Good Parodies are Affectionate Parodies

I forget where I saw this, I think it was a random YT comment or something, but I definitely recall seeing someone say "Every good parody eventually just becomes a satisfying version of what it's parodying".

In the context of Anime I feel this is particularly demonstrated by Mahou Shoujo Pretty Sammy, in particular it's 96-97 TV Anime also sometimes localized under the title Magical Project S.  It's early episodes are very concise parodies of Magical Girl Tropes, sometimes I feel like they have Sailor Moon S in particular in mind, but never mean spirited.  However by it's final stretch of episodes it's just doing a legit sincere Magical Girl story that is simply also making jokes.

Mel Brooks has said he made Blazing Saddles as an Affectionate Parody of Westerns. What killed the old school Western during this era wasn't this parody but a general shift in how Americans thought about that era of our history reflected in the more serious Deconstructions made at the time.

Even very goofball parodies like Airplane or the 90s Wayans Brothers' films are still telling a story that on some level works independent of just being a string of Jokes at other movies expense. 

I remember a similar thought to this being expressed when Trixie The Golden Witch and Best Guy Ever talked about the Rick and Morty Episode that parodies Heist Movies.  For all the jokes at the expense of the formula, it also in it's own way provides a satisfying Heist narrative twist at the end.

The truly Cynical parodies like the ones that stretched the truth about being made by the same people who wrote Scary Movie were never liked and only remained profitable because they were so cheap to make. 

In Patrick Willems most recent video on Music Biopics he talks about Walk Hard and how dismayed he is that it didn't kill the Music Biopic Genre. But that's the thing, I haven't seen that movie but if it truly is as mean spirited as Willems describes it, a movie made by and for only the people who hate the Genre it's parodying then that's why it flopped, that's why the only people who actually found it funny were weirdos with a bizarre grudge against an entire genre.

This extends to the more Internet based styles of Parody as well.  I know that the people at Something Witty Entertainment are fans of Sword Art Online and that their SAO Abridged is an Affectionate Parody and that they are annoyed every time an AniTuber makes a Video Essay citing their parody as vindication of their SAO Hate. 

SWE do not seem to be fans of In Another World With My Smartphone in the same way which is why their one shot parody of that Anime fell flat with me, it's not nearly as funny as their SAO stuff.  Another more obscure YouTube channel called Yusho Productions has done a good Affectionate IWA Abridged that I find hilarious. 

The difficult question is, can this paradoxically apply to a Parody of something that never even existed?

I already made a post on how the Otome Villainess sub genre is based on a type of Otome Game that has never existed.  And I've since learned I'm not the only one who's noticed that.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/12/i-have-something-against-otome.html

But I've enjoyed some of these shows regardless, because for being founded on a seemingly insulting misrepresentation they still are not just basing every Joke on "isn't it messed up Otome Games are like this" instead they just do what a good Shoujo Anime would do within that framing.

The show Trapped In A Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs commonly shortened to MobuSeka has gotten particular ire from those who are mad about this genre's mistaken premise. Because at least this is the one sub type of modern Isekai were the leads are usually Girls.  So using this premise to make another typical male power fantasy Harem feels particularly egregious to them.

But this happens to be one of the Otome Villainess shows I've enjoyed the most, so why?

What would be the appeal of this kind of story if it unironically existed? The appeal would be Romances that defy class barriers.  The protagonist in ModuSeka as he starts falling in love with the two main girls feels like he is unworthy of them, like they are the lead characters and he is just a background character. As a Romance it is in fact doing exactly what you'd expect the non existent genre to do only gender inverted and with a meta twist. 

I also find it interesting to think about in the context of my thesis about how much 21st century Otaku media has it roots in Boys in the 90s enjoying Shoujo Media and taking influence from it.  Maybe what guys want out of Romance and what Girls want are not as inherently different as society keeps conditioning us to assume they are? 

I also really like Luxion, of every Anime character you could jokingly compare to MCU Jarvis, he might be the best. 

The problem with Ranking Anime

I use Anime Database websites like Anlist and Anime-Planet mainly to help me keep track of what Anime I have and haven't watched for my own sake.  The thing I’ve increasingly noticed is how I feel compelled to score an Anime on an at least Semi-Objective out of 5 or out of 10 scaling system doesn’t correlate well to how often I feel compelled to revisit one or talk about it. 

It honestly feels more useful to put them in categories rather than mathematical rankings.

First there are my Favorites, the Anime I would unambiguously start with when trying to summarize what my taste in Anime is, as well as what I consider masterpieces even when they don't entirely conform to my general tastes.  You can get a taste of these by looking at what I list as Favorites on those Database websites, but on those sites I try to list only one entry per franchise, the truth is most any franchise that produces one Favorite of mine probably also has many other entries I could have listed.

Then there are shows that I like and consider worthy of how successful they are, but wouldn’t call a personal favorite and probably wouldn’t talk about as much as I do if they weren’t among the most well known Anime, a frame of reference I can be confident most people into Anime at all will somewhat understand.  

Examples would include Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online, Re:Zero, Mushoku Tensei, Vinland Saga, Frieren and Delicious In Dungeon. Those are all shows from the last 15 years, certainly there are older shows I could put in this category?  Cowboy Bebop is probably the clearest 90s version of a show I feel exactly this way about.

Maybe the more of an Old Classic something is, the harder it is for me to even be self aware how much my own praise for it is because it has that Classic status.  Revolutionary Girl Utena and Serial Experiments Lain are shows I feel like I rank higher than any of those I just listed, yet I rewatch them less often, maybe that’s just because they are such uniquely Dense and thus intellectually exhausting shows to watch. 

Then there are shows I like about as much as the second category but may seem more enthusiastic about because of how much my talking about them exists in the context of defending them against the hate they receive from the online Anime Community at large. Rent-A-Girlfriend, Future Diary, a number of Isekai.  Of course some stuff in the second category does receive similar hate in certain contexts, (in fact several years ago I’d probably have placed SAO here but the intensity of it’s hate seems to have died down).  But I don’t talk about them so defensively because their vocal unironic fandoms are pretty visible.

Then there are shows I like about the same as those two categories but indeed I don’t wind up talking about much because it often feels like I’m the only one even aware of them. When they are talked about on this Blog it's because I’d currently or recently watched them or they’re relevant to some specific topic I’m talking about.  But even within this category there are some I’m more likely to actively recommend to others when I feel like they are the kind of show someone is looking for but hasn’t found on their own.  Engage Kiss is one example as are most shows I mentioned in the Anime Neo-Westerns post, as well as the shows I like to recommend as Fantasy Anime that in no way feel like Isekai even though they came out during this Isekai era like Grimoire of Zero and it’s spin off Dawn of The Witch, or Tales of Zestiria, WorldEnd and Manaria Friends which are also from 2017 or the film Maquia.

And then there are shows I have significant issues with, but also have something I find fascinating about them, about what they could have been, that has me thinking about them more than many shows in the fourth category.  Wonder Egg Priority is placed here, a lot of people seem to feel this way about that show but my opinion is more overfall positive then most peoples.  But arguably the show the character I use as my Avatar comes from is in this category.

And then as perhaps an Evil Counterpart to the second category are shows I failed to enjoy that I would have never thought about again at all if they didn’t become super popular, if I didn’t feel like I was the only one to watch it and not like it.  I don’t want to be a person who hates on things others enjoy, but sometimes I can’t help myself and need to say my piece. The lead Anime in this category is probably Revue Starlight.

Thing is, while I’m pretty sure every Anime I have any strong opinions on at all are in one of these categories, I’m not always sure myself which one.  Like I certainly can’t confuse the first two categories with the bottom one, but in between those is a lot of fluidity.

Turns out everyone likes to watch someone else play a Video Game.

I consider myself a bit of an apologist for Sword Art Online, but one key detail of it's climax hasn't aged well.

The original Web Novel version of Aincrad was published in 2002 before YouTube existed, but the Anime aired a decade later.  So Kirito saying "there's no fun in watching someone else play a video game" was already being proven wrong by the time it was Animated.

Honestly I kind of lament how nearly dead the original Let's Play format is.  Live Streams and edited videos about challenge runs are also fun.  But watching people commentate on their casual play through without having to deal with a Live Chat is something I miss.

Live Streams with some Chat interaction are more tolerable when I'm watching someone smaller. But once their Chat has a larger population then some cities it can become an inevitably frustrating distraction.

Still there's lots of fun Casual Gameplay based YT videos being made which I still enjoy. 

How many VRMMO Anime are actually about VR?

In shows like Sword Art Online and Quality Assurance in Another World the being literally unable to log out plot device is enabled by it not being Virtual Reality but rather more like your Brain is literally plugged into the Game. And it seems like it functions the same way in BOFURI even though it doesn't have a similar plot point. Infinite Dendrogam is another one of these.  "Full Dive" is sometimes the term for it and there is an Anime with that term in the title I didn't watch much of. 

Then there are shows like And You Thought There Is Never A Girl Online and My Love Story With Yamada-Kun where the Games being played are just regular contemporary MMOs, the way the In Game world is Animated is an artistic liberty for the benefit of the audience, it’s not meant to be diegetic.

The various Isekai about a Game world becoming real in some form presumably were actual VRMMOs but that’s not what they’re experiencing anymore.  These would include Log Horizon, Land of Leadale, She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man, and kind of Overlord.

At the end of last year when I finally started watching some old .Hack Anime it kinda hit me how different it is because it is in fact actual Virtual Reality.  The ability of whatever the given plot is to trap people in the game or harm people in real life is presented as seemingly Supernatural and I don’t think is fully explained in any of what I’ve watched yet.

It’s mostly very small things, but they become in hindsight quite notable, like the references to someone using graph paper to help them navigate.

It’s not just an Anime thing, SciFi is often skipping the Virtual Reality phase for some more truly Transhumanist plug-in, like in 2009’s Caprica.

It might have to do with Virtual Reality being technology that does already exist, and has since the early 90s at least, it’s just not widespread and normalized and cheap enough yet to be the standard way Video Games are made to be played, and perhaps it never will be.

Or maybe Virtual Reality is a broader term then I’m treating it and does technically apply to what SAO depicts.  But you know what I mean.  These “Full Dive” things are not something I think I’d ever want to do, but standard VR might be fun to try some day.

Update October 2025: I had forgotten when I first wrote this about the Netflix Anime Good Night World which I watched when it first dropped in October of 2023.  I rewatched it this month and noticed it's Game is an actual VRMMO.  It is in a few ways perhaps the most like ,hack of any modern Anime.

Sometimes a single Show gets Sole Credit for a Trend it's only the most well known example of.

The almsot over current Fall 2023 Season of Anime includes not one but two Fantasy shows where part of how the story starts is the idea of beginning at or after where a traditional Epic Fantasy story ends [Update: turns out it was three actually].  They are massively different from each other in almsot every other way from vibes to art-style to what subgenres they fit into to.

But the thing is nether is actually the first Anime that can be described that way, it also applies to Dead Mount Death Play earlier this year, to The Devil is a Part Timer several years ago, and I feel confident I recall one or two others in recent years who's names now escape me doing it [Update: Endro from 2019 is one of them].  And yet if this concept becomes even more popular in the coming years I suspect a narrative will develop that Frieren, one of the two currently airing, started the trend even though it didn't since it has a respectability or at least pop culture staying power that A Returner's Magic and those shows which came before it largely do not.

Because this has happened before.  It's like the Great Man Theory of History but applied to popular pieces of Media rather then people.

Take how Sword Art Online is blamed for the broader Anime trends that those above shows merely fit into Sub Genres of.  There were shows that actually qualify as Isekai airing during the same season and in preceding seasons.  Even if we distinguish what modern Isekai is like from what we usually got in the 90s and early 2000s then still War on Geminar from 2009-2010 largely fits the modern criteria, and in Japanese it even had the word Isekai in the title.  

But even if we go back to the era of SAO's original Web Novel publication a decade prior, 2002 had other fully immersive VR Video Game themed stories like .hack//Sign and all the way back in April that year's annual Detective Conan/Case Closed film The Phantom of Baker Street.

Sometimes many artists are coming up with similar ideas at the same time organically for reasons that can't be chopped up to one innovator who everyone else copied.  A common term for this kind of thing is a Zeitgeist.

Take for another example how throughout the 2010s every Incest Anime was viewed as part of a trend started by Oreimo.  Oreimo season 1 was again not even the only Incest show of it's season. Yosuga no Sora was also a pretty big deal at the time.  And earlier in the same year we had Kiss X Sis as both OVAs and a TV Anime.  But what bugs me about this is how people forget that Little Sisters being already a thing in Otaku culture is partly what Oreimo was about.  It's another trend that began in Classic Shoujo Celestial Legend Ceres and various Clamp works that Male Otaku started doing later.

Or we could talk about the narrative that Neon Genesis Evangelion "Altered Anime Eternally".  In that case it's not so much a specific trend or genre or trope that Eva is given sole credit for but the entire landscape of modern Anime.  I absolutely agree that 1995 was the beginning of an Era of Anime.  But Eva premiered in the last season of that year, the prior 6 months had already been filled with TV Anime and Movies and OVAs that were ground breaking and game changing in their own ways, and to a lesser extent so had the 6 months prior to that.  Eva was just one final Cherry on top of a very innovate Sundae.  (Also Metal Fight Miku was a completely original TV Anime in the Summer of 1994 that had no connection to any prior IP in any medium, and it was popular enough to get an English Dub.)

However It's not just in the world of Anime this happens.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer was a show I was once and kind of still am a fan of, it was my favorite TV show of all time before PLL and Anime entered my life.  But the narrative often presented by many of it's fans that it was not just the first Girl Power TV show but also the beginning of what I'll call Semi-Episodic Television in general, annoys me.

That narrative forgets that La Femme Nikkita started airing at almost the exact same time in January of 1997, and that Xena Warrior Princess had been on the air since September of 95.  "Neither of those is about a Blonde High School Girl with a superhero like double life" you may retort.  Well The Secret World of Alex Mack started in October of 1994 and lasted 4 seasons overlapping with Buffy.

And all of that is without even getting into the Girl Power Anime that was already officially available to American audiences.  Sailor Moon's DiC Dub debuted in Canada in late 95 and was on American TV by some point in 96.  The early episodes of Slayers were dubbed by the end of 95 as well, also Bubblegum Crisis had been released in the States in 91 and 92 and was Dubbed in 94.

But speaking of Sailor Moon perhaps it's hypocritical of me to say all this now when earlier this year I tired to defend the notion of Sailor Moon single handedly creating her genre (whatever you call it), well really Codename Sailor V in 1991.  The thing is 1990 had the first Devil Hunter Yohko OVA which technically fits all the requirements for being a Magical Girl Warrior but really doesn't fit in Aesthetically or Thematically.  And 92 also had the original video game debut of Galaxy Frauline Yuna. Then there's other niche things like Dream Hunter Rem.  And if just having a magical transformation of some kind works you could also add Majuu Senshi Luna Varga from 1991 to the conversation.

So I still agree with distinguishing the Magical Girl Warrior genre from the Sally the Witch style sitcoms or the Idol variation.  But Sailor Moon is merely the biggest not only piece of the puzzle of how that genre formed.

And all this is part of why even when a trend does seem to chronologically have a pretty undisputable singular starting point I still oppose dismissing everything that came after as mere copycats.  Yuki Yuna Is A Hero and Daybreak Illusion and Blue Reflection Ray each feel to me like shows their creators were trying to say something with, and that they would have tried to make in some form even without Madoka Magica coming first.

Light Novels should be adapted as Movies rather then TV Shows more often

I say this as someone who is in general biased for more serialized modes of storytelling and in fact that bias has played a role in why I like Anime so much to begin with.

But the Anime that embody the strengths of serialized story telling are usually Original TV Anime (and some OVAs and ONAs), and Manga adaptations.  And a lot of Visual Novel or Video Game adaptations work being adapted into a more serialized format because their structure is often like something serialized so that the player can be given convenient places to take a break.

LNs however are kind of the Japanese equivalent to YA novels or airport novels except shorter in length, their original narrative structure is usually much more similar to Movies then to a TV Series. And the Light part of term implies it's pretty rare for there to be too much for a single movie. 

My problem with the broadcast order of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is that it butchered the structure of the original LN which actually is a good stand alone work of art on it's own even if it had never gotten sequels.  The chronological first 6 episodes of Haruhi are the adaptation of that LN and I kind of wish someone would just fan edit them into a movie (both a Subbed version and a Dubbed version).

Sword Art Online was actually adapted similarly to Haruhi in this regard except in that case the inserted short stories written later to flesh out the original arc made the Anime more chronological then the source material rather then less.

The fact that some LNs are short story collections is perhaps the counter point to this thesis.  I suppose the short stories could be adapted as OVAs or ONAs.  But some movies are made as collections of shorter stories rather then one feature length story.

We've already seen success in adapting LNs as movies rather then TV shows.  The Live Action Boogiepop and Others movie, the Kara no Kyoukai films, the SAO Progressive movies of which only one I've gotten to see currently.  Aura: Koga Maryuin's Last War which I think is a pretty underrated entry in the Chunibyo genre.  And most successful of all The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.

But I also think about the niche examples where the serialized format combined with wanting to make a lot of progress in one season has hurt a story structurally.  I'm The Villainess, So I'm Taming The Final Boss rushing to the end of the first novel in only the 4th episode killed my initial enthusiasm for that series.

There are exceptions, Fate/Zero and Fate/Apocrypha are LN adaptations and I don't see how they'd work as a string of movies.  Some LNs do seem to be written from the start with the idea of being adapted into a TV Anime.  However more often then not in Japan the Anime is glorified marketing for the source material not the other way around.  But sometimes whether it gets adapted or not a first novel can seem more like set up for future stories then a satisfying story on it's own.  Maybe it's mostly older LNs this is true for.

The point I'm making is perhaps most proven by the Raildex franchise and the popular discourse around it.  

A Certain Magical Index's first LN was also written to originally stand alone if no sequel was greenlit, that is the plot of the first 6 episodes and they too feel like they could've been a movie.  I enjoy the Index Anime just fine but I'm a notoriously easy person to please, and I can definitely see how every arc that is given only 3 episodes or less (Deep Blood, Tree Remnant, Crystal Fleet, all of season III) could have used more screen time to flesh everything out.

A Certain Scientific Railgun was serialized from it's inception and so the Anime is able to improve upon the Manga in the same way many past Anime based on Manga have from Sailor Moon to DBZ to the original FMA Anime by adding much needed episodic filler episodes and the occasional filler arc that is just as peak fiction as the Manga yet purists hate on them anyway.

Railgun works as a series because the source is also a serial, Index would have been better as movies.

It is true that sometimes even the LNs will split an arc across more then one LN.  SAO started doing this as early as Fairy Dance, and Boogiepop did it back in the 90s with Vs Imaginator, and Index has indeed done it a few times.

So those being adapted as a movie per LN can at first glance be mistaken for those misguided times Hollywood has split the last novel of a YA saga into two movies.  However Across The Spiderverse was pretty universally praised in-spite of ending on a Cliffhanger.  And in the world of Anime we have prior precedent for this with the Nanoha Reflection and Detonation movies being one story split across two films, and then the latest Prisma Illya movie also ended on a cliffhanger.

Maybe 20 years ago the idea of devoting a 20+ novel saga to movies rather then TV would have seemed unthinkable.  But now we live in a post MCU world where Cinema itself can be a little serialized.

Update November 2024: In the slightly over a year since I wrote this I've now finally seen Durarara! and Baccano!

Durarara! works surprisingly well as a TV series, I wouldn't change anything about it or recommend doing anything different if more season of the Anime are made.  It can be another lead counter example to my thesis.

Baccano! also worked very well as a miniseries, but I do think what Baccano! pulled off is likely to only work as a one season gimmick, I'm skeptical a second season could do the same thing with another 4 LNs.  It helped that the Flying Pussyfoot story was a two parter and that they could use Isaac and Miria as the main glue connecting the different stories.

If Baccano! gets more Anime, and I very much want it to, I would suggest just making movies out of as many of them as possible.

Perhaps some of you think too many individual Light Novels are not "Epic" or "Cinematic" enough to warrant a movie.  But I like plenty of small scale low stakes movies, from random Lifetime Original movies I've watched to old movies set in very isolated settings.  Not everything needs to be about the potential end of the world or destruction of an entire city to be film worthy.

Update September 20025: After reading up on what happens in the So I'm A Spider, So What LNs, I'd have the to say the first 5 volumes jumping around between time period would have made them more difficult then usual to work as films.  But that aspect of the story is done going forward and Volumes 6 and 7 which pick up where the Anime leaves off  but only on the earlier part of the time would each make very epic awesome and fairly stand alone movies. 

Sachi, Sword Art Online and Survivor's Guilt

The third episode of Sword Art Online is often considered a Christmas Episode because of it's last segment.

But what I like about it is it's depiction of Survivor's Guilt.  Survivor's Guilt is a fundamentally irrational phenomena where someone who survives something others did not feels guilty simply for surviving and latching onto anything to rationalize it.

But too often stories in fiction meant to address this do give the character in question a reasonable reason to blame themselves, usually nothing that would make them truly legally, ethically or morally culpable, but still some decision they made that if they decided differently could have made a difference.  Because modern standards for good writing are obsessed with things like "consequences" and "Cause and Effect" and trying to avoid getting a plot hole ding from CinemaSins.

What I like about this episode of SAO is that Kirto truly has no rational reason to blame himself, the thing he latches onto is the whole not telling them how high leveled he actually was, but what lead to their death was their acting rashly and overconfidently, knowing how OP Kirto actually was would have had the opposite effect.  

But as expected the SAO haters trying to give it the RLM treatment constantly do treat this as a pothole when it's in fact exactly what makes it a good depiction of Survivor's Guilt.  Yeah it does also serve the purpose of giving Kirto more reason to be a Brooding Loner while not undermining that he's the best at playing this game, but so what. 

SAO was never about IF Kirito is a good Gamer or not, it's about how this experience was Traumatizing regardless.

SAO: Progressive - Aria of a Starless Night, Retcons stuff

I finally got to see Sword Art Online the Movie: Progressive - Aria of a Starless Night now that it's up on Crunchyroll English Dub included.  And in execution it's very good, has most of what makes SAO fun and none of it's most egregious problems.  The issues I have with the movie are only as someone already somewhat of a fan of prior SAO content and wouldn't be relevant to someone watching it as a stand alone or choosing to start their SAO experience here, if that's you then the rest of this post really isn't relevant and I say you should go ahead and dive in, it's a better first impression for Normies then most of the original first season is.

And the principal new character of the film Misumi/Mito is good, I like her and her story in this movie.

There are two types of Retcons.  One is the kind that reinterprets or recontextualizes old events in a way that is not actually absolutely a contradiction, and when they fix continuity problems rather them causing them this kind I tend to be fine with or even like.  Mito's very existence can be considered this kind, she explains the paradox of how Asuna both never really played an MMO before and yet so quickly becomes one of the highest ranked players, she had a Beta Tester Mentor even before she met Kirito.

But sadly this movie also has the more conventionally bad kind of retcon, the kind that is definitely changing what happened.

First is how Asuna and Kirito's first meeting is moved up, and then what was their original first meeting is expanded on.  Some fleshing out of that specific scene could have been fine, but I really always liked that Asuna and Kirto's Meet Cute wasn't predicated on him saving her.

Now this next bit may be a misunderstanding, but it seems like they've also went and implied the Sachi/Moonlit Black Cats incident already happened on the first floor in this new canon.  If true that really does annoy me, to whatever extent I was interested in seeing more of Kirito in the Progressive Movies it was seeing Kirito between episodes 2 and 3, seeing more of how he was before that trauma became such a defining part of him.

But the thing is in general I wanted minimal Kirito in these movies, the premise of the series I already knew going in is a Light Novel/Movie for each floor which based on the original timeline means there should be more movies then the Infinity Saga of the MCU before we reach what Asuna was doing at the time of Episode 3. And the other part of the premise was that it's Asuna as the main/pov character now, which means the new material should be stuff Kirto wouldn't have been privy to, especially when retelling events we'd already seen.

And the way the original series presented things, Kirito and Asuna do first meet in episode 2 at the end of the first floor but most of the romantic development starts in episode 8 with episodes 5-6 being of debatable relevance.  In the original SAO Light Novel it jumps from the events of episode 2 to episode 8, everything in 3-7 is short stories published later.  So there is prior precedent for Reki Kawahara deciding to add interactions between Kirito and Asuna in between, but what happens in 5-7 is still consistent conceptually with them not being regular partners yet but only occasional acquaintances.

So the ending of this movie basically amending the ending of the second episode of the show so that Asuna and Kirito are still part of a party going into Floor 2 really bugs me.  I wanted the Progressive movies to be Asuna with maybe occasional cameos from Kirito.  More stories about Kirito and Asuna as a power couple there is plenty of room for at much latter points on the timeline.

Gnosticism in Anime and Video Games

TVTropes has a page called UsefulNotes/Gnosticism where it talks about Gnosticism and then lists examples of fictional stories that were or are thought to be influenced by Gnosticism.

As an Amateur Christian Theologian, I think it's a problem how often Gnosticism is defined based on it's mythological archetypes rather then the actual Philosophical/Metaphysical point.  If your view of the After Life is an intangible spirit realm where we are free of the confines of the Carnal Material World, you're a Gnostic no matter how Orthodox, Nicene and Trinitarian your Theology and Christology is.

One question that is particularly relevant to the accuracy of calling some of these fictional cosmologies Gnostic is, can you be Gnostic but not even nominally Christian?  According to Religion for Breakfast no one called themselves Gnostics in antiquity, and all the known specific groups we call Gnostics were Christian sects who identified each of these Gnostic Mythological archetypes with at least one person or concept in The Bible or some other Judeo-Christian source.  

However they are also the result of these Christians being influenced by older gentile ideas that in my opinion Christians shouldn't have allowed to influence them, Neopythagoreanism, Middle Platonism, Hermeticism, Hellenistic Mystery Religions and since they mostly started in Alexandria aspects of native Egyptian Mythology and Mysticism (thing is the "Proto-Orthodox" were also being influenced by at least the first two of those during this time period, simply to different degrees or in different ways.  The difference between whether you were called a Heretic or not was chiefly rejecting a Bodily Resurrection).  So you take the mythological archetypes that comes from those influences but subtract the explicitly Christian stuff, and you get a framework that can be compared to a number of fictional Fantasy/Sci-Fi cosmologies.

But going back to my distinction between Gnostic Mythology and the actual point of Gnosticism.  I don't think any currently existing "developed" culture is less inclined to sympathize with the point of Gnosticism then Japan.  Shinto Mysticism I actually view as fairly compatible with Stoic Metaphysics, and Stoicism was I'd say antithetical to all of the Non-Christian antecedents of Gnosticism, even if by the second century they were using a lot of the exact same Greek key words and phrases.

And so when I look at a lot of the Anime or other Otaku Media that has been or can be argued to resemble Gnostic mythology, I kind of feel like they're using the Gnostic Mythological framework to convey the exact opposite attitude.  

This is most explicit in SSSS.Gridman where the Sophia figure is trapped in an Idealized Platonic World of Forms and the Carnal Physical Real World is what she needs to return to.  But I think on some level the same is true of the use of Gnostic or Gnostic adjacent ideas in classics like Serial Experiments Lain or Revolutionary Girl Utena.  

I would not apply a Gnostic reading of any kind to most Isekai however, in modern Isekai the other world is just as much of a carnal/material world as ours, it's the culture being different that makes it often a world the Otaku/Neet protagonist feels more at home in then Modern Japan.  Sword Art Online does sometimes feel like it's making Gnostic Mythological references, but that isn't proper Isekai.

But in the case of Final Fantasy VII (and perhaps then every FF that's been argued to be Gnostic) I go back to what I said before about the Stoics and Gnostics being antithetical even in their use of a lot of the same terms.  I think every argument for Final Fantasy VII having a Gnostic cosmology is actually better explained by a Stoic reading, The Lifestream is the Pneumatic World Soul and Mako (like Mana in other JRPGs and Manga/Anime inspired by them) is a Pneumatic Substance.  The Physical world being Evil and Dirty couldn't be more the opposite of what a story like Final Fantasy VII is trying to say about Nature.  These are stories where the Spiritual and Carnal are in a symbiotic relationship with each other, it is Man's Sins (especially Capitalism) that create the problems.

The western world however has been very influenced by Gnosticism, for all the talk about the Gnostics as some minority the Roman Church persecuted into extinction, I'd argue they kind of indirectly won, all of Mainstream Christianity has become at least mildly Gnostic.  Gnosticism is essentially Platonism taken to it's logical extreme, and so that's why a lot of the Japanese media I just talked about and others get interpreted by westerners more Gnostically then I feel the Japanese could have possibly intended.

Update September 26th: It's occurred to me that I should explain the Final Fantasy VII part a bit more.

The Gnostic Reading of Final Fantasy VII in large part revolves around equating the Lifestream with the Gnostic Pleroma.  The Lifestream and Pleroma have in common being both the source and destiny of each individual Soul  However the Gnostic Pleroma is distinctly outside the physical world, the physical world is basically a prison to the pieces of it stuck here.  The Lifesream however is the World, it and the physical Earth are intimately connected, they form a Symbiant Circle what happens to one will effect the other.  It is quite literally the Soul and Spirit of The Earth.

The World Soul is a concept in a few schools of Greek Philosophy, but it is the Stoic Version that has all the same similarities to the Lifestream the Pleroma has but also is part of the world rather then separate.

Basically Gnosticism has more in common with Scientology then it does the Lore of FFVII.

Further Update October 14 2022: I just obtained Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250 by George Boys-Stones and chapter 8 talks about the World Soul and Nature.

Much of the thesis of the chapter is that while Middle Platonists and Stoics agreed on the World having a Soul, for the Stoics it was a pretty natural product of their Metaphysics as it's virtually synonymous with their God, while for the Platonists it kind of didn't fit so well and proved awkward.

So to Middle Platonists the World Soul was a lesser god at best, and to Plutarch it was actually Evil, but in-between it was also presented as a sort of force without much will or agency of it's own.  

But reading this has only strengthened my Stoic interpretation of The Lifestream and Final Fantasy VII.

I also view the Original Pre-Romanization Stoics as having been the Communists of the Hellenistic World.  And so here's a good Marxist Analysis of Final Fantasy VII.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9EWCLHkqRQNkPHiCAYcIUrJ3twpAmD2o

The 2000s were Anime's most Revolutionary Decade

I don't think Anime has changed more in any single decade then it did in the 2000s.

At the start it looks a lot like the late 90s and by the end it looks almost like what 2010s Anime has been.  That's normal of course.  My point lies more in how radically different the 90s are from the 2010s.  In a lot of ways the early 90s only looks a couple upgrades different from the late 70s.  However comparing what was airing in December of 1999 to January of 2010, it can be hard to believe that took only 1 decade.  

The 2010s meanwhile as much as I've loved the Volume of Anime they've given me (about half of everything I've watched), do feel like they've mostly been defined by a handful of trends.

The 2000s were the most experimental decade, a decade where seeds planted in the 90s were nurtured and cultivated to eventually fully blossom into what we see now.

How did the Magical Girl genre go from Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura to Madoka Magica and Yuki Yuna?  Well stuff like Magical Girl Lyricla Nanoha fills in the gaps.  But in the world of Magical Girl shows that stayed strictly kids' shows, the first 6 years of Pretty Cure laid the foundations of everything that franchise has been doing since.

When it comes to the really out there trippy stuff, yeah everything in the 2000s may be standing on the shoulders of Eva, Utena and Lain, but that just helps them reach greater heights.

Is Mecha dead?  That's a question that's been haunting Anime discourse for awhile now, and I'm not interested in answering what most people mean by that question.  What I miss about the late 90s and 2000s was how Mecha just sorta popped up in shows that weren't mainly Mecha shows.  Like oh you're gonna do Futuristic Space Opera Anime Count of Monte-Cristo, of course the duel is gonna be with giant robots instead of swords or guns.  And even among stuff that Mecha could be considered the main genre classification, today they are usually one of three things, trying to be Eva, trying to be Gundam, or very rarely trying to be Mazinger Z.  It's only in the 2000s that we had a lot of Mecha shows that don't easily fit into any of those.

The nature of these transitions were complicated.  Partly in how often Anime is behind it's source material.  A lot of the trends that have defined mid to late 2010s Anime were already flourishing in these more niche mediums in the late 90s and early 2000s.  Remember when the Sword Art Online Anime debuted it's source material's original publication was already a full decade old, older then some well known franchises that got animated a lot sooner.

Light Novels have existed and been an occasional source material for Anime longer then Visual Novels have.  But in the 90s and very early 2000s the kinds of stories an Anime fan would associate with the term "Light Novel" were completely different.

You could conceivably take any year from the 2000s and argue it to be a key transitional year.  But for the rest of this post I shall focus on arguing for 2006, simply because some shows from that year have been on my mind.

Prior to 2006 no Visual Novels got any 2 cour Anime adaptations, AniDB may list some but I'm pretty sure those are based on games that don't properly count as VNs under the strictest definition.  But in 1 year 2006 saw the debuts of three 2 cour Visual Novel Anime, Higurashi, Fate/Stay Night and KyoAni's Kanon.  Two were instant hits that were in some way followed up immediately.  The one that didn't quite take off as immediately eventually dwarfed the rest to become one of the most all consuming brands in all of Anime.

And in the world of Anime adapted from Light Novels, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya single handedly changed everything.  Though The Familiar of Zero also got it's Anime that year.

In addition to shows that were seemingly giving birth to the 2010s in that year, there were also shows that were in some ways send offs to trends of prior eras.  Nerima Daikun Brothers isn't technically the last Nabeshin Anime, but I feel it was mostly the last gasp of the style of Anime comedy popularized by Excel Saga.  Meanwhile Strawberry Panic felt like the Magnum Opus of everything the Yuri Genre had been for the prior half century.

And Pokémon quite literally transitioned from Advance Generation to Diamond and Pearl.  At the same time it's English localizers made some production transitions.

There was also plenty of stuff that feels just as related to what came before as to what came since, but still while being innovative.  Code Geass, Death Note, La Chevlair D'Eon, Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl.  And then there was a show that wound up making a good case study in Anime obscurity.

Update: On my Twitter thread promoting this post I wound up talking about an interesting 2007 show.

https://twitter.com/KuudereKun888/status/1459123983417229338

Reverse Harem Anime tends to disappoint me

First of all there isn't actually a lot of Reverse Harem Anime relative both to standard Male with multiple Waifu harem Anime and other types of Shoujo romance.  The main Blog you'll find on specifically this Genre is mostly talking about Manga, Games and Books, I may well be less disappointed if I read more Manga and Visual Novels, but Anime specifically is what I'm here to talk about.  

My perspective is also mainly on relatively recent stuff, and stuff mixed with other Genre elements, but the same is largely true of the standard Harems I compare them to.  And I'm not really making the criticisms you've probably seen before.

My issue is how they barely qualify as Harems.  In male lead Harems even though actual Non Monogamous resolutions are rare, all the girls still matter.  My memories of watching Code:Breaker and Code;Realize have faded a bit but I really felt it was mostly just a romance between the Heroine and the main dude while the others guys were just sorta there.

Even in Sword Art Online, where there was never ambiguity that Asuna is the main heroine, Kirito does develop legitimate unique bonds with the other characters.  In both Fairy Dance and Phantom Bullet Kirto's storyline with the new Heroine work as romances fairly well even though they don't get together, because not all romances work out.

And Code:Realize is specifically an Otome Game adaptation.  With standard Harems the Visual Novel/Dating Sim based ones are usually the best at actually treating all the girls close to equally, since in the source material it's literally up to the audience.  Sugo no Sora is something most people only care about because of the controversial Twincest route yet they included other routes in the Anime adaptation anyway.  In Clannad it becomes clear who'll win by late in season 1 but it felt reasonably up in the air at first.  And some don't even designate someone the main one.

For most of history most cultures' gender norms expected men to have multiple lovers but largely forbade it for women.  Even when Monogamy first became the only form of Marriage that was legal fidelity was truly expected only of the wives.   While Anime is more transgressive then mainstream western media in a lot of ways, including specifically on gender.  This particular double standard seems to be one even Otaku struggle to move past, and so Anime becomes less willing to follow through on the point of a Reverse Harem even then a CW Teen Drama.

However one reason I feel somewhat confident this is less of a problem in the more prolific and experimental mediums Anime is often adapted from, is the Boogiepop situation.  

In the first Boogiepop Light Novel it's explicitly most morally virtuous character is a girl who is in a Polyandrous relationship, and that is not treated as her one flaw but as intrinsically tied to why she is the kind of person the world needs more of.  And the low budget but still very good Live Action movie wasn't afraid to include that.  But the 2019 Boogiepop Anime (which I still overall like) in the process of condensing the first novel to only 3 episodes completely removed one of those boyfriends so they could not acknowledge this at all.

So I'm sure Otome Games actually give more equal treatment to all the Husbandos and maybe even sometimes have Poly endings.  But is there an Otome game counterpart to School Days where the Heroine can actually wind up becoming a Cheater while asking the audience to sympathize with how that happened?

Gun Gale Online, SAO's Phantom Bullet Arc: An Accidental Anime for American Gun Nuts?

The first slightly more then half of season 2 of Sword Art Online.  

One detail I notice is how the one Full Dive VRMMO Video Game of the SAO Universe that is specifically said to be developed in America not Japan is the Shooter.  This actually does reflect the real world Game industry, Extra Credits has a video called The Myth of The Gun on why First Person shooters are the one genre of Games that America dominates rather then Japan.  I like to add that America's unique fixation on Guns perhaps partly has to do with us being the one Major nation of the world that is younger then the existence of Guns.  So while other cultures prominently feature Swords, Spears and Bows&Arrows in their founding myths, our founding myths are about battles fought with Guns.

As a Leftist, specifically an Anarcho-Libertarian-Communist, my position on Gun Laws is one of the few things on which I take what America considers the "Conservative" position, but in truth it's only in America that belief in Arming the Proletariat is considered Right Wing.  My beliefs on Gun Rights are the same as Karl Marx, and philosophically my attitude towards Guns is not the same as that of a typical card carrying NRA or GOA member.  I wish Guns didn't exist, but we can't just give fire back to Prometheus.

It's from that perspective that I have observed how Sinon's story in the Phantom Bullet Arc can quite unintentionally appeal to American Gun Nuts.  As a little girl she was a good guy with a gun who stopped a bad guy with a gun, but because Japan's Liberal society so irrationally fears guns everyone looked at her as a freak instead of a hero and that is what traumatized her.  And so now she's playing this Gun themed video game to deal with her trauma, and then she gets pulled into this Death Gun crisis and again helps save the day with her Gun skills before finally getting the thanks she deserved for her original act of heroism.

Normal Anime fans when critiquing this arc of SAO will sometimes say they wish it was just about Sinon and Kirito didn't have to be there stealing the spotlight.  I suppose my hypothetical Gun Nut watching the show for this reading might feel the same way.  But I like to argue that even if we watch it as if she was the lead, Kirto's role in her story is the same as her role in Kirito's, they're making a connection with someone else who has their own PTSD to deal with.

However the one common criticism of the Phantom Bullet Arc that these hypothetical viewers would  most jump to agreeing with is it allowing Kirito to just use a Lightsaber so he can transfer over his RPG sword skills.  Usually the reason this bothers people is because it's Bad Game design that this Gun themed Game allows you to win Gun fights without actually using a Gun.  And that it would be more interesting to actually make Kirito have to adjust to something he's not already good at.

However this hypothetical Conservative American viewer would have a more deeply philosophical problem with it.  Remember one of the most Iconic images of American Cinema is a "savage" POC showing off their sword skills only to be quickly and easily gunned downed by an American who isn't even a professional gunman.  While one of the most popular recurring images in Japanese Animation is a Samurai using their Sword to easily disarm entire legions of gun wielding goons.

However the aspect of the Phantom Bullet Arc that really shows how it doesn't actually agree with this American romanticisation of guns is the villain.  More specifically the Villain who's an actual character in the story.  His infatuation with Sinon is because she killed someone with a Gun and has thus completely fetishized that Gun.  Almost as if he's the audience insert for the people who'd be watching it for that reason.

My Top 17 Anime of the 20tens

The sheer volume of Anime I’ve seen favors the last decade, about half of everything I’ve completed.  Probably a natural result of that it was within this last decade I started watching Anime full time.  Still my absolute favourites lists tend to favor stuff at least a little older, but that’s subject to change, I think in the future I may start considering more 2010s Anime to be 3x3 worthy once they’ve stood the test of time.  And that is all the more reason why making a list of just this decade can be useful.

I’m deciding to do this list of the decade as beginning with 2010 and ending with 2019, like most decade lists.  I am however one of those nerds who thinks Decades should perhaps properly be defined as beginning with 1 and ending with a 0,.and that's why about a year from now I may make an updated version of this list that is for that Decade.  The slight shift in which 10 years are eligible might not be the only reason it’d be different, my mind could change on especially Anime of the last couple years in that time, and simply what I’ve seen may increase, there are still some key shows of the Decade I haven’t seen yet.

The list may sometimes be arbitrary in terms of when an entire franchise is one entry and when I’m just counting a specific installment.  But there are reasons.  If so far pretty much all of that franchise’s Anime incarnation is within said Decade that helps it count as one entry.  But also whether or not the franchise is an anthology by nature matters.

I don't usually like to do Honorable Mentions.  But for this I feel the need to include Sword Art Online and Attack On Titan.  I can’t call them personal favorites but their status as two of the big mainstream Anime of the decade has made them in different ways important to my Anime journey and I’ve gained plenty of enjoyment from both.

17: SSSS.Gridman

A masterful homage to Power Rangers style shows.  And perhaps has some of the best villains of the decade.

16: YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at The Bound of This World

An interesting historically significant Anime.  Aired in the last year of this decade and indeed seems like a product of its trends, but is really an adaptation of the first truly ambitious Visual novel from 1996.

15: In Another World With My Smartphone

I still feel compelled to include this one, it’s what got me hooked on Isekai and still the best approach to Polygamy I've seen in Anime so far.

14: Engaged to The Unidentified

This show is what got me into Slice of Life/Cute Girls Doing Cute Things.

13: Yuru Yuri

For this decade my favorite Slice of Life/Cute Girls Doing Cute Things show.

12: Yuki Yuna Is A Hero

This will always remain a favorite of mine, it's played a key role in how I went from just casually interested in the Magical Girl genre to it being perhaps my favorite Genre.

Movies interlude Pokemon:  I like the XY and Z movies, have very mixed feelings on I Choose You and love Power Of Us.  Haven’t seen Evolution yet.

11: Citrus

Still my favorite Yuri of the decade, I don't care if you find that offensive.

10: Symphogear

Watch it

9: Sailor Moon Crystal

Yes, I went from being pretty hard on Crystal at first to now seeing it’s true value.  Just watch the Viz Dub so you know you’re getting the BluRay rips.  I’m including all three seasons here.

8: No Game No Life

For now I’m going to rank this as the top Isekai Anime.

Movies interlude PreCure:  All but the first of the PreCure crossover movies are in this decade.  I think the best of them are still the earliest ones.

7: Hugtto Pretty Cure

This is the best PreCure of the Decade.

6: Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Usually I’m not likely to actually rank Madoka as the top Magical Girl anime of the era it started.  But for a list like this cultural influence should be factored in.  And my mind does constantly shift on how to rank Magical Girl Warrior shows.

5: Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine.

This is right up there with Utena as the most important Feminist Anime.

Movie interlude final:  Three of the movies from my movies 3x3 are from this decade.  But they are also all capstones on series from the prior Decade.  K-On’s movie, the Gundam 00 movie and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.

4: A Silent Voice

The only proper entry a movie has on this list.  I saw it finally in the last few months and the only reason it isn’t on my movie 3x3 yet is because I haven’t updated it and can’t decide what to kick off.

3: Steins;Gate

This is probably my favorite strictly SciFi Anime, and perhaps my favorite piece of Time Travel based SciFi in any medium.

2: UFO Table Fate/ Anime.

It’s hard for me to choose between Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works.  The former is what I recommend as the ideal normie entry point to the franchise, but it’s precisely because I’m already an Anime person that the latter often satisfies me more.  The second Heaven’s Feel movie also did not disappoint.

1:  A Certain Scientific Railgun S.

I only watched any of Raildex pretty recently, but this show has quickly climbed it’s way to the top in my reverence.  I already made a few blog posts about it in 2019.  And Railgun S is definitely the height of that franchise so far.

I Love Captain Marvel and I Hate The Last Jedi

I really didn't want to talk about TLJ again, but I've observed something that has forced me to.  It seems most of the people hating on Captain Marvel are also people who dislike TLJ and are defining both films as being the same problem.

What I hate about TLJ has nothing to do with anything it has in common with Captain Marvel.  Quite the contrary Captain Marvel is in a way like Return of The Jedi, where the Hero of the Story becomes the true Hero they are meant to be when they go against what their traditional Mentor Figures wanted them to do.  I realize that comparison is stretching it a bit, but the point is my rage at TLJ is strongly tied to how it did the opposite, how Rey is punished for trying the same thing Luke did in ROTJ, how the film is a fundamental rejection of what I believe the message of the Meta-Narrative of George Lucas's Six Episode Saga was.

I would also have found it interesting for a post ROTJ Star Wars film to have a twist like Captain Marvel's where who we thought was the Evil Empire turns out to have been the true Rebels all along.  Captain Marvel is not the most nuanced version of something like that but by Hollywood standards I found it damn refreshing.

There are in fact four female lead Superhero movies of the last two years this post is about.  Wonder Woman, The Last Jedi, Battle Angel Alita and Captain Marvel.  They are in fact the only female lead Hollywood Blockbuster Genre films we've gotten in that time frame (and only one of those leads is even close to qualifying as non white).  When you consider how we've had in that same time-frame as many male lead equivalents for each of those you'll perhaps understand why people who crave more Superheroine films will frequently take whatever they can get.  I don't need to as much because I get quite a bit from Anime, but I'm not a Woman myself so my investment in the subject is not as directly personal.

Of those four movies, TLJ is the only one I don't like at all.  But if I have to pick a least among the other three it would be Wonder Woman which I've liked less the more I think about it, like how all the Disney Star Wars films have gone for me actually. And if I had to pick one I definitely liked the most it would be Captain Marvel.

So one YouTube channel I was just looking at was saying how they think Wonder Woman and Battle Angel Alita are good so that proves they don't simply hate women, they just think those films are how a "Strong Female Character" should be written.  They dislike Captain Marvel and TLJ because they're bad not because they're about women.

I'm not making this post to suggest they do hate women, I don't know what's in their minds.  But Sexism is a tricky thing, very few misogynists literally do in fact hate every single woman.  You see men dictating what women should and should not be like has always been a part of how Patriarchy works, though in different cultures and different eras what those standards are change.  And even the most Patriarchal cultures that have ever existed have allowed "Strong Women" on special occasions.  So a man dictating how a female Superheroine should be written sure can look like it's just the modern Nerd Culture version of that.  That's why my goal in a post like this is never to say what I prefer is how they should always be, people liking the stuff I don't like doesn't bother me.

I'm not gonna say my dislike of TLJ has nothing to do with how Rey was handled, but I feel if anything the opposite.  I don't see how you can call her an unstoppable Mary Sue when she failed to do the main thing she set out to do.  But mostly Rey herself isn't my problem at all, I relatively liked The Force Awakens.  Even Holdo as a character was fine it was only the resolution of that plot-line I didn't like, and I liked Rose.

The mentality these fans express is that there is nothing engaging about a story where the Hero starts out already strong and competent and powerful and only becomes even more so as the story progresses.  Where nothing is ever truly a threat to that hero.  They say this as if it would apply to a male hero equally and I believe them, because the pieces of popular culture I know of with a male hero like that do have varying degrees of critical push back even when they are in fact highly popular and successful.

But it's an attitude I fundamentally reject regardless of Gender as someone who made a post on this blog about how Wish Fulfillment Escapism is Art. I have issues with Sword Art Online but they aren't in anyway about how overpowered Kirito is, he's really no more overpowered then Lina Inverse was on Slayers.

The first season of A Certain Scientific Railgun is a lot like Captain Marvel.  The story begins with Misaka already a Level 5, the challenges she faces are to her worldview not from anyone who can actually overpower her.  And the moment she does something bigger then we'd seen before it's because she stopped holding herself back.  That's a show that became more popular then the one it spun off from then got an even better second season and now a third is coming.

I like lots of different kinds of Superhero stories, for both men and women.  I can and do also enjoy ones where they barely succeed, or don't entirely.  But I see great value in just enjoying letting one wreak havoc on the bad guys unimpeded.

October's first Weekly Anime Update

Tonari no Kyuuketsuki-San aka Ms. Vampire Who Lives in My Neighborhood had a perfectly adorable pilot.  There was a period where Vampire based fiction was a top obsession of mine, I started this blog when that phase was winding down. I wish I could have seen this show and Tsukihime back then.

I know I said last week I was gonna include Slime and Goblin Slayer in the simuldubs I was gonna watch.  But with both I’ve since heard a lot of things about them being Dark and Gritty in ways I prefer my Isekai to not be.  So I probably simply won’t try them after all.

The first episode of Release The Spyce was fun.  Since I first heard of it I’d been joking about the title making me think of Dune.  But it turns out the titular Spyce does kind of the do the same thing Melange does.

Attack On Titan season 3 episode 7 was pretty darn good again, season 3 is easily proving to be way better than season 2 was.

The premier of Sword Art Online: Alicization was 47 minutes, I suspect MAL will ultimately classify it as two episodes.  The first half was not too exciting but has me curious.  The Gun Gale Online segment was fun, I had no idea how much I wanted to see Sylica manning a machine gun.  It seems like they might be planning to play even more into the Gnostic themes I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on.  This is my first time watching this cast with their Japanese VAs, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to get used to them.

Hugtto!PreCure episode 35 was okay.

Steins;Gate 0 episode 22 was very good, I’m quite excited to see the ending now.

So the Live Action Sword Art Online is going to be done by Netflix.

And like when the Death Note project started I don't know if it'll be a series or a movie.

With Death Note I have always been adamant that that should be a serialized story.  But Sword Art Online is more complicated.

The first Web Novel was a stand alone project originally.  And as such I think it could work as a stand alone film, though it would need to be longer then the Death Note movie was.  However if it's a movie I think I'd be a shame to miss out on getting a theatrical release.

Thing is, some of my personal favorite stuff from Aincrad wasn't in the original Novel, but based on the short stories written for the second novel. Like Scillica and Lizbeth's episodes.

Later on SAO however becomes something definitely written in the hopes it would get an Anime.

Now as far as the inevitable debate about westernizing it.  Which I don't know if it'll do that but it probably will.  I'm not against adapting stories to a different setting, it just depends how it's handled.  I feel a lot of the inherent outrage would die down if the American lead could be a type of American other then White for once.  In this case if I were doing it I would have both Kirito and Asuna be ethnically Japanese, even if I set it in America, and later that would add Suguha.

Fortunately the show has a pretty well written African American character right in the source material.  Seriously I don't think people appreciate how much credit SAO should get for not drawing Agil like an early black face cartoon.  That look is still pretty common in Anime because Japan just doesn't know why it happened or why it's offensive.

I like Sword Art Online

Sword Art Online, or SAO for short, is a very flawed anime, some of it's flaws bug me more then others, some arcs are more flawed then others.

None the less I enjoy it, and I like it the most of everything I've watched within it's Sub-Genre, which is Anime about being trapped in a Virtual Reality MMO video game.  Digibro says Log Horizon aired in a time-slot usually devoted to educational programs, and frankly it shows. And .Hack was a show so boring even Yuki Kajura music couldn't save it.  The rest I've seen are just Isekai using Video Game references to pander to that demographic.

I'm a fan of Digibro, some of his criticisms I agree with and some I don't.  But in general his initial diatribe is one of his weakest videos, he's learned since then.

I already did a blog post where I explain that it's wrong to view SAO as a Death Game anime and thus Mother's Basement's objection to Yui offends me.  Now I'm going to break things down by Arc.

The Aincrad Arc I have very few issues with.  I wish there was less Anime Style Fanservice, especially seeing the show's youngest character in her underwear.   And in that older post I commented on the murder mystery two parter.

Besides that most of my issues are connected to the Kuradeel story-line.  Like Digibro I wish they'd stuck with Ausna killing Kuradeel as she did in the original Web Novel version.  Overlapping with the above complaint I wish the accidental Boob Grab wasn't there.  And I also don't like the image of Asuna cowering behind Kirito.

I mostly don't share people's issues with the ending.  I like Kaiba being a mystery.  The plot point with the resurrection device I view essentially as explaining why Kirito and Asuna could live at the end, because there is a 10 second delay before the Nerve gear fries your brain.  They should have just included a little more exposition explaining that.  I can again agree with Digibro that it would have been better if Kirito and Asuna had came back and finished off Heathcliff together.

Xoh is a YouTuber who's made a lot of videos responding to SAO critics.  Some of his points I agree with and some not so much.

When people talk about why SAO is inaccurate to what MMO RPGs are like, it largely reminds me why I wouldn't like to play them.  I would like the community aspect, but not being seemingly unable to play alone.  I would be more interested in something like a MMO Breath of The Wild.

Much of what I like about SAO is how especially the first two Arcs can be read as Gnostic allegories.  That's a subject that will some day be it's own post on my recently launched Comparative Mythology blog.

The Alfheim Arc I'm inclined to agree is the worst part of SAO, though even it I see value in.  Mother's Basement did a video on how to fix the arc, and I pretty much agree with that one.  But I can add a third option to Suguha's romantic resolution, since I ship her with Shinon.

Gungale Online aka the Phantom Bullet arc, is perhaps the most complicated to explain my feelings on.  It has enough stuff I like that I can maybe say I like it more then Aincrad even.  But it has issues including being the most gratuitous yet in it's Anime Style Fanservice.

With both Alfeim and Gungale people addressing the in-universe game designs of these games seem to assume from how Kirito gets his Avatar that there is no customization possible.  I just see it as Kirito being given a default Avatar pretty randomly and just sticking with it.  Frankly I don't feel his presumably Customized avatar from the first episode of Aincrad looked all that imaginative either, I think Kirito maybe usually just doesn't care much about that part.

Digibro expressed confusion at so many people in Gungale just hanging out at that in-game bar/nightclub or whatever you call it, and not actually playing the game.  And that just makes me think about how often I've turned on my N64 to "play" Ocarina of Time just to look at the Temple of Time and then turn it off.  Or put in Majora's Mask just to hang out in Clock Town, I've still completed only half of that game.  I've done similar things with Twilight Princess.

It is exactly that part of Gungale online where SAO started reminding me of the missed opportunities of Caprica, the BSG spin off series I really liked at first, and in-spite of how much it started to annoy me I was really upset it got canceled.

Digibro claims it's inherently bad to do exposition scenes in dinners or restaurants and such places.  But says it was tolerable in the first two arcs of SAO because of how Taverns like those are stables of the Fantasy genre.  Well such things are also staples of the Genres Gungale is referencing, Westerns with their Taverns and Brothels, and Film Noirs with their seedy Night Clubs and Casinos, like Rick's place in Casablanca.  Not to mention how this Arc draws on Star Wars.

Which leads me to a criticism I can agree with.  Giving Kirito a Light Saber so that he doesn't have to actually learn to use a new kind of weapon and fit in with the arc's actual theme.  And while I would not consider the mere idea of a Laser Sword plagiarism, using the exact same sound effects for it I think is.  Gundam has their Light Saber like weapons without recycling the exact same sound effects.

They could have at least given Kirito something like that Blaster/Light Saber hybrid Ezra created in Star Wars Rebels, that Canaan figured out how to use properly in the first season finale.

I'm fine mostly with Death Gun.  How obvious of a Vader Clone he is doesn't bother me.  The premise behind revealing he was two people I feel worked well.  But adding a third felt like nothing more then to have a sequel hook for future story-lines.

Once again I'm uncomfortable with the Rape aspect of the plot.  Ironically I feel it's handled a little better this time, but that they took that rout to make their new villain so evil twice in a row is really lazy.

Shinon should have won the Battle of the Bullets.

There is one aspect of my personal interest in Gungale that I'm going to save for it's own post.

I don't like Asuna (and to a lesser extent his other friends) being sidelined. I get why Kirito doesn't want to get them involved, that's a pretty common attitude for this kind of hero to have.  But usually the plot contrives a way to get them involved anyway.  Here however they find out about it, but still never get to actually help.

The thing that really bugs me however, is how Kirito was in Gungale on an undercover mission but never actually reported anything he learned to the person who sent him in the first place.  We see him spend time back in the real world between qualifying for the Battle of the Bullets and entering it.  Yet when we meet up with his government contact during the BoB he clearly had not even been informed about there being a Laughing Coffin member in Gungale.  And given he was diving in a specially arranged hospital room, why wouldn't they set it up to record everything he was seeing and hearing?

The rest of season 2 I have no issues with at all, Mother's Rosario is absolutely SAO at it's best.  And that I can recall there was no what I would consider Anime Style Fanservice.

Ordinal Scale has turned out to be similar to how I feel about The Dark Knight Rises.  As a stand alone film I have no issues with it at all.  But as far as the on going SAO story goes, it's really annoying how after what had defined much of Kirito's motivations in season 2, he does not care that this AR technology allows them to basically interact with Yui in the real world.  And I think it's really going to show in time how it was written in 2016 to comment on things like Pokemon Go and Google Glasses, but is a Prequel to Light Novels written years before all of that.

Looking forward, I'm very curios about the Gungale based spin off.  And the next arc of the main story-line which it sounds like will start delving more into the A.I. theme of the story.

Live Action adaptations of Anime should be Serialized

My love of Anime greatly overlaps with my love of serialized fiction.  And since people are looking for a common denominator to why Live Action adaptations of Anime, particularly Western/Hollywood ones (PGSM is pretty well received), tend to fail.  I think it may be a good idea to look at how they tend to be based on Anime that was serialized originally, but abandon that structure for being a simple 90 minute to 2 Hour film, or hopefully a series of them.

Death Note is the current hot topic on the subject of Anime being adapted into live action.  I don't know if the Netflix Death Note is going to be a series like the Marvel Defenders shows or just a movie, I've heard it called both.

There have been two Live Action adaptations of Death Note in Japan, a fact I've mentioned before.  A Pair of movies, and then more recently a TV series in 2015.  Both have their strengths and weaknesses in how the adapted the story and cast the characters.  But the 2015 series edges out as the better one for me precisely because it was a TV series and was somewhat able to capture the original story structure better, and had more time.

Anime itself is often adapted from other source material.  If it's Manga it's definitely best serialized.  Some feel the weaknesses of the Akira movie come from needing to cut a lot by condensing the story to just a film.

Meanwhile Gankutsuou is in my view the absolute best adaptation of The Count of Monte-Cristo I've seen, in-spite of how much it changes including dropping my personal favorite story-line by dropping Louise d'Armilly, because it is Serialized like Dumas original novel was.

On the other hand it may be that most of these much decried Light Novel adaptations would have been better off if they'd been movies instead of TV Series-es.  Both Sword Art Online and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya changed the structure to fit the format by having the short stories of their second novel pad out the plot of the first.  I happen to like how the first Arc of SAO was structured in the Anime, and I don't hate Haruhi's, but The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya does feel like a much more satisfying Anime.  And I love that it was an animated movie willing to be nearly a full three hours.

Meanwhile the light novel Washio Sumi wa Yuusha de Aru is being split into three less then 50 minute movies, when perhaps it would have worked better to just be one big movie.

But an adaptation of Noir, or Witch Hunter Robin that left out the case/mission of the week format of the first part of the story I don't think could work.  Likewise with the Monster of the Week format of most of the Magical Girl genre.

I could maybe see Code Geass or Gundam 00 working as films if you made three movies of three hours each for each season, but that would be a huge investment.

There is still a bias to seeing a Big Screen movie as the ultimate goal of any franchise.  I do love the Big Screen and wish I could watch something more serialized on it.  But is it worth how it changes the nature of a story since we can't really be serialized on it?

Back in the day Movie Theater serials were a thing, but the advent of TV caused them to die out.  A lot of serialized Anime is kind of more like what the old serials were then your average Western TV show.  Like Code Geass, Gundam, Eva and other Mecha shows, and perhaps to an extent Death Game animes like Future Diary and Fate/Zero or Unlimited Blade Works.  And also Dragonball Z with the whole 20 episodes for one fight meme.  And Attack on Titan. I could maybe add Madlax.  I'm still not too familiar with Space Opera animes like Legends of the Galactic Heroes.

A lot of DC fans feel DC on Television is satisfying them more then the movies right now.  And the people who had the rights to George R. R. Martin's Saga of Fire and Ice knew that TV would suite that story better, and that decision paid off.

When you adapt a serialized story to a movie format two things happen.  You will probably have less screen time to work with.  And the very structure of the story changes.  Either one of those could result in lovable minor characters being dropped, and similar loss of nuance.  Together it's pretty much guaranteed.

Caprica was a TV show that it really saddens me failed.  It appealed to me for some of the same reasons SAO does.

I've already said I feel Hellsing could be a good fit for the BBC.

Slice of Life shows could make good Sit-Coms, particularly Dragon-Maid, though I'd hate the thought of Lucky Star or K-On with a laugh tract or studio audience.

And I'd like it if ABC Fam.... excuse me FreeForm, could replace the soon ending Pretty Little Liars with a live action Pretty Cure.

Yuki Kajiura is the John Williams of Anime

There are a lot of potential candidates for the title of all time best director or best actor in Hollywood. But I think few would dispute that the all time greatest composer of Film Scores is John Williams.

Between Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park and Harry Potter, he's made most of the most Iconic film scores of all time.  Harry Potter is the only of those franchises I haven't seen, but I still recognize the Music when I hear it.

Who are the top composers of other mediums?  Back when G4 still existed and still had more then just one show about Video Games.  I watched a half hour biography they did of the main Composer of the Final Fantasy series.  He seems like a good candidate, but to me the most personally Iconic video game music is definitely the music from Nintendo first party titles.

But I think easily the John Williams of Anime is Yuki Kajiura.

She did Noir, my favorite Anime, largely the reason I got into anime.  It's soundtrack is still the only Anime soundtrack I've ever bought on CD.  And to this day it holds up, I can put that Music on my not quite an IPod and go weeks listening to no Music other then it.

After that she's done it's sister series, Madlax and El Cazador de la Bruja.  Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero and Sword Art Online.  And many others I still haven't watched yet, some I intend to try soon.  There are some where her Music is the only nice thing some people have to say about it, not unlike how SW Prequel haters feel about their Music.

Can any other Anime composer compete?  Lots of Anime have memorable opening and closing themes, but nothing epic in terms of score.  Death Note's score is memorable mostly for how obviously it's going for an Omen vibe, and that's fine, it works great for what Death Note was doing.  And you've got lots of Anime where the characters are making Music in the show.  Evangelion is an anime who's most disappointing quality was it's music, I love that Bohemian Rhapsody AMV because I feel it tells the story musically far better.  The music of Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works does as well as it does largely because it's following Fate/Zero's lead, knowing Yuki will be back for the Heaven's Feel movie has me even more excited for it, it's too bad the Dub probably won't get a theatrical release.

The only Anime who's score can compete with Yuki Kajiura scores is Revolutionary Girl Utena.  And it had two composers, the Duel Themes were done by a different composer then the rest.  And neither had done anything else I'm currently familiar with, partly because not much else that is considered a must watch.

So for the time being I feel there is little competition for Yuki Kajiura as the best Anime Composer.

The thing about Critics is knowing how to anyalize what they say

I've always been a bit of an Anti-Critic person, especially the main mainstream kind of critics.  2016 was a year in which taking such an attitude became particularly controversial, some of my fellow DC fans claimed a silly Disney conspiracy in negative reviews of DC films.

There is no direct correlation either way in whether or not a critically received film will be one I also like.  But when it comes to Genre films it's clear many are inherently disconnected from most of what casual viewers care about.

What I've come to learn is that the key is in knowing how to discern what they say, why they did or didn't like it.

I watched one YouTube video where a guy gave a positive review of the Comic Book Trade Paper Back Batman Black Mirror. A comic I haven't read.  And I concluded from what he said that this is a story I'd hate and shouldn't bother with.  Meanwhile I've had the exact opposite experience listening to his negative comments on Grant Morrison's Batman run.  But on plenty other Comics I've agreed with this person's opinion.

I've had similar experiences listening to YouTubers talk about Anime.

Digibro had a video recently where he said the differences between different tastes in fiction is being different in what flaws you can tolerate and what flaws you can't.  I disagree however.  Because the thing with especially the Star Wars Prequels is that so very often what I love is exactly what the haters hate, I don't respond to the criticisms because those very things are why I like Star Wars to begin with.

Now I have not yet watched Sword Art Online.  It's an Anime I've been putting off watching, I've decided I will try it soon, I'm not sure what I'll think.  But I know more about it going in then I have few other Animes.  Mostly from listening to very negative opinions of it.  Here I do not really hear the same things I hear from Prequel Haters.

Not once have I heard a complaint be something that is exactly what I'm looking for in Anime.  Some are things I'm not bothered by, like Plot Holes, Incest, and general Anime Cliches.  But also much of it speaks to exactly what often frustrates me in Anime, from gratuitous fan-service, to pointless sexual assault.

However these critics do mention occasional good things, and some are things that might win more points from me then they would others.   And I already know I like the cast it's Dub has.  And I really like it's composer, Noir/Madlax to Madoka to Fate/Zero, all great Anime Music.

I notice that the people who hate SAO the most, often really liked Asuna as a character, and are upset at how she gets treated.  That is certainly something I can relate to.

So I'll give it a shot, I'm expecting either something I'll hate, or something I'll enjoy with heavy reservations.  If I feel like talking publicly about it it'll probably be on my Tumblr, where I'll use an SAO Tag, and/or SAO Hate.