#my only rule is still doremy fans only

[cogpulse]

OK I’ll make an actual pinned post.

I am Vick, I am an adult

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Peace n louve

[the-sinful-voice-witch]

Since according to one of our Cartoon Network gods 🥰 Craig McCracken the Powerpuff girls will be back in a proper reboot❤️‍🔥 I want to review another version of them... No, not the 2016 vomitive bullshit I hope soon to be lost media because nobody should acknowledge the existence of such an disgusting garbage tarnishing our childhood🤢🤮, that abomination doesn't deserve the time of anyone🤬... (I apologize to those who liked it but... I stand by what I said😖)

This is about one adaptation that though it was cut short due to the lack of success in audience but that it wasn't that bad, is still watchable and enjoyable and it has actual funny moments but in the end it was too far away from being a Worthy adaptation of the PPG, I'm talking about:

Powerpuff girls Z!!

We have to keep in mind the show was adapted to japanese audience and has the concept of ✨"Magical girls"✨ so they made lots of changes: the very first one I strongly disliked was that they weren't sisters and they weren't professor Utonium daughters, that alone made me irrationally hate the characters that were the girls individual families (yeah you're going to notice how salty I am about this xD). With that, one of the things that fans loved the most that is the very loving, funny and cute father-daughters interactions disappeared, seriously the girls still hang out a lot in his laboratory but it's not the same as the beautiful moments we got in the original show like how he plays tickles with them, how he kisses their heads to wake them up in the morning... 😔

And another thing is the girls personalities and dynamic between them and don't get me wrong it's not like they are unbearable or awful they are entertaining but in my eyes is just that they aren't "they"... And specially now that I re watched some things to make this review because... I realized that Z Buttercup and Z Bubbles have a bunch of fucking shippeable interactions in the show😨😨. If you were too young last time you watched it just search on YouTube a video of their interactions and you'll see! I'm not that twisted I swear!! Sometimes they literally look Like a married couple and Z Blossom behaves as if she was their daughter, Z Bubbles was even blushing in the first episode when she recognizes Z Buttercup from their School and saying she looked up to her and in general I found their interactions too shippeable and yeah in this universe they aren't sisters but is still incestuous as hell in my head 😖🤯

So individually speaking: Design and personally

For design in general I dislike that the style is not quite unique as I would have liked it, this character design resembles too much to Magical Doremi and something that really bugs me is that the PPG here are in an age between 13 and 14 so they are teens... Yet they made them look like little kids, you can see in the show that they are older than that only when they stand next to a younger character like Ken and like I said they resemble too much to the Magical Doremi girls and those girls were only 8 years old, there's a big gap between 8 and 13/14 you know? Specially for girls. This PPG don't have a single trace of "womanhood" In the shape of their bodies. I would have liked something more like Tokyo Mew Mew style since they were teenagers with (no sexualized) hips, bust and breast shape but the PPG have completely Flat undeveloped child bodies that don't correspond to their ages. I mean if you wanted little kids OK, the original where basically toddlers but if they are teens they are teens! Make some distinction between a teen and a 8 years old other than being tall please.

Z Blossom: Her clothes are nice and I think it fits her well, here she became a genki dumbass girl because they targeted her as the main protagonist (and is apparently a magical girl rule to make the main character a genki mostly dumbass girl) which is one of the things I dislike the most, with fanfics too, I hate when they are too much Blossom-centric if is a general story because to me the others are just as relevant and Blossom ends up being the main focus because she is the leader and is in the center and is seen as a big sister (which she isn't because they all popped alive at the same time) but well, even if it is mentioned several times at the beginning the show actually gives the three the same importance and as the original show sometimes there are episodes where one of them is the main focus so... Half-Ok. Genki is a Japanese term for very energetic characters and that's another problem, it feels like she just sucked all Buttercup's and Bubbles' energy and looks too chaotic hyperactive, her intelligence and liking for studying is nowhere to be seen, only you see traces of her being smart when she thinks of a plan. Also she is a sugar addict (that could be the hyperactivity explanation 😐) and is really thirsty for boys, ok look, is not that I think Blossom is out of character for being thirsty over a boy is just that she wouldn't be thirsty over EVERY cute boy she sees (but curiously not the RRB 🙃) . The original Blossom is a responsable (most of the time) dorky bookworm who likes to learn things and cares about her looks and brags a lot and...this one brags a lot too I guess? But even if Blossom had her not very graceful moments she wasn't as chaotic dumb as Z Blossom,🤦‍♀️. She also doesn't look popular in her school unlike the other too, I kind of feel bad about it, I always dislike when she is put in fanfics as the most or only popular of the three for a reason that usually is that she is a super hottie while her sisters aren't 🤨(but almost always with a repellent bitter personality 😑 that makes me question that popularity) but to no making her popular at all? Come on can we just agree that the 3 of them are meant to have their own fans to their different personalities and looks please? Smart, kawaii and sporty are popular in Japanese anime schools. And another annoying thing is that she also has an annoying bratty mean little sister nobody asked for😬😒 nothing like her original awesome actual sisters 😤, Blossom deserves better. Well at least she is cute and fun but is not very accurate to Blossom.

Z Bubbles: Ok Bubbles is my favorite but Z Bubbles lacks of some Bubbles things, I mean is totally fitting that she would be popular with boys but this way is not how I imagined it: a enthusiastic Kawaii girl that could be scouted to be an idol, instead she is a fine lady like mannered elegant girl (because of a strict traditional grandma nobody asked for 😑) that likes fashion, (i mean it makes sense for both her and Blossom to like that so.. That's ok) but my problem is that even if she is still a bit of an airhead she is way too calm and collected! TOO CALM!! Z Blossom absorbed practically all the usual enthusiasm and energy she should have and also given that her attribute is the "sugar" It would have been more fitting for her to be the sweet addict don't you think? Where is your sugar girl!?😫😫 Her civil clothes... one looks like an uniform and its a bit weird because in their school nobody wears uniform which is unusual in Japanese schools, to be honest I would have liked to see all the three of them in uniforms her other outfit is ok. Her hairstyle is a bit too complicated, I mean I don't dig in those loop style piggy tails I'll rather have normal piggy tails for her (she has to sleep with some balls with her hair around them to keep the shape, looks uncomfortable as fuck). It feels to me like a half baked Bubbles, almost but not quite there.

Z Buttercup: Thought her personality is decently similar to the original: tough, not as polite as the other two, sports star(she has fangirls 😆 which I think fits perfectly in her anime persona) there's something that rubs me the wrong way. In anime there are different kinds of tomboy characters (I kinda want to make a post about about it) the type used for Z Buttercup is not the one I think fits better, is way too overly against anything "girl related" to the point she'll despise the idea to spend time with other girls or even being acknowledged as one because being girly is "uncool" but is not like you see her with boys either unlike the original and Mitch. The original Buttercup defended womanhood and the right to be rough and tough and to like things usually "meant for boys" without being any less of a girl and she never disliked being a girl or tried to physically hide it, I totally think she would be offended if someone mistook her as a boy and would get a punch 👊😂. I don't think she hating dresses and skirts in general is accurate, what I think she hates are clothes with a girly or flashy style, she would be just fine with a simple denim skirt but she would absolutely hate something like a tulle skirt, in the original she is ok with her simple dress but she was upset with the pompous party dress she used in one episode.

A dress and a shirt don't have to be always too femenine and I think the magical dress isn't exactly a style she should hate that much because is not that girly, it has a football jacket 🤷‍♀️and fingerless black globes. To be honest she looks like a crossdressed boy, let me explain 🙌: her civil clothes are 100℅ masculine that mixed with her mannerisms, her Japanese name used for boys too, her voice with the tone used to play little boys roles and her spiked up hairstyle (that is the style Butch should have had) and as I mentioned before her completely flat without a trace of womanhood body makes her look like a crossdressed boy, in fact when Butch stole her dress in that episode he looked more like a girl than her because of his hair and feline eyes 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️, why can't she even have eye lashes if the other two have eye lashes? I want the 3 to have the same eyes style 😭. I have to mention that there was a make over episode where she gets a more femenine look to please a guy 🙂🙃 Emmm ok, that dress she wore was... Not so bad but just as she would hate tulle, frills are also not an option 🙅‍♀️ but I was very pleased with how they re styled her hair, it was almost like the original 💚. So the tomboy type I like for her is the girl with the boyish mannerisms who likes tough sports and has short hair but not necessarily boy style (like a Bob) and wears sporty style clothes that ok can be pants but also can perfectly wear a skirt like denim, or leather fabric or a Hoody dress and she could even wear make up like a simple eyeliner, that's it. Anyway according to the show she is the way she is because of her dad and 2 brothers 🙄thay nobody asked for (By the way I hate Z Buttercup pijama, looks like a Harlequin disguise 🙅‍♀️ like she is disguised as "Z Him")

Magical Dress design and Tranformation sequence:

Oh girl, here I go... I'm going to be mean... After seeing some designs in the artwork I feel robbed. I FEEL ROBBED!! Look!! LOOK!! 😤😤

I can't Fuckign believe out of all THIS☝☝☝ they went with that plain flavorless boring dress with a short sleeves football jacket?(why the fuck buttercup's jacket is yellow? I don't care buttercups are yellow, I didn't like it🙃) ROBBED WE WERE ROBBED!! And the transformation sequence was... MEH, not very superhero fitting, again they copied magical Doremi transformation style 🙄🙄 the only thing I rescue is that moment when Z Buttercup gets the skirt because her face and how she moves her legs is hilarious but really the animation is slacking in general, they should have been put more effort in the transformation sequence and also the weapons... sorry but magical girl or not I find insulting that the power puff girls needed weapons and a belt to transform NOPE, sorry Blossom for Ladybug kinda worked but you a yoyo?😕 Bubbles used a giant bubble blower? Ja. ja. hilarious.😐 I would have liked it better if she blew the bubbles directly from her mouth or her hand making a circle👌and Buttercup using the only thing that is an actual weapon, a giant hammer like Amy rose? Also Fucking yellow like the ugly football jacket? I just don't like it yellow, I don't care buttercups are yellow ok 😂 but honestly Buttercup deserves boxing globes because I rather have her punching instead of smashing like girl you're more of a Knuckles Girl type not an Amy Rose girl type... That's more like Blossom or Bubbles.

Secondary Characters:

Mayor: I'm disappointed he isn't bald and doesn't use a little hat... Was it so hard to give him a Chibi form? Something like Iruma-Kun's demon grandpa. Actually we were robbed again! One of his previous design had a more accurate design as the original and it was adorable and funnier! This one has such a BORING design... Like a background character... Mayor should stand out more!!

Miss Bellum: first of all... Why the hell is she blonde? Nop this is unforgivable, she is a REDHEAD, yeah yeah you kept the gorgeous body and the face hidden joke but she isn't blonde! 😑 also she doesn't have as much presence as her original version which was a role model even more than miss Keane for the girls to look up to but well she is still there I guess. Poor Miss bellum, here Fuzzy tried to pull a Browser with her 😂😂 but this isn't as funny as when he wanted to do that with the professor in the original show.

Miss Keane: nothing much to say in general, her design is pretty good for an anime version of her but unfortunately see isn't much relevant in the show.

Professor Utonium: they wronged you so much professor...😤😤 Instead of being the father of 3 super awesome super powerful girls you are stuck with a unoriginal tiny version of you of a son taking all the screen time you should have 😭😭😭 also he wasn't even the one who accidentally creates something, in this case the chemical Z, that credit was for a fucking robot dog!!! But at least he actually has a wife 😂😂 but he never sees her... 🤪. You know what is ok, if his screen time is not him being a dad with the girls I don't want it anyway 😒.

Ken and the robot dog: Out of the principal four protagonists the girls and the professor individual families Ken is the one I wrinkle my nose the most when he shows up, like who the fuck needed a junior Utonium playing son? NOBODY ASKED for this character and didn't make things more interesting and on top of that he has more screen time than the professor 😒😒, I guess is because in magical girl animes the adults barely have important roles... So we better put a random kid just because 🙄🙄. And the robot dog who talks I suppose is the anime version of talking dog but downgraded, because talking dog was a Fucking real dog DUH! Nobody cares about this robot, is so irrelevant I barely remember anything about him just that they tried to make a emotional scene with him at the end of the series. And my greatest resentment against Ken... He actually has a mom😒, of course since you didn't pop out of a concoction but you popped out of an actual woman but still... The actual daughters of the professor never got a mommy, you know what? It's ok they had miss Bellum 🖕🖕, and I'm not gonna hate the mom because she has the decency of only show up in one episode and didn't took screen time from the professor 😤 uff I'm way too salty about this...

Villains: (note, I'm going to complain a lot about how the colors aren't bright 😅)

Mojo Jojo: Why must you make a mockery of a villain that had such a great origin story... This one is too silly, he lacks of aggressiveness. Silly as mojo might be, this one is right away a pushover and is insulting! Mojo was very important in the original show and... This one looks like the principal villain but... No... His personality just won't do... Also why is he so tall? And I don't like his green! His green was brighter!! You know like ☢️ radioactive

Him: Excuse me but... He is a drag queen not a Fucking son of a Harlequin clown, he doesn't even look that demonlike, well yes, he looks like a possessed cringy clown doll... But uff I miss his bright color palette, he needs more RED!! Anyway he was the source of the black energy that created all the villains, as the lore of the show that wasn't that bad, keeping aside his downgraded looks.

Fuzzy: given the scenario I suppose he is pretty accurate, again with his color palette dulled, but he pretty much was dececently similar.

Princess: I know her name is princess but... What the fuck with those clothes? They took it too seriously, she is a rich mean girl, kinda like a bee queen... She should be more stylish, not a girl disguised as a tacky medieval princess, not even the original one who was 5 did that with her civil clothes and I hated her hairstyle when she goes villain mode😑. Her personality is... Half baked, she is still spoiled, nasty and mean but like not as mean as the original and well actually I do like when sometimes she wasn't bad but in general not the anime version of princess I would have liked. Also what did I say about please make a distinction between a teen body and a little kid body? 🙄 he looks even younger than the PPG and she is the same age!!

Sedusa: WHAT were they THINKING with that DESIGN?? Yeah sedusa had big eyes and a big head and didn't have a nose BUT THAT WAS IN THE CARTOONISH version!! She is supposed to be a extremely attractive woman not a fucking monster 😂😂 she is so out of the place with the style of the other characters! Also she is actually a normal girl that turns into this thing they called Medusa when she puts on lipstick!!😨Was it so hard to hit with the black ray an attractive thief woman so she gets magic hair?🤨🤨 And seriously, her body is ridiculous in this anime style, no even miss Bellum was that exaggerated

Gangreen gang: excuse but again, isn't anime style supposed to make characters more good looking? How the fuck they managed to make them uglier? Again with the wrong green color! but seriously what are those designs?! Is like they couldn't decide between the American cartoon and the anime style ☹️☹️... And they changed the gender of one of the members I HATE THAT. Oh look for Arturito there was a Chibi version unlike with the mayor 🙄.

Ameba boys:......i don't really know what to say about them... So... Meh? 😑🤦‍♀️ yeah that will be enough and one of them is a girl now. I could live without the original ones too to be honest.

Rowdyruff Boys: My heart is completely broken. 💔 Why? Why, why? Just WHY?? 😭😭😭 in this show I couldn't ship them with the girls!!! Because this time the boys are basically Mojo and the girls sons!! 😭 you don't know what I'm talking about? In this version the boys were made with Mojo's arm pit hair, his DNA and Blossoms saliva, Bubbles ear wax and Buttercup's foot sweat 😵😵 so their DNA, just like children are made from mommy and daddy DNA 🙈🙈😭😭😭 each boy is basically each girl son WITH MOJO 😭😭😭. I'm not going to bother to review the three of them separately because they have exactly the SAME personality🤦‍♀️, I like their outfits better than the girl's outfits thought Butch face and hair design is just... 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ emo bangs? SERIOUSLY? I want the Vegeta hair back thank you😤😒 Also I resent with all my soul that they got to be brothers while the girls couldn't be sisters 🤬🤬 and I can't believe how much of a bad joke they are compared to the originals, hello? The originals were intimidating characters that were pretty much equal to the girls in battle and they were dangerous thugs, here they are just 3 gross kids that fight throwing saliva, ear wax and sweaty socks 💔🤦‍♀️ they wronged you so much my boys and they took away my shipping energy by making it incestuous 🥲🥲

Others:

Duchess: well look at that, the 2016 abomination wasn't the only PPG adaptación that utterly disrespected the fourth Puff in an insulting way... She shouldn't exist to begin with, she was not only a wannabe Bunny but she also stole Princess original role: a rich attention seeker bitch who buys a supersuit more stylish than the PPG dresses, wanting to be a 4 PPG and also wants them to look bad... What kind of bullshit is this?? What she was is what princess should have been in the first place, and they dared to put Bunny's color theme, she even has the same hair color 🤬 and FUCK I hate how much I like her super outfit 1000 times more than the PPG outfits 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️. They wasted the chance to make an emotional episode using Bunny's lore. Maybe a girl in a wheelchair or another disability (since Bunny represented disabled people) that gets saved by the girls and wished to have the same powers and return the favor and she gets them in a accident, then saves the girls and loses her powers and then moves away from the city after saying goodbye (so that things doesn't end up as tragic as the original but still ends emotional) see? Something this simple would have been more respectful towards Bunny than this unnecessary bullshit of a character.

Cody: There's a few original villains of the show that I don't care about but I'm gonna talk about this one because of his relationship with Bubbles. This character basically is a hospitalized boy who was Bubbles childhood friend and first love, he gets hit by a dark ray and turns into a beast, so we could have a "beauty and the beast" With Bubbles. I just find curious that his design could be considered another version of anime style Boomer, his hairstyle is similar and he has darker blond hair and darker blue eyes and I wonder... I have the Headcanon that the creator of this character was a boomubbles fan that was as frustrated as me that the rrbxppg weren't shippeable here so they made a character who looks like boomer to make a love story with Bubbles 😂😂😂 what do you think?

Well in general I believe that this show was watchable and entertaining but as anime is not a very remarkable one, it doesn't have a particularly good animation (is a bit sloppy) or good script and definitely I don't think it does justice as an anime adaptation of another show like PPG.

Jeez... I think I roasted it too much 😶😶, I know that normally I talk about why I love things but sometimes a girl has to vent 😅👉👈, I apologize to those who loved this show 🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️ sorry 😅😅

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: The 6 Best Books On The History Of Manga And Anime

  Say you’re a fan of anime and manga who’s looking to learn more about history or craft. Where do you begin? There’s whatever insight you can glean from the work itself, of course. There’s also a good amount of information available online, from animation blogs to translated manga interviews to personal pieces. But when all else fails, turn to the library. Here are some excellent nonfiction books on the manga and anime industry that I’d recommend to just about anybody. I’ve also read at least sections of every book on this list, so you have my guarantee of their quality!

  Image via Penguin Random House

  Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World reaches beyond manga and anime to encompass Japanese pop culture post World War II. But there are plenty of stories in here that fans of anime and manga might find fascinating: 

  The toy car that inspired top developers at Nintendo

How the karaoke machine led directly to idol culture, as music producers sought to produce music that ordinary people could sing

The manga-obsessed student radicals of the 1960s, many of whom came to work on later anime projects like Mobile Suit Gundam

  Author Matt Alt’s choice of interviewees and attention to detail marks Pure Invention as one of the best of its kind. If you’re a curious reader looking for an accessible (and recent!) popular history, I highly recommend this book.

  Image via Bloomsbury.com

  For fans abroad, the history of anime begins with the airing of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy on Japanese television. But this wasn’t enough for Jonathan Clements, a long-time anime and manga scholar who continues to blog on Schoolgirl Milky Crisis. His academic text Anime: A History begins in the 1910s, 50 years before the airing of Astro Boy, in fact, Astro Boy only appears halfway through the book! Clements is concerned not just with the medium of anime itself, but the cultural traditions, historical events, and individual people that brought it into existence.

  One of the greatest obstacles standing in the way of English-speakers seeking to understand the history of Japanese animation — besides, as Clements notes, the haphazard nature of even those resources available in Japanese — is the language barrier. Online writers at sites such as Sakugablog have done fantastic work in making some of this information accessible, but those same writers would be the first to acknowledge there’s still plenty we don’t know. Anime: A History synthesizes countless Japanese-language source texts and interviews about the history of animation, yet Clements is careful to acknowledge that the testimony of individual actors within the industry must be weighed against both their own agenda and the words of others. While Anime: A History would be a valuable text if it was nothing more than a synthesis, Clements’ ambition to build a coherent history of Japanese animation from a production standpoint that thoroughly examines its subject matter and context from all angles is what makes it essential.

  Image via Stone Bridge Press

  Jonathan Clements collaborated with equally prestigious anime and manga scholar Helen McCarthy to produce The Anime Encyclopedia, whose third edition was published in 2015. It’s an enormous text (over a thousand pages long!) that covers everything from summaries and critical appraisals of popular titles to specific themes and tropes to nuggets of cultural history and influence. If I were to criticize this project, I would say that recent anime writing outside the United States exposes The Anime Encyclopedia’s biases; for instance, the magical girl series Ojamajo Doremi only merits a few paragraphs despite its status as a beloved children's series in Japan. Keeping that in mind, it’s an impressive resource that is great fun to browse (and to disagree with)!

  Image via j-novel club

  Mari Okada is one of the most prolific and influential anime writers of the past decade. She’s worked on adaptations, original projects like Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day and KIZNAIVER, and even directed her own films. In her memoir, From Truant to Anime Screenwriter, Okada frankly discusses her personal struggles: her fraught relationship with her mother, her years as a young student when she couldn’t bring herself to attend class, and the process by which she gathered her courage to touch upon her personal experiences in her work. There are chapters of this book that wouldn’t be out of place in an Okada-written drama, which I suppose is the point.

  Okada’s memoir is in part a testament to her work ethic and her willingness to tackle any challenge no matter how difficult or annoying it is. But it’s also a rosetta stone for her work: not just in how it overlaps with her personal life, but in its emphasis on the importance of communication despite how difficult it can be to voice even simple feelings. Whether you’re a fan of Okada or not, I found this to be a great resource for writers nervous of the fraught boundary between fiction and personal experience or for readers who want to know what makes Okada’s work so distinct.

  Image via Stone Bridge Press

  Frederik Schodt is one of manga criticism’s greatest elder statesmen. His book Manga! Manga! put him on the map, not only for its editorial content but also for its translated excerpts of Japanese comics — including what would be, for years, the only available English chapter of Rose of Versailles! Yet that book was published in 1983 and sections can’t help but read as dated now. So I’m recommending the sequel here, 1996’s Dreamland Japan. 

  Like its predecessor, much of Dreamland Japan is devoted to detailing Schodt’s theories as to what manga is and how it works. But the sections of the book I personally find most valuable are the profiles where Schodt writes at length about specific manga artists he either personally enjoys or believes to embody a specific genre unique to manga. The freakish kitsch of Suehiro Maruo; Ryoko Yamagishi’s historical epic Hi Izuru Tokoro no Tenshi (Emperor of the Land of the Rising Sun); and alternative artists like Kazuichi Hanawa and Shungicu Uchida. These chapters stand as a stark reminder that despite the recent popularity of manga in the United States, many fantastic comics remain completely unknown to most English-speaking audiences.

  Image via ComiPress

  Finally, there’s Udagawa Takeo’s Manga Zombie! Translated into English by John Gallagher, it’s an eccentric and rewarding text that profiles several avant-garde manga artists from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Udagawa strongly dislikes the market-driven manga hits that would go on to rule the world from the pages of Shonen Jump and fights instead for the careers of authors whose work was published in the pages of pornographic magazines as often as they were in Jump or the alternative magazine Garo. Most of these authors have never been published in English, whether officially or through illicit means like scanlations. If not for the translation of Manga Zombie — or for Udagawa’s further works of manga scholarship — the artists he writes about might vanish into history without leaving a trace.

  The comics detailed in Manga Zombie can be grotesque, ranging from the “fleshbomb style” of artists like Masaru Sakaki to prescient weirdos like George Takiyama. Some might be repelled by the content here; personally, I’m disappointed by the lack of female comics artists featured, although Udagawa (who mentions the girls comic pioneers the 49ers in the foreword to his book) is certainly aware of them. But I love reading folks talking about their favorite work that I’ve never heard about, and Udagawa makes for an idiosyncratic tour guide to some truly unique material. For those willing to brave the world of Japanese exploitation comics, Manga Zombie is a hidden gem.

  What’s your favorite text about manga or anime? Is there an interview you consider especially interesting? Let us know in the comments!

      Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. When he isn't reading weird fantasy novels and horror fiction, he sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? You can find him on Twitter at: @wendeego

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a feature, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Adam Wescott

[takerfoxx]

“Fires of the Sun: Epilogue” Thoughts

All right, let’s wrap this up.

Okay, starting things off with Yukari's scene, her bits with Byakuren and the remaining SDM crew are pretty self-explanatory and don't require a whole lot of commentary. I am going to say that I actually have no idea where Sakuya's character development is going to take her, save that this sort of quiet, reserved, no fucks given madness thing she has going on right now is…sort of intriguing. She's gone beyond rage, beyond grief, beyond hate, and is, at that moment, more dangerous than she's ever been. And though I haven't planned where it's going to take her just yet, I am interested in finding out.

Bringing Koakuma back was always a given, though the manner went through some changes. Originally I had planned for Shinki to be the one to receive the request and have her reject it out of hand because of rules or some such, only for Yukari to show an uncharacteristic amount of kindness and snap at her, causing Shinki to relent. However, some last minute changes in the previous chapter meant that Shinki was no longer available, so that scene unfortunately had to go. I also was thinking of having Koakuma still be wearing her Serpentine Marauder uniform upon being summoned back. Theor natural consequence of that would of course have Yukari recognize it, draw some unfortunate conclusions, and immediately start interrogating the poor little devil. Honestly that would have been the better choice, as it opens up numerous plot and character opportunities, but at the time I was tired and didn't want to expand things any more than they already were, so I just had her show up naked like a proper summoned succubus and left it at that. The poor girl was already having a rough day anyway.

The final bit with Satori and co. gave me some issues. At that point, I was growing concerned about the runtime of Yukari's scene, especially when compared to the later ones, and felt that her having a third encounter would make it a little tedious, and considered giving it its own section. However, that disrupted the flow of how these loose end scenes were being set up, and everyone was already there anyway, so screw it. Fortunately, in reading it over, it wasn't as bad as I feared, so that worked out. Also, originally I was just going to have her yank Jun and Utsuho over in a couple of sentences, but given what Utsuho had been through, she deserved a little more. However, her scene with Jun was in danger of running too long, as they started to have a serious discussion of their relationship thus far and Jun's bullying of her, and while that would have been interesting, the focus at that moment needed to be on Satori's return, so it was trimmed. But in doing so, it seems a little abrupt and out of place, so perhaps that wasn't a fantastic idea after all.

As for Satori herself, she should thank her lucky stars that her original plotline got scrapped. It was a little awkward dividing her time between her affectionate pets and talking to Yukari. I still get a kick out of her mind-reading answering all of her question instantaneously, and am very glad that that's back. I did have to use my mental wayback machine to recall everything that she wouldn't know as well as everything she should know and remind myself that she did get a good look at Yuuka's true form. Also, I don't care how much he's slipped out of relevancy. Soulja Boy will always remain a form of torture.

The scene from Yuuka's POV (or what's left of her) was short, but worked very well. I'm not really one for flowery, poetic language. Slightly sarcastic and to the point is more my style. But I did try to slow things down and get a little verbose when trying to describe Yuuka's condition. After all, Mima's lovely speech to her was only going to be a few paragraphs, and I really wanted to drive home just how unbelievably broken she was. I mean, the burns are one thing, but Yuuka is have now officially fallen off the crazy tree and hit every branch along the way. Funny thing about her fourth wall breaking thing: originally, it was done simply to set up some gags in the future, have her interrupt the author's notes and stuff like that. But the execution proved to be even bigger than I had expected, and once it was there and started to get a lot of attention, I realized that now I had gone through with it, I needed to take it seriously. Having her be a Deadpool sort of character cracking postmodern, self-referential jokes wasn't going to do it. And going the full Stephen King route of having her break into our world and kill me or something like that would be too honky.

So instead of just making it be a silly thing or drive her to do something way over the top, I decided to let that one peek she got be the whole plotline. That was all she was ever going to see. There wasn't going to be any cutting into other Gensokyos, no entering our world, no including me as a character, outside of those talking directly to the audience bits. She was just going to get a quick look, long enough to realize what was going on, and have it bring everything crashing down on her. Her status as a fictional character was going to literally drive her nuts, cause her to question everything, have an existential crisis, and essentially drive her mad, which is pretty ironic, considering what she is. She would try to deal, become obsessed with storytelling conventions, and over time delude herself into believing that she was the main character. And as such, Yidhra the Outer God, a being beyond comprehension who would literally drive lesser mortals insane by her mere existence, was in turn driven mad herself by something she couldn't understand. Karma, baby.

Reimu's scene was to establish how tense the whole battle would have been to something unable to participate. She, Reisen, and Remilia filled the roles of worried loved ones stuck at home, desperately waiting for any sort of news. And as is my wont, that news was delivered in the silliest manner possible. Y'know, the whole Tengu newspaper business has a lot of fun possibilities. I've been frequently annoyed by clickbait sites like Knowable and whatnot as of late and how irritating their set-up is that I realized how much the Tengu would love such a set-up. Steal other people's stories, compile them under a huge, annoyingly attention grabbing title, and then cut them up in the most irritating way possible to squeeze every cent out of advertisers. And you ever notice that when they say stuff like, "Number three is shocking!", the actual number three doesn't really stand out all that much from the others?

Though that aside, you really have to feel for Remilia here. Her whole humble pie arc was intended to break her down from being a smug snake and make her a more sympathetic character, but damn did it go far. As for Reimu, I'm not too sure where her story is going to go from here. I mean, I know what part she'll be playing during the big climatic scenes in the future, but as for how she'll handle the news of Mima's heel turn or anything involving Rin Satsuki or her friends or whatever, I have no idea. Will she stay at the shrine or will Yukari end up moving her somewhere safer? Will Alice get to teach her magic or not? What is she going to do with her time until the shit hits the fan again? I just don't know yet, but I look forward to finding out.

On a side note, I did plan a cutaway to Alice and Shanghai, but realized that I didn't have anything for them to do that would add to the chapter, so it got cut. We can always catch up with them later.

And then we get to Rin's scene. This one was a big hodgepodge of points I needed to hit and trying to weave them all together. Okay, Flandre had to acknowledge the trauma of losing her old friends, check. Some banter with Rumia, check. Seija got knocked out again so she doesn't ruin the scene, check. Daiyousei's still got her snowglobe because the hell I'm gonna let it get left behind, check. Kogasa's still crushing on Wriggle, check. Doremy gets a proper introduction (and finally an accurate description of her tail) and helps Rumia sleep while making Rin jealous, check. And all the kids had to finally get named as well. I already knew that Kogasa, Doremy, Sekibanki, Kurumi, Seija, and I guess Sara would be among them. As for the rest, I had already discarded Clownpiece (too strong), the Prismrivers (unlikely to be there), anyone not a loli for…obvious reasons, or anyone part of any specific cast herd. I briefly considered Ringo, but didn't really feel like it. I did scour the remaining PC-98 characters, so that's why there were so many demons. Hey, Yuuka's been to Makai before. To fill in the remaining slots, we had Rengeteki as the obligatory fairy and the glasses-wearing Kappa from the Kappa mob. I almost added one of the nameless PC-98 midbosses, but decided to go for the Kappa instead.

And on aside, Doremy's introductory scene was a hoot. I'm not a huge fan of the newer characters, but she was a lot of fun. She and Cirno are going to get along just fine.

Then we get to the final bit, where Rin discovers the bodies of her parents (and yes, that's what they were, everyone already knows it so I'm not spoiling anything). No real behind the scenes thing with that. It just felt like an appropriate way to wrap up her arc before the hiatus, having her return to the place where her story began and finally get some closure with her origins, even if she hasn't figured out who they were.

In regards to lady Meika, again I can't really talk about who she is and how she's connected to the plot, save that she is something that several characters' individual plotlines are building up to, and her bits take place long after Imperfect Metamorphosis's finale. I did drop several hints though, a few of which have already been picked up on. Not all though.

And then, at last we cut back to Hina, who's been conspicuously missing ever since the Shadow Youkai got sucked out of Rin. That was deliberate, as I wanted her scene to be a surprise, as a final, dark reminder that Rumia Yagami isn't gone for good just yet. Anyway, remember how I mentioned being stunned that I was finally getting to write a scene that had been planned years and years ago? Well, this was that scene, and it felt eerie to finally get to do it.

Though on another aside, I tried to make the whole author notes breakdown even wonkier, even to the point of including ASCII art and weirder formatting. Alas, went and ate it all up. Stupid limited formatting options.

So yeah. That's it. That wraps up Fires of the Sun. Looking back, I'm really happy with how it came out. Were there weak spots and areas that could have been done differently and done better? Yes. Where there parts that I skimped due to, and let's face it, laziness? Yes. Did it surpass The Storm as intended? I'm…not sure. The thing to remember is that when The Storm happened, it was sort of a trendsetter for this story and, and this is going to sound arrogant, for Touhou fics in general. I got a ton of notice in the English Touhou fandom for that mini-arc, mainly due to the surprise inclusion of Lovecraftian elements and Yuuka's big fourth wall break. Also a lot of controversy as well, but hey, free publicity. But that was years ago, back when IM was still on the rise. Now the hype's died down, people have gotten used to it being around, so it just doesn't have the same impact as before. It was more of wrapping things up from that big shocker rather than being another big shocker. Marisa's death came close, but not really to the same level.

So no, I don't think Fires of the Sun matched the impact of The Storm. It's more polished perhaps, and maybe the fight scenes flow better, but it doesn't have the newness The Storm had. But that's okay. This was for everyone who stuck around to see what would happen, a way of bringing about some measure of closure before putting this ginormous story on the shelf. And in that regard, I feel it succeeded nicely.

So…I guess that's it. Wow, okay, Imperfect Metamorphosis is now officially on hiatus. Thank you all so much for reading, and be sure to stick around! More stuff for Subconscious is to come!

Cheers, everyone!

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: Madoka, Wonder Egg Priority, and the Future of Late-Night Magical Girl Shows

  Beware! This article contains spoilers for the beginning of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

  It is January 21st, 2011. In the shadows of a witch’s labyrinth, two girls named Madoka and Mami form a close bond. Mami is a magical girl, powerful but lonely. Madoka decides, then and there, to fight by Mami’s side. But then, in the middle of combat, the witch Charlotte transforms into a giant worm and bites off Mami’s head. Madoka’s eyes widen in shock. A broken china cup seeps tea on the ground. Smash cut to the wails of goth rock trio Kalafina as black clouds roil and a single flickering shape strides toward oblivion. Three episodes in, Puella Magi Madoka Magica threw down the gauntlet. Over ten years later, the mark it left is still there.

  Puella Magi Madoka Magica was special. But why? Not because it was the “first dark magical girl series.” Sailor Moon, the modern magical girl standard-bearer, became popular not just because of its charming characters but because the show could do things like briefly kill everyone during the series finale. Even magical girl series aimed at younger audiences, like Ojamajo Doremi, tackled subjects like the death of a pet or the aftermath of a divorce. Not to mention the infamous 46th episode of Magical Girl Minky Momo from 1983, when the titular heroine was hit by a truck! Truly, everything has been done before.

  The secret to Madoka Magica’s success is that it is not really a magical girl show. It is a suspense thriller cunningly disguised as a magical girl show. It has as much in common with Kamen Rider Ryuuki as it has with Sailor Moon, and was written by Gen Urobuchi, a former eroge game writer who ran in the same circles as Kinoko Nasu and Hoshizora Meteo. Madoka Magica is not interested in the slow process of endearment by which magical girl series ease you into the daily routines of their characters — the weekly monsters, transformation stock footage, holidays, and very special episodes. It presents as such only as long as it takes to put you off guard, and then (clad in the gorgeous raiment of art team Gekidan Inu Curry) it goes for your throat. 

    So it was that Madoka Magica became the standard-bearer of a new kind of late-night anime. Rather than “cute girls doing cute things,” let’s call this genre “cruel things happening to cute girls.” Take something charming and unassuming, like a magical girl story or a high school slice-of-life show. Populate it with fun, marketable characters. Then set those characters screaming when the real story pops out like a jack-in-the-box. The frisson between cute and scary hopefully generates enough charge to catch the attention of audiences, but  — most importantly  — audiences don’t have to reach that far to engage with it. That is because these shows are built off those same conventions that anime fans are familiar with. Those conventions just happen to be evil this time.

  As often happens in the entertainment industry, the success of Madoka spawned many copies. These projects did not have Gen Urobuchi, and they were often not lucky enough to have an art team as singular as Gekidan Inu Curry. All things considered, they tried their best. YUKI YUNA IS A HERO brought a different former eroge game writer, Takahiro, on board. Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka made its team of magical girls a proper military unit. More recently, GRANBELM added giant robots to the stew. I’d say Granbelm is my favorite of these, if only because the giant robots were pretty cool! I’d love to see them in a Super Robot Wars game one day.

    Some of the more interesting entries in the “cruel things happening to cute girls” genre didn’t have any magical girls in them at all. Selector Infected Wixoss was a card battle show about teens fighting for wishes; writer Mari Okada smartly changed focus from the cruel system tearing the characters apart to the way that individual selfishness keeps cruel systems running perpetually. SCHOOL-LIVE! featured a group of schoolgirls continuing their slice of life activities within a world devastated by a zombie apocalypse; the anime production was bolstered by a murderer’s row of writers from Nitroplus, Urobuchi’s former stomping ground. Episode 3 — a flashback to teacher Megumi on the day of the outbreak — is a genuine triumph, precisely because it is so earnest. Rather than pushing hard to shock or disgust the viewer, it allows the characters to breathe in the moments leading to disaster and lets the horror come naturally.

  Traditional magical girl shows, in the meantime, have been doing just fine. We’ve seen several good seasons of Precure and two fantastic ones, the all-rounder Go! Princess Precure and uneven but groundbreaking Hugtto! Precure. Sailor Moon’s Crystal remake seasons and movies have steadily improved after a rocky start. The first few seasons of magical idol series Aikatsu are charming and introduce a fun legacy quirk that ties together characters from different seasons. Even Ojamajo Doremi has seen a follow-up film that puts the spotlight on the generation who grew up watching it.

    Madoka’s successors, on the other hand, are in a trickier place. Some of them have been successful, others have been good, but none have recaptured that lightning in a bottle that made Madoka a hit. Even a recent Madoka Magica series based on a phone game, written by Gekidan Inu Curry themselves, came and went without much buzz.

  In the years since Madoka aired, there have been plenty of folks who have expressed their reservations about the “cruel things happening to cute girls” genre. After all, magical girl series can be revolutionary or transgressive without being cruel. Hugtto! Precure introduced the series’ first male Precure (equally comfortable wearing dresses as skating outfits) and featured a romantic partnership between two of its female leads. Go! Princess Precure’s best fight scenes are as spectacular as anything in this year’s Jujutsu Kaisen, yet remain perfectly accessible for its target audience of young girls. Madoka's progeny may have been targeted at older — and often, male — audiences, but outside of some blood and gore just a few of these series were more genuinely mature than the children’s series they riffed upon.

  Image via HiDive

  I do still see a future for late-night magical girl shows. In 2016, a weird magical girl series called Flip Flappers aired. Directed by animation wunderkind Kiyotaka Oshiyama, it featured two girls in love traveling through many strange and colorful environments in search of macguffins. Hidden inside a candy coating of marketable elements was everything from the Freudian fairy tale theories of Bruno Bettelheim, to architectural oddities such as thomassons, to occult figures like Jakob von Uexkull. Flip Flappers harnessed some of Madoka Magica’s sense of danger, putting its cast into intense and scary situations from the very first episode. But it was not a show about girls being tortured by an evil system; it was a show about girls exploring surreal dreamscapes. A new genre had been created: “cute girls doing weird things.”

  Here are the cornerstones for the “cute girls doing weird things” genre: you need girls of course, maybe even magical girls, but the rules behind their magic are nebulous. Rather than take children’s genres and corrupt them, you build out atmospheric settings, drop in the characters, and see what happens next. You give the cast room to express themselves within the bounds of the story, rather than leading them down an assembly line to their doom. The malevolence of Madoka is not off-limits, but more useful still than malevolence is uncertainty. The goal is to unsettle the viewer rather than disgust them.

  Image via Funimation

  Five years after Flip Flappers, a new show walks these same steps: Wonder Egg Priority, an original series from CloverWorks. Of course, Wonder Egg Priority is aiming at something totally different than Flip Flappers. Its spooky environments are incidental. Its main aim is, through riffing on the work of Kyoto Animation and famed director Naoko Yamada, depicting in full and uncompromising detail the difficult emotional lives of teenage girls living in the modern-day. Those lives just happen to be filtered through an anime lens of trauma manifesting as horrific creatures that have to be destroyed, and girls that need to be saved. Yet to me, Wonder Egg Priority captures the dreamlike atmosphere that Flip Flappers achieved in its best moments — the means by which characters exploring unfamiliar spaces reveal themselves in new and different forms. Despite being made of familiar parts, in execution, I think it is something new.

Somewhere between Flip Flappers and Wonder Egg Priority lies the future of late-night magical girl shows. They should not ever replace the ones made for kids; those do perfectly fine on their own, thank you very much. But in their embrace of uncertainty, I recognize a ghost of what I once felt when I first saw Charlotte’s gaping maw. The sensation that the ground had disappeared, and that — like magic — anything was possible.

  What's your favorite recent magical girl show? Are you excited for the newest season of Precure? Does Wonder Egg Priority terrify you on a weekly basis like it terrifies me? Let us know in the comments!

      Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. When he isn't reciting lines from Revolutionary Girl Utena, he sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? You can find him on Twitter at @wendeego

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Adam Wescott