it isn’t actually about the Billionaire dressing up like a Bat to fight crime.

The author of this video clearly strongly feels only someone who hasn’t actually seen Gundam would think it is actually about the Gundam, but I’m not so sure.  I explained above one reason for viewing Gundam as less about the Robot the Evangelion.  But on the other hand Gundam feels more structurally built around the Mecha battles then Eva does.  Also the Plot of the original Gundam is explicitly that the introduction of the Gundam near single handedly changed the tide of the war.

And when it's framed specifically as focusing on the Characters rather then the Mechs I feel like "why is that even a contrast?", obviously the Characters involved in piloting and maintaining the Mecha will be very prominent in a show about a Mecha  And again in some the Mecha is itself a Sapient entity and thus a Character..  But it would be really weird if the Main Characters the show focuses had nothing to do with the Mecha it's named after.

Now I have to admit I did not initially respond to this video with the strong disagreement I’m expressing here. I initially left a comment saying something like “Robotics;Notes is actually about the Robot and that’s why I like it”.  But why did I feel that way?  At the time I would not have been able to explain myself and the counterargument that it's Robot doesn’t even exist yet for most of the show could easily have been thrown in my face.

It feels more narratively about the Robot then a lot of other Mecha shows because building the Robot is explicitly the Goal of the main protagonists, as an end unto itself not merely as a tool to achieve some other goal.  The build up of the Evil Conspiracy they will wind up having to thwart is mostly treated as a background plot till the final stretch of episodes.  But I guess even then the creator of that YouTube video could argue the Robot is actually just a symbol of something else like Communism maybe, I am a Communist who loves the show in part for it's Collectivist ethos.

So I guess the answer to the question is both Yes and No.

Baby Yoda and Elves

I love Baby Yoda as much as everyone, but I can’t help but find the concept of being a Baby who can’t even speak yet for over 50 years kind of horrifying, and I’ve seen similar tropes done with the aging process of some Anime Elves.  I remember thinking a more serious world builder would just explain how their very long lived race matures to adulthood at about the same timespan humans do and then their aging slows down dramatically.  

But then I learned that in some of Tolkien's more obscure writings it’s clarified his Elves were also envisioned as taking like 100 years to become adults.  

The growing that we humans experience for the first 25ish years of our lives and the decaying that defines the rest of it are very different biological phenomena, that both can be described as “aging” doesn’t make them the same thing.  So the later being massively slowed or even frozen for a fantasy race doesn’t inherently mean the former has to be slowed as well.

So any Elves in a story written by me would grow up perfectly normally.

Environmentalist Allegories in Sci-Fi and Fantasy have a common recurring problem

From Final Fantasy VII in 1997 to Darling in The Franxx in 2018, but also in between many interpretations of how and why Krypton blew up.  The common tactic is to allegorize it so it’s that Humanity or the Evil Corporations are killing the Earth via what they take out of it, essentially being Parasites who are Vampirizing The Earth.  

That is a problem because the actual issue with real life Climate Change is the opposite, the Fossil Fuels themselves are just Ancient Prehistoric Garbage in and of itself removing them from the earth isn’t a problem.  The problem is how the Atmosphere is poisoned by the byproduct of burning those fuels.  The primary issue is what we’re putting in, not what we're taking out.

Now I don’t think a good Allegory needs to be a perfect 1 to 1 allegory, my opinion on allegory in general is similar to Tolkien’s.  For example in a JRPG type setting having the energy source also be a source of Magic makes perfect sense.

So you may wonder what the problem even is?  The problem is getting the nature of how we are harming the planet reversed makes it a lot harder to propose any useful solutions, since both scenarios also have it so we need to do more than just stop, we also need to fix the damage already done somehow.

The truth is something like The Lifestream to me would make a better allegory for the renewable energies we want to encourage. On a Metaphysical level I have trouble believing something like that could ever be depleted.

It’s not a coincidence that this mistake is made so many times however.  It’s a product of the desire to tie environmentalism to mysticism, making The Earth itself a Deity we are taking from and not giving back to.  But also way back in the day the issue of CO2 emissions caused by Fossil Fuels wasn’t even the original main concern of the Environmentalist movement, it first grew out of Conservationism, concerns about things like Deforestation.  The thing is as bad as Deforestation can be, it's not the irreversible damage that CO2 emissions are becoming, it does make that problem worse, but it isn't the main source.  [Update:  I do believe Reforestation is a vital part of combating Climate Change which is why it really annoys me when Anti-Zionists try to paint Israel Reforestation of land Deforested by the Roman, Muslim and Ottoman Empire.]

The Irony about how these tropes pop up even in Japanese media is that I feel it would actually fit Japanese Mysticism more.to make it a matter of poisoning the Life Force of The Planet rather than Vampirising it.  Shinto mysticism includes a concept called Kagere, direct references to which in Anime often get translated as "Sullied".  The concept of a spiritual pollution tied to immoral or even merely taboo acts or sometimes just negative emotions.  Plenty of Anime and Video Games have concepts that definitely feel to me like a fantastical adaptation of that concept given a new name, Miasma gets used a lot, the recent Zelda Games have Malice/Gloom, Tales of Zestiria has Maleficence, Fate/Stay Night has it's Grail Mud.  Now I consider this concept an unhealthy and toxic way to look at morality, but as a Fantastical allegory for CO2 emissions I think it would be much better.  Make it the source of your Dark Magic and the Planet’s Life Force the source of the regular Magic.

Another thing both FFVII and Franxx have in common is that in the backstory actual Fossil Fuels had been the dominant form of energy production before the villains of the story succeeded in imposing their system on the world.   And that is where the concerns I’m talking about here are parallel to the main point of my blog post titled Dystopian Science Fiction only Reinforces the Real World Status Quo.  Making your allegory for fossil fuels something that replaced what it's an allegory for makes it so many won’t see it as an allegory for that at all.  Fears that what we might replace Fossil Fuels with could turn out to be worse have long been a vital tactic of how Fossil Fuel Energy companies suppress alternatives, Nuclear Energy never took off in the United States because shows like The Simpsons present it as cartoonishly toxic and dangerous.

I imagine critics of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII who come at it from a Leftist perspective see all the stuff about rebuilding the Fossil Fuel Industry in stories set after the original game as Recuperation, but that an Oil Industry being suppressed by ShinRa helped cause the crisis was part of the Lore already in the original game, that wasn’t something added later.

Both these stories I actually like overall, I defended the later part of Franxx in 2018 when doing so was not very popular, and FFVII’s lore intrigues me for how it can intentionally or not be read as Stoic and how I think it’s thematically more like Tolkien then any Medieval setting JRPG.  This is just one critique I felt had to be made.

A Certain Raildex Watch Order Post

My recommended watch order is a version of the "simplified chronological order" which is the term other people use for an order like this.

Unlike past posts where I've given my watch order for this franchise I want to really break down and explain my logic more. 

A Certain Scientific Railgun (Season 1)

A Certain Magical Index (Season 1)

A Certain Scientific Railgun S

A Certain Magical Index II

A Certain Scientific Railgun T

A Certain Magical Index III

I have chosen not to include A Certain Scientific Accelerator because I kind of don't recommend it at all.  It's not horrible, a true franchise completionist will probably be able to get something out of it.  But it doesn't appeal to me much.  It's chronological placement is between Index I and II but it aired between Index III and Railgun T.

I also didn't give the movie a placement simply because it's not really canon at all.  I do like the movie a fair bit, but I wouldn't prioritize when to watch it.  Index season 1 has everything you really need to know for it.

In the spirit of this watch order not being strictly chronological, I won't make my arguments in their chronological order either.  I'll start with why each season of Railgun should be watched before it's numerically corresponding season of Index.

Railgun Season 1 simply is a better entry point to this world.  I do recommend skipping episode 2 on your first watch since it's both filler is gives an unfortunate first impression of a certain character.  But other then that season 1 of Railgun is a fantastic fun little SciFi show that only ever seems under whelming in the context of the major heights achieved by it's sequels.

One YouTube video I watched defending the Broadcast order as ideal insinuated that Railgun leaves some things unexplained because it assumes you already watched Index.  But especially as far as their respective season 1s go I really don't see what they're talking about.  Railgun is far better at organically explaining how the Esper stuff and Academy City's technology works, and the Magic stuff isn't relevant to Railgun, not in any need to know way.  

Sometimes I think we Nerds assume anything that can be read as a reference to something you've already seen in the release order can only work that way when the truth is they can often work either way.  

Railgun also simply is the better show by a significant margin, so much so that I can imagine the existence of people who'd like Railgun a lot but not Index at all while I can't imagine the opposite.  The way less Fanservice (by my definition Railgun has no Fanservice but I know some might disagree) the better pacing, the usually more intelligent fight scenes, the fact that it could almost pass as a Shoujo, all give it a broader appeal.  

So while there are reasons the order I listed above is best if you do watch both, if you aren't able to get into Index don't worry, nothing in the Railgun sequels absolutely depends on having seen any of Index, it can all stand on it's own.

But the reason why Railgun S should be watched before Index II even beyond all those above reasons is mainly episodes 6 and 7 (or episodes 30 and 31 of Index as a whole as some sites might number them).  This two parter is Kuroko focused and it will hit harder if you have the increased knowledge of her perspective on the Sisters Arc that Railgun S provides.

The particular reason why it's better to watch Railgun T before Index III isn't even much because of either show's main cast.  Episodes 4-6 of Index III is The Battle Royal arc which in the release order (and even more so for Index onlies) introduces a lot of new characters a good deal of whom die in this same arc.  Now the Anime should have given this arc more then 3 episodes to begin with but even if it had I'd still say it works best with the prior investment in Item, Member and School that Railgun T provides.  (Scavenger isn't in Battle Royal however so you could say you've seen everything relevant by the end of episode 20 of T).

Now some will tell you you the later part of Railgun T requires having seen Accelerator first because of Scavenger but here's the thing, I had seen Accelerator first as it aired and I'd forgotten about Scavenger by the time their Railgun T episodes aired.  Railgun T on it's own makes a perfectly fine introduction to them and for me is entirely what endeared me to them, it refers to them having had a bad experience with Accelerator but it's not difficult to guess what that entailed, we don't need to have seen it just like we never needed to see the Kessel Run.

Now as I said if you do watch both there are benefits to watching at least some of Index before the second and third seasons of Railgun.

The reason Index season 1 should be watched before Railgun S is The Sisters Arc.  This arc is to a large extent the same story told from different POVs.  But it is Touma's POV that presumes the audience will be as uninformed as Touma is, while the S version does have some dramatic irony going on, not so much it can't be followed at all on it's own, but enough that it adds to the experience to have already seen the other version.

The reason to watch Index II before Railgun T is mainly again episodes 6 and 7 since they explain one key aspect of what's going on with Kuroko during the Daihasei Festival.    In fact if you are someone who generally hates Index and is a Railgun fan only these are the only two episodes of Index I'd remotely suggest a Railgun fan can't simply ignore.

There are also a few things that reference the events of Index's Daihasei Festival arc while the reverse never happens.

Thing is the Railgun T Daihasei Festival also via one character references a Railgun story still not animated at all, so there is no avoiding an Anime only feeling like they missed something.  

Railgun T has only one problem

 A Certain Scientific Railgun T is an Anime I'm loving more each time I rewatch it.  Railgun S as a complete work of Art is still the greatest Masterpiece of the Raildex franchise.  But Railgun T being a bit less intense and more episodic is perhaps proving to be more rewatchable for me personally.

The Daihasei Festival Arc was perfect, and most of the Dream Ranker Arc was very fun, lots of cool one offs that expand the universe, and for the most part even what it's main plot winds up being is very interesting.  

But I have one thing against it.

And that problem is a Spoiler so don't read ahead if you don't want to be spoiled.

The fact that the show does in fact declare the Doppleganger to not have a Soul really really bugs me.  And honestly it makes me wonder if anyone even knows what that word even means anymore.

The Soul is not actually something the existence of which is debatable, what's debatable is if it's immortal or not, yet it's clear many writers of modern fiction think it's definition is the thing certain religions say still lives when the Body dies, but it's not.  The Greek word translated Soul is Psyche.  Even the most Hyper-materialist ancient Greeks like the Epicureans did not dispute the Psyche existed, what they argued about was if it's immortal or not.

Anything that has a Psyche has a Soul, anything that has Self Awareness has a Soul.  Most important of all though, only a being with a Soul could ever be suicidal.  A life form running on pure animal instinct or AI programing could never develop a desire to end it's own existence.

The concept of an AI wanting to die but being unable to act on that directly because of it's self preservation programing is an interesting idea for Sci-Fi to explore.  But to then turn around and proclaim that entity doesn't have a Soul is absurd.

And to top it all off the Doppelganger's Psyche even proves to be immortal still existing after it's body dies.  So I honestly am baffled and have no idea what definition of the word Soul this Anime was possibly using.

Occultic;Nine subverts the Flat Earth Atheist trope

First of all this post is going to spoil some of the central twists of the Anime Occultic-Nine, if you haven't seen it already I suggest you do so quickly, it's very underrated and is only 12 episodes and it's both subbed and dubbed on Crunchyroll, and it's a fitting show for Halloween month in my opinion.

Flat Earth Atheist is the TVtrope term for when a character is written like a strict hyper rationalist materialist even when in a setting where denying the Supernatural is a lot less rational then it is in our world.  Occultic;Nine is a show that at first one might think is going to feature that trope but actually doesn't.

In the opening episodes both Gamon and Sarai are skeptical of the supernatural, the rest of the main cast are all pretty ready to believe in the paranormal so those two are the Skeptics' representation.  While both are skeptics it's only Sarai who gives off that smug Reddit Atheist energy, he's the character who a genre savy viewer will expect to act like Fred in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. Gamon's skepticism is a lot less central to his identity.

So that's why it's interesting how in episode 7 following the reveal that they've all been Ghosts for 3 episodes it's Sarai who's mostly accepted that the evidence is pointing to that being the case even before it's made truly indisputable.  While it's Gamon who's in denial, but his denial is framed as Emotional coping not a product of whatever his ideology was.

So it's an Anime where the true Rationalist accepts the facts even when they go agaisnt his prior world view and the "Flat Earth Atheist" was never actually that much of an Atheist.

Dystopian Science Fiction only reinforces the real world Status Quo

They establish the Evil Government or Empire in question as being obviously Evil to the audience by having it be nakedly and obviously oppressive in a way no current First World Nation is.  It doesn't matter how many Bread Tube Video Essays go on for hours about how it's a perfect allegory for the real world's problems, nor does it matter if that's what the author intended, the average viewer is at best going to see it as a "cautionary tale".

And that's the problem, scaring the public with the variety of different ways things could be worse creates hostility to the very concept of change.  In most of these stories the better freer society the rebels are fighting for is Liberal Democracy, the real world status quo.  The official full name of the Rebellion in Star Wars is "The Alliance to Restore The Republic", that does make it technically speaking a Reactionary Revolution not a Progressive one, the kind Edmund Burke would call a Reformation rather then a Revolution.  

We see how broken The Republic always was in The Prequels and Clone Wars, yet because The Empire is so blatantly worse people long for The Republic and are not even considering the idea of trying to build something new, or question the very concept of having a Galactic Government in the first place.  The only value I ever saw in writing more Star Wars post ROTJ is attempting to address this.  Instead the overarching narrative we're getting is that the New Republic's mistake was demilitarizing and refusing to take quick harsh action against the rising First Order, even though the message of The Prequels was that militarizing is exactly how The Republic became The Empire in the first place.

Andor is the first Star Wars project to actually really be this Genre.  Star Wars may have "always been Political" but the politics was usually set dressing and framing devices and only remotely part of the main story in the Prequel Trilogy. The Empire was something our protagonists were under the threat of but never living directly under.  Andor is the first Star Wars project to be perceived as some groundbreaking Political Manifesto, but it's not.  The character in the second arc who's supposed to be the ideologue of the group never says a damn thing about the kind of society he wants to create, just a bunch of philosophizing about how highly authoritarian systems like the Empire inevitably destroy themselves, which isn't even true, Rome lasted Centuries.

Breadtubers really love to argue that every fictional Dystopia is either Fascist or Capitalist or both and the Right Wingers interpreting them as being in any way Socialist are simply not getting them.  Unfortunately most Hollywood writers are relatively Centrist Liberals who do view Communism and Nazism as two sides of the same coin.  I like Divergent, I only saw the first movie but I found it more engaging then The Hunger Games.  However the society it depicts can't be viewed as Capitalist nor does it contain any of the things that animate actual Fascist movements.  Even watching it as a Communist I see it as what it looks like when Communism is tried but goes wrong, or at least what Liberals think it looks like when Communism is tried and "inevitably" doesn't work.  Of course when I first watched it I wasn't the Communist I am now as you can probably guess from my first post mentioning it on this blog.

Classic CyberPunk is often alleged to be where Capitalism will inevitably lead if we don't change course.  The problem is most viewers won't see it that way not because they are stupid but because CyberPunk is stupid, it is a fundamental misunderstanding of Capitalism to think it would ever benefit the Capitalists to get rid of the Government.

Here's an informative YT video on George Orwell.

https://youtu.be/2Gz0I_X_nfo

The Anime 86 is more interesting then many other Dystopian shows because the Republic of San Magnolia actually claims to be a Democracy.  

I have now watched the Anime Psycho-Pass (only season one for now which I'm pretty sure was originally meant to stand on it's own).  And I'm going to Spoil it.

Moe Anime could Revive Utopian Science Fiction

The reason Utopian Science Fiction died out is because the Western World's taste in fiction became increasingly over fixated on the importance of things like "Conflict" and "Stakes" and "Character Development".  So settings where our major problems have already been solved are considered "uninteresting" and "boring".

Now there is also the common claim it was also killed by the World Wars and the Holocaust and then further tragic events of the late 60s and 70s made people less willing to believe that a Utopia is possible.  But I disagree with that, horrible events only make us desire optimistic fantasies more.

The most well known and popular work of Utopian Sci-Fi was early Star Trek, but it was never purely Utopian, presumably Earth and other core Federation worlds were, but the stories kept revolving around conflicts with and explorations of more flawed societies.  And in time Star Trek refused to stay even that Utopian and so it betrayed it's roots over and over again till we wind up with dreary depressing shows like Picard and Discovery, or cynical edgy parodies like Lower Decks.

However Anime via the Slice of Life and Cute Girls doing Cute Things Genres has discovered how to make us enjoy fiction that is actually utterly free of any real conflict.  From Lucky Star to K-On to Yuru Yuri and so many others.  And we've also seen a sub genre of Isekai translate that formula into a Fantasy Setting like the 300 Slimes show.

So what we need is a show about Cute Girls doing Cute Things in a High-Tech Futuristic Communist Utopia where Climate Change has been solved and Scarcity eliminated.  And it can be Fun and Cute but also educational about how such a society could hypothetically work.

Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child both have good Anime adaptations actually.

I can't claim to have no understanding of why people think at least Chaos;Head's Anime is bad when I myself had originally given up after a few episodes and mentioned that on this blog before.  However what I speculated on in that prior reference was that my issue with Chaos;Head was probably the story itself not the Anime as an adaptation.  And I never said it was horrible or anything, just that I was having trouble getting into it.

In the years since that first attempt I've gotten more used to VN based Anime of it's type, while still not actually playing VNs themselves.  I started the show over from the beginning and wound up giving it a 9 out of 10, then I gave Chaos;Child a bull blown 10.

I give Child a higher score partly because Head is more difficult to get into, the early episodes are a bit disorienting but ultimately that served a purpose and things will get clarified.

What gets me about how hostile to these Anime their VN fanboys who've made YouTube videos on them are, is they keep saying these "horrible" Anime give people bad impressions of these brilliant ingenious Visual Novel masterpieces.  But the truth is the only people who think these Anime are horrible abomination are VN fanboys overreacting to even the slightest creative adaptation choices they don't like.  Non VN fans who just watched it like they did any other Anime at worst simply went "meh" and moved on.

Their average MAL rating is between a 6 and 7, that's between Fine and Good.  Given all the 1s and 2s being hurled at these shows from those haters, clearly there are many who also gave it higher ratings then the average.  I haven't written any reviews for these shows on MAL, among those who have are people giving them 8s, 9s and even 10s.

Most 5s, 6s and 7s given on an out of 10 rating system generally mean one of two things.  Either that person respected the execution but just couldn't get into the premise or the characters, or they see the potential value in the premise, characters and story but had issues with the execution.  The latter group are probably fully prepared to assume it's something great in it's source material.  And the former were not going to get into that VN even if VNs are a medium they're into.

To RedBard specifically, the problem with these Anime seems to begin with them being single cour, unlike Steins;Gate and Robotics;Notes which had 2 cour Anime.  Everything more specific is really the same stuff VN fanboys whine about in the VN based Anime widely considered to be great, even Steins;Gate isn't immune to these complaints.  Every YT video about recommending these VNs with little comment on the Anime doesn't mention any vital story element or themes the Anime hadn't already conveyed to me.  Information about how they're played however does tell me I wouldn't enjoy playing them as much as I do watching the Anime, even compared to other VNs.

I do prefer 2 cour shows in general, but these I felt worked as 1 cour just as well as Madoka did, which means I don't think dragging them out longer would have resulted in anything good. I did not feel like anything was missing, no criticism I might have would be fixed by adding more context.  It's only people comparing to the source material and know what's missing that can't stop themselves from thinking about it's absence.  But their perspective is the wrong one, most Visual Novels are longer then they need to be, that lack of restraint is largely what's holding the medium back, and I'm saying this as someone who defends three hour cuts of Superhero movies.  I recently tried to play YU-NO and I'll probably try again, but I was not prepared for it to take half an hour to get through the first 5 seconds of the Anime, I gave up before even reaching a save point.

I spend a lot of time watching Adaptations of things I have no source material familiarity for.  And often I can tell when something is missing, when an issue I'm having is probably because of something that was cut, that is where criticism of something as an adaptation and criticism of it as it's own stand alone piece of Art overlap.  

However any criticism that does not exist without comparison to the source material is irrelevant to judging the adaptation on it's own terms.  So you're not gonna convince me an Anime I enjoyed watching, and maybe even made my cry (as Chaos;Child and Umineko both did), is actually very bad because it left out some memorable internal monologue you really liked.

I am a defender of voice over narration and internal monologues in Anime and movies, I HATE the popular YT reviewer use of "show don't tell".  But Visual Novels aren't like the way these tropes pop up in Light Novel based Anime or Hard Boiled Detective novels. VNs are incredibly over indulgent with massive amounts of text of the protagonist pondering things that I'm sure build on the themes and characterization but really are not nearly as intrisincly necessary as their fanatics think they are.

The reason Steins;Gate's Anime was much more successful then any other SciADV Anime was because it simply had better luck getting seen by the non VN fans who would be into it's premise.  Part of that is how the Chaos;Head Anime kind of wears it's VN roots on it's sleeve a lot more.  Part of it might be Steins;Gate being more actively promoted in general (Chaos;Child was the only spring 2017 show I never even knew about while it was airing).  But it mostly comes down to something I'm going to say that might shock some people.  Steins;Gate is the most Normie friendly of the SciADV franchises, while both Chaos; shows are the least.

Trixie The Golden Witch likes citing Steins;Gate as one of the top Otaku Pride shows because it's set in Akihabara.  Yes Steins;Gate has lots of Otaku references, but it's really not actually about any of that.  Being set in Akihabara is perhaps itself a cause of this, like how people who live in New York have never visited the Statue of Liberty.  The status of Akihabara as an Otaku center is most relevant to Ferris's subplot.  Akihabara's older significance as a tech hub is probably more relevant to the main plot, since that's why it's a place one would look for an IBN 5100.

I know exactly how to recommend Steins;Gate to Normies, I tell them it's the best SciFi Anime and in my opinion best Time Travel story in any medium.  If they like the Denzel Washington film Deja Vu, you can tell them Steins;Gate has a premise like that but much more elaborated on due to it's serialized format.  

Even the Hououin Kyōma persona seems more like an American B Movie Mad Scientist then anything specifically Anime.

Steins;Gate became the only one of these that most non VN players have even heard of not because it's Anime is sooo much better at being an Anime, frankly I think it's Animation style and Art design is much blander then Chaos;Head.  It simply is a far more accessible story with inherently wider appeal then the rest.

Robotics;Notes is a giant love letter to the Mecha Genre, but more specifically a Sub Genre of Mecha the American fanbase never got into (Glass Reflection saying the in-universe Mecha show is basically Gundam really annoys me, it's clearly a Shounen Super Robot show like Mazinger Z).  I do consider it and even Occultic;Nine potentially Normie accessible, but still a tougher sell then Steins;Gate, one tactic I use is to describe Robotics;Notes as the msot Speilbergian Anime.  But with Robotics;Notes it's precisely what's more Otaku about it that makes me personally like it more.

Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child however are the embodiment of almost everything Anti-Otaku Anime fans hate, they will never respect them in any medium.  Going back to the discussion of MAL scores, if any non VN players have given these Anime truly low scores on MAL, it's probably those Anti-Otaku types being disgusted by their very premise.

Chaos;Head is about an antisocial shut-in literally named Taku who'd rather talk to his hallucination of his favorite Anime Girl then real people becoming the only person who can save this town that he hates.  That's a true Otaku Hero's Journey.

Then Chaos;Child..... well I'm gonna have to spoil it's central twists here.

86 got off to a rocky start with me.

On June 20th I watched the first episode of 86 since it’s Dub has finally dropped, and I’m a bit confused.

So as the episode started I assumed this was about an unnamed Drone and suggesting their A.I. have become genuinely self aware.  And I was thinking of commenting on how that is one way AI are used as Slaves in fiction that is not applicable to real world Slavery, since actual Slave societies know better then to army or militarily train their Slaves.  For example, regardless of what revisionist Lost Causers will tell you, the Confederacy strictly forbid Slaves from serving in the army.

So when the reveal came at the end that the 86 are actually Humans, I could now only think about the impossibility of this speculative scenario.  Ancient Rome would have members of peoples they conquered serve in their Army, but that service gave them citizenship.  

I don't know if the show intended to mislead me on the A.I. thing or if that was just my brain jumping to conclusions.

Steins;Gate is the best Science Fiction Anime.

I also think it's probably the best Time Travel based story in any medium.  

But I want to clarify what I mean when I say it's the best Sci-Fi Anime.  I mean it's the best Anime at specifically being Science Fiction, the best Anime to recommend to Normie Sci-Fi Nerds as a potential entry point into Anime.

There are Anime I like more that also qualify as Sci-Fi.  

Like for example a show that exists in the same Universe called Robotics;Notes.  That show is quite possibly to me at least better then Steins;Gate at what I generally come to Anime for, but doesn't quite nail it's Sci-Fi premise as well.  But still the difference between those shows on both those scales is an ultimately small matter of degrees, if you like Steins;Gate then Robotics;Notes is probably the next Anime you should give a shot to and vice versa.

However A Certain Scientific Railgun and Code Geass are higher ranked candidates for the title of my favorite Anime franchise period, and are also both technically Sci-Fi.  But they are by no means Hard Sci-Fi, but rather the best Anime equivalents to classic Pulps and Serials.

Gundam Anime (the ones I currently like most are 00 and the Trilogy) are as Mecha War stories better Sci-Fi then Code Geass but ultimately below Code Geass in my opinion for other reasons, and still not as great Sci-Fi as the Semicolon shows.

"Why dedicate a post to this distinction?" you might ask.  Because I know to some Internet Pedantists it might be difficult to wrap their head around making this distinction.  That there can be a difference between a show's use of Sci-Fi being specifically one of the things it's good at, and being merely a plot device or setting to facilitate what the show's real appeal is.

Now there might be a better Sci-Fi Anime then Steins;Gate among what I haven't seen yet, which is still a lot.  But I feel like I've seen enough for my opinion to be worth noting, having completed 535 Anime, and started over 280 I haven't finished.  I can't guess right now what percentage of those qualify as Sci-Fi in some capacity, but it's a significant amount.

Science Fiction is a Sub Genre of Fantasy

In the past I have been very pedantic about drawing a hard line between Fantasy and Science Fiction, especially in regards to Star Wars which I am not alone in considering Fantasy not Sci-Fi.

However my escalating indulgence in Anime over the last 5 years has increased my appreciation for how blurry the line can be.  But more importantly looking at the history of the Genre has made me realize that ALL Science Fiction is Fantasy but not all Fantasy is Science Fiction.

People Fantasize about many things, our more traditional definition of what a Fantasy story or world is comes from Fantasies about the Past.  Urban Fantasy is our fantasies about those elements of the mythic past surviving into the modern world just out of sight.  Fantasy's overlap with Horror is tied to our fantasies about what scares us.

But we also fantasize about the Future, and outer space, or alternate routes history could have taken.  We fantasize about what technology could achieve in the future as it continues to advance, or perhaps has secretly achieved already but is being kept secret by the government or other cabal of elites.  Or could have achieved long ago if certain mistakes were averted.  We also fantasize about finding things Scientists speculate could exist but that we haven't found yet.

When you look at the history of what's called Proto-Science Fiction, Sci-Fi tropes and ideas in works that predate the birth of Science Fiction as a distinct genre.  You'll notice that it's all Fantasy, the exact same works of the Ancient-Medieval past modern Fantasy authors look to for inspiration is exactly where the founders of Science Fiction drew their inspiration.  But when directly adapted today they are classified as just Fantasy not Sci-Fi.

From the Mahabharata & Ramayana, to a Second Century Greek novelist seeking to Parody the Odyssey, to the 1001 Arabian Knights to Japanese Folk Tales to 18th and 19th Century Gothic Romances. 

Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is sometimes called the first Sci-Fi novel.  But the thing that surprises people reading the original book after entering it with assumptions driven by a century of Cinematic Adaptations, is just how Unscientific it actually is, the full title is referencing a Greek myth after all.  The 2nd and 3rd editions actually try to make it more Scientific, the reference to Galvanism for example was not in the original 1817 edition, the only basis in the Book for the trope of the Monster having anything to do with Electricity is a Greedo Shot First/Riddles In The Dark style retcon.  Science is only discussed at all in the book because of the Rationalism of those at Ingolstadt shutting down Victor's ideas.  Victor's actual inspirations come from late Medieval and Renaissance era Alchemists, Sorcerers and Magicians, and one of the author's inspirations may have been Conrad Dipple.

In a way this makes the development of Science Fiction not unlike the development of Science itself.  Chemistry emerged out of Alchemy, Francis Bacon arguably defined the modern "Scientific Method" but he was also an occultist, a student of John Dee.  Isaac Newton believed the mystical symbolism of the design of Solomon's Temple could somehow unlock the secrets of the Universe.

Whether or not Technology can be considered a form of Magick kind of depends on how you define Magick.  One definition used by some Occultists is that it's the manipulation of the energies that exist in nature.

That's why it makes sense that the roles played by Mages in RPGs are taken over by Scientists in more Science based adventures.  White Mages become Medics and Black Mages become Mad Scientists.

Jules Verne was also pretty open about how Genre wise most of his major works were attempts to create modern Odysseys.

Robotics;Notes episode 15 is a good Christmas episode

I feel compelled to make this post about it even though I'm not entirely sure how to articulate my feelings.

Most of Japan is similar to California and Israel in that Snow at this time of year isn't as common as it is for those of us living further north.  That makes a subtle difference in the thematic role Snow plays in Anime in general.  In my post a couple years ago on episode 6 of Noir I got the name of that episode confused, it's Lost Kitten not Snow, but it kept using the word Snow in ways that confused my memory (I think it's because Snow was the name of a song on the Soundtrack).

The episode climaxes in a Christmas Miracle that is really a simple act of kindness.  Standard Christmas episode tropes.  But it's also specifically tied to the show's Sci-Fi setting and how Otaku driven it is.

I'm sure all the Christmas episodes BeneathTheTangles talked about are perfectly good if you're into those shows.  But I think this may be the best Anime Christmas Episode at being Christmas for Anime weirdos.

Serial Experiments Lain turns 21 today.

Someone born on the same day Serial Experiments Lain premiered on Japanese Television would today become old enough to drink alcohol in the United States.

A lot of the discussion around Lain is how "Prophetic" it was regarding the nature of the Internet.  What I find interesting is how part of the reason for that is people forgetting how old the Internet actually is.

I'm serious, there is an increasing tendency to think of it as purely a 21st century aspect of Pop Culture and in the 90s only true hyper tech nerds had access to it, The Internet Historian hasn't covered any 90s Internet history yet.  However there was in fact a movie called "You've Got Mail" made the same year as Lain.  As a wrestling fan I know that Jim Cornette was already making proto rant Vlogs on the WWF's official website in 1997.  

General Public access to the Internet opened in 1992 and by 1995 was already fairly widespread.  My first favorite Website to visit was SMBHQ, that site started in 96 and I remember the runner of the site talking about how he was inspired by the lack of good Mario fan-sites at the time, implying other franchises already had decent ones.

Basically just like every alleged "Prophecy" of the Simpsons, Lain was about what was already happening on the Internet, but we today see it as predicting our more modern versions of that.

It also wouldn't surprise me if in Japan the Net was becoming mainstream faster then it was in America during the 90s.  Before Japan's mid 90s Economic Crash they were in certain ways technologically ahead of us, remember they dominated the Video Game industry.   And one of the most fascinating little known facts is how Japanese TV was broadcasting in High Definition already in 1989, that's why Hotaru has a Flat Screen TV on Sailor Moon S in 95/96.  Akiharbara's original reputation was as a tech hub, and we see it play that role in the second episode of the Pretty Sammy OVA released in 96 before the TV anime started, where Washu humorously claimed credit for the Internet.

Usually when something becomes a ubiquitous part of daily life people start imagining it to be older then it really is.  So why has the opposite happened to the Internet?

It might have to do with how much the face of the modern Internet is younger then that.  YouTube started in 2005 and all the other hubs of modern "Social Media" are even younger.  Even 4Chan is a site that didn't exist yet in the 90s and it's the most popular still existing relic of the early net.

But also partly because there were plenty of people who didn't have access to the Internet right away.  I'm pretty sure I didn't till 1999, and it seems Digibro was later to getting on it then I was, so it's natural he'd think there were no Normies on the Internet yet in the 90s.

Throwing Time Travel into a series

Time Travel is always a tricky thing to write about, and even franchises that had Time Travel as a fundamental part of what it is from the start can still through added sequels become convoluted messes. None the less there is some great Time Travel based fiction out there, like Steins;Gate.

However in my opinion adding a time travel story-line to something that was not initially about that at all is almost never worth it.

This is by no means a consistently inherent deal breaker.  The more episodic something is, the more it can be fine if the time travel stories are kept away from the main overarching story-line and lore, the more it can be fine.  Even more so if consistent continuity was never a top concern.  This is why Star Trek and Pokémon can get away with doing occasional time travel plots, or at least Star Trek used to be able to.

But in Western Superhero Comics, the existence of Time Travel as a potential regular thing in those universes continues to cause more problems then it solves.  Fans accept it, but there is a reason it hasn't been a thing in any highly regarded Superhero movie, yet.

And then there is Sailor Moon, I love Sailor Moon but I just can't endorse the Black Moon Saga, even in the Manga/Crystal version which makes more sense then the 90s Anime.  Are we supposed to believe the timeline was saved from being changed at the end?  Then how-come Neo-Queen Serenity and King Endymion do not seem to remember everything Usagi and Mamoru experienced?  But if it is changed even slightly then why is everyone so certain Chibi-Usa will still exist?  Even if it's still a given that Mamoru and Usagi will get together there is no guarantee the child they have will be the same child, in fact the odds of it still being the exact same Sperm fertilizing the exact same Egg are almost impossible. People don't think about this because the show is about Magick not Science, which is exactly why I would have never added a Time Travel story to it.  I almost want to cite this as the ultimate example of what not to do when adding Time Travel to an ongoing story.  And the only value I see in the Black Moon lore as it's own story is how it unintentionally makes me think of Revelation 20.

I don't have the beef with Chibi-Usa as a character that many Sailor Moon fans have, she is exactly what I'd expect of Usagi's daughter and I mostly enjoy their antics.  My problem is how much her presence in future story-lines makes them dependent on the fact that this convoluted Time Travel story happened.  It's lessened by the fact that it's mostly just an excuse for our main couple to have a Daughteru when they haven't actually gotten married yet, but it's still there.

Fortunately two out of the three movies are stories you could write her out of pretty easily.

She plays an important role in the Infinity Arc, but fortunately the Time Travel is of little effect there.  In SuperS and Stars that is not so much the case anymore, and that's part of why the Infinity Arc is pretty much the end of what I care about.

But let's leave the Sailor Moon subject.

So if I've convinced you to agree that it's rarely worth it to throw Time Travel into something that wasn't about that from the start.  The next question is, how soon is the start?

Let's say you have a 12 episode Anime that reveals we'd been in a Time Loop all along more then half way through?  Well that's a situation where it depends on the execution.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Shoujo Kageki Reveu Starlight are two stories for which that is the case.  What's fascinating is how Reveu Starlight makes this reveal sooner, yet it's the one that feels like an @##pull.  The reason is on that show it becomes just a sub-plot, the person experiencing the loop is not part of the main pairing.  Because Madoka Magica is ultimately almost just as much about Homura as it is Madoka it was very easy to make the Loop feel like it was always what the show was about.

I have an issue with how Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are often depicted.

I don't know to what extent this can apply to Asimov's own stories.  This is the perspective of someone interested in the concept but who still hasn't read Asimov directly yet.  His Laws of Robotics have been used by other writers a lot.

For anyone out of the loop, here is what the Laws are.

The Three Laws, quoted as being from the "Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.", are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.^[1]

What I like about them is how there is no pretense to pretend the laws are equal to each other.  The first law has no qualifier, and each subsequent law has a qualifier defining the prior laws as overruling them in any potential conflict.

This should be a worth while concept to keep in mind even when trying to create moral or civil law codes, much less laws that it's outright impossible for certain lifeforms to violate because of how their artificial brains work.  That's why my personal attitude towards the two Commandments Jesus defined as the greatest Commandments is that if your attempt to obey or enforce some other law puts you in even apparent conflict with either of those then you should rethink what you're doing.

If I were to criticize the laws themselves, it'd be that Robot obedience is placed above their own self preservation.  That is what shows how they were designed to make them slaves.  A more benevolent programmer would at least switch the second and third laws.  Of course ultimately the obedience law being there at all makes them slaves.

But my subject today is how these laws are depicted in some stories.  Because some writers seem to forget that the qualifiers on the second and third laws exist.  For example, take the scene in The Forbidden Planet that KyleKallgrenBHH says demonstrates Asimov's three laws.

https://youtu.be/Za50E46Z87Y?t=361

For now I'll take Kyle at his word that that is the scene's intent.  It bugs me that this near meltdown of Robbie happens, that meltdown would make sense if the three laws were treated as equal.  But the qualifiers should guarantee that Robbie would simply not obey the command to kill and be fine.

I get that writers want to explore areas where this system of laws can be imperfect.  But that can be done without ignoring the qualifiers.  Heck the first command alone can create a conflict if the Robot is in a situation where the only action that can prevent one Human from "coming to harm" is to injure another human.

Making it up as you go along isn't always bad

Isaac Asimov's three laws of Robotics are probably the single most highly revered set of rules for a fictional universe ever conceived.  Before he started trying to connect the Robot universe to his other fiction they always were depicted consistently.  They're so highly revered that other writers have used them (not always correctly) as if they are just a given, from The Forbidden Planet to the Megaman games (in Japan).

This blog post isn't about that however.  It's about the fact that Isaac Asimov did not pre-plan them, they were not in some secret Universe Bible he constructed before he wrote his first piece of Robot themed fiction.  He started just writing stories about Robots how he naturally felt inspired to write them.  And then someone else, his Editor I think, told him "ya know your Robots seem to function on three basic laws" and then Isaac ran with it.  This observation being made opened the door to stories he would never have written otherwise.

There is a common perception out there that serialized fiction always works best when the writer has everything carefully planned out in advance.  Even though in the case of anything that has lasted more then one season or trilogy, that's never actually been the case, however much they may want their fans to think otherwise.  These fans may admit it's unrealistic to pre-plan every scene of all 154 episodes of a 7 season show.  But they think it's important to know where the show is headed, and to have a "Show Bible" that lays out all the key rules and lore, even ones you're going to wait years to mention onscreen.

Some fans of the Wheel of Time series are obsessed with a belief that the books are still playing out according to some master plan the original author laid out decades ago.  I have no idea whether or not that's true, I haven't read any of it yet.  But I find it amusing.

If Joss Whedon had refused to leave his original plan for Buffy Season 2, Spike would have died in episode 10.  But Buffy wound up feeling like it could have been pre-planned, buy in it's closing seasons cleverly drawing on what came before.  So basically I'm saying I do not think Joss planned for The First to be the final season's Big Bad when he wrote that Season 3 Christmas special, but it sure seemed to fit once that was how it all played out.

The average person does not know that Alexandre Dumas novels were written in a serialized format.  Among us who do know a perception exists that Dumas stories were more pre-planned then others.  And maybe he tried to be that way, but given what I know about how that industry worked, there is no way he wasn't subject to editorial whims based on reader feedback.  But Dumas and his rivals in that field like Paul Feval laid the foundations of modern genre fiction.

Telling a story that is carefully constructed from start to finish is of course often great.  But that doesn't work for something ongoing.  Madoka Magica was 12 perfectly executed episodes.  Then they decided to milk it some more.  If you want something to last years, it's best to allow it to be flexible.

Some shows seem to have poor endings because the creators wanted to stick to an ending they envisioned at the same time they wrote the Pilot, even though the show had evolved.  Star Trek Voyager was a victim of this.

You may think "Mithrandir, isn't this odd coming from someone who seems to believe George Lucas about how pre-planned Star Wars was???".  All I believe is that Vader was Luke's father by the time A New Hope was filming, I don't care how many early drafts don't fit the final product we got.  In SFdebris series about the development of Star Wars he delights in trying to refute the idea that Vader meaning father means something by going over these early versions. Yet Father-Son dynamics (with the father still alive) are all over these abandoned concepts he talks about.  Darth Vader is several of those concepts merged together, thankfully Lucas noticed that Vader means father at some point.  To me the big proof of this lies in how Anakin is never mentioned in Vader and Obi-Wan's conversation, yet their backstory as presented to Luke revolved around Anakin.

Plenty of other things clearly did change.  The Emperor was originally envisioned as just a puppet/figurehead according to the Novelization.  Yet the Novelization also proves something like the Taxation Disputes with the Trade Federation was always part of the Republic's fall.  I think Luke and Leia were already siblings when Empire was filmed, because it's ending makes no sense if they aren't, but I don't know about ANH.

So, my point is.  It's about the journey not the destination.