I'm following 10 current Simuldubs.

Kind of exciting after following very little for the last few months.

Now in the past when I've excited about finding a good number of current shows to follow, I've never actually watched all of them to completions.  And this could be the same, never underestimate the ablity of a show that had me impressed at the to eventually lose me.  

As the title says they're all Simuldubs, and there are a couple other recent shows I might try binging when their Dubs are finished, I also intend to try Bubble when it drops on Netflix.  If I decide to try watching a current or recent season show Subbed it'll be either The Executioner and Her way of Life and/or World's End Harem.  But that shall not be the focus for this post.

I'm not promising a return to regularly posting updates on my current seasonal viewings, only when I feel I have something to say will this Gaiden tag be revived.

For Monday I'll be watching Lupin III Part 6 which I actually haven't properly started yet, but Lupin is a franchise I consider reliable.

For Tuesday I'm watching The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising The Nation out of Debt which has actually already reached it's second half.  What intrigues me most is learning the Anti Flahm Racism and how that effects this world's geopolitics, it could wind up being the subject of it's own post, or an important example for a broader subject.

I have 2 shows of Wednesday.

In The Land of Leadale which I learned has the same director as Isekai Smartphone, which to my pleasant surprise had a season 2 announced recently.  It's a fun show but don't' expect any think pieces about it.  It also only has two episodes left, so little chance I'll be dropping it.

Estab Life: Great Escape is my first time watching a show with this particular commonly hated on CG Animation style.  As I watched the pilot episode I got used to it quite quickly actually.  It's also got hella Yuri so I'm optimistic it could be the show to finally earn this style some respect.

For Thursday it's season 3 of Legend of The Galactic Heroes: The New Thesis, it's high quality as the show always was, I'm glad I haven't seen the original and thus can discus this new remake without a comparison filter.  Three episodes are out already and they cover some good stuff.

The Friday docket is Love After World Domination, it's a very fun and cute premise that should be appealing to fans of Power Rangers.

Saturday has three shows, not only that but all three drop deep into the afternoon, I'm sometimes asleep by then.

Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie is an adorable Romantic Comedy with some Milo Murphy's Law going on and some subtle Femdom vibes.

SPY x FAMILY seems to be the designated top Meme Generator for the season, so I'm glad to be following one only a week behind for a change.  Trixie The Golden Witch has a good video on the show but ti keeps getting taken down by copyright BS so I hope it's still up when people get to read this.  Trixie isn't a Dub person though, and as a Dub person I can comment on how "Act Normally" is inherently funny to me because of PLL.  The show might also appeal to people who liked Mr & Mrs Smith.

takt op.Destiny is a show from last year but the Simuldub just started.  I found all three central characters entertaining, and I also got a kick out of the Pilot featuring a setting common to fiction but not necessarily Anime, a midwestern Truck Stop road side Dinner that still has a mildly 50s Aesthetic.  A very specific slice of Americana.

But it's the Sunday show that I really wasn't expecting to be as fascinating as it's first two episodes wound up being, Trapped In A Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs.

The reincarnated as an Otome game Villainess genre really should be and is compelling for the premise of rethinking the Villainess's perspective.  but the only entry in that genre to actually get an Anime so far, Hamefura, as fun as it was did none of that, so far as it appears the real Katerina was destined to be a rotten person before a random Japanese School Girl just stole her life.

This show is NOT that specific sub genre, but actually is putting some thought into the villainess's perspective.  It's drawing attention to how the universe is basically Reverse NTRing her.

That's all my thoughts from episode 2 however, Episode 1 was vert fun but I maybe would have forgotten about it if I hadn't watched it when Episode 2 had already dropped.

Gnosticism in Anime and Video Games

TVTropes has a page called UsefulNotes/Gnosticism where it talks about Gnosticism and then lists examples of fictional stories that were or are thought to be influenced by Gnosticism.

As an Amateur Christian Theologian, I think it's a problem how often Gnosticism is defined based on it's mythological archetypes rather then the actual Philosophical/Metaphysical point.  If your view of the After Life is an intangible spirit realm where we are free of the confines of the Carnal Material World, you're a Gnostic no matter how Orthodox, Nicene and Trinitarian your Theology and Christology is.

One question that is particularly relevant to the accuracy of calling some of these fictional cosmologies Gnostic is, can you be Gnostic but not even nominally Christian?  According to Religion for Breakfast no one called themselves Gnostics in antiquity, and all the known specific groups we call Gnostics were Christian sects who identified each of these Gnostic Mythological archetypes with at least one person or concept in The Bible or some other Judeo-Christian source.  

However they are also the result of these Christians being influenced by older gentile ideas that in my opinion Christians shouldn't have allowed to influence them, Neopythagoreanism, Middle Platonism, Hermeticism, Hellenistic Mystery Religions and since they mostly started in Alexandria aspects of native Egyptian Mythology and Mysticism (thing is the "Proto-Orthodox" were also being influenced by at least the first two of those during this time period, simply to different degrees or in different ways.  The difference between whether you were called a Heretic or not was chiefly rejecting a Bodily Resurrection).  So you take the mythological archetypes that comes from those influences but subtract the explicitly Christian stuff, and you get a framework that can be compared to a number of fictional Fantasy/Sci-Fi cosmologies.

But going back to my distinction between Gnostic Mythology and the actual point of Gnosticism.  I don't think any currently existing "developed" culture is less inclined to sympathize with the point of Gnosticism then Japan.  Shinto Mysticism I actually view as fairly compatible with Stoic Metaphysics, and Stoicism was I'd say antithetical to all of the Non-Christian antecedents of Gnosticism, even if by the second century they were using a lot of the exact same Greek key words and phrases.

And so when I look at a lot of the Anime or other Otaku Media that has been or can be argued to resemble Gnostic mythology, I kind of feel like they're using the Gnostic Mythological framework to convey the exact opposite attitude.  

This is most explicit in SSSS.Gridman where the Sophia figure is trapped in an Idealized Platonic World of Forms and the Carnal Physical Real World is what she needs to return to.  But I think on some level the same is true of the use of Gnostic or Gnostic adjacent ideas in classics like Serial Experiments Lain or Revolutionary Girl Utena.  

I would not apply a Gnostic reading of any kind to most Isekai however, in modern Isekai the other world is just as much of a carnal/material world as ours, it's the culture being different that makes it often a world the Otaku/Neet protagonist feels more at home in then Modern Japan.  Sword Art Online does sometimes feel like it's making Gnostic Mythological references, but that isn't proper Isekai.

But in the case of Final Fantasy VII (and perhaps then every FF that's been argued to be Gnostic) I go back to what I said before about the Stoics and Gnostics being antithetical even in their use of a lot of the same terms.  I think every argument for Final Fantasy VII having a Gnostic cosmology is actually better explained by a Stoic reading, The Lifestream is the Pneumatic World Soul and Mako (like Mana in other JRPGs and Manga/Anime inspired by them) is a Pneumatic Substance.  The Physical world being Evil and Dirty couldn't be more the opposite of what a story like Final Fantasy VII is trying to say about Nature.  These are stories where the Spiritual and Carnal are in a symbiotic relationship with each other, it is Man's Sins (especially Capitalism) that create the problems.

The western world however has been very influenced by Gnosticism, for all the talk about the Gnostics as some minority the Roman Church persecuted into extinction, I'd argue they kind of indirectly won, all of Mainstream Christianity has become at least mildly Gnostic.  Gnosticism is essentially Platonism taken to it's logical extreme, and so that's why a lot of the Japanese media I just talked about and others get interpreted by westerners more Gnostically then I feel the Japanese could have possibly intended.

Update September 26th: It's occurred to me that I should explain the Final Fantasy VII part a bit more.

The Gnostic Reading of Final Fantasy VII in large part revolves around equating the Lifestream with the Gnostic Pleroma.  The Lifestream and Pleroma have in common being both the source and destiny of each individual Soul  However the Gnostic Pleroma is distinctly outside the physical world, the physical world is basically a prison to the pieces of it stuck here.  The Lifesream however is the World, it and the physical Earth are intimately connected, they form a Symbiant Circle what happens to one will effect the other.  It is quite literally the Soul and Spirit of The Earth.

The World Soul is a concept in a few schools of Greek Philosophy, but it is the Stoic Version that has all the same similarities to the Lifestream the Pleroma has but also is part of the world rather then separate.

Basically Gnosticism has more in common with Scientology then it does the Lore of FFVII.

Further Update October 14 2022: I just obtained Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250 by George Boys-Stones and chapter 8 talks about the World Soul and Nature.

Much of the thesis of the chapter is that while Middle Platonists and Stoics agreed on the World having a Soul, for the Stoics it was a pretty natural product of their Metaphysics as it's virtually synonymous with their God, while for the Platonists it kind of didn't fit so well and proved awkward.

So to Middle Platonists the World Soul was a lesser god at best, and to Plutarch it was actually Evil, but in-between it was also presented as a sort of force without much will or agency of it's own.  

But reading this has only strengthened my Stoic interpretation of The Lifestream and Final Fantasy VII.

I also view the Original Pre-Romanization Stoics as having been the Communists of the Hellenistic World.  And so here's a good Marxist Analysis of Final Fantasy VII.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9EWCLHkqRQNkPHiCAYcIUrJ3twpAmD2o

Superman Anime

It's interesting that there has been, at least officially sanctioned by DC/WB, only attempts at doing Batman as an Anime, not Superman as of yet.  Because in my opinion Superman suits Anime far better.

Part of it is of course WB increasingly only having faith in Batman in any context.  But there is also how many Normies still associate Anime first and foremost with Edgy 90s OVAs, so that association has people thinking Batman would be more suited to Anime. But the thing is that type of Anime is too edgy even for Batman, they were Japan's manifestation of the same Zeitgeist that resulted in the "90s Anti-Hero" and the Attitude Era of Pro Wrestling.  I don't think Anime has ever been asked to handle a Dark Vigilante who doesn't Kill, outside of the two Batman cartoons that are supposed to count as Anime but were still written mainly by normal American Superhero writers.

For Superman however, it seems to be Japanese Superhero writers who don't see the problem with making someone like Superman relatable, from Kamen Rider Fourze to multiple Magical Girls and Isekai protagonists.  Anime is filled with Heroes who are more Superman then Superman.

And that comes in part from Anime being influenced by Superman.  The Fleischer Superman shorts were among the inspirations on the OG himself Osamu Tezuka, Project Ako was basically a Superman fan film, it's not a coincidence that Tetsuou wears a Red Cape in Akira or that Prince Ashitaka has the exact same color scheme in Princess Mononoke, and I detect some specifically Donner Film influence on Sailor Moon R.

I also think you'd be surprised how easy it would be to actually set a take on Superman in Japan.  There is a Japanese surname very close to Kent, Kenta, and then whatever equivalent Japanese name you give to Smallville place it in Kansai rather then Kansas.

But I'd want it to be truly the Japanese doing it, not like War of the Rohirrim which has a celebrated Anime director but the writers are still standard WB Fantasy Writers.  

Ya know what, I nominate Katsuyuki Sumisawa to write the Screenplay, he was my favorite 90s Sailor Moon writer and amazingly he's the only one still working, he also wrote for Macross 7, Gundam Wing Gundam The Origin, Dragonball Z and Cutey Honey Flash, each of those works brings valuable and relevant experience to the Superman table, but Macross 7 is perhaps the most important, the Main Character of that show is basically Superman with a Guitar.

So yeah this post is in part a follow up to my last post about how I'm into Anime for the writing more so then the Artstyle. But Artstyle is important, and I do also have some thoughts on how a Superman Anime should look.

One of the Things that helped define Richard Donner's Superman film was how he made it almost like three separate films in one, using very different styles for Krypton, Smallville and Metropolis.  And well Anime can do that even more explicitly.  I'm thinking maybe even actually have three different directors with only the Screenwriter unifying all three portions.

The Krypton portion should have an Artstyle reminiscent of a classic Leiji Matsumoto based Anime, or Osamu Dezaki's adaptation of Space Adventure Cobra.

For Smallville I was first thinking Makoto Shinkai, but the rural small town themes in his movies are usually about someone wanting to leave, Clark leaves to become Superman not because he feels stifled.  I'm actually not all that intimately familiar with Anime set in Japanese rural small towns.  So I'm gonna need help with what to recommend here.  

And then Metropolis should look like a Raildex or SciADV based Anime, those shows are good at turning Tokyo into a bright almsot futuristic Metropolis, (while Kara no Kyoukai and Boogiepop turn Tokyo into a Gotham).

In the Raildex franchise, Touma Kamijou is another example of an Anime hero who's core is basically Superman if Japanese.  Meanwhile Mikoto Misaka is the closest thing Anime has to a Batman [I forgot to consider Detecive Conan here], she is a bit more retribution focused when she sets her sights on a villain, but still isn't a killer.

I know some people actually think the SciADV games and their Anime are very dark, but I don't see it.  Red Bard calls Robotics;Notes "SciADV at it's happiest", but the number of named important present narrative characters who die and stay dead is equal to Chaos;Child, one, and greater then Steins'Gate or Chaos;Head.  Now that death in Chaos;Child is contextually much darker and the only thing in a SciADV show I'd never want to see in a Superman Anime, but that's it, it only gets that dark once.  SciADV at it's darkest is still no where near Zack Snyder and Snyder is no where near Fate/Zero.

And there are plenty of Superman stories that have dark stuff in them that are liked by the same people who hate on Zach Snyder's Superman, they just don't want Superman himself to be dark.

What does Anime Inspired even mean?

As I've been thinking more about my past complaints about allegedly Anime inspired cartoons in the West, I realize the inspiration they are taking is all Art Style.  Catwoman Hunted is allegedly "Anime Style" but the actual content and writing of the story is the same as I'd expect from any Catwoman movie.

There was a time when a Cartoon being as "Dark" or "Edgy" as Netflix Casltevania would have been very rare if at all in the West.  But the way that show was written draws more from Live Action American Dark Fantasy like Game of Thrones then it does something like Berserk.

For me the actual art style isn't much of why I like Anime.  Yeah I do prefer it to what the Internet calls the Cal Arts style, but there is plenty of Western Cartoons I think look great like Batman The Animated Series.  And actually the only animated content I've ever found literally unwatchable solely because of how much it's art style doesn't appeal to me are Anime, like Pokémon Sun and Moon.  Even my old complaining about the New 52 artsyle of the DCAMU films was more about my DC fandom hang-ups then any preference for Anime and I was able to enjoy some of them regardless.

That's the thing, the Cal Arts style is being thought of as the antithesis of Anime style right now, but it's Steven Universe that drew actual thematic inspiration from Sailor Moon and Utena, while High Guardian Spice drew on Little Witch Academia.

A lot of what I like about Anime is the Meta, characters within Anime who are Anime fans, Anime that are in part about Otaku culture, and the only reason I have any desire to see Americans successfully make an "American Anime" is so we can finally see the particularities of Otaku Culture in the West represented in that, the representation American Otaku visiting Japan get in Anime is pretty bland, even Patty in the otherwise phenomenal Lucky Star.

So yeah I'd like to see what a show with the basic premise of a Lucky Star or a Yuri Yuri [or Comic Party] would be like if it was set in America and written not by just any Americans but specifically American Otaku who are long time fans of those kinds of shows and the Anime they reference.  Or if you're gonna need fantastical elements to get the budget do something very directly inspired by Anime adapted from SciADV games, or an Isekai where it's an American Otaku who gets randomly transported to a JRPG Fantasy world, but of course American Otaku Gamers would probably use Final Fantasy or SaGa as the model rather then DragonQuest and that itself is something I'd enjoy seeing.

Miyazaki's whole complaint about the state of Anime is how insular it is, it's pretty much all being made by Otaku for Otaku and only drawing inspiration from other Anime.  So called "American Anime" is being made not by Otaku but by at best Anime Fans who're nostalgic for what was well known in the U.S. in the 90s and early 00s.  

Even western Magical Girl shows are still made by people who've only seen Sailor Moon and maybe Cardcaptor Sakura, or think Utena counts, and maybe super recently might have seen Madoka.  But the true Magical Girl experience also requires exposure to Pretty Cure, Nanoha, and at least one Post Madoka show (hopefully they'd choose Yuki Yuna), but I'd really be hoping for people who've dug even deeper then that and seen Symphogear, Pretear, Wedding Peach, Pretty Sammy and Prisma Illya.

Don't confuse this with another "Style vs Substance" dichotomy, visual style and writing style are both styles.  In Anime especially Style is Substance.

Umineko's Anime is Great

Umineko is different from most cases of my defending a Visual Novel based Anime hated by fans of the source material.  Though my basic argument that the Anime needs to be judged as it's own thing first before bringing source material comparison into it (which VN zealots constantly refuse to do) remains.

In those other cases the Anime adaptation doesn't fundamentally change anything about what happens, it's mostly fans being upset about stuff cut that they liked, but all that cut stuff is probably still Canon in the Anime it's just off screen or in most cases literally in a POV character's head.  In Umineko however actual changes happen making it so what is happening in the Anime can't be the same as what was happening in the VN.

Before I get into those changes however, I want to describe for you my experience watching the Anime as someone who went in knowing only that it's a spiritual sequel to Higurashi.  Because I knew the connection to Higurashi I figured the timeline would restart every 4 to 6 episodes but nothing else.

It starts as an Anime take on a fairly generic murder mystery set up, the first 4 and a half episodes do a good job of establishing the characters and making me interested, and there was definitely a sense that it was being self aware about the clichés it is playing with, I happen to like that style of metafiction.  I was having a good time but it was not something I'd recommend outside the specific context of Anime to watch during October.

Then in the midst of episode 5 during what seemed to my Higurashi memory like an Arc's climax the show suddenly cuts to the characters sitting around talking about the "bad end" having a conversation that feels like one of those non canon Meta conversations characters often have over the next episode preview.  Then Battler starts questioning things and then stuff starts happening and then the Witch shows up, and he starts arguing that witches don't exist, to the Witch standing in front of him.  Then it cuts to Lady Bernkastel and I'm like "she looks and sounds familiar".

Then the show goes off the rails in the best way possible, it gets so absurd and wacky and over the top and I loved every minute of it, the Brass knuckles, the witch battles, the juggling between realities and time periods.  But as all that's happening I also start to get genuinely more invested in the characters and before I know it the penultimate episode makes my Cry, something that then still happened to me fairly rarely, this show that I was a few hours ago tweeting about as a show to watch for the absurd ridiculousness now has me in tears.

When a show or movie makes me Cry it's pretty much a guaranteed 10 out of 10, there would have to be some significant problems to cancel that out and Umineko had none.  So no matter what the VN differences were gonna turn out to be, the Anime as it's own stand alone piece of art irreversibly earned it's status as an Artistic Masterpiece.

Now as I discus the VN differences I will have to get into spoilers, though I'll try to keep them minimal.

Genealogies of Public Domain Fictional Characters

I have been imagining my own framework for a shared continuity between various Public Domain fictional sags and characters for the purpose of stories I may write in the future.  It is influenced by the Wold Newton Universe but ultimately different, starting with my disinterest in the very plot device it is named after.  But it is particularly influenced by the French WNU work on CoolFrenchComics.com.

One idea constantly floating around in WNU circles I particularly don't like is Captian Nemo being the same person as Professor Moriarty.  First of all it contributes to the White Washing of Nemo, Nemo should be Indian which is one of the few things I give Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentleman credit for.  But also it just doesn't fit personality wise or archetypically, Nemo like Robur opposes the British Empire from without not from within.  I'm all for the idea of Moriarty actually being a nationalist rebel against Britannia, but based on him and Moran having Irish surnames and The Valley of Fear it would be Irish nationalism carrying on the mission of Fergue O'Breane (Of Feval's The Mysteries of London) and Sarah O'Neil (Of Feval's John Devil) through The Gentlemen of The Night.  (The recent Anime Moriarty The Patriot is a pretty decent exploration of the idea of Moriarty as a Revolutionary, I haven't seen season 2 since it's not Dubbed yet but I suspect it will be.)

While Public Domain characters are the focus, plausible connections to non PD characters for the purposes of Fan Fiction will come up occasionally.

My unique combination of interests makes me an Otaku looking to strengthen the ties between the lore of Lupin III and and the original Arsene Lupin.  The CoolFrenchComics Lupin Genealogy has connections I like and would keep and others I would discard or adjust.  I think their Arsene Lupin Timeline is pretty solid except that I would probably at least not directly mention any stories not written by Maurice Leblanc.  I won't be able to comment on the Borostyria=Montenegro theory till I read The Woman with Two Smiles for myself.  Now the only versions of Lupin III that can really fit a shared universe like this, at least with the "Third" part being literal, are period pieces set in the 60s and 70s, of which my starting point would always be The Woman Called Fujiko Mine.  Maybe some stuff set in the 80s or early 90s could still work if you're willing to imagine the characters actually now look older then they're at face value being drawn, after all the original Arsene Lupin had a career the spanned over 30 years.

The mother of the Arsene Lupin The 2nd who's the father of Lupin The Third I have decided should be Florence Lavasseur.  I have also decided that Albert d'Andresy descends from Hortense Daniel, that of course probably conflicts with the Nestor Burma theory CFC endorses, but I imagine that theory had problems on it's own.  It's a decision that is symbolic of my viewing Albert d'Andresy as the heir of the 813 form of Arsene Lupin (Jean-Marc & Randy Loffcier's analysis of 813 in the introduction to their translation is spot on).

[Update June 2025: I've been considering changing my mind are arguing Lupin II's mother is Raymonde from The Hollow Needle who died in 1909, but I'm unsure there is room in the timeline of their relationship for a pregnancy, been awhile since I read the book.]

As far as the ancestry of the original Arsene Lupin goes.  For those who don't know Theophraste Lupin comes from Maurice Leblanc himself.  C .Auguste Dupin actually being a Lupin and Theo's father with Poe simply changing the first letter for some reason I like, however I feel the generation between Dupin and Balzac's Bibi-Lupin (who I think could be the same person as Alexandre Dumas' Monsieur Jackal in The Mohicans of Paris) is unneeded, Bibi could easily have sired Dupin directly.  And their lineage going back to the protagonists of Paul Feval's The She Wolf and The White Wolf I also like.

Next is the question of the Lecoq line.  Farmer created Albert Lecoq to be the grandfather of Gaboriau's Lecoq with probably no idea a candidate for the in-between generation already existed, in fact I bet Farmer only knew of Gaboriau's Lecoq because he was mentioned in A Study in Scarlet.  

I am going to keep Feval's Lecoq as the father of Gaboriau's Lecoq in-spite of it's problems because of how it fits on a Meta-Level with Feval having been Gaboriau's Sensei, and Gaboriau contradicted himself on Lecoq's backstory anyway.  I also keep the Ballmeyer-Rouletabille connection and the Lecoq children who kept the last name in the Fan Fiction of Fortuné de Boisgobey, William Busnach & Henri Chabrillat and the 1908 La Fée au Vitriol memoir of Lucien, and I'd like to somehow add Beautrelet of The Hollow Needle. [Note: I'd missed or forgotten that Beautrelet was already on CFC's Lecoq family tree, still I think I may want to change where, I think I like Beautrelet as a younger brother of Rouletabille.]

However my imagination extends the genealogy even further to make Lecoq the real meaning of the L designation in Death Note, Lawliet can still be his forename, he wouldn't be the first Lecoq named alliteratively.

Albert Lecoq is rendered unnecessary by no longer keeping Wold Newton itself.  Albert as the forename of Toulonnais L'Amitie's father certainly isn't a problem, but what Wold Newton writers familiar with Feval and The Blackcoats like Rick Lai and Win Scott Eckert tend to do with Albert doesn't actually fit Feval's lore.  A Normandy family like the Lecoqs would not have become affiliated with The Colonel or the Veste Nere until they first set up shop in Paris in 1818.  In fact I'm pretty sure The Colonel didn't actually use the title of Colonel or even set foot outside of Corsica till then either.

But there is an even bigger issue I have with the CFC's Lecoq tree, and that's making Marguerite Sadoulus the mother of Monsieur Lecoq and Albert's wife a descendent of Milady De Winter.  

First of all in Heart of Steel it's pretty clear to me that Marguerite's relationship with Lecoq doesn't begin till 1832 so it exists 100% contemporary with her marriage to Joulou and her formally holding the title of La Comtesse DeClare, so any son she bore then would be presumed to be Joulu's and raised as a potential DeClare Heir and thus not have had the Lecoq name even if Lecoq was the real biological father, so Inspector Lecoq must have had a different mother, maybe a secret marriage Toulonnias had in his native Normandy.

But also, given how often there are Meta symbolic reasons for these Wold Newton style genealogical connections.  Why make Marguerite's boyfriend an heir of Milady De Winter rather then Marguerite herself?  

Usefulcharts did a series of videos on hidden European Matrilineal family trees starting with the House of Garsenda, in order to try breaking away from how patrilineal by default the study of genealogies has long been.  Well the writing of fictional genealogies has mirrored reality in this regard.  So I've been working on constructing a Matrilineal family tree of fictional French Femme Fatales with Marguerite Sadoulus being the focal point.  I shall post here what I have so far but it is subject to change.

Update; I'm already half regretting some aspects of that, but the gist of that is still my starting premise.

I've been thinking about my French Pulp Fiction interests again.

I did a post recently on how Anime still isn't Mainstream, but the thing is Anime isn't even the most Niche thing I'm into.  Anime at least has enough of an active online fandom presence that I can Tweet about it and find lots of interesting YouTube videos and Tumblr posts and Fan Fiction.

What I'm talking about in this post I'm not even sure what to call it, it's way more specific then what most people who'd call themselves a Francophile mean.  I often use Shadowmen as a short hand after the anthology series Tales of The Shadowmen or the nonfiction book Shadowmen: Heroes and Villains of French Pulp Fiction.  

The main fan-site is CoolFrenchComics.com and the main modern publisher of relevant content is Black Coat Press.  They publish lots of English Translations of 19th and early 20th Century Pulp Fiction, but also some books that contain new stories using these characters or related themes.  The Editors who run BCP are Jean-Marc & Randy Loffcier and some of the books they Translate themselves.  However a lot of their flagship books are translated by Brian Stableford.  A number of them, including some that may benefit from a Female perspective were translated by Nina Cooper.  It seems everything that's a Stage Play rather then Prose is translated by Frank Morlock.  Another notable contributor is Rick Lai who I'll talk more about later.

BlackCoatPress has made some marketing decisions I consider unfortunate.  Starting with their decision to say "Adapted by" rather then "Translated by" on the covers of all their translations. Now they have an explanation for this on their website on a page called Adapted vs Translated, where it's basically because they're trying to distinguish themselves from old Public Domain translations that are little better then what we in the Anime Community would call Machine Generated Translations, they want to give their translators credit for the skill they provide in making their translations actually pleasing to read, it's not because they are actually changing or rewriting anything.

The problem is that explanation isn't on the back of the every book.  And so for example when I'm trying to convince fellow Anime fans to try one of them out, a Translation openly branding itself as an "Adaptation" is going to make them think of 90s Hack Dubs where the names are all Americanized, and Croissants are called Jelly Donuts, and Death is euphemized as "leaving this world", and Eugenie Danglars & Louis d'Armilly are referred to as "cousins".

Rest assured BCP's Translations are the opposite of that, preserving the French cultural characteristics in ways modern Anime Dubs and even Subs still struggle with, like keeping rather then translating French nicknames and Honorifics.  I watched a YouTube video once where someone talking more about Manga translations actually said that Honorifics should be translated or dropped entirely, that they simply don't work in English and only pretentious Weaboos want to keep them.  And I've come to realize that's just plain Racist, only when talking about East Asian media is it at all controversial to preserve their Honorifics, no modern respectable translation of Les Misérables for example would dare change Monsieur to Mister or Mademoiselle to Miss, some of those old PD translation that BCP wants to distinguish themselves from so badly did, but everyone today agrees that's stupid.  No one considers it jarring in the Musical when these French honorifics are spoken by the Cockney accented Thenardiers, it actually works just fine.  Japanese honorifics are way more different from English honorifics then French ones are, what they communicate about the culture is even more important to preserve and any attempted 1 to 1 equivocation of them to English words will be way less accurate in their connotations.

Another marketing mistake is that a few books will on their back cover blurbs describe aspects of what happens in ways that might feel a bit like a bait and switch once you've read them.  So for example don't read The Wandering Jew's Daughter expecting The Wandering Jew to be Superman.  The Wandering Jew's Daughter is itself not one of the best of Paul Feval's novels, but the BCP translation is worth buying just for the information Stableford provides in the Introduction for cultural context, so much history of how the Wandering Jew legend was used in French literature and melodrama that you won't find on Wikipedia.

Stableford's translations always have very in-depth educational Introductions, extensive Footnotes, and more often then not an insightful Afterward as well.  With both John Devil and The Vampire and The Devil's Son I definitely agree with Stableford's Afterward provided interpretations of what actually happened in the story. Companions of The Treasure is another one where Stbaleford's interpretation is basically Canon to me.

The Phantom of The Opera is such a classic of literature and pop culture in general not just in France that you would probably think surely a good faithful and complete English Translation existed before Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier published theirs in the 2000s, but you'd be wrong.  Multiple reviews of their translation affirm that no one before even kept the basic format of how the story is told.  But because theirs came so late and most people assume that "certainly a Penguin Classics edition can be trusted" their English version remains rarely read even by younger readers.  Half the Phantom of The Opera content on YouTube is from Lindsay Elis, and one thing you learn in those is how pervasive is the opinion that Andrew Lyod Webber's musical is better then the original novel, and I can't help but blame the fact that most of these Musical Theater Kids have never read the real novel.

Speaking of Lindsay Ellis she did a video on The Persian, lamenting the constant either White Washing or Demonizing of that character.  So it's a shame she never read Rick Lai's Shadows of The Opera, in that series The Persian is not exactly a main character but they are from what I recall faithfully preserved as both a Persian and a good person.

Speaking of which, now is a good time to mention that there is some relevant material published by other publishers.  A number of Frank Molock's stage play translations were published by Borgo Press, and the first volume of Rick Lai's Shadows of The Opera was from Wild Cat Books, but BlackCoatPress took over for the follow ups.  BCP hasn't published any Rocmabole stuff besides two Stage Plays in one volume, Basil Balian has made a very abridged translation of the entire Rocambole saga, and Jean De Ponson du Terrail has made complete translations of the first two volumes.

I did mention above my desire to sell this stuff specifically to fellow Anime fans.  Rick Lai's Shadows of The Opera and Sisters of The Shadows series is a good place to start.  It began with Rick Lai making a female version of The Shadow, and then things get increasingly implausible with how nearly all the major players in this epic saga are female.  It's a series waiting to be made into an Anime. 

But as interesting as I find Rick Lai's work, some of the characters he uses I really don't want his takes on to be people's introductions to them.  Chiefly Paul Feval's The Blackcoats saga and Maurice Leblanc's The Countess Cagliostro, both have been translated by BlackCoatPress.

The Countess Cagliostro is however the Prequel of the Arsene Lupin saga, and not the only book of that saga to take place before some books already published when it was written.  So is the Lupin Saga one where it's appropriate to read in Chronological rather then Publication order?  Well I still haven't read all of them, but for the essentials of what I have I'd say go ahead.  Basically the essential Arsene Lupin works are the ones translated by Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier and the original short stories included in Arsene Lupin: Gentleman Burglar which basically all take place between Countess Cagliostro and The Blond Lady aka The Blond Phantom.

Paul Feval's works are the most interesting to me.  My introduction to him began as part of my prior Vampire phase, it was The Vampire Countess and Vampire City which caught my attention first and which I read in that order.  Both are great and so are Knightshade and Revanants.  Countess and Revanants are from an earlier phase of Feval's career when he hadn't gotten as ultra Meta yet.  

There is something said in a few reviews of Vampire City I consider misguided, and that's making it sound like Polly Bird is in any way Trans representation, she was simply the subject of supernatural gender bending and it isn't even emphasized all that much, and in the end it would certainly be problematic to read her as Trans representation.

John Devil is the best of Feval's novels, but also the longest at least of what BCP has translated.  I think the best entry point to The Blackcoats saga would be either Salem Street or The Invisible Weapon, but 6 out of 7 of them are worth reading and fairly capable of standing on their own, The Cadet Gang is the one that he clearly was forcing himself to write after losing all passion for the topic so I'd say don't bother with it.  

Thing is while a good deal of the Prose content relevant to this interest is available in English now (there are some still untranslated I want to see get translated), most of the French Movies and TV shows about these characters have no English Subtitled release I can watch.  It's in this area where fans of Japanese entertainment media are lucky, even the most obscure stuff can usually be found Subbed in some capacity.  But for French stuff I wanna watch, the 60s Fantomas trilogy, the 63 Judex, the 96/97 film version of Paul Feval's Le Bossu titled on Amazon as On Gaurd, and the 2004 Arsene Lupin have Subs I can watch, but that's it.  However I also wanna see some of the films based on Eugene Sue's The Mysteries of Paris, or Rocambole, or all of the other Le Bossu adaptations (it seems one gets made about once a decade), or the TV adaptations of Les Habits Noirs and Le Loup Blanc.

Update: I forgot to talk about something important.

If I have piqued anyone's interest in buying stuff from BlackCoarPress, I know from talking with them that buying the book using their website directly gives a larger percentage of what you spend to the Author or Translator then they would get when using a site like Amazon as the middle man.  However that also costs the consumer more on shipping and handling.  And more often then not I get the book faster when I use Amazon, but that's because of the same circumstances that force their delivery drivers to piss in bottles.

It's another unfortunate symptom of Capitalism that what's more affordable for the consumer results in less of the money spent going to who actually deserves that money.  I am in a financially difficult situation right now.  But anyone who is in a fairly comfortable situation financially I would ask to be willing to spend the extra money necessary to support BlackCoatPress directly.