Please Save My Earth (Post-Recording Random Notes not covered in the other posts)

Anime Dream Team

Well, I mean, now that someone is maybe animating Dengeki Daisy, maybe this is more possible.  (It's not.)

 

Anyway, I didn't have a ton of time to really think about this question between seeing it for the first time and recording, so I wanted to give it some more thought.  I do think Production IG did a really good job of many things at the time.  I find myself wondering if Madhouse could do some of the cloth magic that makes everything seem alive (per Frieren ssn 1) and a really great Paradise setting.  It might actually be kind of trippy if they had a completely different studio in charge of all the Paradise stuff, the Earth stuff, and the non-Paradise alien world stuff, so it would really feel like another world . . .

 

I stick by my Yoko Kanno music ask.

 

I might be curious what Nobuteru Yuki could do with character designs.

 

As for writers/directors, I kind of wonder what Mari Okada could do with this source material.  Between her very unflinchingly honest (and painfully hilarious) portrayals of complicated young women in O Maidens in Your Savage Season and her meditations on people raised in a kind of paradise crashing into the regular world a la Maquia, I'm curious.

 

The Telltale (?) Kiche

As for the meaning of the persistent kiche: I think it was a sign that Sarjalim still had work for her to do with her powers, even if she didn't want to do.  Mokuren is so complicated.  I don't always understand her, but I recognize her, and her flaws call to me. 

 

Sarjalim

Sarjalim is kind of a fascinating mystery to me.  When her chosen ones choose other people, she removes the responsibility / blessing from them, so they can go live with their beloveds.  But when she's down to her last believer and there are things that still need to be set straight, she won't let them escape that blessing / responsibility until things are set straight.  And there is still more to be redeemed by the end, when Alice said the kiche comes and goes. 

 

Ugh, Alice, Why?

In the end, I understand why Alice did what she did.  It is profoundly dissatisfying to me.  I don't like it, and I wish she hadn't for reasons that are mostly separate from the world of the story itself.  

I wanted better for Alice.  I hate seeing her potential (flaws and all) as Mokuren and then seeing her reduced to someone who's insecure and always worried her younger fiance will want someone else even though who could he possibly choose who understands what he's been through and still chose him?  It just feels gross and uncomfortable and like a waste of a life. Maybe because it's not something I can bring with me out of the work?  It's something so specific to the story that, even though it logically makes sense, feels wrong?

Then again, most of the hardest hitting literature I've read has had me agonizing over situations and decisions I hate.  I don't read to come away approving of everyone's life choices, and I'm not looking to literature to only provide me with situations and decisions I 100% agree with.  I don't feel like it was a waste of time to read or reread this very long redemption story that provokes some deep moral wrestling (along with suspense and entertainment).

But still, I wish it could have ended differently.

The thought that it really couldn't have is both gratifying and terrible.  The author did her work of world creation in a specific time and place well and solidly, and this is the logical and emotional outcome.  

Ick.  Especially because of the sequels.  I didn't know anything about them when I first read this, so I could imagine they lived platonically and chastely until Rin turned 20 or something.  I want that ignorance back.  : D

Please Save My Earth: Even More Post-Podcast Theology Edition Part 2: Shion and Mokuren

 One of the things we didn't talk about on the podcast much was those deeper religious/faith aspects of the story.  (We covered a lot of ground in the 6 hours of talking about it that we did, but there wasn't room for everything, and this was not a theology podcast.)  The reason why this story stuck with me since I first read it back in 200mumble was because of the questions it left me asking and contemplating.  

Recently, Beth at Pantsuit Politics was trying to articulate a similar question: How do I reconcile my concept of karma with my concept of grace?  I don't want to be judged forever for my worst day/act.  But how long is long enough to be punished?  How do we atone?  I want to take some time to think through this for a couple sets of characters.

(SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE SERIES AHOY!)

 

Shion raped Mokuren.  He lied to her, and she gave consent based on that lie, then she revoked consent when she realized he had lied to her, and then he raped her.  He knew exactly what he was doing (even if he didn't have the whole story about Mokuren and Gyokuran), and he chose to do it.  It was a vile act.  It was cruel and stupid and destructive and completely aligned with the scared/angry/traumatized/hurting/spiky person that he was.  It was an inexcusable, evil thing he did.  On his own, he realized that he harmed her and even started to regret it. 

 

(I'll have to check if he actually apologized for it. [Checked.  He didn't.  He came about as close as he probably could, but no I'm sorry and no please forgive me.  Beginning of volume 11 is intense, and it just feels more real and complicated and messy every time I read it.]) 

 

Then Mokuren said she forgave him, and that forgiveness changed him.  Further complicating this, he thought that she forgave him and saved him from exile and stayed with him even though/because (he thought) she really loved someone else.  Aside from the rage from the people in his community, it seemed he received no punishment at all for his heinous act.  He saw Mokuren's stated forgiveness as the miraculous and unearned gift that it was, and he turned his (very strange at that point) life around and started seeing the other people around him and not punching them all away at every opportunity.  As they all started dying one by one, now trapped on the moon base for the rest of their lives, he was able to act with kindness and compassion that he had never shown before in his craptastic life.  He was able to spend time alone with the woman he loved, even if he thought she was still just playing along for . . . ???  (I don't think anyone was particularly sane at that point, TBH, so I'm not going to try too hard to nail down that reason.)  Until she died, and he was the last one left.

 

And then he lived alone for 9 years, going fully insane until he died a natural death because he promised he wouldn't kill himself and take himself out of the cycle of reincarnation established in the world of the work.

 

When Shion was being a jerk (most of the moments he was breathing) whether we understood why or not, before the flashbacks and after, I wanted karma.  I wanted him to be punished for the pain he inflicted on others.  I wanted him to be punished for raping Mokuren and misunderstanding and hurting everyone around him. 

 

And then I wanted him to stop doing those things.  I wanted him to be a better version of himself, someone who could care for other people and SHOW it.  Someone who didn't always do the absolute worst thing in any situation, someone who wasn't always pushing people violently away while longing to connect with them.  Someone who wasn't sabotaging himself all the time.  Someone who could love and be loved and exist in community.

 

I wanted karma and then grace.  And because I didn't get the karma that felt right to me (Mokuren forgiving him for her own sake but then never having anything to do with him again), I felt . . . cheated? 

 

The grace felt too easy and cheap.  Even though it was so complicated by what was really going on with Mokuren inside in parallel. Even though the forgiveness wasn't even real, since she was only putting on an act to keep up her pride (even when everyone else was dead, which is just another heartbreak to add to the pile).  And even though I have seen real life young women put up with abuse and keep forgiving and going back

because they love him even if he doesn't love them back

because they need him or think they do

because being kind-of-wanted-sometimes seems better than never feeling wanted at all

because of all the complicated and heartbreaking reasons

so I know that this pattern is not unrealistic.

 

But, friends [ME], he lived alone for 9 years surround by the dead and locked inescapably away, watching the wars of the 60s and 70s ravage the Earth.  He suffered unimaginably.  He suffered MORE because he actually DID love her in the end (I think).  If he hadn't loved her, he could have killed himself in a heartbeat.  He wouldn't have made that promise to her, and he wouldn't have kept that promise to her.  If he hadn't promised to watch over the Earth for her, he wouldn't have had to see those things.  He watched and went mad because he loved her and he wanted desperately to see her again, maybe to have the opportunity to have her love him, too.  9 years alone with the dead and the wars and the power you couldn't use to save anyone or anything out of love and faith and a promise to someone he didn't even think actually loved him.  If that's not enough punishment to atone, what is?

 

Would I only be "satisfied" with the punishment of death?  Well, he did that.  With a slow, messy, torturous death?  Yeah, he had that.  He cause suffering, and he suffered.  Karma?

 

So why does it still feel "wrong" that in the end, when Mokuren realized that he did love her back for real, she really did forgive enough to want to go be the atmosphere and the clouds and the sky with him forever?  Didn't he "earn" a happy ending?  And that's not even a good question.  It was still, after all that punishment and atonement, a miracle of grace that she was willing and able to offer him forgiveness and love and togetherness.

 

And then there's Mokuren's guilt (mostly felt by Alice, who had a fuller picture in the end).  How do you live with and forgive yourself knowing you at least in some way caused someone you maybe loved sometimes to live alone for 9 years, slowly going insane, and then torturing his next incarnation because you two just couldn't really be honest with each other the first time around?  Mokuren was not responsible for her rape.  Mokuren may have been responsible for her (understandable hatred). Mokuren did not knowingly condemn Shion to that torturous fate.  Not that exact fate.  And when she realized the karma he suffered, she believed it was enough and that he HAD atoned, (and so did he) and they could be honest with each other, and they could both find grace together and leave behind hate and guilt and karma.  And there is something really beautiful about that.

 

But it still feels very uncomfortable.   And I think that's fine.  The good stuff, the stuff that lasts, challenges you and invites you to watch decisions you wouldn't make in situations you would never be in and come away feeling like the world is complicated and huge and contains multitudes and what it needs more from you, for you, always is grace.

Please Save My Earth Manga: Even More Theology Post-Podcast Edition Part 1: Shukaido and Shion (and Rin and Haru)

One of the things we didn't talk about on the podcast much was those deeper religious/faith aspects of the story.  (We covered a lot of ground in the 6 hours of talking about it that we did, but there wasn't room for everything, and this was not a theology podcast.)  The reason why this story stuck with me since I first read it back in 200mumble was because of the questions it left me asking and contemplating.  

Recently, Beth at Pantsuit Politics was trying to articulate a similar question: How do I reconcile my concept of karma with my concept of grace?  I want to take some time to think through this for a couple sets of characters.

(SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE SERIES AHOY!) 

 

Shion raped Mokuren, and then it seemed like she forgave him completely and they were going to live happily (virus-shortened lives) ever after.  People started dying, Shukaido figured out a vaccine that would delay the virus from taking hold but only had enough for one dose. 

 

I want to point out that I don't think anyone was doing their best thinking or making their best choices in this unimaginably horrible situation (your whole society had annihilated itself in nuclear war, and you were alone in the back end of the universe on an observational base you could not get out of for the rest of your lives).  There were SO MANY BETTER CHOICES he could have made.  But. 

 

A voice told him that he couldn't let all his work go to waste, and if the vaccine worked, he'd be choosing who would be the last to die.  And he knew that would be terrible.  And he chose to inflict that fate on Shion because of all their history together and what he'd done to Mokuren and how he had not had to suffer/pay for it.  He chose to take God's place and administer karma himself.

 

I don't think he EVER thought it would mean 9 years alone on the moon slowly going crazy.  But he still chose cruelty and punishment instead of just leaving that up to God.  And then he died, probably pleased that he had helped get revenge / bring about some sort of justice.  And then Haru had to live with remembering that.

 

And the consequences.  It was a vile act.  It was an intentional act.  It was an evil, unforgivable act.  And Shion could not forgive it for so long.  This is some sins of the fathers visited on the sons stuff here.  Haru didn't do it, but he sure suffered for it.  Shion made sure he suffered for it.  And I know "insane from being on the moon base alone for 9 years" Shion was in the mix here, but it's hard to watch him revenge so hard on someone who is essentially an innocent (Haru)for a thing someone else (Shukaido) did in the past when he (Shion) . . . didn't get punished the way he surely deserved when he did a terrible thing.  I don't know.  When the servant who was forgiven much won't forgive less, that’s hard to watch.  Especially when I know whose role I am often in (spoiler alert: it's the unforgiving servant who was forgiven much).  When you want grace for yourself but karma all the way down for others, that is . . .  Well, it's not good.

 

And maybe that's why, even though I recognize the monstrous and mostly unintended consequences of the choice of a dying man under terrible circumstances, I don't want Shion to come and take advantage of it and torture Haru over it.  How is Haru supposed to atone for a terrible thing Shukaido did?  Why does he feel like he has to atone for it?  What could possibly be done to repair / make reparations?  As long as insane Shion is driving the bus, definitely nothing.  But, honestly, if sane, changed Shion after Mokuren forgave him had been driving that bus, how could justice be served?

 

I think it's also complicated because Haru doesn't do bad things.  He doesn't try to manipulate people.  He isn't doing nefarious deeds for some mysterious purpose that only makes more sense when you realize insanity is a puzzle piece.  It's easy to root for Haru and against Shion. But in my own life, when someone has hurt me, aren't I sometimes more like Shion?  Don't I want karma for them, karma for a thousand years, karma all the way down?  Or, less dramatically, don't I feel like they deserve the harshest version of justice? 

 

However, when I have harmed other people, I want them to understand the full circumstances and complexity and my intentions, and I don't want to be held accountable, to face justice for the harms that are my responsibility, no matter the cause.  I want grace and forgiveness with no repair necessary.  I just want them to understand and absolve.  Or even just absolve because life is hard for everyone (me), and it's such a relief when someone extends grace, unmerited favor, forgiveness I do not deserve and have not and could not ever earn.  (Salvation.)

 

(But the insanity of Shion.  Yes, that makes everything more complicated because of how it overtakes Rin, overpowers him, and we watch this little boy doing these insane and hurtful things and can't help but want him to be punished, especially before we know about the insanity.  But then we do know more about the insanity and . . . It's so complicated.)

 

In the end, I think Haru did the best he could with his ancestral / incarnational bloodguilt for an action he did not take that harmed another whose descendant / reincarnation was put back into his path again later.  He tried his best to see that Rin, at least, could find some sort of forgiveness and salvation and maybe that the spirit / soul /consciousness of Shion could find some sort of peace being with the one he truly loved despite (waves hands in despair) everything.  The wrong was not precisely his, but he inherited it, took responsibility, and worked to repair and bring about some sort of flourishing shalom, as much as it was within his ability to try.  And I think it's important that what he could bring to help was other people who also were looking to bring about redemption and connection.

I want to like shojo anime

I don't know why I don't like shojo anime.  I try to like it.  I really do.  I vote with my dollars and watch it on my limited subscription services.  I do so hoping that maybe if more eyeballs watch it, the production values will improve, and so will the actual anime adaptations.  And it just . . . doesn't?  The pacing is off.  It seems rushed. They try to cram too much into ever-shrinking-season-length space.  The production values are generally terrible.  Lots of stills and pans, off model characters, stilted motion, bad use of CG.  It feels made of shortcuts, and the journey is janky and not worth the effort.  The current aesthetic stomps the original art / character design into the same oblivion.  Did I mention the pacing? &

To be fair, I am only one viewer, so my sacrifice watching these shows probably doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement to Japanese production companies.  And also, I am not (and never have really been) the target audience for shojo.  At least not the kind that generally gets translated and ends up on our shores.  I am not (and honestly never have been) a young maiden in love.  Or an old maiden in love.  Or actually in love.  Shows made for the lustful female gaze (or maidenly crushing female gaze or "just likes to look at hot guys" gaze) are going to make my eyes glaze over.

There are exceptions to my summary of shojo anime above, but they feel like exceptions that prove the rule.

I feel somewhat aligned with Ashley McDonnell on Shojo & Tell.  We both like reading shojo manga just fine.  But there's something about the anime trying to drag and direct and trap our gaze on things we don't actually care about as much (on top of the crappy production values, bad pacing, and unappealing shortcut tropes) that makes it less enjoyable of an experience for us.

Why is this not the case with non-shojo anime that have female protagonists?  Why do I love both the Freiren anime adaptation and original manga (shonen-ish) and both Apothecary Diaries original novels and anime adaptation (seinen-ish) to name a couple recent examples?  (I should probably write essays on each.)  It's probably not fair to compare.*  In addition to having compelling worlds and stories and protagonists, these shows have BUDGETS.  They are beautifully and lavishly animated.    They have time to make us care about the characters.  They have room to tell the stories coherently and well (though editing choices to cut material are still made).  They have space to breathe and expand and enthrall and fill in the blanks between the manga panels.

I want to believe that if a shojo anime could just be given a good budget, support, and room to really tell the story beautifully (and not just whip through and spend as much time focusing on "hot" guys while stupid bells chime in the background), it could be just as good and appeal to just as wide of an audience as Frieren and Apothecary Diaries. I wish that when I hear of once-thought-impossible licensing announcements like From Far Away and Red River and the Yona reboot, I could feel excited.

Instead, I cringe.  Are they going to destroy these beautiful works by giving them the "shojo anime" nightmare makeover?  Are they going to reduce them to trope salads?  Or are they planning and budgeting to make a well-paced, gorgeously animated, Fruits Basket-remake or Banana Fish-level work of art#?  Because Red River is a fantasy historical EPIC work.  (Same for Yona.  And I don't think anyone has announced them, but Basara or even Please Save My Earth the absolute Sci Fi classic just to put that out into the universe.)  

A good adaptation of any of these works could be amazingly great.  A bad one would just be another disappointment, and the investors would say again, "See, it's not worth investing in 'shojo' anime because the audience is too small to turn a profit.  We'll just keep giving them 20 yen to make something terrible for fanservice."  But the problem is the vision of the people funding/making it and the narrow audience they are aiming at, not the stories or their original marketing categories.

I've heard that for shojo and-shojo adjacent anime, the thought process is that they are spending a little to reward the faithful fans.  So they want to make sure to give those fans exactly what they want, and they think that all fans want is hot, thin guys and chimes and tropes.  Maybe I get where they're coming from.  (See above chain where no one watches the bad thing they made, so they feel justified in continuing to not fund the things, so they keep being bad.)  And I've seen the sad fates of larger-budget adaptations that do not keep the original target audience in mind and appeal to no one and are absolutely worse than cheap, shortcut trope-heavy shojo.  I am glad they want to avoid that.  And again, I am not the target audience of the original marketing for the work.  However, I am a big fan of stories, and I love when they are told well, so I can recommend them to people who like good stories.  

The audience of people who like good stories is (hopefully) larger than the audience of faithful super fans of a(ny) particular shjojo manga.  Why not make something for that larger audience, regardless of the original target marketing demographic of the magazine/site/publisher?  I know the actual answer is budget and investors and executives, but I wish it wasn't.

If they come over here legally, you'd better believe I will watch Red River and From Far Away and Yona, no matter how bad they may be.  But I would love to reward the creators with my support not just because I'm trying to be kind to shojo anime creators who don't make as much from anime adaptations but because they are great works of art like Frieren and Apothecary Diaries and Fruits Basket.  If they are really good, I will buy the DVDs or BluRays or whatever physical media you kids do these days (please release them on physical media).  I will tell other people to watch them.  And I hope the risk of trying to make a really good shojo anime will be rewarded.  I'll do my part.   : D

Notes

&Hana Kimi (and The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter) are this year's surprise shojo (and adjacent) anime I'm trying to support due to fond opinions of the source material.  And they are both standard, compressed, cheap, made-of-the-worst-tropes adaptations.  I should not be disappointed, but I sure am.  AND I AM WATCHING TO THE (SADLY) BITTER END.

*Ascendance of a Bookwork might be a better comparison.  The adaptation (especially the first couple seasons) is clearly on a shoestring budget (like most shojo), and they are forced to condense WAY TOO MUCH CONTENT into too small of a season size.  But the online and book following are not "just shojo," and, by golly, this season has a legit company adapting it with 20+ episodes, and I am full of hope.

#Still wish they'd kept Banana Fish set in the original time and been given more time to tell more of the original story (poor Jenkins and the other adults who were decent really got short shrift).  Still bitter about how cell phones wreck so many of the things that made the original make sense.  But, by golly, they took a swing and mostly made it work, and it was coherent (if still bonkers) and looked great.

Maquia: Weaving Lives Together and Tearing Them Apart

b Maquia is a gorgeous fantasy film with beautiful music (from Kenji Kawai) and a story that feels different from any movie I've ever seen.  It's about family, parental bonds, and love of many kinds.  It's about jealousy, desire, and conflict on the individual and the national level.  I have seen it twice now, and I was glad the second time was at home because I cried just as much, if not more, the second time, and it was nice to have a sufficient stock of tissues and no one looking at me sideways wondering if I was okay. 

The writer and director Mari Okada also created O Maidens in Your Savage Season, a hilarious and painful teenage sex comedy series starring females, that deals with themes of desire and awkwardness among adolescents and Anohana, a magical realism / fantasy story that deals with themes of nostalgia, deep childhood tragedy, and growing up and growing apart.  Some of these themes also show up in this story of a Maquia, girl from a race of nearly ageless people cast adrift into the mortal world who chooses to save the life of a mortal infant and be his mother and thereby bind herself to the mortal world despite all the teachings of her people forbidding such encounters.  We get to watch her son grow against the backdrop of a changing world while she remains basically unchanged physically.  It's an emotional roller coaster

 

It's heartbreaking from beginning to end because any story of mortal and immortal on the same road  for a time is going to end the same way if there is any love involved.  And it's relatable to any parent, I suspect, because even though raising a child in the real world is not exactly this fraught, most parents know about the separation that happens as children grow up and become independent and make their own choices and go their own way.  Parents who have children who are adopted might find special a special connection to the rejection of the bond to the person who raised the child because they are not related by blood.  I fit in none of those categories, and I was fascinated and engaged by the situation and how it played out anyway.

 

If you like good fantasy with well-wrought worlds and enjoy making an emotional connection to the films you watch, you might really enjoy Maquia.  Make sure to have some tissues on hand.

In This Corner of the World

o I really wanted to like this movie more than I actually did.  It was a good and worthwhile film to see, a beautiful series of portraits, and I definitely cried and reacted in the right places.  It was long and sad and exhausting (like the times it was evoking), but I suspect I will like the graphic novel it was based on more because the episodic nature of the narrative tends to work better for me in that format. 

War is always tragic and filled with senselessness for everyone involved, no matter what corner of the world they're in, and my sense of that truth was palpable by the end of this film.  And still we go on, sometimes finding beauty where we don't expect it.

Good exercise manga

I can't tell if it's a good exercise manga or a bad one, but Genshiken Second Season sometimes leaves me giggling breathlessly at the tremendously awkward situation this cast of misfits find themselves in.  This is unlikely to be actually dangerous on the stair climber unless it makes me laugh hard enough to have an asthma attack, but my manga-reading antics on the exercise equipment have made other folks in the gym crack a smile.  If any of them ever ask me why I'm laughing, I have no idea what I could possibly say, and it's actually more likely that they'll act there because it's hard to keep up your air of reserve when you are leaning drunkenly on the handrails to keep you upright during a sudden fit of laughter when you are already out of breath.

I highly recommend manga as an exercise reward.  Some series are better than others.  Obviously action and shonen titles are good to get the blood pumping, but comedy is a good choice, too.  ANYTHING will work, honestly.  If you find a series you like and want to read but ONLY let yourself read on the stair climber or exercise bike (works with anime, too, if you can do all of this at home), you'll have a REALLY good reason to keep up with your fitness.  You will form a positive association between exercise and treats!  (Granted, you also need a certain amount of self-discipline/control and a regular exercise schedule to make this work.)

Give it a try!  Together, we can help establish manga and anime as part of a healthy lifestyle!


Some fun exercise manga:

• Red River
• From Far Away
• Dengeki Daisy
• Love*Com
• Crimson Hero
• Kaze Hikaru
• Shaman King
• Naruto
• Blue Exorcist
• One Piece
• D.Gray-Man
• HunterXHunter
• YuYu Hakusho
• Bleach
• Hikaru No Go
• Your suggestion here . . .

TurnA Gundam (naked)

I just finished Gundam Unicorn (dang it, so was it really Char still somehow, or was he just possessed or something ARRRGGHH!?!), and now I am watching TurnA Gundam.  It's giving me a bit of mental whiplash, I must say.  The best comparison I can make is that, of all the shows I've watched, it reminds me most of Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water.  I think it's that weird mix of kid show with some mature themes and coming-of-age crap and  old school animation and character designs.

TurnA took place during what I think of as Tomino's Naked Period, when all of his shows had tons of nudity out of nowhere (OP and ET, in the show itself).  It's ridiculous, actually.  Maybe it's supposed to show that they are really innocent / children and whatnot, but it's just so constant and out of nowhere that I just can't help but find it funny.  It may be fueled by residual sniggering about "Full Frontal" from Gundam Unicorn. (I have been watching Tomino and Gundam for a long time, so I am used to bizarre character names in theory but apparently not totally immune.)

Maybe it's just that I'm really mentally 8, but I find myself giggling and looking away from the screen and begging the characters to just put something on (which is a bad idea when you're watching subtitled-only anime because you miss plot due to excessive[ly hilarious and seemingly pointless] nekkidness).

I'm about to watch the next episode, so maybe it will be a vital plot point that he is naked when he climbs into the cockpit of the Gundam, but right now, I'm pretty much just shaking my head and snorting with laughter.

Gundam Full Frontal Facepalm

Oh, Gundam, honey, you know I love you.  We've been together for 19 years at this point.  This is an eyes-open sort of relationship, meaning that I know that sometimes you go too far, but I must admit I totally forgot about the name of a major antagonist in Gundam UC being Full Frontal.  I nearly fell off the exercise bike when you brought it to my attention again.    I know it's supposed to be sort of ironic because he's a twisty, liar character, the opposite of a full frontal attack, but I have to admit that every time someone mentions him by name, I fill in the non-existent blank with "nudity."  It's not you, it's me, obviously.  But it's also you.

Buying a house pretty much eats your life - and your online anime and manga presence

Wow.  Looking at the barren wasteland of this blog for the past year, one might think I had dropped out of fandom.  I haven't.  I was just searching for and buying a home.  Lest you think home-improvement has crowded out my love for manga and anime, my house has a library for all my manga and anime.  An entire room just for that.  And I may have recently bought something at Aldi's because it appeared in a CLAMP manga, and I sort of never expected it to show up in Aldi's. 

I may try to do some updating in the way that Connie over at Slightly Biased Manga did, where I look back through the year and pick some of my favorites and then make up award categories for them because it's fun and I want to have at least some record of what I thought was outstanding.  Then I may be moving to a monthly format for something I have been brewing for a while to review series that, for one reason or another, are unfinished.  If I can nail the idea and format down, I may even pitch it to the folks at Manga Bookshelf. 

And I may start forcing myself to take some more time to catch up on what's current in online fandom writing.  I can't catch up on what I missed, but I can at least try to get back into the game and figure out what writing styles are appealing to my target audience these days.  See you in a bit. : )

Quotes of December 2013, Part 4

Jason Thompson on Banana Fish: "Yes, Banana Fish slips into the manga bad habit of having the side characters remind us how cool the main character he is.  OTOH, Akimi Yoshida gets a free pass because Ash really is that cool."

Connie C on Pretty Face: It turns out Rina has a long-lost twin sister named Yuna!  And Rina is so happy to have Yuna back!  And Rando can’t possibly explain what’s happened, and doesn’t have anyplace to go, so he feins amnesia and just goes along with it, living in the same house as his crush and pretending to be her twin sister.  He eventually finds a photo of himself, but when he realizes how crushed Rina would be to lose Yuna again, he decides to play along until he finds the real Yuna.  This is somehow simultaneously as creepy as it sounds and not nearly as creepy as it could be.. . . its ribaldry can be simultaneously entertaining as well as creepy.

Ash and Michelle Smith on Attack on Titan:
ASH: If Attack on Titan has one thing going for it, it’s the series’ intensity. And tragic deaths.
MICHELLE: I feel very wrong that “tragic deaths” has seriously made me consider Attack on Titan.
ANNA: I feel the same way. What is the ratio of tragic deaths to non-tragic deaths per volume?
MELINDA: I also would like to see some statistics on this. Yes.

Sean Gaffney on Are You Alice?: "Are You Alice? has a 2nd volume that may potentially have something comprehensible happen, which Vol. 1 lacked, in my opinion."

Movie Review: 'When the replicants learn the role they've been designed for, they do not rebel; they submit. This ostensible passivity may perplex some U.S. audiences even more than the humanoid plot twist. "It's not a very American theme, is it?" says Ishiguro. "It's antithetical to the American creed of how you should face setbacks — that if you fight back, love conquers all." No, it's more a Japanese creed, that accepting one's fate is a form of heroism.'

Shaenon K. Garrity on Phoenix: "Tezuka is getting into his groove here. All life on Earth is destroyed halfway through the story, and it just keeps going."

Quotes of December 2013, Part 3

Jason Thompson on Banana Fish: "When Ash has to kill people, he does: no Disney Villain Deaths here. ("What do you think I am? I'm a murderer, okay? I kill people!")

Melinda Beasi on Black Bird: 'I want to say “good riddance,” but… what will I have left to hate now? I feel bereft.'

Joseph Luster on Hare+Guu: "If the face of every moe character was merely a veil draped over a gaping, apocalyptic maw tunneling toward the infinite beyond, we'd all be living in Guu's surreal jungle, and we'd probably love every minute of it."

Sean Gaffney on Strobe Edge: "After the previous couple of volumes of Strobe Edge tried to hit maximum angstosity, this one seems to be more of a breather."

Jessi Silver: "[R]ealizing that bad anime exists and not every series is Cowboy Bebop-tier entertainment is just a part of being an anime fan past the honeymoon phase."

Jason Thompson on To Terra: 'The English edition's back cover copy reads "In space, no one can hear you cry," but don't worry; To Terra… has spaceships and rayguns, not just emo. In space, no one can hear you explode either.'

Quotes of December 2013, Part 2

Anna N on Red River:"Yuri and Kail are a sympathetic couple, even if some of their issues would be solved if they were only able to sit down and have an honest conversation about their feelings. Fending off witchy evil stepmothers, dodging kidnappings, and dealing with bronze age military tactics do take up quite a bit of time."

Joseph Luster on Hakkaider movie:  "Now that sounds like a fun, roaring rampage of bloody revenge for the whole family, right?"

Melinda Beasi while discussing Banana Fish: 'Also, just in terms of the value of “innocence”… I think there’s an aspect of innocence that is overrated. I think we all have to do some wrong in the world in order to truly understand what’s *wrong* about it, if that makes sense. For instance, I don’t think it’s possible to understand the the consequences of hurting someone unless we’ve actually experienced it for ourselves. I think perfect innocence also requires a level of ignorance that isn’t ultimately a good thing in the world. I know that nobody here is suggesting otherwise, but I think that’s important when we’re thinking about Eiji as a real person and not just as a symbol for something.'

Jason Thompson on To Terra: "Keiko Takemiya's To Terra… (1977-1980) is one of the classic shojo manga, except that it isn't shojo. It was published in Asahi Sonorama's Manga Shonen, which must have been a hell of a magazine, since it published both this and Takemiya's Andromeda Stories (1980-1982)."

Carl Kimlinger on Hyperdimensional Neptunia: "You can make a positive statement about literally anything if you throw in enough qualifiers. So it doesn't really mean anything when I say that Hyperdimension Neptunia is pretty good for a video game adaptation that has no decent characters and a surplus of molesting slime-dogs and lolicon tongue-monsters. But I really do mean it. Neptunia may be about the least promising series to ever be barfed out by the anime-gaming complex, but once it gets its legs under it, it's a surprisingly engaging little adventure. Pointless and unimaginative, sure, and probably artificially elevated by our septic expectations, but engaging nonetheless. Damn. There I go with the qualifiers again."

Quotes of December 2013, Part 1

Anna N on Red River: "While Yuri seems to have an unfortunate habit of getting kidnapped fairly often, she’s also extremely level-headed and pragmatic. Kail rescues her, but she also uses some quick thinking to rescue him a number of times."

Joseph Luster on Inazuman: "There's just as much imagination required of the viewer as there is exhibited, which is part of the fun. With the type of special effects employed for television, many managing to be both crude and ingenious, suspension of disbelief doesn't even begin to describe the experience. That should be a given, though, especially in situations where, for example, Goro outs a Neo-Human in disguise because he "has no shadow," when he clearly does. That's the beauty of it all, and everything is played out so matter-of-fact that you can't help but buy into the timeless fun on screen. "

Jason Thompson on Banana Fish: "But of course, concept is 5% and execution is 95%. Banana Fish has got the execution, and execution-style killings, too. "

Sean Gaffney on Vinland Saga: "This is not going to be a cheery romp – expect the majority of the cast to die – but it’s gripping stuff, and incredibly hard to put down. I really enjoyed Planetes, but you can see how Yukimura has evolved further here. The story carries you along effortlessly, makes you care about these people even as it then hurts them horribly, and is simply filled with badass men being badass. It was worth the long wait to get this."

Rebecca Silverman on the Daily Lives of High School Boys: "This theme continues successfully throughout the show, playing with the contradictions inherent in adolescence – the moments of maturity followed by the desire to do something truly stupid."

Carl Kimlinger: "GUNxSWORD ends well, seeding its final episodes with moments of honest excellence, plenty of Van screaming and chopping things up (it is what he does best)," . . . "Mind you, this unusually satisfying climax isn't the result of careful planning or the product of narrative focus and purpose. Rather, it's the result of very talented storytellers sifting instances of transcendental power from the detritus of a highly entertaining, but lethally uneven show . . ."

Quotes of November 2013, Part 9

Anna N on Red River: "The girl who is about to get stabbed on the cover of Red River is Yuri, a cheerful high school student who had just received her first kiss from her classmate Satoshi."

Lynzee Lamb on butlers: "Vanilla Ice (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure) Were the previous entries too pretty for you? The long-haired, muscular Vanilla serves Dio without question, even going so far as decapitating himself to prove his loyalty. He doesn't stay dead very long. Dio resurrects his faithful manservant as a unitard-wearing vampire. I never thought I'd be talking about merits of Vanilla Ice's good looks, but the character doesn't resemble his namesake."

Joseph Luster on Inazuman: "As Goro Watari, Kikaida star Ban Daisuke proves himself a simultaneously endearing and ass-kicking protagonist once again."

Jason Thompson on Banana Fish: "Picture Cipher crossed with Grand Theft Auto. Speedlines and sexual tension and angry bishonen, back before this sort of thing became overdone and jumped the shark, before Fake and Yellow and Togainu no Chi."

Theron Martin on Sunday Without God: "One thing that does not make it special is the deeply moe nature of its central heroine Ai. Her moe appeal is so cynically calculated – small, delicate body; tiny hands grasping a cute shovel; a cute, cosplayable outfit improbable for the setting in which she is raised – that it almost ends up being a detriment instead, as the cutesiness is so completely at odds with the vastly more serious nature of the setting. That this could certainly drive away those averse to moe content on an initial impression is a shame, as the series has so much potential to offer that it does not need to resort to such base appeals."
[This is also how I feel about Sora no Woto.]

Justin Sevakis: "Hi there! Thank you for writing into Answerman. Please read on as I crush your dreams!"

Quotes of November 2013, part 8

Sara K on The Celestial Zone: "In a world where gender justice was the default, it would not be remarkable if a fighting/action oriented comic book featured many female characters and consistently gave them as much substance as the male characters, where they feel like they are there for their own sake, not to accompany the male characters. We do not live in a world where gender justice is the default. Therefore it is remarkable that The Celestial Zone is a fighting/action oriented comic book with many female characters who feel like they are there for their own sake and not to accompany the male characters."

Bamboo Dong on Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars: "Everyone else does a reasonable job, though, and if you can turn off the little voice in your head that keep chiming in with, “Haha! Thanks Goofy!” you'll likely like the dub just fine."

Carl Kimlinger on Eastern Star: "After years of oddball licensing decisions and an increasingly ambitious spate of oddball anime releases they've become the go-to guys for old, forgotten, or plain weird and under-the-radar series. And bless them for it. Not because it's a kind thing to do for fans, especially the older ones—though it is—but because it has made this box set possible. Even if Discotek did nothing else, even if the rest of its catalog was garbage, even if it was run by Nazis, its existence would still be justified by the fact that it gave us Lovely Complex."

Jason Thompson on Kaoru Mori: "Kaoru Mori is such a good artist that I like to imagine that she'd drawn other historical-setting manga: how much better, say, Red River would be if it didn't look like each page had been whipped out in 15 minutes."

Carlo Santos: "After unearthing so many hidden treasures in the out-of-print/license-lapsed category, it's only right that I bring up certain things that deserve to stay out of print."

Lynzee Lamb on Black Butler: "Sebastian is the most handsome servant on the list, in my humble opinion, but his level of devotion is questionable since he's bound by a Faustian contract. In short, a demon butler can do almost anything a master wants but he's also after their immortal soul, which is sort of a downer."

Quotes of November 2013, Part 7

Luffy1545 in an Answerman column:
"
If I may throw out an outline for EVERY SINGLE EPISODE....
Pan yet another post-apocalyptic desert city. Pan slowly to Casshern. VERY slowly.
Casshern: I found a new city. Gosh, I wish I could remember who I am. That, and I hope that someone kills me once I find out. Oh wait, I'm immortal and can't die anyway. How tragic am I.
Random citizen-bots: Ruin ruin ruin ruin ruin.... we're all going to die, no hope left, blah blah blah. Isn't hope just grand? Citizens continue to mope for the next 20 minutes.
Bad robots: Look, you guys! It's Casshern! Apparently, if we eat him we can avoid ruin! Let's eat him!
Casshern: If that means you are going to kill me, then dig in, boys!
Robots attack Casshern. After a couple of punches to the face, his eyes glow some color, a mask appears and he mercilessly slaughters all the robots in question in a ten-second-long action sequence. If we are lucky. Casshern: Well, phooey. I guess I ruined all the robots who were trying to avoid ruin by ruining me.
Casshern turns and faces camera dead-on. Casshern: See kids? IRONY! BEAUTIFUL, TRAGIC IRONY!!!
Only a lot less-exciting.
"

Sean Gaffney: "These titles are classic modern CLAMP, being entertaining, filled with great art, and highly frustrating on a very personal level. "

Rebecca Silverman on Uta no Prince Sama 2: "Simply put it is just another reverse harem show which contrives to get one normal girl in a living situation with as many hot guys as possible so that at least one of them can fall in love with her. The gimmick here is that they are all aspiring idol singers, so each episode contains at least one song with mildly embarrassing lyrics."

"UtaPri 2 retains its manically bright color scheme where everyone looks as if a sugared-up toddler chose their coloring. Most baffling remains Haruka's terrifying eyes – Mountain Dew yellow with a laser green pupil. What the designer was thinking when this was chosen is anybody's guess, but it is a definite sour note, even among the deranged choices for other characters' hair, eyes, and clothes."

"The plot is lacking, the color scheme is insane, and there's enough cheese here to make nachos for a hundred, but despite all of that it is still an awful lot of fun."

Derek in an Answerman column: 'In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice I've been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like revisiting anime,” he told me “just remember that you used to be young and dumb.”'

Quotes of November 2013, part 6

Sara K on The Lady Hermit: "I do not like being told that romantic relationships are so special that it’s only natural that any other relationships – no matter how deep – can be dumped for romance – regardless of how shallow the romance is. If individual people want to only value romantic relationships, that’s their business (though I think they should inform their friends, families, and colleagues that they do not value non-romantic relationships). But to see such a wonderful teacher-student relationship disrupted over such an empty romance is heartbreaking."

Bamboo Dong on Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars: "As far as alien fights go, Shingu has some of the dullest. Watching Nayuta-as-Shingu fight monsters is like watching Sock 'Em Boppers in slow motion, and if what you're looking for is crazy, intense fight scenes, this show is not for you."

Melinda Beasi on Loveless: "Whether deliberately or not, physical abuse of all kinds is often romanticized in manga—especially BL manga and other genres for girls—and for that reason, I’m generally leery of it as a plot point. Yun Kouga, however, manages to portray this abuse and even give us a taste of the mother’s own internal conflict over it, without romanticizing Ritsuka’s suffering or sympathizing with his abuser."

"We are witness to his mother’s turmoil and her declining mental condition, but we’re not asked to excuse her or to identify with her own suffering. Instead, the focus is on Ritsuka’s desperate refusal to blame her and his determination to maintain her love, through the eyes of Soubi, who finds it all pretty horrifying."  [And like he has room to talk . . .]

"Of course, Soubi has his own issues, and Kouga doesn’t let him off the hook for them, even here, betraying his secret desire to see Ritsuka cry in the midst of it all."

SEAN: Oh Dear Lord. Look at the cover for Hide & Seek. Have you seen two people you want to punch in the face more than these two? :) This is by the author of Bond of Dreams, Bond of Love, which if I recall also had ridiculous covers. Recommended for those who enjoy large yaoi hands.

Brian Hanson: "Let's just say that Company A licenses Show B, but only the first season, and you REALLY LOVE Show B and want to support it so the second season can come stateside. In that case, buy the hell out of that first print run of Show B and love it and cherish it and sing it sweet songs at night, because the only good that waiting will do in that case is to show Company A how unenthusiastic the fans for Show B are.

"And if you multiply Show B by the cosine of Company A, and the sun is directly facing due East and it's 6:00 on a Tuesday, what will the temperature be in Prague? Show your work."

Quotes of November 2013, Part 5

Sara K on The Lady Hermit: "I will admit that, as an aromantic, I am particularly sensistive to this sort of thing . . .. I have nothing against romance – I even like well-written fictional romances – but to me, full-blown romance is like sisterhood – very common, frequently interesting, but something I will probably never personally experience. That’s okay, because sibling relationships and romantic relationships are not the only kinds of relationships which can be psychologically fulfilling."

Paul Thomas Chapman on Orochi The Eight-Headed Dragon: "After a brief invocation involving a double-decker UFO, the movie opens with a sinister minister tossing a baby off of a cliff. Born under inauspicious circumstances, Prince Ousu, the youngest brother among a set of twins born to the Emperor of Yamato, has been sentenced to execution. Luckily for young Prince Ousu, Amaterasu Omikami, the goddess of the sun, intervenes to save his life. Saving plummeting babies in this case requires the deployment of a robot phoenix. Prince Ousu is raised by his aunt, a priestess of Amaterasu. He grows to manhood and discovers his heroic destiny, which allows him to shoot green lasers from his eyes. Prince Ousu takes the name of Yamato Takeru and performs great deeds such as thwarting the evil plans of Tsukiyomi, the god of the moon, and slaying the titular eight-headed dragon. I haven’t even mentioned the giant robot yet."

Bamboo Dong on Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars: "The series is set in 2070, but you wouldn't be able to tell from just looking at it. People still drive cars, people still can't teleport, and we still don't have computers implanted in our brains. Maybe in that respect, it's the most truthfully mundane vision of the future ever envisioned; if I had to put hard cash on it, I bet 2070 isn't that different from 2013 after all."

Lynzee Lamb on the villains in GaoGaiGer: "Their goal is to absorb all of humanity and are led by four (menacing?) leaders named after Italian food and dancing."

Melinda Beasi on Loveless: "Yun Kouga’s greatest strength as a storyteller, in my opinion, is her ability to delve deep into her characters’ weakest, messiest personality traits and present them honestly and without apology. As I discussed at length in episode six of My Week in Manga, it’s clear that she not only loves her characters despite their flaws, but often because of them, and since I also tend to find people’s flaws to be as beautiful or even more beautiful than their strengths (both in fiction and in real life), this is an approach that works especially well for me."

Sean Gaffney and Michelle Smith on Tokyo Babylon:
"SEAN:  I didn’t buy this one, so will forever imagine it ends with a big picnic, and possibly puppies and unicorns. :)
MICHELLE: I will allow you to have your dreams.
MELINDA: I’m sure everyone can guess how eagerly I’ve been anticipating this release. I was over the moon for Dark Horse’s first omnibus, and since I actually like to be beaten into a sobbing pulp by my fiction, I’m willing to move forward without those puppies and unicorns.

Quotes of November, Part 4

Sara K on The Lady Hermit: "First of all, I don’t understand why the female characters are so attracted to him. There is nothing in the script which explains this, so the only explanation I can think of is that he is physically handsome, in which case they should have cast a better-looking actor."

Sean Gaffney on Attack on Titan: "Its popularity is very much on the rise, helped by the release of the anime, but also by its compelling plot and fantastic characterization, which has been helped by greatly improved facial art. The art is still the weak point, but it’s not enough to make this any less gripping."

Lissa Pattillo on Dawn of the Arcana: "The volume doesn’t spend much time with him, which really works to its advantage. I hated Caesar when he was a jerky, abusive prick but it did make him a lot more interesting."

Kate O'Neil on Loveless: "These are the two volumes where I feel the series has finally found it’s footing and it’s purpose, and where I finally understood that everyone is broken."

Michelle On Gundam: The Origin: "The artwork really sells it for me, and I was especially impressed that the space battles are drawn with such clarity. True, I did weary of the space battles by the end, but at least they weren’t incomprehensible, as could easily have been the case."

Ash on Wandering Son: "Friendships are tested and strained as the characters begin to try to figure out just who means what to whom. It's heartbreaking to see those friendships, which are so incredibly important to them, falling apart as jealousy and sheer awkwardness put them in jeopardy."