#MahouShouJune & #PrideMonth week 2

Following up where I left off last week.  I enjoyed Mikagura School Suite which I watched Dubbed, I recommend it.  Sasami-San doesn’t have a Dub so that may take me more time.

Hugtto PreCure episode 18 was great, a lot of fun.  This Lulu Arc has been quite the ride.

Katana Maidens episode 18 was also pretty darn good.  I hope this show can live up to the hype I’ve been trying to give it.

I decided to watch the rest of the Project A-Ko franchise.  As much as I was annoyed by the attempts to straighten the girls out starting with the third movie, they remained entertaining.  But only the first movie is a masterpiece.

I was trying to be optimistic about Steins;Gate 0’s handling of Ruka.  But here they are getting molested by curious scientists for comic relief again in episode 6.

Legend of The Galactic Heroes episode 7 was pretty good.  It may be the least relevant of shows I’m following during Pride Month.  It has some Yaoi potential, but it’s not guaranteed to show up every week.

Magical Girl Site episode 10 was a pretty decent bridge between the preceding episodes and the closing ones.

The Future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

 This entire post is kind of a Spoiler for Infinity War so....

Legend of the Galactic Fascists

Lindsay Ellis just did a video on the ideology of the First Order.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAVeyXwy3BE

Right from the title it had me thinking of my own attempt to deconstruct Star Wars vilification of Fascism back in late 2016.
http://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2016/12/star-wars-is-about-fascism-but-is-it-so.html

Lindsay's point much more so then mine was on the ideological vagueness of The Empire/First Order.  And considers that maybe that's the point, real world Fascism is often pretty Vague, or at least we like to define it vaguely, some would argue Mussolini did have more of a philosophy then Lindsay's source gives him credit for.  But that's not an argument I want to have here.

The thing is, I can't help but feel that even with that excuse for the lack of well defined in depth ideology there is still and always has been a key element of Fascism missing from Star Wars.  Even in the Prequels which I like to praise as being more thought out then the rest of it.

Legend of The Galactic Heroes is an Anime franchise I'd been hearing about for awhile before the Reboot allowed me an easy way to start actually consuming the story.  And every glance I got had me going "well that's sure trying to be Anime Star Wars".  (Gundam is also called the Star Wars of Japan, but I've come to genuinely think of Gundam as more analogous to Star Trek.)  In Digibro's old video about Strong Presentation in Anime he talks about how it used Classical Music, and that was exactly why Lucas hired John Williams.

But now that I'm actually watching a version of it.  I feel this very issue is what it's doing better then Star Wars did.

Episode 4 features characters on the Republic side talking about how the first Emperor rose to power.  And that might have been more profound to me if it didn't feel so overplayed, it's easy for me to imagine what that may have looked like, I saw it in Revenge of The Sith.

But then in Episode 5 we suddenly see Fascist tendencies in the Republic, on the side we would have assumed up to this point were the good guys.  The tension caused by our main character refusing to stand was one thing.  The really import event later in the episode was this image.

It looks kind of like the KKK doesn't it, but this group is analogous to a lot of things.

One important thing Folding Ideas video on Triumph of The Will emphasizes was that the massive "army" of Nazis in that film were NOT the official sanctioned Army of Germany, at least not yet.  Even before Hitler was appointed Chancellor this "army" existed acting like a vigilante Mob in the streets harassing Jews and others.  This was pointed out in a recent Albert Einstein biography.

And that's what makes the violent behavior at Trump rallies back during the election so relevant.

This is why the Superhero genre has long been plagued with Fascist implications.  The Graphic Novel of Watchmen features an in universe article from the conservative magazine Rorschach reads comparing Superheroes to the Vigilante activities of the KKK with the intent of defending both.  Another little known fact about the Klan, they actively tried to help enforce Prohibition during the 20s.

Of course what this episode did is bound to make some American Liberals and Leftists uncomfortable, because it associated Fascists with those wanting War with the foreign totalitarian state, not those who think all the Bloodshed isn't worth it.  The people who are usually the most Anti-War people in America will still look at the 30s and 40s and see anyone opposing War with Nazi Germany as Nazi sympathizers and thus bigots.  But the truth is, the actual KKK were the earliest and most hawkish of America's anti-Nazi War Mongers in 1939.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/14/confederate-flags-and-nazi-swastikas-together-thats-new-heres-what-it-means/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.962c401829a9

One of the pillars of Fascism is Nationalism.  And that is why no, it's not absurd to depict Fascists as in conflict with each other.  Mussolini personally hated Hitler.  And many of the same OSS agents who fought Nazi Germany wound up working with European Fascists against the USSR (and other Communists/Socialists) during the Cold War.  And that's why I actually would like to see a good story exploring the Fascist implications of the Captain America character and am sick of seeing it written off by "he punched Hitler", but I don't trust any of these in continuity Marvel gimmicks to do it well.

Back to the main topic.  This is what is missing from attempts to make The Empire or First Order like Fascists in Star Wars.  The Storm Troopers of Star Wars whether they're manufactured Clones or brainwashed child soldiers are not what they were named after, the actual Storm Troopers and Brownshirts were volunteers from among ordinary citizens, not unlike the KKK.

As I've said before, in Audio Commentaries George Lucas talks more about Napoleon III then Hitler or Mussolini.  That makes a huge difference.  Hitler and Trump never had real popular support, Hitler actually lost his election, and Trump failed to win the popular vote, and even the person with more votes then him couldn't get over 50%, and the Election itself had a very low turn out.  Napoleon III didn't need goons acting like terrorists because he really was Popular, he got 75% of the Vote in an Election with 75% turn out among those eligible to vote, America hasn't seen a turn out like that in ages.  I highly recommend Mike Duncan's Revolutions Podcast's episode on Napoleon III's 1848 Election.

I have an issue with how Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are often depicted.

I don't know to what extent this can apply to Asimov's own stories.  This is the perspective of someone interested in the concept but who still hasn't read Asimov directly yet.  His Laws of Robotics have been used by other writers a lot.

For anyone out of the loop, here is what the Laws are.

The Three Laws, quoted as being from the "Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.", are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.^[1]

What I like about them is how there is no pretense to pretend the laws are equal to each other.  The first law has no qualifier, and each subsequent law has a qualifier defining the prior laws as overruling them in any potential conflict.

This should be a worth while concept to keep in mind even when trying to create moral or civil law codes, much less laws that it's outright impossible for certain lifeforms to violate because of how their artificial brains work.  That's why my personal attitude towards the two Commandments Jesus defined as the greatest Commandments is that if your attempt to obey or enforce some other law puts you in even apparent conflict with either of those then you should rethink what you're doing.

If I were to criticize the laws themselves, it'd be that Robot obedience is placed above their own self preservation.  That is what shows how they were designed to make them slaves.  A more benevolent programmer would at least switch the second and third laws.  Of course ultimately the obedience law being there at all makes them slaves.

But my subject today is how these laws are depicted in some stories.  Because some writers seem to forget that the qualifiers on the second and third laws exist.  For example, take the scene in The Forbidden Planet that KyleKallgrenBHH says demonstrates Asimov's three laws.

https://youtu.be/Za50E46Z87Y?t=361

For now I'll take Kyle at his word that that is the scene's intent.  It bugs me that this near meltdown of Robbie happens, that meltdown would make sense if the three laws were treated as equal.  But the qualifiers should guarantee that Robbie would simply not obey the command to kill and be fine.

I get that writers want to explore areas where this system of laws can be imperfect.  But that can be done without ignoring the qualifiers.  Heck the first command alone can create a conflict if the Robot is in a situation where the only action that can prevent one Human from "coming to harm" is to injure another human.

#MahouShouJune & #PrideMonth week 1

I started writing this one while MyAnimeList was down to help me keep track of what I’ve watched.

Legend of The Galactic Heroes Episode 6 introduced us to a female soldier finally. It's based on books from the 80s, so I guess I just have to forgive the fact that the show acts a little like the very idea is still surprising.

Steins;Gate 0 episode 5 has definitely sped up it’s plot.

Magical Girl Site episode 9 was pretty darn good, it earned its first major death, and Kiyo-Chan has proven to be a very good character, I just hope she continues to be treated this well.

Episode 6 of Food/Stay Night dropped and it was pretty good.  We got to see Fujinii as a little Oneechan.

Upon the Pride Month recommendation of a Twitter acquaintance I have put Mikagura School Suite and Sasami-San on the agenda.

Next week I wanna get into the pattern of posting these on Friday or Saturday, so that's why this post doesn't have any comment on PreCure or Katana Maidens.

Death Note and Social Commentary

What bugs me about the utter failure of the Netflix Death Note movie is that it's gonna be seen as a vindication of those who felt it was wrong to make an American set adaptation in the first place.  I stand by my conviction that a Western re-imagining of Death Note is necessary, as well as that in a Western setting Light should be White because being privileged is vital to his character.  What the Netflix movie screwed up is that it ignored his privilege.

You see, I'm gonna suggest something really controversial. I think the greatest logical weakness of the original story of Death Note is that it's set in Japan.  Japan's crime rate is actually way to low to make sense as a place for Light's particular frustrations to fester.

I know that is potentially a very offensive thing for a Western Anime fan who's never been to Japan and can't speak Japanese to say.  But maybe we should view it as problematic how often Western Anime critics want to view every single detail of every Anime in the context of what's inherently Japanese about it, when really I'm pretty sure every country has lots of writers who would like for their writing to resonate universally and transcend their native cultural context. 

Noir is my favorite Anime, and as such one I've often pointed to as one that could make a good Live Action adaptation (though I've also come to feel it might be pointless to adapt since there is nothing I'm willing to change).  But at least one time I expressed that, someone responded with "Noir could only be done in Live Action well if it's made in Japan".  This confused me since Noir ISN'T EVEN SET IN JAPAN.  It sets foot in Japan only in the very first episode.  If you want to express some frustration at Americans messing with Anime in the context of this show then say France should make it, because it's mostly set in France and is inspired by French films like La Femme Nikita and Leon.  And a French Dub already exists, so if it's as good as the English one then you already have the dialogue written for you.  Kirika is ethnically Japanese, but due to her amnesia plot point nothing about her ever reflects being a product of Japan.  But make no mistake I would never tolerate her being white washed in an adaptation, that's because it's precisely Asians living in the west who need more representation.

With Your Name (which J. J. Abrams expressed a desire to adapt) I understand the arguments for it being inherently Japanese when it comes to how it uses Shinto.  But I once read someone saying it's "about the cultural divide between Urban and Rural Japan", as if there is no way that could be recreated in an American version.  I shouldn't need to explain why that sentiment expresses an utter ignorance of America.

Back on topic.  The first thing Death Note's existence reflects about modern Japan is how influenced it's become by western media.  When you get right down to it, it's basically another literary descendant of Holmes vs Moriarty and Gregory Temple vs John Devil, but with a supernatural twist, and even that aspect is by no means a proper representation of the Shinto view of death and the afterlife, the word Shinigami may be Japanese but the concept is a foreign import.

Mother's Basement described Death Note as being about Japan's harsh stance on crime.  The thing is, that only works if Light is an allegory for Japan itself, and really he isn't written like an allegorical character at all.  Light makes most sense as a deconstruction of American characters like The Punisher and Charles Bronson in Death Wish, characters who appeal to an American attitude that we have so much crime because we're not being harsh enough on it.  An attitude that at first seems inherently Conservative, but it manifests on the Left in things like calls for Hate Crime legislation.

And of course these American characters tend to be White, because Americans who feel that way tend to be White.  Because when they get their way it's minority communities who suffer, they know full well the police are hardly playing with kid gloves.  And that is why Light as an ethnic Minority in America would never make sense to me.

Heck the show itself seems aware of how unlikely Japan is as a setting for all of this since everyone was shocked at the Law Enforcement gathering when L said he thinks Kira is in Japan.  You can argue that shock is mostly him narrowing it down to one country at all and not picking the most obvious one, America, but that still backs up my point.  (In an American's setting you can create that same shocking narrow down to knowing which State.)

I've seen people say you couldn't set the Near and Mello arc in America because then the CIA's involvement wouldn't be a political controversy.  Do these people not know that the CIA isn't supposed to operate domestically? 

Now lots of Anime feature literary archetypes and conventions that are western in origin in-spite of being set in Japan.  But few are as easy for me to imagine being moved to another country as Death Note.  So little time is actually spent at Light's school life that the particulars of why Japanese High School is different never show up.  Nothing annoys me more then when people act like Misa can only work in Japan, celebrity worship is absolutely a thing in America.

Frankly the only thing that would be difficult to keep word for word in an American setting is Chief Yagami refusing to carry a gun when he's no longer officially a Cop due to it being illegal.  But even then you could explain it by saying he's a Democrat.

Yes I said Word for Word, I genuinely feel that the English Dub Script of the Death Note anime shares Shakespeare's ability to work word for word in multiple settings.

Light never once even at an early transitional phase says he's interested in cleaning up Japan.  It was always The World.

Fifty Shades of (Alleged) Plagiarism

I haven't read or watched Fifty Shades of Grey, so I may be the least qualified person to do this.  But as someone who cares about defending the legitimacy of Remix culture, I really feel the need to address the accusation of it being guilty of Plagiarism due to it's relationship to Twilight.

The deepest I've actually dug into this is these two Folding Ideas videos I recommend.
A Lukewarm Defense of Fifty Shades of Grey (The Movie).
Book Club is a Theatrical made for TV Movie

First thing I want to say is that E.L. James or at least her lawyers have been unfortunately hypocritical in going after Fifty Shades derivative works.  I don't like defending hypocrites, but it's for the benefit of others I'm doing this.

Even some people who are ardent defenders of Fan Fiction and other Fan Works like Vraik are calling Fifty Shades plagiarism and saying that it's exactly us who should be condemning her for doing what Copyright holders are so irrationally afraid of.  But I disagree, to me agreeing with the notion that this is plagiarism is in and of itself vindicating the notion that all Fan Fiction is plagiarism.  And that's without even getting into how I ultimately reject Copyright law altogether.

The first context that needs to be added to the fairly well known "it started as a Twilight Fan Fic" fact is that it was specifically an Alternate Universe fan fiction, and one that was more of a retelling of the basic story of Twilight then a sequel or side story.  And that's the real crux of the plagiarism accusation. It wasn't her telling a completely brand new story with Twilight characters and then later writing the Twilight out of it.  Instead we have a story that, in both the version using Twilight names and the one that doesn't, can be described as following the same basic beats as the story of Twilight, but without Vampires or other Supernatural elements.

Thing is, lots of very different stories follow the same basic beats.  Frankly what I'm far more annoyed by are Remakes disguised as Sequels like The Force Awakens and Superman Re[dacted], but no legal objections will ever come up there since they're made by the Copyright holder.  But of course even The Phantom Menace which I really love can also sort of be described as following the same basic story beats as A New Hope.  And comparatively it seems to me like Master of The Universe was closer to TPM then it was TFA in how much it mimics the original.

And that subject brings us to Star Wars relationship to The Hidden Fortress.  The Phantom Menace draws even more on THF arguably, in fact it's TPM similarity that makes me want to get around to actually watching THF some day (maybe once I've actually watched it I'll stop mis-remembering the name as The Forbidden Fortress).  And I shouldn't need to be retreading the defenses of Remix culture that have already been laid out, but my usual allies sometimes disagree with me here.

The thing that makes this Inspired By story feel like more of a Rip Off story is that it actively began under the Twilight name and then later removed it.  And that's why George Lucas is very relevant here.  Because you see there was a stage in the development of Star Wars where he was considering trying to get the rights to simply make it as an adaptation of The Hidden Fortress, but dropped that idea once certain similarities were dropped.  Likewise key aspects of Twilight are dropped for Fifty Shades, I mean MOTU may work fine as a fan fic but if it was an officially licensed Twilight Elseworlds project the publisher tried to make money off of you know darn well someone would go "how can you call this Twilight when no one Sparkles?"

One of the main reasons Star Wars seems so creative even when people are Nerding out over it's influences, are that there were many influences, the creativity is thought to be in how Lucas mixed them together.  So the question is, is Twilight really the only literary ancestor Fifty Shades has?  Often the point of an AU fic is putting the skeleton of one kind of story into a totally different genre and that's exactly what we have here.

What the final product of Fifty Shades still has in common with Twilight is mostly what Twilight has in common with many Teen/YA romances.  The removal of the Vampire aspects make Fifty Shades seem a lot less directly like a Gothic Romance, though Christian Grey is arguably more Byronic then Edward.

If I were to analyze Fifty Shades with no prior knowledge of it's origins, I'd compare it to the many Harlequin romance novels about women having affairs with hot young rich guys that become arguably unhealthy relationships way before I would any typical Young Adult Romance.  And if you told me it started as a Fan Fiction but without telling me of what, my first guess would probably be an Ayn Rand novel.

That's right, once you have even entry level knowledge of Ayn Rand, the ways Christian Gray fits her ideal Individualist male shouldn't take too long to notice.  I'll bet I'm not the first to write about it, but I haven't looked for it yet.  It's interesting how Rand comes up discussing both Batman and Iron Man (I love how Zach Snyder haters will constantly complain about the Randian influences he puts in his DC movies, but are besides KyleKallgrenBHH blind to the far more Randian implications of Tony Stark.  For the record I despise Rand's philosophy, but I can enjoy fiction I don't ideologically agree with).

Recently I've watched YouTube videos comparing Frank Miller's DKR Batman to both Rand's ideal male, and to the Byronic Hero.  And that makes me wonder to what extent the Byronic archetype was an influence on Rand.  But either way this Randian similarity, intentional or not, is a big factor in distinguishing James writing from Meyer's, Meyer as a Mormon was certainly no Individualist.

So at the end of the day Fifty Shades of Grey is no more or less similar to prior works then any other trashy romance novel.  It's only the direct involvement of internet fan fiction and it's stigma that gets it singled out.