I want some English Translations of Nobuko Yoshiya's work

Every piece of Japanese Prose literature labeled  "Light Novel" gets an English translation.  Even if they are often unlicensed Fan-Made Translations.  (I can't have beef with those, much of Paul Feval's work is in English only because of 19th Century piracy.)

Some Fan Translation communities exist specifically for Yuri, Fan Subbing Anime, and Scantalations of Manga, official and Doujins, and Yuri Light Novels.

But there is still no way to read the works of the woman who arguably invented the Yuri/Girls Love/GL/Shoujo Ai genre.  Nobuko Yoshiya.

And the irony is for many of her works there is no legal obstacle to making your own translation in America. Because much of it was Pre 1923 and thus automatically Public Domain in the US, including the single most important one, Yaneura no nishojo ( 屋根裏の二處女 "Two Virgins in the Attic", 1919).

Doesn't matter if it's not Public Domain in the country of origin.  Peter Pan and the KJV are not PD in the UK, but they are in America and how they're used reflects that.  The KJV is the Bible you can find in Dollar Stores, none of the Copyrighted ones are ever sold that cheap.

So, Yanerura no nishojo, Chi no hate made, and most of Hanna monogatari could be translated and reprinted in America by anyone with no worry of legal red tape.

Post Script:  I am going to read some books I've been meaning to read, and so will be taking a brief break from watching Anime.  Once I've read them I will make Reviews of them on Amazon and possibly share them here.

Update January 4th 2024: Since I wrote this Public Domain Day has become a thing and so even more of her work is PD now.  All of Hanna monogatari, and her Kuroshobi Magazine.

Streaming Websites need to be reasonable

Here are two simple rules I feel they all need to follow.

1. Have all shows available for Free with Ads without needing to sign up.

2. No Ads for people using a paid subscription.

However too many want to make certain or even all of their shows watchable only for users paying a monthly fee for a subscriptions.  And also having Ads for paid accounts.

If you want to compete with Television you need make it as convenient as Television.

And this goes double for Anime Streaming.  I realize Netflix's major success with Daredevil and Jessica Jones probably has them thinking they don't need to do anything different.  But in the long run I think I'll be proven right.

But Legal Anime Streaming sites seem to feel they need to milk as much money as possible out of those who feel morally obligated to use them in order to make up for all the piracy.

What they don't realize is the solution to the Piracy problem is to make watching it legally more convenient.  Anime fans want to support the shows they like, but many simply don't have that much money to throw around.  They would have no problem sitting through ads on a legal site if it was just as free.  Especially since some of the illegal sites have ads anyway.

And it's doubly stupid to make a show meant mainly for kids a Paid membership exclusive, like Glitter Force.  On TV it's the opposite, channels like HBO air almost exclusively R rated content, and the parallel to that is exactly where Netlifx main success has been, the dark and gritty corner of the MCU.

Glitter Force it seems is considered a flop, and that's why they aren't going to Dub the Smile Pretty Cure movie.  One reason it failed is because it changed names and tried to pretend it's not set in Japan, but that only explains why it wasn't popular with those already into PreCure.  If the reason for doing that was to make it more accessible to people who don't usually watch Anime, especially western kids, Netflix was not the place to put it.

I think it's a bad idea for Kids shows to be Internet exclusive in general.  As much as we nerds who live on The Internet like to pretend regular television is obsolete.  The fact is it's sill true that the younger a kid is the more their parents are limiting their time online.  Which is why every currently successful kids show still airs on regular television.  So it bugs me that even the new Sailor Moon dub isn't airing on TV, the Sailor Moon fan base could be growing in America right now but it's not.

But there is certainly no way Parents are going to buy a Netflix account just so their kids can watch Glitter Force.  And those that have accounts anyway probably aren't letting their kids randomly browse it, so none are even going to become aware of Glitter Force.

In-spite of all the localization being annoying I find Glitter Force a solid Dub.  It could have been a hit if it'd actually been made available to Kids.

Anime Mash Up Trailers on YouTube

I talked about Fan Trailers last year.  Mash Up Trailers are something different, basically the Audio of a movie Trailer put over different visuals, usually from an Anime giving it a Pseudo Fan Dub quality.

I first discovered them years ago via some Mash Ups of The Dark Knight to Code Geass.  Then last year I found that Dual of The Fates Utena AMV, which was done to the Music Video giving it a trailer like quality.

The only one not to Animation I've really enjoyed is the Pretty Little Liars Suicide Squad one done by one of the BrosWatchPLLToo people.

Then I started seeking them out more regularly and found quite a few.  I watched some of Code Geass to The Dark Knight Rises, some Death Note to the Dark Knight films.  Some Code Geass to the Star Wars Prequels ones, as well as Evangelion to Star Wars.  And Some Mean Girls ones, mainly one to Lucky Star.  They are included on my Anime Playlist.

So I want to mention some Mash Up trailer ideas I'd like to see that haven't been done yet.  And that I'm not talented enough to do myself.

Smile Pretty Cure/Glitter Force to The Dark Knight.  With Joker as The Joker, that's obvious, that's where this idea starts.  Reika as Batman, since she's the one with a one on one confrontation with Joker.  Pop as Alfred, and Nao as Rachel Dawes since she's who Reika is usually shipped with, (according to TVTRopes anyway).

Returning to the subject of Code Geass and Star Wars, I'd like to see that Padme focused Phantom Menace trailer that has already been done to Code Geass once, done to Akito of the Exiled, with Leila as Padme.  And I'd love to see some Gundam/Star Wars mash ups, if they exist already I'm having trouble finding them.

Related to that would be doing Gundam to Star Wars, for me the most meaningful would be 00.  But it's an overdue idea since Gundam is called Japan's Star Wars.

And another Anime that could be fun to see done to Mean Girls would be Yuru Yuri.

And as I said before I'd like to see some using Noir and Madlax.

Update:  I’d really like to see Yuki Yuna is a Hero done to some Star Wars trailers, specially The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.  Those scenes of Karin practicing on the beast with her wooden swords particularly feel made for John Williams music to me.

An American Light not being White would be Alt-Right propaganda

This is a follow up of sorts to my earlier post I'm Fine with a Westernized Adaptation of Death Note.

But there is a second layer to the issue of White Washing Light, which is saying "why does American Light have to be White? not all Americans are White?".

I read a LadyGeekGirl article.  The author seems to think that because Japan isn't as "Racially" diverse as America that it has no concept of some people being more Privileged then others. And I find that offensive.  It doesn't matter how much you think everyone there looks the same, every society has some classes or demographics who are more privileged then others.

Light Yagami is absolutely a privileged person in all Japanese set versions of Death Note.  He's a Police Cheif's son, he's an honor student, he's someone women seem to throw themselves at.  And he absolutely flies under the radar of the police because of that.

So if any Anime character has to be White in an American setting it's Light Yagami.

In fact I will go so far as to say it would be White Nationalist propaganda to have an American Light be a minority.  It will play into their desire to deny White Privilege while delusionally claiming political correctness is allowing minorities to get away with things, to have an Asian American, African American, Latino American or Muslim fly under the police radar the way Light Yagami does.

Light should be an irredeemable villain with no sympathetic qualities.  If he's not that I'll consider it a failure no matter what he looks like, that's my issue with the 2015 series, trying to make Light more sympathetic. So it'd actually be much more problematic for such a character to be a POC.

Some other claims from this article I want to address.

"However, (spoilers for a decade-old manga) L dies. Light outmaneuvers him"

1. We don't know the adaptation will end that way, the first Live Action adaptation in Japan had L win.

2. Light is eventually defeated by Near and Mello, who interestingly were White men in the Manga/Anime but played by a Japanese actress in the 2015 series.  So if this version carries the story to include them, we'll have to wait and see how they're cast.

Aside from the phrasing of “Justice of Kira” not sounding like fluent English, the original Japanese used Kira as Light’s serial killer identity because “kira” (キラー) is how the word “killer” is written/pronounced in Japanese. Why on earth is this white boy from Seattle calling himself that?

Light is not the one who coined the name Kira in the Anime.  Also what country Light is from being known was itself a product of L's deductions.  So we have to wait and see how the name comes about here.

Watari is made Japanese in this even though he was British in the source material.  I'm curious how they're going to make sense of that.

Everything Great about The Star Wars Prequels

I feel bad I didn't watch these videos as soon as they went up.  I got the wrong impression of what this guy thought of the Prequels from his TFA video.  As a long time Prequel defending these videos mentions subtleties even I hadn't noticed yet.

Okay, I can't get the Revenge of the Sith one to show up here the way I could the first too.  If you go watch the videos on YouTube directly you'll find it easily.

He's still more critical of em then I am.  I have a post dedicated to the Taxation Dispute issue.  And Padme is the main character of Episode I as a stand alone film, not Qui-Gon.

But these are good video, a short quick and easy way to start sticking it to Prequel haters.

Sword Art Online was never a Death Game anime

I want to start by saying there are lot of valid reasons to dislike SAO.  I enjoyed the Aincrad arc though it was flawed.  I had a lot of problems with Alfheim and Gungale though there were also good moments.  The two arcs that made up the second half of season 2 were great, Mother's Rosario especially is my favorite so far. I haven't seen Ordinal Scale yet, I will be waiting for the Dubs to watch either it or season 3.

A common theme I've seen among critics of SAO, especially those who hate even the original arc, including Digibro himself in the PCP Podcast on "Plebs", is a notion that it was somehow supposed to be a Death Game Anime, and that the show then ruined it's own sense of urgencey.

Mirai Nikki was a Death Game anime, Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Zero are Death Game animes.  Magical Girl Raising Project is a Death Game Anime (I just watched it and am still processing my thoughts on it).  It's a genre that has an inherently limited appeal to me.  I watched RP because I'm into Magical Girls, Mirai Nikki for the Yandere and Fate/ because I'm into Arthurian Legend and other mythologies.  But if SAO had been structured like a Death Game then it'd have had almost none of what I like about it.

A Death Game Anime is one where the situation encourages or forces the players of the game to kill each other.   The situation Kiba created encouraged working together and for the most part they did.  The people who became murderers were ones who had those tendencies already.

I don't care that character use the words "Death Game" in universe to describe their situation, that is irrelevant to what it means as an Anime sub genre.

Digibro said in the last episode of the DigiBros Super Mario 64 let's play, when they were speculating on Zelda BotW (it was recorded before the game came out) that he doesn't like when Video Games have a sense of urgency.  I agree with him on that, and that is why I like the very parts of SAO he considered the most useless.  Every Video Game he could praise for not having a sense of urgency still has a theoretical sense of urgency, if Link doesn't get to the end and defeat Ganon eventually then Hyrule is doomed.  And that is all the opening episodes of SAO were meant to do, establish a problem that they need to solve, eventually.

But the appeal to me was always about these character living in a digital fantasy world, not about them getting out of it, it appeals to me in a way that connects to how I feel Caprica was such a missed opportunity.  So my favorite episodes were largely the "Filler" which apparently came from the second Light Novel.

Digibro most hated the Murder Mystery two parter.  I loved those, for the most part.  As a fan of Holmesian stories I enjoyed seeing this speculation on how you'd apply Holmsian deductive reasoning in an MMO world.  And when they figured out the deaths had been faked I was quite satisfied.  Then the story dragged on adding some more twists and I soured on it a little.

I also agree that like in the original web novels Asuna should have killed that one guy.

Mother's Basement did a video on SAO where he said it was ruined by the Yui character turning out to be an AI, which he said destroyed the sense that anyone can die.  I have come to be quite personally annoyed by shows wanting to create that illusion, and viewers who ever buy into it.  If you're paying attention you can easily tell who isn't eligible to die on Game of Thrones, or the books it was based on.  Ned Stark was a character created specifically to die early on creating that illusion, and Mami Tomoe was Ned Stark as a Magical Girl, in more ways then one.

And I'm annoyed by the people who want a show where anyone can die.  Whenever I'm watching something and a character death happens that did not feel sufficiently built up to, it simply comes off as bad writing to me, even when it's a character I didn't much care for.  This is part of what slowly soured me to The Vampire Diaries, a show I loved at first.  And when it's done to a character I love, like my Waifu Anna (played by Malese Jow), it just enrages me.  I hate when shows do things just for shock value, and plenty of my favorite moments have been completely predictable ones.  And that is Why I Like Prequels.

As a Christian I like Adoption themes in my fiction, something I talked about in a Force Awakens post last year "Rey is a Skywalker but not by Blood".  So in this setting I quite like the idea of our protagonists adopting an AI character.  So Mother's Basement desire to say Yui ruined SAO by being an AI offends me, just as it offends me when people say Dawn (also my Waifu) ruined Buffy.

That is all for this post.  Expect maybe something in the future about SAO as a Gnostic Allegory, the first two arcs anyway.

Well I just watched The Force Awakens for the third time.

I was listneing to Digibro say how sometimes it takes three viewing to fully gauge your opinion on something.  Or atleast that if you find yourself liking something less the second time to try the a third.

On my second viewing TFA did hold as well I'd hoped it would.  But on this third viewing it was pretty fun again.

I still don't like it as much as the Prequels, but I can say I like it about the same as the original Trilogy.

Also, this was my first time watching it since I got into Lucky Star and Haruhi.  So when we learn BB-8 had answered Rei's question with "Classified" I couldn't help but giggle.

Zelda BotW also kept popping into my head.  Because that Game managed to make it's Landscapes just as awesome as anything in a film that was filmed at real locations.

Also this time when Han fell after being stabbed I thought "is he falling into a Mako reactor".