The Lineage of The Magical Girl Warrior

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

My long relationship with The Buffyverse

Back in 2000 the first episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer I watched was the season 4 episode This Year's Girl, which was obviously not a convenient episode to start with, but I enjoyed it.  Immediately after I watched the Angel episode Eternity.  I was under the impression that for both of those it was when they first aired, I know it was on a Tuesday from 7 to 9 o'clock central time on the WB.  But what Wikipedia currently says about when these episodes aired doesn't line up with that, was I actually catching reruns that aired during the Summer?

Both gave me some wrong impressions about what happened before, but I like that.  Prequel haters keep thinking it's a failure of Lucas that episodes Episodes I-III didn't happen exactly how they assumed from the way information was presented in IV-VI, but I know from experience even when a series was written in order you can get the wrong idea from watching it out of order.  These episodes of Buffy/Angle had me thinking Faith had slept with Angel and that Angle turning into Angelus happened semi-regularly.  (I had heard enough going in that I already knew Angel was a spin off and that Angel had been Buffy's boyfriend.)

I spent the next couple of years catching Buffy and Angel episodes on occasion.  But I fully became a fan in late 2002, when Buffy was already in it's last season.  What pulled me in was catching season 3 episodes as reruns.  Thanks to all of the Rerunning I had managed to see every episode before the series ended.

Buffy held the status of being my favorite TV show pretty solidly until Pretty Little Liars took that position as it's Season 4b was airing.  Thing is I spent a long time not caring about Buffy/Angel at all, it had been declining from my active nerdy interests before it was actually dethroned, and as soon as it was it became pretty much out of sight and out of mind.

Buffy's status as a Feminist show has become a topic of discussion as it's been reevaluated in recent years since Whedon's fall from grace.  I honestly can't speak much to that since the Feminism never was why I was into it.  The truth is I became the Feminist I am now fairly recently in the grand scheme of my life, even when I started these blogs in 2014 I wasn't all the way here yet.  Maybe what Buffy did right played a role in subconsciously prepping me for it, but really when I was big into Buffy I was still fairly Conservative/Libertarian on gender issues.  I was never a reactionary, I always supported the Feminist movements of the past, yet I was one of many Cis-Het white men naively assuming that battle was already won.  I never considered going against traditional gender roles to be wrong, but I was not willing to say having them was inherently a problem.  Now I've become a true Gender abolitionist, though my mind still struggles with the tendency to default to the Binary framework.

Even before I got into Buffy I already tended towards identifying with the female characters in the fiction I consumed, and being into female Superheroes.  I'd already gone through a Xena phase and watched some Sailor Moon.

The fictional media I've consumed has played a role in making me the Feminist I've become.  But mostly I'd say the credit for that goes to Pretty Little Liars and much of the Anime I've consumed.  But also much of the analytical discussion of that media I've consumed, chiefly what Heather Hogan would write about PLL, and the perspective on Anime provided by VraiKaiser and Josienextdoor's WordPress blogs, and then on YouTube people like Digibro, ThePedanticRomantic and Zeria.

Much of the recent reevaluation of Buffy suggests that perhaps Whedon's Feminism always was more like where I was when I loved Buffy, someone who liked Strong Women but who's Feminism is still pretty Binary.  But my point here is simply that Buffy didn't have much of an effect one way or the other on the development of my views on Gender, it's importance to me is in other areas.

Is Buffy another aspect of my Nerdy history that foreshadows the obsession I've developed with Anime?  I think it's mostly how much Bathos there was in Whedon's sense of Humor that anticipates my modern opposition to Tonal Consistency.  Xena was a show that jumped around a lot but each individual episode was still pretty tonally consistent.

Buffy played a big role in making me think about how to structure serialized story telling.  Many have talked at length about the Seventh Episode factor Buffy had, it's not the only TV show to have it but it played a pretty big role in making me notice it.  But what's more interesting is how for a long time I considered episode 5 the ideal point to introduce the Big Bad in a 22 episode season because of Buffy.  The thing is Buffy only actually did that twice, in seasons 3 and 5, so why did I think of it as a major factor in the Buffy formula?  It might have to do with episode 5 resetting the Big Bad in season 1, or that I had briefly mistakenly thought the Halloween episode of season 2 was an episode 5 which at least featured the Big Bad and introduced a minor recurring villain.  Perhaps it oddly fits that in the last season episode 5 was the last appearance of a kind of important villain, Anyanka.

The fact that on Noir it was episode 5 that finally named it's antagonistic force was an interesting coincidence for me. I now know of at least one pre-Buffy show that did this, season 2 of Lois and Clark introduced Intergang in episode 5.

Both seasons that introduce the Big Bad in episode 5 have them then appear in episodes 6 and 8 with those being their only three appearances in the first 10 episodes. Maybe I simply always considered those two seasons the best at how they mapped out the Big Bad's role.

I already talked a bit about my history with Fan Fiction and Shipping where Buffy in particular Dawn was important, she was my favorite character.

I had kinda semi-forgotten just how much I valued Buffy and Angel.  The other day I started watching The Passion of The Nerd's Buffy and Angel videos on YouTube and they really started bringing it all back to me.  This hasn't lead to me re-watching any episodes yet and I don't think they will, I prefer to keep devoting my actual spare time to Anime and allow my memory of Buffy to remain how it is.

SaGa Frontier deserves some credit in the History of Female Representation in Video Games.

First off, yes it is still problematic that out of 7 main protagonists only 2 are women while 4 are men, it is good that the Robot seems to be defined gender neutrally.

What I like however is that the main supporting characters for the female leads are also women.  It annoys me how in movies like Rogue One the progress made by having a female lead is undermined by her still being given all men as her supporting cast.

First I should back up and provide some context.

SaGa Frontier has a unique premise among JRPGs, each protagonist has a completely different story, but they are all taking place in the same world, visiting the same cities on the same map and having largely the same side-quests.  It's an interesting premise I'd like to see more of.

Aselus story is probably the most blatantly Feminist, the main villain is quite literally a Feudal Patriarch.  And she is canonically Gay, it's not just subtext.

Emelia's two main supporting party members are Annie and Best Girl Liza.  This story is definitely about straight women however, though I'm sure it's inspired just as much Femslash fan fiction.

I can see being annoyed at how much Emelia's story is about her Boyfriend, being framed for his murder and then once out of prison being motivated by wanting to find the real killer and get revenge.  Thing is, that's a pretty common story for Male protagonists, in Film Noirs and Neo-Noirs, their wife or girlfriend is killed and they're framed for it.  So I found it interesting to see a woman get that story for a change.

There is a lot more to these stories, but I've decided I don't want to spoil too much.

I haven't actually played this game yet, I'm going off Let's Plays here.  But I think I might be able to handle it better then most RPGs.  Like Mario RPG it doesn't have random encounters, it looks kinda like Mario RPG in a lot of ways really.  It also looks beautiful and has wonderful Music.

Isekai went from being about Girls to being about Boys

I find it interesting how the development of the Isekai genre has kind of went in the opposite direction of a lot of other genre fiction.  We're recently finally getting an upsurge of female lead Superhero and Space Opera films.  Isekai has gone the reserve of that.

Isekai used to be primarily about young Girls from the real world being transported to a fantasy one, from Alice in Wonderland to Dorthy in Oz. Then the Narnia books were relatively gender even.  But also with it's development in Anime, 90s and very early 2000s Isekai shows were typically Shoujo, from Magic Knight Rayearth, to Escaflowne to The Twelve Kingdoms (I just watched it's first episode).

But it seems they became more male oriented as the genre was taken over by Light Novels and became increasingly Otaku oriented.

As someone who's developed a great appreciation for modern Isekai, starting with In Another World with my Smartphone, then No Game No Life(it's about a brother and sister, but still geared towards the male perspective), and then Outbreak Company.  I would like to see that kind of story with a female lead.  I'd love to see Smartphone's going all in with a true non monogamous resolution to it's Harem be applied to a Yuri Harem or a Reverse Harem, or a female lead with multiple lovers of multiple genders.

And beyond that.  Once again what I love is how unapologetic wish fulfillment they are, and I think the world needs equally unapologetic wish fulfillment fantasies for girls, since they are far more often the ones shamed for their fantasies.

But shows like Twelve Kingdoms predated that being an Anime norm, it's instead really dark in how it gets our heroine to her new world.  The wish fulfillment is there, but it's desperately trying to justify itself.  A young woman getting to go on a traditional Hero's Journey is also something I know we need more of.  But in the mindset I'm in now, I need pure Escapism much more, and I'm sure plenty of young women feel the same.

 Basically, old Isekai Anime are like Batman V Superman, while this new trend is like the MCU.

Cinemanarrative Dissonance, the Male Gaze, Megan Fox and Anime

The Folding Ideas YouTube Channel did a video a few months ago on Ludonarrative Dissonance.

In it he references an earlier video that coined the term Cinemanarrative Dissonance with the intent of mocking the idea of talking about Ludonarrative Dissonance.  But he does so going on to say he thinks Cinemanarrative Dissonance is a thing that should be talked about, even if the examples are in general less common then in games.

He cited Megan Fox's character in the Transformers movie as a good example.  The character is a well written not very stereotyped character, who has a solid arc, and is well performed by Megan Fox.  But the camera treated her like a piece of meat, and that is how fans, both casual and even more savvy ones, saw her.

He's not the only person to observe this, it came up in a recent article on The Mary Sue.  I haven't seen the Transformers films myself yet, but I can say as someone who was on Internet Forums like IMDB back then, the perception of the character and of Fox herself was what Folding Ideas says the Cinematography presented.

Now, why is Anime in the title of this post?

Because a lot of female Anime characters have kind of been given the same Cinemanarrative Dissonate treatment.  Characters who are well written, have agency, and depth, and are relate-able.  Yet the animation constantly objectifies them with a lot of the Anime Style Fanservice that I dislike.

The difference I've observed is which way of viewing the female character in question prevails in the general perception of viewers.  With the Anime I'm thinking of this use of fan-service is criticized, but it does not control how the characters are perceived.

Highschool of The Dead is a good example, reportedly most of it's fans are women.  What's empowering about the characters' managed to not be completely drowned out by all the uncomfortable panty shoots and ridiculous boob physics.

But with Transformers, both Megan Fox's character and the actress herself were slut shamed by society, including Feminists, with websites like TheMarySue not feeling the need to stick up for her till fairly recently.  People somehow saw it as her fault that Bay objectified her.

Now in some Anime this contrast is intentional with a feminist commentary in mind, like The Woman Called Fujiko Mine or as I've been told Kill La Kill.  Those I would not compare to Transformers.  But their Live Action Hollywood counterparts do also seem to have more trouble obtaining artistic respectability, like Jenifer's Body (another Megan Fox film) and Sucker Punch.

Why is the general viewer reaction to this contrast so different?  Shouldn't it be easier to see the humanity of the character when it's a flesh and blood human being?  Is it harder to view the actress herself as culpable when she's not physically there?  Is it related to how Anime is inherently more abstract?

Maybe it's because the audience for Anime is more Niche, and so a larger percentage of viewers are inclined to read deeper. 

Jeanne d'Arc in Anime is too Gender Normative

I can accept that it's unreasonable for me to want every Anime featuring her to follow the theory she was a Lesbian that I favor, or others that she was Trans or Non Binary.

But there is no dispute that she did dress like a man, and cut her hair short to fit that.  Whether or not that was motivated by anything more then what she said it was we'll probably never know for sure.

Jeanne appears a lot in Anime and Manga.  But I haven't seen any reference to her cross dressing, in fact she tends to be the most feminine woman in the show.  And it's not like this is alien to Anime, there is a long tradition of female Anime characters who look and dress rather boyish, the Bifauxnen.

It's like Japan simply didn't get the memo on this part of Jeanne's story, they just think female saint equals perfect embodiment of Christian Femininity.

In Fate/Apocrypha it could have created a nice contrast with Astolfo, a guy dressed as a girl, especially since they seem to be being set up as romantic rivals.  And both are French.

Princess Principal was great

It ended today.  It didn't do one of the few things that could have completely ruined it.

It was a fun cute Yuri show, with a lot of appeal to New Pulp and Steampunk nerds.

I highly recommend it to Otaku and Normies a like.  So I hope it gets Dubbed, and that Amazon fixes it's problems.

There is room to continue.  Plus room for more episodes set between what we already saw based on the Case numbers.  So show it your support.  If it's the only reason you're paying for Anime Strike, make sure Amazon knows that.

Akko isn't as Sexy in the series as she was in the movies

It can be difficult to explain what I mean by that, all incarnations of Little Witch Academia are free of the Anime style fan-service that I've complained about before.  And Akko's character design and wardrobe are at first glance identical.  I think a lot of it has to do with how her Legs are animated, I'm a Leg Man so maybe most viewers aren't paying as close attention to that as I am.

This isn't a criticism, I liked the LWA movies and I'm enjoying the series so far (I'm 9 episodes in as of deciding to make this post).

The theory I'm going to present here, that many may find truly shocking, is that the reason for this is that the TV series is more concerned with appealing to Male Otaku.

The way Akko is sexy in the original movie is kind of like how Sailor Moon was sexy, and other Shoujo Anime.  LWA may not be officially marketed as a Shoujo Anime, but it feels more like a Shoujo Anime then an Otaku anime.  In other words, yes Women do like being Sexy in their wish fulfillment fantasies, just as male leads are generally attractive in stuff marketed to men.

Meanwhile Enchanted Parade was crowdfunded mainly by Western fans which is why it actually premiered in America first.  So it was made perhaps more so then most Anime with a concern for appealing to a Western audience.  Really playing up how the premise is basically Harry Potter meets My Little Pony.

But the TV series aired on regular Japanese television.  And so had to be concerned with keeping actual Otaku hooked more then any prior incarnation.  Hence getting in episode 8 the first really blatant Yuri Bait moment.

And here is the fact so many critics of Cute Girl shows and their fanbase overlook.  For better or for worse, stereotypical Otaku actually don't want their Cute Girls to be Sexy, they want them being Cute but totally pure and non-sexual.  Contrary to what you may have heard, including from Otaku themselves when we're making fun of ourselves, most Otaku consider sexiness and cuteness mutually exclusive.  Even Digibro included no "Lolies" in his list of the Hottest women in Anime.

Tsukihime is the gender flipped Twilight

I recently watched the Tsukihime anime.  It's in the same universe as the Fate/ franchise.  The existing Anime from 2003 is generally not well thought of by Type Moon fans, but I enjoyed it.  However I hope Tsukihime gets it's own UFOtable reboot, perhaps once the Heaven's Feel movies are done.  I think it'd even also work here to start with the second route.  In Fate/Zero season 2 the first episode of Kritisugu's origin story ties into the Tsukihime lore.

I was big into the Vampire craze for awhile, I was someone who did not particularly like Twilight but was far more annoyed by the Twilight hatedom. The Vampire Diaries was my favorite Vampire TV show airing at the time.  I had a past complicated history with Buffy but that's a different matter.  I also read the books from the 90s that TVD was originally based on.

I was interested in what little was written that attempted to be a gender inversion of the typical Vampire YA romance formula.  (This was well before Meyer made her own Gender flipped version of Twilight that was rather lazy.)  Christopher Pike's The Last Vampire series also known as Thirst, was the primary example I could find of a Female Vampire falling in love with a boy in high-school.

And what I noticed from that is the female "Good Vampires" are much more morally ambiguous.  Sita was very much an Anti-Heroine, and Lesbian Vampires tended to be modeled after Carmilla.

That's not exactly what I would expect based on the prevalence of the Madonna-Whore Complex.  I would expect it'd be Female Vampires who had no choice but to be either complete Vamps or totally pure angels.  But perhaps it's a product of the belief the ancient Greek philosophers had that women inherently can't control their passions, and therefore only male Vampires could be "Vegetarians".

Eventually I got out of Vampires for the most part.  Lately when I do watch something Vampire related it's checking out Anime Vampires.

I was never able to find a story about a Female Vampire refraining from drinking Human Blood who falls in love with a High School Student.  Not until I was long done looking and decided to watch Tsukihime because I'm growing increasingly obsessed with Fate/ and didn't even know it was a Vampire story going in.

There were no Werewolves though, the Jacob in this case is a sword wielding Vatican Assassin who's name is pronounced C.L. (in the Dub at least).  First time we see her in action she has those same wanna be Wolverine claws Kirei uses.

Meanwhile, we also have a "Little Sister" who in every conceivable way seems like an Older Sister.  And Red Headed Twin Maids.

It's fun, I may check out the Manga, and I rarely read Manga that isn't a Yuri Doujin, so that says something.

Wedding Peach and Yuki Yuna is a Hero

Every Magical Girl Warrior show owes a debt to Sailor Moon, just as all Comic Book Superheros owe one to Superman.  Sailor Moon invented that genre, or Sub-Genre rather.  Things existed before that you could compare it to (Cutey Honey, Mary Marvel, the 70s TV Wonder Woman and Isis), but Sailor Moon was the proper genesis of the Magical Girl Warrior.

But none is stuck in the shadow of Sailor Moon more directly then 1995's Wedding Peach.  It's a show that's easy to glance at and see it as the most generic and egregious Sailor Moon copycat.  But that is unfortunate because I think the show does plenty of distinctive interesting things.

First of all is the fact that the Mascot character is a minion of the enemies who changes sides when Momoko helps her.  The fact that Momoko's father does eventually learn what's going on.  And I feel like noting that this show predates certain western shows that did a similar, Heroine's Boyfriend has an evil demon alter ego twist, including Buffy.

I haven't finished Wedding Peach yet, I'm close to the end, but going through 50 episodes is a slog.  And given the nature of Anime adaptations of Manga I'm not even sure I'll get a satisfying resolution to the story.  It's far from being my favorite Magical Girl Show mainly because it manages to be the hardest to read any basis for my Yuri shipping into.  But I've found a lot of it's character arcs interesting.  And it's the only Magical Girl show that surpasses Sailor Moon in how sexy I think the girls look in their uniforms.

Miragephan has alluded to plans to do a negative review of Yuki Yuna is a Hero eventually.  That seems to be the magical girl show that most enrages her.

It comes from a place of her not liking the Dark Magical Girl trend in general, which is odd to me given how she said in the Madoka isn't a Deconstruction video that she doesn't like limiting what a Magical Girl show could be, but whatever.   If it's the darkness trend she doesn't like I feel like it should be the show that started the trend she is more mad at.

Meanwhile Magical Girl Raising Project is the show that takes the darker and edgier trend to it's most extreme conclusion.  And from what I've heard the Light Novels get even worse in the future arcs where it eventually just becomes the bad guys winning all the time like on Game of Thrones.

But even from the point of view of liking Madoka and being annoyed by shows perceived as being pale imitations.  I couldn't see why Yuki Yuna would be the one to single out.

Then I recalled how Digi placed Yuki Yuna on his Beginner's guide to Magical Girls chart "I want something exactly like Madoka".  (Other things that bug me on that chart are including Utena at all, failing to include Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne in the Thief section, defaulting to HeartCatch as the entry way for PreCure, and not starting either column or even sub-route with Sailor Moon.)

Given how I recently said that Madoka was basically also the birth of a new Sub-Genre.  It seems Yuki Yuki has become the Wedding Peach to Madoka's Sailor Moon.  

Shows like Raising Project and Wixoss have their unique gimmicks visible right up front, one is Magical Girl Hunger Games, and one is the Trading Card Game anime version of Madoka.  (Only thing we're missing is a darker revival of the Magical Girl Thief sub-genre)  While Yuki Yuna is the easiest show on the Madoka bandwagon to write off as failing to do anything unique or distinctive, when in fact it does quite a bit, and is in my opinion far more imaginative then either of those two shows.

Sometimes I outright consider Yuki Yuna better then Madoka (which would make it my favorite Magical Girl show period).  Especially now that I know the whole one character being stuck in an endless time-loop twist had been done in Anime before, something I didn't know in 2014 when I first watched Madoka.  Two Fat Guys Talk are a pair of YouTubers who unlike me flat out hate Madoka, but are also big fans of Yuki Yuna, it's biggest fans possibly, they are for Yuki Yuna what Digibro is for K-On.  So clearly Yuki Yuna has an appeal independent of simply wanting more Madoka.

The thing is, much of what's distinctive in Yuki Yuna are twists, twists I don't want to talk about without a Spoiler Warning.

But besides the spoilers, I do find the characters distinctive.  Toga gets compared to Homura but that is totally unfair.  The only criticism I've seen of Yuki's character is practically a word for word repeat of the common ignorant reasons people "can't relate to Superman".  Fu like Mami can be compared to Manga Minako, but in a very different way, since the point with Mami was she never got to be a team leader even though she was meant to be one.  Fu is my favorite character from Yuki Yuna.

Actually that the show is set in the future not the present isn't supposed to be a spoiler, it's just something people often miss at first.

And I also feel like no other proper Magical Girl show is nearly as rich in Shintoism.

Most importantly, Yuki Yuna like Madoka (before the movie) does have a happy ending. A Happier ending arguably.  Maybe Yuki Yuna will repeat the mistake of ruining that with the sequel, we'll see this fall.

AnimeFeminist has an article on Dark Magical Girl shows.  The author of the article was quite hostile to the genre, but what I like is it's comments section.  A lot of perspectives come up there, people who only like Madoka, people who like Yuki Yuna the best, and at least one person who hates Yuki Yuna the most.  That person's issue had a lot to do with comparing it to military propaganda, which I think is unfair, no one hates military propaganda more then me.  It even has someone defending Raising Project.  It's a pretty insightful comments section.

Here is another really good positive review of Yuki Yuna.

I don't expect everyone to like Yuki Yuna as much as I do.  But don't dismiss it.  It is far more unique and special then many would have you believe.


Spoiler Warning!!!!!!!!

I've watched a lot more Mobile Suit Gundam

So you may remember old posts on this Blog where I talked about Gundam 00 being the only Gundam show I'd watched.  Eventually, earlier this year, I watched the 4 already released episodes of Gundam The Origin and posted about it.

Not long after that I watched the first two episodes of Turn A Gundam then put it on hold.  There I was mainly interested in the Dune like ultra distant future when our History is an ancient mythical past largely forgotten.  But I got annoyed at how literal it took the "reverting to Victorian level society" thing.  I could buy the idea of society technologically regressing, but like literally redoing the same fashion sense is just silly to me.

Well now, since August began, I have decided it was time I really delved into Gundam.

I watched the Gundam movie Trilogy.  And I was impressed, as someone who generally likes the longer versions of any story, I didn't feel like I was missing anything watching these films.  I feel like I can highly recommend them to anyone who's into Space Operas but not sure they get the whole Mecha appeal.

I want to comment briefly on it's treatment of female characters.  It's tempting to compare it to how modern Anime of the same genre tends to handle them, and that may come up later.  But right now I just want to comment on how they are massively better then the big SciFi franchises America had at the time, (Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica) simply by having more then just one or two.  It has 4 among the protagonists (none of whom were ever Damseled) and 3 among the Antagonists.

So it's another reminder of how annoyed I get when people act like Japan in inherently more Sexist then America.  Their gender issues are different, neither is better or worse.  A lot of Modern Japan's peculiar issues were caused by Westernization, which particularly makes it annoying to see westerners criticize it.  (Example, you think their obsession with Panties is weird, well Panties didn't exist in Japan before Westenrization).

After watching the Trilogy I went right to Char's Counterattack.  And I did so knowing full well I was skipping two 50 episode serieses of story.  But I've watched things out of order before, and I wanted to get the gist of the main Gundam saga quickly.  This movie is ultimately also pretty great in-spite of the beginning feeling like you've already missed two acts.  Ironically some reviews I read on MAL were disappointed how irrelevant the events of Zeta and ZZ seemed to be.  Though from my perspective of skipping those it definitely feels like a huge of chunk of Char's character development is missing.  I think their complaint was mainly that characters introduced in those shows were irrelevant to Char's Counterattack, it seems everyone I didn't recognize from the Trilogy were brand new characters.

I then revisited SFDebris reviews of Gundam 0080.  I'll probably actually watch that OVA eventually, but for now since I already know the gist of what happened, and 80s Anime isn't easy for me to get into, I'm gonna focus on watching other Gundam stuff.

I then decided to start Gundam Wing, which was apparently the biggest Gundam show of the 90s.  I'm enjoying it, but also feeling like I'd prefer how a modern Anime would tell this story.  I've watched 17 episodes now and I need to take a break.

Gundam 00 also had 50 episodes, but it decided to clearly present them as two separate seasons, so I knew going in I'd get some sense of a full story out of just the first 25 and that made going all in on it easier for someone like me.

I next watched Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky.  I complained last month about how much I hate DC Animated movies being only 70 minutes.  But if you're the kind of person who likes 70 Minute Animated features, this movie is a pretty good one.

The movie is perhaps not the best entry point since it's basically another side story of the One Year War.  But since a lot of these newer Universal Century Gundam stories are retconning a lot of things (originally the idea was there was only one Gundam during this war, and that's not the Gundam you see in Thudnerbolt),  knowing the original Gundam story can at times be counter productive to understanding what's going on.  In this case my knowing who the Zeon and Federation were didn't help that it took me awhile to figure out which characters were on which side.

However it probably would have helped more if I read it's MyAnimeList description first.  We make fun of Anime official descriptions not always being accurate, but I think that's cause many are telling you what you need to know going in rather then summarizing what happens.  Like the information you get from a Star Wars opening Crawl.  Indeed I've been using the Star Wars Crawl Generator site to make some Star Wars style Crawls for Gundam, mainly using text taken from MAL.  And here is one I made for Thunderbolt December Sky. [And now it's on my YouTube channel]

My main criticism of Thunderbolt is how it handled it's female characters.  The Federation side in this has a female Captain who seems written to be a vindication of every Misogynist who says women shouldn't be in the Military.  The main female character on the Zeon side is better handled only in comparison to that mess.

This movie is very interesting in it's use of Music.  It started a year after Guardians of The Galaxy came out which I don't think is a coincidence.  It's another movie using a lot of Music you can expect Baby Boomers to be Nostalgic for.  But not so gratuitously as some post GotG Hollywood films have.

In one of my old discussions of Gundam 00 I commented on how diverse it's cast of characters was, and wondered if other Gundam shows were similar.  Right now I'd say Gundam 00 still seems to be the most diverse Gundam show.  Among the reasons for that being it actually features Japan and Japanese characters more then other Gundam shows.  The original had Mirai who's probably Japanese based on the name, and that's it.  One Pilot in Wing is Asian but a continental Asian, I think he's Chinese.

Char Aznable's iconic look is quite Aryan.  I'm not sure what we're supposed to think Amuro Ray's ethnicity is, but I'd cast him as African American in a Live Action version, partly because his name has inspired me to Headcanon him as a descendant of Tupac Amaru Shakur.

Gundam is often called the Star Wars of Japan.  Which is why I think I'd commented in my post on Mash-Up Trailers, or at least I meant to, on how strange I found it there aren't any Mash-Up Trailers of Gundam to Star Wars trailers yet.  We have them for Code Geass, Nanoha, Evangelion and SAO, but not Gundam?

My favorite trailer for The Phantom Menace, the one largely focused to Padme with little Anakin or Obi-Won.  I'd like to see done to Gundam Wing, with Relena as Padme.

The original Gundam could fit the new Star Wars movie's Trailers well.

I'm going to talk about Tsunderes, but it's not because I'm like them or anything

One character archetype a lot of modern critics seem to be harshest on is the Anime Tsundere, where I see comments like "the tsundere schtick is handled well when the trope is treated like a mental hangup bordering on mental illness."-a YouTuber calling themselves Char Azanbel.

You see, I've paid enough attention to the world to know that the Tsundere isn't unique to Anime.  It can be traced back to Shakespeare at least.  Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing describes Beatrice's feelings for Benedick thusly:

By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think
of it but that she loves him with an enraged
affection: it is past the infinite of thought.

Skye Sweetnam had a song called Tangled Up In Me where she was basically singing about being a Tsundere.  That whole common idea you've heard that if a girl was picking on you on the playground it probably means she likes you, is exactly what the Tsundere is based on.  It's only become so well categorized in Anime because we Otaku obsess over categorizing everything.

Asuka from Evangelion keeps getting praised as the best written Tsundere. I was unable to find her likeable regardless of her backstory, and that's as someone who's bias is always to favor the female characters.  So I get sick of seeing Asuka praised for being Traumatized, while Rin Tohsaka is considered just a visual novel cliche by "educated" critics. And Kagami ignored for being from an Anime that isn't story driven at all, but that's what I like about Lucky Star.

Everything above is basically copied from an earlier post I did where this Tsundere rant was a mere example of a broader subject.   But now I want to expand on it.

I've been looking at the Anime Tsunderes who predate the term being coined in the early-mid 2000s.  Auska and Misty of Pokemon are among them, Misty is another character I wasn't fond of in-spite of my general bias for female characters.  Do I simply not like Proto-Tsunderes as much as the modern caricature???  Not really.

You see what I've found really interesting looking at 90s Anime is that Tsundere traits most showed up in Shoujo Anime (Anime marketed to young girls), often in the main character, the one the audience is supposed to most be able to project themselves onto.

Heck it possibly starts with Sailor Moon herself, Usagi Tsukino, who is at the beginning very much a Tsundere towards Mamoru.  Rei Hino is also a Tsundere both towards her male love interest (and towards Usagi).  I also notice this in Wedding Peach with Momoko towards Youske, and Hinagiku towards her love interest.  Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne also does the same thing.  In most of these cases the Tsun is mutual from the male in question.

That suggests the average Japanese School Girl could to some degree relate to it, or at the very least enjoy watching it play out.

Otaku centric Light Novels and Visual Novels and the Anime adapted from them began to more and more define some characters almost solely around this trait.  But why is the Tsundere seemingly always the most popular?  When my observations of the Meme generating community suggests the other characters have more vocal fans among typical Otaku?  Is it possible the female audience that many want to pretend doesn't exist for these shows are in fact the ones rooting for the Tsunderes?

Or maybe it's that regardless of Gender the Tsundere is the most relateable, more so then she is an ideal fantasy lover?  Since after all we can all relate to being conflicted, to being in denial, or to warming up to someone or something over time.  I relate to Hiragi Kagmi so much she's currently my Avatar almost everywhere online, even though in theory Konata is who an anti-social lazy Otaku like myself should most identify with.  The thing is I'm not as self confident as Konata is.  EndlessJess relates to Asuka the most of anyone in Evangelion.  I relate to Rei Ayanami most in Eva, so I guess it depends on what kind of Tsudnere it is for me.

When I first made that earlier post I hadn't seen Toradora yet.  It's great, I recommend it, and it's Dub is great too.  Taiga is a very fun little Tsundere.  But there are other cool characters as well.

For a fun epilogue, here is a YouTube video of mine made for Lucky Star fans.

I don't like the 2009 animated Wonder Woman movie

A lot of people seemed to like it, and I don't get why.  Before we had a Live Action Wonder Woman movie people kept saying this is what it should be like.  Now that we do have one, (one I still highly recommend, if you haven't seen it yet you need to),  I haven't yet seen anyone say that animated movie was better, but I have seen people while praising the Gal Gadot film overall saying they preferred the 2009 cartoon's Ares at least.

I can't relate even to that.  First of all how Ares looked in that animated movie isn't justified by the Comics which usually revolved around us not seeing his face at all.  But either way I don't care how Ares looked in the Comics, I know that the Ancient Greeks took pride in that their gods looked like Human beings and not animals like the gods of the "Barbarians" (since they took too literally certain Mesopotamian and Egyptians depictions of their gods).  Ares in the 2009 animated movie looked like they were going for a vaguely Final Fantasy or Anime look, and not a very informed one.

This movie's issues are different from my general issues with this DTV animated film line that I laid out in the Year One post.  Since it was not a direct adaptation of anything they designed it to fit the 70 minute run-time well, and I can't really complain about the voice acting either.

The Ares complaint above is just the most superficial, alongside my being annoyed how Hades was depicted, and having Hippolyta have a child with Ares.  Those mistakes also parallel things I dislike in an equivalent way in the 2017 film, and so clearly are things I could get over.

What I can't forgive is Trevor and Diana's relationship revolving around him mansplaining to her about gender relations.  That's literally the opposite of what I wanted from that relationship.  And I have seen other feminists express the same complaint, in a comments section on the DCWomenKickingAss Tumblr.

I was also really annoyed by the Persephone character, and her ranting to Hippolyta in their fight at the end.  The last thing I want to hear in a Wonder Woman movie is a moral about how women need men.

Basically it managed to undermine everything Wonder Woman should be about.

The only redeeming value it has is the Alexa character, voiced very well by the great Tara Strong.  I liked her, and could enjoy seeing her re-imagined in a better Wonder Woman story.

But that's not enough to save it, and so every time I see Angry Joe say this stupid thing is how Wonder Woman should be, I want to punch my computer screen.

Now that we have a good Wonder Woman movie staring Gal Gadot, we no longer need to settle for this crap, just ignore it and act like it never existed.

Hopefully we will get the Animated movie staring Lynda Carter that has been rumored since the Adam West and Burt Ward animated movie did well (Rest In Peace in Adam West).  And then we can finally have an at least respectable animated Wonder Woman.

Update: So this TheMarySue Article came out in 2019 that is pretty similar to my thoughts here.
https://www.themarysue.com/wonder-woman-2009-not-good/

My Feminist defense of "Cute Girls doing Cute Things" and Yuri Anime

 First I'm going to talk just about "Cute Girls doing Cute Things" for awhile.  Then talk about Yuri at the end.

I'm not really an expert on the genre, there are a number of important shows I have seen little or none of yet, Aria, Azumanga Dioh, Manibi Straight, Hidemari Sketch, Nichijo and Is The Order a Rabbit.  And the shows Digibro talked about in his How to Distinguish between Cute Girl Shows video.  All shows I intend to get to eventually.  Well Aria seems comparatively boring so maybe not that one.

This genre of Anime is in a similar place to Twilight in that I can't sympathize with the Feminist criticism as much as I maybe should, since I know the hatedom is truly driven by Misogyny and Homophobia, yet because Sexists always try to deny they're Sexists, they then use the Feminist criticisms as a shield.  The difference being I don't particularly like Twilight myself so have no personal investment in pointing this out for that one.

Before most Western Feminists even heard the term "Moeblob".  The outrage against these shows started among 80s/90s Nerds who missed the days when Anime (or at least the Anime that got localized in America) was dominated by hyper masculine shows, from Giant Robots to Shounon fighting shows.  Who are deeply offended by the very idea of men enjoying girly shows, even if they are ones technically marketed to men rather then women.  Who see it as an example of how modern society is trying to emasculate them in their paranoid minds. 

Before I became a full Otaku, most of the girly shows I liked were shows that were made for women at least partly, and are shows I still like to varying degrees.  From Buffy, to One Tree Hill, to The Vampire Diaries to Pretty Little Liars.  Before those I even recall being into Party of Five and Xena.  And of course one of my earliest exposures to Anime was Sailor Moon.  I've also genuinely enjoyed a number of Lifetime movies.  And all of this was stuff I got crap for on IMDB if it came up on a board where most of the visitors were typical male nerds.

And my favorite characters have always been female characters no matter how male oriented a show or movie is.  And not just because I found them attractive.  Even though I'm Cisgender, I have a tendency to relate and identify with female characters far more often then male ones in the fiction I enjoy.

And so Padme is my favorite Star Wars character, Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain are my favorite Batman characters, Donna Troy and Raven are my favorite non Batman DC characters.  My favorite Narnia character was Susan.  Even when I read Children of Hurin I liked Niniel the best.  With Pokemon it was weird at first that I didn't like Misty much, but then I got Lisa in the 3rd Movie, Domino in Mewtwo Returns, and in time May and Dawn, and Leaf in the games (I also like the Lass trainers).

I want to write a show that would be essentially the Western Live Action counterpart to Lucky Star.  And the thing is I wanted to write that before I knew Lucky Star existed.  Back around 2010-11, I started working in my head on a show that ostensibly had a Sci-Fi/Fantasy premise, but most of the scenes I cared about were just my characters, which were mostly teenage girls, talking with each other about random and often nerdy stuff.  So when in mid 2016 I discovered Lucky Star, and discovered there was an audience for doing that without the Genre pretense, I felt really liberated.

Digibro likes to compare the appeal of shows like Lucky Star to the appeal of Let's Plays, or at least Let's Plays with more then one person involved.  And indeed the above show I planned even included a few scenes of them talking while the others were watching one play a Video Game, even though I hadn't really heard of Let's Plays yet.

The first show I watched that could be considered a Cute Girls doing Cute Things show, isn't one strictly since it did have one prominent male character love interest, that was Engaged to the Unintended.  Later in early 2016 I watched Yuru Yuri, that show really helped me through some stuff.  Then later in the Summer of that year when I watched for the first time Lucky Star, I knew this was a genre I wanted more of.  Lucky Star remains the best in this genre to me.

Next in line was K-On, it is also really great but a bit too plot/story driven for my tastes.   The thing about K-On is it's only in the west Feminists (or anyone) complains about it, in Japan in-spite of being ostensibly marketed more to men, it was written and directed by Women and has a strong female fan-base.

These shows generally do not have what I complained about in my Anime Fanservice post.  Occasionally one will have a little early on while hooking viewers and then completely drop it.

I'm not the only male who's enjoyment of this genre overlaps with an ability to enjoy Girly Shows actually made for Girls.  I don't think it's a coincidence that the biggest advocate of K-On on YouTube was also once the original Brony, or at least the leading one on YouTube.  A number of Digibro's videos about K-On and Lucky Star are in my Kyoto Animation playlist.

Digibro made a chart called A Guide to "Cute Girls doing Cute Things".  And then a YouTube video explaining it.  A lot of the sub-genres in that chart fail to carry over all of the original appeal, in fact some unfortunately do become Fan Service heavy.  The first three categories are really the purest examples of the Genre.  Digibro also did a Podcast on his history with the Genre.

Some of you might be annoyed how often I'm mentioning Digibro.  Well in a lot of ways he's smarter at explaining things then I am.  Yet still I think there is a slight difference between what I look for in the genre and what he does, so I do need to say more then just "Watch Digibro's videos".

The reason I have come lately to mostly like these shows more then actual Shoujo Anime, is that unfortunately Shoujo Anime continues to be made under an assumption that a Het Romance is necessary for girls to care about it.  I have recently come to find most Het romantic fiction boring, and believe it or not so do a lot of women.

What I'm getting at is, these shows appeal to men who in some ways don't fit society's normal standard of masculinity.  So while these shows may still have problems, and some of the men they appeal to may still be sexist in some ways.  I think it helps far more then hurts that we have these shows.

I mentioned in a comments section once how these shows all pass the Bechdel test rather easily.  And then got responses that I was somehow missing the point of the Bechdel test.  I'm well aware that what the Bechdel test points out is only a symptom not the problem.  The way to pass that test without actually treating the real problem would be a story with like 30 characters but only two are female, and there is no reason to expect or be interested in those two characters talking to each other besides being the only representatives their Gender has, yet they are given a single scene together and it feels forced.  I don't know if such a hypothetical scenario has happened yet, but it's something I suspect will inevitably happen.

Shows that pass the Bechdel test not because of a single scene but because the show is entirely about women who's lives don't revolve round men, are worth celebrating even if they have other problematic issues.  So that we have an entire genre doing that on a regular basis, in-spite of being technically marketed to men, getting almost no credit for it from Western Feminists bugs me.

There is no point in individually criticizing a movie that isn't an ensemble and has a single male lead for not passing the Bechdel test.  The problem is films fitting that description have for decades been most of what Hollywood cares about producing.  Yet TheMarySue felt the need to do a whole article on Spiderman Homecoming not passing the Bechdel test, I still haven't seen that movie, there may be valid reasons to criticize it, but there is no reason to go in hoping it'll pass the Bechdel test.

In the past I've gotten criticized for expressing the above with the statement, "just cause a film has a male lead doesn't mean it can't pass the Bechdel test".   Yes it's hypothetically possible, but there is no good reason to expect it.  And as someone who wants more female lead films, I don't want them to have scenes where the male supporting characters get together to have a conversion that has nothing to do with the lead character I'm watching the movie for.  Still at the same time I enjoy many scenes that others criticize for being useless to the main plot, but those are usually scenes with female characters.  So I may not be the one criticizing a male lead movie for passing the Bechdel Test when it had no obvious reason to, but the criticism would certainly exist.

I think the existence of films with Female Leads that still fail to pass it are far more worth criticizing.  Like The Force Awakens and Rogue One, and I currently suspect The Last Jedi will continue this with Rey spending at least half the film on an island with Luke.  The Wonder Woman film passes it only because of the scenes on Themiscyra, but at least it has a good reason to have Diana mostly interacting with men for the rest of the film.  The new Star Wars films are giving their female leads mostly male support because they seem to think that's just natural.

In Anime this issue rarely happens, when Anime gives us a Superheroine, it also give her a lot of female support.  And if it's related to the Cute Girls doing Cute Things genre, it may well have no male characters at all.

I'm well aware that this genre is kind of driven by a non-sexual objectification, sometimes treating Cute Girls like Cute Animals.  And that is the main Feminist criticism I sympathize with.  But that's relatively harmless compared to most ways a show can be sexist.

The assumption that most of these characters are simply one dimensional doesn't hold up, at least not for the shows well known enough that they're the ones articles criticizing this genre default to singling out.  LadyGeekGirl has an article specifically singling out K-On as being a "Moeblob" show with no character depth, even though K-On has so much character development that they seem unrecognizable watching the pilot and finale back to back.  The development is just done subtly, rather then topping off every episode with a "what did we learn today" speech.  Fortunately AnimeFeminist has a good article praising K-On.

Yuri is ultimately a separate Genre though with overlapping appeal.  And all Slice of Life Cute Girls shows have Yuri shipping in their fandoms.  Main reason I want to separate it from everything I said above is that Yuri shows are more likely to include Fan Service.  But I'm not making a separate post because the Toxic Masculinity issue is relevant to what I have to say on both.

A warning before reading on, I will talk about some sexual content below.

Lots has been written online about why Yaoi and Slash Fiction would appeal to women besides the most superficial carnal appeal.  Lots of different appeals get discussed.  But with men the default is to just assume they only care about watching Girl on Girl sex, and most Western Lesbian Porn indeed only cares about appealing that carnal desire.

Digibro again has a Podcast on his personal history with the genre.  But later I'll get to the more insightful thing he said somewhere else.

A lot of the criticism of Yuri is the Purity fixation.  And I agree that that is a problem, but for not exactly the same reason.  If your going off only the most mainstream Yuri Anime, it's easy to think the Purity fixation is why actual Sex rarely happens.  However there are Yuri Doujins (the target audience writing what they want to see) like A Pure Heart (A Nao x Reika from Smile Pretty Cure Doujin) that are about rejecting the idea that Sex takes away Purity, that Doujin was deeply moving to me personally.

Now you can say the reason that happens in the Yuri Genre is because of the whole problematic "Lesbian Sex isn't real Sex because there is no Penetration" idea.  However the reason Lesbain sex has been thought of that way, is intimately related to how society often thinks of Male sexuality as inherently violent.  Digibro said in the PCP podcast on Porn that he used to be inherently turned off by Penises in porn because he thought of them as inherently violent, but that changed once he actually had sex for the first time.  When he said that I felt relieved, since I now knew it wasn't just me.

Just look at how many slang terms for sex, that were originally specifically about intercourse, are also inherently violent terms, Screw, Nail, Bang, the F word, ect.  Toxic Masculinity encourages men to be proud of that association, but for me it's inherently uncomfortable, and it seems like the only Erotica that's at least sometimes free of any violent subtext is Femslash Fan Fiction and Yuri.  And when violence does enter Lesbian Erotica it's always because of the need to have one of the women "play the man".

And this also reminds me of why I really feel that Revolutionary Girl Utena is one of the best nuanced works of Feminist fiction.  What a lot of people miss looking at it on the surface level is that it criticizes it's own Protagonist when her Princely ideal leads her to Toxic Masculine behavior.  Sadly this is also the main area where the movie sort of falters.

I shouldn't need to remove my own gender from the scenario for Sex to be non violent.  But the Patriarchy doesn't make it easy.  Interestingly, the one piece of Het Erotica I'm aware of that doesn't have this issue is The Song of Songs that is Solomon's.

So yes, these two genres aren't perfect, and I'd like to see them improved.  But "Cute Girls doing Cute Things" being rejected out of hand by many Feminists annoys me.

The Force Awakens was inspired by Nausicaa of the Valley of The Wind

I just found this video on YouTube

And I can't believed I missed these parallels when I watched Nausicaa twice last month.

Some other vids on the subject.

The thing I need to say, even though I don't like sounding like a TFA hater.  Is that when I compare these movies, Nausicaa is way better to me, when I compare Lucas SW films to Flash Gordon or the Hidden Fortress, as good as they are I like Star Wars better.

Turns out there was a Homage back in Episode I also.

The Wonder Woman movie was Great!!!

I decided to not say much right after watching it, cause sometimes my opinion on a DC film will not remain as enthusiastic after a few days of thinking about it.

But now that over half a week as passed, I can securely say Wonder Woman remains as great as I thought it was initially.

So everyone see this movie, please, it is important.

The only complaints I've really seen are some people were disappointed slightly by Ares.  But I wasn't, I have no attachment to how DC Comics usually depicts Ares.  What this movie did was much better.

I give a 10 out of 10.

Zombie Anime 2: Moe Boogaloo

Last November I discussed the first well known Zombie Anime.  And for context talked about my relationship with the Zombie genre in general.  Last night I watched the other more recent one, School Live.

School Live is not a major offender in the Anime Fanservice department.  And in general more fits my taste in Anime by being Cute Girls doing Cute Things, with plenty of Yuri subtext.

But also compared to other Zombie fiction.  While HOTD repeats one of my issues with the Dawn of the Dead remake.  School Live is more like the appeal of the original Dawn of The Dead, these characters make the School their Castle.

My favorite character is probably Kurumi, she's the muscle of the group, distinguishing it further from HOTD where everyone happens to be a Bad@$$.

That's about all I can say without spoiling it.  Well it technically spoiled the first episode to reveal it's a Zombie show up front, but that effect only existed on it's actual debut day, if ever.

I gave it a 9 out of 10 on MAL.  And I definitely like it more then High School of The Dead.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

I've seen my second Miyazaki film now, and first Gibli film.

I watched the Dub, because I am an unapologetic Dub Scrub.  This Dub was dubbed by Disney so it doesn't have your typical Anime Dub cast.  Instead it has Patrick Stewart, always a treat, coincidentally I watched Logan on Thursday.

I just gave the movie a 10 out of 10 on MAL.

So during the scene where they explained the Prophecy of their expected Messiah the first thought I had about him being associated with the Color Blue was "kind of like Vishnu and his Avatars in Hinduism".  A few minutes latter I noticed "hmmm, our title character seems to be wearing Blue a lot".  Then I thought "why didn't that occur to me immediately, I'm a failure as a Feminist".

I was watching this movie because I was hoping for a Messianic Archetype with a female character type of story.  But I'm so used to being disappointed by stuff I hope will do well by it's female characters, that as soon as the people in the story assumed the Gender of their Messiah my brain got distracted for a little bit.

Now even if I watched a Sub I would probably have still needed to ask this.  But I'm wondering about the wording of the Prophecy, does the Japanese use more gender neutral pronouns here?

This movie has clearly been very influential.  It's influence on future Anime I'm sure has been talked about endlessly.  So I want to comment on other things.

First is Video Games.  I believe I'd seen this mentioned as an influence on the Final Fantasy franchise before.  The air ships, Talmecia rhymes with Palmecia, the environmental theme in general. There were even proto Chocobos. Since Breath of the Wild is still a current hot topic in Gaming, the Valley of The Wind itself looks kinda like a city visited in BotW.  And I'm pretty sure that little Fox like animal was a direct inspiration for Evee, a first generation Pokemon.

But what really took me by surprise, was when we finally saw the fully formed Giant Warrior.  First good look at it's face I went "The Anitmonitor, that's the Frakking Anti-Monitor, Marv Wolfman and Geroge Perez were while writing the single most historic Storyline in all of Western Comics, influenced by a Japanese Cartoon."  That is Awesome.

So, It's a movie I recommend.

It's been a Feminist Friday for me

I saw Wonder Woman which was awesome, I highly recommend it.  Best DC film since 2015.  It's almost as good as Anime.

And speaking of Anime I watched the new episode of Twin Angel, the current Magical Girl show.  I still it's the best Anime this season.

I may also latter today finally watch Nauska and the Valley of the Wind.

I may have more in depth thoughts on Wonder Woman in time.  But for now I'm speechless.