In Praise of Rip Offs

One thing I'm sick of hearing is "X is a rip off of ". Lately I heard Pacific Rim was a rip off of Eva because they have people piloting giant robots! And of course, we've all heard about how The Hunger Games is stupid becuse Battle Royale.  It's always said with a superior tone as if no one could possibly enjoy stories without a wholly original plot. Of course, there's never an acknowledgement that a story might go further back- that someone would say that Evagelion is a rip off of "Gundam" or that Battle Royale is a rip off of the Running Man. Nope! The world begins and ends with


I love "rip offs" I love to see a story told and retold. For example,  the Across the Universe trilogy is set on a "generation ship" where generations of people live and die on a spaceship.  A girl from Earth is unthawed and falls in love with a young leader on the ship. The inhabitants of the ship are organized in extreme devotion to their leader. The first time I encountered this story was in an Ursula LeGuin story "Paradises Lost"- another generation ship, with people choosing to live on the ship as part of a new cultic religion, rather than land on the new planet.  With the attitude above- I would have dismissed it as "A rip off! With stupid girl love in it!" If I did, I would have missed a story full of power struggles, genetic engineering and pterodactyls  eating people alive.

Even if two stories  have generation ships or giant robots or teens fighting to the death for the entertainment of all, from that point the story will branch and change. The story of teens fighting to the death branches and we end up in story about the burden of fame and survivors' guilt, and how a revolution can change and warp those who worked for it. The generation ship branches and the story about how a shipborns can lose sight of the original mission of their ancestors and go their own way, becomes a story about revenge and power and struggle. I have no idea what Pacific Rim will be about. I hope to find out.

This Week's Madoka

is episode 8. Taking some inspiration from Utena, not just visually anymore, we get to see where witches come from, and it's not pretty. In Utena, Anthy says a woman can either be a princess (innocent, naive, needing to be rescued) or a witch (not innocent, powerful, and considered to be evil). As Sayaka's soul twists under the burden of realizing she is no longer human, that her wish did not result in what she secretly hoped for, and the enormity of her sacrifice, Sayaka grows, not into the responsible adulthood of a traditional magical girl show- protecting the weak, and finding expression of their abilities*, but into the cruel brutal adulthood that is reality for so many people. Note that her transformation into a witch reaches its peak when she is listening to disgusting men who use women and toss them away. That's a reality as well.

Kyubey talks about how magical girls grow into witches, and I wonder if this is why he seems to target only young girls to become magical girls. Perhaps that liminal state between childhood and adulthood is where there is power. Maybe I'll find out in episode 9.





*Notice the Magical Idol Singer subgenre.

The last person to see Madoka ep 6 or 7.

Yes, as the last person to see Madoka I was shocked by this week's latest episode. It started out with a nice parallel to the typical metaphor for adolescene the magical girl is, and ended with people getting their souls ripped out of their bodies. I enjoyed the subversion of the genre standard that if a magical girl loses or breaks their transformation trinket, they just detransform. (see sailor moon)

I wondered why Kyoko was shocked that the girl she was trying to kill died, until I realized that she was just thinking 'hey, that could happen to me!'. Then again, in the next episode, she stops trying to kill Sayaka completely, and even tries to save her before she totally snaps and goes ham on the witch.


One day I'll have to figure out why I like angst. I wouldn't like a real story about a girl whose whole family died or who went insane, but in fiction, I guess I feel better because I'm not supposed to do anything about it. I can't change what happened, so enjoy the ride. But in real life, I feel bad because I feel powerless to change anything.

So what happened in Code Geass R2

Rocks fell. Everyone died. It was a happy ending. As for what happened after Kallen ran to school with toast in her mouth, let's leave it here. Realistically, there would be a horrible bloody battle for world supremacy, and all Lelouch's machniations would be for naught. But realistically, giant robots can't exist, and neither do immortality, magic powers, or girls with boobs as large as their heads. This is my theory about Lelouch and all that: Insanity runs in the family. Notice that his father and mother apparently have had a years long plan to do some mystical gooblygook about Raganorok and connections or whatever. Note that Lelouch's brother who is named after some sort of German food thinks he can create world peace by threatening everyone with magic bombs. Heck, even Nunally gets into the action with the exact same idea as Lelouch.

Also, I think that Lelouch was always emotionally immature. He had some talents, but he can't really connect with people. It's not just the power of the king that isolates Lelouch. So he probably wouldn't be able to think realistically about the geopolitical circumstances. He's a child inside, and his plan is what a child has come up with. He didn't think beyond his death since he still have the egocentricity of a teenager.

Of course I'd like to note that a story arc in which due to hubris, a single man gains the world and loses everything that matters, and then sacrifices himself to save the world, passing his burden unto his best friend is a tried and true one for a reason. Code Geass just hams it up.

Madoka Magica

As you don't know, I'm the only person on the planet who has not seen Madoka Magica. I have finally seen episodes 1-4. Here's the first episode:

Madoka: I'M A NORMAL 8TH GRADER WHO RUNS OUT OF THE DOOR WITH TOAST IN MY MOUTH! Eh..did I have a trippy dream last night or what? Something about a cat..a girl....and a dangerous magical contract?

Madoka: HEY! THERE'S A MYSTERIOUS TRANSFER STUDENT IN MY CLASS! Do I know her?

Mysterious Transfer Student: *glares* If you know what's good for you, you won't sign any DANGEROUS MAGICAL CONTRACTS!

Madoka: Uh..thanks?

Madoka and Sayaka: We're normal teenage girls! Yay!

Madoka: I'm hearing a voice in my head...let's wander off alone!

*She enters a trippy scene full of butterflies and mothballs with mustaches and shit*

Me: NOT THE BUTTERFLIES OF DEATH AND REBIRTH!!!

Mami: IT'S COOL TO SIGN A DANGEROUS MAGICAL CONTRACT! LIKE ME!

No, Loli is not the same as the n word.

Really? The reason why we don't use racial slurs is because they reinforce a system of racial discrimination, and thus are hurtful. Who is hurt by saying loli? Yes, it's descriptive of something icky, but the wiki is descriptive of fiction, and fiction often does have icky things in it. Should we cut out tropes about violence against children? That is worse than saying "Hey, why is this little kid in this space adventure? OH...." Really folks!

Complaining About Princess Jellyfish

Hulu link for reference. Ok, I admit that I watched all 11 episodes. I grumbled about how we end up with makeovers in every show about a girl that isn't super duper hot, and how if this was a show about male geeks, there would be no makeovers at all. In fact, attractive girls would be inexplicably attracted to these dudes!

Besides that, I just get a huge feeling that something is missing here. I think I would have liked more emphasis on Tsukimi's emotional growth and grief for her mother, and maybe her growing to have feelings for Kuranosuke, or realizing that Shu is a jerk. I'd like to see our 'nuns' fleshed out more. The SAVE THE APARTMENT BUILDING story line ended in a deus ex machina, so it made it feel like all of Tsukimi and Kuranosuke's work, and poorly thought through plans were for nothing.

I don't get it...

THESE ANIME CHARACTERS WOULDN'T MAKE IT IN REAL LIFE!

Dude, real life does not consist entirely of people who are non annoying, smart and sane. Even the real work world does not consist of people who are 'the ideal'. Annoying hot heads, the socially dense, the cowardly and the mentally ill exist in the real world with varying amounts of success, whether we measure it as having huge amounts of money, fitting in in the dysfunctional corporate milieu or having friends and family that adore you.

If we're talking about the unrealistic parts of anime, I'd go first for "dude, those giant robots aren't possible, especially since they are fueled by dragons" or "her tits are in fact bigger than her head". We could discuss how yelling out your attacks would alert your enemy and not do anything, or how dudes who try to rape you all the time in fact are not your best bet for a romantic partnership.

A good exploration of rapist and rapee in love, seme and uke dynamics, or even how the most plain and dull guys have tons of extremely attractive girls crawling all over them would be an interesting exploration of how unrealistic anime is on the characterization front. All we have here is "I don't like the character, so they wouldn't survive in real life". WEAKSAUCE.

Someone else remembers this

A long time ago, I watched this Minky Momo OAV[unsubbed, on an old video tape] and I've never forgotten it. A slow animated meditation on the passing of time. I'm not going to say that anime like this can't be created today, but I still think it's important to watch older anime. Then again, maybe it's just my very slow anime viewing style. Some people are at the cutting edge, watching the new Japanese season's shows as they come out, even if they are all otaku wank fantasies. I am slower- rewatching Miyazaki films that came out over a quarter century ago, finally getting around to watching the hot shows of five and ten years ago. I am like this in manga as well. I am more current, as far as American fan time goes, but I read manga over and over. I want to savor the stories, the characters. Some things don't go out of style.

But I understand other ways of doing things. A lot of people enjoy the community of talking about the latest releases. I simply can't move at that pace.

2d rules

I love 2d. I remember when Zelda made the leap to 3d- I got motion sickness, so I couldn't really enjoy the game. I also got motion sickness from Doom back in the day, so I don't play FPSes. I think the resurgence in 2d can reach both new gamers and old gamers who remember the simple fun of 2d.

Speaking of old memories, Funi is reliscencing classics like Lain and Haibane Renmei. and Rightstuf is reliscencing Utena. This is good because newer fans can see some of the best of the medium.

BTW: I'm geeking out over Welcome to the NHK. I love how the show doesn't shy away from showing that these are unpleasant, broken people. Misaki's strong interest isn't just the random love of a beautiful woman for a loser you often see, but is shown to be unhealthy- "I finally found a hunk of refuse worse than me!" I like that Misaki is her own character- she's not just a collection of traits- "let's make her a tsundere with twin tails and oh! freckles! freckles are hot this year!" but she actually has reasons for her actions. Just very twisted reasons.

And Sato and Yamazaki aren't basically nice guys who are rejected by girls for no good reason. Sato occasionally forgets to even bathe, and has a nasty habit of getting really obsessed with almost anything, and Yamazaki is an asshole with a fixtation on 2d chicks that strikes even me- someone with a blog about obsessing about this sort of thing- as creepy.

More on Moe

I agree with dude. It's creepy. And his talk about every lovely detail of Mina's body is also creepy. Moe annoys me, but the thing that annoys me most is lolicon. While not the actual rape of a child, it's the sort of audience that if I were an anime company, I'd keep on the periphery of demographics for my shows, not even putting in a token loli. Yes, I understand they spend tons of money on models, but maybe sometimes taking the high road might be desirable.

[ETA:also, too much loli drives other demographics away, btw]

The Place Promised in Our Early Days

More Makoto Shinkai. Like Voice of a Distant Star, it has a boy and a girl communicating over a long distance, teens doing things they aren't supposed to do[while in middle school, did you create a flyable plane of your own design? Yea, I didn't either.], extremely suspicious science[Some mumbo jumbo about dreams and parallel universes] and that same wistful feeling.

I love this film though. I love that sad wistful feeling.

Tenative Steps and I'm Sick of Japan

This guy really is sick of Japan. Culture shock is a mother. Come home, son of America! Come home! Our reality shows are more aligned to your cultural sensibility!

Now, back to obsessing about Planetes. Ok, today's episode is Tentative Steps, and it gives me a reason to muse about the idea that anyone can reach any goal. Hachi and Hakim are completely dedicated to their goal of going to Jupiter, even to the point of taking quite extreme measures to reach it. But...what's so good about reaching your goal if others suffer or are crushed beneath your towering dreams? I have to admit that I love Planetes. I love Lavie and his servile devotion to the company, the manager and his buffoonery, Yuri's upstanding heart, Tanabe's naivete, everything! I love how geopolitical forces and office politics warp everyone, even though they are doing their best. I don't have words to express my Planetes love.

More on Does New Anime Suck

This is pretty insightful. I didn't even consider the model market as important[as much of an anime/manga fan as I am, I tend to only buy manga volumes, because I'm old school and like the physical feel of paper] And I agree that there aren't as many something for everyone anime out there. I hate harem and moe, but will put up with them if there's something else for me to entertain myself with.

Personally, Fanservice is a Bore

Fanservice is like hot sauce. A little bit can make a show slightly more entertaining. While watching Code Geass, I'd think "Man, Kallen looks good in that suit she wears when she pilots that mecha." 1% girls in attractive mecha suits improves the anime, but once we get over say...10% fanservice in my estimation, it starts to affect the quality. Thus, do we get to the debate about whether new anime sucks. The issue is that yes, in the past, we didn't have twitter feeds of anime websites meaning that we didn't hear about every single panty shot anime they came out with, but on the other hand, this current moe boom is making me go uuurggh. Yes, moe has its roots in 90s and 80s anime, but the fact is that anime can't live on moe alone, as much as you can't make a meal out of hot sauce. One of my favorite series of the 90s, Slayers, has cute female characters like Amelia and Lina, and attractive male characters like Zel and Xellos, but when you lose interest in Zel's awesome body, there's still the mystery of whether he'll ever find something to get his original body back, the excitement of battles with monsters and gods, and even some amusing hijinks on the side.

Compare this to me trying to watch the anime of Rosario + Vampire. I thought the manga was fairly cute, so I thought "I'll watch the anime." OK, I don't think I got through an entire episode. The point of a panty shot is that you're seeing something usually hidden. If you see them every five seconds, it breaks one's concentration. I start thinking "really? why doesn't she wear shorts under her skirt? Doesn't she know that she's constantly flashing everyone? What if she wears period panties?" Back in the 90s, a harem anime would have maybe five panty shots in a show. You could ignore that level of panty shot and still enjoy other aspects of the show. Of course, I blame harem shows for moe anime today. At first, they had to make some weak attempt to have a plot and they put some random dude in to create some sort of audience sympathy, but since anime creators found that having a plot was unnecessary,and no one cares about the wimpy guy, remove both and we get moe.

I can't complain too much. While anime has fucking CHU BRA or whatever, Ouran Host Club finally grew a plot, Nana's near final volume is coming out, All My Darling Daughters is sticking in my head as some sort of masterpiece ,and so I'm happy. And of course, I'm not on Japanese fan time in anime or manga, so I am in part shielded from the crap. Right now, I'm am obsessively watching Planetes, which I have to admit is one of the best anime I've seen. I only just watched Code Geass. Being late really has its perks.

Planetes: Boundary Line

Boundary Line is the 11th episode of Planetes, and the first episode of an anime I've ever seen that deals with migration in a serious manner. This review has spoilers for the episode. The plotline that I am interested in involves a man from a fictional South American country. He is shopping around a spacesuit created in his country, and every company, and most of the departments at Technora[the company that our heroes work at] turn him down. In one exchange, Claire, who is revealed to have been born in that same fictional country, notes that the Space Equal Opportunity Act or whatever, says that companies should at least consider things made in fictional South American countries, but her coworker says 'We considered it. We looked at the brochure'.

Tied into this storyline is Claire's discomfort with her heritage. The man [Tamara is his name] seems to remind her of the poverty and lack of gloss of her old country. She cringes at his less than beautiful eating habits, and reminds him that she's an America, and was only born in El Tanika. However, at the end, she asks him if she is 'running away'. She can't read her native language, and remembers how far behind she was, starting school in America- 'at age 8, I knew less than a kindergartner'. However, the man reassures her, saying that just knowing that one of them is one of Technora's elite is enough, although even though his family fled to China, he returned in hopes of starting a space industry in El Tanika.

And yes, his spacesuit meets all the international requirements, with the help of our heroes providing space testing. Everything would be beautiful, except for the Space UN has now invaded for peacekeeping purposes[don't ask me!] and all El Tanikans outside of the country are to be detained. Also, their spaceship factory is blown up in the war. But, tearfully, this man looks down at earth, and says, from up here, I see no boundaries, I see only earth. And it's a beautiful episode of anime.

Moe Moe Crap

There's a bottom that even Japanator won't go to with moe crap. Apparently watching some boring 2d girl sleep is just too boring even for the moe connoisseur.

I am watching Planetes. Strangely, this quiet tale of people doing unglamorous jobs in space, and the many problems that come with space exploration has managed to keep my attention despite the fact that no young girls show their panties! What a shock!

Type A and B

I'm type A simply because I find it very hard to be interested in characters that nothing ever happens to. It's way easier to appreciate the finer points of character if they are facing the Big Bad, dealing with their crush on Susie Q or in general doing something other than being "The Token Loli", "The Tall One" or "The Booblicious One". There's only so much moe and wacky hijinks I can take before screaming WILL SOMETHING PLEASE HAPPEN?!

An article on moe. Apparently merely saying the obvious has caused a firestorm in fandom.



Oh god, that's disturbing.

Also, the reason that most anime blogs suck is that most blog suck in general. This blog you are reading now sucks because I have the attention span of a gnat on meth.

Otamen!

Darn you comic book guy! I thought getting a volume of Otamen for $1 was a great deal. But the mixture of gender bending fun[yes, I somehow can't get enough of manly girls and girly men] and wondering if the manga substoryline and the fact that dude is totally gay for Asuka will be used in an awesome manner or not.

I am not caught up on fandoms. On anime/manga, I think I'm about at 2005 on average. Series I need to see include Eva,yes, but I have seen the 1st season of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, read up to volume 18 of Full Metal Alchemist, etc.

On American TV, I haven't seen Glee, am about 1 or 2 seasons behind on the Office, haven't seen Buffy at all, ever....

On video games and comics,hopelessly uncaught up. Due to the fact I've got no next gen systems.

I think I get behind on entertainment as it seems to require some sort of organization to prioritize what you want to watch, etc. I wonder how those folks who live twitter every episode of every show do it.