#well the dub is always funny. but i digress

[assiraphales]

sometimes the english dub is so funny for example when they’re on the way to ennies lobby and t bone is standing in the tracks the franky family starts stressing and luffy, annoyed as hell, just goes “JEEZ! there’s nothing to worry about. zoro’s got this. just watch.” practically rolling his eyes at them. like ok babygurl good for u to hype of your man but they don’t know him like you do chill!!

[aceofshitposts]

I saw that you like CATS the musical. What are your thoughts on the movie?

AAAAH AHHAHA oh man oh boy y'all should BUCKLE IN cuz it's a ride

my simple thoughts? it's entertaining if only because it butchered the stage show so badly in an attempt to idk modernize it? Well, modernization is one part of it I think. The other part I'll go into below lol. I don't necessarily hate some of the more modern renditions of the songs (mostly the ensemble sets like Jellicle Song for Jellicle Cats) but then others are just... so poorly done it's insulting.

I've said this at the end of this whole rant too but I'm gonna put it up here in case people don't (justifiably) wanna see me go on and on about it:

The movie wasn't made for fans of the musical. It was made to make money and I believe they choose, at least partially, to do that through making it the weirdest and worst possible adaptation they could so that people would want to go see the train wreck. Which, really, worked! It was all people could talk about for a good while so like... Goal achieved, I guess.

A MUCH MORE COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS UNDER THE CUT cuz i don't wanna. flood your dash with... this

ALRIGHT SO. Most of my friends know I'm actually a huge fan of new adaptations of things. I love remakes (provided the people making it are coming at it with some form of heart and not just... cash grabbing which is more often the case) I love seeing other peoples interpretations of characters, or changing settings. It's one of the reasons I like American comics so much, getting to see different writers takes is fascinating.

I think musical movies can be wonderful ways to introduce people to a stage show that might have been unavailable to them otherwise! Chicago, for example, is one of the BEST musical to movie adaptations in my opinion. It kept the heart of the show, it's funny and the song numbers are done really well.

There are of course other famous examples, such as Grease or Bye Bye Birdie. Hairspray was also a wonderful take. These are simply off the top of my head, there are of course more.

CATS in particular has a history. If you go through my CATS tag you may see a few posts from @catsnonreplica which posts photos from non broadway productions of CATS! It's a fascinating read and I love, love, love looking at the other interpretations of the characters! CATS is a musical full of fun and wonderful characters if you take the time to see past the ridiculousness haha and the Korean and Japanese runs of CATS especially have some of my favourites.

How does this relate to the movie, I hear you say well. As you might has noticed the movie's interpretations of the characters is........ lackluster at best and downright uncanny valley at best.

CATS is, at its core, a ridiculous thing. I will fully admit that! But it's fun, it's entertaining and if you pay a little attention you can actually get the plot. (Honestly I don't understand when people complain it has no plot but that's a whole other rant for another day)

The movie was... obsessed with this idea of like... semi realism? Like obviously, as a fan, I think they should have leaned into the over the top character designs but instead we got...w ell:

Bombalurina:

Demeter left and Bomba right. Demeter was actually cut! From the movie which is. upsetting lmao.

Macavity is one of the worst offenders for me:

Macavity was... I wish I could know what the hell they were thinking there cuz it's even in his song? Ginger cat??? THAT IS NOT... A GINGER CAT...... but I digress. I would show more examples but I think you get the point.

So. We've butchered the characters appearances. Okay that's fine but what about their personalities?

ALSO BUTCHERED.

There's... there's a lot to unpack here. Just for context: the Jellicle Ball happens once a year and the Jellicle leader chooses a single cat to be reborn into a new life. In the stage play all the cats who are nominated for this honour are on the older side (Jenny-Any-Dots, Bustopher Jones, Skimbleshanks, Gus The Theatre Cat, and eventually Grizzabella) AND are always nominated by another cat. Not themself, unlike the movie where they all seem to nominate themselves.

Jenny-Any-Dots went from a doting grandmother figure who's celebrated for her selfless volunteering and tireless work into a conceited, vain younger cat who is obsessed with fame.

It's an incredibly strange dichotomy. I don't doubt some of it isn't the result of the uh people playing the characters honestly. I do think some of them did the best they could! I don't really blame Jason Derulo, for example, for Tugger. And honestly, Tugger was probably closest to his stage version (while being a trouble maker, he's shown to show Deuteronomy an immense amount of respect)

Speaking of Tugger! This will bring us to one of the biggest grievances with the movie and that is how they handled Mr Mistoffelees.

So... Ugh. So. We have Victoria as the pov character, which imo is like whatever in the grand scheme of things, and then we have Misto who they have decided will be get live interest cuz... Of course. Misto is shown throughout the musical to be awkward, unsure of himself and well. Really, kinda incompetent. Which is Wild cuz in the stage show he might be aloof but he's fairly confident in his powers.

So, Old Deuts gets kidnapped. In the stage show Tugger is the one to bring Misto forward! It's really quite sweet, imo, and I'm showing myself as a Tuggoffelees shipper here, but again Tugger is previously shown to be pretty conceited but then here he is boosting and hyping up Misto to bring Deuteronomy back. My friends and I have lovingly dubbed this the boyfriend hype song.

SOMEHOW. The movie manages to make this, easily, the MOST BORING number in the whole thing. Which, again, WILD. Misto awkwardly stumbles through his whole song, which again is... Boasting of his supreme magical powers which movie Misto clearly. Does not have or believe to have. The song, to me, feels super awkward and unnecessarily drawn out in the movie which sucks cuz it's one of my favourites in the show.

The declawing (heh) of Mr Mistoffelees actually reminds me strongly of how they changed Gaston in the live action Beauty and the Beast movie. He's gone from a beloved figure in the animated movie to someone so disliked in the town that Le Fou has to pay people off to say nice things about him. It's just. Wild character choices were made!!

Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat is probably my favourite in movie non ensemble number. It feels the most... Genuine? Compared to the other nomination songs.

Other problems include but are not limited to:

The inconsistent size scale of the CATS which throws me off constantly.

The weirdly overt sexual overtones added to MANY of the songs (Jenny and Bustopher being the worst)

This is just a personal gripe and opinion but I don't like that they used the UK version of Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer. The American version is both better known and tbh way more fun. Teazer's giggle? Adds ten years to my life every time.

Victoria's added solo song, Beautiful Ghosts, while I like the song as a song it doesn't fit the style of message of the musical. In the movie she's singing directly to Grizzabella who's being an outcast for years that she should be grateful she even has memories of being part of the tribe?? What?? But I know they had to add an original song to be able to be nominated for awards in like the Grammys n shit (which is why all musical movies will have an original song, fun fact!!) kinda funny they went to the effort though considering........... I don't think anyone could have genuinely believed CATS 2019 was gonna win anything but golden rhaspberries.

Movie Mr Mistoffelees has made repeated appearances as my sleep paralysis demon

The various cut characters, shout outs to Jemima, Demeter and Jellylorum especially

Bombalurina being a henchman to Macavity rubs me the wrong way

God I've written... So much. You probably get it by now haha. Like I said at the beginning, I try to go into any adaptation with an open mind but... Let's be honest, this movie wasn't marketed to people who are fans of the musical.

It was marketed, and made, to make money. And they choose to do that through, I think, intentionally making the worst possible version ever. Bad press is still press and the more outrageous people said the movie was the more people wanted to go see exactly what kind of train wreck it was.

Which is a disservice to the stage show, honestly, and all the people who've worked on it over the years.

But what can we do, right?

And besides all that, I do... Still own the movie version and I do still rewatch it on occasion. It is entertaining even if it's in a train wreck kind of way. I usually end up watching the 1998 version, then 2019 and then various tour runs that are on YouTube. (I highly recommend the 2016 tour, it's very good)

So in conclusion. It's fun (?) to watch. I enjoy picking things apart and doing analysis (if you couldn't tell!) so like... I don't hate it?

It did what it set out to do, I guess, and I can't fault it for that but. It's not a fair metre with which to judge the stage show imo. But I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, haha.

Jazz hands. I'm more than happy to elaborate or just chat about CATS if anyone wants! I grew up listening to the Broadway CD since I was a toddler so it's been! A very long standing obsession haha. Probably the only other thing on par with CATS is my obsession with Jurassic Park which I've also been a fan of since I was 3 (but that's a whole story in and of itself)

[demi-shoggoth]

COVID-19 Reading Log, pt 18

Man, this past month has been a heck of a year, hasn’t it? I’ve still been reading books, but my pace has ebbed and flowed, and I forgot to update this for a while. So here’s my thoughts on ten of the most recent books I’ve read.

91. The League of Regrettable Sidekicks by Jon Morris. I had no idea this book existed until I was doing image searches for this project for the other “League of Regrettable X” books. This one covers the sidekicks, minions and goons of comic history. Unlike the other books by Jon Morris, the spread is more even of Gold/Silver/other ages of comic books. After all, the 70s is when Jaxxon the green rabbit appeared in Star Wars, and the 80s had a shape-shifting penguin named Frobisher in the Doctor Who comics. It also feels like it’s a little looser about what makes a character “regrettable”. Some of the sidekicks in its pages, like Woozy Winks and Volstagg the Voluminous, are legit great characters.

92. Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were by Michael Page and Robert Ingpen. I wanted to like this book; I really did. For one thing, it was recommended to me by @listmaker-lastcity​, who I was working with on commissions. For another thing, it was fairly pricy used. Thirdly, to its merit, it is gorgeous. Michael Page, the illustrator, is credited first, and rightly so. But for an “encyclopedia”, it makes up a lot of stuff. It opens with a disclaimer that “the creators of this book have… unlocked their own fantasies”, which means that it invents Arthuriana and Greek myths wholeheartedly. Several of the entries do not exist outside this book, and others are so distorted that their actual folkloric origins have been clouded and obscured by people using this as a source. For material I’m not familiar with the primary sources of, like Gulliver’s Travels, I have no idea if it’s reflecting the source material accurately, or making things up whole cloth. As a fantasy, it’s intermittently fun; some rather nasty misogyny does sneak in and the book is wildly anti-science. As a reference work, it’s useless to the point of actively harmful.

93. Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh. I was a huge fan of the “Hyperbole and a Half” blog back in the day, and knowing Allie Brosh’s history of mental health problems, I was worried when she seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. Her release of a second book was a pleasant surprise, but also showed that some worry was appropriate. This collection of essays, cartoons and heavily-cartooned essays is sadder than the first collection, as it was written during and after a series of family tragedies. It is still very funny in parts, however, and has an overall message of self-care and love that turned out to be extra relevant in the nightmare year that is 2020. It’s the only book for this project that I read in a single sitting. Highly recommended.

94. Mozart’s Starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. This book is half memoir, half biography. The composer Mozart owned a starling during some of his most productive years as a composer, and even wrote an elegy to it when it died. The author used this as a launching point to adopt her own starling, and to examine how this invasive species is seen in American birding culture. The writing is humanistic and charming, and very self-aware (the author worries that her starling is going to die, because that’s what always happens in “this animal changed my life” books). The message is one of respecting all other creatures and of valuing the lives of animals, which is not much of a surprise from the author’s other books (I covered The Urban Bestiary earlier in this project.

95. The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris. The subtitle says it all; this is a biography of Joseph Lister, focusing on his research into antisepsis and promotion of sterile technique in surgery. It takes ample digressions to talk about other major surgeons of the time, the state of hygiene and disease theory in Victorian England, France and the United States, as well as things like labor conditions and women’s rights. These bits and pieces are woven in successfully, so they feel like appropriate context setting. Fitzharris is empathetic despite the often grisly subject matter, but readers with a sensitive stomach and a low tolerance for gore might want to skip this one.

96. Twice the Thrills! Twice the Chills! by Bryan Senn. This is a big book, 400 pages in full sized paper. It is an overview of the horror/SF double feature, covering every movie released initially in that format between 1955 and 1974 in the United States. As such, it reviews more than 200 movies, with behind-the-scenes anecdotes, critical opinion and box office, and general coverage of trends and themes in genre cinema at the time. I enjoyed this book greatly, especially since it covered some movies I’d never even heard of. The timing is perfect, too, as I read this book just before @screamscenepodcast​ covered the first entries in it, Revenge of the Creature/Cult of the Cobra. My one complaint is that the author seems biased against Japanese films. He discredits the special effects and monster suits in kaiju movies compared to even movies like Attack of the Giant Leeches and The Killer Shrews, and complains about acting and scripts in Japanese films much more than he does for other dubbed films. He also consistently refers to Ishiro Honda as “Inoshiro Honda”, which is how his name was misspelled in the 60s. That level of disrespect for some of my favorite genre pictures is a constant low-level irritation in what is otherwise a fine resource.

97. Cursed Objects by J. W. Ocker. This is a fun catalog of objects said to be cursed, including the whys, supposed effects and current locations of these artifacts. The book is sorted into categories, like “cursed objects in museums”, “cursed furniture”, “technological cursed objects”. It takes a skeptical, folkloric look at the topic, being more interested in the stories than in any legit supernatural powers. It even talks about things that “should” be cursed because of their odd appearances or eerie provenances, but aren’t, like the Crystal Skull forgeries. The book is a pleasant and breezy read, and the author has a good sense of humor on the topic. He curses the book itself with an epigram against thieves, and buys a cursed dog statue on eBay that sat on his desk throughout the writing process.

98. Death in the Garden by Michael Brown. This book is wildly misnamed, being light on both the “garden” and the “death”. It’s supposedly a social history of poisonous plants, but is more interested in English herbals specifically. It refers to the authors by name extensively as if we should have all of these memorized, and the only place where the prose has any energy is in the biographical section for these herbalists. There’s very little information about the actual plants and their poisons. I would use the word “doddering” to describe the prose style, which is simultaneously rambling and boring. The photography is pretty, though.

99. Ripley’s Believe it Or Not! 1929-1930 by Robert Ripley. IDW puts out lovely volumes of vintage American comics, and this is no exception. Being a kid into weird facts and trivia, and an adult who is still into them, the Ripley franchise was a major part of my childhood. This is the first modern collection organized chronologically, covering the first two years the strip was in national syndication. The strips cover the typical Ripley mix of sports trivia, weird facts, word riddles and puzzles, misleading statements and the occasional outright lie. The book has a warning about the racial attitudes of the time, which is fair, but it’s not nearly as bad as I feared. Ripley’s habit of drawing from photographic references means that people in ethnic minorities look like real people. But the language is decidedly “of its time”, with slurs used to identify foreign ethnicities (particularly Asian ones). So be warned.

100. Unlucky Stiffs: New Tales of the Weirdly Departed by Cynthia Ceilan. I’m ordering material to pick up from my local library again, which is great! This book was actually recommended by the library website based on the morbid slant of some of the other books I was putting on hold. Unfortunately, this book sucks. It’s pitched as a “weird deaths” book, something like a more literary version of the Darwin Awards. But the deaths are often not all that bizarre, instead being typically sad accidents or murders. It just comes off as mean spirited and misanthropic. Not recommended.

[elencelebrindal]

Soooo... since the asshole Kido is not their father, what are their origins? Since they come from all around the world and whatnot.

I don’t have all of them fully detailed (I mean, the group of Bronzes we know), but I have the main five and Jabu with a bit more of an explanation behind their origins.  

[I made a digression on their Italian names here, you can skip if you’re not interested]

However, let me put a bit of a disclaimer here: part of this thing of “they have different nationalities” works really good for me because the have different names in the Italian dub, so I can avoid trying to explain why they all have Japanese names.  I am aware that people can have names of different origins (where’s the fun in naming a child if you’re not creative, come on), but this helps in adding a bit more diversity to these “orphans from mothers all around the world”. 

Three of the main five don’t have a name in the Italian dub (Seiya, Shun and Ikki are called like their constellations, which is ridiculous but what can I do about it, so they kept their OG names), but for clarity, here’s the name changes of the others. Obviously, the changed names have different meanings:

Shiryu : Sirio (which is the name of a star in Canis Major, also known as Sirius in latin). Technically an Italian name, since Sirio is the Italianization of Sirius. 

Hyoga: Crystal (or Cristal). I’m still convinced that they stole this from the Crystal Saint, it’s too funny. But, well, obviously you know what crystal means. Although, I believe it’s more of a girl name in English? I don’t know, names are weird. 

Seiya, Shun, and Ikki: Pegasus, Andromeda, and Phoenix. Unfortunately. So they keep their original names.

Jabu: Asher. According to the internet, it’s a name of Hebrew origins and it’s the name of the son if Israel in the bible. As a surname, it has different origins. 

Nachi: Black. You know what black means, so let’s move on. 

Ichi: Aspides. I don’t know if the inspiration was what I found, but aspides is the plural form of aspis, a wooden shield used in Ancient Greece. 

Geki: Gerki. Don’t know why this change was necessary. According to the internet this is just a rare surname, no meaning attached, a bit more common in the USA. 

Ban kept his name, and the name can also have origins in languages other than Japanese (such as Slavic origins or Hawaiian origins). I obviously searched on google, so I might not be correct. 

[End of the digression]

So, what are the origins of the Bronze Saints we know? Keep in mind: in my own headcanon (which is basically half-confirmed by whatever is going on in canon) Saints don’t have biological parents that are still alive. I think I elaborated on this on this blog, but I don’t remember. At some point or another, said parents passed away. 

Seiya is the only one I kept as Japanese. Also, it’s a good time to mention that, in my rant about Shun and Ikki, I forgot that Seiya has an older sister too (but hey, they forget her constantly, I can’t be blamed that much).  As the Italian dub calls Tokyo (a name that I adopted with the headcanon of it being a different city because Tokyo is the New York of anime and I’m tired of it), he was born in New Luxor (yeah, Nuova Luxor in the dub, I like it a lot :D )

Shiryu is Chinese. I really like the idea of him simply going back to his origins upon discovering his training place.  He was born in Pingyao, where there is one of the Nine-Dragon Walls. 

Hyoga is 100% Russian. Even though him being Kido’s son makes sense, I hate that old excuse of a man so here you go. Even if Natassia got pregnant on a one time thing, Kido can go cry his loneliness in his expensive pillows and stay away.  He was born in Oymyakon, the Russian settlement with the lowest registered temperatures ever. 

Shun and Ikki are German. I like to think this because of the whole backstory for Pandora, Shun and Ikki in the Hades Chapter. Since she is German, I liked the idea of her being chosen by the twin gods to find a vessel for Hades because she was actually pretty close to him already.  They were born in Munich. 

Jabu is Egyptian. This has a particular reason that came from both their early rivalry in the series and the Italian name for Tokyo. I wanted for there to be some sort of equivalence. He was born in Luxor (see what I did there).

Nachi is British, thanks to his Italian dub name “Black”. Kinda bizzarre, I know, but I couldn’t let go of the opportunity.  Never really thought about where he was born. 

Ichi is Greek, thanks to his Italian dub name “Aspides”.  Again, didn’t thin about his birth place. 

Ban could probably be Hawaiian (since his name has also Hawaiian origins if Internet didn’t lie to me), while I have no idea for Geki. Maybe he could be from the US, since the Italian dub name does exist in America. 

This, in my opinion, gives them a bit more diversity. It doesn’t make sense to me that all the other Saints have different nationalities, but the Bronze Saints are all Japanese save for Hyoga (who’s still half Japanese in the manga). Saint Seiya always struck me as something full of diversity, and I really don’t want them to be so monochromatic, artistically speaking. 

[kanohivolitakk]

Some notes on my Legends of Metru Nui rewatch I did half-asleep

I watched the finnish dub so first voice impressions. The voice direction was good but the dialogue translation wasn’t always the best (more on that later) Lhikans, Mataus, Nujus and Dumes voices were much better/more fitting than the english ones, with Lhikan probably having my favorite voice in the entire movie (Matau close second btw). Makuta and Vakamas were sliightly better in finnish than in english but the english ones were really good as well so I’m not sure. Whenuas was on par with his english one, but still great. Nidhikis voice was quite good but I go back and forth whether or not I prefer it over his english one (I THINK I do but he suffered the most of the translation issues, more on that later) . On paper I prefer Krekkas finnish voice BY A LONGSHOT but the way his voice was directed was really strange and uneven so left a bit sour taste in my mouth. I didn’t really like Nokamas that much for some reason (tho its funny that her VA voiced Jessie from Pokemon in the first few seasons here). She and Onewa were the only ones where I can say for certain I prefer their voices in english by a mile

Also fun fact: In the finnish dub Whenua and Makuta share voice actors, ditto with Nidhiki and Nuju (Lhikans VA also voiced Sidorak in Web Of Shadows)

Now for the movie itself: I love the story it wants to tell of six heroes raising to the odds against them in a deceptively dystopian society and find the heroism in them in absence of a hero. I also do think its a decent kids movie but I do feel the movie suffers from tonal inconsistency as well as some pacing issues (kinda)

Out of all the movies I feel LOMN is the one thats the most “THIS IS A PART OF A LARGER STORY” for me. While the stuff thats only in the books isn’t mandatory (and I think it was right move to cut it) the movie feels like it happened in a day which honestly REALLY makes suspension of disbelief hard for me (I mean this is a scifi/fantasy story with a robot cast but I digress.)

While the movie has a decent “flow” a lot of time it suffers from like...feeling a bit rushed. There isn’t always time to breathe. THIS ESPECIALLY is true with characters. Like I get a big part of thismovie is Vakamas character arc but with how many othe r characters we have to juggle the movie kinda, pushes him aside when the other toas learn their powers and then “WAIT HE GOTTADO STUFF TOO” at the climax

The main issue for me is by far the tonal issues.The movie tries to be both a fun action movie and a darker more somber tale but just... It doesn’t always really do the darkness well.  Sometimes the scenes just are too silly and the dialgoue too direct and/or wooden for it to work as it was intended.

This is where I bring up the finnish translation. Like while it is faithful some parts were translated in a really silly way that made it hard for me to take the movie serious. Like for instance, during the “Lhikan gets attacked by the Dark Hunters at furnace” when Nidhiki holds Vakama hostage to get Lhikan surrender he says “hi there brother” instead of just “brotherrrr” like in the original version that just made me cringe out of second hand embarassment. The movie has a lot of a bit silly stuff like this. Could be because of my language but still.

Speaking of action??? Is it weird that for an action movie Bionicle has very little fighting. Like sure there is some but a lot of time the characters just, dodge each others attacks. There’s also the fact no one uses weapons instead launching energy weapons around. I wonder if this was mandated by LEGO, considering MOL did something similar (Kohlii match of death anyone?)

AThat being said I still do like the movie: I still think the characters are great and are among the better casts in Bionicle, even if they don’t always utilize them well. The score is still great and there are a few good if not great parts there

Also rewatching this movie made me realzie how much I love Matau: hes a joy and by far my favorite Metru. Just such a great fun being of chaos I love him so much

If I wasn’t so in love with best boy Lhikan and a certain traitor spider I would just say “Matau best character” but GUYS DEF in my top 5 toa now. as well as top 10/15 overall faves haha

But ye had a good time, just wish it was a miniseries instead of a movie so it wouldve had time to breathe and not rush the story in 1h 15 mins. Would’ve helped the story a lot tbh

[anime2357]

Hikari analysis (especially for people who dont like her and need some convincing)

Ok so to get started i dont really mind to her mary sue ness. Why? Well for one i dont mind mary sues as long as their not annoying. I know a lot of people consider meiko a mary sue too and while im not sure if she really is one, i didnt really like her from the start. Both are considered mary sues yet i still like hikari because of her character. And that leads to the second part. People like saying she doesnt have a personality but her personality is quiet and polite. And a lot of people who consider hikari a mary sue say it is because of her quietness. Now lets think about her character for a second, and why she might be like that. When she was young she saw these strange creatures all over the tv and even in real life and whenever she would say anything about it, the adults would play it off as her just seeing things or making it up because shes young. Hmmmmmm. That can be really damaging to a child. I know her parents didnt mean to gaslight her like that but still. Its bound to make her question everything she believes and go so far as to think “im seeing things again. I shouldnt speak since they wont believe me.” That girl had to grow up with that, having every adult gaslight the shit out of her. So obviously she would keep her thoughts to herself since, ya know, she had to do that her whole life. And we see her discontent with what she has become in episode 33 of 02 when she was on the ledge with miyako. She even says she wishes she could speak what she is feeling like miyako and not have to bottle up everything inside.

Ok another point i would like to get at is that people say she doesnt have any flaws. Welp i just wrote one of her flaws up top. She cant say what shes feeling and she never quite grew out of that. Ok, i guess people can say that isnt really a flaw but an obstacle at best. Ok i can respect that. So lets go to her second flaw, her need for her brother. Like takeru, she relies on her brother (and no that incest thing is not what im talking about, that was just a fever dream). He was the first one to confirm she wasnt crazy and that everything she saw was real, as well as someone who has her back when she needs him the most. Unlike takeru, hikari never grew out of that. She didnt grow out of her reliance of taichi, and she always considered herself as taichis little sister, not hikari yagami. In episode 13 of 02 takeru even calls her out for being to reliant of taichi. If you only watched the dub it was more of a “you have others with you, ya know” type of scene but in the sub it was more of frustration towards hikari because of her reliance on taichi. Takeru knows what it was like to be known as “someone elses sibling” and not a person of your own. Thats why he gets frustrated that she just accepts the role and doesnt fight it, after all, it was takerus whole arc, and he wanted hikari to get the same arc, which regrettfully she doesnt. Its realistic that sometimes, people dont get the opportunity to grow like some other people.

NeXt point. Shes digimon jesus. Ngl she totally is. In the novels, its explained why(kinda), but since thats a different canon im not ganna get into that. I dont mind that she just randomly gets possessed by a deity because theres random shit all over the digital world. I think a lot of people overlook this but the digital world is the world of complete fantasy. Theres vending machines in the forest and theres telephone booths on the bay. Hell, theres even a tv in the coliseum. So why is it strange that a girl gets possessed by a deity but its ok when the world LITERALLY TURNS INTO A SPIRAL LIKE THATS NOT NORMAL. Anyways i digress. So the reason why i dont see it as a pro quality to her is because SHE CANT CONTROL THAT SHIT LIKE IT JUST HAPPENS OUT OF NOWHERE. IF THE DIGILORD WANTS HER TO JUMP OFF A CLIFF SHE LITERALLY CANT DISOBEY IT!(at least until tri)

Last point, and oh boy its a biggie. So one thing that people say makes her a mary sue is that all the boys (not all but ya know) in the series have a crush on her. Ok. I can see why people hate that aspect of her. To me, however, i dont mind that because it adds to the tragedy of her character (ohhh poor baby is pretty and gets all the boys, how awful. Let me get there.) So, her character up until that point was 1, raised to be quiet or people will gaslight her, 2, always relies on someone else to feel significant, and 3, literally blacks out because a deity takes her body, and there is nothing that she can do about it (at least until tri). Not to mention a group of ugly sea creatures betrays her trust and tries to do not nice things to her. Hell Yeah, its tragic that all of the boys like her. Why, because all who do crush on her only like her for her looks. And the thing is SHE KNOWS. She never reveals her true feelings so she know that people only like her for her looks, reinforcing her original thoughts of people will only like her if shes quiet and a cute face. LIKE BRO. EVERYTHING ABOUT HER LIFE IS REALLY EFFED UP AND THE FACT THAT PEOPLE JUST CHOCK IT UP TO SHES A MARY SUE IS REALLY SAD.

I saw someone who made a funny summary of digimon and they said they didnt like how hikari became a kindergarten teacher since it “follows the female stereotype” (so do a lot of my friends lol) and let me just say, shes probably a kindergarten teacher because she didnt want some other poor kid to be told their crazy and have to deal with the same effed up life she did.

So anyways, to all the people who made it to the end, i cant blame people for not getting hikari. Shes a very subtle character, and if you dont connect ALL of the dots, then you’ll probably miss the greatness of her character. Sometimes i wish people wrote as much about hikari as they do azula from avatar (on the other hand im kinda glad that they dont. I dont want people to start saying shes a disgrace to all females out there)

[its-moopoint]

There is many people upset about OL finale, for what I've read, they take all of the violence the book has but not the tenderness moments; especially on JC... Some has even speak about how looks like everything it's about C and wanted to Jaime be re casted 😯😯😯

You know I couldn't have answered this yesterday before watching myself but after having done so here are my thoughts that sum up in: great ideas poorly executed.

It's a mix of feelings for me, good additional material but for the wrong reasons and bad choices taking out classic book stuff. I'm gonna try explain myself.

1. Jamie in the future.

As a concept I understand what they were trying to do here but I just think it wasn't possible. To have Jamie in the future, even if it's in a dream like experience or disembodied projection, took away from the here and now of the scene, the season and what was really going on. It's such a huge thunder stealing moment and rightly so. I mean raise your hand if you wished and wanted and longed to see Jamie in the future with Claire either in the books or in the show. I know I wanted to and I knew Diana was never gonna do that so I had resigned myself to read about it on fanfics but they go and bam, give it to us so unexpectedly. In fact so unexpectedly that I still think it was neither here nor there in this episode and no one can convince myself Diana is happy with the experiment. I believe she was so against having Jamie in the future in any way and was keeping all her mistery for Jamie's ghost appearance at Claire's window. But I digress... back to the episode, I loved this scenes but for the wrong reasons. I think it's like inviting Antonio Banderas to your wedding and yet not want him to take the spotlight and steal your thunder. You love the idea of him being there but you know it's gonna backfire with people focussing on him. That's what I think has happened here. The image of Jamie in the future being Claire's husband and being so domestic and tender with her is so visually powerful and emotional and beautiful that puts the rape and ordeal in second place and out of focus.

2. Brutality of the gang rape

I have admitted to have read the books only once in a rush devouring them in search of plot jumping descriptions and stuff so I may be wrong here but I remembered the gang rape as beyond horrible in the book so so disgusting I had to stop reading, feeling like puking. In that sense I really don't agree with people who say the show made it cruder or worse, on the contrary, it still felt pretty "safe" compared to what I had came up with in my mind when reading Diana's words.

3. Roland's acting.

I can't be the only one noticing or thinking this. For me it's like he checked out as an anon said. I find his performances completely confusing in the sense that his gestures and acting doesn't match his words. In fact he reminds me of this horrible news anchors who can't do empathy while telling the news so you watch them there be sharing such horrible news with smiles on their faces?? Well that's Rolando here. Total innapropiate facial expressions for the key lines he delivers. It doesn't match. And it screws up the scene. If you doubt it try doing this experiment, go watch one of this key scenes and dub his words with some funny joke you know, or a Limerick, or a song lyrics. It will fit his face too!!! For the life of me I can't understand how this stuff is watched by many and no one sees a problem there. He's just there throwing his lines when it's his turn mostly. In my opinion he failed big time on his Thanksgiving speech on the future and on "when the time comes" iconic line.

4. Jamie and Claire's intimacy.

They say they are trying, and it's definitely better than previous seasons but they still make the same poor choices by cutting the most important stuff out regarding their interactions. I read the script for the finale and again they missed the point by removing any tender touch from Jamie to her. I can't believe they didn't do the marks kissing that was written. Jamie is her healing. His touch is her healing and her recoiling from him at his first attemps of comforting was essential too. I don't understand why they didn't show any of this.

So all in all, I liked some things for the wrong reasons and I think they did worse than they should have with the good material they had that always gets discarded in favour of other meaningless stuff (way too much sophistication in all the 60s easter eggs and so little trauma healing for Claire with Jamie).

[kuroganeslayer]

How did you get into RP?

// The villians made me do it. Axel, Piccolo, Vegeta, Yami Bakura, Yami Malik, Renji, Grimmjow, hichigo, Gajeel, Cobra/Erik, Midnight/Macbeth, and Laxus.

I

[[MORE]]

That is hard to remember as it happened along time ago when I was watching yugioh for the first time when WB had it on tv. Then I grew attached and got the japanse ones including the manga books. I noticed a huge difference between the anime dubbed and the oringal. But sometimes I could understand why they change things, but people pointing your fingers at you which were oringally supposed to be guns was really stupid. Then changing the cards, editing the millienium Rod where Yami Maik is holding it in a wiered angle instead of seeing the dagger so stupid and even editing Zork, because he looks like he has a huge cock, but they edited It and made it worse for the dub. Shit they could of created smoke circulated around him and no one would of noticed it.

 That is where I got my inspiration on writing fan fiction, then I hopped on rp on forums on breaks during my internet class. I used to know how to do lots of html stuff, but now am really rusty with it. When I was in the yugioh fandom, they had a forum where you could look up spoilers, but I got into when you could rp with any other anime character you wanted I would rp as Yami Bakura and Yami Maik, as they were my favorite characters in the show even though they actually dueled against each other, but then took out the dueling part where me and a selected group had all of them go adventures and these two villians would cause chaos.

A few times I also rped as Piccolo, but that was hard to pull off. 

Then I got into the Kingdom Hearts fandom on a different site and rped as Axel and then things started to get hectic as me and a friend were harassed personally just because we wrote paragraphs when we rped. However the other group would god mod a lot so it just wasn’t a fun environment anymore Including the site getting hacked by a moderator who erased all the rps so I found my way to tumblr. At first I would just scroll and type things of my interest then I saw people rping and it looked like fun to me. There was another person who I quickly became friends with and she was a Axel rper and we would rp together. Then I found a Reno rper who has a butt load of other blogs as muses and we became friends. I would rp with almost all his muses. Eventually he and my Axel began shipping together. Then he disappeared and said he needed time away from the fandom and I understood that. Then he introduced me to Bleach and that is where I feel in love with Renji, Ichigo and Grimmjow. I currently have an Renji and Ichigo muse to this day, but I only go on there when I feel muse, but sometimes other people complaining about the manga doesn’t help or even the anon hate either. Also there was drama in the Bleach fandom and it started to get toxic.

So I found a different outlet, but it wasn’t until I saw Fairy Tail on Netflix so I watched it because I give anime a chance of at least 8 episodes or more. The story was hilarious and I decided I would keep watching it trying to find a favortie character that came along. Laxus was awesome and I liked him and his attitude, but also Natsu was completely funny and so was Grey. However when Gajeel came onto the screen I just fell in love with this bad ass. He was a villain and I love villains and I have always have in most cases when it comes to lots of animes. I root for them instead of the heros.  Also I have always loved dragons so Fairy Tail became a favorite and him being a dragon slayer like Natsu was pretty awesome. Damn Gajeel was such a bastard dragonslayer and he wanted to kill Natsu. Then I found out that Laxus was a dragon slayer also. I was thinking holy shit how many are there? So yes that intrigued me also. Gajeel being part of Fairy Tail still baffles me. Makarov making it happen by basically trapping him against his will. This really set off Laxus and he wanted to take over the guild because of dark guilds besides the econsidering his guild weak. Then after the Fantasia arc was over and Laxus leaving his thunder legion behind. I went to look for more episodes. I caught up and was a little upset that Gajeel wasn’t in the Oracion Seis arc and I still hate the creator for doing that because it would of been so much interesting in my opinion to see if Gajeel would turn on Fairy Tail or not. I secretly was hoping he would because I never thought he would become a redeemed villain that earily in the series. With how hes treated now as a comedy relief and joke I wish he never was part of fairy tail.

I even thought about boycotting that saga just because it didn’t seem that interesting. However that quickly changed when I noticed the villians. There were two guys that quickly grabbed my attention Cobra and Midnight. It was during the opening So I continued to watch despite the fact I had a problem of Wendy being exposed to a criminal underlord, guild a dark guild. Sorry, but that made no sense to me to expose a newbie with no fighting experience over someone like Gajeel, Juvia who has experience with fighting guilds. I wondered what the hell was the creator thinking. How come Gajeel wasn’t in this saga at all? It would of been right up his ally. So stupid and lame. Then I was thinking he was purposely excluded for some reason. I still feel for that as it wasn’t just a spy for Raven Tail thing because Gajeel already gave Makarov the information for being a double agent for the dark guild Raven Tail. Juvia also wasn’t in this saga either even though she has been with Natsu’s team when they were dealing with Jellal. I pondered this as well, both members part of Phantom Lord, supposedly a rival of Fairy Tail, however to me it never seem like the case. It was more than that especially if you read the japanese portion of the manga and anime (not the dubb) that evil Saint Wizard Jose wanted that guild terminated, everyone dead, jealously my ass. Much like dark guilds hate light guilds. Gajeel and Juvia were a threat to Fairy Tail and Makarov knew it, so he kept them out of it. Probably for the best, but I digress.

So I rooted for the other side, the Oracion Seis wanting them to beat the light guilds. Midnight was pretty interesting especially when he was sleeping on a carpet. The Cobra guy with his monstrous snake definitely had me hooked. There was something about those eyes and those fangs of his that seemed familar and it reminded me of Gajeel’s, Laxus and Natsu. Then his mind ability to hear anything and go through memories through me a loop. Shit I loved this guy kicking Natsu’s ass and it was just fascinated to watch. Then learning he was also a dragon slayer made me think of how well he and Gajeel would have been fun to team up in the series cause trouble loved to have seen especially to see how they faired against Natsu together. Unfortunately Gajeel and Cobra only teamed up in Fairy Tail Gaiden Rhodonite which I hope in the future its gets an anime adaption. It's about the only time Gajeel actually worked with someone (besides Pantherlily his bad ass black panther exceed) who could hold his own in a fight without interference from a third party. And actually respects him.

[vincent-marie]

The Oft Overlooked A BUG’S LIFE

A BUG’S LIFE…

What can I really say about this movie that other animation fans on the internet haven’t already? It was critically dubbed Pixar’s most mediocre film before the horror that is the CARS franchise.

I was about nine years old when this film came out, and I really liked it then. Honestly, I still kind of do, but admittedly some of it is nostalgia on my part and I’m well aware that it could have been better.

Like I said, this film has been talked about by other online critics about how it is okay, at best. That it was just the Pixar placeholder in between the first two TOY STORY movies. However for the purposes of this article I would actually like to highlight some of the good things about this movie, or at least my reasoning for why I still have a fondness for it.

Now before I continue I do feel like I should address two big elephants in the room: Namely, John Lasseter and Kevin Spacey. Knowing what we know now about them, if you can’t watch this movie without feeling uncomfortable, I totally understand. I’ll admit it makes me a wee bit uncomfortable to watch the film now, and more so the behind-the-scenes featurette on the DVD. (Wish I could blur their ugly faces when they’re being interviewed…)

However my opinions of this film on its own have nothing to do with them or whatever they contributed to the film, so they are irrelevant to what I have to say here. As far as I’m concerned if they hadn’t been involved in the film someone else would have taken their place, and those other people would have done just as good a job, if not better. Not to mention they would have been able to do it without being complete and utter creeps. To conclude, Lasseter can go suck a jellyfish and I hope Spacey rots in hell.

I’m going to primarily talk about the things I like about this movie, both then and now. But before I get to that I’m going to talk about why I agree with most critics who consider this one of Pixar’s lesser films.

A big problem with the movie is primarily the story and characters being a bit weak.

Part of that problem is the story’s initial structure. It’s clearly a retelling of Akira Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI; village is being attacked by thugs, one villager leaves to get help in the form of warriors, villager brings back help, and they successfully fight off the invaders.

Probably the biggest difference in story is SAMURAI ended on a bittersweet note due to casualties among the samurai themselves, whereas BUG’S LIFE didn’t have any real casualties on the heroes’ side. That said, though, it’s funny that the ants seemed so damn certain there would be.

Initially modeling an original story off of a classic isn’t a bad thing in of itself. Back when I was in college it was something a lot of my writing and animation professors encouraged: learn from the classics. Not just film, but also literature and mythology.

The thing is SEVEN SAMURAI as a film was three to four hours long. It had time to accommodate for its fairly large cast, while still keeping its focus on a select few.

BUG’S LIFE, however, was only maybe an hour and fifteen minutes long. The writers probably could have stood to trim down some of the Bug Circus and take time to polish the story rather than try to give EVERYBODY an opportunity to have a funny line.

Having a couple ensembles in place isn’t a bad thing. They had that in TOY STORY with Andy’s toys, the Little Green Men in the claw machine, and the mutant toys. The groups, however, were smaller in that movie, and in the case of the Mutant Toys they had no speaking lines and had to convey everything with silent acting.

However something that’s been pointed out is that with Pixar films there was always a real progression in technical quality. That with each movie they got better and better with the tool of their trade that was CG animation.

Let’s look back at TOY STORY. The reason they made the characters plastic toys was because that’s just what their character models at the time always looked like. It would be a long way before they could even consider rendering complex fur textures for MONSTERS INC., and more complex still Merida’s tangled head of hair in BRAVE. It’s why the human characters in TOY STORY also look a bit weird and plasticky by today’s standards.

With TOY STORY they accomplished lively character animation in 3D. With TOY STORY 2 they managed to make better looking, less stiff human models like Al of Al’s Toy Barn, and slightly nicer fur textures on Buster the dog. MONSTERS, INC. had the aforementioned complex fur textures for Sully and some pretty decent early snow effects.

So what did BUG’S LIFE accomplish on a technical level?

Two words: textures, and lighting.

The last time I watched BUG’S LIFE I was absolutely FLOORED by how beautiful the set pieces were.

Take this scene of Flik giving Dot a pep-talk.

All that detailing in the blades of grass in the background, the pebbles on the ground, the textures on the pebbles, the textures on Flik’s contraption, and even the textures on the characters. It blows my mind trying to imagine how long it took to create those models, differentiate between the more see-through nature of the grass blades and the opacity of everything else, and arrange them in a way that makes for a convincing bug’s eye view of a patch of grass.

Then there’s the scene of the grasshoppers breaking into the anthill.

TOY STORY had some decent lighting that helped establish the needed atmosphere, but I don’t recall it being nearly this crisp.

Once again, there’s the textures on the objects and characters. As a kid, while I was aware the film was CG animated, I found myself speculating if the grasshoppers’ muzzles were made of foam rubber.

These were all things I took for granted as a kid, because I did not yet have the experience to know just how much work and skill it takes to make 3D animation.

This is a still from a minute-long film I made in a 3D computer animation class. I was given maybe only a couple months to make it. That included having to navigate my way through these complex computer programs I was completely unfamiliar with, and technical difficulties like the textures not grafting onto the models right. Let me tell you, it was a pain in the ass.

I look at the backdrops for BUG’S LIFE and I’m left to ask: “How many computers CRASHED trying to render all that?” Because, believe me, that happens. A lot.

Also, here’s the thing. When technical elements of a film are done well, such as lighting or camera focus, the audience LITERALLY doesn’t notice it. They’re too swept up in the story because the visual storytelling keeps up the illusion for them. The audience only notices important technical details like this when they’re done BADLY, hence a lot of people outside the film industry really take for granted just how much work and skill is taken into making a film that looks good.

(It’s why I think everyone should watch FOOD FIGHT at least once in their lives, especially animation fans.)

Okay, while it is inevitable that I would bring up Dreamworks’ ANTZ, I’m not going to talk too much about it. (It’s like the Cola Wars; everyone inevitably picks a side.) All I’ll say for now is I’ve always preferred BUG’S LIFE because it’s nicer-looking design-wise and its content and execution is more family-appropriate. (Also, in 1998 we didn’t know at the time Kevin Spacey was a creep, but everyone and their DOG knew Woody Allen was. Nice job, Dreamworks!)

It’s been pointed out that there’s a distinct casting difference between ANTZ and BUG’S LIFE. ANTZ had a cast of recognizable movie actors, while BUG’S LIFE had a cast of recognizable television actors.

For BUG’S LIFE that’s not necessarily a bad thing. One of the things that bothers me about celeb casting in animated movies is that oftentimes it feels like a flimsy attempt at star-power when said stars don’t have the power to elevate the characters. Actors who might be good front of a camera but bring nothing to a recording booth.

However for the most part Pixar has been really good at casting well-known actors who actually fit their characters and add some personality to them. BUG’S LIFE was no exception.

In fact, quite a few of them had loaned their voices to animation before this film, and some damn good performances too.

And I can name at least one BUG’S LIFE alum who graduated from funny performance to heartfelt performance with Pixar…

(… I’m not crying! YOU’RE crying!)

But I digress. I consider the casting for this movie pretty solid. (With the obvious exception of Kevin Spacey.)

What’s more, growing up I remember a lot of the TV spots for Pixar films usually down-played the celeb cast and let the product speak for itself. The celeb casting was less of a selling point for the films and more like a fun little Easter egg for the parents who had to take their kids to the theater.

Earlier I stated that the story and characters in BUG’S LIFE are a bit weak, and I stand by that. However there are a couple characters I’d like to highlight here as I’ve always found them interesting and memorable in their own ways.

First, let me talk about Hopper for a minute.

(I’ve already stated that Kevin Spacey can rot in hell, so there will be no more of that.)

I’ve heard criticism about Hopper as a character that he was a very bland, one-dimensional villain. To be fair, they’re not wrong.

But the thing I always liked about Hopper is that his one and only goal is to hold dominion over the ant colony. To keep them under his foot, both literally and figuratively, and he wasn’t afraid to use deadly force to do that. He was willing to kill a few of his own goons just to illustrate a point. That’s how threatening he was.

In a lot of children’s media I had seen up to that point, there were several bully characters that were often portrayed as the bigger kids who would demand your lunch money. They were usually ineffectual doofuses like Bulk and Skull from POWER RANGERS, or kids with serious insecurities like Binky Barnes from ARTHUR. While not the first of his kind, Hopper was one of the first characters I had ever encountered as being a prime illustration of not just a bully, but one who had the makings of a dictator.

With his rather one-note motivation, I can see why audiences found him bland, but given his violent means of staying in power, I’m glad they didn’t try to make him “complex” or give him any sympathetic character traits.

Frankly, we live in an age where horrible people are romanticized in the media as being “misunderstood”. I feel like, unlike those media outlets or the upcoming JOKER movie, BUG’S LIFE gets it. They don’t deserve to be portrayed with humanity. These people are monsters. Nothing more.

Maybe if Pixar hadn’t felt the need to rush the production maybe Hopper is one of many characters that could have been polished up a bit in the writing process. Give him some more distinct, memorable traits as a character. Maybe hints at a backstory of Hopper having a long-standing history of using and abusing others, and always getting away with it.

(When I put it that way, we can just say Hopper is the John Lasseter Story. Just draw a pair of glasses and a tacky shirt on the guy and it’s a spitting image.)

The other thing I’ve always liked about this movie was the portrayal of Princess Atta.

Besides being the first Pixar Princess, I always liked how, unlike the Disney Princess pantheon up to date in the late 90s, Atta actually had a bit of a character arc related to the fact that… well, she’s royalty! She’s going to have to take over the colony eventually as queen.

We see this from the beginning as she’s overseeing the harvest and going into a panic when things go even slightly wrong. Also, I find it interesting that it’s a guy that screws everything up when Flik accidentally destroys the food offering, yet she’s the one who gets blamed for it. (Ironic commentary coming from the studio led by an egotistic creep who wouldn’t let women in on meetings.)

But what I loved about her as a kid was that her personality and approach to things was a lot more real and down-to-earth than your average glamorous Disney Princess. She felt less like fairy tale royalty and more like a woman up for promotion at a big company. From a pragmatic standpoint that can be just as scary, stressful and daunting.

(It also feels appropriate in hindsight considering her voice actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus would later star on VEEP…)

My friend @baxterfilms and I have had a lot of discussions about this movie, and we agreed that Atta should have been the protagonist. She actually has a character arc of her own of being unsure of herself at the start of the film, taking charge in the second act, and eventually standing up to Hopper in the third.

Remove Flik entirely, and have her go on a journey to find reinforcements against the grasshoppers. Have her realize that Hopper’s demands are impossible, she’s sick of having to adhere to him, and have her sneak out to get help. When she finds out she literally brought home a bunch of clowns, she understandably freaks out. She has to figure out a resolution because there is a lot of pressure on her to make things right and free the colony from bondage.

Strangely enough, with that version of the story you could still probably have all the indulgent fun of the celebrity cast. It’s just the very core of the film’s story needed some serious tightening up, and maybe Dave Foley as Flik would have fared better as a comic relief sidekick.

With all that said, I thank you for taking the time to read this. I really do think that this film is highly under-appreciated in the animation community. There might have been trouble in the writing room, but the technical achievements in this film were still there and helped Pixar hone their craft into making their animated features as stunning as they are heartwarming.

I have to say, though, I find it funny that there’s almost a pattern to these insect-driven animated movies. Going all the way back to MR. BUG GOES TO TOWN, they usually have rather weak leading characters, and the supporting cast winds up leaving more of an impression.

Weird, huh?

[remotecontrolchuck]

Toonami Review: Second Half Summary!

Yeah, once again I wasn’t able to be around for the first half, but made it for the second half of the run, and in time to watch the premiere of the english dub of Lupin the Third Part V! Oh Yeah!

So glad to have a crime anime on the block, especially Lupin the Third! And after his Italian Adventure, it seems the master thief has bit off more than he could chew after pulling off a major digital heist on the Dark Web. Now everyone with a smart phone is tracking him for a game, a game that could end badly for Lupin if he ain’t careful. But I digress! Speaking of a type of anime on the block again, along with a good crime anime, I’m looking forward to another mecha one coming to the block once Hunter x Hunter is over. 

Can’t believe we’re now down to one last epsiode, and already we’re at goodbyes as Killua says farewell to Gon before taking off with his sister Alluka. It’s going to be one feels after another before reaching the end of this long journey, and it always is when a long running series on the block reaches its conclusion. But that said, best to remember the good moments than the sad, and I’m going to do my best to remember funny parts that made me laugh.

Speaking of laughs, Black Clover continues to supply that on the side while continuing to give us some awesome bad ass moments as the main dish. Gotta say after this second season I do hope there will be a third one as well!

And that’s about it for my thoughts on the second half of the run, now to summarize what I thought of each episode!

Lupin the Third: Lupin and the gang return once again and rob the Dark Web, only to end being babysitters for a hacker girl that’s never been on her own, and are being pursued by Inspector Zenigata and the Internet to boot!

Black Clover: Begun, the Royal Knights Exam has. And after Asta and Mimosa’s rough battle and “Xerx’s” sneaky tricks, their team moves up in the tournament! Also, we’re introduced to the glittery drama queen of the Vermillions, Kirsch Vermillion! Overall, this shows never stops to amuse me, nor stops to surprise after one thing after another.

Boruto: It’s Parent Teacher Conference time before the exams, and even Orochimaru showed up for his “son’s” PTC, which was pretty awkward. But that wasn’t much of a surprise as KAKASHI SENSEI HAVING BEEN THAT REPORTER THE ENTIRE TIME AND MOST OF US ON TOONAMI TAG NOT HAVING SEEN THAT COMING! WOW!

Naruto Shippuden: While Old Man Onoki and his bodyguards take to the skies to fight Scaly Kabuto and Zombie Deidara, Naruto is given a totally legit mission to recruit the insane giant animals on the island/gigantic turtle for the war. Except for the recurring filler Ninja Ostrich, who once again has run off towards the sea of freedom! In short, it was a bizarre episode to watch, especially with the giant female armadillo hitting on Naruto. In other words, I’ll have what they’re having at the studio that made this.

Hunter x Hunter: So besides being enthralled by Koala’s Ted talk about Life, Death, and the Endless Cycle of Violence, it was great to see Gon reunite and apologize to Kite, as well as Killua introduce Alluka and Nanika to Gon. And of course it was quite a bit of feels to see Gon and Killua part ways before the series end, and no doubt there will be more to come come next week’s final epsiode.

Well that concludes my second half Toonami Liveblog Review, you guys have a wonderful rest of the weekend! Goodnight and Stay Gold!

[medea10]

Medea Rambles - Vic Mignogna

Fuck.

I know I’m going to regret writing this and WILL end up with backlash no matter what side I choose in the matter. So this post is the equivalency of shooting myself in the foot. No matter.

I just feel like saying something. Free speech and all that mess.

If you’re unaware of who this man is with the funny sounding last name, this man is named Vic Mignogna. For years he’s been well-known in the anime community as a very prominent voice actor. Many fans (myself included) was introduced to him when watching the English dub to Full Metal Alchemist where he plays pint-sized alchemist Edward Elric. And from then on, fell in love with his voice.

Well, I mean he was okay. Vic wasn’t really my favorite voice actor, but he was still very good. I always loved his voice in Full Metal Alchemist, Soul Eater, and Ouran High School Host Club. But others are absolute, can’t breathe without him, ride-or-die fans of Vic Mignogna and his work in anime, video games, and the Star Trek videos he does with his buddy Todd Haberkorn. In years past, he would always be seen as one of the best English voice actors of all time.

In the past ten years, I’ve seen Vic get some pretty harsh criticism from all across the board. First of all, he was seen as a homophobic. Then there were those who were SICK of hearing his voice everywhere in the anime world. Then they started attacking his Christianity. And other things like he’s mean to people around him, he’s an arrogant so-and-so, he won’t sign this thing I gave him so he’s a buttbag for life, he’s an Anti-Semite, he’s the devil, and so on and so forth. I truly felt sorry for him in some aspects. While I disagree with much of his stances on certain subjects and the homophobia thing was kind of a big driving point for me to dislike him, I wasn’t going to boycott animes that have his voice in it and call him Fuckface McFuck. But despite all that, his loyal fans would stand by his side.

But I think people started to warm up a little to him again a few years back when he attended an anime convention as a guest and got into a shouting match with some random bible-thumper. No matter what anime convention you go to, 9 times out of 10 there will always be some FuckCock holding a bible telling all of us we are going to Hell. And Vic stood up and said that is bullshit. Yeah, that was one moment where I was happy with Vic and proud that someone was ballsy enough to shutdown random Joe Jesus Jr. on the street.

I really wish I could have had the chance to meet him at a con. There was so much for him to sign for me. But alas, he never did make it to the Bay Area (excluding Sacramento, I refuse to travel all the way up there). Because after this next part, I don’t think we’ll ever be hearing from Vic again.

In January 2019, the anime community learned of several sexual harassment and assault charges filed against Vic Mignogna. Many of these claims go back to 2008 (maybe further).  More here. Yeah, the #MeToo movement has nailed a lot of sexual offenders. From Hollywood elites like Harvey Weinstein, to political figures like *too many to fucking count*, to people in the sports world like Larry Nassar. In the wake of this movement, many victims felt it was time to step out of the darkness and tell the world their story.

First of all, everyone is different. Not everyone who’s been assaulted is going to go straight to the police. Some hide this shame for years, decades, so on. When someone is sexually assaulted, a lot of things go through their minds. And the biggest thing is FEAR. Fear of what the assaulter will do if you speak up. Fear of the consequences of speaking out. Fear of what the assaulter will do next. Fear of someone else falling victim to the assaulter. Fear of losing your career. And so on. Many of us choose to stay quiet for fear of no one believing us. Many of us choose to stay quiet for fear of being labeled as a slut or being in the wrong and that we should know better.

But I feel like the wake of the #MeToo movement has encouraged victims to come forward. Especially if their assaulter is someone in a position of power and want to make sure that no one else suffers the way they did. And I’m sure Vic Mignogna’s victims felt the same way. Even though he’s a voice actor and goes to conventions. However with his popularity, it can be VERY intimidating coming out with anything of the sort.

From the looks of many of these accounts, they definitely feel ewwie due to the fact that many of them were underage. And from what I’ve seen so far is about the same level as what Al Franken did. Could there be other victims? Possibly. Could there be worse stories out there that go beyond the too-close-for-comfort kiss/hug? Possibly. And we probably will never know.

Many of Vic’s colleagues have had mixed feelings. Some have come to the defense of Vic and some have taken the side of the victims. And one even came out with her own experience with Vic. More here. As for the fans.

IT. IS. FUCKING. HELL.

I’ve seen it all in the last three weeks all over the internet. And quite frankly, it’s starting to remind me of the stupid crap that happened when R. Kelly was in trouble in the early 2000s (before what we know now). It’s either #KickVic or #IStandWithVic. If you stand with Vic, people see you as a rapist-enabling cunt and if you hate Vic, you’re seen as a lib-tard, SJW, crybaby, snowflake. I’m quite sick of seeing this getting to the magnitude it’s getting to.

The actions of Vic, again, to me they don’t seem that big. However, I’m looking at it through someone who is in her early 30′s. If I was a teenager meeting him for the first time and having him give me unwanted and unprovoked hugs and kisses, I might feel something different. Especially since this is a complete stranger. The story that was shared by Jamie Marchi however makes me think that, yeah Vic did some shady shit. But that’s just what I think.

But the fans are getting out of hand. Voice actors are being harassed for even talking about this. Victims are getting death threats. And that’s another thing I would like to go off on! Why would you do that to someone who’s clearly been through a lot? Why would you send someone who came out after years of suppressing an ugly moment in their lives a fucking death threat? What did they ever do to you personally? NOTHING. They just exposed someone who isn’t even related to you and have no connection to at all after something that felt uncomfortable to them. People like you are the reason Dr. Ford STILL TO THIS DAY can’t even go back home. So knock it off!

When other voice actors in the anime community wound up in extreme trouble, fans were not shy about dumping them like rotten potatoes. The names Scott Freeman and Illich Guardiola come to mind. Then again, both of these guys did stuff far worse than Vic, so I’ll leave it at that.

As of today (February 11th, 2019), FUNimation released a statement via Twitter stating that they have no plans to use Vic in future productions. Yeah, I’m sad on one fact. I’m sad that if any of the shows he was very prominent in, he won’t be there. Which makes me wonder what’s going to happen when Free! returns in 2020. I don’t know, maybe they can get Bryce Papenbrook to play Rin. But I digress. This was a man with a lot of talent and revered as one of the greatest voice actors of all time.

BUT THAT’S STILL NO EXCUSE! People like Vic think they can get away with anything or are invincible because of the status and power they carry. And people like that make me sick. And currently watching that in our political system and real life is just more nauseating. That’s why anime is my one outlet away from shit like this. And then Vic Mignogna reared his head in. While I am skeptical about some of the victim claims, I cannot in good conscience defend Vic.

I’m glad FUNimation isn’t shying away from this and taking the effort to cut ties from Vic. The company does have to consider the safety of the other employees that work there. I will always remember him for roles he’s done in the past (and God help the community if we ever get an Ouran sequel). And that one time fighting that one bible-thumper prick! But that’s it. I can’t support this man’s innocence. Nope. Not gonna happen.

That’s all I feel like saying.

Splash on the Hate-o-rade in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

[tomioneer]

the yyh marathon continues 10 with episodes 31-33

CHU CHU CHU CHU

no, I’m not making train noises

he’s amazing.

i love chu’s stupid hair, I really do. it’s so fun to like, watch move around 

10/10 would date someone with that style ponytail. not the mohawk though, that’s too tall.

better and bigger and BUFFER than I remember damn son

speaking of sons.

soft yusuke

pure, blessed, angel baby yusuke

you’ve realized by now, of course, that I prefer his hair down, but did you ALSO KNOW that i prefer this child is garishly bright coats

no wonder I love napping!yusuke so much and remember these early matches so fondly despite what horrible shit the other kids go through

reminder that they are ALL children

except for rinku. honestly, in retrospect, presumably full-demon rinku is probably older than any of them? 

except for kurama. because. youko.

hiei is somewhere between actually fourteen in human years and like. 300 in demon years, probably.

I feel like kurama, an apparently four tailed fox (I maintain this is a lie, as kitsune can willfully appear to have less tails than they actually possess) is like. four or five hundred human years old at least

koto is a standard kitsune, by the way--transforms into a pretty girl, has one tail in her human form, and is a red fox.

I digress.

chu. chu is an adult. chu is not fourteen, so I can enjoy his shirtlessness without any qualms

koto,  oh my god: “well, they’ve burned their skin, shortened their breath, and somehow lost their shirts. altogether I’d call it a successful fight!”

relatable

they’re laughing, and it’s honestly adorable. 

they’re not hysterical, koto, they’re bonding. 

yusuke used to fight because he had nothing better to do and nothing worth staying out of trouble for, to his perception. maybe he thought it better to get killed in a fight than end up like his mom??? I can’t say

and he certainly never understood keiko’s vested interest in him

he fell in love with that kind of fighting, the carefree brawls where he always came out on top, and used them as a way to prove himself

but now he understands fighting at another level entirely, where his life really is in danger, and the stakes are higher than he’d previously imagined they could be. this isn’t about territory or revenge, he’s been saving lives

and he loves it, and so does this random stranger he’s ended up fighting

of course chu comes back as an ally later

he’s one of the first people yusuke’s ever understood on such a resonant level

thanks for the dramatic preview, kurama, but I really wouldn’t call them perfectly matched

in a fight bewtween two people of equal skill, the bigger one usually wins

or so says anita blake in laughing corpse, a book I havne’t read in ten years lol

so I have a thing for supernatural detectives, sue me

I ran out of ice cream ten episdes and 2 days ago. in retrospect, It hought I was going through these episodes faster than that

knife-edge death match

why is he australian

have I asked that yet, because I’m asking

koenma doens’t like the sound of that but I rmember how this goes and I LOVE IT

shizuru makes a dick measuring joke

watching chu remove his shoes is my new sexuality

btw if you don’t know what ‘toe off your shoes is’ in fanfiction, please watch this sequence because chu does it and yusuke does not

yusuke, I will say again, is a CHILD

yusuke loves the rules of this fight and if it weren’t amanga where he’s not aloud to use the same sort of fight more than once for fear of boring readers, I guarnatee ytou yusuke would do this more often

I can’t believe yusuke and chu are both just standing there in that position waiting with their feet on the sharpened edges of knife blades while the cimmitte decides whether or not a death match is allowed in a death match

yusuke is so small

ominous dark clouds that I missed bc I was typing lol

boys just punch okay

oooh and they even light the fight fo us, interesting

koenma somehow doesn’t recognize someone he knows and has known for years, according to the genkai tournament arc.

yusuke has to reach a lot farther to hit chu

karasu showed up like the little bitch he is

are those tiny eyeglasses on his mask, because if so that is BEYOND STUPID

karasu has a crush on yusuke, I know because his eyes shone and he’s gay

no, I don’t ship it

I could almost ship yusuke and chu though lol

I DO half-ship chu and koto

what the hell, I count them both

ship count: 6/400

kuwabara: I could watch them fight for hours... 

keiko, immediately: I can’t watch them fight anymore!

knowing how this match ends really makes it funny that  the dub, when those plant zombies showed up, had yusuke ask Kurama if he should headbutt them  

shizuru makes an totally unacceptable, but still funny, joke about yusuke having died once already (because they don’t know he pretty much died a second time against rando, and a third time against suzaku)

keiko runs off and shizuru chases her

is this why shizuru meets sakyo? he left his viewing room earlier so I bet it is

I remember shipping them as a kid, let’s see how that goes this time

this is pretty cool actually

she dresses like a first calss gay, honestly

I wishi I could pull that sort of look off

SAKYO hey who guessed he’d show up here , not me

he is beautiful

I actually forgot that this whole time, my favorite fight was going on

I can’t beleive keiko actually got into the fighter’s area and made it onto the field that girl is fucking unstoppable

Keiko, crying: Kuwabara, you have to make them stop fighting!

Kuwabara, clueless: no way, why would I wanna do that?

classic

I read a theory online that kuwabara used to be friends with keiko and yusuke when they were all little, and it has totally changed the way I see it whenever these two interact.

kuwabra genuinely tries to explain this fighter’s mindset to a noncombatant. he is a good, patient boy

yusuke is loving this fight

so is chu

rinku’s internal observations are completely different in the subtitles, saying that chu still has something hidden up his sleeve and it waitinf or the right time to use it, where in english he says that hie wishes the reast of team urameshi had given such a good fight, so rinku could have ‘given his yo-yo a workout’ which is a terrible euphemism for... using his yo yo weapons.

I’m surprised we haven’t gotten more shots of their feet against knives, bleeding

as I went  to type that, we get the first shot of exactly that, as yusuke goes in for his own headbutt to counter chu’s

which was aparently the ‘secret weapon’ rinku meant in the subs

yusuke has beautiful eyes

chu’s head BROKE THE FLOOR

yusuke called chu mate, I dig it

yusuke and kuwabara are cute and gay

oh, they are extra gay when they do sidehugs

I can’t believe that of this whole team only two people are left

yusuke is my hero

he just yelled loudly enough to shup up the entire arena of spectators

“if you idiots got something to say, say it! but say it to my face, or else say it to my fist.” 

that’s a badly written but highly epic and kickass line

I have NO IDEA what chu just said because the audio broke and he has am AUSTRALIAN ACCENT

son of a--

the narrator just fucking punned

yusuke flipped off the toguro kyoudai, and the screen does the dramatic stylized freeze, and the narrator goes, “yusuke may be flippant now”

YOU SUCK

but also it’s a good joke I hate it

where did keiko go during the dramatic pan over the team anyway, she was down there with them.

I rewound and she is Not There.

WHYYYY did they even make Chu say anything??? he doesn’t in the japanese version, there are no subs for him

I really miss the old ED. I love the images for this one, the keiko focus. but. it doesn’t have the same energy. it’s not a jam

now that I thinka bout it, the photograph at the end of that ED could only have been taken in universe on the return trip from the tournament, so I should never have worried that hiei or kurama or kuwabara actually died.

I’m so glad for this arc if only because it’s means all these casual clothes for our cast, and I love that

look how high wasted yusuke’s jeans are, I love it, Ireally do. BOYS , wear high waisted jeans.

during purely internal monolgue, dub yusuke gives a fraction of the information sub yusuke gives by just saying “damn it” instead of “I can’t focus my reiki, why??”

kuwabara’s outside, coincidentally passing by where yusuke is, because hs’ not psychic and ISN’T LOOKING FOR HIM cuz he’s not gay

look, I realize I’m calling yusuke and kuwabara gay a lot. I don’t mean literally gay. 

they are obviously bisexual, or pan, or demi.

I just mean they fall under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, which is in my region frequently shortened to “gay”

Kuwabara immediaetly ruins my theory by straight up admitting to looking for yusuke and wondering why he wasn’t left a note

kuwabara (paraphrased): I wanna have a team meeting

yusuke, a smarty who already knows he ain’t straight: have a meeting with yourself, then. you’ll learn a lot.

kuwabara, who clearly needs more time: what does that mean?

justas I was about to say tha tI couldn’t beleive they just--left genkai in the room alone, we see that genkai is actually stalking her student now that she’s bored of intimadting kuwabara

we just--that’s the ichigaki team

those poor men

those three poor, wonderul men

I remember nothing about those two demon members of the team but now I’m getting flashes of--delaying hiei and kurama?

thank you kurama, you nerd, for bothering to do research on the next team

yusuke, who now trains on his own time even after running out of reiki: why am I so damn tired?

is this. a filler villain? or did togashi really come up with a character who manifests rubgy balls and calls himself rugby

WHY is the dub so far off the sub right now? there’s no lip flap to match!!

this is awful

buys a fucking gymnast

well he lasted for three minutes before getting killed by his own teammate

GENKAI SPEAKS BLESS HER

oh man yusuke thought is was genkai and is now confused as fuck by this young voice amazing

but why the fuck does she sound young, when she hasn’t exerted herself at all that day

she just, fucking tells them about hiei fucking up his arm

baby YOU KNEW you were making that trade, you KNEW

botan looks a lot like sailor moon right now

keiko confimrs that she is aware yusuke has the hots for her, but also that she can see how happy he is here in the tournament

shizuru’s ass is AMAZING

it’s shocking to think neither hiei nor kurama could tell toguro was alive when they were just a room away from him

why are yususke’s eyes glowing

that whole team is huge, how did rugby even make it on that team lol

‘don’t you have a team?’ “of course I do, but they’re extremely lazy” amazing.

I mean, we know they brothers are famous, but it makes so much more sense WHY they are famous--having previously WON the dark tournament

I wouldn’t be opposed to a movie or something about that tournament, honestly. I want to se more of toguro when he was human. 

I wonder how genkai feels weatching him do this

toguro is sort of like an early saitama, if you strip away personality. their drive at this point is similar from what I know of OPM. 

okay so the dub has creepy-possessive implcations thanks to toguro saying (about yusuke) “that boy is reserved for me”. the SUB on the other hand--toguro just says, ‘it’s a bad day to be a large guy, huh?’ which is fucking. amazing. bold. iconic.

yusuke is sitting next to the previous LOVE of toguro’s LIFE, and he doesn’t even notice her. just yusuke. I guess amask really can hide everything?

I’m stunned they aren’t having more trouble  about sittin ght eaudience that was calling for their blood yesterday.

of course yusuke and his friends have to deal with an extra match lol. 

okay but what’s up with this reigun thing. I don’t remember it at all. 

I guess we just really need to see genkai fight.

i do love and admire her a lot.

on the other hand, I do NOT want to see the vs. dr. ichigaki fight. I remember it pretty well I think? and it was just so--upsetting. 

did we uh. ever get a NAME for the younger toguro brother???

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story - Part 34

The Christmas of 2003. My Uncle Bob and Aunt Marty came from Florida to visit the family. Because of the guests, everyone is in a good mood. And I can't necessarily be out getting bad grades or talking to boys so my father has no animosity towards me for those two weeks. Everyone is more or less in positive Christmas cheer. I really don't remember much of what I got that Christmas, other than I was very happy with it. Perhaps I was living in the endorphin high of thinking back on all the positive exchanges between Zack and I. I was being eaten alive by this good kind of stress that is associated with being in love. It hurts. It's all consuming. You can do painful physical tasks without pain or complaint. Temporarily, everything you do seems to have purpose, but at the same time nothing makes any sense at all. There is nothing you can do with it. It's simply there. And it can actually get in the way of actually living if you let it. I could not wait to go back to school to see him.

The only thing I do remember getting that Christmas, is my father for some strange reason decided to buy me this Guns n' Roses music video DVD. Why he bought me this I don't really know. I told him I didn't like Guns n' Roses. He himself never cared too much for Guns n' Roses either. I think he bought me this completely random unneeded gift because he had spent the last year associating me with my eldest sister Maria, who actually was out doing the drugs and having all the sex at my age. Her young wild years had been during the time of Guns n' Roses. She had the big hair, this sort of snotty almost L.A. Cheesy 80's teenage attitude. When my father bought me the DVD, I was thankful, and I even watched all the silly music videos, mostly I remember watching Axl walking down a dark hot looking sidewalk with his bandanna. Later, my father apologized for having gotten me that DVD. He said he had no idea what had gone through his mind when he was picking out gifts in the store.

I got this 50$ Hastings gift card (RIP), and I was so stoked. Sarah had also received some money and we made plans to go into Lewiston (bigger town 45 miles west) together and go shopping. Lewiston doesn't snow much, but it was dry and cold. There was snow on the surrounding valley hills. I remember walking in to the store and seeing all these possibilities that I hadn't really noticed before. It was probably the first time I ever took a real interest in what Hastings had to offer, at least the book or music sections. Previous to this, the only thing I ever had truly enjoyed about going to Hastings was that back in the 90's, I used to get over dubbed obscure foreign fantasy movies from the 80's and B movies for kids. A lot of movies from Moonbeam entertainment. After searching around for some time, I found the new White Stripes album, Elephant. I also found and purchased the biography of Kurt Cobain's, 'Heavier Than Heaven'. I read it over the course of that winter break, and I felt rather cool about it. Now I for sure knew more than anyone else did about Kurt Cobain.

After that, we went to the Lewiston mall, not a very big or good mall, but we were with Sarah's grandma Tutu, and we had to go to a bunch of old lady oriented stores that sold get well cards and soap and old lady jewelry. As we were walking down the mall absently, when suddenly I saw someone sitting at a bench back turned. It was unmistakable who it was, an all too familiar hunch and an all too familiar flannel, but I couldn't believe it. Zack was sitting there on the bench. I walked passed him, and we stopped and said hi. I didn't want to act as pleased as I was, so I swallowed it up. He was with his sister and some visiting cousins. He looked shocked and happy to see me as well. At some point we sat at the A&W, and he, his sister and his cousins were sitting behind us. He and I began throwing things back and forth. His sister and cousins seemed slightly alarmed. I was magical and fun, and I of course could not help but see this as a huge sign. It really did seem to me like the universe wanted us to meet. I could never explain it, but there were just so many coincidences.

I ended up listening to The White Stripes 'Elephant' over and over again. Up to that point, I had to say, it was my favorite album of all time. My father hated it. He would come into my room and accused Jack White of being a talentless guitarist. He made it out to be some aggressive juvinile noise album with no melody. He made out The White Stripes like they were a hardcore punk group, or like Black Flag or something. Later on, after he read reviews, he suddenly became highly interested in Jack White, particularly after the documentary, It Might Get Loud. It was kind of unfair, but it happens from time to time. Particular with front men and guitarists. They become icons for older middle class white dudes who want to start being musicians and think of themselves as 'bluesy'. They always end up spending a bunch of money on P.A equipment and specialty guitars and such.

Most of the time they don't really progress too much as guitarists. For them, it's more about what they can buy than it is what they can do. They always latch on to either Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, a number of various blues musicians, and most importantly, The Who. You can find these men in almost every guitar shop across the USA. They are generally dentists or real estate agents. Some of them are retired. They are bored. Their wives pretend to get into it as well, but actually they only like a few of the love songs and otherwise don't care. This sounds as though I am demonizing this, and it's really not the worst thing someone can do. There is nothing really wrong with it, only older middle class white people (if someone tries to tell me I am being racist against whites I am going to laugh) are the most universally typical group of people. If you don't believe me, you have never worked in the service industry. I really don't want to come off like I am discouraging artistic endeavors either. But it's funny to me because it's so universally the same. All these men are identical in my perspective.

Anyway, I mention these sorts of fellows because I feel like this crowd of people kind of took Jack White and claimed him as their own. And yeah, I know these sorts of people are not terrible, deep deep down they as individuals they are intricate human beings with their own unique qualities, our economy depends on their bored mindless spending habits. But they ruin everything. They just do. When they get into music, they take on music like it's an Olympic event. They think the fastest musicians are the best, or the oldest. They are looking for some kind of authenticity that they lost five years into their practicing medicine or whatever. They try to be seen at the right concerts. They are shameless posers. They brag about what they own. They have to essentially be told what to like. When The White Stripes were wholly a thing unto themselves and appealed to minimalism, childhood nostalgia, and abstract perspective they really just took the Jack White is an acclaimed guitarist with blues influence. Meg was a minimalist drummer, and these guys are all vaguely sexist and skeptical if they should like female musicians so she gets ignored.

My father later in time kind of became one of these older people who want to be cool in time, and he took Jack White and made it seem really uncool. He went from complaining about The White Stripes like they were an example of what's wrong with young folk these days to using it as a prop to seem edgy himself. And of course, he never really listened to it. But he would brag to other people like he did.

I have digressed, and should get back to what I was saying. As I go along in my life story, I am probably going to here and there explain my take on slightly off subjects simply because as I got older I formed more personal opinions about the world. It shapes the story to a degree.

There was a slumber party at Ava's that winter break. We invited Teal, whom I still didn't really trust. She was Ava's friend, not mine. And as I have stated before, she shoved me hard in 6th grade, and there was something really revealing about that shove. I didn't think she was a nice person. Basically, all of us sat around (I mostly just listened), and Teal and Samantha talked about their sex lives. Teal had slept with her babysitter, which I thought was kind of disturbing and weird. Her mom had trusted this high school guy to watch Teal as a junior high school student, and this insignificant dopy foolish creep had covered Teal's naked body with whipped cream and licked it off. I remember this story very vividly. This guy was super dull. I felt like Teal liked him on the grounds that he was older than her. And I just could not imagine letting his greasy boring face near me. Of course, that is just me.

At some point in the night, my friends all put on this Andrew WK song and started dancing. I liked Andrew WK, but dancing seemed weird to me. I was starting to notice group psychology a little more. Sarah and Samantha didn't want to do it, but they felt they had to. Teal and Ava were genuinely into it, and everyone was trying to impress Teal. I decided I didn't want to dance. They ended up putting on some boy band music on and I told them with honesty that I didn't want to dance. I told them I didn't like the songs. I wasn't like rude about it, and I wasn't trying to judge them. I just felt like it was 50% phony. Sarah later admitted that it was, and she was confused as to why she danced. And maybe to a certain extent, Zack labeling me as the 'anticonformist' was beginning to get to my head just a little. I was beginning to live up to the hype.

My Uncle Bob had bought us kids the movie 'Spirited Away' for Christmas. It was really good and I ended up watching it frequently. But then Ava came over, and she became this whole other level of obsessed with that movie. She ended up coming to my house off and on from winter break to Februrary just to watch Spirited Away. She talked about how she was the main character Chio, and how Tyeson was the character Haku – none of which makes any sense at all – particularly Tyeson who was mostly stoned at all times and had little ambition or personality to speak of. And I didn't want to address it, but Ava reminded me of Noface when he was manically creating gold more than anyone in the movie. When she went to sleep I had to tip toe over her and turn the television off, and eventually I got tired of watching this movie over and over again with her, but would do it anyway to be nice.

Eventually Christmas break ended, and we were back in school. My uncle and aunt went home. Ava was acting spongtaneous and crazy. She seemed desperate and moody. She had hoped that Tyeson would come back for the second semester, but he never really did. She was in despair. Sarah had just bought herself a lot of Him and CKY merchandise, but other than that, we were all back in the frying pan.

I mentioned Billy Arnett a while ago. He was the guy that I often saw in detention, whom all the girls thought was super hot. By age 18, he had slept with well over 50 girls, not just in our town, but in neighboring ones as well. I really didn't like him because he was starting to take advantage of girls who were way too young for him, and the only thing that stopped me from being outwardly against him as a person was the sad fact that Zack and him were buddies. But a few of the more popular girls in my class were obsessed with him. I guess these two girls who were already enemies both wanted to fuck him, and try to be the girl that could tame the bad boy, as if that were something anyone could ever do. Billy of course didn't care, so long as he was getting laid. He thought these fights were hilarious and he didn't take any of these young girls seriously. There was some kind of cold-war style mutually assured destruction realization between these two girls, Erica and Amanda. One little move would make the whole thing blow up.

Ava, having watched this whole fight go down from afar, decided to see what would happen if she wrote in black sharpie “Erica is a fucking slut who fucked Billy Arnett” in the bathroom stalls. This ended up causing Erica to think that Amanda wrote it. Amanda of course was innocent, but Erica decided to confront her on it, and this all escalated into a fist fight of scratching and punching and physically attacking one another in the girl's locker rooms. All for the love of stupid Billy who didn't even bother to brush his teeth. Meanwhile, Ava and I sat on the bench out in the gym – though we didn't actually see the fight, we watched them both have to be physically separated. It was 100%. I know that sounds bad – it really isn't in keeping with my feminist values, but both of these girls were stuck up, and pretentiously full of themselves and after being in their class for the last eight and a half years, it felt fun to watch this happen. And I hadn't done it personally. It was all Ava. Besides, the two of them ended up becoming friends because of the incident, so I don't feel too badly.

I ended up doing something similarly a few months later. I wrote YOU WILL DIE SOON 666!!! on a sheet of paper, opened up someone's locker – I didn't know who's, and put it in. It ended up going to this ultra sweet girl named Britney. She was one of the few people who was both popular, and truly a wonderful kind human being. She was always nice to everyone equally and didn't judge other people at all. When she opened her locker and saw what was written, she became frightened that someone was after her. And everyone was baffled. Who would ever want to come after Britney? I felt really guilty. I would say sorry today, but that wasn't how I responded then. I just shut my mouth and looked down at my desk as everyone spoke about it for the rest of the year.

I ended up getting kicked out of math class. My math teacher was named Mrs. Rush. She lost it. As is to be expected, it was the first year of alebra, and I was so confused by this part of the years as to what was being taught. I felt like the things you learned one day were contradicted by the lesson of the next, and I could not follow it. I have always needed more time with math. I can't digest a lesson that quickly. There was this rush, and for whatever reason, I simply could not follow even if I had the right attitude. They might has well have been speaking Latin for the entire hour of math. I didn't do my homework ever anymore. I used to stress about it, but now I didn't see the need to stress if the outcome would be the same regardless if I stressed out or if I didn't. Which teachers hate this attitude. I tried in the beginning, and then I simply stopped. I would instead look out the window and brush my hair with my fingers and think about Zack, and song lyrics and daydream about the future. It was on such a day that Mrs. Rush asked me a question abruptly in class. I didn't even know what she had said, let alone the answer. I had been very deep in thought, a strand of my long curly brown hair was in my hands. She flew into a rage. She called me a lazy worthless human being and she demanded I follow her to the office, she was screaming at me the whole time, I don't remember what. She told me I was never allowed in her classroom again.

I was taken into the office, and she yelled at the office woman, and the counselor telling them I was absolutely under no circumstances allowed to be in her classroom ever again. I was a little besides myself, but a little proud in a way. Zack had also been kicked out of math class after all, and now was taking a really dumbed down math class called practical math. I was hoping they would put me in there instead with him. The office women didn't know what to do with me. They had me sit in a chair. The next day I came to the office at that time and asked them what I should do instead of math, and they told me that I had no choice but to go to math class anyway. So I sheepishly went back to Mrs. Rush's class. She glared at me, but said nothing. Perhaps the principal had shot down her ambitions to have me sent somewhere else.

And to be fair to her, I was a miserable student. I really was. I think she was a small minded judgmental woman, but she was passionate about mathematics. More than anyone else I have ever met. I really don't understand that passion fully, but I have to respect it for what it is. She knew a great deal more about things I have never had the discipline to sit down and learn. I do imagine it was hard to have someone like me in her class, essentially disrespecting everything she was passionate about and undermining her determination to teach. And it had to seem dumb, me twirling my hair with hearts for eyes looking out the window all lobotomized by petty teenage fantasies of romance and rebellion against 'the system'. The again, she was getting paid. And she never did anything when she saw I had been beaten by my dad. Cognitive dissonance kicked in and she decided that I deserved it, whatever it was that had happened.

And she got her revenge. Three months later, nearing the end of the school year she had worn this very boring tan pant suit type outfit, and one of the girls in my class complimented her attire. She gushed and started talking about how it looked good on her because she had a certain body type. I wasn't really paying attention to this conversation because it was boring to me, but she then had started to talk about how some women don't look good in pantsuits and should never ever wear them. She then told me to stand up. I didn't really register that this was connected in any way to her conversation, and thought it had to be something more straight forward. I stood up confused. She then started pointing out what was wrong with my body piece by piece, and why I could never wear a whole bunch of different kinds of outfits that she could wear. I realized eventually that she was standing me up in front of the class to essentially point out that I was chunky. She didn't say I was fat, but that was essentially what she was getting at. I sat down, more baffled than anything. It was extremely unprofessional and inappropriate. Good student or no.

Mrs. Rush ended up dying of lung cancer three years later. She smoked like a chimney and it eventually got to her. The town had a huge fund raising thing, and they raised the 120,000$ needed for this operation that had a chance of saving her life, but then she died a week later, and the money went to another person. I was sad about it. She wasn't a bad woman, and despite our problems she didn't deserve death. My father laughed and called it karma – having heard eventually some of the things she said and did. It is one of the many things I don't really like about him, that kind of dumb reactionary bullshit. I knew she also had a very good side. Her husband was a very friendly and warm person, and you could tell they were very much in love. And at one point the next year she had been teaching a class that Sarah was in, and she had a very strange younger girl in her class that was easy to bully, that she kind of assisted the other students at picking on in the class room. Sarah actually went up to her desk after class and told her that she was tired of the bullying and felt that Mrs. Rush herself was provoking it. Mrs. Rush actually listened to what Sarah had to say, and seemed genuinely concerned, having not even realized her own behavior. It isn't actually an excuse, but there is something to be said for a person who is willing to take criticism and learn from their mistakes.

One day in mid January – I actually think it was January 17th, the day was the day to end all days and that date is forever carved into the aged tree trunk of my memory chamber. Zack had taken me aside after FFA, the sky overcast and grey, the outside air brisk, and other than the river the world was very silent, and he had told me that he thought I was a very special person. He looked me in the eyes and said 'You are a very special person Renee'. He took me aside and told me he really really did love me. I was dear to him. And I didn't react, I don't think I could. I was shaking and in shock. And I had to get to my next class.

I honestly would react so differently now, that it hard for me to put myself in the shoes of someone who simply wouldn't react to this. This would not be a situation that would come up now, but if something like this happened to the person I am now, I would have suggested we skip the rest of class and talk by the river. And I would have figured it out that day. Either he loves me and we should date, or he doesn't love me like that and we don't. I now have this internal person who would know how to naturally be in those shoes. But then, I feel like a part of me that should have been there was a blank slate. Maybe I really had no self esteem, or it had been wiped away by my upbringing, a sort of confience that most everyone has that I don't. Or maybe I am naturally someone with a lot of voids in my personality. I think all three are the case.

I was an empty glass. I hadn't been told I was loved in years. I hadn't felt loved for years. I had become so accustomed to being the bottomfeeder that it didn't even hurt anymore. It was hard for me to accept that someone could love me. Each time he stated it, a part of me felt like it was internally being made whole again by an act of magic. Like I was being put back together better than I had been before. I was getting very close to being emotionally able to react, the glass was close to being full, but it was taking me some time still.

I also had no experience with boys really to speak of, outside of throwing things at them and saying flirtation comebacks. If he tried to kiss me and I totally messed up, which would be likely, then what then? And maybe I lacked the courage to reach out. It's hard to be vulnerable, and I had a lot to lose. A lot of my self esteem rode entirely on his daily encouragement. He really was the only thing in the world I cared about. If I did reach back, what if he realized it had been a mistake all along, and I might lose the one thing in life I cared about. I could not afford to lose him for good.

I tried to tell my friends about it. But they didn't really get it. They took it as a typical reporting, even though the situation was a little different than the others. Like, it was practically a confession. After lunch, we were indoors in the gym watching various sport games being played on the gym floor by oblivious students a million light years away from my emotional state. Zack came up to me, and he sat right next to me. He was acting very strangely, and I didn't know what he was doing. He scooted up so close to me he was practically sitting on me, and he grabbed my head. And he began singing 'Creep' by Radiohead in my ear. It was really kind of sporadic and crazy, and hard to explain. It was awkward and atypical, but that had never been anything to stop Zack. I just sort of melted. My friends all looked baffled. I tried to resist him at first, but then just gave in and let go of my ego entirely. He really was kind of off key a bit in his singing, but it didn't matter either. Eventually I just closed my eyes.

Probably for the first time since some doctor had pulled me of my mom's stomach, I felt at peace. I have ASMR so it had a strong affect on me. It's the kind of peace I fully expect at death. I leaned on him and just stopped even worrying about anything. I could have died right then, and the peace I felt would have made it worth it. He finished singing and I was dazed. I couldn't even tell where I was anymore. The whole world around me looked like a new place. The colors had changed and everything. Everything was new again. I was a new person. I was just about to tell him I loved him back. This was it, and I was mustering the right way to say it. I heard him distantly in the outside world of my thoughts saying to Ava that he could tell that I really did love him – as I am sure I was at this point concealing absolutely nothing. And I was about to tell him how I felt and everything at that moment, but then the bell rang and he walked away. I felt like putty and I was unable to reach him. I decided I would tell him how I felt the next day.

But the next day he didn't come to school. Or the next day, or the next. He was gone. My stomach felt sick. Where was he? Why was he gone? Did this have something to do with me? During this time, Ava acted very annoyed with me. Everyone was slightly annoyed with me, I was pining pathetically, barely able to make it through my day without him. Nothing else in the world was real to me. Was it over before it even began? He was gone for two and a half weeks, and there was never a clear definition other than his father came into the office stating that Zack was sick on day three of his absence. How could this happen?

It was around this time that everyone in my class was signing up for driver's ed. It was something I needed to go to, but the idea of driving seemed daunting and unrealistic to me at the time. I didn't really care if I went or not. Nobody really asked me about it either. I ignored all the papers that got passed around, or the office lady talking over the intercom that it was our last day to sign up. It just didn't seem real to me at all. It was all part of that fake world out there that demanded I know things and do things. All that was real was Zack's blue eyes. And he was somehow gone. Because of my drunken haze, and my unclear judgment, I never ended up signing up for driver ed. And I didn't end up learning to drive that year. Or the next, or the next, or the next. And to this day, this is why I don't have a license and can't really drive. Sure, I can turn on a car. I have even driven rural roads of Idaho, which is fairly easy. But other than that, I don't really know. All because Zack sang Creep by Radiohead to me in my ear and I lost my mind.

PART 33 - http://tinyurl.com/y87449dz

PART 32 - http://tinyurl.com/ycetanep

PART 31 - http://tinyurl.com/yae3o4rd

PART 30 - http://tinyurl.com/ybht9aul

PART 29 - http://tinyurl.com/ybfcr9j2

PART 28 - http://tinyurl.com/yagdlo47

PART 27 - http://tinyurl.com/ydcj5fgf

PART 26 - http://tinyurl.com/y73nvl73

PART 25 -  http://tinyurl.com/y6v6pgoj

PART 24 - http://tinyurl.com/ycak5d8r

PART 23 - http://tinyurl.com/yac6sk3g

PART 22 -  http://tinyurl.com/yat6cfnw

PART 21 -  http://tinyurl.com/y783egno

PART 20 - http://tinyurl.com/y8jskymt

PART 19 - http://tinyurl.com/rfhbms8

PART 18 - http://tinyurl.com/ycrznrwk

PART 17 - http://tinyurl.com/y77unlng

PART 16 - http://tinyurl.com/yadpsv8c

PART 15 - http://tinyurl.com/yb3lt6k5

PART 14 - http://tinyurl.com/yb4cfedq

PART 13 - http://tinyurl.com/yalanq9s

PART 12 - http://tinyurl.com/yc79mw94

PART 11 - http://tinyurl.com/yc9qhj84

PART 10 - http://tinyurl.com/yb734w24

PART 9 - http://tinyurl.com/yc2t6vfw  

PART 8 - http://tinyurl.com/ybl37utq

PART 7 - http://tinyurl.com/ybvo283g

PART 6 - http://tinyurl.com/kbc9dwu

PART 5 - http://tinyurl.com/msnz4am

PART 4 - http://tinyurl.com/k9x8esg

PART 3 - http://tinyurl.com/mwp9atx

PART 2 - http://tinyurl.com/lbt6xq2

PART 1 - http://tinyurl.com/l8xbvg8

[hawk-in-a-jazzy-hat]

Dual Anime Review: Flip Flappers, Magical Girl Raising Project, and the Post-Madoka Magical Girl

The Magical Girl Raising Project is a popular social network game allowing people all over Japan to create their own magical girl heroes, fight monsters and collect points and items. But what most people don’t know is the game’s secret; if you’re lucky enough to be chosen by the admins, you can actually become a real magical girl, complete with enhanced physical abilities and extraordinary magical powers. So it is for Snow White, who takes it upon herself to be a force for good, while getting to know the many other magical girls throughout her city, some of whom are friendlier than others. All’s well and good, until the game’s mascot, Fav-pon, suddenly announces that he’s cutting the number of magical girls down by half...

Meanwhile, in a different show...

Cocona is a middle-school girl with good grades but low self-esteem or ambition. While she struggles to figure out what to do with her life, the eccentric wild-child Papika literally flies into her life and whisks her off to a wondrous and magical dimension known as Pure Illusion. Cocona soon meets the people behind Papika’s journeys, the mysterious organisation FlipFlap, who wants the two of them to travel throughout Pure Illusion and gather the Amorphous fragments said to be able to grant wishes. As they encounter ever more dangerous worlds and even more dangerous organisations, Cocona ends up finding out more about herself, and her own wishes, desires and past, than she could ever imagine...

So, I’m gonna do something different. On the surface, these are two very different shows with very different styles and approaches, and for the longest time I was debating on how best to tackle them. But honestly, despite how different they are they are both magical girl shows. And while there are massive differences between them, both of their approaches can both be tracked back to a single show which, for better or for worse, has completely reshaped this genre for the foreseeable future.

That would be the 2011 show, and my personal favourite, Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

There have been loads of magical girl shows throughout the years, some of which have made their way over to our kid’s TV channels, and some which are lying on the back half of obscurity. Pani Poni Dash, Cardcaptor Sakura, Magical Knight Rayearth, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, and of course, the many many incarnations of Sailor Moon. The main premise is often similar; an average Joe schoolgirl comes across a magical power and becomes a superhero, fighting for justice and looking pretty at the same time. She often gathers a series of friends with their own powers who support her and follow their own storylines, and the stories tend to focus on the power of friendship, positive attitudes and actions, and just generally being a nice person. Yeah, it sounds corny, but honestly as kids’ shows go they range from harmless to actually quite exciting; I remember really enjoying Cardcaptors back in the day (despite the questionable dubbing) and frankly the stories told could be just as epic or intense as your normal superhero show. The magical girl genre was no stranger to dark stuff, or complex stuff, as can be seen with Princess Tutu or Revolutionary Girl Utena. It is, after all, a genre like any other, and you can do what you like with it.

But then came along Madoka Magica, and suddenly, to the anime-creating masses, magical girls could suddenly be a new and unexplored territory.

Madoka Magica took the genre and flipped it on its head. Whimsical fantasy gave way to brutal reality, the power of friendship gave way to the flaws of human nature, and the bright, pastel worlds suddenly seemed far more dangerous and foreboding than they’d ever been before. Whether you like the show or not, there’s no doubt that it did for magical girls what Evangelion did for super robot shows. Madoka Magica has become an icon, and ever since, magical girl shows have and will be judged by that standard, whether unfairly or intentionally.

There’ve been a few definite attempts to cash in on Madoka’s popularity in the ensuing years. Day Break Illusion was one of the first, coming out in the summer of 2013 to the raucous sound of people not caring. Whereas Madoka was subtle in its approach, Day Break Illusion was a blatant attempt to be ‘dark and edgy’ just because Madoka did it. Of course, as I’ll explain later, that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad show. No, it’s the bad cliche characters, terrible plot twists, lack of focus, contemptible fanservice, 2deep4you attitude and general messy aesthetic that makes it a bad show. But I digress.

There have been other notable ‘post-Madoka’ works throughout the years as well, including Wixoss and Yuki Yuna is a Hero, both of which I’ve heard mixed things about but sadly have not seen yet. I daresay there have been others as well that have slipped under the radar. But the point is, magical girls have not gone anywhere, as is evident from the two shows that came out last season. But even though Madoka is over five years old now, its influence isn’t going anywhere either.

In some ways, this is utterly obvious, as can be seen with the first of these shows, Magical Girl Raising Project. Now, this is actually an adaptation of a light novel that was published in 2012, only a year after the release of Madoka. I can’t and won’t say whether the novel itself was directly inspired by the show; there may have been enough time but I daresay the idea was there before Madoka came out. What I can say though is that even if the novel is definitely not inspired, the anime certainly is.

Let’s take a break and mention the production, as I usually do at the beginning. The studio behind this is Lerche, probably most famous for Assassination Classroom and DanganRonpa the Animation. The look of the show pretty closely follows that formula; it’s...decent. Characters are always on model, but often look a little stilted and wooden. The animation is good but nothing spectacular. The direction is very by the books and straightforward, but at the very least it’s not bad. Just unambitious. The music is the same; the pieces do the jobs they’re supposed to, and are never particularly standout or particularly distracting. It’s weird how mundane the production feels considering how dark and brutal the subject matter gets, and honestly I think that works against the show; it’s one thing to pretend the show is all happy-clappy and jolly and then hit the Sudden Dark Turn button, but if the show’s already kinda muted and, let’s face it, bland, the brutal twists don’t hit as hard.

And yes, this show is brutal. Whereas Madoka is sort of ambiguous until the infamous episode 3 (and even then, is nowhere near as dark as some people like to make out) MagiPro gives you only one episode of Shiny Happy Funtimes before it hits you with dark twist after dark twist after dark twist. The fights are brutal and bloody, the characters are pushed to their limits, and just when you think it can’t get any more messed up, you get proven wrong the very next episode. This show is utterly vicious.

Normally, this would put me right off. Vicious and brutal for the sake of vicious and brutal can very easily come off as tasteless and offensive if done even vaguely right (see: Elfen Lied), and utterly laughable if done wrong (see: Mirai Nikki). I was ready to go into this show and tear it a new one; I had virtually no expectations. But the funny thing is...it works. As much as the production is bland,  the actual story itself has a heck of a lot of thought put into it. About four episodes in, I found myself really enjoying it, and wondering where it was going to go next. I was interested. I was excited. It was trash, but it was lovingly crafted trash, and such trash demands my attention.

There are a couple of reasons. Part of that is the characters, although not because any of them were particularly deep or complex or anything. They were just fun. Some very unique designs, and all of them had unique personalities, stories and interactions. It certainly helped that, although Koyuki was supposedly the main girl, the show actually gave sufficient screentime to...pretty much everyone now I think about it. The balance is just right, with the slightly more troubled characters staying around for longer and ‘leaving’ just at the right time. It wasn’t perfect (I’ll get into that in a minute) but it was far better handled than, say, Mirai Nikki, where half of the ‘contestants’ had barely any screentime, character, or both. And there were 16 magical girls (plus Fav-pon) mingling around here, and only 12 episodes to do it all in. I’ll admit, that’s impressive.

That’s the other thing though; the pacing was absolutely spot-on. Right from the get-go, the stakes were there, and you got to see what everyone was up to. It’s hard to describe how essential good pacing is to storytelling, but MagiPro is the show to bring up as evidence for why. Even at its trashiest, the handling of the story itself was really rather masterful. And that’s the other thing; the show was very self-aware. Not in the way that it was constantly turning to the camera and making 4th wall jokes, but rather that the tropes that usually come up in these things kinda did...but then got twisted around at the last second. If I were to give you all of the characters at the beginning of the show and ask you to guess what happened, chances are you’d make a few wrong guesses. As I said, the characters themselves aren’t particularly complex, but the way they’re used feels fresh and new. For the most part.

It’s easy to see the influence from Madoka Magica here, but does it actually work as a successor? In many ways, it gets a lot of things right. It takes the Dark Magical Girl tone and plays around with it, making a show that is actually entertaining, which is always a good start. And of course, it’s far darker and more brutal than Madoka ever was. So is this really the second coming? Eeeh....no. Not really.

For a start, MagiPro has problems. And when MagiPro shows its problems, it really goes downhill. Whereas most of the characters are handled well, one or two really miss the mark. There’s a character called Top Speed who, while a fun character in her own right, has one of the most predictable and hammered-in ‘stories’ I’ve ever seen. They try, lord knows they do, but it’s really difficult to feel any sort of emotional attachment when all she’s doing is spouting clumsy foreshadowing. And where she gets a bit too much, there are a few girls who really don’t get enough, especially with all the build-up some of them get. There’s an attempt there, and most of them get backstories or context (albeit often quite clumsily), but there gets to be a point when they really don’t have much reason to be there.

And that’s the biggest problem with MagiPro; for all of its clever writing and excellent plotting...it really doesn’t have a point. The story just starts, people die...and then it kind of stops. At a stopping point, yes, but it almost feels like a prologue. Maybe they’re waiting on a second season, I don’t know, but as it stands it definitely feels unfinished.

But you could say the same thing about Madoka Magica if you look at it objectively; that has quite an open end as well. But the thing is, the characters are rounded off. The themes reach a natural conclusion. MagiPro doesn’t really have any themes; it’s just pointless violence for the sake of pointless violence. It’s easy to see the influence from Madoka, and the good plotting from Madoka, but unlike that MagiPro just doesn’t really have anything to say. It’s like a bloody fireworks display; pretty and impressive at times, but nothing really substantial.

Despite what many people may think, Madoka Magica is not a great show just because ZOMG DARK SUBVERSION. That’s certainly an aspect it has, but it’s not what makes it special. It has a story to tell and a moral to show and characters and a world to explore while doing so. The problem with most so-called ‘ripoffs’, no matter how good they are, is that they fail to actually understand what makes the original so iconic in the first place. It’s just an attempt to cash in on the popularity, without the effort needed to actually understand them. It’s not just an anime thing either; look at the DC vs Marvel thing going on right now. The MCU, for all its problematic elements, has a definite direction, character arcs and subtle elements and foreshadowing to make everything feel that much more real. The DC cinematic universe is just trying to slam together as many things as they can, get the big events and the big villains and...it doesn’t work. Even if the film itself has good elements (Suicide Squad) it doesn’t feel natural, or real, or integrated in the way that it really should in the bigger picture.

Basically, Magical Girl Raising Project feels like the anime version of Suicide Squad; a decent flick with great elements that ultimately misses the mark on what it’s actually trying to be. And that’s almost a shame, because there’s obviously a lot of effort going in.

So that’s the obvious Madoka ripoff, but what about the other show? On the surface, Flip Flappers seems like something completely different and new. But I promise, the influence is still there; just implemented a little differently.

So how is Flip Flappers’ production? Well, the studio behind it is the relative newcomers 3Hz, who haven’t really got a lot on their backlog; I think the only major thing they’ve done is Dimension W from early 2016. That being said, it’s clear they pulled out all the stops with this show because it looks absolutely phenomenal. I’ve always preferred the rougher, sketchier animation style to the real smooth polished stuff that tends to come out nowadays; Flip Flappers kind of has the aesthetic of a studio Trigger show, but without the off-model characters and clear budget cuts, making it a feast for the eyes alone. Even the real-world stuff is pretty, with very unique and wide-eyed character designs, and once we actually get into Pure Illusion? Ooh boy...every world looks different and every one is a fireworks display of colour and sakuga, and the occasional batpoop insanity. If you want to get a taste of the show at its best looking, watch the third episode. Just the third one is fine; the backgrounds, locations, characters, and especially the fight scenes are glorious to behold. The music is also unique...ish. It definitely has a style all of its own but I’m struggling to think of any tracks that really stood out to me. I will say that there are one or two that I swear sound like something from Spyro: A Hero’s Tail, but that’s just me. The opening’s pretty, and the ending is just adorable, with a little bit of a sinister edge in the fairytale setting. Flip Flappers has a look and a sound all its own, so when it sneaks the slightly darker tones in (say, a living brain in a robot, or a creepy as all heck goop witch), you don’t quite realise the Madoka influences are there, but they are.

Because behind the bright colours and the whimsical adventures is actually quite a mature story, and one that might well have gone over a lot of people’s heads. The amount of fanservice (some of which is admittedly unnecessary, although also quite creatively symbolic), sexual themes and the interactions between the two mains might suggest this is nothing but crass yuri-baiting, but honestly there’s more to it than that. This isn’t just a fantasy adventure; it’s a coming-of-age story. It’s the development of a young relationship through the eyes of an adolescent, and how the worlds of children, adults and those inbetween collide. It’s really quite clever and I should really rewatch it to see if I can pick out some of the symbolism in the background. Certainly there are some great bits of direction and allusions to optical illusions (hehe) that are well-handled and, again, give the show its own style.

I’ve been talking about Madoka but the far clearer comparison to make is with a Kunihiko Ikuhara show, with the bizarre locations, character development done through symbolism and action rather than exposition and dialogue, and the general otherworldly, almost fairytale-esque nature. Also, lesbians. You can argue yuri-baiting all you want, but just like in those shows, the symbolism and intent is definitely on a gay relationship. It doesn’t have to be explicit like in Yuri!! On Ice to be effective or heartfelt, and the characters do not need to kiss in order to make the relationship ‘proper’. Yes, I’m looking at you Tumblr.

Is the show perfect though? Weeeeell...no. Apparently the head writer left halfway through and somebody else took up the reins, and it shows. The writing never gets bad but it suddenly leaves behind the clever symbolism and relationship building and instead focuses on a deep conspiracy plot that honestly comes out of nowhere. Ideas which were built up in the first half are kind of sidelined for a lot of really confusing backstory and some scenes which are just blatantly ripped from Evangelion, and as much as they try to tie everything together, there are big gaps in the final story. What is the deal of the other amorphous child, and the twins? We never really find out. What are Hidaka and Sayuri’s stories? We never really find out, although you could make a solid case that episode 8 delves into Hidaka’s mindset through Bu-chan. That’s not to say it’s ‘bad’, but all the build-up and subtlety from the first half is just sort of forgotten. Thankfully the series does eventually get back to its roots and the main focus it should be on; the world according to Cocona, and her relationships (familial, platonic and romantic). There’s a character I’ve neglected to mention called Yayaka, who honestly has a brilliant arc from beginning to end, and may even be more interesting than Cocona. Even when the show’s writing does lose track, the solid base is still there.

In many ways Flip-Flappers is the antithesis to Magical Girl Raising Project; it’s a visually ambitious production with a lot of great ideas and some marvellous character study, let down somewhat in the end by some lacklustre plotting and pacing. And yet both shows are good. Really good, in fact, despite the flaws. And definitely a product of the post-Madoka anime world.

See, while MagiPro is a clear spiritual descendent of Madoka, I’d argue that Flip-Flappers has been influenced even more. Because as I said, the entire point of Madoka is never that it was dark. The point of Madoka was to take a magical girl, and explore the humanity behind her. It does for magical girls what things like The Dark Knight and Iron Man did for superhero movies, or Evangelion did for mecha shows. Magical girl shows prior could be complex, and could be dark, and could be undoubtedly human. But Madoka Magica took that concept and showed it to the world, and frankly, Flip-Flappers is far more its child than MagiPro is in that regard. Flip-Flappers is a show so in tune with human nature and human relationships that it kinda sorta works to its detriment, although not enough to stop it from being a great show.

But of course, this is all just conjecture on my part. What I can say though is that, despite being remarkably different, both of these shows are really very good and you should watch them. If you’re a person who prefers solid storytelling, shocking twists and thrilling entertainment, Magical Girl Raising Project is the show for you. If, however, you prefer ideas to stories, and would rather explore a character than see them in a fight to the death, or you just want to marvel at the fantastic worlds, then you’ll probably prefer Flip-Flappers. I definitely fall into the latter category myself.

Still, whichever you prefer, it’s reassuring to know that magical girls aren’t going anywhere soon. As proven with superheroes, they are not just kids stuff, or lazy shows with simple characters and lessons on friendship. They never have been. They have the potential to be something great, and in a community changed by a show about a shy, pink-haired girl in a big nasty world, we’re certainly going to see a lot more of that greatness coming soon.

I’ll say it here so I’ve got it in writing; I love magical girls. They are incredible heroes. They are inherently human. And they are utterly magnificent.

My scores:

Magical Girl Raising Project: 7/10

Flip-Flappers: 8/10  

[elencelebrindal]

Honest Opinion - Sagittarius Sisyphus

I really hope I wrote his name right

Overall score (character, not looks): 8/10

After a not so explainable delay, I’m finally presenting to you the man of a lot of people’s dreams. Maybe not mine, but a lot nonetheless.  Now, Sisyphus.  What can I say about him? Honestly, a lot and not enough at the same time, mostly because I have contrasting feelings about him.  As I often say, don’t get me wrong. I pretty much enjoy his character, and I wouldn’t have give him such a high score if it was the opposite, but... there’s something about him that seems too much.  Namely, his deep-rooted faith in Athena and his faithfulness to her. 

I know some of you might say “but op, why are you saying this, when you praised Aiolos to the stars?”, and you’d be right, but hear me out.  Sisyphus is a little bit too exaggerated for my liking, to the point of his guilt about having hurt her willingly trapping him.  That’s not just his personality showing, at least as I saw it, but his faith in Athena paired with the pain he thought he inflicted her made him a weigh more than a useful character.  Also, the fact that only Athena managed to save him from himself... Sisyphus chose to be sealed away in the middle of a Sacred War, knowing he was a crucial Saint thanks to his power, just because he felt guilty about his goddess. 

This is the “too much” I was talking about. This kind of behavior put a lot of lives at risk, and I don’t want to accept this as something a Gold Saint should do. Instead of helping, he eventually lead to El Cid’s death, and you cannot convince me otherwise. Hadn’t Sisyphus did that, he would have survived, if only a little bit more.  And I’m bitter about it. His mistake brought death to other Saints, and I didn’t like it at all. 

[Italian dub digression]

Let’s talk about his Italian voice actor for a second. A man that I both love and dislike as Sisyphus’ voice, because he seems both too young in some cases and absolutely perfect in others.  Though, I can’t complain, he’s one of my favorites after all, and I quite like him on the Sagittarius Saint. 

The voice actor is called Renato Novara, and is notably known for being the voice actor for Monkey D. Luffy (One Piece, 2nd voice), Ezio Auditore da Firenze (Assassin’s Creed II - Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood), Ted Mosby (How I Met Your Mother), Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood), Jesse Anderson, Leo, Yuma Tsukumo, Dennis McField (respectively Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, 5D’s, ZeXal and Arc V), Neito Monoma (My Hero Academia) and many many more. 

If you’re curious about his performance as Sisyphus, here’s the link: La Promessa di Sisyphus

[End of the dub digression]

Now, of course it doesn’t end here.  Because there is a reason why his score is so high, despite so much criticism I have against him. And it’s one particular scene.  The scene where, while he’s trapped in his nightmare, Sisyphus challenges Athena and instead of the Gold Cloth he wears a Surplice. 

Now that is something truly memorable, that I will always love for how painful and heartbreaking it is.  Seeing Sisyphus being so hurt and guilty that he literally rejects the Gold Cloth in favor of the armor wore by the enemy... damn, it hit right in the chest (yeah, ah-ha, I know, I’m not funny). I’m kinda convinced that Sisyphus wearing a Surplice had been done as some form of compensation for not seeing Aiolos as a Specter, but hey, who am I to speak my mind.

But honestly speaking, that scene, that scene with Sisyphus crying tears of blood, so painfully guilty and conflicted with himself, to the point of shooting an arrow towards his goddess... yeah, that scene got him the score he has. Still not enough to justify a mistake that ended precious lives, but enough to make me love his anime version with only a few doubts.  His fierce intervention against Hades is worthy of note as well, Sisyphus was so determined he counteracted a god’s cosmo just to try and protect Athena. That’s a feat and a half, let me tell you.  Too bad that when the arrow backfired at him his entire likability went horribly downhill for me, until the Surplice scene. 

However, I recognize him as a honest character, true to his words (as we see when he promises he will protect Athena to Tenma), and extremely caring. He has a good heart, Sisyphus shows it during one of El Cid’s flashbacks, and loves his friends and companions.  That’s a good person, if I’ve ever seen one, even though a person with one mistake too many.

[perspectivepodcast]

[Transcript] Side A: Translation

To understand what a person means or says, it’s basically necessary to already know what that person means or is saying. So is every successful dialogue just an act of recognition? And is understanding not a path, but a condition?

Jenny Erpenbeck, Go, Went, Gone, translated by Susan Bernofsky

More than six months ago, Magda and I sat down on those comfy sofas of the only teashop in Nyíregyháza, to talk about what Perspective would become after her departure from Hungary. That teashop was one of the greatest sources of comfort during our time there, and I look back at that time feeling that so much has happened since then that it just couldn’t possibly be only six months ago. Was it one year ago? Ten years ago? It was a life ago.

Back then, Magda’s departure was a big bookmark at the chapter we were at with the podcast and with our respective lives. Right now, it’s my departure that’s going to bookmark this other chapter. In the time between her departure from Hungary, and my forthcoming one, I have often felt that life just isn’t willing to give us a chance to rest our head somewhere we’ll feel we can really build a life from, or at least not yet.

But I’m digressing.

On that day, when Magda and I sat on the comfy sofas of the only teashop in Nyíregyháza, I suggested that one of the topics we could do an episode of the podcast on could be translation. It seemed there was nothing more obvious than that. We both spoke more than one language, had lived in at least one country where they didn’t speak our native language. Plus, I have studied Languages and literatures, and have made attempts at translation myself.

At the time, I knew I would probably do something on puns and funny anecdotes related to the languages I know, if I felt like going for a more ironic podcast, or maybe I could make up a story about a couple speaking different languages… There were tons of possibilities. While I was in Hungary, by the way, I actually read a lovely book on the subject: it’s entitled Crossing Borders, and it’s a collection of essays and fiction works curated by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. I really recommend it if you’re interested in the subject, especially because I’m sure it’ll feed your curiosity a lot more than this podcast ever will.

Anyway, what happened is that when I actually started thinking of what I would talk about in a podcast about translation, I was suddenly not so sure any of the possibilities I had thought about before could fit anymore.

I had initially thought about doing a sort of commented list of instances of historical mistranslations that caused havoc in one way or another. For example, when the Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli began mapping Mars in 1877, he dubbed dark and light areas on the planet’s surface ‘seas’ and ‘continents’, labeling what he thought were channels with the Italian word ‘canali’. Unfortunately, however, his peers translated that as ‘canals’, implying large-scale artificial structures had been discovered on Mars, and therefore launching a theory that they had been created by intelligent lifeforms. Convinced that the canals were real, the US astronomer Percival Lowell mapped hundreds of them between 1894 and 1895. Over the following two decades he published three books on Mars with illustrations showing what he thought were artificial structures built to carry water by a brilliant race of engineers. One writer influenced by Lowell’s theories published his own book about intelligent Martians. In The War of the Worlds, which first appeared in serialized form in 1897, H. G. Wells described an invasion of Earth by deadly Martians and spawned a sci-fi subgenre. Amazing, right?

I had also a very cute example: in the ‘50s, in fact, an executive at the chocolate company Morozoff decided to bring Valentine’s Day to Japan. It had been a success in the States, but the executive had misunderstood that these chocolates were intended for women. Because of the company’s mistranslation and subsequent ad campaign, the Japanese thought women were supposed to give men chocolates instead. And that's what they do to this day. On February 14th, the women of Japan shower their men with chocolate hearts and truffles, and on March 14th the men return the favor. Which was an inadvertent all around win for the chocolate companies, of course.

There are thousands of historical mistranslations one could talk about, most of them a lot less cute than this one. But the conclusion I wanted to get to, in the end, is, in the words of my friend Amruta: “knowing two languages doesn’t make you a translator any more than having ten fingers makes you a pianist.”

And yet, as I sat down thinking what I would talk about, if I had to talk about translation, I realized this wasn’t the conclusion at all.

And the truth is that I really don’t know if I’ll be able to explain this. Or rather, to translate into words into this language.

During the past months, I just couldn’t help going on thinking about two things. First, time. Always, time. Second, communicability. And I’ll explain. Or rather, translate.

What if, in order to really, fully understand what another person in saying (verbally or non-verbally), one had to first be in the condition to feel what the other person is feeling? Meaning, what if understanding, real, full understanding, were something you could achieve only if you were in the conditions of feeling empathy towards the other? What if talking were useless, unless you had empathy, empathy being a condition and not a choice? What if understanding were an individual biological ability and not a process, something that can be built together? What if there were walls within us that just couldn’t be overcome?

And if we go even further, isn’t it possible that misunderstanding is inescapable because of the limits of our forms of expression? So, without adducing the ‘fault’, so to say, to the receiver of the information that is to be understood, wouldn’t it be possible that the provider of the information that is to be understood is structurally incapable of providing information that isn’t distorted by the means of expression they choose to employ?

Isn’t it possible that whenever we try to express something, we are always translating?

Is what I feel, what I think, or what lies between feeling and thinking, or what lies below and far deeper than any thought, ever really, transparently, delivered into the world, through any means? When I want to say I love somebody, in English I would use the verb ‘to love’, which is the same verb I would use for my cat, for my lover, for ice cream, or for my brother. How does the fact that this verb is an umbrella term for so many different kinds of, well, what the English-speakers would call love, affect the nature of the love I am expressing? Is the love that I am feeling really a feeling I would categorize together with my love for ice-cream? Does my feeling reflect the way my feeling is embodied through language? No, of course not. What I feel, what I think, becomes something else when I translate it to words. So even speaking in your native tongue is translation. Imagine what happens when you speak in a language that isn’t your native tongue.

But all forms of expression are translation. Choreography is translation. Painting is translation. Tears are translation. Photography is translation. Dreams are translation. Music is translation. Gestures are translation.

Translations of what? Of that something that is at the heart of us, that fundamental, irreducible and yet changeable something that for some reason wants us to reach out.

I wish I could tell you what it is that I really feel. What it is that I really think. I wish I could let you see, or feel, or hear, or touch, or smell, or taste, what it is that moves me, deep inside. I wish I could make you understand. Perhaps, you wouldn’t be able to understand anyway, even if I were able to tell you what it was to be understood. Perhaps, if you really wanted, you would understand.

All I know, is that right now, everybody appears to me to be lost in translation. Whether politically, existentially, epistemologically. We’re all lost in translation.