I hope a Fantastical Alternate History version of WWI or WWII is a staple of every Anime season now

Last season we had Izetta The Last Witch, which gave us basically WWII, but with a lot of cosmetic influence from WWI.

This season we have Tanya The Evil.  People have had a lot fun calling it a show about a "Loli Nazi", but really the War we're currently watching is more of a delayed WWI.

But.... a theory I've seen presented in the comments section of the site I've been streaming the Dub on is that basically Tanya will be the Hitler of this alternate history.

Imagine it, this season ends with the Empire being defeated, lots of climatic stuff happens.  Then the final after credits scene is a jump several years in the future, an teen Tanya gives a rousing speech to disillusioned veterans.  And it ends with them raising their hands saying "Hail Tanya".

That would be chilling.

I am fine with a Westernized adaptation of Death Note

There is nothing wrong with retelling a story in a different cultural context.  We've seen Anime based on stories of Western origin, and I'd like to see more.  I'd like to see Annie on My Mind re-imagined as a Yuri Anime or Manga, replace the role played by the Egyptian section of the Museum with a Shinto Shrine.

My problem with White Washing in Anime adaptations is when that seems likely to be the only Live Action version that property will have since Japan's film industry can't afford to do justice to many of these stories.

Death Note however has had two Live Action adaptations made in Japan with mostly Japanese casts.  Including characters who were heavily implied to be White in the Anime, like the clearly British Watari, or Near and Mello who seemed to be Germanic.  L himself is more controversial as some think he may have been part Japanese, but the name usually revealed to be his real name is a European one.

This Death Note adaptation has some diversity to it, with L being African American.

So I really don't have a problem with the ultimate privileged entitled misogynist douche who thinks he deserves to decide who lives and dies being White.

And I frankly would have liked Misa to be able to Blonde in live action for once, but instead we're still not getting that.

There are other issues I may have this show.  Mainly I'm really annoyed it's going be on Netflix.  But I'll have to wait till I know more. 

I'd like to see the BBC do a Live Action Hellsing

So we've seen Anime adapted into Live Action in it's home country of Japan with varying degrees of success.  And We've seen it adapted into Live Action by Hollywood with so far no undeniable success.

But what about giving the BBC a shot? Looking at some of the the shows they've had including SciFi ones they have the means.  And You'll be surprised how many Anime YouTubers have British accents, so there is an Otaku audience there.

Hellsing would be my first choice for this.  It's set in London, and inspired by a classic work of British poplar fiction.

I'm of a course a Hellsing fan who hasn't read the manga, but really liked the first Anime yet totally hates the art style of Ultimate.  It bums me out that the original Anime didn't get a second season as there was clearly more story to tell.

Hellsing has the potential to fit in right alongside Doctor Who and maybe even fill the void left by Sherlock.

After Hellsing the next Anime franchise that involves a lot of British characters is Fate/Stay Night, especially in Fate/Zero.  But that's still mainly set in Japan.  Maybe I could be okay with a Localized adaptation, it's not nearly as Shinto driven as something like Higurashi, another Anime adapted from a Visual Novel.  But you'd have to be very careful about it.  Or they could make like a Fate/ spin off, just depicting the Mages Academy and other Nasuverse drama.

So Hellsing is definitely the best bet for giving the BBC a shot at adapting Anime/Manga.

Update August 31st 2017:

Thanks to Princess Principal we now have another Anime sorta set in London, an alternate history London.  I like it, but it's still airing so who knows how it'll turn out.

The BBC isn't likely to do something with an all female cast, yes they just finally committed to a female Doctor Who, but that will still have male characters.

And it's best not to adapt something till it's stood the test of time somewhat.  If I revisit Princess Principal in 5 years and still care about it, and others do too.  Then we'll see.

But for now Hellsing is still the best bet.

I'm going to Backlash against the Madoka Backlash

Lately there's been a backlash against Madoka, one that reminds me of the Backlash against Nolan's Batman films from a few years ago.

Madoka is not an anime I'm certain I consider one of my top favorites, it probably was when I first watched it mainly because there was so much I hadn't seen yet way back then. There are two Anime pretty easy to write off as copying Madoka that I'd now say I possibly like more, Yuki Yuna is a Hero and Wixoss.  And there is an older Magical Girl show with some of the same people behind it I would now say I like more, Lyrical Nanoha seasons 1 and 2.

It's partly Rebellion's fault, for playing into a wrong perspective of the show.  People constantly saying it was Dark for the sake of being Dark, or "Tragedy Porn"

I now somewhat more strongly agree with those who say it's not a Deconstruction.  My post on the subject from late 2015 was kind of a bait and switch to begin with, ending by calling it a Reconstruction.

What's really interesting to remember is how SFDebris.com in his reviews of the original series said he didn't even find the show that dark.

I still haven't seen Raising Project yet, from what I've heard it's more like what people keep writing off Madoka as.

I of course cited Madoka as an example in my The Night is Darkest Just Before The Dawn post.  And Mentioned Madoka in my Yuki Kajiura post.

The Show hasn't been at the top of my radar as much as I've discovered more Anime to watch.  But every time I look back on it I remember it fondly.  The characters were pretty well developed, not as one note as Digibro tries to write them off as.  And it's 12 episodes were perfectly structured to tell their story.

Much of the Backlash comes from my fellow Feminists.  The show isn't seeking to send a Feminist Message in the same way Sailor Moon is.  But the perception that it is rejecting the empowering Magical Girl message is tied to the wrong perception that it's a Deconstruction.  I have trouble being critical of Magical Girl shows on Feminist grounds since the least of them I still feel does better then Western Superhero Comics, even female lead ones.  Maybe it's just because Japan's gender issues are different so they quite unintentionally give Western Feminists what we're looking for, but I'll still take it.

Could the Gerudo have been based on The Gorgons?

One of the many things that excites me about Breath of The Wild is seeing the Gerudo finally being given some attention.  I have been fascinated by them for many reasons, like my general interest in Amazons as a concept.  I suggested a theory on a Zelda forum once that they might reproduce by Gynogenesis.

Here, offspring are produced by the same mechanism as in parthenogenesis, but with the requirement that the egg merely be stimulated by the presence of sperm in order to develop. However, the sperm cell does not contribute any genetic material to the offspring. Since gynogenetic species are all female, activation of their eggs requires mating with males of a closely related species for the needed stimulus.

Since we were told in OoT (in the most kid friendly way possible) that they do have sex with males to reproduce.  Yet they seek these males from totally different tribes, and their distinct ethnic features remain un-distorted, most of the time.  Rarely in a Gynogenesis species a sperm will actually contribute, that could explain characters speculated to be part Gerudo (like Telma in Twilight Princess), as well as a male being born every 100 years.

But let's get to the topic I want to discus today.

You might be thinking "aren't Gorgons ugly monsters with hair made out of snakes?".  Traditionally yes.  But Diodorus Siculus claims in his account of Myrina and the Libyan Amazons, that the Gorgons or Gorgos were another Matriarchal Tribe who Myrina encountered before reaching Egypt.  Which would seemingly place them somewhere in the Sahara Desert (Though the Geography of this account doesn't exactly hold up under scrutiny).  As a Creationist interested in this subject, I've speculated they could fit into Genesis 10 via being of the Girgashite tribe of Canaan.

Scholars who think there might be some truth to this claim, have speculated this tribe maybe worshiped a Snake Goddess and that is why they became Snake monsters.  Inside the Desert Colossus/Spirit Temple of OoT, the inner statue of the Desert Goddess has a Cobra wrapped around her.

It may be this is just a coincidence, influenced by my own personal interests, like my tendency to see Solomon's Temple in the Temple of Time.  But it's an interesting comparison to make.

The common tendency to see the Gerudo as being like Arabs could make my Feminism of Pre-Islamic Arabia post interesting to look at.  [And I have since considered reasons to relocate the geography of Myrina's story from North Africa to Arabia.]

I can't play Breath of The Wild anytime soon as I'm so far behind I still own neither Console it's playable on.  But I've been watching others play it on YouTube, and I just love the detail put into creating it's world, it's mind blowing.

I'd love to see this new kind of engine applied to a revisiting of the concept of Majora's Mask.  Bring back all 4 of the original transformation masks, plus add three more.  A Gerudo Mask, a Sheikah Mask and a Rito Mask.  And maybe this Majora's Mask sequel could star Linkle rather then Link?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most critics of fiction seem to believe strongly in Nuture over Nature.

[Update March 2024: This is another old Post I regret making.  It conflicts with how much emphasis my current Philosophy puts on Materialism.]