Anime Weekly Updates, Omer 29: Spring has truely arrived.

Well this last week wound up being fairly busy.

It's been a little over a week actually, so I've seen two episodes of Hugtto Precure, and I'm definitely enjoying this Lulu arc so far.

The second core of Katana Maidens got off to a pretty interesting start.  If the second Core can top the first Core this will probably be the show of the year.

Episode two of Legend of The Galactic Heroes was pretty good, what I thought was happening at the end of episode 1 turns out to be wrong because I had TLJ on the brain.  Still I do think this may turn out to be better Star Wars then the actual Star Wars we've been getting.

Steins;Gate 0 had a pretty good start.  The Dub actually had Monica Rail speaking Japanese which sounded strangely awesome.  And for the time being I'm optimistic that they'll be handling Ruka's gender identity better now.

I also started and caught up on both Comic Girls and Last Period.  They're both pretty fun shows.

Episode 5 of the Fate/ Cooking show also dropped, this one focused a lot on Sakura.  I think I've developed a Purple Hair fetish.

And then Magical Girl Site had a pretty tense and eventful episode 5.

I haven't spent as much time watching older shows as I wanted to, though I did finish Amagi Brilliant Park.  But I'll fix that in due time.

I've decided I am gonna wait on Full Metal Panic.

Over all I'd say this Spring Season is gonna be pretty good.

Infinity War has reignited my excitement for Superhero movies.

It's difficult to explain my feelings here.  Since on an individual basis I have generally been liking the Phase Three MCU films the best so far, and yet at the same time was kind of tiring of them as a whole.

But I really wanted the DC Cinematic Universe to be better as someone who's more of a DC fan.  And so when I wound up feeling disillusioned with Batman V Superman it began a slow fading out of my interest in the genre.  And it helped that my discovery of Anime gave me something to fill that void.

It would never have been completely gone, as Batman in particular is my oldest Fandom and and for a long time this genre was the center piece of my Geekdom.  But the last three DC movies were all ones I left the theaters with initially high praise for but that I slowly soured on.  And that it's been basically the same with the new Star Wars movies had me feeling that I may have only Anime to rely on.

But Infinity War was amazing, it managed to truly feel like a Crisis level Event done on the Big Screen in Live Action with Live Actors.

And the knowledge that Donna Troy will be coming to the Titans show they're making also livens me up.

So my investment in this genre is renewed.  Anime is still gonna gonna be what this Blog talks about the most.  But I no longer feel like it was going to inevitably become an Anime only blog.

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

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

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

First I should back up and provide some context.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are modern Elves really that based on Tolkien's?

It's commonly said that Tolkien's Elves are the inspiration for most Elves in fantasy stories written since, in novels like the Dragonlance series, or Dungeons and Dragons and other Table Role Playing Games, which leads to Role Playing Video Games including JRPGs which in turn influences a lot of Anime, Manga, and Light Novels that then get adapted into Anime.

The thing is, these supposedly Tolkien like Elves seem to me to be.... demoted in terms of their importance to the Lore.  They're now just another one of many Human like Fantasy Races, not Humanity's other half.  They're Elves but they're not The Eldar.  Tolkien's Elves are meant to be kinda similar to what Humans might have been like if Adam hadn't fallen.  While in a lot of Anime they're basically just Cute Girls with pointy ears.

I suppose to some extent it's full circle, they're back to being more like the Ljósálfar of Norse Mythology.  Tolkien's Elves are largely a product of combining them with certain beliefs about the Fae/Tuatha De Dannan of Irish Mythology.  And some older Judeo-Christian conceptions of a hypothetical Pre-Adamic race (before compromising with Evolution turned hypothetical Pre-Adamic races into Cave Men and Ape Men).

I think the most interesting take on Elves in Anime would be No Game No Life, where I'm convinced they're an unflattering allegory for The United States.  The reason I relate to Nilvalen so much is because she's an Elf who hates her own country.  But as interesting as that is, it's not very Tolkien like.

Who I do feel are similar to Tolkien's Elves are some fantasy races not called Elves.  The Cetra in Final Fantasy VII.  How the Amazons were presented in the Wonder Woman and Justice League films of 2017.  There are others I think, but they escape my memory at the moment. 

What's Problematic is how Tolkien's Elves can come off as similar to the Aryans of the racist theosophical ideas that inspired Hitler and Himmler.  But that's why I'd like to see Fantasy races with a similar mystical gravitas be depicted with more ethnic variety.  You can already find a decent amount of Fan Art depicting some of Tolkien's characters as being less white then he probably envisioned.

Fortunately we're unsure what human ethnicity the Cetra would most resemble, we only ever see Aerith, who's only half Cetra, and briefly her mother in a flashback.  Westerners are inclined to see a Caucasian when we look at Aerith but the original Japanese audience might not have (Westerners have accused Anime characters of looking White when they were modeled after specific Japanese celebrities).

I've contemplated in any fantasy story I might write depicting the Ljósálfar as white looking but the Dökkálfar as Japanese looking and the Svartálfar as Nubian (or maybe swap the latter two).

Now Biblically I don't believe in any Pre-Adamic Race, I oppose the Gap Theory.  I've contemplated having the hypothetical Elves of any fictional mythology I'd create descend from Cain in order to deconstruct the assumption that descendants of Cain were inherently Evil.  The problem is it'd also be playing into the rhetoric of certain Racists to associate any descendants of Cain with Non-White especially African ethnic features.

I know for certain that if I ever made any fiction set in the Pre-Flood world I'd depict the tribes of Enosh Ben Seth (from whom came Enoch and Noah's Family) as looking Middle Eastern.

Anime Weekly Updates, Omer 21: I can't think of a title for this post

Katana Maidens took a week off it seems, that annoyed me a bit.

Overlord II had a pretty satisfying finale.

Hugtto Precure has started a new story-line.  One that might prove to be pretty predictable for the Genre, but I can enjoy the predictable just fine.

The first episode of Legend of the Galactic Heroes managed to spark my interest. I actually like that all three Planets look like Earth, that is certainly more realistic then single environment planets managing to stay inhabitable.  Expect my coverage of the show to make lots of Star Wars and Dune Comparisons, maybe this will make me more consistently happy then the actual Star Wars we've been getting.

I'm enjoying Magical Girl Site, I really don't care how much that will annoy some people.  It's definitely distinguished itself from it's Dark Magical Girl predecessors.  I hope it has a happy ending, but may be willing to respect what it's trying to say even without one, it all depends on execution.

That's the thing though, it's gonna get criticized both for every similarity to Madoka and for every difference.  Like so many other works that are easy to view as a cash in on some earlier hit.  They get criticized for being an imitator but also for "not getting the real point" of why the original worked.  I've seen the same thing over and over again with every dark Superhero comic that's post Watchmen and DKR, or every dark Superhero film that's post Nolan's Batman franchise.

I think this show like those Comics should be judged on it's own merits and not be constantly compared positively or negatively to Madoka at every turn.  Cause lots of gritty Comics that came out this long after Watchmen were constantly seen as cashing in on that trend at the time, but are Comics 90s kids are nostalgic for now.

Outside of my weekly shows.  I watched all of Oneechan ga Kita, and four episodes of Oniichan dakedo Ai sae Areba Kankeinai yo ne!.  I see you looking at me funny and I don't care.  They are both amusing shows, but the latter is more inclined to delve into the Anime Style Fanservice I dislike.

I also watched the fourth episode of Amagi Briliant Park.  Which reminds me that I really should at least try to catch up on Full Metal Panic before the new season starts.  Though since I know SFDebris will be covering some it at least this Summer I'm of half a mind to wait and watch it along with them, then just continue from there.

I hate Boss Rushes in Video Games.

They are always tedious to me, and a very unimaginative way to try and force in a penultimate challenge before the final Boss.

And they don't work plot wise either, the equivalent of it never happens in other mediums, unless it's like one of those Batman stories making him gauntlet through all of Arkham.  But guess what, many fans tend to find those annoying.  But it's considered acceptable in Games, so much so that some Rom Hacks will add one to a game that didn't originally have this problem.

The only thing like a Boss Rush I've ever actually liked was what Super Mario RPG: The Legend of The Seven Stars did with The Factory at the end.  Lesser forms of earlier Smithy Gang bosses now appear as just normal enemies, just as dodge-able as any others.  (I also like that this RPG doesn't have random encounters.)  And if you bought the SeeYa item from the Frog Coin merchant in Seasside Town you can run away from ones you unintentionally run into.  So only one Yaridavictch battle is truly required.

It makes sense plot wise, because they were pretty clearly Mechs of some sort to begin with (for some reason people on Mario Message Boards back in the early internet didn't get this, they couldn't even even tell Smithy's true form was a Robot).  So it makes sense to see unfinished prototypes roaming the home base.

You can avoid them if you want, but they are also good for grinding if you want.  If you want to you can battle an endless supply of Macks.

Mario RPG managed to be a good exception to a lot of my personal rules.  I mean in general Mario role playing games are the only ones I can really play.

I did a post once on how I feel it hurts the story telling when the final boss has no character presence before you fight him.  But Smithy managed to work in-spite of being that very problem.

Mario RPG is also a game where Status Effect moves at least sometimes work on bosses.  I always use Toadstool's Silence on Czar Dragon, as well as it's second form.

Anime Weekly Updates, Omer 14: Transitioning from Winter to Spring is slow in Wisconsin.

I've now seen three episodes of Magical Girl Site.  It seems much of what I liked about the first episode was only for the first episode.  But I'm gonna keep up with it for now.

They actually Dubbed the Recap episode for Katana Maidens, that's become generally pretty rare.  It was an adequate Recap.

Did I mention in the last update that I'd watched all of Fate/Extra? Or did I watch that later?  Fate/Extra Last Encore I think is the most disappointing Fate/ show so far.  It wasn't too concerned with making itself accessible to people who didn't play the games.  And my main interest was Type Moon's take on Nero which really wasn't explored much.  So it has lots of cool trippy Madoka esque visuals, but that's about it.

Death March to a Parallel Wold Rhapsody finished.  I will say it was a perfectly okay show, but nothing on Smartphone.

Overlord II has one episode left, I'd say it's exciting conclusion has made up for a lot of the slowness before.

Hugto Precure is remaining pretty good.

For Spring few of what interests me is getting Simuldubbed.  The SAO spin off and Lupin III I'm gonna wait for the Dub no matter what.  So if I feel up to it I'm gonna try to watch Subbed the ones with the best Yuri Potential.  But before that I want to re-watch some old favorites, and maybe revisit some 2017 shows I dropped or put on hold.