I’m not gonna claim to be a Cis-Het Male who is or has become completely immune to Toxic Masculinity. I do have a temper that I sometimes lose control of. But to a typical dude bro who’s offended by the phrase itself, I’m definitely a Beta Cuck.
I have had an attraction to certain media that is presumed in the mainstream standards of American Society to be “for girls” almost my entire life. Also in the more traditionally male oriented stuff I like I frequently find many of the female characters the most relatable and/or likeable.
The thing is Sailor Moon may very well be the first. I have memories of watching the show early Sunday mornings on the UPN, meaning before it’s Toonami run and before Buffy was ever on TV. And I never watched any Buffy till 2000, likewise Xena I didn’t get into until it was already airing its last season in 2000/2001. And the chick shows I got into that are considered even weirder for a guy to like mostly came much later, besides maybe Party of Five but even that I didn’t catch till Scream 2 was already on home video.
My relationship with Sailor Moon was rather complex. There was a time when I thought of it as a guilty pleasure, for some reason more hesitant to admit to liking it then Buffy and One Tree Hill which I talked about on my main IMDB account but used a sock puppet for posting on the Sailor Moon board. That went away over time of course.
Also for a long time being into Sailor Moon didn't much lead to me watching other Magical Girl Warrior shows. I caught some Wedding Peach during the same era I got into Noir partly because it's Dub was being made and promoted at the same time by some of the same people. But I didn’t complete that show till last year or maybe the year before. For some reason I heard of Saint Tail on some website and was interested but never really tried to watch any of it.
It was in 2014 that began to change, my interest in the Sailor Moon revival is what brought me to Hulu and then the recommendations Hulu had on the Sailor Moon pages lead to me checking out both Madoka Magica and Utena, and then other Anime not so closely related to the Magical Girl genre like Rose of Versailles. And from there I dove down even further and have now seen countless hours of Pretty Cure and then most recently the stuff I talked about at the start of this month.
The fact that I cared about Sailor Moon enough in 2014 to be that interested in the revival had a lot to do with how into Pretty Little Liars I was, I knew there was overlap between those fandoms because of my Facebook friends. What I’m not so sure on is to what extent having that past history with Sailor Moon was a factor in my being open to PLL in the first place.
I really feel like I became the true Feminsit and LGBTQ ally I am now from watching PLL and engaging in it’s Fandom for seven years. My thinking on those topics used to be more “centrist” for lack of a better word. But now I feel I’ve become as radically Lefitst as a Cis-Het Male can be on those topics. And reading everything Heather Hogan said while talking about PLL was a factor in moving me on that path. However, the fact that I watched Utena and then read VraiKaiser’s analysis of Utena in the midst of that period also sped things along. And Utena I probably wouldn’t have watched without knowing it’s connection to Sailor Moon.
I’m sure there are many with experiences similar to mine. The thing about the Magical Girl Warrior is that even the most properly Shoujo incarnations have the ability to appeal to guys, girls, and others who wouldn't usually watch girly stuff because they’re essentially Superhero shows. And then the versions presumably marketed at men do not lose the feminine heart of the genre. If there are a lot of people watching only the late night Anime Magical Girls and not the Shoujo ones, I think it’s more the massive number of episodes you have to plow through then being turned off by them being even more girly. In fact that issue is why completing Wedding Peach took me so long and why I still haven't finished most not Dubbed Pretty Cure seasons or the two Magical Girl Thief shows I'm interested in.
There is also of course the cynical assumption that many guys only watch these shows because they like looking at girls in short skirts. Ironically my personal tastes tend to find them Sexier in the Shoujo shows. The characters in Nanoha, Madoka and Yuki Yuna are cute but not sexy. If you wanted to ask me which Magical Girls are even sexier then the Sailor Scouts I’d point you to Wedding Peach.
The thing is Magical Girls aren’t the only girly media where the girls are Sexy. Every actress on OTH and PLL is a pretty damn attractive and some friggin Lifetime movies are among the Sexiest films I’ve watched. But your typical dude insecure in his masculinity isn’t gonna actually watch those shows or read those books to Fap to them, there’s no need when a simple Google Image search will provide more than enough pics of the actress in question. No, anyone actually watching a Magical Girl show likes the product they’re seeing beyond that. At first it may be just for the Superhero stuff, and for some it may stay that way. But there are many for whom watching this stuff has opened their minds to a more feminine perspective.
There are plenty of times when these shows address masculinity in an interesting way. Like the Pretty Sammy episode with the hyper masculine delinquents. They make an effort to help normalize guys being feminine and girls being masculine which undermine certain more cynical assumptions about the genre. Many Feminist love that Be A Man song from Mulan as an unironic celebration of the positive traits society codes as Masculine, in a way the Magical Girl Genre has plenty of moments that can be just like that.
Friday, June 21, 2019
Thursday, June 20, 2019
The Sailor Moon and Wedding Peach Anime are connected.
Kazuko Tadano is a Character Designer I'm a fan of.
I still prefer the basic character designs of the Sailor Senshi in the 90s Anime over the Manga and Crystal, and she was the Character Designer for the first two seasons and the R Movie. I was relived to learn this Character Designer was a woman, I would feel quite uncomfortable with preferring how men changed the designs of a female Mangaka. You could still argue she was designing them to fit the tastes of Sato and Ikuhara, which is an interesting issue to think about given how one of the episodes she also helped animate was Episode 21 - Protect the Dreams of Children! The Friendship Bound in Anime.
None of her replacements as the Sailor Moon character designer had the job as long as she did. They were probably all hired to mainly follow the lead she set, which is a job I'm sure no artist wanted to do long term. But they were good at it so I give them all props.
I have a long history of saying the only Magical Girl Warriors who look even better then the Sailor Scouts (I still call them that sometimes, fight me) are the Love Angels of Wedding Peach. And guess what, the Character Designer for that Anime was also Kazuko Tadano (Sayuri Ichishi shares that credit for the OVAs but not the main series). Now I currently have no idea what the Wedding Peach Manga looked like and so can't express an opinion on if these Anime designs are also better then the Manga. But the point remains that she's made all of my favorite Magical Girl Warrior Character Designs.
This wasn't the only staff the Sailor Moon and Wedding Peach Anime had in common. Hisashi Kagawa for example worked on both of them and Pokemon. Does knowing about this common staff help or hurt the desire to argue that Wedding Peach can stand on it's own and isn't just a knock off? I don't know, but it certainly should help in convincing people who like Sailor Moon to give Wedding Peach a chance.
Digibro likes to argue that you should care more about common creative staff then who has the official branding. Does that mean Wedding Peach is better Sailor Moon then the actual Sailor Moon airing at the same time? It mainly aired concurrent with SuperS the often least highly regarded season of Sailor Moon. Ikuhara was still series director but he had less actual control then he did for S and the R Movie and his frustration with that is why he quickly left to go get started on Utena.
I sometimes wonder if for both Hollywood Movies and Anime we often give too much credit to the Director and not enough to the Writer of the Script/Screenplay. I mention this here because the main Director of Wedding Peach wasn't a Sailor Moon alumni (instead he'd go on to do Pokemon) but at least one of the head writers was, Sukehiro Tomita.
Sukehiro wrote the Scripts for 15 episodes of season one, 13 episodes of R, 7 episodes of S and the Screenplays for both the R and S movies. The generally least liked movie is the only one he didn't write, I have some fondness for Black Dream Hole but it is the weakest. The R movie was the best under Ikuhara, but it seems the Director changing didn't cause as much of a quality drop as the writer changing.
I don't currently know if anyone else can be said to have written more episodes of season one. But I made a Semi-Filler Free guide to Season 1 of Sailor Moon and only two of his episodes didn't make it and only one is among those that barely qualified. He wrote 12 episodes that are almost impossible to justify skipping including the first and last episodes. So if you're someone who outright prefers the 90s Anime over the Manga and Crystal (I used to at least for season one but I've become more balanced on the issue) he may deserve just as much credit for that adaptation work as Sato and Ikuhara. Still he didn't write all of the non filler, you will miss stuff watching only what he wrote.
He also wrote plenty of stuff that at least follows the formula of a Sailor Moon filler episode, including some of what set that formula. So if you like the 90s Sailor Moon Anime mainly for the filler with no counterpart to anything in the Manga (like me) then he also likely wrote something you enjoyed. One of my personal all time favorite Sailor Moon episodes is Episode 26 - Bring a Smile to Naru's Face! Usagi's Friendship which is also one Ikuhara directed. In fact I want the Viz Dub of that episode played at my funeral instead of any religious sermon, just play this and read 1 Corinthians 15.
During the Doom Tree Saga he wrote three episodes, the best of which is the Snow White one, the one who's localization would create one of my favorite Memes. He wrote 10 episodes for the Black Moon saga, which seem to include most of the most watchable ones (I'm not big on that arc in any version). He wrote only 7 for S but they include some major stand outs, like the one where Minako goes nuts donating blood.
He scripted 16 episodes of Wedding Peach including the first two and the last two. But he's also credited with the "original story" which I'm not sure what that means in a Manga adaptation. Did he also help write the Manga? Or come up with the basic outline of how it was changed for the Anime? I don't know enough about how this stuff works.
Most major Wedding Peach creative minds not connected to Sailor Moon would go on to be heavily involved in Pokemon, so if you're nostalgic for 90s and early 2000s kid's Anime they all probably made something more well known you like.
I have a fondness for Wedding Peach that long predates my knowing about any of these connections it has to Sailor Moon and Pokémon. Even if it is a rare occasion of an Anime I like where I can't recommend or even much defend the Dub. And also in-spite of it having less Yuri then any other Magical Girl show I've watched which I'd expect to bother me more then it does.
As far as comparing it to Sailor Moon goes it's only really fair to compare it to single "seasons" not the whole show since Wedding Peach didn't get equivalent sequels, not in Anime form at least, just a fun 4 episode OVA epilogue which is if anything most like the Doom Tree Saga as filler material.
I would easily pick Wedding Peach over R and SuperS and maybe even Stars. But S is definitely a better product, while comparing it to season 1 is the really tough comparison. Sailor Moon's greatest strength is that it has some single episodes that by far top anything else I've seen in Pre-Pokémon TV Anime. However Sailor Moon does have some hard to defend episodes that are arguably worse then Wedding Peach's worst episodes. And I say that as someone hesitant to call any episode of Sailor Moon completely irredeemable.
I wonder if Wedding Peach had an overlooked influence on the future of the genre? It predates PreCure in having Pink be the main color of the MC. I could maybe think of other things that make it proto-PreCure.
Tomita would go on to return to Toei for Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, where he did Series Composition and Scripted 13 episodes.
I still prefer the basic character designs of the Sailor Senshi in the 90s Anime over the Manga and Crystal, and she was the Character Designer for the first two seasons and the R Movie. I was relived to learn this Character Designer was a woman, I would feel quite uncomfortable with preferring how men changed the designs of a female Mangaka. You could still argue she was designing them to fit the tastes of Sato and Ikuhara, which is an interesting issue to think about given how one of the episodes she also helped animate was Episode 21 - Protect the Dreams of Children! The Friendship Bound in Anime.
None of her replacements as the Sailor Moon character designer had the job as long as she did. They were probably all hired to mainly follow the lead she set, which is a job I'm sure no artist wanted to do long term. But they were good at it so I give them all props.
I have a long history of saying the only Magical Girl Warriors who look even better then the Sailor Scouts (I still call them that sometimes, fight me) are the Love Angels of Wedding Peach. And guess what, the Character Designer for that Anime was also Kazuko Tadano (Sayuri Ichishi shares that credit for the OVAs but not the main series). Now I currently have no idea what the Wedding Peach Manga looked like and so can't express an opinion on if these Anime designs are also better then the Manga. But the point remains that she's made all of my favorite Magical Girl Warrior Character Designs.
This wasn't the only staff the Sailor Moon and Wedding Peach Anime had in common. Hisashi Kagawa for example worked on both of them and Pokemon. Does knowing about this common staff help or hurt the desire to argue that Wedding Peach can stand on it's own and isn't just a knock off? I don't know, but it certainly should help in convincing people who like Sailor Moon to give Wedding Peach a chance.
Digibro likes to argue that you should care more about common creative staff then who has the official branding. Does that mean Wedding Peach is better Sailor Moon then the actual Sailor Moon airing at the same time? It mainly aired concurrent with SuperS the often least highly regarded season of Sailor Moon. Ikuhara was still series director but he had less actual control then he did for S and the R Movie and his frustration with that is why he quickly left to go get started on Utena.
I sometimes wonder if for both Hollywood Movies and Anime we often give too much credit to the Director and not enough to the Writer of the Script/Screenplay. I mention this here because the main Director of Wedding Peach wasn't a Sailor Moon alumni (instead he'd go on to do Pokemon) but at least one of the head writers was, Sukehiro Tomita.
Sukehiro wrote the Scripts for 15 episodes of season one, 13 episodes of R, 7 episodes of S and the Screenplays for both the R and S movies. The generally least liked movie is the only one he didn't write, I have some fondness for Black Dream Hole but it is the weakest. The R movie was the best under Ikuhara, but it seems the Director changing didn't cause as much of a quality drop as the writer changing.
I don't currently know if anyone else can be said to have written more episodes of season one. But I made a Semi-Filler Free guide to Season 1 of Sailor Moon and only two of his episodes didn't make it and only one is among those that barely qualified. He wrote 12 episodes that are almost impossible to justify skipping including the first and last episodes. So if you're someone who outright prefers the 90s Anime over the Manga and Crystal (I used to at least for season one but I've become more balanced on the issue) he may deserve just as much credit for that adaptation work as Sato and Ikuhara. Still he didn't write all of the non filler, you will miss stuff watching only what he wrote.
He also wrote plenty of stuff that at least follows the formula of a Sailor Moon filler episode, including some of what set that formula. So if you like the 90s Sailor Moon Anime mainly for the filler with no counterpart to anything in the Manga (like me) then he also likely wrote something you enjoyed. One of my personal all time favorite Sailor Moon episodes is Episode 26 - Bring a Smile to Naru's Face! Usagi's Friendship which is also one Ikuhara directed. In fact I want the Viz Dub of that episode played at my funeral instead of any religious sermon, just play this and read 1 Corinthians 15.
During the Doom Tree Saga he wrote three episodes, the best of which is the Snow White one, the one who's localization would create one of my favorite Memes. He wrote 10 episodes for the Black Moon saga, which seem to include most of the most watchable ones (I'm not big on that arc in any version). He wrote only 7 for S but they include some major stand outs, like the one where Minako goes nuts donating blood.
He scripted 16 episodes of Wedding Peach including the first two and the last two. But he's also credited with the "original story" which I'm not sure what that means in a Manga adaptation. Did he also help write the Manga? Or come up with the basic outline of how it was changed for the Anime? I don't know enough about how this stuff works.
Most major Wedding Peach creative minds not connected to Sailor Moon would go on to be heavily involved in Pokemon, so if you're nostalgic for 90s and early 2000s kid's Anime they all probably made something more well known you like.
I have a fondness for Wedding Peach that long predates my knowing about any of these connections it has to Sailor Moon and Pokémon. Even if it is a rare occasion of an Anime I like where I can't recommend or even much defend the Dub. And also in-spite of it having less Yuri then any other Magical Girl show I've watched which I'd expect to bother me more then it does.
As far as comparing it to Sailor Moon goes it's only really fair to compare it to single "seasons" not the whole show since Wedding Peach didn't get equivalent sequels, not in Anime form at least, just a fun 4 episode OVA epilogue which is if anything most like the Doom Tree Saga as filler material.
I would easily pick Wedding Peach over R and SuperS and maybe even Stars. But S is definitely a better product, while comparing it to season 1 is the really tough comparison. Sailor Moon's greatest strength is that it has some single episodes that by far top anything else I've seen in Pre-Pokémon TV Anime. However Sailor Moon does have some hard to defend episodes that are arguably worse then Wedding Peach's worst episodes. And I say that as someone hesitant to call any episode of Sailor Moon completely irredeemable.
I wonder if Wedding Peach had an overlooked influence on the future of the genre? It predates PreCure in having Pink be the main color of the MC. I could maybe think of other things that make it proto-PreCure.
Tomita would go on to return to Toei for Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, where he did Series Composition and Scripted 13 episodes.
It's not that Japan can't do CG Animation well, Anime studios just don't.
They do do it well in Video Games. I've already said on this blog that I do not comprehend film critics saying "looks like a video game" as a criticism when I watch the Cut Scenes in Final Fantasy XII and XIII and go "why can't Hollywood movies look this awesome". Even on the Wii over a decade ago the cut scenes in Mario Galaxy look better then what Disney and Pixar are putting on the big screen now much less at the time.
But these are the top tier AAA Video Games, they have massive budgets and are typically in production for years. Most Anime is made on a limited budget and schedule that doesn't allow the same amount of work to be put into it. To many nit picky Anime critics this even hurts how good their 2D Animation looks, in TV Anime at least. But 2D Animation is still inherently cheaper to do well and Japan's been ahead of the west at that art-form since the 70s so it's easy for even the cheapest shows to impress a casual viewer when it's 2D.
With Pokémon we can see this contrast demonstrated in the same franchise. Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution is going to be the first fully CG Pokémon Anime and it isn't looking good at all. But in the games Let's Go Pikachu, Let's Go Eevee, Sword and Shield are providing some fraking gorgeous purely CG Animation.
Frankly I think if they really wanted to do this now they should have used Detective Pikachu as an excuse to take this year off from the annual Pokémon Anime Film schedule and spend twice as much time on this one. And done it with an original story, everyone comparing this to a movie we're all nostalgic for is not gonna help it.
There are also video games that have a more explicitly Anime style. And plenty of Dark Fantasy Video Games with an aesthetic that could have worked for something like Berserk.
Final Fantasy VII Advent Children was a Japanese CG Animated Movie made by a Video Game company with the same effort they'd put into a Video Game. And it looks awesome, whatever your lame opinions on it's story are.
But these are the top tier AAA Video Games, they have massive budgets and are typically in production for years. Most Anime is made on a limited budget and schedule that doesn't allow the same amount of work to be put into it. To many nit picky Anime critics this even hurts how good their 2D Animation looks, in TV Anime at least. But 2D Animation is still inherently cheaper to do well and Japan's been ahead of the west at that art-form since the 70s so it's easy for even the cheapest shows to impress a casual viewer when it's 2D.
With Pokémon we can see this contrast demonstrated in the same franchise. Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution is going to be the first fully CG Pokémon Anime and it isn't looking good at all. But in the games Let's Go Pikachu, Let's Go Eevee, Sword and Shield are providing some fraking gorgeous purely CG Animation.
Frankly I think if they really wanted to do this now they should have used Detective Pikachu as an excuse to take this year off from the annual Pokémon Anime Film schedule and spend twice as much time on this one. And done it with an original story, everyone comparing this to a movie we're all nostalgic for is not gonna help it.
There are also video games that have a more explicitly Anime style. And plenty of Dark Fantasy Video Games with an aesthetic that could have worked for something like Berserk.
Final Fantasy VII Advent Children was a Japanese CG Animated Movie made by a Video Game company with the same effort they'd put into a Video Game. And it looks awesome, whatever your lame opinions on it's story are.
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
It's fine if the Villain isn't one of the best characters.
I myself in the past on this very blog have repeated the common notion that having a great villain is a requirement for a great Superhero story. But a lot has happened to change my mind on that.
It would be pointless to go on about great Genre stories that have no villain at all like the third Pokémon movie or Star Trek IV or the book of Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Because that's irrelevant to the argument that if there is a villain the villain needs to be a very engaging and/or entertaining character.
Now I do love great villains, from cartoon villains played by a charismatic actor having a great time hamming it up to complex nuanced psychological profiles. SSSS.Gridman provided one of each of those making it perhaps the best Anime of 2018 in the villain department.
But there is no story where every character is going to be a super engaging stand out character. I need some to be fun and/or interesting for me to get into a show or movie, but it's okay if not all of them are. Even some characters who have a lot of screen time and narrative importance in a given movie are basically just talking plot devices.
This post is about the fact that we tend to see the role of antagonist as one that's uniquely not allowed to be of lower priority. No one is confused when a Superhero film is well received in-spite of the love interest character not being all that highly regarded. But I'd argue the person we're supposed to believe the Hero is In Love With should be more important to get right then the person the Hero is trying to beat up. The old Batman movies got away with relegating Pat Hingle's Jim Gordon to just an exposition device, but when they get one of the villains wrong everyone loses their minds.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe was for awhile perceived as being pretty weak in the villain department besides Loki and maybe a few others. But those movies were massively successful in-spite of that and certain internet critics were pretty confused, lamenting that society has lost something in allowing villains to get stale.
Now over the course of phase three there is a perception that the MCU has been getting better in the villain department. I personally like some of the older MCU villains particularly Ultron, and am not as impressed with some of these highly praised recent ones, especially Killmonger and Hella. But that's not the point today.
I would argue that in the early years of the MCU general audiences and even some Comic readers didn't consider the lack of scene stealing villains a bug and maybe even saw it as a feature.
The 90s Batman movies were largely treated like episodes of the 60s TV Show just now on the big screen and separated by years instead of weeks, and so the fact that each movie had a different villain was treated as the main thing setting them apart from each other. And to a large extent the 2000s pre-MCU Marvel Superhero movies followed their example. When Batman Begins came along and the marketing largely underplayed the villains for the sake of selling it as Batman's Origin Story a lot of us thought things would be different. But low and behold for the sequels it was once again The Joker and Bane who were really selling them.
I think it's possible when the MCU got going many found it darn right refreshing that these Superhero films were not so villain driven, even if often the marketing was seemingly trying to be business as usual in this area. Even the MCU films that critics weren't so kind to still did well at the Box Office.
Thor: The Dark World is constantly treated by YT Video Essayists as among the worst of the MCU films, but for me it's the best Thor movie by far. And criticisms of the movie largely come down to finding Malekith a bland boring uninteresting villain with unexplained motives. I can't even remotely understand criticizing anything else about the film.
The movie isn't actually about Malekith, it's about Thor and his relationships with Loki and Jane and Odin. And in my opinion all of that is handled beautifully whether or not it was predictable. Malekith being just an external threat to advance that narrative is perfectly fine and I would possibly even have disliked screen time being wasted on trying to make him more sympathetic or understandable.
Ronin in the first Guardians of The Galaxy is viewed as being the exact same "problem" as Malekith yet it doesn't seem to have hurt the overall critical reception of the film nearly as much. In that film I think Ronin being a bland character was recognized as being actually thematically relevant, it contrasts him to the fun cast of quirky heroes being established, it even plays into how he's defeated at the end. And maybe the same idea was at play in using him in a minor role in Captain Marvel.
Malekith's blandness may not be so thematically justified but I'd certainly argue it's narrativly justified. He's someone who wants to destroy the Universe as we know it because he wants to eliminate all light and return existence to perpetual darkness. Would it really make sense for that to be a fun one liner dropping character? And knowing why he is like that or wants that would add nothing to what the film is actually about, it would only be a distraction.
Going outside of Comic Book Superhero movies I feel similarly about the aliens in Darling in The Franxx, and many of the villains of the Pokémon movies, and Count Dooku. Some Pokémon movies have great villains, like anyone connected to Team Rocket (even if that connection only exists in the Dub). But it's totally fine that the villain in Pokémon 2000 is just there to start the conflict and then become irrelevant, and that plenty of later ones were just basically that formula being recycled, because the villains are never what I watch a Pokémon movie for.
And maybe it's a problem that for so many Comic Book fans the villains are what they watch Superhero movies for?
Update July 3rd 2019: I have stumbled upon on old YouTube video that perhaps overlaps with the ideas of this discussion. Though I suspect they're critical of more Plot Device Characters then I am.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGtKCATsUuA
It would be pointless to go on about great Genre stories that have no villain at all like the third Pokémon movie or Star Trek IV or the book of Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Because that's irrelevant to the argument that if there is a villain the villain needs to be a very engaging and/or entertaining character.
Now I do love great villains, from cartoon villains played by a charismatic actor having a great time hamming it up to complex nuanced psychological profiles. SSSS.Gridman provided one of each of those making it perhaps the best Anime of 2018 in the villain department.
But there is no story where every character is going to be a super engaging stand out character. I need some to be fun and/or interesting for me to get into a show or movie, but it's okay if not all of them are. Even some characters who have a lot of screen time and narrative importance in a given movie are basically just talking plot devices.
This post is about the fact that we tend to see the role of antagonist as one that's uniquely not allowed to be of lower priority. No one is confused when a Superhero film is well received in-spite of the love interest character not being all that highly regarded. But I'd argue the person we're supposed to believe the Hero is In Love With should be more important to get right then the person the Hero is trying to beat up. The old Batman movies got away with relegating Pat Hingle's Jim Gordon to just an exposition device, but when they get one of the villains wrong everyone loses their minds.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe was for awhile perceived as being pretty weak in the villain department besides Loki and maybe a few others. But those movies were massively successful in-spite of that and certain internet critics were pretty confused, lamenting that society has lost something in allowing villains to get stale.
Now over the course of phase three there is a perception that the MCU has been getting better in the villain department. I personally like some of the older MCU villains particularly Ultron, and am not as impressed with some of these highly praised recent ones, especially Killmonger and Hella. But that's not the point today.
I would argue that in the early years of the MCU general audiences and even some Comic readers didn't consider the lack of scene stealing villains a bug and maybe even saw it as a feature.
The 90s Batman movies were largely treated like episodes of the 60s TV Show just now on the big screen and separated by years instead of weeks, and so the fact that each movie had a different villain was treated as the main thing setting them apart from each other. And to a large extent the 2000s pre-MCU Marvel Superhero movies followed their example. When Batman Begins came along and the marketing largely underplayed the villains for the sake of selling it as Batman's Origin Story a lot of us thought things would be different. But low and behold for the sequels it was once again The Joker and Bane who were really selling them.
I think it's possible when the MCU got going many found it darn right refreshing that these Superhero films were not so villain driven, even if often the marketing was seemingly trying to be business as usual in this area. Even the MCU films that critics weren't so kind to still did well at the Box Office.
Thor: The Dark World is constantly treated by YT Video Essayists as among the worst of the MCU films, but for me it's the best Thor movie by far. And criticisms of the movie largely come down to finding Malekith a bland boring uninteresting villain with unexplained motives. I can't even remotely understand criticizing anything else about the film.
The movie isn't actually about Malekith, it's about Thor and his relationships with Loki and Jane and Odin. And in my opinion all of that is handled beautifully whether or not it was predictable. Malekith being just an external threat to advance that narrative is perfectly fine and I would possibly even have disliked screen time being wasted on trying to make him more sympathetic or understandable.
Ronin in the first Guardians of The Galaxy is viewed as being the exact same "problem" as Malekith yet it doesn't seem to have hurt the overall critical reception of the film nearly as much. In that film I think Ronin being a bland character was recognized as being actually thematically relevant, it contrasts him to the fun cast of quirky heroes being established, it even plays into how he's defeated at the end. And maybe the same idea was at play in using him in a minor role in Captain Marvel.
Malekith's blandness may not be so thematically justified but I'd certainly argue it's narrativly justified. He's someone who wants to destroy the Universe as we know it because he wants to eliminate all light and return existence to perpetual darkness. Would it really make sense for that to be a fun one liner dropping character? And knowing why he is like that or wants that would add nothing to what the film is actually about, it would only be a distraction.
Going outside of Comic Book Superhero movies I feel similarly about the aliens in Darling in The Franxx, and many of the villains of the Pokémon movies, and Count Dooku. Some Pokémon movies have great villains, like anyone connected to Team Rocket (even if that connection only exists in the Dub). But it's totally fine that the villain in Pokémon 2000 is just there to start the conflict and then become irrelevant, and that plenty of later ones were just basically that formula being recycled, because the villains are never what I watch a Pokémon movie for.
And maybe it's a problem that for so many Comic Book fans the villains are what they watch Superhero movies for?
Update July 3rd 2019: I have stumbled upon on old YouTube video that perhaps overlaps with the ideas of this discussion. Though I suspect they're critical of more Plot Device Characters then I am.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGtKCATsUuA
Monday, June 17, 2019
The Shockingly Shoujo Roots of The Pokemon Anime.
In my post about 1992 I mentioned that Wedding Peach homage in the Erika episode of Pokemon as indirect evidence Pokemon might have been influenced by Sailor Moon and linked to Suede's corresponding Pokemon Journey episode as that's where I first learned of this piece of trivia. At the time I made that I didn't recall exactly what Suede had said about it so I've since re-watched it and done some more research. Suede was actually quite understating the connection, it goes beyond just one common staff member.
Nintendo didn't just create their own animation studio out of thin air when they decided to make an Anime for Pokemon. But they did interestingly choose a then young and up and coming one called OLM (Oriental Light and Magic). Wedding Peach was OLM's first TV Anime having previously only done a couple of obscure OVAs. And this is technically still the Studio in charge of the Pokemon Anime to this day. The creative staff of the two Anime by no means completely overlap, but quite a bit of overlap does exist, from series director Kunihiko Yuyama to Yuji Asada (Suede's favorite Storyboarder), Hideki Sonoda (who previously worked on Shoujo projects like Attacker You! and Hikari no Densetsu), Sayuri Ichishi, Norihiko Sudo and even the Sound Director and Photography Director as well as the two OLM producers.
Wedding Peach was a successful show at the time, regardless of how many critics may see it as the most egregious Sailor Moon copycat, and it seems the success of Wedding Peach was a major factor in how they got the Pokemon gig, it seems to have been the biggest thing they'd done prior to Pokemon.
As far as using this as evidence of Sailor Moon possibly directly influencing the Pokemon Speak trope. While as a fan of Wedding Peach I sometimes get defensive of the idea that it's just a Sailor Moon knock off, there is no doubt in my mind the people who made Wedding Peach must have been watching Sailor Moon. And I've found there is indeed some staff who worked on both Wedding Peach and Sailor Moon, but I've yet to find a single person who worked on all three (besides Voice Actors but they aren't the creative staff), like Sukehiro Tomita who was a key writer for Wedding Peach and had previously worked on the first three seasons of Sailor Moon and the first two movies, also Wedding Peach's character designer had previously worked on Sailor Moon including the R movie. That means past Sailor Moon staff and future Pokemon staff were working together, sharing ideas and talking about stuff.
Knowing about this interesting connection between Wedding Peach and Pokemon makes me oddly want to see Wedding Peach characters added to Super Smash Bros. Maybe one of those people who make Smash Mods can do a Wedding Peach one?
OLM has recently started doing Live Actions stuff, including it seems one of the few Live Action incarnations of the Magical Girl Warrior Sub-Genre, the Girls x Heroine! Series. I hope there's a legal way for me to try watching that. I actually don't know if they were involved in making Detective Pikachu at all.
The fact that some of Pokemon's original Japanese voice cast had previously done Wedding Peach and/or Sailor Moon is also interesting. Though perhaps not that surprising, Japanese Seiyu get around just as quickly as Dub Actors, more so even since in Japan this industry isn't divided between two different States, it's pretty much all recorded in Tokyo.
Let's start with the one Japanese Pokemon voice everyone can recognize, Pikachu. Ootani Ikue had previously been Sailor Tin Cat in Sailor Stars the last season of Sailor Moon which ended a few weeks before Pokemon went on the air. The voice of Chibi-Usa was the Japanese voice of Sabrina the Saffron Gym Leader. And Usagi herself has been three different Pokemon characters including Domino in Mewtwo Returns, and she was Potamos one of the more entertaining Wedding Peach antagonists. While the main female leads of Wedding Peach only did occasional if any Pokemon voice work, the two male leads of Wedding Peach became the Japanese voices of Brock and James.
But perhaps most relevant to how I started this is that Momoko the main protagonist of Wedding Peach was also the Japanese voice of Erika on both the series and in the recent reboot movie. Why is Erika the only Gym Leader featured in that movie? I enjoyed it cause Erika was kind of the most misrepresented in the original series and her scene in that movie felt much more like who she is in the Games. But the staff may have simply wanted to work with their original star Seiyu again (and yes some of the staff was still the same, particularly the main director). She was also Aitwo (Amber Two) in the origin of Mewtwo add on to the first movie, so maybe she'll be in the upcoming remake as well?
Takeshi Shudou was never involved in Wedding Peach or Sailor Moon it seems but did create Magical Princess Minky Momo which also had Junki Takegami as a writer and Kunihiko Yuyama as the director.
Update: I found someone who worked on all three of Sailor Moon, Wedding Peach and Pokemon. Hisashi Kagawa who's mostly credited as an animation director or "key animation" and occasionally Character Design. He's worked on a lot of other stuff too, he really gets around.
And another person Wedding Peach and Pokemon have in common is Art Director Katsuyoshi Kanemura.
Satoru Iriyoshi had previously worked on Goldfish Warning! the predecessor to Sailor Moon's time-slot, and then Ghost Sweeper Mikami and Marmalade Boy which were in the future Pretty Cure Timeslot.
Yukiyoshi Ohashi was a Pokemon writer who'd previously worked on Cutey Honey Flash, Mahou No Angel Sweet Mint and some Akko-Chan reboots. And it as turns out they also wrote a lot of Wedding Peach, Shikichi Ohashi is the same person, AnimeNewsNetwork is just confused.
Massaki Iwane made his debut as an Anime Director doing Pokemon where he's become a fan favorite. But he had previously done Key Animation for 7 episodes of Wedding Peach starting with the third. Often ones that were also Yuji Asada episodes.
Nintendo didn't just create their own animation studio out of thin air when they decided to make an Anime for Pokemon. But they did interestingly choose a then young and up and coming one called OLM (Oriental Light and Magic). Wedding Peach was OLM's first TV Anime having previously only done a couple of obscure OVAs. And this is technically still the Studio in charge of the Pokemon Anime to this day. The creative staff of the two Anime by no means completely overlap, but quite a bit of overlap does exist, from series director Kunihiko Yuyama to Yuji Asada (Suede's favorite Storyboarder), Hideki Sonoda (who previously worked on Shoujo projects like Attacker You! and Hikari no Densetsu), Sayuri Ichishi, Norihiko Sudo and even the Sound Director and Photography Director as well as the two OLM producers.
Wedding Peach was a successful show at the time, regardless of how many critics may see it as the most egregious Sailor Moon copycat, and it seems the success of Wedding Peach was a major factor in how they got the Pokemon gig, it seems to have been the biggest thing they'd done prior to Pokemon.
As far as using this as evidence of Sailor Moon possibly directly influencing the Pokemon Speak trope. While as a fan of Wedding Peach I sometimes get defensive of the idea that it's just a Sailor Moon knock off, there is no doubt in my mind the people who made Wedding Peach must have been watching Sailor Moon. And I've found there is indeed some staff who worked on both Wedding Peach and Sailor Moon, but I've yet to find a single person who worked on all three (besides Voice Actors but they aren't the creative staff), like Sukehiro Tomita who was a key writer for Wedding Peach and had previously worked on the first three seasons of Sailor Moon and the first two movies, also Wedding Peach's character designer had previously worked on Sailor Moon including the R movie. That means past Sailor Moon staff and future Pokemon staff were working together, sharing ideas and talking about stuff.
Knowing about this interesting connection between Wedding Peach and Pokemon makes me oddly want to see Wedding Peach characters added to Super Smash Bros. Maybe one of those people who make Smash Mods can do a Wedding Peach one?
OLM has recently started doing Live Actions stuff, including it seems one of the few Live Action incarnations of the Magical Girl Warrior Sub-Genre, the Girls x Heroine! Series. I hope there's a legal way for me to try watching that. I actually don't know if they were involved in making Detective Pikachu at all.
The fact that some of Pokemon's original Japanese voice cast had previously done Wedding Peach and/or Sailor Moon is also interesting. Though perhaps not that surprising, Japanese Seiyu get around just as quickly as Dub Actors, more so even since in Japan this industry isn't divided between two different States, it's pretty much all recorded in Tokyo.
Let's start with the one Japanese Pokemon voice everyone can recognize, Pikachu. Ootani Ikue had previously been Sailor Tin Cat in Sailor Stars the last season of Sailor Moon which ended a few weeks before Pokemon went on the air. The voice of Chibi-Usa was the Japanese voice of Sabrina the Saffron Gym Leader. And Usagi herself has been three different Pokemon characters including Domino in Mewtwo Returns, and she was Potamos one of the more entertaining Wedding Peach antagonists. While the main female leads of Wedding Peach only did occasional if any Pokemon voice work, the two male leads of Wedding Peach became the Japanese voices of Brock and James.
But perhaps most relevant to how I started this is that Momoko the main protagonist of Wedding Peach was also the Japanese voice of Erika on both the series and in the recent reboot movie. Why is Erika the only Gym Leader featured in that movie? I enjoyed it cause Erika was kind of the most misrepresented in the original series and her scene in that movie felt much more like who she is in the Games. But the staff may have simply wanted to work with their original star Seiyu again (and yes some of the staff was still the same, particularly the main director). She was also Aitwo (Amber Two) in the origin of Mewtwo add on to the first movie, so maybe she'll be in the upcoming remake as well?
Takeshi Shudou was never involved in Wedding Peach or Sailor Moon it seems but did create Magical Princess Minky Momo which also had Junki Takegami as a writer and Kunihiko Yuyama as the director.
Update: I found someone who worked on all three of Sailor Moon, Wedding Peach and Pokemon. Hisashi Kagawa who's mostly credited as an animation director or "key animation" and occasionally Character Design. He's worked on a lot of other stuff too, he really gets around.
And another person Wedding Peach and Pokemon have in common is Art Director Katsuyoshi Kanemura.
Satoru Iriyoshi had previously worked on Goldfish Warning! the predecessor to Sailor Moon's time-slot, and then Ghost Sweeper Mikami and Marmalade Boy which were in the future Pretty Cure Timeslot.
Yukiyoshi Ohashi was a Pokemon writer who'd previously worked on Cutey Honey Flash, Mahou No Angel Sweet Mint and some Akko-Chan reboots. And it as turns out they also wrote a lot of Wedding Peach, Shikichi Ohashi is the same person, AnimeNewsNetwork is just confused.
Massaki Iwane made his debut as an Anime Director doing Pokemon where he's become a fan favorite. But he had previously done Key Animation for 7 episodes of Wedding Peach starting with the third. Often ones that were also Yuji Asada episodes.
Saturday, June 15, 2019
The Lineage of The Magical Girl Warrior
In 1991 the Magical Girl Warrior Sub-Genre was born in Manga with Codename Sailor V and Devil Hunter Yoko which technically qualifies but came out too close to Sailor V for one to have influenced the other. Of the two it is mainly Sailor V that is the literary ancestor of the Magical Girl Warriors who've come since, chiefly via it's more well known spin off Sailor Moon.
However I'd have to say the main literary ancestors of the Magical Girl Warrior were not earlier Magical Girls but other types of Superhero stories.
The original Magical Girl genre was mainly a Sit-Com premise, basically inspired by Bewitched but focusing on younger characters rather then a house wife, it's western equivalent would be stuff like Sabrina The Teenage Witch and Wizards of Waverly Place. Next came the Magical Girl Idol sub-genre which is basically Jem and the Holograms but more like how the Japanese Idol Industry works, and it's most in the case of that Magical Girl sub-genre where I can definitely say the Japanese version predates the western equivalent, Creamy Mammy was popular for a few years before Jem came along. Harmony Gold started work on a Creamy Mammy dub that never saw the light of day, so Americans in the Animation industry were aware of it.
I don't want to over emphasize the extent to which certain western works were an influence, directly or indirectly, on the genre. But I have to talk about it somewhat since Naoko Takeuchi has publicly admitted to Wonder Woman being an influence.
Mechanically speaking it is mainly the Lynda Carter TV Show Wonder Woman who seems like a proto Magical Girl Warrior (Or Magical Woman if you prefer since she's an adult), since in that version she doesn't have her powers when in civilian form and has the spinning transformation. And I'm unsure to what extent any other version of Wonder Woman would have been available in Japanese in the 80s and early 90s. But I feel the spirit of the Magical Girl genre is more anticipated by Marston's original vision in the Golden Age comics which were often distinct from the Male Superheros of the Golden Age in how they were about at least trying to solve things non violently and reforming the villains. And the Magical Girl genre has similarly been associated with sexual kinks being thrown in.
Wedding Peach might have been drawing even more on Wonder Woman, they got similar looking Bracelets and a general ancient Greek soldier aesthetic to the Magical Warrior costumes and using Aphrodite in a similar way.
The lineage of Superheros with Magical Transformations probably begins with Fawcett's Captain Marvel aka Shazam, I watched Linkara's review of the first Shazam comic and if only Billy were a girl and Shazam a cute animal it would sure seem like a Magical Girl pilot. A little later the character of Mary Marvel was added to the Shazam mythos and since she doesn't age up when she transforms she is perhaps the first true Magical Girl Warrior. Mary Marvel unfortunately wasn't included in the 70s TV version of the Shazam mythos, instead they created Isis another Magical Woman Warrior. Then there are the many Western Superheros viewed as knock offs of Captain Marvel in some way, from Thor having a similar kind of transformation to Miracleman and Miracle Woman to Marvel Comics' Captain Marvel.
But leaving the transformation element aside, I feel Supergirl may likely have been a visual influence on the genre, in her early to mid 80s look (which is still her most iconic look) she anticipates the basic look of the Sailor Scouts and Love Angels in a lot of ways, especially Mina and Usagi being inexplicably Blond. And it was largely Bronze Age Supergirl comics that first explored balancing the Superhero life with School Life using a female character. Another interesting DC Proto Magical Girl Warrior was Amethyst Princess of Gemworld, but I'm unsure to what extent that character could have been known across the Pacific that early. And maybe She-Ra could be considered a factor as well.
But as I said the Magical Girl Warrior is a Japanese innovation. In many ways the concept was arguably just a Hyper Girlification of the Tokusatsu Transforming Superhero formula most popularly exemplified by Ultraman, Super Sentai and Kamen Rider, but arguably the first was a character known as Gekko Kamen or the Moonlight Mask, the Moonlight Knight from the Doom Tree Saga of Sailor Moon was a direct homage to that character. When I was watching SSSS.Gridman it really felt at times to me like the MC was a male Magical Girl.
And this Genre of Japanese entertainment had even already had Female Superheroes before the Magical Girl Warrior, but they were all more Science Based then Magick which is why they seem related to the Magical Girl genre only in retrospect. The first of them, or at least first to be the main character was Go Nagai's Cutey Honey, Cutey Honey's perceived relationship to this genre is why after the 90s Sailor Moon anime went off the air Toei put a more Shoujo oriented reboot of Cutey Honey in it's time-slot, Cutey Honey Flash.
Once again however I don't think transforming characters were the only influence. I can't help but wonder if La Seine No Hoshi was an aesthetic influence in some fashion. But adding further weight to the possible DC Comics influence mentioned above, I have come to think Project A-Ko must have been a factor. That movie used the same kind of Sailor Fuku that Sailor V and Sailor Moon would later wear, and it anticipated running late for school as a common recurring gag. And all three of it's lead Seiyu wound up being on Sailor Moon, two of them as major characters.
However I'd have to say the main literary ancestors of the Magical Girl Warrior were not earlier Magical Girls but other types of Superhero stories.
The original Magical Girl genre was mainly a Sit-Com premise, basically inspired by Bewitched but focusing on younger characters rather then a house wife, it's western equivalent would be stuff like Sabrina The Teenage Witch and Wizards of Waverly Place. Next came the Magical Girl Idol sub-genre which is basically Jem and the Holograms but more like how the Japanese Idol Industry works, and it's most in the case of that Magical Girl sub-genre where I can definitely say the Japanese version predates the western equivalent, Creamy Mammy was popular for a few years before Jem came along. Harmony Gold started work on a Creamy Mammy dub that never saw the light of day, so Americans in the Animation industry were aware of it.
I don't want to over emphasize the extent to which certain western works were an influence, directly or indirectly, on the genre. But I have to talk about it somewhat since Naoko Takeuchi has publicly admitted to Wonder Woman being an influence.
Mechanically speaking it is mainly the Lynda Carter TV Show Wonder Woman who seems like a proto Magical Girl Warrior (Or Magical Woman if you prefer since she's an adult), since in that version she doesn't have her powers when in civilian form and has the spinning transformation. And I'm unsure to what extent any other version of Wonder Woman would have been available in Japanese in the 80s and early 90s. But I feel the spirit of the Magical Girl genre is more anticipated by Marston's original vision in the Golden Age comics which were often distinct from the Male Superheros of the Golden Age in how they were about at least trying to solve things non violently and reforming the villains. And the Magical Girl genre has similarly been associated with sexual kinks being thrown in.
Wedding Peach might have been drawing even more on Wonder Woman, they got similar looking Bracelets and a general ancient Greek soldier aesthetic to the Magical Warrior costumes and using Aphrodite in a similar way.
The lineage of Superheros with Magical Transformations probably begins with Fawcett's Captain Marvel aka Shazam, I watched Linkara's review of the first Shazam comic and if only Billy were a girl and Shazam a cute animal it would sure seem like a Magical Girl pilot. A little later the character of Mary Marvel was added to the Shazam mythos and since she doesn't age up when she transforms she is perhaps the first true Magical Girl Warrior. Mary Marvel unfortunately wasn't included in the 70s TV version of the Shazam mythos, instead they created Isis another Magical Woman Warrior. Then there are the many Western Superheros viewed as knock offs of Captain Marvel in some way, from Thor having a similar kind of transformation to Miracleman and Miracle Woman to Marvel Comics' Captain Marvel.
But leaving the transformation element aside, I feel Supergirl may likely have been a visual influence on the genre, in her early to mid 80s look (which is still her most iconic look) she anticipates the basic look of the Sailor Scouts and Love Angels in a lot of ways, especially Mina and Usagi being inexplicably Blond. And it was largely Bronze Age Supergirl comics that first explored balancing the Superhero life with School Life using a female character. Another interesting DC Proto Magical Girl Warrior was Amethyst Princess of Gemworld, but I'm unsure to what extent that character could have been known across the Pacific that early. And maybe She-Ra could be considered a factor as well.
But as I said the Magical Girl Warrior is a Japanese innovation. In many ways the concept was arguably just a Hyper Girlification of the Tokusatsu Transforming Superhero formula most popularly exemplified by Ultraman, Super Sentai and Kamen Rider, but arguably the first was a character known as Gekko Kamen or the Moonlight Mask, the Moonlight Knight from the Doom Tree Saga of Sailor Moon was a direct homage to that character. When I was watching SSSS.Gridman it really felt at times to me like the MC was a male Magical Girl.
And this Genre of Japanese entertainment had even already had Female Superheroes before the Magical Girl Warrior, but they were all more Science Based then Magick which is why they seem related to the Magical Girl genre only in retrospect. The first of them, or at least first to be the main character was Go Nagai's Cutey Honey, Cutey Honey's perceived relationship to this genre is why after the 90s Sailor Moon anime went off the air Toei put a more Shoujo oriented reboot of Cutey Honey in it's time-slot, Cutey Honey Flash.
Once again however I don't think transforming characters were the only influence. I can't help but wonder if La Seine No Hoshi was an aesthetic influence in some fashion. But adding further weight to the possible DC Comics influence mentioned above, I have come to think Project A-Ko must have been a factor. That movie used the same kind of Sailor Fuku that Sailor V and Sailor Moon would later wear, and it anticipated running late for school as a common recurring gag. And all three of it's lead Seiyu wound up being on Sailor Moon, two of them as major characters.
Update: I have now learned that there were a few Toei Toku shows that were basically live action Magical Girl shows in the late 80s and early 90s as part of the Fushigi Comedy Series. The most important being The Masked Belle Poitrine.
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
It's #BATTINSON time
A week ago Robert Pattinson was officially announced as the new Batman, I didn't even know he was rumored till today. A new Batman actor was announced and it was a WEEK before I heard about it. This would never have happened five years ago. But during that period when I hadn't come to terms with BvS I stopped following most Superhero news at all and dove deeper and deeper into Anime trying to make it so I was pretty much only following Anime stuff on Twitter.
I have not seen him in anything that isn't a Twilight movie. I will give him a fair shake
He's in his 30s which on the one hand should alleviate my fears we'll be getting another young still learning Batman. But he's not that much older then Bale was in 2004.
Apparently back in August it was announced this film isn't an Origin Story, but I don't even want him having been doing it for only a year or so either. I want a Batman who's young enough that we're no where near DKR territory but who is already a veteran at what he's doing. That's the Batman we still haven't gotten in a proper Live Action movie besides the Shumackers.
The film currently in production is apparently defined as a "Noir driven story". That can mean a lot of things, in my view The Dark Knight is the best modern Film Noir Hollywood has given us. But if it focuses on Batman as a detective more then any prior Live Action Batman movie has I'll be happy, that is definitely the main aspect of the character we haven't seen properly on the Silver Screen yet.
We got two years to wait for that. Right now I'm getting annoyed we still lack a proper trailer for the Birds Of Prey movie that comes out in less then a year. To what extent is that and the Suicide Squad sequel even still in the same universe?
I have not seen him in anything that isn't a Twilight movie. I will give him a fair shake
He's in his 30s which on the one hand should alleviate my fears we'll be getting another young still learning Batman. But he's not that much older then Bale was in 2004.
Apparently back in August it was announced this film isn't an Origin Story, but I don't even want him having been doing it for only a year or so either. I want a Batman who's young enough that we're no where near DKR territory but who is already a veteran at what he's doing. That's the Batman we still haven't gotten in a proper Live Action movie besides the Shumackers.
The film currently in production is apparently defined as a "Noir driven story". That can mean a lot of things, in my view The Dark Knight is the best modern Film Noir Hollywood has given us. But if it focuses on Batman as a detective more then any prior Live Action Batman movie has I'll be happy, that is definitely the main aspect of the character we haven't seen properly on the Silver Screen yet.
We got two years to wait for that. Right now I'm getting annoyed we still lack a proper trailer for the Birds Of Prey movie that comes out in less then a year. To what extent is that and the Suicide Squad sequel even still in the same universe?
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