#super unrelated but this manga made me so nostalgic for the early 2000s

[to-star-lake]

ok guys, hear me out.

so i recently re-read Nana which was (and still is) one of my favorite series of all time. and since then i've been feeling the nostalgia (and PAIN) i've been finding kindred souls who are also holding out hope that yazawa ai will pick it back up at some point.

BUT in my journey of reconnecting with the series and characters, ive read a lot of things about nana and ren's relationship and i can't not weigh in. (nobody asked but here goes XD)

don't get me wrong, there are a LOT of things both of them could've done better in their relationship, and many people say that when ren left to join Trapnest that was the fatal turning point for them, but tbh i think their relationship was doomed from the beginning.

nana said herself when she first saw ren play the night they met; she felt something more like envy/jealousy than love. she always admired ren and idealized him, perhaps more than she loved him.

as a result (paired with nana's very painful history of being abandoned by her mother), ren was more of a savior in her eyes than a boyfriend.

he taught her to play guitar, encouraged her to sing and express herself, and gave her a home. and because she always looked up to him, she couldn't help but feel anxious and inferior in some way when she was with him. i don't think she ever thought she was good enough for him and unwittingly created a relationship that was more about competition (and proving herself) than love.

for ren; similarly to nana, he had a very painful past of being abandoned by his parents and grew up on the streets by himself. perhaps he saw in nana a kindred spirit, and wanted to take care of her (in his final moments, he literally mistook a stray cat for nana); he took her in.

throughout the series, we see him hoping for a family that is with him always, for nana to want to be with him of her own volition, and to have children with him. (but he knew that wasn't what nana wanted, and he struggled throughout their relationship after their reconciliation with this fact).

from nana's perspective, i think ren leaving was so much more than a betrayal of her band, and a boyfriend leaving her: i think when he left, it made her feel not only abandoned, but like he was throwing it in her face that she wasn't good enough (he went to join a better band, in a bigger city, with a more talented female singer).

and it made it worse for her that even after their reconciliation, ren continued to choose Trapnest over her (leaving her behind when the tabloids were publicizing gossip that would only harm her reputation, refusing to help nana out of pent up frustration and jealousy when shin was arrested, in the end prioritizing reira over her).

but when ren joined Trapnest, i think that he found in them an even greater family bond than what he had with Blast. back in his hometown, while he loved the Blast members, it isn't the same as when he joined Trapnest. with Blast, it was all a bit of fun, almost child's play for ren, but he could've accepted that as long as he and nana were happy.

when he joined Trapnest, i think that was when he started to feel the true weight of camaraderie; of having a group of people with a bond stronger than friends or colleagues; they were soldiers together (ren had literally referred to the employees of cookie music working with Trapnest as takumi's soldiers). here, there was a profound kind of devotion and mission that gave him a greater sense of purpose in life, so i can understand why he would make choices that placed Trapnest above nana.

again, this is not to say that at any given moment in the series, nana and ren couldn't have made better decisions or said or done something different. but i think due to the fact that nana's feelings towards ren were always that of an admiration kind of love (rooted in jealousy and feelings of inferiority) instead of pure, unconditional love (which is not her fault, because no one ever really taught her how to love unconditionally). and that ren was destined to discover and devote himself to something bigger than himself (and nana). and the fact that both of them were so young but the stakes were too high; their relationship was doomed from the beginning.

[ais-n]

Hello! I love love love ICOS and was wondering if I could ask a few questions. Namely, what were yours & Santino's inspirations for the series? For example, the Neo-Tokyo setting in Akira strongly reminded me of ICOS, but that could be my own perception of the world in ICOS. Were there any books, movies, anime, manga, etc, that helped to inspire ICOS?

Aww, thank you! I’m happy you like it!

As for inspiration... hmm, I’m trying to think. Honestly, we didn’t really have a specific inspiration from what I can recall. I think a lot of things were just what made sense to us or sounded like fun, and then otherwise inspiration or ideas leached together from lots of sources or everyday living and we put it in from there. Sometimes it was real life stuff, sometimes it was maybe just watching shows and thinking, “That could be cool.”

I have examples beneath the cut of things that either inspired us in parts or else ended up having some cool similarities even if we thought of them separately, but one thing I did want to mention is I’m always on the lookout for characters in shows or movies who could be a nice media representation of ICoS characters. I had started compiling some ideas of that a few years ago and found the link in case you are curious or bored:

ICoS character inspirations: (note, not that the ICoS characters were inspired by these characters, but that these characters seem like cool representations of ICoS characters -- i probably should have said ICoS character representations instead of inspirations, come to think of it...) Anyway that’s here:  https://aisness.wordpress.com/2013/11/14/icos-character-inspirations/ 

And here are some adorable baby Boyd representations from Criminal Minds:  https://aisness.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/baby-boyd/ 

Inspiration examples below!

For example, I used to love the hell out of Fringe and I watched it every week. One episode they had this whole thing about how this one character was kidnapped and the way they found out where they were held or where stuff was happening was by finding out that there was an excessive amount of electricity that was being used in a seemingly abandoned warehouse. Also, that character wasn’t content to just sit there waiting to be rescued; they tried to escape but couldn’t due to reasons, but that came up later in the episode. I liked that it didn’t diminish the character’s strength even in being captured but it also didn’t make it like suddenly they were superhuman and could do anything. Then, completely separately from that and probably years apart, I was doing research on human experimentation and watched things like the documentary Philosophy of a Knife and did a lot of research on Unit 731, and I got some ideas from that. Also completely separately from that and years apart, I’ve always been interested in psychology and psychiatry and I’d also read the book Rape of the Mind by Dr. Joost A.M. Meerloo which is a book from 1956 that talks about brainwashing of POWs and also whether or not brainwashing actually exists in reality or if it’s something else that’s happening with similar results. Plus I’ve done lots of research totally separately from all of that for trafficking etc.

All those things coalesced and then changed into inspiration for a particular situation that shows up later in the series that I don’t want to go into specifics of for spoilers for people who are earlier in the series, but you might know immediately what I’m thinking about. And if not and if you want me to specify with spoilers just let me know and I can do so behind a cut :) 

(PS: Philosophy of a Knife is violent as fucking hell--seriously, seriously graphic. Do not watch it if you are faint of heart. I say this so no poor soul is like “Oh yeah Ais mentioned something about this maybe I’ll watch it! :D” and then is traumatized for life. They went all out on it. It’s actually kind of controversial because of that...)

Then there was other inspiration like sometimes I would dream about something and then wake up and be like, “Oh hey, cool plot idea!” or we would just think through what is likely to happen for that character based on their story line or their personality or human nature or etc and it developed from there.

I would say probably the closest thing to ICoS I know of for a series is La Femme Nikita, specifically the TV show that was on 1997-2001. I had actually never seen it or possibly even heard of it when we started writing ICoS -- I didn’t see the first couple of seasons until years into us writing ICoS. Santino had seen it years prior, iirc, but he hadn’t thought of it for a while. Anyway there are some interesting similarities between ICoS and LFN, a lot of which developed separately and was not inspired by LFN because I hadn’t even seen it so I knew nothing of it and I don’t know Santino’s inspiration or not but we decided things together so I know there are definitely a number of things I suggested with no knowledge of LFN. 

The one thing I know that was inspired by LFN was the term ‘valentine’ which Santino suggested and which I think he got from LFN, but I think everything else is pretty coincidental, which makes sense because they’re such similar themes that there’s bound to be overlap in ideas. What was really interesting to me was when I did finally watch it, I was like, “Hey!! Michael is how I imagine early Boyd to be!!” in terms of his seeming lack of emotion, the way he has such minimal facial expressions and intonation, the way he seems so cold and sometimes a bit ruthless but then other times is bad ass. But Michael is like what Fade-level Agent Boyd would be in skills but with early Evenfall Boyd personality. Anyway, that was super exciting finding someone who represented that minimal emotion I imagined. (Also there’s a character in an anime who fights like how I imagined Fade Agent Boyd fights... I forgot the anime but I can track it down if you want)

You should totally watch that TV show if you haven’t. I never finished it but I need to ^^;; I think I saw through Season 2, maaaaybe s3?, but I never watched all of it and always meant to. I liked what I saw of it from what I recall but I have no idea about how it ended. (I’m a spoilerphobe) I also haven’t seen the original movie it was based on (I don’t think? uggh can’t remember) and I definitely haven’t seen the reboot they did more recently. No idea how much ICoS and those LFNs are similar but the 1997 tv show might be fun for ICoS fans to watch, just keeping in mind it has all the cheesiness of late 90′s/early 2000′s shows lol

I guess the last thing I’d say is I’m generally always inspired in terms of storytelling by my absolute favorite series ever, One Piece by Eiichiro Oda. The layering of his storytelling is masterfully done, and I also really love as a reader/viewer the way he can make me fucking bawl my eyes out and then a page or two later burst out laughing. I’ve always really valued the depth and range of emotions he elicits in his story, and the way he layers super minute details that have massive impact later on the plot, interwoven with the usual character development and on-page normal plot development, so that when you’re reading the first time there’s plenty of interest but that series also makes a phenomenal 2nd, 3rd, 10th, 20 billionth reread, because I swear every time I reread I notice new things I never noticed before because I didn’t have enough information about that plot. 

I love to do the same thing in writing anything I have a hand in--for any sort of significant story at all, I don’t like to write for the first read; I like to write for the second, third, fourth reread. I mean obviously it needs to be interesting enough the first time around, but I personally like to add little details or character development or whatever which is more evident the second or more time of reading when you know everything you need to know, so when you go back to the start you can be like “OHHH! So THAT’S why--!” I got to do that a bit in ICoS but I’m going even more crazy with that in the book I’m working on now independently, because I am a nerd and it’s super fun to me. But anyway that way of writing a story over the course of the entire series rather than writing it solely book by book is something that definitely inspired me in writing Boyd for all of ICoS and all of my characters in it, and I don’t know what inspirations Santino has but whatever has inspired him also complements that inspiration of mine nicely, so that we both ended up being interested in writing that longer-form story built by shorters stories in between, rather than doing stories book by book with transitions in between but less of an overarching arc. If that makes sense? Hopefully it does. 

Also we had made Sin and Boyd and some other characters as RPG characters in separate RPGs so I think we pulled some of that stuff over too, so in a way the original characters they were in those original other worlds probably gave some inspiration for their initial personalities.

btw, Neo-Tokyo in Akira is really interesting as a connection you made in your mind! I haven’t watched Akira in foreverrrrr so I can’t recall it well enough to be able to say either way but my memory of it makes sense for why you thought of that, so that’s cool! I should watch Akira again, or maybe it read it this time... Thinking of Akira is making me nostalgic for all those series that are older but still great, like now I want to watch again Cowboy Bebop, or Trigun, or even Yami no Matsuei, or... Oh actually! Totally unrelated but speaking of! Recently I found the whole series for Kare Kano (Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou/His and Her Circumstances) and omggggg having that sitting on my shelf without me watching it all over again is making me diiiiieeeeeee I’m dyingggggggg but I know I’ll get super into it again for nostalgia’s sake so I’m trying to make myself hold off until I can devote time to it.

Wow I rambled like fuck in this, sorry XD I guess the tl;dr is it was getting bits of ideas or inspiration from random or various places and then other things just kind of developing naturally in our minds, and it all came together into the monster that is ICoS XD 

[valkyri-anna]

This Post is About Anime Openings

I got bored one time and decided to figure out what my top 25 favorite anime opening songs are so here they are

25. Crazy Noisy Bizarre Town - THE DU - Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable

This one is on here almost just because I wanted it to be better. I pretty much knew it was going to end up at the bottom of the list, because a part of me definitely hates this song, but that’s largely because it just doesn’t feel like a Jojo opening. Just imagine moving from the god-tier song that is “end of THE WORLD” to this. It starts out really strong but just goes downhill starting with the chorus.

24. Go!!! - Flow - Naruto

Here’s your nostalgia entry. This song is really stupid but I love it anyway. I was never super into Naruto, and when I was into it I read the manga, but this song is so strongly associated with middle school for me, and the fact that I don’t hate it speaks to how fun it is.

23. Database - Man with a Mission ft. Takuma - Log Horizon

This is a rare anime song that could be better if it was sung by a native English speaker. You can tell English isn’t the singer’s first language, because obviously he’s Japanese, and I think having someone with less of an accent would benefit the song. That said, I do like it, and it works well for a series which is basically just Sword Art Online, except good.

22. For Real - Tokuyami Hidenori - Saiyuki

I don’t like Saiyuki. I tried to watch it, and it just wasn’t very good. Maybe it was good in the 90′s, but if that’s true it definitely doesn’t hold up. However, the opening song is a window to the past in the best kind of way. This is an opening straight from the Sailor Moon era with a sick injection of unnecessary guitar riff.

21. Red Fraction - Mell - Black Lagoon

This song is WEIRD, and it fits Black Lagoon so well. Unlike Database, Mell’s vocals work well for creating the feel the song is going for. Its strange industrial sound gets you way in the mood for a dark slice-of-life about gun-slinging mercenaries, which is perfect since that’s what Black Lagoon is.

20. Sirius - Eir Aoi - Kill la Kill

This song might have ended up here because I had just started watching Kill la Kill when I made this list, but I still like this song. Eir Aoi’s voice is powerful and fun to listen to, and this ridiculous opening is perfect for a ridiculous series like Kill la Kill. It’s like the early 2000′s anime world in a song.

19. We Go! - Hiroshi Kitadani - One Piece

For me, this was the first One Piece opening to capture the fun of “We Are,” and a perfect way to kick off the series’ second half. The punchy, fun music and clever lyrics created what is easily the second best opening the series has had thus far.

18. The Day - Porno Graffiti - My Hero Academia

Here’s a hyped-up song for a hyped-up show. A series about superheroes deserves a super song, and Porno Graffiti delivers it. The punchy drums and powerful vocals always get me excited, and it’s a shame the series’ second opening didn’t live up to “The Day’s” precedent.

17. Tank! - The Seatbelts - Cowboy Bebop

I’m gonna be honest and say I’ve never actually seen Cowboy Bebop, but I definitely still love this opening. The jazzy, upbeat music marks a style of opening that I absolutely adore, and you won’t see the last of it on this list with “Tank!”

16. Stand Proud - Jin Hashimoto - Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders

Of the four Jojo openings that actually feel like Jojo openings, “Stand Proud” is the worst, but it’s definitely still good. The lyrics cleverly call back to Part 1 of JJBA, fitting considering the show’s main villain. It may not be as good as the two openings that came before or the one that came after, but it still manages to be pretty good.

15. Guns and Roses - Paradise Lunch - Baccano!

Told you you’d see this style again. If “Tank!” was fun, “Guns and Roses” is hysterical. It’s fast, fun, and exciting. The lack of lyrics gives the viewer a lot more room to focus on the 12 million characters on screen, and the upbeat music fits the manic characters perfectly.

14. Hyadain no Kakakata Kataomoi-C - Maeyamada Kenichi - Nichijou

I’ll confess that I have a major soft spot for silly, girly, slice-of-life anime openings. The first Yuru Yuri opening could have easily taken a spot on this list, but I only wanted one such song and I think this one is more fun. The duet works so well and it’s adorable. Also, the guitar solo in the middle is a most welcome surprise.

13. The Hero!! - JAM Project - One Punch Man

The original mega-hype mega-song! I don’t know what to say about this song that hasn’t already been said. It rocks. It’s cool. It works for the series. I don’t know.

12. Mazeru na Kiken - Kinniku Shojo Tai - Ushio to Tora

The thing that stood out to me most about this series was the art style, and the second thing was the opening. It’s definitely the closest thing to classic metal I’ve heard in an anime opening, and it works really well. The over-the-top opening primes you perfectly for the over-the-top show that follows.

11. Re: Re: - Asian Kung Fu Generation - Erased

Another series I haven’t seen all the way through, but I do really like this opening. The guitar riff playing throughout is really cool, and the energetic but almost melancholy vocals are so interesting to listen to. It works perfectly.

10. end of THE WORLD - Jin, Coda, and Hiroaki Tominaga - Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders

If Stardust Crusaders was a series about calling back to what came before you, “end of THE WORLD” was the perfect song, and a perfect way to kick off our top ten. It brings back the singers for all three previous openings and puts together an almost theatrical experience that never ceases to amaze me.

9. Guren no Yumiya - Linked Horizon - Attack on Titan

Yes, it’s THAT Attack on Titan opening. I don’t need to explain this one any further, I don’t think.

8. A Cruel Angel’s Thesis - Yoko Takahashi - Neon Genesis Evangelion

This song needs no introduction. Everyone knows Evangelion and everyone knows this song. It doesn’t match the tone of the series at all, but I couldn’t imagine NGE opening any other way. Yoko Takahashi is a goddess.

7. 99 - Mob Choir - Mob Psycho 100

Now here’s a song that couldn’t have gone with any series other than the one it was made for. This song really loses something in the TV version, because the counting motif throughout is so cool, and they had to skip a lot of the middle to fit it into a minute and a half. If you listen to this song, make sure it’s the full version.

6. Bloody Stream - Coda - Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency

I have to first make an honorable mention for “Awaken,” the theme of the Pillar Men, because if that was an opening it would have beat this. That said, if “So no Chi no Sadame” captures Jonathan’s chivalry, “Bloody Stream” capture’s Joseph’s fiery spirit. This was the perfect song for Battle Tendency and it’s extremely fun to listen to.

5. Rin! Rin! Hi! Hi! - Hashiguchikanaderiya Hugs the Superball - Nanbaka

The perfect mix of suave and fun finds itself a home in this song. The singer’s smooth vocals and the unrelenting guitar mix better than they have any right to to make a song that stays fresh every time you listen to it.

4. R.O.D. - YKZ - R.O.D. the TV

Ok, I promise this is the last jazzy opening entry on this list, but it’s the best. It captures the Hong Kong action feel of the show’s best action sequences and I truly do love it. It takes a high spot on this list for all the right reasons.

3.  We Are! - Vic Mignogna - One Piece

I mentioned “We Are!” earlier and it’s not my third favorite anime opening for nothing. Vic Mignogna has managed to lend his voice to the only English dub of an anime opening I actually prefer to the original. I didn’t even start One Piece until 2015, but this song still makes me nostalgic. Honorable mention to the “Friendship Version” of this song, if there was a version of that featuring the English voice cast, that would likely have taken the number one or two spot.

2. Again - Yui - Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

This song is perfect. Yui is perfect. Not a lot of singers can carry a verse like she can, and not many bands capture an almost Nirvana-like energy dynamic like she does here. Only one song by one singer could have possibly beat her, and it’s...

1. So no Chi no Sadame - Hiroaki Tominaga - Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood

No one but Tominaga could have made this song sound as good as it does. Jonathan Joestar is far and away anime’s best-ever boy, and he deserves anime’s best-ever opening. The brass, the vocals, the guitar, everything comes together perfectly to create a song that’s fresh, unique, and PERFECT IN EVERY WAY, JUST LIKE JOJO, I LOVE YOU JOJO PLEASE COME BACK TO US

So anyway that was 25 anime openings that I like, if you made it through this list congratulations