#The anime is really NOTHING compared to the Ranma manga and if you like the anime and haven't read the manga GO READ IT. YOU'LL LOVE IT.

[zoe-oneesama]

So i started watching Ranma 1/2 the remake (im loving it so far for the record) and i wanted to ask

What changes does the remake have from the original??? Like, i knew of ranma 1/2 but never really watch it because im always scare watching old romance animes 'cause of the tropes at the time (u actually make me try it out and i am really considering watching the orginal completly)

Other than a crazy animation upgrade, so far it's pretty true to the original manga. The few changes are pretty subtle but they add up to create a softer picture:

-Akane momentarily getting up from her knees and shouting when Genma first grabs Ranma to throw him into the pond

-Ranma thinking back pensively about Akane saying she'd hate to lose to a guy when he's grumbling about her losing all her niceness after finding out the truth

-When their fathers say they're already a couple, Akane says "we're not, we're FIGHTING!" instead of "He's a couple by himself!"

There's only two episodes, but this already sets up Akane to be a little nicer and Ranma to be a little more thoughtful (not in a kind way but in a slow-down-and-think way). And it shows that the writers are going out of their way to consider the language they're using - Akane is still accusing Ranma of being a pervert because of the Bath Incident, but she's not going out of her way to weaponize his curse against him when she's angry.

It's been forever since I watched the original anime, and I definitely didn't watch every episode (there's so muuuuuch filler!), but compared to the manga, these are very deliberate little details that I think are going in a very good direction.

If you're going to watch the original, just know this: it's ultimately a comedy. Some jokes are going to fall flat depending on your mileage, some jokes rely on old pervy humor (mostly when Happosai comes in, everyone's least favorite character -_-) or the punchline being someone punched into the sun, and some things that probably should be taken more seriously, uh, aren't. Characters fall in love for nothing, and the main characters are two Tsunderes from before the phrase was ever coined.

Once you fall into the tone of what you're watching, it's a very enjoyable ride. I really hope you check it out!

[mysticdragon3md3]

Ranma ½ is GENIUS. Here’s Why by  Bonsai Pop

The thing I really appreciated about Ranma ½ when I was younger, was that it was a discussion about gender without getting sidetracked by sex, the way most “sex comedies” did, especially at the time.  At the time, publishers tried to market Ranma ½ as a “sex comedy” in the vein of raunchy college-setting Hollywood movies or fanservicy Male Gaze series (compare “Futaba-kun Change” or the proceeding “harem genre” that Ranma ½ started).  But Ranma ½ felt more like a discussion about gender more than sex, or even more than sexuality.  And being an AroAce kid, who didn’t know what AroAce was at the time, but was very confused about my gender, I really appreciated Ranma ½’s focus on gender over sex, fanservice, and heterosexuals navigating (sexual) relationships—which, I *cannot* express enough, was the saturated majority of all anime/manga, that even came close to discussing gender, at the time.  I just wanted a discussion about gender, gender roles, complaining about presumed traditional ideas about gender, and how to define one’s own gender despite society’s pressures about gender.  I wanted a discussion about Strength, that the martial arts genre did so often, without an advocation for sexist ideals, toxic masculinity, stereotypes about “feminine” being weaker (even as warriors), fixated only on romance, or any number of female stereotypes, etc.  I feel like I can’t remind people enough of how it was back then, when not only were these toxic mysoginist ideas portrayed frequently, but they were also portrayed as good, true, “right”, or unquestioned.  At least when Ranma Saotome was being a sexist jerk, he was punished for that terrible thinking or eventually had to reconcile with his dissonance.  And Akane Tendo was revolutionary at that time too.  It used to be that on the Shonen genre side, we had only hyper fem, passive, romance-fixated, love interests, OR nagging, cold female characters that really felt like the author was conveying all their horrible views on women in general, OR sexy eye-candy that had close-ups on their boobs or butt so frequently, that it completely made their lack of focus on romance or anything else in their personalities, secondary.  Then on the Shoujo genre side, we had girls who were fixated on nothing but romance, constantly jealous and possessive—and often over guys who hadn’t even proven themselves worthwhile to pursue romantically.  Let’s face it: A lot of Shoujo leading men were often jerks, treated their female love interests badly, and for some reason, she was just supposed to play the devoted “Lady Murasaki” and be totally “in love” with him.  Whyyyyyyyyyy?????????????  Even worse on the Shonen genre side too, because he treats her badly, it doesn’t get portrayed as bad treatment, he doesn’t understand why she’s angry, so she just looks like a volatile nag all the time, often existing only to be objectified or serve as a flimsy motive for his character arcs and actions. It was a pretty bad time.  Not that now has eliminated those problems, but when Ranma ½ and Akane Tendo seem like the shining lights of something different, maybe then you can understand how much I sorely needed Ranma ½ and Akane Tendo at that time.  

Really surprised that this video essay didn’t mention Jackie Chan.  The thing that differentiated Ranma ½ from so many martial arts battle anime/manga at the time, was that Ranma ½’s style of martial arts was inspired by Jackie Chan.  Meanwhile, all the other Shonen martial arts manga/anime were so serious and based more on “cool”, “action” genre toned martial arts movies.  

I’m intrigued by this video essay’s idea that Ranma ½ the series isn’t sexist, but rather, characters within the series are sexist, and are so in order to make a point about how them being like that is messed up.  I need to grapple with this because one of my problems in looking back at Ranma ½ is that it can be a little transphobic and/or homophobic at times.  Like, I’ll never forget when Tsubasa Kurenai was introduced and, Akane, this character that we’re supposed to completely sympathize with during this series, just keeps screaming in Tsubasa’s face that they are a “pervert”, simply because it’s revealed that Tsubasa identifies as a boy but dresses as a girl.  I think the episode just ended like that, and that was supposed to be a joke, but I don’t know whether the reveal’s shock intended on the audience was supposed to be conveyed through Akane and we were expected to have the same reactions as her, or if we were supposed to be shocked at Akane’s reactions and her reactions being ridiculous were the joke.  I dunno; it was a long time ago, I don’t remember much context, and I really should look it back up.  But frankly, there’s a lot of Ranma ½ to sift through and that’s more time than I have, writing this post.  Akane does seem to repeatedly have instances of being perfectly nice to characters, but when she discovers they’re actually guys, she spends a lot of time yelling “pervert” in their faces.  Sometimes I don’t know if we’re meant to see how ridiculous Akane is being or if we’re meant to agree with her.  Again, I watched/read the series a long time ago, and maybe if I re-watched/re-read it now, it would be clear to older me.  Because, when it happens between Akane and Ranma, Ranma has a specific line, grummbling about how Akane was perfectly nice to him, up until she found out he was actually a boy.  And Ranma was a bit nice in his characterization up until that early line of dialogue, so maybe we were supposed to be on his side in that thought.  So maybe Akane spending the rest of the series yelling “pervert” at Ranma (repeated so often it’s essentially their running gag), is supposed to be a joke laughing at how irrational Akane is being.  o.o?  I’d hate to think we’re supposed to be on Akane’s side, repeatedly calling Ranma a “pervert” over a curse that he had no control over getting, and early on was portrayed as a misfortune that the audience was supposed to sympathize and pity him over.  Maybe the whole thing is supposed to point out Akane’s flaws, since everyone in the series is pretty messed up.  (Even Kasumi unsettled me a bit when I was younger, in that she dropped her entire life, to replace her mother’s role when she died.  For me, being a young girl who didn’t buy into those traditional female roles, that were still at the time, strongly pushed onto girls in society, that was a little unsettling.  Still love Kasumi as a person though.)  Akane did have reason to “hate boys”, as the series specifically states early on, but I’d like to think that she was given this flaw as a point to grow away from.  Just as this video essay calls to attention Ranma being sexist and, over the series, eventually growing out of it.  But back when I was young and initially into Ranma ½, I feared that some of these sexist or even homophobic ideas in Ranma ½ were actually reflective of thoughts that Rumiko Takahashi advocated.  After all, there’s a point in Maison  Ikkoku where Kyoko berates herself by saying all women are fools.  Maybe I was too young to see the nuance in a character berating her own mistakes in her love live, vs the implication that all women are “properly” stereotyped into being obsessed with love and end up acting foolish for it.  Nowadays, I can see how we can berate ourselves whenever our specific actions can slot us into generalized stereotypes, and we curse ourselves for falling into proving stereotypes true on occaision.  But back then, when I was younger and watching Ranma ½ for the first time and reading Maison Ikkoku for the first time, I was afraid that such lines were reflective of Takahashi believing such stereotypes as truth.  Which is why I was so happy when sometime after Ranma ½, Inuyasha had a canonically gay character, and instead of Inuyasha calling him a pervert the entire time, he just got exasperated with his non-stop flirting, the way that all the female characters from Ranma ½ are tired of guys who won’t take “no” for an answer.  At the time, I thought, “Yay!  Takahashi has evolved to a less homophobic stance!”  But maybe, all this time, she was always against such things, and merely portraying them, even through characters we were supposed to sympathize with, merely to show how messed up such ideas are.  I really like that thought which this video essay presented.  

But I will disagree with this video essay on 1 thing:  The manga is better.  I’m not trying to be elitist.  I realize that comedy has a very subjective sensibilities, and the anime leans into awkward silence type comedy, whereas I am sick of that type of comedy.  But so many visual gags and jokes in the manga, and Rumiko Takahashi’s style in general, involve panels that are almost completely re-drawn, with only 1 element changed—the gag element—suggesting that the eye is supposed to read from panel to panel quickly (since the human eyes/brain filters out a lack of change, and is hard-wired to focus on changes from previous conditions).  To me, this suggests quick punchlines, whose sudden oddity is supposed to shock, implying an intended fast pacing to the jokes.  And yeah, Takahashi will draw seemingly normal scenes, detailed with all the normalcies of a commonly recognizable environment, then suddenly the next panel is exactly the same except a character is contorted into a silly pose or an absolutely ridiculous creature with an intentionally nonsensical facial expression has suddenly appeared, amid that completely “normal” scene, with all its “normal” details _redrawn_.  It’s why the “evil oni” episode in Ranma ½ had a ridiculous face, despite its supposedly ominous background.  In fact, anywhere Takahashi can fit a gag face, especially if it contradicts the surrounding scene’s/story’s serious tone, she will do it.  She has even said in interviews that if scenes are too serious, she will try to put in a gag in the corner.  I remember reading Maison Ikkoku during a depressive episode (for both me and Godai) and suddenly Yotsuya had poked his head through a hole in the wall, into the scene, shining a flashlight onto his own face, like a kid telling a ghost story, all while he made funny faces and Takahashi’s typical gag with the sign language “I love you” gesture.  The woman cannot let things stay serious (except for Mermaid Saga, parts of Inuyasha, and some short stories), and I love her for it!  ^o^  But the way she suddenly injects ridiculousness into scenes and character designs, suggest, at least to me, an intended fast paced delivery with the jokes.  That sudden shock when you notice Yotsuya making faces in the corner of a depressing scene. That sudden shock, when Ranma is hiding from his mother, and is clinging to the ceiling or futons like Spiderman, and Akane is just supposed to act natural so Ranma’s mom won’t notice where he’s hiding.  To me, this suggests the punchline is supposed to come at you like a sudden punch, unlike awkwardness that hangs in the air.  So when the anime tries to make the joke linger, I just don’t enjoy it as much as when my brain can dictate the faster pacing I want (and believe better fits) while reading the Ranma ½ manga.  

Also, the manga is better because those manga filler episodes were not as well written as the manga.  Rumiko Takahashi is a master of short stories.  And that shows when you run into the less-effective filler anime episodes–even when you don’t know they’re filler episodes!  I remember watching the Ranma ½ anime before reading the manga, before there was even internet lists of which were the filler episodes, and coincidentally, all the filler episodes did not make me laugh out loud, whereas every episode up until that point, had made me uncontrollably laugh.  I feel like the anime thought that because Ranma ½ was an episodic, very silly series, they could just insert anything and it would fit.  But clearly, only  the manga-based episodes—and even individual scenes!—had the nuance of Takahashi’s writing and pacing, to make even an episodic, ridiculous series work.  

  Also, I love how this video essay just lavishes the love on Rumiko Takahashi.  ^o^  

Another thing this video essay pointed out that I appreciate about Ranma ½ is how indifferent Ranma is to all the advances of his suitors or even accidental fanservice.  All the consequential “harem genre” series that tried to emulate Ranma ½ always seemed to include male protagonists who were surrogates for the audiences’ intended horny reactions.  But Ranma was neither turned on, enticed, nor tantalized by even accidental fanservice falling into his lap.  (As Mother’s Basement has noted, harem genre protagonist have a penchant for accidentally falling and grabbing a girls’ boobs, or their face falling into her boobs, or accidentally put into a position to forcibly see up her skirt, etc.)  If anything, he’s more embarassed that he accidentally walked in on girls in undress, rather than enjoying the view OR reacting so long, that the scene drags on, fixating on the accidental nudity/groping/fanserivce.  And I was about to postulate that maybe because most harem genre and fanservice series are usually made by straight men for an audience with a Male Gaze.  But Takahashi wrote Maison Ikkoku’s Godai, right before she created Ranma ½, and he very much enjoyed the view, took peeks, and fixated on any accidental fanservice.  So it’s actually Ranma himself who had reactions and a perspective that were very agreeable to this asexual.  

I hadn’t noticed before this video essay said it, but Happosai really is condemned much more for being the “pervy old man” archetype, whereas other series are very permissive towards that same archetype, even when they’re being sexual predators.  I’d like to attribute this to Takahashi bringing a woman’s perspective, but Sailormoon was also written by a woman and (if I remember correctly) Rei’s grandpa’s pervy ways were reprimanded in only 1 episode then permitted as a running gag in the rest of the series (thankfully, not often).  Then again, lots of the Shoujo genre also advocated for many toxic traditional ideas about gender (like girls picking romantic partners who don’t respect them, and girls being fully devoted/invested in such guys, because they “once” meet the bare minimum for human decency by being nice to them once).  So maybe it was uniquely Takahashi’s prerogative to not let the “pervy old man” archetype slide as supposedly “endearing” silliness.

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Andy on Asian Animation or SYAC: The Master Review 2

Let’s talk a bit about anime and Dobson’s work relation with it.

I think we can all agree, that starting from the late 90s and early 2000s on, anime and manga became extremely popular in the western world. Sure, Japanese animation was nothing completely new to us (Speed Racer, Nadia-Secret of Blue Water, Samurai Pizza Cats, Sailor Moon, Kimba and Akira e.g. come to my mind as properties already known in the west before 1995) but it really was around this time that thanks to “mainstream” stuff like Dragon Ball and Pokemon people became aware of how different Japanese animation was from western. Eventually resulting in the really good shit (like Cowboy Bebop, Black Lagoon, Kenshin and Heat Guy J) coming over and enriching nerd culture for more than just a few people who knew of it as an obscurity at that point. Now, if you know anything about Dobson, you likely know that his relationship with anime is rather… complicated to say the least. Or, to let him explain it with his own words…

Dobson essentially likes silly and wacky 90s anime. But later on he hated anime in general, because it got too popular and a bad experience with an anime club in college soured his enjoyment of it. Furthermore, he put the blame on his lackluster art style and storytelling capabilities as seen in the likes of Formera, Patty and Alex ze Pirate, on anime in general, while also claiming that Disney pulling the plug on 2D animation is the result of the “anime inspired” Treasure Planet, meaning anime in a sense deprived him of his chance at working at his dream job and “ruining” western animation.

Which to me has always been ignorant as fuck. For starters, I can understand not liking certain stories or genres, either for objective or subjective reasons. But to hate on an entire nation’s form of entertainment (not just individual shows or genres), depriving yourself of the chance of potentially watching a lot of good stuff while also being rather insulting to these other works and people enjoying them? Especially when the stuff you can supposedly “stomach” has been rather simplistic compared to other things?

 Second, blaming Japan for “poisoning” your art style? What, did the ghost of Osamu Tezuka possess you and FORCE you to put sweatdrops on your characters forehead while also going for the rather simplistic character style of Rumiko Takahashi, as well as emulating the slapstick of the likes as Slayers and Ranma ½?

 Next, if he had emulated them successfully, I say he would have actually managed to tell decent enough stories worth to read online. Not create Uncle Peggy aka “Discount Happosai” or the bland proto-Isekai known as Formera.

I mean, let’s give some context here: There have been people who successfully managed to emulate certain anime and manga aesthetics into western animation and make it work. Otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten the likes of Avatar-The last Airbender, Samurai Jack, the Animatrix, Thundercats 2011, Super Robot Monkey Hyperforce Go, Kim Possible, W.I.T.C.H, Megas XLR and Wakfu. You know, shows that are actually awesome as hell.

Heck, Dobson’s favorite animated show of the last decade, Steven Universe, is heavily inspired by anime aesthetics to the point of being embarrassing.

 But Dobson… well, he emulated anime aesthetics in his work the same way as these crimes against animation did.

Combined with his general shortcomings as a storyteller it is no wonder his initial comics did not do well.

 Lastly, and sorry for digressing here a bit, but if the Wikipedia entry on Treasure Planet is something to go by, there was no real inspiration by anime involved in making this movie.

Supposedly the idea of making an animated Treasure Planet in outer space movie was already pitched by Ron Clements WAY BACK in 1985 but only came to be after Michael Eisner greenlighted stuff in the late 90s. Design wise the movie was supposed to look 70% traditional and 30% sci-fi inspired and people took inspiration for the art style by illustrators associated with the Brandywine School of Illustration. A western style of illustration established in the 19th century, that had a big impact on the illustration styles for many 19th and early 20th century adventure novels and short stories.

What, is anime supposed to be the only form of animation allowed to have sci fi elements or steampunk in it? Fucks sake, The Lion King and Atlantis, which came out one year earlier to Treasure Planet, were likely more inspired by anime. Don’t believe me? Watch Atlantis and then a certain anime by Studio Gainax called “Nadia-Secret of Blue Water”. Or read up on the controversy surrounding the two.

The truth is, it is not entirely clear what caused Disney to shut down 2D feature film animation in the early 2000s. In fact, if anything, most people put the blame on Michael Eisner and a certain change in the publics taste in movies in general, combined with Disney trying to turn almost every movie they had into a franchise via cheap follow up movies on video and DVD.

And even if Disney did not shut down, are we really supposed to believe that a certain guy with fedora would have made it big at Disney to the point Alex ze Pirate would have been made into a feature film?

But Dobson could never quite understand this and instead of “reinventing” himself properly, he would rant about anime and its fans in one form or another…

 And on the peak of his hissy fit create this little art piece he baptized Anime Sux. Alternatively “West vs East”. Or as I like to call it, slap a jap.

Now, the pic was done in 2008 and Dobson claimed sometimes in the last decade, that he no longer holds his old opinions. Unfortunately, by that point he would also more or less use the chance to vent in his webcomic about anime (or rather its fans), which brings us finally back to SYAC.

 While Dobson never outright thematized in more detail WHY he hates anime and manga in SYAC (likely cause if his comic reasoning was even slightly like his reasoning in his blogs, people would have torn him apart like a bag of paper) he did use the format to punch down on anime fans and their preferences.

 For example, for someone who has a 4chan story going around of having been rather arrogant towards others in college for not liking Ranma ½, Dobson has THIS little college related comic to show off, where he portrays an aspiring manga artist as a delusional jackass.

Then in this strip titled manga, his manga fan is essentially portrayed as a young woman dressing up like a very stereotypical high school anime girl, who is in the wrong for even just DARING to draw her comics in the direction manga are read.

On one hand, I get Dobson’s point. She could be at risk of alienating a market of readers as she is obviously drawing for a western audience. Then again, if she doesn’t draw a traditional western comic but a manga, why shouldn’t she? I mean, as long as she enjoys it, which I assume she does as she seems genuinely just happy when stating that she likes manga, why not let her? Plus, this comic was drawn in the late 2000s. I think by then most people kinda knew how to read from right to left, so Dobson’s claim she would alienate or confuse people is kinda redundant. If anything I find a) Dobson getting angry at her just very petty (just let her have fun) and b) portraying a western manga fan as someone who would be confused by the sheer idea of reading stuff from right to left is also in itself just really dumb and insulting. What is Dobson trying to imply? That anime fans are so stuck in the way they consume certain media, they can’t act according to “western standards” again?

Then there is this strip where yet another female anime fan is essentially portrayed as the embodiment of how “ignorant�� manga fans are of the idea of different art styles...

Which becomes rather laughable once Dobson describes his style as a mixture of European, American and  Japanese. Why? Because he is the one oversimplifying things, rather than the anime fan.

You see while anime and manga of all sorts do share certain aesthetics (like the black and white art style, emphasize on the eyes of characters, the way hair is drawn, recurring tropes within certain genres and so on) style wise (both in art and storytelling) there can be severe differences, depending on the artist alone. Akira Toriyama’s style differentiates significantly from the likes of Eichiro Oda, Rumiko Takahashi, Kentaro Miura, Tezuka, Kaori Yuki and so forth.

The same also goes for many western artists. Herge had a significantly different style from Uderzo and Goscinny. Don Rosa has a different style in which he drew Scrooge McDuck than Carl Barks did. Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee draw mainstream superheroes differently compared to how Jack Kirby, George Perez and others did. Heck, Ethan Van Sciver and Jim Lee were closely associated with Green Lantern in the 2000s and look how they differentiate.

 Which btw is the kind of skill level Dobson would have needed to have, to make it in the mainstream industry

So when Dobson says “I draw in a combination of American, Western and Japanese” all I can think is the following: THAT DOESN’T NARROW IT DOWN! WHAT THE HECK HAVE YOU LEARNT IN COLLEGE ABOUT COMICS? WHICH ARTISTS, WORKS AND STORYTELLERS DO YOU TRY TO EITHER EMULATE OR HAVE BEEN INSPIRED BY?

Then there is this little thing…

Where do I even begin? How about the fact that Dobson’s hand in the last panel looks like he has lost a thumb? The fact that the little boy, anime fan or not, is aware of Sae Sawanoguchi, a character from a short lived OVA and anime series from the 90s, which considering his age, I kinda doubt he would be aware off. Unlike Dobson, who got into anime in the 90s and admits in fact within the posts I loaded up earlier, that he had watched the anime in particular, known in the west as Magic User Club.

Then there is the implication by Dobson, that anime is so “corruptive” as a medium, little kids don’t even know the most basic characters in western animation because of it. I expect in a next panel, that all of sudden some 50s PSA guy comes along and lectures me that if I want this kind of thing not to happen at MY convention, I need to teach little kids more about the GOOD western animation, instead of the BAD eastern one. Then there is this rather unflattering portrayal of a shonen ai/shojou ai fangirl…

 Which makes me laugh cause honestly, even some of the worst shonen ai and shojou ai can do better in portraying a “realistic” gay relationship than Patty if you ask me.

Also, as much as I think fangirls can be extremely thirsty (I have read my fair share of extremely stupid yaoi and yuri fanfics) I think that in hindsight Dobson is really not anyone to complain about shipping obsession and sex when he himself has KorraSami, the Ladybug fandom and a certain rat pirate under his floppy belt.

As you can imagine, Dobson would get heat for those comics, considering how he himself has been greatly inspired by anime and manga for his major comics. And while I don’t have any explicit deviantart posts of him reacting to criticism in that regard, I do have this comic which addresses it directly.

 And yeah, if I were schoolgirl number 4, I would just sigh and walk away after telling Dobson that his mistakes and shortcomings are not related to having consumed anime, but rather by what sort of anime (and other stories) he had consumed and the amount of effort he had put in creating his stories instead of emulating just something more popular. Plus, if you really want people to draw more from life, how about drawing more from life yourself down the line? And no, tracing Star Wars movie frames does not count.

Finally, Dobson, considering how very little most people think of your work, I say mission accomplished: People have learnt from your mistakes and know not to be a Dobson.

And at last, there is this comic, which kinda wraps up Dobson’s “vendetta” with anime and manga fans within the pages of SYAC.

By trying to mock anime fans and make them look just as shallow as he is. I at least suppose. Honestly, the message of this comic is rather muddled. On one hand, I would say the strawman accusing Dobson hates anime just because it is popular is very simplified. After all, Dobson has made his reasons for not liking anime clear in a few more details. It’s just that the details in and on themselves in real life are still rather shallow and boil down to a lot of personal bias rather than an objective criticism of actual flaws. Which I think is worth pointing out.

But frankly, what is Dobson trying to say or point out here? That the strawman is not so different or even dumber than him, because he hates Justin Bieber for “shallow” and superficial reasons too?

Okay, this doesn’t quite work as well as Dobson wants. First, the argument Dobson’s strawman makes is in huge parts based on some verified statements Dobson made for not liking anime. Second, he just says a name and that triggers the guy to express his hatred for Bieber. We don’t know why the guy hates Bieber and you could make in fact the case, that he hates him not because he is popular, but because he has a genuine issue with the artist, his work or his behavior as a human being. Third, if you want to make yourself look like the better person Dobson, try to argue with the guy and make solid arguments why you don’t like anime. Instead you just deflect the criticism by changing the subject and then try to make yourself look like the “smarter” person in the room by mocking your critic in the most condescending manner.

Which as I think about it, sounds like your modus operandi on twitter and tumblr.

Weirdly enough, that more or less marks the “end” of Dobson tackling anime fans and the beef he has with them within the pages of SYAC. Despite how much Dobson’s negative reputation especially in early years was build around him hating on anime and belittling its fans, he didn’t really do more afterwards in the Dobson focused pages of SYAC. And mind you, those strips were also separated by other strips in-between, focused on Dobson just being at conventions.

Unfortunately for him, the strips didn’t really help in any way to diminish that negative reputation and instead just confirmed for many, that Dobson can’t handle criticism about his flawed opinion on anime. If anything, it just made people think even less of Dobson, as the strips just painted him as someone who would rather portray his critics as strawman he can be “rightfully” annoyed at, instead of fellow humans with slightly different tastes in entertainment, who are still worth listening to.

So, now that we have the anime fan related “annoyances” out of the way, what other sort of silly problems in making webcomics would Dobson cover in his strips and are “relatable” to everyone?

Lets see some of these examples in the next part.

[ranma-rewatch]

Episode 12: A Woman's Love is War! The Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

AAAAAhhhhh! After 10,000 years, I’m free! Time to watch more Ranma 1/2! We’re getting ready for the middle part of what I guess you could call the Kodachi introduction arc, and like I intimated last time, she’s not exactly my favorite character. That said, I am interested to see how this can play out over the course of two episodes, so next paragraph I’ll have watched the episode.

Uh, so, I don’t think an episode has surprised me by being this much better than I was expecting so far in this rewatch. Like I said before, low expectations, but I really enjoyed this one. The episode starts with Akane and Ranma heading to school on the day before the marital arts match, only for Kodachi to show up and attack Akane.

This has nothing to do with the match, though. She literally just came by to see Ranma, who she has fallen completely in love with, but decided to attack Akane on-sight because why not. After Akane literally throws her at Ranma, he is suddenly confronted by our old friend Tatewaki Kuno, who is surprised to hear of Kodachi’s affection for this rapscallion. After a few seconds of thought, he makes it clear Ranma has his permission to date her, but when Ranma snaps about now being asked about this, Kodachi gets sad, feeling like maybe Ranma hates her.

Trying to avoid her wrath, Ranma runs and hides behind Akane, pointing out that he is her fiance, which would put a hamper on dating. When Akane confirms this, new stakes are given to their upcoming fight: if Kodachi wins, she gets Ranma. Kuno is totally down with that, since with Ranma out of the way, he sees himself easily winning Akane’s (and Ranma’s) affection.

It’s as Kodachi runs off, laughing, that Kuno finally reveals why he jumped into this conversation in the first place: Kodachi is his little sister. He’s aware that she has quite a few terrible qualities, and so warns Akane that she is likely to cheat quite a bit before and during their fight. As he walks away, Ranma and Akane reel from this family revelation, and Ranma notes that he can actually see the resemblance now.

From there, we cut to Akane practicing that night in the dojo with Ranma. She’s clearly gotten a lot better, though makes it clear the new stakes have nothing to do with why she wants to win so badly. Just as Akane notes that she hasn’t had Ryoga’s assistance in training for the last few days, or seen P-chan, the piglet runs into the room, carrying evidence that he’d been in Hiroshima and Kyoto. (Fun fact: my best friend went to Hiroshima while she was studying abroad there!)

There’s some banter over Ryoga’s reappearance, but then Akane trips on a tool, injuring her ankle in the process. It’s bad enough that Kasumi makes clear there’s no way she can play in the match, which means they need a substitute to avoid giving up. They consider that they’d need to find someone with great marital arts skills, who is really acrobatic, and looks like a girl. All eyes go to Ranma just as Ryoga enters the room, having once again used Soun Tendo’s hot bath to change back to human, and throws cold water on Ranma.

He offers to train Ranma through the night, though it’s clear quickly that Ranma’s general skills do transfer pretty well. The only big hurdle is that in Rhythmic Gymnastics Martial Arts, the fighters aren’t allowed to deal direct blows, only use their themed weapons to fight. Akane observes at first, but they both tell her to go and get some sleep, which she ends up agreeing to. Once she’s gone, Ryoga gets serious in fighting, and reveals why he’s really doing this: he wants Ranma to lose. If he does, Ranma has to date Kodachi, which leaves Akane open to date him. He’s not trying to spar with Ranma, he’s trying to injure him bad enough that he can’t fight.

Akane wakes up the next morning and quickly hears the fight is still going on, heading into the dojo to find they’re going at it, though they’re both clearly exhausted. Oh, and the dojo is wrecked. Ranma is delirious from lack of sleep, and almost falls for a thumb tack in the hand trap from Kodachi when they go to the match at her school. Meanwhile, Ryoga is amazed to find that he’s managed to get from Akane’s house to the school without getting lost, and chalks the miracle up to the power of love. There’s another trick from Kodachi in the dressing room, and Ryoga is hit by random cold water while trying to get to the gymnasium, leading to Kodachi kidnapping him for some scheme.

Soon, it’s time for the match to begin, and Kuno is watching in the stands, ready to root for his sister for what he admits is the first time ever. Kodachi descends from the ceiling in a wedding dress while having rockets fired at her new opponent, all very on-brand for her. Ranma is asked what his name is, and he just gives them his real name, to Akane’s confusion. The Kuno’s both just take this as Ranma somehow having the exact same name as, well, Ranma, and some of their classmates in the crowd notice that they do look alike, pondering on how they’re connected.

The fight goes to start, but Kodachi begins by dazing Ranma with a twirly ribbon and an onslaught of black roses, then uses that opening to attach a chain to Ranma’s wrist. On the other end of that chain is P-chan, which Kodachi thinks will ensure she ends the match. But we don’t get to see that yet, because that’s for next episode!

So, a lot of thoughts, actually. First things first, I feel like this is the first episode of the series so far that’s really gone whole-hog into what a lot of people think of as the series’ main premise. For this whole set-up, Kodachi loves uncursed Ranma but hates Akane and cursed Ranma, Kuno loves cursed Ranma and Akane but hates uncursed Ranma, and Ryoga loves Akane and hates Ranma whether he’s cursed or not. This creates a network of alliances that all work against Ranma and Akane’s wishes. He doesn’t want to date Kodachi and Akane wants to get a victory for her school after Kodachi unfairly beat up the actual gymnastics team.

It all feels very farcical, in a good way. Throughout this rewatch, there have been times when the humor doesn’t really land for me, usually because it just gets too silly for me, if that makes any sense. But this worked perfectly, it was all very character driven while also being deeply ridiculous. Things like Kuno having the sense of mind to see that his sister is a weird one while not being cognizant of his own strangeness kind of brought it to earth in a way, and it was all just a good time.

I also quite enjoyed a lot of the animation, the changes to character designs, and the general dynamics on display. There was something weirdly smooth to how Ryoga entered Akane’s room and put his arm around Ranma’s shoulder that just felt cool to watch. The facial expressions in that scene, and throughout, were also in top form. The way he goes from clearly coming in with an ulterior motive, to revealing what he’s really up to, it all felt a little more devious than we get from Ryoga, but in a good way.

I’m not usually a big fan of leotards, but, uh, Ranma and Akane can both really rock them. (I’d also love to see uncursed Ranma in one, I’m sure his butt would look just as good.) Akane showed up to the match dressed like a ringside coach, and it just radiates powerful butch lesbian energy. The referee to the match is also dressed in a pretty masculine way, and similarly gives off wonderful vibes. Just a really aesthetically pleasing episode for me.

The pacing was also really tight. A lot of stuff got packed into the episode’s runtime, and I’d love to compare it to this section of the manga to see if that’s because it’s a particularly dense storyline or because they made the decision to just stuff the episode with as much manga as they could. We’ll get to my rating after the Character Spotlight, but this is just a treat of an episode, and one I have to say again that I wasn’t anticipating in the slightest. Major kudos to everyone who worked on this episode.

Okay, so, now let’s do a Spotlight on Kodachi. The big reason I held off on doing one last week is that her last name hadn’t been revealed, and her Kuno-ness is kind of a big part of who she is, I didn’t want to wait for the next time I decided to give her a Spotlight to cover that part of her.

Alright, so, as usual, let’s start with voice actors. In English, she actually had three different VA’s over the course of the series run. I’ve actually decided that, going forward, with cases like these I’m just going to focus on who the current voice actors are, and talk about the new ones when they appear. Her first actress in my native tongue is Teryl Rothery, who is actually more well known for her live-action work. She appears to play a main character in Stargate SG-1, which I have never seen, and has filled the role of Jean Loring in Arrow. (Which I have seen, but never noticed that Ray Palmer’s ex-wife was in the show in the seasons I saw of it.) In Japanese, she’s portrayed by Saeko Shimazu, who has actually played a role in every Rumiko Takahasi anime adaptation from that era, so that’s neat.

They definitely play the character a little differently. Shimazu is genuinely fantastic at playing Kodachi as the well known anime archetype of the Ojou. The way she does Kodachi’s laugh might be the best Ojou laugh I’ve ever heard, and she’s generally good playing the character oddly seriously. Like, if you didn’t know Kodachi was a dangerously violent person, her voice acting would just make you think she’s a soft spoken, very feminine girl. It fits her whole aesthetic really well, honestly. Rothery went in a very different direction. I feel like it’s hard to think of Kodachi as anything other than a villain in her voice, she’s more clearly malevolent, like a Sailor Moon villainess. Her version of the laugh is a lot more unhinged sounding, for lack of a more appropriate word.

That kind of leads into one thing I was kind of surprised to notice. It feels as though the Dub and Sub versions of this character differ quite a bit. In the English Dub, they frequently use words like ‘crazy’, ‘unstable’, and ‘mad’ to describe Kodachi, and in a way it kind of dominates her characterization. I’ll talk more about that in a minute, but I’ll say for now I had to sigh at those bits. But imagine my surprise to see the Sub instead talk about her being ill-mannered, stubborn, tenacious. As far as I can recall, they didn’t use any mental health-related words, instead just focusing on the idea that she will do anything to get what she wants.

This creates two fairly radically different versions of the character, at least for me. And I actually greatly prefer what I’m finding in the Sub. Kodachi there is played much more as a dark mirror to her brother. Ranma might say they’re the same, but they clearly aren’t. Kuno is a jerk, and doesn’t seem to take the objects of his affection’s input. But he also, at the very least, sees himself as honorable, a man of culture, and doesn’t seem like the type to cheat in a competition.

Kodachi has no such scruples. She is utterly ruthless, while also sadistically delighting in causing pain to other people. She is, in a way, defined by the fact that she is constantly trying to cheat, to get any victory she can, even while acting as though there’s nothing wrong with what she does, that’s she’s just a beautiful girl doing what she has to. The way they each fall in love with a different form of Ranma, while hating the other, is also a nice touch.

That was all a lot of nice stuff I said, but sadly it’s alls I gots for ya. Going back to the whole ‘crazy’ thing, that’s definitely the thing that, at least growing up, dominates her character. As far as I can recall, the fandom generally thinks of her as the ‘craziest’ of all the main cast, and that’s...not very good? I feel like, at least among some sectors of culture, we’re trying to be more aware of other people and trying to take in feedback, and ableism feels like one of the last big areas where a lot of people, even those who are otherwise far left, struggle to get past their prejudices. I’m including myself in there, I screw up all the time. But yeah, I think we need to kind of think a lot more about the ‘crazy’ tropes in media, especially the ones that associate with violence and evil characters. So far at least, I don’t really have a lot to dig into with Kodachi especially, but it’s something I’ll have in mind going forward.

The other area I feel like I have to rain on this Spotlight a little is just what Kodachi brings to the dynamic of the show. Which is mostly...not a lot. Of all the main characters who are a part of the primary love dodecahedron, she is the one who feels like could generally just not exist without impacting anything. She basically just does what Kuno does, but in the opposite direction. Ranma is going to end up with a lot of suitors, and someone else generally fills the role of ‘violent and amoral’ much better than Kodachi, plus she’ll be appearing pretty soon from where we are now. At least as of now, Kodachi is a character I find doesn’t hurt the show at all, but also doesn’t particularly make it better.

If it wasn’t clear from all the gushing before, I really liked this episode. But how much? Where does it fall among the ranks of all the episodes I’ve seen thus far? After some careful consideration, I think I’m actually going to put this at the number two spot. It really was that good, I have very little bad to say. The only reason it didn’t take the top spot is that I just love episode 7 too much. That makes the current standings:

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’

Episode 12: A Woman's Love is War! The Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 9: True Confessions! A Girl's Hair is Her Life!

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 8: School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga

Episode 11: Ranma Meets Love Head-On! Enter the Delinquent Juvenile Gymnast!

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Episode 10: P-P-P-Chan! He's Good For Nothin'

This has been a really fun one! Next time, we’ll be covering lucky episode number 13, “A Tear in a Girl-Delinquent's Eye? The End of the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!”, which will also be the ending to this little arc. I’m excited to join you then, and see if that episode fulfilled the promise in this episode’s set-up! See you all then!

[mechanicalinertia]

STMPD Recommends Bubblegum Crisis Fanfiction: John Walter Biles' The Tesla Agenda

Does this count?

I'm not sure. Old-timey BGC crossovers with that most illustrious of fanfic-fodder anime, Ranma 1/2 (which is actually Rumiko Takahashi's best-selling manga, even outperforming Inuyasha worldwide! I feel so vindicated!) always struggle to be BGC fics. The tropes of Ranma fanfic, the goofiness or edginess that such stuff inevitably swings toward with nothing in between, swallows anything Crisis-like in an instant. So me digging back through the 'junsenkyo' wiki, a mighty resource to collect, however imperfectly, Ranma fanfics, and rediscovering this? Well, hey. I include it only because it's fucking funny. Really, really funny.

It's just this brilliant meta kind of thing, you know? Bubblegum Crisis as told by way of round-robin between the Ranma cast, who immediately follow to trying to hijack each other's plot points in ways that are criminally obvious for their character type. So Ukyo will take the Sabers out to an okonomiyaki restaurant with a hot waiter who looks a lot like Ranma; then Shampoo will have all the characters speak in her iconic pidgin while still writing regular prose; then Kuno will have the girls fawn over Mackie; then Akane will have Sylia punt Mackie into the sky and insist they go back and try some real home cooking; then Ranma will have Sylia be the worst cook ever and force the plot to jump over to how cool Leon is; then Kasumi straightens the Sabers out and has Sylia meditate while also planning how to clean up after Priss and her boyfriend, and so on and so forth.

They go on for three rounds, with things getting progressively stupider. Round three is literally each character trying to end the story their way, with their avatar character winning the metaphorical game and twisting Crisis's characters to their designs even further. It gets comedically dark near the end, since Kodachi wants Sylia to fawn over a Ranma-esque Largo who takes over the world and then Ryoga has Leon blow up the world with Shi Shi Hokodan in a fit of depression.

If you like Ranma fanfic, and you want a fic that parodies how poorly all the 'Nerima Wrecking Crew' gets along by way of the catastrophic wankery that round-robin / RP fanfics generate even when the personalities involved are relatively sane compared to Ranma and company? If you like this very specific niche? There's nothing better.

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Alex ze Pirate Mini Review 5: Why I love One Piece and my final verdict

(Warning. Post contains initial geek out about One Piece that is meant to correlate to my opinion on Alex in general)

When I started this series of posts, one thing I asked myself was, how could I sum up my problems with the Sam story while also tackling some general issues with AzP without redundantly repeating major points of my previous posts.

… So I decided instead of giving a straight answer, I would first tell you how I came to fall in love with One Piece.

Around 14+ years ago, I began reading manga, with works such as Ranma 1/2, Pokemon and Dragon Ball being my starting point. You know, the average stuff everyone had read at some point. One Piece, already back then consisting of over 25+ volumes,  was only something a friend started to lend me and I read the first seven volumes, not really quite getting why it was that popular. I did not hate what I read, but there was nothing outright standing out to me the way the story was told that got to me. And then I hit the Arlong arc with volume 8 and onwards. While it was mostly the adventure of Luffy with his crew against Crocodile and his Baroque Corporation that totally sold me on the manga later on, the Arlong arc was what really got my attention. Seeing the character of Nami betray her friends, pieces of worldbuilding that would years later play a role and so much more, made me curious where things were going. Particularly, why Nami would betray Luffy. And when I reached chapter 77 to 81, where I got to read Nami’s backstory, how Arlong killed her adoptive mother in front of her eyes when she was just a little kid and Luffy declaring he was going to help her and her village, I was hooked. This was the first time in my life as a manga reader, I was not just entertained, I was emotionally invested. Because not only was Nami’s backstory genuinely saddening to me, but seeing Luffy determined to help her and the ensuing battles was exciting. Exciting because it truly showed to me, how awesome of a character this goofball with stretching powers really is. Not because he was physically strong, but because he was willing to do all of that for someone just “because” he considers that person a friend. Seeing Luffy not just beat up Arlong, but destroying everything this bastard had build on the suffering of the village and in doing so setting Nami free of the past that haunted her, because he cared for her as a person not in a romantic but platonic manner, was satisfying on so many levels.

 And ever since then Eiichiro Oda proved to me time and time again, even if he hits a bump in the road (seriously, fuck most of the Fishmen Island arc) he knows how to write a world that doesn’t just manage to be cartoonishly entertaining, but also filled with heartfelt moments, where true heroism is not defined just by physical strength, but the willingness of the main characters to help and care for each other and the people they meet across the journey. There are many stories out there where the power of friendship as a virtue, and the virtues it is build on are a theme. But in the world of shonen manga, One Piece for me is still the top.

 And Andrew Dobson’s Alex ze Pirate is the complete antithesis to everything Oda EVER created in One Piece.

 While One Piece has one of the most complex worlds I have ever seen in fiction, with Oda often times setting building stones for future story arcs years in advance (seriously, the thing with Brook and Laboon alone is worth mentioning) , Dobson can’t even bother to properly tell us in what part of the ocean Alex has her adventure or why there is a beaver dog thing walking around a bunch of humans.

 While One Piece has some gorgeous artwork and unique designs with an insane level of cartoonish detail, Dobson has some very generic designs and draws like a 15 year old girl that read Spirou and manga too much and now starts doing scribble artwork.

 While Oda draws chapters for over 20 years now, Dobson could not even bother to finish up the adventure of the crew getting properly together back in 2004, as only one volume was released.

 While One piece tells a story that defines the shonen genre for over a decade, Dobson tells stupid newspaper strip jokes that are not even interconnected much.

 While Oda’s Strawhats are the embodiment of the word nakama, Dobson’s characters only bring the following old saying to mind:

 With friends like this, who needs enemies?

 Bottom line, Alex ze Pirate is absolute garbage as a work of entertainment, particularly in the world of kids entertainment. It was so already long before Dobson wrote the three part story I reviewed in detail, but this story in my opinion was for anyone with a bit of brains the last nail in the coffin. Cause overall, this was likely Dobson’s last chance in his and the eyes of the readers.

 The last chance, because he was going to put all his talent as a writer and artist into this one story to prove his critics wrong; That he could tell an engaging and emotionally fulfilling story in a multi part story, longer than his 15 pagers. But like with everything else I have seen so far, he failed.

 He failed artistically, because damn does this not look even remotely professional compared to other professionally published work or even other silly webcomics like Cludscratcher or Housepets (which I highly recommend you to read).

 He failed as a storywriter, because instead of emotionally engaging and well paced, this shit is rushed, works more on “tell, don’t show” than anything else and really just magnifies the worst aspects of his characters and Dobson’s mean spirited humor in general. Cause this is not a tale where we feel like Sam genuinely has found a family and friends in Alex and her crew. It is the tale of Sam just accepting that he has nothing better going on in his life.

 He failed, because instead of actually putting care, effort and love for his characters and work into this, he likely just wanted to get it out and hope that just because he “put effort” into this more than usual, he would already get praise by default.

 And once this thing was out, all that happened was the following: Even more people realized what kind of hack he is, that this project was not going to be salvaged even if actual stories instead of strip based jokes are told and he misinterpreted the disinterest as reason to just completely give up, instead of trying harder.

 And as a result, even if Dobson still went on to do shitty redesigns and a few more pages for it, Alex ze Pirate soon after ended. Put into everlasting hiatus, where it joins such work as Pilote Candidate or Frank Millers All Star Batman and Robin.

 Dobson, if you ever read this, let me just say it how it is: You failing to make even the most basic story about people appreciating their friends, particularly when within the last decade there has been an entire fandom of manchildren out there that was build on a show with “Friendship is Magic” in the title, just shows how bad of a storyteller and creator you are. You shouldn’t have gone to college in order to become an animator, you should have joined fanfiction.net in order to get some basic understanding on how to even write. Cause your writing is so bad, it makes fanfiction look genuinely complex and thoughtful. Well that and you should perhaps go out and find genuinely friends and not just online supporters that mistake you for some persecuted innocent artist, when in reality you are just a toxic idiot who attempts to manipulate people so he can profit of them and their fleeting interest in his substandard comics based on the lowest common denominator cartoons.

 I wrap this review up. We will revisit Alex one day again, but for now, I just want to focus on something more positive. So within the next weeks, if I post something, I will try to make it focused on something NOT Dobson related. You know, stuff to genuinely enjoy. Till then, I just want to say thank you. Thank you @hypocricyofandrewdobson for reblogging my entries. Thank you to everyone who liked this, reblogged this or started to follow me because of it. I hope I managed to educate and entertain you all in a positive manner, without making myself come off too much like an assholish nerd with too many interests. Stay safe.

 And hey, if any of you has his own two cents on Sam, Alex or the others, even ideas how to make them genuinely better, I am always open.

 See ya.

[mysticdragon3md3]

The Meaning of Death: BoJack Horseman vs. The Good Place by Wisecrack

When they started talking about “all books have endings”, I couldn’t help but think of comic books, going on and on and on.  Before I switched to manga, I read American comic books, americomi.  So it was a shock to me, to get into one of my first favorite manga series and reach its end.  No rolling into new writers, artists, or storylines.  Just “this is the end of the series”.  And yes, it was nice to have a story so cohesive---with repeating motifs, foreshadowings, properly placed milestones of emotional progression, a perfectly unfolded theme(s)---because CLAMP had an ending in mind, even when they gave Rayearth a sequel series.  But when that first series ended, I didn’t know what to do.  Magic Knight Rayearth had taken up so much real estate in my brain’s fangirling, that I didn’t know what to do with it gone. I felt an empty spot, that was pretty big.  And years later, when Ranma 1/2 ended, there was melancholy and loss too.  ...Though, Ranma 1/2′s open-ended  “ending” to the manga felt reassuring, that Ranma and Akane were still out there, up to their antics.  But I think when that manga ended, some small part of me was still a little unsatisfied with the lack of finality.  Though compared to the vast majority of fans, it was a very small part.  I was actually very happy to feel like Ranma and Akane were still out there.  Even if their further adventures were only in our imaginations.  But yeah, it’s got nothing on americomi that has gone on for years and years and decades.  LOL

I watched Bojack but not the Good Place, so I thought I’d stop watching this video before spoilers.  But I don’t think this is even the first video essay on The Good Place, that I forgot to check out of before spoilers.  Whatever.  I used to be immune to spoilers.  My immunity has gone down, but I still feel that a series is as good as the experiences of its moments, vs just knowing what happens in the plot and the end.  I want a series/movie/story that feels good to re-watch, because the individual scenes are good experiences, in and of themselves.  So what do a few little spoilers---like plot points---matter?  lol  

And maybe that explains why I never liked the idea that death gives life meaning.  It sounds like the moment to moment experiences are negated or invalid.  If you’re suffering, it “doesn’t matter” because death will make it end and that will be meaningful in some retroactive symbolic way. If you’re enjoying a moment, then it “doesn’t matter” unless it’s eventually ripped away from you, or you or someone else eventually suffers.  Maybe it’s the suicidal depressive in me that doesn’t like the invalidation of the hells or heavens of each daily, “mundane” moment.  Once my sister and I watched a suicide scene in a movie and she didn’t understand why the character did it because he was happy in his relationship.  I just told her cryptically, “It’s an artist thing.”  Maybe I didn’t want to actually talk about the fear of good moments turning bad or wanting to seemingly stay in good moments by making life cut off right there.  Not that I agreed with the character. (Personally, I think death/suicide is for ending and resting from the never-ending suffering that is existence.)  He could have continued on, having many more good moments, he couldn’t have possibly imagined with his significant other.  My sister was right.  Death doesn’t give anything meaning.  It’s like what dream-Herb said in Bojack Horseman, “It’s just your brain trying to make sense of things.”  That’s just what human brains do.  But the comforting interpretations of people left behind doesn’t make anything better or worse for the person who had the actual experiences.  Maybe my problem with the idea  “can’t enjoy anything without it eventually ending” (or even “no light without darkness and no good without evil”), is because it probably plays into the same anxious insecurity that I have to deal with in real life.  I’d like to be able to feel secure in good things/experiences staying and not being called “invalid” unless it has an end in sight.  I’d much prefer for things to evolve.  Even if they transition so much that they’re no longer recognizable from the original, then at least each state was gradual and the necessary fit for each corresponding situation.  I’d prefer that good moments be appreciated, instead of being told they’re invalid unless they have an ending.  And I’d prefer bad moments stop, vs being told it has meaning, like the universe giving you “tough love” so you can learn to become “stronger” or whatever.  Sometimes shitty situations/feelings are just shitty.  And anyway, there’s no guarantee that everyone reacts the same enough to predict whether “tough love” will yield a “toughened up spirit” or a traumatically scarred mentality; the only certainty is that the dispenser of “tough love” is being callous, discompassionate, and often trying to make excuses to “allow” such abuse.  If there’s anything that’s given me the closest understanding of objecting to “the ends justify the means”, it’s my objection to the implication that the day-to-day daily moments don’t matter unless Death.  Like Cloud said in FF7AC, “There’s nothing that isn’t important.” 

Though I can be a little bit of a nihilist about life never having any inherent meaning, I actually just like the ideas that life can be given meaning and that there’s nothing cheap about that manufactured meaning.  (Who told that allegory about a man-made fire to sit by, being just as good as a fire that came out of no where?)  Even though I haven’t watched The Good Place, I like a lot of stories/series about immortality, my Personal Myth uses it a lot in Thought Experiments, and I do like muddling over such themes accompanying immortality.  I feel, just like a truly enjoyable movie/series/manga, the value is in the experiences of scenes and moments.  So what if you already have experienced everything for yourself and know how everything is going to end or know what patterns are going to repeat forever?  You don’t know what a moment feels like to someone else.  One of the tragic failings of language is that humans will still never be able to communicate their exact experiences to each other, no matter what the means of conveyance.  Anything short of a psychic hive mind is still inadequate communication, even that could be considered a singular being who doesn’t know how to communicate to other entities.  (Not without some trial and error, like in Eureka 7.)  It would be just the same as like individual humans to individual humans.  But maybe I just find an unusual amount of value and joy in experiencing things by proxy or from the outside.  Maybe it’s because I’m oversensitive and the bluntness of actually having first-person experiences is too intense for me.  But I enjoy watching someone else having an experience or even just imagining how they experience something, even if I myself have experienced it a zillion times.  Like when I watch an anime I already saw, in a video room with other people at a convention, or listen to reaction videos of a scene or movie I’ve already seen.  No matter how jaded I’ve become to the event, watching someone else have an experience and me trying to imagine what it must feel like for them, reminds me of how I felt when I first experienced the same thing.  But not just a recall; rather, the feelings actually re-manifest as a full emotional experience in and of themselves.  Not just a recollection of events in a plot.  Of course, a whole group of immortals jaded with their own experiences could become too dependent and addicted to the need for fresh people to have experiences for them to re-experience things freshly, by proxy...  ^.^;  There’s just something irrevocably new each time, to dealing with someone who isn’t already experienced with everything.  And all because no matter how jaded and “been there, done that” you’ve become, you still have to be kind and empathetic to other people.  Like when I was a teacher’s aid for 3 year olds, for 6 years.  I wonder if empathy is the reason why watching someone else’s experience, second-hand, by proxy, can be just as intense as a first-hand experience.  I wonder if the writers of The Good Place or all the philosophers cited would have had the notion that “once you’re jaded to your own experiences, there’s nothing else to experience”, if they were neuroatypical?  Where any of them HSPs?  And I don’t think that using other people as proxies for reinvigorating re-experiences is the only use of inexperienced people.  I think that genuinely caring for their emotions, not knowing what they’re going to do when you interact with them, having hopes that they’ll experience things well, and adjusting your interactive tactics to help guide them to good experiences, is instinctually emotional each time.  Or maybe my brain is just weird to care too much whenever someone is standing in front of me in real life.  But I really don’t think it’s just me.  As proof, there’s a lot of problems in the world caused by people ONLY caring about people in front of them in real life, so it can’t be that uncommon.  So then why get so jaded after depleting your own experiences?  Am I saying that mentorship is the “ultimate answer”?  lol  I dunno. But it would explain why people like raising children, even children not their own, when working as teachers.  In my Personal Myth, my main character is spiritually dying inside because she’s immortal and life is a never-ending hopeless trudge, that she no longer has the Strength to improve.  So she hopes instead for death, as a lazy way out.  But continually, new people she meets, and new experiences with old people she’s met before, keep pointing to the answer being to return to the Fight, the everyday battle to continuously improve.  After all, even in the jaded mindset, apparently perfection is still unattainable, because even complacency and satisfaction can spoil into stagnation.  So the answer was in the “martial arts anime” genre all along.  That must be why it always rung true enough for me to encounter it again, seeing the same tenants repeated in the artist community.  “Continual self-improvement”, “compare to your past self, not to others”, “progression is only measured by your own path, not someone else’s years of experience or natural talent”, “fear stagnation and complacency”, “be more concerned with self-improvement vs aggrandizing your ego”,  “recognize the True Strengths of Compassion vs Power”, etc.  Whether art or in anime martial arts, existence is a never-ending battle, constantly teetering on the edge of falling, then gritting your teeth to climb back up, again and again.  There’s always so much to do in existence, how can any humans get bored?  Maybe being jaded is less about having nothing new left to experience or do.  Maybe it’s more about being too tired to contract and expand to adjust to other people? Or just being too tired to overcome the fear that nothing will be different, no matter what you do or what happens, enough to stop trying?  Maybe I’m just falling into human cliches to value Evolution.  Or maybe that’s just the necessary value of anything living.  “Sometimes life is a bitch, but then you keep living,” to paraphrase what Diane said in Bojack Horseman.  Believing that Living and being truly Alive has to be about constantly evolving, both spiritually and mentally, is probably necessary for my survival as a living being.  Evolved into instinct, out of necessity.  

[ranma-rewatch]

Episode 2-School is No Place for Horsing Around

Alright, we’re going into episode two this time, “School is No Place for Horsing Around”. No mess this time with alternate titles this time around, even if the one we have sounds a little unwieldy. Once again, this feels like an episode I know ahead of time fairly well, so I’ll join you in a second after I’m done rewatching it. 

This episode starts out a little slow. It’s the next day, and we’re reintrodcued to the Tendo and Saotome families as they go about what is, for them, normal. Namely, Akane is getting back from a jog to see Ranma and his dad sparring in the yard while the rest of the Tendo’s eat breakfast.

Soon they’re on the way to school, though Ranma is walking there on top of a fence, probably because he thinks it makes himself look cooler. They talk, including about how neither wants the school to know they’re engaged, Ranma acts like a jerk, but just as Akane is ready to give him violent retribution, Genma shows up to chastise Ranma far treating his fiance badly. Ranma immediately just knocks his dad into a nearby waterway, turning him into a panda, then expertly dodges his dad’s attempts at retaliation...only to walk right into the path of some old lady throwing out water, activating his curse.

Akane realizes that Ranma probably shouldn’t show up to his first day of school in his cursed form, so takes him to the house of Dr. Tofu, the family physician for the Tendo’s. He seems like a nice guy with a weird sense of humor, but after Ranma turns back and they leave, he realized that the guy must be a martial artist, since he was able to sneak up on Ranma without him noticing

It also becomes clear that Akane really likes Dr. Tofu, which he finds funny because she keeps protesting about how much she hates boys. But that’s right about when they get to the school gates, and Ranma is stunned to see a bunch of guys from the school, most of them athletes, are running up to Akane to attack her while also proclaiming their love for her. She effortlessly beats them all up while an instrumental version of the theme song plays in the background. (Something I’ve never seen done in a second episode, I don’t think.)

But once they’re all down, the sky darkens and someone throws a rose at Akane, which she catches. From out of the shadows appears a man quoting classical literature/poetry (the source depends on the translation), holding a kendo sword, here to fight Akane. He boasts of his skill, but when Ranma draws his attention, the man gets irate that this whelp dares to show familiarity with Akane.

Ranma reveals he’s staying at her house, and immediately that sends this guy, Tatewaki Kuno, the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High, into fighting mode, but aiming his attacks at Ranma instead of Akane. Ranma seems a little flustered at first, before giving a real introduction of his own and letting the fight start. It quickly becomes clear how powerful Kuno is, able to smash a stone wall or cleave a tree in two with his wooden practice sword, but Ranma is once again great at evading attacks. Just as each is about to hit the other, the dark clouds above begin their rain, and Genma shows up to push Kuno aside and whisk Ranma away just as his curse activates again.

Once inside, Akane gives Ranma the low-down. Apparently, at the beginning of the school year, Kuno announced to everyone that if anyone wanted to date Akane, they had to beat her in a fight first. Ever since, she’s had to fight all those boys every day just to get to class. Oh, and when Ranma laughs off Kuno as a loser, Akane points out a large bruise on his neck. Kuno never hit Ranma, that was just from the attack missing, and she says if he had landed that blow, Ranma would have had a gash there instead. It also turns out that Ranma took longer with his fight than Akane usually does, so they’re late to class and have to stand outside holding water in a bucket, which is/was a normal punishment in Japan.

Meanwhile, in the classroom for the older students, it’s revealed what Kuno got from Ranma in their trade-off: in that split-second, Ranma had quickly scratched some characters onto Kuno’s forehead. His initial annoyance is from the fact that Ranma didn’t write his name correctly, but Nabiki, who is Kuno’s classmate, makes it clear that Ranma had actually just written “Incompetent.” Then, in the middle of class, she tells Kuno that Akane and Ranma are engaged, and he flips out.

This leads to him also being sent out into the hall, but he quickly runs over to the protagonists loudly asking what the meaning of their engagement is. Now the whole school knows, and another fight quickly starts between Ranma and Kuno. As Ranma runs away, he decides to jump out the window, with Kuno following. The fact they’re on the third floor doesn’t faze Ranma...but the fact they’re directly above the swimming pool is definitely a problem. That’s where the episode ends! Cliffhanger!

So, what is there to say about this episode? Well, quite a bit, I’d wager. To start with, I really adored that fight between Akane and all the guys. It’s not the smoothest animation in the world, but it really shows off how badass she is compared to these regular high-schoolers, and the instrumental theme in the background sells it really well.

This is also the introduction of Tatewaki Kuno, one of my favorite characters in the entire series. I honestly cannot think of any way his introductory scene can be improved. None at all. He is pompous, cultured, arrogant, and just a bunch of fun. The fact that it cuts to Nabiki and her friends after he calls himself the “Blue Thunder of Furinkan High”, and they start wondering where that came from, only to reveal that recently he’d instead been calling himself “Shooting Star” just adds to his character. This guy sees himself, unquestioningly, as the hero, when he is in fact an annoyance at best and a misogynist at worst.

The fight between him and Ranma is also great, especially in how it, for the first time in the series, sells the idea that, at least for the really powerful martial artists, we are definitely talking about superhuman people. They’re not quite Dragon Ball Z, but they wouldn’t stand out in the original Dragon Ball. The way the fight ends is a little disappointing, partially because I just don’t care for the track used in the background, but on the whole, aside from a bit of a dull start, I don’t have much to complain about this time around.

You have to understand that, just because I love him so much, I was very tempted to make this second character spotlight all about Tatewaki Kuno. But I will have to save him for a later date, because instead I think it would be sacrilegious to use the second spotlight on anyone who isn’t the character who, in my opinion, is the other protagonist of the series: Akane Tendo.

Unlike Ranma, the question of who voices Akane is a lot simpler. In English, she’s voiced by a Canadian actress named Myriam Sirois. She has done...almost nothing else, Akane seems to definitely be her most well-known role. Honestly, I’m a little sad to see that, because I think she does an excellent job. She plays Akane with a good mix of sweetness and spice for her Tsundere-ish personality. This early in the series she’s still kind of getting into the character, but that’s also true for a lot of the actors.

In the original Japanese, she’s played by Noriko Hidaka. She actually has a long history as a voice actress, with some of her other well known roles including Kikyo from other famous anime based on a Rumiko Takahashi Manga, Inuyasha, and Near from Death Note. Like I said last week, I have some issues really getting a handle on the Japanese voice actors right now, partially because it’s my first time hearing their performances and partially because they’re acting in a language I don’t speak. Because of that...I don’t really know what to say about her performance so far. It is neither amazing nor terrible. Somewhere in-between.

With this episode, we’ve started getting a bit of a fuller look at Akane’s character. She’s a martial artist, and a strong one, though it’s fairly clear that Ranma has a bit of a lead on her in that department. She fights mostly with an emphasis on strength, which comes in handy against the regular athletes but leaves her a little less fortunate against the speedier Ranma.

She clearly cared about how she’s seen at school, being tired of the morning fights and not wanting people to know about her engagement to the new kid at school. Tied up with that is her issue with men. It’s clear that, no matter what she says, she doesn’t hate all boys. Aside from her crush on Dr. Tofu, she doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with her loving father.

The whole ‘badass girl who hates guys’ is a bit of an older trope these days. It kind of feels like Strawman Feminist at this point, but at the very least Akane’s frustration with men is kind of understandable. We don’t actually know when it started, so it’s possible that it literally developed because she’s spend all school year fighting off all the guys in her high school, who are all trying to beat her in a fight so she’ll have to date them, like she’s a prize to be won in a contest.

Aside from all that, the only other thing I can think of to bring up is...her violence. Against Ranma. As someone who has been in the Ranma fandom since shortly after becoming net-savvy, I am well aware that Akane has a small, yet vocal, hatedom, and part of it comes from the way she treats Ranma, namely in hitting him whenever she gets angry. The fact that Ranma won’t strike back, out of fairly outdated chauvinism, doesn’t exactly make it look good either.

This is something I’ve talked about on my other blog, Wright Wednesday, and it’s a rough subject to talk about. First of all, yes, in real life anyone, regardless of gender, who hits other people for things they say is committing assault, and it’s not okay. The romantic-ish relationship between them makes it even worse, as domestic violence is rarely treated seriously if it’s a woman harming a man.

Second, this anime is not depicting the real world. It is a weird harem shounen battle comedy anime, so the rules of what flies in the real world vs what flies in real life aren’t the same. What makes me upset about Akane being able to hit Ranma so often is how it’s framed. It’s okay for her to do that, you see, because she’s just a girl. No matter how strong she is, no matter how good a martial artist she is, it’s okay for her to hit Ranma because her gender makes it comedy. If it was trying to treat it for drama, it would be a hard slap to the face, which would equally enforce traditional gender roles. It’s very sexist, and I don’t really like it.

I will say, right now, that regardless of those issues, I really like Akane. I think she and Ranma are cute together when they’re not being dysfunctional, she’s adorable, and I’d say that by the end of the series she’s a very well-developed character.

At last it’s time to rank the episodes, and now that I have rewatched two episodes, it’s a real ranking! While some might want to give the first episode points for being, well, the first episode, I am going to say right off that I think the episode I covered today is superior. The fight scenes, Kuno’s introduction, and some great comedy made it very fun to sit through two more times. That means the current rankings are, from best to worst: 

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Next time we’ll see what happened to Kuno and Ranma after they fell into the pool in Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love. See you then!

[mysticdragon3md3]

With WonFes 2017 Winter over, it’s time to post the obligatory wishlist!  ^o^

Even though there were a lot of exciting figure announcements and prototype reveals at Wonder Festival 2017 Winter today, I don't feel my wallet is in too much danger.  There were a lot of Nendoroids that looked interesting, but I likely won't buy.  And the figures I ABSOLUTELY POSITVELY HAVE TO PREORDER, were fairly few (at least compared to previous WonFes).  

Below, the squares shaded darkly are figures I likely won't buy.  They caught my eye, but seriously, I'd rather spend my money on other Nendoroids.   The squares clouded in white are figures that if I was forced into a corner, I might be able to give up.  But it'd be nice if I didn't have to.  

Good Smile is going to kill my wallet if they announce more Harvest Moons!  ;u;  If every Crypton Future Media Vocaloid gets a Harvest Moon version, I don’t know what I’m going to do.  Those costumes are just too pretty.  XwX  

I feel like I'm obligated to get Figma Utena and Nendoroids Ed & Al, but I don't feel as strongly about those fandoms anymore, enough to justify the money those figures cost.  On the other hand, I have a rule about not passing up merchandise from an old fandom, for that reason alone.  The last time I passed up a Devil Hunter Yohko artbook, just because it was no longer my all-consuming obsession, I regretted it.  And I kept hunting for it at each succeeding con.  *That* is a regret.  Which is why I bought Figma Hikaru Shidou, even though I haven't been into CLAMP's manga, let alone Magic Knight Rayearth for years.  So when I see Utena, Ed & Al, my nostalgia dictates that I preorder them, even though my current obsessions say that I shouldn't be spending on old fandoms like Utena and FMA.  

I'm not really into these paritcular swords, but I've got a completionist problem.  * I already have Kashuu Kiyomitsu, so I have to get Yamatonokami Yasusada, right?  And Yasusada has a generic hakama!  Before Touken Ranbu Nendoroids, it was so hard to find nice, generic, male wafuku that could go on any character.  Still, even now, though it's gotten easier to get hakama from Tourabu, it's hard to find male kimono or yukata.  So I snatch up any versatile male wafuku wearing Nendoroid, I can find.   * Izuminokami Kanesada isn't really a character I'm particularly attached to, since I'm more a Dategumi fan than a Shinsengumi fan, but I've always liked his character design.  It even managed to make me ignore the long hair, even though I usually don't like that character design on males.  His costume was just elaborate enough, and the color scheme, contrasting between the deep red and intense blues, just really pop.  ^_^   * So that being said, I really shouldn't get Horikawa Kunihiro.  His costume design is closer to modern Western and I'd rather throw my money at wafuku designs.  But damn it, he's got the same intense blue contrasting against dark hair, just like Izuminokami.  ~_~;  That contrasting color scheme---or rather, contrasting intensity or value scale---just work too well on me.  And after seeing Horikawa in the Touken Ranbu Hanamaru anime, I'd feel bad if I split him up from the senpai partner he idolizes.  ~__~!  Anyway, I already preordered his brother (Yamanbagiri Kunihiro), so my completionist itch should be happy about that.  ...Even though the Kunihiro brothers don't seem very close...  x_x   * As for Ookanehira!  You can't trick me into wanting your Nendoroid!  ~w~!  I told myself not to buy any more characters I didn't already know!  (Unless they were exceptionally cute!)  I don't care if your eyes and hair color remind me of one of my main character OCs!  Nor if your seiyuu is Ono Yuki!  You're too full of yourself and I should be spending my money on cuter characters!  Stay back, I say!  Keep your charms away from me!  ~W~!

The Disney Nendoroids are cute and I like those classic "2nd Renaissance" movies, along with Tim Burton, but not enough to get figures.  But if I ran into them at a con or something, really cheap, and there was nothing else I was spending at during a small con, I might go ahead and get them.  Like what happened with Nendoroid Anna.  

I didn't include Nendoroid Yuri, because I already preordered him.  It's strange that I'm certain about getting Nendoroid Victor, even though I'm not as totally obsessed with Yuri on Ice as everyone else seems to be.  But despite YOI not taking over my life, I still do like the characters.  They're sweet!  And I want that ambiance in my display cases!

Karasuno Nendoroids.  No question there.  I just want all my Karasuno starters.  Announcing Yamaguchi and Sawamura together, when there are only 2 more starters on Karasuno, makes me think they'll be announcing them in pairs.  Here's to hoping for some Asahi and Tanaka Nendoroids!  ^o^  And if they decide to make a Nendoroid Ennoshita, I'll consider him.

Japan.  Kiku Honda.  My rule about still collecting for old fandoms, as if they're still my current obsession, applies here.  Except that my Hetalia fandom doesn't feel that long ago.  Probably because I saw Hetalia the World Twinkle at AkibaFest2016.  Let's hope that if we show demand for Japan, USUK will get some Nendoroids too.  *o*!

Nendoroid More Dress-up sets are my favorite Nendoroid more.  The outfits are so nicely generic and versatile, and help put a stop to me buying Nendoroids of characters I have no attachment to, just for their wardrobe.  (I've given Masamune & Yukimura enough wardrobe options already---but I just can't stop!  It's for DateSana!  ;o; )  It’ll be great to put some period era Nendoroids, uniformed characters, and fantasy costumed characters into a modern AU.  Groomsmen for those Nendoroid More wedding sets...Haikyuu boys in formal wear...my KanColle girls as office ladies...  *U*  I could make a cubicle diorama!  O.O  Still waiting for male wafuku Nendoroid More sets, but until then, any Nendoroid More Dress-up sets are always welcome!!!  ^U^

Ice Kirby is so cute and I love blue.  But if I wasn't willing to get original Kirby, with all his cuteness, and I didn't get MetaKnight, despite his cuteness, then I should probably save my money.  I wasn't deluded for a second into buying that robot armor Kirby.  It's on my wishlist because I just like to look at it.  ^^;  I mean, what the heck is that giant, cute thing?!  ^o^

Nendoroid More face cases are cute, but if it comes down to it, those are the first things I cut out of my budget.  After all, I skipped on that Konnosuke faceplate case, and I love Touken Ranbu.  Still, that penguin and fishing bear are ADORABLE.  When I saw the penguine case's announcement last year, I wanted to get it to re-create Chiyo's costume scenes from Azumanga Daioh.  ^u^

I'm not watching Re:Zero, but Emilia is beautiful!  *.*  I have a weakness for pastel hair and her outfit, on top of that, is just so pretty.  Her character design just screams "ingenue" deredere, and that's my favorite type of waifu (alongside kuudere and sometimes dandere).  And if I remember correctly the spoiler I heard once, then she could also be one of my favorite mythological archetypes, the "universal mother goddess".  

I'm not going to buy a Racing Miku.  Let's be honest.  They always look so cool, but they're $80, instead of the usual $50-$60, because they're supposed to support Good Smile's racing team.  But damn, this mint green fairy is cute!  I thought it hurt to pass up the knight themed Racing Miku.  But this is adorable!  ;w;  And I had needed a green female Nendoroid for my rainbow figure photos.  

I was flabbergasted when I saw the Lum Nendoroid and the Rinne Nendoroid.  I thought it might be a hoax, a different figure line from Nendoroid, or maybe even from years ago, long out of print.  But it's actually just one of those Nenodroids made by a different company; Good Smile only does the distribution.  (Like Tomytec's Wixoss Nendoroids.)  So it's not even on Good Smile's WHL4U website, which catalogs all their WonFes announcements.  It might be too easy to not realize when these are even released.  But I absolutely have to support Rumiko Takahashi Nendoroids.  I'm more a Ranma 1/2 fan, than Urusei Yatsura, and I've barely read much Rin-ne.  But if we support these, then maybe Play Future will make some Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha, or Maison Ikkoku Nendoroids.  I would go nutz if Mermaid Saga Nendoroids were ever announced.  

The kimono Nendoroids for Puella Magi Madoka Magica are an absolute buy.  I never thought I wanted more than just Homura and Madoka, but if all the girls are going to get kimono Nendorids, then it's a good time to get the entire Holy Quintet.  ^-^  

Last but not least, Nendoroid More sets for Halloween and Christmas.  I really hope these are Dress-up sets and not just some accessories.  I'm a clay crafter; I can make little accessories on my own.  So these better be full-blown outfits.  Halloween is my favorite holiday and these would just be so useful for holiday figure photos.  I'm really looking forward to more info about these sets.  ^o^    

It was a really great WonFes.  And right on my birthday, it made the best present.  ^u^!  Hopefully, despite this long wishlist, I'll be able to keep things civil with my wallet.  ^^;