#but usually when sonic related animated shorts get made we know about them at least a few days in advance

[sonknuxadow]

thinking about how the marza twitter account has been posting a lot of art of the ghosts from night of the werehog lately and they said something about lah having plans for halloween and their most recent post is this

like please you cant do this to me you cant play with me like this

[atomicblasphemy]

Can’t promise this will make sense.

But I think I’ve seen people theorize this lovely enormous andominous guy is in fact not King’s dad:

And I’m inclined to agree. I mean, Lilith does mention the island King was hatched at was ancient. So odds are he was being incubated for quite a minute and, when the time was right (which may or may not have something do with that sky window thingy or Emperor Phil’s meddling with the island innate magic), he finally hatched.

Moreover, whatever magic is used to cloak that wee island, to produce King sonic rainboom, or to animate Jean-Luc is probably of a different source to that elemental one harnessed by demons and witches from the Boiling Isles since Hooty was unable to pin down what type of demon King was, suggesting he may not even be one. (Also, on a bit of a tangent I just think that’d play nicely with the contrast between Emperor Phil’s bri’ishness and King’s more francophone tendencies).

Lastly, the carvings, the plant life, of the that Island, the fort’s architecture, the writing system, and the very fact that they managed to build what’s probably the most sophisticated bunker in any dimension would in my eyes point  to two things: one, whatever civilization made the island was powerful, foreign, and is long gone; and whoever King’s dad was he was important enough a figure to justify a lot of resources being used to protect his son. And you know how monarchies are: the king is dead, long live the King. Also, we know next to nothing about the world beyond the Boiling Isles other than Eda telling the Selkidomus to hide further into sea and the fact that the Emipre has some form of navy (be it it a military of commercial one, in either case this suggest the existence of other nation with whom to wage war or engage in trade).

Now, I know, essentially, this brings nothing new to the table. But there’s to things I’d like to point which might do just that.

First and weaker evidence:

This looks like a place that has a similar origin to the Boiling Isles, but not really it.

The reason why this can hardly be called evidence is simple though: Eda was undergoing a very bad acid trip when this happened. So while that whole sequence offers a lot of insight into her psyche, that’s all you can take from highs. Everything else there has a very blurry relation with reality. I mean, I’m not even sure that figure people thought was Amity is really someone from Eda’s past or just a way her mind found to cope with the trauma from years of persecution by a fascist state on account of factors way beyond her control.

Regardless, if this is a real place (and consequently faux-Amity a real person), this would mean confirmation that lands other than the Boiling Isles do indeed exist, and on top of that would suggest at least one candidate for King’s true place of origin (and possibly of Eda’s curse, after she became Icarus she did turn into that suspicious looking scroll after all). Hopefully though, the show won’t really focus on that. I mean, just look at how the show sidelined Willow this season then just imagine what the sheer amount of lore this would imply would do, especially considering how short the run time ahead of us is.

But hey, I don’t even know why I’m speculating on all this and seeing how given what we know pretty much all bets are off... so you know... no harm, no foul.

Anyhow. as I briefly mentioned before whoever the lovely guy (fig. 1) is, he seems pretty huge. And that’s actually quite important. Because there is one physically big (to fit her big heart ofc) with a very unclear backstory that the show seems to bring up only when strictly necessary. This lovely gal:

The one on the left.

The reason why I point this out is: I like her and want to see more of her; her backstory was left deliberately hanging after her second appearance; what we do know about her is that she was part of the “staff of a giant” some thousands of years ago; she’s takes care of palismen which put her in a collision course with Emperor Phil; I like her and want to see more of her.

Now, those second and third points are important because as previously stated that guy (fig. 1) is buff. And so was that other figure portray on King’s forts walls. Maybe enough to call them giants (we don’t know what their growth limit is), but not so much to be a Titan. If there’s really a kinship relationship between them and King, then we should probably expect him to undergo a growth spurt, maybe not one of continental proportions, but still a growth spurt.

Anyway, not only that, but Luz (the one on the right in fig. 3) did offer to help Bat Queen find out more about her past, and the offer probably still stands. Meaning that the show writers have this avenue open, and if she really was King’s dad’s palisman then that make her the most poised one to give him the insight he needs on his past (and that his dad is, most likely, long gone, making his story pretty much like Luz’s and Eda’s in the sense it could be described as learning to accept what you can’t, change what you can and from that forge a self you can actually like). Not only that, but this would make her have a deeper connection with Luz’s camp against Emperor Phil, giving her chance to avenge all the palismen he ate over the years (which as of now she’s probably not aware of).

Also, if all of that is the case and King’s civilization is as ancient as Lilith suggested that’d probably mean she is among the oldest palismen out there if not the oldest, which could offer a solution to the palistrom wood shortage problem. And it would also raise the possibility of King’s dad being the inventor of palismen or something along those lines, not sure what that’d entail and I’m into way too esoteric territory to comfort. 

But on a mostly unrelated note and seeing how I’m taking a few hours to aimlessly speculate: Luz’s palisman. I’ve seen people suggesting she’d pick all sorts of different animals from bats to blue cardinals.

I just think she won’t really get a palisman at all. She will get a staff though, Hunter’s artificial one to be exact.

Here’s the thing, getting a palisman and the accompanying staff is kinda painted as this whole rite of passage from witchling to witchhood so to speak. Meaning that from that point on they are a witch, a part of the Isles. A huge commitment for a human to make, and her character’s  whole subtext thus far this season has been a balancing act between her human past and her magical future, culminating in the promise she makes to Camila.

That’s why the Bat Queen (fig. 3) calls her out on her insecure, tentative response when pushed to state her purpose to the potential palismen - even if covered by her usual upbeat presentation (that girl’s mind is a storm right now, poor child). In other words, for good reason, she sees getting a palisman as too much of a commitment, implying certain sacrifices (her link with the human world) she is not ready to make. 

On the other hand, she found in the Boiling Isles everything she was missing in the human realm. She was accepted there, she has a family, friends, and a girlfriend now, all of whom see her as a cherished part of their lives as much as they are of hers. She belongs in the Isles, she belongs in the human realm, and those two are on equal measure to her.

That’s a pretty tough place for some who just started learning who she is - I mean, she is 14 after all. And as of the place that the show left after Yesterday’s Lie, there’s really nowhere she can say to her self that she belongs to.

However, since we are apparently getting a Hunter redemption either way because that’s what popular media is now, every story has a quota of redemption arcs to fill (preferably of officials of monstrous regimes, but i digress) him and Luz could form a sort of parallel. If, as certain sects of the fandom believes, he is a clone of Emperor Phil’s brother (Bob, that’s his name), that’d make them along with Phil himself the characters with the closest connection to the human. Phil is the one pulling the strings so I can’t really tell what  the parallels there would be other than some kind of “what if Luz had less of a moral center to her”. That’s not the interesting parallel though.

By the way, obviously, this whole word soup’s validity depends on the Emperor being either Phil, Bob, or some derivation. I know the show hasn’t made it quite canon just yet but I mean, come on, they’ve been throwing so many bones at this theory that we could build a skeleton army.

You see, Hunter’s staff is great symbol of the relationship he has with Phil. Something that symbolizes that, the way things are, seeing how he is a magicless witch in magicful world, his only way to truly be a part of the world and of society, the only way he can have a sense of belonging is through Phil, it is through the magic he provides via the staff’s artificial magic.

Moreover, if Phil being human ever comes out, and that Hunter is Bob’s clone, then Hunter would have this delightfully existential question to answer: “Who the fuck am I then?”

Essentially, he’ll be in a similar mind space as Luz buuuut their ways out of that are opposite. In order to make a self for himself the first thing he has to do is to sever his connection with Phil and reaffirm what he wants to do with his life (wild magic). And now he has the means to do just that, he has a staff and a palisman (made of wild magic) of his own, he doesn’t necessarily needs the artificial one anymore. A way he can cut that connection is by giving his old staff to Luz.

From Luz’s point of view that would solve her own existential problem, this staff, made with artificial magic - thus suiting the existence of a human in this magical world - would allow her to either/or conundrum: she can be a witch AND a human. She hasn’t gone through that rite of passage, so she didn’t forgo her humanity (in a metaphorical sense, of course). But she was given, from possibly her biggest enemy, tangible proof that she has a place in the Isle, not by birth, but because she made one for herself through the relationships and bonds she formed, through the way she changed people’s lives just being there and being herself. It isn’t a complete solution, but it is a compromise between those too sides of her being

That leaves that piece of palistrom wood Eda gave Luz out of the equation. What the show would try to do with it is anyone’s guess. But I think something along the lines of “Willow finds out a way to replenish the palistrom wood forests, she needs Luz’s branch to do it, Luz gives it to her out of a sense of moral obligation but is torn about it since she feels she’s giving up her chance at having a staff” would be pretty neat. You know, building up a bit of dramatic tension and whatnot.

Anyway, that’s it. Word soup’s over.

[0poole]

The Thing about Furries

This is literally me thinking to myself and putting it online under the guise someone else might care enough to read it, so really there’s no actual point to this, feel free to ignore.

Also obviously I just gotta say people can do whatever the hell they want as long as it isn’t hurting someone else in some way. Also, this is pretty much exclusively about the character design aspects of furry-ism and not the IRL aspects anyways.

So my brother just introduced me to Beastars (even though I’ve known about it for a long time because internet) and after being super insanely into Animal Crossing and other junk, it feels like I have to piece together my thoughts about “furry” characters because it’s funky. Like, insanely funky. Everyone agrees that it’s funky too, which is weird. Usually some people are just making it funky for laughs/dismissiveness but no, here it’s pretty universally funky.

First of all, the definition for the purpose of talking about it. Let’s just say a “furry” character is an animal character with distinctly human traits and talks. For the sake of scope, since the term “funky” made me think of it, Donkey Kong is a furry character. Thumper from Bambi is a furry character. Obviously all the characters from Beastars, Animal Crossing (non-humans), Zootopia, and pretty much all Disney properties where the main character is an animal is a furry character all involve furry characters. One thing I won’t say is a furry character are animal sidekicks that don’t talk, even though they emote like human beings, like Moana’s pig or something. Pokemon aren’t either, outside of Mystery Dungeon stuff obviously. Anything can be turned into a furry character via fanart, but canonically, let’s just say they’re not. This is probably the funkiest part of furry-ness but yeah, I honestly think the one threshold that separates “furry” from “non-furry” is whether or not they talk. I don’t know what it is, it just feels like characters that talk cross the line. It’s basically a nonsense term that can be whatever you make it anyway so who cares, but that’s how I’ll be thinking about it. Also, I’ll never use the term “furry” in a derogatory sense. I’ve never really thought of it as being anything other than a descriptor, not anything with inherent goodness or badness to it, like calling someone a “construction worker” or something. Also “scalies” are just “furries” under another name. Reptiles are still furry as far as I care.

So the age-old question, am I a “furry?” Honestly I think I’m not, because even though I do obviously like furry characters, it’s not like a super big part of my likes. I basically just like good character design and appealing characters, some of which are furry. If I became a “furry” just for that, millions of other people would then become “furry,” basically making the term useless.

Doesn’t really matter though, I just wanna talk about furry character design, because it’s a seriously mixed bag. It’s like a bag filled with lettuce, marbles, and volcanic rock. That’s probably the reason why so many people are into it, since it gives characters a relatable anchor (animals) but can shoot them off in so many different directions that there’s inevitably something for everyone. You can either choose to make them basically humans with animal heads, like in Beastars, super magical and cute like in My Little Pony, or… whatever’s going on with Sonic characters.

I feel like the over-under of “good” furry character design is tweaking the biology of the animal in question without straying too far, and if you do go far, then it’s either relevant to the story of the character or just a thing with all furry characters in the world. For example, horses aren’t pink. But, in My Little Pony, they are, because horses can be any color, and so on. And, ya know, apart from that, just the usual character design stuff, like good color use and whatnot. Frankly the stuff I hate most about “bad” furry design is just “bad” character design, and not really relevant to the furry-ness of the character. It’s just cherry-picked correlation, not actual causation. Human characters can be just as bad as furry characters, there’s just a lot less to change in humans, so some people think the openness of furry design causes bad design when there’s just a lot more left up to the creator.

To be honest I think the pinnacle of furry character design is Zootopia. I feel like one of the big things people like to do is associate people/character traits with animals, like thinking someone’s a weasel for being super cunning and witty, or if someone’s a lion for being super powerful-feeling and proud. Zootopia, I think, manages to not only represent that in the structure and stature of its characters, but really implant a human face on to an animal. When you look at a Zootopia character, you can almost see someone you know in that face. Maybe that’s just standard in most cases, but it feels really present here. As for the character traits of animals, obviously it’s kinda rich pointing that stuff out in a story explicitly going against all that, but in terms of visual design I think we should think of the associated traits of an animal and pair that with their actual biology to an extent. For example, the ungulate characters have pretty thick bodies with thin legs with really pronounced knees. You know, like ungulates. They don’t have human proportions because they’re basically just animals with the stature and culture of humans. I think Nick is one of the big examples of a really easy and good trait to have in furry characters, that being having pretty short legs relative to a long body. 

Humans have really, really long legs compared to everything else. That’s why no one walks on all fours on the soles of their feet, because our arms are so much smaller than our legs, meaning we have to shuffle along on our knees. Animal legs are different. Also, just basic things like size difference and such are basically a given. Rabbits are small. Water buffalo are big. Shrews are even smaller than rabbits. For the most part, you shouldn’t stray too far from basic size differences. Obviously Nick probably would be a bit taller than he is in that case, but since he’s a protagonist he kinda gets a more limited pallet for the sake of wider appeal.

Also, one of the big things about Zootopia that really makes it the best is how society adapts to different biologies. Zootopia itself is so goddamn colorful and diverse, because even the most diverse cities in the real world are only gathering up people of different skin colors, ethnicities, locations, etc. Zootopia has to account for so many different biologies, and the designers really didn’t limit themselves there. Even little things like food stands having a little elevator to get drinks up to giraffe-height really make the world. Obviously they would separate the different biomes, but each biome still having bizarre little bits of technologies in it makes it amazing.

So with that all said, I must hate Beastars, right? I mean, they’re just humans with fur and animal heads. Well, I’m just as surprised as you are, because I actually kinda didn’t mind it as much as I thought. Obviously I’d take a Zootopia over a Beastars any day, but it wasn’t really that bad for character design purposes. Other critiques aside. I mean, the one big thing of size difference is still there, so it doesn’t feel completely lost that these are all animals with different biologies. Plus, I think the big thing is that their animal parts are still very animalistic, and not the usual “furry” design liberties, and that they at least extend well downward into their human parts. For example, in the first episode, that one parrot girl really caught my eye because she still looked like a parrot. What we could see of her arm still looked parrot-like. But, then, what about everyone else who basically is just a furry human with an animal head? 

One of the big, BIG things that turns me off with most furry media is how serious things are. They’re talking animals, Jim. I get you want them to have a super edgy backstory with tons of death and trauma but they’re animals. My brain can’t just shake that thought, and since a lot of my least favorite stuff is super edgy and etc I just get turned off to the idea. Movies like Zootopia fix that by being like “Haha, talking animals am I right guys? Oh by the way there’s a government-funded drug cartel trying to frame carnivores as monsters in order for herbivores to rise above them in power.” If the makers toy with the idea of talking animals being funny/cute/fantastical/etc, then they can implant the serious seeds that make a good story. Things like the Warrior Cats series (my sister’s brand) don’t feel like they strike that chord before they go on to tell a super serious story, so I get lost in the mess (Or at least that’s how fan works seem to go, I’ll probably never read the original books, let’s be real. If they’re not like that then just imagine that as being a critique of fan works). So, what about Beastars? I feel like making the animals so human is absolutely necessary in telling their serious story. Plus, since the animal parts are so much like actual animals, it feels much more like “this is a character represented by an animal” instead of “this is a talking animal” sort of thing. By not making things so cartoonish, they can tell a less cartoonish story. I’m still not super into it but it does work. I’m into cartoons as a whole tho, so I’ll always take cartoons over basically anything else. 

 Now, I want to talk about hands. Choosing whether to give a furry character hands is the turning point in design philosophy. Obviously mammals are probably going to have hands no matter what, because we associate most with them, and they kinda-sorta have fingers, but what about fish? Finding Nemo characters… sort of have hands? They will definitely try to pick things up as much as possible (i.e. Marlin caressing Nemo’s egg) but they don’t actually “grab” things. But, sure, their fins can feel like hands to a human because they’re sorta-kinda in the same location. 

What about wings? Guardians of Ga'hoole has probably the greatest furry bird character design of all time. I HATE it when character designers try to turn feathers into fingers. Probably exclusively because of this movie, but still. I can’t praise this movie enough for sticking to its guns in not only keeping an owl’s actual claws as its hands, and wings only staying something secondary for gestures and stuff, but also for designing WEAPONS for OWLS. Again, they are talking animals, but like… They transcended the thought of it being funny and cute and instead led us into thinking they’re totally badass, because, let’s be honest, birds are probably the most badass of all animals. They fly, have sharp hunting skills, a piercing gaze… and, ya know, are descendents of dinosaurs. They can even be super cute if need be. Did I mention they can fly? That’s like their main thing that mostly only they can do. Not sure if you’ve heard, but flying’s pretty cool. But, yeah, whatever, keeping a bird’s hands to its claws is basically necessary I’d say, unless you want to go the Sonic route and not even give them wings in the first place. 

What about something that doesn’t even have limbs? Snakes are even more bonkers than birds. If an alien came to Earth and the first thing they saw was a snake slithering around they’d probably pack up and leave because their petty minds weren’t vast enough to imagine a thing moving so elegantly and so, like clandestine-ly? Like, just by looking at them, you really can’t imagine how the hell they move. Anyways, this is starting to turn into me gushing about animals… We all have seen that one tweet of that one rattlesnake character from Rango being called one of the coolest character designs, and by golly they’re totally right. Snakes are a place for character designers to flex their imaginary muscles because of how weird they are. What if we get a snake, but… instead of a rattle (which is already a crazy biological feature let’s be real) let’s give him a prosthetic GATLING GUN instead. And also like a gigantic-rimmed hat. That is unreasonably cool. Again, snakes are badass, so instead of having to convince us that it’s all fun and games they can very easily be like “Don’t mess with that guy, he’s a snake” and pull out some seriousness from that.  But, as the internet will surely convince you, snakes are also weirdly cute sometimes. Sometimes so cute you have a crisis of faith. Back to Ga'hoole, the nursery mother snake character there might just be one of the cutest snake characters ever. I still hold true that adults can be as cute as children/young people in the right circumstances, and she is a prime example of that. Also, can we just talk about Viper from Kung Fu Panda? Good God, what a character. I can imagine the board meeting: “Okay so we want a lovable cast of characters that do Kung Fu. We got the main Panda, a Tiger, a Crane, a Snake, a Praying Mantis, a…” “Wait, a SNAKE? How the hell are we supposed to make a snake do Kung Fu?” and then they fucking NAILED it. Not only is she a total cutie pie, but she has some of the best design direction of that entire, amazing franchise. Really, AAA western animation studio furry design is almost always killer. 

Now I want to talk about Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic is easily the Chaotic Evil of furry character design. What the fuck even are they? Imagine starting up a video game company and hearing this one guy come up to you like “I’ve got this game about a blue hedgehog with super speed and one weird inter-connected eyeball and gloves and he collects golden rings and turns Super Saiyan if he picks gets some magical gems” and suddenly he becomes the face of your entire company. I have no idea where all that came from. But, guess what? I still love it. I have no idea why, but it’s great. I mean, even apart from the usual things people say about him, like having a good silhouette and junk. Maybe he’s just been so ingrained in our society that it’s basically Stockholm syndrome, but I do like Sonic characters. I think the only issue I have with the character designs is that some are a little too similar in the face/body (I think Espio and Charmy should look a little stranger imo), but for the most part they’re great. It’s even really refreshing when you do get some character that strays from the normal body type, like Big the Cat, Vector, or that one grey hawk guy from Sonic Riders. My favorite of the games is Cream and Cheese, mainly because she’s a cute rabbit with a Chao (the best part of the Sonic franchise hands-down) but I think the “best” from all forms of media is Tangle from the comics. She has the necessary gumption and sportiness you’d expect from a sonic character, while still looking interesting, but not looking too out of left-field, and also having a super iconic and relevant trait (a giant, fluffy tail. Gotta love those) that has a unique use. One day they will make a game using the comic characters and that day shall be a glorious day. I seriously think the art of the comics is amazing, even though I haven’t actually read much of it myself. I’d definitely give it a shot if given the chance though.

Although, you really can’t talk about furry characters without mentioning porn at least a little bit. At this point it kinda forgoes design and is just a personal preference sort of thing, as you’d probably expect. Porn’s like that. But really, for me, I think any kind of non-human genitalia is actually disgusting. Literally, any excuse to put human dicks on something is a good one. I’m not gonna go into detail, but wouldn'tcha believe some people genuinely are into the idea of having large, human-sized breasts in the same areas as a normal animal’s nipples, i.e. around their hind legs? I mean, anything’s possible, but it’s just… yeah… No. I don’t even want to talk about the various shapes of animal “anatomy.” It’s not fun, and the less I have to think about it the better I am. Obviously if a character’s human enough it’s fine, but I just can’t stand the biology of some of it. Like, how would you fuck a snake? How do they even do it in the first place? My brain just doesn’t conceive of it, and as such it’s not in my purview. But, one things for sure, you are NOT a zoophile for liking furry porn (even if the characters in question don’t stand up on two legs). That’s an entirely different beast, and it’d be nice if people stop pretending like it’s at all relevant here.

The last thing that’s sort of a preferential thing for me is toe beans. I just can’t stand them. It’s like one step below nauseating for me, and I have no idea why. It makes it infinitely harder to enjoy furry stuff because of it, because it seems people are universally for them, both in a weirdly pornographic sense, and in just a cuteness sense. Even the cutest possible depictions of toe beans still make me want to shrivel up inside. Maybe that’s why I like rabbits so much… They’re too fluffy to show them, whether or not they actually have them in the first place.

But yeah, furries. Of course I have a fursona. He’s been in the works for ages because I never feel like I can get him exactly right. Chances are he’ll break off into a separate character like my last attempt. 

[imagesofthegreatgull]

Hybrid Rainbow

Joy has always been a rare and precious commodity. I would argue, though, that in the developed world (Wherever, exactly, that is), it has become somewhat less rare in recent times, as standards of living and education continue to go up. That’s an absurdly privileged thing to say, I realize, but I’m trying to start this thing as evenhandedly as I can. I understand about suffering and poverty; I’m reading A Tree Grows In Brooklyn right now, even! Okay, saying we’re closer now than ever to utopia is going to smack of ignorance no matter how you phrase it, but it also strikes me as undeniably true, in the grand scheme of things. I think most people--aside from the fascists--would refuse a one-way trip in a time machine to any previous era, or at the very least, would recognize that it wouldn’t improve much of anything for them. As unruly as our age is, it’s still probably the best one we’ve gotten thus far, and as the boot-heel of oppression starts to ever so slowly ease up its pressure on the necks of the long-suffering masses, the question has begun to enter into the collective consciousness: what is to be done with joy when it begins to fall, unbidden, into your life with something like abundance? What is to be done if moments of joy no longer must be pried with great effort and sacrifice from the rockface of life, but lie strewn liberally throughout our days, needing only the will and lack of embarrassment to seize them?

Thus far, the latter-day generations have faced up to this problem with decidedly mixed success. The idea that expecting anything other than the very worst leaves one vulnerable to the universe’s cruel whims has been stamped upon the human brain for centuries, and has left many sadly unable to recognize their own privilege (Which, by the way, is a big part of why a whole lotta white folks refuse to admit they have it better than anyone else and continue to dig their heels in against progress because to them it looks like cutting in line). It is still widely accepted that constantly finding joy and peace and purpose in one’s own life is the purview of children and children alone, that it is a naivete to be grown out of. We have the impulse always within us to be hard, to be warlike, to show the world that we’re not weak and frivolous but monsters to be feared, without emotions to be appealed to or ideals to be fallen short of.

Remedying this problem has turned out to be one of the primary functions of counterculture. If it is often unhelpful to simply look at the entire value system of one’s parents and say “Fuck that”, as it tends to foster a rather negative self-definition, still, if part of that value system is a deeply entrenched distrust of happiness, “Fuck that” may be exactly the response called for. The beauty of “Fuck that” is that it leaps past the slow loss of faith in something and arrives immediately at a flat rejection of it, and since much of the history of civilization has been bound up with blind faith in arbitrary and harmful things, the ability and the courage to flatly reject something, to give it no credit for however widely accepted it is but to dismiss it as bullshit from the ground up, is a step forward in human consciousness tantamount to the reinvention of the wheel.

The great irony of the end of the sixties is that all the hippies were miserable for no reason: they won. Rock n’ roll did change the world, it just didn’t immediately transform it on every level into an unrecognizable nirvana. For all the apparent emptiness of its utopian dreams, the basic thrust of the thing worked out just fine: that particular cat will never be put back into its bag, and those ideas are now out in the ether forever, always waiting for someone to find them and be inspired to change their own life and the lives of those around them for the better. The same goes for the punk rock revolution a few years later: they may not have brought the bastards down, but they did successfully bring personal liberation to a lot of people, and poured exactly as much gas on the fires of populism as they intended to. Culture, and in particular art and in particular music, cannot, unassisted, change the world, but it can change your world, and has been changing small worlds all over the frigging place at least since those mop-topped Brits set foot on American shores and probably since Johnny B. Goode learned to play guitar just like a-ringin’ a bell. 

The thread can get lost, however. Culture is always a reflection of the people, and the people still spend a lot of their time bored, frustrated, and terrified of letting on that they have feelings about stuff. Young people especially, formerly the eternal pirate crew waving high the flags of “Liberty” and “Up Yours”, in recent times have often capitulated and resigned themselves to no more than a few stray moments of fun pilfered from the fortresses of the almighty Money Man-Kings, usually in the form of drugs, sex, and reckless self-endangerment. The cost of the hippies and the punks giving up their battles is that the counterculture lost its intellectual leadership, at least until the resurgence in political literacy in the 2010s. In the wasteland following the 70s, there were no John Lennons or Joe Strummers to look to for guidance; even the people who were elected to speak for their generation seemed adamant that there was fuck-all they could really say. Yeah, it’s nice to know that someone else feels stupid and contagious, but that’s not really a direction, is it? The generation-defining message Kurt Cobain and his peers sent out was “We’re all way too fucked up to do anything about anything”, and that introspective moodiness pervaded American underground rock music from the invention of hardcore at least all the way up to the moment Craig Finn watched The Last Waltz with Tad Kubler and said “Why aren’t there bands like this anymore?” and set out with rest of the Steadies in tow to remind everyone that music can save your immortal soul and that hey, that Springsteen guy was really onto something, headband and all, and together they all successfully ushered in the New Uncool and now we’ve got Patrick Stickles wailing that “If the weather’s as bad as the weatherman says, we’re in for a real mean storm!” and Brian Fallon admitting “I always kinda sorta wished I looked like Elvis” and everything’s great, except it’s not, everything’s fucked, but rock n’ roll is here to stay, come inside now it’s okay, and I’ll shake you, ooo-ooo-ooo.

The point of all this is my belief that even with the responsibility rock music has to provide cathartic outlets for dissatisfaction, is has an equal or greater responsibility to provide heroes. I think it’s time we all got over pretending that we’re better than the need for heroes, because we all insist on having them anyway, imperfect roses by any other name, and we’d do a hell of a lot better selecting them if we just admitted what we were after. We don’t just want particularly talented comrades, we want King Arthur, Robin Hood, Superman, Malcolm Reynolds. Damn it all, they don’t need to be perfect, they don’t even need to be all that great really, and yeah, Arthur dies, and Robin never gets Prince John, and Superman can’t save everyone, and the war’s over, we’re all just folk now, and John Lennon beat women and Van Morrison is a grumpy old fart and John Lydon’s a disgrace, but it’s the faith that counts. The faith that there’s something greater than ourselves that some people are more keyed into than others, and that whatever they can relay from that other side is what’ll see us through. All the best prophets are madmen, and madmen aren’t always romantic fools; sometimes they hurt people, or fail at crucial moments due to a compulsion they can’t control. Let he who is without sin etcetera, right? Why not cast aside realism and sincerely believe in something or someone, huh? 

I believe in the Pillows. I don’t know hardly anything about them; my expertise of Japanese culture and history extends to the anime I’ve seen and that “History of Japan” YouTube video that made the rounds a while back. I can’t locate them within the Japanese music scene; all their western influences seem obvious to me, and the rest I know nothing about. They’re the only rock band from their country I’ve listened to any great amount of, I don’t speak the language they mostly sing in, I don’t even know their career very well. The particulars of any experiences they might have had that motivated them to make the art they make are not ones I could possibly share in, so, saying that I “Relate” to their work sounds a little preposterous. They ought to be a novelty to me, a band that clearly likes a lot of the same bands I do despite hailing from a foreign shore, marrying that shared music taste with a cultural identity I have nothing to do with, a small, nice upswing of globalism pleasing to my sense of universalism but not having any kind of quantifiable impact on me.

Yet I, like a good many other westerners, believe in the Pillows. I’m a little buster, and my eyes just watered as I wrote that. In fact, it’s likely because of the barriers of language and culture that exist between us that my belief in the Pillows is so strong. Pete Townshend, someone else I believe in, once opened a show by saying “You are very far away...but we will fucking reach you”, and though the Pillows are both geographically (At the moment) and culturally miles away from me, Lord strike me down if they don’t fucking reach me. They reach me in a way many of their American college rock peers, many of their biggest influences in fact, never have. Dinosaur Jr, Bob Mould, Sonic Youth, the Pixies, Nirvana--all these artists speak directly to the American adolescent experience, but though they have all moved me to one degree or another, none of them have produced a body of work I can so readily see myself in as that of the Pillows. Maybe it is the novelty of it, maybe I’m fooling myself and it is just my sense of universalism carrying me away, but there’s something I hear in the Pillows that I don’t hear in those bands, and though the obvious candidate for that thing would be the foreign tongue the majority of the lyrics are written in, when it comes down to it, I think that thing is joy.

Joy, to me, is the possibility glimpsed by rock n’ roll. Not hedonistic pleasure, not a sadistic glee over the outrage of authority figures, but real, true, open-hearted, “Freude, schöner Götterfunken/Tochter aus Elysium”--type joy. Buddy Holly had joy. The Beatles, The Who, the pre-fall Rod Stewart, they had joy. Springsteen’s got joy to spare. Those people have such profound love for their art and their audience that just the continual recognition of the fact that they have a guitar in their hands and they’re being allowed to play it is enough to make them ecstatic, and whenever they want to actually express something serious they have to get themselves under control to do it. Yet, whether it’s the unfashionability of those utopian dreams, or the simple fact that rock music has become accepted by mainstream culture and is now a commonplace, unremarkable thing, but half the people who have picked up an electric guitar for the past few decades don’t seem all that excited about it. From Kim Gordon snarling about how people go down to the store to buy some more and more and more and more, to Thom Yorke moaning about how he’s let down and hanging around, crushed like a bug in the ground, even up to Courtney Barnett asking how’s that for first impressions, this place seems depressing, it’s not really a given anymore, if it ever was, that people who make rock music are very joyful in what they do. 

Of course, I’m not demanding that our artists be empty-headed fluff-factories; far from it. The Pillows write sad songs and angry songs same as everybody else. But the important thing is this: every song the Pillows play is played with an exuberance and abandon that is immediately striking, regardless of the emotional content of each song. Channelling that kind of revelry into rock music is both to my mind the initial purpose of the genre in the first place and something which has become so rare as to be remarkable. A veneer of detached cool, a howling ferocity, a whimpering woundedness--these have become the hallmarks of American rock music, and they are nowhere to be found in the Pillows.

At the same time, the Pillows are the very antithesis of artlessness. Joy of the caliber they deal in is more commonly found in folky rave-ups, a lack of musicianship giving way to trancelike festivity. But the Pillows are skilled song craftsmen like few others; their sound has evolved throughout the years, but they tend to settle in the neighborhood of power-pop, abounding in glorious hooks and surprising structures. A hundred unnecessary, perfect touches seem to exist in every song; a pause, a solo, a bassline, all deftly elevating the song into a perfect expression of something sublime, something that always--always--takes ahold of the musicians themselves and imbues their performances with power and purpose the likes of which most little busters can only dream of feeling. It should be testament enough to their brilliance that upon first listen to a song I never know what most of the lyrics mean, but whenever I look up a translation, they always turn out to be exactly what I felt they must be; their songs are so musically communicative that they all but lack the need for lyrics. 

This dual nature is why I believe in the Pillows: by so utterly failing to neglect both the highest possibilities of musical composition as an unparalleled tool for capturing emotional nuance and the unrestrained id-like rush that is the province of rock n’ roll, they successfully attain the lofty realm that is--or ought to be--the goal of music in the first place. Never once is there a hint of straying into the realm of primitivism nor into overthought seriousness, and instead they locate themselves somehow exactly center on the scale between punk and prog, lacking the weaknesses and gaining the strengths of both. They make rock whole again by finally disproving the tenet initially laid out by their heroes, your heroes, and mine, The Beatles: the notion that growing up means having less fun. The viscerally exciting early work of The Beatles lacks any of the depth and vision displayed by their later records, but those records are so carefully and expertly crafted that they tend to lose spontaneity, and constantly second-guess themselves where the juvenilia they followed forged unselfconsciously ahead. That legendary career path has laid out a false dichotomy that every proceeding generation of kids with guitars has chosen between, save for the few who could see past it, the ones who heard the wildness in “Revolution” and the wisdom in “Twist and Shout” and realized that they were of a piece, were one and the same, not to be chosen between but embraced fully. Pete Townshend. Bruce Springsteen. Joe Strummer. David Byrne. Paul Westerberg. The Pillows. The real heroes are not those who champion one side or another but fight all their lives for peace between them, knowing that we have not yet begun to imagine what could be accomplished if that were made possible.

Just as they bypass the divide between what Patrick Stickles termed the Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies of rock (I prefer to think of the usual battle as being between the Dionysians and the Athenians, with the true devotees of Apollo being most of those heroes I keep referring to, except Dylan, who might be a Hermesian), so too do the Pillows bypass the Pacific frigging ocean. And the Atlantic, to boot. Their music quotes the Pixies and The Beatles directly, and obviously owes much to Nirvana and all their college rock predecessors who spent the entire 80s desperately stacking themselves until the doomed power trio could finally vault over the wall. Their first record is practically a tribute to XTC. They do speak a lot of English, too. I’m informed that much of western culture is seen as the epitome of coolness in Japan, which might explain their obsession with Baseball, and apparently sprinkling a bit of the Saxon tongue into the mix is far from uncommon in the music scene(s). Regardless, there is something ineffably touching to a distant fan in a foreign land about hearing Sawao Yamanaka spit “No surrender!” or exclaim “Just runner’s high!” It looks from here like a show of mutual effort to understand me as much as I’m trying to understand them. They’re generous enough to have already walked to the middle where they’re asking me to meet them, a middle where it doesn’t matter that I don’t have a suffix attached to my name or that they don’t wear shoes in houses. The invisible continent that all forward-thinking and sensitive people come to long for is where the Pillows are broadcasting from, because they’ve realized that its golden shores and spiraling cities are attainable. They’re attainable with joy, with the fundamentally rebellious act of refusing to let the fascists bring down even your globdamn day, because who the hell gave them that power other than us? I know enough about Japan and America to know that either one accusing the other of being imperialist and socially conservative to a fault is a fucking joke, and to know that we’ve done a lot more wrong to them than they’ll ever do to us and the presence of the Pillows amounts to a “We forgive you”, not an “I’m sorry”. Having watched a decent amount of anime, which is basically the result of Japan’s mind being blown by western media and then proceeding to show their love by often almost inadvertently surpassing their inspirations, I know that the only way to save our respective national souls and everybody else’s too is to put our knuckles down, have Jesus and Buddha shake hands like Kerouac tried to explain that they would anyway, and embrace each other’s dreams and passions and adopt them into our own. 

It takes better people to inhabit that better world, and in case that sounds like fascist talk, I mean we’ve got to do better, not be better. It’s no physical imperfection that holds us back, nor a mental imperfection exactly, as we all have our own neuroses and if we expunge those then we’ll be kissing art and lot of other vital stuff goodbye. No, it’s our discomfort with ourselves, our world, our neighbors, our aliens, that keep us from seeing that crazy sunshine. If we can’t even acknowledge the greatness around us, that surplus of joy I mentioned a while back that we just seem to have no idea what to do with, then we have no hope of ever achieving further greatness, of ever quelling man’s inhumanity to man down to an inevitable fringe rather than the basic order of the world. 

There was always more to do 

Than just eat and work and screw

But now that there’s time at last to do those things, we’re still afraid to, afraid that we’ll come up empty, that the search for fulfillment leads only to disappointment, better to hang back and play it safe, better not to risk becoming one of those people I shake my head at and pity and will secretly envy until I die. It’s a new world, and we must learn to be new people. I believe in the Pillows because I believe they make excellent models for that new kind of person. The way they behave in the studio and on the stage is the way people behave when they’re truly free, and we’ve all been set free already or will be soon, so if we’re going to try and learn what the fuck is next from anyone, I think we might as well learn from the Pillows. At least, that’s one of the places we could get that insight. There’s a lot of art and a lot of philosophy and political theory to sift through to in order to put together a workable 21st century identity, and the Pillows are hardly the only people to have begun making the leap. But because of a silly thing like the size of the earth, the infinitesimal size of the earth even compared to the distance between us and the next rock we’re gonna try and get to, not everybody is getting their particular brand of free thought and action, and I happen to think that’s regrettable, and it’s my will as a free individual to rectify it as much as I can.

Writing about music really is worthless, isn’t it? I haven’t said jackshit about what the Pillows actually do other than to vaguely qualify their genre and temperament, and the only more useless thing I could do than not describing their songs would be to describe their songs. If you don’t hear the bracing weightlessness in “Blues Drive Monster”, or the aching nostalgia in “Patricia”, or the soul-bearing cry in “Hybrid Rainbow” then nothing I could write about those would be more effective than “Little Busters is a really good album.” The better primer might be Happy Bivouac, from a few years later; it has the melancholic rush of “Last Dinosaur”, the ascended teenybopper “Whoa, whoa, yeah” chorus in “Backseat Dog”, and the intro that should make it obvious immediately that you’re listening to one of the best songs ever recorded which opens “Funny Bunny”. Those two, Runners High, and Please, Mr. Lostman are the classic era, selections from the former three immortalized in their biggest claim to western fame, the FLCL soundtrack, a brilliant use of their music that could warrant an equally long piece. Before and after those four are periods of experimentation and discovery equally worth your time, not all of which I’m familiar with yet. See, now I’m just an incomplete Wikipedia article; it’d be equally worthless to expound upon the individual bandmates, on the pure yawp of Yamanaka’s vocals, on the passionate drumming of Yoshiaki Manabe and the supernaturally faultless lead guitar of Shinichiro Sato, or the contribution of founding bassist Kenji Ueda, which was so valued by the others that when he left he was never officially replaced (They’re so sweet). I’m not here to write an advertisement or a press-release, I don’t really even know why I’m here writing this, but I know that I believe in the Pillows, that they’re important, and that people should write about them. I’m being the change I want to see in the world, get it? That’s all we can be asked to do.

It occurs to me that people believed in Harvey Dent too, and that didn’t turn out so well. Hell, let’s leave the comic book pages behind, people believe in Donald Trump, they think he’s a hero, and that’s all going down in flames as I write this. Having heroes can be dangerous, but I still believe it’s not as dangerous as not having heroes. “Lesser of two evils” sounds an awful lot like one of those false dichotomies between fun and intelligence or between misery and foolishness I mentioned earlier, so, let’s call it a qualified good. I’m not much of a responsible world-citizen if my only effort towards bringing the planet together is spinning some sweet Japanese alt-rock tunes and bragging about how open-minded I am, but if I do ever end up doing anyone any good, then I’d consider it paying forward the good done to me by the Pillows, among others. They helped me form my identity as an artist (Read: functional human being) and they made my adolescence a lot easier. Actually, that’s a lie: my adolescence was (And continues to be) pretty easy already, and the Pillows reassured me that I wasn’t avoiding reality by feeling that. While American bands sang about the downsides of being a mallrat or a non-mallrat, the Pillows offered a vision of teenagedome much like my own, one that was grandly romantic, in which suffering wasn’t a cosmic stupidity but a trial with pathos and merit, and joy was not an occasional indulgence but a constant presence, whether it was lived in or lost and needing recovery. 

That’s the old idea of youth, the youth of John Keats, the youth that makes the old miss it, makes it required that we explain to them that it’s still there, it never left, it’s a dream, a momentary affirmation, an attitude, a muttered curse word. So many of my peers, now no longer engaged in a constant race to stay out of the grave as their ancestors were, seemed intent on beating each other into their tombs, as if reaching walking death before their parents was the only way to outgrow them. There’s so much life just lying around and it’s just plain wasteful to let it lie in the sun and rust in the rain. There’s space enough to stretch, to not keep who you are awkwardly curled up inside yourself, to breathe the air and taste the wine and dig the brains of your fellow travelers in this loosely-defined circus. I found that space in the Pillows, having often suspected it was there, and while everyone is going to find that space in their own way--or not, still, tragically not--I have to think that experience was due in part  to some innate and unique quality of the music itself, not just a complimentary sensibility contained within myself. The Pillows are free, and that makes them freeing, it’s easy as that. Their liberation is plain as day; it rings in every chord, every snare-hit, every harmony; it’s up to us ascertain what we can do in our own limited capacity to hoist ourselves up to their level and give some other folks a boost along the way and a hand to grab afterwards. It’s the gift that art gives us, and the Pillows just give it more freely than most is all, which is why I think the suggestion to listen to them is more than just a solid recommendation. Like the insistence on listening to The Beatles, or The Clash, or any of the others, it’s a plea to save your soul, to learn the language of tomorrow and drink the lifeblood of peace and love and piss and vinegar, or else you’ll be lost, lost, lost. 

Can you feel? Can you feel that hybrid rainbow?

[vapormaison]

2019 Best Japanese OST Press/Repress: Elfen Lied by Tiger Lab Records

Like many late millennials with artistic pretensions, I used to have an “Anituber” channel back in the wild west days of youtube. From 2010-2013 — roughly corresponding with my first three years in university — I reviewed DVD releases from ADV, Manga Entertainment, Central Park Media, and Geneon — all the big players in Western anime releases at the time, all dead and gone now with the rise of streaming. Everyone but Funimation — a sad irony and perhaps telling about the nature of the dubbing industry that the studio with a serial rape problem and established casting couch was the only one to survive.

In the interest of maintaining my personal ethics, posterity, and sanity I’ve long since deleted that channel. While there was definitely a “moment” on the platform for a nineteen year-old cokehead film student in front of a MacBook webcam doing his best Slavoj Zizek impression, that moment has long since passed. I’ve long since cooled on “substantive” media critique anyway. The world doesn’t need another Eisenstein-aligned Marxist analysis of Neon Genesis Evangelion — or, a 6-part series on using Lacanian techniques to develop a leftist praxis for Fate/Stay Night. Media exists in the present moment to be a salve for the postmodern hellscape we inhabit together.

As an interesting sidebar, the most popular video on that channel — raking in just north of 10k views over its lifetime from 2011-2015, was a twelve minute video essay on the 1995 anime Elfen Lied, where I asserted that it was the ultimate expression of contemporary Japanese anti-modern rage. While I don’t find myself particularly nostalgic for any of the content on that channel, I’m actually kind of proud of that one in particular.

While most of my analysis was fixated on the visuals, narrative, and recent oeuvre of its mangaka, Lynn Okamoto, and series director, Mamoru Kanbei, I did lay out a framework on why I consider it to be one of the most successful soundtracks ever produced for an anime. I did not heap this praise lightly, as that roughly fifteen year period of 1995-2010 was bookended by the OSTs of Evangelion and K-On! — and certainly proved to be one of the most sonically iconic periods that the medium has ever produced.

it was also one of the first soundtracks that spurred my own history of Japanese OST collection.

And, then, almost a decade later, I found out that Tiger Lab was releasing a vinyl of Elfen Lied.

In spite of this, when I originally the news, I felt a tinge of trepidation. This is not to throw shade at Tiger Lab, however — but at the reputation of previous releases of the Elfen Lied soundtrack in Japan. A quick adventure with google translate across the Japanese net for various Elfen Lied OST roleases — especially on CD — will reveal for you a lot of contempt from Otaku and anime-enthusiast audiophiles for any number of reasons. Most hinge on the quality of the physicals. This is often because Japanese physical media releases of anime soundtracks are often laden with fresh, exceptionally crisp and clean-sounding masters for CDs, and usually exclusive posters and other content geared toward the “collector” nature of many Otaku. This has usually not been the case with Elfen Lied.

A friend of mine in Kanagawa quipped “Sometimes it sounds better on the DVD” in regard to a number of OST releases of soundtracks from anime produced by Studio Arms with CD releases published by VAP. Admittedly, some of it must have been born in resentment, but I’ve always trusted the man’s opinion — as he’s invested a small family fortune into building a shrine of sorts to that studio’s output. He chalks up the poor release quality to the studio’s inability or lack of funds to master the content properly for a CD or HQ digital release, and VAP’s decline in release quality during the early 2000s roughly corresponding to a sale to another Zaibatsu. “Studio Arms made hentai for many years to stay solvent, maybe they could not send a good master to VAP [the publisher]” he told me. While I can’t know if it’s VAP, Arms or another studio handling the CD-master work, a cursory check of their oeuvre seems to confirm confirms that claim of his — but I acknowledge I’m wandering into uncharted waters here.

In spite of all that — I ordered the wax from Tiger Lab and was duly impressed. In lieu of reviewing each track as per my usual review format, in the following section I want to talk about my listening experience from the two formats I own the soundtrack in — the SA/VAP published CD from 2004 and Tiger Lab’s release. Once we finish going into the core differences — and why this vinyl is absolutely worth your purchase over competing physicals — I’ll go into the virtues of the listening experience on the whole.

Part 1: Comparisons of Select Tracks

I suppose the expectation is that I start off by taking about the most iconic recording from the series — the OP, Lilium. In the spirit of defying expectations, I’ll begin with what I consider a better litmus test.

My personal shit-test for a good master and press is how well it can handle a track that is sonically robust and diverse, crossing genre and form — requiring an intensive, sufficiently wide mix and refined master. You don’t get that on every OST album — but Elfen Lied offers one such potential track in particular, and that particular track happens to be my favorite composition on the entire album. Uso Sora, composed by Kayo Konishi and Yukio Kondo is a truly magnificent piece, and it’s used brilliantly in the series — for those familiar, I only need to quote one line: “M-m-mommy…?”.

It begins with lulling piano chords that gradually build in tempo and energy with the addition of percussion, and then it undergoes a full metamorphosis in its last minute or so to become an aggressive, frenetic techno piece with distorted lows and an angry drum kit. Mirroring the evolution of its subject in the show with understated aplomb, and functioning as a robust and enjoyable composition divorced from its source — it really deserve more recognition than it receives, but I do not doubt it will ever step forth from the massive shadow cast from the haunting chorals of Lilium, and the brilliantly directed visual intro that accompanied it.

Needless to say, Tiger Lab more than passed muster here, to the point where I’m almost blown away by just how good it sounds compared to the rest of my Elfen Lied related physicals. I experienced a definite brightness from the vinyl master over my stereo that I don't get from a lot of other Western label releases, like say Milano, which tends to cash in on a Westerner’s preference for warmth.  Tiger Lab deserves credit for this approach, because it genuinely feels like a more authentically “Japanese” sound. In my experience, the Western labels that care the most about the dedicated audiophile adhere to this sonic profile, and Tiger Lab deserves all due credit here.

Finally, I might as well include my thoughts on Lilium. In short, it sounds fantastic. The mix here really brings out the most of the chorals, and provides crisp and clean sounds where you want them most. It’s also one of those tracks where you can just feel the dynamic range before you even hear it. I ended up listening to these on my Cambridges, and I’ve got to say that’s there’s something in the way they treat this particular profile of song — strongly vocal dominated, extremely muted piano, and supporting string inhabiting the negative space — absolutely incredibly. It put the KEFs to shame. I’ve always asserted that you’ve got to pair certain songs with certain speaker pairs. I’ve never been a huge devotional music guy, and I’m not entirely sure that the Cambridge or KEFs provide ideal profiles for the track. That said, Lilium sounds great anyway.

But I can envision these on a pair of high end Yamahas, or a pair of vintage Blaupunkt bookshelves sounding as stone-cold killer as Lucy when Kouta’s threatened.

I sent a rip to my friend Hiroshi, the StudioArms Shrine man, who immediately snapped up a copy after listening. I also learned that it was actually the first vinyl purchase he’s ever made after two decades of serious collecting. So perhaps that is a testament in and of itself!

Part 2: Physicality

I rarely devote an entire section to talking about the vinyl/OBI itself, but then again, Tiger Lab has put out a release certainly worthy of this. First off, the cover, which pairs perfectly with the overall aesthetic of both the series and previous soundtrack releases. I can imagine this being a release that has already attracted some attention by Japanese collectors, as the cover seems to tap into a certain sense of continuity that I know are a huge hit with that community. It certainly pairs well with my two releases from VAP, and a laserdisc set that I have. They all opt for that very iconic Klimt Vienna Secession style with appropriate creative flourishes — but I like Tiger Lab’s take on it the most. The side characters populating the back in a choral array reminiscent of the Beethoven Frieze is also a really nice touch for any enthusiast of the fin-de-siècle style.

I picked up the pink vinyl on release, one of the few pink vinyls that I’ve bought that at least feels thematically consistent with the release and not just a default “vaporwave” or “city pop” or “future funk” styling. Diclonii rock the pink hair, after all. That all said, I’m wishing now that I got the “metallic gold” edition, as its another color that feels both apropos and stunningly beautiful. With all that in mind, this is also one of the better waxes that I’ve felt in-hand, and manages to feel robust. I’ve yet to find specific info, but it certainly feels like a 180g.

In conclusion, I’ve got to give immense credit to Tiger Lab for handling this release with a class and vigor that few Japanese publishers have given it. It certainly bodes well for the future of anime releases on vinyl, and makes me eager to fill out an emergent collection.

[akysi]

Always wanted to do one of these, and now I have. :D 8 years of improvement, wow! I’m also really bad at picking things so I don’t know if I picked the ones that best represent my progress, but eh. I did some edits, but the original base for this can still be found here. Extended thoughts about each year below, it’s a lot! Here’s to bigger and better things in 2019 (please ;_;)

2010: I started drawing digitally in 2006, though regrettably I didn’t save any of the art I did back then. 2010 was when I joined DeviantART, and thus when I started uploading art online. I had frequented DA well before that though (from about 2007 I think), and influence from the artists I followed are pretty evident. A few notable ones were ShaloneSK, Fourth-Star (now SeaSaltShrimp), and thazumi, all primarily dragon artists. Though none of my traditional art is showcased here, this was still a time when I did it often, usually via doodles in class when I was bored. The digital art you see here was made with my first tablet, a Wacom Graphire 3, and Photoshop Elements 3 that came with it. I had little knowledge of file quality, layering, colouring, and other mainstays in using Photoshop properly. Humble beginnings are these! My art education at this point was limited at best, but art was always something I did in my spare time. And like all of the art years leading up to 2010, I drew almost entirely dragons. Aside from practicing foxes for a story I had at the time, I wasn’t interested in drawing much else. I didn’t draw people at all until college, but we’ll get to that. 2011: Christmas 2010 / New Year’s 2011 marked the time I got Photoshop CS5, a version of PS I still use today. For a while I was obsessed with the idea of PS’s Pen Tool, as I saw it could give me much cleaner line art than what I could achieve on my own. I was finally able to test that when getting CS5, and while it worked well for the time, I soon learned the tenets of line weight and tapering, something I would have to practice myself. Up to this point all of my lines were either shaky or fabricated via the Pen Tool, and it shows. This was also a year of trying to mimic Fourth-Star’s dynamic perspective...without any knowledge of how it actually worked. Not a lot of improvement happened here outside of that. 2012: This was the year I bought my Bamboo Create tablet, something I still use with my laptop nowadays. I remember trying it out at my friend’s house before I bought my own, and really loving how I was able to do the line tapering without the pen tool. It still took a lot more practice, but looking back now it was easy to see I was on the way to making line art one of my art’s strongest qualities; something that stays true today. I find it ironic that line art used to be one of the weakest aspects of my digital art, but I suppose that speaks to how far I’ve come. I did more fanart this year, oddly enough. I’d always done it before but I guess I felt shy about sharing it. Notable fandoms were Danny Phantom and Sonic. I didn’t grow up with either, but ended up liking them both a lot, and would doodle them as much as my dragons. 2013: I graduated high school and started my first year of art college, specifically Art Fundamentals at Sheridan College. At this point, everyone I knew pointed to that school (and only that school) for anything related to what I wanted to do; if it wasn’t fine art, go to Sheridan. So I went into college with a bit of tunnel vision at first, but I knew from the start that I would be gunning for animation. Not to animate specifically, but to do character design / concept art for animation. I would learn later on what having this tunnel vision would mean for me, but we’ll get to that later too. This is about the point where more expansion of design and subject matter occurs, albeit slowly. The art featured here doesn’t include my schoolwork, but the much needed increase of anatomy, structure drawing and other college level art courses started me on a path to better things. I still had a long way to go though, and Fundies could only do so much. Unlike most people I actually got decent practice from it given my limited art background, but I still can’t say it was at peak efficiency. This was the first year I actually started drawing people, and it certainly didn’t come without its growing pains.

2014: Surprising no one, I didn’t get into Sheridan after my first year, though that didn’t stop me from being disappointed at the time. I took what was effectively the second year of Fundies, called Visual and Creative Arts (VCA). This was the year that sparked my interest in graphic / logo design, an interesting turn of events all things considered, and that would stick with me a lot more than I expected. This year also featured a few smatterings of character designs, or more specifically design sheets with multiple views, costumes, etc. Character design was a required segment of the animation portfolio, so this is likely what spurred my practice in it, aside from my pre-existing interest. That does not mean I knew how to rotate a character though, yikes! At this point I’d gotten pretty good at clean line art in Photoshop with my current tablet, as well as the merits of high quality imagery. There was a lot of purple in this year and 2015, though that’s nothing really new for me.

2015: This was easily the busiest (and most path altering) year. Second semester of VCA happened during this time, but also what would be new beginnings for me. If I didn’t get into Sheridan animation, I had a choice to make for a plan B: Either stay at Sheridan for VCA Year 3 and try again for animation, or try to get into animation at another school. My buddy Amelia then dropped Seneca’s name in one of my elective classes, and I had no idea how much of a fateful conversation that would be. She mentioned it was considered a second to or even better than Sheridan, and that at least provided a clearer answer for me. A lot of trepidation followed: I didn’t get into Sheridan animation for the third time, and thus applied to Seneca (and a few other places). I was pretty scared of being a first year again at a new school with new people, and while my art definitely reflected the time I spent at Sheridan, I had no confidence in it being good enough for a portfolio given my track record. But low and behold, I got in! I was on my way to a three year rollercoaster of all-nighters, amazing ride-or-die classmates, and relentless, rigorous training. The art from this year does reflect this, both in quantity and quality of uploads, though in more of a “transition period” kind of way. This was the year I really started to draw human characters, most notably with the creation of my first comic project: Starglass Zodiac. This was the first time I had a story idea with a primarily human cast, much less a comic idea, though the designs for them didn’t start appearing in my uploads until the following year. As you might expect I didn’t have a lot of confidence in drawing people. Ironically, my first year of animation taught me all the skills I initially needed for the portfolios!

2016: When I mentioned a path altering year for 2015, I was referring specifically to the path in my art education. 2016 was a path altering year for everything else, and a polarizing one at that. 2016 was a year that was kind to no one, and while the details of what happened to me are not really relevant to this post, there’s no denying what effect it had behind the scenes. This was the year that I fully realized I’d developed symptoms of depression, and with my increasing anxiety to match, this didn’t (and still doesn’t) go so well. I don’t think that’s really reflected in my art, however. Regardless of my mental state, the outside view of my art still features the colourful characters that they always had. By this point I was in my finishing first year / starting second year, and this was easily the best time for me. My time to shine, if you will, at least when it came to character design class. We had an overarching story project that was perfect for SGZ, so I used that time to develop the characters. The double-edged sword of troubled times is my escapism is cranked to 11, so this was probably the year that spurred the most story ideas out of me. This year (and part of the next) started both Id Pariah and Feather Knights. I got my iPad Pro for Christmas this year too, and that proved to be a game changer in the amount of art I could make. I was already used to the Cintiqs at my school, and I was lucky to finally have a screen tablet of my own. 2017: The end of my second year and the beginning of my third and final year of animation. Classes split, streams chosen and a world of missed opportunities began. I didn’t do a lot of art at the beginning of the year, aside from the beginning of my Feather Knights stuff. On top of that, my college had a 5-week long teacher’s strike that literally no one wanted to be a part of, effectively derailing all hope for a good semester. Attempting to do a short film project with this happening was a recipe for disaster. During this strike was the start of my first month long challenge though: Huevember. It was an uncertain time, and most of us were not compelled to get much school work done. Completing Huevember did feel like an accomplishment though, as I was actually able to keep up with it even when school started again. I’d say this art year focused a lot on colour for this reason. What art I was able to complete outside of my schoolwork saw a lot of expansion in that area. In all honesty 2016-2018 tends to blend together for me, for better or worse. 2018: My graduating year. The strike did its damage to my final semester too, but ultimately I survived. Despite completing 5 years of college, my path became the most unclear. Third year taught me a lot of things about myself and how I approach art, but most were not positive revelations. The expectations set out for me are ones that I cannot achieve. However, I have more time than ever to do art, making this year the most art I’ve made to date. I also participated in Inktober, which reminded me how far I’ve come as an artist, despite not doing traditional art for what felt like a century. My illustrative work for Inktober ended up being some of my best art this year, and the prompts made me get creative in more ways than one. The dark cloud hanging over my head has not disappeared since 2016 however, and the toll that has taken shows more everyday. As far as my art was concerned I did more of what I loved, mostly in the form of character sheets and designs. It’s all I can do, for now. 2019, I have one thing to say: Don’t you DARE.

[xxhanachanxx]

When it comes to shipping, am I the only person that’s like a die-hard fan for a ship yet my mind is not screaming that it needs to be canon? Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for people wanting to see their two favorite fictional characters together as a couple; but then again I’m down with whether or not a creator/developer of a film, show, video game, book, etc. can confirm that a couple is canon. Though even if I can find that adorable, let me stick with any other aspects that I want to see in various outlets aside from romance. Or what I find better, for a fictional character I still want to think about portraying them as the way they’re originally portrayed. Sure that I understand that there are AU’s or any form of alternative just so we can make up anything about our precious OTP. Even though I’m all for anyone doing AU’s, sometimes I can’t help but to think that it would corrupt my head; but I’d like to do an AU one day! I’m usually a shipper that doesn’t think that my favorite pairings are the “oh-so perfect OTP and they need to be together forever”, because even for having a ship I do have other shippings that would involve the same character! So, this would probably be the longest text post I’ve ever wrote but at the same time a lot needs to be put down. And with some of the pairings that I will mention, maybe you would be familiar, maybe I’ll not mention your favorite OTP, but do take my conception in consideration!

So my first ship that I’m going to begin with talking about will be Moana x Ariel (or MoAriel). Do I ship them a lot? Well, I’m more in between with they could be great gfs or just best friends, but the way I see it is that they make great ocean buddies! So I cannot deny they’re cute! Do I want them to be canon? No, and here’s where I say that even if MoAriel is cute I still want my mind to be on the right path where I want to portray Moana and Ariel as the way they were originally portrayed in Moana and The Little Mermaid. For Ariel, I still need to keep in mind that she has Eric and Melody (idfc if I’m mentioning the shit sequel, it was one of my favorite direct-to sequels growing up k bye). I also like seeing Ariel and Eric together! Now with Moana, I just think she’s too good for a man and I’m not even headcanoning that she’s lesbian either. While we’re in the topic with the Disney Princesses as all of the news is spilling for Ralph Breaks The Internet, and as an avid LGBT supporter myself, it’s times that I couldn’t take a few people seriously to where they say that Merida, Elsa, Mulan, and many others are lesbian or bi. NOW DON’T TAKE THIS THE WRONG WAY! I’m all for seeing anything LGBT-related in animation, but sometimes I get a bit iffy on that issue with what will kids think of when they see it. I mean I understand that some people would say that it would mess the kids’ minds up. All I can think for now is that if I were to have kids, I would probably teach them about gay marriage not at a young age but maybe when they get older. I guess I’m that one LGBT supporter who can’t stand some of the SJWs… but hey, if people want to headcanon that they’re gay, well they can do them. I won’t stop them for that. Like for Merida, I’d still think she’s better off without a man but I won’t headcanon about her sexuality. For Elsa, like I get that people want her to be lesbian for the Frozen sequel, but I’d prefer wanting to know about the premise of the sequel more. And with Mulan, okay I get it that her outfit is dope and I’m all for her modern outfit. But I can’t have the mindset screaming “OMFG MULAN’S BI!” I believe that she’s a strong female warrior, and even I can’t help to think that she and Shang are great together! Okay now to get back and wrap up with MoAriel, I will say huge kudos for the shippers for making that happen. Like I can’t deny that it’s an amazing crossover between the land and the sea.

Alright, so another ship I’d like to talk about, and another same-sex ship, will be TwiDash (Twilight Sparkle x Rainbow Dash from MLP:FiM). Oh hey look, Imma throwback to one of my all-time favorite OTPs especially I happen to watch some of the old episodes again! Now let’s get to those 2 questions again: do I ship them a lot? I pretty much do, especially the fact that they happen to be my favorite ponies out of the Mane 6! Do I want them to be canon? No, and it’s not because that I think they should end up with stallions instead (and apparently, I don’t want to have those pairings be canon either!). Obviously RD is one of Twilight’s best friends, so I’d rather stick with whatever chemistry they have for each other! So because I have to bring up the fact that I also have pairings of Twilight and Rainbow with stallions, here’s what I need to say about that: Of course having TwiDash as one of my MLP OTPs, I happen to like SoarinDash and FlashLight (that’s Flash Sentry x Twilight Sparkle just to clarify in case if anyone gets mistaken for literally a flashlight; and yes, I like Flash try me bitch). And as a same-sex shipper, I’m not one for giving another character shit for getting in the way of the same-sex couples that I like. So as a TwiDash fan, I really don’t give flak on Flash if he were to get in the way (and Soarin’ too, I guess). Not even to mention that not only that I’ve had it with the Flash hate, it frustrates me to see some bronies/pegasisters making attack/kill art of him (I do have a vivid memory of seeing an art piece of Flash getting attacked by Trixie just bc the artist likes Twixie.). I mean I get that Flash doesn’t have that much character development (human or pony; in fact I’m more of a pony Flash x pony Twi shipper) aside from appearing near Twilight or Sunset Shimmer to where a lot of people scream “gary-stu” or “waifu stealer”, but I will say that I think Flash deserves better. Now I know saying this as a FlashLight shipper in where they don’t really interact with each other that much, I really couldn’t help myself thinking how cute they are together though. But then again, there’s more to MLP:FiM than just shippings! So to get back and wrap up with TwiDash, sure there’s nothing wrong with having other shippings with one of the same characters! Though at the same time, and just like I mentioned from my previous statement with MoAriel, I’m not headcanoning Twilight or Rainbow’s sexualities at all. So I’ll just let my imagination flow to wherever the hell it wants!

Okay let’s get into another of my favorite ship, and this time it’s a hetero ship, ShadAmy! Yay, time for another throwback to one of my favorite Sonic ships! Though I will get into a later topic that’s kinda like the topic with me as a TwiDash fan and not giving Flash a lot of shit for being in the way. So onto the same two questions: do I ship them a lot? I think shipping Shadow and Amy together was sudden, bc I was a huge SonAmy fan back then (and I still do ship SonAmy don’t worry) and wasn’t really fond with Shadow until to this day. I guess after seeing fan art of ShadAmy, it led me to start shipping them. Do I want them to be canon? Probably not, and it’s not that I think that Amy should be with Sonic (and as an SonAmy fan, I could care less whether or not it’s canon, and if anyone screams at me that it is canon and I can’t change anything about it, leave.); and I don’t think that Shadow and Amy have a huge chemistry with each other (even if they only interacted with each other twice in Sonic Adventure 2). Now here’s the part in where I say that as a ShadAmy fan, I’m not one for giving shit on Sonic or have to make him the bad guy just bc he keeps running away from Amy. And even if I’m more into Shadow than Sonic (I promise y’all I’m not like one of those Shadow fangirls…), that doesn’t mean I won’t stop loving Sonic! And playing the games of that blue blur will always hold a special place in my heart! So what conclusion do I have for ShadAmy? Nothing probably. But no matter what I’m okay with whoever I want to ship with Amy. ShadAmy? SonAmy? I really don’t care!

Now since the pairings that I’ve mentioned so far happen to be my favorite OTPs, let’s take this next topic with talking about a NOTP. And who will I be talking about next? Enter Victor x Emily from Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. As much as I enjoyed this masterpiece of a Tim Burton film, apparently having to think about this does grind my gears. So onto the questions again: do I ship them a lot? I’ve already stated that they’re not my cup of tea. Do I want them to be canon- okay um yeah let’s get right into that! I guess ever since I first saw the film back then, when I saw the ending scene with Emily turning into butterflies and then Victor and Victoria embraced my mind screamed, “welp, at least Victor and Victoria have each other now”. But at the same time it did sadden me to see Emily go away like that, yet then again Victor has freed her from the memories of pain and shit she’d been through with Barkis. So where am I going with this? Oh yes y’all, I actually like Victor x Victoria. And no, it’s not that I think Victor x Emily is necrophiliac. Pretty much, I’ve had it with everyone talking shit about Victoria all bc she was in the way between Victor and Emily. Tbh I could go on and on talking about defending Victoria, but to keep it a bit short it wasn’t her fault for interrupting the wedding; in fact, that can be saved for a later time. Now before I wrap up, and as I mentioned since the beginning, I’m all for alternatives or “what-ifs” made by Victor x Emily fans but at the same time we gotta accept the fact that the ending of Corpse Bride is just the way it is. Get used to it. Emily had her own happy ending.

Alrighty then, I’ll be taking this last topic discussing about WildeHopps just before I wrap this whole post up! Ah yes, our favorite fox-bunny duo; yet I do have some tweaks with what I think about them for the near future.. But anyway, let’s get into the questions one last time: do I ship them a lot? Now for anyone that have followed me for my Zootopia shenanigans, I do need to say that it seemed sudden of me shipping them out of nowhere. Like sure I can’t deny that Nick and Judy have a great chemistry, but there’s more to the film than just the shipping (or any romance outlet for that matter). I guess I should say that after seeing the film and looking at the fan art of the two, it led me to start shipping them! Do I want them to be canon? Okay see, this is where I get iffy about it bc even if Disney confirmed that they’re canon (or at least that’s what I heard) I still think that Nick and Judy need to start off as best friends first and then we shall see what will happen in the future if there were to be a sequel. So yeah, I think I’m that one person who had to cool off from seeing the ending bc yeah it’s cute but I don’t think I’ll be falling for it sorry! Friends? Couple? Again, these two have chemistry and that’s all that matters to me! So for now, I’m in both platonic and romantic sides of their relationship. And even though having this thought never occurring in my head, I don’t want to think about giving in for them to have their own mate by the same species. But hey, if y’all want to ship Nick with a vixen and Judy with another rabbit I ain’t stopping ya! Which would somewhat lead me to talking about how Judy would be shipped with Jack Savage (quick fyi for those who don’t know him, he’s a deleted character that was the main protagonist of the early version of the film); while I may not be into SavageHopps that much (and this is pretty much the same thing with my TwiDash and ShadAmy topics..), but damn some of y’all are salty on him for trying to “steal” Judy from Nick. If people want to like Jack, let them. If people want to ship SavageHopps, let them! I mean hey, he’s got Skye (who’s another deleted character during the early process) and I’m all for SavageSkye y’all! Okay, yeah I know I brought them out of nowhere as this topic is supposed to be about Nick and Judy but at the same time I kinda had to bring that out there haha. Like I said we shall see where will their future will take them, and we can have our imaginations flow wherever the hell they go!

So that wraps up with what I have to say with shippings! Thank you guys for taking your time reading this~ ❤️

[lycosa83]

What is a Hero? A One-Punch Man Analysis

I’ve made no secret of my respect for One-Punch Man and its fairly recent but profound fixture in the cluttered world of modern anime.  This senin send up to the shonen superhero genre -  born from the unsteady hands of creator ONE as a webcomic nearly a decade ago - initially appeared as nothing more than a poorly drawn gag manga, and even its most stalwart fans often balk at providing a detailed explanation on why it got so big, so fast.  What is it about this bland, bald protagonist in a goofy costume and his zany cast mates that strikes such a chord with so many people - some who’d be the last to call themselves anime fans?  

Of course, there’s the obvious draw of a new massively powerful, near-invincible character fans can add to their roster of titans - a cudgel with which to play out their vicarious power fantasies.  There’s no end of the toxic hate flung about the Internet whenever someone innocently (or not) asks, “Who would win in a fight between Saitama and [X]?” - with “X” being anyone from Goku, to Superman, to God himself.  While amusing in a train wreck sort of way, these pissing contests don't help us understand the wider appeal of the series - and in either case miss the point entirely.  One-Punch Man has been called everything from a gag series to deconstructive satire - usually by people with little understanding of what these terms really mean.  

In fact, One-Punch Man nimbly straddles quite a number of genre lines - partly because ONE didn’t have a solid sense of direction after his crudely drawn webcomic found a bigger audience than he anticipated.  But the series rides on thanks to his skills as a storyteller, particularly where he manages to maintain a compelling story arc without losing sight of the absurdity of his premise - letting his fans in on an extended joke even as he (seemingly) plays typical shonen conventions straight at times.

The crucial figure in this tightrope dance is Saitama himself, and ONE expertly uses him to pivot the fraught nexus of literary deconstruction and reconstruction: the dismantling of literary archetypes by exploiting the real-world implications and consequences of their outlandishness; and the more difficult task of rebuilding them into something a bit more solid and more resilient to both past and future critiques.  

A Hero Shall Lead Them...  

A good place to start is with the the idea of the shonen hero and what he represents.  In these series the main protagonist is usually the central focus.  True, he (and it's almost always a he) may get eclipsed every once and awhile by another character due to creator preferences or fandom response, but it's still his actions driving the plot, and his growth keeping our butts in the seat.  To accomplish this and keep our interest, it’s usually necessary to endow him with some standout feature: good looks, a sad backstory, a drive towards an impossible dream, or just plain, simple badassery.

...Or not  

Saitama’s got precious little of any of that.  On the surface, he’s a vanilla, rather boring protagonist - dull, plain-looking, and lacking any semblance of motivation or ambition besides “having a good fight.”  He doesn’t have a particularly tragic backstory, or any other issue that isn’t, in some way, of his own making.  He even falls a bit short in the “badass” department, since unquestionable power and ability aside, he’s too low-key and lazily efficient to capture the attention of his in-universe protectorate.  Despite his phenomenal powers and obscene strength, despite his status as the main character, there’s nothing about Saitama that really stands out - at least, not in the way most audiences expect from a shonen hero.  He defies our assumptions about what a hero is supposed to look and act like.  But what makes this a brilliant twist instead of a recipe for tedium is the reason why Saitama obtained his unbelievable power.  No mutant bite, no phenomenal superpowered lineage; he's just a guy who trained so hard that he accidentally became the strongest being in the known universe.  If you think that sounds utterly ridiculous, well, you’re right - and you’re not alone; several characters in story aren't drinking his Kool-Aid, either.  But the consequences of his current state is where the real fun lies.  Saitama paints the picture of the quintessential shonen hero during his training - striving to be the strongest, pushing his body to the limits, and stopping at nothing to fulfill his goal. And guess what?  He succeeds.  The boring battles, easy victories, and existential ennui that defines and constrains Saitama is merely the end result of what happens when our shonen heroes take “wanting to be the best” to the logical conclusion.  Saitama woke up one day and found that he really was the strongest guy around - and without the convenient serial escalation of threats that’s such a hallmark of every other series of this kind, he can do nothing but mourn the lack of any challenge to his unwanted supremacy.      

Heroes, Inc.

Saitama’s blandness stands out all the more because he is surrounded by so many colorful characters who to varying degrees of sincerity strive to reach the pinnacle of heroic gestalt.  Unfortunately, that amounts to all of jack squat in this world.  Heroism is less a service to mankind or a motivator to help the helpless than a stepping stone to stardom, a way to blow off steam, or just a simple paycheck in the mail.  The Hero Association who employs most of these “heroes”  is a shady and slightly corrupt organization, warping the concept of heroism into some bastard offspring of a numbers game and a popularity contest.  Many of the Association's cronies are apathetic to all but their names headlining the front page news, and even those who shun the limelight tend not to hold heroism in the most ideal light.  Genos, our hero’s faithful cyborg Number Two, is a perfect example of this, especially in the beginning: the call to heroism had little appeal to the intense, vengeful youth, and even after joining the Association, he cares nothing for the hero culture it brands and advertises.  Not that you can blame him; One-Punch Man lifts the veil on what happens when heroism becomes a commodity - much like My Hero Academia at times, but with neither that show’s affirming narrative of striving for your dreams, nor its generally upbeat framing of heroic actions through the eyes of idealistic youths.

The Breakdown of the Ideal Hero

All of the above combine to drive home the deconstructive aspect of the series.  In the One-Punch universe, heroism is a public relations racket, meant to boost your social capital or that of the association who hires you.  Those few who sincerely wish only to save other people often find themselves overwhelmed by powerful foes and unappreciated by an ungrateful populace.  And when Saitama - a genuine powerhouse who, despite his laziness, does believe in the call to protect and serve - shows up and makes everything look so damn easy, both his fellow heroes and the people they watch over have a hard time believing he’s anything but a fraud.

At play here, then, is a fracturing of two of the most dearly-held beliefs of the shonen superhero genre: that pursuing power with single-minded focus - even if for the right reasons -  will somehow make your life easier or better, and that being a hero is a noble calling that carries its own rewards.  The following example shows just how ruthlessly One-Punch Man can grind down the above “logic” over the course of its run.

Case study: The Deep Sea King

The Deep Sea King Arc (for anime viewers, episodes 9 -10) is a narrative turning point in what had been up to that point a largely episodic gag fest.  Besides giving us the series’  first persistent threat to actually cause a significant degree of damage to both the image of the Hero Association and the heroes themselves, this arc also established several trends that come back to wallop the shonen enterprise at many points during the show’s run.  For one, we have the introduction and development of multiple heroes, each given a chance to shine and show how deadly they would be if they were up against any normal foe. Stinger, Lightning Max, Snake Fist Snek: all members of the Hero Association’s Class A, the second strongest; all laying out their well-earned hero cred, either here or in previous episodes.  And all fall to the Deep Sea King with little or no effort.  It only escalates from there: Speed-o'-Sound Sonic, One-Punch Man’s resident ninja and self-proclaimed rival to Saitama, fails to inflict any lasting damage on the brute.   As does Puri Puri Prisoner, the first S-Class (the best of the best in the Association) we see in action besides Genos, despite a rather impressive showing.  Even Genos himself gives a strong if futile effort against the evil beast, accustomed as he is to getting ragdolled in order to make the monster of the week look more dangerous before Saitama fists it to oblivion.

So far, this all still follows the standard shonen patterns: evil enemy appears, carves a bloody swath through a line of lesser heroes, and eventually stumbles into a final showdown with our protagonist.  Even so, One-Punch Man still has time to play with a few genre archetypes along the way to varying degrees of faithfulness: the power of teamwork, which fails miserably; the heroic transformation sequence, which only serves to show a side of Puri Puri Prisoner most of us definitely did not want to see; and even the infamous “nakarma power up,” during which resident low-ranked muggle hero Licenseless Rider gains a second wind in his hopeless battle against the Deep Sea King because the crowd he’s protecting all rallied behind him...which does absolutely nothing to change the outcome in any way.  It's at this point - with all the shonen-trope fish riddled with bullets at the bottom of the barrel - that Saitama finally steps in, annoyed and ready to throw down with the king.  

By now, most fans probably know the deal - but those few who miraculously missed the memo on what this series is all about might be expecting a decent fight for once.  And were this any other series, they’d have every right to.  Years of shonen narrative archetypes have conditioned us to expect a fight in these circumstances- maybe one-sided, maybe back- and-forth, but still, a fight.  What we get was the usual half-assed, one punch victory; Saitama drops him like an afterthought, just like every other baddie on the show. But it is the crowd’s reaction and what follows that really twists the deconstructive knife.  Saitama’s hilariously effortless dispatching of the Deep Sea King is par for the course for him, but completely throws his spectators for a loop- so much so that one particular ingrate uses it to argue against the efficacy of the Hero Association and heroes in general.

For most fans, this venom-spewing cretin should be burned in effigy.  But his arguments, on closer inspection, don't deviate much from the tirades shonen fans often level at “weak” characters in many franchises.  He questions the strength and usefulness of heroes and the hero ranking since a low-ranked nobody like Saitama can come along and end it in a single punch.  Truth be told, he does have a point about the rankings' unreliability, but when he equates strength with heroism, thus casting all the heroes who risked everything to keep him and his fellow citizens safe into the proverbial waste bin, he’s not saying anything out of the ordinary for fandoms like Dragonball or One Piece, where “weak” characters are often the butts of many jokes for the sin of not being in the top power tier.  

What's at heart here is the very nature of heroism itself, and who gets to define it.  Our obnoxious jerk lays out his own understanding: “Anyone can buy a little time, but a hero has to beat monsters.”  With that, the heckler shows his shared lineage with those who lust after the violent anti-hero archetype - the ones, like Saitama in the beginning, who are motivated more by the thrill of a good fight than a desire to save people.  These are the heroes who stop at nothing to “beat the bad guy” - collateral damage, protecting innocents, or a sense of higher purpose driving their actions be damned.  These are the heroes who own a dominant share of the current shonen market and who power the 90s Anti-hero trope so well known in Western comics.  These heroes, and their fans, hold “badassery” as the most important and defining trait a hero can have, giving lift to the most reprehensible personal and moral views so long as they have what it takes to annihilate the enemy and confer bragging rights to their vicarious backers.

Tear Down, Build Up

There are many other instances like this all throughout ONE’s webcomic and especially the fabulous redrawn manga made in collaboration with the great  Yusuke Murata.  Teamwork among these heroes is seen not only to fail, but to be fundamentally flawed when weighed against the egos and relative powerlessness of the parties involved.  The Hero Association gets rattled a few more times over the course of the series - each time revealing an even more unsavory underbelly in the process.  Perhaps the darkest manifestation of One-Punch Man’s deconstructive digs is Handsomely Masked Sweet Mask, the Association’s top A-Class and unofficial gatekeeper to the coveted Class S.  Popular, charming, and incredibly handsome, Sweet Mask harbors an almost sociopathic degree of black and white thinking.  His main quirk - aside from badgering other heroes for not living up to his ideals of “perfection” - is his relentless desire to vanquish “evil,” however he sees it.  This isn’t new, of course; hero teams across genres and cultures often have at least one moral monster to wreak havoc with the series' karmic tilt.  But ONE keeps true to his ironic bent by showing how flat-out insane it looks from the outside to idolize someone like that.  Sweet Mask will disregard orders to bring a target in alive,  threaten other heroes and even children who dare interfere with his directives, and all the while his fans cheer him on because hey, he looks so damn good doing it.  This creep's in-universe fandom love him for all the most shallow reasons, and though most of us in real life are thoroughly repulsed by him (if the tremendous amounts of hate he gets across the Internet is anything to go by) Sweet Mask slyly reveals the many illogical ways we justify flocking to characters that intrigue us superficially, even as we’d find their behavior under any other circumstance - or even if enacted by a less attractive or "cool" character - repugnant.  

One-Punch Man, far from being a simple gag series, runs quite a few deconstructive currents under the smooth surface of in-jokes and silliness.  Sure, it’s no Voltaire or Jonathan Swift, but ONE’s crafting has more than a little method behind the madness.  Indeed, you might be forgiven for assuming that the series is primarily satire - a brutal poke at the superhero premise specifically and anime archetypes generally.  But there’s another side to the story; just as the little creep in the Deep Sea King Arc made his case of what a hero is supposed to be, Saitama himself had his own answer.  And we’ll examine that in depth in the next part, along with the slew of other gems ONE throws in to veer his series away from simply demolishing fictional heroism’s house of card and towards rebuilding it in (partial) glory.

[dejametemostrar-blog]

The Sexual Metrosexual Heterosexual

     By CJ Stokes

    He’s a rap superstar, (a genre most infamously known for its machismo and Mafioso themes), yet he’s wearing nail polish and shorts that would be alarming to even the most liberal parents of a daughter.

    He’s also a Pop and Reggaeton superstar.  Until you stumble upon his Instagram videos, you wouldn’t notice that he actually has the voice of an opera star as well yet he uses his spotless voice to tell women his filthiest fantasies, i.e.  A 200 millas en un jetski, ¡eh! Si tú quieres te lo meto aquí, ¡eh!  Debajo del sol, debajo del sol.

     Translation: Going 200 MPH on a Jetski, if you want I’ll park it and we can f*** right here!  Right under the sun!

    I was just chilling all alone in my off campus apartment’s living room, or at least feeling that way due to the disconnect with my roommates when I heard through the twitter grapevine that Latin superstar Bad Bunny would be releasing his debut studio album on the most unexpected music release day of the week, Sunday.  Not only would he drop it this day but also Sunday night.  

    I shouldn’t have expected anything different; as detailed above El Conejito Mal or Bad Bunny is far from predictable and Sunday, a day of reality between myself and it was the perfect day to drop.  I can only understand about 35% of Spanish but Bad Bunny made this arguably the best album

.... Image a version of yourself that is truly absent of apprehension due to the judgement of others and relentless in chasing aspirations which make your heart alone pulsate with passion.  Or even when life goes awry around your newfound sense of invincibility, you know exactly what to do to bounce back, recover.

.... This is the power of Bad Bunny’s 100XPRE.  

.... Just a little after 11 o’clock I had accessed exactly what I was feening for; an escape. The slightly somber chords of perhaps a ukulele or some other miniature guitar were the first sounds to reach my ears.  The chords were just as conflicted as I was about many long terms questions within my lifestyle.. Then, I picked apart as many words as I could from Bunny’s first sonic grunts (also with digital translator handy).  

.... “Sin ti no me va bien, tampoco me va mal

Pase lo que pase no te voy a llamar

Ya yo me quité, tú nunca me va' a amar

Pa' no pensar en ti tengo que fumar

.... Without you, I'm not doing well, it's not going bad either Whatever happens, I will not call you I already took off, you will never love me To not think about you I have to smoke

.... After that came a rolling Latin Trap bass line which fused with mellow dramatic chords and a reggae percussion.  Just like that, within the first four lines of the chorus, Bunny had tapped into this boundless feeling of hopelessness and insecurity when I don’t get what I want or who I want to be more specific.  Not only, did he articulate this usually inexplicable feeling but he also had a solution.  Yes, I know, not a healthy solution or one that works upon the first dose but he found one nonetheless and a hedonistic solution which suited my philosophy.  

    Amidst the void of satisfaction, Bunny’s sonics, vocals and instrumental included allowed me to envision a therapeutic, tropical afternoon, in Puerto Rico, (Bunny’s birthplace) where only the beachgoer and the beach can speak with each other.  The breeze serves as a moderator or peanut gallery but its simply you and the waves sorting out your mental peace.  

     In that same introductory song Bunny says that this girl who causes him to smoke to forget her will remember him when she looks in her wallet and she has nothing. She’ll remember him when he puts “it” in her and she feels nothing; when she feels lonely lost in nothingness and she can fix it but she does nothing then he thanks her for nothing.  

    The vibes that would follow in Bunny’s tracklist are a mixture of his free spirit as well as more vulnerable moments from a man who is a paradox of the stereotype of modern masculinity.

     He is humble yet brash; shy but also the catalyst of any conversation.  

Take tracks two and three, 200 MPH and Quien Tu Eres?  Remember that jet ski I told you about earlier?  Bunny brags about how much better at sex he is than any one his jet ski passenger has been with.  Quien Tu Eres? Dime socio Quien Tu Eres?  They know who I am.  I’m Bad Bunny, who are you, loser?!

    Yet his high horse is sporadic following those two songs come more heartbreak and regret.  He hates the text message “we have to talk” on ‘Tenemos Que Hablar’ and he still wonders what would’ve had happened if this toxic relationship with this woman would have been repaired while they were together on ‘Si Estuvimos Juntos’.  

    The roller coaster of vulnerable honesty to impenetrable confidence continued as any day on Earth would and Bunny captured each transition perfectly. However, what was most outstanding during this first listen of Bunny’s album was that I was having an epiphany. Bunny’s audacity to be himself was inspiring me to do the same from my own living room.  

    As I stated before, I can barely understand Spanish without help so much of my first experience was spent enjoying the sonics of the album however, from the fearless lyrics that I did catch.  I was imagining a fearless future for myself.  I’d chase my dreams and the dream girl.  I wouldn’t apologize for my willingness and passion while doing so.  

    In Bunny’s Complex interview with J Balvin in which they discussed their upcoming projects.  Bunny said

“I remember when they used to make fun of me at every studio when I started… I mean when I was a nobody… Because of my pants but to me it was normal.  I always liked to wear short pants, really short pants, not the ones used by [Carlos Vives’] Not shorts that reach your ankles.  To me those were shorts that were good for jumping over puddles.  There was always a dude who would make fun of me.  He would say something.  And since I’ve always been lowkey and I’ve always been alone.  Now look at them; all following”.

    After playing the album non-stop that night I had a phone call with my longtime comrade and Puerto Rican native Carlos Trujillo, where he told me that Bad Bunny had to be his spirit animal.

    “He says Benito [Bad Bunny], says everything a man can’t say.  Everything you’re scared to say…I can’t even relate to the nail polish but he doesn’t make me scared of what I don’t want to do.  He makes me confident in doing everything I can’t do”.

    With my suspicions confirmed, I decided to fuel my future with Bunny’s inspiration as well. I felt so appeased by the album’s sounds that I realized that the Latin music scene could be an untapped niche for an aspiring producer.  Me, me of all people, a black man, fluent in the Spanish industry.  I could find a gold mine while simply being different and being mysef.  100XPRE has taught me to be comfortable being uncomfortable.  

    Even regardless of my career choices, I can find peace within my relationship problems with Bad Bunny.  I can sift through my future with this ocean Bad Bunny provides.