Obi-Wan Kenobi's first two episodes were pretty good

I'm enjoying the show so far even though it's not really the premise I was hoping for. 

When the PrequelMemers started creating a demand for a Kenobi series, the idea in my head at least was Obi-Wan having fun little side adventures with some slice of life stuff about being a Hermit on a Desert Planet.  I was not thinking of yet another Episode 3.5.

But since that's what the show is I'm going to accept it and move on.  

The Recap of the Prequel Trilogy actually made me notice I haven't watched any SW films in even HD quality yet, I'd been just using my old DVDs.  Now that I have Disney+ maybe I should fix that.

First thing that really struck me was just seeing Ewen's Obi-Wan call himself Ben, in terms of his performance and mannerisms he a did a great job of slowly becoming more like Alec Guinness's performance over the course of that Trilogy.  But the fact that we aren't shown him taking the name of Ben proves Lucas wasn't doing the generic Prequel fan service stuff everyone accuses him of.  For the purposes of this show obviously the Ben name is established now and seeing Ewen use it a nice treat.

So Leia being a part of the show I was not expecting.  But why create a new Droid to be her little pet when she should be building up her relationship with R2 and 3PO by now.

Obi-Wan learning Vader is alive is technically a gap in the narrative being filled, not one that needed to be but since we're here might as well make a thing out of it.

In my post on Force Healing I mentioned that if Obi-Wan was indeed doing it in Episode IV it must be something he learned (maybe from Qui-Gon) in between the Trilogies, and at this point I can say I will be disappointed if that isn't one of the plotlines of this show.

Only reason I'm doing a post on this show this early is because May is Star Wars month so I might as well do one more Star Wars post to close it out.  Visions and these Live Action Disney+ shows are the Disney Produced Star Wars content I've enjoyed the most, I hope they keep it up.

Ashoka is the show I'm looking forward to the most, I like her character, and even though I never read any old EU content I'm conceptually interested in Thrawn enough to be excited for him being the villain of something Live Action finally, and I hope Barris is also in it.  But first a few shows come before that. I will watch Mando season 3, but I have no interest in Andor.

But I am perhaps most conceptually curious for The Acolyte, finally seeing a completely different era of the Galaxy should be a fun opportunity.

When an Adaptation is made Too Late

A lot of the time it seems like it's for the best to wait a long time to adapt something, especially when we're talking about Live Action adaptations of significant prose works of Sci-Fi or Fantasy, it can take 20 or even 50 years for the technology of Film making to catch up to the imagination or the original author.

However the thing about Otaku media is that the aesthetics of where Otaku culture was at that time are more important then the geopolitics or fashion trends of the real world.  In any other context something being too much a product of it's time just means you adapt it as a period piece, but Otaku art is different.

Boogiepop and Others, YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World and Magic Kaito 1412 are examples of source material from the late 80s or 90s that didn't get a proper Anime adaptation till the 2010s.  And I like all three of those Anime to varying degrees, they are all good shows.  But I can't help but feel like something is lost in them being done in these very modern artstyles when at their core these are 90s characters who should be immortalized with 90s character designs.

Animation is not limited in what things it can show the way Live Action is, even TV Anime which is done on more limited of a budget was in the 80s already doing some High Fantasy and Hard Sci-Fi.  However the aesthetics and styles of Anime constantly evolve, and with them the very tools used to animate are replaced.  So it's really just not even possible to animate something today but make it look like it could have been animated in the 90s, the substances behind 90s Animation no longer exist, so nothing animated now can ever be Homousian with 90s Anime.

As someone who lived through the 90s I can still sense the 90s sensibilities in these Anime in ways I can't really explain, (even though at least two seem to have been updated to the present in the adaptation).  But that's all the more reason why their looking so standard 2019 feels off.  

It also matters that all three were works who's source materials were very influential, a lot of stuff following trends they set got animated way sooner. But when those of us who know try to explain that to the average contemporary seasonal Anime viewer, it's hard for them to even believe us when YU-NO looks at first glance like every other generic Isekai of 2019.

It helps that we got glimpses of what aesthetically a more contemporary Anime for each of them could have looked like.  YU-NO has the animated opening cinematic made for the Sega Saturn port and the absolute madness that was it's 4 episode Hentai OVA.  Boogiepop Phantom was basically an animated side story made in 2000 and serves as the only Anime I've ever felt was drawing aesthetic inspiration from Serial Experiments Lain.  And Magic Kaito made a number of appearances on Detective Conan, most notable are the first half hour of episode 219 and OVA 4 which each adapts a story of the Magic Kaito Manga.

That's not to say they needed to be adapted immediately, lots of great Anime came 5ish years after it's source material, sometimes one decade proves to not be too much.

I've argued before that the 2000s were the most transitional decade in Anime history, so maybe that's the real problem.  Some 90s source material is done well adapted in even the late 00s, and plenty of great 2010s Anime was adapted from even early 2000s works.  It's particularly the change to digital Animation that makes it hard for most 90s Character designs to feel right in modern Animation.

Maybe it's not absolutely only an Anime thing.  The DCAMU adaptation of the Death and Return of Superman doing at times scene for scene recreations of stuff from the original 1992 Comic Book storyline but in their New52 based artstyle feels similarly off-putting, more so since I fundamentally hate the New52 style more then I do almost any Anime artstyle.  But this kind of thing is I feel more pronounced in the way Otaku aesthetics work.

May the Anime be With You

 Before I talk more about the shows I’m currently following, let me mention some stuff I’ve added to my Completed list.

I watched World’s End Harem, subbed since I doubt it’ll ever get a Dub, and it is indeed a very fascinating thought provoking show, one I may have more to say on in the future.

I then watched the movie Belle on Amazon Prime, it was an instant classic, I gave it a 10 out of 10. 

And the second Fate/Grand Order Camelot movie was okay.

I also watched two somewhat older shows. Aokana has quickly become one of my favorite Fantastical Sports Anime.  And then 2017’s WorldEnd which was also very good.  WorldEnd is a Fantasy Anime that not only isn’t an isekai but doesn’t feel like one either, by which I mainly mean doesn’t feel like a Gamer Anime.  Such Anime has become increasingly rare in recent years.

I also finally got to watch the Prisma Illya Movie, Licht Nameless Girl, and it was pretty good.

I finally finished the second cour of 86, it was great.

Now back to the Simuldubs I’m following.

Episodes 4 and 5 of EstabLife were both very fun episodes, this show is a real treat.

Episode 7 of season 3 of LOTGH new Thesis was fantastic, everyone hating on the New Thesis for not looking like the 80s needs to get over themselves.

Skeleton Knight, Fruit of Evolution and Tsukimichi are all three proving to be perfectly fun generic Isekai shows, I hope they never stop making these.

The Executioner and Her Way of Life’s simuldub started on HIDIVE, and its first episode was quite interesting.  I’d been hearing about this one for awhile, so I’m excited for it.

Spy x Family is half done now and it’s still holding up well.

I can also now confirm that the first episode of Takt Op. Destiny takes place between episodes 4 and 5, if anyone would prefer to watch the show Chronologically.

The best episode of Lupin III part 6 so far was episode 4, Killers in The Diner, it was a neat little Lupin short story.  But the most recent episode aired on Toonami as of my posting this is the start of what could be a fairly interesting mini-Arc.

I’m also still enjoying Trapped In a Dating Sim, though I wasn’t able to watch episode 6 in time for this post thanks to Crunchyroll’s Beta issues.

Sometimes it's actually unethical not to Spoil a story.

When Doki Doki Literature Club first blew up back in 2017, one aspect of the conversation around it was occasionally how the Tigger Warnings at the beginning kind of Spoils the game, and yet it would still be wrong not to have them.  Fortunately the game is good enough at immersing the player during the hours it spends pretending to be a normal Visual Novel that you may very well have just forgotten about the Warnings by the time stuff starts happening.

DDLC's trigger warnings fortunately did not have to be very specific, there are lot of things they could have been referring to.  And even more Fortunately one potentially Triggering trope DDLC does not do is have a twist where a character we thought was a Cis Woman turns out to be a manipulative psychotic Trans Woman serial killer.  If that had happened, it would in my opinion warrant a more specific trigger warning.

That is a very specifically problematic trope that may be very potentially triggering to some people not necessarily inherently bothered by any broader trigger warnings it could be classified under.  But it is also a trope that is inherently a twist, you can't warn someone that it's coming without Spoiling the story in-question.  But I have no respect for the artistic intentions of creators who choose to use that damaging trope.  I am still a Libertarian when it coms to Free Speech, I have no desire to ban works that engage in Problematic tropes I hate, but the people who want to avoid this Trope also have the right to be warned about it.

In the case of this Trope it goes beyond being unethical to not spoil it, I'd call it outright Immoral to try to prevent people from giving this plot point away on the grounds that preserving Twists is some inherent virtue of your personal Internet Ethics.

I'd been playing by the old rules even though I've felt this way on the inside for awhile.  The Umineko Visual Novel does this trope yet I still didn't discus it till after the Spoiler warning in my Umineko post.  And NezumiVA is a Trans Woman Anituber who did an hour long spoiler free video on Umineko.  Some Trans Anime Fans aren't bothered by what Umineko did, but they need to understand that their being okay with it doesn't mean others will be, and some younger Trans Anime Fans may assume that because someone like NezumiVA recommended it without any qualifiers it must be completely free of any Transphobic tropes only to be very triggered when they invest countless hours into the VNs without any warning of what's coming.

Again I've been guilty of what I'm criticizing here myself in the past, I increasingly feel guilty how often I've recommended Pretty Little Liars to people while forgetting to bring up it's use of this trope in it's last 2 seasons.

That's just one example of an inherently Problematic Twist, there are others I'm sure, but this is the one I have personal experience with.

But after that is the perhaps more trivial but still worth discussing matter of cases where how something is marketed makes an aspect of it a Spoiler that clearly shouldn't be based on how the text itself is written.

Catwoman: Hunted is an animated movie that has no twists, saying exactly how the villain is defeated in the end can still be called a Spoiler, but the identity of the villain certainly is not.  The movie is NOT a mystery, who the main antagonist is is obvious very early in the film, way to early to at all be worth calling a spoiler.  Yet I got in trouble with a prominent YouTube channel on Twitter for referring to that villain on the grounds that it's a Spoiler.

The only reason the identity of the villain can at all be considered a Spoiler is because it was Marketed as if Black Mask were the villain. he's the only antagonist on the Cover.  But in the text itself he obviously is not the main villain, he is set up as less important then Minerva from the start.

I don't know why they did this.  It could be the film entered production before Wonder Woman 84 came out with the expectation that it would make Cheetah a big deal, but then after it had poor reception from the loudest online Nerds they decided to avoid the now tainted character in how they promoted it.  Either way though when something clearly not a twist in the script is inexplicably concealed in the marketing, I feel professional reviewers and other such online Fandom Influencers have a responsibility to clear up that Bait and Switch, not collaborate with it.

Now since Minerva doesn't take on a Cheetah look till the final battle, and some casual viewers may not instantly know to associate the name of Minerva with Cheetah, perhaps this Minerva becoming Cheetah you can argue is sufficiently a surprise.  But the Tweets I made didn't even say Cheetah, so to such a casual fan all it really gives away is that it's not Black Mask, and again anyone planning to watch this movie as specifically Black Mask fans should know going in that he is even less significant then he was in the Red Hood movie.

You would have to be fairly in the know to get specifically Cheetah from "most overused Wonder Woman villain" which is really only even true in the specific context of Animated DC projects.  Even then exactly what Cheetah is has been inconsistent over the years, I did not give away what kind of Cheetah you'll be getting.

But these DC Animated films are not made for casual fans, they are mostly made for the people who will recognize every obscure name they pull out.  And if Catwoman: Hunted were an exception they wouldn't have been so nonchalant about having a group of Crime Bosses summon Demons, Aliens and Robots to battle in the middle of a film that started as a simple Heist movie.  Even the most fantastical Lupin III movies are not that casual about their fantastical elements.  Only Superhero movies are this all over the place genre wise.

Kuudere list

 Since I’ve started defining myself online as a Kuudere, I figure I better break down this Anime archetype by talking about the ones I’m most into, and try to list them basically in the order they came into existence, though for some their Anime came quite a bit later.

The Tsundere and Yandere are the Dere types most well known and the only ones ever the subjects of any serious Video Essays I know of.  I honestly have no idea if my perspective on who is and isn’t a Kuudere even agrees with most Otaku.  Also I’ve still only seen a small percentage of Anime that exist, it’s perhaps revealing that my Kuudere timeline begins in the 90s.

First is Rei Hino in the Sailor Moon Manga, most casuals don’t know this since the 90s Anime changed her personality completely making her much more of a Tsundere. But Manga/Crystal Rei Hino, as well as PGSM, is very much a classic Kuudere. Some may also count Hotaru during the Infinity Arc as a Kuudere, as well as Rei Ayanami in NGE, but they are a type of Kuudere distinct from what I have in mind when I call myself one.

Second is Kanna Hateno in 1996's YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World.  This early Visual Novel was huge in Japan, one of those classics of Otaku media that western fandom doesn’t fully get the influence of since it didn’t get a proper Anime adaptation till 2019.  Just as Mio was vital to the development of the Tsundere, Kanna is a key genesis point for the Kuudere.

Third is Ai Haibara who was introduced to the Detective Conan Anime in 1998.  She is a cool and collected character, in how this show models itself after the Legacy of Sherlock Holmes she is perhaps in a sense Kudo’s Irene Adler.

Fourth is Mai Kawasumi in the 1999 Visual Novel Kanon, she’s an early example of a Kuudere who’s also a Samurai.  After this point I’m not really gonna number them anymore.

Next is Yumera Kirika in the 2001 Original Anime Noir.  The character of Chole also qualifies in different ways, so this show provides two.

But Chiefly of all is Setsuna Kiyoura from the 2005 Visual Novel School Days.  This is the character I’ve been using as my Avatar since I started calling myself a Kuudere and I've ranked her as my number 1 favorite character on MAL.  So for me personally she is the standard I hold all other Kuudere characters to.

Amazingly there is another Kuudere I really like also named Setsuna in the 2007 Anime Shattered Angels.

Then in April of 2008 came Ayase Kishimoto in the 2008 Visual Novel Chaos;HEad which got an Anime adaptation the same year.

Those 9 are the big ones, plenty of other characters in shows I’ve liked could be argued to count, but these are the core to defining what being a Kuudere means to me personally.

Update: October 2022: Now that I've seen all of Karin (2005-2006) for this Halloween month I want to add Anju Maaka, she's similar to Kiyoura in how she's the Kuudere but also kind the brains of the cast, certainty the smartest member of her family in-spite of being the youngest.

It occurs to me that Humora in Madoka Magica probably qualifies.

Update May 2024: I made a post on Miyu from Prisma Illya who I really should have included from the start.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/05/miyu-edelfelt-supreme-kuudere.html

Catwoman: Hunted

I mentioned this movie in my last post rambling about Western Cartoons alleged to be Inspired by Anime even though I hadn't seen it yet.  Was any of my brief assessment presumptuous?

Frankly I might have been too generous in assuming it would at least succeed in looking like an Anime Artstyle.  It definitely looks like it's going for that, but still drawn by people not used to drawing that way.

As far as everything else, from it's OP it was clearly trying to go for a Lupin III OP vibe, which is what I should have expected,  naturally that's the genre of Anime one would reference for Catwoman, Fujiko Mine is basically Japan's Catwoman.  But as I said in the prior post what I'd like to see from Western Animation writers taking inspiration form Anime is them trying some of the very genres or Sub-Genres that pretty much exist only in Anime and it's source materials so far.  For Catwoman as a Lupin III film I'd rather WB/DC just let people in Japan who've made actual Lupin III Anime give it try, ideally the staff behind The Woman Called Fujoko Mine definitely deserve a shot at doing Catwoman.

But let's go back to that OP, it and other music in the movie is trying to be evocative of Lupin III, but the Composer is still not actually Yuji Ohno, so it's like one of those rare Bee Train Anime without Yuki Kajiura, the Music is trying to sound like her, but it's still off.  Now the composer for this movie is Japanese and has done some Anime, but not exactly a lot and usually not Lupin style stuff.  Yoko Kanno is someone I could also see working for a film like this.

I also could have accepted the movie as Anime Adjacent better if it at least had Voice Actors I recognized hearing from Anime Dubs instead of the same kind of casting most of these DC animated movies go for.  Kelly Hu as Cheshire is perfect, and Elizabeth Gillies as Catwoman was pretty good (on a meta-level I'd love to see her Catwoman interact with a Poison Ivy played by Ariana Grande).  But everyone else ranged from fine to to bland, Kate Kane sounded flat and dull.

If they wanted to sell this movie as also a quasi Lupin III movie, why not cast a Fujiko veteran as Catwoman, there are quite a few to choose from, since this is part of a trend of modern depictions wanting Catwoman to also come off as vaguely Latina, Christina Vee could have been a perfect choice.  And since they seemingly wanted Kate to come off as Butch rather then Femme, just hire Erica Mendez to do her Haruka voice.  

If you just want to watch the film like any other DC animated film, the fact that the Artstyle was clearly trying and not quite succeeding to have an Anime vibe might still annoy you.  Other then that it's pretty good, about what you'd expect from a Catwoman solo project at first, but then starts bringing in fantastical stuff that really wasn't necessary.

I appreciated the incorporation of the Classic Purple Dress costume for the ball at the beginning, but when she changed to the main costume of the movie the actual line about "keeping up up with the times" I found odd considering this is the costume primarily popularized by Hush 20 years ago, have the comics really not introduced any new Catwoman Costume since?

As much as I ragged on the the DCAMU films, I certainly preferred their take on the Kate Kane/Batwoman.

I also wish they'd revived Red Claw instead of making the main antagonist of this Batman spin off film be the most overused Wonder Woman villain.  She could have fit the Anime inspiration because I've for awhile felt like she was a little bit Panther Claw inspired.

Force Healing is a positive addition to Star Wars Lore

I'm not saying this as some huge Disney apologist, Rise of Skywalker is a mess with lots of stuff I hate and lots of stuff I like.

The first criticism is always "if only Anakin had known about this",  but that's the point.  

Darth Sidious basically admits he doesn't actually know Plagueis's secret as soon as he had Anakin turned.  It should always have been part of the Tragic Irony of all this that it was only the Light Side that could give Anakin what he was looking for, but the Jedi Order had actually locked themselves out from the full potential of The Light Side with their rigid pseudo-Stoicism.

Both Grogu in The Mandalorian and Rey in Rise of Skywalker discover Force Healing because they embraced the kinds of Emotional Attachment the Jedi Order had rejected.

Now I recall hearing something about George Lucas saying Obi-Wan did Force Healing on Luke in A New Hope, if so that's something he learned as part of his Force Ghost training with Quo-Gon post ROTS.

There is a part of what I loved about Book of Boba Fett that I left out of my last post.  Grogu calming the Rankor with Force healing was so much like a Magical Girl show, this is what those rigidly anti-violence Star Wars fans like Linkara have been waiting for.