Early Visual Novels were wrriten by men who were into Shoujo Manga/Anime.

That thesis if true can explain a lot about the development of Otaku Media in general.  

But to clarify my definitions of "men" for this thesis can include Trans Feminine people who were assigned male at birth but hadn't hatched yet (if they ever did).  I'm not aware if anyone involved actually was, but if any have come out then I apologize for defaulting to referring to them as men here.

By early Visual Novels I principally mean the foundational texts of the genre which largely came from a handful of early developers.  Leaf's Visual Novel trilogy which were the first to use the term and culminated in To Heart, Tactics games like Dosei and One, Key's Seasons Trilogy, Elf games like Kakyuusei and YU-NO: The Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World, and early Age visual novels like Rumbling Hearts.

Early in the 2000s we already start to see VN developers being mostly just influenced by earlier VNs and so whatever Shoujo influence remains is indirect.  Though Nasu of Type Moon has outright said he was a fan of some 90s Shoujo if I remember correctly, Shinji Matou sure seems directly based on Saionji of Utena.

Some of the early Anime adapted from VNs, especially TV Anime where the most explicit sexual material is removed, truly seem indistinguishable from Shoujo Manga adaptations being made at the same time.  2003's Rumbling Hearts can absolutely pass as an intense Shoujo Melodrama while 1999's To Heart would resemble a more light hearted Shoujo Slice of Life RomCom. 

And even in the ones harder to confuse with a Shoujo Anime because of their indulgence in Ecchi fanservice like a lot of Elf based Anime, the influence of Shoujo tropes is still visible.

But the more concrete evidence exists in the specific characterization Tropes.  I've already made a thing on this blog more then once of my observation that in the 90s the Anime characters who seem like Tsunderes are mostly the main characters in Shoujo Manga adaptations, I've seen it in Sailor Moon, Wedding Peach, Marmalade Boy, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne.  But the kicker was Saint Tail where the female lead actually says The Line in 1995.

The word Tsundere was coined on the internet in the 00s as an observation of how certain love interests in Visual Novels behave.  I think the mid to late 90s VN Heroines who would come to later be called Tsunderes like Mio from YU-NO were principally the characters modeled after Shoujo protagonists.  And in these early ones the male protagonists aren't quite the generic Otaku self inserts we'd get later, rather they seem like the male romantic leads of these same Shoujo Manga where the protagonist was being a Tsundere, and so like them the Tsun is often mutual.

There are two well known 90s Anime characters who are often labeled Tsunderes even though they come from neither Shoujo Manga or Visual Novels, and so perhaps you could consider their existence a weakening of my thesis.  In the case of Misty from Pokémon, I've also already written on how most of the key staff of that Anime had previously worked on Shoujo Anime like Wedding Peach and Minky Momo and some other more obscure ones.  So I think they simply wrote Misty the way they were used to writing Shoujo protagonists, then in time her character just got sort of Flanderized.

Asuka Langley however I don't feel truly counts.  She's an example of a character who'd be pretty hard to deny technically qualifies, but there is a massive difference between the way she acts and the Visual Novel characters the term was coined in reference to.  Asuka was simply Anno's poorly thought out attempt to write a character who was mentally unstable because of her Trauma.  And what pisses me off about Evangelion Simps is how because they interpret the archetype entirely through the lens of Asuka they keep saying in their Video Essays that Tsunderes are only good when their behavior is explained by Trauma.  When the truth is the original Tsunderes were the very definition of normal and average in the Manga/Anime most meant to be relatable to normal average Japanese school girls, Trauma is absolutely not necessary.

I've since discovered that the Kuudere also seems to start as a Shoujo thing, in Sailor Moon with Manga Rei and Hotaru in both versions, but I suspect more exist in stuff I haven't watched yet.  And then Goldfish Warning! shows how the hyperenergetic pink haired Genki Girl also started in Shoujo.

We could perhaps add to this conversation some Games who's status as Visual Novels is a bit controversial but do seem to have developed at least in part from the same zeitgeist, like Konami's Tokimeki Memorial, Sega's Sakura Wars with it's clear Takerzakua influence, and Night Walker which honestly may have had a female target audience even in it's porn game form.  

Stosugyou: Graduation is listed on AniDB as the first ever Anime adapted from a Visual Novel, yet it predates Leaf's coining of the term.  I just watched this two episode OVA and it's quite interesting, it has the same Character Designer as the first two seasons of Sailor Moon and Wedding Peach which only adds to how much it tends to feel like the Slice of Life parts of those shows.

Halloween season Anime Updates Gaiden

Well first of all is there any reason to update my general Halloween Anime Reccomendation from last year?  Not much, I've watched more of Karin but that's something I was already aware existed and just didn't think of then, and it's not on any legal streaming sites.

As for new or current Halloween relevant stuff, I've watched 6 episodes of Call of The Night, the ones that can be watched Dubbed on HIDIVE, a couple more will go up before Ocotber's over as new episodes drop on Thursdays.  It is enjoyable so far.

And that's it for Halloween stuff.

I've finished Lupin III Part VI and Classroom of The Elite Season 2 both of which were good but not likely to be shows I'd ever label as favorites.

I've also watched even more Detective Conan, now seen all the Movies but 25, and think as far as what's animated goes I'm pretty effectively up to speed on the main storyline.

I finished Magia Record as the Dub for the rest of it finally dropped and it's was as good as I figured it would be.

But let's return to the other currently airing Simuldubs I'm following.  There are five and they all happen to be dropping on Saturday on Crunchyroll.

Lycoris Recoil and Engage Kiss I'd already mentioned on this blog, they're up to episode 9 now and I like em both.  Engage Kiss deserves more attention.

Spy x Family's second cour has started and it's still fun.

Beast Tamers looks like a fun little show that is not an Isekai but may as well be.

I'm The Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss is officially the second of the reincarnated as an Otome villainess genre to get an Anime, so the one we had before can no longer simply be called "The Villainess show" people other then me will have to start using the official shorthand Hamefura.

This show is very distinct from Hamefura.  

For starters part of the joke with Bakarina is how she's not like the person who's body she's taken over at all, the actual titular "Villainess" kind of no longer exists when the Japanese memories awaken.  This new show's protagonist is a reincarnation of a modern Japanese gamer (I'm not actually sure what their original gender was) but still also is Aileen, she's still molded by the experiences of living that life.  I'm a Pretty Little Liars veteran who enjoys watching a Mean Girls be bad@$$ in their own special way, and so find this protagonist more appealing actually.

From the pilot it doesn't seem we can expect the Yuri that Hamefura has, but that's fine, I'm totally down to watch this girl Tame Anime Daemon Targyreon.

Update October 17th: I just watched the first 3 episodes of Housing Complex C on HBOmax, and they're interesting, got Higurashi vibes and Lovecrafting themes.

These Gaijin have Eastern European Accents in the Dub, but also seem to be implied to be Muslim, there are some Muslim counties in the Balkans but not everyone remembers that, so it's an interesting direction to take.

There is a character named Kahn.  I predict eventually some situation will cause a character to scream or shout their name loudly, and then there will be Memes.

Werewolf by Night was okay

I just watched it and enjoyed some of it.  But it really didn't feel like the kind of story you should be wasting the visually homaging Universal Monster Movies gimmick on.

As someone who's brain has been thoroughly poisoned by Anime, at the beginning I quickly found myself thinking "oh it's the Battle Royal/Death Game/Holy Grail War" set up.  But then also about how the thing that makes Anime with a premise like this work is that at least some of the characters are ordinary people who were drawn into it.  Everyone involved being a hardened monster hunter completely changes the vibe.

This of course reminds me of Patrick Willems criticisms of the post Whedon MCU in general, the lack of the perspective of ordinary people that for example the Raimi Spider-Man movies used so well.

And doing a supposedly Classic Monster Movie throwback really draws further attention to it.  When everyone in the story is used to dealing with monsters then there is no one to be quite as horrified by them as the average viewer would be.  Moon Knight exists somewhat in this same corner of the Marvel Universe but it works so much better because Grant was living a pretty normal life when it started.

I also think about the rather lazy handling of Ted.  Again what an Anime Protagonist might have done is taken a shot on actually being kind to the monster without already being told in advance it's actually a chill dude.  That much better serves the "don't judge people by how they look" moral that is supposed to be the point of having a monster that's not actually evil.

Detective Conan is the Batman of Anime.

In more ways then one, if indeed we consider Goku the Superman of Anime and Sailor Moon the Wonder Woman.  

In Japan Detective Conan is just as all consuming and ubiquitous a franchise as those shows and Pokémon.  Every show I'm inclined to compare to Batman is some similar ways are fairly popular but not one of the goliaths of the industry.

I'm qualified to say this because of my unique Nerd history.  Batman is my oldest fandom, many of the oldest memories I have are of watching Batman shows and movies and playing around as Batman characters with my brother, and I spent the late 2000s and Tweens calling The Dark Knight the greatest film of all time and yes I also read lots of actual comics, enough to have some unconventional opinions on which ones are good and not good.  

Then I got into Anime fulltime in my 30s but quickly felt like it was everything I'd been looking for and needed only a few years for it to take over my self identity.

Then this year I started watching Detective Conan and have increasingly come to realize it combines nearly everything I loved about Batman with much of what I love about Anime in an unbelievably perfect symmetry.

In general I don't think there's many other Anime that do the double life thing as similarly to Western Superhero Comics as Detective Conan, with the Teen Drama stuff making Spiderman perhaps just as valid a comparison. It's technically a factor in Magical Girl shows but tends to quickly not actually matter much, and shows like Code Geass being set in a more alt history setting makes it function differently to begin with.

I also remember one of the fun Memes of being a Batman fan in the 00s was claiming Batman can beat anyone because he's "always prepared" or something like that.  Conan is the Anime character who in my view has earned the same hype, not from being "always prepared" but from being able to use quick thinking to deal with what he was unprepared for, which in truth is more how good Batman stories work as well.

But some of what makes Conan like Batman is stuff film only Bat Fans haven't really seen yet.  The Batman was hyped as being a Batman movie that's finally a detective movie, but it's more Film Noir/Hardboiled Detective. In the Comics Batman can also be a Sherlock Holmes style detective who solves puzzles and defeats his adversaries by outsmarting them.  Detective Conan becomes like Batman by accident because of how he combines inspirations from some of the same sources Batman did.

I increasingly don't think it's a coincidence that Detective Conan has the same initials as the Comic Book anthology series Batman debuted in and which became the namesake of his publisher.

He's even done that disappearing act a few times.

I guess the only thing missing is that there isn't as diverse a Rouges Gallery of recurring villains, just the Black Organization and Kaito Kid who's not really a villain at all.

But the real core reason is that in Anime only Detective Conan has a similar relationship with the No Kill rule, believe it or not even Magical Girls don't follow it as consistently.  It is fairly rare for it to really be that much of an issue in an episode, but when it is it really is, in 649 (the middle episode of a 3 parter) Conan prolongs a crisis endangering his family because of his insistence on not killing the criminal.  It was also a big deal in Movie 24 [and Movie 25 now that I've seen it].  There is never any "but I don't have to save you" BS.

Episode 119 (126 of the old Funimation localization and Dub) is a filler episode that I'm often inclined to recommend to be a good first impression of the franchise for Western Comic Book fans.  On multiple levels I think it's an episode Linkara would love, I hope his Patreons eventually get him to watch it like they have a few Tokusatsu shows.  And SFDebris may like it as well.

Another place where you can watch these Early Detective Conan episodes is Filmrise's Anime section, where the show is still called Case Closed and the episode I just referred to is numbered as episode 13 of season 5.

Update: Did I forget to mention that the first Detective Conan movie has a "somedays you just can't get rid of a Bomb" sequence?  It looks like I did.

Update October 2023: I could just as easily call Atom/Astro Boy the Superman of Anime, his debut certainly the equivalent of Action Comics No.1 in starting Anime's Golden Age.  And the new Pluto adabtation on Netflix can make a good companion piece to Detective Conan.

Teenage Vampires can never be guilty of Statutory Rape

 I’ve noticed there being an issue in Vampire fiction discourse lately, tied to the summer Anime Call of The Night but also older stuff like Twilight, of these Teenage vampires being called “Pedophiles” for being in relationships with people the same age as them simply because they’ve technically been around for decades or centuries longer.

Most Proshippers defend this with the usual “it’s not real” argument which I do support.  But this problem runs deeper because it’s really not even accurate to what the scientific reality of such creatures hypothetically actually existing would be.

Everyone gets that if you are turned into a Vampire at a very young age you stop aging, physically, and will thus never truly grow up, physically.  The problem is these people are assuming these Vampires would still age and mature mentally, emotionally and psychologically.  But that isn’t how it works, if physical aging freezes that also freezes the brain which in some key ways isn’t actually fully developed till about 25.

There is more to adulthood and maturity than how long you’ve existed.  The hypothetical scenario of someone who’s been 16 for 600 years would only be different mentally from other 16 year olds in having a larger pool of memories to remember.  Experience in and of itself does not equal maturity, maturing lies in how your brain processes that experience and a brain frozen at a teenage state of development cannot process that experience properly.

One YT video I watched on Twilight said that what makes someone an adult is their “position of power” or something and so the reason Edward hasn’t become an adult is because he’s still living as a dependent basically.  That’s a bad argument, there are normal people still living with their parents in their 40s and they shouldn't be dating teenagers.  In my argument it wouldn't matter if a Teenage vampire was living on their own, a Hundred years on the streets for them would create less maturity then one year on the streets for a normal teenager because their Brain at least developed some during that year, the vampire’s did not.  And plenty of people have held power as teenagers, Alexander The Great conquered a city and rebuilt it in his name serving as Regent at 16, are we going to treat such a person as less of a minor then a regular 16 year old?  I don't think we should.

But it's not just the Brain, part of the reason Teenagers can't be trusted to make rational decisions related to Sex is that their Hormones are in a more chaotic state then they will be when they're an adult.

Now Vampires are Supernatural creatures so if a writer wants to ignore that Science and write their physically Teenage Vampire as mentally an adult that’s fine.  This is directed at Smug Tumblr and Twitter Antis who think they’re on some moral high ground by insisting on treating fictional Teenage Vampires as Adults even when the writers are clearly not writing them that way.  Because most Teenage Vampires in fiction are clearly written to be Teen characters in Teen dramas.

It’s Vampires who were turned even younger who are sometimes written as “body of a child and the mind of an adult” (Speaking of that tagline the Detective Conan franchise often stresses the use of the word “shunkun” over “deaged” when defining Conan and  Haibara’s condition).  Like for example that one antagonist on the Blade TV series (only version of Blade I’ve actually seen believe it or not).

This difference in approach is only a problem when both clearly seem to exist in the same universe, which off the top of my head I can’t confirm ever has been the case.  If it were though an in-universe explanation could still be contrived.

Thing is, it is especially the Antis in the Anime Community who I know are being hypocrites about this. Any excuse to accuse an Anime or its fans of encouraging problematic behavior they’ll latch onto even when one runs contrary to the logic they used against a different show or character previously.

As in they'll call a Vampire who's been 16 for a 100 years a statutory rapist for being in a relationship with a 17 year old human, but put the same vampire in a relationship with a 35 year old human and then they'll repeat all the facts I talked about to explain why the adult looking character is in fact more mature.

Update: I wrote this in part framed as discourse around Call of The Night even though I hadn't seen any of it yet.  Turns out the main Vampire of that show was turned in her 20s, but maybe still under 25, so that framing wound up being awkward.  But it's still not just about that, it's also about things like Twilight discourse.

Tolkien's Middle-Earth Theology was Platonist and even a little Gnostic

I was wishing I could discover that Tolkien's Metaphysical Philosophy was unintentionally Stoic like I have for Star Wars and Final Fantasy VII and maybe even Zelda.  But no, both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are firm examples of Platonist Christianity.

It starts right with what the name Eru is said to mean in the opening lines of the Ainulindale and Valaquenta and the Index of the Silmarilion, "The One" and "He that is Alone".  That comes from the Pythagorean concept of The Monad which became core to the Monotheism of Neopythagoreanism, Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism.  Lewis does the same thing in the Space Trilogy by calling the first person of the Trinity the "Old One".  The New Testament never uses any form of Mono to define God, the verses people often cite as saying "God is One" or "The Lord is One" have a different word being translated One which I argue is a misleading Translation, Unity or United is the idea being conveyed by that word.

Another part is the very concept of having the Valar do much of the heavy lifting in actually physically creating Arda, this echoes the Demiurge concept of Numenius of Apamea or Plutarch's Daimon subcreators and is firmly Unbiblical.

The most truly in-depth discussion of Theology in anything Tolkien wrote for his Middle Earth mythology is the Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth or The Debate of Finrod and Andreth, published in The History of Middle-Earth Volume X: Morgoth's Ring.  It's in the style of a Platonic Dialogue but more importantly then that are three key things it reveals about Eru Iluvatar and Arda and Men.  

In my copy of Morgoth's Ring (a Hardcover edition with a red or purplish sleeve) on page 311 near the bottom Finrod says that Arda "was made by Eru, but He is not in it" and goes on to basically say the same of Ea the equivalent term for the Universe/Cosmos.  This God being outside the Universe concept is another idea that has been taken as a given by most modern Christian Theologians because of the influence of Platonism, but that I have come to view as actually contrary to Scripture, Stephen says in Acts 7 quoting Isaiah 66 that the Heavens are His Throne and The Earth His Footstool, and remember in Hebrew and Greek the Heavens means the Sky and Outer Space. making it fundamentally part of the Universe.  The Ancient Platonists referred to the World of Forms where their transcendent God lived not as Heaven but as "A Place Beyond Heaven".  The Biblical God is Imminent within the Universe not outside of it.  

Next on page 314 Finrod explains that the Spirit/Souls of Men unlike those of Elves are not confined to Arda nor is Arda their Home.  Thinking things like this about the nature of the Human Soul is a gateway drug to de-physicalizing the Resurrection, now Tolkien doesn't do that, Finrod's ultimate conclusion regarding the destiny of Men and the remaking of Arda involves their Bodies becoming as Immortal as their Souls.  But still I tend to be uncomfortable with even introducing a concept of the Soul being somehow less tied to The World then The Body is.  But when interpreting The Bible this idea naturally comes from the previous one since Adam became a Living Soul when God Breathed the Breath of Life into him.

Then on page 318 they basically adapt the Platonic World of Forms concept to be in the Mind of Eru.  Related to that is how the openings of both the Ainulindale and Valaquenta state that Eru made the Ainu of his thoughts.  That comes from the 2nd Century Middle Platonsit Alcinous who defined the lesser god subcreators as Ideas made of the thoughts of the First God.

Now when I discussed Gnostic Interpretations of certain Anime and Video Games I mentioned how a lot of ideas we associate with Gnosticism are irrelevant to the point.  Not all Gnostics believe the Demiurge and/or Old Testament God was Evil, nor was making good guys out of certain Biblical villains a requirement.  

The World Soul is a metaphysical concept I've mentioned on this Blog before mostly in relation to Stoicism, but versions of it existed in various forms of Platonism and Gnosticism as well.  Tolkien's Cosmology winds up kind of incorporating two conflicting World Soul ideas.

The one thing in Tolkien's Middle Earth Theology that seems close to my Christian Stoicism is the Flame Imperishable, which Tolkien in one letter identified with The Holy Spirit, it's also placed in the Center of the World and is the source of all Sapient Life.  So easily comparable to the Stoic concept of the World Soul and Pneuma, if it weren't in the context of all this Platonism I'd be much more excited about it.

However the Middle Platonist Plutarch introduced the idea of an Evil World Soul, a World Soul that is responsible for corrupting all physical matter, which Numenius of Apamea also agreed with.  And this leads us to the entirety of what Morgoth's Ring is about, Morgoth emptied his essence into all of Arda corrupting and marring it, this taint is called the Morgoth Element.

Now The New Testament does agree that the current world is imperfect, it is still far from God's final design for it.  But the blame for that is chiefly Man's Sin not something an evil god did, however mainstream Christianity loves to overstate the significance of Satan.

None of this changes my enjoyment of Middle Earth set Fiction, in fact I'm glad to have a popular Fantasy Universe that is rather Gnostic to contrast with the ones I feel get called Gnostic unfairly.

And it's hard to tell how much any of this actually reflects Tolkien's real Religious beliefs.  On the one hand he seems to have clearly said to his Priest friend not to take it that seriously.  But on the other every core idea I've objected to here has been genuinely believed by many Christian Theologians.

Rings of Power thoughts so far

It's not what I would have written, but I'm enjoying it so far.

Mainly I would have avoided Numenor for all of season 1.

The main argument being repeated by everyone who's upset about Black Dwarves and Elves and probably I'm sure also a Black Queen of Numenor is the whole "Tolkien was writing a mythology for England" thing.  However there is another revealing quote from Tolkien.

When asked by an interviewer²⁴  whether his Middle-earth was ”in a sense … the world we live in, but at a different era?”, Tolkien, puffing at his pipe, replied simply ”No… at a different stage of imagination, yes.” 

Meaning we're not supposed to care about the logic of how these civilizations eventually become Wales and Wessex.  Saying that everyone can only be White because "It's a mythology for England" ignores the fact that England today and even by the time Tolkien was writing was made up of more then just White people.

Tolkien did care about his world having internal logic, he did base on much of it on his love of studying languages and how they developed.  Which is why one difference if it was me writing this is there'd be even more PoC, I'd have entire groups of non White people but also in time have all the groups intermingle.  I've have these Souhtlanders who we know will eventually lose to their lands to Mordor and Nuemorian Colonizers be at least Brown.  

There actually is basis in what Tolkien wrote for younger Galadriel having been a warrior.

Tolkien is not a writer one can apply Auteur theory too, in the LOTR preface he basically laid out Death of The Author before any pretentious French philosophers coined it.  And in one letter he talks about intending his mythology to be expanded on by other hands.

And it is also a natural part of being mythology that there are conflicting versions and accounts and timelines.  So I don't care about any of those kinds of changes, if the Stranger is Gandalf it'll be weird but I'll accept it.  I would actually consider it more of a betrayal of the Spirit of Tolkien if he turns out to be Evil after how he's been set up.  But that could just be my particular bias as one who likes comparing Tolkien to Sailor Moon.