My advice to Zack Snyder.

First off, I want to offer my condolences on the loss of his daughter, Autumn earlier this year.

Chances are because of that he won't be directing any new movies for awhile.

But my advice is that if and when he does return to directing, he should take a break from Comic Book Movies and try doing some Anime adaptations.  I feel like Snyder's style is better suited to adapting Anime into Live Action, he's clearly been influenced by Anime already.  I did a post on wanting LA versions of Anime to be Colorful, and Snyder I feel would do that, the muted coloring in Man of Steel was the result of Nolan's influence, Watchman shows he is great at directing vibrantly colored films.

He got attached to adapting Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead at some point, who knows if it's actually still in active production.  I think doing something with no SciFi or Fantasy aspect is not going to be Snyder's strong suit at all.  Either way as a former Libertarian-Capitalist and current Libertarian-Communist the last thing I want is more exposure for Rand's so called Libertarianism.

I have enjoyed every Snyder film I've seen except Dawn of The Dead.  And all things considered I greatly appreciate what he's done in establishing the new DC Universe.  But Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman better reflect where I want that universe to go moving forward.  And Justice League will finish Snyder's vision effectively being the third film of his Superman Trilogy.

Snyder's approach of being visually experimental while also having a dark tone isn't what audiences expect from Comic Book Movies.  We're more used to Dark=Gritty and Realistic for those.

Not every Anime would be ideal for Snyder, I feel like Nolan would be best for Noir, and Gundam by the same people handling Star Wars.  And I'd overall prefer Women be entrusted with Magical Girl adaptations.  However....

Madlax, Lupin III depending on which kind of Lupin Anime they're drawing on, Future Diary, Attack on Titan, Kabenari of the Iron Fortress, maybe Code Geass.  Are examples of Anime where if a Western Live Action version is ever green-lite, I think perhaps Snyder might be the best guy for the job.  I would also sorta add just about any Nasuverse story, including Canaan which may not actually count as Nasuverse.

I want to make new Anime Fans

And that is why I can't agree with Pedantic Romantic's opinion that Netflix is worse then Amazon.  Netflix's treatment of it's exclusives may not be the most convenient for those of us already into Anime.  But lots of people have Netflix for other reasons, so it can help grow the Anime community when I can just tell someone they already have access to a bunch of Anime.  I don't want to recommend a show to a Normie till it has at least a full season anyway.  And a newbie is going to watch them Dubbed so Digi's complaints about Netflix's subtitles aren't relevant to that either.

Meanwhile Amazon's exclusives are not only stuck behind a double pay wall, but it seems like they don't get Dubbed.  And this season they have at least one show that I think could be a good show to get people into Anime with, (I won't know for sure till it's done).

Now some people might disagree with my desire to bring in new fans.  Digibro has expressed a few times the mentality that it hurts a Niche property for it to become more mainstream, it dilutes the purity of it.  There are lots of things I could say to counter that, like how new fans are needed for something to survive at all.  But mainly the reason I can't see it that way is this.

I was incredibly late in getting into Anime.  I'm about 5 years older then Digibro, but based on when I finally got full time into Anime I might as well be 10 years younger.  That means there are at least 15 years of being an Otaku I missed out on.  Yet lots of things about me show I was an Otaku at heart all along.  I was definitely a Yuri shipper before I knew that word.

Now some Anime I was familiar with during that time.  Pokemon, Sailor Moon and DBZ were part of my childhood to varying degrees.  Then I fell in love with Noir and it's sister serieses, plus Witch Hunter Robin during the period of my life that mostly revolved around waiting for The Dark Knight.  Then after that I randomly got into Code Geass, Gundam 00 and Death Note.  Thing is, those mostly don't reflect well what my current taste in Anime is, half of them I probably only still like because of Nostalgia.  Lucky Star is now my second favorite Anime, yet I didn't watch it till the summer of 2016, when it was nearly a decade old already.

The lack of easy accessibility to Anime is the reason I missed out on it so much.  (Noir is a show I've still never watched streaming online, I found it via Digital Cable's On Demand service, and then bought the DVD.)  So I want to expand the reach of Anime so more people don't miss out like I did.  If someone gives Anime a chance and they don't like it, that's cool.  But I want to get more people to give it a chance.

The one thing Netflix needs to do to help it serve this purpose is increase it's selection.  Though I'd prefer it not make anymore exclusive.  For this season their exclusives aren't the best entry points anyway.  Fate/Apocrypha is for people already into Fate/, (but fortunately they have UFOtable's Fate/Zero and Unlimited Blade Works), and that gambling show is not exactly going to refute negative perceptions of Anime.  Doesn't mean those shows aren't good, they just aren't good places to start.

But Little Witch Academia can work, it's like Harry Potter meets My Little Pony.

Since a lot of what Netflix currently has seems to be Aniplex stuff, I feel like recommending they work with them to dub the Kara no Kyoukai films.  But I haven't seen those yet and so don't know how good of an entry point Anime they would make.

SFdebris is good proof that Madoka can make a good first impression for Anime.  It seems the only people who have a problem with Madoka are old fashioned Magical Girl fans.

For others who want to make new fans.  I'd recommenced trying to stick to legal streaming sites (like HIDIVE) to introduce people to Anime.  People who are entrenched in the community seem to underestimate just how much outsiders are not likely to be comfortable using a technically illegal site.

So for the rest of this post I want to help explain which Anime are better for introducing new people to Anime.  These "rules" aren't universal however, sometimes what I think is the worst Anime to make a first impression with may for some weirdo be exactly what gets them into it.  So keep what you personally know about a person in mind.

Try to avoid ones that engage in Anime Style Fanservice.  Doesn't mean excluding shows that are Sexy, just try to avoid ones that feel creepy.

It's also important to understand that many Americans who aren't in High School anymore don't wanna watch fiction set in High School.  (Though someone who still enjoys Spiderman or Buffy or Smallville may be an exception to that.)  That is part of why Fate/Zero is the best way to introduce someone to Fate/.

Steins;Gate is a good show to recommend to SciFi fans, as is Gundam 00.  For a Fantasy fan have them start with Nausica of The Valley of The Wind.   The original Gundam film trilogy is a good recommendation for people into Space Operas.  I wish I knew more about what Anime to recommend to people into Westerns and Neo-Westerns, the only thing in that category I've seen much of is El Cazador, and I love it but it may not be the best to get someone started with.

Noir is something good to recommend to people who are into Film Noirs, or are in general Francophiles.  Especially the kind of Francophile who buys BlackCoatPress books.  If you happen to know someone specifically into Paul Feval's The Blackcoats (Les Habits Noirs) series, recommend Noir to them and tell them that I have a fan theory that the Bouquets are related to the Bozzo-Corona clan of Corsica.

Related to that, let's talk about Lupin III for a minute.  My first exposure to Lupin III was The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, for most people I don't think that'd be the best impression to lead with, but for the kind of person who loves Noir like me it might be.  In General the two 70s Lupin movies make great introductions. So could some of the TV specials that got dubbed, of which I've seen five.  Blue Jacket, who's Dub is currently airing on Adult Swim can also be a decent enough place to start, though you may have to warn people that some key characters are unique to it.  But absolutely do NOT use any 80s Lupin work as an introduction, the 80s was the worst era for Lupin.

If you know any Pretty Little Liars fans, recommend them good Magical Girl shows like Sailor Moon, Pretty Cure, Madoka and Yuki Yuna.  Or shows like K-On.  If they are specifically a BooRadleyVanCullen type of PLL fan, then you have a potential Yuri Fanatic on your hands.  Meanwhile from what I can tell so far Princess Principal could be a very good show for PLL fans, but unfortunately it's trapped by Amazon.

Any Feminist who hasn't seen Utena yet needs to fix that immediately.

Likewise, anyone who's into Slash and/or Femslash fan fiction, is a potential Yaoi and/or Yuri fan.

Yuri is one genre where I'm not sure where to start, so much Yuri Anime has never been Dubbed. But I know you should NOT ever start with Kannazuki no Miko.  Yaoi actually has a pretty definitive entry point now with Yuri on Ice.

This October I will be a making a Halloween themed recommendations post.

I would not recommend someone start with Sword Art Online.  Which is ironic because it has already been the first for many.  I think the SAO haters wouldn't be nearly so upset by it's rather standard Anime flaws if it hadn't become one of the most mainstream Animes ever.

The thing in general about the really mainstream shows of the last 10 or 15 years, (SAO, Attack on Titan, Death Note and One Punch Man), is they have probably already brought in all the new fans they're going to, so there isn't much point to recommending them now.  If you know someone who's watched those shows and nothing else yet, perhaps you can use their opinions on those to get an idea of what to recommend them next.

Evangelion is not something to recommend to newbies, someone has to be very into Anime already to in 2017 tolerate it's many many many many many flaws.

HIDIVE is a Legal Streaming site I want to recommend.

www.hidive.com

 It allows you to watch stuff for free with ads.  A paying subscription allows you to watch ad free, at 1080 quality, and Dubs for stuff that has Dubs.  And a few shows aren't view able for free because of Ecchi content.  A paid Subscription is $3.99 a Month.

My main constructive criticism right now is that I wish they'd allow Dubs to be watched free with Ads.  It may be the companies that own the rights to the Dubs that are demanding they not be given away for free.  But the purpose of Dubs is mainly to help bring in new fans.  When I recommend an Anime to someone, I want to link them to a Legal site that will let them watch it for free.  And Ideally that should include a Dub.

I'm weird in that I'm willing to watch Subbed when I have too but still prefer Dubs.  I, as much as I want to recommend this site right now don't have the means to pay $4 a month for it.  So I'll be using this site a lot in the near future, but sadly their Dubs I'll still have to look for elsewhere.

That desired improvement aside, it is a site that runs smoothly for me, even on my cheap laptop.  And the Subs are pretty easy to read.  A note before browsing the site, the section called "Movies" includes the OVAs it has, like Gunbuster.

This site is the only legal site I've found Higurashi on, though it's not listed as an exclusive so it must also be somewhere else, but I'm happy to have just found it here.  I looked for a legal option for it before and kinda gave up when neither Crunchyroll, Netflix or Daisuki had it.

They also have exclusive legal streaming rights to Legend of The Galactic Heroes!!!!!  Yes, you heard that right, the most notorious "Elitist" Anime is finally legally streaming in the West.  It's being added one episode at a time, so only 33 are on there at the moment, but that's still something.  Similar to when Sailor Moon was being added to Hulu.

They have Girlish Number and K-On if you're a Digibro fan, also Canaan and Angel Beats.  And Hidimari Sketch, which I'm gonna need to look into what the proper order of it's seasons are.  And Ghost Hound which Digi recently praised.  And they got Log Horizon, which Digi says you should watch instead of SAO.  And Chivalry of a Failed Knight which he recommends as being better then the Asterisk War.

If you're a Fate/ fan they don't have any UFOtable/Aniplex stuff but they do have Deen/Stay Night, the Unlimited Bladworks movie and the first three seasons Prisma Illya.

They have Engaged to the Unidentified, a personal favorite of mine.  And they got Flip Flappers which makes me happy.  And Kampher, something I've been writing a piece on but keep putting off.  And Clannad which I've enjoyed so far.

And all that's just the tip of the Iceburg, lots of stuff I haven't heard of before which I may use this site to check out for the first time.

They also have some Live Action stuff.  Including 4 Godzilla movies (Smog Monster, Sea Monster, Gigan and 1984).

Current Simulcasts include Action Heroine Cheer Fruits.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tsukihime is the gender flipped Twilight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My review of two Lupin The Third movies

Below is from a project I was going to do, possibly as a YouTube video, called "Top 5 Anime Films according to someone who hasn't seen many".  I've canceled that project for a few reasons.  One being I've seen more Anime movies now, enough to totally re-calibrate what that list would have been.

The section on two Lupin III films was all I ever actually wrote before abandoning it, and I want to preserve those thoughts somewhere (The top 4 would have been the Gundam 00 movie, The K-On movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, and Pokemon The 3rd Movie Spell of The Unown.)  The fact that I consider those two the best Lupin movies is possibly still dependent on me having not seen many, I recently saw Gold of Babylon which came no where near surpassing these, I may comment on it more in the future.  The biggest out of date detail is saying it's the only Miyazaki film I'd seen.  As you'd know if you're following this blog, I saw Nausuca and The Valley of the Wind at the start of June.

So, enjoy.

Number five is…. A tie between two Lupin III films, The Mystery of Mamo and The Castle of Cagliostro.  This will be the only tie on the list, but still it means I’m technically discussing 6 movies.  These are also the only Lupin films on the list, so they are also the best Lupin movies in my opinion.

My interest in Lupin III overlaps with my interest in the original Arsene Lupin and in French Pulp Fiction in general.  And now I shall reveal that these are not traditional objective consumer reviews, but my being analytical about why these films appeal to me.  

Both are perfectly stand alone stories.  But Mystery of Mamo may make a better entry point into the Lupin III mythos, since it was the first Lupin III movie and so definitely felt designed to be an entry point on many levels.  And Castle of Cagliostro has odd qualities that resulted in a fan theory that it may be the chronologically last Lupin III story.  

If you’re into the Lupin III saga mainly for Fujiko Mine then that would also make Mamo the preferred choice for you, she is very important to that story.  She is in Castle of Cagliostro, but is not the main love interest.  I do however quite like the fact that she never shows any jealousy towards Clarisse.

Mystery of Mamo’s other big advantage is having a more interesting main villain.  I can’t help but compare him to the character of Colonel Bozzo-Corona from Paul Feval’s Les Habits Noirs (The Blackcoats) series.  But that is probably just me.

Castle of Cagliostro is also currently the only Hayao Miyazaki film I’ve seen.  I have several of them on DVD but haven’t gotten around to watching them yet.

Castle of Cagliostro draws on specific classic Lupin stories more than most Lupin III stories do, a fact probably owed to how well read Miyazaki is.  The connections to La Comtesse de Cagliostro (available in English from BlackCoatPress as Arsene Lupin Vs Countess Cagliostro) are largely in name only.  The Lupin novel that fans of this movie really need to read, is unfortunately not easy to find legally in English.  It’s original French title which I’ll probably mispronounce is La Demoiselle aux yeux verts, the literal English translation of that title would be “The Damsel with The Green Eyes”, but the existing English translation is a volume titled Arsene Lupin Super Sleuth.  If you know Japanese or Korean it’s interestingly easier to find in those languages, if you know French it shouldn’t be a problem at all, everything LeBlanc directly wrote is Public Domain now.  The Clarisse of this film may be named after the Clarisse of the Cagliostro novel, but her personality and situation is more like the title character of the latter novel.  And there are other parallels too.

There is good reason this is often considered the best Lupin film, I might be the only person who thinks the Mamo film is equal to it.  It is a very well directed and beautifully drawn film.  It’s also been very influential in both Japan and the west.  The climactic final confrontation inside the top of a Clock Tower would be homaged in Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective, and in the first Clock King episode of Batman: The Animated Series.  I could have mentioned this in my The Mysteries of Gotham blog post, where I talked about how the roots of Batman directly or indirectly often go back to French Pulp Fiction.

Wedding Peach and Yuki Yuna is a Hero

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is another really good positive review of Yuki Yuna.

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


Spoiler Warning!!!!!!!!