Sailor Jupiter is different in the Manga

The first Sailor Jupiter centric post on this blog is a bit outdated now that I've become a much more informed Sailor Moon fan.  

With Sailor Mars and Sailor Venus the way they are pretty much completely different characters in the 90s Anime to how they were originally written in the Manga is very well known.  Sailor Mercury is on paper the same but criticism does exist of how the 90s Anime sometimes Flanderizes her.

However Sailor Jupiter real name Makoto Kino was also drastically changed by the 90s Anime.  In the Manga chapter that introduces her the moral of the story is about not judging a book by it's cover.  Rumors that Mako liked to get into fights existed but they were actually not true, there is to my knowledge no evidence in the Manga or Crystal that Mako even knows a single move of Karate.  [Correction: there is some reference to her knowing Karate, but it's a lot less the emphasis, and they come later possibly as a reference to the Anime.]

Mako in the Manga is not even remotely a candidate for being "the Tomboy of the group", she is actually arguably the most traditionally hyper feminine and her femininity was only ever called into question because she was taller then average for a Japanese Female Middle Schooler.

In Japan Manga is actually more widely read then Anime is watched, over there most Sailor Moon fans were also reading the Manga.  In the west however the Anime was always normally the default understanding of Sailor Moon.  But in time certain Manga facts became well known even to those of us who never read it.

But another difference about Sailor Moon fandom between Japan and the West is that in Japan Ami was the most popular character, always getting the most votes in Anime magazine popularity polls as the show aired and even beyond her influence lives on in how most of the Blue Pretty Cures are kinda just Ami with a new name.  But in North America it is more common for fans to say Sailor Jupiter was their favorite.  

But that popularly was specifically for Mako as she was in the Anime, that she was the one who could win fights even untransformed and yet still be very feminine at the same time.  Because on American TV at the time that was rare, we didn't even have La Femme Nikita or Buffy yet, and on Xena at least early on there was a distinction between the Girly characters and the ass kicking characters. While in Japan female characters like that were already starting to become the norm.

So when American Sailor Moon fans are told that Mars or Venus or even Mercury is better written in the Manga because they're less of a caricature even ones who still never intend to read the Manga are prepared to say "I could believe that".  However those same fans were a lot less prepared to accept that half of what they liked about their favorite character was actually a product of the Anime kinda missing the point.

But what surprises me is how even the segment of American Sailor Moon fans who hate the 90s Anime and keep talking about how the Manga was better still give little attention to specifically how different Mako is.  If they're doing a Podcast on comparing specifically all the different versions of Mako's origin story the difference will be acknowledged, but compared to how they just can't stop complaining about other changes it's basically a foot note.

I have become a fan of both versions of Mako, but that's all the more reason I want the difference to be acknowledged more.

A couple years back someone in Jpan made an interesting Trans Affirming short animation using Godzilla, but it also included a clip of Sailor Jupiter on TV playing a role in Minilla's trans awakening.  That Sailor Moon would be referenced isn't that surprising there is a long history of Queer Sailor Moon fandom, but why Sailor Jupiter specifically? Especially when in Japan Ami is more popular?  The clip used may have technically been from or based on the 90s Anime but as this was made in Japan it's important to remember the 90s Anime characterization is a lot less the default understanding.

As someone who was myself assigned male at birth and lived presuming myself to be a Cishet Male for most of my life but have been increasingly questioning my gender identity in recent years.  I can say that while Mako isn't Trans in either version her Manga struggle is easy to see as relatable or even inspirational to Trans Women, a Girl who excels at Femineity even though a physical characteristic she has makes people assume she wouldn't.

Characters like how Mako is in the 90s Anime are role models many Girls in general need, Cis or Trans.  With a greater variety of Anime now available to us we have plenty of other characters who have the same appeal consistently across all incarnations of their franchise, like Ran Mouri from Detective Conan aka Case Closed. But Lita was the first for many 90s kids and she will always be important for that reason.

Dating Sims vs Visual Novels, what's the difference?

The reason I feel this is necessary is because Anime Database websites when saying what the source material of an Anime is will classify as Visual Novels a number of different kinds of Games that have some similar elements but aren't actually the same, Dating Sims are just one of them but probably the most inherently confused with Visual Novels.

YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound Of This World is in fact neither but really a Point and Click Adventure Game with a lot of Text to sit through between all the pointing and clicking.  I myself have called it a Visual Novel on this blog in the past, mostly because I naively took others calling it one at their word.

The first Anime adapted from an actual Visual Novel was To Heart in 1999, the source material of To Heart was the 3rd Visual Novel ever made and the first to have essentially the same narrative premise as a Dating Sim.

In a pure Visual Novel like the original Leaf trilogy the only interactive element is the branching paths, the dialogue tree, it's basically a digital choose your own adventure book.  While in a Dating Sim like Tokimeki Memorial or Doukyuusei you have a calendar and a map, and sometimes more numbers to keep track of then most RPGs.

Notice I said "pure", there is a kind of spectrum between pure Visual Novels and something I wouldn't consider a Visual Novel at all.  Doki Doki Literature Club has the poem creating minigame, but it's mostly just an elaborate way to choose which girl you currently want to pursue, so it's mostly still a visual novel.  School Days has a status bar telling us which girl Makoto is currently leaning towards, while Shiny Days has a similar one focused on only one girl.  But the Dialogue Tree choices are still entirely what effects that status bar so they're also principally Visual Novels.

School Days and Shiny Days are the only Visual Novels I've actually played and only DDLC have I watched full play throughs of.  So my ability to comment on other less then pure Visual Novels is limited, but what I've heard about how say the SciADV games function they have significant other variables that make me question them.

So when exactly a Visual Novel has too many other elements to still be a Visual Novel is difficult to pin down exactly, but there is a limit.  This kind of overlaps with the debate about if Visual Novels qualify as Video Games, pure Visual Novels I'm inclined to agree do not otherwise every Choose Your own Adventure novel would be a Game of the non visual variety.  And I guess my point here is the more of an actual Game you make a Visual Novel the less it still is a Visual Novel.

JRPGs as a concept are an American Misconception.

Years ago I watched an Extra Credits video on YouTube about JRPGs and Western RPGS and I always considered it a fairly bad video but now that I know so much more about the history of RPGs I realize their first mistake was conceding the very idea of JRPGs as being a thing in the first place.

I'm not arguing there are no differences between RPGs in the West and RPGs made in Japan caused by distinct cultural differences.  But they are the same as how every genre and medium of story telling seems different in Japan.  The only other one where the Japanese version is virtually treated as a completely different thing is Animation aka Anime.  In that case though it is increasingly well understood now that what we think of when we hear the word "Anime" is principally certain kinds of Anime that even in Japan are actually a niche interest.

When you look at the history of Japanese RPG Video Games that either never got localized, or even if they were were never as popular over here as they were in Japan, or if they did get popular over here were popular in a way that kind of compartmentalized them from other RPGs in how pop culture thinks about them.  You'll realize that what American Gamers first think of when we think of JRPGs is really much more specifically Squarsoft Games of the SNES and PS1 (and not even all of them really), Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, the SaGa series, Super Mario RPG ect.  Just look at that old College Humor Video parodying JRPGs, every specific game it will make you think of is Square, it's story is mostly a Parody of FF7's plot with visuals taken from Final Fantasy Tactics and Mario RPG.

The main example for that third situation is Pokémon.  I saw a Twitter argument sometime last year where some people were getting annoyed at other people not counting Pokémon as a JRPG.  And yeah Pokémon officially is one, but it's just as different from our standard perception of a JRPG as any Western RPG is.  When you compare the first Gen Pokémon games to prior Game Boy RPGs mechanically and visually it kind of is a natural development, but Game Boy RPGs were never the foundation of how JRPGs were defined, even series that started there gained their true notoriety when promoted to home consoles.

Recently I was watching YouTube videos about NES and SNES Video Games that were officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons games.  And in one the person making the video talked about not liking pseudo 3D first person Dungeon Crawlers but referred to that as being specifically a characteristic of Western RPGs in contrast to "what they do in Japan", but I'm well aware that there are plenty of Japanese RPGs that also do that.  I also dislike that kind of dungeon gameplay, but since I have such a unique history with how I learned about RPGs I never thought of it as something you'd go to Japan to get away from because my first experience with being annoyed by it was Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System, and then learning the Megami Tensei games also did that is why I never tried to play any of them.

In Japan DragonQuest is the most popular RPG franchise, it doesn't just edge out Final Fantasy it dwarfs Final Fantasy.  And there is one Trope we Americans associate with JRPGs that DragonQuest has pretty much been the exact opposite on.  The Killing God or God being Evil trope is mostly a Square and Atlus thing, in DragonQuest God is usually The Goddess and pretty benevolent.  And that is a more accurate reflection of general Japanese Spirituality where Amaterasu is arguably the centerpiece of the Shinto Pantheon.  However back in the 2000s when edgy Atheism was still the trendy thing in Online Culture the Megami Tensei and FF Tactics approach was what American internet Nerds latched onto.  The subject of Goddess Worship in Japanese Media is something I may have to go deeper into someday.

DragonQuest so thoroughly dwarfs everything else in Japan that every Manga or Light Novel or Anime set in a "generic RPG setting" is very clearly using specifically DragonQuest III as the model.  And secretly I think that's the key to why so many American Weebs be hating on these shows.  The reasons they say they don't like them I think are a little disingenuous, the truth is these American Gamers would much rather be Isekaied to a discount Final Fantasy.  Hell I personally would love an Anime set in a world modeled after SaGa Frontier.

But as is the Anime I would recommend to Final Fantasy fans are more Anime that were an influence on Final Fantasy rather then the other way around.  These include Ghibli films like Nausica of The Valley of The Wind and Castle in The Sky.  And I feel like I'm the only person who notices that Sephiroth's character design was clearly inspired by Kunzite from Sailor Moon.

But going back to that Extra Credits video, their main thesis was that JRPGs are not really the same genre but some coincidental independent development.  And that ignores how Western RPGs were and still are played in Japan, specifically the Ultima Series was a very well documented influence on early DragonQuest and early Final Fantasy as was Wizardry.  The RPG is a Western concept in origin including the Role Playing Video Game specifically, that Japanese Gaming Culture made several different distinctly Japanese variations on, but only one of those was ever popular enough in America during the formative years of Gamer Culture to really define how American Gamers stereotype Japanese RPGs.

Update: On Mastadon this interesting conversation was brought to my attention.

https://beehaw.org/post/664403

On Second Thought The Eminence in Shadow might qualify as a more Final Fantasy Esque Isekai.  It's resemblance to "Magic Academy" Anime breeds a similarity to Final Fantasy VIII, and then there's the very concept of a prominent background character named Cid.

Magic Academy Light Novels/Anime owe nothing to Harry Potter.

I know that sounds absurd at first, but it really isn't.  

Otaku Media is a niche subculture in Japan, and their relationship with taking influence from the west is complicated. In the formative years of the subculture in the 70s and 80s a lot clearly was taken and that's why Star Wars and Superman references never feel out of place in Anime.  But by the late 90s the culture started becoming increasingly insular, the thing Miyazaki said that got mistranslated and misquoted as "Anime was a Mistake" was all about how annoyed he is at modern Anime refusing to be influenced by stuff other then prior Anime.

Harry Potter did not invent the concept of fantastical magic themed Schools or using one as the setting for a Fantasy story.  Western Fantasy Novels with such a concept can be traced back to the 50s.  The late 90s saw an increase in such concepts because using even normal school as a setting only became it's own genre in the prior decade.

But since some of these Magic Academy Anime are technically not Magic at all but nominally some sort of SciFi ability, I could add the X-Men comics to the list of things that were kinda this Genre long before Harry Potter.

The one Anime that I do view as maybe explicitly Harry Potter influenced I like is, Little Witch Academia, but maybe not even LWA since two of the Pre-Potter magic School franchises from that video were about specially All Female Witch Schools.  Still LWA is distinct from the Light Novel trend I'm principally talking about.

My agenda here is NOT about trying to destroy the legacy of Harry Potter because of the now exposed bigotry of She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.  I'm not even a fan of this genre of Anime, I've yet to get through a full cour of a single show where this is it's main genre.  However I will recommend while on that subject Chivalry of a Failed Knight since it has an explicit Trans character. 

Rather the agenda of mine this post does fit into is my desire to draw attention to how much modern Anime has it's roots in a lot of obscure forgotten 90s Media that was popular within this subculture in Japan but didn't get localized for the West or directly adapted into Anime till 10-20 years later if at all.  Like YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at The Bound of This World.  

And while I still am far from an expert on that subject I've already found one such piece of hidden Otaku Media that is in fact a Magic School setting before Harry Potter.  Lunar: Sanposuru Gakuen (Lunar: Walking School) released in Japan in January of 1996, almost a year and a half before the first Harry Potter book was published.  This instalment didn't get a Western Release but it was part of an already popular series.

Even before that there was a Shoujo Manga/Anime series called Akazukin Chaka.

However these kinds of hidden pieces of the puzzle of Anime History are not of interest to Mother's Basement when he makes multiple videos on this genre calling them "Anime Harry Potter knockoffs" for clicks.  He's even aware of the differences like the Academy and Magic's existence not being an in-universe secret, and the lack of anything like the house sorting system.

However there is another piece of this puzzle that even these more Normie observers of Anime have less of an excuse to have missed.  Final Fantasy VIII released in February of 1999 but was in production already before Final Fantasy VII was even fully released yet and thus also before Harry Potter.  And just look at it's early Cut Scenes.  It's a Fantastical Academy and the unforms are clearly way more similar to what we've come to expect from LN based Magic Academy Anime then the more generic Harry Potter robes.  

Meanwhile the Japanese Translation of the first Harry Potter book wasn't published till December of 1999, Final Fantasy VIII was almost a full year earlier.

Update July 30th:  Low and behold like right after I made this Reign of The Seven Spellblades starts airing, a show seemingly calculated to make this post age poorly.  But it really only proves my point more, that's what Anime actively trying to evoke Harry Potter looks like, it exposes how not like HP at all the swarm of shows preceding it truly are, all while still managing to be better then Harry Potter in the way only an Anime version of it's premise could be.

Wedding Peach had an All Star writing staff

[Update December 8th: I'm now worried the entire premise of this past was based on misinformation.  Regarding Terada's perceived connection to Zelda]

Zelda is the title character for a reason.

Here's the in-game opening story description for the original NES Legend of Zelda.

LONG AGO, GANON, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, STOLE THE TRIFORCE OF POWER. PRINCESS ZELDA OF HYRULE BROKE THE TRIFORCE OF WISDOM INTO EIGHT PIECES AND HID THEM FROM GANON BEFORE SHE WAS KIDNAPPED BY GANON'S MINIONS. LINK, YOU MUST FIND THE PIECES AND SAVE ZELDA.

And here's the more detailed version in the Instruction Manuel.

A long, long time ago the World was in an age of Chaos. In the middle of this chaos, in a little kingdom in the land of Hyrule, a legend was being handed down from generation to generation, the legend of the 'Triforce'; golden triangles possessing mystical powers.

One day, an evil army attacked this peaceful little kingdom and stole the Triforce of Power. This army was led by Gannon, the powerful Prince of Darkness who sought to plunge the World into fear and darkness under his rule. Fearing his wicked rule, Zelda, the princess of this kingdom, split up the Triforce of Wisdom into eight fragments and hid them throughout the realm to save the last remaining Triforce from the clutches of the evil Ganon. At the same time, she commanded her most trustworthy nursemaid, Impa, to secretly escape into the land and go find a man with enough courage to destroy the evil Gannon. Upon hearing this, Ganon grew angry, imprisoned the princess, and sent out a party in search of Impa.

Braving forests and mountains, Impa fled for her life from her pursuers. As she reached the very limit of her energy she found herself surrounded by Gannon’s evil henchmen. Cornered! What could she do? … But wait!

All was not lost. A young lad appeared. He skillfully drove off Ganon’s henchmen, and saved Impa from a fate worse than death. His name was Link. During his travels he had come across Impa and Ganon’s henchmen. Impa told Link the whole story of the princess Zelda and the evil Ganon. Burning with a sense of justice, Link resolved to save Zelda, but Ganon was a powerful opponent. He held the Triforce of Power. And so, in order to fight off Ganon, Link had to bring the scattered eight fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom together to rebuild the mystical Triangle.

If he couldn't do this, there would be no chance Link could fight his way into Death Mountain where Ganon lived. Can Link really destroy Ganon and save the Princess Zelda? Only your skill can answer that question. Good luck. Use the Triforce wisely.

What you'll notice is that while the player plays Link you are on a mission from Zelda, you are attempting to carry out her plan.  This is why even from the very first game in 1985 she had agency that Princess Peach Toadstool did not.  Now today Peach has become a character with as much agency as Zelda and that's great, I don't wanna a start a Catfight between Zelda Simps and Peach Simps.

In Adventure of Link this aspect of Zelda's role is gone but it's back in A Link to The Past where while you can read a backstory about both the distant and recent past, actual gameplay begins with the Player as Link responding to Zelda's call to adventure.

However in Ocarina of Time Zelda isn't who sends link on his quest and when you do get a mission from her it winds up being the McGuffin Delivery Trope which I hate when it's done for Video Games, I don't want to be told things would have been better if I did nothing.

I like every Zelda game ultimately, but the reason why I consider OoT overrated in the story department is because I care little about how much more cinematic things are like now in 3D if it lessens one of my favorites aspects of the classic games.

Skyward Sword's extreme linearity may be the opposite of the original NES Game in how you play but it was the first game (at least in the main series) since ALttP to bring back this aspect of it, Link is carrying out Zelda's plan, well you could get pedantic and say it's Hylia's plan but they are ultimately the same Entity, and Zelda proper is playing her part in getting the ball rolling.

And then Breath of The Wild is also very much back to the original premise.

Dystopian Science Fiction only reinforces the real world Status Quo

They establish the Evil Government or Empire in question as being obviously Evil to the audience by having it be nakedly and obviously oppressive in a way no current First World Nation is.  It doesn't matter how many Bread Tube Video Essays go on for hours about how it's a perfect allegory for the real world's problems, nor does it matter if that's what the author intended, the average viewer is at best going to see it as a "cautionary tale".

And that's the problem, scaring the public with the variety of different ways things could be worse creates hostility to the very concept of change.  In most of these stories the better freer society the rebels are fighting for is Liberal Democracy, the real world status quo.  The official full name of the Rebellion in Star Wars is "The Alliance to Restore The Republic", that does make it technically speaking a Reactionary Revolution not a Progressive one, the kind Edmund Burke would call a Reformation rather then a Revolution.  

We see how broken The Republic always was in The Prequels and Clone Wars, yet because The Empire is so blatantly worse people long for The Republic and are not even considering the idea of trying to build something new, or question the very concept of having a Galactic Government in the first place.  The only value I ever saw in writing more Star Wars post ROTJ is attempting to address this.  Instead the overarching narrative we're getting is that the New Republic's mistake was demilitarizing and refusing to take quick harsh action against the rising First Order, even though the message of The Prequels was that militarizing is exactly how The Republic became The Empire in the first place.

Andor is the first Star Wars project to actually really be this Genre.  Star Wars may have "always been Political" but the politics was set dressing and framing devices. The Empire was something our protagonists were under the threat of but never living directly under.  Andor is the first Star Wars project to be perceived as some groundbreaking Political Manifesto, but it's not.  The character in the second arc who's supposed to be the ideologue of the group never says a damn thing about the kind of society he wants to create, just a bunch of philosophizing about how highly authoritarian systems like the Empire inevitably destroy themselves, which isn't even true, Rome lasted Centuries.

Breadtubers really love to argue that every fictional Dystopia is either Fascist or Capitalist or both and the Right Wingers interpreting them as being in any way Socialist are simply not getting them.  Unfortunately most Hollywood writers are relatively Centrist Liberals who do view Communism and Nazism as two sides of the same coin.  I like Divergent, I only saw the first movie but I found it more engaging then The Hunger Games.  However the society it depicts can't be viewed as Capitalist nor does it contain any of the things that animate actual Fascist movements.  Even watching it as a Communist I see it as what it looks like when Communism is tried but goes wrong, or at least what Liberals think it looks like when Communism is tried and "inevitably" doesn't work.  Of course when I first watched it I wasn't the Communist I am now as you can probably guess from my first post mentioning it on this blog.

Classic CyberPunk is often alleged to be where Capitalism will inevitably lead if we don't change course.  The problem is most viewers won't see it that way not because they are stupid but because CyberPunk is stupid, it is a fundamental misunderstanding of Capitalism to think it would ever benefit the Capitalists to get rid of the Government.

Here's an informative YT video on George Orwell.

https://youtu.be/2Gz0I_X_nfo

The Anime 86 is more interesting then many other Dystopian shows because the Republic of San Magnolia actually claims to be a Democracy.  

I have now watched the Anime Psycho-Pass (only season one for now which I'm pretty sure was originally meant to stand on it's own).  And I'm going to Spoil it.