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metellastella · 1 year

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Animation Usurper

Happy International Asexuality Day!

Fun Fact, I wrote this during Ace Week in October. But apparently I either am so forgetful, or dissatisfied with my prose or am distractible or just couldn’t motivate myself to do clarifying edits, or some combo of those, here we are all these months later.

So. Let’s make up for lost time.

I’m very far along the ace spectrum, so I typically don’t like Western ‘adult’ cartoons. (as a result of a particular brand of ace, not all ace people experience repulsion) Really, it’s more because the industry has collectively decided ‘adult cartoons’ should mean almost always be *obnoxious and in-your-face* about sexuality, as opposed to some animes made for adults whose focus isn’t that but maybe it includes it occasionally.

To go on a bit of an unrelated tangent, Japan has a lot more respect for the ART medium of animation. And aside from aesthetics and effort, middling thematic variety between ‘this is all about sex’ and ‘for kids.’

(not fond of violence either)

Sadly though, I find the style repetitive and haven’t really done a deep dive on anime. It doesn’t sate the ‘novelty-seeking’ aspect of my psychology. But I venerate all the effort. I just wish there was some fusion between the two, where Japanese animation was a little less rigid in its style dictates and Western animation aimed a little higher for quality. Maybe that’s arising, as you’ll see here in a bit later.

It also doesn’t help that Western adult cartoons seem to think it’s funny to have a dial-it-in art style.

I don’t like the idea of someone spending months of their lives, limited time on earth per minutes of animation, just to have it look scruffy, or flat, derivative, or unimaginative. That is incredibly disheartening to picture, as an artist. Even just being a hobbyist.

Call it vicarious existential anxiety, I suppose.

Maybe some might misread that concern and call me a ‘snob’ for that, but, hey, what’re ya gonna do.

It’s as if, since again they seem to have very little self-respect for their stories or characters, the crude animation and character design itself is a crutch to add to the writing of comedy, and should be laughed at.

Maybe people do find that funny.

And note, I’m not even necessarily talking about making animation realistic or proportioning bodies exactly like anime does. Elegance can be found in the simplest of character designs, if someone deliberately creates it that way. See: the animation studio that produced The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, The Breadwinner, Wolfwalkers, and most recently, My Father’s Dragon.

(kinda glad I dragged my feet and got to give a shout-out to that last one)

Lego Monkie Kid, for that matter!!!!

Cannot say enough good things about that show. I’ll probably make a whole separate post about it.

To be honest, I quite frequently find myself digging for aesthetically pleasing ‘moving art,’ and sometimes the story is secondary. A stationary artist doesn’t have to tell me a whole story for me to enjoy their painting- and artist animators who just happen to draw a bad card from the deck and not to be blessed with pairing to good writers nonetheless pique my interest.

I’ve done enough stationary art browsing over my lifetime, that, in fact, maybe I’ve jaded myself a little. If even a tiny fraction of the stellar character design in art communities online were animated, I think people would start to see the problem, and variety would blossom.

So, that brings me to an interesting intersection of this musing.

And don’t worry, the ace spec subject does come back into it full circle.

Independent animators.

If you had described these two very well-known web animations to me beforehand, and asked me which you think I would like more, I would’ve selected ...

Bee and Puppycat.

I mean. Obviously. Cute creatures and whimsical settings. Not too adult and not too babyish either, something that is astonishingly rare among Western animation??

You might have heard grumblings of this before in fandom spaces, questioning and wondering about why there seems to be no middle ground.

But, oddly, even though I fully mentally recognize B & P as a landmark achievement, both as a step outside monopolized media production spaces and hitting a sweet spot that is sorely lacking within them ... I just didn’t resonate with it.

This is baffling to me, because as I mentioned, the style of it is very appealing, so what gives? I’m put off of some shows with good writing because of aesthetic style, (as a corollary to the seeking styles and disregarding writing, kinda like someone may vibe to acoustic stylings of a piece of music even if the lyrics are utterly insipid on their own) but usually the reverse does not happen. Even if I didn’t like the writing or plotting, which is far from the case, as the writing’s fine, I should have been motivated to finish it.

Honestly, I haven’t quite worked that out yet, tho I have an inkling, and it’s related to suggesting an IRL friend to record Bee’s lines since she likes it so much.

But, that’s not the reason I started this ramble, and not as well-developed as my thoughts on art styles, so forgive me for leaving it aside.

Enter the Dark Horse animation that, had you asked me beforehand if I would like, I would’ve said ‘yeah prob not for me, I’ll move along.’

Helluva Boss (and Hazbin Hotel).

There are LOADS of reasons I shouldn’t take a shine to this cartoon.

1. HH & HB are barely above the likes of Rick and Morty and Simpsons et all in its incessant ‘adult’ jokes

and again don’t misunderstand me here, I /enjoy/ Star Trek Lower Decks. It makes tolerable and judicious use of adult jokes and doesn’t overly rely on them.

2. HH’s style- while absolutely cool- is behind B & P in terms of preference. BUT. In terms of creativity and flow, is heads and shoulders above practically all big name cartoons out there. What I call the “golf ball eye” phenomenon, in which eyes are perfectly round with mere dots. So you get two moldy foods to consume for the price of one: lack of variation in creativity AND lack of character expressiveness and nice looks. Three sci fi examples are Star Trek: Lower Decks, Final Space, and Solar Opposites. One I love, the middle is not bad, and S.O.’s humor is great. Buuuuut. Their face aesthetics….. Even SU Pearl’s exceedingly simple, no-pupil eyes add SO much to the draw of the character with just the inclusion of a single color. I’m not asking for much. I promise. Not even Owl House style highlights are a bare requirement. I know how hard animating is. I like things like She-Ra, soft and round shapes, and tend to dislike sharp edges (Sorry, most recent Ninja Turtles remake. Kipo, you’re fine hunny, just a lil off) and yet. Somehow HH has bypassed that into ‘wtf why do I love this so much.’ Wily little sneaks.

I mean, when the likes of Aquaman 2022 feels like ‘a breath of fresh air’ because there’s so little visual variety in animation, you know something’s amiss. Not to knock it too hard, though. I wish that had been that artist’s “breakout role,” tbh, instead of the first job he got stuck with before that, because he will be forever remembered as the guy who ruined a nostalgic fandom’s wishes at behest of executives and not the guy who made something as whimsical and fun as this iteration of Aquaman. The character was usually the butt of the joke among DC fans to begin with, and therefore has more leeway to be silly. That style won extra points that supplements its questionable aesthetic raw merit. To be fair, there’s so much motion in the character’s body emoting, that also goes beyond very stiff, basic poses common in other shows, I have to give points for that, too.

3. HH universe takes religious concepts and obviously has no respect for them. In a somewhat similar but more lowkey way, recalling a screed by a practicing Hindu who was understandably angry at the less-than-respectful comedic moments in ATLA towards certain cultural aspects, I simply find the /premise/ cringe. I know cringe culture is dead and all. I even agree with that general sentiment. I think Vivzie will sleep fine at night if one backwater Tumblr blog- who’s ultimately still complimenting her- uses the term as a one-off.

It doesn’t help that the vision of Hell typically forwarded in the modern day that is used to terrorize fundie-raised kids during childhood doesn’t resemble the original Hebrew belief and therefore the whole show ends up reminiscent of so much IRL totally unnecessary angst.

I’d almost rather have a fantasy setting that had its own underworld concept, or could be similar to HH canon but with 4th wall breaks that slyly hinted they’re all in Dante’s Inferno which was, historically, political satire of the time (essentially a longform political cartoon, hue hue) and 0% Biblical to begin with ….. Idk.

(though I did have a strange conversation with someone recently which indicated Dante’s Inferno may have been based on pieces of the Quran. Weird.)

4. HB characters are abrasive. I could barely get through Homestuck. Lower Decks is here again a good comedy counterexample of characters that aren’t CONSTANTLY backbiting each other for the sake of a joke.

(or verbally abusing children, as one sci fi protagonist everybody loves to hate)

So, the mystery: how did I manage to stick with this cartoon, with so much pulling against it?

Again, can’t quite put my finger on it

But, I know that by the second episode, it had one little grip on me with Stolas sweetly serenading his daughter against a backdrop of the cosmos and exploding planets.

Encouraged, I thought that perhaps there would be more sincere moments like that. I was hurting for musical animation after all, I can barely comprehend why it’s not more common. (sadly, Centaurworld did not really effectively scratch that itch, for me personally, tho I did latch onto a couple songs long term). Corporations want people hooked on their content, but you don’t offer us that which burrows into the brain and repeats itself for days at a time?

The one time capitalism fails to take advantage of something, and it’s the pleasant things. Figures.

So, back into the thick of it, I’m halfway through the season and have found some bits and pieces to like, but still am questioning if the likable outweighs the negatives. Then I see Blitz and Moxie do their duet. Now that scene alone was worth everything else. Purely aesthetically it’s a treasure, a subtle shift in artstyle that mimicked the likes of Disney, and the character depth upgraded several notches.

So now by this point, I knew, I’m gonna watch the rest of this series at least. Dunno if I was gonna be super invested in the fandom, but not everything you watch will consume your soul like that, so all good.

And then.

Drumroll.

The Wrath Ring pair visits the club.

They are relentlessly mocked for being ‘too vanilla’ for everyone around them.

Man.

You don’t know HOW hard that hit me. You can’t comprehend it.

Feeling constantly out of place b/c of not being allosexual. It’s not a perfect parallel obviously, but it nonetheless struck a deep vein of accumulated angst.

Irony of ironies, the cartoon that may have slipped through my fingers because of VERY SIMILAR issues to that scene IRL managed to take a pickaxe to my psyche.

Seeing two people being unapologetic about being more modest in their desires in the face of what could be interpreted as amatonormativity on steroids was indescribable.

In fact, the parallel gets even closer to reality when you consider any perfectly ordinary woman who’s had the accusations flung at her for being ‘frigid’ or ‘repressed’ whether by men pressuring her or well-meaning friends or acquaintances who think they know what’s good for her better than she does.

An excellent counter-anthem:

youtube

I’d think she’d resonate with this too, and if not, maybe see the episode with new eyes after reading this little entry.

In the modern era, in these ways, there is ubiquitous prude shaming and over-forced sex-positivity even of non-aces.

So, I formally present to you my carefully constructed headcanon on behalf of bygone Ace Week: Moxie and Millie are both gray ace. Their attractions are more subtle than that palm sweaty, instant-draw that ‘primary attraction’ often generates, and subsequent strikes of physical desire.

They might or might not have ‘secondary attraction’ as their only experience (demi) in the stylings of the very popular Friends-To-Lovers trope, but without their backstory of how they met, we can’t determine that yet.

They are alloromo, of course. Alloace. Probably hetace.

After some reflection, as an inversion, Blitz could probably be read as aroallo.

(I know it’s played as if he’s simply ‘afraid’ of getting in a serious relationship, but if you pay close attention, his platonic relationships are presented the exact same way- so it could be just relationships and emotional vulnerability in general. It doesn’t directly have to mean he experiences romo attraction. We don’t see a lot of him deliberating and being ‘drawn’ to it but shying away- rather he’s so oblivious to romance he stumbles into inviting Stolas out without even once thinking what it might mean to the other. Sorry but, that is an incredibly common experience among aro people, not realizing how they’re coming across to another person!!) (and his response to a clearly romantic overture of watching movies and cuddling even more hints that his brain operates in aro mode)

And Angel Dust gives off vibes which are much more straightforwardly aroallo.

And to round it all out, we have the canon aroace character, Alastor.

And thus concludes HH’s careful courting of me. The initial rocky start, the resistance, has evaporated and I am invested.

...

P.S.

If you’d like to see some more independent animation, check out Lackadaisy, which is absolutely stunning

And Talon, the fluidity of which is somewhat rougher, but is nonetheless ambitious, has some neat light effects, and definitely for those who adore dinosaurs

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