#'With Evangelion there was this feeling that you had better be smart to understand it or even just to work on it...

[p2ii]

love how the whole idea behind flcl is that it's basically Evangelion for stupid people (meeeeee)

[flclarchives]

Amusing Himself to Death, an Akadot.com interview with Kazuya Tsurumaki (director of FLCL and assistant director of Evangelion) from around December 2001. In the article, Tsurumaki explains a few things about Evangelion, his mentality behind FLCL as a whole, and the meaning of the name ‘FLCL’.

Full article text is under the cut, or read the article in its original form [here].

Kazuya Tsurumaki was a relatively little-known animator when Hideki Anno selected him to work as the assistant director on Neon Genesis Evangelion. For the TV series, which became a smash hit in Japan and one of the touchstones of the current surge of interest in anime in the US, Tsuramaki served as the main storyboard artist as well as assistant director, and when Studio Gainax began production on a trio of Evangelion films Tsurumaki got his first directorial assignment.

As he tells the story, Anno came to him after Eva and announced that he was out of ideas and that it was up to Tsurumaki to dream up the next project because, "you are next." Tsurumaki let his imagination run wild, but by the time he had written a script, Anno - despite his declaration that he had no stories left to tell - was already several steps ahead of Tsurumaki and in pre-production for his next series, Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo, leaving Tsurumaki a chance to have complete and unsupervised creative control of his own series FLCL.

FLCL, referred to as "Fooly Cooly" (or "Furikuri" by its American fans), is unlike any anime series to come before it. Wild, maniacally fast-paced physical comedy; exaggerated, exuberant animation alternately pushing towards surrealist- as when mecha exuviate from a bump on young Naota's head - and deconstructionist - as when the animation literally stops and the story is told by a camera bouncing across a page of black and white manga art panels; and obsessively, often irrelevantly, referential to obscure Tokyo-pop bands and anime insider trivia; FLCL was hyperkinetic and disorienting, yet mesmerizing, almost transgressive, and undeniably original. It inspired enthusiastic admiration for Tsurumaki as a creator, even amongst the perhaps 90% of the series' fans who were absolutely baffled by much of it. One is tempted to refer to it as announcing the arrival of full blown post-modernism in animation, or perhaps as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable of the anime industry.

When Tsurumaki visited Baltimore to speak to American fans at the recent Otokon Convention, predictably, many of the questions were along the lines of, "Hi, I really loved FLCL [or Evangelion], but could you please explain this part of it to me?"

Tsurumaki answered all questions genially with a self-deprecating and often mischievous sense of humor. For example:

Why does Haruko hit Naota over the head with her guitar?

Kazuya Tsurumaki: Naota is trying to be a normal adult and she belts him to make him rethink his decision.

Why does Evangelion end violently, and somewhat unhappily?

KT: People are accustomed to sweet, contrived, happy endings. We wanted to broaden the genre, and show people an ugly, unhappy ending.

Why is the character of Shinji portrayed as he is?

KT: Shinji was modeled on director Hideki Anno. Shinji was summoned by his father to ride a robot, Anno was summoned by Gainax to direct an animation. Working on Nadia [Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water, one of Anno and Tsurumaki's earlier projects] he wondered if he still wanted to work like this. He thought that working on Eva could help him to change.

Is there any particular reason why so many Gainax series feature very anxious, unhappy young male protagonists with no parents?

KT: Yes, the directors at Gainax are all basically weak, insecure, bitter, young men. So are many anime fans. Many Japanese families, including my own, have workaholic fathers whose kids never get to see them. That may influence the shows I create.

Could you explain the mecha bursting from Naota's head in FLCL?

KT: I use a giant robot being created from the brain to represent FLCL coming from my brain. The robot ravages the town around him, and the more intensely I worked on FLCL the more I destroyed the peaceful atmosphere of Gainax.

Why doesn't FLCL follow one story?

KT: In the third episode Ninamori was almost a main character, a kid who, like Naota, has to act like an adult.  After episode three her problem was solved so we wrote her out.  She has many fans in Japan and we got plenty of letters about that decision.  For FLCL I wanted to portray the entire history of Gainax, and each episode has symbols of what happened behind the scenes on each of Gainax's shows.   Episode one has many elements of Karekano; episode two, a lot of Evangelion references, etc.

Where does the title FLCL come from?

KT: I got the idea from a CD in a music magazine with the title Fooly-Cooly.  I like the idea of titles that are shortened long English words. Pokémon for "Pocket-Monsters" for instance, and an old J-pop band called Brilliant Green that was known as "Brilly-Grilly."

Is there any reason why the extra scenes added to Eva for the video release were cut in the first place?  Did you think the story would mean something different with them intact?

KT: The scenes that were added to Eva for its video release aren't that important.  We added them as an apology for taking so long to get the video out.  Maybe they'll help people understand things, because the episodes were done under tough deadlines the first time around.

Can you explain the symbolism of the cross in Evangelion?

KT: There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us.   Because Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would be mysterious.  None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians.  There is no actual Christian meaning to the show, we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool.  If we had known the show would get distributed in the US and Europe we might have rethought that choice.

After the panel, Mr. Tsurumaki sat down to speak with Akadot.

Do you enjoy confusing people?

KT: I have a twisted sense of humor.  I'm an Omanu Jacku, a contrarian.  [Writer's note- Omanu Jacku is a folk character a bit like Puck, a mischief maker]

What do you see differently now that you're working as a director rather than only as a visual artist?

KT: As an animator I have only the art; as a director story is really big.  I still feel as an animator and I often have trouble putting the needs of the story first.

Did you intend from the start for FLCL to be as bizarre as it wound up?

KT: From the very start I wanted a different flavor.  To achieve this I had to re-train the animators to be as stylized as I wanted them to be because I wasn't drawing it.  I knew that not everyone would get it.  I deliberately selected very obscure J-pop culture and anime sub-culture jokes and references.  Because Eva was so somber I always intended to make FLCL outrageous and wacky.

Why the choice to break out of conventional animation and use manga pages? Was it at all a response to how many anime are using computers to achieve smoother and more realistic visuals?  Were you trying to go the opposite direction?

KT: I like manga, not only to read, but the visuals.  The pen drawings, the frame breakdowns and layouts . . . This is the first time I have used digital animation, and those bouncing manga shots wouldn't have been possible with cel animation.   Personally I'm not interested at all in using computers for realistic animation.  I'm impressed by it sometimes, but I'm interested in using computers to do what was once impossible, not to do smoother versions of what has already been done.  I want to be less realistic.

Has using digital animation techniques changed the way you work, or the way you feel about your work when you see it?  Does it still feel like it's yours if a computer did much of it?

KT: Before I got into digital animation I saw other shows that were using it and I felt that there was no feeling, it was empty.   As an animator, there's a sense of release when you draw a cel.  There's something there.  Working on FLCL, though, I learned that computers can do more, and, most of all, that they allow room for trial and error and revising, more freedom to experiment.  That is why I now feel that cel art cannot win against computers.  For actual animation everything is still drawn on paper.  That work hasn't changed.  It's the other stuff, the touchups, and coloring.  If we didn't use paper, maybe the feeling would change.

Earlier today you said that you were trying to broaden the genre by giving Eva a sad ending.  Does the sameness of much of today's anime bore you?

KT: First of all we didn't use a sad ending to annoy fans.  When they're upset, that really bothers us.  Personally, I think a happy ending is fine, but not if it is achieved too easily.  That's no good.

For all the fans that are confused at all, if you had to define in one sentence what FLCL is about, what would you say?

KT: FLCL is the story of boy meets girl.  For me it is also about how it's ok to feel stupid.  With Evangelion there was this feeling that you had better be smart to understand it, or even just to work on it. With FLCL I want to say that it's okay to feel stupid.

Even though it may be strange to us, do you have in your head a logic behind it?  Are you trying to portray a story that follows the logic of dreams, or is it supposed to make sense symbolically?

KT: I'd like you to think of FLCL as imagination being made physical and tangible, just as it is for me when I take whatever is in my head and draw it.

So what are you working on next?

KT: Right now Gainax has told me that they'll support anything I choose to create, but I'm having trouble coming up with any ideas.

Why is that?

KT: Releasing titles for market, I know I have to make something to please fans, but I'm not a mature enough person to accept that fact.  If I'm not amusing myself I can't do it.  I feel bad that fans have to put up with such behavior from me.  I apologize. 

[algernoninwonderland]

So I’m a dumbass and I deleted a question about what I thought of Ikari Gozen… Here’s my answer!

It’s good… For a Miraculous episode.

It’s nice that Marinette isn’t suddenly kind to Kagami because the plot requires it (unlike, say, Nino’a crush on Marinette in Animan).

I mean, would it be better had there not been… Like seven episodes presenting Kagami in a mostly unsympathetic way during which Marinette is either intimidated by Kagami or waging a kind of war against her because they fight over the same boy (or at least Marinette thinks so)? Well of course, I mean, my 8yo cousin hates Kagami. She is the target audience. She finds her cold and really mean.

It’s nice that Marinette and the audience discover more about Kagami, and that Marinette (audience surrogate here) likes Kagami better by the end of the episode. Wouldn’t it have been better to have all these episodes with Kagami in them show, in a way that 8yos can understand, that no, Kagami is not the devil and is actually more than a one dimensional character? That Marinette was, dare I say, not only weird but wrong to treat her that way?

Yeah but it’s Miraculous we’re talking about. It’s not subtle about anything it does, especially when it needs subtlety and nuance. And when it tries subtlety, something comes right after to ruin it (Puppeteer 2, car scene then the one in Marinette’s room, anyone?)

Of course Kagami is a great character when she is treated as a “person” and not as an obstacle for Marinette to overcome. Outside of Riposte, I think Ikari Gozen is the only episode in which Kagami is presented as something other than an obstacle or a cold-blooded reptile.

Ryuuko is an uninspired name for a Dragon!Kagami, though I understand why they named her that way (I associate the name with KLK more than with ML but that’s on me). Her powers are cool for what we’ve seen, I suppose.

Ikari Gozen is an uninspired villain (nice Evangelion reference there, should have made it even more obvious in case you were afraid we’d miss it, Thomas…) and Japanese culture is still “samurai and kendo and kimono and strict parenting” apparently, which, for a show made in 2019 and written in the late 2010s, is bad and disappointing. The fight in itself is pretty good, pretty smart. Unlike so many others. Most others.

So Ikari Gozen is one of the better season 3 episodes. But considering that everything Miraculous does, many others series that have aired decades before and that are airing now did and do it better (Sailor Moon, Precure, Super Sentai and Kamen Rider, Eva, Utena, the W.I.T.C.H. animated series which isn’t even as good as its source material, Code Lyoko and so many others)…

Miraculous has good ideas and characters with potential, some good character designs and a few beautiful scenes (the umbrella, anyone?) in which the colours are gorgeous and the lighting is good. 

Miraculous also has a terribly flawed execution, a chaotic structure if it’s even got one. It’s not a good show. It’s easy to watch, mildly entertaining, but it’s not good at most of what it tries to do. 

I can’t praise Miraculous for its writing, it’s lacklustre at best, some ideas are stretched to fit a 22 minutes format, some other episodes are filled to the brim with too many ideas which end up not being explored in depth.

I can’t really praise the show for its visuals, the quality really fluctuates, the animation is never too awkward yet it seldom shines and most scenes taking place outside don’t feel like they actually take place outside because of how poorly-lit they are, the colours are very flashy and not really beautiful, the attempts at chibi art is painful and was already outdated in 2015. SAMG does serviceable episodes, sometimes good-looking ones. All episodes are not made by them.

The character designs are alright, I suppose, I mean, sure, let’s have the boys wear padded suits and the girls (who are what, 14?) have these skin-tight suits. I guess making cheap toys is easier if the character models are simple. At least it’s what I’d say if there weren’t so many questionable angles used  to shoot scenes whenever the girl heroes are on screen.

Which makes it a frustrating watch. With the promise that “it’ll get better in the next episode”, which would be alright if that next episode wasn’t nearly completely unrelated to the previous one. Miraculous is not bad to the point where I can honestly hate it. Instead, most of the time, it’s painfully average, painfully mediocre and I can’t honestly say I like it either.

Ikari Gozen would be an okay episode in the context of any other show, for Miraculous, it’s a great episode.

I enjoy the fandom and what it has created a lot more than the show it has built itself around.

[ivnwrites]

How Asuka Langley Soryu is a realistic portrayal of teenage female sexuality

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a legendary science fiction and mecha anime created by Hideaki Anno in 1995 (though there's some heated debate over the second designation given the reality of the evangelions). It's noted for its psychological and theological discussions and its questions about humanity, loneliness, and what it means to live with other people. The main characters have also achieved this sort of legendary status, becoming easily recognizable, but they also are notable just for how well they're written.

Asuka Langley Soryu is one of the main eva pilots and, I am going to be talking about how she is depicted in terms of her developing romantic and sexual awareness in the series and how it's still one of the most accurate depictions of female adolescent sexuality in any media.(I am doing this as a currently 21 year old woman who went through being a 14 year old girl)

Asuka fits almost perfectly into the mold of a traditional mecha anime protagonist; we're told that she got her college degree at 13, she's an ace pilot, she's assertive and much more determined than the actual main character, and has a dead parent. But Evangelion isn't a traditional mecha anime so none of this happens without consequence. Asuka's accomplishments and her need to be the "best" are shown to be the result of her desperation not to be ignored. This in turn stems from her mother's insanity during which she thought a doll was Asuka and couldn't recognize her own daughter. Needing her mother to see her is so important and fundamental to her character that knowing her mother is still literally there 'watching over her' inside the eva is enough to pull her out of complete catatonia in the series ending. This background allows Asuka to have more depth than a traditional character who is simply portrayed as sexy with no knowledge of it or acknowledgement from other characters in the series, making her simply eye candy for the audience but has no ownership of her own body.

The most famous (infamous?) scene that needs to included in this discussion happens when she is attacked by Arael in episode 22 and has her mental breakdown, we see a snippet a the scene I'll talk about later with Kaji. It repeats over and over the last moment when she yanks open her shirt to expose her bra and the top of her breasts and screams "Look at me, dammit, look at me!" As a result of her mental state, we don't know if this is what actually happened, but that doesn't matter because the scene tells us that this is part of how Asuka thinks of her body in her own mind. One analysis I've read talked about this scene as Asuka's frustration that "her body isn't developed or adult in the way she wishes it was." I agree with this, and also read the scene as her sort of trying to physically reinforce her assertion that she's an adult, and her saying 'I have an adult body, why don't you want me?'

This frustration and anger stems from the conflicting messages that girls receive. They're told at various young ages that they're women just because of their bodies development. Growing breasts mean that they are "getting a woman's body," they "become women" when they start menstruating. However, these physical experiences are universal, and pay no heed to a girl's individual mental development. Physical changes can only exacerbate this, because girls see their bodies matching those of women, and so does society at large. Girls the world over start to be treated as adults the instant they start developing breasts when it comes to seeing them as sexual objects, but at the same time, they are still belittled and told that they aren't smart enough to know their own bodies. Girls are also told that they supposedly mature faster than boys, and all of this together creates a strange conflict where girls are at the same time told that they are supposed to be adults and yet only treated as adults when it is convenient for those around them, or when they do something wrong, otherwise they are seen as foolish children. "Save the world, but don't expect your emotional turmoil to be taken seriously."

This can be seen clearly in her relationship with Kaji. Throughout the series, Asuka is shown to be infatuated with him, even though he’s in his 30s and already in an on-again-off-again relationship with Misato. He's shown openly flirting with other adult characters in the series, and multiple characters even get in cracks about it, but from his first appearance onward, he brushes off every one of her advances. We see what is perhaps the most significant their interactions during the Arael scene. The audience is shown a flashback to the two of them having a nighttime conversation on the deck of a ship while they're traveling to Japan from Germany during which she tries somewhat clumsily to seduce(?) him and convince him that she's not interested in anyone else. His ultimate response is to tell her that she's still a child and doesn't have to rush into everything because she still has time.

In reality, it isn't rare for teenagers to develop crushes on adults in addition to their peers. In real girls, the same way as in the series, they can see it as a sign that they are more mature than their peers or even more ready for an 'adult' relationship than those around them. Asuka has what is probably the best outcome; the subject of her affection turns her down but is otherwise kind, as are the other adults around her. In the end it's her own deeper unacknowledged problems that cause the situation to spiral. The problem is that unlike in the series, there often seems to be no way for girls to win psychologically. In real life, if a girl's feelings are returned this leads to obvious problems, and public rejection can lead to ridicule. Girls are blamed for mistakes on the one hand, and belittled on the other. They aren't given the compassion and understanding that they need most at those times.

Through her interactions with Kaji, we can see the disconnect between Asuka's desire to be seen as an adult and her actual actions. She become hyper, somewhat aggressive, and slightly possessive when Kaji is around, becoming frustrated when the relationship between him and Misato rekindles. From Asuka's perspective, she can't see why she isn't the better choice. As discussed above, she sees her physical body as functionally the same as all the other women Kaji expresses even passing interest in, and psychologically she sees herself as more mature than Misato (and she is both right and wrong depending on which aspect of their personalities you examine, but that's a whole unrelated issue). The problem is that she has no idea what the adults around her are thinking; an adult man will not be attracted to an adolescent girl, and though all of the women around her can see that this is just a teenage crush, Asuka herself doesn't have the life experience to know this yet. This, combined with her fear of being ignored, means that what is actually a perfectly reasonable rejection registers to her as abandonment.

We can see this even more clearly if we look at her relationship with Shinji. The two of them are the same age, classmates, living together with Misato, both lost their mothers at a young age, both pilot the evangelions, and have grudging sexual tension that persists to the very end. Despite this, their personalities are pretty much incompatible. The line that is most iconic between them is Asuka's  "what are you, stupid?" (the english dub's version of her japanese line "Anta baka?" basically asking 'are you dumb?'). Shinji is a lot more timid and less self confident than Asuka, and she frequently is shown literally pushing him around. We see in other parts of the series that he is attracted to her but is too intimidated by her to really be able to do anything.

At one point when the two are alone at home, she kisses him, explicitly stating that it's because she's bored. It predictably doesn't go well, with Shinji just standing there frozen until Asuka backs away and then runs to the bathroom to dramatically rinse her mouth out, declaring that she should never kiss to kill time. It's played as a funny scene, but later we see that it actually had a deep effect on Asuka. It's implied that she did see Shinji as a potential romantic interest, but saw his silence and his lack of engagement with her as rejection, and this along with his improvement as a pilot over the series leads her to resent him more and more. During her mental breakdown, Asuka sees an image of his face and screams "You won't help me! You won't even hold me! You're no one! No one!"

In her mind, she has been rejected by all of the people sh's approached romantically. This leads her to feel unwanted and she starts to draw in on herself, and her feeling of animosity grow to encompass all of the characters in the series. In the same episode as her breakdown, she's shown standing naked in front of a bathtub (see note below) saying how much she hates having to be so close to Misato and Shinji. She become more and more worked up until she kicks something across the room yelling "I hate Misato, and I hate Shinji, and I hate that First Child bitch Rei! I hate my dad, I hate my mom! But mostly, most of all, I hate myself! I hate this! I can't stand it anymore! Why do I have to do this! Why me?!"

It is intriguing that Asuka, and the other female characters in Evangelion who show similar insight, came from the mind of an unmarried (at the time), childless man in his mid-30s. Anno himself says that "I like to read romance novels written by women. Since I'm a male, I don't really know the emotions of women. And because I want to understand their feelings, and create more realistic female characters, this is something I have to pursue." and there are plenty of accounts of him asking female animators and voice actresses for their input on characters to ensure that they were realistic. Because of this, Anno allows Asuka to express some of the frustration teenage girls feel with their bodies, and manages to walk the thin line of making Asuka real as a burgeoning sexual being without crossing into the sexualization of a minor.

Note: It is uncomfortably easy to find sexual art and dolls of the underage main female characters in the series but none of this comes from the series itself (there is one character who provides occasional 'fanservice', but she is an adult woman in her 30s). In the actual anime, nudity is not treated sexually, rather it is used to represent and heighten characters' feelings of vulnerability and isolation, reinforcing the idea that characters have been left completely alone with nothing except for their own skin, and at times not even that. Despite this, fans in Japan fixated on the character Rei Ayanami, which Anno attributed to the fact that "They can't handle strong women such as Misato and Asuka." This is even more unfortunate because it abandons the character's stoic loyalty and dive into self reflection midway through the series in favor of reducing Rei to an injured quivering victim using just the visuals of episode 1 (though once again, there's character traits there that are ignored as well). The most important part to say about this is also the fact that both Rei and Asuka are 14 YEARS OLD IN THE SERIES. For god's sake Japanese men, WHY!

Another Note: Actually I can explain why; the age of consent in Japan is 13 which has led to entire industries based on the exploitation of teenage girls, which means that child prostitution and pornography are rampant. Essentially, pedophilia is totally legal in Japan, in addition to child pornography as long as it isn't of real people, meaning that pedophilic anime and manga are totally legal, because easily available child pornography has 0 negative impacts, right? (WRONG). industries based on exploiting young girls: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/for-vulnerable-high-school-girls-in-japan-a-culture-of-dates-with-older-men/2017/05/15/974146c4-035d-11e7-9d14-9724d48f5666_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a58a262e1867 child pornography laws in Japan: http://time.com/2892728/japan-finally-bans-child-pornography/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/57eaaf23-0cef-48c8-961f-41f2563b38aa

[animereviewsandotherstuff]

Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars

As I mentioned before I started watching anime a bit randomly but also more seriously before I entered high school. I would watch anything and everything that I came across, but because the source of anime I was watching was a bit unreliable sometimes I would only be able to watch a few episodes of a show before it would leave my life. Once I was able to watch anime more independently I would go back and try to find those shows that I could only watch a few episodes of. While this was mostly successful there was one series that I would try to watch but would always fail at completing it. Usually something else would get in the way. Life happens, something else takes precedence for a short while. But finally, after far too long, I have decided to go back and watch this show from start to finish. So lets see if the show was worth the time, if my white whale was worth the hunt. Lets look at Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars.

Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars is a 2001 anime that was dubbed into English in 2008. The dub was how I was first introduced to the series so it was how I watched the show this time as well. Before I get into the series itself I want to say I found the dub great. I tend to watch subbed anime more then dubbed, but that is not because I prefer one over the other. I tend to watch anime as it comes out, so I will sometimes watch it before it even has a chance to be dubbed. And since those are the voices I get used to if I ever rewatch the show I will tend to watch it in the form I am familiar with. But I have nothing against dubs in general. Sure some are better or worse then others, and older series that tended to only have half of the show dubbed was not fun, especially when I was younger, but I still think dubs can be great, and Shingu’s dub is definitely a class above. The characters are clear and understandable, there voices fit there characters to me, and the acting is well done, at least to my amateur ears. But enough of how I watched the show. Lets get to the show itself.

Shingu is a series very much of its time, the early 2000s. The show starts with aliens randomly showing up one day in the year 2070. A ship/robot thing shuts down all the communications though out japan, so only a few people are able to watch the robot with their eyes alone, most importantly an old man and a boy in a traditional school uniform. Suddenly a giant robot that looks like traditional paper craft appears and destroys the robot, literally called a hero appearing to fight evil. And it is revealed, aliens exist, the world has changed. But for the average persons life continues on like normal. And we see this in our main character, Hajime Murata, and his mother and sister going about their daily lives. Hajime goes to school, talks to his friends about the news of the aliens but its all light friendly speculation, until there is a new student being introduced, a boy in a traditional school uniform named Muryou Subaru, the same boy we saw watching the alien fight the giant. And that is considered to be the weirdest thing to happens that day.

Right from the start we are told by this that Shingu likes to focus on the mundane and the normal parts of life over the fantastical and strange, even when the fantastical and strange and complicated is surrounding everything. And that's meant to be a little reflective of real life. Sure, something massive can happen but if it doesn’t immediately effect you, more likely then not your going to go along with your life like normal. Aliens can invade, monsters and heroes can appear, but unless you are involved in it or effected by it the thing your going to care about is what your eating for lunch tomorrow or the new person you see at work. Its a very interesting perspective for the series to take. Most shows tend to focus on the fantastical because that's whats interesting. But in Shingu that's what takes the back seat.

Another great example of this is early in the series. Hajime finds the new student Muryou being challenged to a fight by a member of the student council, Kyouichi Moriguchi. The student council and the native born inhabitants of the town know something about the aliens and the paper craft giant, and also know Muryou is something similar yet different. So Kyouichi challenges Muryou to a fight and they reveal that they have strange psychic powers as they fight on the roof, but the only one who sees is Hajime. After the fight is interrupted Muryou invites Hajime to his home to let him ask any questions he wants. And the first thing he asks is not about the psychic powers, the fact that the student council or the teacher seems to know whats up, but about the fact that his last name doesn’t line up with the name on the houses name plate. A mundane question, about the mystery of a new friend and nothing about the battle he just witnessed. Again, a focus on the mundane instead of the fantastical.

While the show always pays attention to the mundane, this is not to say there isn’t a larger, more complicated story going on. A story involving the politics of an alien federation that knows about earth and treats it as a sort of private protected park, of the one town on earth tasked with protecting the planet against aliens who are not part of that federation, of alien diplomats and goverment secrets and eventually things becoming public, and always the question of who is on the right side. But while that all is happening, the show focuses on things like friendship, the sports festival, school clubs, and especially love. Love is another of Shingu’s main themes.

This theme of love does take a few different forms. The main one is that of young romance. Of a girl, the third of our main characters Nayuta, who has to deal with her developing feelings for arguably both Hajime and Muryou, which the show I feel purposely doesn’t give a conclusion to. As in Nayuta never makes a decision about which boy is her one true love, because that's not the point. The point is her developing feels of companionship and even love for others. There is a more actualized romance between Kyouichi and Harumi, between a boy who wants to be a protector but is forced to be the one protected, and the girl who must protect him with her own life if necessary. And even of the school girl crush of Hajimes sister on Moryou. But romantic love is not the only type, or else I wouldn’t say it was a major theme.  Familial love is also talked about a lot. We see Hajime spend so much time with his mother and sister, and you really get the feeling that these are people who love and care for one another in a realistic way. Muryou’s grandfather and especially sister are shown through out the series and show a really nice family dynamic. Nayuta and the rest of the student councils parents are shown throughout the series and while they are sometimes shown as playing with the backroom politics of whats going on involving the aliens they too are doing it because they care for there children and want whats best for them, to live a peaceful life. We see friendship and rivalry and relationships all based on different types of love. And at the end of the show it is love that saves the day.

Shingu’s insistence of focusing on the mundane, even its theme of love is more mundane love then the sort of over the top romantic love we usually see in fiction, is interesting when one thinks about what type of show it is. As I said it is a show very much of its time. In the wake of Neon Genesis Evangelion  there were many shows that tried to capture that same magic. This led to tons of shows that were giant robot shows that talked about human evolution, psychic powers, had aliens and philosophy, teenagers defending the earth but also at great human cost, and more times then not the good guys would turn out to be evil and our hero would have to deal with those ramifications. Shingu in some way shape or form has all of this, but most of it is again in the background. It uses those themes that were popular but instead of making them the forefront they choose the mundane parts of living and make that its focus. Where many other anime went one direction Shingu purpose goes another and tells a much different but much more interesting story. One that feels a lot more human.

One thing I want to talk about that is a small part of the series over all is that of the technology level of the show. It takes place in the future, but its not the future of flying cars and living on the moon or the usual ways that one sees the future in shows. The technology all seems possible. Everyone has personal laptops, but the computers, while imaginative, don’t seem impossible. There is no personal AI’s but instead a built in touch pad that can be used to write. The most improbable thing is the fact that the computer can be folded a second time, which is just different as opposed o impossible. They use the equivalent of smart screens and touch pads and things that weren't well known in 2001 but we have today. The only really fanciful technology is that belonging to the aliens, but they are aliens from far older and more technologically advance alien races, so that makes sense. I always really enjoy shows with realistic depictions of the future. Yes, I love star ships and space travel and time travel and science fiction that goes as far and as wild as possible. But realistic science fiction is a small sort of fun I really enjoy.

Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars is an amazing little show. It is definitely one of my favorites of all time. It is a calm show that is a bit of a slow burn throughout. It is not a fast paced action show, but instead it is relaxing and calming to watch. After years of trying to catch this white whale I finally captured it and found it to be entirely satisfying. I could not recommend this show higher enough. If you have a chance watch this show and experience the mundane of the fantastical. So until next time, keep on watching.

[megatentious]

My lengthy defense of the most hated Persona game

Here’s my grand defense for the most hated game in the series: Persona 1, AKA Revelations: Persona. I know it’s too late to try and rehabilitate the game’s reputation on the internet, but I’m hoping that by rambling in modestly structured form for a bit, at least some folks might be able to look at Persona with a fresh perspective. It would be cool if everyone could try to understand what the game did so well and why it resonated so strongly with me and 2 or so other people. If you are the kind of person that thinks games age and become archaic, then I probably don’t have any hope of reaching you, but still, try to put yourself in the right mindset and approach the game on its own terms, and maybe you’ll discover something quite special.

So, Persona. Persona does very interesting things with choice. As the first Megaten rpg released in America, the negotiation system was a revelation (har har), providing the choice to talk your way out of battles and into rewards is a natural D&D element that never got a foothold in countless videogame conversions of the game, and in the first Persona these elements are at their peak. With every demon having four moods, four series of animation and four sets of voiced sound effects, the expanded options really let you get into the headspace of the demons you’re conversing with, unlike traditional SMT’s more spare binary system. Getting into the thick of things with complex sets of reactions (Joy + Interest, that’s what’s up) makes for a fun simulation.

The theme of choice is also really built into the game’s fabric, it’s the reason why in old usenet postings, Persona was recommended to folks who were fans of Gold Box games, during a time when RPG labels were more porous and that sneaky “J” hadn’t yet latched itself omnipresently to the term. Choice here also extends to the fifth character in your party, a friendly way to promote replay value without new game plus, and certain choices locking you out of giant chunks of the game, an unfriendly way of getting you through the game again. In a world though where developers are desperate to ensure that gamers experience all content (so many buzzwords!), the chutzpah of Persona being willing to lock you out of huge swathes of the game is something I actually admire.

It’s easy to underestimate the impact of the modern day setting in a post Persona 3/TWEWY/Alpha Protocol world, but dungeons that were hospitals and police stations and high school students snarling “EAT THIS” with MIGs in pitched street battles felt revelatory. Exploring the comically low-rent polygonal city (is this another reference to the abstracted icons of SMT1 and 2 world maps?) was actually fun, as ridiculous as waiting for traffic to pass might seem. There are also many complaints about the first person perspective dungeons, even though the rest of the game is third person, but the setting variety is nice and many of the wall patterns are quite evocative (Deva Yuga looks like Persepolis!)

The game also does PSX-era philosophizing in a tasteful and generally thoughtful way, while contemporaries were drawing from Evangelion, Persona looked to Zhuangzi and Jung. Not very high-falutin, true, but at least middle brow enough such that my 14 year old Sophie’s World reading self was entranced. The game has something neat to say about loneliness and identity and the way we construct the world around ourselves (all hinted at in the moody intro. The story is very nice and very Kaneko, even if he’s overestimating the literary quality in this interview, I’m very fond of it and it is my franchise favorite.

Here’s where I alienate the remaining people who might have been on board with me so far: if you ignore the loss of the Snow Queen Quest, a 20 hour alternate version of the story that takes place in a series of SMT:If... like towers, Revelations: Persona is actually the superior game. “Lunarvale,” a hodgepodge of America and Japan cobbled together by localizers attempting to mask the game’s origins, is actually more weird and interesting than the Mikage-cho that appears in Persona PSP. This bizarre mashup, combined with a nonsense translation attempt, somehow manages to better fit the lurid dreamscape vibe the original developers were going for. I can’t undersell how one-of-a-kind and wonderfully unsettling the game’s atmosphere is in the PSX version, and this is helped along of course by the sound.

Here are excerpts from some things I wrote on the music in this game:

Revelations: Persona has the best soundtrack in the franchise, possibly the best soundtrack ever made. In raw quantitative terms it's ridiculous, 113 songs and 3 hours of music without being looped, and all without doing Persona 2's trick of repeated (but still awesome!) remixes. Two majorly sweet leitmotifs for the two major quests, employed creatively and thoughtfully, four fantastic composers on four discs, cohesive and thematically coherent when by all rights it should feel disjointed as fuck, this is a generous OST!

Hidehito Aoki (R.I.P.) composed the dungeon music, which is exquisite. Lengthy songs that are moody, elegant, just plain beautiful and get you PUMPED! The iconic Deva Yuga Monochrome: School Revisited Dream-like, synthy, catchy, beautiful, quintessential Persona sound. Pandora's Den (Deepmost Area): The climax at 1:12! Ice Castle/Black Snow The twists and turns in this one, so effing good. Sebek Music, Karma Palace 90's music is the best!!! Misaki Okibe's range is ridiculous, she composed some of the most memorable, interesting tracks in the whole game. Reverse Dream World: You think you have this song figured out in the first few seconds, but stick around to see where it suddenly veers off to around :30, hilarious and awesome. Theme of Nemurin's Love: The intro! The power of a simple lovely melody, a little Uematsu-esque. Augustia's Wood: The save music, so memorable, I love the grumbling. City 2 Accident: Do you remember wandering the streets in the town, disoriented, listening to this gorgeousness, thinking about how Lunarvale suddenly seemed so scary, like an unsettling dream? Bar Attacked by Harem Queen: A bit of jazzy beauty. And most important of all of course, Misaki Okibe is the composer of the Pharmacy Music, featuring vocals by one Hidehito Aoki of all people. Satomi Tadashi Drugstore Song In our heads forever, teaching us about item use since 1996. 

More alienating for readers who have gotten this far: the “whitewashing” character designs were all improvements, Kazuma Kaneko redrew everything himself and it’s easy to tell that a lot of thought was put into the redesigns. Finally, Mark is also >>>> Masao, everyone’s always yelling about the jive-talking but to me he came across as quite smart and savvy. I dunno, maybe this is just a Flavor of Love/Outsourced minorities just wanna see themselves effect operating here, leave me alone you guys! So yes, the franchise’s current fanbase might not be fond of them, but the cast is comprised of characters that are meant to be iconic and not friends you wish you had in real life, a cast that, FFVI-like, is meant to evoke broader themes and not follow the typical arcs of many RPGs these days. Check out the classiness of Yuki’s design, and allow me to quote some more stuff on how Tsuchiya, master of the character theme, nails it for each party member.

The sign of a good character theme is when you can extrapolate from instrument choice and melody to personality. Here Tsuchiya is the man, no one does it better this side of Uematsu. I hear these songs and I've got a perfect picture in my mind of each cast member. It's what I think of when I think of "videogame music" ha, here are my personal favorites, I could listen to these endlessly. Mary/Maki: Cheerful, just a hint of melancholy in the notes, love that slap bass. Yuki: Starts a bit slow, but soon we learn that Yuki's cool but determined. Alana: The song tells me she's brassy, energetic, fun. Chris/Reiji: Dangerous, exciting, a bad-ass delinquent. Ellen/Elly: Classy, elegant, confident.

Some also rag on the dungeon design, but it seems unfair to expect centerpiece labyrinths along the lines of Strange Journey or Etrian Odyssey in a game going for something completely different. Nevertheless, you’ve got tricky mazes with dead ends that test resource allocation skills and provide a sense of accomplishment. Encounters are tough and require thought, careful consideration of when to flee and negotiate is imperative for dungeon survival. This is something that gets lost a bit in the PSP remake as the encounter rate is increased but battles are a bit easier. Exploiting elemental weaknesses isn’t as elegant as in later games, but with a ludicrously high 14 damage types breadth supersedes depth. And there’s even a positioning system to consider that the developers decided to drop from later games rather than refine. In the end, surviving the dungeon and beating the boss is an RPG staple that just plain works, although yes you will probably grit your teeth at some of the loading times.

And finally, you don’t have to take my random word for it. Parish really liked it too! How’s that for an appeal to authority?

For series buffs, it’s fun to trace this game’s historical lineage, as one of the earlier spinoffs of Shin Megami Tensei, it's easy to spot the mainline series influence: the occultism of the opening ritual, the hospital as first dungeon, the first person perspective for dungeon travel, BLUE POINTER MAN, and the omnipresent danger of demons in town and dungeon alike. Revelations: Persona is drawing from a rich and storied history, but manages to recast SMT traditions in interesting new directions. Again, the atmosphere is really unbelievable and something I haven’t come across in other games. It’s more than a simple curiosity and it doesn’t deserve dumb dismissal or sneering derision for its flaws. Revelations: Persona is a real marvel, modern games ought to draw more inspiration from its lessons, and the game belongs in the RPG canon, there I said it!

[thatgirlinskullz]

i first watched Evangelion about 8-10-ish years ago? so like 2011-2013-ish, i'm not sure.. but i watched the show, then the old movies (death and rebirth, then end of eva) then i learned about the Rebuild movies being an ongoing thing but i didn't watch any of them until now, 2021, because i wanted to wait it out and watch ALL Rebuild movies in one go.. well.. you know how that went xD had to wait close to a decade for the last one to come out and be able to watch them all.. but i stuck to it.. and the final Eva movie is finally out, and i watched it. i watched all the rebuild movies (in two sittings but still, probably better this way anyway)..

i am admittedly not the smartest person.. in fact, i think i am kinda dumb. so of course i still do not understand all of Eva.. but i love it, and it still means a lot to me..

this franchise is weird and philosophical, deep, emotional, questions religion and humanity and a bunch of other things according to a lot of people.. and to my knowledge it wasn't even intended to be all that. it was just Anno's way of expressing himself and what he was feeling, and then people started interpreting things in all sorts of ways. which is great in my opinion cuz art is like that.. it may not have meant too much in the mind of the artist, but viewers can still interpret it in a million different ways and assign much more meaning and depth to it than the artist originally intended.. now, as i said i am not smart, i am no expert, i don't know what Anno wanted to convey really.. but Eva still touched my soul in a weird way, even if i don't understand everything i saw..

it's so odd, i watched the last Eva movie that was just released and i both feel happy and content and very sad and emotional, and i just feel. a lot.

and to me that's the magic of Eva.. it may be a bit confusing no matter how many times i watch it, it is still beautiful and reaches into my core like only a few anime can...

Thank you Hideaki Anno. Thank you Evangelion.

[lesmotsincompris]

Thoughts on GoT S07E06

Since everybody was discussing the leaks, I decided to watch the leaked episode and almost forgot to post my thoughts here as usual.

Anyway: that was terrible, y’all. That was a whole new level of terrible.

The show was awful long before this, of course, but I think this episode perfectly encapsulates how poorly written it can be. Every scene has a lot to tear apart, but let’s try to keep it short:

Winterfell

Oh boy, did that hurt. What D&D have done to Arya isn’t simply character assassination; they murdered her character, shat on the corpse, set the poop on fire, and put the fire out with vomit.

Arya’s lines during this episode seem to come from an anti-Sansa thread on Reddit. It’s so viciously misogynystic and victim-blaming that I’m losing all respect for fans that buy this kind of bullshit reasoning (and I’ve seen them with my own eyes).

Again knitting is brought in a negative context. Again Sansa is called stupid. Again Sansa is portrayed as an ambitious bitch because she didn’t act as the ideal victim is supposed to act. Again Sansa’s forced marriages are used against her. Again we have another reminder that Sansa was raped, because gods forbid we forget it. This isn’t dealing with trauma, this is rubbing in the audience’s faces one of the most hated scenes of this show.

It’s ridiculously out of continuity too. Everything Arya herself did to survive is ignored (hanging out with Tywin on season 2, anyone?). Also she couldn’t possibly think her sister helped the Lannisters get rid of Ned, she was fucking there. If she saw Sansa’s pretty hair and dress, she must have seen her crying and screaming in despair. Watch your own damn show, D&D!

Once more I must ask: what is Littlefinger still doing in this story? He’s trying to put Arya against Sansa, but why? What does he gain with that? Why is Sansa still listening to him? You can’t give me Sansa being snarky at him in one episode and fully trusting him in another, it just doesn’t make sense.

Sansa was rude to Brienne for no reason, and sent her away purely because D&D needed Sansa alone and unprotected in Winterfell again. It’s so forced it hurts.

Apparently Jon didn’t give any news in weeks. Great job, Jon. But hey, couldn’t they use their fucking omniscient robot brother to see what stupidity Jon was up to this time?

I was giggling during the entire briefcase scene, not even The Room can aspire to be this bad.

Dragonstone

“Heroes do stupid things and they die” is the supreme maxim of Grimdark™. It’s also clearly not what GRRM is going for in the books.

We had a scene with the sole purpose of delivering exposition that Jon is in love with Dany. Is he? Why would he be? What evidence have we seen of this? Oh no, but it’s a lot easier to have a character established as "clever" saying "he loves you" than actually showing the process of two people falling in love.

For all their speech abut sparing the innocent, Tyrion says they’ll burn King’s Landing if anyone touches Dany. See, the smallfolk are only important if they bend the knee, otherwise they can die. So much for wheel-breaking.

(we still don’t know what that means, btw)

Again Tyrion tells Dany what to do and how to act; I’m gonna stab with a knitting needle anyone that calls this show feminist. I don’t think Tyrion is wrong in everything he says, but having him mansplaining Dany constantly is annoying. If he “believes” her, why doesn’t he let her to think on her own? If he doesn’t trust her to do it, then why does he follow her?

I can’t blame Dany for being hostile to the whole succession talk. Yes, it’s an important matter, and one book!Dany still has to address, but it came very suddenly and when they had other more important matters to deal with.

Tyrion doesn’t want Dany to go and she goes, and again the narrative will prove Dany wrong for not listening to a man. Fuck this show.

Beyond the Wall

Aaah, le crap de le crap. Don’t get me wrong, Winterfell stuff made me roll my eyes so hard I could watch my own brain cells dying. But Winterfell was filler, while this is supposed to be the big moment, the “go go go, shock shock shock” we’ve been told about, the core of the wham episode of this season.

And it sucks.

Tormund says that smart people don’t go looking for the dead, and I have to agree with him. The whole plan of capturing a wight and touring it around Westeros was incredibly stupid to begin with, so it’s hard to feel bad for the characters when things go inevitably wrong.

Less than five minutes into this episode they were already joking about Gendry being assaulted by Melisandre. Fuck this show.

Gendry being sold to Melisandre, much like Tyrion killing Davos’ son with wildfire, becomes a “look, those characters know each other” gag. This is a very poor choice and ignores the fact that those characters met under traumatic circumstances that deserve a stronger reaction than that.

Of course you don’t hear Beric “bitching” about being killed six times, that would mean death and trauma carry any weight and in this show they don’t. Not anymore.

I’ve been complaining for a while that the show seems to have forgotten why Jorah was exiled, so they answered me with him admitting Ned was right. That’s great, it would have been a significant character development… if we had actually seen it. Character development is a character going from point A to point B, not suddenly being on point B with no indication of how they got there.

Then Jon says he’s glad Ned didn’t catch Jorah. Why? Does Jon knows that Jorah was exiled for selling people? Is Jon okay with that? Since when? He barely knows Jorah and no relationship was portrayed on screen before this moment, why this sudden concern with him?

Sandor says he hates gingers, which is another nail in the SanSan coffin for the show. We already that’s D&D’s NOTP, but the petty ways they find to demonstrate it always amuse me.

I joked about this being the Ultimate Bro Trip - All the Extras Edition, but boy I was right. There’s everything one could expect from this sort of event: sexual assault played for laughs, dick jokes, the most disgusting reference to Tormund x Brienne, heavy-handed hints of R+L=J, lots of walking for nothing, lots of shitting all over GRRM’s careful worldbuilding, lots of dudes bonding over stuff that makes me hate them as characters, poorly executed action with no real stakes. A true winner!

There are small things that worked for me. I kinda like Beric’s speech to Jon, or Sandor turning around when they burn Thoros’ wound. It’s a simple but effective way to remind the viewer of Sandor’s trauma. It doesn’t cost much in terms of dialogue or screentime, and keeps the character consistent and fleshed-out. But those were isolated moments, and isolated moments are not enough to save us from this torture of a scene.

I like the surprise element of the bear attack, but it was too shaky and confusing for my taste. Gendry says the bear has blue eyes, but I could hardly see the bear itself? And how can I care about characters dying if I can’t even see who’s dying? After some point it was The Revenant - Westeros edition, and still not the silliest scene in the episode.

The white walkers now die like vampires from Buffy and one stab is enough to finish them. Worse, they’re following the route of 'kill the boss, every minion dies’. I hate this trope, I’m sure there’s a name for it. It’s particularly bad in this case because now the white walkers’ impressive numbers don’t mean anything; just kill the extra blue dude with a vaguely Japanese armor and presto! Also, you know, it contradicts what we’ve seen so far including in this very episode.

Despite them walking for ages, Gendry goes back to Eastwatch pretty fast. The white walkers are kind enough to wait for no fucking reason while Gendry sends a raven, the raven reaches Dragonstone, Dany gets ready, and Dany flies to the Wall and beyond. This should have taken weeks, but apparently it happens over a day or so.

Look, when people talk about ‘teleportation’ in this show, we don’t mean that the writers must depict every beat of the trip. We mean that the trip needs to make sense considering everything we know about the setting and the resources available in that world. It doesn’t have to be super accurate either, just not physically impossible like this was.

The white walkers not attacking the group makes the previous Plot Armor evolve to a Plot AT Field from Evangelion. If there was going to be battle anyway, why the waiting? You’re already bending space and time for Daenerys to arrive, so I’m sure there would be better ways to have the ice dragon scene without all this contrivance.

The dragon saving scene would have been awesome if not for all the implausibility that led to it. It’s hard to be invested when you’re already angry and disappointed. The contrivances don’t stop there, and Jon takes two levels in stupidity and keeps fighting all macho when everybody else is safe on dragon back. Also Daenerys loves him for some reason.

That spear throwing was the funniest thing. Congrats to whoever did the dragon animations and noises, though, that was a great job. Emilia Clarke’s nearly-crying face would have been a great start for one of Daenerys’ more emotional moments in the show, watching the death of one of her children. Too bad this is basically all the reaction she’s allowed to have.

Jon got Viserion killed out of sheer stupidity and stubbornness, but somehow Dany loves him even more for that! She wants to wait for him, even if that endangers her other dragons. Back at the Wall, she waits for his return, not perhaps a sign of Viserion. When he apologizes for being the worst, she’s not remotely angry at him. It was “good” that her dragon died, because now she understands. Now she knows that in this show men are always right and women pay a dear price for not listening to them.

Can’t see the narrative goal of leaving Jon behind or him falling in the water. Nobody actually expected him to die, even if he should have. Then you have Uncle Benjen Ex Machina holding thousands of White Walkers on his own, as if that somehow prevents a few of them from going after Jon. This whole scene accomplished nothing but stretching our suspension of disbelief further, as if there was any left at this point.

The walkers somehow put chains on the dragon to pull it. Why not just make the dragon fall on land? Viserion returning could have been cool if: a) it wasn’t a product of a conga line of plot contrivances; b) they didn’t take four years to show us his eyes opening, as if this wasn’t ridiculously obvious.

Daenerys can’t mourn her fucking dragon, she’s too busy finding the Ultimate Man to Listen To. What prompts Jon to decide that Dany is now his queen? Why does he call her Dany? How does Dany know the Night’s King name?

More importantly, why do I still care to ask about all this questions when the answer is “D&D are fucking dumb and they’re hoping we are too”?

Extra notes

Should we start printing Euron’s picture in milk boxes? And what happened to Theon?

Fuck this show, fuckindammit, that was a lot of time and energy wasted just to get angry.

[knightofbalance-13]

Gainax Retrospective Review 4: DieBuster, the return of an old friend.

Sequels are a...mixed bag. Some are good, some are bad, some are great and some are just awful. This is for a variety of reasons ranging from poor scripts to bad acting to just not caring. However, one overarching aspect separates the bad from the good: the spirit of the original. SO long as a sequel has the spirit of the original it has a good shot at being a good sequel. This is because at essence a sequel is simply the original work extended. It’s the same show just a little different. And Diebuster does a good job at this. Sadly, it’s only a good job, not a great one.

Made in 2004 as the twenty fifth anniversary special of Studio Gainax, Diebuster follows the adventures of Nono, an eternally optimistic android girl who looks up to a legendary hero and wishes to be a space pilot to fend off the scourge of the space monsters. As she tries to be a space pilot, Nono meets a true space pilot named Lal’c who, in turn, is calm, cool and kind of indifferent in opposition to Nono. Together along with the cold hearted rival Tyrcho and the charming Nicola, they fight against the Space monsters. While the story is short it does have it’s fair share of twists going from our hero Nono ending up being a Buster Machine (heavily implied to have powers that exceed even the original: GunBuster), the things they thought were space monsters actually being protectors of humanity that were assaulting certain members of the human race because they were evolving into the real space monsters and the person that Nono worshiped “Nonoriri” is actually Noriko from the original. SO the plot is a bit more complex and ingaging than before...if it was able to match the energy and focus of the original. GunBuster, while having a mostly straight forward plot, kept a great focus on the story that made it’s short length work as well as it did and had a lot of vibrancy to company it. Diebuster’s focus skips around a bit and the energy at times feels lacking in comparison. In short: The age of the story really shows as it feels like an old person trying to reenact an old event: Impressive but as good as the original.

The themes of the show are...hard to pin down. Again, GunBuster’s focus made this easier as it kept on three themes constantly while Diebuster’s themes jump all over the place. Diebuster has a theme about growing up using the Topless as a metaphor as when a Topless reaches a certain age they lose their power and adults often treat them with contempt...But Topless often curse their abilities and some people have become messed up by it so it’s hard to say if the show is saying if growing up is good or bad. I guess it could be saying that Growing up is hard but necessary but the Topless are depicted as needing that power is it still doesn’t make sense.

The next theme has a bit more focus. This is the theme of character interactions in the story and how the events change them, There is a lot of focus here as throughout the story we focus on the many ways the people interact with each other and how they change one another, similar to Evangelion and FLCL. Except whereas Evangelion only focused on the negative and FLCL focused on the positive, Diebuster tries to take a look at both sides with a slightly optimistic viewing similar to GunBuster’s, it even has a similar talk in it in whether or not humans should try to survive and risk evolving into space monsters (which in of itself could be an observation on how a war slowly turns you into your enemy) or if they should just die with letting people in the future decide whether or not their monsters. Again, the show doesn’t have the focus needed to completely convey this but it does do a better job.

There is also a third theme of achieving impossible stunts through the good ol’ motto of “Hard Work and Guts.” It comes up��a couple of times and is used for some spectacular feats and really gets you engaged but I’m talking about it here because...well, there’s another anime that take this concept and busts right through it next time so I’m gonna conserve my thoughts there.

Now let’s take a look at the characters for this round. First person we’re taking a look at is the main character Nono. Nono is an energetic, cheerful girl who wants nothing more than to pilot a Buster Machine just like her hero who is later revealed to be Noriko from GunBuster. Ironically, Noriko and Nono are pretty much complete opposites as characters. Noriko was shy, nervous and not very self confident whereas Nono is energetic, not shy in the slightest and is full of confidence (excluding when it comes to her surrogate sister.) Noriko’s problem came from her potential never being tapped into ,due to her mental failings, Nono’s problem is that she never gets the chance to show her potential. So this makes DieBuster develop in a much different way. Nono, while silly at times, displays immense amounts of seriousness when the situation calls for it and takes her job as a protector of humanity very seriously. She works very well as a contrast to Noriko and they would have made some very interesting interactions with Noriko had they ever met. In contrast, she’s like a happier version of Simon who just never got her chance until everything changed for her and she has some sibling problems like Naota but these are more her fault than the siblings. Another flaw of hers is her inability to read people thus causing her to hurt some people but then this is balanced out by her surprising ability to inspire others through her simple and pure spirit. All in all, a fun character with a quite a few quirks that make her endearing. However, she lacks the conflict of her predecessor that made her so compelling.

The second character under our scope is Lal’C. She is an ace space pilot and a Topless, a person with special powers that allow them to defy pjysics through mechas...And it’s not Spiral Power. Cool, great under pressure and acts as a reluctant mentor to Nono, Lal’C is the Kazumi of DieBuster who acts as a great compare AND contrast to Kazumi: the contrast comes from the fact that while Lal’c acts as the Kazumi of this show she’s actually not that sensitive or kind as Kazumi: She’s blunt, rude, cold as hell and can be pretty damn rash. She does have a kinder side that Nono brings out that is the result of Nono’s positivity that we see but most of the time she’s just rude.The comparison comes from the fact that she’s honestly trying to help Nono the best she can, worries greatly about her and is very close to her. She does her best to help Nono achieve her goals and acts as her superior for a good chunk of the anime until Nono is revealed to be the seventh Buster Machine and the tables turn with Lal’C being forced to rely upon her student. However, what makes Lal’C even better than Kazumi is that the relationship brings out a lot of character development from her while Kazumi for the most part didn’t get too much from Noriko in terms of story. The pilot goes from being a powerful but cold, distant, rude and kind of pessimistic girl to someone who keeps fighting and fighting despite the odds with lots and lots of loyalty to Nono. All in all, out of the three successors to Kazumi I’ve seen, Lal’c is definitely the best one.

Third up is Tynco, the Jun Freud of our little sequel. Another Topless that is constantly trying to surpass Lal’C, displaying a great amount of disdain with her fellow Topless and is a complete cynic when it5 comes to their powers, believing only in cold hard cynicism. But we latter see that this is due to the fact that she was unable to help her dear childhood friend who died despite all her powers as a Topless, thus leading her to who she is today. But through Nono’s constant exposure and her dedication and optimism she regains that hope  in her powers and becomes a much softer and kinder person. While this is all well and fine, she is simultaneously both a weaker and stronger Jung Freud parallel. Stronger because the anime takes time to develop her and have her change feel more in depth and natural but weaker because that test of character Jung went through never really happens to Tynco and what test of character she does have feels...out of place. She’s a nice character and everything but she just feels too out of place and...bricky.

Finally we handle Nicola who is the reflection of Coach Ohta at first. He’s handsome, smart, wise, older, been in the battle far longer than most of the characters ect. He flirts a lot with Lal’C which does lead to some interesting scenes with him and Lal’C and he does do some work to try and find out what is going on, Nicola is juts not that good of a character. In fact, he’s rather bland and uninteresting beyond the flirtiness of his character. He doesn’t hold Coach Ohta’s firmness yet understanding, his love for humanity, his ability to see the inner depths of characters or even his presence. He isn’t as morally ambiguous, intelligent, manipulative or complex as Gendo. he’s not as wacky, intelligent, funny or entertaining as Kazumo making Nicola the weakest incarnation of the Coach character. Not to mention he tries to rape Nono at one point so...I think we should move on.

The sound of the anime is still very good. It’s opening song Blue Magic is uplifting and smile inducing benefiting the less serious DieBuster and it’s protagonist although it is a pop song so you might not think that it is all that great. The rest of the music uses the good ol orchestra to convey the feelings of the scenes which it does a great job at doing, especially the part with Tynco getting back into action. It also uses a few pieces from GunBuster which are utilized excellently. The voice acting is pretty good as Nono and Lal’C have teh perfect voices to match their characters but this show is only in Japanese so I can’t make a full judgement.

The animation and art have taken quite the leap from before. Even though FLCL was very well animated top where even it’s messier scenes befit the wild atmosphere of the show, DieBuster seem to take bits and pieces from every Gainax show before with the large expressive eyes and colorfulness of the original GunBuster, the more realistic bodies and faces of NGE and the wild energy and glowing effects of FLCL, marking it as an evolution in the art styles. The mechas are heavily personalized and stand out which makes them a joy to watch in battle and the enviroment5s are very well made in that they always capture the scene and it’s tone like Nono’s leaving in the dark and cold signifying a tough road ahead. The animation is very well done, the fights scenes are fluid and a treat to watch, the wacky moments are wild and uninhibited and the casual, more heartfelt scenes are subtle and beautiful.

All in all, DieBuster is a good show whose greatest flaw is that it lacks the focus of the original GunBuster. It works as a 25 year anniversary show in that it contains a lot of references and gags to GunBuster if not a few to FLCL but it doesn’t work as well on it’s own. DieBuster is fun to watch and entertainingt but it lacks the depth that the original had and makes mistakes that the original didn’t. In the end, it feels like the old girl tried to pull off the magic that happened before but all those years worn on her and she could only perform a valiant effort. Although the animation and art as well as sound were great, the other aspects didn’t hold up.

So at the time it seemed like Gainax had hit something of a wall: What could they do next when even the sequel to their greatest anime so far didn’t work? It looked as though their first shot was going to be their last, especially as Hideaki Anno took a good chunk of the people at Gainax to found Studio Khara. But little did anyone know, their greatest work was about to happen a mere three years later. A show that held the heart of GunBuster, the intelligence of NGE, the energy of FLCL and the style of DieBuster while pushing the limits of everything before it and beyond.

Ladies and Gentlemen, ten years ago, that very anime was aired. And it is the aniem I have been building up to. The Magnum Opus of Studio Gainax and the subject of our final review: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann!

Prolouge GunBuster Review NGE Review FLCL Review

[stuprosu]

march 17th, 2020 1:50 AM

yeah

listen

it’s pretty well established that i am absolutely atrocious at keeping this updated. and i always say that i am going to keep it updated. but i never fucking do, do i? so i’ll say it again. and maybe i’ll mean it it this time. but i really do want to keep this up. there’s so much that i am forgetting lately. things i shouldn’t be forgetting. things i want to remember. this is another situation where i am going to have to outline each thing by each month. hold on to your butts. 

[october 2018] see i don’t remember even what’s going on. this is almost two years ago. i saw the national this month. i also went on a date with sam. it went fine but i just wanted to be friends... so he ghosted me. yahoo. it’s coming back to me now. i go to worlds of fun with kady, marissa, ashleigh, amanda, and conner... love these goons so much. 

[november 2018] my other friend - an online friend, one that lived close. we talked all the time and we played a lot of overwatch and shit together. and i’m intelligent. i’m smart. i know when i’m being taken advantage, or know when people try to do this. he asks me out on a date. we meet up in leavenworth. we spend the whole day together and we drink alcohol. i found out later i have a pretty severe alcohol intolerance. i don’t remember much of that night. maybe everything that falls down eventually rises. that whole experience was that stupid fucking bright eyes song. i can’t remember much - that pretty much makes it nonconsensual, right? i have no memory. but it’s been too long. the next day he texts me and tells me he only wants to be friends. i only remember him kissing me and his house and brooklyn 99. my aunt said i was pretty incoherent when he dropped me back off there at 2am. 

i don’t really know what to make of that whole situation. best to not think about it. we have a friendsgiving. but we don’t relaspe. i actually took up smoking, lmao. i cut him completely out of my life. i am talking to people again. i start dating a boy named drew. we were both pretty lonely people.

[december 2018] yooo drew gets in a fucking wreck after leaving my house at 2am lmao i forgot about that. he was trying to avoid a snowstorm and like broke his femur in half. he was hospitalized for 2 weeks. i visited him. he couldn’t walk for about two months. i felt really bad but i didn’t really want to keep dating him. the whole thing was my fault and i don’t know how to feel about it even now. nothing else much happened during this month. someone wrecked into my parked car. i got zaba this month, my ball python. 

[january 2019] kady asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. i break up with drew. it’s cold as fuck. i am sure there are other details. oh, ashleigh tells kady and i she will not be renewing the lease as she is going to move in with her boyfriend. ashleigh, in the past, like august 2018? was dating this homophobe so i didn’t talk to her. when he dumped her (after taking the old v card, which she told me about, which i responded to with indifference, which upset her) i was there to pick up the pieces but i told her she made a really dumb decision and i don’t know what else she expected and that it hurt that she knew my feelings about something and still dating someone so gross. ANYWAYS. new boyfriend. ashleigh wants to move in with the new boyfriend even though they havent even been dating a month... okay. we tell her not to. she doesn’t listen. ashleigh just starts being shady as fuck. jake , her bf, dumps after 2 weeks after she decides to not renew the lease. dumbass. 

ashleigh is still set to move out in may, when the lease is up. so, that’s not my problem. 

[february 2019] i really love my classes. i took ornithology that semester and i really loved it. i also cut my hair then and i came out publicly as bisexaul cause i realized how problematic being pansexual is. i also think i came out publicly as a nonbinary person, too. for so long i had issues with my gender, but i always pushed it aside and literally told myself don’t think about it, don’t worry about it, just stop. cringily, steven universe helped me figure out a label for what i was experiencing through rebecca sugar. pretty awesome stuff. 

[march 2019] a lot of shit went down this month. ashleigh started dating a guy named zane, who she first originally described to me as a creepy guy in her history class. they went on one date and fucked in her CAR in a museum PARKING LOT. lmao  and then proceeds to never sleep with him at our apartment, but will book hotels and shit. like how self conscious can you be?? anyways. i am fed up with it and i vent to some discord server and forgot ashleigh was in it. i delete it just in case but turns out she got screenshots and never told me. ash wanted to come to nakakon the weekend of march 16. march 15, ashleigh brings over zayn and theyre in her room. kady and conner are watching the office and marissa is there too. 

i come home at like 1am and they tell me ZAYN is there and has a fucking GUN on his hip and i’m?? what the fuck. so we start playing that episode of the office with gun safety dwight really really loudly. and then marissa messages ash and asks zayn to put the gun in his car. the gun is a REVOLVER and doesn’t have a fucking safety. she also doesnt have a gun safe? everyone is just super uncomfortable. zayn comes out and makes a huge deal. he tells us we’re being immature and that it isn’t a big deal. i said something along the lines that we live here, he didn’t ask, we’re uncomfortable, respect it or perish, smth like that. he leaves to go put it in his car. comes back in and starts it back up. says that “the big scary gun is put away” shut up cuck. 

anyways we get into and conner steps in because zayn is yelling at me and i am ready to brawl. zayn mentions something abuot how i treat ash like shit. i can only assume she showed him the screenshots of my discord message lmaoooo . anyways the day after that incident ! i cannot resolve it because ash is coming with me and staying at my dad’s apartment with marissa and i for nakakon. ashleigh is really obnoxious some of the time but mostly quiet. but since we were in such close quarters, i couldn’t bring up the whole shit with zayn. so. 

i am fed up and amanda, kady, marissa, ash, and i go to ihop to try and hash this out. we have a talking straw. we talk about alllll of our issues. i thought it went good. i was not aware that ash was aware of the screenshots. we told ash we were uncomfortable with zayn and would appreciate if he would apologize for disrespecting kady and i in our home and how he talked to me especially. this wasn’t unreasonable, considering three other people were witness to how zayn was talking to me. 

zayn said to ashleigh he wouldn;t apologize because he’d done nothing wrong. i told ashleigh i didn’t want him in the apartment. she moved out at this point and we got into it pretty heavily over messenger. ashleigh blocked all of us on facebook. i miss her but she’s a really toxic person who is in a relationship with a really toxic trump supporter who hates antifa and is really cringe. 

[april 2019] nothing much happened. college is good. i still have a massive crush on carter. marissa moved in. she has found out i am a giant recluse by nature and i think that has had an impact on our relationship even today. my past journal articles have illustrated i can only take people in doses, but we’ve found how to get along. 

[may - july 2019] nothing too crazy happened here either. it was an incredible summer, though. i worked, but i went to the lake so much and got close to toby! i hung out with marissa and kady so much and i really love those two girls. dad and amy are together all the time but they’re not “dating”. i know they are, just amy’s kids are young and wouldn’t understand. i know they’ll tell me when they’re ready. i also watched all of hunter x hunter and loved it. rewatched neon genesis evangelion, too, and loved it. i can’t remember when, but danielle handed marissa a letter for me to read. it was really intense and kind of perception-shattering. i texted her and we agreed to become at least non-hostile and chill with each other. i have really been meaning to see danielle irl and talk to her... but i keep forgetting and don’t have much time during the semester. i feel bad but... i don’t know what else to say. i reached out to her in december but was left on read. that was my fault, as i hadn’t responded to her in months. it’s better than what it was, to say the least. 

[august 2019] golden year baby ! just kidding my golden year was whenever i turned nineteen. anyways august is pretty chill. i started my senior year and took entomology. i loved that class so much and had it with carter. i really love the people in my field and i am going to miss them so much. love the biology goons. i also found out from my doctor i am allergic to most alcohols after i had an allergic reaction on my 21st and went to the doctors. i have a pretty severe intolerance. also started playing dragon age again. i don’t really talk to mom at all. my maternal grandfather, cliff, who i have never met/spoken to, has a relationship with my sister ashlee and was at my nephew’s first birthday party. cliff met my brothers and i and was very kind to us. however, i love my aunt shanna with my whole heart and she doesn’t like him at all. there was a very clear and obvious divide of my mom’s sisters and family, like jordan, kenadee, brettney, nana, and my grandfather’s family, like his other children and their spouses. it was all very difficult. i know my grandfather doesn’t have much time left in this world, but he still was rude and treated the family who HAS been there like shit. i know my mom cut my grandfather out, but i am inclined to side with my aunt because she knows best. however, she didn’t pull me aside at the birthday party and tell me not to believe a thing cliff says. cliff, however, did that. told me to believe what nana says and that it was all in the past. that rubbed me the wrong way. i still don’t know what to think about that situation. 

[september 2019] just school and work still, nothing crazy. mammalogy trips, entomology trips, school is really really fun and a lot of work but i love it so much! oh, and carter got me a bernie2020 magnet for my birthday. 

[october 2019] i saw the band cigarettes after sex. they were really awesome. i broke my glasses. i went to ren fest. nathan was creepy. i saw my mom and my aunt brenna at toby’s marching band game. dad, ash, and bentley were there. it was awkward and i didn’t try talking to my mom. a few months prior i kind of ripped into her on messenger and tried to tell her that i wanted a relationship but she had to acknowledge that what she did in the past was wrong (and i told her exactly what she did wrong, and i had talked about this with my siblings and dad, who agreed) and how she could fix it and how i still wanted her in my life. and she refused to acknowledge this. i kind of broke down over it because i realized my mom was never ever ever going to change and it broke me. anyways, i saw her at the game and i didn’t talk to her and answered her questions with as much grace as i could manage. that’s all. she lives in olathe now. that guy and her broke up. toby lives with dad full time now. dad has a good job and bartends part time at top golf. 

[november 2019] there was a praying mantis on my aloe plant! she laid an ootheca. it should hatch any day now :)i went to a deer aging check station. i slept in a bath tub. had some good conservations with my sister. we also had kady’s bridal shower. kaycee’s house is amazing and so is kaycee! i wish she lived closer. 

[december 2019] kady got married! it was a really beautiful reception. i finished my semester with all As and Bs! entomology was really hard, but i got a B in there! most people in ento got Cs or Ds so i did really well :) we started playing left for dead again 

[january 2020] kady is on her honeymoon. marissa and i watched midsommar on new years eve. i started my new classes. i am taking herpetology and paleontology and local flora. i also TA for plant phys and am doing research with dr. barta! life was pretty good. oh, i tried getting glass animals tickets, but they sold out, so i was really bummed :///

[february 2020] chiefs won the superbowl, played dragon age, went to class. i spend a lot of time with amanda and love her so much. i also got my resume together! waiting to hear back so i can start applying for jobs.

[march 2020] it’s the current month. it’s been a wild month because of the virus. i was supposed to find a place to live by may and a job this month but the virus has made that pretty much impossible. my dad has been reassuring but also not at the same time. it will all work out. i voted for bernie in the primaries. i have become extremely socialist in my views. right now, i am really into NGE and jojo’s bizarre adventure and i am listening to a lot of the kinks. jyro turned 11 this month. 11! he’s getting so old. i hope i can find a place to live but i need to find a job first. it’s a stressful time. hopefully i won’t get the virus but... we will see. also, i’ll try to keep this updated. maybe monthly! 

see ya xox

lex